Pathfinder 2E Chaotic Clerics

[Farealmer3]

Can a cleric be truly chaotic? Doesn't following the rules of something external to yourself by definition make one lawful?

 

[Lanefan]

If the only rule is that there are no rules, you're good to go.

 

[Dandu]

Can a cleric be truly chaotic? Doesn't following the rules of something external to yourself by definition make one lawful?

No.

 

[Lylandra]

Why should there not be chaotic clerics? First, "chaotic" is not an extreme, but rather scaling all the way from neutral to complete anachy.

Second, just think of the deities who are chaotic: Those whose portfolios inlclude luck (believing that the randomness of life will work in your favor, so why would you need to plan anyway?), destruction (everything must end in eternal entropy! Or so.), weather (anything could happen says nonlinear dynamics! See this calm sea? Could become a raging storm in no time), love/lust (because who can really plan their attraction?), revolution/change (duh...), dreams (again, uncontrollable) and battle (the "pure violence" on a battlefield aspect, not the cleverly laid plans of generals)

Not all of these faiths would even have "hard" dogmas. They would have teachings, saying and interpretations. They would let others of their "church" have the freedom to find their own path of worshipping their god. As long as you don't violate what your god stands for that is.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In my homebrew setting I have got my own interpretation of caothic aligment. For me "caothic" means too atuned to primal forces(nature and faywild) and the behavior with people from different allegiance(family, guild, country, race, religion, tribe). My "caothic" characters can totally "legal", but only with characters with the same allegiance. A "true caothic" group couldn't survive a serious crisis like the one suffered by the characters from "the walking dead".

 

[Lylandra]

A "true caothic" group couldn't survive a serious crisis like the one suffered by the characters from "the walking dead".

I disagree. I'd go as far as to say that a more chaotic leaning group might survive better in such a scenario than a more lawful leaning one. (Of course, this heavily depends on the kind of lawfulness a person displays, but I'm speaking in general)

Why? Because in general, chaotic people are quicker to adapt to new situations, especially chaotic situations like in TWD. They don't carry cumbersome routines or traditions with them. They see a situation, examine it and react to their best ability. The only downside of a chaotic group is that unless close friendships or family is involved, the bonds between individuals might not be as tough and there might be more infighting about the right decision as there won't be a real hierarchy. But unless you take a bunch evil people (who might kill each other over decisions and refer to leadership by strength), chaotic persons are likely to be better survivors in a zombie apocalypse.

 

[Sunseeker]

Chaotic characters don't have to never follow the rules, they just get to decide which rules they follow and when. A Chaotic character may follow some rules, like the commandments of their god, and they may not follow other rules, like the laws of their homeland. Or they may follow both the vast majority of the time, and occasionally break them when they feel like it.

 

[Celebrim]

Can a cleric be truly chaotic? Doesn't following the rules of something external to yourself by definition make one lawful?

Chaotic gods don't give rules. They give axioms and guidelines and expect their followers to develop their own interpretations and wisdom to make their own decisions.

I don't mean this example to be controversial, but if the whole of a religion's laws were, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.", this would be chaotic because the axiom that is being followed makes the decision making process inherently personal and self-centered. You decide how you would like to be treated, and then that becomes your standard and point of reference. Pretty much all Chaotic Good deities are going to make the majority of following them some variation on that maxim.

Similar, "Harm no one; do as you will.", is a standard that sets up a self-centered (and thus chaotic) moral principle. Pretty much every Chaotic Neutral philosophy is going to boil down to having that as its central maxim, and everything else will be just advice on how to get what you want within that constraint.

The idea here is that instead of a detailed guide to how you should approach each scenario, the chaotic way is to just have some guiding principles that are open to personal interpretation. Chaotic deities are always much more likely to endorse some sort of 'moral relativism' and 'following the dictates of your conscious'. And they are also very unlikely to do more than advise rather than govern their cult, and very unlikely to establish a formal official hierarchy in their cult. Problems in the cult are probably expected to be resolved by some sort of consensus making, and if you can't come to a consensus then everyone should just agree to go their own way and do what they think is right. Note of course that in a Chaotic Evil cult, such consensus making could include killing off everyone that doesn't agree with your viewpoint, and that would be "Ok".

 

[Celebrim]

A "true caothic" group couldn't survive a serious crisis like the one suffered by the characters from "the walking dead".

I don't see how that follows.

The advantage of Chaos over Law is that it doesn't have all of its eggs in one basket. In the event of a crisis, almost certainly some of the chaotic cult is going to die. But because there is great diversity, it's highly likely that if only by random chance, someone is going to adopt a winning strategy. Chaos handles change by evolving, and it evolves really really well and really really quickly.

Law on the other hand tries to prepare for every eventuality. As long as it is not an excession level event, law is probably better prepared overall than chaos is. Where law tends to flop is when it encounters something that's completely outside of anything it's previously imagined. Even then, law still has an advantage in that the community will tend to pull together rather than coming apart. But even that still requires a wise leader to provide guidance, which again means all the eggs are in one basket.

Faced with a wholly unexpected extinction level event, I'd expect chaos to handle it better than law. Of course, if the universe really is lawful, then it's impossible for it to generated a wholly unexpected event that law would not have prepared for. The question of course then is, "Is the universe lawful?" Because if it isn't, then chaos will win in the end. (And conversely, on the other hand if it is really lawful, then chaos will ultimately hit a streak of bad luck, and be eliminated.)

 

[Celebrim]

It occurs to me that there is a really good example from a different sphere of human endeavor - the US military.

The US military isn't fully chaotic. A fully chaotic military is a mob that runs as fast as it can to the sound of gunfire with no centralized command and control at all. But the US military is one of the most chaotic formal militaries in the world, as reflects the more chaotic moral values typical of the United States (that is to say, the US has always placed great value in individualism and prizes rights over duties).

The reason is that the US military is trained to organize itself in a bottom up fashion, with all the individual elements trained to take initiative and make individual decisions. The US military does give specific orders from time to time, but commanders are trained more to give broad guidelines and to delegate authority with the expectation that their subordinates will work out the details based on their judgment. This means that for example in the US Navy, individual seaman could be assuming responsibilities that in other navies might require the authority of the Captain of the ship.

Because their is a hierarchy and an externally reviewable code of conduct you are responsible for, it would be more proper to call this organization 'neutral' on the law/chaos axis, but hopefully it provides some understanding of how you could belong to an organization and that organization still be chaotic.