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anti-ninja
2015-02-15, 10:37 AM
So I have a bit of a problem ...last session my bard manged to piss of what is effectively the Russian mafia of my dm,s world so there's a good chance that he wont be a live much longer so I asked my dm if I could make a back up character a a cleric of wee jas which poses a question how do I roleplay him I do not have much experience with lawful characters so any advice would be appreciated .

hamishspence
2015-02-15, 10:41 AM
The Wee Jas description might be a good starting point for what the character reveres:

http://www.canonfire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Wee_Jas

And the Easydamus description of LN is more elaborate than the little the PHB gives, even if it draws on other franchises besides D&D:

http://www.easydamus.com/lawfulneutral.html

anti-ninja
2015-02-15, 12:58 PM
thanks for the help but i was looking at the link and some the things you cant do seem suicidal like not being allowed to flee or surrender it almost seems like if you want to lawful neutral you cant loose fight yet some basic tactical advantages like the element of surprise are against the code of honor because your supposed to allow your opponent to attack first or am I just misreading it ,but its all around good advice thanks.

hamishspence
2015-02-15, 01:03 PM
Just because it's "dishonourable" doesn't mean characters won't do it - they'll just feel embarrassed about it.

anti-ninja
2015-02-16, 10:33 AM
thanks again for clearing that up just one last question undead and evil spells if I consider running away dishonorable can lawful neutral people justify creating undead and using evil spells I mean according to the players handbook mechanically I can but that feels of but then again I do worship a god of death so its kinda confusing me

hamishspence
2015-02-16, 10:35 AM
Casting an [evil] spell is not a very evil act in itself.

Red Fel
2015-02-16, 10:39 AM
Casting an [evil] spell is not a very evil act in itself.

More importantly, a Lawful Neutral character won't be doing that because it's Evil; he'll be doing so irrespective of its Evil nature.

Creating Undead isn't as big a deal for a Lawful Neutral Cleric, unless your deity has particular issues with the Undead. (For example, a god of "restful death" would dislike using the dead as minions.)

Hendel
2015-02-16, 10:49 AM
I have often played a Lawful Neutral character. In fact, it is my default alignment for dwarves unless I am looking for something else thematically or class wise in a different direction.

Lawful neutral characters and clerics in general always seem rather stoic to me. They are not burdened with cares of is this action good or evil, rather it boils down to will this help my cause and does it make sense in the order of things how I and my deity see things.

Wee Jas in particular has a control over magic and death. There is a certain order in those things that are not concerned with good and evil. Magic requires practice and patience so it seems very lawful and ordered and for the most part very structured. Death also has order to it in that it comes to all eventually in one way or another regardless of how good or evil a being was in their life. She is a fun deity to play a cleric for and she will not mind undead for the most part in my understanding.

I say play it how you feel it but keep in mind that order and structure are the main stays and that other things are just tangential at best. If you need to retreat in order to survive, then that could be legitimized as serving the greater cause of your race, deity, nation, etc. So, I would never call lawful neutral suicidal, but stoic and grim could be words that describe it. In real world terms think of some militaristic societies or even fascist regimes of the early 20th century (even though some of the leaders had strong evil tendencies if not outright pure evil) to get your head around the idea of what a lawful neutral character is like.

Good luck!

BWR
2015-02-16, 11:00 AM
thanks again for clearing that up just one last question undead and evil spells if I consider running away dishonorable can lawful neutral people justify creating undead and using evil spells I mean according to the players handbook mechanically I can but that feels of but then again I do worship a god of death so its kinda confusing me

Please use proper punctuation. It makes everything so much easier to read.

Running away: depends on your code of conduct. If you feel that running away is a no-no, then you shouldn't run away. If you feel it's ok, then it's ok. LN says nothing about running away in particular and I don't believe Wee Jas says anything about it. I'd assume it was ok unless specifically mentioned that it isn't.

Undead: Nevermind what the PHB says, concern yourself with what Wee Jas likes. According to her write-ups, has no problem with undead being creates as long as they are willing to become undead in life. Forcibly turning people into undead (e.g. what things like shadows, wights, vampires and wraiths do) is bad, as is most random reanimation of mindless undead from whatever corpses are lying around. Corpses gotten hold of legally and with the understanding that they may be used for such purposes are fine. I can see that her clergy might have a business option like the Dustmen in Sigil have: you can sign over the rights to your corpse to the Dustmen in exchange for a little money on the spot. That and leaving your body to science religion.

kaoskonfety
2015-02-16, 05:13 PM
Lawful Neutral... is the best alignment because...

The rules are your primary concern, as a cleric you serve: your gods laws, then your personal laws and the lands laws, then order as a whole.

Your objective is not to be fair or just - but to be correct, technically correct. You don't need to point out that you enemies (or friends) are taking a bad deal shaking your hand - but all parties had better keep up their end of the bargain (even if you get the shaft - but you will remember that)

Sneaky tactics are perfectly acceptable, you don't need to challenge your opponents to 'fair duels', fleeing is a valid tactic. Avoid evil - don't NEVER do it, but it is by and large frowned on by societies. The advantage gained needs to be worth while.
- If your enemies have no organization for you to declare war on, this doesn't mean that you have to handicap yourself formally announcing your presence to each camp of rabble. Deal with them as you would rabid animals. It is how they choose to act, it is correct to treat them as such.
- If stealth gets the job done faster and cleaner and is allowed: do it.
- Dishonour doesn't come into it unless that part of the "laws" you follow, retreat all you like - just make sure the option to retreat is part of the plans, assign a fallback point for the party and similar

Stop thinking Samurai and think Lawyer.


Example...
Before taking a contract to kill off a camp goblins raiding the local town:

Wee Jas stance on goblins - they are neither creatures of Order or Chaos and don't in general worship her, so killing them is neither correct or incorrect, it just is. (You would need good reason and some persuasion *extra pay* to assault creatures of order, little to none to oppose chaos)

Local laws - Inquire if the person opening the contact has permission and authority to post the bounty (probably), confirm they are reliable and that you will get paid (can the town afford your services?), check: has a more orderly solution been explored and rejected (has negotiation been attempted, bribery etc.) what specific laws have the goblins broken (probably a few), Does this give them the death penalty?

Personal laws - do you condone the death penalty on bandits? (probably, you are an adventurer, if not finding a non-lethal solution to capture and subdue them could be Dwarf Fortress styled FUN) any personal beef with/liking of goblins?


For Wee Jas Cleric in specific (Kind of a Lawful Creepy god)
- be willing to trade in corpses
- Making undead and evil spells are fine but...
- Don't make more undead than you can control - random monsters are random, Wee Jas loathes chaos
- Don't go grave robbing, its illegal and messy.
- using slain foes for zombie material would be fine *short term*, dismiss them when your immediate threat is over, those bodies don't belong to you
- For an added kick you may want to go with "I used their bodies without their permission due to necessity, I owe *them*" and proceed to clear the debt by insisting the party provide them proper funeral rites to the animated and their companions once the "place" is clear (eating up time and resources and keeping the group from getting the impression animating the dead is something you do lightly)
- Attempt to get everyone in the group to agree to allow you to animate them should they fall, "its just a body once you are done with it", "it will be easier then carrying you back to your parents"

Gritmonger
2015-02-17, 02:33 PM
thanks again for clearing that up just one last question undead and evil spells if I consider running away dishonorable can lawful neutral people justify creating undead and using evil spells I mean according to the players handbook mechanically I can but that feels of but then again I do worship a god of death so its kinda confusing me

The specific reading I have of Wee Jas is that she despises non-free-willed undead; so no zombies or skeletons if you want to be true to her preferences - plus, they tend to be on the uglier side of divine creations, and she apparently is more for the beauteous type of creation.

...part of the reason for my campaign where Wee Jas is in a tentative alliance with Pelor that the "Clockwork Undead" were devised for any undead purposes required, as both deities agree that an undead not powered by the positive or negative plane, and free-willed, is "acceptable," especially if it is relatively good looking and not a shriveled apple person or a grotesque animated skeleton.

kyoryu
2015-02-17, 03:11 PM
More importantly, a Lawful Neutral character won't be doing that because it's Evil; he'll be doing so irrespective of its Evil nature.

Yeah, I disagree with that. Neutral doesn't really mean "will do Evil and Good both", that's really just Evil.

Neutral will, in general, avoid Evil acts (harming others, etc.) while simultaneously not bother to go to the extreme of helping people without getting something out of it themselves.

icefractal
2015-02-17, 03:51 PM
I don't completely agree with that LN article, particularly the honorable/dishonorable section. Allowing your enemy to strike first seems more like a matter of pride than law (not "good" either, because the good course would be either not attacking them in the first place or else trying to win). I'd agree that "invite your enemies to a party, then poison their drinks and stab them" is not the lawful way. But springing an ambush on someone you're already on hostile terms with, like enemy soldiers, is fully legitimate.

And agreed that neutral doesn't mean committing equal amounts of good and evil acts. You can do the occasional evil act, but stabbing innocent people on Monday and then giving them free bread on Tuesday puts you more toward "confused evil" than "neutral". A neutral character might even be indistinguishable from good - as far as their friends are concerned, or even for strangers when it's not difficult. They just won't go the extra mile for people they don't personally care about.

hamishspence
2015-02-17, 04:25 PM
And agreed that neutral doesn't mean committing equal amounts of good and evil acts. You can do the occasional evil act, but stabbing innocent people on Monday and then giving them free bread on Tuesday puts you more toward "confused evil" than "neutral". A neutral character might even be indistinguishable from good - as far as their friends are concerned, or even for strangers when it's not difficult. They just won't go the extra mile for people they don't personally care about.

That can usually be resolved with "giving several people free bread are tiny Good acts - stabbing several people are huge evil acts".

A neutral character who does "go the extra mile for people they don't personally care about" would be very much an exception to the general rules for neutrality - and that would be why they'd have to have some "Evil acts" to balance it out. Most neutral characters are not like this though.

kyoryu
2015-02-17, 05:06 PM
That can usually be resolved with "giving several people free bread are tiny Good acts - stabbing several people are huge evil acts".

A neutral character who does "go the extra mile for people they don't personally care about" would be very much an exception to the general rules for neutrality - and that would be why they'd have to have some "Evil acts" to balance it out. Most neutral characters are not like this though.

I'd still say that someone that commits Evil acts on a regular basis, especially if for trivial reasons and without guilt, is Evil. Even if they do some Good acts for whatever reason.

But that's just my view - Evil is harming others (I'd argue more towards "violating natural rights", but that's getting a bit nitpicky), especially if done without remorse or guilt. That's it, that's the line. If you do that, you're Evil. Whatever else you do doesn't matter.

hamishspence
2015-02-17, 05:26 PM
I'd still say that someone that commits Evil acts on a regular basis, especially if for trivial reasons and without guilt, is Evil. Even if they do some Good acts for whatever reason.

But that's just my view - Evil is harming others (I'd argue more towards "violating natural rights", but that's getting a bit nitpicky), especially if done without remorse or guilt. That's it, that's the line. If you do that, you're Evil. Whatever else you do doesn't matter.

Some Evil acts are a bit more excusable than others. In Heroes of Horror, the "flexible Neutral" archetype is someone whose Evil deeds are always done for Good reasons. And the Dread Necromancer class is described as follows:

"Performing Evil deeds is a feature of this class, but some dread necromancers manage to balance evil deeds with good intentions, remaining solidly Neutral"

(In this case, the evil deeds would be "casting [Evil] spells" "creating undead" and so forth.)

Red Fel
2015-02-18, 06:22 PM
Yeah, I disagree with that. Neutral doesn't really mean "will do Evil and Good both", that's really just Evil.

Neutral will, in general, avoid Evil acts (harming others, etc.) while simultaneously not bother to go to the extreme of helping people without getting something out of it themselves.

I never said that Neutral does "Evil and Good both." I said that Neutral does what it does irrespective of whether it's Good or Evil. While that's not an exclusive reading of Neutral, I find it to be a common one - a Neutral character does what he does for reasons that are not generally moral in nature. That's not to say he seeks to actively harm or help others; rather, it says that he acts out of pragmatism or whatever similar philosophy motivates him, without regard for whether his conduct is ultimately Good or Evil.

I'm not saying that Good or Evil characters actively ponder, "Is this conduct in line with my alignment?" Rather, they embrace their alignments philosophically; the Good character, generally, seeks to help others; the Evil character, generally, seeks to advance himself at the expense of others. The Neutral character, at least in one interpretation, does neither; he pursues his aims irrespective of Good and Evil.

Frankly, I find your description - Neutral being a character who seeks both to avoid harming others (Evil) and to avoid helping others out of altruism (Good) - to be a bit uncommon. Not wrong, simply uncommon. If a character attempts to avoid both harming others and helping others, he really won't be doing much of anything. I find it both more common, and easier to play, if a Neutral character does what he does without regard for the extent of help or harm it causes; or, at the very least, without focusing on those as an ultimate goal.

I find that the line between Good and non-Good to be much more clearly defined than the line between Neutral and Evil. I agree that a person who commits Evil acts has ceased to be Good, full stop. No argument there. But it becomes a blurrier matter when you consider the line between Neutral and Evil. I find that it is possible for a person who commits Evil acts without malice, or for noble ideals, to walk the tenuous line between Neutral and Evil. Possible, if admittedly unlikely. If he persists in repeated, substantial acts of Evil, I agree that he falls quite quickly. But the line is nonetheless murkier, when it comes to isolated, minor acts of Evil.

Thrudd
2015-02-18, 07:02 PM
So I have a bit of a problem ...last session my bard manged to piss of what is effectively the Russian mafia of my dm,s world so there's a good chance that he wont be a live much longer so I asked my dm if I could make a back up character a a cleric of wee jas which poses a question how do I roleplay him I do not have much experience with lawful characters so any advice would be appreciated .

The lawful cleric should always act according to the rules of his religion/god, usually to the letter whenever he can. A lawful person in general will always try to pay their debts and honor laws. If there is a "correct" way to do something according to society, that is the way they will want to do it. If they don't know what the rule about something is, they will try to find out.
If you are supposed to get permission from the king before you go into the forest, they will ask the king for permission. If you are supposed to bring runaway slaves back to their owners, they will do that.

The only time restrictive codes of combat apply are if those things exist in the game world: if there are laws of warfare or specific laws from your god or a warrior code you follow. All or even most lawful characters do not need to have an honor code for fighting.

Grek
2015-02-19, 03:55 AM
Seriously, forget the Lawful Neutral part of it. Play up the Wee Jas aspect, since that has some teeth to it. Ideas include:

-Show an interest in local laws, customs, government and policy. Wee Jas commands that you stay within the letter of the law, so be sure to know what laws those are. Have a strong, but not overwhelming preference for doing things neatly and legally.
-If the party makes an agreement, whether within itself or with some other group, insist that you stick to the agreement unless both sides agree the change it. Consent and trust are the building blocks of society.
-You know who you don't have to get signed permission from before you animate them as undead? Animals. If you desperately need a bunch of skeletons for something, consider purchasing some cattle. For extra brownie points with Wee Jas, hold a feast in her honor with the meat after you raise the skeletons.
-Wee Jas is also a goddess of love and beauty! This means that rotting flesh is probably the wrong aesthetic, but skeletons are perfectly alright. Skeletons (https://m1.behance.net/rendition/modules/42033949/disp/f4aeeaa2ab61bdc8fcd25094263a92e3.jpg) can (http://www.corbisimages.com/images/Corbis-AAKJ001188.jpg?size=67&uid=32dba912-be22-4101-85f2-ed7c0c396fd9) be (http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m16nb3rG1G1qb7dwvo1_500.jpg) beautiful (http://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8pw8o7Gnt1r8vrhxo1_r1_500.jpg)!

Gritmonger
2015-02-19, 08:16 AM
-Wee Jas is also a goddess of love and beauty! This means that rotting flesh is probably the wrong aesthetic, but skeletons are perfectly alright. Skeletons (https://m1.behance.net/rendition/modules/42033949/disp/f4aeeaa2ab61bdc8fcd25094263a92e3.jpg) can (http://www.corbisimages.com/images/Corbis-AAKJ001188.jpg?size=67&uid=32dba912-be22-4101-85f2-ed7c0c396fd9) be (http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m16nb3rG1G1qb7dwvo1_500.jpg) beautiful (http://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8pw8o7Gnt1r8vrhxo1_r1_500.jpg)!

Darling, Skeletons can be Fabulous (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10256894/The-ghastly-glory-of-Europes-jewel-encrusted-relics.html)!

Sith_Happens
2015-02-19, 02:46 PM
- Attempt to get everyone in the group to agree to allow you to animate them should they fall, "its just a body once you are done with it", "it will be easier then carrying you back to your parents"

This one's a bad idea if you plan on bringing them back to life later, it makes it take a higher level spell to do.

kaoskonfety
2015-02-19, 05:25 PM
This one's a bad idea if you plan on bringing them back to life later, it makes it take a higher level spell to do.

Not saying we'd DO it, just RP out trying to convince them to allow it, so that the option is available should we need it - Lawful Creepy

anti-ninja
2015-02-19, 06:24 PM
Thanks for all the help on how to play my character, I think I have a grasp on how to play him now.

Satinavian
2015-02-20, 04:23 AM
This one's a bad idea if you plan on bringing them back to life later, it makes it take a higher level spell to do.
Just make sure that the group allows templates like "mumified creature" instead of the MM entries, so that the undead PCs still are versions of themself and go for it.

Did a similar thing once a played a cleric of Velsharon. And got most of the group to agree in the end, though only one of them was actually made undead.