D&D General How do you think each alignment would handle this?

[Celebrim]

My own perspective on Lawful isn't so much that they "uphold the law" as that they prefer order.

Largely agree. I could play within your categorization at your table and not feel like it was weird. I differ slightly on a few takes, and will try to outline them.

An LG person values this order, but doesn't exclusively value this order.

Your outline of LG I felt was correct, but we shouldn't think that LG people view correct order and good as in tension. A LG person not only believes correct order leads to the good, but that the good leads to correct order. Indeed, they are inclined to think that only through correct order can the good be achieved. They may see a CG person as having by chance correct order "written on their hearts" and so act in a way that is correct without consciously consenting to the law, but they would see those actions as correct precisely because they are in accordance to the law - especially the law at its highest governing levels (what is commonly called "the spirit of the law", though a lawful would object to the concept.)

An LE person values this order, but also doesn't exclusively value it. They also value their own self-interest above all...

Here we get to what I think is my biggest quibble with your conception. A LE person as I understand it no more is self-interested than a LG person. They are not acting primarily out of selfishness. Both the LG and LE person would agree with the statement, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one." The true LE is perfectly willing to sacrifice their own interests for the benefit of their in group. The true LE ruler would sacrifice themselves for the sake of the ones they rule. Where LG and LE disagree is not over self-interest, but over what causes flourishing. Evil generally sees good as weakness, stupidity, willful blindness, ignorance of reality, hypocrisy, and delusional wishful thinking. In a sense, evil sees those that promote good as being worse deceivers than they are themselves. Think about the Joker's motives in "The Dark Night" where he wants to rip away the false narrative he believes good offers. LE differs from LG in what they think is necessary to flourish. To LE, charity, mercy, and so forth only allow the weak to thrive at the expense of the strong. Such actions they believe work to undermine order and discipline, which for the good of the group must be maintained with a harsh and unyielding hand.

If they are really interested in law only to the extent that it rewards them and they happily break laws when it doesn't, that's CE and not LE.

Good isn't compatible with hierarchical thinking, with viewing yourself as "above" someone else.

That's a CG (and to lesser extent NG) perspective. LG doesn't agree. While the LG person might believe that the purpose of a leader is to serve those he leads, they truly do believe that the those who have the right to lead are in some sense better than those they lead and so deserving fully of homage and respect on that account. It's not just the rank that is respected, but the person itself. All the Lawfuls are hierarchical, its just the good lawfuls are trying by it to be benevolent.

I'm not going to say whether CG is right or wrong in this, just that we shouldn't let our bias govern how we describe the different viewpoints. You can make a legitimate criticism of LG trying to encourage the good view a hierarchy and strict order, but we have to be open minded enough to recognize LG in turn can make a legitimate criticism of the goodness of the outcome of "each doing what is right in their own eyes".

 

[Vaalingrade]

Oh look, everyone has a different view of what alignments mean.

Some say alignments are like this. Some say they're like that. Both are correct. Both are wrong.

Because they are wholly subjective and bad at all the things they are purported to be for.

 

[Celebrim]

Oh look, everyone has a different view of what alignments mean.

Some say alignments are like this. Some say they're like that. Both are correct. Both are wrong.

Because they are wholly subjective and bad at all the things they are purported to be for.

Are you really interested in the thread or is this just another excuse to tell us how much you hate alignment? Because, we really know that already. Saying it once was enough.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Are you really interested in the thread or is this just another excuse to tell us how much you hate alignment? Because, we really know that already. Saying it once was enough.

Hey, I answered the question and people had commentary on my answer, so don't come for me over where the conversation went.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Basic Human Fighter (or whatever) is in a local store sees an obviously poor man steal something.

How would each of the alignment's react in your opinion?

LG
NG
CG
LN
TN
CN
LE
NE
CE

Addendum: Don’t over think this

LG - talk to the man, try to get him a job at one of your friends.
NG - buy him something
CG - help him steal
LN - tacke him to the ground and call the guard
TN - ignore him
CN - take a dump in the middle of the store
LE - take him to a meal and offer to pay him for doing something illegal
NE - you're already stealing, if he won't snitch, you won't either
CE - rob the store

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Good isn't compatible with hierarchical thinking, with viewing yourself as "above" someone else. A good person has a fundamentally humanistic perspective, valuing all life. LG values all life, and feels that order and cooperation is the best way to achieve the flourishing of all life, which will likely require some civic law. CG values all life, and feels like personal choices and individual perspectives are the best way to achieve the flourishing of all life, which means civic law is actively a detriment to it. Evil, meanwhile, sees the world divided into better and lesser beings. LE believes in a continuum, so that everyone should "know their place." CE believes in more of a binary, where there is them, and then there's everyone else, and everyone else can go screw.

I would definitely dispute large parts of this.

Good is perfectly compatible with hierarchy, it simply requires that the hierarchy treat all members thereof with a certain minimum of respect, dignity, etc. A king or empress may be LG, and claim his or her position by right, while still believing that all people merit the same high standards of honor, decency, and compassion. A general may be LG, and still strictly enforce military discipline, because hierarchy is critically necessary for battlefield success. Etc. What LG cannot tolerate is oppressive hierarchy; hierarchy used to exploit others. Hence why, for instance, LG necessarily opposes slavery, or must find some excuse for why it is somehow acceptable (usually, by denying the personhood of the enslaved, so that the enslaver can pretend that they have done nothing wrong.)

I also don't think Evil necessarily sees "better and lesser" beings. It can also see all beings as equal! Just equally crap, and thus in no way deserving of any kindness or mercy or even basic decency. "Every man for himself" can be a perfectly valid Evil maxim, despite being fundamentally (if rather shallowly) egalitarian. Evil is much more tolerant of hierarchy in general and specifically oppressive hierarchy, but it does not require it.

Further, I generally disagree about how you characterize Lawful Evil. It's pretty clearly, both in fiction and in reality, a thing that someone can put, as it were, principle ahead of short-sighted self-interest, and indeed this is one of the more interesting things you can do with evil characters. Specifically, a Lawful Evil character is much more likely to accept self-limiting or even self-sabotaging consequences, because sticking to their principles serves their grander self-interest better than breaking those principles, even if it causes a setback. I'd call that a critical component of the "Magnificent Bastard" archetype, actually; it needs to be possible for them to have an "I gave my word" moment or a "nobody else would know, but I would know, and that's enough" moment. Essentially, the mirror image of what I said above regarding Good and Law; just as the LG person does not abandon lowercase-l laws and practices willy-nilly for light and transient reasons, the LE person does not either, but the difference lies in how they respond. A Good person tries to correct the mistake by improving the practice or law so that it performs better. An Evil person tries to foresee consequences better so that giving their word does not require as many short-term sacrifices for long-term gain. The former is deontologic (or possibly virtue ethics), the latter is purely consequentialist.

(And that, incidentally, is what makes such a nice path for moral reform for such "Noble Demon" characters: if their long-term gain keeps pointing toward doing good rather than evil, they may eventually take the plunge and actually flip to N or even G, and often become as terrifying an ally as they were a terrifying enemy before. Which is great for a well-written Magnificent Bastard, preserving their magnificence but becoming someone we can wholeheartedly root for.)

And, finally, if Chaotic is simply "moral relativism + consequentialism," that's...pretty disappointing and basically means that Chaos is a dead-end moral philosophy, which I'm not really willing to accept. Chaos can appeal to external moral standards, to reasoning about morality in ways that generalize, just as easily as Law can. It just does so for different reasons and toward different ends. Libertarianism and principled anarchism, for example, or the work of Robert Nozick.

Edit: as a good example of "principle before self interest" that actually helps someone be more evil, I give you my devils from my DW game. They ALWAYS keep their word, and do not resort to crappy, legalese-based traps. Every contract they make with mortals, they want a mortal to complete. Getting a mortal's soul is a lame consolation prize.

Because every time they get mortals to WILLINGLY go along with their plans, they have aligned another small part of the universe to them and their way of thinking. And a happy customer is a repeat customer. Hence, devils cultivate a reputation of reliability—and they punish those devils who fail to live up to that reputation. They are quite intelligent and thus clearly know that if they behaved like how regular D&D devils do, no one would ever want to do business with them. Which would be colossally stupid business practice! Hence, if you get a promise from a devil, you can rely on it. But it probably is bad for your immortal soul, and almost certainly bad for the world in general...even if you can't see how and the effects won't come to fruition for a century after you're dead.

 

[MNblockhead]

Oh look, everyone has a different view of what alignments mean.

Some say alignments are like this. Some say they're like that. Both are correct. Both are wrong.

Because they are wholly subjective and bad at all the things they are purported to be for.

But think of all the memes we would never have were it not for alignment!

 

[I'm A Banana]

Good is perfectly compatible with hierarchy, it simply requires that the hierarchy treat all members thereof with a certain minimum of respect, dignity, etc. A king or empress may be LG, and claim his or her position by right, while still believing that all people merit the same high standards of honor, decency, and compassion.

It's compatible with hierarchy in as much as that hierarchy serves good and order. An LG character sees a good king, and that's fine, but what might be better is a good council, where power is shared between good people - more sustainable, more ordered. Putting an end to a monarchy or an empire in favor of something better and more ordered is absolutely in line with LG thinking. Monarchies and empires are prone to disputes by the next generation, after all - there is chaos. It also elevates the importance of one person - that is not respecting all life. To a good person, no one is more important than anyone else. Maybe a good king is the best we're capable of in a campaign, but I think if we're going to be a FANTASY PROTAGONIST, then we can do better!

Not that overthrowing a good king is necessarily the top of the priority list in the campaign, but if a player wanted to run an LG anti-monarchist, I'd say that it makes perfect sense. And if the LG king wanted to maybe keep his position at the expense of future stability, I'd say that'd make for a very fun antagonist - someone you mostly agree with, who is doing good in the world, but whose place at the top of the hierarchy gives them a fatal flaw that could lead to some powerful moments. I'd even say you could be an LG anarchist, believing that a sort of "natural order" will emerge between peers in a society, and that the role of leaders and such is more about the job they do than about being in charge.

While the LG person might believe that the purpose of a leader is to serve those he leads, they truly do believe that the those who have the right to lead are in some sense better than those they lead and so deserving fully of homage and respect on that account.

The belief that one life has more value than another is how one ultimately comes to believe that it's OK that one person is hurt, in exchange for another person's safety. That's not a Good philosophy. A Good person values life and mortal flourishing, so a Good person might have a very skeptical view of, for instance, the idea of paying homage to a king - is that leading to the valuing and flourishing of the peasant? Clearly if there are poor people in a community, the order currently in place is not a Good one. Money, merchants, kings, empires, mayors, laws - these are mortal creations, subject to flaws, not things to respect in and of themselves. An LG person may believe that order and codification can, when used properly, create more flourishing than would otherwise exist. But they're not blind - if the system isn't creating mortal flourishing and a respect for all life, then it's not Good, and, however old or storied, could stand to be improved, possibly with jolly adventuring and a peaceful revolution or two.

 

[Celebrim]

The belief that one life has more value than another is how one ultimately comes to believe that it's OK that one person is hurt, in exchange for another person's safety.

My guess is that you believe that too, and you are missing the critical point. If someone says, "Greater love has no man than this, that he gives his life for his friends.", you don't quibble. What you are really saying is someone should not be sacrificed for someone else's personal gain, and well LG believes that just fine. But a soldier gives his life for the safety of another, and a parent will lay down their life for the safety of another. And a commander sends soldiers into battle, knowing that some will die, in order that others might be safe.

So yes, my guess is that you to believe "it's OK that one person is hurt, in exchange for another person's safety."

You are clearly making a Chaotic critique of Lawful Good, and not a Good critique of it. I think a critique from the vantage of Good is possible, but only if we know more about society than we are given in the problem.

so a Good person might have a very skeptical view of, for instance, the idea of paying homage to a king - is that leading to the valuing and flourishing of the peasant?

Why not? Does the peasant not think so? Read the introductory passage of Beowulf, where it talks about the consequences of not having a good strong king to keep the peace and establish justice in the land. Do you think the peasant thinks the king only oppresses him? You are critiquing the situation from a very modern very Chaotic perspective.

Clearly if there are poor people in a community, the order currently in place is not a Good one.

This is nonsense. Poverty is the natural state of man. It's only through great effort that either an individual or a community digs its way out of it. For the great majority of human history, the great majority of humanity struggled to meet basic needs of subsistence. That the community didn't have the charity to help the poor is only one of many possibilities why there might be poverty in society. We err perhaps in seeing as they almost universally would have seen it as a flaw in the individual and in his ethic and in wisdom, but an individual can fail in his ethics and in his wisdom and become destitute quite without society and a poor society may not have the surplus to dig him out of it. Compared to almost every generation that came before us, we are indolent and wealthy with a great deal of time for idleness. But let's not judge so harshly a past society that was poor for lack of technology and infrastructure. Don't make the mistake of looking back at history and assuming you are so much terribly smarter and wiser than the past.

Money, merchants, kings, empires, mayors, laws - these are mortal creations, subject to flaws, not things to respect in and of themselves.

Again, this is very much a Chaotic critique of Law and not a Good critique of it. Chaotics may be right that Law is just a moral relative thing, not worthy of respect in and of itself, but that's not a critique of Law from the vantage of Good but from the vantage of Chaotic. Every Chaotic agrees with the passage I just quoted, whether good or not. You may be right that the highest good and the most moral ethic is Chaotic Good, but I'm not really here to quibble over who is right, just put all the labels on correctly.

and a peaceful revolution or two.

Spoken by someone who has never seen a civil war. Don't judge order to harshly until you've really seen its absence.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's compatible with hierarchy in as much as that hierarchy serves good and order. An LG character sees a good king, and that's fine, but what might be better is a good council, where power is shared between good people - more sustainable, more ordered. Putting an end to a monarchy or an empire in favor of something better and more ordered is absolutely in line with LG thinking. Monarchies and empires are prone to disputes by the next generation, after all - there is chaos. It also elevates the importance of one person - that is not respecting all life. To a good person, no one is more important than anyone else. Maybe a good king is the best we're capable of in a campaign, but I think if we're going to be a FANTASY PROTAGONIST, then we can do better!

Not that overthrowing a good king is necessarily the top of the priority list in the campaign, but if a player wanted to run an LG anti-monarchist, I'd say that it makes perfect sense. And if the LG king wanted to maybe keep his position at the expense of future stability, I'd say that'd make for a very fun antagonist - someone you mostly agree with, who is doing good in the world, but whose place at the top of the hierarchy gives them a fatal flaw that could lead to some powerful moments. I'd even say you could be an LG anarchist, believing that a sort of "natural order" will emerge between peers in a society, and that the role of leaders and such is more about the job they do than about being in charge.



The belief that one life has more value than another is how one ultimately comes to believe that it's OK that one person is hurt, in exchange for another person's safety. That's not a Good philosophy. A Good person values life and mortal flourishing, so a Good person might have a very skeptical view of, for instance, the idea of paying homage to a king - is that leading to the valuing and flourishing of the peasant? Clearly if there are poor people in a community, the order currently in place is not a Good one. Money, merchants, kings, empires, mayors, laws - these are mortal creations, subject to flaws, not things to respect in and of themselves. An LG person may believe that order and codification can, when used properly, create more flourishing than would otherwise exist. But they're not blind - if the system isn't creating mortal flourishing and a respect for all life, then it's not Good, and, however old or storied, could stand to be improved, possibly with jolly adventuring and a peaceful revolution or two.

Again, I raise to you the general, in command of an army hierarchy, the example you assiduously avoided.

There are many times and situations where giving every single person a perfectly equal and ample opportunity to participate is not only unwise, it is actively harmful to flourishing. As CGP Grey put it in his pirate quartermaster video, battle is no time for democracy. There is a very good reason that even the most pro-democracy, pro-equality, etc. etc. organizations and governments have kept the idea of an executive office, a leader, someone who calls the shots. Because, even when you believe all are equal before the law and all should be afforded the same fundamental rights and respect, it is counterproductive and indeed dangerous to leave some things in the painfully slow churn of democracy when action is required, when decisions need to be made quickly and decisively.

Hence, your core claim, that to be good means you absolutely must be opposed to all hierarchy always, accepting what hierarchy exists only on a provisional, "we'll eliminate that later" basis, is fundamentally incorrect. It is oppressive hierarchy, as I said, that is the problem; hierarchy which considers some inherently worthy and others inherently unworthy, that strips away rights and privileges for light and transient reasons, that is incompatible.

And the hierarchy can run the other way, as well. There can be those who get denied common freedoms, not because they are inherently lesser, but because it genuinely protects sapient flourishing to do so. The most obvious example here is children, who are still given rights, but less than those of adults, because they are not ready for such rights. The mentally disabled or disturbed would be another such group. Those who have committed crimes, and been judged as meriting incarceration or death or enforced rehabilitation or the like, are necessarily subject to a hierarchy that places them at a lower rung than those who have the autonomy to not do those things.

It's not the hierarchy that is the problem.