Many groups only win because the DM lets them. Some would argue that's all groups. I understand the desire to play a PC or NPC "as they would really act", but it seems to have led to an unfortunate set of events here.
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It sounds like both of you are roleplaying your characters well, and there isn't any OOC conflict. Should make for an interesting roleplay opportunity.
I think it's pretty much up to you to basically ask the paladin, "what do I have to do to prove to you I'm not evil?" In your character's mind, caving in the entrance was to stop evil from escaping, in the paladin's mind it was a betrayal of the group.
I don't think you've "poisoned the well", because you did have a legitimate reason to do what you did with a noble motivation. If you can find a way to prove to the paladin that you are a moral person, he should be able to forgive you for the cave-in, considering you did it with good intentions.
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CN implies that you are not bound to any moral or legal obligations save for those you consent to. You do good, generally, unless you choose survival over friendship. You act free, not bound to organizational ties or laws, but don't necessarily act destructive. You must have bad CN players.I must say - pulling stuff like that is why I never allow CN characters in home games that I GM.
Player: I want to completely hose the rest of the group!
GM: Wait - what?
Player: It's okay - because I'm Chaotic Neutral!
GM: *facepalm*
I never said that all CN players are bad. Just that some take it as an invitation to justify disruptive behavior. Like you did. I didn't say that it was an evil act. It wasn't. Just disruptive.
Personally, I think the Paladin should have to apologize to his gods. My pc is a tiefling, and he's basing his opinion of me on my race. RACISM. But seriously, is racism a thing Paladins can fall for?
Well for a truly PC vs. PC conflict, I'd recommend Conflict RPG which are PCs vs. PCs type of game using Pathfinder. However, looking at your issue here, it sounds more like a Player vs. Player issue, and not a PC issue at all. I wouldn't play at a table where the GM allows another player to act like that in game. The problem is not the paladin, rather the player running the paladin (and the GM allowing it to happen) - people I'd never want to game with.
I see where this is going now.
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Personally, I think the Paladin should have to apologize to his gods. My pc is a tiefling, and he's basing his opinion of me on my race. RACISM. But seriously, is racism a thing Paladins can fall for?
Funny enough being a bigot or zealot are not ground to fall for a Paladin. Crusaders like Paladin are very scary, the ones that don't show any compromise in their crusade against evil in all its form but usually most people don't play with them on their table.
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...so caved in the entrance to prevent the enemy from getting out...Do you mean that you left the party and closed their escape route?
...
Smite away, sir paladin.
Yeah, that's pretty evil, and a nasty thing to do, IC or OOC. Honestly, get out of this mode otherwise you're gonna find yourself booted.
Bring in a new PC. Drop the whole "but it's what my character would do" feeble excuse for being a RichardHead. D&D is a team game, be part of the team.
In 99% of the questions like "should the paladin fall?" the answer is no.
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At first I was all "Oh hey a paladin who is hiding behind good isn't nice to act like a jerk and is playing lawful stupid." Now with more of the details it sounds like he genuinely has reasons to think you are shady as hell and led them to a death trap. Bailing on people and cutting off their escape route does seem highly suspicious. I tend to play chaotic good roguish characters, and if I had been playing, my character would have settled for giving your character a punch in the face for that. That being said it sounds like the gm had to manipulate events to go their way so really it's the GM's mess to clear up in my opinion.
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See, I think a group where people aren't afraid to fight if it makes sense im character makes for a very strong story, especially in a mature group. Usually, we are. I was looking for advice on in-game ways to deal with an unusual situation.
Here's a plan, set a building with a child inside on fire, then run in and save the child. Boom, you're a hero and shown to be one to sacrifice for the good of others. The paladin now has better respect for you, as long as no one knows you're the one to start the fire.
Sounds very Razmiran, especially if you claim The Living God told you that thr child would need help and that's why you were there.
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I doubt I would consider running away evil. However, it is entirely possible that it would be cowardly and disloyal. I don't know how bad the situation actually seemed at that point. I wouldn't let a paladin attack a person for that. On the other hand it might be reasonable for the paladin to never work with that person again.
I would find it very hard to justify caving in the only known entrance when my allies were not yet known to be dead. I have hard time saying that is not an evil act. You might have perceived it as necessary (the classic lesser of two evils) but still evil. I don't have too much problem with the paladin attacking you at that point.
If you had gone to the cave in point and waited to see if allies or undead came up then only caved it in if necessary, that would have been (in my opinion) a neutral to possibly slightly good act.
If you really think this is an in-game problem not a player issue, your only real possibility is to continue to apologize, try to make it up to them, and prove future loyalty.
Possibly a reasoned discussion along the lines of, "Look all the evidence said that we would all die an the undead would be loose on world. Is that what you really would have wanted to happen? I may have evaluated the situation poorly (please feel free to tell me where the error was in my reasoning) but there was no malicious or betrayal intended."
Totally meta-game, but did you have any fore knowledge that the GM would just let them live? Part of this needs a talk with the GM. If you make decisions based on what the GM has presented, then he just changes things after that decision has been made... Well, he is at least partially responsible for the incorrect decision.
Just one of the reasons I don't like GM's fudging things to make sure the party wins.
CN implies that you are not bound to any moral or legal obligations save for those you consent to. You do good, generally, unless you choose survival over friendship. You act free, not bound to organizational ties or laws, but don't necessarily act destructive. You must have bad CN players.I must say - pulling stuff like that is why I never allow CN characters in home games that I GM.
Player: I want to completely hose the rest of the group!
GM: Wait - what?
Player: It's okay - because I'm Chaotic Neutral!
GM: *facepalm*
I agree, but almost everyone I've seen playing a CN character plays it like that.
I also agree that your GM should do some bailing you out of this problem. Give the paladin/rest of party a dream from their god that you're helpful.
I actually have done this very thing, we were lv7 and in a building and in a hallway there was a mob of redcaps. A MOB of DR 10 fast healing 3 creatures that we had no idea were there so no cold iron. I was the only player who could do damage to them, but it was healed by their healing. 1 of these were invincible to our party. The GM thought the oracle was a cleric and had a holy symbol, but he didn't. So I ran past a door, saw that my team wasn't coming, and closed the door and barred it. when I heard knocking I opened it up for my team and we re-closed the door and barred it again. But if they hadn't finally ran they'd have died.
So if your team wasn't running away, then yeah, I say you did the right thing closing the tunnel. They were as good as dead. This is why I don't enjoy the GM shield, it can really mess up otherwise valid plans and conclusions.
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Now, as a CN character, leaving them all to die was perfectly within the purveiw of your alignment. It makes complete sense, to a CN. You didn't know those people, you had no real bond to them, and saving your skin came first.
But now your character has to deal with the repucussions of that. They all know they can't trust you. They all know you don't care about them. And the paladin is acting on it. Which is perfectly within the perveiw of a LG character. Your character wronged him, has proven disloyal, uncooperative, and actively a detriment to the rest of the groups survival. Pretty definitively. So acting hostile towards your character isn't just perfectly justified, it's downright common sense.
If you wanted the group to accept you, maybe you shouldn't have left them to die and cut off their escape route in a crypt full of undead out for their blood. Just... y'know... constructive critisism.
If you want an in-game way of dealing with the situation here it is: Have you CN guy apologize for leaving people to die, and MEAN it. Then, when they do not accept your apology because YOU LEFT THEM TO DIE, spend the next several months or years in game doing everything in your power to make it up to them for TRAPPING THEM WITH NO ESCAPE FACING CERTAIN DOOM. If your character does this sincerely for long enough, eventually they MIGHT forgive him.
Maybe.
If they're really really nice.
But it's possible. You're actually kinda lucky the paladin is a good character. Good characters forgive. But I know any CN character I ever played would already be plotting not forgiveness, but revenge.
First talk to him, and if he backs off, let it go. Just did that with my stupid Lawful Evil sorcerer that tries to bully everyone into helping him take over the world.
If he doesn't listen, kill him. I've had a hard time with playing with difficult characters, because for some reason everyone around me thinks that unless your character can be one shotted by a goblin and refuses to work as a team with anyone, you aren't TRULY roleplaying. After about the third time these people friendly fire me, betray me, or get in my way while saying "I'm just playing my character!", I lop their heads off, as barbarians are wont to do.
See, I think a group where people aren't afraid to fight if it makes sense im character makes for a very strong story, especially in a mature group. Usually, we are. I was looking for advice on in-game ways to deal with an unusual situation.
You're going to have to aim for an alignment change down the road. There's really no other way forward. If you're not going for a redemption story with this character, then you're just trolling the group.
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With the new update, this feels more like abandoning your allies to death rather than simply fleeing combat, with an added dose of betrayal by caving in the entrance before determining if they were actually alive or not.
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First talk to him, and if he backs off, let it go. Just did that with my stupid Lawful Evil sorcerer that tries to bully everyone into helping him take over the world.
If he doesn't listen, kill him. I've had a hard time with playing with difficult characters, because for some reason everyone around me thinks that unless your character can be one shotted by a goblin and refuses to work as a team with anyone, you aren't TRULY roleplaying. After about the third time these people friendly fire me, betray me, or get in my way while saying "I'm just playing my character!", I lop their heads off, as barbarians are wont to do.
Actually, it's not the Paladin that the problem, it's the OP (rogue).
And, no, one should never kill a fellow PC. If the player is so bad you need to kill his PC, just boot the player.
OP- remember again- D&D is a team game. So. let us assume you're playing Baseball, out in left Field. The opposing batter whaps one out to you, but "since you don't know those guys very well" you just let the ball drop, by getting out of it way. After all, those balls come down pretty fast, you could hurt yourself.
Afterwards, you cant figure out why the team captain is mad at you.
I think the scenario has real potential, if the DM throws in a challenge that only a full party can defeat, and makes sure they all "just happen" to be there to meet it.
Now the paladin is forced to allow the CN guy along, even though he doesn't trust him. The CN guy is forced to put his life on the line for the paladin, even though it's against all his instincts to do so. Eventually the paladin says, "I still don't like your methods, but I can't quibble with what you did for humanity today." And the CN says, "I still would have sealed off the cave, for the greater good, but in this case we did better by sticking together." Cue trimuphant music.
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except for as the OP said, the only reason the party didn't die was the GM shield. So from a character point of view he made the right choices. His "allies" were refusing to run away, the undead would have gone to the town, stop the undead. Now if the allies were okay running away and he closed them in that'd be bad. If the allies were winning and he ran that'd be bad. I know I don't assume the paladin's god is going to come save him when he's in trouble.
I once killed my teammate because of GM shield. There was a bad guy, we super unloaded on him. GM said he was badly hurt, he then grabbed our full health tank and ran, with an 80 movespeed, chasing wasn't an option. I as the spellcaster started shooting fireballs at him. I did enough damage to kill the fighter after a few of them, that was when the GM finally said the enemy wasn't going to die for plot reasons. So does the party hate me cause I killed our friend or does the GM fix things because, really, he broke them in the first place.
Had the GM not stepped in for the Paladin, the paladin would be dead and the player rolling up a new character. So the rogue would have been the only character alive for the new party. And as he said, in story they weren't "allies" as temp teammates for that first fight.
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welp, paladin is actually pretty smart after all.
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Pathfinder and all table top games must be made under a social contract that you and every other player secretly/ooc want to further the story and save other players. The player's shouldn't say they won't heal you, they need to find a reason that their character would. this is in essence kind of plot armor.
This prevents people from not being able to play characters they want to play, and it prevents the GM from accidentally the whole campaign.
quoting for emphasis.
When we were playing in Age of Worms, I had an elf cleric. More correctly, I had a lightly-armored elf cleric PC whom everyone else at the table referred to as "sissy elf-boy" or some variant thereof. I was chaotic good in alignment, which of course didn't sit well with gigantic bearded Mr. Macho-Man LG Human Paladin.
That's in-game, mind you; there was no player conflict.
At some point in the campaign, there's a contrived scenario where the entire world ends if monster X eats person Y. The party was fighting the monster (all in melee except my PC, as usual), and everyone was down to their last few hp, and the monster grabbed the guy.
I had my cleric flame strike the entire melee. Even with half damage on a save, it killed everyone. Deliberate TPK by their own teammate. Granted, my guy used the loot to cast raise dead on them, but there were still some really angry PCs. Especially Macho-Man Paladin, until the cleric outlined the alternative to him.
On the upside, nobody called the cleric a "sissy elf-boy" after that. And nobody questioned that I had a "good" alignment, despite the "chaotic" descriptor.
note: with proper experience and general acceptance, you can ignore the social contract at your leisure. it's just not good to push conflict between players if they're new to it and will get invested OOC in winning the conflict.
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If you cut off your allies' escape route, you are (whether it's in character or not, whether it's evil or not, whether they were almost certainly doomed or not) initiating PvP. Don't be surprised if it comes back to bite you.
It is usually a good idea to come to a pre-game agreement with the rest of the players about the acceptable level of PC conflict.
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... At some point in the campaign, there's a contrived scenario where the entire world ends if monster X eats person Y. ...
I would have been very tempted to pre-emptively disintegrate person Y so there was not a body to eat.
I would have been very tempted to pre-emptively disintegrate person Y so there was not a body to eat.
9th or 10th level PCs (?), IIRC. One or two more levels before that spell comes on line!
I would have been very tempted to pre-emptively disintegrate person Y so there was not a body to eat.9th or 10th level PCs (?), IIRC. One or two more levels before that spell comes on line!
hire a mage for a day... or just burn him, and then spread his ashes around and be confident in the fact that most of his "body" was chemically converted to a gas/dust and was released into the air when he burned.
you should be fine, if he needed to just consume a portion, then every time he exhaled he put the world at risk anyway.
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quoting for emphasis.Pathfinder and all table top games must be made under a social contract that you and every other player secretly/ooc want to further the story and save other players. The player's shouldn't say they won't heal you, they need to find a reason that their character would. this is in essence kind of plot armor.
This prevents people from not being able to play characters they want to play, and it prevents the GM from accidentally the whole campaign.
I disagree. That is metagaming, plain and simple. Using player knowledge ("I must remain with this party for the rest of the campaign") to force a deviation from the character's true motivation is bad roleplaying, IMO.
That said, before you bring a character to the table (especially a CN or any E) you should run the character and his motivations by the rest of the players, to see if they have any objections. If the character will be potentially disruptive, allow them to veto it up-front. Don't build that character and then metagame it to fit a cookie cutter.
If there is a social contract, it is between the players, not the characters. The social contract is that everyone should be having fun, and that no player should ruin that fun for another player. That does not mean that the characters have to get along (or in your example, should be compelled to heal one another) if it breaks character. As long as the players are having fun, PvP is fine. If someone needs to roll up a new character because their party member killed the old one, that's fine as long as everyone was ok with the PvP and everyone is having fun.
I would have been very tempted to pre-emptively disintegrate person Y so there was not a body to eat.
I should add that, in that campaign, you quickly get to that point. Two adventures later, I found myself casting speak with dead on the bodies of a former PC party so that our party would know enough to get through the rest of the dungeon intact...
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Running away with the added bonus of damming/damning your group? What possible friction could that lead to? Whatever justification for that act is questionable at best while saying "I just met these guys" is lame- RPG is about team play. Reversed, if the party said this guy we just met tried to kill us, they could have justified killing you. As a poster above noted, the group is presumed to have an interest in the story and their own collective welfare (whatever their alignments)even if it's a hypothetically temporary arrangement. If it's explicitly clear that is not the dynamic the GM and players expect, fine if that's been made clear.
This is not so much an alignment issue but a definition of party issue.
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Except, without the GM he wasn't hurting the rest of the party, they were refusing to run away. Without a GM they'd be dead. Have them all be dead and roll new characters. Have the GM help you come up with a way to fix this. They wouldn't be alive to be mad at you with the GM save.
Two words that they should learn how to place together, "THUNDER" "DOME" :)
Edit: Could also be "team" "mate"; but thats just boring.
quoting for emphasis.Pathfinder and all table top games must be made under a social contract that you and every other player secretly/ooc want to further the story and save other players. The player's shouldn't say they won't heal you, they need to find a reason that their character would. this is in essence kind of plot armor.
This prevents people from not being able to play characters they want to play, and it prevents the GM from accidentally the whole campaign.
I disagree. That is metagaming, plain and simple. Using player knowledge ("I must remain with this party for the rest of the campaign") to force a deviation from the character's true motivation is bad roleplaying, IMO.
That said, before you bring a character to the table (especially a CN or any E) you should run the character and his motivations by the rest of the players, to see if they have any objections. If the character will be potentially disruptive, allow them to veto it up-front. Don't build that character and then metagame it to fit a cookie cutter.
If there is a social contract, it is between the players, not the characters. The social contract is that everyone should be having fun, and that no player should ruin that fun for another player. That does not mean that the characters have to get along (or in your example, should be compelled to heal one another) if it breaks character. As long as the players are having fun, PvP is fine. If someone needs to roll up a new character because their party member killed the old one, that's fine as long as everyone was ok with the PvP and everyone is having fun.
that's the point, to metagame not trying to kill each other, to try to find a reason to join the party and not just wander past them.
also, the point is to motivate the character to do his personality in a party favorable manor.
as mentioned you can ignore the rule if you have enough experience with the game, etc. the rule is in place to keep people new to PnP games from dicking with each other. because having fun, can't be measured, but the amount of time you spend not healing a character when you easily could, can.
also, as I'd like to point out, what happens if the character was accepted, but for some reason Player B wants to kill Player A's character, player A says no, so what does player B do, end his own character? or does he break his character's motivations for the sake of the party and come up with a reason he wouldn't kill the character?
damming/damning
you deserve a medal.
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Long story short, adventurers who adventure with others they cannot trust with their lives are stupid.
The OP's untrustworthy character wouldn't be part of our group.
Hopefully this is still all IC conflict and not OOC conflict.
Now that I have a better idea of what happened, it's a bit easier to give advice. :)
First of all, if you're trying to mitigate / move past what happened, make sure that the GM is willing to support your IG. First of all, talk with the GM about what you might be able to do from an in-game POV given that he apparently GM-Fiat'd the combat in the PC's favor.
Then talk to the players in question and see if you guys can make sure you all want to be able to move past this IG and keep it from spilling into OOG badness.
Once that is done, I'd recommend employing a cleric of Abadar with Abadar's truth-telling so that you and the paladin can have an appropriate heart-to-heart conversation with full trust (and remember "I'd rather not say" and "I don't think that's an appropriate question under the circumstances" are both likely very true answers for you CN self). Admit you fully thought they were all dead and that the only thing you could think of was to make sure that their undead selves wouldn't come out to kill everyone else (including you). May also want to make sure there are enough witnesses that you're unlikely to be vanished when things get heated. Hash it out in-character, recommend that divinations be performed and that the hand of the divine was indeed involved (via GM Fiat) in saving the rest of the group. If done correctly, this could cause an even greater bond for your group as there is apparently some destiny that other forces are working towards having you perform that resulted in victory where there was no indication for any outcome except defeat.
If you're NOT trying to mitigate this in game and are actually trying to make sure your character doesn't die / get hosed by the party, I'd recommend having your character leave and come in with another character that's more trustworthy to the group. Because leaving the group is probably totally in-character for your character, after all, you just met them :)
-TimD
I'd expect that a certain amount of prejudice against tielfings is to be expected in many games. It pretty much spells this out in the description of the race, saying that tieflings are often shunned and despised out of reactionary fear and that "most societies" view them as aberrations or curses. I doubt this means that all of the superstitious farmers in the campaign world are Evil because they're afraid of people descended from otherworldly fiends. Maybe Paladins should be wiser, but these days they're charismatic instead.
The racial description also says some stuff about tieflings being free to choose their own fate. Overcoming prejudice in a symbolic form without involving any sensitive real world issues might be very rewarding for some folks. Still, it doesn't seem outlandish that characters from a superstitious medieval society might have some doubts if they meet a girl with devil horns and she intentionally traps them in a cave in.
Anyhow, this does seem like a pretty good setup for your PC to leave the party and then return later as a terrifying enemy who knows their strengths and weaknesses. As long as the character is an NPC by then everybody would probably love it.
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This is all in-game. The fight was in an okd crypt, the party wandered right into an ambush I warned them about, and began to die. My CN pc, having only been with them a day, left. She assumed they would die in a cave full of undead, and so caved in the entrance to prevent the enemy from getting out. They survived, get back to the base-camp, and find out I told the npcs they probably died. Paladin challenges me to a fight to the death (with no choice to say no) and I win, but let him live. Still acts hostile at every opportunity since.
It sounds like your character acted reasonably. Survival instinct is not evil. Your PC warned the others about an ambush and they ignored him, walking into what would have otherwise been a TPK if not for DM intervening. They should not blame you for taking extra measures to contain a threat that they underestimated.
Too often Players don't think things through when approaching a situation, assuming they can outmelee or outcast whatever they run into. I believe it is unfair for other players to penalize yours for being the only one who recognized the actual scope of a threat and acted accordingly while they stood and fought blindly. Yours should be able to make the argument that they warned them it was extremely dangerous, and they should be reasonable enough to take you at your word, since PC's did die, afterall.
Paladin's may be the kind to meet a threat head on. But they should not expect everyone else to deal with a situation the same way. He knows the party rogue or mage won't stand toe to toe with threats like he does. A group needs to have a Plan B and maybe even Plan C when it comes to stuff like this.
If you want to continue to play this character in this group, you must talk to the player and more importantly, the DM. Remind the DM that it was his actions that saved the rest of the party from annihilation while it was your own actions that saved your own PC's life. It was his intervention that placed your PC in this situation.
See if you can work out a way for your character to redeem himself in the eyes of the party (keywords being 'in the eyes of the party' since, in my opinion, your character did nothing wrong at all). If you can do that, then great! If not, then time to roll another character up or find a new group.
How do you deal (as a player, not a DM in this case) with players who are hostile towards you just as a rule? Its not like either player is evil or malicious, but the other people just really dont like your pc? For example, ally paladin choses not to lay on hands me because he thinks I'm evil (I'm not) which almost kills me (2hp from the grave). He also attacked me when I fled an encounter that, if not for gm fiat, would have been a tpk. Wat do?
Paladin should use Detect Evil, if he doesn't detect you as evil he can assume that you are not unless your actions are obviously evil (committing violent crimes against innocent people is an example).
I make power characters all the time who are good at at least one combat aspect. If I can manage it I'd kill all aggressor characters, and then proceed forward. I managed it once recently with a LE summoning cleric who brought in his burning skeleton army and spammed summons to kill the opposition.
My point is this: PCvPC should ~never~ take place because characters who are built to kill people are going to win.
Your Paladin's player is being a jerk. You are not doing what he wants you to do and for that reason he thinks he can attack your character or perhaps just you. If he isn't going to heal your character, then deprive him of your character's abilities and wait for him to die. Depending on your class and build this may or may not be feasible, and directly killing the paladin might be extremely difficult considering Paladins can lay on hands themselves as a swift each round.
Just let him die if possible. If he kills your character intentionally, then just go find a different group or start your own.
Alternatively there is the vicious option where you attempt to give them their comeuppance, but expect to leave the group after that.
If the Paladin kills your character you should create a paladin killer. If the group stops you, create a group killer. If they want to play an arms race of seeing who can be the biggest jerk and such actions are unprovoked, then you should set out to win before leaving them in the trash where they belong.
There is nothing wrong with putting explosive runes an everything. Alternatively you can find ways to coup de grace their characters.
Just keep in mind that this option is probably burning your connection to this group, but who knows, they might learn that PCvPC is a really bad idea that has consequences.
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they might learn that PCvPC is a really bad idea that has consequences
Did you read the whole thread? The OP initiated PCvPC by trapping most of the party with a cave-in and leaving them to die. Murdering as many PCs as possible before they kick you out of the game is not a mature way to handle it.
Matthew Downie: No, mostly because it is not important to me.
Jeremias: PCvPC is so short sighted that most of the time people never see it coming. A good GM outright bans PCvPC because it has a tendency to turn into PvP, which leads to either people leaving the group or the group fracturing all together.
TPKing the group with a group killer is basically saying, "yeah, screw you guys," but being overly elaborate about it to make it a point. Once the gambit is up, you just get up, go home, and do something far more productive than playing a TTRPG with people you don't like.
If the party gets sealed into a location that is not planned then it is the GM's duty to figure out how to get them out if they can't make their own way out. Since everyone should have pretty much everything they need to dig their way out of a hole anyway—or at least the martial characters—it shouldn't be an insurmountable problem.
After scanning this thread I see both sides, but the paladin should understand the alternative IF a town was nearby. If this was out in the middle of nowhere then the paladin should not trust you.