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Tiburon Silverflame: He's not Good, he's Neutral, so I don't see a requirement for an atonement spell. And, there WAS a threat to others...read the 2nd paragraph. One bystander was already dead from this guy's flames, and another had been burned.

The Atonement part is rather aside from the main situation. It is only mentioned because this involves a cleric, who must uphold his deity's principles and ethos and an atonement and possibly a quest are typically how you would show your contrition and ask forgiveness. If it turns out the killing was unintentional, the spell is quite reasonable, if it turns out he deliberately murdered the man (I think so) then he must pay the cost as listed in the Atonement spell.

Reading Knowe Remorse's post clearly indicates that the burning man is a victim and is the one in need of help. If this is not the case than it really needs to be clarified if the chaotic effect turned him into some pyromaniacal monster if he wants an accurate answer. However, I believe it's very clear that the party watched people getting burned because the man was on fire and they were trying to help or were merely in the vicinity, not because he was walking around immolating them with some malevolent aura and pinning them in a corner to watch their eyeballs burst and bubble down their cheeks.

So while I don't know whether the cleric violated a specific tenet of his faith, I am pretty sure just about every god with the exception of an evil one (which his god isn't), finds killing a helpless, pleading sentient to be a bad thing to do. Even the strictly neutral ones find such wanton killing bad, some don't even like seeing animals killed out of hand, and since the man clearly wasn't being hurt and this was observed by the cleric, he can't claim it was a mercy killing.

TS: Actually, modern-day...yes, we might well try to kill him.

I find that statement to be so obviously ludicrous it must be a joke. If a man runs up to someone on the street pleading for help, asking to be taken to a hospital because he's been bitten by a rabid dog and contracted rabies, and you shoot him. You are a murderer. Even if that man staggers into you hard and knocks you down because he's suffering vertigo from the onset of disease while he's begging for help. Now maybe you have some knowledge of the Banewarrens that comes into play here, I do not since Knowe Remorse didn't post any details on the man other than he spontaneously caught on fire, which sounds pretty unintentional on his part.

TS: dok, KR mentioned that 2 bystanders did get hurt by the burning guy. So the cleric's actions can be construed as proper defense of another.

Similarly, if you see someone running around on fire, panicked as was clearly stated in Knowe Remorse's post, and people who try to help him get burned (because he's on fire, surprise!) you don't get to claim that he's a villain and deserves the death penalty, which some cleric of an iron god is supposedly legally (read lawfully) entitled to dispense. I will allow the exemption for this the day I see an ash land on your child and you burn your hand patting it out and then immediately scream that she's attacking you and you punch her in the face. There is no description of the burning man running up and bear-hugging innocent civilians to death. If he causes inadvertent harm, that is no grounds for being killed.

Maybe in your campaign world a person who sneezes is clearly the disciple of a plague god and therefore the servant of evil and that's fine, but even in our messed-up modern world, people don't pull out guns and shoot people who are on fire screaming for help without some really good reason. And then if they do have a really good reason, we generally say, "I can understand your reasoning," not "What a lawful reason!" I have as yet read no statement from the cleric for his reasoning, only that Knowe Remorse feels it is likely that's how he felt.

Your claim that the cleric was making a proper action to protect lives does not stand up. You protect people from fire by moving them or the fire away, by giving them protection from the fire so it isn't a threat, by putting out the fire (my favorite) , or even casting Hold Person to stop the man on fire from endangering people, but not by shooting that man in the head after you have stopped him. The life of the man on fire, pleading and begging for help is also a life in need of defending and, even if that man was a hell-spawn demon in disguise trying to trick people, if the cleric acted without any knowledge of that and just believed him a man begging for help, he is a murderer.

I might see gunning down a panicking man on fire if he was about to run into a fireworks store full of people or into a TNT closet, but not when the man is stopped.

TS: And this man was, in fact, not taking any damage from the flames...which rather suggests that his 'cries for help' were attempts to lure more victims. If the cleric's initial action, after learning that the man wasn't being burned, had been to kill the burning guy, I would have no issue with that...
...And who says this guy is so innocent? Perhaps he is...but perhaps *not*.

So then your assertion is, "It's okay that the cleric may have shot a helpless man who was pleading for help because... who's to say he was helpless?" Meaning, because the cleric wasn't 100% sure that the man was a helpless victim begging for his life he didn't really kill a helpless victim who was begging for his life, even if what he just did was kill a helpless man begging for his life? Or maybe what you're trying to say is that you understand his reasoning for killing a helpless man begging for his life?

TS: PL and the cleric are actually making the same mistake; PL is assuming the guy was an innocent victim, while the cleric assumed he was the perpetrator. Both are possible, but the leap to either extreme is seriously premature.

What you are stating here is an extreme and premature assumption. We have absolutely no way of knowing the reason that the cleric did what he did. You are assuming the cleric shot the man because he believed he was the perpetrator. There has been not one shred of evidence for that. How can you claim that the cleric wasn't pissed that he got burned and so decided to hold and murder than man because of that alone?

As for my assumptions, they are neither extreme, not premature, since they are based on the fact that Knowe Remorse himself ended his post with:
"...I honestly don't feel this is behavior befitting a lawful cleric. I'm torn, as I want the players to have fun and am usually not an alignment nazi, but certain actions such as killing an individual who is helpless, and was previously asking for help, even if you did get burned while responding seems like its a stretch."

They are also based on reading the post which detailed how the murdered man was helpless and also begging for his life and also on the fact that this is in DMs Only and I'm trusting Knowe Remorse isn't holding back information to try and trick anybody.

Let me see if I can follow this. I'll use a likely scenario:

So in a DnD campaign there is an event at a jewelry store where a gang breaks in and robs the place. As the gang runs out, the husband and wife shopkeeper try and stop them and end up being beaten to death on the sidewalk. However, in the fight, a bag of jewelry is torn open and leaves a trail of loot. Ostensibly the idea is for the party to come upon the scene, find the murder/robbery and be able to track the perpetrators back to their hideout. Plus you want to introduce a new PC by having him meet the others.

Let's say one PC has declared he's away from the group in a part of town near the hideout or perhaps you think it would be a good way to introduce a new PC by having him spot the trail and have a logical reason to join the party by guiding them to where he intersected the robbers' path. He makes a good Spot/Search check, sees some jewelry heading in two directions, opts to go one way, picking up the pieces as he goes. Obviously any player with a brain is suspicious here, but who wouldn't be picking the jewelry up, even a paladin would if only to find the owner.

So this PC rounds the corner, there's a broken into jewelry store and two dead people on the ground. The other PCs show up on the scene and what do they a see: a guy holding an armful of jewelry and two dead bodies.
The simple explanation is that this guy is robbing the jewelry store and killed to people. Naturally the guy is innocent, he says what happened, claimed that he found a trail and just showed up. But to believe his story you would have to believe in some unseen agency that would rob a jewelry store and murder two people.

This is good interaction, good roleplaying. You expect a bit of misunderstanding to build a relationship at first. So what happens? The party pulls out their weapons, they don't attack but they say, "Well then, we'll call the militia and they'll find out. Don't resist if you're telling the truth." Of course he's telling the truth, so he doesn't resist. He might even go so far as to let them tie him up and take his weapons...
...and then they kill him!

I don't care how good their excuse is. I don't care whether their parents owned a jewelry store and were killed by robbers, or even if it was their parents who owned this exact jewelry store and its them on the sidewalk, they still killed an innocent man!
Just because you understand their reasoning doesn't change what they did. They may go on about their business and never even know about the real gang. They may even leave town later and feel great about themselves thinking they're the best thing since sliced bread, assuming you have sliced bread in your world. But in DnD, there is wrong and right, and unless the DM completely planned for you to kill someone out of hand, and that's a far cry from anything here, even if he planned for there to be a misunderstanding. There has to be some repercussions for acting in this way and especially when it comes to someone who gains a benefit to his character by upholding ideals or codes of conduct they must come into play.

If the PCs god doesn't care about him killing innocent people, maybe the murdered man's god does. And the truth is, most gods technically know what's going to happen to a follower about 5-10 weeks before it does happen, so a DM is well within his rights to have something happen right then and there that seems incredibly well-planned in response to something that happened an hour ago. Does this mean the god hits him with lightning, no, there are (probably) rules against deities intervening directly, but he could have sent a vision to 10 priests 3 weeks ago showing them a city and a broken jewelry store causing them to show up and find a dead fellow worshipper, that would be acceptable and believable. And then they're going to focus on the murderer of the man, and they will actually have a much better reason to end the life of the murderer, because that's what they'll actually be doing.

Am I starting to ramble? Possibly, I don't think the example is too far-fetched to point out that someone killed a helpless person. Even if it had been a criminal or enemy who had surrendered, killing hostages and prisoners is evil unless they have been found guilty. There may even be a law that says it's okay to kill red-headed children, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing, or even a neutral thing to do. If you go around shooting red-headed people around town especially helpless ones, you're probably lawful evil. Regardless that I do, in fact, understand the reason the cleric may have done it does not change that he made the wrong choice, an evil, cold-blooded choice, and should have to deal with it.

Knowe Remorse: Be it as it may, the only 2 players in my game that actually properly suppressed the effects on people were the mage who tied a woman who couldnt stop levitating to a cart and the paladin who bonked another victim with the flat of his blade.

Wait, why didn't they just kill them. I mean, wouldn't that have been easier? I could totally understand the mage not wanting to lose his 50' rope when a simple magic missile spell could have done the job. Maybe he found the rope in the cart though. It's a shame we don't know what the bonked victim was doing. We could totally make it okay for the paladin to have gutted him and taken his shoes with a little creative spinning.

Obviously, these people are 'touched by chaos'. The fact that their 'wild and dangerous and uncontrolled' latent abilities are coming out indicates that they are a threat to all lawful and orderly people of the town and "must be put down!" It's the simplest most logical way of dealing with it. I mean, we can't stop the avatar of chaos, the next best thing is to kill any townspeople who have latent hidden abilities. Why then his presence would have no effect whatsoever, problem solved. Yes, we could round them up, or have them leave the area.... but no... we'll tie them up and kill them "...for the protection of others." Have to make sure we all say that at the end of every action we declare.

Don't want to seem to harsh but want to get the point across. Every night when the cleric falls asleep, he dreams about the burning man begging him for help and coming closer and closer, and nothing he does works to stop the man getting closer. Apologies, begging, pleading, screaming... the man just says, "Please help me, what's happening!?" and then grabs the cleric in his dreams, and then the cleric wakes up on fire for 15 minutes and it hurts, it utterly hurts! He doesn't take hit point damage, but he smells his flesh burning, and his clothes burn, and his bedroll burns, and every one around him burns if they touch him, and this goes on for 15 minutes until there's a deafening gunshot in his ears and it feels like a lightning bolt blew his head apart and then he passes out until morning when he can pray for spells and buy some new clothes and maybe get the idea he did something wrong without you having to change his alignment. Maybe it'll cause some good roleplaying if the other PCs don't tie him up and kill him after he passes out.