There may be some "data" out there, early DDB used to presentations on popular classes and races, dunno if they even did alignments. You're most likely just going to get anecdotal experiences, your best source would be DMs telling you what they've seen. In my experience DMing, I rarely see an evil character proposed for D&D. When they are proposed, it's usually a immaturity thing wanting to adolescently play either sadist or actually "chaotic-stupid," often coupled with the desire to be the party's "internal antagonist." Even a maturely constructed villain is going to more often than not run at cross purposes with the morality of the rest of the party (unless the DM or the table says "let's be bad guys" and it's usually as a departure from regular gaming). So, more often than not, the only real functional way to play an evil character is one who has an agenda they keep separate from the the rest of the characters, or they've allied for some sort of "enemy of enemy" alliance. D&D is largely a team sport and most players don't want to do a heel turn on their 'mates.
I want to say D&D definitely frames the tropes of the game to sort of default "good" heroism, and while evil parties may thrive in some of the published adventures for 5e, for the most part there seems a presumption that the party wants to be the good guys. There are other games out there better at encouraging amoral or antisocial characters, including some D&D clones. 5e to me reads as written for "presumptive good guys."
I find that very few players know how to (intentionally) play an evil character that isn't stupid evil. The majority of evil characters I've seen fall into two camps. The first is characters that can only continue to survive because the DM is avoiding having them face the consequences of their actions because they don't want to take the character out of the campaign. The second are characters that are intended to be neutral but get hot headed or greedy and start doing various evils without realizing it.
The rare well-played evil character I've seen is the sort that acts good when people are watching and ends future threats when people aren't
I am having a discussion with my DM over if most players prefer good or evil characters . Has there been any polls/studies done over this?
You should have made a poll for this thread. More people will click an option on a poll in a thread than will comment on it.
My anecdotal experience has been that most players play some form of good. The few evil characters I have seen over the years have been poorly played at best and purposefully disruptive at worst.
In my experience the far greater majority leans towards good characters, and evil ones are usually one-offs for variety. That said, the murderhobo type of character isn't uncommon and while the stereotype indicated by the name is more extreme than the actual practice a probably significant number of players prefer not to scrutinize their character's morality too closely.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I have a Lawful Evil character idea that I want to play but both groups I play in are Good only.
Concept was a Kobold that believes in the law of the powerful. Lawful because he will do what the "strongest" member of the party tells him to do, Evil because he has no qualms with murder, torture, or other questionable acts. No master plans for world domination, no murder-hobo shenanigans, and no backstabbing the party. I think he would fit into even a Good campaign but my DMs don't want to take the chance, haha. Fair enough.
I'd say on a whole, good aligned parties are more popular. Evil tends to end up with someone feeling slighted because of backstabbing and such.
The closest thing I could find to actual data on this is a D&D Beyond presentation slide, wherein of the 12m characters created (read: not necessarily played, or have chosen an alignment), 23% were Chaotic Good, and following that were 22% Chaotic Neutral. Obviously take it with a pinch of salt, but I think the general wishes of most players would be 'I want to do good without being restricted too much by laws and cosmic, tangible morality.'
I can imagine evil characters being popular... once. People play an evil character as a change, as an outlet, for a one-shot or a campaign before deciding it's not for them. They might even pull it off well, but I reckon most people would find it difficult todo without being disruptive at the table or exhausted by coming up with ways to be evil that doesn't push things either too far, or close to good that they forcibly have their alignment changed.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
Once in 2e my group played a drow campaign where we were all evil and members of the same family. The mentality was work together, unless you see a chance to off the person ahead of you in the birth order. But otherwise, just good. Evil is exhausting. And it’s hard for me, as a player, to get excited about how my character just conned a bunch of peasants out of their gold and burned down the town.
During my last campaign I played a barbarian who would usually go against my group when we would enter a town. I would break into houses and steal things from the churches and throw certain holy items at my paladin. I would never argue about tactics with them but I would usually just run in swinging and they were generally okay with it since I was the tank of the group. At one point I drank a concoction that was in a room that we didn't know what it was. It started to make my character go crazy. My DM asked me separately about my background during a break and then asked if I would turn on the group and that he had plans for my character. I excitedly agreed because I always wanted to play as an evil character but I didn't think my character was truly evil.
Unfortunately, my group disbanded due to having kids and weddings and time to play was hard to come by.
Our current party is one LG (paladin, natch!), two NG (cleric and ranger/rogue) and two CG (bard and sorcerer). The paladin replaced a LN fighter who became LE, which made our sessions... shall we say challenging? Her player had come to D&D from VtM, which explains a lot. She's now the DM, so she can be as evil as she likes and nobody minds!
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Frankly, my dear, I'd rather be listening to Rehn Stillnight.
I think each table can have it's own discussions easily enough. When I GM, I have a 'No Evil Alignment' rule - D&D is a collaborative game and, generally speaking, good or unaligned Player Characters work together far better than parties with an Evil character in the mix. That's not to say I won't permit evil acts by the Players if it's true to character, but having characters that aren't necessarily out for themselves are far more likely to work as a cohesive unit.
That said, I have played in one shots where everyone has played as Evil characters and everyone had a blast!
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#Open D&D
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Seems to me most prefer good, or at least, closer to good than evil, characters. Most games seem centered around good to neutral PCs and evil campaigns seem like a novelty idea that people try out when they're more experiernced. And I tend to hear more stories about the 'evil PC' in an otherwise neutral to good group than I do about a token good player in a more evil oriented party.
The vast majority of adventure designs are "the bad guys are doing something bad and the PCs stop them". While you can come up with reasons why an evil PC would be doing that, it's far more natural for a good PC.
There's a fair number of PCs who accidentally behave in evil ways, though. Commonly just because they decide to go murder hobo.
I tend to prefer true neutral characters myself, but will agree on the large, it seems more people lean good then evil. Though I suppose it depends on your definitions of good and evil. I pick neutral because while I like to adventure for 'good' reasons i.e. save the peasants from the predations of horrid monsters; I also like to ...try to take over the world; for it's own good of course. |;-)s
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Typically my group sticks with good or neutral characters, but we have all played an evil character from time to time. We just make sure it fits with the themes of the campaign and ensure that they have a solid reason to want to work with a group of good/neutral characters in a mutually beneficial way.
One of our campaigns was a very demon/undead heavy one and I played a lawful evil (roughly) Dragonborn Oath of Vengeance Paladin who followed Tiamat. Due to the story and things that happened in previous campaigns, she had a very vested interest in ensuring that these demons didn’t run around unimpeded, to the point where she would allow my Paladin to work with characters that followed good aligned gods as they all wanted to stop the demons.
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"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Myself my preferred alignment is Neutral and I will go with Lawful Neutral with like a Vengeance Paladin I stay away from Evil characters like the plague and I refuse to play a Chaotic Neutral character not because I cannot roleplay one but due to other players reaction thinking I am going to play a psychopath or just be actually evil with Chaotic Neutral on my sheet. If I am playing say a Life Cleric I will go Neutral Good. So yes you can see my choices there as a player.
There's a fair number of PCs who accidentally behave in evil ways, though. Commonly just because they decide to go murder hobo.
"Accidentally". Right.
They frequently don't have 'evil' on their character sheets (now, chaotic neutral maybe).
That goes to my point that a lot of players don't want to scrutinize their character's morality too closely. Petty crimes 'for fun', bullying, barfights, violently resisting arrest, 'enhanced interrogation', killing anything suspected of 'having it coming', all these things tend to be glossed over because "we're the heroes, we do good stuff all the time, it doesn't really matter'. Good, as long as it's not too inconvenient.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
As for intraparty conflict, I see far more problems with chaotic versus lawful than good versus evil. A lawful evil person will carefully consider the consequences of their actions and will generally behave in a way that agrees with the rest of the group (at least while anyone is watching) while they pursue their own ends. A chaotic good person might decide to off the ruler during an audience if they thought it was the right thing to do.
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I am having a discussion with my DM over if most players prefer good or evil characters . Has there been any polls/studies done over this?
There may be some "data" out there, early DDB used to presentations on popular classes and races, dunno if they even did alignments. You're most likely just going to get anecdotal experiences, your best source would be DMs telling you what they've seen. In my experience DMing, I rarely see an evil character proposed for D&D. When they are proposed, it's usually a immaturity thing wanting to adolescently play either sadist or actually "chaotic-stupid," often coupled with the desire to be the party's "internal antagonist." Even a maturely constructed villain is going to more often than not run at cross purposes with the morality of the rest of the party (unless the DM or the table says "let's be bad guys" and it's usually as a departure from regular gaming). So, more often than not, the only real functional way to play an evil character is one who has an agenda they keep separate from the the rest of the characters, or they've allied for some sort of "enemy of enemy" alliance. D&D is largely a team sport and most players don't want to do a heel turn on their 'mates.
I want to say D&D definitely frames the tropes of the game to sort of default "good" heroism, and while evil parties may thrive in some of the published adventures for 5e, for the most part there seems a presumption that the party wants to be the good guys. There are other games out there better at encouraging amoral or antisocial characters, including some D&D clones. 5e to me reads as written for "presumptive good guys."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I find that very few players know how to (intentionally) play an evil character that isn't stupid evil. The majority of evil characters I've seen fall into two camps. The first is characters that can only continue to survive because the DM is avoiding having them face the consequences of their actions because they don't want to take the character out of the campaign. The second are characters that are intended to be neutral but get hot headed or greedy and start doing various evils without realizing it.
The rare well-played evil character I've seen is the sort that acts good when people are watching and ends future threats when people aren't
You should have made a poll for this thread. More people will click an option on a poll in a thread than will comment on it.
My anecdotal experience has been that most players play some form of good. The few evil characters I have seen over the years have been poorly played at best and purposefully disruptive at worst.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
In my experience the far greater majority leans towards good characters, and evil ones are usually one-offs for variety. That said, the murderhobo type of character isn't uncommon and while the stereotype indicated by the name is more extreme than the actual practice a probably significant number of players prefer not to scrutinize their character's morality too closely.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I have a Lawful Evil character idea that I want to play but both groups I play in are Good only.
Concept was a Kobold that believes in the law of the powerful. Lawful because he will do what the "strongest" member of the party tells him to do, Evil because he has no qualms with murder, torture, or other questionable acts. No master plans for world domination, no murder-hobo shenanigans, and no backstabbing the party. I think he would fit into even a Good campaign but my DMs don't want to take the chance, haha. Fair enough.
I'd say on a whole, good aligned parties are more popular. Evil tends to end up with someone feeling slighted because of backstabbing and such.
The closest thing I could find to actual data on this is a D&D Beyond presentation slide, wherein of the 12m characters created (read: not necessarily played, or have chosen an alignment), 23% were Chaotic Good, and following that were 22% Chaotic Neutral. Obviously take it with a pinch of salt, but I think the general wishes of most players would be 'I want to do good without being restricted too much by laws and cosmic, tangible morality.'
I can imagine evil characters being popular... once. People play an evil character as a change, as an outlet, for a one-shot or a campaign before deciding it's not for them. They might even pull it off well, but I reckon most people would find it difficult todo without being disruptive at the table or exhausted by coming up with ways to be evil that doesn't push things either too far, or close to good that they forcibly have their alignment changed.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
Once in 2e my group played a drow campaign where we were all evil and members of the same family. The mentality was work together, unless you see a chance to off the person ahead of you in the birth order.
But otherwise, just good. Evil is exhausting. And it’s hard for me, as a player, to get excited about how my character just conned a bunch of peasants out of their gold and burned down the town.
During my last campaign I played a barbarian who would usually go against my group when we would enter a town. I would break into houses and steal things from the churches and throw certain holy items at my paladin. I would never argue about tactics with them but I would usually just run in swinging and they were generally okay with it since I was the tank of the group. At one point I drank a concoction that was in a room that we didn't know what it was. It started to make my character go crazy. My DM asked me separately about my background during a break and then asked if I would turn on the group and that he had plans for my character. I excitedly agreed because I always wanted to play as an evil character but I didn't think my character was truly evil.
Unfortunately, my group disbanded due to having kids and weddings and time to play was hard to come by.
Our current party is one LG (paladin, natch!), two NG (cleric and ranger/rogue) and two CG (bard and sorcerer). The paladin replaced a LN fighter who became LE, which made our sessions... shall we say challenging? Her player had come to D&D from VtM, which explains a lot. She's now the DM, so she can be as evil as she likes and nobody minds!
Frankly, my dear, I'd rather be listening to Rehn Stillnight.
I think each table can have it's own discussions easily enough. When I GM, I have a 'No Evil Alignment' rule - D&D is a collaborative game and, generally speaking, good or unaligned Player Characters work together far better than parties with an Evil character in the mix. That's not to say I won't permit evil acts by the Players if it's true to character, but having characters that aren't necessarily out for themselves are far more likely to work as a cohesive unit.
That said, I have played in one shots where everyone has played as Evil characters and everyone had a blast!
#Open D&D
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
Seems to me most prefer good, or at least, closer to good than evil, characters. Most games seem centered around good to neutral PCs and evil campaigns seem like a novelty idea that people try out when they're more experiernced. And I tend to hear more stories about the 'evil PC' in an otherwise neutral to good group than I do about a token good player in a more evil oriented party.
The vast majority of adventure designs are "the bad guys are doing something bad and the PCs stop them". While you can come up with reasons why an evil PC would be doing that, it's far more natural for a good PC.
There's a fair number of PCs who accidentally behave in evil ways, though. Commonly just because they decide to go murder hobo.
I tend to prefer true neutral characters myself, but will agree on the large, it seems more people lean good then evil. Though I suppose it depends on your definitions of good and evil. I pick neutral because while I like to adventure for 'good' reasons i.e. save the peasants from the predations of horrid monsters; I also like to ...try to take over the world; for it's own good of course. |;-)s
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
"Accidentally". Right.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
They frequently don't have 'evil' on their character sheets (now, chaotic neutral maybe).
Typically my group sticks with good or neutral characters, but we have all played an evil character from time to time. We just make sure it fits with the themes of the campaign and ensure that they have a solid reason to want to work with a group of good/neutral characters in a mutually beneficial way.
One of our campaigns was a very demon/undead heavy one and I played a lawful evil (roughly) Dragonborn Oath of Vengeance Paladin who followed Tiamat. Due to the story and things that happened in previous campaigns, she had a very vested interest in ensuring that these demons didn’t run around unimpeded, to the point where she would allow my Paladin to work with characters that followed good aligned gods as they all wanted to stop the demons.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
Myself my preferred alignment is Neutral and I will go with Lawful Neutral with like a Vengeance Paladin I stay away from Evil characters like the plague and I refuse to play a Chaotic Neutral character not because I cannot roleplay one but due to other players reaction thinking I am going to play a psychopath or just be actually evil with Chaotic Neutral on my sheet. If I am playing say a Life Cleric I will go Neutral Good. So yes you can see my choices there as a player.
That goes to my point that a lot of players don't want to scrutinize their character's morality too closely. Petty crimes 'for fun', bullying, barfights, violently resisting arrest, 'enhanced interrogation', killing anything suspected of 'having it coming', all these things tend to be glossed over because "we're the heroes, we do good stuff all the time, it doesn't really matter'. Good, as long as it's not too inconvenient.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
As for intraparty conflict, I see far more problems with chaotic versus lawful than good versus evil. A lawful evil person will carefully consider the consequences of their actions and will generally behave in a way that agrees with the rest of the group (at least while anyone is watching) while they pursue their own ends. A chaotic good person might decide to off the ruler during an audience if they thought it was the right thing to do.