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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1552345" data-attributes="member: 5171">Hey, Universe!  First off, to clarify, you're the DM in question?Well, based on her post, her low-level party was attacked by a bunch of things, she used Detect Evil to get a likely ping target, and then she attacked.  The ping target was in fact part of the people attacking, yes?As for delighting in difficult moral conundrums, yay.  I personally like difficult moral conundrums, but I don't really consider this situation one of them.  Even in the complex and morally ambiguous world of reality, if a group of people attack you with deadly force, you're fully justified in fighting back.  And if you have a gun when the people attacking you are using knives, you're allowed to use it.Well, that's just species-ist.  What about those difficult moral conundrums of yours?  You're judging it differently because it's ugly.  Mind Flayers are certainly sentient, and there do exist mind flayers who are not evil.  And yet, because most mind flayers are evil, and because mind flayers are dangerous enough that wasting a round asking "Hey, just to confirm, you're an evil mind flayer, right?" when a mind flayer attacks you is a good way to end up a bit lighter in the cranial regions. I'm confused as to your point here, no offense intended.  As per one of my earlier posts: If someone attacks me with lethal force, I am under no obligation to endanger myself trying to redeem them.  If I can use less force to subdue them, that's great, but legally and morally, innocent sentient beings are entitled to defend themselves.  Even if my attackers mistakenly thought I was somebody else.  Even if they thought I was a criminal and they were executing what they thought was vigilante justice.  Even if they're attacking me because I'm with somebody who has committed a wrong against them, I'm entitled to defend myself from their lethal attacks.  This is not a moral conundrum, or at least, I don't consider it much of one.Don't apologize to me, and don't apologize for that. If you're going to apologize, make it to the player you dealt with unfairly by telling her that somebody who was attacking her was evil and then penalizing her for defending herself and her friends.Now, if he was attacking only because he was starving and because the caravan group had done something wrong to him or his people, then he wasn't evil.  Vengeance isn't pretty, but it's not evil until you start harming innocent people in order to accomplish it.  If ninja-boy here has been done wrong by the caravan, and he sees the caravan, and he decides to attack for the sake of vengeance and to get some food, then he wouldn't detect as evil unless he also enjoys torturing small animals in his spare time or something.  If this kind of "Not a devil-worshipper, just desperate" mentality is what you wanted, then "Chaotic Neutral" is a fine fit, and even just "Neutral" works pretty well.  This guy didn't feel that the law would help him, and he wanted somebody dead for what had apparently been done to him in the past.  Again, that's not a good and saintly alignment, but all by itself, it ain't evil.And, going by general alignments, some of these refugees just wanted food (Neutral), and some wanted food and vengeance (Chaotic Neutral), and some just wanted vengenace (CN), and some wanted food, vengeance, and the opportunity to inflict pain on people because hurting things makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside (CE or NE).  If that's not what you intended -- if you hadn't intended for some of the refugee-ninjas to be sadists who would have attacked any caravan to get food, if only their friends would go along with them, then you did wrong by making them evil. War is primarily a battle between a whole bunch of Neutral people.  There are evil people on both sides, people who enjoy inflicting pain, and there are good people on both sides, people who are fighting for a cause they believe in against a force they believe to be evil.How do I know that the Caravan/PCs were innocent? Well, there's a paladin in the party, and I'm kind of assuming that if you were willing to ding her for smiting a truthfully evil opponent who was attacking her, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you'd ding her for associating with evil people.  Ergo, the caravan can't be composed of mind flayers and blackguards.  Now, if you tried to go for moral ambiguity by saying "Well, the caravan had done something horrific to the refugees, and the refugees are just attacking for vengeance, but I'll have some of the refugees detect as evil while none of the caravan people do," then your moral conundrum hinges entirely on you yanking the alignment chain back and forth a bunch.Here are the possibilities I see, based on what you and the player have said:Caravan generally good, Refugees generally evil: In this case, the paladin was right.  Smite away.Caravan generally evil, Refugees generally good: In this case, why did the caravan people not detect as evil while the refugees did?  If this was a giant setup involving false alignment auras, then all the paladin is guilty of is trusting in the magical divine power her deity gave her.  If that refugee turns out to not be evil, even though he detected as such, she should make redress and feel awful, but she didn't knowingly commit an evil action by any stretch.  She got played.  She should go after the players, who are indirectly guilty for the non-evil refugee's death, whereas she is directly responsible but not guilty.Caravan neutral, refugees neutral: Why did some of the refugees detect as evil, again?  If it's because they were the sadists, while most of the refugees were attacking just for food and what they saw as redress for wrongs, then the paladin did the right thing by attacking the evil ones first.  The ones attacking for food can be subdued, if that's possible and not dangerous for the party, but the ones who are going to torture if given the chance don't merit that kind of special treatment, unless the paladin is so much more powerful than they are that she can afford to pull her punches.  And the player did say "low level".  Again, smite away on the evil folks, who were part of a group attacking the PCs with lethal force. Doesn't matter, Universe.  In D&D-land, f you're travelling on the road and somebody attacks you with lethal force, you have the right to defend yourself with lethal force, and if you have a special ability that allows you to punch harder when punching an evil person, and you also have an ability to detect evil people, and you see an evil person in the group attacking you, how exactly is using a special ability designed to help you hit evil things harder... to hit an evil thing harder... a nonpaladinic idea?  Please describe to me the form of evil this ninja-dude has that makes the paladin wrong to smite the evil person that is attacking her.  If what you meant for this ninja to be was "mean, but not a sadistic person who enjoys inflicting pain for his personal benefit", then you slapped him with the wrong alignment. The evil person was part of the group that was attacking, though, right?  That's what the player sort of implied.  He was in the group that was attacking, and he was evil, and evil as defined in the book means that he enjoys inflicting pain on innocents and/or has no problem hurting innocents to advance his own position.  The fact that she struck this particular person first is not relevant to the discussion.  If a paladin is attacked by twelve people, does she have to let each of the twelve attack her before striking that one back?  Or can we assume that in a generally intelligent campaign, the paladin can say, "Well, hey, I'm going to assume that all twelve of these people are trying to kill me, based on the fact that many of them are firing arrows and many of them are charging forward with axes.  I should fight back against all of them.  Hey, that one is evil.  I have abilities that work better on evil people.  Since I can safely assume that they're all hostile, based on the fact that they're in a group that is attacking me, I should use my abilities to their best advantage."The paladin's actions here were as unpaladinic and fall-worthy as flanking in a mass-combat situation.Hey, whenever I hear a "The DM screwed me" story, I like to get the other side as well.  There could well be more information that changes my mind.  Right now, though, it sounds like you wanted moral ambiguity but didn't put the right alignments in place to get it.  Moral ambiguity is tough to deliver when the situation begins with "the party is attacked".  Even if it's a bunch of neutral people attacking them, the paladin isn't under any obligation to not fight back, or to only fight back with subdual damage.  Her life was in danger, as far as I can see based on the current information, and she defended herself to the best of her abilities, and any kind of "let's try to get the bloodshed stopped and figure out what everyone's interests are" kind of instincts are ruled null and void when she senses that several of the attackers are outright evil.  If it turns out that the evil guy was evil because he kicks children for fun or something, and his attack on the caravan was motivated solely by the desire for food and vengeance, then... well... that's a definite interesting setup, but the paladin is still justified in defending herself against an attacking group.  And she's justified in using the best tactical means in doing so, like attacking the lightly armored people first, flanking her opponents, or smiting the people who detect as evil.</blockquote>

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