Agreements between lawful good and evil

[Laurel]

Hope this is the correct forum and yes it is another question(s) about Alignment and agreements between conflicting alignment.

As a lawful good character can you make an agreement with a lawful evil/ any evil character and thus become allied with them?

Does it matter if you are agreeing to turn over something that could change/alter the tide of war?

Does it change anything if the evil is the lesser or two evils and your options or to choose between the two? Or do you just battle both?

As lawful can you agree to ally with someone knowing at the end of the deal you will be at war with them?

--The questions above are due to specific events in the game I am in; however, I wanted to see what answers people thought of without specifics.

--I know there is no fast rule nor a hard line agreement with everything partaining to alignments, but I'm trying to get a general feel of what people think/feel

 

[Felix]

It depends on which alignment axis is emphasized.

If the Law-Chaos axis is the important axis in the game world, then a Lawful Good character will have more in common with a Lawful Evil character than a Chaotic Good one.

If Good-Evil is more important, then the opposite will be true.

If neither is more important, then one would expect the LG guy to be ambivalent about allying with either a CG or a LE guy.

So, sure, there are plenty of times when LG will ally with LE. Those times will be when the continued existance of Lawful rule is ensured by that alliance. Otherwise, they will contend over how the law is written, and who has the power. But that's only after the anarchal threat of Chaos is put down.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I define good and evil in my game, these are the actions that are going to send you to hell or the promised land, they are a reflection of my campign area and the general belief of the gods I use, they are actions you have to perform day-in and day-out. Most LAWS are based around them.

Lawful and Chaotic are how you view and interact/interface with them and the campaign world.

This is my view, for my game.

 

[ARandomGod]

As a lawful good character can you make an agreement with a lawful evil/ any evil character and thus become allied with them?

Certainly.

Does it matter if you are agreeing to turn over something that could change/alter the tide of war?

Does it matter? Umm... No, you could do it whether or not this was the case. If you're smart enough you'll have taken this into account when making the alliance.

Does it change anything if the evil is the lesser or two evils and your options or to choose between the two? Or do you just battle both?

Does it change anything...
Well, it's not about the good or the evil. I'm not sure where you're going with this. The question was could you ally with this person... A lawful person would feel more comfortable making an "alliance" with a lawful person, be they good or evil, than the same person would feel about allying with a chaotic person. Although they might have some moral qualms about the alliance, they at least would know that the terms of the alliance would indeed be followed.

In fact, many a lawful person would state that it's impossible to actually ally with a chaotic. You can't actually trust them, it's not really an alliance... you can't trust 'em.

Of course a good person wouldn't put any terms in an alliance that would be evil... and he would try to keep terms out that would allow the influence of evil. But Lawfuls support evil more often than not, even laws made by good men.

As lawful can you agree to ally with someone knowing at the end of the deal you will be at war with them?

Of course. Alliances often have set time limits. I have frequently done this sort of thing in war games. In fact, if your lawful good kingdom wants to prevent itself from being subsumed in the Lawful Neutral Kingdom of Hugeness that's attempting to annex your property and subjects, you have to ally with the lawful evil kingdom that's your neighbor.

If good were more important to the LN people in the larger enemy kingdom, then they would have allied with you in the first place, and you (two) could have removed the evil from the LE kingdom to the west. As it is, however, Good would be completely extinguished if you didn't ally with evil. I'm not saying you should do evil yourself, I'm merely espoising the opinion that you're not good if you refuse to protect your citizens in this way.

Good and Evil really don't come much into play there. A LG kingdom would likely ally with a LE kingdom to prevent being subsumed into the LG horde just as much as to fight off the LN oppressors to the north.

 

[Sejs]

Relative alignment has nothing to do with who or how you can interact with people.


1) People do not walk around with their alignment stamped on their forehead. Outside of magical scanning there is no way to tell what alignment someone is quickly or with any certainty.

2) Alignment is not a straightjacket. Not everyone of the same alignment acts in the same way. Ties in with #3...

3) Alignment is a reflection of the general trends of how an individual operates. Just because you are of a given alignment doesn't mean you act in that way in every circumstance, all the time. It just means that in the majority of instances you will tend to act in a manner that is consistant with your alignment.

Alignment does not dictate what a character will do.
What a character does dictates what their alignment is.

 

[Chimera]

Of course.

None of us in the real world have our alignment spelled out in big letters on our foreheads for everyone to see. It gets a little murkier in the standard D&D world, but it's still the same basic thing.

How often have you gotten to know someone, only to find out later that their morals are quite different from yours?

How often have we seen real world nations and people ally those who might otherwise be their dire enemy, in the face of a greater threat? (The USSR being part of the "Allies" during WWII comes to mind here.)

If you facing two evils and are certain to be destroyed by either one of them alone, why would you be foolish enough to battle both at the same time?

 

[AIM-54]

How often have we seen real world nations and people ally those who might otherwise be their dire enemy, in the face of a greater threat? (The USSR being part of the "Allies" during WWII comes to mind here.)

If you facing two evils and are certain to be destroyed by either one of them alone, why would you be foolish enough to battle both at the same time?

My argument, exactly.

 

[The_Universe]

I don't want to hijack my player's discussion, so I'll just provide an answer to one of the questions above, which might help frame the question.

Of the two axes, Good/Evil is emphasized far more than Law/Chaos. I don't let players ignore their character's opinion on law, but it's certainly far less important than doing what's Good.

And now, just to throw a wrinkle into the equation: how do the various alignments feel about this statement: "The ends justify the means."? I think being able to answer that question is one of the best ways to define alignment.

 

[Queequeg]

The view "I refuse to ally with evil" and the view "It's okay to ally with evil for the greater good" both seem reasonable for a good character, whether the character is lawful or chaotic. The difference between lawful and chaotic to me is how seriously that alliance is taken. A LG character who has allied with a LE power to defeat some other evil power would honor the agreement until that other power is actually defeated, whereas a CG character would be more likely to betray his/her ally if it seemed like that would promote the greater good -- if it turned out that the ally was actually the worse evil, for example.

 

[Gwarok]

There are only 2 cases of objective alignment in my world. One is for determining the effects of alignment based spells such as Holy Word. The second is for outer planar beings. For them, alignment IS a straightjacket.

Mortals on the other hand, are comprised of all the alignments. The one they pick to define their character is merely the most dominant. We lack the certainty of living in the devine presense and living in a place where there is no evil, or chaos, or law. Our environment has all of these things, as therefore so do we.

If you are going to make a campaign world with moral grey areas, you are going to have to get used to characters that are going to get really practical, really quick. If they always have to chose between saving the bus full if innocents or the little boy and his puppy, there are going to be alot of dead little boys with puppies.