Order of the Stick 596!

[Scribble]

Wrong. Here's why: V had no clue who Kubota was, or what he did, until Elan told V in this strip, by V's comment. Kubota could have been a helpless prisoner - V did not know for fact. V assumed. That is logic only in the sense that it's poor logic. Logical would have been to take six seconds to ask first.

Yeah that would be logical in our reality, but you also have to remember that the Logic of OoTS also allows them to routinely break the 4th wall in their decision making process.

V knows Elan makes every "important" decision based on the fact that he's a character in a story, and can only act according to storybook convention.

 

[Urbannen]

Yoo hoo, people! Didn't V just undergo a subtle yet noticeable and significant change of character? Remember: Didn't say "I told ye so"/"Dunh Dunh DUNH!"

Who cares about the alignment ramifications? I mean, nobody agrees what the alignments mean, anyway. Right after casting Prismatic Spray (and right after Qarr disappeared), something happened to V.

What do you think it was?

 

[SPoD]

The problem with V using Elan's genre savvy as a basis for killing someone is that Elan's genre savvy is wrong as often as it is right. The OOTS world does NOT always work in accordance with genre; see this strip for an example when it does not. Therefore, Elan's sense of genre savvy is an unreliable source, and it is illogical for V to base a life-or-death decision on it when he/she could easily have taken 6 seconds to find out more.

It's sort of like deciding to shoot someone because Wikipedia told you something bad about them.

 

[jeffh]

What does someone have to do to get everyone to agree that they've just committed an evil act? Apparently painting guard's blood on the walls wasn't good enough too.

Lay off the strawmen. I never thought Belkar was anything other than Evil (if anything it was the Chaotic bit that I wasn't sure of at first), ever since he was totally unaffected by that Unholy Blight very early in the strip's history, long before OotS was anywhere near as popular as it is now.

"Good" does not have to mean "stupid"; doing things, even somewhat nasty ones, for pragmatic reasons is not by itself enough to push one out of Good territory, though it can be an indication that one is straying close to the line if done too readily or when nothing much is at stake. And being accepting of capital punishment - a paradigm case of "killing helpless prisoners" - certainly doesn't disqualify one from being a Good character, particularly in D&D.

I already agreed that V is straying toward the evil end of his/her/its TN box; there's no need for all this hyperbole.

 

[jeffh]

Yes, yes it was.

You can argue whether it was justified or not, but that doesn't change whether it was murder or not.

Murder means wrongful killing. If it was justified, then by definition, it wasn't murder.

EDIT: I was kind of replying as I went, and didn't realize this had already been discussed to death. Carry on.

 

[Hussar]

Lay off the strawmen. I never thought Belkar was anything other than Evil (if anything it was the Chaotic bit that I wasn't sure of at first), ever since he was totally unaffected by that Unholy Blight very early in the strip's history, long before OotS was anywhere near as popular as it is now.

"Good" does not have to mean "stupid"; doing things, even somewhat nasty ones, for pragmatic reasons is not by itself enough to push one out of Good territory, though it can be an indication that one is straying close to the line if done too readily or when nothing much is at stake. And being accepting of capital punishment - a paradigm case of "killing helpless prisoners" - certainly doesn't disqualify one from being a Good character, particularly in D&D.

I already agreed that V is straying toward the evil end of his/her/its TN box; there's no need for all this hyperbole.

Hardly a straw man. Lots and lots of people insisted, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that Belkar wasn't evil. There are threads upon threads entirely devoted to the idea that Belkar wasn't evil.

Now, I'm not sayning that V is actually evil here. He might be. But, this is, in my mind at least, a blatantly evil act. Killing someone, very permanently, simply because it's expedient is evil. The problem with the idea of "capital punishment" is that private citizens are incapable of carrying that out. Particularly when the legal leader of the land is about ten steps away. Capital punishment has a very narrow definition and, "vigilante justice" isn't one of them.

"The last time you captured someone, it turned out to be your brother and he was evil, so, this time, I preemptively permanently killed your prisoner to forestall any such nonsense." is V's entire justification.

And this is considered a good act by some of you?

 

[ppaladin123]

Deontology:

Deontological ethics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Consequentialism:

Consequentialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This debate has been raging for thousands of years.

 

[Nifft]

SMITE DIGRESSION!

- - -

Back on topic: hell yeah V, and rock on elf buddy indeed.

Yay, -- N

 

[Cheiromancer]

Yoo hoo, people! Didn't V just undergo a subtle yet noticeable and significant change of character? Remember: Didn't say "I told ye so"/"Dunh Dunh DUNH!"

Who cares about the alignment ramifications? I mean, nobody agrees what the alignments mean, anyway. Right after casting Prismatic Spray (and right after Qarr disappeared), something happened to V.

What do you think it was?

I wish I knew where Qarr went to. You don't think that he charmed/suggested V into killing Kubota, do you?

[edit] Nah. You'd be able to tell he was charmed by the eyes.

 

[Voadam]

I could not disagree more, for two reasons. First, I think that good intentions/good action is better than good intention/bad action; and evil intention/"good" action (such as it is) is better than evil intention/bad action. In both cases, good action is preferable. Second, action follows intention; you don't have to act on intention.

I don't see how these examples show that you disagreed that intentions matter more. All they show is that you consider good actions better than bad actions when the intentions are the same.

The key contrast would be where do you come down on good intention/bad action versus evil intention/good action?