I'm considering conditions for a delayer I'm going to be starting soon.

Completing the Poll will help me decide when or if the quest will start.

Thanks.

IMO, Evil means more than 10. However if your fame matches or exceeds this, my feeling is that you're neutral.

The game may not agree with this though.

It's hard to say. Fame/Infamy is screwy in Oblivion.

You gain Infamy for doing certain quests, sometimes regardless of the choices you make (as I recall) and sometimes despite the quest seeming "necessary".

I voted ten because I think that's high enough that you've made a choice to embrace the path of Infamy.

For the other question, I voted "still evil" because Oblivion doesn't really give you a way to make amends. You gain Fame by being greedy just as easily as by being generous.

You gotta work around the screwy system and come up with the best you can manage.

Doing the Thieves Guild quests result in increased infamy.
So does comitting murder or doing the DB quests.

So, are you evil because you are a thief? The game doesn't make a distinction.

It's all the same. Hmm, maybe I should be looking at the murder count.

What other stats would increase if your player was evil?

Usually, I would say not necessarily, but there is not a real Robin Hood way to go about thieving in Oblivion, at least not in the setup I play.

I think fame and infamy are different concepts in Oblivion, unlike good and bad Karma in Fallout. Fame is simply how famous you are, not whether you are a good or bad guy. For example you gain one point of fame per arena battle won - not exactly something that would qualify you as a good character. Infamy is how evil you are. Someone with an infamy of 0 is a good guy and someone with high infamy is a bad guy, no matter how famous he is. I think infamy of 10 is enough to qualify as a bad guy - you will most likely be a murderer or an unscrupulous thief if you have infamy that high.

Have you considered offering multiple ESPs to suit varying conditions? Since it doesn't sound like more than a simple script change. Now, there will always be someone who, asked to "Load one of the following: A, B, or C, not all," chooses to load A, B, and C, but that can hardly be your fault.

I said more than 15 because there's plenty of infamy giving quests that you can justify to yourself:

Most of the thieves guild
Parts of the Dark Brotherhood


Murders and items stolen might make more sense. 15+ murders and 50-100+ items stolen= evil.

More than 15 has to be beyond the "I'm killing this person for the greater good!" mark, and 50+ items stolen goes beyond "I'm doing this because I have to." or "I'm donating this to the poor!" it becomes plain old selfish greed at that point.

To avoid people who don't read the readmes, if you are going that route you may aswell script it so you have to choose A, B or C in game.

Or make it an omod that offers the choice in the OBMM. Either will do.

I can get past 50 stolen items just stealing repair hammers from the IC crates that OOO makes "off-limits".

The Thieves Guild quests may be justifiable, but you can't go past the third Dark Brotherhood quest without being evil. Not unless you refuse to complete it, and I think you can't advance then.

I said more than 15, as when your character is really evil, in my experience 15 infamy is really minimal. My good or Neutral Characters have that much just as a byproduct of playing. Even if you have 50 infamy you can still recieve blessings from the good gods as long as you have more fame,which I feel indicates your character is neutral or good.

Goofy fame/infamy system aside, evil people can do good deeds for their own reasons - saving someone's life, for example. Unfortunately, there are very few things that are actually "good" or "evil" deeds in Oblivion - closing Ob gates is certainly good, and murdering people is certainly bad, but all the other actions fall into a spectrum of gray (and some don't really count at all on a good-evil basis, like the Arena fights).

They really should've made give us fame/infamy and good/bad karma, which would be a much more accurate measure of your character's "alignment". Thus, you could end up with six possible outcomes: Someone who's really famous and really good/evil (2), not very famous and very good/evil (2), and not very famous and not very good/evil (2). Fame/infamy gives you a base reaction score; good/bad karma alters that on a sliding scale (inversely; someone who's not very famous but very evil, for example - like a high-level assassin - wouldn't have that much of an attitude hit, since people don't know he's really evil - his deeds aren't spread around. Among other evil people, though, he has a really high reaction score. Bandits/marauders would be afraid of him, other assassins would respect him, etc.).

I wonder if someone could do that... that would be a really cool mod.

Well, I'll never lay claim that my thief isn't greedy, or in it for more than himself. But does my petty thievery make my character evil? My character is a "thoroughbred" thief, and upholds strict ethical values. (Not morals!) He doesn't use weapons excepting in dire situations (such as the preservation of ones life, or in more extreme cases anothers) and tries not do more than "skim" off the top of the loot list of each house. And only things that can be replaced - silverware, decorations, gold and the like. Does that make him evil? I thought evil was practicing necromancy, or killing for lack of a reason. And fame and infamy are completely subjective, depending on whose side you're on. If you're stealing or killing in the name of a god, does that make you evil? Or if you're protecting a life and righting wrongs for a sinful organization like the Brotherhood, does that make you good?



Never liked the fame/infamy Oblivion had. Too many loopholes.

I checked my old Thief character. She has 65 Fame and 41 Infamy. She has never murdered anyone and she has helped a lot of people. On the other hand she has also helped herself to a lot of items. She doesn't worship The Nine Divines or Sithis, but acknowledges the existense of the Daedra, as she has done quests for some of them.
Does that make her Evil?
Personally I don't believe in Infamy=Evil.

One mod that addresses some of the issues discussed here is http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9509
I can recommend that mod for those who wants a better role playing/immersion experience.

Thank you all for your input.

So the game looks at the things that would normally be associated with criminals.
Murders; jail time; being a member of the DB, MD, or TG; stolen a number of items; trespasses; or bounties.
(Did I miss something?)

So where would a good point be to draw the line between Criminal and Evil?
Or, can a criminal be Good?

Nice topic

There is no moral compass in Oblivion.

The infamy/fame system is severely gimped. It's almost worth completely ignoring. Rather than good and evil, think of it more like Chaotic versus Heroic. You can still be both.

How about this: If you have more than 15 Infamy, but less than 5 murders, you're not evil, just pushing the line.

If you have more than 15 Infamy, and 5 or more murders, then you're evil enough for the quest.

The Gray Fox is one one the most infamous characters in Cyrodiil. Is he Evil?

I concur with Showler. Oblivion gave us a half-working good/evil system, that doesn't really differentiate, so add in another logical requirement to balance it out. If you're a serial murderer, you're probably as evil as you can be with Oblivion's standards. And plus, I have to admit that my blade finds a sheath when I need the money bad enough. It allows flexibility.

No he is just infamous, very, infamous. Because he has been around for so long, that the legion starts to fear his zombie skillz. :ninja:

I think the problem is a philosophical one. What is evil? Is it evil if you kill one person who 'deserves' it (in your opinion)? Is it evil if you steal things? You don't hurt anyone physically by doing that after all and you may do it only to take from the rich and help the poor. Is there a certain amount of murders after which it can't be justified anymore? At which point you become greedy when stealing things? 50 items? Items worth 5000 gold?

It is also a role playing game and the imagination of the player plays a role. For example you may steal things and put them in a chest in one of the waterfront shacks to help the poor. The game doesn't acknowledge that.

So it is really impossible to say whether a character is evil or not by simply looking at a statistic since every player has his own way of playing the game and his own rules what is considered evil and what is not.

Personally I would go for a real life point of view though, and in that case an infamy of 10 or higher means you are evil (unless I missed a way to gain infamy points). There are only few options to gain infamy that high:

1. Murder or a huge amount of less severe crimes. Whether you kill someone who 'deserves' it in your opinion doesn't matter in real life I'd say. It is evil to kill someone. And a crime is a crime, whether your intentions are good or not. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor is not good either imo, who says that the rich are bad people and don't deserve their money? They have earned it.

2. Doing lots of bad things during quests, most of which even involve killing people.

3. Completing Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood quests. First one involves stealing a huge amount of things, most of them just for the fun of it or for the challenge. Second one involves murdering people.

That's why I think you can't gain an infamy of 10 without being what I would consider an evil person in real life.

What you need to do is take a step back and figure out what defines "evil". Look at modern society - how often do people get the label "evil" or "monster"? Not very, and it's almost always serial killers, mass murderers, and the like - art thieves aren't slapped with that label, and neither are soldiers (who kill people at the behest of their government), in most cases. Like I said, the rest is shades of gray - petty theft is hardly a blip on the radar, while stealing a horse or a high-end item might get you a couple "evil" points; assaulting someone rates a little higher on the scale, and full-blown murder (which the game defines as killing an innocent, not defending yourself against bandits) is true evil.

So, in effect, here's a list of the rough order of "evilness":

Doing daedra quests (the daedra run the gamut of evil; IMO, Meridia isn't evil, and Sheogorath and Sanguine are just plain chaotic, so the degree of evil would vary by quest).

Joining the TG and advancing through the ranks (though it's more "enemy of society")

Being a necromancer, depending on what you do (Traven's ban notwithstanding - consorting with the undead is generally an evil act);

Being a member of the MD, DB, etc.


And then we have the other random acts, which accumulate evil points on their own: assault, murder, theft, etc. I'm probably missing a few (I'm sure there are some quests that could be considered "bad"), but you get the idea.