Generic Exemplars of Evil dilemma

[Conradine]

“Execution is murder. If we permit it, the blood of the accused stains our hands, making murderers of us all."
- from Exemplars of Evil, pag 8


" When her brother was wrongly accused of murder and executed, the fi ery agitator Merla Thorngage (CG female halfling fighter 2/rogue 6) vowed to oppose the practice of capital punishment. In her mind, whenever the state executes a miscreant, no matter how shocking his crime, it descends to the criminal’s level. Merla also believes that the government represents the interests of the public, so allowing the executions to continue makes the people equally guilty. Therefore, she and her followers liberate convicted criminals, breaking into dungeons and smuggling prisoners out of the city so that they can start new lives elsewhere. Although her views are noble, Merla does not realize that the wretches she helps to free simply pick up where they left off: stealing, murdering, or doing whatever sent them to the gallows in the first place. "


The OP is quite generic: what do you think of the whole issue?

[Kayblis]

IMO, that's like trying to solve a problem by not addressing the cause. Imagine a dragon terrorizing the population of a small town and eating their cattle. The solution equivalent to the one presented by Merla would be killing every single cow in the town's fields to avoid them being eaten by the dragon. Sure, technically the dragon won't be eating any more cows, but that isn't the focus of the issue at all. If your solution doesn't address the cause of the problem, then it's not an actual solution, but a workaround.

By breaking the law and freeing prisoners, you're commiting chaotic acts. It's not necessarily evil in itself, but if you want to argue that letting people be killed is evil too, then facilitating stealing, murder, violence and torture by releasing criminals is a very evil act. The worldview is not the problem here, the methods are. She could just as well use her influence to fight the death penalty and enforce other forms of punishment. She could offer a new solution to the criminal problem, be it a new containment method or a punitive one. She could work to reduce the criminality in her region by a plethora of means, maybe through working with the government. But she chooses the easy way, the direct way, the "I shoot the guy that's annoying me" way of dealing with a problem. She doesn't have the insight to do any better than those before her, so she never solves the problem and in fact makes matters worse for everyone involved. The excess criminals in the street may force the local rulers to worsen punishment and make even more people be murdered, some just as innocent as her brother. All in all, she fails hard at her mission and makes it worse than if she did nothing.

[Telonius]

Yeah, the halfling there is a prime example of Chaotic Stupid. Don't like executions? Fair enough. But completely removing consequences for crimes is not going to solve things. If she were breaking them out of death row and then taking them to her own rehabilitation facility that would be another matter. Just tossing them back into the general population like nothing ever happened, is definitely not Chaotic Good. I'd put it as Chaotic Evil or maaaayyybe Chaotic Neutral.

[dancrilis]

This comes down to 'is it better than 100 guilty people go free so that 1 innocent is spared unjust punishment, or is it better that 1 innocent is sacrificed so that 100 guilty people are punished'.

There are solid arguements on both sides - this is likely a more discussion on law and chaos rather then good and evil.
Individual rights compared to collective rights.

[Conradine]

I had a friend in high school that once said "Better to kill 100 innocents than sparing a single criminal!!!".
His personal dream was to become a judge. :smalleek:

[Mr Adventurer]

"what do you think of the whole issue" in relation to a controversial topic like capital punishment, with essentially no other content to your OP, kinda sounds like you're trolling, dude

[EisenKreutzer]

A characters opinion on capital punishment depends more on the character than their alignment.
A Lawful character would probably not see a problem, but might.
A Good character would possibly be opposed to it, but might not be.

See where I’m going with this?

[Troacctid]

This sort of vigilantism is well in line with the character's listed alignment of CG.

[Ken Murikumo]

That monumental leap in guilt by association logic seems difficult to swallow. The post implies that breaking into prison and freeing prisoners has happened multiple times; i find it hard to believe that this happened with no casualties/fatalities cause by the fighter/rogue. Also, the character is level 8. We all know that doesn't happen by killing rats in a basement. There must have been some fatal encounters with bandits or mercenaries or whatever at some point, which makes the character a hypocrite.

Most importantly, as was said already, freeing prisoners all willy-nilly is definitely going to lead to some of them killing again which is willingly and directly because of the character.

[Conradine]

"what do you think of the whole issue" in relation to a controversial topic like capital punishment, with essentially no other content to your OP, kinda sounds like you're trolling, dude


Capital punishment in fantasy setting.
There are many difference with real world. First, to wrongly execute an innocent means negligent investigations at best, since Zone of Truth, divinations ecc.
Second, it's possible to prevent or limit reitheration with Geas , Mark of Justice ecc.
Third, but not less important, objective alignments.



The post implies that breaking into prison and freeing prisoners has happened multiple times; i find it hard to believe that this happened with no casualties/fatalities cause by the fighter/rogue.

I didn't wrote Exemplars of Evil, so I don't know.
I suppose that killing in fight a fully armed and armored guard who refuses to surrender is not the same - for the halfling - than killing an unarmed, chained, crying person who begs for his/her life.



We all know that doesn't happen by killing rats in a basement.

Mabye advanced Dire Rats.