101 moral dilemmas for good characters

[Kyramus]

Geoff,
read detect evil.
First round is just the presence of evil.
"Hey he's evil."
2nd round, number of auras.
"I sense one evil, it's got to be him"
3rd round: strength and location
"Wait wait, it's only a small evil and it's somewhere on his left pant leg!"

Now how many rounds do the players have before they get tagged with some sort of spell or other??

now that it's on a multiple scale.

first round
"There are several presences of evil. it's the group coming towards us!!"
second round
"every one of them is evil"
third round
"They aren't evil, just something on them, but they sure look mad. "

 

[Humanophile]

Hmm. Brings to mind a good idea. Maybe a bit too "screw the players", but...

32) Some form of minor demon (or devil, fiend, whatever supernatural evil baddie name you use) has learned a fun new trick. It can posess people, and while it can subtly influence their actions and perceptions while it's in them, it can't actually control them. (Read: they still act like them, they won't do anything out-of-character or -alignment, but they act and think a little off. Kinda like a very minor Charm spell.) However, the being posessed detects as Evil to all forms of detection, at whatever level of evil aura the demon wants. Either the party paladin is warned of these beings at some point early in the story, or else he kills a few things that he swears are Horribly Evil, which turn out to be posessed commoners, atones, and learns a solid lesson.

Hmm. If anyone out there wants to actually stat these guys out and make a race of them, might make the world a little more painful for paladins with a Detect&Smite modus operandi.

(Edit: added number to keep things nice.)

 

[Geoff Watson]

Geoff,
read detect evil.
First round is just the presence of evil.
"Hey he's evil."
2nd round, number of auras.
"I sense one evil, it's got to be him"
3rd round: strength and location
"Wait wait, it's only a small evil and it's somewhere on his left pant leg!"

Now how many rounds do the players have before they get tagged with some sort of spell or other??

Sorry, I thought you meant a peaceful encounter in a town or something. If the group is attacking the PCs, they don't have to worry about detecting evil.

Geoff.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Hmm. Brings to mind a good idea. Maybe a bit too "screw the players", but...

Hmm. If anyone out there wants to actually stat these guys out and make a race of them, might make the world a little more painful for paladins with a Detect&Smite modus operandi.

If a Paladin can't trust his god-given powers, why don't you just disallow paladins altogether. I don't understand why so many people want to screw over the paladins, making their powers not work, rigging dilemmas so the paladin loses either way, etc.
Just say "no Paladins in my campaign". It's easier. But I suppose it's more fun to annoy the players.

Geoff.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Geoff,
As for the 2nd part of your post, there ARE some of us who don't believe in the middle ground. Leave us to our heathen beliefs and we'll leave you to yours

Good --- NEUTRAL --- Evil

Does any really play with no Neutral alignment?

Geoff.

 

[Bookwyrm]

Why are you making so much work out of Detect Evil?

Try this for size:
Evil (and Good) comes in 2 different brands - Petty, and Great.

Petty Evil is the ordinary, everyday stuff, from thinking something nasty to slaughtering villages in an orgy of bloodlust. Petty Evil tarnishes the soul, and by extension, Petty Good polishes it. A tarnished soul can be polished and a polished soul can be tarnished, but the soul itself remains the same.

Great Evil (and Great Good) actually change the soul itself. Great Evil blackens it and sucks 'light' out of the world, whereas Great Good makes it shine and banishes the 'shadows'. Great Evil (and Good) are connected with Great powers - gods, demons, etc. (basically anything extra-planar). So anything that comes from the Planes (eg a demon), or gets it's powers from them (eg a paladin) will reflect this.

So, an evil worshipper would have a (very) tarnished soul, whereas an evil cleric would have a black one. A self interested merchant would have a slightly tarnished soul (or maybe slightly polished, or even a mottled one), and a paladin would shine like a beacon in the night.

Any problems?

 

[Chimera]

Not too much difficulty in a number of these, but some good efforts.

#9 - Elves turning into Scotsmen? Who will win Wimbledon?

Kobolds live to 135? Sheesh. IMC, they're fast breeding vermin who are lucky to see 8 summers. A 135 year old would be the Ancient Elder UberKobold.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Good --- NEUTRAL --- Evil

Does any really play with no Neutral alignment?

Would if I could, but no one else wants to play that way. I have managed to tweak the dynamic a little. It's more like:

GOOD --- neutral --- EVIL

So close, and yet, so far...

 

[Zappo]

Ok, what about this:

The PCs stumble upon a child who fled from his village. They bring him back, and subsequently find out that he escaped because he was to be sent to the evil witch as a sacrifice. They come back, and discover that the villagers must send a children every year or so to the evil witch or she will cast a plague on the town. So they go to the evil witch, and she says that she is forced to consume a child every year or wilt away because of a curse a more powerful witch placed on her. So they get to the more powerful witch, who says that she is unable to remove the curse because the king who paid her to place it would have her killed. At this point, they get to the king, who says that he asked the powerful witch to give him eternal youth, which could only be obtained by stealing life from another witch, because he has no heirs and the kingdom would plunge into chaos the moment he dies, because of five ambitious nobles. The five ambitious nobles each have good alignment and fairly sound political ideas, except that they seem unable to find a middle ground between them, hate each other, believe each other to be evil, and constantly plot. Also, at least two or three of them have to get the throne because a seer prophetized that it's either that or A Great Evil Will Happen. So the PCs get to the seer to know more about this, and discover that she in fact lied to the nobles, and did so under threath of death by a powerful devil she had the misfortune of encountering. Turns out that the devil was really a fallen celestial who...

...assuming that the PCs don't jump at you at this moment, I think it would be neat to roll everything over to the kid from the village having orchestrated everything.

 

[incognito]

oka Zappo - a the risk of sounding tounge in cheek;

Your idea is actually really brillant if you can make it turn into a circle with less steps.

5 NPCs, each blames the "next" NPC down the line. The 5th NPC blames the 1st NPC.

None of them are lying, and all of thier motivations are "suspect"

now THAT's an adventure! Doesn't hurt if there are a few cross threads too (ie 2 hates 4 and 1 loves 3 - who secretly lusts after 5)

That type-a thing