Is Coup de Grace an evil act?

[Drawmack]

The situation isn't as black-or-white as you portray it: It depends on the kind of monsters we're taling about.

If you kill a couple of humans without knowing what they're up to you kill without a firm reason and probably you commit an evil act.

But fire giants and ogres? They're usually evil, the party might even have heard of no good ogres and fire giants to that day. I think it depends on the type of creature in question and on the campaign.

You say it depends on the type of creature, if you reread my assessment I called it racism and stated that racism, especially taken to this level, is an evil act. Anything, I repeat anything, that has an alignment listing that says anything besides always xx can have a different alignment and acting based on the usually factor is racism.

If they would just let them go, they wouldn't behave very heroically, either: they'd be cowards not to inspect the matter. And again, it depends on the reputation of the race in question.

Yes, and that's what I said that should do. Coming down to the race in question is once again coming down to racism.

So the situation is almost exactly the same as before: we encounter monsters, and must depend on our own good judgement and the reputation of the involved races to make up our course. The fact that they're away from their usual climate doesn't change that

Again you're getting into the realms of racism.

Repeatedly you state that racism is not evil, does this mean that in your game you condone racism?

 

[Drawmack]

You are just strolling through early 1940s Germany with your band of hearty adventurers when you hear a huge ruccous coming down the path. You all hide and see 2 SS Officers, 4 Reich Footsoldiers and 2 rottweilers march by giving the appearance of a military party....

Wow what an elegant rewrite of my second scenario in which I stated that the PCs would be justified in the act of killing, thanks for showing support to my argument.

 

[Pielorinho]

There isn't a spell called Protection From Malicious Intent. Illithids aren't [Evil; Unless You Understand The Complex Cultural Factors That Combine To Form Such An Alien Mindset]. Assassins aren't [Evil, But You Gotta Remember That A Lot Of Them Were Abused As Children]. Evil is Evil in D&D.

Hee hee! Excellent points, and thanks for addressing the rules. That's half of why I put it in this forum -- the other half of the reason was that I was trying to keep the discussion from hijacking other threads.

Rigamortus,

Just because there is no place to imprision them doesn't mean that is the only way to "deal" with them. Neither is foolishly waking them up and challenging them to a "proper" duel for the sake of fairness. People who use these arguements are just being narrow-minded. I don't intend that as an insult. What I mean by it is, they can't think of any other creative way to deal with them so they try to make the only other obvious decision appear stupid (which it is) and the ONLY other decision there is (which it is not). There ARE other ways of dealing with these creatures besides killing them in their sleep (which I feel is evil) or waking them up and challening them to a duel (which I feel is stupid).

When you say you don't intend that as an insult -- well, sure you do. Else you're doing a piss-poor job of not being insulting. At least live up to your own self-righteousness, man.

As I recall, last time I asked you to enumerate the alternatives to slaying the evildoers or imprisoning them, you bizarrely listed a bunch of tricky ways to slay the evildoers. Not, in my book, an
alternative to slaying them. So I ask you again: using the fire giants as an example, and assuming the party has solid reasons to believe the fire giants are evil, what sound strategies does a third level party have for dealing with the giants that don't result in their death or imprisonment?

Show us that vaunted creativity of yours; help those of us that aren't creative enough.

Daniel

 

[Storm Raven]

So what alignment would you categorize someone in who has no respect for another's life and they would have no compunctions with taking that life? Need help? There are some hints in the PHB under pages 88 - 89.

But that's not the definition of assassin. That is the definition used for members of the Assassin class. James Bond is an assassin, he is a paid killer for his government. Do you intend to argue that individuals like James Bond are evil?

All a sniper is is someone who attacks at range, with the intent to kill. An assassin is someone who attacks, with the intent to kill. So by definition, an assassin is a sniper when they attack by range, and a sniper is an assassin because they intend to kill.

So, anyone who intends to kill is an assassin? I think your grasp of language is tenuous at best.

Depends on the intent. Killing CAN be evil, I fail to see where it can ever be Good. A Paladin killing a Chaotic Evil demon is certainly not an Evil act, but I don't see how it is a 100% Good one either.

And this is where you display your abject ignorance of actual morality.

BZZZT. Wrong. Righteous retribution according to who? Maybe to a Lawful Evil god, but that is about it. This man deserves a fair trial, if trials exist in your world. If not, feel free to do the vigilante thing, but don't kill him. Bring him into the authorities and let them deal with him.

You are confusing "Good" with "Lawful".

Wrong again, and you were doing so good (little "g") too. Seek change of his rulership, but not with the intent to kill. Exile and banishment are just punishments for this tyrant.

Once again, you confuse "Good" with "Lawful". Plus, you assume that "exile and banishment" (essentially the same thing) are just, more just than execution. Do you intend to argue that, for example, Oliver Cromwell was evil because he did not banish King Charles I, but instead had him executed?

 

[Rel]

If, in a given campaign, in order to retain your "Good" alignment descriptor, you must always act in an expedicious manner to save a fallen foe and then attempt to bring him to the "proper authorities", attempt to rehabilitate him or bring him along with you in order to keep an eye on him to assure that he doesn't hurt any innocents, then I want no part of being "Good" in that campaign. That might be fun for some people, but not for me. There are plenty enough moral dilemmas in D&D already without adding me being obligated to save the life of the bandit who jumped out of the woods and attacked me by surprise (and for the record, I'd let the bastard bleed to death where he lay, so long as he wasn't bleeding on anything important, like my bedroll).

Maybe deep down I am just too pragmatic to play truly heroic characters, if being heroic forces you to always give the bad guys the benefit of the doubt. But the types of strictures RigaMortis and Drawmack are talking about are a different brand of "Heroic" than I've ever played with. Frankly, it sounds pretty close to the definition of "Lawful Stupid" that I hear bandied about in the various Paladin threads. No offense.

As I mentioned above, one of the reasons for my attitude about this is strictly that I don't think it would be fun to play under that definition of Good (and I really think this reason trumps any others that might come into play). But perhaps another reason (or maybe what Riga and Drawmack might call a rationalization) is that, unlike our own world, "Ultimate Justice" exists in the world of D&D.

I am ABSOLUTELY NOT trying to derail this into a religious discussion as it pertains to our world. Suffice it to say that if you believe in ultimate justice in the afterlife in our world, it is a matter of faith. Not so in the (default) world of D&D. The gods are proven to be real on a daily basis. Atheists and agnostics in such a world are either woefully uninformed or just plain idiots. Chances are very high that you will be judged, in some form or fashion, in the afterlife. Ergo, "Kill em' all and let the gods sort em' out!" becomes a viable, if a bit indescriminate, approach to dealing with Evil doers.

Maybe that's why there are so few prisons in the average D&D world.

 

[green slime]

Ergo, "Kill em' all and let the gods sort em' out!" becomes a viable, if a bit indescriminate, approach to dealing with Evil doers.

Except that you have no idea just how evil (Evil?) your bandit vicitm is. Are you willing to just go with a hunch and possibly sacrifice your place in Celestia? So a certain amount of caution in your slaughtering mayhem path to glory may be recommended.

Most bandits IMC "attack" by asking for your goods while staring at you down the barrel of a Longbow. Not until you try something rash, like defend yourself against the odds will the arrows start to fly. Most don't even ask for all your goods, but perhaps a "toll". (Particularly if you look like a bunch of well-armed adventurers). How much is the fight worth to them or you? How "evil" is this act if they have been deprived of their rightful livelihood? Are you still sure that CDG is the "right" way to treat a fallen foe?

IMC, CDG sees the most use from PCs when enemy priests and fanatics are involved. The danger of them getting up to join the fight again is too great to be ignored.

 

[Rel]

How "evil" is this act if they have been deprived of their rightful livelihood?

Emphasis mine.

I don't often trot out the rolleyes smilie, but I believe it is available for precisely this situation so, "rightful"?

Look, I was sort of halfway kidding about the "Kill em' all" notion. I don't really play that way most of the time. I was just positing it as a bit of a "moral safety net" when the party must make an unpleasant decision under less than optimal circumstances.

Regardless, I consider that position far less extreme and bizarre than a world where bandits who threaten my life in an attempt to steal my goods are somehow morally superior to me if I defend myself and they die in the process. Chances are that if the bandits came upon a weaker group they would either kill all of them or steal everything they had and leave them defenseless against the elements and ravages of the wild. The only reason they might treat a party of PC's differently is because they are well armed enough to successfully fend them off.

So the question is if we beat the bandits and some of them lay unconscious and dying after the fight, what do we do? If it is convenient to take them to the nearest town to stand trial for their crimes, sure heal them up and bring them to worldly justice. All the better if there is a bounty for their capture. If that isn't convenient then I could either kill them, let them die or heal them enough to stop them from dying and be gone before they wake up. If I do the latter, they might come after me seeking revenge in which case we get to do the whole thing over. Or they might go back to banditry and kill the next group of merchants to pass by. If that happens then isn't the blood of those merchants on my hands? I had a chance to stop them, but I avoided it on the basis of trying to keep my conscience clean of any moral defect.

Sure hope my deity doesn't call me on that one when my own judgement day arrives.

 

[Pielorinho]

I think the rules issue is settled: by the rules, there is nothing to indicate that CdG is evil. Nobody has even attempted to quote the rules to prove otherwise.

The more interesting question remains: should a DM rule that CdG is evil? Should a DM rule that CdG is chaotic?

Part of the problem seems to stem from folks evaluating the question in the context of modern society, in which courts and prison and law enforcement are readily available. These conditions do not apply in many D&D worlds (including in the worlds I play in and DM).

In societies without comprehensive law enforcement, the laws tend to look much more favorably on "vigilante justice": far from punishing someone who kills bandits, such societies might offer a bounty on the heads of bandits. It is very easy to imagine a society in which killing giants is considered perfectly legal within a kingdom's borders, or in which a person who commits certain crimes is no longer protected by the law. In such societies, the use of CdG on appropriate subjects (i.e., giants and certain criminals) is perfectly lawful.

However, adventurers often spend time outside of their normal jurisdictions, often in areas with no formal legal code. When adventuring through a remote mountain pass, there may be no laws that clearly apply to how an adventurer should respond to an attack by hill giants. In this case, as in all cases, "lawfulness" is determined by the adherence to an internal moral compass that values the good of society more than the good of the individual.

Furthermore, adventurers spend a lot of time in areas governed by unjust laws. Does the adventurer who infiltrates the drow queendom, in breaking anti-infiltration laws established by the drow, necessarily become chaotic? What if he CdG's a sleeping drow priestess who tomorrow will lead a raiding party against the adventurer's homeland? Does it matter whether the ruler of the homeland has authorized the adventurer to go on this mission?

I think that CdG is, in D&D terms, morally neutral. The morality (and lawfulness) of the act depends entirely on the context.

Daniel

 

[Sejs]

Wow what an elegant rewrite of my second scenario in which I stated that the PCs would be justified in the act of killing, thanks for showing support to my argument.

Gladly - I agree with your argument that the situation isn't evil or good until additional factors deem it so. I presented the thing with different participants to remove the race aspect.

 

[LokiDR]

Again, I never claimed it did. I wasn't even trying to defend this point at this particular time. I was comparing an assassin with a sniper and how WotC views their specific Assassin class. It could be grounds for measuring if sniping is an evil act or not, since the two are pretty much identical. An assassin that kills his target at range is a sniper by default. A sniper that attacks someone at range with the intent to kill their target is an assassin by default. Again, I was just showing how WotC portrays Assassins.

Assassination is not the same as CdG, so this doesn't help much one way or another.

Just because there is no place to imprision them doesn't mean that is the only way to "deal" with them. Neither is foolishly waking them up and challenging them to a "proper" duel for the sake of fairness. People who use these arguements are just being narrow-minded. I don't intend that as an insult. What I mean by it is, they can't think of any other creative way to deal with them so they try to make the only other obvious decision appear stupid (which it is) and the ONLY other decision there is (which it is not). There ARE other ways of dealing with these creatures besides killing them in their sleep (which I feel is evil) or waking them up and challening them to a duel (which I feel is stupid).

Also, just because there is no known place to imprision these creatures doesn't give someone the right to blatantly kill them. Killing something for "convience sake" does not a Good person make. Being Good isn't something you do only when it is convienient to do so.

This isn't about being Good. It is about not being Evil. Please remeber that.

In many cases, the most efficient, most expedient means of dealing with the situation is to kill them. If you don't acknowledge that, you are being narrow. We aren't talking about killing for "convience sake", we are talking about executing entities known to evil or waging a war on your enemies. If you don't know they are evil (commiting crimes) or you are not at war with them, then the situation is different.

Casting a Cure spell is also not an evil act. It doesn't say it is in the D20 rule book either. But you can be sure, if someone casts cure on an evil person with the intent to keep them alive so that they can continue their evil ways, it would be an evil act. I'm not talking about healing an evil person to try and question them, imprision them, or rehabilitate them either. Intent has a lot to do with Good and Evil actions. So, when you CdG someone, what is the intent? Is it to put them out of their misery, or is it to kill them because you can't come up with any better non-lethal means to deal with them? I'll say it again, in a world that can heal any ailment or wound, I find it hard to justify "putting someone out of their misery".

Killing can be justified.

The CdG rule in D&D is not "merciful blow" it is executing a person. Execution can be evil or not. You are right that CdG has little to nothing to do with "putting them out of their misery" in D&D.

Usually evil isn't ALWAYS evil. If the party had more background, then perhaps killing them may be justified. Without such information known, it is hard to rule. As it stands, from a third party perspective, CdGing sleeping enemies appears to be an evil act IMO.

If they are known oppents in a war, or they are known criminals, or they are a type of creature that is always evil, it is not evil. It is an execution, pure and simple.

It may not fall under the category of heroic, but it also wouldn't fall under the category of unheroic (as slitting their throats in their sleep would). If they knew that they were ill-equiped, ill-prepared and out-skilled with dealing with these foes (party of 4 level 3's vs fire giants, ogres and dire wolves remember) then it would not be cowardly to leave them be, it would be smart. If you are traveling in the jungle and come upon a lion snacking on some prey, would you be a coward if you didn't attack it? No, you'd have no reason to attack it. Same here. Unless we add into the equation that there IS a reason to attack/subdue/question/capture these fire giants, and that they were just not "happened" upon.

You are right that you need good reason to attack the creatures for the act not to be evil.

No they probably were not on vacation. Of course, maybe they got lost and want nothing more but to find their way back home? They don't want any trouble, they just want to leave this unfamilair terrain. That's what you get when you investigate magic portals. Sometimes you end up in places you don't want to be. Guess we'll never know now. Congradulations for CdGing the "usually evil", but in this case good, fire giants that lost their way.

You are right that you need good reason to attack the creatures for the act not to be evil.

So what alignment would you categorize someone in who has no respect for another's life and they would have no compunctions with taking that life? Need help? There are some hints in the PHB under pages 88 - 89.

Adventurers kill all the time. In their line of work it is neccessary and hesitation would mean danger to you and your comrads. Respect for life and compunctions about killing are different. I can respect life but still not hesitate to kill the person trying to kill me.

I never said killing was an evil act. I said a CdG is, in most situations, an evil act. Why put someone out of their misery when you can just get them healed, regenerated or brought back to life? I would argue that killing someone in self-defense IS an evil act IF there isn't any other viable way to defend yourself (such as doing subdual damage or otherwise incapacitating them by non-lethal means). However, if you are out numbered, it is clearly kill or be killed. Sometimes s**t happens and people die in fights, but to make that a goal of yours would be an evil act. Clearly the goal of CdGing the sleeping fire giants was to kill them.

Is killing an animal for food evil? Depends on the animal. If it was an awakened animal who was sent to protect the other forest animals from poachers, then I'd say yes. If it is a deer sipping water from a stream, then I'd say no.

Is the state executing a prisoner it can not hold evil? Depends on a lot of factors. First and foremost this would be a Law/Chaos debate. Once you get into, was the prisioner evil? Was he redeemable? What was his crime? Etc. Then you can make a determination if the death penalty is Good or not.

I think the intent of why you are killing them largely reflects if the act is evil or not.

Yes, the intent. Which means that CdG is not evil by itself, which was the original question.

I'd agree with you here. I think the question is, are they inherently evil? This is something that should be defined and told to the players BEFORE the game even begins. Our current rule is that, demons, devils and undead are inherently evil. So if we find one that is evil, we are freely allowed to kill them without alignment consequence. However, we still need to determine if they are evil. Even then, the Paladin may ROLEPLAY pity on them and let them go under some extreme circumstances. It may be a stupid move out of game, but it can only add to the drama and roleplay value later on (a re-occuring villian if you will).

Game play is different matter. Choosing not to kill an enemy is mercy, which is "Good". That doesn't mean that not showing mercy is evil. It is not evil, but not good either.

Depends on the intent. Killing CAN be evil, I fail to see where it can ever be Good. A Paladin killing a Chaotic Evil demon is certainly not an Evil act, but I don't see how it is a 100% Good one either.

Exactly, CdG isn't evil.

BZZZT. Wrong. Righteous retribution according to who? Maybe to a Lawful Evil god, but that is about it. This man deserves a fair trial, if trials exist in your world. If not, feel free to do the vigilante thing, but don't kill him. Bring him into the authorities and let them deal with him.

That is law, not Good vs. Evil. If the man is known to have committed a crime, then he DESERVES punishment. Society is usually lawful though, so I can see where you would confused. Also, vigilantism is considered bad because people will make mistakes and innocent people will be hurt. That IS evil.

Wrong again, and you were doing so good (little "g") too. Seek change of his rulership, but not with the intent to kill. Exile and banishment are just punishments for this tyrant.

No. "Good" is getting rid of tyrant. How you choose to do this a matter of your personal code, Law vs Chaos. Considering what he could do if he raised an army in his banishment, killing him might be a better idea.

When your other alternatives are Heal Skill, Cure Wounds, Regenerate and Raise Dead, this is a cruel, evil punishment to put on someone.

"Putting them out of their misery" only applies if there is nothing else you can do. This means it should almost never be a reason in D&D.

I agree. Killing is not so much on trial here as CdG is. There are MANY reasons to justify killing someone. There is hardly any way to justify CdGing (remember, CdG = mercy killing = putting someone out of their misery) someone when you have access to the Heal Skill, Cure Spells, Regenerate, and Raise Dead.

CdG in D&D is NOT "mercy killing" or "putting someone out of their misery", it is killing a helpless foe. Then the question is why did you kill. CdG is just a tool.

Let me make this point. Say you are a Fighter with NO skill in Heal (in fact, you have a low Wisdom, so you have a -1 on your Heal Check). You have no access to healing spells or potions. You do not know any Clerics, and Regenerate and Raise Dead are extremely rare to come by in this campaign world. One day you are jumped in the wilderness by a bandit (Chaotic Neutral Rogue). You are all alone. It is a bitter battle, but you best the Rogue and he drops to -1 hit points (not that you would necessarily know this). Now, would you CdG him in this situation and put him out of his misery OR would it be better to try the -1 Heal check for the next 9 rounds in the hopes of saving him? Even if you fail all 9 times and he drops to -10 and dies, 27 seconds is NOT a long time of suffering. So to CdG him when you have the slightest CHANCE to stabilize him, would still be an evil act because you are making a concious decision to end his life, when you have the chance to possibly prevent the death.

If he jumped you and tried to kill you, death is an appropriate punishment, and not evil. It isn't mercy, it is rightgousness.

If you want to save him, remeber that he will probably still die if you just stabalize him. You need to tend to him. That would be a problem if you were off to save the world and time was short.