Having a preconceived idea of the way you are going to treat neutral classes before even entering the game is anti-wincon and unhealthy for the game. People need to treat each game separately with a clear and neutral state of mind. You can’t go holding grudges against alchemists because they didn’t side with you last game, and execute them N3 if you roll Prince just for the sake of it. Likewise, you can’t refuse to kill an alch that was found to be killer/offensive because you are ‘neuts in’. These mindsets that people have going into games simply contributes to the problems neutral classes already have related to kingmaking and the survivor wincon.
People need to evaluate each situation and consider what the most optimal play is when it comes to deciding what to do with a neutral. The choice you make in regards to a neutral should be made with the intention to further your wincon as far as possible. Imagine this from a BD perspective. If someone claims alchemist and there are no other neutral claims, with the current ‘D1 alch claim’ meta, chances are they are probably real. If they aren’t bombing people, there is not much of a reason to kill them at an early stage in the game when there are much bigger fish to fry. The situation is different to say, there are 3 neutral claims including an unconfirmed alchemist (3 neuts is not guaranteed), and many people are confirmed. Killing the alchemist when starting evils are still alive is perfectly fine and should not be considering ‘neuts out’ behaviour.
In a different situation, say there are multiple neutral claims already, and you have just upped someone on the second trial and they claim alchemist, and they are unconfirmed with no heals. Executing this would be completely viable to get information on which neutral claims are actually real.
Now consider a situation where it would be unideal to kill an Alchemist as BD. Last game, it came down to a 1v1 and the alchemist helped the other faction over you. This game, you are Prince, and N3 there are several more suspicious people with NK and starting evils alive, but you jail and execute the alchemist who was the only neutral claim and had not been bombing anyone. This is not a good play this early in the game when you need to be getting claims and eliminating the most suspicious slots.
I’ve used alchemist in a lot of these examples, but it applies for most neutrals (except sellsword really, since it is always anti-BD and you shouldn’t rely on the chance of neut king in any serious game). Consider it’s the second trial and the guy on stand claims scorned with a confirmed TB and confirmed frames - there is not much reason to keep this alive when no other trial can happen. For the most part scorned messes up investigative results and since they have confirmed frames, they have already been doing so. Keeping this alive would not further your wincon as BD.
Things get a little more complicated as an evil when you decide what to do with neutrals. Killing an alchemist before they have even healed/bombed is questionable. You miss the chance to see if they would end up siding evils and bombing prince for you later in the game. It becomes a different story once you’ve discovered that the alch (and merc, for this example) is sitting on the prince and clearly have no intention of helping you. In a cult game, if you were to consider the chance that you hit a merc stand guard when eradicating or converting, you may decide that it would be in your best interest to kill them as soon as possible. This is fine, so long as the judgement arises based on this consideration, rather than just resulting from neuts out thinking because you dislike mercs.
Something we all need to understand is that it’s pretty much impossible to view neutral classes with complete objectivity when we have all won or lost games because of them. As much as we would like to act independently, our subconscious will always influence what we want to do with neutrals and our preconceived ideas about them. I’m just hoping that people can try to be less biased when it comes to deciding how to deal with neutrals. Ultimately, it’s a matter of judgement but a good way of doing this is considering which course of action is most likely to further your wincon, and act accordingly.
TL;DR - Don’t be “neuts in” or “neuts out” just for the sake of it. Consider each game to be a different situation and make your decision based on what helps you to reach your wincon the most.
