Would you change a "chaotic neutral" murderhobo's alignment? Do you allow them?

[MonkeySage]

Whether or not you allow evil pcs in your campaigns, if someone created a murderhobo and assigned them any alignment other than evil, would you change their alignment during the campaign?

I currently do not allow evil PCs- I think it takes a very experienced and skilled player, and more importantly one that I trust to play it well... If a player turned murderhobo, I would change their alignment and ask for their character sheet- because their murderhobo character is now an evil NPC.

Realistically, though, I have a rule: No murderhobos. If someone interprets "Chaotic Neutral" as the "I can do whatever I want" alignment, I don't even allow them at my table. I wouldn't even allow this type of character in an explicitly evil campaign, lol.

[OldTrees1]

Alignment describes how the character has been and who they are now. As a GM I have observed how the character has been and I can ask the Player about who the character is now. If the label _____ fits, then I reserve the authority to apply that label to the character.

However you will notice that talking to the player was an important step there? Communication is powerful.

[Xervous]

If someone is mistaking chaotic evil for chaotic neutral there’s a bunch of points in time where they’ll get corrected. That could be session 0 when I nix or mandate the concept be adjusted. It could be session 1 when it turns out they lied / were incoherent in session 0. It could be in session 2 when the party lynches them like you’d remove a gangrenous limb.

If the party is all on board for murderhobo that’s great! If they want to do something overly stupid the world demonstrates their error. It’s when players get in the way of each other’s fun that problems occur. If a player’s fun wrecks everything else going on that’s a GM veto coming down.

[Satinavian]

I do allow evil PCs. There are lots of interesting group friendly evil concepts for most campaigns

I would change the alignment of a murderhobo to evil. If the game has alignment that is when you use it.

But I don't allow murderhobos as PCs anyway. I have better things to do than DMing other peoples murderfantasies.

[Quertus]

I would keep careful watch over how many good vs how many evil beings they kill. If they are literally killing *everyone*, based on 3e alignment distribution, Chaotic Neutral seems the most likely best fit.

If they go out adventuring, killing evil monsters too much, I may warn them that they're getting dangerously close to Chaotic Good.

[False God]

I allow you to declare your character to be whatever alignment you want at the start of the game, provided you don't give me a backstory where you steal and murder a thousand puppies for funsies and then claim you're lawful good. What you do during the game is really what determines your alignment, so by "allow any alignment" what I really mean is "ignore whatever you wrote in the alignment box and watch what your character does."

What I don't allow is party-facing problem behaviour. Players 1-4 want to talk to an NPC. Player 5 stabs the NPC because raisins. Players 1-4 want to buy some gear. Player 5 robs the gear store. Players 1-4 want to divvy up the loot. Player 5 tries to steal and kill the party to get more loot. This is unacceptable.

Players 1-4 want to get into the town but the guard captain is being a jerk/racist/sexist/general wad. Player 5 kills the guard captain. This is fine. Sometimes you need a character who's willing to "do the stuff" the rest of the party can't or won't. Because ultimately this moves the party's goals forward (getting into the town).

---
On evil: I agree that it requires a certain special sort of player to pull off well-done evil. Anyone who marks ?E on their sheet gets a firm, pre-game warning that I've got my eye on them and reserve the right to revoke their character's existence at the slightest sign of them being a general anti-party jerk.

That said, with some of the more skilled people I play with I've had loads of success with evil characters. Mostly in the Lex Luthor vein who maintain the outlook of "I have goals to accomplish and the party is useful to me in that regard." LE characters abuse the law to their advantage. NE characters take the law or leave it as it benefits them. CE ignores the law more often than not in pursuit of pleasure/riches.
--Remember: Not breaking the law is not the same as following the law.

Since you didn't ask, on good: Likewise, I let anyone who marks LG on their character sheet know that the law is a fairly strict thing and being good is hard. Honestly being "evil" is fairly easy. Especially if they are a divine character of some sort. I've had more trouble with LG "crusader" sorts than CE rapscallions.

[Duff]

If you don't allow muderhobos, why are we having the conversation?
Hit 'em with the banhammer and move on.

As to alignment - it depends on how (and how much) you use alignment. If it's a core part of your game, and you feel the declared alignment and the character's actions don't match talk to the player about which will change.

If a character becomes evil due to this change, don't ban them due to that.
But feel free to end a character that isn't working in the game, whether they're outside the rules or not.

[Calthropstu]

Whether or not you allow evil pcs in your campaigns, if someone created a murderhobo and assigned them any alignment other than evil, would you change their alignment during the campaign?

I currently do not allow evil PCs- I think it takes a very experienced and skilled player, and more importantly one that I trust to play it well... If a player turned murderhobo, I would change their alignment and ask for their character sheet- because their murderhobo character is now an evil NPC.

Realistically, though, I have a rule: No murderhobos. If someone interprets "Chaotic Neutral" as the "I can do whatever I want" alignment, I don't even allow them at my table. I wouldn't even allow this type of character in an explicitly evil campaign, lol.

Chaotic Neutral can not be murder hobos as far as I am concrrned.

As far as killing goes, I have to look at why killing is done.

"He attacked me and I killed him. Outside of that, I'd never kill anyone." That is generally the good outlook.

"Hey, I feel bad they're dead, but there's not enough food for both our tribes. Wiping them out was the only way our tribe makes it through winter." That's the kind of thing a neutral person would do.

"He had something I wanted, so I killeded him dead. Isn't this necklace pretty?" Yeah, that's evil.

[False God]

"Hey, I feel bad they're dead, but there's not enough food for both our tribes. Wiping them out was the only way our tribe makes it through winter." That's the kind of thing a neutral person would do.

If a good person would presumably help both tribes survive.
And a neutral person would kill the other tribe.
What the heck would an evil person do? Kill both and have a lot of food they'll never use?

[MonkeySage]

If a good person would presumably help both tribes survive.
And a neutral person would kill the other tribe.
What the heck would an evil person do? Kill both and have a lot of food they'll never use?

Personally, I'd argue that killing the other tribe would still be an evil act. Saying sorry or that you feel bad afterwards certainly won't make your victims feel any better about having been murdered.

[hamishspence]

"Hey, I feel bad they're dead, but there's not enough food for both our tribes. Wiping them out was the only way our tribe makes it through winter." That's the kind of thing a neutral person would do.

BoVD:


In a world of black-and-white distinctions between good and evil, killing innocents to save yourself is an evil act. Sacrificing yourself for the good of others is a good act. It's a high standard, but that's the way it is.


"Murder to survive" as opposed to "self-defence" is evil. Presumably that's true whether you're an individual or a whole tribe.

[Mastikator]

I'd start with their PC's personality traits, goals, motivations and backstory and work from there to transform their murderhobo into something that I can work with.

[Weasel of Doom]

If someone created a murderhobo and assigned them any alignment other than evil, would you change their alignment during the campaign?

How are you defining murderhobo? I think we all have a general idea of what you mean but for a discussion like this it's probably worth nailing down the specifics.

Evil act

Evil act

I agree with both of you that killing a tribe of innocents to feed your own is an evil act BUT I also think Calthropstu was exactly right in saying it was the sort of act a neutral person might do. Neutral (or even good) people can do terrible things under desperate conditions and that by no means makes them an evil person.

[Calthropstu]

BoVD:


In a world of black-and-white distinctions between good and evil, killing innocents to save yourself is an evil act. Sacrificing yourself for the good of others is a good act. It's a high standard, but that's the way it is.


"Murder to survive" as opposed to "self-defence" is evil. Presumably that's true whether you're an individual or a whole tribe.

In that case, every hunter is evil. Yeah, not buying it.

If both tribes live, both tribes die. Dooming both tribes over morality is suicidally stupid. Sorry, survival is not evil. Just as a wolf taking a baby is not evil.

[hamishspence]

In that case, every hunter is evil.

Murder in a D&D context is the unjustified killing of a sapient being by another sapient being. Usually with a "nefarious motive" (BoVD) but "survival" can be a nefarious motive in this context.

Dooming both tribes over morality is suicidally stupid. Sorry, survival is not evil. Just as a wolf taking a baby is not evil.

Survival involving attacking other sapients without provocation, is.

Wolves aren't intelligent enough to be "murderers" in this context. And killing someone, without provocation, for the sake of "survival cannibalism" has been deemed "murder", historically speaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens


BoVD didn't deem "sacrificing others to save yourself" evil for no reason - they did so because there is precedent for doing so.

[MoiMagnus]

With a definition of "Neutral" large enough (e.g. "anything that isn't literally infused with evil energy or good energy is neutral"), a murderhobo can be neutral.

One could also argue that a murderhobo character being purely one-dimensional, is not really capable of moral decisions (their player don't care enough) and should be unaligned like animals up until it gains a personality.

[KineticDiplomat]

I agree with the above poster who is asking for a better definition of murderhobo. To my understanding, murderhobo-ing is not an alignment, it’s a specific playstyle - one where your character is classically completely unattached to the world, to the point of not bothering to wonder where they sleep, any relations, etc even after becoming obscenely wealthy (That’s the hobo part) and entirely focused on their ability to kill goblins or whatever in escalating dungeon crawls. (Thats the murder).

As it relates to the morality discussion - leaving aside the tired fact that all morality is subjective - neutral covers a great array of acts that are ostensibly possibly “evil” when the intent is not hamfisted cackling lulz.

[False God]

If both tribes live, both tribes die. Dooming both tribes over morality is suicidally stupid. Sorry, survival is not evil. Just as a wolf taking a baby is not evil.

But...how does the "neutral" person know this? How do they know this situation is absolute? Have they attempted finding more resources? Have they attempted consolidating the tribes to better utilize their resources? Have they tried working to reduce their resource usage to better stretch Tribe A's food supply?

Because logically, if Tribe A and Tribe B both need 1 Unit of food to survive the winter, then at worst both tribes are at .5 Units. (because 1 is the survival cutoff, and eliminating Tribe B must raise Tribe A's food units to a minimum of 1).

But being at half your necessary food is not an insurmountable problem, at least not one that requires tribal extermination.

Of course I suspect "all the other options" have been exhausted. Okay, there is no more food to be found. There are no more resource-stretching measures to be taken. There are no more alliances to be found.

Why would the supposed Neutral person kill only the other tribe? Why wouldn't they kill their own tribe? Half of each tribe? 2/3rds of one tribe and 1/3rd of another? Why resort to killing at all? Why not just abandon both tribes? Reasonably speaking, if each tribe only has .5 Food Units, then a neutral person could do nothing and 1/2 of each tribe would survive. Frankly, doing nothing sounds more neutral than resorting to slaughter, regardless of reason.

I guess I'm taking issue because this sounds more like a setup than actual choice a neutral person would make.

[Alcore]

Fun fact; i get accepted to more games with an evil alignment than i do Chaotic Neutral. Muder Hobos ruin games and it's telling when a DM will take honest Chaotic Evil over stand-in "Chaotic Neutral" Evil.

And this is why my CE character fly;

However you will notice that talking to the player was an important step there? Communication is powerful.

See... the character is not the problem. It is inert as a gun. It is a people thing...

Though honestly putting evil on the tin is no where near as a red flag as CN. My CE character didn't actually need an interview process...



As a DM i just don't change alignment. It seems pointless except for spells. Leave changes to the afterlife review like with Roy in the comic

[denthor]

There 3 options

1 remove the character not a good option.

2 inform the player chaotic neutral does good deeds more often then they do evil deeds.

3 if that does not work then allow evil characters and have something more powerful come along and really take advantage of the character. Take advantage show up take gold magic items, show them what evil is.

[Bugbear]

Change a characters alignment? Sure, all the time at the roll of a dice.


Allow Muderhobos? I guess your talking about the character that just randomly kills things in the game and mostly tries to ruin the game and ruin everyone's fun?

Yes. Though I never let a player ruin, disrupt or otherwise negatively effect a game. Kill the character at the roll of a dice, yes.....often.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Tbh alignment in 5e is meaningless anyway, no point in changing it, but if people were being murderhobos and the rest of the party was cool with it and/or murderhobos I'd change the game to suit murderhoboing more, say by moving it to idk the abyss where you can go kill things without really being morally reprehensible. If people were having a problem with the murderhobo, I'd talk to the player ooc and maybe suggest they change their pc or change how their pc acts by toning it down a little.

[Saint-Just]

But...how does the "neutral" person know this? How do they know this situation is absolute? Have they attempted finding more resources? Have they attempted consolidating the tribes to better utilize their resources? Have they tried working to reduce their resource usage to better stretch Tribe A's food supply?

Because logically, if Tribe A and Tribe B both need 1 Unit of food to survive the winter, then at worst both tribes are at .5 Units. (because 1 is the survival cutoff, and eliminating Tribe B must raise Tribe A's food units to a minimum of 1).

But being at half your necessary food is not an insurmountable problem, at least not one that requires tribal extermination.

Of course I suspect "all the other options" have been exhausted. Okay, there is no more food to be found. There are no more resource-stretching measures to be taken. There are no more alliances to be found.

Why would the supposed Neutral person kill only the other tribe? Why wouldn't they kill their own tribe? Half of each tribe? 2/3rds of one tribe and 1/3rd of another? Why resort to killing at all? Why not just abandon both tribes? Reasonably speaking, if each tribe only has .5 Food Units, then a neutral person could do nothing and 1/2 of each tribe would survive. Frankly, doing nothing sounds more neutral than resorting to slaughter, regardless of reason.

I guess I'm taking issue because this sounds more like a setup than actual choice a neutral person would make.

Hm, I will just for fun try answering this point-for-point, because in general situation is definitely something that people have faced regularly, and absolutely not an artificial setup (you may well have the opinion that such situations and making decisions specifically is inappropriate in TTRPG, that is an entirely separate question)

Neutral person knows it as well as person of any other alignment. They usually do not know that the situation is absolute (you can imagine situation where but that is more artificial), nevertheless even a risk that you and your whole community will die often pushes people to do whatever necessary regardless; alternatively the uncertainty is in the other direction ("Maybe if everything goes well no one will starve this winter, but it doesn't look like that; of course we will not share with strangers"). There is very little that can be done to better utilize food with twofold increase in numbers; neither specialization nor economies of scale will do in most situations. Reducing resources usage... requires very precise plans unfeasible before modernity, or is done already. People living on the edge of survival are not stupid. Some of those points can be pertinent to, say, large city dwellers suddenly forced out in the wild by some disaster but if we are talking about "tribes" it's usually all done and accounted for.

A Neutral person will kill only the other tribe because, well, Neutral alignment is not presented as absolutely detached from worldly matters and killing everyone equally, if there is life to be bought at a price of murder than Neutral person would rather murder Others than parents/brothers/friends/obnoxious cousin; nonviolence (even to the point of not resisting people murdering you) is compatible with Neutrality, but so is violence. The next few questions somehow presume that a Neutral person is somehow powerful enough to singlehandedly decide who lives and who dies, which is not a reasonable assumption. Killing half of your tribe by the agreement of the tribe is practically impossible; doubly so if there is a possible enemy nearby when even those who will survive will be afraid that the others will attack now-weakened tribe. Finally walking away from the tribes seems like especially weird proposition. I can see someone trying avert the bloodshed regardless of the fact that your community is in danger, but walking away? Oh, and even the most generous tribe is unlikely to afford you more than your fair half-ration, which means you are even less likely to survive than those who stay. Unless you are still presuming some 20lvl Paladin of Neutrality in which case they should start by slaughtering the high horse they rode in.

Finally: in any remotely realistic circumstance any coherent group with 1/2 of necessary food will not see 50% death toll by the end of the winter. Barring cannibalism (in which case you'd need to eat about 1/2 of the group every 90 days) there will be only few survivors if any. You see, the first day everyone will eat. And the second and a third. If the group is constructed out of abstracted identical clones they will all eat, lose weight, weaken, and die at the same hour. With differences in body weight, metabolism, health etc. some will die significantly earlier than the others and their remaining supply being stolen or redistributed, but this is not a way which can results in 50% survival. The only way it could happen is 50% of the group straight up murders or at least robs the other of everything the first day. Why there were some socially sanctioned options of killing the extra mouths in history it never was something that can take out 50% of the population; infants - yes, old people - sometimes, but not much more. So as a first approximation "If both tribes live, both tribes die" is an incredibly likely result.

[Calthropstu]

Hm, I will just for fun try answering this point-for-point, because in general situation is definitely something that people have faced regularly, and absolutely not an artificial setup (you may well have the opinion that such situations and making decisions specifically is inappropriate in TTRPG, that is an entirely separate question)

Neutral person knows it as well as person of any other alignment. They usually do not know that the situation is absolute (you can imagine situation where but that is more artificial), nevertheless even a risk that you and your whole community will die often pushes people to do whatever necessary regardless; alternatively the uncertainty is in the other direction ("Maybe if everything goes well no one will starve this winter, but it doesn't look like that; of course we will not share with strangers"). There is very little that can be done to better utilize food with twofold increase in numbers; neither specialization nor economies of scale will do in most situations. Reducing resources usage... requires very precise plans unfeasible before modernity, or is done already. People living on the edge of survival are not stupid. Some of those points can be pertinent to, say, large city dwellers suddenly forced out in the wild by some disaster but if we are talking about "tribes" it's usually all done and accounted for.

A Neutral person will kill only the other tribe because, well, Neutral alignment is not presented as absolutely detached from worldly matters and killing everyone equally, if there is life to be bought at a price of murder than Neutral person would rather murder Others than parents/brothers/friends/obnoxious cousin; nonviolence (even to the point of not resisting people murdering you) is compatible with Neutrality, but so is violence. The next few questions somehow presume that a Neutral person is somehow powerful enough to singlehandedly decide who lives and who dies, which is not a reasonable assumption. Killing half of your tribe by the agreement of the tribe is practically impossible; doubly so if there is a possible enemy nearby when even those who will survive will be afraid that the others will attack now-weakened tribe. Finally walking away from the tribes seems like especially weird proposition. I can see someone trying avert the bloodshed regardless of the fact that your community is in danger, but walking away? Oh, and even the most generous tribe is unlikely to afford you more than your fair half-ration, which means you are even less likely to survive than those who stay. Unless you are still presuming some 20lvl Paladin of Neutrality in which case they should start by slaughtering the high horse they rode in.

Finally: in any remotely realistic circumstance any coherent group with 1/2 of necessary food will not see 50% death toll by the end of the winter. Barring cannibalism (in which case you'd need to eat about 1/2 of the group every 90 days) there will be only few survivors if any. You see, the first day everyone will eat. And the second and a third. If the group is constructed out of abstracted identical clones they will all eat, lose weight, weaken, and die at the same hour. With differences in body weight, metabolism, health etc. some will die significantly earlier than the others and their remaining supply being stolen or redistributed, but this is not a way which can results in 50% survival. The only way it could happen is 50% of the group straight up murders or at least robs the other of everything the first day. Why there were some socially sanctioned options of killing the extra mouths in history it never was something that can take out 50% of the population; infants - yes, old people - sometimes, but not much more. So as a first approximation "If both tribes live, both tribes die" is an incredibly likely result.

Yes. But most have missed the point. A neutral person is not going to randomly murder. Barring extreme circumstances, the average person avoids killing.

Chaotic neutral values personal freedom. Chaotic neutral is fleeing an arranged marriage despite the fact it may harm your family. It's taking apples from the fruit stand when no one is looking. It's running naked through town square during a speech.

It's not killing people because lulz.

[MoiMagnus]

(1) While passivity is often neutral, neutrality doesn't necessarily means passivity. Extreme behaviours that are not clearly good or evil can also be neutral.
(2) Neutral doesn't mean rational, it also doesn't mean right either. A neutral person can wrongly assume that this is a life and death situation, and act accordingly not noticing the other solutions available.
(3) High stress situations will probably push a lot of peoples outside of their alignment. And I'm not even talking about changing of personality of having character growth. I'm saying that their thinking patterns that made them took Neutral decisions in normal situations might push them toward extremely Good actions or extremely Evil actions in dire situations. (For them to go back to Neutral behaviour latter, possibly with one of more trauma from the experience).

[KineticDiplomat]

Interesting on how opinions here on “evil vs neutral in the face of resource shortage” differ. We do know that resource shortages cause violence, increased rates of personal (as opposed to organizational-institutional) crime and so forth. That part is pretty inviolable established by social sciences and anthropology.
And we also know that for a good bit of history, humanity lives pretty close to the biological poverty line in terms of calories.

Now what’s interesting here is that if you decide going to war with the other tribe to survive is evil, then not only was humanity probably “evil” for most of its history, but it then leads to a natural new statement: people/societies become morally superior as they get richer, because they are less prone to such “evil” acts. And say what you will about tax fraud or sub-prime lending on falsified credit ratings, but they don’t involve deciding to murder the other guy for food.

And I don’t think that’s actually a statement anyone who is calling the tribal conflict “evil” wants to get on board with. At least in theory; I dare say they do in practice, as we might cheer Aladdin in the movie for his plucky street kid ways as he steals from a stall , but our real world selves would not like it if homeless people started robbing the next door deli.

[MoiMagnus]

Now what’s interesting here is that if you decide going to war with the other tribe to survive is evil, then not only was humanity probably “evil” for most of its history, but it then leads to a natural new statement: people/societies become morally superior as they get richer, because they are less prone to such “evil” acts.

There is an interesting opposition with animals. Animals as unaligned / neutral is mostly a cop out. Most peoples don't want to deal with the moral implication of putting a morality to the natural order. (Is it a moral obligation to prevent an animal from viciously hunting its preys? Etc)

Depending on how you justify the neutrality of animals, primitive human societies are either neutral for the same reasons ("self-preservation choices are never evil"), or evil because they don't get the animalistic exception ("sentience comes with the burden of morality").

And say what you will about tax fraud or sub-prime lending on falsified credit ratings, but they don’t involve deciding to murder the other guy for food.

Advanced societies are more likely to have large scale exploitation of worker or slavery than tribes.
How do you account for the broken starving families and suicides from the economic situation that the tax fraud contributed to create? Should you average those evil so that every individual has a minor part of responsibility for them, or should everyone not actively fighting against them get the full penalty for being complicit? In the latter, modern societies are quite Evil too.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I'd just like to say... going to war with the other tribe is the last thing you want to do. Think of the loss of life on your side at least! They won't go down without a fight and the warriors will likely be the ones who are best at say... hunting and gathering food and all that. Invading the other tribe could well end up with both tribes decimated.

[Mr Beer]

To me a "murderhobo" is merely a dungeon clearer of no fixed abode who tends to eschew the RP aspect of the game in favour of more mechanical slaying and looting. I take no great issue with this.

I do have a problem with people who are disruptive to the party's overall goals or generally go around being edgelords, engaging in sadistic fantasies with helpless NPCs and the like. But I don't try to make it an alignment prohibition. You can be a good player with an evil character at my table. Just don't be a jerkface player.

[neceros]

In D&D murder is always evil. That doesn't mean the character is evil, but if one does it enough the alignment shou8ld change. Honestly this is why I don't use alignment -- who cares? Trying to classify7 millions of years of humanity psyche into 9 categories.

So if he keeps killing then yes he will turn evil. To be neutral one must remain neutral.