After watching an episode from The Flash a few weeks ago, it occurred to me. The traditional super hero comics give one of
the best arguments in favor of the death penalty. I am not saying that the death penalty is
right or wrong. In fantasy worlds, you
are dealing with entities that have super powers rather than typical human
abilities. With that said, the
storylines of super heroes is such that it provides a compelling reason to for
a person to be in favor of it, at least in cases of super powers. To put it another way, perhaps AD&D
handles villains better. Let me explain
why.
In many of the traditional super hero storylines, you have
iconic villains. Those villains will be
sent to prison, or locked up in an atom collider. At a certain point in time, those villains
escape. They are then recaptured and
locked up again. Then, at another point
in time, they will escape again. At
least some of these villains have killed people. On their release, they will kill people
again. The evidence is clear that the
regular police have difficultly capturing them.
When these criminals are locked up, they will always find a way
out. Would it be better for the world if
they were killed? In fact, shouldn’t the
super hero be held morally responsible
for not killing the villain? By sparing the life of a villain, who will
only escape, he is enabling more death and carnage in the future. I do not see what is so super or heroic about
that!
Let us now consider AD&D. I do not know about your adventures, but generally,
the group does not take prisoners. You
fight and kill the monsters. You try to
prevent their escape. Why? Because they will warn other monsters or come
to attack you later. Certainly it might
be a situation where they surrender, but that is likely rare. Such situations can pose both alignment
issues and practical issues. You ae 3
days inside of a dungeon and a group of orcs surrenders. Can you really risk taking them out of the
dungeon and turning them over to authorities?
Would the authorities even bother locking them up? At the same time, can a good alignment
character kill defenseless creatures that surrendered, even if they are evil? The solution I suppose is to always have at
least one evil character in your party to deal with the situation.
Now, imagine how messed up your AD&D world would be if
your Lawful Good Paladin acted like a super hero! You have battled your way through the
fortress. The evil cleric is in the
process of summoning an evil demon or god to the world. The entire world could be destroyed or at
least enslaved. He is responsible for
the deaths of hundreds already. Your
party kills all of the guards and defeats the cleric. However, instead of killing the cleric, he is
taken prisoner. The prisoner is then
taken to a prison. He will later escape
from the prison and the party will have to go after him again. It seems to me this will only lead to a world
where the evil cleric will eventually win.
Isn’t the AD&D of method of simply killing the cleric
and then destroying the body to prevent resurrection a much better way to deal
with really powerful villains? I know I
would certainly feel better living in a world with lawful good paladin
slaughtering evil villains than one where every few months another super villain
finds his way out to cause harm to the public.
In the fantasy worlds, perhaps we
should be looking at AD&D instead of super heroes for moral guidance. Or at the very least, a common sense solution
to the problem of how to handle super power villains.
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