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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1198326" data-attributes="member: 5171">Perhaps this means that I've outgrown comic books, or at least standard superhero comic books, but Superman and Batman seem stupid by that definition.  Sure, Superman has to hold back because he's so poewrful, and he doesn't want to risk becoming evil, but Batman?  The Joker always escapes.  And he always kills people.  The Joker deserves to die.  It'll never really happen, because the Joker is a comic-book franchise in and of himself, but really.I like Farscape more than I liked Voyager.  Here's how this is relevant:Voyager: An evil alien takes over the ship and tries to kill everyone.Janeway: Well, we've finally captured you, evil alien, and your plans have been stopped.  Now, get off my ship.  For the record, we're putting a warning beacon around the nebula you live in, so that no one else falls prey to your evil schemes.Farscape: An evil alien takes over the ship and tries to kill everyone.Crichton: Hey, you freaky fire-breathing sumbeesh, come get some!  (Alien gets blown up, Crichton gets covered in goo, many things explode.)In a world or campaign where the villains are so clearly beyond the power of standard law enforcement to contain, the hero has a moral obligation to take out the trash himself.Admittedly, I don't have this problem with, say, Cartoon Network's Justice League, because even though the bad guys are trying to take over the world, they rarely actually kill anyone.  It's sort of a gentleman's agreement. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />So, if I'm a 9th-level fighter, and I've just broken past the defenses of a 12th-level wizard, and he says, "Alright, I surrender, take my spell components and bind my hands and gag me if you will," and I know that the guy can cast stilled, silent spells, and I know that the local authorities are 2nd-level warriors -- and I know that this guy isn't just coming after me, but is going to kill innocent peasants as well -- then taking care of him is really my problem.Not every case is that bad, of course, but I don't buy that heroes always have to accept surrenders -- not if they're on a stealth mission, not if they have no way of ensuring that the bad guy doesn't escape, and not if they believe in good faith that the person is just going to kill more people if they let him go."Yes, Jane Peasant, your husband the guard was killed by the wizard when he broke out of your pitiful nonmagical town prison -- but you can rest comfortably knowing that I, the hero, didn't kill anyone who was trying to surrender.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to run off and catch the evil wizard and bring him back to your pitiful nonmagical town prison.  Who's the replacement guard?  Your son?  Well, best of luck to you."</blockquote>

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