Playing a Neutral Good character - Little help please?

[Silus]

So Pathfinder game I'm in, I'm rocking a Gray Paladin Legate (Neutral Good Paladin basically) and I'm having trouble getting a handle on playing Neutral Good. Or really any strict-code-of-conduct kind of good.

Scenerio: A character in a fantasy setting is in a country where there's institutionalized slavery, except it's only criminals, prisoners of war, and indentured servants that are slaves. Said character just happens to worship a deity that abhors slavery in all its forms. Stuff happens and they're jumped by bandits who are defeated fairly easily. Now the character had a conundrum. The bandits are disarmed and effectively defeated and at the mercy of the character (In this scenario, let us assume that the character is the Neutral Good Paladin).

Do they:
1) Turn the bandits in to the local law enforcement branch, knowing full well that they will turned into slaves for their crimes, and thus going against their religious tenants...
2) Execute the bandits on the spot and thus take the law into their own hands, as it is better to die free than live a slave...
3) Let the bandits go free, letting them know that should the character catch them doing this that they will not receive such mercy in the future, simply bypassing both issues presented in 1 and 2, but literally freeing bandits that had just tried to murder and rob the character?
4) [Another option not presented here]

[Scripten]

How far are your characters from the border of another polity? If you're close enough, perhaps you could turn the bandits in somewhere where they won't be enslaved.

And then return to this kingdom and topple the regime.

[Silus]

How far are your characters from the border of another polity? If you're close enough, perhaps you could turn the bandits in somewhere where they won't be enslaved.

And then return to this kingdom and topple the regime.

Largest land empire in the world unfortunately. We'd have to hop a boat to get to another nation with different laws.

[Koo Rehtorb]

2 or 3 depending on where you/your god falls on the whole execution in cold blood side of thing.

As Neutral Good is the nicest alignment, though, I suggest 4) find out why they're driven to banditry in the first place and try to fix things for them so they don't have to resort to it any more before releasing them. Most normal people don't choose a life of banditry if they have any other options.

[Drakevarg]

Would demanding they become your squires to seek redemption count as enslavement by your paladin's tenants? If they refuse you could always cut off their index fingers so they can't effectively wield a blade and then turn them loose.

[Silus]

Would demanding they become your squires to seek redemption count as enslavement by your paladin's tenants? If they refuse you could always cut off their index fingers so they can't effectively wield a blade and then turn them loose.

An interesting proposal but I could see that level of coercion to be shaky territory :/

[Darth Ultron]

In a general sense, any Good person will follow the Law. Even if they don't like the law.

Killing the bandits, or letting them go, really don't fit under good actions.

And really to ''kill every criminal so they won't be slaves'' is Evil.

You might ask what is the religions stand on this question:

Does the religion respect the laws of each country?
Does they religion advocate a mass free all the salves?
If they do what to free all the slaves, why is the character not doing that?
Does the religion all for any way you can to avoid putting someone in slavery?
Does the religion accept that once you turn over a person, they are out of your hands?
Does the religion expect every follower to save folks from slavery 24/7?
How would the religion answer the posts question?

[tensai_oni]

Okay, first of all let's get the obvious out of the way - there are no perfect solutions here and that's good because it's Interesting, but it also means some GMs may try to penalize you through alignment dings or even falling (or threat of falling "if this behaviour continues") for picking an imperfect solution. These GMs are bad and deserve a swift smack with the player's handbook.

Now, you need to ask yourself: what does your character abhor more? Slavery, even if it's lawful and frankly not that much harsher than longterm imprisonment with forced labour, or killing people who are at your mercy? If one of those is acceptable (not ideal, but acceptable) then you know what to do. If both aren't acceptable, that's when things get complicated.

If you have good social skills, you could try to persuade the bandits to change their ways. Let them free if they take an oath that forbids them from continuing banditry and other thieving acts - if you have magic or other abilities to enforce such a thing, all the better. Otherwise you may confiscate their weapons and hope you roll high on diplomacy.

Or, like Koo Rehtorb said, people usually do not become bandits because they want to. Some kind of circumstance forced them into doing this: treat the encounter as an adventure hook and get into investigating what that circumstance was, and if you can possibly improve it somehow. This of course is a massive time investment and derails plans of whatever you were doing, so do it only if your current task isn't time-critical and if other players at the table are okay with a distraction. But if they are? Go wild. You are a paladin, you are supposed to be a paragon for others to follow. What better way to exemplify that than fixing the world one injustice at a time?

[hamishspence]

The NG Alignment Handbooks:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...-Handbook-lt-3

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...o-Neutral-Good

might be of interest.

[Cespenar]

Hire the bandits to track down and catch more bandits for gold. Then do the same thing to the new bandits. Soon you'll have a proper sized company of ex-bandits. Move to a new area and repeat.

Oops, accidentally became a vigilante warlord.

[WindStruck]

I might think of it like this. A lot of times when we think of "evil fantasy slavery" or just "slavery" in general, we get images of children kidnapped from their homes, hobbits from the shire in chains, poor innocent natives abducted from their homeland and forced to work for a cruel owner...

The first thing wrong with that picture, however, is that the slaves presented here are criminals, prisoners of war, and indentured servants. That is a whole different ballpark from standard slavery.

The bandits should know the law of the land and the consequences of their actions. They jump someone, they lose, they get busted, they get their sentence. If they're lucky and not killed outright. Oh, but your character is a paladin, see, so you are just supposed to snap your fingers and make the world perfect? It's impossible.

In my opinion, you'd never have the time to reform them. They may be so old it's impossible. Killing them sounds like a bad idea, and you can't really drag them around everywhere as their warden, can you? That sounds pretty impracticable and probably as bad as the "slavery" option. Why not just turn them into the authorities? I mean, you commit a crime, you aren't put in that status forever, are you?

[Kaibis]

Do they:
1) Turn the bandits in to the local law enforcement branch, knowing full well that they will turned into slaves for their crimes, and thus going against their religious tenants...
2) Execute the bandits on the spot and thus take the law into their own hands, as it is better to die free than live a slave...
3) Let the bandits go free, letting them know that should the character catch them doing this that they will not receive such mercy in the future, simply bypassing both issues presented in 1 and 2, but literally freeing bandits that had just tried to murder and rob the character?
4) [Another option not presented here]

So my take is:
1) Lawful Neutral
2) Chaotic Neutral/Good
3) Neutral/Chaotic Good

[gijoemike]

May I present a 4th option, broken into parts A and B?


A) Follow through with the actions of solution #1. Do the lawful expected thing of turn them over to the local authorities, the whole time explaining what due process is in this country. Making sure the bandits are aware of how they will live a life of slavery and labor (Use that diplomacy skill). During this time learn why they had to risk their very freedom to be bandits.

B) Go to the slave market and BUY the same bandits as slaves using the very gold they were trying to steal from you. Immediately, free them all and explain that the true punishment is the realization (loss of hope) that their freedom would be taken from them and that you really do not want to add to the ranks of slaves but were put in quite a conundrum because of their rampant stupidity.


This is not the same as just freeing the slaves as no real punishment is brought against them in option 3. They already understand the risks they are taking. This is a true legal punishment in the eyes of the state but still follows the tenants of the pally's religion that slavery is abhorrent. Then take leadership and the bandit leader follows you as your own personal rogue having changed his ways.

Now this option is what I would expect a LG pally to do. You are just neutral so you could get away with maybe only freeing one of the bandits in this fashion.