General question on is this....

[denthor]

Evil. I failed my attempt.

The party killed hell hound evil creature my character took a kit butchered the dog got three vials of blood. Took it back to a lab. Told the party leader a CG cleric this will make resist fire potions. Proceeded to say some people, not me, may have a moral problem with this. The neutral leaning good priest. DM run. Says now we do not need to keep people Sunday school, but there is a chance for corruption. Needed that priest to brew the potions.

The party cleric dumped the vials cleaned them and returned them.

Do I get credit for evil with the attempt? Was it evil to use blood from an outsider.


Red Fel Red Fel Red Fel, are you upset I killed your puppies?

[Millstone85]

I am confused. Were you trying to poison the party?

[denthor]

No nudge them towards evil acts by having them use the blood of thinking creatures.

It really is one of the ways to make potions of fire resistance. There are just plant versions that work just as well.

If I took your dogs blood and you drank it for a benefit it would be considered evil by most people.

[Red Fel]

Evil. I failed my attempt.

The party killed hell hound evil creature my character took a kit butchered the dog got three vials of blood. Took it back to a lab. Told the party leader a CG cleric this will make resist fire potions. Proceeded to say some people, not me, may have a moral problem with this. The neutral leaning good priest. DM run. Says now we do not need to keep people Sunday school, but there is a chance for corruption. Needed that priest to brew the potions.

The party cleric dumped the vials cleaned them and returned them.

Do I get credit for evil with the attempt? Was it evil to use blood from an outsider.


Red Fel Red Fel Red Fel, are you upset I killed your puppies?

In what way was any of this Evil?

I'm serious. Is there a rule somewhere that says that any reagents derived from an Evil creature are likewise Evil, and their unwitting use automatically an Evil act? I mean, you could make the argument, but I don't know of any RAW on point.

The fact is, you ask for my consult, yet you clearly haven't heard what I've been saying for ages.

First: Attempting to corrupt the party with Evil blood. Do you get "credit for Evil?" You should know by now how absurd the question is. You get "credit" for trying to slip your party an alignment-roofie. That's nothing to be proud of, by my standards. Even setting the jerkiness of the move aside, corrupting people towards Evil doesn't mean tricking them into eating a poisoned apple - it means letting them actively choose an option which promotes Evil. Which leads to...

Second: Even had your party consumed the corrupt compound, I wouldn't say that makes them more Evil. Evil results from choices. Not always fully-informed choices, but active choices nonetheless. Choosing to do a thing, or not do a thing, is what matters, because Evil is about a mindset. You're not Evil because you consumed Evil-juice, you're Evil because you decided that consuming Evil-juice was the best thing to do. Sneaking corruption into their potions isn't going to influence their mindset. That's because...

Third: Evil isn't a checklist. Both of the above have one notion in common - the idea that performing a certain number of Evil acts dings your alignment. It's a notion I loathe, because it misses the point. Your alignment doesn't get dinged because you did an Evil act. It gets dinged because you're the sort of person who believes an Evil act is justified.

So, no. You don't get "credit" for attempted Evil, because that's not how it works - you're either Evil because you're the sort of person who'd try to do this, or you're not. Likewise, your party wouldn't become more Evil for unknowingly drinking your Evil-juice, because it's not a reflection on their mindset.

I've said this over and over. Why do you keep dragging my name out if you already know this?

[denthor]

Fine this joke then.

If satan ever lost his hair

There would be

Hell Toupee

[Jarawara]

That joke is evil! :smallamused:

[Segev]

Why do you want to corrupt your party towards evil? This isn't rhetorical; I genuinely want to know what your overall goal is. What's your motivation?


I think I must have had it easy, the one time I played a corrupter. It was an Exalted game, and the rest of the party were Infernal Exalts whose Exaltations had somehow gotten "free" from the tethers the Yozis (think super-arch-demons) used to control them and pick who got to have the power, so they had Exalted with much more heroic origins and less...pickiness for the kind of petty evil that the Yozis want in their Chosen. My character was a more normally-Chosen Infernal Exalt, and thus worked for the Yozis.

He had other motives of his own, but his official task according to his masters was to find out how these rogue Infernals came to be, and (as a separate but related goal) to bring them into the fold.

My character was a genuinely nice guy, though not above pragmatic evil to attain his goals. The party were heroically-minded folks who talked against all sorts of "pragmatic evils."

A lot of the time, though, my character was the moral compass of the party. To the point that he would spell out the reasons why something was morally questionable, while "grudgingly" acknowledging that it's convenient, easy, or more likely to work and get some sort of arguable utilitarian benefit, but appealing to emotion and pointing out the broad harm or the short-term harm it would cause. And somehow, this often seemed to push the other PCs into feeling comfortable making the "hard choices" that were of much more questionable moral rectitude. Black Hole Sun Shining in the Darkness (Infernals have pretentious title-names) was sometimes rather confused at just how well he was doing, but was glad his masters were pleased with him.

Towards the end of the game, he had a great achievement wherein one of the PCs wanted a special kind of base (called a Manse) that was designed to help him forge artifacts. Shining went to his masters for options, and was able to simply play "matchmaker" between the PC and the demon who ran the manse, arranging for the PC to liberate the demon from another demon who controlled the manse (with fully support from their Yozi overlords). The fact that the manse was in Hell didn't bother the PC at all.

But the corruption was entirely guiding the others into doing things that served the Yozi agenda, or brought their choices in line with the methods and preferences of the Yozis. The goal of the corruption was to coopt them and gain their loyal service to his masters. Like I said, I think I must've had it easy, because the other PCs were weirdly cooperative in their own corruption. I don't know that they ever learned that Shining was an agent of the Yozis. He didn't go around doing much evil, himself, and came off looking like the naive, too-good-hearted-to-succeed one in the party a lot of the time. And it mostly wasn't even an act; he genuinely hated hurting others, even though he was willing to do it for his own goals. (He definitely wasn't Good.)



But the reason I share that is to illustrate why I ask what your goal in trying to corrupt the others is. What is it you want them "evil" for? What do you want to accomplish?

[OldTrees1]

In what way was any of this Evil?

The only gambit I see here is:

"Hey cleric, here is a special reagent. Using it to craft potions will make them more potent <bluff and persuade to sell the temptation as true and tempting>. But some might consider it morally questionable <bluff and persuade to persuade the cleric that it is morally questionable>."

Hope the cleric bought both pieces of misinformation.

Sit back and watch the cleric decide if something they consider slightly morally questionable is worth what they believe is a tempting increased potency. Will this cleric decide to be more evil tolerant? The actual morality of the reagent use is irrelevant to the test of character.

Of course this could easily backfire. The cleric might become even more stubborn in doing the pure thing. Although the consolation prize is convincing the cleric that using the reagent is immoral. That could provoke intolerance.

[Jaeda]

I'm among the crowd that isn't sure what the supposed evilness of what you are trying here is. As best as I can tell, it is either "using parts of a sapient being is evil" or "you drank the blood of a fiend and its evilness somehow corrupts you".

The former isn't evil, regardless of the intelligence of the deceased involved. There are several cultures (both in D&D, other fantasy worlds, and real-life) that consider using as much of the body as possible a way to honor the fallen by giving them purpose even in death; the deceased themselves has no use for the body anymore after all. The primary exception would be if disturbing the body interferes with the soul's ability to go to its proper afterlife, but this isn't a problem with a hell hound; either it recorporates on its home plane after a period of time or it permanently ceases to exist.

The latter isn't how alignment works in D&D. Alignment is a reflection of your decisions. As Red Fel points out, consuming evil juice doesn't make you evil; you are evil because you think that consuming evil juice is the expedient thing to do. It's a "the end's justify the means" mentality.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

For proper corruption I think you need to start with a few good no win scenarios. Like deposing of a tyrant only for the person who hired you becoming the next and worse ruler. Or a bit less ambitious, the choice between killing a bandit leader or knowing she will be back as a returning villain. After a few experiences with "things never end up right anyway" your allies might become more willing to cut corners. And from cutting corners you can work your way down to cutting fingers in order to make someone speak. Or, you know, other evil.

The hard part that you're dealing with now is setting up these scenario's. Maybe you could start by secretly helping everyone you guys get locked up escape? Tempt quest givers to change their mind and want to use the quest objects for evil? Find a quest hook that puts you guys in a morally grey area, like fighting humanoids in their villages with civilians around rather than a straight up fight against pure evil demon dogs. See if your DM is willing to work with you here, some texting and a few dice rolls in private between sessions. Get those guys demoralized, maybe a little used to the idea of hurting someone who's not the devil. Then start offering easy solutions. But they must not find out you're behind it all.

Whatever way you choose, it's absolutely not going to be easy.

[Jay R]

I have no idea what kind of “credit for evil” you’re trying to get, so I don’t have an opinion.

But even if I did, my opinion is entirely irrelevant. This is a DM judgment call, and nobody but your DM has the answer.

But in this case, there is a second benefit to asking your DM. Only she knows if there is such a thing as “credit for Evil” in the sense you’re asking about. I suspect that asking her will result in your getting the answer to the real question, which is, “What is ‘credit for evil’, how do you get it, and what effect might it have on your character?”