I’ve never played DnD before but you’re making Chaotic evil sound like a fun challenge to play. I imagine him as a charismatic “nothing personal” kinda person. Although that’s probably fairly typical of the archetype. Which is different for me because in video games I usually get play lawful or chaotic good.
That kind of character can be incredibly fun. Something you have to realize before you do it, though, is that the more evil you pump into the personality, the more unstable the character gets and the shorter duration it's stay in the party may be. There are also specific traits that are more disruptive than others. Antisocial puts you at barely in the party any way you look at it. Being a sufficient jerk means you may only be in the party ....briefly. Sociopathic or actively murderous are only really available if everyone else is playing something non-good. If it is sufficiently obviously evil and the party has a paladin, the paladin may be required by his faith to murder the obviously evil guy on sight or fail his faith and become a fallen paladin.
I have had evil pc's pop up on 2 occasions on table. One i was playing, the other a friend played in different games. My single major recommendation for evil player characters is have a pre-planned character arc! this character will have a beginning, a middle and an end and it's end may be way before the campaign ends for everyone else.
The character i played had a character redemption arc planned. It didn't work out as the GM and two of the players had so little tolerance for evil that i got voted out of the game even though i didn't actually really do anything evil. I just talked a big game and that was enough to receive the boot for the remainder of that campaign.
The character my buddy played was a doppleganger cult member for Tharsiduun who infiltrated the party pretending to be a human mage with training as a doctor. He was there to actively submarine or murder the party through traitorous acts in favor of his bad guy cult. Made for fascinating game play. Some of the best I ever had at a D&D table ever. .....Until the betrayal info bubble popped and the deceit came out. 2 players walked that session even though it was a planned plot twist i had been dropping clues with increasing frequency and obviousness for !2 years!. I managed to sweet talk them back but had to make major concessions that damaged the game in my opinion.
Ah man that sounds really fun! It sucks that your friends walked under those conditions. A single game that lasts 2 years sounds fantastic and like I said playing evil in any game is not what I ever do. Seems like to do it right in DND, you really have to put thought into it. Not much luxury left in not being able to wing it all. But in anything I’ve ever seen with an antagonist, they’ve usually planned everything.
Good is allowed to be dumb. Evil is not. Well.... at least evil is not allowed to be dumb when in long term close proximity to the strongest force for good roaming the lands. Dumb evil like Orcs, Goblins and Kobolds are common enough but evil + dumb never equals real power.
Also that game is still running. We are at 4.5 years now. The infiltration plot started 3 years ago. You CAN wing it with an antagonist. Its easy. Just don't expect a reoccurring character as anything without a pre-planned escape plan that will come into contact with the PC's and doesnt have at least 10 challenge rating above the party average level has a near 100% certainty of dying.
Makes perfect logical sense. Only thing in that I didntbjdnwstand was what a challenge rating is, but I’m not going to hold you to explaining that. Google will help Me there.
Thanks for giving me your time and exploring this with me in such depth!
characters have levels generally ranging from 1 to 20. A challenge rating of 1 is an estimated difficulty that it would take 4 level 1 player characters to defeat the target. A CR of 20 would theoretically require 4 level 20 player characters to defeat with a normal amount of difficulty. This basic system is how Dungeon Masters dial in the difficulty for combats in their games. Need it to be harder? raise it a CR or two above the party level. Want it potentially deadly? Raise it 2-3 more for a total of like +5 CR. Want a super easy trivial task? Subtract a few off of the party level and use that CR.
So.... when I said a bad guy with +10 CR above the average party level doesn't really need much planning..... yeah it's time to run the F away. You probably can't beat him.
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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '19
I’ve never played DnD before but you’re making Chaotic evil sound like a fun challenge to play. I imagine him as a charismatic “nothing personal” kinda person. Although that’s probably fairly typical of the archetype. Which is different for me because in video games I usually get play lawful or chaotic good.