How do you into lawful neutral? Doing a session today, and while I have a general idea of how my new guy is gonna be...

How do you into lawful neutral? Doing a session today, and while I have a general idea of how my new guy is gonna be, I want to try and play him as more than just a robot or Dredd.

Good? Bad? Im the guy with the ... neutral tends to imply they need to be shown the self benefit of their actions, good or bad. So, clearly identify the reasons your character would be part of the group. Law indicates more then just rules, but order also. So no lolrandum, but consistency in behavior and action. Planning, and following direction. Also looking for the letter, not the spirit of laws.

The fuck is going on in that picture?
Anyway, you could arguably play it as a sort of world weary beat cop. Dirty Harry, but with less extra judicial homicide. "The system sucks, but it's the only damned thing we have, and messing around with it just makes things worse!"
You probably don't believe in rocking the boat, even for a good cause. High falutin' morality just gets people into trouble, what's important is making sure that the world is an orderly place and that things are as stable as possible.
You also probably see sticking to the code, regardless of the present situation's moral implications, as the most important.

I listened to a podcast recently about a pair of lawyers who were defending a serial killer. The murderer told them where a the bodies of a pair of missing women he had murdered were. The lawyers investigated, found the corpses, and then left them there without telling anyone. They tried to make a plea bargain using that information, but it fell apart, so they left those bodies to rot while the women's families went on wondering where their daughters were for months before they were finally found.

By the law, what those two lawyers did was right. They couldn't violate attorney client privilege, even if they wanted to. To me, that's something a Lawful Neutral character would probably do. You might not feel good about it, but you've bought into a system and you're obliged to follow it.

Remember, alignment is a guide line, not a straight jacket. Your character might still wind up breaking the law, leading a rebellion, letting a criminal go for the greater good, and a bunch of other things that go against his alignment. The main thing is that it's something he avoids doing, and prefers to keep things orderly.

Javert

I AM THE LAW AND THE LAW IS NOT MOCKED
I'LL SPIT HIS PITY BACK IN HIS FACE

what is the context for that pic? It always confuses me

Techno Grinch and his loyal worshipers discuss next years anti-Christmas plans.

You're familiar with all those people who were living in countries taken over by nazis or communists or some other horrible regime? All the people who just went on with life, returned to work. The ones who never really collaborated, but also didn't impede the occupier in any way?

That's the barebones version of Lawful Neutral.

If you take that and turn it into a character, you can get something like Odo, from Deep Space 9. A character who is obsessed with the pursuit of justice and truth and doesn't let any side's propaganda sway him.

Holy shit
Dat g-string

I like to play LN as brutal honesty. That is more of a character trait than an alignment but the two intertwine.

As a neutral the character probably measures the consequences of their actions. As a lawful they want their actions to serve the greater order and the functionality of society.

By being brutally honest they bring hidden things to light. Secrecy is the agent of chaos. With all facts and opinions on the table an informed decision, the proper action, can be made.

You could also twist it and be a Sensate. Throwing yourself into new experience as a means to experience, record, and catalogue what it is to be. An action-philosopher so to speak.

I've always loved this pic.

WTF IS IT??

Nuns doing nun things.

Good is selfless
Evil is selfish
Neutral means that you could swing either way. You help others when its not too much trouble to yourself or you still have some moral compass that prevents you from doing outright evil acts.

Lawful means you're following some code of law or honor. You respect tradition and find order more preferable to personal freedom if forced to choose.

More than likely, the grand majority of people in a functioning society are lawful neutral. They look out for themselves primarily but aren't afraid to help others around them, if mostly because society's function relies upon it.

I'd personally just run a normal-ish dude out to make a quick cash-in while preserving the society to use said cash. The difference between this and a LE or NE character is that you are still capable of being a moral compass, basing many of your decisions, however, on prior cases. Lower Int than Wis.

I suggest thinking about it in terms of playing a personality, not an alignment.

Alignment is easy, it's just general guidelines:
>Lawful
Prefers order. Usually follows some kind of code of conduct. Tends to respect traditions and hierarchies. Generally respects laws.
>Neutral
Normally prefers good to evil, but is not strongly motivated to do either good or evil acts. May be altruistic to loved ones and other people they value, but not often to strangers. May be brutal to people they dislike, or to someone they urgently need something from who won't otherwise give it up, but otherwise are benign.

Just make someone who fits with those broad guidelines. Doesn't even have to fit all of them, as long as they're doing not the complete opposite of any of them.

Looks like some bitches worshiping a spooky cyborg.

Be more consistent than the average person, think what your character values and believes in, and then make it more important to stick to those things.
Avoid hypocrisy and special exceptions, that is for the chaotic and the corruptible.

You could go ultra patriot with it. As in what I think doesn't matter, it is more important to serve king and country because they are the law and that is what is most important.

This is like, the second lewdest fictional monastery I've seen this week.

Mecha-Lich abducts a pair of nuns and makes them his thralls to satisfy his sexual urges. Even though his penis was replaced by a socket wrench many years ago.

YOU AREN'T THE LAW, I AM THE LAW!

Thanks for the help everybody, we mostly ended up drafting Conspiracy, but there was enough time for a short session afterwards. Took all the advice to mind.

And sorry for the OP pic, was on mobile, so my only other option was this, Macho Man and Hulkster as palafins, and some Bane pic.

See, shit like this is why people Okay, me say the 3x3 grid is limiting or superfluous.

Alien race pretending to be angels or some shit

Be a coward. "I want no trouble! Let's not do anything illegal!" etc.

Order has its own value. The tyrant may be an awful person, but a revolution will cause many deaths, and the next rulers will probably be the same.
Also, in a fantasy setting, the law might originate from your god. And who are you to discuss his orders?

And if we go full circle with individualisation of the punishment:
Any distinction due to intent or background would be discrimination. The fact that the person commited an infraction means that he felt forced to, and it would be pure hubris to think we can estimate the value of his reasons. Therefore we apply the law to the letter, for everyone.
>Cultist screaming that Kergosh will eat everything and punish the town for its sins : Fined for noise violation
>Children loudly selling newspapers: Fined for noise violation (to be paid by the parents)

Note that you can always find more infractions for bad people or simply people you don't like. It just means that you won't turn a blind eye to infractions made by good people.

>Doing good in this particular situation is against the law.
>I'll do good anyways and then kill myself for insubordination.

Most of the time Hugo heroes are the epitome of duty drawn to its tragic end.

Nah, people tend to do the same when you provide an example. Try starting a thread about The Punisher's alignment, and you might see what I mean.

Establish a set of codes or laws that your character operate by that covers any possible scenario that could happen in an adventure, and then follow them to a T.

Have a specific objective to save a certain VIP, but there's a burning orphanage along the way? Well your objective isn't to stop the orphanage from burning, so it's best to let it be and continue on your current path.

Stuff like that.

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I see you may have gotten your answer OP, but I'd like to add my two cents.

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>If you take that and turn it into a character, you can get something like Odo, from Deep Space 9.
I agree fully with this user.
A LN individual has a defined set of codes or rules or laws that is the primary determining factor for their actions.
It is not all they are, and they don't need to stick to it 100%, all the time, but it should be their guiding attribute.

"I am here to make money in ways compliment with the laws."

I always thought it's more of LE type behaviour. Since LE isn't limited to Nazi-equivalents and evil overlords.

Write out a set of beliefs for the character, change those beliefs when they're successfully challenged so you can tell if the character is changing. Its not like the character is locked into a personality once that personality is created.

A butler would probably work. Recall that lawful in context also points toward orderly and in a manner to be maintained. It's a job or a duty, but it's also a personal point of pride to be maintained. A noble man upholding an old family because he is expected to, or a janitor of sorts removing filth to maintain the status quo. All of these are lawful.

LN sounds a lot like LG, with cold turkeys primed to knock them out of their alignment set up everywhere.

Lawful Neutral is a guy who keeps his nose clean, pays his taxes, and upholds his end of the bargain even if it would disadvantage him because "That's what we agreed on", and expects everyone else to do the same.

So if the local Kingdom levies a 5% tax on loot taken from the local ruins, and he finds a 500g emerald, he wont say "This piece of shit? It's just a piece of glass from a counterfeiter" when asked about a nicely-sized emerald.

And then he proceeds to admonish the rogue for saying that it was "only" a +1 sword.

If I'm remembering it correctly, that exact story about the lawyers gets taught in legal ethics classes in law school. It was actually really controversial even in the law community when it happened, whether these guys had a higher obligation to the client or to the community at large.

I wonder how a LN guy with an "alien" code would be. Say, a foreigner who follows the strict legal code of his people, which is different from the party's and reflects different cultural values and/or isn't tied to moral outcomes in the same way. He respects the laws of the major cities he travels to (even while he chafes at what he considers to be a strange system), but out in the frontier or in tiny hamlets, he falls back on his people's codes and tries to apply them by force when he sees them being violated egregiously by strangers. Maybe he was some form of law enforcement in his land, so it makes sense to him to make those calls, even if they don't result in "good" outcomes.