The "orc baby" paladin problem

[Raloc]

Elliot Stabler, played by Christopher Meloni. He doesn't "regularly assault", but yeah, he's got a temper. As for NE L&O, I watch a lot of L&O at work (mainly SVU and CI, because that's what's on when I'm at work), and they are pretty much the definition of straight-arrow cops. You very rarely see them do anything but play by the rules, though they'll do about anything they can within those limits, and do occasionally cross a line here and there at major story arcs. (Now, the cops of The Shield have a lot less to do with upholding the law or promoting good, but that's a different show.)

But that's why the L&O cops are good examples of paladins to me, not because they're perfect, but because they try, and get frustrated, and are tempted to circumvent the law, but are usually reigned in by their conscience. And when they're not (which happens from time to time), the fact that they win a case dirty weighs on them as heavily as losing. Early on in SVU, Stabler gets in trouble for telling a psychiatrist that sometimes, when he's alone with a perp, he wishes he could just shoot them. (There's a funny exchange later between his captain who says, "You told the police psychiatrist you wished you could shoot suspects!" and Stabler yells back, "I didn't say suspects, I said perps!") Keeping in mind that SVU deals with the molestation, rape and severe child abuse cases; wishing that the perpertrators of said crimes didn't have the protection of the law is fairly understandable. And even then, they almost always play by the rules.

There was a good line on the Closer the other day (as you can tell, I do love a good police procedural, though not the CSI family of shows), where after they couldn't make the case against someone they knew to be guilty, Kyra Sedgewick said to another detective, "We don't prosecute, we don't judge. We just find out the truth." In that respect, I think paladins have slightly less restrictions than tv cops, because once they find out the truth, they do get to judge and prosecute a little. But the truth is important, because paladins shouldn't be attacking people on a guess.

I have, perhaps, put more thought into cop shows and D&D than is really necessary, but its because I have always wanted to run a paladin and cleric -centric game that focused on the law enforcement in a large fantasy city. Law & Order: D&D. I would even love it if we incorporated the dirtier cops of The Shield, and those of the Canadian Coroner's office on Da Vinci's Inquest. But every time I mention it to players I'm met with blank stares, so I guess I'm waiting on a group who loves cop shows as much as I do. (Or they're just afraid they'll have to turn all the loot they find over into evidence. Its probably 50-50.)

See, you're still going by the assumption that "straight-arrow cops" are Lawful Good. That's absurd. Humans are mostly neutral I'd say and neutral good at BEST. I've watched all of the original L&O and some of the others, and a significant portion of it has to do with them incarcerating innocents and victims of crimes without proper evidence. They tend to drive for whatever will get someone convicted, regardless of what the actual situation was, all for props from their buddies or the like. Robbing people of their liberty is hardly a lawful good act. Neither is killing innocents.

 

[PallidPatience]

Man, I wish I was seeing those episodes you were, Raloc. In nearly every one I've seen, all the evidence has pointed firmly at the guy they've rounded up to be indicted at the end.

 

[Raloc]

Well, admittedly, they weren't in the majority of episodes. But there were enough that they would have been Neutral Evil in my book, so that's why I concluded that(because the "bad" guys are held to the standard such that if they had incarcerated multiple innocent people, they'd be evil, period, so the L&O people should be held to the same).

 

[Zoatebix]

I would SO play in your Law and Order: D&D game.

 

[gribble]

I don't agree - I think the Holy property is using two synonymous phrases.

Could you walk me through the logic that leads you to believe that "evil creatures" and "creatures of evil alignment" are two different things, please? I don't think I quite followed.

Essentially, I'm invoking Occam's Razor here. Why, in a rules document (not flavour/descriptive text) would you use two different phrases to refer to the same thing?

Surely, the simplest and clearest thing to do is to use one phrase - either "evil creatures"/"ranged weapons" or "creatures with an evil alignment"/"projectile or thrown weapons" to refer to something. What possible reason could you have to use two different phrases, other than to indicate two different types of thing?

Anyway, we're getting way off track from the original post here. I suggest we continue this is a separate thread (probably in the rules forum) if anyones interested.

 

[Raloc]

It works pretty good in my 2 year running Realms campaign. There's two TN characters (fighters, one started NG), and two LE characters (both started LN). They don't often kill good characters, but the wizards (well, one Red Wizard (just!) and one custom alt. necromancer) are definitely evil. The one fighter is sliding towards NG though. Depends on if he stops his cousin from using the artifact they're after for himself among other things (the cousin being the Red Wizard).

 

[phindar]

I liked the characters in the newer series better, but one thing I did like about the original Law and Order (OL&O) was that you never really knew who who was going to be convicted, and even if the cops had gotten it right. And even when you were pretty sure they had, sometimes the defendant walked. (Someone mentioned Homicide above, and I regret never catching that while it was on, because I've heard good things. Also, wasn't Richard Beltzer's character Munch originally from Homicide... with notable guest appearances on the X-Files and Arrested Development.)

The newer shows, SVU and CI, they pretty much get the bad guy in the end. Sometimes he walks, and sometimes its ambiguous, but most of the time you know whats going on. I still stick by the notion that straight-arrow cops are Lawful Good, or at least, a very good representation of it. Because while they are driven to catch the bad guys, they are restrained by the law; that is, they follow procedure, they get warrants, they don't do illegal wiretapping, and they very rarely try to subvert the process (by say, back dating warrants or lying about probably cause). There is the occasional episode where they argue about civil liberties or cut corners, but most of the time its by-the-book. They complain about the book from time to time, but they very rarely break the law (and when they do, it is treated with all the severity of a paladin commiting a Chaotic Act and having to atone). And "by-the-book" means Lawful.

And that, to me, is what paladins should try to do. An important part of that is the cops from these shows are not perfect, nor should they be. Humans aren't perfect, and perfection is rarely that interesting to watch (except in the case of Maria Sharapova). It's the fact that they struggle with how to do their jobs that makes them good examples of paladins; because being a paladin should be hard. If it were easy, it wouldn't be any fun.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

Of course (unless it's in the PHB, but not the SRD, which would be unusual for pure rules), the Paladins class ability doesn't define what an "evil creature" is. It's certainly valid to interpret this as "has an evil alignment" (which also includes creatures with the [Evil] descriptor), but I'd say it's just as valid to interpret it as "has an evil aura". After all, if the paladins god tells the paladin that something is evil, why would he then turn around and stop him from smiting it?

Just doesn't make sense.

QFT

 

[pawsplay]

The creatures are not innocent.

They register as evil.

Which means that their personalities carry the taint of cruelty, torment, and suffering inflicted upon others. Those aren't just troll babies, those are every piece the wicked beings they will be when they grow up, filled with the delight in the suffering of others just as their parents were.

But they are not guilty of anything.

 

[Aaron L]

In a world where elf babies, which, as Hypersmurf has said, are pretty much genetically programed by their god to be Chaotic Good but yet can still grow up to be Lawful Evil, killing troll babies, which are just as likely to grow up to be Lawful Good as an elf is to grow up to be Lawful Evil (which is to say not-unheard-of), is definitely not a Good act.


Preemptive execution is never a Good thing.