How do you evil PC?

How do you evil PC?

In a superhero campaign? Something like pic related.

In other settings, though, I've done it plenty of ways. My last EEEEEVIL character was a Drow priestess of Lolth who tagged along with the group because it was Out of the Abyss and a rival family had gotten her sent to jail before the start of the campaign.

I generally don't, unless it's an all evil party.

I let player do stuff without telling them "Man, you're sick fuck", at the end they always end as fucking evil asshole.

Like this!

Give them a motivation or goal that always favors working with the party. Switching sides and siding with the BBEG might be the 'evul' thing to do, but you're out for yourself. And at the end of the day you'll get a lot more money, whores, Slaneesh tier drugs or whatever by saving the world than letting it become a ruined husk.

As for working with the party? Set yourself up as a necessary evil, a pragmatist, consumed by desire for BLOODY revenge against the BBEG, or whatever. Evil characters can work with a good party just fine, as long as you're not being an intentional cunt about it. Evil =/= opposing, it's a world view.

Pic related for a good example. This bitch is a fucking torturer who gets off on psychological warfare, but she's still teamed up with the good guys to save the world from super-terrorists.

The core of them is typically extreme selfishness. My highest level (neutral) evil PC got into a situation where the all-evil party was going to be wiped out by goodies, she instantly sold them out and tried to repent, and then, as soon as the tables turned the other way, she chain lightninged the knights and priests who had captured her.

In short, I play evil characters like cowards.

Doing evil things to safeguard your people from a even greater evil

Depends, there are as many reasons to be a villain as there are a hero. The problem comes in that many people play one note, stereotypical villains, and that many times the playing group hasn't consented to having villainy (and the treachery that goes with being villainous) in their group. Playing an oh so ebil {deliberate misspelling} backstabbing douche villain in a group who is playing good and haven't asked for it is a recipe for may "That Guy" posts on Veeky Forums. But if your group agrees and is willing to roleplay, as opposed to roll-play, then it can be awesome.

One that have worked for me and my group:

>A cowardly, and extremely corrupt undercover police officer who won by virtue of convincing the other corrupt police player to carry a chest full of C4 and a Van full of C4 to the ultimate showdown with the other PCs. They hated but respected him as he played an evil character living by his own code and showing courage sort of villain. Me I was just a cowardly pissing myself afterthought. As my character had the explosives skills, and through passing notes to the GM (we all did this) I rigged the explosives and gave him a dummy detonator, his plan was to appeal to their honor whilst preparing an ambush to wipe the good cops out, with the explosives as a bluff/last resort if he was going to die. Naturally he expected me to lead the ambush (I had cowardly acted as his sycophant up until this stage in the campaign, despite being a double crossing coward all the way he thought I'd go along) They had planned for such an ambush and went to the final confrontation prepared for a shootout. Me, I kept the real detonator and waited til the final confrontation/speech was going down in character observing through binoculars (we used to all be part of the same unit taking down organized crime, Ninjas and Superspies game) before pressing the button from a safe distance and wiping them all out. We still talk about it.

>like edgy isekai loli trash

Usually polite and somewhat insane.
Child eating swamp hermit who'd invite you to tea then eat your corpse to spare rations if you died
Nurgle worshiping sorceress who does terrible shit but is always happy to convert by silver tongue AND then plague.

An insane ork on a rogue trader ship who considers himself the baron of "da engine room" and collects taxes from the workers by punching their teeth in and probably dropped the rogue trader before the former into the engine for arguing with him and still tosses people in it for pissing him off

You know, that kind of evil

The last time I played an evil PC, he was a LE Tiefling Fighter/Eldritch Knight who wanted to be the main villain of the campaign. However an even greater evil emerged and destroyed his evil barony, so he decided to join the PCs in a quest for revenge.

That's a lot of metagaming, user. Shame on you.

you make a well written and interesting character. They'll be evil to someone.

You realize that evil is relative. Raiding a village and raping all the women might be evil in your average campaign, but it's par the course for, say, a viking campaign.

Just make an evil PC whose plans don't take up their time of clash with the party or plot. At that point it's mostly pointless to be Evil, sure, but you generally shouldn't play an Evil character unless you all plan for it from the beginning.

>evil is relative
Not in systems with alignments (aka shit settings).

In DnD, alignment is a real concept, but it should mostly apply to cosmic/divine powers. You don’t need an alignment to tell if someone is cruel, but if someone is literally channeling dark powers from some deity beyond, then that’s beyond normal moral quandary.

Same goes for good, law, and chaos. Unless you’re very powerful or are drawing power from some outside source, you barely even blip as the alignment. Spells affect you if you’re aligned that way.

The real issue is nit that alignments are inherently bad, but rather that people obsess and mishandle them. To half the players in the party, alignment is just a detail regarding how they interpret their characters’ relation with the concepts good/evil and law/chaos that doesn’t necessarily need to see any mechanical use most of the time.

Pretty much this. The evil PC might care little about the ethical treatment of others, but mostly restrains himself for the sake of benefiting from society/the party, while being willing to break those restraints in sufficiently extreme situations ("Someone had to kill the human sacrifice or the world would have ended.") Also, no reason you can't have friends and loved ones while still enjoying killing people.

also how I /that guy/

I'm playing an evil wizard in my current pathfinder game. The premise is that this one kingdom is suffering from a lot of turmoil and the leader fucked off. He uses a lot of contracts and things since he worships Asmodeus. He's fucked over a lot of people around the party, but never the party. The reason being that they're the secret to his success. He buffs them, makes him look good, and the paladin sells up how his honorable friend has been a helpful guide to all the local electors who will decide the next king. So far he's gotten knights turned robbers to swear fealty to him only to order them into a fortress where he told the last holdout of the army that they were surrendering and had them executed, vastly boosting his reputation. He also made a vow to a bunch of centaurs that he would make no direct move of aggression against them to secure passage. Instead, he just told a bunch of ogres where they were staying because he needed some stuff they were guarding and I somehow managed to pass a bluff check on the paladin.

Explain further.

ABSOLUTE MADMAN

I take it two ways.
Either an idealist who has some convoluted way of achieving his goals or believes the end justifies the means, because they think the end if just.
Or, I play them as edgy/twisted and try to get the most fun out of them. Once played a Khorne Berserker-like barbarian in D&D who enjoyed cooking and carried all his cooking needs on his back.
His favorite meat to work with was human, especially when they've been tenderized with his hammer, his pestle was a portable ram, and he was really good at flaying people.

Not a direct one to one but work with the party because they're stopping something that is ruining the paradise I'm creating.

>as evil PC
selfish goals
disregard for good of others/morality
backstabbing/treachery
underhanded methods

>as /that guy/
backstabbing
massive dick
party killing

Loving and affable, and all too willing to follow the letter of the law, but give 'em even one good or deserving reason to slit your throat and you can expect a morning visit from some hired goon or trained assailant. Also, many of them are often greedy as a matter of course, though never to the point of explicitly turning on the party or making undue trouble for them.

Evil, but deeply loyal to his or her friends.

First, have them be opposed to the Big Bad's actions. Any reason is a good reason, even, "I'M THE ONLY ONE ALLOWED TO X!"
Second, never fuck over the party. You can take a little extra loot when you find it, but you'll never steal from or attack another party member if you can avoid it.
Thos're the only two rules you need to play an evil PC.

...

I'm playing a neutral evil rogue in a campaign where the rest of the party is lawful or good. He got hired into helping them, and will generally play nice and try to complete the party's goals, because he won't get paid otherwise.

He's evil in that he will abandon the party if all seems lost, and he won't hesitate to kill weaker people if they attempt to do something he doesn't like. He's basically a selfish cunt through and through.

Less Edgy,
but more despite for life
sacriledging against life and good were he can.

playing an evil character imo is more about embracing those tough decisions that benefit self.

>capture a village as part of an insurgency?
survivors swear loyalty or die

>need to kill the mayor but somehow the child sees the final blow
Kill Junior too. An angry son becomes an angry man, who will take action when he can

Things like that. granted there's a lot of overlap with LN in those regards.

Questions for the evil PC when making decisions:
>Can I turn a profit with this?
>how does it benefit me?
>indebted people are pliable people

The only experience I have with evil PC's was bad, unless it is the setting, like playing an all drow party. Most evil players ruin the game the first session or are insufferable cunts you'd never join sides with. I straight out murder them these days when they go all evil. It saves time.

honestly most of the servants or even the masters would make for believable but fairly shitty PC's

Well I like Lawful Evil, less enforcer style and more Lawful Neutral but more Ends justify the means sort of guy, evil doesn't need to be a tyrant going "Mwhahaha"

Just act like a generic adventurer/murderhobo.

This is a good idea, but you have to hope that the DM doesn't decide that the only way for your character to reach that goal is by switching sides.

I think some DMs do that so they'll get a cool twist, and the last time I got shit for switching sides when the DM decided to creatively tie the backstory of my character with the backstory of the bad guys. Doing that to tempt a non-evil character to switch sides is rather interesting, but I'm not sure what he expected in this case.

Stylishly and successfully

Two years running in 5E herding a party of cats and keeping them from getting killed due to having the tactical sense of a boulder rolling downhill and the math skills of a 4 year old. I guess I'm pretty much an Antihero by this point

I had a fairly memorable campaign once where I played someone elses (as in, not the PC party's) BBEG, who got her evul tower destroyed, ring of power thrown into magma, and to top it all off was then nailed to a wall for twenty years until her flesh rotted away enough for her to fall to the floor.

The campaign started with the PCs all meeting in a tavern, trying to get in contact with their shady contact, and accidentally bugging the hell out of BBEGina. She tells them to fuck off, and being adventurers (and still under the impression I was supposed to be their contact), they don't. Then the contact entered the bar, found them, and apologized for being late and started explaining the plot before he realized I was there.

Turns out, the BBEG of this campaign was the "Hero" of the last one. It was very Overlord-esque.

Sounds like marriage material to me

>Sounds like marriage material to me
Eh, she was all skin and bone.

Maybe he's not into this thicc fad.

>tanya
>evil

Not only is she/he a pacifist, she's also just doing her job

Well enough that I'm not allowed to play them.

Tea was an aberrant blooded sorceress, who maxed out intimidate. she was very polite, well mannered, quiet, and terribly disturbing individual. Her best friends were a neutral good bard and a lawful good fighter. She was very much lawful and evil. she doted on her friends, however, and would avoid doing things to upset them in person. Her pragmatic streak was a million miles wide, so behind their backs she would cast bleed to finish off stablized enemies, mail would be assassins back to their employers entombed in barrels of acid with with politely worded warnings of 'be nice or else' after they had been captured and released on their own recognizance by the others, and laying waste to the thieves guild for framing her pet bard for debt reneging.

Very gentle, sweet, and totally and utterly ruthless.

I usually do a variant of High Lawful High Evil character when I do decide to be evil. Ruthless, selfish, needlessly cruel, but 100% upfront about his intentions and is loath to lie or break a promise/deal.
That way its conceivable for you to be in the same party of good non-paladin PCs and able to work with them.

>pacifist
uh user I'm pretty sure that I see her murder people several times

>doing her job
and her job is murder

My second-last PC was a NE ex-pirate Blood Hunter. She'd obviously never describe herself as such, but she did have an unspoken understanding that there's evil, and then there's Evil. As in, you can steal some shit or break some kneecaps or even kill a guy if you gotta, but you don't fuck with souls, and you don't bring demons or undead into it.

She was also a big believer in the old adage "don't shit where you eat".

>the saga of tanya the evil