Im a bit confused on lawful neutral. Could lawful neutral be someone who has rules they want in place and will do what it takes to enforece them with causing as little harm as possible but also not putting being good above all else.
This one can be a bit problematic because good and evil is a very subjective matter and so what I am saying below is also just my opinion.
A lawful neutral character is predominately lawful, they have a strict code that they live by. So that question is simple, the neutral part could mean a few things, they could be apathetic to good/evil, or they could be balanced between being good and being evil or they may even believe as part of their code that good and evil must exist in some type of balance.
I would say the apathetic kind is the easiest to understand, they simply don't care about good or evil. Since they don't care, they just follow the code that they follow, be those actions good or evil.
The more balanced kind gets into what is good and what is evil, multiple interpretations of that. I would say that somebody whom is good is somebody who helps others or does things for the good of society as a whole while an evil character is not generally seeking evil for evil's sake but rather are self-centred in some major way. Such examples could be being greedy and want to own/control everything, or they are violent by nature and desire to fight or kill, or they are focused on power and willing to sacrifice others to obtain said power. A neutral character in this way would have some level of self-interest but also wants to make the world/society a better place too.
Those that believe in making good and evil balanced are probably believers in some type of dogma religion or belief, so their actions would be shaped by that religion or belief and that is likely also the code that they live by to be lawful neutral.
Im a bit confused on lawful neutral. Could lawful neutral be someone who has rules they want in place and will do what it takes to enforece them with causing as little harm as possible but also not putting being good above all else.
Being confused about alignments is entirely normal; they're inherently confusing. Neither the good-evil axis nor the lawful-chaotic axis are at all clearly defined, and they cannot be and remain useful for D&D.*
What you describe sounds to me like it could be described as LN. If it sounds LN to you, great! You're Lawful Neutral.
The thing is, alignment really only matters as a roleplaying tool. It has virtually no mechanical significance. (At least one item cares. That's basically it.)
If you're playing in a way that doesn't fit your alignment, it doesn't matter. If you think changing it will better describe you, you just can. I'm running a game and I have no idea what any of the PC's alignments even are, and don't foresee ever needing to.
* This assumes that they're useful for D&D in the first place, which is questionable. But this is not the place for another alignments argument thread.
Im a bit confused on lawful neutral. Could lawful neutral be someone who has rules they want in place and will do what it takes to enforece them with causing as little harm as possible but also not putting being good above all else.
I did a whole thing on this, once.
See - as I've come across this, it seems to always be LAWFUL ... and also neutral, btw. So the way I've seen LN interpreted would always come out as an ironfisted adherence to the letter of the law. But also, it would almost invariably be adherence to the law of the good guys. You don't see a lot of LN in Zenthil Keep, or wherever.
So I did the same, only opposite: The Grey Guard. A 'paladin' order devoted to written laws as an absolute. Not good laws, but any laws - but they get applied equally to everyone. A Grey Guard in a tyranny would enforce tyrannical laws, but he'd come after the rulers too. So, in essence, NEUTRAL ... and also lawful, btw.
Or anyways that's what I was going for.
I think what you're aiming for is someone who has a personal code that he or she is absolute about - lawful so to speak, regardless of the actual Law of the land. I think that would be fine, but a hard sell for most GM's.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
TV Tropes has sections for all of the D&D alignments, describing different characteristics/character types that fit somewhere in a given alignment's range. It's a good place to look for some inspiration.
Some thoughts: LN tend towards rigid order and structure over accounting for personal circumstance. Think of a collectivist mindset; there's some larger whole that they're dedicated to, and that outweighs the effects serving/maintaining that whole has on individuals. The original example is pretty good for LN; while the Neutral makes them pretty morally flexible in what actions they can accept/carry out, generally if you're supporting an openly destructive/repressive/corrupt/etc. system you're leaning closer to Evil- particularly if, as with most PCs, you're actively involved in the affairs and getting your hands dirty some way. Like, an LN would support evicting tenants who can't pay their rent, even if it's one that's been inflated some way, because the rules are you pay your rent or be evicted. But if someone could prove the landlord was getting around price control laws to inflate the rent, they'd be on the landlord instead. They're not concerned with whether it was morally right or not to raise the rent, just whether it was allowed under the law.
I think the big point of reason to bring to the table for LN is that the Lawful aspect they cleave to needs to be coherent and relatively reasonable. In contrast to the above if you're the guard or overseer who's beating workers who can't keep up with high demands for hard labor on short rations and long hours, then even if you're the "just doing my job" Lawful imo you're still Evil because the system is demanding something objectively impossible and contradictory. They'll follow a system even if that system is harmful to some, but the less the end result resembles a stable and functioning society the less LN is the appropriate alignment.
My interpretation of Lawful Neutral is someone who believes that civilization and its rules are preferable to supernatural good/evil, in the sense that laws and societal structure is like morality chosen by mortals rather than having what is Right and Wrong dictated to them from on high by gods.
Laws and systems can be agreed upon, debated, changed, adjusted, etc. while many people basically live at the mercy of their god, in the eyes of this kind of Lawful Neutral character.
So, for instance, one thing this type of character might do is protect a vampire's lair from being burned down by townsfolk IF the vampire wasn't hurting anyone, didn't kill its victims, and only fed off the willing. It doesn't matter that the vampire is an Evil undead abomination, it's following the laws of this society (if only out of self-preservation) and deserves to live until it forfeits that right.
Imo he's borderline; can't recall just how repressive the Alliance or whatever the big evil government in the setting was called, but between the experiments on the one girl (and probably a lot of other kids) and what they did to the one planet, that's edging pretty far into "are we the baddies?" territory, which could make their wet works man more LE. LN is more the open and official by-the-book type who gets told "those people are criminals/terrorists/etc., go get them" without really being aware of what kind of sketchy stuff their bosses are up to.
Not everybody, but by definition a wet works guy is operating outside of the official rules, and in this context it's generally gonna be to suppress dissent or cover up dirty secrets. I feel like you can't maintain both Lawfulness and Neutrality like that- either you're acknowledging that you're acting to keep those in power at place via them exploiting the power their positions give them (LE) or you're sufficiently disinclined to let rules get in the way of what needs to be done for society (TN). That's not to say an LN can't have moments of "compromise for the good of society"- the most important thing to remember about alignments in D&D is they aren't absolute axiomatic boundaries on character actions- but by the time you're the go-to dark clean up guy for a state like this, you're past moments into your new normal.
One of the problems with neutral on the good/evil axis is that, while presumably it's somewhere between saint and sociopath, it's not really clear where in that range it's supposed to be. Consider the following set of good/evil axis choices
I go out of my way to help others and make the world a better place.
I avoid harming others in my daily pursuits, but I don't make a specific effort to help.
I don't generally concern myself with whether my actions help or harm others.
I go out of my way to harm others.
(1) is pretty clearly good, and (4) is pretty clearly evil, but there's an argument for setting the neutral at either (2) or (3).
Not everybody, but by definition a wet works guy is operating outside of the official rules, and in this context it's generally gonna be to suppress dissent or cover up dirty secrets. I feel like you can't maintain both Lawfulness and Neutrality like that- either you're acknowledging that you're acting to keep those in power at place via them exploiting the power their positions give them (LE) or you're sufficiently disinclined to let rules get in the way of what needs to be done for society (TN). That's not to say an LN can't have moments of "compromise for the good of society"- the most important thing to remember about alignments in D&D is they aren't absolute axiomatic boundaries on character actions- but by the time you're the go-to dark clean up guy for a state like this, you're past moments into your new normal.
Not to make this thread about the bad guy from Serenity, but I think he falls more on the LE side. He even said himself that he's wicked and what he does is evil, and that there's no place for him or men like him in the "perfect world" the Alliance is trying to build.
It does poorly when used with people who are raised a certain way in which they believe is "good" but others believe is "evil"
Are we talking in-game people, or out? In-game, it works fine; broadly speaking Good is being classically heroic and altruistic- defend the innocents, stand against those who would abuse or exploit them, etc.- while Evil is of course classically villainous and selfish- take what you want, kill anyone who stands in the way, etc. The "ends justify the means Well-Intentioned Extremist" is Neutral at best if they work to minimize their collateral damage in achieving their ends, but by the time you're into "condition/torture children to make them into weapons for the state" you're pretty well into Evil by D&D terms. It only does poorly when people try to bring IRL moral relativism concepts into it- the system was designed around the idea of a relatively unambiguous heroic fantasy model, so obviously you're going to have problems when you try to fit a square peg into that round hole.
Basically, thinking you're justified/doing the right thing doesn't make you Good in classic D&D terms, your actions need to fall within the set of behaviors that I think a solid 95+% of players can recognize as implied by the genre. This is not to say that anyone cannot/should not attempt to run alignment on a different model, but at that point you can't really complain that the system is working right when you're deliberately departing from the model used as a baseline.
As others have suggested, here's how I explain LN alignment.
This is an organized person who follows rules. Now whether those rules are societal laws or whether they are a personal code of conduct is up to you. I would say that a LN person believes that order is more important than good vs evil. An ordered society functions regardless of whether it is good or evil, and would likely see chaos (and personal freedom) as the real enemy. Good and evil and simply different sides of the same coin (a Good person thinks themselves good, and those opposed to them as evil; an Evil person thinks themselves good, and those opposed to them as evil). So a LN person wouldn't concern themselves with whether an act is "good" or "evil", so long as it is not chaotic. Chaos is the real enemy to a LN character.
A LN character is not spontaneous, they plan things out ahead of time. They tend to do the things the same way each time, and again, they view any form of chaos as the real 'villain'.
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Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
I mean, wouldn’t overthink the “Good/Evil” and “Law/Chaos” axes as they apply to the day-to-day; to most characters who aren’t close with the relevant planar forces, the concepts would be more abstract secondary matters. I agree with the principle- they’re more concerned with having a structured system than labels or exactly where it falls on an ethical scale (although imo it’s best to avoid anything too overtly Evil to avoid complicity issues unless it’s meant to be a plot point for character development or reforming the system), and they definitely view disorder as bad. Just wouldn’t necessarily have them thinking of these things with the capital letters.
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Im a bit confused on lawful neutral. Could lawful neutral be someone who has rules they want in place and will do what it takes to enforece them with causing as little harm as possible but also not putting being good above all else.
This one can be a bit problematic because good and evil is a very subjective matter and so what I am saying below is also just my opinion.
A lawful neutral character is predominately lawful, they have a strict code that they live by. So that question is simple, the neutral part could mean a few things, they could be apathetic to good/evil, or they could be balanced between being good and being evil or they may even believe as part of their code that good and evil must exist in some type of balance.
I would say the apathetic kind is the easiest to understand, they simply don't care about good or evil. Since they don't care, they just follow the code that they follow, be those actions good or evil.
The more balanced kind gets into what is good and what is evil, multiple interpretations of that. I would say that somebody whom is good is somebody who helps others or does things for the good of society as a whole while an evil character is not generally seeking evil for evil's sake but rather are self-centred in some major way. Such examples could be being greedy and want to own/control everything, or they are violent by nature and desire to fight or kill, or they are focused on power and willing to sacrifice others to obtain said power. A neutral character in this way would have some level of self-interest but also wants to make the world/society a better place too.
Those that believe in making good and evil balanced are probably believers in some type of dogma religion or belief, so their actions would be shaped by that religion or belief and that is likely also the code that they live by to be lawful neutral.
A lawful neutral character might also be one that believes that the good of society outweighs the interests of any individual.
Being confused about alignments is entirely normal; they're inherently confusing. Neither the good-evil axis nor the lawful-chaotic axis are at all clearly defined, and they cannot be and remain useful for D&D.*
What you describe sounds to me like it could be described as LN. If it sounds LN to you, great! You're Lawful Neutral.
The thing is, alignment really only matters as a roleplaying tool. It has virtually no mechanical significance. (At least one item cares. That's basically it.)
If you're playing in a way that doesn't fit your alignment, it doesn't matter. If you think changing it will better describe you, you just can. I'm running a game and I have no idea what any of the PC's alignments even are, and don't foresee ever needing to.
* This assumes that they're useful for D&D in the first place, which is questionable. But this is not the place for another alignments argument thread.
I did a whole thing on this, once.
See - as I've come across this, it seems to always be LAWFUL ... and also neutral, btw. So the way I've seen LN interpreted would always come out as an ironfisted adherence to the letter of the law. But also, it would almost invariably be adherence to the law of the good guys. You don't see a lot of LN in Zenthil Keep, or wherever.
So I did the same, only opposite: The Grey Guard. A 'paladin' order devoted to written laws as an absolute. Not good laws, but any laws - but they get applied equally to everyone. A Grey Guard in a tyranny would enforce tyrannical laws, but he'd come after the rulers too. So, in essence, NEUTRAL ... and also lawful, btw.
Or anyways that's what I was going for.
I think what you're aiming for is someone who has a personal code that he or she is absolute about - lawful so to speak, regardless of the actual Law of the land. I think that would be fine, but a hard sell for most GM's.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Somebody who prioritises the rules of the game over moral choices.
A by-the-book Cop or Lawyer, for example.
I always think that a Machiavellian Noble would be a good Lawful Neutral character, or possibly a Wizard or Monk in an Order.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawfulNeutral
TV Tropes has sections for all of the D&D alignments, describing different characteristics/character types that fit somewhere in a given alignment's range. It's a good place to look for some inspiration.
Some thoughts: LN tend towards rigid order and structure over accounting for personal circumstance. Think of a collectivist mindset; there's some larger whole that they're dedicated to, and that outweighs the effects serving/maintaining that whole has on individuals. The original example is pretty good for LN; while the Neutral makes them pretty morally flexible in what actions they can accept/carry out, generally if you're supporting an openly destructive/repressive/corrupt/etc. system you're leaning closer to Evil- particularly if, as with most PCs, you're actively involved in the affairs and getting your hands dirty some way. Like, an LN would support evicting tenants who can't pay their rent, even if it's one that's been inflated some way, because the rules are you pay your rent or be evicted. But if someone could prove the landlord was getting around price control laws to inflate the rent, they'd be on the landlord instead. They're not concerned with whether it was morally right or not to raise the rent, just whether it was allowed under the law.
I think the big point of reason to bring to the table for LN is that the Lawful aspect they cleave to needs to be coherent and relatively reasonable. In contrast to the above if you're the guard or overseer who's beating workers who can't keep up with high demands for hard labor on short rations and long hours, then even if you're the "just doing my job" Lawful imo you're still Evil because the system is demanding something objectively impossible and contradictory. They'll follow a system even if that system is harmful to some, but the less the end result resembles a stable and functioning society the less LN is the appropriate alignment.
My interpretation of Lawful Neutral is someone who believes that civilization and its rules are preferable to supernatural good/evil, in the sense that laws and societal structure is like morality chosen by mortals rather than having what is Right and Wrong dictated to them from on high by gods.
Laws and systems can be agreed upon, debated, changed, adjusted, etc. while many people basically live at the mercy of their god, in the eyes of this kind of Lawful Neutral character.
So, for instance, one thing this type of character might do is protect a vampire's lair from being burned down by townsfolk IF the vampire wasn't hurting anyone, didn't kill its victims, and only fed off the willing. It doesn't matter that the vampire is an Evil undead abomination, it's following the laws of this society (if only out of self-preservation) and deserves to live until it forfeits that right.
The Operative from the movie Serenity is an example of Lawful Neutral. Follow the law, enforce the law, doesn't matter what method.
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-Ilyara Thundertale
Good one.
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Imo he's borderline; can't recall just how repressive the Alliance or whatever the big evil government in the setting was called, but between the experiments on the one girl (and probably a lot of other kids) and what they did to the one planet, that's edging pretty far into "are we the baddies?" territory, which could make their wet works man more LE. LN is more the open and official by-the-book type who gets told "those people are criminals/terrorists/etc., go get them" without really being aware of what kind of sketchy stuff their bosses are up to.
I really like this websites descriptions of the different alignments.
https://easydamus.com/alignment.html
I'm not certain everybody knows what the blue hands are up to.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Not everybody, but by definition a wet works guy is operating outside of the official rules, and in this context it's generally gonna be to suppress dissent or cover up dirty secrets. I feel like you can't maintain both Lawfulness and Neutrality like that- either you're acknowledging that you're acting to keep those in power at place via them exploiting the power their positions give them (LE) or you're sufficiently disinclined to let rules get in the way of what needs to be done for society (TN). That's not to say an LN can't have moments of "compromise for the good of society"- the most important thing to remember about alignments in D&D is they aren't absolute axiomatic boundaries on character actions- but by the time you're the go-to dark clean up guy for a state like this, you're past moments into your new normal.
True alignment is imperfect.
It does poorly when used with people who are raised a certain way in which they believe is "good" but others believe is "evil"
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
One of the problems with neutral on the good/evil axis is that, while presumably it's somewhere between saint and sociopath, it's not really clear where in that range it's supposed to be. Consider the following set of good/evil axis choices
(1) is pretty clearly good, and (4) is pretty clearly evil, but there's an argument for setting the neutral at either (2) or (3).
Not to make this thread about the bad guy from Serenity, but I think he falls more on the LE side. He even said himself that he's wicked and what he does is evil, and that there's no place for him or men like him in the "perfect world" the Alliance is trying to build.
Are we talking in-game people, or out? In-game, it works fine; broadly speaking Good is being classically heroic and altruistic- defend the innocents, stand against those who would abuse or exploit them, etc.- while Evil is of course classically villainous and selfish- take what you want, kill anyone who stands in the way, etc. The "ends justify the means Well-Intentioned Extremist" is Neutral at best if they work to minimize their collateral damage in achieving their ends, but by the time you're into "condition/torture children to make them into weapons for the state" you're pretty well into Evil by D&D terms. It only does poorly when people try to bring IRL moral relativism concepts into it- the system was designed around the idea of a relatively unambiguous heroic fantasy model, so obviously you're going to have problems when you try to fit a square peg into that round hole.
Basically, thinking you're justified/doing the right thing doesn't make you Good in classic D&D terms, your actions need to fall within the set of behaviors that I think a solid 95+% of players can recognize as implied by the genre. This is not to say that anyone cannot/should not attempt to run alignment on a different model, but at that point you can't really complain that the system is working right when you're deliberately departing from the model used as a baseline.
As others have suggested, here's how I explain LN alignment.
This is an organized person who follows rules. Now whether those rules are societal laws or whether they are a personal code of conduct is up to you. I would say that a LN person believes that order is more important than good vs evil. An ordered society functions regardless of whether it is good or evil, and would likely see chaos (and personal freedom) as the real enemy. Good and evil and simply different sides of the same coin (a Good person thinks themselves good, and those opposed to them as evil; an Evil person thinks themselves good, and those opposed to them as evil). So a LN person wouldn't concern themselves with whether an act is "good" or "evil", so long as it is not chaotic. Chaos is the real enemy to a LN character.
A LN character is not spontaneous, they plan things out ahead of time. They tend to do the things the same way each time, and again, they view any form of chaos as the real 'villain'.
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
I mean, wouldn’t overthink the “Good/Evil” and “Law/Chaos” axes as they apply to the day-to-day; to most characters who aren’t close with the relevant planar forces, the concepts would be more abstract secondary matters. I agree with the principle- they’re more concerned with having a structured system than labels or exactly where it falls on an ethical scale (although imo it’s best to avoid anything too overtly Evil to avoid complicity issues unless it’s meant to be a plot point for character development or reforming the system), and they definitely view disorder as bad. Just wouldn’t necessarily have them thinking of these things with the capital letters.