Paragon
Last time we touched on the struggles of being Evil, we talked about allowing the baddies into the party without disrupting your storyline. That’s a GM’s take though. Today is one for the players.
You see, it is straight up HARD for some folk to do bad. I’m sure there will be no shortage of murderous gremlins down in the comments piping up with, “I love chopping orphan head!” Good on ya. You guys would no doubt get on famously with Assassin. But it’s the Thief-types I really want to talk about today. The ones who enjoy the occasional hard-edged murder, but recoil from puppy kicking.
If you’re one of these players, here’s my suggestion. Do yourself a favor, and just admit that your Neutral. I mean sure, you can have all the Evil tendencies you like. But trying to reconcile your reluctance to do Bad Thing A with your willingness to commit Atrocity B is unnecessary brain cramp.
This is all to do with the old adage: alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. If your moral compass is erratic, it’s a good sign that you’ve got Chaos in your blood. If you find that you’re too honorable to ride down the fleeing villagers after torching their town, you’re probably Lawful. But no one act determines your position athwart the Neutral/Evil axis. It’s the long-term pattern that really matters. And even if you set out to play “an evil PC,” I believe it’s better to play the character first and the alignment second. The latter can always sway back and forth, but in the context of fiction, what you’re really shooting for is a consistent personality. Even if that personality is consistently inconsistent.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we have a good old-fashioned alignment debate? You all know our kleptomaniacal lavender tiefling. What is Thief’s alignment? Defend your answer down in the comments!
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My guess is probably Chaotic Neutral, but unlike Fighter avoiding Chaotic Stupid.
I’m pretty sure Fighter’s alignment is Murder Hobo.
In Thief’s place, I would be happy to know a certain heartless, soulless statblock’s worth of violence right now. Just tell him where the Guild is, tell him they have lots of gold, and let him off the chain.
I don’t know that I’ve ever had an NPC Organization in this comic. Hmmm…
The Organization as a character would be delightful in your hands, I think 😀
My own thief alignment is Neutral. Steal what you need because you actually need it. Don’t take more than is necessary, don’t hit up poor folks, because not only would it be scummy to steal from them, it’s inefficient and only creates more competition and unrest where you live. The law is a fine thing so long as it doesn’t get in the way. Chaos is okay in careful measures, but not if it makes life difficult.
The last thief I played was known as the “queen of the rats”… a former urchin who spent most of her takings on supporting and protecting the younger “street rats”. It wasn’t a D&D game, but I’d have to describe her as neutral / good-ish. I couldn’t say an unqualified “good” because she could be exceedingly cruel when circumstances called for it, but she was absolutely devoted to the welfare of those in her care.
> “street rats”
Crazy how influential Disney’s Aladdin was on our collective conception of “the thief with a heart of gold.” Dude’s a good reference point.
Indeed, though this one was more directly inspired by Catwoman… or at least, the portrayals that focus more on her role as a protector of her territory, a freelance criminal fighting against organised crime.
Thief mentioned in two different comics that she’s neutral and chaotic. Thus, chaotic neutral.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/core-values
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/thief-wizard-part-1-5
And you’re just going to take her word for it? 😛
I’d peg Thief as Evil, for precisely the comic you linked. She killed a civilian for profit and for entertainment, with an apparent lack of remorse. Drawing the line at killing (or even just robbing) orphans doesn’t make her Neutral, because anyone can have lines they don’t cross. The fact that Assassin and Fighter are *more* evil doesn’t bump Thief up into Neutrality.
I have no strong opinions as to where she falls on the Law/Chaos spectrum.
But yeah, alignment is just a category for game effects, so a character that isn’t consistent in their alignment is pretty normal. For a famous example, look at Darth Vader; his characterization and motivations remain almost identical throughout the movies and shows, being willing to risk anything, to sacrifice anything, for the sake of his loved ones. That means being the most courageous and heroic jedi during the clone wars because he fights to protect his friends, it means defecting to Palpatine to protect his lover, and it means betraying Palpatine to protect his son. Same character, different circumstances.
Several of my characters look like they swing drunkenly from alignment to alignment until you understand their motivations. Locus is the most obvious, who could look anywhere from LG sacrificing himself to defend an orphanage to Chaotic Evil torturing prisoners for information (or just for fun) to just some guy if he’s going along with what the party wants (for the record, I’d peg him as NE or CE). Another good one is Smyler, who does whatever earns him the most profit or acclaim and starts CN, but switches to LN once he founds his own nation, because while he doesn’t care about other people’s laws and rules, he cares quite a bit about the ones he made. Same characters, different circumstances, and you call the alignment based on the personality beneath as best you can.
> a character that isn’t consistent in their alignment is pretty normal.
My favorite alignment chart on this point belongs to Batman:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rL1Jjp1dMY8/Sw3vRWrzweI/AAAAAAAAAxs/fMIxw0lZLo8/s1600/batman-alignment.jpg
So my main reason I don’t allow players to play Evil characters is because most people mistake evil with unnecessarily cruel. And if they do play it right, it’s way harder to motivate an evil group to take the quest you were working on.
Decades ago a friend of mine had an idea to run a game for an evil party. We used a Hungarian rpg system that had a similar alignment compass, though Good and Evil were called Life and Death (it was a “we can’t print d&d in Hungarian so we make our own system that is Definitely Not DnD At All Cause We Said So”, but I digress.) So I reluctantly rolled a chaotic neutral swordmaster (think samurai trope class with psychic power fuelled martial arts abilities), while the others boasted how evil their characters are. Which was emphasised by skinning an innocent person alive at one point, cause “he was there”. Yeah, sure. So we get to a small town, where we rest for the evening, and during the night the local thieves/assassins guild sent “representatives” to us to force us to investigate some strange murders happening in town, Or Else. Well, my character wasn’t convinced he should be doing anything for them, but I thought I’ll help the dm a bit and still went along with it. We went around in town, tried to ask questions, but of course noone was helpful cause we’re strangers and so eeeevil. At that point I got kinda bored and since we played relatively higher level characters, I turned to the others (in character) and said “well, not sure about you guys, but I’m not gonna jump hoops for a bunch of local niemands just cause they said so, and I’ll skip town in the morning, cause I’m bored.” The others actually agreed, so we left it all behind. The local guild actually sent someone after us, but we easily dispatched them (and got tortured by the others, cause, you know, they were Evil!)
So that’s when the DM decided he loves his story too much and asked if we wanna know what the story was about and what he planned to happen. I said no thanks and went to grab dinner while he spent the next two hours explaining everything to the other players, instead of, I don’t know, redoing the hook a bit and moving the story to a new location and actually running it…
I think maybe the serial killers from “The Strangers” aren’t the best PCs. If your whole-ass motivation is, “There is no sense or reason to my actions,” it’s awfully hard to map a character arc onto them.
Indeed – “I just do unimaginably cruel and repulsive things Because I Can” is not the definition of evil, but a psychopath.
On the other hand, even if you play an evil character “properly”, not every GM can handle that either – it takes a totally different approach to convince, for example, lord Vetinari (who, in my opinion, is the epitome of Lawful Evil) do what you want, than for example, Sam Vimes or Carrot Ironfoundersson.
Neutral, bordering on evil. Most of the time, her actions aren’t notably good or notably evil — she’s not devoted to malfeasance as some others are — but as you remind us with the “Entrepreneurial” link, she’s not one to let morale scruples get in the way of profit.
On the other axis, I’d certainly rate her as chaotic. She has no regard for the laws of the land, and doesn’t seem to follow any kind of ethical code as a substitute… regularly steals from her own teammates, and so forth.
Weird how thievery itself seems to inform judgements about both “evil” and “chaos.” I wonder which one is supposed to represent?
The way I read D&D alignments, being a thief at all is going to be Chaotic by default… if they follow a particularly strong code of their own that takes the place of law, it might tip them into Neutral, but they’re unlikely to ever be a Lawful character. But that’s not a moral judgement… it’s just a reflection of whether their actions tend to lead to order or disorder.
In contrast, Good vs Evil is the moral judgement… it’s about whether their actions tend to be helpful or harmful to those around them. And a thief could easily fall anywhere on that axis, depending on what they’re stealing, who they’re stealing from, and what they’re doing with the proceeds. So for Thief, most of her actions don’t really lean much either way — but we do know that doing harm to others isn’t really something that bothers her… she may not do it for fun, but she’ll do it if it’s advantageous.
Note that although it pre-dates my time as a gamer (and indeed pre-dates me, period), Lawful vs Chaotic was the original D&D alignment axis… no moral judgement, just a spectrum between those who favoured honor and social rules, and those who favoured individualism and change. Conservatives vs liberals, you might say, though those terms have become regrettably loaded in recent years.
When you look at it that way, Thief is certainly Chaotic. She does her own thing, doesn’t care too much for the norms of a Lawful (or if you prefer, Orderly) society. Which is pretty natural for a tiefling, of course, since society is rarely welcoming to them… that doesn’t make them Good or Evil, but it does incline them to acting outside of the system.
I would argue that Lawful doesn’t have to mean “to uphold the rules of the laws of the country “, but to follow a specific well defined moral code and sticking to it – even if that code is “make sure noone has to starve by any means necessary”. A thief can still be lawful, if they follow set rules – for example, only hit people who can afford to lose some wealth, and never to harm innocents. Just look at the Thieves Guild in Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork: not only do they have a quota of how much they can steal from an individual, they even give you a receipt.
Eh, I’d say that following their own ethical code could easily be Lawful, if that code could be interpreted as being a consistent, coherent set of rules. It’s not strictly about following the law of the land (if a town has a law where everyone must kill one randomly-determined person every day, that law is inherently chaotic, as is obeying it), but about one’s actions being guided by _a_ set of laws rather than by impulse. At its core, it’s more of a reason vs. emotion thing; if it was specifically about obeying the laws of the land, then the opposite of Lawful would be Criminal, not Chaotic.
I personally think that on the 5×5 alignment chart (https://i.imgflip.com/46iogy.png?a464592) Thief fits well with Chaotic Impure. No real code, no major ethical qualms but still some basic level of respect for societal taboos and not opposed to authority on principle. If we’re sticking to standard D&D, though, she was NE but I think Wizard has softened her to the shady side of N.
Can you give me a working definition of the “impure / moral” axis?
Looking at the image, it’s not a new axis, just extra steps along the existing ones: Good – Moral – Neutral – Impure – Evil; and Lawful – Social – Neutral – Rebel – Chaotic.
…which still pops the question, where are the limits of these.
Chaotic Neutral or maybe Neutral Neutral.
Chaotic because of the Rogue stuff (stealing from authority) but also because their dice rolls apparently are always bad; clearly they fight the system just by existing.
As for the Good/Evil, while they do some messed up stuff, I’m not sure its enough to be “Evil.” She seems to be willing to go out of her way for profit, but she could also have just killed the people she was robbing as they slept.
Finally, I refer you to https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/core-values, where they explicitly note they are “neutral”
Psychotic murder gremlin is hardly the best (much less the only) flavor of evil. I often have have a hard time playing an evil character in CRPGs because the evil path tends to be cartoonish and idiotic murderhobo-y. My evil character picks the good options because they’re the *smart options*.
As an example, in one 5e game I’m in I play a truly psychopathic neutral evil Swarm that Walks (it’s complicated). The character is utilitarian to a frightening degree, completely lacking any sense of empathy or morality. They don’t enjoy casual cruelty, but also have zero compunctions about committing atrocities if it advances their own or the party’s goals (they’re also a religious fanatic, which doesn’t help). They’d also never backstab the party – the idea wouldn’t cross their mind.
And they’re prone to acts of altruism, not from the goodness of their heart (they’re made of ants, so no actual organs) but the fact that it advances their agenda. And they’re probably the most evil PC I’ve ever played.
Clearly, Thief self-identifies as Chaotic Neutral, so we can take her at her word (though years ago I had a lot of fun playing a Lawful Good cleric who claimed to be Lawful Neutral, preached what he saw as pure logic, and rationalized most Good acts as somehow being Lawful through judiciously applied Benthamism).
A Neutral character might someday decide to kill Barmaid in a moment of violent levity (Chaotic), but they wouldn’t make a habit of wanton murder (Evil). I’ve had players at my table fail to see the difference between the Chaotic Neutral PC who eventually throws a *produce flame* over his shoulder as he leaves the magic shop (the owner was always rude) –leading to a fire that destroyed four city blocks– and the PC I adjudicated as having slid to Evil “just because” they kill every shopkeeper they meet, rob the till, and loot the store because “that’s what my character would do” and they don’t want to spend any gold. Random is as random does, and in my book, a CN character is 90% goofy and middle of the road, with occasional moments of Holiday Cheer (Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas) being just as likely to occur as the rare “Well, *that* got dark.”
(Everyone treated my halfling rogue as just a silly goofball until they’d give him a specific order and he’d kill something big with one sneak attack, then go back to eating magically summoned burgers, making bad puns, and drinking endless beer. Then I’d get these weird looks, like dropping the monster with one well-thrown rock somehow brought the mood down or something. Shrug.)
Thief strikes me as a true neutral, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that she was chaotic neutral.
One of those two.
Oh goddess this subject really hits. I used to have the joy of alternating one shots woth a friend of doing shadowrun. And during one I was running i came to the conclusion i did not like my players way of doing it. I have run evil characters myself, but i got my start in adventurers league where evil was…only barely allowed plus every time i tried to be chaotic evil i ended up being the voice of reason and ironically consceince for yhe group for practical reasons.
Anyways i rambled off topic, the game was i wanted to run a specific shadowrun beast thing, a spirit of womens vengeance whose name eludes me so i had a cult run out of a womens shelter. My players decided to interrogate one of the girls with a grenade and i had tad to hold myself together for the rest of the session to finish up but it made me realise i am absolutely not an evil player.
Generally philosophy is that „actions determine alignment“ not „alignment determines actions“
Which works well till our group started playing the „we be Goblins“ series.
Where the alignment is given. It was fun until we were sent to the crash the wedding party in part two.
Chaotic Evil is definitely not for me.
For the sake of playing Assassin I could play Lawful Evil very easily:
I‘d use the Ankh Morpork Assassins Gild code of conduct:
No killing intelligent creatures without payment (unless in self defense)
No killing of the defenseless (which includes poor people and excludes people who can afford to hire bodyguards)
No killing of staff if avoidable.
basically killing anything that isn’t a mark is just… bad style.
One campaign I played in, the DM had an NPC name Sir Janus. He ALWAYS introduced himself as an anti-paladin. The group actually became friends with him, even the paladin.
We never could catch him doing any evil, he didn’t detect evil (no one ever threw a detect alignment on him), he had no insignia of ANY evil god, much less a chaotic evil one. I even broke down and set the street kids on him to find out whatever they could about him.
They found almost nothing. Just the inn he stayed at when in the city and a couple places he frequented. It seemed like our group was the only one he hung with when we were both there at the same time. He also wasn’t in the city at any regular times, just popped up every now and then, stayed a few day and then left again. I wish I had pushed to find out more, but the rest of the players weren’t that interested and I didn’t feel it was important enough to take up anymore time. Still bugs me after 40+ years though.
I’d put the thief at neutral/neutral. Pretty much whatever her mood is at that particular time. Tends toward evil, but has no problem with doing something good if she wants to.
Check this exchange, at the 5 mins mark, between Erin, the girl, and Garrett, the guy:
https://youtu.be/IYuMU_tZbn4?t=300
She is more willing, he too but doesn’t kills because he is a thief not an assassin. There on the page we got a thief and an assassin. One is willing to do the stuff the other doesn’t. Yet there is one thing more to consider, the check. Thief can be rich but that doesn’t makes her a good thief. Assassin showed that he can steal, kill and not make a rackus while doing such. Thief shows she can fill a check. Thief should be able, and willing, to steal from an orphanage if she wants to hang with the cool guys on the shades. If she doesn’t wants to loot the orphanage she can still try to get more valuable loot from elsewhere. So not only matters what a character can morally do, but also what they can manage to pull. Easy to say one can do good or evil but show don’t tell. Words are meaningless what matters are the actions.
Huh. Didn’t know I needed to see homegirl go full truwu neutral, but there it is! And she’s already demonstrated a passable tsundere… Wait, is handbook going BESM?!?
In the case of Thief, that is A LOT of big eyes. Oo_oO
Also of note: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/style
Our Thief has disdain for rules, structure and oversight so she’s Chaotic. “I DO WHAT I WANT!” She’s not cruel, and her selfishness never crosses to the point of malice, so she’s not evil. She’s not particularly inclined to help others so she’s not Good.
Pretty clear-cut case of Chaotic Neutral. It could be argued that she’s Ce (Capitalization counts) but I don’t see it.
But what about that one time she did evil things?
I know you’re joking, but for the folks in the back: Alignment is a snapshot of your general moral outlook. Doing the occasional thing out of alignment doesn’t change that unless it’s a regular pattern of behavior.
I still maintain that Wario is the definitive example of how to be CE without being That Guy. Wario cares nothing for the well-being of others, he is motivated solely by his vanity and greed. He also resents any attempt to control him or impose authority on him. He is CE, but he’s motivated to adventure and work with others because he wants to profit.
I’m currently playing an LE Githyanki. I roleplay him as basically a Klingon (Down to the way he talks) with and a bit of a bully.
Well let’s see. According to the Book of Erotic Fantasy, she was Neutral Evil for a while: “It’s all about what I can get away with.” But officially tying the knot with Wizard shifted her alignment over more to, let’s see… Neutral Good: “Give pleasure.” (Or in pg terms, be nice).
The key to understanding the concept of ‘evil’ is to understand how ultimately selfish the person/act is. Stealing from anybody might seem selfish, but if you’re stealing from a super rich person who might not even notice/has earned that wealth through unmoral methods, then it’s not that evil of an act.
In my view, Thief is definitely evil due to killing the barmaid (as well as the at least implied killing of the peasant girl that Paladin was gifting money to way back when). With that said, she is by no means dedicated to being evil (like the Evil Party/BBEG/Demon Queen/etc.) or lacking inhibitions (like Fighter). As pointed out, she sees herself as Neutral. Comics like today’s at least suggest the possibility that she is transitioning back to that alignment.
As for the Law-Chaos axis, I believe her general outlook that stealing is fine (and to some extent required) places her firmly in the Chaotic realm. Of course, not all stealing is Chaotic – heck, if the laws of a particular land require stealing from others, wouldn’t it be Lawful? But in a typical setting/society, stealing is against the law and causes chaos. Thief doesn’t care who she steals from as long as it profits her.
For my tables, I rarely allow evil characters due to people thinking evil = chainsaw maniac. I’m generally fine with less rabid examples – the assassin who follows his code, the plotter who is saving the world for himself, etc. But the munchkinny evil that Thief and Fighter showed in the barmaid killing would be right out – at the very least that would be an immediate pause and reminder of what I expect at my table, if not grounds for expulsion. I have no interest in true murder-hoboism.
I have played evil characters myself (or characters who likely should have been evil if the living campaign allowed such). A former slave turned mercenary who knew that the world didn’t give a damn about him, so why should he give one about it; a servant of the Lord of Blades (Eberron Ultron) who was willing to work with fleshbags in service to his goals; and (my favorite), a dhampir strangler who loved adventuring because it let him kill people without consequences.
Ah, found the other comic: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/giving-it-away
Not sure if I’ve said this here before, but I really dislike the entire concept of alignments.
Categorizing what things your character generally finds desirable/acceptable into broad categories of semi-defined sets never really vibed with me. And of course depending on who you’re speaking to, each of these labels means a totally different thing or set of things. Or has no meaning they can clearly define at all. Or to some people they’ve looked at them a particular way and decided that they believe they all have definitely no meaning. (I knew a person who would state that Lawful and Chaotic might as well be called Purple and Rhinoceros for what little tangible meaning they held.)
They’re useful tools for people new to roleplaying. But I feel that they really just get in the way otherwise. I’ve seen more arguments about what alignment a particular behavior was/wasn’t than I’ve seen any real “Oh yeah, that’ definitely that alignment you have, way to play your character the way you wrote it down on the sheet back before you started actually playing them!” moments.
Which brings me to the next issue I have with them. How you envision your character’s behavior to be before you start playing them and how they actually wind up acting in situations can be wildly different. And it’s just bizarre to look at that and say the character is acting out of character/different from….behaviors you never actually did with that character.
This really winds up being an issue for a lot of “evil” characters. Who absolutely might be selfish people or just people willing to do whatever they deem practical….but thrust together with anyone less “evil” than they are, they wind up doing the same things defined as “good” by other party members because that’s what makes sense for the situation they’re in.
I also think Lawful is just kind of an issue given that most games run a lot towards more “Chaotic” behavior than Lawful ones. Being lawful typically just winds up meaning you’ve locked yourself out of the option of stealing things and maybe objecting when other characters do. Since it makes for very awkward gameplay if a corrupt/evil/just hostile to the party authority figure is in opposition to the party’s goals and that character would say “Well, I guess we have to do what this authority figure says.”
Also….*which* laws are you following? The laws of where you’re from…even when you’re not there? The laws of wherever you go? (Because seems like a really weird commitment to make for characters that know the Hells are a lawful place that exists.) Do you just cherry pick whatever you feel makes sense? But if so, how is that any different than someone who is Neutral and just thinks it’s practical to follow local laws to avoid getting in trouble? (Yes there’s an internal difference, but what that in would vary just as much from one Lawful character to another as it would to any character of any other alignment.)
(And of course… how are any of these choices not equally validly described as Chaotic? Rules you follow regardless of if it’s appropriate or changing what laws you follow based on an ever-changing standard seem like things you could describe as Chaotic just as much as refusing to follow any rules at all, which is in itself a rule.)
I really wish alignment, if it had to be included in books at all, was just suggested in the GM’s section as a tool to ease new players into the game.
And as for answering the question of Thief’s alignment. Well it would be…..”Thief”. The “alignment” of who she is as a person and what she believes in. Which is likely to change over time as she has different experiences and finds herself in different circumstances (or whatever just makes her feel good/uncomfortable on any given day for any number of reasons).
I mean… passing personal checks is it’s sort of evil.
I’d make a joke about how that was phrased, but it’s probably less disturbing this way.
Re: Thief’s alignment: I think I’ll go with Chaotic Neutral, closer to CE than CG. She definitely isn’t Lawful, and she doesn’t seem to have strong Good tendencies, but her Evil tendencies aren’t much stronger. Off the top of my head, the most evil thing she does is tolerate Fighter.
I think I’d peg Thief as being CC or CU on the EA chart (this is going to take explaining, isn’t it!)
Basically, I’ve made a couple experimental alignment charts (though I haven’t published them in any way and don’t know how so don’t bother looking). The one I reference, the Extended Alignment Chart, has nine shades along each axis. (Since there are nine, you can kind of divide them up into being “shades” of the typical alignments.) However, it’s worth noting that half the point of this whole thing is that I feel like the typical alignment chart doesn’t cover all the possibilities well enough. With that in mind:
Law/Chaos: Systematic, Lawful, Ordered, Habitual, Neutral, Mischievous, Rebellious, Chaotic, Feral
Good/Evil: Virtuous, Good, Moral, Aspiring, Neutral, Unsavory, Corrupt, Evil, Despicable
So Chaotic Corrupt is technically a shade of CE with less E, and Chaotic Unsavory is more a darker shade of CN. I haven’t reread the entire comic recently enough to accurately assess all her behavior (and I won’t right now since I should really be doing homework) but on the one hand, she cares about her teammates and loves her wife while on the other hand she as shown has no problem stealing and killing if she has a good reason (“profits” counting as the ultimate reason in her book). So that would put her around CN/CE territory. However, as shown here, her reluctance to perform gratuitous evil keeps her firmly out of Evil or Despicable territory. All in all I think I’m going to assess her as Chaotic Corrupt or potentially Chaotic Unsavory after referencing a few OC’s I’ve already categorized.
The OC’s in question:
CC:
– A being whose life has become the force of shadow (this doesn’t make her bad but it’s relevant) who wants revenge on the person who accidentally killed her (that’s why it’s relevant; she’s technically already died except she isn’t DEAD dead but the class of creature she originally was has been erased and replaced by the force of shade).
– A young woman living on the streets who mainly wants to cause trouble by exploding things, especially if she thinks someone she has a grudge against is around. (She’s CC instead of CE or CD because she’s motivated less by the prospect of causing pain and more by that of causing huge explosions. She wants trouble, but she isn’t really motivated by or considering the ramifications of that trouble — unless she’s specifically trying to hurt someone she personally doesn’t like. Also, she’s… less than competent.)
Also, I like tieflings and therefore this character, so my opinions may be somewhat biased.
Wow, that’s a whole lot more than I thought I was going to write. Oops.
Accepting neutrality is fine. But sometimes, it just makes sense for your character to be evil, even though the player isn’t. Whenever I play, I often feel that it’s no longer me at the table, it’s the character who has taken life and is speaking through me.
And that’s how I found a way that I can actually push through – find a strong enough motivation for my character.
Puppies will be forever left unkicked, I can’t do anything about that. And my character might do an arrogant and annoyed face, but will still snap her fingers to save the maiden from the burning house.
But at the same time, I might have enough motivation to mass murder an entire country for the prosperity of my undead nation. Or to poison my own soldiers so that my evil mistress gets a favor from some eldritch abomination.
I think one challenge for “evil” is that it is often harder for us to justify than good because we default to thinking about pointless, gratuitous evil, but if you can find the justification you need, roleplaying it becomes easier. Although some acts will forever remain beyond the realm of “acceptable evil” to roleplay (killing orphans might be one, looking at you, assassin), and that’s fine, too. After all, if evil isn’t fun, there isn’t much point in it, right ?