First time playing an “evil” campaign, with a friend running a Durge.
We’re failing so miserably in so many comic ways.
We killed most of the origin companions because they’re mostly good two-shoes. When we were done only Lae’zel and Astarion were left.
In Act 2, because we murdered Shadowheart in Act 1, we were locked out of killing the Nightsong because we didn’t have Shar’s Chosen with us. Even after killing Isobel, somehow we ended up with both Jaheira and the Nightsong at our camp, through bad decisions and forgetting to save frequently.
Further, Minthara was glitched and missing in Act 2 after our Durge romanced her in Act 1 but chose not to give in to her urge and kill Minthara because we wanted to recruit her Overly Attached Girlfriend self to our party.
By Act 3, our Monk said “I feel like we’re bad at being evil.”
I sort of do, too. Being a goody-two-shoes in real life can make it hard to know how to be a sinister mustache twirling villain.
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Well to start with maybe broaden your idea of evil. Just killing and murdering is evil but there are lots of other ways to be evil.
What about slowly turning good characters bad by slowly encouraging them to do small wrongs. Like convincing them to pick someone’s pocket. Or justifying theft and other petty crimes.
What about looking the other way when criminals commit crimes and just saying… Not my problem.
Start thinking about long term goals and then add narcissism and selfishness to every choice.
Yeah, I want to try and do an evil Wyll Origin run. Let him make decisions that sound good on the surface but lead to the worst outcomes.
Gotta finish two other runs first, though.
This person DMs
What about looking the other way when criminals commit crimes and just saying… Not my problem.
I always make my paladin play the lute to distract the druids so I can steal their idol. It makes me laugh because he isn’t technically breaking his oath but boy is it skirting that line.
Wait that’s a thing? How does the bard distract absolutely everyone?
If you perform a song using the perform action everyone within range comes to listen. If you pass a performance check they hang out until you stop playing. You can use this to distract everyone and then your rogue can slip in quietly and do his thing.
You don’t need to be a bard, just need the perform action so have your best charisma character or tiefling go talk to Alfira and pass her checks to get musical instrument proficiency.
Oh wow I haven’t played a bard yet, I thought they all got instantly triggered if you took the idol
Yeah, Shadowheart is a member of a stunningly evil cult, not sure why anyone would think she was good.
Plus those bangs, you can tell she’s pure evil incarnate.
I’m well aware she is evil, just couldn’t stand her and forgot I needed her to kill the Nightsong. Whoops.
Similar story with Gale, he became insufferable at a point and so killing him in an evil run was way on the table.
Wyll was a victim of our raid on the grove. Karlach we killed for the Tyr guys, and then killed them, too. Halsin left because we destroyed the grove.
just couldn’t stand her
I shall not stand by and allow this Shadowheart slander continue uninterrupted!
Villains don’t always think they’re evil and don’t often do evil things just because they’re evil.
Often they think they’re doing what’s necessary for what they consider the greater good. For example, an evil character might think that strength is key to survival, is a higher good, so the weak should be punished or eliminated. For example, if you come across a camp of nice but weak innocents, you might side with those attacking them, because you don’t believe the weak deserve to survive.-
Or maybe they think they’re being kind. Those poor villagers were going to get killed by the monsters anyway! Let’s be kind and make it quick by helping the monsters make a quick job of it. Let’s kill the eldery crone or the children who are hungry. It’s a kindness.
Or they might follow a god and do things to appease that god. Serving your god is good, so anything you do that pleases your god is good, whether it’s human sacrifice or killing fluffy animals. Similar to the weak villain, who is too scared of their god or master to oppose them. Like Renfield in Dracula, they (think) they have no choice but to do the evil things their master wants them to do. Often they’re in denial about how they actually enjoy doing these evil things.
Then there’s villains who have no morals or who are nihilists. They do evil things because they’re bored, because it’s easy, and/or because they don’t believe it matters either way. Burn the village down? Why not? Everyone dies anyway. Corrupt someone good? That’s a fun game to play. Someone powerful but good comes along? I’ll help them, because to do otherwise would be dangerous or disadvantageous.
Then there’s villains with delusions of grandeur. They think they’re better than everyone else and will do everything in their power to ensure that anyone who might be better than them, gets cut down to size. Or they like to get involved in evil plots and schemes, because it means they get to feel like they’re influential. Someone wants to overthrow a kingdom? Time to get involved so that people know me as having changed the course of history.
Or there’s the evil characters, who are deeply cynical. The world is evil, nothing is fair, I’m just doing what’s necessary to survive. If I don’t kill/rob them, they’d do it to me. They probably deserved it anyway.
I really struggle with evil play throughs in most games. Rogue Trader is a notable exception for me, as I’m doing the whole “save humanity at the cost of my own humanity” and that’s the one approach to evil that I’ve actually been able to play and enjoy in a game
That’s the new 40k CRPG, right? How are the bugs so far? Owlcat’s games are always super buggy at launch but are usually fairly solid after a year or so. I’ve had that game wishlisted for awhile but saw the initial reviews slamming it for bugs despite the game itself being good, so I’m hoping they’ve made solid progress thus far.
It’s buggy but workable. I had lots of crashes until I updated my video drivers but none since. A couple of small quest / NPC bugs, but nothing serious, certainly no game breakers. It was out for a month or so before I picked it up, so I think I missed the game stoppers.
Meanwhile I was streaming BG3 earlier and killed a child way too casually.
Hopefully you’re having fun at all the chaos of it all though. Because I’d be laughing a fair amount just out of “How does this keep happening?” Sounds like you’ve got an awesome and memorable game going!
I get it. I was never really good at evil playthroughs, but one thing that really helped me get a good evil playthrough in bg3 was inventing a motivation for my character to be evil instead of just always picking the evil option for the sake of it. I just thought of a little back story and personality traits that would make picking the evil options more logical. There are a lot of motivators to do evil things other than just to cause as much harm as possible. Also its good to keep in mind, that just because your character is evil, doesnt mean they always have to pick the most evil option.
Unless you’re Chaotic Evil, then the world’s gotta burn
