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Message: <blockquote data-quote="s/LaSH" data-source="post: 575897" data-attributes="member: 6929">To quote the PHB:'Law' implies honour, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability.'Chaos' implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility.It's easy to get personalities with traits from both. Take Batman. He's free from the shackles of normal law-enforcement (no authority rules Bats), but at the same time he's got his rigid honour code going on. Unfortunately, they're mutually reinforcing traits, not traits at loggerheads. I was going to use logic to determine his alignment, but now I've confused myself and I can't. Just goes to show what an approximation alignment is.Furthermore:'Good' implies altruism, respect for life, concern for dignity etc.'Evil' implies hurting, opressing, and killing others.That's simple enough on the face of it. But what happens when you come across someone like Frank Castle, the Punisher? He goes after scuzzbag criminals with extreme prejudice. He's clearly protecting the innocent, but almost all of what he does is on the evil list - Frank's not a nice man, he's surly and doesn't play well with others. He'll take down superheroes who get in his way if they give him a chance. For Frank, I'm fairly certain that chaotic evil describes him best, despite the fact that he's a hero (of sorts), largely because his violence outweighs the need to employ it.The alignment system in D&D is clearly stated to be a cosmos-defining force. While humans don't have to tick every box in the right order, they'll still be sorted into one of the nine slots. A paladin has to act in a specific way, but that way doesn't have to dominate her world-view. She can easily have a whole string of non-lawful, non-good traits, so long as good and law are the highest priorities. Was Robin Hood (the romantic figure, not a more realistic view) LG? From a certain way of looking at it, yes. He had his honour, his code, his chivalry; and he was definitely good. On the other hand, he defied local authority consistently and lived a merry life in the greenwood, which is quite chaotic. Which one was stronger? I'll tell you: His honour. If the local authorities had been nice and cared for the poor (or whatever they were doing, I can't actually recall), he would have sided with them because of his honour, and in many tales he swears fealty to King Richard. If he were truly chaotic, he would have stayed in the Greenwood, killing deer that didn't belong to him just because he liked it better.There! I cracked an alignment problem! Robin's LG!Thank-you for reading.</blockquote>

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