Which of Sir Marko's vices will win... sloth, or greed? 😏
Nerd By Northwest #366 - “Never Leave the Rogue Unsupervised”
(Click on the image to see the full-size version)
Appealing to blatant self-interest is almost always more effective than guilt trips or appeals to ethics or morality!
That said, "Keep your eye on the party's rogue" is one of the common D&D tropes out there. It's not so much that the party's rogue ALWAYS keeps treasure for themselves when given the opportunity, but it happens enough that the rest of the players just kind of ASSUME they will... even when said rogues are in one of the "good" alignment categories.
And it even goes beyond treasure... sometimes, the rest of the party just assumes the rogue will create trouble when left alone. Which again does happen SOMETIMES, but often it's trouble that would've happened regardless whether the rogue was alone or with the party (triggering a trap or a monster ambush, for example). In one game I had a kender (a halfling or hobbit, basically) rogue that went off on his own to scout other areas of a dungeon while the rest of the party was resting, with nothing eventful or unusual to report. However, while he was gone apparently a powerful fireball spell exploded in the room. He gets back to see the rest of the party burnt and pissed off, and assuming he somehow caused it they tied him up the next night so he couldn't cause more "trouble". Which didn't help at all, because that next night the same thing happened and ALL of us got fireballed.
It ain't easy being the rogue... 😉
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