Spazmo said:
That's just the Lawful Good-for-hire problem that plagued Neverwinter Nights. The tricky part is finding a way for neutral characters to do something important but make sure that it doesn't really change anything
Not in particular. He could shrug the problem away and say it's not his problem. Yet, since he is lawful, a creature like an evil dragon attacking a village would be a chaotic act and therefore would defend it for that reason. It's not really "Good for hire". I'l try to come up with some more examples.
Even in the AD&D 2nd Ed. Player's Handbook, in the druid description, it says that in order to keep the balance, a druid fighting a tribe of orcs with his group might suddenly change sides when he thinks that the orc population is getting too depleted. This sort of totally erratic behavior isn't really the kind of character I would want to play.
A CN would, perhaps, but nobody else is going to be stupid enough to do that.
A TN would most likely look out for specific ideals and defend those. Like nature, which is neither good nor evil. Saving a forest from arson isn't a good or evil act, regardless of how you look at it. Usually a TN character looks out for a specific cause, good, evil, law, chaos all be damned. That cause is everything to them.
But that "balance" bullshit of the druid example above is a total load of crap. The druid would be intent on his ideals, a neutral cleric would be interested in just their order's ideals (no good or evil to sway them, doesn't really care about the laws), etc. A TN order
might be concerned with "weighing the balance", but a TN character, by the definition of neither good nor evil, and neither lawful or chaotic, has their intents on a specific reason and ideas that are neither anything good, evil, etc.
Azael said:
Well, druids are a special case, their obsession with what they view as natural balance isn't something that reflects on other neutral characters. Personally, I view a neutral character as someone who just tries to make his way in the world without going to any extremes, a pretty normal guy in other words.
Pretty much so, I'd say. A (over-romanticised D&D)druid is also focused on nature and that sort of thing.
Megatron said:
A true neutral druid would probably just stand at the side of a battle and use large area affective spells that could randomly heal/hurt the people. Therefore the druid isn't choosing a side and is helping nature take its course.
Uh...why? Nevermind that really a D&D druid is focused on nature and switching sides in combat is stupid, throwing away spells like that is equally stupid unless it's by a CN character. Those kind are just...something by themselves. They don't care about good or evil, but do whatever they please, the realm of the psycho.
As azael mentioned, a lot of it is decided on the motive of the charecter. There's no point doing a task from one side of the scales if your going to inbalance it afterwards. A true neutral charecter would balance out all his actions and his surroundings. The problem is with a neutral charecter is that you'd have to ignore a majority of quests as they require you to evil/good. I can't think of many instances in a game like fallout where there was a true neutral quest as everyone was looking out for themselves.
Um...I thought Azael mentioned that "Personally, I view a neutral character as someone who just tries to make his way in the world without going to any extremes, a pretty normal guy in other words.", which pretty well fits it. A common joe who doesn't care about good or evil, law or chaos, and is just intent on whatever it is they do. A farmer could be a good example of a TN character.
This "balancing scales" crap is just something on the part of some unimaginative person when writing up D&D. In how the D&D alignments are put together, everything is polar opposites. Yet in the center is some flake who is going to abiguously attack one side or another, rather than the more logical of someone who isn't going to do anything to extremes.
The "balance everything" might be some TNs -
in selective attitudes and ambitions, but their depiction of TN of switching sides because the orcs are losing is just something only a CN character or a complete retard would do. Back in the real world kind of thinking (as in, outside of the geeks who wrote this crap without a clue of psychological and sociological relations and activities), the druid would be concerned about his forest more than anything, and would likely take out the one that is clearly more destructive (orcs), and rely on knowing that his team isn't going to kill him afterwards. The orcs most likely would. Hell, his team most likely would if they turned on them and they eventually killed the orcs.
Rather than the idiotic method of fighting and switching sides based upon numbers. Their depiction of "fighting for the orcs" is complete crap.
Hell, if you go by the D&D definition, Planescape: Torment is horribly flawed because if you don't do anything extremely good, nothing extremely evil, lawful or chaotic, you're now supposed to attack sides based upon numbers rather than your beliefs. Yes, you just killed an evil theif...better go kill that good shopkeeper to make sure the good and evil is balanced. That makes very little sense at all.
About the only way to really do Neutral, is to have quests that might have good or evil outcomes, but relate a little to the character's raison d'etre and how they relate to that. The current D&D TN setup is little more than CN with beliefs that good and evil should be balanced. Can't be LN, because they follow order and law, and wouldn't change sides like that - changing sides like that is perhaps the biggest mark of a chaotic character. Someone who betrays his comrades isn't exactly neutral or lawful by any means.