The D&D thread

Kharzette said:

Murder-Hobo Class - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

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I get the joke but as a GM Murder Hobos are usually the worst players.

imready2go said:

The folks I played with back in the day would be shocked to learn there was any class besides Murder-Hobo. They were the types that, if they were on a rescue mission to a dungeon, they would finish the rescue then slit the throat of the guy they had just rescued in case he had any loot. Then go back to town and kill his family just in case they had loot too.

Me as DM:

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Alignment shift to evil! That means you are all now NPCs under my control, lets make some new characters and figure out what "my" new NPCs are up to. Spoiler alert they likely murdered some one you cared about, time to go on a revenge campaign.

Yeah, sounds like your former players played evil alignments. I'm ok with running evil campaigns, but I've found players rarely survive long if the campaign is run right. Few players are actually cunning and ruthless enough to survive a legitimately evil campaign. Those campaigns usually turn out way more difficult than "good" campaigns.

Last evil campaign I ran, the players managed to work their way into one of the bigger organized crime syndicates in the city. The syndicate tested their loyalty pretty quickly and they failed (without realizing it), so all but one of them ended up getting offed.

Arden said:

Yeah, sounds like your former players played evil alignments. I'm ok with running evil campaigns, but I've found players rarely survive long if the campaign is run right. Few players are actually cunning and ruthless enough to survive a legitimately evil campaign. Those campaigns usually turn out way more difficult than "good" campaigns.

Last evil campaign I ran, the players managed to work their way into one of the bigger organized crime syndicates in the city. The syndicate tested their loyalty pretty quickly and they failed (without realizing it), so all but one of them ended up getting offed.

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Yeah aside from murder most normal people can't actually be evil, for people I haven't asked this question to I say if you want to run an evil campaign answer this question.
You are in charge of an outpost with guards and civilians, you and you alone are made aware of an attack that as is you are sure the guards can repel but loss of life both civilian and otherwise will be high. What do you do?

Answer:

Only those that have played many months of Dark Hersey got this answer right.

slippery said:

I knew your answer was going to be nothing, I don't agree though (granted I think in Neutral Good generally). I think preempting the attack by going to slaughter them first is a viable option. If I lose too many men it might leave me vulnerable, so I'd like to lose less men.

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Nothing is the most evil answer IMO.

nothing is AN evil answer, but it's definitely not the MOST evil. there are a lot of equally evil answers. the problem with morality and alignment in games is that it tries to narrow down short term answers as long term alignment. alignment and morality are entirely complex constructs.

i played a lawful evil paladin for a weekend adventure league type game a few months back. it was designed to be a series of 2-3 hour one-shot type adventures. my character was evil. i mean, brutally, unequivocally, irredeemably evil. but he was absolutely NOT a murder hobo. far from it. he was a conquest paladin and used pain and terror to create order. his ultimate goal was peace in the land, but he believed very strongly that the only way to achieve that is to create punishment that was so swift, and so severe, that no one would dare challenge that peace. he encountered a group of bandits on the road, and he and his party routed them pretty easily. when they surrendered, he ordered that they be disarmed. when the party took their weapons, he looked at them again, and sternly ordered they be disarmed. the party didn't understand so i grabbed an axe and cut all their arms off. i very specifically didn't kill them because i wanted their maiming to be a warning and a message.

people play evil characters like they are self-sabotaging sociopaths, but "evil" is REALLY just about being willing to put your own well-being over the life of another. my evil paladin, was just a mean ole curr and made sure everyone around him knew it. (as a player, it is absolutely an amazing feeling to cause a dragon to be paralyzed with fear by you. frightened is SUCH an under-rated status affect) but when the bard in the party gets knocked out from a lucky arrow crit, i had NO problem healing him. yes, i was playing an evil character. no, there was absolutely no sentimentality towards the bard. but my character NEEDED the bard to keep the rest of the party alive at that moment (we only had the bard to heal) so in order to accomplish my goal, it was in MY OWN best interest to keep the bard alive.

if you look at that action in a vacuum, me healing the bard comes across as a "good" action. heck, the bard might have even thought of it as a friendly, "hey, don't go dying on me, buddy!" kind of thing. but it absolutely was not a good action. it was purely selfish.

so to answer that question of what would an evil character do with the knowledge of an impending attack? they would let their subordinates know so they can properly defend YOUR territory. and then you make sure to leave survivors and dis-arm them and send them back to wherever they came from. then, when the enemy is properly de-moralized, you siege their capital. you don't take it, though. you just burn it to the ground displaying all the corpses of their men, women and children on the ruins.

My evil character might have sent out mercenary murder parties against the leader/leaders' family prior to the attack as a deterrent.

I would not have done NOTHING as it would hurt my position more than doing SOMETHING. I am weakened by being attacked or even having others think attacking me is a good idea. You're playing an intelligent being that has his own motivations and ambitions and is not going to just watch his life burn down around him "because evil". He knows he needs other people to help him advance his goals.

The only way I would do NOTHING perhaps if I was 2nd in command of the base and it would serve my ambitions to let my commander die so I could advance in power.

Understanding the motivations of others and exploiting it to my character's benefit is one of the major statutes of my evil Wizard.

yeah, honestly, the more i think about it, the more "nothing" becomes a worse and worse answer. chaotic evil does not mean chaotic stupid

j00t said:

yeah, honestly, the more i think about it, the more "nothing" becomes a worse and worse answer. chaotic evil does not mean chaotic stupid

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I was just trying to keep it simple, when I present the issue to a group it has far more detail. Kind of a you know 9/11 is going to happen what do you do?

Anyone want to toss out some idea's to help me a future chapter in my game? Here is what I know, there is a tower that is probably a bank, but I've also thought about making it a casino, or it could be something else. This tower stands in the middle of a large city, so it's not a dungeon or anything. Someone with a powerful artifact has broken into it and is making their way to the top floor to open a vault and claim treasure. The civilians have mostly fled, the militia and crowd surround the building. The Pc's are tasked with stopping the thief and collecting the artifact.

Now, the big thing is the theme of the artifact, the PC's are collecting these and destroying them, this particular one is based on the school of enchantment. So, I'm thinking the PC's will find people laughing hysterically, wandering around with minds wiped, and probably fight some charmed guards and the like. The top of the tower boss fight will have the theif using these same tricks on the Pc's.

That's basically all I have right now, just a vague idea for where the next part of this story is going. I would love some suggestions!

And as a helpful side note, my PC's rarely get in much combat, they are far more likely to talk to anything that will talk back, so RP stuff is probably more useful that straight up combat, unless its just unavoidable combat, which is also fine.

i never really play arcane casters, so a lot of the intricacies of spell schools are lost on me, but my DM had us on a casino river barge a few months back. he used a lot of homebrew illusion and divination spells that made perfect sense for a casino. areas where basically deity level "zone of truth" spells would invalidate cheating at card games, illusion spells all over that added to the glitz and glam of the scenery (holo dancers, for example and windows that looked out to places that weren't actually there). i REALLY don't know much about enchantment spells other than the obvious, but don't just focus on the enchantment aspect of the artifact. think about how the artifact could interact with the already magical nature of the casino.

Onoes said:

Anyone want to toss out some idea's to help me a future chapter in my game? Here is what I know, there is a tower that is probably a bank, but I've also thought about making it a casino, or it could be something else. This tower stands in the middle of a large city, so it's not a dungeon or anything. Someone with a powerful artifact has broken into it and is making their way to the top floor to open a vault and claim treasure. The civilians have mostly fled, the militia and crowd surround the building. The Pc's are tasked with stopping the thief and collecting the artifact.

Now, the big thing is the theme of the artifact, the PC's are collecting these and destroying them, this particular one is based on the school of enchantment. So, I'm thinking the PC's will find people laughing hysterically, wandering around with minds wiped, and probably fight some charmed guards and the like. The top of the tower boss fight will have the theif using these same tricks on the Pc's.

That's basically all I have right now, just a vague idea for where the next part of this story is going. I would love some suggestions!

And as a helpful side note, my PC's rarely get in much combat, they are far more likely to talk to anything that will talk back, so RP stuff is probably more useful that straight up combat, unless its just unavoidable combat, which is also fine.

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What if it was a group of NPC thieves instead of just one? And the tower is surrounded by guards and militia but instead of the civilians inside the tower having fled, what if they are being held hostage? You could have the PCs outgunned and outnumbered so they have to use wits and subterfuge at first instead of sheer force. Maybe the PCs are able to communicate with one of the gaurds outside and they are trying to help each other against the NPC thieves?

I think you should definitely name the tower Nakatomi Plaza and the guard outside helping them should be a black guy named "Al".

Sounds like an awesome adventure.

Onoes said:

Anyone want to toss out some idea's to help me a future chapter in my game? Here is what I know, there is a tower that is probably a bank, but I've also thought about making it a casino, or it could be something else. This tower stands in the middle of a large city, so it's not a dungeon or anything. Someone with a powerful artifact has broken into it and is making their way to the top floor to open a vault and claim treasure. The civilians have mostly fled, the militia and crowd surround the building. The Pc's are tasked with stopping the thief and collecting the artifact.

Now, the big thing is the theme of the artifact, the PC's are collecting these and destroying them, this particular one is based on the school of enchantment. So, I'm thinking the PC's will find people laughing hysterically, wandering around with minds wiped, and probably fight some charmed guards and the like. The top of the tower boss fight will have the theif using these same tricks on the Pc's.

That's basically all I have right now, just a vague idea for where the next part of this story is going. I would love some suggestions!

And as a helpful side note, my PC's rarely get in much combat, they are far more likely to talk to anything that will talk back, so RP stuff is probably more useful that straight up combat, unless its just unavoidable combat, which is also fine.

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If the whole area is under an enchantment you can make it all an illusion, or good guys look like bad guys, agressive actions look and possibly sound like kind words. Monsters look like guards and innocents look like monsters etc.

They could be the only ones under the enchantment causing above.
Can get into some cool RP with stuff like that.

Other route you can take is turn the tower into a multi floor dungeon, can look up puzzles for each floor if you need ideas. The tower could be endless until they find a way to break the enchantment, maybe hint at the sphere of annihalation on the first floor is actually a key or the gateway out.
I will post more ideas later if you like above.

All this talk of evil PC's reminds me of a campaign log I read from GiTP. It can work and it can work really well if the group is willing to put in the effort. Heres the campaign log if anyone is willing to read it.

Cattle Driving Necromancers-Bizarre Campaign Journal


Also I've played 3.5 edition D&D as well as 5th edition. Our DM had been running the same world for about 25 years before he sadly passed away. He let us absolutely decimate one of our chapter finale dungeons to let us feel OP as we were lvl 21 to 24 fighting lvl 15 to 17 kobold spec ops. With occasional high lvl fights that would challenge us tooth and nail. Theres nothing wrong with throwing tons of lower level mobs at your PC's for them to mow through easily to make them feel powerful. It's all about the fun they have and your ability to tell a story. Just roll with it. If they make stupid decisions then have them understand there will be consequences. It's what happened to one of our PCs and he was a power hungry maniac willing to go to a new source of power at the drop of a hat. He ended up so depowered by the end of the first chapter and no allies he had to reroll. Granted his new character started off just like his old one but meh. It's funny because my guy just wanted to help everyone and never asked for rewards but got showered with epic spells and items and a ton of ultra instinct level allies. It was a fun game but one we sadly never got to finish.

i had another thought about evil characters. there's an old quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln. supposedly he was having this debate about selfishness vs altruism while traveling in some stage coach. he argued that everything a person does is motivated by their own self-interest and that altruism SOUNDS nice, but ultimately it's nonsense. as he's making his point, they pass someone who's cart has fallen over, struggling to right it back up. lincoln immediately gets out and helps the man with his cart, then gets back in. he doesn't even wait for a thank you, or tell the man his name. lincoln's companion (who argued for altruism) pointed out lincoln's selfless act as proof of his argument. lincoln simply stated "i didn't help him for him. i helped him for me. if i didn't help him, i would spend the rest of my day feeling guilty and i'd rather avoid that."

i think most people tend to view the general population as probably 95% lawful good, but i think it's a lot closer to neutral evil and that's generally how the VAST majority of the npc's in our games work. they aren't evil in the sense that they are serial killers waiting to happen, they are just selfish and self-centered. they don't generally care about anything unless it benefits them to do so. they aren't neutral in the sense of "flip a coin" on whether or not they will break the law or not, but they will follow or ignore the law based solely on which one benefits them the most, and in most societies, following the law is exceedingly more beneficial.

MOST of my PnP characters are usually some variation of the idea that evil characters don't HAVE to be monoliths of hate, terror and violence... playing an evil character with that understanding really frees you up to make selfish decisions while still fitting perfectly into a "good" campaign.

Just think if there was a multiverse forum where denizens of the lower planes could calmly discuss their own flavour of evils, maybe the blood war would have a cease-fire

Soulfire said:

All this talk of evil PC's reminds me of a campaign log I read from GiTP. It can work and it can work really well if the group is willing to put in the effort. Heres the campaign log if anyone is willing to read it.

Cattle Driving Necromancers-Bizarre Campaign Journal


Also I've played 3.5 edition D&D as well as 5th edition. Our DM had been running the same world for about 25 years before he sadly passed away. He let us absolutely decimate one of our chapter finale dungeons to let us feel OP as we were lvl 21 to 24 fighting lvl 15 to 17 kobold spec ops. With occasional high lvl fights that would challenge us tooth and nail. Theres nothing wrong with throwing tons of lower level mobs at your PC's for them to mow through easily to make them feel powerful. It's all about the fun they have and your ability to tell a story. Just roll with it. If they make stupid decisions then have them understand there will be consequences. It's what happened to one of our PCs and he was a power hungry maniac willing to go to a new source of power at the drop of a hat. He ended up so depowered by the end of the first chapter and no allies he had to reroll. Granted his new character started off just like his old one but meh. It's funny because my guy just wanted to help everyone and never asked for rewards but got showered with epic spells and items and a ton of ultra instinct level allies. It was a fun game but one we sadly never got to finish.

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I've been slowly reading that link. It's really hilarious