FYI, the second paragraph of the paladin description reads:
A dwarf crouches behind an outcrop, his black cloak making him nearly invisible in the night, and watches an orc war band celebrating its recent victory. Silently, he stalks into their midst and whispers an oath, and two orcs are dead before they even realize he is there.
Not much sunlight between that and killing a sleeping enemy. Of course, paladins need not be good in 5e.
I agree with there is not much sunlight between the two. I think the key is in your closing sentence - a Paladin whose core focus is on slaying Orcs (just for example, it could have been another motivation in the PHB description) would act that way, but that doesn't make the Paladin good. Such a Paladin who's so focused on killing Orcs wouldn't necessarily even care about being good or such things as honour or decency.
Of course, honour and decency in that sense were not really important concepts in the time period being mimicked by D&D, but that wasn't the question.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I agree with there is not much sunlight between the two.
There's actually a significant difference between the OPs situation and the situation in the book.
Ambushes, assuming they're of legitimate targets, are not a problem. The problem is with finishing off the losers after the battle has already been won.
I agree with there is not much sunlight between the two.
There's actually a significant difference between the OPs situation and the situation in the book.
Ambushes, assuming they're of legitimate targets, are not a problem. The problem is with finishing off the losers after the battle has already been won.
A sleeping enemy isn't a defeated one. It would be more like finishing an enemy off while they're on Death Saves or Stable - not either are a common occurrence for PCs to encounter.
In both scenarios, the issue is that the enemy is not prepared to respond to an attack. We're used to distinguishing them as ambushing being a valid tactic of war - but morally, they're not much different, taking advantage of the enemy not being prepared for an attack.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Is nobody talking about "agressive negotiations" in this tale? Forget killing somone ou just put to sleep, I'm pretty sure that is code for "torture", which would be undoubtedly an evil act?
Animals aren't evil because they cannot discern between good and evil (or at least, we don't consider them capable), not because what they do would not be considered evil if done by someone who can do it. A dog bit me once despite me not doing anything to provoke it - it's not evil, because it wasn't capable of that understanding, a person biting me would be committing an evil act. Hence why animals like the tiger are largely considered unaligned rather than good, neutral or evil.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty. Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers; Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas. Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
Is nobody talking about "agressive negotiations" in this tale? Forget killing somone ou just put to sleep, I'm pretty sure that is code for "torture", which would be undoubtedly an evil act?
Yeah, I noticed that as well. D&D isn't exactly a morality simulator, but I'm always a little concerned when the players themselves can't tell that actions like torture or summary execution are evil.
To answer the original question, no, it was not evil, you were in battle fighting for your lives, so taking theirs first is not evil.
The main question I have is, what is a "Roll playing Point" and why do you care if you have a negative?
Just curious...
Cheers!
It's not a D&D thing, if that's what you're asking. Could be that they subtract XP for things not in line with RP or something. It's not a D&D rule though.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
A sleeping enemy isn't a defeated one. It would be more like finishing an enemy off while they're on Death Saves or Stable - not either are a common occurrence for PCs to encounter.
In both scenarios, the issue is that the enemy is not prepared to respond to an attack. We're used to distinguishing them as ambushing being a valid tactic of war - but morally, they're not much different, taking advantage of the enemy not being prepared for an attack.
There's a key flaw in this thinking: targets affected by Sleep are unconscious for a full minute, until they take damage, or until they are intentionally slapped or shaken awake. These characters were not liable to awaken at any moment: the PC who cast the spell knew the exact duration remaining. We can see that the Wizard felt no threat from these characters, as he confidently entered melee range to attack them with a knife. The fact that the DM allowed a coup-de-grace kill at all clearly indicates the victims had no means to resist.
Worse, since the knockout rules allow any melee attack that reduces a character to 0 hit points to leave the target unconscious but stable, we know that these characters could have been left alive with no additional effort. The character in question approached two incapacitated targets and delivered an attack that could have simply disabled the targets for 1-4 hours, but chose to kill instead.
I submit to the jury that there was, in fact, no tactical necessity to killing these individuals rather than simply knocking them unconscious. Nor do the PC's actions display any imminent fear for their own life. Thus there is no conscionable argument for self-defense in this case.
A sleeping enemy isn't a defeated one. It would be more like finishing an enemy off while they're on Death Saves or Stable - not either are a common occurrence for PCs to encounter.
If you're in mop-up phase after targets have been disabled by a sleep spell (i.e. you can be doing things like tying people up), they are fact defeated. Also, I'm not sure what point you're making about finishing off enemies that are making death saves or stable; absent an effect that is likely to make them instantly stand up again, it's also evil.
Also, yes, 'aggressive interrogation' is probably evil.
TL:DR, is killing a sleeping enemy by slitting their throat and evil act? I say no.
So we started a new campaign 2 weekends ago. Last night, our 2nd level party was tailing a group of 8 people that we needed information from to a warehouse building. Our party originally wanted to grab (2) of the 8 members in the group we were tailing if they had split up going to different locations. Not to be. All 8 went to a warehouse and entered. Our party followed. Little did we know that on the other side of the warehouse entrance were additional sentries that took their numbers from 8 to 12. My wizard, neutral (good), grabbed the first initiative and cast sleep immediately putting 4 targets to sleep. Surviving to the second round, my wizard again cast sleep to thin the enemy ranks from 8 down to 6 sleeping and 6 awake. Our party of (1) fighter, (1) paladin, (2) clerics, (1) wizard, (1) monk made short work of the remaining awake targets as well as 2 of the sleeping targets that had been awakened during combat.
After, the combat we proceeded to tie up 2 of the sleeping targets for movement to another location for "aggressive" interrogation. My wizard went to the other two sleeping targets and slit their throats killing them. Little did our party know that there had actually been a 13th enemy in the room that slipped out a back door and called for reinforcements. After another, more difficult and extensive battle, we survived.
Then, at the end of the evening, the DM said he wanted to give my wizard negative role-playing points for killing the sleeping enemy as he said it was an evil act. I say no. My reasoning is (1) consider it a mercy killing, they died in their sleep; (2) was I supposed to wake them up and then beat them to death as we could not have witnesses about our actions at the warehouse; and (3) in what history of combat throughout the ages has an army crept into the camp of another army and woke up their enemy saying "hey, wake up, get your armor on, get your weapon... we want to fight." NEVER! Killing sleeping enemies has historically been how armies won fights against opposing forces and it is not evil but how advantages of combat are exploited.
What so you think.. evil or neutral?
So the "moral universe" is something usually arbitrated by the DM, or a published setting's own written parameters, or something negotiated with he players if its a group world building thing, so maybe that needs to be clarified by the DM or maybe you haven't been paying attention because it sounds like the DM may be upset with the tone the character's actions dropped into the game. So coming back at your DM with what some randoms on a board tell you isn't going to accomplish much other than announce your contempt for the DM's game running.
That said your articulation is weak. For one, calling your killings "mercy killings" because "they died in their sleep" is just wrong on both counts. "Mercy killing" is to kill a living thing to put it out of some great distress. That is, the logic is something has happened to the victim (usually an injury or disease) where it would be _better for the victim_ to die than to live with whatever injury or condition beset it. Throat slitting is also not "dying in your sleep." As mentioned, a successful attack breaks the sleep spell, and even non magical sleep would likely wake up anyone whose throat has just been slit. Do you know what happens to a humanoid body when its throat is slashed? I'll refrain from going into too much detail, but it is in fact a noisy, convulsive, messy and all around horrific event, and is in no way "over in an instant" and definitely not something a victim would sleep through. It's pretty high up there on the brutality pyramid.
I also think we're all missing some context. Your actions make it sound like you were in the heat of some kill or be killed pitch battle. But reading the assignment, as even you articulate, this was supposed to be reconnaissance and information gathering. Generally in conflict, especially if a side is still trying to determine the nature of point of the conflict (hence the information gathering mission), reconnaissance, scouting, spying etc. is not synonymous with seek and destroy. Your kill all witnesses rationale doesn't really fly here, because not only does information gathering often occur without being witnesses, but where do you draw the line? It's entirely plausible someone other than your quarry saw seven people tailing eight people and drag out two of those eight people after some sort of noisy fight where you could definitely hear a slaughterhouse noise choking death rattle or two inside. Are you going to kill those civilians too?
Without calling them good or evil, your characters actions were aggressive, and again if you articulated your 'justification' along the lines you offered and I critiqued here, it's sort of flippant, at best callous and definitely somewhere in the Leeroy Jenkins murderhobo chaotic stupid spectrum. The DMs response seems to be an iteration of this:
Personally, as a DM/GM I try very hard in pregame to make sure everyone playing understands the tone and themes of the game, and make sure I emphasize that tone in the preliminary encounters. Tone setting is also setting the moral compass, what does and does not compute as acceptable behavior in the game's universe. Again, maybe the DM didn't lay out or negotiate those expectations to you adequately. That could be a DM thing, or it could be a listening skills thing. I'd say a binary yes/no polling question on killing in a game where killing happens and is permissible, but there are often in game boundaries that stipulate when violence in permissible, indicates a desire to validate a very simplistic take on something likely more nuanced you're not realizing. I don't know about penalizing you for poor role playing, but it seems you brought something to the table that the DM wasn't expecting in terms of character behavior. Killing an incapacitated enemy is a complicated thing tribunals debate in terms of actual facts and war colleges debate in more abstracted seminars. They aren't simple discussions resolved by binary polling.
Regardless, I hope your character doesn't lose any sleep over this, and when they're sleeping, I hope they get the opportunity to wake up and not suffer an ironic magical soporific assassination as well.
Depends on the situation and the person you are killing. If they are an evil person who continually hurts and kills innocent people, then no.
In the OP's situation, I would say it is pretty grey. These "sentries"... who are they? Are they part of an evil organization? Are they just city guards? In either case, they are simply low-level hirelings for the most part, and so in general I would say this would lean more towards the "immoral" ground. They were potentially just doing their job, maybe had never done anything wrong or to hurt anyone, were just trying to provide for their family when situations were tough, and then you killed them without giving them a chance to surrender or anything. That seems pretty bad.
If they are a cultist in an evil group kidnapping people for sacrifices, etc, and you're basically certain that being a part of this organizations means they have most likely committed atrocities for which the death penalty might be warranted? Then sure, slay away. But it kind of sounds like they were just hired guards, and as such leaving them sleeping or tying them up would have been the moral choice.
If the Dm did not express his moral rules before the game or at least during the fight then no repercussions should be allowed by the DM. Don't set or change the rules in the middle of the game.
But once the DM realizes they forgot to state their rule and they correct that mistake then the players need to stick to it as much as possible.
The DM could have offered an alternative action before the characters action took effect.
Through out history solders have been stunned or knocked out and then killed. Moral or not it has always happened. Mercy in war is a relatively modern concept.
In the end the real trouble is that players do not what these things happening to them. So the sleep spell is nerfed, no knock out rule is realistic in order to give players a chance, and so on and so on.
Through out history solders have been stunned or knocked out and then killed. Moral or not it has always happened. Mercy in war is a relatively modern concept.
Throughout history, accepting surrender, routing, and/or moving on having reduced a force to an ineffective state and just aren't worth the effort are just as common and are far from modern concepts. "Take no prisoners" and "no quarter" fighting are historic terms of fighting, but weren't by any means a constant threat. If anything, modern industrialized theories of total war made wiping out an enemy more probable since it was done with the ease of efficiency. Even T.H. White's take on Camelot has ironic/satiric fun with this notion.
Again, there isn't an absolute nor was there ever a historic absolute answer.
TL:DR, is killing a sleeping enemy by slitting their throat and evil act? I say no.
What so you think.. evil or neutral?
I think you should have a conversation with your DM to see what is the acceptable style of play at your table instead of making this poll.
What are you planning to achieve with the poll anyway? Show your DM this poll and tell them that they are wrong? Get validation from random people on the internet who don't know what exactly happened? None of these are going to make your experience better at the table.
Like others have said, maybe the players were being too murder-hobo and the DM was trying to rein it in. Maybe you were being too graphical with your description of slitting sleeping people's throats that it was making others at the table uncomfortable. Maybe other players had complained to the DM privately that they wanted to capture and question those who were asleep. Maybe the cleric or paladin felt that killing people while they were asleep crossed a line with their character and the DM was trying to prevent inter-party conflict. Maybe the DM just wasn't comfortable with killing helpless people. None of us were at the table so we don't know.
Ultimately, the issue is not whether this act is considered evil, but that your DM wanted to discourage it at the table. For your enjoyment, the best action is to talk to your DM and align with them what is acceptable at the table and what is not. This will ensure that you have a better experience going forward.
Slitting someone's throat in their sleep is absolutely not showing them mercy. It's probably one of the worst ways you can die because you have no time to prepare for it mentally. You just feel an intense, sharp pain and wake up in a horrified panic. Given you could walk over and calmly tie them up tells me they weren't capable of being an active threat anymore, so once Sleep was cast and you won the fight I might consider the enemies defeated and thus prisoners. This would mean what you did was execute prisoners, which is a war crime and as such an evil act.
That said, torture is also a blatantly evil act so I'm not sure why your DM would be okay with that and not the executions.
All that said, there's a reason 5e has steered away from strict alignments. Nobody acts in a simple good vs evil binary all the time. In the heat of the moment, someone who's generally a good person might feel forced to perform an evil act for what they consider the greater good or an evil character might perform a good act if it aids their evil plan in the long run. Just because your normally good character did an evil act doesn't necessarily mean you as the player misplayed them and deserve a punishment for it.
But it's ultimately up to your DM and what kind of morality system they're trying to encourage.
If I am to be a great hero I fully expect someone to eventually try to kill me. And poison and death in my sleep are possible.
Thats why i hire guards when I get famous. Magical and otherwise.
I remember one story of a famous Japanese daimyo who was supposedly killed while on the toilet. literally. Uesugi Kenshin No real proof of the story but why would it exist if it was not true or close to true.
If you play in a game where your Dm does not allow you to gain enough cash to hire the needed people then you have to rely on the Dm being a nice guy.
I personally like it when the Dm lats you gain the cash and fame. It gives him many other options for campaigns. If we have cash we could always hunt down the thief who tried to take it or the assassin who tried to kill me. "Some lowdown murderer killed my guard while I slept. I swear to get vengeance for him!!!"
Clear wild lands of monsters and hire people to build us a home.
Money lets you climb the social ladder and could potentially lead to better and richer campaigns.
If I am to be a great hero I fully expect someone to eventually try to kill me. And poison and death in my sleep are possible.
Thats why i hire guards when I get famous. Magical and otherwise.
I remember one story of a famous Japanese daimyo who was supposedly killed while on the toilet. literally. Uesugi Kenshin No real proof of the story but why would it exist if it was not true or close to true.
Because "he was assassinated by a ninja hiding in the cesspool" made for a more dramatic death than simply succumbing to esophageal cancer, which is what most historians actually believe did him in now. Conspiracy theories weren't invented in the 20th Century.
If you play in a game where your Dm does not allow you to gain enough cash to hire the needed people then you have to rely on the Dm being a nice guy.
I personally like it when the Dm lats you gain the cash and fame. It gives him many other options for campaigns. If we have cash we could always hunt down the thief who tried to take it or the assassin who tried to kill me. "Some lowdown murderer killed my guard while I slept. I swear to get vengeance for him!!!"
Clear wild lands of monsters and hire people to build us a home.
Money lets you climb the social ladder and could potentially lead to better and richer campaigns.
Yeah, but what happens when the guards you've hired are actually assassins sent to kill you?
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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I agree with there is not much sunlight between the two. I think the key is in your closing sentence - a Paladin whose core focus is on slaying Orcs (just for example, it could have been another motivation in the PHB description) would act that way, but that doesn't make the Paladin good. Such a Paladin who's so focused on killing Orcs wouldn't necessarily even care about being good or such things as honour or decency.
Of course, honour and decency in that sense were not really important concepts in the time period being mimicked by D&D, but that wasn't the question.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
There's actually a significant difference between the OPs situation and the situation in the book.
Ambushes, assuming they're of legitimate targets, are not a problem. The problem is with finishing off the losers after the battle has already been won.
A sleeping enemy isn't a defeated one. It would be more like finishing an enemy off while they're on Death Saves or Stable - not either are a common occurrence for PCs to encounter.
In both scenarios, the issue is that the enemy is not prepared to respond to an attack. We're used to distinguishing them as ambushing being a valid tactic of war - but morally, they're not much different, taking advantage of the enemy not being prepared for an attack.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Is nobody talking about "agressive negotiations" in this tale? Forget killing somone ou just put to sleep, I'm pretty sure that is code for "torture", which would be undoubtedly an evil act?
5E is very loose on alignment, so what is considered evil or not is very subjective to DMs interpretation of alignment or moral codes in general.
I believe you have to take into account the motives behind any actions, despite how immoral they may appear.
Animals aren't evil because they cannot discern between good and evil (or at least, we don't consider them capable), not because what they do would not be considered evil if done by someone who can do it. A dog bit me once despite me not doing anything to provoke it - it's not evil, because it wasn't capable of that understanding, a person biting me would be committing an evil act. Hence why animals like the tiger are largely considered unaligned rather than good, neutral or evil.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Greetings everyone,
To answer the original question, no, it was not evil, you were in battle fighting for your lives, so taking theirs first is not evil.
The main question I have is, what is a "Roll playing Point" and why do you care if you have a negative?
Just curious...
Cheers!
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty.
Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers;
Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas.
Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
Yeah, I noticed that as well. D&D isn't exactly a morality simulator, but I'm always a little concerned when the players themselves can't tell that actions like torture or summary execution are evil.
It's not a D&D thing, if that's what you're asking. Could be that they subtract XP for things not in line with RP or something. It's not a D&D rule though.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
There's a key flaw in this thinking: targets affected by Sleep are unconscious for a full minute, until they take damage, or until they are intentionally slapped or shaken awake. These characters were not liable to awaken at any moment: the PC who cast the spell knew the exact duration remaining. We can see that the Wizard felt no threat from these characters, as he confidently entered melee range to attack them with a knife. The fact that the DM allowed a coup-de-grace kill at all clearly indicates the victims had no means to resist.
Worse, since the knockout rules allow any melee attack that reduces a character to 0 hit points to leave the target unconscious but stable, we know that these characters could have been left alive with no additional effort. The character in question approached two incapacitated targets and delivered an attack that could have simply disabled the targets for 1-4 hours, but chose to kill instead.
I submit to the jury that there was, in fact, no tactical necessity to killing these individuals rather than simply knocking them unconscious. Nor do the PC's actions display any imminent fear for their own life. Thus there is no conscionable argument for self-defense in this case.
If you're in mop-up phase after targets have been disabled by a sleep spell (i.e. you can be doing things like tying people up), they are fact defeated. Also, I'm not sure what point you're making about finishing off enemies that are making death saves or stable; absent an effect that is likely to make them instantly stand up again, it's also evil.
Also, yes, 'aggressive interrogation' is probably evil.
So the "moral universe" is something usually arbitrated by the DM, or a published setting's own written parameters, or something negotiated with he players if its a group world building thing, so maybe that needs to be clarified by the DM or maybe you haven't been paying attention because it sounds like the DM may be upset with the tone the character's actions dropped into the game. So coming back at your DM with what some randoms on a board tell you isn't going to accomplish much other than announce your contempt for the DM's game running.
That said your articulation is weak. For one, calling your killings "mercy killings" because "they died in their sleep" is just wrong on both counts. "Mercy killing" is to kill a living thing to put it out of some great distress. That is, the logic is something has happened to the victim (usually an injury or disease) where it would be _better for the victim_ to die than to live with whatever injury or condition beset it. Throat slitting is also not "dying in your sleep." As mentioned, a successful attack breaks the sleep spell, and even non magical sleep would likely wake up anyone whose throat has just been slit. Do you know what happens to a humanoid body when its throat is slashed? I'll refrain from going into too much detail, but it is in fact a noisy, convulsive, messy and all around horrific event, and is in no way "over in an instant" and definitely not something a victim would sleep through. It's pretty high up there on the brutality pyramid.
I also think we're all missing some context. Your actions make it sound like you were in the heat of some kill or be killed pitch battle. But reading the assignment, as even you articulate, this was supposed to be reconnaissance and information gathering. Generally in conflict, especially if a side is still trying to determine the nature of point of the conflict (hence the information gathering mission), reconnaissance, scouting, spying etc. is not synonymous with seek and destroy. Your kill all witnesses rationale doesn't really fly here, because not only does information gathering often occur without being witnesses, but where do you draw the line? It's entirely plausible someone other than your quarry saw seven people tailing eight people and drag out two of those eight people after some sort of noisy fight where you could definitely hear a slaughterhouse noise choking death rattle or two inside. Are you going to kill those civilians too?
Without calling them good or evil, your characters actions were aggressive, and again if you articulated your 'justification' along the lines you offered and I critiqued here, it's sort of flippant, at best callous and definitely somewhere in the Leeroy Jenkins murderhobo chaotic stupid spectrum. The DMs response seems to be an iteration of this:
Personally, as a DM/GM I try very hard in pregame to make sure everyone playing understands the tone and themes of the game, and make sure I emphasize that tone in the preliminary encounters. Tone setting is also setting the moral compass, what does and does not compute as acceptable behavior in the game's universe. Again, maybe the DM didn't lay out or negotiate those expectations to you adequately. That could be a DM thing, or it could be a listening skills thing. I'd say a binary yes/no polling question on killing in a game where killing happens and is permissible, but there are often in game boundaries that stipulate when violence in permissible, indicates a desire to validate a very simplistic take on something likely more nuanced you're not realizing. I don't know about penalizing you for poor role playing, but it seems you brought something to the table that the DM wasn't expecting in terms of character behavior. Killing an incapacitated enemy is a complicated thing tribunals debate in terms of actual facts and war colleges debate in more abstracted seminars. They aren't simple discussions resolved by binary polling.
Regardless, I hope your character doesn't lose any sleep over this, and when they're sleeping, I hope they get the opportunity to wake up and not suffer an ironic magical soporific assassination as well.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Depends on the situation and the person you are killing. If they are an evil person who continually hurts and kills innocent people, then no.
In the OP's situation, I would say it is pretty grey. These "sentries"... who are they? Are they part of an evil organization? Are they just city guards? In either case, they are simply low-level hirelings for the most part, and so in general I would say this would lean more towards the "immoral" ground. They were potentially just doing their job, maybe had never done anything wrong or to hurt anyone, were just trying to provide for their family when situations were tough, and then you killed them without giving them a chance to surrender or anything. That seems pretty bad.
If they are a cultist in an evil group kidnapping people for sacrifices, etc, and you're basically certain that being a part of this organizations means they have most likely committed atrocities for which the death penalty might be warranted? Then sure, slay away. But it kind of sounds like they were just hired guards, and as such leaving them sleeping or tying them up would have been the moral choice.
If the Dm did not express his moral rules before the game or at least during the fight then no repercussions should be allowed by the DM. Don't set or change the rules in the middle of the game.
But once the DM realizes they forgot to state their rule and they correct that mistake then the players need to stick to it as much as possible.
The DM could have offered an alternative action before the characters action took effect.
Through out history solders have been stunned or knocked out and then killed. Moral or not it has always happened. Mercy in war is a relatively modern concept.
In the end the real trouble is that players do not what these things happening to them. So the sleep spell is nerfed, no knock out rule is realistic in order to give players a chance, and so on and so on.
Throughout history, accepting surrender, routing, and/or moving on having reduced a force to an ineffective state and just aren't worth the effort are just as common and are far from modern concepts. "Take no prisoners" and "no quarter" fighting are historic terms of fighting, but weren't by any means a constant threat. If anything, modern industrialized theories of total war made wiping out an enemy more probable since it was done with the ease of efficiency. Even T.H. White's take on Camelot has ironic/satiric fun with this notion.
Again, there isn't an absolute nor was there ever a historic absolute answer.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I think you should have a conversation with your DM to see what is the acceptable style of play at your table instead of making this poll.
What are you planning to achieve with the poll anyway? Show your DM this poll and tell them that they are wrong? Get validation from random people on the internet who don't know what exactly happened? None of these are going to make your experience better at the table.
Like others have said, maybe the players were being too murder-hobo and the DM was trying to rein it in. Maybe you were being too graphical with your description of slitting sleeping people's throats that it was making others at the table uncomfortable. Maybe other players had complained to the DM privately that they wanted to capture and question those who were asleep. Maybe the cleric or paladin felt that killing people while they were asleep crossed a line with their character and the DM was trying to prevent inter-party conflict. Maybe the DM just wasn't comfortable with killing helpless people. None of us were at the table so we don't know.
Ultimately, the issue is not whether this act is considered evil, but that your DM wanted to discourage it at the table. For your enjoyment, the best action is to talk to your DM and align with them what is acceptable at the table and what is not. This will ensure that you have a better experience going forward.
Slitting someone's throat in their sleep is absolutely not showing them mercy. It's probably one of the worst ways you can die because you have no time to prepare for it mentally. You just feel an intense, sharp pain and wake up in a horrified panic. Given you could walk over and calmly tie them up tells me they weren't capable of being an active threat anymore, so once Sleep was cast and you won the fight I might consider the enemies defeated and thus prisoners. This would mean what you did was execute prisoners, which is a war crime and as such an evil act.
That said, torture is also a blatantly evil act so I'm not sure why your DM would be okay with that and not the executions.
All that said, there's a reason 5e has steered away from strict alignments. Nobody acts in a simple good vs evil binary all the time. In the heat of the moment, someone who's generally a good person might feel forced to perform an evil act for what they consider the greater good or an evil character might perform a good act if it aids their evil plan in the long run. Just because your normally good character did an evil act doesn't necessarily mean you as the player misplayed them and deserve a punishment for it.
But it's ultimately up to your DM and what kind of morality system they're trying to encourage.
Would your enemy kill you in your sleep? Simple question to set the bar for being evil.
TO DEFEND: THIS IS THE PACT.
BUT WHEN LIFE LOSES ITS VALUE,
AND IS TAKEN FOR NAUGHT-
THEN THE PACT IS, TO AVENGE.
If I am to be a great hero I fully expect someone to eventually try to kill me. And poison and death in my sleep are possible.
Thats why i hire guards when I get famous. Magical and otherwise.
I remember one story of a famous Japanese daimyo who was supposedly killed while on the toilet. literally.
Uesugi Kenshin No real proof of the story but why would it exist if it was not true or close to true.
If you play in a game where your Dm does not allow you to gain enough cash to hire the needed people then you have to rely on the Dm being a nice guy.
I personally like it when the Dm lats you gain the cash and fame. It gives him many other options for campaigns. If we have cash we could always hunt down the thief who tried to take it or the assassin who tried to kill me. "Some lowdown murderer killed my guard while I slept. I swear to get vengeance for him!!!"
Clear wild lands of monsters and hire people to build us a home.
Money lets you climb the social ladder and could potentially lead to better and richer campaigns.
Because "he was assassinated by a ninja hiding in the cesspool" made for a more dramatic death than simply succumbing to esophageal cancer, which is what most historians actually believe did him in now. Conspiracy theories weren't invented in the 20th Century.
Yeah, but what happens when the guards you've hired are actually assassins sent to kill you?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.