OotS 406

[Vanuslux]

What happens in a society when an innocent person is executed because a jury found them guilty? Does thtis society suddenly become a lawful evil society?

At least in a DnD world you can rectify the situation this mistake and being a person back.

It depends on whether the jury found the innocent person guilty through an honest mistake (all evidence supported their guilt and the defendant's lawyer sucked) or whether it was a matter of assuming the person's guilt based on circumstantial evidence. Ever read 12 Angry Men? I'll never forget the juror who just wanted the defendant sentenced to death as quickly as possible so that he could make it to the ball game he had tickets to and got extremely angry when the other juror's "wasted time" by actually going over the evidence carefully. That's hardly Lawful Good, I'd think. Hence the reason trials have 12 jurors instead of one or two...to dilute the possibility that one jerk will destroy an innocent persons life by simply not caring. It's not a perfect system, obviously, but its far better than one person acting as judge, jury, and executioner all at once while they're in a ticked off mood.

 

[Elf Witch]

It depends on whether the jury found the innocent person guilty through an honest mistake (all evidence supported their guilt and the defendant's lawyer sucked) or whether it was a matter of assuming the person's guilt based on circumstantial evidence. Ever read 12 Angry Men? I'll never forget the juror who just wanted the defendant sentenced to death as quickly as possible so that he could make it to the ball game he had tickets to and got extremely angry when the other juror's "wasted time" by actually going over the evidence carefully. That's hardly Lawful Good, I'd think. Hence the reason trials have 12 jurors instead of one or two...to dilute the possibility that one jerk will destroy an innocent persons life by simply not caring. It's not a perfect system, obviously, but its far better than one person acting as judge, jury, and executioner all at once while they're in a ticked off mood.

In the games that I have seen a paladin with the ability to dispence justice the paladins in question have used tools like detect evil, discern lie, even an augury. So I doubt that an innocent would just be killed by an angry paladin having a pissy day. Also I would rather take my chances with a paladin if I was innocent than with a bunch of jurors who rather be anywhere else and who if they make a bad call it is really no skin off their nose but if a paladin does he has more to lose. So in the end I think he might just be a little more careful.

 

[PallidPatience]

In the games that I have seen a paladin with the ability to dispence justice the paladins in question have used tools like detect evil, discern lie, even an augury. So I doubt that an innocent would just be killed by an angry paladin having a pissy day. Also I would rather take my chances with a paladin if I was innocent than with a bunch of jurors who rather be anywhere else and who if they make a bad call it is really no skin off their nose but if a paladin does he has more to lose. So in the end I think he might just be a little more careful.

How does this support your defense of Miko's paladinhood? She refused to do anything to verify any of what she believed. She took it for fact, and, in a fit of obvious rage, struck down the defendant in the midst of his self-defense.

Honestly, I think all of your problems with the alignment system aren't with the system itself, but with your experiences following it under bad DMs. If you'd seen it run under a good DM, you'd probably not have these problems.

As for your medieval morality for your alignment system... It probably works in your game, but it'd be a really hard sell for the core system. It's really hard to relate to medieval morality, mainly because most of the stuff that was considered "good" or even just overlooked was downright cruel and evil. How could you play a "good" character in that sort of world?

 

[Elf Witch]

How does this support your defense of Miko's paladinhood? She refused to do anything to verify any of what she believed. She took it for fact, and, in a fit of obvious rage, struck down the defendant in the midst of his self-defense.

Honestly, I think all of your problems with the alignment system aren't with the system itself, but with your experiences following it under bad DMs. If you'd seen it run under a good DM, you'd probably not have these problems.

As for your medieval morality for your alignment system... It probably works in your game, but it'd be a really hard sell for the core system. It's really hard to relate to medieval morality, mainly because most of the stuff that was considered "good" or even just overlooked was downright cruel and evil. How could you play a "good" character in that sort of world?

I was not defending Miko in this post I was talking about paladins in general. And in society's that allow paladins to dispence judgement. BTW not allowing paladins to dispence justice didn't stop Miko at all.

I have had great DMs and bad DMs and I have seen paladins played with both. With bad rigid DMs playing a paladin is not fun. You end up either falling or just pissing the rest of the party off because you are terrified of falling and you agonize over every decision.

I use a modified medieval viewpoint. Other wise there would be a lot of things you could not do. When I say try not to be handicapped by 21 century morality this is what I mean. In our modern system we have a way of dealing with criminals we put them in jails. We have airplane and cars so if an evil doer does something in the wilderness miles from a city it is not impossible to get them to the city in a relative short time. We can even call the police to come and take them so we can back to our trek in the wildnerness.

In a lot of settings there would not enough jails or resources to handle say a tribe of marauding kobolds. So a PCs often have to make a choice on to handle them. Let them go or kill them. With 21 century thinking killing those kobolds would be considered murder.

In today world we have the Geneva convention to handle rules of warfare. We don't kill prisoners, soldiers can be arrested for plundering and looting.

There is one medieval viewpoint that DnD players love and that is the right to plunder. The right to plunder was often considered part of the payment for soldiers. We today would be horrified if people went onto a battlefield and looted the clothes and belongings off the soldiers yet that was a common occurance in the medieval ages.

And as for 21 century law lets take a look at that. You have a mafia don who has killed, blackmailed, bribed, and caused a lot of pain and suffering and death of innocents with his tainted herion his soul is as black as they come.

He is on trial for a killing he did not commit. Our laws say that you can only judge him guilty or not guilty for this crime. So by the law he is not guilty but he is still evil and will go on to commit more evil crimes. But you can't lock him up.

In the medieval DnD world say you have the same type of situation. The clerics and the paladins find out that he did not commit this crime but his soul is black with evil taint. The clerics cast disern lie on him and question him and find out that he has killed before. The paladin prays and communes with his god on what to do is this man evil does he deserve punishment. So the man is executed.

I don't want to play all the time in a historical correct game but I find being rigid about applying 21 century law and ethics to pCs in a fantasy setting tends to make it harder to play a good character. I also enjoy mature themed games where everything is not black and white. The elves human holy war is based on the crusades and got some of its inspiration from the movie Kingdom of Heaven. Neither side is evil. Using the limited code from the PHB it would be much harder to play a paladin in this setting.

Besides there are a lot of weird rules that just don't make sense take the rule that a paladin can't use poison. So if a paladin coats his weapon with a poison that does strenth damage that is evil even though the person gets a fort save. And if he makes the fort save nothing happens. But he has to atone for this.

But under the rules a wizard paladin could cast Ray Of Enfeeblement which also does strength damage and has no save. And under the RAW he would not lose his paladinhod for this.

so in my games using poison is not an evil act in and of itself it is no more evil than a sword. It is a tool. It is what you do with it that makes it an evil act.

 

[Renfield]

Technically, it's still the Year of the Dog. The Year of the Pig doesn't begin until the first day of the Lunar New Year, next month (18 Feb).

That's how I found out I was actually born in the year of the Dog, Feb 3rd 1983, coincidentally I believe that's a day before the two week celebration of the chinese new year begins

I think what truly caused Mikos fall was her refusal to even attempt to ascertain the truth - no one was going to try to stop her and Hinjo if they decided to take Shojo prisoner and hold him for trial. Shojo appears to have been willing to tell them everything once they had uncovered the deception, and they had a high enough level cleric coming by to be able to cast, say zone of truth to verify that he and the OotS was not working with Xykon. But she didn't even try to find out the truth, she explicitly said she didn't care what the truth was, or who detected as evil, or really, what the gods might say on the issue.

But Miko did not choose any of these options. She jumped to a conclusion, assumed she was right, and arrogated to herself the power to render immediate judgment. Her sin was pride, and that led to her acting in anger to strike down a defenseless man who posed no real threat, and furthermore was actually innocent of the charges she murdered him for.

Finally, I'll note that the maneuvering that Shojo engaged in was to evade an oath constructed by a human agent, not a divine mandate. The paladins of the Sapphire Order took an oath based upon the decision of a human directive, not a divine directive, and Shojo's machinations were to get around this restriction foolishly imposed by a fallbile human. Miko mistakenly conflated the human directives for the Sapphire Order with a divine instruction, and thus, forgot who it is truly important to obey.

I think Storm Raven said it best here. Alignment is tricky, even by D&D terms, hell, Monte Cook has a list somewhere of core guidelines someone might adapt to be of an alignment for larifications sake. Also, one may argue the flexibilities intention might have with alignment but when you're a Paladin intention isn't the be all and end all, she foolishly rushed in, and with lawful good alignments that = mad mojo. I could also quote Yoda here if someone wants to say there was no evil in her actions Though I think ultimately Storm Raven sums everything up quite nicely and the Richards strip makes me all warm inside.

Interestingly the guy is either an genius, likes to make us think, is an accidental genius, or a little bit of all of the above. There are naysayers for the blackguard argument and I typically agree with them. Losing Paladinhood doesn't = alignment change -> evil. However don't be dissapointed if Rich Burlew does take that path, have faith in the mans intelligence, he's smarter than that. If he did make Miko a blackguard then he'd do it in a rather impressive manner.

Presently it seems to me the door is open both ways. She may have had the slap in the face needed for her to try to atone and become one of the good Paladins, perhaps leading to her death (which I wouldn't mind seeing) or what not; or, she'll go to jail where a certain succubus presently dwells and find a change of heart towards a different route. There are other options as well these just seem the most likely in my mind, Rich has surprised us all before I'm sure so it could go in a completely different direction. Anyway, awesome comic, can't wait to see what happens next. I also forsee a potential escape of the Linear Guild during the chaos of war.

 

[prosfilaes]

First of all I don't have modern 21 law or ethics in my game which is one of the big problems. People judge paladins based on todays morality like you don't kill prisoners, you don't execute without a trial, bigorty makes you evil, slavery is evil.

The Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) didn't execute people without a trial where the suspect confessed. They could beat the confession out of him, but only in open court, and if the suspect died, the judge was executed. Due process varies a lot, but was not invented for the 20th century.

 

[PhoenixDarkDirk]

Why? It makes perfect sense to me. Being undead is not a natural state. One could argue that necromancers raising bodies and ghast killing people to make new undead spawn is evil.

The next time the undead come and munch on a villege the paladins should say sorry folkes we can't help, undead are just misunderstood.

Gods can be zealots in their views without being evil.

Many things which aren't natural also aren't evil, although I agree with you about the ghasts.

I have no problem with defending against actual threats, such as your village-munchers. Your example which I originally cited, however, involved a character specifically identified as good. In my view, the undead status of the character is no justification of the paladin murdering it.

 

[Storm Raven]

Fixed that for ya. Just tryin' to help.

Nope. In general. Actual historical knights and priests who participated in the midaevil political and legal process could not adhere to the paladin code in the PHB as written. Trying to map historical practice on to the PHB version of paladinhood simply doesn't work; a review of historical sources easily demonstrates that they just cannot meet the standards. Especially those who dispensed summary judgment without inquiry into the actual facts of a situation.

Now, this is primarily because the PHB alignments and paladin restrictions are written based upon 20th century morality. So I guess you could change that morality if you wanted to, but then you wouldn't be playing D&D by the rules as written, and are instead playing something else entirely. Which makes the issue entirely moot for this discussion, since we are talking about OotS, which seems to adhere pretty closely to the "official" version of the game (much of the humor of the strip would be lost if it did not).

 

[Herobizkit]

Not that I disagree with everything you said but how do you handling looting in your game?

Dead people don't have stuff. They're dead.

In a role-playing heavy game, the Paladin will oftentimes try to find out the history of the people he kills. If an evil wizard harassed a village, the paladin might give all of the treasure to the village, or most of and tithe the rest to the church, or even keep a few coins to cover his living expenses. But I don't enforce one way or the other; it's up to the Paladin and what s/he feels is right. If the Paladin tends to keep all of the treasure all of the time, I comment on her greedy habits and that she starts to feel "uneasy".

I don't believe in an all-or-nothing scenario on Paladinhood unless the Paladin blatantly does something to further the cause of capital-E Evil; allowing an Evil artifact to pass into the hands of an Evil user, ignoring the town's requests for aid knowing that the town is defenseless without it, killing an innocent just to "take his stuff", and so on. I would start stripping powers, one at a time, until the PC Got It.

 

[Elf Witch]

The Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) didn't execute people without a trial where the suspect confessed. They could beat the confession out of him, but only in open court, and if the suspect died, the judge was executed. Due process varies a lot, but was not invented for the 20th century.

I think we all agree that confession obtained under torture often is not a true confession but a way to stop the pain.

And I can imagine the cries of foul if a paladin engaged in beating a subject until they confessed.

And I never said that there should be no due process and that was a 21 century thing alone.

Due process in one of my games goes like this paladin thinks person has commmitted an evil act he then detect evil, he questions said subject under the spell discern lies if he still not sure he does a commune and then if the evidence of all this says the person is evil then he can execute him. So the person has a form of due process.