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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6889110" data-attributes="member: 4937">So, the first thing is that pious good persons are going to receive omens from their patrons suggesting that the course they are on is not one that is approved.  Incidentally, the motivation "no one has ever taught me right from wrong" and "my fellow party members won't step up and do so", is spectacularly good role-play fodder regardless of what alignment the player wants to play. Secondly, actions should have consequences.  If necromancy is evil in the game, then there ought to be reasons why it is evil and not merely "just because".  Those reasons should start happening.  In my game, for example, the reason necromancy is classified by most good societies as wrong, is that it is essentially creates 'radiation' or 'pollution'.   Large amounts of necromancy in a small place leave a place permanently tainted, which in turn has all sorts of horrid consequences.   Evil societies tend to want to harness this radiation as a power source, even deliberately spreading it to maximize how much gets created.  Good societies tend to want to minimize how much is created in the first place, and carefully contain what can't be avoided.  Leaving aside necrotic taints and spiritual reasons, at the very least there are hygienic issues with dealing casually with dead body parts.  Secondly, if people have a legitimate reason to fear necromancy, then NPCs should start behaving fearfully or angrily once they realize what is going on.Thirdly, if you find you have a PC that is unwilling to put on his character sheet what he actually wants to play, I find that bribery is a very effective strategy for dealing with it.  The next time your character commits a heinously evil act, pass them a note that says something like, "You'll receive 100 XP bonus for desecrating/murdering/whatever vile thing you did if you change your alignment to 'Chaotic Evil'."   This allows the player to feel that the alignment shift was his choice, and tends to reconcile the player toward accepting that his character is evil rather than argue with it.  The other thing to do is related to that, and that is you as a DM need to be taking cues from your player's play.  If most of the party doesn't care that the other player is doing evil things, that doesn't suggest that they are themselves evil - but it does suggest that they are not good (but neutral).   "It's not my problem" is very much a neutral attitude.   Any alignment shift by the rest of the party should tend to be toward neutral - which several of them are already at, so not a problem for them.Continuing with that, if a player keeps signaling that his character is fascinated by dead things and lusts after power, then its time for the universe to step up to that.   So, my first thought here would be have the character contract some deadly disease with a reasonably long incubation period, then take the player out of the room.  Explain to him that the character that they think that they've gotten sick, and they've been feeling various vague symptoms regarding the illness.   Then explain to them that they can make a choice.  Their own experiments in necromancy have given them sufficient necromantic taint that they are now immune to this disease and several like it and as long as they don't wash away that taint by using positive energy from a 'Cure Disease Spell', they'll recover and suffer no ill effects from the disease whatsoever.  Therefore, they can either choose to keep silent about their symptoms, or they can reveal what has happened to the party.In other words, give the player something to do.  If they want to choose to be evil, give them that choice.  Then give the party the choice as to what to do about it.Finally, word of warning - make sure we are clearly separating player motivation from character motivation here.   Player motivation isn't something you can deal with in game.</blockquote>

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