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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5365197" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm still not seeing what you are seeing.  Of course, you are free to interpret the alignment system how you like, but when I read you saying: "Which can lead to some pretty interesting situations.", I read the word 'interesting' to mean something like confusing, unexpected, or counterintuitive.  Perhaps that wasn't your intention, but it seems to me that if you find the results confusing, unexpected, or counterintuitive that it might be because you are phrasing the problem wrong.Personally, I don't think it matters quite as much as you what your motive is when it comes to murder.  I think it matters some, but if motive was mostly what mattered then we'd have the bizarre situation of everyone who thought that they were doing good, being good.  And only a little thought will suffice to realize just how bizarre that would be.Besides which, I think you grossly simplify the characters (however card board they may be) that you have constructed.   I don't think that we can say of the Sadist character that he's solely motived by sadism.  If self-gratification was his sole motivation, surely he would not be so picky about who he gratified his violent and sadistic urges on.   You make it sound as if the decision to never do harm to the innocent either by word or deed was merely a quirk.   Clearly there is some motivation their which is benevolent, so why on the basis of his personality are we judging him evil?  And if indeed it is only a personal quirk, why in the world are we judging him lawful?   For my part, the character sounds like a vaguely CG character with a rather extreme personality flaw that he is holding at least somewhat - and to the greater part that matters - in check.   Now of course, there are as yet unrevealed aspects of his character and his relationship to the world that might alter that decision, but from what I've got to go on so far he sounds like a Vigillante of the more brutal 'pay evil according to its wages' mode.   That on the neutral end of a broad CG spectrum.Meanwhile your Crusader doesn't sound even remotely good to me.  He doesn't seem to me to be much concerned with making war on evil, as he is utterly consumed with making war on his enemies.  He seems to be cut entirely of the 'victory for my side at any cost mold', and that in my opinion is the defining trait of Lawful Evil.   No doubt me maintains some sense of honor, and he believes (wrongly I think) that he's acting under the authority and commission of an external power (the aforementioned LG deity), but he seems to be rather less concerned about achieving good ends (the protection of the innocent) than he is about achieving victory.   I therefore assert that from what I've been given to know, that he's LE.One thing I particularly like about my assessment, is that the description of the two characters you've given demonstrates that they are the exact moral opposites.  One enjoys commiting acts of violence, but only to those that deserve it as just punishment.   The other doesn't enjoy committing acts of violence and deeply regrets the need, but nonetheless proceeds to commit acts of mass murder anyway.   So it is fitting I think that the two figures would occupy opposite and opposing ends of the alignment spectrum.   It is equally fitting that a paragon of LG, when confronted with the need to choose which to oppose is faced with a delimma as it is obvious that both represent something repulsive to the LG mentality.  And I think it is fitting, that given the alignments I have chosen as my labels, that the LG character chooses to side with 'Good' over 'Evil' (reluctantly sacrificing Law for Chaos, that being the nature of the delimma) precisely because this is a case where the general maxim 'the most good for the most people' which underlies the LG philosophy seems to apply.   The Vigillante character represents a threat to no innocent people at present, and his primary threat (undermining of the law, poor role model to the people) is one that is abstract.   Whereas the lives of the millions of innocent threatened by the Crusader is not at all an abstract value.So, yes, I find this situation 'interesting', but not at all because I find it contridictory or counterintuitive.</blockquote>

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