D&D 5E Evil characters material not going to be in the PHB

[Dannager]

That was not what Mearls statement looked like to me. One sentence said material for evil characters is not in the PHB, he did not say evil player characters. The other sentence refereed to his thoughts on the matter, not an assurance of what would be in D&DN.

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IMO there is vast gulf between supporting an option and having a one sentence footnote of "You can let your players take evil spells and abilities, but the game devs don't reccomend it."

"Support", to my mind, means that evil PCs can be created in D&D Next. That appears to be the case, because Mearls said you could do it. Adding that footnote doesn't suddenly mean it's no longer supported. Moving it out of the PHB into the DMG as an option doesn't suddenly mean it's no longer supported.

 

[Celebrim]

D&D does not engage in complex moral relativism.

Wait.. huh... whether or not D&D supports 'complex moral relativism', I'm not here engaging in moral relativism either. I'm trying to explain things from within D&D's morally absolute framework, without real comment on its applicability to the real world.

Good characters tend to cooperate more easily...

Wait, huh? Where is that written?

...and D&D works best when the PCs cooperate well.

Cooperation outside of some iconic and incarnate embodiment of chaos is hardly a good measure of alignment at all. Selfish persons can cooperate out of self-interest, and even strongly self-centered persons can see say close relatives as extensions of their own identity. A strongly chaotic evil person might be willing to sacrifice himself for his son, if he saw his son as simply being an extension of his own will and a furtherance of his own identity... but then equally the same person might be enraged to the point of murder with his son if his son betrayed that perception of the son by contradicting the father's will. Or the son might be cooperating with the father out of only fear, and the father might see this as entirely natural and that it is the proper role of the father to instill fear in the son. Of course people only cooperate out of fear. Of course the strong rule over the weak.

Having a small group of similarly minded allies cooperate for a short time (most campaigns in my experience seldom cover more than a few months or year or two of game time) doesn't require any particular alignment at all.

 

[Dannager]

Wait, huh? Where is that written?

I want to be clear: are you objecting to the notion that good characters, on balance, tend to cooperate more easily than do evil characters?

 

[Celebrim]

I want to be clear: are you objecting to the notion that good characters, on balance, tend to cooperate more easily than do evil characters?

Among other things, yes. Cooperation is based on shared interests, desires, and beliefs. Good characters are no more likely to have identical desires, beliefs, and goals than evil characters. Good characters that find themselves with conflicting goals might choose to resolve the conflict in a different way, if they can, but conflict resolution doesn't equate to cooperation. Are you saying that good aligned characters would never find themselves in an ethical dilemma and choose contradictory solutions despite the same values? Consider the examples of a pacifist and an honorable soldier? Is it impossible for both to be good? Would you expect complete cooperation in their endeavors, and that they would readily condone the others behavior?

 

[Umbran]

I want to be clear: are you objecting to the notion that good characters, on balance, tend to cooperate more easily than do evil characters?

I'd say that, if they don't cooperate, the results are usually less bloody.

One way to think of it is that Good and Evil are usually about the results - Law and Chaos are about the methods. *Lawful* characters would likely cooperate easily. But a Chaotic Good roguish character might well have major problems cooperating with a standard LG Paladin.

 

[Mistwell]

Yes, good characters on balance tend to cooperate more easily than do evil characters. I bolded the "more easily" for emphasis. In that, when they disagree with each other, they are less prone to kill each other, threaten each other, steal from each other, or do other things which tend to be more highly destructive of future cooperation.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Cooperation outside of some iconic and incarnate embodiment of chaos is hardly a good measure of alignment at all.

Repeated for truth. If anything, many contemporary examples of evil involve a collectivist mentality. So do the ubiquitous dark forces that pop up in fantasy fiction. Cooperation is weakly related, if at all, to the D&D concept of good.

 

[Celebrim]

I'd say that, if they don't cooperate, the results are usually less bloody.

They are probably also less likely to see imagine the end state of their cooperation to be, "After we are done with this job, I'm going to kill that SOB."

But a Chaotic Good roguish character might well have major problems cooperating with a standard LG Paladin.

And vica versa. The tough by the book cop and the vigilante don't always have to get along, or even see the other as a 'good guy'. In theory, the tough by the book cop might see the vigilante as being just as bad as the crime boss - failing to declare 'Chaotic Good' to be 'good' at all. Indeed, the crime boss and the by the book cop might have as much to cooperate in, as the by the book cop and the vigilante do. It's not necessarily clear that the by the book cop wouldn't cooperate with the crime boss against the vigilante, if he thought he could prove in court that the vigilante was a criminal but could not yet do so in the case of the crime boss.

An iconic example here is Jean Val Jean and Javert from Les Miserables. One reading of Javert is that he's simply Lawful Neutral with the law before every thing and nothing but the law. But it's also possible to read him as a Lawful Good with a deep character flaw. If you read the book, Javert comes off somewhat more nuanced than he does in the opera. His last act is to write a letter asking for a series of reforms in the judicial system and it's possible to read him as someone that seriously believes he's rooting out cruelty, injustice, and making not just a more efficient state - but a better world. But, despite having seemingly common aims, of course the two find it impossible to cooperate. And indeed, despite the fact that he's continually breaking his parole, it's possible to read Jean as a neutral good character - willing after his reform to submit to the law and even an unjust one, but only after and secondary to other priorities. He wants to turn himself in, but keeps finding he has other responsibilities that come first. And by that reading, it's possible that after his reform both are Lawful Good, but weight 'law' and 'good' and the priority of their duties - duty to God, duty to Country, duty to Family, duty to the Oppressed, etc. - differently. Again, it's not even clear that lawful good characters cooperate.

 

[Scorpio616]

Someone explain how the blackguard is eviler then a warlock with a fiend or far realms pact.

Agree on the Far Realm Pact, Far Realm is supposed to be the kind of threat that gets Good and Evil Gods working together to end and yet it gets to represent in a PHB class?

 

[n00bdragon]

IMO, this is a mistake. The place for "evil" spells is right alongside the rest of the spells. Splitting them up means that every time the DM wants to use an evil spellcaster, he now has to consult two sources rather than one.

An even better place for evil spellcasters would be in the monster manual.