D&D 5E What Alignment Am I?

[Celebrim]

I am relatively new to D&D, and I am a little bit confused about where my new character falls on the alignment axes. He is driven by his own internal compass to punish wrongdoers and to protect the innocent, but he cares very little about the law. He also tends to view things in black and white, and can be pretty ruthless in his pursuit of justice.

• The fact that he cares little about the law suggests that he is probably not lawful, though his obsessive pursuit of justice at all costs might suggest otherwise.
• The fact that he is driven to punish wrongdoers and protect the innocent suggests he is good, but his willingness to take ruthless measures in his pursuit of justice might suggest otherwise.

When you have conflicting motivations like that, it might suggest you've got a character that has worked out some compromise. In D&D, compromise positions are usually neutral.

However, sometimes when you dig a bit deeper, you find that positions that seem to be in conflict aren't really, but are simply expressions of an underlying theme.

Let me suggest a different way of looking at this character.

The fact that he doesn't seem to have a shred of self-interest suggests that he's probably not chaotic. Merely being in opposition to the law doesn't guarantee that you aren't lawful. A lawful person could decide that the laws of particular nation are wrong, because they don't actually further the things that the law was meant to advance. For example, a lawful person could decide that the nation has become corrupt, and has created laws that hinder justice. This person could be motivated to break the law because he thinks its letting the guilty escape their just punishment, or because he thinks that it is letting the powerful and the corrupt abuse the innocent. This person would be lawful because he sees the world as having a higher law which all laws, if they are correct laws, have to be derived from. In that case, all that matters is whether the person sees himself as being the source of this higher law or above this higher law, or whether he sees himself as being subject to it.

Two lawful persons can argue over which law they ought to be subject to, just as two good persons can argue over which is the better expression of goodness.

On the good/evil axis, one good test of where a person lies is exactly what they interpret as justice. For simplicity, consider the "Eye for an Eye" test. A neutral character tends to see justice as applying the appropriate and proportional penalty to a law breaker. Lawful neutrals tend to see this as a matter of what the law demands - usually in the form of punishment (since the main injury was against society). Chaotic neutrals tend to see this as a matter of what the private contract or understanding between them and the other party specified implicitly or explicitly - usually in the form of restitution (since the main injury was against the individual). But the point is always proportionality.

Good on the other hand sees a standard like "Eye for an Eye" as being a maximum cap on the punishment, and that justice is always tinged with mercy, often with the end of rehabilitation. Being forced to take a standard of "Eye for an Eye" is a last resort because the wrong doer is making forgiveness impossible by persistently being destructive, and when it happens always tragic.

Evil on the other hand sees the standard of justice as being disproportional. After all, what's the justice in giving the wrong doer the same or better than what the innocent received? Evil sees justice as being purely retribution, and as something that has as its primary purpose the inflicting of fear and terror. Whenever evil is done (to you or what you stand for), you hit back twice as hard. If someone takes from you, you take back ten times as much. If someone injures you, you hit back ten times as hard. Most commonly in literature this is encountered as the idea of street justice. It's most prevailing trait is that any insult to your honor or the honor of your group deserves to be repaid with death. Forgiveness is weakness and just invites more wrong.

So ask yourself a question about this characters methods? Does he believe in proportional justice? Does he believe in only punishing evil doers to the extent it is made necessary in order to protect the innocent from further harm? Or does he have a theory of unlimited retribution, whereby those people who get on his 'bad list' are to be subjected to the full fury of his wrath?

With the limited information you've given me, it's suggestive of someone who is in the LN-N-LE wedge of the alignment map. But that may only be because you are leaving out keep facts about his motives and behavior. Is he inconsistent? Does he take the tact that the law is whatever he decides it is? Does he have nothing higher he reports to? Under what circumstances would he consider himself wrong and deserving of punishment, and how would he respond to that?

 

[Celebrim]

I think we will never be able to agree, because this looks like a fundamental sticking point. I will never accept that. To me, a Lawful character is Lawful because he seeks to find order, structure, predictability in his actions and the actions of others, and seek to create that order and structure in some way.

This is a restatement of what lowkey said. In order for their to be order, structure, and predictability, all members of the system must agree to some external referent by which they can know there place and purpose in the system. If each member of the system has their own internal idea of what the structure should be like, and no one else in the system can know what it is, then you don't have a lawful system. You don't have that predictability that lawful seeks, because you can't know what law they are subject to. That's precisely why the defining trait of someone who is lawful is their willingness to except the judgment of some higher thing as being better and more definitive than their own judgment.

In my thinking, for example, being a neat freak is a Lawful trait.

Ok, no. Personality is not the same as alignment, at least not before the level of some sort of being that is literally Law incarnate. That is a lawful stereotype. In other words, what you are thinking of is a person whose personality reflects the sort of world they ultimately want to live in. But by no means is every neat freak lawful, nor is every lawful a neat freak. But it is quite possible to have a messy slob that is lawful, and a neat freak that is chaotic. The way you know the messy slob is lawful is because he believes that there is some higher authority whose judgment over how he ought to behave is more trust worthy than his own and that it is therefore right and proper that he subjugate his judgment to that higher authority, and further that he believes what is right for him applies to everyone. Things like how messy or how punctual a person actually is are superficial aspects of that belief. A lawful person might believe he ought to be organized and punctual, but might find that difficult to accomplish or of lower priority than some overriding duty. That doesn't make them less lawful.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Celebrim]

It's interesting to see such broadly differing perspectives even among veteran players. I was clearly right to be confused! So far, I've heard LN, N, CN, NG, and CG as answers.

There are I think two important reasons for that.

First, TSR/WotC over the years have given at times conflicting definitions of different alignments. This has resulted in a lot of confusion with regard to what particular alignments mean, and lacking clear guidance some very common mistaken views of alignment have become popular even though most people who have discussed this at great length know they are completely unsustainable. An example of this would be your mistaken understanding that being lawful means, "Following the law." As I tried to explain, that definition is unworkable because not all legal systems serve lawful ends, and further two different legal systems can advance conflicting and contrasting statutes. If you try to define "lawful" as "follows the law", you quickly find you have all sorts of dilemmas and paradoxes.

A related idea is that if a character follows a code, then they must be "lawful". This theory runs into the problem that "a code" is so nebulously defined that pretty much any character can be thought about as following a code. If your code for example is, "Everyone ought to be able to do whatever they can get away with.", then it ought to be pretty clear that this code isn't based on a Lawful theory and doesn't seek to set up a Lawful world. Worse yet are codes that appear to be personal, private, and even uncommunicatable, where you have characters clearly acting according to some sort of internal logic that only makes sense to them. If "follows a code" implies lawfulness, then many archetypal insane villains have some sort of code they are following.

The second problem is you haven't actually given us a lot of information to go on, in part because of your misunderstanding about what would actually be pertinent information. For example, when you say, "The fact that he cares little about the law suggests that he is probably not lawful...", all you are really communicating is your own basic confusion. What do you mean by "cares little about the law", and why does he care so little about it? It would be more clarifying to tell us what he cares about more than the cares about the law.

 

[Celebrim]

You're right, we will not agree on this. OCD is orthogonal to the issue, although there may be correlation.

Actually, when you reach the level of OCD, you probably have negative correlation. People with OCD are typically acting according to an internal set of personal standards and aesthetics which make full sense only to themselves and which are not mandated by any external code of behavior. The more strongly you have a code of behavior that is private only to you, and whose reasoning only makes sense to yourself, the more likely you are to be chaotic. When you reach a point where your private internally imposed rules fully control you and take precedence over everything else, it's hard to be an orderly member of a system. That's why insanity - at least at the level of neurosis rather than sociopathy - is traditionally seen as Chaos par excellence, and incarnate Chaotic beings strike whomever meets them as insane.

 

[Mercule]

It's interesting to see such broadly differing perspectives even among veteran players. I was clearly right to be confused! So far, I've heard LN, N, CN, NG, and CG as answers.

This is very true. What I learned while playing World of Darkness (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, etc.) is the the GM must be the final arbiter of moral classifications/scales. Vampire is an extremely thematic/mood-driven game and it completely kills it when a rules discussion breaks out -- especially if that discussion is an argument about whether the PC needs to check degeneration because not thinking to give a buck to the homeless guy violates the character's 9 Humanity. You need one official measure, which is pretty much the definition of what a "referee" is supposed to do. A good GM will find a way to communicate these things in a meaningful, timely manner.

D&D alignment is almost insignificant, in comparison to Humanity, but the "punt to the GM" mentality still makes sense. I gave you my definition for when I DM. If I'm at a table where the DM has a different interpretation, I conform, even if I think the definition is silly (Chaotic characters can't have a code of honor). Why? Because alignment is description, not prescriptive -- unless you're a demon or some such -- there are no game effects. I'll do my best with my alignment, but if the GM disagrees, so be it.

 

[vostyg]

With the limited information you've given me, it's suggestive of someone who is in the LN-N-LE wedge of the alignment map. But that may only be because you are leaving out keep facts about his motives and behavior. Is he inconsistent? Does he take the tact that the law is whatever he decides it is? Does he have nothing higher he reports to? Under what circumstances would he consider himself wrong and deserving of punishment, and how would he respond to that?

I added some additional exposition to my initial post. Perhaps after you read it, you might be able to narrow your selection. I would truly appreciate hearing any additional thoughts you might have on the matter!

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=6777454]TheHobgoblin[/MENTION]: Where do I even start?

The vast majority of your complaints have to do with your own misunderstanding and not anything to do with alignment itself.

1) Just because two beings have the same alignment, doesn't mean that they are equally pure and equally radical in their beliefs. Since the very beginning, each alignment bucket has been defined as containing a spectrum. Mortals in particular are assume to lack both the wisdom and intelligence to perfectly follow their own beliefs, or to perfectly reason out what their beliefs demand of them. And likewise, even someone or some being that is lawful evil (to pick one example), might yet believe that the most perfect and right way to practice lawful evil involves some amount of moderation (neutrality). This is why Gygax talked about things like "lawful neutral good" and graphing alignment on a continuous spectrum.

2) A great many of your complaints can be summed up as what is itself an alignment complaint: proper behavior involves moderation, restraint, and compromise. That may well be true, but fundamentally that description of the world itself falls into an alignment spectrum - neutrality. By suggesting that most characters are some sort of neutral, or at least close to neutral, you aren't really stating anything radical about humanity. Humanity has long been viewed as collectively neutral, and I'd even classify humanity as a "usually neutral" species in D&D alignment terms.

3) Likewise, nothing about the alignment system should be construed to mean that average people are perfect paragons of following their stated beliefs. Most persons are assumed to be sufficiently imperfect that they could not act as Paladins or other viewpoint champions, simply because you are right - when the chips were down and following what they believed became difficult, most would transgress. Characters whose behavior always conforms to the dictates of their alignment are rarities (at least, when we aren't talking about creatures that are literally alignment stuff incarnate). No one has ever imposed that people following an alignment are perfect. That's an old misunderstanding that comes from a misunderstanding: DMs imposing harsh penalties on a player as soon as in the DM's opinion they made one transgression away from their stated alignment. That's just bad DMing, and even back in 1e AD&D suggested loss of level be associated with alignment change, the idea that alignment would drift across a chart suggests that it was only meant to track a dominate mode of behavior and not perfection.

4) We know all Dwarfs are not "Lawful Good" because the rules say all dwarfs aren't lawful good. They are only collectively as a race more predisposed to LG than humanity is, but that doesn't mean that every individual dwarf is LG or that even a good dwarf couldn't transgress when tempted. One moment of greed doesn't outweigh a lifetime of consistent goodness; it just makes for one very aggrieved and sorry dwarf once he realizes what he's done. Nor does that mean that even good natured Dwarfs are as universally LG as say an Archon or an Astral Deva. Likewise, just because Orcs are more Chaotic Evil than humans, doesn't mean that they are as perfectly CE as say a demon. It just means their culture would be even more associated with strife and violence than human culture is. Yes, that might mean that Orcs might potentially end up less successful than humans because they are always fighting themselves as well as humans, but isn't that how they are often portrayed?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Celebrim]

As I'm thinking about it, he doesn't really follow an external code at all, just his own simple sense of right and wrong. This generally involves protecting the helpless and innocent from those who would prey on them. He tends to categorize people as either villains, victims, or neither, based on their behavior. He is not above roughing someone up whom he categorizes as a villain in order to get information, and he has no compunctions about killing a serious villain outright if only to prevent that person from victimizing others in the future. He takes no particular joy in this. To him, it's just an unsavory but necessary part of his job. He evaluates each person on his or her own merits, and he doesn't waste his time on petty wrongdoers, focusing instead on serious villains.

I hope you can see just how huge the impact of this additional bit of information is.

We've gone from a description of a character that might well have been a more sadistic version of Javier from Les Miserables, who breaks the law because he feels it was too soft on lawbreakers, to a description of a character who is primarily motivated by mercy. He's no longer roughing up villains because he thinks they deserve punishment; he's roughing up villains because he's trying to protect the helpless and the weak from the corrupt and powerful.

That's a very different sort of character despite superficial similarities in behavior, and we could probably devise thought experiments to show that in some cases, the two characters would act in radically different ways. For example, if asked to choose between letting a wrong doer go free and saving the life of some innocent, we could easily see the two characters reasoning themselves into completely different actions. The LE version of this character would be like, "Nope, can't let you go free even if that means I have to be responcible for this little innocent girl's death, because you'd just go on to threaten and harm someone else." The CG version of this character is more likely to go, "Ok, you win. Leave the girl, and start running." One character is looking at big picture, and more concerned that his enemies get what is coming. The other character is looking at the individuals, and more concerned with their safety.

Again, this is what I meant by it being helpful to rank what the character cares about the most: punish wrongdoers or protect the innocent?

Also, again, it is helpful to think about how a character defines justice. If you end up with a character that defines justice with no recourse to what the law says, with just some personal sense that this wrong thing shouldn't happen or be allowed to stand, then they probably aren't lawful. A good question here might be, does this character consider it more important to be "Fair" (everyone is equal in the eyes of the law) or to be "Just" (an individual should get what they deserve)? Persons more motivated by Justice than Fairness tend to be chaotic. Those that see them as inextricable, because Justice without Fairness implies no order and no oversight - rule by man rather than by law - tend to be lawful. If they compromise and take a halfway position ("whatever best serves the good"), then they'd probably be neutral.