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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hypersmurf" data-source="post: 3611890" data-attributes="member: 1656">Probability is exactly the point.There's a small chance you'll save one sacrifice.  It's far, far more probable that you'll get a hundred otherwise-safe villagers killed.I'm not assuming the outcome is a hundred villagers die.  But I'm saying the likely outcome is that a hundred villagers die.Risking oneself is heroic.  Volunteering to risk everyone else as well, without their consent, not so much.I see it a bit like Take 20.  If there's no penalty for failure (apart from your own death, naturally), hero away.  But if attempt-and-fail will result in a worse situation than doing nothing, a hero needs to make some risk vs reward calculations.For the hero, his own life can be excluded from the calculations, since he's happy to sacrifice himself.  So if the only parties involved are the hero, the sacrifice, and the dragon, the calculation is simple.  The risk is only the hero's life, which is excluded; the reward is saving the sacrifice.  Something for nothing.But once the village is on the table, the equation changes.  The risk is the hero's life (excluded), plus the lives of a hundred villagers.  The reward is unchanged - saving the sacrifice.  And once the odds of beating the dragon (poor) are applied as a weighting, the risk significantly - unacceptably - outweighs the reward.Now, perhaps the hero can justify it.  Either the villagers are willing to take the risk, in which case it's acceptable.  Or else they are unwilling, which means they're not happy to sacrifice themselves for a chance of saving the victim, which means they're evil, which means they deserve to die anyway.  But I don't really see that justification flying.I've always liked the idea of a paladin in a culture that has a Ragnarokesque concept - a great battle at the end of time, with the armies of evil and the armies of good pitted against each other.The paladin travels the world seeking out evil... but he does not destroy it (that would just strengthen evil's forces at the end of time!).  No, rather, he redeems it.  He teaches evil men the errors of their ways, and convinces them to repent, and sets them on the path of Good.Then he kills them.  Before they can lapse.He's not a crusader... he's a recruiter!-Hyp.</blockquote>

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