The Criminal Class - Rogues, Night Caste and their ilk

Many RPGs let you play character types that can only be described by our modern sensibilities as "criminal" or "outcast", whether it's talking about characters that are thieves, assassins, necromancers or something else. This can create an attitude problem, especially when the rest of the party sees themselves as "righteous", or the world doesn't see the "criminal hero" as a "hero".

Scoundrel amongst heroes - the Night Caste

In the base game of Exalted the players play Solars, returning heroes of the world in the vein of Gilgamesh and Hercules. The character "classes" are named after the stations of the sun. The Dawns are the generals and warriors. Zeniths are the priests and leaders. Twilight are sorcerers and scholars. Eclipses are the diplomats. All of them you can see as heroes to be glorified, praised and love by all of their people, getting along and being praised by their fellows. And then you have the last Caste - the Night Caste, the assassins and spies - doesn't sound like something you can trust or be friends with.

Sure, the Night Caste are very valuable when you want to get things done and they compliment the rest of the Castes pretty well, but as far as RPG mentality goes, they feel different.

First of all, they appear less trustworthy than other party members because they are sneaky. They can steal from you, sabotage you, backstab you, lie to your face, etc., that's what they are good at. If you are a paranoid player, you will be paranoid about them, and that's never good.

Secondly, by their nature of being assassins and so on, most of the things they excel at they will try doing alone. This gives them a lot of opportunity to do things without oversight and often give them free reign to call some shots or get the first pick of whatever they steal. They can negotiate with your enemies, steal the best treasure, keep secrets to themselves and so on that the other party members wouldn't be privy to. This again breed more paranoia.

Thirdly, they can be hard to balance encounter-wise and fun-wise. An assassin is supposed to kill people, so if they infiltrate the base of the BBEG, they might want to kill that BBEG by themselves. If they are able to, the rest of the party doesn't get to do some cool fight. If they can't, they might feel like they can't have fun their way. So it's a hard balancing act on how strong they should be vs opponents that might be designed to take most of the party to beat.

Fourthly, if they are too good, they can negate the need for a lot of encounters. We had this problem in Heaven for Everyone - we had a character that cranked Stealth to such a ridiculous degree they could infiltrate whatever they wanted, get all the information they need and sneak out without leaving a trace and avoiding all human and even supernatural guards. We joked that they could just sneak their way to figure out who's the person at the tippe top of a conspiracy pyramid, kill that one person and solve the entire campaign by themselves, but that wouldn't be fun. So we opted not to do that so everyone can have fun.

Fifthly, a lot of what they do is "villain-coded". A Night Caste is all about doing things sneakily, and a lot of activities that require being sneaky are often also shady - running a criminal underground, stealing, assassinations, kidnapping people, espionage, blackmail, stalking, etc. all have negative associations to them, even if they are used for "good" in big quotations. All of these fall under what a Night Caste could easily do, but if they do engage in them they are seen as the bad guys, and perhaps rightfully so.

And finally, these kind of characters are not something you typically glorify - a famous spy is an oxymoron. Sure, in-universe it might not be uncommon, but it still would take a perspective shift for the players at the table to glorify someone running a secret stasi-esque police and a criminal underground silencing dissidents and killing people for future-crimes against the state, in comparison to a Twilight that makes pretty music. All of these sound like something a villain would do from our, modern day perspective, and defending it often is a Thermian Argument.

While a Night Caste might not be the most common go-to when discussing the problem of a criminal RPG class, it is perhaps one of the more fully realised because of the high character agency and power level in Exalted. I've had some experience with that - even in a group of five larger than life narcissists a hero that was all about human sacrifice did not trust me because my character was capable of shady dealings...

A killer is a killer

Going down to more D&D-like things, another similar attitude was perhaps well encompassed by a recent video from All Things DnD:

A paladin and an assassin are one and the same...

Beyond the usual fears of a sneaky character wanting to steal from the party, the characters can argue about the morality of their professions, the honour they possess and so on while at the core of things most if not all D&D characters are killers. This is not through the fault of their own, but by the focus of the game - a combat-focused game like D&D informs the combat-focused characters that play it.

Whether you're a warrior, a paladin, an assassin or the like, in D&D, you kill. One might kill for glory, another for a deity, and yet another for money, but they all kill. To hold that one is immoral while others aren't above one character class can feel bad to play. Sure, most of the time the player opted to play that class on their own "so they should accept its downsides", but it can still be demoralising when other characters boast about how heroic they are or how everyone welcomes them with open arms while potentially shunning the rogue because they are clearly criminal. If they get past that and are all treated like "adventurers" then the situation can graduate upwards to being a Night Caste problem...

Dark magic, evil races, taboo things

In a similar vein you can run into similar type of hang-ups from different kinds of characters. Obviously necromancers, warlocks, orcs, tieflings, or any characters that by default fall on the "evil" side of the alignment chart can be similarly discriminated against by the setting or other players at the table. All such hang-ups should be cleared up before the game starts so everyone would know what they are getting into, how will the game world react to their characters, how will the other players react, etc.

One time we played a game of Godbound in a zombie post-apocalypse setting with one of the characters being a demigod of death. We forgot to discuss how the people of the setting and the PCs from the land that got ravaged by zombies would treat someone that will raise more undead as their main powerset, so we had an argument about it during the game before realising that it would be a really shitty thing to do to tell a player that they couldn't use a large part of their power set due to a hang-up like that mid-game. It was an important lesson to learn.

A pirate is a pirate

On a flip side, sometimes you have to acknowledge when the players are criminals.

A few months back I was looking into running a Stars Without Number campaign. Someone suggested I ran The Pirates of Drinax, one of the more well known campaigns from Traveller. In it, the party is given letters of marque by the king of Drinax so they can be privateers helping restore the kingdom to its former glory.

However, all things considered, it just means the party is a bunch of pirates. The kingdom might have some history, but it's been reduced to a single floating palace. The party will be raiding ships passing by, taking over planets, etc. The only difference between what they are doing and piracy is some descendant of a ruler putting their name on it. Until the actual kingdom is rebuilt, those letters of marque mean nothing.

It's good to call things by what they are so that the players won't be surprised when someone hunts them down like pirates down the line or they get the idea that maybe they should be in charge in this new kingdom. As long as everyone's onboard, have fun!

The same applies to all other potentially criminal or evil activities, like usurping a throne of a kingdom in D&D, or aiding the BBEG...

Conclusions

Before you start playing with "a criminal class" PC in a party that features "good" or "righteous" PCs, it's best to talk with one another about how the characters might be perceived in the setting, the GM or by other PCs. As long as everyone's onboard with how things will be handled, that should be fine. Just remember to stick to it - if you agree that an assassin will be treated like any other adventurer, don't complain about them doing their assassin business (provided they don't betray the party's trust more than other PCs, etc.).

Similarly, it's important for game designers to put extra consideration when introducing "a criminal class" into their game and how they should be treated. Ideally you'd write it broad enough that you could use that same class or character option in a more positive manner, or maybe just let anyone "minor" in the sneaky, subversive arts without making any one class specifically "the criminal class" - warriors could turn into ninjas, diplomats could turn into criminal bosses, sorcerers could turn necromancers and so on so anyone would have the potential to see themselves in heroic or villainous light as needed.