Name: Naga’s Champion
Race: Nagaji
Class: Bloodrager (Crossblooded Rager) 8
Adventure: Escape from Old Korvosa
Location: Vencarlo’s Estate
Catalyst: Splitting the Party
The Gory Details:
After breaking down Vencarlo’s front door, the party split up to search the house. The Ranger scanned the study, the Magus examined the pantry, and the Oracle looked around the living room. Naga’s Champion rushed ahead (as was his tendency), and rifled through Vencarlo’s personal quarters.
The Red Mantis assassin waited until he was sure no-one else was coming up the stairs, before dropping down from the rafters and activating his prayer attack. Three failed Will saves later, the assassin’s sabres were on either side of the big guy’s neck.
The assassin actually rolled pretty low for damage—N.C. only needed to pass a DC 28 Fort save to avoid instant death.
He rolled a 25.
The rest of the party were too busy fighting the other assassin (who had narrowly failed to kill the party Oracle) to notice that their big scaly friend was nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, the Magus was able to rescue N.C.’s body from the flames, and put him into her Handy Haversack. He’ll likely come back, sooner or later – and maybe he’ll learn something from the experience.
Probably not, though.
(Also, this technically marks my first “player kill” as a GM. Yay? :P)
Even though it's just a small part, I'm really happy that I helped inspire someone else's work and grateful that you mentioned me.
Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy where my heart used to be.
As for the guide itself, I had completely overlooked these Subdomains when they came out, and I'm very glad that you wrote this guide so that myself and others can get a better picture of how they measure up and how they could be used.
I most definitely subscribe to the idea of “there are no bad alignments, just bad players”, but I still find this an interesting idea to think about. So here‘s my two CP on the topic.
(Keeping in mind that I am a relative newbie to tabletop gaming, and that these are simply my opinions and experiences.)
9: Neutral Good – While I haven’t GMed for very many of them, I have a hard time picturing a NG character being terribly disruptive. Also, IMHO, the alignment that a lot of adventures are built towards.
8: Chaotic Good – While usually a bit quirky, the CGs I’ve seen have always been good to game with.
7: Chaotic Neutral – I’m not trying to be contrarian with this; CN is the most popular alignment in my area and, minus a couple of inter-party scuffles, they usually play nice with everyone else at the table.
Perhaps part of that is due to their shared focus on freedom and individuality – but that’s just conjecture on my part. That being said, I usually make sure the player in question isn’t trying to play Evil-but-totally-not-Evil before the game begins.
6: Neutral Evil – Alright, so hear me out. Neutral Evil characters are (usually) exceptionally self-centered, but that doesn’t always mean that they are disruptive.
(Story time):
A couple of years ago, I was GMing for a group that had a NE Rogue in it. Sounds like a classic recipe for trouble, right? As it turned out, however, this player knew how to play NE to a T. True, his character was a vicious, selfish, revenge-driven loner – but he was also cunning, pragmatic, and possessed a silver tongue that saved himself and his party time and time again. He knew that he couldn’t complete his personal quest without the aid of his party, and while he wasn’t exceptionally nice to them (he had a tendency to shut them up with a quick punch to the nethers), the rest of the group looked to him as a merciless but skilled leader.
Again, this dips back to the idea I mentioned above, but I think that this also shows a good example of how a NE character can contribute a lot to a group when played right.
5: Lawful Evil – As several other posters have said, LE characters tend to be your best bet if you want to run an Evil character in a Good group. That being said, I feel that while a Chaotic character can still manage to have some non-disruptive fun in a primarily Lawful party, a strongly Lawful character might be in for a rough time in a more free-spirited group.
4: True Neutral – Though this alignment is a personal favorite of mine, there is an awful lot of variance in what it can represent – and some of the players who do choose it just don’t know what alignment would suit them better, leaving their characters feeling a bit confused and lacking direction or motive.
3: Chaotic Evil – I have very mixed feeling about his alignment. While I personally have a soft spot for it, there are just so many ways it could go wrong. That being said, similar to my NE story above, there are also plenty of ways to get it “right”.
A small tip to anyone GMing for/playing CE characters:
One day, while doing some research on Psychopaths and Sociopaths (as you do), I came across something very interesting – while Psychopaths are often unable to form deep emotional attachments to anyone or anything, Sociopaths will often have one or more people or objects that they are greatly attached to.
Case in point: my group’s CE Ranger would likely give his life to save his Animal Companion (a vicious eagle who is just as bloodthirsty as he is), or our group’s Oracle (who is his childhood friend).
Also, gods help you if you try to go after his friends while he’s around.
(One more note: I know that not every CE character is a Psychopath or a Sociopath – it’s just that they seem to be common personality types among the CEs I’ve seen.)
2: Lawful Neutral – While I have seen this alignment only rarely, and I am currently GMing for a very well-played one, I can definitely imagine this alignment being a real spanner in the works for a lot of groups. Again, you can find lots of variance in what this actually represents.
1: Lawful Good – I tried very hard to not put this here. I re-jigged this list several times, but LG remains the only alignment that I would be worried to see on someone’s character sheet. Part of this is to do with my aforementioned local meta of Chaotic characters – I would feel bad for anyone trying to play a Paladin in my area – but also, to me at least, this alignment seems to be the hardest to really play well. If played badly, it can come across as Lawful Stupid; but even if played masterfully, it can be a real damp towel on everyone else’s game. This doesn’t even have to be caused by the direct actions of the player or character in question.
A little bit of conjecture and allegory:
Imagine you were an adventurer. Now imagine that you, and most of your party, were pretty easygoing sorts – you didn’t worry overmuch about doing the “right” thing, and although you all may have wildly differing viewpoints on some subjects, you generally get along alright.
Now imagine the final member of your party was basically Mr. Rogers, but a Wizard.
He was nice, he was intelligent, and he never really caused trouble. His only wish for the rest of the group was that they got along with each other, and that they always tried to be the best version of themselves that they could be.
That’s all solid stuff. I would enjoy playing with that character, and I would enjoy playing with that group.
The problem, in my mind, is as follows: because of the well-mannered Wizard tagging around with the group, there is all of a sudden a feeling of… limitation. Sort of like how you might feel a bit uncomfortable swearing in front of your grandparents, you would likely feel a bit uncomfortable doing something – anything – that could be construed as morally questionable while in a group with this guy.
In this way, even though this character isn’t doing anything purposefully to disrupt the group, his presence and attitude affects the way the other characters act, or feel like they should act.
Yes: most adventures are made with a party of primarily Good characters in mind. However, there is also usually some leeway given – with the idea that a lot of the time, there will also be some not-so-by-the-book characters involved in saving the day.
I think it boils down to this; LG, being something of an "ideal" alignment, can end up changing the course of the game and clashing with the party more often than most other alignments.
TLDR:With so much trouble in PUGs, it's kinda hard bein' good old Lawful G.
…That turned out a lot longer than I thought it would be. Ah well.
While (in my opinion) it would be a reasonable interpretation of the rules to say that you should get both Animal Companions, I can also definitely see your GM saying that you don’t (or shouldn’t) for the sake of balance – and game time.
Also, if it were up to me, I would definitely pick Saurian over Animal*. Dinosaurs are rightly terrifying, and it fits your patron’s theme more than most, in my opinion.
*Unless there is a very specific non-dinosaur AC that you have your eye on.
Hi everyone! My name is Crimson Cadaver, and I've been a lurker on these forums for about three years now.
Recently, I've felt the need to give something back to the community - the Demoniac has always been one of my favorite Prestige Classes, and I noticed that no one had made a guide for it yet in the seven years it's been around.
Because of that, I have decided to throw my hat into the ring and give this guide-writing thing a go.
