Philosophy of Evil

[Giselle123]

The Philosophy of Evil - If I stray here from server policy, dm's please correct me.
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Evil in d&d means you char has committed an ongoing series of terrible acts.  It does not mean you are a bully, greedy, murdered once in rage, are a second story man, etc.  It might mean these things, but it means you did them gladly and would do them again without much/any reservation and regardless of who else loses in the process.

Evil d&d characters scare their friends almost as much as they scare their enemies.  All player chars are adventurers, which means they can and will kill if they need to.  Truly depraved people that can and will kill scare everyone.

Playing a paladin ends up seeing so many evil folk currently on the server you start to think you're in one of the lower plains.  If your char is evil and mr paladin sees it he's going to fearlessly let the non evil ones around you know a rabid wolf is in their midst; it's his sworn duty to oppose you.  If your neutral char isn't worried when mr paladin calls out another as evil, he would not be worried either if a known serial killer were acting as his chauffeur.

[Seanzie]

Are you just stating this? Or are you expecting to have like an open discussion? Because I don't quiet understand what the point of this is?

[fizzt]

Well, the whole point of a forum is generally for discussion of things. My own views on FR evil are along the same lines as Giselle's. In real life, we all have our own senses of right and wrong, but in FR, good and evil are very real and tangible forces.

Being a badass mercenary who would knock your teeth out for looking at him wrong is not evil. He would most likely be chaotic neutral. Then you have the same instance, of making eye contact with some other badass in a bar. This one would gladly slit your throat, take your shit, and smile about it. People that show no remorse for heinous crimes such as needless murder, rape, the truly unforgivable crimes, are evil.

    Of course, those are just two examples, and there are many, many forms of evil. But being evil generally means you're quite depraved, and murdering someone for the slightest reason is entirely justified in your characters mind. Simply having a lust for power and a taste for the more material things in life, even at the cost to others, does not necessarily make one evil.

Of course, my word isn't law, and I'm sure the more eloquent members of the forum will certainly have much better informed, and written viewpoints than my own, so please, feel free to post your own thoughts on evil, and how we feel it should be played out.

[Drakill Tannan]

From what i can tell, doing evil in D&D is doing evil for the sake of it. No cause for the evil, no need for the evil therefore no justification. Futhermore it is the action that is evil, not the intent, same goes with all alignments.

[The Boom King]

I think if we have a mass influx of evil characters who cackle madly while killing just about everything that moves while twirling their moustache in a sinister manner, things will get pretty boring.
 
However, it is as Drakill says; it's the action that is evil. Not the intent. Same goes for good or whatever.
 
I've had lots of characters do good things for their own evil purposes, and the DMs still gave me good points for it, (even after I notified them.)
 
While I understand your argument, I think I disagree that all evil characters have to enjoy their evil acts 100% of the time. Otherwise they come out as two-dimensional.
 
Let me give an example of evil-doers that we know and love:
 
Hannibal Lecter
 
Darth Vader
 
Glad0s
 
Andrew Ryan
 
Captain Barbosa
 
Davy Jones
 
Thousands more I can't think of,
 
ETC.
 
Each of these characters commit evil deeds and are all very evil, but almost all are disillusioned with the belief that their acts are justified for a greater good.
 
Let the DMs make the unspeakably evil characters!

[tropic]

I disagree. While a serial killer would no doubt be evil, so is a bandit or pirate who kills and steals.

Just because a character has an evil alignment doesn't mean that they should be secretly plotting the death and subsequent corpse-defilement of all of their comrades.

To me, evil is sociopathy. That is to say that an evil (sociopathic) character will care very little for the value of life. This does not imply "rabid wolf" or even "scary." It means that they will unerringly act for their own benefit, and only for the benefit of others when it helps themselves.

Once again, we as players should always try and respect what other players are doing, keeping in mind that we don't have full knowledge of their characters and their motivations.

[TheImpossibleDream]

This debate has been done to death in all the years of efu. Nothing is ever acomplished in these kind of threads.

[Giselle123]

Seanzie: As fizzt said, a discussion on a discussion board.

Others:
The core I was aiming for was this; if your character is evil in this realm, they are, regardless of inner conflict, or outward veneer, a foul creature.

Not has exceedingly kinky sexual fantasies, or runs drugs to addicts, or has the hunting attitude of elmer fudd, but has the moral equivalent of the smell of rotting eggs.  A paladin smells this rot (it in character stuns him if its bad enough), and anyone with the lore skill equivalent of a 6th grader knows in character that the paladin both can see the foulness of the truly awful and that it's a hell of a good idea to stay away from people paladin's label as truly bad.

I'd like to see the divide between good/neutral and evil much clearer established; evil chars are hated and feared by most neutrals, and worked with carefully by those who would dare.  Have seen many non-evil chars on the server with high lore skill arguing with a paladin that what he thought was evil was just his hallucination.  The FR version of "This serial killer looks fine to me; what's your problem mr high and mighty?"

[Ghost]

Personally, I find it's far more run, and less frustrating, to focus on your own roleplay and how your character reacts to situations, than it is to worry about whether or not other characters have your stamp of approval on how they respond. It's impossible to divine why another character does what they do since you're not playing that other character. So it's simply best to accept their response in an in-character fashion, and keep roleplaying. Telling other people how their characters should be reacting to things never turns out well, and is completely counter-productive.

[Nightshadow]

My personal favorite type of evil is evil who is trying to accomplish some greater good, but is ultimately cruel and ruthless as he goes about trying to accomplish it. But anyway, regardless of which alignment you are, try to come up with a reason as to WHY your character is that alignment. If you have no reason, go with true neutral, and let IC events shift you one way or another, if at all. This, I feel, is especially important for evil characters, and I think most will agree with me, many of the evil characters these days should really be Chaotic Neutral, because they don't act evil, ever, aside from occasionally being an asshole.

Anyway, yeah, alignment may only be a guideline, but it's an important one, think hard about where your character belongs on that spectrum, and why he is there.

The FR version of "This serial killer looks fine to me; what's your problem mr high and mighty?"

Yes, that's essentially it. I would love if people treated people called out as evil by a paladin with more suspicion, at least. Paladins are hailed as noble heroes, and it's well known that they are honest. Most of our characters likely grew up hearing stories of paladins saving kingdoms and slaying dragons, and how they could tell who among us was a servant of darkness and stuff like that.

[tropic]

What Ghost is saying nicely is that the best way to influence other characters' behavior is through the actions of your own.

[Stormbringer]

In my view, it's simple...Evil people care about themselves before others. In every situation, they look at how they can best benefit from the situation. Whether it's a Lord who twists the words of a treaty to fit his needs. (LE) or someone who kills a 'teammate' for his items. To the evil person, they're own power, honor and glory is paramount. To say, every evil person is a sociopath is, imho, a bit extreme. They are simply willing to do, or let, bad things happen to others in order for them to benefit.
 
My two cents.
 
SB

[Kotenku]

It is definitely worth considering, when deciding your alignment at character roll-up, "Would a Paladin be justified for despising and opposing me at every turn?"

[Divine Intervention]

Evil is all these things and more, tbh it can range from the common cut-throat murdering for coin to the crimelord indirectly murdering hundreds by running the drugs trade.  Yes the crimelord doesn't actually butcher and steal but he profits from an organisation that is doing evil deeds.  Imo an idealist who uses evil methods to obtain a good end is still evil, in that case it's really does the end justify the means etc.

[cmenden]

I think my own opinion on this matter is that if you will regularly derive benefit from the loss of others, you're probably evil!