The L🦩awful Evil alignment is one of the🐎 most overlooked alignments in , but It’s also potentially one of the most interesting. While many players who choose Evil alignments may gravitate towards Chaotic Evil as a way to lose any remaining semblance of impulse control, Lawful Evil offers some delightfully devious options.
S🔯ome DMs ban evil alignments, often for good reason. If you’re making a plot about an evil archmage causing havoc, it helps if no members of the adventuring party would rather be causing havoc right alongside him. It’s much harder to make a campaign where everyone has the same motivation regardless of alignment, especially at lower levels where it’s a little harder 🌳to make world-ending threats. If your DM has banned evil alignments, talk to them about it, but be prepared if the answer is no.
In general, Lawful Evil is less diꦜsruptive to the average party if you play it right. It lacks the “kill and destroy” stereotypes of Chaotic Evil, favoring organization and order. Lawful Evil characters can put together long cons and intricate plans. They can work within the law, using bureaucracy and legalism to their advantage. On the other hand, Lawful Evil characters can be dominators, people who believe that the best way to set up society is to control others, preferably under an iron fist.
If you organize with your DM, you can play a character who is secretly Lawful Evil. It can be easy for a Lawful Evil character who specializes in plo꧒ts and plans to disguise themselves as another alignment. You can even work this into your roleplaying, brushing off times when your mask slips as just being an overzealous Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good, disguising your hatred of the masses as a hatred of “criminals” or “sinners.”
If you take this route, decide on what you want your goal to be. Lawful Evil characters likel𝕴y won’t hang around Good and Neutral character for fun. Decide what you want from disguising your true nature, whether it is purely personal gain or some larger goal.
If you are openly Lawful Evil, think about why your party keeps you around and why you keep them around. Do you provide valuable experience in navigating the bureaucracy of the Evil Empire? Do they help you move up in tꦇhe ranks of your job by eliminating the corrupt officials above you? You likely need to have at least some sort of mutually beneficial relationship, or at least a relationship that each of you perceive as beneficial.
If you are playing an Evil campaign, this changes. You likely will have the same, or at least aligned, interests as the rest of your party, which leaves you free to do ♒all the devious scheming you want without worrying about making nice. You can plot against your party members, spy on them, and otherwise scheme to make sure you have the upper hand over your allies. Don’t make overt moves right away – not if you don’t want the campaign to break down at least – but Evil campaigns allow for the long cons that might be missing when you have to play nice with the goody-goodies.
The Lawful Evil🎶 alignment is an underrated alignment for players who want to hatch villainous schemes while using the law to their advantage. Just follow the advice here to add some nefarious plots to your campaign.