Atypical Alignment Behavior 3.5

[golentan]

So I was in a debate the other day, and we started arguing about some of the alignments of some of our favorite characters. The argument came down to "That character can't be lawful good because he's a jerk," vs. "That character can't be lawful good because he isn't enough of a jerk," vs. "That character is a total jerk, and lawful good, and the two are completely unrelated."

So it got me thinking, what behaviors do you unconsciously expect (or play) in various alignments that are not related to that alignment? Good characters who will point and laugh when you pratfall, or are horribly pessimistic and refer to themselves as "Lawful stupid" for doing good. Evil ones who smile and are kind to their friends, and always throw in good words and helpful praise to their subordinates. Neutral ones who always order people to get off the fence on moral issues. Lawfuls who distrust police, or chaotics who... What do chaotics do that people might have expectations about? It's always seemed rather random.

Alternatively, feats and prestige classes. Basically anything that RPing crutches on because of stereotypes.

Picture related (just proud of it and want to post it).

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[Oracle_Hunter]

Well... I was surprised when my party of Good characters all agreed to capture goblin women and children to sell to a slaver.

Particularly the CG one

I did ask them all why the hell they went along with it, and they all had... decent... justifications. Still, very surprising.

But most of your examples are just against the descriptions of the alignments. Lawful characters may be suspicious of the police if they have cause (say, because they've witnessed massive corruption) but not as a default - they "respect authority" after all.

BTW - nobody expects Chaotic characters to use the law to their advantage. Rather than busting the heads of the chaos cultists who were using a "massage" parlor as a front, I (a CG street tough) urged our politically-connected cleric to get it closed up in a police raid. There was a full set of startled expressions around the table that night.

Of course, the main cultist got away from the Watch, showing me the error of my ways.

[averagejoe]

Well... I was surprised when my party of Good characters all agreed to capture goblin women and children to sell to a slaver.

Particularly the CG one

I did ask them all why the hell they went along with it, and they all had... decent... justifications. Still, very surprising.

The people I play with do stuff like this. One game I was playing a secretly evil guy (though not disruptively; it was actually the GM's idea), and as a setup for the big reveal I was kind of going for a somewhat morally ambiguous guy. I didn't want to do anything blatant, but make it clear that he didn't have problems with killing people and such. The trouble is that the rest of the (ostensibly good) party was doing really evil things. I thought I was going to have to have my guy commit genocide, or something, just to make them go, "You know, guys, I think this guy might not be on the level."

To be fair, some of this can be attributed to thoughtless overzealousness rather than malice. Good times.

[BlueWizard]

Well... I was surprised when my party of Good characters all agreed to capture goblin women and children to sell to a slaver.

As a DM, I would've forced them into neutral alignments or worse.

[golentan]

Well, yes. The point is that the descriptions are against the alignments (or how they are perceived at least). It's things that aren't intrinsic to them that are normally treated as such. Respecting authority doesn't mean trusting it, for example... I respect authority and obey laws, and yet am not fond at all of the sort of person who becomes a career politician or official. Evil is self interested and willing to sacrifice others, so a big bad who earns the trust/friendship of his minions is less likely to be offed by the same, and can advance himself by helping his minions grow and become more powerful while doing so (or as I like to put it: good business makes good evil).

And I'm not talking about people who can rationalize their behavior. I'm talking about people whose long term goals and methods are unambiguously of one alignment, but don't play into the stereotypes. Laid back paladins if you will.

[Narmoth]

Playing a LE blackguard on the way to redemption in a neutral party (LN, CN, CN) that all started on lvl 10, I wanted to see how long it would take before they discovered that I weren't a paladin. So this is what I did:
- Test if a trap was properly disarmed by throwing a orc prisoner on it.
The rest of the group, upon seeing the prisoner getting cut up by the traps blades congratulate me on my briliant idea)
- Hire our group out as assassins to get back a stolen item
The rest of the group perform well as assassins, protesting when I wake the targets before killing them
- Spend money to raise a hireling I despise just to ensure that I don't get a reputation of getting all hirelings killed
The group don't understand why I bother
- Use almost all of my treasure share on booze and hookers
The group suspects that I might fall
- Desecrate the temple of my patron god by using it as a stable for the groups animals and a workshop to make the groups ship into a zeppeliner
No reaction from the group
- Pin the body of a dead kobold to the wall in a desecrating way to scare the rest of the kobolds from following us in the dungeon
The group protests and suspect that I'm not a paladin

[Oracle_Hunter]

Well, yes. The point is that the descriptions are against the alignments (or how they are perceived at least). It's things that aren't intrinsic to them that are normally treated as such. Respecting authority doesn't mean trusting it, for example... I respect authority and obey laws, and yet am not fond at all of the sort of person who becomes a career politician or official. Evil is self interested and willing to sacrifice others, so a big bad who earns the trust/friendship of his minions is less likely to be offed by the same, and can advance himself by helping his minions grow and become more powerful while doing so (or as I like to put it: good business makes good evil).

And I'm not talking about people who can rationalize their behavior. I'm talking about people whose long term goals and methods are unambiguously of one alignment, but don't play into the stereotypes. Laid back paladins if you will.

I dunno - a strictly disciplined thief?

Now, I can understand where you're coming from - trust the police, but mistrust policemen. Basically you think you follow the laws better than the State does, so you're constantly checking up on government officials and double-checking their work.

The Evil example is too easy though - any Evil Overlord worth his salt treats his minions with an even hand and refuses to engage in spiteful action against his own forces. Of course, he'll sacrifice them at the drop of the hat if he thinks he can do so without impacting the morale of the survivors.

As for the PC Slavers: it was their first adventure, and I placed the slavers there are a plot hook, not for them to actually take the job.

Moral of the Story - don't present your PCs with moral quandaries until you know how their minds work

[Katrascythe]

I would normally expect good aligned to put others before themselves simply because it's what they want. But I've never seen this really happen in a game. In terms of PC's I've pretty much decided that good PCs don't actually exist and "good" is an NPC alignment.

For example, we had a CG something (the race and class escape me) that decided that he wanted to go take a lot of money from someone simply because he didn't think they were "good."

I think that chaotic characters basically just go with whatever works at the time. The ends justify the means for these guys so long as the end result helps the overall good.

I haven't seen too much atypical behavior for anything chaotic. Chaotic just kind of works out. It's the G,N,E that'll be unusual. I've seen the chaotic players do things in the name of awesome.

Lawful I see as using only the methods of which they approve to get things done. Lawful characters, IMO, don't stray from these beliefs so to me they are somewhat more perdictable.

I've seen the lawful paladins go completely chaotic. But to me this is the hardest thing to play anyways. You're more bound to your set of beliefs. This doesn't really stop players from going "I barge through the door because people are taking too long." But this just makes me go "Wait, wha...? OOOOK umm... make a strength check?"

But then you can always give them moral dilemmas and really watch these ideas fall apart... Our DM gave us a baby kobold once and all of our alignments except one shifted from good to dead neutral. (The kobold was *really* annoying)

[chiasaur11]

Sam Vimes is a great Lawful Good that isn't entirely what one would expect.

Frankly, though, the traditions of the most moral and good individuals being major fans of biting sarcasm dates back quite a ways. One nice thing one gets from reading older works.

[Tempest Fennac]

I find it ironic that what you did with the Kobold was what alerted your group to the character not being a Paladin, Narmoth (if it was still alive, I'd class that as evil, but if it was dead first, that just seems to be a neutral action).

[Learnedguy]

In my party we just dropped the pretenses of being good guys. I mean, if you look at it objectively, kicking in doors and taking their stuff ain't good no matter how you do it.

So, why do we then go out of our way to kill bandits and other scum?

To cut down on the competition

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I would normally expect good aligned to put others before themselves simply because it's what they want. But I've never seen this really happen in a game. In terms of PC's I've pretty much decided that good PCs don't actually exist and "good" is an NPC alignment.

You'd be surprised, but I've seen quite a few good characters played. Generally it's no harder in terms of gameplay, it just means that the player needs to RP a bit more(which is probably why most players don't do it).