Results 31 to 40 of 40
-
2021-06-27, 02:38 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2015
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
Floods are not "destroy the world and the people scenarios" they are "destroy most people but a select few" scenarios.
Aka horrible behaviours but not the end of everything.
Commonly apocalypses(which also includes the destruction of the world) spare a bunch of people (they skip the being murdered part and instead directly go to the afterlife and other stuff like that) except maybe for that religion with the god that eats all the souls of the dead.Last edited by noob; 2021-06-27 at 02:40 PM.
-
2021-06-27, 03:57 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2020
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
For practical purposes, a lot of people would argue the distinction is without difference. To go back to the point made by ideasmith:
Originally Posted by ideasmithLast edited by Vahnavoi; 2021-06-27 at 03:59 PM.
-
2021-06-27, 05:28 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
In the Great Wheel for D&D, Evil outnumbers Good by a large degree. The only reason they don't overpower the planes is they fight each other.
That means anyone concerned about maintaining The Balance will almost always be opposing Evil. Or at least making sure they keep fighting each other. If they're Good, they'll fight the Good fight, generally avoiding morally grey, and almost always avoiding outright Evil means. If they're Neutral they might use morally grey means when they believe it's called for, and may occasionally do outright Evil. Or they may even be Evil themselves, using any means necessary all the time.Last edited by Tanarii; 2021-06-27 at 05:30 PM.
-
2021-06-27, 07:51 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2006
- Location
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
I only still own one book of the trilogy, but IIRC:
• Destroying both sides is not implied to be possible.
• Team evil is sufficiently bat-**** evil that a win by team good looks to be preferable to a win by team evil, even to those who die. There is such a thing as a fate worse than death.
• The readers on not told anything about this ficton's afterlife, but the fires might well know.
• The death toll from destroying the earth is not specified. Despite your use of quote marks, "killing all the people" is your words, not mine. I didn't rule out survivors, and neither does the trilogy.
The information in the trilogy is consistent with the destroying the earth being good. Since the fires are consistently portrayed as good, it follows that, in this trilogy, destroying the earth is good, or at least consistent with being good.
-
2021-07-10, 12:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
- Protecting my Horde (yes, I mean that kind)
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
In terms of law versus chaos the D&D version tends to work on the basis of LN kind of being an absolutist judge type character. Functional at a divine level if the LN and CN deities are not in agreement they are definitely working at odds to each other. If they were neighbours then LN would be constantly filing complaints with the local ordnance council about CN doing anything, while CN would then be ignoring everything, playing their music really, really loud, and stealing LN's cat.
Best way to treat it is probably like LN being Mr Wilson and CN being Denis the Menace. Without Denis necessarily seeming to like Mr Wilson.
-
2021-07-11, 07:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2016
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
Generally speaking
“Lawful” = following the rules to get the desired result. The process guarantees the outcome.
“Chaotic” = Achieving the goal is more important than the rules. Do whatever it takes.
For LN and CN the quarrel isn’t about the goals it is about the right way to achieve the goals.
Chaotic gods will mess with Lawfuls by creating situations where following the process leads to undesirable outcomes.
Lawful gods will mess with Chaotics by creating situations where the unintended consequences of not following the rules is undesirable.
Where both gods are of the same G/N/E alignment this will be more about who gets more credit for desirable outcomes and therefore more followers and ultimately more souls. Both want N to win
-
2021-07-11, 10:15 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Australia
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
This is a pretty good example of how both can be scary, destructive and fight by proxy until they couldn't get away with it.
OTOH, what you've described scans more as factions that will argue. Loudly, publicly and often.
I suggest "preists" of Khemra turn up on the steps of the Nami temple every Thursday at 3pm to debate with their opposite number. Who may or may not emerge, depending on how busy they are, whether they're in the mood and whether they want to just wander out and chat about (or change) the weather
-
2021-07-12, 08:17 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2016
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
Basically both Khemra and Nami are gods of free will. They want their followers to choose to follow them, not be coerced into following them It’s a war fought with bribes and gifts not the sword and manacles.
An example of low level shenanigans would be in the aftermath of a disaster for Nami and Khemra’s supporters to organize relief supplies. But for Nami’s supporters to secretly stencil “A gift from Nami” onto all of Khemra’s supplies.
They’ll be like 2 divorced parents who get on OK, but can’t live with each other trying to woo the affections of a child. Khemra’s the “I’ll help you with your homework” parent and Nami is the “Who’d like to go out for ice cream?” parent.
-
2021-07-13, 06:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2007
- Location
- Australia
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
-
2021-07-27, 05:20 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2006
Re: What does Lawful Neutral versus Chaotic Neutral divine interplay look like?
That's a pretty good metaphor...
That's actually a really good metaphor...
I also like the idea of scheduled debates that Nami's followers may or may not participate in or the idea of Nami's followers taking credit for the good deeds of Khemra's followers.
Maybe in another world, a Lawful Neutral deity would create a flood or other catastrophe to kill all but a select few mortals, but I cannot picture Khemra or Nami doing that. I cannot even picture my Evil deities doing this.
At least in my universe, no one, good evil or neutral is doing a world flood thing. Even the Evil deities gods don't want to destroy everything because they want to have a sandbox to play in.
My world almost got destroyed twice because a mortal messed with forces beyond his/her ken. The First Unmaking occurred when a dragon sorceress accidentally triggered millions of elementals to randomly run amok. This killed about 90% of all living things and destroyed 95% of all artifacts of civilization. The surviving dragons went from being civilized cooperative power to a bunch of loners squatting over their personal hoards.
The elves took over after the dragons failed, but and an elven wizard accidentally triggered an invasion of millions of otherworldly horrors that wanted to eat the souls of all mortals. This killed about 92% of all mortals, 70% of all animals, and 80% of all artifacts of civilization. This was called the Second Unmaking.
Both of these disasters happened despite the Nine's wishes, not because of the Nine's wishes.
Both mortal and deity alike are nervously watching the human race, concerned that some idiot with delusions of grandeur will accidentally trigger a Third Unmaking. A few of my evil deities are toying with the idea of using a Third Unmaking to their advantage and hope that maybe if hypothetically 90% of all mortals died but only 50% of their followers died, they could come out ahead, but this is not something they would enact casually. They are more likely to allow an Unmaking to happen rather than try to trigger one themselves.
I prefer "Save a village" or a "Save a kingdom" plots, so I'm not planning to have the PCs prevent a villain from causing the Third Unmaking. At least not anytime soon.Last edited by Scalenex; 2021-07-27 at 05:27 AM.