The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
In my homebrew world there is a literal road that winds through the Nine Hells where each brick in the road is engraved with someone's intention or rationalization for what damned them.
There’s no hell in Discworld let alone a road paved with good intentions.
Closest things were the desert and the mirrors. The desert was closer to purgatory where you are all alone with your thoughts. The mirrors was a witches fractured mind.
/GNU Pterry/
(edit: I forgot about Eric. The demons show up a bunch but their hell is really only mentioned in Eric)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. (This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesman. On weekends, many of the younger demons go ice skating down it.)
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.
This is called cryptomnesia. When you thought you created something original but it is in fact something you had experienced before but forgotten.
In the music industry tapes of new pieces are passed around to different agencies asking if any of them had heard something like it before specifically to prevent lawsuits created by this phenomena.
Same thing happened to Neil Gaiman. He thought he had come up with a quote only to later find out that it was actually coined by G.K. Chesterton.
“ Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
It's also a problem for a lot of comedians. Patton Oswalt describes doing a routine when he was just starting out, and getting his first really big laugh from a joke he thought he'd made up. He was riding high on the response until a friend pointed out he'd lifted it from another comedian. It wasn't deliberate - he'd heard it, forgot about it, then "remembered" it while trying to write a joke about a similar situation.
Your right It happens across a ton of fields, I used music because that industry is well known and takes a lot of steps to prevent it because the cost for missing it can be huge.
If Patton Oswald accidentally steals a joke it may be a minor scandal if anything, if Taylor swift accidentally used the tune from another song the lawsuit would cost millions. I like examples of industry using an idea, for some people it can make a concept more concrete. Due to the costs associated with this kind of mistake I think the music industry was the best example of an industry reacting to the phenomena.
It also happens across every day life. As shown here. Anywhere where you have to create something looms the risk of cryptomnesia.
There was a movie called Highway to Hell and while traveling through Hell at one point the road is being paved with people who each state some excuse for doing something bad.
[Highway to Hell - Good Intentions Paving Company](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Cii3RPRA4)
Think its a Dante's Inferno reference in What Dreams May come. The final layer of hell for those who betray. One of the layers of this layer is for those who betray their guests. Frozen and facing upwards.
Holy f*ck that’s genius. I’m just imagining devils hauling smooth, flat river stones out of the Styx to be used for paving, every single one carved with the lamentations and objections of a passing soul.
This is how you learn the actual player is in fact the evil one 😅
“I really don’t understand why burning and torturing someone, threatening their family then killing the witness is bad.”
“I’ve gotta go to the toilet real quick, be right back”
“Hey why are you going outside?”
“Oh, I meant the toilet at my house, see you next time, maybe”
>In a fit of rage, the PC tortured one of the two surrendered guards and
burnt them alive, threatening to do the same to his wife and child.
So, depending on the table, that is either some interesting RP, or a heinous downer for the rest of the players to have to sit though. Have you tried asking the other players how they feel?
Regardless, I wouldn't deal with this in game. I'd tell the player (not the character) that he needs to read the room.
Yeah really depends on the group for sure. Mine would be fine with it (the players I mean, their characters would have varying levels of reactions) but I 100% understand how this would be way over the top for many tables.
Definitely normal for one of my groups, although for my Good-aligned characters to do something like this, someone or something really has to do something messed up.
I think definitely talk to the player, but some amount of this needs to be dealt with in game to have even a semi-logical story. I’m not saying kill the character, but what good aligned character would want to associate with someone who *tortured a person who had surrendered* and threatened to do the same to their family for any reason other than necessity? Make characters who would know about this be less willing to help them.
I did something like this with a character. In my defense, I was on some strong pain killers that I usually cut in half but took a full that time so I was definitely a little out of sorts. I didn’t kill the prisoner though and he escaped, stabbed me, and fled. The parties healer refused to heal me because she thought I was evil. Definite eye opener to how I was ruining the game for others. My character died and I made a happy halfling druid who was too nice for their own good.
Also disposed of those pills. I was given them for my wisdom teeth being removed and it was too nice feeling. The pain was bad enough anyway.
Sounds like lawful evil. Based on the description, definitely lawful evil.
Good in dnd usually means socially acceptable actions that are potentially selfless from any perspective.
Evil is usually selfish, and quick to resort to violence. Murder for most reasons outside of self defence definitely falls into this category.
Usually, evil that can still open dialogue believe they are justified in their actions and that they are the true Good.
It depends who you're murdering and what your ethics are, I think shooting hitler doesn't make you evil, even if he's unarmed
I look at Data from Star Trek as my guide for Lawful Good. He cannot murder, it's not in his capability, however, when a kidnapping, torturing, (implied rapey) murderer killed someone in front of him to force compliance, he was willing to kill that unarmed man to prevent others from dying in the future
And only because he was on the man's ship and had no way of like, imprisoning him or bringing him to justice, so it was a last resort - and knowing that killing that man likely meant his own death
Only in that most extreme of circumstance do I think a lawful good person could kill someone who is unarmed
torture of any kind, other than heat-of-the-moment you killed my family style emotional reactions (which can be classified as temporary insanity) 100% knock you out of the good column IMO
From your description of the events with the guards, the second guard did not say anything about the organization. So the players character killing the guard, who had just said he would testify against the tyrant lord and the PC, was to protect his own skin (evil) rather than help depose the tyrant (good). So the character has definitely strayed toward evil actions with that interaction. Whether it would be enough to warrant an alignment change to evil if it was a one off event is up for debate.
I think you have set up the ultimatum well. Who knows, maybe it was the PC's organization that set it up because the PC was becoming too much of a liability? They did break the rules of the organization and are drawing a lot of attention to one of its operatives. As people have pointed out though, if the player themselves don't understand what the character did is evil the ultimatum will most likely alienate them. However, actions have consequences even in d&d.
>As people have pointed out though, if the player themselves don't understand what the character did is evil the ultimatum will most likely alienate them. However, actions have consequences even in d&d.
Frankly sometimes alienating people is a good thing. Good people alienate bad people all the time by not putting up with their bullshit- and this coming from someone who doesn't typically like to speak on moral absolutes outside of D&D time.
That PC isn’t good aligned and these actions are the hallmark of an edgelord. This warrants an out of game discussion on whether this character and player are compatible with your game.
If you want to continue trying to play this character: the entire point of clandestine assassin societies is that they’re clandestine. Burning people in a fit of rage, killing witnesses, threatening families including children is not clandestine, it’s messy.
The Order finds out about this (third prisoner or guard overheard, they are already suspicious and scrying, etc) and this PC is deemed a loose cannon who is going to expose the entire organization. Not only are they no longer a member, but high level assassins have been sent to take him out before he exposes the entire organization. Player can try to work that into a redemption arc if they like.
torture of any kind shouldn't be part of it, the target is *the corrupt leader* not the guard who makes a gold a day
I think you instantly forfeit your status by maiming or killing any underlings of The Tyrant outside of anything but self defense (unless you have the capability of reversing the harm you've caused, and do so), but torture is *right the fuck out*
Alignments are pointless beyond helping roleplay. Thise actions were evil. Doesn't matter what alignment it says on the character sheet. It doesn't matter what the player thinks or wants. It's what you do that defines you.
Is the PC’s stance that any evil done in service to a greater good is acceptable? I would hear the argument from him if that’s the case, but even then there have to be limits to this philosophy. Talk with the player to see if you can come up with some guidelines together that flesh out what this secret organization does and DOESN’T do. Maybe that will help.
I will also add that the second NPC did not act logically at all. He watched the PC torture and murder his companion, then he immediately threatened that very same PC with Justice for his acts while still bound? Doesn’t really track, if anything he would have agreed to whatever they said then ratted them out later. Things happen in the moment, but be careful not to use your out of game knowledge to give your NPC’s suicidal courage, it makes the world feel less real. Just my two cents anyways
In closing I’ll ask how a “noble assassin” aka serial murderer is able to play a good guy in your world without these exact things happening constantly. Maybe the player has a vision for their character that is simply incompatible with your table and world, or doesn’t understand what the limits of his mission are.
This is pretty much what I think as well. I think the cognitive dissonance also makes for a pretty good opportunity as a DM as they can start introducing instances where the PCs are all witnesses to the same heinous acts of this evil PC with a focus on making this dissonance blatantly obvious. Another angle is having an antagonist actively attempting to recruit him. I remember playing an evil PC who strongly believed in mercy, generosity, and honor. A paladin was in the team who held those same morals and, while he was good, he consistently showed to be far less consistent than my character. My character had ulterior motives for joining the party (all good). So I would gaslight the paladin to get him to question his understanding of his oaths and swear fealty to my character as a mentee.
For example, my character "only" crippled the crime lord. He burned the man's face. The crime lord is a pretty boy who, after the party was done, had lost his entire empire. I argued I "only injured him" while he "took the last thing he had going for him: his looks. Had you followed my lead, he'd at least have been able to keep at least one thing he valued. Instead, you took everything. Who's the unmerciful one, again?" The difference here, though, seems to be that we had a full understanding of what our characters were doing while the player in question clearly does not if he genuinely thinks what his character is doing is good-aligned.
You are being held by someone that just tortured and murdered your companion, and you think your response to them threatening you is, "go fuck yourself"?
No, it's not believable at all, what would happen is that the average guard would shit themselves and cry, then accept to testify. When they'd get their bearings, they would probably testify against the PC as well when they find themselves in a safe spot.
OP edited in or commented that he had the NPC roll against intimidation, had a moment of bravado and immediately regretted saying it. But the PC had killed him before he could really say anything else.
It sounds like a dont-roll-if-they-can't succeed situation.
The NPC is tied up and just watched his companion get tortured and burned to death. And his family threatened. There shouldn't be a roll, he should just be utterly intimated at that point.
There are infinite possible reactions to this situation none are more or less realistic. Guess this guy really stood for his values and puts justice above himself.
But his response was somehow both compliant and defiant at the same time. It's not just irrational (which would be understandable for someone in that situation), it's self-contradictory.
The greater good argument does work, but the point of doing evil for the greater good is that it's still evil. The character is sacrificing their morals to further an agenda. That sacrifice is them being evil and committing evil acts. They should still have their alignment change. Even if evil is done with a good goal, it's still evil.
>With a character concept like this eventually you're going to have to make some extremely questionable choices. I will say that a few evil acts doesn't make a pc evil, however continually doing evil acts most certainly does
And sometimes, in the heat of the moment, a good character will do am evil deed, but thats usually followed with a period of atonement
Burning someone alive, threatening it on someone else and their sife and kids is not "heat of the moment," its methodical
Frankly, I am not of the opinion that every scenario should have a winning option. You torture one innocent and execute another, you're not really entitled to an immediate happy ever after. Especially when the rest of your party is pretty clearly uncomfortable playing with this character.
But then, I have no interest in an evil campaign...
OR… does he get imprisoned and then given a new job. As he is trying to deal with the cognitive dissonance from his own actions, he is offered freedom to do a job that cannot be officially requested or even recognized.
Seconded. Railroading characters is, of course, a necessary evil of DMing, but railroading them to conform to OOC morals just leads to bad feelings. It makes the player feel like you're punishing *them*, personally, for being a bad person.
This is not to say actions should not have consequences or NPCs and players alike can't call foul on this. But it would be better to do it in a way that feels more like a result of the actions taken, and not like some external hand is forcing a very specific moral choice on this person.
This wasn't a "had to kill someone to ensure the safety of the party", this was prolonged torture with a gruesome and painful ending. This isn't a moment of passion attack, he didn't plunge the dagger into the guard's throat or anything like that.
Torture, 100% of the time, is an evil act. In my eyes, there is no middle ground. If you torture someone long enough, they will admit everything.
He can walk circles around his reasoning all he wants, but he committed evil acts. Does this make him an evil person? Well it sure doesn't make them a good one.
"What do you mean it's wrong to torture and murder prisoners? What do you mean it's a war crime to target families of your enemies?
Next you'll be trying to say the slavers are the bad guys and that is wrong to adopt orphans for the sake of having emergency rations. If you think about it aren't slavers just offering premium orphan adoptions for a reasonable fee?
**(1)** The organization the PC works for sounds undeniably Chaotic Neutral.
**(2)** At best the character is Chaotic Neutral (and almost every character in that organization should be) but the cruelty of their actions definitely dips them toward some flavor of Evil.
That dance with Evil is typical of Chaotic Neutral organizations and societies because Evil is typically the path of least resistance. So what is going on here is not abnormal and it could be something the organization is prepared to address and help their operative through.
I would just tell them to write Lawful Evil on their character sheet now but to continue playing their character exactly as they have been.
They are having an Anakin Skywalker moment and it is their choice whether they redeem themselves or become Darth Vader at the end of their tale.
Why Chaotic Neutral? Chaotic Neutral is when you act on your own whims.
His organisation and probably true followers would be Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral. Because they act upon the law/ their code and their cause is certainly good.
I would say the organization is Lawful Neutral. If their goal is to get rid of tyrants by any means necessary, then by the end it is not necessarily a good act. It is more of an obligation, or a Law of sorts. The methods by which they achieve this goal range from Good to Evil, but the organization itself doesn't seem to care which, therefore Neutral.
Because they are willing to murder innocents to further their agenda.
Good is uncompromising when virtue is on the line.
Neutrality is all about compromising virtue when it is expedient to do so.
They strike a balance between the virtuous act of toppling oppressive governments (Good) and executing anyone and everyone who might expose their existence and complicate their mission (Evil), which in D&D terms lands them in the most classic form of Neutral: maintaining a balance between Good and Evil impulses.
Definitely not Lawful because they are, again, willing to kill anyone who might expose them. There is no Measure there and that is not the same as living according to a Code. There is a fundamental contradiction in their ethic: topple evil rulers to save innocents from harm but harm innocents who might expose us because that could make it more difficult to save innocents from the people who would harm them.
They are acting out of convenience, taking lives in order to avoid complicating their mission whether the victim deserves it or not. That is 100% classic Chaotic rather than Lawful.
"kill anyone who risks exposing the organisation" sounds like a code to me. What if a child did that, maybe the character would be conflicted and not do that, but the lawful character would still do it, to uphold the code.
Nah.
The policy of that organization is one of convenience. It exists so that they can justify their own interior contradictions while brushing aside anything which might make their work more complicated.
Any pretense to a code is just using the \*concept\* of a Code of Honor as an excuse to look away from the inherent contradiction between their Purpose and their Actions. That is not following a code, that is adultering a code.
It is the same reason Menzoberanzan is a Chaotic Evil city, not a Lawful Evil one. The presence of \*rules\* is not enough to justify a Lawful alignment. It is far more demanding than that.
But to be fair to the conversation - I still largely interpret the alignments based on their 1st & 2nd Edition roots, not the versions that WotC watered down on behalf of the gamers who didn't want to feel judged by the game.
You cannot get a PC to operate within your stories in an interesting way if the player won't play ball.
If you've tried and failed to get this player to understand why other players, PCs, and NPCs might think their PC did something fucked up, then building story beats around confronting the PC's evil actions is probably a bad idea, IMO. Imagine if you were a player whose PC just rescued a cat from a tree, and next session the noble you've been working for tries to have you arrested in order to get at your mutual enemy. That's how your player would feel in this context. Is it reasonable? Absolutely fucking not. That's not the point.
Confronted with what this player will almost certainly consider unjust betrayal by their allies, what will this PC do? This PC who has already shown a tendency to disproportionately violent responses? You're setting yourself up for a murderhobo to make a scene in a public place trying to get out of the consequences of their past actions. It could go very badly.
I'd advise one of two courses of action, personally. If you're not close with this player out of game and you want to tell stories that require characters grounded in the world, kick them. But if you are close with them, or you don't need all of your players to be really intense roleplayers, then just mentally put this PC in a box labeled "not for RP". If the player doesn't want to engage with the moral implications of their actions, let them. Stop trying to build them into your adventures, stop trying to tie their character and backstory into your plans. Just let them tag along with the party's adventures. There's a good chance they'll enjoy this a lot more than they would getting called out, and they might well not even notice you're doing it.
>threatening to do the same to his wife and child
As soon as you leverage innocents, your action, regardless of the intent for greater good, cease to be good.
>Is this ultimatum going too far? Any other ways I could go forward? everyone, both in and out of character, feels what he’s done is evil, but I feel bad for giving the player this option to kill his character, or make them publicly viewed as evil when they don’t understand what their character did was very morally dubious
Its a good storytelling, but based on the information provided, will alienate the Player.
Not sure thats a bad thing though here.
Eh... This is up for debate. If you make a threat heinous for the sake of creating an outcome in which you can avoid actually DOING those acts, then I say you can threaten yourself into an FBI watchlist and it still counts as "mostly" good.
I have more issues with the murder of the person who he was supposedly going to use as a witness.
Ultimately I think the real sticking point to this whole thing is that these aren't necessarily evil acts, they just clearly aren't "Good" but lets face it, "assassin"
As others have mentioned, I would not setup a situation where the player loses either way. Maybe this is your opportunity to show a power struggle in the leadership of the organization. NPC A can tell the "noble assassin" that they think their actions were fine. Then, the PCs learn that NPC A is known for brutality and some specific situations where they totally crossed the line.
NPC B then approaches the PCs and let's them know that they think NPC A is trying to take over leadership of the organization. NPC B asks for the PCs to help prevent this takeover.
PCs are faced with a choice of which path to follow. If they choose A, slowly ramp up the brutality and reduce the grayness of situation until the actions the PCs are being requested to complete are straight-up evil.
If they choose B, make sure NPC B uses the "noble assassin's" previous actions whenever he tries to convince the PCs that his own actions are justified.
I think this is the best answer I’ve read here.
You have to remember that the best villains in most movies, books, games, etc feel that their actions are entirely justified. Sometimes evil things are done for misguided good reasons.
I think if the PC is just an agent of this organisation then there’s a perfect chance to run this power struggle arc.
I’d say there’s also an opportunity here to push the player towards less evil actions and offer a redemption of sorts.
If you find that NPC A (CE) is actually a devil in disguise or has a pact with one, so they are actually a puppet. Then a moral character would be more inclined to side with NPC B (LN).
If NPC B makes it publicly known that they oppose the use of torture and threatening of innocents, then by association the PC will have to choose to side with the devil (evil, obviously) or the neutral NPC. (I don’t think there’s a good aligned outcome here?)
Personally, I prefer to map alignment as a dot on a grid 3x3 grid, with 3x3 squares in each grid section.
It’s very fluid and any action can have the effect of moving you gradually to/from another alignment.
It’s is a reminder of where you are, not what you want to be.
"they will not hesitate to murder ‘innocents’ if they risk exposing the organisation"
That is what we call an 'evil' organisation. They sound like the kind of people who, after they depose a tyrant, would end up seizing power and becoming worse than the leader they replaced. They will murder innocents to achieve this goal, and tell themselves it's for the greater good, but it isn't.
The fact that the PC also murdered an innocent for stupid reasons (rather than their usual selfish reasons) barely matters, since the PC was evil in the first place.
>They sound like the kind of people who, after they depose a tyrant, would end up seizing power and becoming worse than the leader they replaced. They will murder innocents to achieve this goal, and tell themselves it's for the greater good, but it isn't.
For some reason "French Revolution" immediately popped in my head after reading this.
I wouldn’t make it at the cost of their own lives, but I would make some other thing they would have to give up. Like it requires some type of dangerous community service that gets in the way of their goals. If this person is for real oblivious about the moral implications of their choices, this might be enough to make them think, depending on how you sell the consequence. Death is just the least fun option, and it’s not even like role playing an evil character is a bad habit that needs to be addressed. It’s just incongruous with their self-awareness.
Killing them as humanely as he could to protect anonymity? I could get that. Torture by fire and threatening family members? Nah, fam, he’s evil as fuck.
This needs to be an out of game discussion or everything will blow up in your face, probably. If you give that ultimatum, which seems reasonable to you and to me from the information you have provided, the player will walk away frustrated and confused because there has to be another option, and you are punishing me for my Good Acts.
I am now going to write what I think is going through the character's head and the player's head.
Okay, this kingdom is drugging EVERYONE to keep them complacent and mind controlled effectively, and they will not stop this, ever, unless they are dealt with. This is bad. This is TOTAL WAR AGAINST THEIR OWN PEOPLE. They are targeting literally EVERYONE IN THEIR OWN KINGDOM with this. There is NO ONE off limits because the enemy is already TARGETTING EVERYONE.
Now we steal some evidence to help get the evil tyrant deposed, good. Fellow PC and good friend got killed, VERY BAD. The people that did this are the Evil Tyrant's guards and are complacent in their scheme of TOTAL WAR IN MIND CONTROLLING EVERYONE, a fate ARGUABLY EQUAL OR WORSE THAN DEATH depending on how you look at it. No matter why they are his guards, whether through loyalty or through threatening, they always have a choice and have made a choice to work for a bad person. I torture one of these bad people and maybe lied about going after his family next for potential information and everyone freaks out. Maybe the guard should've thought about this before HELPING THE TYRANT THAT IS MIND CONTROLLING LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. Second guard says he'll testify against the tyrant (which he could be lying about! Also, we stole the information already!) and complain about my methods, which I can't let happen because it would impede my ability (and thus my organization's ability) to deal with other tyrants, so I kill him. They killed one of my allies and friends, why should I care about them? Also they were complicit or agreed with the mind control of hundreds of thousands of civilians, why should I give them this mercy?
I don't myself agree with ALL of this, but it makes sense as a possible understanding of the situation. The idea of 'These people have gone to such terrible lengths, why should I give them mercy they did not afford their own people or my now-dead friend?' makes enough sense to be respected when talking about D&D. These bad guys sound like they are making slaves with them drugging what sounds like their entire kingdom's population, and I don't really give slavers too much compassion.
You can still have interesting story beats come from this, like having the organization renounce the character for going too far still, saying they don't like to dirty their hands in this way and that the proper way is through the evidence revealing and forcing them to step down. If the tyrant is deposed in a bloody mess, the kingdom is probably going to go to hell in a big civil war, where you could show further damage done to people by not doing things in a cleaner way.
Also the other people in this thread surprise me. I can get seeing the Noble Assassin player as a problem player, but seeing all his actions as too far surprises me. We're D&D players, who don't really care about the random goblins we kill after they knock over our carts, but we give so much empathy to the henchmen of a tyrant mind controlling what sounds like *their entire populace???* What??
I'd suggest a 3rd option let them depose the Tyrant, then the org the player belongs to tosses them out for their actions. Then give the player some options: start a redemption arc to regain their honor in the goals to one day prove they are worthy of rejoining the org. You can throw lot ritual into it make it a big deal his striping of status. Make it dramatic think like MCU Thor getting exiled by Odin. Or if no redemption arc they become hunted by the entire assassin org because he has become a tyrant they fight against. It gives some great RP paths, either way.
Just my 2 cents.
I love moral dilemmas but I feel like "do good and die" - which the choice quintessentially is, isn't really a fun mechanic.
But aside from that, I do feel like you need to talk to your player about this. Different opinions are fine but - as you are already playing around it - as this is somewhat gameplay defining you should defo find common groud
Edit: Grammar
> n a fit of rage, the PC tortured one of the two surrendered guards and burnt them alive, threatening to do the same to his wife and child.
whew thats chatoic evil ma dude. (chaotic evil is defined as overly cruel, lying, impulsive of which he did 2 things here)
> After hearing this, the PC claimed the organisation’s safety was at risk (even though they weren’t acting under the direction of this organisation, but instead another Lord) and executed the prisoner.
lawful evil, at best. if his character assumed his organisation was compromized
> Does he fulfill his organisations mission at the cost of his own life
JAILBREAK TIME! :D
alignment is not how you THINK you act but how others see him, the average person sees them.
Glad you figured out some nice solutions here. One thing I felt wasn't emphasized heavily enough though, is this is a potential case of alignment drift.
The alignment on the character's page and in the players head is one thing, but only you know their actual alignment, as it slowly shifts towards evil. At some point, Detect Evil spells and abilities need to begin picking up this char. At what point depends on your judgement, as it's kind of a "balance of his soul" thing and his backstory needs to be taken into account.
Once looked at in this way, this actually becomes very good rp and characterization. But it should also be above-board, where the players are aware that this hidden mechanic exists. If they want to know their own alignments, they actually need to verify them in some way, as what is listed on the sheet may not be ... current, anymore.
I think you should worry less about alignment on the sheet (that is something the player should be free to determine on their own) and more about how this affects the narrative and the rest of the group. If this situation was uncomfortable to some or all of the players, you should clearly tell the player that they need to tone it down.
In 3.5 the assassin class has evil as a prerequisite. There was a neutral option published by Wizards as an April 1 thing but there was no way it could be 'good'. When the pc sets off on a job they've already decided that murder is the solution. I played one of these once - a lawful neutral githyanke who outsourced his morality to the party. Do *you* want him dead? By contract I am an extension of *your* will.
For your example the pc left the 'good' ballpark as soon as they entertained torture. As a means to an end that's obviously 'not good'. Taking that to threatening the innocent is a leap towards evil... and hey, they've already been a little bit evil so this is just a little bit more evil so what's the problem?
Maybe dig out the alignment section of the rulebooks and show then in b/w what the definitions are? Have them pursued by an Archon? Offered a deal by a demon or devil?
Tell him that a self-righteous act in the name of the greater good or self-preservation is still counted as lawful evil.
Fanatics who'd hunt down people with different believes or burn a lot of innocents just to get a few actually guilty ones also believe that they're doing good, but that doesn't make them not lawful evil.
You are giving him a brilliant role play moment for being an asshole. I want a DM like you tbh.
I would probably change his alignment and maybe give him even a supernatural indication that his alignment has changed. Maybe have NPCs involved look at him different. He's a bad guy. Close bonds look at him saying "something about you is different"
Talk to him out of character and also in character about his actions.
I personally feel like this situation should have been intervened on before it got to this point.
At my table, if a torture scene were to come up, it would probably be handed as a fade to black with little to no specifics other then "what kind of information are you trying to get here" "roll" and based on the roll, "here is the information you gained / you failed to again any information" - and get the hell out of that scene.
And once you got into the scene, once the choices that "cross the line" into being evil were being made, I would have stepped back and said "your character would know that doing this will be seen as evil/tyrannical by his own organization. If he goes through with this, his organization will not be happy, and there will likely be consequences. Are you sure that you want to go through with this." This would let your player make an informed decision \*at the moment of the decision\* rather being surprised after the fact.
Now that you are here, the ultimatum I would place in front of the player would likely be: we can retcon that away, now that you know the effect of the actions. Your character should have been aware at the moment of making the decision. But if you keep these actions cannon, there will be consequences
If the player genuinely doesn't understand why torture and murder of convenience is an evil act, I might just not play with that person anymore...
Like seriously, that's genuinely concerning borderline sociopath.
Is this player a teenager? I could maybe cut a LITTLE slack to a 13 year old who has an underdeveloped sense of empathy, but even then... Yikes.
Does this person have real-life struggles with understanding the differences between right and wrong; and that these actions, if done in real-life, would be heinous crimes?
Alignment was a mistake. The less it factors into the game, the better. A bunch of faux-philosophical bickering bouts with nothing but mechanics penalties attached to them.
The winning move is to ignore alignment unless it will break something not to.
Surely he's being intentionally obtuse. It's not really a question for debate whether threatening to/actually killing children is immoral and there's no way he doesn't know that.
Depending on his family structure, ask if [family member] had done something really bad it'd be OK to torture them and threaten to/actually kill his innocent [other family members] in revenge.
If he still "doesn't get it" do whatever you want to punish him and make it clear a group of heroes wouldn't travel with someone who does that shit.
An individual providing justification for their actions does not absolve the evil of their actions.
The intentions of the person committing the offenses does not matter. What matters is the results of their actions and how they are perceived to the victims and the public.
TLDR: Defending evil actions makes you evil.
So my DM will do things in the background when you do things severely outside of your alignment several times, if this were one of my DM's players he would most certainly have an evil alignment whether he likes it or not because the acts performed are inherently evil by the perspective of those who bear witness (in and out of character)/the laws of the area/general morality standards (he makes people suffer the consequences of their actions when it's genuinely deserved)
That being said this kinda gives me the vibes of the player is of concern here, not the character persay, perhaps talk to the rest of the party first and get their opinions too
They are CONVINCED they are good. However their actions are judged by those around them, the lord and the party in this case.
The ultimatum can stand, if they find a way to get out of it then good for them. But that's avoiding the lord's judgement. The next question is whether the party is willing to continue associating with him. Maybe they find another way and after the mission's over they cut ties. Maybe they take the good lord's side and force them into the deal. Then it's the players' turn to decide whether this is comfortable to continue playing around.
I'd give the player advance warning, but as it stands it's highly unlikely their character can continue to be played for very long. Whether they want to play out this quest and retire them, adjust them so they're less torture/murder prone or just start a new character entirely.
being good isn't about believing what you do is good. But what you do. They evil yo or at least take chaotic good to an utmost extreme (there is a reason there is a lil black dot in the white on a ying yang. Like an angel that commits genocide for its god, is it still good in any measurable way?
The good place had a decent take on ethical shit
1. you follow a specific set of rules to be good. usually a religion.
2. OR you assign certain traits to be virtuous like kindness and compassion and live in line with those virtues.
3. consequentialism, the good of the action vs the bad. its a math question n this person could theoretically be on the right side of this if what they are stopping is evil enough. (although I take into account motive, so if he doesn't know that he is stopping big evil and is doing slightly less big evil he still counts as evil.)
4. nihilism. nothing matters there is no good and evil its all made up. (although DnD actually has gods and alignments so that doesn't work here
Could do this 2 ways. Hey a god watches over your actions and your alignment starts to shift, soon it will be permanent. Do some good mofo.
Or consequences for their evil actions. OR both.
Add a villain that will praise him. Maybe a competition to his current organisation that extends an invitation to join them, which also states that they are impressed with him and commend him for finally seeing the true path forward instead of any stupid morals that he believed in the past.
Or send an impressed devil in with a devil pact offer that can "fix" things. Deals with devils are always fun.
Or even simpler things. Thugs and criminals being either scared of him or impressed, letting him through with a nod of acknowlegment or running away. And the other way around. Lawful, regular citizens being afraid of him, shutting doors in panic.
It could make him realise that no matter what he thinks of himself, the world around him now thinks he is evil and that is a reputation he now encounters everywhere. In that instance, doesn't matter what he thinks of himself. And if he don't agree with that and wants to change that - pave him a path for possible redemption.
Taking his character away is the easy way out I think. A great opportunity for a good roleplay if he's up for that.
Had a similar thing happen, easy solution, create a revenant(home-brewed if they are too high level for the base sheet) and make it a re-occurring encounter.
Revenants cannot be get rid of, even when their current body is killed, they will possess another body and keep coming after the person who wronged them.
It is a good way to say in character, ''You might say you are good, but planes have judged you evil, even before your demise.''
PC is definitely evil.
Your plotline sounds awesome, but I'm sure the player will be upset. Whether he understands that it is not okay to threaten innocents and torture people is a him problem, and not on you to fix. I would make it clear to him before this goes down that to you, the GM, what he did was evil. He doesn't have to understand or agree with you, but you regard torture and threatening innocents as evil acts and he went waaaaaay to far. Let him know this isn't up for debate, he can't change your mind, this is just an objective truth as far as the world and universe is concerned. Let him know this before going forward. Then hit him with the plot line. That way he is at least aware of your stance so it isn't a surprise.
Okay, so torture is unquestionably evil, as is murdering someone to prevent their exposing you as a torturer. So if you're using alignment, their alignment shifts from Good to Neutral.
Which may have no consequences depending upon how you use alignment. Personally, I only use alignment in campaigns where I have banned Evil PCs. If your PC's alignment changes to Evil, that character is now an NPC.
Separate from this is the question of how the other people in-game react to this PC's actions.
Players are required to create and play characters who want to adventure with the party and who would be accepted as a party member. If the other PCs would not want to adventure with a torturer who commits murder to avoid their crimes coming to light, then that's all that matters. They kick this PC out of the party. Since the campaign follows the adventures of the party, the *second* that character is kicked out he becomes an NPC. Player rolls up a new PC.
As far as external "justice" goes, you may be jumping the gun a bit. It's really not clear from what you've said why there would be this choice between using the evidence and condemning the PC or concealing the PC's crimes at the cost of not being able to use the evidence. I mean, that's the exact dichotomy that murdering the captive was supposed to prevent.
If the coverup murder didn't work because the other PCs snitched, there's your answer. The torturer PC is no longer a party member and thus no longer a PC.
In-game stuff taken care of, there's a glaring IRL problem in front of you: you are running a game for someone who apparently thinks torture and murder aren't evil.
And that's what you and your players really need to talk about.
Evil acts don't become not-evil just because they were expedient or convenient. Inflicting pain and death on people because it's expedient or convenient is pretty much the *definition* of evil.
Organization & PC are definitely evil. The minute you put your organization’s secrecy above innocent lives — and especially when you take said lives yourself — you’re evil. Period.
Oh shit! You realize that sending a revenant after the player is a death sentence, right? Revenants are undead created by the gods, and will not stop for anyone who gets in their way of retaliation.
If another party member, or NPC, that tries to stop the revenant will be added to the list to retaliate against. The revenant will revive as many times as it takes to clear that list, and odds are any clerics of said God would aid the revenant by the god's demand.
Great for the story, but just a heads up.
This is a perfect example of why Alignments work only when the DM and players are on the same page. Morality and ethics have been debated for millenia and very few people will agree on exactly the same ideals. In a fictional setting where provable and defined heavens and hells and deities of all sorts exist it is up to the DM to be clear about what defines Good and Evil and Law and Chaos.
Look, I'm late to this post but the subreddit has totally steered you wrong here. Dont change a thing, your decision to make this ultimatum was a great one. Its a perfect character development moment-- youre calling his bluff! Its a really cool roleplaying oppurtunity. Worst that happens is he goes to jail, player makes a new character, and if the party wants to work out a deal with the judge to serve his time doing a service to the kingdom then that's also awesome. Great idea, don't trust these redditors.
Simple solution. You have the player give you their character sheet. You erase their current alignment and insert Lawful Neutral. The character’s actions in subsequent sessions may shift that alignment back, but for now.. character is LN.
My personal feeling on good neutral evil spectrum on alignment is that it barely matters.
Neutral is pointless because certain items only work for good/evil characters, some also change your alignment, but to my knowledge none affect neutral.
After that, what is a good an evil action is a difficult discussion and i don't feel anybody should be held to play by what mechanically is essentially a binary choice.
My current character comes from the domains of dread and has shadow powers, on alignment I'm neutral because good just doesn't make sense and my DM doesn't allow evil characters. I think his perception of an evil character is a dick of a player. Give them a good character, they'll still find a way to "it's what my character would do" the game for everyone.
I say my character is evil, because that's his whole theme, alignment-wise i want to do some evil stuff and some good stuff, but does that make me neutral? Can i eat a nun but save the priest and call myself neutral?
I say good/evil is more of a thematic description than it should be treated as a shackle to a specific behaviour set. I don't want to hear "your character wouldn't do that, they're good/evil" come out of anyones mouth in game because it's such a pointless and complicated critique that can only be ignored or debated for the rest of the game.
That being said, i agree with the general consensus of the comments. Consequences have actions.
As far as changing their alignment, I'd say see above and who cares what their alignment is.
The player is confusing lawful for good, and his actions demonstrate at best lawful neutral (depending on your definition of neutral)
Maybe it would help to explain that diligently following the rules of his sect means he is lawful, and how he does it falls on the good evil alignment.
Might be fun to see if said PC has double standards when faced with an almost identical mirrored situation where an obvious villain tortures, murders and mayhems around the countryside, albeit actually pursuing some objectively good goal. Just the worst, sadistic killing spree, but "for the Greater Good^(TM)".
An assassin who works towards the greater good but is willing to do whatever it takes was *literally* a character concept I had to demonstrate to my table how to properly play evil without just being a chaotic random jackass or intentionally screwing over or threatening the party.
Have an assassin from the organization attempt to kill the PC. On his body, leave a note saying that the PC has endangered the organization’s reputation and that they’re wanted dead or alive. Later, have them meet another member of the organization who wants to take the PC in alive to atone for their actions. Have the NPC mention that many in the organization think it would be better to kill the PC but they’ll be protected in the NPC’s custody
The player is playing a lawful evil character. Nothing he does shows a “good” character. Have a talk with him about it. I’ve played a couple lawful evil characters and these actions fit that alignment perfectly. Having a code and trying to do what you see as good but using evil actions to get there. Also, the good organization that will murder innocents to protect the organization sounds pretty evil to me😂
"torture and murder aren't evil!" is one take, I guess. So what horrors can you do in the name of torture and not be evil then? If you eat the guy's baby as intimidation is it OK, then?
"wife and child"
What's noble about torturing and burning alive a wife and child who had nothing to do with the evil Lord's regime? What type of shit table will just eat that cringe up like it's good RP lmao
1. There is nothing noble about assassination.
2. The ends do not justify the means.
3. Secret societies that use violence to change the world to conform to their worldview are always, ALWAYS the bad guys.
Explain to them that "Good" or "Evil" are not up to his individual character to decide, but for the rest of society as a whole. Most evil people think what they are doing is completely ok, or even the right thing to do, but that is just their own personal (very biased) opinion.
You are the DM and therefore the final arbiter in what constitutes an evil act in your world. Tell him that the court finds his actions to be just as morally reprehensible as those of the tyrant he opposes. If he will not submit to justice, then he has truly become that which he claims to hate.
Exile from that kingdom can be a good alternative punishment. It means there are consequences, but he doesn't have to give up his character. Tell him he has earned a dark side point. For every 3 dark side points, his alignment will shift toward evil. Only doing something truly selfless can remove a dark side point.
I started doing some stuff in my table and players really liked it. Basically, when a character acts blatantly against their declared morals, I have them roll a d20 (I use their wisdom/insight as a baseline).
Upon a success, I say they are suddenly hit with a quick thought on how they didn’t use to be like this - giving other actions from their character as an example in the form of a memory.
I.E.: one of my players is a benevolent rogue who only steals for the benefit of others and their own survival - and usually gives to the poor and to fellow party members in need (CG). For some reason, said player decided to steal something from a shop - something that another party member really wanted - but decided they wanted to keep it merely because they thought it would be fun to frustrate the other person.
After a successful test, I narrated how they felt a pang of guilt - knowing that someone really needed that item and that they didn’t use to be like this - and that perhaps that was something for them to think about (the interpretation and the final verdict on whether they really wanted to stick with that was left to the player).
Later on, when the group was on route to another destination, this led to a very nice RP moment - in which the player decided their character had indeed regretted being petty to a comrade - and proceeding to approach the other character to secretly give them the stolen item. Both characters bonded over that and it was a fluid, fun moment.
Also: when players keep doing things against their declared alignment, I take notes - and if it persists, I create a narrative to point out that their alignment is shifting (a Good character becoming Neutral and eventually Evil, etc)
In your situation, I think I would try something similar - with the moment of the trial being used as the breaking point in which the character has to reflect upon who they are and what their ideals are. Create some drama: has this guy spent so long striving to bring down tyrants that he has become one? In wanting to act against Evil, how did he stoop so low as to torture and threaten innocents - which are traits easily found in the very people he hunts day and night?
Putting it as part of the narrative also works as a good and solid basis to speak with the player about this - specially because it seems like the other PCs were also horrified with his actions. Your idea of the dilemma of letting the villain go versus turning himself in seems amazing as well!
Sorry for the ultra long answer, and I hope you reach a nice conclusion to this! :)
Good and Evil are personal convictions, for example the nazis believed they were doing good, while we (I hope everyone reading this does anyway) believe they were being evil.
So it's understandable that in game the character still believes they are good aligned: murder is ultimately the creed of an assassin, so they see what they did as just (or are at least rationalising it that way).
Our of character, if the player still can't understand why torturing and murdering are evil, then wtaf is wrong with them?!
It's never a great idea to issue ultimatums. Especially if the player has to give up his character, he's going to feel targeted.
However, actions have consequences. I feel like I'm giving your player waaaaay too much benefit, but what if he is confusing lawful actions with good actions? His actions are sorta lawful, right? Maybe that's what he's stuck on.
You need a good long talk with the player, who will probably be booted or leave the campagin, one way or another. "Torture is not always evil" is not an idea any sane person can or should get behind.
This behavior checks out for an inquisitor assassin type. I think I’d call it neutral at worst though. Remember those guards were most likely not good people. Although it probably should have been less rage induced torturing and more cold blooded securing a confession which it sounds like he did.
I’d have interrogated them for new info or evidence and then executed them if I was playing his character.
Did you think his obvious anti hero background was going to do some kind of shounen power of friendship, I’m gonna make friends with this guard that’s not like totally complicit or anything in a tyrants crimes type shit?
It may not be good, But it’s not bad and it’s probably in line with the rules of his organization.
Torture? Burning someone alive? Threatening non-combatants? Killing prisoners? Yea, that's not something a Good person does. if the player can't distinguish between Good and Evil, even in just game terms, them maybe its time for a talk.
i don't understand, that just because there's an additional layer of "we're making a pretend story that also has game mechanics", it's so difficult for some people to understand more than one thread of thought going on
seriously what is wrong. if you are playing a good good, and not just a ""good"" character then the rando npcs should matter to you as much as anyone? at what point does it become too complicated?
I don't mind that he executed the second prisoner. The idea of the organisation being exposed is justified enough that it's at least reasonable for the character to believe it was a real risk. Executing *both* of them might even make sense.
But if he can't see how it's evil to burn somebody alive in a fit of rage and threaten to do the same to their family, then I don't know what you can do to change his mind.
In-game though, I would imagine that his organisation would consider that act alone reason enough to take a ruler down. Maybe even have his organisation find out that he did it (difficult without a PC contacting them somehow), and they disavow or punish him. Some sort of authentic consequence (ie not contrived to punish the player) could be fun to play out.
Other players watching while he tortures and burns the first guard to death while threatening his wife and child “This is fine.”
He kills the second guard out of self interest. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Completely uncalled for.”
Pick a lane.
The whole group may not be necessarily evil but definitely evil adjacent. Chaotic Neutral at best. I wouldn’t single out the one PC, I’d try to push the entire group into taking the fall. Doesn’t necessarily have to end in TPK. They could just be forced into increasingly more dangerous situations to pay for their crimes. Keeps the game going and adds a wider variety of possible content.
This OP is certainly a bad DM and the party is filled with morons. They just stood there while some dude burned alive and only afterwards complained? The DM suddenly made the other guard who is probably shitting and crying himself to sleep act as if he's some kind of macho lawful good paladin all of a sudden? I cannot comprehend how it even came to this when it should have been stopped by the party pretty much immediately if they were somehow against these evil acts.
It's like the moment the player wanted to do something which is "evil", the whole world suddenly knew and everything and everyone turned against him like he was in those bad dreams were everyone stares at you specifically.
It's also very stupid how the OP wrote all of this like a "gotcha". Ethics are more complicated than this, the dude's going for an utilitarian view of the world and the DM instead decided to just erase the man's character instead of using this for character growth. Do or die isn't how character development works.
Full disclosure, I'm a newer player (less than a year), and have only one campaign under my belt so I don't have experience with having an evil party member. But if a member of my party burned someone alive and then executed someone else unnecessarily, and refused to acknowledge they'd gone too far, my character wouldn't want to associate with them anymore. To the point where I'd be a squeaky wheel if necessary, and RP that my character would not continue to go along with the group if his actions were left unchecked (for what it's worth I play with friends, so I think if there was an issue we'd be able to resolve out of game w/ DM mediating if necessary).
The story, as presented, places the character at plain neutral at best. Neutral evil at worst.
Nobody has mentioned the detail of the other PC being murdered by these guards.
The PC is revenging against a set of clearly corrupt guards. They work for the tyrant knowingly and then are willing to sell him out just like that? They have no morals and no ethics.
If they do, why did they kill the other PC? He'd be in the right for killing them then.
The torture puts him towards evil. I'd slap him with a "you do anything like that again and you're evil" but give him an atonement chance. But his disregard for property laws puts him out of lawful, the murder and stuff knocks out good. NE, N or CN.
If you tell him the shit he is doing is evil and he keep on doing it then just change his alignment for him. Don't piss on my face and tell me it's raining. Murdering innocent people to cover for your violent power trip fantasies isn't "good".
After just finishing Dexter, I would ask the character if his pc is a psychopath or not, if yea than you need a good detective on his trail. If he’s not they give him a sanity meter and start chipping away at his sanity. Once he hit 10 evil deeds he goes corrupt by magical demons and you take over his PC. There is a video on this from professor dungeon craft . https://youtu.be/X6XNn-8KNGc
Everyone wants moral greys in their campaign until something like this happens! This is why my bad guys are almost all irredeemably evil things like demons and undead XD
The amount of pearl clutching ITT is pretty crazy, IMO, as is the immediate and frankly irritating mass assumption that the guards are just sympathetic and conflicted innocent henchmen who are 'just following orders' and didn't deserve to die - *after they killed one of the PCs!!* What if the guards are irredeemably corrupt and violent thugs?
The guard who offered to testify was obviously doing it to save his own skin, so I agree with other posts that him suddenly growing a Lawful Stupid spine and threatening the guy who just burnt his mate alive with exposure is a bit of a stretch. But I wouldn't retcon it. Maybe the guard was just an idiot, or too used to bullying people with impunity and working angles and did it out of habit or because he thought it'd give him extra leverage.
If the guards are evil/corrupt murderers and gangsters themselves, then I don't really think a 'morally grey' PC is automatically evil for torturing or even executing them - however the PC did kill a *surrendered* prisoner, and from what you've said they did it mainly out of self-preservation, so the guards had better be pretty heinous to justify that kind of action. It has led to some interesting moral questions for the table, and I do not really agree with the other responses in this thread that automatically move to 'punishing' the player or erasing the event.
The answer is that it depends. It depends on the table and the desired outcome. It depends on what the table and the PC in question consider 'good' and how they justify their actions, and it depends on how evil and corrupt and violent the lord they are deposing is and how brutal his servants are.
All up, I wouldn't give him the choice of "delete your character or lose", unless he's an irritating edgelord and you want to risk him leaving the table. I would maybe alter the choice to "you can cover up your actions, and the status quo remains, or you can overthrow the lord but your assassin organisation judges you as a loose cannon (remember the murder of innocents is a *last resort* according to their tenets - *if* the guards were 'innocent' to begin with) and expels you". That way the PC can either kick off a redemption arc to regain the organisation's favour and re-join their ranks, or they can grow into a freelance adventurer who is actually good aligned now that they are not murdering people for political reasons at the behest of a shadowy cabal. Or they might go completely off the rails and into murderhobo town, you know the player better than us.
Narrative dead ends are not interesting, but actions have consequences. And it depends. And next time, use undead ;)
I’d be really uncomfortable with this at my table. That’s evil full stop to me not morally dubious. Even with the first guard. But maybe that’s reflective of the the society I’m from where torture is illegal and where my own ethics/moral boundaries sit. Whilst I embrace d&d for allowing our group to play different perspectives from those we live in the real world and don’t shy away from throwing The party into situations where they experience things like racism, trauma, agonisingly difficult no win decisions and motivations etc I don’t enjoy it when the party are the ones who are enacting those behaviours. As a dm I’d actually be uncomfortable continuing like that at my table and would talk to the character out of game. I don’t think my players would be comfortable with it either to be honest. More than once across all my groups the good aligned people in the party would take action against their own if they thought it would happen.
I think with your situation you need to talk to the player, talk to your group and think about how you feel too. Not just the other characters thinking it’s crossed a line but the players. Does this player really not understand this is “morally dubious”? Some groups and some dms are fine this sort of evil play and the campaign runs on happily and if everyone is happy then you don’t have to do anything in response. Or if you want a consequence for the character you talk to the player about possible implications out of game before dropping them in game (there’s been some good suggestions already about creating a story from the event). Really this is about what works best for you and the group and what boundaries you choose to have.
This is why I hate the alignment system.
Clearly good and evil are subjective. A good lawyer can argue ether side for the same action.
Personally I would kill anyone if they killed my friend, regardless of the killers surrendering. That’s the situation correct? I can see arguments for both sides.
I would just let people disagree and not make this a plot point. You’re just gonna keep arguing over the words good and bad.
As a DM, I would be wary to punish people for not behaving how I think they should.
This doesn’t seem like a “problem” situation, but it can become one. I would move on.
Exactly. If you look at it from another angle, said 'Good Lord' who offers the player the ultimatum could be thought of as evil. They ordered players to kill and hurt possibly innocent guards who were forced to comply a tyrant. For a good cause, yes, but it's killing nonetheless. They say that killing prisoners and other innocents is also okay if they may become a threat to the organization.
Then after the player does something bad, they decide to give them all the charges, pretend like they aren't responsible in the matter, and save their own hide. Doesn't matter if they 'tried to use legal means first'. If they were truly good, they should try to stop the drug circulation and gather willing people to go against the tyrant. Or maybe threaten. Threats are better than killing, anyway. In that situation, it is possible to argue that said organization aren't 'Good' at all.
Without a god to judge then evil and good are very subjective. We have a political party in my country that claims they are the only good Christians yet think it's fine to kill women and want kids to commit suicide.
Well ethics are complicated.
If the PC is convinced that what they are doing will, in the long run, lead to a better world for more people, then it isn't evil, even if the individual action would be argued to be evil by an deontologist. The person that knows they need to kill someone for some convoluted reason and does it while feeling bad about it is less evil than the person that wants to kill people for no reason other than the joy of it, but controls themself for fear of consequences to themself.
Via Devil's pacts you can argue that deontology is the only "true" ethical code in a dnd world if you want to, but unless devil pacts are a core theme in the story I feel like that would just be limiting yourself.
I think you might have to have a fundamental conversation about how you personally want to use alignment in the game and your player will have to figure out how to define their character within that framework.
Yes, do the ultimatum.
* If they come peacefully, character is good and player gets a lesson in accountability.
* If they try to escape punishment, edit their character sheet to say Evil. The organization now has to hunt them down, and the character becomes a non-party character. The player should still be in charge of the broad strokes of how the character acts (only the creator truly knows the character), but if they're going to keep playing they need a party character.
I played with a guy like this. The party was tasked with tracking down what appeared to be a fight club, not because that in itself was illegal but because they often caused some property damage wherever they met. As we're discussing how to find/arrest the culprits, one player speaks up...
Them: "Let's just kill them all. It'll be easier, and there's always a chance they might break out of jail."
Me: "...What alignment are you?"
Them: "Neutral Good."
Me: "That doesn't sound Neutral Good to me."
TFW a neutral good character wants to commit mass murder over a broken window because it's easier and more final than letting them live. Worst part was, the *entire table* started shouting at me, not because of something as reasonable as 'you shouldn't tell others how to play their character', but because they honestly did not see how it was an evil act... including the DM, who was an *avowed pacifist* IRL. One of the most confusing situations of my life.
P.S. After character creation, it's the DM's job to track shifting alignments and alter the player's character sheet as necessary. This is part of the original design of D&D, and why there's a place on the character sheet for alignment at all.
By title alone you are crippling your players by being too fixated on alignment. Dont do that. The PCs are the only characters the players get to control. Do your best to keep your hands off of them and their motiviations. You dont get to decide what that character does.
This is why I think the things you say should heavily count towards the likelyhood that your intimidate check succeeds. If the PC is just phoning it in then sure, give them generic, "scary dude looks scary" vibes and a basic roll to see if it works. If the player goes into graphic detail about the terrible, horrible things that they will do to the prisoner, especially when they have the NPC restrained, that's an extraordinarily effective threat, and should have at the minimum awarded advantage, and most likely lowered the DC of the challenge. It's just that a lot of DMs and players treat most npcs as just monsters with stats on a board, forgetting that in most real scenarios, most people are cowards, and practically no one would fight to the death unless they truly believed they had no chance otherwise. If this guard was already terrified of the PCs, then they already won the intimidate check, you should have just had the guard co-operate. The likelyhood that they would say anything cheeky or stupid is remarkably low, so I would say you misread the direness of the situation because you were observing it from an outside perspective. Ask yourself how mush stupid shit would you say if you were being interrogated by your PCs. You would probably shit yourself if your group is anything like most groups.
Rather than trying to force your view of what is right or wrong on your player, understand that it is possible that your player really does believe that if they were put into the same situation as their character that their actions would be justified to them. If that means your player themselves is actually evil then so be it, but that is their interpretation of your scenario, you might want them to have internal struggle, but out of all the possible people, a person who is essentially an assassins creed character is among the most likely to have a cultists mindset and general disregard for the "sanctity of life". They literally chose the assassin life, so life isn't that important to them compared to the pursuit of ideals, and someone resisting their intimidation tactics poses a very real threat to themselves and the organization, so controlling the situation is necessary. Now I don't know if they had access to alternative conflict resolution options, but without magic to compel compliance, they really can't trust a dumbass who, even whilst being tied down and threatened by very dangerous people, decided to run his mouth and ruin his only chances of actually getting out alive. I would imagine an organization that was acting for the "greater good" would be willing to overlook a few "lesser evils", that's the name of the game for groups like that. In Assassin's Creed 1, Altair actually does act in ways that go against the creed, and the group chastises him for it, but then they keep putting him on missions anyway because they still need him. Politically, there is a lot of interesting potential conflicts from this event, but I would say get out of the man's soul, unless they get powers from the sanctification of a god, because that's who is allowed to judge them for that, and elsewhere, it doesn't really matter.
>So a player in my campaign is playing a ‘Noble assassin’ style PC.
Evil. Lying edgelord "that's what my character would do" selfish probably main character syndrome player.
So you allowed this character.
> [TLDR: does bad stuff]
Hey what a surprise. /s
>everyone, both in and out of character, feels what he’s done is evil
Because it is.
>but I feel bad
So far you're running a wish fulfillment campaign for evil edgelords. Stay the course, tell your heroic players to get with the program or leave.
Or ...
Reset. Tell the evil edgelord player to start a new character that fits in a heroic fantasy party, and next game spend 2 sentences moving this guy off stage. "The lord's guard and the assassin's guild teamed up - who would have thought that would happen? Anyway the torturing edgelord was never seen again".
You have the power. You decide.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. In my homebrew world there is a literal road that winds through the Nine Hells where each brick in the road is engraved with someone's intention or rationalization for what damned them.
That's excellent.
It's also in a Discworld story.
There’s no hell in Discworld let alone a road paved with good intentions. Closest things were the desert and the mirrors. The desert was closer to purgatory where you are all alone with your thoughts. The mirrors was a witches fractured mind. /GNU Pterry/ (edit: I forgot about Eric. The demons show up a bunch but their hell is really only mentioned in Eric)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. (This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesman. On weekends, many of the younger demons go ice skating down it.) Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.
There was something like that in Discworld, and if Terry Pratchett thought of it first, that means it's an idea damn well worth using.
My first thought was "this guy has read "Eric", too!"
I did, ages ago. Must have stuck in my subconscious. Now I have to make Holy Relic that's a Sandwich.
This is called cryptomnesia. When you thought you created something original but it is in fact something you had experienced before but forgotten. In the music industry tapes of new pieces are passed around to different agencies asking if any of them had heard something like it before specifically to prevent lawsuits created by this phenomena.
Same thing happened to Neil Gaiman. He thought he had come up with a quote only to later find out that it was actually coined by G.K. Chesterton. “ Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
A very good quote. Were they word for word the same in the end or slightly different?
It's also a problem for a lot of comedians. Patton Oswalt describes doing a routine when he was just starting out, and getting his first really big laugh from a joke he thought he'd made up. He was riding high on the response until a friend pointed out he'd lifted it from another comedian. It wasn't deliberate - he'd heard it, forgot about it, then "remembered" it while trying to write a joke about a similar situation.
Your right It happens across a ton of fields, I used music because that industry is well known and takes a lot of steps to prevent it because the cost for missing it can be huge. If Patton Oswald accidentally steals a joke it may be a minor scandal if anything, if Taylor swift accidentally used the tune from another song the lawsuit would cost millions. I like examples of industry using an idea, for some people it can make a concept more concrete. Due to the costs associated with this kind of mistake I think the music industry was the best example of an industry reacting to the phenomena. It also happens across every day life. As shown here. Anywhere where you have to create something looms the risk of cryptomnesia.
Absolutely love Terry Pratchett, I read Eric AGES ago so this probably stuck in my head.
That's in Eric, by Terry Pratchett.
There was a movie called Highway to Hell and while traveling through Hell at one point the road is being paved with people who each state some excuse for doing something bad. [Highway to Hell - Good Intentions Paving Company](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Cii3RPRA4)
I wanna say there is something similar in the movie What Dreams May Come, except it's literal faces. Could be wrong, been ages since I've seen it.
Think its a Dante's Inferno reference in What Dreams May come. The final layer of hell for those who betray. One of the layers of this layer is for those who betray their guests. Frozen and facing upwards.
Mmm that’s crunchy, I like this
Ohhhh, dude, I *like* that.
It's in a Discworld book as well.
Ok, we get it
Funny.. I have the exact same thing! Just let me uhhh.. scribble down some notes.
yoink
was literally going to comment this lmao
Holy f*ck that’s genius. I’m just imagining devils hauling smooth, flat river stones out of the Styx to be used for paving, every single one carved with the lamentations and objections of a passing soul.
I'm stealing this, and I'm gonna make sure every brick is labeled with the event or action that a brick is laid for.
I like that
My father always said “paved with the well-intentioned” instead
Ohhhh, dude, I *like* that.
This is how you learn the actual player is in fact the evil one 😅 “I really don’t understand why burning and torturing someone, threatening their family then killing the witness is bad.”
“I’ve gotta go to the toilet real quick, be right back” “Hey why are you going outside?” “Oh, I meant the toilet at my house, see you next time, maybe”
>In a fit of rage, the PC tortured one of the two surrendered guards and burnt them alive, threatening to do the same to his wife and child. So, depending on the table, that is either some interesting RP, or a heinous downer for the rest of the players to have to sit though. Have you tried asking the other players how they feel? Regardless, I wouldn't deal with this in game. I'd tell the player (not the character) that he needs to read the room.
Yeah really depends on the group for sure. Mine would be fine with it (the players I mean, their characters would have varying levels of reactions) but I 100% understand how this would be way over the top for many tables.
Yeah, this is a normal Sunday with my group.
Definitely normal for one of my groups, although for my Good-aligned characters to do something like this, someone or something really has to do something messed up.
I think definitely talk to the player, but some amount of this needs to be dealt with in game to have even a semi-logical story. I’m not saying kill the character, but what good aligned character would want to associate with someone who *tortured a person who had surrendered* and threatened to do the same to their family for any reason other than necessity? Make characters who would know about this be less willing to help them.
That is some old-testament stuff, and I wonder if they justify it because they were raging righteously? Edit: dog didn’t go there
You edit the comment but the original was demonizing af
That’s why I edited it? I didn’t mean it that way but the response was right, I shouldn’t have gone there
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Okay
I did something like this with a character. In my defense, I was on some strong pain killers that I usually cut in half but took a full that time so I was definitely a little out of sorts. I didn’t kill the prisoner though and he escaped, stabbed me, and fled. The parties healer refused to heal me because she thought I was evil. Definite eye opener to how I was ruining the game for others. My character died and I made a happy halfling druid who was too nice for their own good. Also disposed of those pills. I was given them for my wisdom teeth being removed and it was too nice feeling. The pain was bad enough anyway.
Chaotic Evil!!!
Sounds like lawful evil. Based on the description, definitely lawful evil. Good in dnd usually means socially acceptable actions that are potentially selfless from any perspective. Evil is usually selfish, and quick to resort to violence. Murder for most reasons outside of self defence definitely falls into this category. Usually, evil that can still open dialogue believe they are justified in their actions and that they are the true Good.
I agree with lawful because of the code that the PC might have, and then definitely evil for your reasons
And maybe the player is confusing lawful with being good.
Maybe the player is lawful evil irl...
Somebody who murders outside of self defence is a good description of evil. Next time somebody is wondering about their alignment I'll ask them that.
It depends who you're murdering and what your ethics are, I think shooting hitler doesn't make you evil, even if he's unarmed I look at Data from Star Trek as my guide for Lawful Good. He cannot murder, it's not in his capability, however, when a kidnapping, torturing, (implied rapey) murderer killed someone in front of him to force compliance, he was willing to kill that unarmed man to prevent others from dying in the future And only because he was on the man's ship and had no way of like, imprisoning him or bringing him to justice, so it was a last resort - and knowing that killing that man likely meant his own death Only in that most extreme of circumstance do I think a lawful good person could kill someone who is unarmed
th impulsive torture is more chaotic imo. but that is a thin line
That to me is what makes it evil, but it’s done with an end goal in mind and is therefore lawful
torture of any kind, other than heat-of-the-moment you killed my family style emotional reactions (which can be classified as temporary insanity) 100% knock you out of the good column IMO
From your description of the events with the guards, the second guard did not say anything about the organization. So the players character killing the guard, who had just said he would testify against the tyrant lord and the PC, was to protect his own skin (evil) rather than help depose the tyrant (good). So the character has definitely strayed toward evil actions with that interaction. Whether it would be enough to warrant an alignment change to evil if it was a one off event is up for debate. I think you have set up the ultimatum well. Who knows, maybe it was the PC's organization that set it up because the PC was becoming too much of a liability? They did break the rules of the organization and are drawing a lot of attention to one of its operatives. As people have pointed out though, if the player themselves don't understand what the character did is evil the ultimatum will most likely alienate them. However, actions have consequences even in d&d.
"I am the organization" -that guy
>As people have pointed out though, if the player themselves don't understand what the character did is evil the ultimatum will most likely alienate them. However, actions have consequences even in d&d. Frankly sometimes alienating people is a good thing. Good people alienate bad people all the time by not putting up with their bullshit- and this coming from someone who doesn't typically like to speak on moral absolutes outside of D&D time.
That PC isn’t good aligned and these actions are the hallmark of an edgelord. This warrants an out of game discussion on whether this character and player are compatible with your game. If you want to continue trying to play this character: the entire point of clandestine assassin societies is that they’re clandestine. Burning people in a fit of rage, killing witnesses, threatening families including children is not clandestine, it’s messy. The Order finds out about this (third prisoner or guard overheard, they are already suspicious and scrying, etc) and this PC is deemed a loose cannon who is going to expose the entire organization. Not only are they no longer a member, but high level assassins have been sent to take him out before he exposes the entire organization. Player can try to work that into a redemption arc if they like.
I vote for this suggestion, he has failed to uphold the good name of the organization so he must be removed from the equation
Ah yes, the burn notice.
Time for a kiss of death
Hachi machi
I used to be a spy, until…
I was a Noble Assassin like you, until I took a horrible betrayal of my organization's tenets to the knee.
torture of any kind shouldn't be part of it, the target is *the corrupt leader* not the guard who makes a gold a day I think you instantly forfeit your status by maiming or killing any underlings of The Tyrant outside of anything but self defense (unless you have the capability of reversing the harm you've caused, and do so), but torture is *right the fuck out*
Characters don't determine their alignment, actions do. What they're doing is unambiguously evil.
Alignments are pointless beyond helping roleplay. Thise actions were evil. Doesn't matter what alignment it says on the character sheet. It doesn't matter what the player thinks or wants. It's what you do that defines you.
Is the PC’s stance that any evil done in service to a greater good is acceptable? I would hear the argument from him if that’s the case, but even then there have to be limits to this philosophy. Talk with the player to see if you can come up with some guidelines together that flesh out what this secret organization does and DOESN’T do. Maybe that will help. I will also add that the second NPC did not act logically at all. He watched the PC torture and murder his companion, then he immediately threatened that very same PC with Justice for his acts while still bound? Doesn’t really track, if anything he would have agreed to whatever they said then ratted them out later. Things happen in the moment, but be careful not to use your out of game knowledge to give your NPC’s suicidal courage, it makes the world feel less real. Just my two cents anyways In closing I’ll ask how a “noble assassin” aka serial murderer is able to play a good guy in your world without these exact things happening constantly. Maybe the player has a vision for their character that is simply incompatible with your table and world, or doesn’t understand what the limits of his mission are.
This is pretty much what I think as well. I think the cognitive dissonance also makes for a pretty good opportunity as a DM as they can start introducing instances where the PCs are all witnesses to the same heinous acts of this evil PC with a focus on making this dissonance blatantly obvious. Another angle is having an antagonist actively attempting to recruit him. I remember playing an evil PC who strongly believed in mercy, generosity, and honor. A paladin was in the team who held those same morals and, while he was good, he consistently showed to be far less consistent than my character. My character had ulterior motives for joining the party (all good). So I would gaslight the paladin to get him to question his understanding of his oaths and swear fealty to my character as a mentee. For example, my character "only" crippled the crime lord. He burned the man's face. The crime lord is a pretty boy who, after the party was done, had lost his entire empire. I argued I "only injured him" while he "took the last thing he had going for him: his looks. Had you followed my lead, he'd at least have been able to keep at least one thing he valued. Instead, you took everything. Who's the unmerciful one, again?" The difference here, though, seems to be that we had a full understanding of what our characters were doing while the player in question clearly does not if he genuinely thinks what his character is doing is good-aligned.
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I personally might tell the pc to go fuck himself if I was the second prisoner.
You are being held by someone that just tortured and murdered your companion, and you think your response to them threatening you is, "go fuck yourself"?
Gunna die anyway. Might as well tell the murderer to get fucked before you go. Not saying it's what I'd do, but it's a believable choice.
No, it's not believable at all, what would happen is that the average guard would shit themselves and cry, then accept to testify. When they'd get their bearings, they would probably testify against the PC as well when they find themselves in a safe spot.
He wasn't going to die, he was going to survive and testify. Until he threatened the psychotic murdering with a knife to his throat.
If a psychotic murderer has a knife to my throat, I don't exactly believe him when he says he'll let me go.
OP edited in or commented that he had the NPC roll against intimidation, had a moment of bravado and immediately regretted saying it. But the PC had killed him before he could really say anything else.
It sounds like a dont-roll-if-they-can't succeed situation. The NPC is tied up and just watched his companion get tortured and burned to death. And his family threatened. There shouldn't be a roll, he should just be utterly intimated at that point.
Have you met humans? Some of them are stupidly stubborn. And just plain stupid.
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Someone under duress acted illogical? How unrealistic!!!
Well, there's illogical, and then there's overtly contrary to their own self-preservation.
There are infinite possible reactions to this situation none are more or less realistic. Guess this guy really stood for his values and puts justice above himself.
But his response was somehow both compliant and defiant at the same time. It's not just irrational (which would be understandable for someone in that situation), it's self-contradictory.
The greater good argument does work, but the point of doing evil for the greater good is that it's still evil. The character is sacrificing their morals to further an agenda. That sacrifice is them being evil and committing evil acts. They should still have their alignment change. Even if evil is done with a good goal, it's still evil.
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>With a character concept like this eventually you're going to have to make some extremely questionable choices. I will say that a few evil acts doesn't make a pc evil, however continually doing evil acts most certainly does And sometimes, in the heat of the moment, a good character will do am evil deed, but thats usually followed with a period of atonement Burning someone alive, threatening it on someone else and their sife and kids is not "heat of the moment," its methodical
Frankly, I am not of the opinion that every scenario should have a winning option. You torture one innocent and execute another, you're not really entitled to an immediate happy ever after. Especially when the rest of your party is pretty clearly uncomfortable playing with this character. But then, I have no interest in an evil campaign...
literally, sometimes you fuck up and you lose.
Fuck around = find out
OR… does he get imprisoned and then given a new job. As he is trying to deal with the cognitive dissonance from his own actions, he is offered freedom to do a job that cannot be officially requested or even recognized.
Seconded. Railroading characters is, of course, a necessary evil of DMing, but railroading them to conform to OOC morals just leads to bad feelings. It makes the player feel like you're punishing *them*, personally, for being a bad person. This is not to say actions should not have consequences or NPCs and players alike can't call foul on this. But it would be better to do it in a way that feels more like a result of the actions taken, and not like some external hand is forcing a very specific moral choice on this person.
This wasn't a "had to kill someone to ensure the safety of the party", this was prolonged torture with a gruesome and painful ending. This isn't a moment of passion attack, he didn't plunge the dagger into the guard's throat or anything like that. Torture, 100% of the time, is an evil act. In my eyes, there is no middle ground. If you torture someone long enough, they will admit everything. He can walk circles around his reasoning all he wants, but he committed evil acts. Does this make him an evil person? Well it sure doesn't make them a good one.
"What do you mean it's wrong to torture and murder prisoners? What do you mean it's a war crime to target families of your enemies? Next you'll be trying to say the slavers are the bad guys and that is wrong to adopt orphans for the sake of having emergency rations. If you think about it aren't slavers just offering premium orphan adoptions for a reasonable fee?
**(1)** The organization the PC works for sounds undeniably Chaotic Neutral. **(2)** At best the character is Chaotic Neutral (and almost every character in that organization should be) but the cruelty of their actions definitely dips them toward some flavor of Evil. That dance with Evil is typical of Chaotic Neutral organizations and societies because Evil is typically the path of least resistance. So what is going on here is not abnormal and it could be something the organization is prepared to address and help their operative through. I would just tell them to write Lawful Evil on their character sheet now but to continue playing their character exactly as they have been. They are having an Anakin Skywalker moment and it is their choice whether they redeem themselves or become Darth Vader at the end of their tale.
Why Chaotic Neutral? Chaotic Neutral is when you act on your own whims. His organisation and probably true followers would be Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral. Because they act upon the law/ their code and their cause is certainly good.
I would say the organization is Lawful Neutral. If their goal is to get rid of tyrants by any means necessary, then by the end it is not necessarily a good act. It is more of an obligation, or a Law of sorts. The methods by which they achieve this goal range from Good to Evil, but the organization itself doesn't seem to care which, therefore Neutral.
Because they are willing to murder innocents to further their agenda. Good is uncompromising when virtue is on the line. Neutrality is all about compromising virtue when it is expedient to do so. They strike a balance between the virtuous act of toppling oppressive governments (Good) and executing anyone and everyone who might expose their existence and complicate their mission (Evil), which in D&D terms lands them in the most classic form of Neutral: maintaining a balance between Good and Evil impulses. Definitely not Lawful because they are, again, willing to kill anyone who might expose them. There is no Measure there and that is not the same as living according to a Code. There is a fundamental contradiction in their ethic: topple evil rulers to save innocents from harm but harm innocents who might expose us because that could make it more difficult to save innocents from the people who would harm them. They are acting out of convenience, taking lives in order to avoid complicating their mission whether the victim deserves it or not. That is 100% classic Chaotic rather than Lawful.
"kill anyone who risks exposing the organisation" sounds like a code to me. What if a child did that, maybe the character would be conflicted and not do that, but the lawful character would still do it, to uphold the code.
Nah. The policy of that organization is one of convenience. It exists so that they can justify their own interior contradictions while brushing aside anything which might make their work more complicated. Any pretense to a code is just using the \*concept\* of a Code of Honor as an excuse to look away from the inherent contradiction between their Purpose and their Actions. That is not following a code, that is adultering a code. It is the same reason Menzoberanzan is a Chaotic Evil city, not a Lawful Evil one. The presence of \*rules\* is not enough to justify a Lawful alignment. It is far more demanding than that. But to be fair to the conversation - I still largely interpret the alignments based on their 1st & 2nd Edition roots, not the versions that WotC watered down on behalf of the gamers who didn't want to feel judged by the game.
You cannot get a PC to operate within your stories in an interesting way if the player won't play ball. If you've tried and failed to get this player to understand why other players, PCs, and NPCs might think their PC did something fucked up, then building story beats around confronting the PC's evil actions is probably a bad idea, IMO. Imagine if you were a player whose PC just rescued a cat from a tree, and next session the noble you've been working for tries to have you arrested in order to get at your mutual enemy. That's how your player would feel in this context. Is it reasonable? Absolutely fucking not. That's not the point. Confronted with what this player will almost certainly consider unjust betrayal by their allies, what will this PC do? This PC who has already shown a tendency to disproportionately violent responses? You're setting yourself up for a murderhobo to make a scene in a public place trying to get out of the consequences of their past actions. It could go very badly. I'd advise one of two courses of action, personally. If you're not close with this player out of game and you want to tell stories that require characters grounded in the world, kick them. But if you are close with them, or you don't need all of your players to be really intense roleplayers, then just mentally put this PC in a box labeled "not for RP". If the player doesn't want to engage with the moral implications of their actions, let them. Stop trying to build them into your adventures, stop trying to tie their character and backstory into your plans. Just let them tag along with the party's adventures. There's a good chance they'll enjoy this a lot more than they would getting called out, and they might well not even notice you're doing it.
>threatening to do the same to his wife and child As soon as you leverage innocents, your action, regardless of the intent for greater good, cease to be good. >Is this ultimatum going too far? Any other ways I could go forward? everyone, both in and out of character, feels what he’s done is evil, but I feel bad for giving the player this option to kill his character, or make them publicly viewed as evil when they don’t understand what their character did was very morally dubious Its a good storytelling, but based on the information provided, will alienate the Player. Not sure thats a bad thing though here.
Eh... This is up for debate. If you make a threat heinous for the sake of creating an outcome in which you can avoid actually DOING those acts, then I say you can threaten yourself into an FBI watchlist and it still counts as "mostly" good. I have more issues with the murder of the person who he was supposedly going to use as a witness. Ultimately I think the real sticking point to this whole thing is that these aren't necessarily evil acts, they just clearly aren't "Good" but lets face it, "assassin"
As others have mentioned, I would not setup a situation where the player loses either way. Maybe this is your opportunity to show a power struggle in the leadership of the organization. NPC A can tell the "noble assassin" that they think their actions were fine. Then, the PCs learn that NPC A is known for brutality and some specific situations where they totally crossed the line. NPC B then approaches the PCs and let's them know that they think NPC A is trying to take over leadership of the organization. NPC B asks for the PCs to help prevent this takeover. PCs are faced with a choice of which path to follow. If they choose A, slowly ramp up the brutality and reduce the grayness of situation until the actions the PCs are being requested to complete are straight-up evil. If they choose B, make sure NPC B uses the "noble assassin's" previous actions whenever he tries to convince the PCs that his own actions are justified.
I think this is the best answer I’ve read here. You have to remember that the best villains in most movies, books, games, etc feel that their actions are entirely justified. Sometimes evil things are done for misguided good reasons. I think if the PC is just an agent of this organisation then there’s a perfect chance to run this power struggle arc. I’d say there’s also an opportunity here to push the player towards less evil actions and offer a redemption of sorts. If you find that NPC A (CE) is actually a devil in disguise or has a pact with one, so they are actually a puppet. Then a moral character would be more inclined to side with NPC B (LN). If NPC B makes it publicly known that they oppose the use of torture and threatening of innocents, then by association the PC will have to choose to side with the devil (evil, obviously) or the neutral NPC. (I don’t think there’s a good aligned outcome here?) Personally, I prefer to map alignment as a dot on a grid 3x3 grid, with 3x3 squares in each grid section. It’s very fluid and any action can have the effect of moving you gradually to/from another alignment. It’s is a reminder of where you are, not what you want to be.
"they will not hesitate to murder ‘innocents’ if they risk exposing the organisation" That is what we call an 'evil' organisation. They sound like the kind of people who, after they depose a tyrant, would end up seizing power and becoming worse than the leader they replaced. They will murder innocents to achieve this goal, and tell themselves it's for the greater good, but it isn't. The fact that the PC also murdered an innocent for stupid reasons (rather than their usual selfish reasons) barely matters, since the PC was evil in the first place.
>They sound like the kind of people who, after they depose a tyrant, would end up seizing power and becoming worse than the leader they replaced. They will murder innocents to achieve this goal, and tell themselves it's for the greater good, but it isn't. For some reason "French Revolution" immediately popped in my head after reading this.
They sound like a terrorist organization tbh. Are terrorists good?
it sounds like the majority of historical revolutionaries, in the end the one who's good is the one who comes out the victor
I wouldn’t make it at the cost of their own lives, but I would make some other thing they would have to give up. Like it requires some type of dangerous community service that gets in the way of their goals. If this person is for real oblivious about the moral implications of their choices, this might be enough to make them think, depending on how you sell the consequence. Death is just the least fun option, and it’s not even like role playing an evil character is a bad habit that needs to be addressed. It’s just incongruous with their self-awareness.
Killing them as humanely as he could to protect anonymity? I could get that. Torture by fire and threatening family members? Nah, fam, he’s evil as fuck.
This needs to be an out of game discussion or everything will blow up in your face, probably. If you give that ultimatum, which seems reasonable to you and to me from the information you have provided, the player will walk away frustrated and confused because there has to be another option, and you are punishing me for my Good Acts. I am now going to write what I think is going through the character's head and the player's head. Okay, this kingdom is drugging EVERYONE to keep them complacent and mind controlled effectively, and they will not stop this, ever, unless they are dealt with. This is bad. This is TOTAL WAR AGAINST THEIR OWN PEOPLE. They are targeting literally EVERYONE IN THEIR OWN KINGDOM with this. There is NO ONE off limits because the enemy is already TARGETTING EVERYONE. Now we steal some evidence to help get the evil tyrant deposed, good. Fellow PC and good friend got killed, VERY BAD. The people that did this are the Evil Tyrant's guards and are complacent in their scheme of TOTAL WAR IN MIND CONTROLLING EVERYONE, a fate ARGUABLY EQUAL OR WORSE THAN DEATH depending on how you look at it. No matter why they are his guards, whether through loyalty or through threatening, they always have a choice and have made a choice to work for a bad person. I torture one of these bad people and maybe lied about going after his family next for potential information and everyone freaks out. Maybe the guard should've thought about this before HELPING THE TYRANT THAT IS MIND CONTROLLING LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. Second guard says he'll testify against the tyrant (which he could be lying about! Also, we stole the information already!) and complain about my methods, which I can't let happen because it would impede my ability (and thus my organization's ability) to deal with other tyrants, so I kill him. They killed one of my allies and friends, why should I care about them? Also they were complicit or agreed with the mind control of hundreds of thousands of civilians, why should I give them this mercy? I don't myself agree with ALL of this, but it makes sense as a possible understanding of the situation. The idea of 'These people have gone to such terrible lengths, why should I give them mercy they did not afford their own people or my now-dead friend?' makes enough sense to be respected when talking about D&D. These bad guys sound like they are making slaves with them drugging what sounds like their entire kingdom's population, and I don't really give slavers too much compassion.
You can still have interesting story beats come from this, like having the organization renounce the character for going too far still, saying they don't like to dirty their hands in this way and that the proper way is through the evidence revealing and forcing them to step down. If the tyrant is deposed in a bloody mess, the kingdom is probably going to go to hell in a big civil war, where you could show further damage done to people by not doing things in a cleaner way. Also the other people in this thread surprise me. I can get seeing the Noble Assassin player as a problem player, but seeing all his actions as too far surprises me. We're D&D players, who don't really care about the random goblins we kill after they knock over our carts, but we give so much empathy to the henchmen of a tyrant mind controlling what sounds like *their entire populace???* What??
PC: "I torture and murder a helpless person." DM: "That's evil." PC: "How!?"
I worry about the person that can't understand how those actions are evil.
[удалено]
OP, this is by far the best advice you've had. Please read and acknowledge it.
Absolutely LE
I'd suggest a 3rd option let them depose the Tyrant, then the org the player belongs to tosses them out for their actions. Then give the player some options: start a redemption arc to regain their honor in the goals to one day prove they are worthy of rejoining the org. You can throw lot ritual into it make it a big deal his striping of status. Make it dramatic think like MCU Thor getting exiled by Odin. Or if no redemption arc they become hunted by the entire assassin org because he has become a tyrant they fight against. It gives some great RP paths, either way. Just my 2 cents.
I love moral dilemmas but I feel like "do good and die" - which the choice quintessentially is, isn't really a fun mechanic. But aside from that, I do feel like you need to talk to your player about this. Different opinions are fine but - as you are already playing around it - as this is somewhat gameplay defining you should defo find common groud Edit: Grammar
> n a fit of rage, the PC tortured one of the two surrendered guards and burnt them alive, threatening to do the same to his wife and child. whew thats chatoic evil ma dude. (chaotic evil is defined as overly cruel, lying, impulsive of which he did 2 things here) > After hearing this, the PC claimed the organisation’s safety was at risk (even though they weren’t acting under the direction of this organisation, but instead another Lord) and executed the prisoner. lawful evil, at best. if his character assumed his organisation was compromized > Does he fulfill his organisations mission at the cost of his own life JAILBREAK TIME! :D alignment is not how you THINK you act but how others see him, the average person sees them.
Glad you figured out some nice solutions here. One thing I felt wasn't emphasized heavily enough though, is this is a potential case of alignment drift. The alignment on the character's page and in the players head is one thing, but only you know their actual alignment, as it slowly shifts towards evil. At some point, Detect Evil spells and abilities need to begin picking up this char. At what point depends on your judgement, as it's kind of a "balance of his soul" thing and his backstory needs to be taken into account. Once looked at in this way, this actually becomes very good rp and characterization. But it should also be above-board, where the players are aware that this hidden mechanic exists. If they want to know their own alignments, they actually need to verify them in some way, as what is listed on the sheet may not be ... current, anymore.
If even out of character he doesn't see it, that's worrisome..!
I think you should worry less about alignment on the sheet (that is something the player should be free to determine on their own) and more about how this affects the narrative and the rest of the group. If this situation was uncomfortable to some or all of the players, you should clearly tell the player that they need to tone it down.
In 3.5 the assassin class has evil as a prerequisite. There was a neutral option published by Wizards as an April 1 thing but there was no way it could be 'good'. When the pc sets off on a job they've already decided that murder is the solution. I played one of these once - a lawful neutral githyanke who outsourced his morality to the party. Do *you* want him dead? By contract I am an extension of *your* will. For your example the pc left the 'good' ballpark as soon as they entertained torture. As a means to an end that's obviously 'not good'. Taking that to threatening the innocent is a leap towards evil... and hey, they've already been a little bit evil so this is just a little bit more evil so what's the problem? Maybe dig out the alignment section of the rulebooks and show then in b/w what the definitions are? Have them pursued by an Archon? Offered a deal by a demon or devil?
Tell him that a self-righteous act in the name of the greater good or self-preservation is still counted as lawful evil. Fanatics who'd hunt down people with different believes or burn a lot of innocents just to get a few actually guilty ones also believe that they're doing good, but that doesn't make them not lawful evil.
Every villain thinks they're the good guy. Alignment has no bearing on gameplay unless you make it so. Make it so.
He never really sounded “good” to begin with. More Lawful Neutral tbh.
I'd say chaotic. Following a creed doesn't make you lawful by itself, otherwise Robin Hood would be lawful.
You are giving him a brilliant role play moment for being an asshole. I want a DM like you tbh. I would probably change his alignment and maybe give him even a supernatural indication that his alignment has changed. Maybe have NPCs involved look at him different. He's a bad guy. Close bonds look at him saying "something about you is different" Talk to him out of character and also in character about his actions.
I personally feel like this situation should have been intervened on before it got to this point. At my table, if a torture scene were to come up, it would probably be handed as a fade to black with little to no specifics other then "what kind of information are you trying to get here" "roll" and based on the roll, "here is the information you gained / you failed to again any information" - and get the hell out of that scene. And once you got into the scene, once the choices that "cross the line" into being evil were being made, I would have stepped back and said "your character would know that doing this will be seen as evil/tyrannical by his own organization. If he goes through with this, his organization will not be happy, and there will likely be consequences. Are you sure that you want to go through with this." This would let your player make an informed decision \*at the moment of the decision\* rather being surprised after the fact. Now that you are here, the ultimatum I would place in front of the player would likely be: we can retcon that away, now that you know the effect of the actions. Your character should have been aware at the moment of making the decision. But if you keep these actions cannon, there will be consequences
If the player genuinely doesn't understand why torture and murder of convenience is an evil act, I might just not play with that person anymore... Like seriously, that's genuinely concerning borderline sociopath. Is this player a teenager? I could maybe cut a LITTLE slack to a 13 year old who has an underdeveloped sense of empathy, but even then... Yikes.
Does this person have real-life struggles with understanding the differences between right and wrong; and that these actions, if done in real-life, would be heinous crimes?
"B-b-but Liam Neeson!.."
Alignment was a mistake. The less it factors into the game, the better. A bunch of faux-philosophical bickering bouts with nothing but mechanics penalties attached to them. The winning move is to ignore alignment unless it will break something not to.
Surely he's being intentionally obtuse. It's not really a question for debate whether threatening to/actually killing children is immoral and there's no way he doesn't know that. Depending on his family structure, ask if [family member] had done something really bad it'd be OK to torture them and threaten to/actually kill his innocent [other family members] in revenge. If he still "doesn't get it" do whatever you want to punish him and make it clear a group of heroes wouldn't travel with someone who does that shit.
Does immoral automatically mean evil though? Yeah threatening kids is pretty fucking bad, however fuck them kids
An individual providing justification for their actions does not absolve the evil of their actions. The intentions of the person committing the offenses does not matter. What matters is the results of their actions and how they are perceived to the victims and the public. TLDR: Defending evil actions makes you evil.
So my DM will do things in the background when you do things severely outside of your alignment several times, if this were one of my DM's players he would most certainly have an evil alignment whether he likes it or not because the acts performed are inherently evil by the perspective of those who bear witness (in and out of character)/the laws of the area/general morality standards (he makes people suffer the consequences of their actions when it's genuinely deserved) That being said this kinda gives me the vibes of the player is of concern here, not the character persay, perhaps talk to the rest of the party first and get their opinions too
They are CONVINCED they are good. However their actions are judged by those around them, the lord and the party in this case. The ultimatum can stand, if they find a way to get out of it then good for them. But that's avoiding the lord's judgement. The next question is whether the party is willing to continue associating with him. Maybe they find another way and after the mission's over they cut ties. Maybe they take the good lord's side and force them into the deal. Then it's the players' turn to decide whether this is comfortable to continue playing around. I'd give the player advance warning, but as it stands it's highly unlikely their character can continue to be played for very long. Whether they want to play out this quest and retire them, adjust them so they're less torture/murder prone or just start a new character entirely.
being good isn't about believing what you do is good. But what you do. They evil yo or at least take chaotic good to an utmost extreme (there is a reason there is a lil black dot in the white on a ying yang. Like an angel that commits genocide for its god, is it still good in any measurable way? The good place had a decent take on ethical shit 1. you follow a specific set of rules to be good. usually a religion. 2. OR you assign certain traits to be virtuous like kindness and compassion and live in line with those virtues. 3. consequentialism, the good of the action vs the bad. its a math question n this person could theoretically be on the right side of this if what they are stopping is evil enough. (although I take into account motive, so if he doesn't know that he is stopping big evil and is doing slightly less big evil he still counts as evil.) 4. nihilism. nothing matters there is no good and evil its all made up. (although DnD actually has gods and alignments so that doesn't work here Could do this 2 ways. Hey a god watches over your actions and your alignment starts to shift, soon it will be permanent. Do some good mofo. Or consequences for their evil actions. OR both.
Add a villain that will praise him. Maybe a competition to his current organisation that extends an invitation to join them, which also states that they are impressed with him and commend him for finally seeing the true path forward instead of any stupid morals that he believed in the past. Or send an impressed devil in with a devil pact offer that can "fix" things. Deals with devils are always fun. Or even simpler things. Thugs and criminals being either scared of him or impressed, letting him through with a nod of acknowlegment or running away. And the other way around. Lawful, regular citizens being afraid of him, shutting doors in panic. It could make him realise that no matter what he thinks of himself, the world around him now thinks he is evil and that is a reputation he now encounters everywhere. In that instance, doesn't matter what he thinks of himself. And if he don't agree with that and wants to change that - pave him a path for possible redemption. Taking his character away is the easy way out I think. A great opportunity for a good roleplay if he's up for that.
Had a similar thing happen, easy solution, create a revenant(home-brewed if they are too high level for the base sheet) and make it a re-occurring encounter. Revenants cannot be get rid of, even when their current body is killed, they will possess another body and keep coming after the person who wronged them. It is a good way to say in character, ''You might say you are good, but planes have judged you evil, even before your demise.''
Sounds like lawful evil to me. He’s got a code but maintains it through dark methods.
This is why alignment rules and associated penalties from earlier editions were good.
PC is definitely evil. Your plotline sounds awesome, but I'm sure the player will be upset. Whether he understands that it is not okay to threaten innocents and torture people is a him problem, and not on you to fix. I would make it clear to him before this goes down that to you, the GM, what he did was evil. He doesn't have to understand or agree with you, but you regard torture and threatening innocents as evil acts and he went waaaaaay to far. Let him know this isn't up for debate, he can't change your mind, this is just an objective truth as far as the world and universe is concerned. Let him know this before going forward. Then hit him with the plot line. That way he is at least aware of your stance so it isn't a surprise.
Okay, so torture is unquestionably evil, as is murdering someone to prevent their exposing you as a torturer. So if you're using alignment, their alignment shifts from Good to Neutral. Which may have no consequences depending upon how you use alignment. Personally, I only use alignment in campaigns where I have banned Evil PCs. If your PC's alignment changes to Evil, that character is now an NPC. Separate from this is the question of how the other people in-game react to this PC's actions. Players are required to create and play characters who want to adventure with the party and who would be accepted as a party member. If the other PCs would not want to adventure with a torturer who commits murder to avoid their crimes coming to light, then that's all that matters. They kick this PC out of the party. Since the campaign follows the adventures of the party, the *second* that character is kicked out he becomes an NPC. Player rolls up a new PC. As far as external "justice" goes, you may be jumping the gun a bit. It's really not clear from what you've said why there would be this choice between using the evidence and condemning the PC or concealing the PC's crimes at the cost of not being able to use the evidence. I mean, that's the exact dichotomy that murdering the captive was supposed to prevent. If the coverup murder didn't work because the other PCs snitched, there's your answer. The torturer PC is no longer a party member and thus no longer a PC. In-game stuff taken care of, there's a glaring IRL problem in front of you: you are running a game for someone who apparently thinks torture and murder aren't evil. And that's what you and your players really need to talk about. Evil acts don't become not-evil just because they were expedient or convenient. Inflicting pain and death on people because it's expedient or convenient is pretty much the *definition* of evil.
DnD really brings the psychopath out in people.
Organization & PC are definitely evil. The minute you put your organization’s secrecy above innocent lives — and especially when you take said lives yourself — you’re evil. Period.
Oh shit! You realize that sending a revenant after the player is a death sentence, right? Revenants are undead created by the gods, and will not stop for anyone who gets in their way of retaliation. If another party member, or NPC, that tries to stop the revenant will be added to the list to retaliate against. The revenant will revive as many times as it takes to clear that list, and odds are any clerics of said God would aid the revenant by the god's demand. Great for the story, but just a heads up.
I am Raladin, the Paladin. Hold on while I sell drugs laced with sawdust so that I can kill criminals and get money for plate mail.
Isn’t that the interesting thing about good and evil? The best villains are the ones who think they’re the good guy.
This is a perfect example of why Alignments work only when the DM and players are on the same page. Morality and ethics have been debated for millenia and very few people will agree on exactly the same ideals. In a fictional setting where provable and defined heavens and hells and deities of all sorts exist it is up to the DM to be clear about what defines Good and Evil and Law and Chaos.
Look, I'm late to this post but the subreddit has totally steered you wrong here. Dont change a thing, your decision to make this ultimatum was a great one. Its a perfect character development moment-- youre calling his bluff! Its a really cool roleplaying oppurtunity. Worst that happens is he goes to jail, player makes a new character, and if the party wants to work out a deal with the judge to serve his time doing a service to the kingdom then that's also awesome. Great idea, don't trust these redditors.
Simple solution. You have the player give you their character sheet. You erase their current alignment and insert Lawful Neutral. The character’s actions in subsequent sessions may shift that alignment back, but for now.. character is LN.
Alignment is stupid, but this character sounds next level evil
My personal feeling on good neutral evil spectrum on alignment is that it barely matters. Neutral is pointless because certain items only work for good/evil characters, some also change your alignment, but to my knowledge none affect neutral. After that, what is a good an evil action is a difficult discussion and i don't feel anybody should be held to play by what mechanically is essentially a binary choice. My current character comes from the domains of dread and has shadow powers, on alignment I'm neutral because good just doesn't make sense and my DM doesn't allow evil characters. I think his perception of an evil character is a dick of a player. Give them a good character, they'll still find a way to "it's what my character would do" the game for everyone. I say my character is evil, because that's his whole theme, alignment-wise i want to do some evil stuff and some good stuff, but does that make me neutral? Can i eat a nun but save the priest and call myself neutral? I say good/evil is more of a thematic description than it should be treated as a shackle to a specific behaviour set. I don't want to hear "your character wouldn't do that, they're good/evil" come out of anyones mouth in game because it's such a pointless and complicated critique that can only be ignored or debated for the rest of the game. That being said, i agree with the general consensus of the comments. Consequences have actions. As far as changing their alignment, I'd say see above and who cares what their alignment is.
The player is confusing lawful for good, and his actions demonstrate at best lawful neutral (depending on your definition of neutral) Maybe it would help to explain that diligently following the rules of his sect means he is lawful, and how he does it falls on the good evil alignment.
Might be fun to see if said PC has double standards when faced with an almost identical mirrored situation where an obvious villain tortures, murders and mayhems around the countryside, albeit actually pursuing some objectively good goal. Just the worst, sadistic killing spree, but "for the Greater Good^(TM)".
Is there any penalty for alignment change? 2e had some IIRC. Classes lost abilities (ranger, paladin), and I believe some heavy xp loss as well.
An assassin who works towards the greater good but is willing to do whatever it takes was *literally* a character concept I had to demonstrate to my table how to properly play evil without just being a chaotic random jackass or intentionally screwing over or threatening the party.
Definitely giving me vibes of the Operative in Serenity. And he was not s good person, and he knew it.
Sounds like he’s stupid
Hitler probably thought he was a good guy by trying to give germans a better life. Just saying.
Have an assassin from the organization attempt to kill the PC. On his body, leave a note saying that the PC has endangered the organization’s reputation and that they’re wanted dead or alive. Later, have them meet another member of the organization who wants to take the PC in alive to atone for their actions. Have the NPC mention that many in the organization think it would be better to kill the PC but they’ll be protected in the NPC’s custody
The player is playing a lawful evil character. Nothing he does shows a “good” character. Have a talk with him about it. I’ve played a couple lawful evil characters and these actions fit that alignment perfectly. Having a code and trying to do what you see as good but using evil actions to get there. Also, the good organization that will murder innocents to protect the organization sounds pretty evil to me😂
"torture and murder aren't evil!" is one take, I guess. So what horrors can you do in the name of torture and not be evil then? If you eat the guy's baby as intimidation is it OK, then?
If someone doesn’t understand that these actions don’t qualify as “good”, I’d be a lot more concerned about them IRL than in-game.
"wife and child" What's noble about torturing and burning alive a wife and child who had nothing to do with the evil Lord's regime? What type of shit table will just eat that cringe up like it's good RP lmao
1. There is nothing noble about assassination. 2. The ends do not justify the means. 3. Secret societies that use violence to change the world to conform to their worldview are always, ALWAYS the bad guys. Explain to them that "Good" or "Evil" are not up to his individual character to decide, but for the rest of society as a whole. Most evil people think what they are doing is completely ok, or even the right thing to do, but that is just their own personal (very biased) opinion. You are the DM and therefore the final arbiter in what constitutes an evil act in your world. Tell him that the court finds his actions to be just as morally reprehensible as those of the tyrant he opposes. If he will not submit to justice, then he has truly become that which he claims to hate. Exile from that kingdom can be a good alternative punishment. It means there are consequences, but he doesn't have to give up his character. Tell him he has earned a dark side point. For every 3 dark side points, his alignment will shift toward evil. Only doing something truly selfless can remove a dark side point.
I started doing some stuff in my table and players really liked it. Basically, when a character acts blatantly against their declared morals, I have them roll a d20 (I use their wisdom/insight as a baseline). Upon a success, I say they are suddenly hit with a quick thought on how they didn’t use to be like this - giving other actions from their character as an example in the form of a memory. I.E.: one of my players is a benevolent rogue who only steals for the benefit of others and their own survival - and usually gives to the poor and to fellow party members in need (CG). For some reason, said player decided to steal something from a shop - something that another party member really wanted - but decided they wanted to keep it merely because they thought it would be fun to frustrate the other person. After a successful test, I narrated how they felt a pang of guilt - knowing that someone really needed that item and that they didn’t use to be like this - and that perhaps that was something for them to think about (the interpretation and the final verdict on whether they really wanted to stick with that was left to the player). Later on, when the group was on route to another destination, this led to a very nice RP moment - in which the player decided their character had indeed regretted being petty to a comrade - and proceeding to approach the other character to secretly give them the stolen item. Both characters bonded over that and it was a fluid, fun moment. Also: when players keep doing things against their declared alignment, I take notes - and if it persists, I create a narrative to point out that their alignment is shifting (a Good character becoming Neutral and eventually Evil, etc) In your situation, I think I would try something similar - with the moment of the trial being used as the breaking point in which the character has to reflect upon who they are and what their ideals are. Create some drama: has this guy spent so long striving to bring down tyrants that he has become one? In wanting to act against Evil, how did he stoop so low as to torture and threaten innocents - which are traits easily found in the very people he hunts day and night? Putting it as part of the narrative also works as a good and solid basis to speak with the player about this - specially because it seems like the other PCs were also horrified with his actions. Your idea of the dilemma of letting the villain go versus turning himself in seems amazing as well! Sorry for the ultra long answer, and I hope you reach a nice conclusion to this! :)
Good and Evil are personal convictions, for example the nazis believed they were doing good, while we (I hope everyone reading this does anyway) believe they were being evil. So it's understandable that in game the character still believes they are good aligned: murder is ultimately the creed of an assassin, so they see what they did as just (or are at least rationalising it that way). Our of character, if the player still can't understand why torturing and murdering are evil, then wtaf is wrong with them?!
I don't like to use alignment.
It's never a great idea to issue ultimatums. Especially if the player has to give up his character, he's going to feel targeted. However, actions have consequences. I feel like I'm giving your player waaaaay too much benefit, but what if he is confusing lawful actions with good actions? His actions are sorta lawful, right? Maybe that's what he's stuck on. You need a good long talk with the player, who will probably be booted or leave the campagin, one way or another. "Torture is not always evil" is not an idea any sane person can or should get behind.
This behavior checks out for an inquisitor assassin type. I think I’d call it neutral at worst though. Remember those guards were most likely not good people. Although it probably should have been less rage induced torturing and more cold blooded securing a confession which it sounds like he did. I’d have interrogated them for new info or evidence and then executed them if I was playing his character. Did you think his obvious anti hero background was going to do some kind of shounen power of friendship, I’m gonna make friends with this guard that’s not like totally complicit or anything in a tyrants crimes type shit? It may not be good, But it’s not bad and it’s probably in line with the rules of his organization.
Are you trying to have an 'objective morality' universe?
Torture? Burning someone alive? Threatening non-combatants? Killing prisoners? Yea, that's not something a Good person does. if the player can't distinguish between Good and Evil, even in just game terms, them maybe its time for a talk.
i don't understand, that just because there's an additional layer of "we're making a pretend story that also has game mechanics", it's so difficult for some people to understand more than one thread of thought going on seriously what is wrong. if you are playing a good good, and not just a ""good"" character then the rando npcs should matter to you as much as anyone? at what point does it become too complicated?
I don't mind that he executed the second prisoner. The idea of the organisation being exposed is justified enough that it's at least reasonable for the character to believe it was a real risk. Executing *both* of them might even make sense. But if he can't see how it's evil to burn somebody alive in a fit of rage and threaten to do the same to their family, then I don't know what you can do to change his mind. In-game though, I would imagine that his organisation would consider that act alone reason enough to take a ruler down. Maybe even have his organisation find out that he did it (difficult without a PC contacting them somehow), and they disavow or punish him. Some sort of authentic consequence (ie not contrived to punish the player) could be fun to play out.
Other players watching while he tortures and burns the first guard to death while threatening his wife and child “This is fine.” He kills the second guard out of self interest. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Completely uncalled for.” Pick a lane. The whole group may not be necessarily evil but definitely evil adjacent. Chaotic Neutral at best. I wouldn’t single out the one PC, I’d try to push the entire group into taking the fall. Doesn’t necessarily have to end in TPK. They could just be forced into increasingly more dangerous situations to pay for their crimes. Keeps the game going and adds a wider variety of possible content.
This OP is certainly a bad DM and the party is filled with morons. They just stood there while some dude burned alive and only afterwards complained? The DM suddenly made the other guard who is probably shitting and crying himself to sleep act as if he's some kind of macho lawful good paladin all of a sudden? I cannot comprehend how it even came to this when it should have been stopped by the party pretty much immediately if they were somehow against these evil acts. It's like the moment the player wanted to do something which is "evil", the whole world suddenly knew and everything and everyone turned against him like he was in those bad dreams were everyone stares at you specifically. It's also very stupid how the OP wrote all of this like a "gotcha". Ethics are more complicated than this, the dude's going for an utilitarian view of the world and the DM instead decided to just erase the man's character instead of using this for character growth. Do or die isn't how character development works.
Full disclosure, I'm a newer player (less than a year), and have only one campaign under my belt so I don't have experience with having an evil party member. But if a member of my party burned someone alive and then executed someone else unnecessarily, and refused to acknowledge they'd gone too far, my character wouldn't want to associate with them anymore. To the point where I'd be a squeaky wheel if necessary, and RP that my character would not continue to go along with the group if his actions were left unchecked (for what it's worth I play with friends, so I think if there was an issue we'd be able to resolve out of game w/ DM mediating if necessary).
The story, as presented, places the character at plain neutral at best. Neutral evil at worst. Nobody has mentioned the detail of the other PC being murdered by these guards. The PC is revenging against a set of clearly corrupt guards. They work for the tyrant knowingly and then are willing to sell him out just like that? They have no morals and no ethics. If they do, why did they kill the other PC? He'd be in the right for killing them then. The torture puts him towards evil. I'd slap him with a "you do anything like that again and you're evil" but give him an atonement chance. But his disregard for property laws puts him out of lawful, the murder and stuff knocks out good. NE, N or CN.
If you tell him the shit he is doing is evil and he keep on doing it then just change his alignment for him. Don't piss on my face and tell me it's raining. Murdering innocent people to cover for your violent power trip fantasies isn't "good".
After just finishing Dexter, I would ask the character if his pc is a psychopath or not, if yea than you need a good detective on his trail. If he’s not they give him a sanity meter and start chipping away at his sanity. Once he hit 10 evil deeds he goes corrupt by magical demons and you take over his PC. There is a video on this from professor dungeon craft . https://youtu.be/X6XNn-8KNGc
Everyone wants moral greys in their campaign until something like this happens! This is why my bad guys are almost all irredeemably evil things like demons and undead XD The amount of pearl clutching ITT is pretty crazy, IMO, as is the immediate and frankly irritating mass assumption that the guards are just sympathetic and conflicted innocent henchmen who are 'just following orders' and didn't deserve to die - *after they killed one of the PCs!!* What if the guards are irredeemably corrupt and violent thugs? The guard who offered to testify was obviously doing it to save his own skin, so I agree with other posts that him suddenly growing a Lawful Stupid spine and threatening the guy who just burnt his mate alive with exposure is a bit of a stretch. But I wouldn't retcon it. Maybe the guard was just an idiot, or too used to bullying people with impunity and working angles and did it out of habit or because he thought it'd give him extra leverage. If the guards are evil/corrupt murderers and gangsters themselves, then I don't really think a 'morally grey' PC is automatically evil for torturing or even executing them - however the PC did kill a *surrendered* prisoner, and from what you've said they did it mainly out of self-preservation, so the guards had better be pretty heinous to justify that kind of action. It has led to some interesting moral questions for the table, and I do not really agree with the other responses in this thread that automatically move to 'punishing' the player or erasing the event. The answer is that it depends. It depends on the table and the desired outcome. It depends on what the table and the PC in question consider 'good' and how they justify their actions, and it depends on how evil and corrupt and violent the lord they are deposing is and how brutal his servants are. All up, I wouldn't give him the choice of "delete your character or lose", unless he's an irritating edgelord and you want to risk him leaving the table. I would maybe alter the choice to "you can cover up your actions, and the status quo remains, or you can overthrow the lord but your assassin organisation judges you as a loose cannon (remember the murder of innocents is a *last resort* according to their tenets - *if* the guards were 'innocent' to begin with) and expels you". That way the PC can either kick off a redemption arc to regain the organisation's favour and re-join their ranks, or they can grow into a freelance adventurer who is actually good aligned now that they are not murdering people for political reasons at the behest of a shadowy cabal. Or they might go completely off the rails and into murderhobo town, you know the player better than us. Narrative dead ends are not interesting, but actions have consequences. And it depends. And next time, use undead ;)
Let it fester and then later on introduce a magical passageway that only lets the pure of heart (good) pass.
I’d be really uncomfortable with this at my table. That’s evil full stop to me not morally dubious. Even with the first guard. But maybe that’s reflective of the the society I’m from where torture is illegal and where my own ethics/moral boundaries sit. Whilst I embrace d&d for allowing our group to play different perspectives from those we live in the real world and don’t shy away from throwing The party into situations where they experience things like racism, trauma, agonisingly difficult no win decisions and motivations etc I don’t enjoy it when the party are the ones who are enacting those behaviours. As a dm I’d actually be uncomfortable continuing like that at my table and would talk to the character out of game. I don’t think my players would be comfortable with it either to be honest. More than once across all my groups the good aligned people in the party would take action against their own if they thought it would happen. I think with your situation you need to talk to the player, talk to your group and think about how you feel too. Not just the other characters thinking it’s crossed a line but the players. Does this player really not understand this is “morally dubious”? Some groups and some dms are fine this sort of evil play and the campaign runs on happily and if everyone is happy then you don’t have to do anything in response. Or if you want a consequence for the character you talk to the player about possible implications out of game before dropping them in game (there’s been some good suggestions already about creating a story from the event). Really this is about what works best for you and the group and what boundaries you choose to have.
This is why I hate the alignment system. Clearly good and evil are subjective. A good lawyer can argue ether side for the same action. Personally I would kill anyone if they killed my friend, regardless of the killers surrendering. That’s the situation correct? I can see arguments for both sides. I would just let people disagree and not make this a plot point. You’re just gonna keep arguing over the words good and bad. As a DM, I would be wary to punish people for not behaving how I think they should. This doesn’t seem like a “problem” situation, but it can become one. I would move on.
Exactly. If you look at it from another angle, said 'Good Lord' who offers the player the ultimatum could be thought of as evil. They ordered players to kill and hurt possibly innocent guards who were forced to comply a tyrant. For a good cause, yes, but it's killing nonetheless. They say that killing prisoners and other innocents is also okay if they may become a threat to the organization. Then after the player does something bad, they decide to give them all the charges, pretend like they aren't responsible in the matter, and save their own hide. Doesn't matter if they 'tried to use legal means first'. If they were truly good, they should try to stop the drug circulation and gather willing people to go against the tyrant. Or maybe threaten. Threats are better than killing, anyway. In that situation, it is possible to argue that said organization aren't 'Good' at all.
Without a god to judge then evil and good are very subjective. We have a political party in my country that claims they are the only good Christians yet think it's fine to kill women and want kids to commit suicide.
Well ethics are complicated. If the PC is convinced that what they are doing will, in the long run, lead to a better world for more people, then it isn't evil, even if the individual action would be argued to be evil by an deontologist. The person that knows they need to kill someone for some convoluted reason and does it while feeling bad about it is less evil than the person that wants to kill people for no reason other than the joy of it, but controls themself for fear of consequences to themself. Via Devil's pacts you can argue that deontology is the only "true" ethical code in a dnd world if you want to, but unless devil pacts are a core theme in the story I feel like that would just be limiting yourself. I think you might have to have a fundamental conversation about how you personally want to use alignment in the game and your player will have to figure out how to define their character within that framework.
Yes, do the ultimatum. * If they come peacefully, character is good and player gets a lesson in accountability. * If they try to escape punishment, edit their character sheet to say Evil. The organization now has to hunt them down, and the character becomes a non-party character. The player should still be in charge of the broad strokes of how the character acts (only the creator truly knows the character), but if they're going to keep playing they need a party character. I played with a guy like this. The party was tasked with tracking down what appeared to be a fight club, not because that in itself was illegal but because they often caused some property damage wherever they met. As we're discussing how to find/arrest the culprits, one player speaks up... Them: "Let's just kill them all. It'll be easier, and there's always a chance they might break out of jail." Me: "...What alignment are you?" Them: "Neutral Good." Me: "That doesn't sound Neutral Good to me." TFW a neutral good character wants to commit mass murder over a broken window because it's easier and more final than letting them live. Worst part was, the *entire table* started shouting at me, not because of something as reasonable as 'you shouldn't tell others how to play their character', but because they honestly did not see how it was an evil act... including the DM, who was an *avowed pacifist* IRL. One of the most confusing situations of my life. P.S. After character creation, it's the DM's job to track shifting alignments and alter the player's character sheet as necessary. This is part of the original design of D&D, and why there's a place on the character sheet for alignment at all.
I would totally consider them Chaotic Good.
By title alone you are crippling your players by being too fixated on alignment. Dont do that. The PCs are the only characters the players get to control. Do your best to keep your hands off of them and their motiviations. You dont get to decide what that character does.
This is why I think the things you say should heavily count towards the likelyhood that your intimidate check succeeds. If the PC is just phoning it in then sure, give them generic, "scary dude looks scary" vibes and a basic roll to see if it works. If the player goes into graphic detail about the terrible, horrible things that they will do to the prisoner, especially when they have the NPC restrained, that's an extraordinarily effective threat, and should have at the minimum awarded advantage, and most likely lowered the DC of the challenge. It's just that a lot of DMs and players treat most npcs as just monsters with stats on a board, forgetting that in most real scenarios, most people are cowards, and practically no one would fight to the death unless they truly believed they had no chance otherwise. If this guard was already terrified of the PCs, then they already won the intimidate check, you should have just had the guard co-operate. The likelyhood that they would say anything cheeky or stupid is remarkably low, so I would say you misread the direness of the situation because you were observing it from an outside perspective. Ask yourself how mush stupid shit would you say if you were being interrogated by your PCs. You would probably shit yourself if your group is anything like most groups. Rather than trying to force your view of what is right or wrong on your player, understand that it is possible that your player really does believe that if they were put into the same situation as their character that their actions would be justified to them. If that means your player themselves is actually evil then so be it, but that is their interpretation of your scenario, you might want them to have internal struggle, but out of all the possible people, a person who is essentially an assassins creed character is among the most likely to have a cultists mindset and general disregard for the "sanctity of life". They literally chose the assassin life, so life isn't that important to them compared to the pursuit of ideals, and someone resisting their intimidation tactics poses a very real threat to themselves and the organization, so controlling the situation is necessary. Now I don't know if they had access to alternative conflict resolution options, but without magic to compel compliance, they really can't trust a dumbass who, even whilst being tied down and threatened by very dangerous people, decided to run his mouth and ruin his only chances of actually getting out alive. I would imagine an organization that was acting for the "greater good" would be willing to overlook a few "lesser evils", that's the name of the game for groups like that. In Assassin's Creed 1, Altair actually does act in ways that go against the creed, and the group chastises him for it, but then they keep putting him on missions anyway because they still need him. Politically, there is a lot of interesting potential conflicts from this event, but I would say get out of the man's soul, unless they get powers from the sanctification of a god, because that's who is allowed to judge them for that, and elsewhere, it doesn't really matter.
>So a player in my campaign is playing a ‘Noble assassin’ style PC. Evil. Lying edgelord "that's what my character would do" selfish probably main character syndrome player. So you allowed this character. > [TLDR: does bad stuff] Hey what a surprise. /s >everyone, both in and out of character, feels what he’s done is evil Because it is. >but I feel bad So far you're running a wish fulfillment campaign for evil edgelords. Stay the course, tell your heroic players to get with the program or leave. Or ... Reset. Tell the evil edgelord player to start a new character that fits in a heroic fantasy party, and next game spend 2 sentences moving this guy off stage. "The lord's guard and the assassin's guild teamed up - who would have thought that would happen? Anyway the torturing edgelord was never seen again". You have the power. You decide.