How can you act/be evil in a good aligned campaign?

[TraadosDarksund]

I'm looking for a little bit of advice on how to Act out an evil character when the DM's campaigns are practically built for Lawful GOOD characters. He even goes so far as to have us become "junior defenders of Justice"....and it's hard to act evil when all the npc's force you to do good deeds. The current campaign right now is to a bring a ghost girl and her protector to the corpse of her dad....i see no benifit in doing this...seeing as how the protector will prevent me from looting any corpse we find, as to pay respect for the dead. So....what do I do?

[erikun]

Behind the scenes work would probably be the best. In your particular case, hiring someone to follow after you (magically if needed) and loot the bodies as you finish them allows you to get 100% of the dropped treasure without blowing your Defender of Justice cover.

If you are a spellcaster, or even someone with ranks in alchemy, humanoid/animal experimentation is sure to keep the needle in the evil territory. People might locate your experiments, though.

Extortion, blackmail, and working with thieves and/or assassination guilds is pretty questionable. The above case, of hiring someone to pilfer the corpses of opponents for you, would likely be a thieves guide job. Of course, the people is that other people will, by definition, be able to connect you to the crime. You need to ensure that they don't go running to the police to get at you, or for reverse blackmail.

Or you could just continue to acquire the keys to world domination while doing everything else in a LG-manner. After all, nobody will care what your alignment was once you're mind-controlled the entire planet or reduced it to a necromatic wasteland.

[Reis Tahlen]

Best exemple of an evil character in a world full of good, powerfull people:

Spoiler

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[Avilan the Grey]

Step one: Do not be Evil Stupid. Or Stupid Evil.

[herrhauptmann]

A big part of evil could be just refusing to help in a fight.
"We're on a quest to save the world, why are we detouring to get vengeance for some peasants on a group of orcs? Everyone else is going, fine, I'll go with you."
Later on, when the fight starts, stand there, leave the fight, let hostages get killed in front of you. This is more effective if you're a wizard or rogue, you can just sneak or teleport away.

[Tyndmyr]

Step one: Do not be Evil Stupid. Or Stupid Evil.

Yup. Having lots of good people around is both a challenge and an opportunity. There's no call to squander their good opinion of you.

Get henchmen. Never reveal your real name/face to them. Plot, plan, and scheme endlessly to get ahead, but do so cleverly, and so that no blame can possibly be pinned on you. Frame others to take the fall for your misdeeds.

[Marnath]

You don't have to be a bastard or a criminal to be evil. When the team saves a princess, they did it because it was right and you went along to get paid(neutral) and maybe to extort "favors" from her(evil.) When the team saves the poor farming town from orc raiders, the team does it for great justice and you do it because you love watching the light leave a sentient being's eyes. When the team brings down a bandit ring, they do it to save travelers and you do it either out of malice(see above point about killing) or because they dared raise their hands against you. When the thug is taking a child's candy, you chase him off not because he's a criminal thug, but because he was race X or Y and every X or Y deserves a painful death because of their skin tone. No one knows you're not LG unless they detect evil, and why would they? You're the hero.

[Drakevarg]

When I'm stuck in situations like this, I play myself as "the dog on the leash," like a more under-control Belkar. I'm a vicious, bloodthirsty monstrosity, but I reign in my desire to rearrange your organs until my Good-aligned party says it's kosher.

[Snake-Aes]

When I'm stuck in situations like this, I play myself as "the dog on the leash," like a more under-control Belkar. I'm a vicious, bloodthirsty monstrosity, but I reign in my desire to rearrange your organs until my Good-aligned party says it's kosher.

Or when they won't know. Mr Evil Psion has done lots of scheming of the "planted memories" type. One of the guys I implanted with an evil scheme even ascended to big bad without ever knowing it was all my doing.

[Umael]

When I'm stuck in situations like this, I play myself as "the dog on the leash," like a more under-control Belkar. I'm a vicious, bloodthirsty monstrosity, but I reign in my desire to rearrange your organs until my Good-aligned party says it's kosher.

That's a good one.



Don't forget playing someone who doesn't see himself as evil, but as a defender of a different moral code.

"Good and evil does not exist, except as illusions. Reality, the laws of physics, the laws of magic, the laws of nature, are the only laws that matter. It is not even that might makes right, but that right is only a social construct, the deception that your neighbor won't kill you because your neighbor is deceived into thinking you won't kill him."

There is also "war makes strange bedfellows", where you play someone who works with the rest of the PCs long-term because of a mutual threat.

"When this is all over, and Lord Abrasaix is destroyed, we are going to have words, you and I. And after we have words, I will have your head."

You can also do the "deluded evil", someone who does evil, but is deluded into thinking these are good acts.

"You don't understand! They have to die! They are dying already, starving! But I didn't kill all of them! I kept the healthiest ones alive and convinced them to eat their dead. Cannibalism isn't wrong, just misunderstood!"

[Gensh]

Well, you could bring the corpse to her instead. Like in the "animate it, give it one of those disguise undead masks, convince the party it's your Uncle Bob, and take it with you" sense. What's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing because as you can see in that other thread, necromancy being Evil is completely arbitrary by RAW, and you're still technically being just and righteous. If you're not a caster, carry the corpse in a bag or something. Alternatively: use some sort of weapon that prevents resurrection on everything you kill.

[kamikasei]

Is the problem that the DM doesn't want evil characters, or that he's okayed an evil character but isn't taking you in to account in the campaign? From the OP I get the impression that you want to play a character that the DM doesn't want at the table, and the best advice on how to do that is "don't".

[FMArthur]

Do you always have to act evil to be evil? Can evil characters not hold loyalty to their companions?

What would you say to a character idea where they were of Evil alignment but never let anyone know, even through actions? It's widely accepted that you can't just smite every commoner who flags as evil on Detect Evil, because they might ever engage in any serious evil acts. Such people are supposed to be common. Why can't a PC be one?

[Tetrasodium]

Tell us about your character? The options available to a rogue, fighter, and wizard are all wildly different for example.

[Tengu_temp]

Just why do you want to have an evil character in a campaign oriented towards good characters anyway?

[DM-Ninja]

If you want it to be interesting try the slow slide into evil, I mean after all
if a hero has constantly had to go through so many evil things my best guess is this hero has got to be a little weird in the head(some type of disorder or taint)
or you could have such a foreign viewpoint as to think of evil deeds as normal
not every hero can weather out 10 orcs a day plus whatever else happened to show up and want to play and be able to stay the straight and narrow

[hamishspence]

One good Evil achetype is the Tempter- the person who gently manipulates others into entering the grey areas of morality, bit by bit:

"Surely it would be wrong to place the rights of a bad guy over the needs of good people" (As a reason for "roughing up" villains for info)

and so on.

[Tetrasodium]

Simply being detached from or just not quite understanding morality or the difference between right & wrong is another way that you can handle it for certain types of characters. If you do enough horrific things, even because it's "right", eventually you might snap and have trouble with letting yourself see right from wrong. It might be hard to fit into a character if you are already playing it, but you can potentially slowly slide towards it over time. An extreme example might be from full metal jacket, "how can you shoot women and children like that?" > "it's pretty easy, you just don't lead as much since they run slower". Just slide into a less extreme version :).

[Jolly]

Is the problem that the DM doesn't want evil characters, or that he's okayed an evil character but isn't taking you in to account in the campaign? From the OP I get the impression that you want to play a character that the DM doesn't want at the table, and the best advice on how to do that is "don't".

My thoughts exactly. If the DM is onboard with it but just bad at it, I'd still skip it. If you're bound and determined to be evil in a good campaign, play a sociopath. High personal interaction skills, utterly self absorbed, manipulative. Expect to die from PvP, or to lose your character to the DM to be the BBEG.

[mucat]

Why do you have to assume that every evil person who does a good deed has an ulterior motive? You can do good things simply because they're the right thing to do, and still be thoroughly evil.

A quick example I just invented:

Anne is a wizard, self-admittedly knowledge-hungry and a bit of a grouch, but overall a decent sort and a good neighbor. She gladly lent her divination spells to help find the child who had been trapped in that abandoned mine shaft outside town -- they found him just in time, too; she hates to think what might have happened if she hadn't been there. And she always has a Levitation spell memorized to help get old Mrs. Eldon's cat down from the tree, though she wonders how any cat can be that stupid.

Last month, Anne finally tracked down the only surviving copy of an ancient tome she had been seeking for years. It was in the hands of a collector in a distant city, so Anne immediately traveled to meet him. She offered a better price than he would ever get from anyone else -- thanks to her long research, she was perhaps the only living wizard who understood the importance of this book -- but he stubbornly refused to part with it, even after she tripled the already-generous offer.

Anne could have commissioned a thief to steal the book, but after the interest she had shown in it, she would be the first one the collector suspected. So she thanked him politely for his time, verified that his family was away for the evening, and cast Finger of Death. Anne arranged the scene to look like the man had died alone of a heart attack, took the tome, and teleported home in time to rescue that damned cat again for Mrs. Eldon.

No one ever suspected that the collector's death was anything but natural. His widow and children are well cared for, thanks to an anonymous donation they received, of exactly the amount Anne originally offered for the book.


You can't deny that Anne is evil...but she would get along fine with a good-aligned adventuring party, and almost always share their goals. Most of the good deeds she did alongside them would be perfectly genuine, not designed to fool anyone or to serve her self-interest. She likes to help, and sincerely values the well-being of others.

Just not quite as much as she values books...

[hamishspence]

That goes quite well with Savage Species which describes how evil characters can be very nice to people who they have a connection too "Loving parents, loyal friends, devoted spouses"- but ruthless toward their enemies- rationalizing their deeds.

Champions of Ruin has a big list of general evil character archetypes- and they aren't all malevolent and spiteful.

[Avilan the Grey]

I would most likely play a character like this:

1. Greater threat than me - I help, because I don't want Count VampireCyborgDemon to take over the world / feed the universe into a black hole / whatever.

2. I get a lot of loot.

3. I get a lot of rewards and political contacts I can use later.

4. I don't screw over teammates until I gain a LARGE LONG TERM benefit from it.

5. I will have actual, real, friends and loved ones.

[MightyTim]

You should really talk to your DM about this one. From the sounds of it, he really doesn't want any evil characters, in which case, you might as well not bother. If they simply hadn't considered the possibility, work with them to find a suitably evil character but still fit the campaign. Perhaps you can work it in with the DM that your character is only tagging along so that you can betray the party at a later date, and at present time, you don't want to do anything too overtly evil to tip them off.

[Avilan the Grey]

You can always compromise by playing a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold.

[Kyrthain]

I'm currently playing a lawful evil (well, technicallly Evil) character in a 4e game mostly comprised of good/neutral

I'm a paladin of bahamut (Yes, the lawful good one) My explanation is that because one of the other characters (a very good aligned non-violent cleric of avandra) saved my life, I owe her mine, and have become her body guard. He's utterly ruthless in his defense of her, and doesn't care about helping others or anything like that, but he's still the kind of character that can work in a good aligned party

[TraadosDarksund]

Tell us about your character? The options available to a rogue, fighter, and wizard are all wildly different for example.

I'm a fighter. I'm neutral evil. I was FORCED against my WILL to be a masked crusader of justice. The dead ghost girl has to see her father where he died. I worship the Dark Six, I am a dormant half-feind. I don't want to be a defender of justice. Anthying else?

And would letting the ghost girls protector serve his use and killing work? Or are there ways the DM can prevent this?

[hamishspence]

I'm a paladin of bahamut (Yes, the lawful good one) My explanation is that because one of the other characters (a very good aligned non-violent cleric of avandra) saved my life, I owe her mine, and have become her body guard. He's utterly ruthless in his defense of her, and doesn't care about helping others or anything like that, but he's still the kind of character that can work in a good aligned party

Would he be a "Fallen" paladin of Bahamut? You can't normally start off as one with an alignment different from the deity- though you can change alignment and retain powers (and continue levelling).

[Chaelos]

One of the most evil characters I've ever seen was also one of the most innocent I've ever seen. He genuinely thought of himself as lawful good, but he really didn't know what that meant, generally speaking.

It was a little similar to this.

He had some traits of good characters--extreme loyalty to his "friends" aka the other party members, great courage--but his tendencies to murder/devour/massacre NPC's (almost always without the other characters knowing, because he was so sneaky) was genuinely horrifying. By the time our characters discovered the true extent of his evil, the BBEG of the campaign had already revealed itself and we needed our evil, evil friend.

It was certainly an exercise in keeping player-knowledge separate from character-knowledge, to be sure.

[mucat]

I'm a fighter. I'm neutral evil. I was FORCED against my WILL to be a masked crusader of justice. The dead ghost girl has to see her father where he died. I worship the Dark Six, I am a dormant half-feind. I don't want to be a defender of justice. Anthying else?

And would letting the ghost girls protector serve his use and killing work? Or are there ways the DM can prevent this?

None of this makes any sense.

Why did you create a character who was at odds with the party and the game? Did the DM give a really bad explanation of what the campaign was about? Or did you just decide it was your right to play the character you want to play, whether or not your character would add anything to the other players' enjoyment of the game?

If it's the latter case, the problem has nothing to do with evil characters, and everything to do with a player who is behaving badly in real life. (Hint: look around at the other players and the DM. It isn't any of them.)

And what do you mean by "are there ways the DM can prevent this?" He can prevent anything he chooses to; the DM arbitrates the whole frikkin' campaign world!

It sounds like you're thinking of this as a game you play against the DM, and assuming there must rules in place to give you a fair chance against him. There aren't, because the DM is not supposed to be your adversary.

[Hawriel]

Basicly acting like an average adventurer is all you need to do.

Self obsorbed. Only cares about the xp and the mony.

NPC are only aknowledged if they are usefull.

The suffering of others is really beside the point.