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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6632566" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I know this is ancient, but since you brought it up today...I think Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good are incoherent. Consider the position of the Lawful Evil guy. He's expected to adhere to some sort of social hierarchy, but his ethos is "screw everyone else" (as you so aptly described it in the opening post). So why would he care about social order? Sure, he may think social order is something he can exploit, but that doesn't make HIM lawful evil, it makes him at best neutral evil. He's perfectly happy to make those other suckers obey rules that are good for him, and he may unwillingly obey rules enforced on him from above, but he's got no interest in rules per-se in any absolute sense. If he did, he wouldn't be evil, he'd be something else, because self-interest isn't driving him, he accepts some higher authority in more than just name.Likewise, you already pointed out the problem with Chaotic Good, the good REQUIRES considerations of others, and that demands that there be limits imposed on your behaviour, and that implies the existence of external judges of what is and is not correct behaviour (or else you'd just be some CN guy phoning it all in). So, CG and LE simply cannot exist. In an 'LE' society nobody is actually lawful, they're all just operating in fear of everyone higher up the food chain than them. In a 'CG' society everyone is actually acknowledging a higher moral authority who's rules they are willing to follow. So how are they different from LN, or even LG? They aren't really. At best LE and CG are 'preferences', you would rather have the most or the least rules that are feasible. This is why 4e simply got rid of LE and CG and collapsed them into a spectrum. CG is really just "I'm good, but I might not always put other people's welfare ahead of mine" so you're "Good Lite", and likewise LE is "Evil Lite", you really value law a whole bunch and you think it promotes some sort of benefit which clearly shows you must have some sort of interest in the benefit of at least society as a whole, so you're not really entirely evil. To emphasize this they then call "really evil" Chaotic Evil, these are the true bad guys, they care about NOTHING except wrecking havoc. Likewise the "really good" are LG, they're willing to accept ANY restriction or rule, as long as it promotes welfare (in whatever way they see that).So, in terms of what actually works, is the 4e alignment system really different? I don't think so. As before there's no real contest between good and evil, as evil is still just the abnegation of good. Chaos is now simply seen in its true form, the ultimate expression of evil ways, and likewise law is seen in its true form, as the ultimate expression of good.You can of course still have 'law gone wrong' and 'good but doesn't like rules', but they're now simply called 'evil' and 'good', in recognition of the fact that they're not really polarized strongly on the law/chaos axis. Of course in a simple sense, this system is more cut out for telling stories of bad guys vs good guys than conflicts of order vs disorder. The later will in some sense always come out in terms of virtue conflicted against immorality.</blockquote>

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