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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Herpes Cineplex" data-source="post: 1630208" data-attributes="member: 16936">Doesn't matter.The whole idea of alignments is centered on the idea that good, evil, law, and chaos are all objective things inside the game world.  You are Lawful, hence Protection from Law works against you.  That guy is Evil, therefore Smite Evil works on him.So it doesn't matter if you want to dredge out some hoary old freshman philosophy argument that altruism is selfish because it makes the do-gooder feel happy; the alignment system in D&D doesn't care how the do-gooder feels.  It merely cares that he Does Good.  Good is an objective standard based on the actions the character is naturally inclined to take; if you perform actions which are defined as Good without having to think about it and decide whether it's worth it to you, you're safely within the Good sector of the alignment scale.  If you need to find an angle to make it worth your while, you're probably closer to Neutral territory.  And if your first instinct is not to do the Good thing at all (or to do something which is defined as Evil, like killing someone), you're probably Evil.  There's nothing particularly ambiguous about the way the game defines that....which is, I'm sure, one of the reasons why so many people moan about the alignment system in the first place.  Obviously, the real world can tolerate "Mother Theresa was a selfish old lady" arguments, the real world doesn't have such clear-cut definitions of good or evil, and the real world doesn't actually split into only nine different philosophical types.  Looks like D&D's not a "realistic" system:  shock!  horror!If you want a more realistic system, just eliminate all the alignment-specific spells and items (Protection from or Magic Circle against <foo> spells, weapon types like Holy, etc.), and stop worrying about alignments at all.  Me, I wouldn't do that, because I don't have any deep, abiding need to have my fantasy roleplaying game be particularly realistic; playable and fun is good enough for me.--it's more than some games have managed to deliver</blockquote>

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