The Stigmata - How Evil is Evil?

[Karnitis]

I've been playing D&D (5e) for over two years now so normally I'd think I'm past the 'novice' stage. However I've been playing with the same group of people and we all started at the same time. Meaning, we could all have the same knowledge holes and not be aware of it. For example, of the 8ish of us, for two years, we've never taken a Dodge/Disengage/Hide option, or an Opportunity Attack, and I still don't fully understand how they work. I say all this to preface that I'm asking less for a RAW explanation as I am a "If I ever play with new people, where is the bar set?"

Frequently when I see people talk about evil campaigns, or the dangers of an evil character, it is in reference to raping/murdering PCs/pillaging. But aren't there degrees of "evil"? What about people who are just jerks? Take for example, Dwight Schrute from the Office, or Vegeta from DBZ. They are angry, rude, and mostly bad people, but they still cooperate with good guys and in a part of a cohesive team.

A character I've thought of is a Rogue who likes to steal and isn't above torturing bad guys to get information - but he's part of the party for money/fame/glory. I believe that would be a NE type of guy, but I don't want to offer an 'evil' character and have teammates think I'm going to dismember 5-year-olds for fun.

Is it best to just label all jerks as CN and leave it as that, or is it okay to be a just-kind-of-bad guy?

[Man_Over_Game]

I've been playing D&D (5e) for over two years now so normally I'd think I'm past the 'novice' stage. However I've been playing with the same group of people and we all started at the same time. Meaning, we could all have the same knowledge holes and not be aware of it. For example, of the 8ish of us, for two years, we've never taken a Dodge/Disengage/Hide option, or an Opportunity Attack, and I still don't fully understand how they work. I say all this to preface that I'm asking less for a RAW explanation as I am a "If I ever play with new people, where is the bar set?"

Frequently when I see people talk about evil campaigns, or the dangers of an evil character, it is in reference to raping/murdering PCs/pillaging. But aren't there degrees of "evil"? What about people who are just jerks? Take for example, Dwight Schrute from the Office, or Vegeta from DBZ. They are angry, rude, and mostly bad people, but they still cooperate with good guys and in a part of a cohesive team.

A character I've thought of is a Rogue who likes to steal and isn't above torturing bad guys to get information - but he's part of the party for money/fame/glory. I believe that would be a NE type of guy, but I don't want to offer an 'evil' character and have teammates think I'm going to dismember 5-year-olds for fun.

Is it best to just label all jerks as CN and leave it as that, or is it okay to be a just-kind-of-bad guy?

"Just because you're "Bad Guy" doesn't mean you are bad guy." -'The Red Cyclone' Zangief, to Wreck-It Ralph.

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Some people make different levels of Evil. Some have Evil be a cosmic force of the universe (like how Undead, no matter what the reasoning is, is always considered Evil as a cosmic force).

For "mortal", or chosen evil that doesn't reflect your scale on the cosmic plane, I'd just say that "evil" means you're slightly more than just selfish. You're willing to sacrifice others for your personal gain. It's not that you enjoy hurting people, it's that you see people as a resource, and you'll use them the first chance that becomes an opportunity to do so. Someone peddling knowingly malfunctioning goods to suckers on the street would probably fall into the category of "Mortal Evil".

"Supernatural Evil" is the more cosmic kind, and creatures in prior editions were simply just so. Like Demons. If a Demon ceased to be evil, it would immediately cease to be a Demon. It'd probably mutate into something else to reflect their new cosmic planar alignment.

[Sigreid]

No alignment is detrimental to the party. Players are detrimental to the party. There was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode where the series bad guy helped her save the world because "just because I'm evil doesn't mean I want the word destroyed. I quite like it, actually".

[Unoriginal]

I've been playing D&D (5e) for over two years now so normally I'd think I'm past the 'novice' stage. However I've been playing with the same group of people and we all started at the same time. Meaning, we could all have the same knowledge holes and not be aware of it. For example, of the 8ish of us, for two years, we've never taken a Dodge/Disengage/Hide option, or an Opportunity Attack, and I still don't fully understand how they work. I say all this to preface that I'm asking less for a RAW explanation as I am a "If I ever play with new people, where is the bar set?"

Frequently when I see people talk about evil campaigns, or the dangers of an evil character, it is in reference to raping/murdering PCs/pillaging. But aren't there degrees of "evil"? What about people who are just jerks? Take for example, Dwight Schrute from the Office, or Vegeta from DBZ. They are angry, rude, and mostly bad people, but they still cooperate with good guys and in a part of a cohesive team.

A character I've thought of is a Rogue who likes to steal and isn't above torturing bad guys to get information - but he's part of the party for money/fame/glory. I believe that would be a NE type of guy, but I don't want to offer an 'evil' character and have teammates think I'm going to dismember 5-year-olds for fun.

Is it best to just label all jerks as CN and leave it as that, or is it okay to be a just-kind-of-bad guy?

Evil characters can be part of non-evil groups, if it's what you ask.

Talk with the group to see what's ok with them, and what isn't.

Alignment doesn't matter more than your Bond, Ideal, Trait or Flaw. If you choose a Flaw that says "you will ALWAYS side with Giants in a conflict, no matter what", and you play the module "Against the Giants", you, the player, is being an anti-team player. If you're making a child-killer in a campaign where people aren't fine with it, it's the same.

Basically, don't be a jerk OOC, and see what the players and DM are fine with IC.

As for how evil are the evil alignment, it's kind of a "minimum this, but no maximum" kinda scale. The shopkeeper who wants their rivals ruined and will use a gang to make it so, without actually killing people, could have "NE" written on their statblock, the same as any Yugoloth, despite one being just a criminal and the other being a mass killer made of neutral evilness.

Though if you just want to be "kind of a bad guy", don't torture people.

[Phoenix042]

I think the most important thing to keep in mind when doing this is that it is still the responsibility of EACH player to contribute to the fun of the other player's and DM at the table, and that it is the responsibility of the players as a group to resolve PC-PC issues and remain cohesive enough to play the game.

So there's nothing wrong with roleplaying "my PC is Bitchy McBastard, yours is Goody McHonorshins, lets RP a really antogonistic relationship throughout this game" as long as everyone is on board with this and you can somehow justify staying together without trying to make the DM come up with the reasons for it.

And one SUPER helpful rule at my games is this: When PCs attack or target other PCs, the target gets to decide how the action is resolved. So if you try to stab McHonorshins in the throat in the middle of the night, the DM will turn to McHonroshin's player and ask him how he wants to resolve the attack. He can call for a roll if he wants, or he could say "the attack misses" and that's that, or he could even say "it hits" if he wants to for dramatic reasons. That way people don't ever have to feel like other players are taking away their character's agency, but two players who are both on board with it can RP player conflict if they want to.

Maybe they both try to have a duel, but they keep dictating that the other character's attacks miss. This is how we get fight scenes like that one with the spinning wheel in Dead Man's Chest. The character's are angry at each other, but that doesn't mean the player's have to be or that the table needs to become tense or un-fun.



So you can be a jerk / bad guy in your party if you want, but make sure that your character is fun for the other players at the table and that you (the player) respect the autonomy of their characters. Make sure you invest in reasons that your character will stay with the party even if there's animosity, hatred, or outright violence between them (a common goal or deep bond can go a long way here, but there are always other reasons. One of the character's might have the flaw "I surround myself with people who are bad for me" or "I can't tell my friends from my enemies, and become emotionally dependent on bad people."

Don't use the "I'm just trying to RP well!" excuse for being a jerk in RL. You control your character, not the other way around.

[Laserlight]

So there's nothing wrong with roleplaying "my PC is Bitchy McBastard, yours is Goody McHonorshins, lets RP a really antogonistic relationship throughout this game" as long as everyone is on board with this and you can somehow justify staying together without trying to make the DM come up with the reasons for it.

Don't use the "I'm just trying to RP well!" excuse for being a jerk in RL. You control your character, not the other way around.

This. I've run a campaign with PvP where both of the dueling players were laughing hard enough that I had to get a tissue box for them. At the beginning of the campaign, everyone designed in "reasons why your relationship with X is tense" and "reasons why you will stick by them anyway". Probably the best campaign I've run, from an RP point of view.

A couple of campaigns ago, I played a NE-to-CE warlock who made it explicitly clear that the other players were assets in his achieving what he wanted, and he wouldn't hesitate to kill them or let them die the moment they were no longer helping him achieve what he wanted. I-the-player just made sure that what my character wanted was to follow the campaign arc, so I never actually let anyone die (although in the case of "Mr Run Ahead Of The Party Into The Mass Of The Enemy", I did wait until he failed two death saves before I got out the healing potion).

[Lunali]

My general take is that evil people value their own self-interest over the interests of others. If the whole group is evil, they will likely end up doing some truly evil acts. If only one person is evil, they will usually end up doing "good" acts because it is in their own self interest to do so.

[Trustypeaches]

I assume you mean "Stigma", not Stigmata, which is a skin condition.