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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr_Rictus" data-source="post: 363396" data-attributes="member: 850">A decision to adhere to a morally justified oath or code of action is not morally equivalent to a decision to the act (or inaction) itself.  Such oaths and codes have value in themselves for moral reasons.  So, to clarify my previous statement, the thing that would be hypocritical would be to claim that attacking the helpless creature was immoral in its own right, when it became helpless through your lethally-intended attacks, and to still maintain that those attacks were moral, assuming that the circumstances had not otherwise changed.  It may well be immoral to do so, but only if attacking was immoral in the first place.  The mere fact that you have partially achieved your aim of killing the creature, to the degree that it has just become much easier, does not in itself change the moral status of the act.Of coure, this is all assuming that we're basing our discussion on some sort of ethical reasoning.  A being's moral status is clearly not subjective in D&D (alignment exists), and extrinsically-defined codes of morality are equally valid to ethical reasoning as a basis for your campaign's moral system.  But in the former case we don't even need to discuss it.</blockquote>