I'm planning on making a Scaled Fist Monk/Cha-based Blaster Incanter Gestalt and was wondering if I could meet the Monk's Lawful alignment requirement if my character has done the following:
•ran away from home after witnessing someone murder his favorite uncle, wasn't allowed to testify ("unstable"), and the murderer got away Scot free as a result
•moved into an apartment in a metropolis alongside another runaway (their surrogate father was forcing them to live as the opposite gender)
•while watching a fight between a "dragon" and a knight, wordlessly killed the "princess" ("princess" was making rather bloodthirsty cheers, while the "dragon" kept sobbing and trying to back out of the fight; "princess" was revealed to be a hag, and the "dragon" was the real princess)
•the next time he saw the murderer, cut off their tongue and strung them up to trees in a forest by their wrists, left for dead
•saw fellow runaway's father, broke every bone in his legs, then left him with the runaway to do as they please
Hello?
the why of your motivations generally matter as much as your actions, and those are missing here. on top of that, your opinion is decided beforehand (from thew wording, i can see defenses already put in), so I'm not sure responding is going to end up in anything but an arguement, if you want reasons that folks may not have responded.
I mean, the point of alignment IMO is to get you to think about how your character makes decisions and rationalizes their actions. So if you're thinking about "what makes my character lawful- what do they value?" and you are able to come up with justifications for all of those actions within that character's mindset, you should be fine.
Like all the various vigilante stuff would be consistent with a character believing that the system has failed to live up to its own rules, and so the character has decided to pick up the slack, since "every malefactor who escapes justice erodes people's confidence in the system" for example.
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•the next time he saw the murderer, cut off their tongue and strung them up to trees in a forest by their wrists, left for dead
•saw fellow runaway's father, broke every bone in his legs, then left him with the runaway to do as they please
The split-second I saw the question posed in the thread title, my subconsciousness shrieked, "No, for reasons that will be immediately obvious just as soon as I click on this!" ...I was not disappointed.
-- The behavior you recite above might be justified, but it isn't indicative of either a code of honor or observation of the legalities that the legitimate authorities have it place.
You're a monk. If you kill a guy during a combat they started, or in one you started after tracking them down over specific outrages with intent to haul their ass in, that's fine. But your retributions are all over the map. I.e., without consistency, i.e., chaotic. The legitimate authorities would consider breaking a man's legs for telling a kid to cross-dress (for whatever unstated reason that doesn't even appear to be a crime) to be felonious assault, and probably put out a warrant for your arrest.
(Note that if you cease being lawful, you can still use your monk abilities; you just cannot progress farther in the class without atonement.)
The split-second I saw the question posed in the thread title, my subconsciousness shrieked, "No, for reasons that will be immediately obvious just as soon as I click on this!" ...I was not disappointed.
The split-second I saw the question posed in the thread title, my subconsciousness shrieked, "Yes, because the lawful/chaotic axis is so ambiguous, just about anything can be justified as averywhere on that axis!" ...I was not disappointed.
I have to agree with Slim, the last two put you in unlawful area. Breaking every bone in his legs means you have tried and punished him...there are laws for that...besides the fellow runaway could have lied...which leaving him alone with the father means you left the runaway to decide his fate...again you gave him the decision. What he did to the murderer was basically torture..and again left for dead..means you left his fate to chance. The actions might be justified but I really see no structure or code to his actions. This is coming from a guy who played a paladin with no qualms killing goblin children attacking him. :)
I envision him as a blacksmith (though, in modern terms, he's more of a mechanic) who takes considerable pains to be an upstanding citizen, but has an "don't have time for dumbasses" attitude, believes that as long as you earn a living through legal means (runaway friend is an adult now, and works as a troubadour as well as a tailor for the aristocracy), you have earned the right to choose an identity for yourself, and is prone to vengeance
Sounds a bit chaotic neutral to me. Think of it this way, most people follow the law, partly due to punishment. We live our lives and try to avoid any trouble right? We wouldn't go around cutting someone's tongue out or breaking legs...because that is illegal...so lawful is kind of thrown out the window. Now this is kinda splitting hairs but it matters with alignment. Your character seems more prone to revenge vs vengeance...it is personal to him. The runaway is kind of a moot point...unless he was a slave that ran away..but then sometimes people run away because they dislike the rules applied to them..hence chaotic :)
Most of the actions you wrote about do not give any real indications on aligmnent. Actions that are in the distant past should not be proof of a characters current alignment. Also many of the actions you list either have nothing to do with alignment, or do not have enough information to determine what affect they would have on alignment.
If the character ran away from home as a child he could have become any alignment. If the character was an adult when he left then he did not runaway he simply left. This bit of information is completely irrelevant to any alignment discussions.
Moving into an apartment with another person regardless of their circumstances is also completely irrelevant to alignment. Everyone has basic needs such as food, shelter and sleep. Fulfilling these basic needs is a function of being a living creature not alignment.
The fight between the dragon and the knight does not have enough information to determine what if any affect it would have on a characters alignment.
I would classify the next two acts as evil more than anything else. If you had simply killed the murderer that would have been one thing, but you purposely caused him to suffer before death. With the father of the other runaway that also looks like torture. Breaking every bone in a person’s leg is something that would have had to have been done out of combat. Deliberately causing pain to a target that has been rendered helpless is an evil act.
Being lawful does not necessarily mean you obey the local laws. What it means is that you live your life by a code of conduct. Often that code of conduct does conform to local customs, but if your code and the local law conflict you will always choose to follow your code. In some case like the paladins code it may have a stipulation that you respect legitimate authority, but that is not always the case.
Play a lawful evil character and follow a code that includes vengeance.
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General rule: if you list your character's methods of dispatching opponents, and the result resembles the script of a slasher flick, then you're uncomfortably close to chaotic-evil.