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View Full Version : [3.5] How evil does somebody need to be in D&D, to have an evil alignment?



hamishspence
2010-07-21, 06:49 AM
Having read many 3.0/3.5 rulebooks and splatbooks (Heroes of Horror, Eberron, BoED, BoVD, FC2, Champions of Ruin, Champions of Valor, Exemplars of Evil, and so on), the impression I get is, that Evil-aligned characters in D&D are not always particularly "evil". There are tavern bullies, malicious gossips, Well Intentioned Extremists, and so on, among them.

"Humans tend toward no alignment, not even neutral"- implying a fair proportion of humans will be Evil-aligned.

The MM suggests that some beings can be evil entirely be personality (a newborn chromatic dragon, if you take the text under Always X Alignment literally) will be Evil despite never having committed an evil act.

And beings of "usually X alignment" or "often X alignment" can be affected by upbringing- according to the PHB, a human raised by CE orcs is more likely to be CE, and an orc raised by non-CE people is less likely to be CE.

So- can a being with an Evil alignment, be undeserving of death- because their personality, while unpleasant, is not sufficiently bad as to make it OK to "kill them to prevent future evil acts" and their evil acts, while present, are not sufficient to warrant them being killed for having committed them?

I think that (in 3.0/3.5) this is the case- it's not always OK to kill evil people "as punishment and to prevent further evil acts" even if you know they are evil.

And that many Evil people in D&D will be more "jerk" than "villain".

Opinions?

Snake-Aes
2010-07-21, 07:04 AM
An Evil person isn't necessary a sociopath maniac that wants to end the life in the world. Someone that has no liking to others and is willing to harm them if they get away with it is evil.

Also, be careful of your "preemptive murder" thing. Good characters don't just go and kill evil people "because they are evil". Evil people do that.
The current definitions of the alignments makes it clear that you don't have to be good to be a hero, and you don't have to be evil to be a villain. It's perfectly possible to be Evil and be loved by your people and a hero of your country. It's perfectly possible to be Good and hated by everyone around you (damn lad keeps bothering everyone with his silly talk that's bad for business!).

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 07:11 AM
I personally dislike it- but a few people insist

"If someone's evil, they've done something that deserves death, and will keep doing such things. By sparing them while knowing they are evil- you are complicit in their future actions"

BoVD mentions that "killing evil beings in order to prevent them doing further evil" is not an evil act, then "killing evil beings for profit is not evil (but not good" then "such a justification only works for creatures of consummate, irredeemable evil"

Does this apply only to "killing evil beings for profit" or to "killing evil beings in order to prevent them from doing further evil" as well?

And if it only applies to the second example- under what circumstances does "killing evil beings in order to prevent them doing further evil" cease to be "not an evil act"?

I'd say "when the evil being has not done anything that actually warrants being attacked."

Some people say "there's no such being- all beings that have done nothing to warrant being attacked are Neutral or Good"

I disagree.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-21, 07:16 AM
I agree, I disagree with that. Such definition would automatically shove evil into "stupid". That just isn't compatible with stories of powerful villains that are backed by their people.

Boci
2010-07-21, 07:16 AM
I personally dislike it- but a few people insist

"If someone's evil, they've done something that deserves death, and will keep doing such things. By sparing them while knowing they are evil- you are complicit in their future actions"

I think that is partially an outcry against the paladin falling from grace. First time I had a paladin PC, I made being evil in his realm punishable by death just to cut him a break, and gradually intorduced more shades of grey.

Myth
2010-07-21, 07:18 AM
Also, be careful of your "preemptive murder" thing. Good characters don't just go and kill evil people "because they are evil". Evil people do that.I am very much opposed to this notion. I once quit a game because the DM said that my CG Wizard can't Disintegrate the guy who just attacked our party out of nowhere, who is being carried away by his Green Dragon ally because "good characters don't attack fleeing opponents."

Some people seem to think that so long as you are good, you have to follow some shiny Paladin code, and that if you are Evil, you are the "BWAHAHAHAHAHAH I'M SOOOOO EEEEEEBBBBIIIIIIILLLLL" stereotype. NO! That's bad writing and bad roleplaying, imposed by other bad writing and bad movies. These 2D characters that fit some absolute extremes are not realistic and should not be imposed upon the player.

I view myself as a good person IRL. Yet if some staff wielding maniac with bat wings on his back jumps at my pary and mangles one of my party memebers to a pulp, then gets beaten down and retreats, I will have no second thought at ending him right then and there. He attacked first, unprovoked and with intent to kill, removing him is not something a Good character would never consider.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-21, 07:22 AM
I am very much opposed to this notion. I once quit a game because the DM said that my CG Wizard can't Disintegrate the guy who just attacked our party out of nowhere, who is being carried away by his Green Dragon ally because "good characters don't attack fleeing opponents."

Some people seem to think that so long as you are good, you have to follow some shiny Paladin code, and that if you are Evil, you are the "BWAHAHAHAHAHAH I'M SOOOOO EEEEEEBBBBIIIIIIILLLLL" stereotype. NO! That's bad writing and bad roleplaying, imposed by other bad writing and bad movies. These 2D characters that fit some absolute extremes are not realistic and should not be imposed upon the player.

I view myself as a good person IRL. Yet if some staff wielding maniac with bat wings on his back jumps at my pary and mangles one of my party memebers to a pulp, then gets beaten down and retreats, I will have no second thought at ending him right then and there. He attacked first, unprovoked and with intent to kill, removing him is not something a Good character would never consider.
Yeah, that guy did much more than just 'being evil'. I don't see why one wouldn't take him down in combat. It wouldn't be fine for you to, say, torture him for a few weeks, then chop limbs by each possible joint without letting him die, then poking his eyes out with mold cheese, then tearing off his intestines and choking him with it. But combat death is fine. If you want to play more saintly, see to it he is redeemed instead, but that is not usually fun to do unless you really want to play a saint.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 07:26 AM
In this case, it isn't killing someone "because they are evil" but "because they've attacked you moments ago, and while they're fleeing now, they may attack in the future"

Whether they are evil or not doesn't come into it.

Hmm- imagine if the Order had driven Miko off into fleeing when she first attacked them- and shot her as she fled. Perhaps a little iffy?

I agree with:

"Some people seem to think that so long as you are good, you have to follow some shiny Paladin code, and that if you are Evil, you are the "BWAHAHAHAHAHAH I'M SOOOOO EEEEEEBBBBIIIIIIILLLLL" stereotype. NO! That's bad writing and bad roleplaying, imposed by other bad writing and bad movies."

but the point that can be drawn from it, is that it isn't always OK to attack Evil beings, because they won't necessarily be the "Bwahaha" stereotype- some will just be extreme jerks.

Telonius
2010-07-21, 07:39 AM
So- can a being with an Evil alignment, be undeserving of death- because their personality, while unpleasant, is not sufficiently bad as to make it OK to "kill them to prevent future evil acts" and their evil acts, while present, are not sufficient to warrant them being killed for having committed them?


Absolutely. A person who steals from the poorbox is probably evil, but probably doesn't deserve death. The Law/Chaos axis intersects at least a little bit here, but for a punishment to be just, it ought to be proportional.

Regarding fleeing enemies... contrary to what Dark Helmet might think, being Good does not require you to be Dumb. You don't show mercy to something that's proved itself Evil and aggressive just because it's making a tactical retreat. (A helpless or surrendered foe is another matter entirely).

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 07:44 AM
Absolutely. A person who steals from the poorbox is probably evil, but probably doesn't deserve death. The Law/Chaos axis intersects at least a little bit here, but for a punishment to be just, it ought to be proportional.

And sometimes even proportionality can be tricky when punishing someone with A Fate Worse Than Death.

You've captured the Soul Eater- by proportionality, you should cast him into a sphere of annihilation, utterly destroying his soul. But, by BoVD, harming souls is considered evil.

Or for that matter, if an enemy torturer has been captured- should he be tortured for an amount of time equal to the amount he has spent torturing others, or killed swiftly and mercifully?

panaikhan
2010-07-21, 07:54 AM
I once saw an alternative alignment thing, where your alignment was determined by the order of priorities of certain things - self, family, country, etc. etc.
Using that system, some of the alignments were seperated by the smallest of margins.
A Paladin (LG) could have a very similar outlook to a Warlord (LE), but be 'poles apart' from a Beurocrat (LN) or a Healer (NG)

People (PC and NPC alike) should be judged by their actions in the here and now.
How many times are players sent to solve a 'problem', only to find out they are on the wrong side, or have been mislead?

Morph Bark
2010-07-21, 08:38 AM
I personally dislike it- but a few people insist

"If someone's evil, they've done something that deserves death, and will keep doing such things. By sparing them while knowing they are evil- you are complicit in their future actions"

So wait, forgiveness, an inherently Good act, becomes Evil when used on Evil creatures? What? What?

Morty
2010-07-21, 08:43 AM
I definetly subscribe to the school of thought that you do not need to be a heroic altruist to be good and you do not need to be a sociopath to be evil. Which of course means not every Evil person deserves death. And as the OP mentions, the books seem to support that.

Zen Master
2010-07-21, 08:57 AM
I greatly dislike the alignment idea.

To my mind, one interpretation is that if you live 60 years as an adult - doing nothing but dazzling good for 30 years, and nothing but vilest evil for another 30 - you end up true neutral.

By another, you do nothing but dazzling for 30 years - run amok in a bloody red rage because of some great injustice, mistakenly - and turn instantly evil and spend the next 3o years atoning. Possibly to no avail.

Another thing. I'm convinced no one considers themselves evil. No matter their actual morality, only the mentally disturbed would ever think of themselves as evil. Everyone else would justify their actions somehow.

Um ... but to answer the question. Not very, in my book. If you're a greedy money lender, asking heavy interest, you're already on the edge. If you drive a merchant into debt (hiring thugs to burn his caravans, for instance), so you can loan him money at exorbitant rates - all for the purpose of driving him from house and home for a profit, then you're definitely evil.

You know ... even if you simply pretend to be his friend, and recommend a caravan route where you know bandits are likely to attack. Still evil.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 09:10 AM
About this Evil:

Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.
. . .
"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
The operative language has been bolded. This is about the minimum Evil you need to be under the Objective Alignment System. For a little extra detail, consider the Neutral description:

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.
"Killing Innocents" seems to be the Bright Line between Good & Evil. Note also that this is the willingness to kill Innocents - even a greedy banker that charges usurous rates of interest is not going to be Evil unless he would be willing to kill an Innocent debtor. The hypothetical "rob you by interest rates!" banker may very well be Evil if he "simply [has] no compassion for others" but that would imply he literally does not care whether any particular stranger lives or die - even if he would be doing the killing himself.

At the very least, any discussion of alignment must square with this most basic description of the Nine Alignments System. I never liked the 3.5 Alignment Splats becasue they show a poor understanding of this basic concept - at least as it is cited by some people :smalltongue:

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 09:24 AM
The operative language has been bolded. This is about the minimum Evil you need to be under the Objective Alignment System.

It doesn't actually say that this is the "minimum standard"- and, as mentioned, there is much support for the notion that an Evil character can have compunctions against killing.

It lists two typical types of Evil- but there's nothing excluding other types.


even a greedy banker that charges usurous rates of interest is not going to be Evil unless he would be willing to kill an Innocent debtor.

Again- there isn't anything in the PHB explicitly stating this.

If the person is willing to strip the debtor of their assets, and has absolutely no concern over whether the debtor will starve to death- they might be Evil- even if they would never consider personally killing the debtor, or hiring someone to do so.


I never liked the 3.5 Alignment Splats becasue they show a poor understanding of this basic concept - at least as it is cited by some people :smalltongue:

I got the impression that the alignment splats- and campaign sourcebooks- got alignment just right, and it's the "All evil people will murder if they believe they can do so without getting caught" idea that is a bit of a stretch.

There are many ways to harm people other than by killing them- and it's this willingness to do harm, for profit or pleasure, that's potentially the sign of an evil alignment. This harm does not have to be lethal.

Shademan
2010-07-21, 09:28 AM
Debasing innocent life
if the banker takes all your assets etc isnt that debasing our innoccent life?
and stealing from poor people=evil, stealing the same ammount but from rich people=chaotic ?

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 09:33 AM
Stealing's one of those things the gaming system has tended to flip-flop over.

BoVD says "Any child can tell you that stealing is wrong" but doesn't say how wrong.

FC2 lists "stealing from the needy" as a Corrupt Act, but doesn't say anything about other kinds of stealing.

And Complete Scoundrel lists Robin Hood and Captain Mal Reynolds (Firefly) as CG, and Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Carribean) as CN, but doesn't say anything about how Good in general you need to be, for your thieving to not affect your Good alignment.

DMG lists a character who started out as Good, but because they A: steal (but not from comrades) and B: seem uninterested in helping others, the DM says "Original alignment was in error- correct alignment is Neutral"

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 09:49 AM
It doesn't actually say that this is the "minimum standard"- and, as mentioned, there is much support for the notion that an Evil character will have compunctions against killing.
I would like to see this evidence. Particularly since the compunctions here are specifically because someone is Innocent - not because the killer might get caught or his personal code forbids it.

Also: please look at this in context


Good characters and creatures protect innocent life.

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others.

Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.
This is a simple logic problem.

IF
(1) Good characters protect Innocent life
(2) Evil characters destroy Innocent life
(3) Neutral characters neither "make sacrifices to protect" nor kill without compunction Innocent life

THEN?
A Neutral character sits between Good and Evil. If he were willing to make sacrifices to protect Innocent he would be Good. Therefore if he were willing to kill Innocents without compunction, he would be Evil.
An Objective Morality System can be defined like a mathematical proof - both are tightly bound by the rules of formal logic. Regardless of whether you think this is right or not, the question you asked must be solved within this framework.

I'll not belabor this point further - Lord knows I've made it enough - but this is the only answer that complies with the base text provided and the rules of formal logic. You can no more have a Good character that refuses to protect Innocents as a matter of principle than an Evil one that refuses to kill them.

Telonius
2010-07-21, 09:49 AM
"Killing Innocents" seems to be the Bright Line between Good & Evil. Note also that this is the willingness to kill Innocents - even a greedy banker that charges usurous rates of interest is not going to be Evil unless he would be willing to kill an Innocent debtor. The hypothetical "rob you by interest rates!" banker may very well be Evil if he "simply [has] no compassion for others" but that would imply he literally does not care whether any particular stranger lives or die - even if he would be doing the killing himself.


Not necessarily. Killing is the bright line and most often cited part of the description, but "hurting" and "oppressing" are in there as well. What you seem to be claiming there is that "killing innocents" is a required part of being evil. To take that logic to a silly extreme, if somebody enslaves an entire race, forces them to work, has his pick of their children for sexual perversions, bans free speech, and cheats at cards, as long as he doesn't kill them, he's not Evil...?

IMO, killing innocents is sufficient, but not necessary, for evil.

Morph Bark
2010-07-21, 09:50 AM
Again- there isn't anything in the PHB explicitly stating this.

If the person is willing to strip the debtor of their assets, and has absolutely no concern over whether the debtor will starve to death- they might be Evil- even if they would never consider personally killing the debtor, or hiring someone to do so.

This is what I see as the foundation of Lawful Evil. They have something against killing innocents because keeping them alive and making them indebted to you and force them to do things for you, or ultimate acquire their souls "legally" so to speak, is much more beneficial to them.

Bottomline is: whilst alignment is said to be a ground fundation of the DnD universe and is something objective, there is no hard ground fundation for what each alignment exactly entails.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 09:53 AM
You can no more have a Good character that refuses to protect Innocents as a matter of principle than an Evil one that refuses to kill them.

The description of Lawful Evil does seem to suggest otherwise- Lawful Evil characters might refuse to kill innocents, or a subset of innocents (children) and thus believe they are "better" than most Evil characters.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 09:58 AM
Not necessarily. Killing is the bright line and most often cited part of the description, but "hurting" and "oppressing" are in there as well. What you seem to be claiming there is that "killing innocents" is a required part of being evil. To take that logic to a silly extreme, if somebody enslaves an entire race, forces them to work, has his pick of their children for sexual perversions, bans free speech, and cheats at cards, as long as he doesn't kill them, he's not Evil...?
It's cited because it is the single most absolute statement made on the matter.

Compare:

Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others.
"Debase" and "Destroy" are affirmative statements - Evil debases and destroys as much as a red car is red. "Implies" means that it generally follows that X means Y; "car" may imply sedan, but it can also mean coupe, SUV and even truck - it will never mean airplane.

Now, your latter example comes from an intentionally overstrong statement of the principle by myself. Of course someone who truly debases Innocent life as you describe is Evil - but surely you are not implying that the Hypothetical Villain would have compunctions about killing those Innocents? I use the strong form here because, too often, folks on teh Internet seem to believe that being naughty is enough to be Evil.

A more correct form of the lower bound of Evil is "has no greater compunction about killing Innocents as a class than killing any other individual." This requires a little more analysis than I'm willing to lay out here, but it naturally follows from the logic in my last post.

EDIT: @hamishspence - see this post for a finer description. I would also argue that a "Lawful Evil" person who refuses to kill Innocents is rightfully LN unless he's perfectly willing to otherwise debase and degrade them such that refusing to "kill Innocents" is more of a quirk of his Code than a moral belief.

One might as well argue that a CG character's whose "moral compass" compels him to routinely kill Innocents is still Good :smalltongue:

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 10:45 AM
I would also argue that a "Lawful Evil" person who refuses to kill Innocents is rightfully LN unless he's perfectly willing to otherwise debase and degrade them such that refusing to "kill Innocents" is more of a quirk of his Code than a moral belief.

One might as well argue that a CG character's whose "moral compass" compels him to routinely kill Innocents is still Good :smalltongue:

The PHB explicitly states of its descriptions of alignment, that they are generalizations.

Take Dexter- refuses to kill innocents, never debases or degrades innocents- protects innocents- but, he tortures the guilty, horribly.

LG? Or LE? He does evil acts- but only toward those he believes to be Evil.

The statements are not all exclusive statements. "Good protects innocents" does not require that only good people protect innocents.

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has an evil Red Dragon (Klauth) who occasionally (very occasionally) swoops down to protect the innocent. This does not make him nonevil.

And "Evil people debase or destroy the innocent for fun or profit" does not require that, if you do not debase or destroy the innocent (only the guilty) you cannot be Evil.

Evil acts can be done to the guilty instead of the innocent- and can still corrupt the doer to Evil without them ever losing their compunctions against harming the innocent.

Finally- if you go by Heroes of Horror, there are characters who are "a flexible Neutral" do both Evil and Good deeds, and don't "lack the committment to make sacrifices for others" despite the fact that they are Neutral rather than Good.

A Neutral Dread Necromancer might be of this type.

dps
2010-07-21, 10:51 AM
"Debase" and "Destroy" are affirmative statements - Evil debases and destroys as much as a red car is red. "Implies" means that it generally follows that X means Y; "car" may imply sedan, but it can also mean coupe, SUV and even truck - it will never mean airplane.



"Debase" and "destroy" don't necessarily mean "kill". In fact, "debase" would rarely if ever mean "kill". "Destroy" will often mean "kill", but there are certainly ways to destroy someone's life without killing them.

An extremely sadistic torturer might not ever intentioally kill anyone, because that would end the fun of torturing them.

Lord_Gareth
2010-07-21, 11:13 AM
Honestly, a big part of the problem is that "good" and "evil" are relative terms that WotC chose to base off of certain IRL religions (which I will not be naming). While this is convenient for a greater portion of the populace, it's not exactly the smartest way to go building an alignment system for a polytheistic universe.

Personally, for games I run that still use the alignment system (which isn't all of them), good and evil imply the following:

Good characters are concerned with what they percieve as the legitimate wants and needs of others. They try to do as little harm as possible, avoid (what they percieve of as) unnecessary theft and violence, and attempt to help others meet their own needs and/or desires. Social reformists, bright-eyed rebels, honest police officers and selfless firemen might all be "good". Good is not held up to standards of perfection; Good can make mistakes and still be "Good". The important bit is that good characters at least try to learn from mistakes that harm others, if not remedy them in some fashion.

Neutral characters try to avoid harming others in the pursuit of their goals and generally avoid societal notice. They may or may not live by their own moral code, which could include harming others, but generally try not to be a bother otherwise. A mafia leg-breaker might be neutral, as might a preoccupied library researchers. Neutral characters are defined by a lack of solid committment to any one true "moral" or ethical code.

Evil characters disregard the legitimate wants and needs of others in the pursuit of their goals, even if those goals are ultimately seen as altruisic. Evil characters harm or kill out of convenience, apathy, lack of empathy or obsession. They may or may not follow a moral code, but they typically justify their excesses against such a code. Evil is not necessarily self-aware; an Evil character is not necessarily gloating about how vile and putrid they are. Rather, an evil character usually holds their own worldview and paradigm as superseding that of others, thusly allowing them to self-justify placing their own wants, needs, and obsessions far above and beyond those of others.

Volomon
2010-07-21, 11:29 AM
It's really easy actually, it's defined by three words: hurting, oppressing, and killing.

So any person who hurts another for instance, I push down a kid to make room for myself in the doorway in order to escape a fire. My human character takes advantage of the plight of gnomes in a particular city they are hated, and I rob him. When he comes to get his money I'm standing in a crowd of humans and point out that the no good Gnome is nothing more than a beggar coming up with a story. Gnome ends up getting hanged.

It's really not very hard, anything for the progression of yourself rather than for the community is an evil act or at best neutral.

Good is defined by three acts, altruism (selfless act for others wellbeing), respect for life, concern for the DIGNITY of sentient beings.

So for instance if a rogue keeps pick pocketing random/poor people that is an evil act. However if the rogue pickpocketed rich people or mean/evil people and then in turn gave it to the party/poor people on the street this is a good act. Though still a chaotic act.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 11:43 AM
Take Dexter- refuses to kill innocents, never debases or degrades innocents- protects innocents- but, he tortures the guilty, horribly.

LG? Or LE? He does evil acts- but only toward those he believes to be Evil.
CN actually. Like CG he "acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him" but he lacks the "respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings" that would make him Good.

Provided, of course, that he's not just picky about who he tortures and kills for his own amusement - that's LE at best, and probably closer to NE. I'd have to know more to say definitively.

Ask me a hard one :smallamused:

Your statements regarding Alignment Splats only make me warrier of them. "Flexible" Neutral indeed :smallsigh:

To get around the quibbles, how about we stick with the following definition of the border:

An Evil character must, at a minimum, have no greater compunction about killing Innocents as a class than killing any other individual.
Your dragon likely didn't care about the Innocence of the people it rescured - other factors were predominant. Likewise, he would be fine killing any particular individual regardless of their Innocence.

EDIT - to preempt a potential strawman: even a total pacifist would feel a greater horror at killing a true Innocent than anyone else.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 11:48 AM
To get around the quibbles, how about we stick with the following definition of the border:

Quote:
An Evil character must, at a minimum, have no greater compunction about killing Innocents as a class than killing any other individual.


How about not? Given the number of Evil aligned D&D antiheroes who do have a greater compunction about killing Innocents than killing Other Individuals?

What generally makes the difference between "Evil Villain" and "Evil Antihero" is- compunctions.

Similarly, there are going to be Evil characters who have compunctions about killing anybody- but have no problem hurting, tormenting, oppressing, and trying to corrupt, them.

While not D&D, Mercedes Lackey's Brightly Burning has a good example of such an evil character- a school bully called Tyron who hurts and debases other kids, and coerces them into crime by giving them "Bring me something (very expensive) or else" threats, knowing how they'll have to fulfill them. And, at 17, is old enough by D&D standards to take a PC class. Yet, even his (accidental) killer, says of him and his goons "They didn't deserve to die".

By D&D standards though, I'd call that person Evil-aligned.

Psyx
2010-07-21, 11:54 AM
I personally dislike it- but a few people insist
"If someone's evil, they've done something that deserves death, and will keep doing such things. By sparing them while knowing they are evil- you are complicit in their future actions"


Those people are Neutral. Most certainly not Good.

Someone can be a right bar-steward and still operate within the law. How do they 'deserve death'?

Psyx
2010-07-21, 11:56 AM
"An Evil character must, at a minimum, have no greater compunction about killing Innocents as a class than killing any other individual."


Tosh. The very notion of 'anyone evil deserves to die' is far more homicidal than most evil characters. Just because someone is a criminal, a malicious gossip, a thief, liar, swindler-of-old-ladies or whatever, it doesn't mean that they will kill.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 11:58 AM
Those people are Neutral. Most certainly not Good.

Someone can be a right bar-steward and still operate within the law. How do they 'deserve death'?

That's the tricky question- for some people, including me, these "right gits" qualify as evil- yet might still not be murderous. For others, like Oracle-Hunter:

"Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master." -

is about the minimum evil needed, to have an Evil alignment.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 12:08 PM
How about not? Given the number of Evil aligned D&D antiheroes who do have a greater compunction about killing Innocents than killing Other Individuals?

What generally makes the difference between "Evil Villain" and "Evil Antihero" is- compunctions.
As I have yet to hear an actual example that contradicts my hypothesis, I cannot refute this statement.

Remember: compunctions about killing Innocents due to their Innocent nature; having compunctions about killing redheads, children and so forth do not a Neutral character make!


While not D&D, Mercedes Lackey's Brightly Burning has a good example of such an evil character- a school bully called Tyron who hurts and debases other kids, and coerces them into crime by giving them "Bring me something (very expensive) or else" threats, knowing how they'll have to fulfill them. And, at 17, is old enough by D&D standards to take a PC class. Yet, even his (accidental) killer, says of him and his goons "They didn't deserve to die".

By D&D standards though, I'd call that person Evil-aligned.
The bully certainly sounds Evil. Since I know nothing about his killer I cannot say more about the killer's alignment. Do note that Good characters are supposed to have "respect for life" so a Good killer of an Evil man may still believe that the Evil man did not deserve to die.

I hope my posts have, at least, clarified the matter for other people. Several seem to be on the right track.

EDIT: Hamishspence's post above this one is an accurate description of my position. I prefer my reformulated lower bound for reasons of greater percision, but citing the SRD isn't the worst way of making a point about 3.5 D&D :smalltongue:

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 12:15 PM
The killer in question did so accidentally- their "Gift" (Firestarting) which was just beginning to develop, exploded with considerable force.

Since he was accepted as a Herald (basically a bit like NG paladins) his alignment would probably correspond to Good in D&D terms.

This argument has been had befor in other threads, with people saying:



You cannot be Evil and not have committed acts that would make it a Good action to kill you.

and most of the others pointing out that this is based on an excessively narrow interpretation of the PHB.


Remember: compunctions about killing Innocents due to their Innocent nature; having compunctions about killing redheads, children and so forth do not a Neutral character make!

The main basis of a compunction against killing children is basically "they are innocent", mostly.

Jarlaxle, officially NE in the sourcebook Underdark- has compunctions against harming Catti-brie- because he sees her as an innocent.

zalmatra
2010-07-21, 12:34 PM
if you have the evil alignment there is probably a good reason based upon your past history and deeds you have wrought. of course even this can get shady. a lawful evil dictator may be harsh and even evil but he is the only thing keeping together a corrupt society from falling apart and making war/trouble for the nearby lands.

the alignment system holds because the means he uses to control his people are harsh and involve gruesome means even if he is more noble intentions his means are what make him evil he is not a saint nor is he a complete monster he is what he is.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 12:38 PM
This is pretty much what some of us have been saying- the question is, how noble can a guys intentions get and he still remain evil? If his motive for all he does is "Protect the innocent" but he tortures all transgressors horribly- is he evil, neutral, or good?

As far as I can tell, according to Oracle-Hunter, no evil guy can have as a motive "protect the innocent" and if a person never commits evil acts against the innocent (because of compunctions), no amount of evil acts committed against the "not innocent", from torture, to murder, to soul-destruction, will ever make a character Evil aligned.

For example, Dexter is being called CN despite his evil acts:


CN actually. Like CG he "acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him" but he lacks the "respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings" that would make him Good.

I disagree with this, to say the least.

Oslecamo
2010-07-21, 12:47 PM
That's the tricky question- for some people, including me, these "right gits" qualify as evil- yet might still not be murderous. For others, like Oracle-Hunter:

"Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master." -

is about the minimum evil needed, to have an Evil alignment.

I'm with oracle in this one.

Just stealing for a living or bullying people isn't evil

You need to do something really bad for the forces of the universe to qualify you as evil.

That demands cruel murder of others at the minimum.

A neutral thief steals, intimidates and steals people but still has some limits, somethings he won't do for simple profit, like killing innocents.

An evil thief will do anything for profit. Actually he already has done so.

The thing to remember it's that neutral is quite broad. Even children bully, steal and intimidate each other but that doesn't qualify them as evil. But if a child kills another? Lock her up on an instution. Keep the key safe. It may still be redeemed but keep it away from other children for now.

This way, when a paladin detects someone as evil, it's someone who has already done some very bad stuff and gauntlet to the face is a proper greeting.

Heck, Fiendish codex states that D&D evil societies make their members perform cruel rituals (like sacrifice of slaves to their dark gods) to make sure of their evilness. This assures their souls are evil and will go to one of the hells when they die.

So no, just being nasty and bullying isn't enough to make you evil in D&D. You need to have blood in your hands.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 01:01 PM
That demands cruel murder of others at the minimum.

9 points-worth of corruption is all that's needed for a Lawful character to be "damned to Baator" in FC2- several of the corrupt acts are fairly mild.



Heck, Fiendish codex states that D&D evil societies make their members perform cruel rituals (like sacrifice of slaves to their dark gods) to make sure of their evilness. This assures their souls are evil and will go to one of the hells when they die.

Actually, it simply says in FC2, on page 14:

"Thus, Lawful Evil societies often employ coming of age rituals designed to force their young men and women to commit evil deeds to win full adult status. Young men, for example, are often placed in barracks and encouraged to beat and torment younger boys"

Nothing about "you must sacrifice slaves to their dark gods"


So no, just being nasty and bullying isn't enough to make you evil in D&D. You need to have blood in your hands.

And on page 250 of Eberron Campaign Setting:

"In a world where characters have access to magic such as detect evil, it's important to keep in mind that evil people are not always killers, criminals, or demon worshippers. They may be selfish and cruel, always putting their interests above those of others, but they don't necessarily deserve to be attacked by adventurers"

This can apply even outside Eberron.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 01:03 PM
For example, Dexter is being called CN despite his evil acts
You're asking about the Nine Alignments System, and that's how I'm judging him. He is certainly not Good, but you'll note that Neutral has a very broad scope - this is a feature of the system. Regardless of one's personal feelings about the actions in Dexter (a show I have not watched) they are not Evil according to D&D.

Of course, a Good character would still want to stop Dexter - as you've noted, being an anti-hero doesn't require you to be Evil.

Furthermore, I'm not talking about "motives" here - I'm talking about Alignment:

A creature’s general moral and personal attitudes are represented by its alignment.
Someone can think they are protecting Innocents by killing them - or even declare certain individuals "innocent" - but that doesn't make it so. This is an objective, not subjective, morality system. This is why I always capitalize Innocent in the Alignment context. Like Evil and Good, these are terms of art (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/term_of_art) and therefore have specially defined meanings. Annoyingly, the Nine Alignment System does not define Innocence but it's meaning must be rooted in some objective standard rather than the personal opinions of individuals.

So no, a Well Intentioned Extemeist isn't going to be not-Evil just because he wants to "protect the innocent." If he's willing to kill Innocents regardless of their Innocent status, he's Evil.

To frame it more concretely: an individual must kill one of two people. They are identical in every way save that one is an undisputed Innocent and the other is not. If the killer decides to kill the Innocent because of - or despite of - his Innocent status, he is Evil. If he kills the not-Innocent one because of the Innocent status of the other, he is not-Evil.

If he kills neither than you're fighting the hypo which is designed to better illustrate my point :smalltongue:

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 01:05 PM
I was thinking more the book than the series.


He is certainly not Good, but you'll note that Neutral has a very broad scope - this is a feature of the system. Regardless of one's personal feelings about the actions in Dexter (a show I have not watched) they are not Evil according to D&D.

BoED, FC2- Torture is an evil act regardless of how much the victim "deserves it"

D&D does not have an "Any act done to the "not innocent", no matter how horrible, is not evil" rule. In facts, several books explicitly state the opposite.


To frame it more concretely: an individual must kill one of two people. They are identical in every way save that one is an undisputed Innocent and the other is not. If the killer decides to kill the Innocent because of - or despite of - his Innocent status, he is Evil. If he kills the not-Innocent one because of the Innocent status of the other, he is not-Evil.

This seems a bit contrived.

Oslecamo
2010-07-21, 01:09 PM
9 points-worth of corruption is all that's needed for a Lawful character to be "damned to Baator" in FC2- several of the corrupt acts are fairly mild.

Actually, it simply says in FC2, on page 14:

"Thus, Lawful Evil societies often employ coming of age rituals designed to force their young men and women to commit evil deeds to win full adult status. Young men, for example, are often placed in barracks and encouraged to beat and torment younger boys"

Nothing about "you must sacrifice slaves to their dark gods"

Meh I could swear it said that.

It still demands you to be a complete bastard tough.



And on page 250 of Eberron Campaign Setting:

"In a world where characters have access to magic such as detect evil, it's important to keep in mind that evil people are not always killers, criminals, or demon worshippers. They may be selfish and cruel, always putting their interests above those of others, but they don't necessarily deserve to be attacked by adventurers"

This can apply even outside Eberron.

No it can't because Eberron is much more relaxed to alignment. Scratch that, it doesn't actualy care about alignment in any sense of the word. Even Good Eberron gods will grant spells to baby-eating murderers and good people can be friends with the forces of darkness to get their powers whitout any limitation. It's simply ridiculous on my opinion.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 01:10 PM
This seems a bit contrived.
See case #3 :smalltongue:

For more information on the subject: hypotheticals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheticals).

This particular application is common to the Socratic Method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method) of education. As an experiment - can you take this hypothetical situation and explain why it is not true according to the Nine Alignment System? Could you call the killer of the Innocent not-Evil? Is this choice somehow irrelevant in regard to the Nine Alignment System? Why? And what is your support?

EDIT: I hesitated about ascribing Alignment to acts, but I did it anyways so I deserve it I guess.
Acts, of course, do not have Alignments. Certain actions, however, would not be done by a particular Alignment; others would be done exclusively by a particular Alignment. In an oversimplification, these acts are usually called "Good" or "Evil" acts by WotC, particularly in regard to the Paladin.

Torture is emphatically a Not-Good act because it violates the "respect life" and "the dignity of sentient life" planks of the definition. However, it is not always an Evil act - any more than killing someone is always an Evil act even though it violates the "respect life" plank.

Even if an Alignment Splatbook says otherwise, this just tells me more about how little WotC understood the Nine Alignments System developed by TSR than it does about the definitions that serve as the foundation for the System.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 01:12 PM
No it can't because Eberron is much more relaxed to alignment. Scratch that, it doesn't actualy care about alignment in any sense of the word. Even Good Eberron gods will grant spells to baby-eating murderers and good people can be friends with the forces of darkness to get their powers whitout any limitation. It's simply ridiculous on my opinion.

The gods will continue to grant spells to characters who change alignment- but paladins will still Fall for evil acts, or lose their powers for changing alignment.

It doesn't relax "what counts as evil" or "how evil to you have to be too have an evil alignment"- but what it does change, is monster alignments- many "Always X alignment" monsters are "Usually X" in Eberron.

If you don't know what a fictional character will do in a hypothetical situation (because you're not the author) you judge them by their personality, and their acts to date.

In BoVD (and FC2) Evil acts aren't judged by "the nature of the victim" but by intent, context, and the act itself. A victim can be "non-innocent" and still an act against them be evil- such as the destruction of their soul.

Yukitsu
2010-07-21, 01:15 PM
Way it should be:

"I don't really care, just don't stomp on any orphans and I'll just put you at neutral or something."

How a lot of people view it:

"OMG YOU KILLED THAT POOR DEFENSELESS GOBLIN YOU'RE AN EVIL MONSTER 1!1"

It's a game. If the guy wants to be evil, and is basically a nice guy, just let him say he's evil. If they want to be good, just so long as they aren't doing anything obviously and only evil, just let them.

valadil
2010-07-21, 01:17 PM
My standard for evil doesn't take much. Mostly it's just a matter of being self centered. A character can be evil without ever committing a crime in their life. A character can be evil and exist perfectly well in society. He may not have a moral problem with robbing everyone and murdering infants who look at him wrong, but he knows that the town guards will butcher him if he acts on those ideas. So he conducts himself in a manner than keeps society from shanking him. In my book, there's a lot of well behaved evil out there.

I should also point out that I differentiate between evil and Evil. For that matter I use capital and lower case letters for all alignment characteristics. Lowercase is passive; upper is active. Some people go with the flow, but others actively pursue their goals. Someone who is Evil with a capital E is someone so infamous that he probably can be killed on sight. I'm of the opinion that PCs can be evil in a party but not Evil.

-- addendum --

I like this system because it adds quite a bit of depth to alignment, with minimal fuss and notation. A paladin is LG while his churchgoing buddy is lG or even lg. It's pretty straightforward.

The other notation I've been using internally but not pushing at the PCs is to indicate dynamic characters. I like the idea of a character who is on the slipper slope to evil. They get a slash. LN\LE indicates that they're working their way between alignments. I suppose you could also do LE/LN if they were working their way out of evil, but few of my players do so this has never come up. What I've used instead though is an arrow to indicate someone's goals or even what they think their alignment is. So LN->LG would be someone who wants to behave in a better fashion, but hasn't succeeded at it yet. These notations are both a little uglier and a little shakier than lower/uppercase, but I like them all the same.

Foryn Gilnith
2010-07-21, 01:20 PM
Could you call the killer of the Innocent not-Evil?
Given the hypothetical, I simply can't wrap my head around the concept that one and only one of them is Innocent; contrived or not, I feel like having one Innocent and one identical-in-every-single-way-yet-not-Innocent is paradoxical. Either you preserve the exacting similarity, in which case both are Innocent; or you preserve the Innocent v. non-Innocent difference, in which case the non-Innocent would have to be markedly different.

SITB
2010-07-21, 01:28 PM
... This is an objective, not subjective, morality system...

This is my beef with the aligment system.

Warning rant inside spoiler:

In 'Real Life' good and evil are subjective terms. Different people have their own opinions on what constitutes a moral or immoral act.

Saying that D&D does have an objective morality system makes no sense as it was created by falliable humans (Specifcally; WOTC or TSR or what have you) defined by them(ditto) and interpreted by them (People debating D&D aligment); saying "But in D&D-verse aligment is objective the SRD said so" ignores the fact that each person has is own opinion on what acts are moral and thus each person has his own standard on how people should act and what act is more vile than the other.

TL;DR : It's up to the individual DM to decide "How evil does somebody need to be in D&D, to have an evil alignment", since players usually have diffrent opnions on what constitutes evil acts at best the group will have an agreed upon standard.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 01:32 PM
Torture is emphatically a Not-Good act because it violates the "respect life" and "the dignity of sentient life" planks of the definition. However, it is not always an Evil act - any more than killing someone is always an Evil act even though it violates the "respect life" plank.

So- a paladin ruler who sentences evildoers to be tortured to death in the hopes of deterring crime and thus protecting the innocent, would not Fall?

If an act is "not an evil act" then it can't be expected to make a paladin fall unless it would be a gross violation of the code (which doesn't mention torture).

If an act is "inappropriate for characters of Good alignment"- (torture, in both BoED, and much older editions, like Eric Holmes Basic D&D) then it seems logical that it would be Evil- and thus Fall-worthy.

One could say that "Not-Good acts that are inappropriate for Good characters are Neutral acts" as was discussed in this thread:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=157367

but it seems excessive. "Torture is not something a Good character can repeatedly do and stay Good, but not an evil act either" seems like a very weird way of doing acts.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 01:41 PM
Given the hypothetical, I simply can't wrap my head around the concept that one and only one of them is Innocent; contrived or not, I feel like having one Innocent and one identical-in-every-single-way-yet-not-Innocent is paradoxical. Either you preserve the exacting similarity, in which case both are Innocent; or you preserve the Innocent v. non-Innocent difference, in which case the non-Innocent would have to be markedly different.
This is essentially fighting the hypothetical by other means.

I could say "these twins are identical save that one has a tattoo and one does not" and indicate that a not-Evil man would have qualms with killing a man with a tattoo but that only raises new objections.

The point of the hypothetical is to meditate on the hypothetical that one's feelings on the killing of Innocents is the essential quality that differentiates the Evil from the Neutral. It does not matter if an Evil man chooses his victims because of their hairstyle or astrological sign - even if he declares such individuals to be innocent - but so long as his decision to kill an Innocent hinges on them having that quality or is made irrespective of that quality, they are Evil.

The Socratic question is: can you make a case that the killer who chooses the Innocent is not-Evil? If not, then my hypothesis that this quality is both necessary and sufficient is correct. If you can, can you provide an argument that cites relevant authority? Or at the very least does not contradict relevant authority?

EDIT: @Hamishspence - as I said, it is an awkward and oversimplified usage. Torturing a single enemy prisoner for valuable intelligence not otherwise available is unlikely to cause a Paladin to fall via the "evil act" clause, but it may tend the Paladin towards losing his LG Alignment (by becoming LN). Torturing an Innocent for no reason would likely trigger the "evil act" clause in the sense that only Evil people would torture innocents. For these reasons you seldom see Paladins torture people, even though the action should not be enough to make them Fall immediately.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 01:45 PM
It does not matter if an Evil man chooses his victims because of their hairstyle or astrological sign - even if he declares such individuals to be innocent - but so long as his decision to kill an Innocent hinges on them having that quality or is made irrespective of that quality, they are Evil.

How about Ozymandias in Watchmen? His decision to destroy a large number of people, was made irrespective of whether any were Innocent or not- but his motive was "prevent a larger number of deaths in the future".

So he didn't know if any were innocent or not- but given the sheer number, he would have been expected to realize that some were- and he did not care.

If Innocent is defined as "free from sin, guilt, or immorality" (dictionary definition) it's possible that only the very young will be Innocent by this standard. But a person doesn't have to be completely Innocent for it to be wrong to kill them.

Frozen_Feet
2010-07-21, 01:46 PM
My thougths:

1) There's such thing as "banality of evil". Not all evil deeds are, or need to be, grandiose. Small everyday pettiness and jerkishness can accumulate to Evil very easily.

2) Evil is as much absence of Good as it is deliribate maliciousness. Just indulging in alcoholism and beating one's wife is enough to ping as evil to a paladin, if a person does no good deeds to redeem himself.

4) Neutral alignment is absence of both good and evil - a kind of moral thoughtlesness accompanied with following one's base instincts. Neutrality lacks intent for, and does not think in terms of, good and evil.

3) There are different magnitudes of good and evil, but alignment still isn't a zero sum game. Every good deed has a reward and each evil has a punishment. One murder might not drop a Paladin from good to evil, but they'd surely fall or suffer some other karmic punishment.

As such, someone trying to be "true neutral" by juggling deeds of extreme good and evil would never, in my view, be neutral. Instead, they'd juggle between different good and evil alignments, depending on the magnitude of their actions - and regardless what they would be in the end of the day, their afterlife would include both rewards and punishments. For an extreme example, a redeemed mass murderer might ping as Lawful Good to magic in their last years, but he'd still spend a lifetime in Hell before finding his way to Heaven.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 01:48 PM
How about Ozymandias? His decision to destroy a large number of people, was made irrespective of whether any were Innocent or not- but his motive was "prevent a larger number of deaths in the future".

So he didn't know if any were innocent or not- but given the sheer number, he would have been expected to realize that some were- and he did not care.
He was Evil.

See the (newly named) "OH Least Evil Hypothesis" for confirmation :smallamused:

EDIT: Also, the whole concept of Alignment Shifts is that displaying a different value system that your stated one results in a change in your official Alignment. Might as well say "Abandoning Innocents isn't an Evil act, but you can't keep doing it and expect to stay Good." Or are you arguing that people who don't make sacrifices to protect Innocents are Evil? :smallconfused:

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 01:52 PM
and regardless what they would be in the end of the day, their afterlife would include both rewards and punishments. For an extreme example, a redeemed mass murderer might ping as Lawful Good to magic in their last years, but he'd still spend a lifetime in Hell before finding his way to Heaven.

This might be an improvement on the current system.

The closest thing to it is in FC2- it has an:

"if your corruption is 9 or higher, and you are truly repentant- you become a Hellbred rather than going straight to Hell- and you have a chance to avoid Hell if you do enough good in your second life" concept.

This may apply even if the character was Lawful Good (but Corruption 9) when they died.


Might as well say "Abandoning Innocents isn't an Evil act, but you can't keep doing it and expect to stay Good." Or are you arguing that people who don't make sacrifices to protect Innocents are Evil? :smallconfused:

Depends on if the innocents they were abandoning, were ones they already took responsibility for. You can commit Evil acts and not turn evil (not right away) but do enough of them, and you become evil.

Abandoning innocents you'd been given the responsibility of protecting, may fall into this.

A parent who abandons their newborn child, knowing they are likely to die, is committing an Evil act- because they bear responsibility.

If you aren't directly responsible for them- may depend on the DM.

Coidzor
2010-07-21, 02:07 PM
An Evil person isn't necessary a sociopath maniac that wants to end the life in the world. Someone that has no liking to others and is willing to harm them if they get away with it is evil.

*raises hand* Um, teacher, you're pretty much just describing a particular flavor of psychopath right there.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 02:08 PM
Depends on if the innocents they were abandoning, were ones they already took responsibility for. You can commit Evil acts and not turn evil (not right away) but do enough of them, and you become evil.

Abandoning innocents you'd been given the responsibility of protecting, may fall into this.

A parent who abandons their newborn child, knowing they are likely to die, is committing an Evil act- because they bear responsibility.

If you aren't directly responsible for them- may depend on the DM.

How does that square with this statement? :smallconfused:


"Torture is not something a Good character can repeatedly do and stay Good, but not an evil act either" seems like a very weird way of doing acts.
Personally, I see no reason to apply to not apply one analysis to the other - but then again, I think both analysis miss the larger point. I am more interested in hearing your explanation for why these two perspectives are internally consistent.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 02:22 PM
Depends on if you believe the claim "by failing to torture people for info, you are abandoning innocents" or not. I'm a little skeptical of this claim.

On "Choosing the innocent life over the non-innocent one, because it's innocent- can never be an morally reprehensible act" here is a possible counterexample:

A heavily pregnant woman, known to the doctor to be a petty thief (so not Innocent), alternatively, simply presumed to be Not Innocent thanks to being an adult in modern society- is in the hospital. She is having massive complications. In this particular situation, there is no chance of saving both the mother and the baby- one will die in the process.

The Doctor proceeds to operate, saving the baby but killing the mother in the process. His sole deciding factor for choosing which to do was- the baby is innocent and the mother is not.

Proof that the doctor is "not evil"? Or possibly a highly dubious act, that might even be an Evil act in D&D terms?

Conversely- Granny Weatherwax was in a very similar situation- and she didn't let "the baby is innocent" sway her, but decided that her responsibility to the mother required that she save the mother. An Evil act- because the Innocent nature of the child was irrelevant to her decision? Or not?

zalmatra
2010-07-21, 02:26 PM
the alignment system isn't a strait jacket but a guideline for how a char perceives himself and the world around him perceives him and how the gods view you.

We are arguing about applesauce packaging at this point because the end result is a bunch of hypothetical scenarios that each one of us can concoct with a bunch of what ifs attached to it with no end in sight.

The discussion is a snake eating its own tail.

Bharg
2010-07-21, 02:29 PM
"Would you willfully, active or passively risk the live of someone else if it was to your advantage?" I wonder if this question alone is enough to determine if someone is evil or not since a main traits of evil are egoism and a disrespect for live.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 02:37 PM
For some people, being willing to "kill for your own advantage" is Neutral rather than Evil- if the situation is one where the advantage is life- and failure to kill will lead to death.

Like if you and someone else are the last people on a sinking ship, you can't swim well, and there's only one lifejacket left, which the other person has, and has just put on.

Is killing them, to get the life-saving resource, an Evil act?

Would a Neutral person do it?

If a Neutral person did it, would they move all the way to Evil, or just a little way?

I'd say it probably is an Evil act, though maybe not an alignment-changing one- but I'm not fond of the "survival justifies anything" view. Some people are.

Coidzor
2010-07-21, 02:42 PM
Conversely- Granny Weatherwax was in a very similar situation- and she didn't let "the baby is innocent" sway her, but decided that her responsibility to the mother required that she save the mother. An Evil act- because the Innocent nature of the child was irrelevant to her decision? Or not?

Eh, it's worse for a child to grow up having killed its mother than it is for a woman to have to try again. Basic medical ethics is that you save the life of the parent over that of the child if you have to choose.

Bharg
2010-07-21, 02:45 PM
@hamishspence: I wasn't refering to an extreme situation.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 02:45 PM
Basic medical ethics is that you save the life of the parent over that of the child if you have to choose.

True- but the "if the choice is between the death of an innocent, and the death of a non-innocent" argument- a Good person must choose the non-innocent to die would suggest otherwise.

So, it runs counter to basic medical ethics- at least in this situation.

So maybe the argument itself, which is basically that the needs of innocents, justify violating the rights of non-innocents, is flawed?

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 02:49 PM
@hamishspence: I wasn't refering to an extreme situation.

It's a good place to start though. Does survival justify killing others in a situation that isn't self-defense?

If not, then killing others for reasons less important than self-defence, isn't justified either.

It might not be the individual's survival they're killing for, but the survival of someone they love- murdering someone and feeding them to their child to keep them alive, or stealing and transplanting a vital organ.

I'd say if it isn't justified to do it for yourself, it isn't justified to do it for a loved one.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 02:57 PM
Depends on if you believe the claim "by failing to torture people for info, you are abandoning innocents" or not. I'm a little skeptical of this claim.
You missed the point.

The statement in each is "X is not something a Good character can repeatedly do and stay Good, but not an evil act either."

X1 = "torture"
X2 = "abandoning innocents"

For X1, you say "[this] seems like a very weird way of doing acts."
For X2, you say, in essence, "it depends on the context of X2"

So which is it? Are both Tortue and Abandoning Innocents Evil Acts or not? And why draw the distinction the way you do?


A heavily pregnant woman, known to the doctor to be a petty thief (so not Innocent), alternatively, simply presumed to be Not Innocent thanks to being an adult in modern society- is in the hospital. She is having massive complications. In this particular situation, there is no chance of saving both the mother and the baby- one will die in the process.

The Doctor proceeds to operate, saving the baby but killing the mother in the process. His sole deciding factor for choosing which to do was- the baby is innocent and the mother is not.

Proof that the doctor is "not evil"? Or possibly a highly dubious act, that might even be an Evil act in D&D terms?
You phrase the hypo without resolving it. He's not Evil under the OH Least Evil Hypothesis - can you draw the opposite conclusion? And what's your support?

The Granny Weatherwax example is not identical. Here she had to make a difficult moral decision between Apples and Oranges - the baby and the mother are not identical entitites. Good, let alone Not-Evil, is not just an Innocent Protecting Alignment; you can be Good while failing to protect some Innocents. This is why I phrased the Twins Hypo as I did; while I have not read the book, I imagine there are auxiliary details that weighed on her decisions. Perhaps they even spoke to D&D Good ideals - I can't say. But in the Twins Hypo, there is literallly no other information that could sway the killer one way or another - he must decide solely on the basis of Innocence.

Now, if Granny Weatherwax killed the baby because the baby was Innocent, then she is Evil - killing Innocents is the definition of Evil. Surely you wouldn't argue that point :smalltongue:

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 02:59 PM
You missed the point.

The statement in each is "X is not something a Good character can repeatedly do and stay Good, but not an evil act either."

X1 = "torture"
X2 = "abandoning innocents"

For X1, you say "[this] seems like a very weird way of doing acts."
For X2, you say, in essence, "it depends on the context of X2"

So which is it? Are both Tortue and Abandoning Innocents Evil Acts or not? And why draw the distinction the way you do?

Mostly because BoED calls "refusing to help innocents" inappropriate for Good, but doesn't call it evil. And PHB suggests that Neutral characters generally don't risk themselves for those not part of their in-group.

Whereas torture is explicitly called out as Evil in BoED and FC2.


Here she had to make a difficult moral decision between Apples and Oranges - the baby and the mother are not identical entitites.

Two people, one of whom is Innocent, the other not, can't ever be identical entities anyway- logically.



Now, if Granny Weatherwax killed the baby because the baby was Innocent, then she is Evil - killing Innocents is the definition of Evil. Surely you wouldn't argue that point :smalltongue:

The original statement said:


If the killer decides to kill the Innocent because of - or despite of - his Innocent status, he is Evil.

and


If he kills the not-Innocent one because of the Innocent status of the other, he is not-Evil.

As mentioned- it is not necessarily proven, that killing the mother because the child is innocent and the mother is not, is proof of non-evilness.

Bharg
2010-07-21, 03:02 PM
True- but the "if the choice is between the death of an innocent, and the death of a non-innocent" argument- a Good person must choose the non-innocent to die would suggest otherwise.

So, it runs counter to basic medical ethics- at least in this situation.

So maybe the argument itself, which is basically that the needs of innocents, justify violating the rights of non-innocents, is flawed?

There is no such thing as right or wrong in this kind of situation. There are only guidelines, no must or must not, and you cannot jump from right to good and wrong to evil. Maybe all lose/lose sitations like in the Baby murder village are neutral in the end. How do you evaluate something like innocence anyway?


It's a good place to start though. Does survival justify killing others in a situation that isn't self-defense?

If not, then killing others for reasons less important than self-defence, isn't justified either.

It might not be the individual's survival they're killing for, but the survival of someone they love- murdering someone and feeding them to their child to keep them alive, or stealing and transplanting a vital organ.

I'd say if it isn't justified to do it for yourself, it isn't justified to do it for a loved one.

Survival in an extreme situation justifies everything. :smallwink:

"Would you willfully, active or passively risk the live of someone else if it was to your advantage (outside of an extreme situation)?"

Better?

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 03:08 PM
"Would you willfully, active or passively risk the live of someone else if it was to your advantage (outside of an extreme situation)?"

Better?


Tricky- would that mean a racing driver who drives a bit roughly, bumping others a little, to win, thus "risking the lives of others to their advantage" (the prize) would be Evil rather than Neutral.

How much of a risk does it take?

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 03:13 PM
Two people, one of whom is Innocent, the other not, can't ever be identical entities anyway- logically.
Identical in all ways save for that one quantity.

I've reached my three "fighting the hypo" limit, I'm afraid. Ah well, I hope others get the point :smallsigh:

The same is true for your quotation of mine - that, again, was in reference to The Twins, not any generic pair of dissimilar individuals where one is Innocent and the other is not.

EDIT: Also further proof that BoED is silly. If Torture is Always Evil then why isn't Killing? Or Mind-Rape for that matter? These conclusions do not flow from any of the stated definitions of Alignment, but are stated via fiat.

Ironically, WotC is perfectly willing to un-fiat traditional Alignment designations (Mind Rape, Poison, Undead) when it would be "cool" just so long as it can add in new ones of its own :smallannoyed:

Bharg
2010-07-21, 03:19 PM
Tricky- would that mean a racing driver who drives a bit roughly, bumping others a little, to win, thus "risking the lives of others to their advantage" (the prize) would be Evil rather than Neutral.

How much of a risk does it take?
Let's say he bumps someone to often, he is really taking risks, and kills someone. He still answers the question with a "Yes" - meaning he will always answer the question with a yes. Then, yes, I would consider him rather Evil.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 03:19 PM
Maybe if you put "The innocent and the non-innocent" into other moral dilemmas.

If an Innocent person is dying of heart failure, is it "non-evil" to kill his non-Innocent twin and harvest his heart to save the Innocent?

If an Innocent person is stuck on a train track- is it "non-evil" to push his non-Innocent twin in front of the train to save the Innocent?

Suddenly Innocence doesn't seem like that important a property- when it's being used as a justification for violating the rights of others.



EDIT: Also further proof that BoED is silly. If Torture is Always Evil then why isn't Killing? Or Mind-Rape for that matter? These conclusions do not flow from any of the stated definitions of Alignment, but are stated via fiat.

Could be a legacy of older editions. Or, WoTC disliked the thought of Good characters torturing bad guys as punishment (or for info).


Let's say he bumps someone to often, he is really taking risks, and kills someone. He still answers the question with a "Yes" - meaning he will always answer the question with a yes. Then, yes, I would consider him rather Evil.

And if he responds with "Only if the advantage is very big and the risk very small"?

Bharg
2010-07-21, 03:32 PM
Maybe if you put "The innocent and the non-innocent" into other moral dilemmas.

If an Innocent person is dying of heart failure, is it "non-evil" to kill his non-Innocent twin and harvest his heart to save the Innocent?

If an Innocent person is stuck on a train track- is it "non-evil" to push his non-Innocent twin in front of the train to save the Innocent?

Suddenly Innocence doesn't seem like that important a property- when it's being used as a justification for violating the rights of others.

How will that work out? :smallbiggrin:

I think innocence is not important at all. Just look at what is considered innocent. Virginity and ignorance? Great!


And if he responds with "Only if the advantage is very big and the risk very small"?
The question only allows a yes or a no as an answer. It doesn't matter how big the risk is or how big the advantage is, what matters is that he willfully risks someone's life.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 03:34 PM
Maybe if you put "The innocent and the non-innocent" into other moral dilemmas.

If an Innocent person is dying of heart failure, is it "non-evil" to kill his non-Innocent twin and harvest his heart to save the Innocent?

If an Innocent person is stuck on a train track- is it "non-evil" to push his non-Innocent twin in front of the train to save the Innocent?

Suddenly Innocence doesn't seem like that important a property- when it's being used as a justification for violating the rights of others.
Perhaps from a Real-World morality perspective, but you've cleverly illustrated what it means to be Neutral.

Surely none of these are Good acts, but can you say they are Evil? While a Neutral Man wouldn't do any of these to save a stranger, surely doing so to save a good friend would be keeping within his Alignment?

I can easily see a Neutral guy jumping a known criminal to harvest a heart to save his dear Mama - but I can't see him jumping an Innocent man. Likewise, if he had to choose between pushing an Innocent and a non-Innocent in front of a truck to save his mother, he'd choose the non-Innocent.

And if any of these actions are Evil, I would like to see some sort of support to confirm your statement.

EDIT: The fact that Innocence is not definined under the Nine Alignment Systems is problematic - as I've said before. But of the definitions available, I prefer "blameless" to some of the more archaic ones. Why? Because it jives well with the sort of "knights in shinning armor" deal we have going here - a Paladin isn't going to care particularly about the chastity of a woman before rescuing her, but he might be concerned about whether or not she has been unjustly imprisoned.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 03:38 PM
The question only allows a yes or a no as an answer. It doesn't matter how big the risk is or how big the advantage is, what matters is that he willfully risks someone's life.

Which raises the question of all the many ways in which, by acting, you are risking the lives of others in a very small way. Such as by driving- there's always a chance someone will get lung disease from the emissions of your car. And so on.

Not everything can be reduced to a yes-no question.

On "will good guys ever torture?" Easydamus (a compilation of alignment past and present" seemed to suggest that they won't as a general rule (and so, that doing so would be a sign of moving away from goodness):

http://easydamus.com/alignment.html

"Will not torture for information or pleasure" was present for all 3 Good alignments. Though Chaotic Good added after it "But will rough enemies up for info, but not torture them"



I can easily see a Neutral guy jumping a known criminal to harvest a heart to save his dear Mama - but I can't see him jumping an Innocent man. Likewise, if he had to choose between pushing an Innocent and a non-Innocent in front of a truck to save his mother, he'd choose the non-Innocent.

And if any of these actions are Evil, I would like to see some sort of support to confirm your statement.

BoVD's "murder is one of the most evil acts a being can commit"
FC2's "murder is a 5 point corrupt act

Killing someone for their heart, would still be murder, even if it would save a life.

A neutral guy might do it- simply because Neutral characters are much more willing to do Evil acts, when the situation is a little desperate.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 03:40 PM
"Will not torture for information or pleasure" was present for all 3 Good alignments. Though Chaotic Good added after it "But will rough enemies up for info, but not torture them"
Which is just plain amusing :smallbiggrin:

"Will not use violence to extract information. Unless CG, in which case they will be use some violence to extract information. But not too much."

Where does he get that caveat? As far as I can tell L/C says nothing about how much you're willing to hurt a guy - or even what it means to "torture" :smalltongue:

EDIT: Funny question - how many hearts would a Neutral guy need to harvest to become Evil? Under my definition, it would have to become a "fun or profit" deal first; if he needed to kill 100 criminals to get 100 hearts for his 100 dear family members, I don't think you can call that Evil. I'm interested to hear Hamishspense's limit.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 03:43 PM
Probably follows real world principles on the general definition of torture. In which a certain amount of discomfort is considered acceptable, but "excruciating pain" isn't.

Of course, some people do have a tendency to redefine how bad it has to be, to be called "torture".

Bharg
2010-07-21, 03:44 PM
There are no cars in D&D. *smart*

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 03:45 PM
There are no cars in D&D. *smart*
Except in Eberron.

I'm sorry, magic cars :smalltongue:

Bharg
2010-07-21, 03:45 PM
Magic cars with magic emissions? :smallconfused:

Dr.Epic
2010-07-21, 03:46 PM
It's difficult to measure these things. I've always believe selfishness is evil and the ability to be kind to other is good. I guess just look at how often the character does things for themselves v. how often they do things for other people.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 03:46 PM
Magic cars with magic emissions? :smallconfused:
Sure, why not?

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 03:50 PM
EDIT: Funny question - how many hearts would a Neutral guy need to harvest to become Evil? Under my definition, it would have to become a "fun or profit" deal first; if he needed to kill 100 criminals to get 100 hearts for his 100 dear family members, I don't think you can call that Evil. I'm interested to hear Hamishspense's limit.

There isn't much in the books, but Champions of Ruin does suggest that "While neutral and even Good characters can be "driven to evil acts" from time to time, the repeated, deliberate use of many of these is the mark of an Evil character."

One "murder to save" might not make a Neutral guy evil, but several is a good sign that his alignment is changing.

Using FC2, if an otherwise blameless Lawful guy commits two murders, he's damned to Baator until he atones. It's possible that (for really serious acts like murder) two instances might be a good sign of alignment change.

Bharg
2010-07-21, 03:50 PM
If those magic emissions aren't more likely to cause lung desease than our non-magic emissions, then I think you are not risking the lives of other just by driving your magic car.

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 03:54 PM
There's probably others.

Cutting corners on the buildings your customers are going to live in- for profit, the landlord is taking a small but real risk to the lives of his tenants.

A person who, regularly and deliberately, harms people on a small scale for "fun or profit" could be deemed Evil aligned- even if they'd never contemplate murdering anyone (they're squeamish and hate violence of any kind).

"Harming others for fun and profit (even if only on a small scale)" makes a good baseline for one common type of Evil character.

"Committing serious evil (by BoED, FC2, BoVD) acts regularly (even if only ever against the evil)" could be another type, the Vigilante Man, a bit like Dexter or the Punisher.

Champions of Ruin lists a lot of "paths to evil alignment".

hamishspence
2010-07-21, 04:09 PM
"How evil do you have to be to qualify as Evil in 3.5 ed D&D?" might vary a bit depending on the DM, but there is a 3rd party source that categorizes the different levels which I mentioned in a much earlier thread:


Routinely evil things may not be especially evil.

Fiendish codex 2: robbing the needy, betraying your comrades for personal gain, perverting justice for personal gain, all are evil, but many wouldn't be death penalty crimes.

Heroes of Horror, and Eberron Campaign setting, are also pretty clear on this.

In the 3rd party book Quintessenial Paladin 2, there were 3 tiers:

Low-Grade Evil Everywhere
Roughly 1/3 of the human population are evil. This is not something the paladin can defeat. Using diplomacy or intimidate to steer "grasping landlord" toward Good might be appropiate, but stronger action is not warranted.

Evil As A Choice
Anyone who detects as Evil is probably a criminal, a terrible and wilful sinner, or both. Still, the paladin is not obligated to take action- in this campaign, detecting someone as Evil is a warning, not a call to arms. The paladin should probably investigate this Evil person and see if he poses a threat to the common folk, but he cannot automatically assume that this particular Evil person deserves to be dealt with immediately.

Evil As A Supernatural Taint
Merely human evil would not be detected. A murderer who kills randomly would be evil on the human scale, but the paladin's senses operate on the divine level.
However, if this murderer was killing as part of a sacrificial ritual to summon a demon, then his evil would be supernatural in nature and therefor detectable by the paladin. This is a morally black-and-white setup- anyone who is Evil should be investigated or even attacked immediately.

Given that in PHB "Humans tend toward no alignment, not even Neutral", and in BoED being evil is not enough to justify action, most D&D games should by this principle, be somewhere around Evil Everywhere.

Fiendish Codex 2 suggests "most people are only weakly aligned", closer to Evil As A Choice. Still not very severe.

So- Oracle-Hunter seems to be arguing that it's slightly worse than "Evil As A Choice"- and that all evil people are exceptionally dangerous and it's Ok to attack them first, so they can't do any more evil.

Whereas I think standard D&D is closer to Low Grade Evil Everywhere- with around 1/3 of the human population being Evil.

ScionoftheVoid
2010-07-21, 05:40 PM
Whereas I think standard D&D is closer to Low Grade Evil Everywhere- with around 1/3 of the human population being Evil.

I completely agree with you. Small but repeated Evil acts, like theft from those who do not have anything to spare (just using that example so that people are less likely to disagree, I think that theft is probably still slightly Evil even if it is from those who can afford the loss), will cause alignment change, and Falling for Paladins, just as surely as more serious actions. It would take longer, but the person would still end up Evil.

On the difference between "Torture" and "Refuses to help innocents" as regards being non-Good and being Evil:

Refusing to help innocents will not make a Paladin fall because it is not an Evil act. However it is not appropriate for a Good alignment, and if done often will cause the character to become Neutral (at best). Since it is not an Evil act, it alone cannot make a character Evil.

Torture is an Evil act. A Paladin using torture will Fall, and the action causes alignment change. Unlike refusing to help innocents a character can become Evil just through the action of torture if repeated enough, though they will briefly pass through Neutral first of course.

One can only make a character non-Good, the other can eventually make them Evil. YMMV, but I just thought I'd take a shot at clearing that up from earlier in the thread.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-21, 09:29 PM
So- Oracle-Hunter seems to be arguing that it's slightly worse than "Evil As A Choice"- and that all evil people are exceptionally dangerous and it's Ok to attack them first, so they can't do any more evil.
Eh, Evil people are only as dangerous as regular people. The only difference is that they're more likely to kill you rather than merely let you die :smalltongue:

Of course, Good doesn't run around killing people (even Evil ones) because it both respects life and the dignity of sentient beings.

Minor Rant
I like how you're making me sound like a crazy villain here. I don't recall ever saying that "evil people are exceptionally dangerous" or "it's OK to attack them first" mainly because we've been discussing what separates the Neutral from the Evil. I do remember citing primary sources and using formal logic to prove my points though :smalltongue:

I'm not particularly interested in playing the Straw Man here, if it's all the same for you. Your texts from the third party sourcebooks work OK as a way of sub-diving Evil - but it says nothing about the question framed in the OP.

hamishspence
2010-07-22, 03:28 AM
Of course, Good doesn't run around killing people (even Evil ones) because it both respects life and the dignity of sentient beings.


My apologies for attributing an opinion which you do not hold.

Every time I've seen arguments over "is it OK to kill evil beings on sight" there have been people citing precisely the same lines in the PHB "Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others" and "Evil debases or destroys the innocent, for fun or profit" to argue that all evil beings are either murderers or would-be murderers, all evil beings have destroyed the innocent, and therefore, that respect for life demands that you kill anyone you discover is evil, and that failure to do so shows lack of respect for life.





Originally Posted by hamishspence
Even in AD&D- this wasn't the case. If you cast Know Alignment on someone, and it pings Evil- can you immediately kill them?


I take it your question is unfinished, and the remainder is "without it having a negative effect on a Good (or Neutral for that matter) alignment?"
The answer to that is: Yes. From everything I have seen, however unofficial it may be, that was the RAI of the creator of the alignment system.



Smiting evil never leads to falls. It can lead to jail or captial punishment as you just killed someone in town, but never a fall.



It is proof. An Evil alignment means the person has committed acts that allows someone to kill them as a Good action if he does so in order to protect innocents or respect life. Any other interpretation ignores the definition of Evil in the Player's Handbook.

The fact that they have the Evil alignment simply means that they qualify automatically. It is not the Evil alignment in and of itself which warrants slaying, but the acts that it must logically mean the creature has committed.



There's probably numerous others.

Bharg
2010-07-22, 04:16 AM
"Would you willfully, active or passively, take a realistic risk for the live of someone else if it was to your advantage (outside of an extreme situation)?"

Cutting corners on the buildings your customers are going to live in- for profit, the landlord is taking a small but real risk to the lives of his tenants. -> Evil

hamishspence
2010-07-22, 04:22 AM
True- but also, a very "normal" type of evil.

If the legal standards for his hometown actually allow him to build his buildings to minimum safety levels, and higher safety levels are not mandatory, then such a landlord might actually have never broken the law, and his actions never having resulted in anyone come to harm (yet). Yet (on a small scale) he still places profit above lives.

A paladin who met such a landlord, detected him as evil, and then did the research, might find out that the landlord has never committed a crime, and no-one has ever actually died as a result of the landlord's action.

So, he doesn't really have "just cause" to kill the evil landlord- not even if he tries the "I'm protecting everybody else from him" claim.

That's if you consider such a landlord as qualifying for evil-alignment- some people might not.

Hmm- what if his customers are fully aware that he values profit above their safety- and have accepted it as the price for cheap housing? "Consenting to being exploited" so to speak?

panaikhan
2010-07-22, 07:56 AM
re-joining this quite late on:
People not considering themselves Evil - Some do. The 'agent' in the film Serenity states that he is doing acts for the "greater good of humanity" and "to build a perfect world", but fully realizes (and readily admits) that the acts he commits are evil.

On the original question - the DM's and players I have gamed with rarely (if ever) track actions against alignment, unless a specific situation comes up to which it is important. The two-letter (or three-letter, if you play the 3-ring alignment square) code is enough.
I've never been in a situation, either as DM or player, where a Paladin's "Detect Evil" has been directly responsible for a combat. Sure, it has contributed, or possibly been a deciding factor, but never the instigator.

As with most of the moral / social "arguments" in D&D, it is down to the individuals in a gaming group to decide - there is no sure and tried solution written in stone, neither should there be. Our own real world does not have a unified moral theory, so why should the world of our imagination?

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-22, 09:11 AM
My apologies for attributing an opinion which you do not hold.

Every time I've seen arguments over "is it OK to kill evil beings on sight" there have been people citing precisely the same lines in the PHB "Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others" and "Evil debases or destroys the innocent, for fun or profit" to argue that all evil beings are either murderers or would-be murderers, all evil beings have destroyed the innocent, and therefore, that respect for life demands that you kill anyone you discover is evil, and that failure to do so shows lack of respect for life.
Ha, amusingly I agree with some principles. But examine:

(1) Evil debases and destroys the Innocent, for fun or for profit
(2) THEREFORE, Evil creatures are a danger to Innocents
(3) Good protects the Innocent but Good also shows "respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings."
(4) THEREFORE Good creatures guard against Evil creatures but do not take lives unless it is necessary

People always forget that you can deal with Evil without killing them. And nobody can plausibly argue that you are showing a respect for life when you are preemptively killing people who have - as far as you've known - done nothing wrong.

Also: you don't need to have done Evil to be Evil; Alignment predates action, but Alignment changes are only "visible" to DMs through PC action. In the same way that you don't need to have actually protected an Innocent to be Good, you don't need to have actually killed an Innocent to be Evil.

Doesn't make Good any less admirable or Evil any less desipicable though.

hamishspence
2010-07-22, 09:38 AM
Alignment predates action, but Alignment changes are only "visible" to DMs through PC action.

Does that mean that the universe suffers from "lag" in that when a Good person resolves to do something truly alignment-changing, their "real" alignment has already changed- but the "universe" still treats them as Good- until they start "doing" the Exceptionally Evil Act?

PHB 2nd ed's example was burning down a plague village (though I've seen a lot of people disagree with that one).

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-22, 10:03 AM
Does that mean that the universe suffers from "lag" in that when a Good person resolves to do something truly alignment-changing, their "real" alignment has already changed- but the "universe" still treats them as Good- until they start "doing" the Exceptionally Evil Act?

PHB 2nd ed's example was burning down a plague village (though I've seen a lot of people disagree with that one).
Well, not for NPCs and - ideally - not for PCs but we're dealing with a game run by people instead of by an omniscient moral force.

In a proper game, Players would declare their own Alignment shifts when they've decided to change. However, this seldom happens so it's up to the DM (the referee for the game) to keep track of these things.

The reason the "exceptionally Evil act" is frequently cited is that it is an easily recognizable signal and DMs shouldn't be telling Players how to RP their characters. Personally, my players don't have trouble understanding or RPing their Alignments so I don't run into these sorts of problems very often - and the few times they come up I usually let it ride with an oral notice to the player in question.

hamishspence
2010-07-22, 10:08 AM
Maybe that's what the Phylactery of Faithfulness does- it's the only item in the game that can "see through" the lag, identifying the character's true alignment in that moment.

So- you decide to do the act- contemplating it, but before acting, you activate the item. It warns you what will (would have?) happen/happened, and you change your mind, thus evading the consequences of the momentary change of your true alignment.

Bharg
2010-07-22, 10:16 AM
The Phylactery of Faithfulness sounds like cheating to me. I think a Paladin would have to make a great mistake to fall anyway.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-22, 10:18 AM
Maybe that's what the Phylactery of Faithfulness does- it's the only item in the game that can "see through" the lag, identifying the character's true alignment in that moment.

So- you decide to do the act- contemplating it, but before acting, you activate the item. It warns you what will (would have?) happen/happened, and you change your mind, thus evading the consequences of the momentary change of your true alignment.
Eh, those sort of magic fixes always stuck me as very lame.

For most people, changing your Alignment isn't personally problematic. Yes, it should be hard to do and it'll result in changes in your daily life but you're not going to lose the benefits of your Fighter levels because you became Lawful. For those whom it is important, either the God is testing you (and you need to make your own decisions) or He's going to send you some signs to warn you away from your descent. For the Player, it's all character development no matter how you slice it.

Having a trinket to act as a literal moral compass just seems... stupid.

hamishspence
2010-07-23, 11:52 AM
Never Hurt An Innocent is a trope all to itself:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverHurtAnInnocent

Are all villains who, for some reason, have this built into their "code" non-evil aligned by D&D standards?

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-23, 12:01 PM
Never Hurt An Innocent is a trope all to itself:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverHurtAnInnocent

Are all villains who, for some reason, have this built into their "code" non-evil aligned by D&D standards?
Yes.

This is also why such Villains typically stand outside the Moral Event Horizon - killing Innocents is universally regarded as Evil. In D&D, it is also hard-coded into the Evil ethos.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-23, 12:05 PM
Yes.

This is also why such Villains typically stand outside the Moral Event Horizon - killing Innocents is universally regarded as Evil. In D&D, it is also hard-coded into the Evil ethos.

Killing is not the only way to be evil. What about slavery? What if the landlord demands enough taxes his people are starving? what about the doomy ritual of doomful damnation whose casting causes every living being in a few kilometers to writhe in pain for days?

hamishspence
2010-07-23, 12:13 PM
As previously mentioned, it isn't necessarily hard-coded into the Lawful Evil ethos.

There's also the Heroic Sociopath of the most sociopathic kind, who horribly tortures and/or murders anyone he deems "a bad guy" but leaves "the innocent" alone.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-23, 12:13 PM
As previously mentioned, it isn't necessarily hard-coded into the Lawful Evil ethos.

There's also the Heroic Sociopath of the most sociopathic kind, who horribly tortures and/or murders anyone he deems "a bad guy" but leaves "the innocent" alone.

There's that too. The good guys don't Torture and Disfigure their targets.

Darcy
2010-07-23, 12:15 PM
And that's the hurting, debasing and oppressing part. I would say no, someone who has the "never kill an innocent" thing going on isn't necessarily non-evil right away, because by the definition given by the PHB, killing innocents is not that only way evil will manifest.

The other side of it is, often they have a skewed perspective on what makes someone an innocent. Evil is prone to overreaction.

hamishspence
2010-07-23, 12:19 PM
Supposedly, anyone who's like this is "Neutral at worst" precisely because they have "compunctions against harming the innocent"

This is why I think the SRD alignment system should be treated as generalizations, not absolute facts. Yes, neutral people have compunctions against harming the innocent. But does this mean that anyone with these compunctions, cannot be any worse than Neutral?

Not to mention that it says "hurting, oppressing and killing others" not "hurting, oppressing, and killing the innocent"

(Yes, heroes do carry out a lot of hurting and killing, but that doesn't mean that, if its always against the "non-innocent" it will never corrupt the hero)

One could say "Only if the innocent are the victims, does the character actually become evil"- but, the SRD actually doesn't explicitly state this.

So, a person who indulges massively in hurting and oppressing (and maybe debasing as well) those they have good reasons to deem "not innocent"- then, even by the SRD, a case can be made for evil alignment.

The guards of prisoners caught committing serious crimes, maybe?

In Forgotten Realms, the town of Luskan has "Prisoner's Carnival" where criminals are tortured to death horribly for the entertainment of the crowd.

The way I see it, a common "path to evil" is when people start dehumanising others "criminals" "the not innocent" "the evil" allowing them to commit atrocities against those people.

"He Who Fights Monsters" may be a form of this.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-23, 01:02 PM
As previously mentioned, it isn't necessarily hard-coded into the Lawful Evil ethos.

There's also the Heroic Sociopath of the most sociopathic kind, who horribly tortures and/or murders anyone he deems "a bad guy" but leaves "the innocent" alone.
Again, we're not talking about "the innocent" but rather "the Innocent" - a term of art which is used to describe individuals that the Good protect, the Neutral have qualms about killing, and the Evil debase and destroy.

Slavery is a classic case of "debasing" but please refer to the OH Least Evil Hypothesis as to why a "slave only" is still Evil.

And once again, a "lawful evil" bad guy who refuses to kill (or debase to a similar extent) The Innocent is not Evil, but Neutral. If he'd still kill Innocents that he does not personally consider "innocent" then he is Lawful Evil.

hamishspence
2010-07-23, 01:40 PM
Again, we're not talking about "the innocent" but rather "the Innocent" - a term of art which is used to describe individuals that the Good protect, the Neutral have qualms about killing, and the Evil debase and destroy.

And how do we know the game designers see it this way?

It's clear from the whole concept of "acts which are evil regardless of the nature of the victim" and "repeatedly committing evil acts leads to evil alignment" that for at least some of the writers, a characters attitude to "The Innocent" does not guarantee their alignment.

and is there any way of identifying what they mean by, "the Innocent"- that is, if they did intend that the key feature of character alignment, is a characters attitude to this mysterious, undefined group?

Not to mention, that it can end up being circular:

"Who are the Evil? Anyone willing to debase or destroy the Innocent"
"Who are the Innocent? Anyone the Evil are willing to debase or destroy"

Champions of Ruin went into some depth on the some of the different types of Evil character- not all of which "debase or destroy the Innocent".

Frankly though, I don't think we're ever going to agree on alignment- since we're approaching it from different angles. There's the:

"Alignment is all about what you're willing to do with "the Innocent"- protect, debase/destroy, have qualms about hurting"- viewpoint, rooted in the PHB.

And there's the: "alignment is about what acts you have committed and are willing to commit- not who the acts are committed against" viewpoint- rooted in the many splatbooks- which expand on and clarify the PHB.

We may just have to agree to disagree on this one.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-07-23, 02:11 PM
And how do we know the game designers see it this way?

It's clear from the whole concept of "acts which are evil regardless of the nature of the victim" and "repeatedly committing evil acts leads to evil alignment" that for at least some of the writers, a characters attitude to "The Innocent" does not guarantee their alignment.

and is there any way of identifying what they mean by, "the Innocent"- that is, if they did intend that the key feature of character alignment, is a characters attitude to this mysterious, undefined group?

Champions of Ruin went into some depth on the some of the different types of Evil character- not all of which "debase or destroy the Innocent".
In short: if the one term that all three portions of the G/E spectrum use as a reference is subjective, then the Nine Alignments System is subjective. And if that is the case, the Nine Alignments System is not an objective system - which is certainly a massive shift from the TSR version and basically makes any attempt to define Good or Evil pointless.

As for why they didn't bother to define it? Likely because the concept of Innocent works better as a Standard rather than a Rule.
Rules are statements that are designed to be applied with limited or no interpretation of their terms.

Standards are statements designed to be applied through the interpretation of arbitrator.

For example, take the statement "no motor vehicles are permitted in the park."

As a Rule this would forbid all "motor vehicles" within the park. Obviously this would require a firm definition of the concept of "motor vehicle" but it would not be very hard to enforce - if it is a motor vehicle, it is not permitted in the park. However, it might be over-inclusive - a disabled military jeep set up as part of a monument likely would be barred by this Rule. As would any service vehicles used for landscaping or whatnot. But it is very clear.

As a Standard, the arbitrator would be looking at the intent behind the rule. He could say that this rule is intended to preserve the park's natural beauty from careless motorists and therefore while civilian vehicles are barred, Park Service vehicles are permitted. Likewise he would not bar the monument. However, it is impossible to know beforehand whether a given motor vehicle would be permitted or not when the statement is taken as a Standard.
Here, Innocence is fairly easy to judge from an Objective perspective OOC. While a given psychopath might arbitrarially allocate people into "innocent" and "not innocent" categories, Players and the DM can see whether or not they'd, personally, call an individual Innocent. It is far harder to craft an exhaustive definition of Innocent - like pornography, you know it when you see it.

EDIT: I'd feel better about "agreeing to disagree" if you'd at least consider the SRD definitions.
The Alignment Splatbooks show an incoherent understanding of the very basis of the Nine Alignment System - as Devil's Advocate noted (here or elsewhere) they are written as if Alignment were just a series of special cases rather than an objective system of categorization. Treating Alignment as a series of special cases leaves a lot of gaps in the system; gaps that the SRD definitions do not have.

If you treat Alignment as "a system of holes" rather than "a whole system" then you end up with something that can only be run by DM fiat rather than something that individuals can use as a piece of common ground. I see no reason to treat Alignment this way and there is no reason to butcher a clean system when the formal logic used in drafting it is common knowledge.

Burner28
2010-09-10, 01:17 PM
Debasing innocent life
if the banker takes all your assets etc isnt that debasing our innoccent life?
and stealing from poor people=evil, stealing the same ammount but from rich people=chaotic ?

Yeah this kind of thinking is also something I have a problem with. The assumption that the victims of theft are rich and that it is therefore okay to steal from them is well... bothersome :smallconfused:

jmbrown
2010-09-10, 01:30 PM
Killing is not the only way to be evil. What about slavery? What if the landlord demands enough taxes his people are starving? what about the doomy ritual of doomful damnation whose casting causes every living being in a few kilometers to writhe in pain for days?

Slavery is a cultural thing and not unto itself evil. If slaves are treated as sub-humans and their lives regarded as little more than playthings or food for the animals, then it's skirting evil.

I honestly don't care about "the innocent." Evil is a disregard for life that is not your own, period. A lawful neutral banker forecloses on a poor man's house not out of spite but because it's his job and if he doesn't do it then he'll starve as well as his children. A lawful evil banker forecloses a poor man's house in order to sell it at an inflated cost to a rich retired couple looking to settle down. He doesn't do it because it's his job but because he's greedy and see's the poor man's villa as nothing more than an object to increase his wealth.


Yeah this kind of thinking is also something I have a problem with. The assumption that the victims of theft are rich and that it is therefore okay to steal from them is well... bothersome

Are they rich because they exploit those who have nothing? Tax poor boxes, clasp beggars in irons, and raise the taxes only to line their own pockets with it? By D&D's moral standards, it's perfectly fine to rob them blind.

Burner28
2010-09-10, 01:44 PM
Yeah I get that situation but what if they only became rich through honest means? then wouldn't stealing from them, even if you have good intentions( apparently evil acts are evil regardless of their intentions) be an evil act itself?:smallconfused:

Haarkla
2010-09-10, 01:59 PM
And once again, a "lawful evil" bad guy who refuses to kill (or debase to a similar extent) The Innocent is not Evil, but Neutral. If he'd still kill Innocents that he does not personally consider "innocent" then he is Lawful Evil.
I disagree. Are you saying that the unscrupulous monopolistic landlord aristocrat who evicts those who fail to pay his extortionate rents is neutrally aligned? Or the extortionist thug who terrorises honest buisinessmen who fail to pay him protection money? Or the soldier who systematically rapes the womenfolk of his opponents, considering them legitimate spoils of war?

Tamugetsu
2010-09-10, 02:04 PM
This reminds me - I want to promte a third element to alignments to clarify:
The Jerk axis.

For example, I play two characters:

One is a Bardic Prince in disguise who is attempting to kill his evil father to protect his beloved people. He always tries to help people in need, often putting himself at some disadvantage in the process. Also, he cross-dresses. He is Chaotic Good Non-Jerk.

The other is a racist Silver Dragon who was trapped in human form. He is a Cleric of Bahamut and while he follows his god's will and wants to do good, he hates all humans and believes almost all of them to be evil. He also generally looks down on any creature that is not a Metallic Dragon, considering them to be less intelligent or benevolent than his kind. He is Lawful Good Jerk.

It was originally the Jerk-Charmer axis, but I felt that that tied in too heavily with charisma. Besides, as all nice guys know, for whatever reason jerks can be considered charming to some people too.

Tamugetsu
2010-09-10, 02:16 PM
I think that people need to think about alignments in shades of gray. When I consider the alignment of a character, I draw the 9-box grid, and insead of just indicating a box, I draw a point. This allows me to be more specific about how my character would actually react in a given situation.

Think about it: if you put 1000 Lawful Good people in the same situation, they would not all do the same thing.

For example, my above mentioned Bard is CG, but favors good over chaos. Despite his distrust of authority, he is a skilled diplomat and is willing to work with a legal or government system for a breif period of time, as long as it's for a worthy cause. I measure his alignment as favoring good over chaos, but not quite enough for his afterlife to take place in the Beastlands. He's still Chaotic enough for the Olympian Glades of Arborea.

My Cleric, on the other hand, favors law over good, though he is not an extremist in either. If he were not a cleric of Bahamut, he would probably end up in Arcadia when he died. (Arcadia is the plane between Celestia and Mechanus, right?)

kyoryu
2010-09-10, 03:47 PM
I've got a pretty simple version of good and evil, that seems to map *relatively* well across scenarios. Some people may disagree with its application, but it seems pretty decent.

Start with basic rights - "life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness." I know this is a US thing, but bear with me.

To me, those aren't just words. They're the basis of a simple and elegant morality system.

Life: You have the right to your body, and to not be injured or killed
Liberty: You have the right to your time ont his earth
Pursuit of Happiness: You have the right to use your Life and Liberty to further your own goals, so long as you do not infringe upon the rights of others.

Very, very simple. To take it one step further, you have the right to any *product* of the three inalienable rights, as otherwise you do not have those rights. Stealing everything someone owns is effectively the same thing as slavery - you have stolen the product of their Life.

And one step beyond that - you have the right to defend your rights from those that would impinge upon them. If someone comes at you with a knife, you have the right to stop them, however may be necessary - this flows from your right to Life - if you cannot stop someone from taking your Life, you do not have the right to it in the first place.

("right" in this case, and in many legal cases, means the power to determine how something is used.)

Okay, applying this to good and evil:

*acts* can be defined as good/neutral/evil. Infringing upon the rights of others is evil. Defending the rights of others, or benefitting them without compensation, is good. Everything else (aka, the majority of human behavior) is neutral.

One individual is not responsible for the actions of another, but is responsible for his *own* actions. Feeding a starving man is Good, even if that man later does an Evil act.

People can be defined as good/neutral/evil by looking at the majority of their actions. Most people go through their life doing some actions in each category. Doing a single evil act does not make one evil - but doing a lot of them slides you into that category.

quiet1mi
2010-09-10, 04:43 PM
I have learn this from one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, where Kirk meets Lincoln...

Good and Evil use the same tactics but the reason why they use those tactics differ...

Killing an evil person to stop them from doing Evil is not evil just a slippery slope, ala Dirty Harry... But to kill an evil person to take his stuff and garner more power, that is Evil.

Most people are not good people, most people fall into the realm of neutral with good and lawful tendencies.

Avilan the Grey
2010-09-10, 05:09 PM
Slavery is a cultural thing and not unto itself evil. If slaves are treated as sub-humans and their lives regarded as little more than playthings or food for the animals, then it's skirting evil.

All I can say to this is YMMV, to the extreme, on this issue.

kyoryu
2010-09-10, 05:24 PM
All I can say to this is YMMV, to the extreme, on this issue.

By my definitions (above), slavery is absolutely evil, as it denies individuals their Liberty.

It may be *lawful*, but that's a different question.

Starbuck_II
2010-09-10, 07:09 PM
Not to mention, that it can end up being circular:

"Who are the Evil? Anyone willing to debase or destroy the Innocent"
"Who are the Innocent? Anyone the Evil are willing to debase or destroy"


I'd reword it as:
"Who are the Innocent? Some people the Evil are willing to debase or destroy"

Evil hurts non-innocent too. Blood war for example.

jmbrown
2010-09-10, 08:47 PM
Yeah I get that situation but what if they only became rich through honest means? then wouldn't stealing from them, even if you have good intentions( apparently evil acts are evil regardless of their intentions) be an evil act itself?:smallconfused:

Then it boils down to why the person is stealing and how much. Is he stealing a few coins to buy himself bed and a roof over his head? Is he stealing to feed people who are so poor they will die if they don't receive food immediately? Or is he stealing to line his own pockets?

Thievery is about dishonesty and honor is in the realm of law. A person who steals isn't himself evil, but he's certainly dishonost.


All I can say to this is YMMV, to the extreme, on this issue.

Most certainly, but the truth is that slaves haven't (historically) been treated unfairly across the board. The Persians were among the first to adapt a written constitution that dictated rights to all people, even servants.


By my definitions (above), slavery is absolutely evil, as it denies individuals their Liberty.

It may be *lawful*, but that's a different question.

Liberty is a concept of law. All creatures are born free but civilization binds people by the law. Providing someone with good living conditions but denying their freedom isn't unnecessarily cruel or idignant on their life. We see it that way because contemporary society has taught us to hate anything that restricts rights.

Burner28
2010-09-11, 08:58 AM
Then it boils down to why the person is stealing and how much. Is he stealing a few coins to buy himself bed and a roof over his head? Is he stealing to feed people who are so poor they will die if they don't receive food immediately? Or is he stealing to line his own pockets?

Thievery is about dishonesty and honor is in the realm of law. A person who steals isn't himself evil, but he's certainly dishonost.

Me, personally, I think stealing would, with a few exceptions, be an unnecessarily evil act. After all, can't he just get a job and earn his money without using someone else to fund himself?:smallconfused: Also I think you are forgetting that by stealing from someone else, you are violating their rights and dignity.

Anyways here's my viewpoint on the subject. An evil act is not an act that is misunderstood, playful, annoying, selfish, rude or irritating. It is an act that shows a clear lack of respect for the rights of other people to live their lives in happiness. The act takes advantage of other people, is detrimental to the victim and is done at their expense. Although a character that does an evil act is not necessarily themselves Evil (with a capital E) or even evil ( with a smaller e) doing these kind of acts without the good acts to balance them out would make you an evil alignment in my opinion. So someone who steals once in their lifetime may not be evil, but anyone who is happy to steal from decent people (earning their money using non-evil means) constantly without the good acts to balanbce out their misdeeds is clearly showing a lack of respect and taking advantage of these people and although isn't super evil, still is Chaotic Evil

Cogidubnus
2010-09-11, 09:12 AM
Well, I've just started playing a (fixed) Paladin in a PbP campaign, and he won't (and can't, due to his code) kill ANYONE unless they are hurting, about to hurt or likely to hurt an innocent. And he will still give them the opportunity to "come out with their hands up", as it were. Because being Evil doesn't mean you deserve to die. It means you deserve to be allowed to repent.

hamishspence
2010-09-11, 02:40 PM
Anyways here's my viewpoint on the subject. An evil act is not an act that is misunderstood, playful, annoying, selfish, rude or irritating. It is an act that shows a clear lack of respect for the rights of other people to live their lives in happiness. The act takes advantage of other people, is detrimental to the victim and is done at their expense.

I summed up the underlying factor of evil acts in the "what is your alignment" thread on Friendly Banter as:

"My need, justifies violating your rights"

Underneath most "altruistic evil acts" there's probably an element of this.

Ozymandias in Watchmen murders millions of people in the hope of "saving the human race from extinction.

He might claim that his viewpoint is "the needs of the many justify violating the rights of the few" but it's possible that it's really his "need to be the saviour of the human species" that's the true motivation behind his acts of mass murder.

Same might apply to "altruistic serial killers" like Dexter in the book Darkly Dreaming Dexter- he might be "torturing and murdering the guilty to protect the innocent" but underneath that, his true motivation is to satisfy his need to torture, over the rights of others to not be tortured.

Burner28
2010-09-12, 11:01 AM
"My need, justifies violating your rights"

Yeah I think this is indeed a good summary.

hamishspence
2010-09-14, 09:38 AM
Question is- if a person thinks that way- and acts that way- but only violates the rights of the "not innocent" by committing evil acts against them- are they evil?

I'd say yes- the SRD's "Evil characters debase or destroy the innocent, for fun or profit" is a generalization- sure, a lot of evil characters do this- but it should not be assumed to be the sole determining factor in whether a character is evil or not.

A character who hurts, oppresses, debases, and eventually destroys, the "not innocent" at least partly to satisfy their own desires to torment (but leaves the innocent alone) can still be evil IMO.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-09-14, 10:09 AM
I'd say yes- the SRD's "Evil characters debase or destroy the innocent, for fun or profit" is a generalization- sure, a lot of evil characters do this- but it should not be assumed to be the sole determining factor in whether a character is evil or not.
It's not - it, however, is a Necessary and Sufficient (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_and_sufficient_condition) condition.

The following are some other considerations:

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

If that is not enough, try the negation of the following:

"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
These are the parameters of Evil. Satisfying a Necessary and Sufficient Condition is the least "evil" someone needs to be to be declared Evil. A stronger - but still justifiable - stance is that someone who fulfills all the other parameters of Evil would be willing to kill Innocents (as they show no respect for life, period) and is therefore Evil.

hamishspence
2010-09-14, 10:46 AM
It can be inferred that it is a Necessary condition from the way it is phrased in the PHB- but not proven outright.

Going by the splatbooks, it is not a necessary condition- a willingness to repeatedly commit acts the splatbooks define as evil is enough for an evil alignment, even in the absence of that factor.

Dexter:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Dexter

may qualify as this sort of evil character- for him, Heroic Sociopath, Pay Evil Unto Evil, Even Evil Has Standards, and Would Not Hurt An Innocent, are some of the general tropes.

It's not called "Even Chaotic Neutral Has Standards" after all- a person can be a regular evildoer and yet not have that one "harm the innocent" trait.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-09-14, 11:00 AM
It can be inferred that it is a Necessary condition from the way it is phrased in the PHB- but not proven outright.

:confused:

That makes sense in the same way that it can be inferred that an Opposed Skill Check (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm#opposedChecks) "is a check whose success or failure is determined by comparing the check result to another character’s check result" but it cannot be proven outright :smallsigh:

Both are talking about defined Terms of Art within the context of the game. Acting otherwise just introduces ambiguity where there is none.

kyoryu
2010-09-14, 11:26 AM
It can be inferred that it is a Necessary condition from the way it is phrased in the PHB- but not proven outright.

Going by the splatbooks, it is not a necessary condition- a willingness to repeatedly commit acts the splatbooks define as evil is enough for an evil alignment, even in the absence of that factor.

Dexter:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Dexter

may qualify as this sort of evil character- for him, Heroic Sociopath, Pay Evil Unto Evil, Even Evil Has Standards, and Would Not Hurt An Innocent, are some of the general tropes.

It's not called "Even Chaotic Neutral Has Standards" after all- a person can be a regular evildoer and yet not have that one "harm the innocent" trait.

I think Dexter's also a good example of intent mattering, not just results.

If he was a cop who found enough evidence to get his victims tried, knowing that he was in a capital punishment state and that this would result in them dying, we'd probably think of him as closer to Lawful Good.

Similarly, let's say he honestly hated killing people and what he did, and it disgusted him and made him ill, but did it anyway for the sole reason that these people were murderers and the safety of the public required that they go away, and that since law enforcement couldn't do the job, it was up to him. In that case, I could make an argument for Chaotic Good.

But since he kills for his own pleasure, and the effects on society are an afterthought, he goes onto the Evil scale.

Also, while Dexter has a strong code he follows (arguably Lawful tendencies) that code is more a function of OCD and not wanting to get caught than it is an actual code of conduct/honor. He also has little respect for the process of law, to the extent that he subverts it at times to ensure that he gets a shot at a victim, rather than law putting them away. This, to me, makes him Chaotic.

Psyx
2010-09-14, 11:43 AM
...but only violates the rights of the "not innocent" by committing evil acts against them- are they evil?

Heck, yeah!

The old 'It's not wrong to do X, because these people are EVIL' is pathetic and self-serving in a hundred different ways. It's ultimately just an excuse. The subject is drawing a moral line, and who is to say that they are 'right'? There are LOTS of people in this world who are utterly determined that they are only killing 'evil' people (and some of them might be, too), or killing for a higher power. That doesn't make torture or any other 'evil' acts any less 'evil'.

I don't think any of us here think that witch-hunters who extracted confessions under torture, painfully killed their victims and pocketed the profits were anything other than 'evil' on the D&D spectrum, do we? Despite the fact that many of them were determined that they were punishing 'evil' supernatural entities.





Similarly, let's say he honestly hated killing people and what he did, and it disgusted him and made him ill, but did it anyway for the sole reason that these people were murderers and the safety of the public required that they go away, and that since law enforcement couldn't do the job, it was up to him. In that case, I could make an argument for Chaotic Good.


That'd perhaps be fine if he just put a bullet in them. He tortures them instead. That's the real defining difference, as far as I'm concerned.

Dexter is ultimately self-serving. And like all of us, he likes to legitimise his actions and see them in the best possible light. Even far more deviant killers seek to justify their kills: Very few don't try to follow some form of twisted moral code. He kills criminals because it's easier to get away with, it's easier to justify within his ego, and because that is how he was nurtured. It's more out of respect for his father and his need to kill than anything 'good', because he is a violent sociopath and only understands such concepts intellectually.

hamishspence
2010-09-14, 11:49 AM
BoVD suggests context matters, but it doesn't say much about intent- and BoED is pretty clear that when it comes to "inherently evil acts" intent doesn't matter.

On "must be willing to debase or destroy the innocent" and

"must repeatedly commit evil acts and be willing to go on committing them"

I'd say the two put together cover what is Necessary for an Evil alignment- but neither is absolutely required- one of the two is required, but not both.

A newborn chromatic dragon is "willing to debase or destroy the innocent" despite never having committed an evil act- so it qualifies as evil.

An exceptionally brutal antihero (like, possibly, The Punisher, or Jack Bauer, or Dexter) "repeatedly commits evil acts and is willing to go on committing them"- despite not being "willing to debase or destroy the innocent" - so they may qualify as Evil.

Starbuck_II
2010-09-14, 11:52 AM
BoED also says target matters. Okay to kill evil if evil (although it says better to try to repent): not evil to kill evil (neutral act?).
Heck, you can poison them (Ravages).

hamishspence
2010-09-14, 11:57 AM
It does mention that it's only OK to kill Evil beings under certain circumstances- storming a village of evil aligned orcs is not Good, and possibly Evil, if they "haven't been doing anything wrong".

BoVD does suggest that killing evil beings for profit is not evil, though not good- but goes on to say "such a justification only works for creatures of consummate, irredeemable evil"- as well as pointing out that Murder is one of the most evil acts a being can commit.

FC2 reiterates this, listing Murder, Cold-Blooded Murder, and Murder For Pleasure, very high on its list of Corrupt acts.

So, when is killing an evil creature which is not "of consummate, irredeemable evil" not Murder?

Answer- when it's in self-defence, or defence of another. War against an aggressor, and execution for serious crimes, also qualify.

On the whole "ravages" issue- they're still covered by the issue of violence having to be justified to be not evil. Ravages, for one reason or another, do not qualify as "inflicting unneccessary pain and injury"- not because the victims are evil, but because the ravage is less painful.

kyoryu
2010-09-14, 12:59 PM
That'd perhaps be fine if he just put a bullet in them. He tortures them instead. That's the real defining difference, as far as I'm concerned.

He doesn't really torture his victims, at least most of the time. Shooting would open himself up to ballistics evidence, a knife is more generic. Most of the time, the first stab is a killing stab.


Dexter is ultimately self-serving. And like all of us, he likes to legitimise his actions and see them in the best possible light. Even far more deviant killers seek to justify their kills: Very few don't try to follow some form of twisted moral code. He kills criminals because it's easier to get away with, it's easier to justify within his ego, and because that is how he was nurtured. It's more out of respect for his father and his need to kill than anything 'good', because he is a violent sociopath and only understands such concepts intellectually.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Even though he is not killing innocents, he is evil. If he really was killing to protect the population, he probably wouldn't be torturing/etc. (Actually, he doesn't really torture often, he just ties up and makes sure the room is not going to leave any evidence which can be used to catch him).

However, I can see someone performing similar actions (overall) while having an arguably Good alignment, perhaps even Lawful Good. (For instance, someone who actually was motivated to help the population in an area where the justice system had completely broken down due to bribery/connections/etc.)

(and, FWIW, Dexter doesn't justify his killings. He knows he's a monster. He does not delude himself on this fact at all)

hamishspence
2010-09-14, 01:08 PM
(and, FWIW, Dexter doesn't justify his killings. He knows he's a monster. He does not delude himself on this fact at all)

Dexter wouldn't say "I don't victimize the innocent, therefore I'm not evil"-

but the "you have to be willing to debase or destroy the innocent to be evil" argument does.

I prefer the perspective that it's what you do and are willing to do that's the signifier, not primarily who you're willing to do it to.

Which is not to say that a Good person might not do an evil act, if they were in a desperate situation and they thought that evil act would help them save innocent lives.

But it would still be an evil act- and if they kept on committing those kind of acts, their alignment would eventually change all the way to Evil- it wouldn't just stop at Neutral.

"For the greater good of others" is probably one of the commonest reasons for Good people to do Evil things.

kyoryu
2010-09-14, 01:43 PM
Dexter wouldn't say "I don't victimize the innocent, therefore I'm not evil"-

but the "you have to be willing to debase or destroy the innocent to be evil" argument does.

I prefer the perspective that it's what you do and are willing to do that's the signifier, not primarily who you're willing to do it to.

Which is not to say that a Good person might not do an evil act, if they were in a desperate situation and they thought that evil act would help them save innocent lives.

But it would still be an evil act- and if they kept on committing those kind of acts, their alignment would eventually change all the way to Evil- it wouldn't just stop at Neutral.

"For the greater good of others" is probably one of the commonest reasons for Good people to do Evil things.

I agree completely. As I've said elsewhere, I look at the main "natural" rights (life, liberty), and view someone impinging upon those rights, except in the defense of either their rights or the rights of others, as evil. By "life" I mean primarily freedom from harm, not a guarantee of food/etc., btw. Similarly, by "freedom" I mean freedom from restraint/enslavement, not that you should be able to do anything you want, regardless of your ability to pay/etc.

Dexter kills. He does not kill to defend himself or others. That is Evil.

Killing someone that is attempting to kill you is not evil. It is unaligned (I was going to say Neutral, but that's too strong).

Protecting someone (even if it involves killing the attacker) that is attempting to kill someone is Good.

There are certainly some grey areas involved (killing someone that is planning to kill someone else, but hasn't gone through with it, situations without a clear assailant or in which both sides escalated the confrontation, etc.) - but those map pretty well to the areas that most people find grey areas to begin with. I don't pretend that this criteria is universal, but from my POV it gives a pretty good criteria for where an act should fall on the good/evil spectrum.

"The end justifies the means" is almost always used to justify curtailing the rights of one individual or group (that has not impinged upon others) in order to grant another group some benefit. This, in my mind, is pure evil.

hamishspence
2010-09-14, 02:46 PM
Of course, if you take the view that evil deeds outweigh good acts as the measure of a character's alignment (unless they actually repent their evil deeds and decide to stop doing them) then it's quite possible to have an Evil character with many of the Good virtues.

They could be altruistic, make sacrifices to help others, protect the innocent.

All these are not incompatible with being a doer of evil deeds.

Evil alignment does not require an absence of willingness to do good, after all- a person can be willing to do both good and evil deeds, and still be evil rather than Neutral.

Morithias
2010-09-15, 10:37 AM
Evil and good are subjective things, almost always the line is simply drawn in what I call "pleasure versus pain" (not sexual).

Simply put, an action that creates happiness overall I would consider good, one that creates pain is evil. There are obviously events that do both, but one always has to consider the level of both. To put it bluntly, no one in the Dnd universe that is a commoner/expert gives a care about good vs evil, all they care about is making it another day on the farm and leaving the next generation in good fortune. To them good = pleasure, evil = pain.

Moderation is what I believe draws the line between good and evil. You can claim that killing a living thing is evil. Ok, makes sense, then you apply it to animals, which we need food for, we can see it on some level.

My ultimate counter to "killing is never right no matter what" is "Did you take a shower today?" Because germs and viruses are technically living things.

Moderation and context. You could take the most vile act imaginable, and given the right context, make it non-evil.

hamishspence
2010-09-15, 10:48 AM
Moderation and context. You could take the most vile act imaginable, and given the right context, make it non-evil.

Perhaps by some philosophies, but not necessarily by the D&D books (particularly the splatbooks).

In the PHB "Rebuking/commanding undead is an evil act"
In BoED and FC2 "Torture is an evil act"
In Eberron Campaign Setting and FC2 "Casting a spell with the [Evil] tag is an evil act"

How evil, will depend on the source.

Some people take issue with the view that certain acts are "inherently evil" and may insist torture "to get life-saving information" should not be considered evil.

Others extend it to include torture "for very serious crimes" as not evil.

Heroes of Horror suggests that it is possible for a character who commits evil acts to maintain a Neutral alignment if their intentions remain good and they are able to balance their acts against their intentions well enough.

kyoryu
2010-09-15, 01:13 PM
Evil and good are subjective things, almost always the line is simply drawn in what I call "pleasure versus pain" (not sexual).

Simply put, an action that creates happiness overall I would consider good, one that creates pain is evil.

The danger in this line of thinking is that it opens the door to "it's a good thing to murder 1000 innocent people, if it makes a million happy. The happiness of the million is greater than the pain of the 1000."

The bigger danger is that you end up with people thinking that they have the right to make decisions like that. This does not, historically, end well.

hamishspence
2010-09-16, 05:00 AM
Interesting possibility- maybe the statement "Will debase and destroy the non-innocent but not the innocent" is meaningless?

Reasoning is as follows.

All acts that debase people, debase the person committing the act as well.

Therefore, when an innocent person debases the not innocent, they are "debasing the innocent" as well- which means they must be willing to debase the innocent.

By which act, they start to cease to be innocent.

Hence they are "destroying the innocent" and were "willing to destroy the innocent"

Hence, a person who commits evil, debasing acts- even against the "not innocent"- is destroying and debasing an innocent person- themselves.

Does this make sense?

Frozen_Feet
2010-09-16, 05:24 AM
Actually, yes. At least Xykon would agree with you, since he said evil is very much about how far you're willing to debase yourself.

What comes to "Kill hundred, save thousand" types of arguments, I think in context of D&D morality there's a point where the initial act can be evil and will turn the actor evil, even if the net effect is good. Of course, if you don't consider killing and death evil on itself, then greater detail is always needed to appraise such deeds.

Morithias
2010-09-16, 05:46 AM
The danger in this line of thinking is that it opens the door to "it's a good thing to murder 1000 innocent people, if it makes a million happy. The happiness of the million is greater than the pain of the 1000."

The bigger danger is that you end up with people thinking that they have the right to make decisions like that. This does not, historically, end well.

I love how you removed the part where I said you had to consider the severity of both sides. And whether 1 hour of entertainment is 'pleasure' enough to counter the pain and death the tortured victim felt.

hamishspence
2010-09-16, 05:56 AM
The "willing to destroy the innocent" being associated with Evil, may have problems when an innocent person is willing to sacrifice their own life.

They'd only be "willing to destroy 1 innocent- them"- so, maybe it would count as an exception, since they'd never do it "for fun or profit" (unless doing so in a cause you count as more valuable than your own life, counts as being "for profit".

If a person sacrifices themselves knowing they will be True Ressurrected, and does so partly because they know they will be given things they value greatly afterward, would this count as "destroying an innocent for profit"?

Probably not enough to make it an evil act.

Psyx
2010-09-16, 06:42 AM
He doesn't really torture his victims, at least most of the time. Shooting would open himself up to ballistics evidence, a knife is more generic. Most of the time, the first stab is a killing stab.

Torturing even the minority of the time is still an utterly evil act. Once would kind of do it, as far as I'm concerned.

He certainly makes them suffer: He takes them to his kill room and makes sure they are awake to understand the full horror of the situation before killing them. That's not a normal human act, but the act of someone who needs that fear and horror in others. If he just wanted to kill, he'd do it in situ, instead of making a kill room and greatly increasing the risk to himself. Inflicting 1 minute of fear on someone before killing them... that's not achieving anything. That's not punishment; it's self-indulgence.

I also feel that this aspect is rather sanitised to make the TV more watchable. As an audience we see the 'easy' kill and we still like Dexter because we don't see him fully for the monster that he is. However; he's assembled a proper little chamber of horrors for the occasion, and has needed to cover the whole place with plastic. The insinuation there is most certainly NOT that the victims are simply killed, and the sub-text is very visible. I'm pretty sure he tortures the victims, and we're just shown sanitised highlights.




However, I can see someone performing similar actions (overall) while having an arguably Good alignment, perhaps even Lawful Good. (For instance, someone who actually was motivated to help the population in an area where the justice system had completely broken down due to bribery/connections/etc.)


I... really can't. The repeated taking of human life in a deliberate manner by someone acting alone and outside of society is never really altruistic. It's always to feed an ultimately selfish and usually perverse need. The cause is really not important - these people would seize any cause if it suited them. Someone who really wanted to help would find a more humane way of doing things, in a manner seen as more acceptable to society. Honest and decent people do not turn to the gun and knife as a first resort to solving society's problems. Too often these people turn to violence when there are a dozen better and more obvious ways of resolving the problem. that's not 'good'.

MarkusWolfe
2010-09-16, 06:55 AM
If kicking a puppy makes you feel good, then you're evil. Simple as that.

Esser-Z
2010-09-16, 07:02 AM
So monks can't fight hellhounds, then.

Starbuck_II
2010-09-16, 08:08 AM
So monks can't fight hellhounds, then.

Puppies are baby dogs. How often do you fight non-adult hellhounds? They would be reduced one size category and have lower stats.

hamishspence
2010-09-16, 08:14 AM
If kicking a puppy makes you feel good, then you're evil. Simple as that.

What if you're someone for whom it would feel good (you're just wired that way) but you don't do it- because you wish to overcome your own nature?

A redeemed fiend might be one example- but what about an ordinary person who's trying to redeem themselves but are aware that they retain sadistic traits- which they refuse to indulge?

Yora
2010-09-16, 08:19 AM
What if you're someone for whom it would feel good (you're just wired that way) but you don't do it- because you wish to overcome your own nature?

A redeemed fiend might be one example- but what about an ordinary person who's trying to redeem themselves but are aware that they retain sadistic traits- which they refuse to indulge?
Things like these are why you don't discuss alignment in detail! :smallbiggrin:

Is he a bad person? = Evil
Is he not so bad? = Neutral

Keep it simple as that, and you can have fun with your alignment for many years. :smallbiggrin:

hamishspence
2010-09-16, 08:24 AM
Deconstructing alignment can be fun though.

"What would a redeemed creature still with the [Evil] subtype be like" can be an interesting question to ask.

Same might apply to someone who has to infiltrate a bad guy base, gives themselves the Evil subtype via that Savage Species ritual, and passes the will save to not change alignment- they may now gain "urges" which they must restrain to stay Good.