The Paladin's Code...and TIME TRAVEL!

[Mark]

If a paladin could travel back in time and murder a person who would eventually do evil things, is it incumbant upon him to do so...?

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

If a paladin could travel back in time and murder a person who would eventually do evil things, is it incumbant upon him to do so...?

Hmmmmm. The seminal work on time travel, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure does not cover this eventuality. But drawing from that source, the paladin would certainly be called to travel back in time and attempt to convince the evil person to "be excellent and party on".

 

[Zappo]

Maybe some paladins would refuse murder, though I'm pretty sure that most would grab the chance to convert or at least imprison the would-be evildoer.

The real problem is - once the evil person has been killed or otherwise neutralized, the evil acts he would have committed won't happen any more.
Therefore, the paladin in the present won't have any reason at all to go back in time and dispose of him (indeed, he won't even get the idea).
So, he won't travel back to kill the evildoer.
Which means that the evildoer will survive and proceed to commit evil acts.
Thus giving the paladin reason to go back and off him.
Therefore...

*stack overflow*

*head explodes*

 

[Tsyr]

No.

No matter how much you know they WILL do evil deeds, if they haven't done them yet, killing them is cold-blooded murder, plain and simple.

 

[Macbeth]

If the paladin could time travel, why not just stop evil from ever being created at a conceptual level. Or why dosen't he go back in time and kill the first of each intelligent race to prevent evil from happening? As for the real question, assuming he can travel back in time and all he wants to do is stop one evil guy, he has presumably met this evil guy. Meeting said evil guy has changed his life in some way. If he kills the evil guy then he will not be the same as when he left, and may not have discovered time travel. If he can't time travel, how could he change the past? If he couldn't change the past, then he will discover time travel after all...

Ow, my head...

(edit: this was written before the other, similar post above. I did not steal the idea)

 

[Lela]

Destiny vs. Free Choice.

Is the BBEG destined to commit the evil acts? Does he have no chance/choice to avoid the evil acts?

Even then, he's not evil yet. He will be evil later. Kill him and you kill an innocent man. Willingly kill an innocent man. I'd say that hits the Paladin's Code.


So, I'd say the Paladin has two choices. Conversion. Convert the BBEG and try to bolster his resolve. Build his faith and teach him how to deal with issues. No guarantee but is there ever a guarantee?

The other option is to wait for him to start commiting evil acts and then take him down hard. You'd have to be careful though. If you were doing the first option, he may be taking extra steps to hide his evilness from you.

 

[HeavyG]

No.

No matter how much you know they WILL do evil deeds, if they haven't done them yet, killing them is cold-blooded murder, plain and simple.

Maybe he could just travel further back and convince the paladin's mother to use birth control...

...hey...

...OMG ! The paladin is the baddies father !!!

 

[Ravellion]

When not taking into account paradox, he would stop the acts of evil in one way or another, I think.

 

[Zappo]

(edit: this was written before the other, similar post above. I did not steal the idea)

What, you time travel too?

 

[andargor]

Ah. The Single Universe vs Multiverse argument.

Theoretically, Single Universe time travel cannot exist (for the reason Zappo outlined, too much paradox).

In a Multiverse setting, the paladin would just ensure that he jumps to another history "track" if he offs a baddie in the "past". But the original "track" is still there.

So, it depends if you want to give him the illusion that he's done something good, when in reality he hasn't changed anything, except where he is.

Andargor