D&D 5E What Alignment am I?

[EzekielRaiden]

I think this is also a solid answer. It's possible that until recently, the character has been LE or even LN, but the character has just taken a hard turn into selfish and destructive behavior. It is possible that this is a violation of their former beliefs. It's possible that the character had no strong former beliefs and therefore was true Neutral, and this recent temptation is revealing a previously undisclosed aspect of their character. However, from the brief description we've been given, we really know none of those things.

One aspect that argues against this interpretation is that the character in question gives no sign of being in a moral crisis. We'd expect a character that had strong beliefs before hand to now be feeling a sense of guilt or shame about their current behavior. The fact that they only feel excitement suggests a lack of contrasting a priori strong commitment.

Having known people who went through stuff like this, I don't think it's necessarily the total absence of an a priori commitment. Instead, I would call it the "Jedi weakness" phenomenon--the absence of testing of that commitment.

The Jedi tend to take one of two attitudes toward the Dark Side of the Force. The first, and IMO stronger, says that young Jedi-in-training should be (safely) exposed to the feelings and significance of the Dark Side, because it averts the "rush" felt by first-time users (it is, after all, likened to a drug). The second says that all Jedi should be shielded, as much as possible, from any hints of the Dark Side, that ignorance is a defense. For whatever reason, the second attitude almost always predominates among the Jedi, and it almost always leads to a promising young padawan/knight dipping into the Dark Side "for a good reason" at some point--and the sudden RUSH they feel, the power and awareness it provides, proves intoxicating. If that alone isn't enough to tempt future uses (with or without "good reasons"), the whole "keeping it secret" thing and the "continuing to impress my teachers/superiors" thing tends to anyway. Hence why I call it "Jedi weakness"--the Dark Side tends to operate in a sudden extreme rush, so a defense that relies on total ignorance and carefully-reasoned approach is precisely weak to this kind of attack...it works great whenever it isn't tested, which is a defense even if it works for 99% of Jedi.

These people almost always start off still believing in good and justice and whatever else, but they've never actually had those beliefs hard tested before. In this case, this is a character who's never had a "character is who you are in the dark" moment before--his Lawfulness (and presumably G or N, given the OP's reaction to being called Evil) has always been supported by others, carried by their strength...he's lived his life on crutches. He's finally walking on his own for the first time, and suddenly realizing what that allows him to do. That's why I keep focusing on the "this is a tipping point" idea: it's an epiphany of some kind, but what specifically it cashes out as, we can't say. If the character doubles down on this--particularly to the extremity of killing witnesses--then the epiphany is "all that legal stuff I used to buy into was total BS." If the guilt builds enough that they stop--particularly to the extremity of attempting to make amends in some form--then the epiphany is "wow, being a cop is actually hard, and I have to work to be good at it."

 

[dmnqwk]

As has been mentioned already, one of the key mistakes I feel in the examination is going by the assumption "I enforce the law, therefore I am lawful."

Lawful is an adherence to a code, belief system or tradition that you maintain. You do not have one of these from your description, you simply said "well I like hunting down bad guys, but now I fancy stealing their stuff too. Oh yeah what a rush." I cannot fathom how you feel lawful would apply in this circumstance, simply because you work for the law. If you wanted to, however, try and rationalise your behaviour with some additional input then that might affect things. But your job is hunting bad guys, not your alignment. Your alignment, from the information you've given us, is that you like to steal from criminals.

Neutral Evil is still my belief, because every time I picture you I do not see Constable Odo (who is Lawful Good even when working for the Cardassians) but I see a bent cop, abusing his power to take what he wants and doesn't care about anyone but himself.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Also, @Celebrim: I'm not really sure the Dunning-Kruger effect applies here. D-K is about people with minimal experience(/previous skill) overestimating their skills, and people with lots of experience(/previous skill) underestimating their skills. You're instead highlighting a "framing effect" bias; it's not that the candy-thief disputes that it is bad or wrong to steal candy, but rather that it oh-so-surely can't be "Evil" because it's not X, where X is something widely agreed to be Evil. They have similar natures, I'll grant you that, but they're still different. Particularly because D-K tends to yield very quickly to even a small amount of education on the subject in question, whereas the effect you're describing here tends to exclusively become more entrenched when questioned.

Of course, we're also dealing with issues like a fuzzy boundary, and more importantly vague terms ("wrong" vs. "Evil"), which only serve to hamper any analysis we could do. This is why I prefer to start from some kind of clear, consistent definition of the things in question, even if they aren't uncontroversial, e.g.:
"a dedication to Law means recognizing the legitimacy of a particular external authority/duty to regulate your life, even if it runs counter to your desires"
"a dedication to Chaos means denying the legitimacy of any external authority/duty to regulate your life, even impersonal ones such as promises"
"a dedication to Good means that you prioritize the well-being of other individuals over your own well-being, when the two cannot both be sought"
"a dedication to Evil means that you prioritize your own well-being categorically over the well-being of others, even when both can easily be achieved."

Under these definitions, the character in question appears to be inconsistently (or, rather, hypocritically) Lawful, and we really can't say whether he is Good or Evil though things are leaning in an Evil direction. Since he is inconsistent about the Law, that's a decent argument for being Neutral at present. Though I still stand by my belief that his alignment is currently in flux and thus cannot be assigned to one particular square until this moral quandary is "resolved," in some vague sense of the word.

Edit:
And just to be clear, I chose the above definitions very specifically. They are not meant to be jointly exhaustive, though they are meant to be mutually exclusive. In order to be jointly exhaustive, you have to include people who don't necessarily accept any specific external authority as legitimate, but at the same time are not overtly opposed to the concept of legitimate external authority; such people would be Neutral on that scale. Part of my reason for framing them this way is that I tend to see Evil and Chaos painted as extremely broad, essentially consuming most of the space that would be assigned to the two types of Neutral, while Good and Law tend to be characterized as the province of only a tiny minority, a rare few who can somehow adhere to a particular philosophical idea despite distractions away from it. I see this as a rather impoverished idea of the two Neutral regions, which (as I had understood it, anyway) were supposed to be much more common than all of the "corner" alignments combined. (That is, it's "supposed" to be that, in rough population count, CE ≈ CG ≈ LE ≈ LG < CN ≈ LN ≈ NG ≈ NE < TN, and (CN+LN+NG+NE+TN)>(CE+LE+CG+LG).) Instead, both Law and Chaos, both actual Good and actual Evil, should be sufficiently narrow, so as to make most people fall midway between the "extremes." Individual acts can then be consistent with one side or the other, and we can look at behavior in the aggregate to get a sense of where a person "should" fall.

 

[Celebrim]

Having known people who went through stuff like this, I don't think it's necessarily the total absence of an a priori commitment. Instead, I would call it the "Jedi weakness" phenomenon--the absence of testing of that commitment.

When I'm asked to define alignment, I usually define it as those most deeply held beliefs that we hold on to whenever we are tested. Until you are tested, you don't know who you are. Testing both defines and refines who a person is.

The Jedi/Sith problem however is nearly as bad as the Batman problem. Whenever someone asks, "What alignment is Batman?", the proper response is to ask, "Which version of Batman do you mean?" Over time Batman has been presented by different authors in a number of different and sometimes mutually exclusive ways. In the same fashion, we need to ask, "Do you mean the Jedi/Sith how they were presented by Lucas as a young man in the original trilogy, or do you mean the Jedi/Sith how they were presented by Lucas as an older man with apparently changed feelings and beliefs in the prequels?" And I suspect that we are about to muddy the waters further, with yet a different take on the Dark Side and the Light in the sequels. The original trilogy emphasized the conflict in terms of Light/Dark, and very much a contest between good and evil with a "love conquers all" message at the end of the story. But the prequels emphasized the conflict in terms of Jedi/Sith where the contest was much more in D&D terms law versus chaos, and emotions - including love, compassion, joy, sympathy, and the like - were very much a component of the Dark Side. The Jedi were presented as unfeeling rationals, both by their own wisest members and by the Sith. Where as the Sith were presented as aggrieved believers in passionate feelings, not so much inherently evil as simply blindly consumed with a desire for vengeance on their Jedi oppressors. In the final contest, as to whom is more loving and merciful, Palpatine comes off as rather nicer in some ways than Obi Wan, and one is left thinking that neither the Sith nor the Jedi are particularly a force for good but rather this has descended into a contest between Lawful Nuetral and Chaotic Evil, with the many Jedi being divided over the issue of good and the few Sith having no good representative.

The Jedi tend to take one of two attitudes toward the Dark Side of the Force. The first, and IMO stronger, says that young Jedi-in-training should be (safely) exposed to the feelings and significance of the Dark Side, because it averts the "rush" felt by first-time users (it is, after all, likened to a drug). The second says that all Jedi should be shielded, as much as possible, from any hints of the Dark Side, that ignorance is a defense. For whatever reason, the second attitude almost always predominates among the Jedi...

As I said, the Jedi after the prequels no longer come off as a force for good, but I don't think you quite capture the nuance of the problem here. I don't think that the Jedi see ignorance as a defense. The Jedi seem to see the "rush" itself as being the Dark Side, and the defense against it to be the practice of non-attachment, tranquility, rationality, and to be frank a certain level of indifference. The Jedi equate all strong emotions, including love, with the Dark Side and so practice self-denial, non-attachment and so forth as a defense against the emotionalism that is the Dark Side. One open question is whether they are actually right, and all strong emotions come from the Dark Side, or whether they are wrong and the proper protection against the "rush" felt when experiencing the Dark Side is actually strong countering emotions.

The two movie trilogies are deeply divided on this. The original trilogy answers that, yes, strong positive of love, pity, concern, affection are actually the counter to the power of the Dark Side. The prequels however answer rather that strong positive emotions like love and so forth are actually no defense against but strengthen the power of the dark side.

The critical scene in all 6 movies then, in the light of the prequels, is Luke Skywalker correct when leaves training to go save his friends, or is Yoda correct when he tells Luke that he must not do so, and that in doing so he's committing his life to the Dark Side. I'm hoping (and it's a rather forlorn hope), that the sequels will address this most outstanding problem in the Star Wars canon - were the Jedi actually wise?

Now, back to your point, I think it's important to defend yourself by arming yourself against the power of 'the dark side', but I don't actually subscribe to the belief that a little experience of evil makes you stronger to resist it. I'm not a believer in, "You have to get it out of your system."

He's finally walking on his own for the first time, and suddenly realizing what that allows him to do. That's why I keep focusing on the "this is a tipping point" idea: it's an epiphany of some kind, but what specifically it cashes out as, we can't say. If the character doubles down on this--particularly to the extremity of killing witnesses--then the epiphany is "all that legal stuff I used to buy into was total BS." If the guilt builds enough that they stop--particularly to the extremity of attempting to make amends in some form--then the epiphany is "wow, being a cop is actually hard, and I have to work to be good at it."

I fully agree with this as a possible interpretation, and I would say, excellent role playing.

But I'm not convinced that he wasn't self-centered in the first place, and now he's beginning to witness himself being true to that conviction. It depends on whether or not there really is a big moral crisis going on here, and whether he actually cared that much about justice in the first place. Justice is not motivated primarily for concern about the criminals. Justice is motivated primarily for concern about the victims, either as individuals or in terms of the social harm that crime causes. Actually just wanting to defeat or kill the criminals, because they are criminals and it's fun, isn't a strong lawful motivation. It's indulging a taste for violence in a socially approved manner, perhaps because you are smart enough to realize in this manner you can get away with doing it. The actual motivation here might be to vain-gloriously boast to yourself how much stronger and smarter you are than the people you defeat.

 

[Celebrim]

Also, [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]: I'm not really sure the Dunning-Kruger effect applies here. D-K is about people with minimal experience(/previous skill) overestimating their skills, and people with lots of experience(/previous skill) underestimating their skills.

I'm here equating virtue with a skill, and the unvirtuous with being like those with minimal experience and previous practice of the skill.

You're instead highlighting a "framing effect" bias; it's not that the candy-thief disputes that it is bad or wrong to steal candy...

I don't think that is true. In general, the candy thief does dispute that what they do is wrong. And it parallels the D-K effect, precisely because the D-K effect is about where you picture yourself on a relative scale compared to other people.

Particularly because D-K tends to yield very quickly to even a small amount of education on the subject in question, whereas the effect you're describing here tends to exclusively become more entrenched when questioned.

I would argue that the effect I'm describing here yields quite quickly to practicing even a small amount of virtue or even witnessing a small amount of virtue. But that merely attacking a person's reason isn't actually educating a person about virtue.

"a dedication to Law means recognizing the legitimacy of an external authority/duty to regulate your life, even if it runs counter to your desires"
"a dedication to Chaos means denying the legitimacy of any external authority/duty to regulate your life, even impersonal ones such as promises"
"a dedication to Good means that you prioritize the well-being of other individuals over your own well-being, when the two cannot both be sought"
"a dedication to Evil means that you prioritize your own well-being categorically over the well-being of others, even when both can easily be achieved."

I accept your definitions of Law and Chaos. I think your definitions of Good and Evil are only half right. You've actually given definitions for Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil. Your definition of Evil is clearly contradictory to the definition of Law, so you're going to struggle to coherently explain what it means to be Lawful Evil. That is, is there such a thing as self-sacrificing evil, which both prioritizes the well-being of others over your own well being but is also still evil? I argue that there is, and that by examining the nature of that sort of evil you can get to an even stronger definition of Good and Evil.

Though I still stand by my belief that his alignment is currently in flux and thus cannot be assigned to one particular square until this moral quandary is "resolved," in some vague sense of the word.

I agree with your assessment of flux, if and only if, we can establish that prior to this new mode of behavior he'd been tested in some way that established him as lawful (law/chaos axis) or neutral (good/evil axis).

 

[abirdcall]

Your description doesn't give us enough to go on.

Whether or not they follow the rules of the society they are currently in doesn't necessarily make them lawful. It's whether they follow a set of rules.

Also, the vast majority of evil characters think of themselves as being good. Your character thinking that they are good does not mean they can't be evil.

 

[MechaPilot]

Wrong=/=evil.

I have to agree with this.

Example: there are plenty of people who are starving that steal food just to get by; the theft is wrong, but it's not evil.

For me, evil requires a willful intent to do harm to another's person. In a fantasy environment, this definition expands to include another's immortal soul: willfully tempting someone to fall to evil with the knowledge that you are condemning them to an eternity in the Nine Hells or the Abyss is definitely evil.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Now, back to your point, I think it's important to defend yourself by arming yourself against the power of 'the dark side', but I don't actually subscribe to the belief that a little experience of evil makes you stronger to resist it. I'm not a believer in, "You have to get it out of your system."

First: I honestly consider the prequels to be so badly written, both in terms of the particular characters used (and I'm not just talking Jar Jar here, though he's a real problem) and in a broader sense of the starkly different concepts in play, that they're telling a completely separate (and IMO inferior) story. My ideas on this are much more heavily influenced by the two Knights of the Old Republic games, particularly the second. (SW:TOR is an affront almost as bad as the prequels and I will not discuss it further.) Though you can argue that the failure of the Jedi Order in KOTOR2 (and its susceptibility to Palpatine's manipulations in Ep 1-3) stem from the same source--as you put it, the "unfeeling rationals" becoming the dominant philosophy among the Jedi. But at this point, I'm probably delving more into the analogy than I am the actual topic, so I probably should stop there instead of risking a full-on thread derail. Long story short: the "original trilogy" Jedi are much more clearly faux-Buddhists, while the prequel Jedi come across as Straw Vulcans, and it is their Straw-Vulcan-ness that I consider the critical weakness of their philosophy.

Second, I was not at all intending to say that they should get a "taste" of evil to "get it out of their system." What I meant was that the Jedi seem to advocate a policy of "ignorance is the best defense," in a world where actual ignorance is impossible. We seem to agree more than we disagree here; I think Jedi need to understand how and why the Dark Side is so dangerous, which I would totally consider a form of actively "arming yourself against [its] power." In general, actually using the Dark Side in even small amounts leads to full-on bat-guano crazy behavior, sooner or later; it's more a matter of testing the padawan's actual ability to remain calm and in control in the face of passion-inspiring events.

Beyond that I don't really think we, or at least I, have much else to say. We recognize the legitimacy of each others' interpretations, absent clarifying data, and have reasonable evidence to indicate the presence or absence of additional unstated-but-potential motives either way. Thank you, though, for the friendly and positive discussion. Such things are incredibly rare when discussing alignment. We should appreciate them when they happen!

 

[rgoodbb]

Hi folks. Some more info. I'm still trying to put this character together.

I think he enjoys bringing murderers to justice both as an exciting job but morally so as well

But he lets the stealing go, so skewed standards

I think as soon as he is caught, he will realise the what a massive mistake he has made and will genuinely repent but it might take someone or something to open his eyes. Until then, now he has started, it feels like an addiction to him. The high before the fall.

If he has to kill the murderers then he will, but otherwise he will bring them in alive.

He has stolen once as an oddity and there have been no reprisals and his character has expanded in an unusual path from there.

He leaves the city watch and becomes an adventurer for opposing reasons. One he needs to stop doing this, but two he may get caught.

I agree that this is a tipping point. This is his backstory and it is at this point in time where he starts as an adventurer.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I find it unfathomable that the 9-point alignment system is unable to describe morally complex and nuanced behaviour accurately.