So I'm trying an Evil Character


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Rackhir said:
Well I found this story hour staring a very evil mage named Saduul, to be quite interesting and amusing. The first is a link to the original thread which you'll want to read for background. The second is to the current story hour that continues the story. It should definitely have some interesting ideas for running your character.


http://www.enworld.org/showthread.p...t=Saduul+Cortez
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=188896
I find Saduul wildly entertaining, but suggesting him to someone trying to play subtle, hidden evil is like suggesting ...um, Robert Jordan to someone who wants a fantasy writer who has strong, realistic female protagonists :)
 

This is going to sound silly to some, but consider this. I'm a big fan of the Transformers Beast Wars series, and one character in particular embodies the Lawful Evil persona to a T, or so I belive... Dinobot.

Dinobot is a former Predacon (bad guy) that turns on Megatron (his leader) because he feels that the strongest and most intelligent should rule, and he felt that his leader led his men astray from their intended goal for no good reason. As such, the Preds gave Dinobot the boot... and Dinobot then decided to vie for leadership of the Maximals (good guys) to take his revenge. Optimus Primal (the Maximal's leader) accepted the duel and showed him compassion when Dinobot was hanging off a cliff... Primal demostrated that there was strength in honor, something that Dinobot held dear. (Maybe Dinobot's more Lawful Neutral... meh).

As a character, he's the largest of the group, and with the exception of Prime and Rhinox (his alt form is a Rhinoceros... go figure), is easily the strongest on the team physically. He has a rivlary with the team's "Rogue", but it's kind of a friendly back-and-forth (but not at first) in their differences on how they should deal with situations; one one level, they think alike -- do what's most effective to succeed, but where the Rogue prefers stealth and backstabbing, Dinobot prefers the "honorable" charge ahead and take all comers. He is normally all business, ie everything in his life revolves around battle, and feels that a well-planned strategy combined with brute force can solve any problem. Aloof, abrupt and to-the-point, he often mocks the Maximal's "twisted" sense of Good every time the team gets screwed by it.

By the same token, I can see your Monk as the standoffish "tough guy" that would prefer to take the shortest and most effective route to success, but goes along with the Good guys because he finds a greater strength in teamwork. He's the Shadow of Sonic the Hedgehog, the Reggie of the Archies, the snarky foil to the party's do-gooder leader...

If you have access to any Palladium RPG books, look up the recommendation on how to play the "Aberrant" alignment; it describes Lawful Evil morality to a tee.
 
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If good is dominant in an area, any *intelligent* evil character will work hand in hand with good. Who wants to be the loser?

Being lawful means that he's unlikely to actually betray his allies as well. Not because he has squishy warm fuzzy feelings about them, but because his personal honor means more to him than most people's lives. They are useful, he has agreed to work with them, and it's going to almost always be in his best *long-term* interests to support them.

Sure, the evil character could screw over the party, steal the loot, kill someone, etc. but then he's got to kill *all* of them, and then he's stuck all alone against the world again, meaning he'll just have to find *another* party that will take him, despite his increasingly bad reputation...
 


Playing evil is usually asking for trouble. However, that is usually because it is quite often that people playing evil characters will fall prey to using it as an excuse to play something unprincipled.

Truthfully, evil does not have to be that way and I think there is a lot of other games over the years that don't have alignment. Basically, it seems that games without alignment, people have been playing evil-ish characters for a long time without the stigma of having an alignment attached to their actions.

If someone wanted to play an evil character in a game I was running, I would be open to it based upon the resume of the player. I guess playing evil to me does not mean you don't have friends, people you like and people you would go out of your way for. Some of the worst real evil people in history (think of serial killers, dictators and terrorists) even had friends, loved ones and some issues that would be considered 'good' positions.

In short, I think evil is playable if the player is someone you trust.
 

I would strongly suggest that you discuss it with the other players as well as the GM. Your character seems like someone who's passively evil, not going out of his way to help people; rather than actively evil, the whole sacrificing children bit.

This could make a good background theme for the campaign: over the first few levels he proves his worth to the other PCs, then the other PCs find out that he's evil but not Evil, and then they work to convert him - by example, kindness, and reason, rather than coercion - while other forces have him marked for a darker destiny.
 

Tclynch said:
... but he's warped in some ways. Into pain, revenge, personal power and making his skills better than anyone else (proving, he's at the top of the food chain)....
[emphasis added]

Pain as in? If you just have a bunch of peircings and punch people that's fine.
You need to be clear that some people can get very uncomfortable around torture/graphic descriptions of violence in games.
(Sometimes people who are fine with violence in other contexts).

I've seen games where (a DM) took their game someplace to "make a big impact" and seriously upset someone.

If it's just a theme then you're good to go. If you want to graphically inflict violence upon people then you may want to bring that up in advance with the group as a whole.
 

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