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Thread: What's Wrong With Lawful Good?

  1. - Top - End - #104
    Firbolg in the Playground
    Join Date
    Oct 2011

    Default Re: What's Wrong With Lawful Good?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaern View Post
    I feel like empathy was the wrong choice of word. Tolerance would have been a better choice.

    Evil can abide good.
    Good can not abide evil.

    When an evil character performs an evil act he's generally choosing to perform that act, whereas when a good character performs a good act it's because he's being called to perform that act. Ignoring the call of someone in need means turning your back on your good alignment. The inward-focused nature of evil and the outward-focused nature of good are why evil characters can generally be more flexible in their actions than good characters without jeopardizing their alignment.
    This states the majority of my opinions on the subject better than I have explained them. Kudos!

    Evil can accept people doing good acts; good cannot abide evil. Thus, yes, evil is better for party unity, because it can tolerate more. Evil is more tolerant.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaern View Post
    Evil is characterized by satisfying one's own desires at the expense of others. As an evil character you would not likely make any personal sacrifice - bodily, financially, or otherwise - to help a stranger without some sort of incentive, though you might stand by and watch your party help an innocent so long as their sacrifice came at no expense to you. You might scoff at them and tell them they're wasting their time on that worthless meat sack, but you wouldn't be obligated to stop them.

    Evil is inherently self-centered, and the fact that each character has his own goals and desires gives the alignment itself the potential to have very personal implications for individual characters. They may want fame, or wealth, or power, or maybe they just enjoy the suffering of others.
    As long as you're creating the character, why not make something like "wants the party to succeed" to be the thing that the evil character wants?

    Now, where I disagree with you is on the issue that evil won't do good, won't make sacrifices themselves. Some platonic idea of evil might not, but an evil person absolutely will. How many murderers or cutthroat companies donate to charity? Even people who actively dislike the idea of helping people can still feel the social pressure to help out (and then complain to "dear Abby" about how they're being bullied into being good). Someone who donates their time to homeless shelters, and then poisons their enemies? That's not an inherently incoherent character concept. It just ties into how flexible Evil can be, because Evil is a choice, and does not preclude behaving altruistically.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2019-09-18 at 02:44 PM.