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Cut and dry yes.
They were bound and helpless, no longer a threat, and your group clearly had the means and ability to transport them somewhere where something akin to justice could be done. Killing in overt self-defense is fine and I'd even give grace for not bothering to stabilize and heal them after the fight so that nature takes its course.
"They eat people, and besides, they started it" is not a case for justifiable homicide once the danger has cleared.
My mother taught me that.
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First: It was not Lawful. Taking justice into your own hands like that never is. Once you carve off the parts that come from not being Lawful, what's left is simply the act of killing someone who had done horrible things, and would wish to do them again in the future, but who could be prevented from doing them indefinitely with moderate effort. Given that it was apparently quick and clean, I personally don't count that as evil. The only moral difference between the party doing it in the woods and a judge and executioner doing it in the courtroom is the lawfulness. Of course, others might well disagree... based on any number of moral principles that they happen to hold.
Second: Alignment arguments are massive ugly things, because different people have very different ideas about what is and what is not proper behavior, and in the real world it's pretty clear that there isn't a provably objectively correct answer to that stuff. The Alignment system, though, brings in the idea that there is a provable objective good and evil to appeal to, and that it can be discerned via magic (among other things). The instinctive reaction of humanity is to immediately map their own moral intuitions to "good"... and then suddenly they have a way to argue about this stuff that feels like it's meaningful.
Third: PF2, thankfully, is in the process of carving out ... a lot of this alignment stuff. How much of it they're carving out is still unclear, but they're at least carving out a decent bit. So hopefully we can have fewer alignment debates in the future.
Suggestion: leave alignment out of it. It's a badly-formed crutch that's full of splinters. It's more damage than it's worth. If your'e going to have that argument, it should be the more human argument of how acceptable it was, why it was either acceptable or not acceptable, and what the party's going to do about it in the future. Taking away the false trappings of Objective Truth lets us fall back to the rather softer approach to discussing such things that we've developed over the past few generations.
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What are your thoughts?
I think this is something that needs to be handled by the characters.
Or maybe by the players at your table specifically if the tone and theme is making someone uncomfortable.
I'm not sure why my opinion on this specific character and plot event is relevant.
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The details really matter here.
"basically bandits and cannibals" is not nearly specific enough.
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If it became clear that the captives would go on to kill other people, then it's hard to argue that killing them to prevent it would be an evil thing to do. As the reason for execution is about the future, the "helpless" angle is irrelevant.
In fact, that scenario is the example in which some argue it's immoral and cowardly in the "don't want to get your hands dirty" kind of way to let the bandits live.
If you had the chance to kill them, and instead let the bandits go/they escape later, some people would blame the adventurers for the future harm.
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I think Sanityfaerie did a great job in separating the idea of lawfulness out of the equation.
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Hot take: killing prisoners (no matter what they've done or plan to do) is not a good thing.
I'm not talking about an alignment argument here, I'm talking ethically. There's a reason capital punishment is largely on its way out despite the best efforts of some. The way people treat those they have power over says a lot more about their morals than any number of proposed trolley problems.
The reasoning of Trip.H and sanityfaerie leads to some very, very dark places.
It's certainly not good, rather f&+!ed up, but I can imagine quite a few "neutral" characters doing it without feeling like a stretch of the alignment/concept. Something like a "end justify the mean" character on a war against all evil, believing that as long as their evil is proven, death is justified. Or a pragmatist who consider that their life were already forfeit the moment they attacked, and that carrying them all the ways to the authorities is simply impossible/too difficult in these circumstances. Or the one who wholly believe that it'll be impossible to keep the prisonner in line and that they still pose an active danger.
For a supposedly good character tho, this is a dark, dark thing to do, and I would see it as a "fall from grace", or an illustration on how far the character have fallen, that murder in cold blood now seems natural. Either the character would instantly regret it and have trouble coping with themselves, or I wouldn't consider them "good" anymore.
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What is the punishment in your land for such people? Do you have the power to mete out such punishment absent a trial?
I've had plenty of characters execute criminals in the wild if they are sure they are criminals.
Fantasy worlds are kind of the wild west or old world justice. So it depends on the world. If you are out in the wild, have captured some criminals engaged in banditry and cannibalism, and your only option is to let them go or execute them, then execute them.
If you can bring them back to the authorities and there is a law of the land, then probably best to do that.
You have to measure the circumstances and the threat to others before executing criminals including the tech level of your world and its capacity for handling criminals of especially violent and cruel crimes.
You certainly don't want to let cannibals and bandits go to murder and terrorize innocents if you have the opportunity to halt that danger to others. You also don't want to encourage a lawless society where execution is the snap judgment for dealing with anyone accused of such crimes.
So as a DM I would measure the circumstances and the world to determine how it would align with the characters and world.
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Was this a fun situation to role play out? Or did it lead to bad feelings? As a GM you need to pay attention to whether your players are enjoying having these kinds of discussions, or are using them to force each other to accept each other’s beliefs about right and wrong. It doesn’t really matter if the internet thinks thespecific scenario is objectively evil or not. It matters if this kind of situation is what everyone signed up for when they played the game, and if not there are multiple ways to avoid it in the future, as a GM and as a table. None of those ways are coming back to the next session saying “people on the internet say…”
We interrogated them and discovered that they were basically bandits and cannibals.
Why are they bandits and cannibals?
Are they acting within the norms of the culture and society in which they were raised?
Are they part of a larger society that has failed them to the point that banditry and cannibalism are appropriate means of survival?
If they had reasonable alternatives to banditry and cannibalism provided to them, would the have accepted those alternatives?
Did the player character have the authority in setting to perform justice in the field?
Are citizens of the society where the captives were taken legally empowered to perform field justice?
These are only a few possible questions.
But more importantly, there may need to be a discussion at the table regarding expectations and limitations about the kind of issues players are comfortable with.
I hope your table can find agreeable resolution.
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The party should have turned the killer PC to the authorities too.
None of my PCs would keep on adventuring with someone who believes they have the right to decide alone of things that can have a grave impact on the whole party. Especially those ready to kill on a whim.
Because what will happen next time we go to sleep if they decide that my PC is the one who needs killing ?
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Quite honestly, there's really not much of a difference between killing them and taking them to the authorities if they are just going to execute them at the party's word; at that point you're just passing the buck to keep your hands clean
There's not really an easy answer; but personally, I think a "good" character would probably disarm them and send them off or take them somewhere they can be rehabilitated. Killing prisoners is never "good"; no matter if it's performed as lawful punishment or not
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Quite honestly, there's really not much of a difference between killing them and taking them to the authorities if they are just going to execute them at the party's word; at that point you're just passing the buck to keep your hands clean
There's not really an easy answer; but personally, I think a "good" character would probably disarm them and send them off or take them somewhere they can be rehabilitated. Killing prisoners is never "good"; no matter if it's performed as lawful punishment or not
It's OK. Good people can do non-Good acts too.
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Of course it wasn't evil. Evil doesn't exist anymore.
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;P
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I cannot repeat enough, the “objective goodness” of the decision/action is only a relevant conversation for the players at the table. And if it is not a conversation that everyone at the table wants to participate in, then the answer to the question of whether the action was good or evil on an alignment chart is irrelevant, because the scenario itself was not good for the game.
Deciding that the enemy could be attacked regularly and then stabilized was already an example of GM fiat in the scenario. Normally players have to make active choices to cause nonlethal damage, ones that usually have a cost or draw back. Part of the reason this is the default of the game is because it should be clear to players in the encounter whether the objective is to take enemies dead or alive, and the ethicality of that should really be resolved before the encounter is over. 2ndly, PF2 remastered has edicts and anathema now centered as a game mechanic to help clarify this situation in play for players. If one player has an anathema against killing unarmed or helpless foes, the party should know it and should understand that forcing that situation is playing antagonistically to that player.
Lastly, some tables will have fun with characters acting upon different sets of morals and beliefs and others won’t. Trying to decide outside of your group whether the one player played their character wrong is not really going to help your game, but recognizing that there is a communication issue that may or may not be disruptive to everyone’s enjoyment is worth figuring out and talking about.
The answer to that question, like all ethical questions, will vary depending on what system of ethics you apply to it.
I think any discussion about wild west style justice is moot since they were able to take 3/4 of the bandits in without any notable difficulties.
Wild west justice was often dictated by the harsh realities of the environment. It would be a very different prospect if you are a 200 mile walk to civilization and you barely have enough supplies for 4 people. And the captives seem dangerous enough to slip out and cut your throats in the night.
But that is not what we're dealing with. They even came with their own mule to carry them. You could hog tie them and wrap them up like mummies, and it would have little effect on your travels.
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I think any discussion about wild west style justice is moot since they were able to take 3/4 of the bandits in without any notable difficulties.
Wild west justice was often dictated by the harsh realities of the environment. It would be a very different prospect if you are a 200 mile walk to civilization and you barely have enough supplies for 4 people. And the captives seem dangerous enough to slip out and cut your throats in the night.
But that is not what we're dealing with. They even came with their own mule to carry them. You could hog tie them and wrap them up like mummies, and it would have little effect on your travels.
That's not something mortal beings can survive for multiple days, so if that's your plan, you could have gotten similar results by just crucifying them. You save a few days in the process, too.
Transferring prisoners safely costs time, effort, and resources. Trying to shortcut it like this just results in unpleasant death, or escapes. There is a very good chance you don't have the time, personnel, or resources to pull it off.
Also, you want to put three prisoners on the back of one mule? I hope these are Small creatures, because if not, you should probably just crucify the mule too. It would be more humane.
The OP's party delivered the 3 surviving bandits to the authorities with zero trouble.
I now wonder why the killer PC did not kill all of the bandits.
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The “Wild West” is an apt metaphor for the impossibility of having this conversation objectively, because most of us are talking about a land that was a vibrant and often peaceful place until the US army swept through burning villages, orchards and cropland to create an intentional wasteland that “demanded” slow colonial repatriation as US territory. So it was a land turned “lawless” for the sake of freeing it from any ownership claims that the US government would have to pretend to respect. The only reason Marshals ever pursued criminals into these territories and pre-territories was if there were bounties placed on those people and the total number of people left for dead across the south west of what is now the US is unknown. So you had “bad people” deliberately being pushed into an over century’s-long expanding war zone, but the “good guys” were the US Marshals who came into this land only to collect bounties on the specific people who had committed enough crimes against settler colonists to justify paying for their return to “civilization” so they could be hung in front of the people that the US legal system was trying to convince that it had complete authority and reach.
Everything about the scenarios we play out in our games is a contrivance created by everyone at the table to have fun storytelling and rolling dice together. If tales of morality and who gets to act with righteous authority are fun for a table, you can get as nuanced and complicated as you AND your table want to get. But the very reason the rules don’t easily facilitate this, and why so many players have had trouble with both the APs that tried to push themes of acting as agents of legitimate justice and authority is that such stories are only going to work with everyone at the table buying into the narrative that their characters respect the legitimate authority (from the perspective of the story/adventure) equally and understand/are willing to collectively negotiate what that will mean at their table. When players are not ready to do that, games can easily get mired in hurt feelings and arguments about moral codes for imaginary people that literally exist to serve as pawns in games people are playing for fun, not to serve as proxies in interpersonal debates about ethics and morality.
Just “doing what my character would do in this situation” is a dangerous justification for anti-social behavior when that character’s actions make the other character’s players upset about the consequences of those actions. It is everyone’s responsibility at the table to make sure the playing environment is fun and that no one is being made to participate in activities that they find disturbing to be involved with. PF2 is a game that tends to feature a lot of violence, but how we moralize that can tend to get gritty very quickly the more complicated our encounters get with additional constraints about enemies surrendering or being taken captive. As a GM, I love playing with this space, but I bring it up in session 0 and will change how u handle it for different groups I play with. I generally hate “enemy fights to the death” as character motive but it is an easy one to ruthlessly vilify
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What are your thoughts?
Evil. It's killing for convenience as bringing them to the law would take too much time and energy. It's evil justice 101: You don't care about fairness or anything, you just kill whoever you want without justifications.
Probably but not a big deal anymore. Anyway i think most neutral characters would not have too many issues with it if there is a concrete risk of the foe getting free or what have you. A good character probably should not but thats besides the point. Do what your character would
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Is it unfair to kill someone who tried to kill and eat you? Are you worried you can't ascertain their innocence or guilt, what with witnessing it and hearing their confession? If you can't manage to transport them, what do you do? What if you're in a hurry to save the day somewhere entirely else? Are you going to slow your travel speed by 1/3 in order to humanely care for prisoners? What if the relevant legal authority is back the way you came, but lives will be lost if you don't get to your destination ASAP? Once you've captured them, is it an absolute moral duty to escort them safely and comfortably to the nearest authority to have THEM kill your prisoners on your word, or is there some specific number of people who would have to die before you considered another course of action? What if you didn't have enough food for the journey? What if you didn't have enough people to watch them and protect yourself? Are you willing to die in order to attempt to bring bandits to the judgment of a local guy with no qualifications except a political appointment to the job?What are your thoughts?Evil. It's killing for convenience as bringing them to the law would take too much time and energy. It's evil justice 101: You don't care about fairness or anything, you just kill whoever you want without justifications.
Again all of these did not appear in the OP's game.
Also confession is very very far from being a proof of guilt as those experts in legal matters you mentioned previously could tell you.
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Is it unfair to kill someone who tried to kill and eat you? Are you worried you can't ascertain their innocence or guilt, what with witnessing it and hearing their confession? If you can't manage to transport them, what do you do? What if you're in a hurry to save the day somewhere entirely else? Are you going to slow your travel speed by 1/3 in order to humanely care for prisoners? What if the relevant legal authority is back the way you came, but lives will be lost if you don't get to your destination ASAP? Once you've captured them, is it an absolute moral duty to escort them safely and comfortably to the nearest authority to have THEM kill your prisoners on your word, or is there some specific number of people who would have to die before you considered another course of action? What if you didn't have enough food for the journey? What if you didn't have enough people to watch them and protect yourself? Are you willing to die in order to attempt to bring bandits to the judgment of a local guy with no qualifications except a political appointment to the job?
All of that are mostly excuses for performing the evil act. The path of good is by definition a burden: You are not good if you never move out of your way to perform good things.
So, the best you can end up with is people excusing you because the circumstances made the evil act more "acceptable". But it's still evil and if it happens on a regular basis you should very much question how you always end up in this situation (because sometimes, the best thing to do is to avoid ending up in a situation where you are forced to perform an evil act).
Also, performing an evil act in the pursuit of greater good is a very slippery slope.
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Again all of these did not appear in the OP's game.Which is a great thing to know after the fact, but "again," there was no way to know until after the decision what the consequences of the decision would be. I do not make decisions in-game on the assumption that I won't have to deal with implementing them, that the GM will handwave it all. I don't know why anyone would assume that.
Also confession is very very far from being a proof of guilt as those experts in legal matters you mentioned previously could tell you.If someone is caught in the act of a crime, and then confesses to performing that crime regularly, then those legal experts are going to have a hard time formulating an argument for innocence. In fact, if you arrested them and turned them into authorities, on what basis are they going try, convict, and punish these people, if not eyewitness testimony and confession? What fact-finding options does a local fantasy authority have that PCs don't?
It's a really, really bad idea to confess to a crime, and then later try to argue that you didn't do it. If you admit to doing it, you're probably going down for it, because a confession is considered basically the gold standard of evidence by most every legal system in history.
It is true that confessing to a crime you did not commit is an extremely bad idea.
It is also true that it happens extremely often.
And, yes, I am pretty sure the Inquisition loved confessions, as did many murderous regimes throughout history.
Hopefully we have made some progress since then.
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Probably but not a big deal anymore. Anyway i think most neutral characters would not have too many issues with it if there is a concrete risk of the foe getting free or what have you. A good character probably should not but thats besides the point. Do what your character would
And assume the consequences, including the rest of the party expelling you should it happen.
Idealistic platitude founded on ridiculous assumption.
The "evil" act in this case is killing captured murderers. Before they were captured, killing them was inconsequential, but according to you, capturing them creates an absolutely limitless obligation to attempt to find an agent of the state to hand them over to, regardless of the loss of life along the way, because your obligation to these captive murderers goes above and beyond your obligation to your comrades, your families, everyone else in the entire world, because it is absolutely crucial to your moral foundation that a politically appointed dullard judges them for their crimes and a professional butcher kills them for it.
Not at all.
If you look at the situation, you can release them? But you fear they would commit banditry again and as such that there will be deaths of innocent people. So, why don't you find a way to prevent them to commit to banditry? For example, cutting their thumbs is definitely a less severe punishment than death and it will prevent them to commit to banditry (if they are human/oid). Don't you think?
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Thank you for actually engaging in good faith, though. Not as common as I'd hoped.
Everyone is engaging in good faith. With questions like these ones you have necessary very strong reactions.
Okay, an actual interesting question. Would these people rather be executed by their victims, transferred for days and executed by the authorities, or become a collection of handicapped dependents that can't contribute to their community, only beg for charity, eventually to starve.
I don't think maiming is actually the light sentence here.
First, why don't you ask them?
Second, how can you consider death a lighter sentence than maiming? Sure, maiming is rather barbaric, but I definitely prefer to lose my thumbs than to be straight up dead.
Also, you can find "lighter" punishments. If you cut only their right hand thumbs, they'll have hard time commiting to banditry (it's a career where you get killed if you're not really efficient and using your off-hand makes you really inefficient for quite some time) but they should be able to still contribute to their community (even if less). Don't you think?
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One doesn't become a cannibal predator because they're a reasonable guy who knows when to give up.
Exactly where I wanted you to go and the crux of this discussion about maiming: You kill them but to be able to do so you first dehumanize them. So you don't ask them questions, you don't try to understand anything because they are not humans to you. And as such, you can kill them without a second thought, finding it even a "merciful" punishment.
Dehumanization has been used for ages to justify murders (and many other awful things). This is the evil process allowing you to kill them without feeling bad about it.
If you were not dehumanizing them, you'd ask questions, you'd try to understand so you could be fair. But that would then wake you up at night...