A Chaotic-alignment Enchanter/Beguiler/etc.

[tadkins]

Would like some insight because I'm having a bit of hard time grasping the idea.

You've got a character that believes in freedom, opposes tyranny, wants to go their own way, etc. Basically, a Chaotic alignment character. At the same time, you're playing a spellcaster that specializes in charm and control spells. In battle you're using your spells to influence and control the opposing side into either disabling them, forcing them to go against their own ideals, or following your commands. In some cases you're essentially enslaving them. That, to me, seems to be more in the realm of a Lawful alignment.

I dunno, just seems kind of weird to me. Would such a character be possible or is it basically going against itself? Thoughts?

[hamishspence]

CE characters have no problem with enslaving others - its enslaving them that they object to.

CN and CG characters might dislike slavery - but temporarily controlling an enemy, I suspect they wouldn't object to.

[tadkins]

CE characters have no problem with enslaving others - its enslaving them that they object to.

CN and CG characters might dislike slavery - but temporarily controlling an enemy, I suspect they wouldn't object to.

Fair point. :) I was just debating whether someone who believes in freedom would be willing to deny that same freedom to other people. Thanks for the response.

[GrayDeath]

Well, he would, if Neutral Good, be very certain to only target Evil beings and people obviously taking others freedom away,a s a sort of Comuppance.

The only Chaotic Alignment that would REALLY have trouble with this would be realistic CN (not the LOLrandom kind^^) in my opinion.

[tadkins]

Well, he would, if Neutral Good, be very certain to only target Evil beings and people obviously taking others freedom away,a s a sort of Comuppance.

The only Chaotic Alignment that would REALLY have trouble with this would be realistic CN (not the LOLrandom kind^^) in my opinion.

Neutral Good definitely. But a CG character actively opposing an LE regime might be reluctant to adopt those same tactics. Or at least it seems like that. The purpose of this post is debating whether that'd be the case.

Realistic CN to me is just someone who does what they want, screw everyone else. I could actually see them using those tactics if it was practical and served their ends.

[Ellrin]

Chaotic characters don't necessarily believe in freedom, they just don't believe in changing their behavior due to anyone else's imposed restrictions—assuming they're willing to take the consequences, as well. Just look at the drow—as individuals, they're highly chaotic, but their society is pretty rigidly hierarchical (even if where power is concentrated is always shifting), and they're notorious for their use of slaves.

A character who is idealistically attached to the concept of freedom might have some issues with using enchantments in battle, but keep in mind that good adventurers kill their enemies all the time—which should in theory be worse than temporarily influencing or robbing an enemy of their will. I see a freedom idealist who refuses to cast dominate monster, even if it will be temporary and for the greater good, being roughly as extreme in his outlook as a good character who refuses to kill any creature, period, or an evil character who kills every single enemy immediately, no matter how useful the enemy may be alive, or how much legal trouble such an action could cause.

EDIT:
I'd also like to take the opportunity to soapbox a bit here about valuing freedom with relation to the lawful/chaotic dynamic. In short, I don't think it's really connected to that scale—it may even be more closely attached to the good/evil scale, since enslaving a sapient creature would generally be considered an evil act, I would think. Legal systems often exist to protect the liberty of individuals—in a truly anarchical society where might makes right, the strong could impose their will on the weak, and the weak would have no particular recourse. A lawful society isn't necessarily one that believes that people shouldn't be allowed to do what they want; it can just as easily be one with restrictions imposed to ensure that people aren't infringing on each other's ability to do what they want. Granted, this may be less "free" than a benevolent anarchical state, but that condition of benevolence, and therefore freedom, is hardly guaranteed in a "free" anarchical society the way it can be in a lawful state.

I mean, yes, we could go into how any legal system can be manipulated for ones own ends at the expense of others, but it's significantly more difficult to do so under a well designed, lawful state than it would be in a chaotic society. Assuming they both value personal liberty, the difference in freedom between a well-functioning LG society and a well-functioning CG society, therefore, is one of longevity vs. unconditionality, not in the degree to which freedom is valued.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

You've got a character that believes in freedom, opposes tyranny, wants to go their own way, etc. Basically, a Chaotic alignment character. At the same time, you're playing a spellcaster that specializes in charm and control spells. In battle you're using your spells to influence and control the opposing side into either disabling them, forcing them to go against their own ideals, or following your commands. In some cases you're essentially enslaving them. That, to me, seems to be more in the realm of a Lawful alignment.

Chaos doesn't imply universal freedom, and Law doesn't imply controlling others.

To be Lawful is to believe that following rules (not necessarily laws in the legal sense, but also codes, honor, procedures, and that sort of thing) is intrinsically a good thing to do, that things are better and make more sense when they are consistent and invariant, that everything has its proper place, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; in short, Law at the individual level maps to deontology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics). To be Chaotic is to believe that rules are largely arbitrary, that no two things are alike and shouldn't be pigeonholed into a larger framework unnecessarily, that things change and any rules about them should change along with them, that the rights of the individual are paramount; in short, Chaos at the individual level maps to consequentialism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism).

A lawful person might encourage everyone to do their own thing because they believe society only functions properly when everyone participates in it voluntarily, and would oppose dominating others because taking away free will goes against their personal morality. A lawful person might believe that society is most harmonious when everyone performs their assigned role, and would dominate others as needed because anyone who rejects their proper place harms everyone else. A chaotic person might encourage everyone to do their own thing because they feel people shouldn't be beholden to society and should be free to make their own choices, and would oppose dominating others because they hate anything that would take away someone else's freedom. A chaotic person might believe that fairness is overrated and they're entitled to do whatever they can get away with just like everyone else is entitled to the same, and would dominate anyone they want to because it gets them what they want.

Those examples roughly map to LG, LE, CG, and CE in their general themes, but are not the only ways characters of those alignments would interpret those issues--a LG character might dominate enemies because they believe a brief deprivation of free will is more merciful than inflicting physical harm or death, while a CE character might strongly oppose any use of domination because they fear someone else using it against them, for instance. Being lawful or chaotic (or ethically neutral, for that matter) does not dictate how you feel about a particular issue, only the way you reach those decisions and the ethical basis you use to do so.


Just look at the drow—as individuals, they're highly chaotic, but their society is pretty rigidly hierarchical (even if where power is concentrated is always shifting), and they're notorious for their use of slaves.

This is a pretty good example of how alignment and behavior don't correlate at all. People like to complain about drow society being "obviously" LE with its strict rules and hierarchy when drow themselves are CE, so drow should really be LE instead, but the whole point is that the drow don't follow any of their own supposed rules.

Lesser Houses absolutely aren't allowed to wage wars against their betters...but they do anyway and no one cares unless they get caught, in which case they're punished not because they broke the rules but because they were incompetent enough to cover their tracks and the greater Houses just like punishing rivals when they know no one's going to object. All priestesses are absolutely unified under Lolth and follow a strict hierarchy of favor where lesser priestesses defer to greater ones...but yochlol go around actively sowing dissent among the priestesshood and any priestess who schemes against a rival on her own and manages to depose said rival is immediately recognized and rewarded for it. Males are absolutely not allowed to hold any positions of power and are supposed to be utterly disposable for the needs of the priestesshood...but many powerful archmages rival or exceed priestesses in power, and house mothers often protect favored males from their sisters' schemes (or cede power to them outright).

The drow have instituted a complex web (heh) of laws and rules and commandments, but they don't actually believe in any of it. There's only one commandment, "Thou shalt not go against Lolth," and (A) that's not a hard-and-fast rule because priestesses squabble all the time and (B) that's less a "commandment" and more a handy piece of advice, like "Don't go near a rabid dog" or "Don't piss off a hungry tiger." That's what makes the drow Chaotic despite the Lawful-seeming façade.

EDIT to respond to an EDIT:


I'd also like to take the opportunity to soapbox a bit here about valuing freedom with relation to the lawful/chaotic dynamic. In short, I don't think it's really connected to that scale—it may even be more closely attached to the good/evil scale, since enslaving a sapient creature would generally be considered an evil act, I would think.

I'd disagree. There's solid ethical reasoning on both sides of the collectivism vs. individualism debate, and as I mentioned in one of my examples above, it's entirely possible for one person's "forgoing one's own wishes for the betterment of society" to be another person's "involuntary suppression of one's rights." Dominate person and other mind-control magic obviously hasn't been addressed by any real-world philosophers, but it's still the same thing, just to a greater degree.

I mean, people talk about annoying bosses, jerkish customers, and such (and quite a few board-inappropriate topics) in terms of "Wouldn't it be great if they had to..." all the time. Wouldn't it be nice if you could make that gossipy coworker stop undermining you during performance review season and hurting someone else's feelings Wouldn't it be swell if everyone had to follow the speed limit when they drive? A lot of people, if they could wave their hands and dominate person someone into picking up their litter or not swearing in front of children, would totally do it because they don't view it as "enslaving" someone at all, merely enforcing standards of morality more quickly and effectively than giving them a stern-talking to--and more gently than punishing them with fines or prison time or the like, too.

Now, I don't necessarily agree with all of that, and fall closer to the "more freedom is good, controlling other people is bad" standpoint like you do, but the point is that not everyone agrees that coercing others to do things is bad and there are ethical systems where "good conduct is more important than individual wishes" is not only a reasonable statement, but the basis of the whole system. Kant's essays around his Categorical Imperative often boil down to the philosophical equivalent of "I don't care what you want to do, you're going to follow the same rules as the rest of us and you're gonna like it!"

And then of course you get into the whole freedom from vs. freedom to thing, like you mentioned later in that paragraph; what a supernaturally Good or supernaturally Evil being would think of as "freedom," such that an eladrin might view a mortals actions in a very different light than a mere CG human; and so forth.

[Ramza00]

Have you seen Code Geass and the main character Lelouch Vi Britania / Lelouch Lamprage?

So his alignment is not constant for he struggles with his desires and his goals in order to make them real but what happens if his goals are contradictory to his beliefs and so on.

So in the 2 seasons of anime you can say "Lelouch" is all 9 alignments, especially since he puts on alignments / artificial personas like masks.

But if you were to say the default Lelouch Alignment ever since he gains his geass / enchantment power it would be Chaotic Good / Chaotic Neutral. Note Lelouch has the power to make anyone his obedient slave but he does not do this for he finds it to be distasteful and thus he tries to use his enchantment power in an elegant way where the person he is enchanting has the most agency as possible.


In fact is is heavily thematically implied that Geass powers are based off the thing you are weak at and/or the thing you find distasteful. This is not surprising for Code Geass involves lots of Jungian and Freudian psychology on the nature of wishes / dreams / what is conscious / what is thought etc.

[tadkins]

These are some great responses everyone, thank you. :)

Need some time to fully read and digest them but I will be back soon with a response.

[magic9mushroom]

To be Lawful is to believe that following rules (not necessarily laws in the legal sense, but also codes, honor, procedures, and that sort of thing) is intrinsically a good thing to do, that things are better and make more sense when they are consistent and invariant, that everything has its proper place, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; in short, Law at the individual level maps to deontology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics). To be Chaotic is to believe that rules are largely arbitrary, that no two things are alike and shouldn't be pigeonholed into a larger framework unnecessarily, that things change and any rules about them should change along with them, that the rights of the individual are paramount; in short, Chaos at the individual level maps to consequentialism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism).

"Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is fundamentally a consequentialist argument (specifically, a utilitarian one). Conversely, believing that rights are more important than that is significantly deontologist. Not sure those examples help your case.

[Ramza00]

"Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is fundamentally a consequentialist argument (specifically, a utilitarian one). Conversely, believing that rights are more important than that is significantly deontologist. Not sure those examples help your case.

Yes, what you said is accurate, but you can also compare it in different ways.

Δ symbol is Delta in math aka a change of this variabile on a line.)

Virtue Based Ethics <== Δ self ==> Deontology / Obligation based ethics
Charity Based Ethics <== Δ world ==> Consequentialism
Abstract Framing / Ideal Theory / Mind Experiment <== Δ focus ==> Humanistic Based Ethics Framing (what is happening right now.)
Individuality Framing <== Δ alienation ==> Solidarity Framing

Note some of these Δ deltas do not have inherent value statements but since we often describe alienation negatively it may color how I framed this, understand I am trying to be as neutral as possible.

Based off what I described mind control / mind influencing can be plotted in a 4th Dimensional Space and whether it is Good or Bad, or Lawful or Chaotic depends on which of these 8 things you are prioritizing and 4 of these things are in tension with 4 other things.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

"Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is fundamentally a consequentialist argument (specifically, a utilitarian one). Conversely, believing that rights are more important than that is significantly deontologist. Not sure those examples help your case.

Well, sort of. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" and "individual rights are more important than societal benefits" are both deontological stances; they provide guiding principles by which to make decisions, and they're concerned with to what degree a given action is in accord with those principles when determining the morality of that action. "The greatest good for the greatest number" and "Human rights are inalienable" are both consequentialist stances; they provide metrics by which to judge the utility of certain actions, and they're concerned with the concrete outcomes of a given action when determining the morality of that action.

The two approaches obviously appear to overlap a lot when you talk at very high levels like this, about collectivism vs. individualism, divine command theory vs. secular morality, and so forth; yes, collectivism is associated pretty heavily with deontology and individualism pretty heavily with consequentialism, but not always and not exclusively. It gets particularly fuzzy when you bring victim-centered deontology and rule-utilitarian consequentialism into the picture, which both pretty heavily blur the line between the two.

In the end, the best distinction you can make between the two, if you're not going to get into the particulars of a given scenario where the differences actually emerge, is that consequentialism cares about this particular instance while deontology cares about generalized instances, and then you can apply a particular (deontological) rule or (consequentialist) metric and see how they would differ. The CN character says "When I do X, how do I guarantee that the needs of the many are addressed before the needs of the few?" and might make a different decision than he would if he were considering Y instead of X (an act-utilitarian approach). The LN character says "What can I do so that I guarantee that the needs of the many are addressed before the needs of the few?" and would come up with a decision that would ensure that, most of the time for most actions, the decision works as intended (the categorical imperative approach).


Virtue Based Ethics <== Δ self ==> Deontology / Obligation based ethics
Charity Based Ethics <== Δ world ==> Consequentialism

"Charity" ethics would actually be a subset of "virtue" ethics, or aretology, which is the third common ethical category. In D&D terms, it maps pretty nicely to ethical neutrality: "Is this done with the right intent?" (N) as opposed to "Am I doing the right thing?" (L) or "Will this have the right outcome?" (C).