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?
As if you aren’t evil by lying to the player.
And as if they won’t successfully dispute it.
Dord 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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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).
See, here’s my problem with that: humanity is inherently evil so everyone would be killed by such a thing.
Yet here we are, and evil we are. Case closed
You can go ahead and waste time beleaguering the point if you want. It’s not gonna change the fact that humanity is inherently evil whether you like it or not.
If it makes you feel better, it means I am evil too. Then again, so are you. We all are. It’s just the natural state of being human.
I mean, that sounds very much like a paladin in unapologetic violation of one or more of their oaths.
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.
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?
I could see a Vengeance Paladin justifying through divine will or whatever
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
