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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Envisioner" data-source="post: 7981403" data-attributes="member: 6749263">When I was very early in my career as what I now describe as "the world's first 3rd Edition grognard", I saw the alignment restriction of Monk as very fitting, but saw it as a starting point rather than a be-all-and-end-all of the subject.  ("Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end." --Spock)  You use the corebook RAW as a foundation, but then you build upon it.  One of the concepts I came up with was the idea that monk abilities could be compatible with a Chaotic alignment, but the resulting character wouldn't make sense to call a "monk", so I made up a new name for it.  In that process, I also came to the conclusion that True Neutral, and only True Neutral, ought to be a valid alignment for a non-Lawful Monk, one who was less "disciplined" than "detached", which I felt could achieve similar results.  Rather than Shaolin Kung Fu, this would be based upon Taoist mysticism or Zen buddhism; instead of training your body to become a perfect instrument, you would attempt to attune yourself to cosmic energy flows (which are in no way particularly Lawful, they're more like a weather system, in which Chaotic results are ultimately the result of cosmic "rules" operating in a predictable fashion, producing larger patterns which appear random to a casual eye), with the result being that you would "practice the way of effortless effort".  It still seemed properly Monkly, but would make it possible to justify also picking up a few levels of Bard or even Barbarian on the same character, since the stereotypical behavior of such classes is not incompatible with this vision of Monkliness.Without getting into a real-world subject that I shouldn't argue about publicly (PM me if you want to discuss it in more depth), I will say only that it is possible to get a result similar to lawlessness by the creation of sufficiently complex laws.  5E is an extremely "chaotic" rules-set, with a broadly permissive approach typefied by the DM's Guild being a thing; very few things are prohibited, but likewise very few things are spelled out.  If you tried to make a computer game based around a uniquely 5E adventure path, you'd have to make a lot of hard-and-fast decisions about how to program the fast-and-loose rules into the computer so that they worked consistently, or else your game would be buggy to the point of not functioning at all.  3E and Pathfinder have gone very much more with the "lawful" approach; they inherently assume that everything is disallowed by the rules unless there is a rule specifically allowing it (the opposite of 5E's assumption, which is that all the players' and DMs' ideas are legal unless the book says they aren't), and then they manufacture huge numbers of additional rules to specifically allow some new niche thing.  While this approach is a convenient excuse to sell more and more new books, it is also a good way of providing detailed support to a GM who doesn't want to resolve all situations with off-the-cuff rulings that will be difficult to keep consistent, or adherent to a simulationist approach to the in-game reality (which many players, such as myself, very much appreciate, as it's easier to suspend disbelief when the space you're playing in seems fully fleshed-out).</blockquote>

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