Making A PC Temporarily Evil

[Jhaelen]

It's generally a bad idea to take over a player's character.

This.

Even if the player is fine with it, the rest of the group may not. If you know your players well, you'll be able to tell, if it would work.

I know that my current group would definitely break up over something like this.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Even if the player is fine with it, the rest of the group may not. If you know your players well, you'll be able to tell, if it would work.

I know that my current group would definitely break up over something like this.

If the player was fine with it would the group still break up over it? And why?

(I'm not dismissing your opinions, just curious as to the reasoning.)

 

[Nagol]

I've seen cases where the player was fine with it, but the rest of the group decided to kill or ostracise the character for his actions while "under control".

Most of the play groups survived intact with some effect on party dynamics, but one group lost the "controlled" player and another group lost a few PCs over the situation.

 

[Jhaelen]

I've seen cases where the player was fine with it, but the rest of the group decided to kill or ostracise the character for his actions while "under control".

This.

Even worse, some of my players have problems to distinguish between the actions of a player and her character. If one character of a player turned evil, they'd have a difficult time believing the next character not to be evil, too.

It's silly of course, but we've had such a situation and it was extremely difficult to bring the players back together at one table. I'd rather not repeat the experience.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

This.

Even worse, some of my players have problems to distinguish between the actions of a player and her character. If one character of a player turned evil, they'd have a difficult time believing the next character not to be evil, too.

It's silly of course, but we've had such a situation and it was extremely difficult to bring the players back together at one table. I'd rather not repeat the experience.

Gotcha. I definitely could see the party splitting up because of not trusting the character but had a hard time seeing why the group would split up. But if it happened often enough I could see being worried that every character from that player could be evil. And if you don't want that element in a game, bailing on the group.

 

[Aeolius]

Assuming the player is fine with the weirdness, you could always have the player be both evil AND themselves...

In a past issue of DRAGON, an alternate vampire was proposed. The life draining kiss of a succubus created a type of vampire that walked in the day as their regular living selves, but stalked the night as a vampire.

Barring that, perhaps the evil faction gave the PC an intelligent magic item with a high ego, that simply possesses those who carry it.

Or perhaps they are both simultaneously.. Mirror of Opposition