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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1551452" data-attributes="member: 5171">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.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.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."But what did he do?  He decided that the best solution was to attack innocent people.  Evil.  Smite away, ma'am.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).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.No, if this were the real world, I wouldn't be advocating this -- but if this were the real world, you wouldn't have Detect Evil, either.  You'd have to judge for yourself whether the person trying to end your life were worthy of taking the extra risk to subdue them without killing them.  As a martial artist, I've got multiple techniques that deal with knife or gun attacks (pre-emptive note: if handing over your wallet or running is an option, that's by far the best one).  Some of them result in a stunned attacker.  Some of them result in a dead attacker (knife ends up in their throat, gun could very well fire back into their face during the wrist flex that removes it from their hands, etc).  This is something I've thought about -- if I'm being threatened with deadly injury by someone with a lethal weapon, and I have to fight (because my wife is also being threatened, because escape is not an option, because I think they're going to kill me anyway, etc), how much am I willing to risk to save this person's life?And what it comes down to, most of the time, is:1) This guy might have had a horrible life.  His parents probably didn't love him.  He didn't have role models.  In this society, there's a good chance that this guy never really had a chance.2) That said, I've got just as much right to live as he does, and I'm not the pinhead who started it.So... if it's a shaky guy who's obviously terrified, and this is just a cry for help, then I'll risk something to avoid killing him.  But if this guy looks competent, then I will mourn his death and live with it for the rest of my life... but I will to my utmost to live with it.  (And note again, really, even if you have good techniques, the best one is to throw your wallet up into the air and then run like heck while they take their eyes off you.)And I don't even have Detect Evil to let me know whether this is a poor desperate soul or a cold, calculating killer.</blockquote>

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