Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3299073" data-attributes="member: 4937">The Paladin of nuetrality would be a soldier of passivity.  His philosophy would be reactive rather than active, and he'd tend to side against anything that was trying to bring about change.  Assuming he was willing to do anything at all.  Which he probably wouldn't.  More about that latter.The problem with working against things rather than for things is that from the perspective of everyone else in the universe, he would be a champion of betrayal, and a paragon of deceitfulness, wavering and vacillating and working behind the scenes to undermine and destroy everyone elses efforts.  He would be everyone's enemy and noones friend.  Paladin's and anti-Paladins could concievably agree to only one thing - "Let's kill that b#$@#$ before he does the same to us."And so from the perspective of everyone else in the universe, it would be hard to distinguish between the nuetral Paladin and the worst sort of chaotic evil.  In fact, I could see alot of anti-Paladins doing thier best to emulate the philosophy of working against everyone.  That's anarchy of the highest degree.The nuetral aligned 'Paladin' would have one other serious problem.  It's hard enough to know how to best bring about good or evil and render it triumphant.  But at least when you are anything but neutral, you have some idea what sort of actions you should be undertaking.  You don't have to guess about what your purpose in the situation is.  You just put your whole heart in it and go.  Good guys protect the weak, defend the innocent, preserve the peace, bring about justice, have compasion on the misfortunate and mercy on the penitant.  Bad guys are doing thier best to exploit the weak, corrupt the innocent, bring about massacres, escape and subvert justice, show no pity for the misfortunate and no compassion for the helpless.  The sort crisis that they ever have to face is a pretty small matter between not only deciding what quality to show but in what quantity that you avoid tipping the scales to far one way or the other.  Give either side one iota, and they'll run with it to create utopia's or dystopia's or whatever they are into.  It takes more than mortal wisdom to bring balance, and more wisdom to bring balance than it does to win.  And the thing is, I don't think even the gods of balance attempt this sort of thing.  The literature on the subject I recall maintains that the gods of balance only observe, only judge, only record - they don't get much into intervening.  They are wise enough I suppose to know that in intervening, they tip the scales and no diety of less than omnipotence can foresee or control the consequences.So, I don't think I'd bring the concept into my games.  It just doesn't seem to fit.   Nuetral monks maybe, cloistered away from the universe trying to achieve enlightenment and escape it, but not crusaders going out to change it.  It doesn't suit the philosophy.</blockquote>

Verification