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Shademan
2009-03-24, 08:40 AM
you heard me. Any ideas for adventures for a low level evil party?
LV 3-4

kamikasei
2009-03-24, 08:44 AM
Depends heavily on the individual characters. There are lots of different ways to be evil.

Are they capable of working together for their mutual benefit?

Are they capable of working together to benefit a patron?

Would they need to be unified by an outside threat or a powerful and merciless employer?

Are they capable of keeping a low profile or are they inherently outcast (conspicuous and ill-thought-of races, violent and impulsive personalities, etc.)?

Shademan
2009-03-24, 08:48 AM
they work together to get their hands on some artifacts and they need each other to get those items.

Irreverent Fool
2009-03-24, 08:53 AM
Not sure what you're asking exactly. Evil clerics are quite fun though, especially if you find some level 1 skeletal warriors to control with rebuke undead.

obnoxious
sig

Rhiannon87
2009-03-24, 08:54 AM
The main problem with evil is that people who are evil tend to have a difficult time working together. I think for a relatively low-level campaign, you're going to need a powerful boss guy who's forcing them to work together. Basically? The PCs are minions.

What could be kind of fun is to work out a standard adventuring story from the other side-- what's the villain and his cohorts up to while the heroes are running around? Your PCs could be doing missions of evil, blackmailing and stealing and assassinating and whatnot, and occasionally run across this truly obnoxious group of do-gooders who want to stop them.

Shademan
2009-03-24, 08:56 AM
holy friggin yes!
They'll work for a evil overlord! HAHA!
great thanks, but keep them ideas coming :P

The Neoclassic
2009-03-24, 09:27 AM
Graverobbing works well for both chaotic and evil. Perhaps some evil wizard needs the bodies for research. Perhaps the PCs heard that some valuable jewelry was buried with some body. Perhaps some twisted villian wants to bring dishonor on a family by digging up the bodies of their deceased ancestors (hence ruining their proper burials and causing a big mess and fuss).

Perhaps an extortion mission or the need to bully/beat some important information out of someone? It'd also be good for players who really want to be evil, without letting them get lighting-the-town-on-fire out-of-hand.

Farlion
2009-03-24, 09:28 AM
In principle evil parties only work with lawful evil characters and one powerful PC or NPC giving orders (needless to mention, that the only punishment for disobedience is death).

So, I would propose an evil NPC as "employer". This NPC wants to summon an evil fiend, but needs alot of fear in order for the summoning to work. The PCs now have two things to do.

First they have to find an appropriate village, in which they can somehow scare the people (but they have to be careful, the people shouldn't die and they should not leave the village).

Second, they somehow have to give their "employer" access to the local temple, desecrate it so that the summoning ritual can be held in the one place, villagers still think is safe and from which they draw hope.

Naturally, the clerics of the temple will not like this, as well as a random good party the village hires to defeat what ever is scaring them.
To really please their "employer" the PCs could try to scare the adventurer party and even the clerics. A scared cleric present at the summoning would really please the summoned fiend.

I hope I could help =)

Cheers,
Farlion

P.S: Ok, you got my brains working here ^^

Alternatively they could be part of an evil cult, followers of an evil diety or something.
The PCs get the assignment to go into a larger city and build up a secret temple/shrine for their diety or cult. Then they should start networking and trying to build up their own cult in this city.

- They have to find a good place for their hideout
- Somehow they need money to buy bricks, stone, wood etc.
- Their building should not attract attention
- They have to start getting people to join their cult and/or help them

Once this is done, the cult might give them new directions such as:

- one of the aristocrats should be discredeted
- a large merchant should go out of business
- a cleric of a good diety has gotten suspicious of their undertaking and they have to get rid of him
- a good party has somehow found out about the cult and is now looking to erradicate it everywhere they go

Olo Demonsbane
2009-03-24, 11:56 AM
I've always wanted to do this but never had the chance:

The characters are hired by an evil mage/outsider/BBEG as guards. He has a largeish dungeoun, and the characters have to help (his other monsters/friends/minions) defend the place long enough for him to finish a ritual or something.

Then, you send in the adventuring parties. You can either use stats from the DMG, make characters from scratch, or use old characters that aren't being played anymore :smallbiggrin:

xPANCAKEx
2009-03-24, 12:29 PM
evil parties you usually have to be a bit more restrictive in the character creation phase

set some sort of common cause/belief to bind them together - that way you won't get them all following different lifestyles/religions which may work in good parties

think about what you'll be asking them to - evil PCs are selfish. Think about it from their side: they'll all be thinking "whats in this for me"

greed/personal power are far more alluring than "it will help the orphanage"

Drakefall
2009-03-24, 12:43 PM
As far as keeping the party from killing each other goes this can actually be solved very easily. Before you start the campaign simply tell the players that their characters should work together and not try mess with each other too much or guess what? The campaign dies. Now I doubt anyone wants that so they will probably be very happy to work together for whatever reason. I mean heck even evil people have friends and alliances, one need only look at all the OOTS examples of evil happily working together to see that.:smallsmile:

As xPANCAKEx mentioned above giving them a common cause or some kind of connection to each each other also helps.

Totally Guy
2009-03-24, 02:03 PM
The party come across an evil god that is trapped in an ornate jar.

The god is very weak. It talks about a the number of believers worshipping him, knowingly or unknowingly, being proportional to the power it has.

The god then says that in order to ensure that the party works for the god rather than the god working for them he will make them all champions of himself and they will have access to a proportion of his power equal to the party member that has converted the least people. This ensures the party work hard and together for this god.

So for a party of 4 the group could go out and attempt to convert 4 towns to worshipping the new god in town.

So the rogue might find a way to dupe the churches into replacing the altars with the idol of their new god. So the rogue's plan accumulates a portion of worship. Then the fighter / wizard / cleric or whoever can come up with the next way to convert people to the cause. This gives another reason for conquest, it gives good scope for religious antagonists and if the party worked for a BBEG it gives them a way to usurp him.

Once each player has used their plan, with the help of their party of course, then the god can grant then some manner of power. This could be a limited temporary use of a template or it could grant magic items, it could act as a summon or even a DMPC with xp dependant on number of towns that worship him.

TheCountAlucard
2009-03-24, 05:02 PM
By no means is it the story of a low-level party, but I nonetheless recommend you to read Darken, a webcomic about an evil party.

Myrmex
2009-03-24, 05:11 PM
I disagree that evil people can't work together. If they consider themselves friends or family, there's no reason they can't be burning orphanages while high fiving.

Personally, I've always wanted to play a game where I was in an orc raiding party instead of the standard adventuring one.

Fireballing_Fun
2009-03-24, 06:17 PM
I am thinking of starting an evil campaign myself, with the players as members of an evil society.

I am thinking that all members of the society swear a magical oath/geas that does bind them to an extent but does not completely preclude internal back-stabbing and treachery, because though the society wants some order it's leaders also want the strong to rise to the top (well not quite to the top) so they favour a certain degree of social darwinism.

So basically to resist/subvert orders or take actions against the society or it's members (such as backstabbing fellow PC's) requires a will save, and of course also carries a risk of punishment anyway.

Anyway that aside such a setup lends itself well to adventure ideas I feel.

They can be ordered to setup/defend/extend various criminal operations, or attack similar rival organisations.

-attack a slaver stockade, kill them, rob them, steal the slaves.
-clear out a section of the monster infested sewers so that illegal white lotus powder can be smuggled from the docks to the cellar of the blue boar tavern.
-recover the body of a beholder so it can be reanimated by a society necromancer to defend the local safe house.
-kidnap the magistrates daughter so he can be convinced to return an apropriate verdict in a court case.
-deal with pesky good adventurers.
-deal with traitors to the society.
-aid a society doppelganger in infiltrating the seven suns trading cartel, then using the information he acquires negotiate with a local goblin tribe. In return for the information the Goblin promise to stop raiding the caravans of the three eagles (which is owned by the society).
-some time later, when easy loot attracts new recruits to the goblin tribe it breaks the terms of the deal, the PC's are blamed (though it's their bosses fault) and are sent to assassinate the Goblin chief and his immediate henchmen.
-Good adventurers hired just prior to the assassination hack their way through the distintegrating goblin forces, finding incriminating letters between the Goblins and the PC's/three eagles. They give the information to city hall, spies tip the society off, the characters must loot the offices of anything valuable or embarrassing before the city watch, good adventuers, paladins etc descend upon the place and raze it.

Heliomance
2009-03-24, 06:23 PM
Never forget that being evil doesn't stop you having friends. I remember hearing a story about an adventuring group whose big bad was in fact two wizards working together to take over the world. The players couldn't conceive of evil character working together, so naturally assumed that one must be planning to backstab the other at some point. After working out which would be the lesser of two evils, they went to him and warned him that the other would betray him. The wizards thanked them for the information, and the PCs went off to try and stop the plan.

Meanwhile, the guy they'd warned let his partner know that the PCs were on to them. It turned out the two wizards were childhood friends and were indeed planning to have joint control of the world, with each ruling over half.

Fireballing_Fun
2009-03-24, 06:39 PM
The party come across an evil god that is trapped in an ornate jar.

The god is very weak. It talks about a the number of believers worshipping him, knowingly or unknowingly, being proportional to the power it has.

The god then says that in order to ensure that the party works for the god rather than the god working for them he will make them all champions of himself and they will have access to a proportion of his power equal to the party member that has converted the least people. This ensures the party work hard and together for this god.

So for a party of 4 the group could go out and attempt to convert 4 towns to worshipping the new god in town.

So the rogue might find a way to dupe the churches into replacing the altars with the idol of their new god. So the rogue's plan accumulates a portion of worship. Then the fighter / wizard / cleric or whoever can come up with the next way to convert people to the cause. This gives another reason for conquest, it gives good scope for religious antagonists and if the party worked for a BBEG it gives them a way to usurp him.

Once each player has used their plan, with the help of their party of course, then the god can grant then some manner of power. This could be a limited temporary use of a template or it could grant magic items, it could act as a summon or even a DMPC with xp dependant on number of towns that worship him.

That is an awesome idea!

Fireballing_Fun
2009-03-24, 06:40 PM
Never forget that being evil doesn't stop you having friends. I remember hearing a story about an adventuring group whose big bad was in fact two wizards working together to take over the world. The players couldn't conceive of evil character working together, so naturally assumed that one must be planning to backstab the other at some point. After working out which would be the lesser of two evils, they went to him and warned him that the other would betray him. The wizards thanked them for the information, and the PCs went off to try and stop the plan.

Meanwhile, the guy they'd warned let his partner know that the PCs were on to them. It turned out the two wizards were childhood friends and were indeed planning to have joint control of the world, with each ruling over half.

Neat!
(I'd have made them lovers!)

Xuincherguixe
2009-03-24, 09:23 PM
The party could be a mercenary team.

Maybe, they all got arrested individually for different crimes, and decide that it'd be beneficial to work together. For extra fun, it turns out that someone arranged this, such as some evil overlord. Whom later they can murder and replace.

They could just be some adventurers, no rule that says there can't be evil adventurers. Frankly, the way a lot of people who do the mayhem in dungeons are, evil makes the most sense.

They could be a political party. (Cthulhu for President! ... In a medieval vaguely earth type setting...)

They could be running a scam. The game consists mainly of keeping it running.

General evil contractors. The various evil organizations hire them to do various evil things. All the meanwhile they have their own secret nefarious agendas (the PCs, I mean)

Gang of Bandits...

A few of these can be combined too, really.

Fjolnir
2009-03-24, 09:39 PM
You could always do something like making them all members of a mafialike crime cartel, members of different "families" who are told to go to a certain place for a meeting and for some reason are betrayed (perhaps the place is raided by the local authorities?) and the majority of the quest is to gain enough power to take over the various families and control the cartel in an oligarchical manner (each "Family" should specialize somewhere else, making it very hard for one person to know all of the various things needed to run them all) all of the other ideas can easily work off this to (I like the champions of a dark and imprisoned god one) this also gives the party a decent amoral code to work from since if they are already "Made" they probably believe somewhat in the rules of the system

gabado
2009-03-24, 10:11 PM
ok, I'm saying this on behalf of my friends
pillage, burn, kill babies, steal stuff, kill babies, and oh, kill babies.
you see what i have to work with!
any-who i think that a fun evil campaign would be to have half the PCs run good characters of the same level or higher and have both parties work from opposite ends of a dungeon. then they meet in the middle and ether fight each other or join sides in some sort of multi alignment group, it would be interesting to see how the characters interacted. that is if your friends aren't like mine. :smallannoyed:

JoshuaZ
2009-03-24, 10:38 PM
One thing that works better with evil characters than good characters is having the characters held hostage in some fashion by a villain. They will be willing to do whatever it takes to get rid of whatever hold the villain has on them. One thing you could do is to have an evil wizard or cleric implant necrotic cysts in all of them (see Libris Mortis). He will only be willing to remove the cysts if they do what he wants. And since they are encysted he can scry on them more or less at will and if they really piss him off can possibly kill them with no chance of resurrection.

Drakefall
2009-03-25, 04:32 AM
ok, I'm saying this on behalf of my friends

pillage, burn, kill babies, steal stuff, kill babies, and oh, kill babies.


You forgot raise baby zombies, equip baby zombies with lances and skeletal chicken mounts and demand the mayor hands over his daughter lest you unleash your shin destroying cavalry!:smalltongue:

Godskook
2009-03-25, 01:40 PM
Lets see:

I'll assume you've already established group cohesiveness.

Your guys are thrown out by the local mercenary company recruiter. Told to "gain some experience, or don't come back".

Plot hook:
Party discovers poorly defended caravan in the woods. In the process of killing everyone, a legend of a small dungeon with useful things in it is mentioned.

Short dungeon crawl provides them with gear and a level or two

They return, kill the recruiter and get hired by the company. Rules for working with the company work similarly to the thief's guild. As long as the party doesn't hurt company rep and pays up the 50% cut, they're pretty autonomous sometimes. The party can also accept roles in company missions. These can range the full scale from good to evil, lawful to chaotic. You're mercs, remember?

After a couple levels gained working for the company, your party makes enemies of someone at the top. Enter a Road to Perdition or Haley(versus thief's guild) style seek and destroy campaign.

By now, your party should be getting into the teens.

Where you go from there depends on if you want the DM to create the BBEG, or if you are willing to let the PCs be the BBEG.

Vortling
2009-03-25, 02:54 PM
One thing to remember is that evil can and will fight evil just as much as it fights good. Not in the sense of conflict between party members so much as a reminder that you can run an evil group through a dungeon crawl just like a good group so long as there is a suitable reward at the end (ie gold, magic items and not a monster that needs to be defeated for altruistic reasons).

Fjolnir
2009-03-25, 06:32 PM
Remember, the world is big, and only one group of people can really reasonably rule the whole thing if you want to be in control of it, so evil fighting evil is basically a turf war since if you're sufficiently evil, you will be going for the whole enchilada at some point. Evil V good is cliche, and usually is less satisfying in the long run if they really want to let their villainy all hang out, ESPECIALLY if they want to be morally reprehensible folk with these charecters since the BBEG will up the ante while the BBGG will tend to not do it as quickly

gabado
2009-03-25, 11:06 PM
You forgot raise baby zombies, equip baby zombies with lances and skeletal chicken mounts and demand the mayor hands over his daughter lest you unleash your shin destroying cavalry!:smalltongue:

Indead I did. May I add that the new DM had the towns people stuff all their loot down the babies' throats, so there's a bonus to whoever guts the most babies, fish, and trees of all things. :smallamused:

Broler
2009-03-26, 12:20 AM
try having a situation where they are almost certainly going to kill each other :smallbiggrin:

Olo Demonsbane
2009-03-26, 01:42 AM
Never forget that being evil doesn't stop you having friends. I remember hearing a story about an adventuring group whose big bad was in fact two wizards working together to take over the world. The players couldn't conceive of evil character working together, so naturally assumed that one must be planning to backstab the other at some point. After working out which would be the lesser of two evils, they went to him and warned him that the other would betray him. The wizards thanked them for the information, and the PCs went off to try and stop the plan.

Meanwhile, the guy they'd warned let his partner know that the PCs were on to them. It turned out the two wizards were childhood friends and were indeed planning to have joint control of the world, with each ruling over half.

Here (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/rTKEivnsYuZrh94H1Sn.html) it is.

Kami2awa
2009-03-26, 04:43 AM
There's always the possibility that the party band together for mutual protection from some threat; possibly (over-) zealous Lawful Good guys. One thing I like about Evil campaigns is that there is often great potential for 'Sandbox' games where PCs can do whatever they desire to further their characters' aims, without an overarching quest.

VelvetThunder
2009-03-26, 05:48 AM
The players could be insane, and their insanity has brought them together. Say that they all hear voices they feel are divine, but in reality its the cries of a Far Realm God seeking to cross onto the material Plane. So the party doesn't know it's evil. They all feel they are on this Divine Mission, and slowly they work toward opening this permanent Gateway to the Far Realm. They don't have to be high level to start the quest, and Since the DM is the one putting the voices in the minds, You can have some control over what kind of random violence and such they spread.