Hi.
I will dm the Shackled City campaign. Now, while building the characters, one of my player asked if he can play a drow with an evil alignment.
So heres the question to the people, who finished the Path already: Is it possible? Had any of your Players played an evil char, if yes, did it work?
Bye
I told my players that I don't care about alignment as much as I care about working together. As long as your character is a team player, I don't care if you boil puppies in your spare time; that's much better than a "good"-aligned character who's always derailing the plot, getting in trouble with the city guard, refusing to accept suggestions from the Church of St. Cuthbert, etc. The party does have one evil-aligned character, but so far he hasn't done anything particularly nasty. :)
Very good answer from Hogarth.
Nothing to add :)
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In my campaign Rufus was a religious zealot, while Jenya was very open-minded. If you manage to have the evil character being mainly responsible for Rufus being saved at the start, this could lead to great roleplaying conflicts and developments. How about Alec Tercival, the paladin? How will he view an evil drow being responsible for the regaining of the wands (Flood Festival)?
You need to be clear on two things:
a) he MUST not be successful on the Test of the Smoking Eye.
b) he may never betray the other party members to the Cagewrights.
He MAY be an agent of the beholder though... (later).
He MAY have contacts to some members of the Cagewrights and give lots of information about the Underdark around Cauldron.
If you allow him to play an evil character, say to him you will refuse him one BIIIG option in the later stages of the campaign. If he is clear with that, okay. Go ahead.
You three big concerns are:
1) Will he work with the party?
How will your other players work with this character? Are they a bunch of Lawful Good types who are going to have a serious issue with an evil character in the group? If any single character in the group will not work well with the rest of the group for any reason (alignment, nature guy who won't enter a city, rogue guy who always has to seperate and do his own thing, whatever...) then you have a problem that is independent from the campaign but will ruin any campaign.
2) Will he (or a group that accepts him) take the plot hooks described in SCAP?
Take a look through at the adventures in the book and decide if the tie ins and hooks would draw in this (or any other) character in your group. Most have both a humanitarian (save the city) or monetary angle (they will hire the group if they won't do it out of the goodness of their hearts). If either of these motivations work, then you are doing ok... if they just want power and want to take over... well, it depends how patient they are, doesn't it...
3) How will NPCs interact with a Drow (or any other crazy, unusual player race)?
I actually see this one as an opportunity for role-playing, so I see it as a good thing. However, if you think you will just end up treating him as a human and no different from anyone else, then I still would recommend against the character. But not as big an issue...
Sean Mahoney
An evil party will get no help from the Celestials that are involved in SCAP, so in Demonskar Legacy when Nidrama appears to the party, the first thing she does is detect evil on everyone. If someone is evil she just shakes her head and leaves, so no hints there.
Later she wouldn't speak through Alex if he's killed in the fight with Nabthataron.
And eventually she joins the party, because she's been cast out of Celestia for helping them, but if she never helps them, then I can't see how/why she'd be cast out.
Of course, you could reverse all this and just have her help evil people, but that's not how it's written.
My party currently has two evil characters. The players of the characters are team players and I pointed out that I didn't care if they were evil but I didn't want them to actively derail the plot. They agreed that they didn't want to do that either. So everything has been going fine. there have been some exceptionally evil moments but nothing that effects the plot adversely. I have not regretted my decision to allow those characters.
The party is as follows (all gestalt):
Ragnarok - NG dwarf barbarian/monk
Brynna - NG elf paladin/druid
Zilanya - NE drow rogue/sorcerer
Grunt Meatshield - NE ogre barbarian/ranger
Grunt is pretty dumb and happy to act as Zilanya's henchman. He does lots of things on his own but clearly follows her lead. Zilanya, so that her evil nature does not derail things, likes to appear as the noble hero trying to overcome the stigma of her race. She and grunt have done wonders to appear that they are heroic individuals. All of the evil things they do, like fixing a horse race through sabotage, murder, and coercion, was done where no one would see or find out. The fact that her adoptive sister is a paladin really helps her image quite a bit.
Since I am in the same position you are I'd say go for it and allow the drow to be part of the party. Make sure anyone who wants to play evil knows ahead of time what you expect from them ahead of time. I did make the decision later that if any characters die I wouldn't be allowing any more evil characters just because it's easier but if your player has their heart set on it it can be fun.
It's an interesting predicament. My group relies heavily on alignment protectors like magic circles, protect against, holy everything. Even the neutral characters sometimes have to make way, so an evil character will require a different kind of spell strategy.