For Indiana Jones, He wasn't in it for the money? He was an archeologist and wanted to preserve treasures and relics. A famous quote of his is "that belongs in a museum!". It wasnt for himself. He was preserving things, satisfying his curiosity and stopping nazi's. He was systematic, had a code of honour and believed things had an order and place in the world (eg, all artifacts go in museums)
Also, you dont need to take orders to be lawful. as i said in previous post. and vice versa, taking orders doesn't mean you're not chaotic. Some green lanterns I would consider chaotic good, even though they (usually) follow the laws/orders of those blue dudes.
If you take someone like robin (the one who became nightwing), he is what I would consider more like chaotic good. because he disagreed with batman, often disobeyed and did his own thing and followed his own way. Even then, he still followed many orders of batman. Doesn't make him lawful. course, i dont know too much about robin anyhow.
Im not saying that lawful characters don't follow orders, i'm saying its not the defining criteria. It's only one part of a much bigger picture. Eg you could have a stereotypical lawful good paladin. then you could have a paladin that is exactly the same, except he sometimes steals things because he feels like it, all other things such as obeying orders, protecting the innocent, fighting evil, etc is the same. That would be a case of a lawful good character with a chaotic habit. Course, he wouldn't exactly be mr.saintly, but who is?
Actually I'm fairly certain that Indiana Jones only ever "does it for the money" in The Temple of Doom (which chronilogically was the first of the four films) and in the end doesn't take the money anyway. In the rest of the films he seemingly does it for the thrill/adventure of it and always wants the artifacts to be in a museum where they can teach mankind about history and be available for everyone to enjoy.
A good character who steals isn't Lawful Good, because most people agree that stealing is bad. If you steal, you are no longer lawful good. Chaotic Good characters take orders from no one because they live by their own, personal morality. Chaotic Good people can disagree with each other as well when their personal moralities conflict.
As for Indiana Jones, he steals things and breaks into places to recover stuff that he believes should be in a museum. At best, that's Neutral Good. He steals from the rightful owners of antiquities to put them in a museum. A Lawful Good person would work within the law to get those antiquities. Still, Chaotic Good.
Actually Indiana doesn't steal anything... He recovers the Ark from Nazi's who stole it then has it taken from him by the U.S. government, returns some spirit stones to the village they were stolen from, takes the grail after the knight tells him it's ok (although it is lost before he can take it to a museum) and returns a crystal skull to its rightful owner. When did he steal anything ~.^
I'm also not totally up to snuff on my Middle Eastern/Asian/South American Law from 1935 (Temple of Doom) to 1957 (Crystal Skull) so I'm not sure that it was illegal to even attempt to steal these artifacts anyways. Not that he did try to "steal" any of them.
I'm gonna have to disagree on your strict criteria for lawful behaviour. you don't have to tick every box to be of a certain alignment, that doesn't make sense/does not reflect reality.
I'd be like saying "Oh, a good character can never kill for revenge" or something so someone killing for revenge is automatically evil (just an example)
A chaotic character, for example CAN break every rule/law they run into (epitomy of chaotic behaviour), if they so wish. But there's nothing wrong with them following a few rules. doesn't automatically make them lawful if they do.
furthermore, lawful good characters can also disagree with each other, example: two paladins may have different ideas of justice, eg one may believe in legal prosecution (paladin A), the other might believe that his god's teachings allow for divine retribution (paladin . They would both be lawful good, but they may come to blows because one wants to send the criminal to prison, the other wants to smite the evil doer in the name of their good god. Depending on the country, it may be illegal to smite the evil doer (so paladin B would be breaking the law of the country, but following the tenants of his faith), but in another scenario paladin B may have authorization from the monarchy or from a divine power, in which case the paladin wanting to spare the life of the criminal (paladin A) would be opposing the process of justice as recognised by god and king (ie, the law). So rather than what the law actually is, what dictates their alignment is their motivation, attitude and methodology. Ie, they are lawful good. They see value in the law, they appreciate it and they follow it. but they don't do so blindly (otherwise they'd be more like lawful neutral). If a lawful good paladin goes to thay, frees a slave (and thus breaks thayan law) he doesn't suddenly become chaotic good. He's still lawful good because his motivations and attitude remain unchanged.
So if I were to contrast this back to batman. He breaks the law insofar as being a vigilante, but he has his own strict moral code of not killing, cooperates with the police (which is lawful behaviour), collaborates with other heros (also characteristic of lawful behaviour), sets out rules and regulations for the justice league, he's systematic in planning and preparation. etc etc etc this is all lawful behaviour. If being a vigilante was suddenly legal (or illegal), it wouldn't change his alignment. much like how owning a slave being legal in thay doesn't impact the alignment of the paladin. He may not like the idea of breaking the law, certainly, but he'll do it for the greater good. Whereas a chaotic good character wouldn't give a rats arse about the law and may even find joy in it.
@Seriales A Good character wouldn't kill for revenge. He'd turn the miscreant over to the authorities to punish, because the rule of law is good for all people. If killing for revenge is okay for him, then it's okay for everyone, and society becomes a morass of killing for revenge. (And if he believes revenge killing is only good for him, then he isn't really that good, either.) If a Lawful Good character did kill someone for revenge, if they continued to be Lawful Good afterwards, they would turn themselves in to be punished for what they did, because what they did was wrong, and they would know it was wrong. What would prevent a member of the family of the person they killed for revenge from turning around and killing *them* for the exact same reason, and with just as much justification? Surely, you must see that in such a situation, someone has to be the one to forgo the revenge killing to prevent such an act from snowballing. That "someone" is the Lawful Good person. It's Lawful Good to defend yourself when someone attacks you, but not to set out to kill someone in the name of revenge. Lawful Good, as an alignment, is hard to play- this is why! You're not allowed to do what you want and justify it afterwards. If you get attacked by Male Orcs and defend yourself by killing them, but the female orcs ask for mercy for themselves and their children, a Lawful Good character can't just slaughter them out of hand. Additionally, Paladins are held more strictly to the tenets of Lawful and Good behavior than a normal Lawful Good character is. Lawful Good is a hard alignment to play correctly, and Batman, by his actions, doesn't fulfill that behavior. That's just it.
I honestly want to ask if you have been reading my posts, because I specifically addressed following laws in one of my earlier posts on this subject. Chaotic Good follows a personal system of morality, just as Robin Hood did. He believed in the rule of law- except when it came to the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. I didn't say you had to follow no laws to be Chaotic, only that you follow your own morality and try to do good.
If a Lawful Good character went to Thay, he'd buy any slave he wanted to free. In that case, by Thayan Law, the slave would be his property, and they could do nothing about it when he chose to free the slave. He's worked within the law, Thayan Law, and still freed the slave. What could they do to him? Nothing. And he's abided by the tenets of Lawful Good. Buying and selling slaves is bad, but freeing a slave is a good act. So he's done both the Lawful and Good thing by buying the slave and freeing it. Why do you assume the only way you can free a slave is to steal it?
A lawful good character could also slaughter a Thayvan wizard to free the slaves, because owning a slave is considered grotesquely evil in the majority of Faerun. He's acting out of moral law rather than that of that land's law, but is still engaging in lawful conduct as that character sees it. All alignment means at the end of the day is a person's motivations for their actions.
People who look at alignments and don't see grey areas that bleed into the next nearest alignment, well. Okay. If you see alignments as a box, then by all means. I personally never do, because at the end of the day it's arbitrary.
Remember that D&D at the end of the day is make believe with rules. The VAST majority of IRL D&D campaigns I've been a part of that were successful, we basically threw the rulebooks out after the 3rd session. It's handy for shaping an experience but not necessary.
" A Good character wouldn't kill for revenge. He'd turn the miscreant over to the authorities to punish, because the rule of law is good for all people."
I do miss the age old arguments for turning lawful good into lawful stupid were the alignment is very narrowly define to mean never breaking any law/moral code ever. No matter the situation or personal trauma involved.
"Of course, a chaotic good person wouldn't kill a child either (probably), but the difference is the chaotic good person would probably tell the noble liege to eff off, maybe stab him in the face too."
Being Chaotic Good doesn't mean that they would be any more likely to kill an evil king than to walk away. Heck, why are they even listening to any orders at all? In fact, I'd expect a Paladin to openly fight a king that was giving orders to kill children. How could a Paladin turn a blind eye to such evil?
As for batman, Gotham has always been portrayed as a very corrupt city and thats why batman was needed in the first place. In the Dark Knight movie trilogy, batman even goes away after beating Joker for 8 years because the system was working and therefore Batman wasn't need to work outside the law. That marks him as Lawful Good and a good example of how a paladin should be played.
@sandmanCCL Just saying, but he'd have to see something that told him this wizard is evil before killing him. He couldn't just slay the guy out of hand, even if someone else told him that the wizard is evil. He'd better have a good plan for getting him and those slaves asses out of Thay posthaste, because he'll be wanted for such an act, and the slaves would either be dead for helping him and/or re-enslaved, which doesn't help them one single bit.
Purchasing a slave may be evil if you had any intention of keeping them enslaved. Purchasing them with the intention of freeing them? Not so much. The only reason why Thay hasn't been overrun by the other nations with the intent of freeing the slaves and throwing down the slavemasters is Thay is full of evil wizards. Powerful evil wizards. The only thing they ended up falling to is one of their own.
Says who? I could see a guy who's lawful good seeing an estate with a hundred slaves and taking their word of mouth he's a horrible miscreant as enough to act upon it.
I also could see a Lawful Good person just as likely to tell the noble liege to eff off. I am that way, and I am very much a Lawful Good personality type. I respect the law. I go out of my way to do good. But I have a foul mouth and usually respond to rudeness in the same way. While I respect law, I am no respecter of men who claim to have the authority to wield it and do so unjustly.
This is why I tend to stay away from alignment arguments. So, I will not respond any further. I simply mean to suggest there are multiple ways of viewing the world. It's kind of funny we're talking about all this while I'm in an Ethics class. It's basically moral philosophy. We just briefly touched on Kant's Categorical Imperative, Divine Command ethos, and other rules-based ethics. Two people who think very much alike can arrive at totally different conclusions. Life is funny like that.
Batman clearly isn't chaotic. You could argue whether he is neutral good or lawful good - but chaotic...? He helps as Bruce Wayne in lawful/legal way and only resorts to batman-ish methods when there is no other way. And even then he follows a strict code.
@Seriales A Good character wouldn't kill for revenge. He'd turn the miscreant over to the authorities to punish, because the rule of law is good for all people. If killing for revenge is okay for him, then it's okay for everyone, and society becomes a morass of killing for revenge.
before the horror of 4.e, lawful good paladins of hoar believed in this strongly (ie vengance was justice). So i have no problem with this (ie revenge/vengance can be good or evil). Lawful good isn't a box as wissenchaft said.
(And if he believes revenge killing is only good for him, then he isn't really that good, either.) If a Lawful Good character did kill someone for revenge, if they continued to be Lawful Good afterwards, they would turn themselves in to be punished for what they did, because what they did was wrong, and they would know it was wrong. What would prevent a member of the family of the person they killed for revenge from turning around and killing *them* for the exact same reason, and with just as much justification? Surely, you must see that in such a situation, someone has to be the one to forgo the revenge killing to prevent such an act from snowballing. That "someone" is the Lawful Good person.
If a Prince was killed by the king of another country, the father (lawful good king) would justifiably go to war, revenge being one of the motivations. This isn't evil. The king would see his cause as just. Moral relativism aside, i think we can both agree on that intent determines the morality of an action. Someone seeking vengence could be doing it out of duty to family, or because he genuinely recognises his target to be evil. I could equally argue that not seeking justice would be betraying the memory and name of a friend/loved one, which is also evil (if not more evil).
If anything, a neutral person would seek to end the conflict. A templar/zealot (lawful good to the extreme) would not rest until justice is met, which can include wiping out everyone who commited the evil act to begin with, depending on the god, crime, etc.
It's Lawful Good to defend yourself when someone attacks you, but not to set out to kill someone in the name of revenge. Lawful Good, as an alignment, is hard to play- this is why! You're not allowed to do what you want and justify it afterwards. If you get attacked by Male Orcs and defend yourself by killing them, but the female orcs ask for mercy for themselves and their children, a Lawful Good character can't just slaughter them out of hand. Additionally, Paladins are held more strictly to the tenets of Lawful and Good behavior than a normal Lawful Good character is. Lawful Good is a hard alignment to play correctly, and Batman, by his actions, doesn't fulfill that behavior. That's just it.
I would argue its an issue of good evil rather than lawful/chaotic. Or do you think a chaotic good person would kill women and children? I'd argue that anyone who does is evil, regardless of their preference to law/chaos
Lets say there was a child who was the incarnation of EVIL HIMSELF(!). I could envision arguments that a lawful good person could put forward, for and against killing the child. Same story for chaotic good. Lawful good could cite duty to faith, to future to kill the child, for the good of the realm. They could also say that it is wrong to kill any child and that would also fit. Chaotic good can also put forward these arguments (less so on the duty aspect, moreso on the greater good). To me, this shows that its not a strict issue of law/chaos, but good/evil.
And again, i'd like to reiterate that deviating slightly from that behaviour doesn't mean he isnt that alignment.
I honestly want to ask if you have been reading my posts, because I specifically addressed following laws in one of my earlier posts on this subject. Chaotic Good follows a personal system of morality, just as Robin Hood did. He believed in the rule of law- except when it came to the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. I didn't say you had to follow no laws to be Chaotic, only that you follow your own morality and try to do good.
I was providing a counter-example to a notion that all lawful characters had to follow orders. (ie when you asked who gave orders to batman). Saying batman MUST follow orders to be lawful is like saying you MUST break laws to be chaotic. To contrast, luthor is the epitome of lawful evil, but he takes orders from no one (unless he's at gunpoint or its a part of his master plan), same could be said of batman. He would take orders if a team necessitated it or he had a trick up his sleeve.
While following orders is lawful, and breaking laws is chaotic. they aren't the defining criteria as other aspects in terms of methodology, personality, tendancies, etc define the totality of alignment.
If a Lawful Good character went to Thay, he'd buy any slave he wanted to free. In that case, by Thayan Law, the slave would be his property, and they could do nothing about it when he chose to free the slave. He's worked within the law, Thayan Law, and still freed the slave. What could they do to him? Nothing. And he's abided by the tenets of Lawful Good. Buying and selling slaves is bad, but freeing a slave is a good act. So he's done both the Lawful and Good thing by buying the slave and freeing it. Why do you assume the only way you can free a slave is to steal it?
Except that buying a slave would help fund the business, futher perpetrating the cycle of crime. Also, if there are multiple slaves, would a paladin buy them all? no, its not possible given that most paladins dont care too much about material wealth. Would he save a few and abandon the rest? he wouldn't do that either, because his duty wont let him. In my view, a true paladin would free all the slaves (by force if necessary) and break the slavery ring, bring the criminals/evil-doers (in his eyes) to justice and all that. His motivations aren't "screw the rules, save slaves" its "this law is evil, DUTY CALLS, JUSTICE SHALL PREVAIL + save slaves (Etc)"
Paladins CAN go against laws if the laws are unjust, they may dislike doing so, but they will. For pretty much all lawful good paladins, slavery is unjust, regardless of legal status.
Therefore, gotham (being the corrupt ineffective shithole that it is) is like thay and batman is the paladin trying to restore order and normalacy and do good. Batman would love nothing more than for an effective and functioning legal and justice system, but there isn't one. So he has to substitute himself.
If batman was chaotic good, it would mean he has little faith in legal systems to begin with, so he wouldn't care for one even if there was a possibility of one being functional, he wouldn't bother working with the police, or do things like gather evidence.
The arguments here about Lawfulness belie a problem with the alignment system: The laws of the land can and do vary tremendously from place to place throughout the Realms.
The laws of an evil society like the Underdark are clearly at odds with a knight of the Order of the Aster, for example. Such a paladin wouldn't support slavery and murder of rivals. An assassin is Lawful according to an evil organization's codes such as the Shadow Thieves, and isn't going to follow the law of the land in Waterdeep. She's constantly going to be breaking the 'law of the land' in the society at large.
So it is on that basis that I agree with the arguments that strict adherence to a set of personal principles is what Lawfulness is fundamentally about. As I see it, it is about how internally self-regulated and behaviorally consistent the character is.
At the other end of this axis is a character who is capricious and impulsive in his or her behavior. Such a character will be driven to act by things other than a strict code, such as emotion, personal affinity, wishes, wants, and whims. That's how I see Chaotic.
I think Rhian has a valid arguement since we're talking about BG. We alignment rule-set at question is the 2nd edition.
That said, 3rd and 4th edition HAVE expanded on the 2nd edition due to too many rules not making sense and it's now a proven obsolete system. So I think that's most people in this topic refer to those rules rather than the 2nd edition.
Also, Rhian, it's a difference between saying and doing. And that's very important for the new interpretation of the chaotic/lawful scale. Here's an example of an ideal Lawful character based on the new rules of DnD:
A Paladin living by a personal code, moral, or belief, depending on the choice of deity. But let's say he picks a deity with the following rules: "Thou shall not lie," "Protect the innocent and those weaker than you", and "Serve thine maker". When challenged, he still sticks by them the best he can. Let's say the paladin sees his arch-nemesis in trouble with some Drow who want to capture him for torture. The Paladin's code specifically said: "Protect those weaker than you" Rather than letting his arch-nemesis die, the Paladin MUST do his best to assure the arch-nemesis' safety if it's within the Paladin's power to do so. The paladin can afterwards arrest his arch-nemesis, or do what his code tells him to do.
But the rule doesn't have to be god-sent. It can be a personal code, as long as you're coherent and consistent to it.
Now here's an example of someone completely opposite: This guy I know, let's call him Joe, he always says stuff like "Bros before hoes" . But as soon as the situation suits him, he'll ditch you with the bill to go for a random bang with a girl. He is not coherent with what he says, and will break his own rule as easily as he made it up. Though sometimes he sticks to it, if there are no girls to his liking. This makes him Chaotic, as he changes who he is depedning on the situation. He still has some other redeemable qualities to him. He sometimes donates to chairity. He will help mothers to get that baby-wagon onto the bus/train. He's a good guy, but I don't rely on him, and I don't consider him a friend, or someone I would regularly hang with.
The problem here is that the idea of what Lawful and Chaotic mean can be interpreted quit differently from person to person (as can good and evil). Even the D&D rules about what these mean has changed in different editions, as has been quoted throughout this thread. The thing about alignment as I see it is that it should be used simply as a guide, and SHOULD be aloud to be interpreted differently from player to player (and gm to gm). You should not be able to look at someone's alignment and know just how they will act, just as in real life, two good people are still two completely different individuals. Let the alignments in game stand.
Something important to keep in mind is that alignment is more of a measure of ethical tendencies then anything. Evil people can still be nice, good guys can still be stand-offish.
While its true its up to interpretation, they (Wotc) try to be as descriptive and precise as possible, as they want alignment to be meaningful and useful. Eg if you cast detect alignment and detected lawful good, you should be able to expect that person to keep his promises, on average in the very least, or alternatively, really really dislike to betray people.
Furthermore, if someone made a lawful character, that acted completely chaotic (broke promises, constantly stole, blatant disregard for authority, no sense of honour, highly spontaneous, etc) you'd be justified in calling them out on it, and no amount of interpretation would make their RP'd behaviour justified in terms of their chosen alignment.
tl;dr, its best to accurately describe alignment, for both RP, gameplay and enjoyment purposes IMO
I agree with you for the most part. I don't think that an evil character should go around saving kittens, feeding orphans and helping grandmas cross the street (at least with no profit to themselves). I also don't expect good aligned people to kill townsfolk, lie and cheat (unless they have a good reason to do so). I have seen people RP against their alignment and it is bothersome. I just also get annoyed when people play lawful good paladins as lawful stupid. You can be good without being a goody two shoes and you can be evil without being a jerk. I like when things are more subtle and gray, rather than black and white and hack.
@Delvarian The trick, however, is that a Chaotic Evil guy COULD do any of those things pretty reasonably and still be Chaotic Evil. He just happens to like cats, or respect the elderly, or think kids are innocents and should be left alone.
It won't stop him from being Chaotic Evil when he jams his hand down through your throat and pulls out your lungs for questioning his world domination plans... or because you didn't get you cat spayed/neutered and were planning on abandoning the kittens.
This one always loses me a bit. Evil people can love genuinely and evil people can actually like things. They just aren't good people.
@Delvarian The trick, however, is that a Chaotic Evil guy COULD do any of those things pretty reasonably and still be Chaotic Evil. He just happens to like cats, or respect the elderly, or think kids are innocents and should be left alone.
It won't stop him from being Chaotic Evil when he jams his hand down through your throat and pulls out your lungs for questioning his world domination plans... or because you didn't get you cat spayed/neutered and were planning on abandoning the kittens.
This one always loses me a bit. Evil people can love genuinely and evil people can actually like things. They just aren't good people.
Your right, and that's my point exactly. No two people are the same, no matter their alignment, so you can have a chaotic evil person who likes cats, and another who likes to eat cats.
@LadyRhian, teaching archaeology in a university is a thieving profession? Caring about finding and preserving the treasures of the past is "little better than thievery"? Indiana Jones is an archaeologist and a professor, and he has a roguish personality, but he's no thief. He's not in it for the money. He cares about knowledge, and he cares about the plights of people he meets all over the world. He doesn't take anything unless it's been lost in a ruin somewhere, or it's being held by bad guys who want to exploit it or destroy it. (The "bad guys" in the first movie are in fact, the Nazis.)
It seems to me like you may be misremembering the movies or didn't like them enough to pay attention.
I could go on, but I guess maybe we should just agree to disagree. Both our understandings of fictional characters, and our definitions of D&D alignments, just don't match.
@Serialles Have you actually read up on Hoar? Hoar demands his clergy follow both the spirit and letter of the law. So if revenge killing is against the law...
@Belgarathmth You are speaking to a former archaeology student here, which colors my Impressions of Indy's methods quite soundly. He's a throwback to the bad old days of archaeology, when no one made careful notes of where artifacts were found, where no one made site plans, and where you just go in and take what you want with no effort to ensure you understand a thing about the culture that produced it. Modern Archaeology, which had already started by that time (as you can see with Tutenkhamun) recorded everything. The artifact is worthless unless you know where it comes from and where it was found. He's doing far more damage to archaeology and the artifacts by stealing them from where they are than documenting his finds. Essentially, he's taking the artifacts and ignoring the culture and its significance. I know it's being tarted up for the movies. But Indy? Based on his actions? He's a HORRIBLE Archaeologist. What he's really doing is stealing artifacts for museums, with no attempt to understand the cultures he's stealing those artifacts from, and with no attempt to preserve the surroundings of said artifacts so that other scholars can learn from them or learn from the context in which the artifacts were found.
@LadyRhian I *am* an archaeologist, and while what you say is correct from a modern technical point of view, I think you're taking the character out of his context - an imaginary alternate reality set in a former era made for a public whose perceptions of archaeology were largely still rooted in an even more distant era. Judging Indiana harshly by taking him out of his context and measuring him against modern techniques (which the public would not have understood nor appreciated) strikes me as pedantic, as I think on the scale of things you'd have to say he was a good guy.
Or maybe not as your views on killing seem to be strictly black and white:
"A Good character wouldn't kill for revenge. He'd turn the miscreant over to the authorities to punish, because the rule of law is good for all people"
I don't agree with this. No doubt that's true for many breeds of lawful good characters, but certainly not for chaotic good characters. I'm guessing you don't think there's too many "good" heroes in action and western movies, which may be a fair call, but I'm a big fan of shades of grey.
@Lock No, Chaotic Good characters would, depending on the character, see nothing wrong in taking revenge. And I admitted that Indy's actions are tarted up for the movies (so to speak), but Modern Archaeological techniques began before Indy's time. He's good, yes. But Lawful Good? Not so much. Neither Indy nor Batman are Lawful Good. Chaotic Good for Batman, probably somewhere on the border between Neutral and Chaotic Good for Indy.
Disregarding ancient culture is a non-lawful trait because...?
It seems that you have 'law' and 'good' joined at the hip. Things which are morally ambiguous seem to fall into the "Chaotic Good" column in your books for seemingly no reason. To say Indianna Jones is non-lawful because his misguided ways are damaging archeology doesn't make any sense... Does not partaking in the yet to be popularized methods of a profession make you unlawful?
If so, police didn't start using finger printing technology until fairly recently. Does that mean that the police were unlawful? I mean by not using this method of solving cases they were making the police look like they were incompetant by todays standards and in the long run many criminals no doubt went unpunished. Are they unlawful because of this? Those who did use finger printing technology 10-15 years ago weren't using DNA matching like they are today. Are those finger printers from 10-15 years ago now unlawful because a new method has been discovered to do the job better and more acurately? Does any of this make any sense?
No, but at the time Indiana Jones was stealing these artifacts (we never see him requesting permission to work or excavate in these places, either, another non-Lawful trait, the modern method was already well in place. Need I express to you the opinion of those who didn't use the modern method when compared to those who did? His own modern method colleagues would have felt the same way.
What is a cop's opinion of their colleagues who beat confessions out of criminals as opposed to relying on questioning, leads and evidence? (and yes, unfortunately, this still happens).
Comments
For Indiana Jones, He wasn't in it for the money? He was an archeologist and wanted to preserve treasures and relics. A famous quote of his is "that belongs in a museum!". It wasnt for himself. He was preserving things, satisfying his curiosity and stopping nazi's. He was systematic, had a code of honour and believed things had an order and place in the world (eg, all artifacts go in museums)
Also, you dont need to take orders to be lawful. as i said in previous post. and vice versa, taking orders doesn't mean you're not chaotic.
Some green lanterns I would consider chaotic good, even though they (usually) follow the laws/orders of those blue dudes.
If you take someone like robin (the one who became nightwing), he is what I would consider more like chaotic good. because he disagreed with batman, often disobeyed and did his own thing and followed his own way. Even then, he still followed many orders of batman. Doesn't make him lawful. course, i dont know too much about robin anyhow.
Im not saying that lawful characters don't follow orders, i'm saying its not the defining criteria. It's only one part of a much bigger picture.
Eg you could have a stereotypical lawful good paladin. then you could have a paladin that is exactly the same, except he sometimes steals things because he feels like it, all other things such as obeying orders, protecting the innocent, fighting evil, etc is the same. That would be a case of a lawful good character with a chaotic habit. Course, he wouldn't exactly be mr.saintly, but who is?
As for Indiana Jones, he steals things and breaks into places to recover stuff that he believes should be in a museum. At best, that's Neutral Good. He steals from the rightful owners of antiquities to put them in a museum. A Lawful Good person would work within the law to get those antiquities. Still, Chaotic Good.
I'm also not totally up to snuff on my Middle Eastern/Asian/South American Law from 1935 (Temple of Doom) to 1957 (Crystal Skull) so I'm not sure that it was illegal to even attempt to steal these artifacts anyways. Not that he did try to "steal" any of them.
I'd be like saying "Oh, a good character can never kill for revenge" or something so someone killing for revenge is automatically evil (just an example)
A chaotic character, for example CAN break every rule/law they run into (epitomy of chaotic behaviour), if they so wish. But there's nothing wrong with them following a few rules. doesn't automatically make them lawful if they do.
furthermore, lawful good characters can also disagree with each other, example: two paladins may have different ideas of justice, eg one may believe in legal prosecution (paladin A), the other might believe that his god's teachings allow for divine retribution (paladin
So rather than what the law actually is, what dictates their alignment is their motivation, attitude and methodology. Ie, they are lawful good. They see value in the law, they appreciate it and they follow it. but they don't do so blindly (otherwise they'd be more like lawful neutral).
If a lawful good paladin goes to thay, frees a slave (and thus breaks thayan law) he doesn't suddenly become chaotic good. He's still lawful good because his motivations and attitude remain unchanged.
So if I were to contrast this back to batman.
He breaks the law insofar as being a vigilante, but he has his own strict moral code of not killing, cooperates with the police (which is lawful behaviour), collaborates with other heros (also characteristic of lawful behaviour), sets out rules and regulations for the justice league, he's systematic in planning and preparation. etc etc etc this is all lawful behaviour.
If being a vigilante was suddenly legal (or illegal), it wouldn't change his alignment. much like how owning a slave being legal in thay doesn't impact the alignment of the paladin.
He may not like the idea of breaking the law, certainly, but he'll do it for the greater good.
Whereas a chaotic good character wouldn't give a rats arse about the law and may even find joy in it.
I honestly want to ask if you have been reading my posts, because I specifically addressed following laws in one of my earlier posts on this subject. Chaotic Good follows a personal system of morality, just as Robin Hood did. He believed in the rule of law- except when it came to the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. I didn't say you had to follow no laws to be Chaotic, only that you follow your own morality and try to do good.
If a Lawful Good character went to Thay, he'd buy any slave he wanted to free. In that case, by Thayan Law, the slave would be his property, and they could do nothing about it when he chose to free the slave. He's worked within the law, Thayan Law, and still freed the slave. What could they do to him? Nothing. And he's abided by the tenets of Lawful Good. Buying and selling slaves is bad, but freeing a slave is a good act. So he's done both the Lawful and Good thing by buying the slave and freeing it. Why do you assume the only way you can free a slave is to steal it?
People who look at alignments and don't see grey areas that bleed into the next nearest alignment, well. Okay. If you see alignments as a box, then by all means. I personally never do, because at the end of the day it's arbitrary.
Remember that D&D at the end of the day is make believe with rules. The VAST majority of IRL D&D campaigns I've been a part of that were successful, we basically threw the rulebooks out after the 3rd session. It's handy for shaping an experience but not necessary.
I do miss the age old arguments for turning lawful good into lawful stupid were the alignment is very narrowly define to mean never breaking any law/moral code ever. No matter the situation or personal trauma involved.
"Of course, a chaotic good person wouldn't kill a child either (probably), but the difference is the chaotic good person would probably tell the noble liege to eff off, maybe stab him in the face too."
Being Chaotic Good doesn't mean that they would be any more likely to kill an evil king than to walk away. Heck, why are they even listening to any orders at all? In fact, I'd expect a Paladin to openly fight a king that was giving orders to kill children. How could a Paladin turn a blind eye to such evil?
As for batman, Gotham has always been portrayed as a very corrupt city and thats why batman was needed in the first place. In the Dark Knight movie trilogy, batman even goes away after beating Joker for 8 years because the system was working and therefore Batman wasn't need to work outside the law. That marks him as Lawful Good and a good example of how a paladin should be played.
Purchasing a slave may be evil if you had any intention of keeping them enslaved. Purchasing them with the intention of freeing them? Not so much. The only reason why Thay hasn't been overrun by the other nations with the intent of freeing the slaves and throwing down the slavemasters is Thay is full of evil wizards. Powerful evil wizards. The only thing they ended up falling to is one of their own.
I also could see a Lawful Good person just as likely to tell the noble liege to eff off. I am that way, and I am very much a Lawful Good personality type. I respect the law. I go out of my way to do good. But I have a foul mouth and usually respond to rudeness in the same way. While I respect law, I am no respecter of men who claim to have the authority to wield it and do so unjustly.
This is why I tend to stay away from alignment arguments. So, I will not respond any further. I simply mean to suggest there are multiple ways of viewing the world. It's kind of funny we're talking about all this while I'm in an Ethics class. It's basically moral philosophy. We just briefly touched on Kant's Categorical Imperative, Divine Command ethos, and other rules-based ethics. Two people who think very much alike can arrive at totally different conclusions. Life is funny like that.
So i have no problem with this (ie revenge/vengance can be good or evil). Lawful good isn't a box as wissenchaft said. If a Prince was killed by the king of another country, the father (lawful good king) would justifiably go to war, revenge being one of the motivations. This isn't evil. The king would see his cause as just.
Moral relativism aside, i think we can both agree on that intent determines the morality of an action. Someone seeking vengence could be doing it out of duty to family, or because he genuinely recognises his target to be evil. I could equally argue that not seeking justice would be betraying the memory and name of a friend/loved one, which is also evil (if not more evil).
If anything, a neutral person would seek to end the conflict. A templar/zealot (lawful good to the extreme) would not rest until justice is met, which can include wiping out everyone who commited the evil act to begin with, depending on the god, crime, etc. I would argue its an issue of good evil rather than lawful/chaotic.
Or do you think a chaotic good person would kill women and children?
I'd argue that anyone who does is evil, regardless of their preference to law/chaos
Lets say there was a child who was the incarnation of EVIL HIMSELF(!). I could envision arguments that a lawful good person could put forward, for and against killing the child. Same story for chaotic good.
Lawful good could cite duty to faith, to future to kill the child, for the good of the realm. They could also say that it is wrong to kill any child and that would also fit.
Chaotic good can also put forward these arguments (less so on the duty aspect, moreso on the greater good). To me, this shows that its not a strict issue of law/chaos, but good/evil.
And again, i'd like to reiterate that deviating slightly from that behaviour doesn't mean he isnt that alignment. I was providing a counter-example to a notion that all lawful characters had to follow orders. (ie when you asked who gave orders to batman). Saying batman MUST follow orders to be lawful is like saying you MUST break laws to be chaotic. To contrast, luthor is the epitome of lawful evil, but he takes orders from no one (unless he's at gunpoint or its a part of his master plan), same could be said of batman. He would take orders if a team necessitated it or he had a trick up his sleeve.
While following orders is lawful, and breaking laws is chaotic. they aren't the defining criteria as other aspects in terms of methodology, personality, tendancies, etc define the totality of alignment. Except that buying a slave would help fund the business, futher perpetrating the cycle of crime.
Also, if there are multiple slaves, would a paladin buy them all? no, its not possible given that most paladins dont care too much about material wealth. Would he save a few and abandon the rest? he wouldn't do that either, because his duty wont let him.
In my view, a true paladin would free all the slaves (by force if necessary) and break the slavery ring, bring the criminals/evil-doers (in his eyes) to justice and all that. His motivations aren't "screw the rules, save slaves" its "this law is evil, DUTY CALLS, JUSTICE SHALL PREVAIL + save slaves (Etc)"
Paladins CAN go against laws if the laws are unjust, they may dislike doing so, but they will. For pretty much all lawful good paladins, slavery is unjust, regardless of legal status.
Therefore, gotham (being the corrupt ineffective shithole that it is) is like thay and batman is the paladin trying to restore order and normalacy and do good. Batman would love nothing more than for an effective and functioning legal and justice system, but there isn't one. So he has to substitute himself.
If batman was chaotic good, it would mean he has little faith in legal systems to begin with, so he wouldn't care for one even if there was a possibility of one being functional, he wouldn't bother working with the police, or do things like gather evidence.
LOOOONG ass post
The laws of an evil society like the Underdark are clearly at odds with a knight of the Order of the Aster, for example. Such a paladin wouldn't support slavery and murder of rivals. An assassin is Lawful according to an evil organization's codes such as the Shadow Thieves, and isn't going to follow the law of the land in Waterdeep. She's constantly going to be breaking the 'law of the land' in the society at large.
So it is on that basis that I agree with the arguments that strict adherence to a set of personal principles is what Lawfulness is fundamentally about. As I see it, it is about how internally self-regulated and behaviorally consistent the character is.
At the other end of this axis is a character who is capricious and impulsive in his or her behavior. Such a character will be driven to act by things other than a strict code, such as emotion, personal affinity, wishes, wants, and whims. That's how I see Chaotic.
That said, 3rd and 4th edition HAVE expanded on the 2nd edition due to too many rules not making sense and it's now a proven obsolete system. So I think that's most people in this topic refer to those rules rather than the 2nd edition.
Also, Rhian, it's a difference between saying and doing. And that's very important for the new interpretation of the chaotic/lawful scale. Here's an example of an ideal Lawful character based on the new rules of DnD:
A Paladin living by a personal code, moral, or belief, depending on the choice of deity. But let's say he picks a deity with the following rules: "Thou shall not lie," "Protect the innocent and those weaker than you", and "Serve thine maker". When challenged, he still sticks by them the best he can. Let's say the paladin sees his arch-nemesis in trouble with some Drow who want to capture him for torture. The Paladin's code specifically said: "Protect those weaker than you" Rather than letting his arch-nemesis die, the Paladin MUST do his best to assure the arch-nemesis' safety if it's within the Paladin's power to do so. The paladin can afterwards arrest his arch-nemesis, or do what his code tells him to do.
But the rule doesn't have to be god-sent. It can be a personal code, as long as you're coherent and consistent to it.
Now here's an example of someone completely opposite: This guy I know, let's call him Joe, he always says stuff like "Bros before hoes" . But as soon as the situation suits him, he'll ditch you with the bill to go for a random bang with a girl. He is not coherent with what he says, and will break his own rule as easily as he made it up. Though sometimes he sticks to it, if there are no girls to his liking. This makes him Chaotic, as he changes who he is depedning on the situation. He still has some other redeemable qualities to him. He sometimes donates to chairity. He will help mothers to get that baby-wagon onto the bus/train. He's a good guy, but I don't rely on him, and I don't consider him a friend, or someone I would regularly hang with.
Hopefully the community can survive the onslaught of bad grammar and awful spelling XD
While its true its up to interpretation, they (Wotc) try to be as descriptive and precise as possible, as they want alignment to be meaningful and useful.
Eg if you cast detect alignment and detected lawful good, you should be able to expect that person to keep his promises, on average in the very least, or alternatively, really really dislike to betray people.
Furthermore, if someone made a lawful character, that acted completely chaotic (broke promises, constantly stole, blatant disregard for authority, no sense of honour, highly spontaneous, etc) you'd be justified in calling them out on it, and no amount of interpretation would make their RP'd behaviour justified in terms of their chosen alignment.
tl;dr, its best to accurately describe alignment, for both RP, gameplay and enjoyment purposes IMO
I have seen people RP against their alignment and it is bothersome. I just also get annoyed when people play lawful good paladins as lawful stupid. You can be good without being a goody two shoes and you can be evil without being a jerk. I like when things are more subtle and gray, rather than black and white and hack.
It won't stop him from being Chaotic Evil when he jams his hand down through your throat and pulls out your lungs for questioning his world domination plans... or because you didn't get you cat spayed/neutered and were planning on abandoning the kittens.
This one always loses me a bit. Evil people can love genuinely and evil people can actually like things. They just aren't good people.
It seems to me like you may be misremembering the movies or didn't like them enough to pay attention.
I could go on, but I guess maybe we should just agree to disagree. Both our understandings of fictional characters, and our definitions of D&D alignments, just don't match.
@Belgarathmth You are speaking to a former archaeology student here, which colors my Impressions of Indy's methods quite soundly. He's a throwback to the bad old days of archaeology, when no one made careful notes of where artifacts were found, where no one made site plans, and where you just go in and take what you want with no effort to ensure you understand a thing about the culture that produced it. Modern Archaeology, which had already started by that time (as you can see with Tutenkhamun) recorded everything. The artifact is worthless unless you know where it comes from and where it was found. He's doing far more damage to archaeology and the artifacts by stealing them from where they are than documenting his finds. Essentially, he's taking the artifacts and ignoring the culture and its significance. I know it's being tarted up for the movies. But Indy? Based on his actions? He's a HORRIBLE Archaeologist. What he's really doing is stealing artifacts for museums, with no attempt to understand the cultures he's stealing those artifacts from, and with no attempt to preserve the surroundings of said artifacts so that other scholars can learn from them or learn from the context in which the artifacts were found.
Or maybe not as your views on killing seem to be strictly black and white:
"A Good character wouldn't kill for revenge. He'd turn the miscreant over to the authorities to punish, because the rule of law is good for all people"
I don't agree with this. No doubt that's true for many breeds of lawful good characters, but certainly not for chaotic good characters. I'm guessing you don't think there's too many "good" heroes in action and western movies, which may be a fair call, but I'm a big fan of shades of grey.
It seems that you have 'law' and 'good' joined at the hip. Things which are morally ambiguous seem to fall into the "Chaotic Good" column in your books for seemingly no reason. To say Indianna Jones is non-lawful because his misguided ways are damaging archeology doesn't make any sense... Does not partaking in the yet to be popularized methods of a profession make you unlawful?
If so, police didn't start using finger printing technology until fairly recently. Does that mean that the police were unlawful? I mean by not using this method of solving cases they were making the police look like they were incompetant by todays standards and in the long run many criminals no doubt went unpunished. Are they unlawful because of this? Those who did use finger printing technology 10-15 years ago weren't using DNA matching like they are today. Are those finger printers from 10-15 years ago now unlawful because a new method has been discovered to do the job better and more acurately? Does any of this make any sense?
What is a cop's opinion of their colleagues who beat confessions out of criminals as opposed to relying on questioning, leads and evidence? (and yes, unfortunately, this still happens).