Bloodthirsty PC's

It's funny, but the group I DM seems to suffer from the same affliction most players I have encountered in the past fall sway to.

No matter what city, town, port, holding, province, territory or castle they find themselves tromping through, they believe that the local laws don't apply to them. If they commit an illegal act, and the local militia, guard, or reeve comes along to arrest, they will ALWAYS resist arrest. It amazes me. Now some of the players who play lawful characters will not go up against the law, but I always have two or three who feel they have a right to do whatever they wish.

Sometimes they become incarcerated and charged with their crimes which has ranged from assault to obstruction of justice.
 

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It's funny, but the group I DM seems to suffer from the same affliction most players I have encountered in the past fall sway to.

No matter what city, town, port, holding, province, territory or castle they find themselves tromping through, they believe that the local laws don't apply to them. If they commit an illegal act, and the local militia, guard, or reeve comes along to arrest, they will ALWAYS resist arrest. It amazes me. Now some of the players who play lawful characters will not go up against the law, but I always have two or three who feel they have a right to do whatever they wish.

Sometimes they become incarcerated and charged with their crimes which has ranged from assault to obstruction of justice.

How do you have the NPC authorities treat them? Do the NPCs act like jerks?

With obviously powerful adventurer types, I tend to have wise NPC authorities speak to them politely, even deferentially. The NPCs are likely thinking: "OK, we probably *could* take down these guys eventually, but we'd lose a lot of men, so why not be nice". Smart NPC law enforcers seek to calm down a bad situation, not provoke a fight: "I'm sorry my friends, but we really do have to charge you the 1 gold piece gate toll..."

Cases where the NPCs may be obnoxious - (1) they feel overwhelmingly superior to the PCs, eg the PCs appear to be unarmed peasants, the NPCs have very powerful backup on hand or (2) the NPCs feel powerful and seek to establish dominance over the PCs, in D&D this is usually a bad idea.
 

I'm finding a lot of how the PCs react to killing NPCs is down to the DM. I'm in two campaigns at the moment (S'mon's being one). And in very short order my PCs are getting different attitudes to the antagonistic NPCs, and even some of the other PCs in the party. In S'mon's, The Great Ulfe surrendered after we slaughtered the orcs but needs out help to get out past the lower level (we cut the bridge on the upper level and used the secret door that he doesn't know about) - so he's useful to us as an extra meatshield. Win-win. On the other hand in the other campaign, we wandered into a couple of goblins carrying a treasure chest and intimidated them rather than killing them. What happened next was that an NPC mocked us for not asking the right questions before letting them go - and later that session one of the goblins turned up to identify one of the PCs (who was pretending to be someone else) despite putting himself in swords reach to do so (splat). Probably the last time that character's going to accept a surrender. And in the campaign I'm running, the party Warlord works on the principle that making the enemy fight to the last man is just risking yourselves if there's an alternative. She's right most of the time (and in one of the later modules a handful of these NPCs are going to come back as allies).

Shorter me: If the DM rewards the PCs for not killing everyone in sight, the PCs are likely to spare people where possible. If the DM punishes them for leaving survivors, the PCs start cutting throats and dismembering bodies.
 

I have run games where an NPC orc was given magical healing before a PC.

In the same campaign, a tribe of about 30 orcs began to emulate one of the PCs, who had both single-handedly cowed them in battle, and then spared them.

Of course, I am a DM who remembers that most mimics are willing to shake down PCs for food (once they are in a position of power) rather than risk their lives in battle. And I am a DM who will use fallen PCs as hostages so that villains may escape -- and then release them as the villians had promised. Evil doesn't mean stupid, and my villians are often smart enough to know that negotiating now (and keeping their end) might allow them to negotiate later, when they are in a worse position.

IME, players pick up on this quite quickly.

Of course, poorly treated captives may rebound on the PCs, if it becomes possible for those captives to escape/get leverage over the PCs. It certainly does on NPCs! :lol:


RC
 

How do you have the NPC authorities treat them? Do the NPCs act like jerks?

With obviously powerful adventurer types, I tend to have wise NPC authorities speak to them politely, even deferentially. The NPCs are likely thinking: "OK, we probably *could* take down these guys eventually, but we'd lose a lot of men, so why not be nice". Smart NPC law enforcers seek to calm down a bad situation, not provoke a fight: "I'm sorry my friends, but we really do have to charge you the 1 gold piece gate toll..."

Well it depends where they are and what they are doing, but generally no, they don't act like jerks, they act like they have authority. When the PCs are lower level, I usually send in the low level guards to deal with them. When they get up there in level, I'll send in more troops led by sergeants and the like. I have had timid guards deal with them, I have had brave and fair guards deal with them and I have a had jerks deal with them, and no matter, their reaction is generally the same.

Most times, if they spur the local laws, they obtain a poor reputation and it becomes harder for them, to gather information, hire help or strike any kind of transaction with a blacksmith or weaponsmith.
 

And you know Eddie will never be the same after having killed Merrik and learning the truth. He’s going to have to reconcile with the fact that instead of saving lives of good people, he took the life of one.

It was actually the perfect pivotal moment for my character. Had he just acted as he had in the past and spared Merrik’s life, it would have been the end of his downward spiral. He had been through so much, he had so much anger and confusion that he had convinced himself that this was the only way to save the lives of all those people… but he was wrong.

I don’t know if you had intended it this way, based on how I had been playing Eddie leading up to this point or not, but it was very effective.
Eddie's response is very telling. This has become a major event in this character's life and has encouraged the player to add depth to his character.
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Most times, if they spurn the local laws, they obtain a poor reputation and it becomes harder for them, to gather information, hire help or strike any kind of transaction with a blacksmith or weaponsmith.
Excellent. If the players are accustomed to these sorts of consequences and choose to disregard the law anyway, then they are acting in character--assuming their alignments are chaotic. They are choosing to be punished because they know that is what their characters would do. It could be a great opportunity for roleplaying "philosophical differences" between Lawful and Chaotic PC's/NPC's.

Perhaps this is how the Lawful Good Paladin earned the nickname "Mom" from the chaotic PC's. :D
 

Kill them all, let Pelor sort them out :)

If you think about medieval times, people were not exactly the loving, tolerant people that are around today. They burned human beings they thought were witches, treated people of other religions horrendously, and god help anything that resembled an actual monster.

Yes, that was often true. But also, in some countries, there was tolerance of other religions.

In christian lands, during medieval times, yes, it is true that generally, people of other religions (including people who practiced a different version of christianity) were forced to convert to the mainstream version of christianity, and if they refused, they were executed (often tortured before execution), or exiled if lucky.

However, much of the medieval islamic world tolerated christians and jews inside an islamic country (as people with similar beliefs) - but when the muslim armies were at war and captured enemy soldiers (and often civilians), they killed them, ransomed them or enslaved them (and sometimes tortured them). But if those christians and jews who they captured chose to convert to islam, they were sometimes (or often? always?) spared.

It was common for invading armies of the time (whatever their professed religion) to rape and massacre civilians, and even the "holy" christian crusading armies did this type of thing - killing everyone in the city of Jerusalem when they invaded, for example. In contrast, the muslim leader Saladin got his army to spare much of the population of Jerusalem, and sent a platter of fruit to Richard the Lionheart when Richard was sick... and for actions like these, Saladin won a reputation of chivalry, even in the eyes of his christian enemies.

During the Mongol invasions, the Mongols killed perhaps millions of captured soldiers and civilians, and enslaved many, too. However, after the conquests, all religions were tolerated, and torture was banned. Also, Genghis Khan, who united the Mongol tribes, and led the Mongol invasions for many years, owed much of his success to a policy of sparing his defeated enemies, as long as they joined his army, and/or gave tribute to him.

I don't know so much about other parts of the world - but certainly, in many feudal or slavery-based systems there was plenty of cruelty, like in those parts of the world that I described.

So, we can see that the real-life medieval world was quite complicated and varied in cruelty and compassion.

I daresay, we can apply a variety of definitions to "good" and "evil" in medieval-type RPGs, depending on the preferences of the DM and players. Although many people were cruel in medieval times, this needn't mean that "good" people are cruel in medieval-type RPGs. Indeed, cruel acts and cruel people like those I described above, could be classed as evil, even if they are common in a medieval world. Such a culture in the game would make any heroic acts, e.g. by players, that much more special. :D
 
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Agreed- this is brought up in BoED- a world might be a cruel world- but that doesn't mean good people aren't required to adhere to the same standard.

If "humans tend toward no alignment, not even neutral" as per PHB, then it is possible that in the medieval-ish world, as much as a third of the population will be Evil-aligned. Which would fit well with that PHB line.

If the DM wants torture, killing prisoners out-of-hand, killing civilians in war, etc, to be non-evil, that's up to them, but there is some precedent for them being evil acts in a D&D context.

As far back as Eric Holmes D&D, killing prisoners, and torturing prisoners, were described as "inappropriate for Good-aligned characters"
 

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