Ok then reduce it to a believable number. You do 10 things a day lawful and 1 not under considerable duress. Still works unless you are determined for it to not work. Which is another tactic of the extreme corner case argument.You and I can agree on that, probably. But would you agree that a 4/1 ratio is enough to be not neutral. Or a 2/1? These are all pretty reasonable lines to draw as well. Or what if you do 10 minor lawful things and 1 major chaotic? A reasonable argument could be that those minor actions are just a matter of course and not indicative of a persons alignment while the major action is. Another reasonable argument could be that the chaotic again was an exception to the rule and shouldn't be considered until it was a more significant percentage.
The point being the only way to be absolutely clear what is a representation of an alignment would like to a broad audience is an extreme. This happens on both axis to be fair, but the Law/Chaos one is more nebulous and not intuitive.
Its absolutely clear when you put it on your character sheet. When it becomes unclear is when the character acts out of alignment regularly both during duress and via free will. Sample size varies by table. I see this as a feature.
Not trying to continue to be contrary by the way. I just happen to love alignment discussions. I would like to say, I'm enjoying this back and forth discussion that has remained, IMO, cordial.
I can't recall anyone ever being called out for "having a chaotic alignment but acting too lawful". The terms are just too vague.
I have certainly seen Good characters who were clearly acting evil, but its really easy to justify an action as either lawful or chaotic.
It comes up at my table, but not often. Id assume good and evil are so much more apparent, because that axis tends to be viewed as your intended outcome, while the law/chaos axis tends to be your methodology.
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To determine whether Law/Chaos has any value in the game, you have to determine what you want to get out of it. Is it to signal a roleplaying style? Treat it as any of the various and conflicting ideas presented in this thread. Is it to establish a mechanical effect, such as Smite Chaos? Slap it onto whatever creature deserves that smite or any character who chooses to make themselves vulnerable to it. Is it a license to control player actions or to mess with a DM? Any of the suggestions provided in the thread above would work adequately for this purpose (with control of players favoring Lawful and messing with the DM favoring Chaotic).
My goal as a world-builder/storyteller, which isn't really touched upon to any great extent in this thread, is to describe the afterlife in such a way that it makes sense to group souls into different planes. I want clear delineations between the boundaries of one plane and another with no confusion about why those boundaries exist. When that is accomplished, the mechanical effect of alignment-based spells actually makes sense. I hate trying to control players with alignment or messing with GMs by playing Chaotic PCs.
Unfortunately, the definition provided for Law/Chaos in any version of D&D/PF fails to meet my goals. Evil outsiders can fight for any number of reasons; they don't simply have to be chaotic demons and lawful devils. It makes much less sense for Good outsiders to battle one another. That is a failing of the Law/Chaos axis and the discussions about how Planescape has wars between devils and demons is a red herring. It is not the Law/Chaos definitions that mandate such a conflict, but rather the authors of the setting.
I have no faith that the distinctions will be clear in this edition of PF because it has never been made before and the Paladin example demonstrates the game designers still have no clue how to define alignment logically. Specifically, once again, evil acts are evil because they are evil, but a paladin does not fall from grace for unwillingly committing an evil act. Meaningless. Evil acts include murder, which is impossible to do unwillingly (else it would fall somewhere between manslaughter or a tragic accident instead); torture, which generally includes a level of pain beyond harsh language or spanking an unruly child as punishment right through a gray area between inflicting a lot of pain and actual mental or physical torture (who decides when the level of pain is sufficient to cause the paladin to fall from grace? or would the act of spanking an unruly child cause the paladin to fall from grace due to the use of pain to inflict punishment?); and casting an evil spell, which is evil because it is evil (repeat as many times as you like and the definition remains the same). This is for the supposedly "easy" Good/Evil axis. Law/Chaos will be even worse.
My solution for Good revolves around assuming risk to protect the innocent, for Neutral revolves around not assuming any risk to protect the innocent (unless you want to), and for Evil revolves around harming the innocent if you feel like it (and you have to feel like it at least some of the time, or else you are neutral). Anyone can harm the guilty if they want to. Pretty simple in practice; just ask the player to choose the alignment that is the team they want to be on and try to achieve the aims of their team to the best of their ability.
My solution for Lawful/Chaotic is campaign-specific.
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One of my problems with the 4-Axes is that Law/Chaos is more often than not subserviated or marginalized to Good/Evil, which does a massive disservice to Law/Chaos.
That might be good, but my argument here is that there is no such thing as an actual difference between Law and Chaos. And more importantly, what would the difference look like if there was one.I would argue that in terms of D&D terminology, Law/Chaos was a far more important concern in the mythos of ancient cultures than Good/Evil, though "Law" does have a presumed positive value judgment and, likewise, "Chaos" a negative one. There is a reason why the motif of the Chaoskampf is so preeminent in a lot of ancient mythologies. "Order" was closely associated with "Creation." This is particularly clear in Genesis 1 creation account where establishing order from chaos /is/ creation. Dieties in Canaanite, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman mythologies are frequently depicted as forces that triumph over the cosmological forces of chaos (often personified in rival dieties/titans/etc.) to establish creation through order.
The inverse of order and creation can likewise be seen in the Noahide/Great Deluge account where "Chaos" is a symptom of human failure in their obligation to preserve "order" in the world, thus letting the world fall to violence, entropic corruption, and decadence. Pure "chaos" is a lack of "creation." Here, there are close parallels between the cosmological Chaoskampf of creation/order constantly combating entropic un-creation and the human activity of civilization-making combating the wilderness. And here, kings and priests were frequently envisioned as contributors to the preservation of "order, law, creation" in this Chaoskampf. (There is a positive value to "Law" over against "Chaos" because it preserves the things that these ancient cultures valued: life, civilization, cities, stability/peace.*
* Here wars are often envisioned as rulers establishing greater peace, stability, etc. for...
I definitely agree with your take on this. Cultures trying to survive and flourish in a hostile world would have a bigger emphasis on law over chaos. Later on as the culture advances and becomes more sophisticated, morality enters into the picture as mere survival is not the paramount issue any longer