Good will always triumph over evil.

[Funky Badger]

Kthulhu wrote:

Hugo Rune wrote:

I've had a few campaigns end up with the forces of good bickering amongst themselves on the best way to comabt the growing evil.

Dragonlance, the war of the lance.

Home of some of the most spectacularly stupid NPCs in gaming history, it has to be said.

[Wolfsnap]

I was once part of a superheroes RPG where we played the villains. I took on the role of evil mastermind and orchestrated a number of plots - most of which fell apart because riding herd on evil henchmen turns out to be a lot more difficult than I would have guessed. Some new players joined the game as heroes, and they made short work of us. :P

[Atarlost]

Law/Chaos isn't really a sensible ethical axis anyways. Both are low information states. It's like the difference between a grey image and uniform grescale visual noise. Take off your glasses and there is none. The interesting stuff happens in the middle between the utterly boring minimum and maximum entropy states.

[Kazaan]

Atarlost wrote:

Law/Chaos isn't really a sensible ethical axis anyways. Both are low information states. It's like the difference between a grey image and uniform grescale visual noise. Take off your glasses and there is none. The interesting stuff happens in the middle between the utterly boring minimum and maximum entropy states.

This is one of the reasons I've never liked the concept of "law-chaos" and "good-evil" as tangible qualities in a universe as well as identifying fundamental moral and ethical attitude. You can be on the "side" of "law" or "evil", but that's a very different thing from your moral/ethical attitude. I find that, as personal alignment goes, Good-Neutral-Evil are better replaced by Cooperative-Independent-Competitive and Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic are replaced by Conservative-Liberal-Radical.

Cooperative means that you value working together and feel that the best progress is made when people are pooling their efforts towards a common goal.

Independent means you're more or less focused on your own goal and feel that progress is very individualized and self-driven.

Competitive means you feel the best progress is made when people are working to be "the best".

And all three views can easily fit into "good" as well as "evil".

Conservative means you value tradition and rank and you're more likely to trust what's "always been done" and someone with a credential or authority.

Liberal means you prefer to look ahead for better possibilities and value progress even if it means taking risks.

Radical means you're focused more on the risk-taking and feel that real progress is only made by major gambles and, sometimes, it's better to risk it all.

And I can imagine a Paladin, Druid, Barbarian, Monk, Anti-Paladin, or any other class with an alignment restriction meshing with any of these attitude combinations. At the very least, I can see a Radical-Competitive Paladin a lot better than I can see a Chaotic-Evil one.

[GeneticDrift]

Also evil isn't going to line up and fight fair. They don't feel honor bound to give you warning or a chance to act at all.

[Petty Alchemy]

I just wanted to talk about Litany of Righteousness and a party designed to take full advantage of it. Now there's all this narrative discussion @_@

[Matthew Downie]

GeneticDrift wrote:

Also evil isn't going to line up and fight fair. They don't feel honor bound to give you warning or a chance to act at all.

Lawful Evil is more likely to fight fair than chaotic good.

[Cheeseweasel]

The race that brought us longbow-sniping (those cute elves) are (generally) chaotic/good. Fair fighting isn't a hallmark of elves... they fight to win.

[Icyshadow]

Millefune wrote:

According to the forbidden knowledge and true history (for the published Golarion, at least) Tebris discovered... Evil has the most powerful and "first" being on its side. Evil will win in the end, unfortunately. It made me really sad to read that in the setting's canon.

Please cite the source of this claim.

Cheeseweasel wrote:

The race that brought us longbow-sniping (those cute elves) are (generally) chaotic good. Fair fighting isn't a hallmark of elves. They fight to win.

Amen to that. Good does not equal stupid.

On that same note, being pragmatic is not evil.

[The black raven]

Icyshadow wrote:

Cheeseweasel wrote:

The race that brought us longbow-sniping (those cute elves) are (generally) chaotic good. Fair fighting isn't a hallmark of elves. They fight to win.

Amen to that. Good does not equal stupid.

Honorable (ie, Lawful) does not equal stupid either, but many people seem to believe it nonetheless

Quote:

On that same note, being pragmatic is not evil.

True, but many evil characters pass themselves off as being merely pragmatic (Chaotic Neutral in No-Evil campaigns, I am looking right at you)

[Helic]

Cheeseweasel wrote:

The race that brought us longbow-sniping (those cute elves) are (generally) chaotic/good. Fair fighting isn't a hallmark of elves... they fight to win.

You would too if your replacement rate was in the order of several centuries per generation.

[Charender]

It seems to me that evil would simply be more numerous.

Being good means being altruistic more often than not. Altruism has a tendency to put you at a disadvantage or get you killed. Meanwhile evil generally means being selfish. Being selfish when it doen't harm others is fairly neutral, but being selfish to the point of harming others is pretty evil IMO.

Being selfish is easier and more rewarding in the short term than altruism, thus logically it seems like it would be more common. While some people might act altruistic on occasions, they probably balance it out with selfish acts that ultimately put them in the neutral category.

Most of my worlds have about a 60/30/10 Neutral/Evil/Good split in the general population.

[Cheeseweasel]

The black raven wrote:

Icyshadow wrote:

Cheeseweasel wrote:

The race that brought us longbow-sniping (those cute elves) are (generally) chaotic good. Fair fighting isn't a hallmark of elves. They fight to win.

Amen to that. Good does not equal stupid.

Honorable (ie, Lawful) does not equal stupid either, but many people seem to believe it nonetheless

Quote:

On that same note, being pragmatic is not evil.

True, but many evil characters pass themselves off as being merely pragmatic (Chaotic Neutral in No-Evil campaigns, I am looking right at you)

It depends on whether your sense of honor precludes expedient options, like poison, guerilla tactics, etc.

And, too, the difference between "pragmatic" and "evil" is largely a measure of the resort to expedient measures, imo. [Speaking as an evil PC -- usually lawful.]

So, ok, good isn't stupid. But it's OFTEN naieve, and frequently too lenient, for long-term success. Which are qualities in good people try to cultivate. :)

But I really wasn't making any of these alignment comparisons: I was just calling elves dirty fighters.