I thought most non-intelligent undead, such as ghouls and skeletons, were considered neutral or unaligned? They aren't smart enough to be dead. Though Korax does have more personality than most ghouls...
-boy who asks you to find his dog is evil (no surprise), however, I didn't realize that he was the demon (always thought it was the dog turning into the demon when I fetched him), so cavalier ends up attacking the boy and seeing him transform...and he is fairly tough at the low level I'm usually in that area at.
I feel this urge to ask about this. People often use Detect Alignment as a reason for attacking Albert (or is it Alfred, whatever?), since it shows he is Evil (and he then turns into a demon, proving the point).
The issue I have is that humans have a variety of alignments, moreover a human can change their alignment. Taking out the meta-game knowledge of his demonic status, you are essentially attacking a small child because he is of evil alignment. Why would you do this? Would you walk through a village and then take your sword-arm to a young girl because your godly senses told you she was evil, even if she might change as she grew up? Even if you take the possibility of said girl changing out, is it right to murder a child when the worst thing she's done was probably lying a bunch and maybe pulling the wings off the odd dragonfly?
I feel this urge to ask about this. People often use Detect Alignment as a reason for attacking Albert (or is it Alfred, whatever?), since it shows he is Evil (and he then turns into a demon, proving the point).
I don't really look at it as 'they're evil, kill them', I guess. One could think of it as that binary, but it seems to be a horribly impractical of that Paladin's talents. I view them as fighting 'the forces of evil' more than any evil action/thought/deed. Their crusade against evil hits the big targets first (which is why they'll tolerate the thieves guild over vampires, for a spell).
There are levels of evil (again, as I've said this before, I love how NwN did alignments as 1-100, so you could have tendencies toward alignments instead of being 'all in') and I think Paladins would be too busy slaughtering those with slight inclinations. They're looking for true evil, at least in my mental construct.
My view is that redemption is as valid a way of eliminating evil as outright smiting it, and should be the first recourse of more open-minded LG characters. Some of the more... zealous paladins may prefer the violent approach but this philosophy provides some justification for my characters to work with or at least let live evil NPCs who don't seem irredeemably evil. Of course this makes it harder to justify slaughtering goblins but I guess it's self defense.
For me, the difference in approaches between "Kill em all and let God sort it out" and "Redeemable until proven otherwise" is that the second approach yields less of a risk that you make an irrevocable choice that was wrong, and it potentially turns an enemy into an ally. One asks the question of "Can they change" while the other assumes that they can't. And you know what they say about assuming.
I wouldn't personally play a Paladin of the first school of thought, but I can see how others might. I'd bet there are a whole lot more of the "Woops, I fell!" support class from that group though.
But I agree this is wholly subjective point of view and not held by all.
I understand your question, and it boils down to this:
This is an imaginary game and I pretended that my cavalier, who specializes in fighting outsiders (demons/devils), can feel the taint of a demon with her detect evil powers. This is metagaming, of course, because I didn't go around attacking everything that showed up evil. I've played this game a lot, and it's nice to try different approaches to things you've seen over and over again.
Can't remember if it was this way in 2e, but I recall detect evil being able to do exactly that in some D&D iterations. The paladin (or caster) would get varying feedback depending on the strength of the evil- if it was an inherently evil being like a demon or undead it's stronger feedback than a roughly as powerful (equivalent HD) evil person.
Ghouls and ghasts are usually of evil alignment, they have low intelligence, not completely mindless like zombies and skeletons, who are neutral aligned since they have no intelligence. Ghouls and ghasts used to be evil, corrupted and/or cannibalistic people when they were alive so in death they rise to pray upon the flesh of the living with surprising cunning and malice. Skeletons and zombies are just dead bodies animated through magic and given simple commands. Those magics often make them hostile to most living things, but they are not cruel, and they don't get to enjoy what they are doing if they kill a person. While ghouls and ghasts will happilly tear a human apart and feast on the remains.
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The issue I have is that humans have a variety of alignments, moreover a human can change their alignment. Taking out the meta-game knowledge of his demonic status, you are essentially attacking a small child because he is of evil alignment. Why would you do this? Would you walk through a village and then take your sword-arm to a young girl because your godly senses told you she was evil, even if she might change as she grew up? Even if you take the possibility of said girl changing out, is it right to murder a child when the worst thing she's done was probably lying a bunch and maybe pulling the wings off the odd dragonfly?
There are levels of evil (again, as I've said this before, I love how NwN did alignments as 1-100, so you could have tendencies toward alignments instead of being 'all in') and I think Paladins would be too busy slaughtering those with slight inclinations. They're looking for true evil, at least in my mental construct.
I wouldn't personally play a Paladin of the first school of thought, but I can see how others might. I'd bet there are a whole lot more of the "Woops, I fell!" support class from that group though.
But I agree this is wholly subjective point of view and not held by all.