Being Chaotic Evil?

Question

To all the experienced D&D players who look over the answers here, how do you successfully play a Chaotic Evil character? I personally have a vision of how I will play him but what has me confused is how do you manage to get away with all the horrible things you'll be doing? If you are well known or kill the wrong person and have an army looking for you, how did you manage to get away?

The reason I ask is because I've not played a completely evil character yet. I want to know if you can ultimately be successful or if going completely evil is going to doom you in the end.

Answer 1

CE is probably the most difficult alignment to play, since it seems to have no internal compass to guild the PC's actions. However, just like any other alignment, there are various flavors of CE.

Anarchist - tries to bring down the powers-that-be and doesn't care who gets hurt while doing it

Total crazy - do anything on a whim, without a care for the consequences

Psychotic schemer - does things according to a plan, but the causality is illogical and/or unrealistic, so really couldn't be considered as LE (see Joker in Dark Knight movie for a classical depiction of this one)

The biggest problem in playing Evil is interparty relationships - many players see this as an open license for PvP warfare. The thing they don't realize is that Evil groups DO work together - if they didn't, Good would have an easy time of it. It's just the penalties for failure in Evil groups tends to be somewhat more painful (if not fatal). I like to keep in mind the old adage from the Good vs. Evil episode of the original Star Trek series - the difference between Good and Evil wasn't the tactics they used, it was their motivation. So, being an Evil group on the run in a good society isn't all that different  for being a Good group undercover in an Evil one - keep your head down and move fast.