LE antagonists can be morally complex, because despite the tyranny and destruction needed to get there...

Nevermind, completely read the OP wrong

Self advancement by any means necessary

One idea I remember reading that I liked was a character where he can have normal goals, he can even have loved ones, friends, or a town he cares for.
He just does not give a FUCK what gets in his way or what atrocities he has to commit to get his job done. If he thinks his that tavern girl he likes might have a slightly more convenient walk to work if the orphanage burned to the ground, guess what's happening tonight?

>his love is dying, a wasting curse placed upon her by the gods themselves
>the flower of life, deemed too powerful for humanity, has been placed atop a giant citadel, guarded by the emperor himself
>murder time
I like it

Pretty much every confidence man is CE. Some of them can be lovable scoundrels. Actually, a lot of them are, since they specialize in making people like and sympathize with them.

This is a cool interpretation of high-Cha CE.

Confidence man?

Con men/artists. People who scam you to your face because that's where their skill is. It's what the "con" stands for.

Con(fidence) man.

Chaotic Evil does have a continuum, limited as it may be. Two major factors are how much a character's goals intersect with evil itself (is hurting people the means, or the end), and how restrained they are by self-interest or self-preservation (since what else is there to stop them?).

Most moderately, they can be immoral but limited by their self-interest. To my mind, this is the only example of a functional Chaotic Evil player character, because if their goals align with others, an alliance serves them well. They do not need to be persistently malicious or overtly deranged; only in key moments is it revealed that they are entirely uninhibited by moral limitations. These individuals are most dangerous when their ambitions are threatened, and will seek the most effective solutions to their problems, rather than most morally palatable.

Most severely, Chaotic Evil can serve as the ultimate example of evil. A psychology with no framework with which to reason, a thirst for violence that is ultimately suicidal. Particularly when juxtaposed with evil characters still bound by law or principles, they serve as examples of truly ruthless enemies. If a character like this can be persuaded, it is only with the promise of further slaughter.

Chaotic Evil characters can exist anywhere along this continuum, and this actually allows for some great differences between characters who roughly occupy the same moral "square".

Libertarians, anarchists

bump

I find it funny how people don't consider him worse than Volgin when the question of "Most evil MG villain" pops up even though Armstrong literally farmed children's brains to create a super-cheap army
He was Solidus 2.0

Alignments are trash.

Make a human being, not a vague archetype.

How's your first year in college treating you, champ?

Punisher is a weird one because he's definitely NE, but self aware about it. He's trapped by his trauma and psychosis though.

Chaotic Evil means you have a disregard for laws and tradition, and are much more selfish than altruistic.

This doesn't mean you have to kick puppies or be edgy mcedgerson. it just means your value system is more or less completly 180 from society at large.

Pic related are CE characters who, while not the deepest or most original, do have understandable motivations if you read their backstory.

Meet Euron Greyjoy. He's the reaver - the ASOIAF version of both a pirate and a viking, and a sorcerer king of the Iron Islands. He commands the ship by the name of SIlence, manned by the crew of mutes, so they won't talk about his secrets. He killed his brother, raped the other one, he sacrificed the woman who's bearing his child - along with priests of all religions - in a nightmarish magic ritual.
Why is he doing all of this? He believes - rightfully - that the end of the days is coming, and along with it - the end of the gods, which he sees as an opportunity to become a god himself.

One villain I had was actually 100% self aware about the way deterministic non subjective universal morality worked. He realized that in order to inspire great hero's, they needed great villains.

He decided to be that villain

So all of his actions were carefully selected to cajole, outrage, and prompt the maximum number of people into trying to stop him, and then he would shape the promising ones into legitimately strong heroes who would eventually kill him. He knew everything he was doing was 100% wrong every step of the way but believed the legacy he left behind would be worth it.

When one of the PC's tried to side with him, he went fucking apeshit, calling them a whore and a failure and a disappointment. He then betrayed and slaughtered demonic cultists he'd been working with and stopped the Apocalypse because he hadn't gotten the outcome he wanted, which was always for the PC's to stop him and become the protectors the world needed. Killed the PC that tried to betray the party and then vanished, leaving a very confused group

>He believes - rightfully - that the end of the days is coming
>rightfully
>implying

Winter is only the end if you're a fucking pussy

Yes.
Meet Ammon Jerro from the not so famous Neverwinter Nights 2. He is a minor villain that later turns party member. He is literally Chaotic Evil in the game because of his retarded level "end justifies the means" motto, doing things like trying to kill the main charecter at the start, using a horde of demons and devils for his bidding, killing many innocents, and accidently killing his last famiy member which is his granddaughter. All he claims he did for the "greater good" of destroying the BBEG to save everyone while failing and unintentionally killing the ones he loves and blaming others for his mistakes.
Granted he does have redeeming qualitis such as the guilt he feels for his granddaughter, the knowledge that he will answer to all his crimes in life and death and that he will gladly take on such punishments including everlasting damnation to save everyone, and near the end where he can finally admit to his failings and asks for the forgiveness of his granddaughter.
This guy is the D&D FR version of Walter Wight, he even looks like him.

It's not any winter, it's the Long Night, wolf faggot.

Revenge.

You have it backwards.
Alignment is a litmus; it's a signal derived from actions and behavior. If you're a sceming selfish mastermind, you are lawful evil.
But, if I'm lawful evil, it doesn't mean I need to be sceming, selfish, and a mastermind.

Savvy?

Fervent belief that governments and law suppress the natural order of things and willing to go to violent means to destroy them. Arguably even justified sometimes, but with little regard for the destruction sown as a result.

Someone who pursues an objective important to them, and damned to the consequences.

>this entire fucking plan
>"oh, let's kill everyone in power and let civilians handle ther rest"
>"oh, and let's also kill the bitch, that has a literal light-god inside her, without even giving a slightest fuck about the dark god"
>"I'm sure it's gonna work out"
Like, what the fuck did writers were trying to do with this fucking character and this shitty plot? The push him as sympathetic, but the guy's a fucking retard. Fuck.

>Alignment
Probably the most pointless features of DnD ever.
Don't think of your NPCs as their alignment, think of them as people who have motives. Alignment should never be something you put much thought into

I usually play my CE Villains as extremely emotional. Very rapacious, very prone to emotional fits. They're not "Randumb", they're extremely consistent in that when they feel something is supposed to be a specific way, it's already done. They're a little bit related to how a Lawful Good character has an outlook on a specific way things ought to be, so too does this Chaotic Evil character, though it's often less about ideals or rights, and more about emotions and passions. The CE Villain will decide that this band of bandits which follow him are family due to their rather excessive loyalty, and would himself die for any of his nameless mooks, such as flying into that Barbarian rage because /you dared/ to hurt Bill the Brigand, nevermind Bill was trying to kill you first.

It's unthinking, but deeply feeling, with little outward concern. I tend to use CE villains as lower/midtier baddy bosses, party actually fell in with one once (partially by accident), and ended up recruiting him into their rebellion against the Duke. Turned out, he was being paid off by the Duke, until he decided he liked the party more, and decided that gold was worthless if his new little friends weren't around. Was rather interesting.

Why not just play a sociopath?

He's not supposed to be sympathetic. They even spell it out as much in season 4. His ideals were for freedom, but they were taken to a dangerous extreme.

A character can have personal goals or concerns that don't stem directly from their alignment. An LE villain doesn't always have to strive towards tyranny. A CE villain can have humanizing or "morally complex" motives just as much as an LE one can. The difference is that an LE villain still has some respect for order and doing things the "proper" way, while a CEvvillain prioritizes the ends waaaay more than the means and will do anything or hurt anyone to achieve them.

To serve the lower cause of evil. While having divination at your disposal.

Basically be the nicest person around, the most friendly and caring soul anything could be, wandering to aid the needy and serve the weak.

But in truth, said needy and weak are destined to grow into scions of suffering, their existences fated to spread misery.

Towns are saved from incoming disasters, solely so that they may contain a plague that then rapidly spreads to other steads.

Children are collected and lovingly given to a kindly priest - so that the man can be brutally slaughtered before their eyes followed by them being turned into deranged soldiers some years down the line.

That kind of stuff, a wandering villainous figure that carefully seeds evil and nurtures the roots of hate and misery into flowers of destruction and suffering.

All the while being mistaken as a caring, kindly soul that gives short-term succour for the needy, only for the long-term to harbour the greatest amount of evil possible.

NWN2 is so fucking good.

Listen to "Lying Eyes" by the Eagles. That's kinda who that song is about. They're terrible people, and pathetic because they have no way to be better.

The Hero and Villain are separated only by what gets in their way (and how they get it out of their way).

It's because they then have to admit his anti-government views were coming from a child soldier user.

>How to play a CG disguised as CE

>been through a lot of shit
>have endless grievances, some legitimate, others less so
>decide thereafter everything must burn and the ashes must also be stomped

Doing bad shit for good reasons is my favorite kind of villain.

More just Chaotic than anything. You can pretty reasonably chart this character's progression down Chaotic Evil. Awareness of wrongdoing only goes so far when they keep doing wrong, all the way to setting up an Apocalypse, apparently.

You might say that his ultimate intentions, coupled with taking matters in his own hands when a hero failed, could balance the moral ledger somewhat, or it just makes him capricious.

Either way, good, this guy ain't.

If we take chaotic to mean anarchic rather than selfish, then ecoterrorists fit the bill very well.
>We will keep killing your boards, keep bombing your offices, keep poisoning your distributors, keep sambotaging your equipment until you give up and stop destroying our forest.

It's obviously a prompt for discussion on how to go about it you autist.

>CE villain that has motives more morally gray than "burn everything then stomp on the ashes"
That's like saying all CG characters believe we should burn everything down and start over.

Reconsider what the Lawful/Chaotic axis defines and approach the question again. You'll probably find yourself coming to different conclusions.

CE? I offer this to the table, especially post arrow

I can definitely see this.

All he wants to do is live alone and do his own thing.

His own evil evil horrible thing.

And the moment something gets in the way he destroys it if he has to.

>OCD psychopath
>chaotic
mh...

I always thought he represents what happened with communism. A well meaning idea taken to dangerous extremes.

I'm going to bite the bait here. Alignments are more like guidelines to your charecters motives. Not restrictions.

He's not that morally grey, though. He's not "lolsorandumb edgy mouthbreather" that OP wants to avoid, but there's not thaaat much complexity there. Serial killers gonna serial kill. That's all it comes down to for him.

Thought that said librarians for a second and now I really want to see a CE librarian

>Let's see how they like it when I put Pelor's tomes in the FICTION SECTION.

This is an underrated post. Freedom from moral restraints doesn't require constantly amoral action. Patrick Bateman acts entirely normal 95% of the time. Any CE character with the slightest modicum of intelligence would act normal in order to further his plans. It's simply that when the cards are all on the table, he'll slaughter a city without a second thought if it gets him what he wants.

Or to put it another way, at least some people on /pol/ live relatively normal lives.

the antagonists of Korra are as follows:
Amon: communism
Unalaq: Religious Fundamentalism
Varrik: Capitalism
Zaheer: Anarchy
Raiko: Democracy
Kuvira: Fascism

the punisher is lawful evil

Noxamillien from Wakfu.

He did not give a single shit who he hurt or how much pain and chaos he left in his wake since in his mind it wasn't "real" due to his end goal of pressing a big fat undo button on everything.

But 10 minutes isn't enough time

Is that not Wild Arms 2?

>hey henry rollins
>yeah
>wanna be the bad guy in a kid's show?
>fuck yeah
I imagine that's how the pitch went. Not to disparage Rollins, but bad guys are pretty fun and he's got a solid persona and charisma that carry through to his character.

A CE character doesn't need to be a philosopher or a mad dog. It can just be someone who values their personal freedom and doesn't have much of a moral compass. The rest of their motivations and personality can be whatever you want.

I think it's more safe to say that he is neutral something since he never kills innocents or children. All the people he killed have done "something" wrong.

I wouldn't call Nox CE, but very NE.
His goal was entirely self serving at the expense of everyone else, just on a larger scale.
And it was 20 minutes, user. Only. 20. Minutes. Not even enough to save Sadlygrove :'(
Close, but not enough incest.

Honestly, Nolan's Joker wasn't a bad example of that. Even though it technically did boil down to "burn everything then stomp on the ashes" it was specifically motivated by his need to oppose batman and gotham in general. The idea that he can be meticulous in executing his contrarian impulses makes for a great way to rein in the stupid "pure chaos" mindset of most CE, or worse yet CN player stereotypes. He has a clear motive and logical means to it, but ultimately the end result just happens to be chaos.

At the end, however, alignments are based on the end result, not the thought process that got you there.
Fortunately, thinking bad things do not make you a bad person.

Shit i didn't know wild arms fans were still a thing. I thought we went extinct at the turn of the 2010s.

I had a villain directly based on Irving. Steam-transitioning-into-Diesel punk-ish fantasy western setting drawing on the American dustbowl. A magical disaster took the edges of various kingdoms and turned them into damn near uninhabitable wastes. At the center of it was a giant joint funded prison erected by various kingdoms and private investors. The disaster freed all the worst criminals of every kingdom and so in an otherwise lawless wasteland an elf in a wheelchair was trying to use hired muscle to bring some order and safety to the common folk. I never did get to the end of the campaign with my party, but the twist was that the magical desertification was his doing in the first place and the misfire of the magical artifact that caused it was what crippled him. He'd been planning on reclaiming it to resume his experiment all along, and it was a massive lifeforce draining weapon designed to kill an encroaching eldritch abomination. The prison tower was the weapon and was meant to drain all the life from the prisoners. When it wasn't enough the weapon defaulted to draining what it needed from the earth itself. So in the end his plan was to populate the desert with enough people to feed the machine in a second shot. Part of the plan was taking on the role of land tycoon to lure in desperate immigrants from outside, and part was to curb the rate of murder at the hands of criminal elements ruling the wasteland. To that end the party was hired as enforcers to help keep some semblance of order an to help expand the reach of his protection.

>I bet you thought your party would all be good guys
>SURPRISE, it's Ammon time now!

Ammon was such a prick, I love to hate him.

I actually was always on the assumption that his motivation was to make everyone else do awful things to prove to them that everyones a deluded fucker and so he wasn't a freak.

He felt ostracized and disillusioned with society and wanted to bring it down to his level. Hence the boat trick, he wanted to prove the average man was complicit in wanton slaughter.

Ultimately however Gotham proved to be better men then he was, even if Dent didn't.

...

Season 4 is by far the worst fucking thing i've ever had to sit through.

He might be batshit insane, but he understands the value of charisma.

One of the best villains I have ever seen.

>Twenty Minutes

He at least wasn't like this humongous edge lord asshole whom is also CE.

The most terrifying aspect about the Joker is that he might not actually be evil in the D&D sense and really is enslaved to his own insanity.

How in the fuck can you be asking that question while posting a picture of Heath Ledger's Joker?

S4 is a breath of fresh after Boredust Crusadulls

Motives more morally grey not "A CE villian thats not interesting"

Burn everything and use the ashes for fertilizer.

Chaotic neutral

Thank you very much. I tried to consider just what dynamics are at play that make a character Chaotic Evil. Often the assumption with Chaotic Evil characters is that they lack restraint. But in many cases, this would be suicidal behavior. Players and GMs alike need to consider that their characters didn't just suddenly pop into existence (unless they did), and therefore had to get by until the moment we meet them. Their behavior should reflect that.

I think Patrick Bateman is an example of such a character existing in society. It can be easy to assume he's Lawful Evil, simply by referring to the world he lives in, with clear rules and structures that he must adhere to for acceptance. But it's his true character underneath the facade; his deep misanthropy, his desires for dominance and wanton violence, that reveal he wants nothing more than to dismantle the world around him. The only things holding him back slowly come apart toward the end, and if he wasn't just having a deluded episode we see him wreak utter havoc through a few city blocks. His desires for barbarism and destruction are restrained by his self-preservation, which is all that can be left without respect for law or life around him.

bumping

I got here the same way the quarter did.

Anton believes himself to be a force of nature and that anything in his must be eliminated. He has a job to do after all.

well he's a killer who kills bad guys and other killers and refuses to kill innocents that's pretty lawful evil

Would an executioner be lawful evil? Or a judge?