I'm torn. I'm unable to decide between the aforementioned alignments for my next character. I don't have a backstory or anything laid out, I just want to know what EXACTLY each of these alignments entails.
Thank you for your help.
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Daleks and Darth Vader are Lawful Evil - Follow the law and tradition, keep your promises, but twist those promises if they don't suit you - follow the letter or the spirit as it suits.
Chaotic Neutral means specifically going out of your way to act randomly, and break the law, without regard for good or evil. Your choices are purely based on some other criteria than morality, but out of principle, you won't follow laws or tradition...unless you feel like it. Chaotic Neutral is often used for those that are insane.
Talk with your GM. Usually the best way to handle things.
I would disagree with YogoZuno's description of CN. At least somewhat. I don't think alignments should be seen as overly complex or binding. A CN character can be seen as a character that is subject to whims and fancies. You don't need to go out of the way to break laws, but you probably aren't going to be to worried about it if you disagree with it.
A CN character could also be a champion of liberty and individual freedoms, but isn't as nice about it as a CG character.
A CN character could also be a champion of liberty and individual freedoms, but isn't as nice about it as a CG character.
Well, I'd say that the whole "working for others" thing is distinctly a good trait, but you do have a point.
A CN character could also be a champion of liberty and individual freedoms, but isn't as nice about it as a CG character.Well, I'd say that the whole "working for others" thing is distinctly a good trait, but you do have a point.
Perhaps. Maybe instead of rescuing slaves outright, he/she arms the slaves and says "Free yourselves, if you are willing."
Force them to be responsible for their own fates, giving them just enough so they actually have a choice.
Lawful Evil is devotion to the natural order of things. The weak serve the strong. Power is it's own justification.
A CN character could also be a champion of liberty and individual freedoms, but isn't as nice about it as a CG character.Well, I'd say that the whole "working for others" thing is distinctly a good trait, but you do have a point.Perhaps. Maybe instead of rescuing slaves outright, he/she arms the slaves and says "Free yourselves, if you are willing."
Force them to be responsible for their own fates, giving them just enough so they actually have a choice.
Or they could be super zealous about it,
"Oh? You don't want to be free? Well surely you have no idea whats good for you so I'm going to free you anyway."
To me the CN is simple like an adolescent.
The rules dont apply to him most of the time, he certainly wont do what you told him just because you have a fancy rank or white hair (unless he acknowledges you), for some reason his problems are always bigger/more important than yours (even when they are silly love problems) and he is pretty much the center of the world (for himself atleast :P).
He is not dumb/stupid/crazy , he is just ... self centered.
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Thanks everyone for your help, you did a wonderful job explaining! ^_^
I decided to go with Lawful Evil, for any who were wondering. Thanks again! C=
A CN character could also be a champion of liberty and individual freedoms, but isn't as nice about it as a CG character.Well, I'd say that the whole "working for others" thing is distinctly a good trait, but you do have a point.Perhaps. Maybe instead of rescuing slaves outright, he/she arms the slaves and says "Free yourselves, if you are willing."
Force them to be responsible for their own fates, giving them just enough so they actually have a choice.
Or they could be super zealous about it,
"Oh? You don't want to be free? Well surely you have no idea whats good for you so I'm going to free you anyway."
That's interesting as that's how I kind of look at it, the first part that is. This character I am posting as is from Hermea and even though she passed her citizenship test, she told Mengkare to take a long walk off a short dock when she was presented with a contract basically saying she had to sign away all free will to the dragon. While she abhors that in her eyes everyone on Hermea is a slave to the dragon, they gave up their free will of their own free will. Attempting to free them would be hypocritical. It's the same in Cheliax (which she's spent some time fighting slavery there). If a particular slave is fully accepting of slavery, who is she to tell them "No, you must be free even if you don't want to be free." Now, granted it can be a slippery slope, like in Dragon Age 2 you meet this elf who has been a slave all her life, total "slave mentality" and it's obvious that if you just free her she will get abused (or die with no idea how to take care of herself) so the "good" thing to do is to take her as a servant. She'll always be a slave in her mind, but you can pay her and keep her safe from those others who would exploit her.
It seems like every time there's a new iteration of DnD they mess with the alignments.
To me, alignment is the way a character views the world and how the world *should* be, not a reflection of his personality necessarily.
A chaotic neutral character (my favorite alignment) believes that freedom for all is the best way to achieve a balance between good and evil, but whether there is balance is secondary to freedom itself. Freedom for all, and certainly for self, is the end, not the means, but freedom for all is likely to bring about a desired balance.
A lawful evil character would believe that structure and hierarchy would be the best way for the truly deserving to guarantee and preserve their property and power. The law can be enacted and enforced to give them the power they crave and preserve it once it is won.
Aside from alignment, any of the nine alignments can be insane or not, keep their word or not (unless a legally binding contract is signed by the lawfuls), be lethargic, greedy, kind, etc.
An LG could quite easily give his word, then break it by rationalizing that the the greater good will be served and that law prevents his following through. The LG will think in that case that the other party should understand and accept this rationalization.
A CE could be kind if it allows him to achieve a certain goal which advances his own freedom or allows the truly deserving to win their just rewards.
A 'strong personal code' does not make one lawful, as a fellow player likes to believe - that could be any character, regardless of alignment.
IMO, of course. YMMV ;)
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That's interesting as that's how I kind of look at it, the first part that is. This character I am posting as is from Hermea and even though she passed her citizenship test, she told Mengkare to take a long walk off a short dock when she was presented with a contract basically saying she had to sign away all free will to the dragon. While she abhors that in her eyes everyone on Hermea is a slave to the dragon, they gave up their free will of their own free will. Attempting to free them would be hypocritical. It's the same in Cheliax (which she's spent some time fighting slavery there). If a particular slave is fully accepting of slavery, who is she to tell them "No, you must be free even if you don't want to be free." Now, granted it can be a slippery slope, like in Dragon Age 2 you meet this elf who has been a slave all her life, total "slave mentality" and it's obvious that if you just free her she will get abused (or die with no idea how to take care of herself) so the "good" thing to do is to take her as a servant. She'll always be a slave in her mind, but you can pay her and keep her safe from those others who would exploit her.A CN character could also be a champion of liberty and individual freedoms, but isn't as nice about it as a CG character.Well, I'd say that the whole "working for others" thing is distinctly a good trait, but you do have a point.Perhaps. Maybe instead of rescuing slaves outright, he/she arms the slaves and says "Free yourselves, if you are willing."
Force them to be responsible for their own fates, giving them just enough so they actually have a choice.
Or they could be super zealous about it,
"Oh? You don't want to be free? Well surely you have no idea whats good for you so I'm going to free you anyway."
I had a lot of fun with these lines of thought after plugging Valkyrie Paine's Khivatri slave-monks concept into my Golarion. :)
In Vudra, everyone lives according to the caste system and generally accepts their place in it. The lowest of these castes, so low that they're not even considered part of society are the "untouchable" castes, who are regulated to doing the most unsavory tasks for Vudran civilization if anything at all. They have no real rights at all, and the lowest of their castes aren't even considered people anymore. It's accepted as truth that people born to the lowest castes are there for a reason, the sins of their past lives have darkened their karma. And once you're born into the lowest of them, there's no rising from it. You'll always be reincarnated into that caste as punishment.
A priest/monk of Irori came up with a way to rescue these people from their eternal condemnation. He established a monastic order called the Khivatri that would pull in members of that caste during childhood and reshape them in Irori's image.
The idea is this: People are born to the lowest caste because of their personal weaknesses, mostly their selfishness to some degree or another. The only way to rise above the sins of your past lives and to cleanse your karma is to abandon the self and the needs of the self. You give up your freedom(and the lowest castes barely even really have that as it is) and personal desires for the sake of self-improvement, and only through service to another can you transcend to higher level in Vudra's religious/caste system.
Untouchables who are brought into the Khivatri order are no longer considered untouchables, but instead are Khivatri. It's a higher mini-caste than the untouchables, but they're still at the bottom of Vudran society and are still considered by many to not be people.
Khivatri train until early adulthood under the monasteries' harsh tutelage. They're are trained in the martial arts, to serve without question, to supress all personal desires, and to protect their future owners. After their training is over, they are sold off into Vudran society(at very cheap rates).
According to their code, Khivatri must serve and obey their owners, no matter their orders. If a khivatri's owner tells him to jump off a cliff, he will jump off the cliff. And a Khivatri must have a master. If a Khivatri's owner passes away without selling or giving him or her to another, the Khivatri must take their own life(the traditional way is to break one's own neck). This has also caused trouble for a lot of good people who came into possession of a Khivatri; as soon as they told the slave that they were free and refused to take them as a slave, the Khivatri will kill themselves.
Some Khivatri serve one owner their entire lives. Some serve a succession of many owners. They can be sold or given away, and as soon as the transaction is done the Khivatri must serve their new owner with absolute loyalty.
Most Khivatri serve primarily as bodyguards, as that is the primary training for all of them. But some serve their masters in other ways, as entertainment(often fighting, multiple owners arranging Khivatri duels aren't uncommon) and menial labor. An odd few are even kept in harems or even taken into marraige by their owners(though this is extremely rare and nearly unheard of in Vudra itself).
There is no stigma in Vudran society against selling or giving a Khivatri to non-Vudrans, for a few reasons: Khivatri "aren't really Vudrani", and the unshakable loyalty they display serves only to impress upon other cultures the strength of Vudran society(after all, if these are the lowest of their castes, then how great must the higher castes be?)
A Khivatri has no possessions except what their owner chooses to give them and let them keep.
Khivatri remember their given birth names, but always refer to themselves with the humble "this one" unless ordered to do otherwise by their owners. And even then, they will call themselves whatever their owner wishes.
In the monastery and when not told to do otherwise, Khivatri are dressed simply. And in another demonstration of emulating Irori and giving up their previous selves, they all go hairless save for a single braid of hair at the back of their skulls. Again, they will dress however their masters demand. A number of Khivatri have died in the past due to their owners dressing them in showy, impractical attire or even ornamental armor.
While a Khivatri told that he is free will try to take his own life, they can be ordered to "act free" to whatever degree their owner wishes. In countries where slavery is illegal, this is how Khivatri owners keep their property without drawing suspicion. This is also how kind and good owners often treat a Khivatri under their care. Their behavior is still highly ordered, and their greatest responsibility is still to ensure the safety of their owner, but a Khivatri can eventually "come out of their shell" when treated this way. It can be frightening and even traumatic for many Khivatri to suddenly have so much leeway in their lives, however.
A Khivatri who betrays the code and does not kill himself will usually be hunted down by the training monks of the order, but traitorous monks are exceedingly rare as they understand that the way of the Khivatri is the only path to transcendance available to them.
Khivatri can turn up almost anywhere, having been sold in the slave markets or changing from hand to hand elsewhere. The majority of them are owned by merchants or spellcasters, and the adventurous examples of the latter cover a lot of ground.
A Khivatri can be given to another in exchange for other goods or as a gift, and it is acceptable to pass ownership of one to another after death in accordance to one's will.
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A few good specimens of Lawful Evil:
Adolf Hitler (the gold standard, as they say)
Dolores Umbridge
Ebeneezer Scrooge (before his redemption)
Lucius Malfoy
Bob Ewell
James Dobson
Biff Tannen
The Borg
Nurse Ratched
Cecil Rhodes
the Dursley family
the Sheriff of Nottingham
Joe Arpaio
Jack Chick
Torquemada
Cotton Mather
J. Edgar Hoover
Huitzilopochtli
Montgomery Burns
Vladimir Putin
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
George W. Bush
Keith Alexander
ANY bully, really (remember that George Orwell, sick of hearing the word 'fascist' overused, misused, abused, and applied to everyone from Chiang Kai-Shek to homosexuals to women to dogs, finally declared that the only satisfactory definition was simply as a synonym for 'bully')
A few good specimens of Chaotic Neutral:
Beetlejuice (Evil-leaning in the movie, Good-leaning in the cartoon, mostly Neutral in either case)
Q (as in "Star Trek", not "James Bond")
Mr. Mxyzptlk
Bugs Bunny
Loki (keep in mind that the whole "he suddenly becomes a total douche and initiates the Ragnarok" bit is probably revisionism by Christian missionaries who didn't care much for tricksters and wanted the old gods out of the picture anyways)
Magneto (partly because he oscillates wildly between Good and Evil)
Captain Jack Sparrow
Aleister Crowley (might have actually been Chaotic Good, but he would never have admitted to it if so)
Hamlet
Coyote
H. P. Lovecraft (a case of "might not view himself as Chaotic, but is so inherently weird he can't help it;" apparently drifted more toward Good as his short life progressed)
the Marx Brothers (as film personae - Chaotic Good as real people)
Catwoman
Jesse Ventura
the Jim Carrey version of The Mask (the original comic book version was Chaotic Evil)
Carmen Sandiego
Lucy Ricardo
Bart Simpson
Bender (Evil tendencies)
Calvin (his Good tendencies showed up from time to time)
The Phantom of the Opera
Raijin (a lightning god who will steal kids' belly-buttons if they don't hide them - if that's not Chaotic Neutral, I don't know what is)
Forget about it. Just determine your character's personality and play it.
Alignment isn't something that everyone agrees on. Communication can help determine alignment, but usually its best to think without it and just think about what you want to play and if its cool with the group then determine alignment. Trying to determine a main characters alignment in a story could lead into a long argument.(Ex. Seriously, who puts bender as CN? Straight CE imo. Dude pretended to be a god, stepped on an orphans dying corpse because he couldn't wait to dance on her corpse, and burned down zoidburg's underwater house!)
LE imo is the more fun alignment, unless your DM let's you run CN like everyone runs CN.
Most people I see playing (and my players also which really annoys me) use CN as an excuse to run a CE character, then argue to the death with the DM about the paladin's smite working on them. "But but but but, it says Chaotic Neutral on my character sheet!!!"
LE means you keep your word, and you use the rules and order to keep others oppressed and beneath you. It is your right to have more than others, and it is their place to be beneath you.
CN means you have no regard for rules or laws, regardless of whether or not that mentality helps or hurts people. Chaos in DND terms typically refers to anti-law, as in you disobey the order of society, rather than just playing someone who has a stack of note cards and makes no informed or well thought out decisions for himself. I call that Chaotic Stupid.
LE believes that laws and society exist for him/her to achieve personal gain. They're interested in what their country can do for them, and they're looking for ways to get ahead by manipulating the rules and moving the playing field.
CN believes everything above as well, but instead of taking advantage of it, they're pointing to the LE guy as an example of why laws suck.
Once you are a sophisticated enough gamer to be able to create a person with their own personality, as many in this thread demonstrate, you don't need alignment to guide the process. Make a character, decide his basic personality, then decide what alignment seems to best describe him.
+1164
It is very useful to have a set of personality traits, then rank them on 1-10 to get a feel for the character, or have a set of adjectives to describe his personality. I sometimes review this for the character to get myself back in the groove if I haven't played him in a while. The 'alignment' can fit over that once the personality is decided. Given that, I see no reason why alignment would reflect personality necessarily.
Given what I said in my previous post, I think I myself am probably on the line between C/N and C/G, with some N/E thrown in. I keep my word, though, and am forthright in my dealings with others.
PS - Geo W Bush would be L/N ;)
Once you are a sophisticated enough gamer to be able to create a person with their own personality, as many in this thread demonstrate, you don't need alignment to guide the process. Make a character, decide his basic personality, then decide what alignment seems to best describe him. Novice roleplayers use the inverse; choosing an alignment allows them a broad guideline of how a given character thinks, which helps them learn to behave with consistency.
Depends on who you are really. Some people do great with guidelines, others get stuck in them. Some people think alignments really do determine what you can do, others see them as a hindrance and try to ignore them. Some people when they start need nothing and do best just being themselves, others are completely lost without some help.
A few good specimens of Lawful Evil:
Adolf Hitler (the gold standard, as they say)
Dolores Umbridge
Ebeneezer Scrooge (before his redemption)
Lucius Malfoy
Bob Ewell
James Dobson
Biff Tannen
The Borg
Nurse Ratched
Cecil Rhodes
the Dursley family
the Sheriff of Nottingham
Joe Arpaio
Jack Chick
Torquemada
Cotton Mather
J. Edgar Hoover
Huitzilopochtli
Montgomery Burns
Vladimir Putin
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
George W. Bush
Keith Alexander
ANY bully, really (remember that George Orwell, sick of hearing the word 'fascist' overused, misused, abused, and applied to everyone from Chiang Kai-Shek to homosexuals to women to dogs, finally declared that the only satisfactory definition was simply as a synonym for 'bully')...Redacted for brevity...
I don't want to jack the thread, or get full-on into a political debate here, but I do want to say I disagree with including George W. Bush and Sheriff Joe Arpaio in an alignment list with Hitler and Amadinejad.
Re: the OP's subject, I've liked to look at TVtropes.org for examples of how different characters can be, while still falling into a particular alignment category.
Didn't notice those names toward the bottom of the list.
The concept of "evil" as in people who want others to suffer just on principle is very very rare in the real world. GW Bush and Arpaio don't qualify. Plus, even if you are politically opposed to them, I'd think you should take issue with what are perceived as their LACK of lawfulness.