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Talakeal
2017-01-06, 03:55 AM
Setting:

A fantasy world with a western feel. The humans living on the frontier are at war with the beastmen who live in the wild. The beastmen are the apparent aggressors in the conflict and have been raiding and destroying small communities and then disappearing into the forests before the army can respond. The player characters are the survivors of one such attack, now wandering the world.

The players are tracking a pair of human traitors who have apparently sided with the beastmen. They are moving through a coastal forest when they see a band of beastmen. Unbeknownst to the players they are a scouting party for a large war-band scouting for human settlements to raid.

The players approach them and ask about the traitors. The beastmen recognize the PCs and attack them, eager to claim the bounty that their master has placed on the PC's heads. The PC's disarm the beastman leader and then try and get him to talk, but then the notice a forest fire moving towards them.

The PCs make for the shoreline. The beastmen scatter, but one of the PCs yells at them to follow her, and one diplomacy check later the beastmen do just that.

The PCs and the beastmen wade out and notice a woman standing on some rocks in the ocean, apparently also taking shelter from the fire. (Unbenownst to the PCs or the beastmen she is a tracking from a nearby village that was tracking the very same beastmen; the townsfolk were on edge after a nearby plantation was raided and destroyed by a beastman warband in the region.)

Soon thereafter it begins to rain very heavily and the forest fire smolders. The players ask the woman if she knows anyplace safe to take shelter from the storm and she, uncertain and scared of being trapped and outnumbered but trying not to show it, leads them back to her village where she tells them they will be safe.


They enter the village and find a few building smoldering from the fire. The sheriff sees a band of armed beast-men walking into town along with his tracker and several well armed humans. He knows there are some traitors in the region, but doesn't think the PCs are them.

He draws his gun (but doesn't point it at anyone) and his deputies raise their bows and approach the group. His tracker walks to him and tell him what happened. The sheriff then asks the PCs if they wouldn't mind stepping into his office and answering a few questions about why they are traveling through the forest at night with a band of beastmen.

The PCs ask if they are under arrest and the sheriff says no, he just wants to talk. The PCs say that they will come along, but want to help put out the fire first. (Pass another diplomacy test). The sheriff says he will be grateful for the help, and if they promise to come along quietly and answer a few questions he will acquire. They give him their word.

When the fire is nearly out one of the beastmen, who knows that he is infact one of the raiders who took part in the attack on the plantation and will be hung if it is found out, loses his nerve and makes a break for the forest. The sheriff is too fast for him and shoots him down in the street.

At that point the players announce that they are now longer safe here. They are leaving the town and the surviving beastmen are coming with them. The sheriff says he can't just let them go off with the enemy during a time of war until they tell him what the hell they are doing. The PCs adamantly refuse and say that once the first shot was fired the time for talking was over.

The sheriff, exasperated at having to do things the hard way, tells his deputies to place the PCs and the beastmen under arrest.

The PCs attack the sheriff and his deputies and the beastmen join in.

In the ensuring battle most of the sheriff is killed as are most of the beastmen and deputies. A few of the townsfolk go to help the sheriff, and the PCs subdue them violently but non-lethally.

The PCs then drag the tracker (who surrendered), the wounded but still alive deputies, and the unconscious villagers into the sheriff's office and lock them in their own jail cell.

They then take the surviving beastmen and flee the town before the villagers can raise a posse to bring them down.



So, who do you think was in the right here?

Kol Korran
2017-01-06, 04:17 AM
Who was in the right? :smallconfused:

I'll start by a few quick quotes:
- "Look, it was all a big misunderstanding..."
- "It's war. Sh*t happens!"
- "The truth is a three-edged sword: There is our side, there is their side, and there is the truth..."

Thing is, the entire situation was quite complex, and people were both weary and edgy (Quite understandable under the circumstances). In this cases, once ANY spark starts, then people act first, rationalize/ think it over/ discuss things later... :smalleek:

Though some minutiae may change things, on the whole, everyone seemed to have had a different perspective on the situation, different motives and priorities, and quite a lot of (potential) misconceptions. So yeah, it WAS a big misunderstanding, and people most likely tried to act fast according to partial understanding. On the whole, I don't think anyone was much in the wrong here, not sure about "right".

I think you need to define "right" first of all... I'm not sure all would agree on the definition. Otherwise the wolrd would be much, much simpler... :smallsigh:

Koo Rehtorb
2017-01-06, 04:43 AM
Why does anyone have to be in the right? It's kind of a meaningless term a lot of the time.

Mutazoia
2017-01-06, 04:59 AM
My question would be: "Why were the beastmen still with the PC's?" Once the forrest fire died out, they should have either made a break for it, or sneak attacked the PC's, or tried holding the woman hostage as leverage. Hell, they could have tried to swim away...not like the armored members of the party could keep up very well in water.

Second question: "Why did the PC's refuse to comply with the sheriff (Why would they not feel safe because the sheriff shot an escaping prisoner)?" This really makes little sense to me (not having "been there"). The beastmen attacked the PC's, I'm assuming were taken prisoner, and then tried to escape. I see no reason to suddenly start sympathizing wih the beastmen over the townsfolk.

Third question: "Why didn't the beastmen try to escape while everybody was busy with the fires?" If the one can try to run off, I'm going to assume they were all free to do so (i.e. they were not tied up) and had plenty of opportunity. After all, I doubt the sheriff an deputies had enough man power to fight the fire AND watch a bunch of prisoners who (I'm assuming) were pressganged into fighting fires.

To answer YOUR queston: Personally, I'm going to have to say the PC's were in the wrong, for refusing to comply with the sheriff over the matter of an escaping prisoner, who had already tried to kill the PC's.

Kelb_Panthera
2017-01-06, 05:17 AM
The sheriff.

The beastmen, at least, were POW's even if the PC's weren't. The sheriff shot an escaping POW and the PC's had no -good- reason to take offense, much less break off talk and insist on further bloodshed.

At best, they could have claimed the beastmen as their own prisoners and demanded some kind of recompense or promised some sort of punishment from a higher authority for his incompetence (whether they could actually keep that promise or not).

To try to claim the beastmen were not POW's is just absurd on the face of it. They were enemy combatants in the custody of a recogized authority figure. Even if they had been from a different tribe than the one making raids (clearly not the case), there's no way the sheriff could've known and he couldn't reasonably give them the benefit of the doubt under the circumstances.

Ultimately, the big boo-boo was in the PC's breaking off talk and insisting on bloodshed over the sheriff's actions.


If, at some point, he declared that they'd all be hung regardless of any guilt they may or may not warrant then -maybe- the PC's would've had a shakey leg to stand on.

Templarkommando
2017-01-06, 07:31 AM
It depends a lot on perspective I think.

Some of this requires imposing modern legal thoughts on a feudal/monarchical society, but I'm going to try to do it anyway. From the players perspective, the Sheriff starts by saying that he's not arresting them. At that point they are presumably free to go. In fact, it's not until the party announces that they aren't safe with the Sheriff shooting at people and that they have decided to leave that the Sheriff decides to arrest them. I'm not entirely clear on what the charge that the Sheriff was trying to arrest the party on. Associating with the enemy is a problem, but if it was just some random band of beastmen as far as the party was concerned, that could be a deciding factor where intent to commit any crimes is concerned. The tracker (is she a law enforcement agent of some kind?) promised the party safe harbor in her village, and they pretty clearly didn't get it. It's not that the tracker is necessarily a liar - she may have truly believed what she was saying - but it's kind of odd that she made certain statements that may not have been true.

From the perspective of the sheriff, he was just giving his job due diligence. Here's a bunch of strangers that show up that may have some connection to some traitors (even if the connection is that they are looking for them) and they show up with a bunch of beastmen that are the same race that the village is in a war against. It may not be in the Sheriff's wheelhouse, but it could also be that something fishy is going on. If it does turn out that the party is up to no good, then the Sheriff really wants to know where the party stands if things go south because it puts the villagers he's supposed to be protecting in danger. Even if he doesn't care about the villagers, if someone up the chain of command gets wind of the party wandering through town with a herd of beastmen with them... well that could go bad for the Sheriff personally. That hits him in his job security.

If I was DMing this, I wouldn't bother with deciding who was right or not, and I would just realize that regardless of who was right, there are consequences for what happened. You don't just kill the Sheriff somewhere and get away with it without someone following up. Maybe some higher law enforcement agency gets wind of it and starts asking questions. Maybe the Sheriff wasn't prepared to deal with the party, but these Royal Rangers (or Marshalls, or whatever...) are. That's room for moving the plot along. You can put an overzealous cop in there as a foil for the party, and the party has to always stay just one step ahead of this guy that keeps trying to put his nose where it shouldn't be. It's a situation that is ripe for plot development. I hope this helps.

Segev
2017-01-06, 10:34 AM
Yeah, "who's right" isn't really a relevant question, here. I can see arguments for the PCs acting foolishly and escalating the situation when it didn't need to, but if they, for some reason, thought the sheriff was going to turn on them next, they weren't being unreasonable. Even if they were factually wrong, they might have had reasons to think so. After all, it's a tense situation.

Siding with the beast men against the sheriff will likely haunt their reputations, however. The tracker isn't going to bear them any good will, given that they got her captured and her town sacked. And the townsfolk they left in jail are going to remember them for siding with the beast men, not for sparing the townsfolk, most likely.

Whether they were right or not is irrelevant compared to what the consequences will be.

GungHo
2017-01-06, 11:52 AM
So you say you shot the sheriff, but did not shoot the deputy, and though it wasn't in self defense and you're wondering if it was a capital offence?

D+1
2017-01-06, 12:06 PM
so you say you shot the sheriff, but did not shoot the deputy, and though it wasn't in self defense and you're wondering if it was a capital offence?

winner!!!!

Talakeal
2017-01-06, 03:49 PM
So you say you shot the sheriff, but did not shoot the deputy, and though it wasn't in self defense and you're wondering if it was a capital offence?

Yeah, I made the same joke st the time.

John Longarrow
2017-01-06, 08:30 PM
The beastmen recognize the PCs and attack them, eager to claim the bounty that their master has placed on the PC's heads. The PC's disarm the beastman leader and then try and get him to talk

Sticking to what may be the most relevant piece here. Party should realize that their beastmen are their prisoners and treat them as such.

What should have happened:
Beastmen should have tried to escape, if possible.
Party arrives at town.
Party turns captured beastmen over to Sheriff for incarceration.
Party works on putting out fires.

Sheriff should NOT allow beastmen to be loose since they are at war.

No idea why any of the beastmen would accompany them to a human settlement though. The beastmen should have tried to flee unless restrained in some way.

I'd say this is a "DM learning experience". Its not about right/wrong, its about "What should the NPCs have done differently?".

Talakeal
2017-01-06, 09:21 PM
Sticking to what may be the most relevant piece here. Party should realize that their beastmen are their prisoners and treat them as such.

What should have happened:
Beastmen should have tried to escape, if possible.
Party arrives at town.
Party turns captured beastmen over to Sheriff for incarceration.
Party works on putting out fires.

Sheriff should NOT allow beastmen to be loose since they are at war.

No idea why any of the beastmen would accompany them to a human settlement though. The beastmen should have tried to flee unless restrained in some way.

I'd say this is a "DM learning experience". Its not about right/wrong, its about "What should the NPCs have done differently?".

The Beastmen wanted to flee the whole time. One of the PCs kept passing diplomacy rolls to convince the beastmen to come along with the party.

John Longarrow
2017-01-06, 10:16 PM
The Beastmen wanted to flee the whole time. One of the PCs kept passing diplomacy rolls to convince the beastmen to come along with the party.

That brings up a couple questions then..
1) What level is the party?
2) What circumstance modifiers did you give the check?
3) In game was their enough time to actually do a full diplomacy check?

Often times a DM will forget that there should be some hefty modifiers when an action is not in the best interest of the party you are talking to. Think of the difference between "Hey, were going to grab some food and I'd love for you to join us!" and "Hey, were going to the recruiting station to enlist and go to war, I'd love for you to join us!". Most people would be easily swayed by the first request. Few by the second. Your beastmen had a really good reason not to go to the town, they knew their people are at war with humans so they knew it would not be a very good idea.

Talakeal
2017-01-06, 10:43 PM
That brings up a couple questions then..
1) What level is the party?
2) What circumstance modifiers did you give the check?
3) In game was their enough time to actually do a full diplomacy check?

Often times a DM will forget that there should be some hefty modifiers when an action is not in the best interest of the party you are talking to. Think of the difference between "Hey, were going to grab some food and I'd love for you to join us!" and "Hey, were going to the recruiting station to enlist and go to war, I'd love for you to join us!". Most people would be easily swayed by the first request. Few by the second. Your beastmen had a really good reason not to go to the town, they knew their people are at war with humans so they knew it would not be a very good idea.

Who said I was the DM? ¬_¬

John Longarrow
2017-01-07, 05:53 AM
Who said I was the DM? ¬_¬

If your not the DM, the DM should really not have let it go this way.

Course if your not, you could still have answered 1 and 3.... :D

Draconi Redfir
2017-01-07, 10:31 AM
i'm not sure about right or wrong, i'm just confused as to why the party has a possy of beastmen with them. didn't see anything to imply they'd suddenly made freinds other then forrest fire thing, and even then that's more of a "i'm a nice person so i'll help you out just this once" kind of thing. i really don't see why the beastmen would continue following the PC's after the forrest fire went out, most likely they would have attempted to escape into the woods again, not becaume a very confused Possy.

Satinavian
2017-01-07, 10:34 AM
To try to claim the beastmen were not POW's is just absurd on the face of it. They were enemy combatants in the custody of a recogized authority figure. Even if they had been from a different tribe than the one making raids (clearly not the case), there's no way the sheriff could've known and he couldn't reasonably give them the benefit of the doubt under the circumstances.

I actually would say that the beastmen were not POW. At no point they had been actually taken prisoner or surrendered. Only the leader had been disarmend and in combat. And then negotiations started. The beastmen only followed the PCs because of the forestfire and diplomacy checks. Willingly, not because they had been forced.

That is not prisoners of war, that is a truce. And violation of a truce is not something the sheriff should do. And killing the beastmen without actually knowing why a group of beastmen and armed strangers had been led into the village by his own tracker was a really really dumb move.

Not that the PCs had acted particularly bright. They should know that beastmen in the village can mean trouble in times of war. They should have explained immediately why they travel with beastmen.

KillianHawkeye
2017-01-07, 11:20 AM
Well since the party apparently had someone who was skilled in Diplomacy, this whole situation could have been avoided if that person had taken the Sheriff aside and explained everything right away while the rest of the party went to help put out fires. I don't understand why it was an either/or situation; talk to the Sheriff or help put out the fires. Certainly the entire party wasn't needed for either task, was it?

I mean, you didn't know what was going to happen, but at least you should've recognized that it was a very tense situation and taken precautions to stop things from getting out of hand.

tensai_oni
2017-01-07, 05:57 PM
Hard to say who is right, but it's clear who was wrong: the party. They acted like idiots and their stubborn actions led to the situation escalating and getting worse.

In particular I am talking about their unwillingness to cooperate once a single beastman was killed for making a sudden move in a tense situation, a beastman who was earlier on trying to kill them but suddenly they act like s/he's a part of their group. Or in general, I'm talking about the insistence of dragging a group of beastmen around with no good reason, which in the end resulted in most of the beastmen dying.

The fact that the party dealt with beastmen non-lethally but immediately went for the violent option when dealing with humans makes me suspect they have already chosen a side in this conflict. If the DM hoped for a morally grey situation where there are no clear good and bad guys, some communication with the players may be required to see if everyone is on the same page.

kyoryu
2017-01-07, 06:55 PM
Why does anyone have to be in the right? It's kind of a meaningless term a lot of the time.

Well, yeah. A lot of the interesting situations that can occur are the result of everybody involved doing what is reasonable from their perspective and with the information that they have available.

There's not always a right and a wrong side. Sometimes everybody's wrong, and sometimes everybody's right.

Talakeal
2017-01-08, 04:26 AM
If your not the DM, the DM should really not have let it go this way.

Course if your not, you could still have answered 1 and 3.... :D

All right, you got me, I was the DM...

To answer your questions:

It isn't a level based game. They are sufficiently more competent than the average person, but not quite to action movie hero levels.

I just let them have a straight roll. I generally don't like to penalize players or shoot down their ideas without a good reason, and I had absolutely no idea where they were going with this.

Ironically, this looks to be one of the few times when people on the forum seem to be saying I should have said "No," instead of "Yes, but..."


I am actually glad it turned out the way it did because it is going to make it a lot easier for me to set up the next mission, and my players think that they were the big damn heroes for defeating the evil Sheriff of Nottingham; I was just curious how it would look to outside observers because, to me, the players perceptions and reactions to the situation was frankly quite bizarre.

I actually did ask the players why they acted this way, and they told me that it was because they thought their mission objective was to track down the traitors and figured the best way to do that was to gain the beast men's trust.

Talakeal
2017-01-10, 04:36 PM
Follow up story, tell me what you think:

Lone wolf game. The PC is a knight errant wandering through a strange land, the last survivor of a fallen kingdom.

While in a crowded market a young child screams for help. Seeing no guards around they focus on the knight, the only armed person they can find. The child tells the knight that a gang is robbing his mother's inn.

The knight tells the child to lead on and follows him to the inn.

The child's mother explains that a gang of local street toughs got drunk and refused to pay their bill, and when she pressed the issue they began to smash up the place and assault the wait stuff.

Knight enters the next room and sees the gang little sitting at the bar and throwing an empty bottle to the ground while crudely shouting at a serving girl to bring him another.

As the knight approaches the ganger shouts "Piss off! This is a private party!" But the knight does not wait for him to finish, instead the knight shoves him from his seat and slams him against the far wall, a driving a sword into his belly.

The man scream for help and half a dozen large thugs emerge from the store rooms which they had been raiding. Seeing what is happening two of them grab the terrified serving girls.

The gang leader says "Leave now or the girls die!"

The knight responds by roughly grabbing the gang leader's hair and bringing the sword to his throat, stating "That's not how this works. Let them go now or die on your knees. Last chance."

The gang leader thinks for a second and then screams for his men to let the girls so. They do so.

The knight let's the gang leader go and escorts the women out of the inn. Instead of following them the knight shuts the tavern door and locks it. Then says "If you have weapons I suggest you draw them."

The gang does, and they do. The gang leader says "What, code of honor won't let you kill an unarmed man, but doesn't care if you bushwhack him and stab him in the guy?"

The knight does not respond except by attacking the nearest gang member.

The remaining gangers rush the knight.

In the ensuing melee the entire gang is killed or disabled, but the knight is severely wounded in the process.

The knight makes sure all of the fallen gang members are dead and then lays their bodies neatly out for when the guards arrive. Does search the bodies or loot.

The knight opens the door and tells the tavern keep it is safe to come in.

The tavern keeper is visibly shaken by the carnage and stammers out a thank you, but mostly she is just hoping the knight will leave and never come back, which she does.

kyoryu
2017-01-10, 04:52 PM
I think the knight's an idiot.

Wait until the gangers leave, then accost them. Less bystanders get put in harm's way, and it becomes unnecessary to escalate violence to the extent done.

(In the real world, of course. In D&D world, killing is a far more accepted response.)

Kelb_Panthera
2017-01-10, 05:21 PM
Knight strikes me as CE.

I have no reason to believe he saw an opportunity to "help" but, rather, an opportunity to fight. He was clearly out for blood. Even if you tried to paint it as punishing the thugs, the punishment is grossly excessive and shows a callous disregard for life. For punishment to be righteous it must be proportionate.

There's an off-chance that the character is LE and saw his draconian puishment as a duty but that would require a certain social order that wasn't mentioned at all. Could we get some clarification on that?

Talakeal
2017-01-10, 05:43 PM
Knight strikes me as CE.

I have no reason to believe he saw an opportunity to "help" but, rather, an opportunity to fight. He was clearly out for blood. Even if you tried to paint it as punishing the thugs, the punishment is grossly excessive and shows a callous disregard for life. For punishment to be righteous it must be proportionate.

There's an off-chance that the character is LE and saw his draconian puishment as a duty but that would require a certain social order that wasn't mentioned at all. Could we get some clarification on that?

Raised in a LN society where robbery is punishable by death and knights are expected to serve as executioners.

Kelb_Panthera
2017-01-10, 06:45 PM
Raised in a LN society where robbery is punishable by death and knights are expected to serve as executioners.

That'd do it. LE then. I have to question the N in your assessment of the society if robbery that doesn't result in grievous injury or death warrants execution in all cases. Again, proportionality.

The fact the knight's doing his duty makes his actions lawful but doesn't excuse the viciousness of it from being evil.

veti
2017-01-10, 07:54 PM
The Beastmen wanted to flee the whole time. One of the PCs kept passing diplomacy rolls to convince the beastmen to come along with the party.

Why was the party so anxious for the beastmen to come with them?

The only way the scenario makes sense is if the beastmen are basically being treated as prisoners. Once you accept that, then the shooting seems - well, natural - and everything else follows.

The party was clearly in the wrong - for dragging the beastmen along with them when there was no good reason to do it, and for allowing the encounter with the sheriff to escalate so disastrously. They're outlaws now. In fact, it's quite possible that something like this is exactly how you get to be branded as a "traitor" in this setting.

Talakeal
2017-01-10, 09:04 PM
I have to question the N in your assessment of the society if robbery that doesn't result in grievous injury or death warrants execution in all cases. Again, proportionality.

Probably best night t to get too into this lest we violate forum rules, but virtually every western society in the pre modern world punished robbery by hanging. Make of that what you will.

Kelb_Panthera
2017-01-10, 09:47 PM
Probably best night t to get too into this lest we violate forum rules, but virtually every western society in the pre modern world punished robbery by hanging. Make of that what you will.

And? I know about a -lot- of mitigation in those societies. I won't get into talking about how they'd be aligned for the same reason you were hesitant to bring them up in the first place. They're irrelevant anyway.

All I know about the hypothetical society is that robbery results in summary execution without a trial or any consideration to whether any serious harm was done. Unless the knight was acting -beyond- the bounds of his duty?

Arcane_Snowman
2017-01-11, 01:04 AM
I agree with Segev here. Honestly, asking who's right is an incredibly reductive question to be asking in the first place, unless you're playing a game where there's a cosmic enforced morality with tangible consequences and effects then the only thing that is truly important here is the fact that the players made choices. The more important, and I suppose interesting, question would be how the story is altered as a result of those choices.

With the first case, the players should more than likely find themselves being declared criminals by whatever greater authority was in charge of that village, as word more than likely have gotten out as there were several witnesses. How quickly the authority responds is another matter, it is wartime after all. On the other hand they're more than likely to have earned some favor with the beastfolk for having helped them through the city, giving them an opportunity to visit the other camp in this war and there's several options for how to take it from there, and so the story marches on. To the people the village the adventurers will undoubtedly be villains, but the beastfolk now have a new set of allies.

As for the knight, they are most assuredly outside their jurisdiction given the fact that they had no legal reason to do whatever they did (being that they're from a lost kingdom and all). However, whether or not that matters would be a consequence of number things, not least of which would be the social relations between the gang and the rest of the society in which they operated. If they were the kind of scoundrels who were know to do some pretty nasty things (take your pick) then the inn keeper may well lie to protect the knight or she may just be scared to say anything in case the knight comes back. On the other hand it was a pretty disproportionate response to some small-time racketeering, and given that they're not within their own legal jurisdiction they made a judgement call regarding the law and acted upon it in a way that is more than likely unacceptable. How this plays into the story and mythos of "The Knight from the Lost Kingdom" is then going to be a matter of how the rest of society views this act.

Whether the players were in the right or not in a more general sense really shouldn't matter nearly as a much as how the story evolves as a result of those choices, and how they're viewed within the context of the story as a result of those choices.

Coidzor
2017-01-11, 02:46 AM
Well, the players certainly chose poorly if their goal was to not be outlaws.

Great for if they want to find these traitors by turning coat and don't care about who they harm in doing so, so long as they see getting an eventual pardon, a fat stack of loot followed by retiring to an uninvolved nation, or just creating entirely new identities for themselves after this.

Of course, I have to wonder at how you're presenting things that they act the way they do with you.

Segev
2017-01-11, 11:48 AM
It strikes me as the knight misreading the situation more than being villainous. It seems he over-estimated the threat the thugs posed to people; he wasn't entirely wrong, though, given they were willing to hold the women hostage. I don't blame the innkeep for wanting him gone and to never come back, but I expect word of his reaction will also get around.

Next time he's faced with thugs trying to use intimidation, if they recognize him from rumor they should be FAR more likely to be intimidated into just leaving. There IS purpose behind such extreme methods in law enforcement. Knowing that this particular knight is deadly when pushed means that he doesn't have to rough up nearly as many people nearly as often. They're not going to get their noses out of joint over him hitting one or two and scaring them off if they realize that he "scared them off" just by reputation.

Thugs like that are playing a dominance game. The violence is a display more than a final solution. Yes, they'll kill, but they're doing it to prove they're tough and more want to scare people into doing what they say. They generally prefer to rough people up to scare them. Killing is accidental or an isolated example (though some will do it for fun and the rush of power it gives them, if secure in their number of additional hostages).

Faced with belief that THIS guy will respond to any level of intimidation not with a dominance display of his own (which they may win or lose), but with an implacable will to fight to the death, will usually take the wind out of the sails of such men.

He will have a dark, fearsome reputation. But he need not be evil if he lets that reputation do its job where it can. Necessary brutality can easily be Neutral, and can, judiciously applied, even still be a shade of Good.

Talakeal
2017-01-12, 05:43 PM
And? I know about a -lot- of mitigation in those societies. I won't get into talking about how they'd be aligned for the same reason you were hesitant to bring them up in the first place. They're irrelevant anyway.

All I know about the hypothetical society is that robbery results in summary execution without a trial or any consideration to whether any serious harm was done. Unless the knight was acting -beyond- the bounds of his duty?

Good and evil stop being useful terms if you set the threshold too high. If the tough but fair society and the corrupt and cruel society or the overly zealous vigilante and the super villain both have the same alignment you kind of have to question whether the alignment system you are using works for the type of story you are trying to tell.

Yes, the knight was very much acting beyond the bounds of her duty, particularly because she had no jurisdiction and was living by the standards of a kingdom that no longer exists.