A recent post on r/rpghorrorstories has raised a question about the alignment of a character whose party executes a prisoner. But first, Batman Begins!
At the climax of Batman Begins, Batman fights and beats his old mentor, R’as al Ghul. They are on an elevated train headed for the center of Gotham with a deadly payload. Batman has arranged to have Chief Gordon destroy the train track supports, crashing the train and preventing it from reaching the city center. Having defeated R’as, Batman uses his bat-toys to make his getaway, saying to R’as, “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you.” Batman escapes and R’as dies in the ensuing train wreck.
Enter our friend from RPG Horror Stories, who we’ll call Hellhound. The character had a different name, but Hellhound is cooler.
Hellhound has taken an NPC prisoner and interrogates them, promising not to kill them if they give up all the info they have. The NPC complies, and then [it’d be so much cooler if Sneakers were a better-known film] has a fellow party member kill the NPC.
Debate about alignment ensues.
Hellhound thinks he’s Lawful Evil, DM says Chaotic Evil, but we won’t get into that question here because the D&D alignment chart is kinda junk. It’s a decent tool for describing the general behavior of the fantasy races, but not good for analyzing individual player choices.
So, that question set aside for now, how do we think about OP’s actions here?
Will No One Rid Me Of This Turbulent NPC?
First, let’s think about Batman and R’as al Ghul. After getting past the gadgets and billions of dollars, one of the most noteworthy things about Batman is his rule that he does not ever kill, thus the line “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you.” So who did kill R’as? It’s Chief Gordon who blows up the train supports and forces the crash, so Gordon kills R’as.
But, Gordon only did so by working with Batman; in fact, Gordon uses the Batmobile to pull it off. The two are working together. Batman and Gordon together kill R’as.
In the legal realm, we call this a conspiracy. Two people agree to work together towards some end. Now, that end might be justified. We can note that Batman and Gordon are acting in self-defense, they’re acting in defense of others (which we treat the same as self-defense), and R’as just straight up needed killing. But, Batman and Gordon did conspire together to kill him.
Batman (and Gordon) killed R’as al Ghul. So much for Batman’s one rule.
And Hellhound, by asking a party member to kill the NPC, he also killed the NPC. They did it together, and who actually swung the sword might be relevant in terms of who is haunted in their dreams later and/or has to prestidigitate the stains out of their clothes, but in a moral and legal sense, they both killed NPC.
But What About Hellhound’s Promise?
So this is where the meat of the debate is — Hellhound promised not to kill NPC if they gave up information, and NPC complied. Did Hellhound break is promise?
Our position is that this question is a bit of a red herring.
Let’s take a look at what a lie is and specifically what makes a lie wrong. A lie is of course something you present as true knowing it to be false. But the harm of the lie isn’t the falseness of the claim, but rather the creation of a false idea in the listener.
After all, a false claim said to yourself in an otherwise empty room is no lie (unless you’re lying to yourself). Nor is a joke starting with, “So I was on a plane last week…” when you weren’t on a plane last week, and neither is the “so I said, ‘Don’t forget the coffee!'” punchline. Neither is meant to be taken as a true claim by the audience. The audience knows it’s not true, but the point is to tell a joke. Sarcasm isn’t a lie; hyperbole isn’t a lie. And for the same reason, 1600s England banning the theater (in part) because the actors are lying is bunk — no one thinks that guy on the stage is actually Julius Caesar. There is no deceptive intent and no false impressions are made.
Hellhound, while speaking a true claim, for all practical purposes is a liar — the intent was to create a false idea in the mind of the captive NPC and he succeeded in doing so. Why should we care if the false impression was created by a true claim or a false one, so long as Hellhound’s intent was to create the false thought?
In Conclusion
Hellhound’s claim “I didn’t lie” should be given about as much weight as Batman’s “I won’t kill you.”
“I won’t kill you, but I will arrange for you to be killed.”
“I didn’t lie, but I did arrange for you to believe something untrue.”
The gravest offense though would be letting an argument like that derail a game.
It can be a fun thing to think about, but D&D alignment grids are a blunt tool lacking in any sense of nuance, and characters should be free to interpret things how they want. Hellhound is by no means obligated to use the reasoning presented here and can think of himself however he likes.