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Yes, I'm sure Iomedae approves of killing the unarmed.
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You are ordered to report to the nearest correction chamber for re-education, citizen.
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This is actually against the rules, unless the Drow were 5 HD or more, or Clerics of some evil god, they shouldn't have shown up as Evil to Detect Evil.
So, if they legitimately showed up, they were either not helpless (5 HD is kinda hardcore) or probably deserved it (you don't get to be a Cleric of an Evil God by rescuing puppies)...
But this was probably just people not paying attention to the rules.
'Being evil' is not a crime.
The possibility of redemption is beside the point.
At my table the Paladin would be the newest Fighter on the block.
'Being evil' is not a crime.
The possibility of redemption is beside the point.
At my table the Paladin would be the newest Fighter on the block.
'Being evil' is, well... evil...
Not all a paladin's duties are glorious, but they are all duties. Expunge evil from the world wherever it is within your power to do so.
I would judge that quick and unceremonious executions are required if they offer no resistance. Battlelust should be reserved for foes of equal standing... So "enjoying it too much" may put him/her on shaky ground...
Eh, if I were a good character in such a game I'd be more concerned with fixing whatever was causing an entire race to be born irredeemably evil than murdering helpless symptoms.
Being evil should raise the BIG RED flag.
Fixing the race would entail steering them all away from Demon worship
for starters.
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Greetings,
As a long term game master of many campaigns (fantasy, space opera and science fiction) I would like to add some observations to this thread.
First and foremost:
Example:
If you walk on a drow preparing breakfast for his daughter and cast detect evil unless he is planning on poisoning his daughter he is not evil. Detect evil, as far as I am concerned, shows intent and because being evil/good is a state of mind that comes and goes (though may linger where some creatures are concerned) based on a circumstances and surroundings, detect evil itself therefore cannot be absolute.
Feel free to consider my additional opinions/suggestions on the matter below:
1. Book of Exalted Deeds is your friend, use it to resolve any moral arguments at your table.
2. There is no such thing as always beyond redemption/beyond corruption, there are always exceptions and there is always hope/chance. Many examples of mythology and literature on which Pathfinder was based demonstrate so (example: Lucifer, an angel that fell from grace).
3. Personally I am not really interested in black and white games, I leave that for groups who lack their own moral reasoning so they choose to see things in two dimensions. Sure it adds to clarity of the game but it also removes one of the most important elements of a good role playing game... a choice.
4. Making creature evil just because is how bad villains are written...
Feel free to ignore everything above this line as it should be considered as my own personal opinion and interpretation of rules and experiences.
Kind Regards
EH
I think I'm more with EH.
Personally I'd (as a player) just walked past them as a Pally. As long as they didn't take up arms and had done nothing wrong then I would have nobly walked right on by.
They can hang out and be as evil as they want, its when they take action about it is when they meet justice and/or cold hard steel. As long as they stay in their territories, stay off our lands, and steer well clear of our decent and upstanding citizens then they can sit there knitting evil jumpers all day. Should they forget their place, then go-go Pally squad will be in to drag them back for trial and justice.
Can't really call it obscene if you are helping prompt such action... unless of course you are a promoter of the obscene which is of course perfectly okay.
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This is actually against the rules, unless the Drow were 5 HD or more, or Clerics of some evil god, they shouldn't have shown up as Evil to Detect Evil.
So, if they legitimately showed up, they were either not helpless (5 HD is kinda hardcore) or probably deserved it (you don't get to be a Cleric of an Evil God by rescuing puppies)...
But this was probably just people not paying attention to the rules.
Ah, but he said "irredeemably evil, and can't change." This implies the [Evil] subtype. That means that detect evil would ping on them. Also, I think the pally's smite would deal double damage :)
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Good and Evil, Lawful and Chaotic; these are points on a compass that tries to simplify ALL morals and ethics.
Since morals and ethics can be different from family to family, nation to nation, religion to religion, school to school, and group to group; this can lead to conflict.
Let's simplify this further by removing Good and Evil from the picture: a Lawful PC going into a Lawful city, killing indiscriminately all the inhabitants, disobeying the magistrates, etc. Is he acting Lawfully? By whose laws? Whose laws should take precedence? Why? Does it matter if he's a Paladin, the inhabitants Drow, and the magistrates Female Drow priests of Lloth? Should it matter?
This is made tougher because most fantasy realms don't have clearly set laws, and most fantasy religions don't have clearly set commandments, etc.
I'm sure by now you can see the need for the simplicity. If it's Evil, killing it before it can spread that evil is an easy conclusion to that simplification.
If there is a desire on either the GM's or Player's part for more complexity or punishment; its time for fleshing some of this out.
This starts with GM. What is the benefit for what you are wanting to do? How complex should the system be? Are all creatures capable of redemption? If an evil creature is not redeemable; why should the Paladin spare it's life?
Then the GM and player should communicate with each other about expectations and goals for the characters and campaign. A hack and slash player may not be interested in any more complexity than this.
Finally, the player is going to need to define his characters morals or rules. I'd start with around five rules and it should be more of a negotiation between the player and gm; the character and his god. For examples do an internet search for 'Paladin Code'. Keep in mind religions vary, as their portfolios and domains prove.
If the character needs motivation, take away one of his highest level spells or spell levels. After completing it, reward him with it's return (and maybe a free application of a metamagic feat the first time that slot is used after getting it back). If the character continues dishonoring his god, have him lose another spell each time. If he finds some way to please his god, have him gain the lowest spell lost back. When he runs out of spells or spell levels, have him lose his Paladin-hood. I think this makes the entire system more like a form of communication between the character and his god.
I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks.
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Would you so readily allow the cancer cells to stay in your body, if they weren't doing anything bad at the time that you looked at them?
"Well, Mr. Pally-din," said the Doctor "it appears that the cancer cells which had been destroying your liver are now acting benign. As such, since they pose no threat currently, I have left them inside you. Should they at some point in the future begin killing you again, be assured that I will most assiduously destroy them and remove their threat."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Would you so readily allow the cancer cells to stay in your body, if they weren't doing anything bad at the time that you looked at them?
How are they in your body? If anything they dwell in the Drows...
Irredeemably Evil Drow; Just make sure you're basing your assumptions on ethnicity and not just skin color... ;p
If drow are essentially the equivalent of evil outsiders in your campaign, I think it's chill. If you see a random demon minding his own business or whatever, it's not problematic to kill it. This whole thing does assume that when you say "drow are irredeemibly evil" you mean "drow are incapable of changing from a pattern of behavior that is actually worthy of being labelled evil", not "even if a drow generally going around minding his own business and not hurting anything, he's still evil by DM fiat just to give the players fake-o moral dilemmas."
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Would you so readily allow the cancer cells to stay in your body, if they weren't doing anything bad at the time that you looked at them?
I...you do know cancer cells are basically distinguished from regular cells purely by their behavior, right? I mean if they stop behaving as cancer cells that's called 'spontaneous remission' or possibly a benign tumor or some such and the Doctors actually don't do anything (as a rule, anyway).
If you killed every potentially cancerous cell, well, that's all the cells you've got and it kills you, too.
So your example/analogy fails on just about every level.
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And if they're actually all Evil ala Evil Outsiders, then yes, they'd ping on Detect Evil and killing them is okay.
I think irredeemably evil means that if it can move, it will cause problems. It would be pretty irresponsible to not take care such a blatant problem.
"Oh hey, I've noticed that there are some highly flammable explosives near your campfire; but it's okay they aren't actually in the fire, and they haven't exploded yet so there isn't any need to take care of it."
I mean, the only thing you could do with them at that point is turn them into your closely guarded and controlled slaves for the rest of eternity... If could be redeemed, then they wouldn't be irredeemably evil...
This isn't really a Paladin alignment thread, at least in that I don't have a problem with this. Drow in my game world are born irredeemably evil, and can't change.
If this is how things are, then what precisely is the problem with killing them? You HAVE to, or they're going to kill someone else.
The Paladin actually received a divine mandate from an Archon when he got his Paladin powers restored to clear all the evil races from the valley the game takes place in and bring all the other demi-humans under the rule of Aquinella.
This is why the Military has task verbs; to clear simply means to ensure that the area is just that - Clear. The Paladin could also use peacefull means to attain that outcome. That he went straight for his sword against unarmed non-threatening Drow... says a lot.
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Would you so readily allow the cancer cells to stay in your body, if they weren't doing anything bad at the time that you looked at them?I...you do know cancer cells are basically distinguished from regular cells purely by their behavior, right? I mean if they stop behaving as cancer cells that's called 'spontaneous remission' or possibly a benign tumor or some such and the Doctors actually don't do anything (as a rule, anyway).
If you killed every potentially cancerous cell, well, that's all the cells you've got and it kills you, too.
So your example/analogy fails on just about every level.
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And if they're actually all Evil ala Evil Outsiders, then yes, they'd ping on Detect Evil and killing them is okay.
My bad. Doctors have never removed benign tumors ever. Thanks for rules lawyering my choice of wording. I should have said "growth" or "tumor" instead. Clarification noted.
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My bad. Doctors have never removed benign tumors ever. Thanks for rules lawyering my choice of wording. I should have said "growth" or "tumor" instead. Clarification noted.
Not intentionally, they haven't. They remove a tumor because they think it might be malignant, if they know it's not they leave it be, since unnecessary surgery is a bad thing.
And it wasn't the wording, it was the fact that cancer really is just normal cells behaving in an 'Evil' manner, and is thus an awful analogy for what you were aiming for.
To OP:
I cannot (and will not) argue any constructs you have inserted into your game to give justification(s) to its design and give player(s) excuses to do certain things. As a game master you have a right to do so, your group may or may not enjoy them but it does not make them any less/more valid than they are, it is your world and your design.
In said world you decide what is right and wrong, evil and good, lawful and chaotic. If you fail to apply those distinctions with some critical rules in mind (such as fair and consistent application, consideration of game limitations and so forth) they will not be any less valid but they will be flawed when exposed to a larger group of people.
If your players are enjoying the moral construct you are presenting them with then there should be no issue, if they are not then sooner or later you will encounter a problem.
However in the end and on this forum we are not your players and we are bound to disagree with you and among ourselves about the style of game we champion, approach towards moral and ethical dilemmas we prefer and so forth.
This usually leads to derailed threads and silly arguments (and I am pretty sure this is where we are heading right now).
So if you came here to hear me agree with you, validate for you your moral construct or do something else along those lines, I will have to insist that we agree to disagree. And if you came here seeking advice, then there is plenty of it in prior replies...
Kind Regards
EH
if you are evil you should be punished by good
if you are an evil cleric, anti-paladin you have made your foul choice and deserve justice, hence you are detected at low levels
if you have reached 5HD and are evil, you have had plenty of time to make your decision, and you have chosen the path of badness
The tricky bit that a N cleric of an E god radiates an aura of evil...this is when it gets real tricky
This happened on sunday in a PFS game...party had a paladin and a LN cleric of asmodeus
The Paladin actually received a divine mandate from an Archon when he got his Paladin powers restored ... bring all the other demi-humans under the rule of Aquinella.
count me in as part of the rebellion against this tyranically inflicted government. this is why i gun down paladins the moment i meet them. it just saves time in the long run.
i mean, i don't care who your orders come from. forcing your religeon/government/lifestyle/(insert other here) on anyone is among the top five on my list of things to do when being evil. doing it violently (ie purge the heretic style) is the kind of thing that gives lawful a bad name.if i were in this campaign, and this was the paladin's goals, then you can bet i'd consider him the bad guy and act accordingly. you need to act good to be good, not the other way around.
Wow, we aren't even to the second page and there's already so much "badwrongfun" slinging. So many people missed that this started as a "I had a hilarious RP from my players" not a moral debate.
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This isn't really a Paladin alignment thread, at least in that I don't have a problem with this. Drow in my game world are born irredeemably evil, and can't change.
I've always disliked irredeemably evil on a race/species level.
"you know, there is a difference between scared and sorry."
Nice line, can you remember what episode that is from?
"Purge the Drow!" he said. And so the party went to town on 5 evil / unarmed Drow men, beating them to death mostly with hammers as they screamed in their high girly voices.
Sounds legit, Paladins are still Human(or Dwarf or whatever) and they have emotions that still get the better of them. He just lost a friend and let his lust for revenge get the better of him. Maybe ask the player how the character feels about the experience, and if he says there's regret give him a few nightmares(not as the spell) about the whole thing.
The Paladin actually received a divine mandate from an Archon when he got his Paladin powers restored ... bring all the other demi-humans under the rule of Aquinella.count me in as part of the rebellion against this tyranically inflicted government. this is why i gun down paladins the moment i meet them. it just saves time in the long run.
i mean, i don't care who your orders come from. forcing your religeon/government/lifestyle/(insert other here) on anyone is among the top five on my list of things to do when being evil. doing it violently (ie purge the heretic style) is the kind of thing that gives lawful a bad name.
if i were in this campaign, and this was the paladin's goals, then you can bet i'd consider him the bad guy and act accordingly. you need to act good to be good, not the other way around.
You may have misunderstood the role Drow play in the OP's home game setting. Think of them as Demons or whatever.
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5 Drow males, mostly nude but for spidersilk togas, shaved skinny bodies, no weapons, and fear in their eyes.
And so the party went to town on 5 evil / unarmed Drow men, beating them to death mostly with hammers as they screamed in their high girly voices.
Were they killed for being drow, for being evil, or for being effeminate submissive girly-men?
Anywho, alignment is not a straightjacket.
An *evil* person can make a conscious choice not to murder people whenever the opportunity presents itself (even Jack the Ripper managed to resist the temptation to kill *everyone* he disapproved of).
It's setting the bar pretty friggin' low to assume that *good* people might also be able to choose to not murder people, from time to time, even if they don't approve of their life choices.
You may have misunderstood the role Drow play in the OP's home game setting. Think of them as Demons or whatever.
The Paladin actually received a divine mandate from an Archon when he got his Paladin powers restored ... bring all the other demi-humans under the rule of Aquinella.count me in as part of the rebellion against this tyranically inflicted government. this is why i gun down paladins the moment i meet them. it just saves time in the long run.
i mean, i don't care who your orders come from. forcing your religeon/government/lifestyle/(insert other here) on anyone is among the top five on my list of things to do when being evil. doing it violently (ie purge the heretic style) is the kind of thing that gives lawful a bad name.
if i were in this campaign, and this was the paladin's goals, then you can bet i'd consider him the bad guy and act accordingly. you need to act good to be good, not the other way around.
who cares about the drow? i'm worried about everything else that lives in the valley. by the wording of that order it implies that there are other tribes or societies that aren't 'always chaotic evil' in the place, and they will either convert, die, or be exiled. that's what i'm complaining about.
This isn't really a Paladin alignment thread, at least in that I don't have a problem with this. Drow in my game world are born irredeemably evil, and can't change.I've always disliked irredeemably evil on a race/species level.
You aren't the only one.
However, the OP said that the Drow in his world are COMPLETELY irredeemable, so they basically have the Evil sub-type, which in turn means that killing them would be like killing Demons, Devils, or whatever evil outsiders that you might happen to come across. The heroes would be doing the world a favor by getting rid of them.
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Wait, aren't Drow in PF always all evil. Are ther Drow Babies? I was under the impression that Drow, in PF, where elves that literally the universe or something felt had fallen into such corruption that they basically transformed into Drow, in a simplistic, short answer. Or am I confussing something else with PF Drow here?
Technically very little in PF is always anything. The bestiary's alignment section says that the only things that hew fairly strictly to their listed alignments are planar monsters and unintelligent animals, and even with those there can be exceptions. While the general drow fluff text suggests that as individuals and as a society they tend heavily towards evil - and they're listed with CE as their default alignment - there's nothing in the bestiary text that suggests that they're more bound to that alignment than any other arbitrary humanoid. Their nature and culture both bend towards evil, but they're not subject to any overriding compulsion towards it. It's possible that some other random book fleshes them out and binds them more tightly to evil, but it's not in the description. Drow are probably more likely to be evil than (This is all default fluff, of course; if someone wants to use drow a little differently, that's obviously their call.)
Assuming that some combination of evil intent, planar bond to evil or negative energy, or evil deeds are required to be evil, then a drow infant is probably not, by default fluff, evil.
Actually one of the adventure paths is prefaced with a "Drow should be Always Evil".
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Wait, aren't Drow in PF always all evil. Are ther Drow Babies? I was under the impression that Drow, in PF, where elves that literally the universe or something felt had fallen into such corruption that they basically transformed into Drow, in a simplistic, short answer. Or am I confussing something else with PF Drow here?
Officially?
Elves can indeed become Drow in this manner in Golarion, but Drow can also breed and produce little Drow. This second kind are not necessarily irredeemable...though having been raised by the first kind tends to make them so for practical purposes.
The first kind basically cannot be redeemed.
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You aren't the only one.However, the OP said that the Drow in his world are COMPLETELY irredeemable, so they basically have the Evil sub-type, which in turn means that killing them would be like killing Demons, Devils, or whatever evil outsiders that you might happen to come across. The heroes would be doing the world a favor by getting rid of them.
Actually I don't even use it with outsiders. I try to avoid absolutes in my games. There are always exceptions. Sure a good, or even neutral, Balor is reeeeaaaaly unlikely. But impossible in the entirety of creation, that just breaks my suspense of disbelief.
Edit: Spelling errors.
Whats the problem? if they are evil and irredeemably evil then there is no problem with a paladin killing them. now hammering them to death is one thing that I see a problem with. I think the method of the killing is important and can be evil.
he should of run them through quickly and painlessly. again this all hinges on them being "irredeemably evil" .
Apart of the paladin code that people forget is :"and punish those who harm or threaten innocents." by just being irredeemably evil these naked slaves were a threat to good". You have no way of knowing if one of those slaves woudl take his masters place and then lead the army of the drows to the surface. What you do know is he wont flee the surface meet a kindly ranger learn to dual wield scimitars and be formulaic.
Now if these creatures were not evil by there very genetics this would be wrong and the paladin would lose his pally hood. what if the situation were he was on the demon plane and they killed a demon cleric with demon naked slaves?
See those taillights in the distance? That was the analogy bus, you missed it.
Oh I got it, but your analogy was not only wrong, it was also wrong. I was trying to be nice and sort of work with you, but clearly I can just leave you to being wrong on a couple of counts.