Really evil things to do

[danielxcutter]

While it doesn't measure up to the evil in these pages, I think a moment to appreciate the casual evil is in order. You have a spellcaster, they still have some spell slots left and its nearing day end. Well, I'll just start handing curses off to random townsmen. Otherwise all that study this morning was a waste.
And I know the compulsion spells aren't popular, but I've always seen them as casual evil. I still remember reading a book a couple decades back, Moonshae novel from FR. Some fat, greasy Banite cleric, eating drumsticks by the dozen in some pleasant inn. Obviously disgusted barmaid asking if he needed anything else. He casts Charm and says that yes, yes he does. I'm sure we've all had high Charisma bards pulling off the same thing, but it just struck me as a child, how evil such a small spell was.

That's not super evil in and of itself, but many small bits of evil like that tend to build up.

[Segev]

I was going to say that an enchantment-usin wizard doesn't even need a passable Charisma, but without one, they might get the barmaid to be merely disgusted by their good friend's gross behavior, but not to sleep with him. That would take the opposed Charisma check.

[Mystia]

One of my personal favorite Evil things is to use the Control Body power to make someone kill their allies and then suicide (or not).

It's far better than any mind control spell, because the subject is actually still fully conscious, and if you don't prevent him from doing so, he can still talk. You're just using telekinesis to use his body as a puppet.

The one time this has worked out in the most spectacular fashion, was when the party ambushed a squad of soldiers from an opposing faction, and I used Control Body on the commanding officer and succeeded. As his underlings asked for orders, he just fell to the ground as if crying and defeated, then put a blade to his neck. Instant morale drop!

[Darrin]

This is the most evil thing I have ever seen in RPGs:

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http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/files/Errata_ToB.zip

[Segev]

This is probably more of a single-NPC (or ambitious PC) plot than it is a standard "evil thing to do," but I was contemplating how to approach this without magic, and I settled on this for either a cha-focused rogue or a bard.

Half-orc, with maxed out Cha. This is important, despite the racial Cha penalty. You're going to be maintaining a minimum of 3 identities: one human, one orc, and one half-orc.

The half-orc identity doesn't necessarily require Disguise, though you can use it if you want the extra layer of deniability. This one is going a classic route: join the underworld in a major town or small city.

The human identity takes up residence in the same city, and establishes himself as a well-off commoner who performs for a living, and maybe is seeking a patron. Play up the minstrel angle.

The orc identity ventures out into the wilderness and finds either a powerful orc tribe or seeks several of them in the region, and becomes an itinerant trader and fence for them.

Skills to max out include Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Perform (Singing) and Perform Oratory, and Craft (Ballad).

Your goal is to bill yourself as a trader and fence to the orcs, taking goods they get from raids and trading them for stuff the orcs actually can use. Use this as your "in," and build up friendships. You'll go back to the underworld and set things up so they can fence the goods the orcs sell to you for far more than the trinkets you traded to the orcs.

Meanwhile, work your way into the good graces of the power structure. The leaders should like and trust you. When things go well, make sure to publicly give them credit, while carefully letting slip just enough privately to mid-rank types and gossip-mongers that the story - without you being the known cause - gets around that it was YOU who made the major wins happen. When things go poorly, do the reverse; publicly defend the leaders and let the rumor mill handle blaming them and making you look like a good and loyal minion.

Pay close attention to the kind of person the leader is (or are, if there's more than one important one). If they're the sort whose ego is massaged by being feared and known, your human persona will play songs aggrandizing his villainy, subtly encouraging fear of him but, at the same time, making him the target for law enforcement efforts. If, on the other hand, he's the sort who enjoys being a shadow power who is unknown, take the opportunity to play up your half-orc crook's villainy as a dashing rogue (albeit one who must be defeated) that, while not the leader of the underworld, is a major face of it. Either way, you want to make it so that, should anything happen to the underworld leader, you're the go-to guy that the underworld trusts. Do it right, and the leader will have made you his right-hand second-in-command anyway, because your Diplomacy and Bluff ensure he trusts you implicitly.

Meanwhile, you should have your human guise be an adventurer - either alone or in a party - that occasionally clashes with both the nefarious underworld of organized crime and the raiding bandits on in the wilderness outside. In the cultures common to the times D&D simulates, self-aggrandizement is usually acceptable. So play up your party's achievements.

You don't even have to lie in your ballads: when your party wins against the underworld, play it up. When they lose, play up the dastardliness of your half-orc persona (or of the underworld leader). Make yourselves out to be heroes, of course, but sometimes the bad guys are just that fiendish and cheat that hard.

Ideally, your songs and stories should appeal to the law-abiding in the vein of pulp "letters home" articles and stories from the late 1800s, and should appeal to the criminal element as an aggrandizement of their successes.

You're also working your magic with one or more orc and goblin tribes. Being the go-to fence for their bandit goods gives you plenty of excuse with the underworld for going out to meet them. As long as your party is not constantly together, you can find personal time away from them, too. Again, lots and lots of Diplomacy should earn you trust and friendship. And eventually, you can help them plan raids that are more lucrative in terms of what you can fence for them, and give them better tools and weapons and gear. Play multiple tribes against each other if they're not inclined to work together, and in any event, you can start maneuvering to be their strategist and demagogue. Increase their aggressiveness and effectiveness against the town, and increase what they steal so you can bring it back to the underworld.

Meanwhile, this increases the demand for your party's heroic services. If you can, start angling for that patron and try to work your way into the rulers' good graces. Diplomacy, again and again, until the leadership of the town is Helpful towards you and trusts you implicitly.

Now, no matter who wins in this three way conflict, you're coming out on top. If anything happens to one persona, be ready to quick-change a disguise out so that you can be "rescued" by the group that's caught them out, rather than caught as the nefarious one.

[atemu1234]

Act as the benevolent doctor a town, over time cast Addiction on a ton of the inhabitants addicting them to Liquid Pain, use the pain of their withdrawals to fuel making Liquid Pain
Craft Contingent Spells Animate Dead for skeletons for when the commoners die
Keep most of the town in a constant state of withdrawal, when adventurers and heroes come to the town, implicate them as having tons of Liquid Pain

Desperate for freedom from their torment and for the bliss granted by Liquid Pain, they'll be mobbed by weakened, nearly skeletal, but innocent civilians who are tearing at them(perhaps using well placed Suggestion to inspire a mob mentality of the adventurers being to selfish to hand over the Liquid Pain, their confusion is actually just denying what is so desperately craved)

If any commoners are accidentally slain, which they very well might, they come back as a skeleton, potentially without even falling, just the skin sloughing off

Lastly throw in an Avascular Mass in there(whether contingent to keep your involvement secret or not is unimportant) so that the heroes can't effectively get out

It's disgusting and horrific, perfect for mentally scarring the brave adventurers!

Alternatively, a piece of wondrous architecture that casts Breath of Life, in the same room as wondrous architecture casting Death by Thorns, so they writhe in pain as they die to thorns, get resurrected, rinse repeat, effective and scary torture.

I may actually steal this one.

[Buufreak]

Snippity snip snip

This sounds less like some grand evil scheme and more like economical, non magical contingencies.

[Segev]

This sounds less like some grand evil scheme and more like economical, non magical contingencies.

It doesn't sound grandly evil to you? Huh. Okay!

Still seems like a viable plot for a PC or an NPC, to me.

[Graysire]

I may actually steal this one.

You're welcome to it, I'm happy someone's going to get use out of it, it doesn't quite fit for my current (semi)horrifically evil campaign.
A person in said campaign is reading over my shoulder right now as well, so that makes it hard to use that one specifically.
But I plan to post more terrible evil things, and I'd love to hear how it goes(or if you need more fuel for the fire)

[Segev]

In one game, there was a town terrorized by kobolds and plagued by thieves and missing children. It turned out that the kobolds were upping their banditry to unsustainable levels at the behest of new leadership; their chiefs were being replaced by kobolds infected with wererat lycanthropy, and those wererats were beholden to another wererat, a larger wererat, who demanded immense tribute.

Meanwhile, the town couldn't find the thieves because they were also wererats - the missing children were those who feared so much their parents would find out about their infection that they ran away. Others, still infected, stayed with their families but kept quiet and helped with the stealing because the wererat who infected them threatened to out them.

A half-elf bard merchant living in the town was the were-rat behind it all, and he used high Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate to convince the kids he infected that he was the only one who would understand, that even if they didn't trust him as a surrogate parent-figure, their real parents would hate them if they knew. So they had to obey him, or he'd out them.


Overall, it was a very satisfying thing for the players when they took him down. They then spent the majority of the rest of the campaign trying to find a cure for lycanthropy, and gather the ingredients for it en masse.

[Azoth]

I find Runecasters can get up to some interesting fun. Mainly because they don't need to ask a DM about custom items. Their class calls out how they do it.

There are two spells in BoEF, that cause a target to become pregnant with either a half fiend or half celestial child the next time they have sex. If memory serves they are level 4 spells.

Now, Runecasters can inscribe the runes on anything that they can make with a craft check, and set some pretty flexible trigger conditions. You could easily hide the runes in donated church idols, some prayer beads, jewelry ect.

So, let's say you slap a rune that causes everyone to become pregnant with half fiend children on a door bell for the local tavern that goes off whenever anyone gets within 30ft of it. Or for more fun, slap the same trigger on a copper coin.

Not the greatest evil, but it is entertaining to picture a whole mess of people having half outsider children and needing to explain it away.

I did this once and used it as proof of the end times. The character called the large increase in Fiendish and celestial children a sign of Armageddon. Nothing quite like making people think the end of the world is coming.

[Morphic tide]

There's some fun things you can do with Psionic circuits as an StP Erudite. You can load nearly any spell into them. You can also have nearly any psionic power in them. They are reusable. One of the expanded options has it so that it triggers whenever a command thought is done. With a moderately-permissive DM, you can have something set to go off whenever a person thinks a very specific thing that you don't want them to think. Like your real name. Possibly your True Name instead. This makes it so that everyone branded in this way suffers some extraordinary punishment for the grave crime of thinking your actual name, or the name of some particular person you want to be absolutely sure is Unpersoned.

This lets you successfully ban thoughts. With proper enforcement of it. That's Evil.

[Segev]

There's some fun things you can do with Psionic circuits as an StP Erudite. You can load nearly any spell into them. You can also have nearly any psionic power in them. They are reusable. One of the expanded options has it so that it triggers whenever a command thought is done. With a moderately-permissive DM, you can have something set to go off whenever a person thinks a very specific thing that you don't want them to think. Like your real name. Possibly your True Name instead. This makes it so that everyone branded in this way suffers some extraordinary punishment for the grave crime of thinking your actual name, or the name of some particular person you want to be absolutely sure is Unpersoned.

This lets you successfully ban thoughts. With proper enforcement of it. That's Evil.

This is clever and cruel, but unfortunately I am not sure it works without DMs house-ruling, because command thoughts (like any other standard action activation mechanism) have to be at least moderately deliberate. They take a Standard Action, after all.

[Morphic tide]

This is clever and cruel, but unfortunately I am not sure it works without DMs house-ruling, because command thoughts (like any other standard action activation mechanism) have to be at least moderately deliberate. They take a Standard Action, after all.

Actually, the thing I'm thinking of is Swift action activation of Psionic tattoos via command thought. The circuits let you pull some truly overkill things, because you can have infinite tattoos given enough time, money and XP. And they can recharge, admittedly with a loss of power when done actively.

Here's the text, straight from the Mind's Eye article:

Mental Tap [Mt]: This psionic tattoo uses a special type of psychoactive ink that responds to mental commands. You can add a mental tap to any one psionic tattoo, or to the tattoos linked via a relay. A psionic tattoo attached to a mental tap can be activated by mental command, as though it were a quickened power. Using a mental tap counts toward the normal limit of one quickened power per round. Newly scribed tattoos can be attached to an existing mental tap, provided it is not already attached to another tattoo or relay. The mental tap does not fade away when used. Mental taps assist you only in tapping your tattoos; an attempt to trigger an unconscious creature's tattoo takes a full-round action as normal. A mental tap instantly fades away if moved off your body. A mental tap takes a single slot and is created as though it were a tattoo of a 2nd-level power. Only manifesters of 5th level or higher can create this tattoo. Mental taps cost more than a standard psionic tattoo because of the special ink involved.

The cost for a mental tap tattoo includes an extra 500 gp for special materials; the cost to create this tattoo is 650 gp + 12 XP.

The DM permissiveness is having the mental command be something coherent and able to be triggered unwillingly.

[Azoth]

There's some fun things you can do with Psionic circuits as an StP Erudite. You can load nearly any spell into them. You can also have nearly any psionic power in them. They are reusable. One of the expanded options has it so that it triggers whenever a command thought is done. With a moderately-permissive DM, you can have something set to go off whenever a person thinks a very specific thing that you don't want them to think. Like your real name. Possibly your True Name instead. This makes it so that everyone branded in this way suffers some extraordinary punishment for the grave crime of thinking your actual name, or the name of some particular person you want to be absolutely sure is Unpersoned.

This lets you successfully ban thoughts. With proper enforcement of it. That's Evil.

While the Runecasters is limited to divine spells, craft Tattoo would let them do this implicitly with only 10min + spell cast time. Best part is that unintentionally triggering the rune is a non-action.

Drop a rune tattoo of Feeblemind on your minions with the trigger being any thought about your goal, and suddenly questioning your minions is pointless.

Throw Detonate, Fireball, or any nasty AoE on them to trigger if they forcibly lose consciousness, and then your minions become nasty living bombs. Save DC is the same as if you were there to cast it yourself, so it isn't trivial for your enemies to avoid.

[danielxcutter]

There's some fun things you can do with Psionic circuits as an StP Erudite. You can load nearly any spell into them. You can also have nearly any psionic power in them. They are reusable. One of the expanded options has it so that it triggers whenever a command thought is done. With a moderately-permissive DM, you can have something set to go off whenever a person thinks a very specific thing that you don't want them to think. Like your real name. Possibly your True Name instead. This makes it so that everyone branded in this way suffers some extraordinary punishment for the grave crime of thinking your actual name, or the name of some particular person you want to be absolutely sure is Unpersoned.

This lets you successfully ban thoughts. With proper enforcement of it. That's Evil.

I believe the Red One himself mentioned something similar, except with 20th level Truenamers.

[atemu1234]

I find Runecasters can get up to some interesting fun. Mainly because they don't need to ask a DM about custom items. Their class calls out how they do it.

There are two spells in BoEF, that cause a target to become pregnant with either a half fiend or half celestial child the next time they have sex. If memory serves they are level 4 spells.

Now, Runecasters can inscribe the runes on anything that they can make with a craft check, and set some pretty flexible trigger conditions. You could easily hide the runes in donated church idols, some prayer beads, jewelry ect.

So, let's say you slap a rune that causes everyone to become pregnant with half fiend children on a door bell for the local tavern that goes off whenever anyone gets within 30ft of it. Or for more fun, slap the same trigger on a copper coin.

Not the greatest evil, but it is entertaining to picture a whole mess of people having half outsider children and needing to explain it away.

I did this once and used it as proof of the end times. The character called the large increase in Fiendish and celestial children a sign of Armageddon. Nothing quite like making people think the end of the world is coming.

I mean, I once made an Orc tribe that used that spell religiously, for every child born. The result was... a very formidable army.

[danielxcutter]

I mean, I once made an Orc tribe that used that spell religiously, for every child born. The result was... a very formidable army.

How'd the party not die? Both templates are fairly strong compared to the increased CR.

[atemu1234]

How'd the party not die? Both templates are fairly strong compared to the increased CR.

Eh, I gave them one of the variants from a WoTC web article to drop the save-or-die spells, as they weren't exactly all that fitting anyway, and they wound up more or less facing an army of very large, angry orcs and half-orcs (don't ask).

The resultant battle was fought at a level where a group of CR 5 enemies numbering dozens isn't too difficult an encounter. Which is to say, level 14.

[danielxcutter]

Eh, I gave them one of the variants from a WoTC web article to drop the save-or-die spells, as they weren't exactly all that fitting anyway, and they wound up more or less facing an army of very large, angry orcs and half-orcs (don't ask).

The resultant battle was fought at a level where a group of CR 5 enemies numbering dozens isn't too difficult an encounter. Which is to say, level 14.

So, they were essentially at the power difference where fireballing them to death was viable? I was worried that you'd sent them elite orcs with half a dozen ECLs higher than the party, but looks like that's not the case.

[atemu1234]

So, they were essentially at the power difference where fireballing them to death was viable? I was worried that you'd sent them elite orcs with half a dozen ECLs higher than the party, but looks like that's not the case.

Please, I'm not that crazy.

[danielxcutter]

Please, I'm not that crazy.

Actually, both templates add a +4 LA, so the ECL for orcs half a dozen ECLs higher than the party... would still be 2 more than the party without those templates.

[atemu1234]

Actually, both templates add a +4 LA, so the ECL for orcs half a dozen ECLs higher than the party... would still be 2 more than the party without those templates.

Only one of the spells is in use, the one to make half-fiends. Most of them were barbarians or warriors.

[danielxcutter]

Only one of the spells is in use, the one to make half-fiends. Most of them were barbarians or warriors.

No, half a dozen ECLs higher is 6, so take away the 4 from half-fiend is still 2. That's what I meant.

But yeah even mooks are pretty annoying when they've all got templates. How difficult was the fight?

[atemu1234]

No, half a dozen ECLs higher is 6, so take away the 4 from half-fiend is still 2. That's what I meant.

But yeah even mooks are pretty annoying when they've all got templates. How difficult was the fight?

Not very. Again, the variant I used (Half-Goristo, I think) had very few SLAs, which is where most of the annoyance comes in. They were basically just somewhat stronger orcs.

[danielxcutter]

Not very. Again, the variant I used (Half-Goristo, I think) had very few SLAs, which is where most of the annoyance comes in. They were basically just somewhat stronger orcs.

I guess, but it depends on the build. Half-Succubus + Blackguard + Divine Shield + Divine Might = Ouch.

[Ellrin]

I guess, but it depends on the build. Half-Succubus + Blackguard + Divine Shield + Divine Might = Ouch.

I think making half-succubus orcs in the first place is plenty evil enough, really.

[Cirrylius]

I have an evil Necromancer-ish character who literally performed... exploratory surgery when bored and inconvenienced.

Potentially trigger-ish.

While idly reading in a tavern, he got propositioned once too often by a local lady of negotiable affection. He shrugged and bowed to the inevitable. Once away from prying eyes, he tried out that new overarm sap technique he'd read about, drugged her out with Drow sleeping poison, and opened her up to have a brief look at her organs;

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specifically, to see if/how her profession had affected her womb. Discovering she was several months pregnant, he removed the fetus into a jar and cast Gentle Repose, partly because he couldn't remember ever having read of anyone doing that before. Probably the darkest part of that is he hasn't forgotten about that jar; it's sitting on a shelf, waiting for when he has a minute. Conjecturally, he's found a way to spawn Atropal Scions or some other equally awful unique undead.

He cured the surgical incisions, and continued reading for the rest of the hour before giving her an alchemical antivenin. She left smiling about her bonus tip and her nap.

I'm not sure if it's what I'd call useful evil, but I believe it's pretty creatively dreadful.