Neutral Characters in Good Campaigns

[kiapet]

I've played several Neutral characters over the years. (I mean on the Good-Evil scale.) The Giant himself has said that a neutral character:

a) Doesn't do anything
or
b) Does an equal number of good and evil things.

Now in a typical adventure, you rescue the princess, save the helpless villagers, reveal a plot to take down the rightful king, ect. And since most of your party members are usually good, you'll get a couple of cats down from trees and help old ladies cross the road, too.

Short of burning down a village, how is a character supposed to stay neutral after doing so many good things?

[Swaoeaeieu]

the way i see it is that alignment is not a judgement passed on you according to the actions you undertook. You are not neutral because you saved a cat and kicked a puppy. Your alignment says something about the reason you do things.

Neutral characters do things not because it is the good thing to do but because they want do for a neutral reason (paiment for instance).

you dont have to do some evil things after the good ones to stay neutral. as long as you do the good deeds for a neutral reason.

am i making sense?

[Darazel]

Well, you could try to do those things for your own benefit. A simple mean to that may be to charge money.

A fighter saving a village because he does not want the people to suffer may be good.

But a fighter saving a village because (and only when) he is paid to do so is a mercenary and would be considered neutral (at least by me).

EDIT: Ninjad.

[OldTrees1]

Personally I disagree with the Giant on Neutral alignment. While those are both examples of neutral alignment they are not the whole of Neutral.

To me neutral is best summarized by the phrase "good is not easy".

So a benevolent character could fail to be good (aka be neutral) by:
1) Equal focus on amoral factors (personal gain from the venture)
2) Only taking the easy opportunities to help others (letting the difficult opportunities pass by)
3) Using minor evil means to promote good ends (Ex: rough interrogation)

[Neknoh]

Why would a neutral character have to balance things out?

The notion of "Must balance out." pretty much equals to "Ok, so i saved the orphanage. You, youngest from the orphanage, come here!" ¤stabs kid in the eye¤

Which, to me, is just plain stupid "Stupid Neutral?"

A neutral character, to me, is simply about having a more morally grey area to work with, need to interrogate the prisoner? The Neutral could well be the Bad Cop, hanging him out over cliffs and actually not caring if he drops him, but not just randomly pulling the teeth out of a prisoner the first thing he does.

A neutral character wont be the first to dive into a building on fire unless his character demands it (say, burning orphanage, was an orphan). A Neutral character CAN do plenty of good, but he could also be the git who won't leave a crumbling catacomb because there's still treasure there.

A neutral character could be a mercenary or a soldier fighting for himself or his own rather than "fighting the good fight against the evils of this world."

My neutral character in Rise of the Runelords is a Giant Slayer and an Outsider: Exile, meaning her village was plundered by giants and she's dedicated her life to protecting people from them, however, this is not out of duty, this is out of a thirst for revenge and she will not be quick to show a giant mercy for nearly any reason. If there are still fresh traces, she'll go off hunting for them, if not, she'll try to help the survivors of wherever the recent attack was.

I honestly don't like the alignment system, it's far too black and white for my liking, but one makes do with what one's got.

[hamishspence]

To me neutral is best summarized by the phrase "good is not easy".

So a benevolent character could fail to be good (aka be neutral) by:
1) Equal focus on amoral factors (personal gain from the venture)
2) Only taking the easy opportunities to help others (letting the difficult opportunities pass by)
3) Using minor evil means to promote good ends (Ex: rough interrogation)

Seconded. In fact, even evil characters can do good deeds with good motivations, it's just that they do major Evil deeds (for whatever reason) as well.

Neutral characters can fit this mold too- with the Evilness dialed down sufficiently.

Why would a neutral character have to balance things out?

They wouldn't (usually, except for Mordenkainen-type characters and some druids) be motivated to "balance things" - it would be the GM's interpretation of the overall pattern of the character's actions, that would be "they're roughly balanced".

[kiapet]

I feel like playing neutral characters is a little harder because you have to find excuses for things that good characters would do naturally. For example, a neutral character of mine saw a woman crying. I knew that it was a plot hook, but had to think up a reason for my character to even care about some random crying woman.

[Feint's End]

Well first of all lets say that the alignment system is pretty bad in itself and that you should avoid it as much as possible. Secondly as mentioned before the reason why you do things is which alignment you are.
You can be one of the nicest persons and still be neutral simply because you won't go out of your way to help people you don't know. But if you are nice to your neighbours, give them presents if they have birthday that doesn't make you "good" in D&D terms. It just means you are neutral.

Actually some of the evil alignments are not as bad either -> lawful evil for example could be a money loving **** who would almost do everything to get money but he would never kill someone for it.

The problem is that people look at the alignment table and see 3 lines and think "Oh ... there are bad, neutral and good people in this world" but the alignment system in and itself is wrong.

A more realistic views on general archetypes of alignments:
Good alignments mean you are a saint because you go out of your way to help people. Only a few people in the real world are good by how good in D&D is defined.

Neutral alignments (at least the more lawful part) tend to be the middle to the upper part. They want to be happy and also the people around them to be happy. They are good people by our worlds definition since they try to stay out of doing bad things and care for their family and friends. I feel the infamous Chaotic Stupid alignment is just overrated (and wrongly played) and just a different way of being the before mentioned things.

Now evil is the bad apple because the pure concept is stupid. Lawful evil persons could still care for their familys and friends but they don't stop when it comes to making money (I feel like this is a good example). Neutral evil and Chaotic evil are mostly sociopaths. Neutral evil because they go out of their way to harm and spread evil and Chaotic evil because this alignment has sociopath written all over it.

So to put it short: A normal world (D&D worlds maybe have more good and evil people) has very, very few people of good alignment; a lot of neutral alignment; a good punch of lawful evil alignment; a small amount of neutral evil and chaotic evil alignments

D&D good -> realworld saint; D&D neutral -> realword good; D&D lawful evil -> realworld rutheless but still somewhat respectable; D&D chaotic and neutral evil -> sociopaths

Remember though that alignments shift and are seen different by people from different cultures.

[Diarmuid]

I just dont think this is really that hard. Having to come up with reasons to do something seems counterproductive to the whole alignment thing. Would your character ask a crying woman what's wrong. Yes, no. If no, then be a big boy (or girl) and deal with the consequences of that action (or in this case, inaction).

If you must "think of something", again it just shouldnt be that hard: Curiosity, interest in persuing relationship, simply wanting to not hear the crying anymore, desire to maintain a "polite" persona to others around.

[Spore]

Now in a typical adventure, you rescue the princess to strongly suggest getting laid by her, save the helpless villagers to then be their reeve, reveal a plot to take down the rightful king (to become his royal advisor), ect. And since most of your party members are usually good, you'll get a couple of cats down from trees and help old ladies cross the road, too.

I really like doing good to accomplish own goals.

[Zweisteine]

A fighter saving a village because he does not want the people to suffer may be good.

But a fighter saving a village because (and only when) he is paid to do so is a mercenary and would be considered neutral (at least by me).

And a Fighter who saves the village because he wanted to slaughter the attacking monsters is evil.


There are, in my opinion, three broad types of Neutrality.
1. Natural neutrality: You are neutral because you simply don't really have much of an alignment. This is a bit like 4e's "unaligned." Animals are neutral because they aren't intelligent enough to have morals/ethics/whatever.

2. Balancer neutrality: You actively seek balance between the alignments. The guy who saves a cat and kicks a puppy might belong here, but it is really more of a "out to stop extremes." For example, you'd stop a lawful good tyranny (Miko's in charge of it) because it's too lawful, not because it's a tyranny. A classic lawful evil tyranny would be stopped because it is too evil, not too lawful (probably, or maybe both).

3. Basic neutrality: This is the standard type, what most people have. You're neutral because you serve yourself, but only to an extent. You'll protect your town, but because you love your town, not because it's the right thing to do. You might keep quiet/help cover up a murder, because you don't want to be involved with it. For an adventurer, you're out adventuring because you want to be more powerful/wealthy, most likely. If your most frequent employer was in serious danger, you might volunteer to help for free, but only because he's a good source of income, not because you're out to save him (unless he's also a friend).

Of course, as any alignment, it's far more complex than that, but I hope that helped.

[NEO|Phyte]

A Good person saves the world because it's the right thing to do.
A Neutral person saves the world because the end of the world is kinda inconvenient if you wanna keep living. (assuming they aren't neutral to the point of apathy)
An Evil person saves the world because you can't eventually rule something if it goes away. (assuming evil to the point of villainy, regular old evil falls under the same umbrella as Neutral)


This is of course a generalization. Individual characters may have their own reasons for doing things. For instance, the character immortalized in my avatar is busy trying to prevent Atropus from returning to Eberron because if it kills everyone, he can't have the satisfaction of personally hunting down and taking his time executing the people behind the Day of Mourning.

[Scalpless]

Neutral evil and Chaotic evil are mostly sociopaths. Neutral evil because they go out of their way to harm and spread evil and Chaotic evil because this alignment has sociopath written all over it.

Not really. From the SRD:

"A neutral evil villain does whatever she can get away with. She is out for herself, pure and simple."

For example, a very career-focused person who does some backstabbing whenever it's beneficial and is a jerk could be neutral evil.

"A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal."

Could be a gang leader or something similar. Does drugs, beats people up, has random outbursts of aggression.

I think people only see the extremes of their alignments too often. Yes, a True Neutral character could be obsessed with balance and a Chaotic Evil character could be a serial killer, torturer and pyromaniac, but that's not always the case.

[Segev]

Neutral people can be just as driven as good or evil ones.

Neutral people have more morals than evil ones, but less than good ones.

A neutral person probably does balk at murder, and may even step in to help defend somebody from a murderer. He may even consider a murderer who kills somebody he hates to be in the wrong. But he might not rescue that hated person from the murderer. Not that he'd deliberately wait for the murder to happen before acting, but he might decide that merely letting people whose job (or whose predilections) demand(s) that they help is sufficient.

A neutral person might turn a blind eye to evil being done, as long as it isn't impacting him and his. A neutral person is far more likely to decide that the ends justify the means; he'll willingly (if not necessarily happily) perform the calculus to allow the dragon to eat the maiden if it would ensure the town (full of far more people than just the one) was safe. By the same token, he would slay the dragon for its hoard, but not just because it was threatening a random village in which he had no investment.

A neutral person is looking out for number 1, but he's not so callous as to view others as merely tools or obstacles. If it won't hurt him too much, he'll help others out (the degree depends on the level of danger and the cost to himself and his own laziness). While he'd far prefer to avoid harming others to harming them (because his conscience would niggle at him for it), he will do harm to those who haven't wronged him if he has to for a sufficiently driving reason.

And to a neutral person, "sufficiently driving" reasons can be selfish. He will generally have a firm line he won't cross, still, if only from the perspective of "do unto others as you would have done unto you." Where the evil person sees others as things to be exploited, and will thus harm them whenever expedient, the neutral person will stop short on the basis that he wouldn't want to suffer what he would have to do.

But by the same token, he is more willing to force onto others what he would not choose to himself endure if it's needed badly enough. A good person might be paralyzed by a hard choice between harming one group and harming another. The neutral person will pick based on what gets him the most, or costs him the least.

Neutral people will go FARTHER in pursuit of their goals than will good people, but they are less prone to grandiose plans meant to "find a third option" when the morally ambiguous option still gets them what they want. They will not go AS FAR as evil people, particularly in search of petty goals, because their consciences won't let them. But if it's the only way...

Neutral is on a sliding scale between good and evil. They'll do more ambiguous acts than will good guys, but they'll balk at things with which evil will have no problems.

[ElenionAncalima]

Usually, the biggest motivators for neutral are self-preservation, rewards, protection of the things they care about and personal beliefs.

If goblins attack them, they are going to fight back. They might take out the goblins if the town is willing to pay. They might also do it if they live in the town and they don't want the goblins to burn their house down and kill their family. Or perhaps, a goblin killed their father and now they hate all goblins.

[Fouredged Sword]

I think the balancing idea of neutrality works for the law/chaos scale.

"I like my freedom, but I want the protection of laws" is a valid argument, and both good and evil characters can function with a desire for both law and chaos.

Good and evil seems less functional in that manner though.

[Big Fau]

Good and evil seems less functional in that manner though.

It's very much functional, you just need to figure out a motive beyond "Balancing the two extremes". Like this guy:

Spoiler

Show

Really, the idea of LN, CN, and TN being about balancing out the G/E scale is a bad way to envision characters of those alignments. Even the Inevitables, the staple LN creature, are more concerned about the L than the N.

[hamishspence]

Not really. From the SRD:

"A neutral evil villain does whatever she can get away with. She is out for herself, pure and simple."

For example, a very career-focused person who does some backstabbing whenever it's beneficial and is a jerk could be neutral evil.

"A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal."

Could be a gang leader or something similar. Does drugs, beats people up, has random outbursts of aggression.

Would certainly fit with settings where close to 1/3 the population of an ordinary settlement are Good, and 1/3 Evil- like Eberron.

[Slipperychicken]

Here's one interpretation of Neutrality:

You could totally do good stuff, it's just that you don't really prefer good or evilness, and you don't really think about it in terms of good or evil. You'll do whichever you perceive to be beneficial (whether because of gold, social pressures, goal achievement, or other inducements).

[Drachasor]

You can easily be neutral and prefer good (most people don't like evil for simple pragmatic reasons). You can help others as a neutral character for many reasons. You will help out at personal cost family, friends, and others you have a personal connection to.

However, you neutral characters do not help others in general when it requires personal sacrifice. At 10th level stopping a murder in front of you being committed by a level 1 guy is trivial and a neutral character could do that (not really much sacrifice there). Stopping an equal CR murder on the other hand, is probably something they'd avoid unless they had a personal stake. They might demand payment to rescue a princess, something to justify their personal sacrifice. However, after rescuing her, getting to know her and becoming friends, they'd be far more willing to make sacrifices without needing payment or even needing to be asked.

And of course they are free to pursue their own interests.

[Zweisteine]

He may even consider a murderer who kills somebody he hates to be in the wrong.

A neutral person (in this case, under a civilized, non-evil government) would almost certainly consider any murderer to be in the wrong, simply because society says that murder is wrong, so he would accept it.

It's the whole idea of "he may have been a horrible person, but he didn't deserve to die."

(This does assume that "hate" is more of a disliking, not a "he killed my family" level of hate.)

I'd argue with your post quite a bit more, if I wasn't so lazy...

[sjeshin]

I've played several Neutral characters over the years. (I mean on the Good-Evil scale.) The Giant himself has said that a neutral character:

a) Doesn't do anything
or
b) Does an equal number of good and evil things.

Now in a typical adventure, you rescue the princess, save the helpless villagers, reveal a plot to take down the rightful king, ect. And since most of your party members are usually good, you'll get a couple of cats down from trees and help old ladies cross the road, too.

Short of burning down a village, how is a character supposed to stay neutral after doing so many good things?

Well, in your given example, that character would still easily be neutral. True neutrality is about WHY you do things. Not quite so much what you do. While killing innocents will always be evil, saving the princess just because it will earn you renown in the area is not a good act. Helping an old lady across the street simply because it is easy enough is also not worthy of being called a truly good act. If you do it with a kind memory of your grandmother, thinking of how you would walk with her, this is easily still neutral. Your main motivation is your personal relationship with a family member, and the fond memory of her.

If you are having trouble figuring out why a character would do something, because of his alignment, you are too caught up in alignment. Think of the character FIRST. The best rule my first DM told me about in character creation and play is this: "Before you pick a class, pick an alignment. Before you pick an alignment, pick a person." Think about who this person you are roleplaying is, what they are capable of, and try to get a feel for who they truly would be. A lawful good father of three would still brutally kill a man and maybe even continue hacking at his corpse if he came through the door as the man finished off the last of his family.

You aren't playing an alignment, you are playing a person. Real (fantasy) people will never be perfectly in tune with an alignment at all times. Alignment is what your character is pre-disposed to do. In a moment of passion, who knows what that LG fighter is capable of. A paladin's code of conduct class feature is not reprinted in the Lawful Good entry in the alignments section of the PHB.

[TriForce]

well for starters, a alignment is a guideline AT BEST, it doesnt forbid or force a character to do anything. also, its possible to be lawful good and still be racist, or be chaotic evil and do anything to protect your family, including sacrifising yourself.

neutral usually means that a character isnt actually dedicated to something. while a paladin would gladly stop a goblin attack on a random village, and expect nothing in return, a neutral character who decides to stop it would likely expect SOMETHING in return, be it gold, fame, or favors from the lady (s) he saved.

good characters consider "because its the right thing to do" all the reason they need for anything, while neutral characters are more likely to consider risk/reward. this doesnt mean they need to be promised a reward for EVERYTHING, just that they at least act surprised or dissapointed when there isnt any.

gold, curiosity, fame, recognision, bragging rights. these are all good reasons for a neutral character to do anything

[Drachasor]

A neutral person (in this case, under a civilized, non-evil government) would almost certainly consider any murderer to be in the wrong, simply because society says that murder is wrong, so he would accept it.

It's the whole idea of "he may have been a horrible person, but he didn't deserve to die."

(This does assume that "hate" is more of a disliking, not a "he killed my family" level of hate.)

I'd argue with your post quite a bit more, if I wasn't so lazy...

A neutral person is perfectly capable of viewing murder as evil on principle. Just because he isn't comfortable making a personal sacrifice to stop a killer doesn't mean he doesn't think killing other people is inherently wrong for many reasons above and beyond "well everyone else dislikes it" or "it's against the law".

[Segev]

Yeah, basically, a neutral person won't put himself out unless there's something in it for him. The less in it for him, the less he'll put himself out. Where a good person might have the same restriction, the good person's consideration would be whether or not he can afford to put himself out that much, and the more good he is, the more he'll strive to justify putting himself out. The neutral person is more likely to help the less it costs him and the more wrong he perceives the thing he's helping alleviate to be.

An evil person simply won't put himself out at all if there's not enough in it for him, even if it would cost him very little.

A good person would NEVER cause harm to an innocent for personal gain. A neutral person almost never would, but if that harm were small enough and the gain large enough, might (e.g. he might pick a rich man's pocket for the pittance - to the rich man - in his belt pouch if it makes the difference between comfort and misery for the neutral thief). An evil person wouldn't hesitate to harm another, innocent or not, for something he wants. He might hesitate if the attempt would be costly to the evil person, because he doesn't want to risk it, but he wouldn't hesitate if the only thing stopping him was some petty notion that other people matter more than random objects.

[sjeshin]

I've played several Neutral characters over the years. (I mean on the Good-Evil scale.) The Giant himself has said that a neutral character:

a) Doesn't do anything
or
b) Does an equal number of good and evil things.

Now in a typical adventure, you rescue the princess, save the helpless villagers, reveal a plot to take down the rightful king, ect. And since most of your party members are usually good, you'll get a couple of cats down from trees and help old ladies cross the road, too.

Short of burning down a village, how is a character supposed to stay neutral after doing so many good things?

Well, in your given example, that character would still easily be neutral. True neutrality is about WHY you do things. Not quite so much what you do. While killing innocents will always be evil, saving the princess just because it will earn you renown in the area is not a good act. Helping an old lady across the street simply because it is easy enough is also not worthy of being called a truly good act. If you do it with a kind memory of your grandmother, thinking of how you would walk with her, this is easily still neutral. Your main motivation is your personal relationship with a family member, and the fond memory of her.

If you are having trouble figuring out why a character would do something, because of his alignment, you are too caught up in alignment. Think of the character FIRST. The best rule my first DM told me about in character creation and play is this: "Before you pick a class, pick an alignment. Before you pick an alignment, pick a person." Think about who this person you are roleplaying is, what they are capable of, and try to get a feel for who they truly would be. A lawful good father of three would still brutally kill a man and maybe even continue hacking at his corpse if he came through the door as the man finished off the last of his family.

You aren't playing an alignment, you are playing a person. Real (fantasy) people will never be perfectly in tune with an alignment at all times. Alignment is what your character is pre-disposed to do. In a moment of passion, who knows what that LG fighter is capable of. A paladin's code of conduct class feature is not reprinted in the Lawful Good entry in the alignments section of the PHB.

[Particle_Man]

I sort of see it that the neutral characters will care about close friends and family, but otherwise won't go out of their way to help others if it is too risky. The way to get Neutral characters in adventures with Good characters easily is to have them all be friends.

[hamishspence]

A good person would NEVER cause harm to an innocent for personal gain. A neutral person almost never would, but if that harm were small enough and the gain large enough, might (e.g. he might pick a rich man's pocket for the pittance - to the rich man - in his belt pouch if it makes the difference between comfort and misery for the neutral thief).

According to PHB, few characters are perfectly consistent- the example given was Tordek the Lawful Good dwarf, who has a greedy streak and may be willing to steal if he can justify it to himself.

[Segev]

According to PHB, few characters are perfectly consistent- the example given was Tordek the Lawful Good dwarf, who has a greedy streak and may be willing to steal if he can justify it to himself.

Oh, sure. I am speaking in generalizations, here. One "less than paragon of good" trait, even portrayed as a consistent character flaw, does not make you "fall" to neutrality.

Nobody, save God, is perfect. And depending on your D&D setting, God doesn't exist in it.

[Neknoh]

According to your above example though, a street urchin cutting a purse and running into an alleyway would flag as Neutral/Chaotic evil, if he doesn't care who he took it from.

I know it is an extreme example, but if simply "Not caring for strangers loss at your own personal gain" is a token of evil, there are a LOT of evil characters around.