lawful cleric spells vs chaotic cleric spells

[Zhentarim]

Which are generally better?

[GilesTheCleric]

I hate to say it varies, but it varies. [Chaotic] spells allow you to use Chaotic Spell Recall to get some extra slots per day, which is nice, if usually not actually necessary. [Lawful] spells are ime more useful, since there's a whole lot of CE foes out there. Of course, if your entire campaign focuses on devils, then clearly they're not a good choice. Similarly, [Chaotic] spells are probably less likely to affect your party, since CN or CG seem like high-frequency alignments for PCs.

It's a bit tricky to generalise for the entire descriptors, since there's probably a few one-off spells that tip the balance in one direction or the other, but I can't say that I often sort via those descriptors. A quick sort and I see very few good ones:

[Lawful]
Sun Scepter LEoF
Checkmate's Light SC
Dictum PHB
Turn Anathema CC

[Chaotic]
Word of Chaos PHB
Turn Anathema CC
Embrace the Dark Chaos FC1
Extract Gift FC1
Yochlol Blessing DotU
Demonic Blood Infusion Gw

From that list, I would pick [Chaotic] every time if I could only have one or the other. So, I can't tell you with certainty which are generally better, but I think that chaotic spells are on the whole specifically better.

Edit: nvm, PF.

[InvisibleBison]

Aren't they generally the same thing, just changing which alignment they affect? So it would depend on what your campaign is like. If you're fighting mostly chaotic enemies, lawful spells would be better; if you're fighting mostly lawful enemies, chaotic spells would be better; if you're fighting a roughly equal mix of lawful and chaotic enemies, lawful and chaotic spells are about equal.

[Zhentarim]

Aren't they generally the same thing, just changing which alignment they affect? So it would depend on what your campaign is like. If you're fighting mostly chaotic enemies, lawful spells would be better; if you're fighting mostly lawful enemies, chaotic spells would be better; if you're fighting a roughly equal mix of lawful and chaotic enemies, lawful and chaotic spells are about equal.

I'm not sure if the enemies will be all lawful or all chaotic, but the other players are chaotic good, and I am either CN or LN. Depending on how the secret 1d2 roll goes, our foes will either be CE or LE.

[GilesTheCleric]

I'm not sure if the enemies will be all lawful or all chaotic, but the other players are chaotic good, and I am either CN or LN. Depending on how the secret 1d2 roll goes, our foes will either be CE or LE.

In your situation, I would definitely go with [chaotic] spells. Even if they're not useful in combat, they have far more out-of-combat use, and can also be effective against similarly-aligned foes (Yochlol Blessing, for example, is killer if you're building for natural attacks). Are you being forbidden from casting spells of the opposite alignment, or is this just an RP thing?

Edit: I just noticed the PF tag. I don't remember if that was there when I first responded. I apologise for making suggestions; I take them all back. Someone more familiar with PF will have to guide you.

[Particle_Man]

Well since you don't know what your enemies will be, but you do know that your allies will be CG, I would go for the CN cleric. Some of the "alignment" spells do damage to or otherwise hurt the opposite alignment, but don't otherwise distinguish between friend and foe. Similarly, CN clerics could with the right feat make Anarchic weapons, which would be great against LE foes and you could make them for your party. Meanwhile, the LN cleric could make axiomatic weapons, which would be great vs. CE foes but give problems to CG wielders so you would only be making weapons for yourself.

Either way it is a gamble, but if you pick LN and get LE foes you lose big, while if you pick CN and get CE foes, you lose, but not as big. So I would go CN cleric, but for the "playing the odds" reason.

Edit: Since you know that your foes will be Evil, perhaps you could hedge your bets and be a CG cleric? Then if your foes turn out to be CE you could fall back on the "good" spells and make holy weapons?

[Zanos]

There aren't many of these. If we prune the spells that are strictly alignment based mirrors, the use of which depends on your opponents, we're only left with these based on Nethys Archives:

Lawful:
Archon's Aura(3rd, enemies that fail their save against a save take -2 to AC, saves, and to hit. Pretty good debuff for a close range cleric, but save negates might cause some issues since you probably needed to buy physical stats.)
Arrow of Law(2nd, Only effective against chaotic creatures, but has no chaotic mirror. Very weak blast vs chaotic, mediocre blast on chaotic outsiders + daze on a failed save. Garbage.)
Summon Accuser(4th, 10 min/level, summons a spy with at will greater teleport, at will invisibility, and can playback what it saw. Lesser planar ally can get the same creature for some cash and some time, and both spells would be Lawful anyway. Skippable.)
Summon Infernal Host(Functions as SMV, but host devils only. There are better options in regular SM V, and both are 5th level.)

Chaotic:
Maw of Chaos(8th level, shuts down teleportation and wrecks everything without the chaotic subtype. Slowly. Severly limited in that boosting the CMB check is rather difficult for a caster and monsters tend to have great CMD.)
Rift of Ruin(They attached some fancy effects to a pit spell and called it 8th level. I am not impresessed.)
Spawn Calling(This is a 9th level, week long spell that lets you conjure a physically powerful brute that you have no control over. Gate exists. Why are you using this spell? It's probably for NPCs. Good if you want to destroy a town that you could have destroyed anyway as a 17th level cleric, I guess?)
Summon Greater Demon(This 9th level spell lets you summon CR 12 demons. Excuse me while I laugh. They have some interesting abilities but regular summon monster can conjure more powerful creatures, including stronger demons.)
Summon Lesser Demon(The Thoxel is an interesting disrupter, but better combat summons exist in the standard SM V again.
Unleash Pandemonium(Creates a windstorm from a 5th level spell and deafens with no save, but the windstorm being random makes it fairly unreliable as battlefield control, although you can troll archers with it.)
Vermicious Assumption(This is a 6th level spell that has a really crappy demon crawl into a dead body and make it walk around. You don't control the demon, it's just considered charmed. The demon is not particularly effective at anything I can see. I don't see much of a reason to use this spell unless you just want more demons.)


TL;DR:None of these spells are good enough to warrant making an alignment decision over. I think chaos has a slight edge here, but the creatures you can call with planar ally and summon monster are probably more relevant.

[Zhentarim]

Well since you don't know what your enemies will be, but you do know that your allies will be CG, I would go for the CN cleric. Some of the "alignment" spells do damage to or otherwise hurt the opposite alignment, but don't otherwise distinguish between friend and foe. Similarly, CN clerics could with the right feat make Anarchic weapons, which would be great against LE foes and you could make them for your party. Meanwhile, the LN cleric could make axiomatic weapons, which would be great vs. CE foes but give problems to CG wielders so you would only be making weapons for yourself.

Either way it is a gamble, but if you pick LN and get LE foes you lose big, while if you pick CN and get CE foes, you lose, but not as big. So I would go CN cleric, but for the "playing the odds" reason.

Edit: Since you know that your foes will be Evil, perhaps you could hedge your bets and be a CG cleric? Then if your foes turn out to be CE you could fall back on the "good" spells and make holy weapons?

I was wanting to try this concept for a battle cleric that, rather than taking a dump to CHA, CHA=WIS and I incorporate negative energy blasts into my fighting style. We start at level 5, and there isn't a real players guide to the AP since it is based on a campaign ran on original DND decades ago, and I am not sure if I'm fighting a LE foe or a CE foe, and the DM might swap that last second. Again, there is a 1d2 in play.

[Particle_Man]

Can you hedge your bets with a true neutral cleric? You still can get negative energy blasts (and with the right feat, command undead can be useful, as you can get intelligent undead to basically tell you everything they know). You won't get the actual Law or Chaos domain spells that if they are exclusive to those domain lists but otherwise you would be free to cast spells with the lawful descriptor or with the chaotic descriptor, depending on what your enemies turn out to be. As an added bonus, your Summon Monster spells are not restricted by alignment on what you can summon.

[Zhentarim]

Can you hedge your bets with a true neutral cleric? You still can get negative energy blasts (and with the right feat, command undead can be useful, as you can get intelligent undead to basically tell you everything they know). You won't get the actual Law or Chaos domain spells that if they are exclusive to those domain lists but otherwise you would be free to cast spells with the lawful descriptor or with the chaotic descriptor, depending on what your enemies turn out to be. As an added bonus, your Summon Monster spells are not restricted by alignment on what you can summon.

I might try nethys.

The DM mentioned throwing in some hobgoblins. Are those LE or CE?

[Particle_Man]

Hobgoblins are listed as LE in the Pathfinder bestiary.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/hobgoblin