My fiance is running a campaign and the players have the opportunity to obtain a wyrmling black dragon. Now black dragons are chaotic evil, but the monk of the group believes that it shouldn't be killed outright just due to the fact that its race tends to be evil. He wants to attempt to teach and raise it in goodly or rather, less evil ways, but the other players want a backup plan to change its alignment if worst comes to worst. The problem is, the DM doesn't see anything involving forced alignment changes. Is there a mechanical way to handle this or is it going to be DM decision to add something to the game that isn't currently there?
[RPG] How to change the alignment of our black dragon hatchling
alignmentdnd-5emagic-itemsspells
Related Solutions
Check out Belkar, from the Order of the Stick. A chaotic evil character in a mostly-good-aligned party. See this quote:
Despite his kill-first who-cares-about-asking-questions attitude and lack of party loyalty causing the occasional problem, Belkar has proven to be generally effective as a party member [...] but, with carefully applied threats, the rest of the group have generally been able to keep the halfling under control and they consider him to be one of their own.
Note, though, that the OOTS keeping Belkar around has always been a bit of a stretch for willing suspension of disbelief, allowed mostly for narrative purposes, and often lampshaded by the characters themselves, so it might be a bit of a problem getting the rest of your party behind the idea of sheltering a psycho killer, but if you're fun and over-the-top enough, they might appreciate your dramatic value.
Another option that some might not like is getting explicit buy-in from the players, or at least some you think will be into it. Some might see it as a form of meta-gaming that takes away from the real roleplaying, but others might see it as a social contract that allows the party to play the roles they like and build the narratives they like.
but how would performing these almost surely evil acts affect how my character is expected to play the game from then on?
To me this is the most important thing you asked. The answer is: Not At All.
Your character appears to have a well-defined backstory and personalty. Those things define how your character should act. Alignment should reflect those, and that's all. Your alignment changing because of your actions should NOT affect how your character acts, as the alignment just shifted to reflect what you were already doing.
Don't fall into the trap of going "oh I got revenge and the DM made me evil, so now I'm throwing out my character's persona and going supervillan."
Alignment is there to help people who don't have a clear personality for characters, provide game mechanics for things like Smite Evil, and provide some restrictions that we could probably do without. It's not there to act as a straightjacket on what is a well-developed character.
Now, the actual act of getting revenge and fallout from that might cause your character to behave differently. That's RP and entirely in-bounds. If the party treats you differently afterwards that is going to have an effect, but the alignment system doesn't reflect that very well. (Parties can shun good aligned people too.)
How much should other players be aware of my plans?
Depends on the players, really. Are they players who will be okay with some manipulation and secrecy? Or are they players who really value team cohesion and won't appreciate being led around for a secret potentially evil plan?
There's not a good way for me to answer that, as you know them better than I do. I would say that your character probably won't tell them more than necessary unless he's sure that telling them would make them more willing to help.
How careful should I be about players' reactions to having my PC manipulate other PCs?
Same thing as above, really. Some players would have no problem with it at all, others would be rather unhappy.
If my character does manage to enact his revenge (and he may never finish doing so), assuming the actions are metaphysically evil (e.g., knowingly killing a good-aligned entity, etc.), does this make my character evil? What about the other PCs - are they evil? If not, do they turn on me?
While killing a Good creature like an Angel could be called an outright evil act, one evil act doesn't necessarily make you evil. Mortals almost never follow alignments perfectly, they're a mix of different acts and it's more the trend that determines it.
The other PCs may or may not have their own alignment trouble, depending on the situation. How much do they know about why they're helping you? How good are they usually?
And no, if they're helping you do this knowingly and your alignment shifts because of it, they shouldn't just automatically turn on you. That wouldn't make sense, would it?
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Best Answer
There are three ways to forcibly change something's alignment on the books. But none of them really work out well for you.
Forced attunement. Arguably the least dangerous option, if you can somehow force the dragon to attune a magical item you might change its alignment. Perhaps a Geas? If your DM sees that working, and you have any of The Book of Vile Darkness, The Eye of Vecna, or The Hand of Vecna on you, the dragon's alignment will change. To Neutral Evil.
To the Planes. Send your dragon on vacation to the Bytopia for 4 days ("Pervasive Goodwill" optional rule, DMB pp.59-60), The Abyss ("Vile Transformation" optional rule, DMG p.63) or the Nine Hells ("Pervasive Evil" optional rule, DMG p.64) and its alignment might change to Neutral Good, to Neutral Evil, or to Lawful Evil. (But dispel magic or remove curse will get rid of the Bytopian effect.)
Enlist the Slaadi. Unfortunately (?) this won't work on your dragon--only on humanoids. But in the interests of completeness, here's the third way to forcibly change something's alignment: true polymorph the dragon into a humanoid form, then get a Blue Slaad to bring your (humanoid) target to 0 HP. It'll automatically become Chaotic Neutral. Of course that's a consequence of it becoming a Red Slaad.
In all seriousness, parenting's a hard job.
Raising something to "be good" in a world where alignment's a thing written into a stat block is absolutely a project you and your DM are going to have to tackle together. There're no easy outs here. (But there are good story opportunities here!)
But it just got a little bit easier....
Now, a half-year late, I've got to challenge the frame of your question. You say "now black dragons are chaotic evil." And you probably got that from the stat block, or from a generalization you're making based on all the black dragons you've encountered. But
We all know that rule zero empowers the GM to change anything, but this is one of those situations where a published book says "hey, GM: you might need to tweak this dial." I know this question was all about getting "plan B" in order, but I think "plan A" has a little more going for it than one might have assumed.