D&D General For those that find Alignment useful, what does "Lawful" mean to you

[Crimson Longinus]

In any case, this tread once again demonstrates that alignment is not a coherent concept. No one can agree what it means so it cannot used to reliably convey information. If you want a person to be organised and logical but having zero respect for laws, just write that that's how they are and don't worry whether that makes them 'lawful' or 'chaotic' or perhaps 'neutral'. Those words don't mean anything.

 

[Oofta]

In any case, this tread once again demonstrates that alignment is not a coherent concept. No one can agree what it means so it cannot used to reliably convey information. If you want a person to be organised and logical but having zero respect for laws, just write that that's how they are and don't worry whether that makes them 'lawful' or 'chaotic' or perhaps 'neutral'. Those words don't mean anything.

Where I read it and say that, for the most part the majority of people that actually us it are close enough. It's only a few people who have decided that it doesn't work that will try to tear it apart. It's not like there needs to be one coherent vision. If I think of the color blue I'm probably thinking of a slightly different shade than most people but we'd still be thinking of the same color. For those people that are color blind (or if you come from a group that doesn't distinguish blue as a separate color),

The words mean something to me. They mean something to pretty much everyone I've ever played with. They only need to mean something to the person running the character. If they don't mean anything to you ignore it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Where I read it and say that, for the most part the majority of people that actually us it are close enough. It's only a few people who have decided that it doesn't work that will try to tear it apart. It's not like there needs to be one coherent vision. If I think of the color blue I'm probably thinking of a slightly different shade than most people but we'd still be thinking of the same color. For those people that are color blind (or if you come from a group that doesn't distinguish blue as a separate color),

The words mean something to me. They mean something to pretty much everyone I've ever played with. They only need to mean something to the person running the character. If they don't mean anything to you ignore it.

You could just as well choose an animal that best describes the nature of your character or colour that symbolise them. These will be be subjectively meaningful to some people too. But rules cannot be based on Rorschach tests, they actually need to convey something objective.

If all the alignment is just some subjective descriptor like you say, then it shouldn't be a rule. You can have a line 'nature' or some such on the character sheet and people can write on it whatever they find meaningful, traditional alignments included.

 

[Oofta]

You could just as well choose an animal that best describes the nature of your character or colour that symbolise them. These will be be subjectively meaningful to some people too. But rules cannot be based on Rorschach tests, they actually need to convey something objective.

If all the alignment is just some subjective descriptor like you say, then it shouldn't be a rule. You can have a line 'nature' or some such on the character sheet and people can write on it whatever they find meaningful, traditional alignments included.

This is not a philosophical debate about real life. It's about a tool to help people define who a character is and how they react in game. As long as the person interpreting alignment is reasonably consistent it works.

Why does anyone expect scientific accuracy from anything related to D&D? Everything about the game is a vast oversimplification that only loosely models reality. I get that you're alignment-blind. So don't use it.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Comparing the 3e core classes to the 2e versions we get...

Results: 2e: 6 alignment restricted classes.
3e: 5 alignment restricted classes.

On top of 1 extra alignment restricted class, 2e also punished all PCs for alignment changes with a huge exp penalty.

I’ll concede that 2e also had its share of arbitrary alignment restrictions, but to get back to the original point:

From the 3e PHB.

"Lawful Neutral, “Judge”: A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs her. Order and organization are paramount to her. She may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or she may believe in order for all and favor a
strong, organized government. Ember, a monk who follows her discipline without being swayed either by the demands of those in need or by the temptations of evil, is lawful neutral."

Part of the definition of Lawful Neutral is that no Barbarian, no Bard qualifies as Lawful Neutral, but certain Druids can.

If a poster believes such restrictions to be ridiculous, why should they give any weight to the 3e definition of Lawful Neutral?

 

[RuinousPowers]

A Lawful alignment does not mean slavish devotion and abandonment of rationality, unless you are trying to portray Lawful as exclusively irrational and degenerate. This is part of the problem with how the Law/Chaos axis is understood by many. Chaos is a garbage non-alignment that permits people to do whatever they want whenever they want with no limit. It's totally cool for a Chaotic Good character to always obey the rules, play by a pretty clear moral code that prevents them from doing things they would really like to be able to do, and always keep their promises and never tell lies because "well that's just what they always felt like doing." Meanwhile, anyone with a Lawful bent is characterized as an idiot incapable of re-evaluating, unable to consider consequences and absolutely incapable of deviating from previously chosen methods even in the face of irrefutable and damning evidence that they are simply, totally wrong.

It is this very thing that is why I consider alignment as it currently exists such a frustrating and useless tool. It is so goddamn hard to get people to even make Chaos something that isn't an utterly useless "anything goes" faux-"alignment," and infuriatingly EVEN HARDER to get people to consider a Lawful alignment that admits even the barest possibility that laws should be beholden to evaluative standards and subject to reform, replacement, or removal should they be judged wanting.

This is why Chaotic Evil is the best alignment. Not only can they "well that's just what they always felt like doing" on the Lawful-Chaotic spectrum, they can also "I'm pretending to be x alignment to throw off suspicion" to get around the Good-Evil axis, because while Good characters are always expected to hold up Good 24-7, evil characters (especially NPCs) are expected to put up fronts to fit in society. Therefore CE characters let you play your character however you want.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

An example of lawful and good not aligning but the law not being bad, in the most simple scenario I can imagine:
A heavy object is about to fall out of a window onto an unaware innocent across the road from you, (you can’t call out to them they can’t hear you for whatever reasons) you can’t just run across the road to push them out the way because the law says you may only cross the road at a designated pedestrian crossing further down the road, and even then when the lights say to, so you do so but you take too long as a result and the innocent is harmed by the falling thing, but you remained lawful and only crossed at the designated crossing, but ultimately less good came about of your actions because you choose law over good
The law was not wrong nor does it really need to be reviewed but in the moment law and good conflicted and one must come out on top

There are actually real-world laws related to this sort of thing; "Good Samaritan" laws, for example, specifically exculpate people for "ordinary negligence" (that is, for example, a failure to conduct CPR by proper current procedure, but still conducting CPR to try to save someone's life), even if that ordinary negligence might have been a contributing factor to someone's death. They do not exculpate "gross negligence," which usually requires the demonstration of explicitly willful, wanton dereliction of duty, possibly even malicious intent.

I would also, in general, argue that any law which says "you cannot EVER cross the street outside the crosswalk even to save an innocent person's life" is a bad law and needs to be changed. That's a draconian limitation, enforced to the exclusion of rationality; no rational law-maker would ever knowingly and intentionally write a law that explicitly said that. In fact, there are plenty of real-world situations, usually the result of a judge's ruling or the like, where formally criminal behavior conducted purely for the sake of an objective good (as in your example) is accepted as a sufficient mitigating circumstance to erase any need for legal action. (Some judges may even go further and lambast any law enforcement or prosecution for behaving in ways that could discourage people from doing good!)

I do not, personally, consider it even the slightest abandonment of Lawful behavior to say, "Traffic laws exist to protect the lives of anyone using the road or the sidewalk. To take actions which conform to the traffic laws and thus result in preventable, innocent death is a violation of the purpose for which these laws were designed. No law worthy of the name requires behavior that contradicts the very purpose for which the law was made. Thus, although it may violate the letter of the law, the spirit of the law is in fact upheld by knowingly disobeying the letter in this case."

That is not a Chaotic person's response to this situation. A Chaotic person's response, as I am given to understand it (not being one myself), would be something like, "Who the f**k CARES what the law says! GO!" A Neutral person's response would likely be more or less the same, perhaps with a momentary twinge of guilt about jaywalking. The Lawful person, meanwhile, ensures that there is in fact justification for this act, even if it requires breaking the law. If it's a particularly serious breach of the law, unlike this rather mild example, then they will likely do as was mentioned above and turn themselves in.

Let's consider a more effective example, one that's still a common canned thing but far less lopsided: the "would you steal to save your loved one from starvation/cancer/etc." dilemma. You are a relatively poor person, just barely making it day to day alongside your spouse and child. Your child develops a life-threatening illness which will kill them if left untreated, but if it is treated, they are extremely likely to survive. (Nothing is guaranteed, but for the sake of argument, assume this is as close to guaranteed as it gets.) You cannot afford the medicine for the treatment, and something like a charity or government assistance could take weeks or months, time your child may not have. But as it so happens, you work as a janitor in a place that manufactures and temporarily stores this medicine. (Assume the medicine has a legitimate reason for being expensive--perhaps it is made using only non-fetal stem cells, which are very hard to come by, or is something like cisplatin where it is literally made using a precious metal.) It is against the law to steal, and in general most people agree that taking property to which you have no right is a problem, even if the specifics about who should own what property are not accepted. (Even Marx believed in some kind of ownership, despite the claim "property is theft"; after all, since you're just a janitor, you had no part in making this medicine, so taking it would be alienating the people who actually made it from the product of their labors.) Do you steal the medicine to save your child?

A Chaotic person (of any G/N/E alignment) will almost certainly say yes without reservation and do it immediately, no regrets. NG, TN, and NE are likewise fairly likely to say yes, but might hesitate or dither a bit before getting on with it. Lawful Evil is likely to struggle mightily with this, unless there's some other method by which one could obtain the medicine without personally stealing it (e.g. exploiting the affections of one of the scientists who actually does have access, manipulating them into stealing it and administering it to your child "without your knowledge"--LE is big on using patsies.) Lawful Neutral is probably the only alignment that would simply say "no, I would not steal it," though they would almost certainly be very upset about the situation.

The Lawful Good person, as I use and understand the term, would eventually steal the medicine if there truly were no other option and time was running out--and would then turn herself in for having stolen the medicine, once she was reasonably sure the child was healed. That satisfies both requirements, recognizing the legitimacy of the law while still doing what is necessary to serve the good. You see similar sorts of things from conscientious objectors or certain forms of "civil disobedience." You recognize the authority of the state to exercise its laws, openly accepting the punishment for disobedience, but you still disobey because this particular law or action (war, in the case of a conscientious objector) is unconscionable. That's Lawful Good in action. Lawful in general does not mandate slavish devotion, and it is one of the serious problems with alignment that almost everyone legitimately does seem to think that "Lawful" means "slavish devotion to laws to the exclusion of rationality," but neither Neutrality nor Chaos mandates such slavish devotion. (Hell, even Good doesn't require such slavish devotion--it's expected that even saintly folks take the occasional day for self-care!)

This is why Chaotic Evil is the best alignment. Not only can they "well that's just what they always felt like doing" on the Lawful-Chaotic spectrum, they can also "I'm pretending to be x alignment to throw off suspicion" to get around the Good-Evil axis, because while Good characters are always expected to hold up Good 24-7, evil characters (especially NPCs) are expected to put up fronts to fit in society. Therefore CE characters let you play your character however you want.

I'm sure you said this with tongue firmly in cheek, but for real, this is an actual problem I've had more than once. I have known WAY too many people who play "Chaotic Neutral" characters that are really obviously some other point on the spectrum. Too many players are basically allergic to commitment, and the way CN (or, as you note, CE where it's permitted) is characterized by a lot of people, it truly can be parleyed as compatible with literally any behavior. I basically had to slowly, slowly convince a good friend of mine that his main characters were not "Chaotic Neutral" but were actually "Neutral Good" and "Lawful Good" respectively, just in societies where "the law" is more handled by personally-upheld oaths than by external rules applied (in theory) equally on all members of the community. It was just really, really hard for him to believe that one of his characters actively sought order, stability, consistency, etc. because that meant identifying with Lawfulness.

 

[Mind of tempest]

There are actually real-world laws related to this sort of thing; "Good Samaritan" laws, for example, specifically exculpate people for "ordinary negligence" (that is, for example, a failure to conduct CPR by proper current procedure, but still conducting CPR to try to save someone's life), even if that ordinary negligence might have been a contributing factor to someone's death. They do not exculpate "gross negligence," which usually requires the demonstration of explicitly willful, wanton dereliction of duty, possibly even malicious intent.

I would also, in general, argue that any law which says "you cannot EVER cross the street outside the crosswalk even to save an innocent person's life" is a bad law and needs to be changed. That's a draconian limitation, enforced to the exclusion of rationality; no rational law-maker would ever knowingly and intentionally write a law that explicitly said that. In fact, there are plenty of real-world situations, usually the result of a judge's ruling or the like, where formally criminal behavior conducted purely for the sake of an objective good (as in your example) is accepted as a sufficient mitigating circumstance to erase any need for legal action. (Some judges may even go further and lambast any law enforcement or prosecution for behaving in ways that could discourage people from doing good!)

I do not, personally, consider it even the slightest abandonment of Lawful behavior to say, "Traffic laws exist to protect the lives of anyone using the road or the sidewalk. To take actions which conform to the traffic laws and thus result in preventable, innocent death is a violation of the purpose for which these laws were designed. No law worthy of the name requires behavior that contradicts the very purpose for which the law was made. Thus, although it may violate the letter of the law, the spirit of the law is in fact upheld by knowingly disobeying the letter in this case."

That is not a Chaotic person's response to this situation. A Chaotic person's response, as I am given to understand it (not being one myself), would be something like, "Who the f**k CARES what the law says! GO!" A Neutral person's response would likely be more or less the same, perhaps with a momentary twinge of guilt about jaywalking. The Lawful person, meanwhile, ensures that there is in fact justification for this act, even if it requires breaking the law. If it's a particularly serious breach of the law, unlike this rather mild example, then they will likely do as was mentioned above and turn themselves in.

Let's consider a more effective example, one that's still a common canned thing but far less lopsided: the "would you steal to save your loved one from starvation/cancer/etc." dilemma. You are a relatively poor person, just barely making it day to day alongside your spouse and child. Your child develops a life-threatening illness which will kill them if left untreated, but if it is treated, they are extremely likely to survive. (Nothing is guaranteed, but for the sake of argument, assume this is as close to guaranteed as it gets.) You cannot afford the medicine for the treatment, and something like a charity or government assistance could take weeks or months, time your child may not have. But as it so happens, you work as a janitor in a place that manufactures and temporarily stores this medicine. (Assume the medicine has a legitimate reason for being expensive--perhaps it is made using only non-fetal stem cells, which are very hard to come by, or is something like cisplatin where it is literally made using a precious metal.) It is against the law to steal, and in general most people agree that taking property to which you have no right is a problem, even if the specifics about who should own what property are not accepted. (Even Marx believed in some kind of ownership, despite the claim "property is theft"; after all, since you're just a janitor, you had no part in making this medicine, so taking it would be alienating the people who actually made it from the product of their labors.) Do you steal the medicine to save your child?

A Chaotic person (of any G/N/E alignment) will almost certainly say yes without reservation and do it immediately, no regrets. NG, TN, and NE are likewise fairly likely to say yes, but might hesitate or dither a bit before getting on with it. Lawful Evil is likely to struggle mightily with this, unless there's some other method by which one could obtain the medicine without personally stealing it (e.g. exploiting the affections of one of the scientists who actually does have access, manipulating them into stealing it and administering it to your child "without your knowledge"--LE is big on using patsies.) Lawful Neutral is probably the only alignment that would simply say "no, I would not steal it," though they would almost certainly be very upset about the situation.

The Lawful Good person, as I use and understand the term, would eventually steal the medicine if there truly were no other option and time was running out--and would then turn herself in for having stolen the medicine, once she was reasonably sure the child was healed. That satisfies both requirements, recognizing the legitimacy of the law while still doing what is necessary to serve the good. You see similar sorts of things from conscientious objectors or certain forms of "civil disobedience." You recognize the authority of the state to exercise its laws, openly accepting the punishment for disobedience, but you still disobey because this particular law or action (war, in the case of a conscientious objector) is unconscionable. That's Lawful Good in action. Lawful in general does not mandate slavish devotion, and it is one of the serious problems with alignment that almost everyone legitimately does seem to think that "Lawful" means "slavish devotion to laws to the exclusion of rationality," but neither Neutrality nor Chaos mandates such slavish devotion. (Hell, even Good doesn't require such slavish devotion--it's expected that even saintly folks take the occasional day for self-care!)


I'm sure you said this with tongue firmly in cheek, but for real, this is an actual problem I've had more than once. I have known WAY too many people who play "Chaotic Neutral" characters that are really obviously some other point on the spectrum. Too many players are basically allergic to commitment, and the way CN (or, as you note, CE where it's permitted) is characterized by a lot of people, it truly can be parleyed as compatible with literally any behavior. I basically had to slowly, slowly convince a good friend of mine that his main characters were not "Chaotic Neutral" but were actually "Neutral Good" and "Lawful Good" respectively, just in societies where "the law" is more handled by personally-upheld oaths than by external rules applied (in theory) equally on all members of the community. It was just really, really hard for him to believe that one of his characters actively sought order, stability, consistency, etc. because that meant identifying with Lawfulness.

Do people want to be chaotic that badly?

 

[HammerMan]

This is why Chaotic Evil is the best alignment. Not only can they "well that's just what they always felt like doing" on the Lawful-Chaotic spectrum, they can also "I'm pretending to be x alignment to throw off suspicion" to get around the Good-Evil axis, because while Good characters are always expected to hold up Good 24-7, evil characters (especially NPCs) are expected to put up fronts to fit in society. Therefore CE characters let you play your character however you want.

i know this is mostly a joke but there is some truth to this.

I have seen Lawful Evil be played as "I'm a bad guy, but these are my friends and allies and I would die to protect them...I love them... but everyone else is dirt"

I have seen Neutral Evil played as "I am really bad. I will do anything that benefits me... but I also am only an XXXX(insert class/trope) so what I need to do to benfit me is be part of this team, and as everyone succeeds makes me stronger and gets me closer to my personal goal... and since many of them are goodie goodies that means helping people will help me"

and those 2 examples is a generalization of about half a dozen characters over the years that played Darn GOOD evil characters.

in fact looking back I can remember (yes memory is a funny thing so grain of salt) more CN and CG people betreaying the party in one way or form then Evil characters did... heck I even remember a LG character betraying the party once.

 

[Maxperson]

Part of the definition of Lawful Neutral is that no Barbarian, no Bard qualifies as Lawful Neutral, but certain Druids can.

If a poster believes such restrictions to be ridiculous, why should they give any weight to the 3e definition of Lawful Neutral?

Because such restrictions are irrelevant to alignment. They exist within the classes and are ridiculous CLASS restrictions. Change LN to group only and they're still ridiculous. Change LN to purple flying people eaters and they're still CLASS restrictions. There's no good reason to give more weight to the version of alignment from another edition(which still had bard and barbarian restrictions by the way) than the 3e version.