All the enemies are dead except the boss who says he surrenders, what do you do?

[mehs]

I am pointing out that the underlying system does not provide one of the prime incentives present in historical societies for good characters to accept surrenders (namely, taking the defeated soldiers back as slaves).

Without this underlying motivation, it would require some careful world-building for the very *concept* of surrender to be present, at least between good-aligned nations.

Without that world-building, then "good" should, by definition and human psychology, be a very warped stance compared to most modern morality (like it already is in several other places).

It's just another dysfunction you notice when you stop mistaking D&D alignments for anything more than team jerseys with legalistic entry requirements.

But that is just a world-building aside to the main point, which is that the choice to have already killed all the (likely less culpable) minions says something important about our mindset in this mission - namely, that we have *already* judged them irredeemable.

To act otherwise - to kill the redeemable as unnecessarily as it would generally be in 3e - is a rather warped take on good.

In feudal Europe, taking prisoners was pretty common as knights and other high ranking military officers represented a vast investment of resources. Taking prisoners allowed you to ransom them back, allowing you to gain a profit as well as bleeding the enemy of resources.

In other societies, the defeated asking to reclaim the bodies of the dead or the prisoners was an admittance that the winner's owned the battlefield and have of course won.

In societies where the rank and file are not particularly ideologized, it is pretty simple to recruit captured soldiers into your own ranks.

Then there is the possibility of interrogating/truth magic'ing military and political intelligence.

There is the more cynical reason that enemy soldiers that know they will just be slaughtered will fight longer than if in the case where they can surrender or be allowed to retreat..

I mean, god man, there is so many reasons to accept surrender other than "enslave everyone". Not to mention that unless all wars between good aligned nations end with one side totally genocided, the idea of surrender has to exist. I would argue that you are being purposefully close minded to maintain such a position as that good people dont accept surrender.

This is all aside that you are trying to force the necessity for good aligned people to need to a reason to not kill people, when it should be the other way around, that good people should need a reason to kill people. In the outlined scenario, the reason to kill the minions is that they are actively trying to kill you and that you can't safely subdue them. The reasoning for not killing the surrendering leader is then a rather obvious: He is not trying to actively kill you.