I do believe that there are a small number of actions that are vile enough to label a person as evil forever afterwards if in fact they actually happened. I can't see how some one can put a positive spin on things like rape or slaughtering of the innocent. You know the extreme actions of evil. To list such actions as merely selfish is to justify things that should not be. That is what is meant by "Black and White exist but are rare" morally speaking. I agree with the rest of the video; but I believe in a mostly gray outlook on the world not that there is only. Now on to part 2.
the thing is in my experience its almost never the evil player that is the problem its the other players who decided they have to make it a problem specially paladins and clerics who insist they will kill the player because he is evil or something similar even if in theory a lg paladin should be bound by the law as we see in canon they just do go on rampages in the middle of cities whenever they see a person that pings evil
Important thing to remember when playing an evil character: Most evil people still treat those around them fairly well. They still have people that they love and wouldn't betray. Even if they don't really care about someone, they'll work with them if the relationship is mutually beneficial. If your character can't find a reason to work with the party from that, you haven't made a character. You've made at best a caricature.
Reminds my of my evil pc who would take great care of his allies but would treat all others with disdain, and even outright disgust. Especially hypocritical self proclaimed heros. He was such a joy for me and the party to be around
Same- I run a Dragonborn zealot of Tiamat, and not only is he rather friendly, he is quite protective of his people, and has taken our two recent deaths (RIP Carric and Norm) really hard, though he very easily flys into a rage and is willing to lie, destroy, kill, or torture anyone to achieve his ends (he's looking for a relic that is important to the Dragon Cult and in exchange for help finding it, he's helping them deal with some B.S.)
I mean for example just saying because I saw it recently, lord Voldemort is evil, defently, BUT he have some sort of honor code he reward his loyal followers and punish who is incompentent, not always killing but also thru humiliation.
Or if all else fails keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Outward appearances are sometimes everything and if you play lawful evil, why would you turn on those that are assisting on creating a power base?
I have a warlock who is evil, but Only when it comes to her end goal she must save the world so it will still be here for her Patreon to eventually consume it. It doesn't impact standard party interactions, infact she is probably the most moral of the bunch, but it is hard to be a murder hobo with only 2 spell slots.
My warlock started as lawful evil because her cult has a strict code that she follows and her method of evil was generally being selfish. Her patrons goals were always pretty negative in the party's opinion. However, as a sheltered, 4 year old Aarakocra she had a cute innocence about her that was endearing. But the events of the story led her down a path of cruelty and paranoia. Where she is in her arc now is definitely a low point. She's ritually sacrificed an arm and an eye to create a legendary staff and after saving a city from a monster incursion the Guard Captain tried to arrest her for openly using necromancy and other dark spells. And in response she blew his brains out with Eldritch Blast in front of all of his men and several towns folks then intimidated them all into just fucking dropping it.
@@PlayYourRole "WHAHAHAHAH!!! I, the mad scientist of madness, Osa Tarinaa, admit it! You are moderately mad!" “So you'll join my organisation and help us rule the world? Working together, we could bring world peace and order.” "I Refuse!" “Wha-” "Because I am Osa Tarinaa! A mad scientist must always be a solitary creature. He must never belong to anyone or any thing, at any time. That is his destiny..." 'Isn't he embarrassed to say those things?' «Don't worry, he used to be even more of a weaboo» 'Oh, I see...'
I actually had exactly this happen in my party. The "villain" obtained an artifact that began to drive him mad, and eventually his paranoia caught up with them. He arranged for an ambush against the party, and he turned on them as it started. We had introduced the players new character as an NPC, so DM and player traded control, and it was on. The villain escaped, and now, after nearly a year of rivalry, the players are about to have their final showdown with him.
There are a few ways: 1) Be the healer 2) Common Goal: you may be an evil wizard, but Kuraptis/Strahd/et cetera is an ass hole who shoved you into a locker. Saving the world is just a bonus. 3) Character Arc: think Zuko from ATLA. 4) your character enjoys making others suffer, but knows to exercise restraint. All are equal in the eyes of the reaper
Other common goals: 1) I want to become a tyrannical ruler some day, but I can't do that if the villain destroys the universe I wish to rule! 2) "I know how tribes work. If I kill for your, you'll kill for me." -Crusk
Prepare for trouble, and make it double! To unite all peoples within our nation, to protect the world from devastation! To denounce the evils of truth and love, to extend our reach to the stars above! Jesse! James! Meowth, that’s right! Wobbufett!
Playing an evil character as manipulative, using the party to accomplish their own goals, is really fun. Especially when you give them a redemption arc
Even better doing as a DM My plan for one of my campaigns (All of which take place in the same world) Is that they join one of 2 guilds, And they get sent on quests. The "final" boss is the light wing. Its a BIG moth that forms the sun. They defeat the holy entity so that the world is "saved" and that the guild is fit to rule the world. But the guild was a cult and the party just helped them create the end of it. With a giant portal that has evil monsters coming out. And spike towers ripping the planet apart. Also evil jellyfish kidnapping people. It was the end of the world. They also meet the true villain. Who is now a god.
Or or if you get to level 20 being a necromancer that uses wish to create a army of undead with immunity to holy magic then say I'm the final boss bitches and blink away 🧐. You're right being evil like this is not a bad thing because if the DM runs out if ideas by then well then here would be some inspiration
I once played an evil spellsinger wizard named Artor that I treated as though he was going through a redemption arc, working alongside the party for a common goal, until the very last session. In this campaign, the BBEG was a hexblade warlock with a cursed sword that gave him immense, immeasurable power, and we were only able to kill him because the barbarian managed to cut off the hand that held the sword, rendering him vulnerable. We killed him, and as the paladin was telling the party that he was proud of everyone, and giving a speech about how people can change and become better, my character took the sword and ran him through from behind, claiming the weapon's power for himself. Boom, surprise boss battle, ending in a brutal TPK that led into the next campaign with a whole new party. It was awesome to really let out my inner megalomaniac, chastising the party for trusting so easily, for being so easily fooled, and for ignoring the fact that bonds of friendship and camaraderie are nothing in the face of true, overwhelming power. The coolest part was how in the next campaign, the previous party was brought back as horrifying, undead abominations that Artor had raised through a combination of dark magic and alchemical experiments to enforce his will, and they acted as a series of mini bosses that the party had to overcome in order to reach him in the end.
I made an evil character for a one-shot once, and she quickly became my go-to evil character, I just enjoyed playing her so much. The DM worked with me a lot, giving me a bit of extra information, making some of the texts in the crypt we were breaking into in languages only my character knew, and having the setup be that my character was the one that hired the party and brought them together in the first place. She constantly lied and spread misinformation about where they were and what they were doing (the party was actually raiding a crypt of an ancient, legendary hero. She tricked them into thinking it was a cultist/necromancer's den.) She had no intentions of killing them or betraying them- ideally, they would all raid the crypt, she would find what she was looking for there, and everyone would leave with the party none the wiser. Another trick I used was reflecting her dependence in the party in her stats- I purposefully gave her really bad CON. She was a powerful sorcerer, but physically frail, and she was smart enough to know that she needed people backing her up to accomplish anything noteworthy. Betraying her party would've been far too risky and would only cause her to lose her protectors, so she resorted to manipulation instead. So I guess lessons I would pass on: Always check with your DM to see if they'll work with you, they can give you more angles to work from. Give your evil character an obvious weakness that can be supported by the party. Do not actively betray the party (unless you want to play a new character, anyways).
A fighter with a cursed axe that reminded him of battle when he was pretty wounded and would basically attack anything as all he sees are enemies (berserker axe flavored to fit in my character)
I would say the most objective definition of evil is this: The exploitation of the misfortune of others to further their own goals. Saying that evil isn't "real" and "purely subjective" so therefore we can't define it is missing the point. Not every 'evil' character is just misunderstood and simply seeing things from another perspective. A tyrant that exploits his subjects and rules through fear so that he can live in luxury is evil.
See, I agree. The act of exploiting misfortune for your goals is evil. But, I think the point I attempted to make (and admittedly kinda stumbled around on, my bad) was that, does that make the PERSON evil. I mean, if you were raised in an environment where that was the only option to survive... Are they evil? But, then if they are presented with a better way to do things, but they latch onto their old habits, does THAT then ensure they are evil? Where is the line drawn? And I uh... I don't have an answer to that one anymore than the centuries of philosophers that have tried to tackle this do haha
@@PlayYourRole Yer take is good. In game, you can make everything morally ambiguous and grey. But commentors who say there is no evil, and how they then describe their "evil" characters is just EDGY!!! If I play an evil character, The other players will bow to my will, and will eventual sacrifice their souls to further my agenda of PAIN!. But that's just me.
@@WhyYouMadBoi does it? Or does it make them jaded? Convinced of their own inadequacy, such that they give up on doing better with themselves. You aren’t the first person to claim that evil exists, man, and you won’t be the last. The idea that being selfish, hurting other people for personal gain, and not wanting to change those habits, is inherently evil, is flawed because, simply put: those are all characteristics of a confident, driven individual with many enemies, which could just as easily be a hero, even if only of their own story. Point is, evil is subject to individual ideals, and neither _you,_ nor your _culture,_ nor your entire _species,_ can define it succinctly without contradiction from something else. You’re allowed to have your idea of what it is, but you cannot claim it to be the objective truth without rousing objections from other people.
This is actually something I've been playing at in a campaign for the last 2 years! I've been working with the DM in secret, but my "evil" character is more of a spy/saboteur. When with the party, I've played him as helpful, actively working with the party and aligned with party goals, so far as they're aware in and out of game. Basically there are these NPCs that serve to keep a barrier up, protecting our world from the minions of the nine hells, my character's job is to assassinate each of these NPCs, and I'm currently 4 for 4 (out of 8) without the party being aware. They've almost caught me in the act a couple times, but usually it's been accomplished via manipulating riots or letting enemies through the gates while the party is elsewhere. If and when I get found out, my character (assuming they live) becomes an NPC themselves and I'll be rolling up a new one. The other fun aspect to this, is that the character has actually grown fond of the party, and is now trying to still accomplish his goal of letting the nine hells ravage the world, but on the condition his friends are allowed to live out the rest of their lives in peace. A fool's dream and one the party would never forgive him for should that come to pass. Holding on to an artifact he SHOULD have destroyed, to use as a bargaining chip, is actually how he was almost discovered. The whole thing almost failed 'cause he let a desire to protect the party get in the way.
As someone who uses alignment in a more deliberate fashion, I have a few rules for it's definitions and Evil/Good Specifically. 1: Alignment is not effectiveness, it is intent. Having an alignment doesn't determine your competence. Evil characters are not required to be masterful at villainy, the same way good characters who fail don't suddenly become "not Good" anymore because they weren't able to produce their intentions. 2: Corner Alignments are innately unstable. Chaotic Evil, and Lawful Good is not the peak of evil and good. because their chaotic/lawful intentions restrict their ability to do good/evil. the embodiments of Neutral Evil in D&D, Yugoloth enable an endless blood war vs Devils and Demons to determine what is the most effective evil. While again you don't need to be competent to be any alignment, a Neutral Good, Law, Evil, or Chaos are able to embody their one defining Alignment without restrictions (What I call "True Alignments". Imagine little triangular points on all the Neutral alignments"). 3: Evil Player Characters. The main pitfall with Evil PC's is figuring out how they deal with party conflict as soon as they could destroy the party. You don't need to burn bridges or betray the party for the BBEG to be Evil, simply intend and invest in things harmful to others as you see fit. Chances are your character will be outnumbered and critiqued by Good aligned party members. Use that, poke at their own flaws and inclinations, pick their scabs, and convince them their flaws are as indomitable as your inclinations. If done right, you'll make them want to rise to the challenge even more, if only to spite you. I hope this helps, because I frankly find the wishy washy "Morals are subjective" talk to be counterproductive socially and enables a lot of bad faith actors to do some real damage to our world and our games. Thank you for reading my comment. :)
I just found your channel and downloaded a ton of your backlog and have been zooming through them. Entertaining as hell. I love when I find a smaller youtuber with good content. We will watch your career with great interest.
For me, I usually like to play good aligned characters. But when I play evil, I love Lawful evil. I like the idea of a person that is willing to honor a deal, but do it THEIR way. I played as an anti-heroic bugbear hitman that was assigned to the party on work release. It was a great time, most of the time. But sadly, there wasn't a 'chance' to betray the party, but he was more than willing to break some rules and openly refused to engage in certain missions because there was no direct benefit to him.
Howdy! Thank you for this one. This is a topic I've thought about often. If I could throw my hat into suggestions for future vids, I'd be curious to see what you think about playing Monstrous characters. Orcs, Yuan-Ti Purebloods, Goblins, Hobgoblins, etc. I know typically the issue people run into with these characters is that they will immediately be targeted by local authorities due to their race's reputation and/or they often have character rules that make them tough to RP, like Orcs' religious beliefs and prejudice, Yuan-Ti and Lizardfolk's lack of emotions, etc. I know the common answer is to make them "raised by humans" or something so they aren't evil, but that always struck me as a cop-out.
I'll admit that I use a cop out when I play as those characters more often than not. By having them be exiled from their tribe or Homeland. And if they wish to continue to thrive then they have to deal with humans and other races. In more social and peaceful terms than they are used to. It's still a bit of a cop out but I've found that it works better for storytelling purposes.
@@sethwagner5099 I like that a lot better. It doesn’t ignore their monstrous origins but lets them grow and adapt to their new surroundings and explain their ability to councide with other races.
I've always looked at it as good and evil not being related to the character's actions, but the motivations behind the actions. A good and an evil character might do the exact same thing, but will do it for very different reasons. Evil characters are selfishly motivated, as you say in your video. Good characters are motivated by how their actions effect others, selflessly motivated. That is, they are motivated by how the action effects them, regardless of how it may harm or benefit others. Would an evil character save orphans from a burning building? I'd say yes, but only because they feel they benefit from doing so.
That makes me think of a conversation from House MD. House says, "People only do things because it makes them happy or they have no choice." Kutner says, "I do this to help people." House says, "And helping people makes you happy."
@@ArcCaravan we could reframe it this way, if you like, good is when your motives include empathetic drives (care how it effects others) and evil are more apathetic (don't care how it effects others). Both still may produce the same actions, but again for very different motives.
@@MatthewSmith-pv6gd That makes me think of people who claim they're helping the world by sacrificing people, particularly those who don't fit their views. Basically a conflict of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" and "the ends justify (or don't justify) the means", plus "the path to hell is paved with good intentions". Basically an evil who doesn't even know it.
Good aligned characters save a village from death/enslavement because life/freedom is sacred and all should enjoy it, it is the right thing to do Evil aligned characters save a village from death/enslavement because it is useful to have as many people indebted to you as possible to accomplish your future goals, whatever that may be
Very true. I played a ruthlessly evil character in my last campaign. The campaign did not end because of it, in fact, it instead lowered the moral bar for the rest of the party. The group were morally decent until I joined, which was a little later in to the campaign, and they became a far more ruthless and efficient party without my instruction. It made for an... interesting ending to that campaign.
I wanted to share my favorite line (from the deathnote musical here). As a reaction to "the world is not black or white nor wrong or right". Perhaps it's time We drain the color from it then Till we're back to seeing black and white And wrong and right again This is what a character of mine uses quite a lot. He is blind of his surroundings, and does everything in the name of what is good. (Making him cause more harm than fixing it)
Runesmith had a pretty good take on evil in his video on writing antagonists. He basically described it as something that can be applied to an action that puts others in a state of tribulation.
I've been playing an evil night hag and shes my favourite character I've ever played! Shes violent, selfish, and deeply emotionally repressed. I love looking at the "inherent evil" of night hags and instead thinking of what trauma made her who she was. She was taught love is foolish, weak, fake and used for manipulation, that power and control is all that matters. But as she experiences life with the party she finds clear evidence that she feels those feelings she shoves down. And that puts her whole world view in question, like, "If I care about a party member who died, that means love exists, and that means the world isn't full of enemies waiting to backstab you, and you can find fulfilment in love that you never found in power, that means its worth it to love, and worth it to be good." Of course she skews selfish and twisted naturally, and after decades of believing something it takes a lot to unlearn it. But her slow and begrudging character development has been delightful for me!!
Hey! Thanks for the video. Appreciate you. After I made a comment on that video, I've found a discord D&D group and we played almost everyday (I was quick and snatched the spot almost evey time, I actually played D&D with 8 other players and a DM when I got the notif, it was a wild game), and even though DM ban an evil alignment, I've found a lot of fun in Xavier, a Half-Elf Goolock. See, when I said that I can't talk on discord is quite misleading. Sure, I can't do it on laptop, but I just enter calls from my phone and dual-wealding phone + laptop. Anyways, have a great day, and great video as always
I play an evil character. He's selfish, he's egotistical and he thinks the whole world should bend down to their knees and give him whatever he wants. The way we make it work is that he knows that being with the party makes him stronger, and helping them out makes them help him out later. He also enjoys their company. He also has a strong moral code, with some of his morals being socially reprehensible, but one of the things he has is "Don't mess with my friends". That's what I feel makes an evil character work. He's evil, yes, but you cannot direct the animosity towards the party, otherwise you're just unfun to play with. You don't have to be a goody two shows with them, and you may ask for favors if they ask you to do something you don't want, but you don't need to want to kill or steal from them constantly. Your character is evil for a reason. Give him a reason, and give him goals, don't just be evil for the sake of evil, and you're pretty much set to go
@@PlayYourRole Best part is that he's an evil Kobold Necromancer that suffered from some sort of brain altering magic/curse/disease, still don't know it. So he's Vegeta, but extremelly small and confused.
Finding this 2 years later while I have an evil character who's currently in the party throughout the Campaign makes me have extra ideas which I didn't have, thank you stranger for uploading this 2 years in advance :D
I've had a few experiences playing lawful evil characters, and I've always found it the most fun alignment to play around with! One of my current characters is a noble who's kinda the black sheep of her family, and her goal is to bring glory to their name so she can finally feel welcomed. She works with the party because it's beneficial to her, and even grows to care about them as friends, but she's still in it for her own (and by extension, her family's) glory. I'm excited to see how her arc plays out!
I honestly only checked this video out because off Silco on the thumbnail, but i have to say i really appreciate the advice. Me and my pals are starting a new campagin soon and i´m planning to go with a changeling bard, who was adopted and turned by a aristocratic vampire. The negative arc idea is GENIUS! thanks a lot
Yeah I was wondering how to play a vampire that only see’s the party as only pawns and see’s every other living creature as cattle. Without being kicked from the table.
Imagine being a former tyrant or member of an evil faction. You had a disagreement with the higher-ups and are now fighting along with the party for the sake of destroying the competition. That leaves plenty of room for your character to grow.
@@newtondood That's a good idea! I guess the trick is to have a scenario in which your character feels they need the party's cooperation so they must "play nice." After that, they'll need to have a genuine change of heart. That's probably the trickiest bit. Something very important would have to happen to change your character's view of the world from that of a selfish cynic to an altruist. Preferably, something specifically conflicting with part of their background that led them down that dark path in the first place.
My favorite character I ever played ended up being the main villain of our campaign. From the start he was the real BBEG and the guy the party thought was the villain was his puppet. But in order to lure the party into his trap, he had to work with them. He played the goof; a harmless drunk who was primarily the comic relief of the party as well as the healer. He went with them all the way through the final boss fight (very carefully conserving his resources) and after the “villain” was defeated he turned on the exhausted party, and the real final fight was pvp. The reveal shocked everyone, but they were super into it. It was such a satisfying arc I didn’t mind ultimately losing because it was just so much FUN.
Sorry for the bad english, not my first language. Great video, I think u get to the key point of character creation. Often the players want to play a 'finished' character instead of create together in game. The guy who lose the whole family, or the one who have a crazy concept like a armless fighter who use a magical arm, etc. And they create the character ready from the begining, first session and everything already happened... As a DM I try to encorage the players to aloud me to make that stuff happen in game. It needs a higher level of dm-player partnership, but it's awesome. I'd never thought about the evil character in these terms, the next time that the one player in my group that always want to be the lone wolf/lawful evil came up with a new character I'll offer the possibility of telling the story of how he became evil. That's personally one of my favorite arcs.
I really love the idea of an antivillan, the person who does good things for evil reasons. For example my warlock often gave food to the poor and volunteered at orphanages, not because he cared about them, but because he knew they where vulnerable people ripe for manipulation. He would basically groom kids into becoming his minions, little jobs here and there, give them money and the praise they desperately needed and they would do anything for him. His motives for this where simple, he wanted to rule the world. He believed since he was the only one actively trying to make a difference in the world that he deserved to rule it. He saw himself as the paragon of virtue because he was doing these things and he thought he deserved to be powerful. He worked with the party until they found him out and he faked his death, that campaign is over but I like to think he's still in the background, planing revolution and manipulating vulnerable people for his own goals.
I'm currently playing a warlock who's lawful evil. The thing is he believes he's a cleric so at a glance everyone thinks he's chaotic good based on his personality. A good example of how he's evil is once we were captured and in order to leave we had to be punished. given the option of "cut off your hand or kill a child" My character starts talking makes his way to the NPC the entire campaign is based on saving puts a knife to her throat and flat out threatens to kill her yes the BBEG will kill the party but he'll also kill the fools who let his love be killed under their watch. He wasn't bluffing iether he was full on ready for everyone to die just to kill a few hags
In curse of strahd my warlock has been worked on by one of the dark powers and now intends to take the throne. He has lied to the party by telling them there is no other way to escape than having a new person on the throne, so we all have the same common goal. As you recommended, the DM and I planned the negative arc about 1/3 way into the campaign... But he is a clever DM and is likely to pull the rug out and cause drama and tension... And I love it. It's the reason I offer loads of back story for a good DM to work with.
2 really interesting ways to play an evil character that don't necessarily require being selfish: 1. A character that just enjoys being mean, cruel, doing harm hurting others etc... this can be in a cartoonish "gotta get your fix" sadist, but it can also be someone like Agamenon. He was a general who was forced by the Greek gods to sacrifice his daughter, but also punished by them for doing so, with the implication being that deep down he wanted to kill her and was excited to do it. A person who doesn't go out their way to do evil, but when given the opportunity revels in it. 2. A relatively normal person who, when appropriate, does evil things; not out of pragmatism or necessity, but because they are willing in a way that most good people arent. It's a lot more abstract and harder to pin down, but so much more hatable.
In the past with a character I created for 3.5e she was a Chaotic Evil Sorceress/Necromancer. She killed almost an entire village of simple farmers and the like, though she spared the children and domestic animals. She wiped out the memories of the parents/adults in the children's minds and raised them as her own. She also reanimated the farmers to keep up the farming and built herself a massive mansion/estate as well as replanted a Forest around the estate/farm fields. She eventually left/joined an adventure party to find a way to achieve personal immortality for herself and favored children. She also would frequently kill any person she deemed as simpletons/morons/unworthy of living then reanimated them as additional "slaves" to maintain her estate. So she didn't turn on the party either and achieved her goal.
As a teen, the games I played often featured evil characters and PVP and really short campaigns. The only long campaign was the one where the player of the evil character moved away around Level 3. He was already on a collision course with the LG ranger; i'm sure it would have been a short campaign, otherwise. However, I think a mature person can play an evil character without sinking the ship. It could be a descent arc like you describe or a redemption arc or neither. The DM may need to work a little to make sure that players evil goals also somehow align with the more well-intentioned goals of the others. When you get down to it, killing other creatures to get powerful is actually pretty evil. Take that, Paladin!
I played as a Death Domain Cleric during the Saltmarsh Campaign. I never attempted to kill the party once, and I was even the occasional party healer when the time called for it. However, I did take control of an overrun island monastery to rebuild and started tolling the local villages through the use of a protection racket to acquire the necessary monetary income required. I also rubbed shoulders with a Vampire, a crazed Artificer, and revived an Aboleth my party previously killed.
I've been a DM for over 20 years and decided to try 5e (3/3.5 has been my thing) one of my kids ran a two session 5e game. We played evil characters. It was a great experience, it was fun and best of all, I have awesome evil NPCs when I start my 5e game with my regular players. Win, win win!
Or you can just play someone with easily compromised or generally out of whack morals. I think that works well for lawful evil characters. And lawful neutral characters can be a mix of "good" and "bad" morals. In my opinion, these characters should, if they are lawful evil, be redeemed by the end of the campaign or if lawful neutral, have a plethora of noble qualities that contrast their bad ones. I think that negative character arcs are fun, and you made a great point about them. The thing you have to be careful of is how exactly you're going to make them leave the party. If you want to play a character with not-so-great morals, playing a lawful neutral character with a code that is at times noble and at other times questionable is a great way to do that.
I actually am currently playing an "evil" character and I fully agree with the "starting at the beginning of your arc" point u make as it is possibly the only reason why it works in my current campaign. My character basically started the campaign as a 20 year old human who just got his first real job. During the campaign he found himself to be weaker then the rest (this was on purpose) and decided to try to get an edge to help everyone out better, eventually turning into a devil who is now slowly working to gain a network throughout the world and end up as a silco/lucifer hybrid at the end. (At least those are his goals, wether he makes it does not matter) The party consists of only good aligned characters and the only reason mine fits in with the campaign is because he started out fully aligned with the group and then earned himself a spot in the group in the process of becoming evil, slowly changing over time. It works very well because everyone experienced the shift in alignment, so his first "evil" deeds became cool (and sad) story moments for everyone. It also adds an element of conflict as he needs to sneak away from time to time or be very stealthy and deceptive against the party which always brings interesting roleplay moments.
I play a polite, well mannered necromancy wizard. He helped the party anyway he could, but he would also sneak away and rob graves, to further his study in necromancy. And he would use any means possible to further his ultimate goal: resurrecting his wife and daughter. He started late learning magic, so he is older, he doesn't think he will live long enough to see it to fruition. So is trying to become a lich so he can keep learning until he can truly resurrect his family.
Another suggestion is lawful evil. Make the evil part just spice. I had a barbarian who just,, loved murder. That’s what he wanted to do. But he also was loyal to the party, and if it hurt the group, or they told him to back down, he wouldn’t do it. Look at the hangman in fantasy high. I’m pretty sure it’s evil, but Fabian is able to keep it under control, reducing the evil to spice, rather than the main point of your alignment.
I had an idea for a fiend warlock where the pact states that the demon in question can, at the DM's discretion, possess the body of the character and take over for a while, taking them from chaotic neutral to chaotic evil, though the pact will also state that the demon cannot harm people the pact holder sees as allies or impede their goals. Basically the demon would be there to sow chaos and watch the world burn just for the fun of it. I think that with the DM deciding when the switch happens could make for some super fun role play, plus trying to do good through evil means sounds like fun.
I will play an Oathbreaker Paladin that used to be a part of the elven army but got corrupted by a cursed crown and became evil and cruel. But I also dont want to ruin anyone's fun at the table, so thank you, this video was really helpful. :)
There's definitely a way to play a villainous character that works with a mostly good party but the major thing to remember is that it won't last forever. Long ago I had a human bard that was NE (with a bit of a LE streak) and the fundamental building block to his ideology was simple "I need to look good so I reap the benefits of a high rpeutation. Every time someone pointed out I did something immoral, there's always a "but!" to be inserted" so for example. He enslaved people. BUT it was dragon cultists that would've been executed on the spot by any law officers. Instead they can work their contract for a few years and become free (Should've read the fine print. It has a yearly renegotiation clause based on poor performance. Nothing you will do will ever be good enough for you to not owe him even more time of your life.) He invaded the dreams of the party and subtly manipulated them BUT when someone did eventually try to attack their dreams the bard immediately shut that shit down and plagued their intruder with daily nightmares and tracked them down just to kill them. He counterfeited coin BUT he used the profits to give a load of money to the downtrodden and needy to create vast information networks he could use in towns to root out cultists. He murdered innocent people BUT he also saved the world, so by a sheer numbers perspective, what's a few people murdered compared to saving the entire world? He actually reached a point where he was the most famous and upstanding member of the party in the eyes of the people and this turned him into a propaganda piece for the war against Tiamat's cultists. The party were confused why it wasn't them, and my character informed them "Heroes aren't good people. They're people that get results and look good doing it. I like you all, but you're just not the face of crushing Tiamat's cult." So to put this into perspective, he owned a bakery in every town that made a small profit, he owned plenty of blacksmiths, he owned a few libraries and he owned inns in every town. He was deputized in multiple cities as a lawbringer and actually owned enough land to be considered a noble. (He forged a claim on many of his lands by divine right and stole them under the noses of lesser nobles before selling the properties to himself, basically pretending to be nobles with magic and disguises before selling said deeds off to himself for legit legal ownership.) The party was absolutely afraid of him after a certain point because one of the party members threatened to kill him for being so villainous. He informed them that if he was to e charged with a crime, that he should be taken to trial, else it would be murdering a lawbringer, which is a capital offense. Whenever they tried to jail him, he was always out in a few days and acquitted. Every single time he also informed them how he had to murder someone or commit a heinous crime to make sure he got out to save the world and help the party, effectively gaslighting them constantly whenever he was ever called evil by them. "I'm evil? don't you murder cultists? I give them a new lease on life. I'm evil? I don't see you giving nearly as much gold to the poor and hungry. I'm evil? I don't see you providing gainful employment across every town we visit. I'm evil? Gentlemen, I'm saving the world here! "Have you considered the fact that you may be the evil one here? I mean I did have to bribe guards and forge documents because you accidentally killed innocents and destroyed the property of people we were defending. You call it collateral damage, I call it reckless abandon." Let's just say he eventually shifted some of the party members neutral over time from his influence.
I just hope you are/were doing quality debriefings after sessions (or session runs). Because, while it's an amazing act of play and I salute you, some softer players might end with a real world trauma from this play, especially if it was covert enough (i.e. not discussed well with other players) and several years long. If you did your play psychohygiene well, though, these kinds of stories make for lasting fond memories.
Again: I watched a campaign where at the finale one of the PCs turned out to be a traitor in disguise. He had always been the most pious and determined of the party and then he revealed himself as the right hand man of the dark lord. That absolutely blew my mind!
While some morality is ambiguous, there is also much that is black and white, right and wrong. Such as taking an innocent life will always be evil regardless of reason
I love your content man! So cool, helps me in the current campain!! Also, the thing I need of you is to shrink this goddamn border, it makes you so closed in, it makes me feel so weird xD
My evil character concept centers around being evil but doing it for the sake of another, they would do countless crimes in order to make this persons dreams come true. I'm thinking maybe having them be a cleric or a sorcerer, maybe a necromancer... Maybe her significant other could be a lich who wants to be a human again or at least human in mind set.
In my second group I played a lawful evil character who has gone through a redemption arc and is now lawful good. I defined her "lawful evil" as her willing to commit nearly any sin needed to fulfill her end goal. She had some redeeming qualities, such as not wanting to hurt children or parents who truly loved their kids, but she was defiantly NOT someone you wanted to get on the bad side of. She kinda has a record of burning people's faces off when they cross her. Her story is that she was born into a cult that had abducted her father and the two were tortured everyday throughout her childhood. Her father was the one good thing in her life and she wanted to become a proud and kind healer like him. Unfortunately for her, her prayers to the goddess her father worshipped always went unheard and she feared that it was because she was a "monster" (her father was an aasimar, but her mother (who was a powerful cultist) was a drow who kept insisting that she was a "monster"). When she was about 13, they attempted to escape the cult but were captured. She helplessly tried to fight back against the cultist dragging her back to her cell while her father was taken to be sacrificed. After losing her father, she fell deeper and deeper into despair and lost all the hope her father had once given her. Just before she was to be sacrificed, a fury appeared before her, drawn to her by her desire for revenge against her cruel mother for killing her father, and granted her powers. She had just enough strength to escape, but not enough to destroy the cult. She set out on a journey to grow more powerful and destroy the cult, willing to use others to get what she wants and strike down anyone who gets in her way. While her redemption arc happened a lot faster than I would have liked, I had a lot of fun playing my evil character. The rest of the party were made up of good/neutral characters, so I was the only evil one. Despite this, we actually managed to work well together. My character was driven to work with them so that she could fulfill her personal goal and none of them ever got in her way, so there were no issues between our characters. Not even with the lawful good paladin. Actually, the paladin was one of the first in the party to make her feel welcomed and grant a chance at a change of heart. Funnily enough, it's the two characters you wouldn't expect my character to get along with at all that she built the strongest bonds with and made her want to change for the better: the lawful good paladin and our goofy, fabulous frog prince bard (literally, he's basically Prince Naveen from The Princess And The Frog, AND WE LOVE HIM!!!). It was actually an interaction between my character and the frog bard that really sparked her change of heart when she threatened to kill him if he ever crossed her (we had just run into a witch from his backstory responsible for his froggy form who, as it turns out, was part of the cult that imprisoned my character, and my character didn't like how "friendly" the bard was to the witch). As a player, I was worried that I was taking things too far but knew that this was something my character absolutely would do. Turned out that it ended up being such a great roleplay moment that it inspired the rest of the party to really get into roleplay themselves and delve more into character interactions. The bard managed to calm my character down enough to merely promise to kill him if he ever proved himself a threat to her goals, but his words did leave quite the impact on my character and make her question herself. The bard really is an amazing roleplayer and he handled the situation VERY WELL. I applaud him for rolling so well with the scene and even turning the tension to make my character question herself like that. Up until these developing bonds with these characters, mine had simply accepted the fact that she was a "monster" destined for destruction. But they made her realize that she was so much more than what the cult had made her into and she began to become the healer she dreamed of being as a child instead. She's still going through quite a bit of growing pains, struggling with some trauma from her past that resurfaced shortly after she gave up her fury powers and became a healer (the paladin ended up dying in our first major encounter after her ascension into becoming a healer in a manner very similar to her father's death, so that was pretty triggering (paladin's okay now, we revived him)). She still set on destroying the cult, but now understands that she doesn't have to play the role of a monster to do so and cares more for protecting her allies. I actually lost count of how many times she's chosen to heal and use her own body as a shield to protect her allies instead of striking down their enemies like she used to. She's still blunt as heck and doesn't hold back on insults, but she's defiantly a lot more caring and trying her best to be a good person now. I'd really like a chance to play this character again, hopefully with a slower burn for her redemption arc. I'll be changing some things about her now that I have a better understanding of what exactly I wanted to go for with this character. I'm the kind of person who generally tries to keep my anger and frustrations to myself as I'm always worrying about accidentally hurting someone's feelings or giving people the wrong idea of me, so it's so cathartic to be able to play such an angry and aggressive character. I guess that's why I enjoy playing an evil character. Let's me let out my anger in a healthy manner, but I still keep it within reason so that I don't destroy the game. I'm actually impressed that I've been able to play my character so well I've actually been able to help shape the game to what it is. My DM actually admitted that he hadn't yet prepared anything for our BBEG or what exactly the plot would be until I came in with my character. It's not all about her and everyone does have equal importance in the game. My character and I just happened to help give the DM the inspiration he needed for the big story of the game.
one of my favorite characters was a cleric of Tiamat. Her goals was to create cults and subvert existing religions so the followers of those religions were 'unknowingly' (at first) worshiping Tiamat. She was highly invested in the party's success and reputation because it: A) gave her cover to avoid scrutiny, and B) gave her a positive reputation to make her task easier to accomplish (converting others to her god).
I currently have an Evil pc for this one quest because my good character would never willingly help a demilich (she hates undead), so I made a lawful evil rogue who is solely in it for her own personal gain. My first encounter with the party, I negotiated terms of the deal, trying to get as much profit as possible, and landing on 20% of the magic items found. Lawful evil is a lot easier to fit into a party of good people, because you can do good things for bad reasons, and play for the long con, at least in character. LE is my favourite alignment because of that.
I have a great example of this. I had a character who for all intents and purposes was a vampire. He didn’t drink blood however. He took time. He was a centuries old warlock whose deal with his patron gave him the ability to steal the time someone had left and force the hands of fate to end one’s life prematurely. He did what he claimed was for the greater good, for the good of the realm, but he also stole the youths of children, sired bastards and used them to his own ends. Ultimately he met his end being petrified. Getting what he truly wanted. Immortality without the drawback of losing your soul.
Another way I find that might be helpful for group cohesion is seeing the party and helpful NPCs as an asset to be utilized; not allies and companions. Distance yourself emotionally from Justify your actions, internally only if you have to, that your cooperation is because your survival and success is gestalt in a group.
One way that I have handled this is to have multifaceted morality layout situations when you are going to behave in a good manner and have other situations where you are going to behave in an evil manner... for example, I am playing a Shifter path of the beast barbarian flavored around a werewolf when he is the wolf (shifted and/or raging) he is neutral evil the thing he wants most is blood to satisfy his hunger. When he is not the wolf he is a pretty selfless character that I play as neutral good... this also allows me to tie mechanics to RP which can be very powerful in D&D storytelling.
Not excactly the example of evil, but intresting story. Ive in party very stricted under rules circus assassin. His goal was to kill a paladin in the city. He cloaked himself under the mask of the bounty hunter. But he was young and wasnt sure of what he really desired. Long-short story, the group and paladin have a fight against demons in the orphanage and paladin there saved group and tried to help People in poor district. Asassin was amused by that fact, cause he never interacted with targets very close and thought he should kill a "bad guy". Then main demon killed the paladin and party had a Last fight against him. The asassin boy kept broken paladin sword after battle. And when they finished deals in town - he left his asassin circus cause the paladin opened his eyes in a new way. It was a cool Journey!
Negative Character arcs are super cool if they're done properly. The thumbnail is apt, because a prime example of a good negative character arc is that of Viktor in Arcane. It's beautiful, and tragic, and you love him but slowly see the changes happening to make him into the villain we know him as in the game. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the time that I've seen it done at a table, it's a different story. I can remember maybe one or two really really good natural progressions from a hero to a villain, but most people try to rush it, honestly. That kind of a progression in someone to that degree has to occur over the entire length of the campaign, with changes so natural and slight that you don't even notice them, until something they do eventually steps over the ledge.
That's a really interesting take on how to do it. I've wanted to play a truly 'evil' character for some time (my characters trend toward either eccentric but harmless weirdos or gruff, grumbly marshmallows with a heart of gold) and subvert the D&D stereotype of the evil character always causing problems or betraying the party. My plan for this was to make a character who is fanatically loyal to the party, but whose methods are ... well. Let's say they'll do absolutely anything to achieve the party's goals. A Chaotic Evil serial killer who just happens to love the party as their found family, a Neutral Evil master manipulator who wants to raise their friends to the power they DESERVE by any means necessary, or a Lawful Evil conqueror who believes it is the party's righteous destiny to succeed, us against the world, literally if must be. Maybe the party will be on side with this, but if there's any hint that they won't be, the character will begin to secretly ... DO things to ensure the party succeeds. The stuffy nobleman who was preventing the party from bending the king's ear has a mysterious accident. The rival NPC adventuring group that was stealing the heroes' glory is lured into an ancient red dragon's lair... And if the other characters discover and confront the PC about this, it'll be an incredible, dramatic scene, because the evil character genuinely feels "I got my hands dirty so yours could stay clean. Look at all we've accomplished, because I did the things you weren't willing to. I did this all for YOU." They won't even resist the party if they choose to turn them in. Who is really betraying who? They might even be able to persuade the party to embrace their dark philosophy. This is obviously something I'd want to work closely with, at bare minimum, the DM, but it'd be incredible if I could pull it off :)
i had a idea for a character. you play as a mind control parasite inside the brain of a lawful good cleric. the player must act lawful good around the party however they are actually chaotic evil when no one is looking. make little slip-ups like executing helpless prisoners, killing guards when the party is in trouble with the law things that normally a party would accept but would feel bad about doing. finally after a lot of sections have the paracite hatch from the character and become the next bbeg
I believe 2 things that help define if a character is evil is 1). What goal is being aimed at and 2). The method that it can be achieved. You can have good intentions but go about solving it in an amoral way, or have a selfish goal utilizing a method that while detrimental to some is also beneficial to others.
Alternatively I can see being truly evil but only behind the parties back as being viable. Just so long as you realize the character will eventually have to leave the party or change their ways.
I mean, in d&d anyway, evil DOES exist. In the fictional world of the game, it is a measurable characteristic associated with devils, demons, liches, and some gods.
One of my all time fave campaigns was me playing a lawful evil monk in a party where everyone was Good. LG, NG, and CG...all the different G's. And I played it so well that nobody had a clue I was LE until I casually strolled through a "protection against good" spell I didn't even know was there. This was back in 3.5 I think so that spell was warding my char's friends who got there ahead of him and were trying to brainstorm a way around or through the ward. My guy strolls up like "What are you just standing around for?" and walks right through. We had set up ahead of time that all our characters were childhood friends who'd been very close growing up, so that gave me a reason to be...tolerant...of their moral weaknesses. lol. And the "Lawful" part of LE allowed me to be honorable, just, and loyal to my friends. While the Evil part let me be vicious, ruthless, and always go for killing strikes(even on fleeing foes) which I was mostly able to pass off as "the heat of battle". Half of them thought I was just a really over zealous Lawful Good. But through it all he was absolutely loyal to his friends. The actual Lawful Good cleric was like a brother to him and the Neutral Good Bard was once like his little sister and became his wife eventually. And eventually they found it sort of useful to have one person in the team who was willing to get his hands dirty when the situation called for it.
This sort of sounds like the Cheshire Cat in concept. In alignment he is considered an ally of alice, and thus a good guy, but he always tends to commit to actions that always puts alice in trouble, whether it's getting lost and stumbling into a house of Mad Men, or going into a unjust castle and wreaking havoc just by existing.
There are shades of the anti-villain that you have to consider as well. I once played a goblin fighter/rogue who was an anti-villain character. The party never got a full accounting of any treasure they located because being the only one with the ability to appraise things like gems, I would either pocket the choicest ones or offer to take them as my cut after telling them that they were only worth 50gp when they were really worth 5,000gp. I routinely bought the other characters the gear they needed using the money I stole from them to build up their loyalty because I would need them to protect me later. It wasn’t out of any inherent greed that he acted like a villain, but he did act in a similar way to a villain. Over the course of the campaign, the character built both a legitimate mercantile empire, a legitimate guild of bounty hunters and a network of thieves, smugglers & fences. As one of the other players put it, “he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard” before starting a jailbreak and open rebellion against a king to save me from the gallows. Playing the villain who is on the same side as the good guys can be a riot to play. Don’t discourage it for your players.
I love negative character arcs, thanks for talking about them :) I have one of these planned for a long-term character who, as of now, is good-aligned but clingy and excessively, naively trusting of another evil character, whom he considers one of his only and greatest friends. Gonna be fun 😏
Playing as a part of smugglers crew which main idea is finding their place on the frontier is one of the best game experiences for me. Though, I believe we are chaotic-neutral, not evil. Don't know if "anti-heroic" is good description for such sort of character, we just act in our interests that aren't always the best for everyone else (though also aren't always the worsts).
Our solution was to make that character into another villain that was introduced before by a theory that became canon in our universe. The base character was Chaotic Chaotic and was based around the "philosophy" of anti-logic. That character was obsessed with never being logic in any way, which meant that upon meeting an NPC, the logic option was to talk/be nice so it was no, but doing the opposite also followed some kind of logic so no fighting/killing either. That campaign fortunately had next to no NPCs to interact with and the character was just fun to imagine as he was doing insane things while still progressing (the player knowing what he was doing of course). Go back a couple of years, I had made a lich villain who created an entire demi-plane with actual inhabitants and all, for the sake of destroying it after like a kid playing. After the game with the loose canon PC, we theorized that perhaps one had become the other (all the time shenanigans could be explained), and after a bit of chatting, it made perfect sense accounting everything the lich had done in its numerous appearances throughout my adventures. So that's how a simply chaotic character became a chaotic evil time travelling agent of destruction without harm to the other players (well... direct harm cause yknow time-travel) Speaking of time travel and time in general, there's two topics that I'd like you to cover, if they inspire you: time travel itself in D&D and how you'd go about it/whether you think its a good idea or not (you mentionned liking talking about tropes) and how to play a seer/someone with foresight abilities without being useless in everyday life (throwing cryptic and vague sentences when it's not concerning the big plot hints the DM gave you, which assumes you already took the step of talking to your DM) Only if you want to and if you have time for it, those are just suggestions! No pressure on you!
I think the way to play an evil character is to have their goal align with the party. It is not as hard as it sounds, but it depends a great deal on what campaign are you playing in. Party chasing a mac guffin? Have your character want to use it to take over the world themselves. Party fighting organized crime? Your character is there to stomp the competition. And you can do evil things, like torture and murder, and have fun role-play moments with Party members who didn't like that as a result. Play the devils advocate for yourself, ask hard questions about efficiency and choosing between greater and lesser evil. Just be ready do concede in arguments so they don't escalate into PvP fight. But most importantly make sure the rest of the party, out of c haracter, is ok with you doing that. That's the most important part.
Once did an evil bard character in a campaign, who was a priest of an evil god. Played him as more power hungry and slightly sadistic, but (to make sure that I wouldn't annoy anyone else), I gave him things that he wouldn't do. He would taunt enemies mid-fight w/ those that failed to kill him and would attempt to bring npcs to his side/religion (when it fit), but saw backstabbers as "beneath him." Sadly there wasn't many opportunities to show him being power-hungry or for moral struggles that wouldn't jeopardize things.
I'd argue that an Evil character will always make the decision 'for themselves 100% of the time', on two principles. No one ever asks how to play a 'Good' character, one who should be the opposite of Evil and thus should be selfless and giving and never take rewards or act for selfish interests, but people are seemingly much more willing to say 'I'm a good guy, but just once I'll do something for myself', the idea a Neutral Good fighter might ask for gold or tell a lie seems to sit much better with people than a Lawful Evil wizard helping save someone from a bear. We seem to have this set idea of what an Evil character should be and just won't let people deviate from it mentally Two, as Good and Evil are subjective, it's fair to say most Good and Evil characters player by players would be more morally grey or neutral, and you're spot on saying we need to get away from Alignment, it's a mechanic I don't think we really need anymore. You can have an Evil character at a the table if they agree to the social contract to work with the party, the same way people play Lawful Good without being a stick in the mud abide by the law no fun for you paladin. An Evil Campaign of murder and destruction however, that can be fun as hell
I've definitely played the Neutral Evil / pure selfish character before. It does take some work, but you can have it work with the party. One of the easiest ways to keep my character motivated to cooperate was the fact that typical campaign ends up showering characters with obscene amounts of wealth. I wrote an ex-mercenary backstory for the character to give him a reason to believe that working together in a group could lead to acquiring more wealth and power than he could get on his own. He wasn't exactly friends with most of the party, but he respected their skills and he knew that the group together could kill and plunder more effectively than he could himself. And at least one or two in the party would drink and gamble with him. The campaign's BBEG (a pirate lord) appeared early on and humiliated the party, so he had two perfect reasons to stay through the end - revenge and plundering the BBEG's stuff.
I have an Evil Warlock Sorcerer who is a ruthless monster, but her interests and the interest of her patron, a Lovecraftian old one align with the interests of the party, she's a character made after a character's death, she's the one who does the things the more neutral good characters aren't comfortable with doing, and so long as their interests align she has their backs
I have two recommendations for evil players. First is : Compromise. Be evil when it's not going to heavily impact relations within the party. Your goal is to have fun with the other players, not to ruin their fun just so that YOU can have it. Second : Find a quirk that makes it easier to be evil. I have 2 examples. -I made a Satyr Warlock that was a "Go with the flow" and "fun loving party goer", BUT, my definition of fun was basically based on seeing others in pain (NOT MY PARTY OBVIOUSLY). So I would go with the flow with the party and follow them, but I would do tricks to people and often inflict pain to them by stating that "it's normal, because it's fun". -I made a homebrew warlock with Primus as my Patron. This one was much more neutral I would say, but basically I was extremely logical and would refuse to act on emotion and only act in ways that were the most straightforward. If killing someone was the faster, easier approach, I would do so. It could attract some trouble, but my party could always prevent me from doing those things by finding alternate methods and convincing me that it would create a better outcome.
I’ve openly played as evil characters many times in the past and it never caused too many issues I even checked with the other players and the GM at that point in time
My character in my best friend's upcoming campaign is definitely going to be evil to begin with, but as I don't intend for her to be so forever, she definitely falls into the "Anti-hero" category discussed here. I'm a sucker for a good redemption arc. The entire concept came from a line in one of the core books, I forget which one, involving the nature of fiends and celestials and how they are borderline locked into their alignments just by the nature of what they are. It went something along the lines of "If a fiend were to ever stop being evil, it would cease to be a fiend". So my character is a former devil, an Erinyes specifically, turned into a human form after she was betrayed by the warlocks she was patron to and they carried out a ritual that shredded her essence and divvied her power up among them, which nearly killed her, but enough of her essence survived and was shunted into a vessel in the material plane. So she has a goal of hunting down these warlocks and reclaiming her power (a goal that can remain, perhaps with less emphasis on the power reclaiming, regardless of where she is at in her personal arc because they are certainly NOT good people and what they are doing with all that power can't be good either), but in her current form, even with her training (class-wise she's gonna be an echo knight with her echo being an image of her original devil form) she cannot do it alone, which is her incentive to join up with the party. As edgy as the backstory is, it won't be shoved into all the other players faces thankfully. Her best option is to simply play it up like she's just someone caught up in bigger plans, a regular person cursed with power from whatever crazy ritual this evil cult carried out. So she gets to act like a regular adventurer, and with time the party's moral compass will rub off on her and she'll come to realize she genuinely likes and trusts these people, something not possible previously when she was influenced by her fiendish nature and immersed in the (frankly hella toxic) culture of the 9 hells. At first just she'll just be playing her part before eventually, that realization comes. Plus when the reveal of who she truly was inevitably happens, because there's no way it remains hidden forever, it can be this huge moment that can really shake things up, and it'll be a good opportunity to force her to confront what she was after she has become someone better, provided the other players don't find out quicker somehow, which is definitely a possibility. Something else I look forward to is playing someone the other players can bounce off of and have a positive influence on. As most parties tend towards good I can use that to my advantage as a player, letting my character suggest the darker options when we are discussing things, while knowing full well as a player I'll be outvoted and we'll go be heroes, and my character will sigh halfway irritatedly, before going "All right, we'll do it the 'good way' but let's be efficient about it and get a plan together."
I'm creating a campaign where the PCs are investigators searching for a serial killer changeling who has raised a gargantuan Mimic that takes the form as a massive mansion. That mansion changes shapes and confuses the PCs once inside and takes flavor from Saw, true crime cases, and known serial killers. I'm really looking forward to our soon approaching recording session and hope that everyone is ready for a bloody gritty story 😁
Lawful Evil: Take what you want while following a code. This is Barbosa, who can make deals that benefit him without breaking his word. Even when working alongside Jack, he still has goals to improve his lot or get his revenge. Prince Hans of Frozen and Jack Skellington might also fit this bill. Finally, if there are enemies that are both lawful good to their people, they are usually lawful evil to each other. Neutral Evil: do whatever you want, no compassion or qualms. Some may argue that Benedict’s Sherlock fits the bill, since he is bored of most cases, has incredible trouble with making people feel better, and his time in court against Moriarty. Bully Maguire also fits. Chaotic Evil: violently greedy, hateful, or bloodthirsty. This is Kratos destroying pantheons, even as he protects Pandora or his son. Antiheroes and Bully Spider-Man can also fit this mold. Being evil is more about your goals in the bigger picture than your person to person interactions. You can be evil without betraying the party.
I’m playing a Pathfinder game and my PC is a NE tiefling rouge named Qro. I don’t see him as a truly evil person, but labeled him NE because of the way I think the world perceives his actions. On one hand, he murders people. On the other, he does so with the intent of reducing the amount suffering and evil in the world. He doesn’t just go around stabbing kids, but there are a few more orphans in the works because of his actions.
Currently playing a chaotic evil hot mess. The way I always saw evil was selfishness, and that it doesn't have to just apply to YOU So his chaotic evilness manifests in a willingness to do anything and sacrifice anyone to protect the party, because they are the people he cares about. If he had to choose between killing innocents and saving the party, no hesitation he will save the party every time.
My group wanted to play evil characters so we started a campaign as all evil characters. Were Drow sent from the underdark to cause mayhem and possibly take territory on the surface to expand the reach of Lolth
I played an evil character for the first time, I made him a warlock who worships the Raven Queen. He works with the party because his patron basically told him to, and he serves his patron because she grants him more power and knowledge which he can then use for his own purposes. At the end of the day, his ultimate goal to gain the power to do whatever he wants. But because his power ultimately comes from his patron, he’s constrained to do good despite his evil nature. It’s a fun dynamic
My evil character is an eldritch knight (was a warlock, had to switch because of party balance and we lost our Frontline) who is actively trying to bring back his god. In party, he is acting kind-ish to his group. He will do anything to protect them if he has to. However he absolutely needs to find guardian seals to release his god. He's already manipulated his party once about it, and no one has really questioned his goal beyond his cover of "I'm trying to stop an evil from breaking free, and I need to stop the enemy who is using said evil to attack the kingdoms." However he'll eventually become a second BBEG at the request of my DM. I'm excited 😅
i like Openly Sarcastic Productions' video on anti-heroes, where it shouldn't be a specific type of character, but a spectrum. perhaps their motivations are inherently good, but their methods aren't so, or the opposite, where perhaps the end goal isnt necessarily for any good, but their methods are merciful and respectful
I never played, but was researching character development when this started playing. You could possibly make an anti-villain who finds themselves partnered up with the heroes out of convenience. Just a thought.
I really badly want to play and evil twist villain wizard in the party, (Basically this is a very homebrew idea) He’s a changeling that disguises himself as one of the party’s kidnapped members (which will also be played by me, though that is mostly on the beggining. The real party members gets interrogated by a mysterious group of cultists, and since this changeling is a wizard, he basically reads all of her thoughts while she’s in the interrogation to avoid getting lied to. ) He basically wants to revive the Goddess of Mischief in a strong vessel so she may gift him strong magical abilities so he can be feared and known all around the world as the greatest ”Trickster”. His only wish is to go down on history as someone really strong and feared but also respected from his intelligence. So, he’s sort of this selfish person but as he happened to kidnap the nicest person of the group, he has to pretend to be extremely nice to avoid getting caught. The party still suspects that there’s something a little off, but they would probably push it aside. Now, why go all of this way to inflritate the party? Well, the party had heard about a cultist activity going around, planning to revive the goddess of mischief. People are getting kidnapped left and right for sacrifices to get enough magic for the night of summoning. Specifically strong spellcasters like Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards. The changeling inflirtating the group is one of the big leaders, the one who’s in charge of this whole operation. The reason being for this is that he is very experienced and has a connection to the goddess of mischief who is guiding him through this mission. This also allows a close access to the castle, where the princess is located as the party’s duty is to protect the princess but also find out who’s behind this. The princess is the perfect vessel for the Goddess because of her pure strong magic bloodline and because her physical body wouldn’t rip apart from the strong magic entering her body alone. The changeling tries on purpose to subtly lead them away from the clues whenever they’re close. After enough time is bought he orders two of his servants that also belong to the cult to kidnap the princess and start preparing for the night where stars allign and magic grows strong all around the world. By this time the party realizes that the princess is kidnapped, the changeling pretends to know that he saw the kidnappers and leads them to the base of cultists. Of course party getting really suspicious the whole time they’re going there because he’s dropping the character more and more. When they finally get to the main room where there are tons of cult guards that ambush and surround them. The party goes into shock as they see their party ”member” walk past the guards, only for her to drop the act immediatly and change his appearance to changeling’s. Boom! Reveal time, boss fight ensues xD Maybe it could be done better but my excuse is that I have never played the game yet so yeah, I’d say it’s a pretty average story for an amateur writer and even newbie player lol, I’m sorry for massive infodump
Played evil before, ive always let everyone know upfront either by not so subtly dropping clues or by stating it outright and before I do the chaotic evil thing, I run it by my party and give them ample opportunity to intervene so they aren't having a bad time when I do the thing. Only In a few occasions did I have a party member go "oh you are evil, my character hates evil", take the meta info his character is oblivious to and go "detects good and evil" and blow up the campaign. Usually everyone discusses what they are looking for in a game, whether it'll be a problem (like above) or say "you better hide it lol" Generally the evil i play is with the party to push a personal goal, being helpful is just a means to an end. If the BBEG has a macguffin, that is probably his at the end. Doesn't mean he is anti-heroing everywhere, he'll let the heros do the hero thing, but in the background he occasionally pours poison into pots and potions if he won't get discovered
I think an important thing to keep in mind when playing an evil character is that they are still a person. So they will have their own rules and code that they live by. There are certain lines they will not cross or certain things they will refuse to do. As an example I actually just wrapped up an evil campaign, I had a kobold warlock who essentially became a general in our story because of this code he lived by. He was highly respected among his troops, and treated them all fairly. Only dolling out punishments when he disagreed with something people were doing. As an example he didn’t like destroying things for the sake of doing it he wanted his acts to have a purpose. Be it instilling fear in people or causing a melt down in infrastructure. But if you just decided to burn down a house just because. Punished. He was exceptionally nice to people who worked with him. But if you cross him he wouldn’t hesitate to strike you down and make your face part of his skin Cape. (He had a collection of peoples faces from the people who crossed him sewn onto a massive face of a giant that he helped fell) but if you did work with him you earned yourself a valuable and fierce ally. He only ever crossed the party once and it was because one of the other PCs played a full chaos character. Which my character put up with for a long time but eventually do to urging from his Parton and several incidents that shook the base of what my character was building Remmy felt the need to take him out. But he didn’t just turn on him. He saw an opportunity and took it. All of this to say keep in mind they are real people. So they have a way that they live their life and that should be in your mind. And making enemies of the people close to you is a quick way to find yourself stabbed in the back. Which is how my characters story ended. Remmy the Conquerors story ended much like Caesar, he rose up to a massive height and found that he had made too many enemies to remain there for long.
That was like one of my characters I played in a campaign. The party were destined to take the place of the gods (at least some of them) and become the new gods of that domains, but first we needed to stop the advance of some evil god to achieve that. My character, since the beginning was clear in her objectives, she wanted power, and we all know that a person who only wants power can easily become a evil conqueror. She was very strong and both the party and the gods needed her, but all of them knew what she could possibly do when she achieve godhood. Me and the other players were joking about a future adventure where the main villain is my character, trying to conquer the world. Unfortunately we couldn't see the end of this because the DM had to end the campaign due to personal problems.
I have played a lot of evil characters and the way I pull it off is with a code. I'm not just slitting throats for breakfast, I have certain rules that define how I see life. It just so happens that my way of keeping that order is extreme and permanent. My base template is someone like the Punisher or Xanatos. My way is the right way to achieve my goals while at the same time maintaining some kind of order. Answer to no one while also never asking for permission or kindness. Renegade Shepard is another good example of this.
@@ShadowsOfEssence as a player of Mass Effect for 10 years plus a DareDevil comic nerd, I would argue that Shepherd and Punisher may be antiheroes but walk the fine line between hero and villain. Despite his general motives Punisher was inherently selfish leaning him more to a villain. As for Shep, Saren was a villain right? Yet Renegade Shep acted just like Saren, only playing on a different side. The reason I mention those 2 is because in a party, unless you are playing an evil campaign, you will be a villain on the side of heroes. How they interact with teammates is what I'm looking at, not just independent actions. I do hear you though.
Part 2 is up now! ua-cam.com/video/xM62Y6IalE4/v-deo.html
I do believe that there are a small number of actions that are vile enough to label a person as evil forever afterwards if in fact they actually happened.
I can't see how some one can put a positive spin on things like rape or slaughtering of the innocent. You know the extreme actions of evil. To list such actions as merely selfish is to justify things that should not be.
That is what is meant by "Black and White exist but are rare" morally speaking.
I agree with the rest of the video; but I believe in a mostly gray outlook on the world not that there is only.
Now on to part 2.
the thing is in my experience its almost never the evil player that is the problem its the other players who decided they have to make it a problem specially paladins and clerics who insist they will kill the player because he is evil or something similar even if in theory a lg paladin should be bound by the law as we see in canon they just do go on rampages in the middle of cities whenever they see a person that pings evil
Important thing to remember when playing an evil character: Most evil people still treat those around them fairly well. They still have people that they love and wouldn't betray. Even if they don't really care about someone, they'll work with them if the relationship is mutually beneficial. If your character can't find a reason to work with the party from that, you haven't made a character. You've made at best a caricature.
Reminds my of my evil pc who would take great care of his allies but would treat all others with disdain, and even outright disgust. Especially hypocritical self proclaimed heros. He was such a joy for me and the party to be around
Same- I run a Dragonborn zealot of Tiamat, and not only is he rather friendly, he is quite protective of his people, and has taken our two recent deaths (RIP Carric and Norm) really hard, though he very easily flys into a rage and is willing to lie, destroy, kill, or torture anyone to achieve his ends (he's looking for a relic that is important to the Dragon Cult and in exchange for help finding it, he's helping them deal with some B.S.)
I mean for example just saying because I saw it recently, lord Voldemort is evil, defently, BUT he have some sort of honor code he reward his loyal followers and punish who is incompentent, not always killing but also thru humiliation.
Or if all else fails keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Outward appearances are sometimes everything and if you play lawful evil, why would you turn on those that are assisting on creating a power base?
It’s sometimes nice to play a caricature.
I have a warlock who is evil, but Only when it comes to her end goal she must save the world so it will still be here for her Patreon to eventually consume it. It doesn't impact standard party interactions, infact she is probably the most moral of the bunch, but it is hard to be a murder hobo with only 2 spell slots.
Classic evil motivation, and one I love: "YOU can't take over this world, that's in MY plans!"
My warlock started as lawful evil because her cult has a strict code that she follows and her method of evil was generally being selfish. Her patrons goals were always pretty negative in the party's opinion. However, as a sheltered, 4 year old Aarakocra she had a cute innocence about her that was endearing. But the events of the story led her down a path of cruelty and paranoia.
Where she is in her arc now is definitely a low point. She's ritually sacrificed an arm and an eye to create a legendary staff and after saving a city from a monster incursion the Guard Captain tried to arrest her for openly using necromancy and other dark spells. And in response she blew his brains out with Eldritch Blast in front of all of his men and several towns folks then intimidated them all into just fucking dropping it.
@@PlayYourRole "WHAHAHAHAH!!! I, the mad scientist of madness, Osa Tarinaa, admit it! You are moderately mad!"
“So you'll join my organisation and help us rule the world? Working together, we could bring world peace and order.”
"I Refuse!"
“Wha-”
"Because I am Osa Tarinaa! A mad scientist must always be a solitary creature. He must never belong to anyone or any thing, at any time. That is his destiny..."
'Isn't he embarrassed to say those things?'
«Don't worry, he used to be even more of a weaboo»
'Oh, I see...'
Lmao that’s literally my character
@@chriscamaratta1 JESUS?!!? WHAT ARE U DOIN HERE LOL
I actually had exactly this happen in my party. The "villain" obtained an artifact that began to drive him mad, and eventually his paranoia caught up with them. He arranged for an ambush against the party, and he turned on them as it started. We had introduced the players new character as an NPC, so DM and player traded control, and it was on. The villain escaped, and now, after nearly a year of rivalry, the players are about to have their final showdown with him.
thats so cool! a very smart and creative way to do that
Yo, tell us how it goes!
yo ur rlly creative, sweet idea
How did it go?
There are a few ways:
1) Be the healer
2) Common Goal: you may be an evil wizard, but Kuraptis/Strahd/et cetera is an ass hole who shoved you into a locker. Saving the world is just a bonus.
3) Character Arc: think Zuko from ATLA.
4) your character enjoys making others suffer, but knows to exercise restraint. All are equal in the eyes of the reaper
Evil healer is very fun, ESPECIALLY if healing magic is incredibly rare in the campaign world
Other common goals:
1) I want to become a tyrannical ruler some day, but I can't do that if the villain destroys the universe I wish to rule!
2) "I know how tribes work. If I kill for your, you'll kill for me." -Crusk
You can also be a reoccuring villain. Team rocket style. Always fun.
Prepare for trouble, and make it double! To unite all peoples within our nation, to protect the world from devastation! To denounce the evils of truth and love, to extend our reach to the stars above! Jesse! James! Meowth, that’s right! Wobbufett!
A medic who doesn't really care of their party members and treats them more like test subjects?
Playing an evil character as manipulative, using the party to accomplish their own goals, is really fun. Especially when you give them a redemption arc
Even better doing as a DM
My plan for one of my campaigns (All of which take place in the same world) Is that they join one of 2 guilds, And they get sent on quests. The "final" boss is the light wing. Its a BIG moth that forms the sun. They defeat the holy entity so that the world is "saved" and that the guild is fit to rule the world. But the guild was a cult and the party just helped them create the end of it. With a giant portal that has evil monsters coming out. And spike towers ripping the planet apart. Also evil jellyfish kidnapping people. It was the end of the world. They also meet the true villain. Who is now a god.
@@coltonshortell8075 giant sun moth… you play hollow knight? 👀
@@joshphillips5238 Yep,
Or or if you get to level 20 being a necromancer that uses wish to create a army of undead with immunity to holy magic then say I'm the final boss bitches and blink away 🧐. You're right being evil like this is not a bad thing because if the DM runs out if ideas by then well then here would be some inspiration
I once played an evil spellsinger wizard named Artor that I treated as though he was going through a redemption arc, working alongside the party for a common goal, until the very last session. In this campaign, the BBEG was a hexblade warlock with a cursed sword that gave him immense, immeasurable power, and we were only able to kill him because the barbarian managed to cut off the hand that held the sword, rendering him vulnerable. We killed him, and as the paladin was telling the party that he was proud of everyone, and giving a speech about how people can change and become better, my character took the sword and ran him through from behind, claiming the weapon's power for himself. Boom, surprise boss battle, ending in a brutal TPK that led into the next campaign with a whole new party. It was awesome to really let out my inner megalomaniac, chastising the party for trusting so easily, for being so easily fooled, and for ignoring the fact that bonds of friendship and camaraderie are nothing in the face of true, overwhelming power. The coolest part was how in the next campaign, the previous party was brought back as horrifying, undead abominations that Artor had raised through a combination of dark magic and alchemical experiments to enforce his will, and they acted as a series of mini bosses that the party had to overcome in order to reach him in the end.
I made an evil character for a one-shot once, and she quickly became my go-to evil character, I just enjoyed playing her so much. The DM worked with me a lot, giving me a bit of extra information, making some of the texts in the crypt we were breaking into in languages only my character knew, and having the setup be that my character was the one that hired the party and brought them together in the first place. She constantly lied and spread misinformation about where they were and what they were doing (the party was actually raiding a crypt of an ancient, legendary hero. She tricked them into thinking it was a cultist/necromancer's den.) She had no intentions of killing them or betraying them- ideally, they would all raid the crypt, she would find what she was looking for there, and everyone would leave with the party none the wiser. Another trick I used was reflecting her dependence in the party in her stats- I purposefully gave her really bad CON. She was a powerful sorcerer, but physically frail, and she was smart enough to know that she needed people backing her up to accomplish anything noteworthy. Betraying her party would've been far too risky and would only cause her to lose her protectors, so she resorted to manipulation instead.
So I guess lessons I would pass on: Always check with your DM to see if they'll work with you, they can give you more angles to work from. Give your evil character an obvious weakness that can be supported by the party. Do not actively betray the party (unless you want to play a new character, anyways).
New sub here, I would love if you made a video about a how to play a veteran/old character in DnD
I think that's something I can potentially do!
I'll sub for that
Actually I liked this video a lot so I subbed too lol
Played an old mountain dwarf with low dex and low wisdom
A fighter with a cursed axe that reminded him of battle when he was pretty wounded and would basically attack anything as all he sees are enemies (berserker axe flavored to fit in my character)
Most of the PCs: "We must stop the bad guy, because he is destroying the kingdom!"
That one chaotic evil PC: "He stole my magic sword. It's mine!"
Or *thinks of the political fallout after a king is killed* "yeah! I'll bring the popcorn."
I mean, a magic sword is sacred, you can't just take that and not expect consequences
@@PlayYourRoleit still shows how an evil character CAN work with a group as long as its a benefit for them to do so
I would say the most objective definition of evil is this:
The exploitation of the misfortune of others to further their own goals.
Saying that evil isn't "real" and "purely subjective" so therefore we can't define it is missing the point. Not every 'evil' character is just misunderstood and simply seeing things from another perspective.
A tyrant that exploits his subjects and rules through fear so that he can live in luxury is evil.
What about the perv who does the same things but lives in a dirty apt, and can't keep a job. That IS evil.
See, I agree. The act of exploiting misfortune for your goals is evil. But, I think the point I attempted to make (and admittedly kinda stumbled around on, my bad) was that, does that make the PERSON evil. I mean, if you were raised in an environment where that was the only option to survive... Are they evil? But, then if they are presented with a better way to do things, but they latch onto their old habits, does THAT then ensure they are evil? Where is the line drawn? And I uh... I don't have an answer to that one anymore than the centuries of philosophers that have tried to tackle this do haha
@@PlayYourRole
Yer take is good. In game, you can make everything morally ambiguous and grey. But commentors who say there is no evil, and how they then describe their "evil" characters is just EDGY!!! If I play an evil character, The other players will bow to my will, and will eventual sacrifice their souls to further my agenda of PAIN!. But that's just me.
@@PlayYourRole Yes that makes the person evil because they don't want to change.
@@WhyYouMadBoi does it? Or does it make them jaded? Convinced of their own inadequacy, such that they give up on doing better with themselves.
You aren’t the first person to claim that evil exists, man, and you won’t be the last. The idea that being selfish, hurting other people for personal gain, and not wanting to change those habits, is inherently evil, is flawed because, simply put: those are all characteristics of a confident, driven individual with many enemies, which could just as easily be a hero, even if only of their own story.
Point is, evil is subject to individual ideals, and neither _you,_ nor your _culture,_ nor your entire _species,_ can define it succinctly without contradiction from something else. You’re allowed to have your idea of what it is, but you cannot claim it to be the objective truth without rousing objections from other people.
This is actually something I've been playing at in a campaign for the last 2 years!
I've been working with the DM in secret, but my "evil" character is more of a spy/saboteur. When with the party, I've played him as helpful, actively working with the party and aligned with party goals, so far as they're aware in and out of game.
Basically there are these NPCs that serve to keep a barrier up, protecting our world from the minions of the nine hells, my character's job is to assassinate each of these NPCs, and I'm currently 4 for 4 (out of 8) without the party being aware. They've almost caught me in the act a couple times, but usually it's been accomplished via manipulating riots or letting enemies through the gates while the party is elsewhere.
If and when I get found out, my character (assuming they live) becomes an NPC themselves and I'll be rolling up a new one.
The other fun aspect to this, is that the character has actually grown fond of the party, and is now trying to still accomplish his goal of letting the nine hells ravage the world, but on the condition his friends are allowed to live out the rest of their lives in peace. A fool's dream and one the party would never forgive him for should that come to pass.
Holding on to an artifact he SHOULD have destroyed, to use as a bargaining chip, is actually how he was almost discovered. The whole thing almost failed 'cause he let a desire to protect the party get in the way.
Honestly, i really want to play a character like this.
Hidden evil and being a Secret burden/Saboteur to the party.
As someone who uses alignment in a more deliberate fashion, I have a few rules for it's definitions and Evil/Good Specifically.
1: Alignment is not effectiveness, it is intent. Having an alignment doesn't determine your competence. Evil characters are not required to be masterful at villainy, the same way good characters who fail don't suddenly become "not Good" anymore because they weren't able to produce their intentions.
2: Corner Alignments are innately unstable. Chaotic Evil, and Lawful Good is not the peak of evil and good. because their chaotic/lawful intentions restrict their ability to do good/evil. the embodiments of Neutral Evil in D&D, Yugoloth enable an endless blood war vs Devils and Demons to determine what is the most effective evil. While again you don't need to be competent to be any alignment, a Neutral Good, Law, Evil, or Chaos are able to embody their one defining Alignment without restrictions (What I call "True Alignments". Imagine little triangular points on all the Neutral alignments").
3: Evil Player Characters. The main pitfall with Evil PC's is figuring out how they deal with party conflict as soon as they could destroy the party. You don't need to burn bridges or betray the party for the BBEG to be Evil, simply intend and invest in things harmful to others as you see fit. Chances are your character will be outnumbered and critiqued by Good aligned party members. Use that, poke at their own flaws and inclinations, pick their scabs, and convince them their flaws are as indomitable as your inclinations. If done right, you'll make them want to rise to the challenge even more, if only to spite you.
I hope this helps, because I frankly find the wishy washy "Morals are subjective" talk to be counterproductive socially and enables a lot of bad faith actors to do some real damage to our world and our games. Thank you for reading my comment. :)
I really like your definitions.
I just found your channel and downloaded a ton of your backlog and have been zooming through them. Entertaining as hell. I love when I find a smaller youtuber with good content. We will watch your career with great interest.
For me, I usually like to play good aligned characters. But when I play evil, I love Lawful evil. I like the idea of a person that is willing to honor a deal, but do it THEIR way. I played as an anti-heroic bugbear hitman that was assigned to the party on work release. It was a great time, most of the time. But sadly, there wasn't a 'chance' to betray the party, but he was more than willing to break some rules and openly refused to engage in certain missions because there was no direct benefit to him.
lawful evil based alignment
Howdy! Thank you for this one. This is a topic I've thought about often. If I could throw my hat into suggestions for future vids, I'd be curious to see what you think about playing Monstrous characters. Orcs, Yuan-Ti Purebloods, Goblins, Hobgoblins, etc. I know typically the issue people run into with these characters is that they will immediately be targeted by local authorities due to their race's reputation and/or they often have character rules that make them tough to RP, like Orcs' religious beliefs and prejudice, Yuan-Ti and Lizardfolk's lack of emotions, etc. I know the common answer is to make them "raised by humans" or something so they aren't evil, but that always struck me as a cop-out.
Oh man, that's a great suggestion! Thank you, you can more than likely expect that one soon!
I'll admit that I use a cop out when I play as those characters more often than not. By having them be exiled from their tribe or Homeland. And if they wish to continue to thrive then they have to deal with humans and other races. In more social and peaceful terms than they are used to. It's still a bit of a cop out but I've found that it works better for storytelling purposes.
@@sethwagner5099 I like that a lot better. It doesn’t ignore their monstrous origins but lets them grow and adapt to their new surroundings and explain their ability to councide with other races.
I've always looked at it as good and evil not being related to the character's actions, but the motivations behind the actions. A good and an evil character might do the exact same thing, but will do it for very different reasons. Evil characters are selfishly motivated, as you say in your video. Good characters are motivated by how their actions effect others, selflessly motivated. That is, they are motivated by how the action effects them, regardless of how it may harm or benefit others.
Would an evil character save orphans from a burning building? I'd say yes, but only because they feel they benefit from doing so.
Yeah, consequentialism does not work so well in stories when you have so much access to the information behind an action or character
That makes me think of a conversation from House MD.
House says, "People only do things because it makes them happy or they have no choice."
Kutner says, "I do this to help people."
House says, "And helping people makes you happy."
@@ArcCaravan we could reframe it this way, if you like, good is when your motives include empathetic drives (care how it effects others) and evil are more apathetic (don't care how it effects others). Both still may produce the same actions, but again for very different motives.
@@MatthewSmith-pv6gd That makes me think of people who claim they're helping the world by sacrificing people, particularly those who don't fit their views. Basically a conflict of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" and "the ends justify (or don't justify) the means", plus "the path to hell is paved with good intentions". Basically an evil who doesn't even know it.
Good aligned characters save a village from death/enslavement because life/freedom is sacred and all should enjoy it, it is the right thing to do
Evil aligned characters save a village from death/enslavement because it is useful to have as many people indebted to you as possible to accomplish your future goals, whatever that may be
Since you used the Silco picture I was super sad to not hear a peep about him as an example of evil done right.
Very true. I played a ruthlessly evil character in my last campaign. The campaign did not end because of it, in fact, it instead lowered the moral bar for the rest of the party. The group were morally decent until I joined, which was a little later in to the campaign, and they became a far more ruthless and efficient party without my instruction.
It made for an... interesting ending to that campaign.
I wanted to share my favorite line (from the deathnote musical here). As a reaction to "the world is not black or white nor wrong or right".
Perhaps it's time
We drain the color from it then
Till we're back to seeing black and white
And wrong and right again
This is what a character of mine uses quite a lot. He is blind of his surroundings, and does everything in the name of what is good. (Making him cause more harm than fixing it)
Ah man, that's a really complex view point that I can vibe with. I dig it.
Runesmith had a pretty good take on evil in his video on writing antagonists. He basically described it as something that can be applied to an action that puts others in a state of tribulation.
I've been playing an evil night hag and shes my favourite character I've ever played! Shes violent, selfish, and deeply emotionally repressed. I love looking at the "inherent evil" of night hags and instead thinking of what trauma made her who she was. She was taught love is foolish, weak, fake and used for manipulation, that power and control is all that matters. But as she experiences life with the party she finds clear evidence that she feels those feelings she shoves down. And that puts her whole world view in question, like, "If I care about a party member who died, that means love exists, and that means the world isn't full of enemies waiting to backstab you, and you can find fulfilment in love that you never found in power, that means its worth it to love, and worth it to be good." Of course she skews selfish and twisted naturally, and after decades of believing something it takes a lot to unlearn it. But her slow and begrudging character development has been delightful for me!!
Hey! Thanks for the video. Appreciate you.
After I made a comment on that video, I've found a discord D&D group and we played almost everyday (I was quick and snatched the spot almost evey time, I actually played D&D with 8 other players and a DM when I got the notif, it was a wild game), and even though DM ban an evil alignment, I've found a lot of fun in Xavier, a Half-Elf Goolock.
See, when I said that I can't talk on discord is quite misleading. Sure, I can't do it on laptop, but I just enter calls from my phone and dual-wealding phone + laptop.
Anyways, have a great day, and great video as always
I play an evil character. He's selfish, he's egotistical and he thinks the whole world should bend down to their knees and give him whatever he wants. The way we make it work is that he knows that being with the party makes him stronger, and helping them out makes them help him out later. He also enjoys their company. He also has a strong moral code, with some of his morals being socially reprehensible, but one of the things he has is "Don't mess with my friends". That's what I feel makes an evil character work. He's evil, yes, but you cannot direct the animosity towards the party, otherwise you're just unfun to play with. You don't have to be a goody two shows with them, and you may ask for favors if they ask you to do something you don't want, but you don't need to want to kill or steal from them constantly. Your character is evil for a reason. Give him a reason, and give him goals, don't just be evil for the sake of evil, and you're pretty much set to go
Giving strong Vegeta vibes from this, and I absolutely approve
@@PlayYourRole Best part is that he's an evil Kobold Necromancer that suffered from some sort of brain altering magic/curse/disease, still don't know it. So he's Vegeta, but extremelly small and confused.
Finding this 2 years later while I have an evil character who's currently in the party throughout the Campaign makes me have extra ideas which I didn't have, thank you stranger for uploading this 2 years in advance :D
I've had a few experiences playing lawful evil characters, and I've always found it the most fun alignment to play around with! One of my current characters is a noble who's kinda the black sheep of her family, and her goal is to bring glory to their name so she can finally feel welcomed. She works with the party because it's beneficial to her, and even grows to care about them as friends, but she's still in it for her own (and by extension, her family's) glory. I'm excited to see how her arc plays out!
I honestly only checked this video out because off Silco on the thumbnail, but i have to say i really appreciate the advice. Me and my pals are starting a new campagin soon and i´m planning to go with a changeling bard, who was adopted and turned by a aristocratic vampire. The negative arc idea is GENIUS! thanks a lot
Yeah I was wondering how to play a vampire that only see’s the party as only pawns and see’s every other living creature as cattle. Without being kicked from the table.
This works for _becoming_ an evil character, but what if you want to _start_ as one and have a redemption arc?
.... Damn it. Um. Well. Maybe I'll have to make a part 2.
Imagine being a former tyrant or member of an evil faction. You had a disagreement with the higher-ups and are now fighting along with the party for the sake of destroying the competition. That leaves plenty of room for your character to grow.
@@newtondood That's a good idea! I guess the trick is to have a scenario in which your character feels they need the party's cooperation so they must "play nice." After that, they'll need to have a genuine change of heart.
That's probably the trickiest bit. Something very important would have to happen to change your character's view of the world from that of a selfish cynic to an altruist. Preferably, something specifically conflicting with part of their background that led them down that dark path in the first place.
My favorite character I ever played ended up being the main villain of our campaign. From the start he was the real BBEG and the guy the party thought was the villain was his puppet. But in order to lure the party into his trap, he had to work with them. He played the goof; a harmless drunk who was primarily the comic relief of the party as well as the healer. He went with them all the way through the final boss fight (very carefully conserving his resources) and after the “villain” was defeated he turned on the exhausted party, and the real final fight was pvp. The reveal shocked everyone, but they were super into it. It was such a satisfying arc I didn’t mind ultimately losing because it was just so much FUN.
Sorry for the bad english, not my first language.
Great video, I think u get to the key point of character creation. Often the players want to play a 'finished' character instead of create together in game.
The guy who lose the whole family, or the one who have a crazy concept like a armless fighter who use a magical arm, etc. And they create the character ready from the begining, first session and everything already happened...
As a DM I try to encorage the players to aloud me to make that stuff happen in game. It needs a higher level of dm-player partnership, but it's awesome.
I'd never thought about the evil character in these terms, the next time that the one player in my group that always want to be the lone wolf/lawful evil came up with a new character I'll offer the possibility of telling the story of how he became evil. That's personally one of my favorite arcs.
I really love the idea of an antivillan, the person who does good things for evil reasons. For example my warlock often gave food to the poor and volunteered at orphanages, not because he cared about them, but because he knew they where vulnerable people ripe for manipulation. He would basically groom kids into becoming his minions, little jobs here and there, give them money and the praise they desperately needed and they would do anything for him. His motives for this where simple, he wanted to rule the world. He believed since he was the only one actively trying to make a difference in the world that he deserved to rule it. He saw himself as the paragon of virtue because he was doing these things and he thought he deserved to be powerful.
He worked with the party until they found him out and he faked his death, that campaign is over but I like to think he's still in the background, planing revolution and manipulating vulnerable people for his own goals.
I'm currently playing a warlock who's lawful evil. The thing is he believes he's a cleric so at a glance everyone thinks he's chaotic good based on his personality.
A good example of how he's evil is once we were captured and in order to leave we had to be punished. given the option of "cut off your hand or kill a child" My character starts talking makes his way to the NPC the entire campaign is based on saving puts a knife to her throat and flat out threatens to kill her yes the BBEG will kill the party but he'll also kill the fools who let his love be killed under their watch. He wasn't bluffing iether he was full on ready for everyone to die just to kill a few hags
In curse of strahd my warlock has been worked on by one of the dark powers and now intends to take the throne. He has lied to the party by telling them there is no other way to escape than having a new person on the throne, so we all have the same common goal. As you recommended, the DM and I planned the negative arc about 1/3 way into the campaign... But he is a clever DM and is likely to pull the rug out and cause drama and tension... And I love it. It's the reason I offer loads of back story for a good DM to work with.
2 really interesting ways to play an evil character that don't necessarily require being selfish:
1. A character that just enjoys being mean, cruel, doing harm hurting others etc... this can be in a cartoonish "gotta get your fix" sadist, but it can also be someone like Agamenon. He was a general who was forced by the Greek gods to sacrifice his daughter, but also punished by them for doing so, with the implication being that deep down he wanted to kill her and was excited to do it. A person who doesn't go out their way to do evil, but when given the opportunity revels in it.
2. A relatively normal person who, when appropriate, does evil things; not out of pragmatism or necessity, but because they are willing in a way that most good people arent. It's a lot more abstract and harder to pin down, but so much more hatable.
In the past with a character I created for 3.5e she was a Chaotic Evil Sorceress/Necromancer.
She killed almost an entire village of simple farmers and the like, though she spared the children and domestic animals. She wiped out the memories of the parents/adults in the children's minds and raised them as her own. She also reanimated the farmers to keep up the farming and built herself a massive mansion/estate as well as replanted a Forest around the estate/farm fields. She eventually left/joined an adventure party to find a way to achieve personal immortality for herself and favored children. She also would frequently kill any person she deemed as simpletons/morons/unworthy of living then reanimated them as additional "slaves" to maintain her estate.
So she didn't turn on the party either and achieved her goal.
As a teen, the games I played often featured evil characters and PVP and really short campaigns. The only long campaign was the one where the player of the evil character moved away around Level 3. He was already on a collision course with the LG ranger; i'm sure it would have been a short campaign, otherwise. However, I think a mature person can play an evil character without sinking the ship. It could be a descent arc like you describe or a redemption arc or neither. The DM may need to work a little to make sure that players evil goals also somehow align with the more well-intentioned goals of the others. When you get down to it, killing other creatures to get powerful is actually pretty evil. Take that, Paladin!
I played as a Death Domain Cleric during the Saltmarsh Campaign. I never attempted to kill the party once, and I was even the occasional party healer when the time called for it.
However, I did take control of an overrun island monastery to rebuild and started tolling the local villages through the use of a protection racket to acquire the necessary monetary income required.
I also rubbed shoulders with a Vampire, a crazed Artificer, and revived an Aboleth my party previously killed.
I've been a DM for over 20 years and decided to try 5e (3/3.5 has been my thing) one of my kids ran a two session 5e game. We played evil characters. It was a great experience, it was fun and best of all, I have awesome evil NPCs when I start my 5e game with my regular players. Win, win win!
Or you can just play someone with easily compromised or generally out of whack morals. I think that works well for lawful evil characters. And lawful neutral characters can be a mix of "good" and "bad" morals. In my opinion, these characters should, if they are lawful evil, be redeemed by the end of the campaign or if lawful neutral, have a plethora of noble qualities that contrast their bad ones.
I think that negative character arcs are fun, and you made a great point about them. The thing you have to be careful of is how exactly you're going to make them leave the party. If you want to play a character with not-so-great morals, playing a lawful neutral character with a code that is at times noble and at other times questionable is a great way to do that.
I actually am currently playing an "evil" character and I fully agree with the "starting at the beginning of your arc" point u make as it is possibly the only reason why it works in my current campaign.
My character basically started the campaign as a 20 year old human who just got his first real job. During the campaign he found himself to be weaker then the rest (this was on purpose) and decided to try to get an edge to help everyone out better, eventually turning into a devil who is now slowly working to gain a network throughout the world and end up as a silco/lucifer hybrid at the end. (At least those are his goals, wether he makes it does not matter)
The party consists of only good aligned characters and the only reason mine fits in with the campaign is because he started out fully aligned with the group and then earned himself a spot in the group in the process of becoming evil, slowly changing over time.
It works very well because everyone experienced the shift in alignment, so his first "evil" deeds became cool (and sad) story moments for everyone. It also adds an element of conflict as he needs to sneak away from time to time or be very stealthy and deceptive against the party which always brings interesting roleplay moments.
I play a polite, well mannered necromancy wizard. He helped the party anyway he could, but he would also sneak away and rob graves, to further his study in necromancy. And he would use any means possible to further his ultimate goal: resurrecting his wife and daughter. He started late learning magic, so he is older, he doesn't think he will live long enough to see it to fruition. So is trying to become a lich so he can keep learning until he can truly resurrect his family.
Another suggestion is lawful evil. Make the evil part just spice. I had a barbarian who just,, loved murder. That’s what he wanted to do. But he also was loyal to the party, and if it hurt the group, or they told him to back down, he wouldn’t do it. Look at the hangman in fantasy high. I’m pretty sure it’s evil, but Fabian is able to keep it under control, reducing the evil to spice, rather than the main point of your alignment.
Another great example of this is Boshak in Puffin Forest’s Curse of Strahd series
I had an idea for a fiend warlock where the pact states that the demon in question can, at the DM's discretion, possess the body of the character and take over for a while, taking them from chaotic neutral to chaotic evil, though the pact will also state that the demon cannot harm people the pact holder sees as allies or impede their goals. Basically the demon would be there to sow chaos and watch the world burn just for the fun of it. I think that with the DM deciding when the switch happens could make for some super fun role play, plus trying to do good through evil means sounds like fun.
I will play an Oathbreaker Paladin that used to be a part of the elven army but got corrupted by a cursed crown and became evil and cruel. But I also dont want to ruin anyone's fun at the table, so thank you, this video was really helpful. :)
Thanks, good video. I agree that "evil" is nebulous and any one character can engage in "good" or "evil" behaviours.
I got those dice you used in the into for Christmas :D and yes they do look that cool
I'm so glad you enjoyed them! Thanks for supporting the channel!
Guildmasterdan's series on "alignment done right" explains this beautifully
There's definitely a way to play a villainous character that works with a mostly good party but the major thing to remember is that it won't last forever.
Long ago I had a human bard that was NE (with a bit of a LE streak) and the fundamental building block to his ideology was simple "I need to look good so I reap the benefits of a high rpeutation. Every time someone pointed out I did something immoral, there's always a "but!" to be inserted" so for example.
He enslaved people. BUT it was dragon cultists that would've been executed on the spot by any law officers. Instead they can work their contract for a few years and become free (Should've read the fine print. It has a yearly renegotiation clause based on poor performance. Nothing you will do will ever be good enough for you to not owe him even more time of your life.)
He invaded the dreams of the party and subtly manipulated them BUT when someone did eventually try to attack their dreams the bard immediately shut that shit down and plagued their intruder with daily nightmares and tracked them down just to kill them.
He counterfeited coin BUT he used the profits to give a load of money to the downtrodden and needy to create vast information networks he could use in towns to root out cultists.
He murdered innocent people BUT he also saved the world, so by a sheer numbers perspective, what's a few people murdered compared to saving the entire world?
He actually reached a point where he was the most famous and upstanding member of the party in the eyes of the people and this turned him into a propaganda piece for the war against Tiamat's cultists. The party were confused why it wasn't them, and my character informed them "Heroes aren't good people. They're people that get results and look good doing it. I like you all, but you're just not the face of crushing Tiamat's cult."
So to put this into perspective, he owned a bakery in every town that made a small profit, he owned plenty of blacksmiths, he owned a few libraries and he owned inns in every town. He was deputized in multiple cities as a lawbringer and actually owned enough land to be considered a noble. (He forged a claim on many of his lands by divine right and stole them under the noses of lesser nobles before selling the properties to himself, basically pretending to be nobles with magic and disguises before selling said deeds off to himself for legit legal ownership.)
The party was absolutely afraid of him after a certain point because one of the party members threatened to kill him for being so villainous. He informed them that if he was to e charged with a crime, that he should be taken to trial, else it would be murdering a lawbringer, which is a capital offense. Whenever they tried to jail him, he was always out in a few days and acquitted. Every single time he also informed them how he had to murder someone or commit a heinous crime to make sure he got out to save the world and help the party, effectively gaslighting them constantly whenever he was ever called evil by them. "I'm evil? don't you murder cultists? I give them a new lease on life. I'm evil? I don't see you giving nearly as much gold to the poor and hungry. I'm evil? I don't see you providing gainful employment across every town we visit. I'm evil? Gentlemen, I'm saving the world here! "Have you considered the fact that you may be the evil one here? I mean I did have to bribe guards and forge documents because you accidentally killed innocents and destroyed the property of people we were defending. You call it collateral damage, I call it reckless abandon."
Let's just say he eventually shifted some of the party members neutral over time from his influence.
*Slow Clap*
No words- you, my dear friend, are the real MVP.
I just hope you are/were doing quality debriefings after sessions (or session runs). Because, while it's an amazing act of play and I salute you, some softer players might end with a real world trauma from this play, especially if it was covert enough (i.e. not discussed well with other players) and several years long.
If you did your play psychohygiene well, though, these kinds of stories make for lasting fond memories.
Again: I watched a campaign where at the finale one of the PCs turned out to be a traitor in disguise. He had always been the most pious and determined of the party and then he revealed himself as the right hand man of the dark lord.
That absolutely blew my mind!
I love these videos. How about a challenge? How could someone go around playing the Strong, Silent type?
Already have one up talking about that! Should be one of my most recent!
@@PlayYourRole what's the video called?
While some morality is ambiguous, there is also much that is black and white, right and wrong.
Such as taking an innocent life will always be evil regardless of reason
I love your content man! So cool, helps me in the current campain!! Also, the thing I need of you is to shrink this goddamn border, it makes you so closed in, it makes me feel so weird xD
My evil character concept centers around being evil but doing it for the sake of another, they would do countless crimes in order to make this persons dreams come true. I'm thinking maybe having them be a cleric or a sorcerer, maybe a necromancer... Maybe her significant other could be a lich who wants to be a human again or at least human in mind set.
In my second group I played a lawful evil character who has gone through a redemption arc and is now lawful good. I defined her "lawful evil" as her willing to commit nearly any sin needed to fulfill her end goal. She had some redeeming qualities, such as not wanting to hurt children or parents who truly loved their kids, but she was defiantly NOT someone you wanted to get on the bad side of. She kinda has a record of burning people's faces off when they cross her.
Her story is that she was born into a cult that had abducted her father and the two were tortured everyday throughout her childhood. Her father was the one good thing in her life and she wanted to become a proud and kind healer like him. Unfortunately for her, her prayers to the goddess her father worshipped always went unheard and she feared that it was because she was a "monster" (her father was an aasimar, but her mother (who was a powerful cultist) was a drow who kept insisting that she was a "monster"). When she was about 13, they attempted to escape the cult but were captured. She helplessly tried to fight back against the cultist dragging her back to her cell while her father was taken to be sacrificed. After losing her father, she fell deeper and deeper into despair and lost all the hope her father had once given her. Just before she was to be sacrificed, a fury appeared before her, drawn to her by her desire for revenge against her cruel mother for killing her father, and granted her powers. She had just enough strength to escape, but not enough to destroy the cult. She set out on a journey to grow more powerful and destroy the cult, willing to use others to get what she wants and strike down anyone who gets in her way.
While her redemption arc happened a lot faster than I would have liked, I had a lot of fun playing my evil character. The rest of the party were made up of good/neutral characters, so I was the only evil one. Despite this, we actually managed to work well together. My character was driven to work with them so that she could fulfill her personal goal and none of them ever got in her way, so there were no issues between our characters. Not even with the lawful good paladin. Actually, the paladin was one of the first in the party to make her feel welcomed and grant a chance at a change of heart. Funnily enough, it's the two characters you wouldn't expect my character to get along with at all that she built the strongest bonds with and made her want to change for the better: the lawful good paladin and our goofy, fabulous frog prince bard (literally, he's basically Prince Naveen from The Princess And The Frog, AND WE LOVE HIM!!!). It was actually an interaction between my character and the frog bard that really sparked her change of heart when she threatened to kill him if he ever crossed her (we had just run into a witch from his backstory responsible for his froggy form who, as it turns out, was part of the cult that imprisoned my character, and my character didn't like how "friendly" the bard was to the witch). As a player, I was worried that I was taking things too far but knew that this was something my character absolutely would do. Turned out that it ended up being such a great roleplay moment that it inspired the rest of the party to really get into roleplay themselves and delve more into character interactions. The bard managed to calm my character down enough to merely promise to kill him if he ever proved himself a threat to her goals, but his words did leave quite the impact on my character and make her question herself. The bard really is an amazing roleplayer and he handled the situation VERY WELL. I applaud him for rolling so well with the scene and even turning the tension to make my character question herself like that. Up until these developing bonds with these characters, mine had simply accepted the fact that she was a "monster" destined for destruction. But they made her realize that she was so much more than what the cult had made her into and she began to become the healer she dreamed of being as a child instead. She's still going through quite a bit of growing pains, struggling with some trauma from her past that resurfaced shortly after she gave up her fury powers and became a healer (the paladin ended up dying in our first major encounter after her ascension into becoming a healer in a manner very similar to her father's death, so that was pretty triggering (paladin's okay now, we revived him)). She still set on destroying the cult, but now understands that she doesn't have to play the role of a monster to do so and cares more for protecting her allies. I actually lost count of how many times she's chosen to heal and use her own body as a shield to protect her allies instead of striking down their enemies like she used to. She's still blunt as heck and doesn't hold back on insults, but she's defiantly a lot more caring and trying her best to be a good person now.
I'd really like a chance to play this character again, hopefully with a slower burn for her redemption arc. I'll be changing some things about her now that I have a better understanding of what exactly I wanted to go for with this character. I'm the kind of person who generally tries to keep my anger and frustrations to myself as I'm always worrying about accidentally hurting someone's feelings or giving people the wrong idea of me, so it's so cathartic to be able to play such an angry and aggressive character. I guess that's why I enjoy playing an evil character. Let's me let out my anger in a healthy manner, but I still keep it within reason so that I don't destroy the game. I'm actually impressed that I've been able to play my character so well I've actually been able to help shape the game to what it is. My DM actually admitted that he hadn't yet prepared anything for our BBEG or what exactly the plot would be until I came in with my character. It's not all about her and everyone does have equal importance in the game. My character and I just happened to help give the DM the inspiration he needed for the big story of the game.
I once made a Neutral Evil necromancer who would join a party to further his goal because he knows adventurers run into crazy artifacts and items.
one of my favorite characters was a cleric of Tiamat. Her goals was to create cults and subvert existing religions so the followers of those religions were 'unknowingly' (at first) worshiping Tiamat. She was highly invested in the party's success and reputation because it: A) gave her cover to avoid scrutiny, and B) gave her a positive reputation to make her task easier to accomplish (converting others to her god).
I currently have an Evil pc for this one quest because my good character would never willingly help a demilich (she hates undead), so I made a lawful evil rogue who is solely in it for her own personal gain. My first encounter with the party, I negotiated terms of the deal, trying to get as much profit as possible, and landing on 20% of the magic items found. Lawful evil is a lot easier to fit into a party of good people, because you can do good things for bad reasons, and play for the long con, at least in character. LE is my favourite alignment because of that.
I have a great example of this. I had a character who for all intents and purposes was a vampire. He didn’t drink blood however. He took time. He was a centuries old warlock whose deal with his patron gave him the ability to steal the time someone had left and force the hands of fate to end one’s life prematurely. He did what he claimed was for the greater good, for the good of the realm, but he also stole the youths of children, sired bastards and used them to his own ends. Ultimately he met his end being petrified. Getting what he truly wanted. Immortality without the drawback of losing your soul.
Another way I find that might be helpful for group cohesion is seeing the party and helpful NPCs as an asset to be utilized; not allies and companions. Distance yourself emotionally from Justify your actions, internally only if you have to, that your cooperation is because your survival and success is gestalt in a group.
One way that I have handled this is to have multifaceted morality layout situations when you are going to behave in a good manner and have other situations where you are going to behave in an evil manner...
for example, I am playing a Shifter path of the beast barbarian flavored around a werewolf when he is the wolf (shifted and/or raging) he is neutral evil the thing he wants most is blood to satisfy his hunger. When he is not the wolf he is a pretty selfless character that I play as neutral good...
this also allows me to tie mechanics to RP which can be very powerful in D&D storytelling.
Not excactly the example of evil, but intresting story. Ive in party very stricted under rules circus assassin. His goal was to kill a paladin in the city. He cloaked himself under the mask of the bounty hunter. But he was young and wasnt sure of what he really desired.
Long-short story, the group and paladin have a fight against demons in the orphanage and paladin there saved group and tried to help People in poor district. Asassin was amused by that fact, cause he never interacted with targets very close and thought he should kill a "bad guy". Then main demon killed the paladin and party had a Last fight against him. The asassin boy kept broken paladin sword after battle. And when they finished deals in town - he left his asassin circus cause the paladin opened his eyes in a new way. It was a cool Journey!
Negative Character arcs are super cool if they're done properly. The thumbnail is apt, because a prime example of a good negative character arc is that of Viktor in Arcane. It's beautiful, and tragic, and you love him but slowly see the changes happening to make him into the villain we know him as in the game.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the time that I've seen it done at a table, it's a different story. I can remember maybe one or two really really good natural progressions from a hero to a villain, but most people try to rush it, honestly. That kind of a progression in someone to that degree has to occur over the entire length of the campaign, with changes so natural and slight that you don't even notice them, until something they do eventually steps over the ledge.
What about an evil party an entire party of villains would that work?
That's a really interesting take on how to do it.
I've wanted to play a truly 'evil' character for some time (my characters trend toward either eccentric but harmless weirdos or gruff, grumbly marshmallows with a heart of gold) and subvert the D&D stereotype of the evil character always causing problems or betraying the party.
My plan for this was to make a character who is fanatically loyal to the party, but whose methods are ... well. Let's say they'll do absolutely anything to achieve the party's goals. A Chaotic Evil serial killer who just happens to love the party as their found family, a Neutral Evil master manipulator who wants to raise their friends to the power they DESERVE by any means necessary, or a Lawful Evil conqueror who believes it is the party's righteous destiny to succeed, us against the world, literally if must be.
Maybe the party will be on side with this, but if there's any hint that they won't be, the character will begin to secretly ... DO things to ensure the party succeeds. The stuffy nobleman who was preventing the party from bending the king's ear has a mysterious accident. The rival NPC adventuring group that was stealing the heroes' glory is lured into an ancient red dragon's lair...
And if the other characters discover and confront the PC about this, it'll be an incredible, dramatic scene, because the evil character genuinely feels "I got my hands dirty so yours could stay clean. Look at all we've accomplished, because I did the things you weren't willing to. I did this all for YOU."
They won't even resist the party if they choose to turn them in. Who is really betraying who? They might even be able to persuade the party to embrace their dark philosophy. This is obviously something I'd want to work closely with, at bare minimum, the DM, but it'd be incredible if I could pull it off :)
Also I love how he just says alphabet mafia perfectly seriously
i had a idea for a character. you play as a mind control parasite inside the brain of a lawful good cleric. the player must act lawful good around the party however they are actually chaotic evil when no one is looking. make little slip-ups like executing helpless prisoners, killing guards when the party is in trouble with the law things that normally a party would accept but would feel bad about doing. finally after a lot of sections have the paracite hatch from the character and become the next bbeg
I believe 2 things that help define if a character is evil is 1). What goal is being aimed at and 2). The method that it can be achieved. You can have good intentions but go about solving it in an amoral way, or have a selfish goal utilizing a method that while detrimental to some is also beneficial to others.
Alternatively I can see being truly evil but only behind the parties back as being viable. Just so long as you realize the character will eventually have to leave the party or change their ways.
characters that are lesser of 2 evils or maybe an alliance of convenience are rly fun ways of playing an evil character in a mostly good group
I mean, in d&d anyway, evil DOES exist. In the fictional world of the game, it is a measurable characteristic associated with devils, demons, liches, and some gods.
One of my all time fave campaigns was me playing a lawful evil monk in a party where everyone was Good. LG, NG, and CG...all the different G's. And I played it so well that nobody had a clue I was LE until I casually strolled through a "protection against good" spell I didn't even know was there. This was back in 3.5 I think so that spell was warding my char's friends who got there ahead of him and were trying to brainstorm a way around or through the ward. My guy strolls up like "What are you just standing around for?" and walks right through.
We had set up ahead of time that all our characters were childhood friends who'd been very close growing up, so that gave me a reason to be...tolerant...of their moral weaknesses. lol. And the "Lawful" part of LE allowed me to be honorable, just, and loyal to my friends. While the Evil part let me be vicious, ruthless, and always go for killing strikes(even on fleeing foes) which I was mostly able to pass off as "the heat of battle". Half of them thought I was just a really over zealous Lawful Good.
But through it all he was absolutely loyal to his friends. The actual Lawful Good cleric was like a brother to him and the Neutral Good Bard was once like his little sister and became his wife eventually. And eventually they found it sort of useful to have one person in the team who was willing to get his hands dirty when the situation called for it.
This sort of sounds like the Cheshire Cat in concept. In alignment he is considered an ally of alice, and thus a good guy, but he always tends to commit to actions that always puts alice in trouble, whether it's getting lost and stumbling into a house of Mad Men, or going into a unjust castle and wreaking havoc just by existing.
There are shades of the anti-villain that you have to consider as well.
I once played a goblin fighter/rogue who was an anti-villain character. The party never got a full accounting of any treasure they located because being the only one with the ability to appraise things like gems, I would either pocket the choicest ones or offer to take them as my cut after telling them that they were only worth 50gp when they were really worth 5,000gp. I routinely bought the other characters the gear they needed using the money I stole from them to build up their loyalty because I would need them to protect me later.
It wasn’t out of any inherent greed that he acted like a villain, but he did act in a similar way to a villain. Over the course of the campaign, the character built both a legitimate mercantile empire, a legitimate guild of bounty hunters and a network of thieves, smugglers & fences. As one of the other players put it, “he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard” before starting a jailbreak and open rebellion against a king to save me from the gallows.
Playing the villain who is on the same side as the good guys can be a riot to play. Don’t discourage it for your players.
I love negative character arcs, thanks for talking about them :) I have one of these planned for a long-term character who, as of now, is good-aligned but clingy and excessively, naively trusting of another evil character, whom he considers one of his only and greatest friends. Gonna be fun 😏
Playing as a part of smugglers crew which main idea is finding their place on the frontier is one of the best game experiences for me. Though, I believe we are chaotic-neutral, not evil. Don't know if "anti-heroic" is good description for such sort of character, we just act in our interests that aren't always the best for everyone else (though also aren't always the worsts).
Our solution was to make that character into another villain that was introduced before by a theory that became canon in our universe.
The base character was Chaotic Chaotic and was based around the "philosophy" of anti-logic. That character was obsessed with never being logic in any way, which meant that upon meeting an NPC, the logic option was to talk/be nice so it was no, but doing the opposite also followed some kind of logic so no fighting/killing either.
That campaign fortunately had next to no NPCs to interact with and the character was just fun to imagine as he was doing insane things while still progressing (the player knowing what he was doing of course). Go back a couple of years, I had made a lich villain who created an entire demi-plane with actual inhabitants and all, for the sake of destroying it after like a kid playing.
After the game with the loose canon PC, we theorized that perhaps one had become the other (all the time shenanigans could be explained), and after a bit of chatting, it made perfect sense accounting everything the lich had done in its numerous appearances throughout my adventures. So that's how a simply chaotic character became a chaotic evil time travelling agent of destruction without harm to the other players (well... direct harm cause yknow time-travel)
Speaking of time travel and time in general, there's two topics that I'd like you to cover, if they inspire you: time travel itself in D&D and how you'd go about it/whether you think its a good idea or not (you mentionned liking talking about tropes) and how to play a seer/someone with foresight abilities without being useless in everyday life (throwing cryptic and vague sentences when it's not concerning the big plot hints the DM gave you, which assumes you already took the step of talking to your DM)
Only if you want to and if you have time for it, those are just suggestions! No pressure on you!
I think the way to play an evil character is to have their goal align with the party. It is not as hard as it sounds, but it depends a great deal on what campaign are you playing in.
Party chasing a mac guffin? Have your character want to use it to take over the world themselves.
Party fighting organized crime? Your character is there to stomp the competition.
And you can do evil things, like torture and murder, and have fun role-play moments with Party members who didn't like that as a result. Play the devils advocate for yourself, ask hard questions about efficiency and choosing between greater and lesser evil. Just be ready do concede in arguments so they don't escalate into PvP fight.
But most importantly make sure the rest of the party, out of c haracter, is ok with you doing that. That's the most important part.
Once did an evil bard character in a campaign, who was a priest of an evil god. Played him as more power hungry and slightly sadistic, but (to make sure that I wouldn't annoy anyone else), I gave him things that he wouldn't do. He would taunt enemies mid-fight w/ those that failed to kill him and would attempt to bring npcs to his side/religion (when it fit), but saw backstabbers as "beneath him." Sadly there wasn't many opportunities to show him being power-hungry or for moral struggles that wouldn't jeopardize things.
That little white dot had me trying to wipe my screen down for three straight minutes
I'd argue that an Evil character will always make the decision 'for themselves 100% of the time', on two principles.
No one ever asks how to play a 'Good' character, one who should be the opposite of Evil and thus should be selfless and giving and never take rewards or act for selfish interests, but people are seemingly much more willing to say 'I'm a good guy, but just once I'll do something for myself', the idea a Neutral Good fighter might ask for gold or tell a lie seems to sit much better with people than a Lawful Evil wizard helping save someone from a bear. We seem to have this set idea of what an Evil character should be and just won't let people deviate from it mentally
Two, as Good and Evil are subjective, it's fair to say most Good and Evil characters player by players would be more morally grey or neutral, and you're spot on saying we need to get away from Alignment, it's a mechanic I don't think we really need anymore.
You can have an Evil character at a the table if they agree to the social contract to work with the party, the same way people play Lawful Good without being a stick in the mud abide by the law no fun for you paladin.
An Evil Campaign of murder and destruction however, that can be fun as hell
I've definitely played the Neutral Evil / pure selfish character before. It does take some work, but you can have it work with the party. One of the easiest ways to keep my character motivated to cooperate was the fact that typical campaign ends up showering characters with obscene amounts of wealth. I wrote an ex-mercenary backstory for the character to give him a reason to believe that working together in a group could lead to acquiring more wealth and power than he could get on his own. He wasn't exactly friends with most of the party, but he respected their skills and he knew that the group together could kill and plunder more effectively than he could himself. And at least one or two in the party would drink and gamble with him.
The campaign's BBEG (a pirate lord) appeared early on and humiliated the party, so he had two perfect reasons to stay through the end - revenge and plundering the BBEG's stuff.
I have an Evil Warlock Sorcerer who is a ruthless monster, but her interests and the interest of her patron, a Lovecraftian old one align with the interests of the party, she's a character made after a character's death, she's the one who does the things the more neutral good characters aren't comfortable with doing, and so long as their interests align she has their backs
I have two recommendations for evil players. First is : Compromise. Be evil when it's not going to heavily impact relations within the party. Your goal is to have fun with the other players, not to ruin their fun just so that YOU can have it.
Second : Find a quirk that makes it easier to be evil. I have 2 examples.
-I made a Satyr Warlock that was a "Go with the flow" and "fun loving party goer", BUT, my definition of fun was basically based on seeing others in pain (NOT MY PARTY OBVIOUSLY). So I would go with the flow with the party and follow them, but I would do tricks to people and often inflict pain to them by stating that "it's normal, because it's fun".
-I made a homebrew warlock with Primus as my Patron. This one was much more neutral I would say, but basically I was extremely logical and would refuse to act on emotion and only act in ways that were the most straightforward. If killing someone was the faster, easier approach, I would do so. It could attract some trouble, but my party could always prevent me from doing those things by finding alternate methods and convincing me that it would create a better outcome.
I’ve openly played as evil characters many times in the past and it never caused too many issues I even checked with the other players and the GM at that point in time
My character in my best friend's upcoming campaign is definitely going to be evil to begin with, but as I don't intend for her to be so forever, she definitely falls into the "Anti-hero" category discussed here. I'm a sucker for a good redemption arc. The entire concept came from a line in one of the core books, I forget which one, involving the nature of fiends and celestials and how they are borderline locked into their alignments just by the nature of what they are. It went something along the lines of "If a fiend were to ever stop being evil, it would cease to be a fiend". So my character is a former devil, an Erinyes specifically, turned into a human form after she was betrayed by the warlocks she was patron to and they carried out a ritual that shredded her essence and divvied her power up among them, which nearly killed her, but enough of her essence survived and was shunted into a vessel in the material plane. So she has a goal of hunting down these warlocks and reclaiming her power (a goal that can remain, perhaps with less emphasis on the power reclaiming, regardless of where she is at in her personal arc because they are certainly NOT good people and what they are doing with all that power can't be good either), but in her current form, even with her training (class-wise she's gonna be an echo knight with her echo being an image of her original devil form) she cannot do it alone, which is her incentive to join up with the party. As edgy as the backstory is, it won't be shoved into all the other players faces thankfully. Her best option is to simply play it up like she's just someone caught up in bigger plans, a regular person cursed with power from whatever crazy ritual this evil cult carried out. So she gets to act like a regular adventurer, and with time the party's moral compass will rub off on her and she'll come to realize she genuinely likes and trusts these people, something not possible previously when she was influenced by her fiendish nature and immersed in the (frankly hella toxic) culture of the 9 hells. At first just she'll just be playing her part before eventually, that realization comes. Plus when the reveal of who she truly was inevitably happens, because there's no way it remains hidden forever, it can be this huge moment that can really shake things up, and it'll be a good opportunity to force her to confront what she was after she has become someone better, provided the other players don't find out quicker somehow, which is definitely a possibility. Something else I look forward to is playing someone the other players can bounce off of and have a positive influence on. As most parties tend towards good I can use that to my advantage as a player, letting my character suggest the darker options when we are discussing things, while knowing full well as a player I'll be outvoted and we'll go be heroes, and my character will sigh halfway irritatedly, before going "All right, we'll do it the 'good way' but let's be efficient about it and get a plan together."
I'm creating a campaign where the PCs are investigators searching for a serial killer changeling who has raised a gargantuan Mimic that takes the form as a massive mansion. That mansion changes shapes and confuses the PCs once inside and takes flavor from Saw, true crime cases, and known serial killers. I'm really looking forward to our soon approaching recording session and hope that everyone is ready for a bloody gritty story 😁
Lawful Evil: Take what you want while following a code. This is Barbosa, who can make deals that benefit him without breaking his word. Even when working alongside Jack, he still has goals to improve his lot or get his revenge. Prince Hans of Frozen and Jack Skellington might also fit this bill. Finally, if there are enemies that are both lawful good to their people, they are usually lawful evil to each other.
Neutral Evil: do whatever you want, no compassion or qualms. Some may argue that Benedict’s Sherlock fits the bill, since he is bored of most cases, has incredible trouble with making people feel better, and his time in court against Moriarty. Bully Maguire also fits.
Chaotic Evil: violently greedy, hateful, or bloodthirsty. This is Kratos destroying pantheons, even as he protects Pandora or his son. Antiheroes and Bully Spider-Man can also fit this mold.
Being evil is more about your goals in the bigger picture than your person to person interactions. You can be evil without betraying the party.
I’m playing a Pathfinder game and my PC is a NE tiefling rouge named Qro. I don’t see him as a truly evil person, but labeled him NE because of the way I think the world perceives his actions. On one hand, he murders people. On the other, he does so with the intent of reducing the amount suffering and evil in the world. He doesn’t just go around stabbing kids, but there are a few more orphans in the works because of his actions.
Currently playing a chaotic evil hot mess.
The way I always saw evil was selfishness, and that it doesn't have to just apply to YOU
So his chaotic evilness manifests in a willingness to do anything and sacrifice anyone to protect the party, because they are the people he cares about.
If he had to choose between killing innocents and saving the party, no hesitation he will save the party every time.
My group wanted to play evil characters so we started a campaign as all evil characters. Were Drow sent from the underdark to cause mayhem and possibly take territory on the surface to expand the reach of Lolth
I played an evil character for the first time, I made him a warlock who worships the Raven Queen. He works with the party because his patron basically told him to, and he serves his patron because she grants him more power and knowledge which he can then use for his own purposes. At the end of the day, his ultimate goal to gain the power to do whatever he wants. But because his power ultimately comes from his patron, he’s constrained to do good despite his evil nature. It’s a fun dynamic
My evil character is an eldritch knight (was a warlock, had to switch because of party balance and we lost our Frontline) who is actively trying to bring back his god. In party, he is acting kind-ish to his group. He will do anything to protect them if he has to. However he absolutely needs to find guardian seals to release his god. He's already manipulated his party once about it, and no one has really questioned his goal beyond his cover of "I'm trying to stop an evil from breaking free, and I need to stop the enemy who is using said evil to attack the kingdoms." However he'll eventually become a second BBEG at the request of my DM.
I'm excited 😅
i like Openly Sarcastic Productions' video on anti-heroes, where it shouldn't be a specific type of character, but a spectrum.
perhaps their motivations are inherently good, but their methods aren't so, or the opposite, where perhaps the end goal isnt necessarily for any good, but their methods are merciful and respectful
I never played, but was researching character development when this started playing. You could possibly make an anti-villain who finds themselves partnered up with the heroes out of convenience. Just a thought.
I really badly want to play and evil twist villain wizard in the party,
(Basically this is a very homebrew idea)
He’s a changeling that disguises himself as one of the party’s kidnapped members (which will also be played by me, though that is mostly on the beggining. The real party members gets interrogated by a mysterious group of cultists, and since this changeling is a wizard, he basically reads all of her thoughts while she’s in the interrogation to avoid getting lied to. ) He basically wants to revive the Goddess of Mischief in a strong vessel so she may gift him strong magical abilities so he can be feared and known all around the world as the greatest ”Trickster”. His only wish is to go down on history as someone really strong and feared but also respected from his intelligence.
So, he’s sort of this selfish person but as he happened to kidnap the nicest person of the group, he has to pretend to be extremely nice to avoid getting caught. The party still suspects that there’s something a little off, but they would probably push it aside. Now, why go all of this way to inflritate the party? Well, the party had heard about a cultist activity going around, planning to revive the goddess of mischief. People are getting kidnapped left and right for sacrifices to get enough magic for the night of summoning. Specifically strong spellcasters like Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards.
The changeling inflirtating the group is one of the big leaders, the one who’s in charge of this whole operation. The reason being for this is that he is very experienced and has a connection to the goddess of mischief who is guiding him through this mission. This also allows a close access to the castle, where the princess is located as the party’s duty is to protect the princess but also find out who’s behind this. The princess is the perfect vessel for the Goddess because of her pure strong magic bloodline and because her physical body wouldn’t rip apart from the strong magic entering her body alone. The changeling tries on purpose to subtly lead them away from the clues whenever they’re close. After enough time is bought he orders two of his servants that also belong to the cult to kidnap the princess and start preparing for the night where stars allign and magic grows strong all around the world.
By this time the party realizes that the princess is kidnapped, the changeling pretends to know that he saw the kidnappers and leads them to the base of cultists. Of course party getting really suspicious the whole time they’re going there because he’s dropping the character more and more. When they finally get to the main room where there are tons of cult guards that ambush and surround them. The party goes into shock as they see their party ”member” walk past the guards, only for her to drop the act immediatly and change his appearance to changeling’s. Boom! Reveal time, boss fight ensues xD
Maybe it could be done better but my excuse is that I have never played the game yet so yeah, I’d say it’s a pretty average story for an amateur writer and even newbie player lol, I’m sorry for massive infodump
Thank you this was extremely helpful!
Played evil before, ive always let everyone know upfront either by not so subtly dropping clues or by stating it outright and before I do the chaotic evil thing, I run it by my party and give them ample opportunity to intervene so they aren't having a bad time when I do the thing.
Only In a few occasions did I have a party member go "oh you are evil, my character hates evil", take the meta info his character is oblivious to and go "detects good and evil" and blow up the campaign.
Usually everyone discusses what they are looking for in a game, whether it'll be a problem (like above) or say "you better hide it lol"
Generally the evil i play is with the party to push a personal goal, being helpful is just a means to an end. If the BBEG has a macguffin, that is probably his at the end.
Doesn't mean he is anti-heroing everywhere, he'll let the heros do the hero thing, but in the background he occasionally pours poison into pots and potions if he won't get discovered
I think an important thing to keep in mind when playing an evil character is that they are still a person. So they will have their own rules and code that they live by. There are certain lines they will not cross or certain things they will refuse to do.
As an example I actually just wrapped up an evil campaign, I had a kobold warlock who essentially became a general in our story because of this code he lived by. He was highly respected among his troops, and treated them all fairly. Only dolling out punishments when he disagreed with something people were doing. As an example he didn’t like destroying things for the sake of doing it he wanted his acts to have a purpose. Be it instilling fear in people or causing a melt down in infrastructure. But if you just decided to burn down a house just because. Punished.
He was exceptionally nice to people who worked with him. But if you cross him he wouldn’t hesitate to strike you down and make your face part of his skin Cape. (He had a collection of peoples faces from the people who crossed him sewn onto a massive face of a giant that he helped fell) but if you did work with him you earned yourself a valuable and fierce ally.
He only ever crossed the party once and it was because one of the other PCs played a full chaos character. Which my character put up with for a long time but eventually do to urging from his Parton and several incidents that shook the base of what my character was building Remmy felt the need to take him out. But he didn’t just turn on him. He saw an opportunity and took it.
All of this to say keep in mind they are real people. So they have a way that they live their life and that should be in your mind. And making enemies of the people close to you is a quick way to find yourself stabbed in the back. Which is how my characters story ended. Remmy the Conquerors story ended much like Caesar, he rose up to a massive height and found that he had made too many enemies to remain there for long.
That was like one of my characters I played in a campaign. The party were destined to take the place of the gods (at least some of them) and become the new gods of that domains, but first we needed to stop the advance of some evil god to achieve that. My character, since the beginning was clear in her objectives, she wanted power, and we all know that a person who only wants power can easily become a evil conqueror. She was very strong and both the party and the gods needed her, but all of them knew what she could possibly do when she achieve godhood. Me and the other players were joking about a future adventure where the main villain is my character, trying to conquer the world.
Unfortunately we couldn't see the end of this because the DM had to end the campaign due to personal problems.
I have played a lot of evil characters and the way I pull it off is with a code. I'm not just slitting throats for breakfast, I have certain rules that define how I see life. It just so happens that my way of keeping that order is extreme and permanent. My base template is someone like the Punisher or Xanatos. My way is the right way to achieve my goals while at the same time maintaining some kind of order. Answer to no one while also never asking for permission or kindness. Renegade Shepard is another good example of this.
I agree with the control aspect, but two of the templates you mentioned are Anti-heros, not villains.
@@ShadowsOfEssence as a player of Mass Effect for 10 years plus a DareDevil comic nerd, I would argue that Shepherd and Punisher may be antiheroes but walk the fine line between hero and villain. Despite his general motives Punisher was inherently selfish leaning him more to a villain. As for Shep, Saren was a villain right? Yet Renegade Shep acted just like Saren, only playing on a different side. The reason I mention those 2 is because in a party, unless you are playing an evil campaign, you will be a villain on the side of heroes. How they interact with teammates is what I'm looking at, not just independent actions. I do hear you though.