How do I deal with alignment in a setting where the antagonists are Lawful Good/Lawful Neutral...

How do I deal with alignment in a setting where the antagonists are Lawful Good/Lawful Neutral, and a third party that they fight is also largely good aligned? Does one side have to become evil upon fighting the other, or can I just bullshit it?

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Lawful good does mean lawful right.

>the conflict is between two fair and reasonable groups of people who should be able to compromise or otherwise come to terms

That sounds unsatisfying.

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>Conflict is entirely sided in non-lethal skirmishes and debates
>Alternatively, if the third party is Chaotic Good, the party attempts to apprehend them using non-lethal force

>Lawful good does mean lawful right.

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Lawful Good people can still disagree about things or have different beliefs, though the fact that they will attempt to solve it in the most peaceable way might make your campaign a little boring.

My favorite case for this is the Scopes Trial on evolution.
John T. Scopes taught evolution because he believed that it was correct and should be taught to students, and did so in violation of state law fully intending to pay the fine.
Williams Jennings Bryan prosecuted him and spoke passionately against Evolution (in humans) because he believed that it clashed with his religious beliefs endorsed social darwinism.
At the end of the trial everyone agreeably decided the verdict was guilty and Bryan offered to pay Scopes' fine, and everyone involved ate together.
Ultimately one man was wrong and one man was right, but both of them were lawful good people acting in accordance to what they thought best for the people, and they went about the trial and the aftermath in a lawful, good fashion.

Your problem is less getting two lawful people to disagree and more how you're going to keep your group interested in two parties attempting to solve this issue as peacefully with as little disturbance as possible.

yeah that's life for you

Would an order of holy warriors who slay their enemies not be considered lawful good? I don't interpret lawful good as "lawful nice". Just because a paladin is a holy warrior doesn't mean he won't slaughter a thousand foes without a second thought.

I could just secretly change the alignment of their characters but the conflict is more complicated than that. It is, at its core, a conflict between two opposing ideologies, one of lawfulness and the other of freedom. Neither side is inherently evil, but both sides have reasons compelling enough that combat is the only option. The lawful good believe that the party are heretics and the party has committed what is considered a sacrilege and high treason against the kingdom, yet from the players point of view they are fighting for freedom and thus for the cause of good. One of the PCs is a paladin of the order who defected to the rebellion, an act punishable only by death.

It depends on the setting. In a lot of settings people who die in a holy crusade are guaranteed a greater afterlife. If both sides believe in this sincerely (and some settings have objective proof that it is) then many kill for noble causes without remorse and can maintain a lawful good ideology.
Also, Paladins can slay "Evil" and not just their enemies. They can have non-evil enemies that they don't slay unless justice or mercy or their creed or God demands it.

You do like Eberron. The Church of the Silver Flame is a Lawful Good religion, and my god, they are the Spanish Inquisition. They will burn on the stakes, purge the people, and ravage the countrysise in the name of purity. It is really fucking scary.

>They can have non-evil enemies that they don't slay unless justice or mercy or their creed or God demands it.
It is demanded in this setting.

>Implying Javert is not as Lawful Neutral as they come

Yeah, he's pretty much the embodiment of it. That's the whole point of his character arc.

Towa is perfect!

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Is this legal? Asking for a friend of a friend.

Rean Coldsteel dies in Sen III

Being as cute as Towa is illegal in all countries

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You get rid of alignment, you're not using a dynamic it aids the game for.

How will the paladins work then? They will be a core part of the setting.

Everywhere but Canada

Even good people disagree on things, and sometimes there're things that can't be resolved with talking.
If say, some great evil was defeated and taken alive, things might well come to blows on whether or not they need to be imprisoned or executed. If some enemy was forced to attack a nation simply to preserve itself, it's about as right to attempt to make peace and help them out as it is to raise arms against them to protect the innocent from being swept up. If a prophecy predicts a calamity that starts from the life of one innocent, the lawful good of god might declare them put down for the sake of all life, while the lawful good of the land itself might defend their rights as an individual.

You don't have to bullshit anything as long as you can adjust yourself to see more than one side to things. Good people will try to avoid killing, but circumstances don't always permit it.

How won't they?

Eh, I suppose I'll just give the paladins Smite Chaos etc. in addition to Smite Evil.

Because the party won't be evil, but they will be guilty of high treason due to an assassination of a government official that they believed to be evil. Law in the kingdom dictates that killing a government official, all of whom are first and foremost ordained members of the Holy Order, is unconditionally punishable by death.

>Would an order of holy warriors who slay their enemies not be considered lawful good?

No of course not. Killing people for disagreeing with you is evil.

Chaotic Left is the new Chaotic Evil

Just do what sensible people do. Anyone can do anything being of whatever alignment, because alignments are something subjective and not objective.

A chaotic evil person may obey the law and do charity, but internally he's thinking that he only does that because it furthers his own interests. A lawful good person may disrespect law and commit atrocities, because it's justified by his moral code and he's doing it for the greater good.

>unconditionally punishable by death.
So if one official kills another he must be killed, and then his executioner executed as well.

>Does one side have to become evil upon fighting the other, or can I just bullshit it?
Not really.

One side might be heavy on the lawful side, protecting a heavy handed system that's kept the country working for ages firmly believing that change will caused chaos, suffering and invite enemies.

The other may well see/be the people crushed under the boot of law, believing the nation must change before it becomes a lawful tyranny where the letter trumps the spirit of the law and lords will crack lawbooks like whips.

>Your problem is less getting two lawful people to disagree and more how you're going to keep your group interested in two parties attempting to solve this issue as peacefully with as little disturbance as possible.

The classic answer is probably that the two groups are being manipulated against each other. Likely to weaken both for a future invasion.

>They will burn on the stakes, purge the people, and ravage the countrysise in the name of purity. It is really fucking scary.

Then they aren't Good.

>Not Laura
How can you live without good taste at all?

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
- C.S. Lewis

Is that a boy?

Nope.

>How do I deal with alignment in a setting where the antagonists are Lawful Good/Lawful Neutral, and a third party that they fight is also largely good aligned? Does one side have to become evil upon fighting the other, or can I just bullshit it?

They can both be Lawful Good, like the USA versus Nazi Germany in WW2.

>Would an order of holy warriors who slay their enemies not be considered lawful good

Of course they would be. Gary Gygax was clear on this. He was also utterly clear that paladins slaughter orc babies.

Smite Heretic is helpful.

Officials of that sort must of course be officially excommunicated so that his execution is no longer sacriledge. However it must be done by a paladin and he must be brought before the Holy Leader.
>the system favors those in power!
Yes, all systems do. This is not evil.

Good people fight and kill each other over things literally all the time in real life, dude. Alignment is shit and ruining your understanding of people/characters.

For one example of good vs good, Saul of Tarsus's purge of the Christians. He was an inquisitor with a writ from the Jews' supreme religious court supporting his actions and he was not acting cynically but earnestly believed that Christianity was a blasphemous cult. The transformation that he underwent was not due to turning from evil to good but discovering that he was factually incorrect regarding Jesus.