[SixOfSpades]

Question 1: One of my 3 current games stars a Wild Mage, and he's prince of a Wild Mage at that: Chaotic Neutral alignment, goes through quests without thought to morals or consequences, he might betray you if he feels like it, and quite a lot of his conversation responses are determined by my randomly hitting keys on my numeric keypad. His cohorts are just as spastic: Jan, Haer'Dalis, Korgan, Valygar, and CN Anomen. (Okay, okay, so Valygar isn't of Chaotic alignment--but this was the game in which I fought the Shadow Thief Improvements MOD, and if I'd Minsc instead of Valygar, I would simply be dead.) My question is this: Playing a Chaotic character with all-Chaotic companions seems all well and good, but isn't that a rather rational, logical, and lawful way to choose one's party? Which is weirder: Choose 5 Chaotic NPCs, or toss everybody's names in a hat and pull 5 at random?

Question 2: Since when does living off the land guarantee that you must be of Good alignment? Couldn't poachers, highwaymen, and the Atlanta Olympic bomber (who lived in the woods for about 4 years before he was finally caught) be considered Evil? And aren't Good and Evil merely relative positions, anyway? In short, why do all Rangers have to be Good? While we're at it, why can't Evil gods have Paladins? Sure, you can approximate them by having Evil Fighter/Clerics, but are the Good and Neutral gods violently opposed to bladed weaponry? Mask says, "No." (I agree that Paladins should be Lawful, though.)