How should a Good character deal with a situation of extreme civil unrest?

Roll diplomacy, as a Good char in charge of things you should have Cha over the roof

It also depends on what mitigating factors the character thinks there are. Does the quarantine seem like an overreaction to him or her? They're more likely to let shit slide, then. The player might know there is an outbreak of mega influenza, but the PC just sees sniffles. Surely the parents can be reunited with their children?

A lawful good character would be in favor of maintaining a quarintine (even if it means the sick have to suffer) because it would save the not-yet-infected population.

And then take out whoever put the loudmouth up to it, as those "power behind the throne" types are usually the real problem, not the frontmen they manipulate!

And how would he react if people inside started breaking through the barricate, wanting to escape for their lives?

If the quarantine was mandated by a lawful authority, and the infected were virulent enough to guarantee spread of plague, at that point not only are they criminals, but they're a public menace and material threat to innocent bystanders. Even paladins should be green lit to sanction them with extreme prejudice.

That sounds a lot like Lawful Evil. Maybe Lawful Neutral, though a Lawful Neutral character would probably feel like shit for having to put down desperate people like that. That's definitely not a Lawful Good course of action, though. A Good character can't just take the expedient, pragmatic course of action without even trying to find more ethically sound alternatives.

>ethically sound alternatives

If plague infected, quarantined infectees are fleeing into population centers, there would be no time to discuss this with an ethics panel. The most long term good would come from eliminating the escapees with a minimum of exposure to other citizens.

And a Lawful Evil agency would likely burn them all after rounding them up instead of quarantining them, unless they had plans to weaponize the plague bearers.

If we're talking about societal collapse, or an existential threat to the world, it's not impossible that the LE person/faction would willingly work with the good side to maintain order. LE tends to be in it for the long haul-- ruling the world is no fun if there's no world to rule over. Having lawful good be exposed to the harsh realities of a situation may be good for their development. Realpolitik is often messy.

Lawful evil gets shit done

This

This.

Violence against civilians is never justified. Use tazers or a sleeping spell.

If you're serious, wew lad.
If you're trolling, here's your (You)

Contagion carrier is not civilian it's a terrorist.

There's a reason why we have rubber bullets and gas. To be violent without actually endangering them.

Trying to be as nonviolently violent as possible just breeds contempt.

Best to kill them all now with all expedience and let the public mourn and move on.

>fighting for ideologies in a feudal setting where Good and Evil are quantifiable, objective values and gods regularly intervene.
Come on, user. You can't get more black & white than DnD.
You're not gonna wage a long guerrilla war against misinformed people.

>what if the party isn't high-level enough to just magic their way out of everything?
then invading entire territories is out of their reach, as is managing regional crises.

Everyone's gone straight for the plague example, but I want to know how paladins would manage in a situation where they have to try and maintain order in an occupied city where everyone hates their guts. My guess is you'd have a lot of fallen paladins after a few months.

Paladins would make a horrible peacekeeping force. They're about as nonoptimized for police duties as you can get, considering their alignment restrictions.

People as a rule can be very scummy if they're aligned along ingroup-outgroup thinking, and you can't fight an insurgency or organized civilian resistance without committing a few atrocities and giving a few object lessons. Heads on pikes, public racking, and night/fog disappearances aren't really in the pally playbook.

Lawful evil, lawful neutral, and possibly chaotic good characters would be the order of the day for an occupation.

Personally, I think rogues would be ideal for this sort of work.

Short answer: all the paladins would quit or fall about 5 seconds after one of their number gets allahu ackbar'd by rebels.

OP's movie is pretty touching about it.

I would probably fall, no way I would withstand my men being shoot while people are standing as a meat wall.

> implying paladins wouldn't calm people with their godly charisma

Paladins wouldn't be the occupiers they would make sure that the occupiers keep in line and that any methods used to keep order are necessary. Anyone who goes over the line gets struck down by righteous fury.

Maybe. Now I think about it more, I rememeber that half the game in insurgency warfare is trying to make the occupiers overreact so they take it out on the local population, thus getting you more support and recruits.
But paladins would be difficult to provoke in that way.
It would be an interesting situation to game out. I'm nto sure how it would go, although I'm sure the paladins would be severely tested.

>But paladins would be difficult to provoke in that way.
So a paladin would stay quiet if a group of civilians were circling them, throwing stones, while his best friend just took a bolt to the head from a sniper in a nearby building?

Well, the wonders of a paladin is that friend of his is likely to get back up again soon.

While it depends on the setting, unless death is very cheap a dead paladin that isn't a PC stays dead.

>depends on the setting
This is the basic point of contention. If death is cheap and resurrections are just diamond dust away, career ending wounds are unheard of, and the there are literal sentient embodiments of abstract nonsense judging you while at the same time granting phenomenal cosmic power, I'm sure paladins and other lawful good types would be just fine in any situation against canonically marginalized npcs.

But if permadeath is a thing, or those abstractions are not personified but rather existed as principles, and the power associated with them comes from uncertain or debatable sources, and the npcs have the same starting point as the paladins and could potentially have fighter or rogue levels under their bad fashion sense and mobthink, then rogues, lawful evil or lawful neutral wizards and fighters, and the occasional high charisma chaotic good demogogue would be better suited.

If you guys are interested in fantasy realpolitik dealing with worlds with objective moral Good and Evil, you should check out Practical Guide to Evil. It goes into some detail on the realities of governing a nation that literally worships gods of evil and how they relate to other countries that are diametrically opposed to them.

practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/

>“And so we come upon the nature of Cordelia Hasenbach as an entity,” the Empress said. “She must be at war, but cannot be at war with a nation that is Good. These are the rules she has to obey.”

>“It’s why she can meddle in the Free Cities but only to back the faction fighting Helike,” I said. “Otherwise her southern borders catch fire. She has to fight against Evil or her alliances all collapse because no one can trust Procer.”

>“Have you wondered why I never expressed fears of you attempting an independent Callow, Catherine?” Malicia smiled. “This is the reason. Assuming you achieved that result and even sought to remove the impetus for Imperial invasions by trading us grain, you would still have to face Procer. You are, after all, a villain. An acceptable recipient of dear Cordelia’s wrath from a diplomatic perspective, and from a political one a long-term threat. Procer cannot afford another hostile border, from a purely logistical standpoint. It needs Callow to be Good and at war with Praes, to keep them both in check.”

How would you even know it's a terrible plague without a cure? It's a medieval society, not like they have the germ theory down. They either have a magic spell that cures everything or they don't.

A good character would try to resolve things peacefully, perhaps by allowing families to be quarantined together after explaining that they might not survive if they choose to do so.

If someone attempts to infect people maliciously, or through knowing negligence, they're not good anyways.

If your alignment says "Good" and you know or at least think you are infected with a deadly disease, you surrender to quarantine and do your best to keep it. If you're putting your self-interest above other people, you simply aren't Good.

Rubber bullets killed multiple people in Northern Ireland.

They haven't been used in decades have they?

>It's a medieval society
May not be one.

There have been examples of a magical plague in magic setting. Like Warcraft 3.

>A good character would try to resolve things peacefully, perhaps by allowing families to be quarantined together
I don't think those people are worried about dying together. They are worried to gtfo as fast as possible to avoid contracting the disease.

>If someone attempts to infect people maliciously
Common people in general tend to be neutral.

>be told you need to stay put because you're contagious and might endanger other people
>escape containment anyway
>expect to be put down gently

wew ladamaddie

Probably the best moment of the game and proving why goody characters are fucking retarded
youtube.com/watch?v=4g_7c6a_dwA

>be healthy
>goverment expects me to stay locked in a city full of flesh eating zombies

Survival at all costs is not Good. It's neutral.

A Good person would die over knowingly harming an innocent.

>I think I'm smarter and better than the rightful government of the land, chosen or at least accepted by the people including myself.

If you think the government is not rightful, you should be fighting against it. If you're not, you're legitimizing corrupt rule and are not good.

"Shoot those motherfuckers!"

What a conundrum...

I don't blame him a bit:
youtube.com/watch?v=Fp7ihY2aAaY

Your question can be answered with one word: proportionality.
You use whatever means are necessary that cause the least harm to the people involved. If that means upholding quarantine or even having to use (non-)lethal means of subduing rabble, any good aligned character doing his best to act like that should not see his alignment impacted in a negative way. Even paladins

Yes, but it must still be crushing for them mentally. I cannot imagine someone that is good sleeping well even through he only did what he had to do.

In a situation where the citizens are endangered, act accordingly to protect the most civilians as possible, but still try to protect them all. If all of them cannot be protected without endangering the majority, then stand for the majority. If I must harden my heart, then I shall, if it means the citizens will come out safe in the end.
Also you're damn well sure I'll kick down any noble or aristocrats doors to make sure they aren't hiding or hording excess supplies if the rest of the citizens are suffering shortages, I don't give a fuck about your blue blood.

>Keeping Quarantine
Good does not mean stupid. Preventing deathly sick people from getting other people sick could only be considered 'Evil' with the greatest feats of mental acrobatics. People who break quarantine, for whatever reason, do so knowing that they're breaking the law and endangering hundreds, if not thousands of people. THAT is evil, even if the reasons for it are sympathetic. The best thing a Good person/character can do is attempt to restrain/subdue infectees attempting to escape (hopefully without killing them), and try to make sure the ones who don't run are cared for by any means possible.

>Rationing food/water
Again, this IS the Good thing to do in the first place, the alternative having been hoarding all of the food for oneself. The best that can be done here is setting a non-lethal punishment for theft, and not distributing rations with any preference for a certain group. Endangering entire populations of people to starvation out of a constant need for warm fuzzies is not 'Good'.

>Keeping peace in occupied territory

False premise. If your people are doing the occupying, there's a significant chance (although not quite a certainty) that you aren't on the side of the angels in the first place. But if the alternative to occupation is even greater misery? The Golden Rule rears it's head; which is to say, don't do things to the civilians of an occupied area that you wouldn't want done to your own family. Make sure that law and order are upheld, for the sake of everyone, not just your people. Goodness might actually make the occupation go more smoothly in the long run, especially if the previous governing body were less than ideal.

Actually, this would probably be mostly the case for chaotic good characters, who'd sympathise more with the suffering of individuals. Neutral good characters should prioritize the greater good and a lawful good person should be able to deal with it, since applying proportionality as well as creating the necessary order to help people is something very fitting to that

What I think is happening here is people confusing what modern soldiers have to deal with nowadays (and it's certainly a lot). However, most "good" characters aren't played in modern settings at all, and as such very different social mores pertain to characters living in fantasy settings. The gods/religion being a much great part of those peoples and characters lives already changes a lot

Good =/= avoiding conflict or necessary sacrifice
Good =/= acting like every single living thing is owed continued existence at one's expense

Good is making the best possible choice with the available information in the interest of the largest number of beneficiaries.

Good is inherently idealistic. The means justify the end.

Being reasonable, even pragmatic, is neutral.

Being utterly selfish and malicious for its own sake is evil.

Naturally, 99% of all people fall under some sort of neutral alignment.

>The means justify the end.
That doesn't seem like a good phrase. You can justify all kind of evil actions with 'for the greater good'.

The means justify the ends is almost never a solely good route. Means justifying the ends can be twisted into the most heinous and horrifying acts possible in the world. Good also doesn't mean you're stupid, selfless, suicidal or even a martyr for a cause, it just means you're a nice guy who helps others.

I think he's trying to say that doing good things, even with a bad outcome, is acceptable because idealism. He reversed means and ends.

I think he's also confusing Lawful Good for Stupid Good, plodding after an ideological directive, even in the face of a negative outcome. Case in point, not protecting the majority of citizens because quarantining/purging/whatevering the virulent infected is evilbadwrong.

In a world where Good gods and afterlife exist, the means absolutely justify the ends. If your whole civilization dies because an evil power told you to eat a baby or destroy your entire race and you spit in their face, you go to heaven.

IRL that's rarely so simple, but fantasy settings that use objective alignment are explicitly not real life.

So the answer is yet again, "Depends on the setting."

I have expected this version: youtube.com/watch?v=KPGyt3ZDv2Y

If alignments are strict: The stupid good thing to do. Feed everyone and let the diseased peasants live free. Just like an evil aligned would kill everyone or learn the cause and make it theirs to control. They are avatars of their alignment and act accordingly.

If alignments are rational aka no or loose alignments: the moral standing of the character are advisory to the thoughts behind the character. A lot more options like doing evil for goods sake and such comes with that.

>That's definitely not a Lawful Good course of action, though

You do realize that sometimes there are no "good" choices, right? Like sometimes some otherwise good people have to choose between sucking dick for a sandwich or going hungry. Neither of these are great options.

I'll say this, though. There needs to be a clear escalation from diplomacy, to non-lethal containment, before even considering killing those under quarantine.

As for rationing, a good character is trying to maximize the wellbeing of as many people as possible. As long as that's being adhered to, it's basically good. This may mean the good character skips meals if strong enough - on the other hand sometimes the best thing you can do for others is to take care of yourself first.

I don't think you understand what Lawful Good means. Lawful Good means having to make the hard choices. If someone who was strictly Lawful Good had to choose between five people dying and six people dying, he would pick five instead of six.

Yes, he would be racked with guilt. Yes, his conscience might not forgive him. But he's made the best choice he can, and it's not an Evil or Neutral one. It's just the way things are.

Lawful good means doing good in accordance of the law. They limit their good too whats allowed. If the law says kill every man who steals, and he knows he stole for a good cause the LG will not do anything.

Its a reversal of LE, which does evil but only when accordance of the law.

I do love it in alignment threads when the shitheads think that the forces of capital G Good would immediately fail because they're not hard men making hard decisions while hard.

People keep bringing up Paladins, but Paladins are the Fist of God. They venture to dark places and fight monsters. A plague, a quarantine, that is the work of a cleric.

And clerics can cure diseases, bring rain, and generate peacefulness.

That's... incorrect.

Pretty much every Paladin guide says that Paladins will pick Good over Law 9/10, because the Law exists in service of the public good. If the law of the land says kill any man who steals, a Lawful Good Paladin who sees a man arrested for stealing a loaf of bread for his family will, generally, intercede, pay for the cost of the bread, and maybe hire the man to care for his horse or some other task that will take the man off the evil path.

Lawful Evil is the alignment of tyrants and lawyers. It means perverting justice. They don't just perform evil acts that happen to be legal, they go out of their way to find loopholes. They don't see the law as real, they just pretend to play by the rules so that their dealings have an air of legitimacy.