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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8286918" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Because an alignment is completely unnecessary for an NPC you didn't expect the PCs to talk to. It's also unnecessary for an NPC that has a specific role in your adventure, like a Relentless Killer. Which should have at least enough of a backstory that you know why it's relentlessly killing people.Heck, even if it's a completely random encounter, knowing that you rolled "bandits" is more useful than anything else.You chose to dismiss my entire last post, so I'll copypaste the part that's important here:If this is some nameless NPC, then why bother giving it an alignment? It'll act according to its role in the story. Shopkeepers are gonna keep shop. If it turns out that the PCs like the nameless NPC enough that you feel the need to bring it back in a later adventure, then you have some time to think of a backstory for it. If it's a named NPC, then you probably already know at least a sentence's worth of detail about it ("Minion Bob hates his boss") and so an alignment is superfluous, because that sentence will likely be enough to get you through the encounter. The PCs try to threaten or bribe Minion Bob into betraying his boss. Welp, he hates his boss, so sure, he's game!And if you do give it an alignment, then as I showed above, that alignment doesn't actually dictate anything about how the NPC is going to act. I listed three ways a CE shopkeeper can react and four ways a CE minion can react, and that's just what I wrote down right then and there. I can think of lots of other ways. So I repeat: The fact that a minor NPC has a particular alignment has no singular meaning as to its actions. You'd be better off coming up with a bunch of Random NPC Interaction charts; at least something like that would actually tell you what the NPC would do. (<rolls dice> "OK, 13 on the die, so the Shopkeeper Table says... she decides to shortchange the PCs.")Also, maybe if everyone is giving you the same answer, that means it's time for you to reevaluate your question.</blockquote>

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