You have the right, as DM, to demand the player to play his character exactly according to the Alignment he chose for that character. If after speaking with the player, and perhaps explaining what the alignment is that he or she chose, if they keep disrupting the group by taking actions that go against the party's whims, and especially contrary to the PC's alignment, then the player should be removed from the group.
You have the right, as DM, to demand the player to play his character exactly according to the Alignment he chose for that character. If after speaking with the player, and perhaps explaining what the alignment is that he or she chose, if they keep disrupting the group by taking actions that go against the party's whims, and especially contrary to the PC's alignment, then the player should be removed from the group.
That's an awfully extreme route to take!
It's worth noting that someone's alignment is not the cause of their actions, it's the effect of them. I can say I'm lawful good all I want, but if I actually spend my time tempting villagers to secret meetings outside the town walls so they get mauled to death by bears, then I'm definitely chaotic evil.
The most important part of the game (to me, but I think others will view it similarly) is that people have fun. To do that, you need the following:
1: Everyone needs to be able to play the character they've chosen in the way they feel they should, with compromises for: 2: Nobody should regularly perform actions which annoy or detract from the fun of the other players. Annoying other characters is fine, as long as the other player is enjoying the interaction.
Now, if the player made a character and said "I'm lawful good", then as they really get into the role they lean more towards a different alignment, then their alignment is changing - either they were wrong with their initial lawful good, or the character has changed. They can amend their backstory to suit, if they want, or they can say it's happened in-game.
If I were a lawful good paladin, in a group of roguish chaotic neutral types, and over time I became more used to chaotic manners and started adopting them myself, I would feel offended if the DM told me to "stop that, you're supposed to be lawful good". I am what I am, and if lawful good doesn't describe me, then it's not what I am.
"you have the right, as the DM to demand...". no, you don't. You have an obligation as the DM to ensure the game is fun for everyone. If it comes down to a decision between saying "You can do that, but it's not what a lawful good person would do" and saying "you can't do that because of your alignment", then you should be picking the former. If the player is doing stuff which is making it less fun to the other players, then you can intervene with demands. Not for acting outside their alignment - you might as well tell a wizard off if he wanted to hit someone.
Some classes have consequences for changing alignment - clerics and paladins moving from good to neutral will be viewed as bad by their deities and they might lose powers. If a barbarian changes from chaotic neutral to lawful good, that won't lose anything.
I'm not here to debate with you about alignment or how to run a game as a DM. My advice and suggestion is directed for pupulesurfer. If you want to discuss topics like "what causes a character's actions" and "what the goal of the game is", you can set that up on a new forum post.
So yeah, like I was saying, everyone (at the table) expects a player to run his or her character according to alignment chosen. And typically, a player who has trouble doing an alignment almost always ends up continuing to "do their own thing". The players should be working together. If a PC assassinates his own guild just because it helps other players' characters, that doesn't make sense if PC has known the guild for much longer than 3hrs of other PCs, with ties, background, etc to that guild -- let alone why a Neutral character is backstabbing his own guild in the first place. It's one thing to follow this through with the Guild (or associates of Guild/NPC nobles, etc) seeking revenge, for example, but that doesn't resolve the initial poor-alignment play. Hence, the DM should speak about it with the player. Later, after seeing how that player plays in the game, it can be seen whether it's going according to what the group wants -- but if it's causing enough issue that the player significantly hinders your DM;ing -- and group unity, fairness, --- you make the call ultimately of whether he or she stays.
I'm not here to debate with you about alignment or how to run a game as a DM. My advice and suggestion is directed for pupulesurfer. If you want to discuss topics like "what causes a character's actions" and "what the goal of the game is", you can set that up on a new forum post.
So yeah, like I was saying, everyone (at the table) expects a player to run his or her character according to alignment chosen. And typically, a player who has trouble doing an alignment almost always ends up continuing to "do their own thing". The players should be working together. If a PC assassinates his own guild just because it helps other players' characters, that doesn't make sense if PC has known the guild for much longer than 3hrs of other PCs, with ties, background, etc to that guild -- let alone why a Neutral character is backstabbing his own guild in the first place. It's one thing to follow this through with the Guild (or associates of Guild/NPC nobles, etc) seeking revenge, for example, but that doesn't resolve the initial poor-alignment play. Hence, the DM should speak about it with the player. Later, after seeing how that player plays in the game, it can be seen whether it's going according to what the group wants -- but if it's causing enough issue that the player significantly hinders your DM;ing -- and group unity, fairness, --- you make the call ultimately of whether he or she stays.
I agree that if a player is causing issues then this needs to be directly discussed and dealt with, sometimes by exile.
But my key point is that a players actions influence their alignment as much as their alignment influences their actions. I don't feel like anyone should say to anyone "you're playing your character wrong". Better to instead conclude that "lawful good doesn't describe them" than "they are doing chaotic things but they are lawful, so must be exiled".
Session 1: Character played off as a dark mysterious character who ran into a party of adventurers and decided to help them on their quest (end goal was to capture BBEG but assassin wanted to, you know, assassinate it instead - also fine!)
Session 2: Character starts assassinating his guild mates and allied guild members for the sake of helping this party that he just met hours ago.
There is no way this PC would backstab his guild so quickly. On top of that, it derails a major subplot that involved the PCs as they needed help from the guild to accomplish a few quests. Now they won't have that option due to the new PC changing his allegiance at the drop of the hat.
I feel like there's some missing info here.
Why exactly did they feel the need to turn on the guild? Why did he think killing them would help the party? Did you make the guild explicitly opposed to the party? Was the guild attacking the party?
If so, you put this player into a position where they felt they had to choose a side, and it sounds like they chose the one that kept the game going smoothly. I would not fault them for that. Or for killing their opponents when they're playing an assassin.
If it wasn't open combat, there had to be a moment where you could have said, "Hang on. You don't have to murder your associates to help the party. You realize this course of action could actually put them in more danger by inviting the wrath of the entire guild." Or just something along those lines.
Either way, it seems like there was a disconnect between what the player thought needed to be done and what you presented. Getting at the heart of that and making sure you're both on the same page could help you avoid situations like this in the future.
You have the right, as DM, to demand the player to play his character exactly according to the Alignment he chose for that character. If after speaking with the player, and perhaps explaining what the alignment is that he or she chose, if they keep disrupting the group by taking actions that go against the party's whims, and especially contrary to the PC's alignment, then the player should be removed from the group.
No, you do not have the right to demand that a player RP a certain way.
You do have the right as a DM to rule that either:
(a) He is not RPing the alignment on his sheet, and since that alignment is a descriptor of the character, and the descriptors on the sheet MUST be accurate, he will need to erase the alignment he wrote down and replace it with the correct one (in this case, it sounds like neutral evil maybe), or
(b) If he retains the alignment and continues to RP in a way that makes the alignment, which is a line on his character sheet, be an inaccurate descriptor for his character, you have every right to dock XP.
You do not have the right to "tell him how to RP," as a DM. Only to tell him that you do not agree that he has written down the correct data in the alignment line of his sheet, and he should either change that line, or RP in a way that makes the line an accurate descriptor, and if he refuses to do either, you have the right as a DM to give him less XP.
You should explain that writing down lawful neutral and then RPing neutral evil (or whatever -- doesn't matter for this example), would be equivalent to writing down an 8 STR on his sheet but then taking +3 to hit and damage every time he swings a battle axe. The sheet says -1 and he adds +3: he's not doing what the sheet says. You're not allowed to do that. Your game play must conform to what it says on the sheet, and what it says on the sheet must conform to your game play. When the two are not aligned, this must be fixed. Refusal to fix it -- insistence on game play that does not match what it says on the sheet - is called "cheating."
Goodness, please do NOT listen to "TheDungeon_Master_DM." What horrible power-hungry advice. It's your player's character, it's your world. The story is where those two meet and belongs to no one and everyone.
You have already gotten a lot of advice and I think you probably know what to do moving forward. That said, I wanted to throw in this as a general philosophy: The players shouldn't be held to their alignment out of character. It's not fun to find out you want to play your character differently but be forced to play it the way you wrote before the first time you ever played. Instead, you just adjust the world AROUND your player's choices.
It's fine for the lawful good fighter who worked for the city guard to suddenly start breaking the law seemingly on a whim. Your job, as the DM, is to make your world react to that including all of the consequences. In this example, that could mean the threat of being caught, making NPCs ask them questions that force Deception rolls, pissing off the wrong people... It could also mean making criminal contacts that open up new avenues of adventure. And of course any spells and items and the like that deal with alignment should use what YOU deem to be their true nature (though I think 5e eliminated alignment-based spells anyway). What is written on their sheet for alignment means nothing, it's how they act that matters. On that note, I don't even have players write down alignment.
Remember, it's not an adventure if you have to stay on a track.
It's fun sometimes to see personality or at least communication styles manifest through descriptions of DMing. Authoritative communications styles are healthy and done with confident candor. Authoritarian communication styles are considered not so much.
As DM, you can say whatever you want at your table. However, alignment used as tool through which to leash performance per DMs insistence doesn't seem a productive way to play the game. It's frankly where the term "running the game" can get into some connotative sour space.
Alignment is a claim a player makes about their character, and that claim can be tested by the game to see how true it is as the player really comes to terms with the character, which may bee terms that land differently on the alignment chart.
Bottom line, mechanical consequences for alignment "deviation" don't exist in the present edition of the game, though the DMG does point to an Honor system which could be used (as well as drawing from other systems) where adherence to alignment could be more pronounced in the game. In terms of how alignment seems to be treated in the extant published game products in the current edition though, how the world reacts to a PC's actions are a form, and should be the form, of accountability for the PC's actions. The DM determines that, but it should be done more organically with how the game world exists, not some sort of discipline for player's performance to DMs expectations. A DM making out of game declarations adjudicating alignment performance is just so ... schoolmaster I guess. It's much more fun to have characters behave and let the game manifest consequences for the behavior possibly culminating in a "are we the baddies?" moment.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
As I was trying to say above, the alignment line on a character sheet is meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Much like saying the character is 5'9" tall or has blond hair and blue eyes.
However, when the player is at the table and the DM says, "Describe your character to the rest of the players," and the player describes brown hair and brown eyes, the DM would be right to say, "How come it says blond hair/blue eyes on your sheet?" If the player has a good reason ("I am using the Disguise Self spell"), fine. But if the player is going to have the sheet say one thing and the RP describe another, that is an issue. The two need to be in sync.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yeah, I used to play with David Byrne back at RISD and his polymorphous character sheet shenanigans would have been insufferable to you, once he sang to us "I change my hairstyle, so many times now, I don't know what I look like!" and we just let it slide from there.
Now, let me change my story.
When it comes to cosmetic details that get blanks on a character sheet which are often overlooked, I think everybody can be granted a David Bowie period of figuring out their look.I think in session one, unless the characters have invested beyond blanks on a form to include actual artistic renderings of their characters (which by the nature of such work entails a lot more creative investment than the one worders "demanded" on the character sheet) if the sheet says blond and the character says brown, I'd simply say "are you sure? because the sheet says blond and I want to make sure I got the look right in case witnesses see you do something that's going to get you put on a wanted poster for example." Again, it comes down to authoritarian "stop, this is an issue" and an authoritative, "hang on, let's make sure we're on the same page and here's why" modes of playing at the table. But really, it's often not that big an issue and can be retconned pretty easily.
Alignment is frankly an extension of this. Players will give one of the nine capes as team jerseys for what they think they intend at the outset, and as the character actually develops the game determines their moral standing is actually landing somewhere else. Adjudications of "you say you're LG, but none of your actions make sense to that alignment" just doesn't literally plays well as opposed to an NPC saying, "so when you first came to town, the guild had the impression you used your blade under a code of honor, there's a pile of bodies saying otherwise. I'm here because the guild wants your soul in Carceri and I have this sword to make sure that happens." Only one class really has strong conduct guidelines via its oath, the consequences of which can be addressed in game with resorting to Oathbreaker being a possibility if it makes sense to the game.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yes, I'm of much the same opinion as MidnightPlat above. If someone is constantly changing their physical appearance with no logical reason (changeling, Alter Self, so forth) then eventually that becomes a point to address out of character in some respectful capacity befitting of your group's relationships and atmosphere.
Alignment is COMPLETELY different. Alignment is already such a wishy-washy idea anyway, and anything relating to it really should be addressed in-character in my opinion. This could be with direct addressing by an NPC or simply by the way other people view and treat the character, among other more drastic things.
Of all the things from 4e, the idea of being unaligned is really one I wish they'd kept. Most characters were expected to be just doing their thing, not particularly good or evil or lawful or chaotic, just unaligned, but some few were so good or so evil that it actually bears mentioning. It just works so much better than putting people in an ill-defined 9-point straightjacket. Sometimes good people do bad things and vice versa. The only thing that really matters, imo, is that a character be played consistently -- with some latitude for gradual change over time as they evolve.
And to the OP, as I'd kind of said earlier, I'd end up giving this player even more latitude because this is a new character. People are allowed to change their minds about the characters they play. Could be that between making it and sitting down, the player realized they didn't like the choices they'd made. I actually have a house rule that for the first three sessions with a character, a player can change anything they want to. Literally anything - class, race, juggle ability scores, alignment, too. Sometimes the idea you had doesn't play as well as it seemed when you were making it up. I'm not going to make someone suffer through playing a character they don't like because they tried something and it didn't work.
If a PC assassinates his own guild just because it helps other players' characters, that doesn't make sense if PC has known the guild for much longer than 3hrs of other PCs, with ties, background, etc to that guild -- let alone why a Neutral character is backstabbing his own guild in the first place. It's one thing to follow this through with the Guild (or associates of Guild/NPC nobles, etc) seeking revenge, for example, but that doesn't resolve the initial poor-alignment play. Hence, the DM should speak about it with the player. Later, after seeing how that player plays in the game, it can be seen whether it's going according to what the group wants -- but if it's causing enough issue that the player significantly hinders your DM;ing -- and group unity, fairness, --- you make the call ultimately of whether he or she stays.
Yes, this was precisely the issue I was trying to get past. A lifetime with a guild vs 3 hours with the PCs. So yes, I agree there should be some level of accountability to how the character was built and introduced in the game. If that's not how the Players wants to do things, that's fine, but I really need to know beforehand. So after I talk to them, we can either change the character or change the plot.
Session 1: Character played off as a dark mysterious character who ran into a party of adventurers and decided to help them on their quest (end goal was to capture BBEG but assassin wanted to, you know, assassinate it instead - also fine!)
Session 2: Character starts assassinating his guild mates and allied guild members for the sake of helping this party that he just met hours ago.
There is no way this PC would backstab his guild so quickly. On top of that, it derails a major subplot that involved the PCs as they needed help from the guild to accomplish a few quests. Now they won't have that option due to the new PC changing his allegiance at the drop of the hat.
I feel like there's some missing info here.: The party had an enemy in common (assassin needed to assassinate the target, party needed to capture) so the assassin agreed to assist in finding the target.
Was the guild attacking the party? No, they were led by assassin into area with his guildmates. While the assassin was talking with his guild, the party attempted to sneak past them all for some reason. The party seemed to feel they needed to sneak by instead of just talk things over with the guild. Did you make the guild explicitly opposed to the party? No, they had just met. Enemy vs Friend had not been established. Why exactly did they feel the need to turn on the guild? The guild members spotted the party sneaking through the area, confronted them verbally, no threats to wellbeing were made, assassin player then slit the throats of his guildmates when they turned their back. The only impetus via the plot and explanation of the player was "the party got caught sneaking" Why did he think killing them would help the party? Because if his guildmates were dead absolutely nothing would happen to the party. Why that mattered to him, he didn't know. I guess it could be because his contract and using the party to help him unwittingly was more important but that was never given and seems like a bit of a stretch. He could have easily talked them through without killing.
If so, you put this player into a position where they felt they had to choose a side, and it sounds like they chose the one that kept the game going smoothly. I would not fault them for that. Or for killing their opponents when they're playing an assassin. I could see this if there was an actual confrontation. At the time, there wasn't - not even a threat. My plan was to extort them for coming into their territory and asked to leave. But I hadn't revealed that plot point yet.
If it wasn't open combat, there had to be a moment where you could have said, "Hang on. You don't have to murder your associates to help the party. You realize this course of action could actually put them in more danger by inviting the wrath of the entire guild." Or just something along those lines. Very true, I could have. Our group has a practice that whatever they say happens, does, and it is final (unless it wasn't possible in the first place). They know what the consequences are and accept them fully.
Either way, it seems like there was a disconnect between what the player thought needed to be done and what you presented. Getting at the heart of that and making sure you're both on the same page could help you avoid situations like this in the future.
Answering questions time! Look in quote for answers ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You have the right, as DM, to demand the player to play his character exactly according to the Alignment he chose for that character. If after speaking with the player, and perhaps explaining what the alignment is that he or she chose, if they keep disrupting the group by taking actions that go against the party's whims, and especially contrary to the PC's alignment, then the player should be removed from the group.
No, you do not have the right to demand that a player RP a certain way.
You do have the right as a DM to rule that either:
(a) He is not RPing the alignment on his sheet, and since that alignment is a descriptor of the character, and the descriptors on the sheet MUST be accurate, he will need to erase the alignment he wrote down and replace it with the correct one (in this case, it sounds like neutral evil maybe), or
(b) If he retains the alignment and continues to RP in a way that makes the alignment, which is a line on his character sheet, be an inaccurate descriptor for his character, you have every right to dock XP.
You do not have the right to "tell him how to RP," as a DM. Only to tell him that you do not agree that he has written down the correct data in the alignment line of his sheet, and he should either change that line, or RP in a way that makes the line an accurate descriptor, and if he refuses to do either, you have the right as a DM to give him less XP.
You should explain that writing down lawful neutral and then RPing neutral evil (or whatever -- doesn't matter for this example), would be equivalent to writing down an 8 STR on his sheet but then taking +3 to hit and damage every time he swings a battle axe. The sheet says -1 and he adds +3: he's not doing what the sheet says. You're not allowed to do that. Your game play must conform to what it says on the sheet, and what it says on the sheet must conform to your game play. When the two are not aligned, this must be fixed. Refusal to fix it -- insistence on game play that does not match what it says on the sheet - is called "cheating."
This is how I took it to mean but a very good explanation and advice!
The players shouldn't be held to their alignment out of character. It's not fun to find out you want to play your character differently but be forced to play it the way you wrote before the first time you ever played. Instead, you just adjust the world AROUND your player's choices.
It's fine for the lawful good fighter who worked for the city guard to suddenly start breaking the law seemingly on a whim. Your job, as the DM, is to make your world react to that including all of the consequences. In this example, that could mean the threat of being caught, making NPCs ask them questions that force Deception rolls, pissing off the wrong people... It could also mean making criminal contacts that open up new avenues of adventure. And of course any spells and items and the like that deal with alignment should use what YOU deem to be their true nature (though I think 5e eliminated alignment-based spells anyway). What is written on their sheet for alignment means nothing, it's how they act that matters. On that note, I don't even have players write down alignment.
Remember, it's not an adventure if you have to stay on a track.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think part of it was they didn't understand what they were getting into when they thought of the character and that they didn't want to actually play it that way. It would be like me saying I studied to be a Historian with no athletic inclination and have all this knowledge and then decide that I want to have a job as a Professional Athlete. That just doesn't compute and wouldn't work. So him being an assassin for hire then being all "nah, I'm gonna be an adventurer, screw you guys!" just didn't compute. So the issue is mostly with the background issue and less the alignment issue.
And to the OP, as I'd kind of said earlier, I'd end up giving this player even more latitude because this is a new character. People are allowed to change their minds about the characters they play. Could be that between making it and sitting down, the player realized they didn't like the choices they'd made. I actually have a house rule that for the first three sessions with a character, a player can change anything they want to. Literally anything - class, race, juggle ability scores, alignment, too. Sometimes the idea you had doesn't play as well as it seemed when you were making it up. I'm not going to make someone suffer through playing a character they don't like because they tried something and it didn't work.
I'll definitely keep this in mind for future character changes. That seems like a strong rule, especially if they are new and don't know much about the game.
Thanks again everyone! You're all very helpful and forthcoming with advice. If you feel like adding more or addressing anything I said, please keep the conversation going!
The players shouldn't be held to their alignment out of character. It's not fun to find out you want to play your character differently but be forced to play it the way you wrote before the first time you ever played. Instead, you just adjust the world AROUND your player's choices.
It's fine for the lawful good fighter who worked for the city guard to suddenly start breaking the law seemingly on a whim. Your job, as the DM, is to make your world react to that including all of the consequences. In this example, that could mean the threat of being caught, making NPCs ask them questions that force Deception rolls, pissing off the wrong people... It could also mean making criminal contacts that open up new avenues of adventure. And of course any spells and items and the like that deal with alignment should use what YOU deem to be their true nature (though I think 5e eliminated alignment-based spells anyway). What is written on their sheet for alignment means nothing, it's how they act that matters. On that note, I don't even have players write down alignment.
Remember, it's not an adventure if you have to stay on a track.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think part of it was they didn't understand what they were getting into when they thought of the character and that they didn't want to actually play it that way. It would be like me saying I studied to be a Historian with no athletic inclination and have all this knowledge and then decide that I want to have a job as a Professional Athlete. That just doesn't compute and wouldn't work. So him being an assassin for hire then being all "nah, I'm gonna be an adventurer, screw you guys!" just didn't compute. So the issue is mostly with the background issue and less the alignment issue.
Sure, that's obviously something that doesn't necessarily make sense. But the thing is that people turn on people they trust and have known for years all the time for a variety of reasons. It wouldn't hurt to approach the person privately and say "Hey, it's fine that you want to do this but maybe we can come up with some backstory reason/character secret that led to the sudden change of heart."
That said, you again can approach things like this in-character as well. For example, have a surviving member of the guild start to spread the rumors of what happened. It won't affect the players everywhere they go, but you can specifically put in NPCs they need to interact with that DO have guild contacts for one reason or another and have heard tell, and so automatically don't trust the party as a result of that player's character being present. Have a surviving member of the guild (maybe the same one) track the party down and start working against them, built up to be a major antagonist, and honestly one with a very legitimate reason to be hateful. Have them meet face to face, and have that guild member in-character start asking "why? Why did you turn on us? We'd been friends and comrades for years, and you murder them for complete strangers?" Have the party come across a family, a mother and her children, who are being bullied by a landlord or some gang or something because they are struggling to pay back a loan. Why did the mother take out a loan? Well, she's hesitant to tell strangers... But she's also so desperate. Her husband was a member of a guild. They did dangerous work and she always knew it was a possibility he'd die, but one of his guildmates recently checked in on her and informed her that one of their close comrades brutally murdered her husband and the others, so now she's stuck unable to afford to live lest she rely on criminals like this loan shark. Let things like this sink in the consequences of the player's actions. Such interactions allow you to address it in-character rather than making it a big ordeal out of character. Because the fact of the matter is it's already done, so unless you really plan to kick a player over it (which in my opinion would be silly in this scenario), then the best way to address it is in-character.
Is this a habit of the character? Because some of the responses here from a couple of individuals suggesting you take a hard stance act as though the player might be prone to constantly changing things on the fly. But if this is literally the only thing the player has done counter to what you expect, then I think the "DM has ultimate power, chastise the player" route is extremely unnecessary and will ruin the atmosphere of the game long-term. Take it from someone who has been in many short-lived games that were meant to be long campaigns, and as someone who has two campaigns ongoing of roughly three years... You don't want to create a muddy atmosphere for something so trivial if it's a one-time thing. It's something that can be addressed in-character.
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Bottom line: There are character types who would easily turn on people they're worked with for years. An assassin's guild doesn't need to be a close-knit family, they can be businesslike. In fact they probably are. Sure, it might not fit the character's alignment of lawful, but that's the only real conflict here. Maybe the character's actually a loose canon, or maybe they have some kind of problems upstairs. Treat them as such in-character, and if they ask why you are (out of character) you already know how to answer.
You have the right, as DM, to demand the player to play his character exactly according to the Alignment he chose for that character. If after speaking with the player, and perhaps explaining what the alignment is that he or she chose, if they keep disrupting the group by taking actions that go against the party's whims, and especially contrary to the PC's alignment, then the player should be removed from the group.
That's an awfully extreme route to take!
It's worth noting that someone's alignment is not the cause of their actions, it's the effect of them. I can say I'm lawful good all I want, but if I actually spend my time tempting villagers to secret meetings outside the town walls so they get mauled to death by bears, then I'm definitely chaotic evil.
The most important part of the game (to me, but I think others will view it similarly) is that people have fun. To do that, you need the following:
1: Everyone needs to be able to play the character they've chosen in the way they feel they should, with compromises for:
2: Nobody should regularly perform actions which annoy or detract from the fun of the other players. Annoying other characters is fine, as long as the other player is enjoying the interaction.
Now, if the player made a character and said "I'm lawful good", then as they really get into the role they lean more towards a different alignment, then their alignment is changing - either they were wrong with their initial lawful good, or the character has changed. They can amend their backstory to suit, if they want, or they can say it's happened in-game.
If I were a lawful good paladin, in a group of roguish chaotic neutral types, and over time I became more used to chaotic manners and started adopting them myself, I would feel offended if the DM told me to "stop that, you're supposed to be lawful good". I am what I am, and if lawful good doesn't describe me, then it's not what I am.
"you have the right, as the DM to demand...". no, you don't. You have an obligation as the DM to ensure the game is fun for everyone. If it comes down to a decision between saying "You can do that, but it's not what a lawful good person would do" and saying "you can't do that because of your alignment", then you should be picking the former. If the player is doing stuff which is making it less fun to the other players, then you can intervene with demands. Not for acting outside their alignment - you might as well tell a wizard off if he wanted to hit someone.
Some classes have consequences for changing alignment - clerics and paladins moving from good to neutral will be viewed as bad by their deities and they might lose powers. If a barbarian changes from chaotic neutral to lawful good, that won't lose anything.
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I'm not here to debate with you about alignment or how to run a game as a DM. My advice and suggestion is directed for pupulesurfer. If you want to discuss topics like "what causes a character's actions" and "what the goal of the game is", you can set that up on a new forum post.
So yeah, like I was saying, everyone (at the table) expects a player to run his or her character according to alignment chosen. And typically, a player who has trouble doing an alignment almost always ends up continuing to "do their own thing". The players should be working together. If a PC assassinates his own guild just because it helps other players' characters, that doesn't make sense if PC has known the guild for much longer than 3hrs of other PCs, with ties, background, etc to that guild -- let alone why a Neutral character is backstabbing his own guild in the first place. It's one thing to follow this through with the Guild (or associates of Guild/NPC nobles, etc) seeking revenge, for example, but that doesn't resolve the initial poor-alignment play. Hence, the DM should speak about it with the player. Later, after seeing how that player plays in the game, it can be seen whether it's going according to what the group wants -- but if it's causing enough issue that the player significantly hinders your DM;ing -- and group unity, fairness, --- you make the call ultimately of whether he or she stays.
I agree that if a player is causing issues then this needs to be directly discussed and dealt with, sometimes by exile.
But my key point is that a players actions influence their alignment as much as their alignment influences their actions. I don't feel like anyone should say to anyone "you're playing your character wrong". Better to instead conclude that "lawful good doesn't describe them" than "they are doing chaotic things but they are lawful, so must be exiled".
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
I feel like there's some missing info here.
Why exactly did they feel the need to turn on the guild? Why did he think killing them would help the party? Did you make the guild explicitly opposed to the party? Was the guild attacking the party?
If so, you put this player into a position where they felt they had to choose a side, and it sounds like they chose the one that kept the game going smoothly. I would not fault them for that. Or for killing their opponents when they're playing an assassin.
If it wasn't open combat, there had to be a moment where you could have said, "Hang on. You don't have to murder your associates to help the party. You realize this course of action could actually put them in more danger by inviting the wrath of the entire guild." Or just something along those lines.
Either way, it seems like there was a disconnect between what the player thought needed to be done and what you presented. Getting at the heart of that and making sure you're both on the same page could help you avoid situations like this in the future.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
No, you do not have the right to demand that a player RP a certain way.
You do have the right as a DM to rule that either:
(a) He is not RPing the alignment on his sheet, and since that alignment is a descriptor of the character, and the descriptors on the sheet MUST be accurate, he will need to erase the alignment he wrote down and replace it with the correct one (in this case, it sounds like neutral evil maybe), or
(b) If he retains the alignment and continues to RP in a way that makes the alignment, which is a line on his character sheet, be an inaccurate descriptor for his character, you have every right to dock XP.
You do not have the right to "tell him how to RP," as a DM. Only to tell him that you do not agree that he has written down the correct data in the alignment line of his sheet, and he should either change that line, or RP in a way that makes the line an accurate descriptor, and if he refuses to do either, you have the right as a DM to give him less XP.
You should explain that writing down lawful neutral and then RPing neutral evil (or whatever -- doesn't matter for this example), would be equivalent to writing down an 8 STR on his sheet but then taking +3 to hit and damage every time he swings a battle axe. The sheet says -1 and he adds +3: he's not doing what the sheet says. You're not allowed to do that. Your game play must conform to what it says on the sheet, and what it says on the sheet must conform to your game play. When the two are not aligned, this must be fixed. Refusal to fix it -- insistence on game play that does not match what it says on the sheet - is called "cheating."
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Goodness, please do NOT listen to "TheDungeon_Master_DM." What horrible power-hungry advice. It's your player's character, it's your world. The story is where those two meet and belongs to no one and everyone.
You have already gotten a lot of advice and I think you probably know what to do moving forward. That said, I wanted to throw in this as a general philosophy: The players shouldn't be held to their alignment out of character. It's not fun to find out you want to play your character differently but be forced to play it the way you wrote before the first time you ever played. Instead, you just adjust the world AROUND your player's choices.
It's fine for the lawful good fighter who worked for the city guard to suddenly start breaking the law seemingly on a whim. Your job, as the DM, is to make your world react to that including all of the consequences. In this example, that could mean the threat of being caught, making NPCs ask them questions that force Deception rolls, pissing off the wrong people... It could also mean making criminal contacts that open up new avenues of adventure. And of course any spells and items and the like that deal with alignment should use what YOU deem to be their true nature (though I think 5e eliminated alignment-based spells anyway). What is written on their sheet for alignment means nothing, it's how they act that matters. On that note, I don't even have players write down alignment.
Remember, it's not an adventure if you have to stay on a track.
It's fun sometimes to see personality or at least communication styles manifest through descriptions of DMing. Authoritative communications styles are healthy and done with confident candor. Authoritarian communication styles are considered not so much.
As DM, you can say whatever you want at your table. However, alignment used as tool through which to leash performance per DMs insistence doesn't seem a productive way to play the game. It's frankly where the term "running the game" can get into some connotative sour space.
Alignment is a claim a player makes about their character, and that claim can be tested by the game to see how true it is as the player really comes to terms with the character, which may bee terms that land differently on the alignment chart.
Bottom line, mechanical consequences for alignment "deviation" don't exist in the present edition of the game, though the DMG does point to an Honor system which could be used (as well as drawing from other systems) where adherence to alignment could be more pronounced in the game. In terms of how alignment seems to be treated in the extant published game products in the current edition though, how the world reacts to a PC's actions are a form, and should be the form, of accountability for the PC's actions. The DM determines that, but it should be done more organically with how the game world exists, not some sort of discipline for player's performance to DMs expectations. A DM making out of game declarations adjudicating alignment performance is just so ... schoolmaster I guess. It's much more fun to have characters behave and let the game manifest consequences for the behavior possibly culminating in a "are we the baddies?" moment.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
As I was trying to say above, the alignment line on a character sheet is meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Much like saying the character is 5'9" tall or has blond hair and blue eyes.
However, when the player is at the table and the DM says, "Describe your character to the rest of the players," and the player describes brown hair and brown eyes, the DM would be right to say, "How come it says blond hair/blue eyes on your sheet?" If the player has a good reason ("I am using the Disguise Self spell"), fine. But if the player is going to have the sheet say one thing and the RP describe another, that is an issue. The two need to be in sync.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yeah, I used to play with David Byrne back at RISD and his polymorphous character sheet shenanigans would have been insufferable to you, once he sang to us "I change my hairstyle, so many times now, I don't know what I look like!" and we just let it slide from there.
Now, let me change my story.
When it comes to cosmetic details that get blanks on a character sheet which are often overlooked, I think everybody can be granted a David Bowie period of figuring out their look.I think in session one, unless the characters have invested beyond blanks on a form to include actual artistic renderings of their characters (which by the nature of such work entails a lot more creative investment than the one worders "demanded" on the character sheet) if the sheet says blond and the character says brown, I'd simply say "are you sure? because the sheet says blond and I want to make sure I got the look right in case witnesses see you do something that's going to get you put on a wanted poster for example." Again, it comes down to authoritarian "stop, this is an issue" and an authoritative, "hang on, let's make sure we're on the same page and here's why" modes of playing at the table. But really, it's often not that big an issue and can be retconned pretty easily.
Alignment is frankly an extension of this. Players will give one of the nine capes as team jerseys for what they think they intend at the outset, and as the character actually develops the game determines their moral standing is actually landing somewhere else. Adjudications of "you say you're LG, but none of your actions make sense to that alignment" just doesn't literally plays well as opposed to an NPC saying, "so when you first came to town, the guild had the impression you used your blade under a code of honor, there's a pile of bodies saying otherwise. I'm here because the guild wants your soul in Carceri and I have this sword to make sure that happens." Only one class really has strong conduct guidelines via its oath, the consequences of which can be addressed in game with resorting to Oathbreaker being a possibility if it makes sense to the game.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yes, I'm of much the same opinion as MidnightPlat above. If someone is constantly changing their physical appearance with no logical reason (changeling, Alter Self, so forth) then eventually that becomes a point to address out of character in some respectful capacity befitting of your group's relationships and atmosphere.
Alignment is COMPLETELY different. Alignment is already such a wishy-washy idea anyway, and anything relating to it really should be addressed in-character in my opinion. This could be with direct addressing by an NPC or simply by the way other people view and treat the character, among other more drastic things.
Of all the things from 4e, the idea of being unaligned is really one I wish they'd kept. Most characters were expected to be just doing their thing, not particularly good or evil or lawful or chaotic, just unaligned, but some few were so good or so evil that it actually bears mentioning. It just works so much better than putting people in an ill-defined 9-point straightjacket. Sometimes good people do bad things and vice versa. The only thing that really matters, imo, is that a character be played consistently -- with some latitude for gradual change over time as they evolve.
And to the OP, as I'd kind of said earlier, I'd end up giving this player even more latitude because this is a new character. People are allowed to change their minds about the characters they play. Could be that between making it and sitting down, the player realized they didn't like the choices they'd made. I actually have a house rule that for the first three sessions with a character, a player can change anything they want to. Literally anything - class, race, juggle ability scores, alignment, too. Sometimes the idea you had doesn't play as well as it seemed when you were making it up. I'm not going to make someone suffer through playing a character they don't like because they tried something and it didn't work.
Yes, this was precisely the issue I was trying to get past. A lifetime with a guild vs 3 hours with the PCs. So yes, I agree there should be some level of accountability to how the character was built and introduced in the game. If that's not how the Players wants to do things, that's fine, but I really need to know beforehand. So after I talk to them, we can either change the character or change the plot.
Answering questions time! Look in quote for answers ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is how I took it to mean but a very good explanation and advice!
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think part of it was they didn't understand what they were getting into when they thought of the character and that they didn't want to actually play it that way. It would be like me saying I studied to be a Historian with no athletic inclination and have all this knowledge and then decide that I want to have a job as a Professional Athlete. That just doesn't compute and wouldn't work. So him being an assassin for hire then being all "nah, I'm gonna be an adventurer, screw you guys!" just didn't compute. So the issue is mostly with the background issue and less the alignment issue.
I'll definitely keep this in mind for future character changes. That seems like a strong rule, especially if they are new and don't know much about the game.
Thanks again everyone! You're all very helpful and forthcoming with advice. If you feel like adding more or addressing anything I said, please keep the conversation going!
Sure, that's obviously something that doesn't necessarily make sense. But the thing is that people turn on people they trust and have known for years all the time for a variety of reasons. It wouldn't hurt to approach the person privately and say "Hey, it's fine that you want to do this but maybe we can come up with some backstory reason/character secret that led to the sudden change of heart."
That said, you again can approach things like this in-character as well. For example, have a surviving member of the guild start to spread the rumors of what happened. It won't affect the players everywhere they go, but you can specifically put in NPCs they need to interact with that DO have guild contacts for one reason or another and have heard tell, and so automatically don't trust the party as a result of that player's character being present. Have a surviving member of the guild (maybe the same one) track the party down and start working against them, built up to be a major antagonist, and honestly one with a very legitimate reason to be hateful. Have them meet face to face, and have that guild member in-character start asking "why? Why did you turn on us? We'd been friends and comrades for years, and you murder them for complete strangers?" Have the party come across a family, a mother and her children, who are being bullied by a landlord or some gang or something because they are struggling to pay back a loan. Why did the mother take out a loan? Well, she's hesitant to tell strangers... But she's also so desperate. Her husband was a member of a guild. They did dangerous work and she always knew it was a possibility he'd die, but one of his guildmates recently checked in on her and informed her that one of their close comrades brutally murdered her husband and the others, so now she's stuck unable to afford to live lest she rely on criminals like this loan shark. Let things like this sink in the consequences of the player's actions. Such interactions allow you to address it in-character rather than making it a big ordeal out of character. Because the fact of the matter is it's already done, so unless you really plan to kick a player over it (which in my opinion would be silly in this scenario), then the best way to address it is in-character.
Is this a habit of the character? Because some of the responses here from a couple of individuals suggesting you take a hard stance act as though the player might be prone to constantly changing things on the fly. But if this is literally the only thing the player has done counter to what you expect, then I think the "DM has ultimate power, chastise the player" route is extremely unnecessary and will ruin the atmosphere of the game long-term. Take it from someone who has been in many short-lived games that were meant to be long campaigns, and as someone who has two campaigns ongoing of roughly three years... You don't want to create a muddy atmosphere for something so trivial if it's a one-time thing. It's something that can be addressed in-character.
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Bottom line: There are character types who would easily turn on people they're worked with for years. An assassin's guild doesn't need to be a close-knit family, they can be businesslike. In fact they probably are. Sure, it might not fit the character's alignment of lawful, but that's the only real conflict here. Maybe the character's actually a loose canon, or maybe they have some kind of problems upstairs. Treat them as such in-character, and if they ask why you are (out of character) you already know how to answer.
Well said and more great ideas. The wife and kid bit is just heartbreaking! Thank you for your advice!