Nope. You are doing it again, as usual. IF you take time to read Ideals. You will notice there are small written words saying :" Lawful, Chaotic, Good, Evil, Neutral and Any!!!!"
You mean the example text that is not what people actually write on their sheets?
And, are you seriously trying to tell me that something like this "Independence. I am a free spirit—no one tells me what to do."
Requires the word Chaotic next to it to tell me they don't like authority? I'm sorry, I figured the idea of being a free spirit and the dislike towards authority told me that pretty clearly. But I guess if it said "Good" that would make the character not chaotic?
Need I remind You that in 5ed, specific beats general? You took a special evil ideal and decided by yourself to apply to a good character.... That is one of the weakest possible counter point you could have taken.
So... a specific ideal beats your general point that alignment changes two identical ideals into something different. You are even admitting that that ideal is evil, therefore it is a different ideal than the version you wrote for the Good character.
Which was the point.
The point was that your claim fell apart on its first step, because the ideal that the evil character had, was not identical to the ideal of the good character, when you wrote out what the ideal ACTUALLY was.
This is the same BS with your ideal:" My journal" I can't infer anything because iis meaning is not in any of the rule books or in any posts in this thread. That I took the liberty of not rewrite the whole IBF written in a thread to which I was referring is perfectly valid because common grounds have already been established (either the post, or the rule books) but your example was made so that you thought it would give you a "win".
Again, specific beats general. If you take an evil ideal, of course it will be hard and sometimes impossible to apply it to a good aligned character (or lawful vs chaotic for that matter).
Stop the nitpicking, it does not suit you or the points you are trying to make. If anything, all the exceptions you are trying to make only prove that our general take on alignment is right. It is an excellent general tool for what we do with it. Again specific beats general.
Of course you can't infer anything about it. That was the point. Just like you can't really infer anything from "My King" how is that more descriptive than "My Journal"? Because Kings are people instead of objects? So what? I could easily see a character like Jane writing down "Vera" as there bond. So objects are completely valid.
And this is, again, where your point falls apart. You want to claim that alignment filled in the gaps, it told you what kind of relationship the character has with their king, but it can't tell me what kind of relationship a character has with their sword.
Heck, I have a "good aligned" character whose Bond is "Father Knew Best" and unless you know about his father, you couldn't use that information to tell me anything about his bond. Alignment doesn't tell me anything about that. Knowing the relationship, you know, THE BOND, does. Just because we write it in a short hand doesn't mean that we didn't clarify and talk about the rest of it.
And no, alignment doesn't work that way. Because alignment is general. At best. Because alignment is supposed to apply equally to kings, paupers, demons and angels. But "my relationship with my father" by its very presence must be specific.
I know how a CE usually acts. But if I need a specific vilain to act some other way, it is my right as well as my duty to create a specific narrative for that specific villain. The vast majority of my CE critters/opponents will act as what they are. But again, some villain will be CE and will not act as the CE unless pushed into a corner. Maybe that villain has a high wisdom and charisma score enables that specific villain to hide his true personality. Again, specific beats general.
As for the example I have given you that you so claim I got inspired. I simply took the same IBF that have been working all along. Easier to refer to that as we have been talking about these for a while now. Why would I change them? To bring more confusion? It would do nothing good.
Look, dear
@Chaosmancer, you're a nice person and some of your ideas are great and interesting. But when you go into nitpicking mode it does not help the discussion one iota simply because a lot if people simply stop reading your posts.
This isn't nitpicking. This is your argument is fundamentally flawed. I don't know why you keep defending it, it does not work.
Saying "I defend the weak" is an unclear statement, because it could be evil because you mean "the weak" as in the citizens of your country/city/ect and "defend" means "pre-emptively attack" is ludicrous, because no one would take that statement to mean that.
You are twisting things until they snap in half, then declaring that because you used alignment to tape it back together that alignment is a necessary component. And it is not.
