Suggestion "Good" Temple- Dungeon

[justicedragon]

Perhaps a "Good" Temple where Evils could go pillage? Perhaps an orphanage where one can save the children or burn it down?

[kalbaern]

Jun 21, 2015 10:59:16 GMT -5 justicedragon said:

Perhaps a "Good" Temple where Evils could go pillage? Perhaps an orphanage where one can save the children or burn it down?

Great ideas, but wrong game platform.

The issues I see are that such events should have long lasting repercussions.

- In the Forgotten Realms, pillaging a temple, whether good, evil or neutral is not a thing done lightly. Even when its a deity the pillager is vehemently opposed to. In this setting, the gods do often "see" what has happened and may just respond. Most folk know this and give great thought to doing something so rash as to directly piss off a god or goddess.

- Using the orphanage as an example, destroying it is something even the vast majority of evils would avoid. There is a distinct difference between being evil and being psychotic or a sociopath. While evils can have such tendencies, the often do their best to control such urges. Why? Because they want to live and grow powerful is why. If an "evil" PC burnt an orphanage down, what would be the motivation? The public at large would decry the act and even evil rulers would likely intervene to track down the perpetrator(s) if only to prevent an uprising. Thieve and Assassin Guilds would likely hunt the idiot(s) down, whether for a bounty, the fact that they used the orphanage to recruit from or likely both.

- Such events in general should have long term outcomes. If a place was set to the torch, then it should be removed/modified in the module. The problem is, while I'll support such events, they also need to be part of an approved DMed Event. Only then can other long term outcomes also apply. Where there witnesses? There very well could be. Is the PC well known and thusly easier to identify? Will NPC or PC Factions/Guilds learn of the act and react?

- Whether its a paladin destroying an active temple to Bane in Llorkh or an insane half orc burning down an orphanage in Loudwater, if and when they are captured, "perma-death" of the PC could well apply as well. You don't avoid consequences with a few mouse clicks.

[Micteu]

How about some farmsteads or travelling merchants with guards? Or maybe a non-hidden Elven squad kind-of like how you see warbands of orcs?

[justicedragon]

Jun 22, 2015 23:26:55 GMT -5 Micteu said:

How about some farmsteads or travelling merchants with guards? Or maybe a non-hidden Elven squad kind-of like how you see warbands of orcs?

Travelling merchants +1

[jaynah]

I get the rp/story aspect of the orphanage/temple raiding difficulties. But even so, aren't there a couple of places like what they want already in the server that could soorrrrtof fit the bill if evils want a fight in a 'good' place?

And yes, I agree - giving evils more random spawns to attack might enhance their gaming - there's dryads, satyrs, animals ... but maybe non-attacking (unlike the Zhents/adventurers/bandits/etc) -- merchants/traders, elves/dwarves/hin etc scouting groups. Something where if they kill it whole towns won't go after them.

[Wids]

I'm a bit late to the party here, but I've played plenty of Evil characters over the past eight or nine years of playing Neverwinter Nights, and I don't think any of them would kill a bunch of orphans for no reason. One of my worst baddies would probably be Linde Eisengegner, my Chaotic Evil Wizard/Blackguard on the bygone Castlevania: Vampire's Kiss server; that server used the Judeo-Christian pantheon, so Linde started off as an Austrian prostitute who had previously been used as the altar in a Satanic cult's weekly Black Masses before signing up with the cult properly and swearing herself to Lucifer (and eventually becoming one of the very few PCs on that server who was allied with Dracula). So she was the sort who might abduct a lone orphan and bring him or her to the cult, either to recruit the orphan, corrupt the orphan somehow and release him/her back into the general population, or to offer the orphan up as a blood offering; it all depended on what Linde saw in the orphan.  Linde was like that with pretty much everyone she met: Corrupt them or drive them to madness and/or despair if she can, quietly dispose of them if she can't.

But even for her, slaughtering an entire orphanage would be out of the question.  So was straight-up leveling a church, but profaning and desecrating a church and/or corrupting its priests and parishioners was more her style.  Alas, she never had much opportunity for that outside of one or two DM events (like the one where she barged into Pitesti with a party of other PCs because Pitesti had been taken and occupied by the Turks, who had converted a local Catholic chapel to a Muslim mosque for the Turks to use, so she marched into the chapel and summoned a vrock to help her kill the imams inside, then she made a big deal out of dismembering and disemboweling the imams' corpses and smearing the intestines — and their contents — all over the altar with her bare hands, and using the gore to write something unflattering about the prophet Mohammed while two or three of the other PCs got on her case and yelled at her about the whole desecrating-a-house-of-God thing...it got ugly).  She did get into an ongoing feud with another PC (a Paladin sworn to Michael the Archangel), but there still wasn't much else for her to do.  Then the server died and Linde died with it.  

So if Linde wouldn't blindly massacre a bunch of little kids over nothing (at least not without trying to find something more productive to do with them first), then I don't think any of my other characters would.  There always has to be a reason or a cause, as well as foresight regarding the possible consequences and, with the possible consequences in mind, either a careful execution of the deed or avoidance of the deed entirely (especially if the character has a high Wisdom).  Plus, I always have to keep in mind how many of my Evil characters began as orphans, particularly my flagship on the bygone Pirate Isles server, Serrica Thallys (Chaotic Evil Cleric of Umberlee); any good villain has at least one redeeming virtue, and one of Serrica's virtues was that she was extremely protective about children (as demonstrated when the merrow invaded Palaggar, one of Palaggar's NPCs was a little boy who ran all over the place, and Serrica just hovered over that boy, putting herself between the boy and the merrow while nuking the merrow with Hammers of the Gods, Blade Barriers...the works).  Serrica would probably eat her own heart before she'd ever murder a little kid.  So doesn't it stand to reason that many a villain who started off as a wretchedly disadvantaged child would take children under his or her wing, if only to give those kids a fighting chance at the good life which the villain himself or herself never had?

(Linde was quite the opposite of Serrica in that regard, as Linde had the mentality of "I suffered when I was a kid, so why shouldn't every other kid suffer like I did?".  Hence, why Serrica was too good to harm children while Linde wasn't, despite the two characters sharing the same Alignment.  Serrica's father actually cared about her — even if he was a filthy mongrel of a pirate captain before Umberlee sank their ship and he went down with it — so maybe that made all the difference.)

Anyway, that said, what about scripted quests involving lesser evils, like theft, destruction of a prized heirloom, setting somebody up for a scandal, committing a crime then framing someone else for it...things like that?  Just no orphanages.  Please, no orphanages. 

[DM Disaster]

Suffice to say, I know people, and child abusers don’t last long in jail. Burn down an orphanage, and you might become a job a few assassins take on for free.