Originally Posted by quatoria
B/c part of the essence of being good is not sacrificing morality for the sake of expediency. Cold blooded killing under truce is a bit beyond the pale. Casting yourself as the immediate judge/jury/executioner is always questionable with a big slippery slope. I agree with rasputin/GA that this will have serious repercussions with the good members of the Order and of course Celia the fairy chick.
Nah, man, look at the points she makes. "Who cares if we kill one now, it's just one less we'll have to fight later."
And in the other set, "who cares about what they want, it's to my personal gain."
I cherry picked a couple of examples that I remember well, but there are plenty more -- like the time she loots an entire room before the Order shows up.
She's always been focused on her personal benefit to the exclusion of all else. Just sometimes it's less apparent than others. I guess I'm saying that the whole Rebel line was an exception rather than her new rule, and that this is more true to her character.
As to causing problems, yeah I agree this is gonna be an issue down the line.
That's assuming of course that the Guild doesn't decide that it would be easier to use her as a scapegoat.
They've been known to do that if it's more convenient for them.
Man, you guys are pretty thick headed when it comes to D&D morality. What Haley did was absolutely 100% Evil in the D&D sense of the word.
We can argue about whether or not D&D morality makes sense (it doesn't), whether or not Haley was really justified in doing what she did (maybe). But if we accept a D&D alignment system (which the world of OOTS does), there's really no room for argument.
What? In D&D, if you're of Good alignment, and you kill an Evil creature -- human or otherwise -- then you've done a Good act. At least, that's how I thought. It's how D&D allows you to hack and slash to your heart's content without worrying so much about the morality of the thing. Its whole purpose is to excuse otherwise unacceptable behavior by defining morality according to rigid predictable rules.
It was 100% Chaotic, certainly. But Chaotic hasn't meant "Evil" since Basic D&D.
Maybe you guys are right - but I don't think so. I suspect that there's going to be fallout for what Haley did. it wasn't some throwaway thing, Rich lingered on it and Belkar (who is the most avowedly evil of the OOTS) seemed rather pleased with the development.
I'll absolutely give you that it's a different level from the others. However, if I didn't put that in there, you might accuse me of leaving something important out. I don't think that it's real world significance to you or I is as great a gap for fantasy characters, though, who get into life and death situations every day, sometimes twice if the random encounter roll goes bad.
Your last comment misses my point entirely. The aforementioned Inigo Montoya seeks revenge (and OMG KILLS) for his murdered father and this is righteous and good by heroic standards. Yet, Wesley, when faced with the man who actually did kill him (mostly) spares his life. Okay, part of that was he had to bluff, but given his track record in the killing department as The Dread Pirate Roberts, it isn't a stretch to say that he'd give Humperdinck a chance to surrender during the fight itself.
Haley absolutely had motivation, but as others have said, she took expediency over morals when she killed Crystal, especially since she waited until Crystal was totally defenseless to do it. While Haley has previously been a selfish character, she's never gone in for killing on that level before, so this is a new thing. Again, if she'd just pinned her to the wall and shaved her head, I wouldn't be making this argument.
That Belkar approves of it should be evidence enough.
Exactly right. I used to play a spanish-inquisition style paladin just to highlight this absurdity in D&D. He'd capture enemies when killing them was more convenient, preach at them for an hour, and then use his detect evil power to see if his preaching had reformed them. Of course it never did, so off with their heads!
Have we established that Haley is even good to begin with?
Edit: Never mind. She's Chaotic Good and I'm sticking with that -- and that this action is perfectly suited to a Chaotic Good individual in D&D. And that Belkar's joy is with the Chaotic-ness, not the evilness.
Last edited by Rimbo; 04-28-2009 at 11:19 AM.
That's pretty awesome.
Hahahahahahaha!!! That's great!
Except that Haley corrected her "IF Bozzok raises you" which is either a narrative device to cast doubt on the odds of Crystal's return, or it's a truly cruel act on the part of Haley, instilling fear into Crystal that she might NOT be raised right before the moment of her death. Which actually makes it a bit worse.
Well, keep in mind that she didn't actually kill the hobgoblin. There are two points being made in those strips you cite: one, that she considers her previous acts to be under the banner of war, a moral justification that pretty much everyone can follow to excuse acts of killing, and two, that she's a different leader than Roy. Roy would've flown off the handle about Belkar killing people, Haley knows that she can't control Belkar and isn't going to agonize over him killing a creature that got in the way of things.
I'll buy that she's always been self-interested, but she's never stepped into murder herself. There's a big line between robbing someone and taking their life, and keep in mind that her whole motivation for taking all the loot was to ransom her father.
No, I'm sticking with it was an Evil act. There's a vast difference between the flimsy D&D justification of "Well, they're Evil!" for the wiping out of a dungeon for gain, valiantly slaying the evil Necromancer in heated battle and waiting until the evil Necromancer took off his magic vestments to hit the sack then sneaking in and stabbing him in the face. That's why the Assassin class was Evil-only.
And we see where that style of play landed Miko Miyazaki and the Sapphire Guard in the OOTS world, don't we?
What I outlined and what Miko did were fundamentally different. Miko had delusions of grandeur that made her willing to circumvent legal processes and implicitly trust her own suspicions as proof. My paladin would have never done that. He just killed evildoers, which is AOK all day long in D&D.
Kraaze, while your character is a clever meta-comment on the rules of D&D, alignment-wise a LG character having a creature (presumably intelligent enough to understand what your paladin was saying, I'm assuming your PC was not a total idiot) totally in your power enough to force them to listen to you for an hour or so, then killing them afterwards is an extreme act. They are totally helpless, unable to fight back, and you are not in any immediate danger. What you are describing is NOT Lawful Good.
However, arguing the specifics of D&D games (diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks) is a bit too nerdy for me. Suffice to say that the Sapphire Guard went out exterminating whole tribes of Goblins simply because they were Evil. While they retained their paladin abilities is one of the subtle digs Rich makes at the wacky morality of D&D (just as your PC did) and the Southern Gods' morality system, the effect of it was that it gave rise to Redcloak and resulted in the utter destruction of their kingdom due to their oppressive, draconian measures.
D&D? D&D is the most hack and slash rule set I've ever played, players routinely go around killing "Evil" foes without first checking whether they're actually evil. In general things like Orcs and Ogres are killed on sight -- but mightn't they be good?
Yeah, maybe, but that never stops the thief from backstabbing them in cold blood, the fighter from cleaving them en masse, or the wizard from Fireballing them before they have a chance to spread out.
And lets face it, sure Haley had reason for revenge, but the professional Assassin she offed was blatantly evil, dangerous, mad already tried to kill her, claimed she wasn't done, and was clearly plotting to continue whenever she could. Moreover Crystal's job was murdering people for cash! You think your average D&D party, full of (mostly) good members, would just bring her in for questioning or something?
At absolute worst this is vigilantism. I'm with Rimbo, Chaotic Good -- she did what she felt was clearly the right thing, and didn't give a damn what the law or society thought about it.
Would it be lawful good if he brought the generic evil doer back to the local ruler, where he was then summarily executed for being evil? This is meant to be a medieval world after all. Or must there be no capitol punishment in a lawful good society? Consider that, from a Paladin's perspective, summary execution justified by ultimate authority is exactly what happened -- given D&Ds contrived Detect Evil crutch.
Furthermore, certainly you've played D&D? What do you suggest a Lawful Good Paladin should do when (as he surely will) he finds his party members slaying "known" evil doers without due process? Bring them in under citizens arrest? Leave the party? Chastise them limply? More likely he'll play along gamely, as that's how D&D is.
Or lets take the quintessential D&D Lawful Goodness -- Arthurian Knights. Would they have a problem summarily executing a proven Assassin. No, they would not. They might balk at slaying a woman, or someone unarmed, but that is an entirely separate issue.
Ok, enough arguing about silly RPG morality. I really should quit procrastinating and get back to work. ;-P
Last edited by Jasper Phillips; 04-28-2009 at 12:09 PM.
Fixed.
From what I'm seeing, you're still confutzing "Lawfulness" with "Goodness." Paladinbitch fell not because she betrayed her good side, but because she betrayed her Lawful side. And while what Haley did was definitely 100% Chaotic, and definitely opportunistic, it was no more evil than, say, slaying an evil dragon. Now if Haley had gone off and murdered not just Crystal but everyone who'd ever been related to Crystal, that'd be pretty evil, because they'd never done anything to offend Haley. And it's safe to say that by doing this, Haley has probably made herself, the OOTS, and generally a large number of people who might otherwise have been killed by Crystal safer.
(Edit: And while I'm very clearly saying that this is not an evil act by the rules of D&D, this is by no means intended to suggest that I believe that people in real life are justified in slaying "evil" whenever, chaotic good or otherwise. As Kraaze points out, this is a game, not real life. And I would expect that the worst thing to come of this would be some commentary by Rich suggesting just that.)
To be clear, I'm not arguing that D&D has crutches built in to allow for the hack n slash instead of constant morality debates. What I am saying that at that point, you had effectively captured the monster, and at that point the laws of whatever land you were in kick in.
The Arthurian Knights you bring up were authorized representatives of the King, so they were part of the legal system for that land and were justified in handing out punishments. Your typical adventurer is just some schmuck killing monsters for xp and money.
Like I said, D&D's a game, and all games are different to some degree, but the games that I've played in, the killing of a helpless opponent would be considered a non-Good act.
There's that word, rasputin: Laws. Laws. And if there's one thing we know about Haley and one thing we know about D&D, it's that in the system, "Lawful/Chaotic" and "Good/Evil" are completely orthogonal.
Is it lame? Is it sensible? Is it realistic? Doesn't make a shit; it's a game, not a philosophical commentary.
Precisely! It's ok for them because they are Lawfully appointed.
Boy, you sure fell into that rhetorical trap easily. ;-)
[Edit: Damn, Rimbo beat me to the punch!]
I'm not confutzing anything. Would Robin Hood have run into Prince John's chamber and whacked him when it was convenient? No, and he was probably Neutral Good.
The big difference that people are missing here, in my view, is that Haley was the aggressor in this situation. Sure, you can kill an evil dragon or ogres or orcs in D&D, but typically they have been doing evil acts to begin with. An adventure typically starts with "Oh, help us adventurers conveniently in this tavern, kobolds/orcs/tax lawyers have been raiding our village!" to give the PCs a reason to go after them and show immediate danger. The adventure doesn't start with "Vampiria and Humanistan fight a lot, but have a truce right now, screw it; let's wipe 'em all out 'cuz they're evil undead!", it starts with "Vampiria and Humanistan have a shaky truce, but we think Vampiria's up to something, go find out what!"
Haley was under a truce and broke it which accounts for Chaotic, she did it for personal gain which accounts for a Neutralish alignment, but that she did it to someone under that truce (the halfling leader definitely saw the benefits to upholding/enforcing the truce as opposed to high level adventurers beating the shit out of him and his guild) who was totally powerless to defend herself and did it with forethought and pleasure pushes it into the Evil act category for me.
Look at the OOTS strip in On the Origins of PCs where Roy is in a group that encounters a bunch of orcs. All but Roy (and maybe Durkon) want to slay them outright with no provocation, but he stops them and talks to the orcs, and everything works out fine. Rich has shown through this and through the Sapphire Guard that while D&D's flimsy justifications work for NPCs, the PCs are held to a different standard and often poke fun at the tropes.
Well, um, he certainly wanted too. He was definitely whacking somebody.Would Robin Hood have run into Prince John's chamber and whacked him when it was convenient?
Except when the two converge in a PC to make a glorious whole. They were lawfully appointed, at that point their own morality kicks in to help them interpret that law. A paladin is not Lawful at some times and Good at others. A paladin is both Lawful and Good at all times, or should at least be trying to be (see strip where Roy has died and is interviewed about his life). If killing an unarmed and helpless opponent is a Good act in your morality system*, well, Belkar says "Hi."
*I totally grok the point that people are trying to make about D&D being a flimsy justification for mass slaughter of dungeon dwellers so that the game works. However, comics like OOTS, Dork Tower and Nodwick are about making fun of that trope, see above that PCs in OOTS are held to higher standards than this.
In medieval Europe, barons, knights, dukes, et. al. had either High or Low Justice. High Justice gave them the authority to execute wrong doers for serious offenses; Low Justice was concerned with comparatively minor matters. In a well-designed D&D campaign, paladins belonging to a recognized order (and many clerics, too) would be given one of these as a part of their investiture at specific levels. If they had High, they could judge and execute in the field; if they had Low, they'd have to return with captives to a higher authority. Either way, they'd still be Lawful as long as they operated within these preset limits. Higher "levels" of justice could even be earned as a result of completing quests, gaining rank in the organization, seniority, or whatever, providing some nice roleplaying hooks. Sir Goody Twoshoes, level 1 noob paladin, probably wouldn't be allowed to sneeze without a superior's say-so, while Grand Master Pureheart would be a roving courtroom/executioner.
Of course, most campaigns aren't well-designed, and "justice" is pretty nebulous as a result.
Last edited by Dave Markell; 04-28-2009 at 04:32 PM.
Nerds
Just so you guys know, I don't even read this comic, but I enjoy poking into this thread occasionally to see the OCD dissection of D&D minutiae. So, good job nerds, keep it up!
Right there? Stopped reading.
Expediency? Mate, I'm sorry, but this is a question of pure human survival. We're talking about an enemy who came a second away from managing to murder you, has sworn to kill you, and has hated you for decades. The second you teleport away, it is a past certainty that this enemy will begin hunting you down with all the means at her guild's disposal in order to find you some dark night and slit your goddamn throat. There's no room for negotiation here, this is quite literally a nemesis, and only a fool would leave one of those behind to take another crack at killing you if they could do anything about it.
If it's 'evil' to kill someone in the shower to stop them from trying to slit your throat a few days, months, or years later, then, fuck, throw me in the evil camp. I'll have a cozy campout with the rest of the people who don't want to get murdered because they wanted to 'fight fair' with psychotic killers.
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