Who is the Anti-Balance group?

[hymer]

We all understand the concept of a fantasy philosophy or religion which abides by the notion of Balance. I'm considering exploring the people who see it in the opposite light in a future campaign. But who are these people?

The obvious answer is the people who are currently doing very well. They want to do even better, and so would like the Balance-obsessed people to go away and be quiet. But since factions will be going up and down in power over time, this won't be a stable, philosophical/religious opposition. Indeed, once they find themselves falling behind, they will happily ally themselves with the Balance group to advance themselves.

So I'm thinking of a group or groups, who believe that the Balance will end eventually, inevitably, and something they desire will occur then. This should give them an incentive to push for the extremes, whatever the extremes may be, and whether or not they actually agree with them. If it is groups rather than group, then the various groups likely do not agree on what will happen, but since they agree on how to get to it, they are willing to work together. This should also allow for some interesting alliances.

So, dear Playgrounders, let me once again hear your creative voices and sustain inspiration! What are some of these things that the Anti-Balance people could be hoping for? And how about some names for such a group or groups? Any other thoughts, comments, suggestions, etc.?

Thanks in advance!

https://78.media.tumblr.com/161600d53801ba0c40c284a0cb1b00d8/tumblr_no3loeMauQ1ut6yv4o1_1280.png

[Armored Walrus]

Hmm, well, to think out loud - the Neutrals are essentially the common sense people. "yeah I get that being good is a good thing, and laws have their place, but sometimes breaking the law achieves more good, sometimes, the evil that is generated by following a law is outweighed by the stability that the law provides, etc." ie. "I'll use what works from each ideology, as it works for me, and I'll weight each thing in the light of rationality rather than morality."

You could look at them as the Moderates, maybe? Which would make their counters Extremists, but usually Extremists are about one particular ideology, so that doesn't really fit.

Hmm, maybe the approach is that - as the Neutrals essentially tolerate all ideologies, and mostly exist to make sure that one particular ideology doesn't gain supremacy - maybe their counter parts are bent on destroying all ideology, period. So they'd be anarchists, essentially - but, well, that kinda seems Chaotic, doesn't it?

I get what you're going for - a group who's primary purpose is to tip the scales, and they don't particularly care which direction it tips, but I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around how you would define such a group, because that attitude actually strikes me as mostly chaotic. Maybe - Weather Vanes? Momenters? (ie. momentum) Something that conveys they have a strong conviction toward supporting and fighting for whichever ideology is currently ascendant.

[NichG]

Balance, the way it's presented in D&D lore, seems to me to be a sort of status-quo philosophy. Things are best the way they are/the natural way, and anything in the world that looks like it's strictly negative probably does actually have an important reason for being there so let's try to preserve that against ideologies that want a sweeping victory. Neither good nor evil, law nor chaos should win and destroy their opposite, because there's a good reason for that opposite to be there.

So the group that would be philosophically opposed to that might be a group that wants, above all else, change (structured change, not necessarily 'chaos' per se) at a fundamental level. The way the world is and the contrasts that are baked into the cosmos in the form of good vs evil, law vs chaos are fundamentally making the world a worse place than it could be, so the current way things are should be replaced with something better even if that disrupts the current balance. Rather than settling for a set of diametrically opposed eternal conflicts placed in balance with each-other, we should organize the world according to some other principle or some other structure. Maybe they see the gods as fundamentally unsuited to represent their concepts, or want to organize society along the lines of a utilitarian philosophy rather than a deontological one, or whatever, but they have some specific idea in mind of how things should be, which is incompatible with leaving things well enough alone as they are.

Transhumanists, for example, would be classed as an anti-balance group.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Captain Zapp Brannigan.

[hymer]

Captain Zapp Brannigan.
http://i.imgur.com/0myMmtE.jpg
"Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

But I don't think we can classify The Man With No Name in any sort of coherent philosophy. The time for stupid statements is over. (That's a quote, by the way, I'm not trying to insult anyone)

@ Armored Walrus: We don't particularly need to think in alignments here, though there's nothing wrong with that. It'll be a D&D game, after all.

@ NichG: Maybe the Balance people are seen as upholding Medieval Stasis (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis)? Definitely a possibility.

[Rhedyn]

Elder things could. Secret alien outsiders, lurking in the shadows waiting to tip the balance to sunder reality and exert influence through the tear made from such an offset.

Good? Evil?, Such notions do not concern the great old ones.

[Frozen_Feet]

Everybody who is not true neutral is anti-balance.

True neutrality is about preserving a certain, naturalistic status quo. No chances can be truly lasting and any extreme deviation from the norm will have have equal and opposite reaction. For every Paladin there will be a demon and vice versa, so let's try not to have any paladins or demons running around.

Everybody else disagrees. The Paladins know that if they can recruit enough people for their cause, they can vanquish demons once and for all! The demons know that if they corrupt enough people, the world will be plunged into chaos for all eternity!

So on and so forth. The people who fight the Balance are legion. They are all the mofos who want to iceskate uphill, the naive, the idealistic and the delusional who believe their vision of how the world should be has priority over how the world is.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

The main villian of a campaign I ran in 2012 ago amounted to this. Basically someone with a really tragic backstory refuses to accept the that his suffering and loss was part of a necessary balance.

The character of Gorr the God Butcher from Marcel comics which came out the next year was very similar.

[Luccan]

Everybody who is not true neutral is anti-balance.

True neutrality is about preserving a certain, naturalistic status quo. No chances can be truly lasting and any extreme deviation from the norm will have have equal and opposite reaction. For every Paladin there will be a demon and vice versa, so let's try not to have any paladins or demons running around.

Everybody else disagrees. The Paladins know that if they can recruit enough people for their cause, they can vanquish demons once and for all! The demons know that if they corrupt enough people, the world will be plunged into chaos for all eternity!

So on and so forth. The people who fight the Balance are legion. They are all the mofos who want to iceskate uphill, the naive, the idealistic and the delusional who believe their vision of how the world should be has priority over how the world is.

I have to disagree, somewhat. At least if we're going by D&D's True Neutral, where they "prefer good neighbors and leaders to evil ones", they just aren't compelled to be out there fighting the Good fight. They might help their neighbor who is suffering or even volunteer in the military when their country is threatened, but the troubles of a guy a few towns over aren't their problem. Ghouls in the countryside? Send some adventurers to save yourself and your family, not because they're killing vagabonds and beggars.

I mean, there's the example of the character constantly switching sides in a bloody conflict, but I take them as the weird TNs, not the norm.

That said, I think I agree with NichG. The "Anti-Balance" is relative to the Balance, who likely benefit or believe in the status-quo. But their conflict is not necessarily based around alignment. I'm reminded of The Legend of Korra's first season. The city seems like a utopia, but the truth is that non-benders are second-class citizens. It isn't obvious at first, but they lack representation in city government, law enforcement, and other fields. At least one member of the city council leans heavily towards Evil once things start collapsing. But the Anti-Balance group are literal terrorists and essentially maim benders in the name of "equality". So the status-quo is unfair, but those who seek to upset it are using violence and fear to achieve their goals (and several of them actively hate all benders, making them extremist bigots too). Neither side is completely right, each takes questionable to outright morally wrong actions over the season. So keep that sort of thing in mind.

[JeenLeen]

I didn't quite follow the OP's second paragraph, so maybe that eliminated this as a valid option, but I'd think any group that wants their faction to dominate at the expense of others would be anti-balance, in the sense that they want to cause the disbalance in their favor. In D&D terms, this would be those exposing one of the 4 alignments or the CG/LG/CE/LE extremes. They are against balance since balance keeps trying to reset the status quo & keep the other alignments (or whatever) in existence (or at least in power.)

If that doesn't really count, since those would ally with Balance if they're underdogs, perhaps a group made of all extreme alignments who have felt burned by Balance, so they now hate it. They had what they wanted, and it was lost to them due to the ebb and flow of the universe setting things back to the status quo where all is balanced. So now they want to upset the universe's fundamental tendency towards Balance. It might not be the utopia (or hellscape) they originally envisioned, but they're willing to accept that to destroy the force that destroyed their dream.

Such presumes there is some universal tendency towards Balance, or at least a strong group (like I heard druids were back in early D&D) who fight for balance.

[Quertus]

So long as there is Balance, there can be no victory. So long as there is no Victory, there is only Strife. Struggle. The Eternal War.

We are the Pacifists. We seek an end to the Eternal War. We desire whatever imbalance, whatever Peace is most expedient, and most eternal. To this end, we support whatever fashion is winning, whatever ideology will endure, whatever will bring Peace.

[Quertus]

Balance? It's a lie. A very clever lie, that empowers its secret masters: Stagnation, and Death. Do not be fooled by Balance's siren song, do not give in to the temptation of the status quo. Innovate! Embrace change, embrace deviation from the old. Fight to make a better - or, at least, different - tomorrow. Do not let eternity become the grey slave of ennui.

[Mechalich]

In D&D, commitment to Balance involves a belief that the ultimate triumph of good over evil would in fact be horrible. This thesis is advanced explicitly in several places, most notably in Pages of Pain where Troy Denning has the Lady claim outright that the triumph of good would be worse than the triumph of evil, and Troy Denning had a massive influence over D&D fluff over the years. This sentiment is not unique to D&D, the exact same argument is advanced in the conclusion of the Wheel of Time series. This is the idea that both evil and good (and in D&D chaos and law) must continue to exist in roughly equal amounts and any progress made by one side must be halted so as to prevent it snowballing into triumph.

Very few people are actually directly behind this philosophy, since it is counter-intuitive, anti-emotional, and extremely callous overall. This is why the Lady of Pain - who is explicitly disconnected from everything and has no true identity of her own - serves as a highly functional champion of balance and why D&D has portrayed the champions of balance as either inscrutable (Rilmani) or inherent (Aeons). Even a large number of true neutral individuals aren't especially pro-balance, they're siding explicitly with some cause or force that lacks a moral stance - like nature.

The anti-balance group is literally everyone else, because they all have an agenda that ends in the triumph of some specific ideology, for good or ill. However, these groups aren't specifically anti-balance and while most of them find the pro-balance types annoying they have other priorities from ideologies that actively oppose their own all of the time rather than only at certain intervals (and in most fantasy narratives evil is on the verge of triumph, so the pro-balance forces tend to stand with the good guys or at least stand aside).

A dedicated anti-balance stance means trying to break the universe, meaning fighting for an outcome that leads not to the triumph of some ideological viewpoint, but to a total restructuring of the paradigm, possibly down to the point of rewriting physical constants. Given that this usually involves killing pretty much everything alive in the universe as is, the beings behind such things tend to either be absurdly nihilistic or from outside reality as it is understood. In D&D Ilsenine, the god of Illithids, pursued this goal as did various Far Realm entities.

[Cosi]

Who is the Pro-Balance group? What does it even mean to be ideologically Neutral? There's a reason the Neutral Planet is a joke planet on a comedy TV show. "I am strongly on the side of not being on any particular side" is not a coherent point of view, and as such opposing it doesn't really make any sense. D&D alignment is incoherent and doesn't do anything we care about. Just pick some philosophy you think is interesting, and turn up or down the "is a ****" nob depending on whether or not you want them to be sympathetic.

[Tanarii]

The anti-balance group is literally everyone else, because they all have an agenda that ends in the triumph of some specific ideology, for good or ill. There's a logic flaw there. Being not pro-balance doesn't automatically mean you're in favor of the triumph of some specific ideology.

It can just as easily mean you think some other philosophy is already the reality of how things are. Or pro-balance people are either barking up a pointless tree.

It's like saying that all people who aren't pro-deity, are therefore anti-deity atheists. Some people just don't think about religion at all in their daily life. They aren't anti-theists. They are no-theists. Faith-based theist thinking isn't something they oppose naturally, it's just alien thinking that would never occur to them.

[Psyren]

I'd say nobody is "anti-balance" so much as they are "very pro-something else"

Demons for instance fight very hard against the concept of balance - but it's not because they hate balance itself, it's because they don't want any semblance of order/beauty/good around , and don't see a need to stop destroying/ravaging as long as there is any of that still around.

[Mechalich]

I'd say nobody is "anti-balance" so much as they are "very pro-something else"

It is possible to be anti-balance, in the sense of trying to break the universe-architecture and establish a totally new baseline. For example, if we have a universe that has a light-dark moral spectrum and you introduce a faction that wishes to change this to a blue-yellow moral spectrum that faction would be anti-balance because it wants to shatter the universe and produce a totally new moral substrate. An example of a character that desires this is Kreia in KOTOR II - she wanted to destroy the Force and thereby rewrite the rules of the Star Wars galaxy, something antithetical to the goals of the light side and dark side. In D&D the actions of Raistlin Majere in the Legends books - where he seeks to overthrow the gods and become ruler of all - would also qualify.

Anti-balance groups and characters are necessarily rare. It's usually a term best applied to utterly alien entities with inscrutable agendas or to crazed egomaniac villains.

[Psyren]

It is possible to be anti-balance, in the sense of trying to break the universe-architecture and establish a totally new baseline. For example, if we have a universe that has a light-dark moral spectrum and you introduce a faction that wishes to change this to a blue-yellow moral spectrum that faction would be anti-balance because it wants to shatter the universe and produce a totally new moral substrate. An example of a character that desires this is Kreia in KOTOR II - she wanted to destroy the Force and thereby rewrite the rules of the Star Wars galaxy, something antithetical to the goals of the light side and dark side. In D&D the actions of Raistlin Majere in the Legends books - where he seeks to overthrow the gods and become ruler of all - would also qualify.

Anti-balance groups and characters are necessarily rare. It's usually a term best applied to utterly alien entities with inscrutable agendas or to crazed egomaniac villains.

I'd still term that as "pro something else" - just with the "something else" being very extreme. After all, if your goal is to sweep away the current universe, you'd be doing that whether it was in balance or not. Using your own example of Raistlin, the world he was seeking to overthrow was very much out of balance itself, even if the world he replaced it with ended up being even worse.

[NichG]

Who is the Pro-Balance group? What does it even mean to be ideologically Neutral? There's a reason the Neutral Planet is a joke planet on a comedy TV show. "I am strongly on the side of not being on any particular side" is not a coherent point of view, and as such opposing it doesn't really make any sense. D&D alignment is incoherent and doesn't do anything we care about. Just pick some philosophy you think is interesting, and turn up or down the "is a ****" nob depending on whether or not you want them to be sympathetic.

An example of being ideologically neutral would be something like saying 'we don't have the right to decide how societies should live or cultures should be, so I will oppose any instance of one society trying to interfere in the operation of another, for any reason. Everyone should stay in their current regions and govern themselves - or not - however they choose.' Non-intervention, peace as being more important than progressive change, etc.

'Is it right that that society permits murder? It's not our place to decide that for them.'

'They're starving because their economy collapsed, shouldn't we help them since we're doing so well? No, they made their choices and had their own challenges, and whether they succeed or fail is on them and not us.'

And so on...

[Fable Wright]

A young firebrand who knows that balance isn't going far enough. Stick at the status quo? Everyone's equal? But then who's going to make things better? Who's going to bring everyone up? Who's going to bring us to our potential? If nothing bad happens, how will we become better? If nothing outstandingly good happens, how will we be inspired to make it happen more? What of the poor farmer, who one day saw a lord's castle? If balance occurs, the farmer will never get that for himself.

There's a show that I... probably would not recommend, actually, called Fate/Apocrypha. The main antagonist wanted to do one thing: create world peace by removing people's physical bodies, just turning them into immortal, invincible souls who can speak to each other. No one can do worse than hurt one another's feelings; there's no procreation, no death, no violence. No progress.

That is, I'd think, the ultimate goal of the Balance faction.

What purpose is there in that world? What can you do to change it? How can you make things better? What would we leave, in the future? An empty plane, as everyone floats off to an outer plane?

Also, just think for a moment. Would we remember anything about the Rapa Nui people if not for the Easter Island heads? How much curiosity would we have of the ancient Egyptians without the Pyramids and the Sphinx? None of those would happen if Balance ruled. Better to die in a blaze of glory than flicker and die in obscurity.

Anyone who's crazy enough to make something so gloriously stupid that it would be remembered for thousands of years is an opponent of the balance faction.

[Cespenar]

Anti-Balance would be Chaos. Because the alignment axes aren't immaculately symmetric and shouldn't be treated as such.

Balance also would be Lawful. It's probably the most lawful concept that exists. Keeping a "balance" between Law and Chaos is one of the funniest concepts ever.

Keeping a balance between Good and Evil, while philosophically arguable still, is at least a notion that can exist. I also suspect that that was what was being thought when the "True Neutral" thing came up at first.

[JeenLeen]

I think:
--few beings care particularly about Balance itself, but those that care tend to care strongly because they believe (rightly or wrongly) that any faction (Good, Evil, Chaos, Law) dominating would be bad
--most Neutral beings don't particularly care about Balance. These might, as neutral beings, be in line with Balance, but they aren't really pro-Balance.
--most CG/LG/CE/LE or NG/NE/CN/LN beings don't particularly care about Balance, except as a means to an end for their goal. Balance is an ally or an enemy, depending on who is winning. These might fight alongside or against Balance, but they aren't really pro- or anti-Balance.

That said, it is possible for a being to be anti-Balance for the sake of fighting Balance. I find it hard to imagine such a being. Maybe it would need some sort of alien 'alignment' spectrum (green-yellow morality) or desire to break and remake the cosmos, but I think more human reasons could justify such a position.


Anti-Balance would be Chaos. Because the alignment axes aren't immaculately symmetric and shouldn't be treated as such.

Balance also would be Lawful. It's probably the most lawful concept that exists. Keeping a "balance" between Law and Chaos is one of the funniest concepts ever.

While I personally agree with you in that your reasoning is sound and more logically coherent than D&D, I think the general D&D definition and cosmology disagrees with you. That is, the alignments are symmetric and Balance (in the sense of neutrality) is not Lawful. (Hmm... or maybe it's not Lawful for the sake of Lawfulness. They might use Law as a tool when Chaos dominates, but would use push for Chaos if Law is dominating.)



There's a show that I... probably would not recommend, actually, called Fate/Apocrypha. The main antagonist wanted to do one thing: create world peace by removing people's physical bodies, just turning them into immortal, invincible souls who can speak to each other. No one can do worse than hurt one another's feelings; there's no procreation, no death, no violence. No progress.

That is, I'd think, the ultimate goal of the Balance faction.

I'd agree that would be a great goal for a Balance faction, but it also doesn't seem in line with D&D's definition of Balance. (I do admit that this thread is not D&D-centric by definition, but most of the language tends to be focused on D&D-based cosmologies.) If the Balance faction is as you define it, then I see many being anti-Balance once they realize what Balance is up to.

I think, in oWoD Mage lore, one (insane) Euthanatos archmaster tries to destroy Entropy in order to do something similar.

That's also the goal of some force in the Suikoden series. In Suikoden III, we find that Luc was trying to destroy the True Runes in order to prevent an eternal stasis. Edit: or maybe destroying them would cause the eternal stasis... I forget... been a while since I played, but I think Luc was against eternal stasis

[Mechalich]

There's a show that I... probably would not recommend, actually, called Fate/Apocrypha. The main antagonist wanted to do one thing: create world peace by removing people's physical bodies, just turning them into immortal, invincible souls who can speak to each other. No one can do worse than hurt one another's feelings; there's no procreation, no death, no violence. No progress.

That is, I'd think, the ultimate goal of the Balance faction.


No. The Fate/Apocrypha example is an example of the triumph of good - a very specific and alienating kind of good - and the anime is actually making a pro-balance argument. This is generally the argument made in any 'elimination of evil' scenario, that it would also eliminate individuality and meaning from life.

Pro-balance groups work very deliberately to prevent this sort of triumph by a single side in ethical conflict, because whichever side wins, it's viewed as ultimately being the worst of all outcomes.


Anti-Balance would be Chaos. Because the alignment axes aren't immaculately symmetric and shouldn't be treated as such.

Balance also would be Lawful. It's probably the most lawful concept that exists. Keeping a "balance" between Law and Chaos is one of the funniest concepts ever.

No. Law is not balance. Dominance by law is complete stasis, it's the hegemonizing swarm converting the entire multiverse into endless copies of a single thing that never changes (there are entities in D&D that have this goal explicitly, such as Clockwork Horrors and Formians). Chaos is complete formlessness, particles in an energetic quantum swarm bursting in all directions endlessly. Both states are antithetical to life and frankly to any complexity.


I think, in oWoD Mage lore, one (insane) Euthanatos archmaster tries to destroy Entropy in order to do something similar.

Voormas - the central figure in the oMage metaplot, did indeed wish to destroy entropy and thereby radically change the nature of the universe. This was modeled as having massively destructive consequences so extreme that he was opposed by both the nominal 'good' guys of the setting the Traditions (the ethical framework of the oWoD is terrible in just about all possible ways) and the explicit Team Evil the Nephandi. As such he represents the kind of revolutionary 'remake the universe' figure who comes closest to being 'anti-balance.'

[Fable Wright]

No. The Fate/Apocrypha example is an example of the triumph of good - a very specific and alienating kind of good - and the anime is actually making a pro-balance argument. This is generally the argument made in any 'elimination of evil' scenario, that it would also eliminate individuality and meaning from life.

Pro-balance groups work very deliberately to prevent this sort of triumph by a single side in ethical conflict, because whichever side wins, it's viewed as ultimately being the worst of all outcomes.

If you take this approach to balance, then, I imagine that many people would despise the balance faction. "Wait, I'm a starving beggar on the street, and you're doing your best to keep me like that to preserve the evil in the world?!"

"I am a hard-working cop who preserves the law in this city, and you want me to just let criminals go because... there needs to be more Chaotic Evil because I'm doing my job too well?!"

I imagine that many people would view the Balance faction like they would Thanos, or at least the Infinity War version. Absolute madmen giving death and mercy at completely arbitrary points because of some nebulous, nonsensical ideal in the eyes of most people.

[noob]

I think working for balance makes you lawful evil quickly.
I mean if good and evil groups have comparable ability to grow in power then you are as likely to fight one than the other and thus you will overall become evil quickly as killing a good person is evil but killing an evil person is not good or is less good than killing an good person is evil.
Furthermore the concept of balance is clear and is a very precise set of rules(preventing good from winning over evil and reciprocally)and dedication to an ideal with a clear objective is super intensely lawful.
If the balance group wants to keep neutral people for some obscure reason then they need to recruit people who are neutral and getting rid of the old members who became lawful evil very quickly due to being devoted to an ideal with clear objectives and doing a lot of evil.
Having a balance group formed mostly of neutral people would make it very weak due to a constant need to get rid of the old members(aka: those who fought one or more battles for their ideal of balance since fighting one battle for such a cause is very lawful)
Therefore with dnd alignment system it is very likely that if the balance group wants to have importance it will probably have a lot of lawful evil people(due to how the alignments of the people joining the balance group will quickly become lawful evil).

So you can probably pick up as opponents mostly any group of chaotic good people(probably pick multiple groups and individuals since chaotic good people hardly makes huge groups).
Also since chaotic good people can end up being forgiving and stuff like that it is even possibly there could be a group of chaotic good people trying to dismantle the balance group while trying to also convert all those lawful evil people to good.(possibly using a redeemery)

[Mechalich]

If you take this approach to balance, then, I imagine that many people would despise the balance faction. "Wait, I'm a starving beggar on the street, and you're doing your best to keep me like that to preserve the evil in the world?!"

"I am a hard-working cop who preserves the law in this city, and you want me to just let criminals go because... there needs to be more Chaotic Evil because I'm doing my job too well?!"

I imagine that many people would view the Balance faction like they would Thanos, or at least the Infinity War version. Absolute madmen giving death and mercy at completely arbitrary points because of some nebulous, nonsensical ideal in the eyes of most people.

Yes, and people generally do hate the balance faction. Aeons are not your friend, neither were the Rilmani. The Lady of Pain was a horrific entity who spread pain throughout the multiverse and flayed/banished to hideous torment anyone who threatened her absolute authority in Sigil. The balance sucks, it's solution to the Problem of Evil is 'suck it.' Neutral isn't nice, neutral is miserable, neutral means the when the Formians show up to massacre your planet and bring everyone into the hive mind, the neutrals respond by releasing a bunch of Slaadi to counter them - you all still die, but the balance is preserved. The philosophical argument that the obliteration of evil is bad is a reasonable one. However, even if you accept that as a philosophical reality, in that case the reduction of evil by 99.9% would still be awesome.

As for Thanos, he's evil, but he thinks that he's a champion of the balance, and it is possible to imagine a scenario Thanos' thinking is actually beneficial - in fact Marvel ran just such a comic line called The Thanos Imperative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thanos_Imperative).


I mean if good and evil groups have comparable ability to grow in power then you are as likely to fight one than the other and thus you will overall become evil quickly as killing a good person is evil but killing an evil person is not good or is less good than killing an good person is evil.

That is not how D&D morality works. You can kill a saintly individual and have it impact your moral standing in no different faction than killing the worst of villains. Indeed you can have 'kill all the things' as an overriding operational goal and still be entirely neutral (which several fairly large factions in the D&D multiverse canonically do). To be evil in D&D you have to kill people and like it.

In general, however, there are very few ordinary humanoids who are committed to the balance. Most such true neutrals are people committed to a highly specific ethos that represents an inherent balance - ex. the balance of nature that is supported by druidism - rather than being directly committed to balance as a focus. That viewpoint - as the RIFTs guy was wont to go on rants about - is largely alien to the human experience. Most of the champions of the balance in D&D are alien and inscrutable entities who are not your friends and are only marginally less likely to try to kill a party of heroic adventurers than any group of demons.

[hamishspence]

Depends heavily on the edition. 3e at least, in several sources, suggested you don't have to be a "murderer for pleasure" to be Evil - plenty of Evil characters practice much milder forms of Evil.

[Doorhandle]

You could argue that the balancers work to support stagnation and stasis, while the other are looking for progress: a "cure to the human condition" rather than just artiblity minimising the harm done.
So the opposite could be a force of worshipper of chaos, change and evolution/technical progress. This group wouldn't be evil as such (at least not all it's members) but even it's most righteous members would be unprepared for the "unforeseen consequences:" of their experiments.

For an even more ethical complex example, you could have a different group of balance obsessives, who believed the universe is already in perfect balance, and rabidly oppose the other balance roginaidson for meddling with something already in its proper place.


If you take this approach to balance, then, I imagine that many people would despise the balance faction. "Wait, I'm a starving beggar on the street, and you're doing your best to keep me like that to preserve the evil in the world?!"

"I am a hard-working cop who preserves the law in this city, and you want me to just let criminals go because... there needs to be more Chaotic Evil because I'm doing my job too well?!"

I imagine that many people would view the Balance faction like they would Thanos, or at least the Infinity War version. Absolute madmen giving death and mercy at completely arbitrary points because of some nebulous, nonsensical ideal in the eyes of most people.

I agree.

With most balance factions, an imbalance in evil's favor is bad because, well, EVIL, but the main reason they tend to give for avoiding an imbalance of good is almost always because they believe the good faction will eventually collapse anyway, and the evil will return with an even bigger imbalance. it's never because an abundance of good is bad in of itself.
Basically, the argument of every balance faction is "there can be no final victory over evil."

I feel for that exact reason there would be many anti-balance good factions, who disagree (rightly or wrongly) with this analysis.

[Cosi]

You could argue that the balancers work to support stagnation and stasis, while the other are looking for progress: a "cure to the human condition" rather than just artiblity minimising the harm done.
So the opposite could be a force of worshipper of chaos, change and evolution/technical progress. This group wouldn't be evil as such (at least not all it's members) but even it's most righteous members would be unprepared for the "unforeseen consequences:" of their experiments.

Isn't that the Law/Chaos divide? "stagnation and stasis" certainly seems like a Law villain pitch, and "worshipper of chaos" sounds exactly like Chaos (it's right there).

I'm not saying that "stability versus change" is a bad conflict per se, but it doesn't really fit "True Neutral versus ???". That is because D&D alignment is dumb, but that is the field we're working with.

[NichG]

A classic example of a Law/Chaos/Balance triple is the Blood War in Planescape. Baator wants to impose order over the Lower Planes, the Abyss wants to kill their hated enemies and generally destroy stuff, and the Upper Planes want the fighting to continue so that neither side can spare the forces to make a concerted attack against the Uppers.

Literally it's 'the only way we can win is if neither of the other sides gains significant advantage over the other'

There was a celestial arms dealer in Faces of Sigil whose job was basically 'give lots of weapons to the currently losing side to keep the war going'

[Bansheexero]

One would think entropy in general would be the ultimate anti-balance, since conflict would be self-sustaining without it and have no victor. I mean one might argue escalation is the same thing, but it results in the entropy of one side or the other when another pulls ahead. Entropy is relative in this case rather than flat.

[Doorhandle]

Isn't that the Law/Chaos divide? "stagnation and stasis" certainly seems like a Law villain pitch, and "worshipper of chaos" sounds exactly like Chaos (it's right there).

I'm not saying that "stability versus change" is a bad conflict per se, but it doesn't really fit "True Neutral versus ???". That is because D&D alignment is dumb, but that is the field we're working with.

True I suppose. But it could be possible for a lawful faction to oppose balance as well:their laws may include somthing like "allway work towards the betterment of the cosmos" and they may disagree with the balance faction on that.

[Florian]

The Pathfinder Version of the Great Wheel has some good takes on it, because they radically altered what the Neutral planes and outsider races are and how they interact with the Prime Material.

The "Eternal Conflict" happens on the LN - N - CN axis.
N: The Boneyard. The center of the eternal conflict of life, death and rebirth. Aeons, the eternal guardians of duality - outsiders that understand and represent things like Life/Death, Construction/Destruction and so on. Also home to Groetus, the end of times, who will reset the whole universe once the conflict ends.
LN and CN: The eternal city of Axis and the endless Maelstrom. Stability with the downside of possible stasis, vs. flexibility with the downside of possible dissolution. Left unchecked, both will grow across the whole multiverse until there's no difference between the Prime Material and the Outer Planes, as everything is either the city of Axis or part of the Maelstrom, disrupting the River of Souls and awakening Groetus.

So, for example, Abadar, the god of Civilization is basically a nice LN guy that we can all relate to, being city dwellers and using the internet and such, but it´s clear that his version of growing, expanding and unchecked civilization will subjugate and kill nature in the long run, upsetting the balance and leading to a collapse.

The "Eternal War" happens on the G - E axis and absolutely skips the N axis. There's no "Blood War" here and it´s important to understand the difference between "Morality" and "Existence", when it comes to it. The only major factor here are the extreme corners of LG, LE, CG and CE, which are basically held together as "blocks" in a more or less passive fashion by NG and NE.

Basically, the whole outer planes understands and accepts the nature and function of the Boneyard and the River of Souls, what happens if Groetus awakens and when "dominance" turns into "destruction" - still they do it, because it is their very nature.

It can be argued that the enemies of balance are those who are not part of the system and not really connected to the River of Souls. The "First World" can be imagined as the rough drafts, scribbles and markings on canvas, before the artist went for the oil and painted a masterpiece above that, but it´s still there and very vibrant, just hidden, or the "Dark Tapestry", which is basically the sum of the Prime Material that doesn't want (or need) the Outer Planes as a whole.