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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1912213" data-attributes="member: 7240">If, as you argue, alignment can be ascertained from behaviour, why can't you make any determinations about a person's alignment if you know as much or more about it than you do a D&D character's? If you read what I am saying, I don't think the good-evil axis of alignment is anything like as broken as the law-chaos axis. While the good-evil axis suffers from the same means-ends confusion the average Star Trek episode does (by attempting to abolish any distinction between them), it is a largely functional part of the mechanic.Every single one of my criticisms has been about the law-chaos axis. The rules are perfectly clear about good and evil; their definition does accord with my definition of good and evil but it is an internally consistent definition that only runs into problems when conduct and ideology diverge quite substantially. Which means it can be applied to the game. The definition of the law-chaos axis is not internally consistent. If you think that is what I am arguing, you obviously are not actually reading my posts.If you think the two axes are equally well-defined, I am frankly perplexed. No. That's not what I am saying. What I am saying is that there is a specific problem when the following pairing is made:(a) chaotics believe in personal government and oppose the rule of law and believe in individual rights and oppose arbitrary despotic action; when(b) lawfuls believe in government by the rule of law and oppose personal government and believe in unfettered collective action over individual rightswhen in the real world, the pairings are always opposite. I am arguing about generalities. What you are doing is hiding behind generalities. You are saying: alignment is not broken because it doesn't really affect anything. That's not arguing generalities; it is attempting to defend a variable on the grounds that it is meaningless.So how can a think whose implementation you cannot describe function as an absolute? I agree with you, by the way, alignment in D&D functions as an absolute -- I am therefore concerned that this "absolute" is so incoherently defined that you cannot explain how or if it affects either behaviour or ideology.Right. And that's a real problem if alignment's most ardent defenders are incapable of explaining what "right" and "wrong" are.I'm not asking for one; but I would like a definition coherent enough to build one. Have you noticed: the people on this thread who like and use alignment are split nearly 50/50 over whether it is a measure of ideology or conduct. If intelligent supporters of alignment, reading the text the of the PHB cannot even determine that, then we don't even know what an alignment-derived code would even look like.But the rules don't say that, do they? The rules force it, however, because they are so self-contradictory that everyone who uses the alignment mechanic ends up choosing not to enforce some part of it in order to make the thing fly (see swrushing above).So, let's suppose I'm too dumb to understand alignment. I'm in graduate school. I got in with a 4.0 GPA. I was the top graduating history student in my year at the university from which I receive my undergraduate degree. Excepting alignment, I understand how every rules mechanic in the core books functions. What does it say if I lack the intellectual capacity to comprehend alignment. Might this also be a sign the mechanic is broken?</blockquote>

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