So I had a game session last night in which the LN monk collapsed the skull of a bandit pleading for his life.
OBVIOUSLY this is not a LG choice, but again the monk is LN. According to the charter (law) the punishment for banditry is death. So was this action breaking alignment or should I assume that this is business as usual?
What would be an appropriate punishment for this character if he broke alignment?
(Personally I think it's a bit early for the whole atonement route seeing as the PCs are level 2. Stripping his monk powers would also greatly hurt the group because I only have two PCs.
(As a side note: does anyone else have a problem with PCs not caring to interrogate NPCs? I know they eventually will learn to interrogate them but geeze don't ya want a little clue as to what to do next? Lol)
Sounds to me like he's playing a character that falls squarely on the "law" part of lawful neutral. Strict adherence to the letter of the law is, I think, an acceptable LN action. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it unless he starts bending the law.
My 2 cents and all.
Unless the rules of his order require him to offer quarter to surrendering foes, he has no alignment requirement to do so. If he lied to his foe to get him to surrender ("Yield and your life will be spared!"), then he was in the wrong. Is that behavior typical of him?
Unrelenting? Yes very typical. His character has a very "give no quarter" attitude towards the bandits. (Although he has had peaceful interactions with the kobolds.)
Granted the kobolds aren't preying upon the weak.
Best the bandit could hope for from a LN character was capture, a brief statement of the law, and execution as appropriate for the culture. So at most the monk saved 15 minutes and some wear and tear on equipment, the bandit was essentially already dead. Barely worth mentioning unless someone in the party actually intended to let the bandit go. (Or turn the bandit over to someone else for inevitable death and console themself that it wasn't them that killed him, really.)
I hope the monk continues his crusade to bring order to the chaos infested land, and then when he is mighty enough, he can go and punish all the chaos in Brevoy as well!!!
Sweet glad to know I asked here before pulling a deus ex machina to punish him unduly.
I agree that the PCs' charter gives them the right to execute any bandits they find, without trial, regardless of whether they beg for mercy. So it shouldn't be a problem for a LN character unless the rest of the party had decided to so something else with prisoners.