How to play an EVIL character WITHOUT ruining DND

My next lawful evil character is gonna be based on the saying "for the greater good"

Currently attempting a difficult evil char idea with high level PCs and incredible magic items.
Everything is hinging on this group of individuals to sace the world from several different threats. One of which is a cursed personality sickness known as "The wack".
A disease that travels to highest authority of civilization and eliminates thousands of lives in the process. Also known by me to being the god of insanity.
My wizard contracted the wack while he touched a cursed book splitting his mind and fracturing it leaving him with a personality mesh. He has home brew rules for swapping personalities. I made backstory for each one and names so my players can identify who is out based on how i act.
The wack and my wizard have constant battles in hisnhead for control. And though my char is really strong the party didnt exactly help much in his fight against this wack. So at rhis point the wacl is winning

Oh, fuck, I don't have that human, that did something bad to me, cause I am one xd

I think this is a really shallow approach to playing evil, and honestly it sounds like taking advantage of your friends’ opinion of you is your advice in order to settle their issues with your character. Evil-aligned characters don’t have to be jerks at all like you’re narrating them. Also, I put quite a bit of storytelling effort into each of my characters, so if they suddenly die in an unfitting situation, I would obviously be upset, but if there was resolution in their death, I think I could live with it.

What? Who do you play with? Do people really have personal issues disconnecting themselves or others from the characters? I find it very striking to even think about but I guess I must consider everyone's life choices lead them to be exposed to different people.

In the first campaign i was able to finish. I played as a necromancer, who while helping the party do their quest and defeat the god of death/necromancy. Was using my ability to raise the dead to create lieutenants out of the BBEG's lieutenants so i could dethrone him and take over the world as the new BBEG of the next campaign. The whole time i was sending dms to the DM(we did our campaigns on discord because all of us were in different states and one of us was in England) about what i was doing and he would tell me what i needed to roll/beat for it to work. We got to the end and my plan worked. Everyone was blindsided and i was able to make my character's dream a reality. It was honestly pretty cool. And way easier than people think it is.
Also in that second campaign i did not play as the necromancer again. Instead i played as a regular character with no ulterior motive or secret goal.

Chaotic evil = Lawful Good

I... play almost exclusively evil characters. My main is a devout Lolth-sworn drow. If evil is defined by a character who prioritizes their own needs over others, how does that make the characters expecting their own needs to always be prioritized not evil? Also, if you as the player need to break character "every few minutes" to remind the table you're not evil in real life... are the other players all 8 years old? I would highly recommend finding a table of adults who understand the difference between pretend and reality. The key to playing an "evil" character harmoniously is to understand what motives them and how their goals align and differ from the rest of the party's. I'm playing a drow in party with a cleric of Lathander. Both are motivated by their faith. They find common ground on that. There's no need to break character. The other players understand what my character's motives are and he has a vested interest in their continued support, so he prioritizes cooperation. It's that simple.

I am playing a chaotic evil character in a dnd campaign, and I think this video has hit exactly what a good way to play an evil pc is. Another important thing that needs to be done is creating a good motivation to treat the other party members well.

My pc is highly manipulative and is kind and helpful to the party, because they are extremely powerful and further his goals. He convinced the lawful-good paladin in the party to help kill a crime-lord and then proceeded to take control of the syndicate.

"How did it make you feel when someone did something for you for nothing?"

That's very suspicious behavior ....

I made a character minmaxed for lethality. I wondered what the motivation for the character training so hard to be and, maybe it's mine? It just wants to kill. That's pure chaotic evil. but I don't want to ruin anything the others are doing, so "She is wise enough to know that all she has to do is hang around dangerous people for long enough, and her chance will come soon enough, again and again, to kill."

Selfish doesn't mean loveless and your character can grow to like the party and seek do to hide their lack of morality. They might even risk their life because they don't want to lose anything. Althought to them, a freind dieing or going off to live happlily ever after, but never seeing them again are just as bad. If dark elf, then they could be old and bored, wanting to experance somthing new. They might pretend to be good, but kill anyone who threatens their new fun.

One of my favorite "evil character" moments, murdered someone while using disguise self and actor feat to impersonate the BBEG let the family see me before running away, then recruit the family members help to go after the BBEG. the players all knew what happened but my character kept it secret so in game no one knew. prior to that my PC had only done petty thieving or killed during open combat sessions, so showing my high charisma rogue was actually a sociopath took everyone by surprise.

This is a ridiculous supposition. 😡 You can't boil down the comparisons between good & evil in such a way.
You're really trying to open up the door for players to feel enticed into playing evil characters. This is just my opinion but there should never be evil-aligned characters at the table AT ANY TIME. The 2ndary goal for any good DM is to create a world were the characters can become heroic doing good things. 1st goal being/having fun at the game.
D&D should be an escape for people that encourages people to be good in a dark-forboding, evil world, where at any time a kid armed with an AK-47 can walk into a school in Texas firing at will, killing any kid he sees.
We as a society have enuff problems without allowing someone to play evil characters in a game that was meant to be good triumphing over evil.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Anyone who allows kids (even adults) to play evil characters in any role-playing game is contributing to the problems we have in society. If you have a problem with my opinion, tough sh_t.

For me, the best experience playing an evil character was with my first warlock.
Our previous characters died during their last bossfight, implying that our next characters would start at lvl 6 (i feel like this was really important because it gave me the room to write a more complex background than just a simple lvl 1 guy).

I really wanted to try an evil character without ruining other player’s experience, so i worked with my DM and came to a really nice conclusion of playing this warlock with separated souls.
This was a blast for me, because in his backstory he was straight a serial killer who liked to see life being ripped away from his victims, but his patron got enough of it and decided to make him a goofball that kept joking about everything that happened to the party and would feel bad for even trying to defend himself with violence.

His evil side sometimes would come off because of lore stuff and was really fun playing an entirely different character when it happened.

Imo A good example for a dnd character who is evil Kagain from Baldur's Gate. Greedy and selfish, but not going out of the way to be horrifyingly evil and murder hoboish. While apathetic most of the times it's also shown that he does genuinely have standards and their are even acts that he wouldn't do (which could be used to justify an evil character sticking around with a group if they aren't doing it out of friendship).

A great way to play an evil character is to play an asshole with friends. Remember that no one is evil 100% of the time and even bad people often have people they care about. That should be the party for your character.

Honestly an easy way to find out if your other players or dm are bad is 1. make a character. 2. Tell everyone your playing a Chaotic Evil character. and last 3. Play the character as good, charitable, kind, giving, and agreeable as possible. If the dm and/or players are looking to be hostile with you regardless you should leave that table. they are looking for any excuse to treat someone poorly and it's not good (at least not for you) to associate with them.

Here's a character that's technically a "Lawful good" Paladin but a certain character doesn't feel that way...
Artorius Collbrande, the "villain" of Tales of Berseria.
And Velvet Crowe, who is "evil".

Dude i wanted tips and ideas hahahahaha

Ill like to try playing as a lawful evil character.

I am the dm in a campain where the players are a chaotic evil druid and necromanzer, neutral evil rouge, lawfull evil warlock and a chaotic neutral fighter.
Help me… xD

Helpful video!

In addition to what has been explained in the video …

I think most complains towards evil PCs are not because the character is evil, but because said actions come at the expense of the party and their goals (ruin an elaborated plan, kill/anger an important NPC after managing to get into their good graces or de-escalate a situation, steal the hard-earned magic items from the party during a long rest), if said evil actions were to benefit the party without a true repercussion, then they might question the means but couldn’t deny that said actions bring great results (it’s tricky, but can be done).

People don’t hate evil PCs, people just hate rude players.

"how upset would i be .... oh no any way NEXT!" grabs stack of 30 PC that i have made and looking at some of them like I don't even know wo you are.

To me its kinda easy to rolplay a evil character, just make the character someone who priorize itself and its important people over the others and dont have that much problems ignoring the "moral" action with a more..."the most important thing are the final result", "morality and honor dont bring food on the table or pay the taxes" (thats evil in DnD, to me its be a realistic person). After that you just choose if it follow rules (moral/social/or its own rules), ussualy follow them except if it will gain something or have a mentality of "no rules".

In a sense isnt that hard, the standar mercenary/adventurer for money in theory its an evil character, im here to do the mission and gain the money, not to save every damm person in problems

I WAS HERE WHEN ASSASSIN ONLY HAD 340 SUBS

Keep in mind; humanity as a whole survives by cooperation. There's a reason people need socialization but not a need to be isolated. This applies to good and evil in humanity's terms both in real life and in TTRPGs.

I loved the revelation of evil aligned characters being more than just killers. It really gave perspective on ways to redefine the alignment in a way that isn't as cheap as just being a murder hobo. I also felt like the importance of separating yourself from your PC was golden advice.

I've always wanted to try playing a character vastly different from myself, but felt insecure about being judged or being misunderstood, especially when playing with people who may not necessarily know me very well. Personally as a human and player, I despise conflict and have difficulty dealing with adversity, but role-playing a character that exists to cause these things would be an interesting way to explore developing those skills.

A paladin would do this well too, but what's the fun in playing an alignment you would exemplify irl anyway?

90% of PCs are actually evil, but they just dont know yet

Great video, well said

If you want to play an evil character just don't be hostile towards your companions they are helping you fight why would you want to be antagonizing them.
And be mindful of what boundaries you shouldn't cross in the story you are trying to make it will most definitively make people uncomfortable at the table and get you kicked out if you cross them.

I and my friends have played evil characters but we had the understanding that we need to work together. We can cheat or mess with the other pc's but we ate working together not against each other. The only time we have had a problem with another PC was when they were chaotic neutral and didn't work with the group. Don't play stupid evil make it work, find common interests that can keep the party together. A strong leader can help to keep the group focused and can deal with some infighting.

this is exactly how i define good amd evil in my games

sick

Evil people seek to be perceived as good. This either involves doing good while others are watching and doing evil while no one is looking or "reputation laundering" by associating themselves with others who do good to get reputation by way of proximity to genuine altruists. I often play a low level evil person who does very little outward evil while acquiring resources and reputation. If the character survives to mid level, I retire him or her, having essentially "seeded" a future villain. The same way that a criminal would case a bank, ideally as a full on employee of said bank, my evil characters only have subtle signs that they are not altruistically motivated. It is more akin to seeding the grounds of a long con. Depending on the GM or players, I will either retire the character prior to their face-heel turn or, with GM permission, expose my villainy and become a villain for the campaign briefly. In either case, I transition to an actual heroic character at that point. IRL, I am the nicest person imaginable so it is very obvious that my villain characters are not self-inserts. Alternatively, my nice guy persona may be a ruse. Beware.

(Written before watching) I have played a semi-evil character before! He left a lot of broken hearts, murdered hobos, was boisterous and had a pact with an unalligned demon queen (Wasn't D&D, but I guess in D&D he would be a warlock as he had a couple of spells and some supernatural boons like insane dexterity, more than the elves, and could shapechange). At night he just went away to have some fun, and the murders only happened when he was away from the group. One time we had to get informations about a warehouse with suspected cultists, my PC split from the group who watched the house to get first hand informations. My PC went into an alley near-by and asked a hobo, gave him a BUNCH of money for the informations and then just stabbed him in the throat before dumping the body somewhere. No one found out about it but I got the informations in minutes while the others wasted hours and learning nothing. He eventually died in combat, I think... not wearing armor and only having a short sword was not the smartest idea I ever had.

(Written after watching) I don't really like the allignments, they are too strict while most people are more complex. For seperating the character from oneself voice acting might help, just a tiny bit to get into the headspace and for detachment. Not some super gruff voice, slight intonation or accent changes might be enough.

Interesting take. This will have to marinate for a bit

probably one of the major hurdles to get over is, if your character is evil, what it keeping them with the party? what is preventing your character from throwing the party under the bus and making an escape in a dangerous situation?

I agree with a lot of what you said but you have missed out one key thing about playing as a evil character and that is you need to be able to work with your players if you don't do this you could end up getting kicked from the table even evil characters have friends and love ones the only difference is a evil character views on them is not going to be the same as a good character view on friends and love ones I am playing as a lawful evil Hobgoblin Bladesinger who was a mercenary veteran so her mentality is if you hurt someone in her band you are hurting her she kinda has the mob mindset

Nice vid. I've been wondering bout this for a while cuz I've had a character concept or 2 that invloved them being evil. Maybe not necessarily pure evil or irredeemable. More like they are evil because that's what they know and understand. Maybe depending on how the story unfolds they grow and change

“How upset would I be if my character died next session” is absolutely the spookiest thing I think most players could be asked

Great first video. Love this advice. Simple but really effective because of how we all can really get way too “in character” when trying to make for more “fun” gameplay and then justify bad actions that upset the table by saying well that’s what my character would do.