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Index
Lawful Good
Lawful Neutral
Lawful Evil
Neutral Good
True Neutral
Neutral Evil
Chaotic Good
Chaotic Neutral
Chaotic Evil
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Law, Neutrality and Chaos
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Attitudes towards order and chaos are divided into three opposing beliefs. Picture these beliefs as the three points of a triangle, all pulling away from each other. The three beliefs are Law, Chaos and Neutrality. One of these represents each character's ethos, or ethical beliefs - his understanding of society and relationships.
Neutral people follow those rules they find convenient or obviously necessary. They tend to take a more balanced view of things. They hold that for every force in the universe, there is an opposite force somewhere. Where there is lawfulness, there is also chaos; where there is neutrality, there is also partisanship. The same is true of good and evil, life and death. What is important is that all these forces remain in balance with each other. If one factor becomes ascendant over its opposite, the universe becomes unbalanced. If enough of these polarities go out of balance, the fabric of reality could pull itself apart. For example, if death became ascendant over life, the universe would become a barren wasteland.
Philosophers of neutrality not only presuppose the existence of opposites, but they also theorize that the universe would vanish should one opposite completely destroy the other (since nothing can exist without its opposite). Fortunately for these philosophers (and all sentient life), the universe seems to be efficient at regulating itself. Only when a powerful, unbalancing force appears (which almost never happens) need the defenders of neutrality become seriously concerned.
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Good, Neutrality, and Evil
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Like law and order, the second set of attitudes is divided into three parts. These parts describe, more or less, a character's moral outlook; they are his internal guideposts to what is right or wrong.
Those with a neutral moral stance often refrain from passing judgement on anything. They do not classify people, things, or events as good or evil; what is, is. In some cases, this is because the creature lacks the capacity to make a moral judgment (animals fall into this category). Few normal creatures do anything for good or evil reasons. They kill because they are threatened. They sleep where they find shelter. They do not worry about the moral consequences of their actions - their actions are instinctive.
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True Nuetral
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True neutral characters believe in the ultimate balance of forces, and they refuse to see actions as either good or evil. Since the majority of people in the world make judgments, true neutral characters are extremely rare. True neutrals do their best to avoid siding wih forces of either good or evil, law or chaos. It is their duty to see that all of these forces remain in balanced contention.
True neutral characters sometimes find themselves forced into rather peculiar alliances. To a great extent, they are compelled to side with the underdog in any given situation, sometimes changing sides as the previous loser becomes the winner. A true neutral druid might join the local barony to put down a tribe of evil gnolls, only to drop out or switch sides when the gnolls are brought to the brink of destruction. He would seek to prevent either side from becoming too powerful. Clearly, there are very few true neutral characters in the world.
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Wizard's of the Coast have put together a neat
"D&D Online Alignment Test".
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