Nonhuman noncombatants?

You and your companions have fought and slain the orc chieftain and his minions. The male orcs are all dead.

Then you encounter the orcish women and children, who don't fight.

What do you do with them?

Some points to consider:

-Would it be evil to slaughter them, given that they are, after all, noncombatants, even if they are orcs?

-Would it be evil to let them live, if you view orcs and other humanoids as inherently evil?

-Do humanoids, IYC, have the same rights and deserve the same consideration as demihumans and humans?

-What if your character is a dwarf, who may well view these creatures as inherently evil? Could it be an act of Good, from his point of view, to destroy them where they stand, so they cannot breed more of their kind?

Too often, it seems to me, people seem to make the mistake of forgetting the presence of sentient non-humans when discussing campaign worlds. In some ways, comparing our real world to your typical D&D world is almost like comparing apples and oranges, given that some of the creatures in question are not human. I remember one poster in another thread saying that the attitude that because a lizard man has scaly green skin, he doesn'td deserve the same considerations as human, as being 'Neutral Evil'.

So, how does your group handle these nonhuman noncombatants when they pop up? And what if you yourself are playng a nonhuman, especially a dwarf or gnome? Do dwarves let orcish women and children live, or do they slay them? Would it be an act of Evil NOT to kill them where they stand?

Questions like these are why the default system of alignment in D&D sucks. Morality is a largely subjective thing as many schools of philosophy on Earth have proven over the centuries. X often sees Y as evil and engages in a campaign of genocide or conquest, which almost always makes X evil in the eyes of Y. The artifical divisions of alignment in D&D do not address these subjective matters of good and evil at all.

I can't recall where I read it, but there was a website I came across once with a monologue about a paladin's code. One of the things it mentions is that paladins should try to redeem those who can be redeemed and kill those who can't.

The basic idea was that monsters (humanoid or not) whose entry in the Monster Manual said "Always Evil" were to be killed on site regardless of their age or whether they fought back. These monsters cannot be redeemed. However, monsters whose entry said "Usually Evil" have a chance to be redeemed and taught the error of their ways. The noncombatants of these monsters should not be killed without reason.

Obviously the characters in the game world don't know what's written in the Monster Manual, but they do have some idea of what creatures can sometimes overcome their evil heritage and what kind cannot. Orcs... yeah there was one good orc I heard of once, so don't kill the orc baby. Devil babies, though (if they exist), are kill on sight and nobody will fault you for it.

I like that take on it, but I find the area of alignment is so gray and objective (even looking at the rules put down in the manuals) that I usually will try to find out how alignment generally looked at in this particular campaign or setting and just go with the flow. It's not worth arguing over.

Start playing Eberron, man. The whole situation works out a bit different.

You're hired by House Sivis to kill some Orcs. You do just that, and you come across the orc village, filled with orc wimmin and children.

Strangely, they're building a relay station for... house Sivis? But, you were hired by Sivis? What does this mean?

Personally, Eberron is probably the best handling of D&D alignment out there right now, although Dark Sun (which pretty much ignored alignment in the sourcebooks) did better back in the day.

In my Iron Heroes game, which is set in somewhere close to Eberron, and doesn't use alignments, my players just mow down everything. I had an adventure where a sorceress had charmed a whole town, and they just ran through and slaughtered peasants until they could reach the sorceress and her bodyguard. It was brutal.
Then, in a later adventure, they met resistance from some obviously dominated dockworkers, and they slaughtered them too.

While I don't like the way D&D uses alignments, going overboard just 'cuz there's none sucks too.

IMO, you can do one of two things, depending on what tone of campaign you're running.

a) In the D&D world of Good and Evil, Good guys kill Evil guys without a second thought because Evil is bad. This is the default assumption of "Core" D&D -- PC's are heroes, and monsters are opponents for the PC's to vanquish, regardless of real-world morality. If you allow the Evil Orc women and children to live, you're only ensuring that more Evil Orcs will be raised to attack more Good human settlements. Better to kill them now.

b) In the more common (it seems) "Shades of Grey" outlook, everything Evil may have a sliver of Good in them and vice versa. This blurry aligment outlook takes real-world morality into effect -- intelligent monsters are treated more like people than monsters. Whether or not Evil can be trusted to keep its word, well... that's up to the PC's to decide. The Orc women and children are non-violent, and will live peacefully if left alone. Of course, without the Orc men to protect them, who's to say how long they'll last...

My first question is - Why aren't the Orc women fighting?
Nothing in the rules says they can't and being as they are orcs why would their culture prohibit them from scrapping to protect their beds and babies?

Second - even IRL it has been easier to kill the enemy if they happen to look different to 'us'. When the enemy is an entirely different species (especially one with scales) then it naturally becomes even easier to deny their 'humanity' and thus any semblance of rights

Third - Of course you could give your Orcs 'rights' and then play out the consequences. ie the PCs slaughter the women and children but when they get back to town to claim their reward they are instead arrested and put on trial...

Lastly - Alignment Sucks

Personally, I almost never deal with alignment. I don't like objective/discrete morality. I've considered doing a Token-Alignment tracking system, but haven't DMed a game since I became aware of a good system.

I'd like to say that it seems to me that if you kill a bunch of children and submissive women, you are a horrid individual. If you are a justice-is-blind and believe that they're evil, and you kill them, you are a horrid individual. If I were doing alignment-tracking tokens, I'd probably note that as evil. Of course, I'd never DM a game where ever Orc is evil; I just don't see it that way. Morality is a product of environment. Orcs are likely bullies, but not evil.

What do you do with them? You could be the United States and try and find a good-hearted individual in the tribe and influence his/her rise to power. You could show them how to grow corn (if they eat veggies) or how to pick up a trade. Essentially, convert them to a less brutish way of life. If you are pressed for time or are just lazy, I think it's totally legit to fight off the Orc leader, rescue slaves (or whatever else you're killing them to accomplish) and leave them alone. You might be allowing their brutish nature to continue, but you're not encouraging it.

Well slaughtering anyone is against my sense of ethics. But in a game, when role-playing, it will depend on the characters. I'll let the players decide what is appropriate behaviour for their characters.

Largely I ignore the alignment system, as mentioned above: it sucks. I and most of the folks I game with use alignment to give a general idea of the sort of behaviour expected. Whether or not that extends to "them" is a matter that goes far beyond the alignment system as presented in the RAW.

Thus I wouldn't penalise a player if they were playing a "Lawful Good" Dwarven cleric of Clanggeddin who slaughtered the Orc women and children. In this case the character (and their church) would not extend rights to the Orcs. Nor would I penalise an Orc character who did the same to Dwarven non-combatants. If on the other hand the character did something that went against the church's express guide lines then there would be penalties. Maybe loss of spell abilities but more likely a bad response from the church: court cases, reprimands, that sort of thing.

I would show a little divine disfavour if the characters were somehow conflicted about their actions. If the Dwarf cleric in the example above was tormented by the deaths of the non-combatants then I might restrict spell use etc. But this would be a role-playing decision thrashed out between me and the player.

For non-clerical types the guidelines work along the same principals: it's a role playing thing. But there's not likely to be any game mechanical results of the action.

I have always taken alignment in D&D and twisted more into the Morality-System of WoD. Essentially, I divide up the Morality-System into the various Good/Neutral/Evil.

Which is why, in my games, you had yes your alignment. But this wasn't neccesarily just determines how evil or good you are. But where you stand with certain deeds.

So essentially different morality makeups get set-up. If your evil, and do evil-deeds that follows your views, then your evil-morality goes up. But if you do something that goes against it, you must role to see if this effects your moral outlook.

Same thing goes with being good.

With neutral, you are affected by both sides, (this is being replaced by unaligned in 4e in my game). So shows the idea of either going your own path or being drawn by certain views.

When a person's morality reaches 0 in his moral set-up. One must roll to see if he has a "reawakening", ie: do you still follow your old moral-code, or do you set out on a new-path (you become neutral: unaligned).

Most of my PCs end up around, level 6 on the their Morality-sheet, if they don't deviate too much. It goes from 1 to 10.

So in your example, while defending oneself is basic human-instinct so no morality issues come in there, but killing innocence would be determent on your PCs morality-sheet.