Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

[Nagisawa Takumi]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

I'm not sure that both receive the full 20 points. That would depend on how often not killing someone proves disadvantageous. The value of the Disadvantage would have to be sorted out in a discussion among GM and players.

 

According to this thread, Batman and the Silver Surfer are the two characters that have a total CvK.

[Utech]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

According to this thread' date=' Batman and the Silver Surfer are the two characters that have a total CvK.[/quote']

And?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

According to this thread' date=' Batman and the Silver Surfer are the two characters that have a total CvK.[/quote']

 

Good. Now, how frequently does it limit them? If the answer is "pretty much all the time", it's worth 25 points. If the answer is "commonly", then it's worth 20 points. If the answer is "infrequently", it's worth 15 points.

 

And if the answer is "virtually never", you get no points because it doesn't disadvantage you.

 

"Vow of Celibacy" or "Code vs Eating Carrots" could also be a Total Commitment, but absent some in-game drawback from abstention from the act in question, they're not worth any points.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

Batman deals with foes regularly who tempt him, and who frankly deserve it. Just the fact that he has the Joker as a villain means he deserves the 20 points.

 

Silver Surfer. . . well, actually, pretty much everything I said applies to him, too. Sure, he's got the Power Cosmic, but his typical villains are also cosmic beings, often ones with more power than him, to boot. And amongst the villains he's refused to kill when he had the opportunity to do so? Thanos.

 

Yeah, he's got the 20 point version, too.

[SilentMan]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

There's ALWAYS another way.

 

 

Actually there is. Far more reliable than torture. Divination magics. If your team has it`s own version of Doctor Strange, entreating Cosmic Entities should provide necessary information.

 

Here is one example:

 

"From the Realm of the Dread Satannsh

Whence came the forms of Fear

Let all dark veils now vanish

Thy Herald now appear!"

Calls forth a faceless, cloaked and hooded figure who is the herald of Satannish. He will show, through a mystic orb, whatever he is asked, even those who are subject to the

Spell of Everlasting Vanishment

This is the only way to locate someone who has been striken by that spell.

 

EDIT: I suppose invoking herald of Satannish is a bad idea but otherwise magic should get the job done

[Vulcan]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

Assuming of, of course, that the GM's world has magic... or that the GM allows such power contructions.

 

 

Interrogation (rather than outright torture) is the most reliable way to get information out of an unwilling source. But Interrogation takes time, and sometimes the need to get information quickly outweighs other concerts.

 

Sometimes being heroic means sacrificing your reputation to save the little girl who's been buried alive.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

Assuming of, of course, that the GM's world has magic... or that the GM allows such power contructions.

 

 

Interrogation (rather than outright torture) is the most reliable way to get information out of an unwilling source. But Interrogation takes time, and sometimes the need to get information quickly outweighs other concerts.

 

Sometimes being heroic means sacrificing your reputation to save the little girl who's been buried alive.

 

I agree with ya, pretty much all the way around.

 

Bringing Powers into the discussion opens whole canyons full of ethical worms.

 

I just had a phrase pop into my head, and idly wondered how often some variation has been uttered in a game...

 

"OK, We have the information we need. Go ahead and heal him"

[Houston GM]

It's a matter of integrity

 

Sometimes being heroic means sacrificing your reputation to save the little girl who's been buried alive.

If you think it's about reputation, then you don't get this PsychLim (not willing to torture) at all. It's about integrity, and it's not heroic to sacrifice your integrity ... for any reason.

 

I am opposed to torture, because I am not a monster. If a little girl's life is at stake, I still won't torture someone, because I am still not a monster. If the little girl suffocates because someone buried her alive, she died because he was a monster. My integrity is unaffected by his evil choices.

 

I will feel a lot of pain, because I was unable to save the little girl. But I feel the pain because I'm human, not because my choice was flawed.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: It's a matter of integrity

 

If you think it's about reputation' date=' then you don't get this PsychLim (not willing to torture) at all. It's about [b']integrity[/b], and it's not heroic to sacrifice your integrity ... for any reason.

 

I am opposed to torture, because I am not a monster. If a little girl's life is at stake, I still won't torture someone, because I am still not a monster. If the little girl suffocates because someone buried her alive, she died because he was a monster. My integrity is unaffected by his evil choices.

 

I will feel a lot of pain, because I was unable to save the little girl. But I feel the pain because I'm human, not because my choice was flawed.

 

I respectfully disagree...

 

in the "somewhat fictional" words of Eliot Ness

 

"I have foresworn myself. I have broken every law I have sworn to uphold, I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right!"

 

There are as many different "internal" visions of what constitutes heroic actions as there are men put into the position where they have to make those kinds of hard choices.

 

I, for one, feel that sacrificing personal integrity to preserve the life of an innocent child is more heroic than choosing to uphold your code at such a price.

 

But I'll admit to having a "vigilante mentality" psyche lim of my own.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

I'm curious how we know, with certainty that the little girl is buried alive, and we know with certainty that the victim of our proposed torture either did the burying or knows where she is buried through some other mechanism, yet our means of gathering these first two facts infallibly do not permit us to also discover where she is buried.

 

Let's assume, for a moment, the scum showed up at the media offering to provide the girl's location for the sum of $1 million. After Our Hero threatens to torture the victim, he says he doesn't really know - he just saw an opportunity for fast cash. Does Our Hero believe him, and let him go without torture (presumably to the arms of the police) or not believe him and subject him to brutal torture for several hours, crippling him for life and driving him insane with the pain, before accepting he really didn't know?

 

Or, after a few minutes, he provides a location he knows will take the "Hero" a long time to get to and back, so he has a chance to get away or at least postpone future agony being inflicted until he discloses information he doesn't have. And while Our Hero is checking this false lead, the little girl suffocates. Maybe if he had spent his time investigating instead of torturing...

[Houston GM]

Re: It's a matter of integrity

 

I' date=' for one, feel that sacrificing personal integrity to preserve the life of an innocent child is more heroic than choosing to uphold your code at such a price.[/quote']

I'm glad to hear you profess such a strong conviction toward preserving the life of an innocent child.

 

So I spent one minute doing a Google search.

 

If you follow this link or this one you can save the life of an innocent child. It won't require you to torture someone. It won't require you to sacrifice your integrity in any way. It won't even require superpowers.

 

The only price you'll have to pay is $30 to $35 per month.

 

But it's not as exciting as breaking the bones of bad guys ... and you won't get any recognition for it either.

 

 

Bringing this back on topic, this is why I believe that your examples are flawed. Torture is not a sign of heroism. It's a sign of impatience.

 

"Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

[Vulcan]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

I agree with ya, pretty much all the way around.

 

Bringing Powers into the discussion opens whole canyons full of ethical worms.

 

I just had a phrase pop into my head, and idly wondered how often some variation has been uttered in a game...

 

"OK, We have the information we need. Go ahead and heal him"

 

Or worse: "He still isn't talking. Heal him so we can do this again."

[Vulcan]

Re: It's a matter of integrity

 

If you think it's about reputation' date=' then you don't get this PsychLim (not willing to torture) at all. It's about [b']integrity[/b], and it's not heroic to sacrifice your integrity ... for any reason.

 

I am opposed to torture, because I am not a monster. If a little girl's life is at stake, I still won't torture someone, because I am still not a monster. If the little girl suffocates because someone buried her alive, she died because he was a monster. My integrity is unaffected by his evil choices.

 

I will feel a lot of pain, because I was unable to save the little girl. But I feel the pain because I'm human, not because my choice was flawed.

 

Good point about the reputation. I hadn't thought of that. I was thinking about the ending to Dark Knight when I made that post.

 

BUT: If you have a total CvK, and you not only won't kill, but won't allow others (like your teammates) to commit acts that have potentially lethal consequences, could it not be argued that not torturing the guy for the information to save the little girl becomes an act of moral cowardice, rather than moral integrity?

 

Not sure one way or the other, myself. But then, I'm an old, ignored Roman god, what do I know about Christian standards?

[Vulcan]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

I'm curious how we know, with certainty that the little girl is buried alive, and we know with certainty that the victim of our proposed torture either did the burying or knows where she is buried through some other mechanism, yet our means of gathering these first two facts infallibly do not permit us to also discover where she is buried.

 

Let's assume, for a moment, the scum showed up at the media offering to provide the girl's location for the sum of $1 million. After Our Hero threatens to torture the victim, he says he doesn't really know - he just saw an opportunity for fast cash. Does Our Hero believe him, and let him go without torture (presumably to the arms of the police) or not believe him and subject him to brutal torture for several hours, crippling him for life and driving him insane with the pain, before accepting he really didn't know?

 

Or, after a few minutes, he provides a location he knows will take the "Hero" a long time to get to and back, so he has a chance to get away or at least postpone future agony being inflicted until he discloses information he doesn't have. And while Our Hero is checking this false lead, the little girl suffocates. Maybe if he had spent his time investigating instead of torturing...

 

And sometimes bad choices are made. This is the other side of it, because sometimes you're wrong and have to deal with the consequences.

 

Torture is not a tool for the faint of heart, not just becaue it involves inflicting severe pain on a fellow human being, but because the fellow human being may not know what you need to know. And now you've inflicted severe pain on him for no reason.

[Nagisawa Takumi]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

And?

 

*Sigh* Let me repeat myself. They BOTH have a 20 point CvK, which is on ALL THE TIME. OK? They BOTH have the EXACT SAME LEVEL, they WILL NOT KILL EVER.

 

However, HOW THEY GO ABOUT THEIR 'HERO' BUSINESS IS NOT DETERMINED BY THE CvK! IT'S THE OTHER LIMITATIONS THAT THEY HAVE.

 

A lot of you seem to want to make mean MORE than it does. Like 'Soft Hearted' or 'Respect all Life', which simply SHOULD NOT WORK THAT WAY.

 

Because you're killing character concepts. Hell, if you do that, you CANNOT make Batman because he doesn't have a 5 or 10 point CvK, he's got the full 20 (Or 25, or whatever) version, except that to some of you, it means he has to be more 'heroic' or cartoony in his delivery of Justice.

 

I say no.

 

In any of MY games, and this is just my game, a Code Versus Killing is just that, a Code saying "I shalt not kill". Kneecaps fall under OTHER psychological limitations.

[Greywind]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

I'm curious how we know, with certainty that the little girl is buried alive, and we know with certainty that the victim of our proposed torture either did the burying or knows where she is buried through some other mechanism, yet our means of gathering these first two facts infallibly do not permit us to also discover where she is buried.

 

Let's assume, for a moment, the scum showed up at the media offering to provide the girl's location for the sum of $1 million. After Our Hero threatens to torture the victim, he says he doesn't really know - he just saw an opportunity for fast cash. Does Our Hero believe him, and let him go without torture (presumably to the arms of the police) or not believe him and subject him to brutal torture for several hours, crippling him for life and driving him insane with the pain, before accepting he really didn't know?

 

Or, after a few minutes, he provides a location he knows will take the "Hero" a long time to get to and back, so he has a chance to get away or at least postpone future agony being inflicted until he discloses information he doesn't have. And while Our Hero is checking this false lead, the little girl suffocates. Maybe if he had spent his time investigating instead of torturing...

Doesn't work, because we all know the little girl wasn't buried alive and suffocated, but killed and carved up for dog food when the kidnapper realized that his victim wasn't from the family he thought she was...

[Marketeer]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

Greetings HEROphiles, I have a question to add to the debate about Violent Superheroes. Now Batman breaks cartilage, bones, and god know what else when fighting evil doers, but what about Interrogation and gaining their cooperation.

 

Riot (fka; Nemesis) caused quite a few winces from the GM and other Players (and not a few myself). Dislocating joints was a popular choice, breaking/crippling bones, and threatening to tear them apart too.

 

He has a 10 point Disadvantage Code vs Killing titled Kill Only to Protect Innocents, but what about Kneecaps?

 

 

Inquiring HEROphile wants to know?

 

 

QM

 

What tone is your campaign? What does the GM want? What do the other players want to play? What tone do you want from the campaign?

 

All of those are probably more fundamental than the technical nuances of the discussion.

 

Now, having said that, I will use a baseline of comparison: Justice League Animated Batman. He's not the only envisioning of Batman, but he's a relatively commonly known one, and in many ways is more definitively heroic than the comic ones.

 

He breaks bones, but I do not think he has ever crippled someone during the process of interrogation, nor has he tortured--and I do think there is a significant difference between injuring someone during a fight and injuring someone who is at your mercy.

 

The fact that Nemesis/Riot are willing to consider torture at all means they are already on the slippery slope; the narrative question that needs to be asked is what kind of story are the players trying to tell, and is sliding down that slope--or even making the threat of moral degradation due to extreme measures--a part of it. It is entirely possible for the campaign to never put your character in the "torture or the innocent dies" scenario, or to always have available outs.

 

Other campaigns do not have that as a possibility, and the analysis changes as a result.

[Utech]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

*Sigh* Let me repeat myself. They BOTH have a 20 point CvK, which is on ALL THE TIME. OK? They BOTH have the EXACT SAME LEVEL, they WILL NOT KILL EVER.

 

However, HOW THEY GO ABOUT THEIR 'HERO' BUSINESS IS NOT DETERMINED BY THE CvK! IT'S THE OTHER LIMITATIONS THAT THEY HAVE.

 

A lot of you seem to want to make mean MORE than it does. Like 'Soft Hearted' or 'Respect all Life', which simply SHOULD NOT WORK THAT WAY.

 

Because you're killing character concepts. Hell, if you do that, you CANNOT make Batman because he doesn't have a 5 or 10 point CvK, he's got the full 20 (Or 25, or whatever) version, except that to some of you, it means he has to be more 'heroic' or cartoony in his delivery of Justice.

 

I say no.

 

In any of MY games, and this is just my game, a Code Versus Killing is just that, a Code saying "I shalt not kill". Kneecaps fall under OTHER psychological limitations.

Please stop yelling. You missed my point entirely. I did not argue that either character had anything less than a Total CVK. I explained that the value of the Disadvantage would be determined by how often it is disadvantageous not to kill someone in any given game.

 

If I'm running a campaign in which it is never advantageous to kill someone, CVK won't be worth any points no matter how strongly a character is committed to not taking a life.

 

If I'm running a campaign in which it is always advantageous to kill someone, CVK will be worth points as long as a character is at least somewhat committed to not taking a life.

 

If I'm running a campaign in which it is sometimes advantageous to kill someone, CVK will be worth some points...

 

Etc.

[Nagisawa Takumi]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

Please stop yelling. You missed my point entirely. I did not argue that either character had anything less than a Total CVK. I explained that the value of the Disadvantage would be determined by how often it is disadvantageous not to kill someone in any given game.

 

If I'm running a campaign in which it is never advantageous to kill someone, CVK won't be worth any points no matter how strongly a character is committed to not taking a life.

 

If I'm running a campaign in which it is always advantageous to kill someone, CVK will be worth points as long as a character is at least somewhat committed to not taking a life.

 

If I'm running a campaign in which it is sometimes advantageous to kill someone, CVK will be worth some points...

 

Etc.

 

Which was never my point. I'm basing it on the assumption that the setting is as lethal as it deems to be worth the full 20 points at all times.

[Utech]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

Which was never my point. I'm basing it on the assumption that the setting is as lethal as it deems to be worth the full 20 points at all times.

I see the problem. I don't share your assumption that it is Common for both Batman and Silver Surfer to find killing someone to be disadvantageous. I've rarely found it a problem for Silver Surfer. But you are certainly entitled to your opinion.

 

Game on.

[Utech]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

Torture is not a tool for the faint of heart' date=' not just becaue it involves inflicting severe pain on a fellow human being, but because the fellow human being [i']may not know what you need to know[/i]. And now you've inflicted severe pain on him for no reason.

I think it's pretty clear that torture is a tool for the sadist present in most of us. It is never heroic.

 

That shouldn't stop you from playing out torture in a game, of course! There's much to be said for having your superhero cross the line into sadism from time to time.

 

And if you prefer for torture to be perfectly delightful in your games, that's fine, too. After all, we're dealing with a genre that regularly, wantonly breaks the laws of physics and society. Why not morality as well?

[Utech]

Re: It's a matter of integrity

 

If you have a total CvK' date=' and you not only won't kill, but won't allow others (like your teammates) to commit acts that have potentially lethal consequences, could it not be argued that [i']not[/i] torturing the guy for the information to save the little girl becomes an act of moral cowardice, rather than moral integrity?

I'd have to say "No." It's always better to use interrogation methods that do not rely on torture. Always.

 

But your game worlds may be different. Which is great. Play on.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

It's interesting how spirited a defense of the moral integrity of a torturer some mount here, considering the vilification of telepathy as "mind rape" on previous threads.

 

Of course, we're not comparing the two here.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

I see the problem. I don't share your assumption that it is Common for both Batman and Silver Surfer to find killing someone to be disadvantageous. I've rarely found it a problem for Silver Surfer. But you are certainly entitled to your opinion.

 

How common is "common"? Looking at the 5er sidebar p 337, Code of Chivalry, Code vs Killing and Honourable (always keeps word; never takes advantage of a situation) are all considered "Common". However, it seems to me they may not be equally common.

 

PS: Another note for the RAW readers:

 

one character may have a 20-point Code Versus Killing' date=' simulating a total commitment not to kill. Such a character would also seek to prevent others from killing. Another character might have a 10 point Code Versus Killing (the character will never kill another person himself, but might allow others to, albeit with much protest).[/quote']

 

So a total CvK clearly is more than personal killing. But what's the pricing of that 10 point version? "Total Commitment" is worth 15 points minimum, so this cannot be a total commitment.

[Vulcan]

Re: Code vs Killing, but Gods a little fuzzy about kneecaps.

 

It's interesting how spirited a defense of the moral integrity of a torturer some mount here, considering the vilification of telepathy as "mind rape" on previous threads.

 

Of course, we're not comparing the two here.

 

Under the same circumstances, I would vastly prefer the team TP to get the information his way. Torture is not something a hero should do lightly. But (and this depends on character psych limits and player temprement) it is an available tool, and sometimes we don't like the tools we have to use to get the job done.

 

YMMV, of course.