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Ultimately, the problem is not with alignments, but with player motivations. Normally, the "no evil alignments" clause in a game means two things:
- We expect your PC to be heroic.
- We expect you, the player, not to be disruptive.
Many times (but by no means all times), players want to play evil characters so they have an excuse to backstab other players, kill any NPC they don't like, and in general act out any power fantasy without regards to the other players' fun or the GM's fun. Sometimes, Chaotic Neutral is used for the excuse if Evil isn't available. In either case, this is not a good way to play, and should be curtailed.
Evil alignments work fine in a group that is fully aware of the potential drawbacks. If anything, the burden of making it work lies with the player of the Evil PC, who needs to understand that it's not carte blanche to disrupt the game.
If you've had trouble with Evil PCs in the past, feel free to ban them. If you feel that the players need some boundary to keep them from being disruptive, it's a good idea. And beware people who immediately say, "Well, if I can't be evil, I'll be CN."
Starting up a new game with a new group, about to post character generation rules on our site, and I'm weary of allowing an evil character. Simply because they've been problematic in the past.
On the other hand, if I get a good concept I don't want to say no, and ideally I don't want anyone seeing what the other players have on their character sheets; I don't want people judging each others actions by "his character is evil, gotta disagree," I want them assessing actions by their own merit, asking themselves how their character feels about something and acting accordingly.
tl;dr- Evil alignments ok in a mixed alignment party?
The big thing about alignments is how they are perceived when it comes to play. Being 'Good' really only means that you tend towards selflessness, that you put others wellfare ahead of your own and are willing to risk yourself for others benefit. Conversely, being 'Evil' means that you tend to be self-serving, putting your own welfare ahead of others and at times at the expense of others. Being evil doesn't mean that you have to be out raising undead hordes, sacrificing virgins upon an altar or communing daily with the Beast. It doesn't make you allergic to the presence of do-gooders nor does it prevent you from doing good acts so long as they are also self-serving. Classic evil villians almost always either serve a higher evil power or are they themselves seeking to become a greater power, characters can certainly be the same - but they don't have to be. Selfishness is a perfectly acceptable version of 'evil' in my book and as such is a perfectly acceptable character option.
Hi there.
I have a fairly firm rule in my games of no evil alignments, though I have made exceptions for characters that become evil, but seek redemption. I was badly traumatised by an intra-party conflict that knocked a good campaign off the rails, over 30 years ago (the flashbacks, man, the flashbacks!!) and thus happy to allow intra party arguing and bickering (in character), but no actual combat.
That said, I *have* seen evil characters played well in a group - the character who knows he is evil, but is working for good ends. He does the things that need to be done, but the other characters are too soft to handle. He often hides his evil, but where necessary quietly kills the person the group has let go (think of the scene in Buffy where Giles kills the avatar of Glory, or the Agent from Serenity). In the latter case, the character is evil, KNOWS he is evil, but is fighting for (what he thinks) is a good cause greater than he is, knowing he will never lilve to see it.
Now THAT kind of evil I could get behind
Summary - it depends :-)
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You'll probably have few or no issues with allowing mixed alignments so long as you make clear to players with evil characters that:
1. Being evil isn't a free pass to being disruptive. You're expected to be as much a team player as the lawful-stupid guy over there. 'but it's what my character would DO!' is NEVER an acceptable excuse for formenting party strife or torpedoing plans/adventures. It's your character, it's YOUR responsibility to come up with a justification for why your character is being an effective team player while still rating an 'evil' alignment.
2. See rule #1.
3. A little bit of conflict is good for roleplaying, yes. the key word is 'little'. If your evil character thinks we should execute the prisoners, and the lawful stupids think we should hand them over to the law, you help the game by eloquently arguing your case. You hurt the game by slitting the prisoner's throats after the other partymembers' backs are turned.
Usually I don't care about alignment... but I do care about motivation and ask every player to tell me what his character's motivation is...
fame? gold? knowledge? anything else?
with all these I'll try to see any problems and discuss changes due to incompatibility between players, like the Paladin that wants to donate to the church on top of being equipped by group funds and the thief that wants bigger shares because the Paladin doesn't keep his share of money to buy equipment anyways.
In evil campaigns I usually go with a very simple rule: all characters are employed by a badass evil guy who thinks these players can pull the job, but the BBEG will not tolerate anything that could cause the mission to fail, starting with getting rid of other hired people for that mission. Think Darth Vader "I find your lack of faith disturbing..." *squeeeeeeeeze* :-D
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I usually have more problem with Law vs Chaos in my games than Good vs. Evil. Chaotic PCs tend to cause more tension because they usually play the alignment like they don't care about anyone and anything and will do what ever they want no matter what the other players think.
So I am more inclined to let in a LE character over a CN character. CE is just almost impossible to have and keep group unity.
Usually I don't care about alignment... but I do care about motivation and ask every player to tell me what his character's motivation is...
fame? gold? knowledge? anything else?
with all these I'll try to see any problems and discuss changes due to incompatibility between players, like the Paladin that wants to donate to the church on top of being equipped by group funds and the thief that wants bigger shares because the Paladin doesn't keep his share of money to buy equipment anyways.
In evil campaigns I usually go with a very simple rule: all characters are employed by a badass evil guy who thinks these players can pull the job, but the BBEG will not tolerate anything that could cause the mission to fail, starting with getting rid of other hired people for that mission. Think Darth Vader "I find your lack of faith disturbing..." *squeeeeeeeeze* :-D
^ this.
I have found that evil characters don't work well in groups unless one of them is much more powerful than the others, or they are all lorded over by one very powerful overlord.
I ran a campaign with an all-evil party once, and by unanimous agreement between all players and myself, we ended the campaign after only a few levels. All the players and I just started feeling dirty all the time we were playing, and we all simply did not enjoy ourselves. There were a few situations where it simply would have made no sense for the party to not slaughter large numbers of innocents, and there was just nothing fun about that.
Evil alignments are reserved in my games for highly experienced players who I can depend on not disrupting the game.
It is rare that we have evil alignments. I do have some players who use "chaotic neutral" to play evil characters, so when I have them in a group with newbie players I ask them not to play that kind of character (regardless of alignment).
So far we've been able to agree that way.
I personally enjoy playing evil characters. My oldest surviving character is lawful evil tending towards chaotic evil. He's a blast to play.
But when he's in an adventuring party, he is wise enough to realize that backstabbing his party is a high-risk, low-reward activity and as such mostly plays nice with his party. His best friend is actually a lawful neutral monk.
Honestly, my policy is to have them start off at all Neutral alignments and move from there. I suppose LG could be an exception. I have found some new players have great difficult differentiating from good (getting them to be selfless than pro-player orientated) and evil (getting to be anything BUT dumb).
Most starting players are gold and experience motivated, can will follow with the story. So long as there is a reward. They may have their LG character turn a blind eye to a CE PC's actions however, so having evil and good is perhaps something that should be organic from a base.
I play a lawful evil character in a long running game with several neutral characters, a good character and another evil character. I've found that by taking charge rather than tyranting with my LE character the other pc's are willing to follow as long as i don't ask them to do anything that morally offends them.
I pick the jobs we take an normally focus on the reward rather than the task, we have a reputation as honourable bastards who get the job done by any means necessary, i've been aproached by "representatives" of the city guard to break up an illegal auction selling evil magic items (which we did but we bought a fragment of the book of the damned while we were infiltrating it) and even good churches who need really bad people putting down(serial killer anti paladin, gutted he had no one to smite).
We've spared the lives of innocents because it wasn't profitable and we sometimes make deals with opponents paladins would weep tears of joy at a chance to kill.
The main thing i use to achieve this is compartmentalisation, i never tell our CG healer that he's stabilising a guy for our CE rogue to torture for info. Our inquisitor always has a go at getting info "the nice way" before we resort to breaking fingers. I keep an eye on our rogue cause he can be as CE as he likes but he represents the party and if he soils our reputation he is aware of the result (the CG guy thinks you get kicked out, the CE guy knows that you won't be allowed to live to work against the party). Finally we actually have an adventuring charter we all signed with rules for loot, resurection, inter-party conflict resolution, etc.
So far we've done seven levels together, no deaths and no pc on pc action.
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As long as you avoid CE, have a very mature and experienced group of players, and make a clear rule on "no PVP" (including stealing group funds), evil and good can work together.
We actually had one interesting campaign where it was Lawfuls vs Chaotics in a war; and the good / evil axis was much less relevant (we were members of an army sent in to reclaim lands from anarchist "freedom fighters"). So we had paladins and assassins fighting against unicorns backed by goblins (the Paladin code was reconfigured to not work with those who are chaotic and attempt to disrupt society; so they were LAWFUL good).
It worked great, but we had the player group mature enough to make it work (and our assassin didn't play quite as evil as she probably should have; though our negative-energy priest was pretty dark and I, the pally, often had words with him).
But that does bring up another point; often acts of good are "easy plot hooks" for getting PCs to work together. Are you OK losing that?
I play a chaotic neutral witch.
He's essentially a narcissist. He's very charming though, with a charisma of 16. He has no issue with good or evil acts, but realizes that in his current situation, being on the "good" side of that line is better for his overall situation than being on the "bad" side.
His main focus is on his personal goals. Because achieving his personal goals requires working with some good party members, he's willing to cooperate with them so long as it suits his needs.
He's not really a materialistic individual, more interested in necromancy, research and making magic items (mostly potions at the moment). He also dabbles in poisons. He really likes the combination of poisons and "beguiling gift".
So far his evil acts have either been unseen by the good party members, or he's been able to convince the party that it was a "necessary evil."
His major accomplishment so far was to get the party lawful good cleric to hold down someone while my witch chopped off his hand. He needed some body tissue, and we needed to convince our "boss" that the character was dead, so he managed to convince the cleric that chopping off the dude's hand was the only way to let him live. But all my witch wanted was the hand.
So far I've been able to dance the line between playing my alignment and creating party dissension. I do see some conflict in the future between the witch and the lawful good ranger. The ranger doesn't like my witch's drug habit.
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tldr- Evil alignments ok in a mixed alignment party?
I think InVinoVeritas has it right in that it's not the alignment on the sheet that matters so much as the player's motivations.
If the player intends to be a disruptive jerk who causes the game to break down into PVP for his own lulz, he can do a *spectacular* job of that playing a LG paladin.
Played intelligently, a LE or NE character can be very mission-oriented and team-friendly and non-disruptive. IMO, the least team-friendly alignments are CE, CN and LG. Those are the ones that seem mostly likely to attack NPCs for being uppity, or attack other party members over loot divisions or kill-stealing or 'interfering with my honorable single combat' or 'attacking my prisoner' or whatever.
It's more important, in my experience, that the players all agree that whatever they are doing in a team venture, where they succeed or fail as a group, and to, if necessary, play on their shared motivations, than what two-letter-designation occupies the 'alignment' slot on their character sheet.
And motivation is cake, because everybody wants loot and XP, regardless of their alignment. Most published adventures give out plenty of both, and even if the task is to rescue the good princess from the evil dragon, there's no reason an evil party wouldn't absolutely want the reward for rescuing the princess *and* the treasure of the evil dragon, making them exactly as motivated to 'follow the choo-choo' as a good party would be. The only difference will be that the party rogue will be poisoning the heck out of the dragon during the fight, and, afterwards, when the Paladin would have batted his eyes at the Princess and said, 'no reward necessary, milady, we were just doing our jobs' (to the groans of everyone else in the party), it will be the Barbarian saying, 'yeah, the dragon's dead. reward please. daddy needs a new keen falchion...'
Someone who gets off on being disruptive is going to be a problem, even in a game with no alignments at all.
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As a quick example, here are the alignments in a particular group I'm in: LN, NE, CN, N, CG. We get along fine. We all have different approaches to solving things, but we still work together as a team.
If the players are ready to work together, then PC alignments won't be an issue. If a player is looking to get in the way, he might use alignments as a crutch to justify his disruptions. But ultimately, the problem is with the player, not the alignment.
Good players: any alignment is fine. Questionable players: ban Evil immediately (take the crutch away).