CruelSummerLord
First Post
Consider one of two scenarios, both of which take place in your typical tavern.
1) Party is among the few customers in the establishment when a local thug and his heavies come in to extort the tavern owner, who unfortunately is short this week owing to a combination of a lack of business and a price increase in beer shipments. Thug and his heavies start breaking furniture.
Party members take exception to this, and pick a fight with the thugs. No weapons, just fists-and the party members win. Thugs are bruised and battered, but not grieviously injured.
2) Party members are among many customers in the tavern, and notice a gang of young noble rakes swagger in and start bullying everyone-terrifying poorer customers into buying them wine, harassing the barmaids, and threatening everyone around them with either their swords or their political power, saying that they'll get off scot-free because of their connections.
Party members are offended at these bullies, their treatment of the poorer folk, and how they can get off without any sort of retribution, and pick a fight with the rakes. Again, party members win.
Now comes the questionable part. Party members decide to humiliate the thugs/nobles by making them do degrading chores-forcing them at sword's point to muck out the stables, clean out the garbage midden, mop up the vomit, and wash the dishes-for no better reason than to further their punishment by humiliating them, before finally bodily throwing them out and into the dung-infested streets.
Part of the advantage of this, of course, is that the nobles or thugs will be so enraged at the PCs that they'll focus their wrath on them, instead of the innocent bar owner.
My question, therefore: Would humiliating your opponents like this, by taking them down several pegs, be considered an Evil act at all? Remember that the PCs are making them do it at sword's point-teaching the bullies what it's like to be humiliated and picked on by someone they can't fight against-the thugs and nobles are, in both cases, no match for properly trained fighters.
The PCs in question, despite being LG, NG or CG, are hardly paragons of virtue-one might be an alcoholic, another might have a criminal record for tavern brawls of his own, or what have you. The NG party cleric is nowhere around, taking care of business at her temple, and so there's no one of truly chivalric bearing here. The "heroes" would go out of their way to rescue captive children, defend peasants from orcish mobs, and save people kidnapped by ogres or goblins, but they would also have no hesitation about killing highway robbers in cold blood, even if they surrendered.
Well?
1) Party is among the few customers in the establishment when a local thug and his heavies come in to extort the tavern owner, who unfortunately is short this week owing to a combination of a lack of business and a price increase in beer shipments. Thug and his heavies start breaking furniture.
Party members take exception to this, and pick a fight with the thugs. No weapons, just fists-and the party members win. Thugs are bruised and battered, but not grieviously injured.
2) Party members are among many customers in the tavern, and notice a gang of young noble rakes swagger in and start bullying everyone-terrifying poorer customers into buying them wine, harassing the barmaids, and threatening everyone around them with either their swords or their political power, saying that they'll get off scot-free because of their connections.
Party members are offended at these bullies, their treatment of the poorer folk, and how they can get off without any sort of retribution, and pick a fight with the rakes. Again, party members win.
Now comes the questionable part. Party members decide to humiliate the thugs/nobles by making them do degrading chores-forcing them at sword's point to muck out the stables, clean out the garbage midden, mop up the vomit, and wash the dishes-for no better reason than to further their punishment by humiliating them, before finally bodily throwing them out and into the dung-infested streets.
Part of the advantage of this, of course, is that the nobles or thugs will be so enraged at the PCs that they'll focus their wrath on them, instead of the innocent bar owner.
My question, therefore: Would humiliating your opponents like this, by taking them down several pegs, be considered an Evil act at all? Remember that the PCs are making them do it at sword's point-teaching the bullies what it's like to be humiliated and picked on by someone they can't fight against-the thugs and nobles are, in both cases, no match for properly trained fighters.
The PCs in question, despite being LG, NG or CG, are hardly paragons of virtue-one might be an alcoholic, another might have a criminal record for tavern brawls of his own, or what have you. The NG party cleric is nowhere around, taking care of business at her temple, and so there's no one of truly chivalric bearing here. The "heroes" would go out of their way to rescue captive children, defend peasants from orcish mobs, and save people kidnapped by ogres or goblins, but they would also have no hesitation about killing highway robbers in cold blood, even if they surrendered.
Well?
