Intelligent Weapon/EGO contest (unusual situation)

[Damon Griffin]

you also keep using the phrase "situational ethics," which has a different connotation. It usually implies a willingness to perform an evil act to effect a Good outcome. In my campaign world, that would imply a CN aligmnent rather than CG.

I don't want to spend a lot of time discussing Robyn's personality here, but it may be helpful to this discussion to provide a bit of background: Robyn's a half-elf, raised by his elven parent in a woodland elven region. Two groups of humans border the elf lands on either side, and the woodland is being invaded by one group or another all the time; there are economic pressures at work here that I won't go into right now.

Raised in this environment, Robyn eventually became a ranger and has Humans as his Favored Enemy. He's not xenophobic to the point of mania; he's the sole non-human in our adventuring party, all of whom are in the employ of another human. He gets along with the other PCs, and indeed most humans, well enough.

However, once someone has declared himself, by word or action, to be his enemy, that person becomes an "enemy combatant", not entitled to any particularly fair treatment. So for example, Robyn might find it expedient to slit the throat of a magically "held" person, rather than taking the time to tie him up for later questioning. Or if three enemies have been captured and none of them wants to talk, he might kill one in front of the other two to encourage cooperation. This is not something he does all the time, but he's done both those things at least once. Both times we were dealing with opponents who were coming after us in order to make us dead, dead, dead.

Remember, Chaotic Good means I'm interested in what's good for me and the individuals I care about, including my employer. I'm not interested in what's good for my opponents.

If you're drifting out of Good alignment and you sneak around hiding all the time (which conflicts with her special purpose) and you forget to change her bowstring after it's gotten wet, expect a conflict almost every day.

I don't think Robyn is in serious danger of alignment drift. He's had a hard life in some respects and has no reason to love humans, and this makes him more ruthless and/or bloodthirsty in some situations than our party cleric might like. But I created Vere as a "merciful" weapon and I do just knock out opponents if it seems to make sense to do so.

Sneaking around is part of my job; our party doesn't include a full time Rogue.

Vere also has the "renewing" quality, so I think she'll be okay even if her bowstring gets a little wet.

As for your chances of winning the conflict... it doesn't look good. You're creating an item that is smarter than yourself and has more willpower. Be nice to her and try to keep her in a good mood.

Not smarter; I'll have the higher INT even after she hits 25 EGO. But by then she'll have a higher WIS and CHA than me.

 

[AuraSeer]

So for example, Robyn might find it expedient to slit the throat of a magically "held" person, rather than taking the time to tie him up for later questioning.

I guess it's between you and your DM then. IMC, killing the helpless is an evil act, and your character would find himself on the short bus to CE alignment.

 

[Chorn]

Damon Griffin wrote:
Remember, Chaotic Good means I'm interested in what's good for me and the individuals I care about, including my employer. I'm not interested in what's good for my opponents.

I think you should consider reviewing the definition of Chaotic Good. Being motivated by personal connections is a Neutral trait. Just because you're nice to your friends doesn't mean you're a Good guy. Afterall, there are Evil momma's boys.

I don't think Robyn is in serious danger of alignment drift. He's had a hard life in some respects and has no reason to love humans, and this makes him more ruthless and/or bloodthirsty in some situations than our party cleric might like. But I created Vere as a "merciful" weapon and I do just knock out opponents if it seems to make sense to do so.

Think again. Both on terms of drift and ego conflict. If you want to go around slitting throats to make people talk, then your "merciful" weapon will most likely start taking exception to that. It doesn't really care that your knockout to throat slit ratio favors the former. Being hardcoded into its good nature and personality, it's a lot less flexible with regards to leniency.

Regarding your issues with your creation overpowering you; consider something like the movie TRON. Users wrote the big bad Master Control Program. However, he's "gotten 2,415 times smarter since then." Not so unprecedented for one's creation to turn upon its creator.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Yeah; as mentioned, your personal definition of Chaotic Good is very, very far from where it should be.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Yeah; as mentioned, your personal definition of Chaotic Good is very, very far from where it should be.

Is it? Okay, at the risk of thread drift, let's see how far...

Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.

Robyn does not destroy innocent life; he will occasionally kill someone over whom he has a temporary advantage, such as someone who is magically held or otherwise "helpless", but in all such cases these are people who represent a clear and present danger to his life, the lives of his fellow party members, or the lives of innocent people he's expected to defend for some reason. He doesn't kill for fun or profit, he kills to achieve the party's goals (most recently, to rescue two clerics scheduled to become human sacrifices in a demonic summoning ritual.) I respect our cleric's right to hold the opinion that "helpless = innocent" for these purposes, but it's not an opinion I share, and that fact doesn't place me in conflict with the above definition of Good.

"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

By this portion of the definition, Robyn is not as Good as a lot of people, but still falls within the parameters. Respect for life does not have to imply a total commitment to a code vs. killing. Such a code would be insane given his background.

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

Let's save some time and acknowledge that Robyn commits the occasional evil act. He doesn't do it often, doesn't do it just because it's convenient, and doesn't take pleasure from doing it. He'll do it when he feels the situation calls for it and it is likely to be effective. His thoughts on this are more or less "The end justifies the means, IF other means are either unavailable or unlikely to be effective." That may not be a shining example of high morality, but it's not evil, either.

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships. A neutral person may sacrifice himself to protect his family or even his homeland, but he would not do so for strangers who are not related to him.

Here again, the definition specifies "the innocent" as potential victims, and "strangers" as people unworthy of aid. Robyn does routinely aid people he doesn't know, and cannot regard those who make attempts on his life as innocent. So while he may be moving in that direction, I don't see Neutral as the best description for him.

Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties. Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.

Robyn follows his conscience, not those of others. His ethical set is built to a large degree on his background, where most of his neighbors were of the "Kill the elves! Take their resources!" variety.

"Chaos" implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility.
People who are neutral with respect to law and chaos have a normal respect for authority and feel neither a compulsion to obey nor to rebel. They are honest, but can be tempted into lying or deceiving others.

Robyn claims the freedom to act as he sees fit. His tactics and methods reflect adaptability to situations and flexibility of response.

Robyn still sounds Chaotic Good to me. He's not a paragon of virtue, to be sure. But every alignment covers a range of behavior, not one of nine rigidly defined personality types.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Robyn still sounds Chaotic Good to me. He's not a paragon of virtue, to be sure. But every alignment covers a range of behavior, not one of nine rigidly defined personality types.

I agree. Not only that, but a character can still commit actions outside of their alignment occasionally and retain that alignment. Alignment shifts only after protracted and blatant out-of-alignment actions. Occasional slips won't usually shift it.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Is it? Okay, at the risk of thread drift, let's see how far...

Fine. But let's start with your initial summation of your character's moral views:

Remember, Chaotic Good means I'm interested in what's good for me and the individuals I care about, including my employer. I'm not interested in what's good for my opponents.

"Interested in what's good for me and the individuals I care about" is not a Good trait. It's a Neutral trait. People who are Neutral look out for their friends, and employers, and themselves - they are self-interested, but lack the streak of disregard for others or active malevolence that would bring them under the purview of Evil.

Being Good means expanding your sphere of responsibility beyond your friends, allies, and employers, and embracing the radical belief that the lives of people you don't know and like - even people who are currently your enemies - have worth.

Slitting the throats of helpless foes - especially those which have surrendered and placed themselves under your control - is also not generally a Good act. In the heat of battle? Sure. When a "helpless" prisoner attacks despite his chains? Also, sure. When you have crushed the arm of the bandit with your mace, and he is lying, crying for mercy, on the floor? Not so much.

This is not to say that someone who performs these acts routinely cannot be Good, but rather the person performing acts of this sort must constantly examine the state of his soul to make sure he's doing it because it is the right thing to do - the bandit from above raped and then killed several townswomen while *they* cried for mercy in much the same fashion - and not because it is expedient, or because he enjoys the thrill of having someone else, no matter how depraved and deserving they are, in his power.

 

[Damon Griffin]

"Interested in what's good for me and the individuals I care about" is not a Good trait. It's a Neutral trait. People who are Neutral look out for their friends, and employers, and themselves - they are self-interested, but lack the streak of disregard for others or active malevolence that would bring them under the purview of Evil.

Being Good means expanding your sphere of responsibility beyond your friends, allies, and employers, and embracing the radical belief that the lives of people you don't know and like - even people who are currently your enemies - have worth.

Fair enough. I accept the suggestion that my earlier summation of Robyn's views was incomplete and allowed for a flawed assessment of his alignment. My bad.

Slitting the throats of helpless foes - especially those which have surrendered and placed themselves under your control - is also not generally a Good act.

Oh, I agree. If the foe is helpless, then it's never a Good act (well deserved, perhaps, but never Good.) I admitted that Robyn does commit the occasional evil act. As Lord Pendragon, you and I all pointed out, that doesn't automatically preclude Robyn having a Good alignment. He just has to be careful.

As I've indicated, Robyn doesn't do this sort of thing for fun, personal profit, or just to prove he can. It COULD be argued at times that he does it for expediency, but generally there is some real time pressure involved. For example, our cleric has tried interrogating the subject magically, but he made his Will save and didn't answer her questions. She doesn't have that spell available again until tomorrow. A small child will be sold into slavery AND deliberately infected with lycanthropy within hours if we don't get the information somehow.

If the cleric has Speak With Dead available now, Robyn would consider killing the subject in order to give the cleric another shot at interrogation. It wouldn't be his first choice; probably the first option would be to force feed the subject striped toadstools, which can lower WIS and adversely affect the Will save -- but that wouldn't help in the situation described above.

Second option would be psychological torture, but that's usually time consuming and might easily fail against someone with a decent Will save. Physical torture would be good, and given these circumstances our cleric MIGHT even sanction it (she would of course heal the subject as soon as we were done.)
[/QUOTE]

 

[MaxKaladin]

Let me start by saying I'm the DM in question here.

I generally play pretty loose with alignments. I use them mostly for purposes of spells and items that affect a particular alignment. I don't worry about closely monitoring every action for alignment drift. I'm more concerned that the players play to their character's personality than an arbitrary alignment. If I notice a significant and ongoing deviation, such as a CN person obsessively obeying the letter of the law at all times, or a single huge infraction, like a LG person deliberately fireballing a group of nuns "just for the heck of it", then I'll consider an alignment change but otherwise I'm pretty lenient about alignment drift.

I should also note that the slitting throats thing is probably being blown out of proportion as I can only recall him doing it once and the person in question was a demonologists half-orc bodyguard who was carrying a sword with a demon literally bound in it to do nasty stuff to people. The guy was stopped by a hold person at the beginning of a raid on a ceremony where the demonologist was doing a ritual to sacrifice two good aligned clerics and summon a powerful pit fiend. Robyn slit his throat rather than trying to deal with securing him as a prisoner. It has not happened before or since.

As regards to Vere, well, my gut instinct is to say that there wouldn't be any bonus to EGO checks, but that being the creator would mean that conflicts would come along less frequently. After all, the bow that got picked up in a lair somewhere would have based its ethics off some other person where this one based its off of Robyn. I think it is a very good point that sneaking around is likely to be a sore point with the bow considering its special purpose is to "Reveal that which is hidden". It would seem I'm going to have to carefully consider the personality of the bow as it gains awareness; especially with regards to that point.

The father-daughter analogy might be particularly apt here since the bow is being made intelligent gradually, so it will start out as "semi-empathic" and work its way up the scale as Robyn goes up in levels and adds XP to further enchant it.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Let me start by saying I'm the DM in question here.

Hey, Max. I was wondering when you'd chime in.

I should also note that the slitting throats thing is probably being blown out of proportion as I can only recall him doing it once and the person in question was a demonologists half-orc bodyguard who was carrying a sword with a demon literally bound in it to do nasty stuff to people.

I don't think it's being blown out of proportion; the number of times I've done it is only one part of the alignment drift question. The other part being, am I willing to do it again. Since the answer to that question is "Yes, if I think the situation calls for it" I consider it fair game for the discussion.

Also, I did on one occasion have a group of three prisoners and I figured I only needed one of them to talk. I asked the first one my questions and he predictably refused to answer. So I killed him on the spot, turned to the second one and asked again. Predictably, he DID answer. (Our cleric wasn't around for this scenario and has never been told about it.)

There is also some room for debate regarding my, um, expedient elimination of two ogre border guards when we were exploring Skopelos. The local ogres had offered us no violence yet. Of course, they didn't know we were around, and I was hoping to keep it that way.

But thanks for supporting my contention that when I do go that route, there is generally some real time pressure involved.

Oh, in to be fair I should also remind you that it hasn't happened since because our cleric extracted a promise from me NOT to engage in such behavior during the current mission. Being chaotic, I could break my promise, but for the moment I consider that to be more trouble than benefit. (As Max is aware, our party's cleric is played by my wife.)

I think it is a very good point that sneaking around is likely to be a sore point with the bow considering its special purpose is to "Reveal that which is hidden". It would seem I'm going to have to carefully consider the personality of the bow as it gains awareness; especially with regards to that point.

And I will have to introduce Vere to the concept of setting a thief to catch a thief. Revealing that which is hidden to us may involve eavesdropping, moving silently, adopting disguises, becoming invisible or other forms of stealth. She'll have to learn to look past the act and see the motivation behind it, and/or the consequences of letting our opponents and their plans remain hidden.

EDITED TO ADD: And remember, she doesn't HAVE a special purpose at this point. If she does get one, it'll be her final stage of development, granting her one last power and a +4 EGO boost. I think this must be akin to someone having an epiphany about their life's future work, or a calling to religious service. "This is it, this is what I was born to do!"

By the time she gets there, she should be able to make the distinction between "Reveal everything anyone has hidden for any reason" and "Reveal those things which, if they remain hidden, could threaten the innocent; reveal those things which, if uncovered, could benefit my friends without cost to the innocent."