When PCs go "Swiss"

[kigmatzomat]

I just don't understand why he doesn't cop to being evil. IMC there's an evil character and he's integrated just fine. Okay, he's neutral evil (selfish and opportunistic) but he's a reliable member of the party.

On the other side of the screen I played a LE character in a group with a paladin. But again, I was playing a party-friendly evil: left to his own devices will take the most "direct" solution but will go along with non-suicidal plans decided upon by the party.

Once, and only once, have I seen a chaotic evil character work well in a group. The character was impuslive and power hungry but was also quite fond of the other PCs. Imagine Charles Manson as a doting uncle.

I will say that my games have consequences that weed out stupidity. My first campaign had a number of those "chaotic neutral" types; four of them were either hung, tarred and feathered, or killed by a combination of good PCs and guardsmen the first game session. I've picked up one or two others over the years but most last no more than six sessions beore they get killed and the rest of the party declines to raise them.

 

[Wilphe]

"Being True Neutral is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman."

 

[Altalazar]

Just to chime in, as others have said - he's CE. Nothing wrong with that if the campaign can accomodate it. Just dangerous - I can say I've never played a CE character ever. I played a fun LE once, and a few NE in one rather old campaign, but never CE.

CE doesn't seem to be too conductive to a party situation, though - not without some heavy-handedness.

 

[Impeesa]

That's the beauty of it, if a player tacks on a "neutral" anything onto their sheet they feel they don't have to justify anything. :\

Haha... that reminds me of this actual conversation:

Player: Okay, so my druid is neutral evil.
Rest of us: This is supposed to be a more or less heroic game, and there's already a paladin in the party - no evil, sorry.
Player: Aha, but I'm neutral.
Us: You're still neutral evil. That just means halfway between oppressive tyrant and psycho killer.
Player: But... neeuuuutral...
Us: ...Are you still not seeing the "evil" part after that?

Funny thing was, the player wasn't exactly an inexperienced gamer or anything... she is blonde though, that might count for something. I've exaggerated nothing here - right down to the drawn out "neeuuutral" as she pleaded her case.

More on topic, the aforementioned paladin went on to slaughter orc babies, along with entire noncombatant orc families, as they slept. Did I mention the paladin was an orc himself, if that matters? Yeah... his rationalizing of it was great (after breaking in and snapping a young female's neck - "She was trying to scream for help! I had to kill her!"). I think by that point the player had actually tired of playing a paladin in a party of CN 8-Bit Theatre wannabes (now there's a few stories for another thread - I say it like it's a bad thing, but really I was the worst of 'em ), and was having his character being his fall from paladinhood. The session with the orc slaughter was simultaneously some of the best roleplaying and some of the funniest **** I've seen out of the entire group, ever.

Okay, I lie, it's not really a story for another thread, I'm about to tell it right here, and it's actually my most on-topic paragraph yet. My character is a warmage, closely patterned on Black Mage from the previously mentioned 8-Bit Theatre. Since I knew of the heroic-game-paladin thing, and I didn't really want to play a psycho anyway, I went with CN. I made a specific point of trying not to fall into the classic "CN = insane/no accountability" trap, and it can be tough. With that character, I'll help out my allies, though I'm hesitant if it involves personal risk where there was none previously. I'll laugh at the misfortunes of others, but won't go out of my way to inflict it. I'll be unnecessarily violent on occasions, but only when duly provoked.

So, returning to your original question: What would be done? Well, with the evil druid player, we basically talked her out of it before the game started. Somehow I doubt she was actually going to roleplay a good heartless-predator-type druid anyways. But that's not your issue - you have a player who's doing the opposite, roleplaying a pretty good CE without writing it on the sheet. So for an analogous situation, I'd have to consider what would happen if our paladin slipped completely into madness, or if my character acted more like his inspiration. I suspect that at a certain threshold, the DM would simply say to the paladin, "You're evil now, and your powers come from appropriate sources. Change that alignment line." Or he might not tell the player, and just let him discover it - same result eventually, though. If my character slid closer to evil without me noticing enough to actually change my alignment... well, at some point the paladin (who we'll assume hasn't fallen, in this scenario) would run a detect evil, and the DM would probably inform him of an extra source of evil. At that point, if I then continued to act in a blatantly evil matter (as you allege your player is doing), I suspect it would eventually be open season on my character if he didn't distance himself from the party first.

Bottom line? If you're pretty sure he's evil, treat him as such. If he won't change it on his sheet, just treat it as though it were out of date, same as if he'd levelled up to 10 and his sheet still said '9' at the top. Wow... I did a lot of rambling to lead up to the same thing some others have said in a few lines. Hopefully at least someone found it entertaining.

--Impeesa--

 

[Percivellian]

Thank you all for your responses (and stories. So entertaining). The campaign in which this was going on has ended, but the aforementioned player is a part of my regular gaming group, so I think it will be a great topic to bring up the next time we're all together.

The reason I mentioned a lack of character history (backstory, as well as events from levels 1-6, which we didn't play) was because as a result, any insight into the character's mindset was almost impossible to figure out. And this has been a recurring theme with other characters. A lot of them hardly even speak. The thing is, he's a very good player. We've seen him display the capability for indepth thought about his characters, and in-game situations, but for the most part, all of that thought remains invisible to anyone but himself.

I didn't fuss about the alignment too much because the other player in the campaign (there were only two), who was Lawful Neutral, with Enforcer levels, actually, was making extraordinary efforts to work with the dynamic (or lack thereof, the characters were only in the same room about 15-20% of the whole campaign) the other player was giving him. I had to commend him, he made the whole thing work very nicely. As long as he didn't learn anything about the heinous crimes, and benefitted at least somewhat every once in a while from said character's actions, he was having fun, and it worked. Though, he did lament the absence of the other 50% of the PC population at times.

For the future, I am considering having players take an alignment test, then keeping the results to myself, and adjusting alignment based on actions in a point system. That way they can be aware of how things are going to work ahead of time, and I can surprise them with things.

Thanks for all the suggestions.