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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7008100" data-attributes="member: 6787650">[Forgive me, MNblockhead, because the rest of your post indicates that many of the things I've written below are things you'd probably agree with, but I take exception to the statement in bold here and I hope you won't mind me commenting on it. Not everything below is addressed directly to you. -Hemlock]That might be true of a shallow portrayal of Chaotic, or Chaotic Evil, but you can make a convincingly Chaotic character by just ignoring abstract principles and precedent in favor of concrete facts. For example, Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War is espousing a Chaotic perspective, because he figures he can just sign any documents he needs to to keep the team together, because he can (and does) simply ignore them when they become inconvenient.On the other hand, Steve Rogers' moral dilemma is created out of the fact that he is worrying about situations that haven't happened yet, like "What if they won't let us go somewhere we need to go?" It never even crosses Steve's mind that you could theoretically just break the agreement that you signed; this is a Lawful perspective. (That fact that it drives him underground as a fugitive against the law of the land is an ironic consequence.)Evil is selfishness, which includes enjoying harming people. If your best friend always remembers your birthday and takes your kids out for you when you're busy, and if anyone shoves your son or takes the swing away from your daughter your best friend will stand up to that person and get the swing back for her, that's great! If he punches their teeth out, that's questionable, especially if "anyone" is also a little kid. If he instead makes a note of their parents' license plate number and then tracks them down at their house and quietly poisons them in their sleep for revenge, that's straight-up evil, dude. That's wrong. Doesn't mean your friend isn't your friend, doesn't mean he wasn't trying to do you a favor, but as far as alignment is concerned, that's Evil.Put all these things together and you can have a team-oriented Chaotic Evil viking or knight or bard who is perfectly nice to the other PCs, possibly horrid to the hired help, and unutterably vile and malicious to anyone he takes a disliking to. That maliciousness could be physical ("I run him through with my rapier") or it could be social ("That merchant cheated you! I'm going to seduce his wife and take pictures, then give the pictures to his children") and it could even be patient and rational ("Don't worry, I understand we need to finish the mission first--I'll just put the seduction on my to-do list for after we save the world"). It could even be generous and understanding to friends. "I could really use a wingman to help me with this seduction, and BTW remember it's actually an insult against you that I'm avenging here, but I understand that you don't like getting involved in this kind of thing so if you want to just stay home I'll work something out somehow." But it would still be concrete and oriented on short-term concrete results instead of abstract principles and precedents, and it would still be fundamentally selfish: hence Chaotic Evil.But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be interesting to have in the party or in the game. Also, I think Chaotic Good Iron Man could be just fine too. After all, his Chaotic tendencies created Ultron, which was bad for the world but good for the movie business. D&D adventures are similar--having PCs do things which get them in trouble sometimes just leads to interesting stories about how the PCs then got themselves out of trouble.</blockquote>

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