This just pushes back the question one step - what does better mean here?In ordinary English, "better" means "more good" (good, better, best). Obviously that is being ruled out in this context, given that "better" is entailing "less good".
I agree with ThirdWizard, you're being semantically obtuse here, whether unintentionally or not. To say a pie tastes better is not the same as to say someone is a better person, which is
not the same as to say they're better at math. In all three contexts, better means "more good" but only in one does it have any kind of moral value.
What value is the paladin, or bard, committed to that makes achieving human well-being less important? How is it rational for a human being to pursue that value? How does this relate to any actual, historically realised form of human aspiration or moral framework?
They have differing views of what defines human well-being. In the case of a lawful person (I'm going to speak broadly to law and chaos here rather than LG and CG specifically) discipline, honor, and obedience to lawful authority are the marks of what defines a "moral" person, perhaps even more so than kindness or forgiveness. To a chaotic person individuality, personal liberty, and self-reliance serve an equivalent role and again, may actually be valued more than what D&D defines as "good" values.
These aren't actually very unusual ideological conflicts, historically speaking. Given forum policies I can't go into too much detail but there
are real-world philosophies where adherence to tradition and discipline are more important than the suffering of the individual and others where liberty is put above the life of a human.
Leaving asie the fact that I find it hard to believe that a paladin thinks there can be too much charity or selflessness (mercy might be another matter), this is not the canonical meaning of "good" in D&D.
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Nowhere in these passages is "good" defind by reference to charity, mercy and selflessness. It's defined by reference to human wellbeing in general - life, happiness, dignity, etc. How can a paladin think there is too much of that. Or, to reference the 2nd ed AD&D definition, how can a paladin think that there is too much helping of those in need, and too much protecting of the weak? Those are the very raison d'etre of the paladin!
I actually see nothing in any of the sources you've posted which conflicts with the definition of good I've described. All of the good alignments value altruism (charity), life (mercy), and a concern for the dignity of sapients (compassion). Yep, that sounds about right!
The difference is whether they think other values are equally or even more important. Lawful good characters value all of those things, but they also think the values of law are just as important. Chaotic good characters think altruism, mercy, and compassion are all well and good but they also think it's important to be self-reliant and free. As a result, whereas neutral good characters (at their most pure, which let's face it few are) may be relatively unfettered in their zeal for spreading compassion and bringing hope to the hopeless the lawful good character might ask "yeah, but is that honorable?" or "does that seem decent?" whereas the chaotic good character might ask "yeah, but is that self-fulfilling?" or "is that too restrictive?"
Both might also look at a neutral good character's unrestrained compassion as kind of naive and blind to the world's realities: sometimes doing the right thing (whether it's the "good" thing or not) means telling a harsh truth or doing something apparently cruel that in the long-term actually might benefit the recipient. A neutral good character would generally oppose the death penalty, but a lawful good character might consider it necessary. Similarly, a chaotic good character might feel freedom of speech outweighs the potential harm done by hate speech, whereas a neutral good character might feel it's never right to spread hatred or hurt another person's feelings. And so on.
In any case, since we're defining the values of D&D good, here's what the
Book of Exalted Deeds (
the book on 3.5 D&D good) says are good's virtues:
- Helping others (p. 5)
- Charity (p. 6)
- Healing (p. 6)
- Sacrifice (p. 6)
- Worshiping good deities (p. 6-7)
- Casting good spells (p. 7)
- Mercy (p. 7-8)
- Forgiveness (p. 8)
- Bringing hope (p. 8)
- Redeeming evil (p. 8)
None of those include the "lawful" values of a LG character or the "chaotic" values of a CG character. Instead, it's all about altruism, kindness to others, and spreading good feelings about. A LG or CG character do not disagree with these values (they are, after all good), but they share their attention with other principles that can be of greater, lesser, or equal importance.
But in a cosmological framework like the Great Wheel, all such doubt is eroded. What does it mean, for instance, to worry that the unadulterated goodness of Elysium is vulnerable to corrupting infuences? The game rules already tell us that it is uncorrupted. The game rules similarly tell us that both Celestia and Olympus are good, and hence that when it comes to achieving human wellbeing the choice between law and chaos doesn't matter.
That's kind of cheating though, isn't it? Most of the debate over how to best promote good in real-life stems from the fact that we must account for the existence of evil and how best to combat it. In Elysium, however, evil is an extreme rarity. Everyone (well most people) in Elysium are essentially good (and have access to about as much as they could need/want), so there's no reason to concern oneself with the argument over whether order or liberty best serves the public good: all of the evil has been filtered out already.
More to the point, you're still kind of overlooking the fact there are real-life value systems where certain principles of law (such as honor) and certain principles of chaos (e.g., freedom) are considered to be as worthwhile as the principles of D&D good (e.g., altruism).
Another factor in the real world, which relates to political debates, is that political opponents have differing conceptions of the good. For instance, the French revolutionaries regarded solidarity as a key civic virtue, and so does Rawls. Libertarians tend to doubt that solidarity has value - they favour strictly voluntary relationships between human beings.
A good example of D&D law and D&D chaos in action against one another.
There shoud be no conflict between law and chaos: the game's cosmology defines them as equally permissibe, equally effective modes of realising human well-being.
Only if your definition of human/sapient well-being is the same as a neutral good character's. Which a lawful neutral and chaotic neutral character would not agree with.
Even Gygax was contradictory on this point, building the American constitutional notion of freedom not just into some of his ideas about chaos but also into his definition of goodness, as quoted above!
That's arguably because Gygax perceived the American idea of freedom as essentially chaotic good in nature (favoring liberty about equally with compassion and both over duty or tradition). You may agree or disagree with that assessment, but it seems like what he was going for.
I don't understand how I am meant to fit this into a D&D framework, which regards good (ie human/creature wellbeing) as something objectively desirable.
Actually, good is somewhere between objectively and subjectively desirable in-universe. It's
definitely superior to evil, but a modron and a slaad would strongly disagree that it's better than pure law or pure chaos.
Why value human well-being? For a human being, the question answers itself, at least in the self-regarding case!
Not all humans agree, interestingly enough.
In the real world, there aren't any significant political or social movements that value order or anarchy as ends in themselves. Anarchism, libertarianism, rule-of-law republicanism, etc, are all views about human well-being and how it might be secured.
Ah, but their definition of what constitutes human well-being differs. A Buddhist thinks a person's ultimate well-being lies in letting go of their ego; an anarchist beliefs a human will find happiness most easily when unrestrained by rules or laws; a Daoist believes that a human's well-being comes from doing as little as possible as effortlessly and without intention as possible. None of these conceptions of well-being are particularly compatible with one another (and none of them match up with D&D's precise description of good either).
So while good characters are concerned with human well-being, I'd say most neutral characters (and even some evil ones) are too. It's just that their interpretation of what that qualifies as differs from a good character (and perhaps just as importantly, their actions differ as well).
But this is because the paladin thinks that the chaotic choice will undermine human wellbeing. Which in and of itself is completely rational, but which is apparently contradicted by the cosmology, which tells us - via the existence of Olympus - that it is possible to be chaotic and yet realise human wellbeing.
Not really; modrons, inevitables, and formians (as well as LN petitioners) are arguably more at home in Mechanus than they would be in Elysium. They
prefer a world of uncompromising order. Similarly, the slaadi and CN petitioners largely prefer the transformative and untamed fluidity of Limbo to the relatively stable peacefulness of Elysium. Individual preferences vary and that is one of several points the nine-alignment system takes into account. Not everyone wants the same thing from their afterlife (or their mortal existence for that matter). Some people want to go live a more peaceful version of their own lives, alongside their loved ones. Others desire a sense of purpose, to serve the forces of law and good. Others want the freedom to do whatever they want. Only evil characters in the cosmology really lose out and even they get an opportunity to snatch incredible power since even a lemure might one day become a pit fiend and a lucky or clever enough mane can become a demon lord.
In the real world, or the fiction of the real world, the paladin and monk don't think that law and good are independent axes. They think that discipine, adequate self-resepct, honour, etc are part and parcel of human well-being. It is the contradiction between this competely reasonable outlook, and the dictates of the cosmology (ie its dictates that you can be good indepdently of law and chaos) that I am pointing to, as a reason for regardiing that aspect of the cosmology as untenable.
Correct. But law, good, and chaos all define sapient well-being differently. LG paladins and monks believe a person's well-being incorporates the values of law alongside those of good. CG bards (and paladins for that matter, after 4e and 5e) believe a person's well-being incorporates the values of chaos.
The post I replied to presented the paladin's rejection of Elysium's pure good as a response to the threat of corruption. Obviously the paladin doesn't regard law as a corruption of good!
No, but the hypothetical CG bard would. And likewise the paladin would see chaos as a corruption of good. And both the bard and the paladin would likely see any corruption of Elysium from evil (toward neutrality) as corruption as well. You're not really refuting the argument, you're just looking at it from one side (law).
The argument you present here seems much closer to the Moorcockian argument that law and chaos, taken too far, can be dangerous. But a paladin can't embrace that argument; rather, if it is true, then the paladin's outlook is basically false.
It's false (or rather, partially incorrect) from the point of view of neutral good or chaotic good. It's not false from the point of view of lawful good.
But, these wars would never be fought by those who register as "good". A good character who imprisons someone, does so with mercy and respect. There can't really be a CG revolutionary overthrow of a LG society. That wouldn't make any sense.
Actually, I'm afraid it really does happen in real-life (putting aside the subjective values of good and evil for a moment). Because of forum rules I can't really go into specifics, but needless to say there's been several cases of real-life groups that were well-intentioned and even relatively altruistic, but who ended up sabotaging one another or even fighting one another because of their own distrust in one another.
That being said, you're correct that there is no Blood War in the celestial planes. After all, celestials are as close to pure good as you get and one of good's key features in D&D is the ability to show tolerance (through forgiveness and mercy). Celestials aren't terribly likely to wage war on one another, because they're more willing to forgive one another's "faults" and try to work things out peacefully... but that doesn't rule out the possibility entirely (particularly if a chaotic good celestial comes to believe a lawful good entity is erring too close to lawful neutral - or vice versa).