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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 1311894" data-attributes="member: 99">***I've added a brief post to the end of this thread in case anybody cares how things are panning out.  I figured I owed you guys for contributing.***Once again I seek the opinions of my fellow ENWorlders in how I should best handle a situation in my weekly game.  Here's the deal:One of the characters sold his soul to a devil (cheaply I might add) a couple sessions ago.  He was immediately interested in getting it back.  One option that the devil offered him was that she would obtain a special "Sacrificial Dagger" for him to use.  Anybody he kills with this dagger has their soul sent to Hell under the control of the devil who has the lein against the soul of the PC.  Once he has killed enough creatures with this dagger (10 HD x the character's current level), his soul is out of hock.There's no question in my mind that his doing this is evil so let's go forward with that already stipulated.  The question is "How fast will his alignment go from Neutral to Neutral Evil?"There are some mitigating and aggravating factors to consider:The one (and only as far as I can see) thing in his favor is that the individuals he intends on killing with the dagger are already Evil themselves.  In the cosmology of my campaign, these guys are headed to Hell already anyway.  The only thing the PC is changing is whose "inbox" these souls are landing in, if you will.There are several things that can potentially hasten the character's fall into Evil:I've added a list of circumstances by which he can gain "extra credit" for the souls he obtains with the dagger.  I drew these from the Book of Vile Darkness and they contain things like "The subject is tortured for a day before being sacrificed" and "The subject is of Good alignment" and things like that.  If he opts to avail himself of any of these, I'll shift him to Evil then and there.If he uses the dagger on someone who is Neutral (and therefore, according to my cosmology, whose soul was originally bound for the Spirit Realm and not Hell), I'll probably shift him to Evil as well.He also knows that the devil in question is accumulating these souls for a reason:  She's going to sell them to a Devil Lord in exchange for him enchanting a Gate that she's been working on that will allow her to periodically enter the Prime Material Plane for purposes of seducing mortals there and possibly getting her lovely hands on their souls as well.Given all of that, I'm wondering how quickly I should have him make the transition to Evil.  I'd be interested in your opinions.  The primary reason this is important is because another party member is a Fighter/Cleric of St. Cuthbert (Lawful Neutral) and he Detects Evil quite frequently.  There may come a point when he catches the character in question in one of these spells and some hard questions get asked.As a bonus question, feel free to toss out opinions on another aspect of this situation:The dagger is not actually a dagger per se, but a minor devil shaped like a dagger.  As it consumes these souls (and thereby sends them to Hell), it will siphon off a bit of power each time and become more powerful.  I intend to give the dagger some additional powers as it consumes more souls.  I have not yet decided what these powers will be and how fast they will accumulate.I don't really want the dagger to become overly powerful, but it would be fun if the PC wound up saying to himself, "Well, my soul-debt is paid off and I can now be free of this cursed, evil dagger...but it's so damned useful..."</blockquote>

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