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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ConcreteBuddha" data-source="post: 173731" data-attributes="member: 3139"> Humanophile--- I did not say that sleight of hand was necessarily an evil act. I said it was chaotic. Why?An intent to defraud is an intent to deceive which is exactly what sleight of hand always does. It is a deception. An illusion. Showing something that is not there. Misrepresentation of the truth. Therefore, it is not lawful as per the guidelines in the PHB. Note: nowhere did I say that a LG stage magician would suddenly turn to CG because they used Pick Pockets. Obviously this infraction is of a lesser degree than, say, lying to a god. As long as the stage magician had more lawful actions that out-weighed this minor infraction, the magician would stay LG. (Such as explaining to those children afterwards that the tricks are always a function of the multiverse and that everything follows observable and consistent laws. The magician would also explain how the tricks were done so that they could not be used against the same children again.)Hence the "Alignment is not a straightjacket" (for PCs...)I would argue that Alignment is a straightjacket for a lot of NPCs. Namely any creature with an "always blah" in it's MM alignment entry. Like a Solar...As per a LG Solar? The ends never justify the means to a LG Solar. Doing a chaotic act for a good cause is not within the capabilities of a LG Solar any more than a LE devil could do a chaotic act for an evil cause. To do so is to allow extreme outsiders the ability to be as morally adaptable as mortals. Which is the whole point of having "Iconic Alignment Outsiders".I could just as easily say that you are trying to over-generalize a set of definitions to the point that they mean nothing. I do not find fault with the system. The system runs fine. I find fault with your reasoning of the system.You say that the rules are just guidelines and that therefore alignment has no effect on what any of the PCs ever do because actions cannot be weighed against any yardstick. If this were supposed to be the case, then why have alignment? If it is as useless as you propose, then why have the alignment restrictions of the paladin, monk, barbarian, bard, druid, and, in addition, have the entire mutliverse dependent on belief?Let's just chuck out alignment altogether. You can rule -0- it if you want, but I enjoy having a generally consistent alignment definition so a player can read the PHB and know that Good in DnD is "altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of human beings." just as Law is "honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority and reliability."I am not attempting to define anything more than the above. I do not have specific rules to adjudicate every circumstance in DnD. I do not believe the rules are broken. I believe the above words are general enough for my tastes and yet the DM can rule what is good, evil, lawful and chaotic.To get back to the original point of the thread, I believe that a lawful rogue is going to have a certain outlook in the world. Just as a lawful monk or a lawful cleric would. I also attempted to show that a lawful rogue is going to look at skills completely differently than a chaotic rogue. The jump between chaotic and lawful is as big as the gap between good and evil. A lawful rogue should not just be a chaotic rogue with a code. That, afterall, is just a chaotic rogue with a code... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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