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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 432969" data-attributes="member: 151">Sure it was...but in the case of most such fights, it was a civil problem beneath the notice of the lords, except as such when a sheriff or other personage was set to keep the peace.  In some cases, hideous tortures were carried out for relatively simple crimes, such as public drunkedness.  The "justice" of the medieval mindset was often as evil as the crimes they purported to punish or prevent.And duels could easily be considered murder (and often were by disgruntled relatives) when a highly skilled duelist called out someone he knew to far inferior to him, often on a manufactured insult.  Heck, even Mercutio is considered to have been murdered, as he was considered an excellent duelist.All of which seems irrelevant to me.  Part of the issue here is resolving D&D's alignment system, it's game philosophy and moral systems both there and IRL.  There are clear differences, with D&D having a much more clear-cut and simplified system, that often can lead to some interesting twists.  A large part of your interpetation of the act depends on your personal philosophy.Some people consider murder to be evil, no matter what the justification.  A valid viewpoint, but I find it hard to understand how they can play D&D then, given that a large part of the game involves the wanton murder of other creatures...monsters or not.  D&D features concrete ways to determine if a particular being is evil or not, and even how evil they are.  Sending a paladin to slay a red dragon that terrorizes the countryside is little different than hiring a mercenary to waylay an evil duke who is taxing and bullying his subjects into starvation.  An oversimplification, yes, but for the purpose of illustration.IMHO, the hiring of an evil being to destroy an evil being may or may not be an evil act, depending on the circumstances and intent.  If a bard tricks an assasain into eliminating the evil necromancer, is that evil?  If a paladin is dispatched to liberate a town from the clutches of a murderous vampire, is that murder?  Is it evil?  What if the vampire is the legitimate authority for the area, by birthright?  What if the 'bloody baron' isn't a vampire, at all, but just an evil lord with powerful allies, many armed men and has a penchant for raping and pillaging his own people?It's a great big slippery slope, and not an easy field to navigate.  But considering this is a game where whole races of beings are pegged as 'just plain evil', it shouldn't be surprising.Unless, of course, you were a woman or royalty, or better yet, an Italian woman of royalty, famous for poisoning her rivals. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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