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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7963644" data-attributes="member: 42582">I appreciate what you're doing. I'm attempting to respectfully disagree. I think that, as the game is presented, the metaphysical element supervenes entirely on the behavioural and dispositional elements that I'm talking about.So Detect Evil or Know Alignment cast on an orc is (I assert) no different from the same cast on a Brigand (cf Bandit) or Pirate (cf Buccaneer) or random NPC who came up evil on the random alignment chart.A Wand of Enemy Detection may of course give a different answer. But perhaps the same answer for Bandit and Buccaner as for Brigand and Pirate. And in the Dragon article I mentioned, discussing a paladin's response to neutral NPCs, Roger E Moore says Of course, when confronted by a band of wild bandits or buccaneers (all Neutral) you can’t just punch them in the nose and settle things. Again, the sword might be a reasonable answer(The reference to punching in the nose follows from an earlier anecdote about how a paladin in a game Moore was GMing dealt with a dryad who tried to Charm party members.)To allude back to the distinction between manslaughter, murder and justified killing: different legal systems will draw the boundaries of defensive violence in different places - eg what is legitimate self-defence, what is excessive self-defence (which is, roughly at least, a form of manslaughter) and what is outright murder? Many US jurisidictions are, by my standards, very permissive in this respect but still I think draw these boundaries.Serious theoretical discussions of defensive violence need to consider such factors as proportionality, necessity (eg how "anticipatory" can such violence be?), motivation (eg if I kill my nemesis out of a desire for vengeance, but - as it happens though unknown to me - happen to prevent said nemesis killing another person at that very moment, am I to be condmened as a murderer or to enjoy the justification of defensive violence?), etc. I wouldn't expect most D&D games to get into that sort of detail, but we can reconstruct the implicit theory that is evinced by the way such games actually proceed.When it comes to killing orcs, most D&D games seem to set a very low threshold for necessity, connected i part to a very permissive conception of anticipatory self-defence and/or justified warfare. That is, the mere presence of orcs is taken to create a threat that warrants the use of violence to elminate them.Again, my advice for games that want to strengthen the veneer of moral permissibility without making anything too complicated would be to reinforce this by having the orcs be raiders of the Westfold (and perhaps who do not spare non-combatants, though that might also be unwanted grimness for some tables).</blockquote>

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