What alignment is House?

[Ron]

House personality is not well captured in an alignment system. He's arrogant, yes. Still, he cares about some of his patients and he take care of his team even. However, he doesn't like to show his feelings and thus he uses his a*hole mask to protect his own vulnerability.

 

[IamTheTest]

House is more CG than anything. Foreman Id say is NE. Chase is N leaning toward NE. Cuddy and Wilson are pretty spot on. Id say Cameron is the one that doesnt fit the alignment system. I think the important thing to remember is that just because you do evil things occasionally it doesnt make you an evil person. Alignment is the overall net effect of your being (at least thats how I play it). While House has been known to be a tad on the snarky side he is still a generally good person.

 

[Glyfair]

I would have to say CG for House due to what the other poster stated, he will do by whatever means needed save his patient.

However, he is almost always doing it for completely selfish reasons. He only takes cases that interest him as puzzles. He tries incredibly hard to save a patients life because, once he takes a case, he consider it an affront to fail. If he doesn't take a case, he's completely capable of not caring.

I disagree with those who say "he doesn't fit well in the D&D alignment system." I think he's the perfect example of Chaotic Neutral. He might have a slight tendancy for good. The "evil" you see from him is almost always lack of concern, rather than actively trying to do evil. At times, you see some humanity and he'll try to do good. A few good acts do not make someone good.

He is clearly Chaotic. He actively defies authority. In fact, he has made many decisions solely to defy authority (especially in the first season).

What about Chase's behavior when they were doing the arc with the guy who donated money? He turned on House and made deals with the guy so that he couldn't be fired, taking evidence about House's behavior to him in order to procure favor so that he could have job security because he feared House would get rid of him first. I'd go NE during that. He's mellowed out since, but he's shown that if the situation calls for it, he's willing to scheme against his fellows.

That's not evil to me. I think it's clearly neutral behavior. Chase is the hardest to classify, IMO. Of Chase, House and him, I think he's the closest to good. He has strong opinions about certain things (obese people, for one), and unpopular ones. However, he clearly has good leanings (went to seminary school, but failed his "test of faith").

 

[Hussar]

I'm in the CN camp as well. Helping people for purely selfish reasons is not particularly good. He's not actively evil, but, he's certainly not helpful either. When I posted a thread a while ago about CN archetypes, his name came up pretty quick.

Yeah, this is the perfect example of CN. Which is why I detest it when players put down CN on their character sheet and then play warm, fuzzy, altruistic characters out to help everyone.

 

[MarkB]

I'd go with CN as well. I stopped even considering 'good' when he knocked out one of the hospital's only two MRI machines for a week just to test a theory (which he could've tested as effectively using a fridge magnet). Those machines save lives on a daily basis, so there's no reasonable excuse to take one out of commission just to satisfy his curiosity.

 

[Beowolf]

i have to dissagree will those saying house is cn, ill conceide strong cn tendencies. now hear me out on this, i say that the whole uncaring, puzzle focused, arrogant bit is just part of how he deals with patients and hospital staff, part of his phiosophy is that you dont make any meaningful emotional contact with a patient in order to provide unbiased healthcare. he keeps everyone distant so as to only chose the best method of treatement, he maintains an arrogant and egotistical air to show his sureness and confidence in his diagnosis otherwise he may be doubted and his treatement denied ect. as for the busted machine, he was only doing so in order to help find the cause of the paitents illness and was sure that the bullets would not damage the machine, he was wrong in that respectg but it wasent on purpose and once it happend well no point in crying about it the patient was still sick.

also each doctor under him is there only because they belive in what house does is right, however much they dissagree with some of his methods. would cameron have been attracted to him if all she saw was uncaring, selfish motivations

 

[prosfilaes]

i have to dissagree will those saying house is cn, ill conceide strong cn tendencies. now hear me out on this, i say that the whole uncaring, puzzle focused, arrogant bit is just part of how he deals with patients and hospital staff, part of his phiosophy is that you dont make any meaningful emotional contact with a patient in order to provide unbiased healthcare.

But as much as that, he ignores boring cases. He and his team of doctors have been sitting around at times with no work because there was nothing he considered interesting, until his fellow doctor claimed one patient was his cousin.

would cameron have been attracted to him if all she saw was uncaring, selfish motivations

CN doesn't mean that they're simply uncaring and selfish, but that's the dominant theme. And, yes, I think Cameron might be attracted to Satan himself and dream about redeeming him to his position as an Angel of Light. I don't think she's particuarly wise in that direction.

 

[Glyfair]

ii say that the whole uncaring, puzzle focused, arrogant bit is just part of how he deals with patients and hospital staff,

Except it's been shown that he carries that outside the hospital. His regular poker game consists of people he doesn't really know, and doesn't even know their names (the mailman, etc!

 

[EP]

I think I agree with the alignment, but I'd put his Charisma = 5 or 6.

Let's not forget, this is the guy who had Cameron falling for him, got Stacy to come crawling back, and hasn't been fired. Must to something to his personality, wouldn't you say? And he was one of People's Sexiest Men, so we definitely talking 15+ on the Charisma scale.

I think House's Lawful Neutral - he has a method to his madness and follows the science of medicine, just not the doctrines of the medical practise. He links things together and has a code: everybody lies. He just does things his own way. If he were Chaotic, he would literally be tossing in the first drug he got his hands on and standing back with his fingers crossed.

As for the rest, they're not interesting enough to bother giving them alignment. They're NPCs.

 

[Wolv0rine]

Oddly enough, I'll be the really odd man out and say that I think House would be NG. The man obviously cares, once he takes a case (and despite all the hubub about him only taking cases he finds interesting, I think what he finds interesting are cases that he doesn't think someone else could solve just as easily as he could, which isn't a matter of "you're not good enough for me" so much as "Your problem isn't hard enough to NEED me"). He's been willing to throw his career away on a platter to help a patient, he blithely let a young boy think that he turned him in to CPS instead of the kid's mother, he routinely has his staff do illegal searches (which aside from everything else it is, it's definately "the extra mile"). He cares, he just does so in a callous, snide, and protected manner. The fact that he operates from a point of egotism in his own ability and intelligence aside.
I think he's more neutral and chaotic, although the arguement for chaotic is a strong one. I'd actually like to put him square in the middle between chaotic and neutral, but that's not an option under the system.