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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 4116974" data-attributes="member: 57267">Yes, I think that's pretty much the gist of it.However, someone who is ruthless and evil in real earth (pick your favorite historical bad guy, e.g. Hitler if you'd like) can easily rationalize that hellfire is just a myth so lets go be ruthless, take over the world, slaughter lots of people, etc.But, in D&D, those villains know, without a doubt, can even have it scried for a few gold at a local gypsy camp, what will happen to them at the end of their life. They cannot rationalize it as a myth.That alone would be enough to scare most of them straight. Or at least straight enough to avoid the hellfire. If Hitler lived in Greyhawk, he might very well have toned it down a bit, or found a way to latch onto some evil entity who could guarantee him a position of leadership in the afterlife rather than eternal agony.And given that, many evil deities, entities, and even fiends would gladly take on evil followers who show promise, then reward them rather than torment them in the afterlife. If the evil entity breaks his word, he won't get many new promising recruits.Ergo, Mr. evil assassin, necromancer, demonologist, blackguard, etc., all have patrons who promise great rewards. Evil kinds of rewards. Not playing harps on puffy clouds - these guys don't want that. They want an army to lead, a harem to, uh, you know, and a pit full of victims to torment. And their patron will gladly bribe them with this stuff, and will fulfill his promise when these guys die the final death.Even the ones who don't pick up a patron in life, will often be recruited in death by talent scouts for the big bad afterlife entities looking to recruit generals for their eternal interplanar wars. Their death becomes a sort of a free agency...And any evil villains running around commiting mayhem in the D&D world who haven't chose a side yet, haven't secured their eternal bliss, are taking a huge risk. And all the evil entities have armies of messengers of all types, just itching to bop up to the material plane on a recruitment drive. They send these messengers up to find evil guys just like this and tempt them with all the promises.Sure, it doesn't always go this way. But it would surely go this way very often.And once you get the inside track to an eternity of evil awfulness, you only end up in the hellfires if you screw it up and fail your evil patron - their punishment is truly scary.</blockquote>

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