BECMI is the one where Elf was a class, right? Ah... the early days. :)
Yeah, there are definitely some questionable lines that DMs will need to clarify in their own games on a case by case basis.
On these kinds of topics, I tend to split hairs with a sapphire razor, so cases like the Glabrezu Deception opens a lot of doors into the theoretical behavior of characters of any alignment. There will always be someone who has lived an exceptional life (for better or worse) and that will take them down extraordinary paths. Since Player Characters are frequently unique or special, it's not outside of the scope of the genre to create a walking contradiction, but the state of that character is going to be particularly fragile and will be guaranteed to collapse into one alignment or another once introduced into a real gaming session, unless the DM handwaves it for the story. (Kind of like the quantum state of an entangled particle before and after observation.)
I'd be interested to hear more about your experience with Zariel. I haven't played Descent into Avernus, but what I could find online seemed to suggest that exposure to the realm corrupted Zariel by appealing to Hubris; transforming her from a Divine Soldier to a Warmonger. Does the campaign delve more into her psyche?
Try to not think of Good and Evil as representing COSMIC Good and Evil. For your character those words are perhaps better translated as Selfless(Good) and Selfish(Evil).
Selfless (Good) vs Selfish (Evil)
A Good character will do things to help others even at the expense of their own desires. Good alignment implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters will make personal sacrifices to help others.
A Neutral character will do things to help others, but not at the expense of their own desires. Characters with Neutral alignment have compunctions against harming the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people however are committed to others by personal relationships.
An Evil character won't do things to help others, only things to help their own desires. Evil alignment implies hurting, oppressing, and possibly killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and hurt without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
***But Sometimes the thing the evil person wants and the thing that will help others is the same thing. But the evil character is only interested in the part that helps themselves.
Lawful vs Chaotic is how they approach their selfless or selfish nature.
Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition & personal codes, and judge those who fall short of their duties.
Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, rebel against authority, and do what they promise if they feel like it.
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Check out my Disabled & Dragons Youtube Channel for 5e Monster and Player Tactics. Helping the Disabled Community and Players and DM’s (both new and experienced) get into D&D. Plus there is a talking Dragon named Quill.
Being evil is not about kicking puppies and murdering innocents. It's about being selfish and puting your goal over the feeling and well-being of others. But you can still be evil and save the world - after all you're one of the people who live in it. You can help the villagers to repel monster raids, as long as there's reward in it, or maybe you're playing a long game and gaining reputation you can use later is reward enough for you. You can care about your teammates as much as you carry about your armor and weapon - as useful tools you need to achieve your goals, because your not a fool and know you cannot get anything major done without allies. Or you may actually care about them on a personal level, having your own small circle of friends you formed emotional bonds with while having no empathy the rest of the world - after all even evil have the loved ones. Smart or cunning lawful or neutral evil played right are almost indistinguishable from good at surface level, because they put a facade so people don't mistrust them - you may voice your internal thoughts and justifications to your teammates if your group is good at not metagaming or keep playing an evil character who plays good character so his good teammates don't turn on him, up until they figure it out (it's usually harder to hide for divine/pact casters, as visual effects on spells give you up).
Being evil is not about kicking puppies and murdering innocents. It's about being selfish and puting your goal over the feeling and well-being of others. But you can still be evil and save the world - after all you're one of the people who live in it. You can help the villagers to repel monster raids, as long as there's reward in it, or maybe you're playing a long game and gaining reputation you can use later is reward enough for you. You can care about your teammates as much as you carry about your armor and weapon - as useful tools you need to achieve your goals, because your not a fool and know you cannot get anything major done without allies. Or you may actually care about them on a personal level, having your own small circle of friends you formed emotional bonds with while having no empathy the rest of the world - after all even evil have the loved ones. Smart or cunning lawful or neutral evil played right are almost indistinguishable from good at surface level, because they put a facade so people don't mistrust them - you may voice your internal thoughts and justifications to your teammates if your group is good at not metagaming or keep playing an evil character who plays good character so his good teammates don't turn on him, up until they figure it out (it's usually harder to hide for divine/pact casters, as visual effects on spells give you up).
I also hate how there is a requirement that the evil character has to betray the party at some point....why is that a prerequisite? I am pretty sure that an evil character can go an entire campaign without betraying the parties trust. Maybe they just want a specific thing and are satisfied with everything else if they get it.
While I agree with the two previous posters, there is no point playing an evil character if you never do evil. Note that this does not mean betraying the party, but it means committing evil acts at least now and then, when opportunities arise. Whether the rest of the party notices or not, and chooses to act upon it or not is another story entirely...
This gets kinda weird as now we are saying they have to do overtly evil acts? Like its saying as the evil character you have to try to push the buttons of the others?
Just because someone is focused and doesn't want to kick a puppy just to kick it doesn't mean they arent evil.
If you mean small acts of evil sure. Like if their evil comes from not caring about people or things and is in honesty the most common type of evil. They do not save the innocent goblins from the townfolk as its "not my problem". They have somewhat racist views of other races. They charge people for their help regardless of their ability to do so. ("Oh I guess I will accept this 4 silver...you are lucky we are substantially reducing our rate for you"). Or they litter frequently.
Evil like good is a spectrum and small acts of evil or allowing evil to happen is still adhering to the alignment.
Overall the whole alignment thing is a big joke anyway so I just say you pick motivations and how ardently people will adhere to those motivations and go with it. Much more nuanced that way anyway.
There is no point playing an evil character if you never do evil.
Roleplaying at least for me is an excercise of shifting worldview to that of chartacter rather than mine. That on itself is point enough to play characters with morals higly different from mine. I've started playin in World of Darkness games that are all about exploring the character over mechanics and that part I carrid into 40k RPG and recently DnD.
While I agree with the two previous posters, there is no point playing an evil character if you never do evil. Note that this does not mean betraying the party, but it means committing evil acts at least now and then, when opportunities arise. Whether the rest of the party notices or not, and chooses to act upon it or not is another story entirely...
This gets kinda weird as now we are saying they have to do overtly evil acts? Like its saying as the evil character you have to try to push the buttons of the others?
the only thing that I'm saying is that in general there will be opportunities for gain by doing evil, and if an evil character seizes none of these, I don't see how he can be considered evil.
It absolutely does not have by pushing the buttons of the other members of the party, it can be quietly murdering a merchant in the room of an inn to steal his reserve money.
Just because someone is focused and doesn't want to kick a puppy just to kick it doesn't mean they arent evil.
I am not speaking about gratuituous acts, although again someone really evil might do them for the simple pleasure of causiong pain.
If you mean small acts of evil sure. Like if their evil comes from not caring about people or things and is in honesty the most common type of evil. They do not save the innocent goblins from the townfolk as its "not my problem". They have somewhat racist views of other races. They charge people for their help regardless of their ability to do so. ("Oh I guess I will accept this 4 silver...you are lucky we are substantially reducing our rate for you"). Or they litter frequently.
This is really petty and hardly evil. And the campaigns rarely happen in societies which are as well policed and groomed as ours. I'm talking arson, theft, murder here.
Evil like good is a spectrum and small acts of evil or allowing evil to happen is still adhering to the alignment.
It is, but this is also a high fantasy game, and noone would label someone as evil just for littering...
Overall the whole alignment thing is a big joke anyway so I just say you pick motivations and how ardently people will adhere to those motivations and go with it. Much more nuanced that way anyway.
YCMV, but D&D simulates high fantasy in general, with larger than life heroes and villains. Look at the villains in published campaigns, they are evil, blatantly so, it's part of the genre.
OK so they have to commit overtly evil acts to be evil huh? Ok well that is a VERY strict definition and honestly I am glad that the tables I am at do not adhere to such rigid thinking.
Also your last point is blatantly wrong as Eberron specifically focuses on Moral Grey as a key point of the setting. Its built in that everyone does evil/good depending on their motivations. There is similar notions in the MtG settings as well.
The whole high fantasy thing is fine but IMO played out. Overt good guy vs. overt bad guy has been done so much and is easy to simply say what is the "good" or "bad" thing to do its predictable and boring to me.
There is no point playing an evil character if you never do evil.
Roleplaying at least for me is an excercise of shifting worldview to that of chartacter rather than mine. That on itself is point enough to play characters with morals higly different from mine. I've started playin in World of Darkness games that are all about exploring the character over mechanics and that part I carrid into 40k RPG and recently DnD.
Yeah I agree...super rigid thinking there and its the exact opposite way of having dynamic and interesting characters.
the only thing that I'm saying is that in general there will be opportunities for gain by doing evil, and if an evil character seizes none of these, I don't see how he can be considered evil.
Oh, that is for sure. But if you're playing INT 19 WIS 15 evil character it would be in character to only bite on those opportunities when you're sure it would not bite you in the ass. For example in my current campaign my evil character passed the opportunity to loot the corpses of royal knights (full plate is a fat chunk of loot, and 12 sets of it would make me rich) who died defending the town we were also defending because the risk of getting caught was too great and could have ruined my reputation i worked so hard to establish. Meeanwhile when the antagonist blew tha towns hall and I found the mayor's safe trown by explosion to an abandoned warehopuse one block away with nowhere around, I lockicked it and blackmailed the mayor (who turned up to sell state secrets to foreign spies) with documens and foreign currency I found inside.
Look at the villains in published campaigns, they are evil, blatantly so, it's part of the genre.
Laughs in Eberron, where you could have obviously LG queen being a benevolent warmonger that genuinely believes that the world would be a better place if the war was reignited and her side won vs the very obviously LE vampire king who's the biggest champion of piece in the setting e as he's afraid humans would kill each other for good with more and more WMDs and he'd starve to un-undeath.
OK so they have to commit overtly evil acts to be evil huh? Ok well that is a VERY strict definition and honestly I am glad that the tables I am at do not adhere to such rigid thinking.
Hrmm, please be nice in your wordings, as it would be so easy to retaliate, considering your attitude.
And yes, if your character is evil, it's because he has evil in his past, in his present and probably in his future. Playing a brooding character that just considers himself evil but does nothing but pat children on the head looks fairly ridiculous to me. And I also fail how he even intends to do evil in the future just by patting children on the head.
Also your last point is blatantly wrong as Eberron specifically focuses on Moral Grey as a key point of the setting. Its built in that everyone does evil/good depending on their motivations. There is similar notions in the MtG settings as well.
Saying that it is "blatantly wrong" taking ONE setting as an example which does not even apply to the discussion because yes, you are free to play with grey morality in Eberron, but it happens that evil creatures in Eberron do evil as much if not more than in other settings, is just... Well, you see what I mean about being easy to find insulting words.
The whole high fantasy thing is fine but IMO played out. Overt good guy vs. overt bad guy has been done so much and is easy to simply say what is the "good" or "bad" thing to do its predictable and boring to me.
Fine, then don't play D&D, because it's one of the basic principles of the game. You are of course free to play it whatever way you want, and to sneer at people still playing in the old fashioned way, but the fact remains that this is how the game and all the adventures are written. Just look at the villains and their motivations, it's always evil power that they crave, if not chaos on top of that...
Cartoony Skeletor villains are played out.
Why are you playing D&D then ? Do you even read the published adventures ? Can you explain how subtle the villains are and how different they are from Skeletor ?
First off your receive the response from people that you present. You rarely present in a way that comes off as anything other than adversarial and thus you receive this from others. Honestly it should not be a surprise to you at this point.
Secondly you are literally saying you have to play high fantasy to play DnD which is so laughably wrong that I cannot take you seriously anymore on this subject.
Lastly its more like literally every other setting than Forgottem Realms has moral grey....MtG seetings, Eberron, Wildmount....but I guess that's selective thinking on your part and is generally expected based on your rigid thinking patterns.
Good luck in your games but I will be adding you to the ignore list.
Look at the villains in published campaigns, they are evil, blatantly so, it's part of the genre.
Laughs in Eberron, where you could have obviously LG queen being a benevolent warmonger that genuinely believes that the world would be a better place if the war was reignited and her side won vs the very obviously LE vampire king who's the biggest champion of piece in the setting e as he's afraid humans would kill each other for good with more and more WMDs and he'd starve to un-undeath.
Yeah more and more the settings are using morally grey characters. The only reason they have alignment at all is because we cannot get over the antiquated notion of alignment.
I enjoy these contradictions though! Shows that a complex character is infinitely more interesting than a 1D representation of evil.
Can you explain how subtle the villains are and how different they are from Skeletor ?
Good adventure does not require a villain. It requires an antagonist. In bank heist andventure security and towns guard may be antagonists but they're hardly villains unless you really want to make them (i.e. Robin Hood cliches).
I'm not a specialist of Eberron, but I very much doubt the queen has been published as officially LG, as for the vampire king he is certainly committing murder more or less at will, so he is doing evil. The fact that he just wants to prevent a slaughter just to maintain his livestock is in itself as evil as can be.
The point is that he's not the Antagonist, and may as well be a patron of a benevolent party seeking to prevent magic WWII.
Can you explain how subtle the villains are and how different they are from Skeletor ?
Good adventure does not require a villain. It requires an antagonist. In bank heist andventure security and towns guard may be antagonists but they're hardly villains unless you really want to make them (i.e. Robin Hood cliches).
This is such good advice...antagonists is a much better way of looking at it. They have opposed goals but they could even be friends if the circumstances were different.
Paladin and his crew need that money to fund an army to take down a rebellion of people who are disenfranchised by the crown. The crown is struggling to provide for the masses as they had to fight a war to secure access to mining areas. The queen is not even angry with the rebellion but also cannot let it stand. She feels she has let her people down but stepping down would create a power vacuum that would cause much more death.
The paladin cares about his people and will do what he needs to do to get he money to save them. The guards at this vault are paid to do a job and this money is part of the way they feed their families.
Who is the villian here? No one....simply people trying to do their best with the circumstances provided to them.
And again, I did not say that he had to jump at all the opportunities, it's just that it would be bizarre to miss the real juicy ones when they come.
I think you're mistaking good/evil axis with law/chaos. Controlling your impulses and putting long-term goals over immediate benefits is very much a question of lawful vs chaotic.
Alignment is very subjective, but my outlook is that Chaotic is an ideal of individual people, emotion, and exploration, while Lawful deals with objectivity, sensibility, and doing things the "right" way.
Lawful Evil could be someone who sees what they do as right because it's always been done that way, or does horrible things to other people because it makes sense to them. The "to them" part is the thing to accentuate. "Lawful" doesn't mean the literal rules, more personal codes or ways of living. I think this is why Aberrations are mostly Lawful Evil, and looking at them is a good place to start with understanding how playing a Lawful Evil works.
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He/him
If your DM defends the DM vs Players mindset get outta there fast. My advice as someone with a bad history with this game o7 it gets better.
I love 5e monster & planar lore almost as much as I love complaining about it
I look at Lawful Evil as someone who understands there are rules in a society, and they seek to capitalize on them to gain advantage. Where a chaotic outlook would see regulations as preventing them from the freedom to make a personal choice, lawful characters find such laws as the fabric to keep order among a community. While a good character seeks to help others, lawful good does it within the constraints of what is acceptable to a code of honor, the laws of the land, or a religious tenet. Lawful Evil also respects these same laws. But their respect extends to how to exploit such laws for personal gain, or to suppress and subjugate those who pose a threat.
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BECMI is the one where Elf was a class, right? Ah... the early days. :)
Yeah, there are definitely some questionable lines that DMs will need to clarify in their own games on a case by case basis.
On these kinds of topics, I tend to split hairs with a sapphire razor, so cases like the Glabrezu Deception opens a lot of doors into the theoretical behavior of characters of any alignment. There will always be someone who has lived an exceptional life (for better or worse) and that will take them down extraordinary paths. Since Player Characters are frequently unique or special, it's not outside of the scope of the genre to create a walking contradiction, but the state of that character is going to be particularly fragile and will be guaranteed to collapse into one alignment or another once introduced into a real gaming session, unless the DM handwaves it for the story. (Kind of like the quantum state of an entangled particle before and after observation.)
I'd be interested to hear more about your experience with Zariel. I haven't played Descent into Avernus, but what I could find online seemed to suggest that exposure to the realm corrupted Zariel by appealing to Hubris; transforming her from a Divine Soldier to a Warmonger. Does the campaign delve more into her psyche?
Try to not think of Good and Evil as representing COSMIC Good and Evil. For your character those words are perhaps better translated as Selfless(Good) and Selfish(Evil).
Selfless (Good) vs Selfish (Evil)
***But Sometimes the thing the evil person wants and the thing that will help others is the same thing. But the evil character is only interested in the part that helps themselves.
Lawful vs Chaotic is how they approach their selfless or selfish nature.
Check out my Disabled & Dragons Youtube Channel for 5e Monster and Player Tactics. Helping the Disabled Community and Players and DM’s (both new and experienced) get into D&D. Plus there is a talking Dragon named Quill.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPPmyTI0tZ6nM-bzY0IG3ww
Being evil is not about kicking puppies and murdering innocents. It's about being selfish and puting your goal over the feeling and well-being of others. But you can still be evil and save the world - after all you're one of the people who live in it. You can help the villagers to repel monster raids, as long as there's reward in it, or maybe you're playing a long game and gaining reputation you can use later is reward enough for you. You can care about your teammates as much as you carry about your armor and weapon - as useful tools you need to achieve your goals, because your not a fool and know you cannot get anything major done without allies. Or you may actually care about them on a personal level, having your own small circle of friends you formed emotional bonds with while having no empathy the rest of the world - after all even evil have the loved ones. Smart or cunning lawful or neutral evil played right are almost indistinguishable from good at surface level, because they put a facade so people don't mistrust them - you may voice your internal thoughts and justifications to your teammates if your group is good at not metagaming or keep playing an evil character who plays good character so his good teammates don't turn on him, up until they figure it out (it's usually harder to hide for divine/pact casters, as visual effects on spells give you up).
I also hate how there is a requirement that the evil character has to betray the party at some point....why is that a prerequisite? I am pretty sure that an evil character can go an entire campaign without betraying the parties trust. Maybe they just want a specific thing and are satisfied with everything else if they get it.
This gets kinda weird as now we are saying they have to do overtly evil acts? Like its saying as the evil character you have to try to push the buttons of the others?
Just because someone is focused and doesn't want to kick a puppy just to kick it doesn't mean they arent evil.
If you mean small acts of evil sure. Like if their evil comes from not caring about people or things and is in honesty the most common type of evil. They do not save the innocent goblins from the townfolk as its "not my problem". They have somewhat racist views of other races. They charge people for their help regardless of their ability to do so. ("Oh I guess I will accept this 4 silver...you are lucky we are substantially reducing our rate for you"). Or they litter frequently.
Evil like good is a spectrum and small acts of evil or allowing evil to happen is still adhering to the alignment.
Overall the whole alignment thing is a big joke anyway so I just say you pick motivations and how ardently people will adhere to those motivations and go with it. Much more nuanced that way anyway.
Roleplaying at least for me is an excercise of shifting worldview to that of chartacter rather than mine. That on itself is point enough to play characters with morals higly different from mine. I've started playin in World of Darkness games that are all about exploring the character over mechanics and that part I carrid into 40k RPG and recently DnD.
OK so they have to commit overtly evil acts to be evil huh? Ok well that is a VERY strict definition and honestly I am glad that the tables I am at do not adhere to such rigid thinking.
Also your last point is blatantly wrong as Eberron specifically focuses on Moral Grey as a key point of the setting. Its built in that everyone does evil/good depending on their motivations. There is similar notions in the MtG settings as well.
The whole high fantasy thing is fine but IMO played out. Overt good guy vs. overt bad guy has been done so much and is easy to simply say what is the "good" or "bad" thing to do its predictable and boring to me.
Cartoony Skeletor villains are played out.
Yeah I agree...super rigid thinking there and its the exact opposite way of having dynamic and interesting characters.
Oh, that is for sure. But if you're playing INT 19 WIS 15 evil character it would be in character to only bite on those opportunities when you're sure it would not bite you in the ass. For example in my current campaign my evil character passed the opportunity to loot the corpses of royal knights (full plate is a fat chunk of loot, and 12 sets of it would make me rich) who died defending the town we were also defending because the risk of getting caught was too great and could have ruined my reputation i worked so hard to establish. Meeanwhile when the antagonist blew tha towns hall and I found the mayor's safe trown by explosion to an abandoned warehopuse one block away with nowhere around, I lockicked it and blackmailed the mayor (who turned up to sell state secrets to foreign spies) with documens and foreign currency I found inside.
Laughs in Eberron, where you could have obviously LG queen being a benevolent warmonger that genuinely believes that the world would be a better place if the war was reignited and her side won vs the very obviously LE vampire king who's the biggest champion of piece in the setting e as he's afraid humans would kill each other for good with more and more WMDs and he'd starve to un-undeath.
First off your receive the response from people that you present. You rarely present in a way that comes off as anything other than adversarial and thus you receive this from others. Honestly it should not be a surprise to you at this point.
Secondly you are literally saying you have to play high fantasy to play DnD which is so laughably wrong that I cannot take you seriously anymore on this subject.
Lastly its more like literally every other setting than Forgottem Realms has moral grey....MtG seetings, Eberron, Wildmount....but I guess that's selective thinking on your part and is generally expected based on your rigid thinking patterns.
Good luck in your games but I will be adding you to the ignore list.
Yeah more and more the settings are using morally grey characters. The only reason they have alignment at all is because we cannot get over the antiquated notion of alignment.
I enjoy these contradictions though! Shows that a complex character is infinitely more interesting than a 1D representation of evil.
Honestly? No. Anything a DM with bit of creativity cooks up is still a step better than scenarios WotG publish.
Good adventure does not require a villain. It requires an antagonist. In bank heist andventure security and towns guard may be antagonists but they're hardly villains unless you really want to make them (i.e. Robin Hood cliches).
The point is that he's not the Antagonist, and may as well be a patron of a benevolent party seeking to prevent magic WWII.
This is such good advice...antagonists is a much better way of looking at it. They have opposed goals but they could even be friends if the circumstances were different.
Paladin and his crew need that money to fund an army to take down a rebellion of people who are disenfranchised by the crown. The crown is struggling to provide for the masses as they had to fight a war to secure access to mining areas. The queen is not even angry with the rebellion but also cannot let it stand. She feels she has let her people down but stepping down would create a power vacuum that would cause much more death.
The paladin cares about his people and will do what he needs to do to get he money to save them. The guards at this vault are paid to do a job and this money is part of the way they feed their families.
Who is the villian here? No one....simply people trying to do their best with the circumstances provided to them.
I think you're mistaking good/evil axis with law/chaos. Controlling your impulses and putting long-term goals over immediate benefits is very much a question of lawful vs chaotic.
Alignment is very subjective, but my outlook is that Chaotic is an ideal of individual people, emotion, and exploration, while Lawful deals with objectivity, sensibility, and doing things the "right" way.
Lawful Evil could be someone who sees what they do as right because it's always been done that way, or does horrible things to other people because it makes sense to them. The "to them" part is the thing to accentuate. "Lawful" doesn't mean the literal rules, more personal codes or ways of living. I think this is why Aberrations are mostly Lawful Evil, and looking at them is a good place to start with understanding how playing a Lawful Evil works.
He/him
If your DM defends the DM vs Players mindset get outta there fast. My advice as someone with a bad history with this game o7 it gets better.
I love 5e monster & planar lore almost as much as I love complaining about it
Lvl 17, Bard of Swords, Merfolk
I look at Lawful Evil as someone who understands there are rules in a society, and they seek to capitalize on them to gain advantage. Where a chaotic outlook would see regulations as preventing them from the freedom to make a personal choice, lawful characters find such laws as the fabric to keep order among a community. While a good character seeks to help others, lawful good does it within the constraints of what is acceptable to a code of honor, the laws of the land, or a religious tenet. Lawful Evil also respects these same laws. But their respect extends to how to exploit such laws for personal gain, or to suppress and subjugate those who pose a threat.