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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jedavis" data-source="post: 5844584" data-attributes="member: 35933">Misread thread title; now I want to make Helm of Paladinhood a magic item.  I guess the old Helm of Alignment Change might work as a baseline...Not terribly familiar with Helm, and not sure how closely you're holding to FR lore, but the sense I'm getting from upthread is that they're in some sense similar to the Crab of L5R - the mountain does not move, that kind of thing.  Which leads me to suggest that perhaps you should give them something of great importance that they, as an order, are responsible for protecting, much like the Crab protect the Kaiu Wall and keep the Shadowlands beasties out of the lands of man.  The Night's Watch from ASoIaF might also work as inspiration, or (for a darker, but also less geographically-oriented version) the Inquisition of 40k.  If you provide the church with a single, over-arching goal, suddenly determining things that the church needs becomes much more interesting (We need men for the wall, or food.  Or we lost a party over the wall, but one of them was really important; see if you can find him.  Or one of the Seven Seals has been stolen, and much be retrieved, lest a terrible evil awaken.  Or a noble needs escorted somewhere, and it is your duty to protect him on the road).  Give the church something worth protecting; the stability of the realm, or all mankind, or the material plane, or the entire cosmos.  Start with the macro, and the micro will follow.As for the rogue...  It's all about incentives.  If you want to encourage them to let surrenderers live, provide both a penalty for killing someone who surrenders (curse in dying breath, or his brother is a powerful enemy who comes after the particular offending PC, or the legal system in general) and benefits for letting people live.  I once ran a Traveller game where the PCs fought some bounty hunters.  When they won, the bounty hunter medic surrendered.  Most of the PCs were in favor of spacing him, but one of them managed to sneak him off the ship.  The medic later re-appeared and provided some advance warning and underground cybernetics for the PC who had saved his life.  Maybe the guy who surrendered is worth more in ransom money; ransoming was common practice for knights in the medieval period (though not applicable in the thug situation).  Maybe he knows the location of buried treasure, but if the PCs kill him, the knowledge dies with him.  *shrug*You could generalize that to a systemic solution; bad behavior begets penalties, while good behavior gets perks.  If incentives don't work, then talk to him out of game.  If that doesn't work...  well, then you're in a tough spot.  I disagree with the "kill them all" solution proposed above; killing just the rogue should be sufficient.  While killing everyone for the rogue's failings is a strong way to incentivize players to police themselves, it might also kill the game, and I don't think that's within mission parameters.  TPKs just aren't productive.</blockquote>

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