Difference between chaotic good and chaotic neutral.

[Zhorn]

Definitely in the evil territories here.
Sounds mostly like the character is a psychopath that's in denial of being the villain, justifying it by reasoning all their victims were evil doers, while the qualifier for them being the targets of such violence sounds like it is independent of them actually being good or bad.

[da newt]

Evil and Good are SUBJECTIVE.

Depending on the definitions folks choose to use, all PC's are EVIL - their chosen profession is hunting and killing things / people that they disagree with (and then take all their valuables). Every leader / soldier that ever goes on the offensive is EVIL. If nation A starts a war with nation B for any reason all of nation A's participants are EVIL.

99% of all people believe they are GOOD. It's only other people who are EVIL. Hitler believed he was GOOD. The Europeans who slaughtered the 'savage' natives in the America's believed they were GOOD. Water boarders believed they were doing GOOD. The folks burning witches in Salem believed they were GOOD. Etc.

I'm firmly in Max's camp here (unless you are a Paladin or have a God/Patron who may disown you for actions they don't approve of) alignment in D&D serves little purpose other than to simplify things for folks who prefer that morality is fixed and simple like in the story books where there is a team of good guys who wear white and a team of evil guys who wears black, and to justify their PC's actions (combat, theft, B&E, interrogation, etc) as justifiable.

[Unoriginal]

Evil and Good are SUBJECTIVE.

Alignments are not. At least in this edition. They're descriptive and with a rather small definition.


Also I'm pretty sure OP was trying to mock us because they describe their character as chaotic evil in another thread they posted.

Or maybe they've changed their mind. Who knows.

[KorvinStarmast]

Ok, I'll just keep Chaotic Good on there.

What you write on your sheet is up to you. How the world reacts to your character is up to the DM. Alignment in D&D 5e is descriptive, not perscriptive.

Sounds good.

Sounds chaotic.

Yeah your character is definitely evil. If you murder someone for being bossy then you are evil, even if you lie and say it was for a good cause, you really did it because you enjoy killing and torture.

If they did it because they enjoy killing and torture, yeah, it's hard *not* to call that evil.

He has a code for who he hurts, though. He only hurts bad people.

Lawful something might be a better fit for you. Question: how is "bad people" determined? Against what moral dipstick is your character measuring all of this? Who died and made them the monarch of morality, anyway?

2) your character is neither benevolent not kind. As you say, he torture people.

If anything, your character fits more the definition of lawful evil. He wants to impose his favored status quo to the world, and will commit the atrocities he wants within those rules.

Yeah, LN or LE seems to me to be the better fit based on the code and the punishment of {something}.

Using force to stop evil from happening isn't evil, but overuse of force, brutality and torture absolutely is evil.

As soon as you say "absolutely" you are wrong in the 5e take on alignment. (Though for the general case, I tend to agree with you; as a DM I track player alignment trends regardless of what they write on their sheet). IN the very rare case that a spell or item or situation requires an alignment check, it's based on what I have been tracking ... )

Evil people justify to themselves often.

This, and for the OP: I think you are falling into this trap for your character.

Evil and Good are SUBJECTIVE.

Depending on the definitions folks choose to use, all PC's are EVIL - their chosen profession is hunting and killing things / people that they disagree with (and then take all their valuables). {snip} 99% of all people believe they are GOOD. It's only other people who are EVIL.

Well, since the OP is "other people" (from my frame of reference) then the OP's character must be Evil!

Lawful Evil it is!

OK, Zhentarim, let's put your PC into the game that I DM currently.

I've made a chaotic good character, and I roled them up with the intent of being chaotic good, but I'm feeling like my character maybe enjoys punishing people he hates a little too much to be good.

Why does he hate people? What's the reason for hate?

Should I call him chaotic neutral, instead? He means well, but he'll straight up kill/torture anybody he thinks is "bad", and is really radical about his belief everybody should be equal, so he will pretty much attempt to torture/kill anybody who is rich/powerful (or thinks that people are unequal) on sight.

Your PC is an anarchist. After the second or third rich person is tortured and killed, NPC assassins will be hired to hunt down your PC and kill them. No mercy. Those rich and powerful people have friends, family, and a social network. You've pissed off the wrong social group. Your party will most probably be tarred with "guilt by association" by hanging around with you.

Expect bounty hunters and assassins to seek you out and try to kill your PC.

The torture part puzzles me: why is torture necessary at all?
Do you get a thrill from role playing a psychopath?
Do the other players enjoy this?

In my game world, if word got out that your PC had tortured, and then killed, a lot of people / NPCs they would have a hard time getting anyone to talk to them or even allow them into their tavern. "Your reputation will precede you" will apply in many cases.

"Your money is no good here, {Zhentarim's character}: don't let the door hit your backside on the way out."

On the "bright" side, a few criminal syndicates might hire your character for one-off hits on their commercial and/or criminal rivals. Again, your reputation would precede you.

The people who would not treat your character as a pariah would most likely be hardened criminals (like the Zhentarim {your user name is an ironic choice for addressing this question} or various fiends, and their agents - those NPCs will probably respect that kind of cruelty.

I think I've maybe slipped from chaotic good to chaotic neutral in this game, but I'm not sure.

You've slipped into "psychopath" based on your own description.

Is that the character you intended to play?

[Keravath]

He has a code for who he hurts, though. He only hurts bad people.

So middle managers, trying to get food on the table for their families, having to bow down to the boss, who might need extra because they have more children or a sick mother ... are bad people?

Your character killed them all without thinking about their families, about how, although they aren't at the bottom, still have to work their way up. Or did everyone of these "middle managers" beat their employees into submission? Enjoyed what they had to do? Or did some of them try to help the workers as much as they could?

What were the alternatives for the workers? Were they slaves? If they weren't working here are they out on the streets, destitute and starving? Did your character look at the books of the business, assess whether the big boss was actually making a profit? How much profit were they making? Was the big boss using their profits to support a home for orphans because that is where he grew up? Do you know anything at all about the boss except that he seemed to be wealthy?

From the sounds of it, the only thing you knew about the boss is that he appeared wealthy, that he ran a business which employed people and didn't pay very well, and that the "middle managers" were responsible for day to day operations. You said the "boss" sat around doing nothing? Who was selling the products, arranging distribution, finding markets? Items don't sell themselves.

Don't get me wrong, the boss could have been the worst of robber barons, oppressing the workers, squeezing every coin out of the business. However, even at the piddling wages he might have been paying, the workers appeared to have no where better to go.

A chaotic good character would have organized a union, some non-deadly violence, used reasoning to convince the boss that it would be more profitable to pay the workers more and have happy productive workers than down-trodden ones. MUCH harder to do than "kill them all" but in the long run more effective since you create a new system with checks and balances that more evenly distributes the wealth without as much concentration with the ultra-wealthy. It would likely be easier in D&D than it was in the real world.

A chaotic evil character, runs through the place (likely the same as dozens of others), kills all the middle managers (who actually know how to run the business - and whose families and children will likely miss them), kills the boss (who may know where to sell the goods and has the contacts to make it work), puts the workers (who may or may not know how to operate the business but who are also unlikely to have contacts to make it easier) in charge and then runs away to laugh at the chaos they have created. Totally chaotic evil ... and very short sighted since they have no clue how the system works or the best way to fix it except killing the folks in charge. That approach doesn't work in the long run.

----

As for alignment, this is totally up to your DM. If someone on the internet says ignore it - ignore them. They usually have very good points about the applicability and limited breadth of the alignment system for representing real people but that is completely irrelevant for the game and character you are playing with your DM. If the alignment written on your character sheet means something in your game and your DM disagrees with what you have written as a result of your character's actions then the DM will change it or ask you to do so.

Finally, no matter what a person thinks of the alignment system, I think that an individual walking into a business, slaughtering the owner and all the middle management due to some "vendetta against the privileged", committing mass murder or torture, no matter what the justification, falls into the category of "Evil" or "Insanity" ... so if your character's alignment is relevant for the game you are playing in then the character is certainly beyond "dark".

[supercereal]

Evil and Good are SUBJECTIVE.

In the real world? Debatable but not far from the truth.

In a fantasy setting like D&D? Not so sure. They can be subjective, but in most campaings there are litteral embodiment of pure good (e.g. Celestials) and pure evil (e.g. Devils and Demons), as well as true and evil Deities. So in D&D good and evil can be OBJECTIVE, even if they are not most of the time.

[Gtdead]

I don't understand why people think this character is Chaotic.

You are a radical with a set of very defined principles that you act on and are not concerned with your personal freedom.
If I had to set an alignment for this character I'd put it somewhere between Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil, depending on if he is inclined to save an innocent nobody instead of pursuing his target.

Chaos is irrationality and instinct. A teenager "rebel" is chaotic. A communist "rebel" is lawful.

[Kireban]

He has a code for who he hurts, though. He only hurts bad people.

A lot of criminals go by codes. It doesn't make them good, just let them feel better with themselves.

[Sigreid]

The way I see them:

CG = Freedom and kindness. Fight tyranny! Everyone deserves to live a good life on mostly their own terms as longs as they aren't hurting anyone else. It's a pretty libertarian attitude.

CN = My freedom is paramount. It'd be nice if everyone is free, but frankly the choices of and what happens to people outside my immediate family/friends is not really my concern. You're not cruel, but can be seen as callous when you really just want to be left alone.

CE = Life, liberty, property, freedom? These are things that are only for those with the strength to take and hold them. If you're enslaved, tortured, murdered, robbed, raped, whatever; it's YOUR FAULT for not being strong enough to prevent these things from happening. I think Vampire The Masquerade had a great quote for CE: "No one holds dominion over me. No man. No God. No Prince. What is a claim of age for one who is immortal? What is a claim of power for those who defy death? So call your damnable hunt; and we shall see who I drag screaming to Hell with me!" Your fate is in your own hands. If you rule, you deserve it because you won it. If you suffer, you deserve that too for being weak.

[ProsecutorGodot]

You know, I made the same mistake with a character I played a long time ago thinking what I wrote on the sheet was enough to justify how others would see him.

He came from a secretive order of bounty/monster hunters from a shady town run by shady people. I though of him as the rebellious type who did the right thing in the end through the wrong methods. Chaotic Good it was.

But, in retrospect, that wasn't the case. He was intentionally abusive towards monsters, not all of which were threatening out party, and when it came down to finding a currently helpless (though obvious threat in the long term) NPC he chose to kill them immediately. He began with the small bits of "being good" that I thought he was but much of his behavior was LN or LE, in large part due to a strict adherence to the code he followed from his time in the order.

Once I got over being offended how other people didn't see my rationalizing his goodness, it hit me like a sack of bricks that he simply wasn't. A small part of it was intentional from the beginning, one of the party members was a Yuan-Ti Pureblood raised by noble hearted farming folk with a learned sense of morality and goodness. She saved his life after the shady town running people murdered most of his order and chased them out of the city. He was forced to accept that not all of the things his order said about monsters was true or he would be dead.

So after a while he started to change. He wasn't openly offensive to peaceful monstrous type races, he tried diplomacy at the behest of the party. He slowly came around to doing things for the sake of them being done right rather than for the potential rewards he could extort in the future. Most notably, torture was off the table... my do-gooder party members never liked it.

So that's pretty much the time I accidentally played an evil character for a bit. I think your character fits a very similar bill.

[Strigon]

I don't understand why people think this character is Chaotic.

You are a radical with a set of very defined principles that you act on and are not concerned with your personal freedom.
If I had to set an alignment for this character I'd put it somewhere between Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil, depending on if he is inclined to save an innocent nobody instead of pursuing his target.

Chaos is irrationality and instinct. A teenager "rebel" is chaotic. A communist "rebel" is lawful.

I haven't seen anything suggesting he has a "very defined set of principles".

As far as I can tell, the alignment seems to boil down to "I see something I don't like, I get angry, and I attack it." Just because the things that the PC doesn't like are predictable doesn't change the fact that this is Chaotic behaviour.

[MaxWilson]

OK, Zhentarim, let's put your PC into the game that I DM currently.
Why does he hate people? What's the reason for hate? Your PC is an anarchist. After the second or third rich person is tortured and killed, NPC assassins will be hired to hunt down your PC and kill them. No mercy. Those rich and powerful people have friends, family, and a social network. You've pissed off the wrong social group. Your party will most probably be tarred with "guilt by association" by hanging around with you.

Expect bounty hunters and assassins to seek you out and try to kill your PC.

The torture part puzzles me: why is torture necessary at all?
Do you get a thrill from role playing a psychopath?
Do the other players enjoy this?

I imagine torture could potentially be useful for getting information in a world where Zone of Truth exists. "Where were the other drugs going?!!"

As for "NPC assassins will be hired to hunt down your PC and kill them," if I were DMing it's probably going to instead be "NPC private investigators/bounty hunters will be hired to hunt down whoever is responsible and apprehend or kill them, with help from the local authorities." Friends and family of the victim won't automatically know who did it. (There's a reason Zorro wears a mask.) And BTW if you kill the bounty hunters, it's quite possible the aggrieved parties won't continue to throw good money after bad by hiring more bounty hunters unless they are VERY rich and EXTREMELY angry, or unless you have something they want (a powerful artifact that they want back). On the other hand, if you kill off local law enforcement while escaping the bounty hunters you may have an entirely new problem on a bigger scale and may have to go live in the wilderness. (Fortunately there are lots of monsters, dungeons, and interesting adventures there.)

I don't understand why people think this character is Chaotic.

You are a radical with a set of very defined principles that you act on and are not concerned with your personal freedom.
If I had to set an alignment for this character I'd put it somewhere between Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil, depending on if he is inclined to save an innocent nobody instead of pursuing his target.

Chaos is irrationality and instinct. A teenager "rebel" is chaotic. A communist "rebel" is lawful.

For me it seems chaotic because he's responding to immediate situations without thinking about the larger societal context. As someone else said, what happens if he comes back a year from now and those workers whose bosses he killed have new bosses chosen from among the people? Lawful people are inclined to value and take into account institutions, not just individuals. Chaotic people are typically blind to the value or nature of institutions, which is why they take individual vigilante actions like taking down individual bosses instead of setting up a rival company with plenty of capital and friends in high places to take workers and business away from the first company by giving excellent service at a price so low the company's operations have to be subsidized by PC gold.

In Captain America: Civil War, I'd say that Steve Rogers' thinking is lawful ("if we cede power to the Accords, what precedent are we setting and where will it lead?") while Tony Stark's thinking is chaotic ("sign now--we can always violate the accords later if we change our minds"), EVEN THOUGH Rogers is the one who actually winds up an outlaw. Tony Stark may have some kind of a code but it's not a lawful code. The way this PC has been described seems similar. If I were DMing I'd probably let Chaotic items work for him. I'm not sure about the Good vs. Evil items, without seeing him in place and how he interacts with others, how frequently he is kind vs. vicious.

[Unoriginal]

It really has been a while since we had one of those "Is my character chaotic good like Rick Sanchez or neutral good like Thanos?" threads, hasn't it?

[MaxWilson]

It really has been a while since we had one of those "Is my character chaotic good like Rick Sanchez or neutral good like Thanos?" threads, hasn't it?

Is my character Neutral Evil like Vlad Taltos and Morrolan e'Drien or Lawful Evil like Fred Saberhagen's Dracula?

[KorvinStarmast]

I imagine torture could potentially be useful for getting information in a world where Zone of Truth exists. "Where were the other drugs going?!!"

I think Zone of Truth might render about half of the motive for torture moot.

As for "NPC assassins will be hired to hunt down your PC and kill them," if I were DMing it's probably going to instead be "NPC private investigators/bounty hunters will be hired to hunt down whoever is responsible and apprehend or kill them, with help from the local authorities."
Friends and family of the victim won't automatically know who did it. (There's a reason Zorro wears a mask.)

As I see it, in the case of rich people, in a game where diviniaiton magic exists, they have the funds to probably find out.

As to killing the bounty hunters: yeah, more XP.

[MaxWilson]

I think Zone of Truth might render about half of the motive for torture moot.

How? You still have to make them talk.

As I see it, in the case of rich people, in a game where diviniaiton magic exists, they have the funds to probably find out.

But magic in 5E is so limited. If the killer takes precautions, there's a good chance divination magic won't do any good. They could Speak With Dead, but the killer might have been disguised. They could attempt Divination to ask which city to look at first, but the answer is cryptic and the number of answers you can get is bottlenecked. They could try Commune but it's explicitly limited (and may be blocked by Nondetection--DM's call whether that works). They could try Contact Other Plane but it has similar limitations plus a chance of driving you insane. 5E doesn't have many other divination methods--no object reading, no time travel or even time-viewing, no long-range Locate Creature or long-range Locate Object.

It wouldn't be shocking if those rich people failed to locate the perpetrator 9 times out of 10, and the 1 time out of 10 when it works is probably at least as much due to good old-fashioned gumshoeing as magical divination.

[KorvinStarmast]

How? You still have to make them talk.

That's perhaps a persuasion check, getting them drunk, pillow talk ... lot's of different ways to do that. Torture isn't the only way to try and get someone to talk.

But magic in 5E is so limited. If the killer takes precautions, there's a good chance divination magic won't do any good.

As written in the OP, precautions is hardly his MO. That said, your larger point is both plausible and valid based on a given campaign world and a few die rolls.

FWIW: Cops find killers without magic with some frequency IRL. But a "police procedural" may not be the game/show that a given D&D table wants to play.

[Thunderous Mojo]

As I see it, in the case of rich people, in a game where diviniaiton magic exists, they have the funds to probably find out.

I found this out the hard way in 2e, when we clandestinely killed the heir to a noble family that was based off the Medicis. Our group took steps that prevented resurrection, and we disintegrated the body and spread the ashes.

One Commune spell is all it takes, to out you as the killer.

Playing an Icelandic Saga style Outlaw game is incredibly fun!
I highly recommend it.

Role playing the consequences of one's deeds, is why I am devoted to roleplaying.

[TigerT20]

So first of all, alignment is closer to a political compass style thing than nine hard-set boxes. So jot that down.

A seemingly common interpretation among those who care about alignment, and my personal interpretation, is that lawful vs chaotic is about security vs freedom. A chaos extremist would rather be able to murder than be protected from murderers. A law extremist would rather remove freedom of speech than be insulted.

BTW I'm also assuming good = selfless and evil = selfish
Because of this there are some poster children of the alignments;

CG = 'I value other's freedom over my own saftey'

CN = 'I value freedom over saftey'

CE = 'I value my freedom over other's saftey'

(Remember that because spectrum, its perfectly possible to fit an alignment without being it's poster child. These are just bland templates)

Now, your character is committing some pretty selfish deeds - you're torturing people because they don't value the same things as you. You have justifications... but so did the Aztecs. Now, your chief value seems to be equality. This could give you some good-leaning tendencies, but it's not enough to bump you up I'd say. The Aztecs thought human sacrifice was the only thing keeping the sun going and if they didn't a skeleton army would come down and kill everyone. We still consider them savages. I would say equality has no place on the law/chaos axis as it can be achieved by either one - building up a system or tearing it down (communism vs anarchy basically). So we need to look at your other traits. Your character does seem to value their freedom quite highly - they seem very independant and indivualistic. So based off the info given, I would say chaotic is correct.

So yeah CE with illusions of benevolence. Possible arc where you realise your mistakes and try to adapt your methods to be a little more... good?

[Gtdead]

For me it seems chaotic because he's responding to immediate situations without thinking about the larger societal context. As someone else said, what happens if he comes back a year from now and those workers whose bosses he killed have new bosses chosen from among the people? Lawful people are inclined to value and take into account institutions, not just individuals. Chaotic people are typically blind to the value or nature of institutions, which is why they take individual vigilante actions like taking down individual bosses instead of setting up a rival company with plenty of capital and friends in high places to take workers and business away from the first company by giving excellent service at a price so low the company's operations have to be subsidized by PC gold.

I don't think that this reactiveness is a good argument for something being chaotic. Because if societal context is to be taken into account, where does that leave most of the common Lawful tropes like overzealous Paladins, strict judges and Devils. An overzealous Paladin killing/arresting the village witch that despite her methods, was the only reason the villagers survived for so long, is Lawful because he adheres to his tenets, but the villagers will perish come winter.

I think that in order for something to be considered as chaotic, it needs to have a whimsical/irrational nature. The orc that thinks that only the strong deserve to be leaders is irrational because strength isn't a quality that makes someone a better leader, but it is a quality that allows someone to become a leader in a hostile environment and keep that position. They view leadership as a perk and not as a responsibility, which creates a vicious circle.

All we know about this character is that he kills "evil" bosses, not that he objects to leadership in general. We also know that he acts on a principle, without any personal gain. Why he does that we don't know exactly. It can be anything from a political view to a disdain for people that inherit/achieve a position of power and only care about the perks, responsibilities be damned. He doesn't have to object to responsible/elected leadership at all. Leaders can exist even under anarchism but the role is different and there are no assumed perks. People need guidance, and there are individuals that can offer this through knowledge, unique ideas or a better grasp of group dynamics.

I would agree that the character would be chaotic if his idea was to just create power vacuums and emulate some kind of natural selection where the fair leaders survive and the bad ones die, but this doesn't seem to be what's happening here. Nor the character in question is shortsighted, since his actions are effective according to his DM. I would also agree it's chaotic if he was a serial killer that focused on killing a particular brand of people in order to curb his bloodlust while keeping up pretenses of being a "benevolent" person.

[Zhentarim]

I won't go into detail for the sake of the forum rules, but I'll say that the bard I'm playing in this game is a reflection of me, but with less restraint. There are dozens of people I'd love to give a terrible painful death to, but I won't since I respect the legal proceedures of my region and I am trying to take them down the proper way, even though they probably won't be punished as thoroughly as I'd like.

If I fail, then as much as I will curse my enemies under my breath, I will have to let them go. The rule of law is too important to break, even if there is a failure of justice. While these several dozen people are the primary targets of my ire, I'm not fond of bigots or wealthy or powerful people generally, so I get to have a little bit of wish fulfillment when I play my bard, who doesn't live in the real world.

[RifleAvenger]

On the one hand, I think the character as presented is kind of, for the lack of a better term, edgy. I think all the kneejerk torture is pretty solidly Evil too.

On the other, I question what some people in this thread think Chaotic Good looks like. Chaos, by its definition, does not always align its conscience with that of society. A game I'm currently in dropped in the G-E axis, but if we still had it I'd keep the G on my PC. Even after he defenestrated a landlord, and may chose to conspire with the communist bandits of the land to abolish private property (but not personal property). When what's "hurting people" is the system itself, and a CG character doesn't believe working within that system to be worth consideration, it's probably going to get violent and look "evil" to Lawful types.

Any advisement to "ignore alignment" should be taken in the context of how much your GM cares about alignment. If they don't care, then in 5e there's not too much reason you should. If being Evil means you get your soul juiced by fiends 5 seconds after death, and can't be raised? Yeah, take that into consideration.

Also, Law-Chaos axis is about as squishy in terms of actually defining what it means past the vagueness presented in the PhB as G-E. I'm personally not a fan of anything that insists chaotic characters have to be irrational. That's the line of thinking that got us 2e's definition of "Chaotic" as textbook Chaotic Stupid.

[tokek]

What about the wealthy businessman in the last session who barely paid his workers and did basically nothing while middle manager types bossed the workers around? My character killed the managers and the big boss, and gave the whole property over to the workers, so they could co-own everything themselves, and the DM assured me that, yes, the workers were going to make more money now because they were their own bosses and the workers were fine with everything because they didn't like the manager or the big boss very much.

I start a lot of combats in games, and the DM kind of builds around that, now.

Sounds to me like there are no brakes on this evil train. Definitely evil. I mean easily and readily resorting to torture puts you there already but your killing spree shows that its not an isolated problem with torture, its a whole-personality problem.

If they were actual slave-owners and slave drivers then I have had a CG character who would attack slave plantations to free the slaves - but if slavers surrendered she would accept their surrender and when she had the upper hand she would actually pause to demand their surrender.

Even then her alignment was on the verge of slipping on at least one occasion when she left the baddies all tied up when it was pretty clear that the freed slaves were not going to treat them leniently. One harsh act when there were no good alternatives did not change her alignment but if she had made a habit of it I would have considered her alignment to be slipping away from good. This is where moral grey area RP is interesting, put characters in positions where they have no options which lack at least one bad consequence and make the players think which of the bad consequences they are more willing to accept.

But in your case they do not appear to have been slave-owners and the workers were merely badly paid. Robbing the owner to give the money to the workers would have been an appropriate CG response (probably useless in the long term but definitely CG) killing anyone your character took a dislike to is not CG.

If I was your DM then in addition to well-off relatives of the victims being after you there would eventually also be ghosts and revenants of the unjustly tortured and killed people hunting you down. Basically all the usual DM answers to evil murderhobo behaviour.

[Randomthom]

Even then her alignment was on the verge of slipping on at least one occasion when she left the baddies all tied up when it was pretty clear that the freed slaves were not going to treat them leniently.

Freeing the slaves and then letting the slaves decide what to do with their former owners is quintessentially chaotic-good. You've done the good thing (free the slaves, spare the lives of their masters) but also the chaotic thing (let individuals decide what they want to do) rather than the lawful approach (dictate that the slaves must now act in a particular way). In fact, a chaotic character may just see the imposition of law here as another form of slavery.

Law/Chaos is rather a misnomer of alignments IMHO, at least when dealing with mortal sapient species, it becomes more relevant when devils, demons, slaad, modrons, fae & celestials get involved.
Collectivist/Individualist would probably be more accurate for these sort of scenarios though I'll acept it is far less punchy a title.

The Collectivist (Lawful) believes there is a right way to act & live and that everyone should be encouraged to follow that path.
The Individualist (Chaotic) believes that it is for each person to decide how they should act and only they can choose their own path.

That isn't to say that the individualist won't listen to advice, nor that the collectivist is 100% certain that their "right way" can't be tweaked or improved upon.

[Wraith]

If you find that you can't really decide between two similar alignments, might I recommend the Guides to Alignment posted by various GitP members?

None of them promise to be all-encompassing about their subject, but most of them offer some really good examples of both attitudes, characters and situations as to what a given alignment might do, so maybe you can recognise your character in amongst them?

[fbelanger]

I've made a chaotic good character, and I roled them up with the intent of being chaotic good, but I'm feeling like my character maybe enjoys punishing people he hates a little too much to be good. Should I call him chaotic neutral, instead? He means well, but he'll straight up kill/torture anybody he thinks is "bad", and is really radical about his belief everybody should be equal, so he will pretty much attempt to torture/kill anybody who is rich/powerful (or thinks that people are unequal) on sight.

I think I've maybe slipped from chaotic good to chaotic neutral in this game, but I'm not sure.

Kill on sight is pretty much chaotic evil for me.

[kazaryu]

Your character is definitely chaotic evil.

Good character actively stops torture. Neutral character doesn't torture. Evil character tortures.

Hard disagree. An evil person may kill for any reason. But, a neutral person, particularly chaotic neutral can easily be willing to torture/murder if they feel its justified. Remember, this character doesnt go around torturing/killing just anyone. He specifically targets people that (he believes) are wrongdoers. Now, if he starts murdering people just becuase they look at him funny, then yeah...hes evil.

[Darzil]

So, the thing about torture in our world is that it is primarily effective in getting people to say what you want them to say, not to tell the truth.

In a world where spells can compel the truth, it has little other use.

[tokek]

Freeing the slaves and then letting the slaves decide what to do with their former owners is quintessentially chaotic-good. You've done the good thing (free the slaves, spare the lives of their masters) but also the chaotic thing (let individuals decide what they want to do) rather than the lawful approach (dictate that the slaves must now act in a particular way). In fact, a chaotic character may just see the imposition of law here as another form of slavery.

Law/Chaos is rather a misnomer of alignments IMHO, at least when dealing with mortal sapient species, it becomes more relevant when devils, demons, slaad, modrons, fae & celestials get involved.
Collectivist/Individualist would probably be more accurate for these sort of scenarios though I'll acept it is far less punchy a title.

The Collectivist (Lawful) believes there is a right way to act & live and that everyone should be encouraged to follow that path.
The Individualist (Chaotic) believes that it is for each person to decide how they should act and only they can choose their own path.

That isn't to say that the individualist won't listen to advice, nor that the collectivist is 100% certain that their "right way" can't be tweaked or improved upon.

Yes that was not a very helpful description, on one occasion my CG character went off half-cocked and it ended up with a lynch mob of freed slaves. Lynch mobs are obviously morally grey at best so if she had made a habit of that I would have questioned the Good part of CG, but she learned her lesson and prepared better after that. As you say freeing the slaves and then leaving them in charge of justice for the former slavers is the essence of CG.

As for a more general thing about alignments, what I try to do is view it from the position of the archetypal Neutral person who has a pragmatic focus on the people around them and a general "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" approach to morality. Otherwise you get bogged down in arguments of "my ideology says that torture is good so I am good" which is just moral relativism taken to the point of amorality. As for the OP, both torture and killing people for for having a job you do not approve of is likely to be seen as evil by most people - unless that job is one widely considered evil such as slave trader or necromancer (even then killing them all without even looking into personal guilt is very dodgy).

[tokek]

Hard disagree. An evil person may kill for any reason. But, a neutral person, particularly chaotic neutral can easily be willing to torture/murder if they feel its justified. Remember, this character doesnt go around torturing/killing just anyone. He specifically targets people that (he believes) are wrongdoers. Now, if he starts murdering people just becuase they look at him funny, then yeah...hes evil.

Moral grey areas are always interesting in RP, how awful does a situation need to be before torture becomes morally justified to avert something much worse? Is it a slippery slope etc. That really does not sound like what the OP was talking about, there was nothing about "if I did not do this the whole village would die" in what they said.

A good person doing an evil act due to extreme circumstances is definitely an interesting narrative. A person just doing evil things because they want to and can somehow justify it to themselves is just the banality of evil, not usually very interesting as a narrative.