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Person_Man
2010-01-25, 04:06 PM
So many interesting classes, PrC, and feats require that you be Evil. And let's be honest - some times it's just plain fun to be Evil, even if there aren't any specific game mechanics connected to it. But most gaming groups are a mix of Good and Neutral characters. And Paladins, a somewhat popular class, isn't allowed to party with Evil. So being Evil can sometimes be difficult.

Now I've played the full spectrum in my years of roleplaying. And these are the solutions I've come up with:

Play Lawful Evil. Be honest, loyal, and respectful of the law, but be a greedy bastard who places no value on life and is devoid of mercy and compassion. In most cases, you'll have no problem fitting in with a typical party - which spends most of it's time breaking and entering, systematically killing everything inside, and then stealing everything that's not built into the ground (or detaching valuable things that are).
Pretend not to be Evil: You're really in this for the money, and enjoy the high level of violence. These do-good-er chumps help you do that. So you create a Good or Neutral cover identity, and only do Evil things when no one else is watching. For extra points dress in bright cloths, wear a holy symbol of Pelor or Heironeous, and be elaborately polite to people, while secretly plotting the destruction of all mankind...
Be a Traitor: The reason that you're following these Good people around is so that you can feed information to the Evil side and/or betray them when the time is right. Note that you can only do this precisely once per gaming group, because after the first time, no one will ever trust any character you ever play again.
Be Nuts: This falls more into the Chaotic Neutral category. But it's completely possible that a Chaotic Evil character would also be bat guano crazy.
Convince Everyone Else to Be Evil: Play as a thieves guild, or as a band of mercenaries, or as a group bent on world domination. Trust me, it's fun. But since most of the default materials (including 80% of the monsters) are written in a way that assumes you're playing a Good-ish party, it does get old after a while.
Fudge it: This is perhaps the easiest thing to do. Say that you're Evil, but act Neutral. Unless your DM is an alignment teetotaler, he probably won't notice or care.
Be complex: This is perhaps the hardest thing to do. Play Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil, but be childhood or situational friends with the other party members. Occasionally do good things, knowing that they're outweighed by your more vial deeds.


So I thought it would be interesting to hear about other people's Evil character stories. Did I miss any possibilities? Have you found out that a certain Evil character option has worked well for you? In particular, I'm interested in stories about groups that have had success playing NE or CE characters in mostly Good groups, to see if it's viable in the long term.

Discuss.

Myani
2010-01-25, 04:17 PM
From what I've heard, there's no reason you can't do both C) and E), and that's often what E) devolves into anyway, given enough opportunity and power.

It would certainly make for a memorable experience: you double cross your party, only to find that everyone else is frantically trying to do the same thing . . .

valadil
2010-01-25, 04:21 PM
Pretend not to be Evil: You're really in this for the money, and enjoy the high level of violence. These do-good-er chumps help you do that. So you create a Good or Neutral cover identity, and only do Evil things when no one else is watching. For extra points dress in bright cloths, wear a holy symbol of Pelor or Heironeous, and be elaborately polite to people, while secretly plotting the destruction of all mankind...
Fudge it: This is perhaps the easiest thing to do. Say that you're Evil, but act Neutral. Unless your DM is an alignment teetotaler, he probably won't notice or care.




I usually prefer this kind of evil. I think that even the most evil bastard ever concieved would act LG 99% of the time. Evil is about self interest. Avoiding the wrath of overly enthusiastic paladins is absolutely something a self absorbed person would do. Act LG to avoid suspicion and only commit evil when it serves a purpose and won't get you shanked.

Lysander
2010-01-25, 04:25 PM
There's another type of evil you missed: an evil person that thinks they're good, and is actually considered good by many people in their society:

{Scrubbed}

nekomata2
2010-01-25, 04:25 PM
You have Convince Everyone Else to be Evil, but you forgot the IC version of that, Corrupt them. Your goal with the party is to take these powerful souls (or even better, shining beacons of good) and slowly corrupt them until they are as evil as you are. Bonus points if you get their souls out of the deal.

Side note: Fiend of corruption would be funny for that, make a deal with all your party members, you get their souls when they die so no one else can. They better hope you like them more than your evil tendencies.

Edit: Lys, that list is pure evil....nice:smallbiggrin:

Optimystik
2010-01-25, 04:32 PM
"Fudge it" is my technique with many ckasses that have retardedly arbitrary alignment restrictions. I see no reason why Ur-Priests can't be neutral, Hexblades can't be CG, or Warlocks can't be NG.

deuxhero
2010-01-25, 04:34 PM
g:Other:Nuke the system its self. I was never that good to start with.

Glass Mouse
2010-01-25, 04:37 PM
"Be complex" is definitely the way to go.

Another way is to put a lot more emphasis on the first letter of your alignment.
Be LAWFUL evil, not lawful EVIL. Uphold values, tradition, laws, but be a real bastard doing it. Heck, play your cards right, and you might even work perfectly alongside the right kind of paladin.
Be CHAOTIC evil, not chaotic EVIL. Quest to achieve freedom for all (after all, you're the strongest, so anachy would definitely be to your advantage) and, again, be a bastard doing it.
In short, have the law/chaos be the goal for the character, and have the good/evil be the methods.

Personally, I like playing characters who aren't actively dedicated to evil. They don't aspire to be evil, they just are.
My drow character is a fine example of this - she doesn't TRY to live up to drow reputation or anything. She just can't help it if her first thought is "Ooh, suffering!"
Naturally, she has to be smart. She has to suppress these thoughts, at least until there is a safe outlet. She's not as evil as they get, but she's not a nice person; not in any definition of the word.
(This may be what you call "Fudge it", but really... Why write evil, then not play it at all? Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose? Edit: Oops, forgot about alignment restricted classes. My bad.)

Grumman
2010-01-25, 04:47 PM
I view the Good-Evil axis as being asymmetrical, which does make it a lot easier to play an evil character. Frankly, it should be impossible for an Evil character to "Fall", except to piss off a deity with direct control over his access to power. Unless you're supposed to be a paragon of general bastardry (Paladin of Tyranny/Slaughter), you should be able to do as much Good as you like, as long as it doesn't go against your deity's wishes. And if you're a non-Divine character or an Ur-Priest, you don't even need to worry about that.

hamishspence
2010-01-25, 04:54 PM
pretty much. While paladin of tyranny/slaughter is a bit stuck, most of the other Evil classes, variant classes, prestige classes, etc have no penalty for doing Good acts.

Even Vile feats don't have a line saying "you lose this feat if you ever commit a good act".

In general, there is an element of asymmetry.

It seems to be a common trope to have the Evil guy who thinks they are still Good (but crossed the line long ago, in their Well Intentioned Extremism)- several of the NPCs in 3.5 sources seem to fall into that category.

The "Good guy who thinks he's still doing evil and serving evil" though, seems much rarer. Practically unheard-of, in fact.

Satyr
2010-01-25, 04:59 PM
I view the Good-Evil axis as being asymmetrical, which does make it a lot easier to play an evil character.

Well, it should be more difficult to be good. Being good means that you try constantly to improve yourself, or the lot of the people around you, or at least tryin to make the world a better place. For being evil, it is enough to just don't care.

I am not a friend of the allignment system, and only use it as a cosmic affiliation, not some kind of indicator of actual morals (so, evry usual sentient creature is true neutral by default, while every Aasimar is good- even when she is a cannibalsitc psychopath who likes to torture other people, and a kind and generous undead will still be evil), but actually you can be quite "evil" and still not being a jerk, or otherwise you might only try to make everything alright for everybody and still be an annoyance whereever you appear.

Lycanthromancer
2010-01-25, 05:41 PM
I've had two main characters that have been evil; the first one was my favorite character of all time.

He was a LE blue goblin (shaper/constructor, not that it much matters), who was cruel, a coward, a bigot, and a braggart, but he enjoyed having a great deal of structure to his life. He was extremely intelligent, and although he wasn't the strongest in the party (by far), he thought outside the box so well (and portrayed his exploits so effectively after the fact) that the rest of the party greatly disliked him but wouldn't kick him out because he was so useful. Outwardly he liked who he was, but there was always a nagging doubt that he wasn't as great as he pretended to be (hence the bullying and the constant bragging, though the abuse that blues normally receive from their goblin kin certainly helped matters along). He had the opportunity to betray the party for his own personal gain, but refused to do so because he was loyal to his "friends" (and felt a certain affinity for them, since they'd saved his life so often and actually treated him with sincere, if grudging, respect). He screamed colorful (and funny) insults and euphemisms during a fight, and was incredible at battlefield control and troubleshooting (in lieu of the party not having a rogue). My role in the campaign ended when I couldn't make it to games, but near the end he was blackmailed into betraying the party (though I fully planned on doublecrossing the BBEG; with any luck, it would've been to her ultimate downfall).

The second was merely a psychopath. Neutral Evil, he was the genetic experiment of the illithids, and had been tortured experimentally from a very young age, to the point where the only pleasure he derived from anything was giving and receiving pain. He knew it was wrong, but his emotions were so utterly empty that he had no inherent conception of morality. He wanted to be better, but needed constant reminders of what the right thing to do in most situations would be. The fact that he had a nightmare mount bonded to him (that tried to help him, but often gave him horrifically bad advice) didn't help much. I strongly considered using the rest of the group as a moral crutch, but the campaign never got that far for me (unfortunately).

I like playing relatively realistic characters. If they're evil, they have reason (or at least justification, if only within their own heads).

Takronix
2010-01-25, 06:13 PM
Convince Everyone Else to Be Evil: Play as a thieves guild, or as a band of mercenaries, or as a group bent on world domination. Trust me, it's fun. But since most of the default materials (including 80% of the monsters) are written in a way that assumes you're playing a Good-ish party, it does get old after a while.

This is something that caught my eye. This isn't true at all. If anyone is capable of doing same alignment violence, it's evil. Just read the fluff about the abyss and you'll get the idea.

MlleRouge
2010-01-25, 06:30 PM
Complexities of the Alignment system aside, I'm quite fond of evil characters. I tend to view alignment more as a general description of your tendencies than a law of how you should behave, and this is the prevailing view of my group as a whole, so alignment is pretty subjective.

I think there are plenty of valid ways to get an evil character in a mostly good or neutral party, as long as the players are cool with it and know not to be Stupid Evil or Stupid Good about the whole ordeal. My personal favorite is my Lawful Evil cleric of Hextor who thinks he's a good guy. He thinks of himself as an opportunist and pessimist, but otherwise out to do what's (ultimately) right. May have to stomp on a few people along the way, though.

Zaydos
2010-01-25, 06:41 PM
I've only gotten to play an evil character once, for one adventure. He was a half-fiend drow ninja (rogue?)/assassin (using CR in place of LA). Somehow he had found himself in the middle of a high magic elf city (the exact place he never wanted to be) and for my part the session was spent getting out of there before the elves hung me up to dry. The other PCs... well one was a Succubus Fighter who went off with a deck of many things and a hengeyokai cleric who went on the actual adventure (I joined up with him near the end but we didn't play it again). He was supposed to be Lawful Evil, I won't betray my allies since that leads to a bad reputation and as an assassin I live on my reputation (if I betray an employer for moar shinies and it ever gets out I'm out of a my living), who did not want anything to do with elves since they would kill him if they could and weren't worth the hassle.

I want to play or DM an evil campaign sometime.

Randel
2010-01-25, 07:45 PM
I remember playing a play-by-post game quite a while ago (maybe a few years...) in which I played a Chaotic Evil Female Halfling Artificer with a Veloceraptor mount.

I pretty much played as neutral or good in that... with a bit of sneaky evil thrown in.

She knew Goblin (I tend to always have my character know goblinoid... or at least a few monstrous languages in addition to the common 'good guy' ones) so after we defeated a few goblins and took them prisoner then I was the one to interrogate them. I basically stood there threatening to torture, main, and feed them to my dinosaur if they didn't cooperate. All while acting calm and sweet and standing not six feet away from a paladin of Pelor who a little bit ago had given a big speech to someone about how all intelligent creatures should be treated with respect and dignity.

Also, my veloceraptors name was Buster... short for Ball Buster (I never tell that to people I plan on being on friendly terms with).

We got into a big fight with Goblins and started looting the place, one of the other players found a pair of goblin children who belonged to the chieftain we killed. The paladin was searching somewhere else and there was a little argument between three of us (one sort of chaotic good guy who wanted to kill them, one lawful good friend to all living things sorceress who wanted them alive and cared for, and me who was planning to 'escort them to the goblins escape route') I was secretly planning to lead the two goblin kids away and when nobody was looking snap their necks, put them in a bag, and dump them in the river... possibly blaming it on rival goblins or something if someone found out. You know, because you don't just leave goblins around to grow up and I didn't want to upset the good guys on our team.

But then the Chaotic Good guy stomps on the goblin children right infront of the friend-to-all-living-things sorceress and kills them. Sorceress freaks out, I exit stage right and tell the Paladin what happened. Paladin comes back and there's a big argument between them... which was rather loud and long... and we know that the goblin tribe was merely being controlled by a powerful wizard (who had teleported us into cages just a little bit ago).

Funnily enough, I had the Bag of Holding that was filled with all the loot we had gathered from the place and could easily have took off with it. But instead I pointed out that we should postpone our infighting until after we deal with the powerful wizard who can teleport us into jail cells with his mind.

Team gets going again, we fight the wizard (I shoot him in the groin a few times with my crossbow), the Chaotic Good guy (now Chaotic Neutral) dies horribly at the hands of the wizard. Then we start dividing up the loot... then the CG guys replacement character shows up and starts trying to take all the magic items off of his previous character. This upsets the rest of the group (cause some guy just shows up and starts looting their dead buddy that they didn't really like but he died valiantly) and I point out a bit OOC that we could probably get infinite XP and money if we kill this guy along with all the other replacement characters who show up to collect his stuff.

Unfortunalty the game kind of died shortly afterward, but it was fun.


So basically, I tend to go with the 'call yourself Chaotic Evil and just play neutral or good or something' approach. I mean, I would call Mister Rogers a lawful good person, Mister Rogers does not kill people and take their stuff. If you call yourself Chaotic Evil then really the only way you can "fall" is up, and that's totally okay.

Ironically, I would say that sometimes a Chaotic Evil character could be 'better' than a lawful good one... after all, if you come across some enemies, knock them unconscious with nonlethal means and then sell them into slavery then technically they are still alive and could conceivably be used for the betterment of society. If you just kill them right then and there then you've just got some corpses. Plus, the difference between a jail and a slave camp where the slaves work all day on stuff is that the slave camp makes money and has a profitable interest in keeping its inhabitants from breaking out or dying too much.

Yukitsu
2010-01-25, 09:57 PM
My last character was complex evil in a good party, which my DM appreciated. I played a character who tortured, murdered, mutilated and humiliated literally hundreds of people, often with collateral damage. However, I was always pointed at the villains, was genuinely generous, kind and compassionate to the weak and the innocent, and my character rather fully despised herself as much as she did the establishments she sought to tear down.

Ire
2010-01-25, 10:43 PM
Take the Jack Bauer approach to being evil.

Or start out Chaotic Neutral and move over towards evil as a wizard, by the time you're evil, paladin's won't be a problem.

Usually I like to play the good guy in the broad quest scope (save the princess slay the devils!), but I'm willing to lie, cheat, maim, torture, steal, pillage to get that end result (xp and gold obviously).

Plus, evil is like the next shortcut after optimization!

Wind d8/d12
2010-01-25, 11:45 PM
I greatly enjoy playing a false NG character and manipulating other PCs (and players several times) into doing this amazing plans for the greater good. An example was talking a lower level (new player too) Cleric of Pelor to burn down half of a town in order to get the plight of the commoners recognized by the LG-aligned regional lord. The half was of course the poor half and the player didn't consider that the people lived in basically dried grass and mud huts that were too close together. And the Orphanage/Nunnery was booby trapped off screen by dropping a few silvers into a drunken bums cup. So the village started to burn and those not trapped fled to the orphanage, where as the fires grew closer a few barrels of powder caught on fire.


Then I killed the bum too. When he made a drunken confession to the party leader. I mentioned how the lawmen would be too busy to put him on trial and a semi-painless death beat weeks of suffering in a dungeon before a hanging. The Cleric of Pelor confessed to the party that he started the fire but explained that it was my characters idea. My character frowned and explained that I had donated 10% of my wealth to the orphanage and even had a thankyou note signed by the children. At this point the player was mad and said that his character took the note and tore it up, threw it in my face and called me a liar.

Good times.