Recently I have started playing in the LFR campaign with some of my closest friends. I decided (admittedly after much speculation) on the striker role.. and chose rogue.
But which race? I fought the decision for a while, changing classes more than a few times to adapt to the choice of race I was looking over. However, the racial powers inevitably had me choosing drow.
Now as an alignment I chose Good. I chose Tymora as a deity.
What I'm worried about is if I'm fitting into the Good role.. or more into Unaligned. My rogue, Maeglen would never do any blatantly evil acts. Innocent murder, torture or anything of the sort is a complete revulsion to him.
As we played through our first adventure... I noticed myself getting a lot of mileage out of the Bluff skill. A little white lie here, a great lie there.. all in the spirit of furthering the agendas of myself and my comrades. Even going so far as to promise not to turn someone in to the watch... but deciding to do it anyway once our purpose is solved. ( The man.. is a criminal and performing some major offenses.)
When Bluff doesn't work.. Maeglen also finds himself using a more threatening technique. Intimidation. Using it to lay about false threats that he would never back up.
For example... my daft little rogue would say "And don't you go about telling Fang of our plans.. or I swear on my life as a ranger I'll come back and have your tongue out!"
Am I good still.. or am I acting more unaligned?
There's not enough given here for me to say whether or not your character is Good or Unaligned. Though given your unorthodox style, I would say that your character is probably not Lawful Good.
- You believe it is right to aid and protect those in need
- You aren't required to sacrifice yourself or ignore your needs all the time, but you recognize that sometimes the needs of others come before your own.
- You can follow rules and respect authority, but you also know that power corrupts. You do not blindly follow rules because they're "the Law".
- When Law moves into exploitation, Good characters feel compelled to fight against it.
- You don't actively seek to harm others, or wish them ill
- You don't go out of your way or put yourself at risk without the possibility of reward
- You support the Law of the Land when it benefits you
- You value your freedom, but aren't overly concerned with the freedom of others
- Unaligned often indicates a lack of passion toward the extreme of Good or Evil
- Some Unaligned folks choose not to take a stand
Compare these points to Maeglen's personality (great name, by the way!). If it helps to think in terms of movie characters, Han Solo is my favorite example. When we first meet him in Star Wars, he's quite firmly Unaligned. He's a smuggler, gambler, and all-around scoundrel who cares little for anything beyond his own skin, his best friend (Chewie), and his ship. He tells Princess Leia as much, "Look, I ain't in this for your revolution, and I'm not in it for you, Princess. I expect to be well paid. I'm in it for the money."
By the time we get to the beginning of Return of the Jedi, however, Han has moved to Good. He's still a scoundrel, and still looks out for his friends - but his circle of friends has expanded to more than himself and Chewbacca. More, he has come to believe in the struggle against the Empire - so much so that he's now a general in the Rebel army. When necessary, he'll still lie, cheat, steal, and intimidate to achieve his goals. In fact he does quite a lot, but the goal has changed from "line my pockets and save my own skin" to "bring down the Empire and live happily with my girl".
The intent behind it is what matters, as well as the consequences of telling the truth versus the lie. For example, if I lie and I know that it'll most likely get innocent people killed, probably not good. Lie to save innocents? Probably good.
Seems overall more between law and neutrality than good and neutrality.
Look to the why behind the lie, not the lie itself.
After reading the post and the book again on the alignments.. it does look as though Maeglen is good at heart.
TS
I'm going to let you in on a little secret, tjguereca. There are no mechanical consequences for acting outside your alignment in 4th edition, unless your DM has house ruled such into your campaign, so most likely ALIGNMENT DOESN'T MATTER. You could role play your drow as CE, and it wouldn't make an inch of difference to anyone. Heck, you could even multiclass into a cleric of Tymora and it still wouldn't matter. Obviously you've already wasted time and energy thinking about your drow's alignment; I just thought I'd tell you that you don't need to worry yourself over nothing. Play your drow in whatever way works best for you and your group.
TS
:D Thanks for the info Tequila! However.. sticking to my character's alignment has nothing to do with mechanics. It is more in my desire to pick an alignment to follow the way I'm playing him.
Waste of time and energy? Unlikely... since it's an important matter in my opinion.
I do agree.. in playing my drow in whatever works best for you. In asking for answers, my plan was to change his alignment into the way I was playing, not altering my playing to reflect "Good".
Write 'Unaligned' on your sheet. Tell your DM, that this may become ‘Good’ during play. Periodically check in with the DM and ask what alignment they see the rogue as being.
:D Thanks for the info Tequila! However.. sticking to my character's alignment has nothing to do with mechanics. It is more in my desire to pick an alignment to follow the way I'm playing him.
Waste of time and energy? Unlikely... since it's an important matter in my opinion.
I do agree.. in playing my drow in whatever works best for you. In asking for answers, my plan was to change his alignment into the way I was playing, not altering my playing to reflect "Good".
I hope I don't sound snarky when I ask this, but why is alignment important to you? Is it nostalgia or does it help you role play somehow, or what?
TS
I hope I don't sound snarky when I ask this, but why is alignment important to you? Is it nostalgia or does it help you role play somehow, or what?
TS
Again I think we're looking at this from two different sides. I'm not asking my questions in order to shift my play style to match the alignment I chose. But to switch the alignment to my play style.
In that regard, alignment is no more important to me than any other stat. The group of friends I play with don't think it should be ignored just because there's no mechanical consequence for ignoring it. We believe it to be an angle of the game and most of us attempt to use it as a guideline.
Again I think we're looking at this from two different sides. I'm not asking my questions in order to shift my play style to match the alignment I chose. But to switch the alignment to my play style.
In that regard, alignment is no more important to me than any other stat. The group of friends I play with don't think it should be ignored just because there's no mechanical consequence for ignoring it. We believe it to be an angle of the game and most of us attempt to use it as a guideline.
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around your group's attitude toward alignment; why not ignore it if it has no mechanical relevance and no role playing value? The alignment entry on your character never comes into relevance like your character's physical description or personality traits do; unless of course characters actually walk around in your campaign saying "Hi, I'm Lawful Good, what alignment are you?"
TS
Maybe I am looking too deeply into it.. and just haven't stepped completely out of the older edition's mindset.
Am I good still.. or am I acting more unaligned?
Well in 3.5 terms this would be chaotic. As it is those traits to not stop you from being good in 4th. So a few other questions need to be asked for the question to be answered.
Why did you lie and threaten?
Bluffing and threatening others to do good is within the good alignment. Doing so to help yourself would likely be unaligned.
What other acts does the character do?
This one aspect shouldn't represent the character as a whole.
In 4th edition, alignment was made mostly optional to make all the crybabies happy.
I'm happy! Thanks WotC I've stopped crying.
,
You don't know your character until you've played them.
Write 'Unaligned' on your sheet. Tell your DM, that this may become ‘Good’ during play. Periodically check in with the DM and ask what alignment they see the rogue as being.
That is howa lot of people in our group have been doing it for years in 3rd edition. Start neutral and move to alignment that fits your character as you play.
My own personal opinion is that your character is unaligned. Only because through your description he doesn't seem so commited to "Good". In my opinion 4e alignment is about commitment. IMHO.
In 4th Ed., alignments indicate an active commitment to furthering the causes of those alignments.
For the most part, the character does his best to act "Good" whenever possible, but since he's an adventurer, that's not always possible.
In my opinion, there's Good, there's Bad, and sometimes there's Necessary.
Every time you lie, ask yourself if the lie served the greater good - if you hadn't lied, would the consequences of telling the truth have brought a greater amount of good to a greater number of people?
People lie to each other and to themselves every day without any ill intentions towards the people they lie to. I lie to myself every day at work... If I'm unsure of the time, I'll convince myself that it's actually half an hour earlier than it most likely is - 2pm instead of 2:30 pm - so that I'm surprised by how fast my day seems to be going when I do finally check my watch again.
I forget where I read it, but there was a scene in a book once that I thought was interesting...
A priest has an appointment to see the bishop, so he's sitting in the outer office while the bishop's secretary is typing a letter.
The phone rings, and the secretary answers it, saying, "I'm sorry, sir, but His Holiness isn't here right now... May I take a message?"
At the end of the call, the priest goes up to the secretary and chides her for lying to the man on the phone, as the priest knows the bishop is in his office...
The secretary asks, "Father, do you see the bishop standing in this room at this particular moment?"
The priest says, "Well, no, I don't."
And the secretary says, "Well then, I guess the bishop's not here right now, is he?"
There can be many different shades of truth without having to tell a lie.
In your examples...
"I swear on my life as a ranger..."
Well, since your life as a ranger doesn't exist, that oath is invalid, and you're not obligated to fulfill it. The fact that the other guy doesn't know that isn't your problem.
As far as turning in the guy after you promised not to?
I had a rogue promise to help a bad guy escape the party's custody in exchange for information, and not to turn him in to the watch afterward...
I let him go and he ran out the door - two minutes later, he ran into the rest of the party waiting for him outside.
When he said, "But, you promised!", I simply replied, "I promised to let you go free, and to not turn you in. I said nothing about letting you be recaptured. I did indeed let you go free, and when the rest of these fine folks turn you in to the Watch, I'll be across town, resting at the tavern and sipping an ale... I've kept every promise I made."
Heck, the laws of a fair number of countries legally establish that it's perfectly okay for the good guys to lie to the bad guys and you're not even required to feel bad about it. :D
In 4th edition, alignment was made mostly optional to make all the crybabies happy.
Is that bitterness I taste in your tone? May I ask why?