D&D 5E Evil character in the party

[Saeviomagy]

I think that you, as a DM, have to explicitly say to the other characters "Your characters are in no way forced to adventure with this guy. Feel free to boot him from the group, and he will roll a different character, whom you may feel free to vet a similar way".

We did this in a shadowrun campaign where we had a run of characters (from one player) that didn't work with the group. His next character decided that following his team mates around in their private lives was a good idea. We put him in the trunk of a car in a junkyard, intending to pick him up after we'd met with our next employer and ended up flying out of the country immediately. The player played a temporary character in the meantime that DID get along with us, and we forgot about the one left behind until the DM reminded us that we'd left someone in a car boot in a junkyard for 3 weeks... The player didn't really mind because he was happy with his new, team-friendly character.

Anyway, the point being that your players may cop a lot of from a player character because they feel like you, the DM, would step in if they took the appropriate action like telling him to leave. Just give them the go ahead. The character in question may turn over a new leaf.

 

[was]

I allow neutral, but not evil pcs in my campaigns. IME, people who enjoy running anti-social, greedy and selfish characters tend to not play well with others.

 

[SirAntoine]

Evil characters can work, and they make the game more interesting. Alignment should be kept secret, between you and the DM. Rather than asking for every player to agree to allow the possibility, you should apply a rule that no one can attack another PC without a good in-character reason. In other words, don't let players attack the other PC's just for the fun of it or to resolve player to player tensions. Make them get into character, and this will encourage and enhance role playing for everyone. If someone questions another's honor, insults them, etc., you have in-character reasons for the attack. Stealing from the party is okay, and can justify an attack.

 

[Meliath1742]

Lol...what you deem as interesting I find to be distracting and generally destructive to group play. You essentially described all the reasons why I don't allow evil characters. As I stated earlier it comes down to different styles of play. If your group is ok with that style...go for it!

 

[Lanefan]

Lol...what you deem as interesting I find to be distracting...

Ah, but sometimes the distraction *is* the game.

I mean, hey - if the players are having fun killing off each others' characters while my carefully-designed adventure wanders by in the distance, who am I to complain? The adventure will still be there if and when they ever get around to it...

Lan-"and if they don't I can always run it for another group later"-efan

 

[Shadowdweller00]

I will occasionally allow evil characters...however unless I'm explicitly running an evil campaign I usually try to make it apparent from the outset that they will be expected to some extent to be a team player. Party theft is acceptable IN MODERATION. Anything that gets the other players grumbling more than once is usually met with a "Rocks fall, your character dies" deus ex machina. It's heavy-handed, sure, but it's also faster and in my personal opinion both significantly less annoying and likely to result in fewer long-term grievances than waiting for the party to handle the entire thing in character.

 

[Herr der Qual]

As I see it the character, wanted to play the aloof rogue, no allegiance but to themselves, which in my opinion is fine. The party will resolve his allegiance issue on their own, but you should probably make it clear that they can do something about his behavior, they may be restrained in dealing with him as they are unsure if they are clear to proceed.

I've had a few party's where there was an outcast alignment, one was played very well, one was played poorly (such as the case study in this thread).

The clever one was a Rogue, he would sneak off in the middle of the night to do his evil deeds away from party eyes, most of the time, other times he would just find a secluded corner in a back alley to deal with someone, a-la-darkside. He more than once, fenced an expensive (rare) item the party had recovered, got into a bar fight and lost intentionally (but not obviously), then return to the party claiming he had been mugged, they would retrieve it and he would be the richer for having sold it and regained it. The best part was, they completed the campaign with none of the party members discovering his alignment or any of his evil deeds, including selling out the party to an enemy to buy him time to deal with a do-gooder that had found him out and he feared (rightfully so) that said NPC was going to rat him out. Then returned to help save the party. It was brilliantly played.

The other evil character was left to die on the battlefield the first time he was knocked unconscious, the cleric "thought he had more time". Oops. His next character was more in-line with the party's general alignment.

 

[MechaPilot]

I enjoy both playing evil characters and DMing groups that have evil characters in them. However, I always make it clear when I DM for evil characters that simply being evil doesn't mean you treat everyone like crap, turn traitor to join with evil foes, and mindlessly murder anything that moves.

Evil characters have values, twisted values, but values all the same.

One of my favorite characters was a neutral-evil, fiendish cleric of her own divinity (profanity, whatever. The point is that her faith was that she was a nascent hell-goddess). She worked with a party of varying alignments, including good characters, and she fought evil enemies. At first blush, the character seemed good. However, the good things that she did fit with her goals and twisted values.

Killing evil enemies as part of a party had a few benefits for her:
It eliminated the competition
It allowed her to stockpile wealth and magical goods
It made her look like a hero to the people
It endeared her to a group of heroes (the party) that she could potentially manipulate if she needed real heroes to do some dirty work for her down the line.

She used her status with the people and her cleric powers to recruit worshipers as she traveled. One of these recruited worshipers traveled with the party and eventually became the high priest of her religion. She also used her wealth and magical goods to build and stock a temple to house her cult.

What she didn't do was try to burn down every village the party visited while slaughtering survivors and cackling manically in the light of the burning village. Likewise, she didn't harm the other PCs; although she did murder an NPC hireling who was with her when the group was split in a dungeon and who witnessed something she didn't want the party to know about. She actually used his skin as the leather for the cover of the empty spellbook that she intended to turn into her religion's bible by compiling the best moments from her travel diaries.

 

[TarionzCousin]

In 2E, I played in a Dark Sun campaign where both the PC's were explicitly evil.

It was an interesting game because the DM used our evil alignments as one factor in the game. We joined with a caravan across the desert and made some friends. But when we got to the gates of the city, a cleric came out and used "Detect Evil" on everyone. The other PC and my character were not allowed in to the city.

That was a fun, but harsh lesson. Being "evil" made for some very interesting roleplaying.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Part of the key to playing an Evil PC in a mixed alignment party is the flip side of playing a Paladin. Just like a "Lawful Stupid" Pally won't be all that welcome (most of the time), "Stupid Evil" is just as disruptive.

To illustrate differently, imagine a non-evil Kender. As everyone knows, they're infamous for being played as jovial little kleptos that make life tough for everyone. Their party mates almost never know what the Kender has taken until they can't access it.

If, OTOH, the Kender is played so that the Kender anticipates the need for the item, handing it back just in time or just a bit before, then he is more like a living, breathing Handy Haversack or Efficient Quiver. The Kender is still played true to stereotype, but there is less disruption. Fewer hard feelings.

The same goes for evil PCs- played right, they're like a nice dash of cayenne pepper in a jumbalaya as opposed to a mountain of salt.