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Ilmryn
2010-11-18, 06:05 PM
According to most alignment descriptions, there really seems to be three kinds of neutral:

-the "balance" neutral: these characters are dedicated to balance, striving to preserve a balance between the extremes

-the "torn" neutral: these characters are neutral because they have conflicting principles, they have both good and evil tendencies.

-the "uncaring" neutral: these characters are described as simply not caring about alignment an morality debates.

What are your thoughts?

hamishspence
2010-11-18, 06:12 PM
That's a pretty fair summary.

According to the PHB, true Neutral is the "typical or most common alignment" for humans,

in the sense that the chart on page 104 lists races for which the alignment slot they are in, is the typical or most common one- and Humans are the Neutral slot.

"Uncaring" or "indifferent" might represent the more apathetic citizens,

"conflicted" might represent those who do a mix of minor Evil and Good things (Heroes of Horror calls this "flexible Neutral"). They might also exhibit a mix of Chaotic and Lawful traits, too.

and "balancing" would be rare- tends to be druids, or guys like Mordenkainen.

(It also says, earlier, in the description of humans, that they "tend toward no alignment, not even Neutral"- so they have no inherent tendencies).

So I'd go with the average Human culture, being slightly biased toward neutral- which is why the Neutral alignment is slightly more typical or more common, than the others.

Evil DM Mark3
2010-11-18, 06:15 PM
I agree with this, although my terms are different:
Don't Care: People who are uninterested in alignments.
Can't Care: Things that can't understand alignment.
Cares not to Care: Some druids, some outsiders. The middle is important.


I think it is just a quirk of the alignment system.

Tengu_temp
2010-11-18, 06:18 PM
Most of the "balance" people are bat**** crazy, and fool themselves into thinking they're neutral while in reality they're evil. For example: fending off a goblin attack on a village, then helping the goblins raid and kill innocent people? The result is just a big pile of bodies. Evil.

hamishspence
2010-11-18, 06:23 PM
The necromancers in Diablo at least have the excuse of being dedicated to keeping the balance between, not Good and Evil, but the High Heavens and the Burning Hells- both of which would ruin the world if they took it over.

In that setting though, the humans are descended from hybrids of angel and demon.

In D&D, Mordenkainen's dedication to The balance is believed to stem from him knowing what happened in the neighbouring sphere (Krynn) when the balance was lost, and "Good" became more powerful- disaster.

Eloel
2010-11-18, 06:23 PM
My list is also 3 types for all alignments with 'neutral' in it.

#1
By nature. TN outsiders, animals.. Stuff that are 'always neutral'.

#2
By nurture. Druids and other people that choose to be neutral.

#3
By synthesis. Monsters/people that do both evil and good stuff, both lawful and chaotic stuff. They balance themselves out, and are in this bin because there's no 'pisses all over the alignment chart' alignment.

Comparing with EvilDM's list, I'd say
#1 is Can't Care
#2 is Care not to Care
#3 is Don't Care

hamishspence
2010-11-18, 06:29 PM
#3
By synthesis. Monsters/people that do both evil and good stuff, both lawful and chaotic stuff. They balance themselves out, and are in this bin because there's no 'pisses all over the alignment chart' alignment.


The trick is, how much evil stuff can a person do, and still be Neutral?

Mild evil stuff (worshipping an evil deity- all the way up to being a cleric of it, casting [evil] spells, using Rebuke Undead, and the like) probably qualify as mild enough that you can do them a lot and still be Neutral- as long as you only do the Evil stuff toward Good ends, and you do Good stuff too.

This fits with Heroes of Horror.

Strongly evil stuff (sacrificing people to a fiend or evil deity, murdering or debasing innocents for fun or profit, rape, severe torture, and the like)

are probably enough to put a being in the Evil bracket regardless of how much in the way of Good traits they have.

This fits with Champions of Ruin.

Callista
2010-11-18, 07:00 PM
(It also says, earlier, in the description of humans, that they "tend toward no alignment, not even Neutral"- so they have no inherent tendencies).Wait a minute, now... does that mean that fully 33% of the human race is evil?

I seriously think that's a mistake. We're Usually True Neutral, if anything.

Lev
2010-11-18, 07:05 PM
According to most alignment descriptions, there really seems to be three kinds of neutral:

-the "balance" neutral: these characters are dedicated to balance, striving to preserve a balance between the extremes

-the "torn" neutral: these characters are neutral because they have conflicting principles, they have both good and evil tendencies.

-the "uncaring" neutral: these characters are described as simply not caring about alignment an morality debates.

What are your thoughts?
Behold, the 2 kinds of neutrals:

1) Neither

2) Both

JonestheSpy
2010-11-18, 07:20 PM
I think the vast majority of folks would qualify as "torn" - basically decent, but usually reluctant to make the kind of sacrifice for others on a regular basis that would qualify them as Good, and sometimes letting their worse instincts (fear, greed, etc) guide them rather than the better ones.

Then leaning more toward lawful or chaotic depending on the culture (e.g. Medieval China leaning heavily towards law, medieval Scandanavia inclined to chaos).

dsmiles
2010-11-18, 07:34 PM
In D&D, Mordenkainen's dedication to The balance is believed to stem from him knowing what happened in the neighbouring sphere (Krynn) when the balance was lost, and "Good" became more powerful- disaster. That sounds about right, with his "enforced neutrality" philosophy. He did hop around quite a bit between alternate primes, after all.

Talon Sky
2010-11-18, 07:44 PM
I have no strong feelings one way or the other about this topic. ;p

Fiery Diamond
2010-11-18, 07:50 PM
Wait a minute, now... does that mean that fully 33% of the human race is evil?

I seriously think that's a mistake. We're Usually True Neutral, if anything.

Given my interpretation of Evil and my assessment of humanity? Perfectly fair. Maybe even generous.

Then again, I think more things are Evil than many people do AND I'm a believer that "humans are bastards" in general.

WinceRind
2010-11-18, 07:53 PM
Wait a minute, now... does that mean that fully 33% of the human race is evil?

I seriously think that's a mistake. We're Usually True Neutral, if anything.

Being evil doesn't mean being a homicidal maniac.

Your neighbor might be "evil" by D&D alignment and you wouldn't even know. A lot of people might be "Evil" by D&D description, and be cool and productive members of society.

Archpaladin Zousha
2010-11-18, 07:58 PM
I'm fascinated by the "Balance" sort of Neutral people. Something like "Balance" as an abstract concept seems like a hard thing to enforce. The only examples I've seen were people who deliberately threw themselves in the paths of protagonists because their actions were causing too much good in the world, so now it was evil's turn to win, like some sort of referee for world morality, which makes as much sense as the Big Bad being a dentist who wants to wipe out all of humanity because his fierce dedication to proper tooth care makes him disgusted with everyone else because their teeth aren't perfect.

Oh man, that metaphor's bad!

What I'm trying to say is, I don't get the psychology behind "balance" people. How do they know when this "balance" is achieved? Shouldn't they be trying to keep both forces in check, instead of becoming the opposite of whatever side's dominant at that point?

World Eater
2010-11-18, 08:08 PM
True Neutral is most often (90%) not an alignment itself, just the lack of one.

Weasel of Doom
2010-11-18, 08:18 PM
I agree that neutral does seem to come in 'torn', 'uncaring' and 'conciously seeks balance varieties'. Maybe even 'can't care' as another for animals and mindless creatures.

I second the balance neutral not generally making much sense. I guess in some cases it might work but it just feels a bit silly.

And the 33% of humanity being evil just shows that you don't have to be a screaming psycho to ping as evil.

ericgrau
2010-11-18, 08:24 PM
I tend to think of it as four kinds, as all 4 combinations of:
"neither" or "both"
"indifferent" or "strict"

Basically that makes:
unaligned, wavering, anti-alignment and balanced

JonestheSpy
2010-11-18, 09:02 PM
I second the balance neutral not generally making much sense. I guess in some cases it might work but it just feels a bit silly.


It makes more sense when you go back to the original alignemnt system of just Law, Chaos, and Neutrality, inspired by the fiction of folks like Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock. Either too much order or too much disorder cause problems, balance between the two is the goal of the philosophically minded neutrals.

It gets more complicated when you add straight up Good and Evil into the mix. The whole Dragonlance/Krynn explanation of Too Much Good = Apocalypse is just flat-out stupid, in my opinion; not-well-thought-out metaphysical hooha by not-very-talented writers. Others have approached the problem of the Need for Evil much more intelligently - Alan Moore early in his career when he wrote the 'American Gothic' saga for Swamp Thing, for example, or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

The POV in those works - in my opinion, naturally - is that you just can't have good without evil in some form lurking around. You can't really enjoy food unless you know what it's like to be hungry. You can't know true joy unless you've experienced suffering and pain. Likewise one can't truly be good unless they have the ability to be otherwise. That sort of thing.

dspeyer
2010-11-18, 09:09 PM
There's another sort: those who care very deeply about something orthogonal to alignment. Obad-Hai, Zuoken and Boccob are good examples.

Heliomance
2010-11-18, 09:14 PM
"If either good or evil overcomes the other, the balance of the planes will be upset. There will be too much power in the hands of the pantheon that won. The planes themselves will overturn and creation will be undone."

Seems like a pretty compelling reason to follow "balance" neutrality to me.

Susano-wo
2010-11-18, 09:26 PM
Compelling, but forced and hackneyed. :smalleek:

Unless it can be shown why it would really do so, aside from "well, the author/creator said..."

Archpaladin Zousha
2010-11-18, 09:29 PM
The POV in those works - in my opinion, naturally - is that you just can't have good without evil in some form lurking around. You can't really enjoy food unless you know what it's like to be hungry. You can't know true joy unless you've experienced suffering and pain. Likewise one can't truly be good unless they have the ability to be otherwise. That sort of thing.

You would not feel sadness
If you never tasted joy
That's the curse of humans
born in passion you destroy

- Mephisto, in "3 Ways to Epica," by Kamelot.

Mewtarthio
2010-11-18, 09:40 PM
"If either good or evil overcomes the other, the balance of the planes will be upset. There will be too much power in the hands of the pantheon that won. The planes themselves will overturn and creation will be undone."

Seems like a pretty compelling reason to follow "balance" neutrality to me.

Except it's completely made up for the sole purpose of enforcing "balance" neutrality. You could do the same thing for any sort of morality:

"If good fails to overcome evil, then the planes will continue to sink down into nothingness. Evil needs only stall for time long enough for creation to be undone!"

"If you don't save the pandas, then the mighty Panda Gods will descend from heaven, find their children missing, and fly into a rage, and then creation will be undone!"

"If you don't kill the pandas, then their scent will attract the mighty Panda Gods, who will tear apart the fabric of reality to extract their children, and then creation will be undone!"

Plus it brings up the question: If you're doing Evil because that's the only way to save creation, aren't you really doing Good? And if you're doing Good despite knowing it will destroy creation, then aren't you really doing Evil?

Marillion
2010-11-18, 10:49 PM
You would not feel sadness
If you never tasted joy
That's the curse of humans
born in passion you destroy

- Mephisto, in "3 Ways to Epica," by Kamelot.

EEEEEEEE ^_____________^

*ahem*

The "balance" type of neutral makes some sense if you play in a world where Good and Evil are not, well, GOOD and EVIL. GOOD by definition would create a paradise if they won, which is something even neutral people want (they just don't want to put in the work required for it). If, however, the forces of Good are simply "The High Planes" and the forces of Evil are "The Low Planes", with all the mortal races caught in the middle, it makes more sense. You can declare allegiance with the High, with the Low, or with neither, refusing to be a part of their struggle.

The best example of this I can think of comes from the book Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
ENDING SPOILER

The hosts of Heaven and the hordes of Hell are assembled, ready to do battle and initiate Armageddon. Whoever wins, the world and everyone in it will be destroyed. The outcome of the battle hinges on who Adam, the Antichrist, declares allegiance with. However, rather than declaring allegiance with Heaven or Hell, Adam instead decides to champion Humanity.


"I just don't see why everyone and everything has to be burned up and everything," said Adam. "Millions of fish an' whales an' trees an', an' sheep an' stuff. An' not even for anything important. Jus' to see who's got the best gang."


"You can't be certain that what's happening right now isn't exactly right, from an ineffable point of view." [said Crowley]
"It izz written!" bellowed Beelzebub.
"But it might be written differently somewhere else," said Crowley. "Where you can't read it."
"In bigger letters," said Aziraphale.
"Underlined," Crowley added.
"Twice," suggested Aziraphale.
......
Then [Adam] said "I don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out."
......
Adam stood smiling at the two of them, a small figure perfectly poised exactly between Heaven and Hell.
Crowley grabbed Aziraphale's arm. ..."He's not Evil Incarnate or Good Incarnate, he's just... a human incarnate."

So, if you refluff the "morality" axis as an "allegiance" axis, it sorta works. Ish. In this manner, it is possible to support the Celestial while being evil, to support the Infernal while being good, and to support neither while being anything you darn well please.

houlio
2010-11-18, 11:21 PM
I think "balance" morality types tend to be very poorly thought out followers of Eastern philosophy. If you want to make the balance thing work, those who follow it shouldn't get in the way of good or evil since any act for one side or the other disrupts one's own internal balance, which is as important as any larger cosmic balance for a neutral type guy (neutrals think of themselves first).

If you want neutral "balance" philosophy followers in your game, they should be your stereotypical wise and powerful but not involved hermits. First, despite being immensely wise and powerful, they choose not to affect the world around them. Secondly, they tend to actively seclude themselves from the world as to not passively influence anything either. Thirdly, by being withdrawn, they also stay away form the world's good and evil influences (thus achieving their most important goal of keeping the self on balance).

At least, that's the way I prefer to look at it.

Serpentine
2010-11-19, 12:40 AM
Copy-pasted (with the addition of something I forgot the first time) from a while ago:

1. Too dumb for philosophy. Animals are the main example of this. They do what they need to do to survive, cannot make any judgements over whether what they do is good or evil, and so cannot truly perform good nor evil acts.

2. Too naiive for philosophy. Someone who does not think terribly deeply into the motivations behind other people. Other people do what they do, and sometimes it's good for you, sometimes it's not. You do what you're told or, again, you do what you need to do to survive, nothing more and nothing less, without any consideration for right or wrong or what is best for society.

3. Undecided/too new. This character has yet to form any opinions or ideas on right and wrong. A character of mine who was almost literally born yesterday (well, a couple of weeks ago) and who has spent all their life in one place with only a couple of others to talk to has not yet experienced... anything, really. It has no concept of malice nor altruism. It will probably change its alignment as it goes along, although it may just take a distant, observational stance, as it looks at such philosophy from the outside. Which brings me to:

4. The observer. This character has no emotional investment in the world around them. You may take a more "large scale" approach to the universe - everyone dies eventually, everyone goes to their appropriate afterlife, the universe trundles on, that sort of thing. You find the things people do interesting, but you do not condemn nor laude their actions, merely, for example, find it an intriguing study of human nature.

5. Cloistered. This character is so focussed on one specific thing that it neither has interest nor much effect on anything else. An academic who spends all their time studying dragons of all kinds, with little interest in anything else, will probably be True Neutral, if only because they don't really do anything else, good or bad.

6. Balance-seeker. All too often this is described as the "something Good one minute, something Evil the next" variety. As mentioned, this is pretty much insanity - and really, possibly more suited to a Chaotic Neutral than a True Neutral character. Alignment can be about lifetime actions, not just their immediate behaviours one second to the next. If an area, for example, has an overall dominance of Evil, then it makes more sense to balance it out with long-term Good deeds than a mixture of both. It could be things like a decision that, although this Lawful government is doing well now, it looks like it's on the way to becoming an oppressive dictatorship in 20-odd years, so you start sewing the seeds of resistance now.

7. Balance-seeker 2 - the ecologist. This is the idea I had for a paladin of Balance (note the small "p". I think a TN Paladin would be hard to do well, if it's possible at all). Law and Chaos are opposing forces of creation and destruction. A world without one would be just as terrible as a world without the other, and it is together, by clashing and opposing and interaction, that the universe functions at its best. Good and Evil, if they really exist at all, are elements of the universe, like Fire or Earth. You're more likely to use Positive and Negative than the culturally-loaded terms Good and Evil. In reality, they are both necessary for the survival of species - a purely Good species would quickly be wiped out as its members hasten to sacrifice themselves for the good of others, and a purely Evil species would similarly disappear in a mess of back-stabbing and infanticide and the like. The most important thing, essential to the maintenance of the world and the universe, is diversity. Too much Chaos and you have anarchy, too much Law and you have inertia. Variety is the basis of the universe, it is the driving force of evolution, it is the best defense a species has against extinction. Anything that threatens to reduce diversity must be opposed - whether it is a tribe of orcs waging a genocide against elves, or an edge that might allow the Celestials to finally put a dint in the forces of Hell. Such a character would probably prefer to avoid death where possible, but would not necessarily balk significantly at killing where necessary.

8. The Halfway House. TN can be a stopover on the way from one alignment to another. A Lawful Good character will rarely leap straight to Chaotic Evil. You're much more likely to have your idealogy slip and blend and twist into its new one over time, the transient form possibly fitting into a TN alignment.

9. "Soft" neutral. They don't do anything aligned enough for it to really register. You mostly obey the law, except when it suits you not to and you can get away with it; you're mostly benevolent but lazy and a bit selfish, so you never deliberately do anything to hurt anyone, but you generally gon't go out of your way to help anyone, either. Most humans will probably be this sort of Neutral.

I think the best way to play a "balance" True Neutral would be to take the long view, with a focus not on the alignment of individual actions but on the long-term accumulation and consequences. What happens for five minutes now doesn't really matter. The impact it has for a thousand years in the future, does.
Moreover, it doesn't have to involve an attitude of "Evil is desirable!" but rather, "Evil is inevitable and an important part of the very fabric of reality". A Neutral character doesn't have to like that there is Evil in the world, and may even prefer to keep it out of sight and out of mind, but she accepts that it's just the way it is, and that, for example, everyone receives the afterlife they deserve and everything works out eventually. To put it another way, a Neutral character doesn't have to enjoy watching a family of lions tear a gazelle to pieces while it's still alive in order to understand that it's a normal part of life, necessary for the surival of those lions and also a number of other species, and something that should not be stopped for the proper functioning of reality.

Anyway, so, to fit the above into the scheme of the original post... 6 & 7 are obviously "balance" Neutrals. 8 & 9 might be "torn". I guess the rest would be "uncaring". Eeeeh... Doesn't really work for me. Lets see what others have...
Hamishspence's. "Uncaring or indifferent" might be 1-5 and 9. "Conflicted" could be * and maybe 9. "Balancing" would be 6 & 7. Same as the above.
EvilDMMk3's. Don't care: 4, 5, 8 and 9. Can't care: 1-3. Care not to care: 6, 7 and maybe 4.
Lev's. Mmmm... I think all of them except maybe 8 and 9 would/could come under "neither". Which, as an aside, I think I probably the best way to play it - the other's too likely to fall into the "totally mental so-called Neutral" trap.
ericgrau's is interesting. Think I might adapt that myself in a sec. For now, though... Unaligned (neither/indifferent): 1-3 & 5. Wavering (both/indifferent): 8 & 9. Anti-alignment (neither/strict): 4, 6 & 7. Balanced (both/strict): 6 & 7 (depends how you play it).

So. Rather than "strict/indifferent" I would use Active and Passive. But I'm not sure what else I would use - "both/neither" could work, but, at least in terms of what I think should be played, I'm heavily biased in the "neither" direction. Maybe Active and Passive is all that's necessary. That would make it 1, 2, 3, 8 & 9 Passive, 6 & 7 Active, and 4 & 5 depending on the way they're played - e.g. does the dragon-studier shut themselves off from the world because they're just so interested in dragons, or because they have no interest in its goings-on?

SanguinePenguin
2010-11-19, 01:44 AM
The issues people are raising here are simply facets of the issue with alignment as a whole. It is a more ephemeral position than one realizes. The deeper you dig, the worse it seems. For simple character designs or clean extremes, it works fine. If a character is suitably complex the idea of alignment will often just not work with them. Is alignment controlled by desire? By actions? The whole issue is messy.

Take some bizarre cases:

1) A character who strictly adheres to a code of behavior, never wavering in slightest, before he chooses a side, he consults a code, but this code result in him acting in all situations as a CG character. Is he LN or CG? or something else? If you say LN, then what if this code was taught to him by his parents and is effectively a conscience? If you say CG, then what if the characters code changes, or applies differently in a different society (i.e. in city A, he constantly breaks the law to help others, but in city B, the laws and his code are exactly the same)?

2) A character whose quest is to rid the world of evil. They kill everyone they has overwhelming suspicions are evil. What alignment would this character be?

3) As a simple exercise try to ascribe definite alignments to super heroes and super villains. At first, this seems pretty easy, Superman LG, Lex Luthor LE, Batman CG, the Joker CE, Spiderman NG, Carnage CE. Now try characters with more complex motivations: i.e. what is Venom's alignment? TN? CG? LE? He seems to run the gamut at extremes. He is excessively violent, vengeful and cruel, yet he works tirelessly to protect the innocent - even siding with the individual he hates most in the world for the greater good.

Now for a pretty much impossible task, what are the alignments of every single character in the Alan Moore's the Watchman?

Serpentine
2010-11-19, 02:31 AM
Regarding your last question, I saw a thread recently on alignments in which someone declared Rorchach (sp?) to be off-limits. So yeah, 'stricky.

Anyways, in my opinion, alignment is made up of an interaction betwHOLY CRAP THE CATS ARE BREATHING IN UNISON sorry. An interaction between actions, intentions, goals, philosophy and personality, in that approximate order if priority. But no one factor determines their alignment. A person's alignment is not a single action, but rather the sum total - just because the paragon of Law and Goodness just once cheats on a test doesn't suddenly make them Chaotic Evil, or even Neutral Good. It makes them an extremely Lawful Good person who had a momentary weakness.
"My character did this thing. What alignment is she?" is a terrible way to approach the question. "My character did this thing. What alignment was that action, and how much should it be weighed with regard to the character's alignment?" is a good start. But I don't think a character's alignment can really be determined with any accuracy until all the factors I mentioned before - actions, intentions, goals, philosophy and personality - are taken into account.

Lev
2010-11-19, 02:48 AM
I tend to think of it as four kinds, as all 4 combinations of:
"neither" or "both"
"indifferent" or "strict"

Basically that makes:
unaligned, wavering, anti-alignment and balanced
Strict is lawful. You would be adhering to the law of your own alignment.

HunterOfJello
2010-11-19, 02:57 AM
I've always thought the idea of a character being 'strictly' true neutral, like some druids are supposed to be as very strange.

Lev
2010-11-19, 02:59 AM
I've always thought the idea of a character being 'strictly' true neutral, like some druids are supposed to be as very strange.
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Serpentine
2010-11-19, 03:13 AM
Yes, strictness is a Lawful trait. But that's pretty unnecessary nitpicking when it's obvious that what was meant was something along the lines of "deliberate and devoted adherence to".

Eloel
2010-11-19, 03:35 AM
Balancing Good and Evil for 'balance's sake, is Lawful Neutral
Balancing Good and Evil so the fight keeps going, is Chaotic Neutral
Balancing Good and Evil for the heck of it is True Neutral.

So, meh.

Serpentine
2010-11-19, 03:51 AM
I would call "for the heck of it" Chaotic :smallconfused: "Because the universe requires dichotimies to function properly", Neutral.

Heliomance
2010-11-19, 05:42 AM
Compelling, but forced and hackneyed. :smalleek:

Unless it can be shown why it would really do so, aside from "well, the author/creator said..."

It's not hard. Just with the half-formed ideas floating around my head, I could do a basic writeup of a campaign setting where that was built into the cosmology. Sometime when I can be bothered I might even do it, just so I can post it every time one of these neutrality threads comes up. In a world where good and evil are quantifiable absolutes with inherent power (proven by the fact that it is entirely possible to be a Cleric of Good and gain spells from it) then it's really not hard to imagine that an imbalance might lead to Bad Things.

And I wouldn't call doing evil in order to prevent the destruction of reality necessarily a good act. If reality is destroyed, you'll die as well. Similarly, doing good specifically in order to try and upset the balance isn't so much evil as bug**** insane. Not many BBEGs are really Omnicidal Maniacs, and the ones that are generally don't include themselves in the "omni" bit.

Serpentine
2010-11-19, 05:55 AM
Yeah, didn't Xykon have something along those lines to say?