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Something came up in my campaign not too long ago that I felt was in the "goblin babies" category of moral quandaries, and I thought I'd share for discussion. Here's the basic scenario:
A group of adventurers gets roped into helping a small rebel force of drow free their people from a pack of powerful drider sorcerers who have overthrown their creators and enslaved their former masters. Assume the adventurers have never encountered drow or driders before and know next to nothing about them.
The drow quickly establish themselves to be cruel, sadistic jerkwads who don't even try to conceal the fact they view the party as expendable pawns. However the driders, despite initially sounding like a bunch of victimized and abused slaves who valiantly won their freedom, prove to be the bigger threat since they are equally evil and have a doomsday weapon that could wipe out the adventurers' home/pets/stuff.
Skip ahead to the endgame. The driders are making a last ditch effort to enact their master plan when a few of the adventurers comes across a quarry filled with sickly and weak drow slaves barely capable of swinging their pickaxes. The adventurers, at this point, have seen and learned the absolute worst about the drow and what they're capable of when left to their own devices. The one party member capable of speaking with these drow (they didn't speak Common) kills the slaves in a particularly horrific manner when he convinces them they're going to be set free and then directs them into a cave filled with poisonous gas while his fellow party members aren't looking. He reasons he must take preemptive measures to see the drow never regain their power or get their hands on the doomsday weapon and threaten his people. Later on, he tries to conceal his actions from the rest of the party and then attempts to lie about what he did when his allies find the quarry and dead slaves.
Some background on the character:
NG Mystic Theurge with a few levels of Cleric of Nethys, basically a guy who honestly wants to do what is Good and once lost the favor of his own deity for sacrilege in order to protect his friends. It should be noted the character's player has a history of making rash decisions that get himself or other people killed or hurt whenever he's left unsupervised.
Is what he did evil or was it actually a Good action to kill a bunch of mean jerks known for habitually enslaving and sacrificing other people to demons even though they were basically helpless at the time? What about the character's attempt to cover up the deaths? Was he just in over his head? What do you think his fellow party members should have done about it?
Just thought I'd throw this out there...
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Was there any reason to assume the Drow weren't normal members of their race?
Did the Drow thank the Cleric gratefully and offer to reconcile their people's actions in any manner?
If they didn't come off as being good then there's no reason to assume they would be.
Killing is only considered evil if done for pleasure or personal gain usually.
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So, the mystic theurge convinced a bunch of half-dead slaves that he's going to lead them to freedom, and instead led them into a chamber filled with poisonous gas that killed them all?
With all due respect to Godwin's Law, this guy deliberately used guile to lead a bunch of unsuspecting people into a gas chamber, which he knew would kill them. And he then lied to his friends to cover it up.
In my opinion, this is a textbook example of an evil act. He convinced people he was leading them to freedom, and instead led them to slaughter. It doesn't matter if the people themselves were evil. They were mostly helpless, they trusted this guy to rescue them, and then he betrayed them and murdered them all.
If I were the GM, I'd invoke an immediate involuntary alignment change.
As a cleric of Nethys, a Neutral deity that's mainly concerned with magic, becoming evil isn't going to affect him all that much. I would, however, change this character's affinity from positive energy to negative energy: meaning he now channels negative energy and spontaneously casts inflict spells.
I'd say it depends on the game. Some games allow pragmatic actions without care, and some games are all for whole species turning around as part of the epilogue.
If the other players might have a big issue OOC, you might want to talk to him about this sort of behavior before anything gets out of hand. If they don't, and can handle it maturely then awesome.
I would not invoke an alignment change over a single act, especially when its related to a species who's well known for killing everyone including themselves and worshipping evil dieties and not having many if any exceptions to the rule. Neither the drow nor the driders in this setting look anything like nice people, so killing them for the greater good doesn't look like a bad idea. Poison gas sounds less terrible than slaughtering them and speaking a barbaric language in front of eachother. Nethys is both of creation and destruction, so his god doesn't seem like the type to care either way. It is, even to evil creatures however, probably pointed towards the evil end of the scale.
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Well, until the Monster Rights Activists show up...
I think the way which he handled this was evil, especially coming from a NG character. If he thought slaying them was the best option, he should have been straight forward about it and not used lies, deceit, trickery.
Sometimes we do what we do because we have the right reasons, but how we end up doing it is often wrong, and so our entire conclusion is somehow discredited. I would definitely take this action into alignment consideration, but his intention was for the greater good, which is an important consideration as well.
I think it's a good thing that our friendly neighborhood Monsters Rights Committee wasn't so prevalent in Golarion, since wrong and right becomes so arbitrary, subjective, and relative. Sometimes intuition is more powerful and more right that theoretical absolutes... And well... Who was ever imprisoned for ridding the world of a sylvester Goblin or Drow?
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@ Silence among hounds - there was probably more reason to assume they'd become a threat in the future. The drow had only suffered a couple generations of slavery so most of them remembered being in charge, and the drow rebels' actions toward captured enemies along with the words of the driders the party spoke to seemed to indicate these were old school Vault of the Drow style dark elves. The slaves didn't thank him and they didn't immediately trust him because it's not in their nature to trust anyone. The theurge made a good case for "freeing them" with a decent Diplomacy check and some circumstances bonuses (i.e. stay here and be slaves vs. take a shot at freedom) and convinced the drow to make a break for it.
The drow who survived the battle with the driders were offered a safe haven and a chance to redeem themselves by the party's cleric of Sarenrae despite their evil ways, but they refused and chose to exile themselves to a dangerous wasteland rather than live under anyone else's supervision or rules.
Nethys didn't give a lick about the theurge's actions toward the drow. I only mention it to show his decision wasn't influenced by his religion.
Oh yeah, this wasn't the kind of poison gas that makes it look like the drow just fell asleep. This stuff did CON and Fire damage to the drow, cooking them as it filled their lungs with toxic smoke.
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Evil.
One righteous thing to do would have been to turn them over to the celestial garrison.
So anyone who hasn't played through World's Largest Dungeon or isn't following my journal knows, The Celestial Garrison is a small group of celestials and inevitables who maintain a command post in the dungeon. They prefer to stay out of the affairs of the mortal races that have been moving into the former prison but do get involved when truly dangerous evil forces threaten.
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Im with those who consider such action evil.
If they where a threat then he should have found another way to handle it besides mass murder.
Might state my Barbarian (Chaotic good) recently became Chief of an Orc Village that was raiding Human and elf settlements. he killed the Old Orc chief, a good number of his guards, declared himself the biggest meanest thing around and and thus chief and if anyone wants to dispute his claim they can join him in the fighting pit. Now he has the job of teaching his Orcs how to act in acceptable(Well to his barbarian standards) behavior.
This is a simple "ends justify the means" question. Yes, they may be evil. they may threaten your people "in the future" but they were harmless now. On top of that, they were lied to in order to lead them to their deaths. I would tell him about the pillar of skulls in Baator, where the heads of those that have done that very thing are doomed to eternal torment.
It's a horrific deed, and he tried to follow it up with lies about his action. That tells me he knew from the start it was an evil act, and he's trying to bs his way out of any penalties you might apply. Even if he's gotten away with the lie, his personal outlook has changed drastically (you still have to live with yourself, even if your friends can't tell).
I think the way which he handled this was evil, especially coming from an NG character. If he thought slaying them was the best option, he should have been straight forward about it and not used lies, deciet, trickery.
I completely agree with this. Openly slaying them would have been far less evil than what he did.
Sometimes we do what we do because we have the right reasons, but how we end up doing it is often wrong, and so our entire conclusion is somehow discredited. I would definitely take this action into alignment consideration, but his intention was for the greater good, which is an important consideration as well.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
As the OP presented it, this was actively cruel. It doesn't matter that the victims were evil. It's still an evil act. I'd go so far as to call it mass murder.
How should we instead have killed the drow then?
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How should we instead have killed the drow then?
Maybe he should have skipped the "murder the helpless" bit. Evil or not you'll never know what the Drow would have been / done. Because they are dead. You can't judge the actions that they won't do. And that doesn't matter to the nature of the act anyway. You can judge his action. Murder, lies, deceit and treachery. Evil, in short.
Say you see a wagon rolling towards a little kid. You save him. Good act. And he turns out to be a psychotic murderer as an adult. It doesn't change the nature of your action. Good. If you decided to push the little bugger out into the path of the runaway wagon. Evil action. The fact that the little monster would have done evil later doesn't matter. Your action was evil. Period.
You need to divorce the people on the receiving end of an action, like the Drow or my little future psychopath, from the act, in this case murder. That act can be judged. If you decide to commit an evil act to avoid a worse evil, it's still evil. You might consider it a "necessary evil" but it is evil none the less.
We can take a good guess than the drow were going to go off and do great evil though, judging by the past behavior described by the OP. Do you expect them to go back to their own civilization and preach the good word or try to be accepted in the new world, or perhaps try and create a new civilization of peaceful drow in a world that won't let them?
Just playing Devil's Advocate here. I don't know the OP's plans at all. In cases like this where it could go either way I'm usually okay with some lenience myself.
I agree it's absolutely evil to kill them {especially in this manner,) just as I don't think it's ok to murder goblin babies. Especially in Pathfinder, as long as you are not an outsider, your alignment is learned and such. Werewolves are mostly evil only because most werewolves are born to evil werewolves and therefore teach their kids to be evil. Same with evil drow or evil goblins. They could have taken the drow to freedom, used spells or talking to them to determine if they were all evil as most drow are, and if so then decide how to deal with them...
However, I will quote for you Electric Chair by Prince (from the Keaton/Nicholson Batman movie)
If a man is considered guilty for what goes on in his mind, then give me the electric chair for all my future crimes.
Just like the short story/movie Minority Report, you can't find someone guilty for something they haven't done yet because... then they'll never do it... at which point how can they be guilty? It's a total paradox.
We can take a good guess than the drow were going to go off and do great evil though, judging by the past behavior described by the OP. Do you expect them to go back to their own civilization and preach the good word or try to be accepted in the new world, or perhaps try and create a new civilization of peaceful drow in a world that won't let them?Just playing Devil's Advocate here. I don't know the OP's plans at all. In cases like this where it could go either way I'm usually okay with some lenience myself.
It isn't a matter of guessing about what someone else will do. It's about what you do, for good or ill. I expect the good to be good and the evil to be evil for the most part. I don't expect the good to do evil to head off future evil. The ends do not justify the means. The ends are effected by the means. Hence the phrase "no good can come of this" in relation to actions taken that are morally questionable, whatever the intended ends are...
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Stupid good doesn't care about what someone will do, but is endlessly and needlessly forgiving. I'm not a fan of stupid good.
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Yeah, I'd call it evil for the same reasons many have stated already. Nethys probably wouldn't care too much, if at all, but this still leaves a deep stain on the soul.
There are more ways to stop evil than just killing. And sometimes those other methods lead to even greater victories.
Saving souls beats sending them on their way to damnation. But if one must do killing, do it as quick and mercifully as possible.
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If the character had to lie about it to his friends, probably means it wasn't a good act. *shrug*
Skip ahead to the endgame. The driders are making a last ditch effort to enact their master plan when a few of the adventurers comes across a quarry filled with sickly and weak drow slaves barely capable of swinging their pickaxes. The adventurers, at this point, have seen and learned the absolute worst about the drow and what they're capable of when left to their own devices. The one party member capable of speaking with these drow (they didn't speak Common) kills the slaves in a particularly horrific manner when he convinces them they're going to be set free and then directs them into a cave filled with poisonous gas while his fellow party members aren't looking. He reasons he must take preemptive measures to see the drow never regain their power or get their hands on the doomsday weapon and threaten his people. Later on, he tries to conceal his actions from the rest of the party and then attempts to lie about what he did when his allies find the quarry and dead slaves.
What you describe is an evil act.
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I think it really depends on if their was a better reasonable option at hand that he could have performed. Considering what we know from the initial post the only other options I can really see are setting them free in the wild, bringing them to a nearby settlement, or leaving them. On the first entry if the party were just to set them free in the wilds of the darklands chances are they would probably die either from exposure or the predations of other species with the best hope coming from being found by a roaming group of darklands denizens who would just enslave them again. As for bringing them to a nearby settlement considering that they are an evil race of slaves to a very evil culture, in all honesty there's a very real chance that the best they could hope for upon return to said society is just more enslavement amongst the other subterranean races. Finally if he just left them there in the state they were in they would most likely die from starvation and exposure considering that they are barely strong enough to lift a pick and have probably had all their supplies stolen or destroyed since the PC's rolled in. Considering all that the option of a mercy killing might not be such a bad idea and may be the only kindness he can give them save maybe a desperate plea to have them change their ways, quickly atone, and aren't forced to suffer in one of the more evil outer planes.
Now the problem becomes the minute he begins to hide this action from his party since this act basically paints him not as a good man force to make a terrible decision from a list of terrible decisions but rather a disturbed individual seeking to shortsightedly punish a bunch of suffering souls before he ever weighed his options.
If you feel the former is true of his actions do not punish him with an alignment infraction, the haunting weight of the decision is punishment enough. If you feel the latter is true and he did this without thinking and to punish these slaves then you may want to pop the alignment shift to neutral and allow the player to start to think about his actions. Remember that an alignment shift doesn't cause this announcers voice from heaven to descend and inform the players, just let him see that he has started to be treated differently by npc's (particularly those of an outsider bent who might be able to say feel his change) and let him and his party figure it out for themselves. Trust me he will be in for a surprise when you see a party member drop a holy word with him in the blast an he suddenly finds himself burning from the goodness.
Also no need to change his channeling, if he switches to neutral and follows neyths he can still channel positive since he is a neutral cleric of a neutral deity.
Lying, deceit, and trickery is on the lawful/chaotic scale, not the good/evil scale. So the deception element of the killing and the subsequent cover-up with the party shouldn't factor into a discussion of good/evil at all.
Beyond that, the morality of the act depends entirely on whether the campaign-worlds has established inherent racial morality as a thing. If races are inherently good or evil and it's simply a matter of studying an unfamiliar race until you can make the call, then the act was unambiguously good.
Drow are evil.
Destroying evil is good.
Therefore destroying the Drow was a good act.
If it's a realistic prospect in-universe for a person to act contrary to a stereotypical conception of their race, then it would be evil for all the reasons it would be evil in the real world. But to apply real-world morality, you have to posit a gameworld that shares relevant real-world traits. If it's a one-in-a-million chance to find a Drizzt-style Drow and all the rest are backstabbing evil freaks, how can you fault someone for treating Drow as monsters?
According to the alignment rules, destroying evil is not good.
Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
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People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent, but may lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others.
It's hard to consider the Drow as being "innocent".
On the other hand, simply "not helping" was also a viable neutral act.This is arguably a Chaotic Neutral action tipping toward evil. Def adds a notch or two on the alignment ticker.
@Abadar:
Not helping would be neutral, you are correct.
I'd argue that murdering them is evil, especially when they were not an immediate threat.
Now before someone starts a landslide, I'm not saying the character has to be of an evil alignment to commit this act, or that his alignment should shift from one measly evil act. The alignment of a character describes his personal motivations and edicts after all. But his actions does fall within
Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others
And not that much within the other alignments. Meaning it was probably a rock-hard evil act.
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Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others
That's a selective copy/paste. The rest delves into the motives behind evil killing:
Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
According to the alignment rules, destroying evil is not good.
Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
According to a fairly restrictive reading anyway. Selections from elsewhere in that section:
Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit....
A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. She combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly.
It's pretty clear that evil is a threat to innocent life and being good means defeating that threat.
@Ximen Bao: Pretty clear to you, perhaps. However, I reserve the right to disagree. I maintain that my reading is pretty clear ;)
@Abadar: Apologies, but I don't see the relevance. The example the OP gives seem to fall within
and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient.
EDIT:
@Ximen Bao: Also Defeat=/=Destroy.
@Ximen Bao: Pretty clear to you, perhaps. However, I reserve the right to disagree. I maintain that my reading is pretty clear ;)
It's clear so long as you only look at that section, sure.
@Ximen Bao: Pretty clear to you, perhaps. However, I reserve the right to disagree. I maintain that my reading is pretty clear ;)It's clear so long as you only look at that section, sure.
oooh ho ho, you cheeky bugger ;)
I'd say it's probably a chaotic neutral or evil act, but I would add the caveat that single actions rarely justify an alignment shift.
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Stupid good doesn't care about what someone will do, but is endlessly and needlessly forgiving. I'm not a fan of stupid good.
You're missing the point. Killing them is a choice. Just don't pretend it was a "good" one. The killer in this case would be thinking it a "necessary evil". People do the things they think are necessary even when they violate their alignment / principles. With rare exceptions. And as for "stupid good", unless you live with the thought police, it isn't about what you might do some day, it's about what you have done already. You can be punished for your past crimes, not ones you have yet to commit.
*edit* In short, alignment is not a straight jacket. Except maybe for Paladins :) People act outside their alignments. Doing so regularly would cause an alignment shift (or really display one). One aberrant act might have no impact on a characters alignment or it might be the weight that tips the scale towards a new alignment. It depends on how significant the act is and what else the character has been up to.
It is a evil act.
We can take a good guess than the drow were going to go off and do great evil though, judging by the past behavior described by the OP. Do you expect them to go back to their own civilization and preach the good word or try to be accepted in the new world, or perhaps try and create a new civilization of peaceful drow in a world that won't let them?
Actual the characters don't know anything about drow. They know their current drow allies are evil...but what evidence that the entire race is evil? During WW2 you cam accross a group of Germans would you kill them because nazis are evil?
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Stupid good doesn't care about what someone will do, but is endlessly and needlessly forgiving. I'm not a fan of stupid good.
My defination of stupid good is vastly different than yours. My is stupid good kills all evil on sight because of some possible future crime.
I would also say this is a grievous evil act. Enough atleast for the character to shift atleat to True Neutral.
Ok, got some slaves through your adventurers? Feed them up, teach them the way of not being dicks, introduce them to gardening and agriculture. Get them set up with ladies and guys that are into dark lovers.
Evil, made all the more obvious since the character/player in question knew others would disagree and the deadly gas was quite a horrible way to kill helpless creatures.
Destroying evil creatures is not in itself a good act, doing so without proper cause is evil. Now the killing in itself might be construed as proper cause by some definitions, I could see a neutral character doing that but the chosen method of the killing and subsequent hiding of the fact from his companions shows a lack of compassion and regret that ought to be enough reason to turn evil.
I would turn the character evil as a GM, though it would be different if they weren't helpless and could endanger the mission, I find it likely that the player did not want to be dragged into a moral quandary and just decided to get rid of them without discussion. Moral quandaries are not appreciated by everyone.
EDIT : in my games I would 1) turn the character to neutral alignment and 2) turn his channeling to negative energy if he does not seek some form atonement or expresses regret.
I don't know how other people run their games, but I call genocide of humanoids an evil act. This was a case of a character killing a group of weakened slaves of a usually-evil race just because of what they are or what they might do.
If it were demons or devils, sure, genocide away. There's effectively no chance you're harming the world by putting elemental evil down. But in regard to these drow, there could have been one or twenty neutral creatures among them and they've been eliminated all the same. The player didn't even seem to try out a detect evil, which would at least make me think twice about it as a GM.
Further, I could see being more lenient if the player confronted them directly, or if he told his party what he did. But his actions imply to me that he knows what he did was wrong and that they would not react well.
So I'm sitting in a "Your Neutral Good alignment might not adequately describe you anymore" position.
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Not sure if anyone has mentioned this but what makes a "good" character unique is the fact that it doesn't matter if a race of people are evil and that they could potentially cause havoc in the future, he/she would most likely still let them go. He/she would probably lead them away somewhere and leave them to their own devices. I'm not saying he has to give them food or supplies, unless he is lawful good, but marching them to their deaths on purpose and with intent is an evil act.
You don't have to win every encounter with violence. Showing mercy is the act of a good character.
You can't always paint them with the same brush.
Evil, made all the more obvious since the character/player in question knew others would disagree and the deadly gas was quite a horrible way to kill helpless creatures.
Destroying evil creatures is not in itself a good act, doing so without proper cause is evil. Now the killing in itself might be construed as proper cause by some definitions, I could see a neutral character doing that but the chosen method of the killing and subsequent hiding of the fact from his companions shows a lack of compassion and regret that ought to be enough reason to turn evil.
I would turn the character evil as a GM, though it would be different if they weren't helpless and could endanger the mission, I find it likely that the player did not want to be dragged into a moral quandary and just decided to get rid of them without discussion. Moral quandaries are not appreciated by everyone.
EDIT : in my games I would 1) turn the character to neutral alignment and 2) turn his channeling to negative energy if he does not seek some form atonement or expresses regret.
Destroying evil is in the game, a good act. The proper cause is provided by their evil deeds, their intentions to further their evil aims and generally cause havoc, destruction, indulge in perversions with the unwilling and enact degradation on the small or large scale. The relativism, the "it is evil to attack evil without reason" is the modern intruding and branding taking out the evil trash, as evil.
No need to kill these slaves, they can be redeemed or given a better life. To my critic, I did not mean pimp them out, I meant give them a good life and see to their needs. They are leaving slavery behind so they will want to live and try new things.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this but what makes a "good" character unique is the fact that it doesn't matter if a race of people are evil and that they could potentially cause havoc in the future, he/she would most likely still let them go. He/she would probably lead them away somewhere and leave them to their own devices. I'm not saying he has to give them food or supplies, unless he is lawful good, but marching them to their deaths on purpose and with intent is an evil act.
You don't have to win every encounter with violence. Showing mercy is the act of a good character.
You can't always paint them with the same brush.
Killing should be saved for the real threats that have the capabilities to do serious evil. Freed slaves? Well you can stop them becoming marauding bandits/slavers before it gets that far.
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LIES! /me points at you menacingly!
I did no such thing. I even opened the thread saying this is something that happened not too long ago. A month isn't so long ago, is it? ^_^
Anyway, here's how the other players and I handled it:
1. I didn't force an alignment change on the character, but I did impress upon him the act had taken a pretty heavy toll on his karma. This was made all the more obvious when he was refused membership into the Celestial Garrison.
For their efforts in defeating the driders and their doomsday weapon, the Celestial Garrison offered the party membership in their order. All they needed to do to accept was sign their names to the Garrison Charter, an artifact-like scroll that judges the worthiness of applicants. The Charter reacted badly to the theurge and shocked him for somewhere around 26 points of damage when he touched it, meaning it detected a substantial blemish on the character's soul.
2. Two of the party's most loyal, Good-aligned NPC allies (one NG, the other LG) abandoned the group, citing their disgust over what happened, and feeling they'd been betrayed by the theurge. Many other Good NPCs who have learned of the act treat the PC with a neutral attitude at best when talking to him. Those with Neutral and Evil alignments who learn of what he did might actually congratulate him or, at least, react as if it's no big deal.
3. The theurge (not the player) was almost asked to leave the group (who were nice enough to not tell the surviving drow what he'd done.) Another PC, the cleric of Sarenrae, agreed to let the theurge stay with the party so long as he worked with her to atone for what he did.
Here's why I did what I did:
First off, I believe what the mystic theurge did was ultimately a Neutral Evil act. He tricked a group of helpless, desperate people into walking into a gruesome death trap under the pretense of setting them free (chaotic, evil,) but he did it with the callous purpose of preventing future atrocities by creatures he judged to be irredeemably evil (lawful.) However, this is a character (and a player frankly) who honestly tries to be the best good guy he can be but he's most comfortable sitting in back and deferring to the rest of the party's judgments and doesn't handle being alone very well.
Like I said in my original post, the party was split up when this happened. The theurge and two NPC allies came upon the slaves while trying to create a diversion for the rest of the group. Some discussion had gone on between the players about what to do with the drow after the war with the driders and no one had a concrete plan, but a couple of CN and N characters did float the possibility of having to kill them all. The theurge also had the pleasure of meeting, essentially, the driders' chief of propaganda, who used examples of drow cruelty to show the race was just as bad, if not worse, than his own (no spells were used, no skill rolls were made, I just used colorful descriptions of drow culture, religion and history to inform the player of who he was helping in the war.)
I told the player, whatever he decided to do, this was his decision alone since the other PCs weren't around. He could ask the NPCs for their advice, but I wasn't going to let them make the final decision because its not their story. The NG NPC believed they should figure out what to do with the slaves later, and the CN NPC said the drow were jerks and he didn't care if they lived or died but he did point out that letting them live would probably make them his problem later (he lived nearby.) When an OOC joke was made about how incredibly messed up it would be to trick them into the poison gas cave, the player immediately said that's what he was doing. I asked if he was sure, and he said he was, citing all the horrible things he'd seen and heard about the drow. In character, I equated it to a normally mild-mannered, Good man making a terribly bad decision and doing an incredibly evil and cruel thing because he'd finally snapped.
The theurge's attempt to cover up and lie about his actions was Chaotic, but I felt it had more to do with him realizing what he'd done and trying to hide it out of shame and fear of what his companions would do when they found out.
In the end, I think my players and I did a good job in ruling it. His actions did have consequences (friends left him, there's a black stain on his karma, his party almost abandoned him.) I also think part of what led to the player's choice is his reliance on other players to make all the tough decisions (it only took one bad OOC joke from someone else for him to decide to gas the drow,) and I didn't want to penalize him for personally being suggestible.