My guess is that killing Crystal will not be as casual an event as Haley made it appear. I predict there will be serious reprecussions.
Yup, pretty much. Which is why Lawful Rogues are few and far between 
Maybe the thieves’ guild will be one of the nine factions.
Well, yes, from when she was still a paladin in good standing, and did still think the rules applied to her (note, for instance, that she accepted the lawyer’s injunction against Detect Evil). Are you saying that pre-fall Miko wasn’t lawful enough?
I’m speculating on something more personal to Haley - something that will cause her to regret what she did.
I can just see it now:
Haley : “All this happened . . . because I killed Crystal ?!”
Belkar : “See, Haley ? You want someone to stay dead, hide the body !”
Haley : "Uh, Belkar - YOU don’t hide people’s bodies . … "
Belkar : “Of course not ! That way I can kill them more than once ! Heck, I killed a guy five times once. Good times . . .”
Yes and no. Maybe that she wasn’t Good enough - it’s no coincidence the Red Knight, patron god of strategy and tactics is Lawful Neutral. Here, Miko chose to follow the rules because the rules came out in her advantage, she followed the letter of honor but not its spirit. So she was very lawful, but clearly not ethical. Similarly, in her fight against Belkar, she was goaded into fighting him fairly, her original idea was to get healed by clerics until she found him and then killed him because she’s a better standup fighter than he is, and she knows it.
Miko may have technically been Good because her actions furthered a Good cause, but she wasn’t a Good person at all.
Do we? I mean, Tom Cruise played the hero in that recent movie, remember.
Or maybe
Vaarsuvius: “Do not attempt to sway me from this action with an emotional appeal to morality. Your own actions in the demise of Miss Crystal prohibit you from acting as a judge on that subject.”
or
Roy: “We’ve taken the vote, Haley. We’re asking you to leave the group.”
or worst of all
Elan: “I’m sorry, Haley, but I can’t love somebody who would do something like that.”
I disagree: I think that’s the end of that particular arc, and I doubt the other party members will ever learn of it. It’s a subversive twist ending, but an ending nonetheless.
Haley won. End of story.
Consequences aren’t the same thing as karmic revenge, though; consider V’s recent sub-arc.
That being said, I’m not seeing any real downsides to killing Crystal now versus possibly fighting her later. If you think that individuals shouldn’t be empowered to kill on their own personal judgment, that’s well and good, but by those lights, all of the Order are hideously immoral.
Haley has killed a crap-load of beings on nothing more than the suspicion that they were hostile. This is not generally a reasonable or civilized response in modern countries, where the government has a monopoly on local force. OotS-verse, however, has no such monopoly; even in the most sanctified and protected of areas, villains can suddenly appear and start slaying wantonly.
A different world with different assumptions brings about different ethics.
Plus there’s that certain races in OOTS are there specifically and solely for the purpose of being evil and providing XP. For them, there isn’t any burden of proof of evilness.
V’s arc is powered by guilt, a feeling of inadequacy and various character flaws; Haley, on the other hand, is guilty of nothing but ruthlessness, which in her line of business is actually more of a virtue.
I dunno. It just seem lampshaded to me so I don’t feel this was the end of this story.
How else do you see this story ending?
It seems like a perfect resolutionto me. Haley rides off into the sunset, giving her enemies a huge middle finger.
Ironically, while Crystal will lose XP for being killed, she also gains XP. It was her personal nemesis who killed her – when your personal nemesis’ XP goes up, yours does as well.
Yeah, this – like Haerta and a jillion other instances that’ve turned up – is another case where people may be expecting another shoe to drop… but the OotS story has already moved on.
Now that is something that would’ve been amusing to have been lampshaded.
I’m very, very glad I never played D&D and never will play D&D with some of you people.
Yes, breaking the truce was chaotic. I won’t dispute that, and one could argue it’s within Haley’s alignment. What you didn’t note is that the first point I made wasn’t to prove her act was evil, but rather a response to a previous poster. So much for reading comprehension.
However, ambushing a victim helpless in the shower? Smart, maybe. Good, absolutely not.
I think a lot of you either were really crappy DMs or played games with really crappy DMs. If you want to set up someone to murder someone else unawares in a house because they’re a priest of an evil god, you set it up properly. Either don’t have any lawful good characters in the party, or make it clear that the evil priest is causing some persist and grave harm to the community. Then, a lawful good party would seek to apprehend the priest, not murder him in his sleep. If you have a good party (bu not lawful), they would confront him in his home, but not murder him unless he refused to come along quietly to the authorities.
Note that it would be entirely appropriate for the DM to award XP if the Lawful Good characters successfully apprehended the evil priest and took him straight to the authorities. Killing is hardly the only way to get XP in D&D, which some of you apparently utterly fail to realize.
Ambushing someone to murder them can never be good or lawful, unless a state of war exists or some other clear, hostile-justifying circumstances, which are hardly difficult to construct for anyone with an ounce of imagination.
I could see it.
Haley kills Crystal
DING!
H: Sweet! Didn’t know I was that close!
Corpse: DING!
Ghost Crystal: I am SO taking that in Assassin.
Knorf, killing is not the only way to gain XP in D&D. However, it is the only way that is explicitly quantified by the rules. I haven’t read the rules for D&D version 4.0, but in AD&D, every monster in the Monster Manual came with an XP value. This led to certain abuses; in particular, munchkiny players would slaughter literally every living thing they came across under the assumption that they’d get at least a tiny amount of XP for it, even helpless townsfolk, pets, children, birds, lizards, insects, amoebas, etc.
In D&D 3.0 and 3.5, there was a chart cross-referencing between the Monster’s level and the player’s, hoping to stave off this tendency. A level 20 player would no longer get XP for killing a helpless townsperson. In all those versions, how much attention did they give for non-combat XP rewards? A tiny paragraph.
D&D is not a very good role-playing game, in my opinion, for precisely that reason. It is a war game.
What Rich is doing is highlighting some of the abuses of the system, including the alignment system. Redcloak’s whole backstory is based on one such abuse: that it’s perfectly acceptable in D&D terms for paladins (Lawful Good) to rush out and slaughter peaceful towns of goblins (Lawful Evil) simply because they’re goblins. Yes, it is allowed by the rules. No, it makes no sense. Rich is just playing with those conventions, because the rules of the world are different from ours.