Does evil mean Evil? Is a paladin free to act against evil?

[FireLance]

I've got the actual document around here somewhere that spells out the requirements for being "exalted" in the game... if anyone's interested, I'd be glad to share it...

Please do. I for one would be quite interested in your DM's take on Exalted.

Does anyone else use the "Good Book" in this fashion? Or can your good characters simply utilize the spells and abilities in it freely?

I've been trying to encourage my players to use the Book of Exalted Deeds, but nobody has taken up the offer. I think they like killing evil creatures too much to be really Good.

 

[FireLance]

The paladin isn't obligated to wear armor or turn undead, either, but he gets those feats and abilities for a reason. The paladin has heavy armor proficiency and a fighter-type BAB and martial weapon proficiency. He's not a daisy-sniffing pacifist who takes that -4 to do subdual damage all the time (although a paladin with a sap isn't a bad idea).

True, that. Can you imagine a creating a corps of knights who have trained since childhood to be the best warriors around, wielding mystical powers and deadly weapons, and then using them as diplomats and peace-makers? Perhaps this may have been possible a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but not here, not now .

But yeah, I wouldn't have stripped Queen_Dop's paladin of her powers, either. If something evil attacks you, it is not wrong to hit back as hard as you can. If I wanted to give a paladin PC the chance to exercise mercy, I'd have her discover that the young ninja is still alive but dying, and let her decide whether she should try to stabilize him or not.

 

[Al]

Three Evil Aristocrats...

There are three evil Aristocrats, Lord Nasty, Lady Evil and Baron Unpleasant, who are competitors and are constantly trying to do each other down. They arrange each other's (evil) henchmen to be killed, kidnap each other's (evil, adult) children and are generally bad to each other.

One day, Captain Virtue and his noble team of paladin-bots arrive. They kill everyone. Henchmen, children, nobles and all, and nothing is left surviving. As Unpleasant, the last of the three, dies, he says "Why did you kill us?" Captain Virtue says "Because you were evil". Unpleasant, bemused, says, "Yes, we were evil because we constantly sought to attack each other. But you killed us all- more than we had ever done- and yet you're good." Unpleasant then gurgles and dies.

What does this illustrate? The point is that evil is not purely a function of action, but also one of intention. The aristocrats plotted against each other for personal advancement; the paladin smote them for righteousness' sake. If a hired assassin had bumped off Lord Nasty, he and the paladin are performing *exactly the same deed* (if anything, the assassin is more sparing as he ignores the henchmen that don't get in his way). Yet one is evil, one is good.

As soon as you accept that morality is partially contingent upon motive, the entire "right to smite" edifice comes crashing down. Evil can do good, but for evil means. Evil can do neutral (as it were), for evil means. Societal restriction, fear of punishment, rational self-advancement, adherance to tradition, arrogance, pride, cowardice, apathy, insecurity, or even some thin strands of compassion can prevent an evil character from doing evil. A lemure who is informed by the paladins that unless he does good he will be smitted might do good, but is not good. The efficient despot, who realises that advancement of his own power is best served by building a prosperous economy might be evil but aids all. Evil isn't always about arbitrary harm, it can also mean the shameless advancement of self to the exclusion of all others.

Worse, the premise of a "right to smite", particularly with an active population of paladins, one creates a moral code predicated on fear. Fear is no way for a lawful good community to enforce, intimidating its citizens to shy away from bad thoughts. There is no tyranny worse than the tyranny of the righteous. The constant threat of smiting breeds resentment, especially amongst those connected to the victim. Good must spread because people accept its superior virtue, not because they get smited otherwise. Fears of the "fires of Hell" might be a useful method of social control, but it's not a good one (probably LN).

Paladins must always, as with all enforcers of the law, punish action, not morality. To do otherwise descends a dangerous path and the King-Priest of Istar lies grinning at the end.

 

[CalrinAlshaw]

Just so some of you know, that whole description of Swordpoint the Paladin city of "good" bears a lot of resemblence to spanish inquisition...just minus the torture, doesn't make it any better. Thats what seperates good from evil, the willingness to sacrifice time/energy or more to help your fellow man succeed and also learn the ways that you follow.

People keep bringing up this whole "if you get attacked you have the right bla bla" That wasn't the question asked in the first post, the question, was, does a paladin have the RIGHT to SMITE something based SOLELY on a Detect Evil. Personally, I think it'd be great to have a paladin do that, then find out it's some cousin on their way from somewhere and they had aura-altering magic up to hide their true alignment. (That would then go under the "unwillingly" committed evil act, since he thought it was for good.) And watch what happens when he removes that face-covering and sees a loved relative who just joined the paladin order and is returning from a solo-recon type mission.

One thing people forget, is that paladins are WISE. They should use that wisdom, it shouldn't just be a dice-rolling bonus. If a paladin does unwise stuff, a DM should lower their wisdom due to player idiocy. Wisdom entails thinking things through (Morality, philosophy, furthering their gods/knightly order/nation/organizations goals, and making sure what they do is in those best interests.) Just detecting evil on strangers then "CHHAAARGE" is extremely unwise and against the Lawful AND Good natures of a paladin.

Calrin Alshaw

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

ph0rk mentioned something I was thinking about late last night, what about honor? Paladins are supposed to also be honorable. So what about the evil creature in our hypothetical wilderness who surrenders to the paladin? Can the paladin just kill him?

[Philosphers' song playing quietly in the background: Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant and was very rarely stable...]

What about if the paladin sees a cleric of an evil god walking in the woods? He has never seen this cleric before, he knows nothing of his intentions or his past deeds. The paladin faces the cleric, declares him to be evil and tells him to prepare to die. The cleric looks at the paladin and tells him that he has no grudge against the paladin, and no interest in fighting him and turns away. Can the paladin smite the cleric? It does not sound very honorable, attacking someone who chooses not to fight. Is it OK if he smites him from the front, but not from behind? What if the cleric is sleeping? I don't think that could be called honorable at all, but would it be OK if the paladin wakes him and challenges the cleric? Again, what if the cleric refuses to fight, rolls over and goes back to sleep? Give him a beating? Make him angry, provoke him into fighting? Would that be an evil act on the part of the paladin? In this case I see lack of honor, debasing and destroying human life all in one. I guess killing him when he was sleeping would be a lesser evil.

[...Socrate's himself was permanently pissed. A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed]

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

Please do. I for one would be quite interested in your DM's take on Exalted.


I've been trying to encourage my players to use the Book of Exalted Deeds, but nobody has taken up the offer. I think they like killing evil creatures too much to be really Good.

Here's my DMs guide from actually becomming exalted...

The generic things in the book with a good descriptor can be accessed by anyone with a good alignment, however, anything that is "exalted" is off limits to anyone that does not fulfill these requirements...

He uses it very strictly but, the things that are defined as "exalted" are powerful powerful things... so, in some ways, I understand the appeal of setting strict limitations... other times, I just get frustrated because, as a somewhat overzealous Paladin, my character doesn't always want to take the time to try to *fix* the evil...

Anyway... a little off the topic, but, here ya go!

 

[FireLance]

Thanks, Queen_Dop. I think your DM and I see eye to eye on many issues, and I would love to play a paladin or a cleric in his campaign.

 

[The_Universe]

Good on ya. You were attacked. You saw evil, and it was attacking you. An evil thing was attacking you. Smiting it is all good.

But why was it attacking her? Not because it enjoyed attacking things (not evil is murder, btw). It was attacking her, because it was ordered to attack a caravan by his leader (who, by the way, was lawful good). I delight in difficult moral conundrums, and this was one of them. Neither the caravan being attacked, nor the refugees attacking them in this case were completely good or completely evil. Furthermore, the thing didn't attack her until she ran screaming at it with sword swinging.

I tend to think that there are degrees of evil--so Yes, had this been a mind flayer, she would have been alright. But this was a sentient humanoid with the capacity for redemption. Mind Flayers aren't even walking the same path.

Perhaps she might have gotten a clue when, out of 20-30 people attacking the caravan, only 5-10 pinged evil?

Bull. Your DM was high. It doesn't matter if the ninja was starving and trying to get food. The ninja was evil, and he attacked you. By the book, that ninja is either the cleric of an evil deity, as twenty consecutive people have mentioned (Yeah, guys, read the earlier posts, we get it), or else he either enjoys the pain of innocents or has no problem inflicting pain on innocents to get what he wants. If this were a starving Mind Flayer, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

See above re: mind flayers. And I apologize for allowing detect evil to detect people of the alignment. If I have so offended your sensibilities by allowing paladins a little extra power for their strict codes of conduct, than I apologize. As many DMs are wont to do, I do not always do everything BY THE BOOK.

Evil Ninja had an opportunity for growth. He had a chance to say, "Wow, this evil thing hasn't worked out for me. I'm starving and poor and I have no friends and when I die, I'm gonna spend a thousand years as a lemure before I get back in the game. Maybe I should ask someone for food humbly. Maybe I should throw myself on their mercy. Maybe I should ask to be arrested and tried for my past crimes, if only they feed me and give me a blanket."

I think there is a misunderstanding, here. This was not a lone ninja, attacking out of the shadows, murdering for a piece of bread. This was an attack by 20-30 refugees against a caravan for 1) redress of earlier events, in which the caravan had done some not-nice things to the ninjas and refugees, and 2) food.

But what did he do? He decided that the best solution was to attack innocent people. Evil. Smite away, ma'am.

How do you know the Caravan, or even the PCs, were innocent? These events didn't happen in a vacuum. By your logic, anybody fighting in a war would ping evil, because GI Joe across the trench never did anything to HIM in particular.

You were attacked by something evil. Even if it's weak evil, that means it could be a decent-level fighter or rogue. By the books, this is not Jean Valjean we're dealing with. The bread-stealing might've been the reason he attacked you, but judging by his class, he's attacked others for money, for enjoyment, for tests of his skill, or because his masters were testing him. He's killed innocent people.

Ninja wasn't the guy's class--it was the in-game description of what he looked like. All black clothes with a mask pulled up over his face. Furthermore, you have no IDEA why his alignment is evil. It MIGHT be because he's a murderer, but it also might not--not all evil things are killers, Tacky.

Anyway, what you are essentially arguing is that she was justified in killing someone, who struck BACK at her after she charged him, because she mis-percieved the situation. It's not like I was trying to hide the extra details so that she would lose her paladin abilities--that's just asinine. Instead, I was setting up an important plot point, that has stuck with them throughout the campaign.

I am sorry if I came off as a bit angry, but it was my game, and I don't like to see the way I run things attacked with so little regard for the entirety of the situation.

 

[FireLance]

ph0rk mentioned something I was thinking about late last night, what about honor? Paladins are supposed to also be honorable. So what about the evil creature in our hypothetical wilderness who surrenders to the paladin? Can the paladin just kill him?

...

What about if the paladin sees a cleric of an evil god walking in the woods?

...

Can the paladin smite the cleric? ... Is it OK if he smites him from the front, but not from behind? What if the cleric is sleeping? I don't think that could be called honorable at all, but would it be OK if the paladin wakes him and challenges the cleric? Again, what if the cleric refuses to fight, rolls over and goes back to sleep? Give him a beating? Make him angry, provoke him into fighting? Would that be an evil act on the part of the paladin?

OK, I'll bite. With the caveat that my answers only describe how I would react if I played a paladin, and how I would expect paladins in my campaign to act.

A paladin is not obliged to take a prisoner if he does not have the resources to do so. In my view, he may take any of the following actions with honor:

1. He may inform his foe that he is unable to take prisoners, and he should fight to the death or attempt to flee.

2. He may make it a condition of surrender that the foe immediately submits to justice for his past misdeeds. This may include the death penalty, if he has committed sufficient evil.

3. He may show mercy and allow the foe to leave unharmed. Who knows, this could be the turning point that redeems a formerly evil creature. It's this little thing called faith, you see.

With respect to the cleric of the evil god, the paladin should not immediately resort to violence. However, he should be suspicious, question him, watch him carefully, report him to the authorities or even bring him back for questioning himself if the cleric is being secretive or evasive. This may involve inflicting nonlethal damage on the cleric. Evil creatures have the right to life, dignity and freedom as well, and if the evil cleric is simply out for a stroll, the paladin should not stop him. However, he should always be ready to act once he threatens to commit evil.

 

[randomling]

Many seven-year-olds are evil, yet it is generally bad for Paladins to kill them.

Welcome to my .sig, Kilmore!