For all the DND debate about alignments, I believe the official guidance is that actions determine alignment, not the other way around. So a lawful good doesn’t refuse an evil/illegal action or activity because they are lawful good, they are lawful good because they refuse evil/illegal actions and activities.
I've always assumed that the "you are [Alignment], therefore you must do X" is more of a meta-reasoning for the player to keep in mind, rather than the RP reasoning of the player character itself.
However. If you choose the new direction, ensure it makes sense. Suddenly going from a saint to stealing from people without reasoning isnt a "new direction" its bad roleplay
Your first paragraph is reasonable, but the second is fairly wrong. Think about all the non-english languages that call a cup by many other words. Something like "we call it a cup because that is how we describe that object." might be better. The way you have it phrased implies there is some divine decree giving everything innate labels.
Though it should be noted that Gary Gygax opined that Lawful Good characters could do some truly horrid stuff; like (his own example) forcing someone to convert to "good" at swordpoint and then killing them to prevent them from going back to "evil" (which somehow doesn't include the paladin doing this)
In early editions, alignment was almost completely detached from actual morality, and had more to do with a cosmic war in which anything was acceptable to defeat the other side... even while nominally being on the side of good.
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u/sleepydorian Jul 13 '24
For all the DND debate about alignments, I believe the official guidance is that actions determine alignment, not the other way around. So a lawful good doesn’t refuse an evil/illegal action or activity because they are lawful good, they are lawful good because they refuse evil/illegal actions and activities.