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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 3614194" data-attributes="member: 13966">As before, I see your question as flawed in its basic premise. :\ Killing is never fun and games to good people.Fighting may very well be, and is quite a different matter.Also, lethal force is not a necessity in D&D.  Many creatures will run away if sufficiently cowed with a liberal beating, and even tenacious foes can usually be taken out of the fight with nonlethal force (those which cannot are generally the kinds of unliving monsters that should pose no moral quandary to destroy, such as the Undead).Enjoying the act of killing is purely an EVIL impulse and unnatural, a result of mental flaws in some humans.What you should be asking, is "How do we handle killing in D&D settings without disrupting suspension of disbelief, or breaking the alignment system?"Now, part of the question can also be circumvented by considering the nature of D&D settings.  Some creatures in these settings are just plain Evil and/or unliving.  Enjoying the destruction of Undead, Constructs, Fiends, Mind Flayers, and such would not usually be evil.  Especially since the usual reason for enjoying it is the satisfaction of knowing that another unnatural abomination, or manifestation of pure Evil, has been destroyed and will do no more harm.Many creatures in D&D, such as orcs and goblins, are evil by and large, with decent members of their species being quite rare in most D&D settings.  While not capital-E Evil, many are still irredeemable or just too violent and resistant to redemption.  Their gods (Gruumsh, Maglubiyet, Hruggek, etc.) create them to be evil, their cultures compel them to become evil and accept it as the only/right/best way.So while adventurers and paladins and such may feel some regret at slaying these fellow living creatures, they know that letting them live is likely to result in more attacks upon decent humanoids and more generations of such creatures rising up to cause even more harm.This isn't true of real-world humans; we're all human to begin with, and while we have different cultural influences, we retain normal human inclinations and can learn to accept other peoples' ways.  None of the popular faiths that I know of preaches for us to destroy one another, at least not as anything but a last resort; people are converted all the time to different faiths, as they decide for themselves what to believe.  And many live without adhering to the beliefs of one faction or another, without necessarily being persecuted for it.Real-world humans would rather, on the whole, live peacefully and with whatever prosperity they can manage to achieve.  D&D humans are generally the same, but live in a much harsher and more dangerous world, with all manner of monstrosities and divinities looking to do them harm, try controlling them, or acquire their services.  They have to deal with the fact that life is harsh and slaying evil creatures is often a necessity.  But at least they also have the assurance that some benevolent/righteous Powers are looking out for them and will take care of them when their own time comes.But in a D&D world, goblinoids and such are compelled by their very religions, leaders, and peers to actively attempt destruction, or otherwise preying upon, of all other creatures.  They have little choice in the matter and little reason to doubt it; an orc doesn't want to be savagely beaten or slain by his peers for taking pity on the random elf or human in the village they raid, even if he does by some miracle have a flicker of compassion in his heart.  At most he may go solo and try to find his own way, but other orcs from other tribes won't accept him; Gruumsh demands they subjugate or slaughter all non-orcs, with no mercy.While these races may be victims of their own races' cruel and savage societies, many are nonetheless evil to the core.  Most could not be redeemed in a typical D&D setting; their racial imperative is domination or genocide.  Many are the orcs who give in to violent impulses and bloodlust, for it is in their nature as creations of Gruumsh.  They would never accept Good as being the best way for them.  Few are those who lack the orcish imperative to kill and dominate and revel in it all.For a human paladin or the like, slaying orcs is usually a matter of necessity to protect innocent non-orcs, as well as justice for those the orcs are likely to have harmed or slain beforehand, and holy extermination of unrepentant, irredeemable monsters who love slaughter entirely too much and are nothing but a threat to other people as long as they live (even if only because they will keep breeding to produce more legions of orcs, to slaughter humanoids in the next generation and all those that follow).Slaying evil humans is more likely to provoke a moral quandary from paladins, as they will know that humans are more likely to be redeemable, and a paladin is more likely to use nonlethal force when fighting humans they know to be dangerous and/or villainous, unless they know those humans to have commited horrible acts worthy of execution.</blockquote>

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