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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6886243" data-attributes="member: 4937">[MENTION=6777454]TheHobgoblin[/MENTION]:  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.  2) A great many of your complaints can be summed up as what is itself an alignment complaint: proper behavior involves moderation, restraint, and compromise.  That may well be true, but fundamentally that description of the world itself falls into an alignment spectrum - neutrality.  By suggesting that most characters are some sort of neutral, or at least close to neutral, you aren't really stating anything radical about humanity.  Humanity has long been viewed as collectively neutral, and I'd even classify humanity as a "usually neutral" species in D&D alignment terms.3) Likewise, nothing about the alignment system should be construed to mean that average people are perfect paragons of following their stated beliefs.  Most persons are assumed to be sufficiently imperfect that they could not act as Paladins or other viewpoint champions, simply because you are right - when the chips were down and following what they believed became difficult, most would transgress.   Characters whose behavior always conforms to the dictates of their alignment are rarities (at least, when we aren't talking about creatures that are literally alignment stuff incarnate).  No one has ever imposed that people following an alignment are perfect.   That's an old misunderstanding that comes from a misunderstanding: DMs imposing harsh penalties on a player as soon as in the DM's opinion they made one transgression away from their stated alignment.  That's just bad DMing, and even back in 1e AD&D suggested loss of level be associated with alignment change, the idea that alignment would drift across a chart suggests that it was only meant to track a dominate mode of behavior and not perfection.4) We know all Dwarfs are not "Lawful Good" because the rules say all dwarfs aren't lawful good.  They are only collectively as a race more predisposed to LG than humanity is, but that doesn't mean that every individual dwarf is LG or that even a good dwarf couldn't transgress when tempted.  One moment of greed doesn't outweigh a lifetime of consistent goodness; it just makes for one very aggrieved and sorry dwarf once he realizes what he's done.  Nor does that mean that even good natured Dwarfs are as universally LG as say an Archon or an Astral Deva.  Likewise, just because Orcs are more Chaotic Evil than humans, doesn't mean that they are as perfectly CE as say a demon.  It just means their culture would be even more associated with strife and violence than human culture is.  Yes, that might mean that Orcs might potentially end up less successful than humans because they are always fighting themselves as well as humans, but isn't that how they are often portrayed?</blockquote>

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