From: ecrjbruce@economics.adelaide.edu.au
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Bastard DM from Hell &a matter of Honour
Date: 16 Dec 92 19:47:12 ACST
Organization: Economics, University of Adelaide
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: eco.economics.adelaide.edu.au

In article <1gm3qoINN2f2@huon.itd.adelaide.edu.au>, phil@iagu.itd.adelaide.edu.au (Phil Kernick) writes:
> In article <1992Dec15.184131.1@economics.adelaide.edu.au>, ecrjbruce@economics.adelaide.edu.au writes:
> 
> I suppose *as* the Bastard DM from Hell, I should make a few comments
> about what Rob has said.  I also should note that we have had several
> thousand lines of e-mail discussion on these very points...

and one of your suggestions was to pu it to the net.  Note that I didi not
flame anywhere!!

> 
> In my opinion, honour is a function of society and not the other way
> around.  The entire *concept* of honour is artificial.  What is more
> honourable about being killed with a sword as compared to a poisoned
> dagger?  Surely dead is dead.

So what is the difference between a glorious fight vs 300 trolls and sepuku? 
Both give the same result, answer - honour.

>  Some societies *choose* to make
> arbitrary decisions like, "You may kill an opponent, but only using
> the following techniques...".  Rob suggested that everyone knows what
> honour is, and some groups choose to ignore it.  I disagree, no
> everyone has a concept of honour at all,

Everyone knows what honour is.  You may choose not to follow it but you still
know what it is.
  
> so applying foreign concepts
> to them is unreasonable.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

>  If you consider it, honour is not
> intelligent - you kill your opponents with the easiest technique that
> is least likely to get you killed.  Not wave big knives at each other
> until one falls down.

Honour is exactly that - wave big knives at each other...

Honour is intelligent but not always smart, hence you avoid taking the easy
advantage when your opponent slips etc (assuming he's an honourable opponent).
See the examples I gave in private response to this.

> 
> Trial by combat may well have existed in the medieval times, but in
> AD&D terms it could not be considered a good act.  It does lead
> directly to the "might is right" syndrome.  Consider, the young
> upstart noble decides to challenge the wise old sage on a point of
> history.  The noble will win (assuming the sage has no special powers)
> and hence the noble is correct?  I don't think so.  In a situation
> where a duel is offered and accepted then I feel that this is the only
> time that trial by combat is fair.

This would not be trial by combat.  The young noble (proably level 1 ftr) would
be picking on a non combatant, and that is decidedly dishonourable!

> As I pointed out in e-mail, torture does not get the truth.  It gets
> what ever the victim believes the torturer wants to hear.  A perfect
> example is from the movie "The Name of the Rose".  The Inquisitor can
> not get a (wrongful) confession from a priest, so he threatens the
> priest with "hot irons".  The priest then confesses *anything* to
> avoid the torture - even though what he confesses to, he is in no way
> guilty of!

Not always.  The "Rose" analogy is flawed simply because the priest had nothing
to confess.  If I had info and you tortured me you can be sure that sooner or
later I'd give it to you, you'd then go check the info and come back if I'd
lied and start again....

> 
> As described above, trial by combat will also not get any sort of
> truth.

Um, your life or the info??  OK here's the info.....



> I have thought of this for some time, and I believe that the following
> is reasonable.  A paladin my not have many *things*, and may not keep
> much money, so I would have the paladin spend some aquired cash on
> clerical scrolls such as "detect lie", etc.  These one-shot magical
> items (as well as potions) I do not consider to count towards magical
> item limits for character classes.  The spell *will* tell you whether
> he is telling the truth, no other physical technique will.  Other
> useful spells for the same techniques are "hold person" and "charm
> person".

this makes sense.  However  it was not mentioned prior to the game and is in
direct opposition to the rulebooks.

It also assume priests are everywhere  scribing scrolls (which takes a long
time in your game - just an observation not a flame) ready for paladins to
collect.


It would also tend to indicate that a paladin enetering the game should have
plenty of scrolls ready for just these encounters..  Given that he will be
burning through them he's gonna need heaps!




>> Secondly, who deserves to be treated with honour.

>> and thus break him as a lowly curr deserves to be broken, or does he allow the
>> thief to simply say "I'm sorry" and let him go?
> 
> Think lawful good.


I am trying yet I still believe that the thief should be executed as a common
criminal with little hope of redemption.

> 
>> yet when the thief refused to give me information and said
>> "I truly repent of my evil ways" I had to accept his word.
> 
> I will repeat this for the good of the world.  The captive NEVER SAID
> THIS.  In the encounter that this is based on, one of the clerics cast
> "Charm Person" on him and then asked him questions.



True except for a couple of points.  In our after game discussion I posed the
example and that is the reaction you gave me.


Also you allowed the priest to wild magic the spell, he did not have it stored
and I had no knowledge of it.



>> And what about creatures such as orcs etc?  Do I treat them as humans or equal
>> or as animals who are generally evil and below contempt? 

> As we discussed in e-mail, I made the following point.  Because the
> Montrous Compendium (or Monster Manual or any other book) says that
> Orcs are Chaotic Evil, does *not* mean that all Orcs are CE.  It means
> that in general their society is CE.  There will be LG Orcs, but they
> are likely to be confined or killed for their heretical behaviour.  If
> an Orc surrenders, it does not mean that because it's aligment is
> evil, that it automatically is lying.  The aligments as specified in
> the tomes are exact only for unique monsters, and are a societal
> alignment for all others.


Orcs are regarded as CE because they are predominantly CE.  As such all
reactions to them are based on this sort of thought.  Nor do I assume it is
liing, I have said I believe it to be representative of a subhuman race of
evilness and as such it should be destroyed.  By your own words the vast
majority of orcs we meet will be CE because others will be "confined or killed
for their heretical behaviour".  In any DnD  setting Orcs are reviled for their 
squalid evil natures, my reactions to them are based on that.

> 
>> Finally, with our captured thief it has been ruled that I must accept it if he
>> says he repents.
> 
> Not quite.  You must be sure that he has repented, but it is up to you
> to find out if he has.  Again, magic is probably the only certain way
> to do this.


So by repenting he does not give up his former ways and expose them he just
says "Whoops, my mistake, I'll see you around some time...."

and we let him go.

I don't think so!  If he is truly penitent I expect him to provide information
to help the party remove this temptation from the path of others.  He may not
want to help eradicate it directly but if he has truly seen the error of his
ways he will certainly provide the info the party requested.



> Repent does not mean: completely change alignment and now fall in with
> you and your cause.  It means: being sorry for the crimes you have
> committed and truely not intending to do them again.

Nor did I ask for any of this.  If he were penitent then he would provide the
info and be free to go, see paragraph above for reasoning.


> 
> Also, as I pointed out to you and the rest of the party after the
> adventure, the reasons that the thief would not give up the information
> that you wanted were:
> 
> (a)  He didn't have it.

So you're telling me that a level 7 thief doesn't protect his back by having a
little hold over his potential employer just in case the employere may be
tempted to think of our thief as expendable?


Again, I don't think so....

If he's survived that far he knows damn well to protect his back, and the way
you played him (total arrogance, "so you killed all my followers and all the
other level 7 thieves" what do I care, I'm just gonna sit here and sneer at
you...") he was bloody sure somone would look after him.  Or maybe he trusts
his boss implicitly.... but that would be inconsistent.

> (b)  If he had had it, and had given it to you, then not only would he
>      have been killed, but so would have his entire family.  Either
>      way his death was certain, but he could at least spare his
>      relatives.

Sounds like an honour concept to me.


Why could he not just disappear?  Thieves do it regularly nowadays so back then
with no computer checks etc (and the magic free land we play in) he could
disappear easily.

> 
>> It seems to me that the Bastard DM from Hell is going all out to
>> make it impossible for us to get information quickly - and as everyone knows
>> speed is of the essence when small groups are involved.
> 
> I am making you role-play a Paladin, rather that just a good fighter.
> You specifically wanted the challenge and you have it.



First of all I'm not a good fighter, just an average one.  The fighter in the
group who is 1 level below me is a way superior fighter due to his 17 con,
18/04 str.  He wades into combat with his sword of wounding which heals him
when he needs it (once per week, yet to be exploited as a significant
disadvantage) knowing that everything will work out.  I wanted a roleplaying
challenge yes, but there is NO challenge in a paladin if his actions are so
strictly controlled that he cannot weigh up the pro's and cons of a situation. 
All he is is a computer program that follows its input directly.  There is no
challenge in that.  I sought clarification prior to playing a paladin but the
groud rules seem to have moved a bit.  I do not believe a paladin should wander
about slaughtering everything that moves, equally a thief who backstabs should
not expect any clemency from his former victims.



> 
>> His argument is that
>> there must be some significant drawback to playing a paladin, my counter
>> argument is that allocating my best stat to Charisma and the huge exp
>> requirements are penalty enough.
> 
> No it isn't.


Now it's necessary to break this into its component parts.

>  As Rob and I have discussed, stats are not that
> important, especially in my games.

Yes they are.  In your games we take a long time to level.  This is a mutual
observation, not a complaint.  Therefore if I took my 17 cha and put it in str
I would effectively be 1 level higher with regards to thaco, and it will take
me well over 1 year of real time to get there by earning experience.  This
shows how stats are critical in the way that they are allocated.  I agree that
stats do not make the character (hence my allocation of other stats), but to
allocate your best stat (17) to the least used area (charisma) really is a
major drawback.  Also note that it prevents me from gaining a 10% exp bonus as
my str is about 12 or somesuch.




>  So you go up levels slower, but
> not much slower than mages.


At this level the mages go up quickest, check your books.  They get a huge
change in terms of power  when compared to almost all other classes, whereas
the paladin and ranger get the least increase while levelling the slowest. 
This I accept as a function of the class, however it is a MAJOR drawback and
should be regarded as such.



> 
>> If a paladin cannot force information from captured opponents
>> then how are they to function as a class?
> 
> It is not their function to extract information from people.  That
> would be the job of the Inquisitors. 

It is the function of all PC's to extract info during a campaign.



> 
>> If they go on a quest for the
>> church, or for their steed etc. and they meet ONE lousy opponent who says "I'm
>> not telling you jack sh*t" then they are stuffed!  There must be some way for
>> them to get the info they need but what is it?
> 
> I said it before, but it is worth repeating - magic.
> 

And how plentiful is magic in the game?  We rejoice when we get a potion that
isn't cursed!  Given the time it takes to scribe scrolls in the campaign there
had better be a huge number of clerics just loading up with scrolls for
wandering paladins to collect!


> 
> I have talked to many people, and not one has said that a Paladin can
> use torture under *any* circumstance.  Sorry dude.

In all but the extreme circumstance of a cowardly thief attack I would agree. 
When my opponent fights with no honour then all bets are off, it's open season
on him.



regs

Rob

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