How would you deal with this situation??

[Grishnak]

In a session a couple of weeks ago my group fought and defeated a bugbear taking it hostage for info gathering. Then we then went into a major moral discussion on what to do.
I'll describe the group then what the outcome was and ask what you would have done in the same boat.
The group are mainly good aligned with only 1 possible neautral char in there. There was 2 minotaurs 1 n/g and myself c/g, a half celestial n/g, cleric n/g , wizard l/g and an npc ranger with racial hatred for the bugbear possibly neautral. The ranger wanted it dead the wizard was dead against it as it was unarmed. I suggested an arena fight on fair terms and the bugbear chose who to fight, it wouldn't fight. In the end with a lot of discussion and a detect evil cast (Slight evil) getting nowhere the ranger went to kill it, I stopped the ranger and released the bugbear to run back to it's base and warn the creatures there.
Now I've come across this situation before and had the same moral objections from different players. Now would you just say it's evil and kill it, release it as I did or something else?

 

[Teflon Billy]

....The ranger wanted it dead the wizard was dead against it as it was unarmed. I suggested an arena fight on fair terms and the bugbear chose who to fight, it wouldn't fight. In the end with a lot of discussion and a detect evil cast (Slight evil) getting nowhere the ranger went to kill it, I stopped the ranger and released the bugbear to run back to it's base and warn the creatures there....

As a player, this kind of behaviour from my fellow players drives me insane for a couple of reasons.

1) D&D has a non-interpretive Alignment system. You can very easily codify whether something is evil or not.

2) It makes Good-aligned players seem like the world's biggest saps. You were trying to kill this bugbear 20 min.s ago, why is his life so sacrosanct now? Alignment? He's evil.

3) You say yourself that your character "released him to run back to his base and warn the creatures there" This is rank idiocy in the pursuit of Alignment focus. Why on earth would someone do this? 20 mins ago this Bugbear's life wasn't worth 2 cents to you, now you are willing to risk the lives of your entire party? What changed? He's unarmed? What if he had attacked the party with claws and fangs prior to his capture? Would you have been allowed to attack him?

Good alignment shouldn't force people to behave in insane, counter-productive ways.

This is one of the primary reasons I did away with alignemnt in my campaign.

 

[Tabarnak Smokeblower]

I'll assume that the info-gathering was succesful.

The situation you have an evil prisoner, what to do with the prisoner. It would be logical, be the party members good or evil, to make sure that the creature, whatever is done with it, cannot pose a threat to the PC's. The most obvious course of action is to kill it.

Now, if the creature was released, and it went back to "warn the others", would the "others" be coming for the PC's? If yes, of course it'd be best if the creature couldn't go warn his buddies (ie kill it).

You can also intimidate/scare the bugbear into leaving the PC's alone, charm it, implant a suggestion, erase its memory, etc. The PC's have many options to preserve the bugbear's life and avoid having to kill it when it's unarmed and helpless.

I say it was a good act to let the bugbear go, but nevertheless an act that could endanger the PC's life.

TS

 

[Grishnak]

I never fought the creature as I was away from the group chasing after another creature and then check a building for any more hiding in there. I only let it go to get the situation over as quick possible to continue on with the adventure as it had taken about 20-30 mins of talking to get no where. In a gaming sense my char would have been happy for more creatures as he was a frenzied berserker who loved to fight (Sob sob he was killed last thurs)
Also our DM uses intimidate pretty much like scare so the creature would have fled back to it's allies anyway. As for spells they hadn't been learnt so were never brought up.
Thanks for the replies so far.

 

[Kilmore]

There's no way that letting the bugbear go could do anything but serve evil. Perhaps you could have tried to convert the bugbear to the righteous path?

 

[Mark]

I suggested an arena fight on fair terms and the bugbear chose who to fight, it wouldn't fight.

I like your DM...

 

[ThirdWizard]

Or you could turn it over to the authorities. If that isn't an option, kill it.

Once, I had some PCs flying over some mountains and spot some frost giants below. They quickly attacked and dispatched all but one of the giants who dropped to his knees and begged for his life. Being good, the PCs decided that this vile creature needed to die and killed him. Shortly thereafter, other frost giants found the dead ones surrounded by scorched earth and destructed landscape (the PCs were using big ol' spells). So, the war with the Frost Giants began and many innocent lives were lost.

Just goes to show you that alignment shouldn't dictate what you do. Sometimes its best to let the prisoner go, sometimes it is best to kill them. Don't let the little "alginment" line tell you what you have to do. Just don't start torturing the guy for fun if you're good...

 

[Petrosian]

The first thing i tell my player is "play your character and dont worry about your alignment. Alignment is DERIVED from character action and should NEVER DRIVE them."

In your circumstance the first thing i would do is turn to the Gm and ask "what is the custom? is there a common and accepted practice to take prisoners in this type of situation back in to serve judicial process or is it customary for frontier justice to be administered? What is accepted for this world?"

By doing so i am also asking him if he expects us to frequently stop our adventure and questo during run s after run to haul bugbear, ogre, goblin, orcs and every other manageable prisoner all the way back to civilization.

He should be able to define the world for us as well as the ethics and morals established by the churches, gods and political situations FOR HIS WORLD.

Then we would all know where our individual viewpoints would stand and what would possibly, and apparently did here, turn into a long detailed player-on-player argument and party disruption would be AVOIDED.

if you did indeed release the prisoner knowing he would warn his companions and thus endanger the party... if your CHARACTER DID THAT... why in the world would YOUR CHARACTER now expect to be allowed to continue to adventure with those other characters? Your character deliberately aided the enemy. Why wouldn't they kick you out and seek more agreeable allies?

The answer usually lies somewhere in the realm of "but i am a pc so i know i will get to play anyway even tho it might not be the same guy..."

On the other hand, if you were thinking that doing this might mean "i do not get to play because they will kick my character out and he wont be along to help them on this quest..." then you might be a little more concerned about getting along and making these comrades see you as a useful contributor.

That leads to the second thing i tell my players..."it is not MY responsibility to keep you in the party. if the others decide you are out or you get killed and they dont take time or effort to raise you, then do not expect that automatically you will be allowed to reload a new character and come back. You should feel that you, the player, is as much at risk of losing his opportunity to play as his character is at getting kicked out or removed."

This tends to curb the rather inflexible characters some people relish in playing down to every aggravating nuance.

and yes, i have once told a player he was not welcome back, would not get to reload after the fellow player characters had had enough and killed him.

I have only had to eject three players from my games in oh... 22 years of GMing. These rules work fine.

As a interesting aside, the character who was killed by PCs started off his road to disaster in almost the identical fashion... only it was a goblin prisoner, and even after i explained to them the frontier justice custom and how goblins were not treated as "people" by any of the locals (it was furyondy) and that killing captive goblins was Ok he still persisted and did indeed eventually betray them by deliberately warning a goblin patrol they were about to ambush.

Amazingly they let him stay for a while longer but eventually they decided they had had enough.

 

[Emiricol]

Petrosian, that is excellent advice.

In your circumstance the first thing i would do is turn to the Gm and ask "what is the custom? is there a common and accepted practice to take prisoners in this type of situation back in to serve judicial process or is it customary for frontier justice to be administered? What is accepted for this world?"

By doing so i am also asking him if he expects us to frequently stop our adventure and questo during run s after run to haul bugbear, ogre, goblin, orcs and every other manageable prisoner all the way back to civilization.

He should be able to define the world for us as well as the ethics and morals established by the churches, gods and political situations FOR HIS WORLD.

 

[ThirdWizard]

On further consideration.

One thing I forgot was to take into consideration how the PCs got the information from the prisoner. What I mean is, was it implied that if he answered their questions he would be released or did the PCs just interrogate him. If the PCs said something like "tell us where you're tribe is located and we'll let you live" then I would expect the more "oathy" PCs to let him go. Keeping their word would be lawful, breaking it chaotic. Not so much as good/evil.

Killing it might be the smart thing to do, and I would expect that from smart players, but I don't know if its the heroic thing to do, so it depends greatly on your campaign. I know my current character, Cal, would make quite the display of letting him go, laughing at any attempt he might make to go warn his bretheren (intimidate check). Even if he's going to go back to his tribe, then he's gonna bring the fear of Cal the Fatespinner and his Band with him. That might serve my purpose even better than a surprise attack would.

But, that's how Cal would handle it, and I'm not sure he's the most normal of characters. He did, afterall, non-chalantly admit to breaking into the house of a noble to question him in front of an (aghast) paladin... The noble died that night, but that's a whole different story...