Are Player Characters Exceptional?

[*Mr_Otyugh]

It is implicit what opinion of those kind of characters is. And it functions as a decent deterrent for people to avoid causing eye muscle issues when the rolling ensues when they realize the implications. Makes them think.

[*Mick64]

This is easily solved. Play your alignment. While the rules are "you don't have to play your character sheet" I have heard from every admin, dm, and em i've asked that this DOES NOT APPLY to your alignment. You can "act" good (as in roleplay) in order to fool people. But you can't select "good" and then stab everyone in the back.

What is on your sheet is your "true" alignment. And evil can act good for a while, or even all the time around select people. Chaos can hold itself in check, and law can have a night of debauchery. Good can have a bad day, even, provided bad day isn't "wanton murder". But if you aren't playing your alignment someone eventually WILL ask what's going on with the character. And if you're answer is "I was circumventing the alignment lock" i would not expect a positive response.

The only issue I see here is that behavior affects your alignment, not vice-versa. Eating babies makes you evil, being evil does not make you want to eat babies. So in this sense how I see it a DM should never tell someone to "act in alignment", rather gradually shift alignment in accordance to how the character acts.

[*coyotesage]

Well, I will only play the character concept I have in mind and not necessarily be bound by the alignment system. You can change my alignment all day, everyday, and that's fine. I believe that good characters are far too nuanced to be limited by alignment. Also, if you can't play outside your alignment, then you could never really change alignment as an outsider. You would always be exactly what you are, which I think is just bollocks. There is nothing interesting about that.

I don't think we are going to come to a meeting of the minds on this one Brindan, because we have almost totally opposite feelings on the subject of what a "well played" character is.

[*Brindas]

This is easily solved. Play your alignment. While the rules are "you don't have to play your character sheet" I have heard from every admin, dm, and em i've asked that this DOES NOT APPLY to your alignment. You can "act" good (as in roleplay) in order to fool people. But you can't select "good" and then stab everyone in the back.

What is on your sheet is your "true" alignment. And evil can act good for a while, or even all the time around select people. Chaos can hold itself in check, and law can have a night of debauchery. Good can have a bad day, even, provided bad day isn't "wanton murder". But if you aren't playing your alignment someone eventually WILL ask what's going on with the character. And if you're answer is "I was circumventing the alignment lock" i would not expect a positive response.

The only issue I see here is that behavior affects your alignment, not vice-versa. Eating babies makes you evil, being evil does not make you want to eat babies. So in this sense how I see it a DM should never tell someone to "act in alignment", rather gradually shift alignment in accordance to how the character acts.

You misinterpret my meaning. An evil person can do good acts all day to try and "appear" good near good guys without being good.

The opposite, as you've alluded, isn't true. Alignment is dictated by actions AND intentions. A person who screws up all the time but means well is usually good, unless they screw up in a way that screws with souls or something. A person who methodically does good deeds just to make himself look good isn't necessarily good (they still could be, depending on what they use that fame/power to do).

And it is not "not vice versa". Your alignment very much indicates how you are likely to respond, and how you respond indicates your alignment. Alignment is generally cyclical. Each individual will have their own exceptions (This good guy has a jealous streak, a greedy streak, or this evil person NEVER hurts children, or tells a direct lie, etc). But generally your alignment indicates your characters "gut" feeling towards many situations. it isn't a straightjacket. You are free to change your alignment and viewpoint... again, it comes down to does it seem like the character is doing that?

Is the character struggling when they work their way towards redemption? Even a human who was evil should be, let alone a fiend. Is the falling paladin slowly being driven mad at their descent even as they're convinced their way is the right way? They should be.

Characters are living, breathing, evolving things. (And if anyone brings up undead/constructs, you win the technically correct prize, congrats, you know what I mean). it should feel and seem like that. Someone swinging and changing their entire outlook of life should be a challenge, it's not easy, the temptation to slip back to their old self is always there, even if that was a slip from good to evil. Imagine how much more difficult that would be for someone who is MADE of an alignment.


I don't even understand the philosophy difference here, I admit. Outsiders are defined as the embodiment of a concept. I will agree they can change, but to do just do so superfluously seems like really bad and thin rp.

Edit: I didn't mean you can't do actions outside your alignment, or not change alignment. My main character was LE and is now LG. I mean that you can't intentionally pick the wrong alignment just to circumvent requirements or be immune to smite evil.

[*Mick64]

I'm curious what you'd make of this then. On another server I had a character, he was a wizard. He was generally a nice (if shy) guy. He'd protect his friends if needed, and even random strangers if there wasn't -too much- risk involved. He enjoyed his power but didn't use it to hurt innocents..... and he was Lawful Evil. Because he was a necromancer, and the raising of undead tainted his soul. He was brought up to think it was a normal thing to do, so he didn't see anything wrong with it. He wasn't pretending to be nice. He was genuinely rather nice.

This is what I mean by alignment not influencing actions, but the opposite. His alignment didn't make him do evil things. The one evil thing he did made his alignment evil.

[*Brindas]

I'm curious what you'd make of this then. On another server I had a character, he was a wizard. He was generally a nice (if shy) guy. He'd protect his friends if needed, and even random strangers if there wasn't -too much- risk involved. He enjoyed his power but didn't use it to hurt innocents..... and he was Lawful Evil. Because he was a necromancer, and the raising of undead tainted his soul. He was brought up to think it was a normal thing to do, so he didn't see anything wrong with it. He wasn't pretending to be nice. He was genuinely rather nice.

This is what I mean by alignment not influencing actions, but the opposite. His alignment didn't make him do evil things. The one evil thing he did made his alignment evil.

The difference there is that his outlook isn't Evil, the ability he uses is. That is very different from a character with an evil outlook. (Incidentally, you mostly described Brindas on Port of Shadows). Associating with fiends or raising the undead or using this with the [Evil] descriptor will make you evil regardless of intent, because it does. It's useless to apply logic here, and Wizards (and TSR before it) said so. There's no intention, only action.

For everything else, however, intention matters. Messing with the soul, working with fiends, making sentient undead, these things are exceptions. Fireball, however, a spell that is generally used to make things not on fire now on fire (lethal to many creatures) is not. Intention absolutely matters here. I cast a fireball on a crowded group of people to kill them all.... chaotic evil, probably. I cast fireball on someone, and a kid was invisible, unbeknownst to me? Not evil. Yes. A kid died. Yes, my good or netural.. or... hell, it's a kid, even my evil characters will probably feel bad about it... but it's not evil. I didn't mean to kill a kid. So the action remains... whatever it was for fireballing the person I intended - anywhere from LG to CE or even not an alignment at all if it was something like warfare.

You can add gray if you want, even in D&D. Same situation, someone tells you "watch out, there's kids around that have been made invisible!". Well, ***.

But for the most part, that's what i meant. A character can have dilemmas, two characters of the same alignment could come to VERY different conclusions in the above situation with the intelligence.

So I guess what I'm saying is that alignment both guides future actions and is determined by previous ones. It does not DEMAND specific future actions, however, which is where I think people start railing against "you can't tell my character what to do". No one (should) be saying that, but your alignment is a good predictor.

Well, that came a long way from your example, I guess my answer is "What I said doesn't apply to actions classified as "always evil"." but there's very, very few of those. Also, associating and helping fiends is one of them.. which is another reason it's better to not have fiends running through poppy fields naked with nymphs while breastfeeding orphaned celestials.

[*coyotesage]

(Darkrob @ Sep 9 2015, 02:13 PM)
For me, Good Abyssals and evil celestials simply break the immersion. I've little interest in Demons and devils handing out flowers and I've little interest in seeing Celestials randomly killing innocents. Yes, it's possible but when the city is flooded with them... it completely and utterly ruins it for me.

I'm sorry you feel that way. That's almost the exact opposite of how I feel about it. The less expected and weirder, the more I get into it.

You like when someone behaves unexpected?

Will it stay unexpected if you see 10/10 fiends handing out flowers? No.
Will it stay unexpected if you see 10/10 fiends trying to murder you? No.
Will it stay unexpected if you see 2/10 fiends handing out flowers while the rest tries to murder you? Yes.

The restriction will make sure that there are no 10/10 fiends handing you out flowers
A approval would make sure that you can still get two flowers from fiends . And when it happens you will be exited. If everyone does it, it might get boring.

A troll that loves kids and wants to build and orphanage,
A unicorn with urban sensibilities and a deep seated hate for nature
A Iron Golem that really thinks it's an 8 year old girl,
A drider with an intense phobia of spiders,
A Dragon who is depressed and thinks other races are superior to it,
A vampire who's mission it is to heal the sick and injured...

I Never get tired of those kinds of things.  Never.

It might be fun if they all meet each other but I wouldnt call that "roleplay".

Just my two cents.

Just mandating an alignment will not necessarily guarantee anything if the person playing that evil fiend never does anything evil. This is why I keep saying, unless you guys start role-play policing, alignment restrictions don't do anything but limit a few class combos.

[*coyotesage]

A troll that loves kids and wants to build and orphanage,
A unicorn with urban sensibilities and a deep seated hate for nature
A Iron Golem that really thinks it's an 8 year old girl,
A drider with an intense phobia of spiders,
A Dragon who is depressed and thinks other races are superior to it,
A vampire who's mission it is to heal the sick and injured...

I Never get tired of those kinds of things.  Never.

None of those things are outsiders which are mostly what I was talking about, though.

A troll can be any alignment if they get enough reinforcement to be good in life.
Golems with personalities tend towards hilarity.

I love the idea of an undead doctor. (Though that doesn't preclude being evil!)

None of what you listed there is innately silly to me.
Like anything, it depends on how they portray such and have a decent reason for them. If so, I'm all on board with them.
But not many here are against good goblins etc. It's mostly the outsider stuff... unless I'm missing something.

If someone actually is railing against goblins, trolls, etc having free will, I'll gladly join you against them.

Those were examples off the top of my head, but I"ll give you some more Outsider related examples.

A Deva that secretly spreads diseases and refuses to heal mortals under the misguided belief it makes them stronger.
A Succubus wanting to adopt a dwarf baby and wanting to be a stay at home mom and part time school teacher.
A demon realizing the blood war is pointless and trying to convince his bretheren to take up knitting.

I could go on all day. All of those concepts are more interesting than the standard.

[*Brindas]

A troll that loves kids and wants to build and orphanage,
A unicorn with urban sensibilities and a deep seated hate for nature
A Iron Golem that really thinks it's an 8 year old girl,
A drider with an intense phobia of spiders,
A Dragon who is depressed and thinks other races are superior to it,
A vampire who's mission it is to heal the sick and injured...

I Never get tired of those kinds of things.  Never.

None of those things are outsiders which are mostly what I was talking about, though.

A troll can be any alignment if they get enough reinforcement to be good in life.
Golems with personalities tend towards hilarity.

I love the idea of an undead doctor. (Though that doesn't preclude being evil!)

None of what you listed there is innately silly to me.
Like anything, it depends on how they portray such and have a decent reason for them. If so, I'm all on board with them.
But not many here are against good goblins etc. It's mostly the outsider stuff... unless I'm missing something.

If someone actually is railing against goblins, trolls, etc having free will, I'll gladly join you against them.

Those were examples off the top of my head, but I"ll give you some more Outsider related examples.

A Deva that secretly spreads diseases and refuses to heal mortals under the misguided belief it makes them stronger.
A Succubus wanting to adopt a dwarf baby and wanting to be a stay at home mom and part time school teacher.
A demon realizing the blood war is pointless and trying to convince his bretheren to take up knitting.

I could go on all day. All of those concepts are more interesting than the standard.

I guess I'll never understand the thinking that "different" equals "interesting". if you need a gimmick to make your character interesting, it's usually not a very good character. I have gimmicky characters, and let me tell you... they're fun for a week or two.

Then I move on and play something else. In the outsider examples, I don't find them interesting. I question as my good cleric why the Deva hasn't fallen yet. Which puts my good cleric in a bad place - either my deity and everything I stand for is wrong.... or I alert the DM team and bad blood happens. I can't *ignore* something like that. Outsiders are like clerics: they have a duty to represent, at least in part, what their being is, because it isn't just about them. They are a piece of the world. If they want to play an exception they need to do it right, with forethought, and careful planning, not just "okay here I go!". I have never actually seen that happen. Their roleplay directly affects the world and other people around them based on what they are. If they don't like that, there are tons of other races to choose from.

It's the same as if I made a Pelor cleric who murdered babies. It's stupid and it puts real Pelorites in a bad spot because I made a bad choice.

In short: Outsiders being played incorrectly are wrong because you mess with other, unrelated people's roleplay, and I find that highly rude to do so. It's like if I logged in as a DM and just randomly ruled that murder was a good action. It messes with every pc that exists for no good reason. Outsiders are what they are, and good and evil are defined in D&D. A slight variation isn't a huge problem. Tableflipping alignment for no reason leads to confused priests, followers, and shallow humanlike outsiders.

[*coyotesage]

It's probably easier for me because I never play a character that believes in good or evil as anything other than elusive concepts created by minds to justify actions. I know that in the game there is a such a thing as good and evil, but my characters simply don't believe in that. Probably why I also never play clerics. I doubt I could convincingly play a truly good or evil character as defined by the game, because I myself strongly believe what I said in my first sentence.