Alignment Penalties for Evil?

[Pippa the Pixie]

So in any one of hundreds of alignment threads you can find the penalties if a good person violates their alignment, but what about evil? Take a classic: A paladin grabs and kills an innocent person and throws them down some stairs to block some foes. Now, I think it's safe to say that 99% of everyone will say that was an evil act and the paladin has violated their alignment and all. But what about evil? Are there similar acts that an evil person could do to get an alignment penalty? Or does evil get a free pass to do anything any time for any reason? And if evil gets a free pass, why does good not get the free pass(and not just paladins, but all good people).

So:

1.Is there a Good act that a Evil person could do that would violate their alignment?(the equivalent of a good person killing a harmless, defenseless foe just for fun and entertainment).

2.Can a Evil person 'pretend' to be good, for example they can heal others, care for the sick and feed the poor, and still be 100% evil and not face any type of penalty? Can a good person 'pretend' to be evil in the same way?

[Doughnut Master]

Generally, evil gets a free pass because it's easier to be evil. If you have an evil pc that keeps doing the right thing, you could certainly threaten to change their alignment or give them a penalty, but by being good, they're generally making things easier on you.

As for your second question, I would say yes to both. Evil pretending to be good is a pretty common trope as is good having to pretend to be evil.

In general, when it comes to alignment, I'd recommend having player and DM talk things out and get on the same page. Having one surprise the other tends to lead to Bad Things.

[Flickerdart]

Paladins of Slaughter and Tyranny can "fall" if they ever stop being huge *****. Otherwise, Evil characters suffer no more from doing the occasional Good act than Good characters suffer from the occasional Evil act.

[Mando Knight]

Like Flickerdart mentioned, only a few classes have codes of conduct as strict as a Paladin's, and the Slaughter and Tyranny variants (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#paladinVariantsFreedom SlaughterAndTyranny) are the ones that most easily come to mind. Both are required to be jerks of their respective kinds (wanton murderers and tyrannical despots, respectively). Any truly altruistic act is a white mark on their blackened hearts that they cannot bear.

[tyckspoon]

There actually isn't an 'alignment penalty' for Good characters either. Certain classes have class features that require a code of conduct; Paladins (and their variants) and Knights are the most prominent. Outside of those classes, anybody can do whatever they want. If your GM decides you have become Evil, the only actual (immediate) mechanical effect of that is changing the letters in the Alignment box. And yes, Evil characters can have a change of mind and starting behaving Good just as well as Good ones can slip into Evil.

[Nizaris]

Good in the name of evil is easy to justify, will sparing this one person help me screw over many more? If so, then it's all nice and evil.

Harder to justify when it comes to LG characters though (ie paladins.) They have a very strict guideline where LE is much more flexible. It's hard to play the good guys, that's why it can be more rewarding for players, maybe not for me since I'm always LN or TN but hey, that's part of role-playing.

[Steward]

It's kind of like how someone who spends seven days a week as an upstanding, respectable citizen -- a businessman who runs events for the benefits of the community and even volunteering to entertain sick children in the hospital. Sounds like a great guy, right? But because he also spends his downtime torturing and murdering young boys and stashing them in the crawlspace of his house, and because of that most people would think of him as evil.

It's the same thing here. Good acts tend to "weigh" less than evil ones. If you were just keeping track of the number of good and evil acts, the serial killer I was talking about above probably committed (numerically) more good acts than evil ones. But most of us would agree that he was a monster, because you can't just overlook serial murder as if it was a foible. That's not to say that every crime forever blackens the soul, but really -- it only takes a few atrocities to darken someone's name even if they commit many good acts, while someone who regularly commits atrocities can't find redemption solely by occasionally committing one or two good deeds a month or something like that.

[hamishspence]

This. Depending on the DM, even a character whose evil acts are always altruistically motivated "for the greater good" might, because of them, reach Evil alignment despite many other admirable personality traits.


A meaner version of Jack Bauer, maybe: "At work" he tortures suspects and the kin of suspects, to get the info he needs to "protect the country from attack"- in his own time he's kind, altruistic and self-sacrificing.