Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Evil Pathfinder Character Concept

The player of Proteus came up with an awesome evil character idea today in a conversation with Lhye's player and the two of them really built on it.  In Pathfinder, you can afflict characters with an insanity using the Bestow Curse spell.  One of the optional insanities is Psychosis which turns the victim of the spell's alignment to Chaotic Evil as well as granting a +10 bonus to Bluff checks to pretend they're not evil.  In other words, you could create an evil character that goes around with the party and does nothing wrong ... except turning the occasional random NPC into a Chaotic Evil person.

Imagine an elf going around for hundreds of years, casting the spell on humans so that they can then hunt them down while they're older with the rest of the party.  The elf could even cast it on human babies - like the paladin's son - which could create either children who grow up to be serial killers or even evil toddlers who themselves start killing the people around them.

Considering that you don't need to be insanely high level to do this, just imagine how often this could be thrown about by various evil characters in the game world.  Oh, your best friend chose to marry the love of your life?  Turn one of them Chaotic Evil!  Your boss promoted someone instead of you?  Make the new employee Chaotic Evil and then leave the area with your family.

I mean, yes, Chaotic Evil doesn't necessarily mean that they will be all that actively evil but it's bound to lead to some pretty bad acts of random violence.  Then again, Chaotic Evil that comes with a side of 'pretend to be innocent' suggests serial killing or otherwise violent sociopaths who impulsively commit evil acts according to their fantasies.

It is messed up how easy it is to be evil in roleplaying games.

I mean, sure, Remove Curse will work on them but the Bluff bonus means that years of evil deeds might pass before anyone suspects the villain.  By that time, they might believe they were born bad rather than that they were the subject of a curse.

So people, what magically evil plans have you thought up that cleverly uses certain spells?  Proteus' player (who happens to also be Leningrad's player, if you read both the Dystopic and Flashpoint Actual Plays), got any further ideas for this?

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