I want to take a different approach to this than the moral/ practical dimension, not because they're not valid or unimportant just because they've been brought up at the table and this hasn't.

I'm not sure most people (with the possible exception of the Edgelord set. Which is, granted: Pretty common in circles like this.) would actually be comfortable enough with torture to make explorations of it at the table to be a worthwhile investment of peoples time.

I absolutely get people enjoy being transgressive but it mostly seems to be a form of power fantasy. It's not "I am torturing somebody because I enjoy fake sadism." It's "We exist in a culture that enjoys a familiarity with violence in take charge people who are willing to make the hard choices that most people aren't willing to."

The latter of which is actually really easily worked into core combat behaviour and less socially taboo situations. (Like putting a hostage at risk in order to take out the bad guy. Still ethically sticky: Less icky.)

So with that in mind: What utility does torture actually have for the people at the table?

Quote Originally Posted by Malifice View Post
Playing a LG Paladin, obviously I only employ brutal degrading torture on evildoers like Orc children and the like.

Or on human children if its needed for the 'greater good', like stopping Hitler drive a rail carriage into 5 innocents tied to the tracks or something.
Quote Originally Posted by Malifice View Post
It works better when you get your undead minions to do the torture for you. They can brutally torture and debase your evildoing victim 24 hours a day while you adventure and gain loot to help you in your quest for good.

Its how my Devotion Paladin prefers to gain information from the evildoers.

Summoned Demons also work, but they need to sleep. On a positive you can go even more good, by feeding the evildoers to the Demon after the information gathering is complete. I prefer to use undead though.
Just want to point out that these are both genuinely funny ****posts and pretty clever skewerings of the means/ ends false dichotomy and... Six-ish common ethical problems?

I am impressed.