| Jay Ellingson |
Premise of adventure is the party trying to help a fading country/empire that wishes to open an old trade route between the Western and Eastern areas to restore it's former glory. Orcs and Oni have not only joined to destroy those attempting this, but have also wrangled area slavers and bandits into the fray as the wish to mine the riches in the hills and mountains but also to reactivate a long snuffed dwarven forge to make superior (magical, mithral, etc weapons with which to raid the civilized areas. (They are capturing people to work the numerous precious metal mines in the area)
My idea for an NPC (DM PC) is a young man who lost his family in the raids and is now hellbent on exacting revenge. Not a murder hobo evil doer, but a very angry and driven man on a mission who has occasional outbursts of wading into combat with blind fury and lack of caring of the number of opponents. I imagine he has moments like Mel Gibson did in the movie The Patriot.
Thoughts?
| Sysryke |
Just to be clear; the character wants to punish/kill/take vengeance upon slavers and orcs? Don't mean to be dense, but I couldn't quite tell from the thread title if he was a slaver hunting orcs or someone hunting both that profession and that race. I'm going to assume you meant he is anti-slavery.
Alignment questions are going to generate a whole slew of opinions on this site. Aside from a few very specific spell and class feature rules, alignment is very hard to nail down. The "rules" are almost all in prose and descriptive language, as you can't really put numbers on abstract concepts like morality, good, evil, law, chaos, etc. Despite what some will so passionately and elegantly argue, you can't put hard and fast rules on these things. Alignment is at best a character concept tool; a guidepost to direct ways in which your character behaves. The problem is, we all have our own cultural, religious, political, and personal views of morality; and we can't help but bring those to our perceptions of the game, even when we fully understand it's all fantasy. There are just too many variables, and too much entanglement.
All that said. Let your campaign and group guide you. If slavery is legal within the culture or realm of your characters background, then he's neutral or chaotic. If slavery is a no go, then his reasons for objecting to the act come into play. Does he oject because of the cultural/legal taboo, or only because of his personal experience. Would he have cared if it was just a story he heard about some farmers three valleys over? One indicates for a lawful character, the other goes to neutral.
Good/Evil gets more finicky. Both his motivations, and how far he's willing to go factor into this decision. If he's vengeance at all costs and innocents be damned, neutral at best, slipping towards evil if he's willing to be a bigger monster. If there's some moral outrage behind his mission, a whole "never let it happen to anyone else" attitude, maybe he's good.
Class wise you've described a few different features. The flying into fury thing sounds straight up Barbarian, especially if he has little background in formal martial skills. On the other hand, if he's more disciplined, or has better training; you've got a good set up for a Ranger with favored enemies of orcs, humanoids, and maybe giantkin.
Paladin works if you're the all around good guy with law on your side.
But be ware, Paladin plus alignment questions is going to open this thread to a whole lot of crap.
Sounds like it should be a fun character. Maybe a bit grim, but some good roleplaying opportunities. Good luck.
| Scott Wilhelm |
The party wants to help the fading empire revitalize their international trade, and the slavers are against this? Why? It seems to me that slaves get traded, so the more open trade routes, the better.
It seems to me that the slavers should be on the same side as the party, also hoping to profit from free and open trade, in their case, human trafficking, and the NPC wants to shut down the slavers, and the party and the trade routes besides because of the slavery. It might be the NPC that shows the party that opening those new trade routes will lead to the expansion of slavery.
That means that the party needs to examine which side they want to be on. Will they fight to open the trade routes and abolish slavery at the same time?
Will the old empire be willing to abolish slavery despite what it would cost them in tax revenues? Will the party be able to convince the emperor?
| Scott Wilhelm |
Sorry. He would be killing slavers.There is no slavery in the country, it is opportunistic bandits ans such grabbing folks up to sell to the orc and Oni for the mines and forge,etc.
So will the party's goal be to convince the orcs and oni to abolish slavery buy into the legitimate trade and so pursue a more enlightened self-interest, or will the party's goal be genocide of the orcs and oni?
| Scott Wilhelm |
Jay Ellingson wrote:Sorry. He would be killing slavers.There is no slavery in the country, it is opportunistic bandits ans such grabbing folks up to sell to the orc and Oni for the mines and forge,etc.So will the party's goal be to convince the orcs and oni to abolish slavery buy into the legitimate trade and so pursue a more enlightened self-interest, or will the party's goal be genocide of the orcs and oni?
I guess a 3rd option would be for the orcs to buy into the trade route and purchase slaves on the wider slave market while the players' nation chooses to turn a blind eye to where the extra money is coming from or how those lovely low-cost manufactured goods are being made, and the NPC will be forcing the party to make hard decisions.