Is a Lawful Good person always a positive, wholesome person to be around?

[Max_Killjoy]

As BoED points out, an Archon is vastly more able to stomach the Chaos of an Eladrin, than the Evil of a Devil. They are Good first, Lawful very much second.

LG and CG characters can and do routinely cooperate toward Good ends. Adventuring parties frequently consist of Good characters of all alignments.

Then the diagram should be an oval, with the long axis on Good vs Evil.

[zinycor]

As BoED points out, an Archon is vastly more able to stomach the Chaos of an Eladrin, than the Evil of a Devil. They are Good first, Lawful very much second.

LG and CG characters can and do routinely cooperate toward Good ends. Adventuring parties frequently consist of Good characters of all alignments.

I don't think I have ever been on a party without evil characters.

[hamishspence]

Then the diagram should be an oval, with the long axis on Good vs Evil.

That would imply that LE and CE are vastly more tolerant of each other than they are of Good. Which is not true.

As Red Fel points out:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...to-Lawful-Evil

Chaotic Evil: To those who think that Chaotic Good is Lawful Evil's worst enemy, I say you, "Look here, and behold." Chaotic Evil is all of the anarchy of Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral, with none of the manipulable idealism. Good can be channeled towards ostensibly Good ends; Neutral can still be channeled through its love of freedom and self-expression. But there is no leash that can restrain Chaotic Evil's mad, brutal passion, no structure or agreement that can bind them to your will. Kill them on sight; nobody would begrudge the loss of another demon.


LE hates CE vastly more than it hates any of the Good alignments.


Just as different Good alignments tend to cooperate, different Evil alignments tend to fight.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Honestly, i'm not sure why I commented. I consider trying to suss out alignment from actions, especially from fiction characters, to be bass-ackwards. Its really only useful as a player motivation, to be considered when making decisons on taking actions. Not as a yardstick to measure actions taken.

I mostly agree, but with fully-narrated characters (like Sam Vimes), where you get a good look "under the hood", you can get relatively close.

Of course, as with all non-D&D fiction, you have to adjust for the fact that the alignments aren't actual thing in the universe of the character, but...

In general, I strongly dislike attempts to pigeonhole people based on alignment. If we treat each alignment[1] as only being in the extreme edges (in this case extreme Good + extreme Law) instead of being a relatively broad, generic statement with lots of squishiness at the intersections, you end up with the Lawful Stupid or the "all paladins fall" pathologies (or the host of others for the other alignments). And that's stupid.

[1] Neutral would only be in the "center" of its domain, furthest from the edges.

[LibraryOgre]

See other thread, I don't care about the afterlife or cosmology questions when it comes to the subject of Alignment and morality / Alignment vs morality. If someone's worried about how their actions affect their afterlife or cosmological impact, they've left the space of moral considerations behind.

I disagree.

First of all, this is not simply a question of afterlife or cosmology; it is a question of geography, of a real place (within D&D), that is ordered by points on two axes, traditionally represented by Y+ being Good and Y- being Evil, and X- being Lawful, and X+ being Chaotic. Now, these intersections of these axes are broadly grouped into sets, depending on where in their quadrant they fall; something that is a high value Y and a high absolute value X- gets called "Lawful Good", but so will something with a lower value of Y and a lower absolute value of X... until they fall out of the defined borders of their ninth of the plane (a mathematical plane), and into another ninth of the plane.

All of those points, between |-X| and Y, are Lawful Good, unless you decrease the Y too much, or decrease the |-X| too much.

While the traditional Great Wheel cosmology calls these multitude of places "planes", ones place in them can be assumed by viewing alignment... the weighted average of actions, reactions, and intentions... as a mathematical plane. Indeed, something like this appeared in the 1e Player's Handbook

Spoiler: Alignment Chart

Show

If you say, for example, anything with an absolute value of 3 or less is "Neutral", while an X value of 3+ is "chaotic" and a -X value of -3 or less is "Lawful", and a Y value of 3+ is Good, and a -Y value of -3 or more is Evil, you can point to where someone belongs on that plane by the sum of their actions, reactions, and intentions. And their location on the coordinate plane would correspond to a location on the outer planes, barring divine intervention (i.e. a god taking a follower of a different alignment to their domain for the afterlife). -8,2? They are Lawful Neutral. 8,-2? Chaotic Neutral. 3.14,3.14? Chaotic Good.

It's not just cosmology; it's geography. Overlapping use of the word "plane" aside, it's relatively straightforward geography.¹

And, I would argue that people DO worry about their actions affecting their afterlife destination and their cosmological impact... that's the very nature of saying "Am I doing good? Is what I am doing bettering people's lives, or making them worse"? The nature of moral and ethical self-reflection is to ask these questions; Paladins must, by dint of their class, ask these questions with everything they do, and come up with correct answers on the fly. If concerning oneself with the moral meaning of one's actions removes one from acting morally, Paladins cannot exist, since they must always concern themselves with it.

Good and Evil are real and measurable things in D&D. They don't just have directions, they have an address. You can go there.

¹ Planar layers also indicate that there is a Z coordinate, as well, but that varies from plane to plane and does not seem to correspond with any changes in their moral or ethical alignment.

[Nifft]

Then the diagram should be an oval, with the long axis on Good vs Evil.

The idea of alignment-as-a-grid is inherently very silly, and that's perfectly fine because D&D is also very silly.

We play this game because it's fun, not because it's a good description of moral philosophy or some kind of ethical simulation engine. It's neither of those things.

You could tweak it in various ways, but you would need to put in a lot of very difficult work to make it non-silly, and it might not be possible to do so without changing the axes in ways that would render the results incomparable to the original.

-- -- --

Answering the thread, I agree with those who say LG isn't a personality descriptor.

Charisma is more like a personality descriptor -- a high Charisma score is probably a better indicator of ability to appear positive & wholesome.

Imagine a high-Charisma Druid who is True Neutral, very wholesome in terms of natural remedies (including death, when natural) and all-around buxom healthfulness.

The high-Charisma Druid may also be very positive since Mother Nature always wins out in the end, and therefore we live in a truly wonderful world, which is joyously blessed by red teeth and claws.

[Khedrac]

Mark - your image isn't displayed for me (is imgur one of the sites that blocks gitp?) but I could copy the link location and view it that way.

Somehting I think people are forgtting is that different people's understanding of what "Good" and "Lawful" and "Lawful Good" etc. mean in D&D terms differ. That does not mean that anyone in particular is "right" or "wrong", but people are going to misread other people's points because they are not understanding the terms used in the same way.

For me the classic example of this was in the old "Herald level GM" test on the WotC website of the living campaigns (notably Living Greyhawk). One of the questions was about what alignment a character should be given how the player wanted to play him (or her) - the description of the character was absolutely classic "chaotic neutral" (without being stupid) but the supposedly correct answer was "true neutral".
(Iirc the player in question wanted to be able to act entirely according to their whim at the moment, i.e. totally unpredictable.)

Despite that, to get back to the original question, I think the answer is "they can be, but they don't have to be".
Something to remember is that on the alignment graph each alignment represents an area so that two characters can share an alignment whist having different standards and priorities even when judged under the same definitions of the alignments.
I think everyone who has posted in this thread can come up with characters who are, to them, lawful good, but are not pleasant company.
Equally, I think most people can come up with lawful good characters who are pleasant company.
[I say most, because I get the impression that some people's definition of "lawful" is sufficiently rigid that it would be very hard to come up with a pleasant lawful character. I disagree with that definition of "lawful", but that is my opinion not theirs (of course I hope I am wrong about people holding that opinion).]

[Arcangel4774]

As theirs multiple ways to interperate the spectrum ill start by explaining the criterium i use. I leave the moral spectrum DM dependent so see what values he/she consider good evil or nuetral. On what i like to call the entropic spectrum, i judge based on orginaztion and methodology to actions. To this ends many doctors and detectives fall under the lawful good spectrum, but due to vices or pride, cna be insufferable as people. Holmes and House (the show is a reimagining) are great examples.

[Max_Killjoy]

I disagree.

First of all, this is not simply a question of afterlife or cosmology; it is a question of geography, of a real place (within D&D), that is ordered by points on two axes, traditionally represented by Y+ being Good and Y- being Evil, and X- being Lawful, and X+ being Chaotic. Now, these intersections of these axes are broadly grouped into sets, depending on where in their quadrant they fall; something that is a high value Y and a high absolute value X- gets called "Lawful Good", but so will something with a lower value of Y and a lower absolute value of X... until they fall out of the defined borders of their ninth of the plane (a mathematical plane), and into another ninth of the plane.

All of those points, between |-X| and Y, are Lawful Good, unless you decrease the Y too much, or decrease the |-X| too much.

While the traditional Great Wheel cosmology calls these multitude of places "planes", ones place in them can be assumed by viewing alignment... the weighted average of actions, reactions, and intentions... as a mathematical plane. Indeed, something like this appeared in the 1e Player's Handbook

Spoiler: Alignment Chart

Show

If you say, for example, anything with an absolute value of 3 or less is "Neutral", while an X value of 3+ is "chaotic" and a -X value of -3 or less is "Lawful", and a Y value of 3+ is Good, and a -Y value of -3 or more is Evil, you can point to where someone belongs on that plane by the sum of their actions, reactions, and intentions. And their location on the coordinate plane would correspond to a location on the outer planes, barring divine intervention (i.e. a god taking a follower of a different alignment to their domain for the afterlife). -8,2? They are Lawful Neutral. 8,-2? Chaotic Neutral. 3.14,3.14? Chaotic Good.

It's not just cosmology; it's geography. Overlapping use of the word "plane" aside, it's relatively straightforward geography.¹

And, I would argue that people DO worry about their actions affecting their afterlife destination and their cosmological impact... that's the very nature of saying "Am I doing good? Is what I am doing bettering people's lives, or making them worse"? The nature of moral and ethical self-reflection is to ask these questions; Paladins must, by dint of their class, ask these questions with everything they do, and come up with correct answers on the fly. If concerning oneself with the moral meaning of one's actions removes one from acting morally, Paladins cannot exist, since they must always concern themselves with it.

Good and Evil are real and measurable things in D&D. They don't just have directions, they have an address. You can go there.

¹ Planar layers also indicate that there is a Z coordinate, as well, but that varies from plane to plane and does not seem to correspond with any changes in their moral or ethical alignment.

The image isn't loading for me, just the "broken image" placeholder. But I think I've seen it before.

I've always considered the various maps of the outer planes as attempts to map a non-spatial relationship in spatial terms.

Yes, if they're concerned about being good, about doing the right thing, then the characters, the people there, must ask "Am I doing good? Is what I am doing bettering people's lives, or making them worse?" That's NOT the same question as "What sort of afterlife will this give me?" -- especially when it's been demonstrated in other threads, repeatedly, that "Good" and doing the right thing are not inherently and reliably full-on synchronous in these settings, especially when taking multiple editions and various gaming tables into account.

But whether we're talking about a setting where people have no idea what really happens after they die, or one like D&D where it's an empirically verifiable fact -- the instant the character starts saying "will this affect whether I get into heaven Celestia / insert whatever term for whatever plane you want to use", they are no longer making a moral decision. An actual moral decision must be made with total disregard towards such considerations.

[zinycor]

But whether we're talking about a setting where people have no idea what really happens after they die, or one like D&D where it's an empirically verifiable fact -- the instant the character starts saying "will this affect whether I get into heaven" (or whatever), they are no longer making a moral decision. An actual moral decision must be made with total disregard towards such considerations.

Those are considerations that I wouldn't discuss in here, since it goes to close into talking real life religion.

[Max_Killjoy]

Those are considerations that I wouldn't discuss in here, since it goes to close into talking real life religion.

Then don't -- no one is trying to make you.

But we can't discuss a game mechanic / system that makes moral assertions using moral terms without using moral terms to discuss moral assertions and questions. There's really no way to discuss Alignment without touching on these subjects, and no one has mentioned a single real-world religion in this thread that I've noticed.

[Arcangel4774]

But whether we're talking about a setting where people have no idea what really happens after they die, or one like D&D where it's an empirically verifiable fact -- the instant the character starts saying "will this affect whether I get into heaven Celestia / insert whatever term for whatever plane you want to use", they are no longer making a moral decision. An actual moral decision must be made with total disregard towards such considerations.

The sociobiological field of study in real life suggests that any sense of morallity evolved in social animals because its self serving in increasing survivabillity/reproduction. On the other hand many religious people would say that there is no morallity without divinity so doing what the deity wants is morallity. Theres also those that would say that the ultimate morallity of a situation is the effects on society and others, intention be damned.

[Max_Killjoy]

The sociobiological field of study in real life suggests that any sense of morallity evolved in social animals because its self serving in increasing survivabillity/reproduction. On the other hand many religious people would say that there is no morallity without divinity so doing what the deity wants is morallity. Theres also those that would say that the ultimate morallity of a situation is the effects on society and others, intention be damned.

We just had a debate in another thread about how all of those assertions fall apart as underpinnings for moral system or decisions, especially when taken as stand-alone absolutes.

[Lord Raziere]

We just had a debate in another thread about how all of those assertions fall apart as underpinnings for moral system or decisions, especially when taken as stand-alone absolutes.

Agreed. Morality is more than the sum of its parts. it needs to be, or it wouldn't be moral and would not be worth striving for.

[jdizzlean]

Are there compelling counterexamples of Lawful Good individuals (who are unambiguously Lawful Good) who aren't very positive or wholesome people to be around? I'm thinking through a character concept right now and would love some input.

A "lawful good" person can be downright horrible to be around, especially if they conflate "lawful" and "good", or if their idea of "good" is warped.

I have a cleric of st cuthbert sitting around that i'm going to pull out one day and play. he's very much an over the top example of my way or the highway of LG.

alignment in D&D, as this thread and many others have shown is quite subjective. Each of them are far more than the 2 paragraphs they get in the PHB, and each of them can be played a mryiad of ways.

[NNescio]

Are there compelling counterexamples of Lawful Good individuals (who are unambiguously Lawful Good) who aren't very positive or wholesome people to be around? I'm thinking through a character concept right now and would love some input.

The stereotypical stick up the rear end "stick in the mud" Paladin isn't exactly a positive or wholesome person to be around.

Also, related, the kind of Lawful Good who takes duty too seriously and wind up miserable (extra miserable if they are forced to compromise on or betray their principles) because of it and have it bleed out in their interactions with everyone.

(Sam Vimes was kinda like that, but he got better over time.

Heck, even Durkon has this aspect which bleeds out sometimes. Admittedly the Durkula incident has worked most of it out of his system.)

[Kaptin Keen]

And Mount Celestia would disagree with you. As would Bytopia and Arcadia, for that matter... all places where Law and Good co-exist and mutually reinforce each other.

A Lawful Good society is built around the idea that institutions support the greater good. They may not always be perfect for the specific good... there may be individuals who fall through the cracks... but society and its institutions are built to minimize those, and ensure good outcomes for everyone. It is not simply "law and order", though that will be part of it; it is the mutual reinforcement of each other. If the Law is not supporting the Good, then the Law must be examined so it supports the Good, because Law is how you do things, and Good is what you do.

While the cosmology is today called "The Great Wheel", I think it is more accurate as it was originally conceived... a square. If you arrange things on a wheel, then Neutral Good winds up as a higher Good than Lawful or Chaotic Good, and Lawful Neutral winds up more Lawful than Lawful Good or Lawful Evil. I do not view this as true. Rather, Lawful Good is exactly as Lawful as Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil, and exactly as good as Neutral Good and Chaotic Good; at any point on any plane, if you draw a straight line vertical and a straight line horizontal, everything on the Y is exactly as lawful or chaotic as everything else on that line, and everything on the X is exactly as good or evil. The Seven Heavens, the 9 Hells, the Abyss, and Olympus do not border on Neutrality; they have no truck with it.

So imaginary afterlives disagree with me? I can live with that. On the other hand, I agree with you on a lot of other points; that Lawful is equally Lawful in LG, LN and LE, for instance. I've also always felt that if differently aligned nations were to ally, a LG nation could as easily ally themselves with a LE nation as they could a CG.

Really, it's a very simple thought at the base of this: You can utterly crush people or persons using nothing but the law. Innocents too, makes no difference. Law easily becomes a tool for evil, and if you view Law absolutely ... then you're already there. Absolute Law cannot ever be Good, they are factual opposites.

So I'm not saying a good society cannot have law and order - of course it can. But Absolute Law is plainly, simply, always Evil.

And I believe this quite, quite firmly.

So you can't be fully good if you are lawful, but you can be fully evil? So there is never a situation where an evil person looses out by following a treaty or reveals information by adhering to their commitment to the truth?

This is just an inability to understand the difference between ethics and morality.

Please refrain from telling me what I do and do not understand. If you are unable to handle disagreement without resorting to personal slights, then the discussion is simply over.

[hamishspence]

Modrons, Inevitables, etc are devoted to "absolute law" and are LN, not LE.

[Particle_Man]

Miko didn't fall for a long time and was not a positive, wholesome person to be around even when she had paladin powers, and thus was "definitionally lawful good".

Roy and Durkon, however, are positive, wholesome people to be around.

[Tanarii]

Modrons, Inevitables, etc are devoted to "absolute law" and are LN, not LE.

Unless you're running the Planescape Great Modron March adventure, in which case they're clearly evil based on their typical behavior.

[Kaptin Keen]

Modrons, Inevitables, etc are devoted to "absolute law" and are LN, not LE.

Oh ... maybe it can be expressed as 'if you put the Law above the people it's meant to protect - then you're evil'. This applies if you're a modron too. And yes, modrons would fit that label. I am very well aware that modrons are described as neutral in the rules, but that doesn't have any sort of impact on my opinion. Mechanus is a machine, which mercilessly crushes anyone and anything thats doesn't fit. It's clearly evil.

Now, an argument might be made that if all modrons are uniformly identical, then a plane that matches that isn't evil - to modrons. They are not crushed beneath the heel of that draconian regime, because they agree with everything it does.

But we're rapidly departing anything that can be meaningfully discussed (outside of pure philosophy). Imaginary beings in an imaginary world obeying imaginary alignments is ... well, quite detached from any real discussion of morals. Even if the line blurs somewhat - all discussions of alignment share some degree of that problem.

[Themrys]

Pretty much a cop, btw, being LG, doesn't mean that the character can't be racist, misogynistic or a stick in the mud...

A misogynist man (or even a woman, though women have fewer opportunities) will sooner or later do something evil. Because sooner or later he will encounter a woman and treat her as subhuman. And that's evil. Not to mention the general impact he has on all women in the society he lives in.

It is theoretically possible to be a racist without ever meeting someone you could be racist towards, but it is highly unlikely that someone who never encounters people from other races would even bother being a racist in the first place, so ... same applies.

(Being mildly xenophobic isn't the same as being a racist, so "I don't like dwarves. But I don't like humans, either" Sam Vimes doesn't qualify)

Of course it is perfectly possible to be an unpleasant person and still be lawful good. Miko was, for example.

Sherlock Holmes is a pretty annoying man who is condescending to pretty much everyone else and certainly not wholesome with his drug habits, but he still works within the law (most of the time) and genuinely wants to help people (which is the reason he sometimes goes against the law), so he, too, is lawful good.

Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice is an arrogant jerk who insults people to hide his social anxiety, but the only time he seriously harmed another person was when he was mistaken about her motivations and wanted to protect his friend.

Sam Vimes is lawful good. Sure, he goes against the law a couple of times, but if lawful is defined as having a general affinity for rules (as opposed to always following all rules ever) then he certainly counts. He sets rules for himself that he follows religiously.
He still makes mistakes and lies to his wife about eating his tomato and lettuce, but that is pretty petty things that might disqualify him from being a paladin, not from being lawful good.

Another example from the Discworld books would be Granny Weatherwax. She's a joy to read about, but it is implied most people in-universe tend to avoid her. (Arguably, she is a better person than Nanny Ogg. While Nanny Ogg is nice to be around for most people, she actively exploits their daughters in law, whereas Granny Weatherwax does her own cleaning and cooking and isn't even unpleasant to people while she's alone in her hut, which might be most of the time between adventures.)

Actually, a lot of, perhaps even most of the most beloved characters in literature would actually not be that much fun to be around if you met them in real life. They're good people, we can see that in their actions, but some of them are quite unpleasant and we only tolerate it because we don't have to be around them in everyday life.

In short, a lawful good person could be a complete horror to be around. It doesn't take much to make a person mildly annoying, or even extremely annoying, without them having to do anything that you could honestly describe as "evil".
And the lawful element can, in itself, be annoying.

[Evil DM Mark3]

Just realised there is a whole category of such characters, White Saviours.

Its not a popular character these days, I'd say Avatar was the last mainstream example although the protagonists of Valarian gave it a go. But in fiction from 100-200 years ago? They are everywhere.
These people tend to be principled, noble, compassionate and often self-sacrificing but also and arrogant, belittling xenophobes.

Its an unpopular archetype for a reason.

[Psyren]

Soon Kim was clearly LG, and just as clearly, a massive pain in his party's collective rear end.

Sturm Brightblade from Dragonlance was also a fairly quintessential LG figure, and was described with terms like "honorable to a fault" and that the other companions often found his actions "maddening." He was a steadfast friend, but his internal code often made him difficult to deal with.

[LibraryOgre]

So imaginary afterlives disagree with me?

In D&D, which we are discussing, these are not imaginary. They are real places. You can go there. You can even be born, grow up, and die there.

Really, your understanding of D&D alignment seems so at variance with my own, I don't see that we have common ground to talk about it.

[Dienekes]

So imaginary afterlives disagree with me? I can live with that. On the other hand, I agree with you on a lot of other points; that Lawful is equally Lawful in LG, LN and LE, for instance. I've also always felt that if differently aligned nations were to ally, a LG nation could as easily ally themselves with a LE nation as they could a CG.

Really, it's a very simple thought at the base of this: You can utterly crush people or persons using nothing but the law. Innocents too, makes no difference. Law easily becomes a tool for evil, and if you view Law absolutely ... then you're already there. Absolute Law cannot ever be Good, they are factual opposites.

So I'm not saying a good society cannot have law and order - of course it can. But Absolute Law is plainly, simply, always Evil.

And I believe this quite, quite firmly.

But you can utterly crush people using, well, anything. And arguably easier with no law to reprimand the crushing put in place. Anarchic states have historically not been known for their sense of fair play and justice.

My understanding of your argument is that a tool of society has been used for evil, therefore it can never be good. And well, I mostly disagree. And I think the concept of LG as I understand it would disagree as well. It’s simply, that they believe a balanced and enforced structure is the surest way to promote a society that is good.

If the law is then used for evil, as we can all agree happens, the correct response isn’t to just continue to slavishly devote yourself to the law regardless. It’s to alter the laws and hopefully create a more perfect form that removes whatever loophole allowed the evil to triumph.

Now one could argue that this is a pipe dream and the perfect law code can never actually exist. And, honestly, outside of a D&D cosmology where a plane exists that supposedly has it, I wouldn’t be surprised that many LG characters would agree. You never will make the perfect law code. But you can keep trying.

There’s a reason why Leia is regarded as Lawful Good despite being a revolutionary. She sees the current law is corrupt, and is actively attempting to replace it with new, better laws.

[TheYell]

We just had a debate in another thread about how all of those assertions fall apart as underpinnings for moral system or decisions, especially when taken as stand-alone absolutes.

Which is clever, since nobody is allowed to argue against such a proposition with a defense or mention of deism on these forums.

And now you're hijacking another thread with it. This thread has a title question, and your posts about the failure of deism don't answer it.

[Max_Killjoy]

Which is clever, since nobody is allowed to argue against such a proposition with a defense or mention of deism on these forums.

And now you're hijacking another thread with it. This thread has a title question, and your posts about the failure of deism don't answer it.

Funny, we managed to debate it there without breaking the rules, and I mention it as an argument that already took place to avoid rehashing it here - should I provide a link?

[TheYell]

No, I don't want a link to your debate with an empty chair. I'd like you to answer the title question.

[Max_Killjoy]

But you can utterly crush people using, well, anything. And arguably easier with no law to reprimand the crushing put in place. Anarchic states have historically not been known for their sense of fair play and justice.

My understanding of your argument is that a tool of society has been used for evil, therefore it can never be good. And well, I mostly disagree. And I think the concept of LG as I understand it would disagree as well. It’s simply, that they believe a balanced and enforced structure is the surest way to promote a society that is good.

If the law is then used for evil, as we can all agree happens, the correct response isn’t to just continue to slavishly devote yourself to the law regardless. It’s to alter the laws and hopefully create a more perfect form that removes whatever loophole allowed the evil to triumph.

Now one could argue that this is a pipe dream and the perfect law code can never actually exist. And, honestly, outside of a D&D cosmology where a plane exists that supposedly has it, I wouldn’t be surprised that many LG characters would agree. You never will make the perfect law code. But you can keep trying.

There’s a reason why Leia is regarded as Lawful Good despite being a revolutionary. She sees the current law is corrupt, and is actively attempting to replace it with new, better laws.

Pretty much agreed.

Laws can be evil, historical examples are rife and need not be enumerated here. To fight against evil laws, does not make one evil, regardless of what those who would conflate law and good would claim.

Absolute chaos, anarchy, has no mechanisms for justice other than vengeance, and no mechanisms to divide justice from personal power.

Absolute law has mechanisms, but doesn't care about justice, only about order and obedience. Or it mistakes systemic justice for actual justice for the individuals affected.

It is only in the middle between the two that reliable equitable justice for individuals can exist.

No, I don't want a link to your debate with an empty chair. I'd like you to answer the title question.

"You debated with an empty chair, and I won't bother reading the other thread because that might demonstrate otherwise."

Understood.

(And I did answer the title's question... after which I also responded to some other posts... but you can't answer the title's question without discussing what makes a person lawful good or what is meant by lawful good.)

Recent discussions of Alignment as a set of moral assertions:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...of-Lawful-Good
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ia-perspective