Lawful Stupid

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail. Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

Obligatum VII, the posterboy of Lawful Stupid.

"You wear your honor like a suit of armor, Stark. You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move."

– Lord Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish to Lord Eddard Stark.

"Individuals should not create fan films or animations based on our settings and characters. To create such content, you need a Games Workshop license."

– GeeDubs, as always

"Fiat justitia ruat caelum - Let justice be done though the heavens fall"

– legal maxim

Lawful Stupid is gamer slang (derived from the Dungeons & Dragons alignment system, but can easily be applied to characters in any role-playing game as well as fiction in general) for a specific way of playing a Lawful Good or, especially, a Lawful Neutral character, most infamously a Paladin. It is characterized by lack of common sense, following the rules arbitrarily without actually understanding them, and just generally being an annoying prick. He's that guy who will stop a chase scene because he has to chastise someone that was jaywalking. Lawful Stupid players are one of the main reasons (along with asshole DMs) why people dislike the Paladin class. It can also be a jab at the fact that Intelligence is a common dump stat for Paladins in 3.5, since their MAD mandates high Charisma and Wisdom, the traditional dump stats of combat classes. Pathfinder allows them to dump Wisdom, the only class that can really do so, making this even worse.

Although the iconic Lawful Stupid character is a poorly-played Paladin (Alignment requirement: Lawful Good), non-Paladin depictions are almost invariably Lawful Neutral, since this kind of characterization is a disappointingly logical extrapolation from a character alignment that can be summed up as "the Law is the Law and all that matters is that it is the law; whether or not it helps or hurts people is irrelevant, the LAW must be upheld!"

A lot of this really stems from a surface understanding of the Lawful alignment. While following the law is a lawful act, following the rules is not the end-all definition of the Lawful alignment. Lawful means orderly. So the type of person who religiously organizes their sock drawer would be considered Lawful. A Lawful person can disagree with the laws of the land, wanting to replace them with new laws. It's the desire for order and logic that matters. Of course, these would be sensible Lawful people, and therefore not "Lawful Stupid".

Compare to Chaotic Stupid, Stupid Evil, Stupid Good, and Stupid Neutral. There really are a lot of ways to be stupid in fantasy games, aren't there?

How to avoid it while playing Lawful Good

The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, in particular any scenes with the Witches of Lancre or the Ankh Morpork City Watch, are all but required reading for understanding. Granny Weatherwax, Sam Vimes, and Carrot Ironfoundersson are all (probably) Lawful Good, but all add their own twists on the formula. Carrot possesses such a high Charisma score that he can literally charm people into doing what he wants, but when that fails he tricks people into doing what he wants, technically avoiding a non-Lawful alignment by twisting the law into a pretzel when he can. Vimes follows both the letter and the spirit of the Law whenever he can stretch it, but isn't above committing illegal acts to uphold Lawful purposes. Granny is Evil by nature, but Good by necessity and hates it, since her sister got first pick on the question "are you a good witch or a bad witch?" and chose to be bad. To combat this, she continually takes out her frustration on other people by acting like the spiteful and entitled octogenarian that she technically is, avoiding a fall into True Neutral or Neutral Evil because witches are supposed to act a bit nutty, even the Lawful ones, and none of it matters as long as she does what's capital-r Right.

The AD&D book "The Complete Paladin's Handbook" has a section ("Virtues", page 33) on the behavior and code of conduct a Paladin normally upholds; that of a gracious and well-mannered individual who respects good and the law, but is not on an endless crusade to uphold it. They would not upset a tavern just because they detected an evil presence within and risk causing chaos, for example.

Another way to play lawful good is to play your paladin like a modern soldier is supposed to be: able and willing to do anything needed to win, except as decreed by certain laws and customs of war, e.g. for example, the Geneva and Hague Conventions. Those laws still restrict the actions of a soldier, but he is still expected to act with common sense in order to achieve victory and not follow orders that violate those laws. That said, if the only thing keeping someone from committing war crimes is the law of the land, that person may not be all that Good or Lawful.

How to avoid it while playing lawful neutral

This is arguably even harder than avoiding it whilst playing Lawful Good; at least Lawful Good types are supposed to balance their calling to law & order vs. their calling to good. Lawful Neutral types are often categorized by their firm belief that law and order are the only things of importance, with morality being dismissed as insignificant next to the maintenance of order. The primary key to doing so is to keep a proper perspective; traffic laws, for example, have their place in the scheme of things. When you are racing to prevent the nuclear annihilation of a city is not that place. Don't get so bogged down with legal minutia that you allow far greater acts of destruction and anarchy to occur whilst you attend to the little things.

Judge Dredd can be a good example of this. For example, in the opening sequence of the 2012 Dredd movie, he pursues a car full of criminals but does not shoot at them until they collide with and kill a pedestrian, and even then only shoots to disable the van's tires. He doesn't shoot to kill until one of them threatens to kill a hostage and refuses to accept an offer to surrender. Also, when he sees a vagrant sitting outside the crime scene, Dredd tells him not to be there when he gets back instead of arresting him because he has better things to do at the moment. Of course, when he's just doing the rounds on his birthday, he'll issue noise citations to children who sing to him because he is The Law it's just plain embarrassing (and then donate the presents he receives to an orphanage because he's not That Guy). But not always a good example, like the time in the 1995 movie when Dredd suggested Rob Schneider's character jump off the top of a building rather than vandalize a robot to hide in during a shootout, since as Dredd points out, jumping might be suicide, but it's legal. While a good source of memes, the 1995 movie is far from a faithful adaptation of the character.

This is not to say that a Lawful Neutral character doesn't recognize when they break the law or go against the general sense of law (Law) when called to; they do, and they're likely to be annoyed by it. Tenya Iida from My Hero Academia explores this concept, although he can sometimes break into Lawful Stupid, too.

Examples of Lawful Stupid From Games Workshop

BEHOLD! THE PEAK OF HUMAN STUPIDITY! IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO BE THIS STUPID!

• ...Its legal team

Stupidhammer fortykay

• The most obvious example is the Commissar, although protagonists like Ibram Gaunt or Ciaphas Cain will mostly be sensible individuals (if only because nobody wants to read about a teamkilling fucktard for a dozen or so books), background commissars in the Imperial Guard are often the epitome of Lawful Stupid: You left your post to report vital intel to Headquarters? That's a summary execution for ya. Even "protagonists" aren't immune to this. Critiqued an order that'd get your men killed but didn't refuse to follow it? That's a summary execution for ya (though in this specific instance, this was Raine being a ruthless bitch more than lawful stupid).
• The stereotypical Space Marine. Stealth is cowardice, frontal assaults are the only way to go. On the occasion they do utilize tactics like stealth, feints, and flanking, it's all to help the frontal assault succeed rather than the other way around. Retreating is never an option, even if it's to gain more cover. Some will never field psykers or ignore Xenos, and some won't even cooperate with other Space Marine Chapters. A special case being Leandros.
• The Adeptus Administratum is prone to this, especially when there is poor information. It is telling that they were intentionally designed to act like this so that the resulting permanent cold war doesn't explode into catastrophe as it already had multiple times.

Stupidhammer Classic

• The Dawi. They are obsessed with the concept of revenge, as all Grudges must be answered for. This causes them to wage many unnecessary wars, which is especially stupid since they are a dying race (gee, we wonder why). This is exacerbated by the fact that many of these wars waged to avenge their honor just end up creating yet more grudges (because weirdly, their enemies might kill a Dwarf or two when defending themselves instead of bending over and accepting their "punishment" like a BDSM-starved daemonnette), creating a never-ending cycle of conflict. The fluff speaks of two dwarven lords who were fighting each other in a generation-spanning War of Grudges, even while they were being invaded by an Orc warband. The two lords eventually got together and realized that neither of them remembered what their clans were fighting over, forgave each other, and resolved to ally against the Orcs beating down on their gates. Both sides were promptly crushed by a cave-in caused by the gods themselves for failing to avenge their respective Grudges and the Orcs got to loot another Karak without difficulty. Yes, it is literal sacrilege to abandon a Grudge. The only rational explanation is that before the Ancestor Gods uplifted them, the dwarf sense of honor and lawfulness (and absolute and total dedication to oaths) were exploited by heartless early rulers, with the Grudges being the least unhealthy outlet.

Examples of Lawful Stupid From Wizards of the Coast

BEHOLD! THE PEAK OF HUMAN STUPIDITY! IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO BE THIS STUPID!

• The Wizards of the Coast Legal Team, though this one is so bad it straight-up went into Stupid Evil as well.
• The Azorius Senate from Magic: The Gathering is White-Blue taken to stupid levels. The guild makes so many laws that they can literally arrest anyone, and then justify it by finding one of the myriad of pointless laws they've passed that the individual has undoubtedly broken. They'll even arrest someone for merely thinking about breaking a law (see the card Psychic Spiral for proof). This culminates in them being outsmarted by Dovin Baan (also White-Blue aligned), who deliberately endorses Nicol Bolas in the prelude to War of the Spark — doesn't matter if there's undead killing everyone and plunging the whole plane of Ravnica into war, as long as your guildleader is officially elected, everything is fine. The other White-aligned guilds might also count, with the Selesnya Conclave at at a close second.
  • Azor, the founder of Azorius. He deserves a spot on the Hall of Shame especially after fucking around on Ixalan.

D&D Stupid Edition

Whatever happened that put TSR in a tizzy.

Stupid and Forgotten Realms

• The Inevitables, divine golem-like beings with the duty to enact laws and enforce contracts. There's a story of one named "Obligatum VII" (the seventh in its line because six times prior people had the common sense to stop him) who’s trying to free the BBEG in a campaign from the book Elder Evils. The story goes that some mages summoned an eldritch abomination named Pandorym to blackmail the gods, making a contract with it to kill said deities when it was summoned. The wizards imprisoned Pandorym instead of finishing the ritual to let it loose so that it wouldn't destroy the universe before they were ready, but the gods just smote the stupid wizards the instant they were done imprisoning Pandorym, so he's stuck. Well, Obligatum is here to set things right, and make sure that poor, imprisoned death machine gets the freedom it was promised to carry out its goal, which through some warped sense of honor it is willing to do. How exactly this does not bring him into conflict with another type of Inevitable, the Varakhut, whose job it is to prevent deicide is a whole other box of worms. Maybe that's what happened to one of the six other ones.
• Helm, the Lawful Neutral God of Guardians and Watchmen from the Forgotten Realms, has earned this kind of reputation in-universe. Nobody will ever let him live it down that, during the Time of Troubles, he killed Mystara, the Goddess of Magic, for trying to get back into the upper planes after Ao kicked them all out, despite the fact that he knew that this would severely damage the fabric of reality in the process. As a result, wild magic zones and dead magic zones are commonly called "Helmlands". He also catches a lot of flak for the role his worshippers played in the massacres in Maztica, but that's not so much Lawful Stupid as religious bigotry and the priest's only daughter being sacrificed by one of the natives.

Planescape Stupidity

• The Harmonium from Planescape. "The Harmonium believes that peace is a better end than war. [...] If it takes thumping heads to spread the truth, well, the Harmonium's ready to thump heads. Sure, there may not be peace right away, but every time the Harmonium gets rid of an enemy, the multiverse is that much closer to the universal harmony it was meant to have." This attitude is how the third layer of Arcadia shifted into Mechanus, and the gods of Arcadia had to start over. Whoops. What's more, don't forget that they exterminated all non-lawful good and neutral species in the world where their faction originated. Some good.
• The Modron race, similarly to the Inevitables above, due to being extraplanar mechanical lifeforms who embody Lawful Neutral. Except they somehow have even less personality. Imagine a poorly-written chatbot with arms, legs, and the ability to beat you over the head; that's basically a Modron. They can't even understand the idea that their assumptions may be incorrect.
• The Mercykillers from Planescape. They're obsessed with the concept of enforcing lawful justice to the point where even if there's a criminal mugging a helpless old granny just a few meters away, they need to seek out an authority figure, inform them of the crime, and then ask for permission to punish the crime before they can do anything. Because if they don't, they'll eat heavy stat penalties and possibly be marked for death by other Mercykillers for breaking their batshit insane idea of law. Their boss is insane enough about this that she's convinced the fucking Lady of Pain is guilty of something and needs to die as a result!

Other examples of Lawful Stupid

• Most IP legal teams, given the money involved. The Disney corporation is quite infamous for aggressive enforcement of copyrights and trademarks (and lobbying Congress for the extension of time until a property becomes public domain).

And speaking of Disney...

BEHOLD! THE PEAK OF HUMAN STUPIDITY! IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO BE THIS STUPID!

• The company tried to trademark Dia de los Muertos, which is a really important holiday in Mexico.
• The Jedi from the Star Wars Prequels are this, as they followed the Jedi Code — which was meant as a mere guideline — as a set of unbreakable rules and set out to completely repress all emotion in somewhat unfounded fear of those emotions leading to the dark side, when they should have acknowledged that which makes us human and simply taught how to use them positively. Such arbitrarily following of the code leads the Council to turn a blind eye to the various problems Anakin Skywalker was having, thereby unintentionally sealing their own downfall.
  • Works set before the Prequels shows that this is hardly a new problem for the Jedi Order. Knights Of The Old Republic II features a Jedi named Atris who's incredibly obsessed with following the code to the letter and wiping out the Sith. This leads to her being filled with bitterness and remorse after her best friend/secret crush the Exile is kicked out of the Order, but also leaves her too arrogant to talk to anyone about it. Instead, she starts to hide herself away in a temple filled with Sith holocrons to be alone and meditate, and since Sith holocrons literally exude Dark Side-tainted Force energy, she gets unknowingly corrupted into a Sith. Yes, she was so Lawful Stupid that it turned her evil. Atris is basically every negative sterotype people keep bitching and moaning about with regards to Jedi rolled into one hypocritical busybody and is the probably the most actively hated character in the entire franchise just out of how much of an utter bitch she is without even realizing that she has done far worse than the person she keeps bitching at.
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi in The Clone Wars demonstrates another problem with his adherence to the rule against killing an unarmed enemy. He has been caught in life or death struggles where he still refuses to kill his enemy if they are unarmed. That said, he does not hold non-Jedi to this standard, something a dumb slaver once found out.
  • However, the poster boy for this in Star Wars is Mace Windu. Though less because he strictly adhered to the Jedi code, and more because he was a diehard patriot for the Republic. Put simply, this man was once said to be “in love with” the republic (take that as you will, drawfags) and refuses to accept any other system of government as being civilized. Admittedly, he does have the excuse of being born and raised in space Sierra Leone, but he was barely there before becoming a Jedi. Palpatine was probably planning on him doing something stupid from the very start.

For the literature amateurs

• Inspector Javert from Les Misérables. As the author himself explained: the man was built upon two simple and good precepts, namely respect of authority and refusal of rebellion; but he made those look evil in his fanatical exaggeration of them. In a rare occurrence for that kind of character, Javert ends up overcoming (or completely succumbing to, depending on how you view it) the stupid part of the alignment as part of his character arc: When finally faced with a Lawful Good convict, he BLAMs himself rather than capture him (or let him go and live as an imperfect cop). Way to get out of a Paladin dilemma.
  • As Hugo injected a ton of social criticism in his books, public servants putting the law above morals is a recurring theme. Ninety-Three has Cimourdain, a political commissar during the French Revolution, who ends up condemning his own adoptive son to death for freeing a traitor. Much like Javert, he takes his own life during the execution.
• The Starks from Game of Thrones. When Ned Stark finds out that Joffrey and his siblings are incest-born bastards, he does the most asinine thing possible and tells Cersei, instead of going to Robert directly. He also tells his daughters of his plan, which causes Sansa to blab to everybody. His son Robb Stark has even more fuckups, namely executing one of his top generals when he should have kept him around (though said Karstark general undeniably disrespected his authority), failing to communicate with Edmure (though Edmure is incompetent and in basic human decency refused to abandon border towns as bait despite this wrecking war plans), and blatantly breaking his promise to Walder Frey because he felt bad he screwed some other chick and decided to marry her in order to keep their honor intact (though Walder is admittedly a backstabbing opportunist who might have betrayed him anyway, as Robb was undoubtedly losing the war. Also, Walder’s choice to violate one of the most valued rules of honor that even pirates, thieves, and murderers keep simultaneously fucked over his own side by becoming the group that absolutely nobody on any side wants to be associated with. Not even the people he betrays Robb in favor of, which is highly amusing given the sheer Stupid Evil said benefactors display). This kind of shit ends up with the Starks practically destroyed; the survivors being an apprentice pre-teen druid connected to eldritch old god wi-fi attempting to stop the upcoming apocalypse, a little boy accompanied by a barbarian woman in an island famed for cannibalism (said barbarian lady has almost certainly been a regular consumer of long pork herself), a (so-believed) bastard stuck in the oathbound Night's Watch, a traumatized teenager being creeped on by Littlefinger as a replacement for her dead mom, and a budding serial killer assassin who has changed her face so many times at such a young age that she is losing her sense of self and identity before she even reached the ripe old age of 10.
  • An important qualifier is that these decisions aren't entirely motivated by stupid adherence to honour, with personal history heavily motivating the decisions or with the full consequences of the actions not being immediately obvious. Ned Stark in particular had basically no idea that the two shady spy guys he was trusting intended to doom him from the start, Littlefinger out of petty desire for Ned's wife (and to rise to power using the massive war that would kick off) and Varys because he was quietly sabotaging the Baratheon regime in order to raise an alleged surviving Targaryen prince (who is speculated to actually be the last scion of the treacherous Blackfyre brach family of the Targaryens) to the throne (or maybe something else entirely using this plot as a cover, Varys is a spymaster's spymaster). Robb breaking a betrothal to keep the honor of a girl he got pregnant definitely belongs here, however.
• The Nugganite religion, from Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment: the decrees of the Borogravian god Nuggan forbid everything from garlic, chocolate, and the smell of beets, to the color blue and babies. Many Borogravians privately acknowledge that most of Nuggan's Abominations are completely ridiculous (and let the most extreme ones slide, because they're virtually impossible to enforce anyway), even while fretting about which Abominations they're currently committing. Due to the way belief works in Discworld, Nugganites came to believe in nothing but the Abominations themselves, which diverted worship away from Nuggan himself. In the end, it's revealed that Nuggan has rotted away until nothing is left but a disembodied voice babbling Abominations nonstop.

Lawful Stupid doing a "Pro Gamer Move"

• The Sangheili, or Elites, from the Halo franchise. With a ridiculously rigid Bushido-style code of honor that makes the Ultramarines seem like pragmatic chaps, the Elites have often lost battles to humans they could have otherwise won, if they weren't so blindingly "honorable" (ignoring for the minute that they had no problem turning a planet into slag from orbit, but then again, Lawful isn't the same as Good). Full frontal assaults, suicide charges, blindingly following three shady testicle-looking douchebags, and a stupid insistence on fighting "worthy" enemies fairly are all par for the course (granted, they have no problem massacring unarmed civilians or "dishonorable" opponents). There are also numerous examples of otherwise unarmed Elites preferring death over deigning to touch a fully loaded human weapon at their feet. But the most glaring example of their stupidity has to come from the fact that they consider it a dishonor to either get their own blood shed off the battlefield or become involved in a medical practice. This stigma is to such a degree that the Elite Shipmaster who became the Arbiter was secreted away from his keep in the dead of night to visit a doctor (against his will) after he suffered a severe accident during a training session shortly upon his promotion to Shipmaster. Even Klingons aren't that stupid. If an Elite becomes a POW, they have two choices; suicide or breaking out while killing your former captors. If an Elite fails to do either of those things and is "rescued" by other Elites, the POWs are often just executed on the spot for bearing the dishonor of imprisonment. In some cases, this punishment will extend to that Elite's family line. The only reason they even win against the Jiralhanae (Brutes) is because the Brutes are more Stupid Evil than the Sangheili are Lawful Stupid. Well, that, and the fact that they had allied with the Humans by that point and have been inspired to move past some of their ass-backward stances on medicine and weaponry. Of course, not all of them have fully escaped this “bullshito,” and now the humans have the very difficult task of teaching them to wear scarves with pride. They learn to do that, they’ll be invincible.
• When written poorly, the heroes in Star Trek following the Prime Directive turns into this. The rule is that Starfleet isn't to intervene with pre-Warp civilizations in order to prevent their exploitation like European colonizers did to other civilizations. Kirk never followed the Prime Directive at any point since he always felt the pre-Warp civilization was in some kind of danger that warranted violating it. Later shows would give more weight to the Prime Directive by creating situations where it should be followed, and then eventually had characters treat it as a religion that dictated they should never intervene with a pre-Warp civilization under any circumstances, even if it meant preventing their extinction, with the excuse that preventing them from dying out was interfering with their natural development.

Webcomic Stupidity

• Miko Miyazaki from Order of the Stick is another example. She is an overzealous paladin who sees herself as judge, jury, and executioner. The author of the webcomic specifically wrote her to be a parody of 3.5th edition paladins and on seeing if he could make a Lawful Good antagonist. She is disliked by the other members of her order, the Sapphire Guard, and is sent on missions far away so no one has to deal with her. That said, she has some further characterization; her intense behavior has left her a rather lonely person (in one instance, we see her chiding her compatriots for indulgence during a holiday and when they ditch her, we find out she wanted to invite them over to a dinner she made). No reason for her behavior is really given, though she claims she was chosen by the gods. That said, reading between the lines implies her parents were killed in a political manuever and she was raised by monks, presenting a very isolated character who clings to her ideology as way to make sense of tragedy (it doesn't help that a supplement prequel reveals that her mentor was a colossaly arrogant, classist, and war-hungry prick who was a large influence on her being a hardliner. Though she never turned out as bad as he did and she was the one who executed him when he broke the law.) Her most notable action was murdering her own lord for conspiring against the paladins (although said lord had good intentions), which brought upon her fall and the loss of her powers. Ultimately, she loses herself completely to madness and dies unrepentant of her actions.