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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TenseAlcyoneus" data-source="post: 1055960" data-attributes="member: 11422">I agree. His order is Lawful Neutral, and so there are some great role-playing opportunities with the tension between the Monk and his own order. Here, I disagree for the same reasons that I mentioned to BiggusGeekus -- alignment is a difference in kind and isn't a matter of degree. This applies also to DonAdams remark because the alignments are opposed, excepting Neutral. An examination of the spell system clearly shows this. As I wrote to BiggusGeekus, when we cast Protection From Law it isn't protection from a philosophy but from a cosmic force. Further evidence lies in the Detect Evil/Good/Chaos/Law spells. When the Evil/Good/Chaos/Law aura is "overwhelming" the caster is stunned. This is not the case for detect magic. These cosmic forces of alignment are opposed, and they have real game effects by being opposed.Now, the idea of alignment as a status seems to contradict this opposition. If we cannot "act against alignment" then there is no cosmic opposition. But I think this is only seeming and not actually the case. By analogy, an 'A' student has a status of 'A' in virtue of the sum total of his previous actions, and future actions certainly will affect the status of the student; however, not all actions will a significant effect on whether the student continues to maintain the status of an 'A'. For example, whether the student eats Tex-Mex food on Fridays is unlikely to have a material effect on his status. (No jokes please ;-) This is a matter of degree.So it is with alignment. Alignments are matters of kind, whereas the effect of an action on alignment or the appropriateness of and action under alignment is a matter of degree. Characters do have a status, but by acting in accord with opposing alignments they may certainly change that status. Alignment isn't status; status is a way for us to grade whether a character is in a particular alignment with the cosmos. I still conclude, therefore, that character action must necessarily derive most fundamentally from alignment, not as a "personality type" but as a cosmic perspective in opposition to a finite set of other perspectives. This cosmic perspective will rule out many kinds of activities as illogical or improbable for the character; however, it isn't a prescribed set of actions either, that is why confounding 'personality' and 'alignment' is a poor way to go.The best way to look at it, IMHO, is by proscription -- what vices are prohibited in a Lawful Good character. Then we know how to 'grade' the character, to judge their cosmic perspective, which has real game effects for that character and his party.</blockquote>

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