Trying to roll an npc "mentor" for the party.

[Reprimand]

My party doesn't know much about alignment though they've played in a few games prior to this one so they understand mechanics well enough.

I was thinking about making a father or mentor figure for the party to take them out to dinner and give them advice or hints.

Like a more experienced adventurer that knows a few tricks they can try or offer life advice ( like in the way of alignment ) to keep them on the straight and narrow sort of deal.

What are some good ways to roleplay this concept I can think of a few ways like taking the pcs out to dinner to celebrate a successful contract or express disappointment if they do something bad etc.

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

[Pyromancer999]

What kind of mentor are you looking for, personality-wise? A member of any class could technically be a fatherly mentor, in a variety of ways.

If you're looking for a generic adventurer, Factotum X should be able to manage that, or Factotum X/Chameleon Y. Go for a decent spread along the stats, although place priority on Intelligence and Wisdom(because 1) they're wise and 2)it's good for listen and spots). Otherwise, cannot really recommend much without further information.

[Zancloufer]

Some sort of Cleric or Druid might work as:

-They have high Wisdom
-Can offer mechanical help
-Is powerful, but has a good reason not to be going around with adventures and solving all their problems.

A "Mentor" NPC has to walk the line between "is helpful enough the party respects them" and "just solves all of their problems". Even better would be to give them some item creation feats so the party constantly treks back to them.

[Extra Anchovies]

My party doesn't know much about alignment though they've played in a few games prior to this one so they understand mechanics well enough.

Save their precious innocent souls by getting them acquainted with the self-describing alignments in the second section of this page (http://www.easydamus.com/alignmentreal.html). Those names work *so* much better than the standard terms with their wildly varying connotations.


I was thinking about making a father or mentor figure for the party to take them out to dinner and give them advice or hints.

Like a more experienced adventurer that knows a few tricks they can try or offer life advice ( like in the way of alignment ) to keep them on the straight and narrow sort of deal.

What are some good ways to roleplay this concept I can think of a few ways like taking the pcs out to dinner to celebrate a successful contract or express disappointment if they do something bad etc.

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

Well, any realistic functional relationship needs two elements. In this case, those are:
1. What does the mentor get from the PCs?
2. What do the PCs get from the mentor?

Zancloufer's suggestion of someone with reasons to not go out doing stuff themselves is a good one, and a religious mentor figure would also give them a reason to want to work with the PCs - they instruct the PCs in their faith's ways, and send the party off on quests furthering their faith's goals, while the PCs get valuable advice, a reliable source of adventure hooks, and some discount magic items.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Personally I wouldn't suggest it, at least as far as alignment is concerned.

The general idea of a mentor can be a great way to teach players more advanced tricks or simply give some good plot hooks. An Alignment mentor though? There's two big initial flaws you're dealing with:

1. You risk them coming off as a Bible Thumper. The players roll their eyes, nod their heads and then completely ignore the crazy once they're gone.
2. The Alignment system is in itself broken if used as rules, hence the "Descriptive not Prescriptive" saying.

Exploring #1 first. There's actually a potentially even bigger issue, the opposite effect. Basically, players (well, people in general) don't like feeling like they're being forced or told to do things. If you cross their threshold of what they're comfortable being told what to do (which varies per person) you'll start having players lash out. And not necessarily intentionally, it's just a sort of gut reaction players have. When they feel they're being too controlled they take control back of their character, so they feel they actually do have their own character. And if the control they're unconciously fighting against is the DMs? The only way they'll feel they have it back is not doing what the DM is saying, so the more you push your players to act in X way the more likely they're going to act in Y way. And this is actually something we've found in my own group as well, as soon as stuff like Alignment wasn't being paid attention to anymore our characters were suddenly having more Good and Lawful than they were in any other campaign that actually utilised alignment.

And then as far as #2 is concerned. The system is basic, if you follow it as a rule and not a suggestion (where if it's the latter, why are you even bothering with a mentor?) it becomes very... unforgiving. You essentially force your characters into one of nine archetypes. The specifics of the archetypes depend on group (or player/DM) interpretation, but very rarely are they beneficial for any reason other than to railroad groups. And very rarely do they actually allow for complex and realistic characters. And often times this tends to manifest in one of two manners.

2a. The Point System
Basically alignment turns into your Paragon/Renegade, your Kotor Light/Dark etc. You earn points for each action the player does, maybe not literally but it's being calculated as such unconsciously. And it builds up to a point where the player does something relatively minor, but they get hit with the shift because of their past deeds. But the change then feels artificial, cheap and usually as a punishment for a DM for a non-issue.

2b. The Strict code of Conduct
Almost everyone falls under a form of a Paladin Oath unique to their own alignment, only you don't lose class abilities for breaking it. There becomes very clear requirements of what's good, and what's bad. What you're allowed to do and what you're not, and if you suddenly commit one of these acts you get hit with the alignment shift. Even if your reasons were justified (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?501767-am-i-justified-in-my-fustration) if not a little eccentric.

So basically if you decide that you even want Alignments it boils down to "Descriptive, not Prescriptive" because otherwise you open the flood gates. And if it's descriptive, you need to ask yourself why do you want the mentor in the first place? Because at that point you're basically just preaching basic morality that everyone inherently understands already. Anything more than that, you're starting to dictate/control what they players do, which will almost always lead to them doing the opposite and/or having more bland/less interesting characters as a result, usually both.