Is this fair?

[Planeswalker Maloran]

I have seen good and evil characters interact quite well, as long as their immediate goals were similar and neither did anything to upset or disgust the other. The good fighter wants to kill the evil monster that's threatening the town (and will gladly take its loot as a reward). The evil mage wants the monster's loot, and will gladly use the monster for target practice on the way. As long as the DM provides quests that accomplish both good and personal gain, good and evil characters can get along just fine if they want to.

That said, Kmart Kommando summed it up really well with Chaotic Retarded and Lawful Stupid. A chaotic evil character might live perfectly well in a good society, and never cause more trouble than disturbing the peace. He won't go on a rampage unless he truly believes he can get away with it; which typically would mean he's an idiot, because no matter how powerful you are, there's someone stronger. He'll cause as much trouble as he can get away with, and no more, unless he gets aggravated to the breaking point and just snaps.

On the other hand, a Paladin who lusts for the kill is blatantly evil, even if he only goes after evil things. There is a huge difference between protecting a village from goblin raiding parties, and attempting the annihilation of all goblins everywhere. There is a fine line between punishment, revenge, and "preventative" genocide.

So, good and evil characters can get along just as well as lawful and chaotic characters can, and both can fit in equally well in the typical adventuring party, as long as they are played intelligently and with some degree of maturity.

Now, if your players are too immature to play them right, I'd say by all means forbid evil characters. Maybe forbid Paladins, at the same time, as immature players almost always play lawful good and chaotic evil exactly the same "except for the dialog".

However, I disagree with Kmart Kommando about one thing. While chaotic evil people are often sociopaths, a great many of them are not in fact locked up or shot. A trait shared by a great many sociopaths is the level of intelligence required to seem like normal, functional members of society; amusing themselves by doing as much emotional and psychological damage as possible, while seeming quite innocent of any intentional wrongdoing. Only those who lack finess typically resort to violence and are locked away or executed.

 

[AnonymousOne]

So you're this, then?

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm#theNineAlignments
A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable.

Really? You seem alright to me, so far anyway. : ]

Note the grammar, it is not the character which is truly evil here, he is simply driven by his whims for death/destruction/etc.

See I don't like the system in general, it sounds like those that are evil are always megalomaniacs who suffer from a severe bout of either delusions of grandeur or radical psychosis. No where in the PHB or SRD does it allow for someone who is completely self-interested AND at the same time rational. (Maybe it's just the economist in me, but aren't we all completely self interested?)

 

[shurai]

Note the grammar, it is not the character which is truly evil here, he is simply driven by his whims for death/destruction/etc.

I think it is the character that "is truly" evil, even if grammar is what we're going by: The adjective "evil" in the sentence "A chaotic evil character" modifies the noun "character". How come the second part of the sentence undoes this close association, or else takes precedence over it? This isn't a rhetorical question; I want to understand your thinking. For example, do you perhaps see the first phrase "chaotic evil character" as a sort of term-of-art that doesn't necessarily mean what it would if we'd never played D&D before?

See I don't like the system in general, it sounds like those that are evil are always megalomaniacs who suffer from a severe bout of either delusions of grandeur or radical psychosis. No where in the PHB or SRD does it allow for someone who is completely self-interested AND at the same time rational. (Maybe it's just the economist in me, but aren't we all completely self interested?)

I think you may be running into the true problem with D&D alignments and real-world notions of Good and Evil as well, namely, that Good really is more rational than Evil, even from a position of self-interest most of the time. So, evilness really is inadvisable, even for the one that is being evil, while goodness really is conversely advisable, even for the one that is being good, most of the time. So, if you're having trouble understanding how being Evil could possibly be an advisable course of life, that probably means you're not Evil, but that you are rational. : ]

Moreover, we also know that D&D Evil, and real life meaning of evil, isn't exactly equivalent to excessive self-interest, I don't think. The SRD says this about the meaning of Evil:

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

As you can see, this is not the same as self-interest necessarily. Instead, it seems to coincide more with feelings, for example, compassion, and with actions, for example, doing harm to others. Whether or not these feelings and actions are reasonable from a position of pure self-interest is not really discussed.