Paladins have to be held to a higher standard he should take the guy as a kind of servant and explain that he will give him a chance to redeem himself under the Paladins guidance
Failing to meet the standards the paladin sets by example will result in his execution .
This way the wrong doer has a chance to redeem himself
Kill a helpless person? Fall for not acting with honor.
Letting the rapist-murder bandit live? Fall for not punishing those who threaten and harm innocents.
Technically the paladin should fall regardless of what he does. Or the GM interprets "punish" or "act with honor" in different ways. By playing a paladin you hand the GM a RAW method to turn off your class features at will. If you don't like that, don't play a paladin or only play one with a houseruled code of conduct.
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Kill a helpless person? Fall for not acting with honor.
Letting the rapist-murder bandit live? Fall for not punishing those who threaten and harm innocents.
But punish does not have to mean kill. Punishment is ambiguous, likely intentionally so. There is nothing to indicate that the punishment must be the taking of life. Or in any way a corporal punishment. ;)
So I think you're right on the money on the whole "interpretation of punish" point.
-Nearyn
Kill a helpless person? Fall for not acting with honor.
Letting the rapist-murder bandit live? Fall for not punishing those who threaten and harm innocents.
But punish does not have to mean kill. Punishment is ambiguous, likely intentionally so. There is nothing to indicate that the punishment must be the taking of life. Or in any way a corporal punishment. ;)
"Act with honor" is also ambiguous.
The GM does not have to interpret either ambiguously.
Kill a helpless person? Fall for not acting with honor.
Letting the rapist-murder bandit live? Fall for not punishing those who threaten and harm innocents.
But punish does not have to mean kill. Punishment is ambiguous, likely intentionally so. There is nothing to indicate that the punishment must be the taking of life. Or in any way a corporal punishment. ;)
"Act with honor" is also ambiguous.
The GM does not have to interpret either ambiguously.
Agreed, but at least there are some examples of dishonorable acts. And while an interpretation does not have to be ambiguous, interpretation is necessary, otherwise 'punish' is pretty much meaningless :)
-Nearyn
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... a lot ...
... also a lot ...
Wait, hold it ... back up ... stop, please, Gods, stop for a moment.
Are we -seriously- having a discussion about punishing people for -possible- future crimes? Are we automatically assuming recidivism in every single criminal out there?
If that is truly the case, I sincerely hope none of those of you arguing in favor of that would ever be appointed a jury-position in real life, because you clearly do not understand the most basic principles of law, such as "habeas corpus". You do not punish someone for what they MAY do in the future. You punish people for what they HAVE done, or else everything degenerates into complete anarchy or the darkest, most repressive fascism imaginable!
Honestly ... if we are punishing people for the possibility that they may commit a crime in the future, I would be at liberty to have -any- person in the world locked up. And anyone else could have me locked up. Not because of any actual wrongdoing but because of a paranoid belief that a crime -MAY- be committed down the line.
That's not the rule of law. That's -abject- chaos. Chaotic evil nations would function on that kind of principle! Although I use the term "function" in the loosest possible sense in this case!
The original question in this case concerned a rapist, and I'll be the first to say that I do consider rape to be a horrendous, atrocious crime. There's no excuse for it, ever.
This, however, is not a case of judging whether the man has done something wrong or not. There's no -question- that the rapist is a criminal. He's been caught in the act, he's been rendered unable to defend himself, and he's begging for his life.
However angry his crime might make people In Real Life, this is an RP situation, and the paladin has a specific code, as set down by his deity, that he must follow. If his code explicitly states that he must not spare the man's life, then he has to kill him and in that situation he's done no wrong. He's simply followed his code.
If he's a paladin following a deity that stands for redemption and the rule of secular law, then the man should probably be apprehended and brought before a magistrate to be judged. Considering his crime, it's -entirely- possible that the magistrate would then order the criminal in question strung up from the nearest gallows post haste, immediamente, right now, omgående, αμέσως, tuj, すぐに
But unless it is within the Paladin's code to take matters into his own hands, then he's acted outside that code and consequently placed himself in breach of his oath.
I have to say, I'm with Nearyn on this one. The rules system is pretty straight-forward on this. Real life anger and real life disgust at the act of this fictitious soldier is both understandable and frankly a sign of basic decency and moral fortitude, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with how the game system works.
However much we all agree that from a real world perspective, the actions of those soldiers are reprehensible, it's got no bearing whatsoever on the in game situation, where the paladin cannot hide behind "he was a bad man".
He can hide behind "he was a bad man because my oath defines what he did as a bad thing" but then he'd have to be able to specify where his code says that killing an unarmed, defenseless man is his right and perogative, even his duty.
Otherwise, he's no longer a paladin, but a vigilante. Which, obviously, is a very different thing.
I've said it in many threads: If the paladin's player doesn't want the character to fall, he shouldn't fall. The choice to fall should be the player's conscious decision. Unless the action is unambiguously a violation of the code, the GM shouldn't be the one deciding.
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"If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
Indeed - a neutral choice. :)
-Nearyn.
Kill a helpless person? Fall for not acting with honor.
Letting the rapist-murder bandit live? Fall for not punishing those who threaten and harm innocents.
Technically the paladin should fall regardless of what he does. Or the GM interprets "punish" or "act with honor" in different ways. By playing a paladin you hand the GM a RAW method to turn off your class features at will. If you don't like that, don't play a paladin or only play one with a houseruled code of conduct.
I'd like to add a third option:
"Don't play with a GM who thinks it's his sworn duty to ruin the fun of his paladin players by making them fall".
To this day, I do -not- get the whole idea behind GMs who are basically just looking for ways to wreck paladins in their group. It's like the word "Paladin" functions like beermug of 16.000.000 scoville capsaicin on some GMs, making them belch fire and roar while they tear their clothes off in an epic hissyfit, whereas the player sitting next to the paladin, playing an archmage with the power of the universe at his fingertips and the capacity to lay waste to entire battalions of enemies with a single spell gets no reaction whatsoever.
Is Smite Evil really THAT horrible and unbalancing that for some godsawful reason, some GMs feel that they must micromanage every single aspect of a character's life, and constantly place them in impossible moral quandaries which are hopeless and designed solely for the purpose of making the character fall?
And no ... I don't play paladins myself. I personally think the class is duller than watching Adam Sandler paint his living room while telling fart-jokes.
But some people love the class, and should be allowed to play them, unless they are breaking every religious commandment out there "in flagrante".
NO MAN OR WOMAN IS PERFECT! Why should deities assume that their paladins are? What should be important ... in my opinion ... is the -attempt- at perfection. Is the constant striving towards living up to the goals set down by the deity. When the paladin fails, unless it is a truly -horrible- breach of everything the deity stands for, should not result in the paladin falling, but in a renewed and redoubled effort to do -better-.
If a GM sees the word "paladin" on a character-sheet and thinks "ooooh, free turn-off-switch for me", that GM needs to move from his exalted position and down among the players, and let someone more capable do the job of running the game.
-Running- the game. Not -ruining- the game.
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"If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice."Indeed - a neutral choice. :)
-Nearyn.
Not acting when you a: see something evil happening. AND
b: know you are capable of preventing it.
Is an evil choice.Does it make you evil by itself? No. But it isn't neutral.
The rules say differently, and I am more inclined to believe the rules, than I am to believe those who speak contrary to the rules. ;)
-Nearyn
Kill a helpless person? Fall for not acting with honor.
Letting the rapist-murder bandit live? Fall for not punishing those who threaten and harm innocents.
Technically the paladin should fall regardless of what he does. Or the GM interprets "punish" or "act with honor" in different ways. By playing a paladin you hand the GM a RAW method to turn off your class features at will. If you don't like that, don't play a paladin or only play one with a houseruled code of conduct.
I'd like to add a third option:
"Don't play with a GM who thinks it's his sworn duty to ruin the fun of his paladin players by making them fall".
To this day, I do -not- get the whole idea behind GMs who are basically just looking for ways to wreck paladins in their group. It's like the word "Paladin" functions like beermug of 16.000.000 scoville capsaicin on some GMs, making them belch fire and roar while they tear their clothes off in an epic hissyfit, whereas the player sitting next to the paladin, playing an archmage with the power of the universe at his fingertips and the capacity to lay waste to entire battalions of enemies with a single spell gets no reaction whatsoever.
Is Smite Evil really THAT horrible and unbalancing that for some godsawful reason, some GMs feel that they must micromanage every single aspect of a character's life, and constantly place them in impossible moral quandaries which are hopeless and designed solely for the purpose of making the character fall?
And no ... I don't play paladins myself. I personally think the class is duller than watching Adam Sandler paint his living room while telling fart-jokes.
But some people love the class, and should be allowed to play them, unless they are breaking every religious commandment out there "in flagrante".
NO MAN OR WOMAN IS PERFECT! Why should deities assume that their paladins are? What should be important ... in my opinion ... is the -attempt- at perfection. Is the constant striving towards living up to the...
Players are not entitled to house-rules
Paladins can be very toxic to a gaming group exactly because their awesome powers come with a self destruct switch.
GMs are free to interpret the code loosely (or just rewrite the code), but a player demanding that is immature.
NOTE: The paladin's code can easily hold a paladin to higher standard than even what their deity would require.
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Also, Gygax kinda got the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" thing wrong. Not bashing him, a lot of us do, but it doesn't mean what you think it means.According to Hammurabi's Code, the price putting an eye out depended on the source of the eye:
1) Citizens - the offender's eye
2) Freed Slaves - 1.25 lbs of silver (52.5 Golarion GP)
3) Slaves - half of the slaves value (before the eye was removed)Hammurabi's code requires that a rapist be put to death.
First, I'd be pretty darn impressed if Gygax was referring to Hammurabi's Code, and not the Biblical reference.
Second, that doesn't mean he got it right, even if he did.
@Other Responses:
Again, I never said being good was easy. You are not responsible for the actions of others, but you are responsible for what you do about them. Whatever hatred or loathing may be had is an impediment to righteousness, not an aid. All men deserve death: No man has the right to impose the sentence.
Now, as to what that means for my games, it means that, generally speaking, if you're going to play a good character and really hold that alignment, you need show mercy to the defeated, and help those in need. When I DM, I frequently use Undead, Evil Outsiders, and Aberrations because, for fantasy purposes, my group typically has no moral problems with defeating these kinds of foes, and it puts all kinds of issues behind us to have fun in the game. But once you bring in characters that serve as more than literary fodder for our heroic cannons, you change the game.
"If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice."Indeed - a neutral choice. :)
-Nearyn.
Not acting when you a: see something evil happening. AND
b: know you are capable of preventing it.
Is an evil choice.Does it make you evil by itself? No. But it isn't neutral.
Choosing not to act, even if one knows one could help, is not an evil act. Believing it is an evil act, I believe, stems from the mistaken understanding that "Neutral" is "Good Light, now with only 1 calorie".
Not acting at all is the essense of the old saying that all it takes for evil to win, is for good men to do nothing.
By neutrality, they are not actively stemming evil. But that does not make them evil themselves. They can have a hundred reasons not to act. Fear for their own safety. Genuine indifference. Everything in between, and more.
An evil act would be to attempt to assist the perpetrator. Such as by keeping the local guards at bay if they tried to stop an evil act from happening. That'd be actively taking a side, and actively trying to prevent the prevention of the act.
A good act would be to try to stop it yourself.
Neutrality has a nasty habbit, in roleplaying terms, of being seen as "the slightly immoral and ambiguous, but ultimately faithful and constant ally of Good". That's not what neutrality is. It's just as likely to side with no one at all as it is with siding with good. Neutral characters could side with evil without changing their alignments, but somehow, this tends to be seen as bordering on impossible, whereas barely anyone argues that neutral characters should change their alignments to good when they consistently side with the forces of righteousness and pink teddybears.
Most neutral people are not complete gits who refuse to ever take sides ... but they are not motivated by the same moral indicators as good or evil characters.
Can the Paladin walk up and just kill him?
No. Surrender of a effectively defeated foe must be accepted. Of course, you can then pass summary judgement over the villain and execute him on the spot, but the formalities must be adhered to.
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"If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
The paladin's already found a ready guide in some celestial voice, though. :D
My general stance.
Killing someone to prevent future actions is not acceptable. But that's not why our prisoner in the scenario is facing the chop. He's facing the chop over the acts he's performed.
To let him go running off accomplishes what? It doesn't serve justice. He's guilty. The paladin saw it himself.
Given the lack of ability to drag the guy back for tribunal and given the likely safety situation, the proper response as I see it would be execution.
I had a paladin in a similar situation in a game I adjudicated. The party fought through enemies and ended up capturing surrendering hobgoblins and an ogre.
Party questioned the hobgoblins. They indicated they were unaware of the greater evil that their employer was up to. Essentially, they were mercenaries for hire. Morally flexible ones. As the party had the inability to take them back to civilization and they worried about leaving them unprotected and tied up (they had slaves to rescue) they released them (a few of the hobgoblins angered at being lied to by their employer joined up with the heroes to assist them at this point).
The party also questioned the ogre. The ogre had apparently eaten a few of the slaves, as well as being unrepentant about it. Said ogre basically rubbed in the fact they'd need to take him back for a trial, and had no proof (or wouldn't once he had a chance to use the bathroom), the paladin frowned, took a second to review his phylactery of faithfulness, and decapitated the ogre like the animal it was for the crimes of murder, banditry and so forth.
Said paladin admittedly is the chosen servant of the over deity of light, so he has a certain authority that follows him. And purging evil is one of his deity's mandates.
I'll point out that all executions are carried out on 'helpless' criminals.
And as always, with a paladin's lawful alignment, there are higher laws than man's laws.
Players are not entitled to house-rules
Paladins can be very toxic to a gaming group exactly because their awesome powers come with a self destruct switch.
GMs are free to interpret the code loosely (or just rewrite the code), but a player demanding that is immature.
NOTE: The paladin's code can easily hold a paladin to higher standard than even what their deity would require.
So what you're saying is that paladins are so unbalanced that their players should more or less -expect- to be rendered impotent as a matter of expediency, over the course of the game, or am I getting this wrong?
Their "awesome powers" do not strike me as any more awesome than the powers of a mage or the powers of a look-at-me-as-I-hit-everything-at-touch-AC-gunslinger.
If they were that unbalanced, I'd -strongly- suggest that a GM who feels that way simply bans the class from their campaigns rather than allowing their players to make a paladin, only for them to then set out on the Quest To Destroy That Character's Viability.
To me, that's the height of pettiness and a clearcut case of -really- bad GM'ing.
Yes, Paladins can be called to a higher code. But to expect them to be able to live up to that code in every little aspect of life without ever putting a toe wrong, is not only completely unrealistic, but it would lead to a totally unplayable character which should be under the control of the GM to begin with. Unless the player can read the GMs mind to see what precise words and exact actions he or she would be expected to take -as the GM interprets the code- in every single social or combat situation from the moment the game starts until it ends, there is absolutely no way for that character to -not- fall.
And if that is the entire point of the character, -from the GM's perspective- I would prefer if the character class was removed compeltely from the game, because then it serves absolutely no purpose except to create resentment and disappointment in players.
As a GM I would under no circumstance try to take the fun away from my players in such a way, so long as the character was earnestly striving to constantly be a better person in character, and so long as they show some genuine IC contrition for whatever minor missteps they might make along the way. Call that a house rule if you want. I call it trying to create a healthy, non-toxic atmosphere for the game to function in.
And as a player, I would find a class that has to be micromanaged by the GM in such a way to be the height of boredom. Since I wouldn't play one myself, I would genuinely feel it would be a problem if someone else in the group played such a character, because it would necessarily result in a serious skewing of attention towards the paladin constantly having to gauge the GM's reaction, before doing ... or not doing ... -anything at all-, from taking a dump to smiting evildoers.
If that is -really- the level of micromanagement you see the rules demanding, I would be the first person to fall down on my knees and beg Paizo to -completely- eliminate the Paladin class from the game.
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Choosing to do nothing IS the neutral choice, and unfortunately it's what normal human beings do when confronted when something terrible.
However, a paladin actually has a duty to act to help those in need.
Otherwise, I'd say Rynjin nailed it way up in the thread - Mr. "I'm taking advantage of being in a War Zone to Commit Terrible Deeds" is almost certainly a bandit, and as such would have forfeited any protections under the law a normal person would be entitled to.
VRMH's post is actually pretty on-point, though depending on the code, the Paladin may be able to refuse. (For example, a paladin of Torag could most certainly refuse to accept surrender.)
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However, if it is an enemy soldier, the soldier has to be treated as proscribed under the Geneva Convention.
Currently, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 14 offenses are punishable by death. Under the following sections of the UCMJ, the death penalty can be imposed at any time:
[snip]
Now the paladin has no chance to arrest the person and send it back for trial. Under combat operation standards an officer has the right AND duty if the situation demands it to judge the person and execute him.
I repeat right AND duty!
And this also assumes that the paladin in question is an officer. The UCMJ doesn't authorize random civilians to kill people, or even enlisted personnel.
Just because this is a war zone doesn't meant that the paladin in question is acting appropriately. If he's going to claim justification under the laws of war, he he needs to be acting in accord with them himself.
Is he:
1. A member of an armed force belonging to one of the declared combatants?
2. A member of an organized resistance group who fulfill the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war?
et cetera. et cetera. If he's just a guy with a sword who hears the Voice of God in his head, he's a terrorist and a murderer, not a lawful combatant.
Alot of people are making some excellent points.
With that said, an evil act, done in accordance with the law, is still a lawful evil act.
-Nearyn
So what you're saying is that paladins are so unbalanced that their players should more or less -expect- to be rendered impotent as a matter of expediency, over the course of the game, or am I getting this wrong?Players are not entitled to house-rules
Paladins can be very toxic to a gaming group exactly because their awesome powers come with a self destruct switch.
GMs are free to interpret the code loosely (or just rewrite the code), but a player demanding that is immature.
NOTE: The paladin's code can easily hold a paladin to higher standard than even what their deity would require.
No, I am saying the paladin's code is trash.
Trash though it may be, it is still the rules and expecting the GM to hand-wave the rules is improper behavior.
It would be like someone wanting a rogue, but demanding the GM handwave the stealth rules, sneak attack requirements, and poor saving throws. If the GM doesn't do that the rogue is going to have way less fun, but I think no one here believes that any GM that doesn't provide these houserules for the rogue is a bad GM.
If you want to play a holy warrior without a self destruct mechanism, both the warpriest and cleric can fill that role. (Stretch your imagination just a little and both the fighter and ranger could fill that role too.)
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I would not fall the paladin for executing the man in this case--nor would I fall the paladin for sparing the man's life. Like Nearyn says, you cannot hold someone accountable for another person's conduct. The evil has been opposed, and for the sake of argument, is helpless. Whether he will be able to overcome this problem and commit wrongs again is something to be concerned over, but not while the city is in the middle of a major disaster. At the same time, there is justice in his death, and again, we are in the middle of a major disaster--there is no time for due process. In either case, the paladin is acting with justice or mercy, so unless you're holding him to Code of Conduct RAW, he should be fine--expecting him to uphold every aspect of Lawful Good at the same time is setting him up to fall, as Lawful Good is by design an alignment whose component will come into conflict.
Justice is evil?Alot of people are making some excellent points.
With that said, an evil act, done in accordance with the law, is still a lawful evil act.
-Nearyn
Interesting thought.
-Nearyn
No, I am saying the paladin's code is trash.
At least we agree on that part. But there are far more elaborate paladin codes available, individualized for each deity, which I would assume would be natural to use for almost anyone aware of their existence, and certainly for someone who would want to play a paladin. Using any generic "one-size-fits-all"-code would be a recipe for disaster, since there are cases where such a code and the actual, religious teachings of a good-aligned deity would come into direct conflict.
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Justice is evil?Alot of people are making some excellent points.
With that said, an evil act, done in accordance with the law, is still a lawful evil act.
-Nearyn
Justice can absolutely be evil. Justice is an entirely subjective term to begin with.
What you consider "justice", I'm willing to wager, has little to do with what people in many other parts of the world would consider justice. We're not even talking about diametrically opposed groups here ... for example, the United States retains the death penalty. To many Americans, capital punishment is justice because it gives closure to the case and ensures that the criminal in question cannot cause offense to society again.
To most people in the EU, an area closely allied with the US, but where the death penalty is uniformly abolished as part of the EU's charter, the death penalty is an egregious violation of basic human rights or at least an absurd form of punishment with far, far too great a miss-chance.
Same punishment, different perspectives.
In a fantasy roleplaying setting, lawful evil nations are still lawful. In all likelihood, in keeping with the alignment, there will be an extensive form of legal code, often bordering on outright legalism, and while outsiders are unlikely to consider punishments rendered under such a code "just", people who agree with it will certainly see it as "justice".
So yes, justice can absolutely be evil. In fact, it very often is. It just depends on who you ask.
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Justice is evil?Alot of people are making some excellent points.
With that said, an evil act, done in accordance with the law, is still a lawful evil act.
-Nearyn
Justice can absolutely be evil. Justice is an entirely subjective term to begin with.
What you consider "justice", I'm willing to wager, has little to do with what people in many other parts of the world would consider justice. We're not even talking about diametrically opposed groups here ... for example, the United States retains the death penalty. To many Americans, capital punishment is justice because it gives closure to the case and ensures that the criminal in question cannot cause offense to society again.
To most people in the EU, an area closely allied with the US, but where the death penalty is uniformly abolished as part of the EU's charter, the death penalty is an egregious violation of basic human rights or at least an absurd form of punishment with far, far too great a miss-chance.
Same punishment, different perspectives.
In a fantasy roleplaying setting, lawful evil nations are still lawful. In all likelihood, in keeping with the alignment, there will be an extensive form of legal code, often bordering on outright legalism, and while outsiders are unlikely to consider punishments rendered under such a code "just", people who agree with it will certainly see it as "justice".
So yes, justice can absolutely be evil. In fact, it very often is. It just depends on who you ask.
I'd argue that isn't justice.
Things don't become things just because a group of people define them that way.
Its like the old question.
"How many legs do you have if you call your arms legs?"
"Four."
"No. Just because you call an arm a leg doesn't make it one."
There's a question of the genuine, lets say almost platonic aspect of a thing and those things which people misidentify it as.
We need to drill down to the substance of something.
Whether its easy to define what 'justice' is, or whether various people have differing beliefs on justice does not disprove that there is one objective form of justice, and a thousand people might be wrong. Hell, everyone might be wrong.
I've always seen stuff like this through an analogy. You've got a dozen blind marathon runners. Before the race begins, they're grabbed and spun around randomly, and told to keep running until they cross the finish line.
Each of them comes to a conclusion on how to reach that finish line. Not all of these conclusions are correct. And some may be righter then others. Some might call to people for help: Some might genuinely help them, and others might try to make them go even further astray. But again, there is a finish line. Even if nobody ever reaches it.
Obviously, this is an imperfect analogy (all analogies are imperfect), but that being said, I'd argue that Asmodeus doesn't truly understand justice. He's likely like Jadis the White Witch, he understands sin and that he can punish sinners, but likely not comprehend what true justice and therefore mercy entail. You can't have mercy without justice.
In summary: What your opinion or someone else's on justice is, doesn't change what justice actually is. And the fact people can't agree on it, doesn't mean its not out there.
Dnd and Pathfinder's alignment systems are built on a belief in an objective moral system. There is no 'this is good for me, but not for thee' or 'well, in my country we think eating babies is fine and you non-baby eaters are the real bad guys.' At the table, the DM is the final moral arbiter.
This is why a smart paladin picks up a phylactery of faithfulness. You can't lose your paladinhood when your god himself is telling you your action is ok. And if you do, that's why the player's handbook is hardback. Take some justice out of that DM's hide. :p
I'm not sure i agree Spook205, at least I don't agree with everything you just said.
In your opinion then, what is justice, from an objective, in-game point of view?
Because as far as I can tell, even in pathfinder, justice is a societal construct, whereas Law is very much tangible and objective, like Chaos, Good, Evil and Neutrality.
-Nearyn
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Oh no, don't worry, I completely understood, and what I'm trying to get across is that the future doesn't matter. To think that you can predict whether this rapist is going to hurt someone again, and judge him because you are "protecting" people against his "future crimes" is the ultimate arrogance. Even Pharasma is not arrogant enough in her predictions to not weigh the soul again after death, despite it being said that she knows the final destination of every soul, at birth.
Judging a person because you're protecting innocents from his "future crimes" is beyond fascist. You may as well be killing a teenager who was found guilty of accidental manslaughter, because you've predicted there is a likelyhood he's going to accidentally kill again.
I say again, you are not protecting anyone from this man, because this man is not threatening anyone. If he was standing over his victim with a machettte, raised and ready to kill, then you're perfectly within your rights, as a paladin, to strike him down, because you're protecting his victim. But if he's disarmed and pleading, and you decide to kill him, you're not protecting anyone from him. You're just killing a dude.
You're not preventing "future crimes" you're punishing a crime you caught the man RED HANDED doing. Letting the man go is like saying "Yeah man, you get right back to what you ere doing" because what else are you going to do with him?
And rape is nothing like manslaughter. You can't "accidentally rape" someone.
"Oh aye I fell over, my pants came unbuckled and I slipped right in I did. yeah."
No.
I'm not sure i agree Spook205, at least I don't agree with everything you just said.
In your opinion then, what is justice, from an objective, in-game point of view?
Because as far as I can tell, even in pathfinder, justice is a societal construct, whereas Law is very much tangible and objective, like Chaos, Good, Evil and Neutrality.
-Nearyn
Precisely, Nearyn. It is a societal construct. It cannot be anything else. Empirically, justice cannot be an autonomous thing, which can be quantified and measured, because all things involving justice, in the end, is based on laws ... either written down by mankind and therefore subjective in their very nature, although obviously, the subjectivity can be minimized and usually is, or bylaws that are also subject to individual interpretation.
The reason why two judges might render two completely different verdicts in the same case (as is often the case with majority-decisions in courts with multiple judges, or in cases that have been appealed and either overturned or where a harsher sentence has been handed down), is because justice is subjective and dependent on how people perceive it. The reason why there are multiple people in a jury instead of just one, is to get as many different subjective interpretations of justice to coincide as possible, to ensure fairness.
There is no such thing as a universal form of justice. Someone will -always- feel it is unjust, and be able to argue their case why it is.
If not, there'd be no need for a court-system at all.
Heh. And now I'm thinking of something that I'm more or less paraphrasing from Sir Pratchett's Men at Arms:
"The wicked man will stop to gloat. The wicked man will want to revel in the power he has over you. He will drag things out for his own enjoyment.
The good man will just kill you and move on, because he wants this over with."
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I'm not sure i agree Spook205, at least I don't agree with everything you just said.
In your opinion, what is then justice, from this objective, in-world point of view?
Because as far as I can tell, even in pathfinder, justice is a societal construct, whereas Law is very much tangible and objective, like Chaos, Good, Evil and Neutrality.
-Nearyn
What is justice?
Pedantically, Merrion-Webster defines it as: the process or result of using laws to fairly judge and punish crimes and criminalsI'd argue its...
Hard to define, for damn sure. That 'fairly judge' part is the tricky part since that ties into a web of morality. Entire civilizations in our world disagree on the standards of 'fairly judge,' even as people disagree on the standards of what they're judging people on.
But as I stated, that doesn't preclude that there's an objective standard. Indeed, ultimately those systems attempt to live up to it even if they don't agree on what it is.
What I'm arguing is that there's an objective standard for it independent of our capability to correctly determine it. A paladin however is dealing with forces who understandably have a closer grasp on such things. He's an agent of the divine after all.
What this means in practice however, is that in a polytheistic system, if you have various deities who both posit two separate definitions of 'justice' then one or both of them is wrong as compared to the actual objective standard.
This is an intrinsic problem behind the average 'gods as humans writ large' system itself, but fortunately (also for this discussion as I don't want to get into sticky real-life theological grounds here) the gods of a Pathfinder campaign do in fact have an obvious irrefutable objective standard they have to stand against: The Game Master.
The DM determines if say Erastil's opinion that justice is better served by perforating the criminal with arrows rules out over Desna's belief that justice in this situation is served by say violently flogging him with butterfly wings instead, within the grounds of the game world anyway.
You're not preventing "future crimes" you're punishing a crime you caught the man RED HANDED doing. Letting the man go is like saying "Yeah man, you get right back to what you ere doing" because what else are you going to do with him?
I've not bothered to ask the question of whether the Paladin was going to render judgement based on any real authority. I've neglected to do so, because it's not relevant to the discussion. The topic of the discussion was that the paladin player said he could just kill the dude, without it affecting his paladin-status. Whether the Paladin is a field-marshall or not, is not likely to change the alignment of the act tied to the sentence.
You're punishing a crime you caught the man doing.
And the punishment you've chosen entails carrying out an evil act. Perhaps if you'd decided on a different punishment, then there would not be an issue at all.
And rape is nothing like manslaughter. You can't "accidentally rape" someone.
Cmon Rynjin, you know damn well that was not the point I was making xD I was objecting to the notion of punishing potential "future crimes", based on the fact that a crime had been perpetrated. Whether it was rape, accidental manslaughter or stealing pennies out of the church donation-box is irrelevant to this point I was raising. :P
-Nearyn
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What you consider "justice", I'm willing to wager, has little to do with what people in many other parts of the world would consider justice. We're not even talking about diametrically opposed groups here ... for example, the United States retains the death penalty. To many Americans, capital punishment is justice because it gives closure to the case and ensures that the criminal in question cannot cause offense to society again.
To most people in the EU, an area closely allied with the US, but where the death penalty is uniformly abolished as part of the EU's charter, the death penalty is an egregious violation of basic human rights or at least an absurd form of punishment with far, far too great a miss-chance.
I'm totally for the death penalty... in theory.
In practice - I don't trust anyone enough to be behind it. (As you mention - too much potential miss-chance.)
Too many prosecutors hiding evidence etc. (rare but it happens) Too many chances for an honest mistake. (again - not likely - but possible) You can't undo the death penalty.
But in this case - when there's no question they did it. Heck yeah - chop his head off!
And as to justice being evil? There's no way. It's not necessarily good - but it's Lawful Neutral at worst. (A justice system can be abused in a Lawful Evil way. See previous mention of prosecutors hiding evidence etc.)
A Lawful Evil nation isn't evil because it has justice. It's Lawful Evil due to oppression, different standards for the nobility. Etc.
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And the punishment you've chosen entails carrying out an evil act. Perhaps if you'd decided on a different punishment, then there would not be an issue at all.
In no morality system that I've ever heard of is carrying out an execution considered evil.
For example - in The Ten Commandments (please don't bring up religious issues - I'm using it as it's even more the basis for western justice systems than Hammurabi) - it's often misquoted as "Thou Shalt Not Kill" - when it's actually "Thou Shalt Not Murder" if it's translated correctly.
Entirely different connotation - with the implication that killing isn't always bad.
points about justice
And yet, despite you saying there is no way that justice can be evil, every corpse dragged from the headsman's block is another evil act done by the executioner. Is it his duty? Yes. Does he consider it evil? Maybe not. Is it the fairly rendered punishment for a criminal, based on a fair trial in the court of law and based on the judgement of his peers? Probably. But the minute that axe comes down, the executioner is committing a lawful evil act. Does not make him lawful evil, does not make him a fascist, doesn't mean the sentence was unjust. It's just Lawful Evil. And that's not a flaw with the system.
-Nearyn
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I can't believe Nearyn thinks that killing a rapist is a bad thingNo, he's simply one of those DMs that has it in for Paladins who demonstrates that hate by setting up straw fail/fail traps like this. Which is why I'd never run one under a GM I don't know.
Hey, hey. The guy's got a differing opinion let's not go whalloping him.
As I was taught as a youth. You should respect a person, no matter how wrong you think his opinions are.
Nearyn probably believes killing anyone's a bad thing, even if its a rapist. At the risk of putting words in his mouth, I wager he merits the good of preserving life over the good of what he presumably sees as the merits of punishing the guilty.
(EDIT: Responding to Mr. Nearyn)
And I'd argue that those represent failures of the systems aiming for 'Justice.'
A headsman is not a murderer even if he kills an innocent man. He didn't put the guy on the block, the laws and the system did.
Similarly, soldiers aren't de facto murderers.
All killing is no more murder then all love making is rape. And now we're going from ontology to teleology...
..at times like this I feel like I should just link to Nicomacean Ethics, the Summa Theologica and Plato's works and be like 'read these, Spook can't explain all of this without writing almost a book, and people already wrote the books.'
You're not preventing "future crimes" you're punishing a crime you caught the man RED HANDED doing. Letting the man go is like saying "Yeah man, you get right back to what you ere doing" because what else are you going to do with him?I've not bothered to ask the question of whether the Paladin was going to render judgement based on any real authority. I've neglected to do so, because it's not relevant to the discussion. The topic of the discussion was that the paladin player said he could just kill the dude, without it affecting his paladin-status. Whether the Paladin is a field-marshall or not, is not likely to change the alignment of the act tied to the sentence.
You're punishing a crime you caught the man doing.And the punishment you've chosen entails carrying out an evil act. Perhaps if you'd decided on a different punishment, then there would not be an issue at all.
Killing is not an evil act. By the "rules" (of which there are sparse few on alignment, and NONE of them come from the section on Alignment), or by logic.
You only need to engage your brain for a few milliseconds to see how dumb of a notion that is. This entire game is based around killing. Some Good deities have killing your enemies as their HAT.
I can't believe Nearyn thinks that killing a rapist is a bad thingNo, he's simply one of those DMs that has it in for Paladins who demonstrates that hate by setting up straw fail/fail traps like this.
I don't think it's a straw fail/fail trap, depending upon the position of the paladin.
If you are a paladin, that and fifty cents gets you coffee. Not a badge, not the authority to hear trials, and not the authority to execute people out of hand.
Being a paladin does not exempt you from the need to follow society's rules. In fact, being a paladin imposes a further obligation on you to follow society's rules -- it's explicitly in the code (as well as in the alignment).
It's a war zone.... fine. If the paladin's there as part of one of the military forces, then he's subject to military discipline, and he has exactly as much authority as his commander has given him. If the army commander has said that he's authorized to execute criminals found on the battlefield, fine. If the commander has not given him that authority,...
And if the paladin's not part of a formal command structure, he has no authority whatsoever. (Do you have any idea what a bunch of soldiers would do if they found a group of civilians "executing" one of their own for so-called "war crimes"?)
I'm totally for the death penalty... in theory.
In practice - I don't trust anyone enough to be behind it. (As you mention - too much potential miss-chance.)
Too many prosecutors hiding evidence etc. (rare but it happens) Too many chances for an honest mistake. (again - not likely - but possible) You can't undo the death penalty.
But in this case - when there's no question they did it. Heck yeah - chop his head off!
And as to justice being evil? There's no way. It's not necessarily good - but it's Lawful Neutral at worst. (A justice system can be abused in a Lawful Evil way. See previous mention of prosecutors hiding evidence etc.)
A Lawful Evil nation isn't evil because it has justice. It's Lawful Evil due to oppression, different standards for the nobility. Etc.
Indeed, but that oppression is legal under the code of law outlined by that neutral evil nation's ruler(s). So it is still a matter of rulings being handed down that are -in keeping- with the law, however nasty the judgment might seem to right-thinking individuals everywhere.
Hermann Göring actually attempted that defense during the Nüremberg trials. He consistently pointed out that while the American chief prosecutor could rant about how unlawful the war had been and how illegal the crimes against humanity that the nazi regime had committed had been, but that under German law at the time, everything they had done was in fact legal. They had, after all, introduced the laws enabling them to do what they did, themselves. Göring garnered significant international support for his stance. Everyone else tore at their hair in frustration at how insane this was. In the end he was taken down not on the illegality of his actions under German law, but under legislation created retroactively, such as the legislation needed to convict someone for crimes against humanity.
The same thing can be said for stonings of homosexuals and women who sleep with men apart form their husbands in certain parts of the Middle East and Africa.
The rest of us can shout in exasperation and try to point out how absolutely -insane- this is, but to the people who have implemented such laws, they are not evil acts, concealed as justice. They ARE justice. They follow that "universal standard" that you are subscribing to, -insofar as they see that universal standard-.
That's not how most of the rest of the world sees it.
Justice is -never- objective, because it is based on opinions of what is right and wrong. And the -moment- "opinion" enters into it, you can only minimize subjectivity ... you can't eliminate it.
On that note, I think it will suffice to say I doubt we'll reach any kind of consensus on this, and by now, I'm finding myself in circular arguments. For that reason, I think it's time for me to bow out of this one.
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points about justiceAnd yet, despite you saying there is no way that justice can be evil, every corpse dragged from the headsman's block is another evil act done by the executioner. Is it his duty? Yes. Does he consider it evil? Maybe not. Is it the fairly rendered punishment for a criminal, based on a fair trial in the court of law and based on the judgement of his peers? Probably. But the minute that axe comes down, the executioner is committing a lawful evil act. Does not make him lawful evil, does not make him a fascist, doesn't mean the sentence was unjust. It's just Lawful Evil. And that's not a flaw with the system.
-Nearyn
If they did the crime (such as murder/rape etc) - it's in no way evil. It's Lawful Neutral. No question. Even if they didn't do it and were tried in a fair trial. Lawful Neutral.
You are apparently totally ignoring every part of the game system because you personally find execution to be distastful.
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So Nearyn's philosophy is thus:
Government institutionalized genocide (let’s use the extreme... Hitler) - Evil
Ignoring this genocide even if one has the means to easily stop it - Neutral
Executing the dictator who allows such genocide to take place - Lawful Evil
Thanks for jumping to my defense Spook205.
As I said to Arachnofiend earlier, I've yet to bring my personal opinion into this thread, because I don't think it belongs here. Here we're discussing an issue of a player's claim that his paladin can summarily execute a guy he caught raping someone. I don't need to bring my own stance on rape or capital punishment into it, all I have to do is look at the alignment chapter, look at the situation the OP presented, and provide my opinion, based on the rules provided in the system.
@Charon's Little Helper:
You are wrong mate. I am not ignoring every part of the game-system. In fact I do seem to be the only one in the past many post who has bothered ACTUALLY quoting it. I'll do it again, if only for the sake of the argument.
You say executing criminals is Lawful Neutral. I say killing is evil.
Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.
Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent, but may lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others.
There it is. Lawful or unlawful, you're considering the wrong axis of the alignment chart.
I've backed up my claim Charon's Little Helper. Now I'm waiting for you to prove that you're not "ignoring every part of the game system".
-Nearyn
So Nearyn's philosophy is thus:
Government institutionalized genocide (let’s use the extreme... Hitler) - Evil
Ignoring this genocide even if one has the means to easily stop it - Neutral
Executing the dictator who allows such genocide to take place - Lawful Evil
Well, to be precise, that may or may not be my philosophy, I've not bothered to talk about my philosophy.
But that is the letter of the pathfinder rules, as far as I am able to tell.
-Nearyn
Thanks for jumping to my defense Spook205.
As I said to Arachnofiend earlier, I've yet to bring my personal opinion into this thread, because I don't think it belongs here. Here we're discussing an issue of a player's claim that his paladin can summarily execute a guy he caught raping someone. I don't need to bring my own stance on rape or capital punishment into it, all I have to do is look at the alignment chapter, look at the situation the OP presented, and provide my opinion, based on the rules provided in the system.
@Charon's Little Helper:
You are wrong mate. I am not ignoring every part of the game-system. In fact I do seem to be the only one in the past many post who has bothered ACTUALLY quoting it. I'll do it again, if only for the sake of the argument.
You say executing criminals is Lawful Neutral. I say killing is evil.
Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.
Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent, but may lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others.
There it is. Lawful or unlawful, you're considering the wrong axis of the alignment chart.
I've backed up my claim Charon's Little Helper. Now I'm waiting for you to prove that you're not "ignoring every part of the game system".
-Nearyn
Evil implies killing.
Killing does not imply evil.
By your (flawed) logic killing is never for a good cause and we should all live in a world of fluffy rainbows where we talk the bad guy into stopping whatever it is he's doing.
Neither real life or the game world is like that.
But that is the letter of the pathfinder rules, as far as I am able to tell.-Nearyn
Further, the Alignment section is not RULES. Alignment in general is not RULES except where Paizo f%&*ed up and made some spells that affect Alignment.
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@Rynjin: I direct your attention to the quoted segment from the alignment section of the CRB.
Why would it be a bad thing that the heroes do evil things? It's not like they're not also doing good things and neutral things?
Further, the Alignment section is not RULES. Alignment in general is not RULES except where Paizo f~!~ed up and made some spells that affect Alignment.
I think you've ventured into the area of "my personal opinion" and not levelheaded observations based on actual readings of the text in the book.
By your (flawed) logic killing is never for a good cause and we should all live in a world of fluffy rainbows where we talk the bad guy into stopping whatever it is he's doing.
Neither real life or the game world is like that.
Yeah silly me, expecting my players to consider things such as imprisonment or lawfully rendered judgement, when in fact they should just be frenzying through the countryside, horrifically murdering everything that dares look at them cross. That is, after all, what we associate with gallant heroes and shining knights.
-Nearyn
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Just going to say this:
Compunctions about killing innocents implies no such compunctions about killing the guilty.
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Thanks for jumping to my defense Spook205.
As I said to Arachnofiend earlier, I've yet to bring my personal opinion into this thread, because I don't think it belongs here. Here we're discussing an issue of a player's claim that his paladin can summarily execute a guy he caught raping someone. I don't need to bring my own stance on rape or capital punishment into it, all I have to do is look at the alignment chapter, look at the situation the OP presented, and provide my opinion, based on the rules provided in the system.
@Charon's Little Helper:
You are wrong mate. I am not ignoring every part of the game-system. In fact I do seem to be the only one in the past many post who has bothered ACTUALLY quoting it. I'll do it again, if only for the sake of the argument.
You say executing criminals is Lawful Neutral. I say killing is evil.
Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.
Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent, but may lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others.
There it is. Lawful or unlawful, you're considering the wrong axis of the alignment chart.
I've backed up my claim Charon's Little Helper. Now I'm waiting for you to prove that you're not "ignoring every part of the game system".
-Nearyn
I know what it's like to have people put words in my mouth and to make grandiose determinations of how I 'really think' based on what they think I'm saying. Also, its good manners, so. Your thanks, while appreciated, are unnecessary. :)
I think what you've helping to determine though Nearyn is that Pathfinder alignments are officially defined in a very mealy-mouthed fashion. By the strict reading of the alignment blurbs (as I've often argued) you get a very, very mussed up version of what 'good' and 'evil' represent.
Probably because the Paizo folks, or the WoTC folks before them, didn't want to go on record as saying this or that was evil or good for fear of some flavor of moral guardian getting down on them.
So good comes across as 'huggles and heffalumps' in the blurb, when they still have solars who lay out nuclear arrows (with utmost altruism I imagine) onto the backsides of fiends, dragons and evil folks.
Or in the words of the esteemable Prince Phil from Slayers:
PACIFIST CRUSH! BROTHERHOOD OF MANKIND BEAR HUG! LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR LARIAT!