Does Evil Get all the Good?

[Necroticplague]

I've been looking through the books,and it seems to occur to me, is their more support for Evil (or at least dark grey) characters? Books dedicated to Evil:BoVD, Heroes of Horror, Elder Evils, Lords of Darkness, Champions of Ruin. Books dedicated to being good:BoED. Feats you get from that alignment:
Evil: Vile feats that give moderately decent effects and can't be lost, including such things as natural weapons, blindsense, immunity to mind-affecting, and effective immunity to poison+disease.
Good: Exalted feats, which require you to keep an incredibly strict behavior laws for negligible gain, can end up with you lose-lose situations, and are SU to boot, so they go away in an AMF. Examples include a minor resistance to drugs and alcohol that you lose if you ever take any (even by accident), a grab bag of small benefits that you could better gain with equipment in exchange for not being able to have any equipment, and not even allowing YOUR TEAMMATES to kill other people without taking very steep penalties for a small boost to spell DCs(seriously, feel free to make bad choices, but don't drag the rest of the team with you)
PRCs:
Evil: Fiend of Possession, Black Blood Cultist, Mindbender, Shadow Adept, and Soul Eater.
Good:Rainbow Servant

[Eldan]

I think it's not necessarily player support. After all, characters are supposed to be good more often than evil. I think it's just that the assumption is that most bad guys will be evil, so they print specific bad-guy material. They don't need to print specific good-guy material, since the players have all the books full of nonspecific stuff anyway.

[Volthawk]

Good just has less dedicated books. Although talking about PrCs, FCII has a ton of Good-aligned PrCs (IIRC only one PrC in there is Evil-aligned, the Hellfire Warlock).

[Thrice Dead Cat]

[Evil] gets a lot of things. Not all of it is good, though. Sadly, because there is more, they do get some "better" options. The biggest are probably the "taint" rules from Heroes of Horror. You don't need to be evil to abuse them, but going down the slippery slope and being Snidely Whiplash helps.

That said, Book of Exalted Deeds has some gems. Vow of Poverty is largely jank compared to Wealth-by-Level, but there are some amazing spells that require a good alignment in there.


Good just has less dedicated books. Although talking about PrCs, FCII has a ton of Good-aligned PrCs (IIRC only one PrC in there is Evil-aligned, the Hellfire Warlock).

You don't need to be evil to be a Hellfire Warlock.

[Dr.Epic]

Most of the monsters in D&D are evil so good characters get all the cool monsters to fight. There's nothing more awesome than fighting a lich and his undead minions.:smallwink:

[Necroticplague]

Most of the monsters in D&D are evil so good characters get all the cool monsters to fight. There's nothing more awesome than fighting a lich and his undead minions.:smallwink:

When was evil one big happy family? Heck, evil characters have at least as much, if not more reason to fight evil than good does (if two people want to rule the world, heads are going to have to roll one way or the other for success).

[Zombimode]

I've been looking through the books,and it seems to occur to me, is their more support for Evil (or at least dark grey) characters?

What you seem to overlooking is that D&D books are for the DM as much as they are for the players, and some books happen to be more fitting for the DM then others. The "evil" books you've mentioned are all GREAT stuff to have for the DM, since they focus on the antagonistic elements.

[Piggy Knowles]

You skipped a lot of the "good" counterparts of those evil books you mentioned. Sure, there's Champions of Ruin - but there's also Champions of Valor. Heroes of Horror has Heroes of Battle on the other side. Sure, Combat Medic and War Weaver sort of pale in comparison to taint, the Archivist, and the Dread Necro... but that doesn't mean that the options don't exist.

I still think the evil options outweigh the good ones, but it's not quite so one-sided!

[Coidzor]

Love how the old tired idea of the system being partitioned between being for players or being for DMs is getting trotted out in here despite most of those books having language that would go counter to that claim.

Yes, there was a bias towards good being seen as lawful stupid/stupid good on the part of the designers. I can't imagine any other explanation for why they decided that the Paladin was such a good idea they should give the same kind of drawbacks(ok, ok, worse in many cases) for crappy benefits via the Exalted feats and PrCs.
You skipped a lot of the "good" counterparts of those evil books you mentioned. Sure, there's Champions of Ruin - but there's also Champions of Valor. Heroes of Horror has Heroes of Battle on the other side. Sure, Combat Medic and War Weaver sort of pale in comparison to taint, the Archivist, and the Dread Necro... but that doesn't mean that the options don't exist.

Heroes of Battle seems to be much more about warfare than about good, so... how exactly does that balance out Heroes of Horror?

I don't recall anything about the War Weaver being required to be good either. :smallconfused:

[Psyren]

Evil certainly has more (there are 4-6 books dedicated to Evil, compared to Good's 2-3) but it needs the help. After all, in the event of direct confrontation Neutral is more frequently/ultimately inclined to side with Good than with Evil. So options to trick out the big bad and make him really creepy/powerful make him much more memorable in the players' eyes, and his defeat much more hard-won and dramatic.

Not to mention Evil is Sexy, Evil is Cool and other related tropes.

[Piggy Knowles]

I just mean that it was an opposed book, like Book of Exalted Deeds versus Book of Vile Darkness. Heroes of Horror isn't strictly an evil book, but it's about adding creepy horror-based elements to games. Heroes of Battles isn't strictly a good book, but it's about adding elements of epic warfare to games.

From the back cover...

HoB: "As armies clash in epic battles, the actions of a handful of bold heroes can turn the tide of war... brave champions have an impact that echoes across the battlefield and resounds through the ages."

[Coidzor]

Evil certainly has more (there are 4-6 books dedicated to Evil, compared to Good's 2-3) but it needs the help. After all, in the event of direct confrontation Neutral is more frequently/ultimately inclined to side with Good than with Evil. So options to trick out the big bad and make him really creepy/powerful make him much more memorable in the players' eyes, and his defeat much more hard-won and dramatic.

Not to mention Evil is Sexy, Evil is Cool and other related tropes.

Evil is full casters that know what they're doing, really.

[Slipperychicken]

Good gets adventurers of all alignments to fight evil, and they win more often than not, regardless of odds. It's only fair to throw Evil a bone :smalltongue:

[Psyren]

I just mean that it was an opposed book, like Book of Exalted Deeds versus Book of Vile Darkness. Heroes of Horror isn't strictly an evil book, but it's about adding creepy horror-based elements to games. Heroes of Battles isn't strictly a good book, but it's about adding elements of epic warfare to games.

Don't know if you're addressing me, but I wasn't personally counting HoH as an "evil book." The explicitly Evil books are BoVD, EoE, EE, and CoR. Then you have "soft evil books" that have more options for evil characters than good ones - things like FC1 and 2, LoM, LM, DotU and HoH.

They get more splat support because villains need the help. Once your PCs figure out how to kill something, you need new ways to challenge them after all.

[CockroachTeaParty]

It should also be noted that many Good things are better than Evil things. For instance, the Celestial template gets one more kind of energy resistance than the Fiendish template, and spells/powers linked to becoming Celestial/half-celestial etc. often are biased towards Good.

Also, in the core Monster Manual, the highest CR creature in the book is the Great Gold Wyrm, a creature of Good. Solar angels are more powerful than Pit Fiends or Balors, metallic dragons get two breath weapons instead of one...

[Chilingsworth]

Personally, I think it's the neutrals that get shafted on the sourcebooks!

[Pilo]

Add to good books list: Complete Champion and Champion of Valor.
Add to evil books list: Champion of Ruin.