Would you allow this paladin in your game? (new fiction added 11/11/08)

[Navar]

if Lawful meant always having to respect "the proper authorities" all the time, you'd have to ride all over the Good/Neutral/Evil spectrum to stay Lawful, just depending on what town you're riding through!

Just because something is legal doesn't mean you have to do it. You can respect that Prostution is legal, and still not partake. Laws (usually) forbid stuff or allow stuff. Laws rarely Force you to do anything though. "Don't speed" is a law. "Drive exactly 55" isn't. "Prostution is ok" could be a law. "you must pay for sex" isn't likely to be a law. So you can respect that it is legal to do whatever (or illegal) that doesn't mean you have to do the thing that is legal. I can't think of an example where followling the law would change your moral alignment.

 

[Torm]

Lawful, for me, is obedience to all relevant codes and authorities. Sometimes the authorities may conflict (i.e. your internal code may conflict with divine orders or orders of your liege lorde), but Lawful requires that you are obedient to all of the authorities.

That just doesn't work, though - you could cause a person to lock-up by that standard. You have to have a hierarchy for law conflict resolution. I happen to prefer to start with this one:

"This above all else: To Thine Own Self Be True."

The thing is to recognise that ultimately, all of ANY person's behavior, whether you want to think of them as generally Lawful or generally Chaotic or what-have-you, comes from internal motivation first. The reason a Paladin would obey the tenets of his deity is ultimately that he feels a desire to. In a Lawful person, the pattern of these wants may form a sometimes self-conflicting hierchy, i.e. I don't desire to do this, but I swore an oath to do that, and my desire to fulfill that oath is more important to me than my desire to not do this. But still, it boils down to what that person values - not any sort of difference in the actual hardware, so to speak, of Lawful vs Chaotic beings. (Well, except possibly in the case of being made specifically to serve an alignment, like Demons or Celestials - but your run-of-the-mill PC is a free-willed, full run of behavior, type person.)

 

[Endur]

That just doesn't work, though - you could cause a person to lock-up by that standard.

Nope, lockups aren't necessary. Although angst and role-playing opportunities abound.

You have to have a hierarchy for law conflict resolution. I happen to prefer to start with this one:

"This above all else: To Thine Own Self Be True."

And that is pretty close to being Chaotic. If you are only true to your self, then you have no code you follow other than your own internal code. Now, if being true to yourself is your highest code, and you also follow other codes when they don't conflict, then that is more neutral.

If you try to follow and fulfill all of your obligations, and resolve any conflicts to the satisfaction of all parties, then you are lawful.

 

[Torm]

Laws (usually) forbid stuff or allow stuff. Laws rarely Force you to do anything though.

Um, WHAT?

You must wear a seatbelt, by law. You must acquire a permit to run a business, by law. You must report for Selective Service (if male over 18) by law. You must pay taxes, by law. I could go on and on.

You're thinking of our country, and failing to take into account that, for the most part, we live in a nation where we are free enough to have mass objection to inappropriate laws. Try this one on for size, though, from several other countries and occasionally parts of our own, from throughout history:

You must, by law, stop at (insert time of day) and give praise and swear service to (insert diety or government).

That could come into conflict with the requirements of the faith of MANY people, and frequently their "alignment", if real people can be considered to have those. And that's just one example that occurred to me before I even finished reading your post!

To address the flipside, which I believe speaks even more to the point you were trying to make, you're right: Something being legal to do does not mandate it being done. I don't have to drive, but that is legal. BUT, that is completely irrelevant. The point of the discussion about Sir Cedric isn't whether he HAS to frequent prostitutes because it is legal, it is whether there is anything wrong with him doing so if it IS legal, it isn't against his religious tenets, and it seems to be a help rather than a hurt for the women involved.

 

[Henry]

You must, by law, stop at (insert time of day) and give praise and swear service to (insert diety or government).

Sidenote: I actually considered doing this to your Paladin in Zhentil Keep about a year ago, just to see what would happen.

Another example: You must obey the local lords edicts as law at all times, and the punishment for failing to do so is death.

Third example: All lords have the right of "first night" with any new bride they choose under their domain.

If a paladin sees one of these acts or is subjected to one of these laws, does he submit, or does he resist?

 

[Torm]

And that is pretty close to being Chaotic. If you are only true to your self, then you have no code you follow other than your own internal code.

You're still missing it, so I'll put it straight forward, rather than long-winded, as I tend to be:

NO ONE follows anything OTHER than their internal code!

A young man or woman, called by their deity to serve as a Paladin, makes the decision as to whether or not to do so by their own internal code. Everything from that point on (or before that point, for that matter) is layers upon layers, all stacked upon the person's original personality and desires. In serving a diety, they serve THEMSELVES. 'Cause they wanted to.

Some people take their original nugget of self, and build it up, based on their perceptions and opinions, into messy mass of jumbled, incomplete decision trees that aren't necessarily connected the same way twice, ever. Those people are Chaotic. And some people build it up into relatively static, organized trees of cause and effect and personal priorties. Those people are Lawful.

(And, btw, nothing in what I said said to only be true to yourself. But to deny that the ultimate authority within you IS you, is at best silly and at worst harmful.)

One last point for this post: If Lawful characters had no choice but to serve authority, by their essential most basic selves, why would that authority ever show appreciation for that service? Yet, they do.....

 

[Voadam]

Well, there is a certain amount of, "what do I deserve?" involved, too, when it comes to being punished. Once again, you can take this back to what the general answer would be in, say, a poll of 1000 people. "What would you think you deserve to have happen to you if you killed someone else for monetary gain?"

Well not deserve is quite a different standard than not enjoy which was your scientific unemotional basis for why torture was wrong.

Even if people consider themselves deserving of punishment, none would find it enjoyable.

So does your definition of immoral now state that torture is wrong because nobody would say they deserve torture while they might say they deserve some punishment.

And moral judgment is based solely on consensus of such individual feelings of dessert?

 

[Torm]

Well not deserve is quite a different standard than not enjoy which was your scientific unemotional basis for why torture was wrong.

Even if people consider themselves deserving of punishment, none would find it enjoyable.

So does your definition of immoral now state that torture is wrong because nobody would say they deserve torture while they might say they deserve some punishment.

Not exactly. I'm not the simple creature you're making me out to be. The punishment decided upon may still be wrong. But, because it is the wrong that consensus (the best standard we have, since we aren't the Borg) agrees is appropriate to have inflicted upon them as justice for a particular wrong they would commit, it is just.

Court sentencing is very rarely a happy business, and the only thing that excuses the things that a judge or juror may decide or a correctional officer/executioner/what-have-you may do as part of it is that they are acting not for themselves but on behalf of society as a whole, in the pursuit of a greater good. And yes, that does kinda suck, but unfortunately the world doesn't always allow one to pursue those who have dirtied themselves and keep one's own hands completely clean. :\ A Paladin does still kill. Yet, murder (in most religions) is a sin......

 

[shilsen]

I agree that Lawful should mean Lawful whether you are Lawful Good or Lawful Evil. But I do not agree with your definition of Lawful as obedience to an internal code.

...

So your example rogue with a strong internal code would be neutral to me, neither lawful nor chaotic.

Note that your definition does not match the PHB. The description of Lawful Neutral, for example, says that a "lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs here...She may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard..."

This was a change to the definition of LN from 2e, IIRC, and one which I'd personally thought was very necessary. I always found it silly that the 2e defn. of LN was someone who only followed external codes.

On the whole, I find that the definition of the law-chaos axis in 3e comes down not to group-individuality (as it is often, IMO wrongly, characterized) but to consistency-changeability. A character who follows his own personal code stringently can be very individualistic and would count as lawful. A character who acts on his whims can be equally individualistic and would count as chaotic.

 

[The Sigil]

Wrote a very long post, but here's the only part I think is worth injecting into the discussion at the moment:

This is why I chose the word "crime" over "evil act"; there are lots of things that are evil that are not crimes. My point is that your view that it's okay to kill any evil person, any time, regardless of the circumstances breaks down when one recognizes that this includes summarily killing people, without recourse to any due process, who have committed no crime whatsoever.

And that's why I deliberately avoided it, because you're drawing up a Strawman with it. You're mixing the "lawful/chaotic" axis with the "good/evil" axis here. Due process is on the law/chaos axis, not the "good/evil" axis.

A chaotic good character doesn't (and shouldn't) give a flying rat's tail about due process. Does that make him less good? I might add that there are many things that are crimes that are not evil. It wasn't lawful for Robin Hood to steal from the rich and give to the poor. He went ahead and did it because it was "good" without regard for "due process." In many ways, chaotic good is "easier to accomplish good with" than lawful good, because chaotic good can just go out and do it, without having to worry about protocol, etc. But I'm getting off subject here.

Suffice to say you are going to great lengths to try to link "due process" and therefore "law" with "good" and that is a strawman, which is why I rejected it. Due process is NOT inherently good. In many cases, it hinders "justice" from being done on those who have committed evil acts... maybe because they have a good lawyer. Maybe because they destroyed the evidence so well. Regardless, if even one "evil act" goes unpunished solely because of the requirements of the law, can the law truly be characterized as "Good" with a capital G? No, because now it's protecting those who have done evil from receiving justice!

That's why I've tried to be very careful this whole time to keep "Good" and "Law" separate, and why it annoys me when people get careless and try to lump them back together.

--The Sigil