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In my experience the only time playing evil characters works out is when you're doing the gimmick "everyone's evil" game. Then just make sure everyone knows that you're playing it Paranoia style, that life is cheap, and let everyone go nuts with the murder and betrayal. And when everyone's bored with that, sweep up the remains, say "this is why we don't play evil characters" and reboot into something else. 
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Apr 8, 2017 06:16
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Evil characters are fine if the party is working to beat another, more eviler evil. "Yes, I'll help you kill the insane dragon in the process of ascending to godhood to unmake & remake the universe. Just let me make sure my demon thralls are keeping the slaves on task while we're away."
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Apr 8, 2017 06:25
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Nehru the Damaja posted:If this conversation is gonna ouroboros back to just a few posts ago about doing good things for evil reasons, let's just call it off for god's sake I mean ultimately if this is your character's arc there's no problem with it and if you want to write LE on your character sheet, be my guest because I want you to have fun, to say nothing of the fact that my opinion means (I assume) very little to you. That many, many players have taken "Evil" to mean, "gently caress with the party" at some point says more about the kinds of people who generally feel the need to write 'evil' on their sheet more than anything else, but that's anecdotal. Maybe your arc is awesome and alignment is pretty meaningless. The game where you assign alignments to fictional characters in order to feel it out is a pretty good example of how meaningless alignment is compared to arc and personality. Littlefinger might be a great example of LE or he might be a great example of CE, depending on whether you want to talk about his goals or his means. Is Saruman LE while Sauron is CE? Is Twoface LE? Who knows! All of those characters are probably evil, but only because they're such villains. What about non-villainous evil characters? Well I mean I guess you've got Hondo Ohnaka from Clone Wars and that's about the best example I can think of - he's a selfish little poo poo who will betray you in a heartbeat but he's also prone to random acts of kindness just because.
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Apr 8, 2017 06:37
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The actual answer is that evil characters are fine as long as you, the player, are willing to tune what "evil" means to suit the tone of the game and don't actively impede the game and enjoyment of your fellow players because "I'm just playing my character lol." If people want a more lighthearted game then you can't be the guy who wants to carpet-bomb the kingdom with enchanted nerve gas or who gleefully participates in "enhanced interrogation" in creepy detail. In fact you probably shouldn't be doing, or encouraging, that second thing regardless of what your group's tastes are. But by and large playing someone with a big capital-E Evil stamped on the character sheet of their soul is fine provided everybody is on board with things and isn't trying to be a disruptive jerk but for some reason a lot of gaming groups aren't comprised of people who are always on the same page or willing to discuss things in advance so instead you get Bob who insists that he wants to play an evil character and it'll be fine guys, he swears, right up to the part where Bob stabs the king in the dick just because and derails the evening's campaign.
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Apr 8, 2017 06:40
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lawful and chaotic are meaningless noise
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Apr 8, 2017 06:41
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It always seemed to me that alignment was created to help people who aren't used to role-playing get into an RP mindset, but it's become a monster with a life of its own and often serves to cramp role-playing rather than serve it. Write whatever the gently caress you want on your sheet, then try to play your character like a real person with motivations and ideologies different from your own. Edit: also, does anyone use this Ideals thing? I haven't actually played a 5e game yet, just read the books.
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Apr 8, 2017 06:46
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I've never played an evil character, but one of the two times I considered it the narrative I went with in my head was making him like one of those arrogant kung-fu guys who desire power but still adhere to a kinda warrior's code of honor. He'd stick with the party as they traveled the land in order to facilitate meeting and defeating new challengers and growing more powerful, but he'd never screw them over cause he didn't like dealing with most people and they formed a trusted buffer between himself and the unwashed masses. I never went through with that character, but that's about as close as I got to inserting an evil character in a good-alligned campaign without derailing it.
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Apr 8, 2017 07:13
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Bad Seafood posted:I've never played an evil character, but one of the two times I considered it the narrative I went with in my head was making him like one of those arrogant kung-fu guys who desire power but still adhere to a kinda warrior's code of honor. He'd stick with the party as they traveled the land in order to facilitate meeting and defeating new challengers and growing more powerful, but he'd never screw them over cause he didn't like dealing with most people and they formed a trusted buffer between himself and the unwashed masses. This is honestly the most recommended way I'd go about making an evil D&D character in an otherwise non-evil game which is to figure out a motivation that lends itself well to working with the party even if that motivation is, from the character's perspective, "I can use these guys to take hits for me while I pursue my own agenda which, coincidentally, also doesn't happen to derail the game or impede their enjoyment, and I guess I'll save them if I have to since good help is so hard to find these days."
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Apr 8, 2017 07:45
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Petr posted:Edit: also, does anyone use this Ideals thing? I haven't actually played a 5e game yet, just read the books. Ideals/Bonds/Flaws really is just RP fluff to encourage you not to project your own personality/beliefs/feelings into the character you're playing. Your character is supposed to be another person, so havin some key personality traits or complications that differ from your own can make it interesting. Being an obsessive gambler or a serial hustler is neat, but you need a DM that will provide opportunities to utilize it. The ones in the books are okay for starting points. The first couple characters you make up should probably draw from them. Eventually you'll figure out what your character's personality is like and you'll just write your own.
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Apr 8, 2017 11:15
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The best alignment is "Indiana Jones" or maybe "Darth Vader"
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Apr 8, 2017 11:52
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Gort posted:The best alignment is "Indiana Jones" or maybe "Darth Vader" Alignment: dad jokes
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Apr 8, 2017 11:56
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Also if you do want to play an evil character that eventually has different goals from the party, I highly recommend playing to lose - like deliberately set your evil character up to betray the other PCs, have a terrible plan, then lose. Like, it's only fair. You're the one who wants the conflict, why should you also get to win it? And if only one player in the group's gonna be planning for conflict, they have an unfair advantage. You still get all the drama and trappings of being a scumbag in play, and you also enable everyone else have a good time. If you *aren't* willing to do this, why's that?
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Apr 8, 2017 12:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:Alignment: dad jokes Can I change my vote to this
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Apr 8, 2017 15:44
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So many people in adventurers league tables play evil chars? It seems a really good way to get items from real people you don't care about pissing off.
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Apr 8, 2017 15:54
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Adventurer's League explicitly bans evil characters. If you write down something else and still act evil, a competent DM would either ask you to stop, change your alignment to evil which removes your character from the game, or just ask you to leave because you're clearly there to be disruptive.
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Apr 8, 2017 16:13
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The only evil you can play in AL is Lawful Evil, and only if you're a member of the Zhentarim or the Lords' Alliance. This also doesn't allow you to ignore the AL Code of Conduct (which boil down to "don't be a dick") or the treasure distribution rules (which say everyone gets a fair share). It's there to let you play characters that are ruthless and anti-heroic but not "my alignment says I get to kill the barmaid lol" assholes or outright villains. e: ^ and yeah, any other kinds of evil character are ineligible for play, hope you make your save against alignment reversal!
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Apr 8, 2017 16:19
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Cease to Hope posted:lawful and chaotic are meaningless noise Aside from your posts generally just amounting to "stop no don't discuss this again", this refrain seems most disingenuous. Evil and Good are argued over endlessly because they are quite loosely defined in scope, and don't generally have a solid overlap with real life morality. Law and Chaos on the other hand map pretty perfectly to Authoritarian vs Libertarian, which are pretty easy political concepts to grasp, and so tend to be argued over less. Whether it's useful or not to label your character with those is debatable, but most games I've been in have had far more civil conflict arising from the Law/Chaos disagreements of how to handle things, since most of us picked a Neutral stance, being uncomfortable with either implications of superhero Good morality or card carrying evil morality. Also alignments played a significant part in setting up the Planescape setting, best setting, so everyone can suck it.
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Apr 8, 2017 16:25
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I skimmed the al code of conduct and enjoy "No tolerance is given for theft or aggressive behavior. Theft and aggressive behavior are grounds for immediate removal from the play area and the premises." it's clearly meant to mean irl theft but I'm sure that's used to justify not stealing someone else's magic items and then leaving the table. also I don't think libertarian is chaotic. chaotic to me means ignoring laws , not following orders just because, etc. libertarians just want less laws to follow. chaotic is more anarchist
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Apr 8, 2017 16:30
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Cool, this seems like a non-inflammatory direction for the alignment argument to go Which alignment do you think Israel and Palestine are?
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Apr 8, 2017 17:24
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Petr posted:Cool, this seems like a non-inflammatory direction for the alignment argument to go isn't that tanar'ri vs baatezu
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Apr 8, 2017 17:26
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Evil characters work perfectly well if they take a long-term macro level approach to their evil ways instead of just holding up every random merchant and innkeeper they come across. Not that random stickups aren't evil, they certainly are, but that's going to attract attention way too quick. But a lawful evil cleric who organizes a church bake sale to skim off the top? Super hard to detect and way more interesting. Aim for Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart; realize that no man is an island and small accumulated good acts are way better to facilitate evil than just random thuggery.
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Apr 8, 2017 17:32
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Gort posted:Can I change my vote to this "I'm Neutral Evil" "Hi Neutral Evil, I'm dad"
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Apr 8, 2017 17:35
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Ambi posted:Aside from your posts generally just amounting to "stop no don't discuss this again", this refrain seems most disingenuous. In D&D, good and evil amount really straightforwardly to actively struggling and sacrificing to help others versus being willing to harm others. Law and chaos, however, completely fail as descriptors or predictors of anything, because literally any action at all could be painted as having a lawful, neutral, or chaotic motivation as suits the actor (generally something like "my personal code demands that I..." or "I just happen to want to..." or similar). And, in fact, that's actually better than the alternative, since you'd end up in a situation in which bards or barbarians or whatever would be flatly disallowed from keeping their word or whatever.
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Apr 8, 2017 17:40
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I played a LE Zhentarim wizard through all of Out of the Abyss at an AL table. Like someone else described, I had my own goals for the guild but I went along with the adventurers since a demon invasion apocalypse is bad for business. The paladin and I had some funny banter and back and forth debate over raising zombies to help us kill even worse enemies, but it never caused friction because we're not irl shitheads. If you're playing an evil character because you want to be a dick to strangers then your problems go far beyond the alignment system in D&D.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:02
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mastershakeman posted:isn't that tanar'ri vs baatezu Nobody ever remembers the Yugoloths
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Apr 8, 2017 18:05
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I've never seen picking your allignment as a binding contract; more just a descriptor, subject to change. Probably because the first D&D thing I ever touched was Planescape: Torment where your allignment liberally shifts to reflect how your character's been acting lately, so that's how I use it.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:22
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Does alignment even matter in 5e?
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Apr 8, 2017 18:39
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Skellybones posted:Nobody ever remembers the Yugoloths And that's just how they like it. If I remember right, the phrase "Never trust a yugoloth" stems from being able to rely on a Baatezu keeping the letter of their word, and relying on Tanar'ri to never give their word in the first place, Yugoloth's reliability was entirely dependent on outside factors (mainly how much coin or souls they stand to gain). They run the gamut from Charon and his ferrymen, to plague-fiends and abstract hoarders of magic. Also yeah, alignment as a straightjacket or making classes restricted by alignment is dumb and you should feel bad for using it in that way. A single act does not a saint or sinner make. Especially because then you start to get theological with matters of sola fide etc.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:40
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Conspiratiorist posted:Does alignment even matter in 5e? Nope. All the old evil detection/protection spells now just work against devils/angels/etc.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:42
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Alignment is dumb, but trying to dress it up with ambiguity and nuance somehow just makes it more obnoxious. "Oh, so you slayed that person merely because they were Evil, hmm, perhaps YOU were the one who was Evil all along ?"  Eat poo poo. If objective, elemental Evil is both a real thing and easily sussed out via simple spellcasting then you'd have to be insane to actively tolerate its existence. "But what if they're not hurting anybody?" Well then why the gently caress are they Evil, smartass? If "Evil" can also mean "people who aren't actually Evil" then it's a completely useless distinction.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:53
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Yeah, in a world where evil is scientifically measurable and easily verifiable, not getting rid of evil people doesn't make sense.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:58
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Can it be called a Good act, to slay an infant demon? And thus, the Paladin fell. But not the Cleric. Apparently the gods are more lenient with them.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:58
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That's how crazy old paladins see the world, yes.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:59
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Don't let their PR fool you, the Harpers are international terrorists and anarchists.
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Apr 8, 2017 19:02
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Bad Seafood posted:Yeah, in a world where evil is scientifically measurable and easily verifiable, not getting rid of evil people doesn't make sense. But you need to explain going from Evil being an measurable force inherent in approximately one third of all people, monsters and planes of existence, to requiring some sort of continual mass genocide. Planarcide? You going to get rid of Chaos or Law next?
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Apr 8, 2017 19:07
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Wasn't planarcide originally the explicit goal of Law and Chaos? And the reason the True Neutrals were super crazy about balance was that if one side won, it would be utter hell for mortals?
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Apr 8, 2017 19:12
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gradenko_2000 posted:Alignment: dad jokes I have a player in the storm kings thunder game im running who is this. He named his character Aladad Fath'har. An old rear end half-elf war-cleric that has a warhammer named Dissapointment. He dishes out fatherly wisdom and jokes to his fellow party members and it's amazing.
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Apr 8, 2017 19:16
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Doesn't need to be that large scale; just take any high magic kingdom: screen populace for Evil, those pinged are forbidden from holding public office and face much harsher penalties for committing crimes. Even with evil infiltrators and ambivalent neutrals, imagine the economic and social gains from reduced crime and corruption. And evil foreigners are, of course, forbidden from entering.
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Apr 8, 2017 19:21
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Skellybones posted:But you need to explain going from Evil being an measurable force inherent in approximately one third of all people, monsters and planes of existence, to requiring some sort of continual mass genocide. Planarcide? You going to get rid of Chaos or Law next? Vengarr posted:Wasn't planarcide originally the explicit goal of Law and Chaos? And the reason the True Neutrals were super crazy about balance was that if one side won, it would be utter hell for mortals? But yeah, for reasons like this I basically never employ the alignment system in any sort of mechanical fashion. I'll make notes to myself if an NPC or enemy is whatever or whatever so I can decide how they'd react if the PCs try anything (does the bandit king rule over his men with an iron fist or a fatherly embrace?), but otherwise I don't stress it.
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Apr 8, 2017 19:22
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Conspiratiorist posted:Does alignment even matter in 5e? There are a handful of creatures, magic items, and spells that are impacted by alignment. Rakshasas, for example, are immune to all weapon attacks except piercing attacks from good-aligned creatures (to which they're vulnerable). The Robe of the Archmagi comes in different colors that affect what alignments can attune to it. Most of this is late-game stuff though, and I suspect many DMs will realize by that point that alignment doesn't really matter and either ignore or modify anything depending on it.
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Apr 8, 2017 19:24
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