Who was right

[Moff_Tarkin]

As far as my liquor store robbery analogy goes. I do remember one case were a guy set up a robbery and got his friend to come along. During the robbery a gunfight broke out between the robbers and the clerk. The clerk shot the one guy, not the guy who planned and started the robbery but the one he brought along. The other guy was actually charged and found guilty of the murder of his friend due to the fact that his actions (doing the whole liquor store robbery) directly resulted in his friend getting killed.

When you’re an evil and unlawful person, and bad stuff happens has a direct result of you evil and unlawful deeds, then you are responsible.

 

[Kalis]

No court in the civilized world would agree with you. You broke into the so-called demon cult's headquarters/office without a warrant, with no legal authority and killed everybody in there. During this time, one of the occupants, while trying to defend his own life, broke your spiffy shield, so he owes you money? Even though he was killed? or beaten unconscious?

Also, after killing this alleged demon cult your party just split all items of value on the premises rather than pass it to the cultist's legal heirs.

Mercenaries/Adventurers aren't owed money by their group or the targets just because your weapon or armor gets damaged on the mission. Weapon maintenance is your own concern. You make so much money, replacing it is supposed to come out of your own cut.

The real person at fault is you for breaking into the guy's place and attacking him without the skill to keep your shield safe.

The liquor store analogy is flawed. You were the robber of the liquor store(you broke into their house/hq/office with no legal authority and killed them all). It is like the robber trying to claim the store owner owes him money because the owner damaged his pack and car while the guy was driving away.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

The bad guy does owe me. It is not just combatants doing their job. He instigated this fight by wiping out our home village with an army of undead. Just like a guy who robs a liquor store would be responsible to for any property damage or injury during the course of the crime he instigated, the guy who sundered my shield is likewise responsible.

So he owes me 25,000 gold for breaking my shield. That means that 25,000 gold that he is holding in his lair is not his. It belongs to me. The party is throwing my gold into the pile with the other treasure and dividing it all up.

I don’t get the problem. If he owed me 25,000 gold isn’t that just like saying 25,000 of his gold is actually mine.

What part are you all disagreeing with? Are you saying that he doesn’t owe me or that just because he owes me 25,000 gold doesn’t mean that 25,000 of the gold on him is rightfully mine. I would like to hear a better defense for both those arguments.

Yes. We are saying that he doesn't owe you. We are also saying that just because someone owes you money does not me that their money is yours.

Your liquor store assertion (much like your initial assertion) is flawed. Here's what it's actually like:

A man walks into the apartment building that you live in. He proceeds to burn it to the ground. You and your fellow former apartment dwellers decide to form a band of vigilante bounty hunter types to get revenge. While in a climactic encounter with the afore mentioned arsonist, he breaks your $500 pair of Oakley sunglasses. You then kill him. You and your vigilante buddies rummage through the pockets of the arsonist and his buddies and find a total of $2000 and an old iPod. The party decides to sell the iPod and divide the spoils evenly. You, however, want your Oakleys replaced, so you tell them they should let you take $500 off the top and then equally split the rest.

-TRRW

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

People keep saying that he was defending his life and had a right to break my shield. I would love to see someone have a shootout with the cops and claim he had to kill those cops because they were trying to shoot him.

I was wrong to break into the bad guys hideout? Are DEA agents wrong to busting into the mansion of a Columbian drug lord to arrest him? And Is that drug lord justified in shooting the people who are breaking into his home.

You work for the ACLU don’t you?

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

I’ll try to beat you rouges at your own game.

The party is its own little communist utopia where everything is split and shared evenly. Every character and his items are part of the community.

The loot from a battle is the net profit gained from that battle. The party lost a 25,000 gold shield and made 90,000 gold from the battle. The loot, the net profit, what the party splits, is 65,000. The other 25,000 goes to replace the “party’s” +5 sheild.

The end result is the same as what I have been arguing.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

People keep saying that he was defending his life and had a right to break my shield. I would love to see someone have a shootout with the cops and claim he had to kill those cops because they were trying to shoot him.

I was wrong to break into the bad guys hideout? Are DEA agents wrong to busting into the mansion of a Columbian drug lord to arrest him? And Is that drug lord justified in shooting the people who are breaking into his home.

You work for the ACLU don’t you?

A Paladin is more than just a mindless crusader for Good. There is also the side of them that is focused on Law.

And, in most places, breaking into a place, even the hideout of an evil cult, is against the law. Killing them could very well be, too. In a place that would hold a court over damages from losing a shield, its likely that breaking/entering and then murder would also be a crime.

There really isn't any counterpart in the real world to this situation.

 

[Kalis]

People keep saying that he was defending his life and had a right to break my shield. I would love to see someone have a shootout with the cops and claim he had to kill those cops because they were trying to shoot him.

You said nothing to indicate your character was a cop or that you identified yourselves as such. If a group of cops bust downs the door to your house at night and opens fire on you without identifying themselves as cops, then I would believe you had the right to shoot them to defend yourself. Other police officers would disagree, and likely the courts too, but that is mostly because they are about protecting cops. Since you were there specifically for a supposed revenge trip, that would also remove some of their culpability since you were abusing your authority as an officer of the law to extract vengeance.

However, since I by default view all pc's as essentially skilled mercenaries or adventurers I therefore believe they had every right to try to kill you or damage your gear to stop you from killing them.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I’ll try to beat you rouges at your own game.

We're neither rogues nor out to get you. This isn't something about people hear 'beating' you.

You asked a question, people are giving their answers. They just don't happen to line up with where you seem to have expected they would have.

 

[Kalis]

People keep saying that he was defending his life and had a right to break my shield. I would love to see someone have a shootout with the cops and claim he had to kill those cops because they were trying to shoot him.

I was wrong to break into the bad guys hideout? Are DEA agents wrong to busting into the mansion of a Columbian drug lord to arrest him? And Is that drug lord justified in shooting the people who are breaking into his home.

You work for the ACLU don’t you?

The DEA agents are wrong if they break in without a warrant or anouncing themselves as officers of the law with the intent to kill(as your group was out for vengeance). This is especially true if one of the DEA agents decide help himself to the drug lord's drugs and his wife's jewelry because the drug lord had blown up the agent's car.

But this is neither here nor there, since your group aren't DEA agents but vigilantes with no legal authority.

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

As for the guy breaking the Oakley sunglasses I would want my $500. If me and a group of friends decide to go after a bad guy, and one of my friends suffers a great loss as a result of having to further that pursuit then he would deserve to be compensated. He would have game more to stop that bad guy than any of us and deserves to be compensated.

I gave my most expensive magical item in pursuit of these villains. The rest of the party got away with a few bruises that were healed in the morning by the party cleric. My sacrifice outweighs what the party gave in this battle, or in all other battles combined. So should I not be compensated?

The loot from the bad guys was 18,000 gold each. I might have been ok with the party only sacrificing 7,000 gold from the treasury to my cause. That still would have resulted in me getting 25,000 from the people who wronged me.