D&D 5E The "Lawful" alignment, and why "Lawful Evil" is NOT an oxymoron!

[Sunseeker]

I'm going to preface by saying I agree that "lawful evil" is not an oxymoron.

I suspect that to some people's minds, "Lawful" = "Legitimate". Therefore, when they hear/read the term "Lawful Evil", they think it means "Legitimate Evil", which would indeed be a oxymoron!

Disagreement: I think the missing component in this argument is not the "Lawful=Legitimate" but that "Lawful=Good." I think that's why people find "Lawful Evil" to be an oxymoron, because if Lawful=Good then Evil=Unlawful.

Another assertion was that "Lawful" characters must be honorable, and that Devils do not behave in an honorable fashion, therefore they could not be "Lawful".

Commentary: What an odd assertion.

Lawful Evil is simple: Evil with order. A lawful evil person is someone who uses rules, order and "the law" for personal gain. They're the king because the law says whoever marries the princess becomes the next King. Well wasn't it odd that both the king and the prince-to-be died in a horrible hunting accident that can in no way whatsoever be blamed on the Grand Vizier, and oh, what's this, the princess must marry the Vizier if the king (who is dead) cannot find her a husband? I reference Jafar because by-and-large, Jafar was lawful evil. He used the rule of law to gain power, control others and further his agenda.

A lawful evil character doesn't kill people for no reason, and they certainly won't do it, even if they want to, when there is a good chance they'll be caught or can be reasonably blamed for it. And if it is obvious that they are responsible, they'll have been within their rights to do so, or at least appear to have been within their rights.

 

[CaptainGemini]

Basically, 'evil' usually involves putting oneself before others (people, ideas, organizations, etc). 'Lawful' at least implies that you won't always do that; some other force is present and demands to be met (aforementioned people, ideas, organizations, etc.).

But being evil should trump; IRL, evil people follow a code until it's not convenient (like the Nazis; a great many creature comforts would have to be sacrificed if one was to fully follow through on the philosophy of the Third Reich), so while I'll buy that people try to pass themselves off as Lawful Evil (like, say Dr. Doom), in practice they are Neutral Evil.

Here's the 5E text on Lawful Evil:

Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order. Devils, blue dragons, and hobgoblins are lawful evil.

What you describe as evil is this:

Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or
qualms. Many drow, some cloud giants, and yugoloths are neutral evil.

Here's where you run into problems: The "Just Following Orders" defense. A lot of Nazis actually did put the orders of the organization ahead of their own goals, including some very high up in the organization. So many that it actually became impossible to try them all and easier, not to mention more cost-effective, to just reeducate the entire population. In fact, the idea that you shouldn't just follow orders is one of the things that came out of World War 2. That's why the American military ended up with the concept of a "lawful order" in the aftermath and even went as far as to give a very high military award to a soldier who threatened to fire on their own side during Vietnam.

One thing to keep in mind is that, prior to the Nazis, Germany was pretty much the poster child of a Lawful Neutral nation. Hitler demonstrated one of the biggest weaknesses of the Lawful Neutral philosophy.

End of the day, the "Lawful" part trumps the "Evil" part in DnD, in part because it already happened at least once in real life.

 

[Shasarak]

Yeah, I think that's true.

I think LE doesn't withstand rigorous analysis.

The real question is: After accepting a bribe is the character going to keep their word (LE) or do what ever they want anyway (CE)?

 

[aashintu1]

Think of Lawful Evil as Organised Crime.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

If you look at the plotical spectrum you often see graps with 2 axis, one being left right, the other autoritarian/ librtarian.
To Me the lawful chaos divide in alignment always left like just other names for autoritarian and libretarian.

 

[seebs]

Yeah, I think that's true.

I think LE doesn't withstand rigorous analysis.

Most alignments don't.

 

[Maxperson]

The one thing I liked about the 4e system was 'Unaligned' instead of the protect-the-balance Moorcockian 'True' Neutral of the 9-alignment system. It gave you the option of a character with personal motivations not tied to cosmic forces. But, I like to think Unaligned was there all along, implied in neutral without the 'True.'

It appeared in 3e. It wasn't called Unaligned, but it existed as one way to play neutral in the alignment section.

 

[Sunseeker]

It appeared in 3e. It wasn't called Unaligned, but it existed as one way to play neutral in the alignment section.

It's also a great place for players to start who don't know what their "alignment" should be. It's fitting for low-level characters too who may be largely unaware of the greater cosmic forces of good and evil and neutrality. A good "figure it out as I go" position, but not a "get out of jail free" card.

 

[Hussar]

Basically, 'evil' usually involves putting oneself before others (people, ideas, organizations, etc). 'Lawful' at least implies that you won't always do that; some other force is present and demands to be met (aforementioned people, ideas, organizations, etc.).

But being evil should trump; IRL, evil people follow a code until it's not convenient (like the Nazis; a great many creature comforts would have to be sacrificed if one was to fully follow through on the philosophy of the Third Reich), so while I'll buy that people try to pass themselves off as Lawful Evil (like, say Dr. Doom), in practice they are Neutral Evil.

Really, that's the view they took in 4e. How do you distinguish between the two? 4e was a spectrum system with CE on the really bad end and LG on the other. The 9 point system is a bit trickier to pin down. It's more like one of those web graph thingies where you have to take many elements into account.

 

[The Human Target]

Except that the opposite alignment used is "Chaotic", not "Unlawful" and it's lifted straight out of "Order and Chaos" concepts from the Elric series. The second axis of "Good and Evil" were added later and "order" was changed to "chaotic".

Also, despite the exact definition of the word "lawful", that's NOT how the alignments are described.

Chaotic means "disorder and confusion."

I doubt many Chaotic Good characters are either of those things.

Chaotic and Lawful are poor word choices based on an incredibly abstract philisophical idea of universal creation vs entropy from Moorcock books Gygax liked.

That started goofy in the game and got nothing but more and more elaborate and confusing as time went on.

Mordenkainen is True Neutral because he believes in universal balance, so he sometimes aids heroes and sometimes aids mass murderers.

Total nonsense.