What on earth is my alignment?!?

[Town_Drunk]

In a campaign, I'm playing a Bone Knight Cleric who follows Hextor. While he follows a Lawful Evil god, he himself is....... flawed. I decided to make him mentally unstable, even making a small rolling table where I roll a d6 to determine my emotion for the current social encounter. He also is convinced Hextor talks directly to his mind, and that Hextor tells him things. Many things.

Why else would someone make armor out of bones? Hextor told him to. Why would he slay innocents? Hextor told him to. But because of this, he can act erratically, and spontaneously, constantly shifting moods and emotions. He still wants to uphold tyranny, and follow all of Hextor's sacred texts, but this could make it difficult, no matter how hard he tries. So what alignment am I? I'm aiming to be Lawful Evil, but because of this mental deficiency, would he be Neutral, or even Chaotic Evil?

[ZamielVanWeber]

He's lawful evil and you may want to run a somewhat offensive and inaccurate character concept past your table first to make sure everyone is cool with it.

[Keltest]

As a general rule, I am of the opinion that people who are unable (as in, actually unable, not simply unwilling) to control their behavior don't really fall on the alignment scale at all. Alignment doesn't cover people who cannot make intelligent decisions well, and by default I think sweeps them in the True Neutral bin with things like animals.

Barring that though, I would say that whether he is Lawful or Chaotic depends on whether or not he lets his current emotional state interfere with what he's doing. If he's prone to fall into blinding rage at any moment and he acts on that rage, or joy, or confusion, or whatever else he feels, that's chaotic. If he holds it in and lets it out at a more opportune time, that's Lawful.

[John Longarrow]

If he does have an insanity, the first time a cure spell that affects insanity is cast upon him this should all go away.

If its really some kind of divine influences, check with your DM to see if they are cool with it. At my table I'd hate to have someone show up saying "Well, my GOD talks to me all the time so I just do what he tells me" for his character basis.

[Karl Aegis]

Dead. Having a debilitating mental condition in a highly lethal world means you'll be killed off before you can become a bone knight. Let alone a cleric.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Random mood swings are not all that relevant to alignment. Your character is LE.

I second what others have said: make sure this character is not 'too much' for your table. Not everyone can appreciate inaccurate portrayals of 'mental instability' (and given that it's a very unclear term, virtually anything could be considered offensively inaccurate).

[Red Fel]

The funny thing is that my usual default answer to "What is alignment" is "Lawful Evil, of course." Because it's the best alignment, and you either are LE, or should be LE, no bones about it. (Get it? Bones?)

That said, in this case... LE. What's been said has been said. Servant of Hextor, yadda yadda.

Yes, he's mentally unstable. And honestly, I'm not sure that Hextor wants a nutjob like this, if he can't be expected to adhere to order and rules and, above all, absolute obedience. Hextor's big on that, and for good (ha!) reason.


Dead. Having a debilitating mental condition in a highly lethal world means you'll be killed off before you can become a bone knight. Let alone a cleric.

Also, this. Your character suffers from a debilitating mental condition that should necessarily preclude survival, let alone a successful adventuring career.

Further, the "roll d6 for every social encounter" is a big problem. A big one. Unless you're playing a hack'n'slash campaign where social encounters are rare, playing the rabid idiot who could just as easily rip off the king's head or uncomfortably throw himself at said king's leg means taking a major chance. Most parties don't want to do that.

I've seen this concept, or something similar, raised before. A lot of players want to do something "cool," or "different," and that's fine. The problem is that you're basically saying, "I roll d6 to ruin the encounter." Any time you want. And before you say that it's just a character quirk, it's not - it's you, you built it into the character and you choose when to use it. And before you compare it to any other roll of the dice, like a bad attack roll, critical, or save, it's not - this isn't the DM telling you to react, or a pre-existing mechanic, this is you deciding, at your discretion, to take a shot at ruining the game for people. It's neat in concept, but it's basically sacrificing gameplay and fun to chance; fine in a single-player game, perilous in multiplayer.

Instead of playing a "roll to ruin encounter" flavor of crazy, consider either (1) picking a pattern of crazy and sticking with it, or (2) trusting your crazy to the DM. DM-controlled crazy can actually be pretty fun, and simple to execute - explain the concept to the DM, and periodically, the DM will simply pass you notes indicating what Hextor is telling you. There's no chance element, and how you react is up to you, not up to the dice. Further, this gives the DM a tool to increase fun at the table, rather than randomize it.

[Geddy2112]

Seconding everything said above. LE because Hextor, blindly doing anything your deity says, etc.

I like the idea of having your character hearing things from an evil deity, doing them, and having that not be okay in their mortal mind. Surely it can manifest in a variety of ways, but having it be a 1 in 6 chance you go axe murder on the next NPC is not a good way to go about it. Part of him has embraced the dark path, but maybe another is struggling to retain any humanity he has left. You could roleplay it as a creeping sense of doubt and maybe even being taken aback at your own actions"Oh god what have I done" sometimes. Or maybe your rational mind is trying to make sense of the greater workings of a deity "why does Hextor want me to do this? I don't see any reason?" Or even having volatile emotions and sudden strong reactions to things, but they are rooted in logical causes and while he might feel strong rage, sorrow, etc, he just feels these things and is not compelled to act on them. Clearly he would have had to control this(the hulk has to hold back constant anger) to function in society.

Emotions are not totally random-your character is reacting to something, and it is both more realistic and better for the party if you think every time "how would they respond" and respond accordingly, not just rolling a dice and being totally slave to chance.

[Pleh]

Definitely lawful evil. He operates lawfully within the context of the reality he can perceive, just like anyone else.

And don't listen to the naysayers. Lawful good Gnoll Paladins statistically should never happen, but the characters still exist.

Heroes are the exceptions to the rules. That's why they left a safe and comfortable life for adventure. Fate can be a funny thing.

[ZamielVanWeber]

The naysayers are not talking about how he cannot be his alignment but rather that his decision to be "lol mental illness is random" is both disrespectful to the actual condition and disruptive to the other players. Red Fel's proposed solution is actually neither and if the OP wants to have a mentally ill character I would recommend that

[theNater]

If he wants to be Lawful, he needs to build Lawful techniques to control his behavior. One way to do that would be to construct a formal code of behavior, based on Hextor's teachings, and adhere to that despite difficulty. Maybe he's angry, but the code requires he stay his hand, so he tries to hide his anger. When he hears the voice, he checks it against the code to determine whether it's actually Hextor or some Wizard trying to trick him. You can make the code as simple or as convoluted as you like, but make sure you make it party-friendly. Think about situations where your random behavior might screw up the game for the other players, and use the code to keep the game fun for everybody.

[Thac0 Redeye]

I also totally agree with what Red Fel said above. It sounds like you want to play an oddball social chara. I imagine the Irishman from the movie Braveheart who is always talking back to the Almighty during conversations to others. That sounds fun, especially if your DM is cool sending you Hextor's side of the private conversation.

I totally think a random d6 would suck for all the others at the table. Kind of like playing a frenzy berserker that all others don't want to fight next to. ( I tried that one and almost got blackballed from the group. well not quite but you understand.)