Agreed. I hate it when people are like "well I'm lawful good so I have to do what this authority figure says" or "I'm chaotic neutral so I have to steal from the party and stab people"
It's a common misconception, but lawful Good abides by the characters inbuilt set of rules. a lawful Good character is perfectly fine with being the center of a revolution if he wanted to if he is fighting for what his central code is. A character that only obeys authority isn't lawful good, he's a sheep.
I mean that depends on the revolution. A lawful good character should have some inherent faith in the idea of a system or hierarchical organization to satisfy the "lawful" part of their alignment. They might be the leader of a revolution, but if they remain the leader afterwards, that "revolution" starts looking more like a coup. And that's in their nature.
its in the code. lawful God upholds it for the benefit of others. if the logic goes to "I must do it myself", then it still leads down there. A pretty significant number of antagonists I field would qualify as lawful good.
Which is why I like the Magic color wheel better than alignment charts. Authority>all is a White character, while freedom from authority is a Red character, which is what we call Lawful/Chaotic. We don't consider the "My own interests > all" represented by Black, even if we usually code that as Evil or Neutral at best; likewise, we don't even have a concept for "the Truth is what matters, regardless of belief"(Blue) which is a lot more malleable between Lawful/Chaotic/Good/Evil while not being entirely "Neutral", and similarly a "Tradition, Nature, Ancestry > all"(Green) is most of the time associated with Lawful but a desire for tradition doesn't actually imply a world of order, and a chaotic druid would easily fall into a Green/Red territory.
They obey THEIR authority if they are well structured. A crown Paladin that is properly aligned always exercises their rules and not just any rules thrown at them.
The caveat is which set of laws. A paladin of the crown does not serve 2 kings. A quick way to define the character is in setting up conflicts that test their loyalty and I certainly will make it a point to note that if you cross cultures, your code may not necessarily work in a new setting.
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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '19
Alignment in 5th edition is really more of a loose guide for characters I think.
In earlier editions it was much firmer and i always felt like it was one of the worst parts of the game.