Evil & Good PCs working together

[Shemeska]

So I wanted to poll a larger spectrum: Have you ever played in a group that was mixed evil and good alignments? How did things go? Do you have any suggestions on how to make sure it works?

Evil people can have friends too. Unless you're a full blown fiend (and even then there can be other concerns) you're not a slave to your alignment above and beyond anything else if you're playing them as an intelligent and complex character. But depending on the type of evil and the type of good involved here, it's very situational if it can work or not.

My current group of PCs is largely various flavors of neutral, but they have an NG cleric and a LG fighter (cohort to the cleric) in the same party as an NE half-ogre mercenary with Blood War experience, an N (verging on NE) half-fiend/half-celestial, and an NE tiefling who worships Shar.

If you're evil and your deity has you sacrifice living intelligent victims, don't do it in front of the party. Better yet, don't tell the party about your extracurricular activities in specific. Tell the cleric of a good deity that you "worship a deity of loss" and leave out "and we're sacrificing innocents this weekend". Unless we're talking a hound archon trying to make a party work with a glabrezu, mixed or opposite alignment PCs can still work so long as they're motivated by more than money, they have higher shared goals, and if they're friends beyond just having common goals.

You need to have a seriously competant group to pull some things off though. If your group is filled with immature hack'n'slash orc baby killing paladins, you probably don't want to have alignments vary too much among the group. But if your players like non-one dimensional characters with complex motives and personalities, it can be a vehicle to some amazing RP opportunities.

 

[Stalker0]

The way I usually work Good and Evil, it'd be kind of difficult for them to coexist peacefully. I tend to need Good to be very good, and Evil to be very evil. Evil isn't passive - if you aren't hurting folks, you aren't Evil. And anyone who has earned the Good probably won't be the type to allow the Evil one to continue hurting people.

QFT. Evil is supposed to be a rather extreme alignment, people who are evil DO EVIL THINGS. Now, I can understand that during the adventure the evil guy keeps himself in check...for a while. But eventually they got to get their fix. Someone gets hurt, tortured, killed, whatever.

As umbran said, evil is not passive. An evil PC would do evil things, and then try to cover them up to prevent the party from finding out...but he's not going to stop doing them.

 

[Nightfall]

Might help me if I know the party's makeup...and current idealogy/drives...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So evil people are insane? You're describing a serial killer there. While I can certainly understand characterizing them as evil, it seems strange to redefine evil (which takes up three of the nine alignments in D&D) so narrowly.

There are real-world political leaders that history shows us were pretty clearly evil but who didn't spend their time torturing the peasants, "just to get their fix." The daily newspaper shows me a host of evil people who aren't serial killers and whose evil is enacted in the marketplace and elsewhere.

It's perfectly valid to say "in my world, every evil person is a serial killer," but it seems a little limiting to me.

 

[CRGreathouse]

I've done it, but there's often tension. The good and evil characters often seek the same ends, that's not a problem -- it's the means. The evil characters almost always have an 'easier' or 'faster' method to their goals, but the good characters don't want to throw their morals out the window.

 

[Nightfall]

I'd still like to know the make up of this party...if there is any.

 

[Vegepygmy]

QFT. Evil is supposed to be a rather extreme alignment, people who are evil DO EVIL THINGS. Now, I can understand that during the adventure the evil guy keeps himself in check...for a while. But eventually they got to get their fix. Someone gets hurt, tortured, killed, whatever.

I couldn't disagree more. What you are describing is suggestive of an addict, as if an Evil person will start getting "the shakes" if he goes two or three days without kicking a puppy or something. IMO, Evil can be much more subtle than that.

FWIW, I've played Evil characters who worked alongside Good PCs with no problem whatsoever. Once, I had it in mind to play an Evil character in a group that believed it was "impossible" for Good and Evil PCs to work together, so they banned Evil PCs. I wrote "Neutral" down on my character sheet and then proceeded to play him exactly like a Neutral Evil character. No one ever noticed the difference.

 

[Nightfall]

*has nothing against smart evil characters* But I would like to know more of the party make up to make sure I'm not giving bad advice here...

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, I have seen the 'Evil supporting Good' work well in play. For that matter the Evil character may not even think of himself as 'evil', merely 'pragmatic'.

The Auld Grump, mind you, if the party Good Guy ever finds out what happend to the evil Baron Middenheap then it could go badly for our pragmatist...

 

[Nightfall]

Well there's pragmatism and then true evil, Auld. I mean it wasn't like you ENJOYED killing him for no reason.