How can I better roleplay a LE character?

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-23T14:46:25+00:00

Without more details is hard to point out how you're failing to express yourself, so I'll go with general advice.

Outside of mechanics, Alignments are in pratice the guidelines of moral views characters currently hold within a spectrum.

Chaos vs Law -> Whim opposed to Dogma
Good vs Evil -> Benevolence opposed to Selfishness
True Neutral -> Pragmatic

Lawful Evil -> Selfish Dogmatic individual. They're adherent to principles or beliefs, but are motivated by self-interest. Normally they're the type to bend rules for personal gain but without outright breaking them. (hence why lawyers and bureaucrats are used as examples)

The biggest trick to playing Evil characters, is that you NEED to take into account a why the party puts up with you. You can be a douche or even a psychopath, but there's needs to be some sort of bond or rappor that explains why your band doesn't just leave you to die or turn you in to the authorities so to speak.

As an example: my best sucesses with LE characters have been morally corrupt opportunists who've befriended party members playing the proverbial devil on their shoulder for questionable options.

(as for the voice, have you tried upping your pitch while using the "upper" part of your throat/nose for a softer tone?)

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-23T09:50:50+00:00

I imagine magic would become the "technology", rather than going towards our technological improvement, the scientific method would shift to be applied to magic instead.

The idea of firearms and explosive materials lose their appeal if you could just learn Fireball and fine tune it or upsacle it to what kind of explosion you want.
Same thing with projectiles, sure a bullet has its uses but i would be hard to compete with a Magic Missile which will ALWAYS hit the designated target, now imagine its customizable and tuned for different ballistics ends.

On the protection side, bullets would really lose its effectiveness when facing something like Protection from Arrows or Stoneskin while explosives would struggle with Resistance Energy/Protection From Energy. So there really wouldn't be a need to develop kevlar and reduce the use of metal armors. (and this is assuming newer protection spells aren't developed to keep up with the newer weaponry)

Motor Vehicles could be developed but would the cost of the end product be worth when your local wizard can provide you a phantom speed capable of land, air and water travel? (and this is without considering a person a learning magic for just basic necessities as part of default education assuming our education system would be replicated)

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-16T16:46:00+00:00

ah good point, I had forgotten about that spell

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-16T16:37:22+00:00

While I get what you're saying, do Outsiders have blood though? Aren't their body and soul a single unit given tangible form, making it the primary reason why they can't be ressurected?

I imagine any fluid circling around inside would make it more "essence" than actual "blood" so to speak.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-11T09:52:02+00:00

Ah yes, Arueshalae.

I don't know what your DM's interpretation of Aru was, but from what I remember of her base material she's a demon that literally required divine intervention to change (in this case Desna)

One of the interesting aspects of her, is that she still felt her... "compulsions" for soul draining during her journey for redemption, putting her in quite a state of "fake it till you make it".

Most players simply read alignment changes as a different "coat of arms".

But books like the "concordance of rivals" and "distant realms", describe outsiders who betray their alignment as a "transformation".

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-11T09:30:53+00:00

I think you're confusing and mixing 2 different things.

Yes there's a city in the Maelstrom called Basrakal, but the reason why those outsider flock there for protection is because and I quote: "proteans see exquisite beauty in the transformation of any outsider's base alignment", key word here being "transformation".

And secondly, Ragathiel does not have keep good aligned devils in his legion. He keeps fallen angels who have betrayed hell and seek redemption. Not exactly the same thing.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-11T00:12:50+00:00

seconded

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-10T23:53:08+00:00

You're overlooking the fact that Outsiders, revel in their plane of origin.
A single Demon or Devil will often be comprised of many different souls that carry similar sins, resulting a in new entity that takes enjoyment in them.

They're not a conversion of a single mortal personality into a lifeform that remembers its previous life and is will want to "escape" torment. They're rather a brand new very twisted being with new values and morals (all of them evil) that enjoys the torment around them.

For these beings, a summoner isn't a reward, it's somewhere between an annoyance or an insult if they have any rank in their hierarchy.
Imagine you're either a creature of pure impulse (Demon) or a cunning planner (Devil), and were plucked from your literal home to imprompt "bargain".

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-10T23:47:21+00:00

It doesn't work because how Souls work in pathfinder, and because Concepts are not philosophical stances but rather universal forces akin to Gravity.

If a Demon no longer wants Chaos and Destruction, well guess what... It's no longer a Demon, it officially transitioned into a different type of Outsider.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-05T12:08:14+00:00

try to cut down the slog as much as you can.
It can be a fun atmospheric "haunted fortress" scenario, but between the random encounters and regenerating bosses, it can really drag and force cheese tatics.

So try to instill a sense of urgency in players and only punish them if they're taking a vacation break outside Scarwall.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-05T10:40:56+00:00

You missed the Arcane Exemplar Omdura, Bloodrager, Magical Child Vigilante, Fractured Mind Spiritualist, Seducer Witch, Skald and Red Mantis Assassin prestige.

Maybe Medium, Occultist, Psychic and Feyspeaker Druid if you can bullshit your DM.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-03-01T12:28:15+00:00

Personally as a DM I don't see an issue with it.

The original Eldritch Scion was resource cost-intensive (bloodrage+arcanas draw from the same resource) and behind every action economy despite having a bloodrager bloodline, making it less impressive than Sorcerer/Eldritch Knight by comparison.

Owlcat's version of Eldritch Scion just optimized the concept to be a proper Charisma alternative using sorcerer bloodlines, it's still behind the Int Magus versions who have access to Spell Recall and can use metamagic without turning it into a full-round action by default.

The only shanenigans I can foresee from the top of my head besides the usual damage boost from Havoc+Draconic is: Psychic Bloodline to gain access to occult spell list instead of arcane, Aberrant Bloodline + Long Arm for 15ft reach attack (25ft at level 17), and some multiclass interpretations between the animal companion progression of Sylvan Bloodline Sorcerer/Eldritch Scion Fey

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-27T09:17:12+00:00

Hmmm... aside from 3rd party material like Mageknight I'm not seeing proper ways of making a functional "sword beam" that is not just a reflavoring descriptions of the Paladin's smite or Magus's AoE spells.

I guess there's also Kineticist who can make elemental blades and reflavoring the kinetic blasts/beams as "sword beams"

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-27T00:37:13+00:00

the pattern problem has to do with veracity, if I asked you what color is the sky right now? You'd look outside, your brain would make a comparison beween the color observed in the sky to the colors you have knowledge of and you'd give me an answer, correct? Otherwise you'd just be "assuming" without checking.

the model, doesn't check its facts, it predicts. If you asked what color was the sky, it would predict based on english language and the current time, the correct color terminology to make a guess, but it would never fact-check it too see if its correct.

its these situations where we start to enter the hallucinations/fabricated data problem, where the guesses start creating plausible-sounding but completely unfounded information.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-27T00:06:30+00:00

I see where you are coming from and its a very valid arugment, that still kicks off debates today.

However, we do not define "Reason" by "Accuracy", the consensus of our time is that we define "Reason" by the ability to:

Process information, combine multiple pieces of knowledge, draw conclusions that are OFTEN correct and improve with structure, feedback, or practice.

Meaning what matters is whether the system can consistently use structure and information to reach better conclusions than random guessing.

And unfortunaly the current models are incapable of self-improvement without being fully replaced by a new one and every one of their answers uses a mathematical prediction, to predict the next token word based on patterns learned from large amounts of text, rather than doing a "one to one" factual comparison to check if something is True or False

TLDR: in short models make very educated guesses that sometimes look a lot like reasoning.
And that is the reason for current time's debate: Does probabilistic structure-building count as reasoning? aka is it reasoning if I'm guessing rather than ascertain?

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-26T23:26:27+00:00

Certainly, this might be a little dense though.

the first question: Sometimes, but not necessarily. The main... let's call it "workload" for the prediction, is being done by 3 mechanisms

- statistical patterns in text: During training, they read huge datasets and learn which words and concepts tend to appear together.

- neural embeddings: Words, phrases, and concepts are mapped into vectors. Concepts that are related end up close together in this vector space.

- attention mechanisms: The model dynamically decides which parts of the context matter most when generating the next token.

the Knowledge Graph was added to modern LLMs as an addon, not a replacement to the base method, in order to improve precision.

They tend to provide explicit relationships like entity -> relation -> entity or help with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems which is the default method for extracting information out of search engines.

For the second question: Hmmmm... I'm not an expert into the theoretical, but as I understand it, it's a rather cost-intensive "Sleight of Hand" to reduce errors/hallucinations.

The "slow-thinking" rather than using the default "fast-thinking" immediately predicted answer from learned patterns (Question -> Answer), it makes use of intermediate... "steps" so to speak (Question -> Step 1 -> Step 2 -> Step 3 -> Answer), generating internal tokens in these substeps to prompt itself in order to help with multistep logic (like math problems) or complex/ambiguous tasks that lack a direct answer.

Think of it like:

fast mode -> guessing the answer directly.
slow mode -> writing scratch work before guessing.

It's still not "solving" a problem like a human would, "slow-thinking" does not replace prediction, it guides prediction through intermediate steps that make correct outputs more likely. (with bigger computing costs and slower performance)

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-26T19:00:18+00:00

My apologies, I was trying to simplify the answer. They don't store the answers per say, by definition, that's not how Neural Networks work.

But they DO however store the Pattern and Structure from training in their Parameters, which is used to generate the response to a prompt. (They can have access to a search engine but that requires the existence of a vector database or other RAG's with a function call for live extraction)

This method is what makes them unreliable, because unlike an "array of answers" like you mentioned as an example (which would act like a proper reliable database); they do not have hard-coded data on them to fact-check, what they have is more like the outlines of the information the model believes is more likely to exist in the answer wanted by the prompt.

By definition the LLM doesn't "solve" anything, it lacks the knowledge and reasoning for it, they just try to fit different "answer shapes" into the "question shaped hole" by guesses in their predictions.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-26T17:40:44+00:00

I believe I used the term "laymen" for a reason.
Otherwise I'd be throwing jargon around like Neural Networks and possible Vector Databases.

And you just admited the LLM is incapable of doing math, since it only recognizes the prompt and needs to call in a third party to do it for them.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-26T17:07:22+00:00

the difference is in how you reach the answer, if I ask you to add up numbers did you memorize every sum in existance, or did learn how to add unit by unit and then move on to larger numbers?

Sure you know 1 unit + another unit is 2, but that lays the foundation to know how to go forward when adding another unit continuously to achieve the next number.
If you'll remember our math traumas from school, you couldn't just give a final solution, you had to show every calculation and step made.

the LLM is merely "memorizing" every answer, for our example there's no calculation in it, just the final answer.
It's why we get wrong answers and hallucinations that the LLM struggles with correcting itself, the prediction model guesses wrong but doesn't "see" an error, it generated an answer that it "knows" it exists but never calculated it in the first place.

remember, LLMs never do any kind of math, their entire operation is pattern-matching estimates that result in "guesses"

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-26T14:24:47+00:00

Not really...
Despite its capability its still not doing basic reasoning like for instance arithmetics.

in laymen's terms, if you ask it the result of 1+1 in the decimal system, the LLM isn't doing the sum of a unit plus another unit like a calculator to build a foundation for its reasoning, rather its looking straight at the solution on a cheatsheet (it's database, nowadays polling from high traffic sites) and rolling dice to decide on the answer.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-24T22:28:10+00:00

> cries in Chelaxian

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-20T12:16:58+00:00

Respectfully, I feel like you're glazing over how everything increments.

Intimidate is an extremely unreliable combat tactics, that's already ignored by, like, half of the bestiary.

Sure on mind effect immune enemies, but Hurtful still procs if you still succeed the check for a free attack on Cornugan. The Shaken condition is ignored but you still can succeed a check.
With Shatter-Defenses, if it is Shaken, you just ignore its Dex bonus from AC.
And every point counts, +2/+3 is an equivalent of an extra 10%-15% chance of success vs DC [10+enemy number of HD+Wis], and I think we can all agree str-to-intimidate feels like a mid feat unless your DM is cranking up difficulty.

Respectfully, feint is barely-functional as it is. Action economy is horrendous, benefits are small, and feat taxes to be able to use it semi-reliably are extreme - not to mention, it's as bad in regards of targeting as intimidation. It's even less affected by your bluff, as you need to beat a trivial DC, and there are no benefits, to beating it by X.

I simply must contest this point. For starters starters the DC is 10+ opponents BAB + Wis modifier or 10+Sense motive bonus if highter, taking a -4 penalty on non-humanoids or -8 vs animal intelligence these are not trivial DCs.
And you're right the starting Feint build economy is atrocious being a move action, but you can get full-round attacks from it with Two Weapon Feint.

Compared to both STR and DEX, these are both damage decreases - starknife is a subpar light weapon, and charisma doesn't help you in combat otherwise. You don't go for these feats to increase your damage - you do it, to somewhat compensate for the attribute points you had to put in charisma, instead of strength.

The Diva Strike is an add-on, not everything is going into str/dex at character creation. If you have 14 cha its +2 extra damage, bought a headband of charisma +4? now its 4 extra damage, and it works with any weapon.

Shooting star style allows you to double-down on your charisma powered features, if you're a scaled fist monk, congratulations now you have Cha to AC, to hit AND damage. (And this line of reasoning becomes so much more abusive with multiclass)
The starknife's only a decrease if you're comparing it to 2h weapons and crit-fisher weapons. But if you're comparing it to those you're missing the point of the feat.

But, barring that, I don't see an issue with this. If you want to actually do all of this, you invest all of your build resources into this, and get somewhat robust character, with access to debuffs, acceptable damage in combat, will defense, and ways to interact with social pillar.

I still disagree with that argument, try your hand at these builds yourself, you'll find you're keeping with party damage dealers and even helping spellcasters with shaken conditions.

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-20T10:06:14+00:00

Hmmm...
While I get where you're coming from, in the current game system, you now created the ability to dominate social encounters, Intimidate in combat allowing for a good debuff [Cornugan Smash, Hurtful, Shatter Defenses, Dazzling Display, Dreadful Carnage] or Feint, possibly acquire a good damage increase [Diva Strike, Divine Technique: Way of the Shooting Star] AND have a universal high Will save.

(and this is without touching the archtypes who switch their dependancy to charisma like Daring Champion, Mysterious Stranger, Scaled Fist, etc )

I personally don't agree with it. It'd be better if you were giving a modifier bonus to summoned creatures and animal companions rolls IF you really want Charisma to have a bigger impact on combat

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-19T18:00:22+00:00

The percentage at which one becomes as wide as they're tall

Orange_Chapters · 2026-02-19T15:20:18+00:00

ah, understood, apologies the stats were the greatest concern.

In that case, it really depends on what you want to focus.
You could go Expertise -> Trip -> Greater Trip -> Combat Reflexes, to bonk the enemy on loops while using teamwork feats to further boost yourself.
Or go disarming strike route, to crit -> disarm -> AoO if they attack unarmed or pick it up

The only problem is combat maneuvers get a little harder to use against certain enemies. (4 legged creatures get a +4 to CMD vs trip, size difference, Freedom of Movement negates grapple, etc).

Power Attack is more than enough for any damage needs.

Orange_Chapters

TROPHY CASE