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View Full Version : I keep drifting to Good... [D&D3.5e]



Callista
2010-10-23, 06:25 PM
I keep having this problem with my characters. Whenever I play a character that starts out neutral, they never stay neutral. Never. I start out as a money- or power-hungry type of character? They end up caring too much. I start out as someone who just wants to get by and survive--they find something they're willing to die for. It's inevitable.

My latest character is a wizard who started out LN. Her personality is basically someone who wants to know how the world works; she wants to predict everything, maybe even control it if necessary, so that she'll always know exactly how things are going to turn out. She's scared to death of uncertainty. She also isn't very fond of the gods, getting as close to atheist as you can be in a game where the gods are directly involved, because she understands they're not perfectly dependable--the gods are fallible, so she doesn't trust them. (Learned this when the small-town priest couldn't heal everybody who caught the plague that killed some of her family.) Magic is her response to the issue of how you deal with an uncertain reality--by changing reality. At the end of her origin story she's living with her sister and helping raise two small children; loving children is one of her less neurotic character traits. I added it in almost as an afterthought.

OK, so, looks like normal LN. So what happens? A spell goes bad, and one unanticipated teleport later, she falls in with the usual motley group of adventurers. And inevitably, children end up in danger; namely, a newborn infant. By the end of this particular adventure, I end up having this supposedly ultra-cautious level 4 wizard basically teleport (benign transposition, actually) into melee with an enemy that's a CR 8 because it might let her familiar get away with the Generic Artifact-o-Doom that was at the middle of the whole plot. (We weren't supposed to fight. Nobody expected to survive. We did. One of those situations you get into by being stupid, and get out of by being smarter than you ever expected.)

That was the turning point. I hadn't played this character for so long. It turned out that her protective streak came out way more than I thought it was going to; what's more, now it's getting applied to allies that she trusts, and she's consistently putting others first, believing that (she's the only wizard in the group) that they're her responsibility because she knows a lot more than they do and thinks ahead a lot more. She's flawed; she's got a big head about the magic and she keeps trying to make sense of nonsensical things; she's even somewhat prejudiced. But her actions are easily LG, with emphasis on L, so last session I gave up and changed her alignment to LG.

But this happens to me all the freaking time. Tell me: Why can't I ever play a proper neutral character? Every time but one, the character has skewed to Good within a couple of sessions. (The exception skewed to Evil after an incident involving psychological torture and a brown bear... long story.) It's like the adventuring life just forces my characters to take a side on the L/G axis, whether I like it or not.

kyoryu
2010-10-23, 06:41 PM
Even Neutral folks have friends. Helping your friends out isn't particularly far along the Good axis. In fact, I'd argue that someone that wouldn't ever help out their friends is pretty much pegged to the Evil side. Even Belkar helps his friends out on occasion.

Neutral doesn't mean "never helps anyone." It means "generally acts out of self interest." *Generally*. And keeping friends alive is definitely self-interest, especially since you know they'll likely help keep *you* alive in the future.

teslas
2010-10-23, 06:43 PM
Sounds like you have a problem separating you from your character.

Play a Chaotic Evil Sorcerer for a campaign. You might not live very long, but if you can't delve into that I don't see how you're going to play someone who is 'truly' neutral either.

And just because you're willing to put yourself at risk (as a woman who is familiar with children to boot) for an innocent child doesn't necessarily make you good in of itself.

I've played many a stabby, thieving rogues that would still (begrudgingly) put themselves at risk for a kid. Later that night they've still got no problem plucking out a man's eyes for looking at him wrong. That man might even have children. Screw 'em. He should have thought about them before mean mugging people.

Chaotic Neutral or True Neutral Druids are the best. Burn down the new village in the area after they refused to leave, children and all, to save your forest full of badgers. Hey, you warned them you would use force. (Wait, no you didn't, oh well. Obad-Hai still loves you!)

Psyren
2010-10-23, 06:43 PM
Well, as a general comment, I'll say that alignment isn't a straitjacket. There's nothing wrong with it shifting over the course of an adventure, especially if you're playing a class that doesn't rely on it staying static for their class features to work.

As to the specific action of your wizard, saving your familiar so it could save the Macguffin is good, but not quite as holy as you make it out to be. Your character definitely has a vested interest in keeping the world around, otherwise what would she study? So based on that lone example I would say you could stay LN. I'd need more info to agree on an alignment shift.

Yuki Akuma
2010-10-23, 06:44 PM
The fact that you can't help but be decent to people isn't exactly a bad sign.

Dienekes
2010-10-23, 06:45 PM
Exact opposite happened to me when I started RPing. Whenever I start out good my character would take less and less good actions as I grew apathetic to the problems of those around me.

I got passed this by calling it character development.

teslas
2010-10-23, 06:50 PM
As to the specific action of your wizard, saving your familiar so it could save the Macguffin is good, but not quite as holy as you make it out to be. Your character definitely has a vested interest in keeping the world around, otherwise what would she study? So based on that lone example I would say you could stay LN. I'd need more info to agree on an alignment shift.

I agree. Alignment shifting due to very complex actions is something that I am very slow to do.

Hell, even quite a number of very evil acts, especially against evil people, has no real danger of shifting you out of a Neutral alignment in many situations.

It sounds like you might be micromanaging a little too much. Neutral is a very, very forgiving alignment.

Urpriest
2010-10-23, 06:55 PM
One thing about Neutral characters: they don't have to be apathetic. You seem to set up your neutral characters as undecided and made neutral by their character flaws. Why not make a character where neutrality really is taking a stand: a LN character who believes that the law must be harsh in order to survive, or a N druid who values plants and animals above people? Rather than telling a sad story about how the world betrayed them to make them that way, make them come from a well-adjusted childhood in which they simply rationally decided that that was the best course of action. Argue with a few Libertarians on the internet and you'll get the feeling down right.

Another issue, though: adventures generally involve doing Good stuff. To be a proper team player and contribute to the success of the party you end up doing Good things just because not doing them would be disruptive. If you really want to stick to a character/alignment, sometimes you have to make disruptive choices that stop your side from "winning". It' up to you to decide whether that's worth it.

Greenish
2010-10-23, 06:56 PM
Let the character to define the alignment, not the other way around.

Also, play something evil (with minor "e", since just for evuls large hams aren't quite so instructive), and try to get a grasp of the character and it's motivations.

Tengu_temp
2010-10-23, 06:58 PM
The fact that you can't help but be decent to people isn't exactly a bad sign.

I agree. If you can't help but play good characters, don't force yourself to play something else. And especially don't play an evil character just to learn how to play one - you should only play characters you enjoy playing.

Callista
2010-10-23, 07:13 PM
Yeah, Neutrals are definitely loyal to their friends. The Neutral characters in our party are loyal--even the crazy barbarian never targets his drunken fistfights on anybody he actually likes. If they weren't loyal, it wouldn't be a decent party. If that were all--if she were just protecting her friends, and only her friends plus any random kids, I'd say neutral and be done with it. But when you get to the point that you're considering yourself expendable because you care about other people more and feel like you'd be a total failure if you didn't protect them... you're verging on Good. The "L" part is still the strongest part of the alignment, though.

Evil might be interesting, but we already have one guy doing that. We caught him killing people and now have a Mark of Justice on him. He's plotting to kill the guy with the command word, and both have been encouraged to make backup characters.

Marnath
2010-10-23, 07:15 PM
Obligatory links: Lawful Neutral (http://easydamus.com/lawfulneutral.html), True Neutral (http://easydamus.com/trueneutral.html). Basically, neutral people are kind of mercenary in their outlooks, they don't go looking to save people for the heck of it but they'll do just about anything if it benefits them. Saving your familiar and the uber artifact of doom are definately things you'd do to promote your self well being.

elonin
2010-10-23, 07:17 PM
Your character reminds me of a few films that Rutger Hauer was in. Neutrally aligned people who can't help but being good when the rubber hits the road. Not that that is a bad thing. Your example was too specific for me to say though, Anakin was being evil in his response to the sand people. Just to say that if she went to extremes with defending the infant (say leveling a villiage) that wasn't a good act.

true_shinken
2010-10-23, 07:20 PM
It's very nice to enjoy playing heroes. I'm betting most DMs would want you as a player.

Callista
2010-10-23, 07:28 PM
Obligatory links: Lawful Neutral, True Neutral. Basically, neutral people are kind of mercenary in their outlooks, they don't go looking to save people for the heck of it but they'll do just about anything if it benefits them. Saving your familiar and the uber artifact of doom are definately things you'd do to promote your self well being.Huh, I guess that didn't get across right. She was actually putting herself in lethal danger in the hopes that the familiar might get away with the aforementioned artifact. Happened like so: Because my character and two other party members refused to bargain with evidently powerful demonic-type spellcasters (homebrew thing, I think), the party is forced to fight instead. My character and her familiar are preparing to throw magic missiles from safely back in the corridor. Gauging the strength of the enemy and figuring we can't win, my character sends her familiar up into melee range of the enemy and has the familiar grab the artifact (it's a vial of blood--long story--has to do with vampires). Then she casts the Benign Transposition spell on herself and her cat, putting her in melee range and the cat safely back in the corridor, and orders the cat to run. (The spell stopped either her or the familiar from being taken down by an AoO while retreating.) Luckily the threatening enemy was soon thereafter grappled by the party monk.

A cautious LN would reason, "I can't get that artifact away without dying; therefore the logical thing is to grab my companions, cut my losses, and see if we can take this guy down some other way." Or else they'd take the chance that the familiar would die trying to retreat. It may also be significant that the enemy wasn't even threatening my character's hometown--it was just some random town they were passing through, with no personal connections involved.

So, yeah, someone who did something like that could conceivably be neutral. It's just that when this kind of thing happens repeatedly, and becomes a track record for the character, you have to reevaluate.

Marnath
2010-10-23, 07:32 PM
A cautious LN would reason, "I can't get that artifact away without dying; therefore the logical thing is to grab my companions, cut my losses, and see if we can take this guy down some other way." It may also be significant that the enemy wasn't even threatening my character's hometown--it was just some random town they were passing through, with no personal connections involved.

So, yeah, someone who did something like that could conceivably be neutral. It's just that when this kind of thing happens repeatedly, and becomes a track record for the character, you have to reevaluate.

I'd actually say thats a move toward chaos, not good. Rather than thinking about cutting losses, maybe the thought is "I bet I can get that blood away from them if I pull this stunt...If i'm lucky Monk Mc.fists will get in his way long enough for me to run like the Devils are after me."

Callista
2010-10-23, 08:25 PM
Ehh... I dunno, it was just the best strategy I could think of at the moment.

Fleeing would've meant
--We had a chance of getting out alive
--Forfeiting the infant's life and probably dooming the town
--Letting the enemy do various evil things before we tracked their plane-hopping butts down and killed them properly.

Whereas, if the familiar got away with the blood while we were fighting:
--My character would probably die; others quite possibly would as well
--If we died, we might get a chance to kill one or more of them first
--If the familiar managed to flee and hide (at this point the cat has INT 6, dumb but not extremely so), we might save the infant and possibly warn the town. But if the familiar failed, then the villains might get off scot-free.

So, yeah, it was impulsive... chaotic good, I suppose. Versus the cold-blooded but safer action of fleeing and tracking them down later, which would probably have been a LN choice.

kyoryu
2010-10-23, 09:04 PM
So, yeah, it was impulsive... chaotic good, I suppose. Versus the cold-blooded but safer action of fleeing and tracking them down later, which would probably have been a LN choice.

Well, burning down towns certainly upsets the order of things, so you could argue that keeping the town around was a Lawful act... you cared more about the disruption than the individuals, etc.

mucat
2010-10-23, 09:13 PM
If I were inclined to argue about alignment, I would say the character could still well be Lawful Neutral. Caring about the infant's life doesn't mark her as Good; most people, including quite a few evil ones, would go out of their way to save a baby. The fact that she was willing to put her own life at extreme risk to do it might mean she's Good...or might just mean that she's brave, and willing to stick her neck out where most people might just say "I wish I could help."

However, I don't think it really matters what the character's alignment was. I assume that when you designed the character, you weren't thinking, "L and N are my favorite letters, so I want them on the character sheet." More likely you were thinking "I want to play a cautious, conservative borderline control freak", and instead you found yourself with a reckless swashbuckler.

And yes, it happens to me too. When I've been playing a character for a while, and then read back over the initial background and personality synopsis I wrote for them, I'm often amazed how differently I once expected that character to turn out.

To an extent, this is fine. Fluid, organic characters are always more fun than static ones. But if you find that character traits you were really looking forward to playing keep getting lost in the shuffle, and all your characters start acting the same, then pick a trait to focus on each session. Write it on your hand with Sharpie: "cautious control freak". Make a pact that each time your die roll is divisible by 5, you will find a way for the character to do something memorably inflexible.

And if in the middle of play, you find that you realize you really want your wizard to take a wild risk to rescue the infant, do it. But do it for a reason that is consistent with her personality. Why would a predictability-junkie pull that crazy cat-switch trick? Because she had a plan here, dammit, and things are not going as planned! Watching the situation spin out of her control is intolerable, and before she knows what she is doing, she pulls this crazy reckless stunt in a desperate bid to put things back like she'd planned them!

Have her yell something to that effect as she acts. Maybe she gets a huge adrenaline rush because it worked, and exults that she's in control again. And then breaks down trembling later because she realizes how stupidly heroic she was; now she's afraid she can't even predict her own mind, let alone the rest of the world.

She still did all the same stuff, but in a way that reinforces the personality traits you wanted to give her, rather than diluting them. To your fellow players, it will be more clear than ever that your wizard loves predictability. And that trait will be cemented in your own mind, too, making it more automatic on your part in the future.

Kylarra
2010-10-23, 09:35 PM
I think part of the problem is that you're seeing the alignment as a straitjacket with only one response which is appropriate to it. Multiple people of the same alignment will react differently depending on their personalities. The end result may be the same, or at least the motivations might be similar, but the actions taken can differ greatly.

Shatteredtower
2010-10-23, 09:52 PM
For some reason, Callista's dilemma reminds me of Dustin Hoffman's character in Hero, a guy that always advocated a neutral to selfish outlook, but who kept putting himself in harm's way for others in need. Since he was otherwise an unlikeable fellow guilty of several underhanded practices, he might be a good case study for those trying to play the neutral soul prone to selfless actions.

hamishspence
2010-10-24, 04:58 AM
It really depends on whether you consider alignment traits exclusive to an alignment or not.

If you take the view that neutral and evil people would never, or hardly ever, help a stranger at their own expense, then a character who does do that (and never harms the innocent) will drift to Good.

If, on the other hand, you don't consider harming The Innocent a necessary condition of Evil alignment, then you can have an Evil character whose evil deeds are confined to Not Innocent victims- and who regularly risks their own neck to help Innocent strangers- with their evil deeds outweighing their Good ones.

And, if their evil deeds are more minor ones, they might be a "flexible Neutral" character, as Heroes of Horror suggests.

FelixG
2010-10-24, 05:32 AM
Watch firefly, take a good long hard look at Jayne Cobb.

he is perfect neutral!

Zoe: "...Jayne, a little help here?!"
Jayne: "I didnt fight in no war."

Mal: "Why didnt ya turn on me Jayne, you had the opening."
Jayne: "Money wasnt good enough."
Mal: "What happens when it is?"
Jayne: "Well, that will be an interestin day."

Also some of us are just niched into a particular alignment outlook, i personally lean toward LE with some characters.

The way i broke out of the habit was to play lawful good and true neutral characters. People saying its not a bad thing obviously have a different outlook than me.

its more fun to have range with your characters, be able to play anything, than to be stuck in one mindset.

DragonOfUndeath
2010-10-24, 05:38 AM
Also some of us are just niched into a particular alignment outlook, i personally lean toward LE with some characters.

i second this. some people just play LE or CN or NG and find it hard to do otherwise although your character seems pretty LN to me

Drascin
2010-10-24, 05:46 AM
Personally, I find that my characters also tend to drift to Good - the only way I can manage from going that direction is to play an utter bastard of a character, so that it feels more like a supervillain than anything else and so it's very easy to keep him in the same track - just think of outrageous For the Evulz and do it. Real neutral is something I have trouble with.

hamishspence
2010-10-24, 05:46 AM
Hell, even quite a number of very evil acts, especially against evil people, has no real danger of shifting you out of a Neutral alignment in many situations.

It sounds like you might be micromanaging a little too much. Neutral is a very, very forgiving alignment.

Where's it say that? Some people have theorized that only a willingness to commit evil acts against the innocent will change your alignment to evil- but the PHB doesn't actually state that.

And Champions of Ruin explicitly states the reverse- that regularly committing evil acts will change alignment to evil- and says nothing about the reasons having to be evil- or the victims having to be Not Evil.

In the 2nd ed DMG, it suggests that one evil act (burning a plague village), done with a good motivation (to contain the outbreak and so protect others from it) was enough to change alignment straight from Good to Evil.

So it can work that way. Even in 3.5 DMG, it suggests there are exceptions to the general rule that alignment changes are slow.

Iceciro
2010-10-24, 07:45 AM
I think the real question you need to ask yourself is:

Are you there to play an alignment... or a character?

As a DM and a Player I find it far more important to make a character who is fun to play, interacts well with the party, and is memorable, than it is to make a LN character, or a LE, CG, TN, etc. You're not slipping to Evil, and most of the party isn't Evil, so if the circumstances and character development lead to you playing a good character, or a LN-Leaning-Good character, that's not a bad thing. More importantly, will the moments that your character made such decisions be memorable to the players and advance the story in a good way, and are you enjoying the character?

Alignment is an imperfect system on a good day. If your character isn't bound by class alignment restrictions, drift is just a sign of good character development.

Tengu_temp
2010-10-24, 09:24 AM
Watch firefly, take a good long hard look at Jayne Cobb.

he is perfect neutral!


Ha, no. Jayne is an evil character played in a non-stupid way. He is loyal to his crew and doesn't go out of his way to cause havoc for the evulz, but he's also a selfish, bullying brute who has no qualms against hurting those who are not his friends. He has redeeming qualities, but you don't have to be an inhuman monster to be evil.

Starbuck_II
2010-10-24, 09:26 AM
Mal: "Why didnt ya turn on me Jayne, you had the opening."
Jayne: "Money wasnt good enough."
Mal: "What happens when it is?"
Jayne: "Well, that will be an interestin' day."



Actually, at this point while he says the money is enough, but he was really saying "I love you, Mal".

:smallbiggrin:

Iceciro
2010-10-24, 10:19 AM
Ha, no. Jayne is an evil character played in a non-stupid way. He is loyal to his crew and doesn't go out of his way to cause havoc for the evulz, but he's also a selfish, bullying brute who has no qualms against hurting those who are not his friends. He has redeeming qualities, but you don't have to be an inhuman monster to be evil.

And if more players would play their Evil PCs that way, I wouldn't have to convince every DM ever that a LE PC is not going to break their game when played correctly.

Tengu_temp
2010-10-24, 11:27 AM
And if more players would play their Evil PCs that way, I wouldn't have to convince every DM ever that a LE PC is not going to break their game when played correctly.

Indeed. Jayne is a perfect example of how to play an evil character in an otherwise good and neutral party.

mucat
2010-10-24, 12:05 PM
Indeed. Jayne is a perfect example of how to play an evil character in an otherwise good and neutral party.

For that matter, Mal is a fine example of thinks-he's-neutral-but-keeps-drifting-back-to-good. So one solution to Callista's dilemma is just "let the character drift; she'll still be interesting."

Zoe, to me, is a great example of a firmly neutral character who rarely drifts much. She's intensely loyal to friends and loved ones and will risk her life for them without hesitation. She's less likely to stick her neck out for a stranger, and sometimes gets exasperated when Mal risks his crew's well-being to help an outsider.

But to try to keep this on-topic to Callista's concern, rather than drifting onto an alignments-in-Firefly tangent: Zoe would totally have saved that baby from the vampires. So would Jayne, probably. And Zoe would continue to be neutral, and Jayne evil; they're just not sociopaths who could walk away without caring. And once they decide, "all right, dammit, this is my problem," they're brave enough to act on it.

teslas
2010-10-24, 12:42 PM
I agree. Alignment shifting due to very complex actions is something that I am very slow to do.

This is the most important part of my post.


Where's it say that? Some people have theorized that only a willingness to commit evil acts against the innocent will change your alignment to evil- but the PHB doesn't actually state that.

I'd agree with this if it's only for the joy of doing the acts because they are evil or destructive. If it's kept in check but manifests itself regularly as some sort of paranoia and/or influences decisions that have many more than one ethical viewpoint and a hodgepodge of motivations, then that's a different story.



And Champions of Ruin explicitly states the reverse- that regularly committing evil acts will change alignment to evil- and says nothing about the reasons having to be evil- or the victims having to be Not Evil.

And if the person is also committing seemingly selfless acts of charity or altruistic loyalty at nearly the same intervals? Let's look at torture. Lawful good performing torture? No, never. Neutral good? Probably not.

How about a chaotic good character beating the blood out of an evil character in a very slow and painful way. He then gives his body back to his enemies just so that person accepts being brought back to life, so he can sneak in and slowly stab him to death again in a sadistic way in order to spread his name to weaken his enemies' morale. This isn't THAT evil, is it? What if the sadistic aspect is only for effect and the guy actually dislikes doing it, but it is necessary for maximum effect. What if he made a practice of such things in order to become known in a large, large area in order to deter any future outbreaks of organized crime?



In the 2nd ed DMG, it suggests that one evil act (burning a plague village), done with a good motivation (to contain the outbreak and so protect others from it) was enough to change alignment straight from Good to Evil.

I'd disagree with this completely. Chaotic neutral druids would do this in a heartbeat. True neutral druids would surely consider it as an option. You could even make the argument that Lawful Neutral druids would just as easily decide the same thing if the plague was a supernatural event threatening the greater area. They might be horribly remorseful but would they have to worry about being completely and unarguably forsaken by their god or by other druids of all non-evil alignments? No. Ridiculous.


At any rate, at the end of the day, alignment is a thing to enhance the game, not pin it down into binary states of good or evil for every act. Complex actions can have a multitude of influences, and if your DM wants you to have fun he'll consider this. As a player you need to know WHY your character decides to do things, because a good DM may often ask.

Now, simple things, like stabbing commoners for fun and giving their gold to some charity because you have a good sense of ironic humor-- that's a one-way trip to Evil-ville.

Callista
2010-10-24, 12:53 PM
I've been thinking lately--Y'know, the times I played evil characters, I had no trouble keeping them evil. They didn't drift anywhere, whereas I've had one neutral character so far going to Evil. So maybe my problem is just that I can't seem to stop my Neutral characters from taking some kind of stance, eventually. I don't seem to have that problem along the L/C axis; I get drift there too but it's random which way it goes.

So, yeah, my characters never drift to Neutral--always away from it.

I dunno, maybe I'm just over-thinking it. I don't really think all that hard about alignment when I design a character; I just kind of design a person and tag an alignment on afterward. Maybe this particular character just had the wrong tag to begin with.

I think my mistake in this case was making her both cautious and protective. Someone who's instinctively protective of other people doesn't tend to be particularly cautious when those other people are in danger. If I drop the caution (not that she's ever used it anyhow) and just have her analyze things to a ridiculous amount--she's already known to lecture on magical theory mid-battle--then I think I'll have less of a conflict. She can definitely keep the control-freak thing; that fits right in with everything else. If she is taking carefully researched and calculated risks instead of running in headlong like her chaotic counterpart would, then that'd stay in character without giving me fits whenever I feel like she really should be more cautious than this.

Marnath
2010-10-24, 12:59 PM
I'd agree with this if it's only for the joy of doing the acts because they are evil or destructive. If it's kept in check but manifests itself regularly as some sort of paranoia and/or influences decisions that have many more than one ethical viewpoint and a hodgepodge of motivations, then that's a different story.

I think that eventually doing evil darkens your soul, no matter what your original intentions you do eventually become truly lost in the darkness.



And if the person is also committing seemingly selfless acts of charity or altruistic loyalty at nearly the same intervals? Let's look at torture. Lawful good performing torture? No, never. Neutral good? Probably not.

How about a chaotic good character beating the blood out of an evil character in a very slow and painful way. He then gives his body back to his enemies just so that person accepts being brought back to life, so he can sneak in and slowly stab him to death again in a sadistic way in order to spread his name to weaken his enemies' morale. This isn't THAT evil, is it? What if the sadistic aspect is only for effect and the guy actually dislikes doing it, but it is necessary for maximum effect. What if he made a practice of such things in order to become known in a large, large area in order to deter any future outbreaks of organized crime?

...that's so CE it makes my head spin. There's absolutely no way you can justify a good or neutral person doing that. NONE.



I'd disagree with this completely. Chaotic neutral druids would do this in a heartbeat. True neutral druids would surely consider it as an option. You could even make the argument that Lawful Neutral druids would just as easily decide the same thing if the plague was a supernatural event threatening the greater area. They might be horribly remorseful but would they have to worry about being completely and unarguably forsaken by their god or by other druids of all non-evil alignments? No. Ridiculous.


I agree. Torching a plague village to save the rest of a nation is the epitome of a neutral act. Hell, even a LG might come to the point where this becomes his last option, if it is especially virulent, they cannot be saved, and thousands/tens of thousands of lives hang in the balance.

Callista
2010-10-24, 01:07 PM
Heh, yeah. Anyone whose personality could be called "CG" wouldn't torture an enemy. If he needed the enemy to look like he'd been tortured, then he'd probably knock the guy out, do what needed to be done, and bluff him into thinking he had amnesia because it was so horrible. I mean, there are almost always other options; and your CG types would just be too compassionate to even try it. Chaotics will focus on individuals--CG on all individuals, CNs on those they're loyal to, and CE on themselves. That single-person outlook just doesn't permit torture in someone who's Good--not without regretting it severely and spending years trying to make up for it somehow. It'd feel like you were torturing yourself.

Oddly enough, I could see some LG (slight Good, strong Law) characters resorting to torture in a very few specific circumstances. Let's say they come from a society where torture is a normal part of the justice system; and let's say that they haven't got access to mind-reading magic. And let's say that the prisoner in question is the key to saving, oh... fifty people or more, or even the character's home kingdom. In that case--yes, I could see it, for a few characters. They would start going to LN for it; but it wouldn't be out of character for a very few LGs. (Actually--*points to sig*--I don't think it would've been out of character for Miko even pre-fall. Wouldn't have been "pre-fall" for long, of course.) This is because the Lawful outlook tends to be big-picture; they'll look past the single individual in front of them and care just as much about the fifty people they can't see, or the kingdom that's really just a political construct. They're much more rational than emotional, in many cases. So, yeah, with LG I could see just the barest room for exceptions in the "Good people don't torture" rule.

Uncertainty
2010-10-24, 01:11 PM
How about a chaotic good character beating the blood out of an evil character in a very slow and painful way. He then gives his body back to his enemies just so that person accepts being brought back to life, so he can sneak in and slowly stab him to death again in a sadistic way in order to spread his name to weaken his enemies' morale. This isn't THAT evil, is it? What if the sadistic aspect is only for effect and the guy actually dislikes doing it, but it is necessary for maximum effect. What if he made a practice of such things in order to become known in a large, large area in order to deter any future outbreaks of organized crime?


...that's so CE it makes my head spin. There's absolutely no way you can justify a good or neutral person doing that. NONE.

THIS!!!

Chaotic != "I do whatever I want, and my motivations make my alignment." CE (And LE for that matter) characters can still have completely good motivations, as evidenced by countless examples in literature.

Marnath
2010-10-24, 01:15 PM
I'd be wary of saying you can torture and remain LG, however I still think there's probably a threshold between beating your prisoner and "real torture." No, don't get on my case, I know beating is torture in real life. I'm just saying as far as D&D goes, you might be all right keeping yourself to only that, as a last resort. Even then doing it too much is a ticket to neutrality.

mucat
2010-10-24, 01:57 PM
I've been thinking lately--Y'know, the times I played evil characters, I had no trouble keeping them evil. They didn't drift anywhere, whereas I've had one neutral character so far going to Evil. So maybe my problem is just that I can't seem to stop my Neutral characters from taking some kind of stance, eventually. I don't seem to have that problem along the L/C axis; I get drift there too but it's random which way it goes.

You could even keep the caution, if it's a trait you enjoy playing...just have it apply to whatever goal she's pursuing, rather than just to her personal safety. So when she's trying to protect herself, she'll have layer upon layer of carefully thought-out backup plans to make sure she can escape any danger...and when she's trying to protect someone else, she'll have equally elaborate plans for their safety. When her goal is to attain some lost bit of arcane knowledge, she'll be just as meticulous in planning to assure it can't sip through her fingers, even if some of her backup plans involve personal danger.

The last-ditch Transposition to save the child would still be a disturbing experience for her...not because she placed herself in danger, but because her initial plans had failed so badly that she had to improvise a risky gambit to salvage her goals. Her solution, of course, could be to plan all the more carefully in the future...

hamishspence
2010-10-24, 03:19 PM
The easydamus alignment system:

http://easydamus.com/chaoticgood.html

which is based on D&D alignment from all the editions (plus a bit of Palladium alignment)

suggests, for Good alignment, "will not torture" (though CG gets "will rough people up for info, but never torture them")

And for Neutral alignments it's "will torture for info- but never for pleasure"

By implication therefore, if a person does torture for pleasure (even if they claim to be doing it to deter crime, and never harm the innocent) then they are much more likely to be of Evil alignment than Neutral alignment.

That said, a person might have a tendency to do one or two things that an Evil character "would never do" (like make sacrifices to help others, on a regular basis) along with the things that a Good or Neutral character "would never do"- so it becomes a question of which is more important.

true_shinken
2010-10-24, 03:49 PM
How about a chaotic good character beating the blood out of an evil character in a very slow and painful way. He then gives his body back to his enemies just so that person accepts being brought back to life, so he can sneak in and slowly stab him to death again in a sadistic way in order to spread his name to weaken his enemies' morale. This isn't THAT evil, is it?
Of course that is evil. You are being cruel to others for personal gain.

What if the sadistic aspect is only for effect and the guy actually dislikes doing it, but it is necessary for maximum effect.
It makes no difference. He still did it.

What if he made a practice of such things in order to become known in a large, large area in order to deter any future outbreaks of organized crime?
Doesn't matter. It's still evil. Alignment is not that subjective, not even in the extremely subjective BoED.

Tvtyrant
2010-10-24, 04:04 PM
For instance, the Comedian is famous for doing CE things for the side of "justice." He is even considered a hero by some, despite kill a woman 9 months pregnant with his own child. He is evil because he is evil, even if his actions are mostly for the good of society. And he is chaotic, he doesn't follow any rules or laws, he just helps society because that gives him the greatest leeway.

Seffbasilisk
2010-10-24, 11:44 PM
If you're concerned with staying Neutral, I've had Druids who would suddenly go about firebombing lumber camps, killing cowboys, and razing guard posts, to preserve their inner balance.

I've had other characters who do good, but for Evil motives.

Callista
2010-10-25, 07:40 AM
Uhh... firebombing things!? With people still in them? How is that still neutral? :smallconfused:

silvadel
2010-10-26, 01:12 AM
Slipping INTO LG... That is kind of scary just by definition as a lot of people have trouble staying LG. The neutral alignments tend to be friendly to drift. Just because you are acting good quite a bit doesnt mean that you have to cross the line from LN tending towards G to LG.

Things that you do on your off-time could be enough to keep you N and considering yourself N can keep you N.

At any rate, the LN powers do not care so much about your good-evil axis so long as you are staunchly lawful.

---

As a DM I am a lot more likely to shift someone out of LN on the good-evil axis if they arent lawful enough. Someone who is 50 parts lawful and 10 parts good is fine for being LN. It is when someone is 6 parts lawful and 10 parts good that there is a danger of alignment shift.

If your characters primary focus is law and you happen to do a significant amount of good but not as much as your law you are fine to keep calling yourself LN.

Callista
2010-10-30, 12:29 AM
Today's session was... interesting.

We learned something: Our DM does not hesitate to let us encounter enemies that can easily kill us. Here's how we learned it.

The party bard has gone off exploring on his own. (This never ends well.) He walks into a room where a big book lies on the floor of a room. Also in this room are two red eyes about thirty feet up in the air. The entire room is dark with the only dim light coming in through the door, so the bard can't tell where the eyes are coming from. He goes and picks up the book and starts leafing through it, ignoring the obviously large, scary owner of the glowing red eyes.

The creature in question starts roaring, so we head on over there ourselves. With us are two NPCs who are pulling their own weight but also very young--mid teens. I didn't think to ask for a Knowledge check to identify the creature in the dark, but everybody knows it's bad news so we start yelling for the bard to retreat. Said bard decides to stand there trying to read the book (in the pitch dark). Not the brightest crayon in the box.

Next thing we know, we're in the Underworld waiting to be shuffled off to our respective afterlives, having taken 200-some damage each from a breath weapon approximately equal to that of an ancient dragon. My character now feels responsible for having gotten not just her party but the two teenagers killed, because she should've known that the monster was dangerous when she saw it. (Oddly enough this is not the case; she probably couldn't have made the Knowledge DC, though I don't know what the monster was, and so don't know exactly how many HD it had.)

The DM doesn't want to TPK us with an out-of-depth monster, so we end up getting called to the court of what we can only assume is probably an undead lord of some kind living nearby. He promptly offers us a return trip to the Prime Material (as ghosts) if we agree to slaughter the entire population of a peaceful monastery; so we say yes, double-cross him by winning over his agent who was supposed to keep an eye on us (he was in a similar predicament), and get the clerics at the monastery in question to sever the connection between us and the aforementioned undead lord. (Needless to say, we now have a powerful enemy.)

My character's reaction to all of this is a major-league freakout. Not only has she failed; she's been forced to rely on clerics, of all things, to save her and her friends.

But this isn't over. To complicate things: When the aforementioned connection is severed, our souls snap back in time to a single round before we died.

So this time, instead of standing there and yelling for the bard to get his lute-playing butt out of the room, everybody's ready to run for it and leave the bard behind. Cue blue-screen for the wizard, who impulsively casts Benign Transposition to save the terminally stupid bard, fully expecting to be roasted in approximately six seconds. (Additionally: the bard has the book which we most likely really need, and I don't want it burned.)

Turns out that was the solution. The big monster had been tied to the book; and the DM had expected that we would just snatch the book and run for it. The monster vanished as soon as the book (which was in the bard's hands and teleported along with him) left the room. (The book in question is a major plot device artifact, and the big monster in question was apparently dismissed when the book was moved out of the room.) So in the end I did the only thing that could possibly have saved everyone; that makes me as a player very happy; but the character is pretty much a bundle of nerves who can't figure out whether she has been subconsciously brilliant, saintly, or just suicidal. And for the life of me, I can't figure it out, either.

Benign Transposition should come with a warning label: WARNING: This spell can be used to get INTO danger, too!

(My wizard has what amounts to a wand of it, in case you're wondering; it's a very useful spell, and has been used quite often for everything from breaking someone out of jail to tactical positioning during battle. It's just when party members are in danger and the wizard has the ability to get them out--at a cost--that things get... interesting.)

mucat
2010-10-30, 12:41 AM
Callista, that is awesome. And I feel for your poor wizard who, as hard as she tries, just can't get the hang of selfishness.

Who cares what alignment she is? She'll probably never figure it out herself. But she's great!

Marnath
2010-10-30, 12:49 AM
That wizard is awesome. Quite the risk taker. I'm not sure if thats really brave or really foolish. :smallbiggrin:

hamishspence
2010-10-30, 03:33 AM
Of course that is evil. You are being cruel to others for personal gain.

Being cruel to others could be seen as "debasing them"

tricky problem:

"Character is willing to debase and destroy the Not-Innocent for personal gain and personal pleasure"- has done so- will almost certainly continue to do so since their attitude has not changed"

"Character is not willing to debase or destroy the Innocent for personal gain or personal pleasure"

Is Character Evil?

I tend to say yes- but by the strictest reading of the original PHB statement about Evil, it does not automatically follow.

My personal view is that

"All beings willing to debase or destroy the innocent for personal gain or personal pleasure are Evil"

however

"Not all Evil beings are willing to debase or destroy the innocent for personal gain or personal pleasure"


Some people may insist that it doesn't work that way though.

true_shinken
2010-10-30, 09:20 AM
Some people may insist that it doesn't work that way though.
I agree with you, though. Champions of Ruin and Exemplars of Evil seem to agree with you as well.

Callista
2010-10-30, 11:11 AM
As do I. There are quite a lot of fictional characters who are evil and target only other evil creatures. But just because their targets are evil doesn't mean they deserve to die; nor does it mean the person doing them is doing so for a Good reason--he could just be seeking a socially acceptable outlet for his homicidal tendencies. Smart sociopaths do this all the time: find a socially acceptable way to do what you want to do, and you're golden. Similar are the characters in almost entirely Evil societies. Drow, for example, may live a life only killing other drow and the odd goblin. Doesn't make 'em any less evil. And yeah, this is a good way to make "evil character in non-evil party" work out.

hamishspence
2010-10-30, 01:04 PM
Champions of Ruin and Exemplars of Evil seem to agree with you as well.

I don't think Oracle_Hunter will ever agree though. Still, one never knows.

Ironically Exemplars of Evil had one example of someone who was

"willing to harm the innocent whom letting live would compromise their mission of revenge"

who wasn't evil- though they weren't statted out, they were simply an example of a "sympathetic villain".

They were listed as LN: page 10:


Stalking the streets at night, she tracked down a handful of the soldiers and butchered them, carving the word "vengeance" into their chests before hoisting them up on signposts for all to see.

This aggrieved woman will not stop until she kills every soldier who destroyed her home and family, and she will not allow anyone to stand in her way. She regrets having been forced to murder a few drunks, prostitutes, and other poor souls who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they were witnesses, and sparing them would have compromised her righteous mission.

Killing "poor souls who were in the wrong place at the wrong time" purely because they were witnesses, and sparing them would have compromised the mission of vengeance, seems like stretching the border between LN and LE to its absolute limit.

true_shinken
2010-10-30, 01:39 PM
Killing "poor souls who were in the wrong place at the wrong time" purely because they were witnesses, and sparing them would have compromised the mission of vengeance, seems like stretching the border between LN and LE to its absolute limit.
I see that as lawful evil, actually.

mucat
2010-10-30, 01:52 PM
Killing "poor souls who were in the wrong place at the wrong time" purely because they were witnesses, and sparing them would have compromised the mission of vengeance, seems like stretching the border between LN and LE to its absolute limit.

No. It's so far over the border into evil that you can't even see the border from where that character is standing.

EDIT: And the Exemplars of Evil book which you say listed her as Lawful Neutral would lose all credibility on alignment issues, just from botching that one case so badly. Except that I'd never heard of it, so I wasn't giving it any credibility in the first place...

MyLifeMyMusical
2010-10-30, 01:59 PM
Neutral is a very, very forgiving alignment.

This made me smile. :smallsmile:

hamishspence
2010-10-30, 02:25 PM
EDIT: And the Exemplars of Evil book which you say listed her as Lawful Neutral would lose all credibility on alignment issues, just from botching that one case so badly. Except that I'd never heard of it, so I wasn't giving it any credibility in the first place...

Technically a case could be made that:

"she is not a character who "debases or destroys the innocent for fun or profit" so she is not evil"

however I personally would disagree with that position.

The book focuses primarily on villains rather than evil characters in the early chapters, before villains are actually statted out (pointing out some villains can be non-evil)- however some (not all) of what it says makes sense.

For the sympathetic villain:


Tactics: A sympathetic villain is a reluctant enemy. She follows her path because she must, not out of a diabolical need to spread malfeasance. However, she is willing and able to set aside her reservations in pursuit of her agenda, and she accepts that people might be hurt or killed along the way. She sees any such events as unfortunate by necessary consequences of her actions, nothing more.

The non-evil villain is an entirely different category from the sympathetic villain though:


Disadvantages: For a non-evil villain to be effective, he must believe his actions are correct. At heart, he is a good character, and he does what he thinks is good. No matter how zealously he strives for his goal, no matter how misguided or closed-minded his actions, he will not commit atrocities- at least, not unless he can rationalize them.

Odds are that if the PCs can show a non-evil villain the error of his ways, he will stop doing whatever is causing the trouble. That turn of events might be good for the campaign setting, but it caan kill the drama and excitement for the players. To avoid this plot development, make sure that the villain can justify his actions. His motives should be sound, even if his objectives are not.

and it's possible, even probable, that many sympathetic villains will be evil.


No. It's so far over the border into evil that you can't even see the border from where that character is standing...

Since the descriptions of the characters are phrased almost as if they were at the start of the events that set them on their paths, it might be that they were only those alignments then- and have changed.

For the vengeance-driven character, it was:


Although she was two days late, Michella Crest (LN female human ranger 10) could see that the tendrils of smoke still snaked through the trees. She raced through the forest until she reached the ruins of her village. Ignoring the charred and skeletal remains of friends and neighbours, she headed for the remnants of her home. There she found her husband clutching her daughter in the cold embrace of the dead.

From that moment on, Michella vowed that she would not rest until ever last soldier had paid in blood for these shattered lives. She left the frontier and returned to the barony, where the lord's men were bound to be hiding.

from then on it carries on as I described in the quote in my previous post.

mucat
2010-10-30, 05:16 PM
Since the descriptions of the characters are phrased almost as if they were at the start of the events that set them on their paths, it might be that they were only those alignments then- and have changed.

For the vengeance-driven character, it was:


Although she was two days late, Michella Crest (LN female human ranger 10) could see that the tendrils of smoke still snaked through the trees...[snip]

from then on it carries on as I described in the quote in my previous post.
It makes a lot more sense now that you've explained it this way. She was Lawful Neutral when the whole series of events started. By the point described earlier where she is murdering random bystanders, she is clearly quite evil.

true_shinken
2010-10-30, 05:17 PM
It makes a lot more sense now that you've explained it this way. She was Lawful Neutral when the whole series of events started. By the point described earlier where she is murdering random bystanders, she is clearly quite evil.

I agree.
Also, I must recomend Exemplars of Evil. Very nice book.

hamishspence
2010-10-31, 04:01 PM
There are other examples though in Exemplars of Evil- phrased in similar ways. I'm not sure if they all qualify as "alignment at the start of events, prior to changing alignment, which they have done by the present"

Some hypotheses:

1: It is possible for there to exist Evil characters who are unwilling to commit the subset of acts "Harm the Innocent"

2: It is possible for there to exist Neutral characters who, while having qualms, are willing to commit the subset of acts "Destroy the Innocent" but, are unwilling to commit the subset of acts "Debase or destroy the Innocent for fun or profit"

3: It is impossible for there to exist Neutral characters who are willing to commit the subset of acts "Debase or destroy the innocent for fun or profit"

4: It is impossible for there to exist Evil characters who are unwilling to commit the subset of acts "Debase or destroy the Innocent for fun or profit"

5: It is impossible for there to exist Neutral characters who have destroyed the innocent and are willing to continue doing so (but only for reasons that are not Fun or Profit)

I consider hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 True, and 4 and 5 False. In the past I have defended hypothesis 1 many times, and attacked hypothesis 4 many times as well. However I might also defend or attack other hypotheses if I see evidence for or against them.

When I brought up Exemplars of Evil, it was to point out that there is some evidence to suggest hypothesis 5 is not true. There are some other sources though to corroborate hypothesis 5 not being true though:


An antihero might have some great tragedy or dark secret in her past, or she might make use of evil means toward an ultimately good end. In D&D such a character is probably neither good nor evil but a flexible neutral. A cleric of St Cuthbert who launches an inquisition to purge evil from the land, killing innocents in the process, a devotee of Wee Jas who animates undead in order to fight villains even more evil; a ranger hunting down all agents, evil or otherwise, of the baron who burned down his childhood home- these are all antiheroes appropriate to a dark, horrific D&D campaign.

WinceRind
2010-10-31, 05:57 PM
Uhh... firebombing things!? With people still in them? How is that still neutral? :smallconfused:
I dunno, it's kind of subjective.

It's all about where your loyalties lie.

For a druid, his loyalties might lie completely with the animals, and very little with the humans, especially with the lumberjacks and what not.

It's reasonable to expect a human to defend his home and his people from a ruthless orc invasion using all means he has - and it's reasonable for a druid to defend his "people" from what he might see as an uncontrollable invading force by any means.

Alignment is not realistic in the game and in real life, either way. Concepts like "good" and "evil" rely too much on purely subjective things.

Callista
2010-10-31, 06:05 PM
I'm not worried about a druid considering animal life as important as human life; it's just the "firebombing" thing that really had me going "Huh?" Fire and forests... not a good idea. He's risking the forest he's trying to protect. Plus, apparently he went straight to the firebombing, without trying to oust the lumberjacks some other way first. It just doesn't seem very... druidic to me.

mucat
2010-10-31, 06:12 PM
It sounds like the guy was operating under a flawed and frankly silly view of neutrality: "I've been doing too many good things lately, so I'll do something evil, and that will restore my inner balance."

WinceRind
2010-10-31, 06:26 PM
I'm not worried about a druid considering animal life as important as human life; it's just the "firebombing" thing that really had me going "Huh?" Fire and forests... not a good idea. He's risking the forest he's trying to protect. Plus, apparently he went straight to the firebombing, without trying to oust the lumberjacks some other way first. It just doesn't seem very... druidic to me.

Well, druids in D&D not only embrace classical "nature", but the elemental stuff too. He can probably stop the fire anyways =p

And the real question would be : What would a druid do if he came across a natural forest fire?

I mean, those things happen on it's own. It's completely natural.

In my opinion, as a protector and enforcer of natural order, a druid should have nothing against, say, a pack of wolves attacking and devouring a careless humanoid traveling through the forest alone and unable to protect itself. After all, wolves are predators, and that's what they do.

Of course, when you think further into this, humans and all humanoids shouldn't be that different from animals, and the whole arbitrary difference between intelligent humanoids and animals is a ridiculous concept... So technically, the humanoids who drive a specie extinct merely do nature's purpose - the same way various animals naturally went extinct on Earth, unable to stand against other better equipped animals, the species that are too weak as a whole to stand up to humanoids do not deserve to survive.

Meh, I'm going too off-topic, sorry. I better stop posting.

hamishspence
2010-10-31, 06:30 PM
It sounds like the guy was operating under a flawed and frankly silly view of neutrality: "I've been doing too many good things lately, so I'll do something evil, and that will restore my inner balance."

yes- though the main PHB statement about neutrality, is that:

"Neutral characters have qualms about harming the innocent but lack the commitment to make personal sacrifices to help others"

followed by a counterexample that states they might sacrifice themselves for family or even homeland, but not for strangers not related to them.

A person who dumps that definition of Neutral, and allows for an altruistic Neutral character who will make personal sacrifices to help strangers, ends up having to provide some form of Evil trait to compensate-

maybe a willingness to torture the "not-innocent" for pleasure, or a certain lack of qualms about harming the innocent (for reasons other than fun or profit).

mucat
2010-10-31, 06:43 PM
will[/I] make personal sacrifices to help strangers, ends up having to provide some form of Evil trait to compensate-

maybe a willingness to torture the "not-innocent" for pleasure, or a certain lack of qualms about harming the innocent (for reasons other than fun or profit).
Well, yes and no.

If you design a realistic character with a coherent personality, and he or she has a roughly equal mix of good traits and bad ones...sure, you would call that character Neutral on the Good/Evil axis.

But if you turn that around -- first, decide that the character should be Neutral (possibly for game-mechanical reasons), then start having him/her act as if alignment were a scorecard -- if you've been doing too many evil things lately you have to feed an orphan to compensate, and if you've been doing too many good things you have to murder someone to "restore inner balance" -- then what you end up with isn't a neutral character. It's a character who is insane, evil, or both. And more to the point, it's an unrealistic character who would detract from any game other than an intentionally silly one.

hamishspence
2010-10-31, 06:50 PM
If you design a realistic character with a coherent personality, and he or she has a roughly equal mix of good traits and bad ones...sure, you would call that character Neutral on the Good/Evil axis.

I'd say "could" rather than "would" depending on which traits.

The evil trait "willing to debase/destroy the innocent for fun/profit" might outweigh any amount of "willing to make personal sacrifices to help strangers" and the like.

However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the trait "unwilling to harm the innocent for any reason", cannot ever be outweighed by evil traits like "enjoying the suffering of others" and "willing to torture for pleasure" to produce an Evil character.

Some people might insist that it either "always outweighs the evil traits enough to produce a Neutral character"- or, "automatically ensures that the character cannot have most of the worst Evil traits".

But not me.


But if you turn that around - first, decide that the character should be Neutral (possibly for game-mechanical reasons), then start having him/her act as if alignment were a scorecard -- if you've been doing too many evil things lately you have to feed an orphan to compensate, and if you've been doing too many good things you have to murder someone to "restore inner balance" -- then what you end up with isn't a neutral character. It's a character who is insane, evil, or both. And more to the point, it's an unrealistic character who would detract from any game other than an intentionally silly one.

true dat. Characters like Mordenkainen who think of "The Balance" aren't thinking of the balance in them- they are thinking of the balance in the whole universe.

Their concern is not whether they are balanced in their actions- but whether their whole world is so out of balance that it requires certain acts, to bring it back into balance.