Denamic said:
malestrithe said:
Denamic said:
The two extremes, Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil, are notorious for being shit for RP. The only real way to develop an interesting character out of a Lawful Good character would be to introduce a choice where they have to break their alignment.
Example: As a law stating all thefts to be punished by execution, poverty being prevalent, children are often executed according to law.
But Lawful Good? They have to break their alignment or pretend the conundrum doesn't exist.
You just described a tyranny and no Lawful Good character would stand by it. Lawful Good Characters does not go blindly with what the society wants. That's lawful neutral. Lawful Good would do their best to change society for the better, first through legal means, then illegally if legal avenues have been exhausted. Lawful Good is govern by a sense of justice that comes from within and not from some book. If killing a thief does not feel right to you, it is not going to feel right no matter what.
Lawful Good is not about the law. Law in his context really means order. Lawful characters believe in order of some kind is the best thing for people, be it society, codes, traditions, religious doctrine, or a ship's charter.
When order is just, everyone thrives. Strong protects the weak, punishment are administered fairly to everyone, and when new laws are created, lawful good strives to get the highest benefit with the least harm to everyone. When law turns into a tyranny, Lawful Good won't blindly go along with it.
It is perfectly reasonable for a lawful good character to kill people, stage an open revolt, or even overthrow the current system. Lawful Good is concerned with most benefit, least harm. If the best thing for the situation is to start over fresh with new people and new ideals, Lawful Good allows that. If one guard is causing more trouble to citizens than others, Lawful Good will try to get him transferred somewhere else.
Lawful Good is not going to tolerate injustice anymore than other good alignments. They just do things with a societal framework in mind.
You operate from the assumption that there is a 'true' objective set of morality to follow. In my example, this is not the case. The country and its church both support these laws.
To disregard the laws and follow your own set of morals and sense of justice is not lawful behaviour. That is the definition of Chaotic Good.
Before I begin arguing for Chaotic good again, just going to post point of someone else, to show I'm not being... Un-receptive to lawful-Good.
Kwil said:
No, it's perfectly in keeping with lawful good. Lawful, in AD&D, revolves around order, stability, and reliability -- not legality. So lawful characters, of any variety, have a code that they follow -- relentlessly. However that does not mean that the code is simplistic or without compassion. Look at the very description of lawful good: "speaks out against injustice .. Honor with compassion" A lawful good character would not stand for killing children who stole because they were starving, as that's not compassionate, nor just.
The difference, however, is that lawful good would seek to have the laws changed. Chaotic good is far more likely to simply rescue a few kids from the guards, or steal the food themselves and give it to a few of the kids, before going on their way.
However, I do have problems with the methods of Lawful Good. Its slow. Critically so. When dealing with a Lawful neutral Zealot, who believes everything needs to be within full control of the government (but not necessarily for bad reasons), they might take a while to realize when the law is taken to far, such as mandatory curfews for all citizens, with jail-time or major fines for offenders as a good example. Lawful Neutral Justifies it as necessary for maintaining "peace" and keeping conflict at bay, which is logical, and if a Lawful Good is not wary, they might believe so for a time; only to figure it out later as a mild case of oppression. Not to say they're stupid, they'll figure it out, they just might not notice it quick enough.
Then, once they figure out that the law has gone too far in the pursuit for order; they try the "change the law" method, which wastes valuable time itself. Getting an audience with a king or governor is hard you know. At least in any reasonable emulation of actual monarchy in an age of knights. And so the time that takes could be months; and each moment, there is the chance of some horrible law or zealot experiment for the sake of law he hasn't heard of yet doing real damage.
And assuming A Lawful Neutral being is enough of a zealot, the words against the law may fall of deaf ears; at which point, a lawful good character might have their argument fall of deaf ears. Or worse... Use your imagination. And then the lawful Good character has to fight past whatever happens at that point, (which if thrown in jail could take weeks, an hour if he's lucky and goes straight to striking first. Months if the Lawful Neutral Zealot escapes,) and in the end, it may end in a stalemate.
Then the Lawful Good has to run off to grab a Paladin Army (or something) to counter the numbers problem.
And at that point, lots of time has past, and chances are, things have escalated a bit far; and it would probably be best if they just lean over to their Chaotic Good companion, probably a rogue, and say:
"There's this guy being really restrictive with his laws; you mind helping me take care of him? I'm not good with stealth... just, don't have any collateral damage, Please!"
(If the player is creative, this means kidnapping, and faking the guy's death.)
...and then all they have to do is find a guy to replace the Lawful Neutral zealot, but that could take some time, as an ideal one is going to need to be one that doesn't set off alarm bells in a Chaotic Good character's head.
Now, in an ideal situation, a lawful good character only has to deal with one problem, and then the problem might be solved in a week, and if this scenario is what is going on in a campaign scenario, a smart person might figure out this is where it is going and skip to consulting their flighty cousins for advice; but if the character (or the person playing them) fail to catch on to the logical problems indicative at any step of the process, it can get... lengthy.
Chaotic Good on the other hand, can come up with solutions that solve the problem... Incredibly quick. Such as intimidating the Lawful Neutral Zealot at knife point, and explaining that this kind of scenario is what usually happens when Rules are taken too far in the pursuit of order, chaos bounces back to compensate, and someone gets held at knife-point cause someone feels wronged. Which would not happen if they'd not been so heavy handed.
Strangely enough, the logic of this was brought up by a Lawful Character in a web-comic I read once. I'm not sure if it was a Lawful Neutral Character that was simply really smart, or a Lawful Good Character.
Tyrant: And now my Acibek...My servant of law and order... You shall help me Crush all those who oppose our order.
Acibek: No, actually. I don't think I will.
Tyrant: You...you dare to oppose me? You are an Acibek! It is your duty to enforce law and order! In this land, I am the LAW!
Acibek: Incorrect. You are the rules and legislation. And by my estimations, further enforcement of said rules will only inspire further uprisings and chaos in this land.
-stuff about where the souls gathered to make him were gathered, sniped for brevity-
Acibek, (To lady): Rest assured, [the souls] are not suffering, they are part of my perfect collective, allowing me to, at last, bring peace and order to the land... by getting rid of Him!
Sums up both sides nicely, hopefully everyone is happy I didn't portray Lawful Good as lopsided, And I still got the point that unless Lawful Good is smart enough, or lucky enough to know what is going on from the start, they may waste a lot of time in the process.
...Of course, when they are smart enough, and lucky enough, that is really good. Just don't assume they always get to be able to know this stuff; if the player can figure it out, the character probably can, if they can't, the character probably can't. Rare exceptions should be subject to discretion.
Also... I think its important to note that a Lawful Good or Chaotic Good don't have to act Lawful or Chaotic all the time; just they do it with WAY more frequency than they do otherwise. Hey, not even Lawful Neutral or Chaotic neutral is likely to go all Zealot without reason, and as with old Acibek, a smart one is going to know if what they plan to do is going to be counter productive to their ideals.
Hmm... now I need to make a Chaotic Neutral Example...
Bystander: Hey, wanna go steal the crown jewels from the King.
Rogue: Pass, They'll probably use it as an excuse to hire more knights to track me down. I'll stick to just conning him out of his money in a way that makes everyone laugh, he'll probably take it a lot less seriously... now where's my "Clothes for Emperors" Sign? I'm sure people would love to see A king go topless.
0_0; Why did I use THAT example? Why?!
...
Wait, I think there was a real world example where someone did try to steal the crown jewels and got away with it... because he was so silly about it. Offering to buy the jewels off the king for a quid once he got caught(or something like that). Of course, the king at the time was kinda laid back about the whole "lawful" thing as well, being the king that brought back the right to have... Fun... Since puritans ruled the country before him, and they were all "fun is sinful". *groan*
