Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2165272" data-attributes="member: 27012">Fair enough.  Since you are more familiar with the classics of the genre than I am, do they often find themselves dealing with characters like the one in Firefly?  If so, how does the movie resolve the situation?I don't remember the bad guy shooting first before Ben started chopping arms, at least not in the original (I have no idea what unspeakable things the Lucasfilm elves have done to that scene since).  Unfortunately, my LD player and LDs are packed away but maybe I can take a look at the modified DVD.I'm not trying to claim Han Solo is a Paladin.  I'm trying to find out what you think a Paladin should do in situations like that.  Writers and directors carefully craft stories so that characters can get away with certain things and never face other things.  What happens when the hero waits for the bad guy to shoot first and the bad guy either kills the hero or, perhaps worse, some innocent?  What happens when the hero lets a bad guy live and the bad guy escapes justice or comes back to hurt innocent people?One possible answer is that Paladins don't work in a gritty setting and a GM should run a setting that can support Good heroes.  But I'm more interested in what happens when a white hatted Paladin get's placed into a gritty setting (ala Last Action Hero) and waiting for the bad guy to shoot first results in a dead hero or dead innocent and letting the bad guys go means that they come back and hurt other people later.  Is the sort of Paladin you envision viable in such a situation?  Are they expected to accept the unfortunate consequences of their reluctance to act pragmatically as part of the cost of their alignment or should they adjust the parameters of what it means to be Good to suit their alignment?(SOME MORE FIREFLY SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH.)I'm not trying to be annoying.  I'm trying to figure out how best to define Paladins in a morally complex environment without, in essence, leaving no good deed unpunished.  And the reason why I don't think that's the only way to handle Good lies in the word "innocent" in the SRD.  What makes action movie heroes the good guys that audiences cheer for, from James "License to Kill" Bond to Captain Mal of the Firefly is that they reserve their harse justice for the bad guys and do take risks to help the average innocent person.  Mal will put himself and his crew at risk rather than keep medicine from sick townfolk but then he'll turn around and drop-kick a bad guy into his ship's engine.  I'm trying to determine if it's possible for Good to maintain that distinction and still remain identifiably Good, distinct from Neutral.</blockquote>

Verification