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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1555158" data-attributes="member: 5171">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.  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.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?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.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.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.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.That one's pretty straightforward, yeah.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."  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.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 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.</blockquote>

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