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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7951304" data-attributes="member: 29398">There's the error.The DM needs to play out the mechanics, for one thing - get the player to describe what the PC is doing and how, roll the shopkeeper's surprise, roll to hit, all that stuff - if only to give any other nearby PCs or NPCs a chance to react.  Somewhere during all this, if it doesn't become apparent through play (IME it often does), a question might be raised as to the character's motivation for doing this - or for doing it now - particularly if it's significantly out of pattern from what the character has otherwise generally done.That said, "just for the hell of it" is a valid answer to such questions; and of course in-game there probably will be consequences e.g. at the very least being run out of town (along with the party?) as a murderer.  Meta-game, if your system has penalties for alignment violation this is where they might make an appearance, unless the PC was already prone to such random acts of violence. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Depends on a host of factors, but to me stopping the game is the absolute last tool I'll use as long as things are being done in-character; I'd far rather let things play out, and if that means the PCs end up throwing down against each other then so be it. (says he, who ten years ago DMed a party selling - well, actually, donating - two of their own members into slavery in response to those two (quite legitimately) reporting the party to the authorities as slavers!  The players, through all this, I don't think stopped laughing once; and neither did I - it was just one of those absurd sessions where one thing led to the next until nobody was quite sure how things got to where they ended up.  Yet if I-as-DM had stopped the game when I realized the party were actually intent on selling their captives as slaves I'd have denied us all what turned out to be one of the best and most hilarious sessions I've ever seen, along with the memories and stories of that night that are still told to this day.)</blockquote>

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