Alignment: Fall 2022

[Tevo77777]

I have said this three or four times, compliance with the law is a red herring and is not important for judging if a character if Chaotic or not. This is a very common point made by older people and those who actually have read the different alignment descriptions in the different editions.

I have literally quoted and cited alignment descriptions that make this clear.

You literally keep bringing up stuff that I said over and over, has nothing to do with figuring out his alignment, or information that is misleading, unhelpful.

Planning again, nothing to do with alignment. Intelligence, nothing to do with alignment. Following laws or not, red herring, ignore it.

Would Roy lose his lawful alignment just for stealing the soda? Should he? If he does, then that represents an extremely tilted scale of measurement (one chaotic act cancels out a whole lot of lawful ones). Er, but then Roy doesn't lose his lawful alignment when he "steals" the treatment at the inn (when he was mistaken for the King of nowhere), right? Why not? He took far more than a soda's worth of free stuff from the Inn, yet suffered no ill affects alignment wise.

Because the law again, is a red herring and should be ignored. He also suffered no effects because the bill was literally paid by the current King, in return for saving the King's life.

By your logic, if I buy 200 dollars worth of drinks at the bar, but have an empty wallet, I am stealing. Nevermind that later on a friend runs into me and pays me back 200 he owes me, hours before the bar tab needs to be paid.

Does he? He seems to follow rules even within his own... idiom, pretty consistently. As you said "what's the most dramatic/heroic way to do something"? That's not "lawful"? Why not?

He clearly does not like to see people suffering and in pain, and I'm reasonably certain would love to see his father's rule replaced with a "better kinder" rule.

Congrats, you're describing what it means to be Good AND you're describing Robinhood. Robinhood, who is literally the example given by the designers for a CG character, is someone who helped put a good king on a throne in retelling after retelling.

This is like saying someone isn't Christian, and then describing a bunch of traits that make them sound increasingly like Jesus.

Haley, on the other hand, was perfectly ok with the way the rogues guild ran things, as long as she got her cut (ok, she wasn't happy about that arrangement once she realized how impossible it would be to bail out her father at those rates). She certainly never thought about going off on a crusade to make the streets safer or anything. I'm reasonably certain that Elan would. If he could.

So yeah, they are very very different on that regard.

"Haley can also be described as a loose "Robin Hood" sort of rogue. While staying in Bleedingham, Haley snuck out with Vaarsuvius to free slaves (although later on these same slaves were the ones burned alive to make a flaming sign for Elan). Her father, Ian Starshine, described the Thieves Guild under his leadership as a "steal from the rich, give 40% minus-compensation-costs to the poor" organization."

Oh look, it's Robinhood, again and then again.

Ok. So I'll ask again: Why can't my Robin Hood be lawful good?

If you are trying to argue that Robin Hood is lawful good, you don't understand the alignment system.

Let me make it simple for you.

Robin Hood is Chaotic Good, he is the perfect example given for Chaotic Good. Anything he does, statistically, is Chaotic Good.

If you ever get confused what Chaotic Good means, it's whatever Robinhood would do.

Think of WWJD, but make it WWRhD.

Heck. Let's put a classic D&D paladin in Elan's place. You're in the middle of a war, and a find yourself weaponless, and there's a weapon store that closed up, but has a weapon you can use to save many lives. Do you refuse to take it because that would "break the law"? Of course not.

Robinhood would steal the weapon without thinking, Superman/a 1e Paladin would spend the maximum time agonizing over the decision, and then end up having to pick one or the other.

Neutral Good is someone who spends some amount of time (Likely more than Elan) between zero seconds and the maximum amount of time.

To quote a veteran player. "Chaotic good characters will never consider the law in any of their decisions. If they happen to work within the law, it isn't because they made a decision to do so".

Elan didn't consider the law, he considered if it was Nice or Mean or Good.

But I guess that's also part of my point. How consistently does one have to follow any given "side" of one of the alignment axis to be considered "on that side"?

Enough that the GM and the other players don't get insanely confused. Again, literally that simple. If you claim to be CN and the GM, plus half the players think you're CE, you're almost definitely CE.

The US Supreme Court has an identical solution to the one I just purposed, and so does the vast majority of political systems that predate the current system of the current United States.

In any event where it's not clear how the law or rules should be interpreted, it's up to a certain number of judges (The other people at the table).

When it's time to decide if you should go free or be executed, who decides your fate? A certain number of jury members (Again, the other people at the table).

Why is this? Because the purpose of alignment is for the benefit of everyone else at the table besides you.

If we threw out any system of rules or expectations that ever was unclear, we would literally have no rules. Every single legal and political system has someone who interprets the rules. Sports have referees and/or judges for a reason.

Remember that one person (In this thread) who said that all the problems you mentioned are solved by having the GM be the referee or judge? That's true in basically almost all sports and almost all political or legal systems.

Yeah. Sorry. The whole thing is just a cluttered mess IMO. It's completely inconsistent and almost unworkable. And again, the only way to make it work is to cardboard cutout your character types to make it work. Which, as I've said all along, tends to put limits on the range of PCs you can play. Well, that or just handwave things away when it's inconvenient or inconsistent (which it will be a lot of the time if *not* playing cardboard cutout characters). Bleh.

Elan is still not a real character at a real table. Everything anyone says about his alignment is likely pointless, because again, he is not a real character at a real table.

Elan is completely broken and unworkable, he is deliberately designed as a joke character. He's not supposed to make sense.

Yeah. Sorry. The whole thing is just a cluttered mess IMO. It's completely inconsistent and almost unworkable. And again, the only way to make it work is to cardboard cutout your character types to make it work. Which, as I've said all along, tends to put limits on the range of PCs you can play. Well, that or just handwave things away when it's inconvenient or inconsistent (which it will be a lot of the time if *not* playing cardboard cutout characters). Bleh.

This is not even remotely true.

If you can't make a character that doesn't make more than half the table angry and frustrated trying to figure out who the hell your character is as a person... You're a bad player with a bad character and/or you're sitting at a very flawed table.

A character should be consistent day to day, and when they change, they should do so gradually in a way that can be understood and watched.

If a character can't be understood or they change too quickly, they are basically mentally insane, or they're lacking in agency or a defined idea who they are.

This is exactly how it works in professional wrestling and most fiction in general.

But the incredibly broad "good/evil" and "law/chaos" alignment system that D&D introduced? Absolute garbage IMO. It's both too broad *and* too restrictive at the same time. Too many things lumped into these broad categories and too many (often silly) restrictions and rules associated with the resulting alignments to make it work well. And yeah, far far too many inconsistencies even just in terms of which actions fall into which alignment categories based on frankly incredibly subjective rulings.

Bogart is my character. I have played him at table after table, and he has been very obviously someone with a highly highly complex set of moral behavior. He's literally a Paladin who used to be in his version of the Mafia. He has four babymomma's from when he was young and stupid. He has absolutely no respect for the law, and only trusts people he knows extremely well. Bogart looks down upon the rich and heavily favors the poor and dirty. If he follows the law, it is entirely by accident (Which actually fits the description of CG in 3.5)

Bogart literally picked his patron in Pathfinder 2e, based on which goddess or god would let him keep his favorite weapon, and continue his lifestyle. He literally picked the Identity/LGBT supernatural being for these reasons.

Not a single player or GM has had any problem with his alignment whatsoever. He's Neutral Good, and there are charts of things he has to do as a Good person, charts of what he has to do as a Neutral Champion/Paladin.

The Good chart overrides the Neutral requirements (Forgiveness, Redemption), and so does the requirements from his patron (Accept people for their sexuality, ect ect).

Not a single requirement on any of the tables listed say he has to respect the law, or be bad/good at planning, or any number of things you will likely use as proof that the alignment system doesn't fit him.

Lawful Good, Champion
You must act with honor, never taking advantage
of others, lying, or cheating.
• You must respect the lawful authority of legitimate
leadership wherever you go, and follow its laws.

Previously Bogart didn't lie, this version of Bogart can, he just can't be bothered to. Bogart does fit some of the descriptions for CG and NG.

However, Bogart always puts the Good part of his requirements first, and anything that would define him as CG or NG or LG is something he never thinks about whatsoever, nor does he care.

Every single requirement or description or clue that he would be LG or CG is something he either completely ignores, or doesn't care about. This is despite him knowing the legal system really well, and the criminal underworld really well. He knows the law better than lawyers, and yet doesn't care if something he does is legal or illegal.

The laws are still, a red herring. They are maybe a clue to an alignment, but a misleading one.