Is killing a Goblin who begs for mercy evil?

[embee]

Real life example:

My family is Jewish. My grandfather came to the US from Germany in 1938, fleeing the Nazis. December 1941 - hostilities break out and the US is drawn into WWII. My grandfather enlists. When Uncle Sam realized that he was a native German speaker, they realized that he'd be useful translating.

Fast-forward to 1945. He's assigned to one of the divisions liberating the camps. While rounding up SS stragglers, he asks one of the guards, "How could you kill all these people?" The guard said that they were Jews, not people. So, my grandfather took his gun, handed it to his platoon mates, and then beat the Nazi to death with his hands.

Question: Was this murder?

Legally speaking, yes. It was murder. The Nazi had surrendered and was a prisoner. What my grandfather did was a war crime.

However, the analysis does not end there.

The question then becomes was my grandfather justified? I'd say yes and I suspect many others would as well. This doesn't negate the moral culpability of the action but rather mitigates the punishment.

Back to this example: Is killing a goblin who has surrendered an evil act?

Let's start by clarifying the question. Define "surrender." Is he allowing himself to be taken prisoner? If yes, that's a surrender. If no, that's not surrender; that's retreat. We'll get to that in a moment.

Is killing a prisoner an evil act? By this, do you mean is killing a prisoner an act of murder? Legally speaking, yes. It is murder. Is the paladin justified in murdering the goblin? That would depend on the paladin's god. The GM needs to RP from the perspective of that god to determine whether to revoke the paladin's powers.

Is the goblin retreating? If so, what sort of threat does this one goblin pose? Could he reasonably be expected to pose an imminent threat to the paladin, the party, or civilians? If yes, then I would say that that would not necessarily be murder but, again, depending on the paladin's god, could require some kind of act of expiation.

Again, it's not a binary. The circumstances need to be examined and the GM needs to look at what happened from the point of view of not only the rulebook, but the deity granting those powers as well. Some gods recognize mercy while others demand vengeance.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

Question: Was this murder?

Legally speaking, yes. It was murder. The Nazi had surrendered and was a prisoner. What my grandfather did was a war crime.

Analysis, for me, stops at "was it legally murder". Yes, so the act is evil. Done and dusted. So assuming that Paladins, as in core D&D, must be some stripe of good, must also worship a good deity, and no good deity in the D&D pantheon would condone murder, power ought to be stripped.

"Some gods recognize mercy while others demand vengeance." Yeah - specifically the non-good or evil gods. The kind that endorse and allow non-good and evil behavior.

 

[wicked cool]

This seems a little grey in both pathfinder and 5e

where is the hard rule on this?

real world is a slippery slope

my argument was the goblin is fleeing not hands up

 

[nevin]

The way I do it is by the power judging you. For non clerics and paladins it's generally only going to be judged by the local authorities.

Now if the character ever asks a god or power for help, it'll be the powers perception of the actions to date that matter. Not some arbitrary definition of good or evil. If most goblins are evil then a good power could hate them as much as anyone else. I think of Powers as PC's that made it to the top. They aren't omnipitent or or perfect in alignment.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, I would certainly agree with you if the Goblins were just normal people. But according to RAW, those with an Evil alignment seek to actively hurt, opress, and kill other sentients. So even if they aren't doing anything, they are probably cooking up an evil scheme, or preparing an assault or something. So wouldn't it be like attacking a band of wolves who hadn't done anything, just because you know that they pose a threat to you and would kill you at a moment's notice if given the chance?

Going out of your way to kill wolves that have not attacked your people or livestock is absolutely, without question, an act of incredibly detestable evil.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

To the direct point of the OP, the rules are less important than the people playing the game. Always.

If your paladin player is going to have hard time believing his Paladin is Good if they're expected to kill goblins for existing, your game is going to suffer if you force that dynamic into it.

Also I'm pretty sure Goblins in PF are even less "automatically and always evil" than they are in DnD.

 

[Maxperson]

I would love to know what counts as an evil act to you, if not lying about showing mercy and then killing an unarmed/non-hostile creature.

You grossly misread his post.

"The real question is goblins attacked the village and killed some villagers."

So much for non-hostile and unarmed. It murdered villages with quite a bit of hostility.

"The paladin and the party comes in saves the village."

Okay.

"The last goblin flees saying I surrender and wont do it again."

Nowhere does it say that the Paladin agreed to mercy, lying to it. Or that it dropped its weapon.

"As its leaving the paladin pulls out her/his bow and shoots the goblin in the back."

He killed a hostile murderer that said it surrendered, and then it showed that it was still evil when it lied and ran away rather than surrendering. The Paladin is under no obligation to let it go so that it can murder other people later.

 

[Maxperson]

So, replace "goblin" with "elf" - an elf surrenders and promises to never raid a village again and then when he leaves you shoot him in the back. Good or evil?

So we have an elf that just murdered villagers. It promises to never raid again and asks to be able to leave, because if it doesn't ask I'm ordering it to stop and face justice and if it asks, I'm saying no and telling it that it's going to face justice. If the murdering elf says it won't kill again and tries to flee justice, then I'm going to try and capture it, killing it if necessary. It takes more than, "Hey, I really didn't mean it when I chopped the heads off of 5 villagers. I won't do it again." to show that it has changed its tune. That and if you surrender, you are captured. You don't get to leave the village. Leaving is not a part of surrendering.

Now to the good/evil part of your question. Since I'm chasing down a fleeing prisoner who murdered villagers, capture is the goal. However, capture is not always feasible. If it fights to the death, the elf will die. If it does choose to die by fighting back and not surrendering, it's neither a good act, nor an evil one.

 

[Maxperson]

But, just for the record, Moradin would absolutely punish a paladin for killing a surrendered/helpless enemy. The price of being good is that you have to take unnecessary risks - otherwise you're just neutral/amoral. There is no good god in the D&D pantheon that would consider killing a helpless/surrendered creature, who has free will and is capable of being redeemed, a non-evil act.

Gary Gygax stated that if you have an evil creature that surrendered and then converted to good alignment, it would be a LG act for a Paladin to then execute the creature so that it doesn't backslide again.

I don't agree with what Gygax said, but perhaps Moradin wouldn't absolutely punish the Paladin for killing a surrendered helpless enemy of the dwarven people. It depends on the DM and how dwarves and goblins are run in that game, as well as how alignment is run.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

This is basically what I'm talking about.

The thing is, I always assume paladins operate under a perception of the golden rule: a paladin would seek redemption in an evil being as much as purge it, because its a "get" for the good gods. If you kill a helpless foe at your mercy then you have shown no mercy (an evil act), and also do not give that foe a chance to redeem itself. A goblin might run away and get a gang together for revenge....sure, but the goblin might also realize he was granted mercy in the eyes of the paladin and that he may want to rethink his life strategy. In a world where the gods are real, knowing that the god/goddess behind the paladin has given you a second change through their agent (the paladin) might make a difference.

Now, if in the universe you postulate alignments are not just "cultural averages" and goblins are are literally made of Pure Evil (a very special type of baryonic matter) then there may be no hope for redemption because they are in fact embodiments of an actual force for which no good is ever possible.....as GM I'd probably establish such a details to players in advance of the game so they don't accidentally presuppose that the objective morality of the setting has any wiggle room (so in the original example, a goblin of pure evil can never repent or be redeemed because it is literally and unequivocally made of evil and incapable of anything other than evil).