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Message: <blockquote data-quote="embee" data-source="post: 8252060" data-attributes="member: 7026827">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.</blockquote>

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