anyone ever campaign a truly GOOD party?

[Vegan Squirrel]

In my experience, good parties are definitely the norm. Even the occasional chaotic, thievy, trouble-starting character usually has a heart of gold that just gets distracted sometimes by shinies. Given a choice between helping someone in trouble or seeking a fortune, every group I've played with would choose the former, and more often than not they turn down any reward from anyone less well-off than an aristocrat.

Obviously, everyone's gaming circle plays their own style, but it still amazes me how extremely different some of our experiences have been.

[Naanomi]

Forgotten Realms' (formerly Greyhawk's in prior editions) assumptions, which are among the worst, are presented as the defaults. Shown off in the core books.

To be fair, sentient but universally evil beings are a big part of most of the examples that we draw upon for Fantasy Fiction (especially high fantasy, but not exclusively).

Tolkien didn't like to call his orcs 'irredeemable' (it offended his personal convictions), but they were as good as such in every possible way. Conan wasn't out there reasoning with the serpent people outside of blatant deception. There wasn't a secretly friendly White Walker just waiting to be given a chance. Harry Potter made a big deal out of overcoming the prejudices against centaurs and giants and giant spiders; but no one was clamoring for him to be a real hero and parlay with the dementors. While no one is a completely good guy in Azeroth, the Great Dark and its direct servants are undeniably bad guys. Hyrule has a few friendly demons, but no one will fault you for killing the kin of Demise on sight (not even the demons you can redeem). Aslan isn't framed as immoral in his opposition to Tash and his minions (unfortunate parallels to the real world aside). You can count the number of sympathetic Darkspawn on Thedas on one finger.

[Tanarii]

To rectify, slow leveling up way the Hell down, have equipment (especially magic items) be the main way for PC's to become more powerful, give little XP (maybe none) for combat, to gain a level PC's have to spend enough gold at the tavern and carouse

You need to find someone to run 05R's Into the Unknown for you.

Or run it yourself, and teach dese young whippersnappers what it's all about!

Goodman Games even helpfully converted B1/B2 into a 5e module for ya. And B4. And X1.

[kingcheesepants]

I'm sorry to hear that you've only been playing hack and slash games when it sounds like you'd be interested in a bit more RP heavy fare that actually lets you make some more interesting decisions and be a hero. As for me I've never actually been in a party or seen a real life party that would attack anything on sight just for being a goblin or Yuan-ti or whatever. There is always an attempt to talk to them, to find out their motivations and to come to a non violent solution if possible. Sometimes this is taken to extremes when the DM really just wanted to throw a random encounter or a short combat to fill in some time or whatever. I remember one time when we were tasked with helping some guards to capture some bandits that had been plaguing the area and the party was split on whether or not to do so because we weren't sure why the bandits were attacking, what would happen to them after being captured and if these guards were actually trustworthy, however we also didn't want to let people get hurt by the bandits and helping them seemed important too. After discussing this (for way too long) the DM finally had the guard say oh we also need help protecting some shepherds from some wild animals, don't worry about the bandits cause on second thought that's our job anyways. Anyways long story short I've certainly played games where the players were all good and trying to help people and limit the amount of violence and not be murder hobos. If you're more interested in that you should bring it up during session 0. Mindless violence can be fun but I find the more nuanced and heroic campaigns to be much more satisfying and maybe you will too.

[Droppeddead]

If it came to that, I would abandon the party with that PC, and either find a new game with what I perceive to be more mature players, or roll up a new character that is either chaotic or lawful neutral, or even evil if appropriate (I played an evil Dark Sun campaign once and it was quite fun).

So basically what you are saying is that if people (both PCs and players) don't do what you want you'll not only consider them "immature", you will also threaten to leave the group?

[Tanarii]

Mindless violence can be fun but I find the more nuanced and heroic campaigns to be much more satisfying and maybe you will too.

Heroic campaigns are pretty infamous for their mindless violence. Kill these bad guys! Destroy those bad guys! All bad guys, all da time! I mean, if you grew up on Star Trek in the 70s or A-team in the 80s, you might be excused for thinking knocking out the bad guys is what "good" guys do.

Also, refusing to help with a bandit problem isn't heroic.

[da newt]

For those that answer that they do play GOOD PCs as part of a GOOD party - do you capture your adversaries and turn them over to the authorities for a fair trail and possible incarceration/rehabilitation, or do you act as judge/jury/executioner and default to just KILLING things because it's simpler?

Do your campaigns involve defending your home or are they like every campaign I've ever encountered where your party goes out of their way to seek out conflict, combat, and treasure?




BTW - this was not intended as any sort of 'X species are all bad guys' focused discussion, but much more a 'you claim you are the good guys, but your solution to most problems is "we kill it" - you do realize how hypocritical that is, right?'


I especially find the posts/responses from our more rigid posters interesting ...

[Tanarii]

For those that answer that they do play GOOD PCs as part of a GOOD party - do you capture your adversaries and turn them over to the authorities for a fair trail and possible incarceration/rehabilitation, or do you act as judge/jury/executioner and default to just KILLING things because it's simpler?

Do your campaigns involve defending your home or are they like every campaign I've ever encountered where your party goes out of their way to seek out conflict, combat, and treasure?

false dilemmas. But the former (in each case) is not required to be a good alignment.

You are definitely bringing in your own personal interpretations of what's required to be good, and trying to generalize them.

I mean, if by GOOD you mean super extreme edge of what is typically considered good alignment ... sure. And even then the former action in both examples/questions you're giving can do more harm than GOOD.

Edit: "We kill it" is in fact an appropriately heroic good guy response ... to evil guys. It's not hypocritical at all.

[da newt]

"You are definitely bringing in your own personal interpretations of what's required to be good"

Absolutely true of my comments and all comments in this thread.

[Mork]

I've been struggling with this as a player and as a DM. I want to play good charachters, however it also really easy to reduce DND to: the game about killing monsters.
For me as a player, this often comes down to playing charachters with a very black and white feeling or morallity so killing enemies is justified in their mind, so I can continue playing the game. Enemies, are for me, obstacles to finishing quests, not the main thing itself.

the next campagin I'm going to Dm I want to make it activily easier to play a good characther by having any not inherent evil thing not fight to the death. Goblins and orcs will surrender if they are losing. Furthermore I'm going to assume that every attack from the PC's is intended to be non-lethal, unless otherwise noted (in addition to giving enemies death saving throws so you don't immediatly die of a fireball unless you have very little hp).
In addition there will be plenty of undead/demons/devils etc, things that you can fight, kill, and don't feel bad about.
I hope that making it easier to not be a murderhobo, and for the charachters themselves to have some depth of morallity.

[Conradine]

Only once.

Our characters were naive, well meaning and talented teenagers who adventured in order to save their town.


----

I've been struggling with this as a player and as a DM. I want to play good charachters, however it also really easy to reduce DND to: the game about killing monsters.

I'm one of the few person who thinks at himself as Evil and is ok with it. But I like playing pragmatical evil villains. I don't like murderhoboes ( although they're still better than paladins ).

[Vegan Squirrel]

For those that answer that they do play GOOD PCs as part of a GOOD party - do you capture your adversaries and turn them over to the authorities for a fair trail and possible incarceration/rehabilitation, or do you act as judge/jury/executioner and default to just KILLING things because it's simpler?

I'd say the default is not to fight to the death unless the bad guys won't stop fighting. As an example, my current party often offers to recruit the bad guys into their organization to turn their lives around and make up for past misdeeds. Turning over to the authorities sometimes happens, but more often they just let them go after they agree to stop doing whatever evil they were doing (and my current party's organization grants them some level of authority).

Do your campaigns involve defending your home or are they like every campaign I've ever encountered where your party goes out of their way to seek out conflict, combat, and treasure?

They usually involve travel, which in practice means defending other people's homes. The one I'm running now started as a city-based campaign, but they decided to investigate a string of mystical occurrences which has taken them on a journey across the continent. I've never had a group go out of their way to seek treasure, though. I do have such a campaign in mind, but I'll need to stress that backstories involve the PCs being in it for treasure or I'll have no way to motivate the players to actually look for the treasure. All the PCs I've played or played with have been more concerned with helping people and solving problems than with getting into fights or seeking treasure.

BTW - this was not intended as any sort of 'X species are all bad guys' focused discussion, but much more a 'you claim you are the good guys, but your solution to most problems is "we kill it" - you do realize how hypocritical that is, right?'

"We kill it" is usually the last resort, and more often than not because the other side attacked first and wouldn't relent. If they choose to surrender or flee, those are typically acceptable to the party.

They recently learned that forces of goblins have been attacking dwarven outposts and killing everyone. They've set out to mediate the dispute and attempt to resolve it peacefully.

Oh, and if the final blow is melee (and therefore can be non-lethal), it's always non-lethal.

[Amnestic]

For those that answer that they do play GOOD PCs as part of a GOOD party - do you capture your adversaries and turn them over to the authorities for a fair trail and possible incarceration/rehabilitation, or do you act as judge/jury/executioner and default to just KILLING things because it's simpler?

There's an inherent, not necessarily unreasonable, assumption in this question that you can't kill outside the law and be 'good'.

A proper discussion of those assumptions will likely go outside the scope of the thread and/or forum rules, but it's an assumption that could be reasonably interrogated both in game and outside of it.

Do your campaigns involve defending your home or are they like every campaign I've ever encountered where your party goes out of their way to seek out conflict, combat, and treasure?

Red Hand of Doom, one of the more critically acclaimed and popular published modules in D&D's lifespan, is based around defeating a huge army that's invading for spoilery but definitely Evil reasons. It is an intensely combat focused campaign as written with little in the way of political intrigue, and playing it "straight" will be pretty much entirely Good, Heroic acts since you're guarding an otherwise innocent nation against a hostile invasion force whose motives are decidedly not-Good.

Outside of random encounters you're pretty much just fighting different forces in the invading army. Why you're there in the first place will differ from group to group (the module offers some suggestions) but the campaign is structured around that nation defense.

[Naanomi]

There's an inherent, not necessarily unreasonable, assumption in this question that you can't kill outside the law and be 'good'.

Although one might suggest that is more a factor of the Law/Chaos Axis than the Good/Evil one... A Chaotic-Good Robinhood type taking down a cruel king would be explicitly acting outside of the law

[KorvinStarmast]

Thinking about alignment, has anyone ever played a campaign where all of the party members were truly GOOD aligned and always acted accordingly?

Yes.

I mean this is a game entirely centered around hunting and killing sentient creatures and then taking all of their valuables -

no it isn't, but a lot of video games are.

The loot thing has a lot to do with How the DM sets up the world.

If it is set up as a video game, then it's "kill them and take their shoes"
but
if the DM sets it up as a world, like good Dms do, then you have people whose property you recover, monsters such as trolls to defeat, and so on. The Point Is To Slay Monsters to keep a given area safe, Not To Rob People. I still build adventures like that. What is a monster is DM dependent.

I disagree with some of the core assumptions you have embedded in this question, and I am seeing this OP as an "argue about alignment" kind of prompt so I may need to bow out.

Dragging the "you are only good if this criteria is met" bogeyman is, IME, a load of hogwash.

By the way: when I played D&D with my kids with me as DM, the parties were ALWAYS good trying to defeat monsters and various evil things that were a threat to normal people who could not defeat the werewolf, the troll, the bandits, the raiding gnoll packs, etc.

As to turning people over to the authorities: what authorities?

The D&D adventure traditionally has been "out in the wilds" or in a place where there is no law. See Keep on the Borderlands as an example. I think you may be tossing a 20th century anachronism into a medieval/feudal heroic fantasy frame. The picture looks terrible on that wall over there ... and most of the bandits will sell their lives dearly since they know that being in prison in medieval setting means starving to death in a hole unless someone comes to feed them.

They'll fight to the death in most cases.

My current party in Salt Marsh has captured a number of slavers and pirates and bandits. About half of those were hanged within a week by the local crown representative.

This isn't the 20th century filled with appeals courts; this is the local judge/lord/noble/castellan duly authorized by the Crown to adminster the King's Justice.

Once again, when D&D went from Law/Neutral/Chaos to the two axis they (IMO) made a mistake. We did just fine with the original 3.

[Gtdead]

For those that answer that they do play GOOD PCs as part of a GOOD party - do you capture your adversaries and turn them over to the authorities for a fair trail and possible incarceration/rehabilitation, or do you act as judge/jury/executioner and default to just KILLING things because it's simpler?

I always try to parley with both my good and neutral characters even when attacked unprovoked by sentient enemies. The only reason I won't is if I know for fact that the enemy isn't interested in that. When the battle is in my favor, I try to capture prisoners instead of executing. If not, the party's survival comes first and I don't want to be subject to cheap shots. I don't like Lawful Naive.

Do your campaigns involve defending your home or are they like every campaign I've ever encountered where your party goes out of their way to seek out conflict, combat, and treasure?

A mix, in most of the campaigns I've played, the party had a "nationality" and the nation was under attack so we are/become official agents defending our home in a sense. Party members have personal quests that they want to pursue, so sometimes they will help out of necessity (to progress their personal quest).

I've also played in more murderhobo'ish campaigns, the kind that starts in a tavern because the local lord has a quest and a reward. I haven't found any meaningful difference between the two in how I roleplay my values to be honest. It's very rare that the quest giver will try to deceive us or that those who we are supposed to kill aren't the actual aggressors. Pretty much all the campaigns I've played follow the high fantasy tropes with very binary adversaries. The orcs that attack everything on sight without some demand, the cult that wants to revive an ancient evil that will destroy everything in it's wake, etc.

I try to have a reason that pretty much forces me to partake in such activities. For example, I'm searching for my kidnapped sibling or I'm trying to avenge my father/spouse and my reward is information, or I am a Cleric who follows the will of his God and wouldn't be there otherwise.

I've actually seen more nuance and intrigue in videogames than all my DnD campaigns combined. The most nuanced campaign I've ever played had us play as deputies and uproot some cultists that were hidden among the populace. I actually asked the forum about the alignment of my character, which was supposed to be Lawful Neutral at the time. Some people said that I could be evil because those civilians could be the good guys and the lord could have been the evil guy, but after discussing it with the DM, he told me that he was very close to giving me an alignment shock, LN -> LG.

[noob]

I always try to parley with both my good and neutral characters even when attacked unprovoked by sentient enemies. The only reason I won't is if I know for fact that the enemy isn't interested in that. When the battle is in my favor, I try to capture prisoners instead of executing. If not, the party's survival comes first and I don't want to be subject to cheap shots. I don't like Lawful Naive.



A mix, in most of the campaigns I've played, the party had a "nationality" and the nation was under attack so we are/become official agents defending our home in a sense. Party members have personal quests that they want to pursue, so sometimes they will help out of necessity (to progress their personal quest).

I've also played in more murderhobo'ish campaigns, the kind that starts in a tavern because the local lord has a quest and a reward. I haven't found any meaningful difference between the two in how I roleplay my values to be honest. It's very rare that the quest giver will try to deceive us or that those who we are supposed to kill aren't the actual aggressors. Pretty much all the campaigns I've played follow the high fantasy tropes with very binary adversaries. The orcs that attack everything on sight without some demand, the cult that wants to revive an ancient evil that will destroy everything in it's wake, etc.

I try to have a reason that pretty much forces me to partake in such activities. For example, I'm searching for my kidnapped sibling or I'm trying to avenge my father/spouse and my reward is information, or I am a Cleric who follows the will of his God and wouldn't be there otherwise.

I've actually seen more nuance and intrigue in videogames than all my DnD campaigns combined. The most nuanced campaign I've ever played had us play as deputies and uproot some cultists that were hidden among the populace. I actually asked the forum about the alignment of my character, which was supposed to be Lawful Neutral at the time. Some people said that I could be evil because those civilians could be the good guys and the lord could have been the evil guy, but after discussing it with the DM, he told me that he was very close to giving me an alignment shock, LN -> LG.

You did not have a gm trying to make your life and his life complicated.
But dnd have the huge problem of making the game system enough complicated on its own for the gm to have an harder time coming with plot because you do not just need the plot you also need to set dcs on the go, you need to decide which stat blocks to use rather than just thinking "an dwarf with polearm that is hard to beat", you also need to think how to fit 8+ encounters to not handicap short rest classes, you need to set up logistics so that you can fit 1 hour rests but not 8 hour rests(which is basically an hard challenge on its own) and then you figure out that none of that fits with your plot and then you hurriedly grab random stats from the mm as the adventurers face monsters and discover your whole plot is wasted because you need for balance to let the adventurers take a short rest right after the villain said "once the moon reach its highest position I will call a detective" and was actually lying and already did send his minion to call a detective to investigate on a previous crime scene the adventurers were involved and due to that now your adventurers will go to prison because they took a short rest due to the lying villain.(and them going to prison will let the villain ample time to get his daughter to marry the king of a rival kingdom because he got authorisation from his king because the adventurers could not indicate to the king that the villain had a plan to avoid being killed by vengeful ghosts from the kingdom by marrying his daughter and that if he does not gets killed by the vengeful ghosts they will instead kill another villain that was building a bridge toward hell to invade it and become a duke of hell and due to that it will cause an invasion... insert arbitrary amount of interactions between the plot elements)

[Mellack]

I am not sure what campaign world the OP is playing in, but few I have ever seen have fair trials and prison terms. Usually the law is determined by a lord of some kind, and justice doesn't include prison. Theft might mean losing a hand or loss of your goods. Minor crimes might mean you are placed in the stocks for a day or two. Serious crimes mean death.
Think like Game of Thrones. Ned found a deserter. That man was killed on the spot. That is the kind of law most areas have.
Then you add in the practical problems of the kind of creatures most adventurers face. How do you think a town is going to imprison a troll or harpy?

[Naanomi]

Capture VS kill is often up to the GM as much as the players... if enemies never surrender, if enemies don’t go into death saves like PCs to, if players are punished by treacherous prisoners during transport every time... then it just becomes unfeasible to pull off (especially when greater threats loom)

[noob]

Capture VS kill is often up to the GM as much as the players... if enemies never surrender, if enemies don’t go into death saves like PCs to, if players are punished by treacherous prisoners during transport every time... then it just becomes unfeasible to pull off (especially when greater threats loom)

Unless you are lucky and provided with powerful non lethal tools.
Maybe if the gm gives the fighter a merciful sword that on dealing the finishing blow instead of killing stuns for an hour or some other homebrew like that.

[PhoenixPhyre]

My current party has tried to take prisoners where it was even theoretically practical. Got a couple who are out on parole currently (with oversight from the town) and one who got murdered by moles in the town they're currently working for. Of course they did cripple the first two--one permanently as a tradeoff for letting them not kill him with a crossbow bolt to the back as he fled so now he's paralyzed from the waist down unless/until he gets a regeneration (not likely, as it's a low-magic area). The other got a shield edge to the kneecap after he'd surrendered. So until that mends, he's on crutches. So I can't exactly say they're all paragons of good.

Their current mini-arc hasn't left them much opportunity to take prisoners--crazy demonically-twisted fish-people-things and fish don't exactly do surrender well.

[2D8HP]

You need to find someone to run 05R's Into the Unknown for you.

Or run it yourself, and teach dese young whippersnappers what it's all about!

Goodman Games even helpfully converted B1/B2 into a 5e module for ya. And B4. And X1.

Oh! I already own the B1/B2 and the X1 conversions (hopefully the originals are still at my Mom's house, "Into the Unknown" I used a lot, but sadly not "Keep" and "Isle" despite owning them), but not B4, I don't even think I owned it "back in the day".

It must be mine!

(Thanks for the tip!)

[...]Once again, when D&D went from Law/Neutral/Chaos to the two axis they (IMO) made a mistake. We did just fine with the original 3.

+1 to the rest of your post (as is often), but as an aside: it longed seemed to me that the original rules hinted at a good "Church of Law" and an evil "Cult of Chaos" in opposition Anderson/early Moorcock style, never saw that used as a background, but seems like it could work well.

[tokek]

Although one might suggest that is more a factor of the Law/Chaos Axis than the Good/Evil one... A Chaotic-Good Robinhood type taking down a cruel king would be explicitly acting outside of the law

We could also argue that it is only relevant when actually in a well ordered civilisation. Out on the lawless frontiers there is no law to hand anyone over to. Frontier justice is the only justice possible. Adventurers often venture far beyond the reach of any legitimate law - or at least any law that any good aligned person would consider legitimate.

[KorvinStarmast]

Their current mini-arc hasn't left them much opportunity to take prisoners--crazy demonically-twisted fish-people-things and fish don't exactly do surrender well.

Attempts to negotiate with a giant shark tend to have little success. Sharks are neither good nor evil, but they do tend towards alignment = hungry
We humanoids look something like either kibbles or bits for sharks.

We could also argue that it is only relevant when actually in a well ordered civilisation. Out on the lawless frontiers there is no law to hand anyone over to. Frontier justice is the only justice possible. Adventurers often venture far beyond the reach of any legitimate law - or at least any law that any good aligned person would consider legitimate.

Kind of what I was getting at, but you said it better. Thx.

[Gtdead]

You did not have a gm trying to make your life and his life complicated.
But dnd have the huge problem of making the game system enough complicated on its own for the gm to have an harder time coming with plot because you do not just need the plot you also need to set dcs on the go, you need to decide which stat blocks to use rather than just thinking "an dwarf with polearm that is hard to beat", you also need to think how to fit 8+ encounters to not handicap short rest classes, you need to set up logistics so that you can fit 1 hour rests but not 8 hour rests(which is basically an hard challenge on its own) and then you figure out that none of that fits with your plot and then you hurriedly grab random stats from the mm as the adventurers face monsters and discover your whole plot is wasted because you need for balance to let the adventurers take a short rest right after the villain said "once the moon reach its highest position I will call a detective" and was actually lying and already did send his minion to call a detective to investigate on a previous crime scene the adventurers were involved and due to that now your adventurers will go to prison because they took a short rest due to the lying villain.(and them going to prison will let the villain ample time to get his daughter to marry the king of a rival kingdom because he got authorisation from his king because the adventurers could not indicate to the king that the villain had a plan to avoid being killed by vengeful ghosts from the kingdom by marrying his daughter and that if he does not gets killed by the vengeful ghosts they will instead kill another villain that was building a bridge toward hell to invade it and become a duke of hell and due to that it will cause an invasion... insert arbitrary amount of interactions between the plot elements)

I understand the complexities of running a tight plot and failing to make ends meet with the logistics budget. However this doesn't necessarily affect how the players will roleplay their values. The worst thing that can happen to a good character as far as values are concerned is to be deceived by the quest giver and either kill innocents or help the evil villain. Even this eventuality doesn't change the alignment, because the good person will try to atone and make things right. Now of course, the "killing the innocent" has some weight in the sense that a good person isn't quick to draw blood but it really depends on the setting. A good deputy that is following orders to capture or kill a what appears to be "murderer" may find himself in a situation where his quarry has taken a hostage. The good deputy that is deceived at this point, may think that the hostage is about to die, so in his effort to save one innocent, he may kill another that in his desperation, took a hostage only to buy some time and the hostage was never in any danger to begin with. All the guy had to do was to communicate better.

I've actually been in a scenario where I thought that a "good" guy leading a bunch of militia with pitchforks seemed to be a villain. I tried to parley but he was very hostile towards the party and the only reason I didn't attack him was that the DM asked for a group insight check. We got a 7, which didn't tell us much but I gamed the insight check as a "sixth sense" and sheathed my sword, told the guy to stop causing trouble cause next time I will kill him and his band of idiots, and left (I wasn't a good character). Later at the end of the session the DM told me that he was relieved that we didn't attack cause this guy is important to the party down the line and I answered that he really should make it more obvious. This guy was threatening us and was completely unreasonable. We didn't even threaten him, we just asked who he is and he called us filth that deserve to die.

Even in your complex scenario it's fairly easy to roleplay values (assuming that the players care about it). The only time when alignment will come into play is when the guards will try to arrest you. You have some options. You either kill the guards (evil), you try to flee (still good if you are already good) or surrender and try to explain yourself (good). Fleeing from the deceived authorities isn't evil or neutral. You will try to clear your name later but right now you are on a mission and you may or may not know the full stakes, but you are going to investigate anyway otherwise there isn't really any point to continue this story. The DM wrote himself into a corner.

[MaxWilson]

I do not draw from Neitzche, who is a Romantic whereas I am a Rational. I respect some of his pithy sayings and realizations, but I view his overall philosophy as incoherent and dangerous, appealing the lowest instincts of humanity, ala Rousseau. I come from the tradition of Locke and Mises.

Nietzche's palpable frustration with women as a lifelong bachelor makes me laugh. My favorite Nietzsche quote:

"Ah, women! They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."

[Naanomi]

Unless you are lucky and provided with powerful non lethal tools.
Maybe if the gm gives the fighter a merciful sword that on dealing the finishing blow instead of killing stuns for an hour or some other homebrew like that.

Just as much in the DM’s hands as whether enemies surrender

[MaxWilson]

Your statement pretty clearly indicated that you use an implied threat to control the other party members. Don't see another way to read that.

I see multiple ways to read that. People tend to irrationally venerate power, even power that isn't threatening them. Why else do celebrities involve themselves in public causes? Power carries status, and in a game where you rely on power to protect you, it carries even more status. It does not shock me that a character proposing to do something he knows is wrong ("I guess we could kill the widow and animate her as a skeleton archer") would back down ion being confronted, especially by a confident, high-status (powerful) individual firmly saying "we're not going to do that", EVEN IF both players are 100% certain that the DM will not permit PvP use of force.

So, it could be read as a statement about force, or more charitably read as a statement about human psychology. See also Solomon Asch's experiments on conformity.

[Naanomi]

We could also argue that it is only relevant when actually in a well ordered civilisation. Out on the lawless frontiers there is no law to hand anyone over to. Frontier justice is the only justice possible. Adventurers often venture far beyond the reach of any legitimate law - or at least any law that any good aligned person would consider legitimate.

A well ordered and Good/Just civilization even... turning prisoners over to corrupt courts or cruel punishments is not a good act

[PhoenixPhyre]

Attempts to negotiate with a giant shark tend to have little success. Sharks are neither good nor evil, but they do tend towards alignment = hungry
We humanoids look something like either kibbles or bits for sharks.

Although the paladin's default response code goes like

if (target is beast or target.hasAttribute(cute)) { tryTame(target) } 
elif (target.hasAttribute(kneecaps)) { tryBashKneecaps(target)}
else  { trySmite(target) }

so he definitely tried to tame that shark.