Chaotic Evil means that you mainly do things that benefit yourself, and only yourself. Sometimes your agenda lines up with others, but you generally don't do anything for them just because, it always has to benefit you. You are chaotic, you betray people, it is expected of you, but it can be worked with. I know Loki is CN, but his inability to not betray people is a perfect example of this. As a Chaotic Evil character you will betray your party, if your group is being TPK'd in a fight you are obviously going to lose, you'll run. If your group gets a magic item that you need, you'll take it and leave, and you may get split from the party for a while, but you'll eventually join up again.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Yeah for the record I think Jaqen is definitely lawful neutral, not chaotic. All his actions are based around a code that he doesn't break.
To me where I find him more along the lines of neutral is that while there are system's in place by the faceless men they don't take sides. They are just as likely to take a contract from a "good side" as well as a "bad side" and fulfill what is agreed upon. Maybe I should have been clearer in my explanation so as not to confuse.
That's why he's neutral on the good-neutral-evil scale. He's still VERY lawful on the lawful-neutral-chaotic scale. Bit of a difference.
I play a Lawful good Paladin and there's a character in our group that has a multiple personality disorder. Some of his characters are chaotic aligned and one of them is lawful evil. Surprisingly, I get along with most of his personalities. And out of game he's a great guy.
I play a Lawful good Paladin and there's a character in our group that has a multiple personality disorder. Some of his characters are chaotic aligned and one of them is lawful evil. Surprisingly, I get along with most of his personalities. And out of game he's a great guy.
Sally scares me. As does Spectre Greg. Anyone else I’m good with. I just hope his new patron will help with that. Because, there’s only one thing I fear in that campaign and that’s him going full on either of those personalities.
It is mainly about the player. A good player will play the alignment well and appropriately. A good player understands that you are all there for fun and social interaction. Being chaotic doesn't mean you will break the rules all the time and it doesn't mean you look for opportunities to stab other players in the back. I'm back to roleplaying after about 10-15 years, getting back into it after two groups of friends wanted to learn so I ran some campaigns, firstly Middle-Earth under Gurps 4th, then D&D and I delivered a chat about alignment and what the different components meant using looting a body as one of my examples. Now i'm back to playing again and one of my characters is a CG Half-elf Bard - and i'm loving it. Being chaotic doesn't mean I don't or can't follow the law or respect authority and most of the time I do, but there are times when my aims or what I perceive to be the right thing to do is best met by bending the rules or ignoring conventions.
I have too many bad experiences as a teenager in the 80s when it was the players that was the issue, PCs stealing from PCs when the player wasn't there and the DM allowing it, or players sabotaging other players chances of survival. They played themselves and I remember games of Warhammer in particular that were ruined by this. So when I started DMing again I banned evil characters as a default as we had several new players in both the groups I was running. I remember in a one-off someone else ran and a fellow player played an evil character and he set out to sabotage the enjoyment of the others who were still relatively inexperienced. That's not to say I would never allow an evil character in the future and this would depend on the setting and campaign, but I tend to avoid it for now.
Chaotic characters can give a wonderful flexibility in play and allow for a lot of fun and I definitely allow it. The players I now play with as well as myself are mostly in our 40s and 50s and we are too old for that teenage backstabbing nonsense.
Any alignment can be played where everyone has fun. I've seen CE where everyone is having a great time with it, but she's the one that makes it fun for the campaign.Definitely CE, though. Her character can be disruptive but disruptive in a way that will take a situation and turn it funny. She chooses when her character's CE nature is appropriate for everyone's enjoyment. That's how she plays CE.
I've heard/read horror stories where players use their alignment to dominate the game and force actions upon the other players with the excuse that it's what their character would do. That's on the player, not the character sheet.
👆 all day. 100% right.
I’ve seen CG people play theirnchars 100% lawful. (What?) I’ve seen lawful chars do whatever they want (uhhh) etc.
end of the day. Some players... they just don’t understand the alignment and just do what they see fit. In which the DM should either explain the alignments, or re-align then based on their actions.
He's only 24 years old, so not considered an adult yet in elf standards, so he's mostly pretty childish.
Some examples:
climbed onto the shoulders of a very tall guy on a really fancy party, because he couldn't find the rest of the party, then rode on his shoulders to the party, Yachiru style
(while the whole party was trapped in an Illusion) tried to poke the hologram of a black, foggy octopus (our BBE) who sat on a hologram of the world. Just to have our DM controlled Imp slap his hand away.
our DM gave us all some wondrous items, my Druid got the Pennant of the Vind Rune now when we're outside and looking where to go, he'll randomly fly into the air and our barbarian then gets to catch him.
CG - This is what a lot of my characters are. I like the option to do crazy stuff 'normal' people wouldn't do. It's like... Generating the difference between a protagonist and an NPC. Protagonist goes out and *does* stuff, as crazy and nonsensical as it can be sometimes.
CN - Don't have much experience with this one.
CE - Could be the worst character or the best. Wholly dependent on the person playing it. Has a tenancy to fall into murder hobo territory if not properly thought out ahead of time.
CG- Very good alignment to play. You are all about the greater good and being a decent person but don't really have a code of honor or are as strict as LG. You just basically do the right thing when you can. If you see an orphan kid begging, you'll probably give him a few copper or a silver. You'll help the farmer with a goblin problem because you are a decent person and are able to help. You aren't actively seeking out to destroy all evil wherever it lies, you are just making the world better by being good yourself and doing good deeds when they present themselves.
CN- This is the one most people get wrong. You are all about yourself and aligning with whatever or whomever can further your own goals. You will be with a good party just as easily an evil one, as long as you get what you want. It doesn't mean you will kill anyone at any time and be a murder hobo. This is the alignment that is most confused with Chaotic Stupid, meaning you just do random things and kill random people which is just not the cast. You will join a thieves guild and break into a rich noble's home to gain riches, but you won't kill him in cold blood as he sleeps as that is a useless evil act.
CE- Not good for gameplay as this is the murder hobo that murders anyone. All about yourself as well as all about making things suffer and doing evil things for evils sake. Think of what a chaotic good person would do, and then do the opposite. Would I give a beggar a copper as a CG character, then you would steal as a CE. Would I help a family stranded on a trail? Then kill them and torture them as CE. This alignment is mostly not used and for good reason.
I think there's a lot of room, and so it really comes down to individuals. I love chaotic good characters, but I think they have to have some kind of loyalty or feeling to the group, or at least to one person in the group, because it kind of anchors them a little. It's annoying to play with someone who just does whatever they want at all times and then says 'well that's what my character would do' when it messes up something the rest of the group has been planning out, but I think great roleplaying opportunities can come out of having a member of the group who cares about their party members but has impulse control issues, or who has a lot of defiance towards authority figures that could cause problems during certain social encounters, but who's trying to do their best to temper the urge to fight The Man with what's best for the group. And I think that those moments feel more forgivable when it's coming from a character who wants to be a hero and do what's right-- to me, a CG character is no less a problem than a LG character. A chaotic good rogue might get the party in trouble while engaging in Robin Hood-type exploits, but a lawful good cleric can get the party in trouble by trying to make/keep peace with a villain who can't be trusted, too.
With a chaotic neutral character, for me, there REALLY has to be a personal loyalty to the party even if they don't respect anything else, because I don't want to play with someone who's just going to steal from or backstab the party when it serves their own self-interest. And again, there can be great group storytelling opportunities in having a character who's torn between what's best for the party and what's best for themselves, and there are definitely ways of having fun with someone who's going to just kind of dive into things without thinking about a moral compass. But 'chaotic' doesn't have to mean 'randomly being an *******', it just means 'values personal freedom over laws/social mores/codes of conduct'. It doesn't mean you can't have people you value and lines you wouldn't cross, just that those aren't determined by society as a whole. You can have a character who'll take anything that's not nailed down and start fights over trivial matters but who doesn't steal from friends.
Chaotic evil... boy, I think that there ARE players who could make that really fun, and could have that be a source of in-character conflict without any conflict between players, but I would really have to trust someone before I'd want to have a chaotic evil character in an otherwise good party. But in an evil campaign? Bring it on!
I think one aspect of CG characters that people often overlook is that they might not be very suitable for long-term campaigns. They are often described as 'wandering spirits' and similar. Thus, it's not far-fetched to assume that spending too much time with the same people (like an adventuring party), especially if there's a "leader" or other authority figure, might feel a bit restrictive and they feel the need to leave for a while.
I know someone who plays CG as someone who doesn't think things through... with often disastrous results.
When a good-hearted character becomes infamous for causing more problems than solved, is that still Good?
The player does it so convincingly well, though. Everyone (everyone meaning players and DM) seems to have a great time with it.
That's what it's all about. Right? A great time?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I had a player that was CG, and their current mission was to get Xanathar to leave Waterdeep forever. She was a High-Elf wizard, and her uncle in the party was a Shadar-Kai Monk. Xanathar disintegrated her uncle, and she went ballistic, and in the next few rounds threw 3 level 5 fireballs onto Xanathar, and restrained him so the party paladin could kill him.
Chaotic Good characters have good intentions, but they often allow their emotions determine their actions instead of logic, and it often works out to their benefit.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I play a Lawful good Paladin and there's a character in our group that has a multiple personality disorder. Some of his characters are chaotic aligned and one of them is lawful evil. Surprisingly, I get along with most of his personalities. And out of game he's a great guy.
I tried to run a character that was twin-souled (custom background I found on DnDB) but my DM shot it down, I really wanted to roll that CG Druid/CN Rogue I even tweaked it so that the DM would choose when which soul was in control.
What Crazy Stupid people do you play with? I have a Chaotic Evil player that loves bar fights, earning as much wealth as humanly possible by doing quests (or when forced to), and presses NPC's into his mercenary company, Odin's Wolves.
I once used my berserker to tame a dire wolf as a mount by flying over it's head and landing on its back. As the DM put it, " On it's turn, it wimpers as a large berserker sit on it's back as it lays proved." As my peers came to kill the dire wolf, I declared any attacks on Fenrir would be an attack on me and an attack on Odin's Wolves. Seeing people shutter and distort their faces with fear at the thought of combat against me was better than any PC kill, ever.
Chaotic Evil isn't a murder hobo, I rather think of it as a lifestyle choice.
Chains are ment to be broken, as are those who would forge them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Chaotic Evil means that you mainly do things that benefit yourself, and only yourself. Sometimes your agenda lines up with others, but you generally don't do anything for them just because, it always has to benefit you. You are chaotic, you betray people, it is expected of you, but it can be worked with. I know Loki is CN, but his inability to not betray people is a perfect example of this. As a Chaotic Evil character you will betray your party, if your group is being TPK'd in a fight you are obviously going to lose, you'll run. If your group gets a magic item that you need, you'll take it and leave, and you may get split from the party for a while, but you'll eventually join up again.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
The problem is that while a character like this isn't bad in a story, breaking off to pursue your own arc isn't exactly fun for the other players.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
That's why he's neutral on the good-neutral-evil scale. He's still VERY lawful on the lawful-neutral-chaotic scale. Bit of a difference.
I play a Lawful good Paladin and there's a character in our group that has a multiple personality disorder. Some of his characters are chaotic aligned and one of them is lawful evil. Surprisingly, I get along with most of his personalities. And out of game he's a great guy.
Sally scares me. As does Spectre Greg. Anyone else I’m good with. I just hope his new patron will help with that. Because, there’s only one thing I fear in that campaign and that’s him going full on either of those personalities.
It is mainly about the player. A good player will play the alignment well and appropriately. A good player understands that you are all there for fun and social interaction. Being chaotic doesn't mean you will break the rules all the time and it doesn't mean you look for opportunities to stab other players in the back. I'm back to roleplaying after about 10-15 years, getting back into it after two groups of friends wanted to learn so I ran some campaigns, firstly Middle-Earth under Gurps 4th, then D&D and I delivered a chat about alignment and what the different components meant using looting a body as one of my examples. Now i'm back to playing again and one of my characters is a CG Half-elf Bard - and i'm loving it. Being chaotic doesn't mean I don't or can't follow the law or respect authority and most of the time I do, but there are times when my aims or what I perceive to be the right thing to do is best met by bending the rules or ignoring conventions.
I have too many bad experiences as a teenager in the 80s when it was the players that was the issue, PCs stealing from PCs when the player wasn't there and the DM allowing it, or players sabotaging other players chances of survival. They played themselves and I remember games of Warhammer in particular that were ruined by this. So when I started DMing again I banned evil characters as a default as we had several new players in both the groups I was running. I remember in a one-off someone else ran and a fellow player played an evil character and he set out to sabotage the enjoyment of the others who were still relatively inexperienced. That's not to say I would never allow an evil character in the future and this would depend on the setting and campaign, but I tend to avoid it for now.
Chaotic characters can give a wonderful flexibility in play and allow for a lot of fun and I definitely allow it. The players I now play with as well as myself are mostly in our 40s and 50s and we are too old for that teenage backstabbing nonsense.
👆 all day. 100% right.
I’ve seen CG people play theirnchars 100% lawful. (What?) I’ve seen lawful chars do whatever they want (uhhh) etc.
end of the day. Some players... they just don’t understand the alignment and just do what they see fit. In which the DM should either explain the alignments, or re-align then based on their actions.
Blank
Alignment I feel is for introducing the character. After a session or 2 they stop normally and just become ng n.n or ne just cause.
I play a Chaotic Good Woodelf Druid.
He's only 24 years old, so not considered an adult yet in elf standards, so he's mostly pretty childish.
Some examples:
CG - This is what a lot of my characters are. I like the option to do crazy stuff 'normal' people wouldn't do. It's like... Generating the difference between a protagonist and an NPC. Protagonist goes out and *does* stuff, as crazy and nonsensical as it can be sometimes.
CN - Don't have much experience with this one.
CE - Could be the worst character or the best. Wholly dependent on the person playing it. Has a tenancy to fall into murder hobo territory if not properly thought out ahead of time.
CG- Very good alignment to play. You are all about the greater good and being a decent person but don't really have a code of honor or are as strict as LG. You just basically do the right thing when you can. If you see an orphan kid begging, you'll probably give him a few copper or a silver. You'll help the farmer with a goblin problem because you are a decent person and are able to help. You aren't actively seeking out to destroy all evil wherever it lies, you are just making the world better by being good yourself and doing good deeds when they present themselves.
CN- This is the one most people get wrong. You are all about yourself and aligning with whatever or whomever can further your own goals. You will be with a good party just as easily an evil one, as long as you get what you want. It doesn't mean you will kill anyone at any time and be a murder hobo. This is the alignment that is most confused with Chaotic Stupid, meaning you just do random things and kill random people which is just not the cast. You will join a thieves guild and break into a rich noble's home to gain riches, but you won't kill him in cold blood as he sleeps as that is a useless evil act.
CE- Not good for gameplay as this is the murder hobo that murders anyone. All about yourself as well as all about making things suffer and doing evil things for evils sake. Think of what a chaotic good person would do, and then do the opposite. Would I give a beggar a copper as a CG character, then you would steal as a CE. Would I help a family stranded on a trail? Then kill them and torture them as CE. This alignment is mostly not used and for good reason.
I think there's a lot of room, and so it really comes down to individuals. I love chaotic good characters, but I think they have to have some kind of loyalty or feeling to the group, or at least to one person in the group, because it kind of anchors them a little. It's annoying to play with someone who just does whatever they want at all times and then says 'well that's what my character would do' when it messes up something the rest of the group has been planning out, but I think great roleplaying opportunities can come out of having a member of the group who cares about their party members but has impulse control issues, or who has a lot of defiance towards authority figures that could cause problems during certain social encounters, but who's trying to do their best to temper the urge to fight The Man with what's best for the group. And I think that those moments feel more forgivable when it's coming from a character who wants to be a hero and do what's right-- to me, a CG character is no less a problem than a LG character. A chaotic good rogue might get the party in trouble while engaging in Robin Hood-type exploits, but a lawful good cleric can get the party in trouble by trying to make/keep peace with a villain who can't be trusted, too.
With a chaotic neutral character, for me, there REALLY has to be a personal loyalty to the party even if they don't respect anything else, because I don't want to play with someone who's just going to steal from or backstab the party when it serves their own self-interest. And again, there can be great group storytelling opportunities in having a character who's torn between what's best for the party and what's best for themselves, and there are definitely ways of having fun with someone who's going to just kind of dive into things without thinking about a moral compass. But 'chaotic' doesn't have to mean 'randomly being an *******', it just means 'values personal freedom over laws/social mores/codes of conduct'. It doesn't mean you can't have people you value and lines you wouldn't cross, just that those aren't determined by society as a whole. You can have a character who'll take anything that's not nailed down and start fights over trivial matters but who doesn't steal from friends.
Chaotic evil... boy, I think that there ARE players who could make that really fun, and could have that be a source of in-character conflict without any conflict between players, but I would really have to trust someone before I'd want to have a chaotic evil character in an otherwise good party. But in an evil campaign? Bring it on!
I think one aspect of CG characters that people often overlook is that they might not be very suitable for long-term campaigns. They are often described as 'wandering spirits' and similar. Thus, it's not far-fetched to assume that spending too much time with the same people (like an adventuring party), especially if there's a "leader" or other authority figure, might feel a bit restrictive and they feel the need to leave for a while.
Just a thought. :)
I know someone who plays CG as someone who doesn't think things through... with often disastrous results.
When a good-hearted character becomes infamous for causing more problems than solved, is that still Good?
The player does it so convincingly well, though. Everyone (everyone meaning players and DM) seems to have a great time with it.
That's what it's all about. Right? A great time?
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I had a player that was CG, and their current mission was to get Xanathar to leave Waterdeep forever. She was a High-Elf wizard, and her uncle in the party was a Shadar-Kai Monk. Xanathar disintegrated her uncle, and she went ballistic, and in the next few rounds threw 3 level 5 fireballs onto Xanathar, and restrained him so the party paladin could kill him.
Chaotic Good characters have good intentions, but they often allow their emotions determine their actions instead of logic, and it often works out to their benefit.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I tried to run a character that was twin-souled (custom background I found on DnDB) but my DM shot it down, I really wanted to roll that CG Druid/CN Rogue I even tweaked it so that the DM would choose when which soul was in control.
What Crazy Stupid people do you play with? I have a Chaotic Evil player that loves bar fights, earning as much wealth as humanly possible by doing quests (or when forced to), and presses NPC's into his mercenary company, Odin's Wolves.
I once used my berserker to tame a dire wolf as a mount by flying over it's head and landing on its back. As the DM put it, " On it's turn, it wimpers as a large berserker sit on it's back as it lays proved." As my peers came to kill the dire wolf, I declared any attacks on Fenrir would be an attack on me and an attack on Odin's Wolves. Seeing people shutter and distort their faces with fear at the thought of combat against me was better than any PC kill, ever.
Chaotic Evil isn't a murder hobo, I rather think of it as a lifestyle choice.
Chains are ment to be broken, as are those who would forge them.