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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7963862" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think this is probably true. I also posted about surrender and quarter not too far upthread.Roger Moore discusses the prisoner issue in the article I was quoting from before:Not all of the problems Paladin-players encounter in this area of whether killing is right or not are the player’s fault. Sometimes a DM will set up a situation in which, for example, the Lawful Goods have slain all the males of a tribe of Werewolves, and all that’s left are the females and young, who cower in the rocks and refuse to fight. Civilization is hundreds of miles away and no means exists at the moment to render the captives free of lycanthropy. If released, the young will grow up and terrorize the neighborhood again. If they are kept as captives, the party will be severely hampered and may meet new monsters at any moment. Killing the captives could well be the only alternative the Paladin is left with, yet if done the DM might say it was evil and remove the player’s alignment and status as a Paladin. A touchy situation, right? The DM should keep well in mind how he or she would react if placed in the same situation in the game, essentially trapped with no way out. It isn’t fair, and the players will know it and resent it. If captives must be slain, it should be done quickly, without torture, and with the assurance that there was no way to avoid it. . . . The DM should bear in mind the difficulties involved in being a Paladin, and should make an effort to not make things worse for the player by setting him or her up for defeat in some sort of morality trap.The mechanics of D&D (particularly without morale rules) reinforce the absence of prisoner-taking.That said, surrender is not something particular surprising or (conceptually) unusual. And the mechanics of D&D can naturally (as in, without anyone really having to be super-deliberate about it) lead to situations that generate some of the pressure being described in this thread. For instance, suppose a player has his/her PC us CHA/Intimidation to cow some orcs (eg so as to save having to beat them in combat, costing more cure magic and the like). Now the PCs have some prisoners. And suppose, then that a player has his/her PC use CHA/Persuasion (or Diplomacy, or Bluff, or Intimidation, depending on edition and how the action unfolds) to persuade the  cowed orcs to stick the terms of their parole.Now the GM has to decide: are those impossible action declarations? If not, to what extent are successful skill/abilitychecks to be honoured? If the checks are allowed and do succeed, we've now established that orcs can be dealt with other than by violence. And not due to any sort of GM- or player-side contrivance, but simply by following the logic of some of the basic features of the game system where they lead.It's a long time ago now (over 30 years), but I would say something along these sorts of lines is how my game was forced to confront the personality of orcs and similar creatures. (Reinforced by not using alignment, under the influence of the article "For King and Country" in Dragon 101.)</blockquote>

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