I keep drifting to Good... [D&D3.5e]

[Callista]

I keep having this problem with my characters. Whenever I play a character that starts out neutral, they never stay neutral. Never. I start out as a money- or power-hungry type of character? They end up caring too much. I start out as someone who just wants to get by and survive--they find something they're willing to die for. It's inevitable.

My latest character is a wizard who started out LN. Her personality is basically someone who wants to know how the world works; she wants to predict everything, maybe even control it if necessary, so that she'll always know exactly how things are going to turn out. She's scared to death of uncertainty. She also isn't very fond of the gods, getting as close to atheist as you can be in a game where the gods are directly involved, because she understands they're not perfectly dependable--the gods are fallible, so she doesn't trust them. (Learned this when the small-town priest couldn't heal everybody who caught the plague that killed some of her family.) Magic is her response to the issue of how you deal with an uncertain reality--by changing reality. At the end of her origin story she's living with her sister and helping raise two small children; loving children is one of her less neurotic character traits. I added it in almost as an afterthought.

OK, so, looks like normal LN. So what happens? A spell goes bad, and one unanticipated teleport later, she falls in with the usual motley group of adventurers. And inevitably, children end up in danger; namely, a newborn infant. By the end of this particular adventure, I end up having this supposedly ultra-cautious level 4 wizard basically teleport (benign transposition, actually) into melee with an enemy that's a CR 8 because it might let her familiar get away with the Generic Artifact-o-Doom that was at the middle of the whole plot. (We weren't supposed to fight. Nobody expected to survive. We did. One of those situations you get into by being stupid, and get out of by being smarter than you ever expected.)

That was the turning point. I hadn't played this character for so long. It turned out that her protective streak came out way more than I thought it was going to; what's more, now it's getting applied to allies that she trusts, and she's consistently putting others first, believing that (she's the only wizard in the group) that they're her responsibility because she knows a lot more than they do and thinks ahead a lot more. She's flawed; she's got a big head about the magic and she keeps trying to make sense of nonsensical things; she's even somewhat prejudiced. But her actions are easily LG, with emphasis on L, so last session I gave up and changed her alignment to LG.

But this happens to me all the freaking time. Tell me: Why can't I ever play a proper neutral character? Every time but one, the character has skewed to Good within a couple of sessions. (The exception skewed to Evil after an incident involving psychological torture and a brown bear... long story.) It's like the adventuring life just forces my characters to take a side on the L/G axis, whether I like it or not.

[kyoryu]

Even Neutral folks have friends. Helping your friends out isn't particularly far along the Good axis. In fact, I'd argue that someone that wouldn't ever help out their friends is pretty much pegged to the Evil side. Even Belkar helps his friends out on occasion.

Neutral doesn't mean "never helps anyone." It means "generally acts out of self interest." *Generally*. And keeping friends alive is definitely self-interest, especially since you know they'll likely help keep *you* alive in the future.

[teslas]

Sounds like you have a problem separating you from your character.

Play a Chaotic Evil Sorcerer for a campaign. You might not live very long, but if you can't delve into that I don't see how you're going to play someone who is 'truly' neutral either.

And just because you're willing to put yourself at risk (as a woman who is familiar with children to boot) for an innocent child doesn't necessarily make you good in of itself.

I've played many a stabby, thieving rogues that would still (begrudgingly) put themselves at risk for a kid. Later that night they've still got no problem plucking out a man's eyes for looking at him wrong. That man might even have children. Screw 'em. He should have thought about them before mean mugging people.

Chaotic Neutral or True Neutral Druids are the best. Burn down the new village in the area after they refused to leave, children and all, to save your forest full of badgers. Hey, you warned them you would use force. (Wait, no you didn't, oh well. Obad-Hai still loves you!)

[Psyren]

Well, as a general comment, I'll say that alignment isn't a straitjacket. There's nothing wrong with it shifting over the course of an adventure, especially if you're playing a class that doesn't rely on it staying static for their class features to work.

As to the specific action of your wizard, saving your familiar so it could save the Macguffin is good, but not quite as holy as you make it out to be. Your character definitely has a vested interest in keeping the world around, otherwise what would she study? So based on that lone example I would say you could stay LN. I'd need more info to agree on an alignment shift.

[Yuki Akuma]

The fact that you can't help but be decent to people isn't exactly a bad sign.

[Dienekes]

Exact opposite happened to me when I started RPing. Whenever I start out good my character would take less and less good actions as I grew apathetic to the problems of those around me.

I got passed this by calling it character development.

[teslas]

As to the specific action of your wizard, saving your familiar so it could save the Macguffin is good, but not quite as holy as you make it out to be. Your character definitely has a vested interest in keeping the world around, otherwise what would she study? So based on that lone example I would say you could stay LN. I'd need more info to agree on an alignment shift.

I agree. Alignment shifting due to very complex actions is something that I am very slow to do.

Hell, even quite a number of very evil acts, especially against evil people, has no real danger of shifting you out of a Neutral alignment in many situations.

It sounds like you might be micromanaging a little too much. Neutral is a very, very forgiving alignment.

[Urpriest]

One thing about Neutral characters: they don't have to be apathetic. You seem to set up your neutral characters as undecided and made neutral by their character flaws. Why not make a character where neutrality really is taking a stand: a LN character who believes that the law must be harsh in order to survive, or a N druid who values plants and animals above people? Rather than telling a sad story about how the world betrayed them to make them that way, make them come from a well-adjusted childhood in which they simply rationally decided that that was the best course of action. Argue with a few Libertarians on the internet and you'll get the feeling down right.

Another issue, though: adventures generally involve doing Good stuff. To be a proper team player and contribute to the success of the party you end up doing Good things just because not doing them would be disruptive. If you really want to stick to a character/alignment, sometimes you have to make disruptive choices that stop your side from "winning". It' up to you to decide whether that's worth it.

[Greenish]

Let the character to define the alignment, not the other way around.

Also, play something evil (with minor "e", since just for evuls large hams aren't quite so instructive), and try to get a grasp of the character and it's motivations.

[Tengu_temp]

The fact that you can't help but be decent to people isn't exactly a bad sign.

I agree. If you can't help but play good characters, don't force yourself to play something else. And especially don't play an evil character just to learn how to play one - you should only play characters you enjoy playing.

[Callista]

Yeah, Neutrals are definitely loyal to their friends. The Neutral characters in our party are loyal--even the crazy barbarian never targets his drunken fistfights on anybody he actually likes. If they weren't loyal, it wouldn't be a decent party. If that were all--if she were just protecting her friends, and only her friends plus any random kids, I'd say neutral and be done with it. But when you get to the point that you're considering yourself expendable because you care about other people more and feel like you'd be a total failure if you didn't protect them... you're verging on Good. The "L" part is still the strongest part of the alignment, though.

Evil might be interesting, but we already have one guy doing that. We caught him killing people and now have a Mark of Justice on him. He's plotting to kill the guy with the command word, and both have been encouraged to make backup characters.

[Marnath]

Obligatory links: Lawful Neutral, True Neutral. Basically, neutral people are kind of mercenary in their outlooks, they don't go looking to save people for the heck of it but they'll do just about anything if it benefits them. Saving your familiar and the uber artifact of doom are definately things you'd do to promote your self well being.

[elonin]

Your character reminds me of a few films that Rutger Hauer was in. Neutrally aligned people who can't help but being good when the rubber hits the road. Not that that is a bad thing. Your example was too specific for me to say though, Anakin was being evil in his response to the sand people. Just to say that if she went to extremes with defending the infant (say leveling a villiage) that wasn't a good act.

[true_shinken]

It's very nice to enjoy playing heroes. I'm betting most DMs would want you as a player.

[Callista]

Obligatory links: Lawful Neutral, True Neutral. Basically, neutral people are kind of mercenary in their outlooks, they don't go looking to save people for the heck of it but they'll do just about anything if it benefits them. Saving your familiar and the uber artifact of doom are definately things you'd do to promote your self well being.

Huh, I guess that didn't get across right. She was actually putting herself in lethal danger in the hopes that the familiar might get away with the aforementioned artifact. Happened like so: Because my character and two other party members refused to bargain with evidently powerful demonic-type spellcasters (homebrew thing, I think), the party is forced to fight instead. My character and her familiar are preparing to throw magic missiles from safely back in the corridor. Gauging the strength of the enemy and figuring we can't win, my character sends her familiar up into melee range of the enemy and has the familiar grab the artifact (it's a vial of blood--long story--has to do with vampires). Then she casts the Benign Transposition spell on herself and her cat, putting her in melee range and the cat safely back in the corridor, and orders the cat to run. (The spell stopped either her or the familiar from being taken down by an AoO while retreating.) Luckily the threatening enemy was soon thereafter grappled by the party monk.

A cautious LN would reason, "I can't get that artifact away without dying; therefore the logical thing is to grab my companions, cut my losses, and see if we can take this guy down some other way." Or else they'd take the chance that the familiar would die trying to retreat. It may also be significant that the enemy wasn't even threatening my character's hometown--it was just some random town they were passing through, with no personal connections involved.

So, yeah, someone who did something like that could conceivably be neutral. It's just that when this kind of thing happens repeatedly, and becomes a track record for the character, you have to reevaluate.

[Marnath]

A cautious LN would reason, "I can't get that artifact away without dying; therefore the logical thing is to grab my companions, cut my losses, and see if we can take this guy down some other way." It may also be significant that the enemy wasn't even threatening my character's hometown--it was just some random town they were passing through, with no personal connections involved.

So, yeah, someone who did something like that could conceivably be neutral. It's just that when this kind of thing happens repeatedly, and becomes a track record for the character, you have to reevaluate.

I'd actually say thats a move toward chaos, not good. Rather than thinking about cutting losses, maybe the thought is "I bet I can get that blood away from them if I pull this stunt...If i'm lucky Monk Mc.fists will get in his way long enough for me to run like the Devils are after me."

[Callista]

Ehh... I dunno, it was just the best strategy I could think of at the moment.

Fleeing would've meant
--We had a chance of getting out alive
--Forfeiting the infant's life and probably dooming the town
--Letting the enemy do various evil things before we tracked their plane-hopping butts down and killed them properly.

Whereas, if the familiar got away with the blood while we were fighting:
--My character would probably die; others quite possibly would as well
--If we died, we might get a chance to kill one or more of them first
--If the familiar managed to flee and hide (at this point the cat has INT 6, dumb but not extremely so), we might save the infant and possibly warn the town. But if the familiar failed, then the villains might get off scot-free.

So, yeah, it was impulsive... chaotic good, I suppose. Versus the cold-blooded but safer action of fleeing and tracking them down later, which would probably have been a LN choice.

[kyoryu]

So, yeah, it was impulsive... chaotic good, I suppose. Versus the cold-blooded but safer action of fleeing and tracking them down later, which would probably have been a LN choice.

Well, burning down towns certainly upsets the order of things, so you could argue that keeping the town around was a Lawful act... you cared more about the disruption than the individuals, etc.

[mucat]

If I were inclined to argue about alignment, I would say the character could still well be Lawful Neutral. Caring about the infant's life doesn't mark her as Good; most people, including quite a few evil ones, would go out of their way to save a baby. The fact that she was willing to put her own life at extreme risk to do it might mean she's Good...or might just mean that she's brave, and willing to stick her neck out where most people might just say "I wish I could help."

However, I don't think it really matters what the character's alignment was. I assume that when you designed the character, you weren't thinking, "L and N are my favorite letters, so I want them on the character sheet." More likely you were thinking "I want to play a cautious, conservative borderline control freak", and instead you found yourself with a reckless swashbuckler.

And yes, it happens to me too. When I've been playing a character for a while, and then read back over the initial background and personality synopsis I wrote for them, I'm often amazed how differently I once expected that character to turn out.

To an extent, this is fine. Fluid, organic characters are always more fun than static ones. But if you find that character traits you were really looking forward to playing keep getting lost in the shuffle, and all your characters start acting the same, then pick a trait to focus on each session. Write it on your hand with Sharpie: "cautious control freak". Make a pact that each time your die roll is divisible by 5, you will find a way for the character to do something memorably inflexible.

And if in the middle of play, you find that you realize you really want your wizard to take a wild risk to rescue the infant, do it. But do it for a reason that is consistent with her personality. Why would a predictability-junkie pull that crazy cat-switch trick? Because she had a plan here, dammit, and things are not going as planned! Watching the situation spin out of her control is intolerable, and before she knows what she is doing, she pulls this crazy reckless stunt in a desperate bid to put things back like she'd planned them!

Have her yell something to that effect as she acts. Maybe she gets a huge adrenaline rush because it worked, and exults that she's in control again. And then breaks down trembling later because she realizes how stupidly heroic she was; now she's afraid she can't even predict her own mind, let alone the rest of the world.

She still did all the same stuff, but in a way that reinforces the personality traits you wanted to give her, rather than diluting them. To your fellow players, it will be more clear than ever that your wizard loves predictability. And that trait will be cemented in your own mind, too, making it more automatic on your part in the future.

[Kylarra]

I think part of the problem is that you're seeing the alignment as a straitjacket with only one response which is appropriate to it. Multiple people of the same alignment will react differently depending on their personalities. The end result may be the same, or at least the motivations might be similar, but the actions taken can differ greatly.

[Shatteredtower]

For some reason, Callista's dilemma reminds me of Dustin Hoffman's character in Hero, a guy that always advocated a neutral to selfish outlook, but who kept putting himself in harm's way for others in need. Since he was otherwise an unlikeable fellow guilty of several underhanded practices, he might be a good case study for those trying to play the neutral soul prone to selfless actions.

[hamishspence]

It really depends on whether you consider alignment traits exclusive to an alignment or not.

If you take the view that neutral and evil people would never, or hardly ever, help a stranger at their own expense, then a character who does do that (and never harms the innocent) will drift to Good.

If, on the other hand, you don't consider harming The Innocent a necessary condition of Evil alignment, then you can have an Evil character whose evil deeds are confined to Not Innocent victims- and who regularly risks their own neck to help Innocent strangers- with their evil deeds outweighing their Good ones.

And, if their evil deeds are more minor ones, they might be a "flexible Neutral" character, as Heroes of Horror suggests.

[FelixG]

Watch firefly, take a good long hard look at Jayne Cobb.

he is perfect neutral!

Zoe: "...Jayne, a little help here?!"
Jayne: "I didnt fight in no war."

Mal: "Why didnt ya turn on me Jayne, you had the opening."
Jayne: "Money wasnt good enough."
Mal: "What happens when it is?"
Jayne: "Well, that will be an interestin day."

Also some of us are just niched into a particular alignment outlook, i personally lean toward LE with some characters.

The way i broke out of the habit was to play lawful good and true neutral characters. People saying its not a bad thing obviously have a different outlook than me.

its more fun to have range with your characters, be able to play anything, than to be stuck in one mindset.

[DragonOfUndeath]

Also some of us are just niched into a particular alignment outlook, i personally lean toward LE with some characters.

i second this. some people just play LE or CN or NG and find it hard to do otherwise although your character seems pretty LN to me

[Drascin]

Personally, I find that my characters also tend to drift to Good - the only way I can manage from going that direction is to play an utter bastard of a character, so that it feels more like a supervillain than anything else and so it's very easy to keep him in the same track - just think of outrageous For the Evulz and do it. Real neutral is something I have trouble with.

[hamishspence]

Hell, even quite a number of very evil acts, especially against evil people, has no real danger of shifting you out of a Neutral alignment in many situations.

It sounds like you might be micromanaging a little too much. Neutral is a very, very forgiving alignment.

Where's it say that? Some people have theorized that only a willingness to commit evil acts against the innocent will change your alignment to evil- but the PHB doesn't actually state that.

And Champions of Ruin explicitly states the reverse- that regularly committing evil acts will change alignment to evil- and says nothing about the reasons having to be evil- or the victims having to be Not Evil.

In the 2nd ed DMG, it suggests that one evil act (burning a plague village), done with a good motivation (to contain the outbreak and so protect others from it) was enough to change alignment straight from Good to Evil.

So it can work that way. Even in 3.5 DMG, it suggests there are exceptions to the general rule that alignment changes are slow.

[Iceciro]

I think the real question you need to ask yourself is:

Are you there to play an alignment... or a character?

As a DM and a Player I find it far more important to make a character who is fun to play, interacts well with the party, and is memorable, than it is to make a LN character, or a LE, CG, TN, etc. You're not slipping to Evil, and most of the party isn't Evil, so if the circumstances and character development lead to you playing a good character, or a LN-Leaning-Good character, that's not a bad thing. More importantly, will the moments that your character made such decisions be memorable to the players and advance the story in a good way, and are you enjoying the character?

Alignment is an imperfect system on a good day. If your character isn't bound by class alignment restrictions, drift is just a sign of good character development.

[Tengu_temp]

Watch firefly, take a good long hard look at Jayne Cobb.

he is perfect neutral!

Ha, no. Jayne is an evil character played in a non-stupid way. He is loyal to his crew and doesn't go out of his way to cause havoc for the evulz, but he's also a selfish, bullying brute who has no qualms against hurting those who are not his friends. He has redeeming qualities, but you don't have to be an inhuman monster to be evil.

[Starbuck_II]

Mal: "Why didnt ya turn on me Jayne, you had the opening."
Jayne: "Money wasnt good enough."
Mal: "What happens when it is?"
Jayne: "Well, that will be an interestin' day."

Actually, at this point while he says the money is enough, but he was really saying "I love you, Mal".

[Iceciro]

Ha, no. Jayne is an evil character played in a non-stupid way. He is loyal to his crew and doesn't go out of his way to cause havoc for the evulz, but he's also a selfish, bullying brute who has no qualms against hurting those who are not his friends. He has redeeming qualities, but you don't have to be an inhuman monster to be evil.

And if more players would play their Evil PCs that way, I wouldn't have to convince every DM ever that a LE PC is not going to break their game when played correctly.