Friday, February 8, 2013

Lawful Neutral

With the extreme alignments covered, we move into neutrality. One way to think about Neutral alignment is that the people exist somewhere in the spectrum between the two extremes. A simplified way to think about it is that neutrality negates that part of the axis.

So for a Lawful Neutral character, what matters the most to them is obeying the law. Whether the law helps us personally or helps the people collectively doesn't matter. It's the law, so it must be followed.

These characters can come in as many varieties as you can think of reasons to follow the law.  Some may be cowards, and feel like the law is their shield in life. Anybody who doesn't follow the law gets in trouble and taken away, so it keeps the coward safe. Some people are tools. They blindly believe the law should be followed for reasons of honor or pride or tradition. Some people are fools. They simply have never been exposed to any negative aspects of following the law, so the idea of the law being a bad thing hasn't crossed their mind.

The question here is, what does a Lawful Neutral character think about Good and Evil?  The short answer is: not much. An individual character might have feelings about people, but they are more likely to go on a case-by-case basis. They don't believe that all people are worth helping, nor that all people are contemptible swine. People are just people. And the ones who follow the law stay out of trouble.

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