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[Moturnach]

58 minutes ago, PureChance said:

This doesn't particularly seem the campaign tone to support those more morally dubious characters maybe. Though I'm always a fan of the kindly old necromancer who only takes donations and helps out round the town with tireless workers.

Yeah, plus there is a lot of ways to describe "evil". A necromancer has to be hideous person just because while rising dead is outright evil in eyes of many, yet if you are helping city guard to fend off monsters using fallen guards as reinforcements, its also evil yet effectively its a good deed.

So its rather about going through the development of your character. It doesn't have to be selfish evil, its just a matter of view.

 

For example, my current character, Clay Dust, is evil cause he is criminal and gravedigger, yet he is moralist cause he did that due to famine caused by the fact that he is deserted archer who lost its skill, and injustice caused getting him to jail, so he had to escape breaking the law. For average citizen he is outright evil, yet Clay dont want to fall deeper than he had to, so its the kind of character which alignment heavily depends on how you look at him. He have its good and bad sides, plus may look like a hero in one light and villain in other light plus it doesn't dissonate with his beliefs and views, so its definitely worth trying. Imo even Necromancer or Oathbreaker might become a hero but it will be quite a different way to achieve same thing as for example good-aligned Mage or Paladin.

[RedRajah]

2 hours ago, Moturnach said:

Well, if for some reason we end up with lack of certain classes, i can switch character to other class or make another one, so its not that big deal.

Im curious why there is no Oathbreaker/Necromancer entries cause i expected to see a lot actually, but im fine with any class.

Well, Oathbreaker isn't in the PHB... ;)

[Moturnach]

12 minutes ago, RedRajah said:

Well, Oathbreaker isn't in the PHB... ;)

But it is in Dungeon Masters Guide, which is allowed, so its allowed 😁

[scootloops]

On 2/2/2024 at 9:51 PM, Aspekt said:

Yep, I think you did a great job of walking that line.

 

On 2/2/2024 at 7:39 PM, ResidualRose said:

Yeah, that was the assumption of acceptability I was operating under when I wrote the Purveyor of Passions intro scene for Saya.

I agree with Aspekt, that was well done and gave all you needed to understand the emotion and scene without being explicit.

[Aspekt]

To weigh in on the Good/Evil continuum...

I have usually defined the "Good" end of the spectrum as "This person will go out of their way to help others, even when they get nothing from it in return." I have usually defined the "Evil" end of the spectrum as, "This person desires to achieve their goals, even at the detriment to innocent others."

So a Paladin that throws themselves into the pit of doom to save a village is definitely "Good". A Lich that consumes the souls of an unsuspecting village in order to prolong their life is definitely evil.

Good and Evil have no meaning outside of human experience. If you ask if a tree is good or evil, kinda a non-answer. Trees just are. It's our understanding of what actions mean, and what effect those actions have on others that defines what it means to be Good or Evil.

With that said, most characters in DND actually fall solidly into the "Chaotic Neutral" bin, with some occasional steps back and forth between boxes. Sometimes good people do bad things for good reasons. Sometimes bad people do good things for bad reasons. Morality is complicated, and I wouldn't worry about alignment taking too much of a role in this campaign. Don't worry about which of the 9 options is written on your character sheet, consider the outcomes of your actions and choose accordingly.

[Aspekt]

On making your PC Good/Evil...

I would like everyone to fall somewhere between neutral and good.

If you have an Evil PC, that means that you're going to act selfishly and the "Good" members of the party are either going to want to imprison you or kill you. This means you would have to kill them or imprison them. You could try to convert them, but that rarely works in-game.

In my experience, games where EVERYONE is evil end up failing, because people don't like acting out evil things. The 10th time you pillage and burn a village and get loot to add to your pile (and not spend anywhere because you've killed all the traders) people get bored and leave. If you don't get bored of that, you as a person are a psychopath and need pro help haha.

If only PART of the party is evil, the PLAYERS get mad at each other because they each have goals they're trying to achieve that are at odds with each other. This makes the game un-fun because nobody can get the things done that they want to do.

DND is about making a team of people who set goals and are agents for change. You should be helping each other, not hindering each other.

[Coruja]

I can conceive a working evil character. Just imagine an urchin that had it hard in life. He grew up to being used to be selfish for survivability. He doesn't share, and he will take from others if he needs, no matter if these others will get severely harmed by that. He's not a psycho. He doesn't go burning towns and killing children. But he's evil.

[RedRajah]

1 minute ago, Coruja said:

I can conceive a working evil character. Just imagine an urchin that had it hard in life. He grew up to being used to be selfish for survivability. He doesn't share, and he will take from others if he needs, no matter if these others will get severely harmed by that.

Of course, if the others in question are the rest of the mercenary band, it won't work so well.

[Coruja]

Of course. But minor bad behavior, even inside a party, can be manageable. One big example is Belkar Bitterleaf, from The Order Of The Stick.

[RedRajah]

"minor bad behavior" ≠ "severely harmed" usually.

[PureChance]

2 minutes ago, Coruja said:

Of course. But minor bad behavior, even inside a party, can be manageable. One big example is Belkar Bitterleaf, from The Order Of The Stick.

I think this works because there's one author, who orchestrates all character reactions - I think with a group of players everyone needs to be very clearly on board with it OOC, otherwise players get frustrated - and possibly fairly - bring up why their character would continue to travel with a character like that. "But it's what my character would do" is a terrible reason for things, and cuts both ways. Usually the thief character employs the defence expecting the paladin to therefore just accept it for party cohesion.

Different motivations to work together of course do work, one may be doing it for the greater good, the other to clear the playing field of competition.

[Coruja]

Oh, I totally agre with you there. "It's what my character would do" is the most hectic and game breaking phrase, usually said by hypocrites that can't stand to be on the other side of the story.

When I mentioned that single character, sure, there's one narrator keeping everything together. But I already saw it working in a group. To be fair, it wasn't a group of strangers, but a group of friends, so I'll be considerate on that fact. But the main topic remains. I do believe it's doable. There's a few small rules that the evil character must always follow. Never to harm the team directly, or knowingly indirectly, and never to break the plot. One thing is to try and steal a bigger portion of the treasury, another is to assassinate the king out of the blue. I remember I had a character before that used to pickpocket people on the street. Anything she would get from it, if it was useful to her, she would keep, and if it was useful to the team, she would share. Someone innocent had to lose, but that wouldn't be her mates. This last character of mine was evil just because of that. Sure, she could be considered neutral, but I don't think that way. Any thief is very much aware that their victims are losing and there will probably be harsh consequences for them. But it doesn't matter for his personal gain.

[ResidualRose]

Looooot of experience playing evil party members in good/neutral parties here.

Played a (very) evil Drow Oathbreaker once who teamed up with a group of heroes. She was a death knight serving her Necromancer princess, who allied their faction of the Drow with the party’s aims to deal with a bigger threat.

Her princess’s goals, became her own, so she in turn, allied with the party (despite wanting to and having to resist the urge to, stab the party leader, a high elf evoker/light-cleric who…er…”dallied” with the princess for a few nights*…ironically, they actually tended to work the best together…both pragmatists, even though she was waaaaaay more ruthless).

One way to do it smoothly, is to have the “evil/odd man out” in the group functioning under a trope guide and operate under those standards openly, so the rest of the group knows kinda what they are dealing with. That trope is often “The Lancer”…since that’s were you can put the villainous/anti-villainous/anti-hero types in a hero’s party: ie, Vegeta from DBZ (he doesn’t quite fit the evil alignment anymore once you get into Super). This is the trope that my Oathbreaker “fell into” as the party reorganized itself and its social dynamics naturally as time went on. She was both the foil and strongest ally to the party’s high elf leader, as the two of them often found themselves having to work together to corral the rest of party into focusing on tasks as they were a bunch of CN cats (er, well, a naive shadow-corrupted teenaged shadow sorcerer/fighter/warlock and a full blood Orc barbarian) in need of herding.

The other trick is to adhere to “Lawful Evil” on that spectrum of ne’er-do-wells, and establish the rules that your character deals with. By establishing and following a personal code to restrict some of your evil ruthlessness that you otherwise unleash on others, it should put you in a moral/ethical category that is at least one step above whatever the BBEG is…like Charles and Magneto teaming up in the X-Men whenever Mastermold and the Sentinels show up and start doing a genocide. Magneto is usually the top rival to the X-Men…but if something nastier shows up, his code of ethics and personal honour provide a bridge that allows him and the heroes to meet and team up to quash that nastier thing…what happens after that plot and BBEG is done, well, that’s another story arc. XD


*-side tangent, this actual led to a hilarious scene in a dungeon temple we were exploring. We found a mystical fountain of mercury, that reflected back possible futures to those who looked into it.

The High Elf looked in and saw him marrying the Drow Princess to cement the alliance and welcome the Drow back into the civilized world from their long exile to the “burning isles” (aka, the naughty corner of the world they were told to go sit in, after the last time they tried to take over the world and overthrow the Draconic overlords that tried to keep world peace in tact).

…everyone could see this scene…and my Oathbreaker had to visibly restrain herself to avoid trying to dunk the cleric’s head right into the fountain to prevent that future. She spent the rest of the dungeon staring daggers at the high elf light cleric whenever they looked at each other…in the end, she saved him though in the temple boss fight a session later, because she did swear to her princess to do whatever was necessary to preserve the alliance and ensure the party’s successful mission.

Basically, her “leash” to keep herself in check and allow the party a modicum of trust to operate under, was her affection for the Princess and by extension, the Princess’s political pragmatism.

I mean, it didn’t stop her from doing some reaaaaally heinous stuff when the party wasn’t around (such as inciting a conflict between the human/high-elf kingdoms and the wood elf isolationists, via a series of undead assassinations that would push the humans and high-elf’s further into the Drows’ political sphere…or inciting a riot with a similar method that led to the uprising and overthrow of an otherwise innocent local lord who was hamstringing logistics for the war effort…etc), but at least when she was operating alongside them, they had a fairly good sense that she wasn’t about to plunge a dagger into their backs mid-fight.

Edited February 4 by ResidualRose (see edit history)

[OneMoreGamer]

Caused the most in-game trouble by playing a lawful good cleric who dressed skimpily and liked to dance freely. Party had to clear out a whole tavern to keep away the “admirers.” Sweet little innocent thing she was.

 

 

[Coruja]

@ResidualRose What a great story! Thanks for sharing. I had my fair share of smiles this night thanks to you!

@OneMoreGamer And that's why sex education is a must at the monastery.