What's Wrong With Lawful Good?

[Ramza00]

So rethink the alignments not as Good vs Neutral vs Evil but instead Altruistic vs Neutral vs Selfish. [You can keep the Law vs Neutral vs Chaos.]

The problem with being Lawful + Altruistic is the limits of the individual, and the problems of the Lawful + Altruistic as a society is that it rarely happens in practice yet it creates the image of it being Lawful + Altruistic as some Noble Ideal that it supposedly embodies but in reality it doesn't. How do you roleplay a character that feels the urge to be lawful, while simultaneously feels the urge to be altruistic, but the whole entire society is somehow against both of these things. What happens when society is lawful but it finds the suffering of others to be acceptable, what happens when lawful society does not practice care and goodwill? What does a Lawful plus Altruistic character do in such a world?

• I am ignorning the Militaristic Lawful Good character who is the Paladin / Knight Templar, who use force to force his will onto the party.

Lots of people see this dichotomy as a gilded thing, as an absurd thing that is false, like The Catcher in the Rye character calling everyone "Phoneys" for it is the truth even if Holden Caulfield is insufferable. Lots of people see Lawful plus Altruistic to be insufferable [yes this is personal opinion but humans have opinions.]

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Now a Lawful Good Character can recognize the limits of himself and the limits of society but then the LG character has a dash / flavor enhancer of Neutrality on both axises and he no longer "Feels" LG anymore. My point is a LG character feels like an impossible standard and once realized you only see its flaws in at least one dimension or sometimes multiple dimensions simultaneously.

While all the other alignments do not have this tension, this tension of the the impossible Quixotic ideal.



And as you can see by the video and the reference I did, even this form of LG that is "played straight" can be fun to roleplay. Unnatural character who feels foreign to this Jaded world, but D&D is a game that you get to roleplay as if it was theater and you have fun simultaneously being both yourself and someone else simultaneously. So play that LG idealistic altruistic character who is not the LG Paladin who is a pain for the rest of the party.