RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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I've never understood where the notion of CdG being inherently evil is coming from.
So it is perfectly morally justifiable to skewer grunts of the opposing army by the dozens, even though they are 1st Level Warriors, and you are a 20th Level paladin, and they could not hit you were it not for natural 20s. But woe is you if you ever as a priest use "Hold Person" on an otherwise superior foe, and kill him cleanly and quickly?
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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So it is perfectly morally justifiable to skewer grunts of the opposing army by the dozens, even though they are 1st Level Warriors, and you are a 20th Level paladin, and they could not hit you were it not for natural 20s. But woe is you if you ever as a priest use "Hold Person" on an otherwise superior foe, and kill him cleanly and quickly?I completely understand where you are coming from. But the thing is: the warriors did have a chance to do something, whereas the Hold Person, or more specifically my problem with a bound person, it just seems like murder. In the case of justice, with the law directing, no questions; but right after combat, with no more worries or immediate threats, to simply kill bound or helpless enemies...that's where my question comes into play.
Did they? Let us be generous and give them a Longsword attack of... well, how about +3 total? Our hypothetical paladin has an AC in the middling 30s, and about 200 HP, and a DR of 10/magic. That means he handily absorbs even the average critical hit without so much as a scratch. It is as likely (if not more) that our priest rolls low on the CdG-damage and the opponent survives, breaks out of the spell, and proceeds to fine-mince the priest on his next turn.
I think the discussion about this (and poison use) is because one is seen as honorable, while the other is decidedly not. Good and evil, though? Does not neatly line up.
It is all context, IMHO. I see "Honor" as a concept orthogonal to the alignment system, not inherently tied to either axis. Sure, lawful characters tend to be more chivalrous, but there is also the "Robin Hood"-type chaotic. ;)
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Maybe someone should start a new thread (or revive an old one, if such a thing exists) about alignment and its difficulties...
Sure. Which of the 98 gazillion would you like to reopen? Alignment is one of the most discussed, and most flamed, part of the game. And no tow people can agree on it. It works best if the GM says: Ok, people, here's how what Good, Evil, Law and Chaos mean in my campaign and leave it at that. Most people will agree on most of it, but the corner cases like poison use, coup de grace, slavery (yes, it doesn't have to be Evil.) will provoke a firestorm that Summon Red Adere couldn't stop.
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I agree that it really depends on the situation. And be careful when "honor" gets involved, especially when there are so many flavors of it.
One guy might consider it honorable to always fight fair, but there's always going to be someone who sees that as pointless pride when fighting dirty would present less risk to innocents, which he sees as his code of honor.
Personally if the Big Bad is coming to eat the orphans in Urchintown, I could never approve of heroes challenging him to single combat one at a time when everyone jumping him at once and punching below the belt would end the threat right then and there.
I guess that's also why I hated DBZ.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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But with you bringing up honour, which I think is very tied in with the alignment system(but I also think is oddly seperate from it all), shouldn't or wouldn't the paladin go for non-leathal damage and not kill obviously too weak of opponents. Which I think would be the same sort of situation for the cleric and Hold Person. Honour binds them to not kill obviously too weak of opponents(low level or helpless).
I could play advocatus diaboli now, but won't. Especially since that is the case i have been making. If you want to enforce honorable behavior by the alignment system, then that is a valid choice. However, a consequence of that choice is that "resourceful-but-principled" characters will tend towards the evil side of the spectrum while "legalistic-honorable" will not.
But my particular situation deals more with exalted characters. Wouldn't they be even more honour bound to not kill, but to try to "save" the NPC; even at a great personal sacrifice?
And BTW, TerraNova, I really enjoy your point of view and understanding of the situation. It's helping me a lot, thank you.
~Corvas
Thanks for the compliment. :) One of the few things i can really do with being sick and travelling to the bathroom in regular intervals is get into these discussions.
Exalted characters are even less well-defined than the normal alignment system, but yes. Generally, the "goodier" a character is, the less willing he should be to just take lives, IMHO. 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...
And then there is the abomination that is the "Sanctified Creature" template... Yuck...
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Maybe someone should start a new thread (or revive an old one, if such a thing exists) about alignment and its difficulties...Sure. Which of the 98 gazillion would you like to reopen? Alignment is one of the most discussed, and most flamed, part of the game. And no tow people can agree on it. It works best if the GM says: Ok, people, here's how what Good, Evil, Law and Chaos mean in my campaign and leave it at that. Most people will agree on most of it, but the corner cases like poison use, coup de grace, slavery (yes, it doesn't have to be Evil.) will provoke a firestorm that Summon Red Adere couldn't stop.What I meant was a discussion on how to apply it, not whether or not the system works. A lot of new players and DMs have a hard time grasping the concepts involved. Good and evil are presented in D&D as simple concepts, but as you pointed out, the dichotomy is controversial.
I'd like to find a simpler way of explaining it, myself. After all, we were talking about coup de grace and whether or not it could be considered inherently evil.
That raises a question in itself. SHOULD we make rules about certain acts being evil or good? Or would the problem be better served by having individual nations within a campaign make those decisions. I could see poisoning weapons being illegal in a civilized nation, while on a frontier, it might be a standard practice.
The problem is it depends on the situation very much. Would it be Evil to kill Cyrius the Black, Anti-Paladin of Vecna when you manage to catch him sleeping on the copses of the latest innocent woman he's raped and murdered? And if it's not, then is it Evil to kill little Tommy Thompkins when he steals a loaf of bread to feed his family? I suspect most players will feel differently about the two scenarios. Which is why I think the DM and players need to be the ones that determine the rules.
The number of things that are inherently Evil or inherently Good, Chaotic or Lawful should be very, very, very small, though. After all, the game can be played so that high-minded moral paragons or murky vigilantes are both Good depending on the play style at the table. Hard and fast rules are always going to to be impossible to please everyone with and on something like this are probably to be avoided in the game books, but decided by the group.
I thought that I read somewhere in an official book(i.e. wotc published) that a coup de grace was always and irrovecably evil. In all cases, against all foes, and in any situation. The trouble that I'm having now is that I can't find anything at all that seems to corroborate or contradict this.
You may be thinking of the spell death knell or the rules for sacrifice in Book of Vile Darkness.
Coup de grace really depends on the circumstances and the intent, rather than the act itself.
The problem is it depends on the situation very much. Would it be Evil to kill Cyrius the Black, Anti-Paladin of Vecna when you manage to catch him sleeping on the copses of the latest innocent woman he's raped and murdered? And if it's not, then is it Evil to kill little Tommy Thompkins when he steals a loaf of bread to feed his family? I suspect most players will feel differently about the two scenarios. Which is why I think the DM and players need to be the ones that determine the rules.
In either case, it depends on the local laws and the status of the PCs within those laws. In both cases, it may be the PCs' duty to capture the individuals and turn them over to the relevant authorities rather than killing them.
Also, the nature of the punishment vs. the offense needs to be considered. Applying a death penalty for the theft of a loaf of bread is a pretty excessive punishment for the crime, even if the laws allow it.
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.
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Here is my take:
If you are playing a good or honorable character, when you enter battle with an opponent you have the agreement that the battle is to the death, with no quarter asked or given (ie. coup de grace is expected).
Now, if you claim quarter and your enemy agrees, and you use coup de grace, that certainly makes it a chaotic action.
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But this was a homebrew world and this seemed to work very well, until an assassin got free of his chains and murdered two players and me.
This is exactly why the interpretation that Coup is evil frustrates me. If you defeat an obviously evil or vile opponent, how is sparing their life good? if they survive, their chance to commit evil does as well. Some would argue that their chance to do good also survives, but honestly, if they did not ask for quarter but were offered it instead, wouldn't you do exactly what this assassin did? I know my villain would.
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.
Coup de Grace is not inherently evil. There are some circumstance where I would rule that it is , in fact an evil act. However, used against an evil opponent who happened to become helpless would not be one of those circumstances.
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Here is my take:
If you are playing a good or honorable character, when you enter battle with an opponent you have the agreement that the battle is to the death, with no quarter asked or given (ie. coup de grace is expected).
Now, if you claim quarter and your enemy agrees, and you use coup de grace, that certainly makes it a chaotic action.
This is probably the best answer to the question I have seen. It follows logic, and allows for surrender.
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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.
For an offical answer.
Is a coup de grace attack an evil act? (i.e., can a paladin make such an attack without falling from grace?)
The coup de grace is simply a kind of attack and is neither inherently good nor inherently evil. In some cases, it’s the best option against a foe (such as an unconscious but regenerating troll). If attacking a particular character would be considered an evil act—such as stabbing an innocent merchant in the middle of his shop—delivering a coup de grace on that character would be just as evil.
Of course, if the paladin has already promised to face her foe in nonlethal combat, delivering a coup de grace would almost certainly violate her code of conduct.
Is the death penalty evil?
... The death penalty for serious crimes is commonly practiced and widely accepted and does not qualify as evil, even if many good characters, firm in their belief that redemption is always possible, would rather see even the vilest criminals offered the opportunity to find their way to righteousness. ...
To point out, if you were grappling a foe, your ally could not perform a coup-de-grace on him, even if he was pinned. You must be helpless in order to be coup-de-grace, which grappling does not make someone.
Also things to think about, if you are going to keep someone alive, how are you going to contain them? What if they are powerful spellcasters? Fiendish creatures? Monstrous beasts (beholders anyone)?
EDIT: Also, one thing to remember, the absence of evil is not necessarily good. For example, while the death penalty for serious crimes may not be evil, that doesn't mean it is a good act either. Thus exalted characters would probably want to find a better way to deal with the person if at all possible.
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.
Note that it was mostly used when the opponent was fatally wounded, to shorten his suffering, hence the name misericorde.
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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. ;)
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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.
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.I think it is better to separate the character's thinking and understanding from the player's thinking and understanding. For most exalted characters it is not that they wouldn't decide to give up their exaltedness, they just wouldn't even consider that a possibility. They would believe with every fiber of their being that doing exalted deeds is the only way to succeed ultimately. A player on the other hand might decide to have a character act a certain way for some advantage, but if he doesn't understand the mindset of the character he is playing there can certainly be some confusion.
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.
Killing fiends for being evil is worse than killing (most) mortals for being evil. What? How can that be? Think about it. Fiends are "created" evil, they don't have a choice. Even if a fiend manages to change their alignment, they still retain the [Evil] subtype (without some kind of ritual to remove it). But mortals aren't born with an alignment (a non-neutral one anyway), they have to earn one through their deeds. Thus when a paladin learns a mortal is evil, that mortal did deeds to become evil, but when a paladin learns a fiend is evil, well that is just the creature's nature. Killing it on that basis is like killing an elf for being an elf (I mean we all want to do that but it still ain't good). Stop the prejudice against the fiends. They aren't bad, they are just created that way.
...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
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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.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.
yeah? My players just decided to sit the thing out since the leric had no specific mandate from his diety ti onterfere and the rest of the party was too mercenary to care. In my campaign the two societies ended up coming together and magically creating the half-orc race by mingling the blood of human and orc on the alter of their joint diety. In order to prevent violence among them again, she turned them all into a hybrid of human and orc.
Very much doubt that there was ever any kind of official ruling.
Some creatures in the game have the special ability Regeneration. Most famous, of course is the troll.
Certain attack forms, typically fire and acid, deal damage to the creature normally; that sort of damage doesn’t convert to nonlethal damage and so doesn’t go away. The creature’s description includes the details. A regenerating creature that has been rendered unconscious through nonlethal damage can be killed with a coup de grace. The attack cannot be of a type that automatically converts to nonlethal damage.
In other words by the game rules it is nearly impossible to kill any creature that regenerates unless your allowed to coup de grace.
Hence, unless one wants to argue that those that battle trolls are always evil, coup de grace can't be a particularly evil activity in and of itself.
Very much doubt that there was ever any kind of official ruling.
Please see the quote from FAQ above for an official ruling.
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.
I hated that picture and its proposed message from the moment I saw it. Inccubi and succubi are demons, creatures birthed of pure chaos and evil (which, in D&D land, are objective forces just like gravity). They are incarnations of corrupted, vile, impure lust. The notion that such beings are even capable of love strikes me as nonsensical. Show me a paladin who sees one of those beings copulating and thinks "Oh, it must be in love," and I'll show you a paladin who used Wisdom as a dump stat.
Killing fiends for being evil is worse than killing (most) mortals for being evil. What? How can that be? Think about it. Fiends are "created" evil, they don't have a choice. Even if a fiend manages to change their alignment, they still retain the [Evil] subtype (without some kind of ritual to remove it). But mortals aren't born with an alignment (a non-neutral one anyway), they have to earn one through their deeds. Thus when a paladin learns a mortal is evil, that mortal did deeds to become evil, but when a paladin learns a fiend is evil, well that is just the creature's nature. Killing it on that basis is like killing an elf for being an elf (I mean we all want to do that but it still ain't good). Stop the prejudice against the fiends. They aren't bad, they are just created that way.
I seem to recall hearing this (several times) before. The argument assumes that fiends are not the reincarnated souls of hideous and vile people. The Fiendish Codices indicated that at least a sizeable percentage of the fiendish population is just this (a notable case is Orcus himself, who was once a mortal spellcaster). Then they actually did arrive at their current situation by actions.
Of course, I feel that is the weakest rational to reute the argument presented, because it lends credence to the argument's claims that the destruction of fiends can, in any way, be an evil act. While it may not be a good act (the genocide of the Blood War, the ages-old battle of the fiends, is not a good act), the removal of a fiend, a raw, elemental incarnation of all that is vile and horrid in the mutliverse, is never a bad thing. To return to the Blood War once more, the entities of the Upper Planes are quite happy to let the battle rage for eternity and even seem to rely upon it.
Of course, the manner in which a fiend is killed could, concievably, be evil. Again, the Blood War provides the perfect example. When two forces of absolute evil are unleashed against each other, one can only imagine the greusome and terrible acts which they must perform against each other. The fact that the victims of those acts are themselves avatars of perversion in no way mitigates the actions' evilness. But in terms of "simply" killing or destroying a fiend, that in and of itself cannot be evil.
IMO, of course.
Ack! Utilitarianism!!! Now that is inherently evil!
Agreed. :)
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...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.