Debate Question - Read and Respond

Depends on if you classify orcs as an inherently evil race. If so, hack away -- you're preventing a new generation of evil doers from growing up. If not, you have to spare them -- who knows, your act of mercy could shape the rest of their lives.

These kind of dilemmas are always fun in an RPG. This one group I played with always had a thing for paladins, so we were always debating whether things were a good act or not. In one case, we were involved in preparing the defense of a city against the onslaught of a demon lord named Gaunt. This was to be the final battle, the knock-down drag-out affair that would decide the fate of the city. Gaunt's army was about a month away -- and a sorceror in his employ zapped us all to our game world's equivalent of the North Pole. So we had to trudge our way back to the city in time to be there for the attack. Well, on the way, we find this colony of dwarves who are being held in slavery by some frost giants. And the great debate ensued -- do we take the time to liberate the dwarves knowing we'd be losing precious time and would have no way to transport the dwarves back anyway, or leave these dwarves to their cruel fate in favor of the fate of a city of hundreds of thousands. And it didn't help matters that one of the players ran a paladin who worshipped a dwarven god. We must have gone around for hours until we decided to free the dwarves -- and mostly for the XP from killing the giants.

Wow, this is almost like the Tusken Raiders scene in AOTC.

Well, I guess we need to know more about the history of these orcs. But if you have no idea, I would say that it is an "evil" act solely on the fact they are not grown orcs. They're in the developing stage for orchood and pretty much should be considered as children. Give them a chance to exact revenge on you down the line. It makes the campaign even more interesting and suspenseful -- more importantly, they'll grow powerful and be filled with vengeful hate which translates to good XP. (So in the long run, it's quite an evil plot.)

As for Poxy's dilemma, man, I wish I had such GMs! That's really great stuff.

If you just slaughter the children defenseless, it's evil. If you wait until they attack you (when they're grown) it's a neutral act of self-defense when you kill them.

The parties I DM'd waybackwhen killed the male orcs in battle, slaughtered the children in the commons and then raped-murdered the women. They too thought they were justified good guys because the orcs were of evil alignment. HA! Any game system that rewards you for such deeds with personal advancement (in XP) is inherently evil itself.

Nay.

I actually have a rather interesting question.

I'm in a D&D campaign. I've changed my character a bunch of times trying to find the right sort of character. I think I found a type I like, but I'm not sure how to play it. If you game masters could help me out I would certainly appreciate it. My character archetype is a fantasy/D&D version of the Saint of Killers from Preacher. Thanks.

This may not be the kind of advice you're looking for, but it's your character -- play it any way you want.

depends i guess on the crimes of their parents. if this tribe was known to be into all sorts of evil doings. you'd want to clear them all out. why leave a disgruntled young one to grow up to make a larger more evil tribe?

if you just stumbled into a camp and had to fight to defend yourself then i'd leave the young ones alone.