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Oh cool, a sword of detect evil
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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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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?
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.
Why explain it in meta, instead of the old trustworthy totally-not-a-witch saying it only affects evil?
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.
It also defeats the point of the exercise. The paladin is nolonger responsible for the murder of those innocents because he was lied to about the true nature of the sword and would have no way to find out the truth without killing an innocent person.
So it's not the paladin doing the killings, it's the DM.
I think you missed the point of the exercise.
The Paladin is using the sword in place of a moral compass. They stab people upon first meeting and trust that anyone who dies deserved it. If the sword weren't good aligned, this would be heinous behaviour.
So make the sword evil. How long does it take for the Paladin to stop doing evil deeds in the blind belief that they're doing good? Does the Paladin take responsibility for stabbing random townsfolk, or do they try to blame something else for their actions? Does the Paladin just straight up fall to evil, supporting wicked people in the blind belief that they must be the real good guys?
@Susaga @pinkdrunkenelephants you are not getting the real twist. Replace the sword with a fake, completely non-magical one.it doesn't have to be evil. The paladin only has to believe it only hurts evil people.
I did consider that. I like it not affecting evil creatures cause it might make the Paladin question things if it fails to harm one of the BBEG's minions. Whether they question which side their on or the sword itself is up to them.
It's still wrong as it would still be the DM's fault for manipulating someone else to harm other people.
Or did going full Joker become moral while I was away?
No, you're not understanding my point. I'm analyzing what's happening and rightfully blaming the DM for those deaths because they're his fault.
Would you blame someone if they gave an AR-15 to someone they knew was gonna commit a mass shooting?
...I very much do not understand your point.
You get that, no matter who provided the gun, the mass shooter shouldn't have done that, right? Even if they thought the gun was only going to fire blanks, they shouldn't point it at people and repeatedly fire. It's only manslaughter if they stop at one death, and manslaughter still carries a sentence.
You get that the DM is supposed to cause evil, right? They create monsters and villains and the players have to overcome the evil in the world. The DM isn't evil because they sent an army of orcs to attack a village, no matter how many villagers die in the assault.
You get that the people in the game aren't real, right? The DM made them up. Nobody is actually dying, no matter what happens in the game. The morality of the people at the table is not rigidly tied to the morality of the characters they play as.
Just so I know where I'm standing here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Attacking people is still upsetting even if they don't get hurt. There are many ways to harass people without hurting them, and I'd consider surprise schrodinger shanking one of them. I don't know if I'd call that "evil" per se, but I'd definitely call it an asshole move.
Personally as a DM I wouldn't make the sword evil, but I might make it so eventually it would repel the grasp of the Paladin who used it so flippantly, rather than as a warrior of good.
Oh thats interesting, maybe treat it like an attack condition. Before attack Roll a Dex saving throw to see if your sword disarms itself lol
See this is a twist I like.
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.
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).
As if you aren't evil by lying to the player.
And as if they won't successfully dispute it.
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?
D&Dpool breaks the 4th wall!
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.
No, you knowingly put innocent people in harm's way because you wanted to get one over on someone. That, by anyone's standard except yours, is evil. That ain't gonna change.
...This is fiction. These are fictional innocent people. The fictional paladin played by a real person is doing fictional evil. The real person at the table is just a person playing a game. Nobody is in harms way.