Quote from: Rincewind1;693377If you're that afraid of helmet of opposite alignment on your paladin, don't put on unidentified helmets found in dungeons.

Hush! PCs need to be inoculated from making their own bad decisions. Focus only on the positive!

Quote from: deadDMwalking;693394Actually, for me it's that I don't think the character should have a reasonable sense of 'helms of opposite alignment' exist until they encounter them.  A wizard character, perhaps, but most others aren't going to be that up on common magic items - and while the view 'magic items is good' is rather simplistic, it works for most characters.

I wouldn't avoid a helm of opposite alignment because as a player I know they exist - I'd only avoid them if I knew of their existence as a Character.

Of course it's not about just Helms of Opposite Alignment silly, it's Belts of Gender Change everyone knows about...I mean, being wary of unknown magic items in general isn't a foreign concept (and your character does know magic exists, since his buddy wiggled his fingers and conjured a ball of fire that turned a bunch of orcs to crisps moments ago). Putting on an oddly looking, rune - covered, slightly glowing object on your head/hand/belt/foot etc. etc is an equivalent of eating an unknown mushroom while in a forest.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;693188Oh, I do like playing to regain lost paladin-hood.  But a personality reversal is lame.

And I promise you, if I go from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil, I'm going to kill my entire party.  Because I can, and it seems appropriate.  

So what's going to happen is I'm going to ruin your campaign because you included a stupid cursed item that never works out as well as anyone thinks it will.

First off I won't run it like that I woudl probably run it by degrees, effectively introducing a corruption mechanism that starts as an urge to do harm.
Then you have the choice to separate from the party if you can't keep your self in check.

second of all Chaotic Evil characters don't just kill everyone they meet becuase they can, that would be equivalent to some bererker rage. Chaotic Evil characters kill, lie cheat steal for a bunch of reasons
i) It benefits them
ii) they get a kick out of it
iii) It furthers some diety or supernatural entituy they are in thrall to
iv) They can get away with it

If turn evil kill the whole party were the only choice then there would be no evil parties .....

I think that its an interesting character development, the flawed hero trying to regain lost honour, fighting corruption etc etc A classic trope surely.

Quote from: jibbajibba;693401First off I won't run it like that I woudl probably run it by degrees, effectively introducing a corruption mechanism that starts as an urge to do harm.
Then you have the choice to separate from the party if you can't keep your self in check.

A gradual descent into evil is far more interesting than the item as written.  

Quote from: jibbajibba;693401second of all Chaotic Evil characters don't just kill everyone they meet becuase they can, that would be equivalent to some bererker rage. Chaotic Evil characters kill, lie cheat steal for a bunch of reasons
i) It benefits them
ii) they get a kick out of it
iii) It furthers some diety or supernatural entituy they are in thrall to
iv) They can get away with it

Right - and in the event that you're with a nominally good party who won't agree with your new 'impulses', by killing the party sooner rather than later you can:

1) Benefit.  Phat loot from all of their gear
2) Get a kick out of it.  You were a goody-two-shoes before, but now you have a chance to get back at the Thief for calling you gay (or whatever imagined slight you suddenly want to get back for).
4) Get away with it.  If you do it before you've betrayed your new outlook, you're much more likely to get away with it than if you wait until the party knows about your new view on morality.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;693269Rather, I'm going to have good in-game reasons to take the actions to take.  I'm telling you what they will end up being.  

A chaotic-evil individual isn't going to get along well with a good-aligned party, will he?  His interests will diverge with theirs in matters both large and small.  

In the short term, he'd be better off finding some new companions that align with his current goals more closely.  Also, in the short term, a big pile of cash would be helpful.  Killing his former companions (who now have nothing to offer him) and taking their stuff (which does have something to offer him) is exactly what you'd expect him to do.  

This might be different if the party were not so good-aligned and he could see some benefits in the short term, but Chaotic Evil characters, by definition, do what benefits them the most with little regard to long-term planning.  

Call it being a dick if you want, but I see it as playing the character appropriately.

Ultimately, I think putting a player in a position where it is most reasonable for his character to ruin the game for everyone else is a dick move.

See I have no problem at all with a PC killing the rest of the party and takign their stuff hey shit happens. The world keeps turning. I have killed party members and taken then stuff plenty of times. The signs were there

I don't think this is being a dick either its playing a fully realised character in a immersive and fully realised world.

Like I said I would introduce the corruption gradually making the Paladin player slowly realise something was wrong before loosing their shit. The rest of the party might notice, a detect evil would notice a malicious presence etc etc , the paladins pwers would fail a few times, make a Will save to cast lay on hands, make a will save to use turn undead that sort of thing.

Now in other circumstances it might be instant say you get charmed by a necromancer who convinces you the party are all dopplegangers etc etc

I am intrigued that there is such a clear split on the forum between the attitude to such dilemas. I would have thought this was bread and butter roleplay 101 stuff.
I mean I have had paladins who give up paladinhood because because they rebel against god's will and take vengance when mercy was called for (and vise versa) and done that for purely roleplay reasons yet alone actuall in world magical effects.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;693405A gradual descent into evil is far more interesting than the item as written.  



Right - and in the event that you're with a nominally good party who won't agree with your new 'impulses', by killing the party sooner rather than later you can:

1) Benefit.  Phat loot from all of their gear
2) Get a kick out of it.  You were a goody-two-shoes before, but now you have a chance to get back at the Thief for calling you gay (or whatever imagined slight you suddenly want to get back for).
4) Get away with it.  If you do it before you've betrayed your new outlook, you're much more likely to get away with it than if you wait until the party knows about your new view on morality.

But a wise Evil guy will wait till the party gets somewhere safe right?
Killing the party then getting eaten by trolls or being unable to scale the cliffs of dispair would be a klutz move.
Again I have no problem with the former paladin killing everyone. Will be fun running the game where the party play the posse hunting down the Knight of Dark Reknown. you can see how it would work 2 sessions each week one for the paladin player the other for the posse and then the day they all turn up together and realise its the stand off ... sweet:)

Quote from: jibbajibba;693408See I have no problem at all with a PC killing the rest of the party and takign their stuff hey shit happens. The world keeps turning. I have killed party members and taken then stuff plenty of times. The signs were there

I don't think this is being a dick either its playing a fully realised character in a immersive and fully realised world.

Like I said I would introduce the corruption gradually making the Paladin player slowly realise something was wrong before loosing their shit. The rest of the party might notice, a detect evil would notice a malicious presence etc etc , the paladins pwers would fail a few times, make a Will save to cast lay on hands, make a will save to use turn undead that sort of thing.

Now in other circumstances it might be instant say you get charmed by a necromancer who convinces you the party are all dopplegangers etc etc

I am intrigued that there is such a clear split on the forum between the attitude to such dilemas. I would have thought this was bread and butter roleplay 101 stuff.
I mean I have had paladins who give up paladinhood because because they rebel against god's will and take vengance when mercy was called for (and vise versa) and done that for purely roleplay reasons yet alone actuall in world magical effects.

The split is because what you're suggesting (a roleplayed descent into evil and treachery) is not what was proposed. DeadDMWalking simply wanted to wreck the campaign to "teach the DM a lesson," or something similar. The roleplaying bit was tacked on after the fact as justification for bad behaviour when a couple of us pointed out how childish his comment was. I believe that I am as much about the roleplaying as you are, based on everything I've seen you say (and the fact that my longest running group sprang out of a bunch of theatre junkies), but it is still, ultimately, a social game.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;693394Actually, for me it's that I don't think the character should have a reasonable sense of 'helms of opposite alignment' exist until they encounter them.  A wizard character, perhaps, but most others aren't going to be that up on common magic items - and while the view 'magic items is good' is rather simplistic, it works for most characters.

I wouldn't avoid a helm of opposite alignment because as a player I know they exist - I'd only avoid them if I knew of their existence as a Character.

Now that I agree with.

Quote from: jibbajibba;693408See I have no problem at all with a PC killing the rest of the party and takign their stuff hey shit happens. The world keeps turning. I have killed party members and taken then stuff plenty of times. The signs were there

I don't think this is being a dick either its playing a fully realised character in a immersive and fully realised world.

Like I said I would introduce the corruption gradually making the Paladin player slowly realise something was wrong before loosing their shit. The rest of the party might notice, a detect evil would notice a malicious presence etc etc , the paladins pwers would fail a few times, make a Will save to cast lay on hands, make a will save to use turn undead that sort of thing.

Now in other circumstances it might be instant say you get charmed by a necromancer who convinces you the party are all dopplegangers etc etc

I am intrigued that there is such a clear split on the forum between the attitude to such dilemas. I would have thought this was bread and butter roleplay 101 stuff.
I mean I have had paladins who give up paladinhood because because they rebel against god's will and take vengance when mercy was called for (and vise versa) and done that for purely roleplay reasons yet alone actuall in world magical effects.

I am not opposed to the paladin killing the party, but my point is, I think one ought to understand the group's disposition on player characters killing other player characters. In the right group, paladin trying to slay the party can be a blast. But not every group will be cool with it, so you adapt to the room. I think if the group clearly isn't cool with it, and you go around killing pcs, that is where it becomes an issue.

The split is more about deaddm's post where he seemed to be saying he would ruin the campaign to get back at the GM. Later he said this wasn't his intent though. People took issue with the 'ruin the campaign' part and using the alignment shift as justification , not with him playing his alignment.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;693412I am not opposed to the paladin killing the party, but my point is, I think one ought to understand the group's disposition on player characters killing other player characters. In the right group, paladin trying to slay the party can be a blast. But not every group will be cool with it, so you adapt to the room. I think if the group clearly isn't cool with it, and you go around killing pcs, that is where it becomes an issue.

The split is more about deaddm's post where he seemed to be saying he would ruin the campaign to get back at the GM. Later he said this wasn't his intent though. People took issue with the 'ruin the campaign' part and using the alignment shift as justification , not with him playing his alignment.

I assumed deaddm was sayign that he would follow his alignment and kill all the party which would ruin the game as a result and not as an aim in itself.
I take issue with the concept that all CE characters are Rampaging killbots and I take issue that the party all dying ruins the game.

I suspect DeadDM doesn't play a lot of Evil PC games and tends to like play where the party are generated as a group with PCs in different roles all contributing to the party's sucess.
I have very little interest in that type of play as I find it breaks immersion. I much prefer the PCs to happen to be inviduals who all met and adventure together for in game reasons. Therefore I have no need to worry about all good parties all the like.
It is common for us to have a mix and its the GMs job to create hooks that lock PCs into a common goal. These can be as crude as family ties or as complex as extra dimentional curses or whatever but they have to emerge through play and they have to not be a railroad, which is a tricky line to walk.
The Punisher can work with Captain America on a mission, shit The Joker can work with Batman if it means saving the entire fabric of reality though of course ..Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! ...

Quote from: Rincewind1;693399Of course it's not about just Helms of Opposite Alignment silly, it's Belts of Gender Change everyone knows about...I mean, being wary of unknown magic items in general isn't a foreign concept (and your character does know magic exists, since his buddy wiggled his fingers and conjured a ball of fire that turned a bunch of orcs to crisps moments ago). Putting on an oddly looking, rune - covered, slightly glowing object on your head/hand/belt/foot etc. etc is an equivalent of eating an unknown mushroom while in a forest.

If there were some simple safeguard that could be taken against cursed items, then I would agree with you. In my experience, though, cursed items are nearly impossible to detect without suffering the effect of the curse. For example, you can have the magic-user cast Identify on all items first - but that just means the magic user suffers all the curses.  

The other way of being prepared is knowing the different cursed items and being guarded against them - i.e. cast Know Alignment every time someone tries a new helm. This seems very much meta-gaming to me, though.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;693386I guess my approach to playing a character is a i never know for sure what I am going to end up with. I dont come up with a static concept that must stay in place for the duration of the campaign. I let the character develop during character creation and during play. To me half the fun is watching that unfold. So stuff like cursed items potentially make that a more interesting process.

You don't need a predefined character concept to arrive at a point where you are happy with a character and really enjoy running it. Having that upended can be really annoying.

Quote from: jibbajibba;693401First off I won't run it like that I woudl probably run it by degrees, effectively introducing a corruption mechanism that starts as an urge to do harm.

That's not how the helm works. It's more interesting an approach, but I wouldn't spring it on a player.

Quotesecond of all Chaotic Evil characters don't just kill everyone they meet becuase they can, that would be equivalent to some bererker rage. Chaotic Evil characters kill, lie cheat steal for a bunch of reasons
i) It benefits them
ii) they get a kick out of it
iii) It furthers some diety or supernatural entituy they are in thrall to
iv) They can get away with it

Except you're not dealing with someone who has had years to get a handle on their impulses and learn when to override them, you're dealing with someone who is the equivalent of a suddenly hormonal 13 year old, except instead of puberty they're going through sudden alignment change. Bad decisions and poor impulse control, like "try to kill the party, it sounds like fun (remember Angel and his family?)" seems like a pretty reasonable roleplaying choice.

QuoteI think that its an interesting character development, the flawed hero trying to regain lost honour, fighting corruption etc etc A classic trope surely.

What an awesome idea for a storygame! Do a kickstarter, you'll rake it in.

Quote from: jibbajibba;693408I am intrigued that there is such a clear split on the forum between the attitude to such dilemas. I would have thought this was bread and butter roleplay 101 stuff.
I mean I have had paladins who give up paladinhood because because they rebel against god's will and take vengance when mercy was called for (and vise versa) and done that for purely roleplay reasons yet alone actuall in world magical effects.

If they are doing it for purely roleplay reasons, then it's the player making the choice, right? You get how that's different than the player not making the choice?

Identify is an awesome spell. Great for mystery and setting a mood. Magic is risky, folks!

Quote from: apparition13;693444You don't need a predefined character concept to arrive at a point where you are happy with a character and really enjoy running it. Having that upended can be really annoying.

No but real chanracters change and develop developing a role and a personality is part of what makes any protagonist interesting be that in a book, a movie or a game.
One of the drives in RPGs and the thing that clearly defines table top from CRPGs is that your character will be put in situations they have not expected and you have to see how the character emerges from that experience.
If happens to your PC how do they react?

QuoteThat's not how the helm works. It's more interesting an approach, but I wouldn't spring it on a player.

Not as written I agree but as I say would be how I would run it probably becuase my take on alignemnt is less about active forces in the universe and more aboput holistic world view.

I have used other more immediate changes before, riffing off that episode of Star Trek I have had a PC transformed into a light and dark side of themselves. And I have done that by taking them to one side and explaining it like they have just turned CE and not telling them there is a LG version of them somewhere else until later when I do a parallel flashback scene just for that PC.

QuoteExcept you're not dealing with someone who has had years to get a handle on their impulses and learn when to override them, you're dealing with someone who is the equivalent of a suddenly hormonal 13 year old, except instead of puberty they're going through sudden alignment change. Bad decisions and poor impulse control, like "try to kill the party, it sounds like fun (remember Angel and his family?)" seems like a pretty reasonable roleplaying choice.

Not sure I get that after the PC is still intelligent and had impulse control before. A Good person still has bad thoughts on occassion.
Attacking the party from the get go is a reaction but, to me at least, it's a child's interpretation of what Evil is about. Eliminating the party carefully when its safe to do so if there is a clear and definite advantage beyond, "I am Evil Evil people kill everyone they meet", is perfectly fine as I have said.  

QuoteIf they are doing it for purely roleplay reasons, then it's the player making the choice, right? You get how that's different than the player not making the choice?

Here I have a probably extreme view, call it the method roleplayer in me, Once the character is in the world the character is 'real' I no longer really control how that character acts the character kind of does. Now sometimes I will modify that usually at cons and stuff because its a one off and you have to get along with folks so putting a filter on the relationship between you and your charater is a Good Idea. In a campaign game really I don't. Whatever happens in the world will influence the PC more than my conscious roleplay choices will. If they are tempted their reaction is their's not my reaction as to how I would like them to act. So to be if they are affected by a geas or a quest or a help of alignment change or a black blade or whatever that is in the world so its all about them I don't feel for a moment that its been forced on them by a DM rather I feel its just how the world treats them.
I do get that that might be kind of nuts though

Quote from: jibbajibba;693421I assumed deaddm was sayign that he would follow his alignment and kill all the party which would ruin the game as a result and not as an aim in itself.
I take issue with the concept that all CE characters are Rampaging killbots and I take issue that the party all dying ruins the game.

I suspect DeadDM doesn't play a lot of Evil PC games and tends to like play where the party are generated as a group with PCs in different roles all contributing to the party's sucess.
I have very little interest in that type of play as I find it breaks immersion. I much prefer the PCs to happen to be inviduals who all met and adventure together for in game reasons. Therefore I have no need to worry about all good parties all the like.
It is common for us to have a mix and its the GMs job to create hooks that lock PCs into a common goal. These can be as crude as family ties or as complex as extra dimentional curses or whatever but they have to emerge through play and they have to not be a railroad, which is a tricky line to walk.
The Punisher can work with Captain America on a mission, shit The Joker can work with Batman if it means saving the entire fabric of reality though of course ..Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! ...

I tend to think of rampaging killbots as not really people, or insane.

Even a CE person could be the most charismatic person in the room, surrounded by friends, and never hurts a fly.