What ever happened to Law and Chaos?

[Chronos]

Quoth Segev:

I think Law and Chaos are as represented as Good and Evil, honestly. The real issue, to me, is that the distinctions seem to vanish in the Upper Planes, as you so rarely hear about conflicts (even non-violent ones) between Celestials of opposing stripes. You'd think Eladrins and Angels would have issues with each other. Sure, they're all Good, so they're not going to throw down in a bloody battle over their disagreements, but the politics of Good should be more interesting than they are.

I think you actually hit the key point, there. The conflict between chaotic good and lawful good is just politics. They disagree just as strongly as LE and CE; they just express those disagreements through spirited debate instead of through violence. The thing is, though, most players of RPGs don't find spirited debates as fun as violence, so that gets less coverage in the books (though you do certainly see it among players who do enjoy that sort of thing).

[Milo v3]

I could see Angels and Eladrins doing duels in arguments, though obviously only one side will likely be expected to be honourable. Good thing angels are stronger overall compared to Eladrin, means the eladrins's cheating probably makes duels more fair.

[Eldan]

I wouldn't say Archons* are stronger...

3.5 doesn't have the full set of 7 archons in the core MM, but the Trumpet is CR 14. The Ghaele is 13, not much weaker. The strongest forms of neither are in the MM.

The list on Wizards puts Eladrin from CR 2 (Coure) to 18 (Tulani) and Archons from 2 (Lantern) to 15 (Throne). 16 for the Hound Hero, that's class levels. So, if anything, Eladrin are stronger.

*It annoys me when people call Archons "Angels". "Angel" is a name for the Aasimon, not the Archons. Angels aren't even exemplars. They are also "any good" in alignment.

[Necroticplague]

*It annoys me when people call Archons "Angels". "Angel" is a name for the Aasimon, not the Archons. Angels aren't even exemplars. They are also "any good" in alignment.

This is slightly news to me. I thought that "angel" meant Good Outsider (covering archons, eladrins, and whatever the heck the NG guys are), just like how "fiend" means Evil Outsider (covering devils, demons, and yugoloths).

[Divide by Zero]

That's a bit extreme, and quite contrary to the fluff I'm familiar with. The most chaotic thief around probably wants civilization to stick around and be quite healthy, that's how he makes a living after all. Bards and sorcerers are in a similar situation, in spite of also usually tending towards chaotic. Hell, even the barbarians often have a rudimentary form of civilization that they're unlikely to willingly let go of.

But you're using the 3E definition of Chaotic here.

[Milo v3]

I wouldn't say Archons* are stronger...

Keep forgetting Angels aren't the lawful good ones.... Not sure how that got in my head in the first place now that I think about it...

[Kish]

Am I alone in this, or do other people agree?

This is a misleading phrasing.

If you mean what you said: Yep. Just as it should be, they treat whether a character believes in order or chaos as much less important than whether that character is good or evil.

If you mean the unstated "And that's terrible" I find myself seeing between the sentence I quoted and the one right before it, you're inexplicably not on your own but I'm certainly not with you.

[Psyren]

This is slightly news to me. I thought that "angel" meant Good Outsider (covering archons, eladrins, and whatever the heck the NG guys are), just like how "fiend" means Evil Outsider (covering devils, demons, and yugoloths).

The blanket term for "upper planes Good Outsiders," at least according to BoED, is "celestials." This is despite only one of the three groups being native to Celestia. Their leading bodies - i.e. the Hebdomad, Court of Stars and 5 Companions - are called "celestial paragons."

This is part of why I like Pathfinder's use of "Heaven" for the LG afterlife more heavily than "Celestia."

This is a misleading phrasing.

If you mean what you said: Yep. Just as it should be, they treat whether a character believes in order or chaos as much less important than whether that character is good or evil.

If you mean the unstated "And that's terrible" I find myself seeing between the sentence I quoted and the one right before it, you're inexplicably not on your own but I'm certainly not with you.

Yeah, that.

[SaintRidley]

I'm thinking Limbo and the Slaadi might even be less primordial chaos than everyone supposes. Perhaps the Far Realm is the original chaos of the cosmos, Limbo the pale shade of it allowed to exist within the Great Wheel for the sake of balance. When (if) the Far Realm rises to reclaim reality, everything from the most Lawful Modron to the most Chaotic Slaad Lord (or even Pale Night, the shadow of the Queen of Chaos) will tremble at what true Chaos is.

The cosmos inherently carries a bent toward Law, and even the most Chaotic within it have that touch of Law which is detestable to the true Chaos outside.

[Greenish]

whatever the heck the NG guys are

Furries. (Or Guardinals.)

[Psyren]

I'm thinking Limbo and the Slaadi might even be less primordial chaos than everyone supposes. Perhaps the Far Realm is the original chaos of the cosmos, Limbo the pale shade of it allowed to exist within the Great Wheel for the sake of balance. When (if) the Far Realm rises to reclaim reality, everything from the most Lawful Modron to the most Chaotic Slaad Lord (or even Pale Night, the shadow of the Queen of Chaos) will tremble at what true Chaos is.

The cosmos inherently carries a bent toward Law, and even the most Chaotic within it have that touch of Law which is detestable to the true Chaos outside.

I'm inclined to agree, because Limbo (for all its chaos) still fits orderly into the Wheel framework. The Far Realm is true chaos, to the point of defying the wheel's structure and all reason.

[Segev]

It's actually pretty easy to quantify Absolute Law, too: It is dispassionate adherence to the rules, with measured discussion and careful process for everything, especially changing the rules. And even in changing the rules, Absolute Law does so only with an eye towards correcting inclarity or better reflecting the goal of the rule, never to reduce the scope of the rules in general nor encourage "personal interpretation" over clear precision.

From a non-ruler's perspective, Absolute Law is basically machine logic: it does what the rules say to do, precisely and exactly (or at least within the best of its ability).

It's a little harder for me to conceptualize and characterize Absolute Chaos in the way that it works as an alignment. Another post hit part of the problem: the Far Realms are really where "primordial chaos" of the no-laws-of-nature-exist variety are meant to be handled. Limbo, Chaos of the Planes, is again more about freedom.

The reason it's harder to talk about Absolute Chaos is because freedom to choose for yourself without concern for external rules means that there is no "ruler" other than yourself.

In Absolute Law, I had to discuss that there are measured and precise ways to change the laws by specified process. This is because Absolute Law still has sentient ruling entities who have goals and who acknowledge the goals of others; order has no purpose without purpose, else how can you even tell if it's behaving in an orderly fashion? But Law is about the interaction of all the moving parts, and expectation of what the other parts will do based on agreed-upon and acknowledge procedures and traditions.

Chaos - in the alignment sense - has every entity sovereign. Absolute Chaos acknowledges no authority save the hard reality of physical (or metaphysical) incapability. It's much easier to discuss CG and CE, because CG respects the rights of all entities to be sovereign, as long as they respect the rights of others to do the same. CE does not, and in fact often revels in simply being strong enough to be that hard, cold reality of incapability to another being. CE enjoys lording power over others.

CG limits itself from swinging its fist into another's face. CE is limited only by the fact that another's face is there, and that other's mouth might bite off CE's fist.

It's harder to discuss what CN does and why, and thus harder still to think about Absolute Chaos. Absolute Chaos definitely is not without free will. It is not "flip a coin and do whatever it says" or "there's an equal probability of any given action." Beings of Absolute Chaos are just as sentient and free-willed as beings of Absolute Law. (Absolute Law restricts to the rules, yes, but they still have wills and drives of their own.)

Absolute Chaos must, I think, be the loneliest of alignments. Not CG, they don't particularly care about others enough to specifically respect that they must curb themselves wrt those others' freedoms. Not CE, they don't lord their power over other, weaker beings in order to "prove" they have no boundaries and can do anything they want. Absolute sovereigns of themselves, they recognize this is also true of other free-willed beings. But it's hard to define them without ascribing either good or evil behaviors to their choices on how to interact with others. Stating they had a certain amount of realpolitik and pragmatism, but would otherwise trample anything that got in their way, is really leaning them towards the more intelligent of CE types. Claiming they have respect for the sovereign rights of other individuals, and thus self-restrain to first try to find mutually-beneficial solutions to any conflicts leans them more towards CG.

Absolute Law will obey the rules, regardless of whether they lead to good or ill. They will only consider changing the rules (by the prescribed processes and with careful deliberation of consequences both intended and otherwise) only if they perceive that a result of the current ones is undesirable to their own sensibilities. And even then, they will follow the rules as-is despite thinking them less than optimal unless and until those rules do change.

Absolute Chaos does what it wants. I think the only way to really handle it is to give it a sort of dispassion towards others. The realpolitik and pragmatism of working with entities which might present obstacles more costly to bowl through, combined with a statement that they have enough empathy to be willing to do small favors if asked ("please don't step on me; lengthen your stride by a foot to miss, so I may live"), and that they take no pleasure in harming others. Others they harm just happen to be in the way or the most expedient tools to use.

It separates from CE by the virtue that it will take a little effort if asked; it can appreciate others' rights enough to choose an option that is less harmful to others if it is not a big deal to it. CE might do the same, but would do so because it wanted to make the "beneficiaries" feel they owed him something. Or he might deliberately choose the path of greater pain for others, just because he ENJOYS their suffering.

It separates from CG because it isn't going to go tremendously out of its way to protect others from its own expedient behaviors. A little bit, perhaps, but nothing truly noteworthy from Absolute Chaos's perspective.

Callous and dispassionate, but not essentially cruel and not without ability to grant a little bit of mercy when convenient.

[Brookshw]

I'm inclined to agree, because Limbo (for all its chaos) still fits orderly into the Wheel framework. The Far Realm is true chaos, to the point of defying the wheel's structure and all reason.

I'm sure a part of it is that the far realm was a later addition to the game so the niche had already been filled. On another level though I sort of disagree as the far realm is in some essence the antithesis if reality as d&d knows it, while limbo is chaos within the realized nature of reality.

[afroakuma]

The thing about the Far Realm is that it's not chaos; it's merely an order antithetical to our own concepts thereof. Non-Euclidean geometries are still geometries, that sort of thing.

[Segev]

The Far Realms are Apple programs trying to run on your Android device, and being aggressive about trying to physically re-wire the hardware to suit them.

[Psyren]

The thing about the Far Realm is that it's not chaos; it's merely an order antithetical to our own concepts thereof. Non-Euclidean geometries are still geometries, that sort of thing.

Yeah, that's probably a better way of putting it. Alignment = μ, that sort of thing.

[illyahr]

It took me a good long while to figure out what each of the alignments meant, and I'm still working on how to express them properly but I'll give it a try:

Absolute Good is about respecting and supporting the well-being of others. Everything is done for the good of the group to make everyone's lives better. Life is to be preserved at all cost for no one has the right to take the life of another.

Absolute Evil is wholly about the self. Everything is done to benefit the self at the expense of everything else. No value is placed on anything except how it benefits the self. Lives and resources are to be used up and tossed aside if it would benefit the self.

Absolute Law is about structure and order, planning and forsight. Everything has a purpose and performs that purpose. Every action has a set procedure and that procedure is never deviated from. (This is actually the purpose of the Qunari philosophy in the Dragon Age games.)

Absolute Chaos is about individuality and freedom, sporadic and spontaneous. Nothing is connected, for connection is structure. Every action is done at the moment of conception and consequence is a byproduct to be dealt with when it occurs. Nothing is good or evil for that implies a structure of moral guidelines that does not exist.

Those are my beliefs on the matter.

[Anlashok]

Part of the problem I think is that aspects of law and chaos don't always line up with their alignment.

It's rare to see a Good or Evil character do inexplicable acts of evil... but we have seen Devils and Inevitables lie and cheat and for the former even wanton acts of destruction. Chaos doesn't get mucked up as much, but even then you often see a lot of CG entities behaving in NG fashions.

I think in part because some people are still stuck, at least subconsciously, in the Law is More Good and Chaos is More Evil mentality.

[Drackstin]

Can't say I see that... in fact the Hells tend to be more interested in stopping Chaos than they are Good. To the point where...


I think there's an order buried in some book (maybe pathfinder) that's essentially an alliance between asmodeus' hellknights and clerics of some big name LG god that work together to crush demons.

this was when Asmodeus and Calistria, and about 20 other gods came together to seal Rovagug a CE god that they couldn't kill. many gods died that day. and they were of all alignments. so this story is mute.

[Anlashok]

this was when Asmodeus and Calistria, and about 20 other gods came together to seal Rovagug a CE god that they couldn't kill. many gods died that day. and they were of all alignments. so this story is mute.

Nope, just looked it up and it has nothing to do pathfinder tharizdun. I was thinking of the Order of the Godclaw

[nedz]

It took me a good long while to figure out what each of the alignments meant, and I'm still working on how to express them properly but I'll give it a try:

Absolute Good is about respecting and supporting the well-being of others. Everything is done for the good of the group to make everyone's lives better. Life is to be preserved at all cost for no one has the right to take the life of another.

Absolute Evil is wholly about the self. Everything is done to benefit the self at the expense of everything else. No value is placed on anything except how it benefits the self. Lives and resources are to be used up and tossed aside if it would benefit the self.

Absolute Law is about structure and order, planning and forsight. Everything has a purpose and performs that purpose. Every action has a set procedure and that procedure is never deviated from. (This is actually the purpose of the Qunari philosophy in the Dragon Age games.)

Absolute Chaos is about individuality and freedom, sporadic and spontaneous. Nothing is connected, for connection is structure. Every action is done at the moment of conception and consequence is a byproduct to be dealt with when it occurs. Nothing is good or evil for that implies a structure of moral guidelines that does not exist.

Those are my beliefs on the matter.

There are multiple interpretations of all of these, which is fine IMHO. There are also graduated shades of each alignment. A more complex character may have shades of opposing alignments in their make up.

[SaintRidley]

The thing about the Far Realm is that it's not chaos; it's merely an order antithetical to our own concepts thereof. Non-Euclidean geometries are still geometries, that sort of thing.

I've always preferred the Far Realm as going beyond that. It's outside the very concept of geometry - non-Euclidean geometries aren't even what it has, simply because geometry itself is something without meaning there. Hells, meaning is something without meaning there.

I like the Far Realm as Outside, Beyond. Any attempts to make sense of it, whether it be in terms of Euclidean geometry or even understanding it as non-Euclidean, is missing the point. There is no sense to be made, no order to derive, because it is the fundamental absence of anything resembling order.

In being a truer chaos than chaos, which itself can only be understood in relation to order and is thus an ordered thing, it is unrecognizable in any framework we try to put it in. Even in all of Limbo, there are still rules. There is still an order within the chaos in the cosmos of the Great Wheel, even if it is as primal as "oppose order." In the Far Realm, there is none of that. Order and Chaos are meaningless, because everything is meaningless, not even the loosest structure in anything.

As I see it, the Far Realm was the entirety of everything once upon a time. The ultimate nihilism where there was nothing, and nothing was everything, and everything was nothing. And then, something changed. Something emerged from this absence of presence, or became present in this absence, and the first notions of order were born with it. The cosmos formed within, pushing back the Outside to create an Inside, a Great Wheel of Insides.

And even as the Outside and the Inside began to differentiate, parts of the Inside yearned for what was before. Chaos, an imperfect approximation of Outside, was birthed in an attempt to collapse the Great Wheel, to return the Inside to the Outside, unaware they could only glimpse and imagine what true chaos is, what a true absence of order brings. They think it pure freedom, but the truth is that they will return to nothing, to everything, if successful.

The Far Realm is a divide by zero error, and yet it exists in spite of itself and its very nature as a thing that cannot. It's the ultimate expression of Chaos as I see it, something even the most Chaotic Obyrith demons (who I feel are even truer to Chaos than the Slaadi) cannot begin to approximate. The lesser Chaos of the Great Wheel is utterly constrained by the essential Order that comes with having a cosmos, and more importantly is blind to the fact that it is, fundamentally subject to Order even if it purges the cosmos of what it deems contrary to freedom.

In order for true chaos, the chaos beyond the reckoning of even the great Slaad lords, Eladrin nobles, and Obyrith kings, to exist, all has to be extinguished.

That's how I like to go about it, anyway.

[Psyren]

Even the Far Realm has some limits. It has a name, and there is a boundary between It and Not It.

While it's perhaps accurate to say that any classification we come up for it will be wrong (simply because our very ability to classify things is limited to our mortal frame of reference and our need for logical connections between things), there's not much point in throwing out every possible label as being useless either.

[atemu1234]

When it comes down to the far realm, I've always thought of it as antithetical to the everything. Beings from there that go over to the mortal planes aren't just weird, they take bits of the far realm with them because without it their existence would be impossible. We can only see them because our brain is giving us the cliff-notes of what is actually there, because they literally cannot be processed by anything. Stuff like that.

One of the things in my campaigns was that there is no "true" chaos. Everything was created by the gods who basically put them together. Without that spark of law they wouldn't exist. The Far Realm (again, in my campaigns) lacks that spark and yet somehow still happens. Nature itself abhors it, as does divinity.

[Segev]

An interesting converse to the Far Realms beings having to bring bits of their reality with them, and our brains processing them "wrong" and only showing us what we can conceive, is that this is likely true for them of us, as well. When they come to our multiverse, they don't perceive us quite right, either. We have unknowable, alien elements that they find just as disturbing, if they even partially perceive them. When high-level mages and adventurous parties cast their magics to take them to the Far Realms, we bring part of our reality with us, and it hurts and warps theirs as much as what they bring with them does ours.

[Da'Shain]

An interesting converse to the Far Realms beings having to bring bits of their reality with them, and our brains processing them "wrong" and only showing us what we can conceive, is that this is likely true for them of us, as well. When they come to our multiverse, they don't perceive us quite right, either. We have unknowable, alien elements that they find just as disturbing, if they even partially perceive them. When high-level mages and adventurous parties cast their magics to take them to the Far Realms, we bring part of our reality with us, and it hurts and warps theirs as much as what they bring with them does ours.

That's actually how I run Far Realms creatures in my current game dealing with it. The Far Realms has existed since before time as the formless chaos, and the universe as we know it arose when the gods essentially congealed into discrete beings by accident, decided they liked this new way of existing, and made an entire multiverse through force of will. Before they were gods, they were some unknowable entities that played by different rules that even they forget, but the mere act of being perceived by what we think of as consciousness alters them.

This holds true even now and explains why Far Realms entities are almost always at the least annoyed by people; the conscious mind pulls them into a semblance of consciousness and physicality as well, and by and large they are not huge fans of being confined (however poorly) to a form and function. Mortals who go to the Far Realms by and large go mad from trying to make sense of it, but this is because the chaos is literally pushing back against their minds in an attempt to stay formless and chaotic. People of sufficient will can survive and even exert limited control over the Far Realm, but the things native to that realm of existence are always, ALWAYS better at it than someone with a mind, so it's incredibly hostile even for them.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that I view the Far Realms as being closely related to Chaos as a multiversal concept, but far beyond it to the point of representing the complete dissolution of consciousness into an unknowable state of existence.

[SaintRidley]

^^ More or less that. I'm a fan of the idea that they aren't even entities when in the Far Realm. It's contact with this reality, and even the slightest bit of Order, which gives them form. And the stuff of their nature rebels violently against that confinement. It's a good thing only a little gets in at a time, since enough would break the whole of what we call reality.

[123456789blaaa]

I don't understand the tendency to associate the Far Realm with Chaos. We already have a place for Chaos in the Great Wheel. Why ruin the glorious symmetry? I think it cheapens the existing Chaos of the Great Wheel if the Far Realm becomes the "true chaos". I prefer the canon where the Far Realm is something completely alien to our reality and that includes Chaos. Chaos doesn't have rules but it does have guidelines. Pure randomness is all the same and thus not Chaotic.

Anyways, other than that, I agree with the above posts. The stuff of the Far Realm that comes into our reality is only even "comprehensible" because our reality processes it (and they look weird and twisted and sick because that's very hard to do). There was a great post by Afro detailing the levels of filtration:

Are there any (canonical) permanent or semi-permanent gates to the Far Realms? What effects do they have on the area "immediately around" either end of those gates (quotation marks used because 'around' isn't really a thing in the Far Realms except where material taint infects it)?

Yes indeedy. The most famous would be from the Gates of Firestorm Peak - the Vast Gate, an invention of elder elves in a time long since past. Leicester's Gap in the Ethereal Plane is also known to lead to the Far Realm. In the reality of the Great Wheel, prolonged Far Realm exposure creates a region known as a cerebrotic blot, which infects the border of the Region of Dreams and begins to taint and warp lesser life in the area. Powerful and extensive blots warp higher forms of life as well, and entities of the Far Realm may leak through. Laws of physics may "wobble" a bit in these areas.

On the Far Realm side, a gate to the Great Wheel is like a light in the deep darkness; tiny and pinpoint, but it attracts attention. The nature of any possible "inverse taint" caused by the Great Wheel is impossible to nail down, since it would be diffused across the infinite layers of the Far Realm.

I'm going to delve into speculation here, though; the Far Realm is by nature impossible to chart or map. "Regions" can be discussed, though, insofar as their "nearness" to a fixed portal or planar entry point. These are not stable, but rather exist contingent on a brush with the Great Wheel.

So, first you have Proxima, the margin of the Far Realm closest to a continuous planar link. The Vast Gate counts as such insofar as the Far Realm is disconnected from conventional time and so this portal is effectively a continuous link. This is the region most commonly described, the realm of the Amoebic Sea and the horrors discharged into known reality. That's right; everything commonly experienced, all the squamous tentacles and disorienting soup of insanity, that's the most hospitable the Far Realm ever gets. Being located near a continuous link, Proxima is "filtered" by the incursion of reality to appear comprehensible to mortal senses. Note that in this case, when I say "comprehensible" I mean "you look and see things," not "it makes any degree of sense."

Approxima is the margin that forms around any instantaneous or terminal incursion; smaller and less stable than Proxima, this region is most notable for the repulsing current in antireality that slowly drags intruders back out through the pinhole puncture they caused. Ostensibly, this bungee cord effect should make Approxima safer, but if you believe that then you've never been dragged backward through a pinhole.

Next up is Mesia, the region where reality's incursion begins to fail. Xaxox is located in Mesia, constantly refreshed by Daruth Winterwood's maddened work. Mesia is where the supposed "facts" of the Far Realm themselves begin to slip away. This margin fills with those entities that combine curiosity with caution, presences that are far removed from the penetration point itself but are near to it in thought. Mesia is severely taxing on the mind and body; reality wanes severely here and very little can be done to protect from that.

Distalia is the farthest of what can even semi-seriously be called the "safe" regions, and can run perilously thin at times. This margin often floods with the nothingness beyond, sucking the unwary well outside any possibility of retrieval. Recognition begins to plummet off here as any veneer of reality mutates into warped abstractions and the native entities shrug off their incursion-inflicted forms. Distalia is effectively the glimmer of light in the darkness for the lords of the Far Realm, and those that did not project forward into Mesia to observe an incursion will likely impose their presence here, should they be at all interested.

Finally, Ultimon is a... not so much a region as a borderline. Ultimon represents the terminus of reality's influence and the effective event horizon of the Far Realm. To enter Ultimon is to give up any reasonable hope of escaping the strange plane, and marks you for certain doom. The mind cannot interpret the nature of Ultimon.

By the way, anyone even a little interested in DnD fluff should go check out the current Afro Planar Questions Thread (hm, is the plug still shameless if I'm doing it for someone else's work?).

[Vhaidara]

The Far Realms are Apple programs trying to run on your Android device, and being aggressive about trying to physically re-wire the hardware to suit them.

Can I sig this?

[123456789blaaa]

As an aside, I would consider Lovecraft a terrible inspiration for Far Realm material. That even includes aesthetics. Now don't get me wrong,I love lovecraft and injecting inspiration from his material into the game. I just think it fits better with various Great Wheel things like the Obyriths. Heck, the actual Great Old Ones and such probably work a lot better as Chaotic natives of the Material Plane.

I would say things like Torque energy from the Bas-Lag series and The Sick Land web serial work much better as Far Realm inspiration.