Why are beholders Lawful?

[Chronos]

OK, yeah, so to get it out of the way, aberrations are fundamentally alien, and they think so differently from us that our usual notions of alignment don't exactly apply. Let's take that as given.

And yet, if we look at, say, mindflayers, they have a Master Plan, and they work together in hierarchical societies, diligently planning and scheming on how to most efficiently accomplish that Master Plan. What the Master Plan itself is, is surely beyond the understanding of any sane being, but how they go about it is, if not precisely Lawful, at least an excellent approximation of it. So it makes sense to say that mindflayers are Lawful Evil, as they have been in (so far as I know) every edition of the game.

But similarly, beholders have also (so far as I know) always been described, in every edition of the game, as Lawful Evil. But beholders not only can't cooperate with other beholders; they can't stand being in their presence. They're consistently described as acting on their whim of the moment, without any long-term goals. They don't keep their word to any creature they consider lesser than themselves, which is all creatures. The best-known beholder is the leader of a structured hierarchical organization, but that hardly matters, since it's easy to be the boss: Does Xanathar recognize any hierarchy that it's not at the top of?

All of this sounds like Chaotic would be a much better fit to beholders. So why have they always been described as Lawful?

[Telonius]

They believe they are the greatest, most advanced beings in the universe, and therefore at the top of every hierarchy, and the only ones who really matter. Their whole existence is about achieving that hierarchy (as insane and impossible as that would be). They just happen to be really, really bad at cooperation, which is extremely good news for everybody involved. Beholders working together would be the equivalent of a Dalek invasion.

[Biggus]

I don't know about other editions, but the 3.5 MM doesn't say anything about them acting on a whim. What it does talk about is their xenophobic intolerance, their belief in their own image being perfect and everyone else being inferior, which makes me think they're based on a well-known mid-20th-century political party which the forum rules prevent me from naming.

In general, I think it's intended that they form rule-based, well-organised groups, it's just that they have to be at the top of them.

[Chronos]

But "Lawful" isn't just "Likes to give orders", because everyone likes to give orders. A Lawful being also has to be willing to obey orders, when appropriate, and beholders never do that. And when a beholder is on top of something, the "rules" are usually just "Do whatever I want".

[Telonius]

But "Lawful" isn't just "Likes to give orders", because everyone likes to give orders. A Lawful being also has to be willing to obey orders, when appropriate, and beholders never do that. And when a beholder is on top of something, the "rules" are usually just "Do whatever I want".

"Appropriate time for me to follow orders" is a null set for Beholders, because of the (circular) logic that each individual Beholder thinks that it's naturally the best being in the multiverse. "Appropriate time for me to give orders" is always. A Chaotic being wouldn't want to give or take orders, they'd just act on whim and not care what the "best in the multiverse" would be.

[Thane of Fife]

But similarly, beholders have also (so far as I know) always been described, in every edition of the game, as Lawful Evil. But beholders not only can't cooperate with other beholders; they can't stand being in their presence. They're consistently described as acting on their whim of the moment, without any long-term goals.

In OD&D, beholders are Neutral with Chaotic tendencies (recalling that there is no good/evil in OD&D) and they are really only described as avaricious rather than xenophobic. As the alignment system was developing, it changed first to having five alignments - neutral and the four corner alignments - before eventually growing to have nine. The AD&D monster manual was, I think, the first of the AD&D books, and it is my understanding that it may have been written while the alignment system was in transition. So when evil and chaos were being separated, it seems that the beholder, which was only sort of chaotic to begin with, was labeled as lawful evil (similar to how elves went from sort of lawful/neutral to chaotic good).

I don't have a copy of the 1e Monster Manual, so I can't really comment on how beholders are described there, but I believe that the whole xenophobic angle originated with 2e, specifically Spelljammer. Note for example that in the 1e Forgotten Realms, beholders - which are called eye tyrants after all - are heavily associated with the Church of Bane, the lawful evil god of tyranny.

So, I think the long and short of it is that they were intended to fit into whatever the original definition of lawful evil was, but both beholder lore and the meaning of lawful evil have shifted such that it's no longer a great fit; however, their alignment was never updated.

[ShurikVch]

Beholders were Chaotic in the Greyhawk supplement and in the Basic D&D, both of their deities are Chaotic Evil, and their common afterlife destinations are in the Abyss or the Outlands

The question is: wasn't LE designation for Beholders a mistake?

[Biggus]

But "Lawful" isn't just "Likes to give orders", because everyone likes to give orders. A Lawful being also has to be willing to obey orders, when appropriate, and beholders never do that.

So by that logic Asmodeus can't be lawful evil because he's permanently at the top of Hell's hierarchy?

[Bohandas]

Two possibilities.

1.) Perhaps it's meant to represent hive beholders

2.) It's mentioned in a couple places that a beholder's brain contains multiple independently sentient parts that exist in an abusive relationship and manipulate and gaslight each other, and that in particular a significant portion of the information that comes in from the sensory cortex is propaganda fabricated by the sensory cortex. Perhaps the intent is that each of these consciousnesses on its own is lawful if considered on its own

[Wildstag]

I don't have a copy of the 1e Monster Manual, so I can't really comment on how beholders are described there, but I believe that the whole xenophobic angle originated with 2e, specifically Spelljammer. Note for example that in the 1e Forgotten Realms, beholders - which are called eye tyrants after all - are heavily associated with the Church of Bane, the lawful evil god of tyranny.

So, I think the long and short of it is that they were intended to fit into whatever the original definition of lawful evil was, but both beholder lore and the meaning of lawful evil have shifted such that it's no longer a great fit; however, their alignment was never updated.

Per the 1e MM, "The beholder is hateful, aggressive, and avaricious. They will usually attack immediately. If confronted by a particularly powerful party there is a 50% chance they will listen to negotiations - either to be bribed not to attack or to pay a ransom to not be attacked, depending on the strength of the opposing party."

So in that edition, they were still just greedy, but I can see how "hateful" and "attack on sight" would lead to outright xenophobia.

[torrasque666]

But "Lawful" isn't just "Likes to give orders", because everyone likes to give orders. A Lawful being also has to be willing to obey orders, when appropriate, and beholders never do that. And when a beholder is on top of something, the "rules" are usually just "Do whatever I want".
Follow orders of legitimate authority. Except that the only authority a beholder considers legitimate is its own.

[Inevitability]

Spelljammer was late 2e, right? Did anything about its beholders rub off on the 'normal' ones come 3.5?

[Tzardok]

Spelljammer was late 2e, right? Did anything about its beholders rub off on the 'normal' ones come 3.5?

Yes, it did. According to an interview I once read, when they created designs for beholder spelljammers, they got so many ideas they liked that they couldn't decide which one to use. So in the end they decided to use all of them, and came up with the "Beholders are very variable in appearance" and "Beholders are very xenophobic and hate each other if they look differently" as a reason for the different designs.

In short, at least in 2e beholders were able to cooperate (even pretty good) if they just looked exactly the same.

Regarding the original question, let's see what the great lore scholar afroakuma has to say:

One of the important things to understand about Law and Chaos is that their perspectives are strongly rooted in how they want their world to be, moreso than what they want themselves and others to do. Law likes constraints, rules, predictability and order; Chaos likes the unexpected, the novel, the emergent and the unique. This is important because it means that rather than just your own choice of actions, Law and Chaos are very much about what you expect the world to do in reaction. A lawful evil character, for instance, may cheat at cards, but would be extremely offended to discover that his cheating has failed because someone else was also cheating. Why? Because nobody was supposed to be cheating. Hypocritical? Obviously. But it speaks to the mindset of a lawful character - they expect, and very nearly demand, that the world work in a predictable, rational way. Lawful good believes that doing so is best for everyone, lawful neutral believes that it's the only rational way for the world to be, and lawful evil believes that if everyone plays by the rules then you can make your bones by them, either by enforcement and lawyering or by compliance and strategic undermining. Lawful characters can lie, steal, cheat, deceive, defy... they just have very very clear ideas about what the outcome of those actions will be, as well as to what extent they either need or deserve to "break the rules."

Chaos desires freedom. Chaos thinks the world should mind its own business. If I say a purple duck is going to fall out of the sky and smack you in the head for touching a doorknob, a lawful character might ask for (or wait for) proof. A chaotic character will grab the doorknob and be offended at getting hit by a duck, because come on. Chaotic good thinks people should be free to improve themselves and not constrained by laws that would force them to live a certain way, that the world gets better when people have a choice. Chaotic neutral is totally individualistic, without any inherent need to improve the lot of others. Chaotic evil is nearly solipsistic in its total focus on the self.

And this, I think, explains why beholders are lawful. On the surface, beholders and demon lords are pretty similiar: both like to bully weaker beings, both hate others of their kind, both assemble cults of lesser beings to worship them, both like to give orders and hate to be commanded.

But a beholder's vision of how the world should work is a clear and ordered hierarchy: the lesser beings toil for the benefit of the great beholder, who generously teaches them how to worship the only forces worthy of it, the beholder itself and the Great Mother of which it is the perfect avatar, with the pretenders erradicated. Everything is clear, and orderly, and they way it's supposed to be.
Demons, on the other hand, don't care about supposed. A demon lord's vision looks simply like "I can do what I want, and nobody can gainsay me or force me to not indulge my every whim. Not any upjumped mortal, not the Celestials, not the devils, not the other demon lords, not the gods, not even the laws of nature. No one!" and they are willing to break anything and everything if they can reach that.

[Ashtagon]

So by that logic Asmodeus can't be lawful evil because he's permanently at the top of Hell's hierarchy?

Contract law can be considered an type of order that affects both parties. And devils such as Asmodeus are more or less contractually bound (by narrative tropes) to trick others into contracts, and also contractually bound to follow through on those contracts when they find the contract actually disadvantages them.

So I guess lawfulness, as it relates to those at the top of a hierarchy, can be tested by asking whether they consider themselves bound by contracts with their lessers (excluding magical binding spells of course), and whether they consider themselves to have obligations towards those below them on the hierarchy (and not merely useful tools that should be looked after because tools cost resources to procure).

[Segev]

Beholders can be played chaotic. It works.

But what makes them scary is that their orders may seem whimsical...but they're not. They are often insane, and based on a perception of reality that is inaccurate. So the Xanathar may insist that all appointments be made through Theodore the Bugbear, who has been his adjutant for the last 90 years...because the Xanathar is unable to realize that Theodore died 80 years ago. His emotional side won't let his logical side perceive that reality, and his emotional side is what has a direct line to his senses. But the Xanathar Guild functions because everyone knows that rule, and follows it...with some bugbear claiming to be Theodore, and the first bugbear that the Xanathar doesn't turn to stone, disintegrate, or kill and eat for impersonating Theodore is the new Theodore whenever the old one becomes unavailable.

If a Beholder changes the rules, it does so for calculated reasons. Those reasons may, again, be based on a false perception of reality, but they are based on something other than caprice and whimsy. And a Beholder will adhere to what it says it will do, so long as it doesn't, in its madness, hallucinate a different trigger. If a beholder promises safe passage in return for a golden statue of itself, it will grant that safe passage if it is convinced, emotionally, to accept whatever is given to it is a golden statue of itself of sufficient exquisiteness. If its emotional side feels slighted by the offering, it will hallucinate that the offering doesn't meet the requirements. If the emotional side feels flattered, it will hallucinate even a technically-inaccurate offering to fit the requirements with exactness.

What makes them unpredictable is the fact that their emotions control their perceptions. They have deviously logical minds of frightening intelligence, and if their emotional side can be convinced by the logical side to pass information accurately, they are devastatingly effective planners and plotters. They ARE Lawful. But the order they follow is twofold: it's an emotional satisfaction model that has to be accommodated before the real world model can be evaluated.

[Telonius]

A lawful evil character, for instance, may cheat at cards, but would be extremely offended to discover that his cheating has failed because someone else was also cheating. Why? Because nobody was supposed to be cheating. Hypocritical? Obviously. But it speaks to the mindset of a lawful character - they expect, and very nearly demand, that the world work in a predictable, rational way.

A great example of this in Star Wars is Moff Tarkin. When Vader informs him they'd inspected Dantooine and found no rebels: "She lied to us!" Delivered with extreme offense and shock. Despite the fact that he was lying to Leia (that he'd save Alderaan) literally right before she told him that.

[Chronos]

Quoth Biggus:

So by that logic Asmodeus can't be lawful evil because he's permanently at the top of Hell's hierarchy?
Him being on top of the hierarchy doesn't mean he can't be lawful; it's just not, in itself, evidence of it. But Asmodeus has many other lawful traits: In particular, if he makes an agreement (read: contract) with you, he will uphold it (at least, to the letter, and if there are any ambiguities, interpreted in the way most favorable to himself).

Quoth Segev:

But what makes them scary is that their orders may seem whimsical...but they're not. They are often insane, and based on a perception of reality that is inaccurate.
...
OK, so they fundamentally are actually lawful, but only seem chaotic because they're bat-guano insane? That's a fine point to be splitting, but I think I can buy that one.

[Segev]

OK, so they fundamentally are actually lawful, but only seem chaotic because they're bat-guano insane? That's a fine point to be splitting, but I think I can buy that one.

I would venture to take that split hair and run with it by suggesting that the madness should be identifiable and diagnose able, making the beholder more predictable the better one grasps that nature of this particular one's insanity.

Where a chaotic creature can only be predicted based on their non-chaotic, or at least their selfish components, a mad but lawful one can be predicted when you can determine what reality they think they live in. And one thing that is known in general is that things which feed their egos and provide excuses to avoid confronting upsetting facts tend to be bought willfully by the part that controls what their logical mind perceives.

[Metastachydium]

Regarding the original question, let's see what the great lore scholar afroakuma has to say:

Dunno. In that case, alignment might be even more useless than I've previously thought it is. I mean, doesn't a self-respecting con artist's whole shtick rely on the mark trusting that the game is predictable and fair?

[Tzardok]

Dunno. In that case, alignment might be even more useless than I've previously thought it is. I mean, doesn't a self-respecting con artist's whole shtick rely on the mark trusting that the game is predictable and fair?

Isn't that what Haley's point was in strip #428 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0428.html)? The lawful people accept the rules of the game, the chaotic suspect that someone cheats.

[Psyren]

I'm with OP, I think CE or NE are more appropriate for their behavior. They see themselves at the top of the food chain, sure, but archdemons do too, and for the same reason - might makes right.


So by that logic Asmodeus can't be lawful evil because he's permanently at the top of Hell's hierarchy?

Asmodeus would absolutely obey the letter of any contract he signed or any agreement he made though. He wouldn't enter into such an agreement likely, and you'd sure as Home better read the fine print, but he'd still hold himself accountable to whatever is on the page. I don't know that the same would be true of a Beholder.

[Tzardok]

I disagree with that. Beholders don't give a flying turd on "might makes right". A beholder sees itself on the top of the foodchain because of divine appointment. Each beholder believes itself to be perfect, the ideal child of the Great Mother, and because of that everyone should bow to it, no matter how powerful.

[ShurikVch]

Note: not all Beholders are, actually, Lawful

Elder Orb and Doomsphere are both "Usually Lawful Evil"; but "Usually", actually, just mean "over 50%" -thus, number of non-Lawful Elder Orbs and Doomspheres may be rather significant

From the specific examples:
Skixtalq the Obscurant (Drizzt Do'Urden's Guide to the Underdark), Zal the Destroyer (The Inner Planes), and the whole cult of Arik (Immortals of Mystara) are all Chaotic Evil
Oblesh (Xaos town, Planescape Campaign Setting) is Neutral
Tobulux (Underdark Dungeons (https://web.archive.org/web/20161101193907/http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/files/Underdark_WE_2.zip)) is Neutral Good

Similar thing about Beholderkin:
Director and Eye of the Deep are both "Usually Lawful Evil"
Gouger is "Usually Neutral Evil"
Death Kiss and Gazer are both just "Neutral Evil"

[Ashtagon]

Isn't calling them lawful because of their own insane logic a bit of a cop-out though? By that definition, every single creature in the game should be considered lawful due to each individual's own personal insane logic.

They may well have multiple minds in fluff. But there are no game mechanics that leverage those multiple minds. If those minds are functionally indivisible in game terms, it may as well just be a single hive mind, and treated as one.

[Psyren]

I disagree with that. Beholders don't give a flying turd on "might makes right". A beholder sees itself on the top of the foodchain because of divine appointment. Each beholder believes itself to be perfect, the ideal child of the Great Mother, and because of that everyone should bow to it, no matter how powerful.

Right, and when they don't it makes them, without regard for allegiance, credo, or any other consideration beyond whether it is strong enough to prevail or needs to flee.

[BRC]

Isn't calling them lawful because of their own insane logic a bit of a cop-out though? By that definition, every single creature in the game should be considered lawful due to each individual's own personal insane logic.

They may well have multiple minds in fluff. But there are no game mechanics that leverage those multiple minds. If those minds are functionally indivisible in game terms, it may as well just be a single hive mind, and treated as one.

Not to wade into an alignment debate, but there's a difference between, let's call it Lawful do-what-I-want, and Chaotic do-what-I-want.

A Beholder is Lawful because it thinks everybody should follow the rules. The primary rule is that the Beholder is in charge and gets to do what it wants.

If the beholder tells you to do give it your stuff and you disobey, the Beholder thinks you are acting Incorrectly. The Beholder says "Give me your stuff because I am the Rightful Owner of anything I want to own" and if you refuse it punishes you for Breaking The Rules. From the Beholder's Perspective, if it tries to take your stuff and you prevent it from doing so, then Something Is Wrong.


A Chaotic being like, I dunno, a Frost Giant is Chaotic do-what-I-want. The Frost Giant says "Give me your stuff, or I will kill you with my axe". The Frost Giant doesn't think that it's enforcing any sort of rules here, it's mugging you, it wants your stuff and thinks it can take you if you don't want to hand it over. If it tries to rob you and you escape, it's unhappy (It wanted your stuff), but it doesn't view that as any sort of violation. If it wants your stuff it needs to try harder to take it from you.

[ShurikVch]

Note: in the Forgotten Realms, significant number of Beholders participated in the cult of Bane
While it's an exemplar for LE alignment, it's also example of organization where Beholders aren't on the top of...

[Bohandas]

OK, so they fundamentally are actually lawful, but only seem chaotic because they're bat-guano insane? That's a fine point to be splitting, but I think I can buy that one.

It's not the usual kind of insane that people think of though. Yes they have what might for simplicity's sake be called multiple personalities, and yes both of them are sociopaths, but that doesn't preclude each of them individually from being of lawful alignment. The sociopath part might even help.

It might help to envision the beholder as a dystopia consisting of only two people, one of whom is the entire ministry of truth for this dystopia

[Tzardok]

Right, and when they don't it makes them, without regard for allegiance, credo, or any other consideration beyond whether it is strong enough to prevail or needs to flee.

Yeah, so? Where's the discrepancy? It's not like the beholder can go to court and sue for people giving it the proper respect. The point is that violence is not part of the beholder's belief system. If the world were "sane", you would accept its obvious superiority without a fight. You don't, so it needs to righten the world.

I mean, even paladins use violence to fight for what they believe. That doesn't make paladins proponents of "Might makes Right".

[Segev]

Yeah, the big difference between chaotic "do-what-I-want" and a beholder is that a beholder is not actually capricious in its whims and wants. It doesn't change its edicts and desires daily.

Remember, despite the fact that the emotional side controls what the logical side sees, hears, etc., and can induce hallucinations of things going differently than reality, the logical side is still a genius that remembers everything it said and did at least as well as anybody else did, and, not being emotional, has less investment in editing its memories than a more emotional creature would. The logical side does remember promises it made. And it will likely adhere to them, as long as the emotional side hasn't edited things to prevent it from knowing the conditions of the promise have been fulfilled. It can't change what the logical one knows it did, or remembers. IT can't 1984 things into always having been at war with oceania as of now.

If you play a beholder in a game of chess, the emotional side can't really edit the perception of the board in a way that the logical side wouldn't notice, because the logical side can only play according to what has come before. It might try editing things so that you didn't make that really good move the logical side hadn't seen coming, and thus when the logical side makes a totally nonsense move of its own based on a board state that doesn't exist, and you act on the board as it is, reality diverges more and more until the emotional side "hallucinates" that you cheated to reset the board state to what it really is when it can't hide from the logical side what the reality is without divorcing it from ability to play the game at all.

That only even comes up, though, if the emotional side immediately sees why the move you made is so bad for the beholder's ego that it has to pretend you did something else. If you're making a series of moves that sets things up to the point the logical side sees the trap coming, it's too late for the emotional side to try to hide it. It could try "hallucinating" that you mess up the trap, but the logical side is going to know that's a big flub, and the emotional side will probably gloat about it immediately, which will lead to an argument over who's cheating. This is where the madness and "chaotic" behavior really can come out.

Furthermore, if you can make it so that the emotional side WANTS to hallucinate that you've achieved something that makes the beholder owe you its side of a bargain, it can be used to your advantage because it will pretend things went as the beholder wants them to.

REmember that the beholder always knows what it, itself, has done. The logical side can't be made to hallucinate that it has already done something. So if it knows it owes you, it will pay up.

[Bohandas]

On re-reading most of I Tyrant it seems to come down to the existence of towns of physically ifentical beholders, wherein the op's point does not hold because the beholders in the hive are, as previously stated, physically identical in appearance