Yes. IF you apply that to the heroes of DnD, that would mean that, 1v1 any character who uses stealth or magic (is false) would lose to a character who does not (is true).
No. This is why, upthread, I posted that you are making assumptions about how action resolution has to work in a RPG that are not correct.
If a knight loses in single combat, maybe this shows that in fact they are false - perhaps they harbour some sin in their heart, or some dark secret.
You are also assuming that the reference to a
knight makes no difference, and generalises to all characters. But this is not obvious to me at all. Different people can be held to different moral requirements - this is a fairly basic feature of a moral universe that includes knights, monks, oath-swearers, etc.
That the resolution of whether an action succeeds or fails is based on a die roll, random chance, not because an almighty, omniscient being of pure good is putting their thumb on the scale to ensure that those with a pure heart and pure intentions always succeed and are stronger than evil.
Again, you are making assumptions about action resolution. Yes, in the real world we roll a die. That doesn't mean that, in the fiction, the outcome is a product of random chance.
I suppose valid would mean coherent. I mean, you are the one who called them "invalid".
No I didn't. You used the word "valid", and I repeated it in inverted commas - "Of course they're not 'valid'" (post 330). When I was using my own terminology, I said "We already know that LN and CN people are not good. So what is their opinion worth?"
A CN Nihilist has a valid point of view. It isn't a healthy or helpful point of view, but it is valid and coherent and a point of view someone could hold.
Of course people can be LN or CN. People can be mass murderers too. That doesn't make any of those viewpoints and associated behaviours morally worthy, or "valid". It just means that some people don't affirm value, respect human life, and act as morality demands.
There ARE people like this, these people DO exist, their world view is coherent and logical.
Is it? Kant doesn't think so. Plato doesn't think so. Peter Singer doesn't think so. Now maybe those philosophers are wrong - this thread isn't really the place to go into the details - but that is not self-evident.
I also find it weird that you don't think LAWFUL Neutral shares tenets with and informs aspects of LAWFUL Good. Do you think Lawful means something different for each of these terms? With no connections?
In the alignment system presented in Gygax's PHB and DMG, LG believe that social order and external constraint will produce good - human wellbeing, happiness, truth and beauty. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong - the alignment system raises that question but doesn't answer it.
LN people, on the other hand, are order fetishists - they are committed to upholding order whether or not it conduces to good.
Those are fundamentally different positions. One is committed to good, and has a firm view about the means. The other have mistaken the means for an end.
This is a moral failing one can also see in the real world, quite often, although board rules preclude me nominating examples.
