What exactly is a "Neutral" character in the context of DnD?
Fionordequester
Member Posts: 41
I ask because I always THOUGHT it meant one of two things...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) You're a person that's not good enough to be called "good", but not bad enough to be called "evil". So basically, a 6 year old kid who's not fully mature yet, or a 36 year old guy who's been pampered and spoiled for their whole lives.
2) You're a relativist who doesn't necessarily believe in hard definitions of "good" or "evil". You believe the pursuit of balance is more important than the pursuit of righteousness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But, I've never actually played any DnD besides Baldur's Gate, and the "Neutral" characters I've been finding don't seem t really fit in to my preconceived notions of "Neutral". Off the top of my head...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Jaheira's always talking about what Gorion would, or would not, do. She's even making statements like "Don't invite Dorn into your party! He's bad, and suffering his company would grossly contradict Gorion's teachings".
2) Speaking of Jaheira, her and Khalid are practically bending over backwards to help Abdel, despite there being absolutely NOTHING in it for them. They're acting out of kindness, and out of obligation to Gorion...I wouldn't think a Neutral character would be THAT committed to "do unto others as they do to you".
3) There's a group of Druids in the Cloakwood Forest who want to kill a merchant and his two buddies. Why? Because they've, apparently, committed crimes against nature, and must be punished for their transgressions. Seems to ME that said Druids are making some pretty hard and fast rules on what they consider "justice" and what they consider to be "crimes". They act like religious fanatics, when I would think a "neutral" character would be the exact opposite.
4) Carbos and Shank are APPARENTLY "neutral"...and yet are saying stuff like "I've a blade with your name on it!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So...what's the deal? Is that Baldur's Gate not having perfect writing? Or is there something I'm legit missing? Please let me know!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) You're a person that's not good enough to be called "good", but not bad enough to be called "evil". So basically, a 6 year old kid who's not fully mature yet, or a 36 year old guy who's been pampered and spoiled for their whole lives.
2) You're a relativist who doesn't necessarily believe in hard definitions of "good" or "evil". You believe the pursuit of balance is more important than the pursuit of righteousness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But, I've never actually played any DnD besides Baldur's Gate, and the "Neutral" characters I've been finding don't seem t really fit in to my preconceived notions of "Neutral". Off the top of my head...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Jaheira's always talking about what Gorion would, or would not, do. She's even making statements like "Don't invite Dorn into your party! He's bad, and suffering his company would grossly contradict Gorion's teachings".
2) Speaking of Jaheira, her and Khalid are practically bending over backwards to help Abdel, despite there being absolutely NOTHING in it for them. They're acting out of kindness, and out of obligation to Gorion...I wouldn't think a Neutral character would be THAT committed to "do unto others as they do to you".
3) There's a group of Druids in the Cloakwood Forest who want to kill a merchant and his two buddies. Why? Because they've, apparently, committed crimes against nature, and must be punished for their transgressions. Seems to ME that said Druids are making some pretty hard and fast rules on what they consider "justice" and what they consider to be "crimes". They act like religious fanatics, when I would think a "neutral" character would be the exact opposite.
4) Carbos and Shank are APPARENTLY "neutral"...and yet are saying stuff like "I've a blade with your name on it!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So...what's the deal? Is that Baldur's Gate not having perfect writing? Or is there something I'm legit missing? Please let me know!
0
Comments
But the easy justification is .... although neutral people don't necessarily behave as if they have a preference towards good and evil they would, in general, prefer not to live in evil circumstances lol.
You have a range of neutral characters....
LN characters tend to regard the law (or their own personal interpretation of what the law is/should be) as being superior to considerations of good and evil. For example if adultery is illegal, even if the results of the adulterer being punished would be "evil" or negative, the LN character (so long as their own personal moral code didn't interdict them) would follow the rule of the law. Whereas a LG characters often let "good" supersede the law, so that if a certain law's application would cause "bad" things to happen the LG character would likely circumvent the law in some way.
Neutral/True Neutral. True Neutral character's philosophy is often circular; that is, if you were to allow the good guys to eliminate all evil, they would eventually become evil themselves in doing so. So it's best not to be *too* good - Jaheira even says "Perhaps this group needs not quite as much help as I thought" which could be seen as approval (at high rep) but could also be interpreted as her wanting to be elsewhere because you're having too large of an influence on the sword coast. TN's don't keep a "good deeds/bad deeds" list and make sure it's perfectly balanced, they just try not to change the status quo unless it's heavily bent one way or the other.
Regular neutral - they're mostly in it for themselves irrespective of the law or good - but they likely wouldn't commit especially dastardly deeds out of self-interest. They do tend to have a normalized pattern of behavior. This didn't really exist in 2nd ED.
CN: They tend to have no regard for the law whatsoever, or normalized rules of behavior/etiquette. They also don't care *that much* of what becomes of their actions - whether they're good or bad - but they're not likely to take the "evil" option automatically simply because they can (because that would be evil).
1. Dorn has a deal with a demon to steal souls. Your soul is especially valuable.
2. There are Harper motives + loyalty to Gorion + promises they made to him.
3. Druids exist outside of "established" law by establishing their own - their neutrality exists because they don't regard normalized rules and have their own instead. Also those Druids in the Cloakwood aren't exactly on the up-and-up as far as druids go if you talk to Faldorn or happen to have Jaheira in your party when you go through there.
4. Carbos and Shank saw a chance to make some quick money so they took a contract to kill you. There's nothing necessarily evil about that. They don't hate you, they just wanna make some money.
As to why some characters seemingly do not align with their alignments - developers just had more pressing issues than to sit and discuss every minor character. There's a specific mod called Oversight that goes through BG2 creatures are tries to assign sensible alignment values.
Non-druid TN are inherently self-interested but not malevolent. They aren't above breaking the law, they aren't above doing the occasional evil act but they'll try to avoid it if they can help it. A TN mercenary can very well slip into NE if they do evil too consistently. Your average commoner leans toward TN too: they care about their daily lives and that's it.
CN are often hedonists. They do whatever the hell they want and damn the consequences. Unlike CE they aren't especially violent or murderous but they can still be extremely dangerous if they're motivated enough. Narcissism tends to be a big red flag you're dealing with a CN character but it's not restricted to them of course.
My post is more based on 3e where any alignment can denote a wide range of beliefs and behaviors. 2e was more restrictive and @Gallenger's post more accurate to it.
I think moral neutrality means living your life with your needs and the needs of your family and friends as priorities, and letting other people live theirs, with only limited concern about helping others, and either no concern or only faked token concern for any codes, greater causes, or religions. (Just saying you're an adherent of a "good" religion or cause doesn't mean you actually are if you don't live like it.)
You'll follow the law at your convenience, but don't really mind breaking some laws as long as the punishment isn't life-changing, or you think you couldn't get away with breaking it. You'll speed on the highway and sometimes cheat on your taxes, but you wouldn't rob or kill anybody, and you probably find violence abhorrent. You might keep a wallet full of money you found lying on the ground for yourself, especially if there was no ID in it, and you'd likely happily not report a banking , billing, or accounting error in your favor, unless you thought not reporting it would get you into unwanted trouble.
You probably don't like to see people or animals suffer, and you might occasionally try to help out through charity or volunteer work, but only at your convenience, and only in a limited fashion. Yourself, family, and friends come first before strangers. You don't really buy into any ethical philosophy that says you must devote most of your energy to helping others, although you may pay lip service to some altruistic philosophical or religious institution and tell others that you see yourself, your actions, and your ideals as "good".
Cynically, I'm convinced that a lot if not most people are lying about just how dedicated they really are to ideals of "good". They want the perks that come with being considered "good people" without any of the hassle or obligation.
As for the BG characters, most of the "neutral" ones fit what I've described here pretty well, in my opinion.
Jaheira is a special case - her nominal "neutral" alignment is just a rules thing, and her writers didn't want to be limited by Gygax's arbitrary "all druids are true neutral" rule.
You can still be neutral and take a contract to murder a, to your knowledge, innocent man, and still be neutral. If it becomes a regular thing, and you end up being an assassin, then an alignment change to NE would be in order. The act itself isn't good or necessarily neutral by any means, but if the character doesn't engage in this sort of behavior regularly it wouldn't be outside of their alignment. The rules *are* quite different for characters who have certain ethos to stick to - Paladins, blackguards, some clerics, Rangers, and some druids. Any sort of act in the moment that violates their ethos is prohibited and there will be repercussions for violating those ethos'.
In a regular game environment the DM is ultimately the one who draws the line on when a neutral character has engaged in overtly good or overtly evil acts too many times to be considered neutral any longer. It's also easier to figure out around a table because the underlying motivations and tendencies of the player are often a lot more clear.
The reasons behind neutrality are not bound to what most people would deem "good" or "bad".
A neutral character isn't restricted by trying to be good but at the same time they would not actively commit an evil.
I would explain Carbos & Shank being neutral simply with them being idiots who think that being an assassin is somehow cool and will make them look badass. They don't try to kill Charname because they enjoy killing, they do it because of the prestige. I would't be suprised if they never actually commited a murder before that and that if they would succeed it would seriously start gnawing at their concious, leaving them traumatized. Which could have gone a many directions from that point (alignment shift, getting a new job, etc.)
Killing in of itself is not an evil thing. Murder is.
Killing can even be a good thing, in extreme cases. Just look at DC's Joker.
Think of all the lives that could have been saved if Batman would have dropped his bs moral code and just killed him instead of capturing him over and over again. Letting the Joker live is the definition of Lawful Stupid.
And as others mentioned before, Jaheira is actually neutral good
Good: sacrifice yourself to help others
Evil: sacrifice other to help yourself
It's easy to be good when you can reload. In real life most people are neutral. Another name for neutral would be Good-Lite.
Not that you could tell by their attitudes.
And now I'm curious as to what books they paid to gain entry...
On the other hand, it's perfectly plausible for a good person to sacrifice innocents to save his own hide in a moment of weakness. It's called "do what you have to do". As long as he doesn't believe what he did is ok, and it weights on his consience, and he tries to atone - he can be considered good. I'm not sure what do you mean by the big plan, but these two loons are obviously at the very very bottom of criminal hierarchy. If you believe that anyone would've trusted them any info besides what's absolutely essential for their task, I don't have arguments to refute.
If they were tricked into believing that you're a monster and the only way to save thousands of lifes is to kill you, then it's not evil. But it's not "a chance to make some quick money" in that case.
Even if they had the wealth (which I'm sure they don't) to afford the sort of book which Candlekeep demands for entry, even a moronic goon wouldn't spend lots of money merely to earn a minor bounty. The only way I can see to make sense of their presence in Candlekeep is to assume that they got in by taking serving jobs - stableboys or whatever. (Obviously Candlekeep's menial staff must be exempt from the entry charge, else they wouldn't have any servants.)
As for their moral alignment ... they probably ought to have been assigned as Evil because they're goons, but perhaps the original developers assigned them as Neutral because they're so very moronic that they're like animals, incapable of understanding Good and Evil. Or maybe they were Neutral as a default because the original developers simply forgot to assign them to any alignment!
Anyways, thank you so much for all the responses guys! I think I have a clearer understanding of what the alignment systems mean now. So basically, if we were to fit DC/Marvel characters into the alignments, we'd have something like...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lawful Good - Jim Gordan
Neutral Good - Batman
Chaotic Good - The Punisher
Lawful Neutral - Judge Dredd
True Neutral - The Watchers
Chaotic Neutral - Mister Mxyzptlk
Lawful Evil - Doctor Doom
Neutral Evil - Lex Luthor
Chaotic Evil - The Joker
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lex is Lawful Evil
Doctor Doom is Neutral Evil
Batman is Chaotic Good - Does some insane shit.
In general they were armed lay people and not actual clergymen (clerics vs. paladins) although these lay people often took various religious vows and participated heavily in the liturgy of their monastic order. In they end they were still bands of armed men lol. They also occasionally subordinated themselves to strictly secular figures (in D&D terms that'd be like the local lord asking for aid from paladins to come slay some nasty-nasties on his land, and then the paladins just stay forever).
Some of the orders also branched out from purely military affairs to obtain substantial land holdings and some also worked very heavily in charitable areas (hence the word hospital).
It also depends, much like the monastic/military orders, which god/concept/idea the paladin belongs to as to how they behave - or at least ought to behave.
@Fionordequester - Being a ruler has nothing to do with whether one is Lawful or not.