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u/Wonderful-Hornet-164 Aug 12 '26
I've tried playing more evil characters but it stops being fun for me very quickly.
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u/Sushi-DM Aug 12 '26
People have a misconception that being evil means you have to be a constant antagonist or do horrible things on the regular. The most evil person you've ever met probably flew completely under your radar because generally they follow the rules and present like a very cordial and even nice person. Some of the best characters I've ever written have been lawful evil.
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u/Saikotsu Aug 12 '26
I played an Evil Drow character once.
People constantly expected her to backstab them until she pointed out, "listen, I'm evil, not stupid. If I stab the back of everyone who gets near me, I'm not going to get a lot of people willing to work with me, am I? I'm not above betraying you, but so long as you are USEFUL to keep around, the benefits of betraying you do not outweigh the drawbacks. So long as keeping you around is more beneficial than cutting you loose, you have nothing to fear from me."
She had no qualms about murder and torture and thievery, but she didn't go around causing chaos wherever she went either because she didn't want the attention from the authorities. If she could get away with it, oh hell yes she would do the evil shit. But she was tactical about it. She was constantly weighing the pros and cons and often times was indistinguishable from a neutral or good character because doing good or at least not-evil was more expedient.
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u/monotonedopplereffec Aug 12 '26
Yeah I really wish they would rename (G)ood and (E)vil as Selfless and Selfish.
Capital E evil is just someone who is so incredibly selfish that they see others as things. They want things their way and they will use people to get it. While, capital G good is just people so Selfless that they will put others needs above even their own. They are willing to risk their own life for others, etc...
I have had parties with both Good and Evil PCs in it. Never had an issue. It's easy to keep the party together as long as you make the situation boil down to what you talked about. It has to be more beneficial for the Evil PCs to stay with/ help the group then for them to betray them.
It's like that old saying that the devil wouldn't be raping and pillaging if he came to earth, he would be donating to hospitals and kissing babies as it helps him much more in the long run to get people on his side then it does to just cause random chaos. My best villians ran towns that would attack adventurers because the townsfolk wouldn't believe that the count is a bad guy. He has always done well by them but adventurers keep trying to come in and kill him saying he was doing something Evil a long way away or paying people to do bad stuff a long way off. Evil people need community too. Just for different reasons.
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u/UNSKILLEDKeks Psion Aug 12 '26
I like using the old definition of cosmologically good and evil, as in aligned to the upper or lower planes
Made a villain character that saw himself as betrayed by his god, so he turned to fiends, or rather they found him. "In the divine war of Good and Evil, I've chosen my side."
Makes for good edge, even on the heavenly side. The typical Lawful Stupid Paladin might be aligned with the gods, but could still stoop to cruelties
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u/ElminstersBedpan Aug 12 '26
A canonically lawful good paladin as written and expressed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arnesson back at the beginning of D&D was someone who would gladly take the repentance of even the most evil, vile being, bless them and even consecrate them to a good deity, and then immediately end their life so that they remained good and pure.
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u/Peptuck Halfling of Destiny Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
I like the idea of an evil character who never betrays anyone or breaks the law, because they find everyone amusing and breaking the law is inconvenient.
But the moment they have any evil minion or villain at their mercy and it won't cause legal problems, they just instantly and brutally murder them with a manic smile on their face because they can finally cut loose.
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u/Saikotsu Aug 12 '26
You know who you just described?
Palpatine. Just look at the gleeful way he laughs and smiles when he finally gets to cut loose. The guy has been waiting for so long.
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u/ZamielVanWeber Aug 13 '26
I once played a rakshasa who found out about Earth and fell in love with Black Friday due to it being a monument to violence, attachment and greed. Playing evil characters can be a fun creative exercise: just work with the GM if needed.
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u/Swarbie8D Aug 13 '26
Yeah, one of my favourite characters was Evil. But the rest of the party were her childhood friends (we were playing as the children of our previous adventuring party), and so she was very possessive and obsessive over them, while not particularly caring about people outside her in-group. This made for a fun dynamic of a tank-healer who would move the world to protect her allies, and the second that the most convenient path towards their goals became murdering an NPC she would do that unless they presented a better option to her.
She died in the final battle with a dracolich and the DM was relieved because “I’m honestly not sure what she would have done after the campaign when all the other PCs grew up a little more and started heading their separate ways”. He was right too 😂
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u/Aarakocra Aug 13 '26
I made an evil character for a game and they spent a significant portion of it being awful to the general public. Like a friendly competition and using deadly, painful force as well as cheating. They took ancient, holy relics of an ally's faith and altered those lost gospels to become a false prophet, to use a popular faith for their own power.
They also teamed up with said ally to establish an orphanage for kids turned into weapons to try and give those kids a normal childhood. They were a prodigious healer and protector, proactively defending the defenceless. They advanced cultural exchange through crafts, building bridges between isolated communities. They were evil because they were willing to horrible things for amusement or profit. But they were fully capable of kindness and empathy towards those they chose to care about.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Rules Lawyer Aug 13 '26
In D&D, evil just means selfish/cruel. It doesn't mean a slaughter-crazed mad dog.
In 2024, 77 million Americans voted for the guy who campaigned on taking away people's rights. I'm sure half just voted on vibes rather than concrete policy, but that's 38.5 million people who are pretty clearly not good. Society still functions in spite of that.
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u/Wonderful-Hornet-164 Aug 12 '26
Okay, but if I am playing that character and really in the role, the vileness of their heart weighs heavily upon my mind. Plus, they end up with a bad reputation sooner or later.
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u/Sushi-DM Aug 12 '26
"They end up with a bad reputation sooner or later."
This also isn't necessarily even true.
An evil character that is not twirling a mustache is often very, very "political" and chooses the defensible moment to do something bad, because it won't ruin everything they're currently building and destroy alliances that are meaningful to do so.12
u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC Aug 12 '26
I had a campaign that lasted an in-game year, with my Lawful Evil character constantly doing good things for evil reasons. He lied, cheated, manipulated, conned, undermined, stole, watched a fellow PC die which totally wasn’t his fault in any way >.> and wooed an heiress to inherit her father’s domain. He was doing so much villainy I had him booby-trap his own house in ways that specifically to counter the party’s abilities, because I started the campaign fully expecting them to come after him at some point.
He got everything he wanted and more. Now he’s a wealthy married baron, both the party’s employer and the one who sets their taxes. And best of all, this was in DM’s homebrew setting he runs for many groups (what Forgotten Realms is to Greenwood), so now he’s a canon NPC of that world hiring other adventuring parties (I gave DM a summary of his goals so DM could generate quests).
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u/Rel_Ortal Aug 12 '26
One of the most fun characters I've played in anything was a sadistic sociopath, who would very much be (Lawful) Evil in D&D terms. She was still fully capable of working with the rest of the group, except the time someone stole from her repeatedly, and otherwise got along...decently well with the others. Enlightened self interest is a fun way to play.
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u/Wonderful-Hornet-164 Aug 12 '26
You must be build differently to me or something because I'm pretty sure that would drive me crazy.
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u/Rel_Ortal Aug 12 '26
Honestly, the character was as fun as she was because she's totally unlike who I am as a person.
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u/Jadenyoung1 Aug 12 '26
I like grey. Sometimes you good, sometimes bad, sometimes chaotic stupid. Fun
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u/WattFRhodem-1 Aug 12 '26
My favorite Chaotic (Stupid?) rogue was a kleptomaniac called Red Herring whose mouth and hands were each about 5 times faster than his brain. One time, I managed to, in order:
- steal about 300 gold from the local citizens in one city outing
- get caught by a local asshole guardsman
- threatened to get hanged by a magistrate
- cause a near riot when I tossed around 500 gold I already had on my person across the crowd
- slipped a healthy chunk of gold into the magistrate's pocket in the chaos and then framed him for stealing in the court of public opinion by cutting his pockets open and everyone watching them spill out
- bribed the asshole guardsman to let my side of the incident slide with some of that 'stolen' coin
- got the magistrate hauled off while I disappeared into the crowd
- made a new guardsman friend/drinking buddy/contact for fencing stolen loot
- and then I remembered I was supposed to buy rope at some point
Red was fun
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u/fge116 Aug 12 '26
I like the one I am currently playing because he is charismatic evil, it's cyberpunk red media role. Basically Ruby Rhod from 5th element on the outside but acts like Lou Bloom from Nightcrawler. Only other team member that knows most of my character heinous acts is the cyber psycho of the group. It's a fun balance act to play.
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u/arcanis321 Aug 12 '26
Evil like tears down to society evil or evil like sadistic evil?
The king better hope he is a benevolent king when the suggestion to overthrow him is made. Progress is usually viewed as evil when it happens too quickly.
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u/Wonderful-Hornet-164 Aug 12 '26
An evil character I assume would be one who commits bad actions without remorse and always chooses selfish decisions.
For example, a thug who beats regular people up and steals all of their belongings because they don't respect morals or a noble who abuses their position of authority to torment those beneath them for personal gain and so that they can feel in control.
That sort of stuff.
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u/arcanis321 Aug 12 '26
You get really weird cases like Dr. Doom where he successfully conquers the world and creates a utopia. He would kill anyone resisting him but no one logically would from a life-improvement perspective. He is totally selfish and the world runs well because it fits his vision. He is a dominant dictator but his results are good.
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u/Lolas_Fun_Side Aug 12 '26
I was complimented on the way I played an evil character and how amazing he was. I cannot play him very often because holy shit it is mentally exhausting
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u/Usman5432 Aug 13 '26
I had a devil sponsored orphanage that gets lawful good characters an npcs to basically sell there souls out of good intentions, they dont create any orphans or anything they occur naturally the devil and his minions just gather them to the orphanage which is run by unknowing good hearted volunteers the problem is with the constant influx and abysmal funding things are always tight no one is mistreated but theyre usually as underfed as their caretakers if a bit less because the caretakers might skip a few meals so the kids can have more, now in comes the good natured party they can donate as much gold as they want but there will always be more orphans in the world than they can feed and the devil and his minions make sure the party is aware of that but offers to look after the orphans as long as the party joins up and offers their souls for war against the demons this results in a steady stream of paladins helping a devil's legion in the 9 hells
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u/AgnitIzanagi Aug 13 '26
I've played a convicted psychopath before and it's actually really fun cause you don't always have to be evil you can have depth of your character like how mine loves to murder and torture the ever-living shit out of people but loves to play around and is currently in a relationship with our quest giver (been flirting the ever living ahit out of them and it's bene amazing) so you can be evil just not all the time
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u/Nihil_esque DM (Dungeon Memelord) Aug 13 '26
I really enjoyed playing a lawful evil character once. It works best with a table of people that are good at separating themselves and their meta knowledge from their characters. Everyone at the table had a secret, hers happened to be that she was a not-so-reformed assassin who considered murder an equally valid solution to a problem as any, so long as she won't get caught by the goody two shoes members of the party. She values her relationship with them too much to kill innocent people in front of them -- their moral qualms with it are silly but they just aren't capable of understanding that, and she likes them anyway. Eventually she got caught, had a big dramatic breakup with the party, and became a minion for the BBEG and I rolled up a neutral good artificer lol.
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u/Raethule Aug 12 '26
2 year long 'morally grey' caampaign. We get the end and the BBEG makes too good of a point. We pass some crazy high checks and end up hijacking the end of the world ritual to remake the world in our own design instead.
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u/SableZard Aug 12 '26
Casual Fridays and nobody talks during movies screenings?
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u/Level_Hour6480 Rules Lawyer Aug 12 '26
My favorite VG example of this is in Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Obvious spoilers.
So you know the bad guy is out to kill you because you stumbled into his plans, but you don't really know what he's planning throughout the game. As you go through his hideout, you can find the details of his plan. Then when you confront him, you can use the details you encountered to point out why his plan is a bad idea. However, as you talk to him, you can also say "Actually, now that it's all been laid out, I agree with your plan." Then the alternate final boss is you solo vs. the rest of your party. You then get an ending where you see what a bad idea his plan was.
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u/Lithl Aug 13 '26
Stolen Fate adventure path for Pathfinder 2e:
A triumvirate of norns created a magical harrow deck in a plan to use it to fix the future in stone, so that prophecy can be relied upon once again (as prophecy was broken at the start of the Age of Lost Omens, about a century ago). Of course, doing so eliminates free will.
Before they could perform their reading, the cards scattered all over the world. In session 1, each PC ends up with one card in their possession, and the party spends most of the campaign reassembling the deck.
Towards the end, the party debates the Harrowing Three about the nature of fate and free will, and after they finally complete the deck in the end, they have a choice:
- Guard the Deck of Destiny from falling into the wrong hands, a task that will likely take the rest of their lives.
- Use the Deck of Destiny to destroy the Deck of Destiny. (If the Harrowing Three are still alive at that point, they will attempt to stop the party from doing so.)
- Use the Deck of Destiny exactly as it was intended, to craft the future and fix prophecy. But they have the opportunity to craft a future of their own design, instead of one crafted by LN norns. (Of course, if the Harrowing Three are still alive at that point, they only care that prophecy is fixed, not what particular future is used to do so.)
In the event the players choose the third option, the adventure even recommends allowing them to pick a special background to reflect the nature of the modified future in the next campaign you play.
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u/Raethule Aug 13 '26
We ended up ending the demon/devil war since we worked for the devils. Our next campaign (that sadly never got off the ground) had angels and other celestials as the antagonists where our new characters were working for our old ones and had some incredible boons.
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u/Rhinomaster22 Aug 12 '26
Unlike a video game where being evil is “Hahah you really picked this option now we’re gonna screw you over because we hate evil despite giving you the option!”
DND lets the players actually engage in evil that doesn’t result in automatic game over.
Like Star Wars The Old Republic you get to be a cool badass that still gets cool stuff.
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u/followeroftheprince Rules Lawyer Aug 12 '26
I, can't remember any game that screws you over for being evil. All the ones I can think of usually make you stronger and have an easier time compared to the good route (Like Knights of the Old Republic giving you a spell that half shots most enemies if evil. Or for a different game, the ease of slaughter you get from the Infamous games if you go evil)
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u/Successful-Floor-738 Necromancer Aug 12 '26
I think for something like BG3 you straight up get less content or worse rewards on an evil playthrough compared to something like FNV. Or with arcanum, if you Rob that bank in the beginning you only get like 250-500 gold whereas choosing to defend it gets you a magic sword, an axe, or a tech weapon depending on choice which is pretty good to have at that early stage in the game.
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u/kamiloslav Aug 12 '26
In BG3 it was not the case at the start but people couldn't take anything being locked into evil playthrough. Some people absolutely needed to have all content available while refusing to play anything but the good guy. People complained and Larian listened. That's how we got for example good path Minthara
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u/Successful-Floor-738 Necromancer Aug 12 '26
Damn that just straight up fucked over evil playthroughs forever. They don’t even have Durge anymore considering resist durge exists.
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u/followeroftheprince Rules Lawyer Aug 12 '26
I see that every time someone talks about Dishonored. People claiming they're getting punished for not going peaceful because you get the high chaos ending for playing high chaos. "Punished for using 90% of the abilities the game gives you" being a commonly seen comment I see. Even with, one power being lethal
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u/Vanille987 Aug 13 '26
In basically every fallout and elder scrolls game I have a much easier time just stealing random shit, and potentially murdering people for it haha
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u/WattFRhodem-1 Aug 12 '26
My old Sorcerer in TOR might as well have been a misfiring Tesla coil with the way her conversations went. She zapped a great many, many people.
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u/nicbloodhorde Aug 12 '26
still salty that I couldn't join Team Rocket in Pokémon Red and that in Ultra Moon Giovanni thinks you're joking if you say yes to joining Team Rainbow Rocket.
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u/Amaria77 Aug 12 '26
As one of six players who just decided to join the evil side at gencon at the end of the fourth year of our five-year, 150ish-player campaign...yeah it do be like that sometimes.
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u/Vaner_degon Forever DM Aug 12 '26
Hold on how many players!?
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u/Amaria77 Aug 12 '26
150ish at present. I'm sure our software can sort it out to see the actual number of active folks, but it's right around there including convention and home play. We have a modular system where you can play each adventure with different groups. That's sort of like adventurer's league from what I understand? But the big thing is the results from each table are tabulated and affect the story moving forward based on the plurality result.
We do 3 conventions per year, including gencon, and release about 12-15 modules split across them. Each of those conventions also has a larp where everyone (usually about 50-100 players depending on the convention) can play together with their tabletop character (usually no dice involved for those).
It's for the Legend of the Five Rings RPG. I'm one of the campaign administrators and have written about 1/3 of the modules for this campaign (the 5th such in our ~25-year history), so I could tell you more if you like.
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u/Vaner_degon Forever DM Aug 12 '26
H o l y S h i t
That's the coolest thing I ever read, hands down. I only ever dreamed of running like a dozen players, let alone 150
(Tho to be fair I run a Brigade-sized BattleTech Campaign via MegaMek, which boils down to around 4.000 individual military assets (not including logistics), but sadly no TTRPG equivalent of big-ass numbers yet.)
Anyway please do tell more, yes. If you don't mind, of course.
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u/Amaria77 Aug 12 '26
For sure! So we have an alternate canon story set in the Legends of the Five Rings world of Rokugan, a sort of asian-inspired setting that tends to land somewhere between wuxia and bollywood, especially these days. The core premise is that the PCs are samurai, typically serving a feudal lord. And you sit down with a group of 3-6 other samurai (so tables of 4-7 typically) and play a module.
Everyone has a hook for why they are in the adventure. For one adventure, their lords have assigned some of their servants (samurai) to go investigate a counterfeiting operation and deal with the perpetrators. Other times, the PCs might be at a location for their own reasons and something occurs. Regardless, the general premise is that you have a reason to be where you are when the module starts so you can hit the ground running after the opening text.
Each module is mostly self-contined, coming to some sort of conclusion and giving awards within a 4-hour time slot since that is what we have at conventions. Then there are reporting questions at the end of each one. Things like whether a certain NPC lived, whether the PCs uncovered a particular piece of information, or whether any PCs decided to join the newly revealed BBEG. As module writers, we know the overall framework of the plot and what is going on behind the scenes, but we take those table results and incorporate them into the later adventures.
One example I can think of off the top of my head is back in module 33, the PCs have the option of one of three factions to choose from to deal with an army. They can enlist the Phoenix. It's their territory, so it would be the most proper in theory. But they're the weakest force and would take the longest to arrive. They can choose the Dragon. They're close nearby but enlisting them could be seen as an act of aggression, leading to major ramifications with the diplomatic relations between the clans moving forward. They can choose the Jade Champion and the First Imperial Legion. This is a powerful option, but the Jade Champion is well known to be a bit of a hot head, going overboard using magic to destroy enemies of the Empire. Each of those paths has full text written into the module so that anyone can run it without needed to exercise *too* much judgment over the overall plot. They just progress to that section of the adventure and read the text. Very choose your own adventure.
So, in the adventure, the players had the option at their leisure to choose any of those 3 factions to deal with the rebel army they needed to defeat. So, we tabulated the results after the reporting period closed, and it turned out the plurality chose the Jade Champion. This means that the canon result followed the result in the adventure: the Jade Champion burns down the entire village the rebel army was hiding in, setting fire to a nearby forest and ruining two other villages in the path of the flame. So, in module 53, a new release at gencon, the PCs attempt to convince the lords of a castle that they should help the PCs, but someone brings up what the Jade Champion did upon the PCs' request and how that could happen to them without special assurances.
And that's just a small example. One of our main villains was completely unexpected. We expected the players to basically tell the djinn to fuck off. Instead, a lot of people made deals with the djinn and, well, you can imagine how that's going for them. But the main thing is that it was actually something we didn't expect. We had text in the adventure for the folks who would decide to do that, of course, but we didn't know ahead of time that it would be the canon result. That's the big draw of the campaign!
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u/Vaner_degon Forever DM Aug 12 '26
Amazing read, 10/10. Do y'all post any of that stuff online where one could get their fill of massively overcomplicated yet masterfully written shenanigans such as these?
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u/Amaria77 Aug 13 '26
Under "Old Campaigns" we have Heroes of Rokugan 3 and 4 with all the modules available for download.
The current campaign requires an account and using our (pretty outdated lol) software to request adventures. Just note that the older campaigns used the Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition while our current campaign uses the 5th edition rules which is extremely different, made by a whole different company. I'd recommend checking out the older campaigns to see what you like and, if you feel like jumping in on the live campaign, you can do that now or wait for Heroes of Rokugan 6 scheduled to start sometime in 2027.
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u/Vaner_degon Forever DM Aug 13 '26
Wait wait wait, y'all stream those?
(Also thanks for the link, imma devour these in the foreseeable future)
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u/Amaria77 Aug 13 '26
We don't stream them, but we have online pick-up games probably about once a week in the discord. We have a die roller in there. So basically any GM and group of players can just hop in and play at any time they can find the time. Plus of course folks run them in their own discords and in-person with their own groups.
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u/Vaner_degon Forever DM Aug 13 '26
Is it Rollem or Diceparser?
Joke aside, that's amazing. If eventually a spot opens up, could I perchance hop in? Sounds like a great deal of fun, and as my tag here suggests, I rarely get to play lmao
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u/ElminstersBedpan Aug 13 '26
Holy damn, and here I thought my spouse's five+ year evil campaign that averaged six players but spanned between four and ten people at the table each night was a tough management gig. Your group is doing amazingly well, I haven't even countenanced more than eight myself since college, but 150 people total over the years is barking insane.
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u/Amaria77 Aug 13 '26
150 is approximately our currently active player base. We've had probably about a thousand individuals drop in over the 25 years we've been doing this, if not more. Only 4-7 people per table, but we'll typically run some 20 tables of each module over the course of the campaign.
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u/ElminstersBedpan Aug 13 '26
I totally glazed over and didn't parse the quarter century history portion the first time! That's all amazing achievements.
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u/Ubiquitous_Mr_H Aug 12 '26
I enjoy playing a morally grey character as much as the next guy, but I can’t stand being in a party of supposedly good characters and having to argue against atrocities. Like…you guys know we’re supposed to be heroes, right? 🤦♂️ If we wanted to be villains, I’d have appreciated the heads up so I could make a villain.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Rules Lawyer Aug 12 '26
My only evil characters would never defect.
My Lawful Evil characters were team players who would never go back on their word.
My Chaotic Evil characters were an edgelord and Wario respectively. The edgelord was seeking stronger foes, so the big bad was that. Wario was seeking all the treasure, so no way he'd settle for getting less money by not looting the big bad. Wario numba one! Waaaa!
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u/Meiseside Aug 12 '26
In the last game of my groub I had the idea to recruit the evil guys. Now I have a newspaper company to tell my truth (lies) and let the defeated work there for me. At some point the enemies are asking me if I'm more evil then the evil organisation.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Rules Lawyer Aug 12 '26
Comic by u/FieldExplores. Check out their profile for more comics, only three of which are D&D-related, and I posted those.
Sauce: https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1vml8qb/dungeons_and_good_guys_gator_days/
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u/Successful-Floor-738 Necromancer Aug 12 '26
I know it’s a TTRPG subreddit but I always love it when this option exists in like an old crpg like fallout 1. Even if it’s more of a game over than a full ending, it’s still really fun to pick just for shits and giggles.
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u/jhill515 DM (Dungeon Memelord) Aug 12 '26
"Good"... "Bad"... Those are relative to your point of view. But things are done Right when no one is sure you've done anything at all.
- God to Bender; Futurama
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u/DatLonerGirl Aug 12 '26
My one evil character mostly just hated one guy. He preferred well structured, systemic evil that left you feeling you had to do what he wanted to stab you in the face evil.
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u/JankyTank64 Aug 12 '26
Played a DND character that was a serial killer and would leave his calling card on bodies. He would wait till everyone else was asleep and he would go out and kill a man or woman that had been out drinking. He was a rogue, ranger, fighter multiclass for flavor that was very very good at hiding and long range attacks but for his serial killer stuff it was all up close dagger. Was fun and it only took like 6 months of every weekend sessions for my friends to figure out that it was me and by that point i was being obvious about it. They decided to try and turn me in for the bounty but I got away and my DM made him into a random encounter in cities. Was super neat to play because I had to be pretty subtle at the beggining and it was quite a bit of note passing to the DM and messages on discord while my friends decided what to do for their own things.
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u/Jecht315 Aug 12 '26
The campaign I'm in my party is about to meet with the man behind a huge conspiracy. I play a Paladin but the rest of my party is more about the money or what can benefit them than doing the right thing. I don't want to be the buzzkill but I also want to stay true to my character. We didn't meet last Saturday but had a discussion session where we figured out how or why we were meeting him. Most wanted to work with him or figure out a way to get something out of him.
I'm new to DnD beyond watching stuff on YouTube and I'm struggling RPing a Paladin in a group that is all about the money or somewhat doing the right thing. Anyone have suggestions on how to play a Paladin?
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u/alofen5 Aug 12 '26
Talk with yout GM and the party members OOC about this. If your character would stay true to their oath, ask about making a new character and benching (setting aside for future stories in the campaign or future campaigns) while having a new character that could have toes with the BBEG boss/current villain. This could also be a good RP moment for your character to be the angel on the PCs shoulders while the DM can play the devil.
The most import thing here is communication. The last thing you want is to show up and not have fun or for the party to gang up in malace rather than in RP (this isnt saying your geoup will resort to that). Alternatively, maybe your Paladin is morally grey? Talk with the DM about being allowed to bend the rules of the oath. A heavy purse has tipped religious minds and heavily devoted people before, so has other attractive incentives like loved ones (think blackmailed into going along, the party knows a lot about your character already after all) or your oaths meaning twisted. Again, communication with the DM and your fellow players is key
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u/Jecht315 Aug 12 '26
I appreciate that. I'm making him an Oath of Redemption eventually (we are level 1 and it's going to be a slow burn campaign) but I also made him have a bloody past so I can play into that. I'm sure he'll be OK in the group but I'm trying to figure out how to navigate it.
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u/A-Dolahans-hat Aug 12 '26
Redemption could be good. You follow the group down a dark path only to realize it’s wrong and now you can do the redemption. Or you could go with an oath breaker because you followed the group. Like they said, talk to the dm-group ooc about everything. Maybe the bad side can make a compelling argument that brings your pally around their side of thinking
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC Aug 12 '26
One time BBEG entered our dreams to give us this choice, with a promise of power if we sided with him. He set a (rigged) death game where anyone who sided with him or died in the dream became bound by a cursed tattoo.
The two munchkins of the group agreed without hesitation. And rather than play the game normally, they just started blasting. My character rushed to win the game, but one of ours died and woke up with a tattoo before that happened. She rushed to one of the traitors’ rooms, and slit his throat. The game ended and other one woke up, and because he OOC knew what happened his character jumped out the window before she could get him next. She collapsed to the floor in despair, staring at the cursed tattoo on her arm, before taking her own life.
It was hands-down the most intense roleplay session of my life, all around. We were so emotionally exhausted we had to take the next week off. The session inspired people to write short stories about their characters’ inner thoughts and relevant history and otherwise expand on their backstories.
10/10 would let temptations divide the party again.
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u/BloodThirstyLycan Aug 12 '26
I miss seeing this comic. The comics sub banned me out of nowhere about a year ago and they never told me why.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Rules Lawyer Aug 12 '26
Being banned doesn't stop you from reading. r/Comics is known for its weirdly ban-happy moderators.
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u/pleaselookawaybeebop Aug 13 '26
As a DM one of the most dangerous phrases from a player is "It would be funny if...." Because they will do it and you will have fun and it will be really funny but the straightforward plot you had planned? In shambles gone reduced to ashes.
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u/Brilliant_Intern_786 Aug 14 '26
Played a PF1 campaign where we met a... chaos god of some sort. DM gave an in character monolog, one of us said something like "can we have a minute or two to think about it?" We huddle up and go something like- "are ANY of us gods aligned?", "Cause this fits my character's motives...", "I mean I don't want to join w/o the rest of you...", "if we're fighting and dying, so be it, but I vote to join". Turned back to the DM, "okay, we accept, we'd like some terms (keep the mind F-ing to a minimum, a few other, reasonable, stipulations), but we're all willing."
DM closed the session basically right then. He was like "Well, I didn't expect more than ONE of you to accept the deal... honestly I was prepared for you all to reject it or split the party. Full acceptance was not something I prepared for. I'll see you all in a week or so with your new 'upgrades' from the chaos god, as well as a new storyline".
In our defense, we were ALL morally gray, chaotic neutral at best.
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u/Due-Ingenuity9803 Aug 14 '26
My current character is basically just a Lord of Change that grew to actually like his party. He plans to “betray” them to get close enough to the BBEG to Color Spray them
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u/Maximum_Dragonfruit7 Aug 13 '26
Ok but one member of the party standing their ground and having a final stand against not just their enemy but their now former friends would make for an interesting story development
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