>Be a paladin >Over the course of the adventure, become a king's champion >The rest of the party are my retainers, because all of their previous characters died during the event that made us famous >The king declares that we're gonna accompany him to a diplomatic mission in another land >A few days into our journey, we see a burning town >The king orders us to investigate, and then meet up with him later on the road, so we can continue >Go and investigate >Turns out, the town is being raided by some very fucking suspicious folks >They pretend to be bandits, but they are way too well-armed and well-supported to be simple raiders >Defeat them all, take them alive for interrogation
>They refuse to talk for a long time, despite my repeated reminders that they're only alive because we need to know who they work for >They still don't talk. >Tell them that they are bandits in the best case scenario, or foreign troops or traitors in the worst case, but the penalty for their crimes is death regardless, so I am gonna execute them on my authority as the king's champion. >As a paladin, offer them to confess to their sins - God is merciful to the regretful. >None of them want to. >Fine, start executing them.
>Party is looking really uneasy about the whole thing >"We can't really just kill them, can we?" >"Yes we can. We are as close to lawful authority as it gets here, and they comitted capital crimes." >"Yeah, but you're a paladin." >"Should I have just let them go, despite them burning a whole town down and butchering all those people?" >"Well, we could have taken them to the king!" >"How exactly are four of us supposed to escort them? How do we prevent them from escaping? I don't have any manacles, not thirty of them. And besides, the king would just sentence them to death anyway." >"Yeah, maybe, but it just doesn't feel right."
The DM lets it go, and I don't fall or anything, but I'm still bothered by this thing. Was I right, or was I wrong?
It depends on weather corporal punishment was justified. I would say you were in the right because if morality in your game means a "life for a life" then you've done nothing wrong but exact justice.
By modern standards, or liberal modern standards at least one would have to spare the bandits in accordance to human rights law etc. But like your playing in a medieval world so whatever.
As long as it's just executions against pretty vile people, and you don't start torturing them without reason then whatever.
Same thing happened in the video game fable 1, you get the chance to execute a bandit leader and because the "good option" is to show mercy you get evil points for executing him. But the game ignores the crimes he has committed while leading his men. As long as what you do is proportional then I guess it's alright.
Colton Watson
There wasn't really any other option. You offered them redemption, they refused. You had proof they both had and were willing to pillage and murder, because you stopped them in the act. If you had let them go they would just have done it again, and, like you said, four people can't wrangle thirty.
You should probably have identified the leader of the band and had him come along so you could get information out of him later (or, barring that, cut off his head and brought it so you could use Speak With Dead later,) but nobody's perfect.
Luis Collins
A Paladin shouldn't become a king's champior or such. His holy mission is too important to be bound by oaths of fealty to a person rather than to a cause
Dominic Mitchell
You've found one of many situations in life where there isn't really a solid "wrong". There are pros and cons to multiple options on your list here. There's no "all the good guys win and the bad guys die or sit in jail in acceptable and fair ways".
You're not going to always feel good about what you do and you're not always going to have an easy time figuring out what's good and what's bad. That's stuff we teach teenagers when they're edgy enough to experiment with morality but dumb enough to not understand moral complexity.
Come on, dude.
Jason Thomas
Your character thought it was the lawful good thing to do. I'm assuming he knew what his god would think of the situation. He acted in accordance with his beliefs, his god's belief, the laws of the land.
It was bordering the line, but I mean, enemy combatants, costs of war and so on. You didn't do good, but you did do lawful. Take pride in your victory and keep doing your duty.
Colton Sullivan
Real world paladins were devoted to a king, specifically Charlemagne.
Ayden Nguyen
Real world paladins also didn't directly talk to their god and didn't cast holy magic, what's your point?
