D&D 5E Evil Vs. Neutral - help me explain?

[Sunseeker]

Well not really. Life is full of contracts, every job is a contract (written or not), if I have a house rent contract, does that make me Lawful? We sign contract because we have to, otherwise no job no house no medical care and so on. What would rather matter, is how this character thinks of those contracts. But even if the assassin respects all contracts, the real reason might be that it's convenient for him to build a reputation of someone who carries out all assignments, so even in that case this doesn't make him necessarily lawful.

In general, lawfulness is quite a complex thing, depending on a lot of facets. Breaking contracts on a whim is a strong sign of unlawfulness, but the opposite i.e. respecting contracts is not necessarily a strong sign of lawfulness...

In real life, I'd agree, but I don't think you can represent the complexities of the law in D&D.

 

[Jester David]

Running a Dragonlance game and a certain player is decidedly evil. If the job is to assassinate someone, he will assassinate them. If it is to save a kitten then he'll save the kitten. This is all done for the right price. The problem is he stands by the fact he is chaotic neutral and can do whatever he feels like because he "could" do something good any time he wants to.

Everyone in the group agrees that contract killing is an evil thing amd the his excessive motivation by greed is evil as well.. This player however thinks it isn't and all but flips out.

We all have our opinions on ethics but to craft a world I'm using RAW. It helps me craft the reactions of NPCs in a world that has firmly entrenched sides of good and evil. So how do I do this? He's even carrying a powerful magical artifact that is very evil but I'm not going to spill the goods to bribe him into being evil.

If he's always doing his job that sounds more lawful than chaotic.
Neutral people can do evil acts, just like they can perform good acts.

You do mention Dragonlance, which does help matters. Because in that setting Neutral isn't just not-good-not-evil but balance. A Neutral character believes there must be a balance between their good and evil deeds and in the area. If there is too much evil in a region they will do more good and vise versa.

 

[Rune]

My suggestion comes in two steps:

1: Don't argue alignment with your players. What they want their characters to believe about themselves is up to them. Your job is to provide consequences for their actions. Stick with that.

2: Whatever BBEG you thought you were going to use in this campaign just got downgraded. You've been handed the gift of a far better villain in the form of this guy's character (and many of the best villains don't see themselves as such). Give the character plenty of opportunities to undermine the heroic efforts of the rest of the party, especially in secret. Tie it in with major events. Then, bring the escalated consequences home sometime way down the road in such a way that the party must either convert or overcome their wayward party member in order to deal with those consequences.

 

[Mephista]

I personally always determine that Alignment in the game is decided by what God, Faction (Planescape only), or spirit-entity they resemble. Alignment is very literal in my mind - who are you aligned with?

This is how I personally run alignment the standard Great Wheel Cosmology...

1) Modrons / Mechanius for LN, Slaad / Limbo for CN. If you're like a Slaad, we have issues.
2) Devils are LE and focus on tyranny and (to an extent) sin-eating; Yugoloths are NE and embody acting out of greed and desire for wealth; Demons are CE and all about destruction and madness.
3) Good is difficult, since angels fluxuate in alignment, and the once CG eladrin are now not always good. So, instead, I point to typical dieties. LG focus on Justice. Tyr, Paladine, Silver Flame, Hieroneous. NG gods (Pelor, Chauntea, Meilikki, Ehlanna, Arawai) tend to focus on nurturing life, be it in raw nature or agriculture. CG gods, including Sune, Kord, and Tymorra, tend towards beauty, love, individual achievement, and personal freedom - in short, pursuit of what matters to the individual.
4) True Neutral is literally that - you have absolutely no alignment with any celestial group.

 

[The Human Target]

We had one whole edition without alignment arguments.

 

[Morlock]

I don't think contract killing would make him evil unless he was killing anyone he was paid to kill including good folk.

Killing whoever you're contracted to kill is pretty much the definition of contract murder. You seem to be making allowances for the vanishingly rare (at best) "good" contract killers. Talk about your moral hazard: "well, let's see, I'm definitely willing to murder bad people for money, so the only thing keeping me from making a bunch of money is defining my targets as bad..." That's the kind of thinking that exemplifies evil people in the real world. If you're running a game with a moral universe similar to Spaghetti Westerns and Tarantino films, I suppose that makes sense.

 

[mlund]

We had one whole edition without alignment arguments.

That's because they got rid of "Neutral," in that edition. "Unaligned," made a lot more sense. Instead the alignments were basically:

• I care so much I make personal sacrifices and submit to just authority for the sake of others.
• I care so much I make personal sacrifices for the sake of others.
• My sphere of concern / level of awareness is very limited.
• I'll harm innocents whenever necessary to get what I want.
• Bwahahahaha!

CN, TN, LN got pruned off and it really reduced the nonsensical arguments of "Every time I murder an orphan I rescue a dozen kittens," and "Yes I killed that man for J-walking, but I did it because I really like rules, not because I like killing people," being qualifications for being "not evil."

Marty Lund

 

[Morlock]

Well not really. Life is full of contracts, every job is a contract (written or not), if I have a house rent contract, does that make me Lawful? We sign contract because we have to, otherwise no job no house no medical care and so on. What would rather matter, is how this character thinks of those contracts.

Or maybe it's better to think about alignment reflecting what you are in the dark. I.e., how you behave when no one's looking. Lawful people still follow the law, custom, tradition, what have you. Neutral means a mixed bag in this context, and Chaotic people drop law/custom/tradition the second nobody's looking. Neutral would seem to be for more "ordinary" folks (though conformity is very normal), while Chaotic would seem to be more for criminals (irrespective of morality), non-conformists, etc.

When he dies he can make his case to the Gods of Evil that he doesn't belong in their neck of the planes.

Personally, I like the idea of having more consequences for alignment than where a character goes when he dies, or what impact, if any, it has on how people perceive him (people in the real world are usually very good at hiding non-conformist "alignments" to the extent necessary for self interest). That is to say, while I don't like spells like "detect evil" very much, I could, e.g., cozy up to the idea of demons that obey rules whereby evil characters are fair game (and know evil by reading thoughts).

Evil means that purpose is the determinant - ie the character does not treat others, and the welfare of others, as any sort of constraint on the pursuit of desire. Nor does s/he regard beauty as any sort of constraint.

This is so much better a description of evil than the usual "gets off on hurting people" thing, IMO. Which, as you go on to point out, is an extreme case of evil.

On the other hand, I have more sympathy for neutrality as a middle ground for "ordinary" folks than you do.

The world of fiction (and the real world) is pretty full of villains who *claim* they are doing things for right and good reasons, after all....

I would go further and say that in the real world, almost all of the people I would call evil, or even who are most widely considered evil, think of themselves as good. The number of people who don't attempt to justify themselves, or seem unconcerned, strikes me as vanishingly small. It's just not how humans are wired. We're too social.

I personally always determine that Alignment in the game is decided by what God, Faction (Planescape only), or spirit-entity they resemble. Alignment is very literal in my mind - who are you aligned with?

I was just going over in my head the problems my approach to alignment (try to make it align with what I see in the real world to the extent practical) that is presented by evil gods. I mean, if you've got evil gods that are widely worshipped as such, well, that doesn't seem to work with what I see of human nature. This is aside from evil gods that are appeased, like Tlaloc (not that the Aztecs weren't at least in the top 3 contenders for the most evil civilizations in human history, mind you).

We had one whole edition without alignment arguments.

You say that like it's a good thing.

 

[The Human Target]

That's because they got rid of "Neutral," in that edition. "Unaligned," made a lot more sense. Instead the alignments were basically:

• I care so much I make personal sacrifices and submit to just authority for the sake of others.
• I care so much I make personal sacrifices for the sake of others.
• My sphere of concern / level of awareness is very limited.
• I'll harm innocents whenever necessary to get what I want.
• Bwahahahaha!

CN, TN, LN got pruned off and it really reduced the nonsensical arguments of "Every time I murder an orphan I rescue a dozen kittens," and "Yes I killed that man for J-walking, but I did it because I really like rules, not because I like killing people," being qualifications for being "not evil."

Marty Lund

Yeah its a lot easier to understand.

Combine that with it being mechanically unimportant and we never even really discussed it.

Unlike 3e where we spent a heap of time at the table arguing about it to no ones benefit.

 

[Morlock]

From that link posted above:

Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties.

Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.

Interesting. I tell the truth, keep my word, honor tradition (depending on whose tradition), and judge others. I also follow my conscience, resent being told what to do, lack anything more than the barest respect for authority, and keep my promises. I'm agnostic concerning new ideas vs. tradition, with my natural inclination being toward the former, but also being highly resistant to the Nu Age Enlightenment where progs think they've got it all figured out and all of human history is an error to be corrected; I think traditions generally get to be traditions for very good, time-tested reasons. But on the other hand, I find many, if not most, of our new and emerging conventions to be [dog poop].

Where does that place me on the alignment scale?

On the other hand, if I use social conformity as my metric for the lawful to chaotic axis, I'm clearly chaotic.

The descriptions of the particular alignments, however, worked better for me:

A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society.

Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit.

Chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment when it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.

Yep, that's pretty much me, except... I don't derive a systemic "ought" from my "is." That is, I don't advocate Chaotic Good for society as a whole, I advocate Lawful Good, more or less. So, I'm Chaotic Good with Lawful tendencies?