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

[takyris]

Debase: To lower in character, quality, or value; to degrade

I believe that you're using a fairly loose description of the word debase. You're going for one that's closer to the chemical meaning than the implied moral and ethical meaning, which puts the word next to "corrupt, pervert, demoralize, debauch, profane, vitiate, deprave, misdirect" in the synonyms list.

A schoolyard bully who enjoys pushing younger, weaker, or less popular students heads into the toilet and giving them swirlies is debasing innocent life.

That depends on whether a schoolyard bully can be held to the moral standards of adults. Most children do not start out life naturally moral, and while standards vary from culture to culture, they generally indicate that most pre-adolescent children do not have the capacity for moral judgment necessary to hold them legally responsible for the crimes they commit. The SRD doesn't lay out rules for children, and in d20 Modern, while it specifies that a child below the age of 12 is not considered to have classes, levels, skills, feats, or occupations, it does not directly mention allegiances one way or the other.

I personally would handle the schoolyard bully as Neutral until at least teenager-level, but that's merely a reflection of our difference in opinion rather than evidence in support of my position.

A brothel owner who lures poor women into his country with promises of honorable employment and then manipulates them into a life they did not choose (usually through a combination of humiliation and threats) is debasing innocent life.

So he's evil. Agreed. The disagreement is on whether such a person should be summarily smitten. I don't see a problem with smiting this guy. I wouldn't physically assault him in real life, of course, but that's because we have complex penal systems in real life that generally handle this sort of thing. Most D&D-world governments don't have the resources necessary to handle long-term incarceration for anybody but a low-level person, which, in my admittedly subjective opinion, means that they have a small jail for petty offenses (drunkenness or vagrancy and the like) and that everything else is handled through either fines, physical punishment of some sort, banishment, geases (in very high-powered areas), or death. Or are there other punishment systems I'm overlooking that would work for your typical small town?

A professor who stands one of her students up for ridicule when from the class when he expresses an opinion that differs from hers is debasing innocent life (the intent is to humiliate and intimidate that particular student into changing or keeping silent about his opinion and to intimidate other students so as to prevent them from voicing dissent).

I'd rank him as Neutral. He's not nice, certainly. I don't like the guy. But if the farthest he's going is "Putting down someone for his own political reasons", that doesn't in my mind qualify as evil, because it doesn't stand up to the other meanings of debase. Of course, there's a question of intent, here. If he's doing it to maintain order in the classroom and keep his position of superiority intact, he's a Lawful Neutral jerk. If he's doing it to prepare his students for quiet submission to the Mind Flayers when they arrive, then he's Evil, probably Lawful.

Destroy also has different degrees. It would be reasonable to say that someone could "destroy" a person's life without killing them. In the Princess Bride, Wesley's threats to Humperdink center on exactly this point: that he would destroy Humperdink but not kill him. Similarly, it's reasonable to think that burning someone's house down, getting them fired, turning their family against them, and breaking their kneecaps would qualify as destroying someone's life--even though they were still alive. In fact, if the speeches of lawyers are to be believed, any one of those things could constitute destroying a life.

Agree that these people would qualify as evil in the D&D sense. I also think that a paladin would be right to bring such people to justice.

Hurting obviously admits a lot of different degrees.

Well, it's obvious to you, anyway. The word "hurting" certainly does, but its usage in this instance obviously supports the notions of physically harming another person as found in the rest of that description. If you want to get postmodernist on the SRD text, we can have a field day with the "personal sacrifices" that a good person makes (one's own pheasants? goats? virgins? limbs?), or we can go with the common sense interpretation that seems to work for most people.

Exactly what would constitute an individual's involvement in this oppression is unclear but it would be bizarre to maintain that only the leaders (Prince John, the Sheriff, Mullah Omar, and the legislators who voted for Apartheid) were doing the oppressing and that everyone else was just "following orders" or "obeying the law." The oppression standard also supports a more subtle view of evil.

Or it seems bizarre to you. Evil individuals in such a culture will enjoy the oppression. Neutral individuals will obey the law in public, possibly break it in private with individual friends (as supported by "Neutral people commit to others by personal relationships" clause), but never rise up against it unless the terms of oppression expand to threaten them directly en masse. Good people will obey the law in the kindest way possible if lawful, obey it in public and break it in private if Neutral, and try Robin-Hood-esque resistance if Chaotic.

I don't see how your example supports a more subtle view.

Killing people. Okay, I think we're all clear on that one.

That one's pretty straightforward, yeah.

First, it's important to note that these descriptions are typical rather than exhaustive. This describes villains who are lawful evil rather than giving a list of criteria that might make a villain lawful evil. Consequently, it's entirely possible that there will be people who do not fit every aspect of this description.

Agreed. Your point seems to be that one could take away enough of the things that make an evil person smiteworthy without taking away enough to make him no longer evil. However, one could conclude just as easily from your statements that the villain in question might stop being evil (by virtue of not having one or more traits) while still remaining worthy of being attacked by a paladin (by virtue of his remaining sins and faults).

It's like we're arguing over the exact location of the clutch-point on a manual-transmission car or something, and we're using different cars for our examples. You say "This proves that an evil person might not be worthy of smiting", while I say "This proves that this person might not be evil but could still be a jerk."

Alignment is not a straitjacket for NPCs either.

Definitely not, and I support the notion of flexibility in NPC motivations and traits. However, when it specifically says "The evil alignments are for villains and monsters", that does tend to imply that only villains and monsters should get those evil alignments slapped on 'em. Casual folks who do not fit the description of "villain" shouldn't get the evil alignment.

Second, it's important to note that the primary distinguishing factors of the lawful evil villain are 1. playing by the rules and 2. a lack of mercy or compassion. That could fit a lot of "commonplace" villains I discussed in my earlier posts.

You're stretching the term "villain" here. The first two listed are:

- A wicked or evil person; a scoundrel.
- A dramatic or fictional character who is typically at odds with the hero.

Sure, the first can apply, but in a work of fiction like a roleplaying game, the second would seem to be the more fitting. Just like one could apply number four, "A peasant regarded as vile and brutish," even though it's obsolete, or "A baseborn or clownish person; a boor," because that's in Dictionary.com as well under "Villain". Would you care to argue that paladins are primarily supposed to Smite Born or Clownish in an attempt to find more shades of gray?

I completely agree that not every evil person needs to be a killer. There are numerous other ways to hurt or debase others beyond killing, and a person can be just as evil for those offenses. And thus, just as deserving of a smite.

The upshot of all this is that the rules as written support the use of evil alignments for people who aren't EVIL (to use your terminology) and that all evil individuals do not necessarily deserve to have their head smitten from their shoulders by a wandering paladinbot.

The upshot is that you're playing word games. I am personally in favor of adding shades of gray to the game, but I don't agree that they're already in there. In fact, given the change from 2nd Edition to this edition, I'd say that they changed flavor text specifically to remove the "things are only evil while acting evilly" constraints, and to move the line for "evil" so that only those who actually merit paladin-whacking will actually have an evil alignment (although the number of "fake an alignment" spells brings up a level of ambiguity for me that makes it worth it, in my mind, for the paladin to stay his hand -- both to investigate the evil person's compatriots and to ensure that the person is indeed evil, provided that the situation allows for such largesse).

How about a slightly different question? The paladin comes upon two people in the woods, and they are locked in mortal combat. One of them detects as evil. The other does not. The fight is grim and deadly enough that middle-ground tactics like "Halt your deadly combat and explain to me in detail the exact circumstances of your quarrel" are obviously not going to be successful. What should the paladin do?

Attack the evil guy? But what if the evil guy is just a guy who beats his wife, and the guy he's fighting is a knight whose sloppy tying of his mount led to the horse spooking, which caused the death of an innocent bystander? The evil guy, although evil, and although possibly motivated by evil morals, is attacking someone who is, through neglect, guilty of a crime. Or what if the evil guy is actually a ranger with Misdirection cast upon him, while the non-evil-detecting guy is a pit fiend with a ring of mind shielding that hides his true alignment?

Or should we agree that the paladin should attack the evil guy anyway, because, statistically speaking, the odds are that the guy that the paladin's god-given ability tells him is evil is actually evil, and the person he's fighting probably deserves help in fighting the evil person?

I certainly wouldn't penalize a paladin who stepped into the fray to help the non-evil guy. If it was a nefarious trick, I'd hope that the paladin would feel bad, but really, it'd be a nefarious trick. Or the world's worst and most hand-of-plot-ish coincidence. Neither of those merit punishment of the paladin.

If you agree that the paladin should aid the non-evil person against the evil person, then we don't disagree about the moral certainty. All we really disagree about is the degree of imminent threat required for a paladin to act. And that's a good thing to disagree on, I think.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

First off, this reply is not exhaustive. I don't have time to address each and every point you make, so I'll just hit some highlights.

Re: strawman arguments:
Who on "my side" of this debate has said this?
Where have I, or anyone on "my side" of this debate, said this? Evil can be subtle. What does "low-key" mean if different than subtle? And if by "commonplace" you mean.

I'll grant that nobody on "your side" of the discussion has said anything like "scenery-chewing evil." However, you yourself use capital Evil to express the idea that one needs to be worse than ordinary non-capitalized evil in order to merit evil alignment. Typically, that is used to designate something like the evil subtype (something that has been mentioned several times in this discussion--mostly by people suggesting that only really truly evil people should detect as evil at all).

Perhaps, more to the point, your post (and a number of others) seem to take the position that it is always just and justified to smite someone for simply having an evil alignment. Your post went on to say that having an evil alignment means that the person in question has done very evil things in the past and will do evil things in the future and that his relationship to society at large is that of a wolf among sheep. I don't think it requires any leap of logic to say that, if every evilly aligned person can be justifiably killed on that basis, then you only get to be evil if you've done something worthy of death.

But a child is a different and complicated debate. Can we agree to keep alignment debates regarding children a seperate topic?

Actually, I don't think they are a separate topic. The behavior of children--particularly adolescents--I think, often demonstrates a degree of evil that is clearly recognizable as evil but is routinely tolerated and is almost universally acknowledged not to be worthy of smiting. Generally, this is because their actions, while indisputably evil, do not result in a level of harm that the actions of adults do and because, in many circles, it is expected that children will act evilly until they are taught through a combination of punishment and encouragement to behave well. All of those factors are present in society and paladins' treatment of adult evil as well. Generally, adult evil is treated with a seriousness proportional to the harm caused, and is treated less severely when it is thought to be controllable through a system of punishments and rewards.

Furthermore, the behavior of children is quite germane to the topic of D&D alignments. Unless one assumes that all children are neutral until some set arbitrary point (13, 18, 21, whatever, it's just an artifact of our reaction to the dominant culture and laws) when they suddenly become responsible for their actions and get an alignment corresponding to their deeds and tendencies, the 21 year old initiate into the cult of ravagers was probably the 10 year old misfit who was mercilessly mocked by his peers, the late-developing 13 year-old who was bullied and beaten and enjoyed taking out his hostility by torturing small animals, and then the hostile 16 year old who finally grew strong enough to fight back and wasn't ever going to let anyone push him around again. He's been chaotic evil since he was 13, not since he joined the cult. (Maybe if someone had noticed his evil tendencies as they developed, he might never have joined the cult; or maybe he would have rejected their help--we'll never know because if anyone noticed, they assumed he'd grow out of it or found another excuse not to care). Similarly, the paladin who discovers and annihilates the cult might have been the 10 year-old misfit who was mercilessly mocked and the 13 year old who enjoyed torturing puppies but who was found by an old priest as an evil 13 year old, disciplined, shown love, and, at 16 had grown up to be the strong misfit who turned out to be kind and good if anyone took the time to get to know him, and by 21 had joined the Order of the Holy Sword and rooted out the cult.

And finally, it's hardly off topic for the discussion of who a paladin should smite. Fagan-like gang leaders using ten year olds as pickpockets and window-men in the theives guild are a common feature in D&D games. The plucky 14 year old theives' guild member who guides the hero through the sewers to the cathedral of the corrupt archbishop (or guides him through the sewers into a trap set by the corrupt archbishop) is a common fantasy character. All of them have alignments and a paladin might well want to know if he ought to smite them--and if he does, whether or not the smite will work. (Especially the 14 year old who betrays him to the corrupt archbishop).

Assuming the actions you described above were the regular modus operandi for each, and not just a "phase" or the result of one-time poor decision making: If the paladin met the bully, the brothel owner, and the teacher in your above examples in the Forest of No Context, they would detect as Evil. But a foolish, youthful cruelty is not grounds for the evil alignment. A regretted, ill-conceived action is not grounds for the evil alignment. But a pattern of acquiring slaves through deceipt and coersion is grounds for the evil alignment.

I think that really depends. PCs aren't the only characters in any given world who change alignments. It's quite possible that the "phase" is actually a time when the NPC's alignment is evil and that he only comes out of the "phase" when his alignment changes so as to no longer be evil. I have no trouble imagining a slave trader like Isaac Watts starting as neutral, signing onto a slave ship, becoming evil as he becomes inured to and participates in the practices of slave trading, and then becoming a Christian and changing alignment again when he abandons and begins to work against the slave trade (and writes Amazing Grace). It seems to me that the Isaac Watts did indeed go through a "phase" of slave trading but that, while he was involved in it, he was well and truly evil.

This model seems to fit in with your concern that a foolish or ill-conceived (and later regretted) action or a childhood cruelty not give a person the evil alignment for perpetuity.

Note, though, that if the paladin met the above examples in context, he could and should choose to act within civil laws for punishment, not summary execution.

One might also think that, if they don't justify summary execution in the city of Context, they don't justify summary execution in the forest of no context either.

It all comes down to: do you consider a schoolyard bully as Evil? A slaver? A cruel professor? If so, then they get the Evil alignment, and are target's for a paladin's smite.

I don't think that necessarily follows. For the record, my contention is that they all have evil alignments, that a paladin's smite would work on all of them, that a Holy Word spell would probably kill all of them, but that it would be wrong for the paladin to smite them or the cleric to cast Holy Word and kill them.

If you consider their actions as not rising to the description of Evil, then give them the Neutral alignment, and they won't be detected by a paladin.

And this is where my so-called straw man comes up. If the examples of the cruel bully, the manipulating and debasing brothel owner, and the abusive professor do not qualify as evil, then what does? Having eliminated the commonplace kinds of evil that don't deserve smiting, you're left with mass murderers, hit men, and child-molesters as the people with evil alignments.

The biggest problem with paladins vs. Evil seems to be that many DMs will give the Evil alignment to someone not really deserving of it. And then they punish the paladin for acting on the false alignment.

DM: "He was only stealing for food because he was starving."

Player: "So why did he detect as Evil?"

DM: "Because stealing is Evil."

I'll agree that the above situation seems wrong. However, I think you are misinterpreting it in several ways.

First, the paladin is not being punished for acting upon his perception of the NPC's alignment. He is being punished for acting inappropriately on his perception of the NPC's alignment. The paladin might see that the NPC is evil and realize that a stern lecture on the morality of theft will be insufficient and consequently pull out a whip, give the NPC five lashes to demonstrate the consequences of theft. Then give a stern lecture followed by "and, if you had done the right thing and simply asked, you could have had bread without a whipping." (Depending upon the campaign and the setting, that might or might not be appropriate). That would still be acting upon the basis of the paladin's (magical) perception of the theif's alignment but would not be smiting the theif.

Second, the DM in the hypothetical case is wrong to assign an evil alignment simply on the basis of "he was starving so he decided to steal food." An evil person who was starving and decided to steal food would radiate evil. A neutral person shouldn't suddenly become evil because, in desperation, he decides to steal food.

I'd say that paladins who think that smite is the only appropriate reaction to seeing an evil alignment are as much a problem as DMs who think an evil alignment should be assigned because a hungry man decided to steal bread (or who think that the prison warden in Shawshank redemption shouldn't have an evil alignment until he kills someone).

P.S. I probably won't be able to respond to any response to this till next week.

Too bad, it's an interesting discussion.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

So he's evil. Agreed. The disagreement is on whether such a person should be summarily smitten. I don't see a problem with smiting this guy. I wouldn't physically assault him in real life, of course, but that's because we have complex penal systems in real life that generally handle this sort of thing. Most D&D-world governments don't have the resources necessary to handle long-term incarceration for anybody but a low-level person, which, in my admittedly subjective opinion, means that they have a small jail for petty offenses (drunkenness or vagrancy and the like) and that everything else is handled through either fines, physical punishment of some sort, banishment, geases (in very high-powered areas), or death. Or are there other punishment systems I'm overlooking that would work for your typical small town?

Fair enough, there are a few other fairly common punishments that you're overlooking though:
1. Corporeal punishment--5, 10, 20 lashes, etc.
2. Fines (historically applied to a lot of things we would treat differently today).
3. mutilation--off with his hand! (I don't think a paladin would support this kind of thing in most cases)
4. Public humiliation--stocks, the scarlet letter, branding, etc.
5. Ostracism--often goes with #4 but is not necessarily entailed by #4.

Not that it's relevant. I wouldn't have a problem with a paladin smiting this guy (the brothel owner) in the appropriate circumstances either but I don't think the forest of no context where the paladin has no knowledge of his specific crimes is constitutes appropriate circumstances. (And while he is begging and pleading for his life wouldn't constitute that either).

I'd rank him as Neutral. He's not nice, certainly. I don't like the guy. But if the farthest he's going is "Putting down someone for his own political reasons", that doesn't in my mind qualify as evil, because it doesn't stand up to the other meanings of debase. Of course, there's a question of intent, here. If he's doing it to maintain order in the classroom and keep his position of superiority intact, he's a Lawful Neutral jerk. If he's doing it to prepare his students for quiet submission to the Mind Flayers when they arrive, then he's Evil, probably Lawful.

And, what if he's doing it in order to advance an agenda that he sees as good by indoctrinating the students and ensuring they never hear a different side of the story? I agree that, based on this behavior alone, it's hard to tell whether the guy is a neutral jerk or evil.

Agree that these people would qualify as evil in the D&D sense. I also think that a paladin would be right to bring such people to justice.

But justice isn't always a synonym for "lop their heads off with your greatsword."

Well, it's obvious to you, anyway. The word "hurting" certainly does, but its usage in this instance obviously supports the notions of physically harming another person as found in the rest of that description. If you want to get postmodernist on the SRD text, we can have a field day with the "personal sacrifices" that a good person makes (one's own pheasants? goats? virgins? limbs?), or we can go with the common sense interpretation that seems to work for most people.

I'm not trying to get postmodernist with the text. However, it doesn't seem too farfetched to imagine someone who doesn't have the capability to inflict physical harm on most other persons but rather enjoys inflicting mental harm on them. I don't think it would be stretching to call that person evil.

Or it seems bizarre to you. Evil individuals in such a culture will enjoy the oppression. Neutral individuals will obey the law in public, possibly break it in private with individual friends (as supported by "Neutral people commit to others by personal relationships" clause), but never rise up against it unless the terms of oppression expand to threaten them directly en masse. Good people will obey the law in the kindest way possible if lawful, obey it in public and break it in private if Neutral, and try Robin-Hood-esque resistance if Chaotic.

True. I guess it's not clear that simply enjoying the oppression is sufficient to make the first group evil so it's not particularly helpful.

Agreed. Your point seems to be that one could take away enough of the things that make an evil person smiteworthy without taking away enough to make him no longer evil. However, one could conclude just as easily from your statements that the villain in question might stop being evil (by virtue of not having one or more traits) while still remaining worthy of being attacked by a paladin (by virtue of his remaining sins and faults).

True. Actually, I'm not sure you need to take away anything from the descriptions to render the evil persons non-smiteworthy but that's a minor point. However, I agree that someone would be worthy of being attacked by a paladin without being evil and could be evil without being worthy of being attacked by a paladin.

Definitely not, and I support the notion of flexibility in NPC motivations and traits. However, when it specifically says "The evil alignments are for villains and monsters", that does tend to imply that only villains and monsters should get those evil alignments slapped on 'em. Casual folks who do not fit the description of "villain" shouldn't get the evil alignment.

I disagree with that. It seems like it minimizes the evil tendencies and actions of ordinary people to exclude them from the evil alignment. Villains are a special category of evil people who have to be stopped by heroes. The guy who's plotting with his mistress to murder his wife so that he can collect the insurance is probably evil but it doesn't necessarily take heroes to stop him. He's evil but not a villain in the literary sense of the word.

While it smacks of word-games, the notion of a "monster" is a pretty fluid one in D&D. For instance, both orcs and kobolds are monsters in traditional D&D parlance (and, indeed, are usually evil), but it has become quite ordinary in recent years to treat them as basically another PC race. Orcs you negotiate with and kobolds the PCs are supposed to befriend rather than kill seem quite common these days. (Sometimes, I want a mod where the kobolds are all EVIL babyeaters and need to be killed just to get something different). Indeed, it seems that more than a few people seem to be applying that to demons, undead and devils if the number of people I've seen talking about their half-fiend, risen demon, lich, vampire, or tiefling characters is any indication. If it's quite common for monsters to be evil without being villains, it raises the question of why PC races would need to be villains in order to be evil.

You're stretching the term "villain" here. The first two listed are:

- A wicked or evil person; a scoundrel.
- A dramatic or fictional character who is typically at odds with the hero.

Sure, the first can apply, but in a work of fiction like a roleplaying game, the second would seem to be the more fitting. Just like one could apply number four, "A peasant regarded as vile and brutish," even though it's obsolete, or "A baseborn or clownish person; a boor," because that's in Dictionary.com as well under "Villain". Would you care to argue that paladins are primarily supposed to Smite Born or Clownish in an attempt to find more shades of gray?

Now you're playing word-games but I take your point. See above.

I completely agree that not every evil person needs to be a killer. There are numerous other ways to hurt or debase others beyond killing, and a person can be just as evil for those offenses. And thus, just as deserving of a smite.

I'm not sure why you insist on disconnecting the notion of "justly punishable by death" from worthy of smiting. From the rest of this post, it doesn't seem like you'd want to punish every evil NPC who fits the description of the evil alignments with death. In fact, you might agree with me that doing so would often be unjust. Why then, would evil alignment make them worthy of smiting by an extrajudicial paladin if it doesn't make them worthy of death from a judicial body?

The upshot is that you're playing word games. I am personally in favor of adding shades of gray to the game, but I don't agree that they're already in there. In fact, given the change from 2nd Edition to this edition, I'd say that they changed flavor text specifically to remove the "things are only evil while acting evilly" constraints, and to move the line for "evil" so that only those who actually merit paladin-whacking will actually have an evil alignment (although the number of "fake an alignment" spells brings up a level of ambiguity for me that makes it worth it, in my mind, for the paladin to stay his hand -- both to investigate the evil person's compatriots and to ensure that the person is indeed evil, provided that the situation allows for such largesse).

That's odd. I interpret the change from 2e as a move towards a grayer system. In 2e, Detect Evil functioned like detect bad guy. If the guy walking down the street radiates evil, he's probably either on his way to torture puppies or on his way to kill someone. Either way, he represents an iminent threat to someone. In 3e, you can't draw that kind of a conclusion from the fact that someone radiates evil.

How about a slightly different question? The paladin comes upon two people in the woods, and they are locked in mortal combat. One of them detects as evil. The other does not. The fight is grim and deadly enough that middle-ground tactics like "Halt your deadly combat and explain to me in detail the exact circumstances of your quarrel" are obviously not going to be successful. What should the paladin do?

Attack the evil guy? But what if the evil guy is just a guy who beats his wife, and the guy he's fighting is a knight whose sloppy tying of his mount led to the horse spooking, which caused the death of an innocent bystander? The evil guy, although evil, and although possibly motivated by evil morals, is attacking someone who is, through neglect, guilty of a crime. Or what if the evil guy is actually a ranger with Misdirection cast upon him, while the non-evil-detecting guy is a pit fiend with a ring of mind shielding that hides his true alignment?

Or should we agree that the paladin should attack the evil guy anyway, because, statistically speaking, the odds are that the guy that the paladin's god-given ability tells him is evil is actually evil, and the person he's fighting probably deserves help in fighting the evil person?

I certainly wouldn't penalize a paladin who stepped into the fray to help the non-evil guy. If it was a nefarious trick, I'd hope that the paladin would feel bad, but really, it'd be a nefarious trick. Or the world's worst and most hand-of-plot-ish coincidence. Neither of those merit punishment of the paladin.

If you agree that the paladin should aid the non-evil person against the evil person, then we don't disagree about the moral certainty. All we really disagree about is the degree of imminent threat required for a paladin to act. And that's a good thing to disagree on, I think.

This last example seems more of a question of proper decision-making technique than anything truly relevant to the discussion of what evil alignment means. It's certainly interesting though, so I'll bite with one caveat.

Caveat: In this situation, it would not be common for a paladin to actually detect evil. Since it will take the paladin several rounds to get any useful information out of his detect evil ability, the paladin runs a very serious risk that whoever he should help (assuming he ought to interfere) will be beyond help by the time he finds out who (if anyone) is evil. Generally, the paladin would have to make a decision without knowledge of who was or wasn't evil.

So, it seems to me that the proper way for the paladin to decide who to help is to weigh the possibilities. How certain is he that one man is in the wrong and how certain is he that his help would bring about good? Are the consequences of not acting likely to be as bad as the consequences of acting wrongly? If I knew how to write probability calculus, I could probably put all of those into a pseudo-scientific and vaguely informative equation but, unfortunately, I don't.

Let me change the example slightly so we can have a clear example of this to contrast with your deliberately ambiguous one. If the paladin sees an evil man in armor, wearing a symbol of Hextor striking a non-evil man in peasant armor with a quarterstaff, the paladin is justified in riding to the aid of the apparent peasant. It is, of course, possible that the evil is a result of misdirection, the symbol of Hextor an illusion, and the apparent peasant is a murderer whom he is bringing to justice. That, however, is unlikely. The paladin needs to act on the information he has. And, if he's wrong and it is an illusion then the paladin acted wrongly but justifiably.

If the situation is reversed as in your case and the non-evil knight is fighting an evil peasant, the course of action is not so clear. The knight is likely to win without the paladin's interference so the cost of inaction is much lower while the certainty that the knight is in the right is lower by virtue of several fact:
1. Unlike the Hextorian, the evil peasant doesn't fit into a recognizable category that gives a plausible explanation for his actions.
2. The peasant is apparently at a disadvantage so it doesn't seem immediately probably that he started the fight.
In this case, the paladin might do well to ride his horse between them (in game mechanical terms, I suppose he'd have to bull-rush one or both of them) to stop the fight. Alternatively, the paladin might choose to call out something to the effect of: "Stay your hands and tell me what is the cause of this brawl that I may aid the one in the right!" (I don't think it's immediately clear that this would not work). If neither of those is possible, the paladin would probably do well to aid the non-evil person but to ensure that nobody is killed (non-lethal damage) until he has figured out what is happening.

This situation changes if the peasant radiates moderate or higher evil. In that case, the peasant DOES present a danger to the knight because he clearly has a either a strong enough soul (ie high level) that his allegiance shows clearly or he is something other than he appears to be (evil priest, demon, devil, or undead). So, in that case, I would think that, all other things being equal, the paladin should aid the non-evil fighter.

As to the last statement, I think you're right about the substance of the disagreement but not quite right about the substance of what makes a paladin act. Imminent threat is one factor. However, past guilt is another. A paladin has a duty to bring the guilty to justice (or perhaps visit justice upon them) in situations where violence would not be justified on the basis of an imminent threat. For instance, the paladin simply seeing a faintly or even moderately evil black knight eating breakfast in a tavern is ordinarily not cause to walk up and kill him. However, if the black knight was responsible for burning a village the day before, the paladin might well walk in with his sword drawn and say "defend yourself villain, for I have come to bring justice to you for the destruction of Woodsedge!"

 

[takyris]

Fair enough, there are a few other fairly common punishments that you're overlooking though:

Good points. And yes, if one accepts that you can be evil without being smite-worthy, then the paladin can't just smite away on a faint-evil-aura person he meets in the woods. I'm still not sure I accept that, because, by the book, it still seems pretty cut and dried to me. But since I run a game that (in my mind) alters the rules to provide more shades of gray, I'm on relatively shakey ground arguing with you about it.

But justice isn't always a synonym for "lop their heads off with your greatsword."

Very true. This raises a slightly different question than was originally asked: When a paladin knows that somebody merits punishment, but is restricted by his circumstances to either a punishment that is too severe or a punishment that is too weak (or no punishment at all), which way should the paladin go? In this case, I aim for "Too weak, or none at all if required". I don't believe that a paladin should kill unless it is merited, and if it's a case of "I can't give him fifty lashes out here in the woods and then arrest him and bring him twenty miles back to town. I have to either let him go or kill him," then the paladin should let him go -- unless the paladin has been given leave to execute justice by his church or the government.

Where we differ, I suspect, is not in that approach, but in the approach of who gets pinged with the evil aura.

I'm not trying to get postmodernist with the text. However, it doesn't seem too farfetched to imagine someone who doesn't have the capability to inflict physical harm on most other persons but rather enjoys inflicting mental harm on them. I don't think it would be stretching to call that person evil.

I don't, either. But I think Iago merits a good smiting, despite the fact that most of his action is mental rather than physical (um, maybe all of it -- been awhile since I saw it, and hunting through the whole play to check whether Iago knifes anyone or just convinces people to knife each other is beyond my abilities at the moment). I don't think "Only causing mental harm" should make one not-liable-for-smiting.

I disagree with that. It seems like it minimizes the evil tendencies and actions of ordinary people to exclude them from the evil alignment. Villains are a special category of evil people who have to be stopped by heroes. The guy who's plotting with his mistress to murder his wife so that he can collect the insurance is probably evil but it doesn't necessarily take heroes to stop him. He's evil but not a villain in the literary sense of the word.

Odd. The insurance-plot sounds like a classic villain thing to me. He's not trying to destroy the kingdom, no, but it'd be a good d20 Modern adventure.

I guess I'm approaching it from the opposite end. If the smite works on somebody, it's because the paladin's deity wants it to work on somebody. Thus, in my mind, anybody who can be smoted should be someone who is evil enough to be worthy of being smoted. Maybe this is just Tacky's personal faithfulness getting in the way, but the idea that Heironeous would let his smite work against someone who, in Big-H's mind, didn't deserve it, seems off. He doesn't let it work on non-evil people. Why would he let it work on a person who shouldn't get smitten? (Okay, at some point I'll decide whether to use smoted or smitten -- but smitten sounds so lovey-dovey.)

I really see evil as the exception, rather than the rule -- the ordinary person shouldn't be have enough evil to be evil. That, in my mind, weakens the nature of evil in D&D. Now, it's more or less what I do, because I like shades of gray. But it wasn't my original reading.

Why then, would evil alignment make them worthy of smiting by an extrajudicial paladin if it doesn't make them worthy of death from a judicial body?

Because in my mind, you don't get the evil alignment unless, in the eyes of the gods, you are a truly evil person -- not a neutral person with nasty tendencies. I assume that the gods are intimately involved in such judgments, since pretty much all alignment-based magic comes from the divine end of things. That's my thought, anyway. What, in your mind, causes somebody to radiate an evil aura? Why does a person of sufficient selfishness radiate the same aura as a weak undead or minor demon?

That's odd. I interpret the change from 2e as a move towards a grayer system. In 2e, Detect Evil functioned like detect bad guy.

Wow. Musta been playing by a house rule. I could've sworn that it was "evil intent" -- you only detect evil if they're a demon/devil, or if they're in the process of planning or doing something evil. Must've remembered that wrong.

Caveat: In this situation, it would not be common for a paladin to actually detect evil.

Point -- but he can continue to move forward while still detecting, right? Unless I'm remembering the requirements wrong, he's gonna see these people from a ways away, and if he just does single-moves forward and spends a standard action to maintain concentration, he's not losing that much time.

So, it seems to me that the proper way for the paladin to decide who to help is to weigh the possibilities. How certain is he that one man is in the wrong and how certain is he that his help would bring about good? Are the consequences of not acting likely to be as bad as the consequences of acting wrongly? If I knew how to write probability calculus, I could probably put all of those into a pseudo-scientific and vaguely informative equation but, unfortunately, I don't.

You and me both.

Let me change the example slightly so we can have a clear example of this to contrast with your deliberately ambiguous one. If the paladin sees an evil man in armor, wearing a symbol of Hextor striking a non-evil man in peasant armor with a quarterstaff, the paladin is justified in riding to the aid of the apparent peasant. It is, of course, possible that the evil is a result of misdirection, the symbol of Hextor an illusion, and the apparent peasant is a murderer whom he is bringing to justice. That, however, is unlikely. The paladin needs to act on the information he has. And, if he's wrong and it is an illusion then the paladin acted wrongly but justifiably.

Ah, see, in my mind, the important thing was the aura. I was imagining two people in armor, two knights, so there's no strength-weakness thing, which would ordinarily get the paladin on the side of the weaker party. If they're both wearing plain armor, and one of them detects as evil and the other one doesn't, should the paladin assist the one who does not detect as evil?

Much good stuff, followed with:
Alternatively, the paladin might choose to call out something to the effect of: "Stay your hands and tell me what is the cause of this brawl that I may aid the one in the right!" (I don't think it's immediately clear that this would not work).

And then they both shout "Aid me, this other guy is a wanted criminal!" Or one guy stops and the other guy takes a cheap shot -- and maybe it's not the evil guy. If an LE Knight is fighting a CG knight, the LE knight might stop -- and then get surprised by a blindside attack that finishes him off.

In real life, I don't believe that this stuff usually works. Once two people are fighting, they don't usually break it off just because somebody calls over to them to do so. And riding into the middle of it is a good way to get attacked.

It could work, sure, but it is most likely not going to provide "Sense Motive not a class skill" paladins with a ton more information.

If neither of those is possible, the paladin would probably do well to aid the non-evil person but to ensure that nobody is killed (non-lethal damage) until he has figured out what is happening.

All my paladins have saps or improved unarmed strike for this reason -- but for the ones who don't, I don't know that taking -4 just to make sure that the evil is really evil is absolutely necessary. Again, depends on your definition of evil, of course.

This situation changes if the peasant radiates moderate or higher evil. In that case, the peasant DOES present a danger to the knight because he clearly has a either a strong enough soul (ie high level) that his allegiance shows clearly or he is something other than he appears to be (evil priest, demon, devil, or undead). So, in that case, I would think that, all other things being equal, the paladin should aid the non-evil fighter.

Ah -- so moderate evil energy is enough to use as a basis for judgment? Given that a 1HD evil outsider or undead throws off faint, my thought was that faint was enough.

As to the last statement, I think you're right about the substance of the disagreement but not quite right about the substance of what makes a paladin act. Imminent threat is one factor. However, past guilt is another. A paladin has a duty to bring the guilty to justice (or perhaps visit justice upon them) in situations where violence would not be justified on the basis of an imminent threat. For instance, the paladin simply seeing a faintly or even moderately evil black knight eating breakfast in a tavern is ordinarily not cause to walk up and kill him. However, if the black knight was responsible for burning a village the day before, the paladin might well walk in with his sword drawn and say "defend yourself villain, for I have come to bring justice to you for the destruction of Woodsedge!"

Agreed, methinks.

 

[ph0rk]

A paladin has the right and duty to destroy evil. That is his job. That is why the Lawful and Good powers of the universe invest him with the powers to detect and smite evil. You don't appoint a police force and then expect them to sit on their hands.

And if said paladin were duped into killing someone who wasn't actually evil, sucks to be them.

Am I the only one that thinks a class that has the 'right and duty' to slay anything that -detects- as evil is dorky?


Talk about being pigeonholed...

 

[OhRats]

Smite first ask questions later

Actually, I think a paladin killing someone based solely on detecting evil is an evil act in itself. Paladins should be complex and real characters, not simply played as "Lawful Stupid" charge and kill everything fighters. Just my humble opinion, but I think paladins are some of the most interesting and complex characters to play.

 

[Brian Chalian]

Thus, in my mind, anybody who can be smoted should be someone who is evil enough to be worthy of being smoted.

Exactly.

For the record, my contention is that they all have evil alignments, that a paladin's smite would work on all of them, that a Holy Word spell would probably kill all of them, but that it would be wrong for the paladin to smite them or the cleric to cast Holy Word and kill them.

A 1st level evil person dies when they pick up a holy sword. Is the sword wrong?

 

[Axegrrl]

Without reading 8 pages of posts...

Never forget that the paladin is supposed to be just as much *lawful* as good. Committing a chaotic act should be just as dangerous to the paladin's status as committing an evil act.

Arbitrarily killing an individual who radiates evil can be construed as an extremely chaotic act. In fact, dispensing high justice *without* being granted the right to do so was and is generally considered a crime.

The paladin should turn the evil individual over to the local authorities for possible investigation and prosecution -- and whatever punishment the local authorities deem fit.

 

[Silveras]

I should point out that Lawful is a horrendous choice of name for that part of behavior. It implies being Law-abiding, which can be part of the package, but is not necessarily the whole.

Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties. Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.

“Law” implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include close-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability. Those who consciously promote lawfulness say that only lawful behavior creates a society in which people can depend on each other and make the right decisions in full confidence that others will act as they should.

“Chaos” implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility. Those who promote chaotic behavior say that only unfettered personal freedom allows people to express themselves fully and lets society benefit from the potential that its individuals have within them.

Among other traits, Lawful characters seek moral guidance from authority. They rely on the teachings of their deity, then look to those of the mortal servants of the deity, then to their race, their nation/state, their locality, and so on down the line.

On the other hand, Chaotic characters rely on their own sense of right and wrong. They decide in what order they wish to take guidance from authority, if any. Their focus usually works backwards .. my family, then my land, then my nation/state, then my race, then the servants of the gods, then the gods.

So, a Paladin's first thought in any situation should be "What does my religion say to do ?" or "What is the traditional response among my people ?"

That is why it is very important for the DM to have a clear idea of what the answers are to those questions before springing the situation on the player.

Also, the "ranking" of authorities is important. A Paladin who follows a militaristic deity that teaches "Smite evil whenever you find it" is perfectly right to chop the first thing that s/he sees that detects as Evil. It may also happen to be against the secular law where s/he is, but that's a clash of authorities and the divine trumps the secular.

Another Paladin, though, could be a follower of a less violent god. S/he could be charged to "thwart evil where you find it, and try to redeem the lesser evils". That Paladin would be wrong to strike down anything that detected as evil ... unless it was a really strong aura, indicating a soul far gone or a demon in disguise.

 

[Sejs]

Lawful = orderly in your personal affairs, outlook and mannerisms. Disciplined.
Chaotic = intuitive and seat-of-the-pants, gut reaction type. Freestyle.

A paladin is supposed to respect legitimage authority, but is not bound and required to follow any codified set of laws. No more so than any other character, in any case.

To whit: a paladin does not have a chain of command they have to follow just because they're a paladin.