IceBear
Explorer
I'm just of the belief that in order to properly play an "Evil" character you have to always be planning on turning everything to your advantage, no matter what the cost to the rest of the party. I wouldn't really have an issue with one or two evil PCs in my group (a la Raistlin) as it might lead to some interesting roleplay, but if you have an entire party of evil PCs I just can't see the group sticking together for more than a couple of adventures.
Why? Because the intelligent evil characters will always be plotting against each other. Why share the treasure with everyone else when you could just poison them all and keep it for yourself and then hire lots of guards to protect you.
If you're in the middle of a battle and one of the characters falls to negative hitpoints, and a couple of powerful foes stand nearby, I just can't see a party member sacrificing himself to bandage the fallen member. Sure, maybe the party (and thus the evil PC) has a better chance of surviving if all the members are up and running. But, if most of the opponents are now dead would this selfish evil person really take the chance of being killed just to help a fallen party member? I couldn't see it as a regular occurance. If it did happen a lot, then that player isn't playing his alignment properly. Thus, over the course of several adventures most of the PCs will have died off. Then the players start holding grudges against each other and things get ugly.
Anyway, I guess I'm of the camp that D&D is an heroic game and thus I would prefer my PCs being good or Neutral. If push came to shove, I might allow one evil PC into the group but not much more than that.
IceBear
Why? Because the intelligent evil characters will always be plotting against each other. Why share the treasure with everyone else when you could just poison them all and keep it for yourself and then hire lots of guards to protect you.
If you're in the middle of a battle and one of the characters falls to negative hitpoints, and a couple of powerful foes stand nearby, I just can't see a party member sacrificing himself to bandage the fallen member. Sure, maybe the party (and thus the evil PC) has a better chance of surviving if all the members are up and running. But, if most of the opponents are now dead would this selfish evil person really take the chance of being killed just to help a fallen party member? I couldn't see it as a regular occurance. If it did happen a lot, then that player isn't playing his alignment properly. Thus, over the course of several adventures most of the PCs will have died off. Then the players start holding grudges against each other and things get ugly.
Anyway, I guess I'm of the camp that D&D is an heroic game and thus I would prefer my PCs being good or Neutral. If push came to shove, I might allow one evil PC into the group but not much more than that.
IceBear