>king asks you to ferry his bastard child to the port city in secret
>neglects to tell you she was born of a monster
Would murdering her on the spot be justifiable? I can't think of many things more dangerous than mindflayers. But half the party says we should follow through. That it's not worth it.
Other urls found in this thread:
dragonsfoot.org
twitter.com
You might see a monster, I'm seeing free ticket to regency.
Just kill her, present the head to the other nobles, and lead a revolt against the evil king who consorts with the enemy.
That's not anywhere close to how mind flayer biology works, so obviously there's a deeper plot here.
I think we're being set up and this is just to lure us into a trap. Quick, somebody get an octopus and chop it up. We'll disguise the halfling and put him in her quarters.
Stick the kid in the rum hold.
> I cast Detect Evil
> ...
> Yep, she's clear, to the port we go
Moral choices are so simple when morality is as simple as a 3/3 graph.
If it has to be secret, then he can't really complain if you lock her in a crate for the entire trip.
Killing king's daughter while he seem to care about her enough to pay for her safety? Good luck. I won't be surprised if in three days you'll suddenly find out that you are all cultists, rapists and fuck dogs for fun - and everyone in kingdom a;ready knows it.
The only question would be how much king will pay for your heads.
children are unaligned
Does she ping as evil?
In this setting the gods decreed that Detect Evil and similar spells don't function on creatures under 18.
Well. I agree with Gygax. The answer to the Orc baby problem, and this is a variation of that, is to kill the orc baby.
then how do we know children are unaligned?
Would wed and bed tentacle loli.
You fool, she's already taken hold of you with her mind powers!
Very well. I smite. If she's not evil, nothing should happen to her.
Execute the king for heresy.
Look, if you're really that terrified of the lil monster girl, just tie her up or put her in a sack. Sleeping potions, mind shields, anti-magic wards, all of the above can solve this problem.
Okay. So we need to hide her from the world, but we don't want to kill her.
We're gonna build this huge, inescapable maze, and stick her in it.
I can easily see every street corner having posters of the party with the price of '1,000,000 gp, dead or alive.' Every tavern would turn into a den of daggers waiting for you to fall asleep and the second a village figures out your true identity, you'd either have to face an angry mob or be turned away before you wind up getting them killed. Not to mention the endless stream of bounty hunters, mercenaries and adventurers who would be chasing after you.
>Would murdering her on the spot be justifiable?
lolno, any kind of good alignment should stop you
if youre evil then go for it, but why bother with that question then?
>is it a smart idea
no, do the job, get payed, fuck off
if youre contemplating murder you clearly arent very moral anyways, so may as well just get the reward
It's not murder if she is a monster.
>then how do we know children are unaligned?
That guy's not the DM.
mankind is worst of the monsters and yet it's a crime to put them down
if its sentient then its murder
>tentacleloli
Yes he is.
>Detect evil
Have you tried not playing 3.5e?
It's only murder if the law forbids it and you plan it out. That's why executions are not punishable as murder, and accidentally running someone over is manslaughter. If the king wants this done in secret then there is some gray area here, because why does it need to be in secret?
To kill refers to murder, to slay is taking down an enemy in combat.
Monsters are the enemies of man, as such to kill them is not murder but the right thing to do as they'd slay you themselves.
He pays the bills so I see no problem here. He knows she's a monster but he also knows that she's family, and it takes a real monster to kill their own children.
Murdering kids, rape, and explicit sexual encounters should be avoided. They are really creepy. I belive you can have stuff akin to that happen out of rp. During a game it would be odd for a person to go on and on talking about raping a monster because it is justified or killing a kid, even if it "pinged evil". Not trying to be PC but there are some thing best left behind the scenes.
The fact that she is a bastard child is more than enough. We don't know how much power the queen has, or what nobles may have plans for the bastard daughter. Some nobles would marry an otyugh and make passionate love to it if it gets them even one step closer to the throne. Loli with tentacles? There would be hordes up to horizon.
>hordes of nobles trying to court the tentacle-loli with undetermined mind-controlling powers
I'd actually watch cable if the bachelorette was this interesting
so if I make you my enemy I am entitled to kill you?
You may not be trying to, but it's what you sound like
Than again both my groups are faggots from Veeky Forums so maybe my perception is warped by people uncommonly accepting of themes along those lines
Well, I'm not lawful good, so I don't really give a shit. As long as I get paid and don't get in trouble with the king, I'm golden. However, that might raise my price by about 30% considering that some chucklefucks will probably try to kill her, and me.
ask the kid if she could introduce us to mother
It's a tale of warning. I have been that guy before. It was not fun.
You do know what squids are hiding under all those tentacles right?
If we are talking some serious interest from nobles than mind-control through magic/psionics is the least of the problems. Guys up top could fuck up your life with a couple of words and probably have enough muscle behind them to be more or less untouchable without a lot of prep work.
Dude, you don't know how mindflayers reproduce do you? They aren't "born" like humans, mindflayers spew out a large amount of tadpoles from their cloaca which spend a few years in the pool of an elder brain. Those that survive are taken out and implanted into a host's head, devouring the brain and causing the body to mutate into a mind flayer. The host is usually a human adult of either sex.
A "loli" mindflayer would just be a smaller mindflayer that uses a child as a host.
You may want to be careful with how and where you haggle that price, because the logical conclusion is either he agrees and pays more, or you walk and someone knows a secret he clearly doesn't want let out.
Even if the mission is completed, there is some incentive for him to try to snuff you out under the guise of some excuse if possible.
The orc baby dilemma is not an abnormal thing to find at the table, or to answer in either way depending on how monster races are viewed. You're just a pussy.
Murder happens all the time. Kids aren't immune to it, nor are they incapable of being evil little shits. Kid probably has literal mind powers and could be connected to some eldritch hive mind: if that's the case they don't even count as a kid in my book.
Rape I understand taking off the table if you're not in an ERP game or it's traumatic. Murder never should be given that the center of the game is killing monsters for loot, and anything could be a monster.
A wizard did it.
You could try.
Well that depends on how good the mission was done. If PCs did really good work he may be incentivised to employ them further. That makes him know where they are and at the same time lessens the chance that they will spill his secrets - because they'll want to be paid more.
You're taking her to the port because he thinks someone there can cure her.
I was just thinking that honestly. The fewer people knowing about this the better, and they will be more experienced at dealing with such tasks that someone has to do.
Well, if he won't pay me more I'll just go with it because I assume it's already a really good amount. The king cam even wipe my memory afterwards or make me her permanent gaurdian so long as I get my momeny and don't get killed.
That is not how mindflayers propagate, for fucks sake.
What's the point of ignoring plot hooks? If you don't want to engage the plot then just ask the GM for a sandbox-style game? Take the fucking kid and see what twists occur
It isbin this setting.
>king's daughter is a mindflayer
>I can't think of many things more dangerous than mindflayers. But half the party says we should follow through. That it's not worth it.
THAT ISN'T HOW MINDFLAYER BIOLOGY WORKS
MINDFLAYERS SHOVE A LARVAE IN A PERSON'S HEAD AND TAKE OVER THEIR BODY TO REPRODUCE
IT'S NOT THE KING'S DAUGHTER, IT'S THE THING THAT ATE THE KING'S DAUGHTER'S BRAIN AND IS MASQUERADING AS HER USING HER BODY AS A PUPPET
>hurrrr biology can't be different in any setting
The only good option is to escort the child and instill lessons of goodness and virtue upon them.
My nigga
>Everything is everywhere is by the book go buy the book
Ok.
I'm DM'ing a session where my players are dealing with a sub plot to investigate and find a cultist wizard that is kidnapping children and transforming them in demons so he can use them against another cultists that are his enemies.
Is it too edgy of a sub plot? Since most of the pcs are heroes, they are actually motivated to stop the kidnapping and save the children and all that but most of the ones that already got kidnapped are beyond saving and would be some fiend that they would probably have to deal with when they find the guy.
Gary's answer was "it's fine for you to let a paladin kill them, it's better for you to not put them in at all"
Though he was generally loose with what he let paladins do
A paladin killing the child of their king, which has been entrusted to them for protection by the king, is unambiguously not Lawful
Was there ever anything Gygax was right about? Or is it just that fa/tg/uys only tend to agree with his opinions when they're dumb as fuck?
Does she need to eat brains from intelligent people to survive? If yes, smite, if not, watch closely for brain consumption.
Ideas that don't mesh with the current RPG paradigm (but did with the old one), "don't let players read all the rules" (which worked fine until the internet), the period where he was always high on cocaine, and things he said acting as a company face aside he was right about almost everything.
The things people complain about his saying are all deliberately taken out of context - such as the orc babies (where in AD&D all orcs were invariably and irredeemably evil), to the rogue killing the paladin's mount (in a game where the paladin's mount is literally an angel, sent by his god, to assist him in defeating evil), to how alignments worked (not like Veeky Forums says). He was right about many, many things, and wrong about many others. He was human, nothing more or less. People like misrepresenting him here, because they like (You).
Wait, what? Did the FBI really spy on Gary Gygax?
How drunk was the king?
Literally the plot to Caliban's War. Except sub out fantasy for scifi and cultists for evil corp.
>rogue killing the paladin's mount
Wait, which is this one? I haven't heard it before.
Currently playing an Inquisitor with a special hatred for Lamashtu. Clearly this man is a devout of Lamashtu and this bastard child is his gift for his devotion. DEUS VULT! Slay monster. Slay Lamashtu worshipper. send request for my order to crush the vile hovel of the demon whore.
Afterwards roast marshmallows on the pyre that was once the city, go home, and get my tattoo marking the glorious victory for good.
>Did the FBI spy on _______?
It's the post chain
>Paladins are not stupid, and in general there is no rule of Lawful Good against killing enemies. The old addage about nits making lice applies.
comes from. dragonsfoot.org
Who is the mother?
Just a random monster or a monster of nobility?
Why was the child with her father if she's a bastard? Was he actually raising her? Was he keeping her locked away for most of her life? Did she just show up one day with undeniable proof of her lineage? Does her species age super fast?
There are a great many things you need to look into about this king and this child is a key piece of evidence.
If a character was a rape baby its fine. It happened out of rp
If a monster is pretending to be a child it isn't a child, so that makes it ok to kill it.
I let sex happen in my games the same way I would do monstrous things, I would have the rp scene end with a quick"you do that thing". Then move on. Is that so bad?
You have to be above a certain level to ping, or have an aura class feature. She likely doesn't ping, making this argument pointless. Alignments are stupid, though.
>Something is objectively evil by biology
>It is wrong to kill it
>Oh I will just keep this tiget as a pet, look at this little baby, it is just a kitten
>how alignments worked (not like Veeky Forums says)
And how did they actually work, if you do not mind me asking?
There is no cure for becoming a Mindflayer. Arguably, a sufficiently powerful Psion could mind-suplex the new Illithid mind out of their body and seize control, but if it's a child it's obviously incapably of the strength and skill to do this.
The question arises, if the Mindflayers are homebrewed into having a different means of reprodruction, why ask anyone other than someone working off the same rules at all? We can't really offer advice beyond what we know/think to be true, and if it's not true in this setting, there's jack shit we can do.
>contrived reasons why detect evil, smite evil, etc fail to work
I ask the GM if killing this thing would be expected of me or otherwise considered a good deed per the moral norms for a character of my background. He would know better than I, since he built the world, and those norms are most likely highly influential on my character. I then proceed to act according to the norms he states.
>objectively evil by biology
Yes. Welcome to fantasy.
>mind-suplex
I like where this is going
>Yes. Welcome to fantasy.
Not in my setting
>welcome to DnD
fixed it
Less concerned that she's a monster, and more concerned he dresses her like that.
She's way too cute to hurt.
That was the setting in question when the Orc baby question was first raised. Granted not killing the baby isn't actively evil and shouldn't cause a paladin to fall or anything.
Yes, but it doesn't apply to every setting.
Cool, don't see how that's relevant to what Gygax says about his setting though.
Yeah, but it applies to the setting Gygax was talking about. Glad we've confirmed he was right, then.
How is gygax's setting relevant to this thread?
Like in Anderson and Moorcock stories. There are grand cosmic forces at war in the background and both of them make for shitty bosses. They appoint champions and (in theory at least) pick each pick a side in most conflicts, but the majority of the world and especially humanity is neutral.
The Paladin's detect evil is older than the Good-Evil alignment axis and originally detected ill intent and wrong doings currently in-progress (also demons and undead, if I recall correctly).
Mind Flayers don't work that way, so something weird is going on.
But either way he's the king and he's given us a job. Do it, if things go south, we release the breaks on the PC pain train.
So do you not read the posts you're replying to or are you just illiterate? Not every post in a thread is directly addressing the OP.
>The Paladin's detect evil is older than the Good-Evil alignment axis and originally detected ill intent and wrong doings currently in-progress (also demons and undead, if I recall correctly).
To be clear here, I'm not suggesting that Paladins weren't tied to alignment. They were, they all aligned with Law. But detect evil used to be unrelated to alignment.
Bed her. All bitches true colors come out when you bed them.
Isn't there some sort of prophecy about an illithid who manages to keep their personality and is destined to destroy the elder brains and mindflayer society? I think it may be worthwhile to look into this kid a little more.
It's clearly not an illithid either. They don't look like that.
No, you fucking idiot, it's the child of a goddamn illithid king.
Yes, it was born of a disgusting human, but the king will GODDAMN FLAY YOU if you mess up his fucking breeding experiments!
>Would murdering her on the spot be justifiable?
No.
No. She's cute, and since all cuteness is good, she must be good-aligned.