Law vs. Chaos is often much harder to slip on than good vs. evil.
The first question you must answer is this: whose laws?
There are many forms of laws and rules, and you might only be devoted to a particular set of them. The laws of the king? Or maybe the laws of the local duke that is at odds with the king. Perhaps the king is evil and wants you to murder babies, and you are loyal to the duke that commands you to protect babies. Maybe you follow the laws of nature (survival of the fittest, alpha claims authority)? Or perhaps you follow the laws of the street, where you can hold onto what you can manage with your skills and it is the fault of the fool that didn't watch his coinpurse properly.
There is an interesting idea I like messing with- a monk that cheats at poker. That seems unlawful, right? However, this particular game is an underground one played between the city's card sharks. Each one is a known cheater- ergo, the social expectations of the game is that everyone cheats. The game is less of a game of chance, and more of a game of skill, where the winner is the one that pulls the largest cheat without getting found out. Those are the 'laws' of that game. There is a purpose (a competition of skills) and the unwritten rules follow through that purpose. So cheating in this environment is expected, and you are treated as a fool to be fleeced if you don't do it.
Now, let's imagine a lawful spy. Is it a problem if they sneak in and steal hidden documents? No- that is their job. They demonstrate their lawful nature when it comes down to problems- for example, silencing a friend that knows too much. They devote themselves to a cause (the good of their country) and follow through with the rules of that cause (kill witnesses that could expose you).
So the question of whether your acts go against your own personal code. It is usually best to write this out before hand if you are making a lawful character. Paladins are easy- they swear upon their order's rules, which mostly come with the class (the paladin code is a set of rules, and built for the purpose of keeping up trust in paladins). If you are an undead hunter, then allowing a potential undead go away might break your code, even if you have to break local breaking/entering laws. So discuss your personal code with the GM.
As a final note- things can be a bit iffy with the scale, but usually, you would need several events to occur before you slide around in alignment. I would say 3 separate ones usually. Unless the slip is to evil- then a REALLY big one (like unleashing a dark god, or personally murdering an entire village) might send you off the deep edge. But for lawful? I would say 3. Plenty of time to draw back and do a bit of redemption.
Thanks for the Batman advice! That is really good! It also got me that apparently my sense motive check was to him "just a hunch" and not definitive. So it told me nothing >_< He also felt I needed physical proof before opening the door
Sorry for the double post, but the last one was a general discussion on how to be lawful without following the specific laws of the land. Another question here is this: under whose authority are you acting? What is the set up for your campaign right now.
This is important, since undead are a major public concern- particularly ones that reproduce like ghouls. If you are working under a proper authority, such as the town mayor (very common), then you might not need to get things like 'physical evidence', since this is definitely a 'better safe than eaten by ghouls' situation.
You are just doing a simple inspection to insure that the body was properly cremated. What particular interest do they have in stopping you? Do they have something to hide?
Also note- this is set in medieval times. So the laws about searches and seizures without a warrant are DELIGHTFULLY more lax than the modern age. The country might even have special exceptions in this situation because 'GREAT LORD ABADAR THERE ARE UNDEAD RUNNING AROUND'.
As a final note- yeah, Batman. Great example of a 'personal code', since we all know he is breaking a bajillion vigilante, assault, and trespass laws. He works hard to keep himself in line though.
You're golden.
Well there you go- you are pretty much deputized by the sheriff and given some semblance to legal authority, and they were interfering with an investigation during a known outbreak of undead. You had reasonable suspicion that the servant had lied and was hiding a potential undead.
The owner and servant are much more likely to be arrested than you are. You are pretty much doing right by the law here.
Ok, maybe this isn't entirely lawful, but it isn't chaotic either. More neutral. You might have been jumping the gun, but you could reasonably argue that you feared that they would hide the ghoul before letting you in.
At the very least: YOU ARE A LOOSE CANON, BUT A DAMN FINE COP! DON'T DO THIS AGAIN OR I WILL HAVE YOUR BADGE (...or more monk levels) FOR THIS!
...or alternatively, they were deluded into thinking the ghoul wasn't that much of an issue, and for 'their own health and safety' you entered the premises to protect them.
Honestly, I am currently studying law, and even by modern American legal standards, this sounds like it could stand up in court. Based upon your personal expertise and training (skill ranks), you judged that there was reasonable suspicion that a crime was currently ongoing (hiding a potential undead).
Of course, this would mostly only get by because of the emergency situation- you had an injured person, but at the same time you did not feel like you could leave due to the potential ghoul that could threaten the lives of others. So you couldn't exactly wait to get proper permission to enter the premises. Emergency situations lower the requirements for 'reasonable' by a lot.
Part of the problem I see here is that folks tend to think of lawful as being related to law. I think a major reason for this is that the description for alignments is poorly written and thr lawful good entry in particular was written for paladin's pov.
Lawful though, of you take all the lawful entries as a whole rather than focusing on specifics, and include when and where lawful plays a part elsewhere in the rules, lawful comes out not as caring about actual law (regardless of which set of laws) but rather is about dedication.
For example, why does a monk need to be lawful? Following legal laws has nothing to do with gaining the abilities represented by the monk class abilities, but those abilities do require extreme dedication.
Paladin is another example, paladins are intensely dedicated to what they believe is right and honorable. Sadly, the mechanics try to define what is right and honorable instead of letting the setting/gm/players decide, but that is beside the point. Paladins are from a religion or church and therefore the religion generally sets the baseline for what that paladin would consider right and honorable.
Monks and paladins have dedication, and that dedication is a major source for them. The monk needs that level of dedication to learn new abilities, hence them being unable to learn new things without being lawful, as being non-lawful means they lost their dedication. Paladins actually lose powers, because their powers are driven by their dedication and conviction, and thus a loss of that dedication means they are just going through the motions without the faith and dedication to back it up.
So yeah, I see no reason to consider your character as having done something to alter alignment, unless you were dedication to stopping breaking and entering type of activities.
I suspect many people focus on lawful meaning law because a combination of the name, and that lawful meaning law is easier to understand and make judgements (about how closely one is adhering to the alignment).