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@DemoMonkey

Yes that seems to be the RAW version, and you are right.
But that does not rule out that you cant combine the Good-Evil Law-Chaos alignment scale with a D&D world where moral and ethics are philosophical and hard to define, just like in the real world.

The validity of the traditional alignment scale is not dependant on treating them as absolute quantities in the game world.

I for one use the traditional alignments in my quite gritty game world where 'in game beings' have no way to determine anyones alignment by any other way than personal opinion. (That they cant detect it or treat it as absolutes does not say that alignments does not exist)

Oct 5, 2012 -- 2:30PM, DemoMonkey wrote:

I don't understand why people are willing to accept winged boots, floating eyeballs that can disintegrate you, people transforming into giant flying reptiles and actual living gods, and yet still have trouble with the idea that quantifiable detectable things like Good and Evil and Law and Chaos can possibly exist in the D&D universe.

Law and Chaos are no more philosophical or theoretical in a D&D universe than radiation is in ours. Just because you can't see it and not everyone can detect it doesn't mean it's not there. It is NOT like morality and ethics in the real world, which is why comparing it to the behaviour of fictional characters sometimes works and comparing it to real world behaviour frequently doesn't.

If you don't want to play with that baseline assumption, that's fine. I'm a big spokesman for DMs building the world as they please; if you want an alignment-less game, all power to you.

That does NOT mean that people who DO accept that baseline assumption are clueless, stupid or misinformed.

Good and evil as objective forces do not pose problem (most of the time).
It law and Chaos.
Chaos as a "natural" objective force is ok : entropy, renewal, change, anarchy, anything that is an end to a cycle, and so on.
But Law is not the opposite of chaos. It's Order. Laws are human tools to bring some order, and laws are human tools that can bring chaos. Order is order, it doesn't bring chaos and doesn't care about human rules or codes of honor.

If alignment is a tool to define characters, considering human laws is okay. But if human laws are taken into consideration, Law as an alignment can't also be applied as an objective force of the universe.

If Law is equal to Order as an objective force of the universe, then humans laws do not have to be an important part of the alignment description, it's just a side effect. People concerned by Order as a cosmic force don't care about laws, they just consider these tools positively and consider more constructive to follow them if they effectively bring order to a society.

People concerned by Order as a cosmic force wouldn't support laws that bring too much discontent among a population, as these laws are vectors of chaos. In this case, an Order guy will fight to change these laws, and not risk to accelerate the miscontent reaction by trying to submit the population. And good or evil has nothing to do in this choice, repression has short and long term consequences, and the corruption or the end of the ruling system is unavoidable.

Order and Chaos define each other, so paradoxes are unavoidable regarding the choices their supporters will have to do.

Laws can bring order and chaos by themselves.
Not Order.

And it's generally accepted that the alignment "Lawful" is synonymous with Order

To expand:

A chaotic society might indeed have laws, as well, but the laws generally serve a different purpose. In a lawful society, laws are created to bring order. A lawful society is more likely to, say, have a constitution, which enumerates the way a bureaucracy might work, or the powers of the king, or the rights and responsibilities of citizens. It is also more likely to have laws that promote a specific perspecive of order. For example a lawful society creates laws to preserve the status quo. Be it to preserve a hierarchial system, or to create a system of common law that such matters as crime and punishment do not change on a whim.

In a chaotic society laws will be more focused on the basics, such as preventing murder. rape, theft, and the like (unless the society is CE). But since they have no love for the status quo, their laws tend to end there. Punishments (depending on how chaotic the society is) could range to being at the whim of a Judge's benevolence (if there even are judges) to mob rule. 

Oct 5, 2012 -- 6:33PM, Shasarak wrote:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 4:53PM, Monsieur_Moustache wrote:

Laws can bring order and chaos by themselves.
Not Order.

I am not sure exactly how Laws can bring chaos except, perhaps, as a consequence of not following the laws?

Maybe if you had a law that stated: Do what thou will.

Even Aleister Crowleys 'Do what thou wilt shall be whole of the law' is not a chaosbringer (except through misinterpretations).
Here 'wilt' basically meant 'according to your true conscience and your place in the divine plan' (Making it into a sort of wierdly hardcore Lawful/Neutral Good thing)

Oct 5, 2012 -- 6:33PM, Shasarak wrote:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 4:53PM, Monsieur_Moustache wrote:

Laws can bring order and chaos by themselves.
Not Order.

I am not sure exactly how Laws can bring chaos except, perhaps, as a consequence of not following the laws?

Maybe if you had a law that stated: Do what thou will.

If you make laws that put unfair pressure on a specific population at a time when it's not needed, and on the other hand give advantages to a part of the population that is already privileged, the probabilities to provoke chaos are high, from favoring stealing to revolution.
If a king promulgate laws that attack the peaceful balance of a society, just hoping that you won't push too far and the system won't explose, there's no way this king can be supporter of Order, even if he is in the legitimate position to impose his laws.

Planes of order can't just be like the poor reflection of Order that are laws.
We can't say that when cosmic order is concerned, Lawful means absolute Order, and when humans are concerned Lawful stops meaning absolute order, but just means obeying laws or personal codes of your choice.
If we adopt the cosmology alignment forces, alignments are absolute, and then chaotic or lawful people can't be good or evil, the same way good or evil people can't be Lawful or Chaotic.

If we adopt the alignments as a weak and vague profiling tool, then I need explanation about what a vague profiled alignment plane is.