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2019-09-17, 10:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2006
- Location
- California
- Gender
Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignment?
Examples a goodie two shoes party(not my game)
They a he'll hound and a nightmare for mounts.(while saying this is a good guys game)
They have poison constitution damage(death) I can make a justification for strength, dexterity, wisdom,charisma poison as neutral or weak good.
They have a chain devil's whip as a used weapon.
Is this party still good?
What does your party have?
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2019-09-17, 10:43 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
By this logic... aren't most weapons evil? Unless you have a specific weapon made to deal non-lethal damage.
The only case where I would consider items to be evil, would be if these were able to think and chose evil themselves. Otherwise... I don't think the items would matter at all regarding alignment.
Edit: another way to have an item to be evil, would be to have it be powered by some evil act, like it feeding on souls or something like that.Last edited by zinycor; 2019-09-17 at 10:48 AM.
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2019-09-17, 10:48 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2012
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
The Mechanist’s Marvel, a svirfneblin crossbow. Identical to a normal heavy crossbow, until a switch is flipped to turn it into powered mode, at which point it helps reload itself reducing the number of actions required to reload it in Fight! to 10, and imbuing the bolts with a magical charge which allows them to injure lycanthropes and creatures with spirit nature.
A small candy dish which, three times per day, can fill itself with exotic candies.
Is there a point to this?
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2019-09-17, 10:55 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
I don't get the point myself...
As for my game, one of my players had a bottle of infinite coffee, which could be used to once a day create a very strong cappuccino that granted haste to whoever drank it... Now, the item isn't evil at all, but it was granted by a devil as a gift to one of the players after this player sold his soul.
Also a halberd of bleeding which was wielded by a noble Paladin that the players killed and looted.
And yeah... I don't get the point of this exercise.Last son of the Lu-Ching dynasty
thog is the champion, thog's friends! and thog keeps on fighting to the end!
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2019-09-17, 11:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2006
- Location
- California
- Gender
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
Admits the infinite coffee is not evil. The players starting alignment before he sold his soul for coffee and a 3rd level spell?
Point of this "exercise" most groups say they play "good" then do very evil things for power. Most do not recognize the evil they do. Your groups expresso may be a great example.
Did you as a DM change his alignment for selling his soul? After all at the point the gift was given evil scored a victory. Does this have any other strings tell people solicit for me just arrange the meeting?
Killing a paladin (force of law and good) what was their alignment (world view outlook). Before. Did it change? My Chaotic good or neutral good characters would never willing or knowingly attack a paladin. Why did your group do so?
Neither the crossbow or the candy dish are evil They do not fit what I am attempting to ascertain. The candy dish is a comfort item endless pitcher of wine is comparable. Crossbow is for specific purpose.
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2019-09-17, 11:39 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
No need to change the alignments since it was an evil campaign to begin with.
But again, even in those cases, the items weren't evil, the way they got them might have been, but that doesn't rest on what the item was.
For example, a whip that deals poison damage isn't evil.Last son of the Lu-Ching dynasty
thog is the champion, thog's friends! and thog keeps on fighting to the end!
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2019-09-17, 11:53 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2006
- Location
- California
- Gender
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
Then they were acting as they should.
I am looking for good align parties that have used or are using evil items as I stated a good party with a nightmare mount(NE mount with good alignment player).
Whip depends on the poison then the final purpose. Dexterity poison for example is non lethal all of my characters would consider using it.
Hawk Chaotic Nuetral ranger would consider it an easy escape tool. Would not use Constitution poison as this may unintentionally kill someone
Simone (Nuetral Evil cleric) would use it as well. Purpose lower their attacks make them immobile then torture for sacrifice.
Valmont(Nuetral good cleric/thief of Baccob) would most likely sell it back to his Nuetral church of Baccob then pretend(in his mind anyway) it did not affect him out of sight out of mind. Church before party was his motto.
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2019-09-17, 12:01 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
Those considerations are all ridiculous, a weapon is a weapon. The fact that it deals lethal damage only makes it more effective as a weapon. I don't see any reason for a lawful good paladin to refuse to use a poisoned (to kill) weapon if it was the most effective weapon they had at their disposal.
Items (for the most part) aren't evil or good, the way the characters use them or get them might be.Last son of the Lu-Ching dynasty
thog is the champion, thog's friends! and thog keeps on fighting to the end!
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2019-09-17, 12:13 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2006
- Location
- California
- Gender
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
Paladins are virtue,purity, brave and good. They would not poison a blade purposely. Pick one up by accident sure.
Assassins thieves use poison. They are cowards wanton murders. Legal with a contract but still. How could a paladin justify in your opinion using their tools?
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2019-09-17, 12:20 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
Why wouldn't a paladin want to poison their weapon? If he is willing to kill its opponent, why would they refuse to be effective at it? Should they also fight only with dull weapons in order to prevent him from killing? No, they fight with whatever weapon accommodates them, if the opponent the paladin faces needs killing, he would use whatever weapon would fit that purpose.
Last son of the Lu-Ching dynasty
thog is the champion, thog's friends! and thog keeps on fighting to the end!
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2019-09-17, 12:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
- Location
- Sharangar's Revenge
- Gender
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
Depends on the Edition and the Paladin Oaths and the DM as to whether or not Paladins can use poison. Regardless, that is not the point of this thread, which is about adventuring parties that claim one alignment but act in accordance with another. Like, say, if Roy had kept and used Soulmuncher, or if the team had decided to sell Samantha and her father into slavery.
Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Skirmish Game: Warpstrike
My Spelljammer stuff (including an orbit tracker), 2E AD&D spreadsheet, and Vault of the Drow maps are available in my Dropbox. Feel free to use or not use it as you see fit!
Thri-Kreen Ranger/Psionicist by me, based off of Rich's A Monster for Every Season
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2019-09-17, 12:40 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2015
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- Mid-Rohan
- Gender
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2019-09-17, 12:58 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
Last son of the Lu-Ching dynasty
thog is the champion, thog's friends! and thog keeps on fighting to the end!
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2019-09-17, 01:01 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
Eh, Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named) often takes evil artifacts and sentient evil items as his share of the loot, because he doesn't believe in destroying them unless absolutely necessary. Shrug.
Quertus has saved over 100 worlds, but my character who was positioned save a whole universe? His best tool was a stockpile of tasty brains.
Contrariwise, one of my most evil characters wields The Hopes and Dreams of Mankind, because it gives him warm fuzzies.
Really, I'm not sure that there's much correlation between "alignment" and choice of tools. I mean, what alignment do you expect from a character who throws a sharpened circular disc that was once an angel's halo?
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2019-09-18, 09:01 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2015
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
While i mostly agree, i think there still are a lot of excpetions and thus items you only can wield if evil.
Just a couple of months ago i led an adventure where some really powerful set of three artefacts played a role. If placed at certain focal points those would give the wielder complete control of currents and weather in a certain sea which more or less equals the ability to dominate the coastal nations. It was a demonic artefact. To access it the user had to sell his soul to the archdemon of evil water. Which is considered an evil deed in that setting. And additionally to the price after death comes with some mental alignment to this demon. Everyone doing that would start loving unleashing big seamonsters, drowning people and sending floodwaves inland. The rules would hadle that the same way as it handles vices which means they can be suppressed, but that is not easy nor guaranteed.
Furthermore beside the demon pact thing the actual activation would require preparation of the three focal points, each requiring the sacrifice of 40 souls of intelligent beings to said demon.
Of course we had the expected drama in the group. Not that anyone wanted to use these things, but the conditions and downsides were only revealed gradually depending on research the group did. And the characters where affiliated with different coastal nations/organisations and none trusted any of the others with this kind of power.
But yes, i would say if the group had actually unlocked the ability to control this sea i would have regarded them as evil.
Not that it really matters because that was not D&D and such did not actually have alignment rules.
Evil tools that actually make you evil for using them do so by making you do evil things to use them. Everything else is just optics. Gothic chic is not evil.
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2019-09-18, 10:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2018
Re: Tell the playground about you characters magic items and if they match you alignm
I partially disagree.
In the real world, some weapons are considered "evil" to use. We still have some weapons that are banned from war (biological weapons), and there was in the past some weapons banned trough conventions between countries. Sure, the fact that they are "banned" doesn't prevent countries from using them, since war is war. But it is not hard to imagine a lawful good person refusing to go against those conventions. People don't always act in a "cold and rational" way, and there have been examples in the past of aesthetics being put before efficiency, even for medieval war armors.
Similarly, it is not hard to imagine than in D&D, the society, especially the religions, put moral judgement against some kind of weapons. So a LG character could refuse to use poison weapons for a reason like that. Even if that makes no rational sense. Even if weapons far worst are still allowed. Even if that might cost the success of the fight.