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C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 06:48 AM
Awhile ago one of my players was faced with an order he really didn't want to follow, and I am wondering what my fellow forum-lurkers think of the call that I made as DM.

The Situation: a city of ~40,000 people had possibly been infected with a plague that killed it's victims and reanimated them into vicious undead (think 28 Days Later), and the PC's commanding officer (the prince of the nation he was a soldier for) commanded that he, along with the other PCs and the prince's men slay every member of the city's populace, to ensure that the plague did not spread to other places. As might be expected the PCs (who were all x/Good or x/Neutral leaning towards Good) were appalled at the idea and immediately abandoned the prince, along with several hundred like-minded soldiers. This particular PC on the other hand, didn't see following the order as such a cut-and-dry decision.

The Choice: This PC decided to follow the prince's order and proceeded to participate in what I termed "genocide (he didn't agree with that label)." As a result, his alignment was changed from L/N to L/E, a decision I viewed as perfectly reasonable, as he did it because he was commanded to while ultimately displaying a total lack of regard for life. In addition he didn't once think that maybe some people weren't infected or, even worse, that none of the populace was infected, and that the prince (who had displayed a remarkable tendency to act impulsively without thinking of the consequences) may have just been acting selfishly. Coincidentally the prince, who was a paladin, was stripped of his paladin powers and later fell to evil and usurped his father's kingdom.

The Issue: This PC was convinced that his actions were not evil, and that he was only following orders "for the greater good," which to me and the rest of the players sounded awfully similar to the thought pattern of some Nazis (Hitler was, IMO, the definition of L/E), but maybe that was just an unfair generalization. Also before the question of "why did he care so much" comes up, our party was, and still is, a group of players who frown upon evil actions to the extreme, and so that "E" in his alignment was sort of a great big target, especially in the case of the highly zealous paladin in the party.

So my fellow forum-lurkers, my question is this: were his actions a.) justified and b.) evil? I have formulated my own ideas on this, I'm just curious as to what other people think.

Secondarily if anyone has stories similar to this one (significant moral issues with dubious (or not so dubious) alignment repercussions, share those as well.

Rothen
2010-07-04, 06:55 AM
This is just a great basis for an alignment discussion. Essentially the question you have to ask yourself here is:

"If you're trying to be good, but messed up somewhere and did something that is ultimately evil, are you still good?"

It's hard to find a conclusive answer here, and I think you have to go with what you think as a DM. There is something to be said for calling the PC evil. But you could argue that he's still good because he tried - especially here, considering that if he'd done nothing, it would've had far worse results.

Personally, I think you did a good job of calling him neutral. He's still a PC, so I suppose he also did some good acts that might balance out whatever evil there was in that act.
And you're still giving the player a good chance to attone for his crime and get a good status again.

Yora
2010-07-04, 07:02 AM
So my fellow forum-lurkers, my question is this: were his actions a.) justified and b.) evil? I have formulated my own ideas on this, I'm just curious as to what other people think.
Does it matter?
What might matter is what other NPCs think about his choice, and they could be right or wrong.

Excession
2010-07-04, 07:03 AM
I lean toward thinking that in this case Arthas was justified, but that he didn't have to be such an ass about it. The culling was the start of his fall, not the end. His later decisions were fully evil, but in a twisted way it all made sense.

Warcraft 3 had good writing.

Or were you talking about something else?

(As a side note, I always wondered what happened to the gluten intolerant citizens of Strathholm. Acceptable losses?)

Shpadoinkle
2010-07-04, 07:09 AM
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. Even if it sucks.

I'm sure Typhoid mary was a wonderful person, but if she'd been quarantined (possibly for the rest of her life) a lot of people wouldn't have died when they did.

In this case you don't have the option to quarantine, so you have to make do with what options you DO have. Yeah, it sucks that these innocent people have to die, but they're freaking dangerous! True, it's through no fault of thier own, but sometimes a few individuals have to be sacrificed to keep the rest of society safe.

He didn't kill out of spite, or anger, or hatred, or just to be an *******. He killed them because it was a dire situation and it seemed like the only reasonable course of action- these people had already died, been reanimated, and were now a threat to the still living. Yes, it would have been ideal if he could have found a way to help them somehow, but did he have the resources or time to do that?

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 07:09 AM
It's evil. Think Arthas in warcraft 3 if you want an example that doesn't have to call nazis(for some reason people always overreact to that).

"Obeying orders" is not the "point" of a lawful alignment. A Lawful person is just comfortable with the concept. But if obeying orders would imply something he doesn't agree with, he will act to the best of his ability not to obey such orders (even to the point of -oh my- DISOBEYING).
Neutral people do not like to inflict harm on innocents. "Cull the city" is evil by any measure.

If he really showed no qualm in doing that, he's being evil.



Also remember, Good, Evil, Chaos and Order are absolute concepts, above identities or in-universe interpretation. It doesn't matter if in the person's mind it's justified, or makes sense. If it's an evil deed, it's an evil deed regardless of what he or others think about it.

Excession
2010-07-04, 07:21 AM
Well, if this is about Arthas in Warcraft 3, he didn't kill a horde of evil undead. He (or in fact you, as the player) killed a city full of city people who were infected with a disease that he believed to be incurable and was going to turn them into a horde of undead. He was, if it matters, correct in that belief. The disease was contracted by eating infected grain, I'm unsure if it was contageous person to person, or undead to person, at that stage.

This act in itself did not make him fall, but it seems that falling isn't something that happens to Warcraft paladins. They can, like Arthas, become Death Knights, who are living but thoroughly evil servants of the undead BBEG. It's like falling and becoming a Blackguard, but there also appear to be evil paladins who retain paladin-like powers in WoW at least.

Yora
2010-07-04, 07:27 AM
I think it Arthas case, it was not just the killing people who became zombies, but his unwillingness to listen to his friends, kicking them out of his army in anger, and thinking he could deal with the entire situation all by himself without needing anyones help or approval.
While his actions were justified, he did it for all the wrong reasons.

Serpentine
2010-07-04, 07:37 AM
Did he do it because he was told to, or because he genuinely believed that it would be better to stop the disease there, with a relatively low loss of life, than to let it spread and kill unknown numbers of people, or a combination? Also, did he reasonably believe that there was no other, or no other likely-to-succeed, option?

If the former, I'd declare that a definitely Lawful Evil action, though not necessarily enough to push him all the way to Evil from Good or Law from Chaos, but possibly from Neutral.
If it was because he genuinely believed it to be the best way to prevent future greater carnage, I would say it depends on his other behaviour. It would put him at risk of slipping into "greater good" Evil behaviour, but I wouldn't make it enough to cause a change in alignment unless he was already slipping.
If it was a combination, well, somewhere in between depending on emphasis. I'd definitely make it a Lawful act, though.
If there is another reasonable option, these all slip significantly, but not completely, to the Evil side of things.

olentu
2010-07-04, 07:54 AM
Well all in all I would say that the act was most likely evil.

Then again this is D&D where sometimes keeping evil from crushing all that is good in the multiverse is an evil act of the blackest sort.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 08:00 AM
Well all in all I would say that the act was most likely evil.

Then again this is D&D where sometimes keeping evil from crushing all that is good in the multiverse is an evil act of the blackest sort.
Indeed, and it's one of the main evil archetypes, the guy who does evil to save the world. There are a few variations to that. There's the crazed fanatic(pre-dk arthas), there's the pragmatist(Baron Klaus Wulfenbach), and there's even the trickster(Clerics of Hynnin -trickery- have a very popular sect that supports the church of Justice through underhanded methods to uncover trickery and keep the paladins from being thrown in situations they're helpless)

Thieves
2010-07-04, 08:02 AM
Does it matter?
What might matter is what other NPCs think about his choice, and they could be right or wrong.

Unarmed swordsage'd the whole discussion! So refreshing to see appreciation / recognition of the subjective in the world.

Unfortunately, this is not what D&D supports, as Snake Aes points out. It supports only objective values that do not listen to justification, but to forms (best example of this is that atonement is a freakin' spell). If you want resolution in game terms, go with this and anything written down in PHB or DMG; remember that gods are real and will screw you up if you cross their views. All written above sounds quite reasonable to me... in D&D only, though. If you want resolution in moral, real-world terms, The Last Thing you should try to do is rely on others' interpretation. Just for the future.

PinkysBrain
2010-07-04, 08:18 AM
Morality isn't really nailed down in core ... but BoED goes a long way towards doing just that. I'm going to speak here from the BoED perspective. The underlying assumption is that the universe itself is moral ... so in the long run only more evil comes from evil acts, no matter what the short term results seem to be.

Even if the town turns into undead, even if those undead go on to wipe out all live on the planet ... even if the only way to stop that would be for a good man to commit an evil act, even then in the long run more evil would come from that single act than simply letting it happen.

Evard
2010-07-04, 08:19 AM
I think that is unfair, he had good cause and as bad as it sounds it would have worked. Sure the paladin fell later but even an evil guy can have good ideas (look at non alcoholic beer!)... The greater good was to keep other from being infected, and who knows who is a carrier of the disease

Its like saying

Mayor: "hey adventurers we have a dragon problem, go into the mountains and kill all the evil dragons and you will be rewarded!"

Party screams out "WOO Loot and Death of the Evil Dragons" as they march into the mountains to slay all the dragons. They find an egg (that they keep), a youngling, young adult, and two adult dragons. They slay all the evil dragons and come back to town where they are rewarded.

Now would all the character's go from Good to Evil if those where the wrong dragons? They didn't ask (dragons CAN speak) if the dragons where the evil ones and the fact they dragonnapped a baby and killed a child dragon should cause all of them to go to the "dark side".

I see this scenario to be more damning than the one described above.. And this example is a staple of DnD (charge in and kill everything for money).

(yes OoTS is popped into my head)

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 08:31 AM
Hey, go kill the undeads and everyone infected. And those possibly infected, cause we can't let it spread.

What? No! That's evil. I refuse to do so.

I think it's not evil though. It's necessary. Unless you rather have the world overrun with vicious undead. (Or there's a cure. Which doesn't seem apparent)

PinkysBrain
2010-07-04, 08:40 AM
In a fundamentally a-moral universe like our own such utilitarian morality makes sense.

It just doesn't make sense in a world with BoED type D&D morality. A truly good person would realise that regardless of the immediate results killing defenceless people is evil and no good comes from evil. To kill them and trying to dress it up as protecting the world is pure rationalization, it's a cowardly decision most likely taken out of the Prince's fear for his own skin.

Evard
2010-07-04, 08:42 AM
Intentions are what makes an act evil or not.

If my intentions are to get a dead dog off the road (cause of rotting and such) and kick the dog due to having my hands full, is that a evil act? It is technically desecrating a body (and if that doesn't work change dog to half-ling or some tiny race). My intentions are good yet my actions are less than.

Sure it may make your gut squirm but its not evil.


EDIT: So a CG barbarian with a int:8 wis:8 cha:10 is expected to be able to figure out if someone is lying to them and what they are doing is not good even though they see how it IS good? Not happening anytime soon...

oxybe
2010-07-04, 08:49 AM
let's go even more basic:

Mayor McHillbilly: "them dar gobbos are 'a pestering our farmers an 'a takin' 'r aminals! can all y'all kill 'em fer us?"

Adventurers: huzza!

~and thus the group of romanticized thugs proceed to break into the home of the goblins, murder the inhabitants, take their stuff and get the key to the town

this is a proto-typical adventure: thar be goblins, kill them!

rarely have i played such an adventure where the adventurers are given actual proof of goblin wrongdoings, more then "dead cows" and "goblins in the woods".

but what if there were no actual dead animals? the goblins were just peacefully living in their little nook in the woods and the villagers wanted the land (for farming, construction, ect...) and decided to dupe the adventurers to do this bloody job for them.

the PCs honestly thought they were doing good by aiding the farmers from the marauding goblins, and while they did aid them, it's not in the way they thought.

good or evil?

to go back to original topic, depending on how "real" the setting takes itself it could very much be a justified act, whether it's evil or not.

in ye olden thymes, the plague was very "serious business". if it got into the rats & fleas, you could easily have a VERY large amount of casualties. now add in magic to help spread it and you have a recipe for disaster.

depending on the ease of access to "cure disease" type spells, it might be more feasible to kill em all and let the gods sort out the rest, rather then keep them alive and hope for the best.

it might not be the "good" method, but it's definitely the safest.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 08:53 AM
it might not be the "good" method, but it's definitely the safest.

Yes, it's what I'm trying to pass here. The best method isn't necessarily the Good method.

Evard
2010-07-04, 09:03 AM
Still making the guy evil due to the scenario is a bit harsh, I could see myself having a cleric or clergyman coming up to the character sometime and saying that he seems to be getting darker... Give him a few warnings that as a DM I think he is starting to be evil. Now if he decided to kill all the innocents for no good reason then that would be auto-evil alignment.

oxybe
2010-07-04, 09:06 AM
Yes, it's what I'm trying to pass here. The best method isn't necessarily the Good method.

sometimes you need to say "shut up Good".

the PC did what he thought best, alignment be damned. instead of hoping for the best and doing nothing at all he followed orders based on the information given to him and killed what he thought was a threat to the land.

we're only hearing your side, but from my view his intention was good, even if his actions weren't.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 09:09 AM
I think what made his case worst is that he obeyed just to obey. A neutral character could indeed come to the conclusion that a culling would be the best alternative, but he'd not exactly like the idea. The fact he agreed so easily shows that he doesn't really care about the innocents who will not be infected and still die. That's evil in his personality. And the deed itself is evil, but you seem to agree to that.



we're only hearing your side, but from my view his intention was good, even if his actions weren't.

Well, as I said the deal with alignments is that they're above people(and even gods), so regardless of he having all the great and selfless reasons to do it it's still an evil deed.

Cespenar
2010-07-04, 09:13 AM
The correct call should have been:

1- Infiltrate the city and find out the truth about the plague.

2- If there is indeed a plague, run a quarantine.

Drastic measures should only been taken when there absolutely isn't any other choice. Not looking for other options equals to not caring enough, which equals to "not good".

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 09:19 AM
Wow I did not expect this big of a reaction over this, kudos to all of you.

Rothen: Sorry if i was unclear, I changed his alignment to L/E, not L/N. His character was one of the x/N characters that leaned towards good. My apologies if I was unclear with that, but I do agree with what you said about there being a hard-to-find answer; I agonized for quite a while before I decided obeying the prince's command would cause him to change to evil.

Yora: Believe me, I totally understand what you are getting at. As a general rule, I hate the concept of alignment as a concrete label, and for the most part, the PCs went with the "I don't care what is in your alignment bracket, you killed tons of people" route. This thread is purely to gauge what people besides myself think about the situation.

Excession: You have pin-pointed my source of inspiration. To be honest, I always found Arthas a bit of a whiner, and I never saw his fall as something that should have shocked the player. I wanted to take his fall a step further though, so I added the idea that he didn't actually know that the people of "Stratholm" (not my name for the city but you get the idea) were infected. As a matter of fact, his two scraps of proof were the word of the general leading the undead army, and the fact that the first person they saw when they entered the city had the flu (which manifested similar symptoms). The reason I decided it was such an evil act was that they did it not "because it had to be done" as some of you say, but because the prince panicked and ordered it done without any real proof. Also I've never played WoW so that is not a foundation for my decisions.

Shpadoinkle: Again, the prince had no conclusive proof that the people were infected but I get that I didn't make it very clear in the OP so sorry about that. Also to answer your question, no he did not have the time/means to quarantine a city of ~40k people, so I see where you are coming from on that one.

Snake-Aes: This is precisely the angle I took in explaining the reason for the change. Regardless of what he thought, murder, especially of civilians of a questionable danger to others is evil in my book.

Serpentine: This is where the difficulty in my decision came from. He did it because his liege commanded him too, but also because he was scared for his nation and wanted to safeguard his fellow countrymen and his wife and unborn child. He believed it was the best course of action, but he went through with it with little or no reliable information, and while intent matters, the end result was ineffably evil IMO

olentu: I agree wholeheartedly with this one.

Pinkysbrain: The lack of alignment definition pre-BoED always bugged me, and I like to maintain at least a semblance of universal morality when I DM games. There are certain acts that as a human I just can't define as evil or good, but regardless of the intent or the end result, I feel like what he did by itself was an entirely evil act.

Evard: Normally I would agree with you on this one but to be honest, I always considered "classic" DnD to be a bit, dare I say the word...unrealistic. I know that if a world existed like the standard Phb world that the find the monster, get the treasure approach would work, but I feel like reality would go one of two ways: the monsters would overbreed and wipe out humanity (elfmanty, dwarfmanity etc), or the adventurers would eventually get rid of the monsters, since I can't imagine why people would leave any living to cause trouble. Comparing what this PC did to standard DnD concepts like that is, IMO, not very possible though, because it's a world entirely removed from the style of game I run (where monsters are a limited and dangerous situation, after all, the ones that have survived the adventurers must be the most deadly). I definitely get what you are saying though.

2xMachina: Yeah I don't think something evil cant be necessary though. Killing a person very well might be the only answer but it's still killing a person which is, at it's heart, an evil act, though there might be mitigating circumstances.

Keep it up, this is good stuff. Also feel free to contradict me, I am probably totally wrong about most of the stuff I am saying so correct at will.

Kylarra
2010-07-04, 09:25 AM
Did the deserters get moved over to C away from L and N based alignments?

I'm just curious, because while it's true that the lone guy did something horrendous, running away from your problems and letting them happen aren't all that bright and spiffy either.

onthetown
2010-07-04, 09:29 AM
Lawful good means upholding the law as long as it is for the good of the people, and to oppose the law when it is clearly unjust so that people can live in peace.

If the character truly thought that the entire city was infected, then they thought they were doing a good thing and knew that killing the people (or quarantining the city) before they became infected would be better for them than to have to die and become creatures of darkness. That still isn't really good, but the character obviously thought it was. If they weren't so sure but just decided to **** all and follow orders anyway because it was easier than investigating... that's an ignorant lawful neutral minion. If they suspected that the prince might be lying but gleefully went about killing everybody with the excuse that they were ordered to, then happened to kill the prince as well because he was a part of the city and the paladin was, after all, ordered to kill the city's populace... and throw in some other backstabbing and plotting... that's lawful evil.

I'd say the paladin just had a temporary lapse of judgement and should be allowed to repent without falling. If he falls, he's not going to automatically change to an evil mindset, so lawful neutral with a chance to be redeemed would be nice for him.

Nerdanel
2010-07-04, 09:40 AM
Incidentally, when I played Warcraft 3 I waited a few seconds for every citizen to transform before I killed them. It is possible to win the level that way, without killing a single innocent (non-undead) human.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 09:40 AM
Did the deserters get moved over to C away from L and N based alignments?

I'm just curious, because while it's true that the lone guy did something horrendous, running away from your problems and letting them happen aren't all that bright and spiffy either.

They did not get changed/ The PCs were not sworn to serve the prince, they were envoys of the king and ultimately answered to him alone. They were above the rank-and-file soldiers that the prince was commanding and they didn't break any laws or rules that the king imposed, so I didn't think that side of their alignment deserved changing.

Also before I say anything else that might make me look like a fool I want to ask another question:

Would you consider what this PC did genocide?

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 09:41 AM
Incidentally, when I played Warcraft 3 I waited a few seconds for every citizen to transform before I killed them. It is possible to win the level that way, without killing a single innocent (non-undead) human.

I bow to your patience, I saw it as a tactical liability to not kill them ASAP. Maybe I'm cold hearted, who knows.

Kylarra
2010-07-04, 09:46 AM
Incidentally, when I played Warcraft 3 I waited a few seconds for every citizen to transform before I killed them. It is possible to win the level that way, without killing a single innocent (non-undead) human.I did that as well.


They did not get changed/ The PCs were not sworn to serve the prince, they were envoys of the king and ultimately answered to him alone. They were above the rank-and-file soldiers that the prince was commanding and they didn't break any laws or rules that the king imposed, so I didn't think that side of their alignment deserved changing.

Also before I say anything else that might make me look like a fool I want to ask another question:

Would you consider what this PC did genocide?By a strict reading of the word "genocide", no, because they weren't chosen for racial, political or cultural reasons, but rather an issue unrelated to any of the above, unless you choose to read political as "living in the same city", which is fair to an extent I suppose, but it could qualify as mass murder.

I'd like to hypothesize that your deserters are equally culpable, as letting evil happen when you're aware of it, is nearly as bad as accomplishing it for good reasons in the first place.

Private-Prinny
2010-07-04, 09:46 AM
Would you consider what this PC did genocide?

Well...



gen·o·cide

–noun
the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.


So, if you count the city as its own national or cultural group, then yes. Otherwise no.

Even if it is yes, the choice was either thousands of innocents die either way, or tens of thousands more innocents would die if you did nothing. It's regrettable, but as long as he wasn't laughing in the streets slaughtering puppies, it's not Evil.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 09:49 AM
I did that as well.

I'd like to hypothesize that your deserters are equally culpable, as letting evil happen when you're aware of it, is nearly as bad as accomplishing it for good reasons in the first place.

I considered this as well but their choices were either fight the prince (treason->execution) or flee to tell the king of the prince's actions and live to try and repair what he did, which they ultimately ended up doing. I can see your point though.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 09:53 AM
Well...



So, if you count the city as its own national or cultural group, then yes. Otherwise no.

Even if it is yes, the choice was either thousands of innocents die either way, or tens of thousands more innocents would die if you did nothing. It's regrettable, but as long as he wasn't laughing in the streets slaughtering puppies, it's not Evil.

See the thing is, the prince's nation had a fully functional, not to mention very deadly, military which would have been very capable of dealing with the undead that MAY have came from all this, so tens of thousands wouldn't have necessarily died. Also what you are saying assumes that the prince and the PC had conclusive data that the people of this city were infected, which they didn't. If they did I would have had a much easier time, but the reason he fell to evil was because they killed 40,000 people on a hunch which is, in my book, much harder to justify as even a neutral, let alone good act, when such a blatant disregard for life is shown.

Kylarra
2010-07-04, 09:58 AM
It's really easy to make moral decisions as the omniscient [wo]man behind the screen who knows everything for sure, but was the PC in a position to know how powerful the doom plague was? How powerful the military is compared to 40k potential undead enemies? How powerful the undead created by the doom plague were? A reason to say that Prince was operating on a hunch and not off solid intelligence?

Serpentine
2010-07-04, 10:04 AM
Serpentine: This is where the difficulty in my decision came from. He did it because his liege commanded him too, but also because he was scared for his nation and wanted to safeguard his fellow countrymen and his wife and unborn child. He believed it was the best course of action, but he went through with it with little or no reliable information, and while intent matters, the end result was ineffably evil IMODid it work? Did killing a city of infected people prevent the spread of the disease? What did the rest of the party do? What was their alternative, and did they ever try to tell the character in question this alternative plan?
While I would consider it an Evil deed, depending on circumstances - such as the above questions - I wouldn't consider it "ineffably evil". I would move them a couple of points towards the Evil end of the scale, but more because of the psychological effect and the whole "slippery slope" thing than because of the deed itself - which could fairly reasonably be filed under "a tough Good/lesser Evil decision".

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 10:11 AM
It's really easy to make moral decisions as the omniscient [wo]man behind the screen who knows everything for sure, but was the PC in a position to know how powerful the doom plague was? How powerful the military is compared to 40k potential undead enemies? How powerful the undead created by the doom plague were? A reason to say that Prince was operating on a hunch and not off solid intelligence?

Nah I realize this.

Let's see what did he know:

-The human military was the 2nd strongest in the world, capable of carving out an empire from relatively inhospitable territory (in terms of monsters) with not much beyond martial might.
-The prince was fond of making rash, impulsive decisions in the heat of the moment (he earlier left them and about 50 men to defend a town from about a thousand undead simply because he heard a rumor that a patrol of undead was spotted and he wanted to crush them to prove himself to daddy (although he DID manage to return in time to reinforce them)
-The "doom plague" (I like that I wish I had had some commoners call it that a few times) exhibited similar symptoms to the flu, and that it was VERY difficult to get rid of (mid level priests casting remove curse et al could not get rid of it.
-The only concrete sources of information relating to this city was a frightened farmer running the other way in fear of the undead, the aforementioned prince's hunch, and one woman who was exhibiting flu-like symptoms (she just had the flu, but the prince gave her the banhammer on life before they checked if it really was the plague, then he gave the order).

Idk if that's enough info to have you get the gist but there's a few smaller things that I cant think of atm due to lack of sleep.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 10:16 AM
Did it work?

Short term definitely. The city was isolated and kept from undead hands (or claws as it were), though the humans didn't repopulate it and it was eventually razed by a sect of religious zealots seeking to purify lands touched by the dead.

Long term though? Not really. The undead profited by the massacre as it removed one of the nation's key strategic chokepoints as well as taking a sizeable bite out of the pool of soldiers capable to fight against the dead, not to mention the fall of the prince. So he actually ended up doing more bad than good, though I don't think that fact every really dawned on his character

comicshorse
2010-07-04, 10:18 AM
But it did stop the entire population becoming blood-crazed undead ?

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 10:25 AM
But it did stop the entire population becoming blood-crazed undead ?

I suppose if the only possible outcomes to this situation are either the populace ends up as
-Dead
or
-Blood-crazed undead

comicshorse
2010-07-04, 10:30 AM
I suppose if the only possible outcomes to this situation are either the populace ends up as
-Dead
or
-Blood-crazed undead

Granted, which raises the vital question did the other P.C.s have a better plan or just leave the city to its fate

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 10:33 AM
Granted, which raises the vital question did the other P.C.s have a better plan or just leave the city to its fate

At the time they just wanted to get away from the prince and make sure they had nothing to do with a situation they could do nothing to prevent beyond trying to talk. Then that developed into returning to the capital to talk to the king and get advice on what to do about the prince, and try to do what they could to either make sure it didnt happen again or help the people who survived.

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 10:44 AM
Did you TELL the PCs that the information the prince had was sketchy or unreliable? If not, then the PCs must assume that he had good sources (and it should be retconned as such). You don't interrogate a questgiver. You assume that the DM is not messing with you by giving you a trap when they give you a quest.

What I'm seeing is:
DM gives quest.
Player accepts quest.
DM smites player for accepting quest.

But I know I don't have all the facts here.

Ashiel
2010-07-04, 10:45 AM
To the OP: It's difficult to say without all the facts; which are hard to come by in a forum based discussion like this without a lot (and I mean a lot of situational variables).

That being said, I'm inclined to agree with Kylarra on most of it. Often times it's not as obvious to players as it is to us GMs. We know everything that is going on, but our players don't; and choosing to trust in an authority figure when he says that he has found this city infected with a disease that turns you undead doesn't sound particularly evil to me; naive perhaps, but not evil.

So now it's your job to kill them. Why are you killing them? Are they a different religion, color, gender? Is it jealousy, greed, or blood-lust motivating you? Or was it desire to protect the innocent, safety of the people, to end a dangerous threat, or some other altruistic goal?

Frankly, if you want a "real life" example, try this one on. Imagine for a moment someone could purge-kill a single town, and in doing so you would have stopped the Black Plague. Would not doing so be evil? To choose not to dirty your hands with the blood of the infected, you are dooming hundreds of thousands more to die?

Now imagine just for a moment we step it up a bit. Assuming the plague is spread through contact or is - shudder - airborn; and this plague is magical and turns people undead. Maybe it inflicts negative levels slowly, so people die and then return as Wights; or similar self-procreating undead; who could also carry the infection. It could spread incredibly fast, and also put those who treat it or would fight against them at risk.

Even if the prince has an army that could supposedly control such an outbreak, if the army became infected, then the army begins to tear itself apart from the inside. Catastrophe and all that.

But you chose to do the easy thing. The easy thing is not killing the infected and burning the bodies because you want to be pure. That's the evil thing, because you're putting yourself above all the people you're dooming to die and become ravenous monsters.

-----------------

What you have here is a lose/lose situation, which is why playing paladins under certain GMs suck; and why I generally play clerics is groups with GMs who do this sort of thing.

Now I understand that this may not be the whole story. Like I said before, to make a good call would require knowing everything that is going on. But based on what's presented, I don't think the character should have fallen; or if there was really even a disease at all; or if there were clear alternatives made; or some other situational modifier. But as I read it; especially coupled with the Arthas references; no, it sounds too unaligned to warrant an alignment shift.

At least, to me.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 10:49 AM
Did you TELL the PCs that the information the prince had was sketchy or unreliable? If not, then the PCs must assume that he had good sources (and it should be retconned as such). You don't interrogate a questgiver. You assume that the DM is not messing with you by giving you a trap when they give you a quest.

This is more of that "classic" DnD style of play that I really abhor. The Prince wasn't the "quest giver," if that's what you want to call it. If anything, the king was, and he gave a simple command: follow the prince and help him with what he does. I felt perfectly fine about "tricking" them because I told them when we started the campaign that the world they were going to be living in wasn't divided into quests and rewards. It was a world with danger and difficulty like any other, but they very rarely found a note at the local tavern asking them to slay the monster for a thousand gold pieces, both because I just think that is outright stupid and because the few times we did that the universal response was "um why are we doing this?" My players wanted to have a deeper gaming experience than just doing quests.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 10:56 AM
Did you TELL the PCs that the information the prince had was sketchy or unreliable? If not, then the PCs must assume that he had good sources (and it should be retconned as such). You don't interrogate a questgiver. You assume that the DM is not messing with you by giving you a trap when they give you a quest.

What I'm seeing is:
DM gives quest.
Player accepts quest.
DM smites player for accepting quest.

But I know I don't have all the facts here.

On the contrary, of course you should interrogate the "questgiver". If the person with the big ! mark on their heads is always completely trustful, where's the verisimilitude of the world? Or does your world contain absolutely no tricksters, and absolutely no people who can actually be wrong when they come to you asking for help?

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 10:57 AM
This is more of that "classic" DnD style of play that I really abhor. The Prince wasn't the "quest giver," if that's what you want to call it. If anything, the king was, and he gave a simple command: follow the prince and help him with what he does. I felt perfectly fine about "tricking" them because I told them when we started the campaign that the world they were going to be living in wasn't divided into quests and rewards. It was a world with danger and difficulty like any other, but they very rarely found a note at the local tavern asking them to slay the monster for a thousand gold pieces, both because I just think that is outright stupid and because the few times we did that the universal response was "um why are we doing this?" My players wanted to have a deeper gaming experience than just doing quests.

Making it deeper doesn't mean it's not a quest. A quest is merely a task put onto their to-do list. Giving them good reasons and lots of story around it is great! That's what a good DM does.

But in a situation like this, you still have to give a clue that something's damning. At LEAST say "Roll an insight/sense motive check" while they're talking to the guy. I know it's supposed to be an actively declared skill, but you need to toss players SOMEthing in this sort of situation.


On the contrary, of course you should interrogate the "questgiver". If the person with the big ! mark on their heads is always completely trustful, where's the verisimilitude of the world? Or does your world contain absolutely no tricksters, and absolutely no people who can actually be wrong when they come to you asking for help?

The DM gives a hint when it's necessary to interrogate a questgiver. This way, you usually don't run the campaign into the ground with needless paranoia. Meta-knowledge is ok occasionally.

Terazul
2010-07-04, 10:58 AM
@ 'Quest Givers': I think they meant it more as when your PC is talking "the guy you have worked for most of your life and trust with the safety of the people has given you a task to carry out.", he doesn't expect him to suddenly bone him. And if he does bone him, why is the PC the one suffering from the alignment shift? I mean it's one thing to suddenly have less respect/trust for your CO, it's another to suddenly be told you're evil when you were going out of your way to try and do something good. Isn't that the point of being Lawful Good (or a Paladin) to begin with? You screw up from time to time, but lordy you try your hardest to do the most good you can?

Like really, we never penalize Evil characters "oh you bought that guy a drink and saved that orphanage ALIGNMENT SHIFT TO GOOD", since we'll generally assume they're going to do something to make up for it. Why always trying to screw over the Good dudes?

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 11:01 AM
The DM gives a hint when it's necessary to interrogate a questgiver. This way, you usually don't run the campaign into the ground with needless paranoia.

You call it needless paranoia, I call it rolling sense motive checks whenever you are tasked something by someone you're not used to.
It's important indeed to give the players a world where they can have fun, but it gets bland really fast when they know nothing will go wrong if they aren't told that it will. A well placed lose-lose situation here and there does add to the gameplay.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 11:02 AM
Did you TELL the PCs that the information the prince had was sketchy or unreliable? If not, then the PCs must assume that he had good sources (and it should be retconned as such). You don't interrogate a questgiver. You assume that the DM is not messing with you by giving you a trap when they give you a quest.

What I'm seeing is:
DM gives quest.
Player accepts quest.
DM smites player for accepting quest.

But I know I don't have all the facts here.

One of the best things about roleplaying is that if you do it right, PCs will be able to judge for themselves whether an NPC is trustworthy or not. If all "questgivers" were always telling the truth, intrigue kinda goes out the window. You don't need to hold your players' hands like that. Degenerating NPCs into vendors, guards, trainers, questgivers, ect really cheapens the social interactions of the game.

comicshorse
2010-07-04, 11:04 AM
My two gold pieces worth :

The P.C. was under orders from his King to obey the Prince.
The Prince had given a direct order.
Given the presence of the Doom plague the order is ruthless but not unreasonable.
Certainly with out severe magic resources it seems the only way to stop a city turning into a horde of blood-crazed undead.
The PC was LN I think he should stay that. He obeyed orders, he killed but for a good cause.

Interestingly I think the other P.C.s should have to answer for abandoning their Prince and leaving a city to turn into a horde of undead that would threaten the entire kingdom

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 11:05 AM
To the OP: It's difficult to say without all the facts; which are hard to come by in a forum based discussion like this without a lot (and I mean a lot of situational variables).

That being said, I'm inclined to agree with Kylarra on most of it. Often times it's not as obvious to players as it is to us GMs. We know everything that is going on, but our players don't; and choosing to trust in an authority figure when he says that he has found this city infected with a disease that turns you undead doesn't sound particularly evil to me; naive perhaps, but not evil.

So now it's your job to kill them. Why are you killing them? Are they a different religion, color, gender? Is it jealousy, greed, or blood-lust motivating you? Or was it desire to protect the innocent, safety of the people, to end a dangerous threat, or some other altruistic goal?

Frankly, if you want a "real life" example, try this one on. Imagine for a moment someone could purge-kill a single town, and in doing so you would have stopped the Black Plague. Would not doing so be evil? To choose not to dirty your hands with the blood of the infected, you are dooming hundreds of thousands more to die?

Now imagine just for a moment we step it up a bit. Assuming the plague is spread through contact or is - shudder - airborn; and this plague is magical and turns people undead. Maybe it inflicts negative levels slowly, so people die and then return as Wights; or similar self-procreating undead; who could also carry the infection. It could spread incredibly fast, and also put those who treat it or would fight against them at risk.

Even if the prince has an army that could supposedly control such an outbreak, if the army became infected, then the army begins to tear itself apart from the inside. Catastrophe and all that.

But you chose to do the easy thing. The easy thing is not killing the infected and burning the bodies because you want to be pure. That's the evil thing, because you're putting yourself above all the people you're dooming to die and become ravenous monsters.

-----------------

What you have here is a lose/lose situation, which is why playing paladins under certain GMs suck; and why I generally play clerics is groups with GMs who do this sort of thing.

Now I understand that this may not be the whole story. Like I said before, to make a good call would require knowing everything that is going on. But based on what's presented, I don't think the character should have fallen; or if there was really even a disease at all; or if there were clear alternatives made; or some other situational modifier. But as I read it; especially coupled with the Arthas references; no, it sounds too unaligned to warrant an alignment shift.

At least, to me.

Very insightful, I appreciate the thoughts. Hmm alright I suppose I can agree with you from the angle of needs of the many are more important but think of it this way: granted you will never, whatever-deity-you-may-or-may-not-follow-willing, have to murder someone in cold blood, but if you did, even if it were for a good cause, could you honestly say it wasn't evil? I'm not preaching or anything, just posing ideas. To be honest as a person I think I agree with your ideas, but I'm looking at it on a universal level, since in the DnD world the preordained concepts of good/evil/law/chaos are, to an extent at least, preordained, so there has to be a point where intent/motivation becomes moot and basic ethical/moral law kicks in.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 11:06 AM
My two gold pieces worth :

The P.C. was under orders from his King to obey the Prince.
The Prince had given a direct order.
Given the presence of the Doom plague the order is ruthless but not unreasonable.
Certainly with out severe magic resources it seems the only way to stop a city turning into a horde of blood-crazed undead.
The PC was LN I think he should stay that. He obeyed orders, he killed but for a good cause.
+1



Interestingly I think the other P.C.s should have to answer for abandoning their Prince and leaving a city to turn into a horde of undead that would threaten the entire kingdom

They would be rather vindicated when the prince turned on his king and country, no?

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 11:07 AM
...Degenerating NPCs into vendors, guards, trainers, questgivers, ect really cheapens the social interactions of the game.

I'm not suggesting that. I'm saying that using meta-knowledge is ok sometimes to prevent a scenario where, everything the PCs see or hear takes 20 rolls before they progress at all. That's what these sorts of tricks create, and THAT gets more boring than anything else. If descriptions are well enough, if the right rolls are asked for... Then you don't need to outright say it. But if you can't say it without saying it, then just say it.

Evil is an absolute, so the character should've known this would be an evil act. Stating that right after he says he's gonna do it, as an "Are you sure?" is not particularly ludicrous.

prufock
2010-07-04, 11:07 AM
Murdering innocent people is always Evil. Murdering forty thousand of them?
Other options were not pursued, such as quarantine. Blindly following orders is not Good.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 11:11 AM
Very insightful, I appreciate the thoughts. Hmm alright I suppose I can agree with you from the angle of needs of the many are more important but think of it this way: granted you will never, whatever-deity-you-may-or-may-not-follow-willing, have to murder someone in cold blood, but if you did, even if it were for a good cause, could you honestly say it wasn't evil? I'm not preaching or anything, just posing ideas. To be honest as a person I think I agree with your ideas, but I'm looking at it on a universal level, since in the DnD world the preordained concepts of good/evil/law/chaos are, to an extent at least, preordained, so there has to be a point where intent/motivation becomes moot and basic ethical/moral law kicks in.

I believe this is important: The alignment doesn't have to agree with the deed. A LN person could certainly obey the prince, but he'd do so with some weight in his heart. The deed is evil, but the alignment wouldn't have to shift towards evil if the guy carries the weight of those innocents' deaths knowing it was for a greater cause.

as usual this is a very risky territory, but as I said before... it is very possible to perform greater goods through non-good deeds, at least in the realm of possibility of said actor.
The clerics of Hynnin in Gondrian are a good example. They perform multiple acts of trickery, subterfuge and theft, ruining the lives of some but maintaining the power of the church of Justice(said church doesn't know they do it) as a consequence, leading to a better overall life for the rest of the people.

Heck, OOTS has a fine example in the form of Shojo. He didn't hesitate to resort to underhanded methods when it was better for his city.


Another little gem of value is that the burden of Loyalty is to carry the liege's mistakes. Ultimate loyalty can even end with an act of treason and your own disgrace in favor of your liege. The pcs who deserted the prince would likely not be left with just a stern look, but if they have a good argument they wouldn't really be hosed either.

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 11:11 AM
Did you TELL the PCs that the information the prince had was sketchy or unreliable? If not, then the PCs must assume that he had good sources (and it should be retconned as such). You don't interrogate a questgiver. You assume that the DM is not messing with you by giving you a trap when they give you a quest.

What I'm seeing is:
DM gives quest.
Player accepts quest.
DM smites player for accepting quest.

But I know I don't have all the facts here.

SMITE QUEST TAKER!!!

It really depends on what the PC knows. Sometimes, the PC might missed something, and thus, didn't know what you thought they know. You might also misremember telling them something.

The PC could have genuinely believe that following the order is the right thing to do. If so, it's not really evil.

For him, it could be: It's kill them, or let them infect others before dying.

comicshorse
2010-07-04, 11:13 AM
Posted by Prufrock

such as quarantine.

No offence but that's just ensuring the citizens are either ripped apart by undead or become undead, they are just as dead. The PC is just keeping his hands clean, it doesn't do any more good

It also generates more casualties as the army now has to fight an undead horde, not to mention what happens if even a few of the undead break out and the disease spreads.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 11:14 AM
I'm not suggesting that. I'm saying that using meta-knowledge is ok sometimes to prevent a scenario where, everything the PCs see or hear takes 20 rolls before they progress at all. That's what these sorts of tricks create, and THAT gets more boring than anything else.

Eh. There's a fine line between these two extremes, I'll agree. Good DMs can walk it. In this case, I wouldn't be suprised if adequate hints were dropped that the prince might be a little unstable.


Blindly following orders is not Good.

Neither is it Evil. Which is, I think, part of the question at hand.

I agree that exterminating the townsfolk was plenty evil in and of itself. But if the PC was convinced (foolishly or not) that he was doing good, then I wouldn't warrant an alignment shift. One deed generally doesn't cause a change in alignment. If the Character did or didn't see the alternatives might be irrelevant. Stupidity is not Evil.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 11:17 AM
Damn people-being-people and not nice black and white fairytale clichés.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 11:24 AM
{Scrubbed}

comicshorse
2010-07-04, 11:30 AM
{Scrubbed}


Well I'd be careful with the real world politics, first of all.
However its not a matter of MIGHT if a child is in city with a magical disease that is 100 % fatal ( basing it on the movies) the child WILL turn into a undead monster that can infect the entire kingdom.
Now you could evacuate the child but how do you know if he's not already infected ? How many lives will be lost going in to rescue ? How many more will be lost if the child escapes or infects the gaurds ? If you're dealing with something so insanely dangerous as the virus ruthless measures make sense.

I'm ironically reminded of the second movie where saving a child destroys all of Europe

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 11:35 AM
Well I'd be careful with the real world politics, first of all.
However its not a matter of MIGHT if a child is in city with a magical disease that is 100 % fatal ( basing it on the movies) the child WILL turn into a undead monster that can infect the entire kingdom.
Now you could evacuate the child but how do you know if he's not already infected ? How many lives will be lost going in to rescue ? How many more will be lost if the child escapes or infects the gaurds ? If you're dealing with something so insanely dangerous as the virus ruthless measures make sense.

I'm ironically reminded of the second movie where saving a child destroys all of Europe

ARGH no one in the city even WAS infected, or at least it not at first. And ya sorry about the America-centric word usage.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 11:37 AM
Regardless, it only keeps bringing the fact that the deed, ideal or not, was still evil. In-universe, the person's ideals and knowledge do not impart on the alignment of the deed, only on the moral consequence to himself.

comicshorse
2010-07-04, 11:37 AM
ARGH no one in the city even WAS infected, or at least it not at first.

Ah whoops
So when was the city infected. Before the Prince gave the order to attack ?

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 11:38 AM
ARGH no one in the city even WAS infected, or at least it not at first.

You, as the DM, were the only one that knew that, so that's irrelevant. Because the lack of that information was acted on, I'd, personally, change that information such that most were infected. As the DM, you ca change anything the PCs don't know, at any time.

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 11:38 AM
But they don't know that.

They got:
Farmer running away from undead. (And failed Sense Motive)
Someone with the symptoms of infection (And failed Knowledge/Heal check to know otherwise)

As far as they're concerned, there IS a plague, and it is bad.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 11:41 AM
ARGH no one in the city even WAS infected, or at least it not at first.

Uh... wouldn't they have figured this out after not seeing any, y'know, zombies or anything?

Edit:
I'm getting the feeling that this PC was either A) really ignorant and foolish or B) more callous than I might have guessed before.

I mean, how many completely normal people do you have to kill before you admit to even a little bloodlust on your part?

Tiki Snakes
2010-07-04, 11:43 AM
ARGH no one in the city even WAS infected, or at least it not at first. And ya sorry about the America-centric word usage.

The PC had only the knowledge that he had to make the judgement on. He decided that his character would trust his prince and keep his word to the king. He did the hard task, of actively dealing with what he believed to be a city full of soon-to-be-undead.

It's entirely appropriate for there to be reprisals and difficulties due to this choice, and the things that he has done.

But I see no reason to change his alignment, unless he owns up to following the order because he really, really needed to kick a baby right then.

He did a bad thing, a very bad thing, but that doesn't make him cosmically evil, and shouldn't change the way he is allowed to express his character's essential personality and world-views. He made an in-character choice, and not an easy one either. This should be rewarded ooc, (even if the world punishes the actions IC).

That's my opinion, anyway.

Everyone else took the cowards way out. There were two real choices. Either you believe the Prince, and will help, or you do not believe the prince, in which case you are morally bound to stop him.

See King Sharaman's line in the Prince of Persia film for details;

"A great man who would have stopped what was wrong, no matter who was ordering."

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 11:43 AM
Uh... wouldn't they have figured this out after not seeing any, y'know, zombies or anything?

Could have a gestation period. Could activate at night or something. It looks like the DM pointed out things that could falsely point to an infection, but it doesn't look like he ever said "Are you sure? You haven't seen any actual zombies, you know..."

Saph
2010-07-04, 11:43 AM
Heh. Yeah, it's always fun when PCs unquestioningly accept everything they're told by a quest-giver. Try playing Shadowrun with that guy and see what happens. :smalltongue:

Anyway, yes, I definitely agree that the player should get an alignment shift to Evil. There's a certain point beyond which stupidity is not an excuse. If the order you've been given involves killing everyone in an entire city and you don't go to every possible effort you can to double-check the information and try to find alternatives, you most definitely shouldn't have a Good alignment.

On the other hand, I'm not sure the rest of the party acted all that well either. Just leaving doesn't really seem enough - I'd have expected them to try and do something to stop him (although perhaps there wasn't much they could have done).

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 11:45 AM
And killing 40k of them?

You might have skipped the important parts. If he could really mince through 40k citizens running away from him, he's evil (and clearly very powerful).

If he merely goes: "I kill all the infected" and you go "Ok, you kill them all. And you fall to evil", then everyone is misunderstanding something.

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 11:50 AM
Here's an equivalent scenario: Someone curses a PC without his knowledge such that everyone in a particular city looks like shambling undead to him. It's all an illusion though. He reacts to the illusion and kills them all. Does that effect his alignment? In both cases, the player merely thought he was fighting an undead horde.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 11:51 AM
Here's an equivalent scenario: Someone curses a PC without his knowledge such that everyone in a particular city looks like shambling undead to him. It's all an illusion though. He reacts to the illusion and kills them all. Does that effect his alignment? In both cases, the player merely thought he was fighting an undead horde.


Regardless, it only keeps bringing the fact that the deed, ideal or not, was still evil. In-universe, the person's ideals and knowledge do not impart on the alignment of the deed, only on the moral consequence to himself.

I'll end here. People still try to meld character alignments with deeds, and often it really doesn't work that way.

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 11:54 AM
Regardless, it only keeps bringing the fact that the deed, ideal or not, was still evil. In-universe, the person's ideals and knowledge do not impart on the alignment of the deed, only on the moral consequence to himself.

Alignment is an affinity to deeds. It's what deeds your character is most likely to perform. The deed is certainly evil, but not the alignment, as that's not the sort of deed he is most likely to perform.

People forget that alignment is part of a character's personality, not a stat. Personally, if I was this player, I'd say "No, I'm keeping Lawful Neutral on my sheet. That's still where my character's personality points his moral compass, regardless of the outcome of this trap of a quest."

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 11:58 AM
And killing 40k of them?

You might have skipped the important parts. If he could really mince through 40k citizens running away from him, he's evil (and clearly very powerful).

If he merely goes: "I kill all the infected" and you go "Ok, you kill them all. And you fall to evil", then everyone is misunderstanding something.

Yeah... now that I think of it, a 40k population is a metropolis (or close to it) in D&D standards. The fact that the city could have been COMPLETELY ANNIHILATED in any kind of singularity is astonishing. Wasn't there a temple with priests that could have investigated stuff? What did the nobility and the city authorities do? What about a thieve's guild or some other clandestine organization that could perhaps smuggle people out before they were axed? If there's any kind of arcane magic user in the city, it's likely that they might have escaped (in which case, containment has failed). Cities are powerful. If you've the resources to destroy one in its entirety, it means you have the resourses to probably find another solution. The prince is not only unstable. He's bat**** insane. You'd have to be either really dumb or a little psychotic yourself to follow him.

There has to be something we're missing.

Saph
2010-07-04, 11:58 AM
Here's an equivalent scenario: Someone curses a PC without his knowledge such that everyone in a particular city looks like shambling undead to him. It's all an illusion though. He reacts to the illusion and kills them all. Does that effect his alignment? In both cases, the player merely thought he was fighting an undead horde.

Which is more likely in the average game?

a. "This person might not be telling the truth."
b. "This person might be wrong."
c. "I've been cursed with an undetectable unbreakable illusion with no way of knowing it and all the monsters I'm seeing are actually innocent civilians."

If you've been specifically told that you're playing in a game where questgiver != truthful, then it really is entirely your own fault if you make the assumption that anything a questgiver tells you must be true.

awa
2010-07-04, 12:07 PM
first obeying orders with out question is an aspect of neutrality not evil. Second stupidity is not evil. If he was good aligned i might cause him to drop to neutral but not to evil.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 12:11 PM
first obeying orders with out question is an aspect of neutrality not evil. Second stupidity is not evil. If he was good aligned i might cause him to drop to neutral but not to evil.

If his intelligence is high enough to give him a language, he's smart enough to judge moral implications of his deeds. That's why Animals are neutral.

I do believe more information might be necessary, but we know that said guy obeyed him "to obey". That he didn't try to make sure his commander was doing something right in his eyes points at non-good behavior.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:12 PM
Ah whoops
So when was the city infected. Before the Prince gave the order to attack ?

No not at all. The only evidence they had to support the prince's order was the word of the undead general who wanted to turn the paladin and a panicked farmer who, as panicked people do, overexaggerated. Sorry if that wasn't clear before.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:14 PM
Regardless, it only keeps bringing the fact that the deed, ideal or not, was still evil. In-universe, the person's ideals and knowledge do not impart on the alignment of the deed, only on the moral consequence to himself.

I'm with Aes on this one

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 12:17 PM
I'm with Aes on this one

I don't think the act itself wasn't evil. I just don't think it means he's now inclined to perform evil acts, which is what alignment means.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:18 PM
Could have a gestation period. Could activate at night or something. It looks like the DM pointed out things that could falsely point to an infection, but it doesn't look like he ever said "Are you sure? You haven't seen any actual zombies, you know..."

No I asked him twice if he REALLY wanted to and he definitely continued on, even after his comrades left in disgust.

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 12:19 PM
No I asked him twice if he REALLY wanted to and he definitely continued on, even after his comrades left in disgust.

That's completely different. You basically said "Are you sure?" You're completely right then.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-04, 12:19 PM
No not at all. The only evidence they had to support the prince's order was the word of the undead general who wanted to turn the paladin and a panicked farmer who, as panicked people do, overexaggerated. Sorry if that wasn't clear before.

Entitling a sense motive check here would be good to tell that the prince's action, alongside with hurried, is being carried by blind emotion. The players with highest sense motive should be able to tell that whatever he's basing himself on, is likely unreasonable.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:21 PM
Heh. Yeah, it's always fun when PCs unquestioningly accept everything they're told by a quest-giver. Try playing Shadowrun with that guy and see what happens. :smalltongue:

Anyway, yes, I definitely agree that the player should get an alignment shift to Evil. There's a certain point beyond which stupidity is not an excuse. If the order you've been given involves killing everyone in an entire city and you don't go to every possible effort you can to double-check the information and try to find alternatives, you most definitely shouldn't have a Good alignment.

On the other hand, I'm not sure the rest of the party acted all that well either. Just leaving doesn't really seem enough - I'd have expected them to try and do something to stop him (although perhaps there wasn't much they could have done).

Ya they tried to convince the prince that what he was doing was wrong, and ended up getting a few of the prince's knights who didn't leave right away to join them, but ultimately the prince was arrogant and really didn't want to hear people's thoughts and plans if they conflicted with his own.

Anima
2010-07-04, 12:24 PM
Methinks we definitely need the players point of view on this.
I doubt that the player was aware of some of the facts C.Penguin is telling us.
The other players didn't exactly do the right thing either, running away from a confrontation with the prince and thereby sentencing the city to destruction, is not really different from slaughtering the people themselves.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:26 PM
Alignment is an affinity to deeds. It's what deeds your character is most likely to perform. The deed is certainly evil, but not the alignment, as that's not the sort of deed he is most likely to perform.

People forget that alignment is part of a character's personality, not a stat. Personally, if I was this player, I'd say "No, I'm keeping Lawful Neutral on my sheet. That's still where my character's personality points his moral compass, regardless of the outcome of this trap of a quest."

I don't see it that way. I see alignment as an outside force a character has no real control over that shows the rest of the multiverse how he maintains himself. If spells like the detect x spells exist, then the alignment of a character IS a stat, quantifiable just as a character's strength or hp can be figured out.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:28 PM
first obeying orders with out question is an aspect of neutrality not evil. Second stupidity is not evil. If he was good aligned i might cause him to drop to neutral but not to evil.

See but under this logic anything can be labeled as "just following orders." Where does the line lie before something becomes unquestionably evil? Or do you think there is no such thing as an unquestionably evil act?

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:31 PM
Methinks we definitely need the players point of view on this.
I doubt that the player was aware of some of the facts C.Penguin is telling us.
The other players didn't exactly do the right thing either, running away from a confrontation with the prince and thereby sentencing the city to destruction, is not really different from slaughtering the people themselves.

The player is, unfortunately, working at a summer camp for the remainder of the summer. Just in case people are getting the wrong idea, I'm not doing this for self-gratification, it was a very debated issue among our group, so I wanted other people who have no friend-based bias to give their opinions, I'm really glad this has sparked as much discussion as it has: to be honest I was expecting a few replies, maybe a dozen at the most.:smallsmile:

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 12:33 PM
It depends on your "Are you sure?"

If they took it to be "Are you sure you want to kill the infected?" "Huh? Of course." that it's different.

The thing is, we do not know what your player knows. As I said, he might have missed something.

Also, did you go through with him killing all 40k people? That has a way to make people rethink. It it was merely: "You kill them all" then he's missing a lot of things.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:34 PM
Yeah... now that I think of it, a 40k population is a metropolis (or close to it) in D&D standards. The fact that the city could have been COMPLETELY ANNIHILATED in any kind of singularity is astonishing. Wasn't there a temple with priests that could have investigated stuff? What did the nobility and the city authorities do? What about a thieve's guild or some other clandestine organization that could perhaps smuggle people out before they were axed? If there's any kind of arcane magic user in the city, it's likely that they might have escaped (in which case, containment has failed). Cities are powerful. If you've the resources to destroy one in its entirety, it means you have the resourses to probably find another solution. The prince is not only unstable. He's bat**** insane. You'd have to be either really dumb or a little psychotic yourself to follow him.

There has to be something we're missing.

This could be it: I run my cities on a larger scale than the DMG lists give. A city of 40,000 people in my world is...moderate-high, so its not that unreasonable. Also the majority of the military had been slain in the attacks from the undead. I'm really sorry I didn't mention this but I'm running on minimal sleep so things sort of...slip past me.

I don't know if that makes a difference.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 12:36 PM
See but under this logic anything can be labeled as "just following orders." Where does the line lie before something becomes unquestionably evil? Or do you think there is no such thing as an unquestionably evil act?

The line is crossed when someone uses "I was only following orders" as an excuse to cover up their own evil intentions.

It sounds like the player may have thought he'd roleplay out the whole "following orders" thing without really paying attention to the reasons why his character should stop. We all have fantasies about slaughtering cities now again, after all. Right? In order to properly roleplay this, however, the character has got to be really dumb. I think your player might not have considered that at first.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:46 PM
The line is crossed when someone uses "I was only following orders" as an excuse to cover up their own evil intentions.

It sounds like the player may have thought he'd roleplay out the whole "following orders" thing without really paying attention to the reasons why his character should stop. We all have fantasies about slaughtering cities now again, after all. Right? In order to properly roleplay this, however, the character has got to be really dumb. I think your player might not have considered that at first.

I can honestly tell you that I've never had this fantasy :smallbiggrin: Anyway i didn't have him go through every single person because that would just take forever but I provided...descriptive flavor text that conveyed the horror of what he was doing; he was well aware of what it was he was doing.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 12:50 PM
I can honestly tell you that I've never had this fantasy :smallbiggrin: Anyway i didn't have him go through every single person because that would just take forever but I provided...descriptive flavor text that conveyed the horror of what he was doing; he was well aware of what it was he was doing.

Then in my opinion, the character (not the player :smallwink:) is astonishingly moronic or a bloodthirsty psychopath. As a DM I would have checked his mental stats, listened to the player give his best argument for why he shouldn't be evil, and if it didn't add up, I'd have dropped him to LE. Not such a bad thing to be, after all.

As a side note, what class/level was the character in question at the time?

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 12:54 PM
Then in my opinion, the character (not the player :smallwink:) is astonishingly moronic or a bloodthirsty psychopath. As a DM I would have checked his mental stats, listened to the player give his best argument for why he shouldn't be evil, and if it didn't add up, I'd have dropped him to LE. Not such a bad thing to be, after all.

Ya I wasn't doing it to punish him or anything, I just switched his alignment to L/E because it was the most accurate alignment for his situation.

Kuma Da
2010-07-04, 01:03 PM
Just throwing this out there. If slaughtering the city's inhabitants was evil, so was not killing them. Could a good person in good conscience allow an entire city to fill with contagious monsters? People tend to have this notion that if you let something happen, it's not as bad as actually doing it. I feel like this is flawed logic. Deciding not to do anything is still making a conscious choice, in this case a choice to damn at least one city to shuffling minonry.

Now, there could have been a third way. Maybe the citizens could have been screened, or disenchanted, or mass cure disease'd. That would have been ultimately the most good option, but your player made a judgment call. Time was running out. People could have started turning at any point. He intervened.

If he had been slaughtering the citizens out of a sense of enjoyment for it, that would be evil. If he had relentlessly persisted in trying to find a cure, so long as a cure remained feasible, that would be good. But he made a complex decision, and because it was so mixed I think the safest way to call it is neutral. Your player certainly seems to think so, even if he's now been swapped over to LE.

Honestly, this is one of my problems with DnD. Is morality what your character thinks, or what others think of him? If it's what he thinks, then a paladin who slaughters countless people for the greater good is in the clear. If it's what others think of him, then a paladin who's falsely rumored to be a butcher gets saddled with LE.

I've noticed in a lot of games I've played that alignment tends to be how in line you are with the DM's morality. If you do something the DM thinks is evil, you're evil. Likewise with neutral and good.

The discussion in this thread so far has been about 'what do I think is evil'. I would like to throw my two cents in here and say that there might not be an objective answer. The closest definition I can come to--which is purely subjective--is 'evil is whatever hurts the things I care about'. And, if that's the case, there's a little bit of evil in a lot of good actions.

---

For the record: I would consider a genocidal paladin working 'for the greater good' to still be LG, partly because I have a slightly skewed moral compass and partly because I think there's potential in every alignment to be a decent or a horrible human being.

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 01:04 PM
Alignment, as allways, is a touchy subject since it defines the very basics of the human psyche. People recognize themselves in it, and when someone disagrees with how they see themselves they try to counter it.

This situation depends on the player's relation with the prince, the information given to him, and how he went to work on the citizens. This is ofcourse not taking into account any previous acts the player might have done, since they do not apply to the current situation.

How did the player's get to experience the personality of the royal prince who they were entrusted to by there king? Do they have a reason to distrust him at all? Did he show anything aside from this order that might hint at anything that he doesn't have the good of the kingdom in mind?

Did the player know(through the prince) how long the disease would need to take effect? If not then it should be assumed to be urgent.

And last but not least... Dd you ask the PC how he would go to work on the city, or did you just make it up as soon as he said yes? Which is what a devil's contract would be, coming from you, his DM.

PS: I couldn't be bothered to read everything, just most.

Kuma Da
2010-07-04, 01:07 PM
*Agreeing with everything Ferrin said*

Morality is never cut and dry, except to a zealot. Variables matter.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 01:08 PM
It sounds a bit like the movie Outbreak- only with a more lethal plague, and no cure.

"Destroy the whole town to stop the outbreak spreading" has been mentioned in a D&D context before- in the 2nd ed Players Handbook.

Which said "Evil act- so evil that the DM is justified in instituting an immediate change to Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil alignment (the character was a paladin).

BoVD does have a "if that character has (thanks to being conned by a demon) good reason to believe the the town's whole population is now demons- trying to destroy the town is not Evil- even if that "good reason" turned out to be demonic manipulation" suggestion.

But then, it also states that it's not evil to stop him- and that "standing by, while evil happens, is far more evil than preventing the poisoning".

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 01:15 PM
*Agreeing with everything Ferrin said*

Morality is never cut and dry, except to a zealot. Variables matter.

I agree with everything you said as well, since wanting to do good to the best of your abilities is and should be considered good, even if someone is doing evil(without there knowledge, obviously).

Simple example; a child nearly drowned once, he sees a fish. He takes the fish on the land wanting to save it, and leaves it there thinking it's jumping arround because it's thankful. Would you call that evil? No, because it's a kid, right? What makes us different then kids? Experience? If so, then all can learn more to be put to the right path as long as they want to.

Ozymandias9
2010-07-04, 01:16 PM
I can honestly tell you that I've never had this fantasy :smallbiggrin: Anyway i didn't have him go through every single person because that would just take forever but I provided...descriptive flavor text that conveyed the horror of what he was doing; he was well aware of what it was he was doing.

I don't doubt that he was aware of the horror. The real question is whether he was aware of the possibility that the city was not, in fact, infected. I probably would have entitled him to a couple sense motive rolls. There is, however, the possibility that s/he may have such a low Wis score that it may not have mattered. If, in your opinion, the character wouldn't reasonably have noticed the fact that the city was not infected, than this should probably count as an unwitting act of evil.

I'm going to assume for the rest of this post that that is the case. An unwitting act of evil is sufficient for a paladin to fall, but probably not for an alignment shift in general. This may be a good option of using BoVD's lingering effects of evil rules. It provides a middle road to satisfy both the player in question (who doesn't want to be evil) and the rest of the table, who are horrified at the act.

Because it's not actually genocide, but it is close, I'd take some elements from "A Great and Powerful Malevolence" and some from "Darkness Like the World Has Never Seen Before."

I'd probably grab the ability score penalty and the animal repulsion from the higher level, pale skin and hair from the lower level, and use the longer duration for a lingering evil aura on detect evil(1d10x10 days). A grab or two from the psychological taint effects of Heroes of Horror wouldn't be a bad option either.

The character isn't actually becoming evil, but the evil aura is likely to mean he will be treated as though he is for a while. It also can provide for a less heavy handed possibility of working towards redemption.

(As a note, I'm not suggesting that you use BoVD wholesale.)

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 01:18 PM
How did the player's get to experience the personality of the royal prince who they were entrusted to by there king? Do they have a reason to distrust him at all? Did he show anything aside from this order that might hint at anything that he doesn't have the good of the kingdom in mind?

Did the player know(through the prince) how long the disease would need to take effect? If not then it should be assumed to be urgent.

And last but not least... Did you ask the PC how he would go to work on the city, or did you just make it up as soon as he said yes? Which is what a devil's contract would be, coming from you, his DM.

PS: I couldn't be bothered to read everything, just most.

Mk you missed a few key points:
-They knew the prince cared about his kingdom but that he was brash and impulsive, with a tendency to overreact.
-They knew that the disease typically manifested fully about 6 hours after initial infection, and all attempts to cure it with spells or otherwise failed.

As for the final part, I described, briefly but effectively how I felt his character went about doing it, mostly because he didn't seem to keen on going through the details as a player, but he made sure to emphasize that his character did it efficiently and took no pleasure in it.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 01:21 PM
Also it appears the thread has lost sight of the other half of the OP, whether or not anyone has similar stories. People seem to be reiterating things a lot, either because they forgot, didn't read, or skipped things, so maybe it would be a good idea to switch to a different situation for a fresh perspective, but that's just a suggestion.

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 01:28 PM
Mk you missed a few key points:
-They knew the prince cared about his kingdom but that he was brash and impulsive, with a tendency to overreact.
-They knew that the disease typically manifested fully about 6 hours after initial infection, and all attempts to cure it with spells or otherwise failed.

As for the final part, I described, briefly but effectively how I felt his character went about doing it, mostly because he didn't seem to keen on going through the details as a player, but he made sure to emphasize that his character did it efficiently and took no pleasure in it.

They knew about the 6 hours limit, knew it was incurable, and were ordered by there prince? At this point you don't care for the impulsiveness he displays as you've effectively been sent to hell. You either let people be killed in a more gruesome way then you can imagine with no way to save them, or kill them swiftly yourself, with it saving others from an unspeakably horrible fate?

How contagious was the disease exactly that they sent in living soldiers? Not to mention letting those soldiers live thereafter? Because you said it was incurable, right? That's also something to consider, because he might well have seen himself as a sacrifice for the greater good of the kingdom if he would contract the disease.

But really, he had a time limit, an order, and the fate of thousands to judge. He might have wanted to screen them to be 100% sure, but there wouldn't be time, so the logical choice was to kill them as fast as possible, right? If you want to tag "for the greater good" evil then be my guest, it's not uncommon, but it really isn't true evil.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 01:31 PM
Also it appears the thread has lost sight of the other half of the OP, whether or not anyone has similar stories. People seem to be reiterating things a lot, either because they forgot, didn't read, or skipped things, so maybe it would be a good idea to switch to a different situation for a fresh perspective, but that's just a suggestion.

Hmm... I played a paladin who's backstory contained a scenario like this on a smaller scale. A small village was infected with a similar magical disease that couldn't be cured by regular magic. His story was that he refused to slaughter the town and instead searched endlessly for a cure. He failed, and meanwhile the entire town died horribly and rose again as zombie abominations. He was relieved of command and demoted as the church sent in a squad of crusaders to extinguish the threat. He didn't fall, obviously, and the campaign began 10 years later.

Gnaritas
2010-07-04, 01:32 PM
{Scrubbed}

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 01:32 PM
A fresh perspective you say? Imagine it from the townsfolk point of view. let's assume they know about the plague, but don't know who is diseased and who isn't. There would be paranoia, suicides, and witch hunts. Let's assume that effectively all citizens have or will contract the disease before they can all be killed. Contracting the disease is certain death, it would be seen as a relief to many people, but most would still try to flee, endangering others. This can be taken further, but you get the idea.



Hmm... I played a paladin who's backstory contained a scenario like this on a smaller scale. A small village was infected with a similar magical disease that couldn't be cured by regular magic. His story was that he refused to slaughter the town and instead searched endlessly for a cure. He failed, and meanwhile the entire town died horribly and rose again as zombie abominations. He was relieved of command and demoted as the church sent in a squad of crusaders to extinguish the threat. He didn't fall, obviously, and the campaign began 10 years later.

He tried his best to do good to the best of his abilities and knowledge, right? Would he have fallen if he instead prevented most of the horror they would experience?

Darth Stabber
2010-07-04, 01:34 PM
The real question comes down to which lens you view morality through

Utilitarian - always seek to maximize observable good (usually measured in happiness, but I've seen some contention about that between ethicists lately)

Deontological - Always act in the way you would like to see others act. (sort of a reverse golden rule)

However given the nature of D&D I think that deontological viewpoint is slightly more lawful and would not agree to the village slaying. The Utilitarian viewpoint is slightly more chaotic, and could be moved to perform the genocide. So looking at the lawful component of his alignment, the evil shift makes some sense, where as if he were chaotic I would be less apt to say so. Ultimately, I would not base an alignment shift off of one action, instead I would require a pattern of evil acts. If this player had already been leaning toward the dark-side, then by all means let this be the straw that broke the camels back, however if he had previously been leaning good, don't shift him now, and instead just watch his future actions more.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 01:37 PM
Heroes of Horror suggests that "survival" is a common motive for evil actions by Neutral people- and uses plague outbreaks as the example.

"I want to survive- therefore my actions are not evil" might be a common rationale for evil actions.

Even "I want most of my population to survive- therefore my actions aren't evil"

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 01:37 PM
The real question comes down to which lens you view morality through

Utilitarian - always seek to maximize observable good (usually measured in happiness, but I've seen some contention about that between ethicists lately)

Deontological - Always act in the way you would like to see others act. (sort of a reverse golden rule)



I was wondering when this would come up. I agree with your interpretations. Your avatar is both fitting and hilarious, btw. :smallbiggrin:

Saph
2010-07-04, 01:38 PM
Reading this thread, I think the thing that I find most interesting is how quick many people are to jump to the genocide-solution. At least half a dozen of the posters responding seem to have leapt to the conclusion that it's an either-or dilemma - either you kill everyone, or they all become undead, even after being specifically told that nobody was actually infected - the characters in question killed 40,000 people on a false alarm.

In actual games (and in real life), either-or dilemmas are very rare. There are nearly always alternative solutions, and this sort of example is exactly why you should look for alternative solutions (rather than trusting everything you're told).

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 01:43 PM
Heroes of Horror suggests that "survival" is a common motive for evil actions by Neutral people- and uses plague outbreaks as the example.

"I want to survive- therefore my actions are not evil" might be a common rationale for evil actions.

Even "I want most of my population to survive- therefore my actions aren't evil"

That's black and white, I hate that.

"I want more of my population to survive, therefore I need to think of the best way to counter this threat to all life. It's unfortunate that so many must die, but if I do not thousands more will suffer and die. I have no other choice if I want to save as many as possible, even if it means slaying those I love and cherish, it will be swifter then the plague that is spreading."



Reading this thread, I think the thing that I find most interesting is how quick many people are to jump to the genocide-solution. At least half a dozen of the posters responding seem to have leapt to the conclusion that it's an either-or dilemma - either you kill everyone, or they all become undead, even after being specifically told that nobody was actually infected - the characters in question killed 40,000 people on a false alarm.

In actual games (and in real life), either-or dilemmas are very rare. There are nearly always alternative solutions, and this sort of example is exactly why you should look for alternative solutions (rather than trusting everything you're told).

Ofcourse, but in a situation where you're given an order, knowledge of the situation which spells "doomsday" and a time limit? You will think of many alternative ways, sure, but do they take more time? What's the risk with it? It's a disease which can't be cured which spreads rapidly creating an army of death which slays and infects many more.

A lot of people would be driven insane with that information, they would run and flee and cry. They do not want to kill, they do not want to let others die, they do not want to let something like that spread, but they're afraid because they can not bear themselves to kill another, for whatever purpose.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 01:43 PM
He tried his best to do good to the best of his abilities and knowledge, right? Would he have fallen if he instead prevented most of the horror they would experience?

Of course not, but the question has become; Did the PC in the OP do his utmost to save them or at least investigate a cure? And if he didn't (as i believe is the case), then is he really naive or a serial killer? I think the player may have gotten caught up in the "lawful neutral, follow orders" trope, and may have overlooked signs that he shouldn't have. If i were the player of that character, I would have retconned the character's "mindset" and just given him a bloodthirsty tendancy. It makes more sense for the story than him just being blind about the obvious signs. Especially since it would be rather difficult to slaughter the entire city with "swords and sticks and such" in under 6 hours.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 01:44 PM
Reading this thread, I think the thing that I find most interesting is how quick many people are to jump to the genocide-solution. At least half a dozen of the posters responding seem to have leapt to the conclusion that it's an either-or dilemma - either you kill everyone, or they all become undead, even after being specifically told that nobody was actually infected - the characters in question killed 40,000 people on a false alarm.

In actual games (and in real life), either-or dilemmas are very rare. There are nearly always alternative solutions, and this sort of example is exactly why you should look for alternative solutions (rather than trusting everything you're told).

+1. This multiple solutions thing is what I was getting at. If there was only two solutions I doubt I would have changed his alignment, but since he had tons of variables and different solutions, i felt the choice was more easily definable.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 01:46 PM
"I want more of my population to survive, therefore I need to think of the best way to counter this threat to all life. It's unfortunate that so many must die, but if I do not thousands more will suffer and die. I have no other choice if I want to save as many as possible, even if it means slaying those I love and cherish, it will be swifter then the plague that is spreading."

Might depend on what that way is.

Sacrifice a thousand healthy people to the Goddess of Plague to persuade her to halt the plague in its tracks- Evil, or Neutral?

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 01:47 PM
They thought it was an either-or situation. And they had a 6 hour limit. And 6 hour is short.

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 01:49 PM
+1. This multiple solutions thing is what I was getting at. If there was only two solutions I doubt I would have changed his alignment, but since he had tons of variables and different solutions, i felt the choice was more easily definable.

What can you do in 6 hours that might have saved them? :smallannoyed:

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 01:55 PM
What can you do in 6 hours that might have saved them? :smallannoyed:

Remove disease, Augury, Planar binding, Divination, Detect Undead, Heal, ect.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 01:57 PM
Send squads of people in, to bring everyone in the town out- each in small amounts, each group of people kept some way apart, and watched closely by a squad.

Each squad is under orders to attack and destroy that section of the populace- the moment an undead member rises. And then suicide to avoid spreading the plague to everyone else.

Thus- if the plague is there- but has only infected a small part of the populace- only a small part gets killed, and the rest all survive.

Might still be somewhat ruthless- and requires soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves- but it does ensure that nobody will be killed, until undead start rising.

Doing research into stopping the plague might also be important. No matter how ruthless you are, there's a risk of outbreak- so you need to find a cure rather than stamp on every outbreak (since eventually someone infected will escape).

Saph
2010-07-04, 01:58 PM
What can you do in 6 hours that might have saved them? :smallannoyed:

:smallsigh:

You could do pretty much anything, given that they weren't actually infected. Good grief.

Seriously, I'm starting to feel that I'm one of a relatively small minority here whose first reaction on being given this sort of dilemma is to look for alternative solutions or more information. The response of most of the posters in this thread seems to be either to start a moral debate on consequentialism/utilitarianism or to start hacking off heads.

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 02:00 PM
:smallsigh:

You could do pretty much anything, given that they weren't actually infected. Good grief.

Seriously, I'm starting to feel that I'm one of a relatively small minority here whose first reaction on being given this sort of dilemma is to look for alternative solutions or more information. The response of most of the posters in this thread seems to be either to start a moral debate on consequentialism/utilitarianism or to start hacking off heads.

You do not know that. You were told they were infected.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 02:01 PM
Agreed- finding out whether or not there is an infection- should have been more important than assuming there was until proven otherwise, and killing everyone who might have been exposed.

Especially given that the killers will expose themselves in the process- were they under orders to suicide the moment they'd killed everyone in the city?

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 02:01 PM
You do not know that. You were told they were infected.

BY A LUNATIC!

Besides, there was absolutely no evidence to suggest anything resembling a plague once they were actually in the city.

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 02:04 PM
BY A LUNATIC!

Besides, there was absolutely no evidence to suggest anything resembling a plague once they were actually in the city.

Which you didn't know was.

And there is no evidence to suggest they didn't look like having a plague. I know it can be known IRL, but when you're RP'ing, glossing over the: "They look normal" is pretty common.

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 02:04 PM
Remove disease, Augury, Planar binding, Divination, Detect Undead, Heal, ect.

He said it was an incurable disease, and they knew that, furthermore you need one of those spells for EVERY SINGLE CITIZEN. What could planar binding do? What would you ask with augury? "Is it an evil act? Yes. Is it a good act? Yes. Will I save people by killing them? Yes." Detect Undead? Why? If they turn into zombies you're to late allready and would sustain many more casualties.


Send squads of people in, to bring everyone in the town out- each in small amounts, each group of people kept some way apart, and watched closely by a squad.

Each squad is under orders to attack and destroy that section of the populace- the moment an undead member rises. And then suicide to avoid spreading the plague to everyone else.

Thus- if the plague is there- but has only infected a small part of the populace- only a small part gets killed, and the rest all survive.

Might still be somewhat ruthless- and requires soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves- but it does ensure that nobody will be killed, until undead start rising.

Doing research into stopping the plague might also be important. No matter how ruthless you are, there's a risk of outbreak- so you need to find a cure rather than stamp on every outbreak (since eventually someone infected will escape).

Ordering people to kill and then kill themselves? Doesn't that come down to the same thing? Don't you think riots would break out? The soldiers would get overwhelmed, and even if they did manage to put them all down after announcing it there would be the risk of them catching the plague as well. Gongratulations, you have just wiped out the army which was supposed to protect you.

But yes, research is good, but an answer was needed at that moment. Research can be done while things are beign solved more directly at the time. It was deemed necesary.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 02:07 PM
Hence my "split the population into small sections- and wait till the plague starts to show itself before acting" idea.

If most of the people aren't infected, you want to ensure that as many of the uninfected ones as possible- get rescued.

Similarly- if only a few sections of the populace are infected, only a few soldiers get killed.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 02:07 PM
Which you didn't know was. There were obvious signs and it sounds like the rest of the party (and a sizeable portion of the army) figured out he was nuts.


And there is no evidence to suggest they didn't look like having a plague. I know it can be known IRL, but when you're RP'ing, glossing over the: "They look normal" is pretty common.

But... it's a pretty outrageous claim to make that every person in a city is either infected with a zombie virus or soon will be. You have to be looking for a reason to commit mass murder to take that one at face value.

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 02:09 PM
:smallsigh:

You could do pretty much anything, given that they weren't actually infected. Good grief.

Seriously, I'm starting to feel that I'm one of a relatively small minority here whose first reaction on being given this sort of dilemma is to look for alternative solutions or more information. The response of most of the posters in this thread seems to be either to start a moral debate on consequentialism/utilitarianism or to start hacking off heads.

You do realize that they thought they only had 6 hours? That's important considering most humans to function well under stress. It doesn't matter at that point whether they were infected or not is true, it's the way they handle the situation by the information they were given.

Saph
2010-07-04, 02:10 PM
Let's try this one more time.

Here's the information the PCs were given:


Let's see what did he know:

-The human military was the 2nd strongest in the world, capable of carving out an empire from relatively inhospitable territory (in terms of monsters) with not much beyond martial might.
-The prince was fond of making rash, impulsive decisions in the heat of the moment (he earlier left them and about 50 men to defend a town from about a thousand undead simply because he heard a rumor that a patrol of undead was spotted and he wanted to crush them to prove himself to daddy (although he DID manage to return in time to reinforce them)
-The "doom plague" (I like that I wish I had had some commoners call it that a few times) exhibited similar symptoms to the flu, and that it was VERY difficult to get rid of (mid level priests casting remove curse et al could not get rid of it.
-The only concrete sources of information relating to this city was a frightened farmer running the other way in fear of the undead, the aforementioned prince's hunch, and one woman who was exhibiting flu-like symptoms (she just had the flu, but the prince gave her the banhammer on life before they checked if it really was the plague, then he gave the order).

Now, is your response to that, based on that information, really to say "yeah, kill them all"? Really?

No effort to think of an alternative plan? No effort to confirm that they're actually infected? Just an instant jump to the genocide solution?

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 02:12 PM
Six hours before infected people become contagious?

Or six hours before infected people die- with them being contagious the moment they're infected?

If they're contagious the moment they're infected- every soldier who goes into the city and kills someone- is a potential carrier.

Given that the original post said:


-They knew that the disease typically manifested fully about 6 hours after initial infection, and all attempts to cure it with spells or otherwise failed.

it doesn't say anything about the period in which the disease is infectious but no symptoms show.

Engine
2010-07-04, 02:13 PM
I disagree with the OP to a certain extent.
While "Survival" and "Obeying orders" no matter the cost in terms of loss of innocent life could be labeled as Evil acts I would be cautious in shifting a character's alignment for one act as described above.
1)You know that were a lot of variables, but the player and the character could feel they're in an aut-aut situation. So I don't think you should consider this in your reasoning.
2)Lack of independent thought isn't Evil. Maybe he's the gregarious type so in a dire situation he chose to follow the more secure path: following orders.
3)You didn't say how the character reacted after the culling. Did he felt grief for what he did? Following orders without question not necessarily means lack of respect for life. Lack of grief for culling defenseless citizens - no matter the need for the culling - could be a more precise clue of the real viewpoint of the character in this matter (I suggest watching the Young Lions with Marlon Brando, he played a devoted nazi who with time understand how evil is the Third Reich. He follows orders, but he's not evil).

So.
I agree that culling the city is an Evil act, but with your premises I doubt I would change the character's alignment just for that. I would label him as a Lawful Neutral leaning towards Evil and pay a lot of attention on his subsequent actions. More evil acts, even not so evil like the culling? Then changing his alignment could be entirely justifiable, but from what you said the alignment's shifting seems a bit harsh to me.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 02:14 PM
He said it was an incurable disease, and they knew that, furthermore you need one of those spells for EVERY SINGLE CITIZEN. What could planar binding do? What would you ask with augury? "Is it an evil act? Yes. Is it a good act? Yes. Will I save people by killing them? Yes." Detect Undead? Why? If they turn into zombies you're to late allready and would sustain many more casualties.
An augury can tell you whether a particular action will bring good or bad results for you in the immediate future. Ask if not slaughtering the city will bring good or bad results. Divination is even better for this. A negative result on a detect undead throughout the whole city might tell you that there's no undead in the city (which is pretty suspicious, because it means nobody has been turned yet. So how can the prince or the witnesses tell if they've been infected?) Even if you save ONE PERSON, isn't it better than not saving anybody? The PC didn't even try.

Edit: There's also a detect disease spell from OA. Don't know if it would have been available tho.


Ordering people to kill and then kill themselves? Doesn't that come down to the same thing? Don't you think riots would break out? The soldiers would get overwhelmed, and even if they did manage to put them all down after announcing it there would be the risk of them catching the plague as well. Gongratulations, you have just wiped out the army which was supposed to protect you.


I agree. Ordering your troops to kill themselves is probably a bad idea.

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 02:15 PM
Let's try this one more time.

Here's the information the PCs were given:



Now, is your response to that, based on that information, really to say "yeah, kill them all"? Really?

No effort to think of an alternative plan? No effort to confirm that they're actually infected? Just an instant jump to the genocide solution?

I'll tell you what I see from the list.

-The human military was the 2nd strongest in the world. Meaning it could turn into an undead horde that is the 2nd strongest in the world.
-The prince is decisive, though not very good at command.
-The "doom plague" exhibited common symptoms, and that it was VERY difficult to get rid of.
-We see a frightened farmer running away in fear of the undead, the prince's hunch and orders, and one woman who was exhibiting THE symptoms.

Mike_G
2010-07-04, 02:15 PM
I gotta say, if I had to go into life or death situations, I'd want someone like Saph carrying the explosives, rather than any of the "ticking bomb" theorists on this thread.

I've worn quite a few uniforms, and "following orders" is not something you do lightly or unthinking. Dumb orders like spit shine the already shiny boots, you shrug and do it. Dumb orders like "wipe out the city, because while we have the capacity to that in under 6 hours, we can't possible have the means to keep people contained for six hours," you think really carefully about, and weigh other options.

Like mutiny. Or hitting the lieutenant with a shovel.

In fact, the US military allows you to use deadly force only when given a lawful order. So the Nueremburg defense won't cut it.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 02:18 PM
2)Lack of independent thought isn't Evil. Maybe he's the gregarious type so in a dire situation he chose to follow the more secure path: following orders.

Theres a type of devil in FC2 (the narguzon) which is made specifically from those who "followed the letter of the law regardless of the consequences"

A Lawful person whose first concern is obeying, no matter how evil the order they're given is- will become this kind of devil, instead of becoming a lemure as most LE souls do.



I agree. Ordering your troops to kill themselves is probably a bad idea.

Maybe make it "kill themselves once they know they're infected"- if the plague is incurable and 100% fatal.

Ordering them to risk their lives by not killing the population- but isolating them to be sure whether they're infected or not, might be a slightly difficult order for them to obey.

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 02:18 PM
Dumb orders like "wipe out the city, because while we have the capacity to that in under 6 hours, we can't possible have the means to keep people contained for six hours," you think really carefully about, and weigh other options.


In 6 hours, your army sent to handle it might be infected. Would you risk THE 2ND strongest army going to the other side? That's giving the undead an army and losing yours at once.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 02:21 PM
I gotta say, if I had to go into life or death situations, I'd want someone like Saph carrying the explosives, rather than any of the "ticking bomb" theorists on this thread.

I've worn quite a few uniforms, and "following orders" is not something you do lightly or unthinking. Dumb orders like spit shine the already shiny boots, you shrug and do it. Dumb orders like "wipe out the city, because while we have the capacity to that in under 6 hours, we can't possible have the means to keep people contained for six hours," you think really carefully about, and weigh other options.

Like mutiny. Or hitting the lieutenant with a shovel.

In fact, the US military allows you to use deadly force only when given a lawful order. So the Nueremburg defense won't cut it.

I think they made a movie about that kinda stuff with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson a while back... :smallbiggrin:

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 02:21 PM
BoVD does have a "if that character has (thanks to being conned by a demon) good reason to believe the the town's whole population is now demons- trying to destroy the town is not Evil- even if that "good reason" turned out to be demonic manipulation" suggestion.

But then, it also states that it's not evil to stop him- and that "standing by, while evil happens, is far more evil than preventing the poisoning".

So, by RAW, the player that killed the town didn't do evil and the players who left did? Interesting. I'd agree if not for the "Are you sure?" that the DM gave, warning that something's amiss, therefore flipping the two.

-----

For similar stories, the closest I have is a character right now who, while good, will perform evil acts if put into certain situations. The DM has not put them in those situations though, so they've done no evil. Basically, if he came across an abberant (like a Mind Flayer or something) that was not evil, he would not be able to be convinced that the abberant was not evil, and would kill them. Regardless of anything... Child, disabled, doesn't matter. It's entirely possible though that all abberants ARE evil in this setting, as we've encountered no cases counter to this. Also there's a Chaotic Neutral deity that he views as Chaotic Evil, and therefore any worshipers of her... But thus far such worshipers have been insane and attacking the party with one in-party exception who's kept quiet about it, so it's all been good.

In no other instance has alignment really come up.

I guess there was the one time that Mind Flayers were sacrificing people off a cliff to keep that same deity imprisoned, and after explaining the situation had my previous character convinced that freeing her was more dangerous than keeping her imprisoned... But the Fighter charged before I said anything. Almost kinda similar.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 02:22 PM
As i've stated- where does it say people are only infectious once showing symptoms?

The 6 hour deadline may be irrelevant as a "safety measure" if the killers get infected by victims not showing any symptoms.


So, by RAW, the player that killed the town didn't do evil and the players who left did? Interesting. I'd agree if not for the "Are you sure?" that the DM gave, warning that something's amiss, therefore flipping the two.

Some of BoVD's ideas can be a little odd. Still, if the character kills innocent people, but they had no reasonable way of knowing that those people were innocent, and every reason to believe they were monsters, their act might not qualify as evil.

But here- everyone in the town is innocent- there's just a chance, that some of them, might be infected by a disease- by D&D morality- this may not be enough to justify a "kill them all, just in case" attitude.

So it's possible that the prince and his followers (including the PC) did evil by destroying the city, and, that the other PCs did evil by not trying to stop them.

Unless they were in a position where they had absolutely no chance of stopping them, and all they could do was get killed.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 02:25 PM
Maybe make it "kill themselves once they know they're infected"- if the plague is incurable and 100% fatal. My own sense of self preservation tells me that I'll either go awol, mutiny, or at the very least my judgement in telling if I'm infected or not will be biased.



Ordering them to risk their lives by not killing the population- but isolating them to be sure whether they're infected or not, might be a slightly difficult order for them to obey.

How about wait 6 hours and surround the city siege style. Then bombard them with artillery untill they try to rush out through the choke points. Cover those with concentrated archer fire.

Coidzor
2010-07-04, 02:26 PM
It doesn't really matter anyway. The biggest thing is that he's no longer a member of the party and so should be retired as a PC.

Engine
2010-07-04, 02:27 PM
Theres a type of devil in FC2 (the narguzon) which is made specifically from those who "followed the letter of the law regardless of the consequences"

A Lawful person whose first concern is obeying, no matter how evil the order they're given is- will become this kind of devil, instead of becoming a lemure as most LE souls do.

So?
I didn't say that following orders no matter the consequences is not Evil sometimes. I said that lack of independent thought is not Evil.
The OP said that the character chose to follow orders without much intel on what was happening in the city. I said that a gregarious type could resort to the more secure path faced with a really dire situation. The more secure path for a gregarious type is, not surprisingly, following orders.
While I agree that following orders everytime without caring a bit for the consequences is an Evil behaviour I disagree that in a dire situation with few data a gregarious type became Evil for one act.

Leaning towards Evil?
Sure.
Evil for just that?
I'm not so sure. Seems too harsh to me.

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 02:28 PM
It's a risk.

It's either:
1) Not contagious now
2) Contagious now.

If you wait:
1) It's 100% contagious.

Wait or not? I'd say not, and hope it doesn't infect yet. Cause even if it did, waiting didn't do anything except make it harder to kill.

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 02:28 PM
Let's try this one more time.

Here's the information the PCs were given:



Now, is your response to that, based on that information, really to say "yeah, kill them all"? Really?

No effort to think of an alternative plan? No effort to confirm that they're actually infected? Just an instant jump to the genocide solution?

After hearing of an incurable, certain-death disease easily transmitted which can easily be mistaken for the flu? I'd make sure the city would be locked down completely and trust the prince that they can't be cured. What I know at that point is that no one can get out, the city can be burned when necesary, and there's more time to think. They would die either way, by my hand or the plague.

Thing is you can't do that, you're not the big guy there, you're the prince's lacky and you went against his direct order. Sure you can buy yourself more time to think of a solution, but the more soldiers that will be sent in by the prince the more people can succumb to the plague with nothing you can do to stop it. Even if you do find a cure there's the point of giving it to each of forty thousand men, women, and children. But by then? It would be to late and the city would have all turned into zombies which would charge the barricade, potentialy infecting many more. Those soldiers who are infected? They might hide there first sneeze and flee.

There is no best way, because even if you do put down a barricade you lock people down with zombies, effectively killing them anyway, but much more painfull. The chance that there wasn't a plague? Didn't the clerics say they couldn't cure it? That it had the symptons of the flu? That tells me that there is a plague, because magic CAN cure the flu.

Really, it's great you want to spare them as long as possible, but letting people knowingly suffer? :smallconfused:

This is assuming the information given.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 02:30 PM
DMG does suggest that unles the one act is very serious- a character should not change alignment just for one act.

How serious does an act need to be though? In 2nd ed PHB, this kind of thing could lead to immediate alignment change from Good to Evil.

In 3rd ed- might depend on the DM.

On "Going against the prince's direct order":


The PCs were not sworn to serve the prince, they were envoys of the king and ultimately answered to him alone. They were above the rank-and-file soldiers that the prince was commanding and they didn't break any laws or rules that the king imposed, so I didn't think that side of their alignment deserved changing.

Saph
2010-07-04, 02:36 PM
I'll tell you what I see from the list.


This is assuming the information given.

Ok, Machina, Ferrin. I don't have anything personally against either of you, I really don't. But the two of you are using some of the worst reasoning I've ever seen.

You're inductively wrong regarding your use of evidence (the facts you're pointing to don't support your conclusion). You're objectively wrong about the conclusion you're coming to (the people aren't actually infected). You're long-term wrong about the consequences of your actions (as the OP says, in the long term the loss of the city is a major strategic blow). You're morally wrong about the attitude your hypothetical character is displaying alignment-wise (killing that many people should raise SOME red flags, enough to make you think twice, at least). You're laterally wrong about your analysis of the situation (you are not sufficiently pressed for time that have to make a snap judgement). You're emotionally wrong about the justifications you're using (it's not about how long people will suffer, it's about whether they'll die or not in the first place). You're common-sense wrong about your basic assumptions (your first action should be to question the necessity of the action, not come up with reasons for it). You're evidentially wrong about your judgement of the consequences (a slaughter on false information is vastly more serious than you seem to think it is).

In short, you are not only wrong, you are fractally wrong - you are wrong on every conceivable level of wrongness, such that closely examining any one part of your reasoning finds it exactly as wrong as the whole.

Kuma Da
2010-07-04, 02:37 PM
+1. This multiple solutions thing is what I was getting at. If there was only two solutions I doubt I would have changed his alignment, but since he had tons of variables and different solutions, i felt the choice was more easily definable.

I'd propose that he was aware of the possibility of other options, and he still made an informed decision. Just because he didn't throw himself headlong towards the possibility of a magical third way doesn't mean he didn't try hard enough. He had six hours. Six hours. To try and cure an incurable disease on a city-wide scale. And that's assuming the entire population was infected simultaneously at a clearly defined time. He may have had much less before some or all of them started to turn.

His choice had evil in it, but most grand scale choices do.

Additionally, and this is me playing serious devil's advocate/being a tool, as the DM, you set up a scenario that morally put him on the rack. In your eyes, intervening was evil, but suppose he'd declined. Barring plot intervention, that would have meant a) he convinced the army to stay out of the city and they started turning, or b) the army went in anyways without him.

Plus, if the magical third way was your proposed 'good route', you were basically calling for the character to throw aside all realism to chase after a solution that wasn't supposed to exist. Willful delusion does not equal lawful good.

Edit: Saph, did you just say "you're morally wrong"? Hoo boy. Someone's been subscribing to objective morality magazine. :smallbiggrin:

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 02:39 PM
We seem to be getting different things from the same information...

Well, I guess it happens.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 02:41 PM
He had six hours. Six hours. To try and cure an incurable disease on a city-wide scale. And that's assuming the entire population was infected simultaneously at a clearly defined time. He may have had much less before some or all of them started to turn.

Which is why all the soldiers going in and slaughtering the city members one by one isn't a good idea- since (if the city was infected) there's a high chance of the individual killers running into a infectee who was infected early on, and getting infected by the blood splattered over them from killing them in melee.

As I recall from the description- they all went in and cut down the city members in melee. Not the best way to avoid getting infected.

Kuma Da
2010-07-04, 02:45 PM
We seem to be getting different things from the same information...

Well, I guess it happens.

It does. That's what I've been trying to get at with my whole 'subjective morality' thing. DnD subscribes to a very objective morality. If you take action A, you are morality B. Very simple, very clear cut, very cause and effect. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually work.

I'll admit there could be an objective morality out there, and it could be cosmically right, but with so many different viewpoints available, I don't think people are going to find it.

It might be worthwhile, for DMs who hit these kinds of morality debates with their players, to create a list pre-game of what they think is moral. That way everyone will at least be on the same page with whoever's running their world.

edit: I agree, hamish, but how to go about slaughtering a city is a little tangential to the point.

hamishspence
2010-07-04, 02:50 PM
In movies like Outbreak- you at least have the excuse that you have a weapon so powerful it will kill everyone in the city instantly, from a distance (so avoiding the whole "what if the killers get infected" problem.)

The main "why destroying the city would have been a mistake" reason in that, was the possibility that infected people had already gotten out before the quarantine- which would have made destroying the city utterly pointless.

Ferrin
2010-07-04, 02:54 PM
We seem to be getting different things from the same information...

Well, I guess it happens.

No, I think she might have a point here. Since this applies to how we perceive things IRL as well we'd better look into it further and see exactly where she's coming from. If we don't we must have missed something, anything, because that's the problem here. Missing anything of importance when making such a judgement is a matter of life and death for people, IRL or otherwise.

But Saph, where is my logic wrong in locking the city down to buy time before anyone can escape and potentialy infect more people before we have a chance to research anything?

What would you do then? Would you not lock them in? You'd endanger to much by doing that.

I agree that everything beyond that is bad, but like I said, it was assuming the prince wouldn't listen whatever I did. And how many options would remain for you if he doesn't? Killing the prince or trying to assume leadership yourself would cause riots and rebellions thus making it impossible to cure, cleanse, or otherwise help the citizens.

retkin
2010-07-04, 03:07 PM
Let him remain Lawful Neutral, but also let him find out that none of the citizens were actually infected. Have his dealings with people further down the line be tainted by his actions and give him nightmares about the ordeal that ruin his sleep and could sometimes fatigue him.

He can of course get rid of the penalties after atoning through some great deed, but he will still always be haunted by his actions.

jpreem
2010-07-04, 03:14 PM
Let him remain Lawful Neutral, but also let him find out that none of the citizens were actually infected. Have his dealings with people further down the line be tainted by his actions and give him nightmares about the ordeal that ruin his sleep and could sometimes fatigue him.

He can of course get rid of the penalties after atoning through some great deed, but he will still always be haunted by his actions.

It would be a good solution he can remain Neutral - but in this case he will be haunted by remorse. (And PC should act on it - remorse i mean)
Or he can get on without remorse and be just dandy - but in this case his alignment would be evil.

I mean sometimes there are no good choice , but after you have made something as horrible as slaughtering innocents ( may it be for the greater good or what not) and after that you can enjoy a good nights sleep - then my friend you are a psycho.

Coidzor
2010-07-04, 03:23 PM
Another thought. How does one slaughter an entire city if one doesn't quarantine it/lock it down first? Wouldn't starting the massacre just start the inhabitants to run away out of one of the many and numerous unsecured exits to the city, thus causing the potentially infected to stream throughout the countryside where they'll spread it if they have it further than a horde of undead which would give the people a concrete foe to wake up and get off their butts about rather than sitting around waiting for necromancers to turn them into ghouls?

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 03:27 PM
I'm pretty sure they didn't think it through.

"Oh, you kill 40k citizens in the span of 6 hours."

Oh wait, too much info. "You killed the citizens of the city."

Ashiel
2010-07-04, 03:29 PM
I have a small bone to pick with Saph's recent posts. She repeatedly comments on the fact there is no actual infection. That's meta-gaming. Even if the players did get Sense Motive checks; and promptly failed them, then it matters little if there is an actual infection or not.

They (or He in this case) has been duped into being a pawn or a tool for evil. Baldur's Gate II has a similar situation, where a dragon uses illusory magic to disguise a group of paladins as raiders, and the same to your party; resulting in the paladins attacking you and you attacking the paladins (who return to their normal appearance after the fight).

You don't fall. Why? Because even though you just slaughtered a traveling band of PALADINS, you didn't know. You had no reason to believe they were anything but orcs trying to kill you; and they had no reason to think otherwise either.

It's like that. The ruler goes and while having a reputation for being brash and overreacting, he also carries a reputation for being a good ruler and caring for his people; and you're all in a war with undead (an army in fact); and you've been told it displays symptoms similar to a disease that is common amongst the people, except the disease isn't curable by magic; and even the general of the undead army is claiming responsibility; AND those who die to the disease actually turn into killing plague-spreading undead? Oh, and you've got roughly 6 hours to stop it; and the experts (clerics) say it's incurable. Well holy crap; you're boned, huh?

So assuming you know about the proper magics, and you can cast the proper divination spells (or have them cast for you), perhaps you could try to spend some time figuring out if the prince was lying or not; but you have no reason to believe he's lying. So, you make a choice.

Try to desperately research an unknown virus that appears to be unnatural, likely supernatural, that you know precious little about, and find a cure for the seemingly supernatural virus, which a known enemy of your kingdom is taking responsibility for, and try to devise a cure or alternative answer in this mere 6 hour window?

Bite the bullet and take them out before they spread. Do you save the leg or the person? You won't enjoy it, and you may hate yourself for what you must do, but you're doing the greater good. No one wants to cut the limbs off their sick brother.

I also believe I recall the OP saying that the player said something along the lines of "I do it swiftly, and take no pleasure in it".

stenver
2010-07-04, 03:46 PM
Im at your players side. Did the player even know that the Prince had no proof of the disease?

On a side note, you cant kill every single person in a city without quarantineing it first.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 03:54 PM
It's like that. The ruler goes and while having a reputation for being brash and overreacting, he also carries a reputation for being a good ruler and caring for his people; and you're all in a war with undead (an army in fact); and you've been told it displays symptoms similar to a disease that is common amongst the people, except the disease isn't curable by magic; and even the general of the undead army is claiming responsibility; AND those who die to the disease actually turn into killing plague-spreading undead? Oh, and you've got roughly 6 hours to stop it; and the experts (clerics) say it's incurable. Well holy crap; you're boned, huh?

So assuming you know about the proper magics, and you can cast the proper divination spells (or have them cast for you), perhaps you could try to spend some time figuring out if the prince was lying or not; but you have no reason to believe he's lying. So, you make a choice. Cast an augury or divination asking if not slaughtering the city will be good or bad. It will probably come up "weal". You have plenty of reasons and motive for getting more information on the situation. Especially since noone is exhibiting any symptoms in the town and there are no undead yet. The PC didn't even stop to think about it. Everybody seems to dismiss that. When someone makes an outrageous claim that means life or death for thousands of people, would YOU stop and consider the validity of the claim? Especially if there was absolutely NO EVIDENCE for it once you got to the city?



. . . . No one wants to cut the limbs off their sick brother. You haven't met my brother. :smalltongue:


I also believe I recall the OP saying that the player said something along the lines of "I do it swiftly, and take no pleasure in it".
The whole part was glossed over. The player seemed a little too eager to follow tropes and not eager enough to actually consider the situation. Even after others did.

2xMachina
2010-07-04, 03:56 PM
Cast an augury or divination asking if not slaughtering the city will be good or bad. It will probably come up "weal". You have plenty of reasons and motive for getting more information on the situation. Especially since noone is exhibiting any symptoms in the town and there are no undead yet. The PC didn't even stop to think about it. Everybody seems to dismiss that. When someone makes an outrageous claim that means life or death for thousands of people, would YOU stop and consider the validity of the claim? Especially if there was absolutely NO EVIDENCE for it once you got to the city?

You haven't met my brother. :smalltongue:


The whole part was glossed over. The player seemed a little too eager to follow tropes and not eager enough to actually consider the situation. Even after others did.

Is there an augury available? Does he even know that spell exists?

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 03:59 PM
Is there an augury available?Show me a metropolis without at least 5 or 6 different temples. He's bound to find one that can cast the spell.
Does he even know that spell exists? Good question. I'd assume a normal person in such a setting would know of such divination magic. Maybe they dont' know how it works, exactly, but it's probable that they know the basics of what the spell does. Especially if they've heard priests preaching that they can tell the future by the power of their deity.

Saph
2010-07-04, 04:09 PM
I have a small bone to pick with Saph's recent posts. She repeatedly comments on the fact there is no actual infection. That's meta-gaming. Even if the players did get Sense Motive checks; and promptly failed them, then it matters little if there is an actual infection or not.

It matters because the reasoning used by the posters advocating the kill-them-all approach gets you to the wrong conclusion. You would expect this reasoning to lead you to the wrong conclusion because it's an example of Insane Troll Logic (One panicked person + one sneezing person + bad decision by rash, impulsive officer = kill everyone in the city).

Now, you can say "but they didn't know, it seemed like the best decision at the time" . . . except for the fact that everybody else in the party did not think that it was the best decision at the time, and managed to come to the correct conclusion based on the available evidence (namely, that killing 40,000 people on a hunch is not a good plan). If this was such an difficult problem, how come everybody except this guy managed to figure it out? And why didn't he listen to what the other 4 people were telling him?

Engine
2010-07-04, 04:10 PM
I have to point out that the Prince is (was) a Paladin.
And we all know that Paladins frequently abuse of their powers, give unquestionably evil orders and act selfishly, right?
Of course this could happen, but when you're in a dire situation like that (few hours to decide the fate of 40K people) a bad choice it's entirely understandable. The character put his trust in the Prince (a Paladin, impulsive and brash but nonetheless a Paladin) and eventually this trust led him to commit an Evil act. But, as I said before, it's important to see what the character feel about that.
Don't care > Evil.
Care > Stay Neutral.

Mike_G
2010-07-04, 04:12 PM
Ok, help me out here.

They clearly can contain the population well enough to send in the infantry to wipe out everyone, with no fear of escapees carrying the infection further, right? Or else the concept of "send the troops to kill everyone" doesn't work.

They will have proof positive in six hours, they'll still have the army, and still have the place surrounded.

So, why, before choosing to start executing a whole freaking city, filled with toddlers and grandmas and cute little schoolgirls, didn't the PC try to do something useful and PC-ish, like sneak in and grab someone and try magical detection stuff on them?

That would be a great adventure hook, try to infiltrate, take some prisoners and use some kind of divination/heal stuff on them.

No questioning authority on the whole "Kill everyone" order is pretty.... well... complicit in a very evil act.

I just think it's interesting that I'm defending executing prisoners in another thread, but I'm one of the few who won't give this guy a pass. I just think that civilians really should be protected whenever possible.

Thajocoth
2010-07-04, 04:15 PM
I have a small bone to pick with Saph's recent posts. She repeatedly comments on the fact there is no actual infection. That's meta-gaming. Even if the players did get Sense Motive checks; and promptly failed them, then it matters little if there is an actual infection or not.

Actually, this is precisely when meta-gaming should intervene. ...And the DM asked if he was sure, bringing meta-gaming into the decision, telling him that it was a bad act. If not for that, I'd agree with your post 100%.

Sliver
2010-07-04, 05:08 PM
The best course of action when someone tells you to kill a town, when you know they are impulsive and don't really think stuff through, and when there is no definite proof that it's actually as bad as he claims it is, is not "kill them all"

The best course of action is to try and talk the prince out of it, at least until you can make sure killing is necessary. I believe the OP said that the prince cares for his people, and wanted to prove himself to the king. So advising him and telling him that if he takes the idea for himself, it will impress his father that he handled such a situation so well.

After that, you can either stand up against him, perhaps forcing you to fight, or contact the king. If the soldiers that didn't leave see one that fought with them openly stand up against the prince and call him out on the mistake, they might consider what they are going to do a bit better, and decide against it.

Joining the attack force comes after those. My reasoning is that if you can't prevent the deaths of the innocent, at least you can prevent possible deaths of the soldiers. As an adventurer, the PC is probably more skilled than the soldiers, and some might get killed that wouldn't die because the PC took their place and handled it better.

At last, doing completely nothing. You didn't help the innocents, and perhaps because you didn't help the soldiers, some of them died too. What the prince did could go unnoticed, or could be passed as a lie to glorify the prince's name. And you do nothing.

Kuma Da
2010-07-04, 05:20 PM
Let him remain Lawful Neutral, but also let him find out that none of the citizens were actually infected. Have his dealings with people further down the line be tainted by his actions and give him nightmares about the ordeal that ruin his sleep and could sometimes fatigue him.

He can of course get rid of the penalties after atoning through some great deed, but he will still always be haunted by his actions.

This isn't a bad idea, although I feel like it kinda goes the "you weren't in line with the DM's morals. Slap on the wrist," route. Honestly, I feel like the character will more than punish himself enough for his decision.

For everyone who's talking about whether meta-gaming is relevant or not, I'm going to have to throw my lot in the with irrelevant camp, conditionally. Yes, it's important that the player isn't boxed into playing a character that he doesn't like (i.e. poof! you're lawful evil!) But it's even more important that the player play his character. If slaughtering the city is what his character would have done, any talk about what he should have done is irrelevant.

What the alignment discussion is about is whether we should be passing judgment from on high. Do we slap a label onto his character for what he did? I'd say there's no reason not to call him a butcher, but do we declare that his morality is essentially bankrupt until he takes an action that makes everyone think better of him?

There's another beef of mine with the alignment system. You can't just have a quiet change of heart. You have to loudly quest for it. Once you've been pidgeonholed into one of the nine alignments, it takes some work to climb back out of it.

Also, here's something that's been mostly passed over. The DM mentioned that one of the reasons the player is not cool with his new alignment is that he has a very hardline good party. Now, if the party is going to look at his new label and say "whoops, the tag on your shirt reads LE. Have to smite you now," there's a serious RP problem.

Alignment is an at-a-glance morality system. It's also--and I really hate this part--a cornerstone for having a viable build. But that's about it. If this character goes back to rejoin his party and instead of judging him for his deeds they see the great big morality sticker on his forehead, that's the bad kind of meta-gaming.

I've been pretty critical so far, and I realize that's not actually contributing that much to the discussion, so here are a few off-the-cuff alternatives to bumping your PC to LE:

-gains an evil aura, having been stained by the slaughter

-gains a strong reputation, and NPCs treat him accordingly. A diehard general might see him as a loyal soldier, and a simple woodsman might see him as a butcher

-becomes haunted

-becomes stained by death, giving him some limited immunities and making him more detectable to necromancers

Sliver
2010-07-04, 05:35 PM
Yes, it's important that the player isn't boxed into playing a character that he doesn't like (i.e. poof! you're lawful evil!)

Alignment doesn't dictate your personality or your actions, it reflects them. You don't have to change anything because your alignment changed, your alignment changed because you changed something.

An extremely evil act while you were neutral, leaning towards good, is a massive change. You might try to climb out of that hole after a while, but it might be too hard if the people around you see you as evil, you might decide that playing to their expectations is easier than against them.

Coidzor
2010-07-04, 05:37 PM
Cast an augury or divination asking if not slaughtering the city will be good or bad. It will probably come up "weal". You have plenty of reasons and motive for getting more information on the situation. Especially since noone is exhibiting any symptoms in the town and there are no undead yet. The PC didn't even stop to think about it. Everybody seems to dismiss that. When someone makes an outrageous claim that means life or death for thousands of people, would YOU stop and consider the validity of the claim? Especially if there was absolutely NO EVIDENCE for it once you got to the city?

Problem, once they got there they met a woman displaying the symptoms of the flu, which is the disease the plague is mimicking. So, yeah. This being D&D and having casters that can do something other than slaughter people, the party was lax about its journalistic duties.

Given this guy was on the ground in melee here, he didn't have access to magic, or else he would've been on standby or house-burning detail.

Or the OP would've brought this up as one of the allegations laid against him by the party if he was the cleric.


They thought it was an either-or situation. And they had a 6 hour limit. And 6 hour is short.

And who was dumb enough to believe they arrived right at the start of things and thus actually had a full 6 hours? That's the thing, urgency, panic, entrapment...

The rest of the party not even bothering to act together to try to stop it and instead running away...

I mean, hell, party fighter, doesn't want to be disloyal and leave the nation at risk of an army of undead taking this city from the inside, and then the casters leave him so he's basically helpless except to go along with them abandoning their duty by running away or go along with his duty by obeying the prince's bad order. He's a fighter, he doesn't have the skills to effect a change in this situation, especially not if the party face has given up on it before trying.


Mk you missed a few key points:
-They knew the prince cared about his kingdom but that he was brash and impulsive, with a tendency to overreact.
-They knew that the disease typically manifested fully about 6 hours after initial infection, and all attempts to cure it with spells or otherwise failed.

...The city'd be dead by the time they got there if that was the case. Or no one would be capable of moving or fleeing, thus justifying the slaughter as evidence that they were all in the late stage of infection. :smallconfused: Or at the very least, it wouldn't work because they'd run into undead eating their way through the civvies to surprise them and kill them before they could get halfway through.

Basically the scenario itself just doesn't make sense.


+1. This multiple solutions thing is what I was getting at. If there was only two solutions I doubt I would have changed his alignment, but since he had tons of variables and different solutions, i felt the choice was more easily definable.

Ok. What were the multiple solutions that could've worked that you didn't shut down? Magic was out and they weren't high enough level to planar bind in enough medics to try to cure it.

The casters were derelict in their duty and bailed on him rather than work with the party face to figure out, ok, A. can a better plan work here or B. can we do something better than running away.... They failed to notice that, hey, where are the alarums from the undead rising in the street, maybe we should've actually done our jobs of using our ability to negate the existence of most of the classes in the PHB.

Sliver
2010-07-04, 05:43 PM
IIRC, they didn't know how they were infected. The soldiers could easily get infected while slaughtering commoners. Attacking without thought is not the best solution in no way imaginable.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 05:45 PM
Problem, once they got there they met a woman displaying the symptoms of the flu, which is the disease the plague is mimicking. So, yeah. This being D&D and having casters that can do something other than slaughter people, the party was lax about its journalistic duties.
I thought they encountered this woman before they got to the city.



Given this guy was on the ground in melee here, he didn't have access to magic, or else he would've been on standby or house-burning detail.

Or the OP would've brought this up as one of the allegations laid against him by the party if he was the cleric.
Like I said before, there was likely numerous temples in the city. I don't doubt he could have gained access to the spells.


And who was dumb enough to believe they arrived right at the start of things and thus actually had a full 6 hours? That's the thing, urgency, panic, entrapment... That's right. But doesn't that make it more likely for the army to encounter somebody that has already been turned into the undead? Honestly, if the only symptom anyone has is one woman with the flu, that's not enough to condone a massacre in my book. Call me crazy.



I mean, hell, party fighter, doesn't want to be disloyal and leave the nation at risk of an army of undead taking this city from the inside, and then the casters leave him so he's basically helpless except to go along with them abandoning their duty by running away or go along with his duty by obeying the prince's bad order. He's a fighter, he doesn't have the skills to effect a change in this situation, especially not if the party face has given up on it before trying.
I don't see why he should get any sympathy just because of his class. And we don't know if he was a fighter anyway...

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 06:15 PM
Urg I need to learn to not post when I haven't slept it sort of tends to make you forget important details. Alright here's some clarifications:
-The plague can only infect a person if they ingest it willingly. This is a result of the fact that it was born from various scheming devils who according to their lawful nature, made the plague so that it couldn't just infect anyone. You might be thinking that a person would be mad to infect themselves with this but technically(devil semantics), a person willfully ingests the plague when they eat food that had been infected with it (which was the case in all cases of infection). The players only were aware of the willingly taken bit of the disease they were unaware of the lower-planes connection though they suspected something.
-The army was able to cut off the exits to the city (which was surrounded by high walls with only about three exits) and because of the above nugget of information about the method of spreading the plague none of the soldiers doing the deed had any chance of being infected regardless of whether the population was or not. Again the PCs (or anyone) were aware of this.
-He was a rogue/nightsong infiltrator for what it's worth
-The PCs were aware of divination spells, however I never really liked any of the "you cast one spell and know the outcome of a situation" spells, and so while I allow them, the answers provided are exceptionally vague. My reasoning behind this is that if the future was so easy to foresee, casters (mechanically as well as culturally) would be inherently superior to non-casters which while perhaps realistic or even self-evident, doesn't always make for a fun RPing environment. Also I always thought divinations sucked part of the difficulty out of roleplaying, because characters never have to make hard decisions given that they will know what the outcome is and thus can choose to act or not act accordingly.

Mike_G
2010-07-04, 06:21 PM
So why didn't anyone in the party decide to take, say, an hour, sneak in (the Rogue/Infiltrator should be good at such things) subdue/Charm/capture an "infected" citizen, bring him out and have the highest level Cleric or Wizard around check him out before implementing the Final Solution? Chances are the whole party could have been convinced to try that.

Not looking very hard for a way out would justify the Alignment shift. Now, if he tried really hard to assure himself that the city really was doomed, and the massacre would save the rest of the kingdom, and after investigating honestly really believes that this is the only way, then maybe, just maybe, he gets a pass.

Coidzor
2010-07-04, 06:39 PM
I thought they encountered this woman before they got to the city.

Way I read it, they found her right as they got there, something like at the gates or just inside the gates.



Like I said before, there was likely numerous temples in the city. I don't doubt he could have gained access to the spells.
That's right. But doesn't that make it more likely for the army to encounter somebody that has already been turned into the undead? Honestly, if the only symptom anyone has is one woman with the flu, that's not enough to condone a massacre in my book. Call me crazy.

Oh, no, the massacre wasn't justified. The prince was crazy after all and there wasn't any actual plague there. Unfortunately they only had vague suspicions about number 1 and never bothered to figure out number 2 and apparently the entire party assumed that the plague was there. So you can't fault this one guy for doing the only option left to him when the rest of the party ran.


I don't see why he should get any sympathy just because of his class. And we don't know if he was a fighter anyway...

Class = your options. If you play a melee character you are punished with less options than a skillful or magical character. A lone melee character is crippled. A lone caster is inconvenienced.

A lone skillful character is somewhere inbetween those two. Let's just say they face a setback, depending on how they invested their skills.

Kuma Da
2010-07-04, 06:40 PM
-The plague can only infect a person if they ingest it willingly. This is a result of the fact that it was born from various scheming devils who according to their lawful nature, made the plague so that it couldn't just infect anyone. You might be thinking that a person would be mad to infect themselves with this but technically(devil semantics), a person willfully ingests the plague when they eat food that had been infected with it (which was the case in all cases of infection). The players only were aware of the willingly taken bit of the disease they were unaware of the lower-planes connection though they suspected something.

This changes things a bit. It makes detection, screening, and quarantine realistic scenarios. Perilous ones, but a desirable alternative to giving up a whole city for dead.

I'd still argue for remaining neutral, because it seems like the player understood a lot of the complexity of the situation and wasn't acting to hurt people but to save them (both those in the city from becoming twisted parodies of life and those in the surrounding area from being eaten by the same.) If the player had been like "yippee, slaughter!", that would change things. But I think intent matters more than deed in any moral evaluation. Deed is simply a product of too many variables to be an effective way of measuring.

Case example: suppose you make it really easy for your party to do something good (or, as in your game, make it really easy for them to do something evil,) does doing that good deed make them good? Is morality something you have to prove or just give in to?

edit: and is it something of a double standard if you have to prove good but can just give in to evil?

Sliver
2010-07-04, 06:41 PM
-The human military was the 2nd strongest in the world, capable of carving out an empire from relatively inhospitable territory (in terms of monsters) with not much beyond martial might.

I understood from this that there wasn't much in terms of magical powers.

But there is no reason to assume everybody got infected at the same time and all have 6 hours to live. They could have located the first lady they found, or place quick moving agile scouts inside to find out when the first outbreak happens and than strike, if necessary. They attacked because a lady had the flu symptoms.

Anima
2010-07-04, 06:41 PM
If that was truly the case, than he should fall and fall hard. The prince would fall on the spot right into evil and the PCs who let it happen would happily join them both.
There was no plague, just cursed food. That`s a hell of a difference. That scenario makes even less sense now, why would the prince slaughter a whole city, when the problem is in the food supply, which should have been burned instead.
To be honest with you, I'm pretty sceptic, with your description of the events. Maybe it's just the way you present the information, only to refute points that were made in favour of the player. Like I said, I would really like to hear the story from a different perspective, though I'm probably just paranoid.

Coidzor
2010-07-04, 06:48 PM
-The plague can only infect a person if they ingest it willingly. This is a result of the fact that it was born from various scheming devils who according to their lawful nature, made the plague so that it couldn't just infect anyone. You might be thinking that a person would be mad to infect themselves with this but technically(devil semantics), a person willfully ingests the plague when they eat food that had been infected with it (which was the case in all cases of infection). The players only were aware of the willingly taken bit of the disease they were unaware of the lower-planes connection though they suspected something. Ahh, devils. Because blatantly saying screw the rules, we're going to do what we want and claim to be following them anyway is the number one way of making a DnD player hate you. Never got why people did anything but love to hate them.

-He was a rogue/nightsong infiltrator for what it's worth

-My reasoning behind this is that if the future was so easy to foresee, casters (mechanically as well as culturally) would be inherently superior to non-casters which while perhaps realistic or even self-evident, doesn't always make for a fun RPing environment.

See, casters are inherently superior to non-casters even without divination.

Hmm. So he had some chance of effecting the course of events at least. Well, no mercy there then.

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 07:04 PM
Way I read it, they found her right as they got there, something like at the gates or just inside the gates. Meh. I'm not gonna go looking for it again, so I'll take your word for it. Even if they encountered her at the gates, That's only ONE PERSON. If they know how hard it is for the plague to spread, then a logical person (of any class) would surmise that perhaps not everyone has been infected. And that perhaps a majority of people haven't been infected. After all, how would the prince know if each and every single person was indeed infected with the plague?



Oh, no, the massacre wasn't justified. The prince was crazy after all and there wasn't any actual plague there. Unfortunately they only had vague suspicions about number 1 and never bothered to figure out number 2 and apparently the entire party assumed that the plague was there. So you can't fault this one guy for doing the only option left to him when the rest of the party ran. Well, this means he didn't try hard enough for me to give him a pass. Evil in my book, because I can not believe someone could be that stupid/naive and be allowed to carry a weapon.




Class = your options. If you play a melee character you are punished with less options than a skillful or magical character. A lone melee character is crippled. A lone caster is inconvenienced. He was a rogue. He was not alone. Rogue = Tier 4 and has UMD. Army = likely containing somebody of another class to help the poor bastard if he was totally incompetent. And if a character is so dumb that he can't figure this stuff out (and can't even figure out that he should probably try to), then maybe he should resign himself from making these kinds of decisions and just follow the other (more capable) party members.

Ormur
2010-07-04, 07:09 PM
To me you're completely justified in changing his alignment to LE for obeying an order to kill thousands of innocent people. There are always other options and at worst a complete quarantine could be enforced. The intention to minimize damage really isn't good enough since plenty of evil people thought that what they were doing was necessary. Thinking an act necessary doesn't make it "good". In fact I'd say most of the horrendously evil acts committed can be blamed on that attitude.

The "I was only obeying orders" excuse is also known as the Nuremberg defence for good reason, it's not really an excuse. The readiness to kill so many people, not merely handling the bureaucracy that most of the Nuremberg defendants were accused of, also seems to indicate that the character doesn't really belong in the good category. Putting that many non-combatants to the sword is really very brutal.

Coidzor
2010-07-04, 07:10 PM
Meh. I'm not gonna go looking for it again, so I'll take your word for it. Even if they encountered her at the gates, That's only ONE PERSON. If they know how hard it is for the plague to spread, then a logical person (of any class) would surmise that perhaps not everyone has been infected. And that perhaps a majority of people haven't been infected. After all, how would the prince know if each and every single person was indeed infected with the plague?

Yeah, this is why ever having loyalty to an NPC is just begging for the DM to screw you. Because it's stupid to be loyal to an NPC. That was his first mistake, roleplaying rather than metagaming. His second mistake was not paying attention to who he was loyal to.


Well, this means he didn't try hard enough for me to give him a pass. Evil in my book, because I can not believe someone could be that stupid/naive and be allowed to carry a weapon.

And yet the fighter camps are still allowed to churn 'em out, a dime a dozen. :smallfrown:


He was a rogue. He was not alone. Rogue = Tier 4 and has UMD. Army = likely containing somebody of another class to help the poor bastard if he was totally incompetent. And if a character is so dumb that he can't figure this stuff out (and can't even figure out that he should probably try to), then maybe he should resign himself from making these kinds of decisions and just follow the other (more capable) party members.

Certainly seemed like the rest of the party gave up and ran away. So, yeah, he was alone the only one trying to deal with the situation. Of course, he was stupid and failed, but not enough that I feel he should be expected to be evil for teh evulz in other unrelated places and penalized with random paladins trying to slaughter him.

Tiki Snakes
2010-07-04, 07:15 PM
It almost seems to me like the rogue was punished for not having played Warcraft 3. :smallwink:

Hallavast
2010-07-04, 07:27 PM
Yeah, this is why ever having loyalty to an NPC is just begging for the DM to screw you. Because it's stupid to be loyal to an NPC. That was his first mistake, roleplaying rather than metagaming. His second mistake was not paying attention to who he was loyal to.
K. Loyalty is almost never so absolute or strong. You can roleplay a loyal, oathsworn person that has logical doubts and such. In fact, it may show greater loyalty that he is ready to look out for his lord by making sure he's doing the right thing. After all, such a debacle would be devastating to his leige's reputation. :smallwink:




And yet the fighter camps are still allowed to churn 'em out, a dime a dozen. :smallfrown:

Certainly seemed like the rest of the party gave up and ran away. So, yeah, he was alone the only one trying to deal with the situation. Of course, he was stupid and failed, but not enough that I feel he should be expected to be evil for teh evulz in other unrelated places and penalized with random paladins trying to slaughter him.
So... you're actually saying he's not guilty by reason of stupidity? And he's not even a fighter (of which every member is an absolute moron. Roy doesn't exist). Guh? Really?

And... you seem to subscribe to each and every bad class stereotypes. Hint: paladins are not required to hunt down evil-pingers without mercy all nightmare long.

Talkkno
2010-07-04, 07:43 PM
A stab from Grey/Grey morality of 40k.

"Do you think me weak, flawed? Do you hate me for setting my
inquisitorial role above the needs of one agonized being?
If you do, I commend you. I think of that woman still, and hate the
fact I left her to die slowly. But if you hate me, I know this about
you... you are no inquisitor. You don't have the moral strength.
I could have finished her, and my soul might have been relieved. But
that would have been an end to my work. And I always think of me
thousands... millions perhaps... who would die worse deaths but for my
actions.
Is that arrogance?
Perhaps... and perhaps arrogance is therefore a virtue of the
Inquisition. I would gladly ignore one life in agony if I could save a
hundred, a thousand, more...
Mankind must suffer so that mankind can survive. It's that simple."
-Eisenhorn.

Devils_Advocate
2010-07-04, 08:29 PM
he did it because he was commanded to while ultimately displaying a total lack of regard for life.
I'm sorry, but it is not your prerogative as DM to declare what a PC's motivations were. That's the player's prerogative.

:smallsigh: Well, OK, you could decree that the player and the character both only know the character's conscious motivations. But to then base alignment off of unconscious motivations and make yourself the arbiter of unconscious motivations is basically to claim the right to arbitrarily assign pretty much any character pretty much any alignment you want. Which is hardly fair.

It also needlessly complicates things to need to model a character's unconscious mind in detail in order to decide on an alignment. For starters, it requires a theory of the unconscious mind to work with. In contrast, we each automatically know what one conscious mind looks like via introspection. Surely it's easier not to consider an unconscious mind a part of a character for alignment purposes. (I certainly don't regard my unconscious mind as part of me, but rather as distinct from, though attached, to me. It's the not-me parts of my mind as a whole. Of course, this is all a matter of arbitrary boundary drawing.)

Thus, so long as the player says that the character followed this order in order to save lives, I consider your analysis here to be incorrect. Someone with a total lack of regard for life wouldn't worry about saving people.

So, in response to the title question: The categorization of a player character's thoughts as "rationalization" shouldn't enter into it. Avoid using DM fiat on PC personalities, plz.

Now, perhaps the character should be categorized as Evil for other reasons. But it really sounds like we are not dealing here with a complete sociopath who will happily kill anyone so long as doing so serves his own entirely selfish ends.

Killing people in order to save other people is something that PCs in D&D generally do. Frankly, I consider the notion that anything besides (expected? intended? actual?) ends could justify those means to be kind of disturbing. Maybe something else could make them "just", in some sense of the word, but it's hard to see how it could make them more Good and/or less Evil. If ya see what I mean.


Would you consider what this PC did genocide?
The definitions of words like "genocide", "murder", etc., have no direct bearing on alignment. Certainly, one can define a type of act as being evil, but in in that case one must make a determination as to whether a given deed is evil in order to decide whether it is an act of that type, rather than vice versa.

okpokalypse
2010-07-04, 08:54 PM
I find it rather humorous that killing a slew of unknown aligned NPCs and Humanoids doesn't shift one's alignment as an adventurer, yet doing so to a town of "innocents" does the whole alignment shift in the vast majority of cases.

Personally, I think his actions were neutral. Could he have be being very naive and stupid about it? Sure. Not inquiring if there's another way isn't evil - it's just dumb really. Same thing with not potentially relizing it could have been a dupe. If he thought he was acting towards the greater good by preventing a disease spreading from the city to the rest of the world then his intentions were most definitely good, even if the result was ultimately evil.

In the end, I could see his alignment shifting to Neutral, but I'd find it hard to argue that even a series of good intended actions resulting in evil would undo an entire lifetime of doing good and result in an absolute shift to evil.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 10:43 PM
I'm sorry, but it is not your prerogative as DM to declare what a PC's motivations were. That's the player's prerogative.

Ya you are also making the assumption that I did in fact label his actions, I asked him why he did it and his two reasons were: because my prince ordered me to, and because it's for the greater good. Now maybe it is presumptuous of me to think that a PC of mind level with no divining abilities has little concept of the "greater good" beyond his own preconceived notions of right and wrong, but regardless I never once said "this is what your character thinks" so I would appreciate it if you didn't start assuming things.

Not trying to be confrontational or anything I just don't want people to think I'm foolish enough of a DM to dictate to the players what their characters are thinking; I have an infinite number of NPCs to do that to, I don't mind letting 5 of my friends do the thinking for their own characters, but I think I have the right to ask them directly what their character was thinking when he did x or y.

C.Penguin
2010-07-04, 10:47 PM
I find it rather humorous that killing a slew of unknown aligned NPCs and Humanoids doesn't shift one's alignment as an adventurer, yet doing so to a town of "innocents" does the whole alignment shift in the vast majority of cases.

In the end, I could see his alignment shifting to Neutral, but I'd find it hard to argue that even a series of good intended actions resulting in evil would undo an entire lifetime of doing good and result in an absolute shift to evil.

This is precisely the reason I don't ever run "classic" DnD games: it often does become too hard to draw the line between who is innocent and who isn't. The only "monsters" that my players usually kill are either standout NPCs who have done something monumental to harm others or the servants/soldiers/
underlings/etc of said NPCs, and even then they almost always opt to subdue rather than kill. Fortunately the main mook enemies of the campaign are undead so the issue of murder vs self-defense becomes moot.

Ozymandias9
2010-07-04, 11:05 PM
Now, you can say "but they didn't know, it seemed like the best decision at the time" . . . except for the fact that everybody else in the party did not think that it was the best decision at the time, and managed to come to the correct conclusion based on the available evidence (namely, that killing 40,000 people on a hunch is not a good plan). If this was such an difficult problem, how come everybody except this guy managed to figure it out? And why didn't he listen to what the other 4 people were telling him?

That point would hold more weight for me at least, if we knew why the others chose not to participate. If they didn't participate because they didn't believe that the infection was there (or at least had to great a degree of doubt), it should have raised a red flag. If they did believe that the plague was present but were simply to horrified by the prince's... modest proposal, then I would say that there's a decent case to be made that the DM didn't supply reasonable enough basis for suspicion and/or disbelief.

It's worth noting that the word of a paladin, who channels the divine energies of good and law, might carry some weight for a character who is having trouble telling right from wrong.

Devils_Advocate
2010-07-04, 11:57 PM
Ya you are also making the assumption that I did in fact label his actions, I asked him why he did it and his two reasons were: because my prince ordered me to, and because it's for the greater good.
Well, call me crazy, but I don't interpret "for the greater good" to indicate "a total lack of regard for life". Granted, it is an exceedingly vague phrase, to the extent that it could conceivably used by someone without regard for life, but I certainly wouldn't assume that. Did you ask him to clarify his meaning?


I never once said "this is what your character thinks"
Well, perhaps not to him, but it seems to me that you've perhaps put forth an unsupported assumption about what didn't motivate his decision. Or maybe you phrased things poorly, or maybe I misinterpreted your phrasing.

Do you think that he doesn't care about people dying? Do you think that he would have followed an order to slaughter a bunch of people even if it wasn't ostensibly to save lives? If so, maybe you should check with him, because that's not the impression that I get. (I haven't read the entire thread, though, so if I missed something important, my bad.)

If not, I'm not sure what you mean by "a total lack of regard for life". Perhaps this was hyperbole on your part?

Ozymandias9
2010-07-05, 12:08 AM
Now maybe it is presumptuous of me to think that a PC of mind level with no divining abilities has little concept of the "greater good" beyond his own preconceived notions of right and wrong.

That seems to be the basis of where I would disagree with you. If I were, hypothetically, infected with the undeath-causing disease in question, I would want to continue living. I would want it badly. That doesn't change the fact that the right thing for me to do would be to commit suicide before I could become a danger to others. Nor would it make it any more wrong for someone to euthanize me than it would be for someone to put down a rabid and dangerous dog. My family would be sad, and might even be angry (they tend to be irrational), but it would be the right decision and it would serve the greater good.

Omegas
2010-07-05, 12:13 AM
Honestly it is kind of cut and dry.

Question One = Did every one get a since motive check? The answer should be "Yes" if the prince tried to bluff them.

Question Two = Did the character fail that check?

If you failed to offer the check then the players had full rights to do what they wanted under any rationalization. It could be justified in any manner. Characters have skills for a reason. We as players can influence them but it is bad when we cross the line and use our own knowledge and experiences as player knowledge. A character that fails to understand should have a player preforms as if they failed.

Pass or fail the Good characters at least had a good reason to object to this action. As they either seen through the lie or the orders conflicted with their alignment. If they sought to carry out these orders then they would have to make progressive will saves for conflicting with their alignment.

The LN characters had less options. If he failed the check then he would be using player knowledge to disobey his lord. Which would carry the same will save for opposing his alignment.

Under this basis he would believe the lie and thus proceed to preform the less of evils as a neutral act. Save the human race = slaughter a large city.

Honestly if i had the president tell you that one dieing girl carried the plague that would end mankind an you (a general in our army) where order to kill her before it spread - would you preform the lesser of 2 evils?

Good and evil are a point of view. I can force anyone to preform an evil act if it is for the betterment of a majority. When you have no good choices and doing nothing is the worst choice of all then selecting the least evil act is a neutral action. The fact that the LN player was unaware of the correct or best coarse of action does not defer that he made the best choice based on his alignment and the information he had available.

Had he seen through the bluff then he would have seen that doing nothing meant not allowing the disease to spread.

If you failed to offer the check you either did not trust your players would proceed without player knowledge or you simply forgot the rules about bluffing. Either way your player is correct. He should be LN

Ozymandias9
2010-07-05, 12:19 AM
Question One = Did every one get a since motive check? The answer should be "Yes" if the prince tried to bluff them.

That assumes that the prince bluffed. He could just as easily been quite insistently wrong.

Kuma Da
2010-07-05, 12:21 AM
Yeah, this is why ever having loyalty to an NPC is just begging for the DM to screw you. Because it's stupid to be loyal to an NPC. That was his first mistake, roleplaying rather than metagaming. His second mistake was not paying attention to who he was loyal to.

Please please please tell me you were being bitingly sarcastic there.

Outside of particular games, I never play DnD to "win" against the DM. Not only is it explicitly pointless, but I just don't get interesting characters that way. The Nietzschean ubermensch (sp?) with no family ties, no addictions, and no friends outside of the party bores me. I'd rather play a flawed, vulnerable character and trust the DM not to abuse that.

Expecting a player to have to meta-game to avoid horrible consequences strikes me as kind of unfair.

Coidzor
2010-07-05, 12:29 AM
Please please please tell me you were being bitingly sarcastic there.

Outside of particular games, I never play DnD to "win" against the DM. Not only is it explicitly pointless, but I just don't get interesting characters that way. The Nietzschean ubermensch (sp?) with no family ties, no addictions, and no friends outside of the party bores me. I'd rather play a flawed, vulnerable character and trust the DM not to abuse that.

Expecting a player to have to meta-game to avoid horrible consequences strikes me as kind of unfair.

Well, partially yes it was tongue in cheek, partially no I was serious but only insofar as the roleplaying will get you killed or out of the party in a way that isn't fun, partially a reference to what the DM told them all at the outset. Basically the DM told him and the rest of the party not to trust the NPCs or be loyal to anyone but himself and those he had to be loyal to.

He chose to lose himself in the roleplay rather than keep this in mind. As a result that followed from this, as far as I can tell, ultimately he lost his character and had to draw up a new one due to no longer being a part of the party.

Sure, there were more immediate things, but trusting an NPC when the DM tells you not to do so in this campaign is a pretty serious mistake to make.

Sliver
2010-07-05, 12:32 AM
Honestly it is kind of cut and dry.

Question One = Did every one get a since motive check? The answer should be "Yes" if the prince tried to bluff them.

Question Two = Did the character fail that check?

You probably didn't read the whole thread, so a little summery...

The prince didn't lie. The rash, unthinking, impulsive prince who thinks that by taking initiative like that will impress his father thought that it was the best thing to do. Thing is, he probably didn't think of any alternatives. And the PCs knew the prince for being like that. He ditched them to defend themselves against a hoard of undead because there was a small patrol of undead somewhere. If you know that your commander has shown signs of incompetence when making decisions and you still follow his orders blindly with no proof of that what you do is the best way, or a good way, you are just looking for an excuse.

Coidzor
2010-07-05, 12:38 AM
If you know that your commander has shown signs of incompetence when making decisions and you still follow his orders blindly with no proof of that what you do is the best way, or a good way, you are just looking for an excuse.

In this case, one for rolling up a new character.

Ozymandias9
2010-07-05, 12:47 AM
If you know that your commander has shown signs of incompetence when making decisions and you still follow his orders blindly with no proof of that what you do is the best way, or a good way, you are just looking for an excuse.

That smacks of meta-gaming to me. There is a difference between seeing someone as a glory-hound and holding them to be generally incompetent. Particularly when dealing with moral issues, I would expect someone empowered by the forces of light and good (assuming that the characters know of a paladin's power source) would have some general insight. There is also the issue of how a given character views his role relative to nobility and how high above them he thinks they are: the character may have invested a great deal of belief in the wisdom of the ruling class. Moreover, they might simply have a great deal of loyalty and personal investment in the Prince himself, and not often consider questioning his wisdom.

Demons_eye
2010-07-05, 12:54 AM
"The prince was fond of making rash, impulsive decisions in the heat of the moment (he earlier left them and about 50 men to defend a town from about a thousand undead simply because he heard a rumor that a patrol of undead was spotted and he wanted to crush them to prove himself to daddy (although he DID manage to return in time to reinforce them)"


This tells me that he is a bad leader but not inherently a stupid one. Why would he not throw some more time into finding out if they are really infected or even have more reason to attack the city? Why would he not gather more info about something this grave? Why would he send the army to take out a city if he did not know more? If I was the PC I would have done the same beacuse unless I know the Prince is a incompetent leader not just a bad one I would assume he had more info on this and knew that this was a threat.

Sure I might try to find more info about it but hour 5 I would start killing people.

As a matter of fact, if they did believe that they were infected and had six hour till ground zero that is even more reason. If the Prince knew it was six hours then he knows someone is infected. Otherwise some person could have had an early breakfast and become undead any minute.

Sliver
2010-07-05, 01:14 AM
That smacks of meta-gaming to me. There is a difference between seeing someone as a glory-hound and holding them to be generally incompetent.

But he isn't simply a glory hound. He is known "of making rash, impulsive decisions in the heat of the moment." He was a paladin then, he is now. No special insight there, assuming that now it's different is just looking for an excuse or not even trying.


Moreover, they might simply have a great deal of loyalty and personal investment in the Prince himself, and not often consider questioning his wisdom.

An excuse. Would you not punish a war criminal who says he followed orders of someone who he didn't question out of loyalty, even though the person made mistakes before? It is a crime to follow such orders instead of opposing the commander. If you are sticking to "I didn't think, just did it out of loyalty" you have no defense here.

Most of the time the PCs aren't simple minions who go around with their squad and do what a low level commander tells them to. They get their orders from the more important people because they themselves are more important. That means that either they are just being manipulated and chosen for the easiness of effecting them, or that they have some consciousness and won't just follow X without thinking.

If the player did something because he was told to and didn't think of consequences or alternatives, perhaps he is into a more railroady game than the DM supplies him with.

huttj509
2010-07-05, 01:54 AM
Is the action the PC took inherently Evil?

I'd say yeah, he may have viewed it as a necessary evil, but it was evil.

Does this action necessitate an alignment shift from L/N?

Not necessarily. A lot depends on the actual method/eagerness with which it was carried out. In general, if the character had been Good, I might shift him to Neutral, having shown more willingness to carry out Evil actions if felt necessary. However, I would hesitate to shift the character from Neutral to Evil, unless a direct disregard for the city residents was shown.

Part of the problem is that pinging Evil on the alignment indicator can be a BIG deal. If no spells had effects that differentiated based on which side of the line you were on, it'd be easier, but in some campaigns, and some parties, depending on the spells in effect, pinging evil rather than neutral for coming down on the wrong side of a very difficult decision is a serious consequence mechanically. In that situation I'd prefer to have the consequences be role-playing, more than mechanics, unless the PC had already shown a tendency towards callousness, or carried out the order in a particularly callous manner.

Summary: Yeah, the act would be a ding against him on the alignment scale, but I don't think it ought to shift him from neutral to evil without prior shakiness on that front. He had bad and misleading information, which he may or may not have had reason to suspect was bad or misleading. I think that if the character expressed remorse, for example willingness to submit to the King's judgment after the action was done, the act itself would not render the character Evil.

Delcan
2010-07-05, 02:21 AM
Getting in a little late on the subject here, but I think the entire thread is missing one very important detail in the matter... how did the player see the situation?

So far, the only input we've had on the matter is the DM's side of the situation. We have DM knowledge on the "quest" given, the "quest-giver", and the reality of the plague situation, and we have the DM's perspective on how the player responded - but nothing from the player. We have what the player said about the situation - from what the DM heard. In my experience, there can be a lot of difference between what a person says and how someone else interprets it, and even the simplest-sounding explanations can be a lot more complex than they seem.

I don't think that any judgment call on the matter is even possible until the actual player posts on this thread and gives us their perspective on what happened in-game. Otherwise, this is a trial where the defendant didn't show up, and the prosecutor gets free reign over the court. Yes, we can speak about hypotheticals on how the player acted in this case, but that's all they are - hypotheticals. Without the player's input, this thread is just another alignment flamewar without purpose.

Ferrin
2010-07-05, 02:48 AM
Getting in a little late on the subject here, but I think the entire thread is missing one very important detail in the matter... how did the player see the situation?

So far, the only input we've had on the matter is the DM's side of the situation. We have DM knowledge on the "quest" given, the "quest-giver", and the reality of the plague situation, and we have the DM's perspective on how the player responded - but nothing from the player. We have what the player said about the situation - from what the DM heard. In my experience, there can be a lot of difference between what a person says and how someone else interprets it, and even the simplest-sounding explanations can be a lot more complex than they seem.

I don't think that any judgment call on the matter is even possible until the actual player posts on this thread and gives us their perspective on what happened in-game. Otherwise, this is a trial where the defendant didn't show up, and the prosecutor gets free reign over the court. Yes, we can speak about hypotheticals on how the player acted in this case, but that's all they are - hypotheticals. Without the player's input, this thread is just another alignment flamewar without purpose.

I agree with all you said, except calling it a flamewar. This is more of a debate if you ask me. :smallconfused:

C.Penguin
2010-07-05, 02:58 AM
Without the player's input, this thread is just another alignment flamewar without purpose.

...I didn't think this had become a flame war...:smallfrown: maybe I am missing something. Idk I just want to restate that I'm not out to prove myself here I'm just trying to gauge what people think. I think there's been some good discussion but maybe I just haven't been on these forums enough to recognize a flame war when I see one.

And yeah I wish his thoughts could be on here also but like I said many, many posts ago he is working at a summer camp until college starts in the fall so it's sort of not possible for him to do so.

hamishspence
2010-07-05, 03:35 AM
I'd agree on this being more a debate- so far it's remained pretty civil and interesting.

On changing to Evil alignment- may depend on how Evil is portrayed. In many 3.5 splatbooks, some evil characters see themselves as nonevil- believing their acts to be "for the greater good"

Michael Ambrose in Tome of Magic, or the Eldeth Veluuthra in Champions of Ruin, spring to mind.

In a D&D-morality setting, a faction that thinks like the 40K Imperium, might be Evil rather than Neutral, even if they see themselves as Good guys.

Ozymandias9
2010-07-05, 04:48 AM
But he isn't simply a glory hound. He is known "of making rash, impulsive decisions in the heat of the moment." He was a paladin then, he is now. No special insight there, assuming that now it's different is just looking for an excuse or not even trying.

There is a difference between rash and evil. And while I wouldn't expect a paladin to necessarily know better than the first, I would note something fairly out of the ordinary if they had major issues regularly falling into the second.

Moreover, not everyone looks internally to gauge morality, particularly when they are uncertain. A paladin (played straight) would seem a decent place to look, all things considered.

Put another way, depending on the campaign world, paladins may be as rare (and treated as reverently) as a high priest of a LG deity. Even if that high priest happened to be fairly reckless, would you often imagine that most people who they interact with would often consider the possibility of them doing evil?

Additionally, the prior example we were given of the paladin's behavior doesn't indicate any inclination towards evil, merely that he rashly chose glory at the likely detriment of his forces. We don't know him to be cruel or callous, merely rash and possibly stupid.


If the player did something because he was told to and didn't think of consequences or alternatives, perhaps he is into a more railroady game than the DM supplies him with.

I think that's probably a given at this point. The only other reasonable possibility is that they were taking the WC3 inspiration as a far more direct crib than the DM intended and meta-gamed accordingly.

However, the player shouldn't be doing anything, the character should. And a LN character is likely to put great value on orders, particularly when they don't believe that there is reason to believe they are faulty.


An excuse. Would you not punish a war criminal who says he followed orders of someone who he didn't question out of loyalty, even though the person made mistakes before? It is a crime to follow such orders instead of opposing the commander. If you are sticking to "I didn't think, just did it out of loyalty" you have no defense here.
Actually, it's only a crime if you know the order is unlawful. It's not clear in this case that he did. If the character earnestly believed that he was essentially euthanizing a rather large group of people to save them from undeath, he has a solid leg to stand on. He was probably being as rash as the prince, but rashness isn't evil.

Again, it hinges on whether or not the character had reason to believe that the plague was present. If the other characters left not out of disgust but because they had reason to doubt the presence of the plague, then the player in question is likely just looking for an excuse. If its the other way around, well, I would probably do the same thing for a LN character (though possibly with some prior investigation, depending on the int of the character in question).

Ashiel
2010-07-05, 10:55 AM
Additionally, this kind of thing is better handled in game, not on the character sheet. Quite frankly, while I was trying to give the GM the benefit of doubt, I believe he's just trying to be a jerk to his player; because he specifically said he introduced it to create a difficult morality choice for his players where it's lose/lose, and is trying to screw over his player for that.

The PC's alignment shouldn't change. There are in-game repercussions to these things; such as his party thinking him cold; his king being upset (at the prince too); himself when he realizes that he killed countless people for no reason (this would be an exceptionally good place for some self-doubt or self-hate on the player's part), and so forth.

It'd be better to react to this in-game, rather than forcing an alignment change; especially given everything presented here. There are consequences to actions; but really it's the GM's fault here, I think.

And I'm saying this as a fellow GM. :smallconfused:

MickJay
2010-07-05, 11:00 AM
Few things:

did the Prince fall for giving this order? I see no reason why he should NOT fall, and if he did, then how was that manifested? The player might have simply assumed that if the order was given by a Paladin, then it was okay to follow it through.

How did the city resist the slaughter? With that many inhabitants, it would have a considerable number of its own high-level magic users, priests, warriors etc. Furthermore, how did the soldiers react to the order?

Considering what OP said, this is still very much a case of alignment switching to LE for the PC. You can't treat killing of forty thousand people as a "one act" and call it a day, especially since it would take many, many hours of bloody, heart-wrenching killing to slay all these people. However, it was up to DM to make the PC question his decision as the massacre was progressing, it should not have been the matter of "are you sure" and "they're dead now".

On a different note, RL simulations of outbreaks of highly infectious and deadly diseases generally indicate that once a quarantine is in effect, the use of lethal force against those trying to leave the quarantined area is the only way of ensuring the safety of everyone else. This cannot, however, be used as a justification here, since:
- the players knew that the people inside won't be automatically infected even if the disease reaches the city, and there was almost no risk of people outside of the city becoming infected even if the city is totally consumed by the plague
- with three entrances, it would have been very easy to enforce an effective quarantine; even if zombies were to pour out of the city, destroying them at the gates would not have been difficult

hamishspence
2010-07-05, 12:23 PM
This is actually answered in the original post that started the thread:


Coincidentally the prince, who was a paladin, was stripped of his paladin powers and later fell to evil and usurped his father's kingdom.


The paladin prince was stripped of his powers (I think because of the massacre) and "later fell to evil".

Kuma Da
2010-07-05, 01:06 PM
He chose to lose himself in the roleplay rather than keep this in mind. As a result that followed from this, as far as I can tell, ultimately he lost his character and had to draw up a new one due to no longer being a part of the party.

Sure, there were more immediate things, but trusting an NPC when the DM tells you not to do so in this campaign is a pretty serious mistake to make.

I....okay. I'm gonna have to bow out. That is....just wow.

That is so far in contradiction of how I try to game that I'm not sure any opinions I might have would even make sense here.

'Meta-game, don't roleplay, if you want to win'? Uh....no thanks.

There are times when playing a particular role might be a detriment to everyone's enjoyment of the game (i.e. lone-wolfing,) and those are the times when you find subtle ways to change your character. But, in this case, I feel like meta-ing to 'win' the scenario would cheapen both the character and the plot.

Of course, he ended up having to re-roll anyways, so that wasn't a scenario the player was going to win.

Granted, this is all my personal philosophy, so it doesn't necessarily have to apply to anyone else's game, but...wow.

Edit: also, seconding everything Ashiel said.

2nd edit: with a minor caveat. I really, really don't think C. Penguin thinks what he was trying to do was screw the player over. He expected a certain level of meta to make the right choice, and instead the player played his character and everyone else was like :smalleek:. That's more of a difference in gaming philosophies than anything else, and in my experience that's usually what can cause friction at the gaming table.

Yukitsu
2010-07-05, 01:23 PM
Morality quandaries are like in game riddles. The DM happens to like them, no one else has any fun, and players are consistently punished if they get a correct answer the DM didn't think of. Frankly, I would have tried to avoid the situation, or would not have been willing to judge on the basis of action alone, but rather on the reasoning behind it.

Coidzor
2010-07-05, 02:29 PM
I....okay. I'm gonna have to bow out. That is....just wow.

That is so far in contradiction of how I try to game that I'm not sure any opinions I might have would even make sense here.

'Meta-game, don't roleplay, if you want to win'? Uh....no thanks.

There are times when playing a particular role might be a detriment to everyone's enjoyment of the game (i.e. lone-wolfing,) and those are the times when you find subtle ways to change your character. But, in this case, I feel like meta-ing to 'win' the scenario would cheapen both the character and the plot.

Of course, he ended up having to re-roll anyways, so that wasn't a scenario the player was going to win.

Granted, this is all my personal philosophy, so it doesn't necessarily have to apply to anyone else's game, but...wow.

2nd edit: with a minor caveat. I really, really don't think C. Penguin thinks what he was trying to do was screw the player over. He expected a certain level of meta to make the right choice, and instead the player played his character and everyone else was like :smalleek:. That's more of a difference in gaming philosophies than anything else, and in my experience that's usually what can cause friction at the gaming table.

It's all about keeping things in mind. Otherwise you think you're making a hard choice when, really, you're just dragging out the process before you roll up a new character. And I doubt the player enjoyed the manner in which he lost his character at all. So, yes, simply by the rubric of player enjoyment and intragroup friction, he and the group suffered a net loss, as evidenced by how it was so contentious that the DM set the scenario before us.

You have to keep in mind what kind of game you're playing in rather than just blindly roleplaying whatever comes to mind or you run into situations like this. Or a situation in which you're assaulted and robbed by L5R players at a convention for attempting to roleplay like it was a different system. You just assumed I was talking several steps further than what I meant.

Though, to be honest, as a player, I can't credibly give loyalty to an NPC after seeing everyone and their mother just use it as a trap, from my personal experiences to SilverClawShifts' campaign journals. So, yeah, there's certain things a player needs to keep in mind in order to avoid being jerked around by the DM. Like never playing a Paladin without extensive discussion with the DM.

Sliver
2010-07-05, 02:39 PM
Though, to be honest, as a player, I can't credibly give loyalty to an NPC after seeing everyone and their mother just use it as a trap, from my personal experiences to SilverClawShifts' campaign journals.

I'm sorry, what? I recall such thing only happening once in the Crystal Cantrips beginning, and it wasn't with someone they were inclined to trust, and didn't. The DM used demons and evil creatures as trustworthy informants!

Hallavast
2010-07-05, 03:53 PM
Though, to be honest, as a player, I can't credibly give loyalty to an NPC after seeing everyone and their mother just use it as a trap, from my personal experiences to SilverClawShifts' campaign journals. So, yeah, there's certain things a player needs to keep in mind in order to avoid being jerked around by the DM. Like never playing a Paladin without extensive discussion with the DM.

This is a joke, right?

Did you really just say you often use metagame knowledge to further your "DM vs. Players" playstyle? If you did, then I salute you for presenting such a bold and provocative stance on the subject. You'll have your work cut out for you.

Kuma Da
2010-07-05, 03:55 PM
there's certain things a player needs to keep in mind in order to avoid being jerked around by the DM.

I agree that it's important to try and synchronize your concept with the game you're playing. However, if playing a character perfectly appropriate for the setting is 'dragging out the process before a re-roll', you need to switch DMs.

The player isn't wrong for making a character that the DM can abuse. The DM is wrong for abusing the character.

And I really would rather not be in a game where I had to keep looking over my shoulder for hate from the DM, unless I was playing Hackmaster or Paranoia and that sort of thing was explicit in the game description.

Edit: I don't think there's anything essentially wrong with meta-gaming. But I think a players v. DM mindset tends to detract from everyone's fun.

Kylarra
2010-07-05, 04:36 PM
The paladin prince was stripped of his powers (I think because of the massacre) and "later fell to evil".The paladin prince was stripped of his powers and later fell to evil because he was playing WC3. :smallbiggrin:

Susano-wo
2010-07-05, 06:52 PM
Somehti9ng I wanted to mention...you can meta and RP at the same time. I, personally, dislike Meta at the Expense of RP. Ok I hate it. Go ahead and meta, but within the confines of reasonable behavior for your character. Hmm, if I do this, the campaign might break apart, etc, so I won't since there are other options that my character might take


@OP I have a question about the actual slughter(which was clearly hugely evil. Stupidity is not an excuse for not questioning an order of that nature from an already proven to be Rash commander. Its sooo extreme, that after slaughtering his share of approx 40k people, he should defintiely drop in alignment. This brings me to my question. did you ask him if he was sure and skip to the end? That's what is sounds like, which seems to me to create a rather inorganic situation. The real act wasn't so simple as pushing a button. He went through the whole city executing these people.

Really, though I know play styles can be different, but I think you should play out more than that. He should have to murder these people individually, over their cries of terror, at least for a while. In other words, show him that all he is killing are innocent people, who may not even be infected. Hell, if everyone know how its spread, people could even reasonable be expected to at least verbally defend themselves (I didn't eat any! All my food comes from blah blah blah, I know there is no tainted meat there! etc)

This really makes sure that he sees exactly what he is doing, and can have a chance to stop before 40k are on his head. Also, it makes what should be a harrowing experience for the character truly harrowing.

Again, not saying this is the only way to do it, but it would seem to be the best way to really make him without excuse for his actions.

A last side note about trusting NPCs. It seems silly, to be nice, to complain that DM's "trapping" their players with NPC's that might lie to the PC's. If the DM has told you that he is running a world, where NPC's have motives, and personalities, and flaws and virtues, etc, and you take anything that looks to you like a quest giver at face value, well, that's what you get for not RPing, honestly. Sense motive, while I'm at it, will allow you to do just what it says :sense his motive. IF his motive is not duplicitous, well, then you have to use your own judgement :P

Tiki Snakes
2010-07-05, 07:21 PM
Sense motive, while I'm at it, will allow you to do just what it says :sense his motive. IF his motive is not duplicitous, well, then you have to use your own judgement :P

His motive was not duplicitous (He was just wrong), and the PC Did use his own judgement. Because his judgement was not the judgement that the DM wanted him to use, he was punished.

Should have played more RTS games, so he could spot the metagame clues. :smallsmile:

C.Penguin
2010-07-05, 07:34 PM
Additionally, this kind of thing is better handled in game, not on the character sheet. Quite frankly, while I was trying to give the GM the benefit of doubt, I believe he's just trying to be a jerk to his player; because he specifically said he introduced it to create a difficult morality choice for his players where it's lose/lose, and is trying to screw over his player for that.

How was it a lose/lose and more importantly how am I screwing him I honestly don't really get how he couldn't have either failed or succeeded in this and I did NOT make him role up a new character as some people have said; I don't make players roll up new characters just for becoming evil, sorry for not mentioning that earlier

C.Penguin
2010-07-05, 07:43 PM
His motive was not duplicitous (He was just wrong), and the PC Did use his own judgement. Because his judgement was not the judgement that the DM wanted him to use, he was punished.

I didn't change his alignment to punish him, I did it as a result of his actions. If i wanted to punish him I would have just had his character executed or something. It was his call to make and he dealt with the consequences. I've stated before that I personally didn't necessarily consider what he did as evil, at least if it were in this world, but because of the dichotomy that is the DnD alignment system, an act like that just couldn't NOT change his alignment, at least according to just about every official WOTC product that references alignment that I have read.

I wish people would stop using the word punished, I just want to say again that he was allowed to keep playing his character and that his alignment eventually went back to LN because he worked hard to right the wrong that he had done.

Kylarra
2010-07-05, 08:28 PM
How was it a lose/lose and more importantly how am I screwing him I honestly don't really get how he couldn't have either failed or succeeded in this and I did NOT make him role up a new character as some people have said; I don't make players roll up new characters just for becoming evil, sorry for not mentioning that earlierEither he helped kill 40k people, or he knowingly let 40k people be slaughtered.

Susano-wo
2010-07-05, 08:41 PM
If it makes you feel better, penguin: I don't think you punished him. You had his sheet reflect what his actions meant (and hey, if he acts in a non-evil way consistently, he can change his alignment back up! But right now, spells and abilities that target alignment (the only reason that the aligment system matters, IMO) are going to ping him as evil.)

@Tiki, and those of similar opinions. I echo Penguin's apparent frustration with people talking about the poor PC who was punished for "choosing wrong." He is playing in a world that is explicitly not kill the foes, get the XP. Ergo, they are called upon to make decisions. This decision is evil to the extreme that it dropped his alignment in one hit. It not punishing anyone, and certainly not for choosing wrong. (also, my sense motive bit was about people saying that he should have got sense motive to see if the prince was wrong)

Really, is having reasonable consequences for actions that bad?

Felyndiira
2010-07-05, 09:13 PM
This is actually the exact reason that my characters tend to be neutral or evil (by my choice) even in normally good alignments. It leads to a few problems with DMs that believe "evil = evulz," although most of them tend to be very nice people who work very well with the party. That way, if a morality test ever dawns, my character would be able to commit the "evil" act and have it be perfectly within her alignment, no cleric falling and whatnot.

First of all, I believe that a D&D game is run to the enjoyment of the DM and the players. I do understand that some things need to be done for certain problems, such as a player constantly killing townspeople falling toward the evil side, although if your situation is ambiguous enough that it can spawn a eight-page debate on these forums, there's a high likelihood that it's ambiguous enough to be interpretable either way. Different players will have different opinions on morality, and in these cases, there's no reason to pick the path that would antagonize you in the eyes of your players.

I believe hindsight rationale to be a rather foolish thing. Think about it this way - let's say you're a good guy, orphanage-building and all, and you sacrifice yourself to kill a BBEG you believe to be irredeemable to save the world. Upon entering heaven, Astral Deva #1 looks at your profile and tells you: "oh my, you killed the BBEG, but you didn't realize that you can do A which leads to B which will then redeem him. See ya in hell!" You can say that killing a single BBEG is different (and you'd be right), but the overall point is the same - the player "doesn't consider all possible circumstances" and makes an action that can be interpreted as evil, and his alignment is nuked because of it.

The player's rationale for his action is logical, in this case. Sure, you can argue with him for hours about what he could have considered, what he could have done, and what he could have gathered from seeing this and that and knowing this and that in a certain circumstance, but you and your players are different people with different beliefs. In the end, the player still knows his character best, and still gave you a rationale that was perfectly reasonable given the circumstances; dropping his alignment without warning is sending a message that you're willing to shoehorn players for not adhering to your own moral beliefs (possible without warning!), and is a great way to alienate players and detriment a game.

You can say that you're not punishing him for his actions - that you're merely making his alignment reflect his deeds. However, you still changed a quality of his character using a very arguable premise, and it may be no less insulting to the player than "hey, your name is no longer Farn Stronghelm; you're Evil McStupid now. Live with it." In essence, you're saying that the player's character is now a horrible, amoral person because he didn't make the same decision that you did in one circumstance; I, for one, would be absolutely insulted if my DM told me "hey, I placed a baby in your character's way and you didn't kick it. You're no longer evil; I recommend donning scimitars and worshipping Eilistraee now, kk?" (Granted, a cleric has alignment restrictions, although I would still feel insulted if I was a fighter).

Seeing this as an alignment debate would be missing the point IMO, since you'll get equally valid answers from both sides. The point is that you changed one of your player's alignment on something that can be argued both ways, based on your own perceptions of the correct answers to the problems and an expectation that your players, when offered certain information, would come to the same conclusions that you'd expect them to. There are blatant cases of violations, and there are relatively more objective things that can cause a huge debate every time you bring it up. For the latter, it would be prudent for a DM to try to understand a player's perspectives and not always try to judge by the book (not saying that you do it, but using BoED/BoVD as a rule for morals, for example, is horrid).

tl;dr: I think that alignment tests cause RP problems and that a DM should try to accommodate the player a bit in terms of alignment. Having a fun game, after all, takes heavy priority to being right about a ruling.



(On a sidenote, I really think that the D&D alignment system is horrible. Even if we do not consider BoED/BoVD, it encourages players to make suboptimal choices and abandon personal judgment just for some sort of family friendly version of good. All of the characters that I've created so far are neutral or evil (even my cleric of Eilistraee) just as a safeguard since they would kill the midboss that surrenders after attacking you rather than going "gee whiz, you surrendered to me. I guess I should just let you go and pray that you somehow receive a DM-railroad miracle to turn good and won't attack us or our family ever again. Dur." That kind of mentality is really detrimental to the game, especially if a DM would also judge you to not be evil simply because you haven't killed enough babies, or judge you to not be evil because you saved an orphanage and therefore automatically are 100% reverent of life and would no longer kill people for selfish reasons.)

Ashiel
2010-07-05, 09:23 PM
I didn't change his alignment to punish him, I did it as a result of his actions. If i wanted to punish him I would have just had his character executed or something. It was his call to make and he dealt with the consequences. I've stated before that I personally didn't necessarily consider what he did as evil, at least if it were in this world, but because of the dichotomy that is the DnD alignment system, an act like that just couldn't NOT change his alignment, at least according to just about every official WOTC product that references alignment that I have read.

I wish people would stop using the word punished, I just want to say again that he was allowed to keep playing his character and that his alignment eventually went back to LN because he worked hard to right the wrong that he had done.


Either he helped kill 40k people, or he knowingly let 40k people be slaughtered.

This. In the D&D context of morality - which does not function - he is committing a gravely evil act either way; because to his knowledge he is either A: Putting down countless innocents before a plague turns them into ravaging monsters who will kill countless more innocents; or B: He does nothing and allows it to happen; which also counts as an act of great evil (40k acts of great evil, assuming fairness).

I'm going by the information that you C. Penguin have given; and that is what I've come to the conclusion of. The character gained from what he believed a reliable source (who as I understand it already mentioned that magic couldn't solve the problem); and only had a very short time to decide; and decided to follow an authority figure in what was believed to be the best thing he could do - noting that his character disliked having to do it.

Sorry, but if there were actually evil infectious undead like in the movies (which you claimed the situation was based off); I couldn't call someone evil for killing an infected member of their own family to save the rest of their family or other people; or as a coup de grace / mercy blow before they fell. It would be evil if it were merely an excuse; but I've not really gotten the "I would go and kill the world if I had a legal reason" kind of vibe from how your posts have depicted him.

So that's where I stand on it I guess. I personally think it's a horrible situation; and I wouldn't be surprised if he killed the prince and himself out of vengeance and grief; or went mad from the horror when he realized that it was all for nothing. That would be a very, very lonely place to be; and you'd hate yourself far worse.

"No...I'll do it ma. Old Yeller's my dog."

C.Penguin
2010-07-05, 10:26 PM
Alright so this is clearly a debate that has lots of different sides and opinions and I feel like this whole thing has taught me to think more about alignment ordeals and such. So rather than struggle on for another eight pages, I propose we hear some other stories from other people about similar situations where their alignment/character ideals were called into question.

IDK just an idea.

Tiki Snakes
2010-07-05, 10:33 PM
I didn't change his alignment to punish him, I did it as a result of his actions.

Punishment is punishment. I would personally have seen it as such, were I the player, and from the simple fact that the thread has ended up here (and I believe there was mention of it having become a contentious issue amongst the group ever since?) I think we can guess that the player himself has similar feelings on the issue.
It's not assault officer, the dang kid was asking for it!

I don't really have any very similar anecdotes myself, though a fellow player in an old game came close from the opposite direction almost. He was playing a Smartly-Evil follower of Vecna by attempting to better seek out secrets etc by actually helping the party and generally keeping the goonsparty alive so as to protect herself and win local acceptance and so on. The DM had trouble with accepting the idea of an Evil character who had a rational hold on the ramifications of their own actions, and tried several ways of trying to drive a wedge through the party, eventually having the Evil character's parent-organisation directly order her to murder one of the rest of the party.

Which to his credit, the Warlock player did successfully do in a very amusing little showdown. He was then bundled into a mysterious black carriage and left as an NPC.

Ashiel
2010-07-05, 10:56 PM
Well I had a Paladin who made a sense motive check against a wyvern who attacked them, and realized he (the wyvern) was being mind-controlled at the time; only to coup de grace the incapacitated wyvern without using detect evil on him.

It made me flinch a bit, but he clarified that the group knew that the wyvern was evil despite the mind-control because their holy weapons were dealing full damage to them; which was true - the wyvern was actually evil.

Which resulted in a bit of conversing (some of the other players called his paladin-ness into question); which I nodded to and mentioned that it wasn't enough to make him fall; but that he should be careful walking that line, because I would be paying attention to how it goes.

I had to explain to him that being a Paladin of Freedom (Chaotic Good) didn't mean he could undermine the Good part of being a Paladin by saying he doesn't follow a traditional code and what-not; because he still has to be good. Actually had the most trouble with the subject when he was insistent on killing a large number of neutral and good undead (necropolitans and their baelnorn/archlich leader) on the grounds of them being undead and thus "innately evil"; which wasn't the case.

I don't think he was mature enough to play a Paladin, in all honesty. He wanted to play the character in a far more gray to evil tone; so I actually ended up suggesting a few alternatives if he wanted his guy to start administering his own idea of hard justice; and I believe I mentioned the Black Guard prestige class as an option for an anti-hero who believed he was doing the right thing; modified a few ways to fit his character.

However, we gamed via a community based gaming group that swapped GMs around in sandbox style games; so he ended up getting wrapped up in another game, and I did as well; but we often ended up coming back to the same characters from time to time. Was kind of nice actually. Last I checked, believe he had re-statted his character without Paladin levels, because he said he really thought about it and found he wasn't really a good Paladin. :smallconfused:

Generally if something related to alignment is going down, I usually have a chat with the player or players and give them my take on it a little bit; and ask their opinions of situations. Such things aren't ever sudden; and I don't think I've ever adjusted a player's alignment based on a single action - unless the action was something like "I murder the first commoner I come across for lawlz"; and then I ask if they are serious and let them know that pretty much stamps a big "I'm a bad - and mentally handicapped - guy" on their forehead. I can't recall the last time a player ever did something so senseless however.

Kuma Da
2010-07-05, 11:48 PM
I've stated before that I personally didn't necessarily consider what he did as evil, at least if it were in this world, but because of the dichotomy that is the DnD alignment system, an act like that just couldn't NOT change his alignment, at least according to just about every official WOTC product that references alignment that I have read.

I will certainly agree with you there. If you were playing DnD 'as is', then yes. He should have fallen.

As for similar stories, I actually killed a game once. It was a sci-fi crime-thriller a friend of mine was running, and the party had great chemistry. We had a naive corporate agent, his reluctant secretary, and a government test project/marauding psychopath all working together to stomp on a rising local mafia. We were tracking them to their base in the mountains, past a series of checkpoints, and the government project/psychopath started trying to pass off the secretary and the corporate agent (me) as his prisoners.

Neither character really objected at this point, although I made a point of saying that it wasn't a disguise we needed to adopt. We were just being let through anyways.

Eventually, we reached the mansion. The test project/psychopath said he had an idea, wouldn't elaborate on what, and told us all to just walk in and see the local don. We did. By this point I was uneasy, in character and out.

We got our audience, and almost immediately, the test project told the don that he was bringing him two prisoners. Us. The secretary, meta-gaming cooperatively, surrendered. I said "what? Hell no!" and made a break for it.

This started a firefight. The secretary stood by, doing nothing. I bolted into another room, managing to take out a few of the guards. The test project came after me and tried to grab me. I shot him.

Now, my friend's system was specifically designed to be extremely lethal. I rolled max damage and killed him on the spot. The next turn the rest of the guards killed me. The secretary escaped, but only after being badly winged by a hail of stray bullets. We decided to end the campaign.

Up until that point it had been pretty fun, but that little episode pretty much assassinated our enjoyment. We ended up having a long argument about whether what I'd done had been justifiable.

This isn't quite an alignment issue, but I think it does relate to the thread's theme of "what is an acceptable balance between plausible rp and meta?"

Kyuu Himura
2010-07-06, 01:11 AM
I didn't read every reply, but this is what I can tell from the situation.
1.- The prince panicked and issued a stupid order.
2.- It is entirely possible to quarantine a medieval city in a short time, with them having huge walls and what not.
3.- The rest of the party deserted with a few thousand soldiers, they could have organized an alternative plan, quarantine the city, move the presumably infected to a secured area or just talk to the prince into following this course of action... they should have tried.
4.- Mass murder is bad, selective murder may be necessary, but I wouldn't call it good.
5.- What about the guilt factor?? does the new evil guy regrets those kills??
http://img819.imageshack.us/i/lawfulgoodkenshin.jpg
Then I would say he may be still good
he is indifferent to them??
http://img189.imageshack.us/i/saitolawfulneutral.jpg
if it's just business, then it's neutral turning to evil (really really close, because of the kill count)
is he proud??
http://img121.imageshack.us/i/lawfulevilshishio.jpg
evil, evil, evil.
well, I hope the pics speak enough, have nice games.

Agrippa
2010-07-06, 01:17 AM
I didn't read every reply, but this is what I can tell from the situation.
1.- The prince panicked and issued a stupid order.
2.- It is entirely possible to quarantine a medieval city in a short time, with them having huge walls and what not.
3.- The rest of the party deserted with a few thousand soldiers, they could have organized an alternative plan, quarantine the city, move the presumably infected to a secured area or just talk to the prince into following this course of action... they should have tried.
4.- Mass murder is bad, selective murder may be necessary, but I wouldn't call it good.
5.- What about the guilt factor?? does the new evil guy regrets those kills??
http://img819.imageshack.us/i/lawfulgoodkenshin.jpg
he is indifferent to them??
http://img189.imageshack.us/i/saitolawfulneutral.jpg
is he proud??
http://img121.imageshack.us/i/lawfulevilshishio.jpg

well, I hope the pics speak enough, have nice games.

Remove the needless / before the final image tag on each and you're golden.

Edit, I still can't see them.