D&D 5E What Alignment Am I?

[The Grassy Gnoll]

I'd say NG.

 

[S'mon]

Almost certainly Chaotic Good. Like you say - punish evil, protect innocent = good. Break the law, not worried about the means to an end = chaotic (although if he upholds the law when it suits him, perhaps that axis is neutral). At most he's erring towards neutral, and if he stops protecting the innocent he may end up there.

Yes, he seems a straightforwardly CG type. NG have some regard for Law. It doesn't sound like he does anything that would push him away from G in D&D terms.

 

[GreenTengu]

@TheHobgoblin: Where do I even start?

The vast majority of your complaints have to do with your own misunderstanding and not anything to do with alignment itself.

1) Just because two beings have the same alignment, doesn't mean that they are equally pure and equally radical in their beliefs. Since the very beginning, each alignment bucket has been defined as containing a spectrum. Mortals in particular are assume to lack both the wisdom and intelligence to perfectly follow their own beliefs, or to perfectly reason out what their beliefs demand of them. And likewise, even someone or some being that is lawful evil (to pick one example), might yet believe that the most perfect and right way to practice lawful evil involves some amount of moderation (neutrality). This is why Gygax talked about things like "lawful neutral good" and graphing alignment on a continuous spectrum.

You can start by trying to live in reality rather than adhering to this cult of Gygax? The fact that you would describe people as not adhering to these 9 artificial boxes as being a failure of their Wisdom or Intelligence demonstrates a real failure to understand how humans work.

"Lawful Evil" is not someone that someone sets out to intentionally be. Their beliefs are never going to be perfectly "lawful evil" Not in reality or anything written remotely close to it. Maybe that is the way you live as you have been inducted into your little Gygaxian cult, but it is not something people are going to adhere to if they are created and act independently of any awareness of Gygax's little boxes.

One is classified as Lawful Evil because though they believe in following the following authority or the general guidelines the collective has agreed upon strictly, within that framework they choose to do a good deal more selfish things than altruistic things. They are willing to enact suffering within the world in the name of adherence to the overall order of society or so long as it benefits them... to a point.

But there is going to be a point. A point where the amount of suffering they are causing is greater enough than the benefit they gain from it or continued support of the order and one's personal benefit come enough into conflict that one ultimately has to prioritize one over the other. This is not a failure of "intelligence" or "wisdom" because never from the start were their ethical code defined by "Lawful Evil" as they are not adherents to the "one true Gygaxian faith" like yourself. They were simply labeled "lawful evil" because that was the one of the 9 boxes that seemed to best contain their morality.

Similarly, one might be altruistic even to the point of giving some of their self and they would be classified as "good". But virtually no character that has ever been classified as "good" in all of D&D has been the poor little matchgirl who will walk naked through the snow because everyone else seemed to have need of her belongings. Fundamentally we see that these "good" characters generally do act to enrich and empower themselves on a pretty consistent basis. This is not a failure of "intelligence" or "wisdom" because they never set themselves out to be perfectly "Neutral Good". That was the label the artificial system put upon them. They understand their morality-- it is you who has the failure of intelligence and wisdom due to your induction into the Gygaxian faith who fails to comprehend it.

But more than that, a lot of people have a list of priorities that they care about. Whatever is good for one's family, whatever is good for one's nation, whatever path seems the surest path to getting the things they desire often without stepping on so many toes to make lots of enemies.... stuff like that.

Look at most Super Hero characters. They fight criminals because criminals are doing harm to other people. But they themselves work outside the law. But they aren't "Chaotic" typically, they do not think the world would be better without any laws rather they feel those that are tasked with enforcing the law don't have the strength to do it. Then again, they violate people's rights all the time and so you can't really say they are Lawful either. So are all Super Heroes "Neutral Good"? If so, why is it Superman and Batman end up clashing or Captain America and Ironman do? Because none of them work strictly within the law, all of them ultimately intend to benefit others and stop those who would do harm...

This Gygaxian concept that these 9 brackets are somehow universal absolutes and that any failure to be 100% clearly defined by a single access and not to be purely that one thing to an extreme is a failure of intelligence or wisdom of one to not be able to stick to one's moral code is absolute crap. Those boxes were just weak sauce attempts to define people's morality and only work in cases where you have presupposed those boxes exist and have them act according to one. With any other fictional character, you go through a gamut of stories and there will be no universal consensus as to which box they fit into.

 

[Celebrim]

You can start by trying to live in reality rather than adhering to this cult of Gygax?

Well, ok, first you need to understand that the game isn't happening in reality. In reality, you can't take a tiny ball of bat guano and sulphur, chant the right magic words, and conjure 40' balls of flame. In reality, there aren't four elements that everything is made of. There are lots of things about the game that are different than in reality.

The fact that you would describe people as not adhering to these 9 artificial boxes as being a failure of their Wisdom or Intelligence demonstrates a real failure to understand how humans work.

Once again, we aren't talking about reality. We are talking about a fantasy universe. But what I describe regarding Wisdom and Intelligence informing how people relate to the their most fundamental beliefs regarding ethical and moral behavior has parallels in the real world. For example in the real world, a person might be a Sikh, or a Jain, or a Hindu, or a Budhist, or Sufi, or Christian, or a Logical Positivist. The more intelligent that person is, the more we would expect the person to have worked out a coherent, all encompassing philosophy of life, based around what they believe. If they are a theist of some sort, we'd expect that person to have a adopted a very complicated and nuanced theology explaining to them every aspect of life based on their fundamental beliefs. They will have questioned and devised answers and have sophisticated responses to practically any question regarding how one ought to behave given what they hold to be true. The same thing applies to our fictional fantasy characters. The more intelligent they are, the more complicated and extensive will be their understanding of how a moral principal like Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil is. A less intelligent Chaotic Evil person probably isn't capable of elucidating what they believe. They just act on impulse and only give the most simple explanations for their behavior. But intelligent CE person could give complex rationales for their behavior, so that their own behavior seemed right in their own eyes and was consistent with the way they believed the world was or should be.

In the same manner, not everyone in the real world - even if they understand what their beliefs demand of them - is consistent in applying that understanding. There are always areas of their life that appear to a greater or lesser degree to be in conflict with what they say that they believe. The less a person's life seems to be in conflict with what they believe, and the more discernment that they show, the more self-control that they have, the more consistent that they are in their behavior, the more we say that person shows Wisdom (particularly if their beliefs are somewhat congruent with our own beliefs). In a religious context this is often called piety. In the same manner, we'd expect that the wiser a D&D character is, the more their actions would take into account what they actually believe and be consistent with it. We'd expect them to more often intuitively understand how they ought to behave according to what they believe in even difficult situations.

Following this yet?

"Lawful Evil" is not someone that someone sets out to intentionally be.

Well not in this universe.

Their beliefs are never going to be perfectly "lawful evil" Not in reality or anything written remotely close to it.

Well, this isn't reality we are talking about though, right? It has elves, dragons, magic, dwarves, and fairies. It's not reality.

Maybe that is the way you live as you have been inducted into your little Gygaxian cult, but it is not something people are going to adhere to if they are created and act independently of any awareness of Gygax's little boxes.

Again, I am not a member of anything like a 'Gygaxian Cult'. I'm just describing a game and how you play that game. In reality, I have a very different set of beliefs about how the world works, that don't rely on game concepts. Now, I enjoy playing "What if?" games with these game concepts, because they can lead to interesting discussions and interesting ways of looking at characterization and mythic archetypes and literary techniques and philosophical conflict, but I don't actually believe that these are real, because I understand that we are just talking about a game. Indeed, one of the things that I like about the whole alignment system is despite some correspondence to real world beliefs, we aren't literally talking about anything real people believe in, so we can neatly avoid talking about things in real world terms and the all the problems that come with talking about real world religion, politics, custom and so forth.

One is classified as Lawful Evil because though they believe in following the following authority or the general guidelines the collective has agreed upon strictly, within that framework they choose to do a good deal more selfish things than altruistic things. They are willing to enact suffering within the world in the name of adherence to the overall order of society or so long as it benefits them... to a point.

That's like mostly right but not perfectly right. It's the sort of construction I'd expect you to have from reading 3e material on alignment. In particular, it avoids problems like how we classify Kamikazi pilots or suicide bombers or Nathan Bedford Forest or really anyone who is loyal to a code or idea that we'd want to classify as evil, but who has self-sacrificial evil and who actually holds the society, group, or ideal as more important than themselves. But, that's a minor point, and again, I don't want to discuss it in real world terms because that will quickly lead to passionate arguments about what the real world is actually like, rather than merely what this fantasy world is actually like.

But there is going to be a point. A point where the amount of suffering they are causing is greater enough than the benefit they gain from it or continued support of the order and one's personal benefit come enough into conflict that one ultimately has to prioritize one over the other. This is not a failure of "intelligence" or "wisdom" because never from the start were their ethical code defined by "Lawful Evil" as they are not adherents to the "one true Gygaxian faith" like yourself. They were simply labeled "lawful evil" because that was the one of the 9 boxes that seemed to best contain their morality.

It's really hard to reply to any of this because your starting from such an erroneous place, and making this personal. Again, just because I can talk at length about the nature of a fantasy universe, doesn't in the slightest that I believe in elves, dragons, magic, or Lawful Evil. Gygax is a game designer who I have a lot of respect for, but my actual real world beliefs are much more like Gygax's actual real world beliefs - because he didn't actually believe in elves, dragons, magic, or Lawful Evil either. To him it was just a game. In any event, the particular confusion you are having in this section - beyond thinking that I actually believe fantasy is real - is that your definition of Lawful Evil had a flaw in it.

I'm going to stop here rather than turning this into a Fisking session, because most of the rest of your complaints again have to do with poor understanding of the system, and only when we fix your basic understanding of the alignment system can I meaningfully talk about the points you raise.

Those boxes were just weak sauce attempts to define people's morality and only work in cases where you have presupposed those boxes exist and have them act according to one. With any other fictional character, you go through a gamut of stories and there will be no universal consensus as to which box they fit into.

I don't know how weak sauce they are. I know no other games attempt to classify and gamefy morality and ethics that has generated anywhere near as much discussion. And of course, yes, the system only works where you first assume that the system exists as a set of moral absolutes within the game universe. It doesn't however in anyway require that you believe that the system exists in the real world or even that moral absolutes exist within the real world. However, there are typically strong consensuses that are built around classifying fictional characters. It is usually not perfect consensus, but usually strong consensus is built in community regarding the alignment of any fictional character. Almost everyone agrees that Superman and Captain America are consistently portrayed as Lawful Good, for example. Even in the case of a character like Batman, where famously you can show the whole alignment wheel and put Batman in every box on it, there is still strong consensus that the particular Batman in the box belongs in the box and fits in the box, or that demonstration wouldn't make much sense. In fact, what's going on in the case of a character like the Batman is a couple of complicated biases are interacting, the most important of which is the bias of the author regarding what motivations and behavior would be most interesting for the Batman character. So you see the Batman portrayed very different by different authors over the course of the last nearly 80 years we've been writing stories about the Batman, and those different portrayals make for different characters with different beliefs. The other complication here is the bias of the reader, which will tend to want to interpret a character - particular a character that they like or find interesting - according to their own biases. That can either happen because have really flawed understanding of the alignments like "works outside the law, so must be chaotic", or it can happen because in some fashion their own real world beliefs overlap areas of the fantasy beliefs causing them want to assert their real beliefs as 'right' and 'truth' within the fantasy system. That's what I call 'spinning the alignment wheel until your beliefs are at the top'. So for example, real world Objectivists have beliefs that in some ways overlap the fantasy alignment Chaotic Neutral, and when you pose Chaotic Neutral in terms that are recognizable to Objectivists as being somewhat congruent to their beliefs, they tend to want to spin the wheel and say, "No, those beliefs are Neutral Good, because that is the right and proper way to view the world." So to some extent you need to be able to back out of this toy morality we are looking at and view it objectively as a toy that exists for the purpose of the game, before you can talk about it meaningfully.

 

[Celebrim]

See, anyone who is driven to do anything has a huge lawful streak. That sort of focused drive is not chaotic at all, even if the result seems to be something in the chaotic end of the spectrum.

I think that this is another example of confusing personality with belief. Yes, stereotypically, we'd expect lawful characters to be much more focused and driven and serious than chaotic characters. But that doesn't really fully work. An example would be a CE character who is strongly and solely motivated by greed or by lust or by gluttony, and so takes enormous risks to obtain whatever it is that that character strongly desires - lying, stealing, even killing in order to get what they want. This focused selfishness at the expense of any risk, any hardship, danger, and the ire, disapproval, and wrath of society or really anything else at all, does not imply lawfulness. And monomaniacs and megalomaniacs are extremely focused individuals but are archetypally pure chaotic. So even incarnate chaotic beings can be single minded in their purposes.

 

[Satyrn]

 

[77IM]

In D&D, I tend to view Good, Evil, Law and Chaos as great cosmic forces that are engaged in eternal conflict -- they are external to your character. Your alignment is how much your character's actions and personality align with those forces. The contents of your own heart matter, but your actions matter a lot more.

So in the final battle of Good vs. Evil, has your character tipped the scales more towards one or the other? Ditto in the cosmic battle of Law vs. Chaos; has your character made the universe a more orderly place or more chaotic?

It sounds like this character is overall making the world more Good, but neither Lawful nor Chaotic, so I'd go with NG. Although the character isn't the goodest of Good -- his ruthless measures may blacken his own soul, tipping the scales a bit more towards Evil.

 

[Maxperson]

I think that this is another example of confusing personality with belief. Yes, stereotypically, we'd expect lawful characters to be much more focused and driven and serious than chaotic characters. But that doesn't really fully work. An example would be a CE character who is strongly and solely motivated by greed or by lust or by gluttony, and so takes enormous risks to obtain whatever it is that that character strongly desires - lying, stealing, even killing in order to get what they want. This focused selfishness at the expense of any risk, any hardship, danger, and the ire, disapproval, and wrath of society or really anything else at all, does not imply lawfulness. And monomaniacs and megalomaniacs are extremely focused individuals but are archetypally pure chaotic. So even incarnate chaotic beings can be single minded in their purposes.

No. There's no confusion. What you are describing is basically Kraven the Hunter. He had beliefs like you describe. I'm not talking about beliefs. I'm talking about true drive. Batman is driven. The Punisher is driven. That kind of drive is very, very lawful.

 

[vostyg]

In case anyone is curious, after carefully weighing everyone's advice, I decided to go with NG for this character's alignment, with pronounced N tendencies, given that he can be quite ruthless with those whom he perceives as future threats.

 

[Celebrim]

No. There's no confusion. What you are describing is basically Kraven the Hunter. He had beliefs like you describe. I'm not talking about beliefs. I'm talking about true drive. Batman is driven. The Punisher is driven. That kind of drive is very, very lawful.

- emphasis added

Well, I think there is some confusion somewhere. I don't mind if you take a bit of game slang or game terminology and give it your own definition as long as it is consistent, but I tend to balk when people start doing that with everyday ordinary words. In this case, I don't understand your definition of "true drive". Drive is something I expect to find in the dictionary. Looking in the dictionary, the sense it is being used in these sentences would appear to be:

1) an innate, biologically determined urge to attain a goal or satisfy a need.​

2) the determination and ambition of a person to achieve something​

Now, I grant you that the lust or gluttony could simply fall under #1, and therefore by "true drive" you mean #2 which is something slightly different. Ok, fine, but consider a character like Jay Gatsby from 'The Great Gatsby'. Here is a main defined by his drive to obtain financial success as the result of his rebuff at a younger age by a high class wealthy woman. It's hinted that he's a gangster and a bootlegger, and he's certainly not at all an ethical guy. Here is a guy with a driven, almost monomaniacal personality. But he's not at all lawful. He's got no code he's adhering to. He's got no authority figure he is submitting to. He's just this guy with an (unhealthy) obsession with a wealthy woman since his youth and with the things that she stands for - privilege, status, wealth, fame - which were denied to him in his youth. Jay Gatsby is Lawful? Jay Gatsby has the same basic beliefs on some level as The Batman?

Drive in my opinion doesn't define alignment. Alignment is defined by what you are driven to do. Drive, urge, appetite, desire, need, dedication, determination, ambition, and motivation are universal attributes of pretty much any intelligent being. We differentiate them not by whether or not they have drive, but which drives that they cultivate and prioritize. To say that the character is motivated to do something doesn't say very much. Everything has motives. We have to know what motivates them to know much about them.

I don't understand what you mean citing Kraven the Hunter either. Kraven is also a monomaniac, who is consumed with the ambition to prove himself the greatest hunter. That's not a biological drive or a primitive urge like gluttony or (sexual) lust. That's a sophisticated drive that counts as determination and ambition. Yet, I wouldn't cite Kraven as being someone who is trying to adhere to some higher code, or sees himself as subject to some higher authority, or who defines himself by his membership in some group. He's wholly self-interested and seeking purely personal glory for his own reasons that really make sense only to himself. So while I agree with you that Kraven is Chaotic, I don't understand how you can say he's lacking in "true drive".

Whatever definition I try to give to "true drive", whether it's "violation" or "will-power" or whatever, it would appear to be something universal to all intelligent beings, and not something that divides them into 'lawful' or 'chaotic' groups.

So one of us is confused, because I haven't a slightest idea what you are trying to say. Batman is driven. The Punisher is driven. Kraven is driven. Jay Gatsby is driven. But they are driven by different things to act in different ways.