Make a kind and caring character

>Make a kind and caring character
>The intention is to play a complete paragon of goodness, almost a superhero
>In a month or two, he becomes a jackass

Does it happen to you too?

>Make a jaded and pessimistic character
>The intention is to play a former hero, someone who is tired of saving people and wants nothing to do with it
>In a month or two, he begrudgingly returns to being a hero, because it's a job that needs to be done, and done properly - and if not him, then who?
Tsundere paladins are the best.

I have almost the exact opposite problem.

My evil characters always end up in heroic, romantic positions.


I wrote a Thalmor with the full intention of producing a genuine Altmer Supremacist Magic Nazi. In the effort to raise the shattered dregs of the Sixth House to become a Monster Cult that will further weaken the empire by returning a nationalist sentiment to Morrowind, however, he ended up playing Fairy God-Father to a down-on-her-luck Dunmer waif who was one of the purest blood descendants of the Sixth House left alive, raising her up from her position as a pauper, making her believe in herself and take pride in her once-noble origins as he transforms her from a slovenly hick in to a cunning Stateswoman and fit figurehead for the New House.

Inadvertently turned the Evil Campaign in to one of the most uplifting, heart-warmingest scenarios I ever did.

Kinda how VtM is supposed to go if players roleplay the loss of Humanity right.

I think part of it is game dynamic.
If the GM is shit and doesn't reward you for any kind of actual roleplay or creativity beyond "I KILLS THE THINGS WITH MUH SWORDS" then its easy to just stop giving a shit.

Add to that other players who may have never given a shit and play tabletops like first person shooters who groan and whine anytime you think rampant murderhoboing isn't the first, best, and only option it can be easy to just go along with their assholery to keep the story going.

For example one of our players is an ok guy but he never makes characters, he just figures out how to get the biggest numbers on his sheet, writes down True Neutral or says "oh he was like a special forces soldier so he does what he has to" or some shit. and plays to get though every encounter as fast as he can by killing everything then asking what things he gets to make even bigger sheet numbers.

This is the guy who still gives me shit because in our first session my paladin chose to tie up the bandits our bard sleep spelled instead of slitting their throats while they were out but doesn't get why i'd think kicking a guy to death while he's trapped in his sleeping bag that we pinned to the ground with a spear because we found out he accidentally killed someone we met like twice while hunting or the flurry of blows killing of some drunk dude who grabbed his (of course) voluptuous scantly clad drow monk's tits in a bar, infront of like 20 witnesses. When i point this is some badguys shit out he smugly leans over and says "nuh-uh i'm true neutral!" and the GM doesn't give a shit because he's only worried about his glorious NPCs and epic railroad

>Humanity
>not choosing a superior path like Path of the Bones
shiggy

>Playing with Paths
How to spot a person who doesn't get WoD 101

>I Set Out to Become a Hero, But Suddenly I'm Darth Vader?
I mean, this was some Greek hero tier shit. He started a war and everything. Basically he was on the verge of death through the actions of another party member and had to be saved by a devil's intervention, made a deal he shouldn't have, and things spiraled from there.

Nope. Oh, there can be hard times, and moments of doubt, but in the end everything will be okay, you'll see.

Only if the vampires are terrible people to begin with.

My neutral good monk has developed an "ends justify means" style of dealing with evil. She chopped the hands of an enemy spellcaster then cauterized the stumps because we didn't have time to get him to the authority.

What's wrong?

At that point, why not just kill him?

>implying succumbing to The Beast isn't an overdone topic that was rehashed over and over again
Nah, Paths are perfectly fine.

>You will never headpat a lusty Mantiwhore into purity

>t-the LOSS OF HUMANITY IS DEEP AND DARK LIKE MY SOUL

lol you sound like the exact kind of emo cringelord that makes World of Darkness have one of the worst player bases

Honestly? Because I didn't need to kill him. The goal was to "remove the threat" and that meant sending him to jail, or removing his ability to harm us. Hence his hands. I could have killed him, but I didn't need to. So I didn't.

I dunno, the only worthwhile thing about Vampire settings as far as I'm concerned is 2cool4skool antics and exploring alternative ethics.

Paths are just expressing the natural tendency of Man to try and establish a metric by which to judge themselves and others so they can better navigate society. What's the problem with having a character who's motivations can be clearly expressed?

Fair enough! I just imagine most craftsmen, and especially obsessive types like Evil Wizards, would sooner take a dip in a volcano than give up their hands. Seems cruel.


But hey, nobody ever said good guys had to be nice.

I never had that exact scenario, but I did make a jerk with a heart of gold who lost his heart of gold pretty early on, so he ended up with his alignment being Necessary Evil.

I feel that resorting to killing someone because it's the easiest form of removing the problems they cause devalues a person's life. My monk PC values people and so it fits with her character that she'd look for ways that save the person.

I like the moral ambiguity that you're pointing out though. More complex drama always comes from execution of Ideals rather then the ideals themselves. I imagine that nicer PC might take a "mercy killer" bent and have a really tough time with what my PC did.

Lol, and as a friend said, "Niceness isn't a fruit of the spirit"

>Only if the vampires are terrible people to begin with.

They are most of the time to be honest, as almost everyone in the WoD.

Why not just cuff his hands?

We had no cuffs. or rope. But we had a short sword and fire.

Why not break his fingers so that he can't cast right now but could still reform later?

Wow, user, you're a complete murderhobo.

Oh sure. From a grand-scheme-of-things argument, you could easily state that your Monk/Paladin/etc. loses more by living a life in which they committed murder, even righteous murder, at the earliest available opportunities, than if they lived a life where it was an absolute last resort.


I feel like there you get in to an odd area of sacrificing immediate ethics(It may be more humane to simply kill someone whom you've destroyed their reason for living) for prolonged ethics(It will corrode your being to choose murder every time you kill someone who didn't need to die)


For a ends-justify-the-means type of Good Guy, it makes perfect sense to be concerned with the larger moral picture in relation to what they become by what they choose to do to others.

No, he's a disfigurementhobo.

I usually end up with the opposite problem, getting way less jaded than I intended. I usually just stick to upbeat characters these days.

Because I am not a smart women. Also, side note: We where playing in a Avatar the last airbender D&D homebrew. I didn't know how the DM would rule about broken fingers. I honestly considered taking his feet as well, but decided against it.

In my defence, I stopped the rest of the team from killing the man. Im extreme, but not a murderhobo. I even left the hands in his lap, so he could think about his actions when he woke up from the pain induced faint.

I think it also relates to an ethics based on principles vs. an ethics based on something more practically subjective like Utilitarianism. I also think the way you've formulated your works really well for a self interested character rather then a altruistic character.I tried to play my monk as inherently altruistic so the idea she was focused on was "how does the morality of this action impact the world?" Both could be doing the same actions but the motivations could be very different.

>I even left the hands in his lap, so he could think about his actions when he woke up from the pain induced faint.
Jesus!

>I even left the hands in his lap, so he could think about his actions when he woke up from the pain induced faint.
You are fucking metal, lady.

>I even left the hands in his lap, so he could think about his actions when he woke up from the pain induced faint.

>WFRP campaign that goes from shit-level to epic-level
>make a young noble, vain and gluttonous, typical younger son of a great family, that just squanders his time drinking and whoring
>max out fellowship and use the power of my house's name for most things, mostly for the common good
>fast forward to the end of the campaign, after a series of misfortunes, the boy had to grow up
>general of a mercenary army, goes on a crusade against undead
>eventually turned into a vampire, managed to kill his vampiric master thanks to the celestial sorcerer of the party
>end up walking with his army under constant storm clouds to protect himself from the sun and putting entire towns to the torch to rid them of the undead menace
>before long, he starts raising the dead to help his cause, and becomes just another vampire count that roams the countryside, looting and killing everything in his way to fuel his crusade against undead
the irony was completely lost on the character, but not on the gaming group

>Big titty drow monk murderhobo

Tbh sounds like he's playing a drow the right way but that aint true neutral

That guy sounds shitty to play with but god damn i would be lying if i didnt say that big titty min maxed drow are my favorite to play

>edgy captcha

The hands had to go somewhere, and i'm not going to slip them into my bag like some type of Dexter inspired psycho. And hand-chucks are generally frowned upon in polite circles.

>In my defence, I stopped the rest of the team from killing the man. Im extreme, but not a murderhobo. I even left the hands in his lap, so he could think about his actions when he woke up from the pain induced faint.
One time my Paladin & Co captured an enemy spellcaster. I demanded she be completely stripped naked for security reasons while we hauled her in, rest of party shelved the idea. After some OOC YOU WILL REGRET THIS we get to the trial and she summons some devils with magic sewn into her underwear or something and kills a bunch of civilians before we get can clean up.

What I'm trying to say is chopping off the dude's hands is totally justified.

You're right, and its not even that its a bad character really despite the fact her background is like a fucking mess because he minmaxed shit (she's a noble drow monk soldier who was a army scout but all the other drow hated her because she was awesome so she ran away)
its the fact that he refuses to acknowledge that playing like you're in grand theft auto would have us on everyone's shit list.
"I punch the Sargent of the city guard because he called me a the drow equivient of nigger" with the logic "they can't hit me I'm a monk with a 22 AC" is shitty roleplaying" This is the same guy who in our last game couldn't understand why my NG cleric wasn't down with the idea of breaking legs of the guy we had a bounty on every night so he couldn't run away and just heal him in the morning.

>implying a good gm doesn't modify humanity

You sure as fuck don't need to worry about property damage in myWoD. Maybe on the very high levels if you destroy something that is of high emotional value (or helps secure the victims existence). For example a shop an immigrant worked years to build or a marriage ring.

Same thing with self Defense or killing a serial murderer.


>Paths

I like them but they are NPC Stuff. If a player does good RP and it fits with the character concept a character might convert to certain paths but for me Vamps that follow a path are truly Alien. A lot of path followers don't care about the Jyhad or vamp society at all so its kinda hard to have them as player characters.

>"I punch the Sargent of the city guard because he called me a the drow equivient of nigger" with the logic "they can't hit me I'm a monk with a 22 AC" is shitty roleplaying"
That's not necessarily bad roleplaying, if you think of it as 'prideful martial artist brooks no insult from someone they know is not their match'. The only thing metagamey there is the hard AC number.

>This is the same guy who in our last game couldn't understand why my NG cleric wasn't down with the idea of breaking legs of the guy we had a bounty on every night so he couldn't run away and just heal him in the morning.
Also potentially legitimate, given it's a Drow with no sense of empathy for the suffering of others.

Dude might have been better at roleplaying than you realized!

In the case of punching the guard, it was when we were surrounded by like 20 other guardsmen who already didn't like us (Two drow and a black dragonborn) and we do have to live in this city.
And the break-the-guy's legs every night he was playing a elf fighter at the time,

Again i wouldn't mind so much if A: He didn't play the same for every character and he at least acknowledged that just because you say "i'm neutral" doesn't mean you can do anything and its okay and the guy playing a paladin should be OK with you beating a helpless man to death. The idea i keep trying to get through to him is don't think of them as random gaming NPCs to your character they're real people, if you're murdering them left and right then fine, thats a valid character but its pretty fucking evil one

You can't exactly lose your "humanity", it's a meme made up by philosophers and edgy kids. You just become an extremely shitty person.

I know the doujin that image is based on...

Losing Humanity in V:TM is less about being a good person or a bad person, and more about being a civilized person or a savage person. If you take actions that are more like what an uncouth, animal might do, then you start losing Humanity, i.e. Your connection and ability to pass off convincingly as a regular joe in society. The more of it you lose, the more like a predator you act. Low-Humanity is the "evil" side because the idea of Vampire: The Masquerade is maintaining the MASQUERADE.

VtM is fucking retarded, as is the rest of oWoD, mechanically and lore wise.

sauce?

did you kill her and rape her corpse

No, she knew that she was one of many projects for him, so to keep him from leaving she quietly learned everything she could about skullduggery from him, then had him knocked out and locked in a chamber, had his death faked, and then tried very hard to get him to accept the Good Lord Veloth. He wasn't down for the daedric walking ways, but she was convinced to try and get him to flip the anuic script.


He ultimately convinced her to let him free. He's invested too much to let a little kidnapping drive him off, but he's set a Mark on Alinor so that the MOMENT the Sixth House has suitably taken over Morrowind and begun properly cracking the Empire to pieces, he's back to chilling with golden bitches on summer beaches.

Dark Ages Roads are objectively superior

Because they are mostly used by players who want to get away with shit that Humanity would not allow.

>Im extreme, but not a murderhobo.
Yes you are

That seems silly. I mean, Paths don't actually prevent or change how Humanity works. The fact that you follow a Path might make your character ambivalent to their Humanity score lowering or raising, but that doesn't mean your Humanity score follows the rules of the Path. What kind of DM allows for a character's personal philosophy to influence the functional consequences of their decision-making?

Actually, they do. That's the exact reason Paths are shit.

I once played a Paladin of Ilmater, the god of mercy and healing. He wielded a greatsword and focused on doing as much damage as fast as possible. His reasoning was his job was to reduce suffering. The best way to do that was to kill his enemies quickly and without pity. Needless to say people expecting him to be lawful stupid, lawful nice, or wishy-washy soon learned the error of their ways as sir fuck-your-shit would sigh mournfully, draw his sword and decapitate people without a second thought

What that's retarded

I'd fiat the fuck out of that.

Even if you follow the Path of Jiggledyboof or whatever, you're 9/10 times still beholden to the local Power that Be regardless of faction. If you're in the Camarilla you're still paying dues to the local Baron when you step in to his territory, and vice versa.

Why would a character's personal attitude towards their Humanity score, the measure of how effectively they are working to convincingly pass as a human in society, have anything to do with its actual quality?


That IS retarded.

>I even left the hands in his lap, so he could think about his actions when he woke up from the pain induced faint

LONDON
O
N
D
O
N

Humanity only matters to begin with because with the effort you put into "humanity", it stops you from falling to "the beast".

Paths replace humanity because instead of putting in effort to be "humane", you're putting the effort into a different code of ethics. Both achieve the same results of offering you structure and discipline to follow, they're just slightly different. You cucks just don't understand what humanity is supposed to do for the vampire to begin with.

But what's even the goddamn point if you can just choose the easiest possible path and produce a tangibly better result? If the metaphysical change is inherent only to a rudimentary structure to be followed without any actual necessary rules, what makes it desirable for anyone to maintain different stances instead of trying to rig it to the most efficient system possible, like you would with anything else that has tangible consequences?

It's oWoD, don't worry about it.

I dont get the reference. Please explain it.

>Not Path of Cathari or Metamorphosis.
>Intothetrashigoes.avi

Because it allows for more interesting rpg options rather than just "be humans with super powers or get ready to lose your ability to reason." And honestly, none of the paths are really "easy." And that's part of the point.

This guy gets it.

I managed one paladin who was a good person.

Good alignments are hard as fuck to play. Evil alignments are easy as fuck. I think I'm secretly an edgelord.

Okay, that's a great 'meta' answer. What about in the actual setting?

If Humanity has no greater legitimacy as a structure, and can just be swapped out with Paths at any point, what stops a vampire from just making a 'I rigorously plant flowers in my roof garden' Path that lets them avoid the Beast consequences of any moral dilemma in exchange for a completely trivial alternative? If this is possible, then why hasn't every Vampire with sense in his head done that, even if they don't plan on being evil, for little reason beyond avoiding the frenzy consequences of failing to uphold a more obtuse system? And if there ARE clear rules that explain the physiological responses to what amount to philosophical differences, and it ISN'T Humanity(A prospect I consider unlikely, seeing as most Paths seem to deal with/revolve around the general notion of Humanity, even if it just means subverting it), then WHAT THE FUCK IS IT?

This. Humanity forces players to search for solutions apart from violence. You know shit like bribing people or doing other creative stuff. Its vastly more interesting to actually make a deal with the local anarchs instead of going in with celerity and guns blazing.

The path system i use in my chronice makes the paths much more alien. Humanity doesn't require shit like meditation, introspection and constant philosophical debate. A path does. A path actually is the center of a vamps live. Someone who walks a path rarely participates in the Jyhad. They are like scholars and theologicians. A path is much more demanding than humanity. And the Vamps on a path are mostly focused on reaching their paths equivalent of gehenna.

>not using legacy captcha

Fucking newfag.

Because rigorously planting flowers in your garden isn't a strong enough belief system or set of ritualized actions for most people to actually keep the beast down.

Would hand weeding 1/2 sq. km of flower beds count? Because that shit can become ritualized.

I'm still waiting on my anwser on what London has to do with HANDS!

Happened to my Monk, sorta. It was a mixture of story-related stuff and me going through a bad patch for a few months. It ended up becoming a part of his character arc and development, and he's back on track to being a good guy now.

Story was: he had encountered a former monk from a different monastery who had turned to a life of violence after discovering the powers inherit in magic. He was the main villain of the last campaign arc, and some way into the current one my monk realized he'd been feeling out of balance ever since meeting (and killing) this guy. I'd also been playing him as more spiteful and brutal and quick to anger, so the GM and I worked in a sort of 'spiritual experience' for him where he got in contact with his old mentor who helped him get back on the good path. He also set aside his fire elemental powers and focused on finding peace, going from Path of the Elements to Path of Tranquility. It was a fun narrative way to mask the mistake I had made during character creation, which the GM let me change, and to give us a healer since our Paladin is leaving the group.

>flip the anuic script
Huh, what? The Thalmor aren't Anuic.

Its obvious.

>London lot of muslims and terror
>muslim mayor muh sharia law etc.
>chopping off hands is linked to the sharia in public discourse

It was just a cheap right wing comment.

Btw not the one who posted this.

Are you an idiot?

Are you ?

Its obvious that was a /pol/ comment

Oh, you're French. That explains it. No, it has nothing to do with Islamists.

>Oh, you're French

What ?

>make a barbarian and expect him to be the angry guy who has to be restrained from killing people
>the rest of the party is edgelords
>have to explain to them that we can't just go around skinning everyone we don't like and parading them through town

Ahhh.. that makes sense. Thank you..

That's exactly what a Cambodian would say.

You put a space before a question mark. No other language does that, to the best of my knowledge. I guess it would be tempting if you're French to think of Islamists since you've been having trouble with them lately but it has nothing to do with that. Google "pls be in London" or a similar query.

You can't just leave us hanging now.

No i am not french.

>Veeky Forums meme

Dropped.

Why do you put spaces before question marks, then?

Sharia law

I made a young hero that still lives in his family house, just because he's been away for long time and well, he really loves them, the rent is cheap and he's got a dangerous job. He's also pretty nice guy, helping the poor and the like. I have to do it, otherwise my friends would keep telling me that character is edgelord (being monster slayer etc).
My GM went ahead and started throwing family related activities (you have to find yourself a wife, son! time to start taking care of family business!) at me. Actually, it's pretty awesome and lets me bring some depth to the character. However, I didn't expect to play Masks or Monster Hearts in fantasy campaing. So far, he's still good and life-loving, despite the fact he'd already endured some serious psychic trauma(which still made him wiser).

For me usually the decay is from "good person" to "nice person" to "polite person" as the mercy bleeds out of the character. Because I can't ever remove killing someone as an option from the table unless the rest of the group is in on it, trying to avoid violent and aggressive solutions whenever possible means the character refuses to take part in escalation-of-force until they reach a threshold at the very end of the threat ladder, at which point they pull out the biggest stick they have and try to kill the enemy to death as quickly as possible. This, combined with not having the luxury of being able to back down from conflict in most campaigns, means me trying to play a "good" character often ends up with a bigger pile of bodies than a pragmatist one.

Well, I initially made a kind and caring Cleric who just wanted to ease the suffering of everyone and bring unity to the people of different faiths.

Eventually, she ended up reluctantly organizing Church-sanctioned ritual human (well, humanoid) sacrifice to summon her goddess, and is now looking into a way to suck life out of an imprisoned deity that disrupted the summoning so she can use it to fully complete the ritual.

I guess that's the closest thing.

Some hunters are good people.

>closest thing
>not more extreme to even more extreme

Its an edit of pedoshit, so don't bother.
No I wont give you sauce if you ask for the pedoshit.

Porn is porn, user. I would fap to an image of a rock, if it was drawn attractively enough.
Your resistance to provide sauce only makes my dick harder.

Head pats are the purest form of porn

>Created a kind witch who wants to use her powers for good IC'ly. OOC'ly I had designed her to be the perfect support character for the other players, so they can land big numbers and be happy.

>After being treated like shit by the other players for so long, became an embittered harpy who started to improve the world wherever she went, regardless if they people there needed it or not. For the sake of the group, rather than fireball the players, she sticks with them and all the shit treatment just to prove them wrong and that her powers are good.

Eh, true.

But it's less "turned into a jackass" and more "forced to do horrible things because the universe fucking sucks". Personality wise, she's still kind and caring, and genuinely wants to ease the suffering of all beings, but she's essentially thrown into some kind of fantasy/metaphysical trolley problem.

Google "pls be in london" and never talk about memes ever again you fucking newfags

That's a very sad story.

S U M M E R
U
M
M
E
R

Stop playing with assholes.

>Make character with severe trust issues and is always suspicious
>Their suspicion is validated when about two thirds of the people they were suspicious of were some kind of monster in disguise
let me tell ya it's hard being right all the time.

That's the Granny Weatherwax method of witching.