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  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    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...
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    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.
    Balrog99semiticgoddess
  • BlackbɨrdBlackbɨrd Member Posts: 293
    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.
    AerakarMontresor_SPDapifer
  • GenderNihilismGirdleGenderNihilismGirdle Member Posts: 1,353
    Blackbɨrd wrote: »
    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...
    Montresor_SPsemiticgoddess
  • BlackbɨrdBlackbɨrd Member Posts: 293
    Blackbɨrd wrote: »
    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).
  • WarChiefZekeWarChiefZeke Member Posts: 2,651
    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.
    DJKajuruBorcoSkatan
  • DJKajuruDJKajuru Member Posts: 3,300
    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.
    WarChiefZeke
  •  TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
    edited May 2020
    This assumes those who fall between the same alignment think alike and somehow never disagree.
    ThacoBell
  • DJKajuruDJKajuru Member Posts: 3,300
    edited May 2020
    AionZ wrote: »
    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*.
    WarChiefZekeAerakarBelgarathMTH
  • WarChiefZekeWarChiefZeke Member Posts: 2,651
    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.
    AerakarBalrog99JuliusBorisovDapifer
  • DJKajuruDJKajuru Member Posts: 3,300
    @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.
  • DanacmDanacm Member Posts: 950
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    DJKajuru wrote: »
    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.

    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
    ThacoBellGenderNihilismGirdle
  • DJKajuruDJKajuru Member Posts: 3,300
    Danacm wrote: »
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    DJKajuru wrote: »
    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.

    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.
    Wise_Grimwald
  • WarChiefZekeWarChiefZeke Member Posts: 2,651
    edited May 2020
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    DJKajuru wrote: »
    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.
    Wise_Grimwald
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @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.
    Wise_GrimwaldGenderNihilismGirdle
  • WarChiefZekeWarChiefZeke Member Posts: 2,651
    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.
  • PokotaPokota Member Posts: 858
    "imperfectly managed anarchy" in so far as any anarchy allows itself to be managed, at least
    Rao
  • WarChiefZekeWarChiefZeke Member Posts: 2,651
    edited May 2020
    Rao wrote: »
    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.
    Rao
  • RaoRao Member Posts: 141
    @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 ;)
    BelgarathMTH
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    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".
    GenderNihilismGirdle
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    Arvia wrote: »
    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 :smile: . 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.
    Wise_GrimwaldBelgarathMTHGenderNihilismGirdle
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    The new Advanced script in the BGEEs is a great addition. In fact, IWD is worse off for not having it.
    DJKajurushabadoo
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    I don't find Jan Jansen entertaining at all. And playing spellcasters isn't fun for me.
    Permidion_Stark
  • MaurvirMaurvir Member Posts: 1,090
    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.
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