D&D 5E How to play an evil cleric

[Legatus Legionis]

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[jgsugden]

Lawful Evil is pretty easy to incrporate into any campaign. They follow rules. They abide by structures. All you need is a reason for that PC to cooperate with the 'good guys'.

Neutral Evil also works pretty easily. They do whatever they want to get ahead, but they do not need to be stupid. They can abide by rules they don't care about it if keeps them safe.

Chaotic Evil is harder. Their purpose is destruction. Even if they're smart, they're looking for a way to tear thigs down.

Evil PCs I have run for a decent amount of time:

* A LE enchanter. He developed magic to subjogate people, but as he was learning it he saw that people that gained loyalty via magic usually lost, while heroes that inspired loyalty won. Thus, his goal was to enslave the populace by convincing them to be loyal to him... to give him a devotion that could not be dispelled. Played him for a several months before the campaign stalled.

* A NE multi-class martial character that sought only power and fortune. He joined the wealthiest group he could find and agreed to abide by their rules. He hit them with a lot of utilitarian logic to try to convince them to do practical things - kill 5 to save 6. My goal was to trick the other characters down the slippery slope so that we could go after some of the real treasures... regardless of who had them. Unfortunately, there came a day when the party had to decide to decide whether to achieve a greater good or let him die... and he died.

* A tiefling worshipper of Asmodeus. Started as a ranger, then multiclassed into sorcerer and cleric. He was in a game that didn't use alignments, but he was all about redepmtion and sought to redeem his ancestors all thw way back to Asmodeus himself. He was big on the concept of necessary evils.

 

[Bohandas]

I guess it depends on how you want to look at it. While a lot of people don't think their evil, I would think that a cleric of an evil deity would understand, as they draw upon that power. Unlike in the modern world, good and evil in the D&D universe are considered absolutes, as defined by the difference between fiends and celestials. IRL what is considered good and evil modifies over time, as history has shown people performing what we now consider heinous in the name of good (the various crusades as an example).

In theory good and evil in the D&D world should still be defined by consensus, just in a more roundabout way. They seem to be defined by the outer planes, and the outer planes are, in turn, defined by belief.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Well, I guess it would depend a lot of how you want the character to come across. I can easily see a cleric for an evil god, be all fire-and-brimstone, rallying people against a common foe...

We also have the question, on how much the gods care about the alignment and how the cleric gains more worshippers for their respective god as long as they get results. Some of the more gentle gods might not like it, and actually take steps against the cleric in question if he strays from their tenents. Others, might be quite fine with it.

A friend of mine, who grew up in a really evangelistical environment and went on to study religion, said that a lot of those people are basically worshipping Cthulhu.

 

[aco175]

You need a hook to develop over time. Some other suggested ideas for thought, but a guiding principal tohat may never come up. Thanos had his idea and then retired when it came about, or maybe you realize that it was wrong but too late to repent.

You could be evil since as a young pre-adventurer your whole village was destroyed by orcs and now you wish to kill them all. You can justify it by saying that you are trying to spare others the pain of loosing their whole village. You don't care about the logic of killing their whole village, or 1/2orcs, or others that may be working with them.

 

[Todd Roybark]

Central American rain gods. Human sacrifice to make the sun come up.

Human sacrifice is typically reserved for desperate times. Most of the bodies found at ATM, in Belize are from the same general time period, when the culture was under stress.

The normal, yearly ritual, was for the ruler or high priest, to puncture their foreskin with a needle as a sympathetic offering for rain. If that did not work then more extreme offers were made.

The Bog body evidence of Druidic human sacrifice in the U.K., corresponds with the Roman conquest.

An evil priest of a ‘good’ god is a viable route. Most gods are not omniscient. Greed, Lust, a desire for self aggrandizement are all avenues to explore.

 

[Ogre Mage]

The first evil PC I played was Azia, a priestess of Lolth. She was the second daughter of a noble house in Menzoberranzan. The DM required that all PCs be evil, so she fit right in, lol.

My central idea for her character was that she was eternally jealous of her elder sister Xunay (also a PC and priestess of Lolth) but could not kill her because Xunay had the favor of both Lolth and our matron mother. Azia hid her bitterness and frustration around them and acted like a good team player. Instead, she took it out on those beneath her.

She was arguably the most terrible person I have ever played. She would whip underling males in the groin with her whip of fangs for doing the slightest thing wrong and she castrated one of them. She would rub salt in the wounds of ritual sacrifice victims so she could torture them more before they died. She summoned giant spiders so they would eat people alive as she listened to them scream.

 

[Tonguez]

Priest “What do you mean I cant cut the heart out of this sacrificial virgin?”

Adventurer “Well you cant, its EVIL!”

Priest ”Do you mean evil Evil or Evil Evil? You see My god wants to feast on the essence of a virgins bloody heart, then he will restore the Sun - you know its all about the greater good”

Adventurer “But the sun came up today just fine”

Priest ”well yes thats because we sacrificed 13 virgins over the Holy Days, our zealots got a good catch that week”

Adventurer ”No, no, you cant do that, the Holy Doctrine of my Church condems that kind of stuff” casts detect evil

Adventurer “um - you detect as Lawful Neutral?”

Priest “see - its all for the greater good and the sake of tradition, youre not going to condemn our native traditions are you?”

 

[Todd Roybark]

our zealots got a good catch that week

Or more likely, volunteers. History, is replete with persons who willingly sacrificed themselves for what they viewed as the ‘greater good’.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My opinion is in the real life all societies who don't respect the Natural Law are doomed to self-destruction.

In the speculative fiction the evil groups without a common allegiance can't survive against other factions whose members accept the sacrifice for the group.

Fighting for the highest power is stupid when you don't get respect, but only be hated by the rest because the tallest poppiest is the first to wanted be cut.

In my own stories the most of people who believe in the judgment in the afterlife trie to be good. The antagonist who accepts to fall in the dark side of the Force is because his ideas are too close to Nietzsche's concept about the Übermensch or overman and master-slave morality. (In my humble opinion all those words are only a soft way to descript a true souless psychopat).