Not at all; "lawful" primarily means that the character strives to uphold the beliefs, expectations and responsibilities that others place upon him. This doesn't make him any more or less prone to planning or scheming than a chaotic evil character.

Always remember that a chaotic evil character can still give all appearances of being lawful, and even hold a very high position of power. In fact, the sheer ruthlessness of chaotic evil characters means they're often very likely to seize positions of political power when given the opportunity. This does not make them lawful in and of itself. For instance, a judge who makes decisions based on bribes, nepotism, and political connections is chaotic-aligned regardless of who knows about it.

Hell, I once created a Paladin for a stalled PF game who was the embodiment of everything wrong with the zealot type of mentality. He was tasked with the Church of Iomedae with helping to tip the scales in the battle of Good and Evil by trying to, ah, persuade Neutral religious leaders to change their tunes toward that of Good; when the reasoning failed, they were to be "sent to the arms of the Goddess" and framed as being in league with the Lower Planes, setting up a more Church-friendly successor to take his place and lead the "betrayed" flock away from their old way of thinking. Lawful was hardly in doubt, but he was to register as "Good" because his rationale was that if he did not do his duty, the Neutral would be an unacceptable wild card in the PF equivalent of Armageddon, and all of sentient life hung in the balance; hence we was not acting callously, but out of a genuine belief that he was acting for the greater good, as opposed to doing his duty without any regard for the consequences (LN) or to get serve his own interests (LE).

tl;dr: Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are not quite as clear cut as they tend to appear in official D&D.
This. The moment Xzar started doing his giggling maniac shtick, I had to resist the urge to pull him aside and start telling him that with that approach toward Chaotic Evil, he'd be lucky to make his way out the of sight of the next Paladin he saw after me; he was so incompetent at hiding his utter disregard for sentient beings that my Paladin was on the verge of giving him a lecture on failing at Evil (before I remembered that conversation between the party members is impossible). It reminded me of the one time someone tried to grift me so badly that I had to resist the urge to tell them that they should change their game.

This is stretching things to an absurd level, even with the absolute morality of the Golarion world.

Evil characters can still believe strongly that they are acting in the greater good; this does not redeem them if they're actively committing acts of evil in furtherance of their goals. Someone who commits serious acts of evil to achieve good ends is at best neutral. As you described him, I'd rule this particular character as lawful evil. "My religious dogma leads me to believe that we must all band together under a common cause called 'good', and I will commit any act of 'evil' to ensure we do so," is a textbook case of missing the point.

Let us assume for a moment that this spiel fed to the character in question were in fact true: would the actions being done still be classified as evil? I maintain that they would not; in determining whether an action is good or evil, one must look to the motive of the actor. If Armageddon was in fact coming and Good needed every advantage it could get in order to avoid a scenario where the Lower Planes conquered everything and made all life miserable for everyone and ensure that the world was a place of peace and all things warm and fuzzy, it seems that at that point the concern for all future sentient life outweighs every other alignment-determinative factor. Where the character sincerely believes this to be the truth and is motivated by this same concern, I maintain that they are Good as defined by alignment. Now, if it turned out that the whole thing were in fact fabricated and the guy knew that from the get go, then we have to examine whether he was motivated by a concern for sentient life or not; likely that would not be the case, I concur.

Here's the thing, though: even if that particular hypothetical is not correct, alignment, while portrayed in a highly simplified fashion in a lot of official D&D, can be easily turned on its head in numerous ways. An Evil cleric might attend to every single party injury under the theory that a meat shield is no good if it is already tenderized, an Evil thief might hold off on stealing from the party in order to avoid being accused of theft and being thrown out of the group in order to keep adventuring with the people who keep the monsters at bay, or, to address the Xzar scenario, a Chaotic Evil Mage may act as the champion of the downtrodden until they acquire a position of power with enough security that they can decide to either keep up the facade for their own gain or turn into a relentless tyrant who will not hesitant to kill, torture, or otherwise oppress those they have control over to maximize inflated short term gain at an increased risk.

I would argue irrelevance.

An act is still evil regardless of whether it is committed in furtherance of a good goal. A character has a good alignment precisely because he/she works to find better and more just solutions, even if they should come at a personal cost. If you're willing to intentionally hurt and kill other people in search of a solution, you're evil. Your end goals are irrelevant. As far as I'm concerned, it's still an evil act. The character can rationalize however he wants.

However, setting aside alignments altogether, I would argue this guy is contributing to the apocalypse, not preventing it. He's killing community leaders, causing fear, animosity, and spite in his wake. Anti-Paladins everywhere would be proud, and fiends everywhere would be savoring at the opportunity to reap the harvest that this Paladin has sown.

The underlying premise seems to be that an act is always good or evil, regardless of the surrounding context; however, the game itself contradicts itself in this regard. Take the act of killing, for instance: if the act of killing is always evil, then evil is being done whenever an army of invading Orcs are killed in self defense by the armed forces of the nation they are attempting to invade. By this logic, every PC would be Evil by the virtue of killing sentient beings. Ergo, when it comes to killing, intent is key to determining whether it can be defined as morally Good or Evil.


As to a Good character always seeking other alternatives, that's all very good and well, but the problem is that sometimes the other alternatives are not viable, nor do they always exist in the first place. To use a non-RPG example, the game Spec Ops The Line presents the player with a variety of ethical dilemmas, many of which are not binary in nature, but almost all share one thing in common: there is no alternative to committing some form of bad action (beyond turning around and going home, but that's a whole other can of worms the game cracks open and is deserving of its own post). Either save a few civilian hostages after the character with mission-critical data has been executed and the coast is clear for a rescue, or proceed to enact a rescue in which there will be no time to save the civilians before the guards kill them. Choose to kill either a man who stole water in the desert or the cop who killed the man's family during the arrest to appease the supposed villain (who does not in fact exist and is in fact a manifestation of the main character's guilt regarding yet another topic worthy of a separate post), or try to do the "right" thing and either shoot the ropes suspending both parties or attack the snipers covering everyone and watch as the snipers prioritize killing the people you tried to save. Either give a man crashed by a truck and burning alive a quick death or leave him to suffer.

In the real world, if it were known that an atomic bomb were located under a populated city, and one living person knew where it was located, there are alternatives to using torture to getting the information in time in order to disarm the bomb, but if data indicates that doing a search will take too long, that mere interrogation will not succeed in time, or that after trying one of the alternatives (or a combination thereof) and then resorting to torture will still not succeed in time, torture in the case at issue is starting to look a lot less cut and dried Evil where the other options result in allowing people to die.

With regards to my character, the rationale was that all other courses of action would be ineffective due to a lack of belief (as very few people knew or claimed to know about it to begin with) and general resistance towards religious reform in established institutions, and that trying those courses of action and then falling back to the using the Church version of the CIA to preserve the world would result in people quickly deducing who was behind it and putting a stop to it, putting the world back on the track for an Armageddon where Neutrality might let Evil win. The other alternatives existed, but the probability of success was virtually zero, and pursuing those would have prevented enacting the more likely to be successful plan.

There is a profound difference between killing a neutral individual who isn't hurting anyone, and killing a ruthless marauder who has - and will continue to - kill other people.

The orc is directly culpable for what suffering it has caused; the neutral cleric is not culpable for what may or may not happen as a result of the actions of people he doesn't affiliate with. Even insofar as the cleric may be turning a blind eye to evil under his watch, killing him is vastly disproportionate to any crime he has committed. If there's a gun to the Paladin's head and he needs to do something drastic right now, that's one thing. I'll grant far more leeway to what happens in the heat of the moment than to conscious decisions by the Paladin. This really isn't comparable to the Paladin. You are not the one doing the executing here, and I'd agree I wouldn't at all dock a Paladin for making the hard choice when it isn't feasible to save everyone. This is entirely different from intentionally causing someone's death, however.

This would be entirely a different situation if the civilians were not hostages, but instead "collateral damage" caused by your own military operation. Then you would be culpable for their deaths. The precise situation, and how diligent you were in avoiding causing collateral damage, would weigh heavily on the exact verdict alignment-wise. Or, you know, don't do either. Sounds like the main character is psychologically disturbed, and having not played the game it's difficult to say whether his culpability is diminished by mental illness. Sidestepping the implausibility of such a scenario ("we have sufficient evidence to conclude there's an imminent nuclear attack... but our only lead is one guy in our custody") this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how torture works.

It's not like "okay, this is going to suck for the next six hours while we make you very uncomfortable in the hopes you tell us inaccurate information," no, it's "this is going to suck for the next six months while we break you mentally and physically until you're a shell of your former self who will tell us whatever we want," Torture is an exceedingly slow process of information gathering if you want accurate information. Then you have become the forces of evil by doing so, and have only served to defeat your stated objective.

For the record, the CIA comparison greatly hurt your argument; I consider that organization's more extreme actions as both morally indefensible and counter-productive towards world peace.

And this is the ultimate problem with treating alignment as an objective manifestation of objective morality as opposed to an objective manifestation of subjective beliefs on the nature of morality (a la Planescape). The latter acknowledges that Good and Evil are concepts that sentient beings have attempted to define for millenia, ultimately failing to reach any total consensus on the nature of morality, while the former handwaves away all of that, resulting in a gross oversimplification of sentient interactions and beliefs (or insert any given issue of morality here). We have yet to definitively determine as a species, among other things, when exactly inaction is morally culpable, but having an answer foisted onto the population ignores one of the defining aspects of modern society, namely how differing views on morality shape the world.

I think we agree that the act of killing is not always Evil, and that making the determination ultimately turns on the surrounding circumstances. As to how each of use might evaluate the circumstances of any given killing, see the first paragraph.

Some would argue that, and our legal system does recognize, that when a person takes action that proximately results in harm to another, that person is liable/culpable. The more obvious example of course would be the act of pulling the trigger of a loaded gun being the proximate cause of the death of the man whose head it was held against; however, the rationale seems to be that so long as the actor takes an action that they know or reasonably should know will result in the death of another, then the person is to blame. I can think of more than a few people who would argue that taking action at all in this scenario would result in the actor being morally culpable for the death of whoever died, as they intentionally acted in a manner that they knew would result in death. Whether or not they are wrong, let alone whether the culpability overrides any other good they do as a result (after all, inaction will result in a death as well), leads back to the argument in my first paragraph. As to the Paladin, if they think that their options are inaction leading to a unacceptable result (world damnation) and action leading to a favorable result (paradise on earth), then under the logic employed in this paragraph, it is entirely possible that the former could be found good and the other evil. Whether it's wrong or not, second verse, same as the first paragraph.

We're starting to stumble onto the second can of worms that I have referenced; the character is determined to evacuate Dubai after it has been devastated by a storm and for various reasons is hell-bent on doing that, forcing the player to ultimately question why they kept playing when the game reminds them that "there was always a choice". For the sake of argument, let us assume that the character in question cannot leave the area without dying, thus compromising the evacuation, thereby resulting in people being stuck in a city with limited water and under the thumb of armed madmen for an unknown period of time in which any number of people could die. One might make the argument that by taking any action in order to proceed, the actor is in fact increasing the likelihood of the ideal outcome (rescuing and evacuating civilians).

Such is the nature of conducting a thought experiment; how likely is it that a man in the desert will have his canteen stolen or otherwise deprived of water after the water has been poisoned without the man's knowledge? Not very, but it's a textbook example of attempting to work out morality via the creation of hypothetical scenarios.

I have never tortured someone before, so it could very well be that you may be right. However, if all other alternatives would definitely take too long, one could argue that a more brute force approach of inflicting injury would be better than trying to search each potential city and risking death, even if the data in question might be more unreliable as a result. Again, however right or wrong that may be, see paragraph one.

I had intended to make a reference to the CIA as an attempt to inject levity (my sense of humor tends toward the gallows on occasion, so I may have failed) and avoid restating the long and overwhelming description of the Church's actions.

As to the issue of whether the Church has become Evil, one could argue that under a utilitarian evaluation, temporary unsavory actions taken in furtherance of a future benefit with astronomical utility value may in fact maximize total net utility for all sentient life, leading to it being considered morally praiseworthy. As to whether or not this is right or wrong, see the first paragraph.

Oh, I fully agree that alignment is a real pain to define effectively, and you'll never get everyone to agree with you. At this point, I suspect we'll have our differences at the end of this discussion (though I'm quite pleased at how polite this has been; normally alignment discussions can get a little heated)

EDIT - ugh, I made another wall of text... sorry... This much we agree upon; context is important. It's clear we disagree on how it applies, however, outside of clear-cut cases. I'm sure we'd both agree that no justification could be made for outright genocide (which is why I didn't even bother with the cliched example), while we both agree the justification is very strong in cases of self-defense. As legal principle goes, this is a good one. However, judges, juries and prosecutors do exercise discretion in exceptional circumstances. Situations as you described (binary "either A dies or B dies") almost never occur in real life, and if they do it's a spur-of-the-moment thing that's even easier to defend. It's superb as a hypothetical thought experiment or as a plot for a story. As far as real-life goes, it's pretty far-fetched, so I would not expect to see this kind of situation enshrined in general legal principles.

I'd be interested to see if there is a precedent for a case such as the hypothetical ones you've brought up, but I have neither the time nor the resources to do that kind of research right now. Rather, I'm making a point between the logical inconsistency of knowing something while at the same time having no information about it. The very premise is itself a logical contradiction. I can accept unrealistic thought experiments, but those with a logical contradiction built into their baseline assumptions I object to. Considering our discussion of moral justification for morally objectionable actions, the CIA is a very topical real-world example and I took you seriously. I have no doubts that the vast majority of people who work for the CIA honestly believe that what they are doing is right, and I find that the most disturbing aspect of it all. I have different and complementary thoughts on this

Firstly, the kind of people who would permit mass-murder are not the kind of people I would have any faith in to bring about peace and reconciliation. Essentially, because they are willing to commit acts of evil, they will continue to commit acts of evil whenever they feel they are justified. Factoring in human irrationality and corruptability, I would argue the results would be a utilitarian net loss.

Secondly, I reject the utilitarianism view that suffering of the few is can be offset by the joy of the many. I can accept that some won't have it quite as good as others, but to completely disenfranchise or kill one group of people for the benefit of the remaining groups is injustifiable in my eyes.

The answer to that, alternative ways for the quest to play out, Coelocanth mentioned a good example. In reality you may not get the material reward for completing a quest but you should still get XP for dealing with the given quest. My example I stated earlier where XP was given for ignoring the quest, that was because maybe that's how your character would have handled the situation.

Here's the problem. Your do gooder fighter character has done lots of fedex quests, got xp and material rewards from them all, leveled up and can upgrade his long sword proficiency. Your stupid evil character felt the quests we're beneath him so he ignored them but kept his eye out for potential profit by selling the lost items, but lost out on the XP doing so. The logic is is that by bringing people books, you can swing a sword better which makes no sense anyway. So why can't I tell them to shut and still be able to swing a sword better like the do gooder? I only reacted to the quest how my character should

Did you play Icewind Dale 2? Remember the Shaengarne river area where after you rescue Sabrina Fairwynd you can ask to escort her home? You get XP for asking that and all you did was ask a question. If you can get XP for that, why can't you get XP for telling some idiot who lost his book to shut and buy a new one?

I know, I've seen stupid people do stupid things in real life but the problem in DnD games is the world seems mostly filled with do gooder and stupid types. I know stupid evil types in real life but in a DnD setting, it's the norm.

When I first posted this in this thread, I wasn't trying to stir up a shit storm about alignment (very sorry if I have BTW), it was that the dialog options you are given either fall into do gooder or stupid evil types. You may be able to role play a class, but with XP only being given for the "good" deeds, you are pretty much forced into playing a good character. With my previous example before, someone loses something asks you for help, you can only reply in 3 ways, 1 good way (agreeing to help) and 2 stupid evil ways (telling him to go away, laugh at his plight, threaten him whatever). If I could answer with something like "Well, I am pretty preoccupied with other jobs at the moments but I will keep an eye out for you" I would feel much better because considering your situation, this is a much more sensible reaction.

Just want to reiterate my beef really doesn't have anything to do with alignment in and of itself, it's about the game rewarding you for being the "good guy" and penalizing you for being "stupid evil" and in dialog, those are your only options.

Edit: Seems evil isn't the only alignment affected by stupidity. Just talked to the noble in the first Cloakwood area, I agree to help him, the druids come and I get two responses 1) Side with the druids (comment was rather assholey so you know it's the wrong one) or 2) try and negotiate. Select 2 and the druids simply assume I'm with the noble, they attack so I'm forced to defend myself. To think how differently that scenario could have played out if the druids talked instead of stupidly attacking a superior force *sigh*, There's just too much stupidity in the Sword Coast, I swear before I enter Candlekeep, I'm gonna kill everyone in the Sword Coast first.

Edit 2: Definately going on that killing spree now. Just met Takiyah and 2 other shadow druids who were so certain he could single handedly take on my party of 6 and deliver natures wrath with nothing but an ordinary quarterstaves and studded leather armour. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!!!!!!

And Godwin's Law was narrowly averted :)

I only bring up the law to the extent that it reflects the views of certain people on morality, particularly culpability for the death of another. That said, I am now curious if the thought experiment about letting the train hit five people or changing course to hit one person has actually happened.

Perhaps I did not make the contested premise clear; it is known that the bomb is under a populated city, but it is *not* known which city is in danger, nor is it known where in the city it might be located.

I'm not much of a fan of the conclusion reached by my character myself, but I thought it would be an interesting experience to explore the mind of someone after arriving at it, waiting to see if they could ever be redeemed or if they continued to be a titanic wanker.

Funny story, actually: I have yet to run a game of my own, and as a result I have been poring over Planescape setting material. It's a fascinating setting and I am already taking down mental notes for long term campaign goals and quest hooks, not mention starting to get a grasp on the Cant. Anyway, I started reading the Player's Guide to the Planes to make sure I had every base covered, and I found myself absorbed in the descriptions of the various factions that operate in Sigil, and it was an eye opener to say the least. Particularly shocking were the Harmonium. The Harmonium in PST are portrayed as little more than glorified police (which is in fact the role they play in the setting), whereas the book revealed that they were a faction with a rather militant advocacy for authoritarianism. The way the Harmonium sees it, the world it either at peace or at war, with the latter coming about due to differences in ideology and the former attainable only by adhering to one universal system of beliefs (theirs, naturally). In furtherance of their goal, the book specifically mentions that the Harmonium doesn't mind if they have to hit a few heads to do it, indicating that at the very least they are ok with intimidation, at worst that they will resort to murder.

If ever a group screamed "Lawful Good not welcome", it was this one, and yet, the only alignment restriction for joining was a Lawful alignment. One could argue that Paladins were still barred, but given that other factions prohibited certain classes from joining, I'm pretty sure the intent was that Paladins would fit in well with the Harmonium. Granted, this operated under D&D, but from what I have been able to determine, the definitions for alignment types are common between the both of them; ergo, alignment seems to recognize that a character motivated by altruism, respect for life, and concern for the dignity of sentient beings would be perfectly welcome in the ranks of a faction that adhered to the school of thought that they are ok with breaking a few eggs to make the grand omlette of universal order in the name of peace. Given that this managed to get by editorial approval, I think that this serves as evidence that Good characters, as intended by the creative team, can be right warped in the way the values they adhere to, even to the point they take "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" to dark places.
I think I might be more to blame for bringing up the alignment discussion than you at this point (although it seems to be going much smoother than the last time one got started), so don't fret.

As for the encounters... yeah, this is kind of a sticking point with just about any IE CRPG, but particularly BG, which is amazingly heavy on combat with people who should otherwise know better. I guess that's part of the inherent problem with having the DM be a computer, as it only decides that the enemy should flee when they fail a morale check as opposed to realizing they are outnumbered and outclassed in every respect, and has no qualms with having the enemy decide that they are done negotiating even when it is clear fighting would be suicide.

It really does boggle the mind The only time I have ever, ever, seen it happen is when the pushee is idling. They refuse to be pushed whenever they are trying to do something (walking somewhere, fighting an enemy, etc).

This works when you try to loot something under someone else's feet, they get pushed.
But lets say I tell imoen to unlock a chest, i then try to loot it. 1/3 times she and charname will get stuck trying to push each other out of the way. I have to move him, then move her, then move him back to the chest to loot it.

And while walking always completely ignores its ability to push, meaning that as soon as it detects its path is blocked it will start running in a random alternate direction even if there is only way one to go.