How FAST should he turn evil? (Updated 2/9)

[Nightfall]

I'm sorry but killing evil to make sure YOU don't lose your soul doesn't make you good nor does it make you less evil in my book. Call me black and white here, but murder is still murder no matter how you justify it. War is evil and I'm glad to support LE/NE/CE deities that follow that view for the most part. So if you want him non-evil fine, Rel. But I think you're being WAY to nice to the guy. You make your bed, you lie in it.

 

[Rel]

And so the answer to the above question, "How fast should he turn evil", is "it doesn't matter". His alignment is largely irrelevant until the moment something checks for it: At that point, THEN you can look at what he's done so far, and ask yourself, "Is he evil?". It's not WHEN he BECOMES evil, it's IF he *IS* evil when something actually looks. Until then, the cat is both dead and alive.

You are quite correct in that it won't matter for purposes of his personality or the way he plays the character. It matters for just two reasons:

1) If the Cleric of St. Cuthbert does a Detect Evil, does he register on the spell? The dagger would most certainly register as Evil regardless if it is exposed to the spell. But he is keeping it in a Glove of Storing most of the time. For the record, I do not anticipate any sort of major party fracture or open hostility between these characters. Just some hard questions.

2) If the PC gets killed, where is his soul bound for? It is likely that they would have him brought back to life in some fashion. But where is his soul going to be in the mean time. I've established that he's going to Hell regardless thanks to him giving up his soul to the Erinyes. But this will remain a question during his descent into evil and his path to redemption (should he choose to take it).

Nonetheless, your point is valid and it is one that I've made to the player. Essentially saying, "You are standing in the shady end of the 'Neutral' box and you're probably about to meander over the border into 'Neutral Evil'. Unless you start doing some pretty vile stuff (sacrificing Neutral and Good NPC's would be a good example here), you're not going to get too far from the border and the walk back won't be a tremendous journey."

For those of the same mindset as Nightfall, I'll say this: I'm not calling you "wrong" and I respect your opinion and right to govern your own game in whatever fashion you like. I'll also say that I have run games where I had a more "black and white" view on morality. For the game I'm running now and in general, killing evil foes in combat (even if you coup de grace them) is not "murder" nor an evil act (though I'm saying that doing so with a soul-eating dagger IS) and war is terrible, but not evil.

 

[Nightfall]

For those of the same mindset as Nightfall, I'll say this: I'm not calling you "wrong" and I respect your opinion and right to govern your own game in whatever fashion you like. I'll also say that I have run games where I had a more "black and white" view on morality. For the game I'm running now and in general, killing evil foes in combat (even if you coup de grace them) is not "murder" nor an evil act (though I'm saying that doing so with a soul-eating dagger IS) and war is terrible, but not evil.

Rel,

Hey it's your campaign. I'd just say while I can SEE your point, any Faustian deals I see only do one thing, turn someone evil. Period.

 

[Norfleet]

1) If the Cleric of St. Cuthbert does a Detect Evil, does he register on the spell? The dagger would most certainly register as Evil regardless if it is exposed to the spell. But he is keeping it in a Glove of Storing most of the time. For the record, I do not anticipate any sort of major party fracture or open hostility between these characters. Just some hard questions.

Well, the answer to this question is basically entirely dependent on how you treat Detect Evil. If you feel that detect evil detects Evil Evil, and isn't really directly linked to alignment at all, then he detects as evil from fiendish taint. If you feel that detect evil detects the actual alignments, then you simply examine his behavior up to that point and decide whether or not he's evil, and how evil. That's an entirely seperate question from whether the character is evil or not. The former question is entirely up to you. The latter question is easily answered: Would you let him start taking Blackguard levels? He's made his evil outsider contact, and if he has the requisite feats and skills, would you let him do it? Being evil is his only real sticking point now.

 

[Nightfall]

Being evil is his only real sticking point now.

Not for me. He's evil.

 

[Rel]

Hey, gang. Just wanted to give a brief update by way of thanks for all the ideas everyone posted.

It took a couple of sessions before the PC in question got a chance to use the dagger, but it finally happened last week. He rather unobtrusively stabbed a couple of downed Ogres that the party had fought, consigning their souls to the Erinyes and furthering her cause (don't feel bad for the Ogres though. They recently had a hand in slaughtering THOUSANDS of relatively innocent Orc women and children). Ergo, the character is now officially Neutral Evil.

As stated before, this has little impact on his character really. But it does mean that the dagger has now munched on some fairly juicy souls. It may well start to lend the PC some bits of aid during the upcoming session. The other big issue is that the player of the Cleric of St. Cuthbert will be back this session after having to miss the last one. I have little doubt that the player will become suspicious fairly quickly so we'll get a chance to see how well he separates player info from character info (he's a good player and I think he'll do fine).

 

[Joshua Randall]

Dude, player info is so broken.

Glad to hear the game is working out to everyone's satisfaction thus far. I may be an inflexible moralist IRL, but that shouldn't detract from D&D fun.