Evil characters in a mixed-alignment party.

[Lago PARANOIA]

This doesn't work out. Why? Well, one of three things happen.

1) If you're lucky, the evil character never actually does any evil things beyond 'let's rough up this guy some' and 'let's pee on some corpses'. Evil in this case is an informed attribute that doesn't actually affect how the character will behave. Characters like Zelgadis and Piccolo fit into this category.

2) The character with 'evil' on their character sheet does live up to it. This means that they do things like rob the poor, trade slaves, kick children in the teeth for ticking them off, so on. So the characters who are actually good are forced to ignore it, which means that characterization breaks down. Who wants to read a story about how Roy and Durkon had to look the other way yet again as Belkar stabbed someone in the face for a donkey or abused elderly slaves? (p.s. fuck you Burlew)

3) The character with 'evil' on their character sheet does live up to it and the other characters don't tolerate it. That's fine and all, but RPGs are a cooperative storytelling game. And as a limitation of the medium, having the party being broken up wrecks the game a lot more than torching orphanages. So what this generally means is that the evil character is forced to get a new one, the good characters are forced to derail their characters to match the level of evil of their compatriot, or finally:

4) The evil character keeps all of their activities away from their compatriots and their buddies are none the wiser. This is retarded, for two reasons. One, it makes the 'good' PCs look like complete clueless goons--and since the players are perfectly aware what's going on this wrecks characterization anyway. Two, this situation can only last for so long, whereupon things get discovered and one of the three other situations I describe happen.


And you know what? Don't give me that 'evil isn't about being STUPID EVIL' tripe, because you know what? No one has given me a satisfactory answer of how you can actually be evil without being stupid evil because by definition evil is disruptive.

No evil characters, please, unless everyone is at more-or-less the exact same standard of evil.

[Avoraciopoctules]

The 4th situation isn't necessarily unsustainable. I am reminded of the second of the Shattered Light novels ( http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Light-Shatte ... 0671032674 ), where the protagonist, Wladex, was a spellcasting vampire who killed innocents to sustain himself and quested to defeat the antagonist in order to take its place.

Wladex organized and led the other party members, all warriors (some with magical abilities), in a quest to defeat a malevolent force deific in scope. In the course of this, he always presented himself as something other than what he was, switching alter egos when the current one was put in a situation where a normal person would be expected to die. His true identity remained concealed from his companions throughout the book, though he had to put some effort into maintaining this.

If a character has both talent at deception and prudence, I don't think it inevitable that the other characters in a group will eventually see through one of their disguises.

[Psychic Robot]

And you know what? Don't give me that 'evil isn't about being STUPID EVIL' tripe, because you know what? No one has given me a satisfactory answer of how you can actually be evil without being stupid evil because by definition evil is disruptive.

What is stupid evil?

[Lago PARANOIA]

If a character has both talent at deception and prudence, I don't think it inevitable that the other characters in a group will eventually see through one of their disguises.

There are two big reasons why this doesn't work.

The first reason is that is a novel and this is an RPG. The author could control everyone else's reactions and decide if and when the reveal of the character as a vampire was going to happen. In an actual RPG where the plot isn't railroaded, the story's wheels can come off even when the player of the evil character doesn't want it to.

The second reason is because this idea is offensive to the players and actually insulting to the people playing real heroes. The good guys are constantly getting out-of-character reminders that they have an evil bastard in the group who is constantly getting away with things. This means that they cannot actually do anything nor will the game actually do anything about it unless they want situations #2 or #3 to develop.

[sake]

I don't see what's so bad about option one, really. It's not a major disruption on the party, the player gets to have the character he wanted, and it could even lead to some nice rp moments between characters.

The only time I've ever seen it really be a problem is when you get Lawful Stupid and LOL SO RANDUM! Evil in the same party.

Hell, I've been in groups where I played a LE character in a mostly CG party, and at the end of the game, my character had the least number of random acts of murder, vandalism, and amazingly enough even arson of the bunch.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't see what's so bad about option one, really. It's not a major adisruption on the party, the player gets to have the character he wanted, and it could even lead to some nice rp moments between characters.

But that's not even really being evil. It just means that you're a children's TV show-flavored antihero that spits on cats, dresses in black, and snarls at passerbys.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

What can I say other than that I've played games with people being allowed to be whatever alignment they choose and have had immense fun with it. Yes, party conflicts do happen. However, I feel that this has overall only made the game more fun.

Now Your Mileage May Vary: Maybe some people have horror stories about this type of scenario. From my own experience and anecdotal evidence it's been a lot of fun.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Conflicts such as?

[Avoraciopoctules]

If a character has both talent at deception and prudence, I don't think it inevitable that the other characters in a group will eventually see through one of their disguises.

There are two big reasons why this doesn't work.

The first reason is that is a novel and this is an RPG. The author could control everyone else's reactions and decide if and when the reveal of the character as a vampire was going to happen. In an actual RPG where the plot isn't railroaded, the story's wheels can come off even when the player of the evil character doesn't want it to.

The second reason is because this idea is offensive to the players and actually insulting to the people playing real heroes. The good guys are constantly getting out-of-character reminders that they have an evil bastard in the group who is constantly getting away with things. This means that they cannot actually do anything nor will the game actually do anything about it unless they want situations #2 or #3 to develop.

Player 1: "Yo, players 2, 3, and 4! For the next game, I'm thinking of playing a totally nefarious vampire mage hoping to usurp the Laria. Now, there are all sorts of things making that make taking its place impossible for a PC to achieve, so his quest is actually futile, but it makes for a good reason for him to work with the rest of the party. What do you guys think?
Player 2: Could be interesting. You'd have some difficulty dealing with mundanes, so you probably want to work using a disguise. Blood Magic is fairly versatile, so you could assume the identity of a regular caster easily. You would fight well, too, making you a good jack-of-all trades if you feed regularly.
Player 3: I'm playing a paladin, so on the surface, this looks like it could bog the game down in intra-party conflict. Then again, with all of us working together, I'm sure we can design our characters so that it would take arbitrary plot intervention for your secret to come out. I don't want to play a total dunce, so we should work together to make sure your PC is prudent in where he finds blood.
Player 4: Actually, what if your vampire is the one who organized the party in the first place? Maybe you've been researching a way to usurp the Laria, and you need some unwitting allies to aid you. Since we'll be scheming over what he does away from the party anyways, making him the party leader gives him the excuse of having work to do during the rest of our downtime.
GM: That could make my job easier. I was planning a big fetch quest anyways, and this provides an easy out for the party having access to the relevant information. You're fine with an evil PC?
[general assent]
Player 1: Alright. I'll work with the rest of you to make sure my character pulls acceptably subtle nefarious shenanigans. How about we have the scheme he pulls backlash on him at some point? If he survives long enough to implement his plan, it weakens or destroys the Laria, but annihilates him.
Player 3: It'd be hilarious if we never figure out he's a vampire. In the next campaign, we'd find a memorial to his heroism, and it might not even have his real name on it. I'm in and hoping he ends up an accidental martyr.

[sake]

But that's not even really being evil. It just means that you're a children's TV show-flavored antihero that spits on cats, dresses in black, and snarls at passerbys.

That sounds more like how CN and CG is played.

So a character has to be a puppy-raping, pyromanic, serial killer that likes to eat little old ladies and use small children as kindling to be considered evil? This is like those shitty crpgs where you're labeled good for doing side quests even though you're just doing them for the shiny new guns and level ups, and it's far more effective than killing and robing would be.

The whole concept of alignment as what the character does rather than what the character is, looks good on paper but falls apart when even good characters basicly just go around killing and/or robbing people different then they are to gain wealth and power. 'Good' in most role playing games is just 'Evil Lite'

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Conflicts such as?

Well we had a Paladin who was in the Process of becoming Fallen alongside a Cleric of Pelor. The Paladin would go on excursions of evil on his own to kill people for money away from the party meanwhile the rest of the party slowly began to notice the Paladin having extra wealth and items and inquiring how he got them. This involved a lot of good roleplay and discovery

Another situation involved one of the party Wizards and his cohort deciding to take one of the magic items left from a deceased Necromancer to use Trap the Soul on the party Cleric. The rest of the party then had to make an expedition to find and try to defeat their former companion.

Anyway, I'm not saying that allowing mixed alignments won't prevent conflict, it will very likely cause a lot of conflicts and character deaths. However, if roleplayed well and within a mature group of players it can create a lot of fun. And, I think it's important to point out that conflicts aren't necessarily bad, and can (if played well) be very enjoyable.

--Bill

[Fuchs]

Hell, I've been in groups where I played a LE character in a mostly CG party, and at the end of the game, my character had the least number of random acts of murder, vandalism, and amazingly enough even arson of the bunch.

I can attest that this was the case in my first RP group as well - my heroic bard got along best with the LE fighter/wizard since that one, while staying true to his alignment, was the least ranom murderer.

Incidentally, we never really noticed that he was LE, since no one bothered to look up his sheet, where it was plainly written on the top.

[Amra]

An evil character in a group can work well - and this is borne out by other anecdotes on the thread - when the story is allowed to become *about* the player characters, not just *starring* the player characters. This tends to happen anyway at high levels, but there's no reason why a campaign at any level can't work that way.

Evil characters in a group of good characters also don't have to go off and do Evil all the time. There's no reason why they can't be sensible and swallow their impatience at the other characters' do-gooder attitude, provided there's a compelling reason for them to do so. If there's a long-term goal that requires them to hook up with this group of people and play against type, that's not a problem; if they're not dumb, all you'll get from a role-playing point of view is the occasional snarl of impatience or *suggestions* about doing things that shock the other characters.

Played well, an evil character can gradually lead other characters down the slippery slope, encouraging them just a tiny bit more each time to relax the boundaries of moral behaviour. Alternatively they can just be permanently pissed off at the moralising of the others in the party. Provided what they *do* doesn't fly right in the face of other characters' codes of conduct, it doesn't matter overmuch what they think or what they say, within reason of course.

You might well argue that this is tantamount to Option 1), but it doesn't have to be. If the Evil party member sits on their tendencies right up until the point where doing Good or failing to do Evil will personally disadvantage them in a significant way, they could rub along with the others quite happily until that time arrives.

That's the thing about being Evil; you don't lose membership for doing Good things. A Good character in an otherwise Evil party is far more problematic. As Frank and K once said (and I'm paraphrasing because I can't remember the original quote): mend people's thatch for them free of charge and you're Joe the Helpful Thatcher, but eat just *one* baby and you're Joe the Cannibal forever, no matter how many leaks you fix.

You don't get booted off Team Evil just because you saved some children from a burning orphanage, particularly if what you've saved them for is "later". Team Good is much fussier.

[erik]

I have happily played a neutral wizard who was strongly leaning towards evil (worshiped vecna, delved dungeons to kill intelligent humanoids for use of their corpses and items rather than any heroic cause). Looking back, I definitely should have been moved into the full-evil alignment before we ended that campaign.

After our paladin leader died, I wound up being the leader of the group of mostly good-neutral leaning players without so much as a hiccup. Our goals very often overlapped so it all worked out often in entertaining ways.

Evil doesn't even have to be disruptive when working with good adventurers. Often times it can be an asset to have someone from the other team on your side.

[Fuchs]

And evil as defined by the PHB doesn't mean that you can't have friends, can't be loyal, can't restrain from acting on your base impulses or can't plan long-term.

[Nihlin]

Player 1: "Yo, players 2, 3, and 4! For the next game, I'm thinking of playing a totally nefarious vampire mage hoping to usurp the Laria. Now, there are all sorts of things making that make taking its place impossible for a PC to achieve, so his quest is actually futile, but it makes for a good reason for him to work with the rest of the party. What do you guys think?
Player 2: Could be interesting. You'd have some difficulty dealing with mundanes, so you probably want to work using a disguise. Blood Magic is fairly versatile, so you could assume the identity of a regular caster easily. You would fight well, too, making you a good jack-of-all trades if you feed regularly.
Player 3: I'm playing a paladin, so on the surface, this looks like it could bog the game down in intra-party conflict. Then again, with all of us working together, I'm sure we can design our characters so that it would take arbitrary plot intervention for your secret to come out. I don't want to play a total dunce, so we should work together to make sure your PC is prudent in where he finds blood.
Player 4: Actually, what if your vampire is the one who organized the party in the first place? Maybe you've been researching a way to usurp the Laria, and you need some unwitting allies to aid you. Since we'll be scheming over what he does away from the party anyways, making him the party leader gives him the excuse of having work to do during the rest of our downtime.
GM: That could make my job easier. I was planning a big fetch quest anyways, and this provides an easy out for the party having access to the relevant information. You're fine with an evil PC?
[general assent]
Player 1: Alright. I'll work with the rest of you to make sure my character pulls acceptably subtle nefarious shenanigans. How about we have the scheme he pulls backlash on him at some point? If he survives long enough to implement his plan, it weakens or destroys the Laria, but annihilates him.
Player 3: It'd be hilarious if we never figure out he's a vampire. In the next campaign, we'd find a memorial to his heroism, and it might not even have his real name on it. I'm in and hoping he ends up an accidental martyr.

Hell yes. For a while now, my policy has been that either the game looks like this during setup or we're playing Lacuna.

[Jacob_Orlove]

The easiest way to have an evil character in a good party would be to have the evil character invoke "the greater good" a lot. That shifts the debate to what means are appropriate to achieve what everyone agrees is a worthwhile end. The "evil" character can take a very utilitarian position, or at least keep arguing for easy outs like 'hey, let's just kill him' while the "good" characters would have to keep arguing for approaches that might be more difficult or less effective.

This preserves the tension of the good/evil split, and leaves room for either side to compromise in any given situation. It's also not stupid.

[Kaelik]

I disagree about the greater good as a catch all solution, but when I play an evil character, I like to make a point of playing the different kinds of good off on each other.

So you have a Tree Hugging Hippy Druid who would kill someone to save a tree, a Kantian Paladin (the class, or just anyone who actually believes that shit), and some utilitarian CG type.

You want to kill someone you captured? Just do it, then say, "But we had to because we couldn't stop him from burning down the forest, and besides, greater good."

Now the Kantian is going to say something about how you can't do evil for good ends, and as soon as he does, you just won, because the utilitarian is going to totally forget about whether or not killing him was the greatest good (it might be) and spend all his time arguing with the Kantian, meanwhile, the Druid is waffling because he loves his trees.

You can do the same thing in another situation by arguing, "We have to do X, because it's out duty, and we would want others to do it for us." Bamn, Kantian does all your arguing for you.

And you can't say that it makes everyone else look dumb, because it shows everyone else sticking up for their actual beliefs.