Sleeping Human

Viscount K's page

Organized Play Member. 779 posts (2,097 including aliases). No reviews. 2 lists. 1 wishlist. 1 Organized Play character. 23 aliases.



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Witch of Miracles wrote:
This is willfully misunderstanding the argument. We all know the same statsheet can have a bunch of different personalities attached to it. That doesn't make it not the same statsheet doing the same actions. WE want mechanical diversity.

Well said. Roleplaying well has almost nothing to do with the mechanics, so it's unrelated to a discussion about the mechanics. If you feel there's a rule that's getting in the way of your ability to storytell, that's something else, but mechanics like that are few and far between, and entirely separate from the possibilities for character diversity in any case.


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Isonaroc wrote:


Quote:
I'm definitely not in the majority because of this, but I feel PF has overstuffed their classes. You don't need a special ability every level. I like 3.5 for their take on classes a little better.
Eh, I much prefer having at least something every level. It was always a bummer when you knew the next level you were gaining was a dead level.

Yup; that's just good design there. If you level up, it should be interesting and fun every time. Not necessarily a huge power increase, but making a choice or adding a bonus feature that makes it feel like your character is actually different from level to level, regardless of how much your average numbers do or do not go up.


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Male Half-Elf Witch 1, Cleric 1, HP 13/13 (14 NL dmg)

Teral raised an eyebrow at Talas and lowered his chair to the floor, facing the man directly. His face was earnest as he replied. "Might as well get used to it, friend. You live here awhile, you learn that there's almost nothing that isn't worth a laugh now and then.

Curses, monsters, Hells...even death, from time to time. If you take it all so Takh-spawned seriously, you won't ever be able to get used to it. You won't ever be able to take it and make it a part of you, make yourself stronger by its presence. It'll only weigh you down."

He shook his head, remembering. "I know as well as any the prices we have to pay sometimes for the life we live. Some of the things I've seen, things I've done, are literally too awful to remember, most of the time. But I stay, and yes, I laugh at it." He cocked his head slightly. "There's a reason for that."

"Those odds you mentioned. They change." He took out the talisman he'd employed earlier, the golden coin, and flipped it back and forth. "Two sides to any coin, right? One side, Fortune's with you." He placed the coin on the table, holding it up on edge with one finger, one side facing Talas. He turned it slowly, so the other side faced the man instead. "The other, she has it in for you. Every day, every moment, no matter where you are, you flip the coin, and you get a different answer. Some days," he snapped the coin to the table with a clack, "the coin comes up wrong, and you end up with a day like today." He flipped to coin over with a practiced twist, and it rang with a pure-sounding note as it rolled around on its edge, settling in place. "Others, it comes up right, and damn if those days aren't amazing. They can make up for all the bad, if you take the right advantage of it."

"Being here?" He gestured around at the chamber, including all the city in it. "Here is how you take advantage. In Arch, you learn that life and luck is more than the coin flip. It's a card game. There are ways you can improvise, rules you can twist, some you can break."

He nodded to the Oracle. "Jon over there has figured out that time isn't always a straight path forward, and with the Godstone as his seeing glass, he can watch the paths we all walk and tell us which one to take."

Gesturing to Darian, he went on. "The Headmaster has more combat tricks in his head than any dozen other brawlers, and you can bet he does his damnedest to share them with every last recruit that comes through his Academy."

He waved at the rest of the table. "Look around you. We have every single kind of guardian, every trainer and every aide you can imagine. Of every world I've ever heard of, there is nowhere you could go that would ever give you the tools that Arch can. Here, you learn to play the game with the best. You learn how to walk up to Lady Fortune and tell her what game you'll be playing today." He paused just a moment, looking around at all the recruits. "And yeah, sometimes we lose a hand, and we have to give up the pot."

He kicked back in his chair again, tossing his coin into the air and slapping it to the back of his hand. "The trick is to win it back." Peeking at it, he looked up at Talas and the rest again and smiled warmly. "If you'd care to learn how, I say stick around."


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Male Vampire Dwarf | HP: 170/170, AC 23 T 19 FF 17 | Rage: 24/31 | Ki Pool 7/7 | Grapple CMD: 40

"Survival, to find signs of Dwarf." Hah!

On the cavern floor, he found a shallow impression, rounded on one side, and grunted in recognition. His companions looked on, worried. "Is it...?"

"Yep. Tankard impression." He looked up, his expression tight and grim. "Dwarf sign."


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[HP 16/16 | AC 20; T 14; FF 16; CMD 15 | Fort +0, Ref +6, Will +2 | Init: 3; Perc: 6] Half-Elf Vigilante 2; Gestalt Mesmerist (Vexing Daredevil) 1

If the Sergeant has nothing left to offer, Sholano's gonna murder him or encourage Erick to do so immediately. We need to keep up our pace getting out of here before too many more guards converge on us.


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Male Half-Elf Witch 1, Cleric 1, HP 13/13 (14 NL dmg)
Eythil Dreyer wrote:

Eythil plans to stay down with the Wolf and heal it, in case more Orcs show up and have it fight them.

This was not a very well thought out plan on his part. He is used to seeing the creatures of the Forest fight the Orcs and recalls how his tribe could make them fight for them. Having never been properly initiated by the Druids, he does not clearly understand how things like Wild Empathy or even handle animal really work. He expects things to work the way he wants... This could be a very rude wake up call for him.

Wait, wait. He lives in the Forest of Dread and is used to things working the way he wants? That is one self-deluded dude.


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I'm not sure if a spell like that would be overpowered - the community seems to be pretty far from a consensus on whether or not the FAQ ruling was necessary in the first place. That said, I think the only question to answer is based on the idea that the FAQ was necessary and Haste must therefore be the baseline of power for this sort of thing.

Working from that premise, I'd say, in order to balance such a spell with Haste, it needs to be not quite as good in some way other than the extra attack. I don't think it's too overpowered, but it would be definitively better than Haste, at least for the magus who's supposedly casting it, so it needs some kind of tweak. A higher spell level seems like a bit much, but maybe fewer targets affected, or perhaps a shorter duration, is in order.


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I feel like fluff is important - but not necessarily the specific fluff outlined under each specific ability or class. I want a player, or GM, to explain how an ability is working and/or where it comes from, but I don't want to be constrained to it only being the way it says in the book. Holding someone to the specifics doesn't allow for us to tell the stories we want to tell, and that's the whole point, isn't it?

Basically, the rules are the rules, and the fluff is the fluff. Both are important to get right, but as long as they align thematically, I don't care which is used where.


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True, Bruunwald could have been more polite about it - but his underlying point is a good one. Sometimes, the rules are what they are because otherwise, the game falls out of balance. When the rules are very clear on what you can and cannot do, we have to justify how it works in the game world, instead of the usual of making up rules to make the simulation do what we want it to.

In this case, I think that the best justification is the one several people have suggested - that the magic item won't activate without a particular focus or specific pronunciation, such that you have to pay attention to do it right.


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^This, and...

Jeez. I'd never even thought this was a question, and neither had any of the rules-lawyer madmen that is my local gaming group. We'd all been pretty sure that the bloodline spells only come with the bloodline, which is, obviously, a class feature that doesn't come with prestige classes, unless they get all fancy with it like Dragon Disciple. If nothing else, the fact that Dragon Disciple specifically grants them their bonus spells special says to me that it's definitely not ordinarily the case.

I'll grant you that with a certain view of the text, the RAW could be slightly unclear, but I've gotta say, the intent is nodded to in enough places I don't even think this should be FAQ'ed - just seems like wasting the staff's precious time to me.


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The summoner who's afraid of his eidolon.

...I take it back, I might play that, actually. It would be kind of awesome to have a character who refuses to use his main ability until things have gotten totally screwed.


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Male Half-Elf Rogue (Charlatan) 5

No worries. I suppose offspring must take precedent over managing imaginary villains.


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In a little-known corner of Golarion, there rests an even littler-known town. Once a center of trade and culture, this little village has declined to not much more than a tiny collection of barely-tended farms and halfway-competent shops. But the people still hang on, loyally clinging to their ancestral homes.

Recently, a major trade caravan has constructed a new thoroughfare between two of the country's largest cities, bypassing the traditional path that brought most of the remaining trade to the little village. The village, while still a scenic spot, is declining even further, and people are beginning to say that they may have to abandon their home at last.

As descendants of the town's village heroes, and co-owners of the single tavern, you have decided this will not stand. You set out to bring back your village's reputation and re-establish your business as the hottest spot on Golarion!

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Introduction
Welcome, friends, to an epic tale of business and tourism, of kingdoms and hamlets, and most of all, working hard for the money: this mini-campaign that's been buzzing in my head for some time now, finally set free.

This is a game about building up your business, and your little town, into the greatest version that you can imagine. Loosely based on some of the concepts in the video game "Recettear: an Item Shop's Tale", we'll be running the game almost entirely business/donwtime-centric. Yes, you all will be adventurers, but when you go out adventuring, we'll handle that portion with a glossed-over cinematic approach. Roll a few dice, decide how well you've done, award gold and xp based on that, and give a quick summation of your amazing adventures, then back to the important business of running/improving your tavern and town! Oh, there may be the occasional dragon that needs slaying, or perhaps a troll or two might come to town, and you heroes will be called on to handle it, sure, but that's more of a sideline. You're too busy here in town to go looking for such silly things.

That's not to say there won't be challenges, though! As your business and town grow and improve, you'll find yourself butting heads with the major trade caravans and larger cities, competing for resources, territory, people, and, of course, money.

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Game Details
We'll be mostly using the downtime rules from Ultimate Campaign. Fear not if you don't know these rules, I not only intend to handle most of that side of it, but I'll probably be modifying them on the fly as we figure out what works or doesn't work.

One of the main themes I want to play with here is that the scale of this game is going to be determined by the scale of the character's ambition. If you focus solely on running and improving their tavern, then this'll end up mostly as a game about a particularly awesome tavern. On the other hand, if you start focusing on expansion of your town into a city or kingdom, then suddenly it starts becoming a game about running a city. And if that kingdom then starts getting greedy, or pisses off its neighbors too much, then we're looking at a full-scale war game.

The game is starting in a little town in an idyllic location in the wilderness of the River Kingdoms. It has a little bit of everything - situated in the forest, by a lake with mountains looming behind them, resources abound to meet almost any construction or production needs. What's this place called? We'll be working that out as a group once the players are chosen. Similarly, the tavern that you all own has no name at the moment.

I'm looking for about four players, more or less depending on how many interesting applications I get.
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Applications
Crunch:
If you haven't figured it out yet, this is not going to be a numbers-heavy game when it comes to your characters. However, let's get that out of the way first, since I know it helps some folks brainstorm.

  • Level: 1 to start with.
  • Classes: Any official Pathfinder material is legal, except for the Advanced Race Guide.
  • Races: Any of the core races are fine, other official races on a case-by-case basis (but they're probably fine). No custom races, please.
  • 20 Point Buy
  • Average Character Wealth
  • Everyone must have 1 rank in one Profession skill.

Backgrounds: I don't need an epic sweeping background for this one, though if you want to supply one, that's fine too. Still, I'm looking for flavor and motivation more than anything in the numbers, so give me enough to get a feel for your character. You may have noticed, humor is going to be prevalent in this game (mostly because I don't feel like trying to separate the silliness of the concept from the game itself in my mind), so try to have a sense of humor. Your character doesn't need to be silly, but don't give me grimdark, either.
A point that should probably be made on this topic: I'm not looking for characters who can only run a business/town and aren't of any use to a normal party. Yes, you are going to be managers for the most part, but you'll be using your heroic skills to do it, as well as to actually adventure from time to time.

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A Final Word
As I stated earlier, I'm more interested in concept than numbers. Give me an interesting story, or awesome flavor, and I'm way more willing to give you all kinds of leeway in what you can get away with in the game. One of the primary reasons I game at all is because this is the only medium I'm aware of where you can be rewarded for trying to accomplish something awesome, even if it's doomed to fail. Frankly, I'm looking for good writers. I don't want to see a game that reads like a collection of stats and rote actions, I want to see something that I can look back at later on and read to entertain myself.

Lastly, a couple notes on time management. I'm not putting a time limit on recruitment just yet. I'm pretty much willing to let it run until I do or don't have enough character concepts that interest me. I will make sure to give a few days warning before I make my final choices. As for pace once the game starts, I intend to be fairly casual about it; my life runs pretty busy most of the time, and I'm not going to ask more of you than I would myself. If you can make a post a day, great. Otherwise, I'll just make sure things keep moving along several times a week, making assumptions about people's actions as necessary if they're slowing us down. If I haven't heard anything from someone in a couple of weeks, then I'll start looking around for replacements, although a good enough excuse ("My house burned down!") would probably get me to let you back in.

With a bit of comedy, some ludicrous ideas about making a viable tourist trap in a fantasy setting, and a few creative PCs, I think we'll have ourselves some fun. Capitalism Ho!


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Male Half-Elf Rogue (Charlatan) 5

Sholano gives Shendalyn an amused look and a friendly grin. "Nothing so extravagant, I'm afraid. I am, to the extent anyone is, what I seem to be - merely a man, although one possessed of exceptional talent."

That'd have to be Shendalyn, the one with the awful pet. Slick, but not as slick as he thinks he is. Play on the ego, give him someone to chum around with.

He spreads his hands in a gesture of helplessness towards Jethryk and Cruxcarr, indicating their somewhat macabre conversation, the slightest bit of worry in his eyes, though he seems to be trying to hide it. "But then, we do seem to find ourselves with far more fascinating traveling companions in our line of work, don't we?"

Sick bastards, both of them. Work the fright, let them think you're intimidated.

About to continue on with the conversation, he pauses as Alina interjects, raising an eyebrow at her and her apparent man-at-arms, and flashing his smile once more, this time inviting and welcoming. "Ah, where are my manners? Lady Ariposa, and...guard, I presume?"

Hard to get a bead on this one. She might be trying for a joke, there, but she's not making much of an effort yet. Maybe amp up the zealotry a bit? And who the hell is this unfriendly bastard? Hm. There was mention of a fifth, but I could've sworn they said something about a lesser devil of some kind. Illusion, probably. Blast, that's gonna be a trick. Sooner or later, though, I'll find your angle, make no mistake.

Continuing to smile, he takes his seat again, gesturing that the others should do the same. "Well then, friends. Should we get started?"


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Wafflecopter.

...my players are weird.


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JonGarrett wrote:
As for why guys like scantily clad women in there video games (oh hey, the topic) I'm kinda clueless. Even as a horny teen I preferred my female character to have depth, and clothes. My only guess is that it helps some guys feel all is right in the world, and women dressing for them to oggle is somehow good and right. But then, I don't have a very high opinion of some of my gender.

Hokay, so first things first: I am not even beginning to chime in on the rest of this argument, just the bit of your post that applies to the original topic.

The 'why' you refer to in the above quote: This seems fairly obvious, doesn't it? Whether it's politically/ethically correct or not to portray women in this manner is another question entirely, but why would guys like there to be scantily clad and/or sexy women in video games? For the same reasons we would ever like such women to exist anywhere, at any time, in any venue - because we like to look at them. Genetic imperative, pure and simple. I'm certainly not saying that alone is a good reason for including such characters in a game (or media of any kind), but the why, both the why of many guys liking it and the why of its inclusion, is easy.

Whether you meant it to or not, that last paragraph pretty strongly implies that in order to enjoy such things, a man must be some kind of misogynistic jerk. I'd like to think that some of us are capable of appreciating an aesthetic, or a fantasy, without having to believe that "women dressing for them to ogle is somehow good and right". Sure, we prefer characters we interact with to have depth - but a woman having depth does not necessarily mean she must be conservative, nor does a lack of depth mean she must dress or act sexy. And for that matter, seeing an attractive or sexy woman (real or not) and appreciating it is not a bad thing. It's how that influences your behavior that determines the good or bad.

I think the question shouldn't be whether a certain type of behavior, or style of dress, or whatever, should be included in media or not. I think the question should be doing it right. If a woman - or a man, for that matter - is going to look or behave a certain way, then make a character that makes sense for that aesthetic. Sometimes, a woman may be intelligent, strong, and confident, and feels like dressing in a skimpy outfit. As in the game world, so in real life: Good for her.

Just in case somebody feels like jumping down my throat for this, I would like to reiterate one more time that I am not advocating the random inclusion of bikini-clad women just for the amusement of the masses. I'm just saying that when that sort of thing shows up, it's not inherently a bad thing. Only when it's abused is there a problem. Admittedly, it does get abused pretty often, but not every time, is all I'm saying.


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Tiny Coffee Golem wrote:
I like that a lot. I'm going to go with that.

Behold the fountain of random character hooks that is my brain! Partake, and be bountiful!


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Technically, the wackiest thing I've ever seen wasn't a player, but a class feature.

A few years back, our entire circle of friends was playing several concurrent games in a mishmash homebrew setting. Sort of a lighter version of Planescape, wherein portals to all worlds were available and thus anything was possible. One of my buddies decided that his newest character was going to be a druid with an Animal Companion, and he would focus on making said companion as fantastic as possible, almost ignoring the base character. The next world we traveled to happened to have a desert theme...

And thus was born Shan-Lo, the Glorious Camel.

To this day, I can't remember a damn thing about the character my friend was playing other than that camel. It could talk, had the highest Strength in the party, and was our primary tank for several adventures. In a reversal of the usual stereotype, we honestly forgot (more than once) that there was a druid following the camel around.


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Bears don't technically hibernate. They just sleep all winter if given the choice. This is why they can wake up so quickly if disturbed. This extremely long nap is referred to as winter lethargy, characterized as different from true hibernation primarily in that the body temperature of the animal does not lower significantly, and the drop in heart rate is far less.

On a related note - creatures that actually hibernate tend to wake up every few weeks during the winter for frenzied periods of eating and passing waste, during which they use up most of the stored energy they've allotted for the winter. Creatures with winter lethargy, on the other hand, will sleep through the entire season if left undisturbed.


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Okay, having read through the thread, here's my take on all this. Before I give my particular opinion, let's run through some background on what I've been taking away from the discussion thus far.

First up, I should say that I come down in disagreement with the bulk of the OP here. You folks in favor of it do have some great points to make along the way - in particular the idea that a straight numbers boost doth not a mythic game make - but I think that the playtest as laid out so far is a step in the right direction.

Second, I also don't think that it's entirely accurate to say, as some folks have, that only the GM can introduce a mythic feel to the world. Okay, yes, if the GM isn't bothering to try, then nothing is ever going to feel interesting ("Okay, so now you get another mythic tier. Pick your abilities and let's get going." ... *shudder*), please don't misunderstand me. The way the GM runs the game is always, always going to set the tone, regardless of the rules set you're using. The idea here is that the way the boosts are formatted is important, and can make the GM's job easier.

Okay, so here's the main bone I want to pick. Several of the discussions have gotten around to high level (Level 10 Fighter, for instance) vs. mythic (Level 8 + 2 Mythic Tiers), and what that means, functionally. For instance, do we represent Lancelot as a 15th level fighter, or as a 10th level fighter with 5 mythic tiers? Personally, I feel like this is a bad example. Lancelot wasn't actually a mythic character. He was a supreme badass, yes, and achieved things that have passed into legend, but he wasn't mythic in the sense that the playtest was trying to define that term as. He never "Ascended", was never "chosen", he was simply the best knight in a time and place filled with damn good knights. Thus, I think we represent him as fighter (well...cavalier, probably, but that's a different argument). Seems to me that Hercules, or Achilles, is a better choice, so I'm gonna run with that.

Hercules was mythic because of his parentage. He was a legendary force, not because of something he learned to do, but because of who he was. Achilles, by the same token, was not just an amazing warrior, he was invincible, due to circumstances that had nothing to do with his own merits. And that's where the mythic rules come in. If you set out to build Hercules, would you build him as a straight fighter? Heck no. Regardless of how skilled he might be, the fact was that he relied on his godlike abilities to help him get the job done. Similarly, Achilles was damn good, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that being invulnerable probably helped a bit with making his legend. If we have Hercules (Level 10, Mythic Tier 5) and Lancelot (Level 15) face off, they're going to be damn near evenly matched, but for wildly different reasons. Lancelot is a way better fighter than Herc, but Hercules is the child of a god, and that makes a hell of a difference.

So that's the first point that I want to make, that you don't get to be mythic by being skilled, you get there by being something different - better, even - than regular people. Lancelot is the first type, Herc is the second. The question, then, is how do we represent that with the numbers? And yes, we do need to represent that with numbers. If we try to do it any other way, then there's no reason for us to be playing Pathfinder. If all you want to do is tell each other stories about how awesome your characters are, then go play Cowboys and Indians - over here, we're trying to codify how things work within a game world, so that everyone can understand them the same way.

Within the playtest, the way they've done this (or so it seems to me) is by codifying the gains you get somewhat differently than simply gaining another level. You get some of the usual bonuses, notably hit points, but your BAB doesn't increase, your skills don't go up, you don't become a more experienced person as we have come to understand it. When you gain a new mythic tier, you're not a more skilled fighter or rogue or what-have-you, you have gained a new source of power that enhances your abilities in unheard of ways. Your reaction time goes up dramatically, or you can spot weaknesses in your opponent's fighting style that you never could before, or you find your mind expanding to encompass schools of thought you'd never been able to access. This is the source of mythic power.

What I think we need to focus on is more of this sort of thing, and I think both sides of the argument so far have made that point. Nobody wants mythic tiers to feel like gaining a new level always has, they want them to feel like otherwordly power. The question, I think, is what does that for you. They do have to make your numbers go up in some way, or it's just GM fiat - which is fine, as far as it goes, but hardly gives us the basis for needing rules, and doesn't feel nearly as fun. So we need to find a way to increase your power (numbers!) that is different from the usual way. For me, and for some others, some of the new ways that Paizo has introduced in the playtest are the right ways, and what Jason said early on gives me hope that they know which areas to focus on to make it even better. You may not agree that the methods presented so far accomplish the goal, but I hope you agree that this goal is what we're trying achieve, presuming we stick with anything resembling the current system of mythic tiers. Am I right?


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Hyperactive Lazypants Bard 2

Hey guys, just a quick update, in case you're paying attention - My RL group is gonna be running the adventure out of the mythic playtest sometime this coming week. Once we've done with that, I'll have some judgments made, and likely we can get back to this.


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I don't think this is evil. Possibly not good, but definitely not evil. You were acting in the most efficient manner to preserve the lives of your comrades. Yes, it was done in a somewhat harsh manner, but that's the risk anyone takes when they set out to do battle. It's not like you were out slaughtering helpless children and this guy came to kick your butt, is it? 'cause sure, then I'd say this is probably evil. Otherwise, it's just pragmatic.