D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[Imaro]

This doesn't make any difference to my point.

Sure, it is possible for a CG person to be different in some respects from another CG person. Or from a LG person. But from the point of view of LG, CG is radically flawed. Yet a LG person cannot, coherently, deny that it is possible for a CG person to be perfectly, maximally good. Hence, a LG person is committed to it being possible that a maximally good being is nevertheless radically flawed.

Yes radically flawed in that he is aligned with chaos... which has both good and evil aspects in it, this absolute CG person only exemplifies the good aspects of chaos... Yet this still falls out of line with the LG person because he exemplifies the good aspects of law... both are good and I don't see why (especially if good is defined) why this can't be recognized and yet the methods and finer points of the results be disagreed upon?

That doesn't make sense. And it lacks parallels in the real world. In the real world, for instance, socialists don't think that libertarians are fully committed to human welfare yet flawed. They think that libertarianism is inimical to human welfare. Conversely, when Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom he didn't think that socialists and social democrats were fully committed to human welfare yet problematically collectivist. He argued that their collectivism was a threat to human wellbeing and hence that socialism and social democracy were evils to be opposed.

In the real world, there are no political or moral points of view which treat goodness/evilness, and lawfulness/chaoticness, as distinctive measures of value, such that the question of how good or evil someone or something is is independent of the way it relates to stability, change, liberty etc. Rather, they take positions on the contribution of stability, change, liberty etc to good and evil.

I am talking about a Moorcokian-esque weird-fantasy cosmology (which again IMO, Planescape does well)... not a real world cosmology in my game. The fact that there are no examples of this cosmology in the real world (though quite a few in literature of the sword and sorcery type), is not IMO a valid argument since the game is full of things that there are no examples of in the real world. As many times as I've seen you rally against the versimilitude argument in 4e discussions I find it quite surprising that this is essentially what your argument against alignment boils down to... it's not real enough??

 

[pemerton]

I am talking about a Moorcokian-esque weird-fantasy cosmology (which again IMO, Planescape does well)... not a real world cosmology in my game.

Moorcock makes no difference.

Moorcock doesn't think that it is possible to be fully lawful yet good. He thinks that the only path to fully realise wellbeing is via a balance of law and chaos. Hence he thinks that Mt Celestia, as presented in Planescape, is impossible. Yet Planescape asserts that it is possible. Planescape also asserts, via Olympus/Arvandor, that it is possible to be fully chaotic and yet fully good.

The assertion in Planescape, that being lawful or chaotic makes no difference to how much you contribute to good or evil, is quite the opposite of Moorcock, who thinks that excesses of law or of chaos lead to evil.

 

[Imaro]

It's incoherent that they should be on two different axes.

I disagree...

Being loud, and being tidy, are on two different axes. So if I'm trying to work out if you would make a good neighbour, I might have to trade off how loud you are (the louder, the worse) and how tidy your are (the tidier, the better). But these are factors that weight into an all-things-considered judgement about how good you are as a neighbour.

This analogy doesn't make sense when applied to chaos vs. law(tidiness) and good vs. evil(loudness)... what does "good neighbor" even represent here?

Putting good/evil and law/chaos on separate axes is like trying to say that I can have a loudness axis that is independent of a good neighbour axis: ie it makes no sense. It might be true that you are a good neighbour, yet loud, because other things about you eg your tidiness, your willingness to look after the kids if I'm late home from work, etc, outweigh your loudness. But you would be an even better neighbour if you did all those things, and also weren't so loud.

No it's not, again I ask what does good neighbor represent in this example?

So a paladin (notionally LG) who looks at a knockabout bard (notionally CG) ought, in a coherent world, think "That bard's a pretty good person", but ought also to think "But the bard would be even better as a person if she was a bit less irresolute, and left a bit less of a trail of human wreckage behind her." But the 9-point alignment system rules out such thoughts, because the paladin has to concede that the irresoluteness of the bard makes no difference to her goodness (ie her relationship to human well-being) and only matters to some other, notionally independent, thing (law/chaos).

How do you define being a better person? This example still isn;t making sense... You've created some imaginary 3rd axis "better person" that is baed upon the interaction between good/evil and law/chaos... but what is this in the game?

Looking at your game explanation... if this is your ultimate good bard, then how is he leaving a "trail of human wreckage" because then he is not absolute good...

But asserting, by way of stipulation, that law/chaos is independent of good/evil doesn't make it so. I mean, I could define a "shape" system where you get to choose how many vertices you have, and how many sides, but that wouldn't make it coherent to say that I have fully 3 sides but fully 2 vertices. Vertices and sides aren't independent. Nor is law/chaos (be that social organisation, personal discipline, honourability, stability vs change, or however you characterise that particular contrast) independent of human wellbeing. It is a contributor to it.

And asserting that there is a "better person" axis that has to combine both good/evil and law/chaos doesn't make it so, especially since no such thing exists in D&D.

 

[Imaro]

Moorcock makes no difference.

Yeah... it kind of does...

Moorcock doesn't think that it is possible to be fully lawful yet good.

So does D&D... thus LN alignment

He thinks that the only path to fully realise wellbeing is via a balance of law and chaos. Hence he thinks that Mt Celestia, as presented in Planescape, is impossible.

Wrong... Moorcock never asserts that goodness and leanings towards law or chaos can't exist... in his stories it's when things fall into an extreme of law or chaos that good can't exist.

Yet Planescape asserts that it is possible. Planescape also asserts, via Olympus/Arvandor, that it is possible to be fully chaotic and yet fully good.

No it doesn't to be fully chaotic and fully good is an impossibility in D&D (thus my issue with you always panting in absolutes). absolute good would be NG and absolute chaos would be CN they are two different alignments in D&D.

The assertion in Planescape, that being lawful or chaotic makes no difference to how much you contribute to good or evil, is quite the opposite of Moorcock, who thinks that excesses of law or of chaos lead to evil.

Your assertion here, IMO, is wrong...D&D through the 9 point alignment makes it so that you can't go to the extreme of Law or Chaos and still be good... If I am extreme law and follow every rule... how can I be absolute good? Thus the LN alignment and the CN alignment.. the alignments that are purely lawful or purely chaotic.

 

[Parmandur]

Comparing CG to LG isn't as clear, perhaps: take a Caotic Evil and Lawful Evil character. The latter is malevolent, but lives by a consistent personal/social code; the former is a psychopath. Lawful Evil is, definitionally, less evil than Chaotic Evil.



While the character section defines things in relativistic, wishy-washy terms (more like Predictable Nice versus Unpredctible Mean), the fact is we have Platonic beings of pure Chaos, pure Law, pure Evil, pure Good, and even more weirdly the combinations thereof, floating around non-material planes of existence. Platonic Ideas and moral relativism are...strange bedfellows.

 

[Parmandur]

A better alignment model would probably be based on Humors, if we want something Medieval. 8 points, based on Sanguine, Phlegm, Cholera and Melencholia. It would make more sense, and at least people have historically believed it.

 

[Imaro]

Comparing CG to LG isn't as clear, perhaps: take a Caotic Evil and Lawful Evil character. The latter is malevolent, but lives by a consistent personal/social code; the former is a psychopath. Lawful Evil is, definitionally, less evil than Chaotic Evil.

By whose definition? How does a dedication to chaos or law determine who is more evil? what is the "measurement"? you're making a statement as if it's self-evident and it's not.

While the character section defines things in relativistic, wishy-washy terms (more like Predictable Nice versus Unpredctible Mean), the fact is we have Platonic beings of pure Chaos, pure Law, pure Evil, pure Good, and even more weirdly the combinations thereof, floating around non-material planes of existence. Platonic Ideas and moral relativism are...strange bedfellows.

I don't think it's relativistic... it's broad based (they are two different things and I have already quoted game text that makes it a point to call out alignment as broad based) and thus alignments are large umbrellas that encompass a multitude of specific personalities, degrees of devotion and outlooks/philosophies... also who are these platonic beings?? I don't think D&D, in general, gets to that level of specificity where alignment is concerned... this seems to be an assumption you've made but I don't see the basis for it in the game.

 

[Nivenus]

Comparing CG to LG isn't as clear, perhaps: take a Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil character. The latter is malevolent, but lives by a consistent personal/social code; the former is a psychopath. Lawful Evil is, definitionally, less evil than Chaotic Evil.

Is a fascist regime better or worse than Hobbesian anarchy? Is it worse to punish the innocent by being overly zealous in the enforcement of the law or to let a serial killer loose because you were too lenient? Which would you prefer: absolute tyranny with no free will but perfect safety or a dangerous and hyper-lethal world where no one could tell you what to do? These are the kind of questions a lawful good and chaotic good character might have differing opinions on (though note that none of them are ideal).

I think you've also hit upon a pretty common mistake which us to link chaos with insanity. This is a link which is explicitly rejected by official sources: a chaotic evil character is no more unhinged by definition than a lawful evil character: their psychosis is merely different in nature.

Additionally, neutral evil characters (at their most extreme) are generally held as most evil, not chaotic evil ones.

 

[Parmandur]

Last I checked, Demons, Devils, Archons, etc. were spiritual beings; to the extent that killing them in the material world is no more than harming a vessel. They are Ideal, not physical, beings. Evil/Good/Chaos/Law are treated as Platonic, which is inconsistent with the PHB descriptions of alignment.

 

[Imaro]

Last I checked, Demons, Devils, Archons, etc. were spiritual beings; to the extent that killing them in the material world is no more than harming a vessel. They are Ideal, not physical, beings.

How does cannot be killed on a plane outside their home plane equate to an "ideal" being, which as far as I know means perfect? I think you're making some mighty enormous leaps of assumption here when it comes to D&D lore... if that's what these beings are in your cosmology fine but that's not the official word on them.

Evil/Good/Chaos/Law are treated as Platonic, which is inconsistent with the PHB descriptions of alignment.

Where exactly is this stated in the actual books? Where does it happen outside of players and DM's interpreting it that way contrary to what is written in the rules?

Here is the srd explanation for alignment when it comes to monsters... for most monsters alignment is merely a suggestions and even when it's not, it is still described as broad-based as opposed to specific wherever it is talked about in the rules.

Alignment
This line gives the alignment that the creature is most likely to have. Every entry includes a qualifier that indicates how broadly that alignment applies to the species as a whole.