Chaotic vs Neutral

[Netzach Sloth]

My understanding of chaotic is that:

Chaotic good will do whatever they want as long as they think it's good.

Chaotic evil will do whatever they want.

Am I missing something, or are chaotic and neutral essentially the same thing?

[mreed2]

Chaotic = "Laws and tradition are wrong more often than they are right -- defying convention is the right thing to do, even if there is moral component to the action."

Chaotic Good will prefer to disobey the law of defy convention in the course of doing good.
Neutral Good will do whatever is good.
Chatoic Neutral will (traditionally) flip a coin / roll a die to decide between actions.
Chaotic Evil will lie / steal / cheat to achieve greater personal power.

[Shower With Joe Dad Simulator]

Neutral is the goal(say balance) and chaotic or lawful is the means and methods willing to achieve it. Neutral chaotic would be doing whatever it takes to keep that balance, while lawful would be the opposite. Thats a general way to look at it if that helps at all.

That doesnt cover everything but just a general idea and example.

[lilheartless]

chaotic has nothing to do with "morality" and everything to do with lawful / lawless ness a lawful good character will do what is morally correct as long as it falls within the / (their) law.

So a lawful good character that was brought up in a kingdom that allowed slavery might feed the poor but wouldn't stop slavers were a chaotic good character that thought slavery was abhorant might try to stop slavers even if it was legal.

Chaotic neutral characters would be considered either the most whimsical (or Insane) of all the different alignment types they do whatever they feel like in any given circumstance

They might Steal money from a Church and in the same day rush into a burning building to save a child for no other reason than tha'ts what they decided to do when presented with an opportunity / (choice).

[Falaris]

Let's have a bit of a history lesson.

Back in the early days of DnD, alignment was actually your religion. Much like in the books about Elric of Melnibone, you worshipped chaos or law as entities in and of itself; you didn't have gods until later. Neutral was just... not worshipping either.

In that sense, detecting alignment etc. made greater sense than it does currently.

In more recent versions, and in pathfinder particularily, alignment is more about your attitude.

The two axi are good vs evil, and law vs chaos.
Good, more than anything, is about respect for life, altruism, and the dignity of yourself and others.

Evil will seek oppressing, killing and debasing others.

Law implies honor and trustworthiness, obedience to authority, reliability... or closed-mindedness, self-righteousness and inflexibility.

Chaos implies independence, flexibility, and an idel for freedom. Or resentment of legitimate authority, arbitraryness, irresponsibility.

So then, the difference between chaotic neutral and chaotic evil is, the chaotic neutral would be an idealist for personal freedom, while a chaotic evil character would be more of a serial killer.

A neutral neutral character is basically normal people like you and me. We have a decent concept of good and evil, but wouldn't necessarily put our lives on the line for those ideals.

Lilheartless' post about a lawful good character in a country where slavery was legal - lawful - is partially right, but I'd suggest that the lawful good character would also be an advocate for changing the laws and making slavery illegal.

[Netzach Sloth]

So, Good and Evil are motivations, while Chaos and Law are about... willfulness?

[mreed2]

Originally posted by Netzach Sloth:

So, Good and Evil are motivations, while Chaos and Law are about... willfulness?

Incorrect -- both axis refer to motivations, at least in this game.

Chaotic characters like to rebel. They will break social conventions and norms simply because they can. Its valuable, in and of itself, to challenge what is most others would consider "normal" or "acceptable".

An evil character likes to cause harm to others (direclty or indirectly). An evil character will cause harm to others simply because they can. Its valuable, in and of itself, to hurt others.

In these two games these are treated as totally seperate axis. A CG and a CE character will be in agreement that it is desirable to (for example) break an oath. They would disagree on whether it is desirable to (for example) help a child rescue her kitten from a tree.

[Falaris]

Originally posted by Netzach Sloth:

So, Good and Evil are motivations, while Chaos and Law are about... willfulness?

Hm. Interesting question, but I think both are the yardsticks you use to consider your own and others' behavior.

Let's say you see someone randomly shooting homeless people for fun. A pretty despicable act.

Any good or lawful character would be motivated by their alignment to bring that person to justice. (A lawful evil one would too, incidentally - such blatant disregard for the laws cannot be tolerated, even if it was somewhat amusing...).

A chaotic good one would exact some vigilante justice, more likely than not.

A chaotic neutral character might do something about it or not, but he certainly wouldn't join in. A neutral (good/evil axis) is still one that has fairly normal regards for good and evil.

A chaotic evil might kill him - preferrably with hand grenade - or join in the fun.

[Falaris]

A further note:
In Pathfinder, alignment is a bit more than just your attitude. If you do acts towards an alignment, they leave a mark on you, and eventually, a palpable aura. Your alignment is also the aura sticking to you. Some spells, if you cast them, will affect your aura accordingly.

For further reading, I'll suggest:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules/

[mreed2]

Originally posted by Falaris:

A further note:
In Pathfinder, alignment is a bit more than just your attitude. If you do acts towards an alignment, they leave a mark on you, and eventually, a palpable aura. Your alignment is also the aura sticking to you. Some spells, if you cast them, will affect your aura accordingly.

For further reading, I'll suggest:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules/

This references the P&P game -- none of this applies in this CRPG.

[Falaris]

Originally posted by mreed2:

Originally posted by Falaris:

A further note:
In Pathfinder, alignment is a bit more than just your attitude. If you do acts towards an alignment, they leave a mark on you, and eventually, a palpable aura. Your alignment is also the aura sticking to you. Some spells, if you cast them, will affect your aura accordingly.

For further reading, I'll suggest:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules/

This references the P&P game -- none of this applies in this CRPG.

That is a very strange statement. If we were talking about feats that are different here or there, sure, but these are the concepts behind the scenes. You'll have to elaborate.

[mreed2]

Originally posted by Falaris:

Originally posted by mreed2:

This references the P&P game -- none of this applies in this CRPG.

That is a very strange statement. If we were talking about feats that are different here or there, sure, but these are the concepts behind the scenes. You'll have to elaborate.

There is no place in the game where "...you do acts towards and alignemnt, they will leave a mark on you, and eventually a palpable aura." Nor are there any spells that "if you cast them will affect your aura accordingly."

Perhaps those effects should be in this game, but given the OP original question such information is likely to add to his/her confusion rather than being informative.

[Netzach Sloth]

Originally posted by mreed2:

Originally posted by Falaris:

That is a very strange statement. If we were talking about feats that are different here or there, sure, but these are the concepts behind the scenes. You'll have to elaborate.

There is no place in the game where "...you do acts towards and alignemnt, they will leave a mark on you, and eventually a palpable aura." Nor are there any spells that "if you cast them will affect your aura accordingly."

Perhaps those effects should be in this game, but given the OP original question such information is likely to add to his/her confusion rather than being informative.

It's fine, I understand that the game differs from PnP; changing "Kensai" to "Sword Saint" is a good example of arbitrary confusing changes the devs made.

The more I look into pathfinder, the more I'm dissapointed in what was left out, but I understand it'd be hard to implement a lot of the more esoteric rules.

[Falaris]

Originally posted by mreed2:

Originally posted by Falaris:

That is a very strange statement. If we were talking about feats that are different here or there, sure, but these are the concepts behind the scenes. You'll have to elaborate.

There is no place in the game where "...you do acts towards and alignemnt, they will leave a mark on you, and eventually a palpable aura." Nor are there any spells that "if you cast them will affect your aura accordingly."

Perhaps those effects should be in this game, but given the OP original question such information is likely to add to his/her confusion rather than being informative.

Fair enough you don't have detect alignment spells, but you DO have smite evil and alignment based attacks/spells.

[Netzach Sloth]

I think I got it now.

Good wants to help people.

Evil wants to hurt people.

Lawful wants to obey the rules.

Chaotic wants to be free.

[mreed2]

Originally posted by Netzach Sloth:

I think I got it now.

Good wants to help people.

Evil wants to hurt people.

Lawful wants to obey the rules.

Chaotic wants to be free.

Yeap, that's a good summary.