In my main BG game I took the easy route and made my main character a Palidin - therefore I knew all my actions had to be good, lawful, honest, decent etc - and along the way ended up with a party of various shades of good NPC's.
I've re-started with a neutral evil character and already by the Friendly Arm my party is disliked!

Anyone played BG with an evil party - how did you get on, and where are the major problems?

(By the way I just recently started playing Icewind Dale with a totally evil party and they're doing fine!)

damn, i accidentally pressed back instead of post (i have a 5 utton mouse) so i'll post the abreviated of what i was gonna say

anyway, the whole point of playing evil is people not liking you. i personally can never play an evil party because i caN'T do the evil quests. just try killing some innocents or something, or try some evil quests, like killing dynaheir. if you don't like it play good or neutral. IWD has a totally different quest style, but you might have some sorts of prolems near the popuylated areas of the game, like the hand, etc. remember to really play evil, you have to play evil, speak the evil talk, walk the evil walk, otherwise you're not evill...

OR

you can be evil and smart enough to pretend you aren´t...

Anyway, if you´re gonna play EVIL, you should recruit an evil party. The evil NPC´s are:

Edwin-conjurer. Nashkell
Viconia-cleric. Peldvale (I think)
Shar-Teel-fighter. The desert with the basiliks
Kagain-fighter. Beregost
¿?-cleric-illusionist. Bridge to Baldur´s Gate

Ican´t remember more, but anyway you can always have Imoen, she won´t leave and if she does talk again toher and she comes back.

Yeah - I knew I'd be disliked!
I really just wanted to play the game and take the 'alternative route' to some of the quests - killing the merchants for Silke, taking the farmer's side in their dispute with Tenya, stuff like that.

I'm just wondering how things will go if I persue the evil path. Will I manage to keep my supplies up when the stores refuse to serve me, will those pesky Flaming Fist guys be a big problem?

I have Vicona in my party. I doubt the goodies - Ajantis, Khalid and Jaheira - will put up with me for long!

quale is the guy ont he bridge, but he ain't evil.... i think you're thinking of tiax, the crazy arse short guy cleric/thief in the FF section of BG

One of the things wrong with being evil is that in BG if you have a very bad reputation, items cost more, most quests cant be done and the Flaming Fist might just randomly teleport in and try to kill you=)

(ooc)
Agree with the couple of posts already on this topic. My gaming style has always tended towards the completely chaotic evil nutter, mostly to see what kind of reactions it brings on in the game. You definitely get penalized in some ways, attacked a lot more, pay more than items are worth etc.

It makes a bit more of the game though, and can also be more challenging when you're attacked by those flaming fist zealots after a particularly nasty fight without time to recover.

It's fun to play in single player mode this way, but can also get old pretty quickly. In BG I think overall its more fun to play a slightly evil ('diet coke of evil', heh) character otherwise you get stuck in a vicious circle of fight fight fight. At one point my rep was 1 or 0 and well.. you know the rest. Turned bar-room brawls into whole town riots.

I'd like to see a game cater to the evil more - extorting tax money out of villages from a stronghold, terrorizing the locals by night by shapeshifting etc. I'd also like to see more thought put into plots for evil characters. I'm generalising of course, but most of the twists in BG I and II involve going to such and such a place and killing some good guys.

I'm rambling.

it was meant to be played by good charecters... i mean, look at the plotline...

I suppose it might be possible to take a fairly evil route through the game but keep one's reputation up to a tolerable level by making generous donations at the various temples along the way - presenting a charitable public face to mask one's dark dealings. Pretty much like some people do in real life...