Party enters Orc Encampment

Refusing to negotiate with a hostage taker isn't evil, it's common sense. If you reward hostage taking behavior or any sort of blackmail, you'll never be free from it in the future.

>it's common sense

He killed his friend.

Common sense would be to do whatever the hostage taker says until such a time where it is either necessary or favorable to fight back. Example: when the rest of the party is reunited and conscious.

Everyone was down, he was surrounded by Orcs. He sacrificed the wizards life for nothing cause he was captured in the end aswell. That combined with other evil shit he did (he proposed to murder a shopkeeper for a book about Beholders for one)
It was honestly pretty winnable
All lvl 4, Wiz, 2h Fighter, Rogue, Ranger, Cleric
Vs
6 Orcs
1 stronger Orc (chief but just slightly orc stats buffed)
1 (36Hp) Ogre
They were very unlucky with rolls and the orcs were getting lots of hits off early.

I'm playing 5e. How much XP docking is appropriate? Considering they just got to lvl 4 they only have about 200ish XP to dock, or should I revert them back a level?

>Common sense would be to do whatever the hostage taker says

That only makes sense in a world where you can't turn around and gut the fucker once you've regained tactical advantage.

>fa/tg/uy goes to the bank to deposit his tugboat so he can buy minis and doritos
>guy in mask tells everyone to put their hands up and get on the ground
>fa/tg/uy refuses to do so because to negotiate with a hostage taker would b to...encourage more hostage taking?
>lol what
>guy in mask shoots fa/tg/uy full of holes

Alignment switching isn't really a punishment for shitty RP. Don't implement mechanical drawbacks to being an out-of-character dickbag, just talk to your player about it.

Initially, I read it as them all being knocked out by some sort of force, rather than losing a fight, which would be a BS move to end in a PC death. Personally, I wouldn't kill a defenseless character based on another character's lack of (perceived) action, unless it was a direct combat situation. For example, if the Orc is in the heat of battle and standing over the badly wounded Wizard, clearly intending to administer a final blow, and the Cleric spends his turn dicking around, then yeah, it's fine for the Orc to chop the Wizard. Likewise, if the Wizard was clinging to a ledge and about to fall, and the Cleric refuses to help him, then yeah, Wizard falls to his death if he doesn't pass whatever checks he needs to.

On the other hand, a player who might be trying to come up with a clever solution to the problem shouldn't be punished too harshly, especially given that Orcs are pretty nasty beasts and might have just hacked him down anyway. The better play would be to have the surviving Orcs advance and try to disarm the Cleric, as they obviously have an interest in taking the players alive, or to have the Orc Chief continue to negotiate with/threaten the Cleric. It's fine to call for a Wisdom roll from the Cleric, with an easy success giving the Cleric the insight that, yeah, surrendering is probably his best bet.
Now, if you're running a Gygaxian high-lethality game with PC's not getting names until level 3 and horrible death a common fate, then it's fine to have people getting their throats cut because their buddies fucked up all the time. But in a more conventional game, with long term character concepts, PC death shouldn't be inflicted casually against defenseless characters.

As far as Alignment goes, how does the Cleric feel about what happened? Is he guilt-ridden over having screwed up, or callous and blaming the other character's weakness for the Wizard's death?

>I made the Cleric's alignment switch to Lawful evil
>not surrendering yourself to the mercy of violent monsters is an evil act
0/10 would never play in your campaign.

If you read the rest of the thread you'd see that the Cleric did more than this

In situations like that, I'd have the Orc take the cleric prisoner, claiming he admired his resolve. Play the Orcs up as militaristic, rather than outright evil. They respect people who refuse to show fear and will afford them a measure of courtesy because of it.

He probably thinks that the GM pulled a "They sneak up and knock you out from behind, no save" on them or something.

Indeed not what happened. They fought the Orcs and Ogre and simply lost. Afaik you're not dead until you take your negative max HP or you fail 3 DST, correct me if I'm wrong.

Well played. That Cleric can hardly be called a cleric if he's going to allow an innocent to die through inaction.

If I were you I'd find a convenient excuse to kill off the Cleric and rip up the player's sheet for good measure.

>If there was a greater good in not surrendering, the act may have been good.
>If the cleric refused to surrender out of defiance, it was neutral. >If the cleric refused to surrender specifically to get the other character killed, it was evil.

The last one seems unlikely. The cleric's deity may be pissed if there wasn't a good reason, but "you did a neutral thing so I'm making your character evil" is stupid as hell. Even if that character did a bunch of evil shit before, the straw that breaks the camel's back should NOT be a non-evil act.

True enough. I kind of perceived it as evil as he gave no reason as to why he did not surrender.

>Cleric just stares
Does the cleric speak orcish?

The orc spoke Common.

The middle reason seems the most likely on a gut level, though.
>FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME

Hell, I'd have moved him toward neutral on the law-chaos axis before the good-evil axis.

>Cleric
>Doing a neutral act that pisses off your god isn't evil
Hey, it's a moral realativicuck, probably thinks that morality is fluid and not dictated by God's iron will

Alignment doesn't actually do anything you know that right?

>doing a Neutral act isn't Evil
No, it's Neutral. Would you say that a cleric of an Evil deity doing a Neutral act that pissed off his deity was doing Good? That's stupid.

These are actual cosmic forces in D&D. Neutral is a real thing that exists and is distinct from Good or Evil, but falls between them.

Would most Good clerics consider the act evil in the sense of "that's a shitty/evil thing to do?" Sure. But that doesn't actually make it Evil on the alignment chart.

More reasonable would be the character becoming Neutral and the members of his/her former group considering him/her evil.

>He killed his friend.

No, the bad guy did.

Yup

>I am not responsible for my own actions

Wait, I thought the cleric was the pc, not the Orc.

Why is the OP asking about changing an NPCs alignment?

>I am not responsible for the actions of another.

ftfy pal

>Would you say that a cleric of an Evil deity doing a Neutral act that pissed off his deity was doing Good?
No, he'd be doing evil by pissing off his god, because Clerics operate off of Divine Command theory, you cuck.

What was his God? Because I would like to know where it says to bend to the will of evil in his God's code.

You just refuted yourself, dude. If the orc killed him, that was the orc's action, and the Cleric is only responsible for what he did, not killing the wizard.

I'd honestly have switched him towards chaotic, not evil

It's not like he had much to win from not cooperating, he was outmanned and outgunned and the only dwarf standing. He had to decide over his companion's life

>What was his God? Because I would like to know where it says to bend to the will of evil in his God's code.
Presumably his god is of the "Do lawful stupid shit" persuasion, so not doing lawful stupid shit is evil, because it pisses off his god of lawful stupid shit.

Divine command theory is how shit works, don't like it, don't play a religious zealot.

There's a reason every single law enforcement agency and task force on the planet has a policy to not negotiate with terrorists.

The Dwarf had no way of knowing if the Orc was bluffing, or if the Orc was planning on killing everyone anyway. In the here and now, it is reasonable for us to assume that the player and the character saw surrender to the Orc as impossible and unduly dangerous to himself.

You do not negotiate with terrorists.

Read my fucking post and try not to get your head stuck up your ass this time. How would he be pissing off his deity when we don't know who his deity is or what the stance is on surrendering to the wicked is. Divine Command Theory is fucking pointless when we don't know the general commands of the divine fuckwit in question. I wasn't even the guy arguing with you about divine command theory.

It was a shit choice either way, surrendering to orcs means putting yourself at the hands of dirty fantasy dindus, not-surrendering means letting your friend die to fantasy dindus

Read your own fucking post, halfwit. This is the problem with you moral relativist cucks, you want to pretend like oh there's some good guy or some bad guy and that THE LORD ALMIGHTY doesnt hand down every single rule and order. The end is nigh and jesus will not look kindly on your heresy you fucking cuck.

They also have access to a huge amount of resources and responsibility to protect so many citizens that they have to make decisions based on net gain. A bunch of murderhobos don't negotiate with the same gravity.

>This is the problem with you moral relativist cucks

Go back and read my post and stop making an ass of yourself by assuming shit this hard. I'm literally complaining that the OP didn't give us enough information to determine if the action would actually offend his God. Not getting into a moral argument with a retard who uses cuck unironically.

Did you ever actually ask the player what his cleric was thinking? What did he expect to happen, what was his intent, etc?

Are you the same guy from this thread? Because if you areI'm still waiting for that citation.

>cuck
>cuck
>cuck
>All while totaly ignoring what the other person is saying.

Isn't it nice when people broadcast that they can be safely ignored?

Like I said, Jesus is coming, we'll see who's ignoring who then.

Spoiler, not me. I'll be pointing and laughing while jesus punts your ass into a lake of fire.

This is what the Insight skill is to be used for in 5e (reading people's tells to see if they're honest, lying, etc.), which is the rules edition OP's scenario occurred in.

I hope you realize that Pride is one of the deadly sins user.

>be cleric of good diety
>never engage in selfless acts
>avoid people in trouble because you haven't done harm them
>wonder why your gods cast you away if you haven't done anything evil, only neutral acts
That's what I got from this thread

>Implying I give a shit about papist bullshit
Guess again, cuck

Just saying, don't laugh and laugh at someone else's misery and be surprised when you get punted as well.

>Cleric of Good Diety
>Never do good thing
>Sometimes do bad thing
>Good Diety drops you like sack of bricks
yeh it checks out

>Just saying
>Papistry intensifies
I won't, because deadly sins are papist bullshit. Acts are irrelevant, faith is all that matters.

So does that mean that people who are of the faith get a free pass to rape, murder, and steal from other people so long as they have faith that they're in fact good people?

>Wow, he argued with me, he must be another person from another thread that argued with me

Given your predisposition towards being a retard, calling people cucks, and posting like you took the last train in from /pol/ you're grasping if you think everyone that argues with you is the same person. I haven't posted in that thread, or read past the OP and I don't intend to. People argue with you because you're an idiot.

No, because anyone who puts their faith in jesus and acts licentiously was just trying to game the system. Jesus can see through that shit.

I'm not even the original guy you were arguing with, I was just wondering if you and the other guy were the same person.

Why though?

So acts do matter?

Because honestly, you're both incapable of forming a solid argument, engage in liberal uses of ad hominem, and are generally deadset on derailing the thread to engage in pointless bullshit that has nothing to do with the original discussion.

No, sincere faith matters. Insincere faith is just as hellbound as no faith at all.

>all good people are self sacrificing martyrs who never think about the effect of what they're doing for more than a moment and failure to accomplish that is evil
>submitting to evil is good when smiting and resisting evil is evil
Truly activated my almonds. Wait till he kills someone himself rather than just fails to save someone you retard. Not falling on your own sword to save someone doesn't make you evil, especially when it's not clear that the orcs aren't just going to boil you all anyways. You could have had a great moment like the bit with the trolls in the hobbit and instead you killed off a defenseless character. What were his past evil actions? Did he drink milk that he could have given to the poor? Oh the humanity!

>he isn't carrying
>he doesn't pretend to cooperate and shoot the fuck at the first opportunity
>alternatively he doesn't fucking escape or pull shady shit to rescue others if he gets the opportunity
>he just submits because "muh common sense"
You'll not as smart or as good a person as you wish you were. You can do better.

He gave away a druid stuck in a mole shapeshift, conspired to have a shopkeeper killed in order to not pay for a book, tortured a goblin and cut off a necromancer's hand (who surrendered). It was a great moment and everyone is having fun, just a bit awkward as this is the first Character death ever.

What if someone has faith but still engages in otherwise repugnant behavior, such as a knight killing heretics during the crusades?

Does him killing not matter since he has faith that he is doing something in service of the lord?

If yes, does that mean that someone suffering from a mentail ailment that makes them believe that God is talking to them absolved from murder-fucking a half dozen people on a subway platform since he believed that God was really telling him to do those horrible things?

Effects xp gain/NPC reactions

My entire argument is that we don't have enough information from OP's post to determine what actions his player character's god would approve of if we viewed the subject from his standpoint of Divine Command Theory. I'm sorry if calling him mean names hurt your feelings, but how is that lacking a solid argument or unrelated to the original discussion?

Go be a fag in that other thread

Someone of sincere faith wouldn't commit evil acts. If you commit evil acts, your faith is insincere and you're hellbound.

I had something similar happen in a game I play in recently.
>party is pretty much not!Grey Wardens going around the continent trying to get various countries to sign treaties because the not!Blight is coming
>DM really wants us to have a party leader, NPC commander gives it to my LG war cleric after previous party leader went off the deep end for a bit
>party goes to essentially fantasy Detroit, important because despite being overrun with gangs, is still an important mercantile hub
>some LE warlord type took over the city with his gang, keeps the other gangs in lines with threats and violence
>in the way in, get approached by leaders from other gangs, they describe how they hate warlord's rule, and how they might be able to support us in overthrowing him
>I decide to at least hear the guy out, try to come to an agreement because there are more important things going on than the politics of this city
>he agrees to consider, but demands one of us be held as collateral in the meantime
>I volunteer myself, confident my second, the paladin who was the previous leader, would come up with a good plan
>I hang out in the jail for a few days, pretty spartan but no torture or anything, while the rest of the party, after witnessing the brutality of the gangs soldiers on the townsfolk, decide to organize a coup with the other gangs and the warlord's second
>they break in near where I'm being held, I see the jailers attacking my friends, so I try to choke out a guard through the bars
>I try to salvage a bad situation by ordering everyone to knock guards out instead of killing them, but that goes out the window once the guards start using prisoners as hostages
>I get pissed and start unloading on them with spells, one of the guards gets away to report what happened
>party lets me out, and I get my gear back

>we make it up to the throne room to confront the warlord, he chastises me for going back on our deal, when, in my mind, we hadn't worked out anything concrete, and what else am I supposed to do when my party bursts in fighting guards?
>I'm about to respond when the party barbarian interrupts the warlord, telling him to shut the fuck up and calling him a hypocrite
>warlord gets super pissed, tells me to control my dog or he'll shut him up for me
>challenges barb to a one-on-one duel to the death
>barb loses after a long drawn-out fight, warlord commands us to beg for his life
>I say nothing because it was agreed to be to the death, no one else in the party responds either
>warlord decapitates the barb, commands us to leave or face the same fate
>monk decides now is a good time to use the time reversal spell he got from a deck of many things, puts us back before we enter the room and informs us of what happened
>we decide to take a different course of action, wait for our reinforcements to arrive

It worked out in the end, but I still felt bad about the whole situation, was I being That Guy?

Someone murdering heretics in service to the lord does so because they believe that not doing so would be an evil act since it would disobey God's orders to slay every living thing.

Someone suffering from a mental disease also wouldn't have the mental faculties to tell right from wrong, since their own mental state is so bad that they can't even distinguish reality from fantasy.

So based on these elements, are these men committing evil acts? Do they deserve to burn in hell even though God told them to perform an evil action?

He should have been in deep shit before this then. If those didn't change his alignment this wouldn't have. If he was sitting there expressing how happy the thought that his inaction is going to get someone killed it might, but if he just didn't know what to do or understand then this wasn't jack shit on the alignment chart. Reminds me of this time where a saint I was protecting was attacked from behind while I was guarding the wrong side: I failed to save someone, but it certainly wasn't malice.

If he's new have someone higher in his order explain to him what good is and try and redeem him or something.

>Murdering heretics
>MUH PAPIST CRUSADES
I'm done talking to you, cuck. Go suck the pope's dick harder with your papist idolatry.

So I guess this means that neither of them would be performing any evil actions since God told them that it was okay to do so?

user, don't engage an idiot. He'll bring you down to his level and win with experience, which is to say he'll ignore everything you say and go off on strawmaning tangents continually. There are men of higher and lower dignities, and you can't expect the lesser to understand the greater any more than a small cup can be expected to carry a lake.

This really sounds more like a panic response from the cleric/their player than a deliberate act of evil. You said this was the party's first D&D campaign, so it's very likely this is the first time they've encountered a scenario like this and simply had a deer in the headlights moment. If the told the orc to go fuck himself I'd consider differently, but at least the way you're framing things the cleric isn't coming off as a dick.

The only other evil thing you mentioned was , which without context doesn't mean much either, especially since players like to suggest dumb things out of character for laughs.

Your approach to handling the scenario is a bit on the extreme side as well. Switching his alignment to evil for not immediately surrendering is way too harsh. Switching his domain is even more crazy, since you're both drastically and mechanically altering his character over a botched hostage situation. There are games where this sort of shit is pretty common, but dropping this on someone's first D&D game is a bit much. Plus you're effectively fucking over the rest of the party since it's likely the player was forced/pushed into playing healbot cleric.

>How much XP docking is appropriate? Considering they just got to lvl 4 they only have about 200ish XP to dock, or should I revert them back a level?

None. Fucking with removing XP is just going to make things more annoying for you in the long run, and having someone actually get weaker physically for this is especially silly.

Really the best thing to do from here would be to revert his alignment back and see how his character is affected by this. This is a character changing moment and could bring up some interesting character growth.

You're a retard who didn't read my previous replies. I literally said the Cleric should have submitted until he had the chance to take the Orc out by surprise. You literally described several ways to do what I suggested to do--to submit while being prepared to pull something. Not stand there like a moron and say "I refuse to negotiate with terrorists"

Thanks for the reply. I did do the shift as means of boosting character growth. But I'll talk to him about it this week and tell him I'll revert it back if he wishes.

>police officers surrounded by armed terorrists
>"put your gun down officer or we'll shoot"
>"sorry ahmed I refuse to negotiate with terrorists"
>dead cop

Genius

That actually would be the best choice considering what they do to prisoners.

Great. It's a good thing actual cops understand that hostage situations require diplomacy and tactical, surgical precision, not "I refuse to surrender because m-muh principles", or else we'd be fucked.

I'm glad the people in this thread are all NEETs and will never be in a position where they're in charge of saving my life

>getting this ass blasted because nobody wants to play along with a shitty fantasy scenario
You have only your own investment into it to blame.

What are you even talking about?

Rolled 19 + 4 (1d20 + 4)

Hows this for diplomacy?

Wasn't there a single neutral wizard in the party to fry his ass?

Honour duel my ass.

>almost 20
Impressive.

There were, but both me and the warlord were too "muh honor" to allow our subordinates to interfere.

Obviously orcs not going for the kill is out of character and breaks the immersion.

That depends entirely on what kind of hostage taker you're dealing with. Some dude freaking out over a divorce kidnaps his wife, or a bank robbery gone wrong? Sure, those can probably be reasoned with. But "terrorists", which most of the time means jihadis? Surrendering to them is insane unless there's a swat team literally right around the corner that can save you within seconds.

I'd quit the campaign if I were the player.

He was in a no win situation & now he's being judged for shooting from the hip?

Make better scenarios with more options next time.

>admitting being a faggot
I would fry him and then say 'Ops, I was going to cast light to see it better. Sorry.'