How to deal with an evil assassin

[jangartharn1]

Hey guys so I'll just get straight into it. So here's the problem I'm playing a fighter who's chaotic good and in my weekly dnd party is a chaotic evil assassin. We just hit 6 and to become an assassin one of the requirements is to murder an innocent for no other reason then to become an assassin. So the story starts our party is on the road and up until now we didn't know in game the assassin was evil the party thought he was a rouge and we come upon a peasant who was carrying his sickly child home from a friends house. This is where it went downhill the assassin attacks and murders the father and butchers the child my guy following his alignment draws his sword and charges the assassin. The dm favoring our assassin a ton here says a note falls out that says the guy he killed was actually a wanted killer. Thankfully we have a paladin in our group me and the pally know he's evil but most of the party totally believe the assassin and the "note" so pretty much now me and the pally are getting threatened in game by the party and the dm unless we can prove some real evidence then we are actually the bad guys in this situation. In the end this isn't the end of the world to me if me and the paladin lose this but it just irks me that the assassin murders this poor child and the dm just backs him up completely on a murder of 2 innocent people. Any info on how to deal with him without meta gaming would be great thanks guys. 😉

[Dusk Raven]

Well... kinda not much you can do with a biased DM. But frankly, you have every right to attack him. It wasn't clear, from the context, but was that killing supposed to be part of his initiation as an assassin? If it was, than who the victim was is irrelevant, because if he had known he wouldn't have killed him - it has to be for no reason. If it wasn't for initiation purposes, then the assassin was being Stupid Evil (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StupidEvil) and needs to be killed as soon as possible.

Oh, you said without metagaming? Well, he just killed a person and his kid, and even if the adult was a criminal, you have no reason to believe the assassin knew that beforehand. And he killed a kid, which has yet to be excused, and it can't be, unless killing kids is acceptable under the law, for whatever reason... in which case such a law is evil and the Paladin has every right to attack the assassin. Well, he has every right, and some very good reasons, to attack the assassin anyway, and you have every right to support him, even for non-altruistic reasons - the assassin is clearly not reliable.

[Crake]

Take the body back to town for verification. Call his bluff basically. Either the note is a fake, and he won't want to, or it was real, and he didn't fulfill the entry requirement (because he killed them for a bounty, thus negating the "for no other reason" part). The other thing is, are bounties in the region all, by default "dead or alive"? Because it would have to be an incredibly anarchic society for that to be the case. Unless the note specifically says something about "wanted dead or alive" the default assumption should be that he was wanted alive, either for questioning or trial.

But yeah, assuming it's legit, then whatever, your characters can't really say anything against it, as that's how the law runs in this area, but in that case he also still hasn't fulfilled his assassin requirement. If it isn't legit, then calling his bluff and bringing the body in for proof of kill would reveal it was an obvious lie when the authorities are like "who dafaq is this?".

[Edenbeast]

Hey guys so I'll just get straight into it. So here's the problem I'm playing a fighter who's chaotic good and in my weekly dnd party is a chaotic evil assassin. We just hit 6 and to become an assassin one of the requirements is to murder an innocent for no other reason then to become an assassin. So the story starts our party is on the road and up until now we didn't know in game the assassin was evil the party thought he was a rouge and we come upon a peasant who was carrying his sickly child home from a friends house. This is where it went downhill the assassin attacks and murders the father and butchers the child my guy following his alignment draws his sword and charges the assassin. The dm favoring our assassin a ton here says a note falls out that says the guy he killed was actually a wanted killer. Thankfully we have a paladin in our group me and the pally know he's evil but most of the party totally believe the assassin and the "note" so pretty much now me and the pally are getting threatened in game by the party and the dm unless we can prove some real evidence then we are actually the bad guys in this situation. In the end this isn't the end of the world to me if me and the paladin lose this but it just irks me that the assassin murders this poor child and the dm just backs him up completely on a murder of 2 innocent people. Any info on how to deal with him without meta gaming would be great thanks guys. 😉

This the GM's problem for allowing people with very diverse allignment. As a GM I like these kind of moral issues, but then I would still make sure the players' allignments are within reasonable distance. Having a paladin usually complicates the situation.
If the note says "wanted killer" that means local authority was looking for him, maybe dead or alive, so there the assissin might be lucky. Butchering the child was very evil, however. As a chaotic good fighter you were right to jump in. As the paladin, had I known beforehand it was a wanted killer, I would make sure the man is captured alive to be brought to justice. Killing him only as a last resort. If you want to do it right (I'm not sure if will it work with your GM), but you could turn him in for murdering the child and have the GM roleplay the local authorities.
If that doesn't work, then I'm inclined to just walk out. I think this just very bad GM'ing which can ruin the game.

[Crake]

Butchering the child was very evil, however.

Right, I totally forgot to bring up this point in my argument. Bring this up with the non-evil party members, any who say it's fine should just be considered evil on the spot. It's also worth noting that the paladin code says that they don't travel with people of evil alignment, or those that offend their moral code, so this is really a case of "he goes or I go". Whether that means re-roll, or actually bowing out of the game is up to you.

[jangartharn1]

Alright thanks for the info so far everybody. Ya I'm the end pretty sure that the assassin is in trouble because this "note" looked pretty fake I rolled a high enough appraise check (our dm didn't know what else to roll so he had us roll appraise checks.) Me and the paladin rolled high enough and we discovered the note was "real" I'm using real very loosely in this sense as we found the assassins signature logo he always seems to leave at the sight of his crimes as his calling card so hopefully he may have overlooked something that'll help bring him in.

[Crake]

Alright thanks for the info so far everybody. Ya I'm the end pretty sure that the assassin is in trouble because this "note" looked pretty fake I rolled a high enough appraise check (our dm didn't know what else to roll so he had us roll appraise checks.) Me and the paladin rolled high enough and we discovered the note was "real" I'm using real very loosely in this sense as we found the assassins signature logo he always seems to leave at the sight of his crimes as his calling card so hopefully he may have overlooked something that'll help bring him in.

The check to determine if something's a forgery or not is opposed by another forgery check, so ironically, to be able to detect a forgery, you need to be able to make a forgery. That said, forgery is unusable untrained, so unless he was trained and you weren't, then yeah, it'd be an obvious fake. But if he was trained and you were not, you would have no way to tell. I highly doubt he had ranks in forgery though, nobody ever does, and let's be honest, when did he have time to make a forgery of some random dude he cam across in the few rounds between him killing the guy and you calling him on his ****.

[Deophaun]

If it wasn't for initiation purposes, then the assassin was being Stupid Evil (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StupidEvil) and needs to be killed as soon as possible.
It's Stupid Evil even if it was for initiation purposes. That stuff is best done away from the rest of the group so it doesn't cause these kinds of issues. It's highly disrespectful from a metagame standpoint.

I'm playing a fighter who's chaotic good
I'm tempted (note: tempted; do not do unless your group enjoys IC conflict and PvP) to say you should give him a taste of his own medicine. Chaotic good can get by without respecting laws against killing evil murderers in their sleep.

[jangartharn1]

Hmm that could work I am chaotic good if the Law won't help then i could pull a batman sort of moment and take this guy down or bring him to justice. The problem with that is that we have a super serious rper in our group who happens to be friends with our assassin dude in game. Long story short he got super angry that my guy would assault an "innocent dude" who was taking out a wanted man. I don't think the assassins friend ever liked me but he takes real life grudges into the game which really just ruins the game.

[Dekion]

I would forget about the note. I think, as others have said here, that the key is the killing of the child. This is assuming a young child not capable of true malicious thought/action. Even if the man was a wanted criminal, and death at the hands of a "bounty hunter" was an acceptable punishment in the region, only the most evil individuals would participate in or condone the killing of a child. If the other members of your party are backing the assassin, and they think killing the child is okay, then they are also evil. Not even a neutral person would go out of their way to harm a child...leave them to their own devices or at most abandon them (if they aren't capable of caring for themselves) would be about the worst I would expect. I could see the most ambiguous of neutral perceptions that perhaps the child got in the way, or perhaps attacked the assassin for killing his father, but that would also mean that they would have to actually have felt the child was a threat to the assassin. Of course, all of this depends on roleplay and the DM, and if the players refuse to concede that this was an evil act, and the DM is okay with that, then I would perhaps begin to questions the true understanding of morality amongst the group of the individuals with whom you're playing.

[jangartharn1]

Like I said in the first post the child the assassin murdered was a sickly child he could barely stand and his father was carrying him home. The thing that disgusts me is that the father said "look you must be mistaking me for somebody else I'm just a father taking care of my diseased child." And our assassin proceeds to attack him the father dies he drops his son and the assassins slits the sickly child's throat I was sickened I know Dnd is just a game but the detail he put into killing the father and his kid was horrifying it made me wonder if he had actually spend time coming up with what he was going to do there.

[Deadline]

This ... this is an easy sell to the rest of the party who believe you are in the wrong for attacking the guy because he killed "a wanted criminal". Just have your fighter look at them and say bluntly, "Yeah, that note looks legitimate. But the kid wasn't a wanted criminal, was he? Tell you what, why don't we take the body of the criminal in for a bounty, and tie up [assassin dude] until we get there. If it turns out I'm wrong, then I'll apologize, but he'll still have to answer for killing the kid, and I'll buy drinks all night. If I'm right though, you can thank me later for not leaving a cutthroat in your midst while you sleep."

Alternatively, "Look, you want to continue traveling with someone who kills kids, that's on you. But not me. This is where we part ways. If you continue to travel with that scum, I'm sure the next time I see any of you fools, it'll be at the end of a hangman's noose." And retire your character (chat with the DM about bringing in a character more in line with the type of characters he clearly wants to run).

[Pyrous]

Like I said in the first post the child the assassin murdered was a sickly child he could barely stand and his father was carrying him home. The thing that disgusts me is that the father said "look you must be mistaking me for somebody else I'm just a father taking care of my diseased child." And our assassin proceeds to attack him the father dies he drops his son and the assassins slits the sickly child's throat I was sickened I know Dnd is just a game but the detail he put into killing the father and his kid was horrifying it made me wonder if he had actually spend time coming up with what he was going to do there.

The DM and other players are strongly biased, there will be no way to prove this with "real evidence" if they already don't consider the murder of the child as EVIL. Everything that you try to use as evidence will be deemed insufficient.

Also, the assassin didn't have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the guy was a wanted criminal before killing him, why should you? About the child: did the assassin try to justify the killing somehow?

Leave this gaming group, and tell the paladin player to do the same. This is how you should deal with this evil assassin.

[jangartharn1]

Well the assassin did give an excuse for killing the child a very poor excuse but an excuse never the less. His reasoning was "hey the dad is supposedly a wanted guy so the kid must be wanted too!" It was by far one of the worst excuses to do something in dnd I'd ever heard. And again thanks for all the info guys hopefully this'll get sorted out but I appreciate all the info coming in let's keep it going. ;)

[Deophaun]

Well the assassin did give an excuse for killing the child a very poor excuse but an excuse never the less. His reasoning was "hey it's a trap that kid is really a shapeshifter!"
That is a very poor excuse, especially as shapeshifters revert to their natural form on death.

But hey, the assassin just wigged out and killed someone. Maybe he's not the assassin that you know. Maybe that assassin was killed and was himself replaced by a shapeshifter. You should cut off his head. You know, just to be sure.

[Pyrous]

"hey the dad is supposedly a wanted guy so the kid must be wanted too!"

Emphasis mine.

The party is not interested in fairness or only you and the pally are not evil. They are letting this kind of excuse pass for the assassin, but not to you and the pally. If they don't want to simply kill the assassin, they should at least help you capture him, take him and the corpses to the nearest town and try to clear things up.

[jangartharn1]

Sorry about editing the last post from a shapeshifter to he is supposedly wanted I just posted it and I read over it and it was just as stupid sounding as it was when the assassin said it. I at least wanted to make the assassin sound like he had some form of a reason. ;)

[Pyrous]

Sorry about editing the last post from a shapeshifter to he is supposedly wanted I just posted it and I read over it and it was just as stupid sounding as it was when the assassin said it. I at least wanted to make the assassin sound like he had some form of a reason. ;)

Wait, I'm lost. Which was the excuse that the assassin gave to the party? Not that it matters. The really stupid thing was murdering a child right in front of a freaking Paladin! What the hell was he thinking?!

There's only two ways I can see this happening: the player and the DM had already arranged this, or the DM was surprised by this and, not wanting PvP nor a party split, handled this poorly. Unless you can convince your DM that it should already be clear that the guy is evil and has at least to be taken to the proper authorities, I don't see he accepting any kind of evidence.

If you really wanna keep playing with this group, I suggest you retire your current character and bring a more murderhobo one, same for the pally player.


That is a very poor excuse, especially as shapeshifters revert to their natural form on death.

But hey, the assassin just wigged out and killed someone. Maybe he's not the assassin that you know. Maybe that assassin was killed and was himself replaced by a shapeshifter. You should cut off his head. You know, just to be sure.

If the assassin gave that excuse, that should be acceptable.

CG-Fighter: "The Rogue we all know and love would be uncapable of killing a child. Who are you and what did you do to our friend?"
Rogue: "It is me guys. I honestly thought the kid was a shapeshifter."
Pally: "BS! I'm detecting evil on you right now and it's pinging faint evil! We all now that Rogue isn't evil, you filthy liar!"
Rogue: "No, this must be some kind of evil magic someone cast on me."
CG-Fighter: "If you are really Rogue, you know that now we have to kill you to be sure. Just like you did with the kid."
Pally: "And you know we can't just trust someone that says he is not one of the bad guys. Just like you didn't trust the father when he said we should be mistaking him for someone else."