What Would Qualify as "Failing to Strike Down Evil?"


Advice

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As much as I love a good Batman example, we have to acknowledge that Batman and joker exist for different purposes: The reason Batman never kills the Joker is because the Joker makes money and the world warps around the narrative to enable his continued existence.

In the context of Pathfinder, a game where we pretend to be elves who worship a butterfly from outer space, I am comfortable saying that killing an evil and unrepentant creature is not Evil and could be Good in the right circumstances. This is a setting and system that is designed to enable Adventure as the solution to most problems. There is never going to be an AP about constitutional reform and establishing an ethical judiciary and if there is, it will involve planar travel to Hell to steal something and you have to fight a Pit Fiend for it.

Whole swathes of behavior in this game are unethical and immoral from a modern perspective and while modern morality isn't an inappropriate lens by which to view the game, actually condemning the behavior it seems to encourage as evil seems counter to the tone it sells. (In PF1, there are actually a few instances of Outsiders bound/trapped in magic engines, helpless against whatever the PCs might do to them and its never suggested that executing a Pit Fiend with -19 negative levels is somehow the wrong choice.)

But its really just going to be something each group deals with at the table level.


Yeah, I mean the real reason that Batman doesn't kill Joker is
1) I don't think Batman ever kills. That's like one of his things. Maybe there are some versions out there that do, but the most known versions don't.
2) Killing the Joker would get rid of a character people enjoy seeing and watching Batman deal with. Ending his threat by death means that story cannot be written anymore.*

*Without having a whole new continuity, which they spin up all the time anyways.

But yeah, Batman doesn't kill more because of golden age comic ethics and capitalism than anything else.

Liberty's Edge

Claxon wrote:
Well it specifically precludes the stories where the righteous Paladin kills the evil cleric Asmodeus who had been trying to kill him right up until the moment it became clear that he could not win, and then decided to try to force the paladin's hand by surrendering.

My position here has always been and remains that this only applies if it’s either a legitimate surrender or the Paladin believes it to be so. If the Paladin knows that the evil Cleric isn’t genuinely surrendering, then the Cleric remains a combatant.

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Good is not Nice.

There’s an awful lot of real estate between “nice” and “doesn’t slaughter non-combatants.” I bet there are a lot of people who aren’t nice, but also don’t kill non-combatants.

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Good has no obligation to accept the surrender of evil.

I take the position that Good does have an obligation to accept the genuine surrender of evil.

Especially when good cannot control or monitor that evil to ensure they do not commit more evil.

Good is not Easy. If the best one is willing to do is slaughtering non-combatants, one just may not be a good guy.

Liberty's Edge

Bringing the bad guys to justice is NOT a crime, or Evil, or slaughtering non-combatants.


SuperBidi wrote:
"You shall not kill" is certainly the most shared rule among cultures all around the world. It is definitely evil.

IMO, this is not actually correct: "You shall not kill" is a modernization of the original "Thou shalt not murder". The difference in terms is used to signal whether society considers the killing Justified (not evil) or Unjustified (evil).

Capital punishment for especially egregious crimes has been an enduring and broadly accepted part of most cultures, and frankly still is today outside of some relatively small and scattered groups of absolutists.

This is why we have so many various terms to describe deaths (capital punishment, accidental death, manslaughter, homicide, etc.), let alone all the rules of war debates.


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BloodandDust wrote:


Capital punishment for especially egregious crimes has been an enduring and broadly accepted part of most cultures, and frankly still is today outside of some relatively small and scattered groups of absolutists.

Describing the people who disagree with as, "small and scattered groups of absolutists" does not strike me as a particularly measured of unbiased position, all things considered. Friends north of the border say, "hi"


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BloodandDust wrote:
Capital punishment for especially egregious crimes has been an enduring and broadly accepted part of most cultures, and frankly still is today outside of some relatively small and scattered groups of absolutists.

You mean more than half of the world including all western countries but the US? (why do I keep considering the US a western country...)

Capital punishment has been battled over the 20th century. The only last countries keeping it are the exception.

BloodandDust wrote:
This is why we have so many various terms to describe deaths (capital punishment, accidental death, manslaughter, homicide, etc.), let alone all the rules of war debates.

The only cases of acceptable deaths are self defense and those under the rules of war (and war is evil, it's just that you don't always choose it). Capital punishment is lawful evil. It's a specific case where a Paladin could choose not to bring someone to justice.

Kasoh wrote:
In the context of Pathfinder, a game where we pretend to be elves who worship a butterfly from outer space, I am comfortable saying that killing an evil and unrepentant creature is not Evil and could be Good in the right circumstances. This is a setting and system that is designed to enable Adventure as the solution to most problems. There is never going to be an AP about constitutional reform and establishing an ethical judiciary and if there is, it will involve planar travel to Hell to steal something and you have to fight a Pit Fiend for it.

There's a line between a hero and a murderhobo. I agree that they may sometimes be mistaken for one another, but still the former is good when the latter is evil.


SuperBidi wrote:
Kasoh wrote:
In the context of Pathfinder, a game where we pretend to be elves who worship a butterfly from outer space, I am comfortable saying that killing an evil and unrepentant creature is not Evil and could be Good in the right circumstances. This is a setting and system that is designed to enable Adventure as the solution to most problems. There is never going to be an AP about constitutional reform and establishing an ethical judiciary and if there is, it will involve planar travel to Hell to steal something and you have to fight a Pit Fiend for it.
There's a line between a hero and a murderhobo. I agree that they may sometimes be mistaken for one another, but still the former is good when the latter is evil.

Not in the writing. Only in the execution. (Hah!) It is possible to murderhobo your way through an adventure and still end up good. When murderhobos turn evil, its because the players weren't paying attention to who they should be killing and murdered the wrong guy.

Liberty's Edge

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SuperBidi wrote:
You mean more than half of the world including all western countries but the US?

Twenty-three of the States don't have have capital punishment, either, and another seven have it on the books, but also have a moratorium, as does the Federal government. Most of the U.S. doesn't practice capital punishment.

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The only cases of acceptable deaths are self defense

There's a general consensus that violence in defense of others is also legitimate, and that's fairly relevant to heroic fantasy.

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and those under the rules of war (and war is evil, it's just that you don't always choose it).

I'd say that there's a meaningful distinction to be made between aggressive and defensive war.

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Capital punishment is lawful evil. It's a specific case where a Paladin could choose not to bring someone to justice.

I'd argue it's a specific case where, in order to live up to the tenants of Good, a Paladin is obligated to not turn someone in. That could potentially lead to some massive complication (i.e., additional adventures), but if you want easy moral choices, Paladin seems like the wrong class to pick.


SuperBidi wrote:
BloodandDust wrote:
Capital punishment for especially egregious crimes has been an enduring and broadly accepted part of most cultures, and frankly still is today outside of some relatively small and scattered groups of absolutists.

You mean more than half of the world including all western countries but the US? (why do I keep considering the US a western country...)

Capital punishment has been battled over the 20th century. The only last countries keeping it are the exception.

More than half the world's legislatures? Sure. That is not culture though. Canada only passed the capital punishment ban by 6 votes in 1976, which was before mass immigration. Odds are good it would not pass today, given your more global/less homogeneous cultural mix. US laws vary by state but more half the country supports capital punishment for egregious crimes.

Neither of those cover attitudes towards war, self defense, and protection of others.

Only a small and scattered minority hold an absolutist view that all killing everywhere is Evil.

SuperBidi wrote:
BloodandDust wrote:
This is why we have so many various terms to describe deaths (capital punishment, accidental death, manslaughter, homicide, etc.), let alone all the rules of war debates.
The only cases of acceptable deaths are self defense and those under the rules of war (and war is evil, it's just that you don't always choose it). Capital punishment is lawful evil. It's a specific case where a Paladin could choose not to bring someone to justice.

Ah, so we agree after all! Not all killing is Evil, and some of those non-Evil killings include self defense and rule-of-war situations.

All we have to left to debate then, is at what point permanently retiring a violent habitual criminal, child rapist, etc. qualifies as personal or social self defense. :)

SuperBidi wrote:
Kasoh wrote:
In the context of Pathfinder, a game where we pretend to be elves who worship a butterfly from outer space, I am comfortable saying that killing an evil and unrepentant creature is not Evil and could be Good in the right circumstances. This is a setting and system that is designed to enable Adventure as the solution to most problems. There is never going to be an AP about constitutional reform and establishing an ethical judiciary and if there is, it will involve planar travel to Hell to steal something and you have to fight a Pit Fiend for it.
There's a line between a hero and a murderhobo. I agree that they may sometimes be mistaken for one another, but still the former is good when the latter is evil.

I agree with this.


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In a fantasy world it may make sense that killing people makes the world a better place. This view collapses once one tries to bring real world examples into play, however. It turns out no amount of killing people society deems worthless actually has a measurable benefit to the wellbeing of a society (although often a considerable benefit to state control).

Perhaps we ought to leave real world arguments about the death penalty at the door and argue about fantasy morality in its own milieu (being that of quasi-historicity and our own imaginations)?

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