I describe my Human Sage Trickery Cleric (worshiper of Mystra) as Lawful Evil, but I want input on what it means for him to be Lawful Evil and if he's better described as Lawful Neutral. Or if I should just ignore the 9 categories of alignment and continue to play him as something that doesn't really fit into one of the nine categories. I also want some advice on how to play him in a party that is nominally good (although I think the party is better described as neutral or even evil).
I get the impression that some people consider Evil alignment to be a psychopath who has no bonds and will betray his or her party whenever it benefits him or her. But that's not the way I see it. I see plenty of examples in the real world of evil groups where they have a very strong brotherhood with each other. In fact, if you look at the mafia and gangs like MS-13 or religious/political terrorist groups, I think the bond of brotherhood is often strongest among evil groups (although other times, they'll betray each other when given the opportunity). I would imagine that D&D is the same way - that the bonds of friendship in an evil group are stronger than the bonds of friendship in a good group.
Thus, I consider my character to have very strong bonds to the Noble Human Divination Wizard and the Half Elf Swashbuckling Rogue in the party. He's not as attached to the Half Orc Oath of Vengeance Paladin and the Ghostwise Halfling Circle of the Moon Druid - he sees both of them as intellectually inferior meatshields. So even though I think of him as Lawful Evil, there's no chance that he would betray the party (he might flee a dangerous encounter to save his life, but he wouldn't steal from them or backstab them). Playing an evil character that would betray the party is one of those taboo things in D&D that should only be done on the very rarest of occasions, and this isn't one of those occasions.
I do consider him to be evil because he has many evil flaws. He's obsessed with power and wealth, and he fawns over nobles and wants to become more powerful and wealthy. He joined the adventuring party because he thinks it will help him move up from being in a middle class family in Waterdeep to possibly becoming nobility, or helping his children on the path to becoming nobles. He's not concerned with right and wrong, he's concerned with what will help him become more powerful and wealthy.
He's a worshiper of Mystra, but as a Trickery Cleric, he's Lawful Evil. He has the commonly found evil quality found in people where they justify using evil tactics in the fight against evil. Similar to how many people in the USA justify using torture in the fight against terrorism, he also believes that using evil techniques like torture are justified in the fight against evil. This was a pretty useful quality to have chosen in him because the other players in the party (mostly the Oath of Vengeance Paladin) are quite comfortable using torture on people that we've captured to gain information from them. He believes that Mystra's refusal to be sneaky and spy on her enemies caused her to be vulnerable to Cyric's and Shar's plans against her. He believes that if she had used sneaky/deceitful tactics against them, that she wouldn't have been killed by them and could have defeated them. How would this work in the D&D world for him to be a follower of Mystra, but to have a different alignment than she does? In the real world, it's quite common for the extremist followers of a religion to have a different alignment than the religion itself, but is this acceptable in the D&D world, too?
He's also a racist that believes that some races (the magically inclined races) are superior to the other races. He believes that the magically inclined people, the ones with Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma, should rule over the people that are more physically strong (he has very high Intelligence and Wisdom and below average Strength, so this suits him). He hates Goblins, Orcs, Drow, Kobolds, etc.
He doesn't have the charisma to be a leader, and as a physically small person (5'4 125 pounds), he knows that he wouldn't be a leader. But he wants to be an adviser, the puppet-master pulling the strings behind the scenes. He wants to be friends with the nobility so that he can give them counsel, and to become wealthy and powerful through leaders seeking and implementing his advice. For this reason, he's in a party which is nominally good, and he's doing good things for Waterdeep because it will help him to become more powerful. The quests we're taking and the people we're getting them from are good aligned people, but the way our party is acting makes me feel that we're better described as a Lawful Evil party working for Lawful Good questgivers. We're really only doing good things because we'll benefit from it.
How do I role play this character with his flaws in a party which to some extent shares these flaws of wanting to be rich and powerful and being willing to do evil within the bounds of the law if it will lead to being more rich and powerful? Should I be a little bit more open about how the my character and the party are Lawful Evil in my opinion, or should I not bring this up with my party and not tell them that I consider my character and the party to both be Lawful Evil? How should I roleplay his relationship with Mystra, which so far has been a non-factor in the campaign. As a Cleric, his faith is a cornerstone of roleplaying him, but instead of focusing on his relationship with Mystra, I've focused his roleplaying on his fawning over nobles, his love of the politics between nobles, his desire to become wealthy and powerful, and his love of anything related to magic. But Mystra hasn't had a role in my roleplaying at all. How can I start incorporating Mystra into his roleplaying, especially as he becomes more powerful and becomes more than just a low level Cleric from a middle class family in Waterdeep?
I think that he’s closer to Neutral Evil than Lawful Evil, but he’s definitely somewhere in the spectrum between the two. Alignment is more of a guideline for your character’s moral beliefs than a straight jacket in 5E so it’s not as critical as it was in earlier editions. Selfish goals are definitely evil and so is torture.
Good and Evil represent the character's intent. Is the character's goal to do things that benefit the whole or are they simply doing things for personal gain (whether that be power, wealth, or something else).
Lawful and Chaotic represent the character's methodology. Lawful means that the character will prioritize following the law over following their goal, but will push to change the law (through approved channels) to further their agenda and sometimes manipulate the law to help them achieve certain things. Chaotic means that the character will take the path of least resistance towards their goal, sometimes sacrificing long term gain for short term success.
Lawful Good: The law is a tool for good, and therefore should be followed at all times. If the law is not a tool for good, it must be changed to support good, but until then it must be followed.
Lawful Neutral: The law must be followed, whatever the cost. The law should be changed if it is at odds with my morals or personal gain.
Lawful Evil: The law is a tool to bind people as tools. It must be obeyed, but should be made in such a fashion as benefits me most.
Neutral Good: Good is the greatest calling, beyond rules or temporary whims. Anything sacrificed for good is a worthy sacrifice.
True Neutral: shrugs
Neutral Evil: The only goal is to cause mayhem and gain power and prestige. The law can be useful, but if it is not it should be discarded.
Chaotic Good: Doing whatever does the most good at any given moment is the best way to live life, regardless of any broader consequences.
Chaotic Neutral: The best way to live life is to follow my urges, whatever they may be.
Chaotic Evil: Destruction is the final state of all beings. My goal is to cause as much pain and misery as I can, just for the sake of causing pain and misery.
I've seen a group of Neutrals and Goods play with a decidedly Chaotic Evil character to great results. The continuing consequences of the party's short-sightedness appears to delight her to no end.
(They're not "murderhobos" - a word I just recently learned a murder-and-mayhem party. They're the kind of heroes who never intended to turn a bunch of orphans into paste, but they didn't fully understand what it means to command a team of helpful skeletons that they found in a crypt. [post orphans] "Let's give them a test to see if they're cursed." "We sorta already did that!" What's not for a Chaotic Evil character to love? "I love these loophole skeletons!")
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Alignment can be tricky. Just play your character the way you want and if anyone says "that is not what your alignment would do," ask them what alignment that would make them. Alignment is determined by a character's actions, not the other way around.
As I see it, you are playing the character with a Lawful Evil alignment: he will behave according to the social construct and he wants to use the laws to benefit from them.
Sure, being evil doesn't mean that you are mean to each and everyone. You just only will care for other people as long as doing so serves your purpose. Having a party with all the benefits of that (like dumb meat shields) is a perfect reason to be friendly towards them and help them if needed.
The evil side will indeed only truly show when his life is at stake. An evil character will gladly turn his back on 'comrades' if the situation justifies it. This means, if the people he would betray are likely to survive and it will come back and bite him back, an intelligent Lawful Evil person would not betray them, as he is aware of the consequences in the long run. Now if there are no witnesses and by stabbing an ally he can assure his survival, he will gladly do so and lie about it to his party members.
About bringing it up to the party that he believes that they too are acting lawful evil: I don't see that he would feel the need to do so. He wouldn't expect any other behavior. I rather see him defending the actions of the party as 'necessary' to survive in a harsh world and that there simply is no time and place for 'saving the innocent, if there is no pay'. That's where truly good aligned characters should start to take issue. They care more about doing the moral right things, than improving their status in another way. It's their deeds of heroism that count, even if they lose their precious gear over it.
I'm sorry but I'm not that familiar with the story about Mystra. Yet it seems that until now you don't really need to bring that relationship to the forefront as there are many angles into the world of politics, nobility and his love for the Arcane/Divine magic. A cleric might have a personal relationship, which he doesn't want to share publicly with his party. Some phrases which he uses could be: "This is only between my god and me." "I don't need to prove the world that I serve Mystra, as long as she knows it, I am doing right!"
After some quick reading, Mystra seemed only to be interested that magic laws are obeyed, good or bad wasn't any of her concerns. So this can reflect perfectly in the behavior of your character. Torture is good when it ensures that people will abide by the rules on magic, imposed by Mystra.
We haven't talked about alignment at all in my party, which is why it hasn't come up that I consider my character to be lawful evil. I'm definitely not going to limit my roleplaying of him by trying to fit him into this specific alignment. He'll be a lot more fun for myself and for the party if I make him a more complex character.
Bringing up alignment to my party would be an out of game thing, rather than an in character thing. The way I see it, my character doesn't see himself as evil, but I see him as evil. My character sees himself as being very devoted to his family, and being a good father that is willing to do what it takes to help his family. He would describe himself as Lawful Good.
Because he sees himself as Lawful Good, and because he cares about his reputation, there's almost no chance that he would betray the party for his own benefit. The only way he would betray the party for his own benefit is if it would be harmful to his reputation to not betray them. Because he's a husband and a father, he's heavily inclined towards self preservation, although he will definitely sacrifice himself for his family, and he will take a lot more risks to protect the Wizard and Rogue than he would the Paladin and Druid.
What I am wondering is if I should talk to the players about the motives that make us accept certain quests and how we're choosing our path through this world. Whether we want to kind of self correct our path a bit and maintain the belief that we're heroes trying to do good, or if we want to embrace the selfishness of our motives and follow that different path. This would be an out of game discussion, rather than an in-character discussion. Is it worth talking to the other players about this, or should I just see where it goes, and continue to have my character pushing the party (along with the Paladin) into a more lawful evil direction without explicitly confirming with the players that we're comfortable becoming a lawful evil party?
The way El Jairo described Mystra does seem to fit quite well with the goals of my player, so I do think I can start to incorporate that a little bit, but I am grateful for the confirmation that it's fine to have roleplayed my Cleric so far without really ever mentioning the deity that he worships.
Because he sees himself as Lawful Good, and because he cares about his reputation, there's almost no chance that he would betray the party for his own benefit. The only way he would betray the party for his own benefit is if it would be harmful to his reputation to not betray them. Because he's a husband and a father, he's heavily inclined towards self preservation, although he will definitely sacrifice himself for his family, and he will take a lot more risks to protect the Wizard and Rogue than he would the Paladin and Druid.
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Sacrificing himself to save his family is a good thing to do, so I would say that would make him rather Lawful Neutral. An evil person has it's own interests in his heart. Sure, they will love their family and do a lot for them, yet sacrificing himself purposefully, no that what conflict with himself. He would start making up reasons why his family isn't worth him.
Yet I can totally see an evil character perish in the proces of trying to build up his family as nobility, without dying being part of the plan.
I don't know if you should start the out-game conversation about alignment with your players. It's because most people think that they are doing good but in fact they are Neutral at best. Nobody actively thinks that they are doing Evil, it's the other who are Evil and not trying hard enough. What I'm saying is that this discussion might open a can of worms: everyone has a different opinion on what alignment their character has or even other peoples character.
What I would do is talk about this to you DM in private, see how he sees alignment fit into his world. I would find a far more immersive when the world start to show more and more that they despise the party for their motivations. That they perceive them as pure mercenaries, only doing good if it comes with coin.
But if you have very mature players, they won't mind that the characters that they are playing, aren't as good as they portray and belief themselves to be. I find this one of the most interesting aspects of the game: the complex and complicated way of how the human psyche fools itself into doing things that will come bite them back afterwards and conflict themselves. Having characters that are either black or white, isn't interesting at all.
And that's why I would avoid this discussion about alignment, because sometimes people really like to believe in a black & white world. We are the heroes, so whatever we do is Good, as long as we don't start murdering villages for the money. Many people mistake Chaotic Evil for the only Evil alignment. Evil is the kind of morality that puts yourself as the highest priority. This doesn't mean that they will try to fit in their environment or start harming people just for the fun of it. Only really dumb Evil characters would willfully make such actions as they don't understand that the consequences of their actions will be detrimental to them. Real Evil persons, will emotionally manipulate others to get what they want by the others giving in to their demands, preferably without knowing that they are being manipulated. So they still belief that they are doing the right thing.
PS: I have got the knowledge about Mystra from a wiki, so if you want to know more about the history and what not, I found it by a quick DuckDuckGo search.
I played in this exact situation. A new player to the group straight-up told us, "My character is lawful evil, and she's a warlock. She's not hiding the alignment but she is hiding her class, pretending to be a wizard."
We all then decided for our characters what our reactions would be. My character didn't know what a warlock was anyway, so the new character was just, "a spellcaster."
None of us had issues with the lawful evil bit as our goals all aligned and where we were, allies were in short supply. We had some in character discussions about crossing lines in the pursuit of goals, which made for some nice roleplaying.
It worked well. The player trusted us with the metagaming and we all honoured the trust. Inisially the DM was nervous but in the end the character was with us for almost a year realtime (many months ingame). The character only left the game because the player moved to another city.
I have now been open with my party that my character is Lawful Evil, and it's worked out well. We've got a Zhentarim quest giver (he is not our only quest giver, but he is one of them), and we've encountered a Noble that is somewhat aligned with the Zhentarim, and my Cleric gets along well with them because they're his type (and because a big part of my role playing has always been that he fawns over Nobles, and encountering a Lawful Evil Noble is especially someone that he would fawn over).
The frustration has been with the Half Orc Oath of Vengeance Paladin in the party. He's somewhere between Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Evil, and he's always picking fights whereas my character wants to use more non-combat solutions, especially with my Cleric having +6 in Insight. He's doing a good job roleplaying the chaotic Half Orc, but it's a bit frustrating for me (both as a person that wants D&D to be more than just combat, and as a person controlling a character that would want to explore non-combat solutions more than our party does) to just be going into combat instead of talking to NPCs. The DM did warn the Half Orc at some point that if he would have to fight the Noble's body guard if he really wanted to do something he said his character was going to do, and in the two weeks before the next session I let the DM know that if our Half Orc picked a fight with the Noble and her bodyguard, that I was probably going to be attacking my own party member in defense of the Noble.
I don't think any of the five people in the party would say that they have a good alignment, even though our primary quest giver is probably Lawful Good. The struggle has actually become the Lawful vs Chaotic dichotomy between my Human Cleric and the Half Orc Paladin.
The Zhentarim Quest Giver and the Noble both being NPCs that I would describe as Lawful Evil has certainly helped me become more comfortable with roleplaying a Lawful Evil character. These NPCs are probably somewhere on the spectrum between Lawful Evil and Lawful Neutral, just like my character is. My other two D&D characters have had Chaotic Good and Neutral Good alignments, and it's much more natural for me to role play them and to know how those players would respond to situations.
I still haven't really found a way to role play the Cleric/Faith aspect of my character, but my confidence in role playing his Lawful Evil tendencies has grown at least. And I've still had plenty of role playing material for him without having to really bring my faith into it. It's a little bit weird playing a Cleric whose faith is a non-factor, but that's how its worked out.
The character sounds a touch more Neutral Evil, but the alignments don't matter that much.
I will say, as I tell everyone who wants to play and "evil" character, you must be extremely careful. Aside from cruddy DMs, Evil party members are the things that tears an entire group apart more than anything. Granted, these are usually just Chaotic Evil Folks, but Neutral Evil is pretty close.
You've obviously thought out your character pretty well which is a great start. You have clear motivations. That's great! As long as your motivations and goals align with the party, you can do really well! There's plenty of works of fiction where the "bad guy" teams up with good guys to achieve or a goal or stop a Bigger Bad Guy!
My piece of advice is to make sure that he has boundaries somewhere. There has to be some lines he wont cross, maybe there are few, but some boundaries are going to help the other party members justify working with you. That's why CE characters almost never work because they usually have no boundaries and do whatever they want. You really can't play a campaign like that.
A way to help bring his faith into the mix could be just using at as a point of confusion for him. It sounds like he's a little confused about his god and faith and doesn't agree with all of their beliefs. You could play this in a fun way where he scrambles to justify his actions using twisted or poorly phrased beliefs. This could eat away at him a little bit too since he may feel so disconnected from his god. It could be fun!
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I describe my Human Sage Trickery Cleric (worshiper of Mystra) as Lawful Evil, but I want input on what it means for him to be Lawful Evil and if he's better described as Lawful Neutral. Or if I should just ignore the 9 categories of alignment and continue to play him as something that doesn't really fit into one of the nine categories. I also want some advice on how to play him in a party that is nominally good (although I think the party is better described as neutral or even evil).
I get the impression that some people consider Evil alignment to be a psychopath who has no bonds and will betray his or her party whenever it benefits him or her. But that's not the way I see it. I see plenty of examples in the real world of evil groups where they have a very strong brotherhood with each other. In fact, if you look at the mafia and gangs like MS-13 or religious/political terrorist groups, I think the bond of brotherhood is often strongest among evil groups (although other times, they'll betray each other when given the opportunity). I would imagine that D&D is the same way - that the bonds of friendship in an evil group are stronger than the bonds of friendship in a good group.
Thus, I consider my character to have very strong bonds to the Noble Human Divination Wizard and the Half Elf Swashbuckling Rogue in the party. He's not as attached to the Half Orc Oath of Vengeance Paladin and the Ghostwise Halfling Circle of the Moon Druid - he sees both of them as intellectually inferior meatshields. So even though I think of him as Lawful Evil, there's no chance that he would betray the party (he might flee a dangerous encounter to save his life, but he wouldn't steal from them or backstab them). Playing an evil character that would betray the party is one of those taboo things in D&D that should only be done on the very rarest of occasions, and this isn't one of those occasions.
I do consider him to be evil because he has many evil flaws. He's obsessed with power and wealth, and he fawns over nobles and wants to become more powerful and wealthy. He joined the adventuring party because he thinks it will help him move up from being in a middle class family in Waterdeep to possibly becoming nobility, or helping his children on the path to becoming nobles. He's not concerned with right and wrong, he's concerned with what will help him become more powerful and wealthy.
He's a worshiper of Mystra, but as a Trickery Cleric, he's Lawful Evil. He has the commonly found evil quality found in people where they justify using evil tactics in the fight against evil. Similar to how many people in the USA justify using torture in the fight against terrorism, he also believes that using evil techniques like torture are justified in the fight against evil. This was a pretty useful quality to have chosen in him because the other players in the party (mostly the Oath of Vengeance Paladin) are quite comfortable using torture on people that we've captured to gain information from them. He believes that Mystra's refusal to be sneaky and spy on her enemies caused her to be vulnerable to Cyric's and Shar's plans against her. He believes that if she had used sneaky/deceitful tactics against them, that she wouldn't have been killed by them and could have defeated them. How would this work in the D&D world for him to be a follower of Mystra, but to have a different alignment than she does? In the real world, it's quite common for the extremist followers of a religion to have a different alignment than the religion itself, but is this acceptable in the D&D world, too?
He's also a racist that believes that some races (the magically inclined races) are superior to the other races. He believes that the magically inclined people, the ones with Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma, should rule over the people that are more physically strong (he has very high Intelligence and Wisdom and below average Strength, so this suits him). He hates Goblins, Orcs, Drow, Kobolds, etc.
He doesn't have the charisma to be a leader, and as a physically small person (5'4 125 pounds), he knows that he wouldn't be a leader. But he wants to be an adviser, the puppet-master pulling the strings behind the scenes. He wants to be friends with the nobility so that he can give them counsel, and to become wealthy and powerful through leaders seeking and implementing his advice. For this reason, he's in a party which is nominally good, and he's doing good things for Waterdeep because it will help him to become more powerful. The quests we're taking and the people we're getting them from are good aligned people, but the way our party is acting makes me feel that we're better described as a Lawful Evil party working for Lawful Good questgivers. We're really only doing good things because we'll benefit from it.
How do I role play this character with his flaws in a party which to some extent shares these flaws of wanting to be rich and powerful and being willing to do evil within the bounds of the law if it will lead to being more rich and powerful? Should I be a little bit more open about how the my character and the party are Lawful Evil in my opinion, or should I not bring this up with my party and not tell them that I consider my character and the party to both be Lawful Evil? How should I roleplay his relationship with Mystra, which so far has been a non-factor in the campaign. As a Cleric, his faith is a cornerstone of roleplaying him, but instead of focusing on his relationship with Mystra, I've focused his roleplaying on his fawning over nobles, his love of the politics between nobles, his desire to become wealthy and powerful, and his love of anything related to magic. But Mystra hasn't had a role in my roleplaying at all. How can I start incorporating Mystra into his roleplaying, especially as he becomes more powerful and becomes more than just a low level Cleric from a middle class family in Waterdeep?
I think that he’s closer to Neutral Evil than Lawful Evil, but he’s definitely somewhere in the spectrum between the two. Alignment is more of a guideline for your character’s moral beliefs than a straight jacket in 5E so it’s not as critical as it was in earlier editions. Selfish goals are definitely evil and so is torture.
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Good and Evil represent the character's intent. Is the character's goal to do things that benefit the whole or are they simply doing things for personal gain (whether that be power, wealth, or something else).
Lawful and Chaotic represent the character's methodology. Lawful means that the character will prioritize following the law over following their goal, but will push to change the law (through approved channels) to further their agenda and sometimes manipulate the law to help them achieve certain things. Chaotic means that the character will take the path of least resistance towards their goal, sometimes sacrificing long term gain for short term success.
Lawful Good: The law is a tool for good, and therefore should be followed at all times. If the law is not a tool for good, it must be changed to support good, but until then it must be followed.
Lawful Neutral: The law must be followed, whatever the cost. The law should be changed if it is at odds with my morals or personal gain.
Lawful Evil: The law is a tool to bind people as tools. It must be obeyed, but should be made in such a fashion as benefits me most.
Neutral Good: Good is the greatest calling, beyond rules or temporary whims. Anything sacrificed for good is a worthy sacrifice.
True Neutral: shrugs
Neutral Evil: The only goal is to cause mayhem and gain power and prestige. The law can be useful, but if it is not it should be discarded.
Chaotic Good: Doing whatever does the most good at any given moment is the best way to live life, regardless of any broader consequences.
Chaotic Neutral: The best way to live life is to follow my urges, whatever they may be.
Chaotic Evil: Destruction is the final state of all beings. My goal is to cause as much pain and misery as I can, just for the sake of causing pain and misery.
I've seen a group of Neutrals and Goods play with a decidedly Chaotic Evil character to great results. The continuing consequences of the party's short-sightedness appears to delight her to no end.
(They're not
"murderhobos" - a word I just recently learneda murder-and-mayhem party. They're the kind of heroes who never intended to turn a bunch of orphans into paste, but they didn't fully understand what it means to command a team of helpful skeletons that they found in a crypt. [post orphans] "Let's give them a test to see if they're cursed." "We sorta already did that!" What's not for a Chaotic Evil character to love? "I love these loophole skeletons!")Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Alignment can be tricky. Just play your character the way you want and if anyone says "that is not what your alignment would do," ask them what alignment that would make them. Alignment is determined by a character's actions, not the other way around.
As I see it, you are playing the character with a Lawful Evil alignment: he will behave according to the social construct and he wants to use the laws to benefit from them.
Sure, being evil doesn't mean that you are mean to each and everyone. You just only will care for other people as long as doing so serves your purpose. Having a party with all the benefits of that (like dumb meat shields) is a perfect reason to be friendly towards them and help them if needed.
The evil side will indeed only truly show when his life is at stake. An evil character will gladly turn his back on 'comrades' if the situation justifies it. This means, if the people he would betray are likely to survive and it will come back and bite him back, an intelligent Lawful Evil person would not betray them, as he is aware of the consequences in the long run. Now if there are no witnesses and by stabbing an ally he can assure his survival, he will gladly do so and lie about it to his party members.
About bringing it up to the party that he believes that they too are acting lawful evil: I don't see that he would feel the need to do so. He wouldn't expect any other behavior. I rather see him defending the actions of the party as 'necessary' to survive in a harsh world and that there simply is no time and place for 'saving the innocent, if there is no pay'. That's where truly good aligned characters should start to take issue. They care more about doing the moral right things, than improving their status in another way. It's their deeds of heroism that count, even if they lose their precious gear over it.
I'm sorry but I'm not that familiar with the story about Mystra. Yet it seems that until now you don't really need to bring that relationship to the forefront as there are many angles into the world of politics, nobility and his love for the Arcane/Divine magic.
A cleric might have a personal relationship, which he doesn't want to share publicly with his party.
Some phrases which he uses could be: "This is only between my god and me." "I don't need to prove the world that I serve Mystra, as long as she knows it, I am doing right!"
After some quick reading, Mystra seemed only to be interested that magic laws are obeyed, good or bad wasn't any of her concerns. So this can reflect perfectly in the behavior of your character. Torture is good when it ensures that people will abide by the rules on magic, imposed by Mystra.
We haven't talked about alignment at all in my party, which is why it hasn't come up that I consider my character to be lawful evil. I'm definitely not going to limit my roleplaying of him by trying to fit him into this specific alignment. He'll be a lot more fun for myself and for the party if I make him a more complex character.
Bringing up alignment to my party would be an out of game thing, rather than an in character thing. The way I see it, my character doesn't see himself as evil, but I see him as evil. My character sees himself as being very devoted to his family, and being a good father that is willing to do what it takes to help his family. He would describe himself as Lawful Good.
Because he sees himself as Lawful Good, and because he cares about his reputation, there's almost no chance that he would betray the party for his own benefit. The only way he would betray the party for his own benefit is if it would be harmful to his reputation to not betray them. Because he's a husband and a father, he's heavily inclined towards self preservation, although he will definitely sacrifice himself for his family, and he will take a lot more risks to protect the Wizard and Rogue than he would the Paladin and Druid.
What I am wondering is if I should talk to the players about the motives that make us accept certain quests and how we're choosing our path through this world. Whether we want to kind of self correct our path a bit and maintain the belief that we're heroes trying to do good, or if we want to embrace the selfishness of our motives and follow that different path. This would be an out of game discussion, rather than an in-character discussion. Is it worth talking to the other players about this, or should I just see where it goes, and continue to have my character pushing the party (along with the Paladin) into a more lawful evil direction without explicitly confirming with the players that we're comfortable becoming a lawful evil party?
The way El Jairo described Mystra does seem to fit quite well with the goals of my player, so I do think I can start to incorporate that a little bit, but I am grateful for the confirmation that it's fine to have roleplayed my Cleric so far without really ever mentioning the deity that he worships.
Sacrificing himself to save his family is a good thing to do, so I would say that would make him rather Lawful Neutral. An evil person has it's own interests in his heart. Sure, they will love their family and do a lot for them, yet sacrificing himself purposefully, no that what conflict with himself. He would start making up reasons why his family isn't worth him.
Yet I can totally see an evil character perish in the proces of trying to build up his family as nobility, without dying being part of the plan.
I don't know if you should start the out-game conversation about alignment with your players. It's because most people think that they are doing good but in fact they are Neutral at best. Nobody actively thinks that they are doing Evil, it's the other who are Evil and not trying hard enough.
What I'm saying is that this discussion might open a can of worms: everyone has a different opinion on what alignment their character has or even other peoples character.
What I would do is talk about this to you DM in private, see how he sees alignment fit into his world. I would find a far more immersive when the world start to show more and more that they despise the party for their motivations. That they perceive them as pure mercenaries, only doing good if it comes with coin.
But if you have very mature players, they won't mind that the characters that they are playing, aren't as good as they portray and belief themselves to be. I find this one of the most interesting aspects of the game: the complex and complicated way of how the human psyche fools itself into doing things that will come bite them back afterwards and conflict themselves. Having characters that are either black or white, isn't interesting at all.
And that's why I would avoid this discussion about alignment, because sometimes people really like to believe in a black & white world. We are the heroes, so whatever we do is Good, as long as we don't start murdering villages for the money. Many people mistake Chaotic Evil for the only Evil alignment. Evil is the kind of morality that puts yourself as the highest priority. This doesn't mean that they will try to fit in their environment or start harming people just for the fun of it. Only really dumb Evil characters would willfully make such actions as they don't understand that the consequences of their actions will be detrimental to them.
Real Evil persons, will emotionally manipulate others to get what they want by the others giving in to their demands, preferably without knowing that they are being manipulated. So they still belief that they are doing the right thing.
PS: I have got the knowledge about Mystra from a wiki, so if you want to know more about the history and what not, I found it by a quick DuckDuckGo search.
I played in this exact situation. A new player to the group straight-up told us, "My character is lawful evil, and she's a warlock. She's not hiding the alignment but she is hiding her class, pretending to be a wizard."
We all then decided for our characters what our reactions would be. My character didn't know what a warlock was anyway, so the new character was just, "a spellcaster."
None of us had issues with the lawful evil bit as our goals all aligned and where we were, allies were in short supply. We had some in character discussions about crossing lines in the pursuit of goals, which made for some nice roleplaying.
It worked well. The player trusted us with the metagaming and we all honoured the trust. Inisially the DM was nervous but in the end the character was with us for almost a year realtime (many months ingame). The character only left the game because the player moved to another city.
I have now been open with my party that my character is Lawful Evil, and it's worked out well. We've got a Zhentarim quest giver (he is not our only quest giver, but he is one of them), and we've encountered a Noble that is somewhat aligned with the Zhentarim, and my Cleric gets along well with them because they're his type (and because a big part of my role playing has always been that he fawns over Nobles, and encountering a Lawful Evil Noble is especially someone that he would fawn over).
The frustration has been with the Half Orc Oath of Vengeance Paladin in the party. He's somewhere between Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Evil, and he's always picking fights whereas my character wants to use more non-combat solutions, especially with my Cleric having +6 in Insight. He's doing a good job roleplaying the chaotic Half Orc, but it's a bit frustrating for me (both as a person that wants D&D to be more than just combat, and as a person controlling a character that would want to explore non-combat solutions more than our party does) to just be going into combat instead of talking to NPCs. The DM did warn the Half Orc at some point that if he would have to fight the Noble's body guard if he really wanted to do something he said his character was going to do, and in the two weeks before the next session I let the DM know that if our Half Orc picked a fight with the Noble and her bodyguard, that I was probably going to be attacking my own party member in defense of the Noble.
I don't think any of the five people in the party would say that they have a good alignment, even though our primary quest giver is probably Lawful Good. The struggle has actually become the Lawful vs Chaotic dichotomy between my Human Cleric and the Half Orc Paladin.
The Zhentarim Quest Giver and the Noble both being NPCs that I would describe as Lawful Evil has certainly helped me become more comfortable with roleplaying a Lawful Evil character. These NPCs are probably somewhere on the spectrum between Lawful Evil and Lawful Neutral, just like my character is. My other two D&D characters have had Chaotic Good and Neutral Good alignments, and it's much more natural for me to role play them and to know how those players would respond to situations.
I still haven't really found a way to role play the Cleric/Faith aspect of my character, but my confidence in role playing his Lawful Evil tendencies has grown at least. And I've still had plenty of role playing material for him without having to really bring my faith into it. It's a little bit weird playing a Cleric whose faith is a non-factor, but that's how its worked out.
The character sounds a touch more Neutral Evil, but the alignments don't matter that much.
I will say, as I tell everyone who wants to play and "evil" character, you must be extremely careful. Aside from cruddy DMs, Evil party members are the things that tears an entire group apart more than anything. Granted, these are usually just Chaotic Evil Folks, but Neutral Evil is pretty close.
You've obviously thought out your character pretty well which is a great start. You have clear motivations. That's great! As long as your motivations and goals align with the party, you can do really well! There's plenty of works of fiction where the "bad guy" teams up with good guys to achieve or a goal or stop a Bigger Bad Guy!
My piece of advice is to make sure that he has boundaries somewhere. There has to be some lines he wont cross, maybe there are few, but some boundaries are going to help the other party members justify working with you. That's why CE characters almost never work because they usually have no boundaries and do whatever they want. You really can't play a campaign like that.
A way to help bring his faith into the mix could be just using at as a point of confusion for him. It sounds like he's a little confused about his god and faith and doesn't agree with all of their beliefs. You could play this in a fun way where he scrambles to justify his actions using twisted or poorly phrased beliefs. This could eat away at him a little bit too since he may feel so disconnected from his god. It could be fun!