Picture this, you just finished your last campaign as a lawful good paladin. It has been a wonderful experience that has left your heart filled with the positive experiences you have spread amongst the NPCs. Though there is still something missing, something darker. While you have been skipping around doing the goody two shoes shtick; you have been longing for a bit more bloodshed all along. Then your dungeon master announces an evil campaign! So how do you make that evil character you have been longing for without having it fall flat on its face?
Firstly, you have to take a look at what does not work. Being authentically evil is a difficult feat for some, and those that try often believe that killing or stealing are the only factors that scream evil. This is technically true, but by creating a character that revolves purely around either of these two, the character is often left hollow and what many consider to be a "murder hobo." While you can make a character that does involve killing and stealing; you have to include more depth than those two factors.
What does depth look like in an evil character? It is what is often seen in a successful good character. It is reasoning for ones actions. Having a character be good no reason may be plausible, but for a character to be evil, something would have had to happen in the character's life that fuels their actions.
An example of a shallow character can be found in one of my own sessions. I had a player that wanted to play a ninja assassin type of character. Hearing this was okay, and I wondered what else he had to say about it but was not met with much of an answer. Instead, he gave me the characters name and began to make the character's stats. I was worried about this but believed he would flesh out his character once the game started. This did not happen.
When the game did start, I described a basic tavern scene with a few points of interests for players to check out. Immediately, he described his character as stalking a patron of the tavern, and after failing a stealth check, he attempted a messy assassination which found him in the hands of the guard. His reasoning? He felt like it. This would then continue for the rest of the session as his actions had little reasoning besides "to be evil."
At the time I was not too sure how to handle this problem at the table, which may be another post down the line, but days later I managed to talk to him about his character's backstory. His parents were killed and he was trained by a guild of assassins. This told a story but did not have much detail that would shape a character. I asked if I could fill in the gaps of his backstory and add a few bits and was met positively.
Here is what I came up with. Zenith was a rich kid growing up. His father a successful exotic merchant and his mother was apart of the royal guard. Due to this, he often had privileges and freedoms that others did not possess. This led to an invisible target being painted on his family's back as many began to take notice of the family's situation. Other kids would taunt him and insult him for his success, chalking it up to his family's success instead of his own.
Growing up Zenith had these insults thrown at him daily as his parents were often gone due to their positions leading to Zenith growing up drowned in these insults. After years of quiet torture, Zenith found himself distanced from the positive forces in his life, and was coaxed into a group of other teens that were considered outcasts. Even in this group, he was insulted for his upbringing as those around him had none of the freedoms he had.
Eventually, he was given the ultimatum of leaving his family or else he would be kicked out of the group. Choosing the group, he ran away from home and was forced into the underbelly of the city where eventually he was recruited into an assassins guild. Nobody knows why Zenith was recruited, but any request related to the higher ups of society would be taken without hesitation by Zenith and would always be carried out to the client's wishes.
This backstory creates a character that has had conflicts in their life combined with mysteries for others to discover as the game progresses. Zenith is no longer an assassin that kills because he feels like it. Instead, it is a mystery that others in the party will figure out as they look into Zenith's difficult childhood and his specific sphere of operation. Depth is what sets a character apart from an NPC. In Zenith's first iteration, he was simply a faceless killer. In his second iteration, he was a damaged child turned into a ruthless killer that holds similar resentments to those that resented him.
These character creation posts will make a reoccurring appearance on the blog, about one a week, as character creation ends up being the most important aspect in a game. Without an interesting or well thought out group of individuals, a story can fall flat on its face as the basis of it is weak. Which is why it would also be recommended to check out other D&D related blogs to tackle other issues in D&D that are not included here. One of these blogs I would recommend RJD20 which is currently telling their own story of the campaign they are going through right now. There are plenty of character ideas that players and dungeon masters have had, but rarely can they be shared or played. Are there any characters that you have been wanting to make, and what are your thoughts on the most important aspect of an evil character?
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