How do I make an evil character that's fun to play as, and relatively compelling as opposed to a complete douchebag arsehole. Whenever I try to attempt a degree of moral ambiguity I end up reverting back to traditional heriosm by the end or I feel super shitty and OOC for being bad.
So how do I do it Veeky Forums? How do I make evil fun?
If you feel shitty after playing an evil character, you're not cut out for it.
Give them a clear and specific goal that they're willing to do anything to accomplish, but have them try to be otherwise decent.
Have everyone they're up against be huge jerks or otherwise morally reprehensible, and have no illusions as to being more noble than any of them.
Although this can really only work if you're all playing an evil campaign. Instead of trying to be edgy, you'd just be trying to get the other guys before they get you first. Of course, this style is mostly comical.
But, basically, it boils down to everyone being just as bad as everyone else, though there may be worse than you. The key is not to rise above it when given the opportunity, but to instead to go along with it in a manner almost comical.
And, again, it only really works as a theme when the game's tone is set to comically dark and all parties involved are on the same page. Though a clause against backstabbery and inter-player dickery is strongly encouraged.
I almost got cut by that post.
Keep it easy big boy, we'll give your bad deadpool/poor edgelord/villain that never gets around being actually evil because he knows the party will mess him up whatever he/she/demonself wants as long as you don't slit our throats during our sleep, pls no spook
most evil people dont think they are evil.
And most of them arent evil at all times.
Make a character whose agreeable but whose goals are evil and whose methods of getting there are despicable.
Make them relaize that too.
Give him close friends and people he deeply cares about.
You know, I don't think you can pull it off, but to me being Evil means having unnatural appetites. For an Evil character to work with the party, he must love the party. Like, being with the party is the highlight of his life.
Here, let me give you an example.
> "See, I'm a murderer and a thief. I've never done an honest day's work in my life. The only thing I'm good at is killing people, and it doesn't really trouble me."
> "By myself, I would end up in a ditch with my throat cut. But with these guys? They're my best friends. We've toppled kingdoms, we've looted countless riches, we've claimed thousands of lives between us. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I could be so blessed."
> "I would die for these people, but more importantly, I would kill for them. They've made all of my dreams come true."
1. Make sure your character knows that your adventuring party is more useful to you alive than they are dead. If you are genuinely interested in their welfare & survival, even for selfish reasons, you won't betray them and thus can adventure with them.
2. Convert them evil subtly, so it's mutually beneficial while you still reap the most reward.
3. Have a long-term goal, be it immortality or ruling a kingdom, and have the patience to get there. If you are a patient character you can put up with doing a few good deeds to gain the party's trust and they in turn can be counted to at least get you closer to your goal.
4. Know your party. Get to know their likes & dislikes, their desires, so that you can figure out how to exploit them to further your agenda.
5. Democracy is your friend. Make sure most decisions are voted on so you know where people stand and how far you can push your limits.
Have fun op
>Playing this character hurts my feelings
>Well you probably shouldn't play them then
>WOW GET A LOAD OF THIS EDGE
Make him creepy, make him snarky, and make him a jerk sometimes.
I've got a Chaotic Evil necromancer/warlock who's never actually actively against the party, but he makes asshole comments sometimes. A guard gives him a warning shot, and he just snidely, smugly comments that he missed. The guard reiterates that it was just a warning shot, just to get a broad smile and a 'sure it was' in return. Then fifteen minutes later, when the guard absolutely despises him, he flirts with the guard to throw them off balance and throw in a few more backhanded insults.
Then he's also creepy. He habitually mindfucks enemies through Suggestions and Dominates and such, and dissects the bodies of monsters we kill... and the other players have started watching to make sure the bodies are actually destroyed or rendered down into food, since he just reanimates them (and eventually releases them when they're not important anymore.)
The players made the mistake of leaving him alone in a town last session, he broke into the museum, stole a skeleton of a Purple Worm, and reanimated it to add to his menagerie.
He then fabricated a half-ton of steel to give it full plate and turn it into an animate subway train, complete with magically-generated food, water, and air. I'm pretty proud of it. It's a pretty amazing vehicle, though it's not useful in combat, since it lost its poison and the swallow whole is actually actively bad for it, since they'd just end up on the 'inside' of the vehicle.
Then I also played a lawful evil character, who's pragmatic, careful to do 'good' things so that nobody thinks they're evil, and is actively pretending to have a crush on a prince who's near to the same age she is... simply to open the idea of future romance. She's not exactly 'murder for the fuck of it' evil, she's more 'selfish' evil. Cold and unfeeling are the best ways to describe her.
I actually agree with this post, more or less. Not the edgy part about it, but if you're trying to play evil and youre just not getting to it or having fun doing it, don't play evil.
Don't be out rightly evil, you're character only has to be cutthroat when there's actual gains to be made. Underhanded and brutal only get used when they're the fastest path to the objective, and collateral doesn't mean too much if you complete the objective. Sure, you burned down part of the forest, but at least those pesky bandits are dead. And come on, forests grow back.
Alternatively, there's the double-edged sword approach. Playing a character that worships a god that requires a child sacrifice every year? Build an orphanage. Boom, orphans get housed and you have a convenient supply of children, and the convenient excuse of he must have run away.
Moral ambiguity? Forget moral ambiguity. Moral ambiguity is for whiners who feel bad about what they do. That's why you're not having any fun. What you should do instead is pick some clear but selfish goals.
My go-to example was a LE Warlock I played in a long campaign. He had two major motivations; one was burning patriotic loyalty to his kingdom, and the other was a love for laughing maniacally as he unleashed enough power to reduce some fool to a pile of ash and a smoking pair of boots. So he volunteered to join the kingdom's special forces and do heroic missions for them. He was all about unleashing the maximum excusable force "just to be sure" and writing off collateral damage as a necessary evil, but he was absolutely loyal to the team (aka the PC party).
In the game I'm currently playing in, one of the other PCs is a compulsive thief with high aspirations. He's well on his way to being our game's Wilson Fisk; legitimate merchant baron by day, devious smuggler lord by night. He doesn't dick over the party because we need each other, and he helps us on our world saving adventures because you can't steal riches if everyone's dead and the treasure is all consumed by hellfire, but he's doing it all for himself and isn't hiding any soft spots for widows and orphans.
The secret is to avoid all the petty theatrical evil flourishes. If you never follow through then you're just a poser or a pushover. If you constantly follow through the rest of the players will turn on you for being a detriment to the party. Instead, pick some modest evil goals that don't conflict with the other PC's goals, and pursue them in a way that doesn't disrupt the campaign. If you've got a soul eating sword, don't murder people at random, just find ways to encourage your party to go after people you can justify feeding to it. That sort of thing.
A code, have a code. And stick to it dogmatically. Anything the code doesn't specifically cover, do the thing that is most beneficial to your character.
Always try to present your point of view logically find someone in the party who is lawful (or just someone who plays by the rules) and focus on them to manipulate to your way of thinking.
One of my favourite characters was a noble who simply had the mentality that common folk were too stupid to know what was good for them and couldn't take care of themselves, so it was his duty as a blue blood to take care of them and it was, in turn, their duty to obey him. He wasn't malicious about it but your have to take a firm hand with people and sometimes that means cutting a rotting limb to save the patient.
tl;dr Bad people never think they're bad and everyone is the hero of their own story.
Make them maticulous, cunning, confident, and utterly self serving.
Don't attempt moral ambiguity. Moral ambiguity works in two cases: (1) a character is traditionally heroic, but is regularly frustrated in his attempts to do good, avoid evil, or stick to his principles by the pressure of the world around him; (2) a chacter is trying to be traditionally heroic, but is held back by some crippling character flaw, most often boiling down to irresponsibility and/or cowardice. Needless to say, the former case is uncommon in TTRPGs, and both aren't fun for the character in question.
If you want to have fun playing evil, you have to play a character who gets a boner doing evil things (simple utter indifference to suffering of those who come between you and more power and fame is often indistinguishable from baseline PC behavior). Just check with other players beforehand whether they consider your character's ideas of fun within boundaries of good taste.
>implying that's any different from your average PC
>evil
>"evil"
"Look man, I'm just a machine gunner. Yeah I guard the camp, why do you ask? I was ordered to. I mean, I joined the army so I can defend my country. That's a good and honorable thing to do. And I'm good at it, too! I can hit eight out of a ten round burst into a man-sized target at 300 meters! What? Yeah, I noticed how the prisoners get less food that we do. But whatcha gonna do? I mean, we can't exactly feed them and not feed our guys, what's the point in that? Anyway, I heard that the supply situation is clearing up and we'll get better rations next month, that means they'll get em too. I'm sure of it."
Now. Who did I just describe?
Really? Are you sure that's who I described? Or was it maybe the guy on the other side of the same conflict?
Evil is not a state of mind, evil is a label. I'm good. The other guy is evil. This goes for both parties of the conflict. It's been that way for hundreds of thousands of years.
Stop using D&D alignments and grow the fuck up.
>relatively compelling as opposed to a complete douchebag arsehole
Just because a character has bad intentions doesn't mean they have to be a dick about everything. A villain that can empathize with others but does awful shit anyway because they won't let sentiment cloud their goal much like field general or burdened king. A villain that is so sure of their power that they don't need to be raving lunatic or a douche just for the sake of it. Patient bastards are the most destructive.
My favorite characters to play are the LE dudes who have some kind of goal that can be fulfilled by doing whatever the group's doing, also makes the other players not think of me as That Guy who keeps trying to go off and do his own shit
My favorite was a cleric that became the end all badguy because it was the natural progression of his staunch moralist views. He cared so much he got corrupted by his compassion becoming the herald to the settings white death or "god of absolution".
>End all badguy
Ugh.
He was unable to reconcile the existence of undead as a plague on the living while also being able to use the same magic to heal the living and resurrect the dead. He got hung up on how one was supposed to justify the other and decided that neither should exist.
Well, let me write up an example.
Evil Baron.
He is known for rational and effective approach in ruling his lands. Some of the old guard think that he is even too lenient on his serfs. But what they like in him is his ruthlessness. If someone makes his work harder and doesn't have any other benefits such a man will die pretty fast.
He likes his wife and children. There is no real love for marriage was of course arranged. But they are his family and he will burn cities for them if the need arises.
When old king died without a good heir Baron supported the man who would be the best king and not the one who had most rights for the throne. In the process they both and their allies killed a tortured a couple thousand people and they don't feel even a little bad about it.
>How do I make an evil character that's fun to play as, and relatively compelling as opposed to a complete douchebag arsehole
You can't be afraid of letting your badguys love what they do and enjoy when they go ham.
Easy.
Step 1.
Have over 90iq
Now with your new acquired lack of mental retardation and ape-tier iq you can figure out the other steps.
I will never understand people who apply the everyone thinks of themselves as good argument for characters as if every evil character has some noble end goal.
Sometimes a bastard is just a bastard, you don't have to go around showing off how evil you are to everyone you meet just like how your chaotic good warrior isnt spending all his money building orphanages in every city he goes to.
Have a goal and have no issue taking the easy route to attain it even if the easy route involves poisoning the entire city guard and setting fire to the marketplace.
Watch Firefly, pay attention to Jayne.
There you go.
>Yeah, I noticed how the prisoners get less food that we do.
Not an issue, prisoners are not supposed to maintain combat readiness, there is zero reason to feed prisoners as much as your own people, so long as they recieve enough for it to not be considered mistreatment you're golden.
Just watch any movie or show where the protagonist is a criminal.
Remember that no one thinks of themselves as the villain. Everybody has a justification for their actions.