Wulf Ratbane said:
The Book of Exalted Deeds does not D&D make. Your quotes from that book make me as happy not to have purchased it as I am not to have purchased its Evil counterpart.
True. But it explicitly addressed your statement. Killing women and children is evil. Even when they're orcs.
Oh, please. Violence is not always necessarily a victory for evil, not in the real world, and definitely not in D&D.
If every act of violence were a de facto victory for evil, there would be no good adventurers. You can hardly call this a tenet of D&D, unless you plan for your adventurers to treat every dungeon as a friggin' diplomatic opportunity.
Settlling a disagreement with words as opposed to violence is less "evil" than one settled by threat of violence. Settling a disagreement because of threat of violence is better than settlingone by violence.
At it's best violence can good only because it can oppose other violence. Either way, at the root of it violence is the problem. In D&D terms, it's evil, because it's selfish and is only acceptable as good when fighting selfishness (other violence) as a last resort.
The vast bulk of the D&D gaming experience is that violence is a perfectly acceptable solution, in some if not most encounters the characters will face.
That's often because it's provided as the only solution. The game's desiged around killing things, taking their stuff and getting more powerful by doing so. How many games even offer any form of diplomatic solutions as possible outcomes? That doesn't mean that doing so is considered "good" in the game.
Again, if you truly live by that quote, there will be few good characters in your D&D game. I do not play D&D for a chance to enter the dungeon and talk the goblins out of their evil ways, or to otherwise exhaust every other possible attempt to avoid kicking ass.
Nor do I expect you to. I'm simply saying that if you decide to kill the goblin women and children you're performing an evil act according the the game.
It's preposterous to say, "This is what D&D good is." It's no wonder that philosophy was relegated to an optional product. Frankly I'm surprised you can even find it there. It flies directly in the face of all of the FUN of D&D.
Fun doesn't mean good. It's often fun to be the bad guys. Realistically, a party is usually just a bunch of mercanaries who get together to go kill things and take their stuff. Why should I consider that good? Just because the creatures being killed aren't good? That doesn't necessarily follow. In other words, just killing evil doesn't make one good. There's a lot more to being good than killing evil, in fact, just killing evil and doing nothing else probably means that you
aren't good.
Call me crazy, but thousands of years of relentless evil-good conflict abdicates the paladin from any, "Well, maybe this little goblin baby won't grow up to slaughter and pillage."
Evil is evil, and it is GOOD to kill it.
Wulf
Evil is evil, and it's better to not have to kill it unless you absolutely have too. Does that make sense? I understand your viewpoint, but I'm saying that that viewpoint isn't supported by the supplements dealing with the subject matter. Although Alhandra may "fight evil without mercy and protect the innocent without hesitation..." that doesn't mean that she wouldn't be better off fighting evil
with mercy. Because "Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and
compassion."
joe b.