A question about Allignment

[Sling]

Not entirely sure if this is an appropriate place to ask, but it's something I've been curious about for a while, and you all seem experienced enough to shed some light on the subject.

For fun, and as part of a challenge given to me, I'm currently trying to create a character for each of the Paladins variant classes (Freedom, Slaughter and Tyranny), all the way down to a fully built character sheet, and with a general idea of the characters personality and goals. Being a fan of the standard paladin class, I'm no stranger to the more unsavory stereotypes brought about by Lawful Stupid players, and I thought I would incorporate this concept into one of the paladins on the evil end of the scale. Perhaps the Paladin of Slaughter is the type who would execute a person for a traffic violation, and justify any evil act, from a severe beating to genocide, as being part of his crusade to eradicate whatever fails to meet his expectations. That, or maybe the Paladin of Tyranny is seeking to protect the land from corruption... by creating a Big Brother styled society, oppressing the people, and labeling anyone who dares to stand against his 'holy' ideas as a sinner, and a new resting place for his sword.

Now, I've only played D&D for about two years, and I haven't played enough to really see a number of the alignments really elaborated on, especially on the evil side of the spectrum, where everyone is either just an undeveloped villain for the PCs to fight, or a maniac with little motivation for why he's evil, other than "I leik to kill things!" This leads to my question: does a well intentioned extremist count as evil? More importantly, can characters who holds this sort of belief logically be a Paladin of Slaughter or Tyranny?

I know this is sort of a tricky subject, and there are a lot of different interpretations of the alignment spectrum, but I thought I would get your opinions.

[Tempest Fennac]

As far as D&D goes, actions are more important then the reasons behind them, so a Paladin who comits evil acts for a good cause would still class as evil. (I think that's how it works looking at discussions I had about Start of Darkness and Red Cloak's alignment when I first joined the forum).

[SurlySeraph]

In DnD, morality is generally portrayed as objective, not subjective. Therefore, a well intentioned extremist who consistently does more evil than good would be evil.

[shadzar]

Page two, panels 6~9

[Volkov]

There is the other extreme of paladins. Stupid Good. They wouldn't hurt Vecna even if he was threatening to destroy the entire D&D multiverse yet again. I put an Atropal in front of one, made him watch an entire city of 1,000,000 get burned to the ground. And he just scolded it and wagged his finger disapprovingly at it.

[Roderick_BR]

You want Lawful Evil vigilants that try to justify themselves? If you read Marvel/DC comics, here's some stereotypes:
On Marvel, Doctor Doom: He just believes that what he does is right, and will kill anyone that disagrees with him. One story suggests that he was going to sent a musician group to the disintegration chambers because he disliked the song.
Still in Marvel, the Punisher is LN vigilant one step from going LE. He still doesn't harm innocents, and will even surrender to cops if he sees no way of escape without killing them. Take out that morality, and you get a LE char right there.
In DC, Sinestro. He was the most lawful green lantern ever, but he was even evil-er than Doctor Doom, and created a dictatorship with zero tolerance.

[Narmoth]

Oh, I'm playing a LE blackguard (actually, he turned back to good, but that's besides the point).
I justified:
- torture (by D&D clearly evil act) to get information
- killing guards just doing their duty trying to stop me by other persons orders, - cheating and stealing from anyone really
- assassinations
by the cause of greater good

Lesser evil deeds I excused simply by claiming that I did so much good that they had to be excused in comparison.

This makes an evil character that can associate with a neutral, or even partially good party with little trouble

[Devils_Advocate]

It's basically a matter of whether your actions are judged by expected consequences or actual consequences. I once saw this neatly summarized as "Are you Evil if you kill the harmless infant glamored to look like an evil quasit, or the evil quasit glamored to look like a harmless infant?"

Some people will say that both are Evil, which... doesn't really work well with D&D. You can maybe make the assumption that people are evil by default work within the context of a good/evil dichotomy, but the thing is that D&D uses a good/neutral/evil trichotomy. Neutral is the default alignment.

If alignment is what you think you're doing (including what risks you think you're taking), only expected consequences count. Then not thinking about the consequences of your actions to others can make you less Evil, because you don't realize how badly you're screwing them over. That seems dubious.

The alternative is that it's a crapshoot where being Good is as much about making lucky guesses as it is about deliberately choosing to help others. That seems dubious.

You could also say that only intended consequences count. That doing something as a means to an end or as an end in itself impacts your alignment, but predictable side-effects of your actions don't. In that case, the suffering caused by stabbing a guy doesn't count towards your Evilness so long as you didn't specifically mean for him to suffer. That seems dubious.

Personally, I can't seem to find a way of running alignment that agrees with all of my moral intuitions, as my moral intuitions appear to be inconsistent. Achieving consistency would necessarily involved deciding which intuition to discard.

[Edit]Note that the whole "animals are incapable of moral action" thing makes no sense if the morality of an action doesn't depend on what's going on in your mind. So if you're leaving animals amoral, you can't consistently go with the "morality is a crapshoot" approach.

You also have to make skeletons and zombies Neutral, or significantly change their mental capabilities. Heck, if you decide that alignment is a matter of behavior and animals aren't necessarily Neutral, you still need to change zombies' alignment entry or their behavior, too. There just is nothing reliably Evil about these monsters as they are described by everything but the "Alignment" line of their stats.[/Edit]

Perhaps the Paladin of Slaughter is the type who would execute a person for a traffic violation, and justify any evil act, from a severe beating to genocide, as being part of his crusade to eradicate whatever fails to meet his expectations.

That sounds as Lawful Evil as your other example.

In DnD, morality is generally portrayed as objective, not subjective

... but it's not clear whether it's supposed to be based on objective intentions, objective expectations, objective consequences, or something else entirely.

It doesn't help that the rulebooks that are supposed to clarify this are filled with stupid and best disregarded.

But anyway, thinking that you're doing the "right thing" never makes you Good. Thinking that it's right to slaughter your racial enemy because they're your racial enemy is probably typical of Lawful Evil. If anything, adhering to a standard of "right" would be Lawful, so long as it's the standard of a whole bunch of people and not just you.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Now, I've only played D&D for about two years, and I haven't played enough to really see a number of the alignments really elaborated on, especially on the evil side of the spectrum, where everyone is either just an undeveloped villain for the PCs to fight, or a maniac with little motivation for why he's evil, other than "I leik to kill things!" This leads to my question: does a well intentioned extremist count as evil? More importantly, can characters who holds this sort of belief logically be a Paladin of Slaughter or Tyranny?

Yes.

Alignment is more about methods than motivations - particularly on the Law/Chaos axis.

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Good/Evil (basic)

Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.
. . .
People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others.

If you are Good, then you do not kill unless you have a very good reason; if you are Evil, killing people is a perfectly acceptable means to any end.

Law/Chaos (basic)

Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties.

Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.
. . .
Someone who is neutral with respect to law and chaos has a normal respect for authority and feels neither a compulsion to obey nor a compulsion to rebel.

Lawful characters give deference to authority and tradition; Chaotic characters actively rebel against those things.

In a sense, all Paladins can be thought of as Well Intentioned Extremists; they act in the name of their God (or, ethos, I guess) and must remain ideologically pure at all costs.

Some examples:

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LG - Protects the Innocent and upholds authority and traditions unless they are actively harming the Innocent.
LN - Create and maintain order
LE - Establish order at all costs; an order which is good for you

NG - Protect the Innocent, even if you have to defy authority
N - n/a
NE - Kill those who get in your way

CG - Protect the Innocent, and free them from the bonds of authority!
CN - Destroy order
CE - Kill the weak and destroy anything that seeks to control you

I'm sorry to hear you haven't seen any good villains to date; villains are roleplayed just as much as PCs. They have hopes, desires and needs just like real people - but their methods for achieving them differ from "normal" people.

[Fortinbras]

I always thought that lawful evil should be someone like Rommel. Well, I guess I don't want to brand Rommel as evil but that sort of idea. Rommel was brave honorable and chivalrous. However he fought to extend the power of the Nazis. I suppose he didn't have a ton of control over what was happening at home but you get the idea. Someone who waged war like Rommel and ruled his nation like Hitler.

[Zeta Kai]

Hitler himself is probably a good example of Lawful Evil.

Also, the first rule of alignments is we don't discuss alignments.

The second rule of alignments is we DON'T DISCUSS ALIGNMENTS.

[Fortinbras]

Hitler himself is probably a good example of Lawful Evil.

Also, the first rule of alignments is we don't discuss alignments.

The second rule of alignments is we DON'T DISCUSS ALIGNMENTS.

Maybye but he was also crazy, I don't really picture the standard LE villian doing that much ranting and raving. Maybye Stalin is a better example. Or Ivan the terrible, although again he seems a little crazy.

[Zeta Kai]

Maybye but he was also crazy, I don't really picture the standard LE villian doing that much ranting and raving. Maybye Stalin is a better example. Or Ivan the terrible, although again he seems a little crazy.

Ah, but you forget, ol' Adolf used his speeches to rally a broken nation into a frightening force, led by a tyrannical dictatorship bent on domination & genocide. It's hard to top that. Ivan wasn't as terrible as his moniker suggests (compared to Hitler, anyway), & both he & Stalin had pre-existing powerful empires that they took over. Hitler had to build his evil empire from scratch, which I believe is the fastest rise/fall of an empire in history, as well as the fastest slaughter of millions in history (Stalin killed more, but he had a lot longer to do it).

It's arguable, subjective, & probably pointless to debate who is the "best example", but Adolf Hitler WAS Lawful Evil, & is still ridiculously well-known, so he's a good-enough example for our purposes.

[Dacia Brabant]

Here are my thoughts on the Paladin variants:

A Paladin of Slaughter wouldn't just kill because of people failing to meet his expectations, he'd kill for the fick of it. He destroys not for a cause but because it's there and because he can and that's all he does. This is the mass murderer of all mass murderers, a force of violent nature that rapes, tortures and kills everyone misfortunate enough to cross his path. D&D has a lot of this already in the form of Demons from the Abyss, but the Reavers from Firefly/Serenity are a good examples of this, or the Thuggee cult from India.

A Paladin of Tyranny is your typical fascist, believing his way is right and everyone else can either obey or suffer the consequences. Individual suffering doesn't matter, all that matters is The Cause--which is typically whatever system of order gives the tyrant his power--but he at least can be expected to work within the confines of that system of order. This is pretty straightforward stuff, there are so many examples from literature and real life that it shouldn't be hard to replicate.

A Paladin of Freedom is a revolutionary at heart, liberating the oppressed from the oppressors, opposing and overturning systems of order that are inherently cruel and dictatorial. But while he likely believes governments should be small and decentralized, he's not a full-blown anarchist, he's not going to depose the benevolent king or break up towns and villages just because they're lawful. The key is that he's not bound by laws or traditions, so he can act outside of or openly against those things to achieve his goals of liberty, equality and fraternity for the people. This is also something that crops up a lot as wherever you have tyrants you'll have freedom fighters.

[SurlySeraph]

It's arguable, subjective, & probably pointless to debate who is the "best example", but Adolf Hitler WAS Lawful Evil, & is still ridiculously well-known, so he's a good-enough example for our purposes.

Not to get off-topic, but given the number of completely irrational decisions he made (HAI GUYZ LET'S INVADE RUSSIA NOW!) I can't see Hitler as Lawful at all. NE, more likely.

[Narmoth]

Not to get off-topic, but given the number of completely irrational decisions he made (HAI GUYZ LET'S INVADE RUSSIA NOW!) I can't see Hitler as Lawful at all. NE, more likely.

Nope, most Russian troops were tied up in Siberia. He was probably expecting them to have to fight a second front against Japan.

[Halaster]

Well, since we are off-topic:
The Third Reich was about the most chaotic government you could imagine. Different offices in the bureaucracy had overlapping responsibilties, nazi party offices existed alongside state offices with no clear administrative separation. Not even the army was excluded, when the Waffen-SS became an army of its own... Hitler and his cronies pretty much made up the whole structure as they went. Whenever they needed a bureau to handle something, or to give one of their toadies an officious sounding title, they'd go right ahead and create something. Apparently, Hitler liked it that way, because it made him the only person to have it all under control.

To actually add something to the thread, which follows from the above:
Dictatorships are emphatically not lawful evil governments, as they always depend on the whims of one man (the dictator) or a small circle that has access to that man. It always works the same, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or Kim Il Soong. These states have whatever laws and administrative structures the BBEG comes up with off the top of his overadorned military-style hat.
Lawful evil governments should be dependable. They don't enact new laws on whim, but through tedious bureaucratic processes of evaluation and re-evaluation (each time grinding some more innocents through the mill for "testing"). They are faceless, not charismatic.

[Devils_Advocate]

Lawful Good: Egalitarian. "All innocent people deserve justice."
Chaotic Good: Libertarian. "All innocent people deserve freedom."
Chaotic Evil: Murderous. "Kill them all and take their stuff."
Lawful Evil: Chauvinistic. "The [outgroup] are The Enemy. The Enemy should be opposed."

Not to get off-topic, but given the number of completely irrational decisions he made (HAI GUYZ LET'S INVADE RUSSIA NOW!) I can't see Hitler as Lawful at all. NE, more likely.

Rationality would translate to high Wisdom, if anything. Definitely not Law. It's possible to be pathologically Lawful, even: so inflexible you can't function.

Still, maybe there's an argument to be made that he was too capricious to be Lawful.

[EarFall]

Lawful Good: Egalitarian. "All innocent people deserve justice."
Chaotic Good: Libertarian. "All innocent people deserve freedom."
Chaotic Evil: Murderous. "Kill them all and take their stuff."
Lawful Evil: Chauvinistic. "The [outgroup] are The Enemy. The Enemy should be opposed."


Rationality would translate to high Wisdom, if anything. Definitely not Law. It's possible to be pathologically Lawful, even: so inflexible you can't function.

Still, maybe there's an argument to be made that he was too capricious to be Lawful.

This, in regards to the wisdom aspect. Although I would say Hitler was far too capricious to be Lawful, yes...

and Lawful Evil isn't charismatic? Right. I'm sure Levistus, Mephistopheles, Asmodeous.... okay, all devil lords.... all devils pretty much in general, completely agree with you...

Lawful Evil can have TONS of charisma, in fact, more than any group. However, the faceless society you described is another LE type of government. The problem is, many charismatic people tend to be capricious, which is what kept Hitler from fitting the classic devil description. He justwasn't consistent in anything he did.

[Godskook]

LN non-casting paladins:

http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2005-10-13

Judge Dread

A good one-line for the LN Paladin is "I am the law".

[Halaster]

By "not charismatic" I didn't mean "Charisma 8", I meant "not using the trappings of charismatic leadership". That is, no matter how much charisma lawful evil types possess, they don't make that the sole basis of their rule. That just wouldn'r be reliable, predictable and straightforward. It would be a dance on the volcano, the constant re-staging of a leaders sex appeal with the masses, the bath in the crowd. Just doesn't fit in with how lawful evil works in my eyes (or lawful good for that matter). It's "the king is dead, long live the king", whereas charismatic rule depends on the individual leader, which is why dictatorships don't usually outlive the dictator (see Cromwell, Bonaparte, Hitler etc). Real lawfulness makes individuals replaceable, through rule of law. No matter what devil you deal with, you get what you pay for. It doesn't matter if he's named Asmodeus or Mephisto, because they both have to play by the rules. That's what faceless means.

[Fortinbras]

Of course it is very hard to agree on what lawful evil (or to find a real world example) because most really evil people in the world have some sort of mental disorder that makes them do the things they do. I'd say Stalin is the best example of a someone who is LE, although I don't know that much about him so I could be wrong.