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Is Anyone Unhappy About Non-LG Paladins?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6331713" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I think you might mean Obad-Hai rather than Olidamara. Other than that, I agree with what you say here. The differences between these PCs are differences of mechanical build, not differences of underlying archetype.</p><p></p><p>I don't fully agree with this, though. I think D&D - for better or worse - defaults to the assumption that killing in self-defence, or in defence of others, is morally permissible and in some circumstances perhaps morally obligatory.</p><p></p><p>For instance, the d20srd says that "Good characters and creatures protect innocent life." I think that the protection in question is understood to include defensive violence.</p><p></p><p>A more tricky issue is duelling. I think that chivalric morality, and other comparable pre-enlightenment codes (eg viking law codes) take for granted that if someone willingly engages in a fight, and is killed, then the killing was not murder. But the d20srd says that "Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit." That suggests that someone who goes out of there way to start duels because they enjoy winning them - a duellist hustler, if you will - is evil, because enjoys destroying innocent life for fun. But I think that where a duel arises over a genuine point of honour or legitimate conflict, then a good character who participates is not a murderer, because not failing to protect innocent life - the other party to the duel willingly chances his/her life on the outcome. (A truly good character who wins might nevertheless show mercy, however, if that is possible in the circumstances.)</p><p></p><p>Now personally, as someone who doesn't use alignment in my game, I'm happy to leave the issue of defensive violence vs pacifism, and whether duelling is murder, as open ones, to be addressed and debated as part of actual play like the other moral questions that the game raises.</p><p></p><p>But for those who are using alignment, I think the game does provide some answers that aren't too hard to make sense of.</p><p></p><p>The real problem area, in my view, is that the game often labels as "evil" NPCs (eg many orcs, goblins etc) whose status, as legitimate targets of defensive violence, is often obscure at best. It's as if, because the game designers have stuck the label "evil" on them, the PCs are free to treat them <em>as if</em> they were legitimate targets of defensive violence even though no real indication has been given of the threat that they are posing. Often it's not enough just to say "They're threatening the villagers", because if the villagers are illegitimate colonists then it is the "evil" humanoids who have the justice of self-defence (in this case, defence of their homelands against invaders and colonists) on their side.</p><p></p><p>The answer to this sort of problem that I've adopted in my own game is to deepen the backstory - make it clearer, by reference to gameworld history and/or cosmology and mythic history, who has what sorts of legitimate claims. But my experience is that once you start doing this you don't need alignment any more, because the history and cosmology of the gameworld provide sufficient moral reference point in and of themselves (much as they do for us in the real world).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6331713, member: 42582"] I think you might mean Obad-Hai rather than Olidamara. Other than that, I agree with what you say here. The differences between these PCs are differences of mechanical build, not differences of underlying archetype. I don't fully agree with this, though. I think D&D - for better or worse - defaults to the assumption that killing in self-defence, or in defence of others, is morally permissible and in some circumstances perhaps morally obligatory. For instance, the d20srd says that "Good characters and creatures protect innocent life." I think that the protection in question is understood to include defensive violence. A more tricky issue is duelling. I think that chivalric morality, and other comparable pre-enlightenment codes (eg viking law codes) take for granted that if someone willingly engages in a fight, and is killed, then the killing was not murder. But the d20srd says that "Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit." That suggests that someone who goes out of there way to start duels because they enjoy winning them - a duellist hustler, if you will - is evil, because enjoys destroying innocent life for fun. But I think that where a duel arises over a genuine point of honour or legitimate conflict, then a good character who participates is not a murderer, because not failing to protect innocent life - the other party to the duel willingly chances his/her life on the outcome. (A truly good character who wins might nevertheless show mercy, however, if that is possible in the circumstances.) Now personally, as someone who doesn't use alignment in my game, I'm happy to leave the issue of defensive violence vs pacifism, and whether duelling is murder, as open ones, to be addressed and debated as part of actual play like the other moral questions that the game raises. But for those who are using alignment, I think the game does provide some answers that aren't too hard to make sense of. The real problem area, in my view, is that the game often labels as "evil" NPCs (eg many orcs, goblins etc) whose status, as legitimate targets of defensive violence, is often obscure at best. It's as if, because the game designers have stuck the label "evil" on them, the PCs are free to treat them [I]as if[/I] they were legitimate targets of defensive violence even though no real indication has been given of the threat that they are posing. Often it's not enough just to say "They're threatening the villagers", because if the villagers are illegitimate colonists then it is the "evil" humanoids who have the justice of self-defence (in this case, defence of their homelands against invaders and colonists) on their side. The answer to this sort of problem that I've adopted in my own game is to deepen the backstory - make it clearer, by reference to gameworld history and/or cosmology and mythic history, who has what sorts of legitimate claims. But my experience is that once you start doing this you don't need alignment any more, because the history and cosmology of the gameworld provide sufficient moral reference point in and of themselves (much as they do for us in the real world). [/QUOTE]
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