Can lawful good be villains?

That only works of morality is relative, which it is not. ISIS is lawful evil, regardless of his or our perspective.

>alignments
lol

>Playing DnD.

An amateur mistake.

Serious devotion to duty combined with even the slightest misunderstanding can become something dreadful.

Yes, a Lawful Good person who upholds the law under an oppressive regime.

Sure, he may be a good person and be very lenient on his sentencing & killing, but he's still upholding an unjust law.

The Gods of Law in Warhammer are assholes.

Vala in Tolkien mythos are pricks too.

That misses the point that lawful good here isn't from the paladin's PoW, it's objective.

And here we miss the point that objective morality like that isn't really a thing, and more of an RPG excuse to feel good about murdering a lot.

Yes, for instance from my game: A LG paladin warforged who wanted to release the ancient evil from his torteous prison. It reasoned that eternal torture was not only against the law but too not give it a chance of redemption too be an evil act in itself, that even it did not deserve such a fate. It was a machine that did not understand the nuances of good or law, simply following textbook definitions.

It can be done.

Villain has been brought up to hate x species. Has more bad history with x species. Decides that the realm will be better without x species and decides to wipe x species for the good of his people. Yes his actions can be said as evil but his intentions are for the good of his people.

>MFW i accidently explain that hitler can be lawful good...

Glad you could make it, Uther.

Alignment wasn't a part of that specific post, only subjective morality regarding paladins, ISIS militants and demons.

Just answering the question within OPs paradigm.

That would be lawful evil, too. Evil regime with a draconian code of laws.

Of course. All you need someone who opposes the Lawful Good character on an ideological level.

Hell, I've played in this game. Our PCs went from ragtag vagabonds to revolutionaries. One of our antagonists who was a Paladin who stood for law, order, and justice.

We were criminals. We were a threat to society. We had dangerous ideas that, while rooted in justice, could pave the way for a great evil to come to power.

In a typical campaign with a typical group? A Lawful Good NPC would almost certainly be an antagonist.

Focus more on the lawful than the good. Sure he has the best intentions at heart, but at what cost?

thesaurus.com/browse/protagonist?s=t

and while Antagonist doesn't have "villain", it does have "enemy", "adversary", and even "bad person".

Moral relativism is cancer. Evil is defined by actions you fucking chode. People who dscapitate villagers who disagree with them are evil. People who use a highly sophisticated management higherarchy to increase productivity and ensure redundancy developed by the pentagon are lawful. Your paladin slaying villagers and not falling is because your dm knows youre retarded and just wanted to move the session along.

I like to use Lawful Good villians all the time. I never really liked the extremes people portray evil characters without having the opposite also present.

If the extreme end of evil is a moustache twirling man who feels no compassion for others, the opposite would be a man who only feels compassion for others. A man who gives up his own welfare at every opportunity no matter the cost. These types usually hide behind or follow a religion, and think it's also in others people's best interest to follow this religion.

Militant inquisitors, crusaders, manipulative clerics, are all good examples of a man who gave up his entire life, responsibilities to his family and loved ones, and wishes you to do the same for the greater good.

It doesn't necessarily have to be about religion either. It's any ideology that can be considered good or just, but impares on the normal lives of the common man. I have a group of rebels that are trying to overthrow the monarchy and bring representation to the people, the problems most people don't want this, and it will take a war that will spill lots of innocent blood to achieve this. When other people decide that your life is worth the price of change, even a good change, I consider that a villainous, but not evil, act.

hierarchy*
phoneposting

all my villains are lawful good

villains, not without some blatant fuckery. Antagonist is easy peezy.

Alignments are the real villains.

>Villain is an authority figure who is going to execute a good person because of a rigid but contextually justified crime being committed

Lawful good antagonists are common in eastern storytelling

>a rigid but contextually justified crime being committed
That's lawful neutral though.

>Evil is defined by actions

Not him, but that's incredibly stupid. Alignment is defined by the intent behind an action, not the action itself. This is the only way alignment can ever be consistent. Objective alignment is flawed at it's foundation since it assumes anyone's action is caused by the same thought, it assumes every observed effect has the same cause, this is a logical fallacy.

Consider the following:
>Three murderers break into a man's house and [ kill ] his wife.
>The man [ kills ] one of them to protect his child.
>A police officer arrives and [ kills ] one of them to protect the innocents, then captures the other.
>After a trial the third man is [ killed ] by an executioner, who is upholding the law.

All these men performed the same action, [ killing ] somebody. What alignment is killing user?
Anyone with a child's grasp on morality could tell you who was actually in the wrong, and the reason isn't their actions it's their intent.

>Evil is defined by actions
Can we get a definitive list of what actions are and are not evil? It'd be really handy.

>phoneposting
this is the real evil

How so? If the law says "don't give away the nuclear codes" and you give them to save a bunch of schoolchildren, is that really neutral?

Not the user you're responding to, nor do I agree with him, but I do think it's important to note that D&D takes place in a world where alignment can be directly observed via a variety of spells, and even some creatures have passive See Alignment. It is very much an objective part of the world. Certain effects only work against certain alignments. The world also likely has very real gods that could be the source of such objective truths about right and wrong.

Moral objectivism is just much harder to apply in real life unless you follow a particularly dogmatic belief system which dictates such matters.

You beat me to him.

Lawful Neutral is holding the rule of law above one's own opinion.

Are you implying every enemy or adversary is necessarily a bad person?

No. Being Good is literally defined by not being a villain.

Then what's being Neutral defined as, smartass?

I mean arguably Adrian Veidt from Watchmen was Lawful Good.

Others might Argue he Was Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Good as well then. If we go by OLD D&D Basic alignments he was certainly Lawful.

I would argue against the good part. He had noble goals, but he was more than willing to use some pretty evil(by D&D standards) methods to achieve them

By being neither a villain nor a hero, duh.

That's lawful stupid.

Lawful neutral is you follow the law until it is no longer in your morals to do so.

Lawful neutral is the sterotypical freedom fighter, fighting for the law that they believe in, rather than the one that exists.

>Freedom fighters
>The "Let's overthrow the government and fail to replace it so that it will collapse into a tinpot dictatorship within a decade" people
>Lawful

Freedom fighters are Chaotic Neutral at best.

Chaotic Neutral would leave everything as a mess

LAWFUL Neutral would make it a point to build a new and better system, the kind they fought for.

That said I don't think Lawful Neutral would be the "stereotypical" Freedom Fighter, that is certainly Chaotic Neutral territory

>Freedom fighters are Chaotic Neutral

Chaotic people don't want a Government at all.

>That said I don't think Lawful Neutral would be the "stereotypical" Freedom Fighter

Maybe it's muh Americanism speaking, but a freedom fighter is sterotypically working to working to impose a better form of order, but not necessarily one based on a divine definition of "good".

A Lawful Good rebel fights to form a theocracy or utopia, a Lawful Neutral rebel fights to form something different or better.

Law and chaos each contain their opposite to a great degree ("My law or yours?"). A lawful neutral character could easily end up being a rebel, but by the same token a chaotic character can easily be a builder of new societies and new governments, he doesn't have to leave everything a mess.

I think that classically, a chaotic character will write a manifesto and will be the grandfather of a movement, and then a generation later the movement will be a bunch of lawful dudes interpreting his manifesto.

John Wayne in the Searchers

youtube.com/watch?v=ebILIKHi9wo

>Chaotic people don't want a Government at all.

Yes, democracy was created by people who didn't want a government at all.

Chaotic people are the ones who think that the government which governs least governs best.

>A Lawful Good rebel fights to form a theocracy or utopia, a Lawful Neutral rebel fights to form something different or better.
So most rebels are neither.

90% of the time, "freedom fighters" are just attempting to replace the current leader with their personal favorite through terrorism and coups. Sometimes, that favorite is unquestionably better than the alternative, but usually it's just "If he gets in power, he'll reward me for my loyalty" bullshit.

Which is why revolutions descend into dictatorships so fast and frequently. They're cults of personality around one faggot with a silly beard with no real understanding of governing or administrating a country.

Yes, because "good" is relative. Even laws can be interpreted in a multitude of ways.

>Law and chaos each contain their opposite to a great degree ("My law or yours?")
Law is cosmic law, not personal or national law.

>Yes, democracy was created by people who didn't want a government at all.

But they still created a Government.

>Chaotic people are the ones who think that the government which governs least governs best.

We call those libertarians. Which is still a form of Government.

Anarchy is chaotic, anything higher than anarchy is a form of Lawful. Another reason why the alignment system doesn't really work.

In the most basic terms, yes. Revolutions remove a government, which creates a power vacuum, and the most common thing which happens in power vacuums is a dictatorship.

In fantasy stories we talk a lot about pure hearted hero-warriors, and we also talk a lot about villains who scheme in the shadows. That appeals to the sensibilities of a warlike culture.

In real-life history, though, I think that most of the great warriors were (in D&D terms) evil people, and a lot of the greatest goodguys were the ones scheming to make it stop.

Libertarianism is meant to be something that people grow out of, like experimenting with your sexuality or dying your hair silly colours.

Still believing in it is a sign of failing to properly mature, or of ignorance of the competitive advantages of stronger government.

Cosmic law is aligned with social and personal law. It's a fictional cosmic force whose authors define it in terms of human ideas about lawfulness and nonlawfulness.

>with their personal favorite

It's still Lawful Neutral as long as the ideology isn't good or evil.

>"If he gets in power, he'll reward me for my loyalty" bullshit.

This could be anything. Rewarding loyalty isn't inherently good or evil.

>Which is why revolutions descend into dictatorships so fast and frequently.

We're not talking about real life, we're talking about theoretical situations. You can have benovolently good dictatorships, neutral dictatorships, or evil dictatorships.

Historically, all the periods which we look at as "golden ages" were characterized by a wide diffusion of wealth and power (power in many hands), while all the periods which we look at as dark ages or stagnant periods were defined by a few hands holding all the wealth and power.

Rulers tell stories about how you should support and strengthen your ruler so as to create a stable and prosperous society. These stories are myths. Tyranny doesn't lead to stability or prosperity because individuals are stupid, no society should be operated by an individual.

Paladins are supposed to be like Knights of the Round table or Roland or whatever. The crusading and shouting "DEUS VULT" stuff is for fighters, barbarians, or clerics at best

Yeah, most fantasy heroes aren't renowned for their ability to kill large numbers of other humans.

mechanically no. Any setting that has statted alignments has a universal constant for a good/evil and law/chaos axis. First thing the lawful good person started straying from that universal axis he would stop being lawful good as per the rules of the game.

Thematically oh hell yeah, it happens a LOT for a starting distopia's ruler.

I'm not sure what the mechanical definition is for a villain. Pretty sure "villain" is just a matter of perspective, anybody can be somebody's villain.

>confusing villain with antagonist

Weren't we here already?

More constructively: Protagonist = THE main and leading character(s) more than anything, "traditionally" the hero of the story as well.

"Villain protagonists" are a thing - the focus is on a person who is widely understood to be the bad guy in the overall context of the setting itself. Whether or not they believe themselves to be the hero is a separate matter that makes for interesting fodder (see Lex Luthor: Man of Steel and the Joker graphic novel).

>Paladins are supposed to be like Knights of the Round table or Roland or whatever. The crusading and shouting "DEUS VULT" stuff is for fighters, barbarians, or clerics at best

But Roland's story was literally about fighting Saracens.

And Galahad and Gareth/Beaumains were arguably the only Paladins of the Knights of the Round Table. Gawaine was a barbarian, Lancelot, Palomides, Lamorak, Arthur, and Tristram were Fighters, and Agravain was a Cunt.

Good and evil (in D&D) are measured according to universal standard of conduct, individual perspectives don't matter.
A protagonist is the person a story is about. An antagonist is the one who creates problems for them.

I think that "villain" is just a flavor of antagonist. An antagonist could also be a rival or an antivillain.

>Good and evil (in D&D) are measured according to universal standard of conduct, individual perspectives don't matter.

Maybe in 3E onwards. Meanwhile, in older editions,

>Good characters[...] try to be honest, charitable, and forthright. People are not perfect, however, so few are good all the time. There are always occasional failings and weaknesses. A good person, however, worries about his errors and normally tries to correct any damage done.

>Remember, however, that goodness has no absolute values. Although many things are commonly accepted as good (helping those in need, protecting the weak), different cultures impose their own interpretations on what is good and what is evil.

What are you quoting?

thats just lawful neutral

The AD&D PHB. It's weird.

I think its trying to say that people will have their own ideas about what is good and what is bad, that having alignments doesn't replace that. Which makes sense to me. But alignment (Law/Chaos) as an objective value goes back to OD&D.

Law and Chaos are definitely objective, and always have been. It's Good and Evil that were thornier, since they have far more baggage as terms than Law and Chaos.

Even later on, in the editions where Good and Evil are literal physical substances drew a distinction between the substance/subtype [Evil] and the alignment. I remember one of the NPCs from Elder Evils being a fallen Planetar. His aura of good was still active, he still had the good subtype, and his DR could only be bypassed by Evil, but his alignment was CE.

The guy in your OP is the perfect example

>MC tells him that a city is infected and already dead
>main character wants to put them out of their misery so they don't become undead slaves
>Uther tells him nah and stands against him
>MC goes on to save the world

Yea dude, Lawful Good doesn't mean Always Right.

Well yes and no.
Antagonists yes, villains no.
We had a situation where we had to make a deal with a demon to help us find the maguffin we were looking for. Of course the local paladins were not so happy about our deal and tried to kill us for consorting with demons even though it was to save the material plane.

Yes.

Case in point

>Roland
He was basicly a thug going back from a succesful raid.

>They basically stand against everything our civilisation stands for.
Like sodomy? Idolatry? Godlessness?

CG heroes attempt to tear down an evil/corrupt system that the LG is attempted to reform from the inside.

LG villain is doing something horrible that they think is best for the world as a whole, but he has been misled or is flat-out wrong or his plan is short-sighted or whatever.

LG villain is doing something horrible that they think is best for the world as a whole, and he's right.

To be fair Javert is more LN. No reason his role can't be filled by a LG character though.

Of course.

Of course.

Well they can for sure be dicks, good does not mean nice.

>its another retards arguing about MUH ALIGMENTS episode

You know, you could just do away with the whole thing and DM/play whatever you want, right?

It's Lawful GOOD user. It's right there in the name. GOOD. By definition not Evil. Cannot be the Villain. Lawful can be villainous, but Lawful good cannot. If it's a villain, it clearly isn't lawful GOOD.

Ozymandias

What is up with those bits of plate? Why are they even there?

GOT is shit

Of course. The definition of good is subjective, and hence a character who believes that something is evil based on his belief of what is good can be a villain to others with different beliefs.

For example, a paladin arrives in a new kingdom and discovers undead patrolling the streets, lead by a death priest. As undead are an abomination in his belief, he smites them. And is surprised to be smote back by the priest, whose beliefs differ.

>The definition of good is subjective

Not in D&D. There, Good is an objective force that exists independent of observers. This is a universe in which Good and Evil does in fact have hard, objective definitions.

Good thing there are many other roleplaying games and systems other than D&D

Y'all wrong about English, y'all probably wrong about life, y'all probably should kill y'all self.

Yes, but when you're talking about Lawful Good, you're talking about D&D.

He is the prime example of Lawful Neutral though.

It's based on historical Filipino armour because it looks cool. The design isn't just typical fantashit stuff like GOT usually has.