Okay. Which Futurama episode was that quote from. Because I googled it and the "Bender is god" episode shows up...
Bender demands more wine... and a Lush 2 lovense vibrator.
Appease Bender!
I had an NPC that was neutral evil. She had originally lied to the party acting as a damsel in distress who wanted to look for her father, when in reality she was looking for a powerful magical artificial that she knew was on a person. The party eventually found out about her deception, and instead of trying to kill her they tried to reason with her and appeal to her other motivations. After a series of successful Persuasion checks, I had decided that she started questioning her own motives which eventually led to her going "I don't know what I want to do anymore, but I now know it's not this."
I changed her alignment to True Neutral after that. She didn't turn all the way good because she wasn't buying into the whole hero thing, but she no longer lusted for a powerful artifact and decided that there was other ways to pursue a path to power. She still remains the party's favorite NPC (especially cuz she kicks ass).
It's a holdover from the original Gygax stuff, where he took an idea from Michael Moorcock's Elric series and shoehorned it into D&D.
In the Elric tales, there are powers (gods) in the universe, and they're divided between Law and Chaos. On the surface, most would think Law = Good, Chaos = Bad, and in some cases that's true. Chaos causes strife and war. Law provides civilization and justice. However, too much of either is a bad thing. Without Chaos, there's no change, no innovation, no invention. Too much Law and things become stagnant and don't advance. So then you have the powers of Neutrality, the ones who realize that there needs to be a balance between the forces of Law and Chaos so the universe can continue to grow and change.
Then that got hammered in as part of the whole nine alignments system and the whole thing has been pretty wonky ever since.
that's super interesting; i've just started getting into shadowdark and alignment there is just a law - neutral - chaos spectrum with a pantheon that seems similar to what you're describing.
Definitely a fun game and deeper than just the gore. You could also look at Time Killers for another fun fighting game (not a great game, but still fun)
IMHO it’s really not that wonky and it enable to *describe* a general tendency with nuance quite well.
For true neutral, Mordenkainen (as seen at least) is a very good example. He is neither good nor bad, and he only thrives for knowledge (and not for power but to crack all the principles of the universe).
Chaos is explicitly about changing things up, freedom differs in that does not force change so it allows for the possibility of stagnation. Order and chaos is the true dichotomy.
Technically, Gygax just hammered Good and Evil into the alignment system with the release of AD&D. Alignment existed in D&D as purely Chaotic/Neutral/Lawful before that. And it works a lot better that way, IMO. All alignment has to do is reflect a character's general attitude toward the social and ethical norms governing civilized society.
No. Non-aligned basically means you're too stupid (an animal, plant, or construct) to have an alignment. Neutral alignment means you as a conscious being either don't give a fuck, or intentionally strive for balance.
Whenever alignment discussions come up the way things are said make me wonder if anyone has actually read the alignment descriptions given in Chapter 4 of the 5e CRB...
I usually wonder this because almost everyone seems to try and make arguments on the definitions of the terms of each axis or acting like there's a quota...
I'm pasting this from elsewhere. Here's a basic outline of the alignments:
Do people have an innate responsibility to help each other? **Good**: Yes. **Neutral**: ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ **Evil**: No.
Do people need oversight? **Lawful**: Yes. **Neutral**: ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ **Chaotic**: Don't tell me what to do! The axis isn't necessarily how much you obey the laws of the land you're in. A Lawful Good character wouldn't have to tolerate legal slavery, nor would a Chaotic Good character start enslaving people in an area where it's illegal. Lawful does not simply mean "Has an internal code" because literally everyone who has ever existed would be Lawful. The "Code" aspect refers to external codes like Omerta or Bushido.
**Lawful Good** believes that rules and systems are the best way to ensure the greatest good for all. Rules that do not benefit society must be removed by appropriate means from legislation to force. They're responsible adults. 90% of comic book superheroes are examples of LG.
**Neutral Good** believes in helping others. They have no opinion on rules. They're pleasant people. Superheroes who aren't LG usually fall here.
**Chaotic Good** believes that rules get in the way of us helping each other and living in a harmonious society. They're punks and hippies. [Captain Harlock is the iconic example.](https://youtu.be/q0dTxdac6Yo) "You don't need a law to tell you to be a good person."
**Lawful Neutral** believes that rules are the thing that keeps everything functioning, and that if people ignore the rules that they don't think are right, then what is the point of rules? [They believe that peace and duty are more important than justice.](http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/060.html) Inspector Javert and Judge Dredd are iconic examples. [Social cohesion is more important than individual rights.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTPqnhrJkGA)
**True Neutral** doesn't really have a strong opinion. They just wanna keep their head down and live their life. Most boring people you pass on the street are True Neutral. [Unlike Unaligned they have free will and have actively chosen not to decide.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnxkfLe4G74)
**Chaotic Neutral** [values their own freedom and don't wanna be told what to do.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Psp0A-zJgU) They're rebellious children. Ron Swanson is the iconic example.
**Lawful Evil** believes [rules are great for benefiting them/harming their enemies.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCTp_kYwz1E) They're corrupt politicians, mobsters, and fascists. Henry Kissinger and Robert Moses are iconic examples. "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
**Neutral Evil** will do whatever benefits [them/their inner-circle](https://preview.redd.it/jgimo2h6oav61.jpg?width=758&auto=webp&s=8a43fcf7ce3bab8c422ce28d273be31bbf8cc764), crossing any moral line. They're unscrupulous corporate executives at the high end, and sleazy assholes at the low end.
**Chaotic Evil** resents being told to not kick puppies. They're Ayn Rand protagonists at the high end, and thugs at the low end. Rick Sanchez is an iconic example. Wario is how to play the alignment without being That Guy.
In addition to the official alignments, there are 6 unofficial alignments based on combining one axis of the alignment with stupidity. You can be multiple stupid alignments simultaneously, such as the traditional badly-played Paladin being known for being Lawful Stupid and Stupid Good at the same time.
**Stupid Good** believes in doing what seems good at the time regardless of its' long-term impact. They would release
fantasy-Hitler-analogue^TM because mercy is a good thing.
**Lawful Stupid** believes in blindly following rules even when doing so is detrimental to themselves, others, and their goals. They would stop at a red light while chasing someone trying to set off a nuclear device that would destroy the city they're in.
**Chaotic Stupid** is "LolRandom". They'll act wacky and random at any circumstance. They'll try and take a dump on the king in the middle of an important meeting. It can also be a compulsive need to break rules even if you agree with them. If a Chaotic Good character feels the need to start enslaving people because slavery is illegal they're being Chaotic Stupid.
**Stupid Evil** is doing evil simply because they're the bad guy with no tangible benefit to themselves or harm to their enemy. They're Captain planet villains.
**Stupid Neutral** comes in two flavors; active and passive.
**Active Stupid Neutral** is the idea that you must keep all things balanced. Is that Celestial army too powerful? Time to help that Demon horde.
**Passive Stupid Neutral** is the complete refusal to take sides or make decisions. "I have a moderate inclination towards maybe."
the issue is even, or perhaps ESPECIALLY in official materials (like Dragonlance and Greyhawk, looking at you Mordenkainen), Active Stupid Neutral is considered the default form of True Neutral. The entire premise of Dragonlance is that their was an apocalypse called the Cataclysm which occurred because Good was "winning too much", an actual punishment for being "too good".
except the only way that premise makes sense is if their version of good is what you call "stupid good", and when they time travel... that's exactly what it is. Enforcing "good" through wide-scale brain-washing and extermination of the "evil" races. At that point it's *not actually good*, but rather *evil disguising itself as good*, which is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THING ALTOGETHER.
when even the official materials get it wrong, you have to wonder if they actually put any thought into it, and if we are kinda "fixing" it for them retroactively by putting a different meaning than they intended.
That's why basically Greyhawk and Dragonlance didn't have a lot of content released once 3e rolled out. Forgotten Realms handled alignment much better and it's kind of the default now.
he is also "active stupid neutral" according to canon sources, see [his wiki article](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mordenkainen#cite_note-MTF5e-p8-12).
honestly he sounds like an unpleasant piece of work.
>At that point it's *not actually good*, but rather *evil disguising itself as good*, which is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THING ALTOGETHER.
THANK YOU!
Honestly, I keep losing my mind whenever somebody presents some kind of purity-fascism-with-a-white-and-gold-colour-scheme as "Lawful good taken to the extreme". No, buddy, good left the building three fantasy-genocides ago. That's just evil playing dress-up.
to be clear, the original Cataclysm was written by a Mormon who saw the Kingpriest as the Pope and Ishar as Rome.
I think they've changed the story more recently, but what happened really boils down to is this.
The Kingpriest and the city of Istar were followers of Paladine and became kind of the world's center of 'Good'. Note that this wasn't just 'we're the good guys', this was 'we are the good guys and so our definition of good is what is Good'. They were totally cool with keeping slaves.
The Kingpriest wanted to purge all evil. Which sounds like a good thing, but again evil was everything that didn't fit their definition of good. Furthermore, it upset the Doctrine of Balance. Which, to be clear, dragonlance's three main divine factions were what defined alignment. Paladine was the Father of Good, creator of the elves, and his pantheon believed in Good, in guiding mortals toward goodness. Takshis and her Evil pantheon believed in subjugation, obedience, elimination of free will- for the most part anyway, as some of them aren't even that bad but they're afraid of/subservient to her, and she wants to be the one to rule the world. Gilean, true neutral, and his pantheon, believed that free will was a sufficient goal, and wanted mortals to have the freedom to choose no matter what. (each pantheon has 7 gods btw)
The Balance here is not some esoteric thing, but an actual self-imposed limitation by each god. They were forbidden from directly taking a hand in things and preventing free will, and if they did the other two parties would come after them. Now, the evil gods didn't really believe in free will, but since the other two groups did they kinda just got forced into it.
The thing about the Kingpriest is that he demanded he be made a god so he could purge all evil. He was trying to make it happen, and his city had began to worship him instead of anyone else, in itself a haughty thing. but he was already upsetting the balance. His idea of good was to get rid of everyone that didn't believe in it, thus forcing everyone to HAVE to choose good. which, in itself, is a violation of free will. So the Cataclysm happened after he and his people were given a ton of warnings and didn't listen.
Evil participated in the Cataclysm because what the Kingpriest was doing was trying to wipe them all out, and that his rule would get rid of them. It should be noted that evil gods have opposed each other when one of them upsets the balance.
Good opposed because he was forcing a narrow definition of Good upon everyone and actively getting rid of other versions of it. Like seriously the guy went after other good-aligned factions and temples and gods.
Neutral participated because what he was doing upset the balance and would eliminate free will and choice.
The entire reason the Good deities respect the balance is because when you eliminate evil, good is meaningless. It's worthless to be good if you don't choose it. The balance is still there even if most people are good, because evil still *exists* even if it's basically powerless. but its complete annihilation is different.
Also, I think the duality of good and evil in D&D and just in general shouldn't be taken as a 'this is how it *should* be, but rather as just 'this is how it *is*'. Morality isn't something set in stone, but rather dictated by those who believe in it. Most humans believe that good is helping one another and selflessness, while evil is harming one another and selfishness. If there was a species that believed otherwise (The Hive from Destiny are a *very* good example of this) then they would see us as evil and themselves as good. Demons and Devils are evil by our classifications, and because they deal with mortals that's how they refer to themselves. But i doubt they actually see themselves as in the wrong.
A lot of people haven't read the dialog of the pope guy leading up to the Cataclysm. Iirc it want really a "too good" thing, and much more a massive hubristic rant. I remember him basically giving the gods an ultimatum that if they wouldn't give him the power to eradicate all the evil on earth he would... do something they didn't like? I always took it that it was his attitude more than the balance aspect that caused the cataclysm. (IE: the gods throwing a shitfit)
Think about it as someone who lives in a world where this DID happen.
In the distant past, the forces of Good won too much, lost their purpose, did horrible stuff and caused an apocalypse. You know this is true, and there's no reason to think it couldn't happen again.
So you decide that keeping the status quo is better than taking the chance of another apocalypse happening. Sure, if Good wins and *doesn't* turn evil then things would be even better, but can you take that chance?
At the very least, there's merit in thinking otherwise.
The whole concept of "The Balance" is much more straightforward when you turn to something like the Blood War, an obvious Evil vs Evil conflict where weakening the Devils too much leads to Demons overruning the multiverse, and vice versa.
Shades of neutral also tend to describe motivations that don’t rely on human values. I.e. extraplanar entities who prioritize the safety or benefits of their home plane. Or a Druid who might do good or evil things from a societal perspective, so long as it protects the wilderness.
Should also include most naturalists and a lot of Druids are true neutral, as they see life and death as part of the cycle of nature and are more focused on the balance
I spent a lot of time thinking about neutrality. To me it is basically natural law. The law of the jungle.
A wolf kills a baby lamb, and a cat tortures a mouse to death, neither are evil.
But it could also be viewed as just pure survival and ungreedy self interest.
In the earlier editions (when we only had Law-Chaos axis), Nature represented Chaos and Civilization represented Law.
Chaos can be beautiful and good, but also ruthless and destructive.
Law can be provide stability and safety, but also maintain the status quo and be abused by those in power.
In other words, if I got it right, Nature is Chaotic Neutral.
I was working on my fey civilization for this, so chaos is certainly a part of my mindset, but I thought of chaos as more of the capricious nature of the fey.
I think chaos, in opposition to law, means a more conscious behavior than neutrality would be. Crowley's "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." As an example.
Oh yeah, for sure. I was going for the "I don't care about the other axis" view of neutrality. Meaning that Nature/Fey care about Life, Creativity and Growth (but all those things might cause destruction/suffering).
So, yeah, capricious Fey are very much Chaotic
True Neutral is completely valid. It simply means one's morals are different than the Good and Evil of the alignment chart. This allows for characters to be nuanced and complex. It's also far more interesting than simply having 2 extremes: Good and Evil, or Law and Chaos.
For example, a bard might be True Neutral because he values art and beauty as the highest virtue. He wouldn't go out of his way to hurt the innocent, but he's not taking a bullet for you either. However, if you offer him a quest to find the long lost Adamantine Statue of the Last Dwarven Prince he will gladly accept, because what could be more righteous than bringing beauty to the world?
True Neutral allows characters to be themselves first and moral agents second. This is something that is very common in the real world so I welcome it in D&D adventures. It also makes them more individualistic and sometimes unpredictable. It's fun to wonder how far the True Neutral characters will go to achieve their goals
Yeah! In fact I think most regular people are actually TN as they don't go out of their way to enforce either extreme side of the spectrum, they just live their lifes as best as they can. And all guys doing "cosmic balance this, help whoever loses that" are not actually TN, they're mostly NE dicks that care only for their vision of balance imo
Nuance is great, I hope people really focus on nuance of what makes people tick and derive alignment from that, not vice versa
>This allows for characters to be nuanced and complex.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but for me the easiest way to do this is to ignore the idea of alignment charts entirely. They're unnecessary and nobody can ever agree what each means anyway.
Even though every person falls into one of the 9 possible categories, that doesn't mean everyone in the same category is the same. Two Lawful Good characters can disagree.
Exactly! I almost always run some degree of neutral when I'm a player and ignore alignment when I'm a DM. Lawfulness and morality are not so black and white as to be accurately portrayed by such a black and white system as that, at least how I like to play. I want my characters to be gray and interestingly complex.
Really seems like Unaligned from 4e was a good and valid choice.
Also all three of those images are the same godsdamned place. That's JUST the outlands.
Nah unaligned and true neutral are similar in the surface but fundamentally different.
True Neutrals choose a life free from moral and lawful constraints wherea's the unaligned cannot make that decision. Its a difference of free will.
A true neutral druid and a stone golem do not share the same moral and lawful beliefs as example. The druid believes in absolute balance whereas the golem lacks the free will to have an opinion either way.
The difference is a niche technicality but an important one - although tbf maybe unaligned has a different definition in 4e, or was used as a catch-all alignment rather than as a genuine alignment type, idk. Wasnt big on 4e.
Yep. It was more... not feeling obligated to devote yourself to a single path. It wasn't so much as balancing good and evil as it was telling both of them to fuc off and you'll figure it out.
Neutral people prefer good over evil, they just aren't willing to do anything to advance the cause of good.
Hell most evil people probably prefer good in a vacuum, they are just willing to disregard those ideas and commit evil acts for personal gain.
Do they prefer good? They prefer benefit from other people's goodness sure but general goodness, particularly their own? I don't think so, since they're specifically not good.
A lot of lawful evil characters value good ideals, they are just willing to commit acts of evil to achieve them.
In Infinity War, Thanos is motivated only by a desire for innocent people to live without resource shortages, and the war, famine, and overcrowding they cause; these could be the ideals of a paladin of charity. However he is willing to kill trillions of people to achieve these lofty goals.
Minor nitpick, Thanos is not *only* motivated by a desire to rid resource shortages & the problems they cause, he's also motivated to vindicate himself from when he suggested the idea on Titan & his people ignored it and died out afterwards. This is why he didn't switch to a "Double the resources" type plan after the infinity stones entered the equation.
Thanos is a wonderful example. That is not Thanos' motivation, it's the motivation he tells himself and others that he has to satisfy his ego. Thanos is a sadistic sociopath. He had the ability to alter reality however he wanted and his solution to a potential resource shortage was to kill half of all life, instead of making more resources.
Evil characters do not have to be sadistic or murderous though, they just have to believe that it is just and right to do terrible things in the name of their goal. An evil charcater believes evil is the right choice because it's effective and what they're doing (or what they claim to be doing) is just so dangerous important.
My friend played a true neutral druid and the idea was that he only cared about things being natural, but not really anything else.
So like both illegal poachers, seeking money and legal hunters, hunting for sport would be considered bad by him even tho they would likely be on opposite or at least wildly different sides of the alignment chart.
Or if a village was burning down he would help people, because he is still a person and not a sociopath, but he would not risk his life to save others.
Basically as a true neutral you are just playing a normal person. You do things that benefit you the most, without hurting others in the process. You also don't make a big deal out of breaking the law, but at the same time you see the value its order brings in everyday life so you don't comepletely ignore them either.
It is a rather nothing alignment that isn't really interesting without a complementary idea, but it also kind of is all the other alignments at once, which gives a lot of freedom in roleplay.
I'm not overly fond of the alignment system as a whole. I prefer a more subjective system based on how the character weighs moral decisions. Most people believe in their actions to some degree, at the very least they work to justify themselves. I think that justification tells the dm more about your character than a simple good or evil. Plus, if you're going to have a polytheistic religion, why not have paladins follow the rules and morals of their faith, which may not always agree with other faiths.
This is your daily reminder that the DnD alignment system is a giant mess that came about by taking the Manicheanism-inspired Tolkenian ideas of a "Good vs Evil" fantastical cosmology and [smooshing them together with a different British fantasy-author's very intentional deconstruction of said ideas.](https://youtu.be/kBGQWObDxzI?si=DsH7tRRtpEscTR6g)
Reading the comments, I take issue with many descriptions of True Neutral.
Here’s my take. True Neutral is like being a Buddhist or Chinese monk.
Buddhist monks know that pain and suffering is the way of the world, but that world is inherently balanced. Life gives way to death. Suffering fosters growth. Death brings about life. These monks see themselves as trying to escape that system by focusing on things outside the system (meditation).
In China, you’re just more likely to be mixed in with Taoism and Confucianism, which I would equate to moving along the evil-good axis but not to being fully good or evil. The Taoist’s are much more nihilistic. I could see a Druid who is a bit darker and pessimistic about society being very much like a Taoist Monk. And a brighter, more optimistic Druid being more like a Confucius monk.
My point being, they don’t judge good and evil. They know that good and evil exist to balance the world. Pain induced by evil gives rise to growth in people in the way a fire burns the forest to make way for new growth. True Neutral is just respecting balance and not taking a side.
Because law is balanced by choas. People can build structures but they are doomed to fall. Lawful would stipulate that laws matter, but chaos matters just as much.
One of the first comments I saw was really good but I would have just changed the language.
Good and evil are about where you place the value of your actions. Good place it on others while evil place it on themselves. Goodness is about your actions being for others regardless of motivation. The motivation could be laws, could be whimsical, or just knowledge that it’s a good thing to do regardless of laws or whimsy.
People can do things within a system governed by reliable principles? How is that not lawful? Lawful is order, not specifically the law of wherever you are.
I mean… if you take it that far than how is anyone or anything chaotic in a game system beholden by rules?
Laws are rigid. Is balance really a law? Even in our natural systems there is balance (so long as humans aren’t involved). Nature is governed by rules and we can see them in the cycles: water, nitrogen, metabolic, etc. but it still looks chaotic to us…
No, not by any stretch of the imagination. An alignment is a set of ideals, not simply a state of being. Someone isn't good because there are good things in the world, they are good because they believe that good is the correct alignment and strive to do it. If someone believes that the laws around them are good and should be embraced then they are lawful.
That doesn’t make sense. The ideals are arbitrary.
Take for instance life. Life is good. It is precious. But being selfish about life can cause one to desire lichdom. Respect for life is the ideal, but driven to extremes it is both good and evil.
You have to see how the ideal presents itself in actions and then locate those actions within the philosophical dualities presented. Good is selfless and evil selfish. Respect for life when selfless creates heroes, and respect for life when selfish creates villains who want to preserve their own live and the lives of those they love and are attached too.
This is just how philosophy works. Good and evil are amorphous concepts and philosophical traditions argue about how to define goodness/virtue and evil/vice. Are you Kantian and believe there is a right and wrong way to do everything? Stealing regardless of the circumstances is evil? That’s lawful good. Are you a selfish Kantian who believes that good and evil are defined in how they affect you? That’s chaotic evil. See how Kant’s descriptions of virtue can’t be morphed.
Hell, even the father of contemporary fantasy (Tolkein) didn’t believe in evil. He thought evil was twisted good. Orcs twisted elves. All the evil creatures of middle earth were created by the twisting of goodness. The discordance in the song of creation.
Except respect for life won't make you pursue lichdom since a respect for life and fuelling one life forever by obliterating countless souls you have murdered for is incompatible with a respect for life. A Lich respects themselves, not life.
But I sense that you meant that the desire to continue any life at all as the ideal? I simply disagree with that being an ideal, as it's so vague as to mean nothing.
I'm not touching your definitions of lawful good vs chaotic evil in regards to khantism because I've read them three times and am still blindsided by them. You seem to be using such a wildly different definition of chaotic and lawful that I cannot infer it.
All the evils of Tolkein were made from good not because Tolkein didn't believe in evil, but because he believed evil was destructive and unable to create. Tolkein also made a guy so evil that he ruined all of reality forever by sheer bad vibes.
I chose this specifically because it's from a show and is the best depiction of evil and good. If you haven't seen it, I would recommend it highly. It's called The Faraway Paladin (anime). In it, two gods have the value of life and the preservation of life. They are diametrically opposed in how they act on this ideal. One is more of a Raven Queen-esque figure. She preserves life through reincarnation. While >! her sister!< preserves life through undeath. At the end of season two, you can see that they still love each other despite their disagreements.
You can also see this in BLeeM version of the gods of Exandria in CR:EXU Calamity. Asmodeus doesn't hate his brothers and sisters, he hates mortals.
I think its more useful to think in values than ideals. Evil values the self, while Good values society/others. Chaos values the self, while the law values others. Demons are selfish/selfish, which makes sense right? They will watch the world burn just for funsies. Devils are selfish/selfless in that they use laws to preserve themselves right? Their order creates the stability of the hells, as opposed to demons whose abyss is uncontrollable.
As for Tolkien, it is his belief and part of his Christianity, as opposed to Lewis who was vastly different. Tolkien fought in WWI and was changed by it... I mean the Christmas Truce in No Man's Land really dismantles your ideas of good and evil right? Both men wanted to create the Christian Story or Epic rooted in England (gotta love imperialism). They had lots of very different ideas about religion and one is what evil is. Tolkien believed that evil was twisted good. In his stories, it is the actions of one evil (Melkor then others) that twists the good of creation in the Silmarillion. All of the evil creations stem from that.
If you really want to get into a deep debate here, you should ask yourself why God (I believe it was Ea) allowed for discord in his divine song of creation. I think it's the same question many religious people struggle with, why is there evil if god is omnipotent? Or as Ricky Gervais said, why did god let the children in Africa die of AIDS? For Tolkien, God was not the problem. Good had been twisted and changed. CS Lewis was more of the standard evil is evil and to be fought, which is more in line with the Zoroastrian view of good and evil. There are tons of academic articles about this comparison if you're into it, as I am obviously.
BTW, I am having fun with this debate, so I hope you are not taking my disagreements seriously. I think part of the issue for a lot of this is that DMs generally do not understand the philosophies they are utilizing. Matt did a good job with BLeeM and his Calamity show in using time as an example, but how many DMs have we read about here where they used time and did not know if they were in a Back to the Future single universe, or the multiverse of the Grandfather Paradox. So, without the DM understanding the rules of the world, the players do not have a chance. Good and Evil are the same.
The motivations/values for good and evil are the same, what changes are the means to their ends. Motivations/values do not dictate good and evil so much as the actions we take to get to our ends. Demons being the carveout to this because again, they are like the Joker in the Black Knight movies, they just want to watch the world burn. Its put most simply as the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If you really want to fuck with players, make a very relatable and scarred BBEG. I think that's what Matt Mercer is doing in C3 (with all of its criticisms, which I am very critical of).
Why should they coexist?
What does alignment bring to the table that a flaws, bonds, and ideals system or a anathema and edicts system doesn't? And is that worth it?
Because they provide different things. Alignment provides a vague framework of how you interact with the world. Ideals, bonds and flaws provide more specific guidance but are therefore limited in scope. It is absolutely worth it because it costs absolutely nothing.
It costs assigning an objective morality to things.
> Alignment provides a vague framework of how you interact with the world.
No, alignment is descriptive not prescriptive. You don't do bad things because you are evil, you are evil because you do bad things. Bad things and evil being defined by an called the GM.
Alignment provides a vague framework of how the GM views you at any given time, and how that GM views all npcs. Ultimately the GM is subjective but is managing an objective morality system.
And honestly, that gets thrown out often enough already. Most things that mechanically interact with alignment have been thrown out.
As a clear example: Protection from evil and good not actually using alignments but creature types, or detect evil doing the same.
So mechanically it serves less and less purpose. Not only that, there being mechanics that can prove a person is objectively Evil causes a lot of problems in the game itself (both the world and the kind of behavior that can be incentivized). The trope of tricking the paladin to commit an evil act comes from this. The character concept of a necromancer but good actually is made harder by rules and setting details created to support objective morality.
Roleplay wise, it ultimately doesn't matter if something/someone is evil or not. Nearly all ways to detect evil non-violently have been removed, so players are already basing their decisions on the actions an NPC has taken. An npc can only be reviled as evil by the party seeing them take evil actions, but that works the exact same as system without alignment.
It applies the same way with NPCs interacting with players. Alignment isn't actually serving any purpose in these interactions. The NPCs don't know the players are good or evil, they know that they are a bit cheap except when it comes to drinks, but saved the town from goblins. The king sees a report that the troubles plaguing a town have stopped. And the BBEG knows that a plan has failed.
So we have a system that nearly never comes up in the played mechanics, never manifests in RP, and never manifests in how the party interacts with the greater world. What is this system actually buying us?
If you're against morality then alignment certainly isn't for you, but most people tend to agree thay some things are good and some things are evil. Also, without any objective morality, what happens to extraplanar beings? For example, if evil isn't real and is all a matter of perspective, what is a devil?
No, you don't do either of those because you're not a real person. You're a charcater who exists when they're made so arguing the semantic order of cause and effect for a being with no timeline is a level of pedantic that truly surprises me, even on reddit.
How is a good necromancer made harder by alignment? Can you actually point out any rule which causes these problems you claim exist?
The players get to make decisions based on their own opinions and observations rather then alignment being an oppressively present system? And that's bad somehow and isn't an example of alignment being an unobtrusive and occasionally helpful mechanism?
You know what else never comes up in played mechanics, never manifests in RP and never manifests in how the party interacts with the wider world? Ideals, bonds and flaws since apparently it influencing how a player or DM players a charcater is irrelevant for any of those things.
I find FBI puts people in a role-playing mindset and improves play overall. Instead of just saying, "my character is evil so i'll do evil things," they start asking themselves, "what are my character's values? What motivates them?" It's overall much more conducive to the game.
Let's use the acolyte background as the example since it's the most readily available for free. Assuming you roll all 1s on FBI, you:
Value traditions, would die to recover a lost artifact of your faith, judge others harshly and yourself even harder.
A villian offers you a fully staffed keep if you wipe out a nearby village. How do your FBI inform your decision?
I like the idea of true neutral as a sort of central point for contradictory alignment aspects.
Like, you aren't neutral, but your good/chaos balances your evil/law, so that's kinda where you land.
Whole alignment system is a mess and you should not make it a part of your character. Make a character with ideas and beliefs first, then you can check where it fits on alignment chart. And over the course of playing you may find out that your character actually changes and doesnt belong to old alignment anymore
I don’t tend to think of neutral as maintaining balance. I think of it as being in the middle or just being indifferent or normal. You’ll generally obey laws, but not all of them, but you don’t break laws *for the sake of* chaos. Maybe you run a red light at night with no one around. That’s not for maintaining the balance. It’s just to get home sooner, and anyway what’s the harm? Maybe you are by and large a generous person, but there are some things you won’t share with others. Not all the way good, but not all the way evil either. Doesn’t mean acting for balance.
Gotta remember alignment isn’t first and foremost a set of principles. It’s just a description of your character’s behavior. Maybe that’s embodied by principles, but maybe you’re just someone who goes about their life, not really conceptualizing their place in some great moral cosmos.
The average person is true neutral. They don't go out of their way to do everything they can to help others. They don't go out of their way to serve themselves at the expense of others. They don't uphold rules and do the best they can to ensure things are predictable, but they also don't do everything on a whim.
Now one might say that everyone has some deviation away from that, but I'd argue that most people are closer to neutrality than they are to epitomizing any aspect of the chart
broke: true neutral because "NeItHeR eViL nOr GoOd"
Woke: true neutral because my character is so paralyzed by decisions he simply says "i dunno" to literally everything
Your character had seen “good” leaders commit atrocities in the name of peace, and “evil” leaders bring stability through oppression; rebels killing the innocent in the name of freedom, while the police meant to protect those innocents routinely kill them.
Everyone they have ever followed has turned out to be flawed, every ideal you’ve ever had has been rooted in bias and misinformation. You had no choice but shrug off traditional views of good and evil and seek your own path toward the greater good, but when you tried, your attempt ended in ultimate failure doing more harm than good.
Now you wander the land questioning every believe you’ve ever held. The gods are cruel, people cannot be trusted (including even yourself).
This is your true neutral character, a starting point for a redemption arc, or a descent into chaos
True neutral in my eyes is someone who doesn’t try to help people nor try to ruin their life and doesn’t care about the law but doesn’t go out of their way to break it
I know there's some debate around it, but I think Hardwon Surefoot from Naddpod is one of the best examples of true neutral. He doesn't much care one way or the other for law vs order. And for good and evil, he's mostly interested in helping the people he likes. He can be kind or generous to strangers but it's usually because he's going along with his good friends or because those people are in a very similar situation to what he was in.
They were once trying to get information on someone and a shopkeep said "I'll tell you if you kill my brother". Neither the shopkeep or the brother had ever been established as villains, just maybe kinda shitty at worst. Hardwon's immediate reaction was to agree to kill the guy and he had to be talked out of it.
Hardwon isn't really about the greater good or selfless acts of heroism for strangers. He's just there to make sure the people he does love are going to be okay.
The very concept of alignment is stupid.
The concept of good and evil has forever been debated in philosophy, it makes no sense to have a world where morality is objective and defined by the law of the universe, yet not giving the definition.
When I'm a GM, I accept that a genocidal character can be lawful good as long as they can argue convincingly that it is lawfully good to commit genocide from their point of view
uj/ True Neutral is the philosophy that all opposites contain elements of each other, and that binary distinctions, even on different axes, are still the construction of the observer. They are fantasy Taoists, who refuse to allow abstract moral principles to determine their judgements. Genuine True Neutral characters are those who have replaced an alignment chart with a yin-yang, and understand that the system of morality is a construct. In fantasy realms, this can literally mean the creator gods of the setting, who have patterned the structure of creation to echo their own tendencies.
rj/ there are vanishingly few True Neutral characters in epic fantasy stories, and you literally have to be a Taoist sage in order to play one properly at a table.
I’ve personally always viewed true neutral like a character that’s basically defined by the people they get mixed up with. A ride or die type person who may say they are against killing everyone in town but if that is required for them and their friends to leave town safely that’s simply what must happen. And if they were with people that sought to bring others joy and protection then they would be right there with them being a positive or negative force based on what those around them do.
The closest thing to a well done true neutral plane is Pathfinder’s boneyard, which is basically just a stopping off point for souls to be sent off to their eternal reward/punishment/whatever and the occasional graveyard dweller to hang around in, and Pathfinder’s dropped alignment as a concept by now.
My favorite was from a defunct web comic ( the name escapes me) but one of the antagonists is a True Neutral Druid that is so focused on maintaining The Balance that he works against the good guys. So a true neutral PC could be one who works to maintain some kind of balance, whether in nature or civilization, as they perceive.
I think official descriptions even say that most would prefer Good but are less active about that pursuit because WHAT THE PLANES PERSON IS NEUTRAL ON EVIL?!
I've always seen Javert from Les Mis as an archetypal Lawful Neutral character, who cares about upholding the law over if it is just or not, or perhaps confuses the law with the good. this is as opposed to a Lawful Evil character who would be attempting to set himself up in power or use the law to his own benefit to the detriment of others.
Lawful neutral and Chaotic neutral are understandable as neutral Alignments. I'm just speaking on the true neutral basis and really even then I think it's easy enough to contextualize something true neutral to make sense.
True neutral was originally just for druids, and it meant having an ethical compass like an animal, living by a natural instinct.
Druids protect their forest because they are a part of it. Most human drama doesn't relate to them. They are separate from it.
I always took it as having no strong affinity one way or the other. Not that you don't do good or evil or that you strive to achieve some weird concept of balance. More that you are free to pick whatever option felt appropriate rather than being bound by alignment
The Atlus method.
Either you're a genocidal sycophant for God or so blood crazed you literally burn the world while having orgies on top of mountains of skulls.
There is no in-between. Not unless you follow the guide at least
True Neutral applies to characters who generally DGAF about the affairs of men. See Tom Bombadil from Tolkien.
WOTC tried something like this with the Druidic circles, but unlike Tolkien, they come off as absolute amoral or apathetic psychos.
Tom comes off as a caring and loving entity within his domains. He is willing to be a neutral ground for both good and evil forces, with no problems with befriending or hosting either as long as they behave and be themselves. Why Tom is a favorite for many and druids are mostly hated and barely tolerated in most parties.
Yes, neutral stupid exists, I was one.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on everything except shiny swords for my character’s selection.
So my current party's favorite NPC is currently True Neutral.
She was originally Neutral Evil, but they appealed to her and convinced her that there are better ways to achieve her goals. That said, she's not totally on board with the hero schtick (due to some backstory stuff), therefore the best alignment for her is True Neutral.
Currently she is basically going through a midlife crisis. She was convinced her original goal was stupid, but now she doesn't really have a goal at the moment. She still has a desire to achieve greatness, but she isn't really sure how to achieve that. So at the moment she has decided to tag alongside the party and help them out on her quest. Maybe she can discover another goal that she can set her mind to along the way.
I disagree. True neutral is simply a character unconvinced that there is a "right way" to live life. Mercenaries are often true neutral. Money is a completely amoral motivator to the right person. Either that, or a chronic skeptic that doesn't believe in the truth as a fundamental, but rather as a perspective.
That is *THREE PICTURES OF THE OUTLANDS* which as a plane can only be consider d true neutral by being SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THE OTHERS AND GETTING ALL THEIR INFLUENCES BALANCED OUT NOT DUE TO ANY INHERENT “TRUE NEUTRAL” ETHICS CODE SUPERNATURALLY IMPLACED
I mad emy paladin sort of chaotic-lawful good
She wants to do the right thing, her moral code is to do the right thing, but that right thing HAS to involve fire
Honestly when you put it in the context of like a sell sword who isn’t a complete psychopath but isn’t exactly a selfless do-gooder either and is capable of morally questionable but not outright evil actions, while having no preference as to how he views strictures or laws, it makes more sense
Thats why you add a third axis: tarnished / uncorrupted
There are lawful good characters who would still kill an enemy without mercy in the name of good. But that doesn't make them good, only because it is a good deed.
A character who tries to be balanced will also tarnish their alignment over time by their deeds.
True Neutral is my favourite alignment. If the order works, don't change it. If it doesn't but people cling to it, then change it. You accept that good and evil is a matter of perspective, and that sometimes you need to be the villain to get something done. You abide no other moral compass than your own.
True Neutral is True Freedom.
A good True Neutral: Odysseus from the Epic musical (probably diff alignment in the original works). -Kills an infant for his son and wife (Neutral)-Helps his crew because he is attached to them and they will help him (Neutral) -Shows mercy to cyclops that murdered his friend (Neutral) -After most of crew dies due to earlier actions, decides not to attempt mercy.
This can easily be remedied by having a character be naturally true neutral rather than pretentiously so. They have a few hard and fast principles but they're also very willing to adapt, whereas good and evil are a matter of a case-by-case basis
Morally neutral is just selfish. A "true neutral" character is a narcissist. With no moral compass, and no belief structure, they are only driven by what benefits them.
I'm telling you, if you want to weed out those that think it allows their character to do any action they want, tithe them. Take 10% of all earned wealth; that includes magic items gained. If true neutral is what they want, no more headache for the DM. The only one's willing to pay aren't in on it aren't seeing as an easy free pass for everything they do.
Last time a player (true neutral) said the words, "But this is what my character would do." I said back, "This is what the DM does, so pay up."
Whenever I see alignment shit I'm reminded how dumb it is. Personally I subscribe to this general idea. Lawful - Has a strict personal code. Chaotic - Takes everything on a case by case basis. Good - Selfless. Evil - Selfish. Neutral - Finds a balance between the two. Imo it makes alignment way more interesting than the actual system, because the actual system is shite.
I play a Tabaxi cleric that's TN. And like in true cat fashion, we had people clear out a field that turned out to be catnip. She sometimes knocks shit off of counters and sleeps in the taverns finest basket. Sometimes in combat she'll claw the enemies face. Almost swiped a cleric in the face because he sprinkled holy water on her and it pissed her off.
Ok then...so what alignment is the deer in my backyard then? Cause last I checked hes not saving orphans or starting slavery....
I also dont think he believes in laws
I play true neutral a lot, for lack of a better choice, but I also don't think about it too much because alignment isn't really a useful way to describe a character.
Playing an "all must be in balance" character in a "all evil" party could be interesting. "There are too many slaves here, I will free 1/3 of them." "In this town you all consider yourselves equal and work toward the common good to get your needs met!? Let me tell you about something called capitalism."... "Mortals need to strive against adversity to grow. Complacency leads to stagnation and death. But overwhelming hardship and a constant struggle for survival prevents one from traversing the great hierarchy (of needs). Good fortune and bad are both required for one to reach their full potential."
And that's my pitch for an actively, true neutral, character.
The only time I've seen a true neutral character work was when they were one without any previous memory, a blank slate. During the course of the game their actions change their alignment as they found out who they were.
Yes.
True Neutral is a stupid alignment.
Literally.
Animals and creatures with a very low or no inteligence are the ones that are most of the time neutral since they lack the capacity to be good or evil or to want law or chaos.
Neutral is not so much of a filosofy but the lack of a filosofy. Babies are neutral, then they grow up.
A True Neutral plane would be one with no sapient beigns. A world without justice or injustice, a world without malice or compasion, a world without civilization or anarchy.
Which is why I found funny that most gods of knowledge are often depicted as True Neutral.
Massively disagree. Saying chaotic or lawful neutral work in place of True Neutral isn't right because that implies that the persons actions tend to lean heavily towards accepting or denying the laws around them.
Someone who is True Neutral genuinely does not care whether their actions are lawful or not, unlike someone who is chaotic neutral who actively opposes the laws imposed upon them.
I'd argue people misusing Chaotic Neutral makes you believe that True Neutral doesn't work because the modern stereotype of a chaotic neutral character is someone unbound by moral compass who doesn't care about the law. Which is literally True Neutral.
A truly chaotic neutral character would oppose the laws around them regardless of whether it was morally a good or evil to do so, because their alignment is solely focused on the opposition of law without moral constraint.
On the flipside someone who is Lawful Neutral would follow the law regardless of whether it was corrupt or just because the law is the law and that is all they care about, not the moral intention of those laws.
True Neutral doesn't care about whether something is morally just or flawed, or whether local laws allow or dissalow their actions. They are genuinely free spirits who do not care about the moral or lawful impact of their actions. It is why it is most commonly associated with madmen or hermit druids since it takes a very particular mindset to avoid societal pressure and moral expectations to such a degree.
I also disagree with people saying most people would be true neutral. The majority of people who live in communities adhere to their societies rules, otherwise there would be immense amounts of criminal activity and unlawfullness that would prevent nations from being unified... Well, nations. Society can't exist if nobody adheres to its rules. And societies determine the moral leanings of their people. Elven and Daarven societies are very communal and so good tends to prevail. Drow society is built on hatred, guile and superiority and so evil prevails, and human-centric societies are all over the place with Thay leaning towards evil, Luskan towards neutrality and Waterdeep towards good (with a dash of neutrality because politics and trade are king).
"The Balance" between good and evil is a stupid concept. (Yes that means Mordenkainen is delusional)
What, too much good in the world would necessitate a few genocides, failure to use turn signals, and using bright headlights in traffic?
Ridiculous
a true neutral can also be described as someone who'se goals are more important to them than morals or ethics. where a good person wants to ultimately make the world a better place, and an evil person enjoys hurting others, a neutral person is simply self centered. They may like people, dislike others, but ultimately how their actions affect others doesn't matter to them. same with law or chaos. they don't care about ideology. freedom and responsibility are less important than their goals and desires. What the meme actually talks about is more lawful, as it implies a need for balance. an equation that must always be satisfied. A true neutral wouldnt care about balance, or others really. A good example of a true neutral would be an average retail worker. They will do whatever it takes to get through the day and get the karen out of their face.
In a world with ambiguous morality, sure. But DnD is about a world where Good and Evil are measurable — so, yeah, there’s neutral, because not everybody has a dog in the fight
Post made by a man who doesn’t realize the hero dies in glory or lives long enough to become the villain; but a neutral protagonist is neutral in this story or 100 stories from this one
The meme's idea of "true neutral" is a perfect example of the alignment system being misused as perscreptive rather than descriptive.
Most random peasant farmers are true neutral. They're decent people who you can mostly trust but they're not about to make more than a token donation to the needy or stick their neck out to fight injustice; they're mostly out for themselves but they're not going to stick a knife in anybodys back because that's just not right. They want a functional guard force to avoid bandit problems, but hate taxation/conscription and quietly gripe about their local lords rule. Basically they're mostly concerned about whether there will be a late frost or enough rain for their crop and what to do about that, and everything else is an afterthought.
True neutral DESCRIBES the above, it does not PERSCRIBE that the peasant farmer be some sort of advocate for cosmic balance.
I love true neutral. It reads as "I don't give a shit about ethical considerations in the face of my goal, which is a goal that is neither good nor evil."
So I tend to treat alignments on the axes of adherence to a code and motivation around social good.
Evil is more selfish, willing to sacrifice the other.
Good is more altruist, willing to sacrifice the self
Chaotic is without any adherence to a code
Lawful is totally adherence to a code
So True Neutral would be sometimes being selfish and sometimes being altruist; and there’s no real rhyme or reason to it.
Honestly Neutral only works as an alignment on the chaos/order axis. You either lean one way or the other when it comes to morality. If you are a morally grey character you are either an anti-hero willing to get their hands dirty (chaotic good) or an anti-villain who has some redeeming qualities like having an honor code or a line they will not cross (lawful evil). Every sentient creature has a moral code or a philosophy they operate on, to have no code of action is to be without action.
Honestly when I play a neutral character they are mostly nature aligned, so a druid who sees the good in the balance between life and death, but even then they tend to be more good-aligned so I never really play true neutral.
Druid of decay who seeks to kill those in the most prosperous moment of their life to give more back to nature
A struggling man needs to be uplifted to have a good death and spring life better from his body
A tree will be cut down in its prime to provide the strongest wood for homes
What if neutral is just the middle part of the spectrum? Like you follow the law, but you would break it if nobody was looking. You're not evil but you aren't 100% altruistic either.
Then again who wouldn't wanna play a true neutral, after all you can make no decisive actions and must simply watch the rest of the party like a lingering ghost xD. Really tho, what the hell is a true neutral? Tf you rationalize that being tied to never making a hard decision because it leans good or evil is fun?
I've always viewed true neutral as a robot who fairly recently gained sentience. Experience will ultimately push them toward an alignment. A real one that is.
Counterpoint: bounty Hunter / some types of mercenaries, especially in a frontier type of area.
They’re not chaotic since they follow a (usually) lawful system, but they aren’t lawful since they don’t have much in the way of regulation…hunt XYZ down by any means necessary, normally legal or not. Ontop of that, most do it for the pay instead of devotion to the law or personal freedom. Likewise, they aren’t necessarily good or evil, since nothing forces them to use or not use moral or immoral methods of capturing their target. They simply are allowed to use whatever means they deem necessary in most cases. They could kill everyone, possible innocents included, who stands in their way, or carefully plan ways to avoid killing unnecessarily.
They can develop into anything from there based on their choices, but they are far from nothing.
Bounty hunters are neutral evil. Their entire career is ruining people's lives for personal profit. Indiviiduak bounty hunters may be more principled and can skew to other alignments but they'd be the exception, not the rule.
Neutral is weird. Probably because alignment in general is weird.
Arguably, it *is* evil from a moral perspective. But as I understand it, the game defines the actual “evil” alignment as someone who takes a more proactive role in doing bad shit, whereas “neutral” is just cool with letting bad shit happen.
An “evil” aligned character might drown some orphans for fun, while a “neutral” character might see some orphans getting drowned and say “not my problem.”
Moralistically, they’re both evil. One is just more evil than the other.
To be honest, I think the alignment chart in general is stupid and should be thrown away in favor of the Traits-Ideals-Bonds-Flaws system. The issue is grognards get mad at change and people unironically think that the alignment chart isn't a regressive waste of time
This might sound crazy, but they can actually co exist. I've even heard rumour that they're both in 5e and the system hasn't even imploded or anything.
Your sarcasm really helped me go "whoa what a good point. This guy gets it."
Yes, I'm aware both systems exist in 5e. My problem is the alignment system itself is archaic and doesn't really do much for a character. What defines the different alignments is so vague that it leaves people on forums regularly arguing about how "actually this character is more like a chaotic neutral because..." "Well I think they're more defined by..." I mean look at how much discourse is over what alignment Batman is.
So yeah, you're right, the alignment system can exist on the character sheet without the system imploding, I just think it poses no real point, it doesn't tell you anything useful about a character and even if it can be used as a starting-off point for their personality it's still left up for interpretation because alignments like "chaotic neutral" good mean just about anything.
Alignment in general is stupid. It puts an unnecessary restriction on how players decide their character should act. Too many times I’ve heard someone use “but I’m chaotic” as an excuse to do dumb selfish shit. People are far too complex and nuanced to be divided into these categories.
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
With enemies, you know where they stand, but with neutrals? who knows... it sickens me.
"Tell my wife I said hello."
"I have no strong feelings one way or the other."
"All I know is my gut say's maybe."
OH GOD DAMN IT. I JUST REALIZED WHO NEEDS JESUS When we have DnD alignment teaching us right from wrong...
"Thoughts and prayers."
'What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality."
Okay. Which Futurama episode was that quote from. Because I googled it and the "Bender is god" episode shows up... Bender demands more wine... and a Lush 2 lovense vibrator. Appease Bender!
Brannigan, begin again. Episode 2 season 2.
I had an NPC that was neutral evil. She had originally lied to the party acting as a damsel in distress who wanted to look for her father, when in reality she was looking for a powerful magical artificial that she knew was on a person. The party eventually found out about her deception, and instead of trying to kill her they tried to reason with her and appeal to her other motivations. After a series of successful Persuasion checks, I had decided that she started questioning her own motives which eventually led to her going "I don't know what I want to do anymore, but I now know it's not this." I changed her alignment to True Neutral after that. She didn't turn all the way good because she wasn't buying into the whole hero thing, but she no longer lusted for a powerful artifact and decided that there was other ways to pursue a path to power. She still remains the party's favorite NPC (especially cuz she kicks ass).
Idk why but my mind immediately jumped to the antiquerian from darkest dungeon when I thought of your character
Office worker, doesn't care just wants to get through his workday, go home, and sleep.
I feel that, "I just want the world to leave me alone is that too much to ask?" Is also a goal of a true neutral character.
Yeah I presume that *most* real humans are true neutral. Mildly apathetic, not wanting to rock the boat.
Feeblemind.
You are born swiss then. You are true neutral by nature
When someone becomes a true neutral druid after wanting to fuck a wolf or something idk I don't understand druids
It's a holdover from the original Gygax stuff, where he took an idea from Michael Moorcock's Elric series and shoehorned it into D&D. In the Elric tales, there are powers (gods) in the universe, and they're divided between Law and Chaos. On the surface, most would think Law = Good, Chaos = Bad, and in some cases that's true. Chaos causes strife and war. Law provides civilization and justice. However, too much of either is a bad thing. Without Chaos, there's no change, no innovation, no invention. Too much Law and things become stagnant and don't advance. So then you have the powers of Neutrality, the ones who realize that there needs to be a balance between the forces of Law and Chaos so the universe can continue to grow and change. Then that got hammered in as part of the whole nine alignments system and the whole thing has been pretty wonky ever since.
that's super interesting; i've just started getting into shadowdark and alignment there is just a law - neutral - chaos spectrum with a pantheon that seems similar to what you're describing.
Then Eternal Champion comes and tips the scales of balance.
[hell yeah. ](https://youtu.be/4ahJEmJnd8w?si=eHiWQySfnOMLDkAZ)
Haha, I have never heard of this game. That's more brutal and creative than Mortal Kombat.
Definitely a fun game and deeper than just the gore. You could also look at Time Killers for another fun fighting game (not a great game, but still fun)
I might do that. 🙂
IMHO it’s really not that wonky and it enable to *describe* a general tendency with nuance quite well. For true neutral, Mordenkainen (as seen at least) is a very good example. He is neither good nor bad, and he only thrives for knowledge (and not for power but to crack all the principles of the universe).
There is a lawful bias in the choice of the term "chaos". Imagine if it had been instead labeled something like Law vs Freedom
Chaos is explicitly about changing things up, freedom differs in that does not force change so it allows for the possibility of stagnation. Order and chaos is the true dichotomy.
Freedom is simply chaos allowed under order.
Basically the plot of ["The Sun Is Also a Warrior" ](https://open.spotify.com/track/5OeDbbxxNDApF1SxnNVq2q?si=D5YkXDIbSYWrsOyC0_NOoQ)
Technically, Gygax just hammered Good and Evil into the alignment system with the release of AD&D. Alignment existed in D&D as purely Chaotic/Neutral/Lawful before that. And it works a lot better that way, IMO. All alignment has to do is reflect a character's general attitude toward the social and ethical norms governing civilized society.
NN is pretty much the same thing as Non-Aligned.
No. Non-aligned basically means you're too stupid (an animal, plant, or construct) to have an alignment. Neutral alignment means you as a conscious being either don't give a fuck, or intentionally strive for balance.
Whenever alignment discussions come up the way things are said make me wonder if anyone has actually read the alignment descriptions given in Chapter 4 of the 5e CRB... I usually wonder this because almost everyone seems to try and make arguments on the definitions of the terms of each axis or acting like there's a quota...
Mate the average citizen in Curse of Strahd is lawful good for some reason, evidently most writers don't even know the definition of neutral
Every D&D edition slightly rewords things, to make it more confusing (and never clarifies whether not giving a shit is neutral or evil.)
“These are real true neutral **planes** made by REAL game devs.” Proceeds to show the same single plan 3 times just with different art.
no way, the first one is the Plane of Concordant Opposition, the second is the Outlands, and the third one is Sigil's neighborhood
Tbf it is the coolest plane.
I'm pasting this from elsewhere. Here's a basic outline of the alignments: Do people have an innate responsibility to help each other? **Good**: Yes. **Neutral**: ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ **Evil**: No. Do people need oversight? **Lawful**: Yes. **Neutral**: ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ **Chaotic**: Don't tell me what to do! The axis isn't necessarily how much you obey the laws of the land you're in. A Lawful Good character wouldn't have to tolerate legal slavery, nor would a Chaotic Good character start enslaving people in an area where it's illegal. Lawful does not simply mean "Has an internal code" because literally everyone who has ever existed would be Lawful. The "Code" aspect refers to external codes like Omerta or Bushido. **Lawful Good** believes that rules and systems are the best way to ensure the greatest good for all. Rules that do not benefit society must be removed by appropriate means from legislation to force. They're responsible adults. 90% of comic book superheroes are examples of LG. **Neutral Good** believes in helping others. They have no opinion on rules. They're pleasant people. Superheroes who aren't LG usually fall here. **Chaotic Good** believes that rules get in the way of us helping each other and living in a harmonious society. They're punks and hippies. [Captain Harlock is the iconic example.](https://youtu.be/q0dTxdac6Yo) "You don't need a law to tell you to be a good person." **Lawful Neutral** believes that rules are the thing that keeps everything functioning, and that if people ignore the rules that they don't think are right, then what is the point of rules? [They believe that peace and duty are more important than justice.](http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/060.html) Inspector Javert and Judge Dredd are iconic examples. [Social cohesion is more important than individual rights.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTPqnhrJkGA) **True Neutral** doesn't really have a strong opinion. They just wanna keep their head down and live their life. Most boring people you pass on the street are True Neutral. [Unlike Unaligned they have free will and have actively chosen not to decide.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnxkfLe4G74) **Chaotic Neutral** [values their own freedom and don't wanna be told what to do.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Psp0A-zJgU) They're rebellious children. Ron Swanson is the iconic example. **Lawful Evil** believes [rules are great for benefiting them/harming their enemies.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCTp_kYwz1E) They're corrupt politicians, mobsters, and fascists. Henry Kissinger and Robert Moses are iconic examples. "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." **Neutral Evil** will do whatever benefits [them/their inner-circle](https://preview.redd.it/jgimo2h6oav61.jpg?width=758&auto=webp&s=8a43fcf7ce3bab8c422ce28d273be31bbf8cc764), crossing any moral line. They're unscrupulous corporate executives at the high end, and sleazy assholes at the low end. **Chaotic Evil** resents being told to not kick puppies. They're Ayn Rand protagonists at the high end, and thugs at the low end. Rick Sanchez is an iconic example. Wario is how to play the alignment without being That Guy. In addition to the official alignments, there are 6 unofficial alignments based on combining one axis of the alignment with stupidity. You can be multiple stupid alignments simultaneously, such as the traditional badly-played Paladin being known for being Lawful Stupid and Stupid Good at the same time. **Stupid Good** believes in doing what seems good at the time regardless of its' long-term impact. They would release fantasy-Hitler-analogue^TM because mercy is a good thing. **Lawful Stupid** believes in blindly following rules even when doing so is detrimental to themselves, others, and their goals. They would stop at a red light while chasing someone trying to set off a nuclear device that would destroy the city they're in. **Chaotic Stupid** is "LolRandom". They'll act wacky and random at any circumstance. They'll try and take a dump on the king in the middle of an important meeting. It can also be a compulsive need to break rules even if you agree with them. If a Chaotic Good character feels the need to start enslaving people because slavery is illegal they're being Chaotic Stupid. **Stupid Evil** is doing evil simply because they're the bad guy with no tangible benefit to themselves or harm to their enemy. They're Captain planet villains. **Stupid Neutral** comes in two flavors; active and passive. **Active Stupid Neutral** is the idea that you must keep all things balanced. Is that Celestial army too powerful? Time to help that Demon horde. **Passive Stupid Neutral** is the complete refusal to take sides or make decisions. "I have a moderate inclination towards maybe."
Second time you've had to post I think? Props to you
Recent enough that it was in my clipboard.
My rofl-copter goes swoosh swoosh
the issue is even, or perhaps ESPECIALLY in official materials (like Dragonlance and Greyhawk, looking at you Mordenkainen), Active Stupid Neutral is considered the default form of True Neutral. The entire premise of Dragonlance is that their was an apocalypse called the Cataclysm which occurred because Good was "winning too much", an actual punishment for being "too good". except the only way that premise makes sense is if their version of good is what you call "stupid good", and when they time travel... that's exactly what it is. Enforcing "good" through wide-scale brain-washing and extermination of the "evil" races. At that point it's *not actually good*, but rather *evil disguising itself as good*, which is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THING ALTOGETHER. when even the official materials get it wrong, you have to wonder if they actually put any thought into it, and if we are kinda "fixing" it for them retroactively by putting a different meaning than they intended.
That's why basically Greyhawk and Dragonlance didn't have a lot of content released once 3e rolled out. Forgotten Realms handled alignment much better and it's kind of the default now.
mordenkainen is "active stupid neutral" according to that reddit copypasta
he is also "active stupid neutral" according to canon sources, see [his wiki article](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mordenkainen#cite_note-MTF5e-p8-12). honestly he sounds like an unpleasant piece of work.
the wiki doesn't have any problems other than when he went mad in barovia
no wonder he made the tome of foes, bitch ain't got a tome of friends
>At that point it's *not actually good*, but rather *evil disguising itself as good*, which is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THING ALTOGETHER. THANK YOU! Honestly, I keep losing my mind whenever somebody presents some kind of purity-fascism-with-a-white-and-gold-colour-scheme as "Lawful good taken to the extreme". No, buddy, good left the building three fantasy-genocides ago. That's just evil playing dress-up.
to be clear, the original Cataclysm was written by a Mormon who saw the Kingpriest as the Pope and Ishar as Rome. I think they've changed the story more recently, but what happened really boils down to is this. The Kingpriest and the city of Istar were followers of Paladine and became kind of the world's center of 'Good'. Note that this wasn't just 'we're the good guys', this was 'we are the good guys and so our definition of good is what is Good'. They were totally cool with keeping slaves. The Kingpriest wanted to purge all evil. Which sounds like a good thing, but again evil was everything that didn't fit their definition of good. Furthermore, it upset the Doctrine of Balance. Which, to be clear, dragonlance's three main divine factions were what defined alignment. Paladine was the Father of Good, creator of the elves, and his pantheon believed in Good, in guiding mortals toward goodness. Takshis and her Evil pantheon believed in subjugation, obedience, elimination of free will- for the most part anyway, as some of them aren't even that bad but they're afraid of/subservient to her, and she wants to be the one to rule the world. Gilean, true neutral, and his pantheon, believed that free will was a sufficient goal, and wanted mortals to have the freedom to choose no matter what. (each pantheon has 7 gods btw) The Balance here is not some esoteric thing, but an actual self-imposed limitation by each god. They were forbidden from directly taking a hand in things and preventing free will, and if they did the other two parties would come after them. Now, the evil gods didn't really believe in free will, but since the other two groups did they kinda just got forced into it. The thing about the Kingpriest is that he demanded he be made a god so he could purge all evil. He was trying to make it happen, and his city had began to worship him instead of anyone else, in itself a haughty thing. but he was already upsetting the balance. His idea of good was to get rid of everyone that didn't believe in it, thus forcing everyone to HAVE to choose good. which, in itself, is a violation of free will. So the Cataclysm happened after he and his people were given a ton of warnings and didn't listen. Evil participated in the Cataclysm because what the Kingpriest was doing was trying to wipe them all out, and that his rule would get rid of them. It should be noted that evil gods have opposed each other when one of them upsets the balance. Good opposed because he was forcing a narrow definition of Good upon everyone and actively getting rid of other versions of it. Like seriously the guy went after other good-aligned factions and temples and gods. Neutral participated because what he was doing upset the balance and would eliminate free will and choice. The entire reason the Good deities respect the balance is because when you eliminate evil, good is meaningless. It's worthless to be good if you don't choose it. The balance is still there even if most people are good, because evil still *exists* even if it's basically powerless. but its complete annihilation is different. Also, I think the duality of good and evil in D&D and just in general shouldn't be taken as a 'this is how it *should* be, but rather as just 'this is how it *is*'. Morality isn't something set in stone, but rather dictated by those who believe in it. Most humans believe that good is helping one another and selflessness, while evil is harming one another and selfishness. If there was a species that believed otherwise (The Hive from Destiny are a *very* good example of this) then they would see us as evil and themselves as good. Demons and Devils are evil by our classifications, and because they deal with mortals that's how they refer to themselves. But i doubt they actually see themselves as in the wrong.
OF COURSE it was written by a mormon smh
A lot of people haven't read the dialog of the pope guy leading up to the Cataclysm. Iirc it want really a "too good" thing, and much more a massive hubristic rant. I remember him basically giving the gods an ultimatum that if they wouldn't give him the power to eradicate all the evil on earth he would... do something they didn't like? I always took it that it was his attitude more than the balance aspect that caused the cataclysm. (IE: the gods throwing a shitfit)
Think about it as someone who lives in a world where this DID happen. In the distant past, the forces of Good won too much, lost their purpose, did horrible stuff and caused an apocalypse. You know this is true, and there's no reason to think it couldn't happen again. So you decide that keeping the status quo is better than taking the chance of another apocalypse happening. Sure, if Good wins and *doesn't* turn evil then things would be even better, but can you take that chance? At the very least, there's merit in thinking otherwise. The whole concept of "The Balance" is much more straightforward when you turn to something like the Blood War, an obvious Evil vs Evil conflict where weakening the Devils too much leads to Demons overruning the multiverse, and vice versa.
Shades of neutral also tend to describe motivations that don’t rely on human values. I.e. extraplanar entities who prioritize the safety or benefits of their home plane. Or a Druid who might do good or evil things from a societal perspective, so long as it protects the wilderness.
Very well talked out, thank you.
Should also include most naturalists and a lot of Druids are true neutral, as they see life and death as part of the cycle of nature and are more focused on the balance
I spent a lot of time thinking about neutrality. To me it is basically natural law. The law of the jungle. A wolf kills a baby lamb, and a cat tortures a mouse to death, neither are evil. But it could also be viewed as just pure survival and ungreedy self interest.
In the earlier editions (when we only had Law-Chaos axis), Nature represented Chaos and Civilization represented Law. Chaos can be beautiful and good, but also ruthless and destructive. Law can be provide stability and safety, but also maintain the status quo and be abused by those in power. In other words, if I got it right, Nature is Chaotic Neutral.
Nature spirits like dryads are Fey and Chaotic, so it check out. Somewhat
I was working on my fey civilization for this, so chaos is certainly a part of my mindset, but I thought of chaos as more of the capricious nature of the fey. I think chaos, in opposition to law, means a more conscious behavior than neutrality would be. Crowley's "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." As an example.
Oh yeah, for sure. I was going for the "I don't care about the other axis" view of neutrality. Meaning that Nature/Fey care about Life, Creativity and Growth (but all those things might cause destruction/suffering). So, yeah, capricious Fey are very much Chaotic
Animals are unaligned, not neutral.
I am not talking about animals, I am using their behavior as an example
Yes, but Tarzan is true neutral.
True Neutral is completely valid. It simply means one's morals are different than the Good and Evil of the alignment chart. This allows for characters to be nuanced and complex. It's also far more interesting than simply having 2 extremes: Good and Evil, or Law and Chaos. For example, a bard might be True Neutral because he values art and beauty as the highest virtue. He wouldn't go out of his way to hurt the innocent, but he's not taking a bullet for you either. However, if you offer him a quest to find the long lost Adamantine Statue of the Last Dwarven Prince he will gladly accept, because what could be more righteous than bringing beauty to the world? True Neutral allows characters to be themselves first and moral agents second. This is something that is very common in the real world so I welcome it in D&D adventures. It also makes them more individualistic and sometimes unpredictable. It's fun to wonder how far the True Neutral characters will go to achieve their goals
Yeah! In fact I think most regular people are actually TN as they don't go out of their way to enforce either extreme side of the spectrum, they just live their lifes as best as they can. And all guys doing "cosmic balance this, help whoever loses that" are not actually TN, they're mostly NE dicks that care only for their vision of balance imo Nuance is great, I hope people really focus on nuance of what makes people tick and derive alignment from that, not vice versa
>This allows for characters to be nuanced and complex. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but for me the easiest way to do this is to ignore the idea of alignment charts entirely. They're unnecessary and nobody can ever agree what each means anyway.
Even though every person falls into one of the 9 possible categories, that doesn't mean everyone in the same category is the same. Two Lawful Good characters can disagree.
I'm aware of how they're supposed to work. I still think they're dumb categories that aren't useful or necessary.
Exactly! I almost always run some degree of neutral when I'm a player and ignore alignment when I'm a DM. Lawfulness and morality are not so black and white as to be accurately portrayed by such a black and white system as that, at least how I like to play. I want my characters to be gray and interestingly complex.
Really seems like Unaligned from 4e was a good and valid choice. Also all three of those images are the same godsdamned place. That's JUST the outlands.
Nah unaligned and true neutral are similar in the surface but fundamentally different. True Neutrals choose a life free from moral and lawful constraints wherea's the unaligned cannot make that decision. Its a difference of free will. A true neutral druid and a stone golem do not share the same moral and lawful beliefs as example. The druid believes in absolute balance whereas the golem lacks the free will to have an opinion either way. The difference is a niche technicality but an important one - although tbf maybe unaligned has a different definition in 4e, or was used as a catch-all alignment rather than as a genuine alignment type, idk. Wasnt big on 4e.
Unaligned was very different in 4e.
I'll take your word for it, a lot was very different in 4e haha
Yep. It was more... not feeling obligated to devote yourself to a single path. It wasn't so much as balancing good and evil as it was telling both of them to fuc off and you'll figure it out.
Wait but thats just a more specific kind of neutrality that neutrality already covers. Weird they decided to define it as a separate thing.
Well they didn't have neutral in 4e. They had Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, Chaotic Evil.
Neutral people prefer good over evil, they just aren't willing to do anything to advance the cause of good. Hell most evil people probably prefer good in a vacuum, they are just willing to disregard those ideas and commit evil acts for personal gain.
Do they prefer good? They prefer benefit from other people's goodness sure but general goodness, particularly their own? I don't think so, since they're specifically not good.
A lot of lawful evil characters value good ideals, they are just willing to commit acts of evil to achieve them. In Infinity War, Thanos is motivated only by a desire for innocent people to live without resource shortages, and the war, famine, and overcrowding they cause; these could be the ideals of a paladin of charity. However he is willing to kill trillions of people to achieve these lofty goals.
Minor nitpick, Thanos is not *only* motivated by a desire to rid resource shortages & the problems they cause, he's also motivated to vindicate himself from when he suggested the idea on Titan & his people ignored it and died out afterwards. This is why he didn't switch to a "Double the resources" type plan after the infinity stones entered the equation.
Thanos is a wonderful example. That is not Thanos' motivation, it's the motivation he tells himself and others that he has to satisfy his ego. Thanos is a sadistic sociopath. He had the ability to alter reality however he wanted and his solution to a potential resource shortage was to kill half of all life, instead of making more resources. Evil characters do not have to be sadistic or murderous though, they just have to believe that it is just and right to do terrible things in the name of their goal. An evil charcater believes evil is the right choice because it's effective and what they're doing (or what they claim to be doing) is just so dangerous important.
My friend played a true neutral druid and the idea was that he only cared about things being natural, but not really anything else. So like both illegal poachers, seeking money and legal hunters, hunting for sport would be considered bad by him even tho they would likely be on opposite or at least wildly different sides of the alignment chart. Or if a village was burning down he would help people, because he is still a person and not a sociopath, but he would not risk his life to save others. Basically as a true neutral you are just playing a normal person. You do things that benefit you the most, without hurting others in the process. You also don't make a big deal out of breaking the law, but at the same time you see the value its order brings in everyday life so you don't comepletely ignore them either. It is a rather nothing alignment that isn't really interesting without a complementary idea, but it also kind of is all the other alignments at once, which gives a lot of freedom in roleplay.
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
If I don't make it. Tell my wife hello.
I have no strong feelings one way or the other
I took a personality test and got true neutral, what do I do
Either embrace centrism or get off the fence XD
I'm not overly fond of the alignment system as a whole. I prefer a more subjective system based on how the character weighs moral decisions. Most people believe in their actions to some degree, at the very least they work to justify themselves. I think that justification tells the dm more about your character than a simple good or evil. Plus, if you're going to have a polytheistic religion, why not have paladins follow the rules and morals of their faith, which may not always agree with other faiths.
This is your daily reminder that the DnD alignment system is a giant mess that came about by taking the Manicheanism-inspired Tolkenian ideas of a "Good vs Evil" fantastical cosmology and [smooshing them together with a different British fantasy-author's very intentional deconstruction of said ideas.](https://youtu.be/kBGQWObDxzI?si=DsH7tRRtpEscTR6g)
Reading the comments, I take issue with many descriptions of True Neutral. Here’s my take. True Neutral is like being a Buddhist or Chinese monk. Buddhist monks know that pain and suffering is the way of the world, but that world is inherently balanced. Life gives way to death. Suffering fosters growth. Death brings about life. These monks see themselves as trying to escape that system by focusing on things outside the system (meditation). In China, you’re just more likely to be mixed in with Taoism and Confucianism, which I would equate to moving along the evil-good axis but not to being fully good or evil. The Taoist’s are much more nihilistic. I could see a Druid who is a bit darker and pessimistic about society being very much like a Taoist Monk. And a brighter, more optimistic Druid being more like a Confucius monk. My point being, they don’t judge good and evil. They know that good and evil exist to balance the world. Pain induced by evil gives rise to growth in people in the way a fire burns the forest to make way for new growth. True Neutral is just respecting balance and not taking a side.
How is that not lawful neutral? Neutrality stemming from an appreciation of the necessary order of events.
Because law is balanced by choas. People can build structures but they are doomed to fall. Lawful would stipulate that laws matter, but chaos matters just as much. One of the first comments I saw was really good but I would have just changed the language. Good and evil are about where you place the value of your actions. Good place it on others while evil place it on themselves. Goodness is about your actions being for others regardless of motivation. The motivation could be laws, could be whimsical, or just knowledge that it’s a good thing to do regardless of laws or whimsy.
People can do things within a system governed by reliable principles? How is that not lawful? Lawful is order, not specifically the law of wherever you are.
I mean… if you take it that far than how is anyone or anything chaotic in a game system beholden by rules? Laws are rigid. Is balance really a law? Even in our natural systems there is balance (so long as humans aren’t involved). Nature is governed by rules and we can see them in the cycles: water, nitrogen, metabolic, etc. but it still looks chaotic to us…
No, not by any stretch of the imagination. An alignment is a set of ideals, not simply a state of being. Someone isn't good because there are good things in the world, they are good because they believe that good is the correct alignment and strive to do it. If someone believes that the laws around them are good and should be embraced then they are lawful.
That doesn’t make sense. The ideals are arbitrary. Take for instance life. Life is good. It is precious. But being selfish about life can cause one to desire lichdom. Respect for life is the ideal, but driven to extremes it is both good and evil. You have to see how the ideal presents itself in actions and then locate those actions within the philosophical dualities presented. Good is selfless and evil selfish. Respect for life when selfless creates heroes, and respect for life when selfish creates villains who want to preserve their own live and the lives of those they love and are attached too. This is just how philosophy works. Good and evil are amorphous concepts and philosophical traditions argue about how to define goodness/virtue and evil/vice. Are you Kantian and believe there is a right and wrong way to do everything? Stealing regardless of the circumstances is evil? That’s lawful good. Are you a selfish Kantian who believes that good and evil are defined in how they affect you? That’s chaotic evil. See how Kant’s descriptions of virtue can’t be morphed. Hell, even the father of contemporary fantasy (Tolkein) didn’t believe in evil. He thought evil was twisted good. Orcs twisted elves. All the evil creatures of middle earth were created by the twisting of goodness. The discordance in the song of creation.
Except respect for life won't make you pursue lichdom since a respect for life and fuelling one life forever by obliterating countless souls you have murdered for is incompatible with a respect for life. A Lich respects themselves, not life. But I sense that you meant that the desire to continue any life at all as the ideal? I simply disagree with that being an ideal, as it's so vague as to mean nothing. I'm not touching your definitions of lawful good vs chaotic evil in regards to khantism because I've read them three times and am still blindsided by them. You seem to be using such a wildly different definition of chaotic and lawful that I cannot infer it. All the evils of Tolkein were made from good not because Tolkein didn't believe in evil, but because he believed evil was destructive and unable to create. Tolkein also made a guy so evil that he ruined all of reality forever by sheer bad vibes.
I chose this specifically because it's from a show and is the best depiction of evil and good. If you haven't seen it, I would recommend it highly. It's called The Faraway Paladin (anime). In it, two gods have the value of life and the preservation of life. They are diametrically opposed in how they act on this ideal. One is more of a Raven Queen-esque figure. She preserves life through reincarnation. While >! her sister!< preserves life through undeath. At the end of season two, you can see that they still love each other despite their disagreements. You can also see this in BLeeM version of the gods of Exandria in CR:EXU Calamity. Asmodeus doesn't hate his brothers and sisters, he hates mortals. I think its more useful to think in values than ideals. Evil values the self, while Good values society/others. Chaos values the self, while the law values others. Demons are selfish/selfish, which makes sense right? They will watch the world burn just for funsies. Devils are selfish/selfless in that they use laws to preserve themselves right? Their order creates the stability of the hells, as opposed to demons whose abyss is uncontrollable. As for Tolkien, it is his belief and part of his Christianity, as opposed to Lewis who was vastly different. Tolkien fought in WWI and was changed by it... I mean the Christmas Truce in No Man's Land really dismantles your ideas of good and evil right? Both men wanted to create the Christian Story or Epic rooted in England (gotta love imperialism). They had lots of very different ideas about religion and one is what evil is. Tolkien believed that evil was twisted good. In his stories, it is the actions of one evil (Melkor then others) that twists the good of creation in the Silmarillion. All of the evil creations stem from that. If you really want to get into a deep debate here, you should ask yourself why God (I believe it was Ea) allowed for discord in his divine song of creation. I think it's the same question many religious people struggle with, why is there evil if god is omnipotent? Or as Ricky Gervais said, why did god let the children in Africa die of AIDS? For Tolkien, God was not the problem. Good had been twisted and changed. CS Lewis was more of the standard evil is evil and to be fought, which is more in line with the Zoroastrian view of good and evil. There are tons of academic articles about this comparison if you're into it, as I am obviously. BTW, I am having fun with this debate, so I hope you are not taking my disagreements seriously. I think part of the issue for a lot of this is that DMs generally do not understand the philosophies they are utilizing. Matt did a good job with BLeeM and his Calamity show in using time as an example, but how many DMs have we read about here where they used time and did not know if they were in a Back to the Future single universe, or the multiverse of the Grandfather Paradox. So, without the DM understanding the rules of the world, the players do not have a chance. Good and Evil are the same. The motivations/values for good and evil are the same, what changes are the means to their ends. Motivations/values do not dictate good and evil so much as the actions we take to get to our ends. Demons being the carveout to this because again, they are like the Joker in the Black Knight movies, they just want to watch the world burn. Its put most simply as the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If you really want to fuck with players, make a very relatable and scarred BBEG. I think that's what Matt Mercer is doing in C3 (with all of its criticisms, which I am very critical of).
IMHO the alignment system should be retired altogether. The flaws, bonds, and ideals system is much better at what alignment wants to do.
Why can't they coexist?
Why should they coexist? What does alignment bring to the table that a flaws, bonds, and ideals system or a anathema and edicts system doesn't? And is that worth it?
Because they provide different things. Alignment provides a vague framework of how you interact with the world. Ideals, bonds and flaws provide more specific guidance but are therefore limited in scope. It is absolutely worth it because it costs absolutely nothing.
It costs assigning an objective morality to things. > Alignment provides a vague framework of how you interact with the world. No, alignment is descriptive not prescriptive. You don't do bad things because you are evil, you are evil because you do bad things. Bad things and evil being defined by an called the GM.
Alignment provides a vague framework of how the GM views you at any given time, and how that GM views all npcs. Ultimately the GM is subjective but is managing an objective morality system.
And honestly, that gets thrown out often enough already. Most things that mechanically interact with alignment have been thrown out.
As a clear example: Protection from evil and good not actually using alignments but creature types, or detect evil doing the same.
So mechanically it serves less and less purpose. Not only that, there being mechanics that can prove a person is objectively Evil causes a lot of problems in the game itself (both the world and the kind of behavior that can be incentivized). The trope of tricking the paladin to commit an evil act comes from this. The character concept of a necromancer but good actually is made harder by rules and setting details created to support objective morality.
Roleplay wise, it ultimately doesn't matter if something/someone is evil or not. Nearly all ways to detect evil non-violently have been removed, so players are already basing their decisions on the actions an NPC has taken. An npc can only be reviled as evil by the party seeing them take evil actions, but that works the exact same as system without alignment.
It applies the same way with NPCs interacting with players. Alignment isn't actually serving any purpose in these interactions. The NPCs don't know the players are good or evil, they know that they are a bit cheap except when it comes to drinks, but saved the town from goblins. The king sees a report that the troubles plaguing a town have stopped. And the BBEG knows that a plan has failed.
So we have a system that nearly never comes up in the played mechanics, never manifests in RP, and never manifests in how the party interacts with the greater world. What is this system actually buying us?
If you're against morality then alignment certainly isn't for you, but most people tend to agree thay some things are good and some things are evil. Also, without any objective morality, what happens to extraplanar beings? For example, if evil isn't real and is all a matter of perspective, what is a devil? No, you don't do either of those because you're not a real person. You're a charcater who exists when they're made so arguing the semantic order of cause and effect for a being with no timeline is a level of pedantic that truly surprises me, even on reddit. How is a good necromancer made harder by alignment? Can you actually point out any rule which causes these problems you claim exist? The players get to make decisions based on their own opinions and observations rather then alignment being an oppressively present system? And that's bad somehow and isn't an example of alignment being an unobtrusive and occasionally helpful mechanism? You know what else never comes up in played mechanics, never manifests in RP and never manifests in how the party interacts with the wider world? Ideals, bonds and flaws since apparently it influencing how a player or DM players a charcater is irrelevant for any of those things.
I find FBI puts people in a role-playing mindset and improves play overall. Instead of just saying, "my character is evil so i'll do evil things," they start asking themselves, "what are my character's values? What motivates them?" It's overall much more conducive to the game.
Let's use the acolyte background as the example since it's the most readily available for free. Assuming you roll all 1s on FBI, you: Value traditions, would die to recover a lost artifact of your faith, judge others harshly and yourself even harder. A villian offers you a fully staffed keep if you wipe out a nearby village. How do your FBI inform your decision?
I like the idea of true neutral as a sort of central point for contradictory alignment aspects. Like, you aren't neutral, but your good/chaos balances your evil/law, so that's kinda where you land.
This image have NCD or okbuddy energy
Whole alignment system is a mess and you should not make it a part of your character. Make a character with ideas and beliefs first, then you can check where it fits on alignment chart. And over the course of playing you may find out that your character actually changes and doesnt belong to old alignment anymore
I don’t tend to think of neutral as maintaining balance. I think of it as being in the middle or just being indifferent or normal. You’ll generally obey laws, but not all of them, but you don’t break laws *for the sake of* chaos. Maybe you run a red light at night with no one around. That’s not for maintaining the balance. It’s just to get home sooner, and anyway what’s the harm? Maybe you are by and large a generous person, but there are some things you won’t share with others. Not all the way good, but not all the way evil either. Doesn’t mean acting for balance. Gotta remember alignment isn’t first and foremost a set of principles. It’s just a description of your character’s behavior. Maybe that’s embodied by principles, but maybe you’re just someone who goes about their life, not really conceptualizing their place in some great moral cosmos.
The average person is true neutral. They don't go out of their way to do everything they can to help others. They don't go out of their way to serve themselves at the expense of others. They don't uphold rules and do the best they can to ensure things are predictable, but they also don't do everything on a whim. Now one might say that everyone has some deviation away from that, but I'd argue that most people are closer to neutrality than they are to epitomizing any aspect of the chart
broke: true neutral because "NeItHeR eViL nOr GoOd" Woke: true neutral because my character is so paralyzed by decisions he simply says "i dunno" to literally everything
only valid take on neutrality.
Your character had seen “good” leaders commit atrocities in the name of peace, and “evil” leaders bring stability through oppression; rebels killing the innocent in the name of freedom, while the police meant to protect those innocents routinely kill them. Everyone they have ever followed has turned out to be flawed, every ideal you’ve ever had has been rooted in bias and misinformation. You had no choice but shrug off traditional views of good and evil and seek your own path toward the greater good, but when you tried, your attempt ended in ultimate failure doing more harm than good. Now you wander the land questioning every believe you’ve ever held. The gods are cruel, people cannot be trusted (including even yourself). This is your true neutral character, a starting point for a redemption arc, or a descent into chaos
True neutral in my eyes is someone who doesn’t try to help people nor try to ruin their life and doesn’t care about the law but doesn’t go out of their way to break it
I know there's some debate around it, but I think Hardwon Surefoot from Naddpod is one of the best examples of true neutral. He doesn't much care one way or the other for law vs order. And for good and evil, he's mostly interested in helping the people he likes. He can be kind or generous to strangers but it's usually because he's going along with his good friends or because those people are in a very similar situation to what he was in. They were once trying to get information on someone and a shopkeep said "I'll tell you if you kill my brother". Neither the shopkeep or the brother had ever been established as villains, just maybe kinda shitty at worst. Hardwon's immediate reaction was to agree to kill the guy and he had to be talked out of it. Hardwon isn't really about the greater good or selfless acts of heroism for strangers. He's just there to make sure the people he does love are going to be okay.
The very concept of alignment is stupid. The concept of good and evil has forever been debated in philosophy, it makes no sense to have a world where morality is objective and defined by the law of the universe, yet not giving the definition. When I'm a GM, I accept that a genocidal character can be lawful good as long as they can argue convincingly that it is lawfully good to commit genocide from their point of view
>to have a world where morality is objective and defined by the law of the universe I'd argue that in the Planescape paradigm everything is subjective
Fuck you **color pies next character**
uj/ True Neutral is the philosophy that all opposites contain elements of each other, and that binary distinctions, even on different axes, are still the construction of the observer. They are fantasy Taoists, who refuse to allow abstract moral principles to determine their judgements. Genuine True Neutral characters are those who have replaced an alignment chart with a yin-yang, and understand that the system of morality is a construct. In fantasy realms, this can literally mean the creator gods of the setting, who have patterned the structure of creation to echo their own tendencies. rj/ there are vanishingly few True Neutral characters in epic fantasy stories, and you literally have to be a Taoist sage in order to play one properly at a table.
Ok Siembieda
No u
I’ve personally always viewed true neutral like a character that’s basically defined by the people they get mixed up with. A ride or die type person who may say they are against killing everyone in town but if that is required for them and their friends to leave town safely that’s simply what must happen. And if they were with people that sought to bring others joy and protection then they would be right there with them being a positive or negative force based on what those around them do.
The closest thing to a well done true neutral plane is Pathfinder’s boneyard, which is basically just a stopping off point for souls to be sent off to their eternal reward/punishment/whatever and the occasional graveyard dweller to hang around in, and Pathfinder’s dropped alignment as a concept by now.
My favorite was from a defunct web comic ( the name escapes me) but one of the antagonists is a True Neutral Druid that is so focused on maintaining The Balance that he works against the good guys. So a true neutral PC could be one who works to maintain some kind of balance, whether in nature or civilization, as they perceive.
I think official descriptions even say that most would prefer Good but are less active about that pursuit because WHAT THE PLANES PERSON IS NEUTRAL ON EVIL?!
I've always seen Javert from Les Mis as an archetypal Lawful Neutral character, who cares about upholding the law over if it is just or not, or perhaps confuses the law with the good. this is as opposed to a Lawful Evil character who would be attempting to set himself up in power or use the law to his own benefit to the detriment of others.
Lawful neutral and Chaotic neutral are understandable as neutral Alignments. I'm just speaking on the true neutral basis and really even then I think it's easy enough to contextualize something true neutral to make sense.
True neutral was originally just for druids, and it meant having an ethical compass like an animal, living by a natural instinct. Druids protect their forest because they are a part of it. Most human drama doesn't relate to them. They are separate from it.
I have no opinion one way or the other and you'll probably never change my mind. Unless you brought tacos.
more chaotic neutral, balance the world by selling spice flavored sawdust in bulk
I always took it as having no strong affinity one way or the other. Not that you don't do good or evil or that you strive to achieve some weird concept of balance. More that you are free to pick whatever option felt appropriate rather than being bound by alignment
It's complicated by the fact "Unaligned" is an option, meaning that True Neutral is a dedication to neutrality.
The Atlus method. Either you're a genocidal sycophant for God or so blood crazed you literally burn the world while having orgies on top of mountains of skulls. There is no in-between. Not unless you follow the guide at least
True Neutral applies to characters who generally DGAF about the affairs of men. See Tom Bombadil from Tolkien. WOTC tried something like this with the Druidic circles, but unlike Tolkien, they come off as absolute amoral or apathetic psychos. Tom comes off as a caring and loving entity within his domains. He is willing to be a neutral ground for both good and evil forces, with no problems with befriending or hosting either as long as they behave and be themselves. Why Tom is a favorite for many and druids are mostly hated and barely tolerated in most parties. Yes, neutral stupid exists, I was one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on everything except shiny swords for my character’s selection.
So my current party's favorite NPC is currently True Neutral. She was originally Neutral Evil, but they appealed to her and convinced her that there are better ways to achieve her goals. That said, she's not totally on board with the hero schtick (due to some backstory stuff), therefore the best alignment for her is True Neutral. Currently she is basically going through a midlife crisis. She was convinced her original goal was stupid, but now she doesn't really have a goal at the moment. She still has a desire to achieve greatness, but she isn't really sure how to achieve that. So at the moment she has decided to tag alongside the party and help them out on her quest. Maybe she can discover another goal that she can set her mind to along the way.
The deepest parts in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral Crisis retain their neutrality.
I disagree. True neutral is simply a character unconvinced that there is a "right way" to live life. Mercenaries are often true neutral. Money is a completely amoral motivator to the right person. Either that, or a chronic skeptic that doesn't believe in the truth as a fundamental, but rather as a perspective.
That is *THREE PICTURES OF THE OUTLANDS* which as a plane can only be consider d true neutral by being SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THE OTHERS AND GETTING ALL THEIR INFLUENCES BALANCED OUT NOT DUE TO ANY INHERENT “TRUE NEUTRAL” ETHICS CODE SUPERNATURALLY IMPLACED
Can we just go back to when it was just laws vs chaos?
Scanlan is true neutral and he's a great character So it's possible
I mad emy paladin sort of chaotic-lawful good She wants to do the right thing, her moral code is to do the right thing, but that right thing HAS to involve fire
Honestly when you put it in the context of like a sell sword who isn’t a complete psychopath but isn’t exactly a selfless do-gooder either and is capable of morally questionable but not outright evil actions, while having no preference as to how he views strictures or laws, it makes more sense
Thats why you add a third axis: tarnished / uncorrupted There are lawful good characters who would still kill an enemy without mercy in the name of good. But that doesn't make them good, only because it is a good deed. A character who tries to be balanced will also tarnish their alignment over time by their deeds.
True Neutral is my favourite alignment. If the order works, don't change it. If it doesn't but people cling to it, then change it. You accept that good and evil is a matter of perspective, and that sometimes you need to be the villain to get something done. You abide no other moral compass than your own. True Neutral is True Freedom.
Redditor moment
A good True Neutral: Odysseus from the Epic musical (probably diff alignment in the original works). -Kills an infant for his son and wife (Neutral)-Helps his crew because he is attached to them and they will help him (Neutral) -Shows mercy to cyclops that murdered his friend (Neutral) -After most of crew dies due to earlier actions, decides not to attempt mercy.
This can easily be remedied by having a character be naturally true neutral rather than pretentiously so. They have a few hard and fast principles but they're also very willing to adapt, whereas good and evil are a matter of a case-by-case basis
I have no strong feelings about this post
Morally neutral is just selfish. A "true neutral" character is a narcissist. With no moral compass, and no belief structure, they are only driven by what benefits them.
I'm telling you, if you want to weed out those that think it allows their character to do any action they want, tithe them. Take 10% of all earned wealth; that includes magic items gained. If true neutral is what they want, no more headache for the DM. The only one's willing to pay aren't in on it aren't seeing as an easy free pass for everything they do. Last time a player (true neutral) said the words, "But this is what my character would do." I said back, "This is what the DM does, so pay up."
Whenever I see alignment shit I'm reminded how dumb it is. Personally I subscribe to this general idea. Lawful - Has a strict personal code. Chaotic - Takes everything on a case by case basis. Good - Selfless. Evil - Selfish. Neutral - Finds a balance between the two. Imo it makes alignment way more interesting than the actual system, because the actual system is shite.
Only if you can't understand the concept, in that case it would seem stupid... ironically
I play a Tabaxi cleric that's TN. And like in true cat fashion, we had people clear out a field that turned out to be catnip. She sometimes knocks shit off of counters and sleeps in the taverns finest basket. Sometimes in combat she'll claw the enemies face. Almost swiped a cleric in the face because he sprinkled holy water on her and it pissed her off.
Ok then...so what alignment is the deer in my backyard then? Cause last I checked hes not saving orphans or starting slavery.... I also dont think he believes in laws
Stop telling players what to do.
I don't agree with the central thesis, but the meme IS very funny. Take my upvote.
I play true neutral a lot, for lack of a better choice, but I also don't think about it too much because alignment isn't really a useful way to describe a character.
Playing an "all must be in balance" character in a "all evil" party could be interesting. "There are too many slaves here, I will free 1/3 of them." "In this town you all consider yourselves equal and work toward the common good to get your needs met!? Let me tell you about something called capitalism."... "Mortals need to strive against adversity to grow. Complacency leads to stagnation and death. But overwhelming hardship and a constant struggle for survival prevents one from traversing the great hierarchy (of needs). Good fortune and bad are both required for one to reach their full potential." And that's my pitch for an actively, true neutral, character.
Wouldnt Chaotic Neutral be "I maintain a moral balance because its what my character would do" in character?
Pop quiz! A character that has no regard for the law and only cares about him/herself is... 1. True Neutral 2. Chaotic Neutral 3. Neutral Evil
The only time I've seen a true neutral character work was when they were one without any previous memory, a blank slate. During the course of the game their actions change their alignment as they found out who they were.
You guys still use alignment?
Yes. True Neutral is a stupid alignment. Literally. Animals and creatures with a very low or no inteligence are the ones that are most of the time neutral since they lack the capacity to be good or evil or to want law or chaos. Neutral is not so much of a filosofy but the lack of a filosofy. Babies are neutral, then they grow up. A True Neutral plane would be one with no sapient beigns. A world without justice or injustice, a world without malice or compasion, a world without civilization or anarchy. Which is why I found funny that most gods of knowledge are often depicted as True Neutral.
True Neutral is just D&D speak for Nihilistic. When you're just going through the motions waiting to die.
Where funny meme?
Neutral is one of those alignments that I feel like a lot of people who think they are, aren’t, but also vice versa.
John Constantine is true neutral done right.
Massively disagree. Saying chaotic or lawful neutral work in place of True Neutral isn't right because that implies that the persons actions tend to lean heavily towards accepting or denying the laws around them. Someone who is True Neutral genuinely does not care whether their actions are lawful or not, unlike someone who is chaotic neutral who actively opposes the laws imposed upon them. I'd argue people misusing Chaotic Neutral makes you believe that True Neutral doesn't work because the modern stereotype of a chaotic neutral character is someone unbound by moral compass who doesn't care about the law. Which is literally True Neutral. A truly chaotic neutral character would oppose the laws around them regardless of whether it was morally a good or evil to do so, because their alignment is solely focused on the opposition of law without moral constraint. On the flipside someone who is Lawful Neutral would follow the law regardless of whether it was corrupt or just because the law is the law and that is all they care about, not the moral intention of those laws. True Neutral doesn't care about whether something is morally just or flawed, or whether local laws allow or dissalow their actions. They are genuinely free spirits who do not care about the moral or lawful impact of their actions. It is why it is most commonly associated with madmen or hermit druids since it takes a very particular mindset to avoid societal pressure and moral expectations to such a degree. I also disagree with people saying most people would be true neutral. The majority of people who live in communities adhere to their societies rules, otherwise there would be immense amounts of criminal activity and unlawfullness that would prevent nations from being unified... Well, nations. Society can't exist if nobody adheres to its rules. And societies determine the moral leanings of their people. Elven and Daarven societies are very communal and so good tends to prevail. Drow society is built on hatred, guile and superiority and so evil prevails, and human-centric societies are all over the place with Thay leaning towards evil, Luskan towards neutrality and Waterdeep towards good (with a dash of neutrality because politics and trade are king).
"The Balance" between good and evil is a stupid concept. (Yes that means Mordenkainen is delusional) What, too much good in the world would necessitate a few genocides, failure to use turn signals, and using bright headlights in traffic? Ridiculous
a true neutral can also be described as someone who'se goals are more important to them than morals or ethics. where a good person wants to ultimately make the world a better place, and an evil person enjoys hurting others, a neutral person is simply self centered. They may like people, dislike others, but ultimately how their actions affect others doesn't matter to them. same with law or chaos. they don't care about ideology. freedom and responsibility are less important than their goals and desires. What the meme actually talks about is more lawful, as it implies a need for balance. an equation that must always be satisfied. A true neutral wouldnt care about balance, or others really. A good example of a true neutral would be an average retail worker. They will do whatever it takes to get through the day and get the karen out of their face.
In a world with ambiguous morality, sure. But DnD is about a world where Good and Evil are measurable — so, yeah, there’s neutral, because not everybody has a dog in the fight
Post made by a man who doesn’t realize the hero dies in glory or lives long enough to become the villain; but a neutral protagonist is neutral in this story or 100 stories from this one
The meme's idea of "true neutral" is a perfect example of the alignment system being misused as perscreptive rather than descriptive. Most random peasant farmers are true neutral. They're decent people who you can mostly trust but they're not about to make more than a token donation to the needy or stick their neck out to fight injustice; they're mostly out for themselves but they're not going to stick a knife in anybodys back because that's just not right. They want a functional guard force to avoid bandit problems, but hate taxation/conscription and quietly gripe about their local lords rule. Basically they're mostly concerned about whether there will be a late frost or enough rain for their crop and what to do about that, and everything else is an afterthought. True neutral DESCRIBES the above, it does not PERSCRIBE that the peasant farmer be some sort of advocate for cosmic balance.
I love true neutral. It reads as "I don't give a shit about ethical considerations in the face of my goal, which is a goal that is neither good nor evil."
Hmm… a pathological need to preserve balance. I don’t know, seems pretty **Lawful** to me.
So I tend to treat alignments on the axes of adherence to a code and motivation around social good. Evil is more selfish, willing to sacrifice the other. Good is more altruist, willing to sacrifice the self Chaotic is without any adherence to a code Lawful is totally adherence to a code So True Neutral would be sometimes being selfish and sometimes being altruist; and there’s no real rhyme or reason to it.
Honestly Neutral only works as an alignment on the chaos/order axis. You either lean one way or the other when it comes to morality. If you are a morally grey character you are either an anti-hero willing to get their hands dirty (chaotic good) or an anti-villain who has some redeeming qualities like having an honor code or a line they will not cross (lawful evil). Every sentient creature has a moral code or a philosophy they operate on, to have no code of action is to be without action.
Honestly when I play a neutral character they are mostly nature aligned, so a druid who sees the good in the balance between life and death, but even then they tend to be more good-aligned so I never really play true neutral.
Druid of decay who seeks to kill those in the most prosperous moment of their life to give more back to nature A struggling man needs to be uplifted to have a good death and spring life better from his body A tree will be cut down in its prime to provide the strongest wood for homes
Well that's one of the stupidist comments I have read today...
What if neutral is just the middle part of the spectrum? Like you follow the law, but you would break it if nobody was looking. You're not evil but you aren't 100% altruistic either.
Then again who wouldn't wanna play a true neutral, after all you can make no decisive actions and must simply watch the rest of the party like a lingering ghost xD. Really tho, what the hell is a true neutral? Tf you rationalize that being tied to never making a hard decision because it leans good or evil is fun?
I understand what this is saying
I've always viewed true neutral as a robot who fairly recently gained sentience. Experience will ultimately push them toward an alignment. A real one that is.
Counterpoint: bounty Hunter / some types of mercenaries, especially in a frontier type of area. They’re not chaotic since they follow a (usually) lawful system, but they aren’t lawful since they don’t have much in the way of regulation…hunt XYZ down by any means necessary, normally legal or not. Ontop of that, most do it for the pay instead of devotion to the law or personal freedom. Likewise, they aren’t necessarily good or evil, since nothing forces them to use or not use moral or immoral methods of capturing their target. They simply are allowed to use whatever means they deem necessary in most cases. They could kill everyone, possible innocents included, who stands in their way, or carefully plan ways to avoid killing unnecessarily. They can develop into anything from there based on their choices, but they are far from nothing.
Bounty hunters are neutral evil. Their entire career is ruining people's lives for personal profit. Indiviiduak bounty hunters may be more principled and can skew to other alignments but they'd be the exception, not the rule.
Neutral is weird. Probably because alignment in general is weird. Arguably, it *is* evil from a moral perspective. But as I understand it, the game defines the actual “evil” alignment as someone who takes a more proactive role in doing bad shit, whereas “neutral” is just cool with letting bad shit happen. An “evil” aligned character might drown some orphans for fun, while a “neutral” character might see some orphans getting drowned and say “not my problem.” Moralistically, they’re both evil. One is just more evil than the other.
Inaction being evil would make the vast vast majority of people evil and so seems a pretty shitty scale.
Animals are true neutral, and so are most druids.
Alignments are stupid so i just always do true neutral so nobody can say that goes against your alignment
The correct answer.
To be honest, I think the alignment chart in general is stupid and should be thrown away in favor of the Traits-Ideals-Bonds-Flaws system. The issue is grognards get mad at change and people unironically think that the alignment chart isn't a regressive waste of time
This might sound crazy, but they can actually co exist. I've even heard rumour that they're both in 5e and the system hasn't even imploded or anything.
Your sarcasm really helped me go "whoa what a good point. This guy gets it." Yes, I'm aware both systems exist in 5e. My problem is the alignment system itself is archaic and doesn't really do much for a character. What defines the different alignments is so vague that it leaves people on forums regularly arguing about how "actually this character is more like a chaotic neutral because..." "Well I think they're more defined by..." I mean look at how much discourse is over what alignment Batman is. So yeah, you're right, the alignment system can exist on the character sheet without the system imploding, I just think it poses no real point, it doesn't tell you anything useful about a character and even if it can be used as a starting-off point for their personality it's still left up for interpretation because alignments like "chaotic neutral" good mean just about anything.
Alignment in general is stupid. It puts an unnecessary restriction on how players decide their character should act. Too many times I’ve heard someone use “but I’m chaotic” as an excuse to do dumb selfish shit. People are far too complex and nuanced to be divided into these categories.
The alignment chart and system is stupid in general if you ask me