Fun & Evil

[hemming]

DMing a game where it seems the PCs are competing to push the limits of who can be the most psychotic without breaking LE alignment....they have gone from doing evil when it benefits them to developing some serious serial killer type neuroses

-One character lost her hand - now she is obsessed with chopping peoples left hands off

-Another decided she can eat humans without scruples as she is a faun and its not cannibalism

Fun stuff!

Anyone have any good stories about outlandish evil characters to share?

[Ydaer Ca Noit]

My chaotic evil wizard, getting angry with the barbarian sticking close to him and reading explosive runes himself to blast him (and himself). After getting lost in the forest, an other PC accepted to be levitated to see where we were. He reached above the clouds. Then I got him down again (we needed to get out of the forest sadly).

Then burned down the forest to kill something. Then going to trial and persuading the authorities it was necessary because he had only fire spells left (or prepared at all). Good times...

[Tyrosoldier]

Our party was wandering the coast, and we came upon a village. The rogue wanted to steal their altar statue made of gold, but we persuaded him not to. Village get attacked by a Colossal Fortress Crab, which basically bulldozed through the town without even noticing. Our halfling Bard, who rides a 700lb Dire weasel, cast Hideous Laughter on it. This 300ft tall crab keels over laughing, crushing the town and creating a tsunami that washes away what is left of the village. Most of us manage to hold on, but a few of us are swept away and ravaged by swarms of little crabs. after that, we swipe the statue from the remains of the temple, and go to our nearby castle. I (being a Dread Necromancer) have furnished my room with a NecroPit (for holding creations, disposing of unused parts), but our Bard wants to make a maid cafe out of the first floor. The DM says, "Where are you going to get the maids?" I volunteer to make a army of undead maids to staff this place. It basically evolves in to an (affectionately named) Zombrothel. After that, we ride our Pirate's (fluff fighter's) Landship (it haz wheels) off into the sunset.





In our first encounter, i used Ghoul Touch by sticking a spectral hand up a bears arse, who was in the process of desiccating our rogue. We then beat it to death with branches while it was paralyzed.

[KillianHawkeye]

In our first encounter, i used Ghoul Touch by sticking a spectral hand up a bears arse, who was in the process of desiccating our rogue. We then beat it to death with branches while it was paralyzed.

How was a bear removing all of the moisture from your party rogue?? :smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:

[Fouredged Sword]

Well, I am sure the rogue lost plenty of blood, so it may be technically correct.

[Crake]

DMing a game where it seems the PCs are competing to push the limits of who can be the most psychotic without breaking LE alignment....they have gone from doing evil when it benefits them to developing some serious serial killer type neuroses

-One character lost her hand - now she is obsessed with chopping peoples left hands off

-Another decided she can eat humans without scruples as she is a faun and its not cannibalism

Fun stuff!

Anyone have any good stories about outlandish evil characters to share?

Bolded for emphasis. How are these not CE actions?

Edit: To add my own story, I had one of my players get transformed by a demon succubus queen of the underworld into her incubus king, and in return (amongst other things) he dedicated a brothel/cult/church to her on the material plane. Problem was none of the other players a) knew he was an incubus now or b) that he had set this church up. So when they went back into town and suddenly there's a new brothel chain in town that's all the rage. well, of course, if the DM pointed it out, it must be important right?

Well, queue the players investigating the brothel, and interrogating the "brothel leader" who was actually the incubus player's leadership cohort that he used to start the chain. Of course, being a beguiler before his transformation, he was the party face, so.... he was interrogating his cohort, who was completely confused by the way, about his own church with some random adventurers. Watching the player try to keep a straight face through the whole thing was priceless, especially when the cohort described the player as being able to walk around a corner and just disappear (via teleport), at which point the ninja (who thought invisibility instead) said "mwahahah, what if it's MEEE!". At that point the incubus player's face went completely white, because he thought that the ninja had figured it out and was gonna deflect to him... but he hadn't and didn't.

Ahh, good times.

[Dawgmoah]

Anyone have any good stories about outlandish evil characters to share?

The player characters were CG/CN when they started, by the time they finished there was only one left and he was most definately CE.

A party of four people, three of them brothers, raided an ancient temple and discovered a very evil artifact, one of the Crowns of Might or something. They were all 12th or so level at the time. The game immediately devolved into a series of sad but funny, "Spy vs. Spy" type episodes. Each player wanted the crown and were willing to do anything for it. And of course they had to find the other pieces so one of them could have the complete set. For nine months the campaign was derailed into a series of "games" where one player at a time got to do things while the others waited in the other room until either, it was their time to attack someone, or they themselves were attacked.

Anyone who got in their way was massacred, Hostages taken, family members hunted down and killed. The violence spiralled out of control: realms began to get involved, wars were started in the embers of their attacks on each other. Finally, the last one standing pulled the desired ring off of the other one's finger while surrounded by a burning fleet. Stuck it on his finger in triumph. And died.

[hemming]

Bolded for emphasis. How are these not CE actions?


Ah yes - context is everything!

-The hand chopper is mostly focused (for god knows why) with removing the left hand of foes slain in combat. It's not a situation where she goes around chopping everyone she meets, but her character has become weirdly invested in it

-To be fair, the person was already cooked and partially eaten by a demon when they go there. She just sampled some

[graeylin]

"doing evil when it benefits them" is already pretty chaotic.

Lawful does evil as part of a plan, as part of a set of rules or organizational structure. As you said, context is everything, so...

If the PC was removing hands as a statement to induce fear in those who oppose her, that's potentially lawful (long term goal). If she does it because that's the rule, that's what the boss said to do, or that's the way it's always been done, that's lawful. If she's doing it because it's fun and cool or because she doesn't know why, then she's already swinging towards CE.

And honestly, I have a hard time stating that eating a human is an evil act for anyone NOT human, since Human eat other animals without it being an evil act. Cannibalism? Sure, potentially evil. Eating meat that's not of your species? That's a restaurant idea right there. We do it all the time in real life, and we aren't "evil" except to Vegans.

[KillianHawkeye]

And honestly, I have a hard time stating that eating a human is an evil act for anyone NOT human, since Human eat other animals without it being an evil act. Cannibalism? Sure, potentially evil. Eating meat that's not of your species? That's a restaurant idea right there. We do it all the time in real life, and we aren't "evil" except to Vegans.

In the real world, cannibalism means eating other human beings, but in a fantasy world where there are legitimately other intelligent species the definition usually gets broadened to mean eating other intelligent life forms. In other words, eating animals is okay because they are lower life forms incapable of the same level of reasoning as people, not just because they're a different species from us. That's why all the intelligent fantasy creatures who feed on humanoids (ex: mindflayers) are always considered Evil.

[hemming]

"doing evil when it benefits them" is already pretty chaotic.

Lawful does evil as part of a plan, as part of a set of rules or organizational structure. As you said, context is everything, so...

If the PC was removing hands as a statement to induce fear in those who oppose her, that's potentially lawful (long term goal). If she does it because that's the rule, that's what the boss said to do, or that's the way it's always been done, that's lawful. If she's doing it because it's fun and cool or because she doesn't know why, then she's already swinging towards CE.
.

Yeah -The characters do belong to an organizational structure with a set of rules (hence the lawful) - It is an evil organization and they are evil characters - Anything not proscribed by those rules or personal code, is fair game (including personal enrichment and being evil when it benefits you) - She has developed a neurotic impulse after a violent trauma and acts out on it without breaking the rules

[graeylin]

In the real world, cannibalism means eating other human beings, but in a fantasy world where there are legitimately other intelligent species the definition usually gets broadened to mean eating other intelligent life forms. In other words, eating animals is okay because they are lower life forms incapable of the same level of reasoning as people, not just because they're a different species from us. That's why all the intelligent fantasy creatures who feed on humanoids (ex: mindflayers) are always considered Evil.

I get that, but the truth is, either it's defined in both worlds as "eating other human beings", in which case, they aren't doing that in the fantasy world, or it's defined as "eating other intelligent life forms", which means that many, many humans are evil in our world.

Unless you want to argue that it's okay to eat intelligent life forms in our world, but evil to do so in the other world, in which case, there's really no ground anywhere to stake a claim of good and evil upon, since the sands shift so much between the worlds.

[KillianHawkeye]

I get that, but the truth is, either it's defined in both worlds as "eating other human beings", in which case, they aren't doing that in the fantasy world, or it's defined as "eating other intelligent life forms", which means that many, many humans are evil in our world.

Unless you want to argue that it's okay to eat intelligent life forms in our world, but evil to do so in the other world, in which case, there's really no ground anywhere to stake a claim of good and evil upon, since the sands shift so much between the worlds.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly. Which intelligent life forms are okay to eat in the real world? And by "intelligent", are we both talking about human or human-like intelligence? Because I don't know of any animal life on this planet that equals humanity, which is why eating animals isn't considered a problem by the vast majority. I mean, chimpanzees and dolphins are probably the closest, but we don't really eat either of those creatures anymore.

[MonochromeTiger]

I get that, but the truth is, either it's defined in both worlds as "eating other human beings", in which case, they aren't doing that in the fantasy world, or it's defined as "eating other intelligent life forms", which means that many, many humans are evil in our world.

Unless you want to argue that it's okay to eat intelligent life forms in our world, but evil to do so in the other world, in which case, there's really no ground anywhere to stake a claim of good and evil upon, since the sands shift so much between the worlds.

...there are worlds and setting that don't consider gnomes (supposedly intelligent life forms) a highly annoying delicacy?

[Cirrylius]

In the real world, cannibalism means eating other human beings, but in a fantasy world where there are legitimately other intelligent species the definition usually gets broadened to mean eating other intelligent life forms.
Is there a word for that? Saipiophagy, maybe?

[Cikomyr]

Because of the absence of a player, we decided to do a 1-off in the same world as our main character with quickly-created characters, with the idea that we'd be a party of High-level Vampires, and we were compelled to achieve a mission; compromise a Councilman of one of the world's empire. Note that all of the councilmen were at least level 18-20, the basic guards were at least level 5 centaurs, and we were level 12.

We ended up trying to draw up the Councilman in charge of religious security by assaulting a local temple, dominating all priests, desecreating the altar, turning all deads into zombies (I played a Necrocleric) to draw the councilman to investigate. Basically, we didn't do pure evil for the Lolz, it was specifically to provoke the opposing party into coming to investigate.

Didn't worked out very well, so another plan was to stalk the War Councilman into the bars and try to dominate him. But the Arcane Councilman kind of got on us and stalked/ambushed us back. damn being a vampire means we were slippy, and we ran away.

We finally took a bad bait and were assaulted by a retired PC-Paladin who summoned a Gold Dragon mount. My Ghoul Followers managed to hit a natural 20 to hit him, and the dragon rolled a natural 1 on the save against paralysis (we all forgot Dragons were immune to paralysis). And completely out of luck, we managed to kill the dragon, capture and convert the Paladin to vampirism. So we failed our primary mission, but still succeeded at having an agent inside the Empire's leadership. The session ended there, and we continued on with our main chars for the rest of campaign, forgetting about the events...


....until the Final fight; where we ended up facing our Vampire characters as the main cohorts of the BBEG, including the converted Evil Vampire 16th level Paladin.

[graeylin]

All righty, let's define "intelligence".

If your definition is strictly limited to Human or Human-like Intelligence, then you win. Because there's only one species that has Human or Human-like intelligence, and that's Homo sapiens. (of course, then I will argue that also applies in the fantasy world, because an Orc cannot, by definition, have "human-like intelligence". It has "Orc or Orc-like intelligence".)

However, if by intelligence, you mean:
ability to communicate with vocalization and language, let me present whales, dolphins, elephants and the greater apes (some of whom are capable of sign language). And yes, people still eat these creatures, or do not consider it "evil" to do so, even if they don't.

Ability to use tools, or use tools to alter their environment: actually, this is a poor standard, as we are finding out that many, many animals are capable of tool use, and environmental alteration. heck, ants and termites are able to alter their world to suit their needs, better than humans.

Ability to create art, for artistic purpose: elephants, chimps.

Ability to creatively solve problems (other than trial and error): ravens, titmouse, chimps, swine

Ability to memorize and recall: elephants

Ability to count, and recognize numeric values: elephants, monkeys, some birds, dolphins.

Ability to go to war, to cannibalize others, commit genocide, to rape, murder, lie, cheat and steal? Humans, chimps.

Ability to destroy entire ecosystems, develop weapons capable of mass genocide, create entirely new diseases, alter the world's environment in a few generations: Humans.

Wait. I am not so sure those last two are great indicators of intelligence.

[delenn]

I'm the hand chopping player (it's not an obsession, it's justice! :P). My character recklessly killed two innocent bystanders with a spell (she wasn't trying to hurt them, but didn't really care that they were in the way). She was punished by the boss with the loss of her hand, and had to pay restitution to the families of the men she killed - 1000gp each. She knows it was a lenient punishment, and accepts it as just, as she would have been executed if she wasn't so valuable to the organization.

She's ashamed that she was so reckless, and knowing now that losing a hand is an appropriate punishment for undermining the power and respect of the organization and the part of the city it controls and protects, she cuts the hands off of fallen foes to mark them as traitors, would-be usurpers, and enemies of the guild (and because she's a bit psychologically damaged by the loss of her hand, and the shame of losing her cool in battle, but she'd never admit that to anyone else).

[Yorrin]

I had this one player for a couple of years who pretty much exclusively played evil characters. Each an every one of his characters had one thing in common: the first time the party was in a large city he'd find an excuse to sneak off and kidnap the first orphan he found, then ritually sacrifice it to Asmodeous in hopes of gaining favor with the top archdevil himself. He somehow managed to consistently pull this off in groups full of good aligned characters, some of whom specifically tried to keep tabs on him to prevent him from getting too evil. The guy was a great player other than this, and even then the first time it was very well roleplayed. But by the sixth time it just garnered an eye roll from me and looks of shock from those who hadn't seen it before.