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jamminjelly
2009-07-11, 03:11 AM
What are some stories you have of evil characters taking things way too far?

During the first game of D&D I ever ran, the party was slaying Kobolds in a swamp to retrieve a farmers illegal magic items. The party killed all but one Kobold in a group and one player attempted to roll a diplomacy on asking the Kobold to raise an army and join him in destroying the main town. I had to talk to the player afterwards and tell him that I was new to DMing and there was no way I would be able to keep writing around a character that did things like that.

Munsi
2009-07-11, 03:16 AM
well if it's an evil campaign i don't really see anything wrong with that. it's a clever, unexpected and interesting way to take the plot. i don't see any reasonable way to expect the kobold to say yes since the PC's just killd all it's friends in front of it, but that part notwithstanding, it's a cute idea.

if, on the other hand, the campaign and group was NOT specified as evil, then yeah, too far. way, way too far

Skorj
2009-07-11, 03:40 AM
I'm hoping to start an evil campaign if work ever settles down. There will be no such thing as too far. The goal will be for the PCs to eventually take on the equivalent of Sauron in this game world, in order to replace him. But obviously that only works if you've planned for it well in advance.

We usually do campaigns where government and society are strong (and good/neutrral dominated), so evil acts beyond the minor league bring down the wrath of police escalating to armies led by high level paladins on you. So our most evil acts have mostly been against other PCs we were really tired of putting up with. However, accidentally loosing demonic forces of vast power upon the land by some trick of the DM, then ignoring the plot hook and just letting that happen while we went elsewhere: that's our theme. :smallbiggrin:

Most evil act not of omission? I'd have to say cutting the top of someone's skull off and eating his brains with spoons (while still awake, of course). Perhaps more gross than evil, but he was a party member at the time (and I think never did understand that his actions were genuinely that anti-social - some people can't take a hint).

HMS Invincible
2009-07-11, 03:54 AM
I would say abusing the fact that as an adventuring party, you are together a lot and have to place a lot of trust with each other. If some former thug came by and asked to adventure alongside you would be very suspicious. If a PC with a background of former thug joined the party, very few people push the line of "who are you and why should we trust you?"

But that's more along the lines of loyalty and trust rather than evil.

Saph
2009-07-11, 04:13 AM
What does "too evil" mean, anyway? Too evil compared to what? Is there a Recommended Daily Allowance of evil?

I generally play and run good/neutral campaigns. It's possible to have an evil PC, but the question I ask them isn't "Are you too evil?", the question is "Can you work constructively with the rest of the party?" In a good/neutral game, the PCs are generally held in check by the rest of the party and by their allies and friends, so I find any seriously evil acts are self-correcting.

However, if it's an evil campaign, then as far as I'm concerned anything goes. I tend to just laugh if a DM starts up an evil campaign then complains about how the PCs behave. If you wanted them to be nice, maybe you shouldn't have told them to be evil in the first place!

- Saph

AslanCross
2009-07-11, 06:16 AM
However, if it's an evil campaign, then as far as I'm concerned anything goes. I tend to just laugh if a DM starts up an evil campaign then complains about how the PCs behave. If you wanted them to be nice, maybe you shouldn't have told them to be evil in the first place!

- Saph

+1. This is precisely why I do not like running evil campaigns. The news is bad enough; I'd rather not have my players running around filling my head with more atrocious deeds.

Dixieboy
2009-07-11, 06:46 AM
then as far as I'm concerned anything goes. I tend to just laugh if a DM starts up an evil campaign then complains about how the PCs behave. If you wanted them to be nice, maybe you shouldn't have told them to be evil in the first place!

- SaphThere really is such a thing as "too evil", there' also such a thing as "Too much information about your evil deeds".

There's different degrees of Evil.
Just as there's different degrees of good.

Example:
In a game you could be trying to kill an evil monster because it's terrorizing a village.
That's a good act, and most people would be fine with this.
Now if there is a guy who donates all your parties funds to the restoration of the village and the building of an orphanage.
That's a good act, but i doubt everyone would be fine with it.

You can be too evil to function with the group, and you can be too good to function with the group.

Quietus
2009-07-11, 08:30 AM
However, if it's an evil campaign, then as far as I'm concerned anything goes. I tend to just laugh if a DM starts up an evil campaign then complains about how the PCs behave. If you wanted them to be nice, maybe you shouldn't have told them to be evil in the first place!

- Saph

This is why, when you run an Evil campaign, you need to sit everyone down beforehand and lay down some base rules. Such as, how far is the party willing to go?

Theft?
Murder?
Murdering innocents?
Random pointless destruction?

There's worse things, but there's a line I'm not willing to cross... and I know if I ran an Evil game, I'd be laying out several things that I'm not willing to deal with. It's fine for players to want to be Evil, but I will NOT deal with some actions... they're just "too evil" for my liking.

Zergrusheddie
2009-07-11, 08:41 AM
There is always one act that makes people go "Holy Jesus..." around the table. It just depends of how far you are willing to go.

Our Cleric had just reached 5th level and he wanted to get some Undead Minions. Being the evil little bastages that we were, we went into one of the local farm houses to collect (as the LE character put it) "material components necessary to complete a spell". We were using Domains from Pathfinder and the Cleric had an ability called Ghoul Hunger; functioned like Hold Person but the target dropped down and began to eat the nearest corpse or incapacitated being. That's right, we tied up the parents and cast Ghoul Hunger on the children. Do note: the parents were spies and Ghoul Hunger specifically states that you are unaware of what is happening. The children were innocent, the parents were not.

The DM's response: "Why is it that you guys are not this creative when you are playing Good characters?"

The Wizard's response: "Fireball on the entire group if that ever happens again."

Morty
2009-07-11, 08:45 AM
The important thing is to distinghuish between normal evil and stupid/villian evil. A normally evil character can work in an otherwise neutral party, although most likely not if everyone else is really Good, and such characters can form a party based on mutual gain or simply camadeire - evil characters can have friends and comrades in arms. They'll simply do things purely for personal gain. However, the character from OP is displaying the type of Evil that is either stupid, or reserved for villians, depending on how you look at it. I see it as stupid, and don't use it even for opponents when I'm GMing. It's not evil, it's Evil and therefore only suitable for villains in standard, heroic Tolkienesque campaigns. Now on the other hand, their original mission is a good example of how a decent evil campaign can look like.

KillianHawkeye
2009-07-11, 08:55 AM
Take it from me, Kobolds do NOT make good pets!!! :smallbiggrin:

mistformsquirrl
2009-07-11, 09:04 AM
First, to answer the question in the thread title...

I think that it depends on a lot of factors honestly.

Firstly, you've got to define quantities of Evil (this is my personal impression, but obviously it's just my abstraction) -

On the "Close to Neutral" end, you've got villains who believe they're doing the right thing, try to minimize innocent casualties, and might even throw themselves in front of someone they care about, taking a fatal blow for them... But at the same point they're also still willing to accept civilian casualties (usually with some variety of "Acceptable losses" statement), work with fiendish forces, and employ methods most foul in achieving their goals.

The goal might be fine and dandy, and they might try to avoid excessive loss of life - but they're still fine with ruining a few people to achieve their greater aim. A step below Anti-hero on the morality scale.

This is where you'll find an Evil PC who works with a lot of Good PCs - though in such a situation there's going to be a lot of tension.

Then you've got "Genuine Villains" -

These range from your traditional Saturday Morning Cartoon villain (Who is Evil because they are Evil! But generally is only evil in the 'typical' fashion - wanton destruction and looting and the like) - to more pragmatic villains who have some kind of overarching goal; but again, never quite descend to the lowest levels.

Oh - they'll gladly kill you. Probably evil pull out your heart and sacrifice your soul to their dark patrons. They don't likely have many scrupples at all.

But - their villainy is of a sort that can be happily boxed away in "This is a bad guy" thoughts; and thus never becomes too disturbing at the table. Some might still find them disquieting; but not all by a long shot.

Then you've got your Vile villains.

Vile villains are the kind that make your skin squirm.

I'm not going to get into detail about what a Vile villain does. The Book of Vile Deeds can give plenty of explanation; or just troll through serial killer histories <x.x>;; Vile villains are the kind who only a table with a strong stomach should have present - and only with the consent of all involved; because a character of this depravity is going to make anyone remotely squeamish sick to their stomach.

---

Now with that firmly in mind:

Determining how much Evil is appropriate in a PC is going to depend on the following -

1) DM's comfort level - This is easily the single most important factor (though player comfort level is a close second). The DM has to describe the things the PC is doing after all; and the further down the depravity scale you go, the more heinous the crimes become.

Some DMs (self usually included) - simply don't allow Evil PCs because they can't stomach describing these kinds of acts in any terms other than "And this is why you should really off this bastard."

Others will go all the way down the scale - and it really is impossible to tell without asking/playing to determine where the DM will go.

2) Player comfort level - If the other players find the character disturbing to a level they don't want to play anymore/will conspire in metagame to off them... you've probably gone too far. Talking of course is the first gauge "How far do you think I can reasonably go?" - But ultimately the only way to know for sure is to play and see how far it goes. Eventually someone will raise an objection - or you'll hit the bottom of the charts.

Obviously if the other players aren't comfortable with where you're taking your character, there's going to be trouble at the gaming table - some in-game; and probably a little out of game too.

3) Tone of the campaign - If the campaign is set in Candy Land; a Vile Villain is probably not the sort of character that's going to fit in well. (Unless of course it's a sick parody >.>) On the other hand, in a particularly gritty and nasty campaign setting, going pretty far down the scale isn't hard - and only the lowest of the low are real "Villains" in such a setting.

So it depends also on the lens the whole thing is viewed through - the more optimistic the world, the more difficult it is to integrate an Evil character (and the more difficult it is for that character to go further down the chart) - and still keep the campaign's original tone.

4) Type of villain - Not just on the chart, but also their general attitude.

Someone like Nale for instance, or Belkar, may do horrible things (I'd put them in the second category under Genuine Villains)... but at the same point they avoid some of that "ugh..." feeling because... well they're pretty hilarious.

A funny villain (in the 'funny ha-ha' way, not the 'funny "I'm Heath Ledger's Joker"' way) can get away with a lot more than one played seriously; because laughter can prevent people from trying to empathize with the villain's victims.

---

So... How Evil is Too Evil is something that each campaign has to answer for itself using the above factors. Sometimes any evil is too evil. Sometimes, there's no limit at all.

As for stories:

Every story I would tell is frankly disturbing enough that I'd rather not share. Suffice to say, the DM and the player who was playing a (very very vile) villain squicked me out bad enough I quit the campaign <x,x> Details will be left to your imaginations.

Starscream
2009-07-11, 09:17 AM
Is there a Recommended Daily Allowance of evil?

*Picture of toast, orange juice, sacrificed chicken, and pentagram shaped cereal*

Evil-Smax are part of this complete breakfast. They're Grrrruuuesome!"

I rarely do evil campaigns. It's hard to make good characters into interesting villains unless you are willing to go the Miko route (and she was stretching the definition even at the best of times.)

Evil vs Evil campaigns can be fun, however. Though it requires a careful balance. If the antagonist is too evil, it makes the PCs look like creampuffs. If the PCs are too evil, you have the same problem as with good aligned villains.

Generally I draw the line at acts of "Stupid Evil". Just as I'd roll my eyes if a paladin tried to give all the monsters hugs, I don't like it when evil PCs seek out puppies to kick just because "I'm supposed to be evil, right?".

No evil mastermind should leave you wondering how they even survived to adulthood.

Saph
2009-07-11, 09:43 AM
I'm not going to get into detail about what a Vile villain does. The Book of Vile Deeds can give plenty of explanation; or just troll through serial killer histories <x.x>;; Vile villains are the kind who only a table with a strong stomach should have present - and only with the consent of all involved; because a character of this depravity is going to make anyone remotely squeamish sick to their stomach.

There's this, obviously.

However, I usually find that it's the more basic stuff that tends to derail a campaign. For instance, a lot of D&D is based around the assumption that the party is going to co-operate with each other. If the party is some combination of LG, LN, NG, and TN, then that's probably a fair assumption.

If the party is a mixture of LE, NE, and CE, though . . .

Evil One-Offs (And The Problems Therein)

OK, story time. One of the last games I played before leaving for China was a 3.5 one-off. The DM had decided to run a one-shot evil game. He also pregenerated all the characters. I got a Chaotic Evil wererat fighter.

So the party is a collection of evil-aligned races, and we're all supposed to work for some lich. The lich press-gangs us into retrieving a MacGuffin from a nearby mountain. I think it was an angel. He'd fallen out of heaven and we were supposed to kidnap him so that the lich could torture him to death in his experiments . . . or something. I wasn't listening too closely, to be honest.

Anyway, first stop on the way to the mountain is a village. We need to purchase some cold weather gear. It costs around 10 gp each. I buy my own with the money the lich gave us - hey, it's on the expense account already, right? The bugbear barbarian and the duergar think they're being overcharged, and proceed to settle the matter in the "traditional" manner of evil PCs. We manage to shake off the angry mob after about an hour or so, and get to the mountain.

I start tracking, and we eventually run into a Good-aligned adventuring party which the DM had designed to be a sort of mirror match for us. Three of the party members get into a fight with them. I hang around at the back and watch. After a while, the DM notices that I don't seem to be joining the battle.

DM: "Are you going to attack them?"
Me: "Nah, I'm good."

A few rounds pass and the barbarian gets knocked down to single-figure HP.

DM: "Okay, NOW are you going to join in?"
Me: "I'm sure they can handle it."
Barbarian: "We're kind of not winning here."
Me: "Oh, you'll do fine! You guys are tough."
Barbarian: *dies*
Me: "Ooh, that was bad luck."

Session ended shortly afterwards. We never actually found the angel, but if we had I'd been debating 50/50 whether I was actually going to hand it over the lich or not. I'd been thinking of flipping a coin, Two-Face style.

The Moral

The mistake the DM made was he basically designed a normal D&D one-off: quest, party, opponents - and flipped the alignments. Turns out it doesn't work that way. He'd assumed that the evil PCs were all going to team up and try and kill the good NPCs, but I took a look at it and really couldn't see why I'd want to. I was fine with helping the party as long as it didn't put me at any risk, but actually go into a fight? What's my motivation? Let the other guys work off their bloodlust if they're so keen.

I didn't actually make a single attack roll all session. It occurred to me afterwards that I might actually have achieved a D&D record. First time in recorded history a CE character has managed to screw up the actions of the rest of the party by avoiding killing anything.

- Saph

L'intrigant
2009-07-11, 10:26 AM
"Too evil" has very little to do with character alignment. In my experience, it was much less the character or what the character "would do" and more the fault of the player. An evil character in a non-evil campaign can provide internal conflict and liven things up when it's getting dull, offer new ideas that good characters wouldn't come up with, etc. The only time character alignment really obstructs play is when there's a paladin around, due to that rather unfortunate "my powers are based off other characters" rule.

No, what seems to be the problem with evil characters is that most people who play them have no idea how an intelligent evil character would react in any given situation. When the player doesn't know his alignment well enough to play his character believably in any situation, then it becomes a problem. This has less to do with "evil" and more to do with "incompatible". For instance, if I attempted to play a lawful character, there's a good chance I'd totally screw the party over by being too inflexibly stuffy during some negotiation, simply because I have no idea how a lawful character acts in every situation.

Evil characters can break games, but generally only when their players either A) are douchebags, or B) have no realistic clue how to play their characters. The example you provided us, in an all-evil campaign, would be a wonderful and possibly even entertaining step to take. In a good/neutral campaign with an evil character, that move is a bit too drastic. The evil character would know that he's outnumbered and would keep such radical ideas to himself, instead settling for remorseless extortion and swindling, with a bit of murder if there's a convenient excuse.

For instance, Belkar, for all of his impractical decisions, has a tendency towards self-preservation in a nominally good party. He offers his opinions and sometimes engages in full-scale murder, but for the most part he keeps himself in line. Sure, he's a douche to V and Roy (and almost everyone else), but for the most part he realizes that together they could overpower him and kill him easily, and he needs allies to get ahead. Thusly, he keeps his own goals smaller than he'd prefer to stay alive.

"Evil" doesn't mean "uncontrollable homicidal psychopath". If the player does it that way, it's his fault, not the alignment. The exception is when the character is specifically made to be an uncontrollable homicidal psychopath...in which case he generally doesn't live very long in a non-evil party.

jamminjelly
2009-07-11, 10:32 AM
I've had characters that have had no value for other life and characters with drug addictions but those are just evil flaws. Obviously if a campaign is evil then an evil character is almost always no problem.

I'm talking about good or neutral campaigns where a character's evil actions inhibit the other players, like a player attempting to rob the first shopkeeper they see in a campaign, or torturing someone just to spite another character.

boomwolf
2009-07-11, 10:39 AM
No evil mastermind should leave you wondering how they even survived to adulthood.

Not necessarily true. one of the best villains I ever made made everyone think that with his "just roll with it" attitude. his thinking levels were usually along the lines of a barbarian, yet he managed to fool everyone, trick multiple lesser villains into working for him, and kick the crap out of captain of the king's guard in single combat (who is pure combat oriented unlike the villain), by sheer luck.

I'm telling you, luck rerolls with the right kinds of equipment can cause serious trouble.



The lines of too evil for me are "evil of evil's sake", and even that may be crossed every once in a while. but for evilness-do whatever you want. murder, rape, pillage. have fun-you are the bad guys. just remember that if you get too infamous good adventurers might come looking for you.

LibraryOgre
2009-07-11, 10:41 AM
I was once told I had to rewrite my character background because it was too dark.

This was in Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

L'intrigant
2009-07-11, 10:43 AM
Players who take evil characters frequently realize that their actions will not mesh with most parties. We've come to terms with the fact that we're probably going to be kicked out, killed, or threatened out of our usual stuff. Keep them in line by fear. Play their game, and they'll go out of their way to hide it from the party...which means that they'll also go out of their way to hide it from the NPC authorities. The more danger you present to an evil character, the more likely they are to find a way to avoid that danger.

In a good/neutral campaign, the responsibility lies on everyone to keep it running. It's not the just evil character's job to make sure his actions don't obstruct gameplay. It's the DM's job to allow him to have his fun, and it's the other players' job to find a way around the complications that arise. Every player is a part of the team, and they need to realize that just because one character does something that the others wouldn't doesn't mean that he's the one who has to change every time. If that were the case, then there would be no tavern brawls for barbarians, diplomacy for bards, or downtime for mages.

If they're inhibiting other players, then all three facets need to take action. The evil character needs to tone it down, the non-evil characters need to actually work at it instead of just complaining, and the DM needs to make sure there are times when that evil character's approach is valid.

LurkerInPlayground
2009-07-11, 10:46 AM
What does "too evil" mean, anyway? Too evil compared to what? Is there a Recommended Daily Allowance of evil?

I generally play and run good/neutral campaigns. It's possible to have an evil PC, but the question I ask them isn't "Are you too evil?", the question is "Can you work constructively with the rest of the party?" In a good/neutral game, the PCs are generally held in check by the rest of the party and by their allies and friends, so I find any seriously evil acts are self-correcting.

However, if it's an evil campaign, then as far as I'm concerned anything goes. I tend to just laugh if a DM starts up an evil campaign then complains about how the PCs behave. If you wanted them to be nice, maybe you shouldn't have told them to be evil in the first place!

- Saph
Eh. Pretty much. Arguing about alignment in D&D is unproductive and, to put it bluntly, stupid. Part of the problem is that people define these things differently. Go figure, evil is relative (sarcasm, I don't really care to get into a debate about how it isn't).

A character isn't "evil." And he shouldn't be regarded as such. He's malicious, bigoted, antisocial, cruel, unimaginative, greedy or whatever else. Just because you're "evil" doesn't mean you're a villain. You can be a bad person without needing to be all the things I've listed. Assigning the alignment should come *after* you've decided on a list of characteristics.

PC's should take a similar approach. Being evil doesn't mean you're bat**** crazy. You may be greedy, malicious *and* bigoted but not unimaginative, exceedingly cruel or antisocial. And that kind of "evil" character fits better into a party. Being "evil" isn't an excuse to be as disruptive as a cut-rate Hollywood villain.

L'intrigant
2009-07-11, 10:47 AM
Being "evil" isn't an excuse to be as disruptive as a cut-rate Hollywood villain.

Thank you. My point in a nutshell.

Morty
2009-07-11, 10:55 AM
I rarely do evil campaigns. It's hard to make good characters into interesting villains unless you are willing to go the Miko route (and she was stretching the definition even at the best of times.)

I fail to see how. A "villain" is someone who the party opposes. And plenty of people can oppose evil parties.

Starscream
2009-07-11, 11:02 AM
I fail to see how. A "villain" is someone who the party opposes. And plenty of people can oppose evil parties.

"Antagonist" probably would have been a better word.

Morty
2009-07-11, 11:04 AM
"Antagonist" probably would have been a better word.

Probably, but it doesn't change anything; plenty of people or creatures can oppose evil parties. I'm a fan of creating more complex stories without a single "antagonist" that PCs will undoubtedly face at the end of the adventure, though.

LurkerInPlayground
2009-07-11, 11:06 AM
The Moral

The mistake the DM made was he basically designed a normal D&D one-off: quest, party, opponents - and flipped the alignments. Turns out it doesn't work that way. He'd assumed that the evil PCs were all going to team up and try and kill the good NPCs, but I took a look at it and really couldn't see why I'd want to. I was fine with helping the party as long as it didn't put me at any risk, but actually go into a fight? What's my motivation? Let the other guys work off their bloodlust if they're so keen.

I didn't actually make a single attack roll all session. It occurred to me afterwards that I might actually have achieved a D&D record. First time in recorded history a CE character has managed to screw up the actions of the rest of the party by avoiding killing anything.

- Saph
Actually to levy some insight, James Maliszeski of Grognardia has something to say on the topic:
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/06/on-swords-and-sorcery.html

In a nutshell, he is giving an example as how the basic Law vs. Chaos alignment worked and why it worked just fine. D&D was focused on the Swords and Sorcery assumptions. Which is to say that being "good" or "bad" wasn't the focus.

You can be an utter bastard but still be an accepted evil in civilization. For example, slavers got on just fine in the Roman Empire. A slaver that was stereotypically cruel, greedy, chauvinistic, sadistic and so forth could exist in a society just fine without plotting the downfall of all things alive under the sun. Furthermore, if he's smart, he would see no point in trying to be disruptive to a society whose style of life depends on his services. He could easily be a patriot of the Roman Way.

Swords and Sorcery focuses more on characters who are looking to gain status and make a quick buck through antisocial behaviors, against a backdrop of a civilization beset on all sides by irrational forces. That original assumption of killing things and finding gold is hidden all throughout D&D up to the modern day.

In effect, an "evil" character could be an adventurer without anybody being surprised. A profession that rewards violence and antisocial behavior can easily attract people with some character flaws.

Part of the incongruities and failures of more recent D&D come from people taking the assumptions of a Swords and Sorcery system and using it for "epic" fantasy. I imagine the "Good" and "Evil" axis was added to accommodate "realism" while catering to different expectations. On the whole though, it was a imperfect modification of one tool to fit the expectations of a different sub-genre.

Stormthorn
2009-07-11, 11:20 AM
What are some stories you have of evil characters taking things way too far?

During the first game of D&D I ever ran, the party was slaying Kobolds in a swamp to retrieve a farmers illegal magic items. The party killed all but one Kobold in a group and one player attempted to roll a diplomacy on asking the Kobold to raise an army and join him in destroying the main town. I had to talk to the player afterwards and tell him that I was new to DMing and there was no way I would be able to keep writing around a character that did things like that.

The problem here isnt too evil. Its too wide scale. Raising an army can be done by any alignment and destroying a town is the bread and butter of evil army raisers. It would be too evil if he kept that last kobolds family alive and threatened to rape and eat them if the kobold didnt go along with his scheme and demonstrated it once to prove he was serious.

And if your players are robbing shopkeepers then make all your shopkeepers retired adventurerers with 25 character levels, most of them Incantrix.

Dixieboy
2009-07-11, 01:44 PM
I was once told I had to rewrite my character background because it was too dark.

This was in Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

Werewolf?

Like...
The one where the GOOD guys has killed of several species of innocent sapient life?
Where telling the truth to the average human will cause them to go into a fetal position and cry?

That Werewolf:The apocalypse?

Avilan the Grey
2009-07-11, 04:20 PM
I agree with M0rt:

Make sure that the players play "Smart Evil" (which does not have to be Evil Genius") and not "Chaotic Stupid" or "Evil Stupid".

As said above a well-played Evil character in an adventure party should be able to work together with Neutrals on a regular basis, and Goods as long as it benefits him or her.
Even if the base motivation for Evil Character X is not money (it might be revenge, or power, or absolute mastering of a skill, or whatever) the character should be clever enough to keep a regular paycheck. Because it helps in the long run.

In fact, Evil should have much lesser problems working with Good, than Good has about working with Evil. As long as it is beneficial, of course.

Another point is personal honor. An evil Knight might go to great lengths keeping his word, and help people who have helped him, because of honor. And as the Giant points out in his gaming articles, Evil might also fall in love, own pets (who are not kicked around as "Pain" and "Panic" in Hercules, but are well-fed and cared for, and even loved by their mistress).

Halaster
2009-07-11, 04:21 PM
I think it depends on what you call evil. Its always easier and less disturbing to have the classic comic-villain over-the-top evil, with lots of dark towers, sinister schemes and maniacal laughter, than the "real" evil, which is often rather banal. A character who almost absent-mindedly kills people, just because he can, barely mentioning their existence, is far more disturbing than a guy in a black cape and a goatee, who adjusts his death ray.

So, in my opinion there is a sliding scale of zanyness vs. realism, and one of less evil vs. more evil, and they're connected. On the realistic end, a single murder can be too gruesome to describe, while on the zany end, genocide can be relatively harmless.

Ravens_cry
2009-07-11, 04:31 PM
Oh yes, the creepiest evil is the most banal.
Which scares you more, the dark fiend cackling in his tower, or the man who goes to work, does his job, and comes home to a loving family. He doesn't talk about his job much, but it puts food on the table.
His job is to torture confessions out of people who may or may not have committed a crime.
He always gets a confession.

Madra Rua
2009-07-11, 04:42 PM
my own personal vilest character was my first (and most memorable) spellcaster. CE Necrophiliac Necromancer. I literally picked up a body in the first dungeon and carried it with me until the FINAL battle of the campaign(at which point we were epic level.) I did become a lich along the way, so it may not be as purely evil as it was at first.

Avilan the Grey
2009-07-11, 04:43 PM
Oh yes, the creepiest evil is the most banal.
Which scares you more, the dark fiend cackling in his tower, or the man who goes to work, does his job, and comes home to a loving family. He doesn't talk about his job much, but it puts food on the table.
His job is to torture confessions out of people who may or may not have committed a crime.
He always gets a confession.

Two words: "The Operative".

Madra Rua
2009-07-11, 04:46 PM
Also, (i forgot >.<) i had my own assortment of extra body parts that i carried around. Yes, *I* am that creepy necromancer. My were-rat and drow hands were my favorites. They could reach places that real hands just...couldnt. :smallbiggrin:

PLUN
2009-07-11, 04:50 PM
Evil has the same problem as every other alignment or philosophical bent - how did I team up with these guys and why am I risking my life for and with them? If you can't answer those two questions, and function as a unit for an appropriate period of time (in a one off, it's easier to be 'the shifty one', in a campaign it's time to consider a more intelligent kind of evil/betrayal), then it's probably not going to work out.

Specific political or philosophical bents just won't work with particular story or game concepts, and it's something that needs to be discussed out of game in a fair manner right at character creation, where it is best resolved, and solutions can even be considered. It isn't necessarily an 'evil' problem, ijust happens particularly in games of heroism or some other inhierant concept that the group wants to explore and buy into that evil just isn't a good fit - maybe Captain Genocide isn't going to work well with the rest of the Due Process Roster game.

As for the whole campaign and where the line is drawn in terms of mature content and 'real evil' any book giving content aimed at that audience gives the same advice - make sure all your players are cool with it.

Ravens_cry
2009-07-11, 04:50 PM
Two words: "The Operative".
Two more words: "What's that?"
(does a contraction count as a single word?)

Moriato
2009-07-11, 04:53 PM
What does "too evil" mean, anyway? Too evil compared to what? Is there a Recommended Daily Allowance of evil?

Saph, I would love to sig that

Semidi
2009-07-11, 04:57 PM
The extent of one's evilness should be what everyone is comfortable with. You should make it clear what your limits are. Some people have different ones. Me? I don't really have any, then again, I scare myself sometimes.

ondonaflash
2009-07-11, 04:58 PM
Two more words: "What's that?"
(does a contraction count as a single word?)

The Operative is the primary antagonist of the movie Serenity. A very intriguing character.

Ravens_cry
2009-07-11, 05:03 PM
The Operative is the primary antagonist of the movie Serenity. A very intriguing character.
Gotcha, thanks.:smallsmile:

herrhauptmann
2009-07-11, 05:16 PM
Oh yes, the creepiest evil is the most banal.
Which scares you more, the dark fiend cackling in his tower, or the man who goes to work, does his job, and comes home to a loving family. He doesn't talk about his job much, but it puts food on the table.
His job is to torture confessions out of people who may or may not have committed a crime.
He always gets a confession.

TV Tropes: Punchclock villain (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PunchClockVillain)

Ravens_cry
2009-07-11, 05:36 PM
TV Tropes: Punchclock villain (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PunchClockVillain)
Yes,I know. If played for fear, rather then parody, it's a frightening concept. Most of the real 'villians' of tyrannies have been just that.
Just because they are "just doing their job", doesn't mean they can't do their job well.

Devils_Advocate
2009-07-11, 06:26 PM
I've had characters that have had no value for other life and characters with drug addictions but those are just evil flaws.
Drug addiction isn't evil.

jamminjelly
2009-07-11, 06:53 PM
Drug addiction isn't evil.

Well, I used drugs mentioned in the book of vile deeds, and to be fair, I would occasionally sell drugs and also do things like spike the drinks of NPCs during roleplaying segments, but this never troubled any of the other players because I never went overboard.

Callista
2009-07-11, 06:54 PM
What does "too evil" mean, anyway? Too evil compared to what? Is there a Recommended Daily Allowance of evil? Too evil for the group. If you're playing with a bunch of people who don't want to see you describe slaughtering an orphanage and would not have any fun if you did, then it's too evil. If you're playing Evil in a Neutral/Good group and your evil would create so much conflict that the game stopped being fun for everybody, then it's too evil. There are some things that most people simply wouldn't like having described to them; most people wouldn't have much fun if you were anything more than vague about things like rape or child abuse. I can see making your villains really evil so the players want to defeat them as much as their characters do; but it's a game and it's supposed to be fun and for most groups there'll be some things that'll make them uncomfortable.

If it gets in the way of people having fun, then it's too evil. I once had to stop sending zombies (yeah, as in "the things that aren't even evil in some gameworlds because they're mindless") against some low-level PCs because one of my players absolutely hated zombies; she said they made her want to throw up. Well, you don't do that when you can use perfectly good constructs or other things that can fill the zombie strategical niche just fine.

I once had a neutral druid (with an attitude that "I'll do whatever it takes to get to my goal"... i.e, evil tendencies) torture the guy who just killed her animal companion. That was too evil for my group, so I turned the druid fully evil and had her run off into the wilderness never to be seen again... or was she?... (I really wanted the DM to turn her into a villain, which would've been fun, but we stopped playing. Sad.)

Myrmex
2009-07-11, 07:11 PM
What does "too evil" mean, anyway? Too evil compared to what? Is there a Recommended Daily Allowance of evil?

When the fat, bearded cheeto-stained 30 something next to you goes into detail about raping halflings.

BloodyAngel
2009-07-11, 07:55 PM
There isn't really a "too evil" as evil is a term that changes definition culturally. Alignments in my game are more mutable, and far less important. The world is just too gray to fit into the alignment structure perfectly. That said, I do use alignments as the goals and morals your character ASPIRES to have. The ones he strives for. A paladin tries his hardest to uphold the ideals of law and righteousness. Does he occasionally have to lie? Yes. To his lord? Perhaps. As long as he is still seeking to uphold those ideals, he gets a pass on it. That said, there are things he is forbidden to do ever by his code. Cold-blooded torture... Murder of the defenseless... etc etc.

"Too evil" means nothing. Different groups have different ideas on what and what is not too much. To the average American, violence is easily more acceptable than anything sexual. It's a cultural thing. A group of American gamers would likely find a villain who was a rapist far more vile than a murderer... perhaps even more than a murderer of children... though that draws closer to the line. How many stories have had villages burned to the ground and slain to a man? That implies a LOT of dead children. But it hits people harder if you, say... mention a child's charred body on a pike outside town as a warning. That turns your villain from a normal evil guy to a monster. The only difference is in presentation. Some groups would be uncomfortable with that kind of brutality. There isn't really "too evil" so much as "too uncomfortable". If it makes your players feel awkward and uncomfortable, it's too much.

Case in point, I play with my boyfriend, and we run some pretty adult games at times. I don't mean playful sexy games, I mean games where things like that aren't ignored or sugar-coated. (Ok, the first kind too sometimes) I like things very dark. As point, the current game we're playing together involves the warhammer setting, and is set on the High Elves island of Ulthuan, during a Dark Elf invasion. It's more a story than a game, as we're each playing a character or two on each side of the conflict. Slavery, rape and a slew of war crimes are fairly common... as half the mood of the game is "War is not fun and exciting. War is brutal" The dark elves are brutal invaders who do everything they can to break the high elves will to fight. I won't get into the details, but let's just say it's not something you should ever consider adding to your games with any group of people unless you know them REALLY well. The high elf side is slightly more heroic, but also grim and darkly determined to fight on, despite the horrors around them, and quite a few are raging, and hate-filled towards their dark kin... and we all know what hate can lead people to do. Thus, they've done their share of horrible things in return... including one of them snapping and paying back the wife of the dark elf warlord who... er.... ravaged... his sister, in kind. Said dark elf warlord was the "hero" that was being played on his side of the fence.

I wouldn't suggest any of you add things like that to game... but that's our level. We know each other very well... going on 8 years now, and we're mature adults who like dark stories. You just need to find the level of your group. Evil is just a word, it means different things to different people. So is "good". That's the reason for ten million alignment debates, and why evil groups are harder to run. The real world doesn't fit well into the mold of the alignment system. Instead of asking what's "too evil", instead ask your group what offends and upsets them, and what they don't want to see in game... and take it from there.

Yukitsu
2009-07-11, 08:20 PM
You're too evil when it catches up to you and kills you.

Knaight
2009-07-11, 08:37 PM
Comfort levels do vary with players, and its nice to find them out before hand, otherwise you will accidentally cross lines and bother people. I've done that before, by accident, and have reformed what I'm willing to use as a result. For instance an unflinching realistic portrayal at the horrors of biological warfare crosses the line for some of my players. One of my darker campaign settings did the same thing. The short version of the history was that religious extremists in real world religions(lets call them religion A and religion B) started to get very common, and once space travel became feasible religion A caused a mass exodus of religion B. A few hundred years later religion A, religion B, and religion C(who were also exiled in mass) are now at war, fundamentalism is everywhere, and secular peace keeping groups are having little effect. Enter the players, as a secular peace keeping group administrators, arguing for peace. The campaign ended when they managed to convince a religious leader of group B who had caused a lot of warfare that the war needed to stop. Consumed by guilt the religious leader committed suicide, and was seen as an assassinated martyr. Biological and nuclear arsenals started seeing massive use and humanity was nearly obliterated in a wide spread nuclear holocaust. Everyone else slowly died from the various engineered viruses involved.

As far as my players were concerned there was way to much evil on all sides, and the entire thing was too grim and depressing. The ending of the campaign cemented this, and that's when people started mentioning things. The general consensus at the end was that "It was an awesome story, and very deep, with a fun campaign. Never touch any setting anywhere near as dark as that ever again."

Saph
2009-07-11, 10:01 PM
Saph, I would love to sig that

Sure, go for it!


When the fat, bearded cheeto-stained 30 something next to you goes into detail about raping halflings.

That's probably a sign, yeah.

- Saph

Steward
2009-07-11, 10:11 PM
As has been said before, the point is to make the game fun for everyone. There's no point in playing a D&D campaign that is so tiresome and revolting that you dread each campaign and stop looking forward to even seeing the people you play with on the street. Even if you have evil-aligned PCs or a brutal campaign like the one mentioned by BloodyAngel, you shouldn't need professional therapy to get over a well-run campaign.

Myrmex
2009-07-11, 10:11 PM
Oh yes, the creepiest evil is the most banal.
Which scares you more, the dark fiend cackling in his tower, or the man who goes to work, does his job, and comes home to a loving family. He doesn't talk about his job much, but it puts food on the table.
His job is to torture confessions out of people who may or may not have committed a crime.
He always gets a confession.

Everyone compartmentalizes. I don't see why it's hard to accept that the capacity for good and evil exists at the same time within people.

Dark Herald
2009-07-11, 10:33 PM
The short version of the history was that religious extremists in real world religions(lets call them religion A and religion B) started to get very common, and once space travel became feasible religion A caused a mass exodus of religion B. A few hundred years later religion A, religion B, and religion C(who were also exiled in mass) are now at war, fundamentalism is everywhere, and secular peace keeping groups are having little effect. Enter the players, as a secular peace keeping group administrators, arguing for peace. The campaign ended when they managed to convince a religious leader of group B who had caused a lot of warfare that the war needed to stop. Consumed by guilt the religious leader committed suicide, and was seen as an assassinated martyr. Biological and nuclear arsenals started seeing massive use and humanity was nearly obliterated in a wide spread nuclear holocaust. Everyone else slowly died from the various engineered viruses involved.

That would bore most of my players. Granted, they're all honor roll teenagers and we do tend to like talking about that. Just not at the gaming table.

I love that setting Idea. :smalltongue:

Stormthorn
2009-07-12, 12:43 AM
my own personal vilest character was my first (and most memorable) spellcaster. CE Necrophiliac Necromancer. I literally picked up a body in the first dungeon and carried it with me until the FINAL battle of the campaign(at which point we were epic level.) I did become a lich along the way, so it may not be as purely evil as it was at first.

Im working on the idea of playing as a necro necro, but my huy wasnt going to be evil. Any suggestions?

L'intrigant
2009-07-12, 12:55 AM
Hm...necrophilia is kinda...deviant. Book of Vile Darkness has it listed in perversions, and you can even get a feat and a PrC for it. Either way, the game assumes it's evil. The game also assumes that all necromancers are evil anyway, so we have something to work towards now.

An interesting concept to prove your necrophiliac isn't evil: have him only screw willing corpses, as in undead with INT scores who actually ask for it. That wouldn't just be non-evil, but probably a genuinely good act. Lawful is easy to pull off, but for good you have to stretch a bit.

The one thing the rules don't want you to do is make undead. Animate Dead and both Create Undead spells are inherently evil by spell description, but check out the Libris Mortis. That might have some stuff you can use.

Xenogears
2009-07-12, 01:12 AM
Im working on the idea of playing as a necro necro, but my huy wasnt going to be evil. Any suggestions?

For an interesting one have him have a dead lover who he turned into an undead that he still sleeps with. Kinda like Faust from Shaman King but with sex....

Halaster
2009-07-12, 03:58 AM
Everyone compartmentalizes. I don't see why it's hard to accept that the capacity for good and evil exists at the same time within people.
Capacity is one thing, activity is another. We don't usually do all we're capable of. Instead we pick one side - nice or naughty - and go with that. Individual acts may cross the line, but few people actually make a routine of switching back and forth.
And the level of "compartmentalization" neede to be a cold-blooded torturer during the day and a loving family man in the evening is pretty sacry. And yes, evil. More evil than a person who grew up in a world of hatred and pain and knows nothing else. Such a person might invoke pity, even though we call them evil. But a man who knows what his victims could have, how good their lives could be, if it weren't for him and still hurts them, such a man is truly vile.

hamishspence
2009-07-12, 04:15 AM
Terry Pratchett stressed that this kind of compartmentalization was part of the normal human capacity "there is no atrocity committed by the vilest cackling villain that cannot be duplicated by a kindly family man"

Dixieboy
2009-07-12, 05:14 AM
Drug addiction isn't evil.seeing as drugs in D&D include such things as concentrated pain in liquid form, extracted from an unwilling individual.
I'd say drug addiction is at least a "non good" thing.

hamishspence
2009-07-12, 05:17 AM
You could probably raise several D&D-centric objections to the practice:

LG: It leads a person into committing crimes to feed their habit
NG: Its self-destructive- the drugs damage the person
CG: Addiction subverts the free will of the addict, making them a slave to the habit.

Just a guess.

Yrcrazypa
2009-07-12, 05:42 AM
This is something that my father has done when he played evil campaigns.

So the DM said that Trolls need oxygen to be able to regenerate properly after one of the party, not sure who, said that they wanted to cut up a troll and can it. This lead the group to getting a massive amount of "mystery meat" and selling it for cheap to a lot of peasants, as a cheap alternative to other meat. Of course, they never said what it was, and I can't imagine it tasted good, but hey, if you can't afford anything else. So they got rich off of selling this mystery meat, and killed hundreds in the process. I'd imagine trolls were everywhere when they were done with it, and destroyed many a village.

This is the type of evil I'd like to do, a group of comrades in evil working together to get as rich and powerful as possible, while leaving no trail. Who would think that it was the group of adventurers that passed by killing a village, when it was the trolls who actually did it? Quite a vile thing, and quite awesome as well.

Halaster
2009-07-12, 06:09 AM
Terry Pratchett stressed that this kind of compartmentalization was part of the normal human capacity "there is no atrocity committed by the vilest cackling villain that cannot be duplicated by a kindly family man"
Quite true. I think Mr. Pratchett would agree that the latter is far more disturbing. Hits closer to home I guess. Reminds us that we could be that kindly family man. Or that the nice elderly gentleman in the drab suit sitting next to us in the bus might. Scares the living hell out of me, for one. Too evil.

About the trolls: if you eat the stuff fast enough, it should be digestible. After all, trolls can't regenerate acid damage.

Ernir
2009-07-12, 07:51 AM
How evil is too evil?

I ask my players to stay away from rape. That's pretty much it.

PrismaticPIA
2009-07-12, 11:08 AM
I played a chaotic evil cleric who systematically kidnapped my party members, tied them up, craved the symbol of my deity into their flesh, and then sacrificed them to my deity.

I got through 2-3 parties before people started making characters with contingency spells on them.

JonestheSpy
2009-07-12, 03:39 PM
That's right, we tied up the parents and cast Ghoul Hunger on the children. Do note: the parents were spies and Ghoul Hunger specifically states that you are unaware of what is happening. The children were innocent, the parents were not.



I have to say, I really, really don't understand why anyone would think this is fun.

Devils_Advocate
2009-07-12, 07:09 PM
Well, I used drugs mentioned in the book of vile deeds, and to be fair, I would occasionally sell drugs and also do things like spike the drinks of NPCs during roleplaying segments

seeing as drugs in D&D include such things as concentrated pain in liquid form, extracted from an unwilling individual.
I'd say drug addiction is at least a "non good" thing.

You could probably raise several D&D-centric objections to the practice:

LG: It leads a person into committing crimes to feed their habit
Torturing people, spiking drinks, and some crimes are evil. Drug addiction isn't.

I have a mild caffeine addiction, for example. This isn't evil.


NG: Its self-destructive- the drugs damage the person
Not all addictive drugs are harmful.


CG: Addiction subverts the free will of the addict, making them a slave to the habit.
That's to do with the morality of getting someone addicted, not the morality of being addicted.


Capacity is one thing, activity is another. We don't usually do all we're capable of. Instead we pick one side - nice or naughty - and go with that. Individual acts may cross the line, but few people actually make a routine of switching back and forth.
Huh? Ordinary people who are kind to their neighbors are perfectly content to support sweatshop labor, cruelty to animals, pollution, etc. through their choices as consumers. We do such things without really giving it a second thought because those sorts of evil deeds are considered normal, acceptable behavior in our society. But a lack of direct involvement in the activities one supports doesn't make one's choices any more moral than keeping the slaves out of sight.

Normal people are Lawful Neutral or Neutral and commit both Good and Evil deeds. The practice of elemental binding in Eberron would be another example of socially acceptable Evil. What's acceptable will vary from society to society, but human societies will tend to accept if not expect some form of Evil or another, since humans are Lawfulish Neutral, not Good.

Quietus
2009-07-12, 07:46 PM
Huh? Ordinary people who are kind to their neighbors are perfectly content to support sweatshop labor, cruelty to animals, pollution, etc. through their choices as consumers. We do such things without really giving it a second thought because those sorts of evil deeds are considered normal, acceptable behavior in our society. But a lack of direct involvement in the activities one supports doesn't make one's choices any more moral than keeping the slaves out of sight.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with this. You're suggesting that because, say, I buy jeans at Wal-Mart, where they may have been woven in some sweatshop on another continent, I'm committing an Evil act? It can't just be because, say, I don't make enough money to reasonably be able to feed, clothe, and house myself while still paying the additional money to buy products that were created right here on Canadian soil, by well-paid workers? I'm sorry, but I don't think it's an Evil act to choose to spend $20 on a pair of pants instead of $40 or $60, when the $40/60 option means not eating that week.

Coidzor
2009-07-12, 08:42 PM
^: At least, it's definitely debatable whether that's an evil act or not.

Hmm, I generally have a pretty visceral and negative reaction to rape, so that's not something I really want to think about or deal with. I find it rather unpleasant even right now to mention my distaste for it. :/ Simple wanton violence I can much more easily disassociate from any kind of moral discomfit. Torture... sorta varies, depends on the level of evil doing the torturing, the type of tortures used (I'm not familiar with many, really), and whether it's pertinent really to the story.

In terms of party cohesion, I'd say that I have no problem with standard selfish, cruel, vicious individuals working with more altruistic ones, as long as they abide by the player compact and the genesis of the party fits the more evil-inclined characters either being driven to cooperate with the more good-inclined or the evil-inclined characters have a reason to be disguising themselves and adventuring with them for some advantageous end.

Usually the acquisition of power, I would say, or the threat of a bigger fish.

Then again, I'm kind of hazy on what it means to have an evil alignment in DnD terms without being made out of evil. Mostly due to alignment fights I've followed further muddling it up so that I didn't just come up with my own interpretation and damn anyone else. I think.

Set
2009-07-12, 08:51 PM
The practice of elemental binding in Eberron would be another example of socially acceptable Evil.

Getting away from Eberron-specific, in the core game there are Golems, animated by imprisoning living elemental spirits in them that sometimes get so outraged by their treatment that they go on berserk killing sprees, bludgeoning people with permanantly unhealing wounds or spewing forth green clouds of deadly poison.

This is not an Evil act. Not even a little bit naughty, actually. *Not even when the Golem is made from stitched together corpses!*

Animating a dog's corpse with negative energy (which, per the Manual of Planes is a purely neutral energy type, not even *mildly* evil-aligned), no spirit, soul, elemental critter or enslavement involved in any way, *is* Evil. Doesn't matter that the dog zombie will *never* go berserk, or attack people without orders, or malevolently hate all life (since it's got Int 0, making it about as capable of malevolence as a pack of dental floss), or flip out and kill people, or that there is no spirit imprisoned within it, wailing for release. The dog's soul is off in doggie heaven somewhere (elysium, probably), blissfully unaware that it's body is tirelessly pulling your sled. Evil, evil, evil! Not just 'evil,' but [Evil], as in you *will* change alignment for casting this spell regularly.

Alignment, in D&D, is borked.

Play any of the fine games that don't use it, such as GURPS or Mutants & Masterminds or Mage the Ascencion or Trinity and you'll find that games that utterly ignore alignment don't degenerate into crazy back-stabbing fests without everyone writing a 'G' on their character sheet to them in check. Unless the players are immature asshats, in which case alignment wouldn't have helped anyway, and they would have played the sort of Paladin that kills the rest of the party for interfering in their honorable single-combat, or 'attacking their prisoner' or some such lameness (which, in my two decades of D&D experience is *vastly* more common than interparty conflict coming from evil characters).

The only 'too evil' for me is stuff that I, or players at the table, consider tacky, uncomfortable or just gross. I don't need to hear anyone's sexual fantasies at the table, and I don't watch 'torture porn' like the Saw movies, so I'm equally uninterested in hearing graphic details of 'enhanced interrogation tactics.' Make an Intimidate roll please, I'll add a circumstance modifier if you want to say that your character is being 'creative.' (And it might not be a circumstance *bonus,* since torture just makes people lie to make it stop...)

Back in 1st and 2nd edition, a Paladin had special powers above and beyond those of a Fighter (as did a Ranger), and the alignment restrictions served a (dubious, but at least rationalizable) balance purpose. In 3rd edition, a Fighter uses the same XP table as a Paladin, and gains a bunch of Feats to counter the Paladin (and Rangers) special abilities, making them (again, dubiously) balanced *without alignment restrictions.*

And so, the alignment restrictions for the various classes, most particularly the Bard, Barbarian, Monk, Warlock, etc. can readily be thrown out the window. They aren't needed for balance, and the 'fluff' is utterly restrictive.

What if my Monk is a chaotic free-wheeling drunken master?

What if my proud traditionalist Barbarian works himself into a cold, calculating battle-frenzy, like an athlete 'entering the zone?'

What if my lawful Bard is a royal herald, who delivers the dictates and legal proclamations of the Court? What if, instead, he's a tactician, providing inspiration in the form of strategic advice drawn from the many tomes of history that he's read? Or an evangelical follower of Heironeous, who exhorts his allies into acts of glory, in the name of righteousness and chivalry, by reading selected inspirational passages from the Lawgivers holy book?

What if my Warlock gets her powers from the blessings of Archons, and embraces both law and goodness, as befits the pact she has made to shine light upon the darkness in service to her celestial patrons?

There's a ton of stuff that opens up if you abandon alignment as a straightjacket, and consider it instead a guideline.

Alignment. An idea whose time is long past, IMO.

Just play your character.

Milskidasith
2009-07-12, 08:52 PM
I agree with the above poster who stated it isn't evil to buy jeans at a low price because they may or may not have been made with sweatshop labor. Even if you ignore the fact that not supporting sweatshop labor would mean being non-lawful (no clothes at all) or making your own clothes (which is not something most people can do), and even if you accept the fact that indirectly supporting evil is, in itself, evil, you still have to consider this; is sweatshop labor evil? The thing is, sweatshop laborers aren't forced to work there. They generally get paid more than subsistence farmers, for similarly crappy working conditions. They generally don't have the skills required to do anything better.

Sweatshop labor is, by all means, a neutral act; it's not like you are buying clothes made from the skin of enslaved child prostitutes, you are just buying normal clothes made by somebody who is trying to make ends meet in a country that doesn't have all the benefits of yours.

Swordguy
2009-07-12, 09:02 PM
When your players or DM ask you to stop, you're being too evil.

You don't have a right to have fun at your group's expense.

Callista
2009-07-12, 09:36 PM
Getting away from Eberron-specific, in the core game there are Golems, animated by imprisoning living elemental spirits in them that sometimes get so outraged by their treatment that they go on berserk killing sprees, bludgeoning people with permanantly unhealing wounds or spewing forth green clouds of deadly poison.

This is not an Evil act. Not even a little bit naughty, actually. *Not even when the Golem is made from stitched together corpses!*

Animating a dog's corpse with negative energy (which, per the Manual of Planes is a purely neutral energy type, not even *mildly* evil-aligned), no spirit, soul, elemental critter or enslavement involved in any way, *is* Evil. Doesn't matter that the dog zombie will *never* go berserk, or attack people without orders, or malevolently hate all life (since it's got Int 0, making it about as capable of malevolence as a pack of dental floss), or flip out and kill people, or that there is no spirit imprisoned within it, wailing for release. The dog's soul is off in doggie heaven somewhere (elysium, probably), blissfully unaware that it's body is tirelessly pulling your sled. Evil, evil, evil! Not just 'evil,' but [Evil], as in you *will* change alignment for casting this spell regularly.

Alignment, in D&D, is borked.No. It really isn't. Well, no more than the way magic is too powerful or the way you can exploit rule loopholes to create things like Pun-Pun. Most of the time, alignment works just fine. The descriptions of the alignments work fine to define what the alignments mean. What you're pointing out are the exceptions--the non-evilness of enslaving elementals, the evil animated corpses that aren't actually malevolent, the poison use that's tagged evil when it should be chaotic. These things can easily be fixed, though! The houserules are ten times easier than fixing overpowered magic. You're the DM. Okay. Declare it: Zombies aren't evil; binding elementals is; using poison is chaotic, not evil. It's that easy. "Broken", it is not. These are hardly even surface scratches.

Steward
2009-07-12, 10:13 PM
Sweatshop labor is, by all means, a neutral act; it's not like you are buying clothes made from the skin of enslaved child prostitutes, you are just buying normal clothes made by somebody who is trying to make ends meet in a country that doesn't have all the benefits of yours.

What if you did buy clothes made from the skin of babies? Would that make you evil? I mean, the clothes already existed and weren't custom-made for you; they would have been made regardless of you buying them. What if the babies had died of natural causes, or were taken from people who would left them for dead anyway? What if you sold these clothes and used the money towards some neutral purpose, like building condos in Greyhawk? Could your character slide to Neutral in any of those circumstances?



Alignment, in D&D, is borked.

Borked, maybe, but as has been said before you can easily house-rule it, and it's easier than fixing overpowered fighters or sorcerers who don't have enough spell slots.

Knaight
2009-07-12, 10:25 PM
Comfort levels do vary with players, and its nice to find them out before hand, otherwise you will accidentally cross lines and bother people. I've done that before, by accident, and have reformed what I'm willing to use as a result. For instance an unflinching realistic portrayal at the horrors of biological warfare crosses the line for some of my players. One of my darker campaign settings did the same thing. The short version of the history was that religious extremists in real world religions(lets call them religion A and religion B) started to get very common, and once space travel became feasible religion A caused a mass exodus of religion B. A few hundred years later religion A, religion B, and religion C(who were also exiled in mass) are now at war, fundamentalism is everywhere, and secular peace keeping groups are having little effect. Enter the players, as a secular peace keeping group administrators, arguing for peace. The campaign ended when they managed to convince a religious leader of group B who had caused a lot of warfare that the war needed to stop. Consumed by guilt the religious leader committed suicide, and was seen as an assassinated martyr. Biological and nuclear arsenals started seeing massive use and humanity was nearly obliterated in a wide spread nuclear holocaust. Everyone else slowly died from the various engineered viruses involved. "

That would bore most of my players. Granted, they're all honor roll teenagers and we do tend to like talking about that. Just not at the gaming table.

I love that setting Idea. :smalltongue:

Its difficult to pull off successfully, and works best as a relatively short campaign. It also takes a fair amount of prep work(which I absolutely hate doing and usually avoid). Still, it worked well. Just don't run it at a convention or anything, people will be offended. It needed real world religions, and it needed major real world religions, and for people who would react negatively to descriptions of extremists in authority of those religions wouldn't work. My group consists of moderates, atheists, and people who are more than willing to accept that religious fundamentalism can happen, has happened, can and has happened with positions of authority historically, and could feasibly happen again, so there were no real problems on that point. I just ended up making it a bit too bleak for some of them.

Myrmex
2009-07-12, 10:36 PM
Capacity is one thing, activity is another. We don't usually do all we're capable of. Instead we pick one side - nice or naughty - and go with that.

Any evidence for that, or are you condemning every volunteer soldier who has seen combat to a life of villainy?


Individual acts may cross the line, but few people actually make a routine of switching back and forth.

We switch back and forth constantly. Life is a constant litany of trespasses. We forgive ourselves and move on.


Terry Pratchett stressed that this kind of compartmentalization was part of the normal human capacity "there is no atrocity committed by the vilest cackling villain that cannot be duplicated by a kindly family man"

It's the human condition.

You guys need to read more period literature. Humans love a good hanging or beheading or lynching or putting a black man in chains and burning him in gasoline soaked tires.


You don't have a right to have fun at your group's expense.

You do if you're the only DM in town. :smallamused:

Milskidasith
2009-07-12, 11:01 PM
What if you did buy clothes made from the skin of babies? Would that make you evil? I mean, the clothes already existed and weren't custom-made for you; they would have been made regardless of you buying them. What if the babies had died of natural causes, or were taken from people who would left them for dead anyway? What if you sold these clothes and used the money towards some neutral purpose, like building condos in Greyhawk? Could your character slide to Neutral in any of those circumstances?

The thing is, D&D doesn't do economics. If you are the only epic level character in the world, you can still haul a few thousand tons of gold into a shop in any town and buy epic level magic items worth more than an NPC shopkeeper can make in a few thousand lifetimes. There is no supply and demand. So in D&D, if, for some reason, there were clothes made from tortured babies skin, buying it or not wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter if your clothes were made of pure supernatural goodness or human skin, your purchase would have no impact (instead of minimal impact, like in real life) on whether or not the clothes would continue to be made. D&D just can't represent situations like that. Granted, it would be evil in theory, because you seem to be supporting evil causes, but in D&D it really doesn't matter where your gold goes because it all disappears and somehow no matter how useless or specific items are, they are made in bulk and are at every shop, everywhere.

But in real life... yes, it would be an evil act to support making clothes out of tortured humans because your money would cause the suppliers of such clothes to make a slightly increased profit so it is a better idea for them to make more clothes. In real life, it would not be economically feasible to make clothes out of dead babies you find lying around, because there wouldn't be enough materials to make them, not to mention dead bodies are a complex morality problem in real life anyway. So, despite the fact you are playing devil's advocate here, there are concrete answers to your arguments.

I would also appreciate it if you didn't say something like "what if there were enough random dead bodies to make the clothes out of" because that would be so distant from RL and D&D economics that morality, an already extremely subjective subject, would simply not apply.