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AstralFire
2013-11-01, 02:49 PM
Are there any outsider groups that prioritize Law and Chaos the way Angels prioritize Good and Evil? For any generation of D&D.

Before you jump in with Formians, Modrons, and the usual planescape suspects, those are creatures which exclusively value Law or Chaos. I'm wondering about ones which prioritize consideration of the Law or Chaos axis, but still have a preference on the good/evil axis, much as certain types of Celestials care most about whether you're good or evil, with only a secondary concern on your lawfulness or lack thereof?

Eldan
2013-11-01, 02:53 PM
Hm. I don't know any. I jsut wanted to say that I don't think angels necessarily prefer good. They prefer whatever their master prefers and some of the gods that create them would not be primarily about good.

Silverbit
2013-11-01, 05:52 PM
I'm AFB at present so I can't give specifics, but I think certain Ysgard critters prioritise Chaos over Law. Valkyries and Bariaurs, I think.

erikun
2013-11-02, 12:13 AM
Are there any outsider groups that prioritize Law and Chaos the way Angels prioritize Good and Evil? For any generation of D&D.

Before you jump in with Formians, Modrons, and the usual planescape suspects, those are creatures which exclusively value Law or Chaos. I'm wondering about ones which prioritize consideration of the Law or Chaos axis, but still have a preference on the good/evil axis, much as certain types of Celestials care most about whether you're good or evil, with only a secondary concern on your lawfulness or lack thereof?
I'm not sure I quite understand your question.

I mean, there are Inevitables and Slaad. They are pretty much the Lawful and Chaotic creatures of the planes, much more than Formians or Modrons. (Although Modrons are very much Lawful.) Your comparison to Angels is also quite confusing - Angels are very much an Always Good creature, with no real wiggle room on the subject. They don't prioritize Good as much as they are created of Good, and as such really can't not be it.

Could you give an example of what you mean on the Evil side of things?

TheThan
2013-11-02, 02:45 AM
Well let’s see I’ve been looking at different real world religious pantheons from ages past. See I really didn't hardly any of the DnD gods, so i thought I'd steal from our ancestors. anyway I noticed that quite a bit of the Greek gods are really chaotic; while the Egyptian gods are pretty lawful. That’s pretty much the direction I went while working on a homebrew I haven’t gotten around to finishing.

Greek pantheon- chaos over law, good and evil
Egyptian- law over chaos, evil and good
Norse pantheon neutrality, over everything, they’ve really come off as more balanced than the other two.
Haven't gotten around to anything of the others yet. not sure what i want to use for good and evil.

AstralFire
2013-11-02, 02:48 AM
I'm not sure I quite understand your question.

I mean, there are Inevitables and Slaad. They are pretty much the Lawful and Chaotic creatures of the planes, much more than Formians or Modrons. (Although Modrons are very much Lawful.) Your comparison to Angels is also quite confusing - Angels are very much an Always Good creature, with no real wiggle room on the subject. They don't prioritize Good as much as they are created of Good, and as such really can't not be it.

Could you give an example of what you mean on the Evil side of things?

I usually preferred to make my own settings rather than use D&D's, so I'm not super familiar, but - for example - those who try to stop the Blood War and unite the evil planes against the good ones.

Anxe
2013-11-02, 02:52 AM
Slaad are chaotic. I've never heard of a good slaad, but evil ones are pretty common. They're typed as usually chaotic neutral instead of always. Seems like that fits what you want. Chaotic with evil leanings.

TheOOB
2013-11-02, 03:06 AM
Slaad are chaotic. I've never heard of a good slaad, but evil ones are pretty common. They're typed as usually chaotic neutral instead of always. Seems like that fits what you want. Chaotic with evil leanings.

Evil Slaad are the exception, not the rule. You just see them in the books because people like evil monsters to fight.

Slaad are not inherently evil, it's just that good people(and neutral people) tend to prefer law over chaos in others, even if they themselves are chaotic, just as a neutral person prefers good people to evil people.

Pure chaos, which a Slaad almost is, is unpredictable, it can be a force of great creation and destruction, often at the same time, while human beings generally prefer their gravity to go down and their guts on the inside of their body. Even though Modron society is basically slavery, it's still something human beings can, to a point understand, a society, rules, but Slaad are entropic, too unpredictable. People like the status quo, and when it changed they want it to change their way.

Khedrac
2013-11-02, 03:30 AM
By "cross-generation" I assume you mean for all versions of D&D.

If you go back to Basic/Expert(/Companion/Master/Immortal or Rules Cyclopedia) D&D or to the pre-AD&D "Original" D&D then all alignments were just Lawful, Neutral of Chaotic. (It seemed to be based on Michael Moorcock's novels.)

Now early Demons and Devils I think were in the OD&D - which means all they had was alignment "Chaotic".

BECMI/RC D&D did not have outsider groups in the same way that 3rd Ed (or 2nd) does, (in fact since it has a totally different outer planes setup, even 1st Ed has more conformity of outsiders into groups), but it does have some outsiders that could be thought of as members of groups (e.g. Faedornae) and they would probably count for your question.
Note, there's exactly one "demon" in canon BECMI D&D outside the Immortals rules, so the outsider groups are nearly all pretty small.
The other problem is that the designers did not usually create very many versions of a monster, so what in 3.5 would be a group (like Inevitable) tends to be a single monster entry. If you are willing to expand on them, the ones I think fit best are some of the elemental variants: each element has a type of creature that have a non-neutral alignment that serve as one of the major factions in that elemental plane, e.g. Helions for fire (I think they are Lawful, they are usually portrayed as "good").

erikun
2013-11-02, 07:38 AM
I usually preferred to make my own settings rather than use D&D's, so I'm not super familiar, but - for example - those who try to stop the Blood War and unite the evil planes against the good ones.
There is not anything that is trying to stop the Blood War and unite evil planes against the good ones. That's just it - the idea that Angels, or Celestials, would work together as a "group" to fight off evil and other opponents is why they are good. There's nobody doing that on the evil side, because the evil side wants to conquer their rivals and rule it all. There's nobody doing that on the lawful side, because the different lawful groups clash over ideals. There's nobody doing that on the chaotic side, because that's like herding cats into designing rocket engines.

And, to be fair, labels like "Angels" and "Celestials" are just convenient names we give them. You will rarely see, say, Archons and Eladrin working together. They may both be Celestials, but they pretty much won't be working together in any situation beyond mutual defense against evil.

KillianHawkeye
2013-11-02, 05:42 PM
And, to be fair, labels like "Angels" and "Celestials" are just convenient names we give them. You will rarely see, say, Archons and Eladrin working together. They may both be Celestials, but they pretty much won't be working together in any situation beyond mutual defense against evil.

Note that Angels are a separate class of celestial than the Archons, Guardinals, and Eladrin. Angels are always Good, but they can be Lawful Good, Neutral Good, or Chaotic Good in relatively equal number.

Eldan
2013-11-02, 09:09 PM
The lumping together of those four races into a group was always a bit strange. Angels aren't even exemplars.