Converting orcs to Lawful Neutral?

[Lizard Lips]

One of my players, a Half Orc monk, recently captured a boatload of orcish pirates. Feeling pity for them, he selected five to become his students, intending to turn them to the true and lawful path and become monks.

This sounds fine to me, and I intend to let him go through with it, but how do you change someone's alignment. The orcs are agreeable to his tutelage, but is it really possible for them to change? Anyobdy have a game mechanic for it (Will save? Wisdom chekcs to avoid the temptation to go on a law breaking rampage?) I assume some will fail, simply unable to attain the mindset to become monks, but what kind of failure rate seems ok?

 

[kengar]

I would keep this in the area of RP on the part of the monk with possibly a skill roll or two to "teach" his philosophy. This will require you, as DM, to think a little about the ex-pirates and why they were living that life. Maybe they enjoy pillaging and looting, maybe they were forced into it, who knows? Each of the students probably has his own reasons.

To make them switch from Chaotic to Lawful means showing them that Order can be better than disorder. giving up freedom for power might be a good angle too. Discipline for Strength, etc. It's really a question of how the player wants to try and accomplish this. It's not a question of a Saving Throw, it's about people (orcs, in this case) changing their minds about how to act.

There is a section in the DMG about alignment change and gives the example of an NPC slowly shifting away from evil. That may give you some ideas as well.

 

[evileeyore]

Allow it to take time. Roleplay the Orcs as the alignment they are, then over the course of a few months or years (game time) allow them to slowly slide towards Lawful.

Remember that during this time of change their tendency will be to act in the old alignement until the new one really starts to tack hold.

For instance for awhile the will question his methods, and he will have to explian the 'superiority' of Lawfulness.

In the I agree with kengar. Keep it in RP land and skip the dice rolling (except perhaps a few skill checks for him to teach those particular skills).

 

[LostSoul]

It would be a Diplomacy roll, I think. Let the PC say what he's doing and call for rolls whenever you think it's appropriate. Add modifiers based on the angle the PC is taking.

 

[Galen]

One of my players, a Half Orc monk, recently captured a boatload of orcish pirates. Feeling pity for them, he selected five to become his students, intending to turn them to the true and lawful path and become monks.

This sounds fine to me, and I intend to let him go through with it, but how do you change someone's alignment. The orcs are agreeable to his tutelage, but is it really possible for them to change? Anyobdy have a game mechanic for it (Will save? Wisdom chekcs to avoid the temptation to go on a law breaking rampage?) I assume some will fail, simply unable to attain the mindset to become monks, but what kind of failure rate seems ok?

Hmm, from a technical aspect: Do they have stats to achieve the monk class?

From a social stand point:
Orcs are not indians, they are a race of born and raised to hate everything humanoid. Which means they are bipedal and almost always follow an evil diety. The only thing that even comes close to keeping them inline is fear. Not simple fear, like I might spill shampoo on the carpet. Real fear, like if the chief will rip his gut open and leave him exposed in the sun and see how long it takes from him to dry up. Or lop off a body part and feed it to the dogs.

I doubt very much orcs have the will or displine of mind it would take to be truely lawful monk. Orcs also have a fairly low life length which would inhibit its ability to level very far.

Back to the scenario, if the monk wants to try and teach them, I would not let more then 1 of them come even close as a hireling of achieving the monk class. I'd also seriously limit the level this monk could achieve, such as lvl3 is max type thing.

An orc thats living on the water as a pirate is already an achievement, to cross train them from fighter to monk would make them dual class I believe.

A true alignment change would require true(true as in they mean it) Acts of kindness and generocity at some point also. Which is where most orcs fail at everything.

Perhaps deal with the orc rages/evilness like a recovering AA member. They are always recovering, and sometimes fall back. I doubt unless you did some sort of major damage to their brains or put the fear of god into them they would really change to much.

I hope this confusion helped.
Galen
TYPO GOD

 

[trancejeremy]

It depends on what orcs are like in your campaign. I pretty much consider their evilness to simply be cultural, not anything inherent.

Of course, I've played a lot of Shadowrun, so I tend to see orcs as just a variant of humans.

 

[mmadsen]

One of my players, a Half Orc monk, recently captured a boatload of orcish pirates. Feeling pity for them, he selected five to become his students, intending to turn them to the true and lawful path and become monks.

Swaying Chaotic Evil Orcs to a Lawful Neutral path sounds a lot like what Drill Sergeants do every day -- turn undisciplined teenagers into disciplined soldiers. You may want to look at how they do that.

Anyobdy have a game mechanic for it (Will save? Wisdom chekcs to avoid the temptation to go on a law breaking rampage?)

Looking at Alignment and its two axes, I suggest that the Orcs go from Chaotic to Neutral to Lawful on one axis and from Evil to Neutral on the other. Whatever mechanic you use should recognize each of those steps.

If you'd like to be able to use smaller "baby" steps, I recomend Pendragon-style Trait Pairs, one for Law-Chaos and one for Good-Evil, each with a numeric value that can shift a point at a time.