While generally campaigns are designed for good-aligned or neutral characters, being any of the evil alignments typically doesn’t reward you in any way unless you go on a redemption arc. Evil magic items worth getting have such high costs to make them more detrimental in the long run or severely nerfed when in your hands. Spells like animate dead and create undead have a maintenance cost, making it so if you play a necromancer in a campaign, you run out of ways to cast spells sooner or end up never animating the undead all to be able to operate effectively. The temptation for dabbling in the dark arts needs to be tempting, but the features available do not support it, and the magic items don’t encourage you to animate more undead as they generally are focused on spell save dcs and the like. I had hoped back in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft that we would get spells and magic items that would make playing necromancers or fiend summoners worthwhile…. But there was nothing for that task. While I understand the game design is drifting away from alignment being an important detail to consider, it is still an important aspect of design. If your options for good or neutral outnumber that of evil, or are objectively better than evil, there is next to no reason to tempt the player into evil except for those occasional yet niche devil deals and catch 22s. If creating massive hordes of the undead is difficult for DMs to track in combat, at least make it so they have more *options* of undead to have at their disposal. I’m not asking for rules like “this is how you can become a lich!” Or “here’s rules on defiling a land into your own lair!” (Though that would be very fun). I’d just like to see these ne’er-do-wells actually be able to be ne’er-do-wells as well as advice on how to have these evil characters cooperate with the rest of the party without causing tension every 5 minutes because the good-aligned undead-slaying paladin doesn’t want the evil necromancer to animate the undead in the graveyard.
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While generally campaigns are designed for good-aligned or neutral characters, being any of the evil alignments typically doesn’t reward you in any way unless you go on a redemption arc. Evil magic items worth getting have such high costs to make them more detrimental in the long run or severely nerfed when in your hands. Spells like animate dead and create undead have a maintenance cost, making it so if you play a necromancer in a campaign, you run out of ways to cast spells sooner or end up never animating the undead all to be able to operate effectively. The temptation for dabbling in the dark arts needs to be tempting, but the features available do not support it, and the magic items don’t encourage you to animate more undead as they generally are focused on spell save dcs and the like. I had hoped back in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft that we would get spells and magic items that would make playing necromancers or fiend summoners worthwhile…. But there was nothing for that task. While I understand the game design is drifting away from alignment being an important detail to consider, it is still an important aspect of design. If your options for good or neutral outnumber that of evil, or are objectively better than evil, there is next to no reason to tempt the player into evil except for those occasional yet niche devil deals and catch 22s. If creating massive hordes of the undead is difficult for DMs to track in combat, at least make it so they have more *options* of undead to have at their disposal. I’m not asking for rules like “this is how you can become a lich!” Or “here’s rules on defiling a land into your own lair!” (Though that would be very fun). I’d just like to see these ne’er-do-wells actually be able to be ne’er-do-wells as well as advice on how to have these evil characters cooperate with the rest of the party without causing tension every 5 minutes because the good-aligned undead-slaying paladin doesn’t want the evil necromancer to animate the undead in the graveyard.