Player have me baffled, any advise for a DM?

[Swaoeaeieu]

TL;DR: player wants to get his prisoner addicted to druggs, it gives me the creeps, what do?

So i am running this pirate campaign, inspired by one piece and firefly. My players however just heard murder hobo's on a ship and ran with it. It's a fun campaign and i run with their ideas as well as i can since i am still new to the whole DM'ing deal. But now one PC has reached new hights of creepy.

the cloistered cleric of Tiamat, who is also the navigator, has captured and imprisoned himself a navy soldier. After last nights game he told me he wanted to look up some stuff on poison and druggs. He wants to get the prisoner addicted to some nasty stuff to coerse him into doing his bidding. this took me by suprise. while some on the crew are murderous or cleptomaniacs (normal dnd stuff) he is nice on the surface, and plots these wicked things in private.

is this normal behaviour for lawfull neutral PC's or is this a new low?
I dont want to stop him from doing it, since it is an interesting idea, it just feels really evil to me and i don't know how to proceed. What would the great DM's of the playground do in this situation?


Thanks in advance

[LoyalPaladin]

Definitely an Evil act, possibly even chaotic. If you're good to go with it, there are some spells that aid with this in some of the nastier splat books, I'm away from book, but a fellow playgrounder could list them.

[Flickerdart]

Book of Vile Darkness has rules for drugs and addition. In addition to being evil, the ones that can be administered to an involuntary target are also very difficult to find. Make the PC roleplay seeking out Evil contacts who would have access to the drugs (in the nastiest, most Evil ports of call you can design) and then have those contacts demand that the PC perform sinister things in return for the goods. Make sure that the journey to get these drugs is the kind of thing that will tank his alignment to LE, and maybe also make him beholden to some unsavoury characters and/or fiends.

[Geddy2112]

The main question is, are you comfortable/okay with this? If this bugs you on a personal level, or you simply don't want to DM this kind of game then inform the player that you are not allowing it for those reasons. Everybody should enjoy the game, including the DM. You might want to have a conversation with the group about things you don't want in your game that are too far/too extreme. There is no right or wrong answer, but you want to make sure everybody is on the same page.

If you are fine with it, let the PC do it. It seems pretty clearly evil, but I would say this is still a lawful action. The PC is doing this in secret, and is using this to extract information and gain a minion. Sounds like some classic LE to me. If the party wants to be evil, that is ok. Let them put whatever they want on their character sheets, and have them detect/respond to spells that matter about alignment as they actually are. Let the PC's have choice, and make their actions have consequences.

[Renen]

I wouldnt be surprised to get this from a cleric of tiamat.
And its a nice idea, a non-magical way to have someone kinda listen to you. But its not perfect obedience so...

[Darrin]

is this normal behaviour for lawfull neutral PC's or is this a new low?
I dont want to stop him from doing it, since it is an interesting idea, it just feels really evil to me and i don't know how to proceed. What would the great DM's of the playground do in this situation?


Do not attempt to bring alignment into this situation. Nothing good will come from that. Player motivation is dictated by player motivation, not by alignment.

Pretty typical behavior for a murderhobo. D&D actually has rules for drug addiction (see Book of Vile Darkness, Lords of Darkness, or Secrets of Sarlona), but I'm not sure they'll help much here. First, the PC would have to find the drugs from a reliable supplier, or invest in some resources to manufacture them on his own. Once the drugs are administered, addiction may not happen unless the target fails a Fort save. After that, there's a "satiation" period where the target isn't suffering any adverse effects, and is likely to be resistant to any sort of coercion. After that, the D&D rules don't really handle this type of "coercion" all that well, as a creature with any positive amount of HPs or positive ability scores is perfectly capable of resisting all attempts to assert control over their own self-perceived agency. If we go strictly by the Skills system, a PC attempting to influence an NPC's decisions would likely get a +2 circumstance bonus on a Diplomacy or Intimidation check. The actual result of that check is a binary pass/fail, with a high likelihood that at some point the NPC tells the PC to eff off. There are so many ways to mitigate or ignore ability damage in D&D that a habitual drug user is likely to ignore whatever the PC is offering, be it more drugs or the threat of violence.

The key question here is, what type of game do you *AND THE PLAYERS* want to play? If they are happy murder-hoboing their way around the world, I'd probably just politely say, "No, I don't want to keep track of all that book-keeping. If you want a minion to order around, get a dominate person scroll like any other self-respecting criminal mastermind."

If the players actually want a RP-heavy game where influence, extortion, and political maneuvering are a large part of the game, then I'd ditch the addiction/social skill check stuff and play it with a heavier narrative emphasis and a lighter/looser emphasis on the crunch.