would this be evil?

[Gizzard]

Rolling a 20 should always be the best possible result...

I dont get this line of arguement. A 20 is just a crit when you are dealing damage. A crit knows no morality. What a mess it would be if the crit had to decide what was "best" for the player characters before it took effect. PC: "Ha, a 20! I crit the Evil Wizard and deal 27 points!" DM: "No! In a sudden surprise to you, your critical actually deals healing to the Wizard. It is revealed at this point that the Wizard is not Evil at all and you had been mislead by his Vizier! BTW, the Vizier screams in pain back in the city and takes 27 points!" PC: "Huh?"

Anyway, I have a lot of sympathy for the DMs ruling in this case. I think if the players had felt that the DM screwed them at the time, they would have pressed their case then and there. PC: "I was counting on the fact that subdual damage couldnt kill? Rules check?" or PC: "I thought a 20 could only bring me good things?" But, frankly, the result is pretty reasonable; I would certainly accept it.

As player or DM, I would want the rules to cover the possibility that an Evil PC might accidentally beat his prisoner to death while trying to shut her up. The DMs job is to referee things like this, and part of this is being able to make up sensible rules and results on the spot. If its later found that the DMs on-the-spot decision conflicts with the 3E rules, well; things like this happen. In this particular case, I would expect the DM to be able to go back to a reasonable playgroup and say, "Hey, I was looking at the subdual rules and they say you cant kill someone while trying to subdue them. I think thats lame. I'm Rule Zeroing it to work the way it did last week. Any comments?"

 

[Moleculo]

i know it sounds stupid but....

"When your subdual damage exceeds your current hit points, you fall to the floor unconcscious... Each full minute you are unconscious, you have a 10% chance to wake up and be staggered untill your hitpoints exceed your subdual damage again. Nothing bad happens to you if you miss the roll." - PHB 135

There isn't anyway that if he was doing subdual damage, provided he was taking a -4 to attack so he could deal subdual damage, the blow would kill the girl.

jake

 

[Janos Audron]

Tsyr: I'm playing Call of Cthulhu each sunday, and that experience shifted my definition of Evil somewhat...

Like today, we were sleeping, and a FBI agent and a local policeman burst through the door to arrest us. When they lead us down the stairs of the hotel in which we were staying, our friends try to grapple the FBI agent while pointing a desert eagle at the policeman...

Normally, I would call this evil. You just don't attack innocent people who do their job. Especially not if you actually are guilty (in a certain way). IMO that goes beyond mere Chaotic behavior and is Evil. However, we *were* doing good things. We've saved a lot of lives, and by binding some powerful evil beings we've saved a lot of people. Those officers, who are doing the right thing, could've locked us away for years, both in jail and in mental institutions, preventing us from helping / saving innocent people...

And then the question remains: was it good what we did? Was it evil? And suddenly, I wasn't so sure anymore...

So, Tsyr, if you think that "the end justifies the means" is not a valid explanation, then we have no common ground for a discussion, and neither of us is going to convince the other...

By Tsyr
No, this was not something he caused. He did not make the party kidnap the child. He did not make the party attack the child with a sword. If the players had desplayed a moment of concern or even thought, neither of those situations would have happened, and thus the child wouldn't be dead. The DM is punishing the players for something the players did, not something the DM did. Furthermore, if this heinous act does not earn them the wrath of paladins and good-aligned clerics, a mere alignment shift will not.

Now, you seem to have missed my point. First, as I have tried to explain above the kidnapping is not evil. If you think it is, in that case, change their alignments...

However, if you want to change their alignment for killing the girl, in that case you are screwing the players. The players were under the (correct!) assumption that subdual damage could not kill. When the DM suddenly decides that they do kill the girl and THEN wants to punish them for killing her, he 's doing something wrong. That was what I was saying...

 

[The Forsaken One]

As the each Sundays CoC game GM, I just watch and smile at Janos his post.

He finally learned

 

[La Bete]

eeeeeevil....

As always, topics like this get around to the "the ends do not justify the means" vs "the ends don't justify the means, but what if...." argument. which is, unfortunately is a bit of a circular argument...

In any case, here's my 2 cp:

Disregarding whether the rogues actions in going out stealing was stupid (it was - as a veteran rogue player, these guys are barely a notch above bindlestiffs, IMO), and disregarding whether the mayors daughter was a child (other than a heightened gut-response, it doesn't make a difference), and disregarding the possibility that there was a Greater Good, or QOVI, the partys actions were evil, but the characters might not be.

Why?

As noted by various posters, kidnapping is evil, as it places an innocent person in danger. It is less evil than, say, ordering the roast baby in a white wine sauce, but it is still a (small 'e') evil act.

Smacking the hostage (with a sword or not) to stop her shouting is also a small 'e' evil act - there were a lot of other options there.

So, the acts were evil (on a side note evil isn't the best word for these - perhaps non-good might be better) and despite any justifications, I don't think that there really any wiggle room on this.

However I don't believe that this necessarily makes the characters evil. Running through the possibilities:

Paladins, and other Lawful Good devout characters: I would hope would never have entertained this plan, however if they went through with it, would lose their paladinhood and/or the favour of their gods -whether or not the hostage was killed.

Other good characters would certainly drift towards neutral, and its DM's choice as to whether they change immediately - personally, I'm not a big fan of the 'one-action' alignment change.

Neutral characters would have a chalk mark on the "Evil" side of the register - but definitely shouldn't change to evil - yet.

Evil Characters. All in a days work, hey?

(As for law vs chaos - pretty much ditto)

Of course, as far as the town they are in is concerned, they are definitely Capital 'E' Evil, and I imagine there will be a lot of enthusiasm for some hangin' going around. Their reaction may make my next point moot...

Where to from here? With all due respect to SHARK, and others, I don't believe that this has to be the end.

Personally, the complete ####-up the party has made of the situation, make for some very interesting possibilities - firstly, if they escape this town, they will be fugitives from the law, at least in the general area.
They may be forced into the wilderness, amongst other outcasts for some time, and will (or should) be haunted by the fact that their stupidity and evil acts caused the death of an innocent person. The campaign could even possibly build up towards the possibility of redemption......

On a last note, the ruling of subdual crit = killing the hostage is.... interesting. It is within the GM's right to rule this, because of the situation, but I think it is a bit capricious - 20's are normally supposed to lead to desirable results, not the reverse of what the character intended.

Doesn't make a difference to the 'e' question - they were still putting her in harms way, and whether or not they intended to kill her, they were responsible for her safety...

(long, sorry.)

 

[Vocenoctum]

Tsyr: I'm playing Call of Cthulhu each sunday, and that experience shifted my definition of Evil somewhat...

Like today, we were sleeping, and a FBI agent and a local policeman burst through the door to arrest us. When they lead us down the stairs of the hotel in which we were staying, our friends try to grapple the FBI agent while pointing a desert eagle at the policeman...

Normally, I would call this evil. You just don't attack innocent people who do their job. Especially not if you actually are guilty (in a certain way). IMO that goes beyond mere Chaotic behavior and is Evil. However, we *were* doing good things. We've saved a lot of lives, and by binding some powerful evil beings we've saved a lot of people. Those officers, who are doing the right thing, could've locked us away for years, both in jail and in mental institutions, preventing us from helping / saving innocent people...

And then the question remains: was it good what we did? Was it evil? And suddenly, I wasn't so sure anymore...

So, Tsyr, if you think that "the end justifies the means" is not a valid explanation, then we have no common ground for a discussion, and neither of us is going to convince the other...

I'd have classified fleeing the law as Chaotic myself. But you also must understand the difference between self-preservation and what the D&D example did. If they were caught trying to break out their friend and took a hostage, it'd be morally unclear. They planned out a kidnapping, and then tried to beat the hostage into silence. Neglecting her death in th ematter, would it have been better if they'd simply beat her unconscious?

If their plan had worked, and the thief was sprung, and the girl was returned to her family, merely kidnapped and beaten, I would still regard it as an evil act of victimization.

Now, you seem to have missed my point. First, as I have tried to explain above the kidnapping is not evil. If you think it is, in that case, change their alignments...

However, if you want to change their alignment for killing the girl, in that case you are screwing the players. The players were under the (correct!) assumption that subdual damage could not kill. When the DM suddenly decides that they do kill the girl and THEN wants to punish them for killing her, he 's doing something wrong. That was what I was saying...

I don't ascribe to the idea that a 20 is a "good result". It's simply critical damage. Roll damage as normal and multiply the result as normal.
Now, if you have a 4 hp commoner, and they do in excess of 30 subdual (or some other absurd amount) I can possibly see you saying she died. It sounds like the DM simply ruled that it killed her. Perhaps the ruling was that it did normal damage as well as being multiplied, but even at 3-4 HP, she still should have had another 10 in the red.

I don't understand why it wasn't a punch instead. (Maybe they feared an AoO? but as a DM, I'd not have bothered with a roll to attack, just called for damage. There wouldn't have been a 20 rolled.

 

[tburdett]

I never realized that there were so many morally bankrupt people frequenting these boards.

Anyone who could justify kidnapping or murder really needs to take a close look at themselves. Either of these acts is pure evil.

 

[Heathen72]

Morality ain't got nothing to do with it

I dont get this line of argument. A 20 is just a crit when you are dealing damage. A crit knows no morality...

It's not about morality, it's about the intended action. "Best" in this context means not "most good"(or even "least evil") but rather "utter success" in the attempted action.
To put it another way: A roll of natural twenty should represent the best possible result for what is being attempted and a fumble vice versa. It usually represents a critical hit only because in combat PC's are trying to do as much damage as possible to their opponent. For instance , in your post about the evil wizard and the vizier (which was very funny, btw) the heroes motive is unimportant. Their stated action was to attempt to hurt the vizier(presumably with the view to killing him) and when they rolled a crit they got the best possible result in the circumstances: namely 27 points of damage.
If I was climbing a tree and rolled a 20 on my climb roll, I would
hope that my G.M. would say "You zip up the tree like a monkey and find yourself at the top in in a second," not "Sorry dude, you just did 27 points of damage to the tree...."

Oh, and the party's actions were evil. Evil, evil, evil. It scares me to think that people believe terrorising a young girl and then killing her could be otherwise.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Re: Morality ain't got nothing to do with it

It's not about morality, it's about the intended action. "Best" in this context means not "most good"(or even "least evil") but rather "utter success" in the attempted action.
To put it another way: A roll of natural twenty should represent the best possible result for what is being attempted and a fumble vice versa. It usually represents a critical hit only because in combat PC's are trying to do as much damage as possible to their opponent.

The problem is that the rules don't support this. Only in the attack roll is a 20 special, and that's simply in doing extra damage by weapon type.
In any other roll, a 20 is simply one better than a 19, that's it.

(See my post above for my opinion of the DMs call, but the whole "20 is Above and Beyond" subject is a tangent

 

[Gizzard]

In any other roll, a 20 is simply one better than a 19, that's it.

Way off on a tangent: I always wondered about it in relation to the Jump Skill. Every point above 10 is another 12 inches of distance in your jump. So if I want to jump across a raging cavern stream, but only have 5' of beach on the far side...humph, what happens then? So, I want to roll high enough to cross the stream, but not so high I slam into the far cavern wall as part of my jump. In a case like this, a 20 probably is a bad roll, while a 15 might be just perfect.

But, you can see how the DM might have to aggressively make spontaneous rulings in order to have this work out in a sensible way. Otherwise, Monks with 60' moves and +10 Jump will be slamming into the far wall like Wile E. Coyote. Ultimately, its the DMs job to keep things sane and moving along. If that means breaking out some spontaneous Rule Zeros, well, thats the way things go.