Alignment based question

[Railak]

So there's an upcoming part in the campaign I'm running. The scenario is there two parallel realms mortal and spirit, the spirits can see into the mortal realm, but most mortals can't see into the spirit realm.
Spirits in this campaign are anything not human or animal. Elves and dwarves are considered spirits for the campaign purposes and only exist within the spirit realm.
Because of the veil between realms, they can't really interact much. There are mortals that can completely interact with spirits, even fight them.
Some of these mortals have banded together and created an organization that is dedicated to hunting them. The organization has been around for some time, and it's numbers rival that of the royal army. The leader of this group is one of the king's top advisors too.
The leader has been devising a way to make it so they can fight against these spirits. Using some aid from a powerful person he created an object that removes the veil within a decent distance.
He took that idea and made it bigger, creating a spire that removes the veil from within the entire vicinity of the capitol city.
Before activating it the royal army has a parade through the center of the city then they spread out. The guy talks about how there's an invisible threat to the kingdom and flips the thing on.
Obviously the civilians are going to be freaked out, but the soldiers are ready to attack as soon as it happens. A lot of the civilians run away, but a significant amount stay and fight using whatever they can find.

Now the big thing about this campaign is that 4/5 of the party are actually spirits and there's one human. The party has a couple options, flee the city, or stay and fight.. if they choose to flee they might have to fight a couple soldiers, but I'm not making it at all difficult for them.. seeing as 2 can fly, and 1 can earth glide, the last one is also pretty small and stealthy. The human can literally walk out of the city.
The other option is they stay and fight.. the alignment based question comes from if they willingly attack the civilians.. like not even hold back.. would that cause an alignment shift?

[InvisibleBison]

To summarize the situation, the players are about to be attacked by a bunch of people who have been mislead into believing that the players are evil. Is that correct?

If the civilians are powerful and/or numerous enough to pose a significant threat to the PCs, then there's no alignment implication to the PCs defending themselves. Refraining from using lethal force would be a good act, as you're choosing to put yourself at risk in order to protect others. However, continuing to attack the civilians once they're no longer a threat - whether because they're running away, they've been incapacitated somehow, or there no longer are enough of them to pose a danger to the PCs - does seem like it would be evil to some extent.

If the civilians aren't able to actually harm the PCs, then killing them would be murder, not self-defense, and thus an evil action.

[Railak]

Yes that is correct

Yeah the civilians are lv 1 commoners.. the party is level 8, and as far as I can tell they've all got 20+ AC. If the party does attack the civilians it will pretty much just be a slaughter.. there will be a decent number of other spirits who are going to be fighting with them. I am hoping that the party decides to flee and not kill everyone.. but I'm not going to make them.

[Venger]

So you're asking if the party defending themselves against a giant mob of people committing hate crimes against them is Evil?

Of course it's not. They're within their rights to defend themselves with deadly force regardless of what level the mob is. If you judge the alignment of actions on a curve based on how powerful the bad guys are in relation to PCs, do one or more of your pcs have some kind of dbz scanner that tells them the power level of enemies? If not, then it doesn't seem reasonable to evaluate the alignment of their behavior on a metric they can't correct for.

[mashlagoo1982]

Neutral Routes: Flee the location being certain to harm as few individuals as necessary. Properly defending ones self from legitimate dangers without going into the overkill territory.

Good Route: Working to protect individuals ON BOTH SIDES that are being wronged. Working against the propaganda (assuming it is propaganda and not fact within this campaign) that all denizens of the spirit world are working to mount an attack against the kingdom. Remember, while the spirit world citizens are being wronged, the human citizens are also being manipulated. So, BOTH sides are victims. Whom the party should work with needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Stricker punishment is allowed for the propagators of the hate.

Evil Route: Picking a side and killing the opposition without consideration to circumstances. The exception to this maybe killing the leader whom caused the fall of the veil. Depending on their motives, it may or may not be necessary to kill them.

[Doctor Despair]

So you're asking if the party defending themselves against a giant mob of people committing hate crimes against them is Evil?

Of course it's not. They're within their rights to defend themselves with deadly force regardless of what level the mob is. If you judge the alignment of actions on a curve based on how powerful the bad guys are in relation to PCs, do one or more of your pcs have some kind of dbz scanner that tells them the power level of enemies? If not, then it doesn't seem reasonable to evaluate the alignment of their behavior on a metric they can't correct for.

Iirc sense motive has a mode to tell you how strong others are relative to you

[Venger]

Iirc sense motive has a mode to tell you how strong others are relative to you
It does, but it consumes a standard for each monster, is beatable by bluff, and even if successful will only put an opponent in two of the possible four categories. It isn't practical in the given circumstances.

[Remuko]

Neutral Routes: Flee the location being certain to harm as few individuals as necessary. Properly defending ones self from legitimate dangers without going into the overkill territory.

Good Route: Working to protect individuals ON BOTH SIDES that are being wronged. Working against the propaganda (assuming it is propaganda and not fact within this campaign) that all denizens of the spirit world are working to mount an attack against the kingdom. Remember, while the spirit world citizens are being wronged, the human citizens are also being manipulated. So, BOTH sides are victims. Whom the party should work with needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Stricker punishment is allowed for the propagators of the hate.

Evil Route: Picking a side and killing the opposition without consideration to circumstances. The exception to this maybe killing the leader whom caused the fall of the veil. Depending on their motives, it may or may not be necessary to kill them.

agree with this.