The Lawful Good Dilemma ... again


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Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Finneous Frye wrote:

Couple of things worth mentioning here ...

William H Watson wrote:
Your code, as represented by you, would go directly against a couple of Pathfinder's Paladin codes in many situations.
I am not a paladin. I am a monk as clearly stated more than once.

My point is that you made a complaint about the paladin. Without knowing more about said paladin's code, YOUR character's actions could be considered the immoral, possibly evil, actions, based on his code. Some paladin codes (in the world of Golarion) do not allow for mercy to be shown towards those who are evil.

For myself, I dislike many the flavors that are considered "paladins" nowadays, but as long as that's what the creators of that setting says is right and just, that is what it is, in that setting.


From a GMing perspective, I think this is a good reminder to not make it so easy to "sneak up on sleeping enemies" because this raises all sorts of alignment arguments and it's almost completely unnecessary. After all, if the PCs set sentries (magical or mundane) when they camp, why don't the bad guys? Unlike in a video game where "the ability to remain stealthy" is a deliberate design decision, you can have a person killed make enough noise to wake other people up, who can then proceed to either gird themselves for combat or just surrender to save their own skins. Entire groups of baddies who don't set sentries and can to a person sleep through rampant murder are entirely unnecessary and probably should not be in your game.

Any group of folks above animal intelligence should have figured out that "attacking people when they're unable to defend themselves" is a tactical advantage and should therefore have sussed out that it's not a thing they want to have happen to them, and have taken countermeasures. If the players want to come up with an exceptionally clever way to ambush the baddies, go ahead and reward their cleverness, but if "completely infiltrating the baddie camp in order to dispatch all of them in one fell swoop" is on the table, it figures that it would be easy enough to just sneak past them (or steal all of their stuff while they're sleeping, and then sneak past them.) After all, the bandits are much less fearsome when they have no weapons, horses, armor, or pants.

I figure a lot of this comes up because players want to avoid danger (by sneaking up on people unawares) and GMs want to avoid tedium. But I think "you can sneak up on the bandits and kill them all with a couple of rolls" is the bad kind of lazy and should be avoided.

After all, if the ambushed baddies immediately surrender, then that makes the alignment questions much, much starker.


Very good post for highlighting just how invested people are in their playstyles. You have a group that appears to be seeking relief from having to deal with consequences, you seem to be seeking an outlet to be the good guy, without having to deal with a real life possibility of death or injury, or worse, having that person you are trying to help ending up living on your couch. Some posters want to be the biggest bad...... around without that annoying arrest record, or driveby retribution. Not good not bad.

I don't think you are going to get traction with your group dynamics. You would probably have a better chance playing a halfling tank in Sundakar's game. Your character challenges assumptions that they don't want challenged. Your character would fit in most of my games.


Daw wrote:
You would probably have a better chance playing a halfling tank in Sundakan's game.

'Sa a pretty good chance, considering I let anybody play anything they want in my games.

Of course nobody DOES it, but the option's open. Since I allow DP material a Warlord would do pretty well as a Halfling anyway.


MeanMutton wrote:
I have the slightest feeling Torag and Saranrae are regarded as more credible sources... :p

I am a much more credible source than either Torag or Saranrae! I am a real person living in the real world who has made real decisions of good and evil and felt the real consequences of such decisions of others. Torag and Sarenrae are made up deities who are worshipped by made up people who know nothing of good, evil, or decisions.

That being said, the Core Rulebook supports the paladin doctrines of Torag and Saranrae.

Core Rulebook, Additional Rules, Alignment wrote:
Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.

The emphasis is on "innocent life," not on life in general. In at least one case, we have it from the OP that the cultists were "evil cultists."

But on the other hand, how did the party know the cultists were evil? Did the party spend time seeing each individual do evil things: be cruel to an animal, give a waiter a lousy tip? It's important to know each one as an individual. Some of them might be good at heart, but not strong enough to stop or escape from the group. Some of them might have needed the party to rescue them. Did the party cast Know Alignment on each of the cultists? Did the GM say they were evil? Can you take that GM's word for things like that? Some GM's mislead players intentionally to trick PCs into corruption and give their players morally difficult decisions.

Core Rulebook, Additional Rules, Alignment wrote:
Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

Killing the OP's subdued prisoners to spite another player does not sound like "respect for life," but that action was taken by the party Rogue, not the Paladin. The Rogue might not even be Good. As for killing those "sleeping enemies," did they do that with disrespect? Arguably, you are showing more respect for them by making the most out of your advantage.

Not knowing more specifics, I'd have to say killing those helpless enemies might not have been completely inappropriate even for the party Paladin. But refraining from doing so really does not sound inappropriate for the Lawful Good Monk, either.

Personally, I don't believe in monolithic evil, and I don't like it as a literary or fantasy conceit.

Nicos wrote:
To slaughter evil cultist is like the best way to deal with evil cultists.

Some people do. Personally, I think that sounds like persecuting people for their religious beliefs, which is Evil in My Core Rulebook. It probably is in most of ours, Nicos included. In the real world, that is.

But playing in a fantasy world with the wholesale slaughter of monolithic evil people of evil because they are evil can be cathartic and make us better people in real life. Take a man who is full of rage and the need to hit other people because they are there, and put him in a boxing ring, and you may not need to put him in a prison at all.

Finneous Frye wrote:
Yeah by "educating" I meant only that I explained clearly to them what I was willing and/or not willing to do. I didn't mean the preachy "you should be like me because my way is superior" kind of educating.

So, "educate" was just a poor choice of words on your post then. You recognize to us that your fellows are experienced players who know right from wrong, and are making informed decisions from an experienced and nuanced perspective. Make sure you communicate that respect to them.

Finneous Frye wrote:
I am not alone on my side of the quandry. Two others feel the same way I do.

It sounds like you are gaining traction for people respecting your point of view. Good!

Finneous Frye wrote:
This particular group has gamed together for years and some of us significantly longer than that.

For how long has this conflict been going on? Have your fellow players been berating you and "sucking the fun" out of your gaming for years? Is this recent? Have you undergone some kind of personal change and have finished going through your monolithic evil phase, creating this conflict with your fellows, or did the change happen in one the other party members, the Paladin, for instance? Is this the first time your party has ever played Good characters, and you as a group are sorting out how to do it?

Or is something else completely going on? There was one time, I was growing increasingly furious with a player whom I felt was messing things up with the party. A few days later, I found out that the GM had secretly informed him that his character had been assassinated and replaced by a Doppleganger, and indeed he WAS messing things up for the party, mostly because he was ordered to do so by the GM. You never know.


This tends to come back to an out of game issue more than an in-game one.

So this comes out as a player and 'the group of players' issue and not so much a character issue. It can be a combo of things but largely is the interaction of 1)how a GM runs alignment and associated behavior at his table 2)how the rest of the players mesh.

You can't really do much about it in a pickup game with non-regulars, but if its regulars, and someone is intentionally making/playing a char knowing it would not mix well with the group, that's not really a fault of the 'game mechanics'.

Now, every player everywhere is going to want to play their character as they want to play their character, but the societal/community issue of playing a game is the overall mesh. A LG stick in the mud can be just as disruptive to a group as the guy that plays chaotic-douchebag-backstabber.

Now I don't know all the details, did the GM explain themselves well about what their game was going to be like and how they handle alignment/etc? some do, some don't some you know because of long gaming experience with them. Overall tho, I'd say its more likely the outlier will get kicked if they don't conform. And that as a whole, its 'more appropriate' to have the majority rule, especially if its got GM support, than to let 1 player dictate how the game will be experienced by everyone else.

Its going to be about choices. Do you want to continue to have conflict with players and put your individuality ahead of the enjoyment of the group? Are you able to bend and modify your concept a bit so you can have fun like everyone else? Sticking to your principles is fine, and if there are no other gaming opportunities around you may feel that a 'bad game experience' is better than 'no gaming opportunities' but isn't the whole point of gaming with a group of (presumably friends) people to have an enjoyable experience?

Scarab Sages

Finneous Frye wrote:

Some advice if you please. I'm in a campaign and playing a LG monk. My monk would have a code of honour to stand by and this has on a number of occasions been at odds with the rest of the party. I believe we are at a cross roads given recent events. I don't think I am being lawful stupid. I believe my compromises were reasonable. And most importantly I don't want to derail the campaign over this.

Incident 1) the party snuck up on a bunch of sleeping enemies and killed them in their sleep ... including the paladin. I felt this was dishonourable so I didn't take part in it and instead ended up fighting the bbeg who was not sleeping and rushed into the room at the sound of battle. I thought this was a fair compromise and didn't hamper the party's chance at success. The party thought otherwise because I gave up my surprise round attack. I was soundly berated after the fight because of it. Afterwards we discussed my code and slaying people in their sleep ... even though they were evil ... wasn't something I was prepared to do. I kind of figured it was water under the bridge.

Incident 2) A few sessions later we found ourselves rushing into a room full of evil cultists. We had surprise on them. This in and of itself my monk figured was fine. They weren't sleeping; just surprised. I quickly discovered that the cultists were incapable of defending themselves and the fight was going to be a slaughter. They had no weapons and no armour and no training. Essentially they were peasants. Rather than slay the weak, I chose to subdue them with non-lethal damage. The rest of the party simply chopped their cultists to bits. This in and of itself was problematic but I felt again that I had compromised well. But what happened next is where the real problem is. Just to spite the monk, our party rogue snuck in and killed those unconscious cultists when I rushed to the other side of the room to deal with some other creatures who joined the fight.

So the question is, how should I deal with this?

Talk to the GM about how they intended these encounters to resolve. Some GMs don't see evil as been able to qualify as helpless. If they do consider the party's actions to be correct, then you need to adjust your LG concept to fit with how the GM views that alignment.


To me, most of this boils down to the reasons the PCs are attacking these groups in the first place, and the authority they have to deal with the problem.

If you've got sufficient evidence that these people are committing crimes and are given sufficient authority to deal with criminals, then many tactics like this can be justified.

In many fantasy settings, things like banditry and belonging to an evil cult bring the status of outlaw - meaning anyone can kill them without legal repercussion. In other words, just being a member of an 'organized crime syndicate' or worshiping an evil god is an automatic death sentence. Even more, it can be the responsibility of upstanding citizens to oppose - even kill - outlaws where reasonably possible.

This covers the 'lawful' part of the problem - maybe even the honorable part of it. Many codes of honor state that honor is shown to the honorable, and the dishonorable warrant no respect.

As to the 'good' part, good tends to minimize harm and suffering where possible. If you have no problem killing someone on their feet, there's not a ton of difference killing them in their sleep. This depends if the party is willing/able to take prisoners, but it also depends on what the eventual fate of the prisoners will be. Again, in the case of outlaws, dragging them off to the local magistrate has the exact same end point - helpless people (tied up) get executed, only this time it's by the magistrate (and the mob), probably after several days of abuse (being tied up and force marched to the magistrate, rotting in a cell, etcetera).

If the setting supports prison sentencing and/or forced labor camps or lesser penalties than death for outlawry, then capture becomes a more desirable outcome for a good character. At the same time, though, a camp full of sleeping enemies is one mistake away from being an armed mob, so entering and attacking a sleeping camp isn't a tactic without risk of failure. The point being that you CAN capture one sleeping enemy. When you've got multiple enemies, quietly capturing them without alerting the entire camp is nearly impossible (killing them quietly is pretty darn hard too) without the right kind of magical assistance (silence spells or sleep spells).

As you level up, the definition of helpless becomes foggy. You could attack a bandit camp in broad daylight and simply cloudkill the entire camp. For most bandits, it's an automatic kill, no save, no chance to fight back - even if you gave them the chance, the party might be able to fly, have magic protection that makes them basically invulnerable, and so on. Them being upright and armed or asleep make little to no difference, and in the case of outlaws, they know surrender = death from the local justice.

As to the less-than-combat worthy evil cultists...they're still evil cultists, which pretty much gives good players a free pass. "Evil Cultist" generally means part of a cult actively doing evil, so I don't see the problem with good players mowing down commoners who were sacrificing babies to dark gods as a religious practice.

It's on the group to decide if they want to deal with moral quandaries on a regular basis. If the group wants to play it as "evil deserves only extermination" and the GM makes it perfectly clear who the bad guys are, you're better off rolling with it.


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It looks like the in-character drama is contributing to out of characters tension between the group. This has to be resolved out of character.

I have a game where I'm playing the CG barbarian in a group with a couple of paladins who like doing non-lethal damage and asking foes to yield. It's causing in-game friction, but we're checking in to make sure everybody's ok with it in the real world.

When people aren't having fun, the people need to figure out what changes need to be made so people are having fun.


An update of sorts.

The paladin and his lack of adherence to his own personal code has been ongoing. The DM has warned him about this a number of times and his paladin powers are now slowly starting to fade. This predates my own particular frustrations (minor as they may have been) on the whole personal code issue.

The rogue continues to role play being ... well ... a bit of a jerk. Amusingly enough the guy playing the rogue is nothing like that in real life.

The wizard, though supportive of my original code, continues to merely make an uncomfortable face every time something happens. That is his most significant form of protest thus far.

And most importantly, my monk has found a sentient spear and has attuned to it (this campaign is 5e) and the monk is slowly being corrupted and drawn into chaos (chaotic good) and could ultimately been drawn to chaotic evil should I allow that to happen. The DM assures me that this was placed in the adventure well ahead of the party harmony chaos and is not a plot hammer (or party harmony hammer as the case may be) planted in the game to smooth things out. It certainly seemed that way as my monk fought with a spear and it was a sentient spear we did find lol. In the last session my monk even suggested we waterboard an evil extortionist we'd captured to get information regarding his hideout and gang.

PS to the guy who said the monk not attacking the bbeg during the surprise round was a bit 'daft' ... the bbeg was an add to the fight but that is a bit of a moot point now I suppose.

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