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Is killing a Goblin who begs for mercy evil?
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<blockquote data-quote="Mad Hamish" data-source="post: 5738824" data-attributes="member: 25321"><p>Welcome to a topic that has been debated for around 40 years in RPGS (and thousands of years in philosophy)</p><p></p><p>The short answer is really "it depends on the game you're playing" games can vary between </p><p>"game of hats" to "extremely complicated shaded morality"</p><p></p><p>In a game of hats game then unless there's a reason to believe that a particular goblin isn't evil you can probably hack it down with a free concience. </p><p></p><p>In a lot of other games it would depend on the answers to various questions</p><p>a) why was the village attacked?</p><p>is it a case of "we ran into some goblins so we attacked" or "these goblins have raided the human village and they killed the women and children"</p><p></p><p>b) is there anything to suggest that this particular goblin did anything evil?</p><p></p><p>killing an armed combatant is different from killing an unarmed non-combatant and killing a warrior who you recognise from a raid on a human village where children were killed is different again.</p><p></p><p>It also depends on how the individual campaign runs the type of monster, killing a standard pathfinder goblin would be less likely to cause problems than a pathfinder kobold for instance.</p><p></p><p>In a lot of campaigns being evil isn't enough to justify killing somebody. Somebody can be evil but not actually have done anything justifying killing them (a villager who delights in spreading malicious gossip, will cheat or steal if they think they can get away with it etc, would betray people to save themselves or for enough money) but unless they have seriously hurt people killing them wouldn't be justified.</p><p></p><p>Also note that you only detect as evil if you've got a link to an evil force of the universe or you've got significant personal power (5HD or more) by the rules a goblin could be intending to prepare Human Baby Tartare and still wouldn't detect as evil.</p><p></p><p>Note that the comments on alignment on page 5 of the bestiary makes it pretty clear that there is a difference between outer planar aligned creatures and standard intelligent creatures with alignments.</p><p></p><p>For what it's worth I'd recommend that you just discuss it with the players how you see things and try and ensure that you don't screw the PCs over by stuffing them around on alignment. If people want to take more care than you think necessary that's fine, the problem comes when the players think they can get away with more than you think they can.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mad Hamish, post: 5738824, member: 25321"] Welcome to a topic that has been debated for around 40 years in RPGS (and thousands of years in philosophy) The short answer is really "it depends on the game you're playing" games can vary between "game of hats" to "extremely complicated shaded morality" In a game of hats game then unless there's a reason to believe that a particular goblin isn't evil you can probably hack it down with a free concience. In a lot of other games it would depend on the answers to various questions a) why was the village attacked? is it a case of "we ran into some goblins so we attacked" or "these goblins have raided the human village and they killed the women and children" b) is there anything to suggest that this particular goblin did anything evil? killing an armed combatant is different from killing an unarmed non-combatant and killing a warrior who you recognise from a raid on a human village where children were killed is different again. It also depends on how the individual campaign runs the type of monster, killing a standard pathfinder goblin would be less likely to cause problems than a pathfinder kobold for instance. In a lot of campaigns being evil isn't enough to justify killing somebody. Somebody can be evil but not actually have done anything justifying killing them (a villager who delights in spreading malicious gossip, will cheat or steal if they think they can get away with it etc, would betray people to save themselves or for enough money) but unless they have seriously hurt people killing them wouldn't be justified. Also note that you only detect as evil if you've got a link to an evil force of the universe or you've got significant personal power (5HD or more) by the rules a goblin could be intending to prepare Human Baby Tartare and still wouldn't detect as evil. Note that the comments on alignment on page 5 of the bestiary makes it pretty clear that there is a difference between outer planar aligned creatures and standard intelligent creatures with alignments. For what it's worth I'd recommend that you just discuss it with the players how you see things and try and ensure that you don't screw the PCs over by stuffing them around on alignment. If people want to take more care than you think necessary that's fine, the problem comes when the players think they can get away with more than you think they can. [/QUOTE]
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Is killing a Goblin who begs for mercy evil?
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