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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2164742" data-attributes="member: 27012">Well, the real problem the group had in the original example of this thread was between GM and players, which was very much a real world issues.  So I do think that matters.But I'm also not convinced that in D&D 3.5, which demands only that a Neutral character have "compunctions against killing the innocent" (not a prohibition) and states that Neutral characters "lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others" that this act could not be considered Neutral. And I think that the requirement that Good characters "protect innocent life" and that Good simply have a "respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings" leaves quite a bit of wiggle room depending on how the players interpreted the captive soldiers.  In fact, I think that if the alignment system didn't allow distinctions between "innocent" and "guilty" and didn't allow Good characters to act as vigilantes that true Good characters would be nearly impossible to play in a traditional D&D adventuring environment.  That D&D explicitly contemplates Lawful Good warriors who dispense divine smackdowns on the bad guys, I find it difficult to imagine that the ideal for Good would be universal mercy and forgiveness.  I'm having a difficult time imagining how a Paladin could work.Yes, I understand the genre conventions of Westerns and such that you are talking about.  But those movies are often carefully crafted to avoid putting the protagonist into a bind with no escape.  For example, most bad guys die from a single gunshot rather than lying there wounded, never confronting the hero with how to deal with a half-dozen wonded bad guys in the middle of nowhere.  And the badguys often fight to the death.  Put a Paladin with your definition of Good in Han Solo's shoes across the table from Greedo and we are left with a captured and probably dead hero (Jabba wasn't interesting in having Han Solo over for tea) or the pre-revisionist Han Solo solution, which was essentially an execution.  (EDIT:  If Greedo holding a gun on Han Solo was an active threat that justified a violent response, then just how much of a threat does a bad guy have to pose before they can be killed?  I'm curious what the lines are.)</blockquote>

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