Not necessarily. Definitely with the chaotic evil, and some of the other evil people have it as a strong trait. I'm looking at the way that Thanos was portrayed in Infinity War and I don't see him as having a strong selfish streak. I see him as more lawful evil, seeing that there is a problem and fixating on a solution to the exclusion of others because he thinks it will be a good fix. But I could see a counter argument in favor of him being selfish for not considering another path (which the character may have done previously, it's been long enough that I don't recall).
Not necessarily. Definitely with the chaotic evil, and some of the other evil people have it as a strong trait. I'm looking at the way that Thanos was portrayed in Infinity War and I don't see him as having a strong selfish streak. I see him as more lawful evil, seeing that there is a problem and fixating on a solution to the exclusion of others because he thinks it will be a good fix. But I could see a counter argument in favor of him being selfish for not considering another path (which the character may have done previously, it's been long enough that I don't recall).
I see Infinity War Thanos as Lawful Neutral or possibly even Lawful Good if you suspend disbelief and ignore the fact that his solution didn't do anything to fix the problem.
I could see either of those, particularly if you're looking at how he sees himself. I'm mostly getting the evil aspect out of him that he doesn't have any qualms about killing half the population of the universe. You could argue that it's for the "greater good" and he's resigned himself to that fact, but his view of it doesn't give with the others view.
Just look at a few examples from recent popculture. Judge Dredd is definitely a Lawful Good character, but he is anything but nice.
I take great exception to this statement...
Judge Dredd is not recent. He's been around since 1977: 2000 AD Comics. He is absolutely NOT Lawful Good. Folks that are LG are not bound to always obeying "The Law". They have codes, tenants, oaths, etc. to follow, but the key supposition that threads LG decision-making is the good part. Technically, a Lawful Good person can be Lawful Good without ever caring about the "Laws of Man" (society). If the character has a personal code of conduct that they adhere to, that is more than sufficient to satisfy the Lawful axis.
An LG character will/should obey laws that are logical, impose order without undue burden, and serve the interests of the general populace that are expected to adhere to them.
An LG character will/should disobey laws that have no valid logical schema, place an undue burden on the populace, have a clearly ill intent, serve the interests of only a select few individuals, are corrupt, etc. They will/should seek to overthrow corrupt laws/governments, and replace them with laws with laws that serve the interests of good.
Judge Dredd is a Lawful Neutral character. LN is often described as, quite literally, the "Judge" alignment. For good or ill, there is only Law. Individual LN characters may interpret/enforce laws with a slightly more good/evil slant, but they will apply that interpretation equally; the law is the law.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
I am still new to D&D and I wouldn't like it if something like that would be in memories of my friends. But if done right so that there are no bad feelings then I guess that would work.
The problem isn't an evil character per se, it is more an evil player. Players who use playing an evil character as an excuse to be disruptive, murderhobo, backstab other PCs, etc, all the while expecting no consequences for this behavior. I have seen the same behaviors from players with what were ostensibly characters of "good" alignment. Especially player-vs-player attacks, theft, etc can bring a campaign down fast. In my games murdering and robbing your way across the country side will pretty soon get every man's hand turned against your character, but going PvP will get the players against you, and that will last across all your characters, possibly forever.
I think that is the key, Dave. What is the player's motivation? Is the player wanting to wreck the campaign or are they looking to spice up the story?
My brother is a much more experienced RPer than I. He ran local Camarilla (?) for a few years and drug me kicking and screaming into TTRPG a few years ago. And it took. He came to me regarding our new campaign (I am DM). He wanted to play an evil character. So I am trying to wrap my head around this and figure out how it will work. After watching the aforementioned Matt Colville video together, I looked at him and he looked at me and we said in unison, ANTI-VILLAIN. He is playing I suppose you might call it a Dr. Freeze-esque kind of player. 'I do all of these bad things to other people but it is to save my wife from a disease' kind of thing. And how he wants to do this really helped shape the campaign and the end game very well.
The biggest thing I think is communication, primarily between the player and the DM. First and foremost it has to work. If you think you need to include the other players then by all means do so. It is their game too. But this arrangement can allow for some good plot-tool moments in game and can also allow the DM to think the evil player is being led down the primrose path only to have a twist or two of their own.
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Thank you. ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
Me and my dm was planing to betray the party after we would kill vecna from the very start.everyone in the party new they could be betrayed. One guy ended up dieing because he was a liability for the rest of the party. He rolled a new character. I played a neutral evil fallen asimar reborn shadar kai that was given power by the raven queen. His name was Orpheus based of the legend. He was willing to do whatever it takes to rescue his lovers and ensure their safety. Through out the game every on thought I was playing a true neutral character. Half way through the campaign everyone was in silent agreement that our characters were to close for betrayel. Even though the dm keep hinting that anyone in the party could turn at any time, the wouldn't believe it. After all everyone acted like we were a evil family at that point, my character being as friendly possible given my circumstances. After we defeated vecna the party was in pretty bad shape. Everyone was saying now the world is ours, but then something happened turns out during the fight I casted something like greater invisibility that left a double behind after saying to the party that I will try to trap him. So I casted wall of force, attacks that missed me were common because of my abilities which were shadow based. When every something passed through me they just assumed it missed me. Since I made sure to conserve my most powerful abilities for after the fight and stayed out of combat trying to "heal" one of them with temp hp that I could take away at any time. By the time it came for me to kill them I had my illusionary double drinking out of a flask of a potion of healing while say something like " We won the war, now time for the spoils, vecna shouldn't have under estimated -" then I stabed the highest hp one in the back with my blackrazor vorpal sword. He died. Then the palidin tried a 7th level smite on me, it missed. I rolled a nat 20 one my next attack and killed him instantly. Turns out my goal was not to just kill vecna and get the book of vile darkness for myself, it was to also capture a the cleric and let baba yaga have it so she would help me kill lolth, the god who captured my lovers. So I took here soul sense she only had 4th level spell slots left, and let baba yaga eat her soul. By the way for those who don't know, blackrazor destroys the soul with no chance of resurrection, same with what happens when baba yaga eats a soul. Everyone after words were alright with it sense it was told to be a possibility. My character was known for killing with out giving it second thought if he could have it benefit him in some way and ensure the safety of his lovers. The dm even had an amazed look when everything came together in the end. It was probably one of the best games I played. I played it like my character was a elder evil, he didn't care about others but sidn't go out of his way to kill unlessed it benefited him in some way. That is how you play neutral evil characters right.
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Not necessarily. Definitely with the chaotic evil, and some of the other evil people have it as a strong trait. I'm looking at the way that Thanos was portrayed in Infinity War and I don't see him as having a strong selfish streak. I see him as more lawful evil, seeing that there is a problem and fixating on a solution to the exclusion of others because he thinks it will be a good fix. But I could see a counter argument in favor of him being selfish for not considering another path (which the character may have done previously, it's been long enough that I don't recall).
I see Infinity War Thanos as Lawful Neutral or possibly even Lawful Good if you suspend disbelief and ignore the fact that his solution didn't do anything to fix the problem.
I could see either of those, particularly if you're looking at how he sees himself. I'm mostly getting the evil aspect out of him that he doesn't have any qualms about killing half the population of the universe. You could argue that it's for the "greater good" and he's resigned himself to that fact, but his view of it doesn't give with the others view.
I take great exception to this statement...
Judge Dredd is not recent. He's been around since 1977: 2000 AD Comics. He is absolutely NOT Lawful Good. Folks that are LG are not bound to always obeying "The Law". They have codes, tenants, oaths, etc. to follow, but the key supposition that threads LG decision-making is the good part. Technically, a Lawful Good person can be Lawful Good without ever caring about the "Laws of Man" (society). If the character has a personal code of conduct that they adhere to, that is more than sufficient to satisfy the Lawful axis.
An LG character will/should obey laws that are logical, impose order without undue burden, and serve the interests of the general populace that are expected to adhere to them.
An LG character will/should disobey laws that have no valid logical schema, place an undue burden on the populace, have a clearly ill intent, serve the interests of only a select few individuals, are corrupt, etc. They will/should seek to overthrow corrupt laws/governments, and replace them with laws with laws that serve the interests of good.
Judge Dredd is a Lawful Neutral character. LN is often described as, quite literally, the "Judge" alignment. For good or ill, there is only Law. Individual LN characters may interpret/enforce laws with a slightly more good/evil slant, but they will apply that interpretation equally; the law is the law.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
That sounds incredibly scary to me.
I am still new to D&D and I wouldn't like it if something like that would be in memories of my friends. But if done right so that there are no bad feelings then I guess that would work.
The problem isn't an evil character per se, it is more an evil player. Players who use playing an evil character as an excuse to be disruptive, murderhobo, backstab other PCs, etc, all the while expecting no consequences for this behavior. I have seen the same behaviors from players with what were ostensibly characters of "good" alignment. Especially player-vs-player attacks, theft, etc can bring a campaign down fast. In my games murdering and robbing your way across the country side will pretty soon get every man's hand turned against your character, but going PvP will get the players against you, and that will last across all your characters, possibly forever.
I think that is the key, Dave. What is the player's motivation? Is the player wanting to wreck the campaign or are they looking to spice up the story?
My brother is a much more experienced RPer than I. He ran local Camarilla (?) for a few years and drug me kicking and screaming into TTRPG a few years ago. And it took. He came to me regarding our new campaign (I am DM). He wanted to play an evil character. So I am trying to wrap my head around this and figure out how it will work. After watching the aforementioned Matt Colville video together, I looked at him and he looked at me and we said in unison, ANTI-VILLAIN. He is playing I suppose you might call it a Dr. Freeze-esque kind of player. 'I do all of these bad things to other people but it is to save my wife from a disease' kind of thing. And how he wants to do this really helped shape the campaign and the end game very well.
The biggest thing I think is communication, primarily between the player and the DM. First and foremost it has to work. If you think you need to include the other players then by all means do so. It is their game too. But this arrangement can allow for some good plot-tool moments in game and can also allow the DM to think the evil player is being led down the primrose path only to have a twist or two of their own.
Thank you.
ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
Me and my dm was planing to betray the party after we would kill vecna from the very start.everyone in the party new they could be betrayed. One guy ended up dieing because he was a liability for the rest of the party. He rolled a new character. I played a neutral evil fallen asimar reborn shadar kai that was given power by the raven queen. His name was Orpheus based of the legend. He was willing to do whatever it takes to rescue his lovers and ensure their safety. Through out the game every on thought I was playing a true neutral character. Half way through the campaign everyone was in silent agreement that our characters were to close for betrayel. Even though the dm keep hinting that anyone in the party could turn at any time, the wouldn't believe it. After all everyone acted like we were a evil family at that point, my character being as friendly possible given my circumstances. After we defeated vecna the party was in pretty bad shape. Everyone was saying now the world is ours, but then something happened turns out during the fight I casted something like greater invisibility that left a double behind after saying to the party that I will try to trap him. So I casted wall of force, attacks that missed me were common because of my abilities which were shadow based. When every something passed through me they just assumed it missed me. Since I made sure to conserve my most powerful abilities for after the fight and stayed out of combat trying to "heal" one of them with temp hp that I could take away at any time. By the time it came for me to kill them I had my illusionary double drinking out of a flask of a potion of healing while say something like " We won the war, now time for the spoils, vecna shouldn't have under estimated -" then I stabed the highest hp one in the back with my blackrazor vorpal sword. He died. Then the palidin tried a 7th level smite on me, it missed. I rolled a nat 20 one my next attack and killed him instantly. Turns out my goal was not to just kill vecna and get the book of vile darkness for myself, it was to also capture a the cleric and let baba yaga have it so she would help me kill lolth, the god who captured my lovers. So I took here soul sense she only had 4th level spell slots left, and let baba yaga eat her soul. By the way for those who don't know, blackrazor destroys the soul with no chance of resurrection, same with what happens when baba yaga eats a soul. Everyone after words were alright with it sense it was told to be a possibility. My character was known for killing with out giving it second thought if he could have it benefit him in some way and ensure the safety of his lovers. The dm even had an amazed look when everything came together in the end. It was probably one of the best games I played. I played it like my character was a elder evil, he didn't care about others but sidn't go out of his way to kill unlessed it benefited him in some way. That is how you play neutral evil characters right.