Hello. This is my first post. Please don't kill me. This may be more of a general discussion, but we are playing Kingmaker and we're not agreeing with how to deal with bandits in book 1 when it comes to character alignment. Let me explain.
The charter states "... The carrier of this charter should also strive against banditry and other unlawful behavior to be encountered. The punishment for unrepentant banditry remains, as always, execution by sword or rope."
Some people in the party think if a bandit is captured alive, then it's ok to kill them because it's in the charter. Is it? Is this a good or evil act? Would LG, NG, CG or even TN characters kill unarmed and tied up bandits because it's in the charter and therefore they're just following the "law"? Are good aligned characters supposed to go into the forest and slaughter every bandit they see even if they surrender in KM? Can Paladins kill bandit prisoners since they would be following the law of the charter?
If killing bandit prisoners is an evil act (which I believe it to be), how are good characters supposed to follow the charter if they don't kill all the bandits in combat? Send them back to Oleg's for prisoner transport back to a major city? Take all their weapons and armor and let them go? If you played in a good party, how did you deal with bandit prisoners?
Thanks for your help on this.
Why not give the bandits a trial if captured? Give them a chance to say their case and perhaps even repent to work with the kingdom. It could be a fun thing to roleplay if done right and helps to solve the alignment issues. Whether the trial is fair or not is up to the PCs, but it could be fun nonetheless. If found guilty either hang them or send them as prisoners to a major city (to be hanged).
Harark is pretty much as right as possible, in our KM game, I ended up playing a LG (not lawful stupid or lawful zealot) human female marshal(the 3.5 class converted)/psychic warrior and due to her amazing Cha, and very good Wis and Int, ended up as Queen. Trial was my go to move, and worked out quite well for us, that said, only bout 1/3 of the bandits ever lived to be tried in a court of law. Those that repented were integrated into the kingdom, but watched for the first few months of their time, and were sentenced to work to repair what they had destroyed, and aiding those that they had stolen from or harmed.
My players (although not particularly good to begin with) seized on the "unrepentant" part of the charter. Bandits that agreed to reform their ways were spared... well, sometimes. One of the bandits captured in the first attack on Oleg's eventually turned into a henchman for the party - until he got eaten by a shambling mound. The group eventually planned to send captive bandits to the kobolds, to work off their debt to society in the mine, although they ran out of bandits before that came to pass.
So I think really merciful characters might offer the bandits the chance to reform themselves, but I don't consider it absolutely necessary.
Thanks for the feedback so far! We don't have a Kingdom yet and are only 3 games in so it's just a party adventuring and exploring hexes. Our only "base" is Oleg's so we can't have a trial yet. What's been happening is after a little battle, we often have a prisoner we try to question and get info from, so what should we do to him after if we're supposedly good characters?
Harark and another friend of mine did bring up a good point that a paladin could act as judge and executioner. I guess I didn't really see it that way.... The way I see it is if Batman, Hercules from the TV show, Superman, and Robin hood were adventuring, they wouldn't kill bandit captives, but it's different in a lawless fantasy land with no judge or jail nearby --and we're not superheroes.
Thanks again.
My players also latched on to the "unrepentant" part of the charter. They accepted surrender when it was offered, and even revived some who were knocked to negative hit points in battle. They disarmed the captured bandits and then spoke with them to find out about their lives, and also asked what the already-judged-repentant bandits felt about the newly captured ones. Some bandits they deemed to be unrepentant (Kressel, for one, and some of the more unsavoury characters from the fort) and executed or exiled, but most were given a second chance, although it was made clear that justice would be swift if they broke the law again. That was a frequent line: "We're big believers in second chances... but not third chances."
One PC, Hamysil, is a LN Abadar-worshipping Bard and a bastard son of nobility, and he had his eye on leadership from the start of the first module. He offered the ex-bandits membership into the "Greenbelt Rangers", paying them a wage of 1 gp a day out of his own pocket. He got them to patrol, help repair the Trading Post (which made Kesten Garess unhappy when the ex-bandits started outnumbering him and his men) and then later repair Nettle's Crossing.
The party has only been betrayed by the ex-bandits once so far (one of them took off to report everything he had learned to the Stag Lord, but they managed to hunt him down before he got back to the fort). Basically, the deal Hamysil and the others offered them was pretty enticing, so they haven't had much incentive to backslide. We'll see how things pan out if they run into temptations to do the wrong thing...
Not all of the ex-bandits joined the Greenbelt Rangers; when Fat Norry confided to Hamysil of his ambition to run his own tavern, Hamysil actually loaned him 1,000 gp to build it (this was still before we'd got to the Kingdom-building part of the campaign). "Fat Norry's Food House" has now become a bit of a fixture in the barony. Hamysil introduced Fat Norry to the idea of a chain of taverns (a bit anachronistic, but funny), so there's a Fat Norry's Food House in both towns of the Barony so far.
One PC, Hamysil, is a LN Abadar-worshipping Bard and a bastard son of nobility, and he had his eye on leadership from the start of the first module. He offered the ex-bandits membership into the "Greenbelt Rangers", paying them a wage of 1 gp a day out of his own pocket. He got them to patrol, help repair the Trading Post (which made Kesten Garess unhappy when the ex-bandits started outnumbering him and his men) and then later repair Nettle's Crossing.
The party has only been betrayed by the ex-bandits once so far (one of them took off to report everything he had learned to the Stag Lord, but they managed to hunt him down before he got back to the fort). Basically, the deal Hamysil and the others offered them was pretty enticing, so they haven't had much incentive to backslide. We'll see how things pan out if they run into temptations to do the wrong thing...
Not all of the ex-bandits joined the Greenbelt Rangers; when Fat Norry confided to Hamysil of his ambition to run his own tavern, Hamysil actually loaned him 1,000 gp to build it (this was still before we'd got to the Kingdom-building part of the campaign). "Fat Norry's Food House" has now become a bit of a fixture in the barony. Hamysil introduced Fat Norry to the idea of a chain of taverns (a bit anachronistic, but...
See, That is exactly why I love this AP. You never see this kind of stuff coming but can have an awesome impact down the road. Great RP action there.