I'm not going to answer that again. I've already told you three times.
I have.
No you haven't. You've just said "it's useful." That is not an explanation of
how it's useful.
No. That's you, not me. And of course you're failing, because you don't understand alignment and aren't trying to.
Why do you keep making the mistake of trying to pin alignment down to specifics? Is it because you aren't trying to understand it?
Because if it doesn't have an actual
meaning to it, then what's the purpose of using it? You can get the same results you want by using adjectives that don't declare an entire race good or evil and therefore determine whether or not that race can be killed off.
OK. So
here what you are saying is that
your interpretation of an alignment is the correct one, and that it's somehow wrong to describe a lawful evil being as ruthless, brutal, vicious, or hot-tempered being
despite your claim that alignments are general descriptors and not straightjackets.
Heck, let's look at the 3x description of lawful evil.
A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion. He is comfortable in a hierarchy and would like to rule, but is willing to serve. He condemns others not according to their actions but according to race, religion, homeland, or social rank. He is loath to break laws or promises.
This reluctance comes partly from his nature and partly because he depends on order to protect himself from those who oppose him on moral grounds. Some lawful evil villains have particular taboos, such as not killing in cold blood (but having underlings do it) or not letting children come to harm (if it can be helped). They imagine that these compunctions put them above unprincipled villains.
Some lawful evil people and creatures commit themselves to evil with a zeal like that of a crusader committed to good. Beyond being willing to hurt others for their own ends, they take pleasure in spreading evil as an end unto itself. They may also see doing evil as part of a duty to an evil deity or master.
So, the dictionary definition of ruthless is "having no pity," and right up there it says LE beings have no mercy or compassion. I'd say that brutality and viciousness easily go hand-in-hand with pursuing evil with crusader-like zealotry and taking pleasure in hurting others. And the example they give of a LE being having a taboo against killing someone in cold blood would certainly seem to suggest that LE beings can be hot-tempered.
So if alignment doesn't have a single meaning and it's wrong to insist that it does, why are you saying that I'm wrong when I pointed out that at least four of the ten descriptors given for Chaotic Evil work perfectly fine with Lawful Evil beings as well?
Also, you said I was wrong to dislike alignment because of 13-year-old mechanics attached to them. So why are also you referencing a 13-year-old definition of what the alignments mean?
Sure. Not only can you have traits from outside your alignment, but context matters, though. A LG person isn't going to be arbitrarily ruthless and brutal, but would instead temper that with the LG alignment, going after blatantly evil beings ruthlessly. So he's not going to be brutal and ruthless as a whole, like someone who is CE might be, but instead those would be minor traits that only come out in some very specific and rare circumstances. The major part of his alignment would still be LG.
What if you had a person who was a generally nice guy who gave heavily to charity, helped little old ladies across the street, and beat his spouse when he was drunk? Or someone who was a total jerk, cheated and robbed everyone they came across, and gave all the profits to the orphanage where they grew up?
People are more complex than alignments allow them to be, unless you make so many exceptions and insist on so much "context" that the alignment is all but worthless.
That by the way is why your one word descriptors like "Ruthless" and "brutal" fail to be as useful as alignment is. You still need to either create a detailed background to give context to those words.................................or have two letters that represent alignment to give that context. It's a hell of a lot more work to do it your way and mine is just as good.
I never said
one word.
"[Monsters] take pride in their hunting skills and are known for ruthlessly tracking their prey, no matter the circumstances. Most enjoy the hunt more than the kill, and are often willing to let interesting prey go--usually after taking a token from them as memorabilia. Those that do kill their prey usually do so brutally, throwing themselves fully into the blood and guts of it."
This makes for an interesting monster, either as an individual, a sub-culture, or an entire race, and no one alignment could cover all of that. These monsters aren't nice people, but they can be honorable or treacherous, they can be allies, they can be mercenaries you can hire or possibly bribe, they can be enemies. Then you, the DM, decide what they should be in that particular adventure, based on what role you want them to have and how you want the PCs to interact with them. You want the PCs to just kill them with no second thoughts? They become implacable foes. You want to leave it up to the PCs how they deal with them? Then put [monster] on the track of another creature, and the PCs can decide if that other creature deserves to be hunted or not. And because those three sentences use words like "known as," "most," and "usually," you still leave plenty of leeway for [monsters] that aren't like that at all.
www.enworld.org
