Face Turn
Oh my goosebumps! It’s like and Kratos and Hades had a baby! No wait… It’s like Super Saiyan Blue Goku and Ghost Rider had a baby! Or possibly Hades cheated on Kratos with with Scorpion, who was simultaneously cheating on Goku with casual hookup buddy Blue Rhino. Point is we got fire and chains, and I’m very much here for it.
As much fun as pop culture lovechild roulette can be however, let’s set aside the geeking out for just a moment. We’ve got more important things to talk about today. And it has everything to do with satisfying villainy.
Executing a successful NPC face turn is difficult for the same reason that villains are difficult in general. If you want the party to care, you’ve got to expose them to the bad guy repeatedly. That can be a tall order when the most common interaction between party and villain is “immediate fight to the death.” (I’ll allow my geek comic senpai to illustrate that little difficulty). And even if you do manage to use the villain’s escape kit to good effect, you’ve still got to direct narrative attention to an NPC’s arc. In a world full of unresolved PC backstories and limited limelight, dwelling on an NPC’s dramatic moment carries the faint whiff of GM navel-gazing. That means you’ve got to find a way to snare the players’ interest. Luckily, there’s a simple trick for this one.
My favorite example of the technique comes straight out of Chrono Trigger. After half a dozen fights with the villain Magus, you finally get to choose whether to duel him or let him join the party. It’s a pivotal moment tied to a protagonist’s revenge arc. But even more than the villain’s sympathetic motives and tragic backstory, it’s the element of player choice that lets the moment play out so well. Is this a redemption arc? Choose Yes / No. The game pauses to check in on the player’s moral compass. And it’s in that moment, with the metaphorical Count Dooku head between your lightsabers, when the villain’s redemption can become your own.
So what do the rest of you guys think? Have you ever seen a well-executed heel-face turn out in the wilds? Was the character arc foisted upon you, or did you get to choose whether to accept the character’s change of heart? Tell us all your own ideas for getting these bad-guy to good-guy transformations right down in the comments!
GET YOUR SCHWAG ON! Want a piece of Handbook-World to hang on you wall? Then you’ll want to check out the “Hero” reward tier on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Each monthly treasure haul will bring you prints, decals, buttons, bookmarks and more! There’s even talk of a few Handbook-themed mini-dungeons on the horizon. So hit the link, open up that treasure chest, and see what loot awaits!
This is … perfect.
It’s so sad about Patches, but this is the PERFECT consequence to all the crap that little pup had to endure from all these villains, and AP’s displeasure with it all. Action, meet Consequence. With a Smite.
Can you name a spiked chain “Consequence?” I feel like you’d have to name them as a paired set… something like “Cause and Consequence.”
Consequence and Repercussion
You can call it whatever you like. ^_^ It’s one chain, and people don’t argue as much after a few good whallops with the business end of a weapon.
There’s a ready made pairing- “Truth and Consequences”
I think you can get away with just calling it Consequences.
‘Oh, you thought you’d get away without seeing Consequences? Think again.’
Yeah, that works.
Clearly AP stands for Actual Paladin today.
Angry Protagonist?
Anti-Antipaladin! Woo! I love face turns, so I’m loving this comic! That said, I would very much like to know what theme music is playing during this moment, as alluded by the alt text…
I haven’t had a game last long enough for a proper face-heel turn, but I’m definitely noting today’s rant down in case I end up behind the screen at some point.
I REFUSE to believe it’s anything else: https://youtu.be/9OZ-yNdKw3o
Well that got me unexpectedly pumped this morning. Cheers!
*heel-face turn*, I mean. Got that completely the wrong way round.
I always thought “face turn” was short for bad > good, while “heel turn” was short for good > bad. Bleh.
In any case, I was imagining the theme from Attack on Titan. Feel free to insert your own preferences though. Anything by Two Steps from Hell would probably work.
I thought that both were short for heel-face turn
Face turn is when you turn into a face, heel turn is when you turn into a heel. Heel-face turn and face-heel turn are longer forms respectively.
Demon Queen: “Why don’t I hear my boss music?”
There’s this marvelous artwork doing the rounds of a paladin striding into a room where a big, red demon has been pounding on the rest of the party. The demon is looking up, its attitude confused, as if to say: “Wait. Why did a different boss theme just start up…?”
On one hand, it’s pretty rare for player character themes to override boss music. On the other hand, one of the best-known exceptions (“Trombe!”) is a villain-turned-hero, so…still appropriate!
Is it “Diablo II – The Final Stand,” by Keith Parkinson? That seems to fit the description you gave.
https://www.keithparkinson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/diablo_product_001.jpg
That’s the one!
I like the artwork, but I will admit to being annoyed that Amazon is hiding from Diablo along with Sorceress. She should have been out there sticking a spear into the Lord of Terror.
Most of the well-executed heel-face turns I’ve seen have been middle to low-ranking baddies who upon the death of their superiors sees a way out. I like to think of folks like Drow as North Koreans: Those who don’t support the evil regime don’t last long, but that doesn’t mean they like it.
One of my favorite examples I did was an Illithid: Illithids lose their individuality when they are within a 5 mile proximity of an Elder Brain, which can be extended by an Ulitharid acting as a hub, so when the party killed an Ulitharid one of the Illithids negotiated with them because it wanted to just live on its own. The party had to reconcile its peaceful intentions with the fact that it w would be eating brains. I managed to convince most of the party by saying it’d try and pick its targets ethically, and playing on their sympathies by pointing out that it’s either eat people or starve.
Obligate carnivore biology is a tough one. Kind of makes you wonder if an illithid executioner would be a common thing.
The Spelljammer novels had a nice answer to that: THE Spelljammer had an Illithid section which grew brain mould on the walls. It was a fungus, but it was edible to Illithid, gave them all the nutrients they needed, and did not require them to murder and enslave sentient beings.
Predictably, only the one illithid in the story who was non-lethal fully appreciated this resource. The evil ones still wanted to crack skulls and slurp brains while enslaving everyone else on the ship.
It’s more than being an obligate carnivore. Tabaxi are cats and cats are obligate carnivores so I assume they are too, but they can get by on a nice steak.
Illithids aren’t just carnivores, they’re “Sapiovores”. They specifically need the brains of Intelligent beings.
That’s a thing (sort of) in the Laundry Files. Some of the characters are vampires, which in this setting absolutely cannot feed non-lethally. The New Management brings back the death penalty partly to feed the vamps working for Him.
(The other part being that the New Management wants skulls for his decor, being [SPOILER])
Would you believe that I actually tested up a little at this? This is genuinely the kinda shit I think TTRPGs shine at – mechanically representing the narrative, rules be damned
Oh no I meant to leave this as an original comment, damn my adhd!
Back on 10/17 I mentioned a recurring evil wizard and his winter-wolf lieutenant. After 6+ run-ins between the PCs and this foe and his minions (and, necessarily, multiple painful near-death experiences for the villains), as a DM, I began to really wonder about the emotional toll on the bad guys.
The next time the party was characteristically noisy in their arrival, the winter-wolf (busy recruiting new talent) exclaimed “YOU lot?! Again?! I’m not being paid enough for this.” –and promptly left.
(The remaining opponent, an ogre mage shapeshifted into a ‘defenseless gnome,’ was left to try to sell his half of the “Save the helpless NPC from the Big Bad Wolf” scenario solo. He didn’t speak Gnomish. It failed spectacularly.)
Subsequently, rather than violently turn on his employer, the wolf successfully argued that his pursuit of revenge was expensive and pointless, any further villainy in the region was demonstrably doomed to failure, and that there was far more gold to made exploiting the 3.5 RAW for creating and selling *robes of useful items* loaded with gems. (3,500 gp to create / 16,000+ gp sale value of contents.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVC_3TeQO-M
Wait… How exactly does a wolf craft fine robes?
While lacking opposable thumbs, the winter-wolf could be *very* eloquent and persuasive and thus convinced his *boss* that creating useful items was more profitable than passing off cursed items as the genuine article (and punishing the heroes who sought to curtail his trade in thaumaturgical trash).
The logic tracks, and I am thusly satisfied.
I must complement you on your hover text for this panel. I about died laughing. Thanks for that!
Every once in a while I get in a good one. 😀
Oh no…now we have two Paladins. Even if Old Paladin finds a new class, this is gonna muck up all the fan wikis and stuff that I assume exist.
If only Antipaladin was a woman, then I could suggest renaming her to Auntie Paladin.
> this is gonna muck up all the fan wikis and stuff that I assume exist.
It’s quite thorough:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/TheHandbookOfHeroes
> If only Antipaladin was a woman
Aside from that one Rule 63 pinup on the Patreon, I don’t think we’ve ever done that. 😛
So, does this mean antipaladin is now an oathbreaker ? Oathmaker ? Noble-crusader-formerly-known-as-antipaladin ?
Let the rampant speculation begin!
Shouldny be a problem with the name, as We could view the ‘anti’ in Antipaladin now as more like the anti in Antihero rather than ‘evil-paladin’. I mean, when you get down to it, the term antipaladin is more of a meta term that kinda caught on. You don’t call Sith ‘Anti-Jedi’ after all. Personally I’ve liked the names that were used to describe variant paladins in Unearthed Arcana; Paladin of Honor (LG), Paladin of Freedom (CG), Paladin of Tyranny (LE) and Paladin of Slaughter (CE).
Paladin of Breakfast
Paladin of Shag Carpet
Paladin of Low, Low Prices
He could be a Gray Knight from the Pathfinder 1E setting!
What alignments are those? Neutral Good, Chaotic Neutral, and Lawful Neutral? (Or would that last one be Neutral Evil?)
The Gray Knight can be Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good.
AP has been moving away from his minion role – and arguably his old CE alignment for a while now. I could see him hitting NG right about now.
“This isn’t about rules. This is about love. This is about friendship. And it’s about taking you down before you ruin more of it. Smite Evil!”
No, not the Gray Knight. Paladins of Breakfast, Shag Carpet, and Low Low Prices, respectively.
And let’s not even talk about Beach Paladins.
With how swiftly most villains get dealt with, I haven’t had any heel-face turns in my career so much as impromptu adoptions. Bodyguard who’s willing to flip sides for coin? Surprisingly competent kobold priest? Temporarily possessed boxing gladiator? Congrats, we spared your life so you’re one of us now, no arguing.
Such is the magic of the Diplomancer.
Wow, killing Patches really upped the ante, huh?
Sorry, I’ll leave
Dammit… I’ll award you your 1,000 XP pun bounty, but I won’t like it.
Ironically enough, this is the theme that’s going through my head at this scene.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QhcY7zulwko
It’s even well known for stealing the boss’ theme from right under them!
Heh. “Battle With Magus” indeed.
I wonder for the purpose of increasing dread, do smite targets feel when they’re being targeted by smite? A feeling of vulnerability or imminent death?
Well I mean… Saruman seemed to feel that bop pretty good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG2lk-PsoTA&t=220s
Not the bop and imminent ragdoll itself, but the act of targeting them with the smite right before they get hit. Assuming it’s 3.5/PF rules where you activate the smite before you hit them and not if you land the hit.
Ah. Well then you’re looking for the “I declare my smite on you” timestamp, which comes a few second earlier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG2lk-PsoTA&t=183s
Oh heck yes. This is the moment we’ve waited for since his intro.
Chekhov’s dog.
Oh God yes! I have been wishing this would happen since AP was first introduced! Really looking forward to seeing what comes of this, and I always love a good repentance scene.
Interesting to wonder what kind of metagame shenanigans led to this moment. Maybe AP’s player outgrew his edgelord phase and realized he actually wanted to play a hero, and so he collaborated with the GM to set up his redemption arc?
Are you suggesting that Antipaladin plotted to have Patches murdered? O__O
There’s a surprising amount of this in my Ancient Aliens campaign.
One of the PCs was raised in a cult that forms a recurring villain faction, so several characters from her backstory have shown up at various times, and she has usually tried to incapacitate and recruit them, with mixed results. One was a fellow escapee who became a thief working for an unrelated minor villain. The PC tried to develop a rapport with her (the party first encountered the thief when she’d been captured by an allied NPC group, after which her boss pulled strings to get her released), but because the PC hadn’t been open with the party about her cult backstory, another PC casually killed the thief. (Who was, incidentally, running away rather than fighting – PCs gonna PC.) The former cult PC and another PC later conspired to bring her back with Reincarnate behind the rest of the party’s back (turning her into a dwarf in the process), but eventually explained it and left the thief with the allied NPC faction she’d originally stolen from. (The thief’s boss was also supposed to be somewhat sympathetic, but the PCs stealthed their way past all the bits where they could learn that and killed her without the additional context, which later got them sued in Hell Court.)
In another arc against the cult, the party defeated (and, at the former cult PC’s insistence, captured) another of the PC’s former friends as well as both of her parents, who were all still cult members. The PC’s attempts to deprogram her parents didn’t go very well (mother thinks she is a traitor, father thinks she has been brainwashed) and they were jailed. (An opportunity will come up later.) The former friend denounced the cult and agreed to work with the party, but this was a ruse to later betray them at the appropriate time. However, that friend is starting to feel doubts creeping in as they see the party’s comradery, which isn’t helped by a crush developing on the former cult PC. We’ll see which side they pick at some point.
There is one other backstory NPC who might turn. Another cult member, this one was first met by the party while the cult was trying to put on a good public face, so they got a positive view of her. She also admires one of the other PCs for his backstory accomplishments. When the cult declared them enemies, she went along with it, but she has some doubts as well. It remains to be seen what happens when the PCs encounter her again (this time beside her loyalist mother/drill sergeant). They can probably recruit her if they don’t kill her on sight (which is totally a possibility).
There was a recurring vampire villain that the party eventually developed sympathies for, after they discovered that she was being coerced by other villains. The players initially HATED her due to how many times she escaped them (vampires are quite hard to kill if you can’t find their coffin), but in the end she cut a rather pathetic figure (particularly after that arc when she went on her own quest to get her friend her old bosses had killed resurrected) and they let her go.
Lastly (and I promise this is the last one), there is a lower drow commander who the PCs once captured, interrogated and let escape, with one PC secretly putting a status update bracelet on her. She wore that for a while (it gave her updates on the PC as well) until the connection broke. The party encountered her again after she was captured and tortured by a kyton (which that same PC saved her from) and the party took her prisoner. She escaped from them and rejoined her faction, but she is definitely aware that that PC has developed a crush on her. (She’s slightly smitten by him, but not that much.) My current plan is that she will avoid fighting the party (since she knows they are too powerful) and use this crush to sell the party intel on her own faction, some of which is real and some of which is fake or a ruse to gather her own information. The PC with the crush’s player has said that he wants the crush to cause the party problems, so there’s roughly equal chances that they get together, that she horribly betrays the party or that the other PCs kill her.
…That is all one campaign. (I tend to go big.)
I feel as thought I’ve drunk deep from the plot hose:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdnOQ0uWEAE3YpB.jpg
Moral ambiguity is a dangerous drug.
Okay, I have to brag a little. We did this with TWO major villains in my friend’s Princes of the Apocalypse game.
At the start, our characters didn’t know they were evil (we knew out of character of course), so we were able to build a bit of a relationship with both the earth and air prophets, getting to know them and why they were doing what they were doing. Our one fighter ESPECIALLY was able to get quite close (he ended the game engaged). On the BBEGs end, they were trying to keep up the facade of a harmless new ideology, and not a group of evil cultists. They even tried recruiting us to some extent. So it lead to an interesting mid-game where each side was trying to get the other to switch. In the end, we had to fight them in order to get their brainwashing weapons away and get them to truly think freely for the first time in years. After which, they helped us in several big boss fights, as we still wound up fighting the elemental masters they were trying to summon. It was an awesome campaign, and I still ship Aerisi and our fighter to this day.
As to how it happened, I honestly think it was because both sides met enough times in circumstances that they couldn’t fight, that our PCs and the NPCs wound up liking each other enough that they didn’t want to. Us players also didn’t want to kill them, and worked pretty hard to convince the two that the elemental evils they were working for wouldn’t get them what they really wanted. In the end it was almost 100% player driven to flip them.
> I honestly think it was because both sides met enough times
Ya see? That’s what I’m saying!
Any general tips for your fellow GM to contrive “getting to know the villain” scenarios?
I just want to say that Righteous Fury delivering Laser Guided Karma is one of my favorite combinations of tropes. It just excites me so!
Still one of my favorite moments in all of fantasy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qC2P7QYjaE&t=153s
Probably the best one I saw had to do with a sock.
But if people don’t want to talk about that one due to politics we won’t. But it really stands out to me as being a masterful minion turning on boss moment.
Oohohoooo he’s pissed. Rip bad cat you were cool while you lasted
I just really want to see another cross with Tales from the Tables with Anti-AntiPaladin now. Purely to see Angela’s reaction to this development.
If only we weren’t in the middle of a story arc that has us locked in until February, we’d jump on it!
If Anti(?)paladin stays this way for a bit though, I shall poke at Claire about it 😀
How did I not notice this post? 🙁
Well I mean… I know how. Although I try to reply to every comment on every comic, when the comic has been up for a few days I wind up missing a few.
If you’re still interested, hit me on the Twitters and we shall discuss!
Ooooh, we might have a Vindictive Bastard (As the “Paladin” Archetype) at hand.
Maybe!