DM Help You do WHAT!!!! [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Thuphinlok

2014-09-03, 05:12 PM

OK so here's the skinny, playgrounders. I just recently ran a jailbreak in my last session. Everything seemed to be going just peachy. The guy in jail was working his way out, and the extraction team on the outside had set up a fairly competent escape plan. They were going to start a bar brawl to attract the guard then use disguise self to imitate a guard and bring the 'drunk' in to cool his heels in the drunk tank. Meanwhile on the other end of town they would set fire to a vacant warehouse to draw the remaining guards away from the jailhouse. Everything was worked out and the plan was initiated. . . this is where everything starts to escalate quickly. The 'Drunk' starting the brawl plays his part to perfection, attracting the tavern bullyboy's attention and getting a call to the guard put in. Then the bullyboy hits him with his club, and instead of grappling/fisticuffs (nonlethal stuff) he draws his HUGE freaking hammer and attacks the bullyboy (a commoner NPC), he of course crits, and rolls a 9 on his d10 damage, plus his 1.5STR and triples it (essentially liquidating this poor guy). . . they manage to salvage the plan and complete the jailbreak.

My question is this. . . the character in question is a Lawful Good alignment, and I know that one decision does not an alignment break (typically), but I feel like this is an egregious turn from Lawful Good to at least Neutral Good maybe? What say you guys? Have any of you had this kind of issue in a game (PC/DM). He seems genuinely upset about his choice after the fact (I think he just wanted to nudge the guy a bit, but forgot to declare nonlethal damage). The jailbreak is not really an issue even with the lawful (corrupt politics/no trials/unjust treatment and whatnot), but the murder of a random NPC who is just protecting his bar from drunks. . . Should I let him slide and retcon the lethal to nonlethal? Should I leave his alignment or switch it and let him work to restore it? He wants to go back into town to offer reperations to the guys family, but the rest of the party is going to try and remind him that HE is a justly wanted fugitive in that town and he may want to rethink his apology.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 05:19 PM

Asrrin

2014-09-03, 05:20 PM

bjoern

2014-09-03, 05:36 PM

Personally, slaying an innocent in the course of committing a crime sounds like an automatic shift in alignment for both good/evil and law/chaos, at least until he receives an Atonement from a cleric of his deity of choice or makes a huge sacrifice to make reparations.

If he unintentionally caused a death it wouldn't be so bad, but he drew a lethal weapon and outright murdered an innocent. that's pretty cut and dried.

The way things worked out is unfortunate. However the NPC was the one that made the choice to escalate things by using deadly force.

Defending yourself doesn't make you evil.
Freeing an ally from jail doesn't make you evil, probably unlawful but not evil

Let's look at this from a different angle.
Real life

I decide I want to crash a party by causing a riot and getting cops there to crash it.

I go Into a sports bar during a championship game and say that one team sucks, coach isa hack, player is a fraud, whatever.

Place gets loud and a brawl ensues. One guy decides to pull a gun and start shooting at me. I defend myself by killing him. Self defense. That prick turned a non-lethal situation into a potential massacre by being a moron and Introducing a weapon to the mix.

KillianHawkeye

2014-09-03, 05:39 PM

Considering how bad he feels about it, I probably wouldn't penalize him this time. But if it starts becoming a pattern, it will definitely shift his alignment towards Neutral. Keep an eye on his behavior going forward.

Asrrin

2014-09-03, 05:42 PM

The way things worked out is unfortunate. However the NPC was the one that made the choice to escalate things by using deadly force.

Defending yourself doesn't make you evil.
Freeing an ally from jail doesn't make you evil, probably unlawful but not evil

Did the NPC respond with lethal force? I may have missed that. If the NPC was just doing his job and using non-lethal force of his own, it's murder. If not, you are right, self defense. a crappy thing to do sure, but not alignment shifting. Could be the start of a pattern though.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 05:46 PM

Did the NPC respond with lethal force? I may have missed that. If the NPC was just doing his job and using non-lethal force of his own, it's murder. If not, you are right, self defense. a crappy thing to do sure, but not alignment shifting. Could be the start of a pattern though.

Club is about as benign as lethal force goes but so is a .38 special. Its enough.

What the player should take away from this is that sometimes things go sideways and can get ugly. Perhaps the character is hesitant to use such a plan next time.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 05:46 PM

I'd say change his alignment. I mean, the guy starts a brawl in a tavern as a distraction, then straight up murders the guy that was just doing his job. I'm surprised he's not in jail himself.

Deadline

2014-09-03, 05:47 PM

Did the NPC respond with lethal force? I may have missed that.

The NPC attacked with a club. There was no mention of whether or not he was taking the -4 attack penalty to inflict non-lethal damage with it, so it's unclear. The OP will have to clarify.

That said, it just sounds like the player didn't realize he could kill the NPC. I'd simply retcon it to non-lethal, and clarify for the PC that in the future, he needs to specify if he's trying to knock the guy out (deal non-lethal), or kill him.

ComaVision

2014-09-03, 05:49 PM

I think a shift from Good is debatable, and if I'm not sure about it I tend to err in favour of the player.

I don't understand how a Lawful character would even be in this scenario though.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 05:50 PM

I'd say change his alignment. I mean, the guy starts a brawl in a tavern as a distraction, then straight up murders the guy that was just doing his job. I'm surprised he's not in jail himself.

I doubt the NPCs job was to slay drunk patrons that are unruly. Wouldn't have many customers left before too long.

Troacctid

2014-09-03, 05:51 PM

I guess instead of saying "Well, you didn't declare that you were doing nonlethal damage, so he's dead now," the thing to do would be to gently confirm "...And you're going for lethal damage here?"

You know the PC probably isn't intending to murder the guy, and a major characterization faux pas like that shouldn't happen by accident, so if you see it coming, head it off to make sure the player understands what their character is doing. Part of the DM's responsibility is helping the players visualize the scene accurately and this sort of thing is part of that. An alignment shift is a consequence of an act of will, not a procedural error.

So go easy on the player. It was mostly your fault.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 05:52 PM

I don't understand how a Lawful character would even be in this scenario though.

Yeah, that part is pretty much a slam dunk case. Maybe CG is more the characters style.

Segev

2014-09-03, 05:53 PM

Assuming the player (and thus the character) did not intend for nor know that his counter-offensive would be fatal, or that he felt in genuine danger of his life and in need to respond with lethal force to save himself, I would not change his alignment based on this. I would, however, make sure to remind him in future situations that the last time he behaved such-and-such a way, somebody wound up dead at his hands, and watch carefully the choices he makes based on that.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:02 PM

I doubt the NPCs job was to slay drunk patrons that are unruly. Wouldn't have many customers left before too long.

Look at it like this; it's basically the same as having a police officer pull a baton on you because you're starting a brawl (that could turn deadly and/or spill out into the streets), and you pull a gun and drop him with three in his core.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 06:07 PM

Look at it like this; it's basically the same as having a police officer pull a baton on you because you're starting a brawl (that could turn deadly and/or spill out into the streets), and you pull a gun and drop him with three in his core.

A baton and a gun are not on the same level of lethality.

A club and a hammer are on the same level.

Plus the guy wasn't a cop, he was just some guy that smashed my skull with a baseball bat. I was lucky enough to not be killed so I'm going to protect myself the best I can because the next hit might kill me.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:12 PM

A baton and a gun are not on the same level of lethality.

A club and a hammer are on the same level.

Plus the guy wasn't a cop, he was just some guy that smashed my skull with a baseball bat. I was lucky enough to not be killed so I'm going to protect myself the best I can because the next hit might kill me.

The gun was a little hyperbolic, but a wooden club isn't on the same level as a metal hammer, especially considering this is DnD and that hammer is most likely magic. Close, but not quite. Besides, it's irrelevant because a Lawful Good character wouldn't liquefy a commoner. The point is the situation quickly escalated and someone got killed, and the murderer (self defense or not) needs to face punishment.

Spore

2014-09-03, 06:15 PM

I did this once with my LG cleric of Moradin. I jumped a thief stealing from a warehouse and killed him with my battle hammer. Needless to say I had to quest for atonement. If the character is truly sorry about the case then he stays good. If not then he shifts to neutral. The law/chaos axis on the other hand should not be touched (for now) but definitely kept in mind.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 06:18 PM

A wooden club isn't on the same level as a metal hammer, especially considering this is DnD and that hammer is most likely magic. Close, but not quite. Besides, it's irrelevant because a Lawful Good character wouldn't liquefy a commoner. The point is the situation quickly escalated and someone got killed, and the murderer (self defense or not) needs to face punishment.

A club does an average of 3.5 damage
The 1d10 hammer does an average 5.5 hammer

That's a difference of 2 damage.

That's less damage than the difference between calibres of handguns.

Lawful act--no. A lawful character would never allow himself to be in that situation (blatantly breaking the law with the jailbreak)

Evil--no
He murdered no one.

If I cuss a guy out and he shoots me then I shoot him I didn't murder him.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:22 PM

Except in this case you didn't cuss him out, you started a brawl.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 06:24 PM

Except in this case you didn't cuss him out, you started a brawl.

I started it with non lethal damage.

He tried to end it with death.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:25 PM

I started it with non lethal damage.

He tried to end it with death.

Ah! But you don't know the guy was trying to kill you!

bjoern

2014-09-03, 06:27 PM

Ah! But you don't know the guy was trying to kill you!

I got smashed in the face with a bat. That will kill you pretty easy. Much more lethal than than some guys wresting around on the floor.

Gemini476

2014-09-03, 06:29 PM

The gun was a little hyperbolic, but a wooden club isn't on the same level as a metal hammer, especially considering this is DnD and that hammer is most likely magic. Close, but not quite. Besides, it's irrelevant because a Lawful Good character wouldn't liquefy a commoner. The point is the situation quickly escalated and someone got killed, and the murderer (self defense or not) needs to face punishment.

Look at it like this: if the bouncer had attacked your average person with his 1d6 damage club, and the bouncer had at least 12 strength (hey, he's a bouncer), then the average person (Commoner 1, AC 10, 2hp) would be lying on the ground bleeding to death.

If he had taken the -4 penalty to do nonlethal, or attacked with a sap or his fists or something? Yeah, he'd just knock the guy out for a few hours. Using a club like he was apparently doing? The guy he hit is probably going to die within a minute without direct medical care.

The only reason his actions were justifiable was because he was attacking a PC and thus probably wouldn't kill them in one hit (I say probably, since a critical hit would still do an average of 9 damage).

This wasn't exactly a case of disproportionate response.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:30 PM

I got smashed in the face with a bat. That will kill you pretty easy. Much more lethal than than some guys wresting around on the floor.

Not in DnD; You can take multiple hits to the face with a warhammer and be fine (sorta). A PC would have no reason to fear a commoner killing them, unless the PC was very low level.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:32 PM

Look at it like this: if the bouncer had attacked your average person with his 1d6 damage club, and the bouncer had at least 12 strength (hey, he's a bouncer), then the average person (Commoner 1, AC 10, 2hp) would be lying on the ground bleeding to death.

If he had taken the -4 penalty to do nonlethal, or attacked with a sap or his fists or something? Yeah, he'd just knock the guy out for a few hours. Using a club like he was apparently doing? The guy he hit is probably going to die within a minute without direct medical care.

The only reason his actions were justifiable was because he was attacking a PC and thus probably wouldn't kill them in one hit (I say probably, since a critical hit would still do an average of 9 damage).

This wasn't exactly a case of disproportionate response.

In DnD, anything involving a PC is a disproportionate response. And the difference between your average commoner in a bar and a PC in a bar is pretty obvious (unless the PC was disguised or something), so it's not like the bouncer got confused. He used the right amount of force necessary to deal with someone as dangerous as an adventurer.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 06:33 PM

Look at it like this: if the bouncer had attacked your average person with his 1d6 damage club, and the bouncer had at least 12 strength (hey, he's a bouncer), then the average person (Commoner 1, AC 10, 2hp) would be lying on the ground bleeding to death.

If he had taken the -4 penalty to do nonlethal, or attacked with a sap or his fists or something? Yeah, he'd just knock the guy out for a few hours. Using a club like he was apparently doing? The guy he hit is probably going to die within a minute without direct medical care.

The only reason his actions were justifiable was because he was attacking a PC and thus probably wouldn't kill them in one hit (I say probably, since a critical hit would still do an average of 9 damage).

This wasn't exactly a case of disproportionate response.

This

The bouncer had every intention of killing the PC.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:36 PM

This

The bouncer had every intention of killing the PC.

Let's ask the DM. Hey, Thuphinlok; What were the guard's intentions when he attacked the PC?

bjoern

2014-09-03, 06:38 PM

Let's ask the DM. Hey, Thuphinlok; What were the guard's intentions when he attacked the PC?

Yeah that would be important info. However,would the PC be able to tell the ddifference? All he knows is that some dude is smashing him with a club.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:40 PM

Yeah that would be important info. However,would the PC be able to tell the ddifference? All he knows is that some dude is smashing him with a club.

I'd say he would; It'd be the difference from smashing you in the head and clubbing you in the thigh or core. Or instead of using full force you grab the club in a way to reduce the force (think bunting instead of trying to hit a home run).

Sith_Happens

2014-09-03, 06:42 PM

Let's ask the DM. Hey, Thuphinlok; What were the guard's intentions when he attacked the PC? Did the club deal lethal or nonlethal damage?

Fixed that for you. Even if the NPC wasn't necessarily aiming to kill the PC, if he was using lethal force then the PC had every right to respond in kind.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 06:42 PM

I'd say he would; It'd be the difference from smashing you in the head and clubbing you in the thigh or core. Or instead of using full force you grab the club in a way to reduce the force.

OK. Fair enough.
But of the PC took lethal damage, then the bouncer opened Pandoras box.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:43 PM

OK. Fair enough.
But of the PC took lethal damage, then the bouncer opened Pandoras box.

Yeah, I'll agree with that. It's like attacking the US; You don't.

bjoern

2014-09-03, 06:45 PM

Yeah, I'll agree with that. It's like attacking the US; You don't.

Yeah , unless you want to get shot twice in the chest and once in the head. ;)

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 06:46 PM

Fixed that for you. Even if the NPC wasn't necessarily aiming to kill the PC, if he was using lethal force then the PC had every right to respond in kind.

Maybe if the character wasn't Lawful Good.

LordErebus12

2014-09-03, 06:52 PM

i think people need to understand that alignments should be treated as VERY HARD to shift. One act, unless its total self-sacrifice or genocide, should NEVER shift an alignment.

Only constant and consistently unaligned decisions would have any effect on the character. I would also question the player as to why a character is acting un-character-like, since generally (in real life) people don't act differently all of a sudden. Its always gradual and over time. You have to consider that people are 'Programmed' to behave a certain way by their experiences and only extremely traumatic events will have a large effect on their behavior.

Ideally, the character would behave remorsefully, and would probably be troubled by that. He might attempt to help the grieving family of the dead character, swear off drinking, or otherwise attempt to change the way he plans such events. He's gonna have to live with the fact that he murdered someone and it should haunt him... those types of events shouldn't be so easily brushed off of his mind.

You might impose a -1 penalty on attack rolls and initiative checks when dealing with members of that bouncer's race for a month or so, as he works out his unconscious feelings and regret.

Terazul

2014-09-03, 06:53 PM

Even Lawful Good guys make mistakes. Player seems genuinely upset about how things went down, and you already mentioned yourself that single actions do not typically justify alignment shift.

Let it pass, just keep an eye on future activities.

Threadnaught

2014-09-03, 06:57 PM

NPC used lethal force on PC whose only crime was making noise, he could've used nonlethal force instead, but decided to immediately escalate.

If the bouncer is to have a weapon, either make it a Sap, or a Merciful weapon with high damage. Otherwise, you have someone who is likely to wipe out an entire business' customer base. A Merciful weapon btw would be prohibitively expensive for all but the larger establishments.

There are the highly unusual situations in which a Lawful Character may involve themselves in something of questionable legality. Just see how they behave over the course of the next session or so and if the character has an erratic personality, shift it toward Chaotic.

Gruzzle

2014-09-03, 06:57 PM

My vote goes towards no negative action being taken for now.

The OP states that lawful is a non-issue, so we're to presume that the LG character's personal code/religious laws/whatever weren't meshing with local law (corrupted judges, etc), so the only question at this point is would this effect a Good character's alignment.

In the heat of the moment, he neglected to pull the punch(hammer) and deal non-lethal after getting cracked a good one by an angry dude with a bat. As unfortunate as his crit was, he did not go in to the situation with intent to commit murder. His only goal was a distraction. This wasn't an intentionally evil act, but it was an outcome that a Good character would be unhappy with. If the character here is showing remorse (which is what the OP stated) then this LG character never broke alignment, will be wracked by crushing guilt for some time and certainly learn from this, but shouldn't lose alignment.

I would be surprised if the character doesn't initiate some sort of penance, and were I DM, I'd encourage the character, via "confession" to a priest of the same religious order, divine intervention, or what have you, to perhaps look in to contacting the family and tithe to them for a while as compensation? Just my two cents!

Gemini476

2014-09-03, 06:58 PM

Maybe if the character wasn't Lawful Good.

If someone is trying to actively kill you, responding in kind just seems like common sense. Or fleeing, I suppose.

I'd call it a neutral action, maybe even Good if you suspect that the person in question would go on to kill other people if he weren't stopped.

TeslaJr

2014-09-03, 07:01 PM

If someone is trying to actively kill you, responding in kind just seems like common sense. Or fleeing, I suppose.

I'd call it a neutral action, maybe even Good if you suspect that the person in question would go on to kill other people if he weren't stopped.

We don't know the bouncer was trying to kill the PC, which is why I asked Thuphinlok to clarify.

Ettina

2014-09-03, 08:14 PM

Was the PC supposed to actually be drunk, or just be faking drunkenness?

Because if he was supposed to actually be drunk, forgetting to check his own strength sounds like a fairly typical accidental action for a drunk guy. I would honestly be surprised if a drunk guy even could deal nonlethal damage with a normally lethal weapon.

And plenty of people do things while drunk that they regret later. This is just a more extreme version.

atemu1234

2014-09-03, 08:14 PM

I honestly would applaud the character for good roleplaying at being drunk. Apparently he is violent when he is intoxicated.

Also, why was the guard using lethal force on a drunk? He should've used the truncheon in lieu of conversation (and murder).

Basically, he responded alright. Give him bonus XP if he roleplays guilt well when the character comes to.

Chronos

2014-09-03, 09:20 PM

Strictly speaking, the Atonement spell doesn't cover this situation... but then, strictly speaking, the rules don't really address this at all. Give the character an opportunity to get an atonement cast on him by an appropriate priest, to address the guilt he's feeling.

But that said, it was an understandable response. Lethal force met with lethal force. It's not the PC's fault that he's so much better at lethal force than the other guy was.

Marlowe

2014-09-03, 10:42 PM

I love the fact that this thread is entitled: "You do WHAT?", when the whole problem is that that precise question was either not asked clearly or not answered adequately.

Mikeavelli

2014-09-03, 11:23 PM

Should I let him slide and retcon the lethal to nonlethal? Should I leave his alignment or switch it and let him work to restore it?

This is what you should do. It appears he clearly did not intend to kill this person. The player appears to have been confused or ignorant of the rules, and just as surprised the dude is dead as you are.

If it is not the case that he was merely ignorant of the rules; and the player intentionally murdered an innocent who had no part in the scheme, then he is neither lawful nor good. There is no pass for 'defending yourself' in this situation, since surrender, nonlethal fighting, running away, and not placing yourself in this situation in the first place were all perfectly viable options. Atoning somewhat makes up for it, and he might be able to hold on to that alignment if he really feels the character deserves to.

jedipotter

2014-09-03, 11:52 PM

OK. Fair enough.
But of the PC took lethal damage, then the bouncer opened Pandoras box.

Anyone who uses the ''I took lethal damage, so I had to kill'' is Evil. And it is worse if you start the fight. And unless your 1st level, a NPC thug is no threat. Any PC of level two or high was not in much danger...

I like a more extreme game, so that being said:

I'd make the shift here that the player had made the choice to no long be Lawful Good, but to change alignment. Though I would not stop the game for this, ever. I hate wasting game time with OOC stuff. So I'd have a evil outsider show up with a ''welcome to the darkside'' speech and/or the good outsider showing up with the ''what have you done!'' Maybe have a nice effect like blood flow out of the characters hands.

Now if the player just wants to plead ''temporary insanity'', I'd be willing to let it drop, but with the stern waring that they had used a strike.

And if the player thought they did nothing wrong.....I'd make the character Evil. Welcome to the dark side....

A Tad Insane

2014-09-04, 12:11 AM

The Pc was attacked by a man wielding a club, and his adventurer instincts demanded he attacked with a weapon. Instead of a softened blow to the gut, the top spike of his hammer gutted the bouncer, and he felt horrible enough to want to go to the family of the bouncer in the town he was wanted in. That's very much a "lawful good character made a big mistake and wants to never repeat it" situation, so he's a paladin or cleric of a lawful good god, he needs to get an atonement spell, and that's it. He keeps his alignment unless he does this more.

Andezzar

2014-09-04, 01:35 AM

We don't know the bouncer was trying to kill the PC, which is why I asked Thuphinlok to clarify.Unless the bouncer took the -4 to the attack roll and dealt non-lethal damage, he at least accepted the PC's death as a possible outcome.

Was the PC supposed to actually be drunk, or just be faking drunkenness?

Because if he was supposed to actually be drunk, forgetting to check his own strength sounds like a fairly typical accidental action for a drunk guy. I would honestly be surprised if a drunk guy even could deal nonlethal damage with a normally lethal weapon.

And plenty of people do things while drunk that they regret later. This is just a more extreme version.Actually being drunk in that kind of plot is pretty stupid, but not inherently chaotic or evil, unless being drunk is against the law. The existence of taverns very much suggests that it isn't.

If it is not the case that he was merely ignorant of the rules; and the player intentionally murdered an innocent who had no part in the scheme, then he is neither lawful nor good. There is no pass for 'defending yourself' in this situation, since surrender, nonlethal fighting, running away, and not placing yourself in this situation in the first place were all perfectly viable options. Atoning somewhat makes up for it, and he might be able to hold on to that alignment if he really feels the character deserves to.If someone attacks you either with the intent of killing you or at least being OK with killing you, surrender is not a good option.

Anyone who uses the ''I took lethal damage, so I had to kill'' is Evil. And it is worse if you start the fight. And unless your 1st level, a NPC thug is no threat. Any PC of level two or high was not in much danger...PCs or NPCs do not have color coded names above their heads or even a CR number attached to them. Neither could the bouncer know how much damage the PC had previously received nor could the PC know whether the bouncer is a threat to him. He can however perceive that he is attacked with lethal force. Retaliating in kind is in no way evil.

I'd make the shift here that the player had made the choice to no long be Lawful Good, but to change alignment. Though I would not stop the game for this, ever. I hate wasting game time with OOC stuff. So I'd have a evil outsider show up with a ''welcome to the darkside'' speech and/or the good outsider showing up with the ''what have you done!'' Maybe have a nice effect like blood flow out of the characters hands.Do you do something similar if an evil PC ever does somehting without personal gain but to the benefit of others?

And if the player thought they did nothing wrong.....I'd make the character Evil. Welcome to the dark side....Taking the situation with the bouncer out of context, he did not do anything wrong. Self-defense is not evil. Taking part in this plot to free someone from prison most likely was unlawful, but that's it.

The Pc was attacked by a man wielding a club, and his adventurer instincts demanded he attacked with a weapon. Instead of a softened blow to the gut, the top spike of his hammer gutted the bouncer, and he felt horrible enough to want to go to the family of the bouncer in the town he was wanted in.Unfortunately, besides dealing non-lethal damage, there is no mechanism for softening the blow or targeting specific locations. Additionally blunt force trauma to the torso can be just as lethal as such a blow to the head.

Kalaska'Agathas

2014-09-04, 03:53 AM

Self defense may not be evil, but conspiring to commit assault (by starting a fight as a distraction) means that you're no longer talking about self defense. Your character deliberately assaulted someone, and then proceeded to kill them during the commission of the assault. Whether or not the bouncer's death was intended, your character deliberately engaged in an act the purpose of which was to cause harm, and which any rational person could tell had the potential to have lethal effect, without taking any precautions to prevent such an outcome. That the bouncer, in the course of his duties and with the (presumably) lawful authorization to do so, engaged with a weapon, is immaterial. In fact, this wasn't simply acknowledged as a possibility, it was a critical part of the character's plan. Deliberately engineering a situation in which you will be attacked, as part of a reasonable and justified response, means the self defense argument goes out the window.

It sounds, however, like this is a case in which the OP may have been justified in asking "Are you taking the -4 to do nonlethal damage on this attack, or not?" given the character's alignment, and the player's response. A retcon may be in order; however, given the character's desire to make amends, you've got a pretty good adventure hook dangling right in front of your PC. If the campaign has room for it, it may be a time for The Quest For A Diamond The Size Of A Fist And A Cleric Capable Of Casting Ressurection (which, incidentally, is much more thrilling at low levels than in Epic play - that changes things from dungeoncrawling and legwork and sidequests to AccountingQuest: Spare Change Edition! which isn't particularly exciting).

satcharna

2014-09-04, 04:04 AM

The intent was ultimately good (getting a presumably important and good character out of a corrupt legal system) but the act and plan were definitely not lawful. He is violating the law both by breaking someone out of prison and by planning to do so by committing another crime. The first can be argued away with that the local legal system is too corrupt to qualify as good, but the latter is something that a lawful character shouldn't be considering unless the law they're breaking is one he views as evil, and laws against assault are usually seen as a good thing.

If I were you I'd think about consulting the player if the character really should be lawful good, or if perhaps neutral good or chaotic good would be more suitable. One murder isn't enough to change his alignment, but retconning him away from lawful good to something more fitting might be a good idea. Lawful good does after all mean following the law, respecting tradition, and doing good. If a law is evil a lawful character should be allowed to break it (freeing slaves is a good example) but if a law is neutral or good a LG character would do his best to follow it, ie. not commit assault or murder.

Threadnaught

2014-09-04, 04:12 AM

*snip*

I hope you consider everything you have said here, should someone ever pull a knife or gun on you and use it. Wouldn't want you to risk killing someone just because they tried to kill you, because that would be bad. According to you.

satcharna

2014-09-04, 05:38 AM

I hope you consider everything you have said here, should someone ever pull a knife or gun on you and use it. Wouldn't want you to risk killing someone just because they tried to kill you, because that would be bad. According to you.Yes, because the sensible solution to someone threatening/assaulting you is to kill them.

NichG

2014-09-04, 05:50 AM

I hope you consider everything you have said here, should someone ever pull a knife or gun on you and use it. Wouldn't want you to risk killing someone just because they tried to kill you, because that would be bad. According to you.

Why do you automatically assume that jedipotter self-identifies as Lawful Good? It's perfectly consistent for someone to say 'this was an evil act, but if pressed I might do the same thing in that situation'.

Sir Garanok

2014-09-04, 06:05 AM

Perhaps you should have asked if he intended to do lethal damage.

Anyway one act is not enough,though being in this situation makes it more than one act already.

Things depend on how he will role play it.

Pretending like he made the right choise and adding more of that to the list might conclude in alignment change (after warning him).

I would give some sort of atonement opportunity,his choise to take it or not.

Ettina

2014-09-04, 07:18 AM

Yes, because the sensible solution to someone threatening/assaulting you is to kill them.

The sensible solution is to use whatever force necessary to prevent them from harming you, and no more. In some cases, you can do this by just talking to them, or blocking their hit, or doing a takedown or something (I'm in karate by the way). In other cases, your only option is to hit them back as hard as you can, even if you risk killing them. If you honestly believe they're about to kill you, and you have good reason for that belief, then killing them is a sensible reaction.

bjoern

2014-09-04, 08:08 AM

For myself, of this happened to me IRL, I would feel guilt that my actions caused a death. I would blame myself more knowing that it only happened because I willingly caused the situation. The situation got out of hand, I was at risk of dying because things got out of hand, and I killed someone else defending myself.
If anything, for me, my current alignment would be reinforced more solidly than it was before. I would feel terrible. I would have more respect for the laws, seeing first hand how a minor infraction can lead to so much harm.

Threadnaught

2014-09-04, 10:02 AM

Yes, because the sensible solution to someone threatening/assaulting you is to kill them.

Nah, the sensible solution to someone threatening you is to ignore them or if they persist, alerting the authorities.
The sensible solution to someone assaulting you is to defend yourself and alert the authorities.

The sensible solution to someone trying to kill you is to... Let them?

If someone pulled a knife and stabbed me, then attempted to do so again, I'd kill them or die trying. The least amount of force I'd attempt to use on them, has a high probability of fatally injuring them.
Should I just ignore the knife wielding thug and any additional knife wounds instead?

Why do you automatically assume that jedipotter self-identifies as Lawful Good? It's perfectly consistent for someone to say 'this was an evil act, but if pressed I might do the same thing in that situation'.

There's the problem though, it's not that killing someone attempting to do you harm is inherently bad that's being argued, it's victim blaming. The person being attacked in the first place deserves to die because they were attacked. Rather than the attacker forfeiting their rights when they commit a crime, they are to be treated with all the sympathy any can muster.

NichG

2014-09-04, 10:59 AM

Nah, the sensible solution to someone threatening you is to ignore them or if they persist, alerting the authorities.
The sensible solution to someone assaulting you is to defend yourself and alert the authorities.

The sensible solution to someone trying to kill you is to... Let them?

If someone pulled a knife and stabbed me, then attempted to do so again, I'd kill them or die trying. The least amount of force I'd attempt to use on them, has a high probability of fatally injuring them.
Should I just ignore the knife wielding thug and any additional knife wounds instead?

There's the problem though, it's not that killing someone attempting to do you harm is inherently bad that's being argued, it's victim blaming. The person being attacked in the first place deserves to die because they were attacked. Rather than the attacker forfeiting their rights when they commit a crime, they are to be treated with all the sympathy any can muster.

Again, why do you assume that 'Lawful Good' or any other alignment is equal to 'sensible'? D&D alignments are a particular moral system that may or may not have anything whatsoever to do with modern morality, practicality, etc. Its perfectly consistent for the 'correct' action for a given alignment to be 'let the guy kill you'.

In general, the 'sensible' thing to do in real life is to be True Neutral - having no prior philosophical or ethical biases allows for the most rational responses to the widest variety of situations. The problem is with people insisting that their instincts should be labelled as the alignment that seems to be the most socially acceptable to be. Which alignment that is varies, but it tends to be either LG or CG depending.

Saying 'X is the LG thing to do' is not the same as saying 'in real life, in this situation I believe you should do X'. In general, real people who are placed under greater amounts of stress will tend to make decisions that lean towards the E direction because being placed in a double-bind is an indication that the societal structures one assumed would protect you are beginning to betray you. This is perfectly rational behavior (its the attractor for iterated Prisoner's Dilemma - cooperate until you're betrayed, then defect). That doesn't necessarily mean that in a given ethical/moral system that it is perfectly ethical or moral behavior - many such systems ask for their adherents to make personal sacrifices for sake of an overall sense of 'fairness' or group benefit; on a level of individual rational behavior, doing that is often not the optimal choice to make (but collectively it may be optimal within a group of people who share the same ethical/moral systems).

Lets look at the actual breakdown of the situation, independent of the question of 'should the PC's alignment change'. Instead lets just look at each component of the scenario from each side. The PC was involved in perpetrating a crime in the name of good. The wrong being righted by this crime was at an individual rather than societal level. The methodology proposed causes distress and damage to innocents not involved in the perpetration of the crime (setting a fire elsewhere, starting a bar fight); however, that distress and damage may be significantly less than what is being prevented.

So far, this is most consistent with the outlooks of NG, CG, TN, and CN. It isn't strictly CG because the character may well be serving a higher justice. Its probably not LG because of the aspect of causing societal chaos. The aspect of causing harm to people who are otherwise innocent bystanders tends to push it towards neutral on the moral axis as well. Again, this isn't saying that the action should convert the character's alignment to one of those four, its just saying what the action is most strongly aligned with. An LG character could do these things, as could a CE character, but I wouldn't call them a CE or LG act.

Now, we have the bar fight. The bouncer uses a lethal weapon against the instigator. On the bouncer's part, this act is consistent with the spectrum between LN to CE, depending on e.g. local laws, the terms of their employment, etc. It would be hard to argue that this is a Good act on the part of the bouncer. Its also not a rational act given the nature of D&D demographics, but we could reason that the bouncer has never encountered a high-level character, or perhaps that the bouncer often has to deal with a criminal element who tends to deploy lethal force in these situations and is doing what best preserves his life. The act shades towards evil if the choice to use lethal force on the part of the bouncer is motivated by bloodlust or cruelty rather than preservation.

Now the PC's response. Much like the Bouncer's choice, the PC's response is consistent with the spectrum from LN to CE. At the LN side is a doctrinaire reasoning 'lethal force was used against me therefore I have permission to use it in return'. The TN take on it is pure rationality combined with a good-sized dollop of stupidity on the PC's part: 'there is threat to me (false, which is the stupidity part), therefore the rational thing to do is to end this conflict as absolutely as I can'. The chaotic and/or evil versions of this are essentially the same as above, but combined with a conscious refusal to recognize any culpability for initiating the scenario that eventually lead to the bouncer's death; if the PC realized their superiority and the lack of danger, but justified their murder with 'response to lethal force!', then that'd be most consistent with LE (which, given that the PC regretted the outcome, is not what happened in this situation).

So what's the point of all this? There are two. One is that both sides of a conflict can be culpable; there isn't just 'the bouncer was right and the PC was wrong' or 'the PC was right and the bouncer was wrong' - they can both be (and arguably both were) legally and/or morally 'wrong'. The escalation that occurred was the result of the actions of both parties in that through different choices, either participant could have prevented the situation from leading to death(s).

The second point is that 'Lawful' and 'Good' are not the same thing as 'rational', 'safe', 'what you should do', etc. They're just a particular philosophical viewpoint, and certainly not the only one (nor do they necessarily map onto any concepts of real-world morality). Saying OOC 'your character has committed an evil act' is not a form of punishment, and should not be taken or used as such. Its simply a re-evaluation of the character's external actions (and motivations to the extent that they're knowable) against a particular cosmological ethos.

Mikeavelli

2014-09-04, 11:00 AM

If someone attacks you either with the intent of killing you or at least being OK with killing you, surrender is not a good option.

The goal of this plan was to get arrested. So yes, surrender is a good option. If for whatever reason the guy didn't accept your surrender and kept trying to kill you, I'd maybe consider lethal defensive force an option. Still a bad one though, since it's easy to tell this guy didn't pose any real threat.

Nah, the sensible solution to someone threatening you is to ignore them or if they persist, alerting the authorities.
The sensible solution to someone assaulting you is to defend yourself and alert the authorities.

The sensible solution to someone trying to kill you is to... Let them?

If someone pulled a knife and stabbed me, then attempted to do so again, I'd kill them or die trying. The least amount of force I'd attempt to use on them, has a high probability of fatally injuring them.
Should I just ignore the knife wielding thug and any additional knife wounds instead?

There's the problem though, it's not that killing someone attempting to do you harm is inherently bad that's being argued, it's victim blaming. The person being attacked in the first place deserves to die because they were attacked. Rather than the attacker forfeiting their rights when they commit a crime, they are to be treated with all the sympathy any can muster.

The NPC in this circumstance is the authority. He has the legal authority (and duty!) to stop you from brawling. He's the one dead because the PC had a stupid plan. He is the victim. The PC is the aggressor in this situation, and is not a victim in any sense of the word. The PC is legitimately to blame.

Deadline

2014-09-04, 11:47 AM

The goal of this plan was to get arrested. So yes, surrender is a good option. If for whatever reason the guy didn't accept your surrender and kept trying to kill you, I'd maybe consider lethal defensive force an option. Still a bad one though, since it's easy to tell this guy didn't pose any real threat.

It's a bit unclear from the OP:

They were going to start a bar brawl to attract the guard then use disguise self to imitate a guard and bring the 'drunk' in to cool his heels in the drunk tank. Meanwhile on the other end of town they would set fire to a vacant warehouse to draw the remaining guards away from the jailhouse.

The bolded part seems to indicate that the plan wasn't to get arrested, but to dress one of the party members up as a guard and "pretend" to bring him in so they could get a couple of PCs into the jail.

Vhaidara

2014-09-04, 12:01 PM

attracting the tavern bullyboy's attention and getting a call to the guard put in. Then the bullyboy hits him with his club

Specifically, this is the town brute, not the town guard. This is the big guy who sits in the bar getting drunk and regularly wails on people.

What happened was as follows (by my reading)
1. Paladin drinks
2. Paladin attracts the attention of the local bully (likely through insults)
3. Someone calls for the guard
4. Bully swings and hits the Paladin WITH A WEAPON FOR LETHAL DAMAGE, thus starting the fight. Note that the Paladin does NOT initiate the fight.
5. Paladin responds to the lethal attack with a lethal weapon by also attacking with a lethal weapon. He gets a lucky (or unlucky, as the case may be) blow and sends the guy's head flying out the window

This is the guy down the bar calling your mother unpleasant names and you respond by attempting murder. I feel the error was on the part of the GM for not having this just be a fistfight.

Andezzar

2014-09-04, 12:17 PM

The goal of this plan was to get arrested. So yes, surrender is a good option. If for whatever reason the guy didn't accept your surrender and kept trying to kill you, I'd maybe consider lethal defensive force an option. Still a bad one though, since it's easy to tell this guy didn't pose any real threat.That is news to me. I understood the part as Deadline did.

Judging how much of a threat a creature is, is not that easy and the methods for such deduction are not easily available to all classes.

Largely irrelevant sidenote: On a critical hit you do not multiply the damage you rolled for a normal hit you rol multiple times. That way the damage does not spike as much.

Threadnaught

2014-09-04, 12:21 PM

The NPC in this circumstance is the authority. He has the legal authority (and duty!) to stop you from brawling. He's the one dead because the PC had a stupid plan. He is the victim. The PC is the aggressor in this situation, and is not a victim in any sense of the word. The PC is legitimately to blame.

To pacify a drunk, first an attempt to reason with them must be made, if they're violent, disable them and drag them out of the bar, leave the guards to deal with them. Don't kill them, they're a source of income.

Alternatively, I think Keledrath's view is a more accurate one.

I've never seen bullyboy used as a term for bouncer, it's used here to describe the person who initiates the combat. And Keledrath's description is accurate to what is in the OP.

So if I am stabbed by a knife wielding thug, I am legally required to give them all my money and let them murder me?

HaikenEdge

2014-09-04, 12:22 PM

Specifically, this is the town brute, not the town guard. This is the big guy who sits in the bar getting drunk and regularly wails on people.

What happened was as follows (by my reading)
1. Paladin drinks
2. Paladin attracts the attention of the local bully (likely through insults)
3. Someone calls for the guard
4. Bully swings and hits the Paladin WITH A WEAPON FOR LETHAL DAMAGE, thus starting the fight. Note that the Paladin does NOT initiate the fight.
5. Paladin responds to the lethal attack with a lethal weapon by also attacking with a lethal weapon. He gets a lucky (or unlucky, as the case may be) blow and sends the guy's head flying out the window

This is the guy down the bar calling your mother unpleasant names and you respond by attempting murder. I feel the error was on the part of the GM for not having this just be a fistfight.

At no point was the character ever described as "paladin".

Also, not directed at Keledrath but to everybody in general, I'm not seeing how this is a breach of Lawful; as far as I can tell, Lawful doesn't mean you follow the law, it just means you have a significant amount of self-discipline, a code of conduct or something similar, ie, a monk or knight being lawful; in fact, a knight's code of conduct, for which the character is lawful, mentions nothing about laws at all, so starting a fight as a diversion which leads to manslaughter in self-defense is neither chaotic nor evil, particularly if the character's personal code of conduct includes something like, "I will always help my friends."

If anything, to me, enforcing "You have to follow the laws" as lawful seems to make less of the lawful monks who don't care about the law but are disciplined to the point of asceticism.

Nibbens

2014-09-04, 12:23 PM

Ask the player how he feels about it. I'd try to keep the death as is and make sure that he roleplays the fact that he accidentally killed and 'innocent' man. Work with him for the betterment of the story, not against him. Bring up plenty of in game environment shenanigans to remind him of his act. Maybe the guy he killed has a 10 year old daughter - as cute as can be. Tug on his heartstrings and make his story one of guilt suffering and possibly redemption. Maybe something happens to help balance the scales - or maybe his actions only continue to make the scales worse as he accidentally causes the bullyboy's family to lose their home, etc etc.

Pile on the guilt, but leave his alignment alone.

Also - maybe the player might have some ideas about how he wants his story to go.

Vhaidara

2014-09-04, 12:25 PM

At no point was the character ever described as "paladin".

Huh. Somehow I inserted paladin mentally.

HaikenEdge

2014-09-04, 12:28 PM

Huh. Somehow I inserted paladin mentally.

Yeah, if it was a Paladin, it would likely be the first step in what might be the paladin's fall, but for a generic LG character, I'm not seeing it as problematic in the least.

Iferus

2014-09-04, 12:47 PM

Andezzar

2014-09-04, 01:15 PM

If you're trying to escalate a situation, you share responsibility when others do so too. In this case, the player should have anticipated that some people might start using lethal force. A Good character would not let that happen, because he's responsible for the escalated situation. A Good character would disarm or grapple an NPC that draws a weapon.I agree with you, that a good character should od that if he can be reasonably sure that he can disarm the opponent before he is in danger of being incapacitated. However for most characters that decision is not easy to make, so I see nothing wrong with better safe than sorry dead. Killing the bouncer in self-defense is not a good act, but good characters are not required to only commit good acts. To remain good they must perform more good acts than evil ones.

Vhaidara

2014-09-04, 01:21 PM

If you're trying to escalate a situation, you share responsibility when others do so too. In this case, the player should have anticipated that some people might start using lethal force. A Good character would not let that happen, because he's responsible for the escalated situation. A Good character would disarm or grapple an NPC that draws a weapon.

As I said, what happened here was
Character makes unflattering comments about the enemy's mother
Enemy immediately goes for lethal response

Also, given that this was a 1d10+1.5 Str damage attack, I feel this party is sub level 4. Possibly even level 1. So he might have just been hit for more than half of his health. That is a situation where you panic.

Troacctid

2014-09-04, 01:31 PM

Or the player used the attack stats on their character sheet without thinking about it, with the intent of participating in a standard barfight, and the DM treated it as a normal combat encounter and then said "Whoops, you didn't say you were dealing nonlethal damage, so he's dead now" after the fact.

Kalaska'Agathas

2014-09-04, 01:35 PM

As I said, what happened here was
Character makes unflattering comments about the enemy's mother
Enemy immediately goes for lethal response

Also, given that this was a 1d10+1.5 Str damage attack, I feel this party is sub level 4. Possibly even level 1. So he might have just been hit for more than half of his health. That is a situation where you panic.

I think it's slightly different than you present it to be:

Character conspires with Party to cause a bar brawl (possibly Inciting to Riot)
Character makes unflattering comments about target's mother, with the intent to start a bar brawl
Enemy engages in brawl
Character, with full knowledge and desire that Enemy will engage, strikes him to lethal effect

The panic argument falls down somewhat, given the added circumstance that being attacked was an intended and necessary part of the plan. Given their foreknowledge of that, they should have planned to take damage, and taken steps to prevent just this kind of panic reaction. Again, self defense goes out the window when you conspire to cause a fight in the first place.

HaikenEdge

2014-09-04, 01:37 PM

I think it's slightly different than you present it to be:

Character conspires with Party to cause a bar brawl (possibly Inciting to Riot)
Character makes unflattering comments about target's mother, with the intent to start a bar brawl
Enemy engages in brawl
Character, with full knowledge and desire that Enemy will engage, strikes him to lethal effect

The panic argument falls down somewhat, given the added circumstance that being attacked was an intended and necessary part of the plan. Given their foreknowledge of that, they should have planned to take damage, and taken steps to prevent just this kind of panic reaction. Again, self defense goes out the window when you conspire to cause a fight in the first place.

You might conspire to cause a fight, but you might not be conspiring to get brained with a baseball bat.

Vhaidara

2014-09-04, 01:40 PM

I think it's slightly different than you present it to be:

Character conspires with Party to cause a bar brawl (possibly Inciting to Riot)
Character makes unflattering comments about target's mother, with the intent to start a bar brawl
Enemy engages in brawl
Character, with full knowledge and desire that Enemy will engage, strikes him to lethal effect

They were attempting to start a bar brawl, ie, a fist fight, ie nonlethal combat. The enemy went for a lethal blow

The panic argument falls down somewhat, given the added circumstance that being attacked was an intended and necessary part of the plan. Given their foreknowledge of that, they should have planned to take damage, and taken steps to prevent just this kind of panic reaction. Again, self defense goes out the window when you conspire to cause a fight in the first place.

Again, they planned to take non-lethal damage. Imagine if you go to a boxing event. You are prepared to be hurt, but you know your life won't be in danger. If someone pulls a knife in the middle of the round and stabs you, suddenly, your life is in danger.

HaikenEdge

2014-09-04, 01:52 PM

Again, they planned to take non-lethal damage. Imagine if you go to a boxing event. You are prepared to be hurt, but you know your life won't be in danger. If someone pulls a knife in the middle of the round and stabs you, suddenly, your life is in danger.

To be fair, boxing is a bad sport for the comparison; according to the Boxrec Boxing Encyclopedia, 1053 people have died from injuries sustained while boxing.

A more appropriate comparison is probably dodgeball. You can expect to get hit with the ball, and thus be in pain, but at no point are you expecting somebody to suddenly wheel out a cannon and fire grapeshot at you.

Vhaidara

2014-09-04, 01:55 PM

To be fair, boxing is a bad sport for the comparison; according to the Boxrec Boxing Encyclopedia, 1053 people have died from injuries sustained while boxing.

I picked boxing because it came to mind first of full contact violent sports.

A more appropriate comparison is probably dodgeball. You can expect to get hit with the ball, and thus be in pain, but at no point are you expecting somebody to suddenly wheel out a cannon and fire grapeshot at you.

I didn't go with that one because I knew it would invite reductio ad absurdum. Maybe we should go with Rugby instead?

Segev

2014-09-04, 01:57 PM

In the kind of genre that D&D typically depicts, "bar brawls" are non-lethal events that are a "rough sort of fun" for certain kinds of people. They may not be harmless, but they're certainly not more permanently damaging than the property damage they cause. Expecting the brawl to be largely harmless, save for some black eyes and sore heads in the morning, is not unreasonable. When a brawler escalates it to "potentially lethal," the responding escalation to the same level of threat is not unreasonable as a means of self-defense.

Threadnaught

2014-09-04, 01:59 PM

To be fair, boxing is a bad sport for the comparison; according to the Boxrec Boxing Encyclopedia, 1053 people have died from injuries sustained while boxing.

A more appropriate comparison is probably dodgeball. You can expect to get hit with the ball, and thus be in pain, but at no point are you expecting somebody to suddenly wheel out a cannon and fire grapeshot at you.

Actually Boxing is more apt, as people can die if they take too much nonlethal damage, a crit could take them into Dying territory. It's lethal enough that you need someone to break it up before it gets too serious, like a bar brawl cause by some drunk insulting the angriest man in town.

Edit: @Keledrath, nah stay on Boxing. The number really isn't as high as it appears.

jedipotter

2014-09-04, 02:27 PM

4. Bully swings and hits the Paladin WITH A WEAPON FOR LETHAL DAMAGE, thus starting the fight. Note that the Paladin does NOT initiate the fight.
5. Paladin responds to the lethal attack with a lethal weapon by also attacking with a lethal weapon. He gets a lucky (or unlucky, as the case may be) blow and sends the guy's head flying out the window

This is the guy down the bar calling your mother unpleasant names and you respond by attempting murder. I feel the error was on the part of the GM for not having this just be a fistfight.

This was an evil act. When you respond with deadly force for a stupid, childish reason.....then you are evil.

The good person was just trying to make a distracting fight. But as soon as the other guy pulled out a weapon the good guy turned into an insane murderhobo! That is evil.

A good person, who starts a fight and gets a weapon drawn on himself for that reason does not kill the other guy. The good guy disarms him, or grapples him or otherwise stops the fight without killing.

And really, get off the 'lethal' damage. Unless this good guy had like two hit points, a club by a bruiser NPC is no real threat.

This is not an error on the DM's part, the error is the players. The player is the one that had his good character go insane with ''A LETHAL Weapon! I must murder death kill! Murder death kill! Kill! Kill! Aerrghghhggh!''

I'd point out this is a way lots of character die in my games too...

Andezzar

2014-09-04, 02:36 PM

Actually Boxing is more apt, as people can die if they take too much nonlethal damage, a crit could take them into Dying territory. It's lethal enough that you need someone to break it up before it gets too serious, like a bar brawl cause by some drunk insulting the angriest man in town.Not by D&D rules. No amount of nonlethal damage can reduce a character's hit points, much less to -1 or fewer. You cannot kill with nonlethal damage
Lethal damage is subtracted from a character's hit points. If the hit point total reaches -1 to -9 the character is dying, by -10 he is dead.
Nonlethal damage on the other hand is added together and compared to the character's current hit points. If the value of the non-lethal damage equals the character's hit points, he is staggered, if it exceeds the character's hit points he falls unconscious. Adding non-lethal damage beyond that does not change anything but increase the time the character will remain unconscious without help.

atemu1234

2014-09-04, 02:52 PM

Da'Shain

2014-09-04, 02:52 PM

bjoern

2014-09-04, 02:55 PM

HaikenEdge

2014-09-04, 03:04 PM

This was an evil act. When you respond with deadly force for a stupid, childish reason.....then you are evil.

The good person was just trying to make a distracting fight. But as soon as the other guy pulled out a weapon the good guy turned into an insane murderhobo! That is evil.

A good person, who starts a fight and gets a weapon drawn on himself for that reason does not kill the other guy. The good guy disarms him, or grapples him or otherwise stops the fight without killing.

And really, get off the 'lethal' damage. Unless this good guy had like two hit points, a club by a bruiser NPC is no real threat.

This is not an error on the DM's part, the error is the players. The player is the one that had his good character go insane with ''A LETHAL Weapon! I must murder death kill! Murder death kill! Kill! Kill! Aerrghghhggh!''

I'd point out this is a way lots of character die in my games too...

What I'm reading here is, "The player is always wrong."

I could make a case the PC committed a justifiable homicide in defense of his own life; hit points are an abstract metagame concept characters have no inkling about in-game, so any reference to hit points as a justification as to why what the player did was "evil" is metagaming and expecting a character to know something it doesn't even know exists in-character.

What the character knows is that, he provoked some guy, who we'll call Bully in this scenario, and Bully immediately pulled a big stick and tried to brain him good; furthermore, if he tries to grab the club or rush in to take the opponent down, they're liable to get smacked with a stick (an attack of opportunity), where a likely shot might put out their lights, if not straight up kill them. In fact, in this case, the reasonable response is either turning tail an running (which doesn't guarantee Bully won't chase him down and continue whaling on him), or grabbing the nearest object, in this case the character's warhammer, and swinging back in defense of self to avoid getting killed. It's not an evil reaction; it's a simply human reaction.

What you're asking the player to do is act out of character; the kind of risk you're asking the character to take isn't characteristic of a good character as much as an exalted character, but an exalted character wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.

jedipotter

2014-09-04, 03:39 PM

You know, if they die that way repeatedly, it MAY be the DM's fault...

Nah, it's always the players fault.

Lethal is lethal. Unless you're playing an OotS-style campaign, characters don't see their level, AC or hit point totals; all they see is a lethal weapon coming at them and hurting them.

That is such a flimsy argument. Even if the players don't metagame, a ''thug with a club'' is not much of a threat to any character over 1st level. Unless you have some sort of over optimizing DM where he makes every tavern bruser a half dragon/half ogre with a club +5 of slaying humanoids.

Also, try not to use too much hyperbole, it doesn't help. "Insane murderhobo?" "As soon as the other guy pulled out a weapon?" He was struck for lethal damage. The equivalent of a baseball bat slammed into his body at full force. He responded in kind. This is not the response of someone unbalanced or quick to the trigger; he responded to a real, present threat of death.

Don't mix D&D and RL. A 'bat' is nothing to a D&D character. A club is going to do less then ten damage...unless you have the half giant thug whatever. So if the character has like 50 hit points, then even losing 10 does not matter. So, yes, if the player just stood there for like 20 rounds the thug with the club might have killed them.

Yes, a LG character would likely be incredibly remorseful that his plan incited an unnecessary fight to the death, and if he went through with a similar plan without taking precautions then I might note it down as a pattern of reckless disregard of danger to others, with is a point against L and G. But this one time? He made a mistake because he didn't guess someone would simply try to kill him. He'll feel bad, possibly atone, learn from it, and move on.

There is no reason why the character could not have disarmed or otherwise ended the fight with out lethal force. That is what a good person would do. Not respond with deadly force. To use deadly force ''just as you were attacked'' is evil.

What I'm reading here is, "The player is always wrong."
.

Most players are, most of the time.

Say we have character Thon played by Henry. He wants his character to be lawful good, but he also gives Thon the huge character flaw of ''responds with over whelming deadly lethal force on a whim whenever he thinks he is in danger irregardless of anything else''. I'd take the second to say ''you know, you might not want to be lawful good with that flaw, how about you pick another alignment.'' And if Henry says ''Nah, my character just being good by killing anyone who messes with me''. I'll shake my head and let the character fall soon enough in the game.

But see, all Henry has to do is not be lawful good and everything would be fine....

atemu1234

2014-09-04, 03:44 PM

Nah, it's always the players fault. [snip] That is such a flimsy argument.

I don't think you're in a position to call anyone's arguments "flimsy".

Let me get this straight: You hate optimization and don't let the players do it, and when they die (because they aren't optimized enough at your order) it is somehow their fault? (Note I am referencing other threads in which your opinion on the matter is perfectly clear. I thought it would be important for readers who are unfamiliar with your positions on matters of player agency.)

bjoern

2014-09-04, 03:49 PM

I don't think you're in a position to call anyone's arguments "flimsy".

Let me get this straight: You hate optimization and don't let the players do it, and when they die (because they aren't optimized enough at your order) it is somehow their fault? (Note I am referencing other threads in which your opinion on the matter is perfectly clear. I thought it would be important for readers who are unfamiliar with your positions on matters of player agency.)

A second level unoptimized fighter with average HP and stats has probably 13 HP. (2d10+2)
The PC rolled crit and high damage on his hammer.
If the bully rolled crit and max damage and has a 12 strength, the PC is dead.

atemu1234

2014-09-04, 03:53 PM

A second level unoptimized fighter with average HP and stats has probably 13 HP. (2d10+2)
The PC rolled crit and high damage on his hammer.
If the bully rolled crit and max damage and has a 12 strength, the PC is dead.

Case in point. I was on your side.

Da'Shain

2014-09-04, 03:55 PM

That is such a flimsy argument. Even if the players don't metagame, a ''thug with a club'' is not much of a threat to any character over 1st level. Unless you have some sort of over optimizing DM where he makes every tavern bruser a half dragon/half ogre with a club +5 of slaying humanoids.... that entire line of reasoning was metagaming. Again. The character doesn't know he's over 1st level (assuming the one in question even is). All he knows is that some guy came at him with a deadly weapon.

Don't mix D&D and RL. A 'bat' is nothing to a D&D character. A club is going to do less then ten damage...unless you have the half giant thug whatever. So if the character has like 50 hit points, then even losing 10 does not matter. So, yes, if the player just stood there for like 20 rounds the thug with the club might have killed them.And again ... all metagaming. And, might I add, presuming that the character is several levels over 1, as most characters level 1-3 won't hit 50 HP for ages. A club wielded in two hands with a strength of 16 could easily do 10 hp of damage, not even counting the possibility of a critical hit. It might not have killed him in one round, but it's highly possible for it to kill him in two or three if he stand there and takes it.

There is no reason why the character could not have disarmed or otherwise ended the fight with out lethal force. That is what a good person would do. Not respond with deadly force. To use deadly force ''just as you were attacked'' is evil.Ever heard of attacks of opportunity? There's your reason. Unless the character in question had Improved Grapple or Disarm or Sunder or Unarmed Strike, he'll eat another AoO just for trying any of the nonlethal options. Good characters are under no obligation to risk their lives to respond nonlethally to lethal force. Or at least, they're not in every game I've ever played. You apparently view someone as non-Good if they're willing to kill people who try to kill them first, which is not a viewpoint that any of the D&D-derived products caters to at all.

Most players are, most of the time. Most DMs are, too, because most people are wrong a lot of the time.

Say we have character Thon played by Henry. He wants his character to be lawful good, but he also gives Thon the huge character flaw of ''responds with over whelming deadly lethal force on a whim whenever he thinks he is in danger irregardless of anything else''. I'd take the second to say ''you know, you might not want to be lawful good with that flaw, how about you pick another alignment.'' And if Henry says ''Nah, my character just being good by killing anyone who messes with me''. I'll shake my head and let the character fall soon enough in the game.

But see, all Henry has to do is not be lawful good and everything would be fine....It's not a character flaw, and it's not "overwhelming deadly force". It's responding in kind. Lawful Good characters don't have to be Paladins, and even Paladins aren't held to this ridiculous standard.

Andezzar

2014-09-04, 04:00 PM

That is such a flimsy argument. Even if the players don't metagame, a ''thug with a club'' is not much of a threat to any character over 1st level. Unless you have some sort of over optimizing DM where he makes every tavern bruser a half dragon/half ogre with a club +5 of slaying humanoids.Are you expecting or encouraging the players to metagame? That is a strange concept.

Don't mix D&D and RL. A 'bat' is nothing to a D&D character. A club is going to do less then ten damage...unless you have the half giant thug whatever. So if the character has like 50 hit points, then even losing 10 does not matter. So, yes, if the player just stood there for like 20 rounds the thug with the club might have killed them.You might want to check the rules. A club in the hand of a human with STR 18 can deal 24 damage (average not counting crits is 9.5), in the hands of a STR 20 Half-Orc 26. How do you know the PC had 50 HP? Did the OP indicate the level of the PCs?

There is no reason why the character could not have disarmed or otherwise ended the fight with out lethal force.Correct me if I don't remember your previous statements correctly, but didn't you claim that you don't want your players to use their characters' skills to find something out about the gameworld. How are the PC's supposed to assess a threat besides what you tell the players? An attack with a deadly weapon thus cannot be perceived as anything but a threat the PC's life. Risking another attack with such a weapon cannot be expected from any character.

Say we have character Thon played by Henry. He wants his character to be lawful good, but he also gives Thon the huge character flaw of ''responds with over whelming deadly lethal force on a whim whenever he thinks he is in danger irregardless of anything else''. I'd take the second to say ''you know, you might not want to be lawful good with that flaw, how about you pick another alignment.'' And if Henry says ''Nah, my character just being good by killing anyone who messes with me''. I'll shake my head and let the character fall soon enough in the game.And what does that have to do with the OP?

But see, all Henry has to do is not be lawful good and everything would be fine....No. To be lawful good he must do more lawful and/or deeds than chaotic and/or evil deeds.

Alabenson

2014-09-04, 04:14 PM

The morality of the player's actions notwithstanding, I'm personally of the opinion that a single action taken in isolation should NEVER force an alignment shift except in the most extreme of circumstances, and probably not even then. Alignment in D&D is not a video game karma meter; it represents a character's core moral and ethical viewpoints. As such, it should only be changed if a player shows a sustained pattern of behavior that warrants it over a long period of time. A single morally dubious act should no more cause a PC to slide from good towards evil than a single good act should cause a villain to rise from evil to good.

Vogonjeltz

2014-09-04, 04:37 PM

The PC was making a ruccuss by being drunk.
The bouncer responded with deadly force and tried to murder the PC
The PC defended himself

In real life, bouncers aren't allowed to murder drunk patrons that are unruly.

The remorse the PC has should be about how things worked out. And that their plan ended up killing someone because the bounced overreacted to a non-threat with deadly force

Self defense is always vindicated in my book.

Self defense applies only if you didn't provoke the situation.

I would move all the pcs one step towards chaotic evil on the basis of their plan (and following through on the plan). It displays a total lack of compunction at endangering the lives of countless innocents (staging a potentially lethal brawl and committing arson, which could have killed everyone in the city!) all for personal gain (freeing a guilty compatriot from prison).

bjoern

2014-09-04, 04:56 PM

Self defense applies only if you didn't provoke the situation.

So if you provoke me I have the right to kill you? You don't have the right to protect yourself?

???

Threadnaught

2014-09-04, 05:13 PM

So if you provoke me I have the right to kill you? You don't have the right to protect yourself?

???

Y'know, I'm often a very angry person and people tend to provoke my anger by just being around.

Just saying it'd be a very useful bit of a bull**** excuse.

Also it takes the argument to it's logical conclusion... I hope. Good Gygax, I hope the rabbit hole doesn't go as deep as that other recent thread.

Hamste

2014-09-04, 05:19 PM

Y'know, I'm often a very angry person and people tend to provoke my anger by just being around.

Just saying it'd be a very useful bit of a bull**** excuse.

Also it takes the argument to it's logical conclusion... I hope. Good Gygax, I hope the rabbit hole doesn't go as deep as that other recent thread.

Remember, a heart for an eye only kills half the world and the other half would only be half-blind. The live half would still be better off than if they only took an eye. It seems like a reasonable argument to me.

Da'Shain

2014-09-04, 05:21 PM

Self defense applies only if you didn't provoke the situation.Which so far as I can tell he didn't; he was drunk and disorderly in a bar, and a bouncer responded by attempting to kill him.

I would move all the pcs one step towards chaotic evil on the basis of their plan (and following through on the plan). It displays a total lack of compunction at endangering the lives of countless innocents (staging a potentially lethal brawl and committing arson, which could have killed everyone in the city!) all for personal gain (freeing a guilty compatriot from prison).Brawls are generally fought nonlethally; the PCs didn't reckon on opponents striking to kill, it seems. As for committing arson, sure, it's a reckless (possibly chaotic) plan, but we don't know what kind of neighborhood the vacant warehouse was in (if it's all vacant there's not much risk) and they may have taken steps to make it as controlled a burn as possible, and alerted the guard before it got out of hand. We'd need more details before it can be unilaterally declared a complete alignment shifting cluster****, and even then, sheer short-sightedness on the part of the characters explains the plan better than pure malice, which means an alignment shift towards Evil would be inappropriate.

Andezzar

2014-09-04, 05:29 PM

That reminds me:
Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.

Vhaidara

2014-09-04, 05:33 PM

Which so far as I can tell he didn't; he was drunk and disorderly in a bar, and a bouncer responded by attempting to kill him.

No, not a bouncer, another drunk attempted to kill him. Even less authority.

Anlashok

2014-09-04, 05:40 PM

Just as a reminder to everyone, Lawful does not require one to be lawful.

HaikenEdge

2014-09-04, 05:48 PM

Just as a reminder to everyone, Lawful does not require one to be lawful.

Just to clarify, I believe the second "lawful" is meant to mean "law-abiding", which I pointed out in a prior post in this thread.

Marlowe

2014-09-04, 06:01 PM

On a completely unrelated tangential note, the Ignore button is a beautiful thing.:smallsmile:

Kalaska'Agathas

2014-09-04, 06:19 PM

You might conspire to cause a fight, but you might not be conspiring to get brained with a baseball bat.

Given the sort of environment we seem to be talking about - i.e. one in which people carry practical sidearms as a matter of course, rather than tradition or fashion - it is unreasonable to assume that a fight picked in a public setting wouldn't have the possibility of becoming a lethal force encounter. Therefore, if you want to argue that you didn't intend for it to escalate, you need to take precautions to keep it from doing so. But, in this case, no such steps were taken.

They were attempting to start a bar brawl, ie, a fist fight, ie nonlethal combat. The enemy went for a lethal blow

As above, if you wanted it to remain a fist fight, you should have taken steps to ensure it would do so. In the absence of such actions, the person starting to fight (the PCs) is responsible for the outcome.

Again, they planned to take non-lethal damage. Imagine if you go to a boxing event. You are prepared to be hurt, but you know your life won't be in danger. If someone pulls a knife in the middle of the round and stabs you, suddenly, your life is in danger.

This analogy (and those others involving sports) is spurious. They did not go to a boxing event. They went to a bar with the intent to start a fight with someone. Boxing requires consent from both parties, otherwise it would just be assault. But by going into a bar and picking a fight with some drunk they find there, they are engaging in assault (and, again, inciting to riot, which may or may not be illegal, not to mention unethical or immoral).

In the kind of genre that D&D typically depicts, "bar brawls" are non-lethal events that are a "rough sort of fun" for certain kinds of people. They may not be harmless, but they're certainly not more permanently damaging than the property damage they cause. Expecting the brawl to be largely harmless, save for some black eyes and sore heads in the morning, is not unreasonable. When a brawler escalates it to "potentially lethal," the responding escalation to the same level of threat is not unreasonable as a means of self-defense.

I don't think that such a generalization is fair. This will vary considerably from setting to setting (not to mention establishment to establishment) - and again, I still hold that if you start a fight in a society in which most people carry weapons with the expectation to use them if necessary, you should expect that they may possibly come into use.

Which so far as I can tell he didn't; he was drunk and disorderly in a bar, and a bouncer responded by attempting to kill him.

Not so. The PC was not drunk and disorderly in a bar, the PC went to the bar with the intent to start a fight. This wasn't an unfortunate incident which got out of hand. They were deliberately engaging someone with the intent to assault said person.

Brawls are generally fought nonlethally; the PCs didn't reckon on opponents striking to kill, it seems.

As above, such an assumption cannot be substantiated for this case, without further information. And given the information we have, it seems that the assumption is false.

Threadnaught

2014-09-04, 06:47 PM

Not so. The PC was not drunk and disorderly in a bar, the PC went to the bar with the intent to start a fight. This wasn't an unfortunate incident which got out of hand. They were deliberately engaging someone with the intent to assault said person.

PC was behaving as if drunk, and in a disorderly fashion. The whole point of the plan was for a "guard" to arrest a "drunk" so the PCs could get into the prison.

Not specifically out to start a fight, but to cause enough of a disturbance to be arrested for drunkenness. The questionable part about this isn't what happened at the bar, it's the fire.

Kalaska'Agathas

2014-09-04, 06:55 PM

PC was behaving as if drunk, and in a disorderly fashion. The whole point of the plan was for a "guard" to arrest a "drunk" so the PCs could get into the prison.

Not specifically out to start a fight, but to cause enough of a disturbance to be arrested for drunkenness. The questionable part about this isn't what happened at the bar, it's the fire.

The ends were to get a "drunk" "arrested" by a "guard" to spend the night in the drunk tank and facilitate the extraction of an ally. They means by which they chose to go about this were to specifically start a fight, in order to get arrested. Per the OP:

They were going to start a bar brawl to attract the guard then use disguise self to imitate a guard and bring the 'drunk' in to cool his heels in the drunk tank.

So yes, they deliberately, specifically went out to start a fight.

Da'Shain

2014-09-04, 07:13 PM

Not so. The PC was not drunk and disorderly in a bar, the PC went to the bar with the intent to start a fight. This wasn't an unfortunate incident which got out of hand. They were deliberately engaging someone with the intent to assault said person.Let me fix my previous statement, then: "As far as the [bouncer/other patron/whatever] knew, he was drunk and disorderly in a bar, and [they] responded by attempting to kill him." The PC went with the intent of provoking a bar brawl, not a fight to the death. So yes, it is an unfortunate incident that got out of hand, and the lion's share of the liability rests on the person who actually started combat lethally, because without that person's unprovoked escalation, nothing would have happened; the guard would have come by and taken the PC off to the drunk tank, as according to the OP they'd already been called. It makes the PC partially morally culpable that the plan was always built around creating bar brawl, but the man who was killed was killed in self defense for escalating past the point of no return.

As above, such an assumption cannot be substantiated for this case, without further information. And given the information we have, it seems that the assumption is false.Um, we're not arguing a court case, because if we were it'd be even more open and shut that the bar patron's death was in self-defense, as the mere intent to start a fight (which the OP does not state was acted upon more than being drunk and disorderly in a bar) in no way justifies assault with a deadly weapon. We're arguing from the standards of the fantasy world they're in, which unless it differs significantly from other ones, features bar brawls as nonlethal recreational activities for lots of adventurers. Also, the information we're given shows that the PC in question felt remorse and did not expect to have to kill someone (nor was likely even intending to in the moment, considering that the guy was "liquefied" by a crit most likely on a natural 20). So, yeah, I'm perfectly comfortable in that assumption.

Kalaska'Agathas

2014-09-04, 07:46 PM

Let me fix my previous statement, then: "As far as the [bouncer/other patron/whatever] knew, he was drunk and disorderly in a bar, and [they] responded by attempting to kill him." The PC went with the intent of provoking a bar brawl, not a fight to the death. So yes, it is an unfortunate incident that got out of hand, and the lion's share of the liability rests on the person who actually started combat lethally, because without that person's unprovoked escalation, nothing would have happened; the guard would have come by and taken the PC off to the drunk tank, as according to the OP they'd already been called. It makes the PC partially morally culpable that the plan was always built around creating bar brawl, but the man who was killed was killed in self defense for escalating past the point of no return.

I think we're proceeding from different expectations of what a bar brawl consists of, in this setting. Since the response of Bullyboy wasn't remarked upon as being out of line or at least not out of the expected behavior of a bar brawler, I assume that this behavior should have been expected and accounted for, if the PCs wish to avoid culpability in his death in the bar brawl which they willingly engineered. The escalation by Bullyboy, in that case, cannot be described as unprovoked (and, really, if you provoke someone to fight you, outside the context of a duel or bout in which the rules are agreed upon beforehand, you should be prepared for the possibility of the force being greater than you desire, and should plan to make accommodations accordingly). In any case, unless Bullyboy's response was entirely outside what could rationally be expected (which wouldn't be true even in our own society), conspiring to cause a fight with Bullyboy does mean the PCs are responsible for the outcome. Fundamentally, because they engineered the fight, and neglected to take reasonable precautions to keep it non-lethal, they are responsible for the outcome. Bullyboy didn't start the lethal combat - a situation was engineered in which Bullyboy would make the first swing, certainly, but the combat was started by the PCs.

Of course, if we proceed from the assumption that fights in brawls are understood to always be non-lethal affairs, in the setting in question, as you seem to be doing, then yes, Bullyboy would be at least partially culpable. But I don't think that's the case.

Um, we're not arguing a court case, because if we were it'd be even more open and shut that the bar patron's death was in self-defense, as the mere intent to start a fight (which the OP does not state was acted upon more than being drunk and disorderly in a bar) in no way justifies assault with a deadly weapon. We're arguing from the standards of the fantasy world they're in, which unless it differs significantly from other ones, features bar brawls as nonlethal recreational activities for lots of adventurers. Also, the information we're given shows that the PC in question felt remorse and did not expect to have to kill someone (nor was likely even intending to in the moment, considering that the guy was "liquefied" by a crit most likely on a natural 20). So, yeah, I'm perfectly comfortable in that assumption.

I use "case" in the sense of "a specific instance", not in the sense of a trial before a judge and jury (though it'd be an amusing diversion, I think, if we staged a court case trying some point of Rules-Lore or other, as a forum wide mock trial. But I'm pretty weird, in that respect). And if it were, we'd have a case of assault with a deadly weapon, arson, inciting to riot, and probably Murder (PC kills Bullyboy without intending specifically to do so during the commission of felony aggravated assault), but if they felt they couldn't nail the PC on Murder, they'd likely go for Voluntary Manslaughter, at least - hardly a case in which Bullyboy's death would be an open and shut case of justifiable homicide. If your assumption that bar brawls are known and respected to be nonlethal recreational activities is correct, then that changes things. But I think it's clear from the description of Bullyboy's response that such an assumption is invalid in this instance. And not expecting a battlefield weapon to kill someone when used as such seems like a fairly stupid expectation, on the whole.

But I'll grant that, if your assumption were correct, my position would have to change. I don't see that evidenced in what Thuphinlok has posted, however.

Da'Shain

2014-09-04, 08:13 PM

snipOh, I absolutely agree that the PCs' plan was reckless and ill-conceived, and that they should have planned for the eventuality of a bystander overreacting. They certainly bear some responsibility for what happened. However, you're correct in that we disagree on the assumptions behind a "bar brawl" in a fantasy world. Numerous other works portray them as recreational, even comical affairs in which people are knocked out left and right but get back up just fine in the morning; essentially just part of the atmosphere of rougher places.

We also apparently disagree about the expectations that go into a bar brawl in the real world, as well; while I doubt many people would consider them recreational, generally fisticuffs is about as far as they're expected to go. Pulling out a baseball bat and hitting someone in a bar fight would be beyond the pale in real life, both socially and legally, as escalating the conflict to include deadly weaponry opens the door for those you're attacking to use potentially lethal force in self-defense, regardless of whether they began the conflict or not (unless we get into defense of home territory, or "stand your ground" stuff). Especially if the other person "started it" by simply being drunk and disorderly, not with an actual assault, as may be the case from OP (the OP merely says the PC "attracted the bullyboy's attention", not what method he used to do this, and it seems to me to imply that the bullyboy's swing was the first strike of the combat). If that's the case, it really doesn't matter that the PCs engineered the situation; the bullyboy is still the person who took it over the line into life-or-death.

But as I said, I do agree that the scheme was rather hare-brained, and had a lot of facets to it that put bystanders in danger. They're certainly not paragons of moral virtue or planning masterminds. But on the question of whether it deserves an alignment shift or not, I heavily lean towards "not", and view this is a major mistake on their part, not an Evil act, nor enough of a Chaotic one to shift alignment without a pattern being established.

It would be a fun diversion to have a mock trial thread, you're right; maybe we could put all these PC actions that crop up on the forum through the eminently professional legal system of GiantITP.

atemu1234

2014-09-04, 08:22 PM

[snip]

See Hanlon's Razor.

Greenish

2014-09-05, 12:08 AM

I like how the OP's story has taken a life on it's own, with the dead guy being everything from a crazy drunk trying to kill the PC for no reason to a bouncer trying to apprehend a drunk, and the PC being anything between a paladin doing the right thing to a conspiring murderhobo, and the fault lies in the DM, or the player, or neither, or both, or actually in the alignment system.

As a side note, I just want to add that the truncheon should've been printed in the PHB.

Andezzar

2014-09-05, 12:57 AM

As a side note, I just want to add that the truncheon should've been printed in the PHB.What's the difference between a truncheon and a club? Isn't a truncheon just a cylindrical piece of wood whereas the club is a bit tapered towards the handle? IMHO both would be represented by the club in D&D. A less lethal version of the 8url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baton_(law_enforcement)]baton[/url] would be the sap. It already exists in D&D.

Greenish

2014-09-05, 01:13 AM

What's the difference between a truncheon and a club?The truncheon is a martial weapon that deals non-lethal damage. If my memory serves, it also costs a few gold pieces, but is otherwise identical to a club (one-handed, 1d8 bludgeoning damage, 20/x2 crit).

It already exists in D&D.Yeah, it was printed in BoED. :smalltongue:

Spindrift

2014-09-05, 02:43 AM

At no point was the character ever described as "paladin".

Also, not directed at Keledrath but to everybody in general, I'm not seeing how this is a breach of Lawful; as far as I can tell, Lawful doesn't mean you follow the law, it just means you have a significant amount of self-discipline, a code of conduct or something similar, ie, a monk or knight being lawful; in fact, a knight's code of conduct, for which the character is lawful, mentions nothing about laws at all, so starting a fight as a diversion which leads to manslaughter in self-defense is neither chaotic nor evil, particularly if the character's personal code of conduct includes something like, "I will always help my friends."

If anything, to me, enforcing "You have to follow the laws" as lawful seems to make less of the lawful monks who don't care about the law but are disciplined to the point of asceticism.

Ofc, it needs to be clear that having a code doesn't = lawful.
You could be chaotic and have a code. Heck, the paladin of slaughter has a code of conduct(it's a stupid code, but it's still a code).
It's about how you follow your code and what your code entails. If your code states you'll always help a friend even if it means comitting arson and throwing a city into chaos as people struggle to put out the fire, I'd have a hard time seeing that action as lawful. It just means your devotion to that part of your code means more to you than the possible danger to people who may die trying to fight that fire and the chaos it may cause.
It's not unlawful to always help your friend, but it matters how you go about doing that.

While following the law isn't necessary to be lawful, an appreciation for order and a dislike of chaos tend to come with the turf. You can think a law is stupid or unjust, and not be required to follow it to maintain your alignment. If you couldn't then paladins would be falling all the time cause of slavery laws etc. But you respect the laws you do believe have merit. They're rules by wich society works and maintains order, and you subject yourself to those rules when you enter town, as do others, like a contract. If you expect others to live by those rules, but break them yourself, that's not lawful.

Most of the time laws against assault and arson are considered to have merit, at least to people who live in a city. You'd need a good reason to be able to justify those acts as lawful, though individual acts wouldn't be enough to cause an alignment shift.

Personally, I think the arson was less justifiable (considering the alignment) than the manslaughter, fire can be pretty unpredictable and could have endangered a lot of people. Could have caused widespread chaos, panic and loss of innocent life if it got out of hand. Whereas the guy did strike him for lethal damage, and he probably didn't intend to hit the guy so hard with his hammer.

Don't think it mandates an alignment shift if his character is truly sorry about how things turned out, though he should probably learn from his mistakes. If it became a pattern it'd certainly lead to a shift.

Ofc this is all just my opinion, alignments are hardly something that's universally agreed on, wich is why every DM posting a question regarding an alignment issue will get a thread full of contradictions.
In the end it always boils down to a DM's call, cause if the question was simple enough to only get 1 response it probably wouldn't have been asked in the first place.

amalcon

2014-09-05, 07:41 AM

Um, we're not arguing a court case, because if we were it'd be even more open and shut that the bar patron's death was in self-defense, as the mere intent to start a fight (which the OP does not state was acted upon more than being drunk and disorderly in a bar) in no way justifies assault with a deadly weapon.
If this were a court case in the modern U.S, it would be a clear-cut case of felony murder. LG guy was committing a felony (engineering a prison break), and someone died in a foreseeable manner; therefore, LG guy murdered him. Other jurisdictions generally have similar provisions. Just sayin'.

But we're not arguing a court case here. The "Good" act would have been to use the minimum force necessary to protect yourself and innocents, such as by e.g. not instigating the barfight in the first place (finding another way to stage the prison break). Anything that puts innocents at risk (including instigating a barfight in the first place) is not good. Example "Neutral" acts include would be to engineer a relatively safer fight (e.g. by having a cleric on hand, or paying off the bouncer / other participant beforehand, something like that), or to run away when it turned more dangerous than expected, or to bring an effective nonlethal weapon (truncheon, merciful warhammer, etc).

This particular response was an evil act, though unless LG guy is a paladin, this isn't necessarily a problem in itself. If he's just an ordinary Lawful Good character, one evil act doesn't cause an alignment shift. If he weren't actively seeking a fight, even this response would only be neutral.

It's also metagaming to assume that a fist-fight is going to be nonlethal. That D&D doesn't model the fact that fist-fights between adults are frequently deadly doesn't change the fact that they are, and not operating under this assumption would be metagaming.

bjoern

2014-09-05, 08:07 AM

If this were a court case in the modern U.S, it would be a clear-cut case of felony murder. LG guy was committing a felony (engineering a prison break), and someone died in a foreseeable manner; therefore, LG guy murdered him. Other jurisdictions generally have similar provisions. Just sayin'.

But we're not arguing a court case here. The "Good" act would have been to use the minimum force necessary to protect yourself and innocents, such as by e.g. not instigating the barfight in the first place (finding another way to stage the prison break). Anything that puts innocents at risk (including instigating a barfight in the first place) is not good. Example "Neutral" acts include would be to engineer a relatively safer fight (e.g. by having a cleric on hand, or paying off the bouncer / other participant beforehand, something like that), or to run away when it turned more dangerous than expected, or to bring an effective nonlethal weapon (truncheon, merciful warhammer, etc).

This particular response was an evil act, though unless LG guy is a paladin, this isn't necessarily a problem in itself. If he's just an ordinary Lawful Good character, one evil act doesn't cause an alignment shift. If he weren't actively seeking a fight, even this response would only be neutral.

It's also metagaming to assume that a fist-fight is going to be nonlethal. That D&D doesn't model the fact that fist-fights between adults are frequently deadly doesn't change the fact that they are, and not operating under this assumption would be metagaming.

Um...
I'd be willing to throw some punches in a brawl, cause I'd probably get a broken nose at worst (probably)
A guy pulls a gun out....yeah I'm all set. No thanks.

Its not metagaming to understand that a punch hurts less than a Louisville slugger to the brain stem.

amalcon

2014-09-05, 08:12 AM

bjoern

2014-09-05, 08:18 AM

Irrelevant, unless you'd be willing to *start* said brawl for your own purposes under the assumption that "nobody will get seriously hurt."

Sure. People could get banged up and bloodied. But so long as it stayed just fists no one is going to die.

amalcon

2014-09-05, 08:26 AM

Sure. People could get banged up and bloodied. But so long as it stayed just fists no one is going to die.Incorrect. Over 600 people were killed by unarmed strikes in the U.S. alone in 2012. (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_w eapon_2008-2012.xls) This is actually more than were killed by clubs, though certainly this is just because there were more incidents.

Hubert

2014-09-05, 08:27 AM

Um...
I'd be willing to throw some punches in a brawl, cause I'd probably get a broken nose at worst (probably)
A guy pulls a gun out....yeah I'm all set. No thanks.

Its not metagaming to understand that a punch hurts less than a Louisville slugger to the brain stem.

Of course a gun is much more lethal than punches. However, in real life there is no clear-cut distinction between non-lethal and lethal damage. Somebody can be killed in a bar fight even if everyone is just throwing punches.

Now regarding the D&D game, it depends on if the rules are strictly the physics of your world, or just a simulation. In the first case, yes, brawling can be seen as a form of "rough entertainment", with everyone assured to be fine the next morning. In the latter however it is possible that innocent people will die during the brawl created by the PCs.

Talya

2014-09-05, 08:30 AM

With apologies to William Goldman, there are no degrees of dead. Lethality is a binary thing. You're either dead, or alive.

Likewise, the moment a character chooses to inflict lethal damage on another character without some impressive justification, the other character is quite free, morally, to use any amount of lethal damage in return.

HaikenEdge

2014-09-05, 08:36 AM

Incorrect. Over 600 people were killed by unarmed strikes in the U.S. alone in 2012. (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_w eapon_2008-2012.xls) This is actually more than were killed by clubs, though certainly this is just because there were more incidents.

This might be pedantic, but it might also have something to do with the fact that carrying around clubs isn't nearly as common as carrying around one's body. I'm fairly certain the statistics don't exist, but I have a feeling the percentage of deaths caused by club used in combat per capita is significantly higher than the percentage of deaths caused by unarmed strikes used in combat per capita.

That's to say, I feel the higher number of deaths caused by unarmed strikes has more to do with the number of unarmed strikes available for use, compared to the number of deaths by clubs, which are much less easy to acquire than one's own fists and feet.

NichG

2014-09-05, 09:13 AM

Sure. People could get banged up and bloodied. But so long as it stayed just fists no one is going to die.

About 5% of murders in the US are caused by attacks with hands, feet, and fists. That's about 800 a year. Now, I'd believe that a good chunk of those are things like strangulation, but we're still talking about something which does kill people. Often very randomly in practice (triggers some latent aneurysm, knocks them over and they smash their head on the way down, etc). What makes it even more dangerous is, I suppose, how many people believe that it actually isn't dangerous.

Edit: ninja'd

bjoern

2014-09-05, 09:21 AM

About 5% of murders in the US are caused by attacks with hands, feet, and fists. That's about 800 a year. Now, I'd believe that a good chunk of those are things like strangulation, but we're still talking about something which does kill people. Often very randomly in practice (triggers some latent aneurysm, knocks them over and they smash their head on the way down, etc). What makes it even more dangerous is, I suppose, how many people believe that it actually isn't dangerous.

Edit: ninja'd

Sure. There are accidents. I don't have the data available on hand but think about this:

How many people do you think were hit with fists, feet, pushed over? Lots probably tens of millions of occurances. How many died? 800. Pretty low odds

Now how many people were hit with a deadly weapon? Gun, knife, lead pipe, etc? I'd say a lot ALOT less than tens of millions. How many died? I'd say a fair amount.
If you get shot /stabbed/bludgeoned, chances are that you're going to die.

I've been punched probably 10 times and kicked about the same in my life. Fallen over hundreds of times. Im not dead.
Now, if I was forced to pick, take all those punches, kicks, and falls again, or be stabbed. I'll take the punches, kicks, and falls. Being stabbed/shot/bludgeoned has an exponentially higher rate of death.

NichG

2014-09-05, 09:55 AM

Sure. There are accidents. I don't have the data available on hand but think about this:

How many people do you think were hit with fists, feet, pushed over? Lots probably tens of millions of occurances. How many died? 800. Pretty low odds

Now how many people were hit with a deadly weapon? Gun, knife, lead pipe, etc? I'd say a lot ALOT less than tens of millions. How many died? I'd say a fair amount.
If you get shot /stabbed/bludgeoned, chances are that you're going to die.

I've been punched probably 10 times and kicked about the same in my life. Fallen over hundreds of times. Im not dead.
Now, if I was forced to pick, take all those punches, kicks, and falls again, or be stabbed. I'll take the punches, kicks, and falls. Being stabbed/shot/bludgeoned has an exponentially higher rate of death.

So you're fine with me inflicting you with, say, a 0.1% chance of death as a form of entertainment? Or would you consider me taking a hostile action that carries any chance, even remote, of killing you to be justification for the use of lethal force to defend yourself? By your previously stated logic, if you throw a punch and I shoot you, thats just self defense.

Because the point is that, regardless of how much you want to highlight how harmless a punch is, people do die from a single punch (more stats - there's about 90 'single-hit' manslaughters from bar brawls per year in Australia; they call them king-hits). Your own ignorance of the fact that you could kill someone by actions you think are harmless does not actually excuse you from the consequences of those actions. If you throw a punch thinking its not going to kill someone but they die from it, you're still responsible for their death.

Thurbane

2014-09-05, 10:00 AM

Back to the OP: a truly LG character should respond with enough force to subdue an inherently non-evil aggressor, if possible.

If a commoner 1 comes at a Paladin 6 with a club, surely the Pally can just beat the guy unconscious with with the flat of his sword (or hammer, as the case may be), take the club off him, and let him come around with a headache he won't forget.

Yes, the bouncer decided to pull a "lethal" weapon (FWIW, this has VERY different connotations in the D&Dverse vs. real world). Let's face it, though, the chance of a lowby NPC actually killing a mid-level PC with a club is pretty remote.

I know some people are of the opinion that if someone pulls a (lethal damage inflicting) weapon on you first, you are totally within your rights to mercilessly slaughter them with the most damage-dealing weapon in your arsenal; but things don't work the same way in D&D as they do in real life. IRL, some dude swinging a baseball bat at me in real life is a credible threat to my well being and could in fact kill me; in D&Dland (for a mid level adventurer, at least), it's barely more than an annoyance.

I'm not even going to comment on the morality of using lethal force for self-defense (and the huge room for interpretation of what that term even means) in the real world. My rant would probably get me banned from the forums. Lets just say I believe that a lot more people in the real world are "trigger happy" than I wish were the case...

bjoern

2014-09-05, 10:09 AM

So you're fine with me inflicting you with, say, a 0.1% chance of death as a form of entertainment? Or would you consider me taking a hostile action that carries any chance, even remote, of killing you to be justification for the use of lethal force to defend yourself? By your previously stated logic, if you throw a punch and I shoot you, thats just self defense.

Because the point is that, regardless of how much you want to highlight how harmless a punch is, people do die from a single punch (more stats - there's about 90 'single-hit' manslaughters from bar brawls per year in Australia; they call them king-hits). Your own ignorance of the fact that you could kill someone by actions you think are harmless does not actually excuse you from the consequences of those actions. If you throw a punch thinking its not going to kill someone but they die from it, you're still responsible for their death.

I know we are bouncing back and forth from reality to fantasy in this thread but the facts are that in fantasy a non lethal punch can't kill you.

My argument for real life is that a gunshot is more lethal than a punch. If they were equally lethal why would armies use guns? Wouldnt they just punch everyone?

Now, if youre going to what-if this thing to the hyperbolic extreme, let's say that you want to show someone up by beating them in a drinking contest. You each take shots until one person passes out. After dozens of shots, the other person passes out.
They die from alcohol poisoning.
Are you evil? Since you knew that at least one person in the history of the world died from alcohol poisoning?

What about a footrace? Other guy has a heart attack and dies. Evil act? You were aware that heart attacks can happen while under physical exertion.

Lets say your a teenager TPing a house, the homeowner catches you in the act and you run. The homeowner takes up chasing you across the street and gets hit by a car and dies. Are you now a CE serial killer? Do you deserve a needle in the arm?
You were doing something harmless that wasn't going to kill someone and the homeowner escalated by chasing you to presumably beat you up, so you ran.

Of course you could saythat by TPing his house, you put him at risk of falling off a ladder and dying.

NichG

2014-09-05, 11:16 AM

I know we are bouncing back and forth from reality to fantasy in this thread but the facts are that in fantasy a non lethal punch can't kill you.

My argument for real life is that a gunshot is more lethal than a punch. If they were equally lethal why would armies use guns? Wouldnt they just punch everyone?

Now, if youre going to what-if this thing to the hyperbolic extreme, let's say that you want to show someone up by beating them in a drinking contest. You each take shots until one person passes out. After dozens of shots, the other person passes out.
They die from alcohol poisoning.
Are you evil? Since you knew that at least one person in the history of the world died from alcohol poisoning?

You're responsible. Whether that ends up meaning that you're 'evil' or not is a much more complex question. Lets assume your starting point is a Good alignment.

If you shrug and say 'well, sucks to be them but its their fault for getting into it with me', or otherwise try to evade the consequences or avoid making amends, then yeah, I'd say you move a bit towards Evil. If on the other hand you admit that you're at fault and try to make amends, then I'd say your alignment doesn't shift.

If your starting point is a Neutral alignment, then completely ignoring the consequences moves you a bit towards Evil, but accepting it while not making amends probably leaves your alignment constant or possibly moves you very slightly towards Evil (e.g. you'd have to willfully repeat this over and over for it to construct a pattern of action that suggests you're trying to get people to kill themselves in a very roundabout way).

Lets say your a teenager TPing a house, the homeowner catches you in the act and you run. The homeowner takes up chasing you across the street and gets hit by a car and dies. Are you now a CE serial killer? Do you deserve a needle in the arm?
You were doing something harmless that wasn't going to kill someone and the homeowner escalated by chasing you to presumably beat you up, so you ran.

Of course you could saythat by TPing his house, you put him at risk of falling off a ladder and dying.

Yes, you have some culpability. Its not nearly as much as you do in the bar brawl case. If you TP someone's house and they get so flummoxed that they have a stroke and die, then yes, you still have some culpability. If you leave a loaded gun in the house and someone uses it to shoot themselves, you have some culpability there too - more than the TP, maybe still less than the bar brawl. Its not the same culpability as if you just shot them, but its not zero either. Legally speaking, there's all sorts of complex evaluations that go into figuring out exactly what that culpability is. Both sides of a dispute can end up being culpable/guilty - its not that one is right or the other is right.

Morally, dodging or excusing responsibility is a pretty strong sign of 'evil' - because it says that your top priority is what the consequences are for you, rather than what the consequences were for the person who died (who is, generally speaking, suffering more severe consequences than you are given that you're still alive).Accepting responsibility, even if not fully deserved, and seeking to make amends is a sign of 'good' - basically, you're recognizing that because of you (directly or indirectly) other people are suffering, and so you seek to do what you can to alleviate the suffering you caused as much as possible.

Now, I should caveat all of this by saying: its okay to have an evil character. One should not feel personally slighted because their character's actions have been judged as evil. Too many people read these situations as 'the DM, OOC, is judging me as a person'. If you let go of the idea that having a 'G' on your character sheet is somehow fundamentally better than not, then its easier to be objective about this kind of situation. Instead of 'wanting to be X alignment', just focus on 'wanting to act the way your character would act' and let the universe take care of itself.

bjoern

2014-09-05, 11:30 AM

You're responsible. Whether that ends up meaning that you're 'evil' or not is a much more complex question. Lets assume your starting point is a Good alignment.

If you shrug and say 'well, sucks to be them but its their fault for getting into it with me', or otherwise try to evade the consequences or avoid making amends, then yeah, I'd say you move a bit towards Evil. If on the other hand you admit that you're at fault and try to make amends, then I'd say your alignment doesn't shift.

If your starting point is a Neutral alignment, then completely ignoring the consequences moves you a bit towards Evil, but accepting it while not making amends probably leaves your alignment constant or possibly moves you very slightly towards Evil (e.g. you'd have to willfully repeat this over and over for it to construct a pattern of action that suggests you're trying to get people to kill themselves in a very roundabout way).

Yes, you have some culpability. Its not nearly as much as you do in the bar brawl case. If you TP someone's house and they get so flummoxed that they have a stroke and die, then yes, you still have some culpability. If you leave a loaded gun in the house and someone uses it to shoot themselves, you have some culpability there too - more than the TP, maybe still less than the bar brawl. Its not the same culpability as if you just shot them, but its not zero either. Legally speaking, there's all sorts of complex evaluations that go into figuring out exactly what that culpability is. Both sides of a dispute can end up being culpable/guilty - its not that one is right or the other is right.

Morally, dodging or excusing responsibility is a pretty strong sign of 'evil' - because it says that your top priority is what the consequences are for you, rather than what the consequences were for the person who died (who is, generally speaking, suffering more severe consequences than you are given that you're still alive).Accepting responsibility, even if not fully deserved, and seeking to make amends is a sign of 'good' - basically, you're recognizing that because of you (directly or indirectly) other people are suffering, and so you seek to do what you can to alleviate the suffering you caused as much as possible.

Now, I should caveat all of this by saying: its okay to have an evil character. One should not feel personally slighted because their character's actions have been judged as evil. Too many people read these situations as 'the DM, OOC, is judging me as a person'. If you let go of the idea that having a 'G' on your character sheet is somehow fundamentally better than not, then its easier to be objective about this kind of situation. Instead of 'wanting to be X alignment', just focus on 'wanting to act the way your character would act' and let the universe take care of itself.

The question posed in the OP was whether or not that situation made the PC evil or not.

If I have a plan. And the plan goes awry, that has no effect effect on my alignment. I may be guilty, seen as evil by the public, executed for punishment, whatever. It doesn't matter. My own alignment is still the same. I know I'm not evil, I didn't enjoy killing him, I didn't want to kill him, I didn't want anyone to get hurt.

The ONLY way that his alignment would change is if inside his PCs head, he wanted that death to happen.

If a PC is a trainwreck of bad luck, and someone innocent dies because of his actions on a frequent basis, he isn't evil unless that was his intent. Evil means that is their goal to hurt people.

If the player is the one causing these "accidents" to happened. So he (as a player) cab be evil while his PC is good, then that is a OOC problem and needs to be handled OOC.

NichG

2014-09-05, 12:01 PM

The question posed in the OP was whether or not that situation made the PC evil or not.

If I have a plan. And the plan goes awry, that has no effect effect on my alignment. I may be guilty, seen as evil by the public, executed for punishment, whatever. It doesn't matter. My own alignment is still the same. I know I'm not evil, I didn't enjoy killing him, I didn't want to kill him, I didn't want anyone to get hurt.

The ONLY way that his alignment would change is if inside his PCs head, he wanted that death to happen.

If a PC is a trainwreck of bad luck, and someone innocent dies because of his actions on a frequent basis, he isn't evil unless that was his intent. Evil means that is their goal to hurt people.

Actually, I disagree on this point. Evil doesn't necessarily mean that their goal is to hurt people, but rather that they have an outlook and actions consistent with that outlook in which hurting people to get what they want is acceptable even for very disproportionate trades. If they recognize that their actions are causing deaths but refuse to do anything to alleviate that (because e.g. 'it would be inconvenient') then that is also evil - they are placing their own convenience, pride, etc over the lives of others.

If the PC is a trainwreck of bad luck and people die because of their actions on a frequent basis, yet they refuse to take steps to avoid the situations which are causing that to happen, then they're evil because they're placing e.g. the fun they have adventuring over the lives of the innocents who are killed by their ineptitude.

For example, an engineer who can't actually design a structurally sound building. If he realizes that this is the case, but basically makes excuses, covers things up, etc in order to retain his job, then he's willfully endangering the lives of others just for the sake of being able to continue in his career. That's an evil act. At that point, if he wishes to do the 'right thing' in the sense of a 'good' alignment, he should recuse himself from being an engineer.

An adventurer cursed so that his critical misses cause a random town to be slaughtered is evil if he keeps seeking out battles despite the fact that he knows that this is going on. The person who cursed him is responsible for those deaths, but so is he.

bjoern

2014-09-05, 12:24 PM

Actually, I disagree on this point. Evil doesn't necessarily mean that their goal is to hurt people, but rather that they have an outlook and actions consistent with that outlook in which hurting people to get what they want is acceptable even for very disproportionate trades. If they recognize that their actions are causing deaths but refuse to do anything to alleviate that (because e.g. 'it would be inconvenient') then that is also evil - they are placing their own convenience, pride, etc over the lives of others.

If the PC is a trainwreck of bad luck and people die because of their actions on a frequent basis, yet they refuse to take steps to avoid the situations which are causing that to happen, then they're evil because they're placing e.g. the fun they have adventuring over the lives of the innocents who are killed by their ineptitude.

For example, an engineer who can't actually design a structurally sound building. If he realizes that this is the case, but basically makes excuses, covers things up, etc in order to retain his job, then he's willfully endangering the lives of others just for the sake of being able to continue in his career. That's an evil act. At that point, if he wishes to do the 'right thing' in the sense of a 'good' alignment, he should recuse himself from being an engineer.

An adventurer cursed so that his critical misses cause a random town to be slaughtered is evil if he keeps seeking out battles despite the fact that he knows that this is going on. The person who cursed him is responsible for those deaths, but so is he.

OK, so every doctor who has someone die while under the knife is evil?

Let me get this right: the "good" response to someone dying because of you is to just throw your hands up in the air and say "I quit"

The engineer in question isn't necessarily evil. Maybe he built a bridge and it failed. So he investigated it and found his mistake.
He makes a new bridge with the corrections made and it fails again. He looks into it, something different this Time. Fixes it for next time . Eventually hell get it right. Not evil. Guilty, responsible, yes.

Let's say he has advisors saying "hey, this isn't going to work" and he ignores it because he believes that he is right. Not evil. Proud, arrogant, ignorant,careless yes but not evil. Should he be fired? Yes. If he can't listen to advisors then that's a big problem. Evil? No. Fired? Yes

The only way he would be evil is if he honestly knew (not just told) that it would fail and kill people and he wanted that and did it anyway.

If you believe that your actions will hurt people and that's your motivation then you are evil .

If you take an action that might hurt people and do it anyway because you think its the best option and are hoping that you can pull it off without anyone getting hurt. Not evil. Reckless for sure, but not evil. Is the kid that runs a stop sign evil? No. Hes a reckless teenager, not an evil person.

Thuphinlok

2014-09-05, 12:31 PM

bjoern

2014-09-05, 12:37 PM

Whew! I forget about a post for 1 day, and I have 5 pages to go through!
Alright as clarification was asked for the bouncer did NL damage.
The player, probably meant NL, but didn't specify at the time of attack.
I have not gone through all the posts yet, but I am leaning towards retconning the whole thing to NL. I know my group and this player is usually pretty on it when it comes to this type of stuff, so I say he was tired and made a mistake. Thanks for all your help guys.

Yeah, alignment topics are usually a good way to get a 10-pager.

OK. If the bouncer only did NL damage then it was the PC who escalated it to a deadly confrontation.
If the player wanted to kill him then he evil.
If the player just forgot, then not evil.

Retcon would be a good option since the actual PC would have "forgotten" and would have actually used non lethal damage (assuming hes not evil)

Vogonjeltz

2014-09-05, 04:09 PM

So if you provoke me I have the right to kill you? You don't have the right to protect yourself?

???

No, and I didn't say that, so I have no idea how you reached that conclusion.

1) Self Defense only applies to the party that is NOT the aggressor. By provoking the fight, the PC has become the aggressor.
2) Just because the NPC was not the aggressor does not make it ok for them to use lethal force either.

So neither the PC nor the NPC would be in the right should they have killed the other.

Which so far as I can tell he didn't; he was drunk and disorderly in a bar, and a bouncer responded by attempting to kill him.

Brawls are generally fought nonlethally; the PCs didn't reckon on opponents striking to kill, it seems. As for committing arson, sure, it's a reckless (possibly chaotic) plan, but we don't know what kind of neighborhood the vacant warehouse was in (if it's all vacant there's not much risk) and they may have taken steps to make it as controlled a burn as possible, and alerted the guard before it got out of hand. We'd need more details before it can be unilaterally declared a complete alignment shifting cluster****, and even then, sheer short-sightedness on the part of the characters explains the plan better than pure malice, which means an alignment shift towards Evil would be inappropriate.

We will never know what the bouncer was doing if the bouncer is not resurrected. As the facts stand now, the PC is a murderer because he went to the location with the intent of provoking a fight. That the PC didn't know the fight would turn deadly is immaterial, there was the obvious possibility that it could.

Similarly for the alignment shift owing to arson: The PCs didn't care at all, so a shift towards evil (i.e. Neutral Good becomes True Neutral) is quite appropriate. Good requires compassion for all living things, neutral is indifference, and evil is depraved indifference. Committing arson destroys someones property and potentially their lives, which pretty much requires the characters to not care about the consequences of their actions.

What's the difference between a truncheon and a club? Isn't a truncheon just a cylindrical piece of wood whereas the club is a bit tapered towards the handle? IMHO both would be represented by the club in D&D. A less lethal version of the 8url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baton_(law_enforcement)]baton[/url] would be the sap. It already exists in D&D.

Agreed, the sap is probably what bouncers/bartenders/some city watch might carry. Of course, the DM could also have been making the point that these patrons don't play around, and it's taking ones life in ones hands to get into a fight with an armed hooligan.

If a PC is a trainwreck of bad luck, and someone innocent dies because of his actions on a frequent basis, he isn't evil unless that was his intent.

I respectfully disagree. If the PC is displaying a knowingly reckless or willful disregard for the danger their actions place on others, then they simply aren't good. Being good requires the PC to actually care what happens to others, and not caring = not being good.

Whew! I forget about a post for 1 day, and I have 5 pages to go through!
Alright as clarification was asked for the bouncer did NL damage.
The player, probably meant NL, but didn't specify at the time of attack.
I have not gone through all the posts yet, but I am leaning towards retconning the whole thing to NL. I know my group and this player is usually pretty on it when it comes to this type of stuff, so I say he was tired and made a mistake. Thanks for all your help guys.

Good to know, I would highly recommend the retcon in these circumstances unless the player actually wants to carry on with it being lethal.

Spindrift

2014-09-05, 04:17 PM

Well, if they took steps to ensure minimum risk of the fire spreading, it'd show they weren't completely negligent. If it were me I'd have just dumped a bunch of smokesticks or something and shouted fire, pretty much the same distraction.

geekintheground

2014-09-05, 05:28 PM

Whew! I forget about a post for 1 day, and I have 5 pages to go through!
Alright as clarification was asked for the bouncer did NL damage.
The player, probably meant NL, but didn't specify at the time of attack.
I have not gone through all the posts yet, but I am leaning towards retconning the whole thing to NL. I know my group and this player is usually pretty on it when it comes to this type of stuff, so I say he was tired and made a mistake. Thanks for all your help guys.

i support the retcon unless the player wants to keep it as is. it could bring out some really cool RP opportunities. but i dont think this would garner even a fraction of a step toward an alignment change, it was a total accident and those happen. so the action its self is detestably evil (as evidenced by the last 5 pages), but the character himself isnt.

Dread_Head

2014-09-05, 06:51 PM

OK, so every doctor who has someone die while under the knife is evil?

Let me get this right: the "good" response to someone dying because of you is to just throw your hands up in the air and say "I quit"

The engineer in question isn't necessarily evil. Maybe he built a bridge and it failed. So he investigated it and found his mistake.
He makes a new bridge with the corrections made and it fails again. He looks into it, something different this Time. Fixes it for next time . Eventually hell get it right. Not evil. Guilty, responsible, yes.

Let's say he has advisors saying "hey, this isn't going to work" and he ignores it because he believes that he is right. Not evil. Proud, arrogant, ignorant,careless yes but not evil. Should he be fired? Yes. If he can't listen to advisors then that's a big problem. Evil? No. Fired? Yes

The only way he would be evil is if he honestly knew (not just told) that it would fail and kill people and he wanted that and did it anyway.

If you believe that your actions will hurt people and that's your motivation then you are evil .

If you take an action that might hurt people and do it anyway because you think its the best option and are hoping that you can pull it off without anyone getting hurt. Not evil. Reckless for sure, but not evil. Is the kid that runs a stop sign evil? No. Hes a reckless teenager, not an evil person.

That's not what he was saying about the engineer though. If the engineer knew he couldn't build a stable bridge but kept planning bridges that he wasn't sure would work without telling anyone because he didn't want to lose his job then he was committing an evil act because he was endangering innocent lives for his own good.

The same applies here, the character planned a fight that could end up causing an innocents death. (They also started a fire that could potentially have spread.) This endangered innocent lives for the characters own benefit. Definitely not a good act, almost certainly an evil one, even if he had the best of intentions (saving his noble and good friend from unlawful incarceration.)

To use your doctor analogy, if one person dies whilst the doctor is performing surgery, not an evil act because it was a mistake. If the doctor continues operating on people knowing he can't perform a certain bit of surgery then he is committing an evil act by endangering the life of an innocent.

@the OP: I would let the player retcon this if he truly didn't mean for his character to kill or potentially cause lethal damage. If that wasn't what the player wanted then he clearly made a mistake and shouldn't be punished for it, no one is perfect. If he meant to hurt the bouncer but didn't want to kill him then the waters are murkier, I'd probably retcon it anyway though.
I once had an experience playing a VOP druid and we burst into the final chamber in a dungeon where several children were being held captive. We got in a fight with the last of the cultists and I got caught up in the fight and had my character cast Haboob forgetting that several captured children were in the radius of the spell (they weren't particularly clearly marked on the battlemap.) It helped win the fight (we already had it pretty much in the bag though) but afterwards my DM told me I'd lost all my exalted feats because I'd killed two children. This wasn't what I wanted and my character wouldn't have done it because he could see the whole situation but I was penalised for the rest of the session and I was going to have to go on an atonement quest. The game ended shortly after that due to lack of interest but I wasn't happy about what happened with my character and I feel in a similar scenario the players mistake shouldn't screw over his character (unless the player wants play a fallen character or wants to rp atonement.)

NichG

2014-09-05, 10:00 PM

OK, so every doctor who has someone die while under the knife is evil?

Let me get this right: the "good" response to someone dying because of you is to just throw your hands up in the air and say "I quit"

There's a reason that the first rule for any doctor is 'Do no harm'. If 20% of your patients die under the knife but only 10% of them would die left untreated, then yes, the doctor should quit.

The engineer in question isn't necessarily evil. Maybe he built a bridge and it failed. So he investigated it and found his mistake.
He makes a new bridge with the corrections made and it fails again. He looks into it, something different this Time. Fixes it for next time . Eventually hell get it right. Not evil. Guilty, responsible, yes.

Let's say he has advisors saying "hey, this isn't going to work" and he ignores it because he believes that he is right. Not evil. Proud, arrogant, ignorant,careless yes but not evil. Should he be fired? Yes. If he can't listen to advisors then that's a big problem. Evil? No. Fired? Yes

The only way he would be evil is if he honestly knew (not just told) that it would fail and kill people and he wanted that and did it anyway.

If you believe that your actions will hurt people and that's your motivation then you are evil .

No, he doesn't need to be homicidal to be evil. He just has to have a callous disregard for the value of life. If someone kills someone to get their wallet just because they want the money (not because they enjoy murder or specifically want people to die), that's still an evil act.

Remember, in D&D demographics a full 33% of people are evil. Most of that is evil driven from banality - apathetic evil. Those people don't actively want to hurt others, but they're callous to the harm their day-to-day actions cause and over time it builds up into a pattern of behavior that warrants an 'E'. Someone who, e.g., takes twice their share from a rationed food source every day for years is evil. They didn't directly kill anyone, or decide 'I really want people to suffer', but their actions have led to the suffering, malnutrition, and starvation of people around them. Choosing to be ignorant of the consequences doesn't absolve the person.

Things like pride, arrogance, ignorance, and recklessness are major drivers for evil. Pride may not in of itself be evil, but pride in the way of the hypothetical engineer certainly is - specifically because its indulging in pride at the cost of other people's misfortune.

If you take an action that might hurt people and do it anyway because you think its the best option and are hoping that you can pull it off without anyone getting hurt. Not evil. Reckless for sure, but not evil. Is the kid that runs a stop sign evil? No. Hes a reckless teenager, not an evil person.

A single action does not generally define an entire alignment. A kid who runs a stop sign is mildly more chaotic. A kid who runs a stop sign and crashes into someone, hurting them or killing them, faces a dilemma. Maybe they see the harm their actions caused and stop doing it - no alignment change. Alternatively, maybe they shrug and say 'so what? I survived.' - then they become a bit more evil. If that same kid repeatedly runs stop signs, causing multiple accidents that hurt or kill others, then yes, they're evil. They're behaving in a way that they know from experience causes harm, and refusing to adapt their behavior to change - their behavior is a pattern of willfully harming others for the sake of their pride, arrogance, whatever. So that's evil.