LE Paladin in Adventurer's League

[DocSharpe]

The short version: RPing your PC is not a reason to make everyone else at your table not have fun.

I think this replaces the long winded version I have posted on the outside of my screen...

 

[kalani]

For those questioning this issue - this is even discussed in the Adventurers League Player's Guide on p4 and specifically on p22.

P4: No Undermining of Other Characters During Adventures.
Adventurers are brought together by common cause, and during an adventure, they’re expected to work together to overcome challenges. Though certain factions might find others distasteful, individuals will put that aside and become a team when put in dangerous situations. In short, play nice with each
other when things get deadly.

P22: How do I deal with players of evil characters, or who venerate an evil deity?
Just because a player has a character with a darker side doesn’t mean that player has a license to make the game less fun for others at the table. Players are encouraged to have their characters work together despite their differences; a little competition is fine, as long as it stays fun for everyone involved and doesn’t result in other players getting shut out of the experience. If a DM or another player feels as though a player is creating an uncomfortable situation through the excuse of “it’s what my character would do,” the DM is free to give the offending player a warning for disruptive behavior, and if it persists, ask the organizer to remove the player from the table.

tl;dr:Work together. Play nice. No infighting. "It's what my character would do" is not an excuse (regardless of alignment).

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

For those questioning this issue - this is even discussed in the Adventurers League Player's Guide on p4 and specifically on p22.

P4: No Undermining of Other Characters During Adventures.
Adventurers are brought together by common cause, and during an adventure, they’re expected to work together to overcome challenges. Though certain factions might find others distasteful, individuals will put that aside and become a team when put in dangerous situations. In short, play nice with each
other when things get deadly.

P22: How do I deal with players of evil characters, or who venerate an evil deity?
Just because a player has a character with a darker side doesn’t mean that player has a license to make the game less fun for others at the table. Players are encouraged to have their characters work together despite their differences; a little competition is fine, as long as it stays fun for everyone involved and doesn’t result in other players getting shut out of the experience. If a DM or another player feels as though a player is creating an uncomfortable situation through the excuse of “it’s what my character would do,” the DM is free to give the offending player a warning for disruptive behavior, and if it persists, ask the organizer to remove the player from the table.

tl;dr:Work together. Play nice. No infighting. "It's what my character would do" is not an excuse (regardless of alignment).

IMHO it was a horrible horrible horrible idea for there to be allowed any Evil aligned characters in the AL. It is hard enough, as we have seen posted in this thread several times, dealing with the CN, N "murderhobos" without introducing an Evil alignment in the living campaign. 98% of the people that tend to play the LE alignment tend to only see the E of the alignment and tend to play it more as CE than LE in the end any how. And then you have some writers that write overtly Evil missions for the Zhents and it can cause quite a bit of party strife unless you are lucky to find someone in the 2% that can actually play a LE character.

And the admins having to put in the above 2 notices in the rules goes to show that they had some foresight to realize that it was going to be a problem.

To my point above I will give an example. The 2 Zhents in our group were given a mission to poison an individual but were unable to successfully do so. Another factions mission was to talk with the individual to get some information and possible help for something else. Well this NPC ended up being an ally and assisting the party in a combat scenario. Well the 2 Zhents deciding that they couldn't poison the individual before decided to just attack the NPC, who was allied and fighting alongside the other 5 party members at the time, to accomplish killing the individual. So here we have 2 party members trying to kill a party ally and important part of a quest for other party members, yet the other party members by the rules can not do anything to stop the 2 murderhobos trying to kill the NPC.

So my example above goes to show that writing intrigue between the 2 factions and people that just see the Evil in their alignment and not the Lawful of their alignment go together to make very odd and unfun situations for the party. And by the rules we are just supposed to sit back and allow it to happen. Because "It's what my character would do" is not an excuse.

I have only played maybe 30 to 35 AL adventures and I have experienced similar things to the above probably 8 or 9 times in those opportunities to play. And I rarely play with the same group of people so its not isolated to a local play group etc.

If a small percentage of people can handle and play the LE correctly that same small percentage can be applied to the number of DMs that can adjudicate its use as well. So you get DM's that dont know what LE really means or how to adjudicate it and things like what were mentioned above because the DM just wants the players to have fun playing. But it creates/created party strife but we all just have to deal with it because the AL Character Creation Guide says so.

 

[skerritthegreen]

To my point above I will give an example. The 2 Zhents in our group were given a mission to poison an individual but were unable to successfully do so. Another factions mission was to talk with the individual to get some information and possible help for something else.

I generally feel CN is far more difficult than LE to deal with, but if you are having problems with the LE players, you should remind them that their factions have told them they must work with the other factions and not to cause waves or their PCs will be executed for threatening the factional alliance. The factions that allow evil PCs wield pretty big hammers when keeping their people in line. It is also important that DM's help guide/control their tables. I have seen LG paladins be just as difficult or intransigent ("Its a goblin, I put it down immediately no matter what you say because they are evil!")

As to your specific example, this appears to be a case of either a confused/unprepared DM or a DM that wanted to mix in some party conflict. The NPC the Zhents are supposed to poison (Audrec, who I note they are told about and he is generally a bad guy and is only present in the mod if there is a Zhent that needs to go after him), is NOT the same NPC the other are supposed to talk to (Bhun). If your DM set up a situation where characters were in conflict, that is unfortunate but it was nt intended.

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

I generally feel CN is far more difficult than LE to deal with, but if you are having problems with the LE players, you should remind them that their factions have told them they must work with the other factions and not to cause waves or their PCs will be executed for threatening the factional alliance. The factions that allow evil PCs wield pretty big hammers when keeping their people in line. It is also important that DM's help guide/control their tables. I have seen LG paladins be just as difficult or intransigent ("Its a goblin, I put it down immediately no matter what you say because they are evil!")

As to your specific example, this appears to be a case of either a confused/unprepared DM or a DM that wanted to mix in some party conflict. The NPC the Zhents are supposed to poison (Audrec, who I note they are told about and he is generally a bad guy and is only present in the mod if there is a Zhent that needs to go after him), is NOT the same NPC the other are supposed to talk to (Bhun). If your DM set up a situation where characters were in conflict, that is unfortunate but it was nt intended.

I went back and looked at the transcript and you are correct he was not the one we needed to talk to but he was allied with us in the combat at the time the PCs decided to attack him.

You are missing the point I was trying to make....the vast majority of people, be they players or DMs, do not have a clue how to deal with or play the LE characters much less, like you and both noted, the CN ones. Hell I will be the 1st to admit I have no clue how to play one either so I choose not to play a character with either of those alignments so as to not impose my ignorance of the intricacies needed to play the alignment.

I have seen as in the above example, players attacking allied NPCs, players openly killing captured and incapacitated NPCs/Monsters, players openly torturing captured and incapacitated NPCs/Monsters and players murder noncombatant women and children as well.

And as to your unprepared DM etc. You are dealing with a volunteer core of DMs a lot of whom stepped up to run because the need arises. If we only had fully prepared DMs that are well versed with the intricacies of dealing with certain alignments and the players that play them, this living campaign would be dead on arrival.

It comes down to people just want to play or DM and the Expedition modules are an easy way for people to get content to play or DM. But it seems the AL Admins assume everyone is well versed in how to deal with the problems some alignments create, and that their rules in a document that it seems not a lot of people even read, are trying to weave far to much intrigue and intricate details into the campaign.

These problems have been around for a long time with organized play, so this is nothing new. I was just giving examples of situations I have seen personally.

 

[skerritthegreen]

I guess my response remains that there is no one right way to play D&D and your RPing is no excuse to make playing unfun for someone else. If people embrace those two guidelines, it will work out. There will be exceptions of course, but that's how humans are. If someone isn't fun to play with, I would encourage you to politely let them know that their actions make you uncomfortable and you are not having fun. If the problem persists and there is no remedy (they won't talk it out, the DM and organizer are no help, all the other players agree that PCs should be violent murder hobos and you suck since you want to RP, etc...), don't play with those players.

The only other option would be to remove all choice for alignment (everyone must be LG, and this is how we expect it to be played, no exceptions...). Personally (not speaking as an admin in this case), I would rather we give lots of options, expose players to diversity, and grow as a community despite the occasional bumps in the road.

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

I guess my response remains that there is no one right way to play D&D and your RPing is no excuse to make playing unfun for someone else. If people embrace those two guidelines, it will work out. There will be exceptions of course, but that's how humans are. If someone isn't fun to play with, I would encourage you to politely let them know that their actions make you uncomfortable and you are not having fun. If the problem persists and there is no remedy (they won't talk it out, the DM and organizer are no help, all the other players agree that PCs should be violent murder hobos and you suck since you want to RP, etc...), don't play with those players.

The only other option would be to remove all choice for alignment (everyone must be LG, and this is how we expect it to be played, no exceptions...). Personally (not speaking as an admin in this case), I would rather we give lots of options, expose players to diversity, and grow as a community despite the occasional bumps in the road.

Actually I would think it would be better to ignore the need to choose an alignment but make it mandatory to choose a Faction. And have the factions goals/needs be what drives the characters in game.

 

[skerritthegreen]

I have no issue with people making those sorts of decisions when RPing your PC, but alignment isn't an optional rule, so it sounds like you issue isn't with the AL, but with D&D in general. You might be better served to go over to the D&D boards and make that argument, or contact customer service with that suggestion as what you are asking for is beyond the scope of organized play.

 

[kalani]

As someone who was a participant in the DND NEXT playtest from the earliest playtest packets, I can state for the record that - throughout the development cycle, the feedback given through the various polls and playtest feedback, was that players (on the whole) prefer an alignment system to a game that lacks one - but at the same token, they did not like alignment-based mechanics which straight-jacketed characters.

It was primarily the result of this feedback that we have the system we have today - in which Alignment exists, but plays a very small (almost negligable) part in mechanics. Detect Evil (and similar powers) now detect otherworldly and undead creatures, rather than being an alignment detector; Paladins are no longer bound by alignment restrictions; characters no longer lose class abilities for violating an alignment; and most spells/powers now deal with creature types instead of alignment. Take Smite for example - it now works regardless of alignment/creature type.

In fact, one of the few places where alignment still has a mechanical effect is the few magic items which require attunement by a creature of X alignment.

 

[Tyranthraxus]

ive actually had players also not actually pick alignments. Ive never actually picked up on it because the circumstances to find out have never existed (ie no use of alignment targeting spells). (and yes this is in AL games)