The reasoning behind allowing CN but not LE


Pathfinder Society

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Silver Crusade 1/5

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I've personally always wondered about this topic, as have many others. Now, I truly don't expect a rule change any time soon, but I do want to know what other people think the reasoning is behind allowing an alignment such as Chaotic Neutral into organized play, but barring Lawful Evil.

The only reason I could truly think of was the truly arbitrary "Well, if they are evil, and you have a Paladin in the party, things will go downhill and they will go downhill ASAP." My question is why? What reasons would a LE party member give a Paladin to actually detect evil on them?

Disruptive to the party: The LE PC is one of the most trustworthy around. If they give you their word, by the gods, you can trust them. Furthermore, you can rely on them to stay on the right side of the law. This is particularly beneficial to social scenarios in which good conduct is essential for completing it without a problem. Contrast this with the CN PC. They may decide to play nicely with the conventions set forth by the scenario... they may also decide that the best way to find out what they need is to snoop around, threaten NPCs, etc. This is not to say that LE PCs cannot do this... but they are indeed less likely to.

The Paladin says, 'I will not allow you to...": Steal from those innocents. Murder those prisoners. Insert other example here. We've all seen this and it is nearly always dealing with the CN PC. Now, in ethical dilemnas, the Paladin will almost always side with the LE PC before the CN one. In fact, the same may hold true for moral dilemnas as well due to the LE PCs pragmatism versus the CN PCs "Because I felt like it" philosophy. With a few minor exceptions (diabolism... but that is already ALLOWED for LN PCs) you will likely find agreement between the LE and the Paladin.

Betraying or otherwise leaving the party: Just... no. Especially not in organized play where there is no benefit for either the player or the PC. If CN PCs can be trusted here then so can LE ones.

Roleplay: Sometimes, you don't want to be a hero. Sometimes you want to play a Varys, or Dexter, or Ra's al Ghul. All of which could work well in a team environment. It seems a bit odd then, that CN Stabbity McMurderhobo was let through the door and not any of these three. It is not as if the Society doesn't have Lawful Evil members. Why disallow these excellent roleplay concepts due to the E in LE?

Now, this next part might be put in its own section, but I think it ties in nicely. Some might argue that because the characters are evil, theh might have a mechanical advantage against certain enemies. Now, that is certainly true! However, do think of the oppertunities that this could open up. We might see more Law vs Chaos conflicts in which morality is not a particular kssue. This would allow us to see all new foes such as CG fey, or open up interesting storylines such as "What if a Paladin decided to go full out Judge Dredd according to her god's ideals?" It would also allow us to work more closely with evil aligned members of the Society, which we HAVE done in seasons past.

I repeat, I don't expect a rule change. I just thought it would be an imteresting discussion to have. Thoughts? Opinions?

Liberty's Edge 2/5

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I think this type of question is brought about by a misunderstanding of alignments, and the often touted "evil lite" or the "chaotic stupid" play of Chaotic Neutral.

Evil is still evil.

Just because someone is lawful doesn't mean they are magically less evil. And just because someone is chaotic doesn't mean they are inherently inclined to be disruptive or to betray the party on a whim.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/5 RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8

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Generally speaking, I think it's just for simplicity. Consider the following points.

1) It's a lot easier for a GM to say "no, you can't do that it's evil," or "if you do that, you'll shift to evil," than it is for a GM to say "no, you can't do that, it's too chaotic and neutral."

2) Also, where as experienced roleplayers and RP a character of any alignment in a non-disruptive way at the table, PFS and Core have diverse player bases, and those players have a myriad of play experience. Typically, newer players have difficulty playing evil characters in a way that isn't detrimental to party interaction. Put another way: the actions of evil characters derail the adventure more so than the actions of non-evil characters.

3) This is due to the fact that PFS/Core assume non-evil PC alignments, so they can have adventures where it is assumed you "do the right thing" and 99% of the time the PCs will do just that. It is harder to have an adventure where you account for the possibilities of evil alignments as well. It is especially hard to do so when keeping scenario word-count low.

4) Players acting out the actions of evil characters at the table isn't something that everyone, by and large, is going to be comfortable with. Removing that element from an organized play system is good move if you want to introduce new people into the enviornment. For example, I suspect that a majority of parents would have second thoughts about letting their children game with us if someone at the table was describing their last human sacrifice to their evil deity.

5) Finally, evil alignments (with the exception, perhaps of LE) do not have a tendency to work together. Seeing as this is one of the tenants of the Pathfinder organization, it doesn't make sense for them to allow many evil Pathfinders to work for them. The ones that do likely acquired their positions through lying and deception, or through the deception of others on their behalf (I imagine Zarta has helped accelerate the careers of evil Pathfinders).

So the short answer is: because it's easier to disallow evil PCs than it is to deal with all of the above in an organized play environment.

Silver Crusade 3/5

About that second part.

I can think of at leasty two scenarios where a very important decision for the scenario is more about deciding between law and chaos or at the very least not between good and bad, more like different types of neutral/evil. That is not much, true, but quite few scenarios have large decisions at all.

Spoiler:
Red Harvest and Beacon Below

And about the first part as well, now that I had some time to think. What Fomsie said is true. Only a particularly jerky player will play their CN character as disruptively as you described. And while lawful characters might have more in common with each other than lawful good and chaotic neutral have, sometimes the evil/good axis of alignment does weight more in decisions than law/chaos axis. Like, let's say torturing people (seeing as there is a FAQ about Profession (torturer) being evil and thus not allowed). I'm not saying neutral characters would not categorically allow torture, but I will also stand firmly in my belief that good characters should not allow it no matter how chaotic they are.

5/5 5/55/55/5

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"That person is evil"

Parents. What kind of game is this?

That person is chaotic neutral

Parents: "What?"

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

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Pathfinders aren't allowed to be evil because the Decemvirate hates competition.

Silver Crusade 1/5

Fomsie wrote:

I think this type of question is brought about by a misunderstanding of alignments, and the often touted "evil lite" or the "chaotic stupid" play of Chaotic Neutral.

Evil is still evil.

Just because someone is lawful doesn't mean they are magically less evil. And just because someone is chaotic doesn't mean they are inherently inclined to be disruptive or to betray the party on a whim.

The problem with this is that this type of argument is simply begging the question. Why shouldn't something evil be allowed? Because it is evil. This is not a valid argument as by its very nature yes, evil is evil, but the question is why should it not be allowed. The fact of the matter is that from observation of various games and gaming systems, you, myself and others have noticed that Chaotic Neutral has been taken as this "evil lite" and we have seen it played as "chaotic stupid" and in fact, when questioned about their actions by PFS and home GMs I have seen "I'm Chaotic Neutral. My alignment would allow me to do that." as significant explanation for arguably evil actions. True, in an ideal world this should not be the case, but it does happen in the real one.

On the other hand I can certainly understand Walter's argument points. I find myself in agreement with all of them (save for a minor detail on point 5, but that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand). This is the sort of reasoning I have been looking for as a counter to not allowing an alignment such as Lawful Evil. Still, that does not weed out the problem of players masquerading evil actions under the banner of CN, but that too is another discussion within itself.

EDIT:
@BigNorseWolf: Heh. I can imagine that is what it comes down to at the end of the day.

@Nefreet: I've got one PC who agrees with Torch and might just have to write a strongly worded letter to the Ten.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

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Disruptive people will be disruptive no matter the means.

Allowing any kind of evil is enabling that disruptiveness, because disruptive people often use tags, labels, and titles as excuses for why the are allowed to be disruptive.

These disruptive people are often not mature enough in their interpretation or definition of what it means to be evil to be discerning enough on how to play a non-disruptive form of evil. They often play a caricature of evil rather than a personality that just happens to be evil. In other words, evil defines the personality, instead of being a part of it.

While those types of evil beings exist, they are often the most heinous of psychotic anti-social serial killers or Demons/Devils.

I'm reminded of Cyric of the Time of Troubles trilogy in the late 1980's/ early 1990's of the Forgotten Realms of 2nd edition AD&D. He often did things to sabotage or betray his friends, he did not do them because he was evil. He had a personality, motivations, likes, dislikes, feelings, etc. And his way of acting out on those things is what defined him as evil.

But often as not, when you have folks playing evil, they purposefully make sabotaging or betraying actions and then say, "why? that's what my character would do, he's evil." Ok, why did he make that choice? What motivated him to do that? "He's Evil."

Allowing any kind of evil is a real good way to cause disruption in any game group let alone in an organized play environment. Look at how much disruption gets discussed just because of a neutral Cleric of Pharasma and a Neutral Necromancer having to find a way to interact that isn't adversarial.

Chaotic Neutral is also misunderstood. But regardless of how the alignment is interpreted (correctly or not), a GM can say, "If you do that, that is an evil act and I'll have to mark it on your character chronicle sheet." Or, "If you keep doing evil things like that, your character will become evil and I have no option but to mark them as dead." [NOTE: of course within the rules of the Guide to Organized Play.]

So being able to play Chaotic Neutral is not just another way (or shouldn't be) to play evil.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Starfinder Superscriber

The problem isn't that LE isn't allowed given what people do with CN.

The problem is that people use CN as an excuse to play characters that are evil-in-all-but-name. As Andrew says.

The solution isn't allowing LE on the basis that people are already doing evil stuff in the name of CN. The solution is calling out the evil stuff that CN people are doing, making them realize that it's evil, and warning them that they're in danger of having their character become unplayable if they keep doing it.

Scarab Sages

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Let me put it this way: You're comparing Aleister Crowley (CN) to Adolf Hitler (LE).

Don't let stupid people who don't understand what the alignments mean dictate your own comprehension of the alignments. As I seem to keep saying: hate the players, not the game.

Liberty's Edge 1/5

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Lawful Evil: A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order, but not about freedom, dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion. He is comfortable in a hierarchy and would like to rule, but is willing to serve. He condemns others not according to their actions but according to race, religion, homeland, or social rank. He is loath to break laws or promises.

This reluctance comes partly from his nature and partly because he depends on order to protect himself from those who oppose him on moral grounds. Some lawful evil villains have particular taboos, such as not killing in cold blood (but having underlings do it) or not letting children come to harm (if it can be helped). They imagine that these compunctions put them above unprincipled villains.

Some lawful evil people and creatures commit themselves to evil with a zeal like that of a crusader committed to good. Beyond being willing to hurt others for their own ends, they take pleasure in spreading evil as an end unto itself. They may also see doing evil as part of a duty to an evil deity or master.

Lawful evil represents methodical, intentional, and organized evil.

(Core Rulebook, pg. 167-8)

Lawful Evil is an 'order above all' alignment. You're trying to do the correct thing as set out by the lawful authorities, but these irritating goody-two-shoes keep getting in your way because they can't see that it's for the greater good that these people have to die now, or you can't free those slaves because it would cause a major incident somewhere. Honestly, I'd be more scared of a LE character played correctly than I would of someone using the 'evil' tag as an excuse to spread chaos. Lawful Evil is scarier because they know they're doing bad things, and they justify it. I think that's what Paizo's attempting to avoid.

That and if a properly played LE character got into the Society, he'd have taken over within a season. And we just can't have that, can we?

Chaotic Neutral characters aren't anarchists (or the Joker) either. 99% of the characters I play are Chaotic Neutral, and only one of them has ever gotten tagged as 'borderline evil'. Chaotic Neutral 'represents freedom from both society's restrictions and a do-gooder's zeal', to once again quote the CRB. They are motivated by personal desires and values, rather than commitment to a particular organization or way of life, and those values are not intrinsically harmful to the people around them.

3/5

I once played a character dedicated to the concept of chaos. He wasn't evil like some Society members are in actuality. Entropy is chaos in its truest form. But chaos is about more than being free for society's restrictions to my priest of chaos, Chaos could be argued as the natural state as all things move towards it as time goes on. I forget which Law of Thermodynamics that is off hand but that is beside the point. Nothing gets better when left alone. All things deteriorate and fall a part.

As for evil vs chaos, I favor the OP's argument about WHY lawful evil should be allowed.

Side note: I just realized Megatron is LE while the Fallen was more CE, interesting...

(Other Side note: Zarta IS LE and she isn't running things currently, she got a promotion but she still works for the Decimevirate.

1/5

This is my understanding of the difference between CN and LE. CN is an ethical framework that believes in personal freedom over all else. They do attempt to balance that freedom against its effects on others however. LE individuals exist inside an ethical framework where they respect power over everything without respect for the rights or lives of others.

A CN character is viable in a RPG campaign. A LE one is not. I've got 30+ years of experience running D&D campaigns and watching them explode if an evil character was allowed in to fall back on.

Dark Archive 5/5 5/5

I've said it before, I will say it again. I would much rather play and/or play with a LE PC than a CN.

Andy saw my "Lawful Neutral" Hellknight in action. She was Lawful Evil in all but name. Only once did people object to a proposed action. (I wanted to execute criminals. Who happened to be children. People objected. I did not.)

Dark Archive 5/5 5/5

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jon dehning wrote:

I've said it before, I will say it again. I would much rather play and/or play with a LE PC than a CN.

Andy saw my "Lawful Neutral" Hellknight in action. She was Lawful Evil in all but name. Only once did people object to a proposed action. (I wanted to execute criminals. Who happened to be children. People objected. I did not.)

I have considered you weak ever since.

Dark Archive 5/5 5/5

Robin Aeronica wrote:
jon dehning wrote:

I've said it before, I will say it again. I would much rather play and/or play with a LE PC than a CN.

Andy saw my "Lawful Neutral" Hellknight in action. She was Lawful Evil in all but name. Only once did people object to a proposed action. (I wanted to execute criminals. Who happened to be children. People objected. I did not.)

I have considered you weak ever since.

Oh, really? Is that why you failed to obtain any boon in Eyes of the Ten?

Dark Archive 5/5 5/5

jon dehning wrote:
Robin Aeronica wrote:
jon dehning wrote:

I've said it before, I will say it again. I would much rather play and/or play with a LE PC than a CN.

Andy saw my "Lawful Neutral" Hellknight in action. She was Lawful Evil in all but name. Only once did people object to a proposed action. (I wanted to execute criminals. Who happened to be children. People objected. I did not.)

I have considered you weak ever since.
Oh, really? Is that why you failed to obtain any boon in Eyes of the Ten?

It is not my problem if the Decemvirate fails to recognize talent when they see it.

I will remind you I still have a certain carved figure. His days are numbered.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

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jon dehning wrote:

I've said it before, I will say it again. I would much rather play and/or play with a LE PC than a CN.

Andy saw my "Lawful Neutral" Hellknight in action. She was Lawful Evil in all but name. Only once did people object to a proposed action. (I wanted to execute criminals. Who happened to be children. People objected. I did not.)

But you are certainly an example of someone who is mature enough to be able to create an "evil" character that isn't a caricature of evil.

4/5

So long as you're not being disruptive or portraying things that GMs, other players, and campaign staff would rather not have in an organized play system, write LN on your character sheet and enjoy privately thinking of your PC as evil. If you do wind up needing an atonement to stay playable, so be it.

That said, it is a good rule to simply disallow evil PCs because it means that if you do things that heroes in our organized play environment shouldn't be doing, there are repercussions. I've heard more than one tale of someone going evil, and retiring their PC with pride afterwords.

Personally I think my bloatmage qualifies in the above category of "LN", but that doesn't make him any less of a teamplayer, even if at the end of the day he is out for himself. He even prepares feather fall and cast it on an ally who'd been giving him crap all day!

Liberty's Edge 1/5

David_Bross wrote:


Personally I think my bloatmage qualifies in the above category of "LN", but that doesn't make him any less of a teamplayer, even if at the end of the day he is out for himself. He even prepares feather fall and cast it on an ally who'd been giving him crap all day!

You, sir, are far more mature than I can ever hope to be. I distinctly remember my Chaotic Good Cleric of Sarenrae walking into a room, spotting the Aspis Consortium Agents, and screaming "Feel the wrath of Sarenrae, you Aspis bastards!!" as she Fireballed the room. We found out afterwards that there was an NPC in there we were supposed to save. Needless to say, that character got retired a couple of levels later when I got sick of paying for atonements...

Then there's the ifrit sorcerer, the gay paladin of Iomedae, the bard/ninja of Cayden Cailean... you get the idea. We've stopped calling it Chaotic Neutral if certain people are sitting at the table; now it's Chaotic Destructive.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

It's simple.

Evil isn't allowed for PCs, therefore neither is Lawful evil. This is for various reasons, most of which have to do with making PFS palatable for a large audience (and the parents of some of the audience).

Chaotic Neutral isn't inherently problematic. But when someone is playing a CN character in a problematic way, use the "Don't Be A Jerk" rule. You can play a character of any non-Evil alignment as long as you play nice with the other people at the table.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Usually its not any behavior that is itself problematic but rather he complainer is always wrong syndrome. All paladins or all murderhobos ...or all paladinmurderhobo..... works fine. Its the mixed groups that make for some interestin rp with disruptive potential.

Scarab Sages 4/5

i only have one character that is CN. it is my illusionist who had a mental break at watching his parents get destroyed by an summoned creature. he has a 20 INT but cannot always tell the difference between his illusions and reality. i play him like murdoch from the old tv series the a-team .... (showing my age there).. my point is i always thought CN was a great way to role play functional insanity. As for the LE point of view, being LE let's you do some pretty heinous things and i think keeping that element out of PFS is a good thing.

Silver Crusade 5/5 5/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria

I think that adding LE would make it even more difficult to justify why certain characters are pathfinders, we already have to deal with some rather messed up things (some deific obediences like asmodeus).
Paladins are the obvious issue, and we have had a number of circumstances where our detect evil was foiled by neutral followers of evil gods, there is still that rather thin line separating us vs them.

I really don't want to apologize for the behavior of CN characters, but the fact that some GMs are apparently a bit to lenient when it comes to behavior that should require an atonement, but this has nothing to do with the prohibition against evil characters.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

i let Chaotic Neutral players know early on, that those two words aren't a license to play Chaotic Evil Light, especially in Society play.

Sovereign Court 2/5

Just because you have a tattoo of Zon-Kuthon's (un)holy symbol on your tongue, people seem to think you're evil! It's the damnedest thing.

There is a pretty notable difference between a LE and a LN character in my opinion. My Pain Taster of Zon-Kuthon is a fairly amiable fellow who just happens to engage in some practices certain people find unnerving and who has a very skewed perspective on what it is Zon-Kuthon actually stands for. He would never hesitate to endanger himself to save a fellow party member (unless said party member had done something like assault a Hellknight when acting as a guest under Hellknight jurisdiction, for example).

Kyobi sees no issue with being pen-pals with a mass murderer, but wouldn't aid in a mass murder. He would (and has) lead squads of men to their death at the command of a superior, however. A LE version of the same character would coldly balance risk-and-reward and likely at least some of the time judge it not to be worth the danger or the resources to save / restore / raise their companion(s). A LE character would not shout "Get behind me!" and fight a literal horde of wraiths, or tackle a monster made of lava and punch it to death while it spewed lava in place of blood, without some serious cost-benefit analysis first.

That being said, I've seen plenty of people with LN characters tending toward LE evaluations, but I have (as others have mentioned) seen far more CN characters stopping just short of kicking puppies on their way to CE.

1/5

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We can't play "Evil Characters" because everybody's still nervous about the RPG backlash in the 80s and that's frankly a little silly and a little sad.

When we live in a world where a 13 year old can download instructions to bluejack a cellphone, build a pipe bomb, and then go to their school with an Armalite rifle that they converted into a fully automatic weapon using instructions that they downloaded two months earlier, people have bigger s&+# to deal with then imaginary violence on graph paper.

Everyone is still (rightfully) frightened over the decades of bad publicity our hobby received at the hands of people who are no where near as noble as the Clerics the young players in these games were rolling up and using to vanquish demons and evil beasts. In fact instead of embracing the "absolute good versus total evil" nature of the story and ignoring what could have been a fantastic method for religious education (imagine using a Christian themed table top role-playing game for the sake of teaching stories from the Bible), people just kind of crapped all over it and failed to understand it.

Essentially, because of Jerry Falwell and Jack Chick, we can't have nice (or in this case, evil) things.

1/5

That is simply nonsense.

I'll repeat, I've been A GM since the late 70's and over that time I've tried allowing evil PC's many times due to the insistence of players who claimed they could RP them without causing problems. They were without exception wrong. In order to RP any flavor of evil alignment a PC is simply not compatible with a party of adventurers. LE in particular does not allow for cooperation. To properly RP LE the player must be seeking to dominate those around them and that is simply not a pleasant gaming experience for the other people at the table.

Silver Crusade 1/5

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Jessex wrote:
I'll repeat, I've been A GM since the late 70's and over that time I've tried allowing evil PC's many times due to the insistence of players who claimed they could RP them without causing problems. They were without exception wrong.

An appeal to authority if I haven't ever seen one. This would be an excellent response to why YOU wouldn't allow a LE PC in a party however. That being said, all cases are subjective as you could see if you speak with other GMs or indeed people who have played LE properly. Some instances can be noted above.

Jessex wrote:
In order to RP any flavor of evil alignment a PC is simply not compatible with a party of adventurers. LE in particular does not allow for cooperation. To properly RP LE the player must be seeking to dominate those around them and that is simply not a pleasant gaming experience for the other people at the table.

Also not very compelling. Again, just because you have not personally seen something Lawful Evil done well does not mean it does not exist. A Lawful Evil character need not seek to dominate those around him. Take the Dexter example: serial killer, terrible human being on balance... yet able to function normally when need be. What you are describing is similar to Lawful Stupid or Chaotic Stupid... it is Stupid Evil.

There are many ways to get a LE character who DOES seek to dominate other people to work well with a party: direct them towards a greater evil, or perhaps a rival. Give them a reason to work with the party. As a lawful character this is generally easier to do than a chaotic one, as a chaotic character follows their whims and desires while if a lawful character gives you their word not to betray you... well they are generally more prone to keep their word.

We should indeed avoid hasty generalizations. I repeat, I did not seek a rule change, I just wanted to know the valid reasons why it wasn't allowed, and I found quite a few in the above comments. An appeal to authority and personal bad experiences is not a valid reason however.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Andrew Christian wrote:

Disruptive people will be disruptive no matter the means.

Allowing any kind of evil is enabling that disruptiveness, because disruptive people often use tags, labels, and titles as excuses for why the are allowed to be disruptive.

These disruptive people are often not mature enough in their interpretation or definition of what it means to be evil to be discerning enough on how to play a non-disruptive form of evil. They often play a caricature of evil rather than a personality that just happens to be evil. In other words, evil defines the personality, instead of being a part of it.

While those types of evil beings exist, they are often the most heinous of psychotic anti-social serial killers or Demons/Devils.

I'm reminded of Cyric of the Time of Troubles trilogy in the late 1980's/ early 1990's of the Forgotten Realms of 2nd edition AD&D. He often did things to sabotage or betray his friends, he did not do them because he was evil. He had a personality, motivations, likes, dislikes, feelings, etc. And his way of acting out on those things is what defined him as evil.

But often as not, when you have folks playing evil, they purposefully make sabotaging or betraying actions and then say, "why? that's what my character would do, he's evil." Ok, why did he make that choice? What motivated him to do that? "He's Evil."

Allowing any kind of evil is a real good way to cause disruption in any game group let alone in an organized play environment. Look at how much disruption gets discussed just because of a neutral Cleric of Pharasma and a Neutral Necromancer having to find a way to interact that isn't adversarial.

Chaotic Neutral is also misunderstood. But regardless of how the alignment is interpreted (correctly or not), a GM can say, "If you do that, that is an evil act and I'll have to mark it on your character chronicle sheet." Or, "If you keep doing evil things like that, your character will become evil and I have no option but to mark them as dead." [NOTE: of course within the rules of the...

Chaotic neutral in practice is EXACTLY being evil without being evil.

"So being able to play Chaotic Neutral is not just another way (or shouldn't be) to play evil."

But it is. Whether that reality gets acknowledged or not. As echoed above, I'd much rather be with a LE party member than a CN one. Every day and twice on Wednesdays.


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I don't allow CN in my games either. Any good, plus LN, and N

(Oh, this is a PFS society discussion, my mistake. I stay away from PFS like the plague. But that is neither here nor there... )

Silver Crusade 2/5

Robert Carter 58 wrote:
I don't allow CN in my games either. Any good, plus LN, and N

Not an option in PFS.


thecursor wrote:

We can't play "Evil Characters" because everybody's still nervous about the RPG backlash in the 80s and that's frankly a little silly and a little sad.

When we live in a world where a 13 year old can download instructions to bluejack a cellphone, build a pipe bomb, and then go to their school with an Armalite rifle that they converted into a fully automatic weapon using instructions that they downloaded two months earlier, people have bigger s%#* to deal with then imaginary violence on graph paper.

Everyone is still (rightfully) frightened over the decades of bad publicity our hobby received at the hands of people who are no where near as noble as the Clerics the young players in these games were rolling up and using to vanquish demons and evil beasts. In fact instead of embracing the "absolute good versus total evil" nature of the story and ignoring what could have been a fantastic method for religious education (imagine using a Christian themed table top role-playing game for the sake of teaching stories from the Bible), people just kind of crapped all over it and failed to understand it.

Essentially, because of Jerry Falwell and Jack Chick, we can't have nice (or in this case, evil) things.

I think an evil themed game can be fun with the right players. I am sometimes surprised how conservative the average gamer is. So, it's not just that they are frightened.. they don't like it. They don't like it when the Avengers kill in comics, they rail against any change, and they don't like evil themes- even if the pulp tales that formed D&D were certainly awash in them. (As were the myths that came before...)

4/5

I say this as a person who has made multiple lawful aligned characters, honestly in my personal taste I find the lawful alignment more annoying than any sort of evil or chaos. That said I can see how evil characters might not be appropriate for organized play.

And as always I'm disappointed to see the chaotic alignment get such a bad wrap. As some others have pointed out there is a fair bit of room to abuse it but there's also a ton roleplay potential there too.

1/5

Sera Dragonbane wrote:

There are many ways to get a LE character who DOES seek to dominate other people to work well with a party: direct them towards a greater evil, or perhaps a rival. Give them a reason to work with the party. As a lawful character this is generally easier to do than a chaotic one, as a chaotic character follows their whims and desires while if a lawful character gives you their word not to betray you... well they are generally more prone to keep their word.

And NONE of that will be a pleasant gaming experience for the rest of the people at the table which is why the alignment is banned. You may believe you can come up justifications as to why you could play a LE character that would not force inter party conflict, despite my 30+ years of experience in direct conflict with that belief, but it still boils down to it being not fun for the r4est of the table which is a good enough reason to ban the alignment.

Silver Crusade 1/5

Jessex wrote:
Sera Dragonbane wrote:

There are many ways to get a LE character who DOES seek to dominate other people to work well with a party: direct them towards a greater evil, or perhaps a rival. Give them a reason to work with the party. As a lawful character this is generally easier to do than a chaotic one, as a chaotic character follows their whims and desires while if a lawful character gives you their word not to betray you... well they are generally more prone to keep their word.

And NONE of that will be a pleasant gaming experience for the rest of the people at the table which is why the alignment is banned. You may believe you can come up justifications as to why you could play a LE character that would not force inter party conflict, despite my 30+ years of experience in direct conflict with that belief, but it still boils down to it being not fun for the r4est of the table which is a good enough reason to ban the alignment.

What you are missing is this. Your experience with the alignment is not everyone's experience with the alignment. Just as you've not yet seen it work in your toted 30+ years of tabletop games, I have seen it work DOZENS of times with different groups in not even half the time. Why? Because the GM was able to work with the player.

One's personal experience is not sufficient justification as to why NO ONE should play the alignment. Just because I've never seen a penguin with my own two eyes, does not mean penguins do not exist, despite my experience stating the contrary. Imagine if that logic were to be applied to anything else.

"Not once did I see a gunslingers that didn't cause inter party conflict. Therefore gunslingers should not be allowed at the table."

I could go into more extreme examples using the real world, but I am pretty sure it is clear how the logic falls apart.

Again it is clear why you don't want it at YOUR table. That doesn't mean it can't be done. Again, there are other VALID reasons why it shouldn't be allowed in PFS, but this is not one of them.

Grand Lodge 3/5

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Like all alignment discussions, this one has Zero chance of coming to a point where everyone agrees, because everyone interprets alignments differently. What one person asserts is LE behavior, I might see as LN. In a regular game the people playing it can sit down, have an in depth discussion of their characters and their alignments, and everyone can work from a common ground (even if not everyone 100% agrees)

In a campaign like PFS, this isn't going to happen. As a GM, I might allow evil alignments in my game when I am sure that a player I know is mature enough to not disrupt the game with it. In PFS I don't always know the players who come and sit down at my table, how am I to know that this isn't someone who plays evil to be disruptive? There is no vetting process to allow players to prove themselves, so it makes sense that there are no evil alignments allowed for the campaign. It is in the best interest of the CAMPAIGN that all characters are required to maintain neutral or good alignments.

1/5

Personally, I would be comfortable dropping Alignment as a game mechanic all together frankly. I don't need a dot on a sheet to tell me that killing a baby is wrong and that same game mechanic is, more often than not, an obstacle to the more refined points of modern story telling and role-playing. Just like Character Classes, it's only there out of tradition.

Grand Lodge 4/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

The organized play campaign is not going to promote evil, tacitly or otherwise.

Grand Lodge

Don't you know that in PFS, neutral is the new evil?

Shadow Lodge 4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Not at my table. I have warned players that their Neutral characters are risking removal from play.

Grand Lodge

The Slave Pits of Absalom must have been so fun for Cheliax faction players at your table.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Ms. Pleiades wrote:
The Slave Pits of Absalom must have been so fun for Cheliax faction players at your table.

Non paladins have near infinite variations on lawful that can be impossible to discern from chaos in a single gaming session if ever

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Ms. Pleiades wrote:
The Slave Pits of Absalom must have been so fun for Cheliax faction players at your table.

One, I never played/ran it before faction missions were abandoned.

Two, there was a specific dispensation on faction missions for awhile.

Three, reading the faction mission I can't see how that specific action is irredeemably evil enough to warrant a total alignment shift.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I truly fear for the future when slavery is given such an easy pass with the current generation.

4/5 5/55/55/55/5

LE/NE is fine in a party - Just ask Albert Swearengen. He showed that Evil can cooperate.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Starfinder Superscriber
David Bowles wrote:
Chaotic neutral in practice is EXACTLY being evil without being evil.

Huh? What? Do you really think that, or are you being sarcastic here?

If you really think that: then you're one of the problem players that makes GMs not want to have CN players in a game.

CN is not evil. If it were, it would be called CE. But there already is a thing called CE. So, presumably, CN, is supposed to be something different.

Go and read everything that's written in the CRB, the GameMastery Guide, Ultimate Campaign, and Champions of Balance about Chaotic Neutral, and then compare it to what's written about Chaotic Good and Chaotic Evil.

They're not the same thing. Players that start with your attitude, and who actually follow up on that attitude, should have their PFS CN characters marked as having their alignments shifted to evil, and should be marked as unplayable in PFS.

Sovereign Court

Yeah - as others have said - I think you're reading correlation as causality.

It's not that being CN makes these people play disruptively; it's that people who want to be disruptive nearly all put CN on their character sheets as an excuse.

Even if CN wasn't allowed - those same players would still be disruptive. They just couldn't use the same excuse.

Silver Crusade 2/5

rknop wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
Chaotic neutral in practice is EXACTLY being evil without being evil.

Huh? What? Do you really think that, or are you being sarcastic here?

If you really think that: then you're one of the problem players that makes GMs not want to have CN players in a game.

CN is not evil. If it were, it would be called CE. But there already is a thing called CE. So, presumably, CN, is supposed to be something different.

Go and read everything that's written in the CRB, the GameMastery Guide, Ultimate Campaign, and Champions of Balance about Chaotic Neutral, and then compare it to what's written about Chaotic Good and Chaotic Evil.

They're not the same thing. Players that start with your attitude, and who actually follow up on that attitude, should have their PFS CN characters marked as having their alignments shifted to evil, and should be marked as unplayable in PFS.

I'm talking about how other people use CN as an excuse to do ANYTHING. I don't have any CN PCs, but I sure have to sit with them often enough.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Starfinder Superscriber

Excuses can be enablers, though.

Some people will be disruptive no matter what.

Some people who might be capable of not being disruptive, will be if they see an excuse sitting out there to do so. Evil alignments nicely provide that excuse. And, sadly, for some, CN also does.

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