I'm playing a Chaotic Neutral High Drow (custom race I created. They left the underground to live on the surface. This did away with their Light Sensitivity, but they also lost some abilities that living underground gave them) Druid. I understand how to play good druids and evil druids, but I'm not so sure on the law/chaos axis. How would you recommend playing a chaotic druid?
Think 'eco-terrorist'. This character, as a druid, represents the wild, but thinks in short-term; any sort of sentient encroachment on the wilderness is to be removed, post-haste.
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You are wild. You are free. No chains or cages bind you. You care little about questions of morality, and merely act upon your own desires, whether it is to kill who you want to kill or save who you want to save. When a problem arises, you do not deal with petty politics and treaties like those LN druids, but instead you act as is your duty as the alpha of your pack, the king of your jungle.
...honestly? Standard barbarian works. The above is a valid interpretation of what a CN druid could be like.
Think of nature. It is vicious sometimes but not needlessly so. It doesn't follow rules or authority save one: survival of the fittest. He who adapts survives and he who doesn't perishes.
Your druid represents nature at its most volatile. Nature destroys and creates at random then creatures scramble to find order and purpose later. Cities last for centuries then are taken down by a mere earthquake or tidal wave. And you are the tidal wave that will crash down false notions of order.
You can be an anti-civilization druid in this way believing that humans who attempt to conquer nature will end up consumed by it. You be more active about bringing civilizations down but that might venture too far into evil territory which would cause you to lose your powers.
To those LN Druids who say nature follows patterns and cycles, say this: All systems tend towards chaos.
Your mood is as ever-changing as the phases of the moon
You don't need to be destructive or have some sort of anarchist agenda to be chaotic.
I've seen this misconception too often. Just because you don't believe in rules and laws it doesn't mean you have to be an anarchist. Sometimes a chaotic character will follow the rules but not because of anybody is telling him to do so but because he wants to and he feels like it's right. A chaotic character will rather follow his heart or his instincts rather than be constrained by what he is supposed to do.
A chaotic druid might try to emulate nature's ways by being caring and merciful when he feels he should be and a force of destruction at other times. Or he might just think that laws and social structure are unnatural and only tear people apart from the natural world. He might work against civilisation even if he's not directly destructive or rebellious by trying to show other people more simple and natural ways by giving example.| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
One question to consider is; Chaotic how, and how chaotic?
Chaos can be freedom, but it can also be disorder.
Chaos can be random, but it can also simply be complexity.
Chaos can be opposition to law, but it can also be simply its absence.
You could be one given to whim as animals are.
You could oppose structure on merit.
You could hold that mutations are an aspect of nature and focus upon those.
You could reject society/government/law/ect. and hold that survival of the fittest is the true path.
You could champion expression through nature.
You could be insane and talk to trees as much as you do yourself.
You could just be a person of their whims who simply likes nature.
You could be a druid who offers prayers to a deity or demigod; A CN druid of Shub-niggurath is certainly going to be different from one of Valani.
Like law, there is more than one flavor for chaos.
Also, you walk the line between Good and Evil; Is it because you believe in balance between the two? Are you simply one who happens to be as good as they are evil? Do you reject the premise of the question?
Further, what environment or aspect of nature does your druid focus upon? The whole of it, just where they are, or some individual thing? If an animal may serve as their focus or at least inspiration, perhaps avoid picking one that is known for social behavior or building ordered structures. Sharks, foxes, and cats; these are all thoughts. If one goes with weather as perhaps a route; Do you find order in a storm? Roaring winds and raging tides.
Personally, I say this; Determine who the character is, then slap druid on top and decide how that plays with who they are. How does revering nature flow with who they are?
Xuldarinar, I 100% aggree with you. You covered everyrhing and I don't think there's much more that it could be said.
You hate roads.
Seriously, hate 'em. Hate 'em and the road they came in on.
You do your best to smother, divert and overgrow every road you come across. Pit traps are great as are rope snares.
You're not too fond of paths either.
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Why do you want to be Chaotic Neutral? Instead of picking your alignment first, and then trying to figure out your personality, I would suggest developing the personality first, and then choosing the alignment that best describes that.
Because it is an interesting challenge? Seed ideas that you build characters around can come from a lot of things. You might think 'this class is cool', 'this weapon looks interesting', 'I want to use this spell', etc.
There is not only one way to make a character. He decided to build out from the alignment. It works as a nice thought experiment.
Heck, I often have the most fun when I set a limit like that and try to make a character that can stretch the limits of an alignment. I worked up a monk that can lie, cheat, and steal while being lawful.
I also thought of ideas of a paladin with that one monk-ish archetype that teams up with a witch to cheat at card games (the idea there is that cheating is part of the game and its intended and accepted challenge; the witch uses misfortune to make other people have sucky rolls, and the paladin can protect his allies from similar effects).
One of my most memorable characters came out from an agreement with my GM. It was in Mage:the Ascension. I love developing complex character concepts but this time I only provided a stat block. My character suffered from amnesia and I didn't know anything about her past. So I knew what my character could do, I knew her personality, but my GM developed her backstory based in my stat block and behaviour anf let me discover it as the story advanced. She ended being one of my iconic characters ever.
So everything can be a good starting idea for creating a PC: an alignment, a basic concept, a class... No matter what is the basic idea, what matter is that you develope it in an interesting way.
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For a CN Druid, I would say the idea is to lean hard towards the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. That is, everything dies, everything rots, everything falls away with time; civilization and other works of man intended to supersede nature are no exception. Protecting or preserving these things is not of inherent value- civilization will show its right to continue existing (or not) if it perseveres but it has no more right to do so than the deer has right to not be eaten by the wolf. Indeed, the herd is stronger if the weak and sickly are picked off by predators, and it is much the same with civilization's institutions. Indeed, when the forest burns it makes room for new life to thrive.
So I would say your ethos is acknowledging the inevitability of death, rot, and decline, but understanding that it is necessary to prevent stagnation, which is the true enemy of growth and renewal. Most druids privilege spring and summer, your domain is autumn and winter.
Rules, treaties, promises, codes, laws, these are artificial things invented by people who think they are above and separate from the natural world, rather than participants within it. Those people arw wrong, teach them that. Everything is either predator or prey, sometimes both at different times, to behave otherwise is wrong. Bandits? Predators, it is natural for them to prey upon travellers, and is is natural for prey to fight back and try to gore the predator to death. It is also natural for apex predators to prey upon other predators, strive to be the apex.
Traditionally, the fey are Chaotic Neutral. I'd personally draw my inspiration from there. Fickle, ineffable, enigmatic - possibly a prankster, possibly just operating under a very different set of ethics & morals (depends on the kind of fey we're talking about, here.)
You wouldn't happen to have a copy of Changeling: The Dreaming lying around, would you....?
I have a CN druid, she's was born a crown princess in the mountains, however she did not feel at home with her duties or her status. She found the underground constricting and depressing.
So she ran away, seeking freedom amidst the forests and it's animals, she rebelled against the traditions and laws of her people for her own personal freedom and happiness.
She joined adventures because the forests she lived in was threatened (RoW adventure path) and she is still traveling with them to protect nature from eternal winter.
I have a hard time drawing the exact line between true neutral and chaotic neutral, to be honest, but my interpretation is that a chaotic neutral character does whatever strikes him or her as the right thing to do at the time. They do not fight laws as much as ignore them. If the law says whatever you want to do, well and good. If it does not, meh.
As a saying from close to my neck of the woods goes, the law is a gate across an open field. Only the foolish or the blind feel they have to go through it. You may be forced to do it, or you may like to do what is says anyway, but social mores and the like don't have any more hold on you than anyone else's opinion.
In the context of a druid, I would interpret this as basically having your own views and not caring much about those of others. If you are in a druidic cult, this means being somewhat of a free spirit and caring about the dogma or the hierarchy as little as possible. Your own communion with nature (or your god, if you are that kind of druid) and experience are your main guide. Again, you do not have to oppose authority for the sake of it, it just does not mean anything to you. If you think the hierophant is right, or if you want to get on their good side, or if you have another good reason, you can follow the party line just fine. All the systems and institutions of the world, however, they are just words and make-believe. You are neither as altruistic and idealistic as the chaotic good types nor as destructive and callous as the chaotic evil ones.