How ruthless can you be without being paladin bait.

[Richter Harding]

Making a pirate reanimated medium who gained this class after being backstabbed by his captain. An experience like this obviously has some impact on personality and mannerisms.

For example :
1 defeat raving cultist, party wants to interrogate but he knows nothing, pirate slices his head off atfer failed interrogation.

2 Defeat BBEG minion, pc's try to intimidate or convince him to talk and fail, minion backtalks and threatens the pc's in return, pirate tries to intimidate and excecutes him without a word if it fails or succeeds.

How ruthless can you be before tables and the paladins start tugging at your morality leash?

[Sangerine]

As ruthless as you damn well please so long as the paladin doesn't directly witness it, you're below 11 HD and you wear the fashionable, yet comfortable angelic armor.

Call the paladins.
You don't ping as evil.

[Thaago]

You are basically asking how evil you can be without anyone calling you on it. If you don't want to have the role playing/morality discussions of playing a ruthless neutral character, then don't play one without talking to your table out of game first. In some groups its great fun to be absolute bastards, but in my experience only when everyone is on board. Its also great fun to have tension between characters, but again that sort of thing should get hashed out first so people aren't just pissed at you.

For Paladins:
Depends entirely on the code of the Paladin. Most codes frown on the execution without a trial of prisoners, but not all. Cultists, bandits, and other 'outlaws' carry automatic death sentences for some codes. For others, they want to try and redeem and will view your killing poorly.

As long as you stay away from doing harm to innocents then you lie in the grey neutral zone and Paladins at least won't go all smite evil on you.

For groups:
Depends on how lawful good they are and how stupid you are being. Execution without trial is, with some exceptions as I noted above, not a lawful or good act. If by killing prisoners too early you are denying the group intel or reducing bounties or earning the wrath of powerful figures, then you are probably going to piss people off as well. I've also DM'd a group of 'bastards' whose policy it was to kill prisoners so that they couldn't be betrayed. Again, talk briefly out of game.

[Thaago]

Sangerine wrote:

As ruthless as you damn well please so long as the paladin doesn't directly witness it, you're below 11 HD and you wear the fashionable, yet comfortable angelic armor.

Call the paladins.
You don't ping as evil.

Errrr, well... just because you don't ping evil doesn't mean Paladins won't try to talk/redeem/arrest/smite you if they have the evidence. If you completely cover your tracks then yes, they won't know, but it doesn't sound like thats the case here.

That said, Paladins tend to have the investigative abilities of a wet paper bag.

[My Self]

You need to know your GM.

Or...

Buy a Hat of Disguise and pretend to be a different person every time you make a kill. Be as ruthless as you like, just make sure to cast Undetectable Alignment every so often.

[KenderKin]

I hate to interrupt so abruptly, but some people play paladin's in the more judge, jury, executioner (think Judge Dredd) model and they may be just as ruthless, though they might want to have a trial before sending them off the boat and into the shark infested waters.

A paladin in a pirate game possibly even more so than others. The open sea you are the law!

[Claxon]

Chances are if people outside your "town" recognize you for being an evil bastard, somewhere a paladin may hear about it and come to investigate / laythesmackdownonyourcandyass.

But there's no guarantee. Of course, it could be any servant of good or law who may hear about what you're doing and want to investigate.

Basically if people know you did it, you're probably going to have problems with someone at some point.

[My Self]

KenderKin wrote:

A paladin in a pirate game possibly even more so than others. The open sea you are the law!

I think you can just do that in general. Being "Good" does not mean being merciful to those who are undeserving of mercy. Sarenrae's paladins/clerics will not hesitate to kill all undead, even if they are sympathetic and might possibly be redeemable. Being lawful does not mean you need to be nice, either.

[Claxon]

Good Is Not Nice
Good Is Not Soft

[Richter Harding]

Might have been handy to say this in advance, but by ruthless I mean vengeful but not sadistic or plain murdergypsy pirate-monkey, just willing to make the heads roll of those who cross him. He won't go after innocents or townsfolk and shake them down or cut their heads off.
But if the paladin is adamant about putting the criminal on trial you can be damm sure he will be outside the court sharpening his cutlass.

More a Calistrian policy then chaotic evilness; whoever wrongs me shall pay, if they offer no tribute then they will pay with their blood.

[Heretek]

Still really depends on the Paladin's deity. If they are Ragathiel then there is certainly no issue. Shelyn? Ehhh... Iomedae? Maybe?

[Qaianna]

Paladins aren't the only ones to worry about when you're a badass antihero (or wannabe of one). Tread carefully and mind the party as a whole. Had a modern spy campaign turn a little when one of the party (the leader of the group too!) use 'enhanced interrogation'. There's no alignment in that one, but it was still a bunch of fairly decent folks. (The player departed for other reasons.)

(And what's the point of the pirate's intimidate in scenario 2 there when you're going to kill the minion anyway?)

[Phoenix M]

Paladins can by ruthless as well, keep that in mind.

Paladin to raging mob: "You rebels will all lay you're arms down and surrender to the lawful authority."
Raging Mob: "DIE!!!"
Paladin: "I warned you."
(actual session from 2ED, it didn't go well for the mob)

[DM_Blake]

Go ahead. Be a nasty, awful, ruthless, evil jerk.

Retribution is inevitable. (And if that guy cannot do it, he has bigger friends)

[Carla the Profane]

I think you posed the wrong question. The real question should be: "How ruthless can you be without becoming GM bait?". This is especially true in PFS, where there's a thin line between 'commiting evil acts' and 'vengeful'. Tread carefully.

[Richter Harding]

Qaianna wrote:

Paladins aren't the only ones to worry about when you're a badass antihero (or wannabe of one). Tread carefully and mind the party as a whole. Had a modern spy campaign turn a little when one of the party (the leader of the group too!) use 'enhanced interrogation'. There's no alignment in that one, but it was still a bunch of fairly decent folks. (The player departed for other reasons.)

(And what's the point of the pirate's intimidate in scenario 2 there when you're going to kill the minion anyway?)

If he talks, death will be swift, the minion would obviously not grant the same right to the party if he was the victor.

If he insists on being stubborn in the face of defeat, why put him out of his misery quick?