<>How much evil could good endure before becoming evil?

[Harmon]

We hunted down the assassin and his cleric partner. They died hard, nearly killing our Rogue and our Arcane Archer in the process. The leader of the group and the driving force behind the hunt for them got the killing blow on both men, which made me feel pretty good.

The bodies burst into flames in the end, so there is nothing to lead us anywhere after their master. I would like to follow, but there are bigger fish to fry and as near as I can tell no clues to follow up on.

So the task is complete and the torture was not necassary, it came down to a matter of his friends bleeding out and having no real choice but to kill the assassin or let them die. Not a choice to him.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Li Shenron]

“I just want to torture him to death,” so says that NG wizard, feeling remorseful as he says it to his friend and confidant the Bard.

An assassin killed one of the people in his group nearing on two years ago, and the wizard has led his group after the assassin, now they are on him and the assassin is aware of their presence.

The party member (a Half Orc Fighter/Barbarian) was killed to stop him from fulfilling a prophecy about an Orc that would join all the trips together.

The wizard was rescued/saved by the Half Orc more times then he could ever count, and was abused by him verbally and berated by him. He didn’t view the Half Orc as a real friend until he was gone.

Now the wizard seems willing to sacrifice himself for revenge, but is he? No, not truly, he will kill the assassin. Torture him to death, nah, but he wants to see him suffer.

My question before the World of EN is this- how far could a NG person go in brutalizing someone to their death without losing themselves? Could they hire someone to kill him? Could they tie him up and break bones? Or would NG be more inclined to kill him (the assassin) in open battle?

The wizard has led this group for a while and has lost more then a few friends, party members (PCs and NPCs), he’s become a different person from the shop wizard he started as in the very first adventure.

The wizard's perseverance in his vengeance seems to me quite a Lawful Neutral behaviour.

If he kills the assassin with a minimum of mercy, I would say this is quite a neutral act, it's not straight evil by D&D standards, but by no way it's a good act as well.

If he punishes the assassin in a different way, such as beating him up a lot in battle to teach him a lesson, but spares his life and then brings him to the authorities (supposing the authorities are after him, you can't just bring someone to the police and get him arrested because _you_ know it's an assassin), then it is even farther from evil.

But if he first beat him up or torture him to make him suffer, knowing that at the end he's still going to kill him anyway, then the wizard is indeed bringing completely unnecessary pain to someone. He's not doing it to "teach him a lesson" this time, because the assassin would later be dead, and couldn't atone and make up for his mischief (that's what a "lesson" is for, right?). In this case the wizard has really stepped into evil quite seriously.

Anyway I think the player is not making a mistake at all, unless he's pretending his character to still be NG. But IMHO he knows where his PC is going and is making the choice knowingly.

If you think he doesn't do this on purpose, or if you do not want the campaign to go into such a direction, try to make it particularly difficult for him to kill the assassin:
- have the wizard find that the assassin has already been killed by someone else
- have the wizard meet the assassin and find he's a poor demented guy who doesn't understand good from evil
- have the wizard kill the assassin in the horrible way, and then find it wasn't the same person who killed his friend

 

[Thundering_Dragon]

Since he's a Wizard, does he have ranks in Knowledge: The Planes? If so he realizes that living a good, honest life will lead to being sent to paradise after death, and that living an evil, corrupt life will lead to being tortured in the Abyss/Gehenna/Baator. Therefore all he has to do is kill this corrupt and wicked Assassin to ensure that the torture does happen, without ever dirtying his hands personally.

It's really amusing how the D&D cosmos works. No one with any education or training should consider evil as a viable choice in life, since the paradime of Heaven-Hell is actually provable and you can even visit those places, if you possess enough power.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

It's really amusing how the D&D cosmos works. No one with any education or training should consider evil as a viable choice in life, since the paradime of Heaven-Hell is actually provable and you can even visit those places, if you possess enough power.

Except that the Lower Planes aren't all that bad-- for the fiends. They're continuations of the lifestyles that the evil lived as mortals: the quest for power and influence over every other concern.

And you can become a hell of a lot more powerful as a fiend than you can as a mortal.

 

[Thundering_Dragon]

Except Good is generally always more powerful than Evil in D&D. Gold Dragons are stronger than Red Dragons. Solars are stronger than Balors. And so on. Why endure agony, suffering, and a relatively terror/paranoia filled existence striving to become powerful in Evil, when you can become even MORE powerful living a peaceful, honest, interactive existence to further yourself in Good? People primarily concerned with power should strive to be Good.