Is it possible for a player to roleplay a legitimately evil character not looking for redemption in a good-neutral...

Is it possible for a player to roleplay a legitimately evil character not looking for redemption in a good-neutral party without [much] risk of them backstabbing the group, being a nutcase, or just being the resident edgelord that should technically be some shade of ____ neutral character?

Make him a giant racist. Sure he wants the necromancer to go down and not take over the lands like any other sensible person, but those knife ears are scum and should all die.

>you guys are cool, and I actually honestly like you, but I really believe in the diea that the world should be goberned by a single tyrant and that such person should be me, so I'm gonna go with you to the end of the world until the time comes for me to claim my rightful position on top of the world by whatever means are necessary
>you can come with me, though, that'd be swole

yes, but their goals and his goals need to align fairly well. Your PC might need the Gem of C'tahan to become a lich, but first they need to pry it from the great beast's own eye socket while he is rampaging through a city. Your best bet is to not do this with a paladin in the group and just bluff your way through.

>racism does not imply evil. actually killing those elves might be, but simply having the opinion does not perclude evilness.

Fuck off cunt

Play evil character that follows law to the letter.
If there is a loophole that let's him fuck someone over he will do it.

With complete disregard for common sense, to him law is just a game. He will find any error, any leeway to gain advantage.


Cold logical, yet caring about the party. He won't fuck them over unless they do this first. He will find all underhanded ways of helping the party, and occasionally will work in shadows - without their knowledge.

Add a dash of aristocratic background, some underground connections and you have one messed up party face. Or maybe add connection to some secret society.

>"I can't conquer if there's nothing to conquer"
>Guy with noble goals, but questionable-at-best methods
>Agrees with heroes on what needs to be done, but believes that end justifies the means
>Social Darwinist who sees the heroes as having potential to be the strongest and most fit
>Selfish, immoral treasure hunter/bloodthirsty murderhobo who sees the team as a way of sating ther desires

Maybe try a "noble demon" type of character.

He's an evil asshole, but he rigorously sticks by his set of principles and as such will honor his contracts and promises.

You can spin this both in a more pragmatic "I recognize I'll need powerful allies to accomplish big things, so naturally I care about my reputation a lot" or the more flamboyant "puh-lease even evil has standards, I will not stoop so low as to backstab my own travelling companions" kind of way. Maybe he's even showing good faith hoping to eventually convert the party to his cause and make genuine allies out of him, tho pushing that agenda may not fly with players that have other plans for their characters, so you probably should have a backup explanation for why he's sticking with the party.

>"Look, I'll steal from and kill a whole lot of people. Anybody, really. But I like you guys (or: I need you guys), so ya'll ain't on that list of people. Just, uh, don't ask me too many questions about my odd jobs. Also, if someone's bullying you, I can take care of that problem real easy. Super easy."

"Protective evil" is a good, practical approach.

An evil character can become friends with a good-aligned party. That takes care of backstabbing. Their goals can align just fine too. The good party might want to slay that dragon to save the village, while the evil character may just want to gain access to the dragon's hoard. As long as there aren't any cartoon villain or lawful stupid characters in the party it's fine.

I mean, there's a pretty good webcomic with a party consisting of a Neutral Evil Wizard, a Neutral Good Fighter, a Chaotic Neutral minmaxed gish, and a Lawful Neutral Rogue who exploits contracts and the like as a means of thievery.

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were evil as fuck and they did not stab their party in the back. They gave their party huge as fuck profits and bribes. Evil is not just being as malicious as possible in every situation no matter what.

90% of Veeky Forumss rp problems would be fixed if you stopped thinking human beings were cartoon characters with zero nuance.

Yeah, you just have to pick your evil acts or understand the meta
>Lawful Evil
PC's don't like you, but they understand your code, persuasion and Charisma can get you through the rest, and you can easily slip away to do your own privatized thing if need be

You can justify everything you do because you're a charismatic strong reliable figure, what matters is whether or not you've made too many enemies along the way by what you do, people care more for your qualities opposed to the negatives and that works fine for you.

>Neutral Evil
The Stereotype of you being an unreliable backstabber is over the top at best, Players should know the means of keeping you on a leash is to keep you well fed, or the other case at hand as per alignment is to be the guy who keeps thing morally grey or is otherwise, in effect a corrupter, because you make people fall from their original positions because of the stance you take, or you could simply be an uncaring immoral individual in practice, you may be incredibly likable an sociable even.

Breakup occurs at random, many will be at unease around you, many might try to give you the benefit of the doubt, many will persecute you and you may take offense, or always walk the fine line

>Chaotic Evil
You are on a leash, or have your alignment tenancies based in expressional freedoms considered less-than savory by others, often misunderstood, but you carry a brutal honesty about you used to tear down counter-arguments to what it is you do, no matter how self-desructive and counter-productive things can potentially get. Your lack of self control is however, the main grievance your party has with you, and no one can doubt that you have the easiest path to power opposed to all other PCs.

Effectively, you can be right about everything, but you end up debasing everything and everyone around you and are simply not worth the sacrifices as a companion

It worked in a low-fantasy, get-treasure-and-babes game I played. Two PCs were evil, but they just played it as meaning selfish and not caring about helping people uncompensated and never tried to fuck with the rest of the group or burn orphanages or whatever. It really relies on how well you can trust your players not to be disruptive more than alignment.

The bigger bad/common enemy is how you make it work.

I am evil and do evil things, but this asshole is making things difficult for everybody, including me, so how about a truce until we kill them?

Sure. It's not like preferring different methods inherently means you need different goals.

Yes. But it has to be an evil that doesn't screw over the campaign.

Once, I made a Neutral Evil character for Rise of the Runelords. I decribed him as "A mix of Varrick from Legend of Korra, Dampierre from Soul Calibur, and Waluigi." Cowardly, craven, and would do anything for money. He started the campaign trying to scam a dying man out of his fortune, and brought the party together by insisting he repay them for the use of potions he got for free from a church (there was a goblin attack at the time.) His motivation was basically to become financially and politically powerful.

Being super greedy and cowardly, he worked especially well with the lawful good party member who didn't care about money and would prefer pacifism whenever it's an option.

How long until the paladin casts "detect evil" and goes postal?

You could also be an evil cultist who try to convert the party.
Or it was a prophecy made by an evil oracle that you must help them.
It must be something where the means (adventuring with a party) help an evil end.

I agree with this. "You willingly participate in these laws-- I merely carry them out to their fullest extent."

Then if they say they're Lawful Evil, the DM (or other party members) can argue that their literalist interpretations of the law actually undermine its rule and therefore should be considered Chaotic. Free character conflict.

I've had a power-hungry bastard of a noble house. All that "heroism" stuff was great way to build up a good reputation and goodwill from the populace/nobles/king so she'll get a shot at getting a title of her own. Also, money, magic items, knowledge and all that stuff that comes with being a high-level adventurer. At first, those other guys were just meatshields and minions, but she grew fond of their quirks over time. Lot of stuff going behind the party's back, she had whole second persona build up, separate from her public appearance. Also, "good" actions for selfish reasons. "Let's show mercy to BBEG's rank soldiers, they were just doing what they've been told!" And they will do what they're being told later, when I hire them to work for me.

Yeah sure. You can be evil and still ask members of the party for advice and listen to them when they say "please don't"/

It's fucking easy to play an evil character without you idiots getting your panties in a bunch over "muh edge" nonsense.

Just roleplay a possessive narcissist aspiring to be a better person because he feels guilt over narcissism, although this guilt is spawned from viewing it as a personal weakness, and hating an imperfection his self as a narcissist. As a possessive self centered man he loves his companions dearly, and views them as family, and refuses to let anything happen to them or let go of them because of the joy they bring him.

Because of this he goes to extreme or even horrifying lengths to safeguard them, as he is incapable of seeing why he should let go of things he cares for, because it's about HIS love, and not their's. If a party member is taken hostage by a group of bandits he slaughters everybody, including the women and children to get them back. When an organization threatens the party or one of its members, he burns it all down. If one of the party members dies, he engages in necromancy and human sacrifice to bring them back. To him everything is secondary to that which he loves, and if anything stands in the way it must be destroyed.

His conflict is the question if firstly he genuinely cares for the party or merely views them as things like toys, and secondly if he would actually sacrifice himself for the party, or if his 'love' begins at the costs of others and ends at his.

It is. We had a women running a lawful evil barbarian fluffed out as a recently orphaned peasant girl who did what your describing. She's with the group because our cleric healed her and now she's traveling as what amounts to his bodyguard. She figured out the world is a terrible place and wants to protect and provide for the genuinely good and innocent people she finds in it, like the party. She thinks they're fools, but her fools. Unfortunately she tends to do so in less the pleasant means.

Sure, evil characters aren't obligated to do anything. They're actually less of a risk of a disruption than a good character, which is obligated to act a certain way.

Anakin Skywalker: The Post

he's right you know

Yes, except there is a shitton of observed proof that carrying those prejudices will influence your behavior towards whoever you have prejudices for, regardless of whether or not you realize it.
Your prejudice will create justification, as ipso facto as it needs to be.

Sure, just play the Black Whirlwind or Canderous.

Black Whirlwind was chaotic as fuck, but I'm not sure about evil (it's been a while since I've played it, though, perhaps I've just forgot)

He was pretty OK with killing anyone that got in his way for the hell of it.

I can not like a group and still consider it wrong to be evil towards them. Take baptists for example, I don't like them, but if suddenly given total power I would neither restrict their religion or persecute them. I just don't like them.

"Hey, you're off to kill orcs and take their stuff? I love killing people and stealing their stuff, I should come with you!"
One of my favourite characters was a goblin con artist tagging along with the 'heroes' as an opertunity to get rich quick and maybe point them towards killing her tribe's rivals. After making sure all her enemies were put to death by paladins, she returned home with all her treasure to sieze power.
She was an unrepentant manipulative bitch, but she was also useful to the party. Plus they found her occasional attempts at being a femme fatale hilarious because... Goblin.

I played a goblin transmuter once who was personally loyal to a Good PC despite being NE himself. He was perfectly happy to torture a bard who'd crossed the party to the point of removing her tongue so she couldn't cast again, and tended to cover that sort of thing up. He saw his liege as pure of heart in a fundamentally impure world and was enthusiastically willing to get his hands dirty instead. Now that I think about it, I basically played him like an L5R Scorpion in that regard. Like, the guy was bad news, but loyal to a fault.

This is how it works in Shadowrun. I don't see why it wouldn't work in D&D. Desire for money and power can motivate cooperation as well as competition.

So basically it's generally fine if it's. A goblin? Do you think its because goblins are often more comic-reliefy than other evil characters, which takes the edge off?

He's a lawyer, or the setting's equivalent of a lawyer.

Sure. The thing you have to understand is that good is limiting, evil is not.

Good defines a set of morals and and list of taboo actions you shouldn't do. Anything that breaks those codes and violates those taboos is, by default, evil. An evil and can still do good things and remain evil, but a good man cannot do evil things and be called good.

To put it simply: "I'm not an evil man because I like to kill torture and kill people. I'm an evil man because I'm willing to do it if it gets me what I want."

You can have a genuinely evil fuck in your party of good and neutral dudes. Most of the time, he should seem like a normal person. He fights monsters with them, eats meals with them. He likes his friends, and is even genuinely capable of friendship and loyalty.

But whenever breaking the law or harming the innocent is the quickest path to success, he has no problem doing that. He won't consider that special. Maybe he understands that he has to hide this fact from others because not hiding it causes problems for him, maybe he is oblivious to the fact that what he is doing is monstrous.

If your party is saving an orphanage from a group of monsters, your evil guy is the one to pick the slowest orphan, knife him in the guy so he'll scream, and toss him behind the party to distract and slow down the uncoming horde of flesh eating beasts. Because he doesn't care about that orphan, it helps himself and other people he DOES care about, and he'll never think doing that was somehow vile or wrong.

You can roleplay as Hitler.

Good Guy's mindset: Treat everyone as your friend unless he is your enemy.

Bad Guy's mindset: Treat everyone as your enemy unless he is your friend.

There, I solved morality.

I don't know. Transmuter guy here. He was actually a minor NPC I took over and fleshed out,so like, he was a goblin when I got him. I definitely didn't play him as comic relief.

Sure

Being a dick who genuinely wants what is best for himself at the expense of others isn't mutually exclusive with having friends, and wanting your friends to also be successful isn't necessarily a Good trait.

lol look at this racist

Heres the guts of it for me, OP.
The PURPOSE OF THE GAME is my core guiding principle.

_I_ would define it such that the PURPOSE of the game is that the party is a group of PLAYERS that want to make some sort of interactive fiction adventure that their characters co-operate with together to help realize.

THIS IS KEY!!! All else must fall in service to this, and this is my foundational for all further principles.

So.

What does having an evil character at the table do?
Does it work against the guiding principle? If so IT SHOULD GO.
If it doesn't we can talk further. Is it about the player creating some grand scheme so he can betray the other players CHARACTERS and the PLAYER can feel superior to 'outwitting' some people that were only traveling with them for contrived OOC reasons.

This is like cheering yourself for driving across the finishline in an automated wheelchair... you were enabled. Was it the enablers fault for enabling you?

The decision to have an evil character in the party must be something that the other players are somehow on board with, as it really isn't running with the overall narrative principle, at least at first glance.

Special snowflakedesu.

Sure! My character believes that loyalty and strength are the highest virtues- he'll put aside his person views and desires for the clan- in this case the group. Hell fight and die for them, and always back them up regardless of other factors!

He just also has no respect for the weak, and would have quite a fun time kicking a dog to death, or burning a village. He obeys the rules of human society only because he'd be overwhelmed with numbers if he didn't, firmly believes his own Darwinian raiding culture to always be right, and considers thinking, intelligence, contemplation, and acceptance of other ways to be signs of deviancy and moral weakness.

If you're part of his group, he'll back you to the hilt. If you aren't, you're meat or an enemy.

>ogrillon tribesman

An important consideration is lack of restraint. My character would have a good time tormenting an animal. But why would he, if he has other pleasures? I enjoy creme brûlée, but I don't always seek if out- I get it when it is convenient. Likewise my character enjoys tormenting the weak- but he enjoys fighting more. He's not a devil- he isn't contractually obliged to hurt people.

He does it when it's convenient or he feels like it. And he can be convinced not to do it if you present him with something more enjoyable.

This.
Right now I'm playing a petty, cruel, underhanded little shit of a thug that believes one of the other PC's is a brilliant leader that he can latch on to. He figures that an honorable dude that looks out for his team will lead him to a cushy retirement.

I would like to play a Hellsing type of scenario where the rest of the party are genuinely good people trying to hold on the leash of some sadistic overpowered monster who is for some reason completely loyal to the party members.