[3.5] What would cause a Cleric of Mammon with the Law and Evil domains fall?

[Zhentarim]

Mammon is the archdevil of greed and I’m looking to make a cleric of the law and evil domains who serves him, and I am wondering what kinds of quandaries I might encounter playing a character devoted to lawful evil greed.

[Kelb_Panthera]

You have a patron. You follow the dictates of its teachings or you lose your powers. As a servant to one of the archdevils, you're almost certainly a member of one of his cults as well so obeying your superiors and abusing your underlings would certainly be part of it. Thats your law aspect, btw.

More generally, mammon teaches that there is virtue in proper greed and hording. So being too free with your spending, unless its on oppulence to make your own life more comfortable and ostentatious ought to be a no-no. Giving money or other gifts to anyone without demanding -something- in return is just right out.

Then there's Evil (note the capital E). The pillars of good are all well defined in BoED and engaging in the behaviors that represent them with any frequency should put you on a fast-track to needing a new patron. Remember, however, that motivation matters. Donating to an oprhanage (it's always an orphanage) simply because the children need help is a good act and against your patron's ideas. Donating to an orphanage with the caveats that they "discipline" the children properly (read: make them unconsciounablly miserable) and that your "friends" (other cultists) can get fast-tracked for adoptions (child sacrifice anyone?) is perfectly fine.

Obviously, your GM's interpretation is more important than mine but this is how I'd interpret the infernal dogma. BoVD and FC2 both have more detailed guidelines for each of the archdevils cults.

[Segev]

Pity that leads to any sort of generosity could cause you to fall.
Failing to technically pay your debts could cause you to fall, if only because it's unlawful. Doing everything you can to squeak out of paying them, or to pay as little as possible, within the rules, though? Golden.
Wasting money on making yourself look good could cause you to fall.
It's not a problem if you're buying ostentatious displays of wealth. It is a problem if you're buying temporary displays that leave you unable to live up to the opulent standards they set.
It's a huge problem if you're using it to appear noble-hearted and aren't somehow trying to spin it back to material gain.
Don't give away money to improve people's opinion of you. Your sin of choice is greed, not pride or vanity.
Destroying another's wealth or happiness at great expense to yourself. Again, your sin is greed, not envy.
Jealousy is an iffy one; the fear that what you HAVE will be TAKEN is legitimately an exercise in greed.
Letting a tantrum damage your wealth in a substantial way. Again: greed, not wrath.


As for general "moral" or "ethical" quandaries, the second bullet gives some ideas: Greed tells you to never give up your wealth if you can avoid it. Lawfulness (which Mammon definitely is; this isn't a step off his alignment that he'd be eager to corrupt you away from) means you respect ownership rules, debts, contracts, etc. If you find yourself in debt to the point of ruin, you may well be torn between paying your debts or sating your greed.

You may also have a legitimate moral quandary over the goose that lays the golden egg. Any analogous situation, you have to evaluate whether your immediate gain for slaughtering it is worth more than your long-term gain from nurturing it and continually harvesting the eggs. Factors like who else might have rights to the eggs, whether you can keep it and protect it from thieves, the reliability of its egg-laying...these things are normal cost-benefit analysis questions, but they become a legitimate moral quandary when your highest virtue is greedy acquisition.

"Your money or your life" is also a tricky one. Not in cases where losing your life means you lose whatever money you were trying to save by not choosing "life" anyway, but in cases where there's a legitimate possibility that your money stays with your corpse, corporation, or whathaveyou, you need to weigh cost of getting brought back to life against loss of that money.

"Is this art piece worth more than the magic item being offered for it?"

[Zhentarim]

Pity that leads to any sort of generosity could cause you to fall.
Failing to technically pay your debts could cause you to fall, if only because it's unlawful. Doing everything you can to squeak out of paying them, or to pay as little as possible, within the rules, though? Golden.
Wasting money on making yourself look good could cause you to fall.
It's not a problem if you're buying ostentatious displays of wealth. It is a problem if you're buying temporary displays that leave you unable to live up to the opulent standards they set.
It's a huge problem if you're using it to appear noble-hearted and aren't somehow trying to spin it back to material gain.
Don't give away money to improve people's opinion of you. Your sin of choice is greed, not pride or vanity.
Destroying another's wealth or happiness at great expense to yourself. Again, your sin is greed, not envy.
Jealousy is an iffy one; the fear that what you HAVE will be TAKEN is legitimately an exercise in greed.
Letting a tantrum damage your wealth in a substantial way. Again: greed, not wrath.


As for general "moral" or "ethical" quandaries, the second bullet gives some ideas: Greed tells you to never give up your wealth if you can avoid it. Lawfulness (which Mammon definitely is; this isn't a step off his alignment that he'd be eager to corrupt you away from) means you respect ownership rules, debts, contracts, etc. If you find yourself in debt to the point of ruin, you may well be torn between paying your debts or sating your greed.

You may also have a legitimate moral quandary over the goose that lays the golden egg. Any analogous situation, you have to evaluate whether your immediate gain for slaughtering it is worth more than your long-term gain from nurturing it and continually harvesting the eggs. Factors like who else might have rights to the eggs, whether you can keep it and protect it from thieves, the reliability of its egg-laying...these things are normal cost-benefit analysis questions, but they become a legitimate moral quandary when your highest virtue is greedy acquisition.

"Your money or your life" is also a tricky one. Not in cases where losing your life means you lose whatever money you were trying to save by not choosing "life" anyway, but in cases where there's a legitimate possibility that your money stays with your corpse, corporation, or whathaveyou, you need to weigh cost of getting brought back to life against loss of that money.

"Is this art piece worth more than the magic item being offered for it?"

Along those lines, could gluttony also cause a fall? For me, gluttony and greed have always seemed to go hand-in-hand, but they are listed as separate sins.

[Duke of Urrel]

Along those lines, could gluttony also cause a fall? For me, gluttony and greed have always seemed to go hand-in-hand, but they are listed as separate sins.

The reason why greed and gluttony don't go together is that you can't both have your wealth and eat it, too.

[Segev]

Along those lines, could gluttony also cause a fall? For me, gluttony and greed have always seemed to go hand-in-hand, but they are listed as separate sins.


The reason why greed and gluttony don't go together is that you can't both have your wealth and eat it, too.

Right. Note that I'm not saying "doing the wrong sin makes you fall." I'm saying that sacrificing your greed for another sin would. If you can be prideful, vain, gluttonous, and wrathful all while maintaining an enormous personal supply of opulence and wealth, especially growing it? Mammon'll find that respectable. I mean, you're still a pauper compared to him, but hey, mortals.

[Zhentarim]

Right. Note that I'm not saying "doing the wrong sin makes you fall." I'm saying that sacrificing your greed for another sin would. If you can be prideful, vain, gluttonous, and wrathful all while maintaining an enormous personal supply of opulence and wealth, especially growing it? Mammon'll find that respectable. I mean, you're still a pauper compared to him, but hey, mortals.

I like this interpretation. To me, those who do Mukbang should be motovated by both greed and gluttony—gluttony to eat like that and greed to record it.

I am put off by watching mukbang, but the money is so good I’ve thought about doing it as a vocation.

[denthor]

If you find a begging child giving it a copper piece with securing a pledge of loyalty would be a crime.

Bonus points in your favor. Hire paladins to protect your social club. Do this in a lower class high crime district. Hire lawful servants for the party. The paladins would be honor bound to keep the starving poor people out. How do you higher them. You find lawful goods that approach them through a neutral third party. He would approve of such lawful contract deception.

[Segev]

If you find a begging child giving it a copper piece with securing a pledge of loyalty would be a crime.That depends: is this child's oath of loyalty something you can exploit for more than the value of the copper piece? If you're not immediately putting him to work, probably not. But let's revisit this "donate to an orphanage" idea.

You want to either work your way into a controlling position through your donations (especially of your oh-so-valuable time, making yourself indispensible and having fingers in all the bureaucratic pies), unless you just decide to start your own, bigger, fancier orphanage and put the first one out of business.

Either way, once you own the orphansorphanage, you turn it into a workhouse, Oliver Twist-style. Now, when you see that poor beggar brat on the street, you can give him a copper and a candy to lure him into following you, spin your tale of giving him shelter and a vocation, and throw him in to work at the jobs you need tiny hands to do properly. Now you're exploiting the helpless for your own wealth.

If you can make them grateful for it, all the better; less likely they'll run away (costing you workforce) or grow up to turn against you (because fighting legal battles is almost as expensive as fighting adventurers with tragic backstories for which you're responsible).

The key is, as a follower of Mammon, you're about greed over mere profit. YEs, you like profit. You covet and crave it. But greed is short-sighted by nature, so you generally will take the most in the moment, which means you can't do long-term investments that are only modestly lucrative. Any orphans you raise and aren't spending miserly sums on to squeeze as much immediate profit out of them as possible had best be the most promising cash cows when they grow up.

Up side: your reward structure that gives promising adventurer-types more comforts and lavish rewards helps filter those who will have the power to avenge their tragic backstories are more likely to view you positively, rather than as an instigator of their tragedy.


Bonus points in your favor. Hire paladins to protect your social club. Do this in a lower class high crime district. Hire lawful servants for the party. The paladins would be honor bound to keep the starving poor people out. How do you higher them. You find lawful goods that approach them through a neutral third party. He would approve of such lawful contract deception.This is cute and clever. All the better if you can spin their Lawful adherence to the contract into questionably (but not outright im)moral acts, and sell them on the guilt of having been PAID for it.

This is actually win-win for you: If they do take your payment, you can rub their noses in their greed and what it drove them to do. If they reject it, you got their guard services for free!

[Clementx]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWiWD3reF8Q

First thing to come to mind. For non Star Trek watchers, the grey guy is an exiled intelligence agent who normally is sweet as pie. But he is in effective withdrawal and going crazy.

[Zhentarim]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWiWD3reF8Q

First thing to come to mind. For non Star Trek watchers, the grey guy is an exiled intelligence agent who normally is sweet as pie. But he is in effective withdrawal and going crazy.

I got a kick out that clip.

Also, I answered my question about why greed and gluttony don’t go hand in hand, or at least, its a one-way relationship where gluttony needs greed but greed can do without gluttony:


https://youtu.be/tOK7L3S-OVs

[Zaq]

Serving a patron who is an archdevil can be interesting. You’re committed to Evil, and part (not all, geez, that’s not the argument I wanna have today) of that is selfishness. Always look out for Number One, by which I mean you. That’s a big part of being Evil and a bigger part of life in the Baatorian hierarchy. Which you’re invested in, even if you aren’t actually in.

But you’re serving a patron who also values looking out for Number One. Him. And archdevils may be Powers, but they ain’t deities. Sure, puny mortal affairs probably won’t cause Mammon to gain or lose status/power/influence in the great scale of his affairs, but it’s still something that he cares about. And archdevils, unlike deities, aren’t quite tied into their portfolios in just the same way. Not everything that advances “greed” advances Mammon’s interests.

So... what happens when these aspects conflict? What happens when you have a chance to greedily act in your own interests in a way that works against Mammon’s interests? Sure, a rank-and-file baatezu in a situation like that is mostly going to try to figure out if they have a way to succeed (which may well result in promotion) without getting caught early (which will almost certainly result in demotion—and a baatezu fears nothing so much as demotion). You’re probably a little different, though, if you’re a cleric praying to and receiving magical power from Mammon. That’s a very different setup. And therein lies the interesting part.

I don’t know how that would go. That’s what makes it interesting.

[daremetoidareyo]

I was thinking in literature terms about a cleric of Mammon falling, it would start with realizing that increasing the comfort of the lowest amongst his group of people that he leads increases their productivity.

From there he begins to acquiesce to all other normal needs for those people, including healing for the sick and even paid vacations. While he's doing this his people can still be doing evil things for the cause of lawful evil.

But what happens when he expands is Empire and implements all of these nice things that they may have never been privy to before?

What happens when he calculates that performing a sacrifice to his Lord would cause a negative benefit from his little lawful evil Utopia?

[Segev]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWiWD3reF8Q

First thing to come to mind. For non Star Trek watchers, the grey guy is an exiled intelligence agent who normally is sweet as pie. But he is in effective withdrawal and going crazy.

Knowing the rest of that episode's story, I love that, even in the throes of his anger and self-hatred...he maintains the integrity of his lies.

I don't know that that was even really the incident; it seems like the kind of thing that would be glossed over for Enabrin Tain's protege. I mean, burning GARAK is nigh suicidal. It's like MI6 exiling James Bond to Moscow in the 70s.