James Allen Sanchez's page

roguerouge wrote:

underling wrote:

That brings up the second problem - logistics. often enough it is untenable for a party to take on an evil 'hostage' and still complete their mission. It may be time sensitive, or involve infiltration, etc... Taking a prisoner because of the refusal to finish the death that the party's combat had started, lessens the chance of the party's success.

Why did you think the party paladin was buying so many handcuffs, gags, and leg restraints while he was back in town? To spice up his relationship?

He's hoping to visit with that succubus paladin? You know, checking to make sure she's still on the virtuous path;-)

If he's a heterosexual male below the age of 90 (or 900 in the case of an Elf), you can plan on it! She can even lay on hands to cure the cat scratch fever...I wonder if she's accepting supplicants (uh, for a blessing, of course).

Jerry Wright wrote:

The moral problems become even more complicated when you bring gods into the mix. To borrow an example, killing little Tommy might be abhorrent to Pelor, while Gruumsh might consider it the height of public service.

So should good and evil be something that reins in even the gods, or are they the arbiters of it?

Exactly. Little Tommy's not pulling his weight on the raid.

For players playing Lawful religious types, their first question should always be what the faith's orthodoxy is in these cases. (And, much of the time, a lawful religion will have instructions on everything they could think of and placed it in their holy text.)

My fellow player in the original incident that started this thread was a follower of Raziel. We actually had a fairly lengthy discussion about him (if you add up the all the bits that we used as examples of how said player's {who is fairly new to role-playing} character would probably view the world over the course of 3 or 4 gaming sessions). Since his entry is rather scant in the BoED, here's what we theorized: He was an (epic) paladin of St. Cuthbert who watched several of his fellow paladins fall in their zeal to uphold law (remember St. Cuthbert is lawful neutral), and when the original ruler of Mertion became an infamous fallen angel through the same mechanism, Raziel ascended to take his place determined not to make the same mistake. His credo: if its an evil outsider causing mayhem on the prime material plane, don't bother to offer quarter, kill it. The DM was crucial to the development of this theory. So, his game, his concept of Raziel, nuff said.

On the other hand, my patron, Chalchi, the Olman goddess of beauty, love, and warfare (it seems that war is a domain for almost all of the Olman deities), has even less "official" information on her (the DM read me the 5 or 6 sentence entry about her from a Dungeon magazine). I have been using my extremely limited knowledge (mostly from PBS and Discovery channel documentaries) of Meso-American religion combined with my nonexistent (other than old movie stereotype) knowledge of Polynesian religion (the Olman seem to me to be a Meso-American culture with strong hints of Polynesia) to guide the theology of my character. Given the stereotype (and my dearth of real knowledge), I think that the coup de gras is perfectly acceptable to my deity. Anybody have any ideas about what Chalchi's orthodoxy may be? I can't escape the feeling that I skated on this one simply because the DM and I have virtually no frame of reference other than the above mentioned documentaries and old movies, even though I think that my character and his deity would be fine with the way he handled the situation.

James Allen Sanchez wrote:

a lot of stuff replying to me...

Why yes, I have. An appendix (or follow up or whatever you want to call it. maybe it was just a second paper) in my thesis went on to disprove my entire thesis using much more sound reasoning and logic. the fact that on the surface you can justify these things was the point of the paper. that someone who hadn't thought it over and read more in depth might be inclined to believe it works like that. It was an odd class with an odd teacher who valued my twisting of the writings and my ability to formulate what seemed like good logic more then what I was actually saying. basically I just took that central tenet, as you put it, of maximizing joy and minmizing pain and crunched the numbers. if a gang participates in a rape, 1 person feels pain, multiple people feel joy. yes, this is wrong on many levels and actually goes against the teachings. don't hate me, i don't believe it myself. i got the A because I argued a point well, however twisted the logic, not because my subject matter was agreeable. That's what we're supposed to get the As for, writing good essays.

On a side note, this is the same teacher who allowed me to use Charles Darwin as a philosopher to argue against Xenotransplantation. maybe that can give you some insight into the kind of class it was.

(also, I'm not trying to draw you into an argument. after rereading my original post i realized how it sounded and i felt the need to explain some things. please take this post with a grain of salt that i do not in any way advocate any of this, and was expressing my contempt for a belief system which is so easily misunderstood. also, don't judge the class until you've taken it. it actually taught me a lot. And yes, the teacher recognized the fallicies in my paper, which is why i needed the second paper disproving it. it was a lot of extra work, but it was the most fun i've had writing a paper.)

Well...I'm not quite sure how to start this apology; I was in a strange place last night. After re-reading my post an hour or so after I wrote it, I e-mailed 2 friends of mine, (one who started the thread, and the other who read it thoroughly to give said progenitor DM-ly advice) asking if I had lost it and gone over the edge of the precipice. They haven't replied yet and I was actually a bit afraid of opening the thread this morning, thinking that I was about to be ripped a new one by several people, or at least you. Apparently I owe you an apology for misjudging your character as well as impugning your scholarship.

Thank You one and all who read this thread for your patience and understanding, and to you especially Kessukoofa for your gentle correction (as an adult would correct an errant child having a tantrum) rather than returning my salvo with a diatribe of your own.

Jal Dorak wrote:

The Western concept of good is usually that it is much harder to be good than it is to be evil, and that all good creatures must be vigilant lest they lapse into evil. It is much harder for an evil person to become good than it is for a good person to become evil.

Yes, but that is usually due to an idea that people are inherently "sinful"/"evil". That we must fight against our baser instincts. A celestial creature would have no such instincts so should be "tempted" by evil.

On the other hand some cultures/religions actually believe the reverse. That people are inherently good and that it is by not following our "baser" instincts that we fall into evil.

You don't even have to go to 2 different religions to get this dichotomy: Bramhanist Hinduism versus Jaynist Hinduism, Theravada Buddhism versus Mahayana Buddhism. If you want a more Western take, the current Rabbinical Judaism with its "original sin" versus the no-longer-practiced Essene or Pharisee Judaisms or Gnosticism (not Judaism, but closely related) that taught that we are born pure and innocent "as we were in the garden" but the world corrupts us more the more we learn of it. Or for and even more Western (European) dichotomy: the Roman Catholic Church and the Cathars in place of the Rabbinicals and Essenes/Pharisees/Gnostics. If the real world has such conundrums, is it not logical that D&D, and RPGs in general, have them as well, and far from what the Mazes and Monsters crowd claims, they lead not to Satan worship and other evils, but to an extreme ethical questioning which ultimately leads 99% of us to be better, more compassionate human beings?

PS Last time I made this argument, I was called a tree-hugging f*ggot; pretty enlightened, huh?

the Stick wrote:

James Allen Sanchez wrote:

...the argument settled into a 3-way battle of the philosophers with 3 using Thomas Hobbs social contract argument, 2 using Kant's a priori truths argument, and me the lone Mill/Russeau utilitarianism proponent)...

Ack! Utilitarianism!!! Now that is inherently evil!

/threadjack

I would agree in most cases given that I wrote a thesis a couple of years ago for a college class where I used Utilitarianism to justify, among other things, gangs, murder, rape, theft and crowd mentalities, so long as it is more then one person inflicting the harm on only one person. I realize this line of thinking isn't new, but hey, netted me an A.

Incidently, I use "in most cases" since I was practically raised by Jesuits (at least during my formulative teen years) and therefore have developed a very keen sense of casuistry. I therefore have nothing to really add to the topic of the thread since I look at every instance in context of the instance itself, and therefore there are no absolutes, only ideals to strive for and trends that are followed. a group using cou de grace in the case of the Vrocks would not be evil in my book since they are doing it to protect the entire town. in fact, Coup de Grace would not be evil in general for me since it is inflicting the minimum amout of pain to obtain the objective. Now if they had slung up the Vrocks and tortured them for days just ot hear them squeal? That's evil!

Just my .02.

Okay Kessukoofa, I'm not specifically picking on just you here, you just happen to be #3. I thought The Stick was just making a joke, but the fact that you actually wrote a college paper on Utilitarianism to justy such heinous things begs the question: Have you ever actually read anything by John Stuart Mill, Rene Rousseau, or even John Locke? The central tenet of Utilitarianism is to maximize the joy in the world and minimize the suffering, and that we, as rational, compassionate beings must use our intellect and free will to do just that whenever we are confronted with an ethical question; this more or less defines the chaotic good or even neutral good alignments and fits beautifully with exalted character of those alignments.

The fact that your professor gave you an A for the paper is a sad comment on the state of our educational system. Murder, no matter how many mentally disturbed people it may bring a moment's pleasure to would not balance the scales in favor of the misery that the act brings not only to its victims, but the victims family and friends as well. The logical process of Utilitarianism follows closely with the Hindu (not Buddhist, or at least not the Theravada Buddhist) concept of karma, in that it takes many more good or selfless acts to expunge even 1 evil or selfish act from your soul.

Seldriss wrote:

In the real world history (is there such a thing actually?), the knights had a thin dagger called "Misericorde" which was used to... well... give the coup de grace to their opponent.

That's the one with a stabbing blade about 1 foot long, and an odd hilt with a crossguard and pommel typically of similar shape

(forming a capital I), right?

Sorry, I was just at the museum. ;)

If the crossguard and pommel are both flat discs, those are what Ewart Oakshott and I-can't- remember-his-name Mckenzie both called a rondel dagger in their seminal works on bladed weapons in European history. Both books were stolen from my car about 12 years ago, so I no longer have them to double check for certainty, but that sounds like them. Were they the same? I don't recall either referring to rondel daggers as miserichordes, but even an eidetic memory can spring leaks after that much time. What museum did you see them in? Do they have a website so I can look at a picture? That would be way cool!

James Allen Sanchez wrote:

Hello again,

I just re-read dragon chessplayers response again, just a little historical FYI, in England during the 16th through 18th centuries, many people were hung for stealing food, and that was considered right and just. Now that's f*cking harsh!

This just means that the government of England in the 16th through 18th centuries may not have been good aligned.

I don't think any government is actually good aligned. I think the best we can hope for is lawful neutral, and that the lawful evil ones (Nazi Germany, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, etc.) fall quickly.

Samuel Weiss wrote:

As an aside, the Book of Exalted Deeds makes it clear that such a mindset is definitely not exalted. Being willing to reduce yourself to "ordinary" status, no matter how desperate the situation, is always a failure to live up to the highest standards required for exalted status.

One of several reasons I find the book nearly useless.

[quote=]The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Sorry, my mistake for not making it clear. I (the player) said to a third player when the combat started and the player of the other exalted character was making his grapple checks, "I think this is something that our {exalted} characters would do given the desperation of this situation. They would simply act to save the innocents in the town from the depredations of the demons." The question about the possibility of it costing us our exalted status was a meta-game question, not a thought process of the characters, and was ultimately answered by the DM as he says to the other player (with a smile on his face when that player rolled his first natural 20 in this campaign (!) "Raziel smiles upon you."

James Allen Sanchez wrote:

Does the willingness to sacrifice all that we believe sacred to save all that we hold dear AND sacred (protecting the innocent) make it an evil act?

As an aside, the Book of Exalted Deeds makes it clear that such a mindset is definitely not exalted. Being willing to reduce yourself to "ordinary" status, no matter how desperate the situation, is always a failure to live up to the highest standards required for exalted status.

One of several reasons I find the book nearly useless.

Also, barring something peculiar, the moment you grappled the vrock the dance would have been interrupted anyway, making the coup de grace unnecessary.

As for coup de grace being an evil act by definition, I would never even assume that. You are much more likely to get in trouble for it not being an exalted act, and it is always going to be a dangerous thing to mess with in terms of local law and killing someone magically compelled by one means or another.

This is exactly why I asked the question. If you recall, in the opening chapter of The Book of Exalted Deeds, one of the graphics has a paladin confronting (what are assumably) an incubus and a succubus with his sword drawn, and the caption reads (I'm going from memory so I will use capital letters instead of quotation marks) A PALADIN MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN DESTROYING EVIL AND UPHOLDING LOVE. They never answer the (implied) question.

James Allen Sanchez wrote:

PS sorry for all the capital letters, but this damned site doesn't allow you to italicize for emphasis, or at least I don't know how to make it do so.

You can use metalanguage tags to make bold and italics and a few other features. When next you compose a post click the "BBCode tags you can use Show" button at the bottom of the screen and it'll show you the allowed tags.

Oh, I see someone else beat me to it. The blinking computer seized up for ages. Still, those BBCode tags also show how to do useful things like qoutes and hyperlinks.

Thank you for the help anyway.

TerraNova wrote:

Yet several crusading dieties will likely disagree with that notion, and there are such things as "always CE" creatures, which by no means are demons...

One of the greatest IMO things I ever did in a campaign was to introduce the PCs to a conflict between a settlement of LN humans and a tribe of LN orcs, both of whom worshiped the PC clerics diety. It was a land dispute and the settlers had moved into the orcs territory. The resulting moral gymnastics were fun to watch, esspecially when they discovered that the humans had provoked the conflict as an excuse to wipe the orcs out and sieze their fields and livestock. Yes, these particular orcs had adopted human "civilization."

Edit: To answer the original question, I do not think that coup de grace is an evil act. It just makes sense especially if you do not have the resources to care for a wounded and dying enemy.

I tied this once: I had been playing D&D since the early 80's, and DMing for more than 10 years. My newest "newbie" player had been playing for 9 years; needless to say, all veteran gamers. I watched as an all good party (4 lawful good characters and 1 neutral good character) party of 5 PCs and 1 NPC (a neutral good cohort) completely disintegrate. The next 2 gaming sessions became arguments (not discussions) about ehics and morality. So in order to advance the game, (although I did find the arguments enlightening and enjoyable, especially since all of my players were {are} exceptionally literate and the argument settled into a 3-way battle of the philosophers with 3 using Thomas Hobbs social contract argument, 2 using Kant's a priori truths argument, and me the lone Mill/Russeau utilitarianism proponent), I had to reset history to before orc/human war just to salvage the last half of a third gaming session. It just goes to show you that life, even in an RPG, is extremely complex.

James Allen Sanchez wrote:

PS sorry for all the capital letters, but this damned site doesn't allow you to italicize for emphasis, or at least I don't know how to make it do so.

You can bold and italicize by putting a 'b' or an 'i' in brackets '[_]' at the start of the text to emphasize and in brackets after a slash '[/_]' at the end of the text to emphasize.

cool thank you for sharing your knowledge! Okay, lets see if i got it right...

Hello again,
I just re-read dragon chessplayers response again, just a little historical FYI, in England during the 16th through 18th centuries, many people were hung for stealing food, and that was considered right and just. Now that's f*cking harsh!

Hey there folks,
As one of the exalted characters that sparked this discussion, let me explain the situation: there were 3 vrocks (that's right, chaotic evil outsiders - DEMONS), doing some funky-assed destruction dance in the town square in the middle of the bodies of the townsfolk that they slaughtered, who were attempting to reach sanctuary in the chapel. If the vrocks had been able to compete their dance, they woul have destoyed the entire town, and we knew from various knowledge (the planes) checks that we had 6 to 12 seconds (1 or 2 rounds) to stop them. I, the party cleric (actually favored soul) beefed-up the monk (an exalted follower of Raziel) specifically so that he could grapple one of the vrocks with the sole intent that our party leader would coup de gras it to stop the ritual RIGHT NOW, and if Raziel or my goddess - Chalchi a war goddess of the Olman pantheon - (the DM) decided that it was an evil act and we lost our exalted status, it was a decision that either of our characters would have made anyway to save the town. Does the willingness to sacrifice all that we believe sacred to save all that we hold dear AND sacred (protecting the innocent) make it an evil act?
Both I and the DM recalled that a coup de gras is generally considered evil when used to slay a helpless opponent, but 1) the opponent was't helpless but was desperately fighting to break the grapple and continue its dance, and 2) in fact Raziel (the DM) encouraged the action. To be fair, both I and the DM were fairly certain that "a coup de gras is ALWAYS an evil act" is NOT the case, so we didn't bother to look it up.

PS sorry for all the capital letters, but this damned site doesn't allow you to italicize for emphasis, or at least I don't know how to make it do so.