Ideas for moral choices

[tim01300]

I saw a few threads asking about wether a Paladin should fall if they kill goblin babies or a lich phylactery that is bound to a little girl. I love these kind of problems and was hoping you guys have more that you could add here.

Note, I am DMing a game but noone is playing a Paladin, I think this stuff is just fun for any characters to have to make these choices.

What are some ideas or past experiences that were morally tough calls?

[hamishspence]

Quintessential Paladin II had some interesting moral problems- and didn't give answers to any, simply saying "What, if anything, do you do"?

One was "a fiend offers resources (not dubiously obtained resources either) simply in order to be able to say "They accepted my gift"."

[CaladanMoonblad]

I run moral quandaries in my games all the time. Probably one every two or three sessions at least.

Example 1) The heroes are assigned to discover the source of a suspected vampire den. In the course of their investigation, the heroes run across at least two vampires who plead not to be destroyed (one was a tailor who had children) and promised to feed on animals, while the other was a wizard who is actively searching for a cure to vampirism to gain back his mortality, and resurrect his wife (he stashed her body).

Example 2) The heroes come across a wrecked cottage, and rescue a single survivor who claims his home and family were destroyed by Fomorians, except the giants took his daughter Elsa unharmed. The heroes track the Fomorians back to their campsite, which is actually a Frost Giant Tower that the brothers took over, and find The Giantspire in the center (increases size level by two and maintains for 1 mile radius), but also find 5 giant sized human women in various stages of pregnancy. The Fomorian brothers kidnapped the women to impregnate them, so their family did not die out. The healer in the group ascertained that even the Giantspire is not enough, and that at month 8 the women would die (two already died but it didn't stop the Fomorians from continuing their practice). After defeating the brothers, the heroes had a hard choice.

Example 3) I ran a translyvania-esque adventure zone that had a variant form of vampirism; it ran as a supernatural disease, with an incubation period that damaged Constitution until the person died... and rose again 1d10 rounds later. The incubation period lasted for days depending on the Fortitude check. The heroes had been tasked with finding a cure for the Count's daughter, and managed her disease by keeping enough spell slots open for lesser restoration (they were all level 4 and 5 at this point). In the course of the adventures, they came upon a mother and her children who were infected. The heroes did not have enough spell slots to manage the disease for these peasants and save the count's daughter. They had to choose whose life was worth more; a mother and her children, or a rich man's daughter. The cure was to find and slay Patient Zero (the real dark lord of the realm who waged war against the new count).

[Slipperychicken]

Well, you can always have a classic hostage situation; the bad guys have swords on innocent people's throats. The obvious choices are; fight but risk hurting the hostages, let the "bad" guys go (they might release the hostages, but also escape with something important to the quest), or somehow trick the bad-guys into freeing the hostages.



Example 2) The heroes come across a wrecked cottage, and rescue a single survivor who claims his home and family were destroyed by Fomorians, except the giants took his daughter Elsa unharmed. The heroes track the Fomorians back to their campsite, which is actually a Frost Giant Tower that the brothers took over, and find The Giantspire in the center (increases size level by two and maintains for 1 mile radius), but also find 5 giant sized human women in various stages of pregnancy. The Fomorian brothers kidnapped the women to impregnate them, so their family did not die out. The healer in the group ascertained that even the Giantspire is not enough, and that at month 8 the women would die (two already died but it didn't stop the Fomorians from continuing their practice). After defeating the brothers, the heroes had a hard choice.


So, let me get this straight... the heroes could either force these women to carry their rape-babies and die (ostensibly to allow a family of evil rapist trolls to procreate), or abort them and save their lives (which spells the end of the evil rapist troll-people). I'd imagine these women would have fairly strong opinions on the matter, so asking them about it would be a good start.

[Hyena]

I never actually instert moral choices in my games, because they make no difference - my players will always choose the eviler, the edgier option because it's more cool that way.

[CaladanMoonblad]

So, let me get this straight... the heroes could either force these women to carry their rape-babies and die (ostensibly to allow a family of evil rapist trolls to procreate), or abort them and save their lives (which spells the end of the evil rapist troll-people). I'd imagine these women would have fairly strong opinions on the matter, so asking them about it would be a good start.

The third option was to leave them to their fate and let the gods decide. In the group I run, one is a mystic theurge (cleric of moradin and wizard), and another is a paladin of Heironeous; the other characters include a NG rogue, a CN dwarf fighter, a CN barbarian, etc. It was a tough moral quandary for the cleric and paladin; to end monstrous lifeforms to save the mothers, try to bring the mothers out of the Gianstspire 1 mile radius (which would kill them because their fomorian fetuses were normal sized and suddenly the women went back to normal size), perform medical surgery to save the mothers at the expense of the monstrous offspring, etc.

There was debate for about a good hour as the players tried to formulate a plan. What didn't help was that the women further along had Stockholm syndrome (the ones who rebelled in that abductee class had already been killed), while those only a month along (including the girl the heroes were originally tasked to save) were the most amenable to persuasion.

My heroes got out of the situation without violating code of honor or violating Lawful precepts. The player of the cleric of moradin sent me a text after the session to show his appreciation for the moral quandary, calling the session one of the most memorable, simply because the real challenge of the session was to find the moral way out.

Moral quandaries are supposed to be hard.