| KestrelZ |
I would like a clarification from the original poster about what kind of LG character was meant. It seems adding the phrase sociopath has made this discussion derail far too much.
I can only infer as to someone who is so blinded by their code that they are capable of horrendous things while still clinging to the veneer of a LG alignment as written.
The closest I have seen was a paladin PC that took eliminating evil way too far. Obviously the player was trying to be disruptive, and made a paladin that was against the spirit of the class while following the letter of the rule.
The paladin would wander around town, detecting evil on everyone. If someone pinged evil, he would challenge them to a duel right on the spot. If the pinged person was unarmed, the paladin would provide the evil aligned villager with a weapon and duel the person.
Did it fall within the code of a paladin as written? Yes. Was it in the spirit of a good paladin? No. Any consequences? Of course. Sadly, I was not the GM since I would like to know what would happen if someone simply refused to duel the paladin, yet that is not here nor there.
| spectrevk |
spectrevk wrote:Regarding point 2, Holmes himself states in the series that he's a "high-functioning sociopath". So, bad professional fiction writing instead of fanfiction writing.A few of things:
1. As mentioned elsewhere, that's not what "sociopath" means.
2. Sherlock Holmes isn't a sociopath, that's just nonsense propagated by bad Tumblr fanfiction.
3. By definition, a person who only obeys the law because they're supposed to, rather than doing so out of dedication to the concept of order, is Neutral, not Lawful.
4. By definition, a person who cares *solely* for themselves, with absolutely no thought for anyone else, cannot be Good. You are describing a Neutral or Chaotic Neutral person. Or, perhaps, a Lawful Evil person who uses the law for their own selfish ends.
I consider the series to be bad fanfiction, frankly.
pH unbalanced
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I would have no trouble believing that a reformed sociopath -- someone who once met the criteria of sociopathy, but who no longer qualifies because they have stopped acting like a sociopath (though they probably still have the same internal thought processes) -- could be Lawful Good. An active sociopath, on the other hand, is by definition currently performing actions contrary to that alignment.
Having said that, I find most alignment discussions ignore the cosmological structure specific to Golarion. Pathfinder (and D&D before it) has long had this tension between mechanistic alignment and philosophical alignment, and this is how they have mediated it in Golarion -- mechanistic is how you detect and you are treated while you're alive, and philosophical is how your soul is treated after death.
I find it helpful to think of Good and Evil as substances. Being Good means you have an excess of Good in your spirit (like a buildup of protons). Good will adhere to you if you perform altruistic actions, but also if you cause more physical Good to appear on the Prime Material Plane -- by summoning Good Outsiders, for instance. Good that accretes on you from this sort of "amoral" action also affects your alignment -- you can (by rule) become Lawful Good (for purposes of your effective alignment) simply by summoning an Archon every single day as long as your actions aren't actively moving you away from LG. Because of all that Law and Good dust that brushes off on you from the Archons.
However, your mortal alignment does not determine how Pharasma will judge you and which plane your soul will be sent to after your death. That *does* depend on your beliefs. If your true philosophy is one where you would be more at home among beings of Chaos and Evil, the fact that you coated yourself in Law and Good will not keep your soul from going to the Abyss. (There's a long article about Pharasma's judgment and the River of Souls In AP #84, Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh, which just came out.)
| Piccolo |
I thought this might prove useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
And just to round it out with a non technical term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
As an aside, I've got the entire collection of Sherlock Holmes as written by the original author. He's actually a high functioning/low end of the spectrum autistic, not a sociopath in any sense. I wrote "high functioning" because most autistics have lots of other issues, like severe mental retardation. My career is in psychology, BTW.