I miss CG

[Mercule]

Dausuul: Sure. I still don't see a war ordained by the elemental concepts of Order and Chaos. Lawful/Good vs. Lawful/Chaotic makes perfect sense though, because they're humanoid and have feelings about things that can cause actions that don't align with the concepts of Order and Chaos.
In other words, no person will ever be perfectly Lawful or Chaotic.

No person is ever going to be perfectly Good or Evil, either. I fail to see the relevance.

 

[muffin_of_chaos]

No person is ever going to be perfectly Good or Evil, either. I fail to see the relevance.

I can comprehend perfect good and perfect evil wanting to destroy each other much easier than perfect order and chaos. That's probably because good and evil seem to be constructs.

 

[Celebrim]

Dausuul: That's a very good treatment except for one thing - you don't give Lawful Evil enough credit. Lawful Evil isn't merely well organized chaotic evil, and neither is self-centeredness the be all end all of evil.

Lawful Evil is what you get when you take Lawful Good and then state, "Life has relatively little value. The life or suffering of an individual is of little concern compared to the success of the state. Power is everything. Success is the sole measure of the worth of society."

People in a lawful evil society legitimately feel that the state is worth more than they are and are (like any lawful society) perfectly willing to sacrifice themselves for the state. In fact, they are probably more willing to do so than evil a lawful good society, as lawful evil societies almost invariably end up having significant death cults where death is symbolicly or openly celebrated (for example, the SS in the Nazi's. I could site more modern examples, but don't want to get political). LE societies are almost always 'lovers of death'.

The critical aspect of a lawful evil society is correctly knowing your place. If your place is X in the heirarchy, then you are supposed to stay there. If your place is really Y in the heirarchy, then you are expect to move yourself (up or down) into the place where you are supposed to be. Of course, you can be wrong, and the assumption of the lawful evil society is that if you succeed, then you were right. If you fail, then you were wrong. And wrongness in knowing your place in the society is the most venial sin in a lawful evil ethic. So, there in a LE society there is nothing wrong against plotting against your lord and replacing him, per se. If you successfully do so and succeed in the role, your success justifies your decision and is proof that it was time for you to enter into the role. On the other hand, anything less than success is proof that you were wrong, that you are guilty of betraying your rightful lord, that you are guilty of hubris, and must be punished punatively and without mercy in order to sustain the social order.

And if the society really is LE, people wanting to change thier place in the society - especially through extra-legal channels and especially more than a single rank - are extremely rare. Everyone isn't in fact climbing the ranks on everyone elses back. Most of the time they are doing thier job and if very good at it being promoted to new responcibility. Only very very rarely would someone be wrongly placed into the wrong caste and need to take extraordinary measures to correct the problem for the good of society. Normally, the society is expected to function by everyone in it and everyone's greatest ambition is to serve in the role that they were assigned - even if it is as grease for the iron wheels of the tyranny that they serve.

 

[Dausuul]

Dausuul: Sure. I still don't see a war ordained by the elemental concepts of Order and Chaos. Lawful/Good vs. Lawful/Chaotic makes perfect sense though, because they're humanoid and have feelings about things that can cause actions that don't align with the concepts of Order and Chaos.
In other words, no person will ever be perfectly Lawful or Chaotic.

Nobody in his/her right mind would want absolute stasis or total chaos. But that doesn't mean a war between "elemental" powers of Order and Chaos couldn't take the form I described, when humans get involved. The Lawful side is fighting not for the absolute victory of Order, but to put an end to what they see as an onslaught of Chaos leading to the breakdown of society. The Chaotic side is fighting not for a total collapse into Chaos, but to break what they see as the iron grip of Order enforcing a stifling tyranny.

Each side regards its own "elemental" principle as generally preferable; the Lawfuls want to see a world dominated by Order, with only enough Chaos to keep things from grinding to a complete halt, while the Chaotics want a world filled with Chaos, with only enough Order to keep things from utterly disintegrating.

Of course, while both sides probably recognize in principle that it is not desirable for either Order or Chaos to achieve complete victory, in practice they may become blinded to the dangers of overreaching... to the point that Lawful characters may keep trying to strengthen Order, or Chaotic characters may keep sowing Chaos, even to the end.

 

[muffin_of_chaos]

Agreed. Sounds like a good campaign.
I just think it's silly to assume that Order and Chaos *want* their followers to engage in war. They wouldn't, even if they had wants.
In the same vein, I think real embodiments of law and chaos in the form of elementals is implausible.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

It's not that Robin Hood went against Prince John, it's how he did it.

Going against a usurper may not immidiately ring the CHAOTIC lights, but banditry? Are you honestly going to tell me banditry is not a chaotic action?

It's only banditry because the Usurper says so. Once you win, it becomes heroic resistance and you get medals for it. And no one would dare call you a bandit.

Robin Hood in most legend was fighting for the rightful ruler against the usurper. If he was truly chaotic, he would have kept 'stealing from the rich to give to the poor' after Richard resumed his rule. Otherwise, why not? The poor are still poor, the rich are still rich. But of course he knows these actions would have been undefendable under a legitimate government. He isn't nearly chaotic. He wasn't doing the bandit schtick by choice and he did so by maintaining as many of the knightly code as he could.

Also, fighting Nazis may not automatically equate to good, but I'm pretty sure defending your homeland, your neighbors, and your family, is

No, defending community and family is a normal human impulse. Just about anyone able to overcome his/her fear of death would do it. If you do overcome your fear of death in order to defend your own, does it make you good? No, it makes you courageous.

After the war ended, some resistance fighter and soldiers who fought the nazis then commited various crimes during the course of normal society, including fairly evil ones such as abusing their spouse and rape. Indeed their lawyers sometime invoked their past service as attenuating circumstance.

How is that possible? Easy : Being courageous and being morally good are two different thing. Hopefully you can be both but they aren't connected. And I got to say it's very naive to believe otherwise.

 

[Celebrim]

The definition of "Chaos" implies not reacting to codes at all, because they cannot apply.

Purely a symmantic difference. Whether or not the chaotic actor is ignoring the external code or consciously defying it, the effect is the same. The point is the chaotic actor does not believe his actions should be dictated by an external code, but only by internal and personal constructs (or some sort).

All right. An action is lawful And evil. We're not talking about lawful/evil actions, but actions designed to achieve evil through law, as Lawful Good actions are designed to achieve good through law. There are no such Lawful Evil actions, therefore they cannot exist on the same axis.

I think if you drop the assumption that an action is defined by its intention, this will clear itself up pretty quickly.

You are onto something in as much as people actively trying to achieve evil are rare, so rare as that we probably have never seen a whole society with the goal of evil, but I think this is more problimatic for Nuetral Evil than Lawful Evil. It is sufficient for lawful evil that you are trying to achieve law through evil. It is not necessary that you be trying to achieve evil through law. So it maybe that for mortals, the whole bottom quarter of the graph centered on NE is almost inaccessible because nihilism has such low appeal in living organism, but that doesn't imply that lawful evil can't exist. Again, it is sufficient for lawful good to be trying to achieve law through good. It is not necessary that it be trying to achieve good through law.

There can be evil results of good-intentioned actions. I don't consider those actions to be evil, because otherwise there's no point in considering good and evil as being possible at all.

Yes, there is. Plenty of perfectly rational and rigorous philosophies exist out there that do not consider intentionality to be particularly important in determining whether something was good or evil. They might consider it a mitigating factor when dispensing justice, but the act itself was good or evil based on something other than its intention.

Once again, I can't help but think your confusion is that you have a very specific moral philosophy and you refuse to classify it except as 'Good' and refuse to examine your bias or to consider other philosophies relative to your own. If for example, you were lawful neutral, it would be natural to claim that chaos is just insanity or doesn't exist and that good and evil where constructs. You might even be right, but in being right you wouldn't hold the philosophy described as 'Good' by D&D.

You understand that I'm not saying that Lawful/Good and Lawful Good are the same thing right? Lawful/Good equates to the past editions, Lawful Good to the current. Not mutually exclusive systems, but one's better than another.

I understand that you are really splitting hairs here.

I'm saying there is a distinct difference, and no one else seems to see that. Which is kinda cool, it means this argument means something.

I think your distinct difference just don't amount to much to anyone but yourself.

Lawful/Good would be troubled by the indecision between whether to be Lawful or Good. In 4E, if this was a serious issue, that person would probably be Unaligned because their focus isn't Good or Evil.

Of course lawful good would be troubled by the indecision between whether to act lawfully or goodly. All the mixed alignments hold two different goals in tension with another. A chaotic evil person can be troubled with indecision because the 'good' path seems to lead to short term personal gains. He might be tempted to do 'good' because it seems easy at the moment. And so on and so forth.

Isn't the internal struggle and debate between doing what is lawful and doing what seems right the core of what makes lawful good characters so interesting? Isn't that how we see it play out in the better and more interesting characterizations of lawful good characters? The tension and indecision is a consequence of imperfect wisdom (or at least that's how LG people understand it), not a consequence of not having allegiance to law and good. Quite the contrary, without an allegiance to law and good such indecision, confusion, and tension wouldn't exist. Unaligned people generally don't have internal moral turmoil.

What? The point is that championing anything is to take a moral stance.

What? Did I say it didn't?

No...? I don't get it...this still has nothing to do with chaotically good action or lawfully evil action. (Read: as differentiated between Chaotic/Good action and Lawful/Evil action.)

You are really stretching now.

Never did claim so. I'm claiming that the action to break down a door to save a child you think is in danger isn't chaotic. This is because we still have different definitions of chaotic, mine having more to do with the current edition and the actual definition and yours having to do with an idealistic chaos.

Err... you still seem like you are stretching to me.

Slavery is evil, by the common connotations of the word.

Common sense isn't proof of anything.

It isn't indentured servitude, it isn't doing it for someone's own good, it is using someone else for your own good without their consent.

That's not the definition of slavery, and more importantly that's certainly not how societies that practiced slavery understood the term.

Personally I don't really believe in evil, because I'm a Spinozist.

Swell.

 

[DarkKestral]

Dausuul: Sure. I still don't see a war ordained by the elemental concepts of Order and Chaos. Lawful/Good vs. Lawful/Chaotic makes perfect sense though, because they're humanoid and have feelings about things that can cause actions that don't align with the concepts of Order and Chaos.
In other words, no person will ever be perfectly Lawful or Chaotic.

Certainly, no individual may be utterly Lawful or Chaotic, but when you have deities that directly interact and speak with individuals and thus have a say in a society's actions, it can be perfectly reasonable to have a war between LN and CN gods, because the gods CAN be pure expressions of an ideal.

For an example, Moorcock basically has the lords of Order vs. the lords of Chaos. Order has rules for everything, but their real goal is to create a never-changing reality where the past is the same as the present which is the same as the future. Their home and ideal is a an utterly featureless plane that extends forever. On the other hand, Chaos is ever-changing. None of the lords of Chaos ever stay the same from moment to moment, and so does their home, a place where the laws of reality literally don't exist. Things come in and out of existence all the time and the one rule is that anything is possible.

These gods, unlike mortals, are totally without mercy. They can be good or evil depending on situation, but ultimately they are neither in and of themselves, and basically represent primordial visions of the two concepts, "unsullied" by other ideals. They may want individuals to commit acts which are evil, but they themselves don't perceive these acts as having any moral or ethical consequences beyond protecting Order or Chaos, because they are utterly apathetic to the desires of mortals. On the other hand, devils and demons have historically paid quite a bit of attention to mortal desires; their role in D&D has always been to tempt individuals into expressing their darker desires at the expense of their fellow man. This introduces a significant difference that helps clarify the "N" section of spectrum... Moorcock's gods will do whatever it takes to promote their cause, be it a good or evil act, while D&Ds fiends and evil deities are supposed to find it hard to do good acts unless they can hide a greater evil within. Moorcock's gods are in one sense extreme examples of the LN and CN alignments, then.

Their mortal followers tend to be either good or evil, but it's made clear that slavish devotion to one of the two sets of principles/deities without concern for your fellow man is going to end up with the follower doing very evil stuff, and that in general, while a given individual may prefer the actions of one side or another, the balance must be struck somewhere in the middle. Balance isn't the be-all and end-all, however, as a society may function well even if it is tipped somewhat to one side or another philosophically as long as it does not get too aligned.

 

[Praesul]

I'm not sure if this has already been said, as I didn't have time to read the entire thread but here's my take.

Don't think of the new alignment system as a spectrum of only good and evil. This new system isn't implying that Lawful Good is "more good" than simply Good. What it does imply though is that LG is more restrictive than Good. A LG player has a certain code they must follow, while a Good character has a lot more personal freedom, like Neutral Good and Chaotic Good used to. The developers just decided there wasn't enough of a distinction between NG and CG.

On the other side, Evil and Chaotic Evil are much the same. Evil people are more the selfish folks we remember from NE and LE. Like LG, CE characters have certain decisions pre-made for them since they are chaotic and evil. They won't have that code of ethics the LG guy does, but they will have a certain predisposition against civilization that a plain old Evil guy might not have.

In the end, I think the new system really does a great job of reducing ambiguity in the alignment system and helps to prevent those arguments so many people have eluded to. Also, I think it works to give back some of the story telling power to the player. Freeing up the choices of Evil and Good characters will really allow for a less restrictive playstyle.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

It's only banditry because the Usurper says so. Once you win, it becomes heroic resistance and you get medals for it. And no one would dare call you a bandit.

It's still chaotic. Or are you now going to tell me that running around, mugging people, is somehow inerently lawful?

Robin Hood in most legend was fighting for the rightful ruler against the usurper. If he was truly chaotic, he would have kept 'stealing from the rich to give to the poor' after Richard resumed his rule. Otherwise, why not? The poor are still poor, the rich are still rich. But of course he knows these actions would have been undefendable under a legitimate government. He isn't nearly chaotic. He wasn't doing the bandit schtick by choice and he did so by maintaining as many of the knightly code as he could.

You're confusing chaotic/lawful with good/evil. Robin Hood used a chaotic means to fight - I don't care what the justification was. If he stopped the banditry afterwards, then his alignment changes, although at times I think I'm the only person who realizes this is possible.

No, defending community and family is a normal human impulse. Just about anyone able to overcome his/her fear of death would do it. If you do overcome your fear of death in order to defend your own, does it make you good? No, it makes you courageous.

So wait, good is defending people unless you know their names?

After the war ended, some resistance fighter and soldiers who fought the nazis then commited various crimes during the course of normal society, including fairly evil ones such as abusing their spouse and rape. Indeed their lawyers sometime invoked their past service as attenuating circumstance.

Then wouldn't this constitute as a PERFECT example of the three chaotic alignments teaming up momentarily? Some where chaotic good - fighting to defend others. Some were chaotic evil - fighting to remove the law. One is good, one is evil, but both team up because they both hate the very lawful evil nazis.

How is that possible? Easy : Being courageous and being morally good are two different thing. Hopefully you can be both but they aren't connected. And I got to say it's very naive to believe otherwise.

No, but it's very aggrivating to see "good is helping people. Unless you know them. Then it's not good. And chaos is when you do something bad."