Exalted Good in an Evil campaign...

[WeaselGuy]

So, while messing around with character ideas, I kind of made an uber optimized Exalted Good Cleric Beatstick. When I shared it with my friend, he thought it would be funny to make an LG champion for himself, make it my cleric's brother, and insert them into our DMs evil campaign just to give him some angst. It's something that the DM would roll with, so we wouldn't be complete d-bags. My concern is, would it even be possible to play in his campaign setting, without completely derailing it?

In the current campaign, it's post apocalyptic, the bad guys won the last war and run the show, but it wasn't supposed to happen like that, so some divine army is going to descend on the planet and do a hard reset, basically wiping out the last 70 years of existence as we know it. The current group is adventuring to find some McGuffin to prevent (or destroy) the intervention army from doing their thing. Overall, it's been really fun, with loads of shenanigans.

In all actuality, I don't actually see any way in which an Exalted Good Cleric/Ordained Champion of Heironeous could even spend 12 seconds with the party, without laying the Smite-Down on them all. Now, maybe a Rogue/Spymaster/Slayer of Domiel could make it happen, but I don't really know how the Cleric could. Ideas? Thoughts? Am I just crazy? Or is this just a bad idea strapped to a powder keg, hovering over Mt Vesuvius?

[Red Fel]

My concern is, would it even be possible to play in his campaign setting, without completely derailing it?

Short version: No. Well, yes, but no.

First, the no. Exalted is basically Good++. It's not just Paladin-esque Awful Good; it's Good taken to a magnitude of Holy. You can be Good and still be a bit naughty; Exalted requires you to either actively shun Evil, or actively pursue its destruction. Good characters and Evil characters can be friends, with some difficulty; it is substantially harder for Exalted and Evil to be friends.

That's not to say that your Exalted character has to kill the rest of the PCs; he could simply leave. UltraGood doesn't mean Stupid Good; if he can't take them on, or if he cares enough about them personally that he can't bring himself to do it, he doesn't have to fight them. But he can't stay with them if they're Evil and he knows it and they've really got to show it.

That said, the technical yes: If he can be magically completely oblivious to their Evil, it's possible. If they're very good friends, and they never do a single Evil thing where he can detect it; if he constantly fails his Sense Motive, Spot, and Listen checks; if they manage to be absolute saints around him and absolute monsters when he's not around, it technically works. It's a pain and it's un-fun, but it technically works.

The problem is that as soon as he sees them being Evil - which he inevitably will - it has to raise flags. And once he realizes that they're Evil, he has to either confront or leave them. You can't make the "He stays because they're his friends" or "He stays to turn them to the side of Good" arguments, because every time they commit an Evil act and he doesn't do everything in his power to stop them, he is becoming complicit in their Evil deeds. He cannot lend his imprimatur to their acts; he has to split.

[lytokk]

Honestly, this is one of those situations where I could see Exalted good and Vile Evil actually working together, but I need some more information about the hard reset that's going on, but I'll lay it out as I see it. The EG and VE may have completely different methods, but their goals will remain the same, assuming everyones goal is for this thing to reset, or to not reset. Truthfully, it could be interesting so long as actual PVP is off the table.

[danzibr]

That said, the technical yes: If he can be magically completely oblivious to their Evil, it's possible. If they're very good friends, and they never do a single Evil thing where he can detect it; if he constantly fails his Sense Motive, Spot, and Listen checks; if they manage to be absolute saints around him and absolute monsters when he's not around, it technically works. It's a pain and it's un-fun, but it technically works.
This is what I was going to say, except it could be fun. The evil party members pull the wool over the good party members' eyes.

How smart is your Cleric character? Probably has high Wisdom, but maybe if he's stupid enough it could work. Or if the bad guys are just *that* sneaky.

[hamishspence]

And once he realizes that they're Evil, he has to either confront or leave them. You can't make the "He stays because they're his friends" or "He stays to turn them to the side of Good" arguments, because every time they commit an Evil act and he doesn't do everything in his power to stop them, he is becoming complicit in their Evil deeds. He cannot lend his imprimatur to their acts; he has to split.

Yes and no. BoED does specifically state that it is possible for an Exalted person to cooperate with a person they know to be Evil, against a great threat - if (and only if) they never turn a blind eye to any such evil acts.

So, the evil person has to agree not to do evil things, for the duration of the situation.

[FearlessGnome]

It's a bad idea, Jim. But, if you are determined. Do they have a common goal? Maybe the evils PCs are trying to murder an evil ruler somewhere for their own wealth and power. The Exalted character might be able to shoehorn enough rationalizations in there to allow them to work together briefly with evil PCs in that case. Like a Paladin might be persuaded to let a weak demon escape with its life if it tells the paladin who its lord is, and what the evil masterplan is. There is room to compromise, but the exalted character should never be comfortable travelling together with evil.

[WeaselGuy]

Thanks for the speedy responses, now for some more info...

1) I haven't inserted this character into the campaign, nor do I know if I actually will insert him.
2) The party is actively trying to prevent the hard reset (it's basically a group that calls themselves "The Reclaimers", coming to annihilate everything the bad guys have done in the past 70 years, then bend time to put the good guys back in charge (I think >.>)). The party is a group of mid-ranking mercenaries/free-lancers/officers in the regional overlord's employ, tasked to retrieve a McGuffin that those pesky do-gooders stole from him (classic good-guy quest).
3) If the cleric were to join the group, it would probably be as a spy (I work for the good guys, infiltrating the bad guys to report back on their progress to the good guys), and working in tandem with my "brother" (my friend that wants to make a character to co-play with this cleric).

3a) If my friend does this, I think he'll probably go the route of Rogue 5/Spymaster 1/Slayer of Domiel 10/x 4, and actually be the true spy in the group, whereas I am just the divine muscle

[atemu1234]

I feel like it would be difficult but possible with EXTENSIVE RP. For example, the following:

You are one of the evil characters' brother, and seek to convert him and the rest of the party to good. You will help him so long as it does not harm good creatures, and act as a relative moral compass to the group. They still are evil and do evil things, but you try to reign them in. Just don't expect to be exalted long.

[Brookshw]

You might be able to pull this off and since the DM and party are game for it, go for it! You should be doing you're best to uphold the ultragood, but given the circumstances it sounds like a bit of leeway would be reasonable. Personally I'd push the roleplay tension as often as possible but you know how your group would respond and what might be appropriate better than I.

[Astralia123]

Basically you are trying save the day, so yes, you can cooperate with evil guys.

Be ware, you should never make a paladin type of stop-your-evildoing alarm bell. You are born post apocalypse and thus should know how the world is always like. This is necessary when you are building your character concept, while things like champion of Heironeous really does not suit in this setting that much.
It is also necessary to speak with other players in advance. Some evil characters can accept cooperation with exalted characters, given they have same goal and the evil characters are determined enough with their own goals. For example, a revenger for one's family could be evil, and may cooperate with anyone (including exalted ones) that can lead him to his enemy, and is not necessarily bound to commit evil at every possible chance.

Which is effectively saying, that your evil party members should build their character concept as carefully based on the post-apocalyptic setting, and decide a strong motivation that would make them travel with exalted characters and forbid evildoings at least for some time.




Say, you can demand them not kill women or children, show mercy on defeated enemies (but be aware of the risk of being backstabbed by the enemies), like any gentlemen would do in pre-apocalyptic eras. On the other hand, you should not go that far to forgive every evil doer or be strictly against killing, which can be foreseen to be the often solution, if not always in such a world setting.

[Venger]

So, while messing around with character ideas, I kind of made an uber optimized Exalted Good Cleric Beatstick. When I shared it with my friend, he thought it would be funny to make an LG champion for himself, make it my cleric's brother, and insert them into our DMs evil campaign just to give him some angst. It's something that the DM would roll with, so we wouldn't be complete d-bags. My concern is, would it even be possible to play in his campaign setting, without completely derailing it?

In the current campaign, it's post apocalyptic, the bad guys won the last war and run the show, but it wasn't supposed to happen like that, so some divine army is going to descend on the planet and do a hard reset, basically wiping out the last 70 years of existence as we know it. The current group is adventuring to find some McGuffin to prevent (or destroy) the intervention army from doing their thing. Overall, it's been really fun, with loads of shenanigans.

In all actuality, I don't actually see any way in which an Exalted Good Cleric/Ordained Champion of Heironeous could even spend 12 seconds with the party, without laying the Smite-Down on them all. Now, maybe a Rogue/Spymaster/Slayer of Domiel could make it happen, but I don't really know how the Cleric could. Ideas? Thoughts? Am I just crazy? Or is this just a bad idea strapped to a powder keg, hovering over Mt Vesuvius?

that sounds hilarious!

from the title, I thought I knew how this thread was going to go and it'd just be "I want to play a Stupid Evil character in a Good party" with find and replace done, but it's really quite different, since you got the consent of the DM and your friends first, which is all that really matters in situations like this.

if your friends are willing to work together (which Evil characters often are) in the pursuit of common goals, then there really isn't a problem.

it's also good that you aren't hoodwinked into thinking the stereotypical genocidal maniac pally is the only way to play a Good character.

especially since your post implies that you've already been playing awhile without issues, I say "good for you" and would love to hear about your game. do you do a campaign journal or something?

the basic structure is very similar to the third D&D movie "Book of Vile Darkness" which is actually quite good. the main character, a (technical) paladin of pelor, is disillusioned with the state of affairs since pelor never actually does anything and does not believe he or the other gods actually exist. his father is kidnapped by some bad guy's henchmen who are trying to find the book of vile darkness.

in order to find him, the main guy goes into a tavern where an Evil party is holding tryouts to find a brute type to fill out their ranks and impersonates a blackguard. they're seeking the book so they can give it to the wizard who wants to use it for stuff so they can collect the reward money and the main guy wants to do it so he can find his dad and destroy it.

the whole time, he's got to put up with all the bad stuff they do and try to covertly mitigate their evil deeds and such without blowing his cover. it's a super awesome movie and you should check it out in general, even if it doesn't sound like you need help figuring how to play nicely with others.

[Phelix-Mu]

All really good points.



the basic structure is very similar to the third D&D movie "Book of Vile Darkness" which is actually quite good.

Emphasis mine. Are we talking about the same movie here? Cause, while the concept was good and the costumes weren't half bad, the sfx, 60% of the acting, and a good bit of the writing seemed really bad to me. Are you comparing this one with the other movies, cause then I think you are probably on the mark. I mean, these things had some of the SyFy [Weird Animal] Versus [Hybrid Animal] looking pretty well-executed.

I've always wished for a well-done Mystery Science Theater 3000 of the D&D movies, complete with nerdy canonical references only real diehards would get.

More on point, [repeats much of Red Fel's points].

[Venger]

All really good points.

Emphasis mine. Are we talking about the same movie here? Cause, while the concept was good and the costumes weren't half bad, the sfx, 60% of the acting, and a good bit of the writing seemed really bad to me. Are you comparing this one with the other movies, cause then I think you are probably on the mark. I mean, these things had some of the SyFy [Weird Animal] Versus [Hybrid Animal] looking pretty well-executed.

I've always wished for a well-done Mystery Science Theater 3000 of the D&D movies, complete with nerdy canonical references only real diehards would get.

More on point, [repeats much of Red Fel's points].

I'm talking about the 2012 TV movie "Book of Vile Darkness." I know of no other similarly titled movie, so it's probably the same one.

I really liked the story and it showed a surprising amount of thought, especially for a TV movie. The way they approached the main guy's atheism in the beginning I thought was really respectful to both sides and they didn't come down and hammer you one way or the other, and I liked his relationship with his dad and the rest of the party too.

The dialogue was a little wooden in places, but it was mainly with specific wording hear and there so it'd sound appropriately Historical, and the witch's britishy accent slipped in places, but I thought the screenplay was pretty solid. People didn't just sort of do stupid stuff for no reason because the plot called for it, and I thought characterization was pretty consistent, especially for the witch since femme fatale characters are traditionally so badly done.

the special effects, I thought were generally pretty good, especially for a budget of $12 million dollars, especially when they encountered the slaymate. that makeup or cgi or practical effect or whatever it was looked really good, and the scene was genuinely unsettling.

I'm evaluating it on an objective scale as its own thing since it doesn't bring any of the characters from the first two movies back, so isn't really a spinoff, but when compared to "wrath of the dragon god" I thought it was a lot better (I liked wrath of the dragon god too, but it sorta dragged in places, the spellplague subplot thing didn't really need to be in it) and it's an order of magnitude off from the first one, which I hated.

specifics aside, what I liked the most about bovd is how you could tell the writers actually gave something of a damn about what they were doing. the party's made up of a goliath (whose makeup looked awesome), shadar-kai, and vermin lord. the main guy goes to the store and buys a bag of holding and a vicious weapon, and they threw in a slaymate who even mostly looked like the picture. you can tell they actually read the books and incorporated stuff from the setting and game into the movie instead of just making up stupid crap like the first one.

[WeaselGuy]

that sounds hilarious!

in order to find him, the main guy goes into a tavern where an Evil party is holding tryouts to find a brute type to fill out their ranks and impersonates a blackguard. they're seeking the book so they can give it to the wizard who wants to use it for stuff so they can collect the reward money and the main guy wants to do it so he can find his dad and destroy it.

the whole time, he's got to put up with all the bad stuff they do and try to covertly mitigate their evil deeds and such without blowing his cover. it's a super awesome movie and you should check it out in general, even if it doesn't sound like you need help figuring how to play nicely with others.

This... All sorts of this... (emphasis mine)

This is what I'll probably be trying to pull off, in some form or fashion, probably with the intent of covertly converting the party, to the point where they don't want to finish their quest, and instead will start working against the geo-political machine.

Also, for a wee bit more background, since it was (sorta) requested:

-a Half-Orc Monk (new guy, tried helping him optimize, was pretty set in how he wanted to build his character)
-an Elf Sorceress/War Wage(from DragonLance), very much a battle-mage, the PrC lets her give her Cha bonus to party members as Morale AC
-Human Psion/Diabolist, supposed to be the "Face" of the party, ended up being a blaster. Wants to switch to either a Bard or a Rogue. Might do Rogue to set up to bring my Champion in
-Lesser Drow Cleric/Swift Wing, my current character. After building her how I wanted to play her, I decided to take her concept and optimize it, leading to the EG Champion presented earlier. I really do like playing her, and will run her until she dies, instead of getting her swapped out.

Currently, our Psion intends to Plane Shift to one of the Lower Planes, in order to recruit some fiendish army to help the Regional Overlord (the BBEG from the previous campaign (the one we failed, leading to this followup setting)). He may use this attempt to swap out characters, since he isn't enjoying a) stepping on the sorceress's toes, and b) put on a cursed ring that is requiring to take his next and all future levels as a Shaman from OA.

Our Sorceress is actually the only character from the original party still alive. We started out as a Lesser Drow Swordsage, very much chaotic evil, who went on a killing/arson spree in town, and got himself turned into a vampire. When we rescued him, he went and turned my Lesser Tiefling Paladin of Tyranny and the (then)Lesser Drow Sorcereress into vampires as well. The good party we were chasing set an ambush for us, Turned me into the next count (their turn undead check sent me running for the high hills), torched our carriage (which was carrying our coffins) and crispified the swordsage. The Sorceress managed to rescue her own coffin, then critted her Bluff check to have them believe she wanted to convert to good, and hated being a vampire. So their Druid Reincarnated her (she rolled for regular Elf), then they recruited her to replace their wizard that the swordsage managed to kill before getting lit up like a christmas tree. On her nightly guard shift, the Sorceress snuck away to report back to our Boss, and was summarily saddled with our current Psion, and my Kobold Mounted Ranger. I explained his demise in another thread, but the short of it is, the Psion had to sacrifice a party member in order to keep his Diabolist powers (it was a fiendish contract thing), and apparently my Kobold felt like base-jumping off a tower. Without a parachute. Yay Will saves... (seriously though, I was fine with it, I like making and playing new characters)

Which leads us to my current Cleric, a Deepwyrm Lesser Drow who PrC'd into Swift Wing, and is currently the party tank, as well as a very much not undercover spy. I was added to the party by our Boss's Boss, so that she could keep tabs on what these "blundering fools" were up to. So far, so good, DMM:Persist Divine Power is one helluva drug, and it led me to do some research on just how Tanky a cleric can get. And that led me here :D

[Venger]

This... All sorts of this... (emphasis mine)

This is what I'll probably be trying to pull off, in some form or fashion, probably with the intent of covertly converting the party, to the point where they don't want to finish their quest, and instead will start working against the geo-political machine.

yep! that's why I mentioned it.

oh cool, that's sort of what happens in the movie, too. check it out for one of the possible ending to your campaign :smalltongue:


(background)

wow, your party is... unoptimized to say the least. things will certainly be challenging.

my suspicions are confirmed, your game does sound pretty hilarious and like a lot of fun. it's clear the players of the Evil characters know just what they're getting into same as you.

NB: you can't "nat1/nat20" on a skill check.

[WeaselGuy]

yep! that's why I mentioned it.

oh cool, that's sort of what happens in the movie, too. check it out for one of the possible ending to your campaign :smalltongue:



wow, your party is... unoptimized to say the least. things will certainly be challenging.

my suspicions are confirmed, your game does sound pretty hilarious and like a lot of fun. it's clear the players of the Evil characters know just what they're getting into same as you.

NB: you can't "nat1/nat20" on a skill check.

yeah, I know you can't "crit" in the usually sense of the word, but 9 times outta 10, if you roll a 20 on a bluff check, and have ranks in it, the other party will believe you :D

as far as optimization goes, it's really the monk that's unoptomized. The Psion really knows what he's doing, and while the Sorceress would be better served as a Wizard, she doesn't like prepared spellcasting, so I found that War Mage PrC to help her out. It really gives a blaster a little more oomph (adding first 1, then 2, then 3 dmg per die rolled for damage (so, at level 10, she's doing 10d6+20 on a lightning bolt)). So far, we haven't really found anything too troublesome, most stuff dies within about 2-3 rounds.

[Venger]

yeah, I know you can't "crit" in the usually sense of the word, but 9 times outta 10, if you roll a 20 on a bluff check, and have ranks in it, the other party will believe you :D

as far as optimization goes, it's really the monk that's unoptomized. The Psion really knows what he's doing, and while the Sorceress would be better served as a Wizard, she doesn't like prepared spellcasting, so I found that War Mage PrC to help her out. It really gives a blaster a little more oomph (adding first 1, then 2, then 3 dmg per die rolled for damage (so, at level 10, she's doing 10d6+20 on a lightning bolt)). So far, we haven't really found anything too troublesome, most stuff dies within about 2-3 rounds.

ah, ok. that's definitely true, it's just from the way it was phrased it sounded like it was as a result of nat20ing that he succeeded, since a lot of people think it's a rule.

he definitely is.

that's true in general of people who play psions. for the most part, they have their fill of casters and want to try something new, so already have a good grasp of the basics. more of an overlap thing (no correlation implying causation)

out of curiosity, how did he qualify? I'm assuming the DM either waived being able to cast "shriveling" or let him sub in a similar power like crystalstorm or something. do you know why he took diabolist? it doesn't really... do anything. if it was for the imp, he could've saved some time and burned the two feats on improved familiar. I'm assuming he's a shaper since you said he blasts (though he could be a kineticist) so maybe it was for skills since you said he wants to face.

sounds pretty good.

[WeaselGuy]

We found a genie's lamp a little earlier, and he wished for the ability to cast shriveling psionically (among other things that I don't remember). I also don't know exactly what type of psion he is. In fact, he might be a Wilder (I think he does some kind of Surge thing?) As far as Diabolist, I think he just wanted to do it /shrug... Now that I think about it, the DM may have came up with the cursed ring bit to kind of reign him in, it was getting kind of crazy >.>

[Venger]

We found a genie's lamp a little earlier, and he wished for the ability to cast shriveling psionically (among other things that I don't remember). I also don't know exactly what type of psion he is. In fact, he might be a Wilder (I think he does some kind of Surge thing?) As far as Diabolist, I think he just wanted to do it /shrug... Now that I think about it, the DM may have came up with the cursed ring bit to kind of reign him in, it was getting kind of crazy >.>

ah, so you just meant he's a manifester of some sort and call them all psions. I gotcha. the same way wizards pick a school, psions (have to) specialize by picking a school. rather than being able to manifest all school's powers minus one or two, they pick one of the six and only get to manifest those in addition to the general list they can all pull from.

that doesn't rule out him being a psion with the overchannel feat. given his informed ability of familiarity with the game, it's unlikely he'd do wilder since they're pretty terrible unless you're pulling tricks with wild surge to boost your ML, but then again, he did take diabolist, so maybe he is a wilder after all and thought it would be good flavor or something.

[Sam K]

This may have been suggested (kind of hitting the booze tonight :P), but for why an exalted character would hang out with the bad guys:

What if someone on the good side believes that this is the way things have to be in order for good to eventually triumph? That "resetting" the world will just lock it into a never ending cycle of good VS evil with no end, whereas falling completely to darkness will eventually bring an age of light and good?

This could make for an interesting plot for the good character: he has to make sure the good side fails in resetting the world, but still probably have to try and stay good despite traveling with an evil party.

[WeaselGuy]

This may have been suggested (kind of hitting the booze tonight :P), but for why an exalted character would hang out with the bad guys:

What if someone on the good side believes that this is the way things have to be in order for good to eventually triumph? That "resetting" the world will just lock it into a never ending cycle of good VS evil with no end, whereas falling completely to darkness will eventually bring an age of light and good?

This could make for an interesting plot for the good character: he has to make sure the good side fails in resetting the world, but still probably have to try and stay good despite traveling with an evil party.

That's an interesting spin on things...