A question about Paladins and killing.

[hopeless]

Regarding this and that

Just a thought but has anyone ever come across a situation where the area having been used as a home for a seriously evil tribe that has been recently wiped out but leaves a single surivivor who is described as having been abused.
When a certain paladin uses their detect evil and is told by the dm they're evil and they subsequently chase them down and kill them from behind whilst they're essentially defenceless ignoring the pleas of the rest of the mostly Good aligned party members even though said area should have made the paladin's pursuit of the (goblin) survivor pretty much impossible since that aura should have been blotted out by the remaining taint in the cavern.

Would THIS constitute an evil act?

And as for those baby trolls is it possible it isn't the babies tht was detected was it rather the area they were living in?
Yes I know unlikely but I wondered if this has actually turned up since detect evil is far from the sure fire spell everybody seems to think it is and a Paldin having to concentrate on it makes what i desrcibed above even more unlikely (but it did happen in case you wondering).

 

[Raloc]

I would have had them detect neutral for one thing. Baby creatures usually can't make their own decisions, and thus I'd say aren't evil (and as to Frankthedm, are all your NPCs the same alignment, do you always follow the books? I sure don't, so basically every alignment is "Usually XX, unless the DM feels like otherwise" for my game.). Killing babies = evil. Unless the paladin in question or the other party members are clairvoyent in the extreme (say, as much as a troll's lifetime), I'd say they can't know if the trolls will eventually be evil or not.

 

[Endur]

Turn them over to the authorities.

Let the authorities decide what to do.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I agree with the "We're all reasonable people..." comment. Baby killing is not what D&D is all about. Just give the DM what he wants and get on with the game.

Hypersmurf had a good idea:

Bl

We really need a Devoted Berserker feat that allows Paladin and Barbarian levels to stack for purposes of Smite Evil and Rage, and that allows Rage even as a Lawful Barbarian.

-Hyp.

How about a Zealot class? Identical to Barbarian in terms of powers and abilities. Change "Rage" to "Zeal", same effects. Swap "survival" skill for "Knowledge: Religion". Done.

 

[frankthedm]

Unless the paladin in question or the other party members are clairvoyent in the extreme (say, as much as a troll's lifetime), I'd say they can't know if the trolls will eventually be evil or not.

Re-read the OP. They know the baby trolls are evil already.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What kind of DM throws such a lame & cliche 'dillema' at the paladin for no good reason? Why did he put the damn things there in the first place?

Hi, I'm the DM. (I actually started a thread about this from my end before I saw this one.)

It's not "for no good reason." The Midwood campaign is one with a great deal of history and the adventures they go on flow out of that history. The characters' base of operations, Maidensbridge, was named after a girl who was to run away with her lover but, while waiting at a bridge in the woods, a river troll came up and gobbled her up (and later him). Now, several hundred years later, the river trolls are coming back, as part of the coming dark ages. Having a force of trolls instead of just a lone one is very purposeful. (The scrag mother was more intelligent than most and was a level 1 adept, as a sign of that.)

The campaign's been going on a year, and this is the first real "paladin issue" that's come up. My goal is not to torture anyone for playing a heroic paladin -- far from it -- but it's a difficult path, and periodically, things will happen where the path won't be so clear. It's hardly the thrust of the campaign, which is likely to be big and dramatic and heroic for the rest of 2007.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I would have had them detect neutral for one thing. Baby creatures usually can't make their own decisions, and thus I'd say aren't evil

I consciously made them evil. Tadpoles aren't eggs -- I thought about that and rejected it earlier -- and these are now quite large (the size of a medium-sized dog). No one in the group has the ability to judge how close the tadpoles are to growing legs and beginning to hunt the people of Maidensbridge, but it's not far off.

The heroes already found a larder full of half-eaten humanoids and came here to rescue two children lost in the woods.

The tadpoles are sentient and have been engaged in evil acts, aided by their mother.

 

[kenobi65]

You forgot:

"While I watch from the safety of the land rover."

Oh, yes. Or, maybe, in this case, the Apparatus of Kwalish.

 

[takyris]

But it is clear. They detect as evil. They are as evil as a low-level evil cleric, or a mid-level evil warrior. They are evil by D&D standards, which means that they are inherently evil and will definitely pose a threat, and deserve to be smitten as much as a lemure or a dretch.

The real issue I have here is that this isn't a moral dilemna. The DM HASN'T set up a morally difficult choice. The DM has only managed to set up a morally DISTASTEFUL choice. The proper thing to do is to kill the troll babies, and anyone who reads "Detect Evil" knows it, but killing defenseless babies is really not what anyone who signs on as a paladin wants to do.

The DM gets to make the paladin feel bummed, but only because he's made being good feel scummy for that session.

 

[Raloc]

Re-read the OP. They know the baby trolls are evil already.

Re-read my post. I said in my own game, they wouldn't have detected evil.

Edit: Also, I have a severe problem with paladins being allowed to commit infinity of evil acts (murdering innocents etc.) as long as they "detect evil" beforehand. If the "troll babies" were a different race and were in a city, the same act would be completely unacceptable. Either they're LG or they're not, not some bizarro-world mish-mash where paladins should have no consequences for their actions as long as the person they're committing crimes against happens to have an "evil" alignment.