D&D 5E Would You Rather Have a LE or CN party member?

[Oofta]

I think CN has a bad reputation going back to older editions that basically defined CN as chaotic insane. The party member that would switch sides in the middle of combat "just to see what happens". It doesn't have to be that way. Law and Chaos can be simply order versus freedom. Good versus evil can be altruism vs self-centered.

A LE character may kill a fellow party member because they said a bad word about their liege and saying anything bad about The High Goomba is punishable by death. Nothing personal of course, but the rules are the rules.

A CN character could simply be driven by a personal moral compass that includes loyalty to friends and indifference to others while avoiding undue harm. They may be the most loyal and reliable party member you've ever met.

Character motivation and behavior are only indirectly related to alignment.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I think CN has a bad reputation going back to older editions that basically defined CN as chaotic insane. The party member that would switch sides in the middle of combat "just to see what happens". It doesn't have to be that way. Law and Chaos can be simply order versus freedom. Good versus evil can be altruism vs self-centered.

A LE character may kill a fellow party member because they said a bad word about their liege and saying anything bad about The High Goomba is punishable by death. Nothing personal of course, but the rules are the rules.

A CN character could simply be driven by a personal moral compass that includes loyalty to friends and indifference to others while avoiding undue harm. They may be the most loyal and reliable party member you've ever met.

Character motivation and behavior are only indirectly related to alignment.

Yup. This is a part of why I like 5e alignment. It's a couple of sentences to take into account alongside Personality Traits, Bods, Flaws, and Ideals to influence player decisions and possibly gain Inspiration.

With my players who are new to gaming with 5e, CN has never been the sociopath magnet I read about in alignment threads.

 

[Slit518]

I would rather adventure with a CN party member, because then they can be Charlie Kelly from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

 

[Oofta]

Yup. This is a part of why I like 5e alignment. It's a couple of sentences to take into account alongside Personality Traits, Bods, Flaws, and Ideals to influence player decisions and possibly gain Inspiration.

With my players who are new to gaming with 5e, CN has never been the sociopath magnet I read about in alignment threads.

There's also the oddity that people think a CN would be an insane sociopath with no sense of self preservation while many serial killers are very ritualistic, follow set patterns and follow a "code". In other words are the very definition of LE.

In any case, if anyone ever tells me in a game I'm DMing that their PC does ___ because their alignment is ___ on a regular basis or to justify asinine behavior we're probably going to have a chat.

 

[MNblockhead]

The more important thing to me is the kind of player than the kind of character the player plays. A bad player can make a character of any alignment ruin the game for everyone. A good player can make a character of any alignment add to everyone's enjoyment of the game. If you want to play CE, you need a reason for why your character is working with other party members. You can be CE without being completely mad or you can be completely mad in a way that favors support of the group. Some of the biggest monsters in history loved their families and were very loyal to their friends. Instead of bonds of love, perhaps there are magical bonds that force you to support the party. Maybe you just really enjoy the adventuring and the party is your way to get opportuniteis to kills things and get loot. Whatever the character's motivations and contraints are, it is up to the player to come up with something that makes the character a workable member of the party.

As for whether I would want a CN character. Sure, if it is the right character played by the right player. The best real-world example of a CN person I can think of is Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead. Man, I love Jerry's music and he could be a very charismatic and loving person. He could also be a selfish prick, especially to the women in his life. More interesting is how he reacted to issues the band had with its success. Both cool and not so cool reactions.

CN Cool: Not only did he have no interest in policing people recording their shows and selling unlicensed merchandise, the Dead were known for allowing and in some cases setting up areas for people to bootleg their concerts, which is why you can support entire radio stations of just Dead music and not hear it all.

CN Cool: To hell with playlists and even playing the same songs the same way. The Dead were adept and Jerry a master at improvisation. Every concert was different. Song devolves into chaos and are new songs built up from the chaos.

CN Not Cool: The Hell's Angels liked to hang out with the Dead. I'm sure they provided some of the Dead's drugs and occasionally provided security. When some of the other band members raised concerns, especially for female staff, significant others, and groupies, Jerry's respons was "Well, you know, I don’t think that good means very much without evil”.

CN Not So Cool: When Dead's popularity had a resurgence in the 80s with their only hit single "Touch of Grey" (from their In the Dark Album), the traditional laid back community of fans that surrounded the Grateful Dead were swelled with touch heads and the huge groups of people coming into communities camping out, doing drugs, trying to sneak into venues were leading to issues with local communities and their police, plus fans were getting hurt and arrested. Most of the band members worked with local oranizers and law enforcement, making recordings to be played to fans asking them to do and not do certain things to be more safe and more respectful of local communities. Jerry refused to participate. He didn't want to tell people what to do.

CN Not Cool: Jerry (and other band members) would slip acid into peoples drinks and dose them without their consent. E.g., on a TV appearance, they didn't like the staged-party feel, so they dosed the drinks of the extras with LSD to turn the show from an artificial party into an authentic party.

Still, despite occasional fights and interventions, Jerry was very loyal to his bandmates and fans. He wanted to leave the band in the 90s but so many people's livelihoods depended on him, he stuck with it and felt trapped by it and abandoned a relationship over it. Which sounds more lawful than chaotic, but people are complex. Characters can be complex as well. One can have a particular view of the world and try to aspire to and live by ideals, but behave very differently from those ideals in specific areas of your life.

 

[BookBarbarian]

In any case, if anyone ever tells me in a game I'm DMing that their PC does ___ because their alignment is ___ on a regular basis or to justify asinine behavior we're probably going to have a chat.

I always try to stave this off in my Sessions 0s.

With varying degrees of success

 

[Dispater]

Lawful Evil any day.

Chaotic Neutral gets interpreted as bonking mad about 99% of the time.

Playing Lawful Evil actually brings up some interesting moral dilemmas for the player. CN is just a free pass for 'whatever works'

 

[Warpiglet]

I don't allow evil characters in my home campaign, so CN. I also have a general rule of don't play a jerk, or someone who is purposely disruptive.

However, CN just means they don't believe in external laws and rules and don't adhere to a code of good or evil. It does not have to mean chaotic insane or really chaotic evil but that's not allowed at my table.

My last cleric was CN - he didn't believe any authority figure should be telling others what to do and everyone should seek their own path. While he never committed any explicitly evil acts, he also wouldn't necessarily go out of his way to do good deed either.

Then again, I think people should use alignment as little or as much as they want. I view it as a general guideline to how the character views the world, not as justification for actions or a straight jacket.

EDIT: If anyone at my table ever says "I'm going to do ___ because I'm ___" we're going to have a talk about what alignment means and revisit the baseline rule in my first paragraph.

Exactly spot on.

Here is an example of "I'm going to do ___ because I'm ___":

What do you do as the typical neutral character? Some people might play it as maintaining a balance but the average farmer has no idea what balance this refers to. Also within a true N alignment a person might do something noble for the homeland or actually something cowardly to save themselves. It just does not make sense to say if "alignment" then this particular behavior.

Consider Lawful Good. Do all LG characters fight evil with great conviction? Are they necessarily brave or generous? They may well tend to do the right thing more often than say a true neutral, but it does not mean they always do so nor do they always act in a selfless fashion.

Alignment speaks to overall tendencies and probabilities but there is and should be incredible diversity within each of the 9 alignments.

If we look at it through this lens, my question would be about particular behaviors. The LE character that murders when it makes sense to them or within their code could bring about the death of the whole party just as easily as a CN character could. The question is less CN for me and more about the level of stupidity or conflict the character fosters.

Are there any conflict averse CN mages with the sage background who do not like restriction but usually stay in their lane? I think it is possible and the character would be little trouble in most parties.

We had a pal that always played CN characters. He played CN as "conflict needed" and was periodically attacked by other party members. He also generated fun at times and at other times acted in ways that no authority structure would tolerate which sort of ruined any sense of realism. Popping off to a noble in his own manor or keep should get you hung or worse if they are in authority but often a DM will handwave the game can continue.

So my long-winded conclusion is the alignment matters much less that the behavioral tendencies within the alignment. Two LE characters might not play the same way...

 

[Storyteller Hero]

Almost all problems that arise from alignment issues are a result of players not having enough direction to work with (possibly including the understanding that alignment doesn't force the choices that their characters make). They might not know what their characters actually desire, what their personal objectives are, so the players end up playing to stereotype or worse - much like a chicken with its head cut off.

A good session zero, where the players and the DM hammer out the personal objectives of each character as well as the reasons why their characters might cooperate productively in a group, will have a good chance to prevent most if not all possible alignment-related problems.

If a player chooses to play disruptively in spite of discussion on motivations and whatnot, that's a potential red flag on the player him/herself, and one may have to consider kicking the player out of the group, because unless the player actually is one's kid, it's not one's job to teach the player how to be an adult.

 

[DeanP]

I'd rather a Chaotic Neutral. Chaos is the natural order of the universe.