Question on the alignment system

[croaker]

Hello everyone i have a question, one of my players is a chaotic good. he and his party were hired by the local lord to purge the city of a thieves guild based in the slums. so everyone was going around trying to find out its base and attracted undue attention to themselves and fought against a couple thieves.

after which he had a bright idea of burning down the entire slums to get rid of the thieves guild. so my question would that be a chaotic good act because his intention was "just"?

[NNescio]

Hello everyone i have a question, one of my players is a chaotic good. he and his party were hired by the local lord to purge the city of a thieves guild based in the slums. so everyone was going around trying to find out its base and attracted undue attention to themselves and fought against a couple thieves.

after which he had a bright idea of burning down the entire slums to get rid of the thieves guild. so my question would that be a chaotic good act because his intention was "just"?

No.

It's a callous act that puts the lives of many innocents at risk. Chaotic Evil.

[Bovine Colonel]

Hello everyone i have a question, one of my players is a chaotic good. he and his party were hired by the local lord to purge the city of a thieves guild based in the slums. so everyone was going around trying to find out its base and attracted undue attention to themselves and fought against a couple thieves.

after which he had a bright idea of burning down the entire slums to get rid of the thieves guild. so my question would that be a chaotic good act because his intention was "just"?

I'd say that signifies a full-blown change to Evil, Chaotic or otherwise. The man's decided to kill hundreds of innocent people just to get at some criminals, arguably causing more damage than the thieves' guild could do in a good year (number made up off the top of my head). He doesn't seem to care about human life; thus, Evil. I guess you could make a case for Lawful Evil if he's been telling himself "for the greater good" the whole time, but he's definitely evil.

[croaker]

thanks just looking for confirmation before i set the paladins on him.

[BlackHumor]

That's not just Evil, that's Lawful Evil. One of the hallmarks of Lawful Evil is following the letter of a contract while ignoring its spirit, like your player is doing with his contract to "get rid of the Theives' Guild".

[Drelua]

That's not just Evil, that's Lawful Evil. One of the hallmarks of Lawful Evil is following the letter of a contract while ignoring its spirit, like your player is doing with his contract to "get rid of the Theives' Guild".

Really, it could be any kind of evil. You're certainly right about one possible reason, but it could also be chaotic evil if the character just had no problem burning the whole place down to get at the thieves, with a blatant disregard for life but no concern for the contract. It's evil, but you'd have to know the character's rationale to know what kind. Probably chaotic evil, as this doesn't sound like a player that puts thought into their actions.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Wow. One of the few situations where the alignment system actually works.

Yes, this is capital E Evil. Probably either Lawful or Chaotic (I doubt it's Neutral), but definitely Evil.

[Dalek-K]

I had a paladin in my group do this once, of course before hand he gathered all the innocents, gave a fair warning, the rebuilt their homes with the reward money. (The gang didn't believe the pc ...)

All and all the people actually benifited from this.

No gang and new homes!

What you described was cold blooded murder, sewing chaos (through a LE act), and basicallly being a moby sized di**

[gkathellar]

Evil. Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil, Lawful Evil - could be any of them. But yeah, Evil.

When you ask an alignment question on these forums and people actually agree instead of launching into longwinded ethics debates, you know the answer is clear.

[TheGeckoKing]

LE if he was following the letter but not the spirit of the order.
NE if he was just being lazy.
CE if he was being "spontaneous" and didn't think this one through.

Some degree of evil by reason of stupidity.

[Telonius]

Generally, determining a character's alignment is not about single actions. (Keeping an oath or following a code is about single actions). Alignment is about the general viewpoint of a character. Most of the time, a single action isn't going to push you one way or the other. Jaywalking once does not make you chaotic; having a consistent history of lawbreaking behavior does.

However, this is one of those few situations where I'd consider a single act to change an entire alignment. This only happens in extreme cases. Becoming a lich, extreme action of self-sacrificing atonement, an otherwise loyal person deciding to murder the king; it takes something severely dramatic and consequential for one act to flip an alignment. I think this one qualifies. Basically, the character has probably crossed (caution, TV Tropes link) a moral event horizon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralEventHorizon). I say probably, because there might be some other mitigating factors (does he realize what he did, does he regret it at all, etc). But absent some serious, serious atonement, he is in no way going to be called "good" ever again.

[Prime32]

Good: Help everyone (even complete strangers), hurt no one.
Neutral: Help myself and my friends, unless it hurts others.
Evil: Help myself and my friends, regardless of whether it hurts others.
While a character might be forced to act in a different way (eg. a good character killing an evil one to prevent him harming others), the above is how they want to act, and they'll feel bad otherwise.

In this case, since a Good character would care about the lives of everyone he'd just murdered, even if he "had no choice" he'd probably go mad with grief. If he did it willingly and with no regrets, that would be an immediate alignment change to Evil.

EDIT: Supplementary

Stupid Good: Hurt no one, regardless of whether it helps everyone.
Stupid Neutral: Help no one, regardless of whether it hurts anyone.
Stupid Evil: Hurt everyone, regardless of whether it helps me.