My Opinion About Playing Evil PC In D&D 3.5 [Archive]

OldTrees1

2017-02-25, 05:29 PM

None of your points 1-4 (the 5th isn't a point at all) are specific to or even correlate with PCs that are evil.

In my opinion, characters can be more nuanced and realistic than the black and white oversimplifications. In those oversimplifications we have merged a lot of "stuff I don't like" with "stuff that is immoral" and vice versa as is normal for rationalizing humans. However characters are not bound to those unrealistic self contradicting oversimplifications. Good characters can disagree about what should be done or even get into conflicts with each other. Evil characters can work together with Good characters when their motives inevitably align.

I have seen good people and immoral people harmoniously work together on the same cause. Some time the consequences were moral, other times they were immoral. But people can work together harmoniously with people that differ from them.

So if you want to make progress, you should do some introspection and find what about "Evil PCs" rubs you the wrong way, because those traits are at fault and are not categorically part of Evil characters.

For example:
1) I don't like unresolved interparty conflicts. Obviously unresolvable interparty conflicts are inherently unresolved interparty conflicts. Evil Characters do not necessarily have such and Good Character can have such. Either way, I don't like it when I am DMing.

2) I don't like selfish players. I view the game as a group activity and thus everyone should be concerned about everyone else's enjoyment. Players that don't care about other players have no place at my table regardless of the alignment of their characters.

3) Some morally superogatory deeds are extremely boring in action and some vile deeds are too revolting for me to dwell on during a game. Those topics are censored at my table out of a desire to not bore or ruin the fun of the people involved.

Since none of that would prevent characters like Frollo, Voldemort, Xanatos, or Redcloak at my table, I see no reason to ban Evil PCs at my table.

Bucky

2017-02-25, 05:47 PM

I tend to prefer playing evil PCs to good ones. They have more leeway to be pragmatic - if my goal is for the party to "win" the scenario, pesky things like ethics tend to get in the way. Part of that means suppressing intraparty conflict. It might mean keeping secrets from the other party members because they'd cause drama. Or it might mean carefully weighing effectiveness against how much it'd anger the party paladin. But the downside - needing to smile and roll with the rest of the party's decisions - a good character would be stuck with anyway.

Vizzerdrix

2017-02-25, 05:55 PM

Those all sound like problems with bad players in general. Maybe talk to your group, or lead by example.

Firechanter

2017-02-25, 06:07 PM

First and foremost, it's never the _character_ who is a jerk. A character is some scrawlings on a scrap of paper. It's the player, and _exclusively_ the player, who defines the character's actions. In principle, totally independent of their alignment. Some players are jerks even when they play a nominally Neutral Good character.

That said, I have to add that it's always kind of a Red Flag to me when a (new, unknown to me) player announces they want to play an Evil character. Sure there are exceptions, but more often than not they are really just in it to have an excuse to act like a jerk. They will grief the other players, and when called out on it, claim "Hey dude, it's just what my character is like."

On the third hand, I've seen more than my fair share of nominally Good or Neutral characters who, while not party griefers, contemplated or engaged in behaviour that would make Pol Pot pale in comparison. This player type typically argues "Why, that's not Evil, it's just pragmatic". Go figure.

If all you're looking for is a "Gets **** Done" attitude, any Neutral alignment will work just fine - particularly LN, I suppose - without triggering red flags with fellow players who have suffered too many jerks. It's highly effective, though in my opinion becomes a bit boring after a while.

I wouldn't quite say that players should never be allowed Evil characters. They _can_ be pretty cool, and played non-disruptively too. After all, nothing says Evil character can never care about anyone else. They may be the most uncompromising ally you could imagine. The type who would rather blow a whole city to dust than leave their friend, i.e. you, behind.

atemu1234

2017-02-25, 07:08 PM

My thoughts are that you clearly don't care about anyone else's opinion in this case; whether or not you're correct is of no importance to you, because you will continuously fall back on the 'oh, it's just my opinion' whenever someone says your statement is objectively false, even though you went onto a public forum, and posted it without anyone asking.

Dagroth

2017-02-25, 07:28 PM

I find Evil characters to be enjoyable to play (or to GM) when you have a good group of players.

I've played many evil characters... an Elven Necromancer, who was Neutral Evil. He found the idea of death and souls to be fascinating. This was in 2.0, where Elves had "Spirits" instead of "Souls", which explained their immortality. He would do things like kidnap people so he could perform experiments to study the nature of death. I never described what he did... I would just go "after I kidnap the person, I spend (rolls a d6) 4 days studying their death". Every time I rolled the maximum on the die, I would switch to the next higher die.

A Pirate-hunting Telepath, who was Lawful Evil. He was an "order above all things" type of guy. Think Spock from the Mirror Mirror episode of Star Trek. He thought nothing of sacrificing "pawns" in order to solve bigger problems. He's also the reason I'm not allowed to play a Telepath with my group any more. :smallbiggrin:

Overall, the other players never had problems with my characters... Just the creepy way I play telepaths. :xykon:

Uncle Pine

2017-02-26, 05:12 AM

Hey everybody. This is my opinion about Playing Evil PC. I believe in my opinion that playing evil PC doesn't fit well in D&D 3.5 for so many reasons.

1. Evil PC always get into conflict with other party members and Non PC.

2. Evil PC are jerks.

3. Evil PC takes out the fun of everybody enjoyment.

4. Evil PC are better off being enemies of the party and better being Non PC.

5. I also believe the Evil PC should be banned from being PC.

That's my opinion about Evil PC. Any thoughts anyone? :smile:

I think your opinion is biased in the same way people who think Chaotic Neutral characters have to be played like psychotic murderhoboes on fire are biased. All of them can apply to every alignment, if you have that alignment played straight by a problematic player: idiotic LG characters will refrain from hurting any enemy at all and force their views on the rest of the party for the greater good, idiotic NG will prefer a more passive approach and simply choose to be useless in any combat situation; CG characters will declare that they don't want to take part in any quest that the party receives from a king, a noble or some other authorities because he thinks they are all jerk who oppress the masses and you should rob them instead of aiding them; idiotic TN will refuse to take part in any of the party's activities and won't vote on any decision because you can't disrupt your inner balance if you don't do anything.
Your rules 1-5 should instead read: don't play with someone who can't help but being a disruptive *******, regardless of the class and alignment s/he decides to play.

My opinion on Evil characters: exhibits A (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?443306-quot-Pelor-the-Burning-Hate-quot-(from-Wizards-forum)), B (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?448542-Compliance-Will-Be-Rewarded-A-Guide-to-Lawful-Evil) and C (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?446414-No-Limits-No-Regrets-A-guide-to-the-Chaotic-Evil-alignment).

Barbarian Horde

2017-02-26, 05:14 AM

GrayDeath

2017-02-26, 05:29 AM

Since Chaotic Evil is all about doing exactly what YOU want, and hurting others on the way, ideally. So if you don´t want to, why should you?

I mean its rather rare, sure, but Chaotic Evil Beings that are not insanely cruel do exist.

icefractal

2017-02-26, 05:49 AM

Point #1 just isn't true, Points #4-5 aren't arguments against evil PCs, they're suggestions for when you already agree evil PCs are undesirable, and Point #3 is going to vary from group to group.

However, Point #2 is true - evil PCs are jerks. When you operate on a zoomed-out level, then sure, why not play a villain, that's just as viable a character as a hero. And sometimes the game isn't very RP oriented and a zoomed-out level is plenty.

But when you start to focus on the details, start to imagine what those evil deeds would look like, it can get uncomfortable. Assassinating people, enslaving them, ruining lives for your convenience ... it's pretty ****ed up when you think about it. You may not want the character to succeed any more. And while there are games like Fiasco where wanting your own character to fail spectacularly is a normal part of play, it doesn't always fit so well with D&D.

You can duck around it with "informed evil" - that is, the character is announced as evil, and treated as evil, without actually doing anything particularly nasty in-game. A few ways I've seen:
A) "Would" be willing to do heinous stuff, but never ends up needing to in the course of play.
B) Does things that are considered very evil for unspecified metaphysical reasons, like becoming a Lich.
C) Focuses all evil in a narrow area, like wiping out Elven villages. Is otherwise not evil. Doesn't spend much screen-time on the evil part.
These can work, I guess. Depends on the style of the campaign.

Importantly, this doesn't just apply to the player themself. The rest of the party is complicit in their actions if they continue to associate with and make no real attempt to stop this person.

People often advise to just sweep it under the rug and put party unity above everything, but it can ruin the fun of playing a character if you have to add "And stands by with his hands in his pockets while Necro-Dave rips out villagers' eyes for spell components" to their personality.

So TL;DR - evil can work, but don't just throw it in there on a whim. You need to figure out how evil you mean by evil, and whether the other players are cool with that.

Firechanter

2017-02-26, 06:13 AM

Importantly, this doesn't just apply to the player themself. The rest of the party is complicit in their actions if they continue to associate with and make no real attempt to stop this person.

People often advise to just sweep it under the rug and put party unity above everything, but it can ruin the fun of playing a character if you have to add "And stands by with his hands in his pockets while Necro-Dave rips out villagers' eyes for spell components" to their personality.

Yeah, I refuse to comply with suchlike. That's why I - as player or DM - always try to talk to everyone beforehand about alignment and deities etc. Like, in our current game, one player has, after first trying to dodge the question (another red flag), he finally fessed up that he wanted to play a follower of the god of torture and destruction. Yeah, that would totally fly in a campaign revolving around building a community. Since everyone else in the group also opposed, he eventually changed his concept to a neutral deity.

What I also noticed is that, for some reason, the players of "just my character" always seem to expect the other players to put up with their party griefing without repercussions. Or sometimes they just accept there will be backlash, but they just don't care. So everybody gets hurt but those who prefer cooperative roleplay and care about their characters suffer more from it. Again, my preferred solution is to remove the griefer from the group.

Kesnit

2017-02-26, 07:57 AM

I've been in several games with Evil PCs. Let me give you two examples...

1) Tokanok Gnomehands, CE Gnome Artificer. (This was a 4ed game.) Tok had an overarching goal - to achieve ultimate power. The other PCs were useful to him, so he adventured with them as long as their usefulness continued. There was a memorable encounter where the DM underestimated the power of of the enemies. All but 2 PCs - Tok and a melee type - had died, and the melee type was getting flattened. Tok was in the back of the room, so just ran away. There was nothing else he could do to save the remaining PC (and really, there wasn't), so what was the point of him dying, too? Tok did eventually ascend to godhood, and the players still talk about him with fond memories.

2) In a 3.5 game, I was playing a LE Crusader, and my wife was playing a NE Incarnate. The rest of the party was Neutral. One of the other players (not PCs, players) kept making threats towards my and my wife's characters, because she "didn't like how the party was slipping towards Evil." Neither of the Evil PCs had ever done anything to any other PC. (The threats started the first game where I brought in the Crusader.) So which PC was really Evil - the ones that had E on their sheets, but never had the chance to do an Evil act, or the one with True Neutral who continually threatened to harm fellow PCs?

Vizzerdrix

2017-02-26, 07:58 AM

I dunno.. if your chaotic evil and you havn't tried to kill your party in the first 15seconds of gameplay are you roleplaying chaotic evil correctly?

Yes. Yes you are. In fact, if anyone cant get their characters to play nice with the group and the story, reguardless of alignment, then maybe this isnt the correct hobby for them.

umbergod

2017-02-26, 09:23 AM

Yes. Yes you are. In fact, if anyone cant get their characters to play nice with the group and the story, reguardless of alignment, then maybe this isnt the correct hobby for them.

Winner! Ive played multiple evil PCs in Neutral to Good leaning groups. Evil doesnt mean disruptive or stupid. Hell, antiheroes can easily be evil. The NE Ranger that tortures the location of the kidnapped princess out of some bandits is definitely doing evil acts, for the purpose of achieving a good goal.

Rhyltran

2017-02-26, 11:25 AM

I dunno.. if your chaotic evil and you havn't tried to kill your party in the first 15seconds of gameplay are you roleplaying chaotic evil correctly? The other two I think players should be able to manage, Lawful Evil being the easiest.

I've played a chaotic evil character in an evil campaign. He was the kind of guy willing to do anything for power. If it meant murder, torture, stealing, lying, and betrayal he was fine with this. However, his party is more powerful than anyone he's ever met. They've survived things that no one else could possibly hope to survive. While he didn't like them, didn't even really care about them, it didn't stop him from realizing that his goals were more likely to be accomplished with a group of battle hardened veterans who were kicking butt and taking names than they would on his own.

He didn't fit in lawful evil because often he would do things that he wanted, sometimes at the detriment of the group, he had no code of honor and he didn't give a crap what people, society, or laws expected of him. He wasn't quite neutral evil because if he could he loved doing things that put him in the spot light, he enjoyed watching people squirm, and he relished at any evil or instability he caused around him. Regardless, not once, did he betray his party because that would have been stupid. Plus he feared the party leader.

Darth Ultron

2017-02-26, 03:10 PM

Hey everybody. This is my opinion about Playing Evil PC. I believe in my opinion that playing evil PC doesn't fit well in D&D 3.5 for so many reasons.

Your being a bit vague. After all evil fits very well in an evil D&D game or even a game with just mature adults.

You can have an evil character in any game, with a good player who is a mature adult. Anything less then that....and well, the game will have problems sure.

Remuko

2017-02-26, 03:46 PM

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-26, 03:58 PM

The fact that OP hasn't replied at all really makes me feel this this whole thread was started just to rustle peoples jimmies. So far people seem to be remaining civil though, which is nice.

I definitely side with the majority opinion here that Evil is a totally viable choice and it comes down to player more than character.OK here my reply. Most of the time when evil PC roleplay with other non evil PC is always a problem as I mention in the first post in this thread. If people want to play Evil PC. That's up to them. I for once don't play Evil PC because I always play Good PC also it my preference and choice to play with Good PC.

Calthropstu

2017-02-26, 03:59 PM

I'll come to the op's defense here.

While yes, evil pcs CAN be played well, especially in campaigns designed for it, the kind of people generally attracted to playing evil pcs are, more often than not, jerks. Yes it is player specific, but the kind of people who WANT to be evil tend to be jerks.

Now in a good solid group, you can play evil characters and come to an agreement that evil acts are to be done to npc's, not the rest of the party members, or there can be an agreement that anything goes, and no one will be upset about it and if it gets distuptive, you bring in new characters who don't have grudges.

But normally, my experience has been the guy begging to be evil wants to screw over party members and piss people off for kicks.

I generally reject such players from entering my tables.

Honest Tiefling

2017-02-26, 04:02 PM

While yes, evil pcs CAN be played well, especially in campaigns designed for it, the kind of people generally attracted to playing evil pcs are, more often than not, jerks. Yes it is player specific, but the kind of people who WANT to be evil tend to be jerks.

I've had the opposite experience when it comes to the good-evil spectrum, but I think it also comes down to this: If you tend to run goody-goody two shoe games, the only evil you are going to see are those probably not following the expectations of the game...Hence, jerks. Others will just politely not play at all if that is not their cup of tea. Run evil games, and you get the opposite problem.

Basically, I think Evil PCs are fine, just don't underestimate people's ability to do something completely wrong to be jerks to other people.

Calthropstu

2017-02-26, 04:10 PM

I've had the opposite experience when it comes to the good-evil spectrum, but I think it also comes down to this: If you tend to run goody-goody two shoe games, the only evil you are going to see are those probably not following the expectations of the game...Hence, jerks. Others will just politely not play at all if that is not their cup of tea. Run evil games, and you get the opposite problem.

Basically, I think Evil PCs are fine, just don't underestimate people's ability to do something completely wrong to be jerks to other people.

I have run an evil campaign before to great effect. However, it was with people that all knew each other. The characters were genuinely evil (at one point they sacked an entire village enslaving everyone and selling them to a cadre of vampires) but the in party stuff was good natured, and fun.

But yes, you are correct. Much of what I am describing pertains to people wanting to play evil characters in heroic campaigns

Dagroth

2017-02-26, 04:14 PM

Honest Tiefling

2017-02-26, 04:24 PM

I dunno.. if your chaotic evil and you havn't tried to kill your party in the first 15seconds of gameplay are you roleplaying chaotic evil correctly? The other two I think players should be able to manage, Lawful Evil being the easiest.

This quote made me think of fey and demons being completely unable to deal with mortals, because once 15 seconds is up a 'ding' sound occurs and the fey/demon in question Hulks out and smashes everything. Especially Pazuzu who goes from being perfectly civil and understandable to an idiotic rage monster in a matter of seconds.

Calthropstu

2017-02-26, 04:30 PM

Belkar. Seriously.

Yeah, belkar is the quintessential chaotic evil character for me. Rargh destruction is fun and all, but such people generally don't live past lvl 1. Chaotic evil does not equate to chaotic stupid.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-26, 04:44 PM

If people want to play evil PC they need to make sure what they're doing.

Uncle Pine

2017-02-26, 06:30 PM

If people want to play <insert any character concept> they need to make sure what they're doing.
You see, this reasoning can and should be applied to all kind of characters, for many of the reasons listed in this thread.

I was wondering, is the Rogue class similarly banned at your table?

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-26, 06:37 PM

You see, this reasoning can and should be applied to all kind of characters, for many of the reasons listed in this thread.

I was wondering, is the Rogue class similarly banned at your table?
Well I play a Rogue at my current game however the rogue that I'm playing happen to be a Neutral Good Male Lesser Drow Rogue. I just happen to like goox aligned lesser Drow. I'm just not comfortable playing an evil lesser Drow. And to answer your question I'm not a DM. So in other words no.

Dagroth

2017-02-26, 09:56 PM

Well I play a Rogue at my current game however the rogue that I'm playing happen to be a Neutral Good Male Lesser Drow Rogue. I just happen to like goox aligned lesser Drow. I'm just not comfortable playing an evil lesser Drow. And to answer your question I'm not a DM. So in other words no.

But if you're not stealing from everyone, then you're not playing a Rogue properly!

If you're not playing a greedy & selfish person who always makes sure their share of the treasure is bigger than everyone else's, you're not playing a Rogue properly!

I could go on, but it amounts to the same kind of arguments against Evil Characters.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-26, 10:57 PM

But if you're not stealing from everyone, then you're not playing a Rogue properly!

If you're not playing a greedy & selfish person who always makes sure their share of the treasure is bigger than everyone else's, you're not playing a Rogue properly!

I could go on, but it amounts to the same kind of arguments against Evil Characters.
First off I play my rogue just fine. Second I just play my rogue in a much more different and positive way. And third if I play an evil rogue, the DM will kick me out of the game. So what's your arugnent to counter it. :annoyed:

Crake

2017-02-26, 11:04 PM

Stryyke

2017-02-26, 11:21 PM

I think you have an . . . inexperienced view of what being evil means. All evil people don't run around killing wantonly. I like to think of the evil/good dynamic as virtually synonymous with a selfish/selfless dynamic. Evil people don't necessarily kill without reason. After all an evil character, whether PC or NPC, won't survive past level 0 if they just run around killing things. They inevitably bite off more than they can chew, and get slaughtered. The evil characters that survive to become powerful do so by blending in, while pursuing their own selfish desires. Once they become god-like, they might get a bit more liberal with the death-dealing; but until they are pretty powerful, they want to survive too. Perhaps more-so than good aligned characters.

AnachroNinja

2017-02-26, 11:48 PM

Yeah, belkar is the quintessential chaotic evil character for me. Rargh destruction is fun and all, but such people generally don't live past lvl 1. Chaotic evil does not equate to chaotic stupid.

And the thing is, Belkar has very finely calibrated sense of how far he can go and how far he can screw his party over without ceasing to be worth having around. He really only crossed that line the one time. He's a classic example of "at least if he's on our side we can point him at the enemy".

Rhyltran

2017-02-27, 12:05 AM

In my anecdotal experience I have only ever had 1 player who played an evil character in an otherwise neutral-ish game. The first time, the players didn't even realise he was evil until after the campaign was over, and the second time, it was a very sandbox-y game, where players had plenty of opportunity to do solo play, or only play with certain other players, as the games were very drop-in-drop-out, yet, despite being horribly mistreated by the evil character, the players all seemed to gravitate to them anyway.

I personally don't like it when people discredit the "that's what my character would do" argument. I think mature adults can create a divide between themselves and the game, and at my table, playing true to your character is held in high regard. If that happens to mean that a character needs to retire from the group because the others cannot reasonably see themselves continuing to adventure with the character, then so be it, but compromising your character for the sake of everyone else at the table? Screw that. I would rather see my character remain faithful to their concept, and become an NPC, than to have it become some pale imitation of what I envisioned them as just to fit in with everyone else. If a character does something you don't like, deal with it as your character would, and if it turns into a dramatic confrontation between players, and the eternal cursing of each other as mortal enemies, then so be it. It's a game we use to tell stories, and good stories come with drama.

As a side note: What is you and your group's age bracket bartmanhomer?

Your gaming table is the type of gaming tables I play with. I recently retired my latest Paladin because he simply could not get along with the party. I could change his character so he could. I could have had him suck it up and function but that wouldn't be true to his character. Likewise, I decided to continue playing a previous character I had from another campaign who is more in line with the way this party functions. Maybe in the future a character of mine won't work well in the group and the Paladin can continue his journey with those adventurers. Then again, we've had campaigns where "pvp" has happened but it's not something anyone builds towards or forces. His character's goals and dreams ended up completely contrast with ours and would not budge. It ended with the destruction of his character but it was also one of the most memorable moments of the campaign.

At some point maybe I'll make a thread on encounters like that one but to make a long story short.. he tried his hardest to convince us and pleaded with us to join his side. We tried to do the same but in the end it came down to a fight to the death. It was heart wrenching because we were really attached to him as a member of the group.

Uncle Pine

2017-02-27, 12:16 AM

First off I play my rogue just fine. Second I just play my rogue in a much more different and positive way. And third if I play an evil rogue, the DM will kick me out of the game. So what's your arugnent to counter it. :annoyed:

You're still roleplaying your Rogue wrong if you aren't stealing. Sure, you may not do for your own personal gain, but a NG Rogue should nonetheless steal from the party, if only to devote the gold to some Good church or orphan house/pup shelter: those money are way better off used to spread happiness around than in the hands of adventurers. They always find ao many riches that they won't even notice the missing coins.
It's not you, the Rogue is just built like that, and so should be played. A Rogue steals just as naturally as a Barbarian rages, although your motives may vary. You should still remember to steal. Your party members may not like it, but they can't dislike something they aren't aware of! Play smart! :smallsmile:

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 12:26 AM

You're still roleplaying your Rogue wrong if you aren't stealing. Sure, you may not do for your own personal gain, but a NG Rogue should nonetheless steal from the party, if only to devote the gold to some Good church or orphan house/pup shelter: those money are way better off used to spread happiness around than in the hands of adventurers. They always find ao many riches that they won't even notice the missing coins.
It's not you, the Rogue is just built like that, and so should be played. A Rogue steals just as naturally as a Barbarian rages, although your motives may vary. You should still remember to steal. Your party members may not like it, but they can't dislike something they aren't aware of! Play smart! :smallsmile:

Do you even know the difference between right and wrong? First off a Neutral Good Rogue doesn't steal from a the party. It's wrong which will leads to betrayal, distrust and conflict. Also if a party steals an Evil enemy that's consider good. So I think your twisting the definition between good and evil a little too far. :annoyed:

Uncle Pine

2017-02-27, 12:46 AM

Do you even know the difference between right and wrong? First off a Neutral Good Rogue doesn't steal from a the party. It's wrong which will leads to betrayal, distrust and conflict. Also if a party steals an Evil enemy that's consider good. So I think your twisting the definition between good and evil a little too far. :annoyed:
"Stealing" is an act best evaluated on the Chaos/Law axis rather than the Good/Evil one. Good characters can steal from whoever they damn please, with an appropriate motivation.

Take Robin Hood, for example (either from the novel or the Disney version, both works). He's either CG or NG, but what does he do? He steals. And maybe he doesn't even have Rogue levels! Think how much more good thefts he'd be enforced to do if he was a Rogue.

EDIT: Good characters, if roleplayed correcly, should understand where the Rogue stealing from them to donate to the half-orc orphans is coming from and not hold a grudge. That's what GOOD characters would do!

Marlowe

2017-02-27, 12:51 AM

Three words; Drow Clown Zombie.

Dagroth

2017-02-27, 02:00 AM

First off I play my rogue just fine. Second I just play my rogue in a much more different and positive way. And third if I play an evil rogue, the DM will kick me out of the game. So what's your arugnent to counter it. :annoyed:

Do you even know the difference between right and wrong? First off a Neutral Good Rogue doesn't steal from a the party. It's wrong which will leads to betrayal, distrust and conflict. Also if a party steals an Evil enemy that's consider good. So I think your twisting the definition between good and evil a little too far. :annoyed:

Blue text is generally accepted as meaning sarcasm.

Essentially, we're not saying all Rogues have to be played that way... just like all evil characters don't have to be played in the way you're indicating they would/should be.

Barbarian Horde

2017-02-27, 05:12 AM

Let me change my question.

If your chaotic evil and your party hasn't tried to kill you in the first few minutes of gameplay are you roleplaying chaotic evil correctly?
------------------------

Perhaps like Belkar, someone is willing to put up with you. In an attempt to minimize your impact on the world.

If your as ill nature as your alignment says you should be, then I think the goody little two shoes who play the good alignment to the extreme will notice something and call you out on it. Honestly this is a two way street. Which makes it to hard want to side with the OP. Personally I stick to the neutrals a lot.

So in conclusion I think If I was to play chaotic evil personally in a party of good aligned players my actions would, with no hesitation, be upset with my character at one point. Enough to want to kill him depending on said action. Not from me acting stupid, but performing a task that they do not approve of. How long can you pretend to go along with what the party wants before you start taking penalties to your alignment? If your DM doesn't penalize you then I think you can play chaotic evil with a good party without it being an issue as your break alignment to avoid something the group frowns on doing.(assuming they are good aligned and your not)

Perhaps I play it on the heavier side then the lighter side.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?446414-No-Limits-No-Regrets-A-guide-to-the-Chaotic-Evil-alignment

Was a link I found after some google fu. The different types are all good examples.

weckar

2017-02-27, 05:18 AM

Bartmanhomer, I generally look forward to your threads.

Still, would you like to back up any of those statements you made in the first post with some evidence, or at least experiences? Then we'd have something to talk about.

Uncle Pine

2017-02-27, 06:13 AM

Let me change my question.

If your chaotic evil and your party hasn't tried to kill you in the first few minutes of gameplay are you roleplaying chaotic evil correctly?
I suggest you have a look at this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?446414-No-Limits-No-Regrets-A-guide-to-the-Chaotic-Evil-alignment) thread I linked earlier. It should shed some light on why the answer to your new question is the same as the one to your other question: you can play a crazed CE beast, but that isn't your only option as a player of a CE character.

Efrate

2017-02-27, 06:14 AM

One of my favorite characters I ever played was a CE pixie enchanter. He used a special collar to make his cat familiar do all his "speaking" for him, and focused on doing whatever he wanted to enjoy himself, with no concern for others. It was easy for him to lie, steal, and mislead, but mostly he just laughed at NPCs who tried in vain and failed at most any task he decided to make difficult. He adventured for a long time, because dominating and killing monsters who are so much more than normal people was great fun, and paid well, with only one team member who stayed alive through most of it, a CE warblade whose purpose in life was to prove he was the strongest combatant. He was very easy to manipulate into believing he was so much stronger than the cat, and for around 10 levels no one knew the cat was not the enchanter. It was a great campaign.

Evil doesn't mean stupid nor jerks, and can be blast. Your issues OP seem more with players than with characters. If chaotic/lawful stupid/jerk is all you play with yes I can see it, everyone should be NG so they all go for the greater good and work together for the betterment of all, but using in game stuff to fix out of game stuff is a bad answer, just talk to the players and tell then to shape up or ship out.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 07:29 AM

weckar

2017-02-27, 08:51 AM

that Wikipedia article has nothing in it regarding Evil PCs.

This is starting to head the same direction of your 'why Drow are awesome' thread. It's becoming a metadiscussion of opinion vs fact.

SorenKnight

2017-02-27, 08:58 AM

I dunno.. if your chaotic evil and you havn't tried to kill your party in the first 15seconds of gameplay are you roleplaying chaotic evil correctly? The other two I think players should be able to manage, Lawful Evil being the easiest.

Chaotic Evil doesn't mean stupid. If they aren't stupid they'll understand the consequences of their actions and do their best to fulfill their desires in a manner that still allows them to be members of society with all the benefits that entails (being able to buy items, sleep in beds, etc.) rather than being killed or having to flee into the woods.

I played a character like that (he was LE, but this applies to any evil alignment). He had two priorities, finding enough money to indulge his alcoholism and to have fun killing things. Being a heroic adventurer satisfied both. He made more money in a day than most people had ever seen in one place, and he got to fight a wide variety of interesting monsters.

The party never had a problem with him, beyond finding how much he enjoyed killing things really creepy.

Uncle Pine

2017-02-27, 09:00 AM

I mean, OP is the same person who started a thread titled "Roleplaying A Jerk Who's Neutral Good". I think he perfectly knows that alignment doesn't make the jerk and at this point I question the purpose of this thread.

FocusWolf413

2017-02-27, 09:37 AM

Well I play a Rogue at my current game however the rogue that I'm playing happen to be a Neutral Good Male Lesser Drow Rogue.

You didn't need to say Lesser Drow and male.

Zanos

2017-02-27, 10:13 AM

You didn't need to say Lesser Drow and male.
Ha!

I think OP is wrong, but he sort of has a kernel of truth in what he says. Evil PCs in "normal" groups can be perfectly fine. After all, the life of an adventurer is one where you hurt/kill stuff, accumulate magic items, and get more powerful. Evil characters are usually enticed by at least 2 of those, if not all three. Besides it isn't necessary for Evil characters to be jerks, it can just as easily involve being a particularly ruthless adventure. If you execute all your prisoners and generally prioritize your own advancement, it's pretty easy to slip into Evil.

That said I do agree that a lot of people pick Evil PCs in bad faith, fully intending to play against the party. I personally let players play characters of any alignment, with the stipulation that I expect them to be willing to work together in character. Drama is fine, intentional and planned PvP is not. So you can be Evil, but stealing from the party, secretly feeding the BBEG information, or actually being a doombot isn't stuff I allow at my table.

Pleh

2017-02-27, 10:21 AM

martixy

2017-02-27, 10:47 AM

Blue text is generally accepted as meaning sarcasm.

Essentially, we're not saying all Rogues have to be played that way... just like all evil characters don't have to be played in the way you're indicating they would/should be.

You just had to go and ruin it, didn't ya. :smalltongue:

OP, your attitude towards evil PCs comes off as so naive, it almost seems trollish.

In my experience, in a collaborative, group game evil does however require a certain level of psychopathy or enough careful, reasoned intent to successfully emulate that. Few are the players who can successfully pull that off. I've seen even logical, highly intelligent individuals devolve into "hurr, durr, I kill teh kittens because my character is evil".

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 03:33 PM

that Wikipedia article has nothing in it regarding Evil PCs.

This is starting to head the same direction of your 'why Drow are awesome' thread. It's becoming a metadiscussion of opinion vs fact.

Yes it does.

Sir_Chivalry

2017-02-27, 03:38 PM

Yes it does.

Care to provide some quotes from the article that apply, then?

theasl

2017-02-27, 03:45 PM

Yes it does.

Just saying "yes it does" does not make it so...

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 03:46 PM

Care to provide some quotes from the article that apply, then?

In common usage, theft is taking of another person's property or services without that person's property or services without that person permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful of it.

OldTrees1

2017-02-27, 03:51 PM

In common usage, theft is taking of another person's property or services without that person's property or services without that person permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful of it.

Yes that is the common usage*. However it only talks about theft and not about "All Evil people steal and Only Evil people steal".

Robin Hood and King John both stole. One is usually classed as CG despite the theft and the other is usually classed as LE.

*Although I could go on for about a page about the difference between common, legal, and moral theory usages of the term.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 03:54 PM

Yes that is the common usage. However it only talks about theft and not about "All Evil people steal and Only Evil people steal".

Robin Hood and King John both stole. One is usually classed as CG despite the theft and the other is usually classed as LE.

Ok so maybe Good people can steal. So what?! My character doesn't steal.

Red Fel

2017-02-27, 03:58 PM

In common usage, theft is taking of another person's property or services without that person's property or services without that person permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful of it.

Bartmanhomer, instead of just responding to that one point, try tying it into the rest of the discussion.

In this case, you've said what theft is, now explain the point you're trying to make. Explain how that relates to Evil PCs. Are you trying to say that theft, being a wrongful taking etc., is Evil, and therefore those who do it are Evil?

If you're trying to say that, then keep in mind OldTrees' response concerning Robin Hood. He's a pretty standard illustration of Chaotic Good, and he's unquestionably a thief. It's right there in his name, "Prince of Thieves." Go watch a Kevin Costner movie. You'll laugh.

That said, if theft makes a PC Evil, and Rogues steal, then Rogues are Evil. If Evil PCs are bad, and shouldn't be played, because they're selfish jerks, then Rogues - which must be Evil, because they steal - should not be played. And that means that your Rogue - which you play just fine - is Evil and should not be allowed at the table.

Or, maybe it's just possible - hear me out - that generalizations don't work. That "All X are Y" may work as a logic exercise, but when it comes to describing characters, it doesn't work. Because characters are an attempt at simulating people, and - I think you'll agree with me - people are complicated.

OldTrees1

2017-02-27, 04:00 PM

Ok so maybe Good people can steal. So what?! My character doesn't steal.

That is perfectly fine. The post that initially suggested "your rogue must steal for being CG" was colored blue. That meant it was being sarcastic. They didn't really think theft was mandatory for CG rogue. They were apply the form of your argument to a different topic to result in a conclusion you would reject. Then they colored it blue to indicate they also rejected the conclusion. Thus they were using an argument by contradiction to point out how your initial argument against Evil PCs was wrong.

Telonius

2017-02-27, 04:00 PM

For questions like this, I usually turn to the experts.

Look, Perry the Platypus, just because I'm evil doesn't mean everything I do is evil.

"Evil" is not the same thing as "is always a jerk, all the time." All you need for a character to be evil is a disregard for life. Evil characters can certainly be self-interested. They can even work really well as part of a team; even Evil likes to have friends. Backstabbing your allies, or putting them at unnecessary risk (on the chance you get caught by the authorities), is not Evil. It's Stupid.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 04:03 PM

Bartmanhomer, instead of just responding to that one point, try tying it into the rest of the discussion.

In this case, you've said what theft is, now explain the point you're trying to make. Explain how that relates to Evil PCs. Are you trying to say that theft, being a wrongful taking etc., is Evil, and therefore those who do it are Evil?

If you're trying to say that, then keep in mind OldTrees' response concerning Robin Hood. He's a pretty standard illustration of Chaotic Good, and he's unquestionably a thief. It's right there in his name, "Prince of Thieves." Go watch a Kevin Costner movie. You'll laugh.

That said, if theft makes a PC Evil, and Rogues steal, then Rogues are Evil. If Evil PCs are bad, and shouldn't be played, because they're selfish jerks, then Rogues - which must be Evil, because they steal - should not be played. And that means that your Rogue - which you play just fine - is Evil and should not be allowed at the table.

Or, maybe it's just possible - hear me out - that generalizations don't work. That "All X are Y" may work as a logic exercise, but when it comes to describing characters, it doesn't work. Because characters are an attempt at simulating people, and - I think you'll agree with me - people are complicated.

Ok, ok. I give up, I surrender. Maybe stealing mixing with the evil polarity is over-generalizing a bit too far. :annoyed:
:annoyed:

Red Fel

2017-02-27, 04:06 PM

Ok, ok. I give up, I surrender. Maybe stealing mixing with the evil polarity is over-generalizing a bit too far. :annoyed:
:annoyed:

That's a fair position. I'm proud of you.

So let's expand back to the OP. Your position, in essence, is that Evil characters "always get into conflict," "are jerks," "take the fun out" of the game, and "should be banned."

That's your position, that's fine. Statement of opinion. But now that you've put your opinion out there, people are going to want - as you've seen in this thread and others - to challenge it. Which means supporting your opinion.

Let's start with your first point, that Evil characters always get into conflict with the other PCs and NPCs. Now, that may be true in your experience; I wouldn't know. But can you show me something that requires this behavior in all Evil characters? Or is it possible, just possible, that an Evil character can have a reason for cooperating with other characters?

Buufreak

2017-02-27, 04:08 PM

Ok, ok. I give up, I surrender. Maybe stealing mixing with the evil polarity is over-generalizing a bit too far. :annoyed:
:annoyed:

Now if only a certain other poster could be in the same boat about wizards...

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 04:11 PM

That's a fair position. I'm proud of you.

So let's expand back to the OP. Your position, in essence, is that Evil characters "always get into conflict," "are jerks," "take the fun out" of the game, and "should be banned."

That's your position, that's fine. Statement of opinion. But now that you've put your opinion out there, people are going to want - as you've seen in this thread and others - to challenge it. Which means supporting your opinion.

Let's start with your first point, that Evil characters always get into conflict with the other PCs and NPCs. Now, that may be true in your experience; I wouldn't know. But can you show me something that requires this behavior in all Evil characters? Or is it possible, just possible, that an Evil character can have a reason for cooperating with other characters?

Ok, I accepted your challenge. Uhh.....I know when an evil character for example let just say a Male Gnoll Barbarian. He wants infromation of the whereabouts of the Orc Atrmy that might be useful for the party. So he torture the NPC and the NPC reveal the information. Does that sound evil enough? :smile:

Red Fel

2017-02-27, 04:16 PM

Ok, I accepted your challenge. Uhh.....I know when an evil character for example let just say a Male Gnoll Barbarian. He wants infromation of the whereabouts of the Orc Atrmy that might be useful for the party. So he torture the NPC and the NPC reveal the information. Does that sound evil enough? :smile:

Okay. That's fair. He tortured an NPC, that's Evil.

Did he get the information, though? Because if he did, doesn't that help the party? If my Evil character says to the heroes, "I'm going to go gather information that will help you," then comes back with the information, that helps the party. If my Good allies spare a helpless villain who pleads for mercy, but my Evil PC goes back when nobody's looking and kills the villain, knowing that the villain is just the type who'll come after us for revenge later, isn't that helping the party?

I think you see that, now. Or I hope you do. An Evil character can do bad things that help the other PCs. Maybe even help other Good people. The information you got from torturing that NPC may save an entire kingdom from the invading Orc army. That kind of makes you a hero. An Evil hero, but a hero nonetheless.

Kinda fun, isn't it, when you look at it that way?

OldTrees1

2017-02-27, 04:18 PM

Ok, I accepted your challenge. Uhh.....I know when an evil character for example let just say a Male Gnoll Barbarian. He wants infromation of the whereabouts of the Orc Atrmy that might be useful for the party. So he torture the NPC and the NPC reveal the information. Does that sound evil enough? :smile:

Why would the Gnoll Barbarian use torture? Torture is rarely reliable and would lose the Gnoll some valuable allies. So instead the Gnoll takes the Orc prisoner aside and says "Clearly you do not want to end up a prisoner of war. I might convince my friends we are too busy to turn you in, if you give me a reason for us to hurry elsewhere. Perhaps the location of the army? We would find it one way or another but that information now would give me an excuse to rush my party onward rather than take you in."

Of course if torture was reliable then the Gnoll might easily spin it as Red Fel did above.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 04:20 PM

Okay. That's fair. He tortured an NPC, that's Evil.

Did he get the information, though? Because if he did, doesn't that help the party? If my Evil character says to the heroes, "I'm going to go gather information that will help you," then comes back with the information, that helps the party. If my Good allies spare a helpless villain who pleads for mercy, but my Evil PC goes back when nobody's looking and kills the villain, knowing that the villain is just the type who'll come after us for revenge later, isn't that helping the party?

I think you see that, now. Or I hope you do. An Evil character can do bad things that help the other PCs. Maybe even help other Good people. The information you got from torturing that NPC may save an entire kingdom from the invading Orc army. That kind of makes you a hero. An Evil hero, but a hero nonetheless.

Kinda fun, isn't it, when you look at it that way?
Yes. He got the information. Now that you think about it being Evil does help in some cases. :wink:

Red Fel

2017-02-27, 04:23 PM

Yes. He got the information. Now that you think about it being Evil does help in some cases. :wink:

It does! And it can be fun!

And not just fun for the Evil PC. Fun for the party! Imagine how many problems you can solve, how many ways you can help your friends, when not constrained by paltry morality! Imagine how much good you can achieve when you're willing to go to any length to achieve it! Imagine the monsters you can slay when you are the greatest monster of them all!

Lots of books, series, and movies, have a protagonist who is a hero because, deep down, he is an even more dark and terrifying creature than the enemies he hunts. A trained killer killing other trained killers. A demonic vampire hunting lesser vampires. A man with a beast soul slaying monsters who threaten the innocent.

We can be "good guys" too, is the point. To quote Zangief, "You are bad guy. But this does not make you bad guy."

atemu1234

2017-02-27, 04:53 PM

It does! And it can be fun!

And not just fun for the Evil PC. Fun for the party! Imagine how many problems you can solve, how many ways you can help your friends, when not constrained by paltry morality! Imagine how much good you can achieve when you're willing to go to any length to achieve it! Imagine the monsters you can slay when you are the greatest monster of them all!

Lots of books, series, and movies, have a protagonist who is a hero because, deep down, he is an even more dark and terrifying creature than the enemies he hunts. A trained killer killing other trained killers. A demonic vampire hunting lesser vampires. A man with a beast soul slaying monsters who threaten the innocent.

We can be "good guys" too, is the point. To quote Zangief, "You are bad guy. But this does not make you bad guy."

That's right up there with one of my favorite quotes from Buffy:

GILES: Can you move?
BEN: Need... a minute… She could have killed me.
GILES: No she couldn't. Never. And sooner or later, Glory will re-emerge and make Buffy pay for that mercy, and the world with her. Buffy even knows that, and still she wouldn't take a human life. Because she's a hero, you see. She's not like us.
BEN: Us?
[Giles proceeds to strangle Ben]

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 04:55 PM

It does! And it can be fun!

And not just fun for the Evil PC. Fun for the party! Imagine how many problems you can solve, how many ways you can help your friends, when not constrained by paltry morality! Imagine how much good you can achieve when you're willing to go to any length to achieve it! Imagine the monsters you can slay when you are the greatest monster of them all!

Lots of books, series, and movies, have a protagonist who is a hero because, deep down, he is an even more dark and terrifying creature than the enemies he hunts. A trained killer killing other trained killers. A demonic vampire hunting lesser vampires. A man with a beast soul slaying monsters who threaten the innocent.

We can be "good guys" too, is the point. To quote Zangief, "You are bad guy. But this does not make you bad guy."

Hmmm. Red Del, I never thought that I ever going to say this but you're right. But a wait a minute wouldn't my other party members be uncomfortable having an evil character in the team? Remember everybody have different opinions about evil character and not everybody doesn't feel the same way about evil characters.

Zanos

2017-02-27, 04:59 PM

Lots of books, series, and movies, have a protagonist who is a hero because, deep down, he is an even more dark and terrifying creature than the enemies he hunts. A trained killer killing other trained killers. A demonic vampire hunting lesser vampires. A man with a beast soul slaying monsters who threaten the innocent.
To nitpick, these character concepts could actually be anywhere on the alignment chart. But you already mentioned what it's all about: your means.

Dedicated Evil characters can be extremely interesting because in many cases they know what they're doing is wrong, but whatever goal it is that they have in mind is important enough for them to sacrifice morality on the altar of pragmatism. I'd argue that these are the bulk of Evil characters, people who have either simply selfish or G/good goals but aren't particularly caught up in what they have to do to get there. There are some characters, mostly Evil clerics or paladins, who do Evil simply for the sake of it, but they're more rare and usually kind of incompatible with "typical" parties.

Hmmm. Red Del, I never thought that I ever going to say this but you're right. But a wait a minute wouldn't my other party members be uncomfortable having an evil character in the team? Remember everybody have different opinions about evil character and not everybody doesn't feel the same way about evil characters.
Don't walk into the group and say "Hi I'm Evil McSatan, who would like to get stabbed?" Most Evil people are relatively normal. A favorite establishing character moment for one of my Evil characters is when he killed an unconscious enemy spellcaster as the rest of the team debated what to do with him.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 05:13 PM

To nitpick, these character concepts could actually be anywhere on the alignment chart. But you already mentioned what it's all about: your means.

Dedicated Evil characters can be extremely interesting because in many cases they know what they're doing is wrong, but whatever goal it is that they have in mind is important enough for them to sacrifice morality on the altar of pragmatism. I'd argue that these are the bulk of Evil characters, people who have either simply selfish or G/good goals but aren't particularly caught up in what they have to do to get there. There are some characters, mostly Evil clerics or paladins, who do Evil simply for the sake of it, but they're more rare and usually kind of incompatible with "typical" parties.

Don't walk into the group and say "Hi I'm Evil McSatan, who would like to get stabbed?" Most Evil people are relatively normal. A favorite establishing character moment for one of my Evil characters is when he killed an unconscious enemy spellcaster as the rest of the team debated what to do with him.
What evil character would do something so stupid like that? That really a dead giveaway right there. :mad:

Zanos

2017-02-27, 05:15 PM

What evil character would do something so stupid like that? That really a dead giveaway right there. :mad:
Executing people who are too dangerous to reliably contain is probably Evil, but it's also smart and pretty easily justifiable.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 05:20 PM

Executing people who are too dangerous to reliably contain is probably Evil, but it's also smart and pretty easily justifiable.

May I ask, How? :confused:

Zanos

2017-02-27, 05:26 PM

May I ask, How? :confused:
Alright, let me outline a scenario for you. This isn't an exact mirror of what happened, but it's close enough.

You are fighting a mystically dangerous person who you have seen do the following:
Teleport
Kill with a thought and a word
Animate the dead to fight for them
Burst objects
Varies other wizardy stuff

And now you have them unconscious. You could keep them tied up and try to put them in jail, except, oh wait, it's more than a day's travel to the nearest city and when they wake up who knows whether or not they're going to literally speak a word and kill you, disappear again to murder more people, or just bust the bindings with a thought. So you can worry about the fact that killing prisoners is wrong and worry about whether or not this person is going to escape and kill or be a general menace again, or you can worry about neither of those things and just kill them.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 05:29 PM

Alright, let me outline a scenario for you. This isn't an exact mirror of what happened, but it's close enough.

You are fighting a mystically dangerous person who you have seen do the following:
Teleport
Kill with a thought and a word
Animate the dead to fight for them
Burst objects
Varies other wizardy stuff

And now you have them unconscious. You could keep them tied up and try to put them in jail, except, oh wait, it's more than a day's travel to the nearest city and when they wake up who knows whether or not they're going to literally speak a word and kill you, disappear again to murder more people, or just bust the bindings with a thought. So you can worry about the fact that killing prisoners is wrong and worry about whether or not this person is going to escape and kill or be a general menace again, or you can worry about neither of those things and just kill them.
That make sense. :biggrin:

Kantaki

2017-02-27, 05:32 PM

May I ask, How? :confused:

Err... They are dangerous? Whatever they did to make the ( presumably mostly good-neutral) party oppose them, they might will do it again.
And this time they are going to be smarter about it and won't be stopped as easily, making them even more dangerous.

So in this case the "good" guys showing "mercy" to the villain and let them go are worse than a "evil" guy killing them "ruthlessly" behind the back of the goody-two-shoes.

Deadline

2017-02-27, 05:33 PM

That make sense. :biggrin:

It's also Evil.

*shrug* Don't know if that matters though.

Azoth

2017-02-27, 05:50 PM

Yeah, gotta agree with the guys saying Evil characters, or any character, when applied and played properly is fine. My last Evil character was Lawful Evil. He had max ranks in Profession (Barrister), and handled all of the party's dealings when taking on quests and jobs. Everyone got an even split of the loot, and NPCs couldn't easily try and backpedal on payments.

The only times that conflicts arose were when the more merciful members of the party got angry about his very literal nature. A prime example was on a train when we got ambushed and civilians were involved. My character clearly stated, "Anyone who wants to live, drop your weapons and stand down immediately." When my initiative came around again, he made a mental note of everyone holding a weapon...and slaughtered them all even if they later tried surrendering to him peacefully.

He did "betray" the party a few times. This was done to save their lives. Refusing to retreat from a losing battle you can't turn the tide on is dumb. A lot of his comrades were dumb. Hitting them hard enough to knock them out and then teleporting away is smart. So there was plenty of drama from time to time, but nothing to make people distrust him or refuse to travel with him.

Crake

2017-02-27, 06:31 PM

Why does this thread feel like an after school special about not pigeonholing evil people?

Dagroth

2017-02-27, 07:05 PM

Err... They are dangerous? Whatever they did to make the ( presumably mostly good-neutral) party oppose them, they might will do it again.
And this time they are going to be smarter about it and won't be stopped as easily, making them even more dangerous.

So in this case the "good" guys showing "mercy" to the villain and let them go are worse than a "evil" guy killing them "ruthlessly" behind the back of the goody-two-shoes.

There have been many, many comics about how Batman is just as guilty as the Joker because he knows that the Joker is going to escape and kill again. But Batman sticks to his Neutral Good credo (I refuse to buy Batman being Lawful Good or Chaotic Good... he works with the law, but not within the law).

Movie heroes tend to get away with "killing" villains because said villains usually end up killing themselves. Thus, the hero keeps his high ground without having to concern themselves with repeat offenders too much.

Having an Evil character in your group just makes it so that the villains will more likely end up dead.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 07:52 PM

Why would the Gnoll Barbarian use torture? Torture is rarely reliable and would lose the Gnoll some valuable allies. So instead the Gnoll takes the Orc prisoner aside and says "Clearly you do not want to end up a prisoner of war. I might convince my friends we are too busy to turn you in, if you give me a reason for us to hurry elsewhere. Perhaps the location of the army? We would find it one way or another but that information now would give me an excuse to rush my party onward rather than take you in."

Of course if torture was reliable then the Gnoll might easily spin it as Red Fel did above.

Uhh Hello he's evil! :annoyed:

LordOfCain

2017-02-27, 08:06 PM

Imagine how many problems you can solve, how many ways you can help your friends, when not constrained by paltry morality! Imagine how much good you can achieve when you're willing to go to any length to achieve it! Imagine the monsters you can slay when you are the greatest monster of them all!

Can I sig this?

Kantaki

2017-02-27, 08:15 PM

Uhh Hello he's evil! :annoyed:

I'm sorry, but since when does being evil mean you can't have standards (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0258.html)?:smallconfused:

Torture isn't very useful to aquire information (or anything, really), so why use it? There are better methods. Lies, blackmail, making promises, paying... Torture is just so unnecessary and... distasteful.:smallyuk:
Unless you are into that kind of thing of course...

OldTrees1

2017-02-27, 08:28 PM

Uhh Hello he's evil! :annoyed:

He's also not an idiot. :smallannoyed: I did mention that they would reject torture because it was not reliable. It is not like they actually cared about the morality of the torture.

Instead I suggested they "offer a way out of indefinite inhumane incarceration that would likely end in death". Or in other words "threatened them with indefinite inhumane incarceration ending in death". Threats work but torture doesn't.

Honestly I am surprised you missed the irony of me having the Evil Gnoll use the "Good Guys" as the "Bad Cop" in the "Good Cop / Bad Cop" routine.

Red Fel

2017-02-27, 08:37 PM

That's right up there with one of my favorite quotes from Buffy:

Atemu, you know how I feel about that quote.

Love it.

Can I sig this?

I don't know, can you?

Seriously, go for it. Spread my glorious name.

I'm sorry, but since when does being evil mean you can't have standards (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0258.html)?:smallconfused:

Torture isn't very useful to aquire information (or anything, really), so why use it? There are better methods. Lies, blackmail, making promises, paying... Torture is just so unnecessary and... distasteful.:smallyuk:
Unless you are into that kind of thing of course...

That's precisely the point.

Admittedly, there will be some flavors of Evil that can't abide torture. Maybe they're squeamish. Maybe it offends their sensibilities.

For the rest of us, though, it's perfect. Why, you ask?

It's simple. What separates Neutral from Evil is excess. Both Neutral and Evil alignments can be ruthlessly pragmatic. For example, killing a helpless captive spellcaster who you just know will come after you again - that's pragmatic. A Good character might not be able to stomach it, but both Neutral and Evil can take care of that for you in two flicks of a knife.

No, what separates them is excess. Neutral will do what is necessary to get the job done. Evil will go just a little bit beyond that.

And not just for senseless reasons. Not just for "the evulz." No. It serves a purpose. An excessive one, but a purpose nonetheless.

There are a lot of ways to get a captive to talk. A lot of ways to convince him, for the moment, to betray his allies, his cause, his beliefs, his country. But there's one surefire way to ensure that he would never dare betray you. And that's by showing him just what kind of monster you are. When faced with the concrete manifestation of pain and fear, everything else falls away, and you learn what's truly important - never making me angry.

And it serves other purposes, too. Sure, you could execute your enemies cleanly, let the word get out that you're some tyrant who mows down those who oppose him. Or you could rend the flesh from their bones, display their still-bleeding carcasses along your borders, and warn all who pass that this is the fate of all who would dare defy me.

The acts attributed to the historic Vlad the Impaler are particularly brutal and savage. And yet, under his despotic reign, crime was at a low, and the borders were protected against invasion. Because people understood what they faced.

So, yeah. Torture isn't necessary. That's the point. The point is to make someone ask, "What kind of monster would do this?" And then to be the answer.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 08:42 PM

I'm sorry, but since when does being evil mean you can't have standards (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0258.html)?:smallconfused:

Torture isn't very useful to aquire information (or anything, really), so why use it? There are better methods. Lies, blackmail, making promises, paying... Torture is just so unnecessary and... distasteful.:smallyuk:
Unless you are into that kind of thing of course...Torture is very useful for evil characters.

Pleh

2017-02-27, 08:44 PM

He's also not an idiot. :smallannoyed: I did mention that they would reject torture because it was not reliable. It is not like they actually cared about the morality of the torture.

Instead I suggested they "offer a way out of indefinite inhumane incarceration that would likely end in death". Or in other words "threatened them with indefinite inhumane incarceration ending in death". Threats work but torture doesn't.

Honestly I am surprised you missed the irony of me having the Evil Gnoll use the "Good Guys" as the "Bad Cop" in the "Good Cop / Bad Cop" routine.

Torture doesn't work for getting information.

It does give you a substantial bonus to your intimidate check. "Pain is scary."

Gnolls are described in the mm as prefering living, sentient meals because they tend to scream more when eaten alive. Maybe the gnoll isn't after information, but just a good time.

OldTrees1

2017-02-27, 08:47 PM

There are a lot of ways to get a captive to talk. A lot of ways to convince him, for the moment, to betray his allies, his cause, his beliefs, his country. But there's one surefire way to ensure that he would never dare betray you. And that's by showing him just what kind of monster you are. When faced with the concrete manifestation of pain and fear, everything else falls away, and you learn what's truly important - never making me angry.

I don't think I agree here. The Lesson "never make me angry" is the wrong lesson to instill while trying to extract information. You are begging for the captive to say whatever you want to hear rather than to say the information you came in here for.

Sure if held captive by a Lich that has nothing better to do all decade than watch your lifeforce flow into and out of our body, you might quickly learn the desperation of saying literally anything to get them to stop. However you are now useless as an informant.

"There are five lights. I have green hair. You are always right. Everyone that disagrees with you is a fool. Etc"

So yes, Torture is good at instilling fear and fear can be useful at sculpting reactions. However extracting information is not one of its strong points.

Zanos

2017-02-27, 09:04 PM

Torture works fine in D&D land(and much fiction) for getting information, assuming you have the right skills. I mean, hitting them with a sap and then casting an enchantment spell or reading a scroll of one is probably much, much easier. It does work though.

I agree that torture is pretty bad for it's supposed purpose in reality, though.

Daefos

2017-02-27, 09:06 PM

Torture is very useful for evil characters.

Care to explain why?

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 09:10 PM

Care to explain why?
Yeah Evil character let just say the Paladin Of Tyranny needs information. So he use his sword to torture the NPC to get information. The NPC tell the information to the Evil Paladin and there you have it.

Kantaki

2017-02-27, 09:11 PM

Dagroth

2017-02-27, 09:11 PM

You don't torture the guy who has the information...

You torture the guy a few cells down, so the target can only hear the responses of the victim. So the target can imagine what the torture is like... what it will be like, when it's his turn.

Heck, if you're squeamish, you can do this with illusions... but you better be really good with those illusions. And the only way to get the details right is either to have experienced it, or witnessed it.

So illusions probably aren't nearly as effective.

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 09:14 PM

Azoth

2017-02-27, 09:19 PM

Just using physical trauma as torture is highly ineffective for anything aside instilling fear. There is a reason that a multitude of methods have been developed over the centuries. Each has its own merits when trying to gain a certain outcome. None are particularly suited to gaining honest information on their own.

That is an inherent problem with torture. Eventually, the victim becomes numb to it, or says whatever it takes to make the torture stop.

Kantaki

2017-02-27, 09:20 PM

Why not?! It works. :annoyed:

No it doesn't.
They will tell you what (they think) you want to hear, not necessarily the truth.
Unless you want them to confess something they might (not) have done (direct) torture is pointless for the purpose of a interrogation.
If you want to punish them afterwards for wasting your time, now that's the right time for it.:smallamused:

Bartmanhomer

2017-02-27, 09:23 PM

No it doesn't.
They will tell you what (they think) you want to hear, not necessarily the truth.
Unless you want them to confess something they might (not) have done (direct) torture is pointless for the purpose of a interrogation.
If you want to punish them afterwards for wasting your time, now that's the right time for it.:smallamused:

Yes it does. Torture always works. Disagree with me all you want. I know that I'm right. :biggrin:

Red Fel

2017-02-27, 09:28 PM

But not to extract information from a prisoner.

... Information?

Honest Tiefling

2017-02-27, 09:31 PM

Yes it does. Torture always works. Disagree with me all you want. I know that I'm right. :biggrin:

This? See this? This is the voice of someone bad at evil. Empirical evidenced ALWAYS wins. This is why we need intelligence, not charisma builds people! Else some blackguard will come waltzing in thinking he has all of the answers and shouting over the 8 charisma wizard. You just do the stabbing and I'll do the experimentation that violates the laws of decency thank you very much.

Kantaki

2017-02-27, 09:32 PM

Yes it does. Torture always works. Disagree with me all you want. I know that I'm right. :biggrin:

Okay... that is kinda worrying...

And in a sense you aren't entirely wrong.
Torture is a wonderful tool to get the victim to say something specific- to „confess” they are the evil cultist who abducted all the local children, to „reveal” their plot against their liege, things like that- but to get actual information you don't know already?
That's rather unlikely.
More likely is they just make something up to make the pain stop or tell you a half-truth or outdated intel for the same purpose.

Edit: @RedFel: Yes information. Sometimes you need it. Sometimes you need it from prisoners. Having fun, making examples and taking vengeance are all great reasons to inflict horrible suffering, but sometimes the pleasure has to wait until the job is done.

atemu1234

2017-02-27, 09:36 PM

Also D&D has rules on torture. It's basically an intimidate check. So yes, in this context, it works.

Red Fel

2017-02-27, 09:49 PM

Edit: @RedFel: Yes information. Sometimes you need it. Sometimes you need it from prisoners. Having fun, making examples and taking vengeance are all great reasons to inflict horrible suffering, but sometimes the pleasure has to wait until the job is done.

Gotta be honest, if I'm torturing my captives, I'm not doing it for information. Oh, I'll make them talk, but I won't actually listen. No, if I'm doing it, I'm doing it to make a point.

Seriously, this is D&D. If I want information, there are spellcasters who can scry for it, priests who can ask their patrons about it, or psychics who can rip it directly from your brain, as pleasantly or unpleasantly as I like. I keep people on payroll for a reason.

Information? I don't torture people for such a silly reason.

OldTrees1

2017-02-27, 09:55 PM

Gotta be honest, if I'm torturing my captives, I'm not doing it for information. Oh, I'll make them talk, but I won't actually listen. No, if I'm doing it, I'm doing it to make a point.

Seriously, this is D&D. If I want information, there are spellcasters who can scry for it, priests who can ask their patrons about it, or psychics who can rip it directly from your brain, as pleasantly or unpleasantly as I like. I keep people on payroll for a reason.

Information? I don't torture people for such a silly reason.

Fair enough. Although, like the Gnoll Barbarian example, not all Evil characters are powerful enough to have such useful resources on their payroll.

Some pitiful Evil characters have to get the information themselves before they can use torture for their other ends.

Elkad

2017-02-27, 09:58 PM

Playing Evil in a Good party is great fun. Especially if you hide it. Some games the party figured it out eventually. Some they didn't. But I never run around doing evil acts just to do them.

I'll put LN on my character sheet I leave lying around. The DM and I know the truth.

Doing your evil offscreen is too easy. Do it onscreen, and hide it from the party anyway. I cleared a structure full of bandits with a Cloudkill, despite knowing the basement was full of children captured from a nearby village (my Imp rat had done some scouting), and that Cloudkill flows to the lowest space. Then I just distracted the party with a "fleeing bandits" illusion and covered up the evidence.

Not because I wanted to kill children. Because that's the spell I had memorized that was most appropriate for the tactical situation.

Zanos

2017-02-27, 10:00 PM

Yeah, I've killed a kid or two in my time because they were within the optimal targeting radius of a fireball...

atemu1234

2017-02-27, 10:48 PM

Yeah, I've killed a kid or two in my time because they were within the optimal targeting radius of a fireball...

Eh, my favorite thing to do is to use an evil character to cut the moral Gordian's knot, as it were. "Oh, this is a moral quandry. The key is inside a small child? I use mass hold person on my party members, then proceed to remove the child from the room, and then the key from the child." (that scenario may have resulted in my character's death, but still...)

Azoth

2017-02-27, 11:08 PM

One of my favorite evil characters in Pathfinder had his shining moment when the party caught him with a near mountain of Soul Gems. They knew he was a Necromancer, but not how far he took it. They had only really seen him spam debuffs and occasionally create an undead meatshield with the intention of it being destroyed shortly thereafter. (I layered magic to hide my alignment, and make my alignment appear non-Evil for the Paladin's sake.)

He had been supplying his Imp familiar with wands of Summon Cacodaemon to harvest the souls of the enemies they had killed. These were used in the crafting of magic items for the party.

Imagine the looks on their faces when they realized the countless souls of those who stood in our way were forged into the very items they used to mow down newer stronger enemies. Now, imagine the Paladin's Holy Avenger deciding that this was the perfect moment to reveal it was sentient as a cacophonous stream of hundreds of voices shouting at the same time for vengeance against us!

I retired the character shortly after, but it was worth it.

Calthropstu

2017-02-27, 11:19 PM

Zanos

2017-02-27, 11:27 PM

That's still technically helping...

I find it amusing that the rules don't prevent you from creating a holy avenger or other holy weapon out of harvested souls.

Coretron03

2017-02-27, 11:29 PM

Crake

2017-02-27, 11:49 PM

Efrate

2017-02-27, 11:56 PM

I'm pretty sure Red Fel IS Lawful Evil, and liking it is a byproduct.

On torture, there is plenty of reasons, not the least of which is part of a ritual to summon various fiends to help you out. To do the whole divinitation thing. Or just for kicks. Or for an example. Or because have you SEEN a succubus? Speak with dead is a spell you know. And they cannot lie.

Azoth

2017-02-28, 12:11 AM

See what I mean? This right here is what I was talking about in my first post in this thread. This has been my experience with players wanting to play evil. It's not fun for anyone other than you, it's disruptive, and a total jerk move. This is why I don't allow people to mix good and evil alignments in parties.

Okay, time to set the record straight.

1) I was not disruptive towards my group in the slightest. My Necromancer routinely debuffed enemies and used battle field control spells in combat to assist my team mates in combat.

2) I was the party crafter. I never charged them more for items than the cost to create the item minus how much I could negate with my current Soul Gem supply.

3) When I created undead it was understood in character that it was a temporary thing. Like raising some Worgs to help take down an Orc encampment. I only ever created mindless undead, and when their purpose was served the party hacked them back to dust while I commanded them not to retaliate. So, they never interfered with the party or were a long term thing.

4) My being Evil was a gradual shift over several levels from being originally Neutral. When my character realized that his morality was shifting, he didny want to lose his friends so used magic to hide his alignment from the Paladin. He also restrained his actions around the group so as to not cause more stress than necessary. Often times giving up good tactical choices or opportunities for power grabs because his friends were more important.

5) The Holy Avenger stunt came at a point where IC and OOC, we all realized that my Necromancer was slipping fast, and there was no saving him. Alot of IC decisions were coming back to bite him hard. He decided before he truly went off the deep end mentally and Alignment wise, that he would use up the last of his Soul Stones and personal wealth to give a parting gift to each of his party members.

6) The reason the Holy Avenger was made sentient was to remind the Paladin of the weight he carried. The character was starting to slip into "one more screw up and you fall" territory. The combined sentience of those we killed served to remind him that every action he took, and every life he reaped or spared would remember him. That he needed to stand above the moral dilemmas of others as a fair arbiter between right and wrong.

7) My party thought it was an amazing way to end the career of my Wizard. He died shortly after I retired him, and the party wanted to invade Hell and drag him back to life, even if it was against his will all Balder style. They watched a man make all the wrong choices for all the right reasons, and bargain away every scrap of himself to help and protect them. In the end, they knew he could have betrayed them to save himself from his addictions, debts, Faustian pacts, and madness...but he didn't. He walked the road to Hell alone because despite the travesties he committed, he was not a bad man.

Zanos

2017-02-28, 12:13 AM

Explain how, with the information at hand, you deduced that this was a jerk move. I want to see your reasoning beyond "I wouldn't have liked what you did if I were in one of the character's places". And can you explain why you wouldn't have liked it beyond "it doesn't fit in with the narrative that I wanted to build for my character"? What is wrong with an interesting plot twist like this? Or do you consider your fellow player characters exempt from being able to go against the grain of whatever character you create? Is no negative inter-party dynamics allowed at your tables? Everyone has to hold hands and play happy-sunshine rainbow land adventures, damn, that must get boring.
Yeah I gotta say, I'm not really sure how it was a jerk move either. I mean, sometimes there's implicit trust between PCs because of the way the game is run (or we can sit here for 3 hours while i ask the newest party member 20 questions under a dominate person), but they knew he was a necromancer and up to some shady stuff. Plus while what he was doing was obviously blatantly Evil, it was still a net gain for the party in general. That's a lot of magic items, after all. Don't ask how the sausage is made, I suppose?

6) The reason the Holy Avenger was made sentient was to remind the Paladin of the weight he carried. The character was starting to slip into "one more screw up and you fall" territory. The combined sentience of those we killed served to remind him that every action he took, and every life he reaped or spared would remember him. That he needed to stand above the moral dilemmas of others as a fair arbiter between right and wrong.
This is pretty cool narratively, and props for that...but that sword is super, super Evil. I honestly think the Paladin might fall if he doesn't destroy it ASAP, crafting souls into magic items is one of the worst actions you can do, cosmic alignment wise.

Azoth

2017-02-28, 12:24 AM

This is pretty cool narratively, and props for that...but that sword is super, super Evil. I honestly think the Paladin might fall if he doesn't destroy it ASAP, crafting souls into magic items is one of the worst actions you can do, cosmic alignment wise.

Funny thing. There is no set way to determine a PC made Intelligent Item's alignment. The DM allowed me to pool through my gathered Soul Gems for ones that were either Lawful or Good aligned so that I could make the Holy Avenger Lawful Good. It was the final chuckle my Necromancer had.

Would the Paladin destroy a sentient Lawful Good Holy Avenger forged out of the souls of those he had slain in his past?

Zanos

2017-02-28, 12:27 AM

Azoth

2017-02-28, 12:39 AM

I suppose it's DM dependent. I was thinking mostly 3.5, in which crafting a magic item out of souls more or destroys them, and destruction of the soul is one of the blackest acts you can commit. Might be different in Pathfinder?

When making an intelligent item out of souls, you generally end up with one soul becoming the central intelligence of the item, and the others are cannibalized to pay the cost. My DM let me just fuse them together like Legion. It is left up to DM discretion on if destroying the item will release the souls or not. It is hinted that the Intelligence of the item is just an imprint of the soul, and that the soul was actually destroyed. Rules and Canon wise...no one knows.

OldTrees1

2017-02-28, 01:14 AM

Explain how, with the information at hand, you deduced that this was a jerk move. I want to see your reasoning beyond "I wouldn't have liked what you did if I were in one of the character's places". And can you explain why you wouldn't have liked it beyond "it doesn't fit in with the narrative that I wanted to build for my character"? What is wrong with an interesting plot twist like this? Or do you consider your fellow player characters exempt from being able to go against the grain of whatever character you create? Is no negative inter-party dynamics allowed at your tables? Everyone has to hold hands and play happy-sunshine rainbow land adventures, damn, that must get boring.

Yeah I gotta say, I'm not really sure how it was a jerk move either. I mean, sometimes there's implicit trust between PCs because of the way the game is run (or we can sit here for 3 hours while i ask the newest party member 20 questions under a dominate person), but they knew he was a necromancer and up to some shady stuff. Plus while what he was doing was obviously blatantly Evil, it was still a net gain for the party in general. That's a lot of magic items, after all. Don't ask how the sausage is made, I suppose?

Social interactions are subjective and even the objective parts are usually emergent from the people involved. So what could be a jerk move at my table might differ from what would be a jerk move at yours. This is quite a subjective area. It fit perfectly for Azoth and his group.

My party thought it was an amazing way to end the career of my Wizard.
However it would not fit so well for my group. Some (not all) negative interparty dynamics are restricted or assumed will not exist. This is because I want the party to progress their goals without being slowed down by more than decision making & planning. So disagreement on important issues & clashing goals are fine but backstabbing is not. Azoth's character had significant disagreement and clashing goals(LG Paladin & Necromancer in the same party!) and my group would love that. Azoth's character could even be openly evil. But the duplicity in regards to the harvesting souls and tainted items would go against the established tone. Great Plot Twist but it requires more paranoid PCs and that would slow down the "PCs progressing their goals" story. Good for Azoth's table, but not a fit for mine.

So Azoth's tale is a great example for a more advanced class*. However for "Not all Evil PCs are jerks 101" we might want some lower level examples.

*My "cull the population" necromancer would likewise be better left for later.

Crake

2017-02-28, 01:28 AM

Social interactions are subjective and even the objective parts are usually emergent from the people involved. So what could be a jerk move at my table might differ from what would be a jerk move at yours. This is quite a subjective area. It fit perfectly for Azoth and his group.

Except that's not how context works. You can't say that something was a jerk move just because in some contexts it might be a jerk move. You have to analyze the scenario in the context it occured in, and I think, based on Azoth's more detailed explaination, it's fairly clear that it was quite objectively not a jerk move. Just because you wouldn't like it at your table, doesn't make it suddenly irredeemably a jerk move, and accusing it of such is close minded at best, and indicative of an ignorant, self-centric world view at worst.

Fizban

2017-02-28, 01:36 AM

OldTrees1

2017-02-28, 01:36 AM

Except that's not how context works. You can't say that something was a jerk move just because in some contexts it might be a jerk move. You have to analyze the scenario in the context it occured in, and I think, based on Azoth's more detailed explaination, it's fairly clear that it was quite objectively not a jerk move. Just because you wouldn't like it at your table, doesn't make it suddenly irredeemably a jerk move, and accusing it of such is close minded at best, and indicative of an ignorant, self-centric world view at worst.
I prefer if you respond to what I said rather than some fictitious post you imagine reading. Perhaps check my singular post on this topic(I guess this would make my 2nd). You know, the post you are quoting but conflating with another post by another author?

Hell, if you actually read the post you are quoting then we might not have this miscommunication right now.

Dagroth

2017-02-28, 01:48 AM

I've decided my response to an evil PC is that anyone writing Evil on their sheet is actually unaligned until I say otherwise.

The problem with evil PCs is that people try to use their alignment as an excuse to do stuff that the rest of the group doesn't want. Alignment is not an excuse. If you want an evil PrC and I think it's okay, you can qualify via backstory, but once the game starts you have to play with the group like everyone else. Luckily it's a lot harder to become good than it is to stay evil, so you're probably not in danger of losing your PrC unless you intentionally start atoning.

Huh. In my current group, I'm playing a LN Cleric/Crusader/RKV. The entire rest of the party is Chaotic. Two CGs & one CN.

There are many situations that my character's goals and methods don't mesh with the rest of the party's. They often go behind my character's back to do things that he wouldn't approve of.

Is that bad? No. That's Roleplaying.

OldTrees1

2017-02-28, 02:08 AM

I've decided my response to an evil PC is that anyone writing Evil on their sheet is actually unaligned until I say otherwise.
Interesting idea. You might be able to generalize it to everyone is unaligned until they have existed long enough for the DM to have an idea of what alignment they are.

The problem with evil PCs is that people try to use their alignment as an excuse to do stuff that the rest of the group doesn't want. Alignment is not an excuse.

True. Alignment is not an excuse.

Although I would note that depending on the group, doing stuff the party does not want but the players enjoy is fine (your use of group was ambiguous).

Fizban

2017-02-28, 02:29 AM

Interesting idea. You might be able to generalize it to everyone is unaligned until they have existed long enough for the DM to have an idea of what alignment they are.
Absolutely viable, but I generally expect people trying to be Good makes for a better story-or at least matches with the stories I'd want to tell. If I wanted to go grey, that'd be swell. Even better, leaving it undefined and pretending alignment doesn't exist at all until an actual avatar of that alignment shows up and proves it with Holy Smite.

(your use of group was ambiguous).
I usually use group for the players rather than the PCs (the party), but table is more explicit.

OldTrees1

2017-02-28, 02:31 AM

I usually use group for the players rather than the PCs (the party), but table is more explicit.

Ah. That is the reading I got from it. I mentioned it, in part, because I think Dagroth read it the other way.

Dagroth

2017-02-28, 02:33 AM

Ah. That is the reading I got from it. I mentioned it, in part, because I think Dagroth read it the other way.

Naw. I use "Group" to mean my gaming group. I use "Party" to indicate the characters. Thus in my Group, I am playing a character. The other characters in the Party are these.

Or I could have said "The other players in my group are playing characters that are Chaotic".

Mordaedil

2017-02-28, 04:25 AM

[How to properly torture as an evil PC in D&D]

PC A: Dammit, the gnoll army is on the move, but we don't know what route they will take or how long it will take them to get here! We have to get the information out of this gnoll prisoner, but he refuses to talk to any of us.
Evil PC: Give me five minutes alone with him, I'll get the information out of him.

*he is left alone with the gnoll prisoner, the party out of options and not wishing to see the cruelty*

Gnoll: Heh, you'll ever get any information out of me! I'm loyal to my tribe and would never sell out my chieftain!
Evil PC: Information? I already know everything. The gnoll army is moving across the marshlands and will arrive in four and a half days time.
Gnoll: Wha- but why do you...
Evil PC: I need to make sure you don't say anything unnecessary and reveal more to those morons than necessary. For that, I'm going to need to make you shut up.

*gnoll blanches as much as a gnoll can blanch and the scene fades to black. The evil PC emerges five minutes later*

PC A: Did he talk?
Evil PC: Oh yes, the gnoll army will be rossing the marshlands in five days time. He proved quite cooperative after the fact.
PC B: You didn't... Do anything too terrible to him, did you?
Evil PC: Oh, my no. I even left him with a bit of a smile on his face. Why, you could say he's smiling from ear to ear!
PC B: Well, alright then.

*gnolls corpse is slit across the throat and given an unnatural human smile cut into its hyena-like face*

[Evil concludes]

Just got a bit bored at work, sorry if it's kinda crap, I'm a bit sick.

Esprit15

2017-02-28, 05:58 AM

This is my opinion about Playing Good PCs. It is my opinion that playing Good PCs doesn't fit well in D&D 3.5 for so many reasons.

1. Good PCs always lecture other party members and NPCs on being good.

2. Good PCs are holier than thou.

3. Good PCs takes out the fun of everybody's enjoyment.

4. Good PCs are better off being enemies of the party and make better NPCs.

5. I also believe that Good PCs should be banned from being PCs.

That's my opinion about Good PCs. Any thoughts? :smile:

I fixed it!

More seriously, I don't see the reason that people are against Evil PCs outright. Sure, some people can't handle playing an Evil character, but those people tend to play Paladins just as poorly. Evil can have friends. Evil can see the value in keeping someone alive. A conflict of personalities and ideals between two good roleplayers is just as entertaining to be a part of and watch as a good story.

But hey, I'm weird. I started really playing with a DM who enjoys the occasional party conflict and PvP, as long as everyone is mature enough to handle it.

Pleh

2017-02-28, 06:32 AM

Torture is useful for gaining information, if primarily a specific kind.

Are you familiar with the works of Shan Yu? (http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Shan_Yu)

But the SRD actually says that torture does give useful information the same as diplomancy. I mean, subject to DM fiat as always, but RAW supports it.

Point 1: torture is an intimidation check.

Point 2: most people focus on the combat Demoralization aspect of the intimidation skill. But the more general application of the skill is a fear based varient of diplomacy.

You can change another’s behavior with a successful check. Your Intimidate check is opposed by the target’s modified level check (1d20 + character level or Hit Dice + target’s Wisdom bonus [if any] + target’s modifiers on saves against fear). If you beat your target’s check result, you may treat the target as friendly, but only for the purpose of actions taken while it remains intimidated. (That is, the target retains its normal attitude, but will chat, advise, offer limited help, or advocate on your behalf while intimidated. See the Diplomacy skill, above, for additional details.) The effect lasts as long as the target remains in your presence, and for 1d6×10 minutes afterward. After this time, the target’s default attitude toward you shifts to unfriendly (or, if normally unfriendly, to hostile).

If you fail the check by 5 or more, the target provides you with incorrect or useless information, or otherwise frustrates your efforts.

So, if you successfully intimidate the informant, they are treated as being in a friendly disposition while they are intimidated, specifically for chatting and offering limited help.

Your character probably doesn't know if you rolled 5 points below the opposed level check and fear/mind-affecting immunities are a dime a dozen.

So RAW says that torture does get reliable information, but it is not always a reliable method of obtaining it.

Fizban

2017-02-28, 07:35 AM

On the other hand, I think most people can't handle the idea that threatening to kill someone or torturing them would just be a simple check. They assume that having someone at your mercy should make them automatically fear you killing them so much that they don't need a check (or the circumstance bonus is arbitrarily high).

But if you were going to kill them, you could have done it already, which means that any circumstance bonus is rather nullified by the fact they're still alive. Or you're going to torture and kill them anyway, so it doesn't matter if they talk. Either way, it's up to you to convince them to do what you want because they have no reason to believe you. Which is a skill check.

Adjacent to torture is the capturing of prisoners for interrogation in general: it's terrible. Every single time a player says "hey, capture him alive!" they're introducing a moral/ethical dilemma and if there's any split in the party it's going to flare up. And most of the time they do it because they can't think of any other way to get information. But they think they can force it through roleplay even though they don't have any actual interrogation abilities in the first place, so it's a moral/ethical dilemma in exchange for nothing except a scene nobody wants. So unless the mission explicitly requires it and you already know what you're doing, just don't do it.

D&DPrinceTandem

2017-02-28, 08:26 AM

Elkad

2017-02-28, 08:27 AM

The problem with evil PCs is that people try to use their alignment as an excuse to do stuff that the rest of the group doesn't want.

No. I'm evil and quite often I do EXACTLY what the party wants. What they really want, not what they say.
Nobody wants to waste time building an orphanage for baby hill giants.
Everyone wants to keep the lost relic, or at least let the Artificer melt it down for crafting XP, not return it to the king/temple/whatever for a smattering of mundane gold.
Zombie horses don't get tired, or care if you bury them near the entrance to the Labyrinth of Squeezing Checks to keep them safe while you explore for 3 days, and it's not like I killed them.
Juju Zombie Pegasi? Even better. Int6, and 55mph tireless flight is pretty useful for a long time.

Buufreak

2017-02-28, 08:50 AM

Huh. In my current group, I'm playing a LN Cleric/Crusader/RKV. The entire rest of the party is Chaotic. Two CGs & one CN.

There are many situations that my character's goals and methods don't mesh with the rest of the party's. They often go behind my character's back to do things that he wouldn't approve of.

Is that bad? No. That's Roleplaying.

A great big bag of this! So many people want to through out a red flag over the idea of an evil in the good/neutral party, but no one seems to bat an eye at the law/chaos spectrum. I have had to scrap entire character ideas in the past because after learning what the rest of the party is doing, there is no feasible way for him/her/it to mesh well enough with their chaotic shenanigans, and I wasn't willing to compromise my character's need for order.

Is that making me a jerk for not playing him? No, because I would have likely hated playing him. Not because of the character, but because of the party. Sometimes you gotta pick your battles, and while some interparty conflict is acceptable, having something in a moral code of "refuses to work with chaotic characters" isn't worth the headache when literally every other party member was chaotic.

Pleh

2017-02-28, 09:34 AM

I'm actually composing a document (might become a thread around here later if I feel I can get it polished enough) addressing some of the common misconceptions about alignment, specifically the ones that lead to Lawful Good characters getting pigeon-holed into being the stuffy stick in the mud characters that no one wants to play or play with (even outside of their wonky lawful stupid morality).

I feel like people have overgeneralized the simple concepts of "Lawful people like rules, chaotic people like breaking them" and "Good people don't hurt others (without justification) and evil people enjoy hurting others".

These are fine as generalizations, but everyone knows that it's too broad a brush to do justice to a few exceptional characters (Batman being a very common problem in categorization).

See, I like to ask the question, "Is a character who follows their own personal set of rules lawful (due to their adherence to ordered sets of behaviors) or chaotic (due to their disregard for rules imposed on them externally)? Or does this make them an Equilibrated Neutral (as opposed to the Ambivalent Neutral since they do have an alignment to SOMETHING) by virtue of their mix of lawful and chaotic components?"

The purpose of the question is less to form a definitive answer and more rhetorically to demonstrate that the issue we're looking at has more nuance than the conversation currently grants it. People feel characters are being pigeon-holed because Moral Alignment in D&D is meant to define characters Descriptively rather than Prescriptively. This is complicated by the fact that a large number of effects and abilities in the game are triggered by alignment, which forces descriptive definitions to act prescriptively.

But we must be careful to remember that the RAW need for prescriptive moral definitions should not be allowed to pigeon-hole characters into always acting in accordance with their "alignment," because the character informs the alignment and not vice versa. Yes, it is literally possible for an evil character, shocked into awareness by the Paladin's use of smite, to be allowed by DM fiat to suddenly alignment shift to neutral as they suddenly became repentant of their evil deeds and thus escape the Paladin's smite. Probably not many DMs would allow or do this, but there is technically no action required to shift alignment. You only need DM permission. If your character was convinced that they weren't actually evil when they really were, seeing a Paladin's Smite actually triggering against them might change their mind and cause them to shift alignment if they suddenly become remorseful of their evil behavior. This is because alignment descriptions are naturally fluid and honestly are not accurately represented.

The Nine* Core alignments weren't meant to be accurate. There was supposed to be a lot of ways to play each alignment so you could make all kinds of characters out of each one.

*There's actually Ten core alignments, since True Neutral actually lumps Unaligned and Extremely Balanced into a single True Neutral category. I like calling them the Equilibrated and Ambivalent Neutrals, to indicate if they are neutral by possessing a mix of opposing alignments or by possessing no particularly strong alignment.

That's the physicist in me talking, though. I see Alignments as a force that compels your character towards a type of action, though they are capable of resisting the force acting upon them like a particle with a charge reacting to force field lines. Thus neutral characters really indicate a Net Neutral set of forces, which again either means there are no forces acting or else they are mutually balanced against one another.

Red Fel

2017-02-28, 10:21 AM

You have an interesting hypothesis, Pleh, but I have to take issue with one part.

That's the physicist in me talking, though. I see Alignments as a force that compels your character towards a type of action, though they are capable of resisting the force acting upon them like a particle with a charge reacting to force field lines. Thus neutral characters really indicate a Net Neutral set of forces, which again either means there are no forces acting or else they are mutually balanced against one another.

I and others have said it before, but it bears repeating - alignment ought to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Or, in more common parlance, "alignment is not a straitjacket."

Alignment should describe the type of person your character is, based on what he does and what motivates him. For example, this character feels a strong desire to help others without being asked; he probably tends Good. This character prefers the presence of structure and authority to independence and individualism; he probably tends Lawful. Here, alignment isn't compelling their actions, but is rather a label that describes their mindsets.

Likewise, when alignment shifts, it's because the person has shifted (absent outside, magical interference). For instance, a character who has come to find that murder is a more expedient and efficient way of getting things done probably tends Evil, because he is the sort of person to find Evil actions more appropriate.

Alignment should not be a "force that compels your character," because that removes this. A character should be Good because he cares about others; he shouldn't care about others because there is a G on a piece of paper. Likewise, expressing alignment in terms of a compelling force limits the concept of the alignment shift - if you are constantly under the sway of the cosmic force of Law, for example, how could you shift towards Chaos? Yes, you can resist it, but if that's baked into the definition - if you can resist Law but still be Lawful - then no degree of resisting will actually change your Lawfulness, will it?

Dagroth

2017-02-28, 11:08 AM

A great big bag of this! So many people want to through out a red flag over the idea of an evil in the good/neutral party, but no one seems to bat an eye at the law/chaos spectrum. I have had to scrap entire character ideas in the past because after learning what the rest of the party is doing, there is no feasible way for him/her/it to mesh well enough with their chaotic shenanigans, and I wasn't willing to compromise my character's need for order.

Is that making me a jerk for not playing him? No, because I would have likely hated playing him. Not because of the character, but because of the party. Sometimes you gotta pick your battles, and while some interparty conflict is acceptable, having something in a moral code of "refuses to work with chaotic characters" isn't worth the headache when literally every other party member was chaotic.

We've been encountering Demons now in dungeons and I've developed a tactic... First, Dimensional Anchor followed by Axiomatic Storm. The Storm does pretty amazing damage when you've got multiple Demons, even against 10 acid resistance. Plus it provides concealment, making their SPAs nearly useless.

Of course, the fact that the rest of the party has to wait for the Demons to come out of the Storm isn't my fault... :smallbiggrin:

On the other hand, I think most people can't handle the idea that threatening to kill someone or torturing them would just be a simple check. They assume that having someone at your mercy should make them automatically fear you killing them so much that they don't need a check (or the circumstance bonus is arbitrarily high).

But if you were going to kill them, you could have done it already, which means that any circumstance bonus is rather nullified by the fact they're still alive. Or you're going to torture and kill them anyway, so it doesn't matter if they talk. Either way, it's up to you to convince them to do what you want because they have no reason to believe you. Which is a skill check.

Adjacent to torture is the capturing of prisoners for interrogation in general: it's terrible. Every single time a player says "hey, capture him alive!" they're introducing a moral/ethical dilemma and if there's any split in the party it's going to flare up. And most of the time they do it because they can't think of any other way to get information. But they think they can force it through roleplay even though they don't have any actual interrogation abilities in the first place, so it's a moral/ethical dilemma in exchange for nothing except a scene nobody wants. So unless the mission explicitly requires it and you already know what you're doing, just don't do it.

Torture isn't killing. Not in the slightest. If you're threatening to kill someone, you've gone the wrong direction.

In fact, torture is about the victim wanted to die... but you not letting them.

When you tell one of the prisoners "Congratulations! You get to live!" He should feel relieved at first, until he slowly realizes that he only gets to live because you're going to torture him... in order to get information out of one of the other prisoners.

Buufreak

2017-02-28, 11:27 AM

Torture isn't killing. Not in the slightest. If you're threatening to kill someone, you've gone the wrong direction.

In fact, torture is about the victim wanted to die... but you not letting them.

When you tell one of the prisoners "Congratulations! You get to live!" He should feel relieved at first, until he slowly realizes that he only gets to live because you're going to torture him... in order to get information out of one of the other prisoners.

I feel that I learn by example better than anything else. Just how my brain is wired, to each their own. As such, I feel like the best example given of torture is that of Prometheus. He isn't being reamed for information, or for some sick jolly. Guy is being punished, and in a rather horrendous way. Each day, he awakes, only to have his inner organs eaten by a large bird. When he would succumb to the pain and injury, the bird would fly away, only to return the next day after he had been healed of his missing body parts.

That's genius, in my book. And really, in dnd you don't need pissed off big pappa Zeus to do it, either. Strap a guy down, and have someone with the ability to cast (spell or wand/scroll not really mattering) regenerate. Tear him apart, let him get to that bottom line of "yup, this is where I die." Then just stop. Fix him. Heal him. Because really, we are just getting started with his torment.

The other biggest part about this is it isn't digging for info, in any way shape or form. He is being punished. Prometheus stole from the gods, but your story may differ. Regardless, the idea is the dude is going to suffer forever. Let that really sink in. How long have you been alive? Could you imagine that for an infinitely longer amount of time, you are going to be tortured to near death, only to wake up and do it again?

That is torture. That is punishment. And it is a beautiful art.

Pleh

2017-02-28, 11:34 AM

I and others have said it before, but it bears repeating - alignment ought to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Or, in more common parlance, "alignment is not a straitjacket."

Ah, actually, I was one of those people.

The purpose of the question is less to form a definitive answer and more rhetorically to demonstrate that the issue we're looking at has more nuance than the conversation currently grants it. People feel characters are being pigeon-holed because Moral Alignment in D&D is meant to define characters Descriptively rather than Prescriptively. This is complicated by the fact that a large number of effects and abilities in the game are triggered by alignment, which forces descriptive definitions to act prescriptively.

I acknowledge my post was a bit lengthy. I don't begrudge some speed reading of its contents.

Alignment should describe the type of person your character is, based on what he does and what motivates him. For example, this character feels a strong desire to help others without being asked; he probably tends Good. This character prefers the presence of structure and authority to independence and individualism; he probably tends Lawful. Here, alignment isn't compelling their actions, but is rather a label that describes their mindsets.

Likewise, when alignment shifts, it's because the person has shifted (absent outside, magical interference). For instance, a character who has come to find that murder is a more expedient and efficient way of getting things done probably tends Evil, because he is the sort of person to find Evil actions more appropriate.

Alignment should not be a "force that compels your character," because that removes this. A character should be Good because he cares about others; he shouldn't care about others because there is a G on a piece of paper. Likewise, expressing alignment in terms of a compelling force limits the concept of the alignment shift - if you are constantly under the sway of the cosmic force of Law, for example, how could you shift towards Chaos? Yes, you can resist it, but if that's baked into the definition - if you can resist Law but still be Lawful - then no degree of resisting will actually change your Lawfulness, will it?

I can see that I was not being clear about my use of metaphor. That was my mistake for not being clearer.

You see, there is room in Fantasy for Good and Evil, Law and Chaos to be supernatural forces (in fact, most campaign settings say that such forces DO exist in some capacity). Star Wars is a very clear example of how Forceful these fictitious forces can be.

But my intention was more to speak to the interaction between an individual character's conscious and subconscious; the character applies this force against themselves. The Subconscious applies the Prescriptive Alignment Force and the Conscious mind interjects all opposing concerns to render a decision to either follow their gut that feels right (despite the logical consequences) or follow their sense of reason for what seems right (despite the passionate and irrational feeling warning them to do otherwise).

This is a much deeper level of nuance to alignment that most discussions don't waste much time delving into.

To give an example of this, my answer to the question I posed earlier:

"Is a character who follows their own personal set of rules lawful (due to their adherence to ordered sets of behaviors) or chaotic (due to their disregard for rules imposed on them externally)? Or does this make them an Equilibrated Neutral (as opposed to the Ambivalent Neutral since they do have an alignment to SOMETHING) by virtue of their mix of lawful and chaotic components?"

I say the answer cannot be ascertained by these conditions alone. We need a test to gather more information.

Take this character (say, for example, Batman), whose alignment seems contradictory when in the scenario of disagreeing with the established order, and place him now into a scenario where the established order perfectly reflects or at least compliments his own personal code and values. What does the character do in that scenario?

Bruce Wayne made it clear over several story arcs that he would prefer to not have to be Batman. If he lived in a Gotham that was not crazy and corrupted constantly, he would be free to abandon the cowl and simply enjoy living in the freedom to pursue making life better for everyone.

In short, Batman in a society of batmans would stop being a vigilante and become a city council leader in the continued efforts to cooperatively push the Greater Good as far as they could reasonably continue to advance it.

Therefore, he is Lawful Good, since he wants to cooperate in a Lawful Good society, but being placed in an Evil society, his adherence to Lawful Good values makes him act in a manner that seems chaotic.

Let's take a counter example to see what it takes to make a Chaotic character. Malcom Reynolds of Firefly. Clearly a cut and dry case of Chaotic Good with a few Chaotic Neutral tendencies. But put this character into a scenario where his universal environment were to suddenly change to match his own personal values? He likely would not go back to serving in the Independents as a Sergeant (assuming there even was any fighting left to be done). He likely would not take up an office to serve the greater good. He would likely find some personal relief that wrongs had been made right and then go his own way to enjoy what time he had left in his own manner.

This makes him Chaotic Good. He certainly maintains his own personal code of conduct, but he ultimately has no aspiration to participating in a greater cooperative effort to advance society. For all his good nature, his self-will remains supreme.

Part of this is likely due to a backstory involving a radical alignment shift. He once had faith in god, he once believed the Independents would win the war and had to win the war because they fought for what was right, and he had a personality shattering moment of disillusionment when the Independents surrendered at the Battle of Serenity Valley. In that moment, the Lawful Good Malcom Reynolds, who had faith in the system and in the divine that they would protect the freedom of citizens against the tyranny of the state was lost and he underwent a traumatic alignment shift that made him Chaotic. It is unlikely that he will ever fully recover that Lawful trust that was lost in that valley, but he never lost his Good aligned spirit. He now plays the the only cards that are left to him, but even if everything was made right once more, it's not likely he would ever take up the mantel of authority as he once did.

Red Fel

2017-02-28, 11:52 AM

I can see that I was not being clear about my use of metaphor. That was my mistake for not being clearer.

Okay. I think I see where I misapprehended your meaning now.

So, basically, if I understand, it goes like this - the personality and worldview of a character defines the type of person he is, which creates in him an "alignment," which in turn steers the character towards itself. Or, to put it simply: Person -> alignment -> conduct and perspective. Is that about right?

If so, I think I get it. And I think it does a good job of addressing the elephant in the room, which is Chaotic alignment. Namely - if each alignment is based upon characters acting, thinking, and feeling in a particular fashion, and Chaos is defined by the character's independence and desire not to be constrained, then wouldn't a Chaotic character be defined by not acting or thinking in a Chaotic way?

Looking at the alignment, then, as a sort of force the character imposes on himself allows us a sort of work-around. It even allows for the existence of the Chaotic "code," which is otherwise somewhat contradictory in D&D alignment terms. If looking at the world through a Chaotic lens has the effect of creating a desire in a person to "be more Chaotic," it doesn't necessarily preclude him from having a code or moral guideline to which he holds himself; he is able to place limits on himself and still be Chaotic.

I think. I may have actually lost myself somewhere in there. Y'all Chaotic-types are confusing.

Flickerdart

2017-02-28, 11:56 AM

Pleh

2017-02-28, 12:46 PM

Okay. I think I see where I misapprehended your meaning now.

So, basically, if I understand, it goes like this - the personality and worldview of a character defines the type of person he is, which creates in him an "alignment," which in turn steers the character towards itself. Or, to put it simply: Person -> alignment -> conduct and perspective. Is that about right?

If so, I think I get it. And I think it does a good job of addressing the elephant in the room, which is Chaotic alignment. Namely - if each alignment is based upon characters acting, thinking, and feeling in a particular fashion, and Chaos is defined by the character's independence and desire not to be constrained, then wouldn't a Chaotic character be defined by not acting or thinking in a Chaotic way?

Looking at the alignment, then, as a sort of force the character imposes on himself allows us a sort of work-around. It even allows for the existence of the Chaotic "code," which is otherwise somewhat contradictory in D&D alignment terms. If looking at the world through a Chaotic lens has the effect of creating a desire in a person to "be more Chaotic," it doesn't necessarily preclude him from having a code or moral guideline to which he holds himself; he is able to place limits on himself and still be Chaotic.

I think. I may have actually lost myself somewhere in there. Y'all Chaotic-types are confusing.

Yes, this delves into the Problem of Chaos. In reality, there is no actual chaos, just like Cold does not exist. Chaos is the lack of adherence to order. Order, likewise, is meaningless unless there is some force, internal or external, which compels a unit to follow a predictable pattern. Chaos is the measure of things that disregard the force of order.

This is why I thought it would be interesting to bring chaos theory into the discussion of Lawful Evil vs Chaotic Evil. The fact is that even Chaos (in a seemingly contradictory way) operates by a set of laws.

The absolutely chaotic character does not exist because absolute chaos does not exist. Chaos is representation of statistical randomness.

Entropy is a literal force that effectively creates chaos and disorder, but it is a law that can be measured and accounted for. Things that are hot gradually lose heat to nothing more than entropy: that random chance that an excited particle happens to bump into the lower energy surrounding particles.

Chaos does not exist in a completely random set of particles because there is no order to become an exception to. Randomness becomes the rule and then randomness is no longer unexpected. There is no end to the rabbit hole. But you can apply group dynamics to chaos and now instead of a group of completely random and chaotic air particles, you have a fluid of dynamic particles that normalize to a group behavior through their interactions with one another. There comes into effect a statistical law of averages that states that the group approaches an equilibrium.

The only way to prevent sheer statistics from establishing order in a chaotic system is to isolate the particles completely. Nothingness is literally the only exception to law and order. Interesting physical things can happen to particles that are completely isolated (and it is tremendously difficult to actually isolate things).

---

So, let's resurface from the depths of the rabbit hole and simplify. Law and Chaos cause one another to exist. If you have a chaotic system, statistics will dictate how that system will operate as a whole. If you have a strictly lawful system, the random exceptions will doubtlessly make an appearance. In fact, Entropy more or less dictates that exceptions MUST occur.

It's not a question of if a character obeys laws. It's a question of which laws they are obeying.

That's why I devised the test: "put them in a room with a bunch of like-minded people. Do they begin working together or drift off to do their own thing?"

This tells us if they are *trying* to follow a social code and cooperate and are simply struggling with an uncooperative social structure, or if they really are just following their own internal compass and aren't paying any mind to what anyone else is doing.

A Chaotic Character tends to be more responsive to the Law of Whimsy, which is to say they tend to trust their gut despite (and even in spite of) what the world tells them. Chaotic Characters have set themselves as their compass, which, to translate to Lawful Evil language for you, means that to control them you must play to their whimsy.

Most chaotic characters have a certain code of conduct they decide upon (partly because most characters even in the extreme corners of the alignment spectrum are not actually extreme in their alignment). Even the Joker, among the best posterchilds of Chaotic Evil maintained a particular philosophy, and had a "method to the madness."

Batman is a confusing case for many because of how confident he is in his moral code. He takes on the appearance of following his whimsy, which is a good aligned whimsy, and disregarding the common sense others place upon him. The difference is that he is actually smarter than they are and has calculated a better conclusion than they have. In essence, he understands the Law better than they do and did better work in devising conclusions. That allows him to cut corners others can't because he actually knows better what corners he can afford to cut.

Dagroth

2017-02-28, 01:00 PM

Didn't read your whole post (sorry, a little busy at the moment). But you have things backwards.

Heat is Chaos because Heat is molecular motion. Entropy is Law because it is a static lack of motion. Everything perfectly still.

It's not called "The Heat-Death of the Universe" because everything gets hot. It's because everything loses heat and becomes cold and still.

Heat requires energy to be added to a system. Heat produces motion. Motion is Chaos.

Efreets should be Chaotic Evil because they want to spread Chaos with granting poorly worded Wishes in the most twisted and random ways. And because Fire is the Destroyer.

Djinns should be Chaotic Good because Air requires motion, yet air provides life. When you start removing Chaos and motion from a Gaseous State, it changes to a Liquid and then to a Solid.

Marids should be Neutral because they can feel the pull of both motion and stillness in fluids.

Janni should be Lawful Neutral because the relatively low amount of molecular motion in solids promotes Order.

And don't forget... in AD&D Cold is an energy type. Cold removes motion. Cold removes choices.

Law is Cold.

Pleh

2017-02-28, 01:02 PM

In my excitement I forgot to be concise.

TL;DR my point is that perhaps a better definition of lawful is a characteristic nature of cooperating with those perceived as like minded. Chaotic being the lack of interest to cooperate even with like minded individuals and instead follow your own whimsy.

The rest of my post was explaining how this is subtly different than what we already had.

weckar

2017-02-28, 01:37 PM

I think if this thread has established one thing, is that not all Evil characters are equal and that you don't have to do ALL the Evil things if you are Evil - same as that you don't have to do ALL the Good things to be Good.

Just because you don't torture doesn't mean you can't extort, blackmail, murder, enslave or oppress to your heart's content. You'll still end up cosily warm on the south end of the alignment spectrum.

Honest Tiefling

2017-02-28, 02:48 PM

I've decided my response to an evil PC is that anyone writing Evil on their sheet is actually unaligned until I say otherwise.

So...You are either encouraging me to do evil to get the proper alignment, or encouraging me to toe the line so I can keep my mechanically superior alignment? Or are you encouraging me to ignore my sheet and do whatever? I don't need it for that last one, I've gotten into the habit of writing in joke alignments just to see if the DM even reads that section or not. (And because I don't actually like the alignment system).

icefractal

2017-02-28, 08:22 PM

Adjacent to torture is the capturing of prisoners for interrogation in general: it's terrible. Every single time a player says "hey, capture him alive!" they're introducing a moral/ethical dilemma and if there's any split in the party it's going to flare up. And most of the time they do it because they can't think of any other way to get information. But they think they can force it through roleplay even though they don't have any actual interrogation abilities in the first place, so it's a moral/ethical dilemma in exchange for nothing except a scene nobody wants. So unless the mission explicitly requires it and you already know what you're doing, just don't do it.Ugh, yes. On more than one occasion, I've killed a foe in combat, rather than use nonlethal methods, for this reason. My thought process usually goes:

"Hey, I bet I could incapacitate this enemy, and get them to surrender!" :smallsmile:
"But then someone is going to want to interrogate them." :smallconfused:
"And then someone will suggest torture ..." :smallannoyed:
"And at that point I can either be a party to it or start a whole argument about it." :smallyuk:
"Screw it, I'll just kill them." :smallsigh:

I personally don't like it when people discredit the "that's what my character would do" argument. I think mature adults can create a divide between themselves and the game, and at my table, playing true to your character is held in high regard. If that happens to mean that a character needs to retire from the group because the others cannot reasonably see themselves continuing to adventure with the character, then so be it, but compromising your character for the sake of everyone else at the table? Screw that. I would rather see my character remain faithful to their concept, and become an NPC, than to have it become some pale imitation of what I envisioned them as just to fit in with everyone else.Agreed. There's nothing wrong with PCs coming in conflict, even to a major extent. However, I think what people are usually complaining about is when someone (perhaps implicitly) says:
"That's what my character would do, and you have to accept my character staying in the party because they're a PC."

Which often would mean compromising everyone else's character. So for example, I don't think any group I've played in would have a problem with the "pile of soulgems" reveal, most would find it awesome in fact - because he makes the big evil reveal and then walks away. If he instead expected to stick around in the party, while continuing to harvest souls, it wouldn't go over so well.

Calthropstu

2017-02-28, 11:04 PM

Okay, time to set the record straight.

1) I was not disruptive towards my group in the slightest. My Necromancer routinely debuffed enemies and used battle field control spells in combat to assist my team mates in combat.

2) I was the party crafter. I never charged them more for items than the cost to create the item minus how much I could negate with my current Soul Gem supply.

3) When I created undead it was understood in character that it was a temporary thing. Like raising some Worgs to help take down an Orc encampment. I only ever created mindless undead, and when their purpose was served the party hacked them back to dust while I commanded them not to retaliate. So, they never interfered with the party or were a long term thing.

4) My being Evil was a gradual shift over several levels from being originally Neutral. When my character realized that his morality was shifting, he didny want to lose his friends so used magic to hide his alignment from the Paladin. He also restrained his actions around the group so as to not cause more stress than necessary. Often times giving up good tactical choices or opportunities for power grabs because his friends were more important.

5) The Holy Avenger stunt came at a point where IC and OOC, we all realized that my Necromancer was slipping fast, and there was no saving him. Alot of IC decisions were coming back to bite him hard. He decided before he truly went off the deep end mentally and Alignment wise, that he would use up the last of his Soul Stones and personal wealth to give a parting gift to each of his party members.

6) The reason the Holy Avenger was made sentient was to remind the Paladin of the weight he carried. The character was starting to slip into "one more screw up and you fall" territory. The combined sentience of those we killed served to remind him that every action he took, and every life he reaped or spared would remember him. That he needed to stand above the moral dilemmas of others as a fair arbiter between right and wrong.

7) My party thought it was an amazing way to end the career of my Wizard. He died shortly after I retired him, and the party wanted to invade Hell and drag him back to life, even if it was against his will all Balder style. They watched a man make all the wrong choices for all the right reasons, and bargain away every scrap of himself to help and protect them. In the end, they knew he could have betrayed them to save himself from his addictions, debts, Faustian pacts, and madness...but he didn't. He walked the road to Hell alone because despite the travesties he committed, he was not a bad man.

Ah, I take it back then. My apologies.

I read it as "I secretly worked evil into the sword I made for the paladin, gave all my fellow PCs items created with the most evil of methods, screwed them all over and retired the character when they found out."

AnachroNinja

2017-02-28, 11:45 PM

Azoth

2017-02-28, 11:48 PM

Ah, I take it back then. My apologies.

I read it as "I secretly worked evil into the sword I made for the paladin, gave all my fellow PCs items created with the most evil of methods, screwed them all over and retired the character when they found out."

No biggie. Playing Evil characters often, forces one to become accustomed to being misinterpreted in the worst ways. Now, doing it that way is something an Evil character can do, but is rather tasteless unless you are turning him over to the DM to be used as an antagonist to the party.

Alot of times when I play Evil characters, they are the kind of guy that seems like a great person to be friends with. They, just have a lack of certain moral compunctions that most have.

For them the idea of binding Succubi and Lilitu to gain Profane Gifts and Pacts is a natural thing to those who want to become stronger. Maybe they want to engineer a "perfect" race, and go about abducting people by forcibly plane shifting them to private demiplanes. Perhaps they have an insatiable avarice and consider the party their most prized possession.

None of this gets in the way of them being functioning members of society or likeable. As any functioning addict will tell you, "There is a time and a place to indulge."

Calthropstu

2017-03-01, 12:38 AM

No biggie. Playing Evil characters often, forces one to become accustomed to being misinterpreted in the worst ways. Now, doing it that way is something an Evil character can do, but is rather tasteless unless you are turning him over to the DM to be used as an antagonist to the party.

Alot of times when I play Evil characters, they are the kind of guy that seems like a great person to be friends with. They, just have a lack of certain moral compunctions that most have.

For them the idea of binding Succubi and Lilitu to gain Profane Gifts and Pacts is a natural thing to those who want to become stronger. Maybe they want to engineer a "perfect" race, and go about abducting people by forcibly plane shifting them to private demiplanes. Perhaps they have an insatiable avarice and consider the party their most prized possession.

None of this gets in the way of them being functioning members of society or likeable. As any functioning addict will tell you, "There is a time and a place to indulge."

See, my experience with people playing evil characters would BE the tasteless version. They were out to screw people over, and not in a fun way. If you review my post regarding "worst character death" out in the "RolePlaying Games" forum, you'll see a sample of what I have had to deal with at times. I have had some VERY unpleasant groups that I played with.

So yeah, a policy of no evil unless everyone is evil is the result.

To be fair, one of my favorite characters I ever played was an evil mystic theurge potion maker who swapped a few healing potions he was selling with potions of chain lightning...

Yahzi

2017-03-01, 01:42 AM

My thoughts are that you clearly don't care about anyone else's opinion in this case...
Not caring about other's opinions is one of the hallmarks of Evil...

I don't mind Evil PCs; but Evil DMs are right out. :smallbiggrin:

upho

2017-03-01, 05:00 AM

That's precisely the point.

Admittedly, there will be some flavors of Evil that can't abide torture. Maybe they're squeamish. Maybe it offends their sensibilities.

For the rest of us, though, it's perfect. Why, you ask?

It's simple. What separates Neutral from Evil is excess. Both Neutral and Evil alignments can be ruthlessly pragmatic. For example, killing a helpless captive spellcaster who you just know will come after you again - that's pragmatic. A Good character might not be able to stomach it, but both Neutral and Evil can take care of that for you in two flicks of a knife.

No, what separates them is excess. Neutral will do what is necessary to get the job done. Evil will go just a little bit beyond that.

And not just for senseless reasons. Not just for "the evulz." No. It serves a purpose. An excessive one, but a purpose nonetheless.

There are a lot of ways to get a captive to talk. A lot of ways to convince him, for the moment, to betray his allies, his cause, his beliefs, his country. But there's one surefire way to ensure that he would never dare betray you. And that's by showing him just what kind of monster you are. When faced with the concrete manifestation of pain and fear, everything else falls away, and you learn what's truly important - never making me angry.

And it serves other purposes, too. Sure, you could execute your enemies cleanly, let the word get out that you're some tyrant who mows down those who oppose him. Or you could rend the flesh from their bones, display their still-bleeding carcasses along your borders, and warn all who pass that this is the fate of all who would dare defy me.

The acts attributed to the historic Vlad the Impaler are particularly brutal and savage. And yet, under his despotic reign, crime was at a low, and the borders were protected against invasion. Because people understood what they faced.

So, yeah. Torture isn't necessary. That's the point. The point is to make someone ask, "What kind of monster would do this?" And then to be the answer.While I think this is a quite brilliantly explained, reflecting how I personally also define Evil in my game, I'm actually not so sure the alignment system as written agrees, being largely based on moral absolutism. For example, in the PF version (which I happen to be more familiar with nowadays), two of the suggested motivations for Evil PCs (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules/#Motivations_for_Evil_Characters) are:

Ignorance: You commit horrific acts because you genuinely don’t know better. Either you were raised to adhere to a set of monstrous values, or something in your past left you unable to empathize with others (or with creatures of a certain group). Is this willful ignorance? What could change you?

Purpose: Your mission might not be inherently evil—it might even be noble—but it’s too important to compromise. If atrocities will get the job done, you don’t hesitate. But are you sinning to serve your purpose, or are you drawn to your purpose because it gives you license to sin?

A character with either of these motivations who is "killing a helpless captive spellcaster who you just know will come after you again" isn't necessarily Evil according to Red Fel (and me). But according to the alignment system, the act itself is most likely inherently EvilTM regardless of motives and additional circumstances, just like casting a spell with the [evil] tag always is. No excess needed. And if we look at Red Fel's example through the lenses of other moral philosophies, the intents, reasons and circumstances might instead even make excesses like torture a moral and Good thing, as exemplified by the positive consequences of Vlad the Impaler's many heinous actions. These different perspectives are great when playing an Evil PC, especially in an otherwise non-Evil party, since they can provide good rationales for performing acts which are nevertheless EvilTM according to the game, while you're still being a trustworthy and appreciated member of the party.

Applying this to the experiences and opinions Bartmanhomer stated in the OP, which I've seen many other people agree with, I very much suspect that the players of Evil PCs who end up disruptive are ignorant of the possible alternative moral philosophies/perspectives and ways to play Evil or simply jerks, and in most cases both.

No. I'm evil and quite often I do EXACTLY what the party wants. What they really want, not what they say.
Nobody wants to waste time building an orphanage for baby hill giants.I think I get and agree with the point you were making here, but I have to say an orphanage for baby hill giants sounds awesome, regardless of alignment! Several the character's I've played, and probably four of the five PCs in the game I currently run totally would "waste time" on such a project. And a previous PC in the same party (LN, btw) actually did build an orphanage and school for goblin babies/kids and adults who had begun "questioning the virtues of the typical goblin way of life", one of them even taking the place of the late orphanage/school founder in the party!

(And btw, had I played a reasonably smart Evil PC, I most likely wouldn't have rejected the idea of saving baby hill giants, seeing as how that might very well provide me with useful loyal minions in the future.)

Fizban

2017-03-01, 05:32 AM

So...You are either encouraging me to do evil to get the proper alignment, or encouraging me to toe the line so I can keep my mechanically superior alignment? Or are you encouraging me to ignore my sheet and do whatever? I don't need it for that last one, I've gotten into the habit of writing in joke alignments just to see if the DM even reads that section or not. (And because I don't actually like the alignment system).
I'm encouraging you to play your character. Your character must function within the party. If it turns out your character is doing that while also being evil, you'll register as evil when necessary.

Note that bringing a character who is intended to be evil into a party with a Paladin automatically disqualifies you from functioning within the party before you hit the table. I will make sure that if anyone is playing a Paladin the others know it beforehand, though if you object I'll be giving weight to the Paladin (and crushing the Paladin if they make a nuisance of themselves).

Pleh

2017-03-01, 09:51 AM

While I think this is a quite brilliantly explained, reflecting how I personally also define Evil in my game, I'm actually not so sure the alignment system as written agrees, being largely based on moral absolutism. For example, in the PF version (which I happen to be more familiar with nowadays), two of the suggested motivations for Evil PCs (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules/#Motivations_for_Evil_Characters) are:

Ignorance: You commit horrific acts because you genuinely don’t know better. Either you were raised to adhere to a set of monstrous values, or something in your past left you unable to empathize with others (or with creatures of a certain group). Is this willful ignorance? What could change you?

Purpose: Your mission might not be inherently evil—it might even be noble—but it’s too important to compromise. If atrocities will get the job done, you don’t hesitate. But are you sinning to serve your purpose, or are you drawn to your purpose because it gives you license to sin?

I highlighted what I think is the key word here: suggested. I don't think the game makers intended this to mean the alignments were prescriptive, just that they COULD be, if needed.

Based on the style of writing the RAW tends to have, the actual morality of any given act in the game is a DM prerogative. Different campaign settings can really affect how the morality plays out, and in real table games, the DM often is rather inclusive of the players' ideas about morality.

The suggested morality system in most of the rule systems I've seen are more to help players who have writer's block and don't know how to set up their alignment system. Give them a broken, but functional standard and let them work it out for themselves when they finally come across a moral dilemma and decide whether it's better for their table to stick to the suggested system or to make an exception.

EDIT: Addendum: Honestly, as a DM I never worry too much about the goodness or evilness of a PC action unless it is shockingly out of character, obviously would result in undesirable consequences for the PC (based on how I think they want their game to go), or if we're playing Star Wars (or a similar system of morality) where doing evil things can literally cause their character to be taken over by a NPC force of morality that possesses them forever if they give in to it's pull.

Zanos

2017-03-01, 10:43 AM

While I think this is a quite brilliantly explained, reflecting how I personally also define Evil in my game, I'm actually not so sure the alignment system as written agrees, being largely based on moral absolutism.

A character with either of these motivations who is "killing a helpless captive spellcaster who you just know will come after you again" isn't necessarily Evil according to Red Fel (and me). But according to the alignment system, the act itself is most likely inherently EvilTM regardless of motives and additional circumstances, just like casting a spell with the [evil] tag always is. No excess needed. )
Yes, the alignment system as written is entirely based on moral absolutes, this is particularly evident in 3.5 where say, a Paladin killing a child possessed by an Archfiend is still Evil. Yes it was for a good purpose, but you cannot treat your purity as a commodity to be traded away when it's inconvenient. Alignment is a cosmic force, and committing any Evil act literally makes Evil more powerful in the material plane.

This is why, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, a character can be Evil under their cosmic alignment, even if their actions aren't considered wrong by a modern moral compass.

Segev

2017-03-01, 11:12 AM

The conditions under which "killing a helpless captive who is too powerful and dangerous to let go or even try to contain" is non-evil do tend to require the "powerful and dangerous" captive to be at least dipping south of Neutral on the moral axis. Generally speaking, it's not justified to kill a LN lawman who won't stop pursuing you nor stop trying to arrest you just because he won't stop and could escape to hound you again. It is justified to kill a LN(e) lawman who's already pronounced a death sentence and is going to carry it out, himself; it's self-defense, at that point. (The wavery conditionals get involved when you ask if the death sentence is warranted; Evil McStabbabies doesn't get a moral pass on killing the LG paladin who is hunting him down after he escaped his lawfully-appointed execution for his many nefarious crimes, because he abrogated his moral right to self-defense long ago in this instance. Not that he CARES.)

upho

2017-03-01, 11:47 PM

I highlighted what I think is the key word here: suggested. I don't think the game makers intended this to mean the alignments were prescriptive, just that they COULD be, if needed.

Based on the style of writing the RAW tends to have, the actual morality of any given act in the game is a DM prerogative. Different campaign settings can really affect how the morality plays out, and in real table games, the DM often is rather inclusive of the players' ideas about morality.I don't think you're wrong about the intent (or "hopes"), the DM prerogative and different campaign settings, which much of the descriptions of the PF alignment system goes to great length reiterating also in sources other than the CRB. But I think you're missing the point by believing "suggested" to be the key word here, because these are merely two examples among many which confirm the same moral absolutism.

In short, when it comes to the actual mechanical effects and details of related elements, such as certain paladin class features or the alignment tag of spells, as well as more concrete examples and suggestions such as those mentioned above, all of them are written under the assumption of a game using that same moral absolutism, leaving very little room for interpretations which wouldn't also necessitate a rather considerable change in related game mechanics. Yes, the most general descriptions of the alignment system and the associated guidelines for how to use it say things such as:

"Alignment is a tool to aid players in creating personalities for their characters. It is a guideline for a character’s morality, and Game Masters should not use it to unduly hamper characters, nor should it be used to straitjacket PCs in regard to determining the relationships between them."

But then goes on to give more concrete examples of the alignments which, again, all still very much assume and rigorously adhere to mentioned moral absolutism, actually giving plenty of very good reasons for players to feel they have to put a straitjacket on their PCs in order to not end up unintentionally ruining the fun, and for GMs to follow it closely in order not to unintentionally mess up related mechanics. Or to put it in another way, the "Lawful Stupid" pally often isn't just bad roleplaying, but also an effect of this consistent confirmation of, and adherence to, the same moral absolutism. And another example of the effect of the hard-coded moral absolutism can actually be found in this recent post in this very thread:
Note that bringing a character who is intended to be evil into a party with a Paladin automatically disqualifies you from functioning within the party before you hit the table. I will make sure that if anyone is playing a Paladin the others know it beforehand, though if you object I'll be giving weight to the Paladin (and crushing the Paladin if they make a nuisance of themselves).

I get the feeling the writer(s) of these general guidelines wished the mechanical effects of the system (left virtually unchanged from 3e) allowed for more interpretations and wasn't as much of a potential straitjacket as it actually is. The only other possible explanation I can think of is that the writer was simply ignorant of most alternative perspectives and philosophies, which I do find a lot less likely.

More importantly though, note that my main point is that it isn't actually necessarily a bad thing that there are differences between what the PF rules defines as Good or Evil and what you and your players do, precisely because it makes parties of PCs with technically opposing alignments that much more viable by allowing you to "cheat" the alignment system. (IMO the problem is instead that interesting character concepts which could otherwise be perfectly viable, like "Your Good and Friendly Neighborhood Necromancer", are impossible due to the hard-coded moral absolutism.)

The suggested morality system in most of the rule systems I've seen are more to help players who have writer's block and don't know how to set up their alignment system. Give them a broken, but functional standard and let them work it out for themselves when they finally come across a moral dilemma and decide whether it's better for their table to stick to the suggested system or to make an exception.That may be the case, but when it comes to 3e/PF, the "broken but functional standard" is pretty deeply rooted in game mechanics having a potentially huge life-or-death-impact on the PCs. So regardless of whether you're suffering from writer's block or otherwise wouldn't even think of considering your PC's moral outlook, you won't escape the related mechanics without typically pretty extensive houserules.

EDIT: Addendum: Honestly, as a DM I never worry too much about the goodness or evilness of a PC action unless it is shockingly out of character, obviously would result in undesirable consequences for the PC (based on how I think they want their game to go), or if we're playing Star Wars (or a similar system of morality) where doing evil things can literally cause their character to be taken over by a NPC force of morality that possesses them forever if they give in to it's pull.Largely the same here, though I've also made pretty drastic changes to the related mechanics to make it suit my setting and players.

Yes, the alignment system as written is entirely based on moral absolutes, this is particularly evident in 3.5 where say, a Paladin killing a child possessed by an Archfiend is still Evil. Yes it was for a good purpose, but you cannot treat your purity as a commodity to be traded away when it's inconvenient. Alignment is a cosmic force, and committing any Evil act literally makes Evil more powerful in the material plane.

This is why, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, a character can be Evil under their cosmic alignment, even if their actions aren't considered wrong by a modern moral compass.Ooops! Seems I missed your earlier post and made basically the same point again. Sorry! :smallredface:

TheifofZ

2017-03-02, 01:57 AM

Well now. I return for a short bit, and find the perfect thread to weigh in on.
Red Fel already covered most of the gist of it, but that's because he's Red Fel. Saw what you did, there, buddy.

Couple things, and then a brief story.
First; another quote that recently became quite a big deal, IIRC; "I'm bad, and that's good. I'll never be good, and that's not bad. There's noone I'd rather be, then me."
Some of the most enjoyable characters I've played are the ones that could certainly have been the villain, but for how things played out.

The second point is something already well discussed; Correlation is not Causation. As well, just because some act in one way does not mean all do. That's like saying 'Some people that like D&D are good at math, so all of them must be math nerds.' Understanding that, let's break down OPs points to remove the confusion of those points.
"1. Evil PC always get into conflict with other party members and Non PC."
Instead, that should be "The Evil PCs I've seen are always played to get into conflict with other party members and NPCs"
Which could be understood as 'The players of the Evil PCs I've seen want an excuse to cause conflict with other party members and NPCs'.

"2. Evil PC are jerks."
Instead should read "The Evil PCs I've played with are jerks" and... yeah, okay. The evil alignment requires, on some level, that the character be willing to sacrifice the well being of others for their own success and happiness, which is basically being a jerk. But there's a sharp distinction to be made between 'madly murderobo everything in sight just because I'm evil' and any other form of more subtle evil play.

"3. Evil PC takes out the fun of everybody enjoyment."
You mean to say 'the campaigns I've played in with Evil PCs haven't been enjoyable for anyone.' And that's a sad thing to say holds more than just a few grains of truth.
As mentioned earlier, many people play evil so they can hack and slash everything in sight, betray and harm the party, and generally just do anything to get ahead. Which is boring, frustrating, and ultimately, bad for the game, the group, and the players.
This is not the fault of the character, though, nor the alignment. It's the fault of the Player behind the PC, and just like any other problematic type of player, the game will likely be healthier without them, or at the very least, after the DM has given them a firm talking to. It's just as bad as having a Lawful Stupid Paladin forcing everyone else to stick to trying to be perfect, and refusing anything else. Or a dozen dozen other type of bad players out there.

"4. Evil PC are better off being enemies of the party and better being Non PC."
This, and point 5, are both largely your own opinion, and can be lumped together without issue.

Here's an example of an evil character I played that my group greatly enjoyed playing with. Felix, the rogue, he started the game with NE and stuck to it the entire campaign long.
His alignment was NE specifically because, though he'd happily do terrible things (On more than one occasion, sneaking back to dispatch otherwise helpless foes to ensure they didn't cause trouble later, stealing holy artifacts from the church of the party's cleric's god to sell them, and worse.) he did have a strict personal code of conduct that meant that the party could largely trust him; things like 'not killing without a reason' and 'not stealing money from party members'. And while there were times that the others OOC were a little frustrated with things I had done IC (the holy artifact incident, for instance), the fact was that the game was largely more enjoyable for the party OOC, with several of Felix's capers being seen as the high point of some sessions, and several incidents actively making life a dozen times easier for the party as a whole.

The only times I wasn't sure if the party would be largely okay with what I was planning, I always double-checked before hand, vetting the plans with both the party and the DM at the start of the session at minimum, such as the very end of the campaign where Felix committed a triple cross, first betraying the party so that he'd be in a better position to betray and back-stab the BBEG of the campaign at the climactic moment.
Which is, incidentally, how a player should handle playing an Evil PC; by and large the Evil actions you do shouldn't make the game more difficult to enjoy for the group, and anything that might cause such issues should be discussed clearly and carefully to make sure noone will feel that their enjoyment is hurt by it.

Fizban

2017-03-02, 07:56 AM

Felix committed a triple cross, first betraying the party so that he'd be in a better position to betray and back-stab the BBEG of the campaign at the climactic moment.
Vetting a triple cross beforehand seems like it would suck most of the tension out of it. But as an end of the campaign final gambit, doing it without vetting it is pretty good: You've worked alongside this man for months, do you think he's double-crossing you, or setting up for a triple-cross? And then leave that up to the other players. Of course if you just pulling the double-cross you'd have to vet it, at least with the DM so they can reduce challenges accordingly for the change in party.

Alcore

2017-03-02, 08:05 AM

I love being evil characters but "evil with standards" mind you. I have never once (and likely never will) sell their soul. Evil is a means to an end not an eternal servitude thing.

The big problem I have with most not-me evil PCs is how banal they are. Belkar and Xykon all day.... it bores me as much as most paladins.

Pleh

2017-03-02, 09:25 AM

I don't think you're wrong about the intent (or "hopes"), the DM prerogative and different campaign settings, which much of the descriptions of the PF alignment system goes to great length reiterating also in sources other than the CRB. But I think you're missing the point by believing "suggested" to be the key word here, because these are merely two examples among many which confirm the same moral absolutism.

~Snip~

More importantly though, note that my main point is that it isn't actually necessarily a bad thing that there are differences between what the PF rules defines as Good or Evil and what you and your players do, precisely because it makes parties of PCs with technically opposing alignments that much more viable by allowing you to "cheat" the alignment system. (IMO the problem is instead that interesting character concepts which could otherwise be perfectly viable, like "Your Good and Friendly Neighborhood Necromancer", are impossible due to the hard-coded moral absolutism.)

That may be the case, but when it comes to 3e/PF, the "broken but functional standard" is pretty deeply rooted in game mechanics having a potentially huge life-or-death-impact on the PCs. So regardless of whether you're suffering from writer's block or otherwise wouldn't even think of considering your PC's moral outlook, you won't escape the related mechanics without typically pretty extensive houserules.

Largely the same here, though I've also made pretty drastic changes to the related mechanics to make it suit my setting and players.

I don't see the changes to moral absolutism to be all that extensive. It hits all the classes built to be based on their alignment pretty hard, which always seemed to be rather pitiful game construction in most every place I saw it done (except maybe in the prohibitions against using spells you are aligned against; casters have enough alternative choices that taking a hard line here is effective without being a straitjacket).

There's a few primary topics that are widespread in a campaign setting (like Necromancy being evil, as you mentioned), but I don't see that kind of change as being all that extensive. Though it has large scale implications for the universe you're creating, it doesn't effectively require all that much mechanical changes to make Necromancy a neutral act.

Pretty much all it does is lift the restriction on who can use it. In the story, extensive houseruling. In the mechanics, a widespread, but relatively small change.

Likewise, it requires very little mechanical changes to say a Paladin can choose to slay a child possessed by an Archfiend without breaking their code of conduct. In fact, I've never actually seen it played that a Paladin would be subject to that level of Lawful Stupid (unless the player felt that way; I should clarify that I've never seen a DM use that against a player).

In my own experience, the purpose of Moral Dilemmas are to give the Player a choice to make in character, not to punish them for making the wrong one. If an unintentional dilemma came up where I felt there would be clearly unacceptable consequences for making a bad choice, I would try to make sure the player knew ahead of time so they could decide how best to proceed with their character's story. Because at that point, it's more a story than a game. It's less about rolling or qualifying for features and more about using the character you built to actually play out a narrative.

At that point, I couldn't care much less about what the rule book was trying to tell me about a moral dilemma it wasn't considering when it was written.

Moral Absolutism in D&D feels more like a Theoretical RAW to me, whereas I've never seen it strictly adhered to in actual gameplay against the better judgement of the table. In my mind, the ACTUAL definitions of Morality are defined more by the DM than the books, which are more offering examples to inspire character creation than prescribing what options are available to players.

Descriptive rather than prescriptive. The fact that the Descriptions lacked some imagination doesn't necessarily mean that alternative morality is prohibited.

But maybe I'm wrong. What are some of these other extensive mechanical changes you were thinking of that makes this not work so well? I admit that for all my years of gaming, I've always been behind the curve on the vast extent of material.

OldTrees1

2017-03-02, 10:37 AM

Moral Absolutism in D&D feels more like a Theoretical RAW to me, whereas I've never seen it strictly adhered to in actual gameplay against the better judgement of the table. In my mind, the ACTUAL definitions of Morality are defined more by the DM than the books, which are more offering examples to inspire character creation than prescribing what options are available to players.

Moral Absolutism is not mutually exclusive with the DM defining the ACTUAL definitions of Morality. The DM defining ACTUAL definitions of Morality, rather than definitions of Morality being relative to the current whims and beliefs of PCs/NPCs, is Moral Absolutism.

Segev

2017-03-02, 11:10 AM

Moral Absolutism is not mutually exclusive with the DM defining the ACTUAL definitions of Morality. The DM defining ACTUAL definitions of Morality, rather than definitions of Morality being relative to the current whims and beliefs of PCs/NPCs, is Moral Absolutism.

I tend to have issue with this approach because most people who attempt it don't understand that, just because they can draw lines in the sand, that doesn't necessarily mean that any lines work. Often, their "moral absolutes" lead to self-contradictory paradoxes.

This only gets worse when the creator of the "absolute" moral system is aiming to achieve this in order to trap alignment-focused characters in "moral quandaries."

This tends to be either a jerk DM wanting to screw over a paladin, or an armchair philosopher who thinks he's cleverly proving a point about objective morality not existing by deliberately creating a flawed "absolute" moral system. (Which is like proving that internal combustion engines can't possibly work by building a car with a block of C4 for an 'engine' and demonstrating that it explodes when turned on.)

OldTrees1

2017-03-02, 11:18 AM

I tend to have issue with this approach because most people who attempt it don't understand that, just because they can draw lines in the sand, that doesn't necessarily mean that any lines work. Often, their "moral absolutes" lead to self-contradictory paradoxes.

This only gets worse when the creator of the "absolute" moral system is aiming to achieve this in order to trap alignment-focused characters in "moral quandaries."

This tends to be either a jerk DM wanting to screw over a paladin, or an armchair philosopher who thinks he's cleverly proving a point about objective morality not existing by deliberately creating a flawed "absolute" moral system. (Which is like proving that internal combustion engines can't possibly work by building a car with a block of C4 for an 'engine' and demonstrating that it explodes when turned on.)

Do remember the alternatives are to use Moral Relativism(I am not going to go into why that is a bad idea) or for the DM to use someone else's definitions(Which has exactly the same problemspace, we just moved the actor).

Yes the field of Ethics is hard (and a DM or game dev proposing definitions is analogous to an amateur submitting a moral theory). However there is no escaping that difficulty.

Segev

2017-03-02, 11:32 AM

Do remember the alternatives are to use Moral Relativism(I am not going to go into why that is a bad idea) or for the DM to use someone else's definitions(Which has exactly the same problemspace, we just moved the actor).

Yes the field of Ethics is hard (and a DM or game dev proposing definitions is analogous to an amateur submitting a moral theory). However there is no escaping that difficulty.

True, and fair. The alternative I would propose probably falls in the "defined morality" zone, but rather than the situation I mentally lept to to object (sorry about that), where the absolute morals are pre- and proscriptions on specific actions, it would be to frame it in terms of broader goals and end results.

Yes, I'm a aware that this sounds a lot like utilitarian ethics, but I'm not really suggesting going that far.

For the most part, humans who share a cultural background have certain moral points they can agree on. As long as they stay away from the strict definition of moral relativism (where it really is a matter of what you THINK is good or evil) and try to stay rooted in those principles, the absolute morality they can agree on will likely arise for each situation without too much need to quibble and argue. Not "no" need, but limited.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that, if you perceive a moral paradox, you're either trying to rationalize something you know to be wrong by claiming bad things happening to you are inherently immoral, or you're missing something.

The second biggest thing is that, if the DM is going to have to make a judgment call, he should warn a player of the moral weight of his declared actions before the player finalizes them. And, again, the DM should never have a paradox in his judgment call. Obviously, the player chooses whatever he wants, but he should not be "gotcha'd" by the result.

OldTrees1

2017-03-02, 12:23 PM

True, and fair. The alternative I would propose probably falls in the "defined morality" zone, but rather than the situation I mentally lept to to object (sorry about that), where the absolute morals are pre- and proscriptions on specific actions, it would be to frame it in terms of broader goals and end results.

Yes, I'm a aware that this sounds a lot like utilitarian ethics, but I'm not really suggesting going that far.

For the most part, humans who share a cultural background have certain moral points they can agree on. As long as they stay away from the strict definition of moral relativism (where it really is a matter of what you THINK is good or evil) and try to stay rooted in those principles, the absolute morality they can agree on will likely arise for each situation without too much need to quibble and argue. Not "no" need, but limited.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that, if you perceive a moral paradox, you're either trying to rationalize something you know to be wrong by claiming bad things happening to you are inherently immoral, or you're missing something.

The second biggest thing is that, if the DM is going to have to make a judgment call, he should warn a player of the moral weight of his declared actions before the player finalizes them. And, again, the DM should never have a paradox in his judgment call. Obviously, the player chooses whatever he wants, but he should not be "gotcha'd" by the result.

You are giving another example(well several) of Moral Absolutism.

For amateurs crafting Moral theories there are two methods that I would like to highlight their pros and cons:
1) From the Conclusions to the Rule
Start with all the moral verdicts that are obviously commonly agreed on among your group. Then construct a moral theory that would conclude those moral verdicts.
Pro: The theory agrees with the group on specific cases
Con: The theory is extremely likely to be self-contradicting

2) From the Rule to the Conclusions
Start with a moral value that is obviously commonly accepted among your group (Ex: It is moral to be the kind of person that through thought, action, and consequence maximizes your benefit to others and minimize your harm to others). Then derive moral verdicts from that value.
Pro: The theory is as self consistent as your capacity for logic
Con: The theory might have surprising opinions on specific cases

The possibilities you cite at the observation of a moral paradox seem to have some heavy handed bias. I would have just left it as some form of the more neutral toned:
"Moral Paradoxes do not exist. If you observe a Moral Paradox, then either the Moral Theory you are using is flawed/incomplete or your observation of the event is flawed/incomplete."

Your point about the DM judgement call was perfectly worded.

Segev

2017-03-02, 12:57 PM

You are giving another example(well several) of Moral Absolutism.I am. I was acknowledging that. Or thought I was. Apologies if that was unclear.

The possibilities you cite at the observation of a moral paradox seem to have some heavy handed bias. I would have just left it as some form of the more neutral toned:
"Moral Paradoxes do not exist. If you observe a Moral Paradox, then either the Moral Theory you are using is flawed/incomplete or your observation of the event is flawed/incomplete."Well put.

Your point about the DM judgement call was perfectly worded.Thanks!

Pleh

2017-03-02, 01:51 PM

Stealth Marmot

2017-03-02, 02:55 PM

Torture is actually an effective means of getting information. It's just not effective in a vacuum. If you torture one man who knows several things you need to find out, you will get dozens of conflicting bits of information, especially if you keep going to try to find out everything he knows. Generally a person will break, give you the information you want, and if you keep going thru will start making stuff up to satisfy you. A partially savvy prisoner may have tried to give you lies early on to confuse you.

The solutions to this are three fold. One, you need periods of lower stress when you can restate and reword questions to try to catch him changing answers. Two, you need other sources of information that you can use to compare and verify what you get from the individual your torturing, which also can be useful in the questioning itself. Three, you need to be able to convince your prisoner that he can trust you, that you are as professional who can be reasoned with. He needs to know that if he provides what you want, he actually can stop the torture and preferably avoid death.

Anyone who says violence never solves anything isn't using enough of it.

So you take the Inglorious Basterds method to information gathering.

Here's the thing, people who are scared, or in pain, they will tell you what you WANT to know, but not what you NEED to know.

See, here's the thing about information and people, we have bias. If you hear what you want to hear, you will think it is true and people who are being tortured or under threat of torture will happily tell you what they think you will believe. In fact it can be worse if they are scared because they might be reluctant to tell the truth because they fear the consequences of telling you something they don't want to hear.

Proper interrogation is making friends with the person you are interrogating. They have to do more than fear you, they have to want to help you. Unless the information is immediately and reliable verifiable, the person you are interrogating will lie to you unless you make them want to tell you the actual truth, and that limits the value of interrogation immensely.

Think of it this way: Imagine if you were taken prisoner, and they pulled out two potential people to try to get information from you.

The first was Hitler, and he screams at you, asking questions, demanding you tell him what you know about something that you could easily make up for fudge the facts on, plus you get the feeling that telling him certain true things will anger him and he will be in denial over it.

The second option is they send in Mr. Rogers, and he calmly tells you that you're safe and he appreciates how great you've been, but the truth is that you could really be his neighbor if you just be honest with him. Don't worry, he's willing to hear whatever you tell him because he knows your honest, even if it is something he might not enjoy hearing.

Tell me, who would you be more likely to tell the truth to?

Segev

2017-03-02, 03:18 PM

Think of it this way: Imagine if you were taken prisoner, and they pulled out two potential people to try to get information from you.

The first was Hitler, and he screams at you, asking questions, demanding you tell him what you know about something that you could easily make up for fudge the facts on, plus you get the feeling that telling him certain true things will anger him and he will be in denial over it.

The second option is they send in Mr. Rogers, and he calmly tells you that you're safe and he appreciates how great you've been, but the truth is that you could really be his neighbor if you just be honest with him. Don't worry, he's willing to hear whatever you tell him because he knows your honest, even if it is something he might not enjoy hearing.

Tell me, who would you be more likely to tell the truth to?

If I wasn't already inclined to give them information? Neither. Just because Good Cop is offering me a donut doesn't mean I am going to feel obligated to tell him how to kill my friends and protect the evil regime for which he works. Or whatever reason I've got for not wanting to share with these people.

Threaten me with torture? I don't know. I'd LIKE to think I'd hold out. But until tested, I am not positive I could. I don't deal well with pain.

Would I lie to stop the pain? Sure, if I thought it'd work. But that's because this isn't a very good interrogation technique, torture or no.

Heck, "good cop/bad cop" works because Officer Rodgers can convince you that he can protect you from Officer Hitler, but only if you give him something. It's an effort, as well, to instill a minor version of Stockholm Syndrome. Officer Rodgers is likable, and you want to like him because he's being nice to you. Surely, he is on your side, and wants to help, so if you can just help him...

But no. In a single session, good cop/bad cop won't work on a determined subject.

There are a number of techniques one can employ; Officer Rodgers is crucial to most of them.

Officer Hitler is optional in some of them.

The one thing you don't want to do in an interrogation is convince the subject that he's at the sole mercy of an irrational person. That instills exactly the kind of "tell him what you think he wants" that is being called out.

If you're going to use torture, you do it with a calm, rational demeanor. It is critical that the subject believe you to be rational. That all you want is true, useful information. That stopping is something you'll be willing to do if he cooperates. Maybe something you even WANT to do.

But that alone isn't enough. Because, yes, in that one session, "tell him anything to make him stop" is an option.

You need, therefore, to be able to convince your victim that he can't afford to lie. That the lie being discovered is worse even than silence. Two primary means of achieving this are the "known questions" technique and the "verify and punish" technique. The first can be done in a single session: ask your questions with the threat of torture on the table, and have some of those questions - perhaps even most of them - be ones to which you already know the answer. Make sure you also know whether or not the subject knows the answer; you want "I don't know" to be something he feels safe in saying if it's true, but is afraid to say if it isn't.

Ask questions in small sets - 3 to 5 - and punish him for answering ANY of that set with a lie. Don't tell him how you know he's lying. The fact that he knows he lied about at least one of them will serve to start convincing him that he can't fool you. When he tells the truth, thank him kindly for it. Maybe reward him with something to soothe any discomforts lingering from punishments. This will convince him that telling the truth is a way to avoid pain. He has no idea what questions you don't already know the answers to, so he weighs ALL of them against the risk of torture if he's caught lying. You convince him in this fashion that lying is futile and that the truth is the only way to avoid more pain.

With "verify and punish," you can admit when you don't know the answer. You are going to keep him for a long time. You will treat him reasonably well if he cooperates and answers your questions at all. You will then go out and use his intel with an eye towards verification. Test it with minimal risk to yourself and your organization. If he proves truthful, slightly improve his circumstances. If, at any point, you catch him lying, you tell him calmly that his information was found to be false, and that he is being punished for lying.

If he answers that he doesn't know, and you can't be 100% positive that he's lying, you simply downgrade his treatment. Don't punish him yet. But make it clear to him that you have places to put those who are not useful. If he doesn't know anything, he'll get put there. Maybe it's just a place where they torture people for fun. Maybe it's some sort of horrific misery. Simply making answering your questions with useful information being the price to eat or get water can work.

Reward him the first time he breaks and tells you anything. Verify, and torture if he was lying. If he's lied, don't reward him the next time he breaks until you verify his information. DO reward him, then. And tell him you're sorry you had to wait, but he'd proven untrustworthy in the past. And how much you hope he'll be more forthcoming going forward, so that you can reward him more promptly.

Torture is a useful tool of interrogation. It just requires more than a dumb "tell me or I hurt you" approach.

Stealth Marmot

2017-03-02, 03:32 PM

Segev

2017-03-02, 03:36 PM

I should mention I wasn't suggesting Hitler and Mr. Rogers as Good Cop / Bad Cop, but as alternative situations.

If you were talking to EITHER Mr. Rogers OR Hitler as your singular interrogator, which would you more likely be honest and give useful info to?

Sorry. I answered that first, before treating them as good cop/bad cop, but I can see how that would get conflated with the rest of my post.

Neither.

Under the assumption that I was not willing to be cooperative already, I would not find Officer Rodgers to be particularly persuasive that I should start doing so just because he's asking nicely. I don't trust him; he works for people who have held me against my will and are asking me for information that will be used against me or to harm people or a cause I care about. Why on earth would him offering me a donut and a kind word make me decide to tell him where my secret rebel base (or whatever) is?

Zanos

2017-03-02, 03:40 PM

Stealth Marmot

2017-03-02, 03:47 PM

Under the assumption that I was not willing to be cooperative already, I would not find Officer Rodgers to be particularly persuasive that I should start doing so just because he's asking nicely. I don't trust him; he works for people who have held me against my will and are asking me for information that will be used against me or to harm people or a cause I care about. Why on earth would him offering me a donut and a kind word make me decide to tell him where my secret rebel base (or whatever) is?

Not immediately, of course, the person would first have to get to know you. They would be helpful to you, have them do you favors or connect with you on a personal level, talk with you about their personal lives. They would actively look like they are trying to help you out, but you are in fact a wanted criminal so they can't let you go.

The important thing is connecting, and they have to communicate to do so.It takes a long time, but if you get to know someone and realize that they don't seem so bad, then you start questioning a lot of things. Are they really the bad guys if they employ such good people? And if they are bad guys, then this guy might honestly be my only way out, and he can only really help if I'm honest because he will give the information over and when it turns out true they will go to bat for me!

See, end of the day, a prisoner will be looking for whatever answer will net the the best outcome. If you get some nasty torturous person in here, they will simply become jaded and resolved towards death, but if you get someone who seems honest and trustworthy, then that person can promise them an actual way out that doesn't result in death.

A person being tortured has very little to lose, but one who thinks they can get out of being jailed or in a hellish prison is willing to give information.

It's not an easy sell, it's manipulative as hell, especially if you don't plan on making good on your promises to help them, but the short of it is that pain can actually BUILD resolve and determination, particularly if a person is ready for pain and death.

I mean, why do you think so many zealous religions use self flagellation?

I'm not a psychologist, but the one of the most successful interrogators in modern times used the "Mr. Rogers" method.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff#Technique)

That's pretty much where I got the concept from. I believe it was mention on Last Week Tonight and it showed an FBI interrogator's technique and it was very Mr. Rogers.

Edit: I should concede that he did make use of the Gestapo's existing reputation as intimidation.

Red Fel

2017-03-02, 04:01 PM

If you were talking to EITHER Mr. Rogers OR Hitler as your singular interrogator, which would you more likely be honest and give useful info to?

The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown. The Lion beat the Unicorn all 'round the town.

The "Good Cop" method works by disorienting the subject, making him forget that he is a prisoner possessed of vital information, and convincing him that he is a functionally free man chatting with a friend. The way to avoid interrogation is to invert the scenario - that is, to disorient the interrogator.

Did you ever watch Batman: The Animated Series? There's an excellent episode that delves into Alfred's history as a spy. He is captured by bad guys who want him to reveal his half of a secret code. Instead, he rambles constantly about nonsense. As a result, when he does answer their question, they mistake it for more nonsense.

Most prisoners eventually succumb. That's practically a truism. Whether you spill your guts because someone else is about to literally spill your guts, or you casually disclose things to your new best buddy, you're probably going to let loose the truth at some point. The trick, then, is to be so incomprehensible and random up to that point, that when you finally do break, they don't even realize it.

Me, personally, I'd probably end up giving information to one or the other. I'm not made of stone. But the challenge for them would be figuring out when I had. And I have no desire to make it easy for anyone.

ShaneMRoth

2017-03-02, 04:06 PM

5. I also believe the Evil PC should be banned from being PC.

This appears to be the default setting of 3.5

The first six alignments, lawful good through chaotic neutral, are the standard alignments for player characters. The three evil alignments are for monsters and villains.

Per RAW, the evil alignments aren't an option for players. The GM has to suspend this rule before a player can create an Evil charcter.

I strictly enforce this rule in my games. No evil PCs, per the rules as written.

I would only suspend this rule if I believed that every player in the group could handle playing an Evil PC. It is my experience that there is always one player who can't. It is also my experience that for a game to work you have to run as fast as your slowest member.

Segev

2017-03-02, 04:45 PM

I'm not a psychologist, but the one of the most successful interrogators in modern times used the "Mr. Rogers" method.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff#Technique)

Not immediately, of course, the person would first have to get to know you. They would be helpful to you, have them do you favors or connect with you on a personal level, talk with you about their personal lives. They would actively look like they are trying to help you out, but you are in fact a wanted criminal so they can't let you go.

The important thing is connecting, and they have to communicate to do so.It takes a long time, but if you get to know someone and realize that they don't seem so bad, then you start questioning a lot of things. Are they really the bad guys if they employ such good people? And if they are bad guys, then this guy might honestly be my only way out, and he can only really help if I'm honest because he will give the information over and when it turns out true they will go to bat for me!Certainly, this would be more effective. But the key point is "with time." Single-session, you're not going to manage this.

Additionally, you're not going to get a hostile, even malevolent subject to share useful information just by being nice. Certainly, the psychological tactics employed by this gentleman would be useful, but they do rely on the subject having some good-hearted desire for a connection...and not be willing to lie to "his only friend." It also relies on him not maintaining a mantra of hate. Which CAN be done.

We don't even have to look to prisoners for examples. Foster and adoptive kids can remain hateful towards their caretakers even when the caretakers do their best to be good parent-figures.

Now, of course, trained psychologists can do better with manipulation. And that's why people will break one way or another. The "good guy" approach can take longer, and be less effective the more malevolent the subject is, however.

See, end of the day, a prisoner will be looking for whatever answer will net the the best outcome. If you get some nasty torturous person in here, they will simply become jaded and resolved towards death, but if you get someone who seems honest and trustworthy, then that person can promise them an actual way out that doesn't result in death.

A person being tortured has very little to lose, but one who thinks they can get out of being jailed or in a hellish prison is willing to give information.

It's not an easy sell, it's manipulative as hell, especially if you don't plan on making good on your promises to help them, but the short of it is that pain can actually BUILD resolve and determination, particularly if a person is ready for pain and death.

I mean, why do you think so many zealous religions use self flagellation?

That's pretty much where I got the concept from. I believe it was mention on Last Week Tonight and it showed an FBI interrogator's technique and it was very Mr. Rogers.Indeed. But note that "the best possible outcome" for somebody who has decided to take on a martyr complex can be "hurt these guys as much as possible." Even if they're playing every card to come off as "friendly."

Edit: I should concede that he did make use of the Gestapo's existing reputation as intimidation.There's this, too. Which goes back to at least convincing the subject that failure to cooperate might lead to torture.

Actually torturing him can definitely convince him of this. If you have to resort to it, make sure you do it with professional detachment and a shared goal of making it stop. Because you really don't want to torture him; you want him to give you the info you need.

Our "nice guy" interrogator was able to play good cop against the phantom bad cop because there existed a real bad cop who earned that reputation.

Did you ever watch Batman: The Animated Series? There's an excellent episode that delves into Alfred's history as a spy. He is captured by bad guys who want him to reveal his half of a secret code. Instead, he rambles constantly about nonsense. As a result, when he does answer their question, they mistake it for more nonsense.Do you happen to remember the episode name or number? I am not sure I've seen that one, and it sounds good.

Most prisoners eventually succumb. That's practically a truism. Whether you spill your guts because someone else is about to literally spill your guts, or you casually disclose things to your new best buddy, you're probably going to let loose the truth at some point. The trick, then, is to be so incomprehensible and random up to that point, that when you finally do break, they don't even realize it.

Me, personally, I'd probably end up giving information to one or the other. I'm not made of stone. But the challenge for them would be figuring out when I had. And I have no desire to make it easy for anyone.
Again, I think the "nice guy" version almost relies on the subject being the sort who is able to see good in even his captors. Get somebody fanatically convinced his captors are all devils, and they likely won't break to the "nice guy" approach.

I don't know that I could keep up a confusing stream of nonsense that would successfully be similar enough to the truth that speaking the truth would be obfuscated by it. My best bet would be recalcitrance, and I am not good at staying silent. It'd be difficult.

Fortunately, I don't know anything anybody'd want to interrogate me for, so there's nothing to worry about there.

*quietly toes his spellbook out of sight under the dresser*

OldTrees1

2017-03-02, 05:25 PM

I agree with everything you guys have said, but I would submit the following.

You can sometimes achieve the illusion of moral absolutism. This largely hinges (as with any illusion) that you don't ever look too closely at it. Start the game with a general theory of moral absolutes, something that looks about right at a glance. Then when dilemmas come up, rationalize them and presume that's how it always worked.

This presumes the players and DM are more or less in agreement on how the dilemma ought to be resolved. It would be a fantastically successful game that touched on morality so much that the contradictions in the illusion couldn't really bear it.

As a player and DM, I feel like there is room for both absolutism and relativity in the same space. As we've seen, knowledge and willfulness play a keen role in morality. Just because there is an objectively best reaction to any situation under absolutism doesn't mean a mortal knows what that best reaction is or that they are capable of that reaction. There can coexist the best that is possible with the best that can be provided.

Paladins ought to be held only to doing their personal best, not the universal best. Then to prevent abuse, there would be a minimum competence required so their personal best never falls outside what is acceptable.

A paladin that slays a child possessed by an archfiend might best be reprimanded and court marshaled, even stripped of rank if it is found that the paladin could reasonably have vanquised the fiend without harm to the child. But only lawful stupid gives no leniency for having the right heart in an impossible situation.

I still don't think you understand what is Moral Absolutism and all the cases it includes.

For context: You are not talking about relativity. Everything here is moral absolutism. An action's moral character being dependent on the context of the intent, circumstances, and consequences? That is moral absolutism. The Players and the DM disagreeing about what is moral but in the end something is ruled? That is moral absolutism.

It is only Moral Relativism if you can honestly say "The actual moral character of the action is simultaneously (0% moral & 100% immoral) & (100% moral & 0% immoral) depending on which NPC you ask". That is the kind of crazy relativism that is Moral Relativism. If you are not trying to say a single event has 2 equally true but mutually exclusive moral verdict, then it is not Moral Relativism

Moral Absolutism: The Paladin might fall or not fall depending on the morally relevant information.
Moral Relativism: The Paladin simultaneously both falls and does not fall.

Segev

2017-03-02, 06:04 PM

Moral Absolutism: The Paladin might fall or not fall depending on the morally relevant information.
Moral Relativism: The Paladin simultaneously both falls and does not fall.

As much as it pains me to say this... to be fair to moral relativists, it would be more fitting to say that the paladin falls or not depending on how he feels about his action. Or how some arbiter does.

The "good" or "evil" of an act, in moral relativism, depends on the moral system to which you subscribe. Moral relativism allows for each system to be absolute, but does not allow for any one system to be "better" than another.

I've tried to type more sentences to conclude this 4 times now, and each one carries my disdain for moral relativism sufficiently that it probably risks violating the forum's terms of use, so I will stop here.

OldTrees1

2017-03-02, 06:08 PM

As much as it pains me to say this... to be fair to moral relativists, it would be more fitting to say that the paladin falls or not depending on how he feels about his action. Or how some arbiter does.

The "good" or "evil" of an act, in moral relativism, depends on the moral system to which you subscribe. Moral relativism allows for each system to be absolute, but does not allow for any one system to be "better" than another.

I've tried to type more sentences to conclude this 4 times now, and each one carries my disdain for moral relativism sufficiently that it probably risks violating the forum's terms of use, so I will stop here.

I don't think that firstrephrasing is accurate. Moral Relativism states that it depends on each observer (including ones at a different time and place) and that all their verdicts are simultaneously true. So whether the Paladin falls depends on who you are asking & they are all right. Although I guess, Moral Relativism does not claim that it is always the case that given the numerous people that have, do, will live will disagree on the moral character of an event.

Segev

2017-03-02, 06:19 PM

I will back off from an argument on the most professional philosophical definition of "moral relativism," because it isn't a topic I've studied formally. I can say that the way that it is used most commonly, it's basically saying that you can't use one moral system's standards to judge another, and thus any moral system has equal weight as long as the people adhering to them believe in it.

And again, the conclusion I wish to draw is probably stepping over the line of terms of use for this forum, so I will again refrain. This is quite frustrating, because I believe it to be a good point, but I am incapable of expressing it neutrally. :smallmad:

OldTrees1

2017-03-02, 06:27 PM

Pex

2017-03-02, 06:37 PM

Most players I've found who want to play evil PCs want to do so to be selfish jerks, but I repeat myself. They want to do so without the pretense of their character being chaotic neutral on the character sheet. They don't give a damn about anyone else's fun.

I can at least say I've known and played with one exception. I understood how her character fit in the game and the interest as to why the player wanted to play it. It was pure roleplaying reasons and Honest True had no Jerkiness about it nor any negative affect upon the rest of the party.

Milo v3

2017-03-02, 07:36 PM

Before my group started using Subjective Morality rules, most my PC's were evil. Didn't really cause many issues outside of "hey, can you change your character to neutral so that I can roll up a paladin". Evil != Saturday morning cartoon villain.

Dragonexx

2017-03-02, 09:34 PM

Let's get something straight here. Are the people you all play with satisfied?

The only people your justifications have to satisfy are the people you are playing with.

If you go for moral absolutism, and the people at your table don't care and just want to kill some orcs, then everybody's happy and there's no problem.

upho

2017-03-03, 02:05 AM

I don't see the changes to moral absolutism to be all that extensive. It hits all the classes built to be based on their alignment pretty hard, which always seemed to be rather pitiful game construction in most every place I saw it done (except maybe in the prohibitions against using spells you are aligned against; casters have enough alternative choices that taking a hard line here is effective without being a straitjacket).First, I feel I have to apologize for not further explaining my perspective and my assumptions here. I've been trying, perhaps arrogantly, to view this primarily through the lens of a not very experienced player and/or DM, and with the assumption that both would prefer to play the game according to RAW as far as possible.

Anyhow, I think making changes to the moral absolutism itself is probably not what most DMs (and players) find potentially problematic (even though that is probably what they should find problematic if they're playing a game where the PCs are expected to face a lot of tough moral dilemmas, as other posters have touched upon). But, at least if judging by the many posts I've personally read in various gaming forums where related issues has come up (particularly in the case of players/DMs of pallys) for seemingly as long as 3e/PF has existed, it appears to me that many groups/DMs are unwilling to alter the moral absolutism primarily because it would involve altering the mechanics, or at the very least unintentionally making mechanics suddenly produce different and unforeseen results.

There also seems to be a resistance to alter the moral philosophy on the grounds that it would be a too big a change from how the game supposedly was intended to be played. For example, quite a few DMs seem to be of the opinion that the very existence of the pally (and antipally) class as a whole is largely dependent on the game's default moral absolutism. Meaning they don't necessarily separate what I believe many here would designate as setting/campaign specific mechanics from core mechanics, especially if those are the default found in the CRB. (And then there also seem to be a few DMs who thinks the IMO annoyingly limiting and naive moral absolutism described by the rules are good for their game, and like the sometimes very odd and often arbitrary impact it may have on PCs.)

There's a few primary topics that are widespread in a campaign setting (like Necromancy being evil, as you mentioned), but I don't see that kind of change as being all that extensive. Though it has large scale implications for the universe you're creating, it doesn't effectively require all that much mechanical changes to make Necromancy a neutral act.

Pretty much all it does is lift the restriction on who can use it. In the story, extensive houseruling. In the mechanics, a widespread, but relatively small change.

Likewise, it requires very little mechanical changes to say a Paladin can choose to slay a child possessed by an Archfiend without breaking their code of conduct. In fact, I've never actually seen it played that a Paladin would be subject to that level of Lawful Stupid (unless the player felt that way; I should clarify that I've never seen a DM use that against a player).While I personally agree with this, think about the many posts you've read which indicate the game(s) the poster plays or runs largely follows the alignment system and related mechanics as written (as for example Bartmanhomer's OP and perhaps also Fisban's post I quoted earlier). And while I guess (and hope) very few DMs would enforce those dogmatic views and mechanics in a situation as extreme as that of the pally and the archfiend-kid, the moral absolutism otherwise appears to have a very significant impact on many games.

And I should clarify that I think the reason relatively minor houserules to alignment related stuff unlikely to have much impact on other parts of the system (such as necromancy) aren't introduced more often isn't necessarily because of the perceived mechanical complexity. Instead, I suspect it's typically because many DMs fear such changes would deviate too far from the core assumptions described in the alignment system, which they in turn believe would for example make the story lines of many published adventures difficult or awkward to run as written. I also suspect this is especially true in the case of necromancy, since it's mentioned specifically as being particularly EvilTM in the very introduction to the alignment system, in the second sentence:

"Characters using spells with the evil descriptor should consider themselves to be committing minor acts of evil, though using spells to create undead is an even more grievous act of evil that requires atonement."

All that said, please note that I may very well be factually wrong here, since I'm basing this primarily on the related posts I've seen and believe myself to remember well enough.

In my own experience, the purpose of Moral Dilemmas are to give the Player a choice to make in character, not to punish them for making the wrong one. If an unintentional dilemma came up where I felt there would be clearly unacceptable consequences for making a bad choice, I would try to make sure the player knew ahead of time so they could decide how best to proceed with their character's story. Because at that point, it's more a story than a game. It's less about rolling or qualifying for features and more about using the character you built to actually play out a narrative.

At that point, I couldn't care much less about what the rule book was trying to tell me about a moral dilemma it wasn't considering when it was written.I agree. And had I run a game otherwise largely following the alignment related mechanics as written, a PC would have to decide on a very extreme and unlikely solution to a moral dilemma before I'd consider enforcing those rules, especially if it turned out the result somehow hadn't been expected or appreciated by the player.

Moral Absolutism in D&D feels more like a Theoretical RAW to me, whereas I've never seen it strictly adhered to in actual gameplay against the better judgement of the table. In my mind, the ACTUAL definitions of Morality are defined more by the DM than the books, which are more offering examples to inspire character creation than prescribing what options are available to players.

Descriptive rather than prescriptive. The fact that the Descriptions lacked some imagination doesn't necessarily mean that alternative morality is prohibited.I think the reason unfortunately quite many don't share this view, at least not in practice as far as I can tell, is because they, knowingly or not, see the descriptive alignment system as being made prescriptive by the related mechanics (such as barbarian = Chaotic, pally = LG, monk = Lawful, necromancer = Evil etc). Which is the very reason I find many of those mechanics problematic.

But maybe I'm wrong. What are some of these other extensive mechanical changes you were thinking of that makes this not work so well? I admit that for all my years of gaming, I've always been behind the curve on the vast extent of material.I don't think you're wrong. But I would wager most less experienced DM's, especially those who prefer to play published adventures as written, have a very different view of what is considered "extensive changes" in this context (again, not necessarily primarily mechanical changes).

upho

2017-03-03, 03:05 AM

Moral Absolutism is not mutually exclusive with the DM defining the ACTUAL definitions of Morality. The DM defining ACTUAL definitions of Morality, rather than definitions of Morality being relative to the current whims and beliefs of PCs/NPCs, is Moral Absolutism.Yep. Since I believe I happened to introduce the term in this thread, I'm sorry I didn't clarify it and the reason for using it further. So in case anyone wonders, the reason I used it is that I hoped it would emphasize how the game's moral "philosophy" often completely fails to take circumstances (or common sense) into account, to the point that it would be a pretty good satire of bad moral absolutism.

Hmm... Maybe I should've said "the categorical imperatives of D&D" instead? :smallwink:

Speaking of: here's the perfect and hilarious comic for this discussion (http://existentialcomics.com/comic/23)! It even includes Kant. Playing D&D (guess his PC's alignment). For real.

Teaser:
http://res.cloudinary.com/upho/image/upload/v1488528661/Kant_lrogbp.png
:smallbiggrin:

OldTrees1

2017-03-03, 03:21 AM

Yep. Since I believe I happened to introduce the term in this thread, I'm sorry I didn't clarify it and the reason for using it further. So in case anyone wonders, the reason I used it is that I hoped it would emphasize how the game's moral "philosophy" often completely fails to take circumstances (or common sense) into account, to the point that it would be a pretty good satire of bad moral absolutism.

Hmm... Maybe I should've said "the categorical imperatives of D&D" instead? :smallwink:

Speaking of: here's the perfect and hilarious comic for this discussion (http://existentialcomics.com/comic/23)! It even includes Kant. Playing D&D (guess his PC's alignment). For real. :smallbiggrin:

Yes, categorical imperatives (as Kant uses them in Kant's examples) would be an example of something that seems to ignore specific circumstances (sometimes to counterintuitive conclusions).

"He once lied to save a child from an evil ogre. He still feels badly about it to this day."(Taken from link).

Pleh

2017-03-03, 10:04 AM

I still don't think you understand what is Moral Absolutism and all the cases it includes.

For context: You are not talking about relativity. Everything here is moral absolutism. An action's moral character being dependent on the context of the intent, circumstances, and consequences? That is moral absolutism. The Players and the DM disagreeing about what is moral but in the end something is ruled? That is moral absolutism.

It is only Moral Relativism if you can honestly say "The actual moral character of the action is simultaneously (0% moral & 100% immoral) & (100% moral & 0% immoral) depending on which NPC you ask". That is the kind of crazy relativism that is Moral Relativism. If you are not trying to say a single event has 2 equally true but mutually exclusive moral verdict, then it is not Moral Relativism

Moral Absolutism: The Paladin might fall or not fall depending on the morally relevant information.
Moral Relativism: The Paladin simultaneously both falls and does not fall.

I wasn't terribly concerned with the formal definition of the terms. I have a degree in Physics and I have just gotten used to exercising a great amount of leniency with people who try to use scientific concepts haphazardly. I correct them when they have something backwards and step into the half-true metaphor they're using when they're half-right. I smile when someone actually gets it.

I wasn't meaning to talk about how morality is actually defined in games. I was talking about how it should be conducted in games.

My point was more that the difference between a system of moral Absolutism and Relativism can be difficult to distinguish when
1. The Absolute system takes the ignorance and willfullness of the actor into consideration and
2. The actor's ignorance is sufficiently large such that they cannot fully grasp the intricacies of the Absolute system.

Under these conditions, we find the actors functioning more or less the same way under both an Absolute and a Relativistic system.

In essence, my point is that just because D&D is defined with an Absolutist theory doesn't mean it can't be played as if it were relativistic. All you have to do is keep the Absolute Morality somewhat mysterious to the actors who act within the system.

For example, the Paladin facing a moral dilemma with the possessed child. The real problem is how the Paladin loses their powers if they break their code of conduct (this eliminates the mystery with definitive consequences or the lack thereof).

There are two ways of resolving this. Either the DM decides that the Paladin doesn't lose their powers according to the Absolutist rules about leniency in regards to the moral dilemma (perhaps judgement and sentencing has been postponed for the afterlife, due to the crime being committed with the best of intentions in a no-win scenario), OR perhaps the Paladin loses their powers all "Spiderman" style where the loss of power is more psychosomatic and the Paladin subconsciously cuts themselves off from their powers due to their internal distress. Their "Atonement" quest doesn't miraculously restore their power, but clears their conscience, which was blocking them from using it.

Again, we've left a definitively absolute moral system sufficiently ambiguous in effect to allow a relativistic degree of freedom to the player. We have constructed an Absolute system that offers consequences that simulate a relativistic system, largely due to the actor's ignorance of the deeper rules behind the absolute system.

And that is more or less my point. You don't have to have a definitively Relativistic system of morality in order to leave players a Relativistic level of freedom to act. You just have to be willing to be very hands-on in your interpretation of the effects of morality on your players (which I would vehemently argue that you should have been doing to begin with).

OldTrees1

2017-03-03, 02:19 PM

I wasn't terribly concerned with the formal definition of the terms. I have a degree in Physics and I have just gotten used to exercising a great amount of leniency with people who try to use scientific concepts haphazardly. I correct them when they have something backwards and step into the half-true metaphor they're using when they're half-right. I smile when someone actually gets it.
Biology, Philosophy, & Programming background myself. The Biology background stresses the correction step more than the Physics background would.

I wasn't meaning to talk about how morality is actually defined in games. I was talking about how it should be conducted in games.

My point was more that the difference between a system of moral Absolutism and Relativism can be difficult to distinguish when
1. The Absolute system takes the ignorance and willfullness of the actor into consideration and
2. The actor's ignorance is sufficiently large such that they cannot fully grasp the intricacies of the Absolute system.

Under these conditions, we find the actors functioning more or less the same way under both an Absolute and a Relativistic system.

In essence, my point is that just because D&D is defined with an Absolutist theory doesn't mean it can't be played as if it were relativistic. All you have to do is keep the Absolute Morality somewhat mysterious to the actors who act within the system.

For example, the Paladin facing a moral dilemma with the possessed child. The real problem is how the Paladin loses their powers if they break their code of conduct (this eliminates the mystery with definitive consequences or the lack thereof).

There are two ways of resolving this. Either the DM decides that the Paladin doesn't lose their powers according to the Absolutist rules about leniency in regards to the moral dilemma (perhaps judgement and sentencing has been postponed for the afterlife, due to the crime being committed with the best of intentions in a no-win scenario), OR perhaps the Paladin loses their powers all "Spiderman" style where the loss of power is more psychosomatic and the Paladin subconsciously cuts themselves off from their powers due to their internal distress. Their "Atonement" quest doesn't miraculously restore their power, but clears their conscience, which was blocking them from using it.

Again, we've left a definitively absolute moral system sufficiently ambiguous in effect to allow a relativistic degree of freedom to the player. We have constructed an Absolute system that offers consequences that simulate a relativistic system, largely due to the actor's ignorance of the deeper rules behind the absolute system.

And that is more or less my point. You don't have to have a definitively Relativistic system of morality in order to leave players a Relativistic level of freedom to act. You just have to be willing to be very hands-on in your interpretation of the effects of morality on your players (which I would vehemently argue that you should have been doing to begin with).

I understood this rephrasing much better. You are saying that even in a world where Moral Absolutism is true, then Moral Agents still have the freedom to have Metaethical and Ethical beliefs that are false and this allows the Players some flexibility with how their characters(the Moral Agents) respond to the world. Miko would be an example how the flexibility still exists even at its minimum (as a complement to your SpiderPaladin example).

Why didn't you just say so?:smallbiggrin:

Pleh

2017-03-03, 02:32 PM

Biology, Philosophy, & Programming background myself. The Biology background stresses the correction step more than the Physics background would.

I understood this rephrasing much better. You are saying that even in a world where Moral Absolutism is true, then Moral Agents still have the freedom to have Metaethical and Ethical beliefs that are false and this allows the Players some flexibility with how their characters(the Moral Agents) respond to the world. Miko would be an example how the flexibility still exists even at its minimum (as a complement to your SpiderPaladin example).

Why didn't you just say so?:smallbiggrin:

Ah, brevity is the soul of wit.

I grabbed a minor in English Literature on my way out, so you could see how a college career of Physics, Literature, and D&D would lead me to explaining the same concepts through a slightly denser paragraph.

OldTrees1

2017-03-03, 02:51 PM

Ah, brevity is the soul of wit.

I grabbed a minor in English Literature on my way out, so you could see how a college career of Physics, Literature, and D&D would lead me to explaining the same concepts through a slightly denser paragraph.

Meanwhile Philosophy and Programming teaches lazily concise wording. Cheers to you good sir!

Nightcanon

2017-03-04, 02:01 AM

Part of the problem is with conflating alignment with other things: with personality, with sides or factions, with interests.
It's entirely possible to imagine a LE human character fighting alongside CG and LG human charactersin defense of a predominantly human settlement against LE hobgoblin raiders (or indeed, against indigenous hobgoblin populations whose territory is being settled). Consider Belkar Bitterleaf, who is CE and fighting alongside a LG fighter and at least 2 CGS against a CE lich. Even before this, it was pretty clear than Belkar had taken up with Roy because he enjoyed killing, and the killing the people/beings that Roy wanted him to kill would get him into less trouble than just killing randoms. True, early on Belkar attacked Elan to harvest him f9r XP, but was persuaded that this would result in the rest of the Order killing him, and he hasn't tried any PvP since. Meanwhile, he has never shown any inclination to defraud the rest of the party, while CG Haley has.

Particle_Man

2017-03-04, 10:19 AM

I think one could play an evil PC if one as a player agrees not to mess with the party and play the type of evil PC that doesn't mess with the party.

Heck, if one is careful, one could play the "secretly evil" character that others don't even realize was evil, because the evil stuff was done away from the party. I mean, certain types of evil assassins wouldn't be very efficient if they were advertising themselves as such.

That said, there are some classes (Crusader for example) that are described in the flavour text as filtering everything decision they make through their alignment. If that flavour text is followed, it would be harder to play that sort of evil character without messing with a (non-evil) party because you technically are meant to be constantly asking yourself "Am I being Evil enough?"

Red Fel

2017-03-04, 03:34 PM

I think one could play any type of PC if one as a player agrees not to mess with the party and play the type of [] PC that doesn't mess with the party.

Fixed that for you. Fact is, it's true of any concept - there are always concepts that can mess with the party. Playing a thief in a party of guardsmen. Playing a Paladin in a party of Necromancers. Playing an Illithid in a party of Psions. Playing a Kender, ever.

That said, there are some classes (Crusader for example) that are described in the flavour text as filtering everything decision they make through their alignment. If that flavour text is followed, it would be harder to play that sort of evil character without messing with a (non-evil) party because you technically are meant to be constantly asking yourself "Am I being Evil enough?"

If.

Flavor text is great when it helps you come up with a character concept that everyone at the table can enjoy. It is not RAW, however, and you are not obligated to follow it when it means playing something that will disrupt the table.

No character should be asking himself "Am I being Evil enough?" If you have to ask that, the answer is of course not. But if you never ask yourself, the answer is always a resounding I am precisely as Evil as I need to be, and no more.

And that's just Evil enough.

ShaneMRoth

2017-03-04, 08:47 PM

Where does flavor text end and RAW text begin?

Milo v3

2017-03-04, 08:59 PM

Where does flavor text end and RAW text begin?

Where it stops being wish-y washy "world-describing" text which is just meant to give you inspiration, and starts talking about mechanics. But there are times flavour-text and RAW overlap.

In the flavour text of druids it says they hate undead, this is not RAW though, as there is nothing stopping a player being a druid who is pro-undead. There are no mechanical penalties to being a pro-undead druid, so there is nothing RAW makes druids "hate undead". But, you will become an ex-druid if you teach druidic to a commoner regardless of your druids background and flavour.

It's flavour text which says barbarians are savages from the wilderness, but nothing in the mechanics of the class stop you from use the flavour of a brute from the slums or a monk who enters meditation in battle to help him focus.

WarKitty

2017-03-04, 09:16 PM

This is why I don't play with alignment as a thing. Different people/cultures/deities have different standards, although there's probably as much broad agreement as you'd find among world cultures. That doesn't mean people aren't more or less evil, just that it's meant to encourage people to react more organically (e.g. having characters who have different value systems that might not match up as pure "good" or "evil").

upho

2017-03-04, 10:12 PM

If.

Flavor text is great when it helps you come up with a character concept that everyone at the table can enjoy. It is not RAW, however, and you are not obligated to follow it when it means playing something that will disrupt the table.

No character should be asking himself "Am I being Evil enough?" If you have to ask that, the answer is of course not. But if you never ask yourself, the answer is always a resounding I am precisely as Evil as I need to be, and no more.

And that's just Evil enough.:smalleek: What? Dark Lord and Master, how can you say this? Did one those goody-two-shoes bullies just smite your Majesty in the head? You have taught us Red Fel Fan FiendsTM there is always a need to be more EvilTM, it's even the very motto of the fanclub!

Seriously though, so much this. Quite a few elements would also be broken paradoxes in a game treating flavor text as RAW (like say fighters in a party of full casters with a modicum of optimization).

Where does flavor text end and RAW text begin?I'd say the RAW of an element generally begins the moment it's defined in game mechanics. Using the Crusader's flavor text on alignment which Particle_Man mentioned as an example, it would also become RAW if there was a defined mechanical effect of a Crusader not making every decision in accordance with their alignment, as this would be an exception to the general RAW of the alignment system. (Compare with for example certain pally features.)

That said, the answer is certainly not always as clear when it comes to alignment.

EDIT: Ouch! Totally stalker'd by Milo! /EDIT

Flickerdart

2017-03-04, 10:34 PM

:smalleek: What? Dark Lord and Master, how can you say this? Did one those goody-two-shoes bullies just smite your Majesty in the head? You have taught us Ref Fel Fan FiendsTM there is always a need to be more EvilTM, it's even the very motto of the fanclub!

You seem to have been misled in your deductions (though such is the nature of evil).

It is only the one who doubts himself that must commit evils beyond his current vile deeds. When one is confident in the evil one is doing, one need not doubt or second-guess.

Zanos

2017-03-04, 11:16 PM

In the flavour text of druids it says they hate undead, this is not RAW though, as there is nothing stopping a player being a druid who is pro-undead. There are no mechanical penalties to being a pro-undead druid, so there is nothing RAW makes druids "hate undead". But, you will become an ex-druid if you teach druidic to a commoner regardless of your druids background and flavour..
To nitpick, a Druid that ceases to revere nature becomes an ex-druid. Many DMs would consider being pro-undead(or even not being anti-undead) as a failure to revere nature, because undead creatures are, in most settings, antithetical to the natural world.

Milo v3

2017-03-04, 11:36 PM

To nitpick, a Druid that ceases to revere nature becomes an ex-druid. Many DMs would consider being pro-undead(or even not being anti-undead) as a failure to revere nature, because undead creatures are, in most settings, antithetical to the natural world.
Considering undead arise naturally, and negative energy is one of the inner planes. There is nothing actually to suggest that undead are any more unnatural than living creatures. Most settings have them be naturally evil, but that's not the same as unnatural. :smalltongue:

There is no RAW which makes revering nature and being pro-undead mutually exclusive. I mean, I've heard of a GM who viewed "healing a severely injured animal" as not revering nature. When it can be used to that extreme it's a rather weak arguement IMO.

Pleh

2017-03-04, 11:50 PM

Deophaun

2017-03-04, 11:58 PM

It does give you a substantial bonus to your intimidate check. "Pain is scary."
Which, in game terms, temporarily makes them friendly, which means they will give you information, as strongly implied (strangely) by the rules for the skill's failure:

If you fail the check by 5 or more, the target provides you with incorrect or useless information, or otherwise frustrates your efforts.

atemu1234

2017-03-05, 12:05 AM

Ah, the paradox of magic. When the supernatural occurs naturally, is it still supernatural? Or is it merely unsettling?

I think most DMs would take it like any other D&D rule. You can't ever break the rule... without justification.

Every feat and spell is a justifcation for breaking some other rule. In general, you can't be a pro undead druid. If you do enough work with your character to justify it to your DM, the rules support the amendment of the rules.

I mean in most-to-all of my D&D campaigns I like to have undead be neutral unless something else occurs - vampires/ghouls/ghasts/etc. are evil because they'll feed on the living in a setting where resurrection is relatively cheap and easy, etc.

Particle_Man

2017-03-05, 01:40 AM

If.

Flavor text is great when it helps you come up with a character concept that everyone at the table can enjoy. It is not RAW, however, and you are not obligated to follow it when it means playing something that will disrupt the table.

No character should be asking himself "Am I being Evil enough?" If you have to ask that, the answer is of course not. But if you never ask yourself, the answer is always a resounding I am precisely as Evil as I need to be, and no more.

And that's just Evil enough.

Well actually this particular case has mechanical support. If a NE crusader is not evil enough, and in the DM's opinion becomes neutral instead of NE, then the crusader loses all crusader class abilities until they get some non-neutral alignment again.

Also, it is not just the player that decides how much flavour matters, it is the DM. If your DM is not Red Fel, you might want to make sure your DM thinks like Red Fel before trying a NE crusader in a non-evil party.

Actually IME (which may be abnormal) I have found that evil characters tend to harm themselves in non-evil parties that I have been part of. This is because they often have run away from a battle to save their skins, but (through bad luck, lack of planning, or a vengeful DM, take your pick) end up in a worse situation, and without the rest of the party to back them up. But that might just be a quirk of games I have been part of (and it has not always been true even then, just a tendency).

Zanos

2017-03-05, 03:23 AM

Considering undead arise naturally, and negative energy is one of the inner planes. There is nothing actually to suggest that undead are any more unnatural than living creatures. Most settings have them be naturally evil, but that's not the same as unnatural. :smalltongue:
Actually, the description of druid itself suggests that undead are not natural, considering the class dedicated to the reverence of the natural world reviles them, has tons of spells to destroy or hinder them, has at least one prestige class dedicated to eradicating them, and cannot create them as part of their spell list despite the other primary casters being able to. And also that areas infested by undead tend to be blighted and otherwise drained of all life, both plant and animal, which druids specifically are supposed to defend. Hell, the Blighter, which is literally an anti-druid, gets a bunch of pro undead themed stuff.

I guess you could have some bizzare fringe druid who thinks undead are totally cool, but it goes directly against the grain of the spirit of the class, I think.

There is no RAW which makes revering nature and being pro-undead mutually exclusive. I mean, I've heard of a GM who viewed "healing a severely injured animal" as not revering nature. When it can be used to that extreme it's a rather weak arguement IMO.
I don't think those situations are even on them same planet in terms of their equivalence.

OldTrees1

2017-03-05, 03:53 AM

Actually IME (which may be abnormal) I have found that evil characters tend to harm themselves in non-evil parties that I have been part of. This is because they often have run away from a battle to save their skins, but (through bad luck, lack of planning, or a vengeful DM, take your pick) end up in a worse situation, and without the rest of the party to back them up. But that might just be a quirk of games I have been part of (and it has not always been true even then, just a tendency).

I think your experience is abnormal but let's dig into it:
Why are these characters, that happen to be evil, often having to run away from a battle? Being evil does not weaken your hp/ac/saves so why would evil characters have to run away from a fight that other characters would not?

It kinda sounds like you are observing cowards self harming themselves by running "out of the frying pan and into the fire". Brave Brave Sir Robin, he bravely turned and fled ... and then got eaten by a stronger monster.

Milo v3

2017-03-05, 06:48 AM

Snip
Tell that to the druids who purposefully turned themselves undead and retain their powers that WotC statted up, like the Dry Lich in Sandstorm. And there are things like feats specifically for undead druids. Druids also cannot cast comprehend language despite all the other 9th casters and bards being able to cast it, does that mean druids should hunt down people who use words?

Flavour in D&D is murky, because it's made by many many different writers and is a grab-bag game that wants you to be able to do anything.

ShaneMRoth

2017-03-05, 08:21 AM

It's almost as if the Rules As Written need to be adjudicated or something...

Particle_Man

2017-03-05, 12:57 PM

I think your experience is abnormal but let's dig into it:
Why are these characters, that happen to be evil, often having to run away from a battle? Being evil does not weaken your hp/ac/saves so why would evil characters have to run away from a fight that other characters would not?

It kinda sounds like you are observing cowards self harming themselves by running "out of the frying pan and into the fire". Brave Brave Sir Robin, he bravely turned and fled ... and then got eaten by a stronger monster.

I guess they might be thinking "why should I risk myself to save those guys? The heck with them!" and then running away . . . but finding things worse for themselves. Almost like a mini-morality play. :amused: Alternatively, good characters IME (which again may be abnormal) will stick with the party even when things get rough. Sometimes they will die with the party (the dreaded TPK) but often the party will pull through, sometimes because of the good characters that stuck around.

Now this may be an artifact of the sort of players I know that play good characters and the sorts of players I know that play evil characters. Anecdotal evidence and all that.

OldTrees1

2017-03-05, 03:38 PM

I guess they might be thinking "why should I risk myself to save those guys? The heck with them!" and then running away . . . but finding things worse for themselves. Almost like a mini-morality play. :amused: Alternatively, good characters IME (which again may be abnormal) will stick with the party even when things get rough. Sometimes they will die with the party (the dreaded TPK) but often the party will pull through, sometimes because of the good characters that stuck around.

Now this may be an artifact of the sort of players I know that play good characters and the sorts of players I know that play evil characters. Anecdotal evidence and all that.

I would classify that as alignment independent.

1)The villian and their pawns are stronger than the sum of their parts. This is why the villian often loses when separated from their pawns (wasteful use of pawns, inspiring disloyalty, or the enemy killing them). Thus the smart villian will accept some risk in the preservation of their pawns.

2)Never create an enemy without reason. If you abandon your pawns to their doom, and the pawns survive, you just gained some strong enemies. So do not abandon your pawns unless you know they will die.

As a result even the most vile of villians has rational reasons to only abandon the party in the case of a TPK. And if you only flee TPKs, there is no "out of the frying pan and into the fire" effect.

Also good characters might care about each other in the general sense that they care about the villagers in a village on another continent. However good does not mean serving Bob over serving Good. A Good character might decide that while risking their life to save Bob is noble, their duty is to go risk their life to save another village instead.

So even good characters might flee their companions and risk "out of the frying pan and into the fire".

(Of course the character possibility space for a group is only a subset of the total possibility space, conclusions that I draw about characters in general do not refute conclusions drawn about characters in your group in particular)

Milo v3

2017-03-05, 03:52 PM

It's almost as if the Rules As Written need to be adjudicated or something...

Except the RAW is consistent on this, in this case it's the Flavour Text that needs to be adjudicated. Which in my opinion is a good thing, since different settings can view the topic very differently.

Particle_Man

2017-03-05, 06:21 PM

As a result even the most vile of villians has rational reasons to only abandon the party in the case of a TPK. And if you only flee TPKs, there is no "out of the frying pan and into the fire" effect.

Well either the players I know that happen to play evil characters are bad at judging what is and is not a TPK in the making, or the players are having their characters act in non-rational ways when playing evil characters. Since people are irrational, I could see players having their characters fall into tropes (the bad guys are more likely to sacrifice their pawns in stories, and everyone has seen Darth Vader force-choking his supposed allies in Star Wars). So in a narrative sense, many people "expect" the bad guy to do what might well be not fully rational things. Perhaps because in stories (and hey, in history) a lot of famous bad guys were also irrational in exactly that way (I believe in the movie Downfall Hitler has his own nephew or brother-in-law executed, even when he was losing and needed every ally he could get).

Bartmanhomer

2017-03-05, 07:37 PM

Paladins are very judgemental class (depending on which alignment that paladins is part of, Lawful Good Paladins, Chaotic Good Paladins, Lawful Evil Paladins and Chaotic Evil Paladins.) I never play a paladin before but it the good paladins were associated evil PC there's different be some problems. Same thing with evil paladins associated with good characters. I might be wrong about this but I just think there's something bland about paladins. :confused:

ShaneMRoth

2017-03-05, 07:56 PM

... I never play a paladin before but it the good paladins were associated evil PC there's different be some problems. ...

According to the SRD on paladins...

a paladin will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code

TheifofZ

2017-03-05, 09:49 PM

Well either the players I know that happen to play evil characters are bad at judging what is and is not a TPK in the making, or the players are having their characters act in non-rational ways when playing evil characters. Since people are irrational, I could see players having their characters fall into tropes (the bad guys are more likely to sacrifice their pawns in stories, and everyone has seen Darth Vader force-choking his supposed allies in Star Wars). So in a narrative sense, many people "expect" the bad guy to do what might well be not fully rational things. Perhaps because in stories (and hey, in history) a lot of famous bad guys were also irrational in exactly that way (I believe in the movie Downfall Hitler has his own nephew or brother-in-law executed, even when he was losing and needed every ally he could get).

By and large, stories are written such that most often Good naturally overcomes Evil; this means that the villain is required by the medium to give the hero some out through which the hero can succeed. So hewing to the example of fiction, even historical fiction, for proof that evil is inherently irrational is an argument based on flawed logic. (You're literally taking a fictional representation of the world as a basis for a non-fictional argument. That's much like saying 'Because there are dragons in fantasy books, clearly real-world lizards can all breathe fire.')

As well, history is determined by the winners. Noone is 'the bad guy' of their own story, and most war is less 'good verse bad' than 'us vs them'.
For example in the crusades, most Christians would say that the Muslims were villainous, evil people that needed to be driven out by the righteous crusaders.
But the Muslims would be likely to say that the Christian armies were monstrous, inhuman attackers that needed to be defended against at any cost.

Certainly, some people are actually evil, both in their deeds and words, but the irrationality of "Evil" people verses the rationality of "good' people lacks any real measured validity, and in fact, I would hazard a guess by my own observations (if we're treating anecdotal evidence as acceptable) that people with malicious intentions are just as capable of calm, carefully reasoned thought as those with pure intentions, and either set is also equally capable of irrational and wild thinking instead.

As a final note, seeing someone seriously use the term 'bad guys in history' made me chuckle.

Particle_Man

2017-03-06, 01:01 AM

But regardless of whether or not IRL evil people and good people are equally rational, the fact that in most media evil people are portrayed as less rational could well have an effect on how people portray evil characters in role-playing games, because the media is where gamers get a lot of their inspiration for roleplaying characters (from people wanting to play "someone like Conan", or "someone like Captain Kirk", for example). So it doesn't surprise me that in rpgs you are more likely to run into people playing evil characters as more irrational than they would play good characters, even if this is inaccurate, since they are more likely to look to tropes in media for inspiration than to history books.

I mean, yeah, Darth Vader killed his allies, which strictly speaking wasn't that rational, but Darth Vader is one of the coolest evil guys out there. Also, Heath Ledger's Joker famously kept killing his accomplices (come to think of it, so did Jack Nicholson's Joker, alas, poor Bob). And of course the Joker is crazy. But there is a reason that those evil characters are iconic, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of that resonated with gamers playing evil characters, more so than actual evil people in history that were also rational. Maybe one should play evil guys like a reader of Machiavelli's The Prince, but more gamers have seen Star Wars/Batman than read The Prince, much less read any internet guide on "how to play evil characters".

In the media some of the more famous (for gamers) evil guys working with the party would be Belkar and Firefly's Jayne, and even they got grief for going too far (Belkar got kicked out of the OOTS by Haley, Jayne nearly got spaced by Mal). Are there similarly popular media examples of evil people that are still rational enough to work with a team of good guys in the long term, without the "inevitable betrayal"?

I am not saying gamers can't play evil yet rational and non-disruptive characters, but I can also understand why statistically more problems arise from players playing evil characters than from players playing good/neutral characters. And that could lead to more DMs and Players being wary of someone that says "Hey, could I play an evil character in your campaign?"

And I stand by my statement that Hitler, was, in fact, a bad guy. :smallsmile:

OldTrees1

2017-03-06, 01:10 AM

Mordaedil

2017-03-06, 02:16 AM

(I believe in the movie Downfall Hitler has his own nephew or brother-in-law executed, even when he was losing and needed every ally he could get).
The... The movie? :smalleek:

I worry for this generation.

OldTrees1

2017-03-06, 02:23 AM

The... The movie? :smalleek:

I worry for this generation.

You do know that Documentaries existed for awhile now and have been a teaching tool?

Although citing a War Drama about the events rather than a Documentary about the events is a little disappointing.

Regardless, we can end the risky foray into IRL politics now. Forum rules do not distinguish between non controversial and controversial IRL politics.

Mordaedil

2017-03-06, 05:33 AM

You do know that Documentaries existed for awhile now and have been a teaching tool?

Although citing a War Drama about the events rather than a Documentary about the events is a little disappointing.

Regardless, we can end the risky foray into IRL politics now. Forum rules do not distinguish between non controversial and controversial IRL politics.

It's not the political aspect I'm worried about as much as the confliction between history and fiction, which is...

I mean, I get it, history (and by extension documentaries I suppose) are kinda boring, but citing Der Untergang, while a great film makes me feel like I lost a bit of my sanity.

Segev

2017-03-06, 07:57 AM

I would argue that the same thing which makes "good inevitably overcome evil" and "evil is often irrational and self-destructive" is one and the same. Or, rather, that the latter is the cause of the former.

There absolutely can be an evil mastermind who doesn't behave in self-destructively irrational ways. However, the less self-destructively irrational he is, the less "classically evil" he'll seem. Enlightened self-interest - the intellectual evil (and neutral, and even some good) people's virtue - leads to many of the same behaviors that good morals and a strong conscience tend to. It gets there through much more rigorous rational examination of long-term causes and effects than does an emotionally moral core, but they wind up being remarkably similar.

In fact, what often makes a Good person utilize the philosophy is a realization that he keeps running into seeming paradoxes where there is no "good" solution. Enlightened self-interest's thought patterns often can lead even the most moral and upright person out of such quandaries, by virtue of the fact that most Good is just an intuitive (but often incomplete) understanding of the same principles.

Don't let this diminish the Good person's choices! It shows the strength of the underlying moral and ethical codes that these lead to intuitive grasp of something that takes far more brain-power from the evil, solely-self-motivated individual.

Pleh

2017-03-06, 07:58 AM

I think this conversation is dancing around an important point, but never quite saying it concisely.

There IS a point at which alignment becomes prescriptive, but it's not in the RAW, it's the DM adjudication.

If a player chooses an alignment to gain a mechanical benefit (like choosing to be a good aligned Rogue so he can be an assassin who won't be detected by Detect Evil), but goes on to play the character as a recklessly and unquestionably evil character, it is more than fair for a DM to prescribe an alignment shift that is more accurately descriptive of how the character is being played. This prevents players from walking all over the alignment rules as if they didn't exist. (Some tables play as if they didn't exist anyway, so those tables are a trivial scenario).

Of course, the corollary to this is that a good character can take an evil action (and vice versa) and not lose their alignment. The alignments are descriptive, but they are descriptive of the very general, overall perspective of a character. There's also a spectrum inside each of the nine alignments. Everyone knows that you can be an evil character who is barely more evil than a neutral character. Then there can be extremely evil, where your alignment almost makes you an unnatural monster even if nothing else does.

This is why I was advocating for an alignment system that takes into consideration the subconscious character. It's almost like an NPC Cohort who exists exclusively for interacting with your alignment based choices (like Jimney Cricket). It's not only possible for the conscious to be at odds with the subconscious; that's actually a foundational component of drama (the good kind). Like with any Cohort, it needs to be remembered that there is a hierarchy of authority between the player and the DM. In general, the DM is expected to voice the character, but the Player informs the DM about the character they are voicing. The DM retains the right to shift the character's alignment by voicing the subconscious differently in order to communicate to the character and the player that the character may be falling under the influence of alignment shifts.

Segev

2017-03-06, 08:09 AM

There IS a point at which alignment becomes prescriptive, but it's not in the RAW, it's the DM adjudication. Perhaps. There are, for instance, effects which forcibly change one's alignment.

If a player chooses an alignment to gain a mechanical benefit (like choosing to be a good aligned Rogue so he can be an assassin who won't be detected by Detect Evil), but goes on to play the character as a recklessly and unquestionably evil character, it is more than fair for a DM to prescribe an alignment shift that is more accurately descriptive of how the character is being played. This prevents players from walking all over the alignment rules as if they didn't exist. (Some tables play as if they didn't exist anyway, so those tables are a trivial scenario).This is the definition of descriptive alignment, though. Not prescriptive.

Prescriptive alignment says, "Ah, ah, ah... you're Good, so you are not allowed to have your character refuse to help this orphan," or, "Because you're evil, you have to kill that barkeep for watering down your ale." These are particularly overbearing examples, but they hopefully get the idea across.

When, for instance, a Lawful Good monk is afflicted with werewolf lycanthropy, he's prescribed to be Chaotic Evil during a full moon, when his curse transforms him. Should he actually willingly use his shapeshifting, his alignment shifts to CE entirely, even when he's not transformed, as the curse takes over.

The "transformed state" version of this is often treated like a different person entirely, as the afflicted doesn't even remember what he did while transformed. But if he gives in to his curse and takes it on all the way, his personality changes.

One could argue that, sure, he pings as CE, but he doesn't have to act it. That, however, is strongly belied by the fact that the DM is encouraged to take over the character as an NPC if the player doesn't act his new alignment. This obviously makes redemption difficult, since it's magic altering his very desire to behave in certain ways, and the obvious solution (striving to act the redeemed alignment) is specifically forbidden.

The same is true of a Helm of Opposite Alignment's curse.

But, other than that, D&D tends to go for Descriptive: you are how you act, rather than you being forced to act how you are labeled.

Zanos

2017-03-06, 09:57 AM

Segev

2017-03-06, 10:09 AM

This doesn't apply as strongly in a setting where behaving in an Evil fashion can grant one favor and real, tangible benefit from a slew of various dark powers. When evil Gods and devils are willing to directly empower you for acting classically Evil(sacrificing peasants, selling souls, wanton torture), enlightened self interest shifts quite a bit in favor of that behavior.

It still applies. Good powers and gods reward their faithful, as well. So it ultimately comes out as a wash on that front.

Particle_Man

2017-03-06, 10:12 AM

It's not the political aspect I'm worried about as much as the confliction between history and fiction, which is...

I mean, I get it, history (and by extension documentaries I suppose) are kinda boring, but citing Der Untergang, while a great film makes me feel like I lost a bit of my sanity.

But the very fact that I cited a movie rather than history reinforces my point that gamers are more likely to look to narrative tropes than historical fact when looking for inspirations for their rpg characters. :smallbiggrin:

Zombimode

2017-03-06, 10:32 AM

It still applies. Good powers and gods reward their faithful, as well. So it ultimately comes out as a wash on that front.

The classic idea on that issue is the notion that it is hard to be a good person, while it takes no particular effort to be a bad person. Thus the temptation of the "dark side" is real: while you could also attain power by dedicating yourself to a "good" cause, the power of the dark side is easy to obtain. For D&D this fact is obfuscated by the way gaining levels for player characters works: from this metagaming perspective there is no difference between taking a level of Wizard (a Profession tied to rigorous study and mental discipline) to taking a Level of Warlock (representing gaining power by a pact with powerful and often malicous entities).
The DM can take those fluffy bits into account for the worldbuilding, though.

Segev

2017-03-06, 11:03 AM

The classic idea of evil being "easy" is deceptive. Evil is "easy" for those who do not devote considerable intellectual effort to their moral choices because, without the level of thought required to achieve enlightened self-interest, evil appears to be less restrictive. If one does not appreciate the underlying truths which make Good (as an intuitive grasp of the same principles unearthed through rigorous study of enlightened self-interest) direct you towards what is often the more optimal long-term choice, then the optimality of the long-term choice is obfuscated by the short-term gains of the "easy evil" decision.

To remove morals from it for a moment, a not-terribly-intellectually-deep young man who was raised to view frugality and hard work as "good behavior" may seem to an intellectual equal who is spendthrift and lazy, to be trapped by his stuffed-shirt rules of behavior. He doesn't get to go have fun at the tavern every night, and he's always up early to work and exhausted at the end of the day and doesn't get to go do fun stuff in town when he feels like blowing off a half day of work.

Neither young man really "gets" the economics behind it. But the intuitive/ingrained rules of frugality and hard work lead the first young man to eventually being a prosperous adult with financial security and, potentially, moderate (or even significant) wealth. The latter young man remains relatively poor and may even become destitute if he cannot hold a job or spends more than he can afford and goes deeply into debt.

The intellectually earnest youth who studies economics despite his view that there is no moral imperative to be frugal and work hard will be able to understand WHY those behaviors lead to wealth, and likely will engage in them if he values that wealth and has the self-control to hold himself to his own long-term interests.

Perhaps he might be just a little more willing to splurge at times, if he has calculated a particular plan for his fortunes rather than relying on the generalized guideline of "spend only what you have to." Or perhaps he'll recalculate his budget for accelerated success with each windfall.

But the notion is the same.

Evil is EASY in the short run. It LOOKS easy compared to Good because the rewards for Good are subtler. There's a reason the classic stories of "Evil to gain power" have hidden prices, or prices the Evil bargainer didn't value as highly as he should, which come back to bite them.

"Smart evil" - which typically involves heavy doses of enlightened self-interest - will often look like Good in many of its decisions because Good instinctively goes for the long-term benefit. Not always - the exceptions are where you'll detect the ruthlessly but brilliantly evil mind - but often.

Stealth Marmot

2017-03-06, 01:14 PM

"Smart evil" - which typically involves heavy doses of enlightened self-interest - will often look like Good in many of its decisions because Good instinctively goes for the long-term benefit. Not always - the exceptions are where you'll detect the ruthlessly but brilliantly evil mind - but often.

"A prince should present the appearance of being a compassionate, trustworthy, kind, guileless, and pious ruler. Of course, actually possessing all these virtues is neither possible nor desirable. But so long as a prince appears to act virtuously, most men will believe in his virtue. "

Zombimode

2017-03-06, 01:20 PM

There is a reason why the name of this quote's originator has become an adjective :smallsmile:

Zanos

2017-03-06, 01:55 PM

Segev

2017-03-06, 02:51 PM

Except a character who is like that isn't exploiting stuff like harvesting pain and souls as direct methods to increase their own power, or they are and just keep it under wraps. There is no equivalent to a lot of the advantages Evil characters can exploit among the Good alignments, and in many cases Evil characters aren't locked out of Good options while the reverse is usually true. I mean sure, they pay for it later in the afterlife...except that they don't, because they worship an Evil god, many of whom have perfectly fine afterlives for people who are heavily invested in their own self-advancement, or are notoriously difficult to keep dead, which usually involves some form of Evil.Actually...thanks to the BoED's more...stupid elements...there are a lot of ways that Good can mimic Evil's stunts but do it better.

For instance, you can literally convert pleasure into magical resources equivalent to the pain-resource evil gets. And it's a Good act. So you get divinely-sanctioned Good-aligned brothels that churn orgiastic bliss into crafting XP, and you can get your donors to pay you for the privilege (rather than having their next of kin seeking adventurers to stop you).

Again, a lot of the assumptions about Machiavellian behavior go out the window when Evil is a cosmic force that gives tangible benefits, and tastes good besides. No that you can't or shouldn't play such a character, but being out and out blatantly Evil can be a rational decision in universe. It's not the only rational Evil character, as after all, messing around with that stuff is usually dangerous, but it certainly exists.It really doesn't go out the window, though. Evil-as-cosmic-force doesn't require you to be stupid. It just gives more ways to be evil. Doesn't mitigate the costs of those evil acts, but it does make the acts themselves more profitable. Being Good has similar benefits.

Believe me, I'm not saying being Evil doesn't work. It absolutely does. But the more enlightened self-interest with which you act, the more prosperous you tend to be, and the more you resemble Good-aligned behavior in day-to-day interactions and activities.

TheifofZ

2017-03-06, 05:46 PM

Much of the theme of The Prince is, in fact, focused on subtle manipulation.
And it's entirely reasonable for an Evil character to hew closely to that; after all, while Evil grants real and tangible benefits as a matter of course, it's still largely the purview of the character to maintain a positive enough image to avoid attracting roving bands of murderhobos that will ruthlessly happen around, and to, said evil character.
So while being Evil pays off, said payment typically requires a certain minimal level of finesse to obtain without getting adventure-ered to death. (Boy, that's a bit of a stretch of the english language, there.)
Or to put another way, we come back to the fact that the primary incentive of evil, IE: POWER UNLIMITED (or at least a marginal increase in personal wealth and apparent happiness), does not automatically preclude a basic idea of how to not be a stupid jerk that will get your teeth kicked in, even though it does attract a large number of people who generally act like they need a good kicking as a matter of course. As such, asking a player to refrain from playing Evil Stupid, and instead literally any other method of being evil if they insist on it, is entirely a viable option.

DaggerEar

2017-03-06, 08:13 PM

I've played a Lawful Evil character in many a campaign.Its a great aligment since I can still work in the confines of society and law,but working on your ability to manipulate others,get out of situations etc. is key. Hiding your alignment is also very useful so when I'm evil I'm usually a Cleric or divine spellcaster type.I don't go against the party unless I can justify it to be logical to everyone and meet my owns needs which isn't always easy.I find it more difficult to be evil then good,but its part of the fun.

atemu1234

2017-03-07, 12:45 AM

"A prince should present the appearance of being a compassionate, trustworthy, kind, guileless, and pious ruler. Of course, actually possessing all these virtues is neither possible nor desirable. But so long as a prince appears to act virtuously, most men will believe in his virtue. "

You do realize that Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a satire, right? He hated the person he was giving the advice to.

Deophaun

2017-03-07, 01:24 AM

You do realize that Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a satire, right? He hated the person he was giving the advice to.
You do realize that there is no historical document that states The Prince is satire, right? It's only a theory of the work that became popular in the 18th century.

Zombimode

2017-03-07, 02:17 AM

You do realize that Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a satire, right? He hated the person he was giving the advice to.

Even if that would be true, the intent of the author is entirely irrelevant to the mertits of the content of a text. If Frege would have ended his Begriffsschrift with "Lol, it's just a meme" should we throw out modern formal logic?

atemu1234

2017-03-07, 02:17 PM

Even if that would be true, the intent of the author is entirely irrelevant to the mertits of the content of a text. If Frege would have ended his Begriffsschrift with "Lol, it's just a meme" should we throw out modern formal logic?

That'd make since if The Prince was actually sound advice. While a couple bits will stand on their own, the things about being a iron-fisted ruler were a direct attempt to get the person he was giving the advice to killed or overthrown.

hamishspence

2017-03-07, 02:21 PM

In the foreword to the Penguin edition of The Discourses, the writer suggests that nothing said in The Prince is not also said in The Discourses - with an implication that, in general, the advice in both is meant seriously.

Segev

2017-03-07, 02:29 PM

It is, overall, filled with useful advice. Not all of it good, and certainly not all of it applicable to all governmental structures, but it is useful for manipulating people who are, themselves, unscrupulous. Ultimately, The Prince is good advice if it is not held as a Bible meant to stand on its own. Taken in context with other classics of governing philosophy (not the least of which include Sun Tzu's Art of War), it can help form a sound means of securing personal power and influence.

Just don't be an idiot about it, and be ready to recognize that it, being written by a man from a particular time and place, is not going to be perfect advice all the time. It may well have errors in its judgments.

Calthropstu

2017-03-07, 02:37 PM

I would classify that as alignment independent.

1)The villian and their pawns are stronger than the sum of their parts. This is why the villian often loses when separated from their pawns (wasteful use of pawns, inspiring disloyalty, or the enemy killing them). Thus the smart villian will accept some risk in the preservation of their pawns.

2)Never create an enemy without reason. If you abandon your pawns to their doom, and the pawns survive, you just gained some strong enemies. So do not abandon your pawns unless you know they will die.

As a result even the most vile of villians has rational reasons to only abandon the party in the case of a TPK. And if you only flee TPKs, there is no "out of the frying pan and into the fire" effect.

Also good characters might care about each other in the general sense that they care about the villagers in a village on another continent. However good does not mean serving Bob over serving Good. A Good character might decide that while risking their life to save Bob is noble, their duty is to go risk their life to save another village instead.

So even good characters might flee their companions and risk "out of the frying pan and into the fire".

(Of course the character possibility space for a group is only a subset of the total possibility space, conclusions that I draw about characters in general do not refute conclusions drawn about characters in your group in particular)

There is also flat out cowardice. You can be th most good person in the world. Saving orphans from lives on the street, tending the sick, delivering food to the homeless... and run screaming like a scared little girl at the first sign of danger.