what would you do?

[Yoroichi]

Background:
I am playing in this campaign, the storyline is irrelevant for the point i want to make, where i am a level 17 dwarf barbarian focused on restoring his clan with the honor bond. I am playing a Lawful Neutral character (who became chaotic in the process) and i want your input on the following issue. i understand how alignments are a bit subjective and people's use of alignments varies so please try to answer me on this specific situation, but also feel free to analyze further.

Wut happened:
We were caught in a City that every three days reset it self, and we had to perform a specific set of tasks in order to escape this riddle. We arrived at the city where a great festival occured that lasted 3 days. On the morning of the 3rd day everything reset to the first day when we were arriving in the town. The riddle spanned 2 sessions and we missed a pretty important clue so we didnt eventually solve it. However my character had seen the people resetting in front of him and was convinced(i was convinced) that we were part of an illusion, laying on the ground somewhere and drool coming out of our mouths.

At this point, after it had taken us 4 hours of not being able to solve the riddle, i decided to attack and kill a guard knowing that they would reset, thinking i might overload the magics capacity somehow. I was desperate at the point :0. That did not work as we were not in an illusion but a demiplane, that after it held us there for the required time started dissolving and left us floating somewhere on the ethereal plane.

Where i need help:
DM decided that my alignment should be changed to evil after i attacked and kill a guard (and got arrested), despite me seeing that the guard was again alive on the next reset.
He justified that since i had the capacity to kill an innocent guard i should switch to evil, while i countered with i thought i was in an illusion ( which i legitimately did).

I strongly disagree with his point obviously, and i wanted your inputs since everyone here is a behemoth of experience :P

Thank you in advance

[Kane0]

If its a single act with mitigating circumstances or room for grey areas then its usually not called for an alignment change. If you kept up that behaviour then it would become more and more a case of alinment shift.

In the (default?) cosmology it is irrelevant what the person believes to be true, but killing is not inherently evil either.

Personally id have said that your actions were not evil, considering you believed (rightly or wro gly) that it was all fake and would be reset anyway. If you were doing it for giggles then thats evil, but this was a desperate and frustrated ploy to advance the plot.

But alignment is like wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff anyway.

[HoarsHalberd]

Background:
I am playing in this campaign, the storyline is irrelevant for the point i want to make, where i am a level 17 dwarf barbarian focused on restoring his clan with the honor bond. I am playing a Lawful Neutral character (who became chaotic in the process) and i want your input on the following issue. i understand how alignments are a bit subjective and people's use of alignments varies so please try to answer me on this specific situation, but also feel free to analyze further.

Wut happened:
We were caught in a City that every three days reset it self, and we had to perform a specific set of tasks in order to escape this riddle. We arrived at the city where a great festival occured that lasted 3 days. On the morning of the 3rd day everything reset to the first day when we were arriving in the town. The riddle spanned 2 sessions and we missed a pretty important clue so we didnt eventually solve it. However my character had seen the people resetting in front of him and was convinced(i was convinced) that we were part of an illusion, laying on the ground somewhere and drool coming out of our mouths.

At this point, after it had taken us 4 hours of not being able to solve the riddle, i decided to attack and kill a guard knowing that they would reset, thinking i might overload the magics capacity somehow. I was desperate at the point :0. That did not work as we were not in an illusion but a demiplane, that after it held us there for the required time started dissolving and left us floating somewhere on the ethereal plane.

Where i need help:
DM decided that my alignment should be changed to evil after i attacked and kill a guard (and got arrested), despite me seeing that the guard was again alive on the next reset.
He justified that since i had the capacity to kill an innocent guard i should switch to evil, while i countered with i thought i was in an illusion ( which i legitimately did).

I strongly disagree with his point obviously, and i wanted your inputs since everyone here is a behemoth of experience :P

Thank you in advance

Alignment is motivation not action. A lawful good character can butcher another lawful good character quite easily when they are mislead. If one has been convinced that a "child" is actually a polymorphed demon, and the other is told LG 1 is trying to kill an innocent child, then both are acting on their alignments when they try and kill each other. If your character honestly believed that you were in an illusion then it is not an evil act to attempt to break out of the illusion by any means you have available.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Clearly alignment is a minefield, so I'm hesitant to be the first to reply to this, but...

Point the first: one act is rarely enough to shift someone's alignment. Everyone makes mistakes and evil people are nice sometimes. Especially if you claim to be neutral, a few murders can be justified. Even where the character doesn't believe the victim will come right back to life.

Point the second: your character (who I assume now identifies as CN) believed his actions were irrelevant; that they would make no real difference to anything real. Therefore I would argue that normal ethical rules don't apply. If you know (or sincerely believe) that nothing is real, how can anything you do have an 'alignment' at all?

Point the third: alignment is really two things: what you aspire to and the universe's judgement of everything you've done up to now. The first is what's written on your character sheet, the second determines what happens when someone casts Detect Good and Evil on you. A CN can certainly murder a guard, believing they are an illusion, and still feel comfortable with the words "Chaotic Neutral" written on their character sheet. Will the universe judge them differently? Maybe. But probably not, as long as they don't start killing for fun.

[PhantomRenegade]

If your character truly believed it was an illusion then he isnt evil, unless he realised it wasnt a illusion after killing the guy and didn't feel remorse then yeah he might be a bit evil.

[Shining Wrath]

I suggest you have your DM read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Thomas raped a girl because he didn't believe anything that was happening to him was real. He wasn't evil, he was thoroughly confused and dealing with something that his worldview didn't allow him to comprehend.

[hymer]

Does it matter what the DM thinks your alignment is? Your PC wouldn't think himself evil, surely. Alignment has very few mechanical effects in the core game. So, some ill-informed person (the DM) is judgmental about your character, but why should you care?

[eleazzaar]

You didn't believe you were actually killing a guard, so that one action under unusual circumstance is not an indicator of how you should be expected to act in the future. It would be silly for the DM to suddenly demand that you start acting evil now-- which is pretty much all alignment is for in 5e. It's a general descriptor of how your character behaves.

Now as to weather the gods consider your mitigating circumstances or not-- that's debatable. They might well consider you act "evil", but even then it should take more than one evil act to turn your alignment to evil. What if somebody commits a single self-less atruistic act? Does the GM expect their alignment to change permenatly to "Good?"

[Stan]

I don't think one act with such mitigating circumstances is even enough to turn someone from good to neutral. Unless you enjoyed slowly torturing the guard, I can't see that forcing an alignment change.

[TheOOB]

Alignment is motivation not action.

Gonna disagree. Alignment must be objective because various spells and magical effects key off of it and rarely ask you why you did something or how you feel about it. Alignment thus cannot be subjective, otherwise a crazy serial murderer would key as good and not evil if they really believed they are "saving" people. An evil act is an evil act, regardless of intent.

That said, except under extreme circumstances, alignment is not the measure of a single act, it is a measure of general tendencies. If your character is normally willing to harm innocents to advance their goals, then they're evil. (note, an evil character can totally get along with a good party, it's not that hard). Your GM's justification was correct, if you are willing to murder(or even risk murder) to get out of a situation, that's evil, but unless you had been trending towards evil I'd say it's a big leap, but you may have been doing so for ages.

I think the action taken, killing a guard, without any more context is rather extreme, but semi-predictable. Every groundhog day story involves a loop where the character lashes out against the world trying to change something. That said, there are countless ways to do so without murder. (watch groundhog day, for example).

Honestly though, what alignment your GM says you are doesn't matter much. 5e has few alignment based effects, and unless your GM is specifically using your new evil alignment against you, have a frank discussion with them and tell them you think the change was extreme/ask how to redeem your character.

[Yora]

Alignment is something that nobody agrees on.

Since it also doesn't do anything in 5th edtion, just keep playing your character how you want to play him. Maybe the DM changes his oppinion what alignment should be written on your character sheet or not. It could also be "purple" or "platypus", doesn't make a difference.

[Flashy]

Alignment must be objective because various spells and magical effects key off of it

As far as I'm aware this is no longer the case in 5e. There are some magic items that are themselves aligned in particular ways but nothing I know of that has an alignment restriction for the user.

As far as spells go Detect Good and Evil uses creature type, it doesn't actually measure a person's alignment.

[ChubbyRain]

Background:
I am playing in this campaign, the storyline is irrelevant for the point i want to make, where i am a level 17 dwarf barbarian focused on restoring his clan with the honor bond. I am playing a Lawful Neutral character (who became chaotic in the process) and i want your input on the following issue. i understand how alignments are a bit subjective and people's use of alignments varies so please try to answer me on this specific situation, but also feel free to analyze further.

Wut happened:
We were caught in a City that every three days reset it self, and we had to perform a specific set of tasks in order to escape this riddle. We arrived at the city where a great festival occured that lasted 3 days. On the morning of the 3rd day everything reset to the first day when we were arriving in the town. The riddle spanned 2 sessions and we missed a pretty important clue so we didnt eventually solve it. However my character had seen the people resetting in front of him and was convinced(i was convinced) that we were part of an illusion, laying on the ground somewhere and drool coming out of our mouths.

At this point, after it had taken us 4 hours of not being able to solve the riddle, i decided to attack and kill a guard knowing that they would reset, thinking i might overload the magics capacity somehow. I was desperate at the point :0. That did not work as we were not in an illusion but a demiplane, that after it held us there for the required time started dissolving and left us floating somewhere on the ethereal plane.

Where i need help:
DM decided that my alignment should be changed to evil after i attacked and kill a guard (and got arrested), despite me seeing that the guard was again alive on the next reset.
He justified that since i had the capacity to kill an innocent guard i should switch to evil, while i countered with i thought i was in an illusion ( which i legitimately did).

I strongly disagree with his point obviously, and i wanted your inputs since everyone here is a behemoth of experience :P

Thank you in advance

Sounds like your DM wants you to be evil and no way to get around that, however... It doesn't matter.

Let your character be evil. That's fine, just don't be an ass or an antagonist and things should be fine.

Evil doesn't mean your personality has to change all that much, just how you go about getting what you want and what you will sacrifice.

[HoarsHalberd]

Gonna disagree. Alignment must be objective because various spells and magical effects key off of it and rarely ask you why you did something or how you feel about it. Alignment thus cannot be subjective, otherwise a crazy serial murderer would key as good and not evil if they really believed they are "saving" people. An evil act is an evil act, regardless of intent.


"An Evil act is an evil act, regardless of intent." Which means that all adventurers who'd ever killed neutral mercenaries, or misguided cultists or crusaders would eventually become evil. Not to mention anyone who was ever mind controlled into doing something evil would then become evil themselves. Alignment is a clumsy mechanic that will -always- be subjective.

[pwykersotz]

"An Evil act is an evil act, regardless of intent." Which means that all adventurers who'd ever killed neutral mercenaries, or misguided cultists or crusaders would eventually become evil. Not to mention anyone who was ever mind controlled into doing something evil would then become evil themselves. Alignment is a clumsy mechanic that will -always- be subjective.

It's less clumsy than you give it credit for. You're burdening the system with minutia it isn't intended to cover.

Neutral Good - Help others according to their needs.
Neutral Evil - Do what you can get away with, no compassion or qualms

If the noble adventurers kill bandits indiscriminately and do it when there are other ways to stop them, making rivers run red with their blood...then yes, they might very well be evil. But not because they're killing neutral parties or deceived people, but because murder is their first resort.

But to the OP, the alignment shift is pretty lame. You might get a corner cut off your "goodness and mercy" card at most. Good people can do bad things but still try and want to be good. Forcing someone to an evil alignment is asking them to shift their outlook on life as well as their actions. It's a big thing.

[goto124]

There's another problem:


after it had taken us 4 hours of not being able to solve the riddle

Why is the DM not letting the group move forward? Why is he forcing them to do things 'his way'? This sort of restrictive DM may not listen to suggestions about alignment.

Something something railroad.

[Jacque]

But to the OP, the alignment shift is pretty lame. You might get a corner cut off your "goodness and mercy" card at most. Good people can do bad things but still try and want to be good. Forcing someone to an evil alignment is asking them to shift their outlook on life as well as their actions. It's a big thing.

I agree with this. You attempted to solve the puzzle with an act that can be designated as evil, and I don't find your justification for the murder to be plausible. It would be a step towards evil, however forcing an alignment change is a bit drastic for this single act.

[HoarsHalberd]

It's less clumsy than you give it credit for. You're burdening the system with minutia it isn't intended to cover.

Neutral Good - Help others according to their needs.
Neutral Evil - Do what you can get away with, no compassion or qualms

If the noble adventurers kill bandits indiscriminately and do it when there are other ways to stop them, making rivers run red with their blood...then yes, they might very well be evil. But not because they're killing neutral parties or deceived people, but because murder is their first resort.

But to the OP, the alignment shift is pretty lame. You might get a corner cut off your "goodness and mercy" card at most. Good people can do bad things but still try and want to be good. Forcing someone to an evil alignment is asking them to shift their outlook on life as well as their actions. It's a big thing.

And again that is based more upon intent than action. If their intent is to slaughter everything that opposes them, that's worse than killing things after trying other avenues. Which was precisely my point, intent is more important than action.

[pwykersotz]

And again that is based more upon intent than action. If their intent is to slaughter everything that opposes them, that's worse than killing things after trying other avenues. Which was precisely my point, intent is more important than action.

I see them as both going hand-in-hand for mortals. Intent matters. What you actually do matters. I'll cede your point of "more important" because I lean that way as well, but I think saying alignment is always subjective when there are beings formed from the pure energy of alignment out there is a bit heavy handed.

[HoarsHalberd]

I see them as both going hand-in-hand for mortals. Intent matters. What you actually do matters. I'll cede your point of "more important" because I lean that way as well, but I think saying alignment is always subjective when there are beings formed from the pure energy of alignment out there is a bit heavy handed.

From context I was arguing against someone who was saying alignment cannot be subjective for mortal creatures, but yes, always subjective was a bit heavy handed as I wasn't thinking of celestials, fiends and the like.

[zinycor]

My question is:

Does it matter? If your character now is evil, well good for him, you dont have to make any change on his behavior, and he will most probably switch to whtever alignment suits him better if changing alignment it's so easy on your campaign.

I have never understood what's the big deal with the GM changing your alignment, is not like on old editions where you got less XP when you changed your alignment.

[AvatarVecna]

Alignment is the tangled mess of taking into account reality, perception, opinion, real-world morals, action, motivation, circumstances, and social mores and trying to fit every possible combination into a 3 by 3 grid. Was it an evil act? I'd probably argue that it was; there's ways to break out of an illusion beside "I hit it with my axe." Was it an Evil Act? I'd probably argue that it wasn't; you carried out an action that you thought was the best way forward that you were convinced wouldn't actually hurt anyone; it technically did hurt someone, but they got better and don't remember the pain. Should it change your alignment to Evil? I would say not; one evil action that was caused by incorrectly perceiving the circumstances that was re-written by reality anyway? Unless that action was on the same Evil level as genocide and baby raping, I'd say you're probably fine.

TL;DR: I say that this single action shouldn't change your alignment, but would warrant a warning that a series of similar acts would definitely do so. Of course, as I'm not your DM, my opinion on the matter doesn't matter that much, unless he's the type to be swayed by internet arguments.

[Esclados]

I'd say the most important question is whether the character showed remorse after the deed failed to 'break the illusion.'

An Evil character would most likely say 'eh, i gave it a shot' and not give it a second thought.

A Good character would most likely anguish over the harm they caused to a real person and their family, even though it was 'reset.' Respecting life and all that.

A Neutral character is probably going to be somewhere in between, but it shouldn't sit well with them either, even though they were desperate and the harm was ultimately undone. They'll probably get over it though.

Ultimately, of course, characters should be individuals and have their own sense of morality outside of their alignment team jersey. Alignment should be descriptive, not either proscriptive or prescriptive. Your DM seems to agree... but should probably look to more than this single action in a vacuum.

[LordVonDerp]

I agree with this. You attempted to solve the puzzle with an act that can be designated as evil, and I don't find your justification for the murder to be plausible. It would be a step towards evil, however forcing an alignment change is a bit drastic for this single act.

Except that there was no murder. He knew the "person" wouldn't actually die.

[AvatarVecna]

Except that there was no murder. He knew the "person" wouldn't actually die.

Well, technically, he did actually murder the guy, and the guy actually did die. He just got better. That doesn't change the fact that the guy still definitely actually got murdered.

EDIT: It's like, just because an injury eventually heals, doesn't mean that after the injury heals that the original injury never happened. If I stabbed myself, but the stab wound eventually healed, that doesn't change the fact that I stabbed myself, and it doesn't change the fact that I should probably seek professional help for my self-harm issue. All it means is that the stab wound healed.

[LordVonDerp]

Well, technically, he did actually murder the guy, and the guy actually did die. He just got better. That doesn't change the fact that the guy still definitely actually got murdered.

EDIT: It's like, just because an injury eventually heals, doesn't mean that after the injury heals that the original injury never happened. If I stabbed myself, but the stab wound eventually healed, that doesn't change the fact that I stabbed myself, and it doesn't change the fact that I should probably seek professional help for my self-harm issue. All it means is that the stab wound healed.

Except that it's nothing like your example.
A better example would be killing someone in skyrim and then resetting the game

[PhantomRenegade]

I think you're all forgetting that in addition to it being a groundhog day having no concept of what a groundhog day event is his character thought it was an illusion.

It seems to me pretty neutral to kill a dude in a illusion to try to break it since you'd think the dude himself is an illusion as well.

Unless i misinterpreted what he said, in which case i'll shut up now.

[AvatarVecna]

Except that it's nothing like your example.
A better example would be killing someone in skyrim and then resetting the game

Still doesn't change the fact that someone had to experience being violently murdered. That the universe retconned it doesn't change the fact that the character had to brutally murder someone, and that someone had to suffer being brutally murdered. As I've said previously, I don't believe this should turn him evil; I believe that it would turn him evil if this kind of thing became a habit for the character.

[HoarsHalberd]

Still doesn't change the fact that someone had to experience being violently murdered. That the universe retconned it doesn't change the fact that the character had to brutally murder someone, and that someone had to suffer being brutally murdered. As I've said previously, I don't believe this should turn him evil; I believe that it would turn him evil if this kind of thing became a habit for the character.

It's not an evil act any more than waking up, seeing a fiend across the room, panicking and blasting it, and it turns out you were trapped in an illusion. Or being dominated into killing someone. Or killing an orc with his back to a well and causing a traveler who drinks from that well to die from dysentery. Likewise, devils and demons would become good from all the devil and demon killing they do if what matters is the consequence more than the intent.

[AvatarVecna]

It's not an evil act any more than waking up, seeing a fiend across the room, panicking and blasting it, and it turns out you were trapped in an illusion. Or being dominated into killing someone. Or killing an orc with his back to a well and causing a traveler who drinks from that well to die from dysentery. Likewise, devils and demons would become good from all the devil and demon killing they do if what matters is the consequence more than the intent.

I'm not saying intent doesn't matter, and I never have been. But it's not the end-all-be-all either, otherwise serial killers trying to "save" people from a depressing reality by killing them would be Good. The reason I say that a pattern of this behavior would warrant an alignment shift is because he's already seen proof that either this isn't an illusion or proof that killing someone doesn't end the illusion; it would warrant an alignment shift because he no longer had any non-Evil reason to kill people, and he did so.

Killing somebody once while convinced that they're not a real person and you're not really harming anybody so that you can free yourself from an illusion is a vaguely neutral act at best. Continuing to kill after you know it won't free you from the illusion, just because you know that your actions won't have consequences? It shows that the consequences were the only thing holding you back from killing people; now that you know the consequences are gone, how you act is how you would naturally choose to act...and choosing to kill people despite their deaths not helping you escape your current situation leaves only a handful of reasons why you would continue killing people, and just about every last one of them is Evil.

Killing somebody once isn't evil; the act itself is arguably evil, but the circumstances and the murderer's intent mitigate that. I wouldn't punish the one-time killer, under these circumstances: I'd punish the repeat offender.

[Jacque]

Except that there was no murder. He knew the "person" wouldn't actually die.

He didn't know the person wouldn't die. He theorized it but knew nothing for sure.

The point I am concerned about is that out of the many options for solving the puzzle he decided to kill someone. Perhaps, just in case a murder actually results in the loss of an innocent, he should have tried to "overload the illusion" by destroying property i.e. starting a fire. Instead he chose the drastic solution of killing a guard.

There are different ways to overcome an encounter, and I don't think he chose the good aligned way. But again, I don't think it warrants an alignment change just because of that.

[Wartex1]

He didn't know the person wouldn't die. He theorized it but knew nothing for sure.

The point I am concerned about is that out of the many options for solving the puzzle he decided to kill someone. Perhaps, just in case a murder actually results in the loss of an innocent, he should have tried to "overload the illusion" by destroying property i.e. starting a fire. Instead he chose the drastic solution of killing a guard.

There are different ways to overcome an encounter, and I don't think he chose the good aligned way. But again, I don't think it warrants an alignment change just because of that.

Actually, wouldn't a complex illusion be harder to maintain, so property destruction, since houses and stuff are simple, wouldn't do as much?

What he did would have been neutral, as he figured everything was an illusion and he wasn't actually killing someone. Not good, but not evil.

[LordVonDerp]

I'm not saying intent doesn't matter, and I never have been. But it's not the end-all-be-all either, otherwise serial killers trying to "save" people from a depressing reality by killing them would be Good. The reason I say that a pattern of this behavior would warrant an alignment shift is because he's already seen proof that either this isn't an illusion or proof that killing someone doesn't end the illusion; it would warrant an alignment shift because he no longer had any non-Evil reason to kill people, and he did so.

Killing somebody once while convinced that they're not a real person and you're not really harming anybody so that you can free yourself from an illusion is a vaguely neutral act at best. Continuing to kill after you know it won't free you from the illusion, just because you know that your actions won't have consequences? It shows that the consequences were the only thing holding you back from killing people; now that you know the consequences are gone, how you act is how you would naturally choose to act...and choosing to kill people despite their deaths not helping you escape your current situation leaves only a handful of reasons why you would continue killing people, and just about every last one of them is Evil.

Killing somebody once isn't evil; the act itself is arguably evil, but the circumstances and the murderer's intent mitigate that. I wouldn't punish the one-time killer, under these circumstances: I'd punish the repeat offender.

Neither the intent, nor the action itself make much of a difference. In the end, the action had no effect on anyone, something he knew when he performed.


In the case of the serial killer the intent does not matter, as the effects will be the same either way, and he is quite clearly out of his mind.

[LordVonDerp]

He didn't know the person wouldn't die. He theorized it but knew nothing for sure.



"At this point, after it had taken us 4 hours of not being able to solve the riddle, i decided to attack and kill a guard knowing that they would reset"

You were saying?

[AvatarVecna]

"At this point, after it had taken us 4 hours of not being able to solve the riddle, i decided to attack and kill a guard knowing that they would reset"

You were saying?

We're already dealing with Groundhog Day shenanigans that had him convinced in-character that he was dealing with an illusion of some kind. A real DM bull**** move would be wait until he finished killing the person, then say "reality seems to dissolve as you strike the final blow; for a moment, you feel quite proud of seeing through the magical ruse...a feeling that is slowly replaced by dawning horror as you realize the blood on your blade is not disappearing, and the beaten body of a child/a pregnant women/your lover/your trusted teammate/your best friend/whoever lies on the ground in front of you. A hushed silence shrouds the area as a crowd of people that weren't there before gaze in horror at the atrocity you've committed." And before you say that no DM would pull such a **** move, remember that we're already talking about the guy who was gonna straight up change his alignment to Evil because of one act that was made under some pretty strong mitigating circumstances with a completely innocent intent.

[goto124]

A better example would be killing someone in skyrim and then resetting the game

Killing someone would be a logical action if you figured you lived in a video game world that demands you can't progress in your quest until someone gets killed.

But this is just part of a larger issue at hand: Why did the DM force the party to get stuck with a riddle for 4 hours? Why is the DM so inflexible?

[AvatarVecna]

But this is just part of a larger issue at hand: Why did the DM force the party to get stuck with a riddle for 4 hours? Why is the DM so inflexible?

There's two kinds of challenge a Groundhog Day style puzzle can present. The first one, paradoxically, is a time trial: assuming that victory is possible within the span of time between resets (which it must be, for the game to continue), if the span of time is repeated an infinite number of times, the solution will eventually be tried; however, if the Groundhog Day effect is only affecting the players (or some small area that they're within) and the rest of the world is moving along normally (including the villains and their plots), then the PCs need to find a way to escape the effect before the villains can pull off their plan. The second one is the standard "you need to accomplish some important task before the effect will end for you"; when it's pulled off perfectly, it uses a puzzle hard enough that it can rarely be solved correctly the first time, but easy enough that you don't have to restart enough times to master several complex skills along the way; when it's pulled off terribly, you end up with a terrible puzzle that takes forever to solve and ends up giving players the impression that the DM is interning as a locomotive engineer.

[Jacque]

"At this point, after it had taken us 4 hours of not being able to solve the riddle, i decided to attack and kill a guard knowing that they would reset"

You were saying?

Erh.. I guess you are technically right. I might have made my own judgement interfere as he based his knowledge of illusion on the metagame experience that they have so far spent 4 hours without progress. In my mind, that sounds more like "I'm bored, I want something to happen, I kill something" than justification for knowing that the world around him is an illusion.

[Steampunkette]

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."

The first part of that is the most important part to the situation as presented.

Yes. You killed a guard. But it was not murder. Murder requires an intent to gain from the willful killing of another person. Your character did not willfully kill a guard. He willfully attacked an illusion. This is an important thing to consider. Your character essentially succumbed to a delusion and acted upon it, resulting in another person's death.

Even if you HAD murdered the guard, it's still a single act. One that your character would probably regret. Remorse would be appropriate.

Third: Everyone. EVERYONE has it in them to murder another human being. It's part of being a conscious being. A LG paladin -could- make the willful choice to murder an orphan. He doesn't, sure, but he's got it in him that he could make that choice. It's a matter of free will. He -chooses- not to murder the child. Whether it's out of piety, care for others, respect for life, fear of repercussions, or a combination of any of a hundred other reasons.

Your DM doesn't understand alignment very well. And that's a shame.

[goto124]

The point I am concerned about is that out of the many options for solving the puzzle he decided to kill someone. Perhaps, just in case a murder actually results in the loss of an innocent, he should have tried to "overload the illusion" by destroying property i.e. starting a fire. Instead he chose the drastic solution of killing a guard.

If the group had been hacking away at the puzzle for over 4 hours, chances are they already tried all the nonviolent options (and some violent-but-not-outright-murderous ones)

How desperate must a good/Good person be before she does something evil/Evil?

[Yoroichi]

If the group had been hacking away at the puzzle for over 4 hours, chances are they already tried all the nonviolent options (and some violent-but-not-outright-murderous ones)

How desperate must a good/Good person be before she does something evil/Evil?

We had already tried (each situation warranted a reset): leaving the city, convincing the King to stop the festival, burn the outer crops, fly to the moon -_- (which was replaced at night by a demilich's face), teleport away from the riddle, waiting it out, fly away from the city, party hard along with the festival, look for clues on the local temple regarding the goddess/festival, not sleeping at all (hence we saw the reset take place) and camping outside the city walls.

I 'd say pretty desperate,

I think the general consensus is that the act was kinda evil, but not alignment changing :P