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Was playing that pregenerated cleric of Sarenrae for a PFS session. NG character of a NG God. During the course of the adventure, the party encounters a suspicious individual in the forest, they attempt to gather information, but can determine nothing beyond a faint evil aura. They hear spell casting in trees nearby (Mage Armor, presumably cast by the 2 enemies in hiding), and decide to attack. The party kills one, which causes the remaining two to resort to threatening hostages (also in hiding). The party saves the hostages, while one enemy escapes, the other dying on the ground.
Sarenrae is a God of redemption, the sun, honesty and healing. I see that helpless enemy on the ground and I start healing it. This creates a problem for the group, as only my character seems to believe in redemption (or goodness for that matter). And the GM seems very unfavorable to the idea of the man learning a lesson from this encounter. Ultimately, the party votes (4 to 1) to give the man to the hostages, who represent the local government, who are very clear that giving the hostage to them means death without trial. The hostages then kill their former captor, who is helpless at the time (fully healed, but bound). And it was the party's paladin that handed them to the hostages.
How should I have handled this one? I feel I did the role playing correct, but the result left me feeling like my cleric should seek atonement after this session. Looking for suggestions either on my roleplaying of this character, or in how to work with the group to solve this sort of situation in a more good-natured way.
Yeah, I don't see the problem at all.
People in real life who generally get along and like each other,
also have moments where they disagree strongly over principle.
Same happened here.
If you want to roleplay a submissive, conformist character, go ahead.
If you want to roleplay an idealistic optimist who steps out on limbs, great.
I don't know if your group has a problem with your character acting that way.
It's seems pretty plausible that such a character may act that way.
I would in fact be more miffed if a player brought a character concept that they made a big deal of their moral stance, etc, but then when inconvenient moments like this struck, they dropped their moral stance.
At this point, it seems like the character would follow up with the other characters.
Perhaps asking them what other information/evidence they would have needed for other course.
Perhaps depending on further evidence you find about the murdered NPC.
Perhaps bringing up alternative situations which might make them think twice about their moral choice.
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Did the prisoner give any hint of desiring redemption and conversion?
The GM was pretty clear that redemption would not happen with this NPC. But it still struck me as something a NG character of a redemption god would persue, even if it couldn't ever happen.
And the main issue was that not only were we in the domain of the hostages and the mission revolved around being in their good graces, but also that we had been hiking for a week to get there through a harsh forest, so we didn't really have any good options on how to save this NPC. It was turn in to the hostages, or loose him in the forest to die in the harsh forest (or have him come back with allies to attack us or the local government).
I hate having no options.
First off, Sarenrae isn't above doing a bit of wholesale smiting, so don't forget that part of it. If you can't safely rehabilitate someone, an execution is part of the religion too.
I also think you are being a little narrow on the redemption thing. It is perfectly plausible to accept that just because someone is 'redeemed' they still are required to pay for their crimes.
It would have been entirely appropriate for your character to accept the Justice of the temporal authorities but still offer comfort and perhaps a hope of redemption. Obviously details of particular practices for the religions in Golorian are pretty few and far between, but your character convincing the others to allow you to hear his confession, give him a final blessing and pray with him before he is executed would have been appropriate. Obviously if he choose to refuse this, there would be nothing further you could do.
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Can do no more harm?!?
Don't forget it's a world with magic/necromany and ghosts, wights, revenants and countles other options of returning nightmares so it's imho the best choice to kill only if it's neccessary!
And even villains and monsters doesn't exists in a vacuum.
Revenge can be a powerfull motivation.
Hmmm...I felt that the GM could have at least played along and had the buy put into prison for 20 years where he can think about what he did. Y'know. Instead of the lynching. I mean...even a regular execution after a trial would have been better.
Specifically doing a lynching without trial just seems WAY off the normal radar for a 'good' individual. Especially when the fight has cooled down and you have a legitimate means of handing the bandit over to the local government.
Vigilante justice like that is usually frown upon, since working without a set system means you are more likely to expand the 'crimes' that are worth lynching, such as "a half orc was tryin' ta marry mah daughter! I ain't gonna have no green skin grandbabies!"
I would just talk to the GM. Say that the exact way things went down wasn't really koshar for you or the character you are trying to represent. Maybe just asking him send such people to trial, with the vague but never confirmed implication that the guy gets executed. With a trial at least, you can write it off specifically as a direct result of the man's misdeeds. Lynching gets way, way more personal and dirty, and thus has an air of being less legitimate.
Just say "I am uncomfortable with the implications carried with lynching. Could you just do proper trials instead in this kind of situation?"
Lynching wasn't mentioned in any post, until yours. The captors took their vengeance on the "bad guy" and executed him on the spot. The original poster feels that his character had no options. Sometimes you don't have options. Sometimes it is "this is going to happen whether you like it or not."
I also agree with some of the previous posters. Once your character knows that they are going to execute him and he had no way to stop them, he could have said a prayer for/with him and turned away from the execution.
Anyways, I don't see the point of lynching vs. legitimacy, the OP's character doesn't seem to care particularly about "legitimacy", they are not Lawful inclined, they only want to play up the "redemption" bit.
Fine, but not every situation is going to pander to that desire. So this huge bit of gray-ness the game has sent your character should be just as much, if not more, opportunity for "roleplaying" than if you get to play a 2-dimensional cartoon of morality where every case has an easy option. In this case, somebody who may or may not have deserved forgiveness/chance of redemption was not given it... This situation only came up because they received a few less HPs damage than necessary to outright kill them in the middle of battle when they were trying to kill your allies.
It doesn't sound like the character in question really has question of their allies' base motivations, their inherent goodness, or whatever. It was just a situation that wasn't ideal by their personal focus on "redemption" which the rest of their allies aren't particularly focused on, a fact which they likely knew ahead of time and this incident simply emphasized. OK. Is this character SO focused on redemption that they pass judgement on those who aren't as inclined forgiveness (such as the characters' allies), to the point of refusing cooperation with said non-forgivers, to the point of turning against said on-forgivers?
I'm not really getting that, I'm not really getting the the OP's characters' personal take on Sarenraean redemption requires them to treat as enemies anybody who doesn't 100% agree with that take on redemption. Meaning, some grey stuff came up, and you had the opportunity to express a character aspect which was on fringes of group consensus, you can continue to RP that perhaps looking to attract some group members to at least consider other more amenable situations as worthy of forgiveness/redemption opportunity. Or you can decide you are roleplaying a character whose ideological dedication makes them incompatable with the group.
Honestly, it sounds like the OP's character could well have RP'd a moral stance that perhaps others would consider but ultimately reject most specifically because of specific circumstances he mentioned (locale, etc). And that would upset his character greatly, both morally and egotistically. OK, so that can be role played out. But unless they are so fundamentalist about this detail that they are willing to turn on their allies (even non-violently parting of paths), then they are probably going to grumble about it for a while, and then focus themselves on the greater good. And that can include trying harder to proactively point the group in directions more likely to end up with Redemption outcomes, rather than mope about the worst-possible scenario for likelyhood of Redemption.
And the grumbling and idealistic conflict and moral questioning in the mean time is coincidentally good material for role playing. Just not the easy option 2 dimensional kind. And yeah, it helps to have solid group understanding to allow minor RP events like this to happen without over-reacting... Not at all sure if there is any evidence of the group reacting this way here, rather than the OP having problems when no easy choices present themselves. To sum up, I would expect the same for any other characters with idiosyncratic morals/personal views that happen to conflict with the OP's and rest of groups' character.
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Did the Cleric offer the soon-to-be-executed the chance to contact a loved one with a message, perhaps carry a family ring as proof? That seems like an opportunity for redemption of sorts, contact their dear old mom, apologize for an old sin, and let her know that her son is now killed for his crimes, better than not knowing for years. Seems like that sort of opportunity was over-looked when you didn't get your way in the most overt way possible. But what does getting your way have to do with redemption?
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Lynching wasn't mentioned in any post, until yours. The captors took their vengeance on the "bad guy" and executed him on the spot. The original poster feels that his character had no options. Sometimes you don't have options. Sometimes it is "this is going to happen whether you like it or not."
I also agree with some of the previous posters. Once your character knows that they are going to execute him and he had no way to stop them, he could have said a prayer for/with him and turned away from the execution.
All I am doing i giving a specific term to an ugly act. It was stated that this series of events would lead to "death without trial" by what can potentially be classified as an 'angry mob'. It is, in fact, a correct term to describe this situation, although one heavy with overtones.
While that mob's anger may be justifiable, it doesn't make it 'right'. While many of you may gloss over this since it is an 'enemy', mere clutter of letters and numbers to fall to a greatsword, the core issue of this thread was that the murdock felt uncomfortable trying to step into the shoes of his character and trying to consider the moral issues of allowing a man to be killed outside of the heat of combat, especially when he is supposed to be following a god of redemption.
I will also note that I may rather sensitive to the issue since I ended up hearing a lot of ... 'uncomfortable' stories growing up in the American South. So I may be too focused on legitimacy and trials, since a strong legal system tends to prevent lynching. But it is impossible to enter any situation without bias, and that bias is the core of this thread: Murdock appears to be uncomfortable with letting a lynching happen (as indicated when he goes so far as calling the paladin out on this). I choose the term lynching since it IS ugly- I want to get across the feelings that I, and perhaps Murdock, feel with this scenario.
While you may find the term lynching uncomfortable... think about how a player may feel when they realize the GM has throw a lynching into the campaign and has rejected all methods of finding another solution. My obsession with a 'legitimate' method was simply presenting a more "PG rated" version of the basic events. Vague "taken to trial" endings would not carry much discomfort, and even a proper execution after a trial at least has the same trappings that make such actions acceptable in modern society. It is easier to write off and swallow the unflinching nature of the law (which needs to be strict to set an example and maintain order) than to allow your 'redeemer' character to allow a crowd to give into their baser urges to murder another being that could, at least in theory, be redeemed.
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It sounds like you played that one just right. Not every party is going to agree about the best solution for justly dealing with captured foes. A cleric of Sarenrae will certainly try to convince captured enemies to repent and will always encourage her party to choose mercy over vengeance. Sometimes this won't seem very profitable: There will always be some who cling to their evil ways.
The Dawnflower brings her gifts to the Just and the Unjust alike, giving all the chance to see their errors and repent of their sins. Who are we to think ourselves greater than her?"
Saranrae is a tricky one, since even in their own organization they have some 'less merciful' sects.
I played a Paladin of Saranrae, not a Cleric, so my actions may have been a LITTLE different. When I ran into bandits, I gave them the chance to turn from their evil ways and join us. Usually only once. If they continued the battle they tended to die.
When we DID get captives, they also were given the chance to switch sides. Those that did were forgiven or made to atone (depending on their crime). The more harmless ones were treated well and some even given positions in our Kingmaker kingdom.
This guy you ran into... Sounded like the ones that wanted to fight to the death. Leaving them with the villagers or prison or whatever... was probably the right thing to do. As a Cleric I would have asked the villagers to treat him fairly.... as a Paladin/king I would have threatened the crowd. If they didn't give him a fair trial, They'd deal with me.
Frankly the biggest problem here... is that guy was guilty. He was Super-guilty. The Heroes stopped his plot red-handed... the victims knew perfectly well who was holding them... There's not really much you're going to get out of a trial with a case like that. Best you can do is make sure the punishment fits the crime... but guilt/innocence is already obvious. And frankly an old fashioned gallows is pretty common punishment for most violent crimes.
Best you could really do is try to redeem the soul if not the body. My Paladin did that a few times too. Crimes were so bad, they had to die... but they didn't have to die evil.
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Again, sometimes you are not given a nice way to end things. There are times when no matter what you do or say things will not go the way you want. At those times, you can only do what can to keep your conscious clean. The cleric tried to redeem the NPC and it failed. The crowd wanted the NPC dead and the cleric was unable to stop it. At that point all he can do is offer the NPC a prayer for redemption and a quick and painless death.
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Some good ideas here, thanks. Praying with him during the execution and offering to contact loved ones for closure on their part both were things I should have done. Neither occured to me at the time.
Regarding some comments. Both Sarenrae and my character were neutral good. So, we had no special attachment for obeying any socital laws, but likewise no special attachment to breaking them. Good values life. So, RP wise, I determined that my character's inclination would be towards keeping them alive, if an option was availible.
And I wasn't a Paladin of Sarenrae, as Lawful Good character would be inclined to adhere to the local authorities, especially in absence of a Good solution.
As for dwelling on redemption, being a cleric means, to me, being a staunch proponent of at least one of the areas of concern for your deity. With redemption on the list, my cleric should at least try to redeem creatures they enounter. Sarenrae has areas of concern in Healing, Honesty, Redemption, and the Sun. Honesty and the Sun didn't really apply here, but healing the helpless (even villians) and attempting to get them to seek redemption seems very much within the areas my cleric should have been focused.
Again, sometimes you are not given a nice way to end things. There are times when no matter what you do or say things will not go the way you want. At those times, you can only do what can to keep your conscious clean. The cleric tried to redeem the NPC and it failed. The crowd wanted the NPC dead and the cleric was unable to stop it. At that point all he can do is offer the NPC a prayer for redemption and a quick and painless death.
Fair enough. I understand the situation might not allow such an NPC to be 'saved', in any physical or spiritual sense of the term. I just prefer swift painless executions to... uglier methods implied by handing him over to the angry victims.
Better to bring him to the scimitar yourself than to allow that. If only to make sure that the victims do not gain hands as bloodstained as the bandits.