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A question regarding the interpretation of the alignments. Possible spoilers for Wrath of the righteous. Sorry for my english! ^_^
The city is at war, full of demons and cultists. Our party is targeting a house that we believe that is a den of demonic cultists. We give the password to enter (obtained before), but doesn’t work. We tell them that we are demonic cultists, but we do not know the new password, if exists. They tell us that we leave. We tell them to open or we will break the door.
We broke the door.
Inside there are six men armed with bows and swords. They told us to go out. The paladin says that we have been sent by the Crusaders, and that we only want to enter to search tracks or documents of demonic cultists; If they let us in, we will heal their wounds (if any), and then we will go home (trying to use diplomacy). They said “no”.
The Inquisitor detects evil and tells us that they are evil. The Oracle of battle intimidated one of them. The others attack us. After 3 rounds of fight, we won. Two of them died, one surrendered, and the rest are unconscious.
The paladin fought using non-lethal damage, the rest of us using lethal damage. The paladin says that all of us should have used non-lethal damage.
DM said us that in this encounter we were neutral or evil, not good. I think that all times we try to do it in a peaceful way, but they did not want to leave, they were evil and they did not surrender until the end. DM said that because we identify ourselves as cultists, there was no way that they will believe us.
Alignment of our actions? Thoughs?
Your group forced their way in to a house and killed some of the people living there, that sounds unlawful and evil to me.
Just because someone detects as "evil", you are not justified, either legally or morally, to break into their house and kill them.
Imagine someone busting down your front door after you told them to leave. Then they go waving weapons around in your face and threatening you. You try to defend yourself but fail. The intruders kill two of your friends. Would you consider the intruders' behavior to be good or lawful?
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Your DM has it wrong. ** spoiler omitted ** The fact that you entered via password is proof enough of their allegiance.
The inhabitants of the house chose their fate when they opened fire on you. The fact that you didn't kill them all argues for your restraint.
Just because someone detects as "evil", you are not justified, either legally or morally, to break into their house and kill them.
We entered breaking the door, but it wasn't their house. We knew that that house was a haven of cultists because his address appeared in documents found in another cult house, but they were looters. And we were working for representatives of the martial law in the city.
If you have spoilers the proper thing is to either tag it within your post, or at the very least note it in your your title.
Ok, sorry.
War is a deadly thing, and in a setting that is decidedly dark fantasy life is cheap. Diplomacy does not always work, and yet you still have a mission to complete.
If you believe that there are cultists there that are destabilizing the government and murdering people then it isn't unlawful to kill them if they refuse to cooperate. You were attempting to infiltrate them, and when that failed you had to turn to force to achieve your goal.
Unfortunately these people were not doing anything actively evil in your presence. Attacking you for invading their residence is not evil, and is fully justified even if you flashed identification after kicking in their door.
Did you find the evidence you needed in order to justify your actions, as that will ultimately decide if your actions were evil or good. If you killed a bunch of cultists, and captured the survivors then they are just going to be executed for treachery anyway. If you did not find proof then your actions were neutral or chaotic and neutral or evil.
So you are technically still neutral neutral, we can't say openly chaotic since you are searching for something for a lawful reason, and we can't say openly evil because you are attempting to destroy evil, but Lawful and Good are nowhere to be seen in this argument.
Then again, this also needs to be taken in context to the setting and what was going on at the time.
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Then again, this also needs to be taken in context to the setting and what was going on at the time.
Context, from the back of the book 1 of Chronicle of the righteous: The Worldwound Incursion (1 of 6)
It sort of sounds like the only people who would be there are cultists, as everyone else probably would have been killed off.
Unsure if you can assume that everyone is a cultist who will try to kill you, however.
Still, the actions were neither good nor lawful, but the setting is chaotic evil anyway. Treating the entire town as a hostile dungeon, and assuming everyone is going to kill you might be perfectly normal.
There are a couple of things that people seem to be ignoring. The first is that they are in the middle of a war. The party is investigation group of people suspected of being demonic cultists. Demonic cultists typically engage in human sacrifice, murder, rape and other extremely evil acts. The people they encounter are armed to the teeth. The people in the house detected as evil, which means they are either 6th level or higher or are either evil clerics, or antipaladins.
There is a paladin in the party not an ex-paladin so the crusade has to be at least lawful, if not good. If the crusade was just an excuse to kill, loot and rape they paladin would have broken his code by associating with it. The party was acting on orders from the crusade to investigate and track down the demonic cultist.
The fact that they are in a warzone means that some of the normal rules of behavior are suspended. Breaking and entering and seizing control of other people, or their possessions can be justified in these circumstances. The people in the house fit the description of the evil cultists they are going after. The party went out of its way to verify the people in the house were in fact demonic cultists. At this point any reasonable person is going to think the people in the house are evil cultists. While the party did threaten the people in the house, they did not initiate combat. When attacked with lethal force they responded in a like manner. When combat ended they did not continue to fight and accepted the surrender of the people inside the house.
If they detected as evil those are some pretty powerful looters. Keep in mind that in order to detect as evil you have to be at least 6th level unless you are a cleric of an evil god, an antipaladin, an evil outsider, or undead. According to the book the vast majority of people are 5th level or lower. It also states that NPC classes rarely advance beyond this point. If these were ordinary looters they should not detected as evil. While simply detecting as evil does not justify them being killed for no reason, it does give a reason to be suspicious. If these where just a bunch of low level ordinarily looters your GM messed up by having them detect as evil.
So assuming the people in the house did detect as evil the situation is you have encounters one of the following, a powerful group of evil adventures, the servants of a demon or evil god, a group of disguised demons, or a group of disguised undead. In any case this is a group to be very wary of.
Keep in mind detect evil tells you to important things. The first is if they are evil, or are servants of evil. The second is that they are a significant threat. The 5th level butcher (expert) who has killed dozens of children and uses them to make pies and sells them does not detect as evil.
And to be honest this seems like a case of let’s make the paladin fall for no reason.
I am not all that familiar with the AP so I can only go by what is normal. Even so there are always exceptions to the rule but my point was more that it should be used as a guideline not a yes no answer. The fact of the matter is when something detects as evil or any alignment for that matter it should be handled carefully. Anything radiating an alignment is something to be wary of. If something that radiates your opposite alignment attacks you for whatever reason, I think you are justified for reacting with what lethal force. From what I read the looters are the ones who attacked first, not the party. Yes they did use intimidation but that is not the same as an attack.
Just to fill in a few facts as I am GMing this...hopefully without spoilers.
The PCs are sent to this building, an alchemist shop to look for information about demonic cultists. The people on the insides are squatters and looters and shouldn't have detected as evil as they are low level.
I suppose they could try to pass themselves off as the owners but the only social skill they have is intimidate.
Considering that the PCS could have seen cultists sacrificing people in the steets I think this party showed pretty good restraint.