A Slice of Mercy
It’s not easy owning a Pizza Goblin franchise. Adventurers are all the time wandering in with outdated coupons. Feeding the delivery wargis cuts way into your margins. You’ve got to source your own toppings, and even if no one can tell you’re using canned man-flesh, fresh eyeballs are both necessary and expensive. Worst of all, you’re competing with BBEG’s retirement package on staffing, and for some reason those guys are always hiring. Just saying, if I were that poor Goblin Shift Manager I’d be just as happy to take the smiting. It would probably be less painful in the long run.
If you happen to occupy Paladin’s place in this little arrangement though, then you are sitting pretty. As a card-carrying member of Team Good Guy, he’s well within his rights to smite every mother-lurker in the room. That’s just science. But if you want to go above and beyond in your quest to make the party rogue feel like an dick, then sparing the monsters is also a great way to go.
Not just any monster will do though. If the defeated bad guy is cackling manically and promising “vengeance from my dark masters” or whatever, you’re probably better off with a quick, humane stabbing. (I can think of a certain Wizard who would be well-served heeding this advice.) Instead, you’re looking for enemies at the bottom of their character arc. I’m talking frightened cultists en route to sacrifice. Noble lieutenants torn between love of country and disdain for king. Starved beasts kept in pits to dispose of interlopers. It’s all about picking your spots. And given the looks of that dispirited greenskin manning the cash register, I’d venture to say he’s a prime target for a little self-serving leniency.
What do the rest of you merciful monster hunters think? When it comes to sparing the enemy, how do you know if you’re getting a good deal? What steps do you take to make sure you skip out on the sudden but inevitable etc.? Tell us all about your own merciful monster ministrations down in the comments!
NEW T-SHIRT DESIGN! What’s this? A brand-spanking new t-shirt in the Handbook of Heroes Store? And it features the adorable greenskin delivery boys from our somewhat obviously-named “Pizza” comic? I’ll take twelve! Proclaim your love for Pizza Goblin with this stylish slice of tasty trash! It’s the best pizza in all of Handbook-World!
ARE YOU AN IMPATIENT GAMER? If so, you should check out the “Henchman” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. For just one buck a month, you can get each and every Handbook of Heroes comic a day earlier than the rest of your party members. That’s bragging rights right there!
Nothing like Player Characters to throw a wrench into any plan. My party ends up in a dungeon without their gear, due to a series of unfortunate events involving a political assassination, a brooch no one knew was magical, and raw bad luck.
Early in this dungeon, however, they find a scroll of Breath of Life. Powerful, especially when without their gear, they’re quite vulnerable. They make their way through the dungeon, only to find an imposing enemy between them and escape: An awoken dire rat who fashions himself an arch-wizard. (Really just a wizard 3, but you certainly don’t expect a dire rat to be throwing Acid Arrows around.)
Naturally, however, the heroes prevail.
And then they used the Breath of Life scroll on the rat, apologized for encroaching on his territory, and left.
Please tell me that rat showed up to bail them out of trouble later.
They used Modify Memory to restore his shattered mind, and he used his newfound recollection of the events leading up to his awakening to give them info on the weaknesses of the illuminati-style cult attempting to take control of the empire.
My players once spontaneously decided to resurrect a corpse they found whose main purpose (I assume) was to warn that the dungeon was a dangerous place.
Luckily, the book gave a vague description of who the corpse used to be and why it was there, so I had somewhere to build off of for her character sheet and how she might react to being resurrected. I called off the session early to sort that stuff out (the players agreed), so I had plans available for if the characters decided to interrogate her, recruit her, fight her, basically anything.
They asked a couple of basic questions, found her old master, and dropped her off. That’s about it.
Know which enemy to spare and which to go sicko mode can be hard. General rule of thumb for me: guards, soldiers, and other “legal but evil” types I tend to spare or at least I don’t finish off. Bandits, goblins in caves, or cultists in the middle of dark rituals usual get the death blow. Wild animals also tends to get spared depending on the circumstances. Obviously if I’m hunting they have to die. If it’s a back of wolves simply fighting because we got too close to their Cubs, mercy. If it’s because they’re starved and/or diseased, sometimes you just gotta out them down.
Funnily enough, I spare more people the one time I played an evil campaign. But that was because I was a slave trader; people I defeat, be they rival criminals or whatever, I try not to kill so I can ship their unconscious bodies to my mover buddies and make a quick buck off the ransom. Or the one time I helped a Necromancer clear out a tribe of orcs so he can raise their physically stronger bodies up as his own minions. It’s just business.
You’d think that would be a more popular option. Ransoming knights is a thing in Arthurian legend after all. Focusing on that could be a cool way to go with a hedge knight cavalier looking to make a buck.
I guess the problem you’ll have is that the rest of the party might be a little miffed about a fellow PC giving the villain their soldiers back if it’s anyone tough enough for your average villain to care to ransom.
Well, it might be beyond the scope of what the DM planned, but it’s not as if you give the villain their important NPC with everything intact.
Say for example you captured a standard Knight. Maybe he has some important purpose to the villain like he’s a Sargent or something. Secondly, that Knight has the standard kit: full plate, great sword, heavy crossbow, and some misc personal stuff. That’s at least 1600GP worth of loot from the Knight you aren’t giving back to the villain. Then you can ransom off the Knight himself at anywhere between say, 500 or even 2000 GP. Now the villain needs to have both the money to pay the ransom and reequip the Knight, if he plans to make sure he’s ever going to go back to fighting.
So from one BPC the players have possibly made around 1600-3600 gp, obtain some high quality loot, and drained resources from the villain. Now sure, we can always assume DM villain dark matter and say that the bad guy can just make plate armor and weapons appear out of thin air so he doesn’t need to worry about actually losing money over one guy. But at that point I’d say the DM already lost, because now the PC’s would have ample reason to milk the villain of their effectively limitless resources as long as they play the long game and continue in hunting down and capturing people like knights or such among the villains minions.
It’s either that or the villain will have to start hiring cheaper minions such as Barbarians, orcs, or Barbarian orcs, or the DM will have to start making up bullshit reasons why the players can’t plunder the enemy loot like their equipment always being destroyed or for the enemy to always teleport away upon death.
No way am I actually tracking the cash value present in the BBEG’s warchest at any one time. But if my PCs make a big deal about ransom and costing the BBEG money, you can bet I’ll find some way to fold that into the story (e.g. ill-equipped foot soldiers, traitorous mercs looking to switch sides, etc.).
My players have been quite merciful in my current campaign. They’ve successfully negotiated with goblins, gnolls, sea hags, dragons… It’s kind of a Saint Martha situation, though they haven’t had to deal with a tarrasque yet. They’ve brought a tenuous peace with most of the monsters they’ve encountered. The question is whether or not the panicky townsfolk will try to kill everything behind them.
Mind you, I really shouldn’t be surprised. The entire party consists of the half-human offspring of a philandering bard-king. Of course they’re going have some empathy for those who don’t fit into polite society. (Or, in the case of the dragon, they didn’t want to be reduced to carbon smears.) And I’m happy to encourage creative, (mostly) nonviolent solutions to potentially lethal problems. I know the players are going to surprise me. May as well encourage them to do so in a way that leaves plenty of dangling plot threads for later.
It’s been an advantage in my megadugneon game that “the town” is something that can be managed, unlike the string of settlements you pass through in a more open-world setup. After 17 levels of play two dragons, several stone giants, a couple of gargoyles, and an enterprising goblin named Pie Sneak have all set up shop in town. It has been a struggle from a public relations standpoint, but that’s what the whole town council election arc was for.
“Election arc” should be an established plotline trope, like “tournament arc” or “rescue arc”.
We frequently find ourselves sparing female NPCs. But usually only if they’re not strictly super evil or have ‘waifu’ qualities (if they lack them, they later gain them with a new token). On PC is joked about as ‘collecting’ them. Examples include a Sphinx, a Salamander mechanic, a hostile sniper…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/waifudolon
I found that shouting “Surrender!” at minion type enemies after their boss has fallen is a pretty good way to go about the deal. (pro-tip shout it after you have taken your actions for the turn that way you both avoid losing out on the action economy if they don’t go for it, AND don’t look like a huge jerk for killing/hurting someone after telling them to surrender but before they had a chance to do so if they do go for it)
Once the minions go for it you can disarm them, take any wealth they happen to have and send them on their way with their own rations, clothes and similar non-valuable but important for nonviolent survival stuff.
As the basic minion types they are also not all that likely to engage in the inevitable betrayal/rematch behavior since they don’t really have the narrative heft to carry such an encounter. Probably doesn’t even have their own preassigned name unless you ask them for it.
Another pro-tip: Make sure your party is onboard with mercy. Nothing’s more embarrassing to a would-be do-gooder for their enemy to be offered surrender, only for their murderhobo buddy to do what they do best.
In my starfinder game, the party left behind an unconscious sniper to get eaten by one of these things:
https://www.starjammersrd.com/game-mastering/bestiary/enemies-by-type/plant/ksarik/
Note the bit about “its capability of extracting and assimilating other creatures’ genetic codes, temporarily mimicking its prey’s adaptations.” I’d always meant for the monster to get the sniper abilities + thirst for revenge, hunting down the party as a bizarre awakened critter later in the game. Sadly, plot got in the way and it never happened. #regrets
As a bio major, I’m pretty sure desires for vengeance aren’t genetic. (Nor epigenetic.) That would only work if the players didn’t know the technical details of the lore…or didn’t care about science, but what kind of monsters would they be then?
If its not a potential long term threat, it gets let go.
Non-caster, non-martial leader and avoids the zealot archetypes are usually let lie, or stabilized. It never hurts. And odds can favor if it sees you again, they run first.
Casters, doesn’t matter whom, are finished off immediately, no escapes, no quarter. You exist as a credible threat enough to warrant meeting an end.
Unpleasant as it may be, I feel like casters taken prisoner would at least get the Lavinia treatment in a realistic setting. They’re just too dangerous as prisoners, and solutions like “antimagic prisons” strain credulity.
Best way to handle caster prisoners:
Anti-magic lined cell or forcing them to wear anti-magic adamantine and impossible-to-unlock manacles or other restraint devices (expensive and not foolproof from mundane escapes).
Stripping them of magic permanently (difficult to do without artifacts, divine intervention, or wishes, though you can rob a wizard of their spellbook and writing materials).
Feebleminding them (cruel but effective, vulnerable to dispels).
Soul imprisonment (not far from death at that point).
Forcibly silencing/muting them them (vocal components) and/or removal of arms (somatic components).
‘Fate worse than death’ spells that permanently imprison or change them into harmless forms. These include Baleful Polymorph, Imprisonment, Scribe’s Binding, Petrification, Rival’s Weald.
Stripping them of their ability to travel through dimensions, then yeet them into a place they have no hope of escaping and/or is unpleasant.
Travel directly to the planar home of a deity that is the individual’s worst enemy (especially if they’re also your own deity) and offer them as a gift.
Like you point out, most of those sound expensive and impractical. What the hell kind of bandit camp or goblin army that manages a party-capture-TPK is going to have access to anything other than the Lavinia?
Cutting off hands and tongue seems pretty excessive to me.
Putting in a gag and tying their hands together so they can’t make verbal or somatic components seems plenty to me.
Come feeding time you can have some guard with a stick stand next to them so the AoO can stop them from casting if you really want to.
That seems a lot cheaper and easier than trying to maim them without killing them or rendering them unusable for whatever reason you bothered to imprison them in the first place.
Sure it wouldn’t be perfect, and there’d be ways around it (say if they knew both silent and still spell) but that’s not much different from how non-magical prisoners have sometimes done a violence or otherwise escaped from non-magical prisons in the real world.
The defenses only have to be good enough to be worth using for their cost that’s all.
That, or they’d want to recruit the magicians. Magicians are rare and valuable, might as well give it a whirl if they seem vaguely agreeable to it. (Or barring that, ransom to someone who can.)
Lavinia? Like, Aeneas’s wife? I can’t find any references to stories where she’s killed in captivity…or captured. Apparently her hair getting set on fire was a good omen for her descendants’ wars or something?
Like in Shakespeare.
I thought he meant Lavinia Whateley
The antimagic prisons would work in settings with a lot of preexisting dead magic zones
I smell a plot device: https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/Otataral
A digression, but I ‘ve recently been trying to get tips on “futurizing” fantasy art/characters, like making them into sci-fi versions of themselves. Any tips?
PS: Economy comic when?
Depends on what you mean by futurizing. Arranging fantasy settings into cyberpunk-style institutions and drawing the result would make for vastly different futurized fantasy than keeping everyone’s narrative/sociological roles the same and putting them into a raygun gothic universe.
I’ve got a buddy who wants to run a cyberpunk version of Blades in the Dark.
Ask me again in half a year.
As for the economy comic, I do have this old script lying around in my “rejected” document:
Title: Market manipulation.
Text: Meddle not with the economy, for it is fragile and easy to break.
Pic: Thief is set up in town at a sort of lemonade stand. She’s got two signs out front. One says, Will buy old ladders for 5cp. The other sign says, 10’ poles, 2 sp each. Thief is grinning ear to ear as peasants with ladders line up on one side of the booth and adventurers walk away with 10’ poles on the other. There’s a large pile of coin in front of Thief.
Dialogue: —
Scrollover: No refunds.
As with so many of my failed scripts, the problem is that this is a three-panel gag. Figuring out how to make an economy comic work as a single-panel illustration remains a challenge. If you’ve got an appropriate scenario in mind I’m all ears.
Have a cross-section, the stall in the centre working as a “panel divide?” On one side, warrior is taking ladders off the commoners, and on the other thief is giving out the poles whilst turning to wink at the reader. In the centre, in the darkness of the stall, we see commoner making the magic happen.
I agree, the stall should be the panel divide (although there is still the issue that the panel isn’t particularly wide (hmm, I think the panel is slightly taller than it is wide, so maybe it’s a cutaway of a two story building with one business on each floor instead?)
You begin to see why Laurel rejected this one, even if the concept is OK.
You know what, I think I’ve got it, the ladders are being bought from townsfolk on the top floor in town, and the lower basement floor is attached to some kind of cave or dungeon where adventurers are buying the poles.
Lol, “Meddle not with the economy” should be “Don’t try to understand the economy, ever.”
Have the 10-foot poles sold out of the front, and show a side-door with a sign offering to buy old ladders and someone carrying one in?
Kill them all. Raise them as undead.
Yes, we exist here too.
Efficient.
wat
Step 1: Genre Awareness.
Is the canine warrior in front of you a cruel servant of Set, or a good doggo who gets very excited for pets? Is that siren a heartless monster, or an insecure would-be musician? Is that spider-monster a cruel slave-owner, or just a cutthroat businesswoman? (Splitting hairs, I realize.)
Sometimes you’ll find context clues that help you tell the difference. But no context can be as useful for as many monsters as knowing whether you’re in a straightforward dungeon crawler or a character-driven morally-gray narrative adventure.
I feel like there could be an RPG where “Genre Shift” is an action.
But for real, the difficulty is that the same game can be both a “straightforward dungeon crawler” and a “character-driven morally-gray narrative adveture,” shifting from session to session and scene to scene. In that sense, meta questions directed to the GM like, “Do I get the sense that these guys are irredeemably evil?” can help to get everyone on the same page in terms of expectations. It breaks immersion, but at least it lets you know whether your GM is feeling PG-13 or hard R that day.
I’d question whether that would qualify as a straightforward dungeon crawler, but my group has been more or less permanently locked firmly a couple notches from the straightforward-dungeon-crawler end of the spectrum, so I can’t claim much personal experience.
In urban campaigns I try and make a point of taking as many Dwarfoid (Or “Humanoid” if you’re boring and think everything should be defined relative to the ape-folk) foes alive as possible. Captured foes can indict co-conspirators.
When away from civilization prisoners are a dicey prospect, but I try to honor surrenders/take one alive for questioning.
In general I think society has ingrained in me an aversion to killing anything that could be described as “People”.
For real. Leaving someone injured and stripped of their weapons is perhaps a crueler fate than a quick death. Ain’t nobody wanna play the DiCaprio survival game:
https://cdn2.creativecirclemedia.com/chestnuthilllocal/medium/20200622-130623-web-flix-the-revenant.jpg
“Hopefully the Druids find you before the Owlbears.”
…what do you think dwarves evolved from? Lichen?
(“Hominid” would work, if you want a more race-neutral term instead of one that just puts a different race front and center.)
Dwarves didn’t naturally evolve, they were crafted to be perfect by Moradin.
Humans: Like a mixture of Dwarf and ape.
Elves: Tall, smelly, skinny, fragile, pretentious, knife-eared Dwarves.
Tabaxi: Like a mixture of Dwarf and cat.
Halfling: Short svelte Dwarves.
Warforged: Like a mechanical Dwarf.
All the races are “Like Dwarves, but….” with their unique deficiencies defining them.
I play a doctor in one campaign. He’s a pacifist, a devout follower of the god of medicine, and entirely Lawful Good. Wherever possible, he avoids killing enemies. Early on, he’d even admit certain captured enemies to the hospital and personally help with their recovery.
Then they got the bills. He wouldn’t kill you. He would financially ruin you with medical bills. He would tack on charges if they were resistant to the healing process, especially if he had to sedate them or bind them to the table.
Was there an enforcement mechanism?
Generally my groups don’t do this. Too many genre savvy people. Plus we mostly run into monsters that can’t be reasoned with, not humanoids (so the GMs are probably being smart in that regard). The only times it really comes into play is if this is a person we need for something later or if it’s someone we’ve really grown to like in our time knowing them.
Meaning that the potential for betrayal is too high?
Yep.
“We’d prefer to let you live, but we know that as soon as we have our back turned, you’re gonna go back to what you were doing and we’ll have to do this all over again. So we’re gonna skip that and end it now.”
I play a Paladin (OoD – worships the Godess of Nature/Life/Moon & Sun) in a current game, and generally have him use non-lethal damage against redeemable/freewill creatures, or monsters/beasts that are not inherently hostile towards people. Fiends on the other hand he considers to be beyond the divine grace of free will, and will simply destroy them – sending them back whence they came. He will encourage the other party members to do the same, but not pressure them about it, nor hold it against them if they don’t. Sometimes sparing an enemy caused complications, but nothing we could not handle, and I’ve never regretted it. We even got some enduring jokes – like the (hostile) guard left wrapped up in a rug like a burrito. In particular, there have been some times when sparing the enemy paid off hansomly with intel gained through questioning. Never torture – just a well thought out argument for why they are wrong and why they should change their ways. This far from always converts them, but it does tend to engage them in conversations in which they often let down their guard and spill more info than they intend. I feel like courage+set an example+soft influence is a very positive way to run a paladin.
That’s the real sticking point with the classic pacifist character. If there’s a quick-and-easy mechanism to make prisoner-taking a viable tactic, then it’s gravy. If you wind up devoting hours of session time to prisoner logistics, then it gets into problem-character territory. For that reason, I class pacifist PCs alongside chaotic evil PCs as a “talk to your GM” concept.
I remember reading a Monte Cook blog post a million years ago about this very issue. If memory serves, he instituted some kind of clerical order who specialized in “conversion therapy” for evil captured creatures, just so the party wouldn’t have to deal with it. That’s its own ethical can of worms of course, but at least it saved on “but what do we do with the unconscious minions” conversations.
Oh, my character is definitely not a pacifist – instead I’d say he considers life to be something special, and it should not be taken without a good reason. If the enemy seems redeemable and killing them is not necessary, then why do it? Why not simply do non-lethal damage as the take-down blow? As for the logistics of what to do with the prisoner afterwards, as I recall we usually just let them go – perhaps sans weapons. That has never cost us much session time.
Depends on the nature of the dungeon. If you plan to return to the same complex repeatedly (megadungeon) then letting the monsters return to base is a problem. If you’re just in some random alley in an urban environment, there’s a lot less potential that you’ll have to deal with the same guy multiple times.
Maybe this is just my disdain for writing intelligent yet innately evil creatures, but if I were in that group, I’d be looking for an opportunity to spare a fiend and ignore that guy’s encouragement otherwise.
In particular, there have been some times when sparing the enemy paid off hansomly with intel gained through questioning. Never torture – just a well thought out argument for why they are wrong and why they should change their ways.<\Quote>
I have a rogue with the cook background (homebrew), and he pumped expertise into the tool. He can tear down a dire boar in under an hour. His “well-thought out argument” tends to include words like “sinew”, “marrow”, and “cartilage”.
…One of these days I’ll work out the quote mechanic for this site!
It’s just one of these guys “>” before the quoted text.
Don’t mind me; just testing syntax!
I GMed for a party who spared basically everything. The aggressive griffon that started their adventures was healed and freed, the group of enemy cultists was (successfully) convinced their leader was a megalomaniacal madman, and the insane necromancer was incapacitated, calmed down, and they promised to sort out her problems. They ended up with about a dozen tagalong NPCs and one PC started dating one of the cultists post-game.
The cult leader still got his head chopped off, though.
How did they manage all the prisoners midway through a dungeon crawl? Was there ever any betrayal?
Things were made easier by them encountering a small group of cultists in the lair of the necromancer, who didn’t like either band of interlopers and was trying to kill them all indiscriminately. It started as ‘if we work together we might not all die’ and during this the party cleric starting asking them why their (absent) leader was such a nutjob. They didn’t have a good answer and by the time they’d convinced the necromancer not to kill them all, the cultists were having doubts about the cult thing. Half of them willingly stayed on with the party to help them achieve their goals, no treachery involved. So it wasn’t really a case of managing prisoners.
Some really awkward conversations, though.
I’ve found that if a relatively intelligent enemy wasn’t on board with negotiating prior to a fight, they aren’t going to be willing to cooperate in the long run. Just too darn proud, vindictive, and petty most of the time…
Shame. We usually end up having a lot in common.
As for animals and creatures of similar mental faculties, they’re pretty straightforward. They usually want food or you to get out of here. If they can’t get either, they tend to have no problem with fleeing to live another day. Such creatures aren’t immediately dangerous.
Simpleminded but intelligent creatures are similar in some regard, but you can work with them long term. Threaten them into not being evil. Mercy can also be: You get to keep your head, but if I hear that you’re harming innocents I’m coming back to chop it off, and I’ll work my way up from the other end.
Ironically, not taking the good-aligned approach can mean spilling less blood neeslessly.
If we’re going by the book, Intimidation lasts a little while and then wears off. I’ve found the GMs tend to let credible threats stand though (read: ones made by crazy barbarian PCs).
The PC’s history probably does more work than any roll could ever hope to do.
My Thief Rogue actually prefers non-lethal takedowns and combat with humanoids. The reasons for this are threefold:
Guardsmen are far more dangerous in their pursuit of murderers as opposed to simple thieves.
A dead person no longer makes any money to steal.
A living person always has a chance to turn around and choose a better life for themselves, given another chance and possibility of redemption.
He doesn’t extend the same courtesy to things like aberrations, undead, or the like.
Heh. Honor among thieves.
…
Actually, I wonder if having a paladin-style code for an “honorable thief” type of PC could be any fun? Might be some design space there….
One of the interpretations I read of the deity Votishal, of the world Newhon in the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser-series, is that he was the patron of Lawful Good rogues and thieves. By Votishal’s command, they only used their skills to achieve the greater good and serve civil order.
One of the most legendary thefts of Votishal’s faithful was the removal of a jewel-studded skull and set of hands from the crypts of the Master Thieves: old grandmasters of the Lankhmar thieves’ guild who had become undead after their inhumation, and who might even collectively serve as demigod patrons of the ‘Guild… Or just collected sacrifices and worship from their living brethren and offered guidance as they saw fit.
Of course, what they were guiding was a well-established thieves’ guild that had connections with other disreputable organizations and which killed people who stole without a license. Also, they tended to be on the harsh side when punishing what they saw as disobedience or insults of their dignity…
Considering what the Master Thieves were like, Votishal might have had that particular skull and set of hands removed to stimy the Thieves’ Guild — or because the undead mind inside the skull was particularly vile and to remove its influence from the world of Newhon.
Anyway, it might be something to consider for your research into honour among thieves. 😉
This is actually a plot point in our setting. In the war between Goodness and Evilness, this is a contention point that could lead to a civil war in Goodness forces. Evilness got three pillars. Destruction, the tendency of Evil to set things in motion and change the status quo, why Evil do things and their aggressive tendencies. Domination, Evil wants to be served, those bellow you are your playthings. Corruption, Evil like to propagate and changes things into Evil. Goodness got their own three pillars that mirror, or are mirrored, by Evil’s ones. Protection against destruction, for Goodness jumps and shields innocent, but also they react, alone they don’t do anything other than being vigilant. Liberation against domination, for what Evilness slaves Goodness liberates. And against corruption? Redemption, to give a helping hand and get people out of their very own deepness back into the light 🙂
Thing is one of the top members of Goodness called a crusade against Evilness, but at the gates of Evilness he and several more betrayed the forces of Goodness and changed sides. That has lead to a schism in Goodness force, for many want nothing but to destroy Evil. And so the debate is open. Should Goodness just forget about the redemption pillar and achieve a ruthless victory or should they insist with it even more to not get a pyrrhic victory? Should Goodness just cast Smite Evil on everything Evil or should they fight but try to redeem Evil to achieve a greater victory? 🙂
Please feel free to say what you think. This plot point is actually one i am proud of for all the philosophical debate it has generated in the table and in other places 😀
If we’re in D&D world where Good and Evil are elemental things, then you’ve got to go with your own side’s principles. Call it the 5th Element approach:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/03/4b/b9/034bb9408f35eea38128595af4ce0415.png
I don’t think Immanuel Kant applies when you can touch the evil:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoNnFEAj7p8
Even if it’s a block of Evil, then it doesn’t mean it’s evil. And in our setting you can put what alignment you want that doesn’t mean you are that. That you are good doesn’t mean you are Good. A sword made of goodness can still kill innocent people and serve evil and be handle by an evil character for extra irony 🙂
Moral categories aren’t set on stone for us 😀
ಠ_ಠ
Reminds me of the Euthyphro dilemma. What makes the gods arbiters of morality? If it’s something innate to them, then morality is ultimately arbitrary. (Why is a pound of demon flesh more evil than a pound of angel flesh? What does it even mean for an inanimate object to be evil?) If it’s something external to them, what is it?
That is simple. Something is good or bad according to gods because they got power to back their laws. In our setting, a small part of the plot and problems comes from the god of Justice realizing that just because he is a god of justice that doesn’t make everything he says and does just 🙂
A god, with the power to claim that title could speak of any law and tradition and its enforcement while breaking that very rules and traditions 🙂
Demons aren’t inherently evil, they are more like political exiles. Demon itself is a label like radical or subversive. In fact some “demons” can be more good than many servants of the gods. In fact being good is what could make a servant a demon if he works for a god of evil 😀
Colin, an sword can be made of iron but isn’t iron as in material. You don’t grab a sword and consider it a piece of iron even if its made out of it. You consider it a sword, one made of iron. A sword made of evil is a sword. Being it made out of evil doesn’t make it evil in the same way being made of iron doesn’t mean a sword is a piece of iron, even if made of it 😀
I’m glad your group enjoys this style of play. Personally, I don’t have much patience for D&D&philosophy101.
Colin, everything is philosophy 🙂
Including sophistry.
Oh, wow… I remember that movie.
That poor little kid. I always wondered what became of him afterward.
In our Starfinder game, my Shirren Mystic of Sarenrae is fairly pacifistic, and tries to KO most enemies or preserve life. This tends to be more useful than not, as we frequently interrogate them. We’ve also gained a few allies this way (which translated into bonus exp / NPCs accompanying our journey) by going way out of our way to save/rescue someone who’d be far easier to just kill off.
Of course, not all of the party works with this, and our Vesk soldier occasionally accidentally murders someone in the heat of battle.
We also face a lot of irrevocably bad people. If they’re lucky (i.e. have yet to commit an atrocity), they get a single offer to surrender when they’re inches from death. Those that already showed that they’re beyond redemption tend to have very lethal spells blasting their heads.
Can you really murder someone in a battle? I guess yeah, but… I dunno, that seems like a weird construction in my head.
What’s that upside-down writing in the back? Obuns? Gobbuns?
it’s upside down
Looks like OBLINS to me, though given the font it could also be OBUNS. Either way, there’s probably a ‘g’ behind Paladin’s face.
If there isn’t booze in that milkshake, Paladin might be facing some flak from his superiors Upstairs. Threatening a (literally) small businessman, tisk tisk.
That’s not a milkshake. It’s a free soda fountain tap water. The goodliest of pizza joint beverages!
I suddenly recall there was a PrC for D&D 3.5 that allowed you to affect the attitude of beings you met – all beings you met – and bring peace.
There were some rave reviews for it, given that it was fairly unique among D&D character classes and prestige classes, in that it not only allowed for a peaceful resolution of hostilities, but was absolutely focused on it. Finally, a way to be a genuine pacifist in D&D without coming across as a wet blanket or painting a big target on your forehead in a dangerous and hostile world.
I’d be curious for a link. I’d also be curious to know how that PrC interacts with the rest of the party. I mean, if every combat encounter became, “I roll Diplomacy and we skip the combat,” I wouldn’t be a very happy barbarian.
That was also an episode of the TV show “Unikitty!”
In the Temple of Elemental Evil CRPG I played a party of all paladins one time and would always spend the action to stabilize any enemy that hadn’t been killed outright (although they all stayed permanently defeated anyway in the CRPG so it did ‘t particularly matter)
Never played it. Are they just unconscious, or does “permanently defeated” mean they get up and exit the dungeon?
They’re treated as dead even if they don’t die
It also occurs to me, (possibly due to the influence of Overly Sarcastic Productions’ video on the Greek monster Typhon and/or of the movie Human Centipede: First Sequence) that one way to disable an enemy permanently without killing them, or imprisoning them, or amputating limbs would be to cut some of their tendons
Equivalently one could break a bone and then deliberately set it improperly. This theoretically could be done instantaneously with a Cure spell since nothing is actually missing in this scenario and thus Regenerate is not required.
Truly the merciful solution.
I will tell you the tale of Guk Freg and Srec
3 simple goblins who encountered a wreck
Saved by the bard with ambitions so lofty
With donations that frankly got a bit costly
Guk found a spinoff within which to pursue
a thieves guild career, his fortune to accrue
Let me say, a path the Bard thoroughly rues
But it’ll likely stay thus if he keeps up his dues
Freg and Srec were two slightly less fortunate souls
both snatched up by ogres, unwilling pets were their roles
But we found them again, the bard bartered his best
A song and a dance, and some gold for those pests
Now both Freg and Srec accepted this was their lot
but only because both of them had been caught
The bard felt they should work for altruism instead
but the concept was a little bit over their head
So this is where Derrik stepped up to the plate
pointing out concrete benefits to both of their fates
How loyalty begets loyalty, so it’s like investing
in allies who will gain trust through trials and testing
Now Srec was a bright one, and genuinely tried
to travel on the path that would bring allies to his side
but Freg still had doubts, though could see the appeal
but there was Tiamat’s Paladin whispering in his ear
Power was his goal, he envisioned himself at the top
But when that Paladin left, Freg was brought to a stop
As Srec and Freg were alone when the Druid beginner
accidentally hunted Freg, whom he ate as his dinner
With only Srec left he had the party’s attention
(The Druid apologized after we had an intervention)
We set him up with a crossbow for his own defense
He could stick to the outskirts if things got too tense
But he performed better than we all expected
He came to realize the joy of being respected
even our cleric, who had him thoroughly rejected
would be at a loss when she was protected
That night was the fight in which Srec would shine
he chose his own path and it was truly divine
The cleric had stumbled on an unwinnable foe
and none of our party could survive even a blow
But srec had got not a thought for his own skin
acted as a decoy, though he knew he couldn’t win
But his act was enough, it gave us the reprieve
the time we needed for her to be retrieved
But though he ran for his life, naught to be done
he lost his battle, but the war he had won
The gods celebrated his noble sacrifice that day
Smote the foe he had faced while carrying him away
Though his loss was a blow of great sorrow and pain
Our memories of his growth and loyalty remain
We’re secure in the knowledge held deep in our souls
he’s now resting in comfort alongside unicorn foals