would this be evil?

[Balgus]

Ironic Judgement

Hey all- I bet you all are wonderig how it turned out. We had a game this weekend- and here it is:

The person that actually did the hit hanged. Even tho it was an accident, it was enough of an outrageous act that the town would not stand for it. The rest of the group was paraded out of the town and was stoned by the townspeople. the wiz and sorc were hit with a couple stones that killed them. We all chose to rollout new chars- cause the Dm asked us to. he said these would be good characters for him to play around with. The ranger was casted out and warning was sent to all neighboring lands about us- he was the only one to keep his char.

Here's the funniest part. Since the law could not prove that the thief was in cahootz with the group, she was slapped with a small fine (25GP) and a night in prison, and was released with a warning never to come back.

 

[Balgus]

reaction to thread

HMMMM...

never thought I would get such a response from just asking for opinions. I thought it would be pretty cut and dry- guess not.

I told My DM about the crit- and he said apologized to the group: he brought Pizza. He also gave us a "get out of jail free" card for any one decision we do not agree with him on. We just huddle, and tell him what we think, and he would turn back the hands of time and redo the event as we asked. But it has to be fair- not "i died, and so can you undie me..."

I thought he was pretty fair. And the game moves on... with a fairly diff story. And plus, we have some villains to look forward to... and who knows them best but us- their creators? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[La Bete]

Well, the gm made the calls, and I think that this has all reached it's natural conclusion.... just one more thing:

Absolutists, a.k.a. Champions of Orderly Good:

Tsyr, SHARK, tburdett, Wormwood, La Bete, Mort

Lawful?

Moi?


Waaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!


(throws toys out of pram)

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, my vote (hey, it's election day, everyone gets to do it):

1> The theft was Chaotic, not Evil. It violated the law of the land. Attempting to get the thief released would be somewhat chaotic as well, although not enough to ruin alignments.

2> The kidnapping was evil. Kidnapping is always a violation of the victim, and trying to sugar-coat it is just sad. If the victim is an innocent, it is just plain evil evil. If the victim is not an innocent, it's a "prisoner of war" and must be treated humanely until it is either returned to its home or tried under your laws. Still evil, but justifiable, societally-accepted, LAWFUL evil.
From the first post, it seems the daughter was an innocent; she was being abducted because of who her father was, not because of anything she had done.

Frankly, if I was the DM I would have stopped the adventure there, screamed "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING????" at the players, rewound the clock by half an hour, and tried again. It's called a "Mulligan", and everyone needs them.

3> Killing the child was evil. If it had been intentional, I would have found a new group of players on the spot, because at that point it's the PLAYERS that are evil. But, even unintended, and even if they thought the rules didn't allow for it, their actions were evil. They chose to do something that no "good" code of conduct would ever allow, and they did it solely because they thought they could get away with it under the rules of the game.

Story time:
About ten years ago, I was playing in a Shadowrun campaign that the DM had crossed with other games to end up with an Amber-type setting. One night, we're all in a bar, and one of the players (let's call him Doug) decides to take a walk.
He walks into a dark alley, rounds a corner and sees two men. A man in dark clothing, holding a very ornate and obviously magical dagger, is standing over the unconscious body of a man dressed in white. The man in black turns to him and tells Doug he'll give him anything he wants if he takes the dagger and kills the man on the ground.

Doug says "Hmm, gimme a motorcycle." The man in black says "Sure." Doug stabs the man in white, killing him.

At this point, the rest of us are sitting around either in dumbfounded silence, or screaming "YOU CLUELESS %*&$" at him. Doug, on the other hand, is trying to explain how his (Lawful Good-type) player shouldn't be penalized since he didn't know who the guy on the ground was.

It went downhill from there. If I recall correctly, I punched him to death, he got resurrected, and then was turned into a coffee table by a friend of the ex-man in white. But, he DID get a nice motorcycle out of it.

 

[tburdett]

Wow. I managed to say something that both sides of the argument took offense at... Interesting...

TBurdett: The events you describe would class the politician (note: not nobleman or mayor or any other title, just politician) as a definite evil person, the type of guy that adventurers go after. They kidnapped and killed one person, enough to get them locked up for a good long time, or even hung, but not enough to engender the sequence of events you describe. That goes beyond the realm of just punishment and into the realm of petty revenge and hate. Of course, it would allow for an interesting plot to develope...

Exactly!

I would imaging that the person in power might indeed feel hateful and vengeful about the killing of his child. I could even see him developing into a long-term evil NPC because of these events. An evil NPC that the PC's might have to do somthing about eventually.

Hopefully they would do something that didn't involve kidnapping and murder!

 

[Hellzon]

I'll just stick my head in. Don't bite it off, please.

3> Killing the child was evil. If it had been intentional, I would have found a new group of players on the spot, because at that point it's the PLAYERS that are evil. But, even unintended, and even if they thought the rules didn't allow for it, their actions were evil. They chose to do something that no "good" code of conduct would ever allow, and they did it solely because they thought they could get away with it under the rules of the game.

Not just the rules of the game, but the laws of physics in the campaign world. Remember, the players had NO IDEA that smacking someone on the head with a sword with the intent to subdue could kill that person. (That's what the -4 penalty is for, BTW, aiming for nonvital body parts - such as the groin - and using the weapon in the wrong way.) But, the GM appaerently apologized, so I'll not delve into this.

As to whether it's evil or not, if it's not murder, then it's torture (smacking someone with a metal object counts as torture in my book), which i put right below murder - together with rape - on Tsyr's list of Heinous Things To Do. Still evil.

And yes, the kidnapping was eeeeevil too.

Think I made my point now. Good night.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Re: I'll just stick my head in. Don't bite it off, please.

Not just the rules of the game, but the laws of physics in the campaign world. Remember, the players had NO IDEA that smacking someone on the head with a sword with the intent to subdue could kill that person.

To me, that shouldn't matter. The player with the sword was effectively breaking the 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not metagame".

Hitting the girl with a large, heavy object, something that in the real world has a chance of killing even when attempting to use it nonlethally, is WRONG. The player thought he could get away with it, though. He did something his morality shouldn't have let him do simply because he didn't think there was a downside. That's a failure at the roleplaying level, for one thing.

Let's also remember that the way you knock someone out is by hitting them so hard in the head that their brain bounces against their skull. It SHOULD have a possibility of error.

As to whether the crit should have done lethal damage, I personally say that since you take a -4 to attack subdually, if you fail the attack by 4 or less you do lethal damage (i.e., you rolled well enough to do a normal hit, so you do that normal hit instead of the subdual one). Sorta like how when firing into melee, if you missed by 4 or less you hit the other person. This definitely gives you an incentive NOT to try this, and gives a large advantage to using subdual weapons like saps instead of improvising.

 

[jgbrowning]

Pedantic note: Robin Hood was, originally, more than a guy who effected a wealth transfer from rich to poor. He was once Sir Robin of Lockesley, IIRC, and was dispossessed by the evil King John. His unlawful antics were supposed to be protecting the commonfolk from the lawful but evil behavior of the powerful.

Well, to be even more pedantic Robin Hood is a myth, a legend. Look into the actual schorship around him, instead of the fiction. If i remember properly the name "locksly or loxly" wasn't even mentioned in any records until the 15th century.. some 200 or so years after the supposed robin hood.

no one knows if he even was real, they do know that people tell stories about him.

Not to hijack this topic, but sometimes things are said that just have to be corrected.


joe b.

 

[Hellzon]

Clarifications

To me, that shouldn't matter. The player with the sword was effectively breaking the 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not metagame".

...

Let's also remember that the way you knock someone out is by hitting them so hard in the head that their brain bounces against their skull. It SHOULD have a possibility of error.

But it doesn't. Not by the rules. What I was trying to say, and perhaps didn't, was that if we continue my resoning, the rules of the game are the laws of physics in the DnD world. It's a cinematic world with cinematic laws of physics (think Arnie's: The last action hero) and if these rules/laws are constant, the CHARACHTERS would never even have HEARD of someone _accidentially_ killing someone, just like Jack Slater in abovementioned movie (good one, go see it) winds up in our world and thinks he can still smash windows with his bare hand without getting cut. So if the charachters have never heard of someone accidentially being bludgeoned to death (since people can't be, according to the rules) it's not metagaming to try to knock someone out with the back of a sword, and when that resulted in death, good roleplaying would make the charachters believe in The DM/Chtulhu/Inconsistency in the laws of physics/The Matrix. (OK, I'll stop referring to films now. )

As to whether the crit should have done lethal damage, I personally say that since you take a -4 to attack subdually, if you fail the attack by 4 or less you do lethal damage (i.e., you rolled well enough to do a normal hit, so you do that normal hit instead of the subdual one). Sorta like how when firing into melee, if you missed by 4 or less you hit the other person. This definitely gives you an incentive NOT to try this, and gives a large advantage to using subdual weapons like saps instead of improvising.

Didn't know about the 'firing into melee'-rule. (And I'm a rules lawyer, can you tell? ) However, I doubt the charachter who hit missed by 4 or less, I bet he rolled more like 'twice as much as he needed to hit'. Besides, as our DM put it, the -4 penalty is to avoid mishaps, such as hitting your ally with a bow or killing your target when you meant to subdue.

Let me just repeat what I said in my post above, so I don't get eaten: Of course the act was evil!

That would be it. Good night, gentlemen.

 

[Bastoche]

forget it...