I'm having fun tracking the actions of my players as we go, to the point where I'm looking for ways to make the system more impactful. But that's a topic for a different thread!
In this thread, let's share some interesting incidents you or your players experienced that resulted in a change on the sin point chart.
To start:
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In our second session, the players rescued a certain nobleman (whom we are all almost certainly familiar with) from "certain goblining!" . . . Only, when they approached the very vocally grateful noble after defeating his oppressors, instead of helping him to his feet, our intrepid fighter frisked him, found his money pouch, and gave it a significant squeeze. After that, the fighter demanded payment, with most of the rest of the party agreeing that they deserved a nice reward for saving this guy. (Keep in mind: the town was still under attack, with goblins running amok and setting things on fire!) Naturally, the noble obliged with a modest amount and promised further reward later at the local inn.
Then the nobleman saw that his hunting dog was grievously wounded by the goblins and begged the PCs to save him. They did . . . and demanded more payment. : )
Later, at the inn, the noble offered to take the party on a boar hunt in the Tickwood Forest. The party was less than impressed with this as a reward*, so instead I used the opportunity to have him give the party a piece of jewelry that might serve as a valuable plot hook and/or piece of intel later.
The fighter got dinged for a point of greed. I didn't ding the others as they were more or less just going along with the idea--as well as giving the noble a hard time because they didn't like him--but going for a random attack victim's purse seemed exactly like the sort of thing that would warrant a point.
* Paraphrased reaction: "Oooh, you mean I get to hunt innocent wildlife with a real member of the privileged class? My dreams have come true!" (I wonder how often this happens in other folks' campiagns...!)
I may be a hard grader but that sounds like two greed points for everyone to me. They extorted money from a man saved from goblins and then extorted more to save his dog, all while the goblin attack continued. Also factoring in - being ungrateful for yet another award from the man the saved. If you stand by while someone else is aggressively greedy, do nothing yet willing take a share of the profit - you're greedy too.
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Last session almost produced a lust point for one member of the party. Yep, you guessed it--Shayliss Vinder accosted the party as they were heading to the Rusty Dragon.
The highest Charisma character in the party was a grippli swashbuckler, and even Shayliss wasn't quite that open-minded yet, so she requested aid from the half-orc warpriest, who (a) knew exactly what was up and (b) was 100% fine with it. However, one of the party gnomes stepped in and said "I'll go! I'll go!" and before we knew it they were in the basement. Unfortunately, the gnome actually thought she was there to hunt rats and ended up with a black eye for her trouble. One unexpectedly high Bluff check later, Ven apologized profusely, and the party has free pies for the foreseeable future from the general store.
"Haw haw, Shayliss, that's the third wardrobe malfunction you've had this week!"
"...Sorry, Pa..."
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I'm keeping an entire Sin Log for everyone, and after at least Runeforge, I'll ask them if they're okay with it getting posted here. So far, they're at level 12, and have accrued a rather unsurprising bunch of statistics.
All I'll say so far is that nobody's accrued any Lust, but a couple PCs and a Leadership Cohort have scored a bit of Love; there's more Generosity than Greed; and the most sinful person has the High Score in multiple sins, to the point where his nominally Good alignment is currently "Wobbling". If he ever decides he'd rather act purely in self-interest instead of anything altruistic, he'll shift to Neutral.
So in my game, I blew up the garrison during the goblin attack, killing most of the guards. This was my way of explaining why the PCs were doing a good portion of the fighting, and also why they'll be asked to step up and help out after the goblin raid.
Part of the summary from my game is this:
As the party put down the 2nd wave of goblins, a massive explosion shook the town. The guards (who had been helping the PCs thus far) were about to race off to aid another citizen in trouble, but as the boom rumbled through the streets, they looked back and saw the garrison had been reduced to rubble. They turned and sprinted back toward their guard allies.
The PCs for their part didn't seem enthusiastic about helping yet another citizen in trouble. Father Zantus healed everyone and pleaded with them to go help the man who was shouting for help. Klondike stood firm and asked, "How much are you paying?" At this, Father Zantus gave him a incredulous look.
As you might guess, being in the middle of a goblin attack with people dying around you, and being the recipient of free healing, and then saying "pay me or I won't help anyone"... earns 1 greed point.
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I ran two groups of Runelords. One group fell apart before getting to Runeforge, the other completed the AP victoriously.
In the former group, the party needed to bunk down part way through the Thistletop delve. They (wisely) set up watches... except for the party wizard who refused to take any shifts. Then, when Bruthazmus and others raided their campsite in the night, he rolled over and refused to get up and do anything to help with the situation because he didn't want to risk interrupting his sleep. Sloth!
That same wizard spent time inventing a new version of the floating disk spell that was basically a chair he could yoke to another party member so that he could scribe scrolls and such instead of having to walk anywhere. More sloth!
The other party had some pretty diverse sins, but one party member in particular (a Dwarf Ranger) was so deep into every single one of them that when they got into Runeforge he had the distinct honor of feeling deeply welcomed by every single wing.
And, perhaps most amusingly to my mind, one of the party members had Envy as her associated sin. And, after seeing how little there was left to the Abjurant Halls which meant there was so much less benefit to having envy as a dominant sin ranted on about how deeply unfair it was that everyone else got so much more out of their sins than she did. It was so beautifully perfect a reaction, and shows the brilliance of the AP writers to have set that up organically the way they did! :D
Wow, I wouldn't have awarded sloth for either of those first 2 examples. I would have awarded diligence or something like it. Zeal? I don't recall what the positive options are.
To get sloth, you have to be shirking responsibilities because "I don't wanna" or similar lazy, non-helpful reasoning. In both of your examples, the PC was trying to achieve something good and helpful to the group (spells for an adventuring day, and innovative magic that enables him to craft scrolls to help the group).
I really love your last example, though. That's pretty awesome. I'll have to remember that if my group gets that far along.
so you never have to walk anywhere again
Except that's not what he's doing, or not his goal. It's stated right there in the post we're responding to -- the player wants to craft items, but the crafting rules prohibit crafting during adventuring days. IF the player can find a way to journey with the group without doing any actions (including walking) then he/she can spend the days crafting items.
The character is the opposite of sloth; trying to accomplish two things at once (traveling with the group AND crafting magic items while they move). And the character is doing this only because of a limitation in the rules -- the player probably doesn't want to have the PC seem lazy, but the group needs gear & magic, and by the rules, this is a way to achieve that.
Let me put it this way. If I were attempting to be helpful for the party -- creating magic items that will be cheaper than full price, and definitely helpful if the group is in trouble -- and the GM awards me sloth points for it, I'm gonna nope out. That's punishing the player for trying to be helpful. It's a great way to get the player to say, "Oh, you know what? Nevermind. I didn't realize that helping the group was going to get me flagged with a negative mark. If I just don't be that helpful, it seems like my character comes out the other side with no negatives, even if it means the party is worse off or even TPKs. So yeah, let's just have me not do that helpful stuff."
Same idea goes for the first example too, sleeping during a midnight fight. The player clearly knows that if the wizard awakens for a fight, the sleep is considered ruined, and extra hours must be spent asleep. That's from this rule:
The wizard does not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but he must refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period. If his rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1 hour to the total amount of time he has to rest in order to clear his mind, and he must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing his spells.
And it gets worse, because if you cast spells during a midnight fight, then you cannot regain them in the morning -- those slots are just lost for the day. That's from this rule here:
When he prepares spells for the coming day, all the spells he has cast within the last 8 hours count against his daily limit.
So the wizard cannot wake up, and cannot cast spells to help. If he/she does, then either the wizard just doesn't have spells for the upcoming adventuring day, or the wizard has to delay the party by extra hours of rest. Of course the players at the table might tell him, "We'll wait for you to rest extra, please help us!" But if they don't or cannot give him extra hours of rest, he's gimped for the day. He might even be useless, if he's emptied his slots.
So the wizard is actually being diligent. He's trying to be sure that he can help the party during the adventuring day. If he gets up to help, he screws that up. Obviously, if the midnight fight goes terribly wrong, then the other PCs might scream for help, and he might have to give up his rest just to keep the party alive. However, that clearly didn't happen.
I'm mostly with Misroi but let's be clear this is a player making rules decisions not a pc making character decisions.
The floating chair idea is a deliberate attempt to exploit the rules (personally, as a DM I'd have said - sure that spell will work, but no you cannot create magic items while sitting in a force chair telekinetically lashed to your buddy. No where near stable enough.) However, I could see others making a different judgement.
But no way is the refusal to fight justified on any but a meta-game premise. If you and your companions are awakened by a threat in the night, you engage with all your awareness. The idea that you would let your friends handle it and go back to sleep could only be based on knowing exactly what it is (seems unlikely) or assuming something about the CR of the encounter. Further, that they had to wake you to get your decision on whether to participate has already disrupted your sleep. And lastly, assuming your friends can handle it seems reckless bordering on suicidal - "I'm going back to bed, you chumps can handle a few dire rats." Except behind the dire rats were a few rat swarms and small group of vampires. Wizard deserves to wake up on the wrong side of a blood feast. Too bad his friends had to die to teach him a lesson.
Outshyn does have a point - the awarding of sin points should be based on the GM's understanding of the player/character's intent. One man's sloth is another man's efficiency. If the player is simply using the rules as permitted by the GM then I don't know that he should get sin points (which are a penalty of sorts) unless the player's stated motivations are driven by laziness.
Wow. Really didn't expect that to be so contentious. Some more context might help here, I think. The character's motto was "magic is applied laziness." (Our whole group was made up of engineers.)
The idea behind the floating chair spell was originally just an alteration so that it would be yoked to someone other than him so he could ride it. I don't remember whose idea it eventually was to use that riding time to scribe scrolls, but it wasn't the original intent of the spell as far as I'm aware.
There are some compelling arguments in here as to why not getting up isn't the worst thing (and it's not), but given the somewhat meta-gamey nature of it and the character's creed, I still think it was worth the sloth point.
As for the points themselves, I never told the players that I would be counting them. I didn't want that knowledge to influence their behavior any, since the only thing it really matters for is which wing of Runeforge is their special place. So it's not like I was saying "Sloth! Shame!" or anything like that, just marking a tally in my notes. Those just happened to be some of the most memorable.
And, to be clear, that player was extremely awesome at using applied laziness to inventively solve problems. The character was a lot of fun to run for, and very appropriately was a conjuration specialist to boot. I think he and Jordimandus would have been good friends if the campaign had lasted long enough for them to meet :P
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Gotcha: he was a conjurer, he was explicitly trying to be lazy, to the point of working hard for that goal, and you wrote "Sloth" in your notes for him. Sounds fair.
In my adventure, there's one character who initially started out as a big game hunter who wanted to bag the Sandpoint Devil, but as time and characterization went on, he got dubbed a Cavalier of the Blue Rose and started retraining levels into it, attempting to do non-lethal takedowns and suggest peaceable alternatives to violence. He'd accumulated a lot of Wrath at that point, but now he's been getting a lot of Kindness as well, to the point of them balancing out. Though, since I'm altering Runeforge and the PCs' reasons for being there, this'll mean he'll get to decide whether he's sinful or virtuous (though he'll most likely pick the latter).
There's also a cowardly oracle who tends to fire his bow, miss once, then give up and wait around to heal anyone who gets injured. On multiple occasions, he's even fallen over to cry on the floor just because he couldn't get around enemy spell resistance. He's even gone on record saying, "My sin would definitely be sloth."
This is argument over intent is precisely why I didn't track sin points. The last thing I want is to end up in a disagreement with my players over how sinful they've been. Much like alignment, everyone has their own opinion on what is what.
If that comes up, my players can argue with Lissala. : )
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Yep, the players have their own intentions, the GM just gets to see their actions and any unintended consequences thereof, and people reading these posts may not get all the context. Now, I admit I did some reaching of my own on the Sin Log, but after the Big Reveal, I'll offer it to the players to see.
Also: I had a witch, who got Gluttony for jokingly offering to help Ameiko eat her dad, following a flippant remark at the beginning. Of course, since that witch was planning on becoming undead at a later point, I did know what kind of joke it was. She did get more Gluttony, and did become undead later, and not necessarily in that order. But not because of the misaimed wishes of any insane adulterer.
Another session, another few Sin points--the PCs captured a drunken Tsuto. They could have searched him, found the journal, and gotten their answers there, or questioned the newly-rescued Ameiko, or taken him to stew in jail for a bit while they locate a caster for magical interrogation. Instead, they immediately dragged him to the furnace room and tortured him with hot iron tongs and a cat-o-nine-tails to get him to talk. This was only mildly productive--not only did it take three different characters to pull off an Intimidate roll, but Tsuto's scripted to not talk about a certain subject short of being charmed. The only reason he didn't have his hand chopped off is because he smugly presented it himself when the fighter threatened to do so. One wrath point for each of three PCs.