So i have a player who wants to play a lawful evil character. As it has been described to me, it's kind of a "Yes, sure, i am a monster. But I'm the monster that keeps the other monsters at bay." The problem i'm running into, is how justify if/when the character fails their intimidation rolls. Like normally you can kind of hand wave with something like "The NPC is not afraid of you." But i feel like that doesn't really work, when the character is less "Trying to scare someone (with a bluff of implied violence)" and more "Ok, so i strap this guy down and start to torture him for the information."
My current outs are stuff like "You took things to far and the NPC died"/ "NPC's mind was unable to withstand your actions. It shatters like a glass cup against the hard stone floor." Or the tried and true "Turns out they are more (strong emotional feeling) of (thing) then they are afraid of you."
first mistake you did was to allow himto do what he wants without asking some questions first...
first off, evil people do not belongs in groups, the group might decide to deal with him when they have enough... is the player ok with that ? the actions of the player will have consequences, he tortured a guy, hiding the body, desintegrating them, was the guard on duty does he has friends who search for him. all of these are problems that will be brough to the groups attentions and when those problems becomes too big, the players will probably turn on him again.
Consequences is the word you are seeking. if there is no consequences to his actions, then why is he playing that to begin with ? no there as to be complications and consequences to the doings of all players, not just him.
your problem on intimidation is easy to fix without the need to hand wave it all... in fact you should hand wave as little as you can. now if you hand wave because some players are strongly against that type of description, thats a red flag you should of discussed before letting that player join in. the inherent problem with an evil pc is that we do pretty gruesome things... other players might not like they hear and it might turn them off. if that happens, then it was a bad idea and i would suggest the evil player finds another character to play. intimidation rolls are fine for any NPC, you can just set a DC for the information and make him do a bunch of rolls for the torture scene. giving him a bit of info every time he beats your DC.
i'll show you an exemple of what hapenned to me in an evil game of a friend.... i was playing a barbarian minotaur. he was sadistic and had a bunch of head problems like liking too much sex and the likes... not going into much details.... before i even did this character, i literally asked the other players if they were OK with such things, had they said anything to me, i would not have played it. but they all said, do whatever you want, we're fine with it. and i started enumerating just to be sure... ****, torture, dismemberment, full on joker style madness and the likes ? they all said, we' don't care !
heres the punchline... after 4 sessions i had to drop the character and change his persona. i even made one of them gag... people might think they are ready for whats coming, but in the end they might not internally. so speak with other players, make sure this character wont be a problem and if you see him becoming a problem... react to it, don't just hand wave.
so yeah keyword... consequences !
small story about an evil campaign back in my school years... group destroys a small village. after the 2nd village destroyed, they are hunted down because of wanted posters. they level up, destroy a town... now the guards of the country are after them. not just the bounty hunters. they wreck a capital... barely escaping their demise and saying to me that i have put guards too big for them on purpose... wasn't the case, capital, of course its well defended. they wreck village after villages... until they see a man entirely clad in golden armor, white eyes sparking with divine energy and a maul in his hand. he's alone, they do not think... they meet him ready to kill the holy man... the man says, i have forseen your deeds in my visions, prepare to meet your end ! the group ignores the warning, just try to kill him... i give them all 1 hit before he goes... only a single player decided to run, said thats not normal, thats definitely not human right there ! the others says... chicken its gonna be done in 1 round. they all go... mind you they are all level 5 or 6 back in 2nd edition days. the man goes "is that all ? now int he name of my deitiy i will execute you !" and the cleric high level cast flame strike at level 9 ! kills them all in one shot. except for the man who fled... players all calls bullshit and says, i cheated...
moral of the story... do you really think the king would of let another village go down in flames without sending one of his general against them considering the rest of the country over time was unable to catch them ? consequences ! consequences man !
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
the fact that you started your reply with a broad strokes opinion, does not really give me much hope that you are going to offer much in the way of helpful advice.
Also noticing that basically everything you point to seems to come off as less "evil doesn't work in a group" and more "chaotic murder hobo doesn't work for group settings (where everyone isn't a chaotic murder hobo"
In the end it doesn't feel like you actually bothered to answer the question posed. Consequences don't fix the here and now problem of "Player rolled a 4 (that's with advantage).... now try to explain why the NPC, who they are currently literally flaying alive, doesn't just tell them the answer to their question." Sure you can set up a problem (consequences for flaying someone alive) down the line, but again that doesn't fix the problem at hand.
First, there’s the idea you don’t have to call for a roll. If you decide the NPC will give up the information based on what the character is doing, they do, no roll needed.
But if he does flub a roll. They say that someone being tortured will say whatever they must to make it stop. But that doesn’t mean they’ll tell the truth, just that say what they must to stop it. Could be that on a bad roll, the NPC gives false information because it’s what they think the PC wants to hear in the hope it will end the torture.
First, there’s the idea you don’t have to call for a roll. If you decide the NPC will give up the information based on what the character is doing, they do, no roll needed.
But if he does flub a roll. They say that someone being tortured will say whatever they must to make it stop. But that doesn’t mean they’ll tell the truth, just that say what they must to stop it. Could be that on a bad roll, the NPC gives false information because it’s what they think the PC wants to hear in the hope it will end the torture.
i like this. I think i will add it into my possible responses
I don't think this has anything to do with giving the player what they want. If they make a roll and it bombs, then the check fails to produce the desired results on the desired time scale. For intimidation, maybe the NPC is too scared to talk. Or they try to hide their fear with aggression/bravado. Or they break down. If you ask your players to roll and then don't allow them to fail, then it's no different from not asking them to roll at all.
I had an extremely persuasive bard in my last campaign. A roll of 20 was low for him. Sometimes, I didn't bother asking him to roll and just narrated the effects of his natural persuasiveness. Sometimes, I let him roll because he was the only person in the party with a shot at convincing someone of something, and the DC was 30. And sometimes, when he rolled low, I would narrate that his interlocutors were too busy being enamored with his aura of charisma to give him the answers he wanted or change their minds. Every strength is a weakness in the wrong circumstances. You can be too intimidating, charming, or observant for your own good. Low rolls can therefore be putting too much into it such that it's counterproductive to your goal.
First of all, I don't really recommend allowing this type of character. That said, the big real-world flaw of torture is that it's good at getting an answer, but bad at getting a true answer. People just say whatever they think will cause the torture to stop. Thus, if the PC fails their roll, they still get an answer. It's just incorrect.
Fair points. I think my big issue is that i'm so use to people defaulting to the old "Go big. or Go Home" style of doing things. I'm very curious what a subdued intimidation/ charm/etc.... looks like.
I also kind of love the idea of sometimes giving the players the answers, and then having them assume the NPC was lying (because it was too easy).
First of all, I don't really recommend allowing this type of character. That said, the big real-world flaw of torture is that it's good at getting an answer, but bad at getting a true answer. People just say whatever they think will cause the torture to stop. Thus, if the PC fails their roll, they still get an answer. It's just incorrect.
So why do you feel this kind of character would be bad to allow?
I'm trying to figure out if peoples dislike of the character idea is based off foreseen problems, or if it's just the "I've never managed to play or play with a decent evil character, so thus it must be impossible to play with/as one."
the fact that you started your reply with a broad strokes opinion, does not really give me much hope that you are going to offer much in the way of helpful advice.
Also noticing that basically everything you point to seems to come off as less "evil doesn't work in a group" and more "chaotic murder hobo doesn't work for group settings (where everyone isn't a chaotic murder hobo"
In the end it doesn't feel like you actually bothered to answer the question posed. Consequences don't fix the here and now problem of "Player rolled a 4 (that's with advantage).... now try to explain why the NPC, who they are currently literally flaying alive, doesn't just tell them the answer to their question." Sure you can set up a problem (consequences for flaying someone alive) down the line, but again that doesn't fix the problem at hand.
I read that torture doesn't yield reliable information, so you could easily have the foes provide false information to make the pain stop. A particularly tough one might get to make Strength checks to break out of whatever's holding him so he can attack back, or a magical foe may have some other way of turning the tides, or at least teleporting away before the torcher can begin in earnest.
In the more long-term, if the character is particularly sadistic, that will likely draw the attention of fiends or of deities, wanting to either further corrupt them, or punish them for their horrendous actions respectively.
First of all, I don't really recommend allowing this type of character. That said, the big real-world flaw of torture is that it's good at getting an answer, but bad at getting a true answer. People just say whatever they think will cause the torture to stop. Thus, if the PC fails their roll, they still get an answer. It's just incorrect.
TBH I would have torture give incorrect/incomplete information pretty much every time, if a player tried that in my campaign. Any skill check would just be to see how quickly the victim started telling them what they thought the torturer wanted to hear
If you want to get the truth out of someone, at least use zone of truth. That's what it's there for
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
So why do you feel this kind of character would be bad to allow?
I'm trying to figure out if peoples dislike of the character idea is based off foreseen problems, or if it's just the "I've never managed to play or play with a decent evil character, so thus it must be impossible to play with/as one."
I wouldn't allow a character like that because gratuitous torture is just not something I'm comfortable with narrating as a DM (or comfortable listening to as a player). I don't see a problem with it if you're in a group of adults that are all comfortable with it though.
As for your initial question I would probably just say that not everything requires a skillcheck roll. Presumably they already succeeded on various combat and/or skillcheck rolls to subdue the NPC, so from there you could just narrate results without requiring Intimidation checks.
So why do you feel this kind of character would be bad to allow?
I have never seen things like torture, even if resolved as 'fade to black', make a better game.
fair, fair
Not a huge fan of it, but i can see where it comes in handy (as an option). Ideally the DM never lets things progress so far, as to make it the only "answer".
The player sounds like an Edgelord who is only using the game to feed their own violent fantasies that laws and circumstances won't allow them to embody in real life.
I would recommend not only cutting that person out of your gaming group, but out of your life entirely.
The player sounds like an Edgelord who is only using the game to feed their own violent fantasies that laws and circumstances won't allow them to embody in real life.
I would recommend not only cutting that person out of your gaming group, but out of your life entirely.
This is not the impression i have gotten from the player, and i will likely not be taking your advice. But thank you for offering it.
The player sounds like an Edgelord who is only using the game to feed their own violent fantasies that laws and circumstances won't allow them to embody in real life.
I would recommend not only cutting that person out of your gaming group, but out of your life entirely.
That's quite a drastic conclusion to jump to from reading an internet forum post and not actually knowing much at all about the context of the situation.
"You cause a lot of pain but you develop no coherent information or leads answering your question."
As mentioned, torture in real life is rarely useful in generating good intelligence. This is why "beating a confession out of someone" usually leads to the confession being thrown out of court or assigned low credibility in an intelligence evaluation. Besides the human rights violation, it's also been demonstrated by numerous academic assessments as well as assessments by practitioners of various professions where HUMINT is gathered, torture puts a subject in a "say anything" position.
So failures should just be incoherent or otherwise inactionable results (the only name your subject gives you was "mommy" do you want to hunt down your subject's mother?), if you have some sort of fumble mechanic or just want to double down on failure, give them misinformation. As a DM, you have strong sway over the moral workings of your universe. You can make torture a very flawed an inappropriate method if you so wish.
If you want an idea as to how intimidation can work without "fade to black", the Navy SEAL movie "Act of Valor" has a pretty good interrogation scene taking place on a yacht, but the only reason it works is because the interrogator already knows so much prior to the meeting. I wouldn't set the DC for info from intimidation within the likely range unless the interrogator has done some demonstrable homework on the subject. The difficulty in interrogation IRL isn't really based on how weak or strong minded the subject is, it's how good the interrogator is.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Assuming the NPC actually knows the information the player is seeking and the PC fails their check:
1. The NPC is more afraid of x than of player.
2. The NPC has a high pain tolerance, they mock the PC while getting the corkscrews.
3. The PC turns out to be fairly bad at torture. Perhaps they trip while carrying the water to waterboard them, start sneezing thanks to all the dust and can't stop, their tools break as they get ready to use them, etc.
4. Torture is the NPCs kink. It's going to get weird real quick when your LE PC is whipping them and they just say "harder daddy".
So why do you feel this kind of character would be bad to allow?
I have never seen things like torture, even if resolved as 'fade to black', make a better game.
Agree. And this hopefully goes without saying, but if you are allowing torture in your game, it's wise to ensure everyone at the table is comfortable with it. Not only that, it's good to check in with players privately afterward, because they may not realize beforehand that they find certain subject matter disturbing until they see it referenced in-game.
To add to the potential red flag discussion about this character, I often find that these types of characters are not well-suited to a collaborative game unless every other character at the table really buys into it. If the rest of the party is more chill and you have one PC with sadistic tendencies, the tension & disharmony amongst the party starts to grow when players 1-4 want to handle things one way and player 5 always goes full Guantanamo Bay on an NPC. Every once in a while is manageable, but if it becomes a habit, it can form a wedge between the players that causes things to be unfun. This is a cooperative game, and some characters aren't really suited to being team players. Be on the lookout for signs that the PC isn't gelling.
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So i have a player who wants to play a lawful evil character. As it has been described to me, it's kind of a "Yes, sure, i am a monster. But I'm the monster that keeps the other monsters at bay." The problem i'm running into, is how justify if/when the character fails their intimidation rolls. Like normally you can kind of hand wave with something like "The NPC is not afraid of you." But i feel like that doesn't really work, when the character is less "Trying to scare someone (with a bluff of implied violence)" and more "Ok, so i strap this guy down and start to torture him for the information."
My current outs are stuff like "You took things to far and the NPC died"/ "NPC's mind was unable to withstand your actions. It shatters like a glass cup against the hard stone floor." Or the tried and true "Turns out they are more (strong emotional feeling) of (thing) then they are afraid of you."
first mistake you did was to allow himto do what he wants without asking some questions first...
first off, evil people do not belongs in groups, the group might decide to deal with him when they have enough... is the player ok with that ?
the actions of the player will have consequences, he tortured a guy, hiding the body, desintegrating them, was the guard on duty does he has friends who search for him. all of these are problems that will be brough to the groups attentions and when those problems becomes too big, the players will probably turn on him again.
Consequences is the word you are seeking.
if there is no consequences to his actions, then why is he playing that to begin with ?
no there as to be complications and consequences to the doings of all players, not just him.
your problem on intimidation is easy to fix without the need to hand wave it all...
in fact you should hand wave as little as you can. now if you hand wave because some players are strongly against that type of description, thats a red flag you should of discussed before letting that player join in. the inherent problem with an evil pc is that we do pretty gruesome things... other players might not like they hear and it might turn them off. if that happens, then it was a bad idea and i would suggest the evil player finds another character to play. intimidation rolls are fine for any NPC, you can just set a DC for the information and make him do a bunch of rolls for the torture scene. giving him a bit of info every time he beats your DC.
i'll show you an exemple of what hapenned to me in an evil game of a friend....
i was playing a barbarian minotaur. he was sadistic and had a bunch of head problems like liking too much sex and the likes... not going into much details.... before i even did this character, i literally asked the other players if they were OK with such things, had they said anything to me, i would not have played it. but they all said, do whatever you want, we're fine with it. and i started enumerating just to be sure... ****, torture, dismemberment, full on joker style madness and the likes ? they all said, we' don't care !
heres the punchline... after 4 sessions i had to drop the character and change his persona. i even made one of them gag...
people might think they are ready for whats coming, but in the end they might not internally.
so speak with other players, make sure this character wont be a problem and if you see him becoming a problem... react to it, don't just hand wave.
so yeah keyword... consequences !
small story about an evil campaign back in my school years...
group destroys a small village. after the 2nd village destroyed, they are hunted down because of wanted posters.
they level up, destroy a town... now the guards of the country are after them. not just the bounty hunters.
they wreck a capital... barely escaping their demise and saying to me that i have put guards too big for them on purpose... wasn't the case, capital, of course its well defended.
they wreck village after villages... until they see a man entirely clad in golden armor, white eyes sparking with divine energy and a maul in his hand. he's alone, they do not think... they meet him ready to kill the holy man... the man says, i have forseen your deeds in my visions, prepare to meet your end ! the group ignores the warning, just try to kill him... i give them all 1 hit before he goes... only a single player decided to run, said thats not normal, thats definitely not human right there ! the others says... chicken its gonna be done in 1 round. they all go... mind you they are all level 5 or 6 back in 2nd edition days. the man goes "is that all ? now int he name of my deitiy i will execute you !" and the cleric high level cast flame strike at level 9 ! kills them all in one shot. except for the man who fled... players all calls bullshit and says, i cheated...
moral of the story...
do you really think the king would of let another village go down in flames without sending one of his general against them considering the rest of the country over time was unable to catch them ? consequences ! consequences man !
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
the fact that you started your reply with a broad strokes opinion, does not really give me much hope that you are going to offer much in the way of helpful advice.
Also noticing that basically everything you point to seems to come off as less "evil doesn't work in a group" and more "chaotic murder hobo doesn't work for group settings (where everyone isn't a chaotic murder hobo"
In the end it doesn't feel like you actually bothered to answer the question posed. Consequences don't fix the here and now problem of "Player rolled a 4 (that's with advantage).... now try to explain why the NPC, who they are currently literally flaying alive, doesn't just tell them the answer to their question." Sure you can set up a problem (consequences for flaying someone alive) down the line, but again that doesn't fix the problem at hand.
First, there’s the idea you don’t have to call for a roll. If you decide the NPC will give up the information based on what the character is doing, they do, no roll needed.
But if he does flub a roll. They say that someone being tortured will say whatever they must to make it stop. But that doesn’t mean they’ll tell the truth, just that say what they must to stop it. Could be that on a bad roll, the NPC gives false information because it’s what they think the PC wants to hear in the hope it will end the torture.
i like this. I think i will add it into my possible responses
I don't think this has anything to do with giving the player what they want. If they make a roll and it bombs, then the check fails to produce the desired results on the desired time scale. For intimidation, maybe the NPC is too scared to talk. Or they try to hide their fear with aggression/bravado. Or they break down. If you ask your players to roll and then don't allow them to fail, then it's no different from not asking them to roll at all.
I had an extremely persuasive bard in my last campaign. A roll of 20 was low for him. Sometimes, I didn't bother asking him to roll and just narrated the effects of his natural persuasiveness. Sometimes, I let him roll because he was the only person in the party with a shot at convincing someone of something, and the DC was 30. And sometimes, when he rolled low, I would narrate that his interlocutors were too busy being enamored with his aura of charisma to give him the answers he wanted or change their minds. Every strength is a weakness in the wrong circumstances. You can be too intimidating, charming, or observant for your own good. Low rolls can therefore be putting too much into it such that it's counterproductive to your goal.
First of all, I don't really recommend allowing this type of character. That said, the big real-world flaw of torture is that it's good at getting an answer, but bad at getting a true answer. People just say whatever they think will cause the torture to stop. Thus, if the PC fails their roll, they still get an answer. It's just incorrect.
Fair points. I think my big issue is that i'm so use to people defaulting to the old "Go big. or Go Home" style of doing things. I'm very curious what a subdued intimidation/ charm/etc.... looks like.
I also kind of love the idea of sometimes giving the players the answers, and then having them assume the NPC was lying (because it was too easy).
So why do you feel this kind of character would be bad to allow?
I'm trying to figure out if peoples dislike of the character idea is based off foreseen problems, or if it's just the "I've never managed to play or play with a decent evil character, so thus it must be impossible to play with/as one."
I read that torture doesn't yield reliable information, so you could easily have the foes provide false information to make the pain stop. A particularly tough one might get to make Strength checks to break out of whatever's holding him so he can attack back, or a magical foe may have some other way of turning the tides, or at least teleporting away before the torcher can begin in earnest.
In the more long-term, if the character is particularly sadistic, that will likely draw the attention of fiends or of deities, wanting to either further corrupt them, or punish them for their horrendous actions respectively.
TBH I would have torture give incorrect/incomplete information pretty much every time, if a player tried that in my campaign. Any skill check would just be to see how quickly the victim started telling them what they thought the torturer wanted to hear
If you want to get the truth out of someone, at least use zone of truth. That's what it's there for
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I wouldn't allow a character like that because gratuitous torture is just not something I'm comfortable with narrating as a DM (or comfortable listening to as a player). I don't see a problem with it if you're in a group of adults that are all comfortable with it though.
As for your initial question I would probably just say that not everything requires a skillcheck roll. Presumably they already succeeded on various combat and/or skillcheck rolls to subdue the NPC, so from there you could just narrate results without requiring Intimidation checks.
I have never seen things like torture, even if resolved as 'fade to black', make a better game.
fair, fair
Not a huge fan of it, but i can see where it comes in handy (as an option). Ideally the DM never lets things progress so far, as to make it the only "answer".
The player sounds like an Edgelord who is only using the game to feed their own violent fantasies that laws and circumstances won't allow them to embody in real life.
I would recommend not only cutting that person out of your gaming group, but out of your life entirely.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
This is not the impression i have gotten from the player, and i will likely not be taking your advice. But thank you for offering it.
That's quite a drastic conclusion to jump to from reading an internet forum post and not actually knowing much at all about the context of the situation.
"You cause a lot of pain but you develop no coherent information or leads answering your question."
As mentioned, torture in real life is rarely useful in generating good intelligence. This is why "beating a confession out of someone" usually leads to the confession being thrown out of court or assigned low credibility in an intelligence evaluation. Besides the human rights violation, it's also been demonstrated by numerous academic assessments as well as assessments by practitioners of various professions where HUMINT is gathered, torture puts a subject in a "say anything" position.
So failures should just be incoherent or otherwise inactionable results (the only name your subject gives you was "mommy" do you want to hunt down your subject's mother?), if you have some sort of fumble mechanic or just want to double down on failure, give them misinformation. As a DM, you have strong sway over the moral workings of your universe. You can make torture a very flawed an inappropriate method if you so wish.
If you want an idea as to how intimidation can work without "fade to black", the Navy SEAL movie "Act of Valor" has a pretty good interrogation scene taking place on a yacht, but the only reason it works is because the interrogator already knows so much prior to the meeting. I wouldn't set the DC for info from intimidation within the likely range unless the interrogator has done some demonstrable homework on the subject. The difficulty in interrogation IRL isn't really based on how weak or strong minded the subject is, it's how good the interrogator is.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Assuming the NPC actually knows the information the player is seeking and the PC fails their check:
1. The NPC is more afraid of x than of player.
2. The NPC has a high pain tolerance, they mock the PC while getting the corkscrews.
3. The PC turns out to be fairly bad at torture. Perhaps they trip while carrying the water to waterboard them, start sneezing thanks to all the dust and can't stop, their tools break as they get ready to use them, etc.
4. Torture is the NPCs kink. It's going to get weird real quick when your LE PC is whipping them and they just say "harder daddy".
Agree. And this hopefully goes without saying, but if you are allowing torture in your game, it's wise to ensure everyone at the table is comfortable with it. Not only that, it's good to check in with players privately afterward, because they may not realize beforehand that they find certain subject matter disturbing until they see it referenced in-game.
To add to the potential red flag discussion about this character, I often find that these types of characters are not well-suited to a collaborative game unless every other character at the table really buys into it. If the rest of the party is more chill and you have one PC with sadistic tendencies, the tension & disharmony amongst the party starts to grow when players 1-4 want to handle things one way and player 5 always goes full Guantanamo Bay on an NPC. Every once in a while is manageable, but if it becomes a habit, it can form a wedge between the players that causes things to be unfun. This is a cooperative game, and some characters aren't really suited to being team players. Be on the lookout for signs that the PC isn't gelling.