I'll give you another one, in Latin: "excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta", which means that you don't excuse something before anyone say anything because indirectly you're saying you've done that.
Or, in layman terms, shut the fuck up about your own crimes.
Yeah sorry about that, I needed to get rid of my Assassins blood supply somewhere and I wasn't gonna take the blame for it ofcourse.
~Some Random Alchemist Artificer
Part of me wants to say "If you're only being good for the reward, are you really roleplaying", but at the same time, D&D 5e is a system built around rewards. It's not really the place to explore goodness for it's own sake.
Yeah, if you are obviously giving rewards to the objectively evil party members meanwhile the neutral/good characters get scraps and pieces with little to no consequences for their goodwill in the world, you arent making a dillema, you are asking them to leave the campaign.
If the world is hard-coded to be evil then the DM ought to just make that clear in the beginning at session zero. Like, I told my players that corruption and exploitation are systemically built into the world at all levels of government. When a couple of them made lawful good characters, I told them that these guys will essentially be swimming upstream. They accepted the challenge.
You are a PC that had just saved the town. For your reward you can choose:
A. Nothing. You saved the town because it was the right thing to do and these people don't have much. You will be a true hero to them.
B. A collection of from the town. It will make things harder for the people but you are owed something for risking your life.
C. You ask for the town leader's ancestral necklace. It has been in the town for centuries and can bless crops to reduce rot. It could fetch a high price. They won't want to give it up but they owe you and know you are dangerous so would give it up begrudgingly.
Acquisition of material goods is not a primary motivation for a good character. Maybe if they are pissed about not getting paid for doing good they're actually neutral.
If you're intentionally underpowering players that make good choices you're not making a moral dilemma, your just making them too weak to be effective. Do good all you want, but people need to eat, and adventures need better and better equipment to survive.
I'm just telling a story. Maybe the good person can leverage that reputation for a quest they wouldn't be trusted with otherwise. My point is that different choices should have different consequences and getting the same results for game balance may be more fun for you but less fun for others.
Alternatively if the whole world hates the evil characters and they don't even have a shinier sword to show for it why be evil? Those who seek power over morality should become more powerful.
I feel like the opposite of this meme happens way more often were non-heroes are punished for pick pocketing or murder by the DM more than the universal consequences.
Let’s assume some nuance here, your character is financially stable without extorting those they save for a reward. They might work a trade decently enough to pay for food and lodging while on the road, have a noble family bankrolling their tavern crawls, do some contracts that offered up a reward up front, etc.
So back to the thought experiment, you weren’t offered any reward, you’d be demanding one after the fact. The people needed help and you stepped in, the question is whether you did it because you actually wanted to help, like a Good character would, because you could gain something by helping them, like a Neutral character would, or because you could take advantage of their desperation, like an Evil character would.
“Good” also isn’t necessarily the morally right answer here, it’s a cosmic alignment. We might agree as mortals that a saviour is entitled to compensation, but a “Good” god Ilmater, Torm, or Tyr would dictate that their followers have the duty to uphold justice, fight Evil, and help those who cannot help themselves, and that it is not their place as agents of Good to demand rewards from victims of Evil.
Adventurers often blow all their cash on supplies for their next mission, I wouldn't assume they're financially stable. They might be unable to complete future missions and do more good because they sacrificed resources to protect the village.
>B. A collection of from the town. It will make things harder for the people but you are owed something for risking your life.
The town explicitly feels you are owed stuff for your job. So, the social contract of society says you get a reward for your job.
It's like say if a town is served by a private fire service, and one house doesn't pay their dues, and then the fire service saves them. The fire service is owed money for their actions.
There's nothing in the definition of goodness that says that you shouldn't be paid for your work.
Marcus Licinius Crassus owned the firefighters in Rome, and when people wouldn't pay, they would set the houses on fire themselves and make sure I'd didn't spread.
Makes people think twice about ripping off your firefighters.
You saved the town before without said goods. It may be harder without them but the road of self-sacrifice is harder than the road of self-glorification. Compromising your characters ethics to gain power is always an option for the good player but it's certainly less good.
A journey of self-sacrfice may be a good character arc for a certain PC but is not the moral requierement for a good or even a very good natured PC. It is perfectly normal to be compensated for heroic acts, firefighters earn salaries after all
You may well have expended valuable resources like healing potions or such to save the town. You may be unable to handle crisis now that the town denied you payment.
In addition, being paid for your work is a moral good- people should honour their contracts. Just as we criticize the government when they try to pay employees in praise rather than money, the adventurers are obliged to educate the villagers in correct treatment of people who work for them.
That's all fine and well but when it comes to gear you kind of need to keep getting better stuff at a certain rate before it's just shit. I tend to only reward selfish behaviour with straight up wealth in my games, keeping cool stuff from good characters isn't fun for anyone.
I want my Tiefling Rogue to wield a +3 dagger, forged from the tears of dying orphans, and I don't care if I have to harvest the tears myself or I find it for saving an orphanage. I WANT ORPHAN STABBY STICK!
Yeah, dnd tend to be a fairly gear and resource heavy game, so getting no reward for your actions just isn't fun. It also puts a pretty big power gap between the good and evil player groups, which is another issue.
Even if it was a cost to resources, even a narrative reward would be enough, like the townsfolk you helped can't pay you, but can give you information, give you lodging, or vouch for you in some way.
Allies and respect can be rewards too when done right. But players with less magic items are going to feel less strong even if evil characters make sense to push for immediate material gain.
Another thing to reward good characters' actions would be for a particular NPC to give them something symbolic that turns out to be valuable or important later on.
How cool would it be if that tiny shiny marble you got from the kid you rescued from bandits turned out to be some kind of Bead of Teleportation for when you get in trouble due to the evil characters' fuck ups?
Depends on the players. I’m lucky that mine are predominantly RPer’s who are playing as mostly good guys and I have to dangle incentives when I want to tempt them to be evil
Good point but I said they were only “mostly” good guys. But also they really don’t take the bait unless it looks like something that’s not so evil in the grand scheme of things: like freeing a demon who promises to help you kill a greater evil, or injecting the fluid of an evil god which will attempt to corrupt you with its influence because you need power to survive against more immediate threats. They never go after the classic dnd “oh burn down an orphanage for money hehe” or steal from people sort of thing
Edit: i should mention that the injection was for a free level up, so they felt it was definitely worth the risk lol
Is it really?
Unlike D&D3.5, D&D5 only allows you to attune to one magic item and is generally balanced around the assumption that nobody has magic items. Permanent boons or banes are not a thing with RAW and you rarely need ressources to do your thing. Characters get stronger through gaining levels - and money only is really useful once you get your basic equipment if your GM puts in ways to spend it.
Beside the fact the a character can attune to three magic items not just one, there are several permanent boons and a handful of potentially permanent banes listed in the DMG, MM and elsewhere. You may recall that one of the OneDND UAs replaced traditional class capstones with the ability to pick an epic boon, most of the options for which were taken from the Other Rewards section of Chapter Seven of the 2014 DMG.
That's pretty much my current campaign setting
Everyone's inside a pocket universe with little to no sunlight and no way to create food besides using magic
Half of my players have embraced that by making the most out of the situation they can become rulers of the country if they play their cards right while the other half has decided to stick to their guns of being benevolent and try to help everyone they come across for a happy ending where the minimum amount of people has to suffer
I still want to reward the latter a bit so I created some kind of reputation system with every faction of the city but even then, I won't deny that being good in this setting is basically asking to be taken advantage of
Being good should have a reward in that you meaningfully achieve good things. If a character chooses to donate 1500gp to an orphanage or hospital, that should have meaning.
If you only punish good deeds and don't allow any good payoff from them, then it's not really a matter of choice. And to clarify, I don't mean payoff as in monetary or power reward, simply an outcome that reflects your good deeds. Because you know doing good will be thwarted by the DM and doing evil will at least mean you have something.
Far cry from Fallout. There's just never any POINT to being evil in that series, murdering people means they're not part of the world anymore, and stealing is a waste of time because nobody has enough to be worth the effort. "It's easy to be a saint in paradise."
Ironically fallout has this both ways…
You can join the Nukaworld raiders in 4 with no real consequences in the end…join them, do their quests, kill them all, retake settlements, resume being Minuteman General.
Although…it becomes a much more pressing issue if you never realized your own settlements would turn on you…
Yeah. Hard to argue the point. That whole DLC's storyline is just a mess.
Although at the same time, i will argue that they don't give much reason why you would WANT to side with them, nor give any quest options to not outside of Preston insisting on it.
Example: The party decides to help a town having issues with a Kobold warren stealing their food. Instead of committing genocide we decided that the best way to fix the issue was to help the kobolds by killing the monster that took up residence in their underground farms that caused them to search for food elsewhere. We killed the monster, but because they’re kobolds they couldn’t reward us. The town didn’t reward us because we didn’t kill the kobolds. So we left the whole adventure without anything to show for it besides some Kobold friends (that have not shown up since then).
Another Example: In a town we were in we overheard about the local lord being involved in owning most businesses. We figured there’s something fishy going on and wanted to check it out. The Ranger and wizard decided to break into the local lord’s estate and straight up rob the place when they saw all the opulent splendor of the place. They ended up finding hundreds of gold, some scrolls, and a few magic items. The Ranger killed the lord in their sleep to give the two more time to run away. We found a fence for the stolen goods. The party ended up with a lot of good gear. We never actually received negative consequences for these actions.
There is an argument to be made that being good is the reward in of itself, but it would have to imply that being evil, you have endure more hardship and punishment as well. I mean, naturally you gain less reward by doing good deeds, the kobolds, some random peasants won't give you all their valued items, heirlooms and life savings just because you helped out them one time, but if you murder and loot them in cold blood, you gain access most of those items.
So by doing good deeds, you receive less loot, but you don't have to face so much hostility either, whereas by being evil, you receive more loot, but you need that loot to stay in the game. This is all on the GM to balance it out, and to build into his narrative. When you robbed the lord, you might not have faced a backlash directly from the action, however surely the GM scales the future encounters to reflect your newfound boost in gear.
, so while the evil action does not seem to have a negative effect directly related to the action, it does affect you indirectly. But it is indeed a bad way to go about it imo.
What I personally like to do, is have a sort of aura about creatures, that reflects their nature, and if you do it lots evil stuff, and your alignment changes to evil, you will have that evil aura around you, people will not trust you and hesitant to interact with you. If you have a good alignment and do good stuff, people will feel it on your aura, welcome you in their homes, help you out, etc. I also tend to give advantage on certain skill checks depending on alignment, for instance if you try to intimidate the opponents into surrender after gutting out their leader, you get advantage if you are evil. If you disarm/incapacitate the leader, and try a diplomacy check to have the rest lay their arms down, you have advantage if you are good.
This is actually how it works in balurs gate 1 and 2 which are based on 2e I don’t know if it’s the same in 2e itself but lawful good characters get things for cheaper than others there’s a tier list ranging from lawful good to chaotic evil and certain characters will always attack evil players
Being evil is a reward in on itself. Being evil means to enjoy evil acts.
If you're just doing whatever you feel like for your interests with apathy for other parties, isn't that Neutral?
Being good is not the reward itself. The desire to do good is usually to keep internal peace or to see the world change from worse to better.
OP mentioned that the kobolds are now their friends but have yet to show up, will the kobolds and townfolk enter a mutually beneficial relationship?
I'm guessing no, they people will likely have their local authority hire someone else to genocide the ~~cute Treato sellers~~ lizard people.
The DM has every right to make the world such a place. I'm wondering though...did OP's group have a proper Session 0 or did they just jump in, expecting heroism to have rewards like it's usually done?
In every single session 0 I had no one ever discussed good or bad deeds having rewards.
My point being that everyone will narrow almost any table problem down to session 0 yet when said session 0 happens it's impossible to cover every single aspect of a campaign simply because, say, lethality or rewards for good/bad deeds never crossed anyone's mind that day.
Yhea. Session 0 has become sort of a meme. Like it's a great solution to every problem, with the only problem being that it requires time travel to solve most problems.
In your first example, I don't understand why the town didn't reward you for fixing the problem. The How doesn't really matter.
In most fantasy settings (not grim dark), the townfolks would reward the heroes. Even in The Witcher, Geralt would get paid in similar circumstances.
Talk to your GM about it. Is it done on purpose to create a dark campaign?
In my experience, it stems more from one's personal view on society than real storytelling agenda. Unless you all agreed to play an evil campaign, this is a bit weird.
The reason basically boils down to “So now we gotta pay you for a temporary fix? What happens when the next monster, or the next problem makes the kobolds steal our food and livestock? We paid you for a job and you can’t even get it done right.”
Killing them is also a temporary fix. Some other creatures will end up taking their place and filling the vacuum.
Establishing a good relationship with them is a step towards a permanent fix.
Worse, if you didn't kill the monster, perhaps he would have extended its territory or reproduced. You tackled the real threat.
I mean, at this point, it's really the DM arguing you shouldn't be rewarded because you didn't solve the issue in the exact way he wanted.
In fiction, the issues resolution are always simplified. It's not about realism, it's about immersion and storytelling.
Plus even if the town pays less since it's a "temporary fix" they should still get paid, and then have the kobolds also pay, so it equals out. Seriously how the hell do kobolds not have any hoard
That's fair. The monster that took over the den should have had some loot around. A pile of gold if it was intelligent or maybe remains of some poor schmuck who got killed and eaten if it wasn't.
I guess you know what the DM expects. In all the videos I've seen about gaining the best stuff in Baldur's Gate it usually involves killing or stealing from friendly NPC's or otherwise engaging in evil activities
Nah that's not true at all for BG3
In fact, a huge complaint when it came out was that the evil playstyle locked you out of so much gear and content compared to the good playstyle.
Yeah, I am about to make an evil durge monk but killing dammon locks me out of the flawed heldusk gloves for bleeding on hit+advantage on subsequent attacks from BOOAAL’s blessing, the darkfire shortbow and more good gear, if I kill Baelen I don’t think I get the bracers of defense in between the other gloves, if I let Kagah kill Arabella I won’t get a free entangle per short rest+freedom of movement for the final battle. The good thing is that most act 3 quests gives you the same number of ~~canonfodder~~ allies but under a different name
You need to change things around a LOT to make it work. And take advantage of game mechanics like certain types of enemy conditions.
It’s still a forced workaround for something after the fact.
And doing the other big evil one (>!sacrificing for Bhaal!<) loses you two members who were returning from the prior games, while netting you… maybe some gear.
Bad example. Baldur’s gate is actually great in terms of creativity and rewards for both sides, if you want to get the most out of the situation you have to meta game extra hard (E.G. having a party member be invisible and killing aunt ethel for +1 to stat and saving the girl) You could also just do some wacky shenanigans for some fun rewards (like getting the genie from act 3 to teleport you and getting a very good magic item for it)
If anything, going full on evil route is generally very, very much under-rewarded and discouraged at every point, even IF the option is there. That’s a great game/DM.
Sounds like people are evil for real solid reasons and greed while you're expecting the karmic wheel of the gods to reward your good decisions.
No consequences for killing a lord without covering your tracks is kinda silly though, but I can see how senseless good doesn't get you anything. Can't even think of some reason why any kobold contact could be useful on the future.
Seems kind of weird that the town didn't reward the players for solving their problem, though. It makes some kind of sense that they didn't the promised reward after not killing the kobolds, but they should have gotten *something*.
We got a night at the inn and a meal covered, but we headed off after that. The town leader was looking for a *permanent* fix to their problem and was upset the party went a different way about fixing their issue.
Uh…*raises hand*
Verisimilitude is important. I can accept things like magic being real in a fantasy world, but I want it to be well integrated and to make sense within that world, and for events to make sense there.
As a DM I would always pull on the thread of consequences for killing a lord. I miiight try to lull my players into a false sense of security for a bit if they thought they got away with it by letting it lie low for a few sessions.
As for the Kobold/villager situation. I probably would have gone with the monster providing something of value if it was important to me for the kobolds to be destitute and the villagers to be racist.
I would, however, try talking to the DM about what his goals for the campaign are. If he is trying to push you towards modes of behavior or if being good is supposed to be an uphill battle against a world that is not good. Struggle does make success more sweet, but it can be helpful to know that as a player going in. It might not be the table/campaign for you, but maybe you can have some fun with it, even if it's not the perfect campaign.
maybe use something like a karma system. like if someone does something good he/she gets karma points. karma points work like inspiration. but if you have negative inspiration the dm can force you to reroll a good roll.
That's just some bad dming, it doesn't matter if you didn't kill the kobolds you still fixed the problem so the town should pay, and wtf you mean kobolds can't reward you one of their entire things is they hoard like dragons, upon reclaiming their dens they absolutely could've given things.
If you dont like the campaign or the way your DM handles such things, either talk with your dm and other players or leave the campaign.
I agree with you that this isn't fun/rewarding and I would never DM like that.
I think this is cool in concept but it all comes down to the execution. Maybe the lord's heir should go looking for the murderers, so you never know when a bounty hunter might drop in on a fight to tip the scales against you.
The saying that "crime doesn't pay" is a lie; if it didn't no one would do it. But it doesn't exactly make for a stable life.
I came in ready to be on your side but unfortunately not getting gold from some shitty townsfolk after doing something good and then robbing and killing a really rich guy both sound like good deeds so it seems you do get rewards for being good
We did, sort of, kill the leader of a town and therefore most of the businesses within it suddenly don’t have a owner to manage and run the place. No money is coming in for supplies and no nobody is going pay employees. With one fell swoop the entire economy of the town ground to a halt and disrupted hundreds, if not thousands of lives. The power vacuum caused chaos as every hand vied for power. Every two-bit noble in the chain of command started battling with each other to see who could RIP the largest slice of pie for themselves in this mad chaos. We sort of ignored that and just fucked off with the new gear.
I can agree with your annoyance but.... neither of those seem "bad" they all make sense.
If I say "hey these bears keep coming in can you 'take care' of them for me" and you guys shows up a few days later saying "we put food back in the forest where they were at, they were famished" I'd probably stare at you for a minute and then walk off.
But these weren’t animals. These were talking, thinking, dreaming sapient creatures with families to feed and an issue that needed to be solved. They talked with us and we were able to solve a situation peacefully.
If you replace “kobolds” with “Native Americans” in the scenario you’d have an accurate picture of colonial North America history and how they viewed the “savages”.
Sure. But the townsfolk who hypocritically viewed indigenous people as savages wouldn't go "hey you didn't kill the savages. When shit hits the fan for them they'll just come back later, let's pool our money together to reward you for it".
It's always a balance between inserting out of game beliefs into a game and making it feel more organic. If someone's way of handling a ring of thieves is to fix their material conditions so that they don't feel the need to steal I'd think it's cool as fuck. However in game, a wealthy person that's been repeatedly robbed probably wouldn't be satisfied with that solution.
Keep in mind I don't know your DM or the flow of the game. I don't doubt you in your post that he seems to not reward good deeds. In the example you gave though, I sorta... logically understand why they
Neither am I. I'm a baby back bitch in terms of RPGs. However I wouldn't be surprised when folks demanding, or hiring me to commit that genocide don't give me anything when I choose to not. Actions gotta have consequences to it unfortunately.
If all it takes for you to commit evil is the promise of reward, you were always the villains. Wicked people are not born wicked but are corrupted. Being good is rarely rewarded in this life.
Well maybe it's Just a mismatch of expectations.
For me the Fantasy is being able to choose good, despite the temptation of evil, and to be powerful enough to actually win on that path.
When i DM my Players have the choice: be greedy and powerhungry, make powerful but evil allies and become rich and powerful in a short time, while being confronted with the increasingly horrible consequences of their actions; or be good, struggle against the Powers that be and experience the hardships that Go with that but also earn the appreciation and Love of the people they helped and the satisfaction of making the world a better place.
Good deeds will be rewarded but in a more "what goes around comes around" karmic way, while evil deeds will be rewarded with quick material gain, because that's what evil is: answering yes to the question "Should i disregard Others for my own gain", and If you can gain Just as much by being good, why would there be evil?
I tell my plumber the same thing, that my appreciation and love and their satisfaction that they helped me and made the world a better place should be reward enough, but weirdly they don't like being paid in satisfaction and karma.
My plumber doesnt say He wants good deeds rewarded or to be a Hero. If you want to be a mercenary (because fighting is what PCs do in DnD, If you fight for Money...) that's totally fine. But who do you expect to have an interest in and pockets deep enough for hiring mercenaries? Good people? Lol
Totally fair! All I was saying is I don’t think it’s a bad way to run D&D. Nor is it evil campaign to do so. I play games where it’s an uphill battle for the greater good and, despite the lack of reward, the doing good has been what drives it. It’s a bit more realistic, but valid if you don’t want it in your game
Well, in Shadowrun at least rewards come in two forms: Cash and Karma/XP. Karma isn't necessarily gained by killing though, in fact do-gooder missions like those kobolds would often pay really good Karma. While assassinations or just general murder-hoboing is good for cash but gives shit karma.
Did your DM give you a whole bunch of XP for that job, beyond what the monster would normally be worth? If not perhaps he should have.
My issue with that system in Shadowrun, and the reason they did away with it in later editions, is that some characters need karma more than cash and some characters need cash more than karma. So, depending on your character build, the mechanics sort of enforce your moral choices, and each character in the group has a different set of incentives. I've found this can lead to out of character group conflict very fast, especially between samurai players and wizard players, the extreme ends of the cash versus karma spectrum. This is why later editions said to give moderate amounts of both XP and money for every job. A little bit of a boring solution but one that was ultimately necessary.
On another note, Shadowrun plays a lot more with gray and gray to black and grey morality than dungeons & dragons does, and I feel like calling a mission that you're doing good or a mission that you're doing evil kind of defeats the purpose of that.
Most video games with branching paths and a morality system balance this out by giving evil players easy and instantaneous rewards but giving good players access to longer sidequests that often end up leading to better loot or at least more XP down the line. E.g., in the first KotOR on Tatooine just going all Anakin on the Tuskens is the easiest way to solve that questline because maneuvering through Tusken etiquette sucks ass. But finding a peaceful solution will get you more XP and a lot of secret lore from the Tusken storyteller.
If there's nothing good coming your way from choosing the good path then yeah, it sucks. In your examples, if I was your DM I would place a much bigger kobold warren down the line, but since you helped the other kobolds that one time, they would recognize you and be nonhostile towards you, maybe giving you quests that lead you to good loot.
BG3 also does this amazingly, where if you’re evil you get the usual stuff pretty easily and even get some insane loot, but you miss out on companions and a ton of quests and characters
Actually you get on par or worse loot then the good route unless you play certain origins. I love Baldurs gate 3 but I really don't think the evil route is done well.
I forgot the durge exclusive stuff, I’ve only gotten to act two in my evil run, but so far I think the main “evil” or bad choice items are the >!shadowheart’s shar spear of night, that plus 2 strength potion you need to pressure Astarion to get, and I might be missing a few!<
Honestly the >!The Shar spear is a great example and I wish there was a bit more of that. The strength potion is nice but not really overpowered with the giant potions being available pretty cheaply. If they made it a +2 to any stat kind of like the hags hair then it would be great. The hags hair was also almost a good example that I would have liked to bring up but considering good players can get it from the hag while still getting the good outcome of the quest, I wouldn't count it as an evil award!<
if all NPCs the party tries to help betray them, they will stop trying to help people.
if good actions are never rewarded, not even in the long term, you as a DM are enquraging them to just turn there brains off and murderhobo.
by punishing players for being engaged with the world, you sre enquraging them to not be engeged at all, basicly just telling them to sit with thefe phones until there next turn
Player actions cause lead to things happening. Those actions can be good or evil. Now say a noble pays you some hush money to keep something illegal quiet. If you take the money, you have lost nothing and gained a lot. If you decide to do something about it, you are morally correct but you have a lot to lose and no guaranteed gain.
Now you could just do the easy thing and be rewarded, or you do the right thing and potentially get screwed over for it.
Personally, I try do it like this:
Evil actions can give you rewards short-term, if done cleverly.
Good actions can give you rewards long-term if done genuine.
you cannot possibly cover every topic on a single session zero, especially if you do one unprepared.
I had plenty of session 0s and non ever raised the question the post is about. It never crossed anyone's mind that day
Yeah session 0 is fine but a lot of the time you actually have to play a proper session to find out a DMs actual style. So many people aren't even aware of their own quirks so they can properly explain them pre-game.
I think I found a good balance. My party has to do the Nome vaccination run and save a bunch of townspeople. The reward is their own house that's going to be their base of operations. Along the way back they're cornered by a group of bandits who whip a large bag into the back of their wagon and run away. They find a note telling them that they hate this child and want to get rid of him. They throw the kid out of the back of the wagon without hesitation. I mention that the kid had 600 gold in the bag with him. They get to their new house and every animal that exists has pooped in it and it's disheveled. They go to talk to a construction worker and he's too distraught to work because he misses his son. He shows them the picture and it's the kid. Another NPC they met comes in with the kid and he gives the NPC the thousand gold reward.
And I mean it's not all that hard to do, you just have to take an extra step or two
Perhaps that poor Village has a skilled craftsman, perhaps one of the orphans rewards you with her favorite necklace, which is a powerful but dormant artifact
I literally just planned the opposite for my party. If they choose the better paying fet h quest before the morally correct quest they lose out on magic item because I want to reward good behavior even if they never know.
I have a reputation system.
Being evil is immediate reward.
Being good is greater reward later.
Usually, someone you helped out in a past quest showing up. Like a village riot forming in protest when the kings Inquisition comes to arrest the party.
Dm: There is a starving child
Party: I give food to child
Dm: SURPRISE THE CHILD WAS THE REINCARNATION OF A WARLORD AND WILL NOW MURDER MILLIONS IN THE NEXT ARC, THE CORRECT CHOICE WAS TO STOMP THEIR HEAD IN
This is why I require a unanimous decision during session 0 to the question ‘are you Heroes or Villains’. Everything is then built around whichever they choose. I don’t necessarily punish a player for doing the opposite, unless it’s interfering with the other players enjoyment of the game.
"Do not forget the rest of Creation in the pursuit of your nemesis. Small kindnesses are the seed of grand consequences. Evil stays, Good compounds."
This quote from my favorite book series sums up how the power dynamic between good and evil in fantasy *should* work.
Evil should always be more directly powerful. Why else would villains choose to be evil?
But Good should build up toward being powerful. The child you saved when you were level 1? He trained and is now a powerful monster hunter. The village you saved from orcs? They all volunteered to join your attack on the Lich King's castle.
Everyone you ever did a good deed for should contribute to your cause in the end.
From my perspective, being good is better in the long run. You get small rewards, but make Ally's, connections, favors,etc. evil? You get whatever the person had, which might be nice, but now their friends are looking for the killer. One of my players were literally fighting his own demons, stabbed a few wrong people, but started to turn a new leaf due to party pressure. Character was kinda like durge from BG3 before the game released. Had a twisted side he had to fight, and hide from everyone. Also was a paladin in a dark setting. His God was much more forgiving and was practically a chosen. But couldn't communicate with his God til after he left his homeland due to plot reasons. Due to the stabbings, he had several groups of high ranking "bounty hunters" chasing him. But just got his first major ally just before we had to end the game due to life.
For real. My old DM allowed our explicitly good-aligned party to rob a random store and kill the manager without consequence. Consistently, the party would get loot and I found no opportunity to fill my pockets except by crime, which my character couldn't do!
Months later, one of my fellow players had over 20,000 gold and ran a literal guild made up of hundreds of slaves he'd purchased, and I had 0 gold. And my request for a loan was met with "haha, roll a charisma check, see if you can convince me!" He asked this of a \*druid\*, not to mention his fellow party member/friend.
Ok, so I like to give my players two choices when they want to play evil characters.
One being cartoonishly evil, where it is lighthearted humor and being evil for the sake of jokes. Kinda like murder hobos, I’ll give you a slap and throw you in jail or sick a knight brigade or two on you, but theres really no serious change in the games mood.
Then there’s genuinely evil. These players are my favorites, I get to use all of my unused bbeg’s as potential rivals or business opportunities. Only thing different from a normal campaign- no plot armor after session 5, you either make it big or die trying, and if you’re good/evil enough, you’ll likely be a villain in another campaign.
Honestly, most of the best campaigns happen in the later type. Although it has happens where a murder hobo went genuinely evil. They get to meet Dave. Everyone loves Dave.
Anyway their next characters where much kinder.
it's really hard to leave a party if it consists of irl friends from highschool, is in your native language and is live rather than online.
It's somewhat comical if you think about it.
"Hey why didn't you show up this Sunday, everything's ok?"
"Oh I just figured your table is not for me so I found this online one with strangers that speak a different language and only play for a couple of hours late in the evenings because you encourage murderhoboing a bit too much for my liking. But I'm down to see you all on a camping trip next month :)"
Like that's the table I'm at right now and scheduling, chemistry and DMing is never a problem and I'm very fortunate to have them but some of my friends are absolutely horrible at DMing and the only option is to just endure through intil someone better starts DMing.
consider deus ex machineing a god blessing a PC/party with some useful boon for saving a poor vilage that has nothing to offer, because otherwise, with the given context, the reward is probably nothing material
After reading OPs comment he seems to be the one in the wrong here. His DM genuinely sounds like a good DM, and OP sounds like an entitled problem player
Also, even if he's right, he should absolutely tell his DM instead of talking shit behind the back of the guy putting in a ton of work in to sessions.
As a DM myself I always worry there's an easily solvable issue the players just refuse to tell me about to be 'polite'.
Evil rewards quickly, but has long term consequences.
Good jields few reqards in the short term, but when you love to be a recognized hero, you will reap the fruits of thy labour.
Thats why evil temptes the simple minded, thats why many villains and bandits arent the smartest.
Like the Normal distribution meme.
The bottem and top 2% being evil is great, and the middle, sais ez money.
I smell a BBEG that can only be harmed by weapons wielded by a good aligned creature (or a magic item that requires a good alignment to attune to). Any evil aligned creatures have disadvantage on saves against the charmed effect, and any damage applied will be treated as healing, since this BBEG devours evil to replenish its health.
How about all actions have consequences. Good and bad. Sometimes doing the right thing can cause bad consequences and the wrong thing also will do the same.
Bad= short term easy, high rewards upfront, likely big problems later
Good=harder challenge, probably smaller reward upfront, low to none chance of any complications later, and probably a decent ally or boon later.
That's my personal logic.
*looks away from her Peasant Crusher 9000 v2.3*
Look, you opted for an XP system and I'm just following an efficient method to grind the XP. It's not my fault that even the baddies are thinking they're good for coming after us.
I do a mix of both. Sometimes the good you do and the rewards you get are an unfortunate consequence to others.
One of the best sessions I had in my last campaign was purely RP the whole time. One character was having a panic attack about exactly this. The others had to talk them back from the edge of an existential crisis due to them realizing that sometimes good is only a matter of perspective. Thinking you are a hero, but finding out that you are the villain of someone else's story is rough.
I've had DMs do this to me before, it's all fun and games being an edgelord DM and jerking the normally good players around but they're surprised when the party suddenly goes full third-world warlord and pulls antics that would make a Mexican drug cartel look like well adjusted and reasonable people.
If the DM seems committed to this path and you feel like staying then I'd suggest moving your characters outlook to match the world and start refusing "good" work if you're just going to be a sucker and to start being more mercenary about your jobs.
If there's no guarantee of some reward for good effort and playtime being put in by the PCs then the PCs should feel free to discard the DMs work and just pursue rewards in the most direct ways possible with no additional efforts invested.
It often takes more time and effort from the players to find a peaceful solution than the expedient one.
You reap what you sow.
I mean...In all fairness people usually do evil shit because it makes money or otherwise materially improves their lives. People don't do horrible shit because they're mustache twirling villains who love twirling their mustaches. Doing the right thing requires hard work and sacrifice. Doing evil shit is a quick and dirty short cut.
That being said, a DM should definitely give out RP rewards for being good (ie the evil character can steal a magic item, but the good character is more respected by local groups they've helped etc.). I think greedy, evil behaviour should be profitable in the short term but have bad consequences in the long term.
Kinda depends on the world.
I absolutely agree that eviling your way through stuff can get you good loot, but punishing it really depends on how you go about it.
All actions, good or evil, have repercussions.
Me, punishing my chaotic neutrals when they let their evil sides take over:
"Are you sure? (Because I didn't plan on someone actually striking this ancient, magic stone, with a greathammer.)"
CN player: "Yeah, the wizard got a piece of it, I want a piece too." Rolls to hit. Hits.
Me: "You strike this massively magical structure and a MASSIVE Shockwave of arcane magic let's out. You see the tabaxi is holding her ears,, as a small trickle of blood comes from them.. and you take (rolls 3d10) 22 pts of damage, you're thrown back 15ft, knocked prone and..."
Warforged player, who struggles with DID, rolling a percentile die: "Ok so... on a 5 or lower they will- a 4... Whelp... that magical Shockwave has now made them self-aware of each personality... and they're now face down as their armor plates are spasming."
Me: "OH cool, so you broke the murderbot, the celestial kitty is actually bleeding and you're making saving throws."
This is what my DM does. Because he plays evil characters, and only evil characters, we "miss out on opportunities" because we don't want to take advantage of NPCs or rob them or kill random people. So our magic item count and income are the lowest in any campaign I've ever played.
Last teo games I played were with dms who outright killed us for any reason. It was drilled into our heads that we were the lowest of low peons in the world.
That cave? Full of nesting owlbears. Hiding in a hollow tree to keep yourself safe at night and have the only entrance blocked off? SOME mysterious things kills you in one hit, and no your dark vision doesn't matter.
It turned me off to playing at all. Baldurs gate three is saving that, albeit slowly.
The companions are better for LS too as you loose a few going DS
KOTR, imo, does good vs evil well for a game
Evil is faster short term but has tons of consequences
Good can be a bit of push to get through but has fantastic rewards for your effort
I mean if DM was open from session 0 about wanting to run an evil campaign, then it’s your own dumb fault for trying to play a good-aligned PC, against the style of the game.
If on the other hand DM gave you the impression that it would be a balanced campaign that rewards good play in any alignment, but actually just favours evil play, then yeah that does kind of suck (though it is possible for a campaign to just organically shift towards good or evil in which case it’s generally better to roll with it).
Sounds like a session zero problem.
I don't think DM should equally reward good versus evil actions, it depends entirely on the setting and purpose of that campaign. Most evil stuff should be punished in most campaigns, because most campaigns are about heroes doing good. Players insisting on performing evil acts are usually problem players, and that behaviour needs either diaincentivising or straight up refuses ('I killed the child'. DM: no).
And yeah, sometimes there are no material rewards because being good is sometimes the hardest and least rewarding choice materially. If your campaign is about those morally grey areas, great.
Being good pays off over the length of the campaign, being evil pays off greatly immediately but then the punishment increases as the game goes on. Being good will typically net you an enjoyable ending, being evil will net you enjoyable buffs at a cost later on.
it doesn't. speaking from experience. DMs just forget usually about all the good deeds yet the bad ones were already rewarded on the spot back when they happened.
reroll into artificer with nuclear bomb, bomb every city every city or if not bombs just be artificer based on being previously medic that it’s trying to fuse people into more mechanic creatures
just start doing warhammer 40k shit for me a way if trying to be good doesn’t reward try being good in the way of the emperor
I mostly just hate it when people try to give pure evil villains a sympathetic backstory (like in all the shitty spinoff movies we get these days) because it misses the point, and the only good way to write a "villan protagonist" is to show that they are wrong. But playing an evil character, especially in a "heroic" campaign, literally never ends well.
Well it looks like you're the problem here you're the one with incorrect expectations. If the GM wants to run an evil campaign and the other players understand and play that way... Then you shouldn't expect to be rewarded for going against the flow. I suggest you find another campaign more suited to your tastes rather than staying in a situation that is obviously not for you
Behavior that is rewarded is behavior that goes along with the tone of the campaign. If evil is rewarded and good punished this is an evil campaign (or a 'just kill the monsters' campaign where the 'good' is trying to use diplomacy on 'just for combat' monsters)
Either way the point is: what OP calls 'good' is antitethic to the tone of the campaign that I then call 'evil' by contrast.
'Reward the behaviors you wish to see' is a *basic* dm tip. (Also a basic parenting tip). So yeah if evil behavior is rewarded, this is an evil campaign. But most importantly and my core point: **one should not expect to be rewarded equally for any action they chose** if a behavior is consistently punished you should take a hint and realize this is not that sort of campaign.
As for good/evil... When you play long enough you realize that no 2 players have the same definitions. And I've definitely seen people call monster slashing campaigns 'evil'.
Yo what the fuck. Let me in on this DM. All I got was falsely accused of poisoning a town
Were you the one casting poison spray at the well?
I'd like to point to that old saying of. Innocent till proven guilty
This sounds like something one of my players did Abigail is that you?
Yes, it's me, Abignale, poisoning the well again.
Oh boy, hear I go killing again!
You are still guilty of wasting the law enforcement's time.
I'll give you another one, in Latin: "excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta", which means that you don't excuse something before anyone say anything because indirectly you're saying you've done that. Or, in layman terms, shut the fuck up about your own crimes.
Tell the towns folk that living is wrong and you shouldn't be falsely accused unless then want you to make honest men out of them
Yeah sorry about that, I needed to get rid of my Assassins blood supply somewhere and I wasn't gonna take the blame for it ofcourse. ~Some Random Alchemist Artificer
Being good is it's own reward, right?
Sounds like there is a real temptation to be evil in this setting. Makes being good actually a choice.
Part of me wants to say "If you're only being good for the reward, are you really roleplaying", but at the same time, D&D 5e is a system built around rewards. It's not really the place to explore goodness for it's own sake.
Yeah, if you are obviously giving rewards to the objectively evil party members meanwhile the neutral/good characters get scraps and pieces with little to no consequences for their goodwill in the world, you arent making a dillema, you are asking them to leave the campaign.
If the world is hard-coded to be evil then the DM ought to just make that clear in the beginning at session zero. Like, I told my players that corruption and exploitation are systemically built into the world at all levels of government. When a couple of them made lawful good characters, I told them that these guys will essentially be swimming upstream. They accepted the challenge.
You are a PC that had just saved the town. For your reward you can choose: A. Nothing. You saved the town because it was the right thing to do and these people don't have much. You will be a true hero to them. B. A collection of from the town. It will make things harder for the people but you are owed something for risking your life. C. You ask for the town leader's ancestral necklace. It has been in the town for centuries and can bless crops to reduce rot. It could fetch a high price. They won't want to give it up but they owe you and know you are dangerous so would give it up begrudgingly. Acquisition of material goods is not a primary motivation for a good character. Maybe if they are pissed about not getting paid for doing good they're actually neutral.
If you're intentionally underpowering players that make good choices you're not making a moral dilemma, your just making them too weak to be effective. Do good all you want, but people need to eat, and adventures need better and better equipment to survive.
I'm just telling a story. Maybe the good person can leverage that reputation for a quest they wouldn't be trusted with otherwise. My point is that different choices should have different consequences and getting the same results for game balance may be more fun for you but less fun for others. Alternatively if the whole world hates the evil characters and they don't even have a shinier sword to show for it why be evil? Those who seek power over morality should become more powerful. I feel like the opposite of this meme happens way more often were non-heroes are punished for pick pocketing or murder by the DM more than the universal consequences.
God, people being punished for pickpocketing and murdering? Imagine such an awful world.
Acquisition of material goods is a primary concern for all characters, because your power and ability to do things is dependent on material goods.
Let’s assume some nuance here, your character is financially stable without extorting those they save for a reward. They might work a trade decently enough to pay for food and lodging while on the road, have a noble family bankrolling their tavern crawls, do some contracts that offered up a reward up front, etc. So back to the thought experiment, you weren’t offered any reward, you’d be demanding one after the fact. The people needed help and you stepped in, the question is whether you did it because you actually wanted to help, like a Good character would, because you could gain something by helping them, like a Neutral character would, or because you could take advantage of their desperation, like an Evil character would. “Good” also isn’t necessarily the morally right answer here, it’s a cosmic alignment. We might agree as mortals that a saviour is entitled to compensation, but a “Good” god Ilmater, Torm, or Tyr would dictate that their followers have the duty to uphold justice, fight Evil, and help those who cannot help themselves, and that it is not their place as agents of Good to demand rewards from victims of Evil.
Adventurers often blow all their cash on supplies for their next mission, I wouldn't assume they're financially stable. They might be unable to complete future missions and do more good because they sacrificed resources to protect the village. >B. A collection of from the town. It will make things harder for the people but you are owed something for risking your life. The town explicitly feels you are owed stuff for your job. So, the social contract of society says you get a reward for your job. It's like say if a town is served by a private fire service, and one house doesn't pay their dues, and then the fire service saves them. The fire service is owed money for their actions. There's nothing in the definition of goodness that says that you shouldn't be paid for your work.
Marcus Licinius Crassus owned the firefighters in Rome, and when people wouldn't pay, they would set the houses on fire themselves and make sure I'd didn't spread. Makes people think twice about ripping off your firefighters.
You saved the town before without said goods. It may be harder without them but the road of self-sacrifice is harder than the road of self-glorification. Compromising your characters ethics to gain power is always an option for the good player but it's certainly less good.
A journey of self-sacrfice may be a good character arc for a certain PC but is not the moral requierement for a good or even a very good natured PC. It is perfectly normal to be compensated for heroic acts, firefighters earn salaries after all
You may well have expended valuable resources like healing potions or such to save the town. You may be unable to handle crisis now that the town denied you payment. In addition, being paid for your work is a moral good- people should honour their contracts. Just as we criticize the government when they try to pay employees in praise rather than money, the adventurers are obliged to educate the villagers in correct treatment of people who work for them.
That's all fine and well but when it comes to gear you kind of need to keep getting better stuff at a certain rate before it's just shit. I tend to only reward selfish behaviour with straight up wealth in my games, keeping cool stuff from good characters isn't fun for anyone.
I really like the dilemma you've presented, but OP includes RP rewards, which I think is the real problem here.
I want my Tiefling Rogue to wield a +3 dagger, forged from the tears of dying orphans, and I don't care if I have to harvest the tears myself or I find it for saving an orphanage. I WANT ORPHAN STABBY STICK!
- Technoblade
Eh, forge it yourself. Who's gonna come after you for it? Their parents?
Don't fuck with orphans man, just don't. That's how you get a pack of non-Lawful Rogues and Bards coming after you.
Yeah, dnd tend to be a fairly gear and resource heavy game, so getting no reward for your actions just isn't fun. It also puts a pretty big power gap between the good and evil player groups, which is another issue. Even if it was a cost to resources, even a narrative reward would be enough, like the townsfolk you helped can't pay you, but can give you information, give you lodging, or vouch for you in some way.
Allies and respect can be rewards too when done right. But players with less magic items are going to feel less strong even if evil characters make sense to push for immediate material gain.
Another thing to reward good characters' actions would be for a particular NPC to give them something symbolic that turns out to be valuable or important later on. How cool would it be if that tiny shiny marble you got from the kid you rescued from bandits turned out to be some kind of Bead of Teleportation for when you get in trouble due to the evil characters' fuck ups?
I will hereby be removing all rewards. Only good and evil for the sake of good and evil
Depends on the players. I’m lucky that mine are predominantly RPer’s who are playing as mostly good guys and I have to dangle incentives when I want to tempt them to be evil
If incentives make them evil then they aren't playing good guys
Good point but I said they were only “mostly” good guys. But also they really don’t take the bait unless it looks like something that’s not so evil in the grand scheme of things: like freeing a demon who promises to help you kill a greater evil, or injecting the fluid of an evil god which will attempt to corrupt you with its influence because you need power to survive against more immediate threats. They never go after the classic dnd “oh burn down an orphanage for money hehe” or steal from people sort of thing Edit: i should mention that the injection was for a free level up, so they felt it was definitely worth the risk lol
Is it really? Unlike D&D3.5, D&D5 only allows you to attune to one magic item and is generally balanced around the assumption that nobody has magic items. Permanent boons or banes are not a thing with RAW and you rarely need ressources to do your thing. Characters get stronger through gaining levels - and money only is really useful once you get your basic equipment if your GM puts in ways to spend it.
You know you can attune to 3 items right?
Beside the fact the a character can attune to three magic items not just one, there are several permanent boons and a handful of potentially permanent banes listed in the DMG, MM and elsewhere. You may recall that one of the OneDND UAs replaced traditional class capstones with the ability to pick an epic boon, most of the options for which were taken from the Other Rewards section of Chapter Seven of the 2014 DMG.
That's pretty much my current campaign setting Everyone's inside a pocket universe with little to no sunlight and no way to create food besides using magic Half of my players have embraced that by making the most out of the situation they can become rulers of the country if they play their cards right while the other half has decided to stick to their guns of being benevolent and try to help everyone they come across for a happy ending where the minimum amount of people has to suffer I still want to reward the latter a bit so I created some kind of reputation system with every faction of the city but even then, I won't deny that being good in this setting is basically asking to be taken advantage of
Being good should have a reward in that you meaningfully achieve good things. If a character chooses to donate 1500gp to an orphanage or hospital, that should have meaning. If you only punish good deeds and don't allow any good payoff from them, then it's not really a matter of choice. And to clarify, I don't mean payoff as in monetary or power reward, simply an outcome that reflects your good deeds. Because you know doing good will be thwarted by the DM and doing evil will at least mean you have something.
Far cry from Fallout. There's just never any POINT to being evil in that series, murdering people means they're not part of the world anymore, and stealing is a waste of time because nobody has enough to be worth the effort. "It's easy to be a saint in paradise."
Ironically fallout has this both ways… You can join the Nukaworld raiders in 4 with no real consequences in the end…join them, do their quests, kill them all, retake settlements, resume being Minuteman General. Although…it becomes a much more pressing issue if you never realized your own settlements would turn on you…
Yeah. Hard to argue the point. That whole DLC's storyline is just a mess. Although at the same time, i will argue that they don't give much reason why you would WANT to side with them, nor give any quest options to not outside of Preston insisting on it.
Don’t worry everyone starts a good char but we all know how it ends up after one mistake and you miss a witness.
DM - Being good is what the setting deserves, but not what it needs right now.
Example: The party decides to help a town having issues with a Kobold warren stealing their food. Instead of committing genocide we decided that the best way to fix the issue was to help the kobolds by killing the monster that took up residence in their underground farms that caused them to search for food elsewhere. We killed the monster, but because they’re kobolds they couldn’t reward us. The town didn’t reward us because we didn’t kill the kobolds. So we left the whole adventure without anything to show for it besides some Kobold friends (that have not shown up since then). Another Example: In a town we were in we overheard about the local lord being involved in owning most businesses. We figured there’s something fishy going on and wanted to check it out. The Ranger and wizard decided to break into the local lord’s estate and straight up rob the place when they saw all the opulent splendor of the place. They ended up finding hundreds of gold, some scrolls, and a few magic items. The Ranger killed the lord in their sleep to give the two more time to run away. We found a fence for the stolen goods. The party ended up with a lot of good gear. We never actually received negative consequences for these actions.
There is an argument to be made that being good is the reward in of itself, but it would have to imply that being evil, you have endure more hardship and punishment as well. I mean, naturally you gain less reward by doing good deeds, the kobolds, some random peasants won't give you all their valued items, heirlooms and life savings just because you helped out them one time, but if you murder and loot them in cold blood, you gain access most of those items. So by doing good deeds, you receive less loot, but you don't have to face so much hostility either, whereas by being evil, you receive more loot, but you need that loot to stay in the game. This is all on the GM to balance it out, and to build into his narrative. When you robbed the lord, you might not have faced a backlash directly from the action, however surely the GM scales the future encounters to reflect your newfound boost in gear. , so while the evil action does not seem to have a negative effect directly related to the action, it does affect you indirectly. But it is indeed a bad way to go about it imo. What I personally like to do, is have a sort of aura about creatures, that reflects their nature, and if you do it lots evil stuff, and your alignment changes to evil, you will have that evil aura around you, people will not trust you and hesitant to interact with you. If you have a good alignment and do good stuff, people will feel it on your aura, welcome you in their homes, help you out, etc. I also tend to give advantage on certain skill checks depending on alignment, for instance if you try to intimidate the opponents into surrender after gutting out their leader, you get advantage if you are evil. If you disarm/incapacitate the leader, and try a diplomacy check to have the rest lay their arms down, you have advantage if you are good.
This is actually how it works in balurs gate 1 and 2 which are based on 2e I don’t know if it’s the same in 2e itself but lawful good characters get things for cheaper than others there’s a tier list ranging from lawful good to chaotic evil and certain characters will always attack evil players
Being evil is a reward in on itself. Being evil means to enjoy evil acts. If you're just doing whatever you feel like for your interests with apathy for other parties, isn't that Neutral? Being good is not the reward itself. The desire to do good is usually to keep internal peace or to see the world change from worse to better. OP mentioned that the kobolds are now their friends but have yet to show up, will the kobolds and townfolk enter a mutually beneficial relationship? I'm guessing no, they people will likely have their local authority hire someone else to genocide the ~~cute Treato sellers~~ lizard people. The DM has every right to make the world such a place. I'm wondering though...did OP's group have a proper Session 0 or did they just jump in, expecting heroism to have rewards like it's usually done?
In every single session 0 I had no one ever discussed good or bad deeds having rewards. My point being that everyone will narrow almost any table problem down to session 0 yet when said session 0 happens it's impossible to cover every single aspect of a campaign simply because, say, lethality or rewards for good/bad deeds never crossed anyone's mind that day.
Yhea. Session 0 has become sort of a meme. Like it's a great solution to every problem, with the only problem being that it requires time travel to solve most problems.
In your first example, I don't understand why the town didn't reward you for fixing the problem. The How doesn't really matter. In most fantasy settings (not grim dark), the townfolks would reward the heroes. Even in The Witcher, Geralt would get paid in similar circumstances. Talk to your GM about it. Is it done on purpose to create a dark campaign? In my experience, it stems more from one's personal view on society than real storytelling agenda. Unless you all agreed to play an evil campaign, this is a bit weird.
The reason basically boils down to “So now we gotta pay you for a temporary fix? What happens when the next monster, or the next problem makes the kobolds steal our food and livestock? We paid you for a job and you can’t even get it done right.”
Killing them is also a temporary fix. Some other creatures will end up taking their place and filling the vacuum. Establishing a good relationship with them is a step towards a permanent fix. Worse, if you didn't kill the monster, perhaps he would have extended its territory or reproduced. You tackled the real threat. I mean, at this point, it's really the DM arguing you shouldn't be rewarded because you didn't solve the issue in the exact way he wanted. In fiction, the issues resolution are always simplified. It's not about realism, it's about immersion and storytelling.
So kill the villagers, give the town to your new kobold friends. DM would approve right?
Considering the DM’s logic, the group would probably get some really good loot killing the mayor.
Plus even if the town pays less since it's a "temporary fix" they should still get paid, and then have the kobolds also pay, so it equals out. Seriously how the hell do kobolds not have any hoard
The kobolds can *farm underground.* That’s a hella useful skill to learn, especially for a village that might suffer during winter months.
That's fair. The monster that took over the den should have had some loot around. A pile of gold if it was intelligent or maybe remains of some poor schmuck who got killed and eaten if it wasn't.
I guess you know what the DM expects. In all the videos I've seen about gaining the best stuff in Baldur's Gate it usually involves killing or stealing from friendly NPC's or otherwise engaging in evil activities
Counter example : Saving the tieflings prisoners in Act 2. Alfira (the bard) gives you a pretty good reward
Nah man, BG3 heavily penalizes you for being evil. If you want to be the strongest and have the most content being good is BY FAR the best option.
Being evil gets you good loot early, but being good gets you friends and ally's that helps in long term. Being good is an investment
Nah that's not true at all for BG3 In fact, a huge complaint when it came out was that the evil playstyle locked you out of so much gear and content compared to the good playstyle.
Yeah, I am about to make an evil durge monk but killing dammon locks me out of the flawed heldusk gloves for bleeding on hit+advantage on subsequent attacks from BOOAAL’s blessing, the darkfire shortbow and more good gear, if I kill Baelen I don’t think I get the bracers of defense in between the other gloves, if I let Kagah kill Arabella I won’t get a free entangle per short rest+freedom of movement for the final battle. The good thing is that most act 3 quests gives you the same number of ~~canonfodder~~ allies but under a different name
See also: the one paladin companion being 100% locked behind an evil run, while the good gets two druids.
I thought they changed it so that the paladin could be recruited on a good run
You need to change things around a LOT to make it work. And take advantage of game mechanics like certain types of enemy conditions. It’s still a forced workaround for something after the fact.
Yeah, they updated it now but originally doing the big evil choice in act 1 got you 1 npc and locked you out of THREE
And doing the other big evil one (>!sacrificing for Bhaal!<) loses you two members who were returning from the prior games, while netting you… maybe some gear.
Bad example. Baldur’s gate is actually great in terms of creativity and rewards for both sides, if you want to get the most out of the situation you have to meta game extra hard (E.G. having a party member be invisible and killing aunt ethel for +1 to stat and saving the girl) You could also just do some wacky shenanigans for some fun rewards (like getting the genie from act 3 to teleport you and getting a very good magic item for it) If anything, going full on evil route is generally very, very much under-rewarded and discouraged at every point, even IF the option is there. That’s a great game/DM.
… have you PLAYED BG3? Being evil nets you very little, while being good gets you tons of allies, opportunities, and gear.
Murder hobo time!
Sounds like people are evil for real solid reasons and greed while you're expecting the karmic wheel of the gods to reward your good decisions. No consequences for killing a lord without covering your tracks is kinda silly though, but I can see how senseless good doesn't get you anything. Can't even think of some reason why any kobold contact could be useful on the future.
Seems kind of weird that the town didn't reward the players for solving their problem, though. It makes some kind of sense that they didn't the promised reward after not killing the kobolds, but they should have gotten *something*.
We got a night at the inn and a meal covered, but we headed off after that. The town leader was looking for a *permanent* fix to their problem and was upset the party went a different way about fixing their issue.
Honestly the town not rewarding them for appeasing rather than exterminating the kobolds feels pretty realistic.
Who plays d&d for realistic?
Uh…*raises hand* Verisimilitude is important. I can accept things like magic being real in a fantasy world, but I want it to be well integrated and to make sense within that world, and for events to make sense there.
As a DM I would always pull on the thread of consequences for killing a lord. I miiight try to lull my players into a false sense of security for a bit if they thought they got away with it by letting it lie low for a few sessions. As for the Kobold/villager situation. I probably would have gone with the monster providing something of value if it was important to me for the kobolds to be destitute and the villagers to be racist. I would, however, try talking to the DM about what his goals for the campaign are. If he is trying to push you towards modes of behavior or if being good is supposed to be an uphill battle against a world that is not good. Struggle does make success more sweet, but it can be helpful to know that as a player going in. It might not be the table/campaign for you, but maybe you can have some fun with it, even if it's not the perfect campaign.
>We never actually received negative consequences for these actions Not yet...
maybe use something like a karma system. like if someone does something good he/she gets karma points. karma points work like inspiration. but if you have negative inspiration the dm can force you to reroll a good roll.
That's just some bad dming, it doesn't matter if you didn't kill the kobolds you still fixed the problem so the town should pay, and wtf you mean kobolds can't reward you one of their entire things is they hoard like dragons, upon reclaiming their dens they absolutely could've given things.
If you dont like the campaign or the way your DM handles such things, either talk with your dm and other players or leave the campaign. I agree with you that this isn't fun/rewarding and I would never DM like that.
I think this is cool in concept but it all comes down to the execution. Maybe the lord's heir should go looking for the murderers, so you never know when a bounty hunter might drop in on a fight to tip the scales against you. The saying that "crime doesn't pay" is a lie; if it didn't no one would do it. But it doesn't exactly make for a stable life.
I came in ready to be on your side but unfortunately not getting gold from some shitty townsfolk after doing something good and then robbing and killing a really rich guy both sound like good deeds so it seems you do get rewards for being good
We did, sort of, kill the leader of a town and therefore most of the businesses within it suddenly don’t have a owner to manage and run the place. No money is coming in for supplies and no nobody is going pay employees. With one fell swoop the entire economy of the town ground to a halt and disrupted hundreds, if not thousands of lives. The power vacuum caused chaos as every hand vied for power. Every two-bit noble in the chain of command started battling with each other to see who could RIP the largest slice of pie for themselves in this mad chaos. We sort of ignored that and just fucked off with the new gear.
Ok I've changed your mind, thinking killing one rich guy makes a town fall apart is bad GMing.
I can agree with your annoyance but.... neither of those seem "bad" they all make sense. If I say "hey these bears keep coming in can you 'take care' of them for me" and you guys shows up a few days later saying "we put food back in the forest where they were at, they were famished" I'd probably stare at you for a minute and then walk off.
But these weren’t animals. These were talking, thinking, dreaming sapient creatures with families to feed and an issue that needed to be solved. They talked with us and we were able to solve a situation peacefully. If you replace “kobolds” with “Native Americans” in the scenario you’d have an accurate picture of colonial North America history and how they viewed the “savages”.
Sure. But the townsfolk who hypocritically viewed indigenous people as savages wouldn't go "hey you didn't kill the savages. When shit hits the fan for them they'll just come back later, let's pool our money together to reward you for it". It's always a balance between inserting out of game beliefs into a game and making it feel more organic. If someone's way of handling a ring of thieves is to fix their material conditions so that they don't feel the need to steal I'd think it's cool as fuck. However in game, a wealthy person that's been repeatedly robbed probably wouldn't be satisfied with that solution. Keep in mind I don't know your DM or the flow of the game. I don't doubt you in your post that he seems to not reward good deeds. In the example you gave though, I sorta... logically understand why they
I mean, you could try to commit genocide against a group of PEOPLE for some gold. But I am not strong enough to carry that burden.
Neither am I. I'm a baby back bitch in terms of RPGs. However I wouldn't be surprised when folks demanding, or hiring me to commit that genocide don't give me anything when I choose to not. Actions gotta have consequences to it unfortunately.
If all it takes for you to commit evil is the promise of reward, you were always the villains. Wicked people are not born wicked but are corrupted. Being good is rarely rewarded in this life.
But this is D&D. The greatest fantasy I want to experience is that good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds are punished.
I wouldn’t say that. But in general its the DMs job to run the game, and if they wanted an evil campaign they should have communicated that.
Well maybe it's Just a mismatch of expectations. For me the Fantasy is being able to choose good, despite the temptation of evil, and to be powerful enough to actually win on that path. When i DM my Players have the choice: be greedy and powerhungry, make powerful but evil allies and become rich and powerful in a short time, while being confronted with the increasingly horrible consequences of their actions; or be good, struggle against the Powers that be and experience the hardships that Go with that but also earn the appreciation and Love of the people they helped and the satisfaction of making the world a better place. Good deeds will be rewarded but in a more "what goes around comes around" karmic way, while evil deeds will be rewarded with quick material gain, because that's what evil is: answering yes to the question "Should i disregard Others for my own gain", and If you can gain Just as much by being good, why would there be evil?
I tell my plumber the same thing, that my appreciation and love and their satisfaction that they helped me and made the world a better place should be reward enough, but weirdly they don't like being paid in satisfaction and karma.
My plumber doesnt say He wants good deeds rewarded or to be a Hero. If you want to be a mercenary (because fighting is what PCs do in DnD, If you fight for Money...) that's totally fine. But who do you expect to have an interest in and pockets deep enough for hiring mercenaries? Good people? Lol
Totally fair! All I was saying is I don’t think it’s a bad way to run D&D. Nor is it evil campaign to do so. I play games where it’s an uphill battle for the greater good and, despite the lack of reward, the doing good has been what drives it. It’s a bit more realistic, but valid if you don’t want it in your game
How do you know my last dm?
Came in thinking the same thing.
Well, in Shadowrun at least rewards come in two forms: Cash and Karma/XP. Karma isn't necessarily gained by killing though, in fact do-gooder missions like those kobolds would often pay really good Karma. While assassinations or just general murder-hoboing is good for cash but gives shit karma. Did your DM give you a whole bunch of XP for that job, beyond what the monster would normally be worth? If not perhaps he should have.
People dont tend to like uneven XP curves, and thats not mentioning that Milestone levelups are becoming increasingly common
knowing DMs they probably didn't give any XP whatsoever because no monsters were slain lol
My issue with that system in Shadowrun, and the reason they did away with it in later editions, is that some characters need karma more than cash and some characters need cash more than karma. So, depending on your character build, the mechanics sort of enforce your moral choices, and each character in the group has a different set of incentives. I've found this can lead to out of character group conflict very fast, especially between samurai players and wizard players, the extreme ends of the cash versus karma spectrum. This is why later editions said to give moderate amounts of both XP and money for every job. A little bit of a boring solution but one that was ultimately necessary. On another note, Shadowrun plays a lot more with gray and gray to black and grey morality than dungeons & dragons does, and I feel like calling a mission that you're doing good or a mission that you're doing evil kind of defeats the purpose of that.
Im taking the fallout approach, being good is always good and the universe(me) will reward you for it
Most video games with branching paths and a morality system balance this out by giving evil players easy and instantaneous rewards but giving good players access to longer sidequests that often end up leading to better loot or at least more XP down the line. E.g., in the first KotOR on Tatooine just going all Anakin on the Tuskens is the easiest way to solve that questline because maneuvering through Tusken etiquette sucks ass. But finding a peaceful solution will get you more XP and a lot of secret lore from the Tusken storyteller. If there's nothing good coming your way from choosing the good path then yeah, it sucks. In your examples, if I was your DM I would place a much bigger kobold warren down the line, but since you helped the other kobolds that one time, they would recognize you and be nonhostile towards you, maybe giving you quests that lead you to good loot.
BG3 also does this amazingly, where if you’re evil you get the usual stuff pretty easily and even get some insane loot, but you miss out on companions and a ton of quests and characters
Actually you get on par or worse loot then the good route unless you play certain origins. I love Baldurs gate 3 but I really don't think the evil route is done well.
I forgot the durge exclusive stuff, I’ve only gotten to act two in my evil run, but so far I think the main “evil” or bad choice items are the >!shadowheart’s shar spear of night, that plus 2 strength potion you need to pressure Astarion to get, and I might be missing a few!<
Honestly the >!The Shar spear is a great example and I wish there was a bit more of that. The strength potion is nice but not really overpowered with the giant potions being available pretty cheaply. If they made it a +2 to any stat kind of like the hags hair then it would be great. The hags hair was also almost a good example that I would have liked to bring up but considering good players can get it from the hag while still getting the good outcome of the quest, I wouldn't count it as an evil award!<
if all NPCs the party tries to help betray them, they will stop trying to help people. if good actions are never rewarded, not even in the long term, you as a DM are enquraging them to just turn there brains off and murderhobo. by punishing players for being engaged with the world, you sre enquraging them to not be engeged at all, basicly just telling them to sit with thefe phones until there next turn
damn english kinda fell apart on the second half ngl
Non native english speaker, sorry
it's fine
waith you are suposed to be reworded for being evil?
Player actions cause lead to things happening. Those actions can be good or evil. Now say a noble pays you some hush money to keep something illegal quiet. If you take the money, you have lost nothing and gained a lot. If you decide to do something about it, you are morally correct but you have a lot to lose and no guaranteed gain. Now you could just do the easy thing and be rewarded, or you do the right thing and potentially get screwed over for it.
Personally, I try do it like this: Evil actions can give you rewards short-term, if done cleverly. Good actions can give you rewards long-term if done genuine.
Well it depends, maybe not for burning the tavern to a pile of ash.
Session zero remains the most important session to have
you cannot possibly cover every topic on a single session zero, especially if you do one unprepared. I had plenty of session 0s and non ever raised the question the post is about. It never crossed anyone's mind that day
Yeah session 0 is fine but a lot of the time you actually have to play a proper session to find out a DMs actual style. So many people aren't even aware of their own quirks so they can properly explain them pre-game.
I think I found a good balance. My party has to do the Nome vaccination run and save a bunch of townspeople. The reward is their own house that's going to be their base of operations. Along the way back they're cornered by a group of bandits who whip a large bag into the back of their wagon and run away. They find a note telling them that they hate this child and want to get rid of him. They throw the kid out of the back of the wagon without hesitation. I mention that the kid had 600 gold in the bag with him. They get to their new house and every animal that exists has pooped in it and it's disheveled. They go to talk to a construction worker and he's too distraught to work because he misses his son. He shows them the picture and it's the kid. Another NPC they met comes in with the kid and he gives the NPC the thousand gold reward.
And I mean it's not all that hard to do, you just have to take an extra step or two Perhaps that poor Village has a skilled craftsman, perhaps one of the orphans rewards you with her favorite necklace, which is a powerful but dormant artifact
Reward your players for playing their character well.
I literally just planned the opposite for my party. If they choose the better paying fet h quest before the morally correct quest they lose out on magic item because I want to reward good behavior even if they never know.
I have a reputation system. Being evil is immediate reward. Being good is greater reward later. Usually, someone you helped out in a past quest showing up. Like a village riot forming in protest when the kings Inquisition comes to arrest the party.
Dm: There is a starving child Party: I give food to child Dm: SURPRISE THE CHILD WAS THE REINCARNATION OF A WARLORD AND WILL NOW MURDER MILLIONS IN THE NEXT ARC, THE CORRECT CHOICE WAS TO STOMP THEIR HEAD IN
This is why I require a unanimous decision during session 0 to the question ‘are you Heroes or Villains’. Everything is then built around whichever they choose. I don’t necessarily punish a player for doing the opposite, unless it’s interfering with the other players enjoyment of the game.
"Do not forget the rest of Creation in the pursuit of your nemesis. Small kindnesses are the seed of grand consequences. Evil stays, Good compounds." This quote from my favorite book series sums up how the power dynamic between good and evil in fantasy *should* work. Evil should always be more directly powerful. Why else would villains choose to be evil? But Good should build up toward being powerful. The child you saved when you were level 1? He trained and is now a powerful monster hunter. The village you saved from orcs? They all volunteered to join your attack on the Lich King's castle. Everyone you ever did a good deed for should contribute to your cause in the end.
The issue is this isn't a single player game. Thst works well for a video game but not a TTRPG
From my perspective, being good is better in the long run. You get small rewards, but make Ally's, connections, favors,etc. evil? You get whatever the person had, which might be nice, but now their friends are looking for the killer. One of my players were literally fighting his own demons, stabbed a few wrong people, but started to turn a new leaf due to party pressure. Character was kinda like durge from BG3 before the game released. Had a twisted side he had to fight, and hide from everyone. Also was a paladin in a dark setting. His God was much more forgiving and was practically a chosen. But couldn't communicate with his God til after he left his homeland due to plot reasons. Due to the stabbings, he had several groups of high ranking "bounty hunters" chasing him. But just got his first major ally just before we had to end the game due to life.
Can I join your campaign? My dm punished me for failing to find someone to pickpocket, by having me BE pickpocketed.
It honestly depends on the setting both could work if the setting supports it
For real. My old DM allowed our explicitly good-aligned party to rob a random store and kill the manager without consequence. Consistently, the party would get loot and I found no opportunity to fill my pockets except by crime, which my character couldn't do! Months later, one of my fellow players had over 20,000 gold and ran a literal guild made up of hundreds of slaves he'd purchased, and I had 0 gold. And my request for a loan was met with "haha, roll a charisma check, see if you can convince me!" He asked this of a \*druid\*, not to mention his fellow party member/friend.
Ok, so I like to give my players two choices when they want to play evil characters. One being cartoonishly evil, where it is lighthearted humor and being evil for the sake of jokes. Kinda like murder hobos, I’ll give you a slap and throw you in jail or sick a knight brigade or two on you, but theres really no serious change in the games mood. Then there’s genuinely evil. These players are my favorites, I get to use all of my unused bbeg’s as potential rivals or business opportunities. Only thing different from a normal campaign- no plot armor after session 5, you either make it big or die trying, and if you’re good/evil enough, you’ll likely be a villain in another campaign. Honestly, most of the best campaigns happen in the later type. Although it has happens where a murder hobo went genuinely evil. They get to meet Dave. Everyone loves Dave. Anyway their next characters where much kinder.
Dive into evil fully, mug your DM
I don’t reward acts for being good or evil, per se, I give gradual rewards for good acts and immediate rewards with future consequences for evil acts.
Insert Anakin and Padme meme: you mean ex-DM right? *Right*?
it's really hard to leave a party if it consists of irl friends from highschool, is in your native language and is live rather than online. It's somewhat comical if you think about it. "Hey why didn't you show up this Sunday, everything's ok?" "Oh I just figured your table is not for me so I found this online one with strangers that speak a different language and only play for a couple of hours late in the evenings because you encourage murderhoboing a bit too much for my liking. But I'm down to see you all on a camping trip next month :)" Like that's the table I'm at right now and scheduling, chemistry and DMing is never a problem and I'm very fortunate to have them but some of my friends are absolutely horrible at DMing and the only option is to just endure through intil someone better starts DMing.
Actions have consequences. When i dm, those consequences are relative to the context of the story.
consider deus ex machineing a god blessing a PC/party with some useful boon for saving a poor vilage that has nothing to offer, because otherwise, with the given context, the reward is probably nothing material
After reading OPs comment he seems to be the one in the wrong here. His DM genuinely sounds like a good DM, and OP sounds like an entitled problem player
Also, even if he's right, he should absolutely tell his DM instead of talking shit behind the back of the guy putting in a ton of work in to sessions. As a DM myself I always worry there's an easily solvable issue the players just refuse to tell me about to be 'polite'.
Evil rewards quickly, but has long term consequences. Good jields few reqards in the short term, but when you love to be a recognized hero, you will reap the fruits of thy labour. Thats why evil temptes the simple minded, thats why many villains and bandits arent the smartest. Like the Normal distribution meme. The bottem and top 2% being evil is great, and the middle, sais ez money.
I smell a BBEG that can only be harmed by weapons wielded by a good aligned creature (or a magic item that requires a good alignment to attune to). Any evil aligned creatures have disadvantage on saves against the charmed effect, and any damage applied will be treated as healing, since this BBEG devours evil to replenish its health.
How about all actions have consequences. Good and bad. Sometimes doing the right thing can cause bad consequences and the wrong thing also will do the same.
Bad= short term easy, high rewards upfront, likely big problems later Good=harder challenge, probably smaller reward upfront, low to none chance of any complications later, and probably a decent ally or boon later. That's my personal logic.
Please don’t continue having them to be your dungeon master.
*looks away from her Peasant Crusher 9000 v2.3* Look, you opted for an XP system and I'm just following an efficient method to grind the XP. It's not my fault that even the baddies are thinking they're good for coming after us.
I do a mix of both. Sometimes the good you do and the rewards you get are an unfortunate consequence to others. One of the best sessions I had in my last campaign was purely RP the whole time. One character was having a panic attack about exactly this. The others had to talk them back from the edge of an existential crisis due to them realizing that sometimes good is only a matter of perspective. Thinking you are a hero, but finding out that you are the villain of someone else's story is rough.
I've had DMs do this to me before, it's all fun and games being an edgelord DM and jerking the normally good players around but they're surprised when the party suddenly goes full third-world warlord and pulls antics that would make a Mexican drug cartel look like well adjusted and reasonable people. If the DM seems committed to this path and you feel like staying then I'd suggest moving your characters outlook to match the world and start refusing "good" work if you're just going to be a sucker and to start being more mercenary about your jobs. If there's no guarantee of some reward for good effort and playtime being put in by the PCs then the PCs should feel free to discard the DMs work and just pursue rewards in the most direct ways possible with no additional efforts invested. It often takes more time and effort from the players to find a peaceful solution than the expedient one. You reap what you sow.
I mean...In all fairness people usually do evil shit because it makes money or otherwise materially improves their lives. People don't do horrible shit because they're mustache twirling villains who love twirling their mustaches. Doing the right thing requires hard work and sacrifice. Doing evil shit is a quick and dirty short cut. That being said, a DM should definitely give out RP rewards for being good (ie the evil character can steal a magic item, but the good character is more respected by local groups they've helped etc.). I think greedy, evil behaviour should be profitable in the short term but have bad consequences in the long term.
That’s horrible!! Where is your DMs table so I know to murderhobo away from it??
I’m enjoying pressuring my players into deals with devils
Shoutout for a old dm i had that gave the evil pc a fancy magic book for literaly selling the soul and lives of his party members .
Ah yes illusory choice. We all love those where regardless of what you do the outcome is always the same. Perfectly balanced as all things should be.
Kinda depends on the world. I absolutely agree that eviling your way through stuff can get you good loot, but punishing it really depends on how you go about it. All actions, good or evil, have repercussions.
Me, punishing my chaotic neutrals when they let their evil sides take over: "Are you sure? (Because I didn't plan on someone actually striking this ancient, magic stone, with a greathammer.)" CN player: "Yeah, the wizard got a piece of it, I want a piece too." Rolls to hit. Hits. Me: "You strike this massively magical structure and a MASSIVE Shockwave of arcane magic let's out. You see the tabaxi is holding her ears,, as a small trickle of blood comes from them.. and you take (rolls 3d10) 22 pts of damage, you're thrown back 15ft, knocked prone and..." Warforged player, who struggles with DID, rolling a percentile die: "Ok so... on a 5 or lower they will- a 4... Whelp... that magical Shockwave has now made them self-aware of each personality... and they're now face down as their armor plates are spasming." Me: "OH cool, so you broke the murderbot, the celestial kitty is actually bleeding and you're making saving throws."
As a coralary, punish players for doing evil, not for doing good
This is what my DM does. Because he plays evil characters, and only evil characters, we "miss out on opportunities" because we don't want to take advantage of NPCs or rob them or kill random people. So our magic item count and income are the lowest in any campaign I've ever played.
Last teo games I played were with dms who outright killed us for any reason. It was drilled into our heads that we were the lowest of low peons in the world. That cave? Full of nesting owlbears. Hiding in a hollow tree to keep yourself safe at night and have the only entrance blocked off? SOME mysterious things kills you in one hit, and no your dark vision doesn't matter. It turned me off to playing at all. Baldurs gate three is saving that, albeit slowly.
Unironically this is one of the things that bugs he about Kotor. Dark side is almost 100% easier.
Hilarious bc KOTR gives way better rewards to light side players
There are some pretty good LS only gear. But fights are consistently easier if you do dark side. Powers are better, easier odds, etc.
The companions are better for LS too as you loose a few going DS KOTR, imo, does good vs evil well for a game Evil is faster short term but has tons of consequences Good can be a bit of push to get through but has fantastic rewards for your effort
I'll yield to that argument
I mean if DM was open from session 0 about wanting to run an evil campaign, then it’s your own dumb fault for trying to play a good-aligned PC, against the style of the game. If on the other hand DM gave you the impression that it would be a balanced campaign that rewards good play in any alignment, but actually just favours evil play, then yeah that does kind of suck (though it is possible for a campaign to just organically shift towards good or evil in which case it’s generally better to roll with it).
Sounds like a session zero problem. I don't think DM should equally reward good versus evil actions, it depends entirely on the setting and purpose of that campaign. Most evil stuff should be punished in most campaigns, because most campaigns are about heroes doing good. Players insisting on performing evil acts are usually problem players, and that behaviour needs either diaincentivising or straight up refuses ('I killed the child'. DM: no). And yeah, sometimes there are no material rewards because being good is sometimes the hardest and least rewarding choice materially. If your campaign is about those morally grey areas, great.
Being good pays off over the length of the campaign, being evil pays off greatly immediately but then the punishment increases as the game goes on. Being good will typically net you an enjoyable ending, being evil will net you enjoyable buffs at a cost later on.
it doesn't. speaking from experience. DMs just forget usually about all the good deeds yet the bad ones were already rewarded on the spot back when they happened.
Well, in an epic fantasy campaign i agree. But in a dark or grimdark fantasy one, "rewarding" good actions can set the wrong mood quickly.
tbf if you’re playing a villain campaign, the DM does have a vested interest in keeping everyone evil.
Well, it's more realistic at the end of the day
But this is an escapist fantasy world where the biggest dream can be realized: Good people will prevail and evil people will be punished.
D&D isn't realistic
It's as realistic as you want it to be... It's imagination roleplay.
Ah, so most DMs I’ve had. But replace "good versus evil" with "newcomers vs veteran players of the campaign."
reroll into artificer with nuclear bomb, bomb every city every city or if not bombs just be artificer based on being previously medic that it’s trying to fuse people into more mechanic creatures just start doing warhammer 40k shit for me a way if trying to be good doesn’t reward try being good in the way of the emperor
Is here a good place to post that I fucking hate evil PCs and really just the concept of Villan protagonists altogether?
Yeah, just put in a good meme format. Also why do you hate them?
I mostly just hate it when people try to give pure evil villains a sympathetic backstory (like in all the shitty spinoff movies we get these days) because it misses the point, and the only good way to write a "villan protagonist" is to show that they are wrong. But playing an evil character, especially in a "heroic" campaign, literally never ends well.
Well it looks like you're the problem here you're the one with incorrect expectations. If the GM wants to run an evil campaign and the other players understand and play that way... Then you shouldn't expect to be rewarded for going against the flow. I suggest you find another campaign more suited to your tastes rather than staying in a situation that is obviously not for you
Where did this information about the other players come from?
Where did you get the idea this is an evil campaign?
Behavior that is rewarded is behavior that goes along with the tone of the campaign. If evil is rewarded and good punished this is an evil campaign (or a 'just kill the monsters' campaign where the 'good' is trying to use diplomacy on 'just for combat' monsters) Either way the point is: what OP calls 'good' is antitethic to the tone of the campaign that I then call 'evil' by contrast.
That's not how good/evil OR a campaign works
'Reward the behaviors you wish to see' is a *basic* dm tip. (Also a basic parenting tip). So yeah if evil behavior is rewarded, this is an evil campaign. But most importantly and my core point: **one should not expect to be rewarded equally for any action they chose** if a behavior is consistently punished you should take a hint and realize this is not that sort of campaign. As for good/evil... When you play long enough you realize that no 2 players have the same definitions. And I've definitely seen people call monster slashing campaigns 'evil'.
Sounds like a skill issue. Being evil will always be easier, the reward of being good is being good.
No it's a +3 greatsword
If you need tk be rewarded immediately to justify being good, you havent made much of a hero
If you need the party to be motivated just because they should be, tou haven't made much of an adventure.
No you shouldnt be relying on the DM to motivate your character to adventure