Going Bad

I seem to be doing this in my game as well. (disclaimer: I did let the DM know that I wanted to slide him at least into neutral so I could make better use of the less ethical warlock features) I started out as Lawful Good, and have become True Neutral with a leaning towards LG through a number of acts characterized by phrases like "they're evil/not humanoids/agents of the Illithids so torture/other evil act is okay." I would say that the key is to always have justification, my character is eventually going to be okay with sacrificing innocents (using them as bait or bargaining chips or whatever) for his conception of the greater good. He's beginning to conceptualize the campaign as a war for survival against the Illithids and that will serve as a justification for some unpleasant things. If the campaign goes on long enough I'd like him to use Create Thrall on a king or something to gain control of a military. His goals will always be good, but his principals will have eroded entirely.

Brilliant! I’ll be stealing the heck out of this philosophy.

DnD isn't exactly the best system for it, since it has so much minutia and as said, doing the 'right' thing can be mechanically tedious.

But, my character started off as the moral center, heal any humans and sentient humanoids rather than kill them and slid to become the Demon Queen of Hell and BBEG in our loose OotA campaign over the course of 2 years, so it can be done.

So how did that happen?

It was actually in our last game, a magic-oriented Mutants and Masterminds.

She was a dead Irish nun who had healing magic a few hundred years ago. But in the backstory she was killed by a creature who kept trying to tempt her to join him, and after she said no a few too many times, he murdered her and made her into a banshee.

A few centuries in servitude and captivity, she joins the party. Still grasping on to her religion and still wanting a peaceful route, but I gave her one fatal flaw. She wanted to kill the creature that had killed her so her soul could rest.

That fatal flaw was the driving point, especially since the BBEG was the creature, who was the Demon of Envy, who it turned out was her father. (I hadn't planned it, the GM ran with it and I loved it). This put her and her half sister, another bad guy who we had crossed paths with a few times, to be in the running for Demonic Titles. And, after some heartfelt sacrifice to try and bring a beloved NPC back, sacrificed her connection to her soul and fell in to the first steps of becoming the Demon of Pride. It was all about the good intentions externally, but inside she knew this would give her more power to kill Envy.

But, her motivation was still in tact but her perspective changed. She thought, as her dark powers grew and the full extent of how much her demonic family (Including Envy, Wrath, and Gluttony) had fucked over everything, she decided she needed to do more than just kill him.

So, in a climactic showdown, instead of merely landing the death blow, she consumed his heart to gain his powers too. She and the party had struck down the other demons, so she was the only one left with a familial claim to ruling hell. And she decided, now that she had all this power, she was going to save the Earth from itself. Because what is a few centuries or even millenia of suffering and combat, if afterwards it is everlasting peace? >>>

So, the secret is, you need something to drive them. Not just a normal want, but something that can be driven to the point of obsession. That can be warped, and completely consume their world view.

Her view started as helping people and getting rid of the evil that was her father. And that is still it by the end of it. But, now the HOW has changed. It took 2 years, a lot or moral skirting, losing her religion and seeing how little she initially mattered for her to be lost enough to view power as the only way to make the difference she wanted to see.

But now, the whole party is on edge having just seen the full demon lord's might in OotA and all the players are triggered by the color purple in game (it was the color of her skin and powers after she went half-demon). So I think that is a pretty successful character arc.

And, given how my current character is distantly related to my first character's story, the arc isn't over yet.

...

I hope you're being sarcastic.

He was.

>Lewd succubus corrupts a virgin paladin until he's her loyal pussy slave
>A morally upright paladin purifies a licentious succubus until she's his obedient housewife
Which one, teej?

A just and righteous paladin is tempted by a succubus, then beheads her in the shining one's name as a warning to all others who would corrupt his purity.

I prefer
>A lusty noble goes about seducing every woman he desires
>A honey trap snares any man she targets
>Curious people pit them against each other, curious to see what happens
>They end up wearing each other out and become faithful partners because no-one else can keep up with their sex drives

Had a character go from CG to NG to LE because he made a series of bad decisions but ultimately end up reconciling himself with the results- partially.
>Tricked into a vulnerable position by an enemy and an unknowing ally
>Devil makes him an offer
>Devil knows that normally the PC would refuse, so offers to cut the same deal with his much more morally flexible kid brother or worse, with one of his enemies
>PC has to decide whether he can pass up a second chance- and entrust someone else with the power the devil is offering.
>He eventually decides that no, he can't afford to risk anyone else taking the deal
>Fights on behalf of the devil for a morally light-grey faction, gets wierd looks due to his new allegiance
>Plan almost goes off without a hitch until a wizard throws a wrench into it at the lasts second
>His faction still wins, but he loses everything in the aftermath, including his wife and unborn twins
>Wife goes to Hell with him, his children's souls are handed off to another god and he has no idea where they are now
>Given the opportunity to torture the wizard who got him and his wife killed and his children taken away from him
>He takes it and starts down the path of darkness in earnest
>Becomes a torturer and chain devil.

I've had an interesting ride with this sort of concept. My character started out innocent enough. Pretty much your cookie cutter human girl coming of age, with amazing magical talent and some training to boot, but woah, the source of her power is corrupting. Gradually, to gain more power and control over it, she got into some bad deals with demons, even joined up with a demon group.

Eventually though, things went south and she captured the soul of that demon group's leader after someone killed him and she scurried off. Tried to be a good guy again, but was quickly arrested for helping in all of the wrong ways. To get revenge, she joined the mage school of her hated enemy under a different name and disguise as a teacher, but then her care for her students changed her. She fell in love with someone. She found a road to redemption.

And then her friends abandoned her. Her lover betrayed her. And something in her just broke. A succubus took advantage of the broken thing, and turned her into a tool to fight her enemies. And that's the story of how I'm the BBEG.

How about if they each learn more about each other's values and end up forming an equal relationship?

>Equal relationship

Demons don't deserve equality with man.

The best thing to do is to avoid the notion of the alignment chart as the foundation of the character. Instead, think about what the character's values are. What is good to this person. Now, think about what his patron values. If you want to be evil this should be fairly different from stuff people normally care about, like life and happiness. Now, think about why your character made a deal with this patron. He must have wanted something that's related to the patron's purview. Not necessarily directly related, but he made his pact for a reason. Now, when you play out the character, he can become more like his patron as he pursues his own agenda. Good things like not killing innocents may fall by the wayside in pursuit of his goal, and his emotions will become more like those of the patron. Don't do it quick though. Play at least a month, perhaps more, without any of this happening. Keep a good handle on the evil. You need to establish that the character was initially good. Then, once the character is well grounded, allow very small bits of moral apathy and compromise to pop up. Just a few, over the course of real life months, and only when it makes sense. Then begin to allow more, and become callous. Then more still, and begin to do whatever horrible things you're patron is into. Then do some more, and let it gradually slip from an occasional failing to a habit to a way of life. Then you'll have realistically become evil. There can also be a few major turning points along the way, but even those should be pretty minor.

There was a campaign where I played a NG cleric. Then I realized the other players were murderhobos and the DM was an enabling shitstick that didn't bother punishing such base acts.

I tried my best to uphold my standards but after a few sessions of unrewarding roleplay, I slid down to CE pretty quickly, as my own petty way of spiting the DM and everyone else on the damn table.

I know you frequent this board, you, and I still feel very strongly about this!

I made a character who is a deconstruction of the concept that destroying evil feels good. When you revel in the pain of others, you will slowly cause more and more pain to people less and less deserving. It started off with brutally and painfully killing a villain in cold blood rather than the quick and relatively painless kills normally used and eventually culminating into torturing prisoners for information despite being promised mercy if they surrendered.

Have it start with accidental violence. Lost a drunken bet and punched the guy hard enough to break his neck. Spying on someone suspicious, get found and defend yourself lethally. Snooping around an interesting place and find the resident, try to tie them up but knock them down a flight of stairs. Eventually the violence becomes second nature, and then you're a callous monster to anyone who didn't know what you went through

I've got a problem and this place looks like the thread to ask:
>Have a character in a Pathfinder campaign, Lawful Evil Bladebound Magus
>His schtick is an obsession with people's word. Lie and cheat and steal all you want, but if you break a promise you go on the shit-list
>Said list is literal, the dude keeps journals on him and has a habit of writing contracts when people make promises to him, or the inverse.
>Problem is the GM has decided to name the Black Blade "Oath-Breaker" and made her the type of bitch that crosses her fingers behind her back while saying she loves you.
>This despite the fact that she's supposed to also be Lawful Evil

How the fuck do I reconcile with this? I don't know why she acts like this and in character I've been driven to nearly breaking the bitch several times, stopped only by the fact that my character will never break his word, and when they meet he went full retard, promising to help her accomplish her goals and not to let her be broken. She's his sword, no other Black Blade exists that will work with him, and she's USEFUL, both as a weapon and a"person".

tl;dr My LE character is getting cucked by his "totally lawful evil too I swear" sword and he can't break her, wat do.

No. I've played characters who had to do some bad stuff as they went along, but it was more necessary evil than anything else, and it wasn't played as going down a dark path.

Griffith had strong hints of something like sociopathy long before he ever became Femto.

How about: succubus ejected from the Hells because she accidentally a conscience, gets taken in by a good-aligned goddess who reprograms her to be a good person, then gives her free will and sets her loose in the city with the goal of assassinating a serial killer?

Sleepy Balrog a cute

My fetish is the latter followed by
and then the paladin committing suicide after realizing her heart really was redeemed, leaving their children alone.

Find out what her goals are, before tying the bitch in rags and leaving her in the attic before going on to accomplish her goals.

That's my point. You start showing it early, but you just cover it up by never acting on those hints.

>Going bad
>Going
mfw

"Evil" people almost always think they're the (misunderstood) good guys/underdogs doing what's best for everyone and not getting recognition for it.
By everyone of course they mean 'people who matter'. Usually they have a very specific and restrictive definition. Might also involve sacrificing 'people who don't matter' for the good of 'people who matter'.

The hallmark of "evil" is being told "please stop, what you are doing is hurting us" and finding a justification for not listening. The reasons for this can be varied, but often it's a fear that admitting you were wrong will jeopardize everything you've done so far and that you Might Actually Be The Bad Guy.

"Evil" also operates under some fucked up, subconscious premises, for example that you have either Good people and Bad people, and that an action is good if done by a Good person and bad if done by a Bad person. "Since I'm obviously a Good person everything I do is good, and everything my enemies do is obviously born out of malice and trickery".

If you want to play a character descending into evil, they need to slowly blind themselves to criticism, listen to their ego over their sense of empathy, adopt a very limited black-and-white view of the world, and expand the category of people who can be sacrificed to the greater good while lowering the threshold at which this is acceptable.

>Turned Evil.
???

>Lewd succubus corrupts paladin into depraved evil
>It goes well
>Horribly well
>Fallen paladin turns out worse than her in every possible way
>ohshit.png
>Succubus wants off this ride
>Fallen paladin won't let her, he/she's taken too much of a liking to her now
>Succubus not sure if terrified or aroused

The corruption has to be slow, and is best started while the character thinks they're still doing right.
One of my characters, who started as a Lawful Neutral unflinching defender of the common man slowly slid into lawful evil as his nation's government became increasingly corrupt. His solution was to become the government, leading to a coup in which he attempted to seize dictatorial power by murdering the emperor and his whole family.
He wasn't an unambiguous good guy to begin with, but he definitely went downhill.
Just give your character a purpose, and warp the methodology for achieving it over time.

Like has been said, the key to it is that your goal is for the greater good, or best intentions or whatever. It's a an ego thing in a lot of ways, your character has to think that something ideological is wrong, and they know how to fix/change it for the better. Then they start working towards the goal, slowly employing more extreme means as they fail to accomplish their goal, until the rest of the party casts them out or follows them down.