I was always under the impression that the lawful/neutral/chaotic part of the alignment had to do with society rules, while the moral part of it had to do with personal rules. If you follow your own set of guidelines, that doesn't make you lawful, since by definition you will be following your own rules. Thus, a paladin is lawful because he follows the rules of his society (church), a guard is lawful because he follows the rules of his society (city), and you could probably have a ranger being lawful, assuming rangers also had a society with rules to follow.
What alignment would you assign to The Punisher? He is a killer, he doesn't obey laws, but he does have a very strict set of rules. Is he evil because he kills? Is he lawful because he follows a set of rules? Is he chaotic because he doesn't follow the rules of society? Is he just a psychopath?

Again, I think the alignment system tends to fall apart when you start to look at it too hard. There is personal moral codes, and moral codes imposed by society, which both could represent a 'lawful' alignment, but which can easily come into conflict with one another. Then there is the conflict between intention behind behavior and activities, the idea of an objective morality and perspective. If you commit a heinous crime such as torture or murder 'for the greater good' for instance, does it make you good or evil if you are convinced of your own morality? Furthermore does this change depending on the perspective, moral code, or intentions that this act is being inflicted upon? People argue about what constitutes a moral action in real life all the time, and the addition of a law/chaos axis complicates things further, which is why I generally dislike alignment systems, although I will say that I do like the Lawful/Chaotic axis a lot more than the good/evil one, because it is a bit more easy to udenrstand. Personally, my 'ideal' morality slider for a game system (if I had to make one) would have 'personal morality' on one end and 'cultural morality' on the other. (doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, however. Trying to make real-world morality work on the classic good/evil chaos/law slider is like trying to make a square peg fit a round hole however, as everyone has a different understanding of it. I do think that the Chaotic Good slot makes the least sense, however. and tends to attract the least enjoyable sorts of characters, IMO.

Again, I think this is all tangentally related, as the real issue at hand is why there is no good D&D fantasy books, and why the flagship character of D&D literature, Drizzit, is so irritating. :)

For the record, the alignment I think would best fit the punisher is Lawful Evil. He doesn't kill for sake of killing like a chaotic evil individual might, he does it as 'punishment' for crimes. However, his methods themselves can only be described as evil.

I always viewed Chaotic good as a doing what he/she considers is good, but who is not bound by a strict code of "what is good", but more acts on instinct and feelings.

Then again, I always hated the alignment system with passion. I just felt like trying to implement it in any meaningful way just limited roleplaying, and I wish it would never have been created. The alignment system is something that almost everyone I've roleplayed with has houseruled away, for similar reasons as the one I stated.

I've never cared for the Dragonlance books. IMO the Songs & Swords series is the best of D&D novels, i.e. fairly average fantasy fare.

Part of the Chaotic/Lawful issue here is that it was defined differently in various editions. In earlier editions, lawful was defined as your acceptance of not only society's laws, but law and order as a concept. In a sense, it was a desire and respect for structure of all kinds, both personal and societal, but societal got greater importance because societal order affects more people than a personal code does.

In 3e and onwards, lawful was changed to be a personal code, and nothing more. It doesn't matter what your personal code actually IS, it only matters that you never deviated from it. If your code demands that you murder everyone with blonde hair and that you rob every store you visit, then you'd be Lawful if you had enough integrity to always follow through on your beliefs. In previous editions your personal code in this case would be irrelevant because all of your actions cause discord rather than harmony. A corrupt lawyer would be Chaotic rather than Lawful because he has no integrity, even though as a lawyer his actions are formed around manipulation of the rules without actually breaking them. I think that this definition is downright silly, even as alignments go, since it's only about a quarter of the full definition from earlier editions.

You also have to remember that in D&D, these aren't just arbitrary designations. Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are fundamental forces of the universe and they have POWER. They are at a metaphysical level at least two steps above the gods themselves, and can affect many aspects of the everyday world, or even the entire setting itself. There's plenty of gray, of course, but your alignment and the alignment of other people/objects/places/etc have a very real impact on a physical level, not just a philosophical one.

the example you gave relates to the good vs evil not to chaotic vs lawful. sparring someone and saying that you not complete monster makes you less evil not less/more lawful.

and

"chaotic good characters cannot have a moral code"

i think that quote sums up your idea about the system pretty well as well how it is different from established alignment of d&d.
you can't have good/evil without morality. if you say chaotic character has no morality code then he/she is personification of chaos. that person is above/below the whole system then.

thats not how it operates and you are upset so to speak :) that the system does not work like you imagine and you have your own idea on what chaos means.

Everyone has rules. every sentient beings have rules which he/she/it/whatever obeys. that does not make them lawful in dungeons and dragons. you can say Joker is lawful evil character because he obeys his own rules of insanity but by the rules of dandd he is clearly chaotic evil.


cleric and paladin are two different things.

and you are speaking about good vs evil. not about lawful vs chaos which is the point of the argument here.

they are not the same. they are four different, equal in power ideas, forces of the universe.

One more reason why I like the alignment system, it sure creates talk and controversy. :)

A big deal to me is lying, if someone lawful gives you his word, he can be trusted. A chaotic person can't.

Evil is doing stuff to benefit yourself and maybe close friends, but mainly yourself.
Good is doing stuff for the benefit of others, and maybe yourself, but mainly others.

Which would of course mean, that Drizzt could also be seen as lawful evil. :)

But the system's just a rough guideline, unless you get stuck in it, you'll benefit.
And it's more understable as the early edition version,
if you consider law vs good to be actual divine entities the same as good and evil.
It just gets a bit metaphysical, so no wonder it was altered.

PS. In my view, Paladins are real neat characters to play with.
Considering them limited to city guard role, would be not too far off.

The system demands they get divine and legal mandate to go and eradicate all evil.
If they travel to another country, where they have no such liberty, they'll have a hard time.

But that also means, they can go and butcher a whole tribe of orcs or other "evil" creatures. Women and children, all for a higher cause. As long as they are on the holy mission, it's all good.

Alignment is useful as a shorthand for DMs. If my players try to make a truce with this type of monster, is it likely to keep its word, or would it be willing to betray them? Except as a very general guideline ("No, your paladin can't murder people in their sleep and take their stuff."), it's not something that player characters should have to worry about.

For the record, here's the definition of "lawful" and "chaotic" as per the third edition: Batman (I can't believe I'm doing this ...) has no problem lying to criminals and flagrantly breaks the laws when it's convenient for him to do so, but he usually keeps his promises. He's not irresponsible and doesn't seem resentful towards legitimate authority (but also has no problem ignoring it). To an extent, he probably believes that personal freedom trumps authority (i.e. if Gotham tried to outlaw pornography, it's hard to imagine Batman going from bookstore to bookstore beating people up), while also believing that some sort of moral order needs to be maintained. I think he's pretty clearly neutral good: edit: Jarmo, in relation to the above definition, I think you'll have trouble showing that a paladin committing genocide shows "respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings." Of course, D&D has always been a little weird about that, so I suppose it's up to the individual DM. My good cleric tries to resolve situations with "evil" races peacefully (without a whole lot of success, it has to be admitted).

A reader's choice of authors is personal, but I can't stand R. A. Salvatore's writing myself. I read one Drizzt novel (can't even remember the title), and then, to be fair, I read one of his non-AD&D books (called Echoes of the Fourth Magic or something like that). I disliked the non-AD&D one even more than the Drizzt novel. His style just doesn't appeal to me.

The Dragonlance novels aren't too bad considered as juvenile fantasy, but what was somewhat fresh in the 1980s probably seems much more trite today.

+Rep for mentioning Order of the Stick.

In the first three books (chronologically, Dark Elf trilogy) Drizzt could be classes as Lawful or Neutral. He developed a set of principles and attempted to follow them in a society which is against personal restraint. He later moves towards Chaotic when he realizes his principles were stupid and led to his friend Wulfgar getting killed (at least that's the conclusion I came to, the actual explanation was so badly written I missed most of it). After he meets Montolio he consolidates his principles with his nature and realises that everyone has a choice between Evil or Good and he chose Good, though apparently all Orcs, Goblins, and Knolls are born evil and there are no exceptions. It's not that the alignment system is broken it's just that Salvatore either didn't understand it or didn't want to properly use it in order to develop his character.

I'd say Batman is Chaotic Good since he is a comic book character. The authors can't have him killing off all the villains because if he did they would have to create a new one for each series and for one which has ran as long as The Bat it would get out of hand. Instead, they invented a set of Gotham morals which says no matter how Evil someone is they can always be reformed even though it never happens and their prison is as easy to break out of as a stripper cake.

The only good one Ive come across. Vampire of The Mists by Christie Golden.

And I laugh at people supporting shit like Dragonlance.

Well yeah, in normal world that would be the case. In D&D some races are just born evil, therefore being the antithesis of everything good and should be exterminated. For law, love and the greater good. Goblins being just a bit away from devils and demons, surely those should always be destroyed without any respect for their life, no?

Which might be partly why the system was done away with. Saying some races are just bad, might be interpreted as... racism.


A bit more shallow ground again with evil humans. Maybe there have been sliders like 73% evil, 13% chaotic. But that'd just be even sillier.