Justified Piracy

[Keedo]

I am running a Skulls and Shackles Campaign. At first, it was not a problem, but now I am running into an alignment issue.

The captain of my PCs ship is chaotic good cleric. At the point in the campaign, they need to start raiding ships in order to raise the funds to take out a much larger task by outfitting their ship or paying some debts.

He worships Cayden Cailean. I am trying to find some way he could justify his piracy and stay in alignment without having to shift alignment and possibly lose his ability as a cleric.

I could really use the help otherwise their campaign is hindered greatly.

[BigNorseWolf]

Only raid ships from cheliax. Whether they're directly slaving or not, anything that hurts that country at all is a blow for FREEEEDOOOOM!

[Crayon]

With a Chaotic alignment you can generally use pretty much any self-serving justification you like. it's not like it has to have any internal consistency or make sense to anyone besides the character and, perhaps, Cayden

[Yuri Sarreth]

I think you may be overthinking this.. CG follow the "For the greater good, the end justifies the means" mantra. As long as they the cleric knows that the larger task mentioned would be more evil and he needs to become stronger to battle said evil then stealing to equip or pay his debts to free up his attention for that evil would be no problem..

[Andy Brown]

and no taking slaves. I've got the same issue, but have so far dealt with it as described above.

[Streamwalker]

Simply shifting his alignment from CG to CN won't make him lose his powers, since he would still be within one step from Cayden Cailean's alignment.

[Lintecarka]

The good character in my party was very interested in stopping ships from and to bloodcove, a known slaver city. Freeing slaves became a major motivation for the first 5 books and it was pretty easy to change some bits of the story to keep it relevant.

[tchrman35]

Not played S&S, but would it be unreasonable for them to look for actual work? There must be trade routes that could be particularly lucrative. A knowledge (local) or profession (merchant) check could give them the information, or a high enough gather info roll could do it too. Use that session or two (or longer if it's going well) to explore the back story of one or more characters.

Sure piracy is easier. But easy and right are not always the same.

If they got bored before they got what they needed, have them attacked by pirates they can reasonably defeat, then provide them with a Payday when they subdue and/or kill the raiders.

[Cevah]

Become a privateer, not a pirate. The letter of marque from the hurricane king means he can attack the king's enemies (the chellish) in good conscience.

There is also a flipped version of the AP for goodish characters you can use.

/cevah

[James Risner]

Watch season 4 of black sails. It does an excellent job of justification.