Code of Honor (Honesty), point value?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Depends on where and when.

When Superman was originally written his activities were closer to legal than they would be now - if for no other reason we have more civil rights law now.

<shrug> If there are "civil rights laws" that impact on what Superman usually does these days, I'm unaware of them. Superman (and by that I mean mainstream comic book Superman) is not a cop or government agent. He doesn't extract confessions, doesn't hospitalize criminals, doesn't break into private residences or even businesses except when someone is about to die, doesn't provide evidence to the authorities except incidentally, and doesn't interfere with people voting. The truth is under the law you can get away with a hell of a lot if people will die if you don't act.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<shrug> If there are "civil rights laws" that impact on what Superman usually does these days, I'm unaware of them. Superman (and by that I mean mainstream comic book Superman) is not a cop or government agent. He doesn't extract confessions, doesn't hospitalize criminals, doesn't break into private residences or even businesses except when someone is about to die, doesn't provide evidence to the authorities except incidentally, and doesn't interfere with people voting. The truth is under the law you can get away with a hell of a lot if people will die if you don't act.

Actively going around looking for criminals to beat up and turn into the police is vigilanteism and generally would get you in trouble in the real world. The DC universe clearly has much looser laws than we do about that. Superman appears to be within the law in his setting though. I would give him Honesty.

[Flyndaran]

Authors have said that Honesty is about following A! set of rules, not necessarily local laws.
You don't suddenly change morals when crossing national borders or when your nation enacts laws contrary to how you've always lived. Such as now hiding refugees from ethnic cleansing when it's made illegal to do so.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Causing property damage to save human lives is not illegal. The law allows for such things. Nor for that matter is intervening to stop a felony in progress.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<shrug> If there are "civil rights laws" that impact on what Superman usually does these days, I'm unaware of them. Superman (and by that I mean mainstream comic book Superman) is not a cop or government agent. He doesn't extract confessions, doesn't hospitalize criminals, doesn't break into private residences or even businesses except when someone is about to die, doesn't provide evidence to the authorities except incidentally, and doesn't interfere with people voting. The truth is under the law you can get away with a hell of a lot if people will die if you don't act.

The problem is when you deliberately set out to look for a criminal act in process and then use violent means to resolve it without official sanction, training or authority. At that point, you are no longer simply a private citizen acting to preserve life in an emergency, you've become a criminal who planned and executed an act of violent vigilantism.

In any reasonable setting, laws would be written to invest Superman with law enforcement authority and subject him to the same legal safeguards as other enforcers of the law. As most comics settings are rather more inconsistent than reasonable, this doesn't usually seem to be the case.

Modern nation states are quite jealous of their monopoly on the use of force. Most of them have tolerances that approach zero for those who would encroach on that monopoly. Hence, not a lot of legal leeway for vigilantes patrolling for trouble and subduing criminals with high-powered lasers and massive, building collapsing force.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Icelander

The problem is when you deliberately set out to look for a criminal act in process and then use violent means to resolve it without official sanction, training or authority. At that point, you are no longer simply a private citizen acting to preserve life in an emergency, you've become a criminal who planned and executed an act of violent vigilantism.

Yeah. There's no law against that. Not in the United States. Not actually in any English common law nation.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<shrug> If there are "civil rights laws" that impact on what Superman usually does these days, I'm unaware of them.

He routinely violates people's privacy with his super senses. He falsely imprisons people by tying them up and leaving them. He uses excessive force (the only thing that prevents comic book heroes from being mass murderers is the comic convention that knocking people unconscious is not life threatening).

It's not necessary to be an authority to be sued for civil rights violation. Lots of criminals are, it's a way to get cases that miscarry in state criminal court into a federal civil one.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Yeah. There's no law against that. Not in the United States. Not actually in any English common law nation.

There are laws against assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, etc.

Technically, you can call yourself a vigilante and go out with your buddies to patrol to your heart's content. You can even carry all sorts of weapons and tactical gear, at least in many places in the US.

It's when you start to do all the stuff that superheroes tend to do that you run into legal issues, as the law is actually not all that favourable to people who assault other people with lethal weapons, even if their justification is that they were trying to stop a crime. Plenty of people who were defending themselves have been convicted of assault or more serious charges, simply because they went further than stopping the direct threat warranted.

And Superman isn't ever really threatened by muggers or bank robbers, which would force him to rely exclusively on an argument centered on defence of others, which usually does not cover property and certainly does not cover using violence to prevent suspects from escaping.

Premedidating the violence is usually going to ensure that the vigilante is indicted and convicted. Well, unless he's in Texas or Mississippi.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

2) More importantly, the point cost depends on how much trouble the code would get you into through maintaining the code. Since it's basically "follow the law, or be good where the law is evil", it's basically no trouble at all unless your campaign is set in an inherently evil regime. In contrast, all five of the CoH in Basic contain elements of risk (either physical risk or loss of standing among the CoH's in-group) for the character that are unrelated to the law.

No, a law can be of considerable inconvenience without being evil. It is always against the law to cheat on one's taxes and taxes are sometimes extremely grievous. But that law is not a command to participate in genocide.

A CoH that includes respecting the law but not blindly is not in fact just shorthand for "don't be evil." Giving reasonable respect to public institutions(Constitution, laws, offices) is a reasonable part of a CoH. It would probably for instance include refraining from venial nepotism, patronage and favor trading even though "everyone does it."

One example of that was a story I heard of a country judge who found his daughter arraigned for a traffic violation(the story does not explain why he did not recuse himself). He promptly found his daughter guilty. And then turned around and paid the ticket himself.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Modern nation states are quite jealous of their monopoly on the use of force. Most of them have tolerances that approach zero for those who would encroach on that monopoly. Hence, not a lot of legal leeway for vigilantes patrolling for trouble and subduing criminals with high-powered lasers and massive, building collapsing force.

And Superman lives among modern nation states. But in any case it is hard imagine him living without being a walking sovereignty.

Be that as it may that is not the only scenario. This CoH can work in a feudal society.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Yeah. There's no law against that. Not in the United States. Not actually in any English common law nation.

I am pretty sure if, I for example, went looking for gamers who download GURPS PDFs from torrents, beat the crap out of them, and left them in front of the police station with a helpful "Friendly Neighborhood Psychopath" note, I probably would be of interest to the police very quickly.

This isn't the case in the comics, so it doesn't apply there, but saying that vigilanteism is legal in the real United States is just not correct.

More seriously there are people who sometimes get away with some very bad things because the justice system is messy and they sometimes get the crap beat out of them or killed by aggrieved victims. The law definitely prosecutes the vigilantes in these cases, even though they could argue they were preventing further crimes.