Oh cool, a sword of detect evil : rpgmemes

[-] Susaga@ttrpg.network 117 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The sword's power changes with time, and as it racks up more kills. Soon, it gains a +1 to attack and damage. Then, it can become wreathed in flame as a bonus action. Then, it grants advantage to checks made to locate creatures. Then, its base power inverts and it can only kill non-evil creatures.

Do not tell the player about that last one. Insist to the player that it works exactly as you first described. The Paladin can kill innocent shopkeepers and little old ladies, but cannot kill this assassin working for the BBEG.

Will he question his own stab-first ask-later methods? Or will he turn evil without even noticing?

[-] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 84 points 11 months ago

I personally hate this kind of twist. If you need to actively lie to your player, not just mislead with some clever wordplay, it always feels like you’re breaking trust.

[-] CmdrUlle@feddit.de 19 points 11 months ago

Why explain it in meta, instead of the old trustworthy totally-not-a-witch saying it only affects evil?

[-] MJBrune@beehaw.org 6 points 11 months ago

Still is a betrayal of trust if the player prices the sword effects are over way then it changes. Video games rarely do this because breaking that trust feels terrible.

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[-] Madison420@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

No need to lie, have it start to say stuff after awhile and if the other doesn't jump to demon sword that's on them.

[-] Tenchi@lemmy.world 31 points 11 months ago

I also hate this kind of twist. There better be a great lore reason for this because it's a huge fuck your playstyle meta reason to do this.

[-] Susaga@ttrpg.network 18 points 11 months ago

The playstyle is stabbing random townsfolk on the off chance you kill a bad guy. Fuck that playstyle.

And for a lore reason, just have the sword be influenced by the morality of the wielder's actions. Stabbing random townsfolk is evil. The sword turns evil.

[-] whofearsthenight@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

If you know that the sword can't hurt people that aren't evil, then stabbing randoms is by definition not evil because you can't hurt them.

I mean, yeah it's meta gaming hard and lots of folks wouldn't want this at their table, so chalk it up as a learning moment as a DM and figure out a good way to take it from them. The obvious one in this case is that the sword damages evil creatures, not destroys. Have our little meta-gaming pally stab a guy twice his level and get wrecked so he rethinks the practice. "Welp you've stabbed the bbeg, they've stripped you and the party of their possessions and locked you in a dungeon, boy you're lucky he had somewhere to be or you'd be dead." Like this is only a clever meta-game if you're in a video game where you know the level of the zone you're in and you know the full meta.

And even then, a simple "hey we're a RP table and we try to keep meta to a minimum, so please reconsider this practice" or "hey before you go stabbing everyone, do you know what the level of each of the characters are? something to think about..." is the polite thing to do before you ruin their game based on the DM's mistake.

[-] Susaga@ttrpg.network 5 points 11 months ago

First off, a sword that only destroys evil doesn't mean insta-kill. It just means you only deal a fatal blow if they're evil. You can just rule that it still damages good characters, so you lose basically all of your allies due to constant wounding.

Second, this is consequentialism vs deontologism. Is the morality of an act decided by the outcome or the act itself? You have the consequentialism view that the action is okay because you know it can only kill an evil person. I argue that the sword's properties can change without you knowing, so this knowledge is just belief. As the consequences cannot be truly known before the action takes place, the morality is decided by the action itself (deontology). Stabbing people at the start of every conversation is evil.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 21 points 11 months ago

If I were doing this, I wouldn't describe the effects exactly (except the +1). I would just tell them it misses every time they attack a non-evil character first, and describe it being wreathed in flames. Then for the swap just tell them who it misses or hits still, but they have to figure out both times what the effect is (or that it changed).

[-] pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

As if you aren't evil by lying to the player.

And as if they won't successfully dispute it.

[-] optissima@possumpat.io 8 points 11 months ago

Good thing the DM can't be stabbed by it! How would they dispute it without metagaming? Wouldn't that be a great plot arc?

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[-] Susaga@ttrpg.network 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Does the Paladin trust their blind faith in the weapon, or do they consider the morality of their actions by themselves? Consequentialism vs Deontologism, essentially. The lie reinforces the blind faith to make the situation work.

I put an ethical dilemma in front of a Paladin. I do not consider this evil.

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[-] PlexSheep@feddit.de 63 points 11 months ago

It makes perfect sense. The paladin found the exploit.

[-] learningduck@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

Suck to be neutral lol.

[-] pyrflie@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Actually based on how it's worded it would have no effect on neutral aligned creatures on the Good/Evil axis.

Which would make the sword pretty shitty since Good or Neutral covers close to 1/2 of the monster manual, and may or may not apply to some bandits.

[-] explodicle@local106.com 36 points 11 months ago

Without lawyers, the kingdom was unable to resolve disputes and fell into chaos.

[-] The_Picard_Maneuver@startrek.website 11 points 11 months ago

Although the number of disputes did fall pretty dramatically too

[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 months ago

All the lawyers had previously been stabbed.

[-] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 34 points 11 months ago

To be fair, the sword kept nagging him.

"You should draw me, i bet that guy's really evil" OKAY FINE SWORD-NIMI YOU CAN EAT THAT OLD MAN

[-] wahming@monyet.cc 13 points 11 months ago

Oh hi Nightblood. Where did Vasher go now?

[-] LoamImprovement@ttrpg.network 26 points 11 months ago

I mean, that sounds very much like a paladin in unapologetic violation of one or more of their oaths.

[-] xkforce@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago

I mean... theyre not harming anything good so not really?

[-] learningduck@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

But would it kill neutral innocent people?

[-] xkforce@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

Are neutral innocent people evil?

[-] ajmaxwell@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago

I could see a Vengeance Paladin justifying through divine will or whatever

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

It does sound like Frank Castle living out that one scene in Westworld.

[-] Omnificer@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Yea, blatant murder and assault isn't justifiable to most good deities or codes of ethics, even if the target pings as evil. "Oh this shopkeeper is evil? Guess he dies."

At the least, it's highly illegal most places, so even if there aren't divine consequences there'd certainly be social ones.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 6 points 11 months ago

Yeah, even when alignment is proof enough you still need trials, and a random person's magic sword isn't exactly reliable proof in itself.

Can it fail? Can it be tricked? Is it a magical effect, or a divine one?

What about people who have done horrible crimes but served their sentence?

[-] Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 14 points 11 months ago

You can't expect to wield supreme judicial power just cause you threw a sword at some watery tart.

[-] Klear@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

Supreme judicial power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical abuse of a magic item. I mean, if I went around stabbing people just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!

[-] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 24 points 11 months ago

Now throw him a good character with some magic immunity that negates the effect of the weapon.

[-] Rheios@ttrpg.network 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Have him stab the mayor who's evil because he's greedy and selfish and borderline abusive in trade-deals with neighboring regions but is otherwise beloved (and has rewards heaped on him) because he's so good at actually keeping order in the town and keeping their goodwill (although probably at least a little bit through some passive-aggressive blackmail). That's always fun.

[-] FaceDeer@kbin.social 15 points 11 months ago

Back in 3rd Edition D&D there was a spell called "Holy Word" that could kill non-good creatures within a 40 foot radius of the caster, if the caster was sufficiently high level relative to the creatures. Good creatures were completely unaffected.

When tightly packed you can fit about 2000 people into a 40-foot-radius circle (total area is 5000 square feet). So one casting can deal with the population of a good-sized town. My gaming group speculated for a while about a society where it was a routine ritual to round up all the peasantry and nuke them with Holy Word to keep the population clear of evil. Never incorporated it into any campaigns, though. It's a bit of a sticky philosophical puzzler.

[-] melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 11 months ago

This is a weird one because despite being a "good" spell, it entails the mass murder of innocent neutrals. It really doesn't seem like a good action to me.

It seems like anyone who was okay with this would fall to neutral or evil simply by virtue of being okay with mass murder, and in turn fall victim to the Great Neutral Purge.

[-] FaceDeer@kbin.social 9 points 11 months ago

Indeed, hence the sticky philosophical puzzler. I would think that the clerics themselves would start getting affected by the spell. Fortunately (for them), the effect of the spell when cast on someone of the same level as yourself is only deafness for 1d4 rounds. The Church could probably cover that up.

There was another interesting related situation that came up in an actual campaign I was in, involving the Blasphemy spell (a variant that only kills non-evil targets). My party and I were in our "home base", a mansion belonging to an allied NPC noblewoman, planning out our next excursion. A powerful demon we'd been tangling with attempted to scry-and-fry us, teleporting in and nuking us with Blasphemy. Unfortunately there were a lot of low-level NPC staff working in the noblewoman's household and the spell wiped them out instantly... except for one guy, who happened to be of evil alignment. He survived the encounter because of that.

Even though his alignment was evil, though, he'd never done anything wrong and didn't seem like he had any reason to do anything wrong in the future. So we weren't sure if we should fire him or what. It wasn't illegal to simply be evil, you had to actually do something evil before you could be punished. We just warned him we'd be keeping an eye on him, in the end, and kept him on staff.

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[-] bastian_5@sh.itjust.works 15 points 11 months ago

Link: The Faces of Evil

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[-] DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works 12 points 11 months ago

Make an evil dude who's just immune to stab wounds. Problem solved.

[-] WoofWoof91@hexbear.net 11 points 11 months ago

don't paladins have an at-will detect evil?
or did they take that out in 5e?

[-] blashork@hexbear.net 8 points 11 months ago

They do but it's 1+charisma mod per day uses. The 5e players I know would immediately start stabbing people just to save on resources.

[-] WoofWoof91@hexbear.net 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

did they change what at-will means in 5e?
cos in 3.5 it means no usage limit, just takes a standard action

like so

[-] SourceOfMistypes@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 11 months ago

It simply says they can use the feature that often. It never says that it's an at-will action/feature. "At-will" isn't even a game term in 5e as far as I'm aware.

[-] WoofWoof91@hexbear.net 5 points 11 months ago

fair enough, i've only played 5e a couple of times and never as a paladin or gm

[-] GrammatonCleric@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

Can't find out without fucking around 😉

[-] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 8 points 11 months ago

Mine just stood stock still staring at people for 24 seconds before starting a conversation, detecting good/evil/law/chaos. Made for some very fun roleplay.

[-] Lag_Incarnate@ttrpg.network 4 points 11 months ago

Certified Faces of Evil moment. "This is my Smart Sword!"

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