Any DMs on this board must be familiar with the scenario. Everyone loves the idea of playing an evil character. So your buddies make up their assortment of characters--the cleric of Heironeous, the ninja, the thuggish fighter, the wild barbarian, the rogue serving time for past indiscretions. Then one player comes up with the idea that he wants to play a neutral evil wizard. Well, the group was quite a hodgepodge before. But throwing an evil character into the mix? Working alongside a cleric of Heironeous? I don't like to say 'no' to any of the options in the Player's Handbook so I tried explaining to the player all the reasons why it would be a bad idea.
My question is, has anyone tried running any evil characters through Age of Worms? Was it a completely evil party or was there a mix of alignments? Has anyone successfully had a party consisting of both good and evil characters? How did you justify this?
Directly to Erik & company: Will the later plot require that the PCs be good or neutral? Will evil characters have any interest in preventing the Age of Worms or be more likely to want to bring it on? The first adventure is quite open--the PCs are tomb-robbing so anyone could conceivably be a part of it. But I'm wondering if later on the alignment will become a problem as far as adventure hooks go.
I have to decide whether to let this player play an evil character or not. I'm leaning towards no because there is a LG cleric of Heironeous in the group but I hate forcing something as basic as alignment on someone. Help would be appreciated.
From what I can see in the first adventure there's nothing preventing the party from being evil, the adventure hook works just fine for a party of any alignment. Considering the backdrop evil characters might even be more likely than good characters.
About your party, I've found that there's usually problems keeping a party together when there's characters with conflicting alignments. Because of that I usually let my players decide a party alignment that can't be TN. Any character created must then be within 1 step of the party alignment.
I am not your typical devil's advocate on this issue because my favored PC alignments are LG, or when disparate party alignments all but necessitate it, NG...but
...so your buddies make up their assortment of characters--the cleric of Heironeous, the ninja, the thuggish fighter, the wild barbarian, the rogue serving time for past indiscretions. Then one player comes up with the idea that he wants to play a neutral evil wizard...
In this list, wouldn't the cleric of Heironeous (assuming the character's not LN) be the odd ball in this hodgepodge (my own bias--calling a LN priest of this diety an oddball--aside). The other characters (except for the wizard) could be more good than bad, but the weight of probability is not on their side by my (LG/biased) estimation.
Still, as a DM, I don't like to say "no" to my players either...fortunately, in my case, they have said "no" for me thus far (current alignments include LN, NG, N, and CN--which have already provided for some very interesting conflicts/disagreements that I've had nothing to do with this side of 4th level...).
If it did become an issue, I like Evilash's idea about everyone's alignment being within 1 step of the other's (although, my current group wouldn't qualify in this case)...wildly differing alignments, especially diametrically opposed ones, should not get along in the long run. As far as the short run is concerned: Do or can the ends justify the means? Is this just a convenient excuse?
As to whether you should actually allow a PC with an evil alignment in this AP, Evilash has a point: the cesspool, AKA Diamond Lake, would probably produce/nurture more than a few PCs with evil alignments. If your player chooses this, hold him/her to it. And, good luck,
LG (which, by the way, does not stand for Lawful Good)
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I hate Evil Characters, but there is no reason that the Cleric and Wizard cannot have been friends in childhood, then went in different directions, but are now drawn back together byb the adventure...I can see a million opportunities for Role-Playing...with the Cleric trying to move his old buddy towards the "right" path.
Thanks for the help. The player has decided to play a N wizard so I won't have to cope with this problem. For some reason almost all of my players want to play evil or CN characters, usually picking CN when I give them 'the look'. I really need to run an evil campaign so they get over it.
There is one LG cleric of Heironeous, who is the oddball but he made his character first so I don't want to tell him to change his alignment. Not sure what the barbarian's alignment is but I'm expecting the ninja to be LN or N, the fighter is CN, and the rogue will probably be either CG or CN. So really the cleric is out of place but I like Evilash's idea that he is trying to set others on the right path.
Part of his background is that he strayed from Heironeous' way when his wife died and was sent to Diamond Lake by the church to 'set him straight' with Valkus Dun. So I can see how he would be preachy now that he has lost and refound the way himself.
In my experience the difference between N and NE is too minute to even notice most of the time. I currently play in an all evil campaign in which most of the characters vary from NG to NE on a situational basis, regardless of what their actualy alignment is. Prime example, to get past a specific area of a dungeon we've been looting we needed to gift five children and two ogers to an insane number of ghosts. We bought the children from a somewhat corrupt orphenage manager (something I think is easily identifiable as evil) then spent an hour debating over wether or not to go after the mild mannored oger family living near the city we worked out of (would have ammounted to basic MM ogres with no class levels with us being 11th-12th) or go after a mated pair of ogre raiders who had been causing the city problems for several years (one being a 8th level fighter and the other being a 9th level druid). We eventualy went after the two evil ogres and did the city a huge favor, something which helped us in the end but seemed very out of character for what our party is supposed to be.
Basicly, it's not the fact that you have a player wanting his/her character to be evil that you need to worry about, it's the type of evil the player wants to roleplay that you should question. Look at Rastlin from Dragonlance, I'd say he was NE from the get-go and he adventured with a paladin for how long?
Directly to Erik & company: Will the later plot require that the PCs be good or neutral? Will evil characters have any interest in preventing the Age of Worms or be more likely to want to bring it on? The first adventure is quite open--the PCs are tomb-robbing so anyone could conceivably be a part of it. But I'm wondering if later on the alignment will become a problem as far as adventure hooks go.
Not sure about later on, but I can see a very good reason why evil PCs would be interested in thwarting the Edon Triad. It is stated that the three churches whose members make up the Ebon Triad do not look favorably upon their teachings. Evil followers of these gods would find a ready-made hook - stamping out a renegade sect.
In my experience the difference between N and NE is too minute to even notice most of the time .... we needed to gift five children and two ogers to an insane number of ghosts. We bought the children from a somewhat corrupt orphenage manager (something I think is easily identifiable as evil) then spent an hour debating over wether or not .... We eventualy went after the two evil ogres and did the city a huge favor, something which helped us in the end but seemed very out of character for what our party is supposed to be.
Let me assure you that your characters never strayed into the Good alignment regions in this scenario -- or even Neutral :o
And "too minute to notice" is a fairly big exaggeration.
My two cents :)
Jack
I had a player wanting to play a priest of Hextor. I figured that would be easy enough to work in - the Ebon Triad cult is seen as heretical by the Lawful Hextorite church, so they'd definitely send someone to bust on them Inquisition style.
As for mixing good and evil alignments - I've never found that to be a huge issue, as long as people role-play in any sort of realistic way. In your scenario, the priest of Heironeous doesn't know the wizard is evil-aligned. As long as he doesn't engage in egregiously illegal acts in front of the priest, he's probably fine. And being much smarter than the priest, he's likely to be able to come up with plausible explanations to cover over any minor vices. ("Greater good" is popular, as is feigning piety "Doesn't Heironeous say all the evil should be eradicated without mercy? Doesn't that include women and children?")
All Evil characters aren't total sociopaths, and they generally know what those around them consider appropriate behavior. They know how to hide it, excuse it, etc.
Furthermore, the behavior of most "Good" parties isn't much different from what Neutral or Evil characters would do. The fact is, most adventures where you go kill evil things, you get rewards, loot, experience, etc. An Evil character would want in on this as much as anyone, in fact, more so. Ideally a truly Good character might have some qualms about "Hey, there's an orc tribe out in the woods, here's 5000 gp to kill them to the last man." But the sort of paid assassination most adventures revolve around is the bread and butter of an evil character. While good folks don't like to kill other good folks, evil folks don't suffer from the same compunctions about their evil "brethren". Evil folks aren't *averse* to someone benefitting from their actions - they just want pay for it.
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After reaching a saturation point on how many new rules, feats, skill uses, classes, etc. I could play with, I've begun tinkering with character pesonalities. Lately, the focus has been on evil, plus a little chaotic neutral ("evil lite" as some people say). I think that there's nothing wrong with a player playing an evil character with a group of neutral or good characters- the question is what they're looking into the evil alignments for.
Unlike in the Saturday morning cartoon shows where moral absolutes exist, D&D gives the option for a range of gray parallel to that seen in the real world. Nothing excludes evil characters from caring about friendships, lovers, children, faith, or any number of things. One of my current projects is a devoted and loving family man and carpenter with a sick wife who also happens to be an evil fighter. The bonds of comraderie he found during his stint in the army appeal to him, and he desperately wishes to raise his station in life to help his family survive. He'll also kill a paladin for a quarter.
This is just one example of literally hundreds available for personalities and motivations. The question then becomes: "why is Player X interested in playing an evil character?" If the answer is because of complex character motivation and good roleplaying experience, great! If its so that he can "be evil", maybe it is time to run the evil campaign, or just a good ol' black-and-white, orcs-are-evil-and-live-in-this-dungeon hack and slash, which satisfies the need to kick butt with no reprecussions quite nicely.
It sounds like you've come up with a good solution already, though. i'm just adding to the pile. :)
All Evil characters aren't total sociopaths...
True, but the general problem is that players who want to play evil characters rarely understand that. Many want to play an evil alignment specifically because they WANT to play a sociopath. I have to admit I'm guilty as charged of the offense myself. My first evil character was a 2e wizard who was a pyromaniac. He'd light members of the party on fire just to watch them burn. Of course, he was like my 2nd or third character so I didn't have that much experience with the game. Nowadays, I occassionally play an evil aligned character, but always design them so that they are controlled enough to get along with a party, hence, LE is my favorite evil alignment.
All Evil characters aren't total sociopaths...True, but the general problem is that players who want to play evil characters rarely understand that.
So I guess a good question might be, how mature are your players? One of my favorite characters was a Lawful Evil Fighter/Cleric of a god of Vengence. When it came to playing my character, I told everyone I was a Paladin of a God of Justice. My character was evil, but he cared about his friends and did everything to protect them, just like any paladin should, but he was a bit over the top on dealin out 'Justice' and not to caring about the plight of people not in his group. It caused a little friction, but nothing that caused any party fights. Now if you allow a sociopath Evil character in, eventually he is going to fight the cleric and you'll force the party to choose sides. That could be enough to kill 1/2 the party, and even worse, break the campaign.
Of course, when you don't allow him to play NE he'll probably play the same way and just say he CN.