Unpopular opinion: Bodhi is a better, cuter and far more interesting little sister than Imoen will ever be. And Jon in turn is the perfect elder brother. Especially when compared to Abdel. Or Sarevok, for that matter.
Are you sure Bodhi didn't just use her Dire Charm spell on you? She probably didn't need it on that Abdel horn-dog but you seem like a straight-up guy to me...
Nah, oozes are immune to mind-affecting spells and spell-like abilities. It's just that having a unhealthy obsession with blood thirsty yandere isn't half as bad as some may think.
It does pay off having a self-regenerating amorphous body in such a relationship though.
Gromnir would have conquered the five, and claimed the Throne of Bhaal.
Think about it, Gromnir knew and saw right through Melissan and her plans. Gromnir, would of seen that Yaga-Shura could somehow not be damaged and would have found a way to damage and kill him. Gromnir would of turned the five against Melissan, and reaped the benefits.
Gromnir would have conquered the five, and claimed the Throne of Bhaal.
Think about it, Gromnir knew and saw right through Melissan and her plans. Gromnir, would of seen that Yaga-Shura could somehow not be damaged and would have found a way to damage and kill him. Gromnir would of turned the five against Melissan, and reaped the benefits.
Gromnir was a visionary.
brb making a CN half-orc kensai Gorion's Ward named...Gromgir...for no reason...
Gromnir would have conquered the five, and claimed the Throne of Bhaal.
Think about it, Gromnir knew and saw right through Melissan and her plans. Gromnir, would of seen that Yaga-Shura could somehow not be damaged and would have found a way to damage and kill him. Gromnir would of turned the five against Melissan, and reaped the benefits.
Gromnir was a visionary.
brb making a CN half-orc kensai Gorion's Ward named...Gromgir...for no reason...
Great idea. You could even make a party full of the five (or you could cheat and just ctrl q some of them in your party).
Lawful Neutral is, in fact, the greatest alignment, and people who are Chaotic Good are generally meddlesome troublemakers who do more harm than good in the end.
Lawful Neutral is, in fact, the greatest alignment, and people who are Chaotic Good are generally meddlesome troublemakers who do more harm than good in the end.
Lawful Neutral is, in fact, the greatest alignment, and people who are Chaotic Good are generally meddlesome troublemakers who do more harm than good in the end.
IMO a wise Lawful neutral character does much more Good than a Lawful Good one.
This assumes those who fall between the same alignment think alike and somehow never disagree.
Not really my point. By DnD terms a lawful neutral goes from a strongly logical mind (like the beings from the plane of Mechanus) to a Samurai obssessed with honor. I think it's one of the most hated alignments (along with LG) because it's commonly related to blind zealotry but I began to enjoy it when I realized that a LN character may also be seen as one who has his own code but also respects those have different codes, like a Priest of Helm who loves and respects the druidic order because it also a nice way to keep the world *orderly*.
Lawful Neutral definitely seems like the least popular non-evil alignment, but in my mind it is the most essential for justice, for stability, for far sightedness. Only with a neutral set of rules and standards, favoring nobody and applied to all, can any sort of equality under the law exist. That is the essence of the Lawful Neutral philosophy. The Lawful Good and the Lawful Evil both try to twist and interpret the rules of society to their own ends. Only the Lawful Neutral is faithful to the word of the law itself, and that's exactly the kind of person you want dispensing justice. Not the Lawful Good nor the Lawful Evil and certainly not the chaotic.
I think a lot of folks (another unpopular opinion incoming) dislike the lawful axis because people nowadays are generally inclined towards a libertarian social philosophy and generally resent rigid moral structures, restrictions, and codes, not realizing the good they often do and the fact that they are neccesary, even to those who don't claim to hold to them.
@WarChiefZeke I believe that IRL there are many other factors to be considered , though. I'm afraid that real life alignment axis belongs to a different thread , least go offtopic.
Lawful Neutral is, in fact, the greatest alignment, and people who are Chaotic Good are generally meddlesome troublemakers who do more harm than good in the end.
IMO a wise Lawful neutral character does much more Good than a Lawful Good one.
Then someone is playing lawful good wrong. I swear, lawful good must be the most misunderstood alignment with how often people get it wrong.
Lawful Neutral is, in fact, the greatest alignment, and people who are Chaotic Good are generally meddlesome troublemakers who do more harm than good in the end.
IMO a wise Lawful neutral character does much more Good than a Lawful Good one.
Then someone is playing lawful good wrong. I swear, lawful good must be the most misunderstood alignment with how often people get it wrong.
Lawful Neutral is, in fact, the greatest alignment, and people who are Chaotic Good are generally meddlesome troublemakers who do more harm than good in the end.
IMO a wise Lawful neutral character does much more Good than a Lawful Good one.
Then someone is playing lawful good wrong. I swear, lawful good must be the most misunderstood alignment with how often people get it wrong.
Lawful Neutral is, in fact, the greatest alignment, and people who are Chaotic Good are generally meddlesome troublemakers who do more harm than good in the end.
IMO a wise Lawful neutral character does much more Good than a Lawful Good one.
Then someone is playing lawful good wrong. I swear, lawful good must be the most misunderstood alignment with how often people get it wrong.
Wrongly-played Paladins get a good share of the blame for turning lawful good into "lawful stupid" in a lot of people's minds.
How much good a person actually accomplishes in the Realms ties more into your wisdom score and knowledge of the planes more than whether you are on the LN or LG side, in my opinion. Being able to see the big picture, and unintended consequences of your actions, is what is most important. As is often stated in the manuals, neutral characters usually still prefer good to evil, exemplified in people like Kelemvor. His whole backstory is actually a great example of how a LG character can become a
LN one with the best of intentions.
I actually think Mask of the Betrayer did an excellent job of highlighting a Lawful Neutral (Kelemvor) and Lawful Good philosophy (Kaelyn) conflict. Kaelyn is technically neutral good, but a lawful good character would just as easily act the same way, seeing the laws of the planes as unjust. Neither side is wrong, imo.
One of the things that people often mix up are honourable and good. While the honourable thing to do might also be the good thing to do, that aint necessarily so. In real life there are "honour killings" which aren't honourable at all. It's just a case of somebody wanting to "look" good rather than "be" good.
However both in-game and in RL political systems are set up to reward the Lawful Evil with the result that currently just about the whole world over both ends of the political spectrum are led by lawful evil characters. It takes a particularly charismatic chaotic good person to overturn the applecart. However when they do, the nation can often be transformed for the better.
In BG I tend to play CG not because that alignment is more sucessful, but because something needs to be done to change things, and unless you try, nothing will ever be changed.
@WarChiefZeke "How much good a person actually accomplishes in the Realms ties more into your wisdom score and knowledge of the planes more than whether you are on the LN or LG side, in my opinion. Being able to see the big picture, and unintended consequences of your actions, is what is most important."
But why do you think LN is the only alignment able to see the big picture? Anybody is capable of perspective.
That's kinda the opposite of what you are quoting there, I'm saying alignment matters less than wisdom + perspective, not that LN characters are unique in that regard. I do think it takes a wiser than normal person to see why something like a LN philosophy is important, though.
Without directly addressing general questions of prudence and political morality (which @Wise_Grimwald's and @WarChiefZeke's posts raise in abundance), here's a part of my perspective: fate has been cruel to lawful characters in the Forgotten Realms. A lawful character prefers to act within and through stable institutional forms, and has a vision of right relations among people in which values like stability, predictability, and order predominate. But from what I have seen of it (admittedly, not a lot, so feel free to respond with counterpoints), the conditions of power in Faerun skew *hard* toward a contrary state of affairs, that is, the persistent destabilization of institutions capable of establishing social order.
Let's look at some snapshots in Irenicus' life story: (1) tries to ascend to *godhood* by siphoning the energies of the Tree of Life; (2) maintains an extensive personal stronghold and laboratory under Amn, where he performs all manner of experiments with impunity; (3) overruns Suldanessallar with an army that includes golems, demons, and dragons, after having incorporated within himself a part of the essence of the dead god of murder.
(1) Irenicus had become one of Suldanessalar's preeminent mages, presumably having received a great deal of education from a local association of mages (perhaps something akin to a college - an institution capable of preserving and transmitting a high degree of specialized knowledge). From what he learned there, and with only one partner (Bodhi), he was able to mount a credible (if not ultimately successful) assault on the Tree of Life (the source of elven immortality??) that would have allowed him to become a *literal* god.
Okay. So, some lessons: (a) certain local magical associations can catapult their students / members to meteoric levels of power, providing sufficient knowledge to put truly earth-shattering (and potentially even pantheon expanding) powers within reach of the most capable; (b) two such people can covertly hatch and credibly execute a plot imperiling the lifesource of an entire race. Does it matter that Suldanessalar stopped this plot the first time around? Yes and no, but mostly no. The point is the actual (as in "really achievable") potential for private individuals to wield such cataclysmic personal power. The existence of such potential cannot but be deeply destabilizing for states, institutions, and societies. It's like if MITs two most gifted professors could build a deployable nuclear arsenal in their garage.
(2) The Cowled Wizards in Amn are an extremely powerful association of wizards that has an institutional history and present practice of strictly regulating the use of magic within city limits. Irenicus sets up shop right under their noses. It's not a little under-the-table alchemy, mind you - it's a full-blown carnival down there. Golem assistants? Check. Duregar employees? Check. Portal to the elemental plane of air? Check. Summoning circle for calling demon knights out of the Abyss? Check. Miserable pseudo-harem of nymphs? Check. Tanks full of failed human experiments? Check. Full suite of torture and stabilization devices? Check. And the Cowled Wizards had no idea about any of it, until Imoen cast a magic missile outside Chateau Irenicus' back door. Speaking of the Cowled Wizards, they don't pose any real threat to Irenicus, he wiped out the first wave or two effortlessly and actually gained control (apparently equally effortlessly) of the primary mechanism they use to enforce their authority (i.e., Spellhold).
Lessons: (a) a single mage (with a partner - Bodhi is still in the picture at Amn, I suppose) can amass sufficient power to build a substantial powerbase right under the eye of an institution - fairly well-integrated with the local government, no less - specialized at surveilling mages; (b) a single mage and his partner can not only break out of, but commandeer, the premier enforcement mechanism that an organization with expertise designed to subdue people *just like him*. Wild! This would be like if the two MIT professors from earlier were building their arsenal in a bunker underneath KGB headquarters in Moscow.
(3) Whatever institutions existed in Suldanessalar (which were probably millennia's old, given the lifespan of elves) they were not enough. Certainly, precautions were taken; new protocols, security measures, etc. adopted in the aftermath of Irenicus' first failed attempt. It wasn't enough. Irenicus came back with a piece of a god inside of him and was on the verge of crushing the native resistance entirely. Gorion's Ward counter-stormed the city - a lucky deus ex machina for a city practically already under the hostile occupation of one mage's private army. Two points of interest: first, Suldanessalar wasn't some backwater - this was the seat of the Tree of Life and the city-state whose resources, educational and otherwise, made it possible for Irenicus to become as powerful as he did; second, Suldanessalar wasn't saved by the dispatch of some foreign sovereign - it was saved, you guessed it, by a group of private individuals wielding even more power than Irenicus. The lessons here are probably clear by now.
But weren't Irenicus and/or the time of Alaundo's prophecy exceptional? In a sense, of course. But if you look the surrounding evidence/data, I think Irenicus' exploits are *much* better understood as indicative of a general pattern than as the exception to one. Think of all the "little Irenicuses" (Irenici?) that must sprout up to plague everyday life in Faerun. Where so much private power can be amassed so freely, order-keeping institutions are going to struggle immensely to maintain themselves, not to mention preserve order in any sort of broader society. There's a reason why the generations of Faerun never really see a stable increase in their material standard of living, and why they build amidst the bones of arguably more advanced empires (e.g., Netheril). You can always say X, Y, Z authorities are/were incompetent, but that is sort of a lazy way out.
Phew, alright! So, all that is to say: I feel bad for all the lawful characters in Faerun - Ao dealt them a raw deal. Whether or not @WarChiefZeke is right that lawful neutral is the "greatest" alignment, I feel like it's definitely going to be the most prone to feelings of futility and disappointment. Also, I think it cuts against @Wise_Grimwald's idea that Faerun could be predictably made better if more chaotic good characters "overturn[ed] the applecart" - I think it's a toss-up, at best.
After writing all this, I'm actually inclined to think that the hard-nosed of Faerun might look down on the self-consciously lawfully-aligned as overly "idealistic." Funny, given that the opposite often seems to be the case in real life (although there is precedent in discussions about international relations, where the most hard-nosed realists see the world as a sort of imperfectly managed anarchy).
Without directly addressing general questions of prudence and political morality (which @Wise_Grimwald's and @WarChiefZeke's posts raise in abundance), here's a part of my perspective: fate has been cruel to lawful characters in the Forgotten Realms. A lawful character prefers to act within and through stable institutional forms, and has a vision of right relations among people in which values like stability, predictability, and order predominate. But from what I have seen of it (admittedly, not a lot, so feel free to respond with counterpoints), the conditions of power in Faerun skew *hard* toward a contrary state of affairs, that is, the persistent destabilization of institutions capable of establishing social order.
The nature of the planes is such that there can never be perfect order, nor true anarchy, on the Prime Material, at least not without major destabilization of the realms. A balance is enforced by ensuring all alignments and philosophies are able to exist and act, and you are simply rewarded based on how true you were to your own stated philosophy. Part of what Kelemvor previously got in trouble for was in rewarding the good and punishing the guilty after death, so strongly that it threatened to tilt the balance between good and evil, and he nearly lost his godhood over that.
Law and chaos, good and evil, are real metaphysical forces in the realms and the Prime Material incorporates all of them. Too much of one in that realm would have some sort of unintended consequences to be sure, but I dont know what.
I think it's fair to say the arc of the realms bends towards neutrality of the apathetic sort.
@WarChiefZeke - that's pretty interesting; I was not really aware of that interpretation. If that really is the basic picture, then it raises many, many more questions than it answers. But I think I get the gist of it.
Nevertheless, I think the metaphysical framing is neither here nor there. Even granting there is a "force" called "law" and a "force" called "chaos" that need to be kept "balanced" (let's take a raincheck on meaningful definitions of all those terms for now), there is a requirement of continuity inherent to the experience of social order. If this continuity is absent, I think it can still be accurate to speak of most people in Faerun as living under conditions of a "hard skew" toward disorder, notwithstanding an abstract balancing of law and chaos.
To see how, imagine a hypothetical Faerun - Qaerun - with four kingdoms. At the end of every 10 years, there is a Big Event that determines the fate of each kingdom for the next decade: 50% of the time this Big Event means the preservation or restoration of almost perfect order; the other 50% of the time, though, this Big Event throws the entire kingdom into existential-threat-level chaos. Run this system for an arbitrarily large number of years, and you will have a "balance" of law and chaos. On average, each kingdom will be in order half the time and in chaos the other half of the time, with (again, on average over time) two kingdoms in order and two kingdoms in chaos during any given decade.
But what would it feel like for human beings actually living under this system? It would probably be maddening. The sort of institution-building and long-term planning and coordination required for social continuity could not be undertaken effectively with such a high probability that one's kingdom would be roiled by chaos every decade. But it is just that continuity across decades and generations that is essential to a meaningful experience of social order. The abstract metaphysical balancing doesn't matter: it does nothing for the experience of social order in Kingdoms A and B during the transition into chaos decades to know that next decade is just as likely to be an order decade, or to know that order decades in Kingdoms C and D may be offsetting their own chaos decades, or to know that Qaerun, considered as a whole, is "neutral" in the long-run.
Stated otherwise, there are two problems. First, the metaphysical balance is a global property of Qaerun, whereas the meaningful experience of social order is essentially a local property of life in each individual kingdom. Second, metaphysical balance is asynchronous (i.e., you don't not need to look at t1 to know whether t2 is balanced), whereas the meaningful experience of social order is highly time-dependent (i.e., you can't know whether there is a meaningful experience of social order in t2 without looking at what happened in t1).
This thought experiment doesn't show that Faerun *must* be disordered. If you adjust the frequency of Big Events, or their magnitudes, you can end up with a system in which continuity is largely preserved. What the thought experiment does suggest, however, is that continuity is an important temporal aspect of the experience of social order that abstract balancing of metaphysical forces does not guarantee.
So even if the arc of the realms does, metaphysically speaking, bend toward neutrality, I don't think that means the individual lives or societies in Faerun would ever experience it that way. To suggest otherwise, based on the metaphysical explanation alone, actually seems to commit a whole-to-part fallacy, where a property belonging to a whole is mistakenly thought to belong necessarily to its parts. And when you actually look at the evidence (e.g., Irenicus, et al.) I think it favors admitting a prevailing experience of a strong skew toward social chaos.
All of this could be side-stepped, of course, by modifying the definitions of the key terms, but that is a rabbit hole, I fear, we could hurtle down for ages
I love reading this kind of analysis of fantasy realities. When I was younger, I often did this kind of thinking myself. As I got older, I started to look more closely at the purpose of such mental exercise, though.
I have several related points that this kind of detailed analysis of fantasy or any fictional setting brings up in my mind.
- There always comes a point when we need to ask ourselves why we're doing a thing. As someone who has suffered from bipolar disorder, I had to learn to identify when my thoughts are racing or running away with me, which can cause me to lose control.
- There is such a thing as "overthinking it" with any fictional material for which its primary purpose is to entertain. Sometimes, when I am confronted with such analysis of a work of fiction, where I would have tended to jump in and participate in my youth, I now want to ask, "But was the game/movie/show any fun?" Or "Did you enjoy yourself?" Or "Are you getting pleasure from picking it apart like that?" If the answers are "yes", then I would say "Okay, carry on, then, have fun."
-It can be argued that intensely analyzing a work of fiction can yield insights that are useful when applied to real life. Literature classes do this all the time in education. The only caveat to that is that I think it needs to be clear that such is the goal of the analysis. There is a time and place for everything, everything in its correct time and place. Otherwise, it's possible to just be losing control of our thoughts and losing touch with reality without realizing it.
- If at any point analytical discussion starts to become emotionally heated or unpleasant, it's time to stop doing that, and do something else. Go outside and enjoy some sun and fresh air.
That's kinda the opposite of what you are quoting there, I'm saying alignment matters less than wisdom + perspective, not that LN characters are unique in that regard. I do think it takes a wiser than normal person to see why something like a LN philosophy is important, though.
" I'm saying alignment matters less than wisdom + perspective, not that LN characters are unique in that regard."
But this entirely undermines your initial post that LN is the "alignment".
True, but that also requires metagaming. With his pre-test Wisdom, he's not that powerful.
.
Just sayin'... tis also metagaming for the charmain to know whether Anomen's got 12 or 16 Wisdom.
I do realize it's a bit late to reply to that, but I've been rather busy lately.
I'd just like to say it doesn't require metagaming, just a short conversation, to find out that Anomen's wisdom is not above average . Although that would probably be an 8.
I don't know if that's an unpopular opinion, but I really don't like AI in RPGs. It kind of contradicts the whole thing.
I don't find Jan Jansen entertaining at all. And playing spellcasters isn't fun for me.
This reminds of that time uncle Grumpy had a pot of bad turnip stew. We should have known something was wrong as soon we saw him smile. He never did smile once in all 286 years of his life prior, that's why we called him "Grumpy." Not that his real name wasn't "Grumpy" mind, we just called him Grumpy Uncle Grumpy. He hated it, but then again, he hated everything. Anyway, long story short, always remember to check your stew before eating it. Bad turnips are as bad as good turnips are good.
Unpopular opinion: Bodhi is a better, cuter and far more interesting little sister than Imoen will ever be. And Jon in turn is the perfect elder brother. Especially when compared to Abdel. Or Sarevok, for that matter.
Assuming you can get past the permanent blood stain on her chin, Bodhi vs Imoen can be expressed well on a hot/crazy chart. Bodhi is definitely stronger/more powerful, and arguably beautiful in her own right, but she is also undeniably, certifiably nuts. Imoen has the girl next door thing going on, but she's mostly sane.
Comments
Are you sure Bodhi didn't just use her Dire Charm spell on you? She probably didn't need it on that Abdel horn-dog but you seem like a straight-up guy to me...
Think about it, Gromnir knew and saw right through Melissan and her plans. Gromnir, would of seen that Yaga-Shura could somehow not be damaged and would have found a way to damage and kill him. Gromnir would of turned the five against Melissan, and reaped the benefits.
Gromnir was a visionary.
brb making a CN half-orc kensai Gorion's Ward named...Gromgir...for no reason...
Great idea. You could even make a party full of the five (or you could cheat and just ctrl q some of them in your party).
That is certainly an unpopular opinion.
IMO a wise Lawful neutral character does much more Good than a Lawful Good one.
Not really my point. By DnD terms a lawful neutral goes from a strongly logical mind (like the beings from the plane of Mechanus) to a Samurai obssessed with honor. I think it's one of the most hated alignments (along with LG) because it's commonly related to blind zealotry but I began to enjoy it when I realized that a LN character may also be seen as one who has his own code but also respects those have different codes, like a Priest of Helm who loves and respects the druidic order because it also a nice way to keep the world *orderly*.
I think a lot of folks (another unpopular opinion incoming) dislike the lawful axis because people nowadays are generally inclined towards a libertarian social philosophy and generally resent rigid moral structures, restrictions, and codes, not realizing the good they often do and the fact that they are neccesary, even to those who don't claim to hold to them.
Then someone is playing lawful good wrong. I swear, lawful good must be the most misunderstood alignment with how often people get it wrong.
First good, after lawful. To be honest, the real lawful stupid is lawful neutral. But of course there other aspects: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawfulGood
That's the thing, all alignments can be stupid and disturbing.
Wrongly-played Paladins get a good share of the blame for turning lawful good into "lawful stupid" in a lot of people's minds.
How much good a person actually accomplishes in the Realms ties more into your wisdom score and knowledge of the planes more than whether you are on the LN or LG side, in my opinion. Being able to see the big picture, and unintended consequences of your actions, is what is most important. As is often stated in the manuals, neutral characters usually still prefer good to evil, exemplified in people like Kelemvor. His whole backstory is actually a great example of how a LG character can become a
LN one with the best of intentions.
I actually think Mask of the Betrayer did an excellent job of highlighting a Lawful Neutral (Kelemvor) and Lawful Good philosophy (Kaelyn) conflict. Kaelyn is technically neutral good, but a lawful good character would just as easily act the same way, seeing the laws of the planes as unjust. Neither side is wrong, imo.
However both in-game and in RL political systems are set up to reward the Lawful Evil with the result that currently just about the whole world over both ends of the political spectrum are led by lawful evil characters. It takes a particularly charismatic chaotic good person to overturn the applecart. However when they do, the nation can often be transformed for the better.
In BG I tend to play CG not because that alignment is more sucessful, but because something needs to be done to change things, and unless you try, nothing will ever be changed.
But why do you think LN is the only alignment able to see the big picture? Anybody is capable of perspective.
Let's look at some snapshots in Irenicus' life story: (1) tries to ascend to *godhood* by siphoning the energies of the Tree of Life; (2) maintains an extensive personal stronghold and laboratory under Amn, where he performs all manner of experiments with impunity; (3) overruns Suldanessallar with an army that includes golems, demons, and dragons, after having incorporated within himself a part of the essence of the dead god of murder.
(1) Irenicus had become one of Suldanessalar's preeminent mages, presumably having received a great deal of education from a local association of mages (perhaps something akin to a college - an institution capable of preserving and transmitting a high degree of specialized knowledge). From what he learned there, and with only one partner (Bodhi), he was able to mount a credible (if not ultimately successful) assault on the Tree of Life (the source of elven immortality??) that would have allowed him to become a *literal* god.
Okay. So, some lessons: (a) certain local magical associations can catapult their students / members to meteoric levels of power, providing sufficient knowledge to put truly earth-shattering (and potentially even pantheon expanding) powers within reach of the most capable; (b) two such people can covertly hatch and credibly execute a plot imperiling the lifesource of an entire race. Does it matter that Suldanessalar stopped this plot the first time around? Yes and no, but mostly no. The point is the actual (as in "really achievable") potential for private individuals to wield such cataclysmic personal power. The existence of such potential cannot but be deeply destabilizing for states, institutions, and societies. It's like if MITs two most gifted professors could build a deployable nuclear arsenal in their garage.
(2) The Cowled Wizards in Amn are an extremely powerful association of wizards that has an institutional history and present practice of strictly regulating the use of magic within city limits. Irenicus sets up shop right under their noses. It's not a little under-the-table alchemy, mind you - it's a full-blown carnival down there. Golem assistants? Check. Duregar employees? Check. Portal to the elemental plane of air? Check. Summoning circle for calling demon knights out of the Abyss? Check. Miserable pseudo-harem of nymphs? Check. Tanks full of failed human experiments? Check. Full suite of torture and stabilization devices? Check. And the Cowled Wizards had no idea about any of it, until Imoen cast a magic missile outside Chateau Irenicus' back door. Speaking of the Cowled Wizards, they don't pose any real threat to Irenicus, he wiped out the first wave or two effortlessly and actually gained control (apparently equally effortlessly) of the primary mechanism they use to enforce their authority (i.e., Spellhold).
Lessons: (a) a single mage (with a partner - Bodhi is still in the picture at Amn, I suppose) can amass sufficient power to build a substantial powerbase right under the eye of an institution - fairly well-integrated with the local government, no less - specialized at surveilling mages; (b) a single mage and his partner can not only break out of, but commandeer, the premier enforcement mechanism that an organization with expertise designed to subdue people *just like him*. Wild! This would be like if the two MIT professors from earlier were building their arsenal in a bunker underneath KGB headquarters in Moscow.
(3) Whatever institutions existed in Suldanessalar (which were probably millennia's old, given the lifespan of elves) they were not enough. Certainly, precautions were taken; new protocols, security measures, etc. adopted in the aftermath of Irenicus' first failed attempt. It wasn't enough. Irenicus came back with a piece of a god inside of him and was on the verge of crushing the native resistance entirely. Gorion's Ward counter-stormed the city - a lucky deus ex machina for a city practically already under the hostile occupation of one mage's private army. Two points of interest: first, Suldanessalar wasn't some backwater - this was the seat of the Tree of Life and the city-state whose resources, educational and otherwise, made it possible for Irenicus to become as powerful as he did; second, Suldanessalar wasn't saved by the dispatch of some foreign sovereign - it was saved, you guessed it, by a group of private individuals wielding even more power than Irenicus. The lessons here are probably clear by now.
But weren't Irenicus and/or the time of Alaundo's prophecy exceptional? In a sense, of course. But if you look the surrounding evidence/data, I think Irenicus' exploits are *much* better understood as indicative of a general pattern than as the exception to one. Think of all the "little Irenicuses" (Irenici?) that must sprout up to plague everyday life in Faerun. Where so much private power can be amassed so freely, order-keeping institutions are going to struggle immensely to maintain themselves, not to mention preserve order in any sort of broader society. There's a reason why the generations of Faerun never really see a stable increase in their material standard of living, and why they build amidst the bones of arguably more advanced empires (e.g., Netheril). You can always say X, Y, Z authorities are/were incompetent, but that is sort of a lazy way out.
Phew, alright! So, all that is to say: I feel bad for all the lawful characters in Faerun - Ao dealt them a raw deal. Whether or not @WarChiefZeke is right that lawful neutral is the "greatest" alignment, I feel like it's definitely going to be the most prone to feelings of futility and disappointment. Also, I think it cuts against @Wise_Grimwald's idea that Faerun could be predictably made better if more chaotic good characters "overturn[ed] the applecart" - I think it's a toss-up, at best.
After writing all this, I'm actually inclined to think that the hard-nosed of Faerun might look down on the self-consciously lawfully-aligned as overly "idealistic." Funny, given that the opposite often seems to be the case in real life (although there is precedent in discussions about international relations, where the most hard-nosed realists see the world as a sort of imperfectly managed anarchy).
The nature of the planes is such that there can never be perfect order, nor true anarchy, on the Prime Material, at least not without major destabilization of the realms. A balance is enforced by ensuring all alignments and philosophies are able to exist and act, and you are simply rewarded based on how true you were to your own stated philosophy. Part of what Kelemvor previously got in trouble for was in rewarding the good and punishing the guilty after death, so strongly that it threatened to tilt the balance between good and evil, and he nearly lost his godhood over that.
Law and chaos, good and evil, are real metaphysical forces in the realms and the Prime Material incorporates all of them. Too much of one in that realm would have some sort of unintended consequences to be sure, but I dont know what.
I think it's fair to say the arc of the realms bends towards neutrality of the apathetic sort.
Nevertheless, I think the metaphysical framing is neither here nor there. Even granting there is a "force" called "law" and a "force" called "chaos" that need to be kept "balanced" (let's take a raincheck on meaningful definitions of all those terms for now), there is a requirement of continuity inherent to the experience of social order. If this continuity is absent, I think it can still be accurate to speak of most people in Faerun as living under conditions of a "hard skew" toward disorder, notwithstanding an abstract balancing of law and chaos.
To see how, imagine a hypothetical Faerun - Qaerun - with four kingdoms. At the end of every 10 years, there is a Big Event that determines the fate of each kingdom for the next decade: 50% of the time this Big Event means the preservation or restoration of almost perfect order; the other 50% of the time, though, this Big Event throws the entire kingdom into existential-threat-level chaos. Run this system for an arbitrarily large number of years, and you will have a "balance" of law and chaos. On average, each kingdom will be in order half the time and in chaos the other half of the time, with (again, on average over time) two kingdoms in order and two kingdoms in chaos during any given decade.
But what would it feel like for human beings actually living under this system? It would probably be maddening. The sort of institution-building and long-term planning and coordination required for social continuity could not be undertaken effectively with such a high probability that one's kingdom would be roiled by chaos every decade. But it is just that continuity across decades and generations that is essential to a meaningful experience of social order. The abstract metaphysical balancing doesn't matter: it does nothing for the experience of social order in Kingdoms A and B during the transition into chaos decades to know that next decade is just as likely to be an order decade, or to know that order decades in Kingdoms C and D may be offsetting their own chaos decades, or to know that Qaerun, considered as a whole, is "neutral" in the long-run.
Stated otherwise, there are two problems. First, the metaphysical balance is a global property of Qaerun, whereas the meaningful experience of social order is essentially a local property of life in each individual kingdom. Second, metaphysical balance is asynchronous (i.e., you don't not need to look at t1 to know whether t2 is balanced), whereas the meaningful experience of social order is highly time-dependent (i.e., you can't know whether there is a meaningful experience of social order in t2 without looking at what happened in t1).
This thought experiment doesn't show that Faerun *must* be disordered. If you adjust the frequency of Big Events, or their magnitudes, you can end up with a system in which continuity is largely preserved. What the thought experiment does suggest, however, is that continuity is an important temporal aspect of the experience of social order that abstract balancing of metaphysical forces does not guarantee.
So even if the arc of the realms does, metaphysically speaking, bend toward neutrality, I don't think that means the individual lives or societies in Faerun would ever experience it that way. To suggest otherwise, based on the metaphysical explanation alone, actually seems to commit a whole-to-part fallacy, where a property belonging to a whole is mistakenly thought to belong necessarily to its parts. And when you actually look at the evidence (e.g., Irenicus, et al.) I think it favors admitting a prevailing experience of a strong skew toward social chaos.
All of this could be side-stepped, of course, by modifying the definitions of the key terms, but that is a rabbit hole, I fear, we could hurtle down for ages
I have several related points that this kind of detailed analysis of fantasy or any fictional setting brings up in my mind.
- There always comes a point when we need to ask ourselves why we're doing a thing. As someone who has suffered from bipolar disorder, I had to learn to identify when my thoughts are racing or running away with me, which can cause me to lose control.
- There is such a thing as "overthinking it" with any fictional material for which its primary purpose is to entertain. Sometimes, when I am confronted with such analysis of a work of fiction, where I would have tended to jump in and participate in my youth, I now want to ask, "But was the game/movie/show any fun?" Or "Did you enjoy yourself?" Or "Are you getting pleasure from picking it apart like that?" If the answers are "yes", then I would say "Okay, carry on, then, have fun."
-It can be argued that intensely analyzing a work of fiction can yield insights that are useful when applied to real life. Literature classes do this all the time in education. The only caveat to that is that I think it needs to be clear that such is the goal of the analysis. There is a time and place for everything, everything in its correct time and place. Otherwise, it's possible to just be losing control of our thoughts and losing touch with reality without realizing it.
- If at any point analytical discussion starts to become emotionally heated or unpleasant, it's time to stop doing that, and do something else. Go outside and enjoy some sun and fresh air.
" I'm saying alignment matters less than wisdom + perspective, not that LN characters are unique in that regard."
But this entirely undermines your initial post that LN is the "alignment".
I do realize it's a bit late to reply to that, but I've been rather busy lately.
I'd just like to say it doesn't require metagaming, just a short conversation, to find out that Anomen's wisdom is not above average
I don't know if that's an unpopular opinion, but I really don't like AI in RPGs. It kind of contradicts the whole thing.
This reminds of that time uncle Grumpy had a pot of bad turnip stew. We should have known something was wrong as soon we saw him smile. He never did smile once in all 286 years of his life prior, that's why we called him "Grumpy." Not that his real name wasn't "Grumpy" mind, we just called him Grumpy Uncle Grumpy. He hated it, but then again, he hated everything. Anyway, long story short, always remember to check your stew before eating it. Bad turnips are as bad as good turnips are good.
Assuming you can get past the permanent blood stain on her chin, Bodhi vs Imoen can be expressed well on a hot/crazy chart. Bodhi is definitely stronger/more powerful, and arguably beautiful in her own right, but she is also undeniably, certifiably nuts. Imoen has the girl next door thing going on, but she's mostly sane.