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| - Also known as Lawful Anal, these people may call themselves Lawful Good, but seem to completely forget about the "Good" part. Rather, they lean toward such rigid adherence to the law that anybody who breaks any law, anywhere, for any reason, is the enemy. Even saying an unkind word to someone is an act of pure evil, and the Lawful Stupid can and will act as Judge, Jury, and Executioner. They refuse to hide from even overwhelming threats, and believe that letting evil win in any way (by, say, helping the villagers to retreat from the advancing dark army) is against their alignment. Naturally, they are too stupid to be evil; that is why they are called Lawful Stupid, not Lawful Evil or Lawful Neutral.
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| abstract
| - Also known as Lawful Anal, these people may call themselves Lawful Good, but seem to completely forget about the "Good" part. Rather, they lean toward such rigid adherence to the law that anybody who breaks any law, anywhere, for any reason, is the enemy. Even saying an unkind word to someone is an act of pure evil, and the Lawful Stupid can and will act as Judge, Jury, and Executioner. They refuse to hide from even overwhelming threats, and believe that letting evil win in any way (by, say, helping the villagers to retreat from the advancing dark army) is against their alignment. Naturally, they are too stupid to be evil; that is why they are called Lawful Stupid, not Lawful Evil or Lawful Neutral. Woe be to the fellow party member who fails to live up to their almost obsessive-compulsive standards. If the thief so much as jaywalks, Mr. Lawful Stupid will insist on turning him in to the "proper authorities" (regardless of what alignment said authorities actually are), or perhaps even execute him on the spot. Then he'll berate the other members of his party for "condoning" the thief's behavior, and may turn on them as well. This makes this guy highly irritating as well as stupid for turning in his only allies, to the point where despite usually calling themselves Lawful Good, they look a lot like Lawful Evil, or at best Lawful Neutral. Or maybe Chaotic Neutral. For newbie DMs, the best solution is usually a blunt force object applied to the head of the offending character -- if not the player. In tabletop roleplaying games, it's apparently such a common behavior for paladins (see Leeroy Jenkins) that it seems this is what everyone expects paladins to do these days. In fact, it's so common that the Dungeons and Dragons Sourcebook Book of Exalted Deeds spends a good number of pages explaining how to be Lawful Good without being a total dimwit. The creators themselves got sick of it. Basically, this trope is a Lawful character carrying the Idiot Ball because that is the Lawful thing to do. A truly Lawful Good character believes that a lawful, orderly society is necessary for good. He does not believe that rules can never be bent or that leniency is always wrong. Also compare Honor Before Reason, which has a tendency to overlap with this if done badly. When this behavior is caused by faith, Belief Makes You Stupid is present. Compare and contrast Chaotic Stupid, Stupid Good, Stupid Evil, and Stupid Neutral, which are the Moral/Ethical Alignment: Stupid equivalent tropes for Chaos, Good and Evil. The Fundamentalist and Knight Templar usually fall under this alignment, and may eventually develop into Tautological Templar. No Real Life Examples, please. Examples of Lawful Stupid include:
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