Do you have an "Evil" race in your world?

[2D8HP]

I a big fan of evil elves though.

Fey are cruel and unpredictable beings largely because they care only for their own amusement and have no empathy, so on and so forth.

Elves/Fey

An Elf is just a Drow bleached by the sun..
Drow the original Elves

I combine the worst sterotypes of the French and Russian Nobility of the "Ancien Regime" with the savage kidnapping "Indians" of old western. They have vampire-like hypnotic powers and vulnerability to iron

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.

Yet most of my current PC''s in other DM's "world's" are Elves....

[Jay R]

When the raiders attack the village intending to kill all the men and abduct all the women, then they are evil. I don't care, and I don't see why any player character should care, whether they do this because they are orcs, or drow, or vikings, or pirates, or whatever.

In my current game, goblins are generally attacking the PCs and inoffensive NPC villages. That's because the goblins are semi-bestial and easily cowed, and will always follow an alpha leader. The PCs have not yet put together that they have always been led by ogres, or gnolls, or humans, or somebody.

The party has been attacked by goblin wolfriders, using tactics they'd never used before. They tried to separate a wounded PC from the rest of the party and drag him off alone. That's because they weren't following the goblin leader, but the alpha wolf, so they were using wolf pack tactics.

[Trask]

Mind that I'm not saying that they're shouldn't be people that the players come into conflict with. Maybe even whole tribes or kingdoms. But just as humans dont just go to war with the entire dwarven race if they get pickpocketed by some dwarven thieves, I dont like to treat a race like Orcs (mammals, humanoid, intelligent) as just ok to genocide. If a race is to be truly evil through and through and thoroughly irredeemable I like for there to be some reason behind it. Like beastmen twisted by chaos that are slaves of some more sinister force, like another poster said reptilians that see mammals only as meals, perhaps extremely alien bug men or hiveminds. All these are ok to me because they just just become different colored/ear shaped/shorter humans that are just mindlessly aggressive for no other reason than to provide a guiltless punching bag for PCs. They are truly different due to real biological/supernatural factors and are realistically capable of possessing entirely alien mindsets to that of normally evolved creatures with empathy and sense of self preservation.

[weckar]

Mind Flayers and Elves are my go-to Evil races. Every now and then I also drop Doppelgangers in there, but only because in my world they actually associate quite closely with Mind Flayers...

[Coidzor]

Mutated members of otherwise varied races tend to be crazy and/or evil. That's largely geography and exposure to too much of the wrong kinds of magic, though. Stuff in deep sea trenches or that lives near magma vents on the ocean floor? Probably mutated and evil in addition to being utterly alien and weird to begin with.

Like the mentally and physically twisted magical crossbreed soldier servitors of mad wizards are pretty skewed towards being evil. Or the inhabitants of the areas where gods died and their deaths tainted the land, they have a tendency to become monsters on the outside or inside if not both.

Kobolds with chromatic dragon features are slightly more likely to be evil than good, but most of them are neutralish.

Kuo-Toa and Sahagin are pretty inimical to other sapient life.

There are spirits and fey that are just straight up made of evil or that are hostile to all life or all intelligent life that isn't a spirit.

It's not really a world with lots of evil hordes, though, at least in the current era. In the past there were some, especially during the war of the gods, but several species got genocided into extinction.

Monsters like manticores are pretty much always evil, along with cursed things like werewolves or things made of evil like demons.

[nrg89]

Undead are under the control of it's creator, but you need sorcery for that and in my setting sorcerer's are somewhat amoral. Not always immoral, but to get the powers one needs to make a pact with a demon and in my setting rakshasa are the demons.

They were created with self interest as their number one priority by the gods because the gods noticed that altruism, compromise and community made humans really strong and could one day maybe challenge the gods. In a desperate attempt they created the rakshasa, beings of complete self indulgence to suppress the humans. It backfired horribly.

But players are free to play a sorcerer if they want, but there's a lot of suspicion and prejudices against sorcerers in the world.

[Misereor]

The party has been attacked by goblin wolfriders, using tactics they'd never used before. They tried to separate a wounded PC from the rest of the party and drag him off alone. That's because they weren't following the goblin leader, but the alpha wolf, so they were using wolf pack tactics.

*Thumbs up*
Like it!

[Logosloki]

Only Deities, Outsiders and Outliers have alignments in my world so, not really. Mortal servants have an aura that exudes the alignment of their patron (the more favoured, the more powerful the aura) but they themselves do not normally have an alignment (having an alignment would make them an Outlier).

Creating Undead does not normally make a mortal an outlier, it depends on the type of undead they make. Husk-Undead are beings created by disjointing the soul of a body and then sealing the body so that the soul cannot return. This does make you Evil, even if you do it to yourself.

Creating or Summoning something automatically makes a mortal into an Outlier. They shift either to the alignment of their patron or if they do not have a patron then they become Virtuous or Chaotic depending on the context of their creation/summon.

[TheFurith]

I personally would never really have an evil race. Unless you want to count demons or devils, the sort of evil outsider that's malevolent for the same reason a fire elemental is hot. It just is and you aren't going to change it. No amount of philosophy and rationale will change what they are.

As far as races like orcs. The entire idea behind them was so that you could straight up murder a hundred of them and have nobody morally question it because they're just evil faceless things. That's just how they are and they all deserve to die for it. Now that idea is absurd of course. But it depends what you want out of the game really.

Do you want gritty realism where almost everyone is mostly decent but just have conflicting motives and ways of life and put them at odds? Or do you want to play "heroes" ridding the world of anything "evil" because it has a different language, culture, and skin color? Or maybe you play with people aren't okay with killing anything that even resembles humans and will make the entire game a total pain? In which case you need a new player.

Either way, human like races that are evil for evils sake just don't make any sense.

[Max_Killjoy]

Depends on what one means by "evil".

In terms of a capital-E cosmological force or power dubbed "Evil", I'm not a fan of the concept.

In terms of "Evil for the Evulz", even less of a fan.

However, if you mean "naturally and or culturally predisposed to a mentality inimical to the rights and wellbeing of others" or "alien to the point of very likely mutual hostility", then I can go with that.

So yes, in my settings, there are sometimes species and cultures that -- due to their very nature -- most others are not likely to have a productive or peaceful relationship with, and those others are likely to view them as evil.


The Broo (Glorantha)... without going into detail, there's a species that's pretty much objectively evil as a whole.

Or Illithids, who literally cannot live without eating other intelligent beings -- even if they weren't also culturally arrogant and domineering in the extreme, they can't live in peace with other species.

[LudicSavant]

I generally agree with your post, but...

Or Illithids, who literally cannot live without eating other intelligent beings -- even if they weren't also culturally arrogant and domineering in the extreme, they can't live in peace with other species.

This is one generalization I can't get behind. Humans themselves often practiced human sacrifice... including many cases where it was voluntary. It's not a stretch to imagine a culture willfully sacrificing people to powerful, superintelligent creatures rather than going to war with them, or even a case where the humans doing the sacrificing think of it as a mutually beneficial relationship.

I recall a particularly interesting example posted by Hiryuu somewhere on these boards.

Let's talk about Illithids, this'll be fun. According to The Illithiad (shush, bear with me), a mind flayer needs one brain of a month to stay alive - that's bare minimum - and it needs to be from an intelligent creature with the ability to reason (no using Int 4 critters, the mind flayer needs meat). Smart and clever brains taste better. We are told they keep slaves for this, or make raids.

This means one mind flayer, at minimum, needs to kill 12 people a year. Now, since the brains have to be adult brains, they need a maturation period of 16-17 years or more. That means the minimum brain input a mind flayer needs to get to a given brain is about 150 brains. That's a lot of raiding or slave raising. Illithiad also says there's ~100 or more illithids in a given city or town run by them, on top of what the elder brain eats (we'll ignore it for a moment). That's 15,000 brains over the course of 16 years, which may not seem like much, but that's the bare minimum - it's like forcing your entire population to live on unseasoned instant ramen for a decade and a half. In order for your population to maintain that level of consumption, you should probably have about ten times that - you need breeders and educators (you want your brains smart, they need to be tasty) and then you need to keep up their maintenance - feeding them and pumping away their waste is a big job. You also need to house them, can't keep them in cages, it makes for horrible food.

Basically what this means is that you might have a small group of illithids in charge of a huge city-cult devoted to them and devoted to producing smart, intelligent members of the populace who might even petition to be eaten, on top of the rabble-rousers and troublemakers (this is probably why the ancient Gith had high enough numbers to stage a coup and win). Welcome to the city of mind flayers, where health care is free, education is robust and fun, but hey, don't break the law.

And one of my own comments on the subject

I like the idea of aberrations and non-aberrations having to overcome crazy obstacles like "we need to eat the live brains of your species" in order to achieve relatively peaceful co-existence... and actually seeking to do so! Perhaps to the horror of other humanoids and aberrations alike (kinda like how the elves and dragons alike were horrified by half-dragons in Eberron).

I can totally imagine people petitioning to have their brains eaten, too. After all, they may believe that they live on as a component part of a greater being instead of wasting away in old age, or even that this is a sort of way of being "elected to the governmental mind." Also, it could come with honors, influence (such as giving political voice to a dying wish), or pecuniary rewards.

[Arutema]

The campaign I'm working on has the only humans in the setting as the invading racist imperialist race. So yeah, I'd guess they're the "evil" race of the setting.

[Max_Killjoy]

I know it's not a particularly popular thought to express any more, but I do think it's possible to have a human culture that's actively evil -- and to have the victims of that evil be willing participants in it.

I can't really give present-day real-life examples without pushing the limits on forums rules AND potentially starting a threadfire. Historically, I'd say that most human sacrifice counts.

[LudicSavant]

I know it's not a particularly popular thought to express any more, but I do think it's possible to have a human culture that's actively evil -- and to have the victims of that evil be willing participants in it.

I can't really give present-day real-life examples without pushing the limits on forums rules AND potentially starting a threadfire. Historically, I'd say that most human sacrifice counts.

Uhm, what? What the heck does that have to do with anything?

Or Illithids, who literally cannot live without eating other intelligent beings -- even if they weren't also culturally arrogant and domineering in the extreme, they can't live in peace with other species.

The point I disagree with here isn't about whether it's evil or not, it's about whether or not a creature that must consume sapient species can hypothetically live in peace with another sapient species.

And my answer to that is: Of course they can, through a wide variety of means, such as (but not limited to)...

- Sapient-eating creatures only eat some sapient species and spare other ones, with whom they are on good terms.
- Sapient-eating creatures only eat creatures that are going to die anyways.
- Sapient-eating creatures only eat volunteers.

[KarlMarx]

In my campaign, Orcs--the main "enemy"--aren't innately evil, but their culture--nomadic, predatory behavior towards other groups due to a crippling lack of resources, and fairly meritocratic--is incompatible with the urbanized, relatively peaceful, hierarchical Human empire.

Therefore, the human leaders consciously or unconsciously label the other culture as evil to prevent it from dissolving their own. It's essentially a case of us vs. them, used by the humans to cement their control(our system is the only good, so those who oppose it are evil!).

Eventually my PCs are going to discover this--and discover how devils(who are incarnations of the mortal races domineering desires) have been using it to create a "perfect" society for them to take over.

So the mortal races aren't evil, just different and the victims of xenophobia. However, their culture does promote activities seen as evil--raiding, pillaging, etc.--that can be seen as evil. However, this behavior is simply seen as necessary for survival in the world that the orcs have created.

[BWR]

I have no problem with the concept. 'All [specific mortal race] are evil' is little different from 'all demons are evil' in anything but where they live and how powerful they are on average. Fantasy racism is fine by me because once you have defined the world as being a certain way you have already determined right and wrong in that setting. If this includes making one or more of the traditional humanoid races into 'always baddies', I'm perfectly fine with it.
As for what I do in my games, it's more like 'mostly bad' rather than 'always bad' and much of that is cultural rather than inherent.

[Max_Killjoy]

Uhm, what? What the heck does that have to do with anything?

----

The point I disagree with here isn't about whether it's evil or not, it's about whether or not a creature that must consume sapient species can hypothetically live in peace with another sapient species.

Ah, OK -- I misunderstood that part of the disagreement.

[LudicSavant]

Ah, OK -- I misunderstood that part of the disagreement.

NP, glad it's cleared up

Edited previous post slightly to make it clearer that that is what I was disagreeing with.

[Kid Jake]

In a setting that I've put a lot of time into but not gotten to play in yet, pretty much all the races are horrible monsters. The elves are murderous cultists, sacrificing hundreds of sentient creatures a day to prevent their gods from waking up and eating them. The dwarves are near emotionless cogs in an ever expanding empire built on the backs of enslaved races. Trolls are simple brutes on the brink of extinction that lash out at anything that gets too close. Unicorns are basically the Immortals from Highlander. The humans are trying to cleanse the world with fire, with a large subset even attempting to kill the 'gods' themselves; even though that would cause the entire world to stagnate and eventually die.

Everything is an unpleasant mess(I pitched it to my players as Warhammer as performed by the Kids in the Hall), but most of them at least have some reasoning as to why they want to kill everything.

[i]Most]/i] things do anyway...but not gnomes. Gnomes are, pretty much to a man, a bunch of manic monsters that fall into the "Rape, murder, arson and rape." school of a-holery. Their diet consists of 90% hallucinogenic mushrooms, 9% terrified travelers and some filler. They do nothing but scream profanity at the top of their lungs, trip balls and attempt to sate every impulse that enters their heads without empathy, remorse or fear of consequences.

They don't have sinister plans, they get no particular pleasure from causing pain and generally don't even want what you have; but in their permanent drug fueled haze they're prone to suddenly wondering what your eyes might taste like/what color smoke your house will make as it burns/how many gnomes can fit inside a human chest cavity... and they will not rest until they know.

[Cluedrew]

Sometimes, but there are usually not a races of biological beings. Things like demons, nightmares given flesh or biological weapons that got free. The idea of a naturally occurring race being A) stable in characteristics that you can say "always" and B) evil. So I guess I have issues with both the always and the evil. I mean if the setting was literally created by the hand of god (or gods) recently then that changes the rules. But otherwise the races would have gotten to its current point by some path and a lot of the "they are evil" explanations really forget about that and they just... don't make internal sense.

If you have some supernatural malevolent force, that plays by its own rules and depending on what the rules are, that can make sense.

To Kid Jake: That sounds like something you would do. The campaigns I know of yours would fit right in.

[Telonius]

If something lacks the intelligence to be Good or Evil, it's more like Neutral Hungry. It can still be a threat, can't be negotiated with, and is an acceptable target. A lot of Aberrations and many Undead fall into this. If it's smart enough to make moral decisions, it's generally not Always Good or Always Evil.

Even things like Vampires don't have to be Evil. In a more comedic campaign I'm preparing, they've been allowed to live in the Big City as long as they promise not to make spawn. There's even a volunteer group of Incarnates with Strongheart Vests calling themselves the "Blood Bank" that help them out.

[NovenFromTheSun]

Sort of:

The "slayers" are, to make a long story short, robots built by demons. Calling them a "race" is a bit of a misnomer.

Wendigos have had their will stripped from them and can only follow the directions of certain other being, but the person they once were is still in there, just unconscious. (These ones don't come from cannibals, which is why I'm thinking of changing the name. On the otherhand I've heard of some wendigo legends that don't have that aspect.)

The people of Noma were once people supernaturally mutated to be weapons. Making war on the people of Lina and Yula is ingrained in their psyche as much as the desire to keep living. However, amongst each other their lives are pretty normal. They have families, make art, and pursue hobbies. They were exiled to Noma because the early secret-keepers decided they weren't worthy of death.

[Gastronomie]

The orcs in my 3.5 campaign are pretty nasty. Warlike, brutish, selfish, and even sadistic. But they're not inherently evil, more like culturally problematic and pushed in a certain direction by sinister forces who want to use them. So I don't suppose they count. But they come close enough that the PCs attack and kill them without a shred of remorse or any holding back. That's a good thing, narrative-wise. Faceless mooks you can mow down to show how badass you are; they are a trope for good reason.
When I want something more ambiguous, I go to hobgoblins. They're smarter, more disciplined, and more mysterious.

This fits my image about "monster races".

I consider the idea stupid that something can be "born evil", unless it's a supernatural entity like a demon or a devil. While the orcs may be savage and the drow nazi-racist, they're simply so because they were educated to be that way, in a closed society where that way of thinking was part of "common sense". If a drow orphan grows up educated by a benevolent human family, sure, he'd become generous and kind. The same would actually apply to other races like goblins or kobolds too (and if taught in school, while they may not grow to be "highly" intelligent, they will still be able to be as smart as the average man).

That being said, most of the monster races which the party comes across are the "evil" ones, so they're not gonna be subject to mercy.

But, once in a while, it's fun to throw in a non-evil monster race guy or two.

I once introduced in my short campaign an orc family that's opened up a portable restaurant on the streets. The family consists of the father, the mother, two grown-up children, and two small children. The wife is stronger than the husband in terms of authority, mainly because of her fierce temper - the husband seems a bit afraid of his wife, and the small children try to cheer him up, while the grown-up children just shake their heads.

The family sells grilled meat, hunted fresh in the morning. Stab them with sticks, and sells them to the travellers and adventurers. They also sell potions and medicine crafted from plants that they harvested in their path.

The family carries the old orc ways of travelling and hunting in the wild, but in their case they do it as a favor for the villages which they come across. They may hunt down a Bulette that's been plaguing the lands... and grill it. They may slay the Owlbear that's been a problem for the farmers... and grill it. They know how to live in the wild, including how to cook these bizzare monsters without getting your stomach hurt, and they're making the most out of their knowledge.

The adventurers bought some grilled Bulette from them (soaked in beer and wrapped up in special herb-leaves before grilling to soften the hard meat and add it flavor), as well as some herb ointment (HP recovery) and antidote.

Mechanic-wise, they weren't much more than a normal "potion seller", but the players absolutely loved this family of orcs. After the campaign ended, told me they were their favorite NPCs - an opinion I shared with them. These sorts of stuff can be really fun if done right.

[Pugwampy]

I never cared much for Gnolls . "Mein Kamph" is directed towards the Gnoll menace .

[veti]

They're called humans.

I honestly find it hard to imagine any "monster" race doing nastier things to humans than we have, at various times in history, done to one another. To me, halflings are small, shy humans; dwarfs are small, aggressive humans; elves are skinny, mystical, long-lived humans; orcs are angry, bloody humans. None of them are inherently "better" than the others, they've all got the potential to be as nasty as you like.

Oh sure, there are demons and whatnot as well, but they're not a "race", more of a manufactured thing.

[Max_Killjoy]

True -- just about any "mortal race" that is inherently evil is going to be a story-device reflection of purely human evil from the real world.

[Max_Killjoy]

NP, glad it's cleared up

Edited previous post slightly to make it clearer that that is what I was disagreeing with.

Many a speculative fiction story has been written with a setting like those detailed, with an "evil peace" in place.

[mikeejimbo]

I have a setting where pretty much everyone is neutral at best, and the more xebophobic and ruthless species are the most economically successful.

Well I guess giants tend toward good, and one tiny human empire is good. But the giants are slaves and the human empire is hemorrhaging money and in danger of being overrun.

Being good sounds like it's weakness in my world, but in truth the premise is that it takes strength to be good in the face of such serious adversity. Anyone good is fighting an uphill, losing battle. Do you give into evil to survive, or die nobly?

[Fayd]

Honestly, depends on the world. One of mine sort of does, insofar as they have been enslaved by the forces of evil so long and through so many other worlds that they have picked up the Evil and Extraplanar subtypes by this point and are functionally indistinct from their masters, HD aside. Another setting I ran did not. Another game only had the distinctly Evil creatures be undead and... the gods, actually. All of them.

[Coidzor]

They're called humans.

I honestly find it hard to imagine any "monster" race doing nastier things to humans than we have, at various times in history, done to one another. To me, halflings are small, shy humans; dwarfs are small, aggressive humans; elves are skinny, mystical, long-lived humans; orcs are angry, bloody humans. None of them are inherently "better" than the others, they've all got the potential to be as nasty as you like.

Being human makes it difficult to think of things that other humans could not or would not, yes.

The fact that we find such things objectionable from time to time even when it doesn't affect us at all should remind you that the glass isn't completely empty, though.