Alignment violations and how to deal with them

[PlainSimpleGarak]

well, the information is the thread is valuable for both me and the new player. But yes, there are many issues with the players at hand.

But said player noted he didn't understand that killing an unarmed civilian would violate a good alignment. Before I could point him at certain examples, he thought that it was ok to kill anyone opposing him (as opposed to killing things that are evil) without violating the ethos of his NG diety.

 

[tomBitonti]

It's not so much that my newbie players want their characters to be evil. If they did I would have a much easier time mediating this - I would advise them to shift alignments and deities accordingly.

The problem is the players in question have created character they intended to be good characters. So much that they have goals that say 'when I grow up (level up) I want to be a part of a good organization that fights against evil!'

But, being newbies, they don't think things through before getting into the thick of the action. And when things go wrong, they freak out and do things that violate their chosen alignment.

Example:
The last game session featured the players sneaking onto a large sailing ship, to get back goods stolen from a merchant prince. It was made very clear to the PCs that these goods were stolen as part of a political subplot between various merchant princes, rather than piracy or direct thievery. Through their investigations they found that it was a personal vendetta between the Captain of the merchant vessel and the rival merchant prince - aka the vast majority of the crew is not in on this and is just a guy doing his job.

The rest of the party sneaks on board. The fighter/mage had been assisting them by creating a diversion, finds himself stuck onshore without the rest of his party. It is safe onshore, but when he sees bad stuff happening to his friends, he decides he needs to get on the boat, now. He can't swim. He has low dex and charisma, and doesn't think he'll make it past the sailors guarding the plank. So he asks 'if I dress as a sailor, can I just pick up some cargo and walk on' and the answer is 'yes, that is likely. There are a lot of sailors loading cargo.'

So he decides he's going to knock out a sailor and steal their clothing. But he doesn't think the plan through. He calls one sailor off, lying about some damaged cargo, and then he tries to cold-cock the guy. Except he doesn't have any particular skill at hand to hand so when he rolls, he ends up just starting a fistfight and punching the guy. And the sailor, getting a fist in the face, punches him back. They skirmish for a round or two, doing about 4 points of (we were counting as non-lethal) damage each. I narrate that the fight is becoming loud and starting to draw attention. My player panics, and uses shocking grasp on the sailor. Which kills the man, instantly.

[reference: PC has 21 HP / Sailor has 6HP / Shocking Grasp: 1d8+6]

To which one of my veteran players turns around, shocked and asks 'did you just kill that guy? That's evil...'

The newbie returns 'It was self defense!'

Veteran player replies 'you lied to a guy who was just doing his job, lure him into an alleyway, punch him - and then you get surprised when this crusty sailor type hits you back? And use a lethal spell on him?'

The newbie replies 'Well, the last bad guy we fought didn't go down so easily, I didn't realize sailors were so easy to kill...'

Which started the discussion of alignment and what to do with said player. And to find ways to describe to the play what it meant to be neutral good, and how to prepare your fights better if you're trying to not seriously injure someone.

It's a learning process. They are newbies. I'm just trying to find ways to communicate what they need to learn to them better

Heh, I've seen that sort of example too. We had an interrogation, and my character rolled very high on his interrogation check, which we role played as really freaking out the NPC. We got the information we needed, but the NPC was scared out of his wits.

A moment later, we got into a PC discussion about what to do. Actually, a bit of an argument. No-one said they were watching the prisoner; the GM had him bolt, which we all thought was entirely reasonable.

Spot checks all around. The Druid makes hers, and sic's her panther animal companion on the poor fleeing prisoner. Without thinking at all of the likely consequences. One round later, the prisoner was slashed to death.

I find such cases hard to judge. The action was harmful, but clear intent is missing. Legally, the person in either case would be guilty of some degree of murder. Alignment wise, if they realize what they did and have their character be remorseful, I'm not sure what that means.

Partly, there is a problem of the game sometimes getting in the way of empathizing with one's character. The game is played to have fun, and has a greater or lesser degree of abstraction, and a lot of folks often don't want to be bothered with these sorts of details. I suppose the sort of game you are playing will say how to handle this issue.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Celebrim]

It's not so much that my newbie players want their characters to be evil. If they did I would have a much easier time mediating this - I would advise them to shift alignments and deities accordingly...But, being newbies, they don't think things through before getting into the thick of the action. And when things go wrong, they freak out and do things that violate their chosen alignment.

This is a pretty common problem. I've had to deal with in my own campaign early on. The party is technically guilty of murder on several occasions, or being a party or accomplice to a murder, or standing by and allowing murder to occur. A party member stabbed to death a mortally wounded cultist. Granted, the cultist was a mass murderer and the blow might be considered a mercy stroke or a sort of justice, but it was on the line. Then the party joined forces with a gang of opium smugglers to fight a rival gang that had been involved in a theft related to the parties quest. But then they stood by and allowed the head thug to torture and then poison the prisoners. That was over the line. Then the party captured a grave robber, who tried to escape because one of the party members favored just killing him, and the party shot him in the back as he fled. Again, the guy was not nice and he was 'resisting' but it seemed over the line to me. I had to tell the religious types that they could sense their respective deities were getting displeased with the example they were setting.

Here the problem was we had two players who basically wanted to play evil characters trying to interact in a party that was supposed to be good.

You've got a slightly different problem.

From the description, if the guy hadn't really expected the sailor to die, I would have made the character roll a Horror check as a way of communicating to the player that his character should be horrified by what he just did. It was definitely evil. He definitely needs to perform penance. He definitely needs to understand what happened.

But if it was accidental and ignorant and well, stupid, I'm not sure it qualifies as alignment drift. What it might constitute is poor role-playing if the character in question has a high WIS score, because high wisdom characters are suppose to understand the consequences of their actions better.

Partly it might also be your fault. The entire sequence, lie, assaulting, and ultimately murdering a by-stander is something you might should have - acting as the player's consciousness - intervened in to explain that the PC had the feeling this might be wrong or a bad idea. A wisdom check is sometimes appropriate as a mechanism for providing to the player clues about the morality of actions.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I've only had this come up a very few times over my many year playing, but my general approach is if I see a pattern of inconsistent behavior then I'll let the player know. One action does not an alignment change. If the continue with the inconsistent behavior over a period of time, then the alignment changes. This generally has little effect, just a few in relation to some spells and special abilities. For PCs with an alignment dependent class, such as paladins or clerics, this can be a bigger deal with penalties spelled out by the rules. Generally changing back, if the PC wants it, follows the same process and takes just as long. For paladins, clerics, etc there's usually some process to atone for their behavior.

It's really important in the cases where alignment makes a difference to have the players and the DM on the same page. Before starting a paladin, for example, the player should get together and decide what the paladin's code will be. Most of the arguments over paladin behavior I've seen online (a perennial favorite topic of discussion) could have been avoided just by doing this.

Oh, just remembered. I think the 1E rules had an experience point penalty penalty for alignment change, and I think I used it just once as a DM. Nowadays I probably wouldn't bother, even if it were in the current rules.

 

[n00bdragon]

You have two options:

1. Get a sharpie marker and boldly draw an "X" over the rules for alignment in the book for whatever edition you are playing. For characters that are given divine inspiration (including paladins) take a few minutes to read their god's description carefully. When the character does something the god wouldn't approve of react appropriately. If the paladin of the god of mercy gleefully beheads surrendering or fleeing forces you can do something, though considering it's a god of mercy he'll probably give the paladin at least another chance.

2. Secretly make a list of actions that fall under various alignments and which do not fall under others. Any time a player takes an action that doesn't fit their alignment they lose a level. Arguments cause further level loss or the arrival of Conan The Barbarian to squash their character into paste, or both. Neutral Evil character is shopping at the store peacefully? Level drain! Good aligned characters kill something you've determined is good even though it acts like a villain? Level drain! Neutral characters picking sides in a conflict? LEVEL DRAIN!

 

[N'raac]

Biggest single issue: TALK to the players. Many issues, hardly limited to alignment, come from "gotcha!" play. "HAHA you just changed alignment - lose a level heeheehee" "Oh you forgot to say you were using Selective - you heal the Bad Guy too! HAHA!"

I expect the players not to use out of character knowledge. I also don't expect them to have all the knowledge their characters would take for granted. That sometimes means reminding them of abilities they typically use, discussing the mechanics of their proposed action, etc.

This is even more important for new players. We forget how many rules and game conventions we just take for granted. The player clearly didn't know Shocking Grasp would kill a typical sailor. So maybe someone else should have asked "Are you sure? That will probably kill a typical sailor!" Maybe someone should also have noted that "It's pretty unlikely you'll KO the sailor with a single punch - the rules for unarmed combat don't generally result in a fight ending that fast." And there's nothing wrong, when it becomes clear a rules misunderstanding resulted in an action the player would not have taken had they understood how the rules work, with saying "OK, since Character would know his Shocking Grasp is lethal, we'll back that up - what do you want to do instead?"

It is possible to fall somewhere between the extremes of "no alignments - tear those pages out" and "any deviation costs you a level".

Or we can keep playing "beat up the newbies", and wonder why it's so hard to find new players, the hobby keeps shrinking and good game publications get less and less common. Too often, the newbie is there, seemingly, to be mocked for his poor knowledge of the extensive rules as he learns the game. Then we wonder why they don't come back after a few sessions.

I like the idea of another player helping a newbie out in an experienced group (the GM has too much on his plate already) to help the player enjoy our favoured hobby from the outset, and maybe sells it to his own friends, rather than turn him into one of "those guys" who leaves the hobby with a bad taste in his mouth, and thinks of the gaming community as a bunch of unwashed ill mannered socially maladjusted nerds - a view he also shares with anyone who cares to ask.

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now!

 

[PlainSimpleGarak]

Partly it might also be your fault. The entire sequence, lie, assaulting, and ultimately murdering a by-stander is something you might should have - acting as the player's consciousness - intervened in to explain that the PC had the feeling this might be wrong or a bad idea. A wisdom check is sometimes appropriate as a mechanism for providing to the player clues about the morality of actions.

This is true. It's a learning experience for me, as a ~DM~ as well as the players.

I am an experience ST for the storyteller system games - used to a bunch of experienced WW players. And in those games, half the job of the ST is to bait characters into making morally unsound decisions, because the games have clear mechanics for morality. It becomes a morality game of cat and mouse.

In DnD the adventure is far more straightforward. We expect heroes to go fight monsters and gain rewards. Being a DM who is fairly unschooled in, well, DMing I run a far more 'sandbox' game, which becomes difficult to moderate when new players are confused.

That said, a horror check sounds like a fantastic idea, and something I have heard of in different systems. The player is open to the idea of penance (which is good, makes my job easier!) so I think we'll sally forth with that idea.

Thank you for the ideas!

 

[Ahnehnois]

There are no alignment violations. Only alignment changes.

 

[Starfox]

There is a relationship between PC alignment and table rules. A GM who wants a heroic game might say "no evil", and really mean that "play nice in my games, as that's what I am comfortable with". In this kind of game, PC alignments matter more than in many others. I guess this is why the standard advice is not to allow evil alignments.

The way to handle this is the same a any situation when events in the game start to bother anyone. Talk about it out of character.

There is also another reason to play nice - and that is that heroism is a good source of inspiration, which in turn makes the game heroic and fun. But this is generally secondary - first you chose to play good, then you get a kick out of doing heroic stuff.

 

[N'raac]

While true, you don't need alignment to set guidance for characters. "Hard-bitten mercenaries", "Heroic boy scouts" and "ruthless powermongers" don't need alignment guidance to make it clear what is expected.