Alright, DJ’s accurate jab aside
Magically aligned in this case is supposed to mean compatible with magic, takes and absorbs magic in normally unexpected ways (normal effects happen per normal, but the character’s advancement fallows a path aligned to spells he is commonly hit by or are more powerful than normal, if he is commonly hit by polymorph magic the character may end up progressing towards the ability to shape shift/shapechanger type (highly unlikely to ever get there, the amount of magic needed for such a change in the character is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future as I don’t think the character would be polymorph that much, if at all) if commonly hit by flight spells the character would start to become accustom to flight (possibly even gaining the ability)
Also, even those who are innately magical don’t have to be sorcerers: Pixies come to mind: their loaded with magic, but not all with class levels are sorcerers (they make equally good wizards by stats) and as far as raw arcane/magical energy goes, I think warlocks express that better then sorcerers; they don’t bother forming proper spells at all ;3
[sblock=C/L G/E alignment rant]
As for the evil-good and chaotic – lawful alignments, they don’t really decide if a character is predictable or not or if they work to uphold the law. Lawful just means they won’t , normally, break the written law(or as the case may be, their honor code): A Lawful character may work in the spirit of the law, or may pervert it to serve themselves and or their interests. A lawful evil character can adhere to both the spirit and the written word of the law to the letter while a lawful good character is bending it to use as both sword and shield to aid the common persion, or vica versa. Meanwhile some chaotic characters are mind numbingly predictable.
Case in point Chaotic evil: aka the “smash everything” alignment common to evil barbarians (And some of the best lawful characters are all but imposable to predict without extensive knowledge of them). At its root, in dnd Chaotic dos not mean the character has to act unlawful, only that they place freedom above law: because of this any character that places themselves above the law can easily be ‘chaotic’ and choose to obey an ordinance even though they don’t want to. This is in fact common practice to my knowledge: how often do chaotic, party, characters do something blazingly against the law on a whim? The only other true aspect of lawful vs chaotic is lawful tends to honor their word more commonly, but both can lie as well (Lawful character end up claiming some term or condition was not meet, and even inter into contracts knowing that the term or condition would never be meet. So yes, just a mild tendency to be more honorable then their chaotic counterparts)
As for good and evil: Good means they place others above themselves, evil means they will trample over others to get what they want, and neutral is simply pouting oneself first, but without the tendency crush others underfoot without mercy if doing so makes the path easier. Then taken to the liberal use that chatic and lawful are, evil is always taken to the extreme you rarely see a character listed as ‘evil’ that is only kind of evil, if someone is evil, they can kill a baby, not even filch and that’s the accepted norm; a neutral character might have no qualms with ruining someone’s livelihood, and thus their life for their own gain; by the descriptions I’ve seen of evil, that’s borderline if not across it.
[One of my commonly used evil characters will work, at his own detriment, if certain lines are crossed; the character is still an incarnation of evil, but even a devil can have morals that make sense, twisted or otherwise
]
…As for Alexander acting apparently at random, See twisting his character >_<
Chaotic neutral, in his case, meant he held his own freedoms, rights, and privileges above the written law, and if he could break a law to make them greater, he would while at the same time, obeying them while convenient to do so. However, do to his goal being a high position is a structured and organized system, much of the time disregarding the law would lessen his privileges if not his freedoms and rights, thus he was not supposed to do so as willy nilly as other CN characters would normally[/sblock]
As of right now, I’m presently bouncing some background ideas in my head, I’ll have to hind the info thread and then see where I stand :3
Magically aligned in this case is supposed to mean compatible with magic, takes and absorbs magic in normally unexpected ways (normal effects happen per normal, but the character’s advancement fallows a path aligned to spells he is commonly hit by or are more powerful than normal, if he is commonly hit by polymorph magic the character may end up progressing towards the ability to shape shift/shapechanger type (highly unlikely to ever get there, the amount of magic needed for such a change in the character is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future as I don’t think the character would be polymorph that much, if at all) if commonly hit by flight spells the character would start to become accustom to flight (possibly even gaining the ability)
Also, even those who are innately magical don’t have to be sorcerers: Pixies come to mind: their loaded with magic, but not all with class levels are sorcerers (they make equally good wizards by stats) and as far as raw arcane/magical energy goes, I think warlocks express that better then sorcerers; they don’t bother forming proper spells at all ;3
[sblock=C/L G/E alignment rant]
As for the evil-good and chaotic – lawful alignments, they don’t really decide if a character is predictable or not or if they work to uphold the law. Lawful just means they won’t , normally, break the written law(or as the case may be, their honor code): A Lawful character may work in the spirit of the law, or may pervert it to serve themselves and or their interests. A lawful evil character can adhere to both the spirit and the written word of the law to the letter while a lawful good character is bending it to use as both sword and shield to aid the common persion, or vica versa. Meanwhile some chaotic characters are mind numbingly predictable.
Case in point Chaotic evil: aka the “smash everything” alignment common to evil barbarians (And some of the best lawful characters are all but imposable to predict without extensive knowledge of them). At its root, in dnd Chaotic dos not mean the character has to act unlawful, only that they place freedom above law: because of this any character that places themselves above the law can easily be ‘chaotic’ and choose to obey an ordinance even though they don’t want to. This is in fact common practice to my knowledge: how often do chaotic, party, characters do something blazingly against the law on a whim? The only other true aspect of lawful vs chaotic is lawful tends to honor their word more commonly, but both can lie as well (Lawful character end up claiming some term or condition was not meet, and even inter into contracts knowing that the term or condition would never be meet. So yes, just a mild tendency to be more honorable then their chaotic counterparts)
As for good and evil: Good means they place others above themselves, evil means they will trample over others to get what they want, and neutral is simply pouting oneself first, but without the tendency crush others underfoot without mercy if doing so makes the path easier. Then taken to the liberal use that chatic and lawful are, evil is always taken to the extreme you rarely see a character listed as ‘evil’ that is only kind of evil, if someone is evil, they can kill a baby, not even filch and that’s the accepted norm; a neutral character might have no qualms with ruining someone’s livelihood, and thus their life for their own gain; by the descriptions I’ve seen of evil, that’s borderline if not across it.
[One of my commonly used evil characters will work, at his own detriment, if certain lines are crossed; the character is still an incarnation of evil, but even a devil can have morals that make sense, twisted or otherwise
]…As for Alexander acting apparently at random, See twisting his character >_<
Chaotic neutral, in his case, meant he held his own freedoms, rights, and privileges above the written law, and if he could break a law to make them greater, he would while at the same time, obeying them while convenient to do so. However, do to his goal being a high position is a structured and organized system, much of the time disregarding the law would lessen his privileges if not his freedoms and rights, thus he was not supposed to do so as willy nilly as other CN characters would normally[/sblock]
As of right now, I’m presently bouncing some background ideas in my head, I’ll have to hind the info thread and then see where I stand :3
