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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Pendragon" data-source="post: 2553124" data-attributes="member: 707">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.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.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.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.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.</blockquote>

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