Party Tactics and Rules III: Shock and Awe

[Pax]

As for the "evil act":

Sa'Keb is the leader of the group. He approves our courses of action, and he is the duly appointed representative of the organization we work for, called the Triad. We are also in military service for the Emperor, and Sa'Keb is our "squad leader". So, yes he has lawful authority.

The recovery of the casters is of great concern for the Triad and the Emperor. So much, that the Triad sent one of their highest representatives to prevent the local military commander (a Lord) from mobilizing the party out of the region. Considering we were CL 4 when this happened, we're still wondering why the heck we are so important... So Sa'Keb uses extreme prejudice to accomplish the mission.

The question came up because the DM was concerned, but he is open to comments.

Thanks again!

Andargor

Well, that sounds to ME like Sa'Keb was acting fully within his LN alignment, moral and ethcial code, etc, etc, etc. Basically, it's a case of the whole "To make an omlette, you have to break a few eggs" mentality. Very military, very "Duty, honor, country" ... IOW, very very LN, IMO.

Field commander of a military group, whose mission (recover of the casters) is obviously and clearly of great importance and significance to Command ... definitely a case of "Eggs, meet omlette-maker" ...

 

[shilsen]

You seem to be getting alot of good rules responces, so let me pipe up on the question of lawfulness.

Lawful neutral gives you alot of leeway to do otherwise evil things, but at the same time it is quite constraining on when you can do these things:

1) You need to have clear authority to act. You can't just be acting on your own initiative. If the character is not bound to the service of some larger organization, did the party at least agree to this course of action? Would/were some members of the party offended by the act (or would they be offended if they knew)?

2) Lawful systems of morality should not have many ambiguities. The character should know based on his moral code when murder is permissable. If the moral code doesn't cover the situation, it should be a source of great stress to the character - possibly paralyzing them into inaction. At the least, such a character should seek out higher authority to determine if he has acted 'wisely', and should be penitant of the moral authority disagrees.

3) The character has to see his action as in the service of some larger group - and he has to be right! Moreover, he cannot break the code even if breaking the the code appears to be in service of the larger group - this would be leaning away from lawfulness and toward something else.

4) The code can't be utterly ruthless (that would be lawful evil). For every case in which murder is permissable to perserve the interests of the group, there has to be balancing cases where it is clearly not permissable.

Nice description, except that this is 2e Lawful Neutral. In 3e, a LN character can follow "law, tradition or a personal code". You can be a complete individualist and LN, as long as you have a specific (non-evil) code that you follow consistently. In this case, I agree with the earlier posters that Sa'Keb's actions are LN and not evil.

 

[Celebrim]

shilsen: I slightly disagree with you on a couple of counts.

First, I don't think there was a big overhaul in the alignment system between 1st, 2nd, or 3rd edition. Things may have been clarified further or explained differently, but the core remains the same. There is nothing in what I said that is in expressed contridiction to 3rd edition. I don't expressly forbid the possibility that you are the highest authority, and I don't expressly forbid that the system of morality that you follow can be one of your own devising. These are however rare cases, and I stand by my explanation.

Saying that a person who is lawful can follow a 'personal code' , that is to say one not shared by the larger society or indeed any organization that the person is attached to, leads us into a bit of a circular definition. A 'personal code' is a lawful code, if and only if it serves to further the overall cause of lawfulness. That is to say, the only personal codes which are 'lawful' ones are ones that serve to place yourself in your proper, ordered, place in the world. It has to be a code which other lawful people recognize to be lawful, even if it is not there own and in the details they don't agree with it.

You can't simply say, "I'm an individualist, and I'm looking out for myself but because I follow a set of rules in my goal of individuality and self-engrandizement at the expense of all others I'm lawful."

But you could possibly say, "My honor is my own. Because my society has no honor I must show them through my actions the proper way to live ones life."

Note that if you believe that no person's path in life bears any similarity to any other person's path in life, then your philosophy isn't lawful either. Lawful is about emphasizing the connectedness of things, not thier uniqueness.

Also the code has to be non-good as well as non-evil.

I agree that the deed was lawful and not evil because Sa'Keb had in his own view the authority to act as he did, and did not do it out a personal desire to see the man dead, and presumably because Sa'Keb believes he has limits to his authority opposed upon him by his superiors and the code that they collectively follow. He wasn't thinking "I can kill because I want to... because I'm powerful... because I enjoy it... because I'm Sa'Keb...because this man p1$$ed me off... because I'm in a bad mode...etc."