I'm considering if I ever play in this game, would a neutral druid (of the Green Faith) who later on took Envoy of Balance, be a good addition to this path?
Or am I just imagining things?
As per the sidebar in the Player's Guide, simply participating in the events of the campaign will cause you character to do things or allow things to be done that will quickly result in your alignment shifting to evil.
I am looking forward to working out how this adventure path might proceed with non-evil characters who initially support House Thrune (on the grounds that the Glorious Reclamation are basically foreign invaders who must be driven out - and they have family in the country) but who balk when they realize the depths of evil that this task requires.
I would imagine that these adventurers would probably fare no better than the Glorious Reclamation itself does. At best, I guess that they would ultimately abandon the adventure path and flee the country to pick up some other adventure.
So you guys are saying I'd be unlikely to keep Envoy of Balance huh?
So you guys are saying I'd be unlikely to keep Envoy of Balance huh?
If you're doing this campaign you'll eventually reach a point where you're either walking down the path of evil, or be unable to continue.
This is as advertised an out and out evil campaign. BTW, there's no indication that the Glorius Reclamation is a foreign element, Iomedae herself, was Chelaxian after all. And is still held in high regard in Cheliax as one of their own who made it big.
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So you guys are saying I'd be unlikely to keep Envoy of Balance huh?
Pretty much, if run as written. That said, talk to your GM! They may be willing to modify it for the concept to work.
Also, consider that it may be quite fun to roleplay a "descent into darkness" from TN to NE, just have a backup class to retrain into.
I don't want 'descend' into evil. I just want to keep the balance between law and chaos, good and evil! :p
But if that seems unlikely or unworkable in this AP, I'll guess I'll try something else.
You could be a druid of the green faith, but unless your GM doesn't bother enforcing alignment, you'd end up NE pretty quickly. Of course, that works just fine as a druid. So go on with your bad (literally) self.
Approaching this from the other end: I wonder how hard it would be for a GM to modify Hell's vengeance so that characters don't have to be total scumbags to participate? It's a bit early (only one book has been released, after all), but I wonder if it would require a total rewrite, or just some tweaks at key places?
I'm thinking of a scenario in which the rebellion the PCs have to put down was started by Knights of the Glorious Reclamation, but the Glorious Reclamation Knights' pride blinds them to the looming chaotic evil of the Demonic State in Isger and Cheliax that their rebellion will unleash.
Rationalize it as "Cheliax is the last true bastion of evil in the area" and it needs to exist to serve the balance
If you really want the odds stacked against you, try playing a Lawful Neutral Hellknight of the Order of the Godclaw. You were the original enemy of the Glorious Reclamation, and House Thrune does not fully trust you because, while you might do the occasionally necessary evil deed, you are unwilling to actually become evil in their service. On the other hand, you are too patriotic to flee for your life as any smart coward would.
I think I will have to get a look at the Hellknight encounters in later volumes of this adventure path to get an idea how events might proceed for such characters.
You could also play it as cartoon villainy. Be over the top with the heroes acting all Dudley Doright and the villains (the PCs) twirling their mustaches, laughing maniacally, and researching how to build railroads so they can tie damsels to them. :)
Seriously. If I ever ran this AP, I'd so play it up for laughs and amusement. Kick the Toy Poodle's Squeak Toy sort of thing.
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By my understanding, this is the AP where you play the villains "liberating" an orphanage from paladins in order to feed the toddlers there to soul eating Vulnudaemons (their favorite sacrifice), while the martial characters play soccer with the heads of older children to unwind.
That's how an evil AP should look like, IMO.
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I don't want 'descend' into evil. I just want to keep the balance between law and chaos, good and evil! :p
But if that seems unlikely or unworkable in this AP, I'll guess I'll try something else.
You're either going to play an evil character from the start, or have your character descend into evil or stop playing the character.
Rationalize it as "Cheliax is the last true bastion of evil in the area" and it needs to exist to serve the balance
This would be like any of the Republican candidates(*) claiming to be the only conservative, because Nidal is EEeeeeEEEEEeeevvvviiiiillllll, and Isger and Molthune are pretty nasty too, even if officially listed as Lawful Neutral.
(*)If you want to play the AP up for laughs and amusement, past and present examples of these give obvious examples of character concepts . . . .
The Donnie Brasco effect. :-)
Kinda wondering, is it possible to play as really hardcore infiltrator/double agent waiting for perfect moment to strike back at Thrune and doing evil acts in process to stay undercover? xD
I kinda doubt it is, but I'm curious :D
If I understood the player's guide, then becoming a true Thrune agent - actually becoming someone the Queen can trust - requires granting the Queen a more invasive version of telepathic bond.
I.e., good luck planning treason when Queen Abby can actually rummage around in your head.
I guess we'll be able to get a better answer after the whole AP comes out. Part of it (as I posted somewhere else) depends upon the answer to this question: What happens if the PCs fail?
Rolls his Will save against starting a 'Paladin in Hell's Vengeance' thread.
I got this, what could possibly go wrong...
I haven't changed man, you've changed! G!!$~&n it, what's up with the twenty questions. Now go get the pig's blood, it's bathy time.
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I didn't even want to buy this AP, but my will is weak and I saw it all shiny and new in a store. I like the idea of moustache twirling evil that was suggested, almost play this for laughs with incompetent villainy that still pulls things off.
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I guess we'll be able to get a better answer after the whole AP comes out. Part of it (as I posted somewhere else) depends upon the answer to this question: What happens if the PCs fail?
My hope for the answer to that:
That if the PCs lose, then Queen Abby is forced to use the nuclear option - invoking her pact with Asmodeus to call upon massive reinforcements directly from Hell, with all the horrible ramifications that come with that.
My hunch is that the Glorious Reclamation has no chance for victory - they're trying to achieve too much. The only question is how much of Cheliax is going to burn putting an end to the Reclamation.
The PCs ultimately represent Queen Abby's chance to end things relatively cleanly. (For a given definition of clean. Queen Abby's a monster.)
But Queen Abby will not accept defeat, even if winning means reducing Cheliax to a wasteland.
I guess we'll be able to get a better answer after the whole AP comes out. Part of it (as I posted somewhere else) depends upon the answer to this question: What happens if the PCs fail?
My hope for the answer to that:
That if the PCs lose, then Queen Abby is forced to use the nuclear option - invoking her pact with Asmodeus to call upon massive reinforcements directly from Hell, with all the horrible ramifications that come with that.
My hunch is that the Glorious Reclamation has no chance for victory - they're trying to achieve too much. The only question is how much of Cheliax is going to burn putting an end to the Reclamation.
The PCs ultimately represent Queen Abby's chance to end things relatively cleanly. (For a given definition of clean. Queen Abby's a monster.)
But Queen Abby will not accept defeat, even if winning means reducing Cheliax to a wasteland.
Putting the countryside to the torch is essentially telling the Order of the Scourge that yes, Thrune has finally become a bigger liability than their absence. And I imagine the Order of the Scourge could gather quite a few allies to fight House Thrune. So in the end, she'd wind up bolstering the Glorious Reclamation by doing that — counter-intuitive, perhaps, but politics makes strange bedfellows, as the saying goes. All's fair in love and war, but I'm not sure Abby wants to alienate one of the major Hellknight Orders... at least, I'm not sure she wants to alienate them and face the consequences. They're already on ThruneWatch; I have a feeling she doesn't want them to go to Defcon Thrune. Yes, she'd be able to summon more devils to put them down, but does she really want to be that deep in hock when Asmodeus comes calling?
Of course, now that you mention the nuclear option, who says that Hell is the only faction that Queen Abrogail II has made alliances with? She might have also made alliance with the Technic League in Numeria.
When my players, who chose to play in this rather than Rebels, started talking characters two of them wanted to play LN types where they support Thrune because they see it as better than the alternative or because the law is the law no matter who makes it. I told them while those ideas could work in theory, this is a full on evil campaign. They aren't really common, so why not embrace the opportunity? Now for some groups they may not have much say in the campaign (if everyone else is on board) so trying to play a character they're comfortable with is a fine reason. But with my players they jumped at this chance, so it was kind of a head scratcher.
That said so far I haven't seen anything that you're required to do that's really that evil in the first book. There are plenty of opportunities to let your evil flag fly if you want, but everything could be handled with out going evil. Now future content may push you further down that route, or your fellow players may require you to allow things that might start a fall. As of now though I think TN could work (no guarantees that it'll last though).
The players guide say they PC's will have to commit evil acts. I am assuming that at some point assassination and murdering good creatures for the advancement of evil will come up. You will be fighting good outsiders who are likely doing a good thing.
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I'm considering if I ever play in this game, would a neutral druid (of the Green Faith) who later on took Envoy of Balance, be a good addition to this path?
Or am I just imagining things?
your imagination is running wild if you think that your character can get past the first half of the first adventure w/o descending into EVIL.
EEEEVIL!
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Ultimate Intrigue provides the Vigilante, so you could have a character who maintains a neutral off-the-job alignment.
I think it probably could be modified enough to even run it as good characters from what I've seen thus far (Admittedly not much).
That said, it IS modification rather than a straight run through probably.