Quote Originally Posted by Ring_of_Gyges View Post
Back to the original question, 'Can a lawful good character be a vigilante who punishes evildoers outside of a legal system?' I'd say sure. Personally I think treating a Lawful alignment as having anything to do with prevailing cultural rules is a mistake.

Take Dan the Dwarf. Dan lives in a dwarven hold with legal rules, written down, impartially applied, and basically fair. Everyone is connected to everyone else by family and feudal ties into a well organized society. The community as a whole can respond as a cohesive unit to outside threats and has courts to handle internal disputes. Dan loves this, he thinks this is how people should behave, and is capital L Lawful.

Take Oscar the Orc. Oscar lives in an orc tribe where there are no property rules beyond "what you can hold onto is yours, what can be taken from you isn't". Disputes between orcs aren't governed by any sort of rules, the aggrieved party just tries to murder the other orc. Leadership of the tribe isn't based on any sort of constitution or theory of rulership, there is just an orc who is bigger and scarier than the others so people mostly do what he says. Oscar *hates* this. He wishes his people would stop wasting their talents on infighting and private vendettas. He wishes they could get organized, work out a chain of command, and get some order in place so everyone wasn't spending half their time trying not to get stabbed by another orc who is pissed off about something. Oscar sounds pretty lawful to me, but compare him to the PHB definition. He doesn't "respect authority", he thinks the authorities in his tribe are idiots, he doesn't "honor tradition" he thinks his traditions are dooming his species. I'd stat him up as Lawful, even though he is totally opposed to the cultural values of his people.

More importantly I think it is important that people with identical views have the same alignment. If Dan is lawful, Oscar needs to be too because they think the same thing about how to organize society. The best way to accomplish that (IMO) is to have lawful/chaotic be about adherence to ideals rather than cultures (which may or may not have lawful ideas).
Here are my thoughts on this issue: the Dwarves in your example seem to be doing just fine; they are a Lawful Good society with a clan/feudal structure and a functioning court system. I would imagine that not every Dwarf in that society is always honest or never steals, but when someone does break the law there are ways to investigate the crimes, try the subject impartially and if he is found guilty, punish him. Dwarves are quite happy with this system; even if they commit a crime and are caught they know that they will have a fair trial and the punishment will be fair as well.

Oscar the Orc might not be Lawful; yes he wants to replace the values of his society with more structured ones, but my question would be why? Why does Oscar want to do this? Is it because Oscar's tribe is at a disadvantage compared to the Hobgoblins, Dwarves and Lawful Humans? Or is it because Oscar is sick and tired of being picked on all the time and prefer to sleep without keeping one eye open all the time? Basically, is Oscar interested in creating a well ordered society that benefits everyone or is he looking out for number one?

A lawful character on my scheme would be really troubled by vigilante action. He'd want checks and balances, he'd want to arrest and try villains rather than kill them, he'd want to have objective standards about who he goes after and what evidence against them he needs to have first.

A chaotic vigilante on the other hand would be more pragmatic, if he thinks someone is guilty but can't prove it he might go after them anyway. If a trial before an impartial judge isn't practical he might just punish the villain on his own judgment.

In my D&D games there can be lawful vigilantes and chaotic ones, they just go about it differently.
You pretty much summed up the difference between Daredevil and the Punisher. Matt Murdock may be breaking the law as Daredevil (he certainly risks being disbarred), but he operates by a strict moral code. His ability to follow that code has been pushed to its limit on at least four separate ocaissions, but he's managed to bounce back each time. The Punisher just shoots people he suspects of criminal activity. No trial, no appeal, just bullets, grenades and bazooka shells.

Despite the way he bends the law, I feel that Daredevil is Lawful Good. The best I can say for The Punisher is that he's a Chaotic Neutral loose cannon, if not outright Chaotic Evil.