D&D 5E Please help: Newbie Oathbreaker

[Commissar]

Hello,

I'm a dnd newbie in general and after a long time I decided to play an Oathbreaker. My overall attitude has a paranoid sense of the path of vengeance. I have an extreme feeling of vengeance, collecting scalps of evil humans in order to make them a cap.
But as you may have already assume, there is a lawful good dwarf (life domain) cleric in our party. According to my background my Character is not willing to kill him, because he's not evil but on the other hand he gives me a hard time since he doesn't trust me (he prevented me from scalping once). Since I didn't scalp, I thought is a good idea if I could convince him he did something terribly wrong (evil act) and then persuade (bluff) him I'm a good person but I did a terrible mistake as he did. In our previous session I convinced him, that he slept with a child while he was drunk and atm he's trying to atone himself. Will I get any advantage on bluff or may I tell him it was a prank or something? Any other more straight forward ideas on how to gain back his trust?

Thank you very much.

 

[I'm A Banana]

My first reaction:

...but you're a newbie, so that might not be useful.

Here's the thing: IMXP, party conflict like this is rarely much fun, and often ends up detracting from the fun of killing monsters and taking their stuff. I don't usually come to D&D games to struggle with my fellow players about basic RP shiz.

If your character goes around doing grisly things like scalping enemies and making a hat out of their scalps, you should probably expect the rest of the world to react to that - in most D&D games, that reaction from a lot of corners is going to be "Ew. That's gross and you're weird. You're also possibly dangerous." You're playing an Oathbreaker already, so being a little transgressive is totally in-character. That doesn't mean the rest of the characters / NPC's are going to approve of it - in fact, the disapproval of Stuffypants the LG Cleric of Life is probably the same kind of disapproval your character is used to from the Oath of Vengeance paladins that he broke his oath to.

So the first thing to note is that the cleric's reaction isn't exceptional - that's kind of the reaction I'd imagine you'd want to see. One of the fun challenges for you is going to be making this kind of gross and weird activity something that doesn't disqualify your character from Doing the Right Thing. ("Just because I made a hat out of the scalps of my enemies doesn't mean I'm not on your side, bro." *doffs hat respectfully*)

But regardless of the behavior of the other PC's / The Rest of the Campaign World, it's useful to internalize this mantra: "I am here to work WITH the party". D&D's a team game that you only stand a chance of doing well at if you collaborate with your party. That means Stuffypants over there is not your enemy. He's your ally. He's there to smack down the same bad guys you are, and he's there to heal and support you when you get in over your head, and he's not an acceptable target for shenanigans. Sure, he's a dink who wants to poop on your scalp party, but in the war against evil there will be hundreds of scalps, and he won't always be around / be conscious / be quick enough to stop you all the time.

In your shoes, I'd probably tell Stuffypants that it was all for a laugh. It shows your character has a pretty monstrous sense of humor, but he's a man making a hat out of scalps, so clearly his sense of polite behavior is seriously out of whack with most of the world's. That establishes that your character has some limits to what he's willing to get suckers to do - he's a bit of a sociopath, but he knows there's limits.

As for regaining trust: be prepared to not be trusted for a while, and try to think of ways you can be useful to the cleric and what he wants to accomplish. You can even say, "I promise not to scalp anyone for the next week!" or whatever, for a cherry on top. Maybe have a good chat about why you think scalping is important, and why he thinks it's not cool. Make him a drinking cup from the skull of some villain and present it to him as a peace offering. Focus on your shared goals, and see how well you can pursue those.

Be genuinely repentant - your character should note that he probably went too far, he's learned a lesson, and won't mess with the Cleric like that again.

And as a player, keep in mind that mantra: "I am here to work WITH the party". Stuffypants might be a buzzkill, but he's not who you should be focusing your energy on defeating, overcoming, or messing with.

Save that for the evil people whose scalps will soon be resting on yours.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

The entire point of an Oathbreaker is that you no longer feel bound by your Oath. In fact you revel in the fact that you broke it. You can quite easily be an evil-aligned Paladin of the Oath of Vengeance, but becoming an Oathbreaker specifically means you no longer care about that Vengeance. You didn't just break your Oath but try to reinstate it; you deliberately threw it, and all it stands for, away.

If your Oath of vengeance was about slaying evil humans, then as an oathbreaker you're more likely to try to side with them against the innocent or good. You might kill one or two just because you like killing and you'd get into more trouble than its worth to go on a more general murder spree.

Why would the cleric not being evil matter as to whether you kill him or not? You're an Oathbreaker; you no longer care about protecting the innocent or killing evil. He is completely correct that he cannot trust you: if you were happy to renounce something as powerful as the Oath of a Paladin, there is nothing you can swear to that will mean a damn to you any longer.

The only way to get him to trust you would be to convince him that you're no longer an oathbreaker. You'll need someone else to convince him though: he knows that nothing you say is trustworthy. Maybe get one of those evil guys you're now making friends with to pose as a character witness?

The problem being that in order to persuade him you're not an evil person, you're going to have to stop doing evil stuff. As the antagonist, its your responsibility to come up with reasons why you don't just kill him, but as your current character, you're going to have to think very hard how to do that.

I have to ask though: what on earth possessed your DM to allow an Oathbreaker and a Lawful Good character in the same party? Oathbreakers are generally NPC only classes for a reason.

 

[Illithidbix]

Very much agree with The Banana
Internal party player vs player CAN lead to awesome moments that are treasured and remembered by everyone involved.

But very very easily lead to resentment between players and it breaking the game.
Some people enjoy PVP, other people really hate being part of it.


Anecdote time!
I had one that worked out ok... in the end in my last Campaign. Which consisted almost entirely of newbies.
Campaign premise was set in a world where magic and monsters were mostly legends, a bunch of teenagers from a mountain goat farming village follow a bunch of renegade archeologists into a tomb and accidentally got invested with the power of ancient heroes… I.e they got classes and levels.

After fleeing their hometown for “accidentally” committing murder, treason and arson they get ambushed by bandits.
- As in a bunch of bandits accidentally jump out on them and soon realise their mistake in an “Opps I thought you were someone else… less well armed” sorta way.
The bandits are barely a threat and quickly captured, the real point of the encounter is the moral choice of what to do with said bandits (and a pisstake on the stereotypical bandit encounter).

- Anyway things got heated between the Esa, the somewhat powermad dragon sorceress and Aino, the aspiring Paladin (due to pick up their Oath of Devotion next level…), after the dragon sorceress incinerates a captured bandit and then cuts their throat as the paladin tries to heal them.
The paladin, then responded with a big enough hit to insta-kill the sorceress (negative hit points over her hit point maximum).
At which point I ask "Are you striking to kill or unconscious"
"To kill!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yep"
"Are you really sure?"
"Yes!"

And then the most difficult choice I've ever had to make as a DM: Let it stand or let the sorceress live. As it was player agency vs player agency... I let it stand.

"Uh...Ok, you bring your sword down and decapitate Esa."

Resulting in abject shock and horror from the rest of the player party as childhood friends murdered each other.

The Bard went briefly mad with grief and tried to attack the Paladin... somewhat failed and eventally gave up and stormed off.

It was fantastically roleplayed by everyone. And became pretty much the defining moment of the campaign.

However it very almost broke the game, and I discussed with the players *rebooting* the game with different characters elsewhere in the world, as the party seemed dead or splintered, we carried on and said Paladin then started developing stigmata (a bleeding neck wound, which had a tendency to bleed if she got too smite happy), and I gave her the option to take the Oathbreaker variant, despite not getting.

The player of Esa the Sorceress was somewhat saddened and shocked to have her first character killed off in somewhat an abrupt manner, but quickly got over with it.
Esa returned as the final boss in kinda dracolich form, and Aino the paladin sacrificed herself in the knowledge that her sin could always return for the grave as long as she still lived.

So... yeah, sometimes PVP can result in awesome, but it will often stretch a game to breaking point.