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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 6848196" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya! The thing with alignments are this: the player can play his character however he wants, regardless of what's on his sheet. The DM can't just say "No, your character doesn't do that because he's Lawful Neutral". So... [MENTION=6826003]Matita[/MENTION], there is basically nothing stopping your friend from saying "Ok, fine. I'm Chaotic Good. Now, I want to acquire a lot of deadly poison so I can begin planning my assassination of the entire Village of Homlett".Anyway...The biggest problem I've had with players deciding to play "non-good" characters is what annoys me the most. The characters are not "Neutral Evil" at level 1. The character is "Neutral Good". Then, after gaining two or three levels, they become "Neutral". Add in a couple more levels, say, level 6 or 7 now...now the character starts "behaving Neutral Evil". Why? Becuase if they were behaving NE from day one, they probably wouldn't have made it to level 2, let alone level 3 or more.Currently, by coincidence, my players had decided they wanted to play "bad guys". They rolled up characters and we've been playing for...four sessions, I think. At the end of last session one player commented "Well, we aren't really bad...we aren't evil...maybe self-serving and greedy...but not evil". And I just blurted out "Yeah, that's because you guys are low level. Just wait until you get a few levels under your belts. You'll all be knifing drunks in the tavern, breaking into shops, and killing entire families because you just want a safe place to rest for the night". Suffice it to say, the looks on their faces pretty much told the story. It was an awkward silence for a few seconds (which felt much longer), and then one said "No, we won't do that...".... ... more silence... "Yes. You will. Just watch..." I said. Some uncomfortable shuffling of characters into back packs and whatnot (it was the end of the session and everyone was getting ready to leave).I highly suspect I just hit a raw nerve of "Pick your stats". Oh, what I mean by that? One time, over a decade or two ago, I got sick of supposedly "rolled stats" turning out to be ridiculously unprobable (like 3d6 ending up with 18, 18, 16, 16, 15, 14, or 18, 17, 17, 15, 12, 6, etc.) from one player in particular, but others more often than not as well. So...when we started a new campaign I just said "Pick your stats. I trust you to make a decent character". :evilgrin: Surprise surprise! I got characters that had one 'high' stat, many medium ones, and maybe a low-ish one (like 8 or 7). Well, except for one guy, who made a ridiculous character...once. The disgusted looks of disappointment from me and others at the table must have been enough, because all his characters after that were...'reasonable'. Anyway...I think me pointing out that they aren't evil right now because they are so weak, and that the moment that changes, it's Demon City Shinjuku...well, I think they realized what they are doing and are likely to do. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />In closing: Evil/Bad parties? Pointless and only for players who want to just blow off steam and power trip. I mean, when was the last time you had a group of evil PC's risk an obviously deadly fight if they didn't have to? Now, if a player comes to me and says "I'm interested in playing an evil character because I want to get into the whole 'tortured soul' type mindset. I want to make bad or outright evil choices, and then suffer for them. I think it would be a nice RP change" Well...I'm all for that. However, I've never had a player say that. When they want to play a "bad" character, they get genuinely P-O'ed when their characters evil actions have actual consequences...like their character gets hunted, beat up, thrown in jail, and executed for the cold blooded murder of an entire family of farmers. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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