[DF] Dragonlance

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Honestly, that doesn't seem that far off to me. Situations like this are extremely difficult to judge the morality of, such that they can go either way. Consider similar situations. An innocent townsperson is being controlled by a cursed amulet, and the Paladin is aware of this. In the resulting fight, is it acceptable for the Paladin to just shove his sword through the innocent's chest, or should his vows require him to instead try to subdue the remove the amulet? If a reliable divination reveals a newborn will grow up to be a genocidal monster, is it acceptable for the Paladin to snatch it from its mother's arms and dash its brains out against a wall, or should he try to figure out a different way to ensure the prophecy doesn't come to pass? In the example case, the Paladin could have made arrangements to have the women and children restrained whenever there was going to be a full moon (or however involuntary shifting worked in that game).

Of course, were I GM and found myself in this situation (likely due to poor planning, as I'm not enough of a jerk to purposefully put a player in such a Catch 22 situation), if I decided executing the victims violated the Paladin's code, I wouldn't just let him/her go through with it and then say "Congratulations! You're now a Fighter with no Bonus Feats*!" Rather, I'd either just outright tell the player "That violates your vows as a Paladin, are you sure you want to go through with it?" or have the player roll against a relevant skill (probably Religion) to figure out if this was a violation... and on anything but a Critical Failure would probably say something along the lines of "You aren't sure if this behavior would be acceptable for a Paladin, perhaps you should consult an expert."

*Which is something I said to a player of a Samurai character who violated his code of Bushido, but I had given ample warning beforehand, and even let him take back the action that led to loss of his class features, now that he knew I was serious. He abandoned the character and made a different one not long later.

As King and Country pointed out the Paladin is an idealized version of what at the end of the day is a fighter who "hypocritically preaches respect for all life, while a value system he would more realistically possess, that of religious intolerance, determines his actions."

The Paladins of the Scarlet Crusade in WoW still have their Paladin powers even though they go around killing anyone (man, woman, child) that they believe is afflicted with the curse of undeath.

Samurai are much in the same boat though while they didn't live up to the ideal Bushido was not what the WWII propaganda film Know Your Enemy, Japan tried to paint it as either - "sanctioned double dealing as an art to be cultivated". Shogun (based on the story of William Adams) is closer to the reality.

GURPS Japan has Bushido outlined as
* die rather than fail in task.
* commit ritual suicide without hesitation if ordered to do so.
* answer any challenge or insult to his lord.
* always be polite to his equals and superiors
* cannot overlook disrespect from a social inferior; such disrespect is usually punished by death.

That last one is why one of the Samurai lops off the head of a peasant in Shogun. They were original Lawful but could be any alignment from 3.5 on.

Originally Posted by Varyon

All that said, I'm not a huge fan of alignment systems. I do kind of like them as cosmic forces, but where a character still has sufficient volition to go against type. Of course, that's likely to end up with the type of setting where such forces can be summarized with "Good isn't always good, and Evil isn't always evil."

In Deities and Demigods the "worthy" Orcs and Goblins fight in their own Valhalla. Each race claims they are always the winner in these battles.

Yahtzee in his review of computer games has said he has no use for moral choice systems as you ether had to be either an effective LG Mary Sue or CE Murder Hobo to get the "best" endings.