Lethal curses / diseases in PFS, evil or not?

[Wylliam Harrison]

Hypothetical here:

A caster, due to faction's goals/morals or personal background, casts an eventually lethal spell like a disease on a specific evil NPC one meets at moment X.

Would this be considered an evil act? Since you're potentially doing society a favor by removing this NPC.

[Arachnofiend]

Would it have been an evil act to stab the NPC in the kidney?

If the answer to that is no, then you should be fine. Something slow burning like a lethal disease might fall under the "cruel and unusual" spectrum but I doubt the Dark Archive is going to bat an eyelash at something like that.

[Wylliam Harrison]

Ah well, i rather meant an NPC that you'd talk to in relation to a quest, opposed to combat.

I forgot to mention, the situation could be for PFS, in the distant future.

[Cyrus Lanthier]

Umm... I don't think someone being "evil" is itself enough to justify their murder not being an evil act. If you routinely kill people to further your goals, you're probably evil. If you routinely kill people who haven't otherwise done anything wrong, but *might* due to some characteristic they have (they are an orc, they follow a god you oppose, they trip your "evil sensor"), then you're probably Lawful Evil (amusingly). If you kill someone who is presenting a clear and present danger to yourself, that's a neutral act. If you take someone out who is a clear danger to others, it can be a good act, but that's complicated.

So... I guess the answer, as it so often is when it comes to questions of alignment, is "we need context."

Also, why the "slow burn" over the knife in the kidney?

[ShoulderPatch]

Cyrus Lanthier wrote:

So... I guess the answer, as it so often is when it comes to questions of alignment, is "we need context."

This.

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As this is the rules forum, Does the spell used have the [Evil] descriptor?

If yes, the default assumption of Pathfinder is the casting empowers evil and is to some extent an evil act (though how it's specifically used might move the overall act towards neutral/no alignment shift, see #3 below).

If no (I'm assuming no as you didn't mention it) it's as morally ambiguous as a Fireball and then this is more of a general discussion or advise question (flagging for move) and...
1) Context hugely matters, not just the events but the game and PCs as a whole.
2) Many tables have house rules on alignment that win out.
3) The GM is the final arbitrator at his table. Whatever the DM decided is the correct ruling for his game.

[Serisan]

Because Grandmaster Torch deserves a slow and even more painful death.

[Arachnofiend]

Cyrus Lanthier wrote:

Also, why the "slow burn" over the knife in the kidney?

For the same reason you can shoot an enemy soldier but gassing him is a war crime.

[Cyrus Lanthier]

Arachnofiend wrote:

Cyrus Lanthier wrote:

Also, why the "slow burn" over the knife in the kidney?

For the same reason you can shoot an enemy soldier but gassing him is a war crime.

I'm just what makes it so much more practical in the OP's situation to use a disease/curse. And how they can insure that the evil guy in question can't get it cured/removed somehow (if they merit this sort of thing, they can probably pay for a spell to be cast)... And if the evil guy is in their power (thus ensuring it isn't cured), then deciding to use the drawn out, painful method of killing a prisoner is probably at least borderline evil.

Cloudkill isn't an evil spell, and it's sometimes imminently practical... And Cloudkill almost certainly would qualify as a war crime.

[Wylliam Harrison]

Cyrus Lanthier wrote:

Also, why the "slow burn" over the knife in the kidney?

Because they might be capable of physically kicking your ass if provoked.

As to the context,
Let's say we have Emily the witch, who's N and has lost a beloved to drugs. The innkeeper "Richard", is a, as of yet never caught, hardtime druglord who has his own people kill constables or people who oppose him/investigate him.
Downright rotten, you as PFS party talk to him under pretense. Then Emily the witch casts a lethal disease on him, without arousing suspicion on herself.

Hence, Emily has a disease slowly kill off an elusive criminal, provided no cure was sought out or the "victim" was locked away.
For the greater good....perhaps?

[Arachnofiend]

Sounds like a neutral act to me. The Society outright orders you to do worse things sometimes.

[Cyrus Lanthier]

Hmm... I would think that Emily's actions are neutral, very appropriate for a neutral character, especially if she knows/suspects that "Richard" was ultimately behind the death of her loved one.

If it's "the only way" to stop the spread of illicit drugs that are killing people, one might consider it a good act, depending on character motivation.

If Emily now goes on a campaign to clean up the streets, becoming a vigilante, she might even end up CG... But if she goes too far and starts killing dealers even when she could have brought them to justice, she would probably slide toward evil, as hatred consumes her (good implies respect for life, after all).

[Ms. Pleiades]

Hmm... Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral. Vigilanteism is an archetypical backdrop for a Chaotic Good alignment.

The whole situation however is all very much reminding me of Glenda the 'Good' Witch in terms of how clever it is.

[deusvult]

Wylliam Harrison wrote:

Hypothetical here:

A caster, due to faction's goals/morals or personal background, casts an eventually lethal spell like a disease on a specific evil NPC one meets at moment X.

Would this be considered an evil act? Since you're potentially doing society a favor by removing this NPC.

The means used by a PFS character to kill someone is usually moot (barring character class code influences, of course). The context is what matters for alignment considerations.

So if a PC kills an NPC via ragelancepounce or contagion should be moot, so long as it was ok to kill the NPC at all in the first place.

This is all of course ignoring that killing an NPC via a long, slow acting process like disease, curse, or poison is likely to be moot. NPC is likely to suffer a lethal dose of sword, fireball, or something else from the rest of the party once the initiative die has been cast.

[Tamec]

In PFS, casting an evil spell without evil intent to cause harm or death is not an evil act. Per the FAQ. By the same FAQ casting an evil spell with evil intent to cause harm or death is evil.

Pretty much in combat, well all's fair in love and war. Casting Death Knell is no different then a coup de grace to make sure the bad guy stays dead. Some consider both an evil act but they are not...in PFS. Casting Blindness or Deafness is a jerk move but not evil. Even though if you thing about it you are permanently removing someone's sight or hearing.

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Arachnofiend wrote:

For the same reason you can shoot an enemy soldier but gassing him is a war crime.

Poison gas in the real world has a nasty tendency to kill random people as the wind changes or kill future people when it gets into the soil and/or water. So called "indiscriminate weapons" (i.e. ones which kill non-combatants who you didn't intend to kill) are generally banned.

Chemical weapons behave differently than conventional weapons in some important ways and those differences help justify the taboo. Some of it is just irrational taboo, but not all of it.

A magical curse that only targets one person and isn't contagious doesn't strike me as any better or worse than stabbing people.

[Torchlyte]

Ring_of_Gyges wrote:

A magical curse that only targets one person and isn't contagious doesn't strike me as any better or worse than stabbing people.

You don't think torturing somebody to death is worse than killing them cleanly? That is, assuming this is a curse that does something nasty and gradual like make them starve to death.

[Auriea]

Torchlyte wrote:

Ring_of_Gyges wrote:

A magical curse that only targets one person and isn't contagious doesn't strike me as any better or worse than stabbing people.

You don't think torturing somebody to death is worse than killing them cleanly? That is, assuming this is a curse that does something nasty and gradual like make them starve to death.

:rubs hand on Torchlyte's face:

Thinner

[Wylliam Harrison]

Torchlyte wrote:

That is, assuming this is a curse that does something nasty and gradual like make them starve to death.

Feast of Ashes, however that deals only non-lethal dmg according to description.