Goody good guys and loot(ing)


Wrath of the Righteous


My group started The worldwound incursion yesterday and a discussion came up after encountering the crazy dwarf under Kenabres.

Minor encounter spoiler:
The dwarf didn't notice the PCs until they were within sight of him, they called out to him (after pally used Detect evil, for which Millorn didn't register since he's <5 hd).

Millorn's reaction was to yell out something about "crusader assassins" and casting Mage armor, the ranged paladin declared that he was taking a ready action to fire if the dwarf cast another spell.

Millorn, being bat guano crazy didn't listen to them and started casting another spell (which no one was able to identify).
Long story short, Millorn was taken down to -4 hp before the round was over.

The group stabilized him and bound him before starting to check his gear.
And it was then the discussion arose:
"We don't if he's evil or just paranoid/crazy" (which was the main reason for him being stabilized in the first place). And even if he is evil, is taking his stuff robbery? Or is it ok to take stuff from people you fought, without compunction?

Confiscating his weapons wasn't an issue, but what about his potions and his spellbook, his food?

The group wasn't willing to wake him up and questioning him, they didn't want to risk him casting a non somatic spell etc.

In the end they decided to take his weapons, potions and spellbook but left him his food, camping gear etc then left him stable and unbound with a potion of cure light wounds.

I'm happy with their decision, but since it sparked a discussion, I'm interested in your opinion about looting people like this.

Normally this isn't an issue for us, since the group normally has a more of a grayscale attitude towards morality.

Pathfinder RPG assumes the players loot their way through the APs, amassing wealth, but in a campaign where the (at least my) group is "extra good" this system feels a little bit wierd (and meta-gamey), especially since one of the characters in the group is extremely generous (he's asked to not be in charge of party gold etc. saying "cause then you might find that I've made a substantial donation to charity without giving it a second thought".

So what are your opinion about looting/wealth/charity in a campaign with extra goody good guys.


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If they don't loot or give to charity, it's easy to convert to other forms of resources using the downtime rules.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCampaign/downtime.html

Say they left Millorn with his stuff (about 2000 gp) instead of looting. Millorn would then acknowledge that not everyone is out to get him and help the PCs later in the form of 20 Magic as he's crafting scrolls or other magic items for free to pay his debt of life.

Say they donate 600 gp to charity in Kenabres. Word spreads and people are willing to help the PCs in their time of need, earning them 10 Influence and 15 Labor.

No good deed goes unpunished!


We do this as well depending upon the adventure, it's good it is role playing. Greed is something that good players should struggle with on occasion. We played with a good group in kingmaker and I was the GM. I was critical of the good characters by about book 4 as there only "good" deeds happened because they got those rewards in the module (for example saving the boy). It should have a wrong feel to loot tombs of good people ect for a good party. They should have charity as a mantra on occasion. Like wise an evil group should actively do bad deeds to people.

Liberty's Edge

Our party took his stuff, but we also looking for a way to help him with his obviously severe mental issues. Once he's a functioning citizen again, we plan on returning his things to him, including his spellbook. Did we rationalize a bit? Sure. As a player, I don't know how well this works with his backstory, but that's the way the GM's portrayal went, so that's how we handled it.

I think our party may be less prone to selling our goods and more along the lines of donating them to further the cause going forward. Or at least that's what my cleric plans to advocate.


I generally try to get at each PC's ethos on those matters, when it matters.

Taking the goods in this instance could be viewed as regretablly necessary, or something that could never be done, but it depends on how the player sets up the characters world view.

It's very similar to a Paladin needing to choose between the spare the goblins as they might be reformed guy, or the kill them all and let the gods sort them out guy. Either can be a valid position, but the player needs to say it up front and be consistant.

The parties decision looks to be a good one, as they left him what he could use to survive (I'd probably have left him a daggar as well), but with nothing that would enable him to quickly be able to endanger the party seriously. If they deemed him enough of a threat that their mission, and thus that portion of society it was going to save is at risk, even killing him would be within bounds IF they had set their characters up with the proper good ethos.

Now don't think I'm advocating that you can rationalize any behavior, I'm simply saying that you can make some serious decisions even up to taking someones life if there are. They would need some specific reason as in we can't let him endager what we're doing in the next few hours or days, not oh he could be a threat 20 years from now, or the world would be better without him.


It will be alot easier when the opponents starts registering as evil.
I doubt there will be much stabilizing when the opponent is clearly evil, unless they seem redeemable, but then they wouldn't be fighting the pcs.

It will be interesting to see how they react to enemies surrendering when they can't take prisoners, as weell as meeting evil characters that can be redeemed :)

And to think that I initially thought that WotR would be a boring "black and white, smite everything" style campaign. Turned out it's the AP that really started us discussing morality.


Other than consumables like potions or scrolls, we don't generally have magic items available for sale (our GM compensates though, most if not all of our magical items are customized for us and come by other means than Ye Olde Magic Shoppe), so unless the character(s) have an eye towards affluence like their own ship, villa, tavern or keep or like to collect rare things that cost money like books or art, rarely do we bother to loot bodies for coppers. A quick search when time allows for especially valuable items or intelligence and that's it, with a lot of loose coin spent more on bribes or donated to worthy causes. 90% of what we tend to buy is goodwill, even with less than good characters. I don't expect WotR to be any different, especially considering that our PC's are LG, LG, NG and NG.

However, they will probably be quite comfortable with ridding this world (and especially the worldwound) of evil, whether its conscious at the time or not.


Ahlmzhad wrote:

I generally try to get at each PC's ethos on those matters, when it matters.

Taking the goods in this instance could be viewed as regretablly necessary, or something that could never be done, but it depends on how the player sets up the characters world view.

It's very similar to a Paladin needing to choose between the spare the goblins as they might be reformed guy, or the kill them all and let the gods sort them out guy. Either can be a valid position, but the player needs to say it up front and be consistant.

The parties decision looks to be a good one, as they left him what he could use to survive (I'd probably have left him a daggar as well), but with nothing that would enable him to quickly be able to endanger the party seriously. If they deemed him enough of a threat that their mission, and thus that portion of society it was going to save is at risk, even killing him would be within bounds IF they had set their characters up with the proper good ethos.

Now don't think I'm advocating that you can rationalize any behavior, I'm simply saying that you can make some serious decisions even up to taking someones life if there are. They would need some specific reason as in we can't let him endager what we're doing in the next few hours or days, not oh he could be a threat 20 years from now, or the world would be better without him.

I've always found a good rule of thumb to be 1) does the character believe he's doing good? (even if the player might not) and 2) does the act or failure to act harm the forces of good or go against the known will of their deity in any way? If the act passes those two litmus tests then it's Good as far as I'm concerned.

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