Is extreme levels of personal ambition compatible with Lawful Good behavior? Can someone be Lawful Good if they fully intend to ascend to godhood themselves? Or is a higher degree of humility required?
Is extreme levels of personal ambition compatible with Lawful Good behavior?
depends on the setting
in eberron, yes
in forgotten realms/greyhawk, no
Depends on the specific cosmology, but generally I would say it's fine.
power for the sake of power is selfish thus LE (arguably LN)
power as a means of some higher goal could be LG
What if it's both? What if you intend to obtain power for the sake of benefitting everyone, including yourself? What if you explicitly want to be a Lawful Good god, but it's at least partially motivated by the knowledge and selfish desire that you'll live a much better life as a Lawful Good god than you would as an Evil god?
>What if you intend to obtain power for the sake of benefitting everyone, including yourself?
fine under LG
>What if you explicitly want to be a Lawful Good god, but it's at least partially motivated by the knowledge and selfish desire that you'll live a much better life as a Lawful Good god than you would as an Evil god?
That's assumption, not knowledge. It does make some sense from the "no rest fo the wicked" angle, as in Good deities are generally less likely to get backstabbed by other Good deities vs Evil deities backstabbing each other more frequently, but it's not a guarantee. And makes whole situation a bit of a Catch 22 - striving to become (or remain) Good is for selfish reasons means you shoudn't be Good.
suppose you feel yourself to be a better arbiter of what is true and just better than the gods themselves? suppose, perhaps, the gods are imperfect enough that you, having the benefit of the memory of the mortal experience (which most gods, if they had ever had such at all, likely do not recall), might conceivably be a more compassionate and upright steward of creation?
>that's power for the sake of a goal
the goal is power enough to make a difference
>suppose, perhaps, the gods are imperfect enough that you, having the benefit of the memory of the mortal experience (which most gods, if they had ever had such at all, likely do not recall), might conceivably be a more compassionate and upright steward of creation?
In such case you've very likely moved outside of D&D cosmology and any further discussion of Good and Evil is pointless.
Doesn't matter what your intentions are, it's all about what you actually do.
Let's look at this logically. If Good men don't try to become more powerful, Evil men will. Now let's say they succeed. By virtue of being more powerful, Evil will be able to triumph over Good. Ergo, Good men must seek power so that Evil men don't acquire enough power to beat them. Therefore, power-seeking is the primary act of good, as without it, Good will be overwhelmed by Evil and any other acts of Good will become impossible to perform.
In ideal fantasy worlds good ones end up in positions of power because they feel their sense of duty compels them to do so, not because they necessarily want to be powerful.
Is such a sense of duty an inherent trait of ambition or pride itself though? After all, in order for you to feel that your duty is to rule the kingdom benevolently, you have to feel that you are worthy of the title of king. A peasant's duties are merely to farm, they don't feel that their duty is to slay evil and become king. A sense of ambition or pride is a prerequisite to a sense of duty.
Duty is more of an instinct to a good being, akin to the need to eat or breathe. A dutiful peasant will through Hell or high water attempt to continue his services to the bitter end, allowing no man to spurn him of his sacred mandate, for in his eye the call to agriculture is a destiny as worthy as any rulership.
>Seeking power
Your primary competition in the arena of power is your own side. They are all the enemy. They are your lessers that need kept in their place, your equals who compete for positions open to you, and those above you or with more than you who you will want to take power from.
In a lawful good, noblisse oblige, it is still the same, just without backstabbing and conniving. The opportunities available to the unscrupulous are not available to you, but recognition of piety, generosity, and heroism will be scarely shared between you and others of your way of life. Honor for the sake of power corrupts it. I see nothing but a knave anon who wishes not for the greater glory of Lawful Good, but only for the greater glory of himself.
Power attracts the corruptable. It is our way that only the reluctant may wield power, and those with full knowledge of the responsibility it that out leadership entails. This heretic needs thrown out of the Lawful Good community immediately. No Attonement!
>Your primary competition in the arena of power is your own side.
I would hardly say that's true. In any given world, the majority of occupied lands for Good to conquer, usurp, or overthrow will be either Evil or Neutral lands.
>your competition
In heirarchy your competition is your peers. If you're a General it's other Generals.
In D&D traditionally alignment is faction, hexcrawl AD&D. In 3.5 alignment rules were pulled back, the penalties and alignment languages for your faction and such were reduced or gone, just some restrictions were there but watered down. At this point, 5e? It's in the lore. You can't mess it up so bad you lose a level or the GM takes control of your character anymore.
Anon has the lore right, OP is trying to apply facebook alignment chart meme logic to a big ass lore system he knows nothing about.
There's a Plane of Law and a Plane of Good and the Gods support it. If you're mortal you'll be able to leave your homeworld/dimension, I'm honestly a little iffy on that because worlds are flat from what I understand.
Society is just a word. Can you put it in a basket? Can you point to it and say this is society, we are standing in it? The afterlife is real in D&D, it's a place you can go and come back from, and the rules are supported by the Gods, not ordained by the Gods.
I'm not going to tell you it's not possible to ascend, since I think Cuthbert and Vecna may have been mortal once, I am going to say you're not going to be mortal anymore, you won't be able to leave your home plane anymore like a mortal can, and other rules will apply to you.
Is OP trying to become the embodiment of a 10th alignment? You can't change Law and Good, they're Planes power flows into and out of. But if you manage to become your own open space universe, let me know.
Peers include your equals on the other side too.
I think it comes down the reasons someone has to try and become a god? It's a weird thing to make a blanket statement on.
Sure. Lawful Good means you're on the side of law and goodness. It doesn't mean you're greedy; the two iconic lawful good species of the setting, dwarves and gold dragons, are also iconic for being greedy as frick, for example.
D&D alignment doesn't make sense.
since the whole thing is ultimately based on "le we live in a society" if you ascend above that society you, via apotheosis for example, can just say you're whatever you want and society will succumb
since in D&D morality is set by the gods, there it is exactly as Thrasymachus said
>morality is set by the gods
no, in most d&d setting good and evil are objective metaphysical forces that are beyond the gods
>Lawful good (LG) creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society. Gold dragons, paladins, and most dwarves are lawful good.
If he is a god he is above society and therefor he can do whatever he wants
A god may be above society of mortals but is still part of society of gods.
then just become even greater than the gods?
OP's question is ultimately just a question of power
at which point in D&D do you truly achieve apotheosis and power over reality/morality?
>power over reality and morality
You have the power to choose as a mortal in these settings. You lose that if you become a God. A Plane can be like a planet or a universe. Casting a water spell? The power to do so comes from the Plane of Water. It's unlimited. It will never run out of Water.
Mechanus, the Plane of Law. It's a place. We don't need dogma or philosopher's or social scientists to get nothing degrees and tell people what Lawfulness is. You cast Lawful spells that's where that power comes from. It doesn't run out. That's the 'power above gods' you're interested in.
If your starting point is being a planet or your own pocket dimension, I'd say in a few billion years you could become a Plane of Power.
If you want the power to change things and decide your mortality for yourself, you already have that mortal. More so than you would if you were a force of nature holding the Planes together in balance. Does that make sense or do you still want to be a planet when you grow up?
>at which point in D&D do you truly achieve apotheosis and power over reality/morality?
17th level Wizard
As long as it's through lawful and good means, thee is nothing wrong with trying to improve yourself and fatten your toolkit to help others by. Though whether the person seeking deification will ever *get* it is another matter entirely: in D&D, ascended LG gods usually get their role incidentally rather then as an intended bid of divinity.
>lawful
slavery only alignment
>good (implying Evil)
slavery only dichotomy
>Is extreme levels of personal ambition compatible with Lawful Good behavior?
Depends on how extreme, I guess.
>Can someone be Lawful Good if they fully intend to ascend to godhood themselves?
Depends on the definition of Good & Evil you go with. Fate/Providence, no, Natural Law, depends if the Law allows for it, early modern absurdism as evil following post Lisbon 1755, yes, post modern sexual predation as foundation of evil, I guess so, who the frick knows, it doesn't make any sense anyways and is just another scar left by Freud on our society... ?
>Or is a higher degree of humility required?
Not necessarily.
The Catholic God calls on us to bring Heaven on Earth. Literally. Once its done it'll be like a Disney show down here, wolves and sheeps playing around and no one getting hurt. We can't exactly do that if we just spend our entire history contemplating how little and incapable we are in comparison to God. There's a duty of humility before God but not before our own very Nature. So in your setting say God allowed for ascension, then he probably wouldn't turn the qualities that lead to it into vices...