Why is it evil to kill the prisoners?

[med stud]

War is not about trying to murder your opponents, it's about fulfilling the political goals of your leader or defending yourself against the political goals of another nations leader. Soldiers in those wars are most often just pawns that cant really be blamed for the conflict. To kill all enemy soldiers not fighting would be like killing innocents, and humans have a hard time killing innocent humans, even during the most dire circumstances.

An example of this is the treatment of German prisoners taken by the Red Army during WW II. Only the SS- forces were killed outright. Regular Wehrmacht- soldiers were taken prisoner. The prisons they were taken to were more or less death camps, but they still werent killed on the spot. And this was during one of the worst and most brutal wars of history.

 

[Tom Cashel]

But even without the thought of alignments, I fail to see the moral issue.

And people wonder why Americans shoot each other with such regularity. I mean, why not blow somebody's brains out if you've gone to all that trouble to subdue them and tie them up?

 

[Hand of Evil]

And people wonder why Americans shoot each other with such regularity. I mean, why not blow somebody's brains out if you've gone to all that trouble to subdue them and tie them up?

Rome saved their foes for sport.
Blackfeet (America Indian tribe not halflings) would strip them naked and let them run for it as a right of passage, their young men would give chase.
Some tribes would cook them.

Just some reasons why people would not kill foes.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Funny thing this concept of a greater good and evil so many want to play by. This group of people seem to agree that good and evil is a higher truth that is not subjective. Now they just have to agree on what that is.

Perhaps the really funny thing is that WotC decided to hard-wire in good and evil as non-subjective truths. If you check up the PHB and DMG you will find that they are defined as basically non-subjective, objective realities.

IMO that tends to cause more problems than it solves in the long run! I'd be happy to see alignment ditched and forgotten for ever, replaced by the kind of thing that Runequest had in its cults. The d20 Modern "allegiance" system is a fair first step, but it falters in the one truly significant area - defining (or helping DMs to define) the inter-relationships between different allegiances.

Back in RQ, your cult affiliation gave you a good idea of who were your allies, your friends, neutral, your enemies or those you would kill outright at any opportunity... and this could vary for different members of the same party. It was a great system and could be used as a basis for producing similar things for the gods in a D&D Pantheon, the nations in D&D Kingdoms and such like.

The one area in D&D where absolute alignment is significant is those spells which have differing effects depending upon the target alignment. For all the divine ones I'd be tempted to make the distinction "worships my god/doesn't worship my god".

Sorry for the sidetrack Arcady...

 

[mythago]

Personally, I don't think a Good alignment forbids revenge, especially revenge for a contracted killer. The means you undertake in your revenge, of course, must not be evil, or you are risking your alignment-- but revenge itself is acceptable.

No. Revenge is not protecting oneself from future harm. It's not stopping a threat. It's doing a second wrong and calling that a right.

You're confusing self-defense with revenge here. Revenge is punishing someone for a perceived wrong.

Now, again, I don't know WHAT the assassin's contract said, and you don't either. But if it said "assassin will try until target dead," then killing him was not revenge. It was self-defense.

Likewise, I can see a Good character deciding that this assassin guy is just going to go out and kill more and more people if he is freed, so killing him would be a lesser evil.

If, OTOH, your motivation was not "I have to kill him or he'll kill me first," but "He DONE ME WRONG!", that's revenge.

 

[Elf Witch]

Personally, I don't think a Good alignment forbids revenge, especially revenge for a contracted killer. The means you undertake in your revenge, of course, must not be evil, or you are risking your alignment-- but revenge itself is acceptable.

In this case, we have a contracted assassin. Sure, he's given up the antidote-- but that means that, by his contract, he's required to try again. He is still a threat to the character's life, and by extension, the lives of the rest of the party.

And this is leaving aside the risk that an assassin poses to any number of decent, good people who may be his targets at some future date.

No, in this case, if the character wants his revenge, it is certainly a righteous revenge, and there are several non-revenge reasons for the character and his friends to "severely curtail the actions" of this assassin. The Bard and the Paladin should both have supported him, and I cannot blame the character from walking out of that party.

He could have turned the assassin over to the proper authorities he did not have to just kill him. Though the party was crazy to just let him go. He is an assassin he will just turn around and kill again. That is something a good alingned party would not do.

 

[Arnwyn]

Seriously...

I just don't see it.

If someone is bent on killing you, and you've just finished killing all but a few of their companions...

If you've managed to morally justify this...

Why is it then suddenly evil to kill them because you've stopped fighting long enough to question them?

Because you're now stooping to the level of the villains. Those who are good usually take the high road. You're also showing mercy, which is generally considered a good trait.

Where did this idea come from, cause it certainly doesn't measure up to any warfare ethics outside of the Geneva conventions on POWs. And that convention certainly has little place in fantasy, or even most other genres.

In your opinion.

If you break into someone's home with the intention to killing as many of them as you can in order to improve your martial skills and take their possessions, how do manage to consider that morally superior to killing the one's you've captured for information?

It isn't, and I don't know who does consider that to be morally superior.

Every day in our fantasy RPG campaigns the PCs play out Mai Lai on any Orc or Goblin villages they find, then insist on sparing anyone who lives past the point where the PCs decide to take a break and gather info on where they can find more people to kill and loot to steal...

Well, I'm not sure what kind of bloodthirsty PCs you have, but mine certainly don't do this. My PCs never instigate - they only retaliate, and *still* show mercy to those who surrender.

I'm having a real issue with sense of disbelief over seeing PCs that gun for going after and killing NPCs, then have a sudden turn of heart and find moral issues in killing those they capture...

It seems highly suspect to me. It smacks of a lack of a proper grasp of morality, or of warfare ethics -even modern ones.

I'd have an issue with that too, if my PCs "went after and killed NPCs", and then had a sudden change in heart. Thankfully, they don't do this.

It seems you have clearly defined what is expected (or not expected) of characters who have good alignments, and that's great. Each person has to do that for his/her game. However, if you are suggesting that it be that way for everyone's campaign, you're dreaming.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

No. Revenge is not protecting oneself from future harm. It's not stopping a threat. It's doing a second wrong and calling that a right.

You're confusing self-defense with revenge here. Revenge is punishing someone for a perceived wrong.

I'm well aware of what revenge is, thank you, and I am not confusing the two. I mentioned self-defense because that is another possible angle for approaching this situation, since there is a definite possibility of further attacks.

As I said originally, I do not believe that revenge is wrong, unless the drive for revenge leads the character into actual evil behavior-- killing or harming innocents, being careless about how else gets hurt, etc.

With the assassin tied up, however, killing him would be at least chaotic, unless the character had lawful authority to perform field executions. Unless he's a lawfully-empowered executioner, he should at least provide the assassin a weapon and tell him to defend himself.

The Paladin may be right in stopping the character from killing the assassin-- but he certainly shouldn't be trying to turn him loose.

EDIT: As for "doing a second wrong," you seem to be implying that killing an assassin, an obvious, self-proclaimed, and professional threat to society and innocent life is an evil act. I must disagree wholeheartedly.

 

[Kichwas]

An email by a fellow gamer brought me back to thinking on this:

from anonymous:
I usually don't get a chance to review the posts, but I think you bring up a very interesting debate. I've wondered the same thing, and the armed vs. non-armed opponent is the only somewhat satisfying answer I've heard. It's no longer equal ground - which is of course flawed b/c were you really on equal ground to begin with if a bunch of adventurers are barging into someone's home/land? Funny how people don't think about ethics until the bloody battle stops...

Yes, that's the core of the question right there.

Why do ethics only begin when the battle stops, when you have your Hollywood moment?

It doesn't seem to fit for me for societies that exist in a framework of total warfare rather than limited warfare.

Total Warfare examples: Urban gangs, Vikings, US-Indian Wars, Columbus in Caribbean, Settlement of New Zealand / New Guinea, Biblical Warfare, Pre-Roman and Post-Roman European Tribal warfare (thus pre medieval kingdoms), Bosnia, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in many cases, WWI and WWII.

Limited Warfare is more what you had in the age of the musket and the medieval era. When armies lined up on a battlefield and fought under specific rules of engagement while leaving civilians alone. After WWII. the US has tried to maintain a policy of limited warfare as well: Vietnam, Korea, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq...

In Total Warfare you seek to completely destroy or eliminate your opponant. In limited you seek to curb their current objectives while doing the least overhall harm to either side.

I see the fantasy struggle of good / evil, and of elf + human + etc vs. Orc + goblin + etc as total warfare. That's certainly how it seems to play out in all the literature, modules, and source material.

 

[Tom Cashel]

Now I’m officially pissed.™

I guess that's why it's against the rules to talk politics @ EN World.

Sure...secretly bombing Cambodia 24 hrs. a day while telling the public that we were "pulling out"...that's Limited Warfare, all right.

(deep breath)

You'd be better off comparing D&D "morals" to the chivalric ideal than to a (partially understood) history of warfare. PCs fighting monsters isn't warfare, it's fantastical fictional heroism.

Trying to find the real-world morals in D&D is like trying to find the honest men Nixon's White House. They're just NOT THERE.