Tarn Kilragh's page

Q: "Player Versus Player: Who really wants this?"

A: Sociopaths.

Actually, that's not fair. Every time two sweaty middle-aged men lock themselves in a squash court, it's PvP. Every time two teams of head-injury-prone meatballs gather together to play football, it's PvP. PvP isn't inherently wrong, bad, or evil. It's just not HEROIC. And being heroic is a massive part of this hobby, which is why PvP feels so weird. The key is that in sports, PvP is agreed-upon. In an RPG it better be agreed-upon as well, or else, well, sociopaths.

It could serve a story purpose if there was some OOC agreement on where it was going (think Batman vs. Superman at the end of Dark Knight Returns) but a game that "focuses" on it is asking for trouble for so many reasons. Not least among which, you're explicitly encouraging rules-lawyering and munchkinry.

Two or more PC groups competing in a race to snatch the magical MacGuffin from the BBEG's lair first? Fine.
PCs coup de gracing each other and mutilating the corpses so they can't be raised/using Animate Dead to make them into zombie slaves, you might as well be running Bumfights. Have you ever known nerds *not* to take something relating to their pet fandom personally?

Edit: now I think on it, a game similar to Assassin/Mafia with an evil player or two per group (but nobody knows who they might be so everyone is a suspect) could be fun, I suppose, if handled properly.

RumpinRufus wrote:

OilHorse wrote:

RumpinRufus wrote:

It depends on your deity.

Torag or Iomedae would tell you "kill 'em babies!"

Shelyn or Sarenrae would say "spare them and raise them in the light."

Erastil would say "try to raise them right, but if they still turn evil then kill them."

There's not one monolithic "paladin" thing to do, it entirely depends on your deity.

Torag, God of Protection. Not so sure that he would automatically say kill the baby.

Not so sure Iomedae would see the honour in killing babies either.

Torag's paladin code example says:

Torag's paladin code wrote:

Against my people’s enemies, I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except when strategy warrants. I will defeat them, yet even in the direst struggle, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag.

So if the babies are orcs, goblins, or giants at least (potentially other based on the paladin's homeland,) Torag says "no mercy".

I'm pretty sure babies aren't his people's enemies.

Unless his favored weapons are a bottle of whiskey and a coat hanger.

Only way I'd bring it up in game would be if a party was slaughtering the adults with no reason other than "they're orcs". They'd have to fight their way past a desperate rear guard trying to buy the non-combatants time to escape and then deal with the mothers and older children begging them for mercy and throwing themselves in front of the babies.

The paladin, assuming there was one, would have fallen long before reaching the babies.

Posting under the name of my half-orc paladin of Erastil who long ago made the choice to spare the goblin babies outside Sandpoint.

At that point it's less "would this make my paladin fall" and pretty much all the way into "I'm going antipaladin, how sweet can I make the deal for my new patron fiend?"

Okay, so a boulder is rolling down a hill and will crush 5 people unless you divert its course in which case it'll crush 1 person...

It's a game. If your DM derails it into a discussion on ethical philosophy more suited for a bunch of lit majors discussing Dostoyevsky than trying to have a good time, he's breaking the unspoken social contract of "everyone at the table is there to have fun." And if he's doing this to screw someone who's trying to play a Paladin for the sake of screwing them, he's in dereliction.

If it comes up at all as a storytelling device in any context other than backstory, it's probably needlessly divisive (as this thread demonstrates) and doesn't contribute much to the gaming session. In other words, red flag of DM dickishness.

You don't have to play a game with no winning moves.