This is the fourth post in our series on the metaethics and moral standing of the lawful/chaotic alignment axis in Pathfinder. To start with the series’ introductory post, click here.

We’ve all seen it, probably many times over. For my part, I saw it first in the very first campaign in which I played, and it’s been a fixture of more or less eyebrow-raising characters ever since. More than just silly actions taken because “Hey! That’s what my character would do!” – I’m talking about Chaotic Neutral characters who have little-to-no compunction about going on what amount to criminal rampages in the name of being justified in doing so by what seem like the rather lax restrictions of their alignment. So today, in honour of happy-go-lucky CN rogues and gleefully lootful murderhobos everywhere, we are addressing the question of whether/to what extent a chaotic alignment might allow and/or justify evil actions.*

To some extent, we should also note that answering this question (or at least working towards doing so) will help us get a handle on just what it means to be CN, that trickiest and most slippery of alignments. After all, while we are ostensibly just talking about whether chaotic alignment can justify evil actions, this just isn’t a question for CG- and CE-aligned characters. To whatever extent alignment can have any kind of explanatory or justificatory role regarding character morality (recall that there are good reasons to think that the entire notion of alignment is rather incoherent on this question, and that alignment is, in a moral sense, little more than a shorthand label at best), CG characters need not worry about this question, since their aversion to evil comes from their being good, having nothing to do with being chaotic. Similarly, CE characters by definition have little or no compunction about evil actions, but this is because they are evil, not because they are chaotic.

So this question is really about CN characters, first and foremost. Let me reiterate, though, that key point that every good roleplayer and GM knows, and which very much holds true here: alignment is not character, and a character is not just her alignment. Whatever we might be able to say about alignment, it should leave rather a lot open to interpretation, such that many different kinds of characters with many different kinds of motivations could all consistently fall under the rubric of CN. A specific alignment might well imply some restrictions about what a character would not do or believe, but it would very rarely (if ever) specify what a character would do or believe.

Now, with that out of the way, we can address this question more or less head-on: is the chaotic element of a CN character’s alignment somehow sufficient for justifying evil behaviour from that character?

To answer this, let’s take a moment to recall how we’re interpreting what it means to be chaotic. For our purposes, a chaotic alignment implies a methodological approach to exercising power and accomplishing tasks which includes the unleashing or unbridling of abilities and/or resources. Being chaotic has less to do with one’s moral or political beliefs and behaviour and more to do with how one goes about acting in accordance with one’s beliefs and motivations.

So can a CN character indeed do evil by virtue of being chaotic, on this interpretation of the concept? In a rather important sense, the answer has to be “Of course!” Whatever a character’s motivations might be, she is almost certainly going to commit evil actions at least occasionally, unless she is specifically committed to doing good (and even sometimes then, albeit by accident). It probably won’t be done very consistently or very severely (otherwise you’re probably talking about a drift into CE territory), but it will almost certainly happen at least occasionally. This is a consequence of having a neutral alignment on the good/evil axis, rather than being chaotic; frankly, it’s probably true of most living humans, and hardly limited to CN Pathfinder creatures.

Of course, the exact same thing could be said of LN characters as well, so it seems that this sense of the question isn’t really speaking to the real issue. The real question we want to look at is: does having a chaotic alignment justify/explain evil actions better or more often, relative to a lawful alignment?

This is also a more difficult question, and I suspect that reliable answers to it will come down to some more detailed questions about psychology and sociology, rather than philosophical questions. That being said, I’m still willing to hazard an educated guess, which should at least provide the shadow of an answer.

We’ve already established that we are primarily contrasting LN and CN alignments. By definition, these alignments are neither tremendously concerned with doing good (that would, presumably, make them good-aligned) nor thoroughly evil (again, that would presumably make then evil-aligned), such that they probably would do evil occasionally, under certain circumstances, but not very often and not without qualification – saying more than just these vague hand-wavings is difficult without limiting the diverse range of motivations and personalities that such characters might have.

That being said, if evil done by neutral characters is usually not deliberate, then it strikes me as rather plausible to say that CN characters would likely do evil more often than their LN counterparts, given that chaotic characters tend to act by unleashing themselves and forsaking internal control, while lawful characters exercise power by focusing themselves and seizing internal control. As a matter of empirical psychology, I feel like the latter method is just less likely to result in things going wrong accidentally…though, of course, if the facts of empirical psychology don’t actually end up supporting this conclusion, it will not be saved by philosophy.

So we’ve now come to some kind of an answer to this question, lukewarm and largely empirical though it may be: having a chaotic alignment does indeed suggest that a character would probably do more evil than a similar character with a lawful alignment. But this would only be because she might be more prone to unintended consequences, and not because of anything inherently evil about being chaotic. As for those players who appeal to their characters’ CN alignments as a way of justifying amoral romps across the countryside, doing as they please and taking what they will without concern for anyone or anything else…no, a chaotic alignment does not justify any such thing. A character who behaves this way may or may not be chaotic, but she is most definitely evil, and that is the element of alignment at work in these instances.

My final answer, then, to the question of whether a chaotic alignment can justify evil actions has to be a paraphrase from Reverend Lovejoy: “Short answer: ‘no,’ with an ‘if.’ Long answer: ‘yes,’ with a ‘but.’”

So we now have a much better handle on what it means to be CN (and perhaps even LN). In the next post, we’ll have a close look at CG, and consider whether that alignment is even coherent or possible at all…and we’ll finally engage with some previous scholarship in the intersection of RPGs and moral philosophy while doing so! Stay tuned!

*Incidentally, acknowledgement for this topic is owed to “Josh,” who jumped on the introductory post for this series to ask “Have you considered discussing the phenomenon of players that use ‘chaotic’ alignment to justify evil actions?” Well Josh, your question is the reason we’re looking at this today (and not some other day, in any case).