Ninjadeadbeard
2019-10-06, 01:06 PM
Have you ever stopped in the middle of a game and wondered, are we doing something morally reprehensible? Have you ever stopped, mid-slaughter, and wondered at how many paladins keep throwing themselves at you? Have you ever, just before you sit atop the Skull Throne, which lies atop the Mountain of Everlasting Skulls, just pondered on all the decisions that led to you getting here?
Let's help with that. Share you or your party's acts, beliefs, or just tales of madness. Then, others will tell you what alignment you'd fall under in their games. Are you the baddie? Are you the Goodie? Are you the Neutie?
I will drop the first example.
Merlin Pendry was a Half-Elf who served in an Elven army. After he developed Chaos Magic (Wild mage Sorc, 5e D&D) he was discharged as a hazard to his own side. He founded a party called the Wyld Fyre Guyld [sic] and they went about doing jobs. Well, two of them. Before they were a bit derailed.
First job was a simple "a lord is lost innawoods, go save him". We ended up slaughtering human barbarians left, right, and center. Mostly via Fireball. Then, when we saved the Lord and captured two of the humans, we realized that we couldn't speak their language... but we could speak the language of their Dire Wolf, who we'd been carrying as a prisoner for miles by this point, and he could speak theirs. The wolf was a terrible translator, being really, really dumb, however. Eventually, we had the OOC suspicion that the Lord had murdered one of these savages' friends... but IC we couldn't tell if the Lord was lying. We could tell that the Dire Wolf was trying to lie to us and buy time for his Master (puppet-master Druid of some sort) to coordinate the ambush against us. We Intimidated him to back off, then slit the wolf and every prisoners' throat for good measure. Started a war, but we were paid for a rescue Op.
Got into a sanctioned bar fight for cash, and the Barbarian knocked out one of the competitors, who was clearly the result of some Frankenstein-tier experiments. His handlers shadowed us for a while, and we... kind of killed him a couple of times while experimenting on ways to fix him. We didn't want to involve authorities, so we purchased a 15X lethal dose of sleep medication for the guy (he couldn't biologically sleep, but he couldn't trance, so we realized he was a badly made human-elf hybrid). Yeah, that stopped his heart and I ended up having to shocking grasp his heart back into rhythm. He ended up changing species a couple of times, and suffered identity death twice over. Those alchemists were jerks, apparently. I think we gave him 50gp and let him crash at our seedy Inn-bedroom.
Those alchemist... things, kept shadowing us so we stabbed one and dragged him over to talk. Literally, I offered him my sincere condolences on losing that fight, but then added we'd be more than happy to do work for them as mercenaries. They sent us to some run-down tavern that was warded and contained a monster. Apparently, their experiments were to create the ultimate lifeform or something like that. We made an effort to clear out the local civilians, and then firebombed the monster in its building until dead. Unfortunately, this triggered my Wild Magic Surge, and I rolled the one that caused me to go wild, summon monsters, explode, die, and then reincarnate as a Tiefling. When the alchemists showed up, mad that we had survived their petty attempt to kill us, we intimidated them into paying up, then executed them since we were no longer under contract. We also accidentally drove their leader insane since his mind was inside the monster when we killed it. Any attempt by the DM to get us to follow them and do more adventuring did not pan out. We took the money and left.
As an odd-job (literally a carousel roll) we killed a small bandit camp. Their allies and partners sent us a message that was basically a magically-binding death threat. We... caved in the messenger's head and interrogated his friend until we figured out the poor guy was a villager the bandits used for messaging people. So... we found his village, and launched an all-out assault on the bandits. Pretty normal stuff. Everything was on fire, I was a T-Rex... and then the bandit boss (one of the five men who'd signed in blood) came out and proved he was some CR20+ demigod warlord. We killed him. I mean, he killed me once but I got better. And after thoroughly wrecking him, he melted into slag and white-hot bones... which was when the Arcane Archer made an interesting History Check, and determined that drinking the blood or bonemarrow of a demigod would confer his powers on whoever diabolized him. Naturally, the Archer slid up to the body and began chomping down. Due to a 12 Con, he kept choking on ashes and couldn't steal his power. I, Merlin Pendry, on the other hand, had a 20 Con, and a Con-Save boost from an item. So I knocked it back and gained immunity to enchantments. No one else partook, but we were told in no uncertain terms that blood magic was despised, and considered a crime against nature. We decided to eat the other four men, as long as they had similar powers to steal.
We also gave the villagers 2000 gp to rebuild. They chose to follow us home and build their village near our base. Weird.
We did make it clear to the guards, and a few other bandits that we were only looking for those five guys, and that we'd leave the organization alone as long as they didn't try to stop us. So far, we've had some minor bandits give us a wide berth and/or offer to sell out our targets.
So... What Alignment Are We? Are We the Baddies?
Let's help with that. Share you or your party's acts, beliefs, or just tales of madness. Then, others will tell you what alignment you'd fall under in their games. Are you the baddie? Are you the Goodie? Are you the Neutie?
I will drop the first example.
Merlin Pendry was a Half-Elf who served in an Elven army. After he developed Chaos Magic (Wild mage Sorc, 5e D&D) he was discharged as a hazard to his own side. He founded a party called the Wyld Fyre Guyld [sic] and they went about doing jobs. Well, two of them. Before they were a bit derailed.
First job was a simple "a lord is lost innawoods, go save him". We ended up slaughtering human barbarians left, right, and center. Mostly via Fireball. Then, when we saved the Lord and captured two of the humans, we realized that we couldn't speak their language... but we could speak the language of their Dire Wolf, who we'd been carrying as a prisoner for miles by this point, and he could speak theirs. The wolf was a terrible translator, being really, really dumb, however. Eventually, we had the OOC suspicion that the Lord had murdered one of these savages' friends... but IC we couldn't tell if the Lord was lying. We could tell that the Dire Wolf was trying to lie to us and buy time for his Master (puppet-master Druid of some sort) to coordinate the ambush against us. We Intimidated him to back off, then slit the wolf and every prisoners' throat for good measure. Started a war, but we were paid for a rescue Op.
Got into a sanctioned bar fight for cash, and the Barbarian knocked out one of the competitors, who was clearly the result of some Frankenstein-tier experiments. His handlers shadowed us for a while, and we... kind of killed him a couple of times while experimenting on ways to fix him. We didn't want to involve authorities, so we purchased a 15X lethal dose of sleep medication for the guy (he couldn't biologically sleep, but he couldn't trance, so we realized he was a badly made human-elf hybrid). Yeah, that stopped his heart and I ended up having to shocking grasp his heart back into rhythm. He ended up changing species a couple of times, and suffered identity death twice over. Those alchemists were jerks, apparently. I think we gave him 50gp and let him crash at our seedy Inn-bedroom.
Those alchemist... things, kept shadowing us so we stabbed one and dragged him over to talk. Literally, I offered him my sincere condolences on losing that fight, but then added we'd be more than happy to do work for them as mercenaries. They sent us to some run-down tavern that was warded and contained a monster. Apparently, their experiments were to create the ultimate lifeform or something like that. We made an effort to clear out the local civilians, and then firebombed the monster in its building until dead. Unfortunately, this triggered my Wild Magic Surge, and I rolled the one that caused me to go wild, summon monsters, explode, die, and then reincarnate as a Tiefling. When the alchemists showed up, mad that we had survived their petty attempt to kill us, we intimidated them into paying up, then executed them since we were no longer under contract. We also accidentally drove their leader insane since his mind was inside the monster when we killed it. Any attempt by the DM to get us to follow them and do more adventuring did not pan out. We took the money and left.
As an odd-job (literally a carousel roll) we killed a small bandit camp. Their allies and partners sent us a message that was basically a magically-binding death threat. We... caved in the messenger's head and interrogated his friend until we figured out the poor guy was a villager the bandits used for messaging people. So... we found his village, and launched an all-out assault on the bandits. Pretty normal stuff. Everything was on fire, I was a T-Rex... and then the bandit boss (one of the five men who'd signed in blood) came out and proved he was some CR20+ demigod warlord. We killed him. I mean, he killed me once but I got better. And after thoroughly wrecking him, he melted into slag and white-hot bones... which was when the Arcane Archer made an interesting History Check, and determined that drinking the blood or bonemarrow of a demigod would confer his powers on whoever diabolized him. Naturally, the Archer slid up to the body and began chomping down. Due to a 12 Con, he kept choking on ashes and couldn't steal his power. I, Merlin Pendry, on the other hand, had a 20 Con, and a Con-Save boost from an item. So I knocked it back and gained immunity to enchantments. No one else partook, but we were told in no uncertain terms that blood magic was despised, and considered a crime against nature. We decided to eat the other four men, as long as they had similar powers to steal.
We also gave the villagers 2000 gp to rebuild. They chose to follow us home and build their village near our base. Weird.
We did make it clear to the guards, and a few other bandits that we were only looking for those five guys, and that we'd leave the organization alone as long as they didn't try to stop us. So far, we've had some minor bandits give us a wide berth and/or offer to sell out our targets.
So... What Alignment Are We? Are We the Baddies?