I believe that God's Law is Good and Right. He established and defined what IS Good and Evil.
No one wants to touch it, so I will.
You are applying your real world believes (which I think to at least some degree I share) to a fictional universe. DnD has bunch of gods, each with their own alignment - so it's less about good or evil, but whose favour you are trying to gain. I am not terribly well versed in DnD, but I am pretty especially Lawful vs Evil has less to do with being "good or bad" in moral sense, but more of "control vs impulses". Laws can be good or bad. It's more about your character wanting to follow rules, or him doing whatever feels good at the moment.
That said I do agree that alignments as they are are rather troublesome and too open to interpretation. That's why I would prefer a different reputation system, if such was ever implemented.
I'm fully aware that my beliefs are real world and D&D is not. I'm actually quite glad for that. If they tried to make D&D align with the Bible, I'd probably have some real issues with it.
Yeah. I know that there are lots of gods, but like mrfuji said, "Good is, practically by definition, what the Good Gods espouse and represent. Selfishness, kindness, benevolence, mercy." I brought up my real beliefs because as I'm playing a game where moral dillemmas come into play, my own personal beliefs do have a tendency to alter my decisions. If I'm playing a Lawful Good Paladin, and I read that the Goddess is Lawful Good, I'd expect that my dialogue options that are Good aren't going to make me suddenly Neutral Good if I pick Good too many times instead of Lawful.
But that's what happened in Pathfinder. The more I chose Good instead of Lawful, because Lawful was more often harsh and cold and frankly NOT good, the more I shifted towards Neutral Good. And so, my alignment shifted and I lost my ability to use certain swords and my paladin powers and such. It severely hindered me for being Good instead of Lawful.
I wouldn't mind a system of alignment that auto-shifts your alignment if it is done as mrfuji has kind of implied. If you make a Good choice, you shift more towards the extreme Good alignment. If you make an Evil choice, you shift more towards Evil alignment. Major Evil choices shift you towards Evil faster, and likewise major Good choices make you shift towards Good faster.
The problem is that what constitutes Good versus Evil may not be translated the same by me, you, mrfuji, RagnarokCzD, etc., and there are different flavors of Good and Evil, which is why there are Neutral and Chaotic versions of both.
So, you can't just shift alignments on people because my action may SEEM like it is Evil in BG3, but it may actually just be smart. I'm SAYING I'm joining Minthara when I'm really pretending to join her to lure her into a more advantageous position for myself. Instead of 4 party members fighting Minthara in her home court, I'm luring her to a well-defendable gate with allies like Zevlor to help me wipe out her forces. So how is Larian going to judge my action of "Yes, Minthara, I'm going to help you"? Are they going to call that evil?
Now, if I kill Zevlor, and I throw open the gate and let Minthara in, then THAT is a pretty major evil event. But does that shift you from Good to Evil, or just Good to Neutral? I mean, it truly depends on what? Your heart. What is the motivation and the heart of the character? My Drow Sorcerer might be doing it because he hates everyone in the grove and he sees this as a totally advantageous move to join Minthara and manipulate her and the Absolute to get what he wants. So, for him, it should be considerably evil and his alignment, if Neutral previously, should shift to Evil. Absolutely. But how would the game know that his motive and heart is evil? It can't.
But what if my character is reluctantly joining Minthara because he/she sees Minthara's path as the only REAL solution to the problem? "I can't defeat the goblins. There are too many. Nettie was clueless, and she didn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings that Halsin would actually help either. The gith nearly killed us, and the hag freaked out because it was Netherese magic. Everyone is after us! The druids are morons and the tieflings are useless. I mean, that's cruel to say, but it's true. So, what choice do I have? If I turn into a mind flayer, many MORE people will die, especially if I'm some freaky, more powerful variant of them." And so, though the Neutral character doesn't really WANT to butcher everyone in the grove, they do so because they feel trapped with little way out. For what they perceive is the greater good, they are temporarily siding with Minthara and the Absolute in the hopes of gaining valuable information that will help them find a cure.
Should that Neutral character then shift towards evil?
