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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1208755" data-attributes="member: 5171">Actually, just to randomly steal ideas, combining Barsoomcore's with Force-User's -- this brings up a really interesting point of morality in a D&D universe.I agree, Barsoomcore, that in the real world, children get leeway.  A child who kills, even if it is premeditated, is sent to prison until he is an adult, but no longer (except in rare instances where an older child is tried as an adult).  (Note: U.S. Legal system, not speaking for whole world.)  This is because children in the real world don't have access to nuclear weapons.  They can potentially kill somebody in horrifically unlikely and rare instances, but by and large, a child who does something morally wrong doesn't accomplish much.But a child in a D&D world has the potential to, as demonstrated here, make a deal with fiendish powers in order to gain the D&D-world equivalent of a rocket launcher.  Not a nuclear weapon, no, but definitely worse than a handgun.In a world that exists like this -- where demons can hunt around the dreams of children, find the ones who seem corruptible, and then make them a tempting offer to wreak some havoc -- would children still get the leeway that they get in the real world?Obviously, by asking the question, I am implying that there may be a difference between that world and our real world.  But I am by no means certain.In any event, I consider it an interesting question.  The paladin's player obviously (if subconsciously) feels that the scope of power available to the children is such that ignorance cannot, at that point, equal innocence.  Though the child did not have the benefit of more years of moral education, they still should have known better, and must now reap the karmic result of what they have sown.  ForceUser, by his determination that the paladin got power-whacked, seems to feel that the increase in Damage Potential that the children get does not necessitate an increase in accountability and responsibility and judgement against them.  That is to say, even though the children can, in this D&D world, do things that are just as powerful as many adults can do, with results worse than most adults could accomplish, they should still be treated with more leeway, not because the crime was any less horrific, but because they were not able to truly understand the choices that they were making, even though they did choose these actions freely and without magical compulsion.Not sure there's a right answer.  Definitely sure that we won't find an answer that'll satisfy everyone.  If I ever ran an adventure designed to explore this (and I'll tell you right now that I most certainly will do so at some point), I'd try hard to make it a world-ambiguous scenario -- some NPCs would feel one way, some NPCs would feel the other way, and the gods would be quiet or contradictory on the subject.Dang.  I showed up in this thread for a flamewar about paladins and game balance, and I ended up getting a rather interesting philsophical and moral argument.  Don't be sneakin' that jazz into my power-fantasy wish-fulfillment steam-blowing hobby, man! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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