Why would anyone party with an evil PC?

[Gale]

Scenario: You are a Neutral Good Cleric who has recently cast a Detect Evil spell and found out a fellow party member is aligned evil. Your character has no special ties to them nor sees them as exceptionally useful to the group. If anything they have proved to be an annoyance, always insisting on violence as a solution to most problems. The rest of the party isn’t evil and you feel if you told them about this issue they likely wouldn’t be overly hesitant to cut ties with the individual. What do you do?

I’ve been trying to approach the question of, “Why would anyone party with an evil PC?” from this perspective for a while now. Someone knows without a doubt that a party member is evil. Why wouldn’t they simply cut ties with them? I know out of character it would be rude, but I’ve always had trouble justifying it in-game. Evil characters typically can’t be trusted even when they give their word. (Excluding Lawful Evil.) Why would anyone run the risk of being betrayed if they didn’t have to?

Note: I'm mostly ignoring scenarios where the evil PC is of substantial use to the party and/or is relevant to the plot.

[Geddy2112]

Scenario Your character has no special ties to them nor sees them as exceptionally useful to the group. If anything they have proved to be an annoyance, always insisting on violence as a solution to most problems.
Why would anybody want to be in a party with this person, alignment aside?


ignoring scenarios where the (evil) PC is of substantial use to the party and/or is relevant to the plot.

Deleting the one use of evil here, how is a PC not either of these? Either the player, the DM, or both have caused a character to not be relevant to the game. PC's should be built to be relevant; alignment may or may not matter to this.

I don't think you really have a problem with evil PC's, you have a problem with PC's who have no connection to the group, contribute little to nothing, and are overly toxic and violent. Nobody should play with these characters, nor should any DM allow them, or a Player bring them to a game.

This is not an alignment issue- I have seen and played plenty of evil aligned PC's that are nothing like this. I have also seen neutral good characters be exactly as you described.

Being evil aligned does not require you to be a backstabbing murderhobo jerk. Plenty of evil people are perfectly functional, and even capable of things like friendship, diplomacy, love, and being nonviolent.

edit-In b4 Red Fel

[Vhaidara]

A few options
1. The Belkar route: You can aim their destructive tendencies. This actually happened with my first group: the reason the two Neutral members lugged around the Evil guy is because whenever they ditched him, he would show up a week later and they would here rumors of burned orphanages.

2. Redemption. Left to his own, he will damn his soul. Help him see the error of his ways. Not necessarily preachy, but kindness works too

3. Usefulness. I know you rules this out, but it does bear mentioning, since it's usually the easiest to arrange.

[Tvtyrant]

There are a lot of types of evil. I had an extremely ruthless Ranger who, among other things, kept a menagerie of poisonous animals to use for weapon poison. He was very successful at capturing giant spiders and would remove their legs to make them safer and easier to handle, and kept several legless spiders in tiny cages which he dragged around.

Rorbeck (my ranger) was an evil character, but he never considered betraying his friends or murdering innocents. He simply did not follow other people's morality.

[SkipSandwich]

The quick answer is you don't.

Now, just pinging evil isn't grounds for immediate expulsion, since neutral and chaotic evil characters can value friendship and loyalty just fine (if in a slightly twisted fashion) such that evil =/= sociopath.

In your given scenario however, this evil party member is not anybody's friend, and has no emotional ties with any of the current party, as such, it is a reasonable concern that should push come to shove, he may choose to save his own neck rather then another party member at a critical junction.

But evil characters make friends, fall in love, and can become protective of the status quo just like characters of any other alignment. An evil character who lacks a better reason may take risks for the interest of the party just because they don't want to go through the trouble of re-acquiring allies if everybody else dies, or as a form of enlightened self interest, if he can be counted on to save your life, shouldn/t you make the same effort for him later?

[elonin]

There are a lot of types of evil. I had an extremely ruthless Ranger who, among other things, kept a menagerie of poisonous animals to use for weapon poison. He was very successful at capturing giant spiders and would remove their legs to make them safer and easier to handle, and kept several legless spiders in tiny cages which he dragged around.

Rorbeck (my ranger) was an evil character, but he never considered betraying his friends or murdering innocents. He simply did not follow other people's morality.

This is how I'd do it. Frankly there isn't much here I'd say qualifies as evil. If using poison is evil then choosing a weapon with better weapon crunch is as well. Maiming and keeping the animals isn't a good act but isn't exactly evil either.

[Milo v3]

Evil people still care about some people, just make sure at least some of the other PC's are people the evil PC cares about. Whether that's from family relation, love, being true friends, etc. That way, even the non-cared for PC's have a degree of protection, because the evil PC doesn't want to anger or hurt the PC's they do care about.

[Rubik]

I played an Evil character in an otherwise Good party. He knew the value of good PR and actually went out of his way to help others when he felt it would benefit him in some way. He did play both sides against each other somewhat, but that was as much due to blackmail on the BBEG's part as anything else. However, he was loyal to the group and ensured that whatever else happened, he fed enough misleading info to the BBEG that it looked like the group kept getting lucky in their escapades. He really showed his Evilness when initiative rolled -- as well as when planning vengeance against those who really PO'd him.

He was a valuable member of the team. The others just found his methods really questionable sometimes.

[OldTrees1]

Scenario: You are a Neutral Good Cleric who has recently cast a Detect Good spell and found out a fellow party member is aligned good. Your character has no special ties to them nor sees them as exceptionally useful to the group. If anything they have proved to be an annoyance, always insisting on violence as a solution to most problems. The rest of the party isn’t good and you feel if you told them about this issue they likely wouldn’t be overly hesitant to cut ties with the individual. What do you do?

*Swapped Evil with Good*

The party member in this scenario is not a member of this party regardless of what alignment they happen to be.


I’ve been trying to approach the question of, “Why would anyone party with an evil PC?” from this perspective for a while now. Someone knows without a doubt that a party member is evil. Why wouldn’t they simply cut ties with them?
This is a different scenario. This is a question about evil PCs in general. One of the universal traits of evil PCs is that they are PCs. They are characters that happen to be evil not merely evil that happens to be a character.
1) Evil PCs have relationships just like any other character. They can have friends. They can be brotherly/sisterly. They can be out fighting to defend/avenge their family. They can be attempting to reach their loved ones. They can simply be there to help the causes their family fights for. Would you accept your evil brother's honest help towards your cause provided they kept their hands clean?

2) Evil PCs have motives just like any other character. They might be fighting for survival or defending their stuff("Why would I destroy the world? That is where I keep my stuff."). Sometimes their motives are pure/selfless("The world is at sake. I must not fail. No matter what, the world must be saved").

3) Evil PCs can make deals. Perhaps there is a share of treasure in it for them provided they help out(bring value) and keep their hands clean.

Long story short, there are few reasons to adventure with someone that care about their alignment. Most reasons for adventuring with someone are independent of alignment.

[Mechalich]

Generally, people of dramatically opposed alignments - especially is the evil characters actually follow the impulses of their alignment and don't constantly try to restrain them - don't enjoy hanging around together. Most people don't enjoy having someone who is effectively a psychopath (Neutral evil) hanging around with them.

So yeah, there's little reason for a party of adventurers that formed to just gallivant around the countryside and try to make their fortune, to include such a disruptive member. In fact, such a group, with relative freedom to recruit and dismiss people as they wish, would probably over time come to cluster around a very tight alignment grouping - and probably a fairly tightly knit set of personal bonds in general.

However, a huge portion of adventuring parties don't form that way. They form because someone else hired them, or they're all running from something, or they all have their own reasons to stop a specific crisis. Having a goal not only can, but should, override alignment conflicts, at least for a while.

[The Grue]

Oh yay - yet another alignment discussion thread.

These threads always come down to the same argument. On one side, you have the people who view alignment as a loose descriptor of a character's mindset. On the other, you have the people who view alignment as a rigid set of instructions for what a character can and cannot do.

No progress is ever made, because neither side agrees on the core assumptions in play.

[OldTrees1]

Oh yay - yet another alignment discussion thread.

These threads always come down to the same argument. On one side, you have the people who view alignment as a loose descriptor of a character's mindset. On the other, you have the people who view alignment as a rigid set of instructions for what a character can and cannot do.

No progress is ever made, because neither side agrees on the core assumptions in play.

If that is an accurate depiction of the lines, then I(being biased towards the former) think progress could be made by pointing out that any complete set of instructions yields too few(proved via counterexamples that don't fit) distinct characters and any set of instructions that is not complete results in the former position.

However that is probably my bias talking.

[The Grue]

If that is an accurate depiction of the lines, then I(being biased towards the former) think progress could be made by pointing out that any complete set of instructions yields too few(proved via counterexamples that don't fit) distinct characters and any set of instructions that is not complete results in the former position.

However that is probably my bias talking.

It also assumes that the latter position holds that alignment is at all a set of instructions. You can't make progress by redefining the opposition's terms.

[Meepo_]

Put simply; he's a fellow player. Whether he's evil or not, it's never fun to kick someone out of the party and force them to role play their own scenarios (it rarely ends well).

I'd say to look at this OOC: This player is a part of your gaming group. You game to have fun. Fun > rules. If rules get in the way of fun, no one wants to play. So unless this guy deliberately makes the game less fun, keep him around.

For some IC justification, you could always view him as an asset if nothing else. Depending on your god, it might even be okay to associate with evil characters when they aren't desecrating good churches and summoning undead legions. Heck; the whole point of a cleric leaving his/her church character-wise is usually to a) Gain power for their god and b) convert people, thus achieving a). Maybe you can convince him to repent.

[Brova]

Alignment is weird. On the one hand, you'd expect people who are evil to do things like torture people or kill children. On the other hand, that is deeply uncomfortable to talk about and not really something most people want to do in their games. On the gripping hand, if evil people don't do evil stuff, why is it okay to kill them and take their things?

The best solution for most games is probably a Saturday Morning Cartoon type of morality. People aren't evil because they kick puppies and punch orphans, they're evil because they have a snake motif and happen to shoot red lasers instead of blue ones. So you can go punch Cobra in the face, but it is also okay to have an "evil" ally.

[Crake]

I solve this problem by only allowing creatures with innate alignment detection to use such abilities (which I then changed to a scent-like ability, but that's a separate discussion). People too often associate "evil" with "unstable". But evil and amiable are not mutually exclusive, and some evil people can be evil simple for an attitude of "I will kill any orc I come across, with no questions asked". Whether or not that is evil is entirely subjective, which is why I don't let players bring their subjective opinions in on a cosmic good/evil scale. They can make their own decisions about whether they would want to party with someone based on their actions with one another. I even tell players to just ignore alignment completely, play their characters as they envision them, and if alignment ever comes into play (either by an alignment specific spell such as holy wrath or the like, or by some outsiders coming out and sensing alignments) then I will determine their respective alignments based on their prior actions and attitudes on the spot.

I have had players assume that they were neutral, but were most decidedly evil on more than one occasion. Extremely funny when they're testing it out with a holy weapon, lightly pricking their hand, and the sword rips through their hand with holy vengeance.

[ericgrau]

Just because he's evil doesn't mean he's Evil. He might simply be a little selfish, but otherwise helps out the group as long as it helps him out. After all cooperating nicely with adventurers is a nice way to get rich. Even if it means taking some risks to help out the group. Now if things get really sour he might turn tail and abandon the party. But he would realize that means he'd probably never be accepted back and so he would only do so if it was a potential TPK or at least multi-PC kill. Even if it was risky it may still be worth it for the future loot. Especially at high level when raise dead is common.

You gotta remember that 1/3 of humans are supposed to be evil. They aren't all hardened criminals, merely more evil than neutral.

Heck the way many people play D&D where they kill everything and take no prisoners is pretty evil, and it's a lot evil not just a little evil like most evil people are. Even if the monsters are evil, lethal force is only supposed to continue as long as it is necessary, and even then the monster might not be evil enough to warrant it (did he murder the villagers or merely steal some cows?). It's only that you don't think about it because it's a game, and really this is just bad role-playing rather than a super evil player.

If you play evil like a cartoon villain or someone who hurts others for no reason, you're not playing normal evil, you're actually playing the alignment Stupid Evil.

[Sayt]

Well, there's [E]vil, and then there's [E]vil.

To use Discworld characters as examples:
Moist Von Lipwig at the start of Going postal is [E]vil. He's a con artist who takes advantage of people without care or concern for their wellbeing, and causes 22.3 deaths through his actions. His intentions are arguably neutral, but hisa ctions are
The Carcer is [E]vil. He's a serial killer who takes great pleasure in killing and torture.

Lipwig is a useful fast-talker and ideas man, with some prodding in the right direction: he just needs external storage for morality.

Carcer just thinks people are meat for him to carve and refuses to see differently.

[Remedy]

Why wouldn't you party with Evil PCs? They're the fun ones. The better question is why would you party with Good PCs? The Good ones are going around lecturing about such nonsense as "doing donuts while drunk is a bad idea" and "you're irritating the neighbors who are trying to sleep." A Paladin once told me I shouldn't egg somebody's house even though they insulted me in middle school. I mean, what a buzzkill.

[Rubik]

Why wouldn't you party with Evil PCs? They're the fun ones. The better question is why would you party with Good PCs? The Good ones are going around lecturing about such nonsense as "doing donuts while drunk is a bad idea" and "you're irritating the neighbors who are trying to sleep." A Paladin once told me I shouldn't egg somebody's house even though they insulted me in middle school. I mean, what a buzzkill.Fixed that for you.

[Remedy]

Does red text signify something? Other than mod posting, I mean? :smallconfused:

[Rubik]

Does red text signify something? Other than mod posting, I mean? :smallconfused:Shorthand for EEEEEEVIL.

[Milo v3]

Why wouldn't you party with Evil PCs? They're the fun ones. The better question is why would you party with Good PCs? The Good ones are going around lecturing about such nonsense as "doing donuts while drunk is a bad idea" and "you're irritating the neighbors who are trying to sleep." A Paladin once told me I shouldn't egg somebody's house even though they insulted me in middle school. I mean, what a buzzkill.
I have to say I really can't read this threads title without thinking of an actual Party rather than an Adventuring Party.

[OldTrees1]

Does red text signify something? Other than mod posting, I mean? :smallconfused:

Some posters use Red or Purple to denote text spoken by an evil being. Red Fel is most well known for doing this with his in character instructions on how to be an intelligent evil character.

[Curmudgeon]

Shorthand for EEEEEEVIL.
No, that's mauve now. Orange is the new black, and mauve is the new red. You gotta keep your fashion color awareness current.

[Rubik]

No, that's mauve now. Orange is the new black, and mauve is the new red. You gotta keep your fashion color awareness current.Didn't you know? Retro is groovy.

[Crake]

Some posters use Red or Purple to denote text spoken by an evil being. Red Fel is most well known for doing this with his in character instructions on how to be an intelligent evil character.

Typically the ones well known for using it also have it explained in their signatures so people don't get confused by random, ever changing personal preferences for color-meaning combinations.

[hamishspence]

To use Discworld characters as examples:
Moist Von Lipwig at the start of Going postal is [E]vil. He's a con artist who takes advantage of people without care or concern for their wellbeing, and causes 22.3 deaths through his actions. His intentions are arguably neutral, but hisa ctions are
The Carcer is [E]vil. He's a serial killer who takes great pleasure in killing and torture.

I think that was the TV version. In the book, the figure estimated by Mr Pump is 2.238 people.

Lipwig is a useful fast-talker and ideas man, with some prodding in the right direction: he just needs external storage for morality.
He grows away from his "lack of care for people's wellbeing" over time, as well.

[Yogibear41]

In the example you gave, they probably wouldn't. But as other people have said, its less to do with alignment and more to do with them just being a pain to be around. However, you could always rationalize it and say the NG character is sticking around to make sure that if the Evil Character ever does go to far, he will be around to put him down.


Its funny in a game I am in where I was bringing in a new character and a new player was joining the game at the same time, we both made Clerics/Paladins of the same LG goddess. However, I was a LE heretic of the faith ha. We meet on a ship on the way to the village where the rest of the party was awaiting our new characters to arrive. After we/our DM gives a brief description of what we look like which basically came down to the new player noticing I had the same type of holy symbol that he did, and also that I had red eyes (I had fiendish ancestry) the literal first thing he did was detect evil. A very interesting conversation happened after that ha.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I generally tend to play LE characters, and it's always worked out fine. Evil characters can still have loyalty and friendship, but they may throw those friends under the bus to save themselves when needed. Regardless, such characters are often welcome in the party, because "Evil gets things done." (http://www.d20monkey.com/comic/a-matter-of-alignment/)

[Taveena]

Gotta second the people saying 'no connections or mutual goals makes for a bad party member regardless of alignment'. It's not like you automatically party with every LG character as a CG character - depending on your goals, they could be an antagonist.

[Telonius]

Important to note: not every Evil character is the puppy-kicking, moustache-twirling variety. All that's required for an Evil alignment is for a character to consistently go out of their way to hurt people. An Evil character that's played intelligently can fit in with quite a lot of different parties. He doesn't have to do things that shock the conscience at all times, whenever he has the opportunity. The party might not even notice that the person likes killing orcs a bit too much, or might not know what he does when he's away from the rest of the group.

In the OP's example, it sounds like that's exactly what's happened. The Cleric didn't even notice that he was palling around with an Evil character until he cast the Detect spell. So the answer is contained in the question: the Cleric would adventure with an Evil character, for whatever reason he had already decided to adventure with the character. Unless you pre-screen all of your adventuring partners, you just wouldn't know.

[Segev]

The scenario presented by the OP really doesn't have much to do with the problem PC's alignment. It therefore doesn't help answer the question asked in the thread topic.

We've talked at length in this thread about how the reasons to party with people rarely correspond to alignment, as well.

However, the scenario implied in the question, at least to me, was more along the lines of, "Why would anybody party with a PC who is doing evil things?"

And the answer to that really comes down to two points: 1) does the person KNOW of the evil things, and 2) does the person CARE about them?

Note that one can be merely neutral, or even some level of good (but not a paragon thereof), and not care. The evil isn't being done to you, it is something you can excuse or justify or overlook, or you may not know (even if you suspect).

And, obviously, if you don't even suspect, why would you not party with them?



The reason evil PCs are a problem in parties most often comes down to the fact that players of evil PCs who cause problems are using the "evil" tag as an excuse to play anti-party. To initiate PvP for their own amusement or benefit, to try to manipulate or control the party IC and OOC, or just to be a jerk and screw things up. They rely on the PC tag to force the other players to put up with their behavior.

Evil PCs, properly played as people who wish to remain with a party that has no meta-reason (e.g. "we're all controlled by guys sitting around a table") to put up with him if he's a problem, are usually LESS problematic than some Good PCs, because the Evil PC is trying to hide it, or prove himself useful enough to overlook it, and frankly probably has reasons of his own for hanging out with this group and doesn't want to be kicked out.



To go back to the OP's scenario and tweak it a bit, let's say you're an NG cleric who has just recently used detect evil and discovered that a party member is Evil. He might have raised your eyebrow once or twice over his ... eagerness ... to engage in bloodshed, or over his sense of expediency, but he's been a useful ally and possibly even a friend. Nothing says "evil" has to hate everybody all the time and can't think you're a swell guy.

Why would you keep partying with him? Because all the reasons you were partying with him before are still valid. You just now know that he's not merely a bit uncomfortable in his predilections, but that he may be more dangerous than you'd thought. He bears more careful observation, and you probably shouldn't dismiss his "morbid jokes;" he may not be joking, after all. But unless you find his evil is pervasive and untennable, you have little reason to stop hanging out with him and partying with him. In fact, doing so gives you more chances to watch and make sure he isn't up to something.

[sovin_ndore]

I think we have fairly addressed the 'lets define alignment' digression that every discussion on this sort of subject is bound to proceed into.

That said, even if you have a really bad party member. And I mean the worst example of 'that kind of evil' listed in this thread (though I would argue that is still alignment independant). So this is the puppy-slaying, carniverous, pvp, socially maligned, necrotic, thorn-in-society's side type character. There are still good rationalles available to justify adventuring with them. A number of people have already provided good examples of ways to make that work and I will toss in another few suggestions with no effort to try to be exhaustive about the subject:

1. You don't believe them. Maybe your character is so good that evil of that calibre can't be rationalized, so instead you choose to believe 'it can't be that bad.'
2. You want to fix them. 'Everyone has some good inside'.
3. You want to guide them. Keledrath nailed this one coining it the 'Belkar route'
4. There is no one better. Either rationalize that 'sometimes you need monsters to fight monsters' or latch onto something they can bring to the party that no one else could.
5. Rationalize alignment. If we can argue it OOG, you can certainly argue it IG.
6. Behaviour Blind. Maybe you fail to notice the psychopathic behavior or maybe you don't care.
7. You want to protect others from them. If you are keeping your eye on them, they can't get into as much trouble, can they?

[Taveena]

I think we have fairly addressed the 'lets define alignment' digression that every discussion on this sort of subject is bound to proceed into.

That said, even if you have a really bad party member. And I mean the worst example of 'that kind of evil' listed in this thread (though I would argue that is still alignment independant). So this is the puppy-slaying, carniverous, pvp, socially maligned, necrotic, thorn-in-society's side type character. There are still good rationalles available to justify adventuring with them. A number of people have already provided good examples of ways to make that work and I will toss in another few suggestions with no effort to try to be exhaustive about the subject:

1. You don't believe them. Maybe your character is so good that evil of that calibre can't be rationalized, so instead you choose to believe 'it can't be that bad.'
2. You want to fix them. 'Everyone has some good inside'.
3. You want to guide them. Keledrath nailed this one coining it the 'Belkar route'
4. There is no one better. Either rationalize that 'sometimes you need monsters to fight monsters' or latch onto something they can bring to the party that no one else could.
5. Rationalize alignment. If we can argue it OOG, you can certainly argue it IG.
6. Behaviour Blind. Maybe you fail to notice the psychopathic behavior or maybe you don't care.
7. You want to protect others from them. If you are keeping your eye on them, they can't get into as much trouble, can they?

I actually had a character a while back who was precisely this EXCEPT for the PvP aspect, pointedly avoiding conflict with the party as much as possible. It was part of her modus operandi, really - by getting away with this, by getting them to ACCEPT her bloodthirst and brush it off as minor, she would Win. She would prove that the alignment system was bull**** through example. She would be the foulest, most depraved Hero the world ever saw, and it would love her for it.

So she was THOROUGHLY on the other player characters' side, because to oppose them would be to admit defeat.

[Taelas]

The situation as constructed in the OP is somewhat contrived. There is no reason to travel with that particular PC.

But there are many possible reasons to travel with Evil PCs, personal connections being a big one.

[Necroticplague]

Because Evil doesn't always mean evil. You can be Evil from simply casting a bunch of [Evil] spells, without any indication as to what your morality is. And even without considering that, an evil person can have the same goals as you. If both of you want to make your way through whatever ruins, the evil dude can cooperate out of sheer enlightened self interest. Another is that evil people actually have more to offer. Good people have restrictions as to what they can do to help. Evil people have less. All else being equal, the dude willing to get his hands dirty will be more useful.

[Lord of Lustria]

It sounds like you dislike the Player not the character, We have a chaotic evil warlock in our party and he GETS **** DONE (he is very useful) He is good at all the knowledge skills and does a ****LOAD of damage. Also, although he is evil his backstory is that the reason he is evil is that deep down he is a good guy but he is possessed by an evil spirit and it occasionally makes him do bad things. (He really regrets them) Perhaps look at your own roleplaying and say "How can I accommodate this fellow PC?" They are a person who is playing to have fun just like you and it would probably not make them feel too good if you kick them out of the party or make them reroll their character. That is like them not wanting to play with you because you picked the arguably cheese filled cleric class.

[Kurald Galain]

I’ve been trying to approach the question of, “Why would anyone party with an evil PC?” from this perspective for a while now. Someone knows without a doubt that a party member is evil. Why wouldn’t they simply cut ties with them?

There is a certain kind of player that plays RPGs so they can act without suffering the consequences. For example, so that their character can randomly slaughter or torture NPCs without being arrested or attacked in return. This kind of player generally also wants to be able to act like a d*ck to everyone including his teammates, without having the consequence of being thrown out of the team.

It's a form of catharsis, really. That said, I don't particularly see why you'd want to play with someone like that. These people do come up annoyingly often in public campaigns (LFR/PFS)

[Red Fel]

Argh. How frustrating. First, I get back from a couple of days away to discover a thread like this has been going on without me. Second, I discover that my name has only been mentioned twice (plus once in a quote, but you know that doesn't count).

And third, and worst of all, it seems that all the good points have already been taken!

Yeah, you heard me. I can barely contribute anything. The OP's scenario is inherently flawed because it presumes that the Evil character has no reason to adventure with the party in the first place, and vice versa? Check. "Just because you are bad guy doesn't mean you are bad guy?" Check. Purple text is the only real way to denote Evil? Check, check. Some players use Evil to mean anti-party, but that doesn't mean that all Evil is? Double-check.

You people, honestly. You're trying to crowd me out of my racket. Not cool.

And finally, I want to give a particular tip of my hat to Taveena, for that awesome Evil character concept. Subverting the alignment system by making the most pro-party monster you can? Taveena, you restore my faith in oh the humanity.

http://mmii.info/_ign/44039.gif

[Mcdt2]

Throwing in my 2cp here: Having DM'd a campaign that went from level 1 to 30 which featured mixed alignments (to wit, a chaotic good rogue//unarmed swordsage, a lawful good half-celestial samurai//cleric, a chaotic neutral druid//ranger who was also a werewolf, and a lawful evil drider psion//wizard), I'd say I have some experience in this regard.

So, the good half of the party allowed the drider to hang around at first because they shared a common enemy: the rest of the drow, who were amassing an army to take over the surface world. Naturally, the drider's magic was useful to them, but not any more than any other wizard's would have been, necessarily. Likewise, he held some knowledge about the drow leaders, but no more than the forward scouts of the army did. They stayed together because both sides found each other convenient.

After the army's threat was taken care of, another threat arose from the drow that threatened the entire world. Being that all members were interested in saving their world, of course, they continued together. Of course, they kept as much of a close eye on each other as they did on their foes, but the drider was diplomatic enough to know it was best to avoid blatant murder in front of his teammates.

As the threats rose (along with the party's ECL), the motivations of each member diverted slightly, and the party's cohesion suffered as a result. On an especially memorable occasion, the cleric saw fit to bludgeon the drider (now a demilich, in fact) with an adamantine door for a number of rounds, after casting a modified variant of holy sword on it. Sadly, this was probably the high point of their relationship from then onward. Ultimately, the conflict between those two turned into a massive war for control of several prime continents as the pair set to work uniting/conquering the world, with an obligatory duel between the might of their personal epic-level spells. At the very least, however, they managed to restrain themselves (not including the aforementioned holy door incident) from that point until such time as the universe was no longer crumbling.

[Vhaidara]

On an especially memorable occasion, the cleric saw fit to bludgeon the drider (now a demilich, in fact) with an adamantine door for a number of rounds, after casting a modified variant of holy sword on it. Sadly, this was probably the high point of their relationship from then onward.

I'm sorry, I couldn't understand the rest of your post.My mind was blown with the amount of win in that statement.

Can I put this in my extended sig?

[Gale]

Hey, OP here. I actually forgot I made this thread, haha.

But anyways I wanted to clarify that I understand there are many reasons to have an evil-aligned PC in your group. As long as the character can make meaningful contributions and isn't a detriment to the party I don't see why a character of any alignment would be a problem. (Except in some extreme circumstances.) I've contrived the situation in the original post where the evil PC was essentially useless and an annoyance solely because I have personally been in similar situations a couple times and had to sit back and wonder why my character tolerated their existence. Admittedly, this thread had given me some answers to that I hadn't thought of. Perhaps, I've been too narrow-minded in my approach to this.

Regardless, I feel I have a much better understanding of the issue. So thanks for the discussion!
(Feel free to continue though; I'm not really stopping anyone.)

[TheifofZ]

Here's a point that even Red Fel missed. (SHOCK!)
Some players get fed up with playing good or neutral, and try their hand at quote-unquote 'evil' characters.
But instead of any kind of believable 'evil', they just go on a slaughter-fest that requires they be put down like a rabid dog.
While true that some of the more extreme predilections of evil are prone to treating other living beings with a certain level of stabbiness, doing it blindly is typically the stuff done by suicidal nutjobs. Intelligence and some level of sanity and awareness drive all but the most extreme evil creatures to keep their more murderous impulses in check for large portions of the time. Compare culprits of mass-shootings, that typically get taken down by the police for good, to sociopathic serial killers that the police struggle to catch in the first place, and are usually merely jailed.
Unfortunately, between players like that, the general PvP antisocial players, and the BBEGs, the second issue comes up. (Which was covered, but I'll mention again)

Second: The game rules assume about 1/3rd of all characters of fluid alignment (read: NPCs) are technically evil. From greedy merchants who skim alittle extra from their buyers to the hard working, stressed out guy who beats his wife... Most evil characters don't actually require brutal butchery to save the world from them.
Most of the time, you wouldn't even realize they're Evil unless you actively cast the spell Detect Evil or Detect Alignment. One's alignment is determined by how well one treats the rest of the world, how well one treats oneself, and one's intents behind that treatment, but that's a broaaaad picture, and includes extreme outliers and the more generalized populace in one lump sum. Just because a blue guy wants to blow up the planet doesn't mean everyone who wears blue does. Same thing.

Personally, I like playing Evil characters. I think my two favorites that I played were, in order:
Ethan, a hulking Ogre fighter/barbarian with mild sociopathic tendencies and anger issues. He treated violence and killing casually, much like others might treat conversation, but he understood the difference between 'Target' and 'non-target', and between his absurd eloquence when it came to hurting things, his ridiculous strength, and his understanding of the concept of friendship, he was a solid and dependable character that you could count on to have your back if he liked you enough to consider you a friend.
Chalky, a pale and somewhat sickly Dread Necromancer who was more than willing to get his hands dirty doing whatever it took so that he could spend the rest of eternity 'living' with his wife. She had died, unfortunately, and he'd reanimated her as an intelligent undead while aiming to become a Lich himself. As long as noone tried to stop him from reaching this goal, he was more than content to stick with the party and obey the general consensus. Actually a pretty nice guy aside from the whole 'Evil necromancer who toys with the souls and bodies of the dead to further his understanding of undeath'.

The point I'm making here is that it's entirely possible to play an evil character that isn't an antisocial slash-n-stab murderhobo, and it's likely also entirely possible to play a good character that is an antisocial slash-n-stab murderhobo.
If a player insists on being a jerk in character, and makes the party hate him, alignment is neither an excuse to be forced to keep him in, nor the reason you should kick him out.

[Honest Tiefling]

Perhaps a tangent, but if I were the OP, I'd turn to god. I'm a freaking cleric, I assume I put faith in the teachings and wisdom of my deity. If I don't have one of those, presumably I have something!

Also, this approach gives me an opportunity to get the DM to give me a reason if I really cannot think of one myself. Could be things my character could not provide for themselves, such as a test, or because the evil PC is a little too troublesome to bump off (such as a noble scion) or as a part of a prophecy or is really one of the few people needed for a ritual that might be important...