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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 1210399" data-attributes="member: 13654">Bad communication beforehand but by all accounts handled properly during the session.  The DM gives the player fair warning of the supposed moral danger.  The player rightfully argues that no moral danger exists or at least his character IS justified in his actions regardless of the supposed moral dangers manifested.  And most importantly, the DM chose to let the issue drop, at least for the present, and move on with the game rather than slam on the parking brake until the issue was yakked to its ultimate end.No, I don't really see this as any kind of problem.  At the very least it can be explained away as those characters NOT having the intense, unshakable moral and ethical grounding that the paladin has (and indeed MUST have.)  They still see innocent children and try to deal with them as if they still were.  The paladin sees them for what they REALLY are and comes to the much more difficult conclusion that it is either necessary or at least within the realm of proper choice of action to kill them.Had they succeeded in killing or subduing the lot of them their conversation afterward could have very well had the wizard and barbarian at first expressing shock and dismay at the paladins apparantly abhorrent and evil behavior, followed by the paladin chastising the other characters for their lack of moral courage to do what was right and necessary (at least what the Paladin sees as right and necessary).However, your comments properly infer that many games would be improved by players and DM's alike who did not attempt to overlay real-life and modern morals on a game system/world that is _designed_ not with shades of grey but crystalline black and white.  D&D is a world where evil is a force that is openly manifested in the world to the point where it can be detected and opposed directly by spells and items for which that is their reason for existence.  If children are innocent they can be identified as innocent without the children having to say or do anything at all as the paladin in this case apparantly did.<digression>Similar challenges can be made toward applying real world political structures, political dynamics, sociological forces, cultural norms, theories of law/crime and punishment, and so forth.  Even benevolent kings are still _autocrats_ and ought to rule that way.  There seems to be a common assumption that most NPC's are literate regardless of their occupation or social station but without the presence of schoolhouses for children to learn it.  Education institutions are limited to monasteries, temples, sages, and perhaps universities, but which of those teaches basic literacy and when?  And even more importantly - why?  What do commoners read or write?  Newspapers?  Books?  How can they if books are only found in the libraries of sages and wizards?It's one thing for PC's and their NPC allies and enemies to read and write, but quite another to have a billboard in town where royal decrees and want ads are posted.  It's also one thing to expect that children be perceived as wide-eyed innocents to be dealt with using kid gloves [ha! pun intended] but another to expect that to _continue_ when PC's are faced with manifestly evil, murdering children who are attempting escape with life-threatening tactics.</blockquote>

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