The Alignment System & "Real" Alignments

[Kitunenotsume]

You know, after reading this I feel that it's pretty ridiculous that the standard Elf alignment is Chaotic Good. If the vast majority, even 40% of the population "don't respect authority, follow their own conscience" then how do they have cities, peaceful societies, leadership structures etc. At best Elf society is Neutral Good (which would have to mean the majority of Elves are Neutral Good)

Convenience, community benefits, and a large enough world that if you ever want to stop working with the commune you can just leave, I should imagine.
You don't need to respect authority to come to the sensible conclusion that your life is easier by working together, as long as everyone willingly chips in where they feel like helping.

[Azroth]

Just keep in mind with all arguments presented that alignment definitions changed between editions.

In older editions, it was more black and white. The newer ones are more flexible with some grey in between. The black and white systems are great for people new to role play and/or D&D. The grey bit is less so until you grasp a better understanding.

[Rhifox]

You know what the biggest problem of DnD's alignment system has always been? The attempts to codify generalities for specific alignment combinations (eg LG, CG, CE, and so on). The system makes perfect sense when you view it from the lens of Law/Order vs Chaos and Good vs Evil, and set characters into specific alignment combinations based on how they relate to both of those scales independently (as in, you understand your character relates more to Chaotic ideals, and they relate more to Good ideals. Therefore, they are Chaotic Good). Like, if you just read the descriptions on Law and Chaos and Good and Evil, and stop there, it makes tons of sense. The biggest issues in alignment come when you start giving stereotypes for specific alignment combinations and players then feeling like they must meet those stereotypes and slot their characters into those 3x3 boxes, instead of building an alignment based on their own understanding of the philosophy behind the alignment system. This is why you'll always have people quoting the combination definitions as if those should be binding, but never quote the actual philosophy descriptions, even though the philosophies are far more important to understanding how alignment is constructed.

Functionally, this is what alignment actually is:

[Hoihe]

You know, after reading this I feel that it's pretty ridiculous that the standard Elf alignment is Chaotic Good. If the vast majority, even 40% of the population "don't respect authority, follow their own conscience" then how do they have cities, peaceful societies, leadership structures etc. At best Elf society is Neutral Good (which would have to mean the majority of Elves are Neutral Good)

It is better inho to view law and chaos as Individualist vs Conformist.

Elves are highly individualistic. The edge case for individualism for them manifests in worship of evil gods, reanimation of dead, helping drow, working with fiends and killing fellow elves who did not violate these

These things are forbidden. They are forbidden as a consequence of the Good alignment.

There is also hiearchy thanks to the Seldarine appointing a Coronal as their mortal representative, and a general respect for elders and otherwise wise leaders .

However, unlike almost everyone - elves encourage a great deal of individualism and diversity so long it remains Good.

This is best examplified by Angharradh, whose teachings are essentially "Our individuality and diversity is our strength - for with our sense of kinship, we will do our duties for Good and the elves perfectly without sacrificing who we are "

This is reflected in Arborea/Arvandor. Like Elysium, Arvandor lets petitioners retain their memories and identities unlike the lawful neutral Oghma who seeks ubifornity beyond skills.


Going by rhifox's approach, elves who follow the Seldarine are quite strongly Good, with Chaos manifesting through Individualism.

Because they lean heavily over good rather than chaos, their econonic system is quite communal - elves will go out of their way to feed and house the destitute members of their community so long they too follow seldarine/seldarine allied gods. By our instincts, this sounds more like Lawful systems of economy, but in thid case it comes from the Good angle. In elven economy, the chaotic angle manifests in mobility.

In wood elven villages, all elves between 25-110 will try out every job their home can offer (Races of the wild), then choose one that suits their skills and spirit without external pressure. Compare against humans who will have their children follow their own footsteps, nore likely than not.

Moon/sun elves do not have this described explicitly outside of novels (and some novels... break the lore (Labelas and the spelljammer accident. completely out of character) so sticking with just sourcebooks... there isnt much. We know on evermeet they have noble houses, strong liberties and attending the Tower of sun and moon is very prestigious - doing so means your parents got you in, or you showed exceptional skill. Bit less ideal than wood elven, but still far more free than real Earth society at the time.

[Rhifox]

In addition to what Hoihe said, it should also be noted that elves are somewhat related to fey, who are basically the definition of chaos and yet also have hierarchical societies, even with things you might typically associate with a lawful society, like the importance of lineage. The thing with fey societies, though, is they're very much built around the individual, and individual whims and wants. Often one or a group of very charismatic leaders whose presence awes those around them, and whose word is law because it's their word, not because some arbitrary law dictates you follow it. Such leaders are supplanted when they step down or someone else proves themselves even more charismatic and worthy of the position. If one doesn't agree with such a leader, which can often happen for creatures driven by their passions and impulses, then they can either try to supplant them, or leave.

Demon structures are similar. One very strong overlord whose might, cunning, or charisma cows those around them. Demons, like fey, have courts.

Chaotic characters can have societies. There can be chaotic societies. Chaotic societies are just built around the individual and their whims, rather than around any particular code of laws or traditional values.

There is so much room for all sorts of characters and societies in every alignment bracket.

[Thaelis]

This is reflected in Arborea/Arvandor. Like Elysium, Arvandor lets petitioners retain their memories and identities unlike the lawful neutral Oghma who seeks ubifornity beyond skills.

Going by rhifox's approach, elves who follow the Seldarine are quite strongly Good, with Chaos manifesting through Individualism.

Because they lean heavily over good rather than chaos, their econonic system is quite communal - elves will go out of their way to feed and house the destitute members of their community so long they too follow seldarine/seldarine allied gods. By our instincts, this sounds more like Lawful systems of economy, but in thid case it comes from the Good angle. In elven economy, the chaotic angle manifests in mobility.

In wood elven villages, all elves between 25-110 will try out every job their home can offer (Races of the wild), then choose one that suits their skills and spirit without external pressure. Compare against humans who will have their children follow their own footsteps, nore likely than not.

Moon/sun elves do not have this described explicitly outside of novels (and some novels... break the lore (Labelas and the spelljammer accident. completely out of character) so sticking with just sourcebooks... there isnt much. We know on evermeet they have noble houses, strong liberties and attending the Tower of sun and moon is very prestigious - doing so means your parents got you in, or you showed exceptional skill. Bit less ideal than wood elven, but still far more free than real Earth society at the time.

Thanks for the Elf lesson! I'm surprised there's so much I don't know about Elves even though I always play them

[Hoihe]

Mention of fey is a good one, and can represent the idea of "CG" is not enough of a descriptor.

Elves, even the most chaotic amongst them (mainly worshippers of Erevan Ilesre whose behaviour some may consider childish/immature due to their constant pranks and tricks and misbehaviour [including other elves (Sun Elves in particular)], they lean more towards good than chaos. This is examplified lightly in the story of a moon elven house partying, then being sent word from the Queen (who is p much the manifestation of the Seldarine, who are cosmic good, especially after 1371) that she needs more guards to protect her. The moon elven house promptly stopped their revelry, took potions/asked priests for Lesser Resto/antidote to sober up and went to fulfil their duty with minimal grumbling. In essence, just like Angharradh's dogma says: great individuality, but unshakable unity in times of need. In more extreme examples, an Erevanite will stop their pranking if they realize it was causing genuine pain and suffering for their victim (and it's not just their pride being hurt, but something deeper).


Contrast Erevan against the Seelie Court. The Seelie Court are the CG fey. However, they're pretty much immortal with very little care in the world. They lean far more towards Chaos than Good, and if a bunch of pixies went out to prank a bunch of humans - they won't care about the well-being of their victims. They will turn people bald, they will transform people's mustaches pink. They will steal beloved objects. And won't care about the mental plight and suffering this will cause. In fey society, barring being forgotten and killed - consequences are rather minimal. Even though they are technically good, no matter how hard you try to explain to pixies, nixies, dryads the consequences of their chaotic actions - of how much it will ruin families, break up communities, cause people to be outcast and exiled - they won't understand. They don't even really respect others' individuality, beyond their own: using magic to force others to dance for days on end, to say thins they didn't mean, to spend time with the Dryad rather than their partners at home.

The only thing really differentiating Seelie from Unseelie is intent, and worst outcome. Seelie will drive you mad, make you outcast, ruin your life - but they won't kill you, and stealing your soul doesn't really interest them. Seelie do all this because they don't understand mortals, and not because they revel in the suffering their actions bring. Unseelie? They specifically do what they do to see mortals suffer, to taint their souls and see death and murder.

An erevanite elf may steal your belongings, but not something that reminds you of someone you loved.
An erevanite may use charms to make you do dumb things, but if it has unforeseen consequences, they will step and and sort things out.
A seelie fey will steal your belongings, not caring what they are. They just think "I want!"
A seelie fey may force you to dance for hours, but will stop if they think it will hurt your body or kill you. (they may still misjudge though. They'll feel bad if they do)
An unseelie fey will explicitly steal your most beloved objects to see your mental anguish.
An unseelie fey will make you dance until you starve and laugh maniacally at "how weak mortals are."

[Wolfrayne]

Drow are a good example of a chaotic evil society that functions, they have a hierarchy and incredibly strict rules that they drive in to their people from day 1 but the overarching rule is basically "don't get caught and it doesn't matter"

People stepping out of their alignment once or twice isn't really a big problem, the problem comes when you have a lawful good character who constantly breaks the law or does things that perhaps their god would frown upon and yet never seems to have any form of punishment for it, or someone picks an alignment for a certain class and then has no intention of actually playing that way.

A good example is the amount of people who dip blackguard and act like its just a fighter, or pick red wizard/shadow adept but then ignore the important lore and background that actually makes those classes what they are.

[JIŘÍ]

Elven races are dominantly chaotic good.

Chaotic good character has no issue in following laws of society he sees just and fair. nor does it mean chaotic good character will rebel onto any leader (be it monarch or elected) if told orders to follow. That's biggest misconception.

Chaotic good will however oppose if his goverments obviously acts unjustly, oppressive, or purposely hurts people




Being chaotic good did not stop Sun Elves in starting Crown Wars lasting several millenias, burning down villages in war, ancient houses from taking fellow elves as slaves to work in mines (House Durothil and alike), causing massive cataclysmatic events killing hunders up to million elves (magical vortex in Mieyetar and First Sunder for example).

It did not stop noble houses in Myth Drannor coming with drawn blades (House Starym) into council meeting murdering other councilor to keep city closed to non elves, trying to shuffle the political decision of council by force.

You may say few individuals in charge were evil, perhaps. But majority of followers in each event were goodly aligned elves, YET they were willing to kill other elves and take part in attrocities.

They were goodgly aligned yet despised wild elves and wood elves, and in acient times they were treated like gipsies were in medieval real life. The entire kin, shadow elves, were even genocided by others after "supposed" assasination on some elven leader of ancient kingdom.


Hell even sun elves who are evil are rare examples yet Moonblades were forged to prevent being wielded by sun elves because moon elves feared their drive for power


In one famous battle in Crown Wars Aryvandarian army fought alliance of Mieyetar, when orcs attacked both sides. They kept fighting each other and orcs, 70 000 elves died in that battle alone.

[Ravial]

Alright, since you bring up elves, let me enlighten you with lore pre-4'th edition that you seem to so intently use.

Yes, Chaotic Good isn't the "I AM ONLY REBELS" team. They are perfectly viable to work with a society that is just and doesn't hold too many unnecessary laws like human societies have (like, having a law for every single thing).

Hhhhowever.

Let me give you a bit of a history lesson:

Hidden: show

Crown Wars:
1. The first Crown War was started by Aryvaandar, one of Sun Elven-led nations. Yes. There were other elves living in it. There were others and sun elves living in other nations. Don't generalise.
2. The second Crown War was started by Dark Elves of Illythir who (surprise surprise) always were evil in the majority of their society and decided that their prelude of assassinations on other kingdoms is done and war can now be MORE EASILY excused by Aryvaandar doing its thing.
3. The third Crown War was started by Vyshaantar Empire, because they wanted to take over a Sun and Moon elven kingdom of Shantel Othreier. By then Vyshaans were irrevocably corrupted by evil. Also, Shantel Othreier wasn't destroyed. After 300 years, they simply decided to surrender.
4. The fourth Crown War was started by Illythiir again because the Dark Disaster happened (for which there was never any proof found to blame Aryvaandar and which Myeritari high elves actually caused to be THAT bad) and they were waiting for an excuse to attack Vyshaantar empire already. Here comes the absolute gem of Illythir, which is them doing exactly every single atrocity possible that a mortal can think of and more- destroying whatever cities, villages and whatnot there is- burning the ground, tainting the water, slaughtering men, women and children- you name it. They did it. Demons n' undead.
5. The fifth Crown War was started by CORELLON LARETHIAN, since he decided to intervene and pointed out the Vyshaan clan as the source of current strife among the elves that will continue if it's not removed. So guess what happened? The entire elven world + their own nation turned against them.

Now, let's explain some things.

Elven kingdoms didn't take any slaves. IDK where you got that out of, but even in "Evermeet: The Isle of Elves" that goes in detail about the entire history of elves makes it a -point- to say only Dark Elves of Atorrnash and Illythir did slave trade of any sort. House Durothil was never forced to work in any mines- they were sent to Evermeet to colonialize it, which is very distinctly written out in the said book.

Atorrnash was the first city of Dark Elves. Guess what? Oh yeah, Chaotic Evil.

The Sundering (There's no First Sundering until 5e timeline) was made by High Elven mages of all other types of elves that existed. Green(Wild), Sun, Moon and Avariel. Dark elves weren't present, even though they REALLY wanted to be, because they were.............. Evil.

Lastly, the battle you're describing was The Battle of Gods' Theatre. It was between the Vyshaantar Empire and Shantel Othreier, not any alliance of Miyeritar. Orcs did attack both sides and, as it often happens in such a battle, the front splits into three sides. It was the only battle that had ever gotten this bloody and only largely due to orcs that threw the entire battlefield into chaos. Vyshaantar forces won and occupied the northern reaches of the kingdom.

Myth Drannor:

Now. Myth Drannor's history is pretty harsh, yes. House Starym started a revolution in order to overthrown and kill Coronal Eltargrim, but it failed. It was one day fight, some elves died, Starym leader died, the entire house was shamed but allowed to stay (Because you know. Elves re-socialise more than execute people). They weren't about to kill some councillors or something. They wanted to take out their king and emperor. After that, House Starym was regaining their entire honour and doing some pretty insane heroics but in the end, their last descendants died bringing more shame.

Wood and Wild elves weren't despised at all. In fact, they didn't exist until the 3.5 history of Faerun, in which Wood Elves only ever had Eaerlann as their dwelling. They were nothing like gipsies. Green elves (current wild elves) had their civilisations normally with every other elf. Their homes were centred in... Surprise surprise! Illythiir. And it was Illythiiri dark elves that, after the green elves stopped being of use, decided to just exterminate them. Wood elves appeared much, much later in the history of Faerun.

Shadow elves don't exist until 5e retcon, so that point is moot.

Moonblades:

Well, here I don't think you've either read that history properly or just forgot about it. Probably the latter. Moonblades were created by elves across the entire world in a joined ritual containing extraordinary amounts of high mages- all centred in the Elven Court. As they were created, noble lineages were allowed to send as many claimants as they wanted. A good number of elves died trying to claim a moonblade but of all those that survived- all of them were moon elves. This is why they are named "moonblades". Now, why did that happen? Evermeet: The Isle of Elves explains this easily. The ritual was designed to make those weapons be more in favour of moon elves than sun elves- on purpose- but not to prevent them completely. It doesn't stop sun elves from trying to claim one (in fact, it is mechanically possible- all you need to be is Neutral Good aligned and pass through a trial), but that's the reality of it.

Elven History aside:
Unless you're a creature with magical bloodline heritage of any sort, you're free to do what choices you want. You can be good aligned and be swayed by evil to commit something technically evil but "Right" and not "Wrong". Even if you have tendencies towards a particular behaviour (Elves, dwarves, gnomes, tieflings and such), it doesn't mean it'll dictate all you do. Your deeds are your character's alignment. The alignment isn't your character. End of story.

[zhazz]

As I keep telling people..

Alignment is descriptive - it describes your character as it is right now.

Alignment is never defining - it doesn't define your character

Even the most evil of characters can and will do things that are considered good. And vice-versa.

Changing alignment through actions and role play is even part of the rules. Otherwise there would be no need for the rulebooks to contain sections on fallen paladins, and how these can redeem themselves.

[Azroth]

I'm just going to say this and leave it there as is....

There is a point system to alignments for a reason. As even good and evil whom are falible as mortals do have short commings. However the alignment is based upon the default values your chracater holds dearly. Thus always keep in mind that while this point system does exist, it's not as if your good character will ever make it a default habbit to make acts of evil.

e.g.

A soldier from Rigus in planescape would be seen as highly regimented, structure based and unified under the laws in place to ensure the command structuer remains in tact (Lawfull). While at the same time take in slaves, kill or demote others whom are under you who do not obey the laws that are in place, all the while waging war for enterinity under this banner of tyrany and dispair (Evil).

Rigus is a LN(E) based enviroment with a mind set in place. This doesn't mean the hartless does not have short comings due to being mortals, hence why it's law that others are to obey at all times. And it's why some of it's citizens will at times be demoted so far down the chian of command they are praticly slaves as far as as sociaty and it's views.


Just giving examples here.

[JustAnotherGuy]

As I keep telling people..

Alignment is descriptive - it describes your character as it is right now.

Alignment is never defining - it doesn't define your character

Even the most evil of characters can and will do things that are considered good. And vice-versa.

Changing alignment through actions and role play is even part of the rules. Otherwise there would be no need for the rulebooks to contain sections on fallen paladins, and how these can redeem themselves.

This is exactly how I've explained it to people in the past. The alignment system doesn't show how your character will act, it shows how they have acted up until now. Do good, and get good points. Do evil, get evil points. Just because your toon is an alignment, does not restrict your future actions. It is an indicator of the past.

Now, it can be used as general RP guidelines. "I want my toon to remain NG, so I need to act in this way." Again, not as a restriction, but as a guideline.

[Steve]

It is also just as valid to say: “My toon IS Neutral Good, thus she ALWAYS acts this way, as in self-reliant, helpful, courteous, kind, respectful, sensitive, friendly, loving, merciful, gracious, humane, altruistic, giving, respectful, and protective of life.

Would this toon act Lawful Evil someday in the future-present? Highly, highly, highly unlikely. Although, you, the player, may of course make them perform a Lawful Evil action, which in the D&D game, causes Alignment to LITERALLY shift, which in a case of a NG character, could bring them to become Lawful Neutral in Being, and thus from that point on are reliable, responsible, truthful, orderly, loyal, respectful of authority, regular, structured, rigid, neat, methodical, and precise.

If you compare the traits of NG and LN above, taken from easydamus, you can see for yourself how close they actually are, and the subtle differences are what allows for character of the Character.

[bharring]

Just as not all LG characters are Lawful Stupid, not all CG characters are Chaotic Stupid. It really is a continuum.

I keep struggling to play Ceirinohr as Neutral (CN, but Chaos is easy). He's a lot kinder than his calling requires of him (mercy is one of his vices, or so his brother told him). The struggle between what kindness he may want to provide, and what kindness he should provide (because balance) gets difficult. But that's a lot of the fun.

He's in an odd position. Random acts of kindness can be upsetting to his god (Talos, CE), but he is a kind-hearted. And even when he finally "falls" from Talos, he still strives to put Balance and the Cycle above his own wishes. This naturally leads him to doing actions that seem inconsistent - he'd burn down a city given the opportunity, but he'd also rescue a passerby in a chance encounter.

People (and, by extension, characters) *are* inconsistent. Often struggling between two drives (such as Ceir's kind heart vs his duty). In some characters, one drive wins every time (or perhaps there is only one drive). But Others - like Ceir - will seem inconsistent by nature.