Being out evil'ed in my group (aka the others have surpassed my badness)

[Spo]

In a Waterdeep Heist campaign (minor spoilers) and my chaotic good monk gets killed about 8 sessions ago. Rerolled a goblin fighter named Burpp that was to be chaotic evil and I figured I would shock the sensibilities of the rest of the group that at the time was pretty law abiding (always clearing things with the city watch, really not wanting to break into Gralhund Manor, and generally afraid of breaking the law). Well, since Burpp has been with the team, they had no problem keeping hostages in the basement, breaking into buildings to get keys and readily killing any one who gets in their way (thought they liked to use "persuade" and "intimidation" a lot.

In the last session, the team was in Xanathar's lair and got caught and imprisoned with others. They escaped but made no effort to help out the other prisoners (some unconscious). The team's plan was to blow up the lair as they were making their escape. Burpp was on the other side of the lair and had just arrived there (missed the prior session). When I asked out of character about the other prisoners, their response was that they would slow them down and that the gave them a map on how to get out.

Sure enough, lair destroyed and all the prisoners perished. I meant for Burpp to standout through his willingness to do uncomfortable things. Now my evil goblin feels uncomfortable around the rest of the group and is feeling "out eviled." Maybe after getting a couple of levels, their true killer nature is starting to show.

What are your thoughts?

[furby076]

Sounds like a standard D&D, aka murder hobo aka self-interested only group. It's why alignment i pointless. Nothing to see here.

[rahimka]

Sounds like maybe some alignment shifts are in order for the rest of the party

[Spore]

It is Dragon Heist for a reason. There is money on the line, and a lot. So becoming gradually more ruthless and evil is just running with the module I say.

[Bigmouth]

I have always thought of evil as the default alignment for people who aren't role-playing. Don't get me wrong, evil characters can be deep, can be role-played well, etc. But...if there is no role-playing, everything heads towards evil because it is the most like playing a video game. It is doing smart things with no restrictions. Pardon me shopkeeper while I murder you and take your stuff. Hello villager, don't mind me while I wander into your home and steal your things.

Did you know their alignments beforehand? Were they all secretly evil but cowardly/secretive about it before? A good friend always used to play chaotic evil but would rp as the nicest person in the group, because of all the benefits there are to being perceived as good. Were they good alignments but are not playing as such now? This is problematic on several levels.

The most innocent reason for it could be that seeing Burpp in action made them all go "Wow! Burpp is awesome and seems so fun! I wish I could be more like Burpp!" They copy Burpp a bit and lights go off and bells ring in their heads. So much fun being like Burpp! Playing evil can be liberating, especially if you've always played good pcs. No strings to hold you down! No stupid rules. You do what you want when you want.

Less innocently, it could be symptoms of boredom or lazy rp. The evil way is the easiest way. Torture is easier than persuasion. Leaving prisoners behind is easier than rescuing them. They see no benefits to doing things the good way, so why do them?

Does the group rp a lot? Are there ramifications for evil actions or rewards for good ones? Is it just that Burpp is the awesomest character ever? I have a difficult time playing evil personally, so I am going to be biased here, but if the group rps and the DM is showing the effects of good and evil, then I might find my own rp on Burpp sliding in the opposite direction. (it's a good story arc. Dark dirty character sees his/her actions mirrored by others, finds them distasteful and sets about fixing the flaws that have been revealed). Burpp then is the one saying "I am going to get these prisoners out of here." (could even cover it up with evil reasoning so he/she doesn't have to admit to good leanings "There could be a lot of money for saving them"

[Particle_Man]

I hear yah. I once played an antipaladin in Pathfinder and I was nowhere near the evilest in that group. And I was wearing gold dragonhide armour for crying out loud! :smallsmile:

[BloodSnake'sCha]

I hear yah. I once played an antipaladin in Pathfinder and I was nowhere near the evilest in that group. And I was wearing gold dragonhide armour for crying out loud! :smallsmile:

There is a difference between looking evil and doing evil.

I have to say that my LN vengeance paladin was the most brutal and mean character I ever played and I played a murderhobo(the party tided my down in a city of dwarfs that offended me and my goal in the game was to destroy the city and kill everything inside. The little girl even pass the Drow trials and got the title of a female drow as an halfling(Loth loved her way of thinking and acting) and I will still say my LN paladin was more by keeping the law).

He was like that because he will always keep his word, no matter what.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Fair warning, this hypothesis may be merely the deranged imaginings of my sleep deprived mind...

I feel like one of the big highlights of roleplaying, that is one of the things that feels the best, is surprising the people you're playing with. That can be accomplished through a brilliant ploy, a cunning scheme with a grand reveal, even a perfect joke... but the easiest way to do it is to be shockingly ruthless, because that flies in the face of the tropes we've come to expect from stories about heroic characters, but is still pretty easy to come up with, and moreover is often efficient from a gameplay perspective.

It's actually possible to do the opposite, to get that same high of surprising/impressing your friends by playing a shockingly altruistic character, and doing so is my favorite experience is 5e so far (in fact, I just posted the story of Jaun "Aegis" in the Favorite Characters thread). The more I think about it, the more I think that part of the reason he was so fun to roleplay is that he stood out from both the rest of the party and most of the NPCs, but also that I felt like I was surprising my friends - playing more gritty, realistically/relatably selfish PCs - every time he did something especially self-sacrificing (repeatedly diving into a river elemental in armor to rescue civilians despite having lost most of his health the first time, staying on a collapsing cliff to try and talk some sense into an NPC who refused to leave (that one didn't end so well when I tried to grab and drag him and rolled a nat 1, so it was ruled he was a goliath and just flung me aside), and ultimately sacrificing himself to stop a killer fog machine that could have spelled the end for any number of elementals but which the party and the NPC tribe could have easily outpaced). And it was awesome. Tried playing essentially the same character but Warforged for a different campaign, and it was boring. Part of that was the relative lack of opportunities to show off his personality, but I think the bigger thing was that there was no sense of surprise or uniqueness to his character compared to the original. Jaun was a humanoid character who overcame his flaws and became a paragon, but Aegis the Warforged was programmed to protect people... and is still doing that... which made him not all that different from the other mostly good people in the adventuring party and world as a whole.

Moral to the story: there is nothing surprising about a Warforged choosing to be lawful, not even lawful good. But where I was actually going with that is that it's the surprise, the contrast with expectations, that's so exciting about playing an extreme alignment. For a group that was previously all good, playing Evil is going to feel increasingly seductive, and then from there it'll take ever more extreme acts of evil to continue getting that shock value. How poetic.

[Spo]

These are some really great insights. Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond.

After Waterdeep Heist, we are going into Mad Mage (that was one of the reasons I rolled up a goblin fighter - thinking he would be good for a dungeon crawl). Although people seem to like his personality - playing him as a Italian mob goon with a short man syndrome - being the least evil/amoral isn't that much fun because there is no one to challenge his beliefs or have him see things differently. As someone mentioned above, Burpp's ideas are made because they are expedient and easy and made without thinking of consequences. I liked it when the life cleric would say "Burpp, we COULD kill the guard and try and hide the body like you want, or we could try to distract him and accomplish the same thing." Today, however, the life cleric would say, "I cast guidance so Burpp can slice the guard's throat quietly."

For Mad Mage, I am definitely going to roll a chaotic good character to question the actions of the rest of the group. Won't go full on Redemption paladin, but maybe a monk that questions the use of violence or a barbarian that is not proud of who he is when he rages.

[Laserlight]

That's an insightful hypothesis.

I've felt that as a DM, your job is to produce strong emotions in the players, and those emotions are felt most strongly when there's an abrupt change. You don't want a session which is "we're about to die" for the whole time, you want "confidence", then "dismay", then "relief".

Part of it is also a change from every day life to RPGs. It's unexpected because it's something the player would never do, even though the character would.

And yeah, when we did SKT, I made a CE warlock, intending to be the Party Bad Guy. Turns out I was the most stable, least randomly violent character in the party.

[patchyman]

I lived through a similar situation. I made a Lawful Neutral (with Evil tendencies) Rogue for “Curse of Strahd”. The rest of the party was good or neutral.

For most of the campaign, my Lawful Neutral character was consistently acting as the voice of reason and only sane man. In fact, in one case, he deliberately committed an Evil act.he did not want to in order to prevent the LG Paladin from falling.

While I played the character to the end of the campaign, let me give you the benefit of my hindsight. Retire the character and play something else. I found my enjoyment suffered because I felt I could not play the character the way I wanted (no blame, sometimes it is just not the right character for the party).