Player Dilemma

[Grugni]

Not get involved??????
I'm over a hundred years old!!!!
You children need to get up to my level before I'll get involved!!!!

 

[lgburton]

Fair enough. As I said, there are many things a paladin player needs to get rulings on before a campaign starts. The morality of killing goblins and goblin children is one of them.But if this is true, there should be Neutral or Good goblin settlements out there. Every goblin tribe cannot be Evil, unless it's inherent to their nature. So in your campaign, I'd expect the paladin to be able to find a neutral goblin tribe with which he could leave the goblin orphans.

there are good/neutral goblin settlements out there, depending on a person's camaign world. heck, even in just wotc supplements there are good goblins - check out Sandstorm, the Bhuka race.

If there is no such tribe, if invariably a group of goblins getting together will turn to evil, then there's nothing "usually" about it."Without a good reason" makes it morally relative, I'm afraid.Absolutely right. But it's an outlook that you yourself, even if unconsciously, are practicing. "Depends on the circumstances" is moral relativism. Otherwise killing goblin children would either always be right, or always be wrong, just as killing human children is always wrong.

"killing human children is always wrong" IS moral relativism. we just don't like thinking about it. the situational ethics/moral relativism slope is very very slippery, and i think you should probably clarify your argument here, if you are intending to make an argument for absolute moralism/ethics.

How is killing children by starvation and exposure any different, morally, from killing them with a knife?

one is murder, the other is neglect. in alignment terms, one is an evil act, one is a neutral act. there is a serious difference, and even the laws about murder in america reflect this particular issue - motive makes all the difference. 1st degree murder is a very different crime than murder in self defence, isn't it?

The only difference, AFAIAC, is that the adventurer who chooses to kill by exposure is squeemish and a coward, while the adventurer killing with a knife is at least honest about what he's doing. And more merciful besides. Dying from exposure can take days.

again, neutrality - someone who is willing to say "i'm not getting involved," is a much different person than someone who is willing to say "i'm killing them for their own good."

Logical consequences to actions makes for a good campaign, yes. Trumped-up, unbelievable consequences to certain actions the DM doesn't like, with no warning or explanation, never makes for a good campaign.

i agree with this last statement whole-heartedly.

 

[Zen]

I have decided to carry on playing my paladin, but i am going to try to get the party to become more cohesive and to select a leader. Once we have a leader selected i will then try to get the party to sit down and discuss what as a group we believe is the right thing to do. This isn't my idea , one of the other group member's has come up with it, but he is playing his character as a stay at the back and not get involved, so i will become the spokeperson.

I was playing a paladin a while back and another player and I kept butting heads over things like prisoners, tactics and other matters that often arise when a paladin is involved. Our group was like yours and there wasn't an agreed-upon leader for the first adventure, we were working together out of common interest.

When the adventure was over, my paladin declared the partnership dissolved and wished everyone well. He then declared that he was beginning his own adventuring company with himself as leader. The new group would abide by the paladin's definition of morality (which was well known by then) and would defer to the paladin's judgment on these matters. The paladin had been a good mouthpiece for the group and had made some sound decsions, so all the players but the one sided with the paladin. The last one felt his character couldn't abide by the rules and created a new character who could. This way, we kicked out the character but kept the player.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Check out the:Paladins and Good Aligned Folk In War - Are Orc Children Slain? thread in this very forum for a good, healthy discussion of these issues. This thread in fact inspired me to create that one because I thought it would be useful to generalize the situation.

A lot of good points of view no matter what your point of view.


Chris

 

[Lord Pendragon]

there are good/neutral goblin settlements out there, depending on a person's camaign world. heck, even in just wotc supplements there are good goblins - check out Sandstorm, the Bhuka race.

Yes, this is why I made mention of the possibility in a previous post. If there are good/neutral goblins out there, then I can see a paladin taking the goblin children to such a village to be cared for. That'd be the good thing to do. If the campaign world (such as the one where I play a paladin,) does not have good/neutral goblins, then killing them is the way to go.

"killing human children is always wrong" IS moral relativism. we just don't like thinking about it.

Um...no. There is nothing relative about an absolute action having an absolute moral value. Neither the action nor the value change, regardless of the nature or viewpoint or culture of the individual.

Unless, of course, you are talking about the real world, in which everything is morally relative, since other cultures have different moral codes relative to ours (some of which, I suppose, may not view killing human children as evil. Aztecs maybe?) That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a D&D world in which killing human children is always wrong. D&D is a morally objective world, and that morality is set by the DM. It was my assumption that the overwhelming majority of DMs would set "killing human children" as morally wrong, though that was, indeed, an assumption.

Now that I think about it, though, let me amend my previous comment to haakon1. "Without a good reason" could indeed be part of a morally objective paradigm, so long as the defining "good reasons" were concrete, regardless of the race or culture contemplating the killing.

the situational ethics/moral relativism slope is very very slippery, and i think you should probably clarify your argument here, if you are intending to make an argument for absolute moralism/ethics.

I'm not making an argument for anything. D&D is a morally objective universe, as written. [Good] and [Evil] are consistant universal forces, whose nature remains unchanged regardless of who contemplates them, and whose nature is self-defining, regardless of how any particular culture feels. Every culture doesn't get to define it's own "Good" and "Evil". There is one right answer, the [Good] one, whether a culture knows and agrees with it or not.

one is murder, the other is neglect. in alignment terms, one is an evil act, one is a neutral act. there is a serious difference, and even the laws about murder in america reflect this particular issue - motive makes all the difference. 1st degree murder is a very different crime than murder in self defence, isn't it?

It's impossible to use American law in a discussion about morality. It isn't always relevant. American laws are about order as much as they are about goodness.

And I would argue that by killing the children's parents, you've already placed a moral burden upon yourself, with regards to the goblin children. They're your problem now, for good or for ill. To kill a child's parents, then leave him in a hut to die of exposure is far more than neglect. It's murder. And it's far different from happening upon a goblin hut you've never seen before, noticing there are no parents there to take care of a goblin child, and continuing on your merry way. You caused the child to be without a caregiver. You have created the situation whereby the child will die from exposure, if not saved. And therefore you have killed that child. You can't kill a child's parents, then walk away from the child--incapable of caring for itself--and claim no culpability in its death.

again, neutrality - someone who is willing to say "i'm not getting involved," is a much different person than someone who is willing to say "i'm killing them for their own good."

And I say again, you become "involved" the moment you killed the goblin children's parents. You can't claim to be not involved in their resulting deaths, however they come about.

 

[Grugni]

Since i have only just stumbled onto this particular post in the forum... I am the dwarf character involved in this...

regardling the goblins... my belief is simple.

I am a dwarf and i have taken the foe hunter feat with its plus 1 against goblinoids.. but who is to say as a roleplay aspect my character cannot display hatred towards goblins. as far as i am concerned the death of the goblin kids was justified as they are inherently evil and nothing can be said will change my opinion on that.. the death the dwarf dealt them was quick and painless... better than the adult goblins we has smashed our way through to get to this point...


in my characters aspect his hatred for the goblins justifies his actions. unless you would rather they were left to starve... and in regards of the re-education centre is this...

A leopard does not change its spots.. young or old.

Grugni Oreshaper...

Psst the paladins a girl..

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Honestly, I'm cool with the Dwarf player in this case. Welcome to the boards, Grugni!

 

[DevlinStormweaver]

I disagree. Why can't a leopard change it's spots. We are in a fantasy setting, things work differently. Surely it is up to the DM who is running to say whether over time things can change alignment. Plenty of people on this post have said that adventures can change alignment based on their actions, so why not monsters

 

[LostSoul]

regardling the goblins... my belief is simple.

That is cool, but your belief may not actually be Good. The group should decide what the lines (defining alignment) are. If that makes you Neutral, who cares. It's the same character, anyway.

Psst the paladins a girl..

 

[haakon1]

Fair enough. As I said, there are many things a paladin player needs to get rulings on before a campaign starts. The morality of killing goblins and goblin children is one of them.But if this is true, there should be Neutral or Good goblin settlements out there. Every goblin tribe cannot be Evil, unless it's inherent to their nature. So in your campaign, I'd expect the paladin to be able to find a neutral goblin tribe with which he could leave the goblin orphans.

Yup. In my campaign, there's been neutral orc tribes (twice) and there's a neutral goblin trader who travels between the goblinoids and the humans. There's also a very old bugbear king (ruling goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears) who is evil, but has made a treaty with the humans of the Keep on the Borderlands not to attack in exchange for a cow a week. When he dies, his evil daughter will seize power and go to war to show her authority, but for now, giving the kiddies to him to raise would be a reasonable course of action. That bugbear king, from the 2nd Edition version of the Keep, is pretty interesting -- a survivor of human raids who was left for dead.

If there is no such tribe, if invariably a group of goblins getting together will turn to evil, then there's nothing "usually" about it.

Not an issue IMC, since there are non-evil goblins, but even if there are not entire TRIBES of non-evil humanoids, there's still the possibility of an exceptional individual turning to good. For example, IMC, a character long, long ago began try to convert Lizardmen. So, there are now a few LG lizardmen clerics of Heimdall. But no whole tribes have converted yet.

"Without a good reason" makes it morally relative, I'm afraid. Absolutely right. But it's an outlook that you yourself, even if unconsciously, are practicing. "Depends on the circumstances" is moral relativism.

I don't consider the "Just War" theory moral relativism. But we're not supposed to get into real world religion.

Otherwise killing goblin children would either always be right, or always be wrong, just as killing human children is always wrong. How is killing children by starvation and exposure any different, morally, from killing them with a knife? In either case, you're killing them. The only difference, AFAIAC, is that the adventurer who chooses to kill by exposure is squeemish and a coward, while the adventurer killing with a knife is at least honest about what he's doing. And more merciful besides. Dying from exposure can take days.

It's like the difference between:
- Calling in artillery on a village that you're taking fire from versus lining up civilians next to an irrigation ditch and machine gunning them. That's the difference between "war is hell", "we had to destroy the village in order to save it", and collateral damage versus war crimes and the My Lai incident.
- Nuking Hiroshima versus bayoneting babies and pregnant women (as the "Hun" were accused of doing in Belgium in 1914). Again, collateral damage versus war cimes.
- Legally speaking, Manslaughter (neglience resulting in death) or versus 1st degree murder (intentional planned killing)/genocide (murder of a whole group because of racial, ethnic, or religious characteristics). The first can get you up to about 7 years, the second can get you the death penalty or your own special court at The Hague.

Women and children die in both cases, but I think there's a moral difference. Mixing politics and religion in one post -- oh my!

Logical consequences to actions makes for a good campaign, yes. Trumped-up, unbelievable consequences to certain actions the DM doesn't like, with no warning or explanation, never makes for a good campaign.

True. IMC, it made sense for the Viking warriors to follow the lead of paladin party leader, and kill the snot out of the disobedient halfling. True, they didn't care whether the orc prisoner lived or died, being neutral and hardened warriors, but they did care about not following orders in combat. And really what Viking likes disobedient halflings who attack their leader? If the halfling didn't want to be dead, he shouldn't have raised his hand to the party leader. Being a PC is no protection -- the NPC's don't know their opinion "doesn't count". That I happened to agree with the paladin and was pissed at the halfling, well, that just made me more sure in how I played it.