Nevertheless, if you know that the target is Evil, then you know that they will actively try to perform Evil acts—which, if you’re Lawful Good, should be against the law. If your resident legal system is letting off Evil goblins, then it is broken, if not actively evil itself. Lawful characters are not obligated to follow corrupt legal systems—although their means of soling this problem should itself be lawful. In this case, however, I got the impression that the player had assumed “innocent until proven guilty” was itself the Lawful Good attitude to take, when in fact it is merely stupid (and, of course, he knew full damn well those goblins were guilty of something and would go on to commit more crimes.)
Nevertheless, if you know that the target is Evil, then you know that they will actively try to perform Evil acts—which, if you’re Lawful Good, should be against the law. If your resident legal system is letting off Evil goblins, then it is broken, if not actively evil itself.
Still not necessarily true. Take Jim the reforming criminal. Jim already served his time, so should not be arrested just for having committed evil acts. And since he still detects as evil, he can still feel the evil impulses tearing at his soul at every turn. But he fights them every day, and (I’ll stipulate) he manages to avoid doing anything evil for the next two weeks, after which ‘detect evil’ doesn’t work on him anymore.
So when the cleric casts detect evil on Jim and the rest of the party decides to vigilante-slaughter him for his loot, what should our Lawful friend do?
Resisting these “evil impulses” is itself a Good action, or it would not result in an alignment shift.
And, once again, in a world running on D&D, Jim should, in fact, be arrested—because otherwise he will commit Evil acts. If the authorities have discovered a way to persuade Evil characters to act Good—perhaps with threats of punishment or magic—then good for them, and I doubt a Good character would object, but that is not the case in the example given—these are Goblins, and without any reason to privileged the hypothesis that they have somehow been induced to act for the good of society, stabbing them is better than allowing them to continue harming others.
So when the cleric casts detect evil on Jim and the rest of the party decides to vigilante-slaughter him for his loot, what should our Lawful friend do?
The Lawful friend will attempt to follow the law—or, depending on the particulars, his code of honor / sacred traditions / whatever. If the Law says that criminals are innocent until proven guilty, then the Lawful guy would treat the criminal as such. He doesn’t need to know whether the criminal is reforming, or struggling with his inner demons (of the figurative kind), or whatever; all that matters is making sure the Law is followed.
Thus, if the Law says, “you can’t murder Evil people unless you have evidence of them committing actual crimes and/or atrocities”, then that’s that. Both our reforming criminal, and Stalin McHitlerguy, would be treated the same by a Lawful character who followed that Law.
They don’t ? I was under the impression that they did, to an extent; just like Lawful Evil characters have to obey at least the letter of the law. This is why their evil is all about convoluted contracts and complex machinations with plausible deniability—as opposed to, say, torching villagers while laughing maniacally.
Oh, they would prefer to reform the system from within proper channels, obviously, but they can consider a specific law non-binding based on their own code of honour or whatever. Lawful characters can free slaves because their human rights are being violated, for example.
Nevertheless, if you know that the target is Evil, then you know that they will actively try to perform Evil acts—which, if you’re Lawful Good, should be against the law. If your resident legal system is letting off Evil goblins, then it is broken, if not actively evil itself. Lawful characters are not obligated to follow corrupt legal systems—although their means of soling this problem should itself be lawful. In this case, however, I got the impression that the player had assumed “innocent until proven guilty” was itself the Lawful Good attitude to take, when in fact it is merely stupid (and, of course, he knew full damn well those goblins were guilty of something and would go on to commit more crimes.)
Still not necessarily true. Take Jim the reforming criminal. Jim already served his time, so should not be arrested just for having committed evil acts. And since he still detects as evil, he can still feel the evil impulses tearing at his soul at every turn. But he fights them every day, and (I’ll stipulate) he manages to avoid doing anything evil for the next two weeks, after which ‘detect evil’ doesn’t work on him anymore.
So when the cleric casts detect evil on Jim and the rest of the party decides to vigilante-slaughter him for his loot, what should our Lawful friend do?
Resisting these “evil impulses” is itself a Good action, or it would not result in an alignment shift.
And, once again, in a world running on D&D, Jim should, in fact, be arrested—because otherwise he will commit Evil acts. If the authorities have discovered a way to persuade Evil characters to act Good—perhaps with threats of punishment or magic—then good for them, and I doubt a Good character would object, but that is not the case in the example given—these are Goblins, and without any reason to privileged the hypothesis that they have somehow been induced to act for the good of society, stabbing them is better than allowing them to continue harming others.
The Lawful friend will attempt to follow the law—or, depending on the particulars, his code of honor / sacred traditions / whatever. If the Law says that criminals are innocent until proven guilty, then the Lawful guy would treat the criminal as such. He doesn’t need to know whether the criminal is reforming, or struggling with his inner demons (of the figurative kind), or whatever; all that matters is making sure the Law is followed.
Thus, if the Law says, “you can’t murder Evil people unless you have evidence of them committing actual crimes and/or atrocities”, then that’s that. Both our reforming criminal, and Stalin McHitlerguy, would be treated the same by a Lawful character who followed that Law.
Actually, Lawful Good characters don’t have to obey Evil laws.
EDIT:
Emphasis on the code of honour types.
They don’t ? I was under the impression that they did, to an extent; just like Lawful Evil characters have to obey at least the letter of the law. This is why their evil is all about convoluted contracts and complex machinations with plausible deniability—as opposed to, say, torching villagers while laughing maniacally.
Oh, they would prefer to reform the system from within proper channels, obviously, but they can consider a specific law non-binding based on their own code of honour or whatever. Lawful characters can free slaves because their human rights are being violated, for example.