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View Full Version : [3.5] Can "acts of neutrality" change a Good (or Evil) character to Neutral?



hamishspence
2010-06-23, 07:50 AM
I ask this because I saw it argued that:

"Multiple, persistent, unrepentant acts of neutrality" should change a Good or Evil character's alignment to Neutral.

Is there such a thing as an "act of neutrality" which has such moral weight, that if done repeatedly, it will change non-neutral (morally) characters alignment?

I find the whole concept a bit baffling.

Mostly because (going by FC2) most actions by average characters are Neutral- few are aligned toward Law, Chaos, Good, or Evil.

So most of a Good character's acts will be Neutral- it's the fact that they do some Good as well (along with their Good personality traits) that makes them Good-aligned.

Snake-Aes
2010-06-23, 07:52 AM
I don't think you can just "sum" the deeds. That statement covers a line of thought similar to "If you willingly behave as a neutral character the most, you are neutral". It applies to any alignment.

Shadowleaf
2010-06-23, 07:52 AM
Indifference springs to mind. A good character watching crimes happen, but does not prevent them? It's not Evil, but it's not Good, either.

Mongoose87
2010-06-23, 07:54 AM
What makes a man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

Kish
2010-06-23, 07:54 AM
Indifference springs to mind. A good character watching crimes happen, but does not prevent them? It's not Evil,
Highly, highly debatable.

I agree with hamishspence. Most acts are Neutral acts. Eating dinner is a Neutral act most of the time (not when dinner is alive and screaming at the time). Going to the bathroom is a Neutral act. No number of Neutral acts will make someone change alignment. If you're evil and never do anything good, you'll stay evil.

hamishspence
2010-06-23, 07:56 AM
Indifference springs to mind. A good character watching crimes happen, but does not prevent them? It's not Evil, but it's not Good, either.

That's one way of looking at it.

An Evil character who "watches crimes happen but does not prevent them" shouldn't really change to Neutral if they do that a lot though- which is what's implied by "Neutral acts that can change an Evil character to Neutral".

Erom
2010-06-23, 07:56 AM
I'd say that most neutral actions are of low enough moral weight as to be negligible. Most everyday stuff we do, like brushing our teeth and reading the newspaper, are both neutral and super super minor.

The number of devotedly neutral acts that are actually important enough to count worth a damn are pretty small, actually, so I could see it being possible but extremely rare.

Heliomance
2010-06-23, 07:58 AM
Bringing balance to the Force?

Snake-Aes
2010-06-23, 07:59 AM
Indifference springs to mind. A good character watching crimes happen, but does not prevent them? It's not Evil, but it's not Good, either.

"Indifference" is a little more than that. A neutral character that doesn't put himself at risk to stop something bad from happening is likely to do so. Someone that is perfectly capable of easily stopping a monster from eating <generic npc> and doesn't do so is likely evil(here enters the "complete lack of concern about others").



Regardless...back to the op: If someone willingly acts consistently as one alignment, someone has that alignment.

hamishspence
2010-06-23, 08:01 AM
The number of devotedly neutral acts that are actually important enough to count worth a damn are pretty small, actually, so I could see it being possible but extremely rare.

It's hard to think of ones- resolving disputes between Good and Evil?



Regardless...back to the op: If someone willingly acts consistently as one alignment, someone has that alignment.

When a character does both Good and Neutral acts consistantly- which takes precedence?

Serpentine
2010-06-23, 08:01 AM
I'd say yes, but very very slowly.

Shadowleaf
2010-06-23, 08:02 AM
Possible examples-

persuading Good and Evil beings to resolve their disputes peacefully?
Passing a law that forbids unprovoked attacks by either side on each other?

It's hard to think of ones that make sense.
Neutral does not mean referee between Good and Evil.

And the other is argueably just being Lawful.

Yora
2010-06-23, 08:04 AM
I'd say yes, but very very slowly.
In the same way as "stoping to do evil things"?

When a character does both Good and Neutral acts consistantly- which takes precedence?
This doesn't work. Any act that is neither good nor evil is neutral. Even the most good or evil character will spend the vast majority of their day doing neutral acts.

hamishspence
2010-06-23, 08:04 AM
The Regalia of Neutrality mentioned resolving disputes (not always peacefully) as one of the traits a character in possession of part of the Regalia develops.



This doesn't work. Any act that is neither good nor evil is neutral. Even the most good or evil character will spend the vast majority of their day doing neutral acts.

That was my view- but the claim that was made to me was that Neutral acts have a moral weight all their own- that can move Good or Evil characters away from Good or Evil.

I don't know what they'd call "ordinary neutral acts"- "Unaligned Acts"?

Shadowleaf
2010-06-23, 08:09 AM
The Regalia of Neutrality mentioned resolving disputes (not always peacefully) as one of the traits a character in possession of part of the Regalia develops.
That's.. Odd. I mean, both Good, Evil and Neutral characters resolve disputes - one way or the other.

Though I guess one could argue judges mainly are Lawful, I still hate to see them as the 'bufferzone' between Good and Evil.

hamishspence
2010-06-23, 08:12 AM
The regalia were a bit odd- a crown, scepter, and orb, each of which affected the personality. For one of the items:

Evil- Character can only tell lies while they have it
Good- Character can only tell the truth while they have it
Neutral- Character must reveal all falsehoods, including their own, while they have it.

Fouredged Sword
2010-06-23, 08:17 AM
I think the act of TN that we are looking for is an act of doubt. A good character that doubts his acts of good would slide twards TN. A lawful character that doubts the law would slide twards TN. A chaotic character that doubts the benifits of his freedom would slide twards TN. An evil character that doubts his need for power would slide twards TN.

Doubt is a corrosive thing, and it would take time and serious doubt to change an alignment, but I think that is the first step twards most alignment change. Very few people go from good to evil or evil to good in a day. Most spend some time in the middle figgureing out who they truely are first.

hamishspence
2010-06-23, 08:22 AM
Isn't doubt a big part of some characters?

Just because a character doubts their acts are the right thing- doesn't mean their alignment will slide.

Not all aligned characters are self-confident with no doubt in themselves or their cause. A character could be a do-gooder, but a doubter, all their life.

Yora
2010-06-23, 08:23 AM
But a good character would rather doubt that his good action was maybe not the best way to achieve a good end, than to doubt that doing a good thing was the right choice.
I don't think this system of good and evil acts is workable at all, even though some poorly written lines in several books mention them. I think alignment works only if you take intentions as the defining factor. Did a character help out of compassion or for selfish reasons, or was bringing harm to others his outright intention or the result of misjudging a situation?

hamishspence
2010-06-23, 08:25 AM
The example given at the time, was violence in self-defense being possibly a Neutral, potentially alignment changing act, for both Good and Evil characters:


A paladin's problem in this case would be striking too quickly. A Tyrants problem would be not killing them fast enough.

Totally Guy
2010-06-23, 08:27 AM
There was one time I was playing a cleric who was Chaotic Good and I was about to going to level up soon and have access to the atonement spell which be perfect for out not-so-evil evil party member.

I had been using cards for my spells to remind me of all the magic I could do.

So I made up this massively oversized card with Atonement" on it in big letters.

Just before we levelled up the GM said that he'd not been evil enough so now he'd be neutral... I was really looking forward to pulling out that spell.

hamishspence
2010-06-23, 08:32 AM
I think alignment works only if you take intentions as the defining factor. Did a character help out of compassion or for selfish reasons, or was bringing harm to others his outright intention or the result of misjudging a situation?

BoED seems to go with-

for "Good" actions intention matters a lot (selfish reasons make "Good" acts Neutral)

for at least some "Evil" actions, intention matters not at all

for others, intent and context can make the difference between an act being Evil, and an act being nonevil.

Person_Man
2010-06-23, 08:49 AM
Bringing balance to the Force?

Actually, no. From Wookieepedia (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Balance_of_the_Force):


The idea of balance of the Force, a central tenet of the Jedi Order, refers to the ideal state in which the Force exists in nature, i.e. as the light side. The presence of the dark side corrupts and destroys this natural balance, and the Jedi viewed it as their duty to restore it.

So bringing "balance" to the force was when "Anakin's offspring redeem him and allow him to fulfill the prophecy where he brings balance to the Force by doing away with the Sith and getting rid of evil in the universe." It was clearly a Good act, not a Neutral one.

Lots of fans (myself included) have a hard time believing this, because the word "balance" implies equal parts of Light and Dark existing in harmony and/or symbiosis and/or equilibrium, and in many "cannon" expanded universe novels the Sith continue to exist after Return of the Jedi.

Basically, it was just a really poor choice of words on the part of Lucas that makes little to no sense, and no one called him out on it.

Kish
2010-06-23, 08:53 AM
Strictly speaking, the movies (at least the three original movies--I honestly don't remember whether the prequel movies did or not) never use the term "light side." It's the Force vs. the dark side of the Force.

2xMachina
2010-06-23, 09:03 AM
You breathe too much. That's neutral.

Paladin, you FALL!

Teron
2010-06-23, 09:36 AM
In my opinion, actions don't determine alignment (except when a player's actions don't match what he wrote on his character sheet, and the simplest solution is to change the latter, but that's essentially a retcon, not a realistic occurrence within the game's fiction); alignment determines actions. Some sort of change in the character's outlook has to precede a lasting change in his behaviour. "Acts of neutrality" (more likely, a decrease in good actions) won't make a good character neutral, and to start "performing" them for no reason is bad role-playing; a loss of interest in others' well being (caused by a bad experience, perhaps) will make a good character neutral. The actual "cosmic" change (erasing the G on the character sheet, and its mechanical effects) might wait for confirmation in the form of actions, but the psychological change comes first.

Cogidubnus
2010-06-23, 10:13 AM
Bringing balance to the Force?

No, the Jedi still do good. Balance to the Force is simply because ALL people have Evil in them, so only by removing the ultimate evil can evil be less prevalent than good.

But I would say that preserving SOME balance is definitely Neutral, though possibly more on the Law/Chaos axis than the Good/Evil one. For example, an Urban Ranger/Sniper I made recently loves the city, but grew up in the forest. She wants to see cities develop and grow but without hurting nature, so she's Neutral.

LibraryOgre
2010-06-23, 10:58 AM
I ask this because I saw it argued that:

"Multiple, persistent, unrepentant acts of neutrality" should change a Good or Evil character's alignment to Neutral.

Is there such a thing as an "act of neutrality" which has such moral weight, that if done repeatedly, it will change non-neutral (morally) characters alignment?

I find the whole concept a bit baffling.

Mostly because (going by FC2) most actions by average characters are Neutral- few are aligned toward Law, Chaos, Good, or Evil.

So most of a Good character's acts will be Neutral- it's the fact that they do some Good as well (along with their Good personality traits) that makes them Good-aligned.

I think what will change a person to neutral alignment isn't a preponderance of neutral acts; rather, it is a preponderance of neutral acts when there was another, reasonable, alternative.

Sure, it is "good" to give away your breakfast instead of eating it yourself... until you starve yourself. So it's neutral to eat your own breakfast, and not necessarily reasonable to give it away.

However, if you're a mid-level fighter, and you see a couple guys giving someone a beat-down in an alley, the neutral response is to walk away... but it's quite reasonable for you to intervene, because someone should and you can.

And once again, it comes back to my hero's maxim: We do what we must because we can. If you are capable of doing something about a wrong, and choose to do nothing, that is neutral (sometimes evil, but usually neutral). If you are not really capable of doing something about a wrong (O'chuul on the tower of Azure City, pervasive hunger and poverty), then doing nothing is just what you can do.

Keld Denar
2010-06-23, 11:03 AM
What makes a man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

Prepare to continue the epic struggle between good and neutral!

mucat
2010-06-23, 11:04 AM
I tend to agree that, at least on the Good/Evil axis, there are not a hole hell of a lot of morally significant "acts of neutrality". There are morally insignificant acts -- as people have said, brushing your teeth, reading a book, scratching an itch -- but these don't reveal anything at all about a person's alignment.


The example given at the time, was violence in self-defense being possibly a Neutral, potentially alignment changing act, for both Good and Evil characters:

That's not a neutral act; it's another example of an act without much moral weight, because nearly anyone, good, neutral, or evil, will defend themselves when attacked. If you use more violence than necessary (which will sometimes mean any violence at all, if there was an obvious alternative), then it is an evil act, gaining more and more moral weight as the violence becomes more disproportionate to the situation.

But no matter how many times an evil character is attacked and fights in self-defense, he doesn't become any less evil, unless he also stops doing whatever it was that marked him as evil in the first place.

On the example of a character who actively works to balance good and evil...this might represent an actual, morally significant act of neutrality. But good and evil are not symmetric, and trying to "balance" them often results in an evil character. (As an extreme example, back in Second Edition it was popular to create "neutral" characters whose ideology was to kill evil creatures if Evil was becoming too powerful, and kill good creatures if Good was becoming too powerful. i hope no one today would call such a character anything but an evil sociopath.)

You could have a John Constantine-style character who is actively neutral in some sort of cosmic war between between Celestial and Infernal forces, trying to keep either side from overpowering the other...but in order for the character to be non-evil, their reason for wanting to keep the Celestials in check has to be something other than "they're too Good". For example, if the decisive final battle will inevitably destroy the Material plane, then a neutral or good-aligned mortal might work to make sure neither side is winning. But he's not trying to balance good and evil, he's trying to save his world.

On the law-chaos axis, it seems much more possible to be "actively neutral" and work for balance, opposing both excessive law and excessive chaos. And in this case, a character who was originally Lawful or Chaotic, but starts working for a balance, would become neutral on this axis. (Or more precisely, as Teron points out, their actions would reveal that they had already turned neutral.)

Tiki Snakes
2010-06-23, 11:08 AM
No, you can't really hold neutrality up in the same way as good and evil, it just doesn't work. Just another part of the alignment system that's best ignored.



As for balancing the force;
Did you ever notice how anyone who 'falls to the dark side' starts acting in a very similar way, largely reguardless of their original personality, whereas the light side jedi act in much more diverse ways?

Light and Dark, as abstract concepts, are neither innately good nor innately evil. Likewise, Anger, though sort of a 'negative emotion' isn't always a bad thing.
It almost seems to me like the problem with the Force, the inbalance, is that there is something wrong with the dark side of the force. Almost as if it had become self-aware, or perhaps a powerful sith had fused with it in such a way as to exert some measure of influence on a cosmic scale.

That would put the task of 'balancing the force' as being to remove the defect from the dark side in some way, allowing the two sides to regain a more peaceful equalibrium. (Which would tie in with the expanded universe's whole Luke-falls-then-redeems-self thing.) I kind of like the concept that it isn't the dark side of the force that's the problem as much as something has 'damaged' it.

Though, to be quite honest this is a good example of the problem I increasingly have with the EU. It just pays no attention to bits like this, and so much of it seems to directly contradict the whole 'balance being brought to the force' thing.

If you take the EU as cannon, the only thing you can really assume is that the prophesy of balance being brought to the force wasn't true, and that the majority of what happens in the films is actually not that important after all. :smallannoyed:

jseah
2010-06-23, 11:11 AM
Many small neutral acts can eventually make Evil characters neutral again. It just takes time.

DarkLord McLich became a lich in his youngster days, through a ritual of horrifying evil and sacrifice. He destroyed kingdoms, raised unholy armies and burned orphanages, the whole evil shtick. He's about as evil as any mortal can get.

Then a cabal of mages strike him down, crush his army and defeat him. He runs away to his private demiplane and decides to wait them out.

Unfortunately for him, he's still waiting, sort of. Said cabal is still watching his plane twenty thousand years later, unable to assault it but ready for him in case he ever emerges again. They're not really paying him much attention anymore, since he's apparently too frightened to come out as long as they still exist, all of them have normal happy lives and aren't really too bothered about having to cast a divination every month or so.
By now, his private demiplane has it's own plant life and he has magically caused the evolution of most of the larger animals. Armies are useless on this plane where he is god, so he doesn't have one. And in this incredibly long time, he gotten lazy, preferring to spend his days smoking his pipe, enjoying a nice meal (after a spell let him taste, smell and feel again) and reading the latest literature by scrying on the local printing houses on the Prime Material.
Even if the cabal crumbled, it is uncertain whether he would come out to wreck havoc again. He's simply gotten a bit... too rusty.

He's not Good, but he might fail to qualify as Evil now.

2xMachina
2010-06-23, 11:28 AM
He's not paying to read! That's stealing! :smallwink:

Set
2010-06-23, 11:31 AM
I don't see anything as an 'act of neutrality.' Either you are doing good, or you are doing evil, or you are doing things of no moral significance.

The Gygaxian notion of Mordenkainen actively screwing around with good or evil nations to maintain some sort of balance was, IMO, whacky. Switzerland wasn't neutral because they sided with the Allies until Germany was beaten back and then switched sides to support Germany against the Allies in 1943. It was neutral because it didn't pick a side, not because it capriciously sided with whoever was losing to maintain some nonsensical 'balance between good and evil.'

The only way a good or evil character could 'turn neutral' is if they stop being good (lose their empathy for others, abandon their charitable mission, walk on by and ignore people in need, etc.) or stop being evil (no longer valuing money or property over life or dignity, no longer kicking puppies, no longer talking in the theatre, etc.), or if they cast too many spells with the wrong descriptor and 'fall' out of goodness or accidentally turn good. (For those that use spell alignment descriptors, anyway.)

And Anakin totally brought balance to the Force. There were fifty or so good Jedi, with dozens of kids recruited to learn their ways, at any given time, and, like *two* Sith, in hiding. Once Anakin was done 'bringing balance to the Force,' there where still two Sith (him and Palpy), and two Jedi (Obi-wan and Yoda). Ta da! Balance!

Note to Jedi. You'd won. You can stop worrying about balance when your side is ahead 50 to 2. :)

Qui-gon "Wait, we have to be fair and present equal time to the Sith point of view!"
Mace "No we don't. Because their 'point of view' is insane. Shut up."

jseah
2010-06-23, 11:34 AM
He's not paying to read! That's stealing! :smallwink:
No, that's... browsing. Yes, you can walk into a store to read books without buying them right? This is the same, he just cuts out the middle man. XDXD

Telonius
2010-06-23, 11:58 AM
IMO, you will more often "turn neutral" by acts of omission rather than commission. Deciding that you should neither intervene to save the mugging victim, nor help the muggers, but rather ignore the whole thing altogether, would be Neutral.

It's easier to formulate if you introduce Law and Chaos, since True Neutral is a bit weird anyway. "Good and Evil both seek to take away my freedom, so who cares what either one of them say?" would be the typical attitude of a CN character. "The law is the law, and both Good and Evil must follow it, regardless of the consequences," would be an attitude typical of a LN character.

Choco
2010-06-23, 12:27 PM
Depends on whether or not your DM considers failing to act good as going against the good alignment. If a good aligned character is walking down the street and sees a bunch of common thugs beating up and taking the shirts off the backs of orphans for fun and profit, and does the "neutral" thing by not getting involved, some DM's would definitely knock that character a bit towards neutral (some even towards evil probably). By that logic, enough "neutral" actions can definitely shift your alignment.

Of course that only seems to be an issue for good. If an evil character were in the same situation, inaction would probably not have any effect.

It is in general a lot easier to gain evil points than good points, good as it exists in D&D is something you actually have to work towards, while evil is something you can slip into with just the smallest mistake. Kinda like climbing a mountain, at the top is good and the bottom is evil. You gotta work to get to the top and put effort into advancing and sometimes even into staying where you are, but you can easily trip up and fall quite a distance with just a small mistake. Same goes for trust, takes ages to build, but one small moment to destroy forever.

Curmudgeon
2010-06-23, 12:30 PM
Being indifferent some of the time does nothing to alter your alignment. Being indifferent all the time is your alignment.

An Evil character would have to consciously avoid doing Evil deeds (including when there's no chance of detection) quite a bit to shift to Neutral. A Good character would have to consciously avoid doing Good deeds (including when there's every chance of detection) quite a bit to shift to Neutral.

Ozymandias9
2010-06-23, 12:51 PM
That was my view- but the claim that was made to me was that Neutral acts have a moral weight all their own- that can move Good or Evil characters away from Good or Evil.

I don't know what they'd call "ordinary neutral acts"- "Unaligned Acts"?

That's what I would peg it as. Brushing your teeth isn't neutral, its irrelevant. For an example of a neutral act, the knight in shining armor who leaves the battle to hold off the undead hordes to save the princess he had been courting from kidnappers. It's certainly heroic. But its also neutral.

mucat
2010-06-23, 12:52 PM
Many small neutral acts can eventually make Evil characters neutral again. It just takes time.

*snipped details of DarkLord McLich evolving from evil to neutral.*

I agree with you that at the end of your story, the lich has become neutral. But that's not because of all those small acts of smoking pipes, eating meals and reading books. It's because he no longer commits evil acts, or even feels particularly inclined to do so.

Snake-Aes
2010-06-23, 12:56 PM
The big problem is trying to objectify the alignment. While Good and Evil are clearly defined concepts, they're often in conflict and you can't just put someone's alignment in a spreadsheet.
Darklord McLich's evilness petered out. He no longer felt like doing evil. Does that make him neutral? Depends. The more important question is: when someone displeases him, will he act neutrally or evilly? On the former he's really just bored out of that stuff. Otherwise, he just became lazy.

HenryHankovitch
2010-06-23, 09:34 PM
Active Neutrality (as opposed to something which simply has no concept of morality, like an animal) seems to me a largely inward-looking concept. It would be more based on your motivations, than your actions themselves. So a Good person might shift to Neutral while still doing Good actions, just changing why he does them.

Other than that, ostentatiously Neutral actions...giving up a position of power or wealth for humility? Trying to preserve the natural order of the world. Taking on a laborious or dangerous struggle for knowledge. Scientific discoveries, exploration, or historical chronicles. Creating works of art, perhaps. Or, more negatively, despairing of one's acts/accomplishments. An Evil person who becomes struck by the futility of his greed or ambition might be making a shift to Neutrality.

Certain types of atonement might be Neutral rather than Good. Someone who is trying to atone for their crimes, while accepting that they cannot undo/repay their original misdeeds, might be said to be pursuing Neutrality rather than Good.

jseah
2010-06-23, 11:02 PM
I agree with you that at the end of your story, the lich has become neutral. But that's not because of all those small acts of smoking pipes, eating meals and reading books. It's because he no longer commits evil acts, or even feels particularly inclined to do so.
But what if he turned neutral because he found that all those small things was more pleasing than say, torturing a rat.

He won't even bother to melt the flesh of someone who displeases him anymore (including said cabal of wizards) even when he could easily do it with little effort. Most likely, he'll kick the offending person out of his plane or force the guy to make his homeland speciality dish so he can try something new.
Not quite giving up his nastiness, but just... not really actively evil anymore.

At the end of the twenty thousand year wait, he bears more similarity to the cranky bad-tempered old man going "get off my lawn!"

Susano-wo
2010-06-23, 11:04 PM
I tink its like Congress and Porn: (to use an well tread joke) I don't know how to define it, but I htink I'd know when I saw it

Its hard to formulate, but I think if you are doing enough 'grey' things in the good/evil paradigm when there are good and or evil (or lawful and chaotic) choices available, then yeah, you would slide over to neutral. (of course, then there's the outlook/action issue...which gets things all nice and muddied! >.>)

hamishspence
2010-06-24, 06:22 AM
The actual example that sparked the debate was Gannji's (the lizardfolk) act of "preemptive self-defence" here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0729.html

Does it make the most sense to think of it as an Unaligned act (with no moral weight)

a "Neutral act unacceptable for Good characters" (which will move a Good (or possibly Evil) character slightly toward Neutral)

or an at least mildly Evil act?

Aquillion
2010-06-24, 08:02 AM
Once you start down the neutral path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

More seriously... my feeling is that you can't become neutral through actively 'neutral' actions, that's silly. However, you can become or show neutrality through inaction. Someone who did a lot of evil deeds twenty years ago and nothing particularly noteworthy since is probably now neutral.

You don't have to commit epic acts of neutrality to become neutral. That just doesn't make sense. But it does make sense to me that a good or evil person should have to maintain their alignment to an extent.

hamishspence
2010-06-24, 08:05 AM
A campaign where the Rilmani are running around "tempting others to the Neutral side" or "offering pacts that grant benefits in return for Neutral acts" would be very nonstandard.

It might be fun if you can create a convincing rationale for what counts as "acts of irredeemable neutrality" though :smallamused:


You don't have to commit epic acts of neutrality to become neutral. That just doesn't make sense. But it does make sense to me that a good or evil person should have to maintain their alignment to an extent.

What about evil characters who infiltrate Good organizations, and commit acts that the organizations see as Good, and avoid committing Evil acts (to maintain their cover). Do they slide to Neutrality? Or does their overall Evil goal keep them Evil even though they're not doing Evil acts- for years?

Aquillion
2010-06-24, 08:13 AM
What about evil characters who infiltrate Good organizations, and commit acts that the organizations see as Good, and avoid committing Evil acts (to maintain their cover). Do they slide to Neutrality? Or does their overall Evil goal keep them Evil even though they're not doing Evil acts- for years?He he he. That gets into whether morality in D&D is based on your intentions, your actions, or your basic temperament (which your actions and intentions merely show.)

This is tricky, and many different D&D books have disagreed over it. Most mechanical things support alignment based on your actions or, at best, your intentions, but the SRD clearly says:


A creature’s general moral and personal attitudes are represented by its alignment -- which makes it a description of your temperament.

Part of the confusion stems from the fact that it was, as I recall, originally intended to just represent your temperament, but DMs were encouraged to force people who constantly acted against their alignment to change -- not because their alignments had 'made them evil', but because the player had been playing an evil character all along, and just really ought to have a character sheet that reflects this.

Since from a player's perspective this tends to feel like "you have sinned, and now your alignment is evil", that view tended to suffuse the player-base, and over time came to be reflected in official material. But I don't think it was the original intention -- the original idea was that your alignment just reflected how your character thought, and could therefore only be changed if your character changed the way they thought, not because of any acts you committed.

You could be a good character who committed endless horrible pointless murders and remain good, in theory; but you wouldn't. (Of course, in practice, what happens -- and what the books encouraged -- was that your DM would lean in and say "Are you sure you're playing a good character?" But, originally, that wouldn't represent your character's alignment changing due to your actions, this represents the DM saying "hey, based on how you're playing, you lied about your alignment on your character-sheet, now go correct it.")

hamishspence
2010-06-24, 08:20 AM
A character's temperament can shift- they can go from idealistic to ruthless over time, given much experience of the world.

Or they might lose their temper with an enemy, do something nasty to them, and thus learn that doing nasty things can be surprisingly emotionally satisfying.

It isn't always "evil all along"- characters in fiction can change quite a bit over time.

The splatbooks tend to treat Good and Evil acts differently- Good acts become Neutral if the intention isn't good enough (BoED) but some acts are Evil regardless of how Good the intentions are (BoED, BoVD).

Champions of Ruin emphasised that acts say most- a person who's routinely doing Evil acts, regardless of how Good their intentions are, is an Evil character.

BoED and FC2 also emphasised that "Sometimes good characters become corrupt"- and in the FC2 backstory, Asmodeus was one.

Aquillion
2010-06-24, 08:28 AM
A character's temperament can shift- they can go from idealistic to ruthless over time, given much experience of the world.

Or they might lose their temper with an enemy, do something nasty to them, and thus learn that doing nasty things can be surprisingly emotionally satisfying.
Yes, but what I mean is, the books slowly went from "the way you are acting shows that your alignment is really now XYZ" to "because you are acting this way, your alignment is really now XYZ regardless of how your character feels about it", with the extreme of this reaching the point where an involuntary action (e.g. mind-controlled by a lich) is implied to be able to impact your alignment.

(And some books didn't so much move slowly in that direction as they did leap off a cliff towards it, especially BoED -- understandable, since "your soul has been darkened by sin!" is an evocative image for much good-and-evil epic fantasy. But it wasn't the original intention, I think, because the game's designers originally recognized that it would just lead to endless arguments at the table -- part of the reason 4e ended up doing away with mechanical implications for alignment almost entirely.)

hamishspence
2010-06-24, 09:43 AM
The DMG actually gives examples of both:

"you made a mistake writing NG or your character sheet- as played, you character was really N all along" and

"the character evolves, over time, finally renouncing their evil ways and changing from CE to CN"

The second example was an NPC who had joined the party, though.

Rumpus
2010-06-25, 01:39 AM
There are compass points when a character can choose to undertake a good act or not, an evil act or not, or a good or evil act. It really comes down to how you define "Good" and "Evil".

I define Good as "a willingness to harm yourself or undertaking risk to help others without promise of proportionate reward" (if you are doing it primarily for a reward, it's a mercenary act, which may not be evil but isn't good).

I define Evil as "a willingness to harm (relative) innocents in order to benefit yourself, monetarily or otherwise". This is pretty broad, but seems to cover the bases.

If you don't fall into either of these categories, I'd put you as N on the G/E axis. Neutrality is pretty much an absence of action, or acting to your own benefit without directly harming others.

Plus, you've got the whole issue of what a character THINKS his alignment is may not be his actual alignment. If I decided a character had changed alignments, I wouldn't tell the player directly, but I might have a spiritual advisor NPC comment on it (or have the peasants throw rotten cabbage).

Lycanthromancer
2010-06-25, 01:48 AM
Plus, you've got the whole issue of what a character THINKS his alignment is may not be his actual alignment. If I decided a character had changed alignments, I wouldn't tell the player directly, but I might have a spiritual advisor NPC comment on it (or have the peasants throw rotten cabbage)."Eat sauerkraut you bad-for-nothing goodie-two-shoes! How dare you turn from Evil to Neutral!"

Grifthin
2010-06-25, 01:50 AM
A druid (neutral) - might aid a bunch of adventurers in slaying a goblin tribe that has been causing excessive damage to the enviroment. That same druid might also stop the party from exterminating the goblins, since she doesn't want the nearby humans to have free reign to do what they want with no competition.

mucat
2010-06-25, 01:57 AM
The actual example that sparked the debate was Gannji's (the lizardfolk) act of "preemptive self-defence" here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0729.html

Does it make the most sense to think of it as an Unaligned act (with no moral weight)

a "Neutral act unacceptable for Good characters" (which will move a Good (or possibly Evil) character slightly toward Neutral)

or an at least mildly Evil act?
Gannji's act was evil. Not the most evil thing anyone has ever done, of course, but still, he hurt a guy (and could have ended up killing him or a bystander) who had done nothing but mildly annoy him.

It was a mild enough evil to be the kind of thing an otherwise good character might do on a bad day. But it was not the elusive "neutral act" we're looking for here. I mean, wouldn't you find it absurd to claim that an evil person, if he started enough tavern brawls, would prove himself no longer evil?

(Though it would make atoning a lot more fun! Someone should have told the orcs (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0561.html)!)

hamishspence
2010-06-25, 03:16 AM
I thought so too, but the response was:


Ganjji's actions are perfectly Neutral. There was a legitimate if uncertain threat to his health and well being, and he wasn't willing to risk that uncertainty for the benefit of the person threatening him, so he went for a pre emptive strike.

Maybe it's just me- but I think that's setting the bar on preemptive strikes as a Neutral act, far too low.

Corporate M
2010-06-25, 05:35 AM
I don't think you can "go neutral" in the sense you can commit enough neutral acts, so much as neutral is a compromise between being evil and good.

For example, you take most series, and characters develop. Vegeta from Dragonball Z started out as chaotic evil. During the Cell and Buu Saga, he was more chaotic neutral. Do to his unpredictability and sheer arrogance. Chaotic neutral suggested he was reaching a turning point, but hadn't quite made it there yet. Which is why he let his thirst for a fight and to prove to himself he was strong enough by letting Cell go full form, and letting Majin Buu grant him basically the half-fiend template and blowing up half a stadium of people just to piss off Goku enough to fight him.

More often then not, I'd imagine good, but neutral as they become more cynical, more filled with hatred and malice, and corrupt themselves. Evil as it redeems itself, may never quite be good, but can settle for neutral. The same principles apply to law/chaos, though it may be a bit tougher to knockdown those old habits. (Atleast that's implied in fiction) So in essence, neutral is the path of characters who've gained or loss some perspective. Rather then an absolute alignment that can be bought into the same way the four primary can.


Maybe it's just me- but I think that's setting the bar on preemptive strikes as a Neutral act, far too low.
I'd consider it more of a chaotic act myself. It certainly isn't honorable, and most often isn't legal either. In every since it's controversial, but doesn't imply any good or evil implications without more detail.

hamishspence
2010-06-25, 05:37 AM
Possibly. Still, Good dropping all the way through Neutral to Evil- while still perceiving themselves as Good heroes, seems to be quite a common trope in D&D, and in fiction.

I would agree that in D&D 3.5, Neutral does often seem more like a zone which people pass through, than an alignment philosophy all to itself- the place of fallen heroes, and villains who have renounced their villainy but aren't exactly Good yet.

Roderick_BR
2010-06-25, 05:46 AM
Looks like the issue is not that you are acting neutral, but that you are not acting good/evil. If you stop being a hero/villain, you are just being a normal person. You need to be active in your good/evil-ness.

Also, need to be VERY careful with what a player/DM finds "neutral". A friend of mine once threatened an old guy with his +1 greataxe to his throat to reveal who was taking money to the mercants, and claimed it was "neutral"... Note, the old guy was one of the victims, and didn't want to say anything for fear of the bandits.

Aquillion
2010-06-25, 06:05 AM
Also, need to be VERY careful with what a player/DM finds "neutral". A friend of mine once threatened an old guy with his +1 greataxe to his throat to reveal who was taking money to the mercants, and claimed it was "neutral"... Note, the old guy was one of the victims, and didn't want to say anything for fear of the bandits.It can be, depending on whether his intentions were to follow through with that threat or not. Good doesn't have to be dumb, and you're allowed to lie if it's the best way to handle things available.

It's not nice, but good is different from nice.

hamishspence
2010-06-25, 06:45 AM
There's a fine line between "intimidation" (not necessarily an evil act) and "Intimidating torture"- torture that does no actual damage- corrupt act in FC2.

It may depend what side of the line these kinds of threats come under.

2xMachina
2010-06-25, 06:58 AM
Decapitation =/= torture though.

hamishspence
2010-06-25, 07:02 AM
The threatening part might qualify- depending on how graphic the threats are.

Holding a weapon to someone's throat and going "Talk- or else" may come under "causing someone severe emotional distress"

Hanging someone scared of heights off a high building- and repeatedly faking dropping them, might qualify as "intimidating torture"

Killer Angel
2010-06-25, 07:09 AM
Mostly because (going by FC2) most actions by average characters are Neutral- few are aligned toward Law, Chaos, Good, or Evil.

So most of a Good character's acts will be Neutral- it's the fact that they do some Good as well (along with their Good personality traits) that makes them Good-aligned.

The fact is: most of your actions are neutral.
But when you're presented with the possibility of doing good deeds, you don't, then you're shifting towards neutrality. Neutrality, is not when you do "neutral" acts. It's when you actively choose to don't act in a good (or bad) way.

Lord Vukodlak
2010-06-25, 07:12 AM
To me neutral is the balance between the extremes

A Neutral Good character, doesn't possess enough lawful qualities to be lawful and he doesn't possess enough chaotic qualities to be chaotic.
He believes and law and order to a point and freedom from restriction and law to a point.


My Lawful Neutral wizard Morten goes out adventuring to gather wealth and power so he can build his Shadow Kingdom. [a kingdom built by shadow magic, he actually plans for something bright and cheery]

He won't harm innocent people to achieve his aims, no pillaging towns or slaying metallic dragons. But is perfectly willing to employ evil spells on his enemies such as animate dead.

If it is within his power to save people in danger he'll do it, but he's not willing to throw his life away over it. [unlike say my Chaotic Good fighter Zorr].

Morten is also a believer in necessary sacrifices.
When the party was fighting a ghost that went from cell to cell in this dungeon in order to drain levels to restore his hp after an attack against us.

Morten suggested that the party may have to slay the prisoners before the ghost kills them to use and uses their life force to restore its self with its draining touch. He argued better they die by an arrow then the life drain of an ghost.

hamishspence
2010-06-25, 07:15 AM
Neutrality, is not when you do "neutral" acts. It's when you actively choose to don't act in a good (or bad) way.

Makes more sense for Good characters moving toward neutrality, than Evil ones. An Evil character might frequently have the opportunity to do something evil come up- but if they're living in a society where overt evil deeds are likely to draw adverse attention- they won't take those opportunities very often.

Quite a few Evil characters see themselves as good guys- which means their Evil actions might be limited to certain groups which they hate.

Such as half-elves and humans- in the case of that Faerun Elf Supremacist group.

Or binders and those sheltering them- in the case of Michael Ambrose in Tome of Magic.