Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Talanall 08-03-04, 01:47 PM	So. I play in a high-level game. Last night, one of the party's wizards exercised an enormously inventive method of killing a hill giant. It was also an enormously unpleasant way of killing one, and it stirred up a brief but amicable debate about morality. I thought I would toss the situation before the peanut gall . . . er, the boards, and see what all of you think of it. The situations is this: The party, mostly of level 19-20, is in a mountain range, attending a giantish council to negotiate a peace settlement on behalf of a nearby human nation. One of the party members, a wizard, loses his temper with a hill giant cleric, and gives voice to a number of nasty insults which really aren't fit for repetition on these boards. The giant, who had quite a few levels as a cleric, was VERY upset. Ritualized combat broke out. The combat ended with a spectacularly unpleasant death for the cleric. He charged the wizard and landed a thunderous blow on him, inflicting quite a respectable amount of damage. The wizard promptly cast reverse gravity, sending him some one hundred feet into the air. The wizard then calmly shapechanged himself into a gelatinous cube the next round, and oozed into the reverse gravity effect. DM: "That's just . . . wrong. Do you turn off the reverse gravity?" Wiz: "Nope. I'm going up." DM: "Let' see. He gets a Reflex save, doesn't he?" Wiz: "Theoretically." DM: "Well, let's see. A Reflex save gets you pushed back out of the way instead of engulfed. You're coming from below. So he'd be pushed . . . up." Wiz: "Right. Out of my reverse gravity effect. Which means he'd fall back down." DM: "Oh." DM: "I see." DM: "He's engulfed. Note that I reserve the right to review this ruling if you try this trick again." [argument amongst DM and players ensues over the morality of killing an adversary by 20 or so rounds of 1d6 acid damage per round] DM: "Well, you realize you'll probably fall down before he dies. Wiz: "Nah. We'll be up here for almost 2 minutes. He'll drown before then." DM: "I dunno. He's got a high Con score, and can hold his breath for a long time." Wiz: "Well, he's going to be making continuous Fort saves, as it happens. If he fails one, he's paralyzed, so at that point he'll suffocate." DM: "Huh? Paralysis stops you from breathing?" Wiz: "It stops you from holding your breath. He'll inhale me." DM: "Eww." The entire moot, consisting of well over a thousand giants, proceeded to look on in horrified fascination as the hill giant was digested/drowned some 100 feet above the ground. Eventually another giant cleric used a spell to allow the hill giant to die if he wished, rather than endure the wizard's treatment. So. This brings us to my question. What do YOU fine ladies and gentlemen say about the morality of the wizard's methods in killing his opponent? Good? Evil? Lawful? Chaotic? Neutral? As a side note, I'd also like to say that I, for one, thought that this was a rather elegant, if disturbing, solution to a troublesome adversary. The wizard later indicated that he was acting on the assumption that, once the giant succumbed to paralysis, he'd quickly lose consciousness and die, and that the actions described above were not nearly so inhumane as they might appear to onlookers.
Mike the DM 08-03-04, 01:59 PM	:uh-huh: Wow. That's just...I mean...I'd never even think to...that's... :uh-huh: As far as the alignment implications? Sorry, I've gone over to Vaal's dark side and nuked alignment, so I got nothin' for you on that. But that wizard...?!? Wow.
tarkin 08-03-04, 02:07 PM	Let's list the mistakes the DM/Player made: 1) You auto-hit him. Sorry, doesn't work that way. You went up, does NOT mean you hit him. You need to make a touch attack to hit him. 2) Once you get to the top of the reverse gravity well, you both oscillitate. If you DO make your to hit the first time, then if he made his save, you would be osicllating apart from each other, you could not touch him. You can NOT engulf him as you do not have any way of moving towards him. 3) he can not inhale you. Period. Paralyis just does not work the way you think it does, and neither does the cube effect. Cubes kill by acid, their Paralysis does not prevent creatures from breathing or from holding there breath aAnd Engulfing does NOT block people from breathing, otherwise it would warn about the danger of suffocation. The reverse gravity does NOT in any way change the rules of the Cube's combat. So you ignored rules of hitting, ignored rules of physics, and made up incredibally bad house rules for a Gelatinous Cube. But yes, when you don't require creatures to make a to hit, ignore rules of physics that prevent you from getting close enough to attack and grant incredibally powerfull powers to monsters that do not have them, you can kill pretty easily.
ChaoticGod 08-03-04, 02:15 PM	Hill Giant Cleric # 2 to the wizard: "Well you slew Golak in a horrific way. He was my brother so I must also challenge you to a ritual duel." A line of giants forms behind him as he speaks. :mad:
Talanall 08-03-04, 02:18 PM	Tarkin: I'm not asking you for a critique of the mechanics of my game. Please, don't post off topic. If you have nothing better to do than post rudely-worded, unsolicited catalogues of what's wrong with other people's gaming, then do it elsewhere than on my threads. If you want to discuss the ethics of the In Character events that transpired, then please, by all means stick around and discuss that. If you continue make this thread an unfriendly place, I will call the moderators to make it friendly again.
tarkin 08-03-04, 02:23 PM	I am sorry if you were offended by my honest critique of multiple bad rulings. I do not consider it to be an attempt to make this an unfriendly place, I considered it an honest attempt to tell you the obvious errors made by the DM. YOU made it part of the topic by explaining it so much, and then complementing it. If it was NOT supposed to be part of the thread, then you should have kept in much simpler and certainly not said it was "elegant" etc. -------------------- As for the morality of it, starting the fight was evil, killing him so quickly and effortlessly (regardless of how you did it), was in no way good/evil/law/chaotic.
Talanall 08-03-04, 02:24 PM	Chaotic God: Interesting that you should say that. As it happens, there were some other clerics of similar power present. They decided that they'd rather not get digested like Crusher the Hill Giant, I guess. Three other giant clergy also died in the combat, as it happens, but they fell to more conventional attacks. Essentially, the death I described above came as the capstone of a short, ugly fight in which the PCs slew the four most powerful giants present at the moot. There was literally nobody left who had a prayer of winning a fight against them.
Talanall 08-03-04, 02:26 PM	Originally posted by tarkin I am sorry if you were offended by my honest critique of multiple bad rulings. I do not consider it to be an attempt to make this an unfriendly place, I considered it an honest attempt to tell you the obvious errors made by the DM. It was unsolicited, and off topic. The players and DM all had fun, so there were NO "bad rulings." I'm surprised you haven't trotted out "munchkin," and started slinging that term around, too.
tarkin 08-03-04, 02:29 PM	As I stated above, YOU MADE IT THE TOPIC If you did not want to discuss it you should have just said "My high level wizard killed the giant in two rounds". AND you complented it, STARTING the conversation. I did not call it Munchkin because it was clear you had no idea it was against the rules. While players having fun is important, it is in NO way related to "bad rulings". Players can have fun while the DM lets them kill gods with a magic missile spell, it does not make the ruling "good".
PenderGrass 08-03-04, 02:30 PM	I will call the moderators to make it friendly again EEEEEEEEEEEEEN!!!! wrong. Tarkin's post is fine, your problem with it is your own - and I think the mods would be happy to tell you that. On Subject: I think your Human Nation would be very upset at the rash action of their Peace Negotiator. There is NOT enough to go on to judge the actions as being good or evil - even law and chaos are hard to say without more to go on. What made the Wizard so upset? What type of alignment is he and his Wisdom? You seem to be more of a 'free-form' game (seeing your response to Tarkin), so do you even enforce alignment? Off-hand the best I can say is it seems chaotic and unwise, since his mission was one of Peace and he brought violence. But we need more info.
Mike the DM 08-03-04, 02:32 PM	Originally posted by tarkin Let's list the mistakes the DM/Player made: 1) You auto-hit him. Sorry, doesn't work that way. You went up, does NOT mean you hit him. You need to make a touch attack to hit him. 2) You go up at the same speed he goes up. He went first. You can't hit him at ALL until either: A) he leaves the Anti-gravity or B), the anti-gravity ends. 3) he can not inhale you. Period. Paralyis just does not work the way you think it does, and neither does the cube effect. Cubes kill by acid, not suffocation. The reverse gravity does NOT in any way change the rules of the Cube's combat. Let's list the mistakes tarkin made: 1) You're not the DM - it's not your call. If the DM rules that the giant is helpless to avoid the cube coming at him, that's his way of dealing with an unusual (to say the least!) circumstance. If you'll note, he did say he'd review it later. 2) You're not the DM - it's not your call. Plus, you need to re-read reverse gravity - a character 'falls' until it reaches the maximum height and then hangs there. As soon as the cube wizard entered the field, he rises to the same height as the giant, thereby catching up to him. 3) You're not the DM - it's not your call. Given that a paralyzed swimmer may drown, per the rules, it's an entirely reasonable ruling that a paralyzed creature engulfed by a cube could suffocate as well.
masterofmayhem 08-03-04, 02:35 PM	Originally posted by Talanall DM: "Well, you realize you'll probably fall down before he dies. Wiz: "Nah. We'll be up here for almost 2 minutes. He'll drown before then." DM: "I dunno. He's got a high Con score, and can hold his breath for a long time." Wiz: "Well, he's going to be making continuous Fort saves, as it happens. If he fails one, he's paralyzed, so at that point he'll suffocate." DM: "Huh? Paralysis stops you from breathing?" Wiz: "It stops you from holding your breath. He'll inhale me." DM: "Eww." :eek: Originally posted by Mike the DM :uh-huh: Wow. That's just...I mean...I'd never even think to...that's... :uh-huh: But that wizard...?!? Wow. Uhh . . . Well said. ;)
Gheralt 08-03-04, 02:43 PM	With the information given in this post, I would have to say "Neutral." Gelatinous Cubes do this sort of thing regularly, and they're neutral. So, the action in of itself is neutral, just like eating a bowl of cereal is neutral. What makes the action have alignment, I think, are the motivations and the results. Example: I kill a snake. Neutral. I kill a snake that was trying to eat a small child. Good! I kill a snake because the government has told me snakes are illicit and in need of death. Lawful! I kill a snake because it's illegal to kill snakes. Chaotic! I kill a snake because I'm a bastard with no respect for life and enjoy seeing critters suffer. Evil. I don't much care about the Roolz here. The DM's in charge, and if everyone had a good time, so much the better. --Gheralt Paladin and Trusty Meat Shield :fight!: Addendum: Regardless of alignment, that's some messed up fecal matter, right there.
tarkin 08-03-04, 02:45 PM	Since you guys insist on continuuing this discussion instead of dropping it for being off topic, Mike the DM claimed I made mistakes (Which I will renumber as he was trying to be insulting by repeating the first claim 3 times) 1) You're not the DM - it's not your call. If I was a player objecting to the DM, you would be right. But I am not. I am another DM telling you that the "elegant" idea the player thought of was illegal using WoTC standard rules, so you should not be bragging about it. My objection to his bad rulings is NOT a mistake because I did not do it in game. 2) You were right, I re-wrote my stuff to fix this problem, but the idea is the same, reverse gravity did NOT work the way he thought it did. He does NOT hang there he oscillatetes. 3) Nice idea, but it is just plain a bad call. If the Cube's power of Engulfing was capable of "drowing" someone, it would have said so. PERIOD. It does NOT say so, so being engulfed does NOT prevent you from breathing. While you may believe the idea of drowing may be logical, it is not listed as a power of the Cube, and if it were to be listed, it would significantly increase the power of the Cube, ESPECIALLY considering the Paralysis power that it also has. Yes I made one mistake, which I found and corrected. I am willing to admit when I make errors. Are you?
Mike the DM 08-03-04, 03:08 PM	Originally posted by tarkin *snip* Sometimes there is a huge gap between knowing The Rules and applying them. The only ruling that Talanall might want to revisit is allowing the cube to automatically hit the giant - perhaps a touch attack against AC 10 would've been more appropriate, since the description of reverse gravity refers to 'oscillating slightly,' but instead he made a judgement call (and an excellent one, in my book) that advanced the story. That's what The Rules are for: to advance the story. If a DM ignores or changes a rule on the fly to make the story better, and doesn't do it to put the players at a disadvantage, then it's absolutely in the spirit of the game. Everything that Talanall did in this encounter sounds like it was inspired and fun for him and his players - and if he put Rule 0 ahead of the rest, well, that's exactly where it's supposed to be, by The Rules.
Talanall 08-03-04, 03:20 PM	Pendergrass: My apologies if the information given is a little too sketchy. I'll try to fill in the gaps. I'll start with the human nation. It's a plutocracy, run by a small council made up of mercantile princes. Not dissimilar to Venice or Florence, in some ways. This nation had been subject to massive attack from a horde of monstrous humanoids and giants, which had conquered maybe a quarter of its territory. The humans have subsequently begun to push them back into the mountains and reclaim their territory after the horde's leadership was assassinated. The giant tribes involved in the moot were allies of the leaders of the horde, and have been a general menace to the settled areas farther down the mountains from the horde's territory, conducting raids and harassing mercantile traffic through the mountain passes. The council's request to the PCs, after you strip away the flowery diplomatic talk, was along the lines of, "Get them to stop it. How you accomplish this is up to you." The party is mostly composed of good-aligned characters. One CG wizard, one LG cleric, one LG wizard (though most of the group currently has doubts about his lawfulness -- he's the one who killed the hill giant), and one LN cleric. The LG wizard has Wis 17, I think. What ended up happening, is that this predominantly lawful, predominantly good party decided that the thing to do would be to try to negotiate some sort of lasting peace treaty, if that was even possible. They planned to gather the giants, and deliver an offer along the lines of, "Cease hostilities, and we'll set you up with trading rights, shipments of food so that your children don't starve this winter because all your hunters are dead or off raiding, and we'll offer our aid in punishing any human who breaks the treaty." The adult females (who outnumbered the males by quite a margin) were mostly neutral or even good in alignment -- one of the clerics took a stroll around the moot with true seeing up. So we were somewhat hopeful that this offer would actually get some mileage. But then the giantish politics started. Because we'd invoked some rituals that we didn't fully understand to gather the meeting in the first place, we had a degree of judicial power. The more powerful and intelligent evil giants began to set traps for us, to try to trip us up and make it harder for us to get the meeting's agreement to our proposals. They wanted to keep raiding, because they were doing rather well out of the deal. The first trap consisted of a NE stone giant, who had captured and roughed up a human bard for singing "nasty wicked lies" about how he, the giant, had lied about having killed a dragon singlehanded. He wanted permission to kill the human. The LG wizard (yes, the same one who pulled the ooze caper) used magic to compel truthful answers from the giant, and ascertained that the bard was telling the truth, and that the giant had, moreover, killed the dragon's wyrmlings in their sleep when it found their mother already dead. It's my guess that this fired the wizard's temper. He's fond of children and other young creatures, and was disgusted that someone would kill the wyrmlings in such a manner, and then attempt to gain personal glory from it. The stone giant ended up challenging for ritual combat, and died. The giants in general seemed to either approve or not to care one way or another about this incident. The second trap was much more extensive. The four most powerful evil giant clergy present at the moot decided to try to end the meeting by picking a fight with us, hoping that we'd take the bait and end up losing another ritual combat. When the meeting reconvened, we made our offer of trading rights, food, and so forth. The female giants were interested, but the males (that is, the evil clergy) began to toss insults at us, reminding the gathering that humans were weak, and that it was a dishonor to trade with them when they could raid instead, and so on and so forth. The LG wizard began to respond in kind, and the insult contest escalated to the point that the hill giant called for a duel to defend his honor. The wizard agreed to the duel, since his temper was up, and then learned that if he fought, he'd be doing so in an antimagic zone. Which basically meant that he'd be crushed in short order, given his extremely low Str, Dex, and Con scores, and his tiny BAB, and his dismal AC without magic. He refused to back down, however. When asked later, out of character, why the character was ready to commit suicide like that, his player explained that in character, the wizard had concluded that if the neutral and good giants weren't going to speak up in support of an offer they obviously liked, when they had a majority and could count on winning a fight over it, then they simply weren't going to go for the offer at all unless the representatives of the evil giant deities were taken out of the picture. He persisted in his willingness to fight because, his player stated, he felt that his death would probably unite the giants' remaining warriors, and end with them going off and getting slaughtered in battle against vastly superior human forces, leaving the more peaceful, less evil females and youngsters to their own devices. Somehow or other (I am still not entirely sure how it happened) the wizard and the hill giant ended up naming champions to fight on their behalf, primarily because the rest of the party didn't want to watch the wizard get splattered all over the landscape. Acting on advice from a neutral judge, those of us who were not fighting the duel prepared to deal with violence after it was over, because if our LN cleric won the fight, there would probably be more fighting to contest the outcome. And that's what led to the fight that ended with the death by ooze of the hill giant.
Talanall 08-03-04, 03:28 PM	Mike the DM and Tarkin: If you guys want to discuss rule theory, please, by all means take it to another thread. I appreciate your interest in the rules aspects of this case. But that's not the thread topic. I started this thread purely in order to discuss the alignment implications of the wizard's actions. I included the little bit of rules stuff that I did because I thought it added a touch of humor to the discussion, and because I admired the DM's willingness to respond to a VERY odd situation by a patient, good-natured attempt to make rulings to cover it. I think that there are really no clear rules about how you decide whether you get to hit something by falling upward onto it when it's oscillating at the pinnacle of a reverse gravity effect. In any case, the DM tells us that the hill giant wasn't very powerful anyway, and that we'd probably have finished him in a single round, since the other giants we'd been fighting were dead and he'd have been subject to attack by four level 19 or 20 characters. So the DM just went along with it, because it seemed interesting. That said, please keep it on topic from now on.
Mike the DM 08-03-04, 03:44 PM	Well, we certainly wouldn't want a thread about alignment to get off topic. There are very few ways of killing in D&D that aren't horrifically brutal. I don't know that smothering the giant in ooze is any more 'immoral' than sticking him in the eye with a sword, frying him with a lightning bolt, or dropping a great bloody boulder on his head. For alignment purposes, about the only weapon that seems to come with morality 'baggage' is poison - and even that was tossed in the hopper in BoED. Of course, this is one of the reasons I bagged alignment altogether.
PenderGrass 08-03-04, 03:58 PM	Since the Wizard was challenged within the laws of the land/meeting - I see no problem with his Lawful aspect. Since his method for killing his opponent may have been a little harsh - needlessly inflicting suffering and extensive pain - it may be suspect (but, I would only say this IF he has a history of torturing his victims before killing them - otherwise, I say it was a just kill). There is no real indication of anything being out of sorts as far as his actions vs his alignment.
Mithral Icesilver 08-03-04, 04:14 PM	I am going to follow PenderGrass's lead and ignore the rules argument here. Okay. The attack took place in ritual combat. Lawful. The attack killed the giant. Neutral. The killed giant was evil and trying to get rid of the peace thingy. Good. The method of death inflicted needless suffering. Evil. When all the alignment algebra is done, this comes out to neutral with lawful tendencies (1 lawful, 1 neutral, 1 cancelling good/evil set).
Talanall 08-03-04, 04:17 PM	I tend to agree with your assessment of the wizard's actions, Pendergrass. He doesn't make it a habit to torture people. That's evil, and he actually seems very clear on the difference between good and evil. He does have a very short temper, though, and doesn't deal well with people who he thinks are being rude to him. To his credit, most such incidents genuinely are examples of common rudeness, usually from people who don't know that he's an archmagus until after he's used a telekinesis spell to dangle them by their ankles.
meabolex 08-03-04, 04:52 PM	So. This brings us to my question. What do YOU fine ladies and gentlemen say about the morality of the wizard's methods in killing his opponent? Good? Evil? Lawful? Chaotic? Neutral? Wizard got angry, Giant got angry. Fighting began. Wizard used a gruesome method to kill giant. Would the wizard have used the method (which, by the rules, is dubious to me -- but I'm not going to get into that) if he weren't ticked off? Judging by your later comments, the wizard's actions were either lawful neutral or neutral by game terms. The actions taken certainly weren't good by definition -- but the provocation and eventual reverse gravity + shapechange "cruel and unusual" method of destruction weren't actions habitually displayed or a sign of philosophical change. They were rash actions -- which anyone can make. The main Lawfulness bent I see here is that the wizard tried negotiations, pursued honesty, and sought to destroy what he perceived as evil. The latter here extended the action away from good, but not convincingly enough to warrant alignment change. If he kills someone like that again. . . with less provocation. . . I'd make him LN.
LadyIslay 08-03-04, 05:32 PM	Well, if *I* had been there, *my* character would have flown up to meet the gelatinous cubed wizard and lectured him about quick deaths. Part of being 'good' is not allowing, and certainly not creating, undue suffering, and this particular death doesn't give the impression of being very quick. Most creatures watching the spectacle would probably assume that the hill giant was going to be slowly consumed by acid. If the giant can't hold his breath, then the death takes 3 rounds. I suppose this isn't any slower than stabbing him or anything *my* character probably would have done, so, on further inspection I can't say that this form of execution has anything to do with alignment; however, not everyone present would know that he couldn't breath. Most would assume he was going to be slowly consumed by acid while unable to do a damn thing about it... so it has the appearances of being very not-good to onlookers, which is probably why if *I* had been there, *my* character would have been disgusted, and probably wouldn't think very well of the wizard.
Talanall 08-03-04, 05:39 PM	LadyIslay's character was there. She plays the character I designated as a LG cleric. I was mistaken. She's NG. *tickles LadyIslay* And yes, she lectured the wizard at some length. He was a blob at the time, though, so his reactions were difficult to gauge. It took magic to get him to spit the giant out.
Arkenian 08-03-04, 10:21 PM	Okay. First, as a brief note to address the ruling thing. I was DMing. It was 2 AM, and the party had just decimated all the other giants. The giant in question was the weakest of the four, and he was dead, he just hadn't stopped breathing yet... It was ingenious, and I didn't want to take the time studying up on gelatinous cubes (I haven't used an ooze in a very long time, and did I mention it was 2 AM??) to determine all the details. In the end, for the purposes of this discussion, all that matters is the situation that pertained as we understood the rules at that time of night. ;) I never actually really ruled on the suffocation thing, because the "neutral judge" used a spell to offer him a mercy death. To clarify a few points: 1.) Talanall is being kind. It was pretty clear that the rulers of the human nation expected them to annihilate (or at least decimate) the local giant population. The council's opinion, however, is hardly a guarding factor as to alignment. Its debateable even for lawfulness ;) 2.) It bears mentioning that the only reason it was technically legal is because the party happened to be in a position to make the rules. It _was_ a sneak attack. If, admittedly, one done with all good graces. 3.) As I see it it comes to: a.) short of clear and egregious torture, do we care about how someone dies? b.) Is there a point where just the "ewww" factor is a demoralizing act of terror on the innocent giant population?? -Arkenian the Golden
Phrennzy 08-04-04, 01:09 AM	If the wizard had shapechanged into an iron golem, grappled the giant, and then strangled him to death - not just unconciousness, a clear point of winning the combat - but continued to strangle a helpless foe, would that be considered evil? IMO, that's what happened. It's like casting Hold Monster and then Coup De Grace'ing him. The situation: Wizard is a viscous blob (not the way I would have ruled it, but reasonable enough). Giant is paralyzed and begins to inhale the blob. At this point - paralysis - the battle is over. The giant has lost. Allowing the giant to choke on his viscosity was an evil act by the wizard. Causing harm to a helpless opponent. So, that, IMO, makes it an evil act.
Redding MTG Player 08-04-04, 03:57 AM	If you have made up your mind to kill him which is allowed by good characters from there it is just a matter of how, if a person is going to die, what does it matter how they die quickly or slowly in a few minutes it won't be an issue and by doing it in this fashion he decreaced the likelyhood of himself or others being harmed in the proccess of killing the giant. being good doesn't mean being squeamish, a good person can kill with the best, a lawful good fighter can slit the throats of his enemies to smite the evil from the land and save the lives of his companions
MarkB 08-04-04, 04:45 AM	I think the main point of contention for the giants might not be the torture aspect - it was a legitimate, if very unorthodox, combat action - but the fact that the wizard, essentially, digested the giant to death. How do the giants feel about creatures who eat their kind in public?
Nom 08-04-04, 08:24 AM	As usual, the question "Was it evil?" is being asked without the pre-requisite questions of "What is evil?" and "Who defines / judges good and evil anyway?". Let's ignore the rules interpretations; they're not relevant to the situation anyway. So, the facts: (1) Evil giants are deliberately trying to spoil a peace accord. They have already proved that they are untrustworthy twice. (2) The situation was ritualized combat. We have not yet been told whether it was "to death", "to surrender", or some other agreed resolution. (3) The wizard, for reasons not stated IC, chose to kill the giant. The manner of death was somewhat unpleasant, especially for those watching. The giant himself probably didn't feel a thing after being paralyzed. (4) We have not been told whether the defeated giant offered to surrender, or even accepted his defeat. Key questions: Is life more important than evil? Does the PCs' morality acknoweldge giants as having moral status? What punishment, if any, do evildoers deserve? Thoughts: As near as we can tell, the wizard's actions are not problematic for one of Lawful alignment. At each point, he is honourable and the opponent is dishonourable. There is a Law/Chaos issue with the finishing conditions of the fight. If it were to first blood or the like then obviously it's un-Lawful to kill the opponent. Conversely, it may be Chaotic to allow the opponent to live if the combat rites require the loser's death. If life is more important than evil, then any action that takes life is only justifiable in the most extreme of circumstances, and even then is a failure. It also leaves a nasty moral problem of how to deal with natural death. If giants have no moral status, then the action is no more good nor evil that crushing rocks or destroying a tree which fell on you. It may be lawful or chaotic depending on the terms of the fight. Punishment is an interesting angle. What is an appropriate punishment for a foe who is provably warlike, treacherous and follows evil Gods?
ck2001wendt 08-04-04, 09:11 AM	Sounds like an Evil act to me: 1. It was unnecessary. Your party had killed all the other Giants in the conflict, so this one was at your mercy. You could have done any number of things to him (looting, taking him back to be imprisoned), but you chose to kill him. My Wizard was once forced to CDG an orc...but it was in the heat of combat (there were 6 other orcs on the way, and Color Spray only lasts so long). It took 2 trys, but it was necessary to secure his partyīs safety. 2. It was cruel and unusual: a. From your post, it sounds like the Wizard enjoyed the giants suffering (nah...I can be up here all day if I want...). Enjoying the suffering of another is not merciful...tis the way of the Dark Side. b. Even if this was a fight to the death, you chose about the least merciful option you could find. Letting him fall 100 ft would be painful, but it would be over in 6 seconds if he didnīt bleed to death). Taking 20 rounds to let him slowly eat away is not cool. What if he made all his fort saves? Heīs sitting there in agony being eaten.
CzarGarrett 08-04-04, 09:33 AM	In a single situation here, I don't think it matters too much. Its a wizard, not a Paladin, and unless he was an exhalted Wizard, even if he did an act or two of evil, its irrelevant. I'd probably call that somewhat chaotic and slightly evil. Killing the cleric would be neutral, killing him by dissolving him in acid is kinda evil. And it wasn't exactly a lawful act, although it did occur within the bounds of combat, it was extreme. But as I said before, unless he was an Exhalted Wizard, and unless he does stuff like that again and again, he's fine.
LadyIslay 08-04-04, 02:07 PM	The wizard isn't exalted, but he *DOES* cast sanctified spells from time to time. I'm going to revise my take on the morality of the situation, since I'm being swayed to believe that you can't drown inside a gellatinous cube. Besides, there is a considerable chance that he might not have failed his fort save for paralysis (the other giants were passing DC 27 fort saves). Killing a giant with that many hit dice and that high a con score 1d6 acid / round is just terribly cruel.... especially when the killer has faster ways of killing the creature. Next time, use the Flesh Jelly :)
Talanall 08-04-04, 04:18 PM	Originally posted by Nom As usual, the question "Was it evil?" is being asked without the pre-requisite questions of "What is evil?" and "Who defines / judges good and evil anyway?". Okay, fair enough. How do YOU define "evil"? We'll assume you ge to define/judge what is good and what is evil. That's kind of the point of this thread. Law and chaos are also under your purview. Indeed, you are like unto a god, for our purposes. Let's ignore the rules interpretations; they're not relevant to the situation anyway. Fine with me. I just put 'em in because I thought it was funny, not because I was hoping for a discursus on whether my DM did a good job with them. He's already explained what happened there, and why. So, the facts: (1) Evil giants are deliberately trying to spoil a peace accord. They have already proved that they are untrustworthy twice. Yep. This is definitely accurate. The DM even told us so, after it was over with. In his words, "You were set up." (2) The situation was ritualized combat. We have not yet been told whether it was "to death", "to surrender", or some other agreed resolution. It was semi-ritual, really. The ritual proper was a duel between a cloud giant/psychic warrior 8, and a human clr13/ftr5/hierophant1. We had good reason to expect an outbreak of violence immediate after it was over. We also had ceremonial power to declare and execute a species of law over the gathering. As the DM said, the combat in which this killing happened was a sneak attack executed in a quasi-legal capacity. The terms of the duel were "to the death" by the request of the challenger. The combat which ensued following the duel was to the death, as well, by virtue of the combatants having failed to ask for mercy. In fairness, the other giants who died in this second fight were mostly dead before they knew what was happening. The hill giant had a chance to ask for quarter, and did not. (3) The wizard, for reasons not stated IC, chose to kill the giant. The manner of death was somewhat unpleasant, especially for those watching. The giant himself probably didn't feel a thing after being paralyzed. The wizard has a habit of failing to explain himself unless asked to, in character. His player did explain his character motivation. He also has stated that he would have used flesh jelly form (the monster is in MMII, I think) if he'd remembered, out of character, that it existed, rather than use something that relied on low-grade acid damage to kill things. According to him, that method of killing was intended to be publicly gruesome and terrifying as a means of cowing any evil giants that might still be left around with the will to fight. (4) We have not been told whether the defeated giant offered to surrender, or even accepted his defeat. The wizard offered him a chance to surrender. He did not take it, because he had every reason to believe that he would either get to kill the wizard, or get to watch his champion kill the wizard's champion. Key questions: Is life more important than evil? Does the PCs' morality acknoweldge giants as having moral status? What punishment, if any, do evildoers deserve? I don't know the answer to the first question. The LG wizard says that, to his character, it's not at all objectionable to kill a creature that he knows to be evil and to have performed evil deeds of its own free will, on a more regular basis than you'd expect of a neutral character. That is, he says his character wouldn't try to kill a neutral character for doing the occasional bad things that everybody does, but he would definitely kill a murderer who had either escaped the proper authorities or who was subject to authorities who would, for some reason, fail to do their just and proper duties. The PCs' morality does acknowledge the giants as having moral status. Hence the wizard's loss of his temper, and his willingness to fight/negotiate/engage in ritual with them. Also, hence LadyIslay's character's decision to lecture the wizard about his bad behavior. As for the punishment question, I can shed more light on this as it pertains to the wizard. He is religiously inclined, and attends services at the temples of several gods, notably of magic and of justice/vengeance/law of the LG variety. He comes from a culture that is ruled by a CE despot, practices slavery, and has laws written by the wealthy and powerful to benefit themselves at the expense of those below them. As such, he is used to thinking of justice as something that must sometimes be achieved in spite of, rather than in harmony with, the authorities. Thoughts: *snip* Punishment is an interesting angle. What is an appropriate punishment for a foe who is provably warlike, treacherous and follows evil Gods? The wizard's player says that his character would argue that death is entirely appropriate.
Mithral Icesilver 08-04-04, 05:21 PM	The Arms & Equipment Guide, by the way, specifically states in the section on gelatinous cube mounts that they are air-permiable. This adjusts the ruling slightly towards evil.
Redding MTG Player 08-04-04, 08:15 PM	just because a LG person can let someone live that doesn't mean they have to or even should if I defeat a giant in ritual combat then let him live he is going to be highly ****** off and most likely try to kill me or others later especially since the rest of his people have been destroyed he would most likely become a rouge who preys on others. Inflicting pain and death mearly because you can is evil but there is no where that is says killing a person in a safe, smart, and strategic manner that may cause pain is evil. warriors can attack a bandit and inflict a gut wound (very slow very painful way to die) and that isn't evil.
Nom 08-04-04, 08:35 PM	Originally posted by Talanall Okay, fair enough. How do YOU define "evil"? We'll assume you ge to define/judge what is good and what is evil. That's kind of the point of this thread. Law and chaos are also under your purview. Indeed, you are like unto a god, for our purposes.*laughs* OK. You want to know what I would consider good and evil in this situation? My morality fits somewhere between NG and LG in a D&D scale. I believe that there is a moral Law that is Good, but I also believe that such a Law is redundant an unnecessary for those who are Good (they do the right thing without needing Law to tell them what it is). However, since most people (myself included) are not inherently Good, we need both Law to prove this and mercy to rescue us from judgement. Applying this (with some difficulty) to the situation at hand, the main sticking point I see is that killing something in the manner that the wizard is morally awkward for two reasons: (1) he is claiming the right to be executioner of justice over the giant, without explicit moral backup. I don't claim that capital punishment is wrong, but to take the life of another - even with legal justification - is not an act to be taken lightly. (2) he is using suffering of one creature as an object lesson to others. Moving outside my personal morality and into the morality that operates in my gameworld (which is explicitly quite different): Issue 1 is not particularly an issue. In my gameworld, most martial followers of LG dieties consider that they do have the divine right to execute moral justice. To slay evil is part of their code. Value of life vs deserves to die often depends on whether they tend NG or LN. Issue 2 is more problematic, since the painful death is not necessarily related to anything the creature itself deserves. The act is certainly pragmatic (since the giant is going to die, let's make a point). Some LG people would consider that the giant got exactly what it deserved. Others would feel uneasy about a manner of death that borders on torture when other options were available. Though the question must be asked: is the manner of death unjust or inherently evil, or are the observers just squeamish? I'd also observe that different cultures view Good in different ways. Modern western culture is very individualistic, so tends to view Good in terms of the individual. Other cultures are more corporate, and thus moral questions tend to be evaluated across the group rather than on an individual basis. The combat which ensued following the duel was to the death, as well, by virtue of the combatants having failed to ask for mercy. In fairness, the other giants who died in this second fight were mostly dead before they knew what was happening. The hill giant had a chance to ask for quarter, and did not.So there is nothing un-Lawful about the action. Whether it is Good depends a lot on how you draw the balance between the life of a single evil creature and the "greater good". The wizard has a habit of failing to explain himself unless asked to, in character. His player did explain his character motivation.I didn't so much mean through the character, but more the player explaining the character's in-game motivation. As discussed below:According to him, that method of killing was intended to be publicly gruesome and terrifying as a means of cowing any evil giants that might still be left around with the will to fight. ... As such, he is used to thinking of justice as something that must sometimes be achieved in spite of, rather than in harmony with, the authorities. The wizard's player says that his character would argue that death is entirely appropriate.And from the character's point of view, I completely agree with him. Justice was publicly served on an evil creature that thoroughly deserved it, and in a manner that acted to convince those witnessing it to do the right thing. Personally, I'd be inclined to argue that the wizard does not have the moral right to appoint himself executioner of such a judgement, but that needs to be weighed against the fairly sure knowledge that if the creature is released it will kill those the wizard is responsible for. I'd draw an analogy to the situation where police have an armed criminal holed up in a house: I'd not condemn a policeman for shooting the criminal dead. Although the action is not desirable, the consequences of not doing so could be much worse, and by using a gun for criminal activity the criminal has given up certain legal protections (such as an expectation that the Law will not use violent force against him).
ChaoticGood 08-04-04, 10:07 PM	I want to take this opportunity to address a common misunderstanding in the alignment department. Lawful doesn't mean one obeys the law. It means that a person operates on an unchanging set of principles which guide his/her behavior towards a goal. Chaotic means that you do what you feel like doing at any given moment and don't make long-term plans. The Wizard's problems here began with a Chaotic action: allowing himself to get into a fight that was detrimental to his overall goal based purely on his emotional response to an insult. Once the Giant attacked him, the Wizard was purely justified in defending himself and fighting back. So that's Neutral. The real genius here is when the Wizard falls back into his Lawful thought processes and devises a methodical and pre-meditated plan to deliver swift and terrible death to the transgressor. Yes, I contend that the Wizard's kill was definitively Lawful. He set a goal (to make an example of this fellow), then followed through methodically andwithout delay. (And with a heck of a lot of style, if I do say so myself!) Good or Evil? Well, I say Neutral, since he was acting to defend himself, though obviously with an Evil tendency, because there really wasn't any reason to be so gruesome. There are far less gruesome ways to make an example of someone. Overall, I saw Lawful Neutral with a strong Evil leaning. I wouldn't let this guy cast Sanctified spells for a while. ;)
Talanall 08-05-04, 12:32 AM	Originally posted by Mithral Icesilver The Arms & Equipment Guide, by the way, specifically states in the section on gelatinous cube mounts that they are air-permiable. This adjusts the ruling slightly towards evil. This is a good point. On the other hand, the wizard's player doesn't own this sourcebook. So on that basis, I'm going to discount this point -- he didn't know that this bit of information was out there, out of character. His character would have known, but the difficulty is that his character's knowledge is limited by the player's knowledge. Which is interesting, and might even merit a thread of its own. Metagaming is bad, and all that, but what happens when your character ought to know something that the player does not? On the other hand, even if he did, I'd be inclined to excuse him -- maybe. While a gelatinous cube may be described as air-permeable, it also deals acid damage with its attacks. If you inhale an acid which is strong enough to corrode flesh, my guess is that it'd corrode your lungs, and that you'd still suffocate.
Talanall 08-05-04, 12:47 AM	Nom: Thanks for your post. It was, if I can say so without embarrassing you, absolutely fascinating. Now, that said, I have another few questions for you, if you don't mind asking them. You said that: Applying this (with some difficulty) to the situation at hand, the main sticking point I see is that killing something in the manner that the wizard is morally awkward for two reasons: *snip* (2) he is using suffering of one creature as an object lesson to others. I think point two is really an important one. I've been talking to the wizard about this a good deal, and he maintains a really interesting distinction about what he was doing. He follows the thread, and has declined to comment to it for himself. But he says that he draws a distinction between causing suffering and appearing to cause suffering. In his estimation, what he was doing was appearing to cause suffering. He says that the reason he nudged the DM towards a ruling that involved having the giant suffocate rather than die of acid damage while still conscious was that his character was not interested in torturing the giant, so much as he was interested in appearing to torture the giant. I am not sure what I think of this argument. Your thoughts? For that matter, what do others reading this thread think of his argument? Is it a valid one? I don't have any reason to think he's lying about his character's intentions. I've known him for years, because we grew up together. I'm cautiously inclined to think that his intentions, especially given the questionable authority of the rules as written involved in this case, are a valid factor in the morality of his character's actions. And I'll also point out, again, that he said, once LadyIslay pointed out the flesh jelly from MM2 to his attention, that if he'd known about it, he'd have used a flesh jelly form instead of gelatinous cube form. If we decide we believe the wizard (and I do, pretty much) he was counting on the observers of this fight to be a bit squeamish. Regardless, the thread is getting steadily more interesting. I'm really glad I posted about the wizard.
Talanall 08-05-04, 12:58 AM	ChaoticGood: Again, like Nom's post, yours is quite interesting from my point of view. Particularly, I am interested in your treatment of the wizard's action as unnecessarily gruesome. More and more, as I talk to him, and listen to peopel comment on this thread, I am inclined towards the possibility that he acted out of a genuine belief that his killing the giant would look FAR worse than it actually was. By the rules as written, this may or may not have been an erroneous assumption, but I know the player, and I have absolutely no reason to think that he'd torture someone or something, in or out of character. He's not that kind of guy. I actually agree very firmly with most of your analysis of the wizard's actions. I think that his loss of his temper is chaotic, certainly. It's one of the places where his claim of LG alignment gets difficult to support, because the character loses his temper pretty often. The player, by comparison, is pretty even-tempered, though he's inclined to sarcasm. On the other hand, even when he starts to do something for the chaotic reason of his difficulty controlling his temper, he tends to proceed in a really markedly lawful manner as he carries out whatever it is that he decides to do. It's also really very easy to predict what will or will not set off his temper. It's not as if he's a hothead, precisely. But I'll say it again, since I've heard his player say it more than once. The player simply did not know about the flesh jelly, which seems like a much more humane solution to the problem (it deals bludgeoning damage that's far more than 1d6 per round, and whether the giant was suffocated or not, it would have died within a few rounds). The character has extremely high skill totals in Knowledge (nature), (dungeoneering), and so forth, and I have to hand it to the player when he claims that his character probably would have used this other form, had he remembered out of character that it even existed. The wizard's player also wanted me to thank you for the compliment about the stylishness of his kill.
Talanall 08-05-04, 01:07 AM	Originally posted by MarkB I think the main point of contention for the giants might not be the torture aspect - it was a legitimate, if very unorthodox, combat action - but the fact that the wizard, essentially, digested the giant to death. How do the giants feel about creatures who eat their kind in public? Well, yes. From their point of view, this was definitely a problem. And actually, the wizard didn't digest him to death. A bystander gave the giant a mercy death, so he didn't get dissolved. That said, the giants eat humans. This is a fact, for our purposes. They said so, very plainly. Humans are crunchy and good to eat, according the them. Now that I think of it, the wizard didn't like it much when they said so. In any case, I can certainly attest that after the fight was over, the giants who had not been involved (and there were about a thousand of them) dispersed. Rapidly. The DM said that they appeared eager to get as far from the wizard as possible. So I'm guessing that they didn't like it.
ck2001wendt 08-05-04, 03:48 AM	Hmmm....I guess the big question is: How long did the player expect killing the giant to take? If he expected it to take more than a minute, itīs probably an Evil act. Think about methods of corporal or capital punishment that are at least Neutral...the best example for me is the guillotine. Takes no time at all, and you still prove your point. Now think about methods of corporal or capital punishment that might be considered Evil...like Crucifixtion (sp?). The cross was designed to take several hours, as the person slowly suffocated to death. And getting nailed to something (when they didnīt just use rope), with gravity putting pressure on the wounds, probably wasnīt that fun either. In D&D, our time scale is a little shortened. Anything that should take more than a round or two to finish off a helpless foe, when the battle is already won, should probably be considered Evil. Furthermore, the Wizard was banking on the Giant failing a FORT save and suffocating. That would happen eventually (the DC goes up, right?), but the Fort save is the Giantīs strongest suit...donīt expect it to happen very quickly. In game terms...they have big lungs. Finally, the Wizardīs desire to "teach the other giants a lesson" could furthermore be construed as an Evil, or at least a Neutral, act, because itīs designed to "terroize" them. All in all, the LG wizard isnīt doing a very good job of remaining G. Oh, and an illusion of the Giant being digested to death (after a swift mercykilling) would have worked just as well. Giants arenīt known for their Will saves (though I suppose out of 1000, ONE of them would have made it).