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I was just pondering that one topic that always comes up: "What is the most evil act you have committed in an RPG?" You know, the topics that invariably turn into an escalating arms race to see who can outdo the other while posting stories that would have most gamers staring with shock and disgust at the player acting them out and would likely lead to being permanently uninvited to the group. Possibly with a restraining order tacked on.
This is the opposite.
What is the most noble, self-sacrificing, compassionate, awesomely righteous, and just plain good act your characters have performed? Stood alone between countless innocents and oncoming marauders? Actually managed to redeem a fiend? Adopted and successfully raised the goblin children your party may have inadvertently orphaned? Let that positive energy flow!
Well, I am not really sure what the most good act would be, but I can throw a couple out there for you to decide for yourself:
Descended into hell itself to rescue the soul of a deceased paladin, a church congregation (or, what remained of them, plus a couple of their souls), a crystal containing a whole world's worth of souls, and a bunch of holy relics... Obviously, this was in "A Paladin in Hell".
Let the villain of a really nasty encounter get away in order to save the lives of fellow party members after a nearly TPK experience.
Delved deep into the plane of negative energy in order to prevent a demilich from taking control of undead all over the universe.
I have to run quickly. I'll probably post more later.
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Unfortunately, I DM more than I play, so I've never had one of those moments for my PCs.
But I've seen a few from the other side of the screen:
Dwarf Fighter, played by my brother in his first ever adventure. With his +3 dragonbane greataxe, he leaps off a balcony to challenge the Aspect of Tiamat in melee combat. He survived.
I was playing in a Forgotten Realms campaign set in Al-Quadim. The PC was a paladin of Mystra from Silverymoon, sent to establish a benign religious presence in one of their port cities, if I remember correctly.
In any event, I had somehow won the services of a male djinn whose wife was imprisoned or enslaved in some unusual fashion. We were at a point where the male djinn could grant the party a wish to aid us against our foe, but we also found his wife as his prisoner. My PC (against the better judgement of some) used that wish to free the djinn's wife instead of 'boosting' the party.
My logic was that, if the djinn had the power to free his wife, but could not use that power directly himself, then I had to give him the capability to do so for all the help he had given us to date (especially if we might not survive the final battle - I couldn't deny him one last chance to be with his true love).
That stopped my DM dead in his tracks for a few moments. He then decided that the reunited couple would pledge their service to my PC freely, as if I were family. The final confrontation with the BBEG went a lot better with two djinn with us, needless to say ;)
That campaign was probably my best experience playing a paladin, now that I think about it. Good times.... :)
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
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I had an elven Cleric / Wizard of some sort back in 2E who would constantly totally change any village we ended up in. Continual Lights for everyone. Plant Growth on the farmers crops.
She even researched a pair of Continual Wamth and Continual Chill spells that she would also hand out to people in local communities to allow them to either go the winter without firewood or preserve foodstuffs in underground rooms. Many of her spells cost money to cast, so she blew through quite a bit of gold this way.
The spell that got her pretty much thrown out of elven society was a version of Polymorph Other that worked normally for 2E (permanant change, physical *and* mental), but could affect multiple targets, required the targets to be willing / agree to the transformation first, and only turned creatures into animals, fey creatures and / or elves of similar size to their previous size. She would offer that as a choice for any humanoids or bad-guys defeated, to be reborn as elves, fey or animals, instead of being killed (since the party would otherwise just kill all the bad-guys anyway).
The rest of elven society was less than thrilled with the idea of her making new elves out of orcs and hobgoblins and stuff and she ended up having to rescue some of her transformees from elves who wanted to destroy them. At her point of retirement, she had a community of these faux elves (and fey, centaurs, etc) building their own society, far from the disapproving eyes of the rest of elvendom...
Kind of a bizarre resolution to the old 'do we kill the women and children?' dilemna, but she was a bizarre character. :)
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Playing a changling monk raised by goblinoids in an Eberron 'play with the creator' game.
We rescue a goblin child, and since my character's background said he was an orphan, I figure he would really have a soft spot for the kid. So he protected her, she rode in the Haversack when they went adventuring, he wouldn't let her see the dead bodies on the crashed airship, etc. Some of the most fun roleplaying I'd done in a long while, and I was really taking a shine to the kid.
"What if I'm not bluffing?" (I'm sitting there with my arm up and cocked back, like I was holding the rapier).
Well the gnome decides I'm bluffing. So I run her through. Everyone was quiet at the table for 'bout a minute, before things blew up.
Finally Keith says "Well we'll call that a surprise round, roll for coup de grace"
My signed copy of Sharn: City of Towers says "The gnome had to die." :-
One of the players in my campaign once played a ranger who sacrificed herself for the rest of the group. It was in the adventure House of cards. There were only 2 cards left, and one of them was Dungeon. She decided to take all the cards and accept the imprisonment in Hades so that the rest of the group could finish the adventure.
Of course I added a sequel where the group could travel to Hades and rescue her. It was in Greek mythological style and had Cerberus, Tantalus, Sisyphus etc. And of course they were not allowed to look back whether the ranger followed them...
In my previous campaign the heroes each got presented with a wish as a reward for succesfully saving their city. One of them used the wish for healing a chaotic evil assassin whom they were trying to convert and who had lost his hand. He became chaotic neutral after this event.
Another LG cleric in my campaign spent some sessions converting the mayor bad guy of the campaign by offering his friendship and playing chess with him every week. It took many sessions, each time with the risk that the bad guy would decide to attack the PC, but the PC always managed to get away with it. It took a long time to convert the bad guy, but the PC did not give op and succeeded in the end.
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Well, unfortunately, I DM a lot more then I play, as in I DM'd almost every weekend for 8 months, and played three times. It was an Iron Heores game and it was set up so that we were escaping slaves. My barbarian decided that if we release the rest of the slaves, it would cause a distraction that we could use to hide. I suppose that releasing the slaves counts as a good act, even though it had a selfish motive. I have seen my players do some good things though. like adopting a pack of wolves that they hatched themselves from the eggs (don't ask. long story), and one adopted a baby bugbear after they killed its mother. most of the time thoguh, they're pretty selfish and violent and most generous they get is "ok, we'll only run you through a little bit."
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I'm not one to usually necromance my own threads, but in light of the awesome Paladin preview and the "are Goblins civilized" threads: bump.
The fighter in my Curse of the Crimson Throne game has given his house away to his young, poor and illiterate half-orc sidekick and a "former" cutpurse he and his party saved. He put a lot of effort into getting that house, and he's spent the majority of the campaign living out of a room in Three Rings Tavern.
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My monk gave a Bucknard's Everfull Purse to the starving villagers of some town that had been ravaged by a dragon's minions back in 2E. The rest of my party was traumatized, but owning a bag of endless money went against the vow of poverty I made up as part of my background so I didn't consider it a good act (I was just getting rid of something I didn't want.) My DM disagreed and gave me a free level.
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In light of all the "is this character evil" threads going about, bumping a light to shine in the darkness.
There was this Neutral wizard, absolutely cynical, travelling with a mostly good party. Eventually, the paladin started getting to her, all through leading by example, not through preaching directly to her. She really started to want to believe in the ideals the paladin stood for, and came to see him a symbol of good and hope that the world(which she saw as a "Sick Sad World") desperately needed.
But she still lacked the faith that those ideals could survive on their own in such a world. She started going about in secret to watch his back and clean up loose ends that she believed would wind up getting him killed. She dirtied her hands handling matters she believed the paladin couldn't, or more importantly, shouldn't. She became more and more devoted to the task of protecting him both as a person and as a symbol that couldn't afford to be sullied by what she considered necessary evils.
When the party left enemies alive, she murdered any who she believed might come looking for revenge on the paladin. If she found out about a problem that could even slightly put the paladin at risk of breaking his code, she would either cut through the problem with brutal efficiency or guide the party away from ever seeing it, consequences for anyone else be damned.
She covered her tracks well, and kept it up for a long time. But while she started off believing whole-heartedly that she was doing what was right, the guilt just started to pile up. While the paladin was sleeping the sleep of the just, she was getting anything but. Eventually the rest of the party started to notice her cracking up, and it all came out in the open when she tearfully confessed(in a church of the god she had come to believe in but whose tenets she could not find the faith to truly follow) everything she had done and why to the paladin she had turned into a sort of idol. He was horrified by what had been done for his sake and in his name, and saddened by who had done it. The wizard is full-on weeping at this point, not even daring to ask for the forgiveness she believes she doesn't deserve. The paladin(AND THE PLAYER) is shedding Manly Tears as he hugs her, forgives her without any hesitation, and then gently places her under arrest. THE DAMN GM IS TEARING UP AT THIS POINT.
The party is shocked when they learn the details in-character, and a good chunk of the campaign after that was dedicated towards the wizard's trial(with the paladin and most of the party serving on her defense) and her long and arduous parole(under the paladin's watchful eye) and struggle towards redemption. She eventually made it to NG.
The paladin and wizard were married by the end of the campaign, but that was an even longer and bumpier road.
Once, in the first DnD campaign I played in, I sacrificed my character for the group. Not the biggest deal around, I'm sure a lot players have done it, but this was still early in our first campaign, and right after a character's "moment of clarity" and the need to redeem himself. Here's a little backstory leading up to what happened.
We had just finished our first major campaign arc through a dangerous dungeon, thwarting a major villain. On just too many occasions, the die rolled just right to keep us from getting TPK'ed, and my character took it as a sign from his Goddess that someone was watching out for him. After the dungeon, my ranger took a level of cleric as he became "born again" and felt obligated to venerate his goddess.
A few weeks later, my character started drifting from his alignment sharply. We were having a bad night, rolling bad, just having general unluck. Tempers flared, and my character ended up doing some things his deity looked down on horribly. Even suffered an alignment shift it was so bad. The DM even made a comment that bad nights happen, but other eyes are upon you guys...
At our next session, we happened upon a Stick Giant(massive treant type thing) that was just too powerful for us to stand against. It had all these wind powers, and could move fast, to prevent us from outright fleeing. After catching a few of its attacks, I realized there was no way the party cleric was going to heal us up in time to withstand much more, so my character flung himself at the beast head on, and screamed for his friends to run while they could. There was no chance I was going to beat this thing, and I knew I was dead meat. But the DM also knew I was very partial to this character, being my first DnD character and all...
The creature destroyed me. Completely. But, it bought the party enough time to escape. The party was devastated. In character everyone voiced how upset they were and didn't know what to do. It reminded me a lot of the scene form LotR when the fellowship escapes Moria, after losing Gandalf. At this point we had only experienced one other character death, and that was our rogue in the aforementioned dungeon, so we were still really partial to each other characters.
The DM pulled me aside and we had a little side-RP bit. My character awoke in the afterlife, sitting next to his Goddess. Basically, the Stick Giant was sent by my goddess as a test. She wanted to see if I would redeem myself, or if I was lost to the alignment shift I was presenting. By sacrificing myself for the welfare of others, I had redeemed myself and passed her test. This was my one "get out of jail free" card, and next time I wouldn't be so lucky. I was sent back to the land of the living without a level loss.
As the party made camp and lamented my character's death, I came walking up unharmed, but much wiser. Everybody cheered... Haven't had a RP session that deep in a long time...
Mmm I like this post. . . .but, hey, thats my icon!
I haven't played a while but lets see . . . I had one LG cleric settle a war between a tribe of druids and a city.
Same character became the personal physician to a NE emporer in a different world. He had The Three Artifacts of Evil (crown, sceptre, and orb) and basically was the one man clean up crew for the world. Ultimate scary dude had a heart condition. He had a couple of pet pit fiends to soften up the targets first. They LOVED thier positions, roaming across the world at will of the Northern Emporer. One of his powers were to turn bones to jelly. He had huge bell jars with the corpses of those he killed. LOTS of bell jars. She kept him alive to prevent the Empire from falling apart and a new Dark Age. Eventually he left the Prime Material after he defeated the forces of chaos trying to end the world. He left one of his treasures, his piano, to his physician. She used to play the piano on special occasions as a rememberance.
In light of all the "is this character evil" threads going about, bumping a light to shine in the darkness.
There was this Neutral wizard, absolutely cynical, travelling with a mostly good party. Eventually, the paladin started getting to her, all through leading by example, not through preaching directly to her. She really started to want to believe in the ideals the paladin stood for, and came to see him a symbol of good and hope that the world(which she saw as a "Sick Sad World") desperately needed.
But she still lacked the faith that those ideals could survive on their own in such a world. She started going about in secret to watch his back and clean up loose ends that she believed would wind up getting him killed. She dirtied her hands handling matters she believed the paladin couldn't, or more importantly, shouldn't. She became more and more devoted to the task of protecting him both as a person and as a symbol that couldn't afford to be sullied by what she considered necessary evils.
When the party left enemies alive, she murdered any who she believed might come looking for revenge on the paladin. If she found out about a problem that could even slightly put the paladin at risk of breaking his code, she would either cut through the problem with brutal efficiency or guide the party away from ever seeing it, consequences for anyone else be damned.
She covered her tracks well, and kept it up for a long time. But while she started off believing whole-heartedly that she was doing what was right, the guilt just started to pile up. While the paladin was sleeping the sleep of the just, she was getting anything but. Eventually the rest of the party started to notice her cracking up, and it all came out in the open when she tearfully confessed(in a church of the god she had come to believe in but whose tenets she could not find the faith to truly follow) everything she had done and why to the paladin she had turned into a sort of idol. He was horrified...
So, when does the book come out? Or is going to be a trilogy?