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ArmorArmadillo
2007-09-28, 04:17 PM
Alongside such vernacular alignments as Chaotic Stupid and Lawful Retentive, I'd like to suggest another: The Neutral Weasel

"Obviously it was fine to kill him, he was working for the lich!"
"We're saving the world, we can take the city treasury if we need it!"
"If I didn't lie to the priest, we wouldn't have been able to beat the dragon."
"The treasure would just have been destroyed in the fire."
"She didn't have legitimate authority to arrest me!"

Good, neutral, and even anti-heroic evil heroes have to compromise their morals sometimes. But have you ever noticed that certain people always seem to be compromising their morals? Usually this just qualifies as chaotic stupid, but sometimes the player isn't just acting outside of their alignment. They're doing it, and they have an excuse.

When it comes down to it, you can come up with a justification for pretty much anything; from theft, to treason, to murder. However, coming up with one after doing whatever you did to try and justify out of character behavior is just weasely.

Has anyone ever had a bad experience with a player like this?

squishycube
2007-09-28, 04:47 PM
Hehe, you remind me of my party.
Almost all characters in my group tend to be like that at least a little. We like to call it pragmatic, but usually as the campaign moves on the character slide away into evilness more and more.
We don't justify the behaviour afterwards though, it is usually not necessary as most characters will readily accept pragmatic behaviour from the others. In fact, the characters often influence each other to be more pragmatic. A new character that starts out all nice and with ideals quickly becomes tainted by the vile things he sees and the nasty things he has to do to get rid of them.
My characters in this group often start out as idealistic and slightly naive and end up harsh, often bitter but with a very large sense of duty.

Rex Blunder
2007-09-28, 05:00 PM
I dunno, sounds like a good description of neutrals. They always seemed a little weaselly to me. "People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others." :smalltongue:

Dr. Weasel
2007-09-28, 05:03 PM
I sure haven't ever played one of these. Never.


Certainly not in every campaign I played before college.

Raolin_Fenix
2007-09-28, 05:11 PM
"Obviously it was fine to kill him, he was working for the lich!"
"We're saving the world, we can take the city treasury if we need it!"
"If I didn't lie to the priest, we wouldn't have been able to beat the dragon."
"The treasure would just have been destroyed in the fire."
"She didn't have legitimate authority to arrest me!"

Wait, these all sound suspiciously familiar. I'd swear I've seen them somewhere before.

Like in the OOTS strip a couple days ago, and today.

You got something to say, Armadillo? :smallbiggrin:

Dubie
2007-09-28, 05:13 PM
Hehe, you remind me of my party.
Almost all characters in my group tend to be like that at least a little. We like to call it pragmatic, but usually as the campaign moves on the character slide away into evilness more and more.
We don't justify the behaviour afterwards though, it is usually not necessary as most characters will readily accept pragmatic behaviour from the others. In fact, the characters often influence each other to be more pragmatic. A new character that starts out all nice and with ideals quickly becomes tainted by the vile things he sees and the nasty things he has to do to get rid of them.
My characters in this group often start out as idealistic and slightly naive and end up harsh, often bitter but with a very large sense of duty.


This sounds less like "neutral" to me and more like some of the eager young soldiers I see going off on thier first campain and coming back with a slight dose of PTSD...

Telonius
2007-09-29, 07:51 AM
I've actually played a character like this, but it wasn't really a problem. Phido Oswald, a Shifter Rogue/Wizard/Master of Masks/Arcane Trickster. Medium-high charisma, very high intelligence, Bluff check in the stratosphere. But extremely low Sense Motive, and a Wisdom of 10.

Basically, this guy believed his own BS. He was a weasel, everybody knew he was a weasel, but he was weasely enough that people had to believe him anyway. He started out as the cohort of my main character, Caleb "Oz" Oswald. Phido was Oz's uncle. Oz was an Urban Ranger, but his Sense Motive score was always lower than Phido's bluff. Uncle Phido is that one disreputable uncle that everybody seems to have, who's always involved in some kind of shady deal or other. Everybody knows he's up to no good, but somehow he manages to never get caught.

Example of his weaseldom? Well, at one point, we had an evil druid, Adragil, who left the party. Phido pilfered a bunch of his scrolls before he left. One of these was a scroll of Last Breath. We'd never specified which version - Complete Divine or Spell Compendium - of the spell was on the scroll. The DM ruled that it was the version that Reincarnated you. But my character, with his low wisdom, didn't bother to read the whole scroll. So, when our Warforged Barbarian died, and no one was around to raise him, Phido leapt to the rescue and used the Last Breath scroll. The Warforged came back as a Dwarf.

Newly-made Dwarf: "What... who did this to me?"
Phido: .... Adragil!

It brought down the house.

He was the most enjoyable character I've ever played, and he worked really well within the party. His weasely justifications for his actions didn't really bother people, since they knew that he was a conman at heart. We statted him out as Chaotic Neutral, but I think that Neutral Weasel would have worked too. :smallbiggrin:

ArmorArmadillo
2007-09-29, 01:55 PM
Exactly.

Really, though, there's nothing wrong with a character actually being sneaky or a cheat; the problem is when players try to claim some sort of inherent "PC Immunity" that means that they can do whatever whenever to whoever as long as they come up with a flimsy excuse.

Nowhere Girl
2007-09-29, 10:02 PM
You're in the area of chaotic neutral or possibly neutral or chaotic evil, depending on how badly this character's bending the rules.

Actually, even chaotic good can come off as weasely -- after all, what is "chaotic" but an alignment type that says "principles and honor aren't important"? ;)