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Project_Cobalt
2012-06-12, 09:04 AM
([EDIT]: To keep from needing to scroll down to answer the question I should have answered in my original post, I am running 4th Edition D&D.)

I posted previously http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=244848 in regards to the want by my party's Ranger to fill the role of leader already occupied by my party's Paladin. Things came to a head last night, and I'll have to tell a story, but here goes.

The Pledge

The party had been tussling with a tribe of Gnolls in a forest where it's magically always night. The Gnolls had been working with some Ogres and robbing travelers, as well as waging war on the Elves within the forest and burning down the forest in search of an artifact which, according to legend, can only be found through use of cleansing fire.

Eventually, the party ran across a group of Elves who assumed the party was allied with the Gnolls. The PCs were forced to defend themselves and (against the Paladin's direction to take them alive) killed the group of Elves. They made peace with the remaining elves and offered to repent by helping the Elves root out the Gnolls and stop the destruction of the forest.

The PCs raided the Gnolls' stronghold - a red-stone tower that was once a watchtower for paladins of the same order as our party's Paladin. Atop the tower, they found a pair of elven prisoners who were badly brutalized by the Gnolls. They freed them, and fought their way to the Gnollish encampment where the Gnollish leader waited.

The Turn

When they came upon the leader of the Gnolls, they were surprised to find he was a priest of the Shepherd (the same God the Paladin worships). They were doubly surprised when he invited them into his study to talk about what could be done, rather than fighting them. Here's where things get hairy.

Throughout the conversation with the Priest, the PCs discover that he received a vision from The Shepherd (the Paladin has also received a vision in the past which directed him to making some morally gray decisions based on his interpretation of that vision) instructing him to find an Amulet which was stolen by the Elves thousands of years ago. An Amulet which can only be truly verified by cleansing fire (it glows bright and the jewel at it's center changes color). An Amulet that the PCs have, no less (they discovered it when a Hobgoblin warchief was using it to control a White Dragon).

The Priest, knowing about the PCs previous self-defense slaying of the Elves, brings into question how he is any different. He has come to a place to accomplish a divine mission, and the Elves stood in his way violently - so he disposed of them. The PCs, by contrast, are traveling through the area on no particular mission, and fought the Elves to the death in self defense.

All in all, his argument convinces all of the party except the Paladin that, at very least, they need to remand him to the proper authorities. When he brings up that the Church owns the land upon which the forest sits, and that the proper authorities would be the Church, they decide that they have no power to enforce their morality on him and that, despite his callous disregard for Elven lives, he is only defending himself on a mission of (what he insists is) great import. The rest of the party leaves.

When questioned in regards to any activities by the Gnolls (the elven prisoners, the robbing of travelers, etc) he insists that he did not know, and that had he been made aware of these actions, his followers would have been punished.

The Paladin is not having any of that.

The Prestige

And so the Priest gives the Paladin a choice.

"What will you do? Kill me in cold blood when all I have done is serve the God you yourself have devoted your life to? Will you remand me to the justice of corrupt nobles in place of your trust in your faith? Or will you leave, and allow me to continue my divine mission?"

The Paladin knows full well that he is going to have to make a moral compromise. He will either kill the Priest - and hope that his interpretation of the Shepherd's will is correct - or capture him - and take him back to a city where the Nobility's virtue and ability to rule is in deep question - or, leave - and allow a zealot to continue murdering innocents in the name of the Shepherd?

As he has done before (the Party ran into a man who was allowing travelers to stay in his home, and then buying their wives to sell into slavery) - the Paladin insists he is the Shepherd's Sword, and kills the Priest (who does not resist). He burns down the Priest's home, and scatters the tribe of Gnolls who were following him.

Then, he rejoins the party. Only now, things are different. They saw the burning house, and know that the Paladin has killed the Priest. The Ranger and the Barbarian decide that they will no longer follow a man who has decided to take into his own hands the execution of someone who more or less operates under the same moral code that they do.

The party comes to a fork in the road. Both roads lead eventually to the city that was their original destination. The Paladin goes right. The Barbarian and the Ranger go left. The Warlord watches as the party splits, unable to do anything. He decides that someone needs to watch over the Paladin and guide him back to redemption. The party is split.

Now, all of that is mostly just fluff. The important part is that the party is split. I intend to leave them split for a while to work out some things, and really illustrate how fractured the group has become (without a defender or a leader, how will the two main damage-dealers survive?). The Paladin's player has (of his own volition, of course) rerolled his character as a Blackguard to further showcase his moral uncertainty and separation from the man he once was (and as a perfect double whammy, we now have no defender and a Paladin who works less well with others, in a case of RP influencing mechanics).

Can anyone give me some advice to make the split meaningful, and most of all, temporary? How can I guide the players to joining back up as a group? And of course, the obvious question when it comes to anything involving Paladins and their various codes, am I a bad DM for including this moral choice at all?

Sheogorath
2012-06-12, 09:20 AM
As someone who just finished reading The Prestige, I have to congradulate you on your flavour-texting.
Apart from, the games I'm involved in always have a horrid habit of ensuring the entire party is split at least once or twice. People seem to like covering all areas at once.

Siegel
2012-06-12, 09:47 AM
You are running 3.5 DnD ?

Project_Cobalt
2012-06-12, 09:58 AM
You are running 3.5 DnD ?

Woops. I suppose I should have mentioned. I am running 4th edition D&D.

Rallicus
2012-06-12, 10:21 AM
I remember that last thread. You've got yourself in an interesting predicament, and the ranger could definitely use this to their advantage if they still want to fill the "leader" role.

Ideally, the ranger could be the one to bring the group back together. This might result in the party respecting the ranger's decisions over the Paladin's, and thus they would become leader.

But if the ranger doesn't want to take initiative then a good way to bring them back together is the promise of wealth. Have a rumor reach their ears about a place filled with powerful magical items and treasure. They all discern the location and meet up at the place, only to find it littered with powerful enemies. They have no real choice but to work together for the time being, unless they want to die, and hopefully this will rekindle the party as a whole, because they'll realize they work well together.

Either way, I wouldn't keep them separated for too long. It's fine for character development and roleplay but if you intend to add challenging combat, it's better that they get back together ASAP.

nedz
2012-06-12, 11:22 AM
Your mistake, perhaps, was to pose a moral question at the Paladin rather than to the whole party. Maybe that wasn't your intention, but it is how it has panned out. Now you have two parties.

I'm not sure you can force them back together, nor do I suspect you would want to. You might be able to facilitate it though if the two groups somehow become involved in either another moral escapade, or perhaps have to face some greater threat. You have to make their characters want to regroup, this could be a very long story arc though.

Anxe
2012-06-12, 11:49 AM
Who has the amulet?

hamlet
2012-06-12, 11:53 AM
Actually, the moral question was posed to the whole party, and the whole party got to make decisions on it. It was merely the Paladin who got premonition that something like this might come up.

Where to go from here? Well . . . it kind of depends, doesn't it? On whether or not you, as the DM and arbiter of the world, feel that the Paladin's actions were justified morally and ethically. Or, in the end, if there really was a "correct" choice.

As I see it (and, fair warning, I see through an AD&D lens), the Paladin did what he truly believed was the correct course of action in a very tough situation. He confronted someone who, despite being of the same religion and seeking what I believe was probably a Good goal, perpetrated evil in the pursuit of that goal. Or permitted evil to be perpetrated because of it, which rests upon his metaphorical shoulders as the acknowledged leader of the gnolls. The Paladin should not fall.

Yes, he probably could have spent some time reasoning with the gnoll, or brought him back to the city and tried to pursue actual justice for him, but there is a whole lot of if coming off of either of those options. Especially when it comes down to the fact that evil was being done, if even in the cause of good, and the Paladin had the opportunity and imperitive to stop it.

Of course, as I understand it, Paladins in 4th edition don't really fall. But, this gets me round about to the point.

I don't think he should have been re-rolled as a blackguard, if only because that's acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Instead, I think the next course of the campaign might have been spent trying to come to terms with the ramifications and implications of that decision, and it could have been done on both sides of the party without turning it into a one man show. Eventually, the Paladin could have come to the point where he recognizes that he acted rashly, though not evilly, and must needs atone for that while the Ranger and Barbarian could probably come to grips with the fact that, at least on a fundamental, basic level, the Paladin was right and the Gnoll Priest was perpetrating evil and making things worse all around and "talking it out" or just walking away weren't viable ways to address the issues at hand.

smashbro
2012-06-12, 12:52 PM
One idea to get them back together, as rallicus said, is to get them together for some common goal, and throw hard encounters that they need to work together for. Depending on what your party is like, you could make it gold, magic items, or something physical.


Or, if you want to continue the theme of hard moral judgements, somehow bring them back together based on a question of ethics. Should the man hang, if he stole medicine for his dying son? Stuff like that. If the party members all agree, then they can realize that they aren't so different, and acknowledge that it was a hard choice to make (about the gnoll). If they disagree, let them begin to fight, hopefully beginning to wonder why they are fighting people who were once friends, and were not evil people.

Project_Cobalt
2012-06-12, 08:09 PM
Who has the amulet?

The Ranger, currently. During the conversation with the Priest, she had it, but decided that she would not hand over the amulet to him. Her reasoning was that, despite his intentions, she wouldn't hand over the amulet that they had previously seen a hobgoblin use to control a dragon to a man who had shown he was willing to abuse his power.


I don't think he should have been re-rolled as a blackguard, if only because that's acknowledgement of wrongdoing.

I agree completely with your entire post. I left it entirely up to the player as to whether he wished to do so. That, and bizarrely enough, Blackguards can be Good-Aligned in 4th Edition, so he hasn't actually changed alignment at all.

I think it's really good advice, and honestly something I hadn't considered, that I should illustrate to the Ranger and Barbarian that, even if they disagree with it, the Paladin made his choice and they should have stuck around to deal with it instead of just leaving. Or, to put it another way, that they themselves are not free of wrongdoing. The party splitting is not solely on the Paladin's shoulders.

I would also like to state that whenever I refer to the PCs, I am doing just that - the PCs feel this way about everything. The players are cool-headed, and enjoy the direction the campaign is going. They are enjoying the chance at inter-party conflict and the ability to see where this new, uncertain story will take them.

Man on Fire
2012-06-12, 09:03 PM
Godo way to bring them back together is to have them being forced to cooperate by common enemy. Like get them caught by bunch of Hobgoblins and sent to fight in the arena against bunch of monsters or something like that.

hamlet
2012-06-13, 07:51 AM
I agree completely with your entire post. I left it entirely up to the player as to whether he wished to do so. That, and bizarrely enough, Blackguards can be Good-Aligned in 4th Edition, so he hasn't actually changed alignment at all.

I think it's really good advice, and honestly something I hadn't considered, that I should illustrate to the Ranger and Barbarian that, even if they disagree with it, the Paladin made his choice and they should have stuck around to deal with it instead of just leaving. Or, to put it another way, that they themselves are not free of wrongdoing. The party splitting is not solely on the Paladin's shoulders.

I would also like to state that whenever I refer to the PCs, I am doing just that - the PCs feel this way about everything. The players are cool-headed, and enjoy the direction the campaign is going. They are enjoying the chance at inter-party conflict and the ability to see where this new, uncertain story will take them.

Then maybe an adventure or two designed to "teach" the PC's on both sides that they have both done . . . not wrong, but not lived up to their expectations is in order. Perhaps a situation for the Paladin/Blackguard where he comes across somebody who needs help, but realizes in the helping that his involvement would only make the situation worse and that he must choose a less direct methodology to improve matters. Perhaps a local warlord who is despotic, a bit cruel, but ultimately fair and, all things considered, creating a preferrable order counter to the certain chaos and death that would result from his absence.

In the meantime, an adventure for Ranger and Barbarian where they face a similar situation, but they are forced, despite their leanings, to directly involve themselves in order to ensure that justice is carried out.

And, in the end, perhaps they end up working at the same problem from opposite ends and meet somewhere in the middle?

Man on Fire
2012-06-13, 08:00 AM
Perhaps a local warlord who is despotic, a bit cruel, but ultimately fair and, all things considered, creating a preferrable order counter to the certain chaos and death that would result from his absence.

Wizard who was defending small kingdom from Orcs and decided that the best way to do it is by turning to necromancy and creating an army of undead. Now they defend the kingdom and patrol the street, killing any law-breaker, allowing king to rule with an iron fist.

Blackknife
2012-06-13, 08:39 AM
There is a short TL;DR at the end of this if you can't get through my essay of a post. Sorry for length.

Greetings everyone, this is my first post after having looked in on these forums from time to time when doing internet searches for ideas on wonky builds, and this is the first post that has actually made me interested enough to register and stop lurking like a zerg lurker. :) To start with I want to say Kudos to Hamlet for hitting every nail on the head. I may be mainly a v3.0 and v3.5 player, but the rules for both ad&d and 3.0/3.5 seem to agree in this case. The paladin followed the v3 code to the letter in this case. That out of the way I want to throw in my own thoughts on the questions you ask at the end of your post.

Making the split meaningful. That is going to be a rough one because meaning is a very perception-based thing. What do your players find meaningful? Find out what matters to your players and incorporate those ideas. Believe it or not, eventually adventuring for gold and fame loses its luster after playing for a decade or two. :)

Making the split temporary. This will actually partially be answered by answering the first one. What would cause the players to re-unite? You're their DM, and are in the best position to answer that one. This comes back to looking at what motivates the players (yes, the players, not the characters) to adventure.

A couple example ideas for what could motivate them; Simple survival. R. A. Salvatore did this pretty well with Drizzt and Artemis in The Legacy of the Drow tetralogy, when the two were forced to ally briefly just to survive against overwhelming odds, even though they hated each other. Home and family. If they all come from the same place, and there is some kind of horrible threat to said place, and they really like said place, there you go. There are a bunch of real life examples of this all over. As silly as this may sound, go check out the first episode of TNT's Leverage, and pay close attention to the end. Great example of a party deciding to work together for various reasons.

Are you a bad DM for including this moral element? Well that partially depends on how you define a bad DM or a good DM. I personally measure the quality of a DM based on how much fun the group is having. If your group is having fun, (even if it is due to something incredibly silly) then in my book you are doing a good job. :)

As for this moral quandary itself, if you want to tell an interesting story with a literary element or two, you're off to a good start. Just make sure that is what the group would enjoy. Keep in mind the player of that paladin character kind of asked for something like this just by choosing the paladin class. That kind of stuff is part of their role-playing setup.

I am not as familiar with v4 rules on alignment as I am on v3, so this next bit may not apply. In v3, good is in a word, defined as altriusm, neutrality in a word, is defined as self-centered, and evil is defined as psychopathic, psychopathic basically being a state of mind where one views other individuals as nothing more than fiction or cardboard cut-outs and treats them as such. If you are going to include moral choice, and the players seem like they are enjoying that element, run with it. Examine what concepts like good and evil really mean in your setting, and why. Get some epistemological considerations from your characters after a moral choice, and then once they have worked through those, throw another, much more complex and difficult choice at them, likely at a higher level.

In the game I am currently running, I have the players set up as a combination of mercenaries and commanders in a military that serves the ruling power on the continent, and this setting using a kind of magical technology to make life possible. Weapons are forged, crops are grown, water is purified, by the grace of the god-kings and their ability to use a mythical magical fuel source that randomly breaks up from the ground in springs in various places around the world.

Well, this stuff isn't exactly common, and it really is essential for life in this setting, which is a slowly dying world. The campaign starts when the government that runs this military gets wind of a particularly bountiful fountain of this stuff, in a defenseless yet slightly xenophobic/outspoken village. Military sent PCs and some NPCs in to negotiate, things turned bloody when one of the skittish NPCs shot one of the villagers in the head out of fear/rising panic. At this point, there was a full 50% split in the party, half of them sided with the villagers and the other half sided with the military, and this actually sparked some out of game arguments about the nature of morality, consequence, and fairness. My group ended up loving it. :) Go with what your group enjoys.

TL;DR You're not a bad DM if your group is having fun, find out what your players care about and use those as hooks, that is how to make the split matter and get them back together. If your group seemed to enjoy working through that moral choice, go deeper and make that a larger part of the role-playing. I laughed so hard when I hit “submit reply” and got a message that the server was too busy, thinking I had lost the post that I put so much consideration and time into writing.