The "orc baby" paladin problem

thedungeondelver said:

If this thread has inspired me to do anything, it's that I'm going to write a Paladin's Code for my campaign should someone step up to the plate to play a Paladin in the future. I'm going to pretty clearly define how they should be acting in given situations (Prisoners, no prisoners, etc.)

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Working on mine now. Started with Boy Scout Law, and adding elements of Superman that are workable for D&D (the no killing this is obviously not going to fly) and then going to compare it to the PHB mini-code.

Aaron L said:

Wait a minute... did you actually just say that some of the people posting in this thread are evil?

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I think Korgoth did, and to be perfectly honest, a version of this same thought has occurred to me before as well - not so much that the other people trying to define a Paladin's Code are EVIL, per se. More that it is difficult for people who lack utter moral clarity (or the other side of that coin, being a zealot) to properly define what it is to be someone who DOES have it. Sort of like a child trying to pretend to be an adult (they lack the information and experience) or an adult trying to pretend to be a child (they lack the uninformed innocence) - they may get close, but their frame of reference won't really allow it to be quite right.

Aaron L said:

Wait a minute... did you actually just say that some of the people posting in this thread are evil?

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So... some folks are saying that it would be a good act to murder a pregnant woman (a Paladin no less) in order to kill her unborn child based on what it would do in the future... and you have a beef with me?

Anyway, I said that some folks subscribe to morally evil philosophies, not that they act on them. As far as I know I don't know any of the posters, so I don't know how they do or don't behave. If you find out one of our posters murders some pregnant lady or stangles an alien baby, PM me about it after you call the real life police on them.

Point is, if murdering a pregnant woman for any reason whatsoever sounds to you like it could be reasonable, maybe you're not the guy to explain to the world what a Paladin is supposed to be like.

Korgoth said:

So... some folks are saying that it would be a good act to murder a pregnant woman (a Paladin no less) in order to kill her unborn child based on what it would do in the future... and you have a beef with me?

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I think you're having trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. D&D good is not the same thing as real-world good (for one thing, the former has a canonical definition).

So... some folks are saying that it would be a good act to murder a pregnant woman (a Paladin no less) in order to kill her unborn child based on what it would do in the future... and you have a beef with me?

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I sincerely hope you realize I'm talking about a fantasy world where objective good and evil can be determined with 100% certainty.

Because we are in an RPG discussion forum on a D&D website, and not talking at all about a real-world scenario or morality.

Anyway, I said that some folks subscribe to morally evil philosophies, not that they act on them. As far as I know I don't know any of the posters, so I don't know how they do or don't behave. If you find out one of our posters murders some pregnant lady or stangles an alien baby, PM me about it after you call the real life police on them.

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Point is, if murdering a pregnant woman for any reason whatsoever sounds to you like it could be reasonable, maybe you're not the guy to explain to the world what a Paladin is supposed to be like.

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Why not? Because a fantasy world's moral code doesn't mesh up with what you think is good and evil in the real world? That's like saying that someone who had never tried cast a magic spell couldn't tell you what a wizard's supposed to be like.

Ease up on the personal attacks, there, Porkins.


Stay on target! Stay on target!

In order so that those who will listen will hear, it is entirely consistent in a D&D universe to have killing a pregnant woman be an entirely Good-aligned action. Death is not always an evil thing -- death of an evil being, in fact, is a good thing. And if a powerful evil being can be prevented from even coming to be, by the death of a single good being, it is better to allow that person to die than to allow them to live. If they fight you, they may even be guilty of evil -- they are selfishly considering their own life above the lives of those that will be harmed by what they bring.

Good. Is. Not. Always. Nice.

Delta said:

I think you're having trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. D&D good is not the same thing as real-world good (for one thing, the former has a canonical definition).

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There wasn't a disclaimer at the beginning of the thread saying we'd be discussing the semantics of Moon-Language rather than English.

Kamikaze Midget said:

Because a fantasy world's moral code doesn't mesh up with what you think is good and evil in the real world?

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How about this: I'll start a thread asking whether Paladins should put poison on their blades, and then I'll move the goalposts by stating that in my campaign, "poison" refers to NaCl. After all it's just a fantasy world, so they could conceivably call NaCl "poison". Then after I make that move, I'll sling mud at anybody who argued against poison use. I'll even put in little smileys like I think they're some kind of loon who can't tell fantasy from reality, because they should have assumed that the word "poison" doesn't mean a harmful substance.

But thanks for being irrational and insulting anyway. It might have been stultifying to read, but it tells me plenty about you.

I don't really care about other people's arguements or even the ofiicial rules on this one, the way I've explained to my players is that every mortal* creature has the possibility of both free choice and redemption and if possible should be saved rather then being killed. Paladins should not massacre evil, except when they have proof that they have either committed evil and a crime (that is punishable by death) or are in the act of doing evil.

This has never really gotten in the way of the game because 99% of the time, paladins only encounter evil creatures (big, bad, smelly, stinks of evil kind) in a combat situation. Otherwise, a paladin would be breaking the law by slaughtering someone evil that hasn't comitted a crime that can be proven. Of course, the paladin can kill someone but normally they can only get away with it once or twice before a LN officer would arrest them.

A paladin may not get arrested for slaughtering the innocents of orcs that are hated in a given area, but they certainly wouldn't be liked, respected, and probably seen as a fanatic in most cosmopolitian locations.

*Mortal creatures are anything that has a finite life span, two parents and needs to eat. Thus undead, magical beasts, outsiders & aberrations generally fit outside these parameters and are not believed to be subject to free will. They are what they are, so if something smells of evil, the paladin can go smite-happy on the thing.

Korgoth said:

Point is, if murdering a pregnant woman for any reason whatsoever sounds to you like it could be reasonable, maybe you're not the guy to explain to the world what a Paladin is supposed to be like.

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No, Korgoth. The point is that you seem to be new here, and you may be unaware that we have some rules of conduct for these boards that you are violating. Please follow the link and review them.

Please show respect to your fellow board members, and be civil. Accusations and insults are not welcome here. Please do not ascribe motives or moralities to other posters - the internet is known to be a really lousy medium for mind-reading.

If any of this is unclear, please feel free to e-mail one of the moderators. Our addresses are available in a thread stickied to the top of the Meta forum. Thank you, and welcome to EN World.

How about this: I'll start a thread asking whether Paladins should put poison on their blades

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Generally, it is held that poison violates the "honorable combat" part of the oath, but even that is hotly debated. The idea for one side goes that the paladin should be destroying evil with his own hands, rather than with subterfuge, skullduggery, and sneaktheifery. The idea for the other goes that poison is just a tool, like fireballs and the Hide skill, and the paladin should be free to use it as they do any tool.

More to the point of the paragraph, "evil" and "good" have clear definitions and ways to read them in D&D, and these definitions are different (but similar to) what the real world's western Judeo-Christian post-enlightenment milieu considers the concepts to be. In D&D, because you can tell what is evil, destroying evil is good. In the real world, because you can't, destroying what you think might be evil is seriously a stickier issue. Y'know the line "Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged?" In D&D, it's turned on its head, because the gods give the mortals the capacity to judge -- and the imperative to do so. No one has been re-defining the D&D terms, just extrapolating from their implications, unlike someone who would claim that salt is poison, because that would be re-defining what D&D means by "poison."

Well, Whizbang Dustyboots, I HOPE YOU'RE SATISFIED.