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Thoughtbot360
2021-04-07, 11:28 AM
Not another alignment thread!

Yes, but this is to explore an idea for making alignments more useful as a setting concept than as a source of pointless arguments around the table. It also doubles as a simplistic pantheon for when you are homebrewing your own adventures and you need one that's easy to explain.

1. A brief history of alignment:

Whenever a discussion of alignment crops up, the topic of how nobody cares about Law vs. Chaos (at least, nowhere near as much as Good vs. Evil) will arise. However, in bygone eras of D&D, it used to be that Law, Chaos, and Neutrality (with regards to Law and Chaos) used to be the ONLY alignments, being based on popular Fantasy novels at the time using Law and Chaos as stand-ins for Good and Evil/Peace and Warfare/Creation and Destruction. (I'm not even going to start about Alignment languages...) True, there was a "Protection vs. Evil" spell, and Clerics could turn into "evil" (and also Chaotic) Anti-Clerics by abusing their Finger of Death Spell in Whitebox, but it seemed more like Good was to be a subdivision of Law (all good clerics were Lawful) while Evil was a subdivision of Chaos.

(In other words, it was exactly the opposite of how 4e handled alignment: Lawful Good, Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic, Chaotic Evil)

But then, they came out and said you can be Lawful AND Evil, like alignments were Pokemon types. And then the Planescape setting came out and immortalized this tomfoolery! (So, everytime a DM helps a new player to fill out the character sheet, the subject of the NINE Alignments and how little they really matter has to come up eventually.)

The problem with this 3x3 alignment grid, aside from being a clunky way to try and condense human morality, is that it also creates problems for classes like Paladins who might lose their powers because of a DM judgement call over a nebulous issue, or Clerics who have to pick a particular alignment-specific god to use a domain. If the DM didn't make a pantheon and leaves gods up the player, then...the whole religion thing feels tacked on and unimportant.

I'm sure nobody here knows what that feels li-


2. GET ON WITH IT!:

ahem.

So, rather than requiring the homebrewing DM to make a huge pantheon of gods that will still restrict Domain choices because there are no gods of X Alignment with Y Domain, why not just make the major Alignment Forces as gods, since even outsiders are categorized by alignment.

Law and Chaos, as they exist right now, feel like the sort of Blue-and-Orange Morality that mortals would follow for dogmatic convictions, rather than personal ones. So, a setting could use the "ethical" axis of a character's alignment to show devotion to one of three gods based on the Old-school alignments, which are self-centered but reward devotion in ways which can be exploited by good OR evil people. But we are going for 5 gods.


Law- The Law god wants to bring about a Light Age, where the world is more united and connected than ever before, under a single banner. This could be an evil oppressive empire, or something like the Star Trek Federation. Both work. Conformity and Hegemony are the ORDER of the day. ....c wut i did der?

Neutrality- Do we even need a neutral god? Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral mortals will simply worship the lawful and chaotic gods, respectively. We are NOT using "philosophically" neutral as the dogma here. The neutral god encourages that followers side with the WINNING team, not the losing one. The "balance" can fall in a sewer and die, although the neutral god does prefer peaceful isolation to war. The temple of Law, by contrast, will mobilize to keep an empire from losing power if the Law god thinks that the empire will help bring about a "Light age".
This is because the neutral god only cares about the flock growing and surviving to worship and exalt the god another day. The god is not inherently malignant, but given to fits of narcissism and greed, that make it pliable by the other gods.


Yet, in recent centuries, it has become known that the chaotic god, the one who DOESN'T want to take over the world and the least power one of all, has somehow secured the neutral god's cooperation, due to what MUST be some form of debt. There are times when the clerics of the neutral god experience their magic weakening, their communities falling into sickness and decay, and these periods always end with a sudden alliance of the neutral and chaotic temples for a time, the neutral god sending believers on "holy missions" that benefit chaos. And these events are the only time that neutrality will save chaos from being crushed by law (or anyone else who's sick of chaos' ****), yet this wasn't always the case and the other alignment gods get no such treatment.

Chaos- Now, THIS is the god who "upholds the balance." Chaos is never worshiped out in the open, but its many shadowy cults ally themselves with assorted organizations of thieves, cutthroats, assassins, political underdogs, and even the second (or thirteenth) sons of nobles. Schemers and mischief makers of all stripes receive the chaos god's blessings, but sometimes small and fragile cultures will receive boons from the chaos god, just to keep the world map a riotous patchwork rainbow of strange and exotic peoples. The god doesn't want to conquer the world or overthrow society, because then they will be nobody left to manipulate and outsmart, no arrogant overdogs for the plucky underdogs of chaos to outmaneuver. Instead, Chaos revels in the dissolution of ideologies and the proliferation of unlikely victories. Whenever one side, particularly the Law god, starts to take over, Chaos moves to ensure that "Lodoss will not be unified NOR conquered..." ...because where's the fun in that?

Good and Evil- I wish I could come up with something clever for these gods, but these alignments' reputations preceded them. One thing of note, however, is that because these deities represent all of good/evil instead of simply a ethical subset. Their tenets are very broad, but mostly involve directly interfering with the other counterpart god.


I...don't actually remember where I was going with this. Have I made a complete topic? It was saved under the auto-saver, and it loaded this instead of the thread that I thought was saved, so now I'm posting it.

Should this be in Homebrew? It doesn't really feel like proper Homebrew...

So, um....Discuss!



Edit: Also, I haven't really used this forum in um, a decade? Does anybody know how to change signatures? I can't seem to edit that part of my profile. That petition is long dead by now, Rich took down the articles, so no newcomer will even know what this is about.

KaussH
2021-04-07, 05:08 PM
So ages ago, but still being used for a current game in a fit of lazy. I made law, chaos,good, evil greater gods. I then made all the crossovers their kids and lesser gods. Named the greater gods, juggled the names to make lesser ones ( aka the cg gods name is a mix of the god of chaos and god of good. Bamn, pantheon. Oddly it works ok. :)

dafrca
2021-04-08, 01:20 AM
I like where you were going with this but it sort of faltered there at Good and Evil.

Maybe leave Good and Evil out of it all together. The three gods of the godhead. Add in some sort of logic for the three to not have power over the other but rather struggle against each other. Law, Neutral, and Chaos. Hum, this needs more thought but I like it. :smallsmile:

Glimbur
2021-04-08, 08:40 AM
I like where you were going with this but it sort of faltered there at Good and Evil.

Maybe leave Good and Evil out of it all together. The three gods of the godhead. Add in some sort of logic for the three to not have power over the other but rather struggle against each other. Law, Neutral, and Chaos. Hum, this needs more thought but I like it. :smallsmile:

Exactly what I was thinking, leave Good and Evil out. Then your PCs who likely try to be good people can sometimes work for Law, sometimes for Chaos.

I can see the Neutral philosophy being very popular among people without power, which is also interesting.

Law has two faces, benevolent and tyrannical, but it feels like Chaos only gets its faces based on which kind of Law it is opposing. Maybe Chaos can be interested either in strengthening the weak or taking down the powerful. Neutral then does not get a duality because it is Neutral.

And then you get to consider if Outsiders exist and how they act... this is a simple base that can go many ways. I like it.

aglondier
2021-04-09, 01:29 AM
I always liked White Wolf's version in Werewolf the Apocalypse. Weaver, Wyrm, Wyld.

Weaver is the more-or-less mindless force of Order, binding up the world in its webs. Wyld is chaos incarnate, creation unbound. Wyrm is the destroyer, balancing the other two, a force of renewal.

Anonymouswizard
2021-04-09, 02:17 AM
Reminds me of Megami Tensei, especially later games due to there now being three proper alignment representatives (early Neutrality was more about rejecting both sides). Now while Law in the series greens towards tyrannical and Chaos towards brutal this is more a case of their alignment representatives not being very nice people, and the games do have explosions of hope the alignments can be more positive.

But yes, you've got the Law representative looking to unite their chosen ones in a United world and optionally damn the rest, Chaos as the weaker one looking for eyeball change, and Neutrality which you've presented as siding with the strongest, but for most people is probably more a philosophy of '**** off and take your holy war with you'. Neutrality doesn't care which side wind, in the areas where one side is dominant it'll side with them but at the end of the day they'd rather both sides just shut up.

Devils_Advocate
2021-04-12, 11:08 PM
So, basically...

Law: Unity
Neutral: Prosperity
Chaos: Diversity


I've noticed that there are already divine roles associated with each of the nine alignments to varying degrees. They correspond pretty well to 5th Edition Cleric Domains, unsurprisingly, since those are meant to cover the common archetypes.

Lawful Good: The paladin god of paladins and justice. Strongly favors peace in general but the smiting of evil in particular. Protection domain.

Neutral Good: Nice, friendly goddess of healing, agriculture, family, and community. Wonders why everyone can't just get along. Tells followers to treat others with kindness and help those in need. In a position of power but somehow seemingly not a jerk of any variety, which deserves considerable respect. Life domain.

True Neutral: The druid god of druids and the wilderness. Regards this whole "civilization" business as frequently out of control and seeks to protect natural environments from artificial disruption. Nature domain.

Lawful Neutral: The death god of death and things staying dead and not moving around any more, dammit. Every life's beginning must be balanced with that life's eventual end. Hates mortals circumventing the whole mortality thing and undead in particular. Will allow someone to temporarily return to mortal life for a price. Is patient like that. Fees non-negotiable. Grave domain.

Lawful Evil: The tyrannical god of tyranny and conquest. Favored deity of those who want to take over the world or just part of it. Sees great honor to be had in battle, and greater honor to be had in victory. War domain.

Neutral Evil: The secretive god of murder, undeath, evil, darkness, and secrecy. Hates life and seeks to end it. You'd be alarmed to know how many cultists there are worshiping this deity, but on the plus side you never will. Lures followers in with promise of POWER, UNLIMITED POWER, MWAHAHA. Opportunities for advancement are many because there are always new openings. Death domain.

Chaotic Evil: The destructive god of destruction, storms, and raiders. Remember: pillage, then burn. Everything's gonna fall apart one day, and trying to build anything to last is a futile endeavor, so instead, get while the getting's good and smash anything and anyone who stands in your way. Tempest domain.

Chaotic Neutral: The trickster god of tricksters, thieves, and pranks. Sees sticking it to The Man as an end in itself. Possibly crazy; sanity is just so limiting, you know? Trickery domain.

Chaotic Good: Fun goddess of entertainment, art, and beauty. Wants to make the world a happier place. Likes music and dancing. Popular with hedonists too moral to follow the Trickster and peaceniks not altruistic enough to live up to the NG fertility goddess's standards. (She'll still take them, but her teaching make some people feel guilty.) Light domain.

Thoughtbot360
2021-04-13, 09:38 AM
I like where you were going with this but it sort of faltered there at Good and Evil.

Maybe leave Good and Evil out of it all together. The three gods of the godhead. Add in some sort of logic for the three to not have power over the other but rather struggle against each other. Law, Neutral, and Chaos. Hum, this needs more thought but I like it. :smallsmile:

It is true that the vibe puttered out with good and evil there. The first half of the original was made maybe months ago, but then I didn't finish it for whatever reason. I thought that I was loading a completely different auto-saved thread because my computer just crashed when I was writing a different one. So, with the memories flooding back to me, I decided to finish that idea, but I drew a bit of a blank on the Good and Evil gods, and I was tired, and discouraged from losing my other thread that I still have to redo.

However, as bland as they are, Good and Evil play a very important role just by being another pair of factions that hate each other that Chaos can play off of. They help stir the pot.

That said, you know that thing where the Neutral God owes the Chaotic god strange favors? Yeah, that was originally favors to Evil, but then I realized this put Neutrality back into its role of saving Evil from the Jaws of Good, which is something that always bugged me about its whole "balance" schtick, so I gave it to Chaos, who really needed an ally. But, that was the spark to more ideas. Something strange was supposed to be going on with all three of the "moral axis" alignment gods. Yet, I gave up because I just wanted to post the thing.

Basically, the Evil god got frustrated at the eternal battle between itself and Good (well, between itself and everybody, really), and wanted something to give it an edge. So, Evil tried to tap into some foreign nameless dimension for the power to crush the other gods, but Evil wasn't a complete fool and tricked the Neutrality God into exploring the power first (flattery will get you everywhere with Neutrality). The experiment sickened Neutrality with a chronic condition, for which only the Evil (or now Chaos, I guess) has the treatment, and tore open a hole in reality that threatened the very fabric of existence! The Good god, seeing what had happened, and seeing Evil flee the scene snivelling "I-I didn't do it!" while Neutrality turned a lovely shade of THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE on the floor, leapt into action to save the day. The Good god, reach into the hole, getting irradiated by Lovecraftian DEEP MAGIC and all, and started to pull the flaps of the world-wound together even as the corrupting energy continued to escape. With a sheer force of will, through sheer infinite love, the Good god resisted and cast out the madness, just long enough to cross-stitch reality shut with a golden thread of divine power made from the god's own blood.

But, the scars continue. Its possible that the Good god actually absorbed the power that the Evil god wanted. Every once in a while, the radiant damage spells of Good priests will become Maximized (as per the 5e Sorcerer power/3e Metamagic feat) crackle with excessive, blinding energy. The Good god, when angered, will become engulfed in a blinding nimbus of light. Gold-colored Death lasers abound for a while, then suddenly the clerical magic weakens for a time before returning to the boring status quo. Some whisper that instead of sealing the hole shut, the Good god actually trapped it inside its own body....

The Evil god got out scott free. Although, there is this one mystery where all the statues and idols in the Evil temples cry POISON ("Don't touch it with your hands!") at the same day of the year, every year. That day couldn't be the anniversary of something could it? Nah...




Oh, and one minor thing. The Law temple doesn't necessarily want to unite the world under its banner, it is happy to support another temple, or the more secular government of a massive empire, or probably even a cyberpunk megacorporation. This makes the Law god rather attractive for expansionistic cultures of all sorts. Now, the Neutrality God does the same thing, but what Law does that Neutrality doesn't do is apply itself, work had, infiltrate the hierarchy, start entrenching itself, making it a necessary part of government and harder to remove. This leads to....ironically(?) Law creating massive inefficiency which leads to Law defeating itself when it was on the precipice of conquering the world, its global civilization collapsing under the weight of its own out-of-control bureaucracy!

I think the Chaos god's words at the time were: "lol."

Okaay, actually it was more like: "I didn't, COULDN'T, even do anything, its a miracle, lol." And that's why the Chaos Temple's theology mostly sounds a lot like the insane clown posey talking about keeping an eye out for Chaotic Miracles....

Thoughtbot360
2021-04-13, 11:33 AM
So, basically...

Law: Unity
Neutral: Prosperity
Chaos: Diversity


I've noticed that there are already divine roles associated with each of the nine alignments to varying degrees. They correspond pretty well to 5th Edition Cleric Domains, unsurprisingly, since those are meant to cover the common archetypes.

Lawful Good: The paladin god of paladins and justice. Strongly favors peace in general but the smiting of evil in particular. Protection domain.

Neutral Good: Nice, friendly goddess of healing, agriculture, family, and community. Wonders why everyone can't just get along. Tells followers to treat others with kindness and help those in need. In a position of power but somehow seemingly not a jerk of any variety, which deserves considerable respect. Life domain.

True Neutral: The druid god of druids and the wilderness. Regards this whole "civilization" business as frequently out of control and seeks to protect natural environments from artificial disruption. Nature domain.

Lawful Neutral: The death god of death and things staying dead and not moving around any more, dammit. Every life's beginning must be balanced with that life's eventual end. Hates mortals circumventing the whole mortality thing and undead in particular. Will allow someone to temporarily return to mortal life for a price. Is patient like that. Fees non-negotiable. Grave domain.

Lawful Evil: The tyrannical god of tyranny and conquest. Favored deity of those who want to take over the world or just part of it. Sees great honor to be had in battle, and greater honor to be had in victory. War domain.

Neutral Evil: The secretive god of murder, undeath, evil, darkness, and secrecy. Hates life and seeks to end it. You'd be alarmed to know how many cultists there are worshiping this deity, but on the plus side you never will. Lures followers in with promise of POWER, UNLIMITED POWER, MWAHAHA. Opportunities for advancement are many because there are always new openings. Death domain.

Chaotic Evil: The destructive god of destruction, storms, and raiders. Remember: pillage, then burn. Everything's gonna fall apart one day, and trying to build anything to last is a futile endeavor, so instead, get while the getting's good and smash anything and anyone who stands in your way. Tempest domain.

Chaotic Neutral: The trickster god of tricksters, thieves, and pranks. Sees sticking it to The Man as an end in itself. Possibly crazy; sanity is just so limiting, you know? Trickery domain.

Chaotic Good: Fun goddess of entertainment, art, and beauty. Wants to make the world a happier place. Likes music and dancing. Popular with hedonists too moral to follow the Trickster and peaceniks not altruistic enough to live up to the NG fertility goddess's standards. (She'll still take them, but her teaching make some people feel guilty.) Light domain.


You know, that sounds dangerously close to something I once did. I took the domains and paladin oaths from the 5e Player's handbook, and took the non-evil gods from the SIMPLIFIED! (Seriously, there are 500k or so gods in Greyhawk proper) Greyhawk pantheon from the 3e Player's handbook, and I realized that they could fit as another simplified pantheon/world-building springboard. One thing I did differently was instead of tying clerics and other worshippers to the alignment of each odd, I abstracted the god's alignments.:


Hieronious, god of Justice: worshipped by non-evil (Knightly) Fighters and Oath of Devotion Paladins*.


Pelor, god of the Sun: Non-evil Life and Light domain Clerics. Two sides of the same idea. The Light Clerics purge undead, and the Life Clerics run disaster prevention/mitigation to help random civilians not become dead, which is a prerequisite to becoming undead.

Elhonna, goddess of the woodland: Non-evil Rangers and Oath of Ancients Paladins*.

Kord, god of Strength: Non-evil Barbarians and Tempest Clerics.

St. Cuthbert, god of the totally not contradictory concepts of Common Sense and Zealotry: Non-evil War Clerics and Oath of Vengence Paladins. Favored weapon is supposed to be a simple mace, but when his title is "St. Cuthbert of Cudgel", I think of the war domain. I like to think that a "Cudgel" could be a Morning star, Maul, War hammer, a "Gutentag" which uses the stats for the Great axe or Halberd, or any number of martial weapons.

Wee Jas: Non-evil Necromancers and Death Clerics. The splatbooks give Wee Jas the grave domain, but she was much more the poster girl for Neutral Clerics who chose to channel negative energy instead of positive energy.

Fharlaghn, god of roads and travel: Non-evil Bards and Knowledge Clerics. Temple builds relations with foreign cultures. And roadside shrines. And roads. And bridges. And roadside inns that offer discounts to wandering minstrels.

Boccob the Uncaring, god of magic: Non-evil Wizards and Arcana Clerics. Fharlagn took Knowledge, and honestly, the Arcana domain was MADE for Boccob, he probably grandfathered the idea in by being in the 3e PHB with the "Magic" domain, which is basically the same thing.

Obad-hai, god of nature: Non-evil Druids and Nature Clerics.

Olidamarra, god of thieves: Non-evil Rogues and Trickery Clerics.

Moradin, god of Dwarves: Dwarves, duh.

Corellian Latheron, god of Elves: Elves, duh.

Garl Glittergold, god of Gnomes: Gnomes, duh.

Yondolla, goddess of Halflings: Halflings, duh.


-Bonus chapter: THE BAD BOYS!-

Hextor, god of tyranny: Evil Fighters and Oathbreaker Paladins. Fight me, Hieronious!

Vecna, god of secrets: Evil Wizards and Knowledge/Arcana Clerics.

Nerull, god of Death: Evil Assassins and Death Clerics. Because the Raven Queen blows. psst. Hail Sithis.

Erythnul: Evil Barbarians and War Clerics.

Gruumsh, god of Orcs: Orcs, duh.


Monks and Warlocks: Don't really have cooresponding gods. Monks were originally a kind of variant Cleric, which is the real reason they add Wisdom to Armor class, but the reason being is they are actually supposed to be Xaiolin monks trying to find inner spiritual perfection instead of engaging in external theism. Warlocks might've had a typical god before but now that they sold their soul to their Patron will remind them, everyday, exactly who their god is.

*-What? No Clerics!? The temple of Hieronius more of a knightly order than a true temple, but despite not having "Clerics" as the player class it has many monasteries full of non-Kung Fu-practicing Franscian-esque monks who devote their lives to worship and protect the bones and other relics of long dead saints and paladins which contain a little bit of leftover holy power. Despite no living clerics, these dead heroes help these holy places do clerical services. Elhonna's has a similar set up with shrines that double as recruitment centers for her orders of rangers and paladins. Also, all of those non-cleric classes can end up serving in an ecclesiastical role instead of just worshipping as laymen.


But, the reason to use this pantheon is just to forget about lore (seriously, Wee Jas is an ancient Suelian god, St. Cuthbert are Oeridian gods, and the story behind the Oeridian and Suel culture causes conflict between these two lawful neutral deities becauseOH NO I RAN OUT OF ****s TO GIVE:smallsigh:) and just have a grab-bag of generic gods for new players to assign to their character when the DM homebrews a new setting.

Its a great idea. I'm not throwing shade at your pantheon. Its just very similar.

Your LG Protection God= Hieronious
Your TN Nature God= Obad-hai
Your LN Grave God= Okay, more Raven Queen than Wee Jas. Understandable trope for LN.
Your LE War God= Hextor
Your NE Death God= A little of Vecna, a little of Nerull. Especially that hating all life thing.

LibraryOgre
2021-04-13, 12:31 PM
So, basically...

Law: Unity
Neutral: Prosperity
Chaos: Diversity


That's not a bad summation of them, actually.

One idea I played with a few years ago was to rewrite Dragonlance but "flipped 90 degrees"... so, instead of the big conflict being between Good and Evil, the big conflict was between Law and Chaos. Reordered the Gods into pantheons based on that (it worked out PRETTY well... I had to shift one of the gods of magic to keep them in the "right" alignment, and it wound up being a 6/9/6 pantheon split, instead of core DL's 7/7/7), but the idea of Lawful v. Chaotic worked fine, and made for some interesting bedfellows... Kender on the same side as Ogres, for example.

Devils_Advocate
2021-04-13, 05:02 PM
Its a great idea. I'm not throwing shade at your pantheon. Its just very similar.
The similarity to nearly any D&D pantheon is the point! Lots of pantheons are very similar. There are well-established recurring archetypes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22E82Q1dLSY) that exist to fill equally well-established roles. Like, you've got to have a Lawful Good god of justice and honor for traditional paladins and similarly inclined heroes. You've got to have a True Neutral nature deity for druids. You've got to have a god of thieves for thief characters. If you wanna have a great big army of bad guys, you may as well have an evil war god for them, with the paladin god serving as the Athena to the war god's Ares. And of course you can't have a secret murderous evil cult that worships an evil god without having an evil god who is worshiped by a secret murderous evil cult.

Then there are the oddly specific combinations of traits that don't seem particularly necessary but keep cropping up nevertheless, probably mostly due to lack of originality. Ehlonna and Mielikki are Neutral Good forest goddesses worshiped by rangers and also Good-aligned druids, and Artemis is probably listed as NG just so as to slot her into that pre-existing role. Because we need a Neutral Good forest goddess worshiped by rangers and also Good-aligned druids, apparently? But no; other pantheons lack such a figure and she doesn't fill any obvious essential role, so this is probably just a matter of repurposing others' work with the serial numbers filed off, which D&D is of course no stranger to by any stretch of the imagination.

The Deity of Mortality and the Dead (and less so dying itself) is interesting because that doesn't correspond to any character class and isn't required by a specific setting role either. The Great Wheel cosmology had souls travel to their respective afterlives automatically without assistance from any psychopomp, and the role of gods was that souls went to deities who they worshiped, and that works just fine. But a God of Death as Part of the Natural Order fills the role of Weird Neutral Faction quite nicely, so so long as you want one of those, why fix what ain't broke? Of course, that does require fixing the Death domain, since granting the power to animate the dead is obviously inappropriate for someone adamantly opposed to doing just that. So they had to come up with a different domain for this archetype, and then they had to do it again two editions later.

So it's more like...

LG Protection God = Heironeous, Torm, Paladine, the Silver Flame, Bahamut, and all o' them just, honorable paladin gods o' justice, honor, and paladins.
TN Nature God = Obad-Hai, Silvanus, Chislev, Balinor, and all o' them wild druid gods o' druids and the wild.
LN Grave God = the Raven Queen, Kelemvor, Hades (non-vilified), kinda Wee Jas, and all o' them gods o' the dead and mortality.
LE War God= Hextor, Bane, Maglubiyet, and all o' them tyrannical conquering warrior gods o' war, conquest and tyranny.
NE Death God= Nerull, Incabulos, Vecna, Bhaal, Myrkul, Shar, Morgion, The Keeper, wow this one is popular, and all o' them secretive evil gods o' evil, secrets, and secret evil.
CE Tempest God = Talos, Umberlee, Erythnul, Zeboim, Gruumsh, and all o' them destructive barbaric ususally storm gods o' destruction plus storms and/or barbarians
CG Light Goddess = Lliira, Sune, Sharess... Huh, somehow I thought that there were at least four of these? Ah, okay, Tymora is also a CG goddess who hangs out in Brightwater but isn't really the same type. Anyway, the fun Faerunian goddesses of fun times and Ed Greenwood having a type.
CN Trickery God = the fricking Trickster Archetype that the Trickery domain is primarily for. Honestly not sure how common Pure Trickster is, but it's the one Definitely Chaotic Neutral option I can think of, so it's relevant.
NG Life Goddess = Chauntea, Arawai, Hestia, and all other generically benevolent goddesses of stuff associated with the Life domain but not covered by Light and/or Protection, which together isn't too much for one goddess so we may as well give one all of it. So this one is a conflation rather than a specific recurring combination of specific traits that I've identified. Uh... combo breaker!

Also...

?? Knowledge God = Oghma, Deneir, Aureon, Gilean, Thoth, and all of 'o them nerdy gods o' books, learning, knowledge, wizards, and great big nerds.
?? Arcana God = Mystra, Boccob, Azuth, Math Mathonwy, Hecate, Isis, and all o' them mysterious deities o' magic what're probably favored more by sorcerers because wizards tend to prefer the nerd god.
?? Forge God = Gond, Reorx, Onatar, Moradin, Hephaestus, and all o' them inventive gods o' crafting, artificers, and invention.

(A straight-up generally pro-magic god of magic encourages magic and opposes restrictions on magic, which isn't a lot to go on, but probably means Chaotic alignment just because that probably entails opposing some fairly common-sense laws. Somewhat similarly, a god who unthinkingly serves as a source of all manner of artifacts is probably Neutral in a "sells weapons to both sides" sort of way. Gods of Knowledge tend to be Neutral, but it would make sense to have an uncompromisingly honest LN deity of truth to oppose the fiction and secrecy of the CN Trickster and NE god of evil respectively, since those already cover those approaches to information management. But really these are all significantly less tied to specific alignments than the others, which is why I left them out before.)

I have given thought to doing a bit of pantheon design and fleshing one deity of each of these types out more, as you have with your gods of Law, Chaos, and Neutrality, and there was a bit of that in some of my descriptions. But mostly I was reporting on trends, and deliberately leaving original additions out so as to leave each role as a generalization.


Edit: Also, I haven't really used this forum in um, a decade? Does anybody know how to change signatures? I can't seem to edit that part of my profile. That petition is long dead by now, Rich took down the articles, so no newcomer will even know what this is about.
It's the "Edit Signature" link on the "Edit Profile" page. The "Edit Profile" link is under "Forum Actions", which...

You know what, screw good general practice, I'm just gonna go ahead and give you a fish:

https://forums.giantitp.com/profile.php?do=editsignature

By the way, you got me to check my own signature and I found out that it was broken. It has since been repaired with a working link, thus restoring it to its former glory like a phoenix rising from its ashes.

Witty Username
2021-04-18, 12:55 AM
I don't think people care less about Law and chaos so much as they are harder to argue about. Good vs Evil is morality and people tend to have an opinion about morality. Law and chaos are more complex and people don't have primed opinions on them as much.

Devils_Advocate
2021-05-28, 07:47 PM
I always liked White Wolf's version in Werewolf the Apocalypse. Weaver, Wyrm, Wyld.

Weaver is the more-or-less mindless force of Order, binding up the world in its webs. Wyld is chaos incarnate, creation unbound. Wyrm is the destroyer, balancing the other two, a force of renewal.
I haven't read that source material, but I am familiar with the Exalted counterparts of those three, which are easy to pick out just from the names and your brief descriptions. ("Release the Kukla!")


Basically, the Evil god got frustrated at the eternal battle between itself and Good (well, between itself and everybody, really), and wanted something to give it an edge. So, Evil tried to tap into some foreign nameless dimension for the power to crush the other gods, but Evil wasn't a complete fool and tricked the Neutrality God into exploring the power first (flattery will get you everywhere with Neutrality). The experiment sickened Neutrality with a chronic condition, for which only the Evil (or now Chaos, I guess) has the treatment
It makes some sense for Chaos to be the one to come up with a creative solution to a novel problem (and for Evil to be the one who wrecked ****).


what Law does that Neutrality doesn't do is apply itself, work had, infiltrate the hierarchy, start entrenching itself, making it a necessary part of government and harder to remove. This leads to....ironically(?) Law creating massive inefficiency which leads to Law defeating itself when it was on the precipice of conquering the world, its global civilization collapsing under the weight of its own out-of-control bureaucracy!
So... Law never uses its influence to manage things more effectively by improving efficiency, reducing costly internal conflict, etc.? Followers of the Lawful god in different organizations don't, say, collude with each other for mutual benefit, subtly shifting competing factions towards peaceful coexistence, then alliance, then eventually formal union, until a single society of elites dominates the entire world behind the scenes, while official rulers serve as mere figureheads who can take the fall whenever things go south? Instead, they all just suck at their jobs? Chaos will always triumph, because Law is dumb?

If you say so. Seems kind boring to me.


Monks were originally a kind of variant Cleric, which is the real reason they add Wisdom to Armor class, but the reason being is they are actually supposed to be Xaiolin monks trying to find inner spiritual perfection instead of engaging in external theism.
Some have opined that D&D's Monks are out of place in a game with character archetypes generally fairly rooted in medieval European folklore, but I dunno, I think that Friar Tuck is pretty good with a quarterstaff in at least some of his depictions? Regardless, being a member of a religious order isn't the same thing as being a member of a clergy, although one can of course be both (an okay if not great multiclass); so it makes sense for Monks to be their own different thing from Clerics in a game that has more than one religious class regardless.

Which technically makes Paladins a special type of Monk, I think? Huh.


Warlocks might've had a typical god before but now that they sold their soul to their Patron will remind them, everyday, exactly who their god is.
So Warlocks and their patrons are just weird Clerics and deities? If anything, I'd go in the opposite direction, with the Warlock receiving a one-time infusion of power in exchange for a one-time service. The service is probably something significant and difficult, with a penalty (usually forfeiture of the Warlock's soul) if the service is not completed by deadline.


That's not a bad summation of them, actually.
I'm not sure how you meant it, but this sort of usage of "actually" seems like an indicator of mild surprise to me; in this case, the surprise being that the philosophies presented can be described so well so succinctly. But that's a little weird, since those philosophies seem so clearly to each be built around a single simple core concept which isn't hard to identify or give a word for. Maybe it's me.


One idea I played with a few years ago was to rewrite Dragonlance but "flipped 90 degrees"... so, instead of the big conflict being between Good and Evil, the big conflict was between Law and Chaos.
I've gathered that Dragonlance's "Good" and "Evil" factions each have an ideology or way of life that they want to bring everyone over to, whereas "Neutral" wants individuals to be free to choose their own path. So it's basically set up as Lawful Good vs. Lawful Evil vs. Chaotic Neutral, not that it's reflected in the deities' alignments, nor that they acknowledge that e.g. a Chaotic Good character may well be more sympathetic to "Team Neutral" than to "Team Good".


I don't think people care less about Law and chaos so much as they are harder to argue about. Good vs Evil is morality and people tend to have an opinion about morality. Law and chaos are more complex and people don't have primed opinions on them as much.
Well, that all depends. 3E made Good and Evil essentially just kindness and cruelty, with Law covering morality in a relative sense. AD&D was different, but there it was pretty clear that Lawful characters want some sort of Authority to enforce some sort of Order, whereas Chaotic characters aren't really willing to trust anyone with the power to do that, or at least not enough to cooperate unquestioningly. Conflict between the two is thus expected and natural.

The exclamation point is part of the title. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8xhdL8BPvU)

Fooour sharks in the water....

But really, I don't think that any version of D&D has ever given a description of alignment that doesn't require "boiling the stupid off" to even use consistently, and there are various different ways to modify things to be less pants-on-head. One can discuss the merits of different approaches to that, but it tends to be a bit futile to talk application of some categorization schema before said schema is even sorted out.

LibraryOgre
2021-05-29, 12:29 PM
I'm not sure how you meant it, but this sort of usage of "actually" seems like an indicator of mild surprise to me; in this case, the surprise being that the philosophies presented can be described so well so succinctly. But that's a little weird, since those philosophies seem so clearly to each be built around a single simple core concept which isn't hard to identify or give a word for. Maybe it's me.


It is surprise, because while you found it easy to reduce them to a word, I've seldom seen it expressed simply yet adequately.

Leonard Robel
2021-06-08, 03:17 AM
It's a neat idea. I think of gods as alignments already, sort of the reverse. That's how I justify it when gods of different pantheons meet - they are actually the same gods, it's the humans (or animals) who see them in their own images.

I like the statement of neutral alignment just going along with whoever is winning, I think that's the essence of neutrality, though still wanting to see themselves as decent.
I use law and chaos as in-betweens for good and evil. I recognize that it seems like a bit of a cop-out, but at the end of the day I keep coming back to it.

Someone good genuinely feels for others. They are motivated by mercy.
Someone lawful has an idea of good without really understanding it at their core. They see it more as justice.
Someone neutral takes the path of least resistance. Fear keeps them from being too good or too evil.
Someone chaotic is unreliable, perhaps crazy or otherwise less compassionate than someone neutral.
Someone evil genuinely enjoys dominating other beings far more than they are troubled by it.

Nifft
2021-06-08, 11:09 PM
The simplest I've been able to use in a real game was:

Law: Stability
Chaos: Change

Then what would Neutrality represent? In this game, it was Cycles, which are both stable (in that they repeat) and also changing (in that each stage of the cycle ends and progresses into the next).

So, for example, the cycle of the natural year would be in the domain of Neutrality, but spring and autumn were Chaotic (because daylight hours, temperature, and weather were in flux), while winter and summer were more stable, and thus Lawful.

Tides were Neutral; storms were Chaotic.

Institutions would usually begin as Chaotic, and then over time slowly become Neutral (if they were cyclic) or Lawful (if they were more static).

Devils_Advocate
2021-07-11, 09:29 PM
It is surprise, because while you found it easy to reduce them to a word, I've seldom seen it expressed simply yet adequately.
Ah, well, if by "them" you mean Law, Neutrality, and Chaos, then there's the issue: I didn't mean to summarize those, although I can certainly see how my post could give that impression! I was summarizing the particular philosophies of the three gods and religions in the OP, each of which is more clear and more specific than the associated alignment, which is comparatively vague and broad.

As it happens, I recently played Solasta: Crown of the Magister, a video game based on the 5E D&D SRD. But before playing it, I spent a lot of time thinking about which combinations of (sub)classes and (sub)races fit together into ideally balanced parties, because I just really like matching up sets of things (in case the way that I matched up alignments with Cleric domains didn't give that away already). And part of that was exploring how to min/max the game's various personality values. See, rather than choosing alignments, personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, this game has you select two personality flags from four available based on selected Background, and then pick two again from all ten that the game has (except for the three that cover dialect). Those being

Kindness: A tendency to care about others, preferring to make friends rather than enemies.
Altruism: A tendency to always try to help those in need.
Lawfulness: A tendency to follow rules, laws, and order rather than chaos.
Authority: A tendency to enforce rules and beliefs with authority and leadership.
Violence: A tendency to solve problems with violence, even when there are other options.
Egoism: A tendency to put oneself, friends, and family first, at the expense of others.
Greed: A tendency to value wealth and comfort above all else.
Cynicism: A tendency to scoff at principles and values.
Pragmatism: A tendency to value practicality over principles.
Caution: A tendency to take care of one's own safety above all.

Obviously these are traits that have been associated with various alignments and alignment components in various ways and to various degrees throughout the history of D&D, usually with a notable lack of clear explicit definitive statements. And certainly one way to deal with the lack of clarity is to chuck out "alignments" per se and just track the actual particular traits that alignments are vaguely associated with. But even if you still want to have "Law", "Chaos", "Good", and "Evil", breaking things down like this provides a useful vocabulary for discussing what we want each of those to mean.

Like, for example. Lawfulness, as the name suggests, is probably the above option that most of us pretty much think of as just being Lawful alignment. But there's a positive correlation with Authority, too. They do tend to go together. And, thus, when things are left vague, a character with high Authority but low Lawfulness can be passed off as "Lawful", because it's unclear that Authority isn't directly included under than label instead of just related. Explicitly separating them out makes it easy to say "Hey, enforcing laws and principles isn't the same as following them yourself. Forcing others to follow rules without adhering to rules isn't 'Lawful Evil', that's just being a bully. NO LAWFUL ALIGNMENT FOR YOU!"

In this case, the OP's Lawful God probably does both have and favor high Lawfulness, but is even more so an advocate and avatar of Authority, whereas for an entity of pure Law, Lawfulness would take priority. The Neutral God and his followers, meanwhile, embrace Pragmatism and Egoism; perhaps their Caution is above average as well. Is that combination maximally Neutral? I dunno about that, but if we define Neutral simply as not being any other alignment, it may well be more Neutral than seeking to oppose extremes or balance opposing forces.


I use law and chaos as in-betweens for good and evil. I recognize that it seems like a bit of a cop-out, but at the end of the day I keep coming back to it.
Well, a Lawful Neutral character can have Good tendencies, and a Chaotic Neutral character can have Evil tendencies, but you can have Lawful Neutral characters with Evil tendencies and Chaotic Neutral characters with Good tendencies too.

As I remarked above, enforcing rules and following rules tend to go together. Makes sense, right? Those are both expected outcomes of valuing people following rules. And "enforcing rules" doesn't mean asking people nicely to follow them. At the very least, it means threatening others. Laws are threats. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmaoNLSHx_w) And threats don't mean much if they aren't followed through on! Which is to say that, just as Lawfulness and Authority are adjacent, Authority and Violence likewise live right next door to each other.

If anything, it's probably easier to be Lawful Evil than it is to be Lawful Good. Easier to be Chaotic Good than Lawful Good, too. I don't expect that those are particularly controversial assessments; which of the remaining options is "easy mode" is more debatable, but I think that each of Lawful and Good is pretty widely each regarded as "hard mode" for its respective axis.