One of my players would like to play a Lawful Evil wizard who worships Asmodeus. I think this idea could work but I could use some advice on how to keep him hooked into the story.
The player is someone I've played with for a while so I'm not worried about him trying to de-rail the campaign or backstabbing the party. He's generally just interested in the character concept and role-playing someone following the Chelaxian/Asmodeus philosophy. The character would have be a Korvosan patriot with family ties in the city.
So I think it should be straight forward to keep this character motivated in the first couple books as book one has the PCs getting paid to assist the Law. That's mostly true in Book 2 as well. But by Book 3 & Book 4 things get tricky. And by Book 6 the church has sided with the queen.
Here's what I'm thinking.
-- Threats to his family are one source of motivation, but that's only going to help so far and if I use it constantly will get tiresome.
-- Some faction with the Church of Asmodeus or the Acdemy sees him as a pawn to he used to further their agenda and becomes his patron. First using him as an agent to pursue the question of the legitimacy of Ileasa's reign. At the end of Book 3 when her criminal actions become clear they push him to take action to depose her in hopes of moving their pawns closer to the throne.
Who to use? Other ideas? Anyone else have some evil party members?
As time progresses the fact hes teamed up with these people long enough could be reason in itself. He might be *evil* but evil people can still have friends and allies. He could owe them one, or simply enjoy their company, despite their constant attempts to do good (bah!)
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One of my players would like to play a Lawful Evil wizard who worships Asmodeus. I think this idea could work but I could use some advice on how to keep him hooked into the story.
The player is someone I've played with for a while so I'm not worried about him trying to de-rail the campaign or backstabbing the party. He's generally just interested in the character concept and role-playing someone following the Chelaxian/Asmodeus philosophy. The character would have be a Korvosan patriot with family ties in the city.
** spoiler omitted **
This just screams for using the Acadamae. If you have read as far as books 3 and 6 you know that there is a wizard that could be used as an arch rival or basic enemy. I would go with that.
Being a patriot with ties to the city seems reason enough.
the Iconic Seltyiel is Lawful Evil, and was used as a pre gen for the Council of thieves AP, which takes place in chelax, with plenty of devils and domination.
The question arose "why would this character, being lawful evil, want to stop all the lawful evil people from doing stuff, and not just kill the chaotic good party member?"
I think the answer to that applies well here. Which was "why not?"
Devils are lawful evil, and as it so happens, fight each other for power and domination all the time.
Just because you may be of a like mind doesn't mean you have to say "oh wait, your king? ok Ill go sit down and be your subject then"
A lawful evil person abides their time, pretends to cow tow until he can find a way to coup. When he has maneuvered him self into a spot where he can pounce he will do so.
The hook for starting the adventure and gathering the characters is pretty much void of any alignment motivation so would hook anyone of any alignment, the following few events after the first few encounters also pretty much puts the party together, with no real need to question alignments or "wait why are you here and what are your motivations?"
By the time the LE character in the party has to ask himself these questions, it could be easily clear to him the benefit of keeping his party members around as vehicles to carry him to a place of power and he may actually like one or two of them.
In the eyes of one or two of my former LE characters (I had a Monk and a Magus) who may have been in the position this LE wizard will be in, my motivation might be "who does this muling quim of a teenage queen think she is, wait til i get my hands on her, Ill break her teeny neck!"
Simple, many people in the game both characters were in viewed my characters as "heroic" even though his personal reasons for doing what he did were simply because a) it was an easy way to rob the guys body and root through his stuff to see what he had and b) all in the name of my rise to power.
I would just have him sit down and iron out what keeps his character lawful. Is it some kind of a code of honor? Is it tenets of faith?