Alignment help.


Advice


So, in this campaign I've been playing as a player in recently, I am playing a rather stereotypical Lawful good Dwarf Cleric who worships Torag. I just have a bit of trouble getting along with my companions and role-playing.
My party includes a NG Sorcerer and Paladin, which both typically don't voice their word unless things begin to get out of hand. There is a ranger who knows that he doesn't know enough about his surroundings to argue with anyone.
The problem is the the last two members of the party who are a rogue and an oracle. They both recently changed their alignments to CN but they've been playing like their that alignment this whole time so its not that big of a deal. The oracle is the one that bothers me on his own.
I don't know the guy in real life very well, so i didn't really have a feel for what kind of guy he was before he joined us last session, but its clear to me now that our personalities are not compatible. He likes to contradict me in most decisions I make, and the GM will not help. I don't blame the GM though, he is new to gming so he is still very caught up in the mechanical side of the game, and he isn't solving problems in the group unless its a rule argument.
I'm home schooled, and am not terribly proficient in dealing with this kind of issue, so any help possible would be helpful on that front.
My second problem is with my role-playing. I am lawful good, and yet my characters oldest brother and twin brother were murdered by Gobliniods in the goblin bloodwar, and my character still holds onto that and hates goblinoids. So, when the a goblin harem attacked us I killed two of the women and the other two began screaming about the babies and trying to rush by us to the nursery. I felt like that was out of character for the goblin women because because of the way they raise their young in cages and I continued my attack...
My GM called my a sociopath and turned the other players against me. Interestingly enough, the oracle was the only one who sided with me in the end, but I digress. Was I outside of my alignment? Personally, I see goblins as little more than pests. Should I be sorry for killing a mother rat going home to her children? If she abuses and ignores them?


It always depends. For one thing it can depend on what you do with the goblin children now..good old goblin children dilemma. You could claim you'll help them develop into civilised beings, not monsters and pests that their traditional parents would make them into.
Moral relativity is quite common everywhere.


You can see them as little more than pests but that doesn't mean that they are. Goblins are sentient creatures and as such can vary just as much as a human.


Dread Knight wrote:
You can see them as little more than pests but that doesn't mean that they are. Goblins are sentient creatures and as such can vary just as much as a human.

Sorry, when I said "I" I was speaking in character, not as a person. The thing is that you're answer doesn't really tell me what I wan't to know. I wasn't asking for views on what goblins are. I was asking if even if I am blinded by my hate of goblins, am I within the context of being good?


Sorry, *your

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Good people can hate. Goof people can want vengeance. Good people can do bad things.

For some reason, there are players and GMs who seem set in making a Paladin fall. Now you're not a Paladin, but you're LG.

I ask this, does a CE person suddenly become CN or CG just because they happened to push a kid out from under a falling piano? No. One act doesn't define them, usually.

Now did they purposely give their life to save an orphanage full of kids? That might be different.

Just being a but head won't make a LG character fall. Never should getting some payback. Particularly if you follow certain gods.

YMMV


What constitutes good, or evil behaviour can be highly subjective; clearly your gm interprets it one way and you another. You need to sit down with your gm and agree a code of conduct that you can both be happy with, and how often (and what sort of circumstances) you can deviate from that.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Enterler wrote:
Dread Knight wrote:
You can see them as little more than pests but that doesn't mean that they are. Goblins are sentient creatures and as such can vary just as much as a human.
Sorry, when I said "I" I was speaking in character, not as a person. The thing is that you're answer doesn't really tell me what I wan't to know. I wasn't asking for views on what goblins are. I was asking if even if I am blinded by my hate of goblins, am I within the context of being good?

Would killing a fleeing female human going home to her children, be within the context of good? I think you should get the same answer.

If you are blinded by hate and act on it you are not acting in a 'Good' fashion IMO. But as the others have said one action doesn't cause an alignment change.

You and your GM have differences on what is considered 'Good' so also as others have said you should sit down and talk with your GM to work out a code or guidelines on what would and would not be a 'Good' action.

Grand Lodge

Goblins are a normally Evil race (you do find the odd ball good goblin, drow, orc, vampire, succubus, etc etc) but the fact is 99.9% of them ARE EVIL.

Stack on top of that, Dwarves have a racial hatred of Goblins, similar to halflings and giants. It is completely in character for a dwarf of any alignment to decide that it is better to end the goblins then spare em and have to deal with them later in life.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Standard Pathfinder goblins are horrible creatures who keep their babies in cages. The existence of a nursery implies that these are not standard Pathfinder goblins.

In which case they may be of the subspecies 'morality-trap goblins'. That means they always have lots of children and they all want to murder you and you either let them kill you or you kill them and have to adopt all their ultra-aggressive children yourself and retire from adventuring or leave them to starve or murder them.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

You need to define your alignment, and I suggest you ask the other players at the table to do the same...

As a cleric you don't need a code of conduct the same way a paladin does, but a few pins of does and don'ts can help a long way...

Yours could be something like:

I'm lawful so:
- I try to follow the laws of the land to the best of my ability.
- when in doubt I try to rationalize according to dwarven tradition and Torags teaching
- I will do anything in my power to kill any goblin who crosses my path

I'm good so:
- I donate a bit to help the poor I come across
- I won't kill innocents (unless they are gobbies)
- if I can, I help those in need


Bacon666 wrote:

You need to define your alignment, and I suggest you ask the other players at the table to do the same...

As a cleric you don't need a code of conduct the same way a paladin does, but a few pins of does and don'ts can help a long way...

Yours could be something like:

I'm lawful so:
- I try to follow the laws of the land to the best of my ability.
- when in doubt I try to rationalize according to dwarven tradition and Torags teaching
- I will do anything in my power to kill any goblin who crosses my path

I'm good so:
- I donate a bit to help the poor I come across
- I won't kill innocents (unless they are gobbies)
- if I can, I help those in need

This means that you are not good.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Actually, according to the tenants of Torag, the slaughter of enemies and their families is pretty much standard practise:

Faiths of Purity p.27 wrote:
Against my people's enemies I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except to extract information. I will defeat them, and I will scatter their families. Yet even in the struggle against our enemies, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag.

As enemies of the dwarven people, goblins are pretty much considered guilty by default. Certainly, you could argue the finer points of the above, especially with the last sentence, but the point still remains.

Please note, this is one of the codes that a Paladin of Torag is expected to follow. Being Lawful Good does not mean you can't be ruthless, in fact it's pretty much expected.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Quote:
Yet even in the struggle against our enemies, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag.

Sean "I write god articles" K "not Wayne's brother" Reynolds himself pointed out this line with the implication that genocidal baby murder doesn't fly even for Torag.

Different groups are going to take different approaches to morality. And many take the stance that what actually is Good or Evil doesn't change depending on whose eyes you're looking through. Genocide and the murder of children tend to land in "always evil" territory for a lot of people, for very good reason.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Players can make an alignment argument to justify nearly *anything*, and while others may make counterarguments, there is no final arbiter to say who is right.

In the same vein, historically, religion has been used to justify the worst atrocities imaginable.

Amalric, Bishop of Citeaux, 1209 wrote:
"Kill them all, and God will recognize his own."

So, at the end of the day, don't sweat it. If your DM imposes a change of alignment, he is a douche. Just point to the above cited code of your god, or anything else that lets you do what you want, and claim religious justification for it. <g>


As a Cleric of Torag, like Neil Mansell said above, you did what you where supposed to do. You're Lawful Good, not Lawful Nice.

If you want to roleplay out of it, ask the others in the party what they would have done. Leave the evil women to raise their evil children? Take care of them? Leave them to die? Better to just make it quick. Besides, they're evil. If they where not evil, your DM done shat the bed in not telling you that those wheren't normal goblins.

As for the Oracle player: Don't just assume that you two aren't compatible. If you do, then YOU are the one who doesn't try to make it work. He did side with you in this situation, right?


This is fine and all, but I wasn't for killing the babies, just the mothers that were attacking us earlier. As to whether or not, I would kill a fleeing human mother...
Well... If she abused and raised her children in cages I think I might be tempted.


I will try to make it work with the Oracle, I'm not giving up yet, I was just asking for advice. Thank you everyone for your help. Everyone here on this message boards is so nice. I'll be back soon I'm sure!

-Enterler


I am the GM of Enterler's group and he and I discussed this after these posts. I definitely made some mistakes in my handling of this, but it also helped two other party members realize that how they were playing their characters wasn't in line with their alignments either.

I was trying to use this as an opportunity to start a discussion on relative morality - just because you don't agree with how the goblins treat their children, doesn't mean that all goblins need to die.

We are going to have the dwarf cleric of Torag bring this up in game next session and tell the other characters, "I'm not sure how we handled things with the goblin mothers and children was right, and here's why... According to my experience... As a Cleric of Torag...

I wasn't trying to force an alignment change, as I don't believe GM's should force that, players should see that their actions don't mesh with their alignments and do what the other guys did, "I think I need to be CN now". I don't think the cleric needs an alignment change, the party just needs to understand his position. I felt that I was going with the discussion at the table. Several party members were trying to argue the dwarf cleric out of his position, but as a character, it was clear he felt strongly that the goblins needed to die.

I wasn't as familiar with the character background as I needed to be and now that he's explained it to me, I understand his motivations. The interesting thing is usually the cleric is one of the least "murder hobo" of the bunch, but the tables turned. I regret using the sociopath label. All's well that ends well and this should lead to some lively discussion next time around.

Liberty's Edge

Seems cut and dry the mothers attacked you, you defended yourself and ended a threat to yourself and your people. Faulting you for defending yourself from a goblin with lethal methods seems like a bit of a jerk move on your DMs part.

Grand Lodge

Ah, goblin babies.

Good thing my CN Tiefling Oracle/Barbarian, and follower of Lamashtu, saved them from all the "good" PCs.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Alignment help. All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice