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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Torm" data-source="post: 2055767" data-attributes="member: 12706">Lawful Good is the key, and the biggest problem, IMO, is people who misunderstand what 'Lawful' is supposed to mean. I discussed this in another thread, and pardon the repost here, but I couldn't figure out how to link straight to that post instead of the entire thread - and I figure some of you might not want to read through 9 or 10 pages to see what I said: <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> There is a common misconception about the Lawful descriptor - so common, in fact, that I've even seen the paid authors of RPG books screw it up from time to time."Lawful" doesn't have doesn't have a lot to do with following the laws of men or gods! (There is a connection, but it is less direct, and I'll touch on it in a moment.) It is an internal, behavioral descriptor - it refers to whether or not a person has an internal set of rules and organizational ideas for themselves that are relatively immutable. As opposed to someone who either does not have such rules, or for whom those rules frequently change or are ignored - someone with a "Chaotic" behavior, in other words.The Rogue that steals whatever, whenever, as the mood hits them, with NO regard for anyone (not even bad regard, as in wanting to hurt people) and no particular rules for himself is Chaotic Something, probably Neutral. The Rogue that never steals from children, the elderly, the crippled, or anyone who has his own militia  , who never steals from another Rogue unless that Rogue stole from him first, who always leaves his victims with enough silver for their next meal - the Rogue that has a general Code inside himself that he is dedicated to, in other words - is probably Lawful Neutral.(Twisted as it may seem, the Rogue who is dedicated to an internal general Code that includes things like never allowing someone to insult him without taking something they value away from them, who only commits his crimes on evenly numbered dates, and who always makes certain he knows someone's name before he kills them to take their stuff - well, he's Lawful Evil.)The reason it frequently seems that Lawful characters will identify with the laws of men or of a particular church is because it usually (but not always) takes a Lawful minded character to come up with a general Code of laws, and since the Lawful mind follows a logic system, other Lawful characters are likely to understand and incorporate that logic - especially in situations where they may have been raised having that logic laid on top of their Lawful nature before they developed their own logics, or where (as in the case of many Paladin/Cleric characters) their own internal Code indicates taking up Duty to a greater cause, including taking up aspects of that Duty that might have never developed within themselves. Also because of the logical nature of Law, a Lawful character with no preconceptions on a particular subject who is entering a land with laws regarding that subject (say, a LN Ranger entering lands with slavery when he has never heard of it) is likely to internalize the logic of those laws - make them his own, so to speak - unless they contradict his Good/Neutral/Evil axis.</blockquote>

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