We’re playing Rise of the Runelords, so minor spoilers I guess? If you seriously haven’t played that yet? Or like seen any P1 artwork.
Long story short, we’ve got a Paladin of Iomedae who is like the rest of the party, 110% DONE with goblins. The GM has been merciless with the bastards. We’ve seen them light old people on fire, they killed the kids who were chasing butterflies, and have majorly screwed up one of our parties NPC wifues. The Paladin even tried sparing some of them from the raid and they just ended up burning a farm and killing the family in ways I can’t discuss on this forum.
So when we went rocking into the Goblin camp we have shown 0 mercy and are at times using terror tactics on the buggers. And then we get to the room with the goblin kids. General call was to just go Goblin Slayer on their little green butts. However the GM is stuck on whether or not the Paladin can take part, which he kind of wants to since his NPC sister also got badly burned and lost her house in the attack.
There is also the fact that there are no Goblins alive to take care of them and there an't none gunna come back cuz the huts are trapped. The our Oracle has been using the term Exterminatus.
Oh and worth noting that they do pop up on the Paladins Detect Evil.
Depends on your gm.
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Detect evil usually only pings on evil creatures 5 HD+, or on clerics who follow an evil god, or on evil outsiders or undead. Your GM could be giving you a hint, they might not be familiar with detect evil or they could be trying to make the paladin fall with bad info; not enough data to tell.
Personally I'd call killing children evil, even children who have been raised to be evil themselves if they're not so old that changing that might be reasonably likely (CE goblin rogue 5 or CE goblin cleric of Lamashtu 1, not reasonably likely). There's a lot of varying opinions on any issue touching on alignment though.
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Seriously, the player should talk with the gm. You'll get a lot of peoples personal takes on it but there are enough arguments in either direction that the only opinion that matters is the GM running for the paladin.
It is entirely reasonable in the years of training and religious observation that the paladin would quite simply know what the doctrine says about that situation. Paladins would have been in that situation at one point and either fallen or not, and you can bet that any organization devoted to serving the will of another being is going to examine situations where that beings displeasure shows up intently.
Ask for a knowledge religion roll to think of similar instances within the faith.
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I'd go by Iomedae's paladin code:
(...)
When in doubt, I may force my enemies to surrender, but I am responsible for their lives.
(...)
I will be temperate in my actions and moderate in my behavior. I will strive to emulate Iomedae’s perfection.
Personal feelings about goblins shouldn't impact judgment, even if family was affected. That's part of being a paladin: You believe in something greater than your mortal instinct or emotions. Finally, it wasn't the kids who did all this. By RAW, goblins are not automatically evil:
Alignment and Religion: Goblins are greedy, capricious, and destructive by nature, and thus most are neutral or chaotic evil.
So for me the question would rather be: Can I allow my fellow adventurers to slaughter goblin kids?
Of course this is just one take on it.
if they pinged as evil in the evil-dar they might actuly already done evil stuff. in the goblin info i seem to recall that the babies are left to fend for themselves with little if any food and cannibalism is common. murder is evil, killing and eating someone is even more so. if they are kids and not babies i can see them being evil enough already to get the chop.
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The proper choice is to postpone adventuring and devote your lives to rearing the goblin children. You will need to establish a homestead away from Sandpoint and other settlements in case the goblins aren't able to overcome their early learnings and resort again to violence. You must raise them as your own, hoping that that they take any and all of your teachings to heart, bucking the norms of their society and becoming their own people. Perhaps learning individuality will help them understand that what their forefathers did was wrong and allow them to become members of civilized society. Once they're adults, you can perform summary execution on the lot of them; they reach adulthood at 13.
But seriously, you should ask the GM what the tone of the game is. Any GM who uses morality traps is just asking the campaign to get derailed, especially if the campaign expects the players to partake in genocide without batting an eye.
It may even vary from deity to deity. I'm not sure if Iomedae would be cool with that, but I think Torag would be ok. And if you were a paladin of Serenrae, it'd be a big no-no.
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Ah, yes. The moral conundrum underlying the little-discussed fact: people who get stabbed/stab others for a living aren't really all that "good" by real-life standards.
In 3rd, Good and Evil were not just different philosophies; they were real, quantifiable forces that governed the universe. I'm not sure how that got translated in Pathfinder, but some things are born evil. Are fundamentally evil. "Evil" is as much a part of them as their eyes, limbs, teeth and hair.
In one of my settings, orcs and goblins are Tolkienian; creatures warped by evil who only love war. They're not a people, they have no culture. They're a primal force, like mortal demons. Redemptionis impossible.
But in another, they're more akin to especially warlike tribes of people. They are strong and wild, but also noble and spiritually attuned, with traditions and goals outside of mindless bloodshed. Redemption is absolutely on the table.
As the others have said, you'll have to check in with the GM and make sure you're all on the same page. It doesn't sound like the paladin's god would be cool with it, but it really depends on whether the enemy is redeemable or not.
And yeah, allowing actions against your code to take place is just as bad as doing them yourself.
I'm not a fan of overtly grotesque, so-called "mature" content in games (you never know what sort of real-life trials your players have gone through), but I AM a big fan of this sort of temptation for a paladin. "These guys are evil. Oooh yeah, so evil. Want to smite them? You could. They deserve it. So bad. You should do it. DO IT." ...but you can't. There's no honor in butchery.
We think we found a work around. We're just going to lock the cages, then on our way out just toss them in bags and take them back to town. We figure we can just throw them at the church. They'll either become clergy or second class citizens, either way the wild goblins are taken care of. We already agreed we were going to take the Boss (You know the one) and their cohorts alive anyway so we have already borrowed the prison wagon.
I don’t think you necessarily even have to take them to a church, though that might be the kinder option. Dropping them at any legitimate authority should be fine. If the city guard decides it would be better to kill them, then that’s their problem. And really who’s to say the local church won’t have an inquisitor who might want to kill them anyway.
Could start your own monster orphanage, I suppose. Nobody's using Chopper's Isle for anything, right?
Are you saying that sentient beings that have tools, their own culture and songs and language arent people because they have different values?
That's barbaric.
Maybe "archaic", but that was the stance of many civilized cultures through history, so "barbaric" isn't a great fit.
Cleanse them with fire.
The party in my Kingmaker campaign came across a Mite nursery after killing a
clan of Mites, and chose to adopt the babies rather than slaughter them. But they also befriended the Kobolds and the Spriggans and the Centaurs, so I can't say that it surprised me.
Honestly, though, the baby Goblins shouldn't have shown up on Detect Evil, so it seems like a trap. Either the GM doesn't know the rules of Detect Evil, or it's a setup to against the Paladin.
Oh and worth noting that they do pop up on the Paladins Detect Evil.
Wait, what? Why? Even most regular goblins won't show up on that.
Oh and worth noting that they do pop up on the Paladins Detect Evil.Wait, what? Why? Even most regular goblins won't show up on that.
as i said, cannibals
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as i said, cannibalsOh and worth noting that they do pop up on the Paladins Detect Evil.Wait, what? Why? Even most regular goblins won't show up on that.
Ugh, sorry I asked, this thread is doomed enough without going down that route.
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One needs some degree of power to ping, as has been pointed out earlier.
The most evil of weaklings won't get much of a reaction.
If those gobbo children ping, well, they're not actually kids. They're faking it, and hey : your paranoid paladin smelled it out before it became a problem.
One needs some degree of power to ping, as has been pointed out earlier.
The most evil of weaklings won't get much of a reaction.If those gobbo children ping, well, they're not actually kids. They're faking it, and hey : your paranoid paladin smelled it out before it became a problem.
I was thinking the same thing... either babies don't show up, or they aren't babies. Lol.
You could cast infernal healing on them first so they ping evil...
In cases like these, I'd say: if the creature in question isn't born evil (and goblins aren't, as they are a player race in 2e) I would think the paladin would instead take them to be raised by non-evil people or the like. If the creatures in question are born evil (e.g most evil outsiders, although most of them seem to be "born" as adults) I'd say it's ok to kill.
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I guess the boards haven't been sustaining the requisite level of falling paladin threads. Has already been said, but goblin babies would not detect as evil unless they're really badass 5HD babies.
This is an old debate and it basically breaks down into two sides:
Side one says look, they have evil printed in their stat block. Pathfinder is a simplistic black and white world, so no problem, kill away. It's designed that way for guilt free fun (Just like Starwars).
Side two says the absolute morality of the alignment system is just a game mechanic conceit which we try to ignore and add shades of grey into the setting. So it comes down to which camp does your GM sit in.
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In cases like these, I'd say: if the creature in question isn't born evil (and goblins aren't, as they are a player race in 2e) I would think the paladin would instead take them to be raised by non-evil people or the like. If the creatures in question are born evil (e.g most evil outsiders, although most of them seem to be "born" as adults) I'd say it's ok to kill.
2e goblins are an abomination and this is the 1e forum, where they need special gm permission to be played.
Kind of depends on the setting.
If Goblins are evil as a product of their environment and culture then baby goblins might not be evil by default and could be raised to be productive if somewhat impulsive members of society.
on the other hand like in my homebrew setting Goblins could be a creation of the dark gods, meant to be easily replaced fodder for their armies against the light. Embodiments of Gluttony they can survive on little food but reproduce through over eating, growing pustules that drop off and grow into full goblins within a week, a handful of well fed goblins can quickly become a massive horde threatening everything in the area.
In my case Goblins are basically a Bio-weapon created by evil gods and a Paladin better have his stomping boots on.
2e goblins are an abomination and this is the 1e forum, where they need special gm permission to be played.
Meh. Debatable. My only issue with goblin PCs as 2e presents them is that, by every right, they should be uncommon. It's what they're described as being, a marginal sliver of the overall population - short of certain specific places. And the traditional goblin way of life has always felt unnatural, in an interesting way, at least to me.
But that's another discussion entirely.Alignment auras have rules, and children should not have much in the way of said auras. Even goblin, orc or drow youths, no more so than a chelish kid or whatever other evil culture/race.
If they do, shenanigans are involved.
In cases like these, I'd say: if the creature in question isn't born evil (and goblins aren't, as they are a player race in 2e) I would think the paladin would instead take them to be raised by non-evil people or the like. If the creatures in question are born evil (e.g most evil outsiders, although most of them seem to be "born" as adults) I'd say it's ok to kill.2e goblins are an abomination and this is the 1e forum, where they need special gm permission to be played.
Fine, but I doubt any humanoid race is born evil. I've always thought the only creatures that are born evil are evil outsiders, undead (which aren't actually "born", but you get what I mean) and maybe some aberrations (I think James Jacobs said things like love and compassion are completely alien to the algollthuh (aboleths and their kin), so it's hard to see how they could not be evil.)
You are assuming that goblins are people. If the GM has decided that they are always evil, no exceptions, then killing them out of hand is perfectly acceptable, even laudable.People are products of environmental. Ship them off to sarenrae and feel better about not killing babies.
Heres a hint though. If you feel odd about it, a Champion of good should probably feel something too.
Good means do right by everyone.
Are you saying that sentient beings that have tools, their own culture and songs and language arent people because they have different values?
That depends on your definition of 'people'. You're clouding the issue, because that isn't what I was talking about nor what the OP was.
If the GM has determined that goblins are always evil no exceptions, they are always evil no exceptions and killing them is a good act.
Sentience, culture and tool-use is irrelevant. If all their values are evil values then killing them is pretty much by D&Definition a good act.
If that is what the OP's GM was going for, and having kids ping as evil really indicates that, then killing goblin kids is fine. Killing all goblins is fine. At the very least, killing these goblins is fine.People don't seem to have this problem with demons. Say every demon is evil and there's no problem with killing them. Say every goblin is and you have people screaming at the top of their lungs that this is horrible.
Actually say every demon is evil and they'll trot out a spoiler from an adventure path, and then another module and nocticula the redeemed, never minding the direct divine intervention in basically all of these examples.
Creatures with actively evil intents count as evil creatures for the purpose of this spell.
So the goblins likely were plotting to murder them!
Actually say every demon is evil and they'll trot out a spoiler from an adventure path, and then another module and nocticula the redeemed, never minding the direct divine intervention in basically all of these examples.
It still annoys me. Outsiders being literally made up of a concept of evil being redeemed is dumb.
Was gonna say, there are plenty of people who would have problems with murderdeathing every demon they meet without evidence of evil intent. Maybe we just don't play in the same circles.
Creatures with actively evil intents count as evil creatures for the purpose of this spell.So the goblins likely were plotting to murder them!
It still annoys me. Outsiders being literally made up of a concept of evil being redeemed is dumb.
Actually say every demon is evil and they'll trot out a spoiler from an adventure path, and then another module and nocticula the redeemed, never minding the direct divine intervention in basically all of these examples.
I find the concept of evil having metaphysical properties wholly separate from either the intent or practice of sentient beings to be actively harmful to the gaming community, and I find Paizo's furtherance of this scheme in their settings to be their greatest creative and ethical failure. Fortunately, given enough likeminded players, we can all play how we want.
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I think as Pathfinder and Paizo evolved, they decided they wanted to move away from the moral absolutes of the alignment system they inherited from D&D and to make things more nuanced.
Just look at the goblins in question. They went from psychotic monsters to be exterminated on sight in their first AP to player characters in their new game.
I think as Pathfinder and Paizo evolved, they decided they wanted to move away from the moral absolutes of the alignment system they inherited from D&D and to make things more nuanced.
Just look at the goblins in question. They went from psychotic monsters to be exterminated on sight in their first AP to player characters in their new game.
I think that's less "progressiveness" and more Goblins are a very visible mascot race that separates Pathfinder from other TTRPGs. So it makes sense from a marketing standpoint to get people on board seeing them as more than evil gremlins.
Subverting alignment expectations was already an old idea in D&D. Drizzt Do'Urden was the most obvious example. I'm sure you can find a good demon if you look deep enough.
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When I ran that section, I left out the goblin babies specifically because of all the arguments that room has spawned over the years. I so didn't want to deal with that. :)
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This is a fun thread.
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Just to note that by default the goblin baby cage room is currently empty but it has note for "If you want to have moral questions, add baby goblins" :p
Anyway, I find it kinda questionable yer gm had baby goblins ping as evil unless they were like fighter 5 baby goblins :p
Also just to note, 1e goblins aren't inherently evil, there is LN goblin as early as in Council of Thieves
Only thing that is fundamentally different in 2e non evil goblin portrayal vs 1e non evil goblin portrayal that 1e non evil goblins tends to be non evil because they are incredibly dumb or have latched onto idea that they really follow(such as the LN goblin who really thinks they are a hellknight despite being just goblin in fullplate hellknights use as sewer scout). Though I agree that orcs should have gotten core book treatment rather than goblins, goblins as written in 2e feel like they should be uncommon because apparently Varisian style goblins are still majority of them(even if in isger they tend to be milder mannered)
Just to note that by default the goblin baby cage room is currently empty but it has note for "If you want to have moral questions, add baby goblins" :p
Anyway, I find it kinda questionable yer gm had baby goblins ping as evil unless they were like fighter 5 baby goblins :p
Also just to note, 1e goblins aren't inherently evil, there is LN goblin as early as in Council of Thieves
Only thing that is fundamentally different in 2e non evil goblin portrayal vs 1e non evil goblin portrayal that 1e non evil goblins tends to be non evil because they are incredibly dumb or have latched onto idea that they really follow(such as the LN goblin who really thinks they are a hellknight despite being just goblin in fullplate hellknights use as sewer scout). Though I agree that orcs should have gotten core book treatment rather than goblins, goblins as written in 2e feel like they should be uncommon because apparently Varisian style goblins are still majority of them(even if in isger they tend to be milder mannered)
Orcs or hobgoblins, although i'd lean toward hobgoblins given the way ironfang invasion shakes out canonically. the orc nation is crumbling, disorganized and as a race other than the one chieftan they're not big into diplomatic interaction with other peoples.
Shouldabeen hobgoblin.