Is hiring a slave considered an evil act ?

[HWalsh]

Ms. Pleiades wrote:

If we're reasonably going to accept that in Golarion, slavery is Capital E Evil, then there are some implications that have to go with that insofar as how it's presented and interacted with by players. This includes as just one example of good-aligned characters being a little rougher with such NPCs that are actively involved in the slave trade is going to be an expected and acceptable part of going through modules, adventure paths and scenarios, rather than having the game world inexplicably bend over backwards to give protections to slavers that the setting tends to lack for other Capital E Evil practices, like torture, rape, etc.

Uh no.

The evilness of the act doesn't insist that they would be punished more harshly than they are. That's not a viable leap of logic. This is already a setting where many villains are killed during confrontations with PCs and the NPCs don't care.

[The Raven Black]

I think slavery in places other than the Evil states (Cheliax being the prime example) has been considerably downplayed over time.

[Fergie]

HWalsh wrote:

Slavery, as I said on page 1, is evil. It is never anything other than evil. It is the removal of free will and the ability for a sentient being to choose their own path. It reduces a person to the status of property.

The removal of free will is not Evil in Pathfinder. Compulsion magic isn't Evil, inevitables are not Evil, etc. Free will is the domain of Chaos. Also, reducing a person to property is generally bad in the real world, but in a fantasy world, it does not have to be. In our society, pets are considered our property. We own them. Are we Evil because we own another sentient creature? The ideas that let you own an animal without it being evil are the same ideas that would let a Solar or Gold Dragon own a human.

This is also a persuasive argument for animal rights in the real world. It is wrong for some advanced alien race to show up on Earth and do medical experiments that are harmful to humans for the same reasons it is wrong for humans to experiment on animals.

In Pathfinder, removing someones free will (which could include the will to do bad things) is an affront to Chaos.
Oppression, brutality, sadism, etc. are affronts to Good.

[HWalsh]

Fergie wrote:

HWalsh wrote:

Slavery, as I said on page 1, is evil. It is never anything other than evil. It is the removal of free will and the ability for a sentient being to choose their own path. It reduces a person to the status of property.

The removal of free will is not Evil in Pathfinder. Compulsion magic isn't Evil, inevitables are not Evil, etc.

Huge difference between stopping someone from breaking the laws and/or performing immoral acts and removing all free will.

[Chris Lambertz]

Removed some more posts and the responses to them. The defense of oppression and ownership of other actual human beings (such as hyperbole involving out-of-game examples of slavery) is just not OK on our forums, and frankly is distressing to multiple teams here. Folks have been provided with a number of posts from our creative team to draw conclusions for their home game, and I don't think leaving this thread open is going to result in anything productive.