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How do YOU play Chaotic Evil?

NoloirNoloir Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 380
How do YOU play Chaotic Evil? Playing a Half Orc Barbarian in another run or two but usually play Chaotic or Neutral Good. How's playing evil to the core done?
Post edited by Noloir on

Comments

  • SyndareeSyndaree Member Posts: 56
    I have only one rule - Pursue pleasure at all costs. If you get pleasure from helping others, do it. If you get pleasure from killing others, do it. If you get pleasure from betraying others, do it. If you get pleasure from manipulating others, do it.
  • OlvynChuruOlvynChuru Member Posts: 3,075
    I would think that someone who's chaotic evil isn't necessarily eviler than someone who's lawful evil or neutral evil; they're just more chaotic.
  • DanacmDanacm Member Posts: 951
    edited March 2020
    Just be selfless, but not dumb "im the evil lord" type character. The good writed evil characters are not think themselves as evils, just a guy who have different motivates and desires. Often think herself as stereotypes like the choosen, the ptsd, the renegade, etc. The most evil villains can do good think if their goals needed it, but the key is manipulation, and calculated behavior like the evil with good reputation trope.

    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilTropes
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    i made a chaotic evil barbarian for pnp dnd and back in 2004..ish? ( and is still being played to this day haha, although he isn't chaotic evil anymore )

    in the beginning it was all about doing whatever you want to do and no rules apply to you, just fore pure personal prowess and power gaining, pretty much power gaming to the extreme ( even if you aren't a "power gaming" character ) if slaughtering a whole town gives you enough XP to grow a level, you do so, break into a bank and steal all the money for yourself? you betcha

    you can still work for "good means" as in save towns and cities from bigger tyrants than you, but you aren't going to be doing it for the niceness of your heart obviously, there will definitely need a price to be paid for your service, and in fact, you might even become the new tyrant of said city or town, especially if you were able to stop it, then whats stopping you from taking its place?

    and especially when you start gaining serious power ( probably around level 15+ or so ) you are really going to be a force to recon with, and basically the only way for civilizations to protect themselves from you is bribery and services that can stop you from slaughtering them if they dont

    but after a while, it kind of gets boring being evil, and eventually my character went through an alignment change around level 22 or so and become chaotic neutral instead, still doesnt really have respect for others, but he's not going to slaughter those beneath him for the sake of doing so unless there is real good reason to do so

    when it comes to the evil alignments, i think lawful evil is the best to play if you plan to play an evil alignment, being lawful evil makes you disciplined and you can actually still connect with society and even get along with good characters to some extent, a lawful evil person doesnt just do something for the sake of doing it, that character will have some sort of laws or conduct that they follow, for example; a lawful evil character may NEVER lie, even if it hurts good people, doesnt matter to them, as long as they don't lie, perhaps lawful evil characters are more like sociopaths, where they are not concerned about the outcome of their actions, but they dont always deliberately to evil acts for the sake of doing it, they have honor, but no conscience

    neutral evil to me is someone who only cares about themselves and their own personal perseverance, kind of like narcissist, they will do whatever it takes to accomplish their goals, although they are not as crazy and out of control as a chaotic character, they are a bit more reserved, laws mean little to them, but at the same time, chaos is not what they are after, Jon Irenicus from SoA is a perfect example of neutral evil, he doesnt care who he has to hurt to get what he wants but at the same time he doesnt just straight up destroy everything in his path ( like the inmates from spell hold, he kept them around, and although he messed up his home town, that was more based on revenge then just the sake of doing it ) i guess with that, if neutral evil characters do evil acts, there was always a motive behind it, it was never for the sake of doing because you could or can, it was because something give cause to that character to do so

    then chaotic evil, rules dont exist, you do whatever you want whenever you want, and you do evil acts just for pure spite basically, you are a complete loose canon and wildly unpredictable, true chaotic evil characters have hard times fitting in with society unless they are very intelligent and can hide their nature, but in the end, pure destruction or conquering or power or influence is what they want, there is always some greater desire of some sort, and they will do anything that it takes to obtain it, they are feared and they thrive off of that fear, they dont want the world to like them, they want the world to fear them, they are tyrants incarnate
  • jsavingjsaving Member Posts: 1,083
    edited March 2020
    Chaotic evil - Take what you can, if others can't stop you then they don't deserve what they have

    Neutral evil - Take what you can, because you can

    Lawful evil - Take what you can, and follow the rules because structure ensures no one gets more than they should

    Chaotic good - Give what you can, no matter what law or tradition says about it

    Neutral good - Give what you can, because you can

    Lawful good - Give what you can, and follow the rules because structure ensures everyone gets what they should
    Post edited by jsaving on
  • ZaxaresZaxares Member Posts: 1,325
    For me, a Chaotic character largely lives for immediate gratification, often operating on impulse and gut feeling. Meanwhile, Evil characters enjoy seeing others suffering or in pain, so put the two together and you get a personality that is very much like a vindictive bully; someone who largely lives from moment to moment, oppressing and hurting people that he can because that's what makes him happy (or feel powerful). The scope and scale of his evil acts will largely depend on his own power and abilities. A simple half-orc alley-basher might be content to live day to day, taking pleasure in beating up (or killing) the unfortunate victims he runs into in said alley-ways, and then promptly spending what he gets on ale and whores. A Red Dragon, on the other hand, would scale up his rampages and destruction from attacking merchant caravans to destroying entire villages or towns (or extorting them for tribute/maiden sacrifices, whatever he was feeling more in the mood for at the time).
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    I don't.
  • jsavingjsaving Member Posts: 1,083
    I've no interest in it either. If I did, I'd probably go for a Han Solo type who thinks everybody should leave everybody else alone, but has just enough of a selfish streak to be CE rather than CN. Then there'd be a potential redemptive arc to get to CG.
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,829
    We can always take some tips from the CE companions you can recruit:

    Baeloth: It's all about the spectacle! And if some other people have to die for that, that's not my problem.
    Shar-Teel: No comment; I've never done anything with her.
    Tiax: Tiax will rule! And speak in third person, the little megalomaniac.
    Xzar: I'm just here to collect interesting corpse bits for my experiments. Who are you calling crazy?
    Korgan: Screw the rules, I like killing. And money.
  • NoloirNoloir Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 380
    edited March 2020
    Post edited by Noloir on
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    Noloir wrote: »

    nope

    because when i click on the link it says; comment not found
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,723
  • NoloirNoloir Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 380
    @JuliusBorisov Thank you, and thank you posting the video.
  • NoloirNoloir Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 380
    sarevok57 wrote: »
    Noloir wrote: »

    nope

    because when i click on the link it says; comment not found

    Fixed it. @JuliusBorisov was kind enough to post it in plain sight for all to see as well.
  • SyndareeSyndaree Member Posts: 56
    edited April 2020
    Well I guess the problem with playing Chaotic Evil in Baldur's Gate is that the game really doesn't really let you play it on an intelligent level. I can easily imagine a very cunning player character (and player) playing chaotic evil in a DnD campaign without anyone even realizing he is evil at all, let alone chaotic.
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,723
    My run through BG:EE confirmed the lack of story evil options. It's not without a reason:

    "These proved only minor limitations as the game ended up being filled with an array of popular and familiar creatures, plus a few lesser-known enemies from the D&D canon. However, there were more challenging restrictions coming from D&D owners TSR. “TSR’s Code of Ethics was somewhat limiting and forced us to often boil everything evil down into simply ‘being greedy’“, says Chris. “This one dimensional portrayal of evil was limiting but wasn’t something that prevented the team from accomplishing its larger goals for the content in the game. We were still able to tell the story we wanted to tell, we still allowed you to be as greedy or psychotic as you liked while you were playing, there just weren’t as many ramifications to being evil, or as many avenues to it, as we would have liked.”

    Sure enough, this limited freedom to flesh out the ‘evil’ side of the game saw most quests and indeed the core plot playing out much better for good or neutral aligned characters. But while this aspect of the game was criticised by a handful of hardcore roleplayers, the finished product was hardly tarnished by it, and the critical and popular success of Baldur’s Gate proved this."

    https://www.gamesradar.com/making-of-baldurs-gate/
  • jsavingjsaving Member Posts: 1,083
    I agree, and worse, the game is so unresponsive to alignment decisions that you can go through the game with almost exclusively CE behavior while genuinely perceiving yourself to be LG. How many times on these forums have we seen people complain the game "inexplicably" changed their alignment to evil during the Trials when they simply followed the same behavior patterns (stealing, hurting people, etc) that kept the words "lawful good" on their character sheet until then?
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