Vigilante Alignment

[Kenji]

Should we limit Vigilante alignment to non-Lawful only, which allows evil characters to take the PrC?

[Eira]

I'll say what I have said before.

My argument for not making vigilante evil is that vigilante is not meant to be a selfish thing. it's doing a cause for the literal greater good, not just their own delusion of a greater good.

It's a specific thing.

It's not the same as guards going "we don't condone vigilante justice" because some guy merced a pickpocket who stole from them. Would that same guy help someone getting mugged in an alley? They should

I honestly don't think a chaotic evil vigilante really follows what the class intention originally was, or how it's been presented

I also think it's a good idea to support that neutral can do evil things sometimes, that good can do dubious things sometimes, because of how alignment works, and that sum of their actions

[Paint]

Mechanically, it opens up a lot of fun options, but I'll say what I usually say about these kinds of things;

Alignment restrictions are good because they force you to play outside your comfort zone. If you want to play an evil class or PrC, there's plenty of other options.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

I voted other.

I still want to be a lawful good vigilante insert batman debate That might be a liberator debate too.

I think we are in a fairly decent spot for vigilante alignment. Eira and Paint make good points.

[Aog]

Yes; restricting player agency as little as possible is the best thing for creative freedom. I understand the line in the sand about paladins; I don't understand why there needs to be such a line with vigilante. I thought class names were OOC information, anyhow, no?

[The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie]

it is the year of our lord 2010+13 man open up the alignments a little bit and allow people to be creative and just see what happens

[D4wN]

I said no because evil simply doesn't fit the concept of vigilante. In saying that however.. I do believe we have a fundamental alignment issue where most people simply do not play their alignment and I personally believe alignment has very little actual meaning overall. I like other concepts of being selfish vs selfless or kind vs malicious or brave vs cowardly. Alignment puts a label on people most don't tend to stick to in my experience and it can sometimes be intangible. But I guess that's a whole other topic!

[ReverentBlade]

A lot of extremism/vigilantism can be deeply dark, in my opinion, but I voted no simply because evil already has enough toys from a mechanical standpoint.

[Wrips]

Yes. The general concept doesn't justify alignment lock and I can clearly see a situation where the Vigilante becomes a greater problem than the evil they are supposed to fight. That would be interesting roleplay.

[Dr. B]

Yes.

I think it's important to remember two things here:

(1) Bad people can think they are good.

(2) People might not recognize their own motives.

These facts can make for very layered characters.

So yes, it should be opened up to evil, and it should also be opened up to lawful, with one exception that I shall mention at the end.

Evil can be the product of many things. It's not necessarily selfishness, as someone said above, and acting under the "delusion of the greater good," as Eira puts it, does not mean your underlying motives are selfish. Ruthlessness, cruelty, indifference to suffering, hatefulness, and Machiavellianism can all be qualities that can contribute to (but don't guarantee) a person being evil. There can be evil people who think they're good and have unselfish motives. The genocidal dictator who thinks they'e improving the world is a classical example. There can even be Chaotic Evil people who think they're good; terrorists who want to punish what they consider an evil by indiscriminately murdering innocent people are an example. Vhaeraun, in FR lore, is a great example of a CE character who thinks he's good: in his mind, his aim is to improve drow culture and unify the Tel-Quessir, but his unconscious motives are hateful and destructive, and he leaves a wake of chaos in everything he does. He's mistaken about his own motives, which is why I find him a really interesting deity.

Heck, Vhaeraunites who operate in Lolthite society are paradigmatically vigilantes. They act outside the laws of society for what they see as the greater good (even though they're evil) and they do so with the stated goal of creating a more harmonious, orderly world (but they're actually chaotic).

For that matter, lawfulness isn't necessarily conformity to the laws of the state. This is something I think the class gets really wrong. Lawful characters can and do come into conflict with the laws of the state. Diabolists, for example, are almost always lawful, yet they exist and work in societies where consorting with devils is illegal. Anyone remember Samara, the Asari Justicar from Mass Effect? She adhered to an extremely strict code of conduct that actually required her to kill a police officer who was preventing her from carrying out her duty, despite the fact that she's the epitome, the textbook trope, of Lawful Neutrality.

tl;dr: evil people can think they're good. Chaotic individuals can think they're lawful. Lawful characters can come into conflict with the laws of society. This makes a character interesting.

Personally, I think the class should be open to all alignments except for Neutral Evil. I find it hard to think of examples of NE moralists.

Now, all this having been said, the difficult question is whether most of the playerbasehas the capability to play an evil or lawful vigilante. I can see that as an argument for gating certain vigilante alignments behind RPR or DM applications, but I think in principle such characters should be allowed.