Playing an "acceptably" evil character? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Doctor Awkward

2019-07-03, 01:32 PM

Oy...

Okay! So...

Here is the best and (in my opinion) only way to play an evil character without being hated by your party:

You play a good character.

Yes. My six cardinal rules for playing an effective evil character are all based around you being "good." A SUPER good character.
If you want to be truly evil, you have to be good.

With that in mind...

Rule #1: You are only ever evil towards others.
Your party will never, ever, experience your evil. You will murder children belonging to NPC's. You will destroy the last unicorn in the forest. But you will never do it to your party. Why is that? Because...

Rule #2: You are trying to impress your party.
How can you be the most evil of evils if there is no one around to appreciate it? If you watch every TV series ever made, the evil person has lots of people around them all the time. And you have to impress these people. You need witnesses. If you don't have those then you aren't evil. You are just a ****.

Rule #3: You need to keep your party alive.
There is no point in betraying your loyal henchmen to the "good guys." Because then there's no one to see how truly evil you are when you destroy the good guy using his mother as bait and his sister as entertainment for the evening. So you must use all your evil cunning, treachery, and deception to keep your party out of any trouble they find themselves in. You may or may not be responsible for this trouble, but regardless you will use all of your evil to get them out of it alive and in one piece.

Rule #4: You will defend your party.
You will remain loyal to them at all costs, and die for them, provided it's at the hands of a truly good opponent. You might lose but this is fine if you manage to save them while being truly evil in the process. That's your goal. You are evil and evil is often thwarted. The reason for this is that the correct side is the one that wins. Because if you are truly evil and you triumph, then you can argue that you are correct, and it's the other side that deserved to lose. They are really the evil ones, weren't they? This is how you corrupt.

Rule #5: You will only back-stab your party if it is part of a cunning plan
This plan is always to convince the good guys (always NPCs) that you are a double-agent. So that you might infiltrate them and stab everyone in the back and save everyone in the end. You are truly evil because you smuggled your party into the belly of the beast and triumphed. Basically, you do not ever back-stab your party if only you gain something by doing so. Because...

Rule #6: You are making things better
You are evil in the first place because you believe that your way is better. If you look at truly evil people in history, they were trying to make a better world for all of the people they believed belonged there. So if you are truly evil you are trying to seize power so that you can make your life better and by extension make those around you have a better life as well.

Using these six rules, you can happily play an evil character that cuts off the fingers of small children to get the information they need to triumph over that goody-two-shoes NPC. The most important takeaway is that you never, ever sacrifice your fellow players because they are your witnesses. You don't back-stab them because you need them to help advance your cause. And the main reason you take this route is because you are playing a cooperative game. So if you are an evil person who constantly betrays their fellow players, you might be having fun but no one else will be.

Don't be that villain. Be the villain who is truly evil by being truly good. Do your best to be evil to everyone else except your friends.

wilphe

2019-07-03, 01:53 PM

Red Fel

Red Fel

Red Fel

Jowgen

2019-07-03, 02:01 PM

My take:

First up, be a moral relativist in order to challenge alignment stigmata. Who decided that pinging on a detect evil makes it okay to kill/hurt/disrespect you? Does anyone truly believe that evil people can't be productive, functional, even cherished members in multi-alignment society? The moment the "good guys" start questioning whether killing you makes them intolerant fanatics you've won.

Throw in a dash of moral particularism in there too for everyday use. Whenever you do something evil, it's important to be able to frame it as a morally ambiguous choice. Talk about the greater good, right of the individual, whatever works to make the paladin not outright murder you for burning those children.

Then comes the part about making yourself valued, ideally indispensable. If people have something to loose by smiting you as punishment or for justice, especially if that something involves letting a greater evil win, people will be more willing to listen to your arguments and ideally compromise their own moral code.

Throw in the random odd act of apparent kindness or generosity. This helps you to tell character lies when challanged about dubious behaviour. You saved XYZ! You risked your life for the good of whatever! It is always good to have recent examples of altruistic behaviour on hand to throw into an argument to keep people from thinking you're all bad and beyond saving.

And of course, if you're going to be just outright pure evil, don't get caught with your hand in a cookie jar, in a cookie factory, with your pants down and on fire.

MaxiDuRaritry

2019-07-03, 02:58 PM

I had a LE blue goblin factotum//shaper psion in a group of Goody-Goody types. He was crabby and a sadist, but he was smart enough (and had enough self-control) that he kept it to the battlefield (or occasional other times, when it wouldn't get him in trouble). He had A Past (worthy of caps), and having the other party members gave him enough backup that he felt less threatened than when he was alone. Assassins are less likely to attack a powerful group than they are one person alone, after all.

He fed his sadistic tendencies on the battlefield and gloried in the pain that he could inflict, so he tended to go really overboard, laughing and hooting and throwing insults, heaping pain and humiliation upon his enemies. He kept the torment under wraps outside of combat, unless it was in the name of some serious Intimidate bonuses.

Thing is, he also liked (well-behaved) children and small animals, and would go ape**** on anyone he caught abusing them. He even tended to treat most adults reasonably well, too, unless he deemed them too stupid to bother with, as dumb people really kicked his Goku Button. After awhile, he started using his party less as a security blanket and more as actual friends, since he grew to like them despite himself. They were competent and intelligent and willing to throw themselves in harm's way for him, all things he very much appreciated. Not as intelligent as him, of course, but he also enjoyed being the smartest one in the group, so...

Anyway, the BBEG of the campaign looked into his past and used that to blackmail him into betraying the party. (The death threats didn't help, either.) She used him as a mole, gaining intelligence reports on a regular basis. A psion he might've been, but he had a high Int and Cha, and plenty of social skills to go around. He fed her false information mixed with real intel, just enough to make her think she was getting some real goods out of it without putting the party in serious danger. He played both sides against each other in a way that allowed him to get a LOT of loot from the deal, since the various attacks against the party ensured a steady income of mooks.

He would have told the party about this, but he was pretty sure there was a second mole in the party, and he didn't know who it was. (There wasn't, but he didn't know that.)

The party found him a bit difficult to get along with at first, though he mellowed out somewhat as the campaign went on. He was an invaluable party member, even though it was pretty clear he had...issues.

It was great fun all around. For me, at least.

ThatMoonGuy

2019-07-03, 03:27 PM

You can get away with a lot of evil as long as you can make it seem morally justified. Bandits and the like are just the tip of the iceberg, you can literally raze a church to the ground as long as you are able to justify it somehow. I once played an evil druid and our group ended up working for a bunch of halflings who were being threatened by local authorities. My character, being from a minority group, actually tried to help the gnomes for a while but eventually things went south, a big battle began and the halflings all went inside a church to save themselves. My character went in and tried to convince them to run away. They refused. They believed their god would save them even though there was a small army of angry peasants ready to arrest, torture and murder them.

So my character killed them all, believing that at last this way they'd have a quick death. It was an act of mercy.

That was how she operated, mostly. She wouldn't necessarily go out of her way to cut people down, steal sweets from little kids or kick puppies. But she was completely ruthless, killed everyone who got in her way and had nothing against torture and crimes. She adopted orphans to work with her, took care of them and protected her vassals. The rest of the party accepted her because she was effective and did just enough good to justify the cruelty while society at large just felt like she was a saint. She had good friends, a pretty house and a garden of black lotus.

When it comes down to it, people, in general, are quite ok with accepting evil as long as that evil can give them what they want. Be effective and control the narrative, control the image, make everything you do seem well intentioned and hide whatever you can't paint in a coat of decency and good intentions. Be charismatic, help people, be nice and no one will care if, when fighting, you have your wolves and dogs rip your enemies apart while they still live.

As long as you're smart enough and don't play the Starscream, you'll be fine.

pabelfly

2019-07-03, 05:35 PM

In terms of getting away with doing evil stuff out-of-character, just have a discussion with the rest of your group about what they're comfortable with if you're not sure. I'd especially check what sort of game your DM wants to run to make sure he or she can work with what you want to do.

In terms of getting away with stuff in-character, another suggestion is to hide some of your evil nature from the rest of the party. Use bluff skills or do your dirtier deeds away from other players. They can't object to what they don't know about.

Lastly, you might even consider trying to figure out ways for the rest of your party to benefit from your evil deeds. People are much less likely to object if your evil nature and deeds are directly beneficial to them.

Malphegor

2019-07-03, 05:42 PM

Be loved.

Make them need you, want you. Be useful. Friendly.

All the while you are furthering their doom should they cross you...

Asmotherion

2019-07-03, 06:59 PM

Answear this questions:

A) What type of villain are you? Just because you are evil doesn't mean you have to react evil to everything otherwise you'll end up with a cartoon character. Are you an assasin? A sadistic bastard who gets pleasure by seeing others suffer? You double in some evil magic such as necromancy or enchantments? Perhaps you're more satisfied in creating the means for others to do bad things such as crafting poisons or drugs and selling them. Find your thing and have that thing define your evil nature rather than having to do all of the evil acts you come up with that will either turn you into a comic relief or the next encounter.

B) Why are you with this party? Did you start as their prisoner and they eventualy grew to trust you enough not to betray them to have you with them? Do you view them as your minions? Are they also bad people and you've all formed a gang of sorts? Are they close friends from long ago or family and this gives you a reason to want to protect them despite being corupt to the core? Perhaps you all belong to a guild and you respect the code of conduct or just see the benefit of having other strong people on your side. You must have a reason not to treat your party as you would a stranger otherwise you will end up the random encounter of the day (been there done that).

C) What's your retributive quality? For some reason people may have mixed feelings about you and some people may even remember you as a hero. There is a reason you're not behind bars as would an average goon: there are people who will stand for you and even defend you (in court or otherwise). For this you need some "good" facade (you're still doing it for evil manipulative reasons but people perceive it as a good act). Perhaps you get lots of money to a charity (that "free hospital for everyone" that is actually secretly selling corpses of dead patients to necromancers). Or perhaps you have some real good qualities (that are just overshadowed by you being a necromancer/assasin) such as helping some orphans or employ poor people to build your stronghold for a good price. All of those will get some ambiguity about you in the gossip and (at least locally) rumors of you laughing maniacly as you drain the life of a unicorn will be dismissed as simply rumors.

D) What's your ultimate goal? A true villain always has one or helps a more major villain archive one. You may want to assasinate an Emperor or Start a War. World domination is fine and all but you need a plan to turn this Villain Fantasy into a realistic goal. Perhaps you aspire to flood the marcet with cheap mastercraft items and become every shop's sole suplier just to have the ecconomy fall wich will lead to people loosing their homes and you buying them at a steal.

E) How are you on an Emotional Level? Do you have any Empathy or are a Cold Bloodied murderer? if the latter you may go Sociopathic villain and pretend to care to fool others. if the former What pushes you to do evil eventhough you can see what you do is wrong? Greed? Megalomania? Something else?

F) What authority do you respect above all others? From the Lawful Evil Corupted Guard who respects the Thief's guild that sponsor his "bonuses" to the Chaotic Evil Demon who answears to his Demon Lord everyone has respect to some authority (even if they're not directly obediant to it). You may even aspire to raise your status in a specific group (Zhentarim or some thief's guild for evample).

That's more or less how i design an evil pc. i may be forgetting some questions though.

Red Fel

2019-07-03, 09:03 PM

Red Fel

Red Fel

Red Fel

Yo!

I want to play a character that is evil. He loves torturing and killing, and making people suffer. However he also knows that such things are not acceptable in polite society and has a strong survival instinct. So he spends his life toeing the line, and became an adventurer because monsters/bandits/whatevs are free game for fueling his sadistic impulses.

My question is, with a typical DM, in a typical party (lacking a paladin or anyone else overly lawful), just *how* evil can I reasonably get with the character and not be getting into too much trouble both in character or out of character?

Also feel free to throw me some interesting ideas on creative ways to be evil within these restrictions.

Check my sig, there's a handbook there. That said, let me summarize. Better yet, let these fine folks do all the work for me:

Be loved.

Make them need you, want you. Be useful. Friendly.

You play a good character.

*SNIP*

Don't be that villain. Be the villain who is truly evil by being truly good. Do your best to be evil to everyone else except your friends.

Two simple rules of thumb for playing evil characters:

1) Never betray the party.

2) Never do anything that has a high likelyhood of getting the party in trouble unless they all agree to accept the consequences.

Keep those in mind, and the other players shouldn't have any problems.

These. And others.

Step one is that an Evil character can have depth. You don't need to be a monster at all times. Trust me, it's exhausting to be "on" all the time. Take a break and pet a dog instead of mutilating it, every once in awhile.

Step two is simply to be a great party member. That's pretty easy, and mostly identical to playing a capital-G Good character. Be a good party member, be productive, be helpful, be friendly, be trustworthy.

And step three, when you step over the line, do it (1) to other people, and (2) for a reason. By all means, be Evil, but don't do it senselessly.

"But Red Fel," you might say to your monitor if you didn't know how the internet works, "That hardly seems like I'm being Evil at all!" Well, yes and no.

Yes, in some ways, it doesn't seem like you're being Evil. Because your Evil is pragmatic and directed. If you're in the woods someplace, nobody but your party for miles around, you really don't have much opportunity to be horrible. You might even - gasp - look Good to an untrained observer.

But when you do have the chance to be Evil, you do it. Have an enemy mage captured? After he's of no use to the party, absolutely do torture and kill him. If asked, remind them that if he escaped, he could easily be a threat - their mercy is commendable, but impractical. Have to bring somebody to justice without killing them? Shoot to wound very badly. Sure, you could have knocked them down, but they definitely won't be escaping with their leg missing below the knee. Somebody hurt your friend, your loved one, your party member? What you will do should be the stuff of nightmares. German children's authors should be taking notes.

Be friendly, be helpful, be useful and effective, but every now and then, do something entirely in character and for all the right reasons that reminds the party that you are a monster. They'll keep you around, though.

Because you're their monster.

MisterKaws

2019-07-03, 09:23 PM

Basically everything Red Fel said.

Look at Belkar from OotS. He's Chaotic Evil. He's literally a by-the-book example of Chaotic-Dumb-Evil. And he adventures in a party of otherwise mostly good people. He just doesn't try to kill his friends and keeps his swords on his enemies' guts instead of his friends' - most of the time, anyways. He did have to get that Mark of Justice for going bonkers, but if you don't go bonkers, there's literally no reason to use one on you!

Even Paladins are forbidden from attacking you without reason(killing innocents, raping houses and burning women, that sort of thing), although they wouldn't be able to adventure with you. A normal party of NG adventurers, though, would have no qualms about you being Evil, as long as you don't go around killing every random villager.

Hell, few weeks ago someone 'round these boards posted us a story about his Necromancer. He always left the party for some minutes to clean up his Good friends' mess and kill annoying people. The party was even hired to investigate murders that were caused by their own mage, and he just went along with it while hiding his tracks. In the end they didn't find anything and he just kept going. Being that sort of guy is fine too; just don't get caught.

upho

2019-07-04, 07:05 PM

Everyone else have given excellent replies on the question of how to Dark Side in a non-evil party, so I'll just add a few tips and ideas on how to avoid some associated practical issues and on how to find out the answer to this question:
just *how* evil can I reasonably get with the character and not be getting into too much trouble both in character or out of character?

First, to talk to your GM on how to best solve the practical side of things, especially if you play in real-time at a physical or virtual table. As you'll likely want to hide your worst behaviors and nasty habits from the other PCs, you'll also want to minimize time and attention being spent on these things during play unless/until discovered by another PCs, as well as to reduce the risk of you describing them to your GM drawing OoC attention from the other players. A tip is to work out what I call an SHP™ - "Standard Hidden Procedure" - or two for your PC's typical evil behavior:

An SHP is some predefined behavior or set of actions the GM can assume you'll always attempt to do hidden from the other PCs in a certain frequently recurring situation. Basically a "script" to save you from having to repeatedly describe these same actions to you GM without the other players noticing. Common SHPs for an evil PC deal with what they do with enemy survivors or prisoners, what they do on their own when they think nobody's watching, their typical choice of "entertainment" in civilized areas and their behavior towards people in general. An SHP should include a few odd flavorful specifics in line with your personality, making it more interesting in case you or whatever your actions leave behind are discovered by other characters. It's also a good idea to also decide on some kind of subtle signal - like a code word or phrase - you can give your GM in situations when you don't wish to perform an applicable SHP for some reason.

It has become pretty much standard in my games to use SHPs whenever a PC wants to keep some potentially important recurring set of actions hidden from the others.

When it comes to determining just how far into Red Fel's wonderfully dark embrace you can fall without getting into trouble in character, I recommend you follow the advice given by the Dark Lord himself:
Be friendly, be helpful, be useful and effective, but every now and then, do something entirely in character and for all the right reasons that reminds the party that you are a monster. They'll keep you around, though.

Because you're their monster.In short, don't start like Belkar did if you want to stay with the party. Start small instead, and only display either some general vague lower case evil tendencies or one more obvious limited to a specific area or circumstance. Then slowly reveal more of your true upper case EVIL nature as you prove yourself a highly useful, dedicated, trustworthy and loyal party member and friend.

And don't forget that a bit of smart marketing never hurts, meaning that not only should you try to make your evil actions appear the most effective, but also impressive and entertaining. If you murder with style, torture in odd creative ways, and don't hold back on the witty remarks and dark humor, the other PCs will appreciate you even more. IOW, don't be just any monster, be their pit fiend general, their balor lord, their Darth Vader.

How evil the other players are comfortable with your character being is impossible to know without actually asking them. So be careful to not go too far, especially in terms of how you're evil and especially if you don't yet know them particularly well, and ask how they feel about it once your character's true nature becomes more evident. For both IC and OoC reasons, I recommend you stay away from innocent kids and animals, rape, or similar stuff.

Doc_Pippin

2019-07-06, 07:20 AM

I want to play a character that is evil. He loves torturing and killing, and making people suffer. However he also knows that such things are not acceptable in polite society and has a strong survival instinct. So he spends his life toeing the line, and became an adventurer because monsters/bandits/whatevs are free game for fueling his sadistic impulses.

My question is, with a typical DM, in a typical party (lacking a paladin or anyone else overly lawful), just *how* evil can I reasonably get with the character and not be getting into too much trouble both in character or out of character?

Also feel free to throw me some interesting ideas on creative ways to be evil within these restrictions.

A common issue I see when people play evil characters (Which is often why DMs hate evil PCs) is they do evil for no reason which is not logical or believable, and doesn't work well with group play. Good and Evil characters should have roughly the same goals, in that they generally want to be prosperous and happy. The difference between the two is what they are willing to do to achieve those goals and to a lesser extent their reasons behind the goals. The second is explained as a good guy whats success for his family for their happiness while an evil guy might want the same thing but to bring glory and power to his family name. Below is the example I give my players when explaining the true meaning of good and evil.

Bob is good and Tom is evil. Both are happily married. One day both of their wives are arrested for vague reasons. Bob being good will attempt to save his wife through legal channels, he will undertake quests to earn her freedom, he will beg and plead, and if that fails he will attempt an intricate heist to prevent unneeded violence. Tom will try the easiest method first which is usually the basic legal channels and if that fails Tom is willing to kill anyone, guilty or otherwise, to free his wife. The difference between good and evil is a matter of how far they are willing to go to achieve their goals and the intent of said goals, it is unbelievable for a character to simply wake up everyday saying "Welp, I'm going to waste a bunch of time being evil today, maybe get some murder and torture in, because... REASONS!" This kind of insanity doesn't allow the DM to motivate you in any believable way, it also makes creating party bonds difficult.

SangoProduction

2019-07-06, 07:29 AM

In my signature, I've actually got the journal entries of a 2 year long campaign (though only played every other week), where my character, Anne, was Evil...but due to his obsessive desire to not be alone from the party, did the best he could to not piss them off. Or even drive them away.

We then TPK'd, and that was that. (The campaign was actually really...sub-par... and there was next to no planning on the DM's part, outside of a basic idea. But I didn't care at the time.)

Keltest

2019-07-06, 07:56 AM

There are two basic rules for playing an evil PC.

The first: You have to be useful to the party. Unlike good characters, who are willing to accept petty things like "Friendship", "Honor" or "Loyalty" as reason enough to welcome somebody to a party, evil characters are unfortunately not welcome by default in any group, including evil groups! To that end, you need to give them a reason. Being skilled and putting those skills at the service of the party is probably the easiest way to do this, but you can also have important information, useful contacts or friends, or even just be filthy rich. Demonstrate to the party that they will be better off having you working with them.

The second rule is a related concept: Your goals much align with the party's goals. As an evil character, you are fundamentally selfish. The party is a means to an end, and even if you genuinely like and respect them, if they get in the way of what you want then you will go through them, and they are aware of this. Thus, you need to make sure that what you want and what the group wants are close enough that they wont force you to choose between them, even inadvertently. Disagree about the methodology all you want, as long as you all agree on what youre after.

There are a few other things to consider as well, which aren't rules so much as guidelines. Just as the group needs a reason to want you in it, you need a reason to want to be in the group. Shared goals are usually enough for evil characters, but not always. Be prepared to back down on the more overtly evil methods you would choose if you do it in front of the group. Theyre good guys, they probably wont appreciate the suggestion that you set the orphanage on fire, even if it would probably force the abusive administrator out of the building. On a related note, if its out of sight, its out of mind. As long as you make sure it wont come back to bite the party, don't feel the need to hold back on the evil if the party isn't there to see it or hear about it. What they don't know and wont hurt them isn't a problem. Finally, shave your mustache. As much as it can be fun to twirl, doing so is almost always going to be one of the fastest ways to shift from an asset to a liability in the eyes of the party, and thus break rule 1.

Doc_Pippin

2019-07-06, 11:05 AM

1) "As an evil character, you are fundamentally selfish."

2) "The party is a means to an end, and even if you genuinely like and respect them, if they get in the way of what you want then you will go through them."

I disagree with the first quote, evil does not always mean you are selfish. I guess the easiest example would be Adrian Veidt aka Ozymandias from watchmen. He was charitable, self-sacrificing, heroic, and generally altruistic... and he gave innocent people cancer, betrayed his superhero friends, killed the comedian, all before murdered New York, because he thought the end justifies the means. In the end, everyone believes they are the hero in their life story. This mirrors my previous statement about the willingness to do whatever it takes being the difference between good and evil.

In contrast, I agree completely with the second statement (Not the "they now it" part that followed it though). The willingness to do horrible things to reach your goals is well explained by that line.

On a related note I would talk to your DM about getting rid of or modifying the ridiculousness of detect good and detect evil. Wizards even saw how dumb the idea of black and white objective morality is and changed this in 5e, making detect alignment reveal only creatures of specific types that exemplify various moral views, such as angels, fiends, undead, and so forth. Moral absolutes are ridiculous for many reasons, why would a neutral rogue think of poison as evil. What if my cleric's deity has incredibly strict dietary restrictions, shouldn't my detect (Insert opposite alignment) spell detect those "abominations" who wantonly consume those taboos?

A fun example is the druidic necromancer logic concept
1) Druids wish to protect nature from needless destruction
2) A druid would most likely wish to preform their duties with the least amount of damage to plants, animals, and other natural things.
3) While death is natural and decomposition is part of the food web, skeletons are generally slow to decompose and are not required for nature to thrive.
4) Because the undead are unnatural if they are killed then nature losses nothing and gains a more easily accessed source of calcium.
5) Thus Druids should strive to use undead in the defense of nature instead of sacrificing plants and animals
6) Necromancers are environmentalists, "Renew, Reuse, Recycle"

Keltest

2019-07-06, 12:43 PM

I disagree with the first quote, evil does not always mean you are selfish. I guess the easiest example would be Adrian Veidt aka Ozymandias from watchmen. He was charitable, self-sacrificing, heroic, and generally altruistic... and he gave innocent people cancer, betrayed his superhero friends, killed the comedian, all before murdered New York, because he thought the end justifies the means. In the end, everyone believes they are the hero in their life story. This mirrors my previous statement about the willingness to do whatever it takes being the difference between good and evil.

In contrast, I agree completely with the second statement (Not the "they now it" part that followed it though). The willingness to do horrible things to reach your goals is well explained by that line.

On a related note I would talk to your DM about getting rid of or modifying the ridiculousness of detect good and detect evil. Wizards even saw how dumb the idea of black and white objective morality is and changed this in 5e, making detect alignment reveal only creatures of specific types that exemplify various moral views, such as angels, fiends, undead, and so forth. Moral absolutes are ridiculous for many reasons, why would a neutral rogue think of poison as evil. What if my cleric's deity has incredibly strict dietary restrictions, shouldn't my detect (Insert opposite alignment) spell detect those "abominations" who wantonly consume those taboos?

A fun example is the druidic necromancer logic concept
1) Druids wish to protect nature from needless destruction
2) A druid would most likely wish to preform their duties with the least amount of damage to plants, animals, and other natural things.
3) While death is natural and decomposition is part of the food web, skeletons are generally slow to decompose and are not required for nature to thrive.
4) Because the undead are unnatural if they are killed then nature losses nothing and gains a more easily accessed source of calcium.
5) Thus Druids should strive to use undead in the defense of nature instead of sacrificing plants and animals
6) Necromancers are environmentalists, "Renew, Reuse, Recycle"

Undead being anti-druidic tends to be more in the vein of "summoning evil spirits to inhabit the corpses" type of unnatural.

Anyway, even your example character is still selfish. He believes his goals and desires for the world are the best, and is willing to do horrible things to see them through. What he wants the world to be like is more important to him than the people he is trampling to get there.

Remuko

2019-07-06, 02:03 PM

Doc_Pippin

2019-07-06, 04:06 PM

Undead being anti-druidic tends to be more in the vein of "summoning evil spirits to inhabit the corpses" type of unnatural.

Anyway, even your example character is still selfish. He believes his goals and desires for the world are the best, and is willing to do horrible things to see them through. What he wants the world to be like is more important to him than the people he is trampling to get there.

Veidt wasn't self serving he did what he did to prevent nuclear war and the extinction of humanity, he is evil because of how he did so. He Spocked his way through it "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"

And D&D has shown that binding elementals is just as viable a way as any to animate and power magical items why does a skeleton need to have an "evil spirit" bound to it, bind an earth elemental to the calcium rich material and bam, nature spirit skeletons.

SangoProduction

2019-07-06, 06:33 PM

Was your boy named Anne related to "A Boy Named Sue"?

lol. It messed with the party too. Took them a couple months to get it right (and even then, there was the occasional slip).

King of Nowhere

2019-07-06, 07:26 PM

you can get away with a lot of evil as long as you solve problems. use evil as a mean to an end. don't make a mess for the party to clean. and you should be fine.

TheNerfGuy

2019-07-06, 08:12 PM

One person in my group has played two evil characters as his first ones. Both were Chaotic Evil since they were free-spirited and tended to engage in dickish behavior, such as desecrating corpses, wanting to murder innocents, etc.

My DM told him that if his current character dies or is retired, he had to play a good-aligned character next. He was not happy.

Thus, in my experience, the best way to play as an evil character is to do what you want and not care about others in the game. Even if it does end up doing the word good, doing so for self-serving reasons still makes the character evil.

Bohandas

2019-07-07, 01:59 AM

it is unbelievable for a character to simply wake up everyday saying "Welp, I'm going to waste a bunch of time being evil today, maybe get some murder and torture in, because... REASONS!"

Doesn't that describe most serial killers though? ie. Robert Berdella, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Rader, etc.

The only part of the scenario that's strictly unrealistic is the "every day" part

Keltest

2019-07-07, 08:33 PM

Doesn't that describe most serial killers though? ie. Robert Berdella, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Rader, etc.

The only part of the scenario that's strictly unrealistic is the "every day" part

Most of them are mentally ill. They have what is in their mind a legitimate reason for what theyre doing. It isn't just arbitrary cruelty for the sake of cruelty, theres just a disconnect between what they think theyre accomplishing and what is actually happening.

MaxiDuRaritry

2019-07-07, 08:35 PM

Most of them are mentally ill. They have what is in their mind a legitimate reason for what theyre doing. It isn't just arbitrary cruelty for the sake of cruelty, theres just a disconnect between what they think theyre accomplishing and what is actually happening.I'm pretty sure sociopathy is mental illness.

I also believe it's largely the D&D definition of "Evil."

Keltest

2019-07-07, 08:42 PM

I'm pretty sure sociopathy is mental illness.

I also believe it's largely the D&D definition of "Evil."

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

This is what the 3.5 SRD has to say about evil. While I can see how you would assume sociopathy falls under that umbrella, its not the same thing. A sociopath can be evil, or they can be neutral, or they can be good (though the last one would be difficult). Likewise, being evil doesn't require you to be a sociopath, it just requires that you be willing to get over any qualms you have about hurting people. "the ends justify the means" and all that. Actual plausible evil doesn't want to hurt people, it doesn't actively seek out situations where they can do the most harm (unless its supernatural evil), they just have things they value more.

King of Nowhere

2019-07-07, 09:32 PM

Doesn't that describe most serial killers though? ie. Robert Berdella, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Rader, etc.

The only part of the scenario that's strictly unrealistic is the "every day" part

serial killers aren't representative of the average evil guy. they are super extremely evil, or they are mentally ill, or at best they could be well intentioned extremists.

according to the books, humankind does not have any alignment tendency. this means that roughly one third of humanity is evil. so take the worst third of your aquaintances, that's what regular evil people look like.
perhaps it can be argued that the alingment tendency applies to a middle-age humankind, that was much more evil than it is nowadays. In which case you'd go on to argue that modern humankind has a tendency to good, caused by culture and education. And so maybe now 20% of humans are evil, and you onlly have to take the worst fifth of the people you know.

anyway, the result is the same. most evil people are not monsters. they are jerks. they are selfish. they will definitely screw up other people for profit. but they do not go around kicking puppies.