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In a game I'm running soon, one of the players will be a Redeemer archetype Paladin of Sarenrae, and part of her story is she will have found, through a series of events, a black dragon's egg, and is deigning to raise it herself, against it's nature, as a creature of good and law.
I've already told her the black will never, ever reach Lawful Good, but with enough care, nurturing, positive reinforcement, punishment, etc, he might make it as far along the spectrum as true neutral. (EDIT - Thanks to arguments later in this thread, that has changed, and he might just make it to LG)
I've also decided this is going to be a comic relief character in a lot of ways. For one thing, even as a neutral character, he's going to THINK he is an evil, malicious, violent tyrant, even though he's kinda self-deluded about it. (This is strongly based on a black dragon I played in a 3.5 game.)
He's going to refer to the paladin as "lieutenant" when he's approving of her or in a good mood, or simply "woman" or "human" when in a bad mood. When he refers to the rest of the party, they will be "minions" if he's in a good mood or approves of their actions, or "meat" etc when not so. His share of party treasure? "Tribute"
In personality, I've crafted something that's...kind of a cross between Morbo from Futurama and Stewie from Family Guy. He will never admit that he gives any sort of care for his "mother", and will break out into overly emotional screams and death threats for almost no provocation..but pretty much never act out on it.
Between the Pally player and I, we've crafted a few funny scenes for their background. Stuff like...
Pally - "Mr. Sizzles, get in here, I need to talk to you."
Dragon - "My name is Killtooth, woman."
Pally - "Mr. Sizzles, I don't have time for this. Now!"
Dragon - "I SAID KILLTOOTH WOMAN, not Mr. Sizzles! I am not a childish thing to play with and give silly names! I will eat your face!"
or
Pally - "We have to save that family!"
Dragon - "F#%* that. I have coins to count again tonight. How else am I supposed to know how many I have?"
Pally - "I suppose you're right. I'll save them. And I'll just be so tired from fighting by myself that I won't have time to make your favorite steak dinner..."
Dragon - "YOU WILL MAKE ME STEAK REGARDLESS!!! But...well..you know, all of a sudden, for my own reasons, which have nothing to do with any comments from you, woman, I feel generous, and as if I should help save that family. Because they will worship me after, which is right and just as they should...yes... And that steak will be medium rare, and may Apsu help you if it is well done, woman."
and of course there was...
Black Dragon adorably playing with yarn in a room by himself. Door opens, he's tangled up, massively guilty look on his face.
Dragon - "Sprites broke in here...and...tied me up...yes...I was just...escaping. Yes...and I ate seven of them! YES! Anyway...I have it all under control, and you will SHUT THE DOOR AND KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING!!!"
Pally walks up and pets dragon behind ears
Dragon - "I AM NOT A CAT!!!"
And, just to show his soft side...
Dragon - "You will no longer leave for more than a day at a time, Leiutenant. This I, your grand master, command of you."
Pally - "Awww, did my little Mr. Sizzles miss me?"
Dragon - "I DID NOT MISS YOU! I...didn't feel like hunting my own meat, woman, and did not enjoy the experience...much...I mean, it was pretty fun to chase the meat as it ran from me, but, no, I did not miss you, nor did my stomach have a queasy feeling, or did I wonder if you were ever going to come back or leave me alone in this world, which I'm just now realizing will happen one day when you eventually die so much younger than I will...no...IT DID NOT HAPPEN!! I will eat your corpse, woman!! Just...not today. But...you will not leave me, woman! I command you!"
Pally - "Aww, I missed you too"
Dragon - "I HATE YOU, VILE HUMAN!!"
So, yes, I think you have some of the picture of the silliness to the character, but hey, there's a little seriousness to it, anyway. I mean, by nature he's pretty much as vicious and evil and malevolent as possibly can be, but how much of that is nature, and how much nurture? Seems like a LOT of it would be nature, considering from all I've seen they don't seem like the type to actually raise their wyrmlings, and whatnot...but then again, I think anyone raised without a moral compass to guide them into how to act right can turn into a pretty violent sociopath, because they were never taught things like basic compassion, empathy, etc...so it should be pretty interesting to see how a black dragon raised by a pally should turn out.
So, here's where I turn to you guys! How do you think I should strike this balance out? What could be some interesting "hooks" I can work out with this little guy?
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Guess there is always the obvious trying to impress other powerful dragons, can see a green dragon manipulating the young black dragon with some promises of false power or if you are the kind who wants to be a bit cruel, can have a green dragon who found an orb of black dragonkind and is using it to control all the black dragons in the region, including of course the wyrmling.
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I've already told her the black will never, ever reach Lawful Good, but with enough care, nurturing, positive reinforcement, punishment, etc, he might make it as far along the spectrum as true neutral.
That's ludicrous. Why not?
Yeah, if a Demon, a creature whose entire BEING is created from pure distilled essence of Chaotic Evil can be redeemed and become Good, I see no reason a Chromatic Dragon can't.
That's ludicrous. Why not?I've already told her the black will never, ever reach Lawful Good, but with enough care, nurturing, positive reinforcement, punishment, etc, he might make it as far along the spectrum as true neutral.
Well, I suppose he COULD get there, but likely wouldn't. I simply figured nature vs nurture, we're roughly 50% genetics, 50% how we're raised, so: (CE+LG)/2=NN.
Plus, how else can I have him THINK he's a ridiculously evil villain with humorous outtakes if he's not at least neutral?
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... that was so ridiculous a statement, it made my head hurt.
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If I was your player, a person playing a REDEEMER paladin, I would be pretty annoyed if my GM asserted that my gods-given powers (the ability to help guide the wicked towards redemption) was essentially worthless. Because that's what you're telling your player if, after nearly a LIFETIME of work, I found out that I could *only* partially redeem the dragon.
I've personally never liked the notion that alignment is a genetic factor, not a societal one. Putting aside real world debates, if alignment was as strongly based on nature as you believe, then why would devils exist? It would be pointless to try and tempt Good people into Evil, because it would be entirely in their nature to be Good, and thus the devil would fail every time. But as every good "fallen hero" story will tell you, that is NEVER the case. Alignment is a consequence of your actions, a statistic that defines YOU based on what YOU do; it isn't this rigid cosmic mandate that tells you exactly how you act at all times.
If I was GMing for your player, I would have the wyrmling be VERY open towards acting in a Lawful Good manner if raised in the right way. Children basically mimic the alignment of their parents until they're adolescents anyway. Wait until the dragon is a Juivenelle before making it introspectively examine its life, forcing it into an existential crisis. A draconic identity crisis is a MUCH more compelling story than, "Oh, this thing is naturally Evil no matter what you do."
I don't think there's any call to be insulting. But Jaelithe pretty much gets what I'm going with here. Like an adolescent who puffs out his chest and acts like he's a rebel around his friends, but really doesn't do anything that bad.
It's pride, combined with a natural inclination for and desire to do violence, curbed by being raised against such a thing...but not wanting to ADMIT he's had his nature curbed, and wanting to APPEAR to be a nasty, vile type.
I suppose you're right... it wouldn't be an inevitability that he wouldn't go good.
I did forget about the canonical examples of outsiders turning from their core-being alignment, so, yeah, it would be silly of me to say he can never go good. Okay, so, that's totally on the table from here on.
Now, as I said...hooks, etc?
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There's something inherent in the nature aspect, but nurture plays such a huge role. Let's break it down.
It's in a black dragon's nature to be cruel and intimidating, right? Even lawful good characters can be cruel and intimidating, provided that it doesn't violate their code (the law) and it accomplishes a good purpose. It's not as if lawful good characters are forbidden from investing in the Intimidation skill, nor are they allowed to do something that causes emotional distress (cruelty) to another character, like breaking the duchess' heart by admitting that they don't really love her and that they never will. I'm not saying that cruelty is strictly good, but there are so many shades and hues here that it's not strictly evil, either.
So, if a black dragon were to be nurtured into suppressing any urges to exhibit cruelty, or at least express them in the least harmful way possible, it might be successful. Think of an uncompromisingly self-righteous jerk (perhaps even the paladin themselves). They can be difficult to deal with, but they're not specifically non-good. Perhaps things might manifest as having an over-inflated ego, narcissism, or a penchant for practical jokes that aren't completely harmless. Each one of those traits can be a manifestation of cruelty, even in a mostly benign sense.
The idea that a black dragon, raised from a hatchling, cannot achieve a lawful good alignment suggests not only that demons cannot find redemption (as previously mentioned), but that it is impossible for any being of any race to manifest an opposite in alignment, either along the lawful-chaotic axis, the good-evil axis, or both. This would mean that redemption is an invalid option in the game, so characters like Drizzt Do'Urden cannot exist, as he comes from an evil race. It would mean that canonically established redeemed demons cannot exist. It would mean that there are no such things as good goblins, evil aasimar, or for paladins to ever fall to the point of becoming antipaladins (nor antipaladins rising via redemption to become paladins).
There's no specific influence raising the hatchling to become cruel or intimidating. There's no guiding force to prevent it from becoming lawful or good (or both). I think you may be looking at this from an extremely narrow perspective, and I hope that those of us who have responded have helped you to see things a different way, because raising a black dragon from a hatchling to be lawful good is a pretty cool story to tell.
Best wishes.
Just for my own reading and self-edification on the subject, can anyone link me to some information about these redeemed evil outsiders? I am having trouble finding them with some cursory Google searches. I'd love to read their stories. The only example I can think of where an outsider swapped from their given alignment was Trias in Planescape: Torment.
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Even a young dragon is as intelligent (or more...many NPCs have Int as their dump stat) as a human adult, so I'm not sure where you're getting the fact that they aren't intelligent enough to act tough (which is what many human adolescents and pre-adolescents do anyway...).
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Heh not relevant for the moment, even if the black dragon becomes evil later on for whatever reason, usually the time it takes to do a campaign,increasing age category of a dragon never comes into play. The wyrmling is just starting his life, even if the black dragon is good for as long as the campaign goes, its fine and that what is important.
The fact that black dragon might become evil when it become Juvenile or an adult is frankly not important unless you do a game, many decades or even centuries later to show the impact of raising said dragon.
As far as redeemed evil outsider, there is one in wrath of the righteous adventure path. Now if you are wondering if there is a redeemed evil creature roaming around Golarion...none cross my mind at the moment.
I thought that dragons, when they hatched, were imparted with certain knowledge passed down from their parents. He actually may be CE right out of the egg, and have to be convinced to be anything else.
I had a player of a paladin go through this exact scenario, except the wyrmling was given to the paladin as a boon, and had already hatched.
I also had fun RPing the chaotic little bugger. The discovery that squirrels could be sewn together kept him occupied for a while...
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Well, per James Jacobs the Evil is at least in large part cultural, and IMO should not inherently prevent a Black Dragon from becoming Good...at least in theory.
The basic character definitely still works, though. Not everyone raised by a Good person is Good.
Well, there is a natural inclination to be evil, sadistic bastards. It pretty much spells out in Dragons Revisited that blacks are almost never raised by anyone, and when left to their own devices become the most cruel, capricious, and villainous of the dragons, which means nobody taught them to be such and there is no societal inclination to be so...
...however, that being said, I said like more than ten posts up something along the lines of "You're right, guys, I was wrong at first, and he could most assuredly become good." and I even edited my original post to point that out.
I thought that dragons, when they hatched, were imparted with certain knowledge passed down from their parents. He actually may be CE right out of the egg, and have to be convinced to be anything else.
I was not aware that black dragons had a racial memory that was passed down genetically. Do you have a source on that?
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Not in pathfinder, in 3.5 yeah, draconomicon or dragon magic addresses that, essentially they are born with whatever knowledge their parents shared with them.
Even so tho...Black Dragon at least in the Golarion setting have a complicated history, they used to be owned as slaves by the crazy powerful Azlanti back in the days. Of course, when civilization, fell they ran away and swore to never be controlled again.
Reminder that dragons come out the egg as intelligent as an adult male and from their description in pathfinder, they actually gain great pleasure from devouring pleading and crying intelligent creatures alive. They gain almost no pleasure from eating food the regular way. Dragons are magical creatures, just something to remember and it's probably a complicated condition put on them by whoever created them (Tiamat is cited as being too evil to be worshiped in Golarion but she is there in the dragon pantheon but nobody can gain powers from her).
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...however, that being said, I said like more than ten posts up something along the lines of "You're right, guys, I was wrong at first, and he could most assuredly become good." and I even edited my original post to point that out.
That would actually require people to read all the posts in a thread first. Then, assuming they actually did read all them, they would have to refrain from posting their opinions, which we all know to be nearly impossible on a forum. [/rant]
I liked the idea presented about the Dragon Hunters guild. Perhaps even someone from another faith hears about this insane Sarenrite who thinks he can redeem a clearly evil beast! Perhaps some inquisitors of Iomedae hunt down the party to show this foolish Redeemer his notion is nothing but pure poppycock! I find having good antagonists adds a nice layer to a game that typically revolves around Good vs. Evil.
Another idea is the dragon's mother discovers her offspring has been stolen and attempts to retrieve her child?
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Alright, plot hooks involving a good dragon.
A local princess tries to provoke the dragon to kidnap her so that her sweetheart recruit in the royal guard can rescue her and prove himself worthy of royal marriage.
A necromancer with a grudge against dragons is developing a familicide spell that if cast on the dragon's ancestor, would kill him and dozens of the black dragon's other relatives across the world.
A metallic dragon starts hunting down the black dragon, thinking it's evil.
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An evil dragon has heard of the good black dragon and uses disguise self or similar to appear as a black dragon and terrorize villages, etc, to frame the good dragon (alternately, the evil dragon *is* an evil black dragon). Party has to prove that another dragon was behind it, since who would expect two dragons in the same area?
The dragon gets controlled by a lower-level version of an orb of dragonkind (or a converted spell similar to planar ally but for dragons) and the party has to determine who is behind this, if the dragon is being used for good or ill, and convince the responsible entity to free their ally.
The black dragon discovers something deep in a lake (due to its water breathing) and needs the party to investigate - possibly it was driven off by something).
A ranger who hunts dragons (and possibly has the clichéd backstory of his family/village/lover/etc wiped out by black dragons) starts hunting the dragon down.
Sheep or other similar animals start to disappear in the village the party is at (possibly around the same time the party is tight for funds to buy meat for the growing dragon). The ranchers believe that the dragon is eating their livestock, but perhaps it is caused by wolves/worgs (led by the obligatory winter wolf?) pushing into the lands (perhaps from the dragon foraging in the natural wolf habitat, from other creatures outcompeting them, or from their intelligent evil leaders direction).
A druid tries to convince the dragon that it isn't natural to associate with people and live among them.
One day, the dragon goes out and doesn't return. He has gone hunting and gotten injured by an animal.
An evil cult believes that the black dragon is destined to grow up to be the mortal vessel for some evil dragon god to possess. They are determined to kidnap him and convert him to the worship of their deity so he will fulfill this role.
Some suitable anti-slavery faction feels that this relationship is basically enslaving the dragon and attempt to save him from his bondage.
I love Mr Sizzles already