I like alignment

[Scowling Dragon]

>.>
<.<

....Yes. I like the alignment system. The poor stupid alignment system (Ducks from the ton of books logged at my direction).

Personally I believed that allot of good can come from it, but simply its horribly misused and there are of course some problems with it.

Yes, some of the worst supplements ever where based on the alighnment.

But lots of good things come out of it as well:


It allows for simple character framework (And if done properly will avoid "Can't do this, your LG"
Whilst I do believe that commoners SHOULD have an alighnment, it just shouldn't register with spells. Detect evil should not be an excuse to kill
UNLESS the person is just SO pure or so evil that thier souls begin to register. A genocidal warlord with the blood of thousands almost literaly on his hands, with a strong sadistic streak is such a hateful and vile creature that his soul begins to become demonic even BEFORE he enters hell. He becomes a demon in a mortal shell
Its great for the strongest forrces of good/evil. Just I think some spells go overboard.
Every spell can be used in a great way. Depends on the presentation. OOTs showed the WORST way it could be abused "I detect your evil then DIE!" but its also possible to use it in cool ways: "I opened my eyes and I could detect a demonic presence. Something was not right with that object it radiated such a force of hate and vile- Even as inanimate as it was.

[Larkas]

I like the alignment system too. I just think it is much better used in a more subtle way than the game tries to push us to do. But to do away with the system entirely (along the lines of 4E, which, frankly, did) is not a great choice in my eyes. The alignment system is an integral part of D&D itself, and has to be played to its strengths, not its weaknesses.

[Vitruviansquid]

I think people don't like the alignment system because they misuse it by trying to apply it to modern ideas of morality when it was actually an ingenious way to get players to think like medieval people, who saw the world in stark terms of good and evil, often based on religious lines.

Nobody in the Song of Roland asked if Baligant donates a lot of money to a kitten orphanage, or how much joy Roland derived from killing people. Baligant was capital-E Evil because he was a Saracen and Roland was capital-G Good because he was a Christian, and that was that.

[Othesemo]

The problem is that the alignment system never allows for anything (roleplaying wise) that couldn't be accomplished without it - a paladin can follow his code without LG written on his character sheet, just as a blackguard can kick a puppy without being labelled as CE. All of the perks of the system that you mentioned can be achieved without using it, provided that you've got a competent DM. Meanwhile, the system practically invites itself to be misused, and has led to several unsavory additions to the game that would not exist without it (as you admit).

[Scowling Dragon]

Uh how? If the system wasn't built that way, then spells like detect evil wouldn't exist.

It makes it nice and simple. As long as you don't overdo on any of the stuff it works out fine.

[Dienekes]

The problem is that the alignment system never allows for anything (roleplaying wise) that couldn't be accomplished without it - a paladin can follow his code without LG written on his character sheet, just as a blackguard can kick a puppy without being labelled as CE. All of the perks of the system that you mentioned can be achieved without using it, provided that you've got a competent DM. Meanwhile, the system practically invites itself to be misused, and has led to several unsavory additions to the game that would not exist without it (as you admit).

Ehh, I've always just seen it as a tool to help get in the mindset of playing someone other than themselves for new players. And for that it's helpful. Good/Evil, Law/Chaos are fairly generic terms that have a base ideology that is easy enough to recognize. If a guy is prone to obeying orders and following codes of law they're lawful. If they don't care for the law then they're chaotic simple as can be.

It's when you actually sit down and try to think about the system and the restrictions placed upon the players that it starts to break down. While it seems almost fundamentally obvious that the raging barbarian would spit on the laws of civilization, it ignores that barbaric tribes often had their own very strict laws and codes of conduct. So if I want to make a barbarian who is strictly following these codes wouldn't he be lawful? And would that mean he can't get angry enough to smash things? Why not? Bard is even weirder since a court musician would probably obey the laws of the court they're in and who are their patrons.

And this doesn't even get into the huge arguments of what makes evil, evil and good good that everyone has their own opinion with. And that's really it's major weakness. Philosophers, religious leaders, and cultures have all tried to define good and evil and generally someone somewhere disagrees with their assessment. It's just impractical to mandate down what is good and what is evil except for the most basic actions.

Now this could be avoided if they were just describing what one culture views as good and evil that the game is set in. But since homebrew worlds and even within a campaign setting numerous opposing cultures exist and interact it doesn't work as it is currently presented. But personally, I would argue it was never meant to be put under the level of scrutiny it has on it. But then I think that's true with quite a lot of the rules in the game, which is why we have broken powers and loops and tricks that were never meant to be used and no one on the development team had even remotely thought of.

[Larpus]

The main problem I have with the alignment system...actually, D&D in general is that everything is very binary in nature.

Things either are or aren't. You either succeeded or failed. Stuff like that.

Don't wanna dwell in rant, so I'll keep to the matter at hand.

I'm not saying that the division of Law vs. Chaos or Good vs. Evil is my problem, but rather that fact that if you're evil, you're evil, the end.

The Paladin will see you glow red and be entitled to murder you in front of your family and children, because you're evil, even thought you're just slightly evil.

I'm most probably making myself confusing, but what I mean is that there is a dissociation between the way things work and the way things are expected to work.

When you make a character who is Evil, it means that he's inclined to make evil decisions, be merciless and all that. He's not neutral, because he doesn't pursue a balance, he's clearly evil...but how evil is that?

Is he an absolute monster who will bring end to the world as we know it? No.

Is he anything like a devil or a demon? No.

Is he even "evil" as in a villain? Hell no.

So why is it that he's pushed the same burden and alignment as the campaign big bad? It makes no sense!

And that is the problem, there are no shades of "how evil" you are or aren't, the Paladin will see you glowing red all the same and smite you all the same, because it's binary, there are no buts or ifs.

This gets specially bad when we get to chaos and law. Great frameworks, but way too often I hear people (on my table even) call on me for making a chaotic Wizard because "studying is too lawful for a chaotic" or even the typical RAW of a Barbarian or Bard having to be chaotic.

Why is that? I get that the core of the class is freedom and all that and that, by theme, the alignment doesn't prohibit you from following a code or abiding to laws. But that only raises further questions and problems.

If you can be a chaotic being with a deep and extensive personal code...why does you tic the exact same as a demon who lives for mindless destruction in the eyes of someone using Detect Chaos or similar?

And if a chaotic being is allowed to have a personal code and a lawful one is allowed to break some rules to get things done, why is it that a good character is odd-eyed when he makes a clearly evil decision or an evil one makes a good one, sometimes even ensuing an alignment shift?

So...bottom line and tl;dr, the problem is that the system is enforced as a set of specific rules meant to limit us when instead it should be just a framework to start building your character's persona.

[Larkas]

It's when you actually sit down and try to think about the system and the restrictions placed upon the players that it starts to break down. While it seems almost fundamentally obvious that the raging barbarian would spit on the laws of civilization, it ignores that barbaric tribes often had their own very strict laws and codes of conduct. So if I want to make a barbarian who is strictly following these codes wouldn't he be lawful? And would that mean he can't get angry enough to smash things? Why not? Bard is even weirder since a court musician would probably obey the laws of the court they're in and who are their patrons.

Actually, if you think deep down, to be a bard you have to be carefree, and to be a barbarian you have to let fury take hold of your senses. Besides, both can be neutral, and neutral... Well, have a fairly neutral view on laws :smallbiggrin: Most of the problems people see in the alignment system stems from the fact that people simply forget that Neutral is there :smallfrown:


And this doesn't even get into the huge arguments of what makes evil, evil and good good that everyone has their own opinion with. And that's really it's major weakness. Philosophers, religious leaders, and cultures have all tried to define good and evil and generally someone somewhere disagrees with their assessment. It's just impractical to mandate down what is good and what is evil except for the most basic actions.

That's why I think that trying to categorize every action is a fool's errand. And that's why I think we have to play into the alignment system more subtly. Neutral does wonders for gray areas :smallsmile:


Now this could be avoided if they were just describing what one culture views as good and evil that the game is set in. But since homebrew worlds and even within a campaign setting numerous opposing cultures exist and interact it doesn't work as it is currently presented. But personally, I would argue it was never meant to be put under the level of scrutiny it has on it. But then I think that's true with quite a lot of the rules in the game, which is why we have broken powers and loops and tricks that were never meant to be used and no one on the development team had even remotely thought of.

Like you, I think that alignments are just guidelines, not a straitjacket. The Paladin is the greatest example of the system taken too far by the players and DMs alike, maybe with a little push from the rules: you can easily break a minor rule or turn a blind eye to some... "Non-righteous evil guy spanking" without both breaking the code and acting outside of LG. But pushing this too far is to be reprimanded. As is killing someone in cold-blood, even if he is evil. Heck, even if he is the BBEG.

[Scowling Dragon]

I actually like playing Dirty paladins. Their only LG in the sense that they will do anything to help the needy and weak. Everything else is fair game. Backstabs, ambushes ect.

[Larkas]

I actually like playing Dirty paladins. Their only LG in the sense that they will do anything to help the needy and weak. Everything else is fair game. Backstabs, ambushes ect.

You can do that kind of stuff and still be LG. You probably CAN'T do that kind of stuff and still follow the Paladin code (I mean, you can ambush to capture someone, but to kill while they're unarmed? I don't think so.). But that's a totally different question and the reason I play CG Paladins :smalltongue:

[Hiro Protagonest]

What's alighnment?

Anyway, if you do use alignment, the color wheel tends to be better. Black is not Evil, White is not Good, and you can pin down Batman with it. Lord_Gareth's interpretation isn't very good (you only have five colors. How do you get two or three colors for yourself, two allied colors, and two enemy colors?), but just get Primary/Secondary/Tertiary colors (only Primary is required) and you're good. You can put Batman in any alignment except NE/CE, but with color wheel, he's White/Blue for lighter interpretations, and White/Black or White/Black/Blue or White/Blue/Black for darker ones.

But alignment causes problems. It's another one of those things that causes conflicts and people getting kicked out.

[Kish]

I think people don't like the alignment system because they misuse it by trying to apply it to modern ideas of morality when it was actually an ingenious way to get players to think like medieval people, who saw the world in stark terms of good and evil, often based on religious lines.

Nobody in the Song of Roland asked if Baligant donates a lot of money to a kitten orphanage, or how much joy Roland derived from killing people. Baligant was capital-E Evil because he was a Saracen and Roland was capital-G Good because he was a Christian, and that was that.
So the people who "misuse" it include everyone who ever writes a description of what it means in a D&D book?

[Scowling Dragon]

You can do that kind of stuff and still be LG. You probably CAN'T do that kind of stuff and still follow the Paladin code (I mean, you can ambush to capture someone, but to kill while they're unarmed? I don't think so.). But that's a totally different question and the reason I play CG Paladins :smalltongue:

Killing unarmed people? Thats wrong. Capturing is the word. A paladin can still be unwavering in his pursuit of law and justice and kindness. Just the methodology is weird.

[Dienekes]

Actually, if you think deep down, to be a bard you have to be carefree, and to be a barbarian you have to let fury take hold of your senses. Besides, both can be neutral, and neutral... Well, have a fairly neutral view on laws :smallbiggrin: Most of the problems people see in the alignment system stems from the fact that people simply forget that Neutral is there :smallfrown:

I'd definitely argue that. The generic bard with the fluff presented is carefree sure (when did carefree mean chaotic?), but if I wanted to make an army drummer who is strict with discipline or the toady court bard who fawns over the evil overlord and obeys every rule possible to rise up the chain of command can definitely be lawful and would best be represented in the game by being the bard class. But why can't he learn how to play mystic music better if he's lawful? That's ridiculous.

The barbarian again, berserkir were real warriors who got themselves into a rage before a battle. And the Norse definitely had rules, codes, and views of honor. Now was every berserkr lawful? Of course not, we have a fair few stories of them being rude, disrespectful jackasses. But was there at least one who strictly followed the codes and rules of Norse and yet on the battlefield went into a rage? I would place a rather large sum of money that there was. Yet by DnD rules he could not exist.

[Larkas]

Killing unarmed people? Thats wrong. Capturing is the word. A paladin can still be unwavering in his pursuit of law and justice and kindness. Just the methodology is weird.

Of course. I'd go even further: the Paladin follows an abstract idea of justice, not a concrete one.

Say you are a Paladin that has been contacted by the lord of the land to capture a so-said great criminal that hides in the woods. You go there, capture the guy and brings him to the lord. You're being lawful right there, and following the Code. The guy gets arrested and his execution is set to happen in three days. No trial at all, let alone a fair one. You decide this isn't righteous at all, and you break the guy from jail. Your conduct can certainly be categorized as chaotic, but are you breaking the Code? I don't think so. You strive for heavenly justice, not a human one.

As long as you don't strive to destabilize the government, I don't think you're being chaotic enough to shift alignments and fall from grace. Ditto for bringing an evil lord to justice, this time a heavenly one.

Like I said, the system has to be played to its strengths, not its weaknesses :smallsmile:

[Scowling Dragon]

Eh. There are people like us who think its a nice tool and others that think it limits them.

Yup.

[Water_Bear]

It seems like a lot of people really over-think alignment.

Good is about altruism and mercy while Evil is about selfishness and malice.
Law means having a strict code of ethics while Chaos means freedom.
If you're conflicted or just don't care, that's Neutrality* on either axis.

Your alignment is how you can be relied upon to act in general; a Good person can be a bigot while an Evil person can love their family. It isn't an exact science pinning someone down to an alignment, but luckily D&D is a system designed for and by Humans so we can play it by ear.


*Some Neutral people, like the prototypical Druid, are into balance. Most, at least in the established fluff, are not. Renaming it Unaligned is one of the few things I think 4e did right, although still not worth losing LE and CG.

[Scowling Dragon]

Personally Neutrality also works if your looking for a goal:

A wizard looking for power is neutral. Not good or bad. Just looking for a goal.

[Larkas]

I'd definitely argue that. The generic bard with the fluff presented is carefree sure (when did carefree mean chaotic?), but if I wanted to make an army drummer who is strict with discipline or the toady court bard who fawns over the evil overlord and obeys every rule possible to rise up the chain of command can definitely be lawful and would best be represented in the game by being the bard class. But why can't he learn how to play mystic music better if he's lawful? That's ridiculous.

That's why you have the Virtuoso :smallsmile: Don't forget that Bards don't lose any class feature for becoming lawful, they just can't gain any more levels, and Virtuoso embodies the spirit of the musician who tried very hard to get where they are. And you don't even have to be a Bard to qualify for it! For me, that kind of court bard wouldn't be a Bard at all, but rather an Expert with lots of ranks in Perform and no creativity. Get a level of Sorcerer and BAM, Virtuoso :smallsmile:


The barbarian again, berserkir were real warriors who got themselves into a rage before a battle. And the Norse definitely had rules, codes, and views of honor. Now was every berserkr lawful? Of course not, we have a fair few stories of them being rude, disrespectful jackasses. But was there at least one who strictly followed the codes and rules of Norse and yet on the battlefield went into a rage? I would place a rather large sum of money that there was. Yet by DnD rules he could not exist.

Again, I stand by my opinion that most people forget about Neutral. If you are a rager on the battlefield but a follower of tradition, you're Neutral, simple as that. I think that most berserkers (those guys that got in a bloodlust and fought almost naked, right?) were just plain chaotic, but a "regular" Barbarian can be Neutral/Unaligned and follow rules, no problem.

@Water Bear: My thoughts EXACTLY, though I still don't like the renaming, since there ARE people "aligned to neutrality", like the druids you mention.

[PersonMan]

Again, I stand by my opinion that most people forget about Neutral. If you are a rager on the battlefield but a follower of tradition, you're Neutral, simple as that. I think that most berserkers (those guys that got in a bloodlust and fought almost naked, right?) were just plain chaotic, but a "regular" Barbarian can be Neutral/Unaligned and follow rules, no problem.

Problems, however, arise when someone says 'well, my [barbarian] guy is basically exactly what's described under LG. Why am I NG?' Do surges of strength and endurance during battle make one inherently incapable of pinging a certain way under Detect Law?

[Scowling Dragon]

Depending on how its played (Once again)

I usually don't ping anybody unless their exceptional. But, you could play it that whilst you act like your lawful internaly you just have SUCH A BARELY CONTAINED RAGE! that your soul detects as non-lawful.

[Larkas]

Depending on how its played (Once again)

I usually don't ping anybody unless their exceptional. But, you could play it that whilst you act like your lawful internaly you just have SUCH A BARELY CONTAINED RAGE! that your soul detects as non-lawful.

This. The "problem" with the system is that people try too hard to conform to any morality concept while they could conform to another with no problem at all. That is to say, the "problem" lies with how objectively people want to use a rule, and maybe even with how the rules are written themselves, but not with the system itself. Use it more subjectively, with more subtlety, and you shouldn't have any trouble at all :smallsmile: And remember:

There is no shame in being Neutral.®

:elan:

[Water_Bear]

Call me crazy, but the Monk Barbarian and Bard requirements have always made perfect sense to me.

A Barbarian is, regardless of fluff, someone who flies into mindless rages. Hence the fact that you cannot use Charisma/Dexterity/Intelligence based skills at all, or even activate an item by a Command Word. Hell, Calm Emotions will knock you right out of a Rage by RAW. Like it or not, Barbarians will always tend towards Chaos even ignoring the fluff.

Bardic Knowledge is a literal expression of the Bard having traveled and picked up tons of miscellaneous knowledge and stories by their free-spirited wanderings. They want to settle down and become Lawful, fine, but they can't advance any more because that kind of wanderlust is all about freedom.

Monks are the toughest case, because the idea of them being meditative and disciplined is only heavily implied rather than stated outright in the rules text. It might have been better if they were written as a more generic Martial Artist class, but it makes more sense for them to be Lawful when you look at the portrayal of Martial Arts in Western media.

Again, people over-think alignment. A Chaotic Barbarian can still be loyal, they just won't be predictable. A Bard can be an excellent politician, but they are less likely to get locked into codes of honor. A Monk can be rude, but they are defined by their discipline.

[Dienekes]

That's why you have the Virtuoso :smallsmile: Don't forget that Bards don't lose any class feature for becoming lawful, they just can't gain any more levels, and Virtuoso embodies the spirit of the musician who tried very hard to get where they are. And you don't even have to be a Bard to qualify for it! For me, that kind of court bard wouldn't be a Bard at all, but rather an Expert with lots of ranks in Perform and no creativity. Get a level of Sorcerer and BAM, Virtuoso :smallsmile:

Lawful does not mean they cannot be creative. And frankly, being an expert to get into virtuoso sucks.

It also means to reach the type of character I want to play I have to wait until level 8 because the game just told me I have to, when there is a class that does everything I want to do that has a weird requirement to meet their predetermined fluff. That is a dumb reason.

What about being a bard requires being chaotic? Learning to play music? No, it most definitely doesn't. Being creative with your music? Of course not, talk to Brahms whose life was set in a rigid pattern. Learning magic? The wizard would like to disagree.

The only thing that requires the bard to be non-lawful is because the rather generic and in my honest opinion boring fluff attached to it is restrictive in that regard.


Again, I stand by my opinion that most people forget about Neutral. If you are a rager on the battlefield but a follower of tradition, you're Neutral, simple as that. I think that most berserkers (those guys that got in a bloodlust and fought almost naked, right?) were just plain chaotic, but a "regular" Barbarian can be Neutral/Unaligned and follow rules, no problem.

No the Berserkirs weren't naked, they wore animal skins over their armor. But that's beside the point. Why does getting angry when you fight automatically mean you can't follow laws, have your own code of conduct, tell the truth, and all that jazz?

[Sutremaine]

A Barbarian is, regardless of fluff, someone who flies into mindless rages.
Lawful characters can't fly into mindless rages?

[moritheil]

I agree with the OP. The point of the alignment system is simplicity. It is an abstraction for quick and dirty (if vague) behavioral guidelines and team roster composition. The main problem people have with it is when they try to use it in other situations, like legitimate philosophical explorations of the meaning of evil, in a real-world context. It was not designed to do that. Getting mad when it can't do that is sort of like getting mad that your abacus can't spit out enough digits of pi.

I see this kind of complaint about the alignment system commonly:


The main problem I have with the alignment system...actually, D&D in general is that everything is very binary in nature.

Things either are or aren't. You either succeeded or failed. Stuff like that.

Don't wanna dwell in rant, so I'll keep to the matter at hand.

I'm not saying that the division of Law vs. Chaos or Good vs. Evil is my problem, but rather that fact that if you're evil, you're evil, the end.

Yes, "things are or are not evil" is simplistic. But I'm not sure that Keith Baker's solution - that people can be both good and evil, and detect as such - is any better.

In D&D alignment is ontological, meaning something just is evil or good. Another apt term to use would be Manichean; in D&D pure evil and pure good actually exist, and are fundamentally irreconcilable. Frankly, I suspect the issue is that the labels "good" and "evil" are really there for flavor. You would be better off replacing the terms in your mind with "Team Blue" and "Team Red." That way people won't be repeatedly tempted to use real world morality to have existential crises over whether you're really justified in reducing the "hit points" stat of amalgamation of statistics to 0.

Of course, if you want to run D&D as a morality play, one in which every Outsider actually has enough free will to choose which team to play for, and so on, that can work too, but then I'm guessing you won't be complaining about things like paladins* being entitled to kill baby dragons; you'll be rejoicing because it provides the opportunity to ask questions like, "What is morality, really?" :smallamused:


*Side rant: Also, people keep acting out this conceit that paladins are supposed to be excessively merciful, and act shocked when they kill evil creatures incapable of defending themselves. They're divinely appointed avengers and killers. They aren't limited to reasonable use of force; they aren't even required to accept surrender. Remember that only a few hundred years ago, in the real world, rape was considered naturally a part of the plunder of war. We who live in the modern world don't align with that mindset, and neither should we be surprised if we don't align with the mindset of people handed a divine mission to kill everyone who falls into a certain category.


A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

The only thing I can think of is that people get confused with the real-life paladins, the palatial servants were supposed to be the epitome of knighthood and protectors of the weak. The code does mention helping non-chaotic, non-evil innocents . . . but those are pretty notable exceptions, and in any remotely realistic society large numbers of the downtrodden are going to be excluded because of them. That peasant who couldn't render his proper taxes to his lord last year? Out. The bum who steals bread to live? Out. That squatter who lives in a condemned building because he can't afford real housing? Out. Those are all acts in defiance of the law, and the people are persisting in those conditions. The paladin isn't required to help them, and by the rules maybe shouldn't help them, unless she can ensure they don't return to that state of conflict with the law.

A reasonable law would maybe contain exceptions for such cases, but given that modern laws are often unreasonable, and medieval ones are widely thought to have been much worse... yeah. I don't see paladins as bringers of mercy.

[Water_Bear]

Lawful characters can't fly into mindless rages?

Not really?

Look at Mechanus. Law is about discipline, calculation, and careful examination of yourself and your goals. Strict codes of honor and procedure. A Lawful warrior should ideally fight with precision and intelligence, or at least use rote techniques drilled into them during training.

Barbarians are the perfect example of Chaos in action. They jump in, axe swinging, in a frothing incoherent rage. This is, again, held up by the mechanics even without fluff support.


What about being a bard requires being chaotic? Learning to play music? No, it most definitely doesn't. Being creative with your music? Of course not, talk to Brahms whose life was set in a rigid pattern. Learning magic? The wizard would like to disagree.


Bards don't have to be chaotic. They can be neutral. :smalltongue:

But seriously, the Bard's requirement is based on the traditional perception of artists as free spirits. I think a lot of DMs would be willing to give you an exception on the requirement if you want to play a lawful bard, but it misses the point of the class in my view.

Just have them be a Neutral Bard who became Lawful after they had to pay more attention to theory as a Virtuoso or Sublime Chord. It's less of a headache and keeps the flavor intact.

[Yuukale]

How do you view for example, an elf that would sacrifice himself for a fellow elf in need but wouldn't have the slightest compunction about razing human cities to ashes in order to further some elven scheme (retaking lands to stablish a new or rebuild an old empire?)

[moritheil]

How do you view for example, an elf that would sacrifice himself for a fellow elf in need but wouldn't have the slightest compunction about razing human cities to ashes in order to further some elven scheme (retaking lands to stablish a new or rebuild an old empire?)

I can see an argument for CG.


Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.


A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he’s kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society.

Remember, the system is an abstraction with a specific purpose. We by our modern standards of morality would have real problems saying a guy who razes cities full of people is "good." But that is not what D&D alignment is.

[Yuukale]

this character I played as CN (since he saves and takes lives with no great moral dilemmas).

But there's an implied question behind this one: are the alignments applicable on cross-race views or, as an example: I'm LG to elves and LE to any other races?

[Water_Bear]

We by our modern standards of morality would have real problems saying a guy who razes cities full of people is "good." But that is not what D&D alignment is.


Whether they hate a person, a country, or a whole race of creatures, villains motivated by hatred are implacable and intolerant, capable of dreadful acts in pursuit of destroying the object of their disgust. They aim to do maximum violence to their hated foes, and they might go so far as to commit genocide or mass murder to achieve their ends.

D&D alignments are a lot of things; they are objective in-universe, they are significantly influenced by heritage, and they determine whether a creature is deserving of mercy and protection.

They are not a blank cheque to slaughter innocents, and that is exactly what it means to indiscriminately destroy a city. Even a city of "Always Evil" creatures, by RAW has at least 5% of their population as non-Evil, plus children who are always presumed innocent.

A Neutral character might(!) get away with this kind of behavior if they showed remorse after being confronted with the tolls of their actions. In any of my campaigns, that is a one-way ticket to the Evil side of the pool.

[Dienekes]

Not really?

Look at Mechanus. Law is about discipline, calculation, and careful examination of yourself and your goals. Strict codes of honor and procedure. A Lawful warrior should ideally fight with precision and intelligence, or at least use rote techniques drilled into them during training.

This is implying that law is intelligent than chaos isn't. Which is actually not true at all. You can follow the law and the codes of society, be as honest as Abe and still get worked up and emotional in combat

Also that is one, completely inhuman version of lawful in action.

Take one of my favorite fictional characters: Lucius Vorenus. He's a stoic, intelligent, believes in the old Roman laws above all else even what is actually beneficial to him.

He also can fly into some very murderous rages because he is in fact human, has emotion, and anyone can channel their anger into violence, it is rather easy. If I were to build him he would be Lawful Neutral, and would have a level of Barbarian (mixed admittedly with Warblade to get some White Raven maneuvers and Diplomacy skill he was a Senator).


Bards don't have to be chaotic. They can be neutral. :smalltongue:

But seriously, the Bard's requirement is based on the traditional perception of artists as free spirits. I think a lot of DMs would be willing to give you an exception on the requirement if you want to play a lawful bard, but it misses the point of the class in my view.

Just have them be a Neutral Bard who became Lawful after they had to pay more attention to theory as a Virtuoso or Sublime Chord. It's less of a headache and keeps the flavor intact.

How is playing a lawful bard missing the point of the class? It's a guy that performs magic by singing/dancing/playing instruments/orating. Why would I have to go through hoops to play a lawful person that does that? Also how is just saying "yeah go ahead and play the lawful bard" more of a headache than making your player jump through hoops to play the character they want to?

[moritheil]

D&D alignments are a lot of things; they are objective in-universe, they are significantly influenced by heritage, and they determine whether a creature is deserving of mercy and protection.

They are not a blank cheque to slaughter innocents, and that is exactly what it means to indiscriminately destroy a city. Even a city of "Always Evil" creatures, by RAW has at least 5% of their population as non-Evil,

And this is known by who? By the DM? Sure, the all-knowing DM has all the facts. By the players? Maybe, maybe not (plenty don't stop to think about such things.) By the character? No guarantees, there.


plus children who are always presumed innocent.

If you're insisting on using RAW, that's not RAW at all. I just searched the entire alignment section for mentions of children, and the only mention is in LE, where LE villains pretend that letting children go makes them better (it doesn't.)


Some lawful evil villains have particular taboos, such as not killing in cold blood (but having underlings do it) or not letting children come to harm (if it can be helped). They imagine that these compunctions put them above unprincipled villains.

You seem to be a little indignant at my classification of a mass murderer as "good by the fast and dirty DnD rules," which to me suggests that you aren't separating this completely from real-world concepts of morality.


A Neutral character might(!) get away with this kind of behavior if they showed remorse after being confronted with the tolls of their actions. In any of my campaigns, that is a one-way ticket to the Evil side of the pool.

Everything in the Good alignment text I quoted talks about the character of the individual, correct? Their beliefs, their actions in the context of their beliefs, and so forth, are what determine alignment. It does not say that the factual accuracy of their beliefs determines alignment.

Now, I'm having to guess a bit about what this hypothetical elf does and does not believe to be true. I'm guessing in the most consistent way possible, because otherwise you're trying to pin an alignment to some sort of inconsistent madman, which may or may not even be doable (though it would mean I got the "Chaotic" part right.)

So: first item up, he believes strongly in doing good. He will lay his life down for his fellow elf because he can identify with his fellow elf as another person. This points to good.

Second item: he doesn't have any regard for nonelves (in this case, humans.) In trying to reconcile this with the first, I surmise that he has difficulty thinking of humans as sentient lifeforms. He does not acknowledge them as persons. In this he is very wrong, factually, but this offers an explanation consistent with his first trait. He can lay down his life for his fellow elf and raze cities of nonelves and have no conflict between the two because in his mind he is doing what is best for people. He is honestly trying to do good, as evinced by his willingness to sacrifice himself for even a stranger who is an elf. (This would be different if he was only willing to sacrifice for a fellow follower of the same deity, or part of the same family, or something - LEs can make that kind of sacrifice without blinking. But an LE won't sacrifice for an unaffiliated person.)

I can offer yet another explanation for this behavior, where the elf is a utilitarian: yes, it's terrible for humans to die, but it's also terrible if he doesn't prevent some tragedy that will happen if he doesn't raze the city. (This is how the eldar work in 40k.) So he's really just choosing which group gets to die, and sooner over later.

Obviously, you can make your own interpretation of this elf that doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt but instead argues that he willingly slaughters innocents. Neither this interpretation nor my interpretation above is better or more accurate, because this information is missing from the original post. That's why I said, "I see an argument for him being CG," not, "he is absolutely CG." I wrote that he could be CG. But it depends on what he really believes, which we don't know. We are forced to guess by limited information.

Aside: how literally do we interpret "life" here? Do you think it would make a human being evil to be willing to kill, say, an ants' nest in order to build an orphans' shelter? Strictly by RAW, that human is no more and no less evil than a mass murderer.


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

Above, I suggest that the point of differentiation is how the character recognizes the situation, but I suppose there are other ways of doing it too.

[Kish]

Remember, the system is an abstraction with a specific purpose. We by our modern standards of morality would have real problems saying a guy who razes cities full of people is "good." But that is not what D&D alignment is.
Like Vitruviansquid, you appear to have a concept of What D&D Alignment Is that is untainted by any D&D book's actual words on the subject.


You seem to be a little indignant at my classification of a mass murderer as "good by the fast and dirty DnD rules," which to me suggests that you aren't separating this completely from real-world concepts of morality.

That would probably be why Water_Bear is right and you're wrong.

"Separating this completely from real-world concepts of morality" will not lead you anywhere useful, where D&D alignment is concerned.

Repeating that an elf who doesn't value human life can be good "by RAW" doesn't change the simple fact that the briefest glance into the relevant section of the Player's Handbook should tell anyone that RAW permits nothing of the sort.


Above, I suggest that the point of differentiation is how the character recognizes the situation, but I suppose there are other ways of doing it too.
Confronted with a direct quote from RAW, you're wibbling. The book doesn't say "Evil characters consider themselves to debase or destroy innocent life."

[moritheil]

Like Vitruviansquid, you appear to have a concept of What D&D Alignment Is that is untainted by any D&D book's actual words on the subject.

RAW, every time you step on an ant, or your fireball sails off into the bush and kills plants, you are committing an act morally indistinguishable from slaughtering orphans. That's RAW, right there. RAW only looks at "life." I quoted it. So if you want to take that to its logical conclusion, that would mean like 99% of the world commits evil acts on a regular basis, because they can't help it. (Do you kill things and eat them, or benefit from the killing of things so that you can eat? Yes? By strict RAW, you are evil.)

My solution is to note that factual accuracy is also something that the character can't necessarily help, and look at what the character intended. As I said, you can come up with other ways of breaking the deadlock. Neither are technically right by RAW, because they aren't RAW.


That would probably be why Water_Bear is right and you're wrong.

That would be why Water_Bear responds strongly to my post, and you share his bias, so your knee-jerk response is that he must be right and I must be wrong. But both of us are going out of RAW; he is doing so in a way that preserves his ability to think of these rules as morality, and I am doing so in a way that preserves my ability to think of these rules as abstract rules of D&D.


"Separating this completely from real-world concepts of morality" will not lead you anywhere useful, where D&D alignment is concerned.

I firmly disagree. As I asserted previously, Good and Evil in D&D are "Red Team, Blue Team," unless you're actually trying to play in a morality play. If you are, that's cool and I certainly won't stop you. But for those who aren't trying to agonize over it, it is quite useful to treat good and evil this way.

[Hiro Protagonest]

This thread has quickly become an example of why alignment is bad.

[Kish]

RAW, every time you step on an ant, or your fireball sails off into the bush and kills plants, you are committing an act morally indistinguishable from slaughtering orphans. That's RAW, right there. RAW only looks at "life." I quoted it.

Interesting claim you're making there. Either you're saying that there is only one word, of one syllable, in all the D&D books, about the alignment system...or you're claiming to be able to prove a negative. More than that, a negative existence of words which actually exist inches away from the word "life" which you're taking out of context.


That would be why Water_Bear responds strongly to my post, and you share his bias, so your knee-jerk response is that he must be right and I must be wrong.

No, see--I say that he's right and you're wrong because you're saying that "Rules As Written" support something that they plainly don't. "Cold is better for cooking food than heat!"=wrong. As simple as that.


I firmly disagree.
Yes, I got that you disagree that the book says what it says.

[Othesemo]

I take offense to the implication that only a lawful warrior can be cool and calculating, or that a chaotic one must fly into a mindless rage.

I'll begin by saying that my alignment is essentially established, both by myself, friends (and enemies), and various tests (in short, it's as concrete as possible). However, I'm curious what you make of it; give me your best guess.

Firstly, I'm a musician. I probably play music for about four hours any given day- both at professional gigs, and playing for the hell of it. I compose music not dissimilar to Stravinsky, and do so with absolutely no regard for any modern (or classical) conventions. I've variously learned nearly half a dozen instruments for no reason beyond it sounding fun. However, I also fence (the sport, not the lawn care). And when I fence, I focus completely on that. I'm strategizing almost faster than I can consciously perceive- certainly faster than my opponent usually can. I fight with precision and intelligence, utilizing all of the drills taught to me. I'd be insulted if anyone implied that emotion entered into my mind as I fought.

So, tell me. Am I lawful, or chaotic, or neutral? Which pigeonhole am I best suited for?

[navar100]

Most of the problem with the alignment system is some people want to play out their violent psychopathic fantasies (some hyperbole but not entirely) yet resent their character would be labeled Evil. In less obviousness but part of the same point, Lawful Good is subconsciously considered the epitome of being The One True Way, The Righteous, The Hero, but resentment is there when told their actions is not Lawful Good either because they want to be called Lawful Good when they're not or despise that Lawful Good is considered such Righteousness in the first place such that because they're not Lawful Good and they know they're not they hate being considered lesser beings because of it.

The resentment is there because players inherently have their own real life morals and ethics which are The One True Way for them, and when such philosophy wouldn't be Lawful Good in D&D terms they blame the alignment system as broken.

The rest of the problem is those who use the alignment system as a straight jacket/get out of jail free card. Straight jacket are for those who use alignment to dictate behavior with no deviation and punish you for not playing correctly and get out of jail free card for those who are jerks and use their character's alignment as justification to play a donkey cavity female hygiene product sack of feces.

[moritheil]

This thread has quickly become an example of why alignment is bad.

I'd rather say that this thread has quickly become an example of why people wanting other people to play the game the way they play it is bad. :smallamused:


Interesting claim you're making there. Either you're saying that there is only one word, of one syllable, in all the D&D books, about the alignment system...or you're claiming to be able to prove a negative. More than that, a negative existence of words which actually exist inches away from the word "life" you're taking out of context to build a house of cards.

Neither thing. I merely point out the difficulties presented by the alignment system in reconciling that statement - difficulties which can be overcome by interpreting the rules a certain consistent way. I acknowledged, early on, that there were other interpretations, but I don't think that this interpretation is unworkable; thus, it's legitimate.


No, see--I say that he's right and you're wrong because you're saying that "Rules As Written" support something that they plainly don't. "Cold is better for cooking food than heat!"=wrong. As simple as that.

But you're arbitrarily using a definition of innocence that supports your own preconceptions of morality. I have a real problem with dragging that into a fantasy game unless everyone else at the table is agreed upon it.

See, if you think "obviously cold can't be better for cooking food than heat" is a tenet that does not need to be stated, then that constitutes something you aren't able to suspend disbelief about. But we even have real world examples of cold cooking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id_OC8qsH6E&feature=player_embedded), so is it so unreasonable to say that in a fantasy world that could be the norm and that cold COULD be better than heat for cooking? I'd say that your assertion "cooking=heat" is an excellent example of how if you're not careful you wind up dragging preconceptions into things.


Yes, I got that you disagree that the book says what it says.

No, I disagree that what you think the book says is the only right way to interpret it. Furthermore I disagree with the idea that your own concept of morality (that you use in real life) should necessarily be linked to treatment of morality in D&D, for precisely this reason: it causes these kinds of arguments over what "feels" wrong.

[Water_Bear]

I may have been overly confrontational before, so I'm going to say this first; I did not mean to insult you, or anyone else, when I said that razing a city is mass murder and an evil action in D&D. I will try to be more even-tempered in my explanation below.

It is an Evil action to kill an innocent being indiscriminately. This ought to be evident based on the PHB description, but if not then I direct you to the Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, Champions of Ruin, Champions of Valor, and Exemplars of Evil.

The description "Always X" explicitly means that ~95% of the population has that alignment, but the rest have other alignments. I think we can agree that non-Evil and Good NPCs are Innocent in a cosmic sense, and that children should logically be lumped in with them as (with rare exceptions like Unholy Scions) they don't have the ability to commit evil and arguably do not get alignments at all until the age of majority.

With regards to the "incorrect beliefs" argument, where the perpetrator doesn't know that the people they kill "count," the fact is that characters should be expected to know better. As my earlier Exemplars of Evil quote shows, and is found elsewhere, bigotry is considered a minor Evil act in D&D and acting on that hatred is a heinous act of violation and evil.

So, with that reasoning, burning down a city of intelligent beings is going to be a heinous act even without considering the sheer suffering such an act would cause. Just the fact that you are killing those 5% of non-Evil adults and 99.99% of Innocent children is more than enough to say it is something which displays a lack of respect for the life and dignity of others.

[moritheil]

I may have been overly confrontational before, so I'm going to say this first; I did not mean to insult you, or anyone else, when I said that razing a city is mass murder and an evil action in D&D. I will try to be more even-tempered in my explanation below.

It is an Evil action to kill an innocent being indiscriminately. This ought to be evident based on the PHB description, but if not then I direct you to the Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, Champions of Ruin, Champions of Valor, and Exemplars of Evil.

Yes, I do agree! But here is where I think you (and possibly your supporter) missed my point - that term, innocent, is not well defined! Kids are not defined as innocent, and the RAW even goes so far as to suggest that sparing kids so as to not murder innocents is a delusion of villains that makes them think that they are less evil. Slaughtering baby red dragon hatchlings, in many interpretations, is a good and noble act, and the RAW doesn't contradict that except in BOED (which presents alternate rules for redeeming things that are irredeemable in core.)


The description "Always X" explicitly means that ~95% of the population has that alignment, but the rest have other alignments. I think we can agree that non-Evil and Good NPCs are Innocent in a cosmic sense, and that children should logically be lumped in with them as (with rare exceptions like Unholy Scions) they don't have the ability to commit evil and arguably do not get alignments at all until the age of majority.

No, emphatically not. To do so is to bring our presuppositions over real world morality into it. It could just as easily be true that non-alignment-typed children are born evil (after all, kids are mean to each other) and need to grow up to be capable of making the choice to be good.

If you want to define kids as innocent, you are free to do so - in your own campaigns. And other people are free to define them as automatically guilty, or neutral, or whatever they want. RAW does not define innocence. Therefore a campaign where human paladins descend on a goblin encampment and slaughter everyone without troubling their alignment (much like the OOTS storyline itself) falls within acceptable interpretations of RAW.


With regards to the "incorrect beliefs" argument, where the perpetrator doesn't know that the people they kill "count," the fact is that characters should be expected to know better.

If that's what the group you're playing with agrees upon, sure. But if you're going to tell me there's no interpretation of that hypothetical elf wherein he's CG? Sorry, there's so much wiggle room there that I can't agree with you - I see several ways he can be CG, for given interpretations of the alignment rules.


As my earlier Exemplars of Evil quote shows, and is found elsewhere, bigotry is considered a minor Evil act in D&D and acting on that hatred is a heinous act of violation and evil.

In my first example the elf doesn't hate humans; he just doesn't understand that they are people capable of feeling pain and suffering, and worthy of respect and forbearance. He thinks of them as a human might think of plants.


So, with that reasoning, burning down a city of intelligent beings is going to be a heinous act even without considering the sheer suffering such an act would cause. Just the fact that you are killing those 5% of non-Evil adults and 99.99% of Innocent children is more than enough to say it is something which displays a lack of respect for the life and dignity of others.

But I told you he doesn't think of them as intelligent beings when I first posited the example. (I said he couldn't recognize they were "sentient," but I assume we are getting at the same idea.) He doesn't understand his act is evil, and he did it not out of hate, but in the spirit of doing good and kindness to other people, which to him necessarily means other elves (remember my analogy of killing an ant colony to build an orphanage?)

[moritheil]

So, tell me. Am I lawful, or chaotic, or neutral? Which pigeonhole am I best suited for?

And this is the point at which I generally tell people that it's just an abstract system of rules made to categorize characters and tell us how they interact with spells. Actual people are complex enough to give such a system fits. Thus, I am an advocate for mentally replacing "good" and "evil" with "blue team, red team."


The resentment is there because players inherently have their own real life morals and ethics which are The One True Way for them, and when such philosophy wouldn't be Lawful Good in D&D terms they blame the alignment system as broken.

You're right, but I think it's even more fundamental than that. The question I would say this hinges on is, does something have to make sense to us in order to be true? Because some people can handle a nonsensical world, and some people really can't. Their games are going to be different.

Personally, I feel a lot of results that DnD spits out at us, or asks us to accept, make no sense. (Fireballs produce tremendous heat, but no pressure change? Come on.) This is where willingness to suspend your own ideas about reality comes into play. People react to that absurdity differently, and can tolerate different amounts in different places. How you or I react to that absurdity may put us at odds with how other people feel things should be handled.

[Venger]

I'd rather say that this thread has quickly become an example of why people wanting other people to play the game the way they play it is bad. :smallamused:
yep. a practice known as badwrongfun. :smalltongue:


real world examples of cold cooking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id_OC8qsH6E&feature=player_embedded)

wow! that's cool as hell! thanks for posting that.



UNLESS the person is just SO pure or so evil that thier souls begin to register. A genocidal warlord with the blood of thousands almost literaly on his hands, with a strong sadistic streak is such a hateful and vile creature that his soul begins to become demonic even BEFORE he enters hell. He becomes a demon in a mortal shell


with all of the things that others have mentioned, the standard for alignment threads, I wanted to mention something that has always been a problem for me with alignment and I never see brought up.

there doesn't really exist RAW any sort of degree for alignment. I forget which splat, but one of the books says that an inkeep who waters down his beer is NE (I think)

so, between him and say, for example, a mind flayer, who is more NE? well, going by RAW, neither of them.

I'm not saying that they need to introduce a 100 point scale or anything, just that it seems to be a sort of problem, especially since some books, like the fiendish codices show how an alignment can shift with certain acts. how do you know what your starting point is?

again, I'm not saying that these questions have (or need) an answer, just that with the system as-is, they can't really have one derived.

personally, in my games, I try not to make alignment a big deal. as you'd imagine, neither I nor my players notice anything missing.

[Knaight]

Nobody in the Song of Roland asked if Baligant donates a lot of money to a kitten orphanage, or how much joy Roland derived from killing people. Baligant was capital-E Evil because he was a Saracen and Roland was capital-G Good because he was a Christian, and that was that.

Palomides in Le Morte d'Arthur is a Saracen knight that serves under Arthur. Moors were integrated in medieval culture throughout just about the entire period. The actual crusades, which the Song of Roland is connected to? Much of the first one consisted of Crusader states were allying with Islamic states* to fight other crusader states and Islamic states were allying with crusader states to fight other Islamic states. The third involved the fall of the Fatimid dynasty at the hands of other states and internal forces. Actual history isn't so simple, and assuming that actual medieval people always thought of things in black and white with no consideration of nuance is incredibly inaccurate. Nuance was lost in much of the literature, and yet to a large extent it is still there - look at Le Morte d'Arthur, and the conflict between Lancelot and Gawain. Nobody is really positioned as Good or Evil, both are sympathetic, and the reason they conflict is due to the characters being developed.

As such, that particular argument collapses. If you want to argue that alignment works well representing the shallow understanding of the middle ages largely inferred from Renaissance works where Renaissance historians tried to make themselves look better by trashing the period, then fine, do so. That holds up perfectly. However, I, for one, would prefer not to argue that something is fine because it resembles a group the way another group painted them in immensely self aggrandizing works.

[Acanous]

Just going to point out here, you DO get varying shades of evil when you use Detect Evil, as showcased in the "Aura of Good/Aura of Evil" descriptors.

This, of course, is based entirely on hit die, and not on actual evil acts at all, (Aside from that an Evil cleric is going to glow more evil than an evil barbarian, presumably because of his link to higher evils)
but you as a paladin can see "This is a very weak evil aura" (Lv 1 evil commoner) as opposed to "This evil aura is overwhelming!" (Balor)

If the paladin strikes an unarmed civilian who is not in the process of an evil act, he's going to fall, regardless of that civilian's alignment. (It's in the paladin code)

[Deophaun]

there doesn't really exist RAW any sort of degree for alignment. I forget which splat, but one of the books says that an inkeep who waters down his beer is NE (I think)

so, between him and say, for example, a mind flayer, who is more NE? well, going by RAW, neither of them.
Not necessarily true. If the inn keeper has at least 11 HD, then he is more evil than the 8HD mind flayer. The mind flayer is faintly evil under a detect evil spell, whereas the 11HD inn keeper is moderately evil.

And curse forum lag...


If the paladin strikes an unarmed civilian who is not in the process of an evil act, he's going to fall, regardless of that civilian's alignment. (It's in the paladin code)
That's ok. The Paladin can just walk into the barkeeper's establishment during business hours and smite him without a problem.

Alignment is fun!

[Venger]

Just going to point out here, you DO get varying shades of evil when you use Detect Evil, as showcased in the "Aura of Good/Aura of Evil" descriptors.

This, of course, is based entirely on hit die, and not on actual evil acts at all, (Aside from that an Evil cleric is going to glow more evil than an evil barbarian, presumably because of his link to higher evils)
but you as a paladin can see "This is a very weak evil aura" (Lv 1 evil commoner) as opposed to "This evil aura is overwhelming!" (Balor)

If the paladin strikes an unarmed civilian who is not in the process of an evil act, he's going to fall, regardless of that civilian's alignment. (It's in the paladin code)

you are right, but that's exactly was what I was talking about. say there's a 12th lvl character who's commited a few petty evil acts, just enough to push him over the E threshold versus say a level 6 evil paladin of some sort who has devoted his life to moustache twirling acts of senseless meanness.

the "strength" of their alignment, so to speak, is, as you said, based on character level rather than their actual (alignment) acts. do you get "more" LG/CE/etc as you level up? well, not necessarily, no.



Not necessarily true. If the inn keeper has at least 11 HD, then he is more evil than the 8HD mind flayer. The mind flayer is faintly evil under a detect evil spell, whereas the 11HD inn keeper is moderately evil.
that's exactly my point though. watering down your beer is not worse than taking prisoners and using them for slave labor and eugenics experiments. this more than the other stuff has been alignment's biggest failing for me.

[Deophaun]

that's exactly my point though. watering down your beer is not worse than taking prisoners and using them for slave labor and eugenics experiments. this more than the other stuff has been alignment's biggest failing for me.
Tell that to a dwarven paladin.

[Lord_Gareth]

What's alighnment?

Anyway, if you do use alignment, the color wheel tends to be better. Black is not Evil, White is not Good, and you can pin down Batman with it. Lord_Gareth's interpretation isn't very good (you only have five colors. How do you get two or three colors for yourself, two allied colors, and two enemy colors?), but just get Primary/Secondary/Tertiary colors (only Primary is required) and you're good. You can put Batman in any alignment except NE/CE, but with color wheel, he's White/Blue for lighter interpretations, and White/Black or White/Black/Blue or White/Blue/Black for darker ones.

But alignment causes problems. It's another one of those things that causes conflicts and people getting kicked out.

In my defense, we (the thread) have started moving in the direction of having only your primary color count for what few mechanical purposes have survived. I just haven't archived it/written a new thread with edits in general yet.

[Acanous]

Well, if you're a Dwarven paladin, watering down beer could very well be a smiteworthy offense.

As far as I'm conserned, the alignment system is really only missing two things:
1: a standard system of measurement. This is currently left up to the DM, and you get all kinds of things from alignment rubberbanding to detect-and-die campaigns.
2: it is easier to be evil than good. The writers expected players to be "Good guys", and while they opened up the OPTION to be (Or become) Evil, it was seen as undesireable to do so.
Neutral should be the "Easy" alignment. Good and Evil require dedication to principals and goals, and constant drive towards them. Law and Chaos the same.

As far as the hit dice thing goes, it is a flaw, but I can see why they did it that way. Bubs the lv 1 Evil Commoner might kick a dog. That matters to Bubs and the Dog. If Bubs kicked a Cat, bubs would die.

Phil the Bandit Lord is a lv 6 Rogue. He's a big bad dude, not the kind of guy even the local Law enforcement wants to take on. His evil acts effect an entire community, but probably just in one area. The Kingdom can still rally up a squad of knights to deal with him, and a suitably large angry mob can take him down.

James the lv 12 Evil Cleric is capable of purpetraiting evil acts all across the country, and if he REALLY tries at it, the globe. There might be 3-4 NPCs capable of taking him on in the whole world. He is a serious threat that affects entire nations. Rallying groups to oppose him is difficult, and he's going to be causing some serious damage and take a long time to actually bring down.

Frank the lv 17 Evil wizard is going around killing gods. His evil acts effect the entire multiverse. He could easilly conquer an entire plane, and if he put any effort into it at all, you'd need direct divine intervention in order to slow him down. Stopping him would require an overdeity, and so long as there's evil gods in the pantheon, too, you're unlikely to see that happen.
Rallying adventurers to oppose Frank is going to be a very difficult prospect, as he's liable to hear about it and kill you before you ever actually pose a threat. Frank is a Big Bad Evil Guy.

The reason Detect Evil works off of hit dice, is because of how big an impact your evil actions create. If you're a normally-good adventurer, who hit level 12 and started doing evil things, nobody's going to care about that kitten you saved last week, they're going to care more about that trade ship you just burned down, causing food scarcity and riots in another city.

Now, most DMs don't actually transition your theatre of operations based on level. They are supposed to, but there's no hard rule saying "This is the level where PCs step up to heroes of the town, heroes of the country, heroes of the plane" and you'll normally see adventurers running around at lv 12 with the same horse-drawn wagon full of stuff they had at lv 6. This is -Because that's easy-, and is in itself a -Neutral- act. Good and Evil adventurers should be constantly striving to make a change to the world. Same with Law/Chaos.

Of course, that's *My* opinion as a DM, and without an objective alignment measurement system, it only applies to my games.

[Fatebreaker]

In my defense, we (the thread) have started moving in the direction of having only your primary color count for what few mechanical purposes have survived. I just haven't archived it/written a new thread with edits in general yet.

I'd really like to see more of your color wheel theory. Also, have you given any thought to how a M:tG rpg would work? 'cause I'd like to see your interpretation of that, too.

--

On alignment:

The main problem I have with alignment is that the system is conceptually loose but mechanically strict.

Conceptually, good and evil and lawful and chaotic are not terms which we as players have a clear or even mutual understanding of. Individuals might have their own ideas, and individual groups might share commonality of thought, but as a community? Not so much. Well, maybe that doesn't matter. Some vague, loose, and sometimes contradictory or nonsensical ideas on alignment might not be a problem. I mean, it's not like it actually has an in-game effect, right?

...oh.

Mechanically, alignment is strict. Different spells and abilities have different effects on characters of different alignments. Certain classes can lose abilities if their alignment changes. Certain classes are not even an option for characters of specific alignments. Suddenly, players have incentive to be this alignment or that alignment. They have penalties for being the wrong alignment. Now, it is profitable for players to take alignment seriously, because alignment questions have serious consequences. When alignment isn't clearly defined, but has clear consequences, that's a foundation for conflict.

[Lord_Gareth]

I'd really like to see more of your color wheel theory. Also, have you given any thought to how a M:tG rpg would work? 'cause I'd like to see your interpretation of that, too.

It would work extremely poorly and to the complete displeasure of those who enjoy either M:tG, RPGs, or both.

That being said, setting a game in an M:tG world, which is not the same thing, might work out. In a lot of cases the worlds themselves have gotten away from a lot of the flavor that would limit them from translating to other systems or at least make it very annoying to do so (such as drawing mana from land). For example, you could probably run Ravnica in 3.5 or Legend with zero fuss as long as you're willing to re-skin a few things.

[hamishspence]

If the paladin strikes an unarmed civilian who is not in the process of an evil act, he's going to fall, regardless of that civilian's alignment. (It's in the paladin code)

It's in the BoED, in various references that state that its evil to "go to war" with evil creatures when you have no evidence of actual wrongdoing, and to target non-combatants during a justified war against evil.

It's in Eberron Campaign Setting where it states that not every Evil creature deserves to be attacked by adventurers (the examples given were an innkeeper and a lawyer)

It's in Dragon Magazine 358: August 2007: Paladin Guide (page 93)

"Any violent acts the paladin undertakes must be motivated by good intentions and undertaken in such a way as to minimise damage (a paladin may not slay every evil creature she sees in the hopes of preventing future violence). She cannot levy violence against noncombatants, children, or helpless creatures, even evil ones"

But oddly, the PHB doesn't say much about it. In fact, some people could interpret "punish those that harm or threaten innocents" as allowing killing as a punishment even if it took place in the past and the person you want to punish is unarmed and unthreatening to anyone right now.

[Socratov]

OK, first off, i love the alignment system. it offers a framework to roleplay your character.

A few problems do exist with ti (but hey, what doesn't have problems in dnd 3.5). 1) people thi the alignment is static and guiding. Im my opinion alignment is flexible. a shift in alignment because of in game actions for me counts as character growth. 2) people think alignment is limiting and in it's binary nature inhibits people to take actions, Im my opinion, a character acts and it's alignment represents the nature of the last few actions a character makes. Exceptions to this rule are paladins and exalted characters. they are obviously influenced in their alignment, but they are also the epitome of good (works for the evil sides too, they are the paragons of a certain alignment). alignment, when used well, can offer a guideline on how to act when you have a certain alignment. It give you a hand in how a character of comparable alignemnt acts, it doesnt tell you directly how to behave. 3) aligment justifies certain acts. again, except for paladins who actually have abilities to discern and eradicate evil, alignment does nog justify a genocidal action against a certain group of certain aligned people. In simpler words, no it si nog ok to justify murder by "he was evil, duh" or any comparable excuse. However, it should make it easier to atone for sins agaisnt those people when it happens. 4) peopel think alignment is absolute. No, alignment is subjective. if you are good aligned, evil people are compared to you evil. Whe you are neutral aligned, evil is comparably less evil then in the example before. Evil in the last example is just a person who cares a bit less about the baclash of certain ections then a neutral character.

I know some things I said have allready been said, but it's ahrd to give change of half a copper piece on 2 cp :smallamused:

[sonofzeal]

I think the alignment system has its merits, as long as you see it as a continuum rather than a straighjacket. Many of my characters border two or more alignments, and that's okay.

[Taelas]

Repeating that an elf who doesn't value human life can be good "by RAW" doesn't change the simple fact that the briefest glance into the relevant section of the Player's Handbook should tell anyone that RAW permits nothing of the sort.
No, the relevant sections of the Player's Handbook permits exactly that.

Look on page 103, the right-hand column, and read the last paragraph. Specifically focus on how "few people are completely consistent". An otherwise Good elf can remain Good while not placing any value on human life, because being Good does not necessarily mean you are Good in every aspect of who you are.

Likewise, an otherwise Evil character can have traits more commonly associated with Good, such as caring for orphans, the poor, the outcasts. Raistlin Majere is an example of just such a character.

[Water_Bear]

Look, I get that people want the rules to be unambiguous and clear, and that its fun to see what you can allow under the exact wording of the rules.

But really, come on.

Is it Good, by any definition of that word, to stab babies? Especially when D&D makes it abundantly clear that there is no guarantee, even with Evil Outsiders, that they will become monsters?

The various alignment source-books are filled with examples of Good behavior being merciful and respectful of non-Evil life, and repeatedly urge against Detect-and-Smite behavior.

And what does it say about us as a hobby if we need to told explicitly that killing children is wrong? Maybe it's just me, but my group usually just rules off infanticide right off the bat. I feel like I've wandered into an Anti-D&D Chick Tract or something...

[Venger]

Killing unarmed people? Thats wrong. Capturing is the word. A paladin can still be unwavering in his pursuit of law and justice and kindness. Just the methodology is weird.

Do monks count? :smallbiggrin:

[Snowbluff]

This thread has quickly become an example of why alignment is bad.

Yeah. I like alignment, but it's fluff. Citing anything by RAW is pointless because it's fluff. Argument is worthless because the arguments are in the pointless RAW... :smallsigh:

[Scowling Dragon]

This thread has quickly become an example of why alignment is bad.

I disrespectfully (Cause Im CE) disagree. Its interesting to see how different people see alignment.

[Snowbluff]

Do monks count? :smallbiggrin:

Don't Monks get Imp Unarmed Strike, or are at least considered armed with fists? So they are ALWAYS armed, and therefore should be arrested in places you aren't allowed to be armed? :smallamused:

[Suddo]

Whilst I do believe that commoners SHOULD have an alighnment, it just shouldn't register with spells. Detect evil should not be an excuse to kill
UNLESS the person is just SO pure or so evil that thier souls begin to register. A genocidal warlord with the blood of thousands almost literaly on his hands, with a strong sadistic streak is such a hateful and vile creature that his soul begins to become demonic even BEFORE he enters hell. He becomes a demon in a mortal shell


These are the 2 things I have in my worlds and apply. I tend to not think that murdering someone is evil sense the act in a vacuum could be evil but apply any outside influences and it can immediately become Neutral or Good. I could give literally dozens, if not hundreds, of scenarios and explain why the Paladin breaks his code of conduct but is doing a extremely good thing.
I play a mostly Tier 3 games, for PCs, so beyond the Incarnums no one has alignment straight jackets which is the main problem with the morality system. When RP interferes with how your character mechanically acts then you might have people who are playing a alignment just for a power which is silly, outside of necromancy and a few other things. What's the statement roleplay shouldn't interfere with rollplay or the other way around.
The only time I think alignments are okay is with divines but that's more due to the fact that you are powerless without your god/s and you shouldn't piss them off. In fact I'd choke up on the restraints for Clerics to the point of paladins, though it isn't a problem sense I only have that as an NPC class.

[Kish]

No, the relevant sections of the Player's Handbook permits exactly that.

Look on page 103, the right-hand column, and read the last paragraph. Specifically focus on how "few people are completely consistent".And then torture the English language by treating "completely consistent" as "meaningfully-described-by-any-other-words-here."

No thanks. I don't need proof that it's possible to twist words if you want them to say something they don't; even if you weren't the third person in this thread to offer this argument, I already knew that. But words still mean things.

[PersonMan]

Don't Monks get Imp Unarmed Strike, or are at least considered armed with fists? So they are ALWAYS armed, and therefore should be arrested in places you aren't allowed to be armed? :smallamused:

But they aren't any more proficient in them than normal people, by RAW, so they just happen to hit people to death, they don't have any special training on how to hit people.

[Snowbluff]

But they aren't any more proficient in them than normal people, by RAW, so they just happen to hit people to death, they don't have any special training on how to hit people.

Nope. You aren't armed when striking someone unless you have this feat. FOr the most part, only Monks can be kicked out of places for being armed all of the time, cuz they are. Armed. With themselves. The only weapon they can't drop. Paladins can kill them because they are never unarmed... wai-

I'd like to point out that you probably just figured out the big problem with monk. Their 'special training' consists of waving their arms a little faster, hurting their chance to hit 'Flurry of Blows'.

[Taelas]

And then torture the English language by treating "completely consistent" as "meaningfully-described-by-any-other-words-here."

No thanks. I don't need proof that it's possible to twist words if you want them to say something they don't; even if you weren't the third person in this thread to offer this argument, I already knew that. But words still mean things.

...

What on earth are you going on about?

"Completely consistent" means exactly that. A person is not necessarily 100% of one alignment, but it is the majority that matters, not any individual aspect. Even if an elf treats human lives as disposable and with cruelty, they can still be Good, if the rest of their personality fulfills the criteria for Good.

The rules directly permits this. There is no twisting of words, and it is actually quite insulting that you would claim I am doing so.

People are not cardboard figures that fit neatly into 9 boxes. Alignment was never meant to model individuals in more than general terms.

[huttj509]

Alignment can be great UNTIL you get effects depending on it.

It can be a useful general guideline to worldview, but then you get a spell where the difference between being killed and blinded is which of 9 boxes you fit in.

When it becomes mechanically important to know specifically if you qualify as neutral or evil, things break down.

People don't fit neatly into boxes. Even in fiction. There will be those who straddle the edge, and could go either way. If that call makes the difference between taking dex damage, and nothing happening, you'll get disagreement. Heck, it seems like you get "what alignment is ____" threads on a fictional character, and you'll get 12 different answers in the 3.5 system, unless the character's Dudley Do-right or The Joker (and even then, which version?)

[HalfGrammarGeek]

This thread has quickly become an example of why alignment is bad.
You're right. And ya know what else? We gamers disagree about rules all the time, so rules must be bad too.

[Callista]

I like alignment, too, especially the two-axis system. Most of the drawbacks seem to come out when people don't really take the time to understand it.

Biggest mistakes people make when trying to apply the alignment system:
1. Confusing Law with Good and Chaos with Evil. (CG Haley and LE Redcloak beg to differ.)
2. Changing alignment too quickly, based on single actions rather than patterns of behavior and character development: "You got drunk and killed that guy in a bar fight! You're Evil now."
3. Treating alignments like factions which must always be hostile to each other.
4. Confusing "Lawful" with "Law-Abiding", "Chaotic" with "Absolutely Random", "Good" with "Nice", or "Evil" with "Omnicidal Maniac".
5. Playing according to your character's alignment rather than his personality.
6. Treating an alignment change as though it's a punitive action rather than a sign of character development.

The alignment system is a good thing because it allows you to have a shorthand for your character's ethical beliefs and goals. It's a good role-playing aid. If you didn't role-play at all, you wouldn't need alignment; you'd just be out there gaining as much XP as you could. With alignment, you have a way of briefly stating what your character values, and which cosmic forces he's connected to.

[Sucrose]

...

What on earth are you going on about?

"Completely consistent" means exactly that. A person is not necessarily 100% of one alignment, but it is the majority that matters, not any individual aspect. Even if an elf treats human lives as disposable and with cruelty, they can still be Good, if the rest of their personality fulfills the criteria for Good.

The rules directly permits this. There is no twisting of words, and it is actually quite insulting that you would claim I am doing so.

People are not cardboard figures that fit neatly into 9 boxes. Alignment was never meant to model individuals in more than general terms.

Some would argue, both the person you quoted and myself included, that the capacity to see another sentient as completely disposable due to race is a sufficiently flagrant breach of the Good alignment that it overshadows any other personality traits.

Take, for example, John Wayne Gacy. He spent much of his time doing charity work, and generally serving as a pillar of the community. However, he carried out at least 33 grisly murders. These overshadow the rest of his personality.

[Hiro Protagonest]

You're right. And ya know what else? We gamers disagree about rules all the time, so rules must be bad too.

Every thread about alignment that I've seen has turned into an argument. But threads on rules? Get resolved quickly in most cases. The only time people have argued about the RAW is when the rules are VAGUE, and vague rules are a bad thing.

[Scowling Dragon]

I actualy like spells related to alignment. But I make them work only against oure demons or truly evil people.

[sonofzeal]

Some would argue, both the person you quoted and myself included, that the capacity to see another sentient as completely disposable due to race is a sufficiently flagrant breach of the Good alignment that it overshadows any other personality traits.

Take, for example, John Wayne Gacy. He spent much of his time doing charity work, and generally serving as a pillar of the community. However, he carried out at least 33 grisly murders. These overshadow the rest of his personality.
What about [real-world person widely praised as noble]? He never killed anyone, but he published some pretty unflattering things about [ethnic group] during his time in [country]. Does that make him a bad person despite everything else?

[Shadowknight12]

I like alignment like I like my women: smart and open to new ideas.

No, really, that sums up my feelings on the alignment system. It's a good idea, but it needs to be adjusted to personal playstyles. We can't all play the same way, so we can't all expect to use the same rules the exact same way. Houseruling should be the norm, not some hideous sin.

[Sucrose]

What about Ghandi? He never killed anyone, but he published some pretty unflattering things about black people during his time in South Africa. Does that make him a bad person despite everything else?

Well, I've heard some rather unflattering things about how he treated his wife, and he did endorse Hitler, so my feelings on Ghandi are rather mixed to begin with. But if that were the only thing that were wrong with him? It would probably peg him to neutral. But even the blacks of South Africa were treated better than this elf is supposed to be willing to treat humans, given that apparently casually razing a city Eldar-style is on the table.

Now, if he had no sympathy after seeing the West Indian colonies, then I'd have no choice but to peg him as Evil.

[sonofzeal]

Well, I've heard some rather unflattering things about how he treated his wife, and he did endorse Hitler, so my feelings on [real-world person widely praised as noble] are rather mixed to begin with. But if that were the only thing that were wrong with him? It would probably peg him to neutral. But even the blacks of South Africa were treated better than this elf is supposed to be willing to treat humans, given that apparently casually razing a city Eldar-style is on the table.

Now, if he had no sympathy after seeing the West Indian colonies, then I'd have no choice but to peg him as Evil.
We should probably get off the [real-world person widely praised as noble] issue as in hindsight it might be skirting board rules.

Anyway, my point is that we are large; we contain multitudes. Good people are not good all the time, and bad people are not bad all the time. It's one thing to say that a serial murder's crimes outweighed his charitable contributions, but it's another to say that any amount of bigotry outweighs any amount of good.

[Water_Bear]

Anyway, my point is that we are large; we contain multitudes. Good people are not good all the time, and bad people are not bad all the time. It's one thing to say that a serial murder's crimes outweighed his charitable contributions, but it's another to say that any amount of bigotry outweighs any amount of good.


Then you should be happy; no-one so far has suggested that bigotry alone is enough to push someone into an Evil alignment.

But using racial hatred to justify the slaughter of the thousands or tens of thousands of sentient beings living in a city? THAT is some Grade-A Evil.

The Pro-Razing argument was that the CG Ranger didn't consider the Humanoid inhabitants of the city sentient. Which is not a very reasonable claim if you stop and think about it. Either this person was deliberately consciously ignorant of the facts, or they had an Intelligence score usually reserved for Animals.

[Taelas]

Some would argue, both the person you quoted and myself included, that the capacity to see another sentient as completely disposable due to race is a sufficiently flagrant breach of the Good alignment that it overshadows any other personality traits.

Take, for example, John Wayne Gacy. He spent much of his time doing charity work, and generally serving as a pillar of the community. However, he carried out at least 33 grisly murders. These overshadow the rest of his personality.

That is a very bad example. A racist is not automatically a murderer, and a racist can still be a fundamentally good person.

Yes, you can have traits which overshadow everything else and change your alignment, but they have to be far more significant than racism. As bad as racism is, it isn't murder.

[Sucrose]

We should probably get off the Ghandi issue as in hindsight it might be skirting board rules (although I think this (http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhihitler.html) nicely addresses the Ghandi-Hitler issue).

Anyway, my point is that we are large; we contain multitudes. Good people are not good all the time, and bad people are not bad all the time. It's one thing to say that a serial murder's crimes outweighed his charitable contributions, but it's another to say that any amount of bigotry outweighs any amount of good.

Pretty much what Water Bear said. I'm not claiming that some bigots, if they do not allow their bigotry to cause them to tolerate monstrosity, could not be Good. I am pointing out that Szar Lakol's defense of a 'CG' elf destroying a city of innocent humans is a sufficiently stark case that I can say that in that particular case, that particular elf is very much Not-Good.


That is a very bad example. A racist is not automatically a murderer, and a racist can still be a fundamentally good person.

Yes, you can have traits which overshadow everything else and change your alignment, but they have to be far more significant than racism. As bad as racism is, it isn't murder.

Look back at the argument that you jumped into. It was over whether an elf that would risk his life for a fellow elf, but raze human cities to the ground for no reason other than it aided elves in any minor way, could be considered 'CG.' Bigotry on this scale is, quite clearly, murder.

[sonofzeal]

Then you should be happy; no-one so far has suggested that bigotry alone is enough to push someone into an Evil alignment.

But using racial hatred to justify the slaughter of the thousands or tens of thousands of sentient beings living in a city? THAT is some Grade-A Evil.

The Pro-Razing argument was that the CG Ranger didn't consider the Humanoid inhabitants of the city sentient. Which is not a very reasonable claim if you stop and think about it. Either this person was deliberately consciously ignorant of the facts, or they had an Intelligence score usually reserved for Animals.
The person I originally quoted said that simply to SEE some group as disposable "overshadows any other personality traits". I disagree.

ACTING on that, though? Yeah, totally evil. Bigotry is a minor strike against. Murder is a major strike against. Mass murder of thousands? THAT overshadows just about any amount of good, as far as personal alignment goes. But bigotry by itself doesn't. To quote Avenue Q: "Everyone's a little bit racist, some times. It doesn't mean we go around committing hate crimes."

[Sucrose]

The person I originally quoted said that simply to SEE some group as disposable "overshadows any other personality traits". I disagree.

ACTING on that, though? Yeah, totally evil. Bigotry is a minor strike against. Murder is a major strike against. Mass murder of thousands? THAT overshadows just about any amount of good, as far as personal alignment goes. But bigotry by itself doesn't. To quote Avenue Q: "Everyone's a little bit racist, some times. It doesn't mean we go around committing hate crimes."

Seeing someone as disposable means that you are precisely evil enough to act on seeing them as disposable. There is no moral difference between wanting to do something, and not doing so because it is impractical, and simply carrying out the action. You can only claim any level of moral superiority if you don't do something that you see as reasonable if you somehow realize that you aren't reasonable to see it that way (which requires an impressive amount of cognitive dissonance).

[HalfGrammarGeek]

Well, I've heard some rather unflattering things about how he treated his wife, and he did endorse Hitler, so my feelings on Ghandi are rather mixed to begin with. But if that were the only thing that were wrong with him? It would probably peg him to neutral. But even the blacks of South Africa were treated better than this elf is supposed to be willing to treat humans, given that apparently casually razing a city Eldar-style is on the table.
Fun fact: Many people who didn't live in Germany during WW2 endorsed Hitler, simply because they didn't know what he was doing. He billed himself as a people's socialist, which appealed to a lot of people -- particularly the civic-minded and the oppressed.


Every thread about alignment that I've seen has turned into an argument. But threads on rules? Get resolved quickly in most cases. The only time people have argued about the RAW is when the rules are VAGUE, and vague rules are a bad thing.
Alright then; people disagree about political figures and ideas all the time. That must make politicians and ideas bad.

Honestly, I get it. The way alignment is written is vague, occasionally contradictory, and not mutually exclusive. Even if we focus on one edition's take on it. But taking such an extreme attitude toward alignment is...extreme.

[Taelas]

Look back at the argument that you jumped into. It was over whether an elf that would risk his life for a fellow elf, but raze human cities to the ground for no reason other than it aided elves in any minor way, could be considered 'CG.' Bigotry on this scale is, quite clearly, murder.

I didn't respond to the argument. I responded to one portion of it that I disagreed with, and I made it clear precisely what it was and how I disagreed.

A murderer who destroys an entire city is evil, yes, but that has nothing to do with him being a bigot and everything to do with him destroying a city. Actions on that scale change alignments completely on their own.

[Sucrose]

I didn't respond to the argument. I responded to one portion of it that I disagreed with, and I made it clear precisely what it was and how I disagreed.

A murderer who destroys an entire city is evil, yes, but that has nothing to do with him being a bigot and everything to do with him destroying a city. Actions on that scale change alignments completely on their own.

You were defending the idea that an elf who 'does not value human life' can be Good. Not valuing the lives of those who occupy the city means that there is nothing moral stopping you from destroying it. The only thing that would stop you is if it is impractical for you. That willingness is exactly morally equivalent to actually carrying out the action. You have the (species-specific) sociopathic outlook of a murderer; you simply lack the opportunity.

Incidentally, got through that article you linked, sonofzeal; it was a good read. I suppose that that point is no longer one that I will hold against Ghandi.

[Taelas]

You were defending the idea that an elf who 'does not value human life' can be Good. Not valuing the lives of those who occupy the city means that there is nothing moral stopping you from destroying it. The only thing that would stop you is if it is impractical for you. That willingness is exactly morally equivalent to actually carrying out the action. You have the outlook of a murderer; you simply lack the opportunity.

Do you even realize what it is you are saying?

If someone thinks of human life as worthless, it does not automatically mean they are willing to kill humans with no compunctions. One does not necessarily follow the other.

An elf can think of human life as worthless without having any desire to murder an entire city of humans, and be able to recognize such an act as monstrous. It's entirely possible that coming face-to-face with such a situation would cause that elf to reevaluate his perceptions of humans, even. (It also might not affect him at all.)

People do not generally examine their own beliefs in detail--they are just there, and we act on them. D&D characters are no different.

[Sucrose]

Do you even realize what it is you are saying?

Why, yes, I do. Thank you for asking.


If someone thinks of human life as worthless, it does not automatically mean they are willing to kill humans with no compunctions. One does not necessarily follow the other.

Incorrect. If you have compunctions, prickings of conscience, then that means that you subconsciously realize that these lives do have value. If you honestly thought that there were nothing about humans that was worthwhile, then it wouldn't bother you for them to be destroyed. It would be like taking an antibiotic to kill an infection.


An elf can think of human life as worthless without having any desire to murder an entire city of humans, and be able to recognize such an act as monstrous. It's entirely possible that coming face-to-face with such a situation would cause that elf to reevaluate his perceptions of humans, even. (It also might not affect him at all.)

People do not generally examine their own beliefs in detail--they are just there, and we act on them. D&D characters are no different.

I never said that they would have a desire to do it. It simply wouldn't factor into their moral considerations, since the human lives are valueless. You can think that you believe a group's lives have no value, and still be horrified by their extermination, but that just means that you didn't actually believe that. If you did, it would not affect you.

It is possible to think that you believe human lives are valueless, and still, despite your bigoted attitude, be a good enough person to not be considered Evil. If you don't allow your bigotry to affect your dealings with the humans all that much, you might even manage to be Good.

But actually believing that said lives are valueless is simply sociopathy. Which is evil enough to overshadow any other personality traits.

[PersonMan]

Well, with the alignment system as written (as well as the 'thinking bad thoughts does not make you evil' clause in one of the alignment books) is based on actions. Meaning that, theoretically, this elf could see humans as utterly worthless, but never do anything evil because of this if they only interact with elves. It's the action of, say, razing a city, that is a point against Good (although this depends on which view of alignment you have - real world morality vs an entirely separate morality), not the belief itself.

[hamishspence]

...

What on earth are you going on about?

"Completely consistent" means exactly that. A person is not necessarily 100% of one alignment, but it is the majority that matters, not any individual aspect. Even if an elf treats human lives as disposable and with cruelty, they can still be Good, if the rest of their personality fulfills the criteria for Good.

I consider deeds more important than "the rest of the personality"

A person who consistantly does evil deeds against a particular group, is Evil, even if the majority of their deeds, since they rarely encounter that particular group, are Good.
And even if they're not completely consistant about that group- the fact that they're consistantly doing evil deeds at all, outweighs any Good deeds.

Inconsistently doing evil deeds, in time of crisis- that's reasonable for Neutral and Good- they can be "driven to Evil from time to time".

[tcrudisi]

I like alignment as well when done properly. That's the problem though, it has to be done properly.

I think 3.x did something very bad when it tied things to alignment. Paladins must be LG? Assassins must be evil? No, thank you. I don't want to have arbitrary restrictions on a character. I want to be able to use the alignment system to describe my character without him being forced into something that I don't want him to be.

That's where I think 4e has (mostly) gotten it right. I wish all 9 alignments were still there, but I would rather miss 4 of them than be forced into playing a specific alignment. I like being able to describe my character as "An evil paladin of the god of war." That ... strikes me as something totally awesome. Or a good assassin for Lady Luck. The alignment more easily describes my character but doesn't force me, mechanically, into certain things. It's just how it should be.

I think the sweet spot is to do what 4e did with alignment (remove arbitrary restrictions) while keeping all 9 points from 3.x. If that happens in 5e, I'll consider that to be a great alignment system.

[hamishspence]

I tend to agree with the notion of keeping alignment but cutting mechanical restrictions.

Maybe keep unaligned as the name for neutral though- it's more accurate in the context of most 3.5 neutral creatures and characters.

Edit- interestingly, one version of basic D&D (Eric Holmes version) also had 5 alignments- but those were the corner alignments and Neutral. So LG, Chaotic Good, N, CE, and Lawful Evil, but LN, CN, NG, and NE were not present.

[Lady Serpentine]

So, since the last character to be proposed as an arguing point was rather extreme, what about someone who sincerely tries to help people, is a completely devoted friend/lover, and tolerant of others, but will cheerfully torture someone, healing them as needed to prevent death, if they badly harm someone she loves?

Or someone who, if she doesn't want to die of starvation, must kill a human or something similar at least once a month or so, depending on how long they would have had left to live before she did so, but is otherwise actively good?

[hamishspence]

Might depend how often it happens.

A vigilante who regards everyone in their city as "loved ones" and seeks out and tortures horribly those who initiate harm to them- I'd say they cross the line into Evil. A bit like a more loving and affectionate version of The Punisher, or Dexter, or Night Haunter from 40k.

"murder to survive" is quite common in fictional vampires- while some only need a small sip, in other settings the vampire may need a full drain, or be unable to stop drinking once they start. If the vamp relies entirely on killing the truly vile, after catching them at or shortly after villainy, and does so as swiftly and painlessly as they can, a Neutral alignment may be feasible- even a Good one if the DM is exceptionally generous.

[Lady Serpentine]

Might depend how often it happens.

A vigilante who regards everyone in their city as "loved ones" and seeks out and tortures horribly those who initiate harm to them- I'd say they cross the line into Evil. A bit like a more loving and affectionate version of The Punisher, or Dexter, or Night Haunter from 40k.


Just close friends and/or lovers. And she is somewhat scaled, hence the 'badly' bit. She won't, say, track you down and flay you for punching someone she cares about, provided that said punch doesn't kill them or otherwise do them serious harm, and someone's intent plays a role in things too.



"murder to survive" is quite common in fictional vampires- while some only need a small sip, in other settings the vampire may need a full drain, or be unable to stop drinking once they start. If the vamp relies entirely on killing the truly vile, after catching them at or shortly after villainy, and does so as swiftly and painlessly as they can, a Neutral alignment may be feasible- even a Good one if the DM is exceptionally generous.


A vampire is similar to her, but not quite right - one could always argue, with a vampire, that they could have human servants prepare the required amount of blood from more than one person, etc.. She quite literally has no choice but to kill because she feeds on the life that her victim would have had to live had they died of natural causes or an accident.

[hamishspence]

D&D vampires, according to Libris Mortis- have two dependencies, one on blood (fail to feed and vampire eventually becomes immobile) and one on life (fail to energy drain and the vampire goes insane- and few NPCs can survive two points of energy drain).

Torture- at least according to FC2 and BoED, is basically an evil act (FC2 gives a scaling for it- the severest torture is equivalent to Murder For Pleasure, morally).

So, if the character, on discovering that their family had all been killed, say, by an invading army or a criminal gang, and set out to torture to death everyone involved in the killing, eventually one would expect their alignment to change.

Now it must be said that "vengeance" is not inherently evil according to BoVD- but it becomes evil when the character starts committing specifically evil acts as part of it.

[TheGeckoKing]

So, since the last character to be proposed as an arguing point was rather extreme, what about someone who sincerely tries to help people, is a completely devoted friend/lover, and tolerant of others, but will cheerfully torture someone, healing them as needed to prevent death, if they badly harm someone she loves?

Considering I don't see how torturing the person helps your injured family member/friend in any way, they're on the border between Neutral and Evil there, and that Neutral part is there only because your usage of torture could just be an illustration of an extreme rather than a common occurrence.


Or someone who, if she doesn't want to die of starvation, must kill a human or something similar at least once a month or so, depending on how long they would have had left to live before she did so, but is otherwise actively good?

Eh, depends on how the person tries to limit this; going the minimum of one person a month, paying off families of the deceased anonymously, pitching in for/paying for a Raise Dead from the local Cleric and so on would suggest a Neutral character. I don't think the whole "Feeding on people to stay alive" would let them be Good though, because you're effectively saying that your existence is more important than the people you're feeding from.

[Taelas]

Incorrect. If you have compunctions, prickings of conscience, then that means that you subconsciously realize that these lives do have value. If you honestly thought that there were nothing about humans that was worthwhile, then it wouldn't bother you for them to be destroyed. It would be like taking an antibiotic to kill an infection.
No. This does not automatically follow.

Feelings are not logical. It is possible for someone to feel an entire race is worthless and still feel compunctions about killing them.


I never said that they would have a desire to do it. It simply wouldn't factor into their moral considerations, since the human lives are valueless. You can think that you believe a group's lives have no value, and still be horrified by their extermination, but that just means that you didn't actually believe that. If you did, it would not affect you.
Racism does not work the way you seem to think it does.

It is possible to be a fundamentally good person and still believe wholeheartedly that a group of people is worthless. They don't particularly care if those people die. That does not mean they wouldn't feel compunctions about killing them. Being the instrument of someone's death, and not caring if they die, are not at all the same thing.

It may be due to ignorance, and they may change their minds after examining their own beliefs more critically, but that does not mean they "didn't actually believe that". It is possible to have a change of heart, and it is possible to have extremely firm beliefs without ever having examined them critically.

The way you seem to equate hatred with murderous wroth is honestly disturbing. It is far more likely to be expressed via oppression than genocide. Oppression is absolutely evil, but it is not murder.


It is possible to think that you believe human lives are valueless, and still, despite your bigoted attitude, be a good enough person to not be considered Evil. If you don't allow your bigotry to affect your dealings with the humans all that much, you might even manage to be Good.

But actually believing that said lives are valueless is simply sociopathy. Which is evil enough to overshadow any other personality traits.
'Sociopathy' is an extremely poorly defined term, because we don't actually fully understand the condition. People with antisocial personality disorder, which covers most of the aspects of sociopathy, can be fully functional members of society who never commits an evil act. They are more likely to, as they do not generally feel guilt for their actions, and they have few things that inhibit such behavior... but it is far from certain.

Simply believing that all human life is worthless does not make the person who believes that evil.


I consider deeds more important than "the rest of the personality"

A person who consistantly does evil deeds against a particular group, is Evil, even if the majority of their deeds, since they rarely encounter that particular group, are Good.
And even if they're not completely consistant about that group- the fact that they're consistantly doing evil deeds at all, outweighs any Good deeds.

Inconsistently doing evil deeds, in time of crisis- that's reasonable for Neutral and Good- they can be "driven to Evil from time to time".

You are arguing for your interpretation of the rules, not what they actually say. It is entirely reasonable to have a character who is Good yet who normally treats people as if they are disposable. In fact, it is a very common trope: the jerk with a heart of gold.

[Callista]

I tend to agree with the notion of keeping alignment but cutting mechanical restrictions.That does seem to be one of the major issues that makes alignment into such a point of contention. If paladins didn't lose their powers for shifting away from LG, there wouldn't be so many paladin debates... but paladins would also lose much of their uniqueness and flavor. The trouble here is that the flavor comes at the expense of giving dickish DMs a way to penalize players for role-playing in a certain way.

The player isn't blameless either, of course. If you create a character whose personality is compatible with being a paladin, they would not be the sort of person to willingly and lightly go against their LG beliefs. If you create a character without a personality, or with an incompatible one, though, you can run into a lot of trouble. If you do that you're playing D&D like it's a video game and you may forget your character's code in the quest of making him more powerful. Or you may be playing a perfectly realistic character, but one that should never have been called as a paladin because he's incompatible with it to begin with.

So how do we handle that problem without having to get rid of that very interesting idea--that a paladin's powers come from his faith, his morality, and/or his deity, and that if he loses them it's a big red flag to him that he's done something very wrong? I like it. It's got so much storytelling potential and it would be such a pity to discard it for no good reason.

The trouble seems to be that the paladin is actually losing his powers--that the character becomes weaker, and that this is something many players don't like. What if there were a way to make sure that the paladin could change his beliefs without losing his powers? Obviously he can't keep his old source of power; so there should be a fall from grace; but there should be some extremely easy alternatives that he can go into.

So here's my thoughts about it: What if, in your particular world, paladins are as special as they are in any world; but not just LG deities and planes recognize that? What if, instead, when a paladin falls from grace, s/he immediately receives offers from other powers?

There's the classic blackguard route, of course, and I like that; but it forces the paladin to completely abandon everything he's ever believed in, and most of the time it's not like that. Plus, you have to have prerequisites. So that's not a full solution.

We do have other paladin variants though, one for each of the four alignment extremes. Those are a good start. Say that, when a LG paladin decides that order is doing more harm than good and it's time to start tearing down the tyrants that are hurting the people she loves--well, she's gone CG, and could easily switch to Paladin of Freedom. Rebuild the character, level for level. The power level hasn't changed.

It would be a fairly simple matter--just a house rule that says, "If your character's alignment makes him ineligible for his class, you may rebuild using a similar class which fits his new alignment." And that would stop people from being afraid to let their paladins and other alignment-restricted characters change to the point that they change alignments, because it would no longer mean a sharp drop in power.

[Larkas]

Actually, if you consider Dragon Magazines to be worthy rules sources, you have a Paladin for each alignment; IIRC, the relevant issues are #310 and #312.

In my games, I actually let Paladins fall in a similar way. Let's say a character became so absorbed with laws and regulations that he actually became LN. He can either make a pact with LN powers, and become a LN Paladin (Enforcer, I think it was called), trading all his LG Paladin levels to LN Paladin levels, or atone and go back to being a LG Paladin. If, after going LN and not atoning, he starts being LG again, he can get his LG Paladin status back -- but the powers that be will only go so far. If he falls again and fails to atone, he can make pacts with other powers, maybe NG, LN or even farther than that, but the LG powers will never trust him again.

Well, at least that's how it works in my games :smallredface:

[Lady Serpentine]

D&D vampires, according to Libris Mortis- have two dependencies, one on blood (fail to feed and vampire eventually becomes immobile) and one on life (fail to energy drain and the vampire goes insane- and few NPCs can survive two points of energy drain).

Torture- at least according to FC2 and BoED, is basically an evil act (FC2 gives a scaling for it- the severest torture is equivalent to Murder For Pleasure, morally).

So, if the character, on discovering that their family had all been killed, say, by an invading army or a criminal gang, and set out to torture to death everyone involved in the killing, eventually one would expect their alignment to change.

Now it must be said that "vengeance" is not inherently evil according to BoVD- but it becomes evil when the character starts committing specifically evil acts as part of it.

Ah. Haven't got Libris Mortis. I'll have to look into that at some point...

With an army, she'd probably only go for the person who'd directly killed her friend, or possibly the one who specifically ordered the particular attack, since she gets that the generals, ruler, and most of the invading force, didn't even know of the person's existence.


Considering I don't see how torturing the person helps your injured family member/friend in any way, they're on the border between Neutral and Evil there, and that Neutral part is there only because your usage of torture could just be an illustration of an extreme rather than a common occurrence.

Mainly it's used to deter others from doing the same; if word gets around that messing with her family/friends results in dying horribly, fewer people are likely to consider doing so. Perhaps not the best method, admittedly, but it's the one she uses, so...

And yes, it's not exactly a common occurrence; as noted, she scales her reaction according to the circumstances, so things that she considers to actually warrant such things are reasonably uncommon.



Eh, depends on how the person tries to limit this; going the minimum of one person a month, paying off families of the deceased anonymously, pitching in for/paying for a Raise Dead from the local Cleric and so on would suggest a Neutral character. I don't think the whole "Feeding on people to stay alive" would let them be Good though, because you're effectively saying that your existence is more important than the people you're feeding from.


What if it is more important than that of the people she's killing, though? She's a nigh-immortal healer, and a good one. If, drawing on that experience and her magic, she's able to cure otherwise lethal/debilitating diseases that no-one else knows how to stop, and save people lethally or cripplingly injured, and does so for a considerably greater number of people than she kills, isn't her continued existence more important than that of, say, an innkeeper?

[Starbuck_II]

That does seem to be one of the major issues that makes alignment into such a point of contention. If paladins didn't lose their powers for shifting away from LG, there wouldn't be so many paladin debates... but paladins would also lose much of their uniqueness and flavor. The trouble here is that the flavor comes at the expense of giving dickish DMs a way to penalize players for role-playing in a certain way.
.

Paladins would still have a code even if you got rid of alignment. So I don't think you'd lose anything.
They'd still act with honor, help the innocent, etc.

How would allowing them to act how they wish while within the code change things?

[Scowling Dragon]

Paladins would still have a code even if you got rid of alignment. So I don't think you'd lose anything.
They'd still act with honor, help the innocent, etc.

How would allowing them to act how they wish while within the code change things?

I don't think the code has anything to do with LG actually as much as it has to do with the law against being evil and stuff. If you do, your stripped of your powers. Its a nice fluff/ rule interaction.

[Callista]

Paladins would still have a code even if you got rid of alignment. So I don't think you'd lose anything.
They'd still act with honor, help the innocent, etc.

How would allowing them to act how they wish while within the code change things?It wouldn't solve any problems. You'd be replacing "Did my paladin do something evil?" with "Did my paladin break his code of conduct?" If you replace "stay Lawful and don't do anything Evil" with a longer, more complex code in order to do away with alignment, that's just adding complications you don't need. There are many possible codes of conduct that stay within the limits of LG. If you limit them all to one particular code because you've gotten rid of alignment and can no longer say "Any code, as long as it's LG", then you're limiting the possibilities for the players. There might as well be only one order of paladins, if they all believe exactly the same things. In a realistic world, there are many ways to be LG and many ways to go about being a paladin. Alignment keeps that flexible.

[Lady Serpentine]

Something that really needs to be remembered for this sort of thing is that they're not 'LG' as such. Rather, they're 'L' as well as 'G', and the two parts are separate but interact. Being a Lawful Good character doesn't mean that one has a devotion to the laws of the region, simply that they're Good and have an ordered (non-Chaotic) temperament; a paladin who picks through the legal code of the area to find any loopholes, etc., possible to get their friends out of trouble (provided that it wouldn't conflict with the Good part of their) is just as valid as a more 'traditional' one.

[Venger]

(scrubbed)

[sonofzeal]

{self-scrubbed by Venger
Let's get off the [real world figure] issue. It was a mistake for me to bring it up, because it skirts too closely to board issues and because there's a lot of disinformation and rumours out there. People seem to delight in "revealing" the depravity of supposedly good people, even if that depravity is invented wholecloth. See the previous accusation about him supporting [real world politician]; the closest he came to that was letters begging [real world politician] to choose a nonviolent path.

{self-scrubbed by sonofzeal}

[Dr.Epic]

Okay?:smallconfused: There are people who don't like the alignment system?

[Venger]

valid points regarding board policy

you're probably right, I'll get rid of my post, in retrospect, I don't see how much productive can come of it

[Lord_Gareth]

Okay?:smallconfused: There are people who don't like the alignment system?

I don't. I prefer systems that encourage players to examine their characters' motivations and beliefs rather than attempting to weigh actions against one another and come out with some kind of moral weight at the end. The D20 Modern system is really good in this regard, actually; conversely, the Star Wars system is pretty much The Worst Thing.

[Callista]

The benefit of sticking an alignment on a character you create is that you know everything about that character, unless you've done something fancy with amnesia and have an evil DM. You can safely label him. You can't label a real-life person near as easily because you can never know everything about them, and last I checked, the Detect spells were still fictional!

We don't need to worry about real-life people, though. Just the characters we've created ourselves.

There are the cases where characters are complex enough that it's hard to place them--a disciplined soldier in a rebellion might seem to be both chaotic and lawful, for example. But in those cases, you can just default to Neutral--it's just a more spread-out neutral than usual. There's a point beyond which the character's personality becomes too inconsistent to put an alignment on him at all, but that's more of a sign of bad storytelling (or multiple interpretations by multiple authors).

If you find yourself with a character that has strong traits of opposing alignments, the best thing to do is make him tentatively Neutral, define his personality and motivations carefully, and let his alignment shift (or not) naturally as his character develops and he makes choices within the game world.

If only we could get people to stop being afraid of changing their characters' alignment!

[Fatebreaker]

The benefit of sticking an alignment on a character you create is that you know everything about that character, unless you've done something fancy with amnesia and have an evil DM. You can safely label him. You can't label a real-life person near as easily because you can never know everything about them, and last I checked, the Detect spells were still fictional!

We don't need to worry about real-life people, though. Just the characters we've created ourselves.

There are the cases where characters are complex enough that it's hard to place them--a disciplined soldier in a rebellion might seem to be both chaotic and lawful, for example. But in those cases, you can just default to Neutral--it's just a more spread-out neutral than usual. There's a point beyond which the character's personality becomes too inconsistent to put an alignment on him at all, but that's more of a sign of bad storytelling (or multiple interpretations by multiple authors).

If you find yourself with a character that has strong traits of opposing alignments, the best thing to do is make him tentatively Neutral, define his personality and motivations carefully, and let his alignment shift (or not) naturally as his character develops and he makes choices within the game world.

If only we could get people to stop being afraid of changing their characters' alignment!

The problem is that alignment in the game is not just a concept to help you gauge the actions of your character. It's also a mechanic with very real penalties and benefits.

Johnny isn't afraid of changing his alignment; he's afraid of losing his class abilities. He's afraid of taking extra damage because the DM has a different opinion about good and evil and law and chaos.

If you have some requirement to be lawful, then it suddenly matters whether that disciplined rebel is lawful, neutral, or chaotic. So alignment becomes a destination rather than an origin. "What would my character do?" becomes "What must my character do?"

[sonofzeal]

you're probably right, I'll get rid of my post, in retrospect, I don't see how much productive can come of it
Actually, I think an important point came out of it.

Our society positively delights at flinging mud at any figure praised as morally worthy. I seriously cannot think of anyone praised as a hero or a saint in the popular media, whose name was not almost immediately dragged through the mud by somebody or other, often with completely unsupported allegations.

This unfortunate tendency of our culture might explain some of the difficulty we have with "Good" characters. Our cultural tendency is to question and distrust any claim of goodness, so we tend to examine it with a fine toothed comb looking for anything we can point to and say "see, they're actually a horrible person under the facade". This results in situations where good characters can't do any amount of evil without the morality being challenged, but evil characters can do large amounts of good without anyone caring.

Unfortunately, the only real solution is to be aware of this tendency and consciously choose to balance it out when we find ourselves slipping into that (very seductive) mode of thought.

[Shadowknight12]

Actually, I think an important point came out of it.

Our society positively delights at flinging mud at any figure praised as morally worthy. I seriously cannot think of anyone praised as a hero or a saint in the popular media, whose name was not almost immediately dragged through the mud by somebody or other, often with completely unsupported allegations.

This unfortunate tendency of our culture might explain some of the difficulty we have with "Good" characters. Our cultural tendency is to question and distrust any claim of goodness, so we tend to examine it with a fine toothed comb looking for anything we can point to and say "see, they're actually a horrible person under the facade". This results in situations where good characters can't do any amount of evil without the morality being challenged, but evil characters can do large amounts of good without anyone caring.

Unfortunately, the only real solution is to be aware of this tendency and consciously choose to balance it out when we find ourselves slipping into that (very seductive) mode of thought.

Hence why I prefer a strictly mathematical system for morality. It doesn't matter what that morality is. We don't actually need Good, Evil, Law and Chaos. We could have a three-dimensional chassis with Freedom vs. Duty, Honour vs. Pragmatism and Logic vs. Emotion. All which are, theoretically, positive values when taken in moderation (though some would argue that a certain extreme is better than its opposite, of course).

The entire point of a formal, structured alignment system is that the only way it makes sense from a cosmological point of view (without any Author Intrusion) is that all the scales are balanced with precise mathematical certainty.

EDIT: And the reason it connects to your post is that a mathematical alignment system prevents the old "...yet you kill one bad guy..." problem with good characters having to be prohibitively inhuman in order to retain their Good alignment.

[Lord_Gareth]

If only we could get people to stop being afraid of changing their characters' alignment!

I'm not actually afraid to do so, especially since I don't often play characters where it matters re: my class abilities, but right now I'm at a stage in my roleplaying (not to imply some kind of 'roleplaying advancement' or Pokemon-style evolution) where I want to explore complex moral choices and motivations. Sometimes I do this with very morally simple characters that have a striking contrast; a crusader of Pelor that despises half-breeds, or a serial killer construct with a soft spot for others of his 'kind'. Sometimes, though, I do this with concepts that can be difficult to peg in an alignment system with the understanding that I don't really know everything about my character, and the point is to explore where their motivations take them and at what point they draw the line in the sand.

Let us take two very different characters of mine as an example, one of whom ended up having a problem with my fellow players and the other which didn't. The first, which created no problems, is a man named Jason, who grew up in a poor house in Sharn with no surname and no one but his brother. When the two of them got out they went their separate ways for a few years; Jason joined a succession of gangs until he got a feel for the streets and then mustered into the military for a year, while his brother apprenticed to a Beguiler. Both got into politics together, or, rather, Jason's brother got into politics. See, his brother was the public face of the two, campaigning for better treatment of the poor, for education, for measures to fight starvation and neglect. Jason, on the other hand, serves as his hidden weapon; when a politician is being particularly stubborn, recalcitrant, or malevolent, Jason steps in and kills him. He does so quietly, without fuss, and in their sleep with a single quick blow, but the fact remains that he murders these men and women in cold blood, leaving behind grieving families caught up in a vendetta that had nothing to do with them. Jason feels no guilt about what he does, because it is for the best of reasons. What alignment should he be?

The other is Kyllan Hammerson, and he did cause problems in a game. See, Kyllan is a pretty simple guy. The son of a blacksmith (hence the surname), Kyllan signed on with a mercenary company known as Highwind in a no-ressurection campaign setting in order to escape small town life and retire with a degree of respectability. At the start of the game, Kyllan was characterized and written down as LN, with a deep and abiding respect for the law (both on and off the battlefield and chain of command), a general compunction against harming the weak and helpless, and personal discipline. He was also a racist and a bigot in the low-level sense of lacking respect for 'uncivilized' beings and an ignorance of cultures outside of his own. As the game progressed and the campaign got more and more serious, he discovered a love for other cultures that blossomed in him, and he took to protecting those that were being illegally abused and mistreated and campaigning for the fair treatment of those that were being taken advantage of by technically legal means. However, as the commander of his mission (of literally world-saving importance), Kyllan has also personally tortured prisoners for information (and would do so again if given the chance), ordered assaults with a high chance of harming noncombatants (though admittedly as a very last resort), caused wanton destruction of property in pursuit of his enemies (including crashing a dragon into an evacuated village, destroying dozens of homes) and is more than prepared to take even more extreme action in order to, as he has been told, actually save the world from an honest-to-goodness apocalypse. I'd thought Kyllan was slipping towards evil. Imagine my surprise when my fellow players called BS on him being less affected by a spell that targets Good characters because at the time the DM and I agreed that he was still LN rather than LE. Is Kyllan Good because of his motivations? Evil because of his actions? Do his current actions outweigh his history of selflessly defending the weak, and does it matter that he did so because their torment was contrary to maintaining order rather than justice? There aren't easy answers to these questions, but there would be under a different system.

[Callista]

EDIT: And the reason it connects to your post is that a mathematical alignment system prevents the old "...yet you kill one bad guy..." problem with good characters having to be prohibitively inhuman in order to retain their Good alignment.It brings in its own problems, though, doesn't it? You could, for example, kill one orphan and rescue another orphan and balance out at neutral, if you used math for it. But that doesn't take personality into account: Someone who'd willingly murder a child doesn't have a Good-aligned outlook on the world, no matter how many people they rescue. Or, on the other hand, you could play someone who's trying to redeem himself from having done lots of horrible things before--his personality could have changed to the point that he's now willing to die to save the orphan and would never consider murdering him, but because of all his past misdeeds he's still way in the negatives and considered "evil".

No, I think it has to be a label put on a character's personality and values--otherwise, it would be like the character alignment we find in computer RPGs, which is fine for a program but hasn't got much to do with role-playing. Let's take advantage of the fact that we're not computers, and are therefore flexible enough to create realistic characters and understand their motivations and personalities instead of just tallying up karma points.

[Lord_Gareth]

*Points at his post above*

Yoooou mean like that?

[JadePhoenix]

Let us take two very different characters of mine as an example, one of whom ended up having a problem with my fellow players and the other which didn't. The first, which created no problems, is a man named Jason, who grew up in a poor house in Sharn with no surname and no one but his brother. When the two of them got out they went their separate ways for a few years; Jason joined a succession of gangs until he got a feel for the streets and then mustered into the military for a year, while his brother apprenticed to a Beguiler. Both got into politics together, or, rather, Jason's brother got into politics. See, his brother was the public face of the two, campaigning for better treatment of the poor, for education, for measures to fight starvation and neglect. Jason, on the other hand, serves as his hidden weapon; when a politician is being particularly stubborn, recalcitrant, or malevolent, Jason steps in and kills him. He does so quietly, without fuss, and in their sleep with a single quick blow, but the fact remains that he murders these men and women in cold blood, leaving behind grieving families caught up in a vendetta that had nothing to do with them. Jason feels no guilt about what he does, because it is for the best of reasons. What alignment should he be?
From what you described, this character is evil. I see no moral ambiguity here, even.


The other is Kyllan Hammerson, and he did cause problems in a game. See, Kyllan is a pretty simple guy. The son of a blacksmith (hence the surname), Kyllan signed on with a mercenary company known as Highwind in a no-ressurection campaign setting in order to escape small town life and retire with a degree of respectability. At the start of the game, Kyllan was characterized and written down as LN, with a deep and abiding respect for the law (both on and off the battlefield and chain of command), a general compunction against harming the weak and helpless, and personal discipline. He was also a racist and a bigot in the low-level sense of lacking respect for 'uncivilized' beings and an ignorance of cultures outside of his own. As the game progressed and the campaign got more and more serious, he discovered a love for other cultures that blossomed in him, and he took to protecting those that were being illegally abused and mistreated and campaigning for the fair treatment of those that were being taken advantage of by technically legal means. However, as the commander of his mission (of literally world-saving importance), Kyllan has also personally tortured prisoners for information (and would do so again if given the chance), ordered assaults with a high chance of harming noncombatants (though admittedly as a very last resort), caused wanton destruction of property in pursuit of his enemies (including crashing a dragon into an evacuated village, destroying dozens of homes) and is more than prepared to take even more extreme action in order to, as he has been told, actually save the world from an honest-to-goodness apocalypse. I'd thought Kyllan was slipping towards evil. Imagine my surprise when my fellow players called BS on him being less affected by a spell that targets Good characters because at the time the DM and I agreed that he was still LN rather than LE. Is Kyllan Good because of his motivations? Evil because of his actions? Do his current actions outweigh his history of selflessly defending the weak, and does it matter that he did so because their torment was contrary to maintaining order rather than justice? There aren't easy answers to these questions, but there would be under a different system.
He looks clearly neutral to me. Some Good traits, some Evil traits. Thus, Neutral.

[TuggyNE]

Hence why I prefer a strictly mathematical system for morality. It doesn't matter what that morality is. We don't actually need Good, Evil, Law and Chaos. We could have a three-dimensional chassis with Freedom vs. Duty, Honour vs. Pragmatism and Logic vs. Emotion. All which are, theoretically, positive values when taken in moderation (though some would argue that a certain extreme is better than its opposite, of course).

This idea intrigues me, and I wish to hear more. (It's the first replacement alignment system I've looked into so far that I think I could stand; sorry, but, say, the Color Wheel, just doesn't do it for me.)

[Lord_Gareth]

This idea intrigues me, and I wish to hear more. (It's the first replacement alignment system I've looked into so far that I think I could stand; sorry, but, say, the Color Wheel, just doesn't do it for me.)

I made it more or less on a whim. You don't have to apologize - I'm not about to get offended.

That being said, have you checked into D20 Modern's system?

[Shadowknight12]

It brings in its own problems, though, doesn't it? You could, for example, kill one orphan and rescue another orphan and balance out at neutral, if you used math for it. But that doesn't take personality into account: Someone who'd willingly murder a child doesn't have a Good-aligned outlook on the world, no matter how many people they rescue. Or, on the other hand, you could play someone who's trying to redeem himself from having done lots of horrible things before--his personality could have changed to the point that he's now willing to die to save the orphan and would never consider murdering him, but because of all his past misdeeds he's still way in the negatives and considered "evil".

No, I think it has to be a label put on a character's personality and values--otherwise, it would be like the character alignment we find in computer RPGs, which is fine for a program but hasn't got much to do with role-playing. Let's take advantage of the fact that we're not computers, and are therefore flexible enough to create realistic characters and understand their motivations and personalities instead of just tallying up karma points.

What if the killed orphan was going to grow up to be a genocidal dictator or had already displayed psychopathic tendencies by murdering small animals and other orphans? And what if the saved orphan was going to grow up to be a saint or already displayed the qualities of being the vessel of a good-aligned god?

You are entirely right; it's not that easy. Which is precisely why we must reduce it to impartial, impersonal mathematics. Situations have already an inherent complexity, so our goal, as game designers or houserulers, should be to minimise the complexity to avoid arguments at the table. Obviously, the best solution is to do away with alignment altogether, since that's the least complex option, but if we must keep alignment, we must make everything surrounding it as simplified as possible precisely because the real world situations it attempts to analyse and codify are already inherently complex. We must choose a system that is as impersonal and unemotional as possible to dissuade arguments and facilitate common ground.


This idea intrigues me, and I wish to hear more. (It's the first replacement alignment system I've looked into so far that I think I could stand; sorry, but, say, the Color Wheel, just doesn't do it for me.)

Well, Freedom versus Duty is the conflict between sacrificing one's own freedom to obey a higher authority (duty) versus disorganisation and libertine tendencies (freedom). The main conflict here is whether personal freedoms are more important than social obligations or viceversa. Note that this does not necessarily involve the law, since duty is one's own personal measure of how much obedience they owe society, not how much one is willing to follow the law. When the military stages a coup, a soldier will have to choose between his duty to the chain of command and his duty to the current power. Regardless of what he chooses, he will still be Dutiful (if he chooses to take a third option and run away, that's not Dutiful at all).

Emotion versus Logic is fairly self-explanatory. Do you put your feelings aside and make cold, logical decisions at the risk of forsaking what makes you human (or whatever race applies) or do you choose to follow your heart and potentially make catastrophic decisions, such as sacrificing an entire village to save an endangered loved one?

Honour versus Pragmatism is purely internal and does not relate to society, regardless of what might seem at first glance. Everyone (save very few exceptions) have some sort of moral code. Pragmatic people are the ones willing to compromise their own moral code to achieve their goals, or to modify their moral code as situations change. Honourable people adhere to their code of conduct regardless of how difficult circumstances become and sacrifice advantages for their own peace of mind.

It could be argued that the ideal position is True Neutral, a balance of all three, and that excess of any virtue can be dangerous and severely unbalance the subject. However, the other side of the coin is that a non-committal person also lacks a reason to fight or take a stand. One could argue that a lack of strong convictions is highly unhealthy in a world where masses can be manipulated to suit the charismatic, or even just trusted to ignore any shady dealings.

[hamishspence]

You are arguing for your interpretation of the rules, not what they actually say. It is entirely reasonable to have a character who is Good yet who normally treats people as if they are disposable. In fact, it is a very common trope: the jerk with a heart of gold.

Actually, I'm arguing for what the rules actually say- in Champions of Ruin, BoED, etc. Even the DMG says "Actions matter, not statements of intent by players"

"Treating people as disposable" isn't really compatible with "respect for life". The "jerk with a heart of gold" may be rude, obnoxious, slightly ruthless- but he still "respects life".

"Heroic Sociopath" is the kind of person that treats people as disposable- Belkar, for example.

[Amphetryon]

Actually, I'm arguing for what the rules actually say- in Champions of Ruin, BoED, etc. Even the DMG says "Actions matter, not statements of intent by players"

"Treating people as disposable" isn't really compatible with "respect for life". The "jerk with a heart of gold" may be rude, obnoxious, slightly ruthless- but he still "respects life".

"Heroic Sociopath" is the kind of person that treats people as disposable- Belkar, for example.

One of (the multitude of) the issues with alignment in D&D is that self-awareness and language aren't presumed to be the exclusive province of any particular species. "Treating people as disposable" sounds like a reasonable benchmark, until your character is hired to clear out the goblin warrens at 1st level so that the can sleep easier at night and have an area to expand into. The moment your character and the rest of that character's party evict or exterminate those sentient, sapient goblins from their homes, simply because they're paid to or because they value the humans/elves/dwarves/etc.s' right to be there more than the goblins that are [I]already there, it becomes more problematic to view their actions as "good". On the other hand, refusing the assignment from the duly-appointed town representative makes it harder to justify the "lawful" moniker, and defending the goblins against the townsfolk could well earn you the label of "evil" in the game's universe.

[Callista]

"Treating people as disposable" sounds like a reasonable benchmark, until your character is hired to clear out the goblin warrens at 1st level so that the [insert "traditional" PC race here] can sleep easier at night and have an area to expand into. The moment your character and the rest of that character's party evict or exterminate those sentient, sapient goblins from their homes, simply because they're paid to or because they value the humans/elves/dwarves/etc.s' right to be there more than the goblins that are already there, it becomes more problematic to view their actions as "good". On the other hand, refusing the assignment from the duly-appointed town representative makes it harder to justify the "lawful" moniker, and defending the goblins against the townsfolk could well earn you the label of "evil" in the game's universe.Here's what differentiates CRPGs and war games from role-playing games. If you are playing a game where the point is to kill the enemy and gain XP, you may be having a lot of fun, but you're playing a hack-and-slash game that probably includes only light role-playing. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't take full advantage of the storytelling options you'd have available in a more fully fleshed-out world.

If you're applying the alignment system properly, and you've built Good-aligned characters, then they would indeed wonder why they should simply clear out the goblins. They would think about the possibility of peace. They would investigate whether the goblins had been raiding and killing, or whether they were minding their own business and just squatting in some caves the humans wanted for themselves. They might try to broker a peace agreement, depose a vicious goblin leader in favor of a more rational one, force the goblins to move elsewhere, or even try to forge bonds between both communities. Sure, goblins are more likely to be evil than humans are, but (depending on your DM), half or even more aren't evil, and some of the evil ones may be jerks but still don't deserve death. If it came down to it, Good-aligned characters might still exterminate the goblins--but only if those goblins turned out to be a bunch of killers intent on taking out the innocent humans.

What the humans in the town label you may or may not be congruent with what the universe labels you. Many a true hero has been called a coward, a traitor, or an evildoer. When you're Lawful, that can be a source of a good deal of shame--who hasn't read a story about an honorable knight forced to choose between serving his king, and doing the right thing? He never gets through it without agonizing over his choices.

There's nothing particularly wrong with hack-and-slash, old-style D&D games where the goblins are little chunks of XP, and where the biggest problems you have involve whether the rogue is going to make that Disable Device check. But, if you're going to role-play more fully than that, the alignment system does have to be applied universally, and goblins count as sentient creatures whose lives are as significant as your own. You're no longer running around in a world that's your personal playground; you're a citizen of a bigger place where other people have their own personalities, beliefs, and ideas. The more real the world becomes, the less you can take advantage of your PC status. And, personally, I like it that way. The more real the world becomes, the more interesting the story gets.

[Kish]

One of (the multitude of) the issues with alignment in D&D is that self-awareness and language aren't presumed to be the exclusive province of any particular species. "Treating people as disposable" sounds like a reasonable benchmark, until your character is hired to clear out the goblin warrens at 1st level so that the can sleep easier at night and have an area to expand into. The moment your character and the rest of that character's party evict or exterminate those sentient, sapient goblins from their homes, simply because they're paid to or because they value the humans/elves/dwarves/etc.s' right to be there more than the goblins that are [I]already there, it becomes more problematic to view their actions as "good".

True...

On the other hand, refusing the assignment from the duly-appointed town representative makes it harder to justify the "lawful" moniker,

...might be a problem if the character is Lawful Neutral or "more-lawful-than-good"...

and defending the goblins against the townsfolk could well earn you the label of "evil" in the game's universe.
False.

Awfully commonly believed on the Internet for some reason, but quite false. If there's a syllable in any D&D book that states anything that would logically translate to "it is evil to refuse to slaughter members of a Usually Evil race when members of a No Alignment Tendencies race want you to, in the absence of knowledge of the specific individuals concerned," I don't know where and it's certainly not one of the core books, Exalted Deeds, Vile Darkness, or any book I know. If the DM wants you to kill the goblins and doesn't want it to be more complicated than that, it's very simple to say, "This band of raiders has been attacking the village! Please wipe them out before they come back and slaughter us all this time!" Note: I didn't say anything about the race of the band of raiders. They could be goblins, orcs, elves, dwarves, humans, illithids--it simply doesn't matter to their narrative role, which is that of mooks to be slaughtered if the speaker is being completely truthful. If, on the other hand, the DM wants to say, "We want to hire you to wipe out these nearby goblins who haven't done anything yet because they're goblins," well, by the book that's a textbook Lawful Evil job offer, and it's as simple as that.

[Amphetryon]

I've nothing to say about the 1st or 4th paragraphs, so I'm snipping them simply for space.


If you're applying the alignment system properly, and you've built Good-aligned characters, then they would indeed wonder why they should simply clear out the goblins. They would think about the possibility of peace. They would investigate whether the goblins had been raiding and killing, or whether they were minding their own business and just squatting in some caves the humans wanted for themselves. They might try to broker a peace agreement, depose a vicious goblin leader in favor of a more rational one, force the goblins to move elsewhere, or even try to forge bonds between both communities. Sure, goblins are more likely to be evil than humans are, but (depending on your DM), half or even more aren't evil, and some of the evil ones may be jerks but still don't deserve death. If it came down to it, Good-aligned characters might still exterminate the goblins--but only if those goblins turned out to be a bunch of killers intent on taking out the innocent humans.

What the humans in the town label you may or may not be congruent with what the universe labels you. Many a true hero has been called a coward, a traitor, or an evildoer. When you're Lawful, that can be a source of a good deal of shame--who hasn't read a story about an honorable knight forced to choose between serving his king, and doing the right thing? He never gets through it without agonizing over his choices.

Your definition of "apply the alignment system properly" is almost certainly not one that applies universally at all tables. Why should the PCs question the word of the duly appointed town representative who wants to hire them when he says the goblins are a menace? What happens when the PCs investigate and find that the goblins were looting/killing - because someone made it appear so?

"What the humans in town label you" is often relevant to your alignment simply because of how they react to you. They call you a no-good, evil, goblin-kisser and start attacking you on sight? Now you've got to defend yourself, where the use of force could land you in jail, regardless of the lethality of that force or even the rightness of your self-defense. Is a person who is convicted of a crime in a duly appointed court of law still eligible to call himself "Lawful"? Is a person who kills an untrained commoner who attacks him still eligible to call himself "Good"? What if, instead of defending themselves, the party vacates? Well, now they're in breach of contract (unlawful), and labelled as cowards and goblin-sympathizers. Good? Lawful? I'll wager there's not a consensus on how those actions would be viewed.

[Amphetryon]

False.

Awfully commonly believed on the Internet for some reason, but quite false. If there's a syllable in any D&D book that states anything that would logically translate to "it is evil to refuse to slaughter members of a Usually Evil race when members of a No Alignment Tendencies race want you to, in the absence of knowledge of the specific individuals concerned," I don't know where and it's certainly not one of the core books, Exalted Deeds, Vile Darkness, or any book I know. If the DM wants you to kill the goblins and doesn't want it to be more complicated than that, it's very simple to say, "This band of raiders has been attacking the village! Please wipe them out before they come back and slaughter us all this time!" Note: I didn't say anything about the race of the band of raiders. They could be goblins, orcs, elves, dwarves, humans, illithids--it simply doesn't matter to their narrative role, which is that of mooks to be slaughtered if the speaker is being completely truthful. If, on the other hand, the DM wants to say, "We want to hire you to wipe out these nearby goblins who haven't done anything yet because they're goblins," well, by the book that's a textbook Lawful Evil job offer, and it's as simple as that.

If there's a syllable in any of the core books that says "using lethal force to defend a 'usually evil' group of a race against a 'no alignment listed' group never qualifies as Evil", I'd appreciate a quotation and source. Otherwise, it's less "false" than "not necessarily true", which was already acknowledged by use of the word "could" in my comment.

[Kish]

If there's a syllable in any of the core books that says "using lethal force to defend a 'usually evil' group of a race against a 'no alignment listed' group never qualifies as Evil", I'd appreciate a quotation and source. Otherwise, it's less "false" than "not necessarily true", which was already acknowledged by use of the word "could" in my comment.
You described a particular scenario. So your last clause was just a non-sequitur that had nothing to do with the rest of your post?

In the scenario you described, where the townsfolk have said, "There are goblins nearby! They're goblins! They were here first! Kill them so we can expand into their space!" and nothing more, saying "No" is not only not evil but required to not do something evil. This is quite unambiguous from the Player's Handbook descriptions of alignments; for extra irony, it is established very simply by "treating people as disposable=evil."

Moreover, any scenario where it would be evil to side with goblins against humans is also one where, were the positions reversed, it would be evil to side with humans against goblins. Because--again--the races aren't the morally significant factor here; "Group A wants Group B wiped out so Group A can expand into Group B's territory," or, "Group A wants Group B's regular attacks on Group A stopped," is. Treating people as disposable is evil. There is no problem with this axiom. Your effort to establish a problem with it consisted of describing a situation where slaughtering goblins would, in fact, be evil, and proceeding as though this meaning the axiom broke down was self-evident.


Is a person who is convicted of a crime in a duly appointed court of law still eligible to call himself "Lawful"?

You tell me. As a DM. Suppose that a group including a paladin enters a swamp to kill the evil orc chief who rules it. Suppose that the orc chief is, in fact, guilty of myriad crimes by the standards of most of the world, and is unambiguously evil and a danger to every settlement anywhere near the swamp.

Suppose that the orc chief, whose rule over the swamp is uncontested, had declared that Killing Him Is Illegal, for some obscure reason.

Does the paladin have to choose between turning himself in to the orc chief for attempted assassination of the swamp's political leader, or losing his Lawful alignment? Does this only become necessary if the orc chief points a finger at him and shouts, "You criminal!"? Only if the orc chief rounds up 14 other orcs to act as jury and prosecuting and defense attorneys and declares that he wants to put the paladin on trial (he will, of course, be acting as the judge, which luckily is completely legal by the rules which he just made up for the swamp)? Or does a "duly appointed court of law" have to be human?

[Callista]

Your definition of "apply the alignment system properly" is almost certainly not one that applies universally at all tables.Well, 'course not. Everybody plays the game differently. Nothing wrong with that. House rules are more common than not. Who actually applies the Massive Damage rule or insists on multiclassing XP penalty? Lots of people house-rule alignment, too. If you want a hack-and-slash game where you go out to kill goblins because the mayor said to do it, more power to you and have fun.

Why should the PCs question the word of the duly appointed town representative who wants to hire them when he says the goblins are a menace? What happens when the PCs investigate and find that the goblins were looting/killing - because someone made it appear so?They should question the town's duly-appointed representative if they are the kind of people who would question that person: that is, Chaotic enough to mistrust authority, or Good enough to make absolutely sure that the goblins they were killing actually deserved it. Only a party with an LE bent would go out and slaughter goblins without question when given that order.

"What the humans in town label you" is often relevant to your alignment simply because of how they react to you. They call you a no-good, evil, goblin-kisser and start attacking you on sight? Now you've got to defend yourself, where the use of force could land you in jail, regardless of the lethality of that force or even the rightness of your self-defense.But that's a good thing! Now you have a Good-aligned party who are morally and culturally ahead of their time, trapped in between their own "civilized" but prejudiced race and the problem of how to deal with goblins who truly can be dangerous and truly are often evil--all without becoming murderers. The story becomes more complex this way. The humans can no longer be considered the "good guys" simply because they're humans, and the world becomes more complex as the heroes try to live in a world where their respect for life has branded them as traitors.


Is a person who is convicted of a crime in a duly appointed court of law still eligible to call himself "Lawful"? Is a person who kills an untrained commoner who attacks him still eligible to call himself "Good"?Yes, and yes. It all depends on why you did it. But these are PCs here, remember? They get to take control of the story. The Lawful guy in court can use his testimony to give a moving oratory on why goblins are people, too; and the Good guy faced with an untrained commoner can knock the guy out instead of killing.


What if, instead of defending themselves, the party vacates? Well, now they're in breach of contract (unlawful), and labelled as cowards and goblin-sympathizers. Good? Lawful? I'll wager there's not a consensus on how those actions would be viewed.Not by the in-world people, of course; and that's what makes it so interesting. "Good" doesn't mean "You're a hero; everybody loves you; everything you do is praised." It just means "You truly care about the welfare of other sentient beings." Sometimes, people who do that get themselves killed because of it. You can be universally reviled and still be Good-aligned. While it's a good idea not to overdo it on the angst when that happens, it's still a nice element in the story.

[Amphetryon]

Well, 'course not. Everybody plays the game differently. Nothing wrong with that. House rules are more common than not. Who actually applies the Massive Damage rule or insists on multiclassing XP penalty? Lots of people house-rule alignment, too. If you want a hack-and-slash game where you go out to kill goblins because the mayor said to do it, more power to you and have fun.
They should question the town's duly-appointed representative if they are the kind of people who would question that person: that is, Chaotic enough to mistrust authority, or Good enough to make absolutely sure that the goblins they were killing actually deserved it. Only a party with an LE bent would go out and slaughter goblins without question when given that order.
But that's a good thing! Now you have a Good-aligned party who are morally and culturally ahead of their time, trapped in between their own "civilized" but prejudiced race and the problem of how to deal with goblins who truly can be dangerous and truly are often evil--all without becoming murderers. The story becomes more complex this way. The humans can no longer be considered the "good guys" simply because they're humans, and the world becomes more complex as the heroes try to live in a world where their respect for life has branded them as traitors.

Yes, and yes. It all depends on why you did it. But these are PCs here, remember? They get to take control of the story. The Lawful guy in court can use his testimony to give a moving oratory on why goblins are people, too; and the Good guy faced with an untrained commoner can knock the guy out instead of killing.

Not by the in-world people, of course; and that's what makes it so interesting. "Good" doesn't mean "You're a hero; everybody loves you; everything you do is praised." It just means "You truly care about the welfare of other sentient beings." Sometimes, people who do that get themselves killed because of it. You can be universally reviled and still be Good-aligned. While it's a good idea not to overdo it on the angst when that happens, it's still a nice element in the story.
I've played at more than one table where every one of your "yes" answers was considered incorrect, from an Alignment perspective, by DM decree and player majority.

And that's the problem with Alignment. If I've decided to make a Paladin to play at a table where I'm not personally familiar with how the DM and other players view everything, I'm still reasonably sure I'll know the mechanics of how Smite works, how Lay on Hands works, how Divine Grace works, and how my spells and steed will function. I'll have almost no clue on whether the actions that I perceive as Paladin-level LG will match that DM and party's notions of Paladin-level LG. I've seen tables (and arguments on the internet) that believe that "Detect Evil/Register Evil/Smite!" is the appropriate response for a Paladin, and I've seen tables (and arguments on the internet) that believe that same paradigm will lead inexorably to the Paladin falling. Paladin stops to rescue orphans? Whoops, sorry, that's delaying their duly appointed tasks, violating their Lawful nature (this was ruled so at more than one table I've attended). Paladin agonizes over whether his choices were correct or incorrect? Whoops, sorry, a Paladin is always sure of what's Good and Lawful by dint of his 'always-on' Detect Evil and moral fiber, so you're jeopardizing your status as more than a Fighter-sans-bonus feats (again, ruled so at more than one DIFFERENT table I've attended). What actions can a Paladin take to ensure that he doesn't fall? All but entirely up to the DM and that table's take on Alignment.

[hamishspence]

But that's a good thing! Now you have a Good-aligned party who are morally and culturally ahead of their time, trapped in between their own "civilized" but prejudiced race and the problem of how to deal with goblins who truly can be dangerous and truly are often evil--all without becoming murderers. The story becomes more complex this way. The humans can no longer be considered the "good guys" simply because they're humans, and the world becomes more complex as the heroes try to live in a world where their respect for life has branded them as traitors.

Yup. BoED's paragraph that most closely corresponds to this was:

page 11

Being Ahead of Your Time
Heroic characters often end up at odds with their culture and society. the standards expected of good characters in D&D, especially those who lay claim to exalted status, bear much more similarity to modern sensibilities about justice, equality, and respect for life than to the actual medieval world that D&D is loosely based on, and that is quite intentional.

It is certainly possible that your campaign world might be a more enlightened place than medieval Europe - a place where men and women are considered equal, slavery is not practiced in any form, torture and capital punishment are shunned, and the various human and humanoid races live together in harmony. In such a case, an exalted character can live in relative peace with her culture, and focus her attention on saying evil creatures in ruins and dungeons or rival, evil nations.

On the other hand, your campaign world might more closely resemble the realities of life in Earth's Dark or Middle Ages. Perhaps women are not viewed as men's equals or even sentient beings in their own right, slavery is widespread, testimony from serfs is only acceptable if extracted through torture, and humans of a certain skin tone (let alone nonhumans) are viewed ad demonic creatures.

It is vitally important to remember one thing: these factors don't change anything else said in this chapter (or in the Book of Vile Darkness) about what constitutes a good or evil deed. Even if slavery, torture, or discrimination are condoned by society, they remain evil. That simply means an exalted character has an even harder road to follow. Not only must she worry about external evils like conjured demons and rampaging orc hordes, she must also contend with the evil in her own society.

In all likelihood, most human (and halfling) societies fall somewhere between the two extremes described above. In game terms, humans tend to be neutral, neither good nor evil. Human societies might tolerate a variety of evil practices, even if some humans find them distasteful. In such a circumstance, an exalted character is still at odds with the norms of her society and may occasionally find herself in conflict with it, but she can devote her time and attention to dealing with evil acts, either inside or outside her society, rather than trying to reform an entire nation or culture.

In situations where a society's practices put good characters at odds with it, a good character's alignment is the strongest indicator of how she will deal with that conflict.

[Duke of URL]

To avoid re-inventing the wheel, I'll just link to my own thoughts on the subject (http://www.victoriouspress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=511). Summary relevant to the OP: alignment can be a very useful tool for character development, especially if we throw in the question of how strongly is the character's commitment and the reasons behind that, remembering that the character's actions and beliefs determine the alignment, not the other way around.

Even if you're in a game that doesn't use the alignment system, it can still be worthwhile to go through the steps of determining the character's alignment and strength of commitment as part of the process in developing the character's history and personality. It helps develop a picture of how the character is likely to behave, and why.

[Starbuck_II]

Yup. BoED's paragraph that most closely corresponds to this was:

page 11

And it notes that it means Exalted good not just good if you read it carefully. So unless you plan on being exalted, it doesn't matter.

[hamishspence]

The first part:

the standards expected of good characters in D&D, especially those who lay claim to exalted status, bear much more similarity to modern sensibilities about justice, equality, and respect for life than to the actual medieval world that D&D is loosely based on, and that is quite intentional.

and the last part says "good" not only "exalted". So, it's applicable, if not quite as strongly, to Good characters as well as exalted ones.

"Good implies ... respect for life" in the PHB, after all.

so- if you're intending to be Good, some of it is at least applicable:

"The principles of good make certain demands about how criminals are treated"
"The use of torture or other practices that inflict undue suffering upon the victims goes beyond the pale of what can be considered good"
"There are certain limits upon the use of violence that good characters must observe"
"Good characters must offer mercy and accept surrender no matter how many times villains might betray that kindness"

Plenty of statements that use "good" rather than "exalted"

[Amphetryon]

The first part:

the standards expected of good characters in D&D, especially those who lay claim to exalted status, bear much more similarity to modern sensibilities about justice, equality, and respect for life than to the actual medieval world that D&D is loosely based on, and that is quite intentional.

and the last part says "good" not only "exalted". So, it's applicable, if not quite as strongly, to Good characters as well as exalted ones.

"Good implies ... respect for life" in the PHB, after all.

so- if you're intending to be Good, some of it is at least applicable:

"The principles of good make certain demands about how criminals are treated"
"The use of torture or other practices that inflict undue suffering upon the victims goes beyond the pale of what can be considered good"
"There are certain limits upon the use of violence that good characters must observe"
"Good characters must offer mercy and accept surrender no matter how many times villains might betray that kindness"

Plenty of statements that use "good" rather than "exalted"

Where is "undue suffering" defined in D&D terms, please?

Does the last one mean that any character who kills an enemy without pausing to offer to accept surrender is behaving in a way D&D calls Evil? If so, how many folks here can say that none of their Good characters have committed the Evil act of simply continuing to fight until the enemy is dead? How about for enemies who didn't speak a language, or didn't share one in common with any in the party?

[Water_Bear]

And it notes that it means Exalted good not just good if you read it carefully. So unless you plan on being exalted, it doesn't matter.


Well, Exalted characters are still Good; in fact they are the paragons of good. Looking to them as an example of how Good characters ought to behave is natural. And it is important to note what caused someone to stop being Exalted; willingly committing an Evil act.

As others have said, D&D's alignment system is more clear then people make it out; BoED and other books are packed with insights into what each alignment means. Even the corner cases aren't usually that hairy, as Action tends to trump Intent in D&D Morality.

Alignment isn't something that can be adjudicated purely by mechanical interactions, which is its greatest strength; it relies on the Players and DM to decide what alignment means to them and adds complexity to their interactions with each other and the game world.

[hamishspence]

Where is "undue suffering" defined in D&D terms, please?
It's not- pretty much falls into DMs discretion.


Does the last one mean that any character who kills an enemy without pausing to offer to accept surrender is behaving in a way D&D calls Evil? If so, how many folks here can say that none of their Good characters have committed the Evil act of simply continuing to fight until the enemy is dead? How about for enemies who didn't speak a language, or didn't share one in common with any in the party?

This one may be context-sensitive- if you know the enemy can't speak your language, and it doesn't respond to attempts at miming a surrender offer (not sure how that would work though) then self-defence is likely to come into play.

It may be impractical to break off a fight to make a surrender offer sometimes.

[Fatebreaker]

Alignment isn't something that can be adjudicated purely by mechanical interactions

...well, that's a problem, since a number of mechanical interactions are adjudicated differently based on alignment.

[Hiro Protagonest]

From what you described, this character is evil. I see no moral ambiguity here, even.


He looks clearly neutral to me. Some Good traits, some Evil traits. Thus, Neutral.

I don't understand. Both had good intentions. One killed much more than the other, as well as tortured and destroyed. But you call the guy who only kills the necessary amount of people to get to his goal evil, while the one that caused a lot of collateral damage (both on property and people) neutral.

[hamishspence]

it might be that the "hidden weapon" guy isn't in the description described as doing Good things a lot of the time- making personal sacrifices to help others, and so forth.

That's why they're not getting the "Some Good traits, some Evil, thus Neutral" defence.

[Man on Fire]

I like the alignment, the axis of law vs chaos an good vs evil is interesting and it's fun to wonder who fits where or who can fit entire chart (http://th05.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2010/175/5/f/Lelouch__s_Alignment_Chart_by_AlsoSprachOdin.jpg) by himself (http://writingiseasier.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/batman-alignment-chart.jpg).

What I on't like is how deeply rooten into the game it is. Infamous Always Chaotic Evil bullmanure makes me wanna go and beat somebody. Entire species and they're all evil - BULL@#$%! Or usually chaotic evil - same thing, nonsense incarnate. If a species is inteligent, then they have right to be every alignment they wish, Orcs have the same right to be good or evil and coblins can be lawful neutral or neutral good. An if species isn't sentient the way humans are, then it doesn't have alignment. I can get beings that were created by certain forces like devils, demons or devas, they were tailor made to represent some sort of place on the axis. But Saying that all Orcs are chaotic evil is just plain stupidity. Alignment can be fun but cannot be enforced strictly, they're only guidelines at best.

[Water_Bear]

What I on't like is how deeply rooten into the game it is. Infamous Always Chaotic Evil bullmanure makes me wanna go and beat somebody. Entire species and they're all evil - BULL@#$%! Or usually chaotic evil - same thing, nonsense incarnate. If a species is inteligent, then they have right to be every alignment they wish, Orcs have the same right to be good or evil and coblins can be lawful neutral or neutral good. An if species isn't sentient the way humans are, then it doesn't have alignment. I can get beings that were created by certain forces like devils, demons or devas, they were tailor made to represent some sort of place on the axis. But Saying that all Orcs are chaotic evil is just plain stupidity

Yeah, it's always a little headscratching why a Humanoid race is Usually X or Always X, that always seemed like something better suited for outsiders. I guess its my Human Usually Neutral prejudices...:smalltongue:

But it should make you feel better that "Always X" explicitly means ~95% of the population; there will always be Orc Paladins, they're just fairly rare.
Still, I agree that Humanoids should default to Neutral and have less lazy explanations for Evil Orc Raiders that "well, you know how Orcs are amirite?"

[hamishspence]

But it should make you feel better that "Always X" explicitly means ~95% of the population;
What book's that in? MM doesn't give a figure for the lower limit of "Always X alignment".
Though I suppose if "Usually X" is given as 50% to 95% somewhere, a case could be made that 95+% qualifies as "always X"



Still, I agree that Humanoids should default to Neutral and have less lazy explanations for Evil Orc Raiders that "well, you know how Orcs are amirite?"

"Alignment- Any" sounds about right.

[Callista]

Hardly any species is "always" any alignment. There are alignment tendencies, "often" or "usually", but that is a cultural or racial bent and you cannot conclude that any individual must have that alignment.

Real world example: Men are taller than women, right? Yep. On average, men are "usually tall" and women are "usually short". But there are tall women and short men. It's like that: A blink dog is "usually lawful good" and a Worg is "usually neutral evil"--only you measure it with Detect spells instead of yardsticks.

The "Always" alignments where exceptions are one-in-a-hundred to one-in-a-million, are usually:
1. Undead. Fueled by negative energy, their minds have been affected to the point that they naturally desire to kill living creatures, regardless of whether or not they deserve it.
2. Celestial, infernal, anarchic, or axiomatic creatures, which are usually outsiders closely related to aligned planes. They come into being as full adults and are composed of the basic substance of their home plane: A Succubus is quite literally made of evil.
3. Dragons. The only "Always" group which has a childhood, dragons receive the racial knowledge (and culture) of their species in the egg, and are born with an alignment. Notably, their alignment is also the easiest "Always" alignment to change; it's possible with Handle Animal and/or Diplomacy checks by a PC fostering a dragon hatchling.
4. Animals and other INT 0-2 creatures, which are driven by the instinct to survive without either altruism or malevolence, and are by default always True Neutral.

There are a few others that don't fit into those categories if you page through the monster manuals, but in pretty much every case there is a good reason why those creatures are always, always one alignment or another. When PCs meet an "Always" creature and have no reason to believe that it may be the one-in-a-million who isn't that alignment, they can make assumptions. In all the other cases, the sentient creatures of the D&D world are capable of change. In a non-hack-and-slash world, PCs will need to recognize that the exceptions exist when they make their decisions.

[Taelas]

Actually, I'm arguing for what the rules actually say- in Champions of Ruin, BoED, etc. Even the DMG says "Actions matter, not statements of intent by players"

"Treating people as disposable" isn't really compatible with "respect for life". The "jerk with a heart of gold" may be rude, obnoxious, slightly ruthless- but he still "respects life".

"Heroic Sociopath" is the kind of person that treats people as disposable- Belkar, for example.

The elf I mentioned before has respect for life--simply not human life.

I said you were arguing your own interpretation because you said someone who is "consistently doing evil" is Evil, and you implied that it didn't matter how rare that consistent evil behavior was. I very much disagree. No one is completely consistent; and in my opinion, someone who consistently does good 95% of the time, but then consistently commits evil the remaining 5%, is perfectly in line with that philosophy, and qualifies for a Good alignment.

Imagine a tragic character that hates orcs due to a traumatic event in their past. They will torture orcs, have no qualms killing them even when they surrender, and in fact seem to take delight in it. They will even acknowledge that their actions are evil; they simply don't care.

This evil aspect is focused solely towards orcs. The character will argue for sparing goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, and all other kinds of evil creatures out of respect for life, and is in every other aspect a clear example of a Good character.

In my opinion, despite their treatment of orcs, the character is still of a Good alignment.

[Callista]

...wut? Seriously? Since when was somebody who restricted their torture, killing, and general mayhem to a specific group of people considered "good"?

[Taelas]

...wut? Seriously? Since when was somebody who restricted their torture, killing, and general mayhem to a specific group of people considered "good"?

It is everything else that makes them Good.

[Amphetryon]

...wut? Seriously? Since when was somebody who restricted their torture, killing, and general mayhem to a specific group of people considered "good"?

Board rules prohibit giving specific examples from human history, but they exist, from the POV of those doing the general mayhem.

[hamishspence]

Savage Species page 102:


An evil character can be a loving parent (such as Grendel's mother) a faithful spouse, a loyal friend, or a devoted servant without diminishing their villainy in any way; this merely reflects the way in which people compartmentalize their lives and the fact that they behave in different ways toward different groups, brutalising those they consider beneath them but treating their peers and loved ones with respect and affection. .

In this case "those they consider beneath them" is humans, and "their peers and loved ones" is all elves.

Thus, they qualify. In Champions of Ruin "repeated, deliberate use of many of these (evil acts) is the mark of an evil character" Doesn't say that they can't commit good deeds as well, or even that their evil deeds must be more common than their good ones.

The Eldeth Veluuthra racist elven organisation is described as "an evil group than thinks their every action is in the service of good".

[Necroticplague]

I, personally, mostly ignore alignment because I can make arguments for any character with a bit of depth in any way. As a result, I see alignment as relatively detached from a character's actions. Good,Evil,Law, and Chaos are physically present forces that exist, and your alignment simply indicates which you are closestly astrally connected to. I see it this way because this is the same game where the elements are "sound", "force", "negative energy", "positive energy", "fire", "cold", and "acid".

[Taelas]

Savage Species page 102:

.

In this case "those they consider beneath them" is humans, and "their peers and loved ones" is all elves.

Thus, they qualify. In Champions of Ruin "repeated, deliberate use of many of these (evil acts) is the mark of an evil character" Doesn't say that they can't commit good deeds as well, or even that their evil deeds must be more common than their good ones.

The Eldeth Veluuthra racist elven organisation is described as "an evil group than thinks their every action is in the service of good".

The Eldreth Veluuthra actively attempts to eradicate humans; it is their primary purpose. That is not the kind of character I am suggesting. If the orc-hating character I suggested actively starts to hunt orcs and makes it their primary purpose, they wouldn't commit enough Good acts to weigh out their Evil deeds. At the very least, they would rapidly become Neutral, if not outright Evil, depending on how focused they are.

Just as an Evil character can do Good deeds and remain Evil, a Good character can do Evil deeds and remain Good.

[Gnome Alone]

Suppose that the orc chief, whose rule over the swamp is uncontested, had declared that Killing Him Is Illegal, for some obscure reason.

Does the paladin have to choose between turning himself in to the orc chief for attempted assassination of the swamp's political leader, or losing his Lawful alignment? Does this only become necessary if the orc chief points a finger at him and shouts, "You criminal!"? Only if the orc chief rounds up 14 other orcs to act as jury and prosecuting and defense attorneys and declares that he wants to put the paladin on trial (he will, of course, be acting as the judge, which luckily is completely legal by the rules which he just made up for the swamp)? Or does a "duly appointed court of law" have to be human?

Kish's scenario is apt, and I believe it helps to illustrate what I feel is a misunderstanding of the intent of "Lawful." Blindly honoring and following all laws simply because they are laws leads to incoherence even without another massive abstract philosophical concept muddying the waters (e.g., "Good.")

But Lawful in the D&D concept doesn't mean mechanistic adherence to legalism. It means being reliable and following a code and such. The only part of the description of Lawful that even pertains to the actual laws of a state or other polity at all is the bit about "respecting legitimate authority." The paladin in the above example could simply not recognize the orc chief's authority as legitimate. Hell, he could be a Lawful Good anarchist paladin that recognizes practically no authority as legitimate.

[hamishspence]

Just as an Evil character can do Good deeds and remain Evil, a Good character can do Evil deeds and remain Good.

Not consistantly.

In the PHB "occasionally taking something, or hoarding" were the examples given, on page 103. Also "a good character can lose his temper".

They can also be "driven to evil from time to time" Champions of Ruin.

Torturing innocent people is a bit more than that. Once someone will "hurt people if doing so is convenient" merely because of their race- they're entering Evil terrain- that of the LE villain who, page 105: "condemns others not according to their actions but according to their race, religion, homeland, social rank" etc.

[Sutremaine]

What I on't like is how deeply rooten into the game it is. Infamous Always Chaotic Evil bullmanure makes me wanna go and beat somebody. Entire species and they're all evil - BULL@#$%! Or usually chaotic evil - same thing, nonsense incarnate. If a species is inteligent, then they have right to be every alignment they wish
Those are pretty shallow roots. You can say that every humanoid, monstrous humanoid, and giant type uses Human alignment (ie. by individual and not by race), and it doesn't change the cosmology or magic system of the universe described in the core books. The aligned planes and their outsiders still exist, spells and class features still work the same way as always... it just means that humans aren't the only ones with the privilege of being judged on their individual merits. Even dragons (which have strict alignments despite no planar association) are easily fixed by letting them be what they want and choose clerical domains appropriate to themselves and not to their colour.

It's certainly a troubling part of the alignment system (try running a stereotypical campaign with different races of humans instead of different races of creatures and hopefully it all becomes very uncomfortable), but the problem comes not from the system but from the way it's used.

If a DM told me my character should be acting a certain way because of their alignment, I'd be as miffed as if I were being told to act a certain way because of the race I was playing.

[TuggyNE]

I made it more or less on a whim. You don't have to apologize - I'm not about to get offended.

That being said, have you checked into D20 Modern's system?

I have, a little; it seemed OK, although it didn't have quite enough of the cosmic significance I often like.


Well, Freedom versus Duty is the conflict between sacrificing one's own freedom to obey a higher authority (duty) versus disorganisation and libertine tendencies (freedom). The main conflict here is whether personal freedoms are more important than social obligations or viceversa. Note that this does not necessarily involve the law, since duty is one's own personal measure of how much obedience they owe society, not how much one is willing to follow the law. When the military stages a coup, a soldier will have to choose between his duty to the chain of command and his duty to the current power. Regardless of what he chooses, he will still be Dutiful (if he chooses to take a third option and run away, that's not Dutiful at all).

Emotion versus Logic is fairly self-explanatory. Do you put your feelings aside and make cold, logical decisions at the risk of forsaking what makes you human (or whatever race applies) or do you choose to follow your heart and potentially make catastrophic decisions, such as sacrificing an entire village to save an endangered loved one?

Honour versus Pragmatism is purely internal and does not relate to society, regardless of what might seem at first glance. Everyone (save very few exceptions) have some sort of moral code. Pragmatic people are the ones willing to compromise their own moral code to achieve their goals, or to modify their moral code as situations change. Honourable people adhere to their code of conduct regardless of how difficult circumstances become and sacrifice advantages for their own peace of mind.

It could be argued that the ideal position is True Neutral, a balance of all three, and that excess of any virtue can be dangerous and severely unbalance the subject. However, the other side of the coin is that a non-committal person also lacks a reason to fight or take a stand. One could argue that a lack of strong convictions is highly unhealthy in a world where masses can be manipulated to suit the charismatic, or even just trusted to ignore any shady dealings.

I'll have to consider using this next campaign I'm in :)

It probably deserves a detailed write-up converting, say, Outsiders to this. (Or, as the case may be, eliminating some of them.)

[Shadowknight12]

I'll have to consider using this next campaign I'm in :)

It probably deserves a detailed write-up converting, say, Outsiders to this. (Or, as the case may be, eliminating some of them.)

Well, I could give it a try, though Outsiders can remain as they are. Keep the Good, Evil, Law and Chaos subtype, along with all the other alignment-related powers and spells. They are now vastly depowered, as Smite Evil would only affect creatures with the Evil subtype and Unholy Blight affects practically everyone as though they were neutral and only creatures with the Good subtype receive the worst effects.

A devil and an archon can still be, for example, Dutiful Logical Pragmatic, but the way they express their "alignment" is vastly different because of their subtypes. You can even have (hilariously) a Liberated Emotional Pragmatic Inevitable, for example. It's still a creature with the Lawful subtype, it just happens to be more passionate and flexible about it than most and prefers to work alone.

[hamishspence]

If a DM told me my character should be acting a certain way because of their alignment, I'd be as miffed as if I were being told to act a certain way because of the race I was playing.

It's more "If the character wishes to stay the same alignment, then they should be acting in certain ways" though I can understand the objection.

On "more good behaviour than evil behaviour = good alignment"- that's more the schtick of video games with a Karma Meter.

Maybe apply the logic to abusers of various kinds.

A person spends 9.5 hours every day "making personal sacrifices to help others", and 30 minutes every day beating their spouse/children, or committing various other forms of abuse against them. The rest of the time is spent doing "unaligned things" like sleeping, eating and so forth.

Are they Good because "they spend more time being Good than being evil"?

I think not. And Champions of Ruin seems to support this perspective.

[Amphetryon]

It's more "If the character wishes to stay the same alignment, then they should be acting in certain ways" though I can understand the objection.

On "more good behaviour than evil behaviour = good alignment"- that's more the schtick of video games with a Karma Meter.

Maybe apply the logic to abusers of various kinds.

A person spends 9.5 hours every day "making personal sacrifices to help others", and 30 minutes every day beating their spouse/children, or committing various other forms of abuse against them. The rest of the time is spent doing "unaligned things" like sleeping, eating and so forth.

Are they Good because "they spend more time being Good than being evil"?

I think not. And Champions of Ruin seems to support this perspective.
Is Champions of Ruin, a Forgotten Realms supplement, designated as the final word in Alignment concerns by WotC canon?

What about a person who spends 9.5 hours every day "making personal sacrifices to help others", and 30 minutes every day killing random creatures they just met and taking their stuff? Because, that's fairly typical Paladin behavior in lots of campaigns. . . or is the killing and looting okay because the random creatures blipped red on the Evil-o-meter, or just weren't kin to the killer?

[Kish]

Fellow, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that "typical behavior in lots of campaigns" relates to "viable in by-the-book D&D" in any way other than "evidence that lots of people, not just the ones who have argued for the wacked-out nothing-to-do-with-morality version of alignment in this thread, are confused about how the alignment system is supposed to work."

The answer's not going to change because you phrase the question yet another different way. If you spend 30 minutes every day killing and robbing random creatures then you're evil. The briefest glance at the alignment section of the Player's Handbook should tell you that. The number of groups you know where no one takes that brief glance, or people who do immediately respin the words there into meaninglessness--"Respect for life? Um, that means I won't kill anyone who is in the party or doesn't have anything I want to steal and isn't in my way!"--is irrelevant.

[Amphetryon]

Fellow, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that "typical behavior in lots of campaigns" relates to "viable in by-the-book D&D" in any way other than "evidence that lots of people, not just the ones who have argued for the wacked-out nothing-to-do-with-morality version of alignment in this thread, are confused about how the alignment system is supposed to work."

The answer's not going to change because you phrase the question yet another different way. If you spend 30 minutes every day killing and robbing random creatures then you're evil. The briefest glance at the alignment section of the Player's Handbook should tell you that. The number of groups you know where no one takes that brief glance, or people who do immediately respin the words there into meaninglessness--"Respect for life? Um, that means I won't kill anyone who is in the party or doesn't have anything I want to steal and isn't in my way!"--is irrelevant.

So, every adventuring party that kills things found in a dungeon-delve is evil? I'd have thought that POV was a bit harsh.

[willpell]

I love alignment, as long as it's played with a light touch. I also subvert the holy living heck out of it, with characters who are deeply suspicious of magical alignment detection. It seems to me that that angels and Books of Vile Darkness and so forth are inevitably going to have somewhat narrow and biased interpretations of what is actually a rather nuanced subject; the nine boxes on the alignment grid are only the broad strokes.

For instance there's a big difference between the Neutral Evil of an assassin, someone who just looks to turn a profit on the deaths of others because he figures they were gonna find some way to kill each other anyway, he might as well get paid for it, versus the Neutral Evil of a dread necromancer who r(canwesaytheRword?)es the laws of nature six ways from sunday to create his unholy legion of mindless slaves...and would never hurt a fly (on any level beyond the emotional pain of people who think their former loved ones deserved not to get turned into negative-energy robots, or the supposed environmental catastrophe of increasing the presence of dark powers in the world, neither of which he feels is as important as the people who talk about it want you to believe).

Don't think of alignment as a restriction. Think of it as a springboard for figuring out your character's worldview. Don't just say "My character's Chaotic"; ask why. Does he inherently distrust authority figures? Does he instinctively lash out at those who try to manipulate him, even for his own good? Does he like to laugh at jokes that other people think are offensive and unfunny? Does he believe his dreams and intuition are more real and more special than the grand ancient traditions and ambitious forward-looking plans of great nations? There's just so much you can do with alignment if you don't make the mistake of thinking that it's a simple, black-and white thing....despite the existence of mechanical arguments that it is exactly that. (Like I said, subversion.)

[lt_murgen]

Having been a RPGer for the better part of 30 years, alignment started off as an issue, but has gradually faded away for me. Alignment, for better or worse, tends to come into play with Divine characters more than anywhere else. This leads to some natural common causes:

(1) Insufficient character development. A player is playing a a divine Class [DC] should have a written code of conduct, a detailed history of his/her training, and the teachings of the specific order they are part of. Without that, how can they judge if they are on the right path? And if they don’t want to go through all the hassle, then why are they playing a DC?
(2) Insufficient world development. If the DM allows (1), then they get what they deserve. The DM should not only know the religion the DC, but how it is seen within the society the game starts in, and any potential societies that may interact with it. If the characters are going to interact with non-human socities on a large scale, then religious viewpoints need to be considered BEFORE play begins. Yes, it is possible for a gnoll to be a benevolent vegetarian, but if their society dictates consuming sentient beings and taking slaves, then they are an evil race as defined by the DM.

(3) Insufficient religious development. Knowing the religion of the characters, all of the characters, will help determine their motivations. In most games dieties exist, they exert a significant influence on the world around them, and they expect (and punish) certain behaviors in their followers. Many players can be polytheists, but athiests would be few and far between. When you grow up in a world where you go to a spiritual temple for healing it is hard to deny their influence. The gods (and by extension, the DM) are the arbiters of what is good and evil.

(4) Moral relativism: This is where most people get hung up, as evidenced by this thread. Are actions inherently good or evil, or do their consequences matter? Does the end justify the means or not? This is something that needs to be discussed before play between the DM and the players of DC. Each campaign will have different conclusions.

Now, for the games I play, I dictate that there are concepts of absolute good and evil. I explain that actions and intent are more damning than results. Similarly, detect good and evil detects only the residue of past actions (“taint of evil”) and intent (“gleam of future foul acts”). In a world where people can be compelled to tell the truth and where you can detect good and evil, the gods take an interest in the actions of DC. As the DM, I inform them that I reserve the right to issue divine punishments to DC who break their vows. Often, it is simplt a string of bad luck (roll twice, take the lower value, or -1 to all rolls). But that is just me.

[Kish]

So, every adventuring party that kills things found in a dungeon-delve is evil? I'd have thought that POV was a bit harsh.
Of course. There's no possible way to have adventurers motivated by anything but racism or greed extreme enough to murder for. Not only do the D&D books never ever address any other reason to go into a dungeon, no one has discussed such, particularly not in this thread.

(Lest someone who hasn't been reading take this literally, note the sarcasm tag, please.)

[Taelas]

It's more "If the character wishes to stay the same alignment, then they should be acting in certain ways" though I can understand the objection.

On "more good behaviour than evil behaviour = good alignment"- that's more the schtick of video games with a Karma Meter.

Maybe apply the logic to abusers of various kinds.

A person spends 9.5 hours every day "making personal sacrifices to help others", and 30 minutes every day beating their spouse/children, or committing various other forms of abuse against them. The rest of the time is spent doing "unaligned things" like sleeping, eating and so forth.

Are they Good because "they spend more time being Good than being evil"?

I think not. And Champions of Ruin seems to support this perspective.

No, it doesn't. It supports the opposite perspective: That a person who is Evil can do Good things without becoming Good.

By your logic, it is much, much, much easier to become Good than Evil, which is nonsense. Do an Evil deed, you're damned forever. Do a Good deed, it's forgotten by the next sunrise? Please. Neither is true.

Your example is also poor. I am not speaking of a person who does Evil on a daily basis, but in certain situations. The weight of actions is vastly different. The person you are describing is far more likely to be Neutral rather than Good, and depending on their motivation for doing good deeds 9.5 hours every day, they could easily slip into Evil.

It may seem "video gamey" to you, but it is the sum of our actions, as well as intent and motivation, that matter.

[Morithias]

I recently came up with an idea that might remove some of the smite crazy problem. This will take a while and go into some weird terrority but try to stick with me.

In one videogame I play, there is a tribe of Miko who via a special ritual (sex) suck the evil essence from a person and trap it inside their bodies. They hold a special lottery that is rigged. You're tainted, you win, you're not, you lose.

The hero of this videogame is for lack of a better term a serial rapist, and a hero only in the loosest terms unless that term is "heroic sociopath".

....he can't win the draw.

Why? Well apparently it's because he doesn't realize that rape is wrong.

Wouldn't that be an interesting idea for the alignment system? You have to realize something is wrong to do before it'll register on your soul? An orc who was raised to kill and never realized killing is wrong...Chaotic Neutral.

That evil cleric who sacrifices people to keep themselves young and KNOWS that murder is wrong? Evil aligned.

It would lead to an interesting idea with the Paladin. You can't go smite crazy cause your smite doesn't work on half the people you're trying to fight. People who are raised wrong and have blue and orange morality are immune to your smite.

With the right players it might lead to them trying to "educate" the savages so to speak, since one of their best methods of killing them are now gone a.k.a anything that only works on evil people.

[Deophaun]

I don't understand. Both had good intentions.
Because intentions don't matter, the road to hell being paved with them and such.

Circumstances, however, do, and the second character had much greater extenuating circumstances than the first.

[hamishspence]

Do an Evil deed, you're damned forever. Do a Good deed, it's forgotten by the next sunrise? Please. Neither is true.

Actually Fiendish Codex 2 says almost precisely that- if you're lawful, and you do 9 pts worth of Corrupt acts, and you fail to have remorse- you're damned to Baator forever.

A little harsh, and I'd personally go with a more geometric scale- humiliating an underling 7 times is not morally equivalent to committing one "murder for pleasure" - but the point is sound- evil deeds can damn someone, but good deeds without remorse or repentance, can't save someone.


Your example is also poor. I am not speaking of a person who does Evil on a daily basis, but in certain situations.

You argued that when 95% of a person's actions are Good, and 5% are Evil, that person is Good.
No one is completely consistent; and in my opinion, someone who consistently does good 95% of the time, but then consistently commits evil the remaining 5%, is perfectly in line with that philosophy, and qualifies for a Good alignment.
Why does it become different when this is applied to "daily actions" . How about weekly? Monthly? Yearly?


It may seem "video gamey" to you, but it is the sum of our actions, as well as intent and motivation, that matter.

That's not even what the PHB says. If a person "has no compassion for others and will kill/hurt/oppress them if doing so is convenient" they're Evil. The fact that the "others" they have no compassion for represent only a small portion of the population- is irrelevant.

[Amphetryon]

Of course. There's no possible way to have adventurers motivated by anything but racism or greed extreme enough to murder for. Not only do the D&D books never ever address any other reason to go into a dungeon, no one has discussed such, particularly not in this thread.

(Lest someone who hasn't been reading take this literally, note the sarcasm tag, please.)

The comment to which I responded (Regardless of the rest of your day, spending 30 minutes a day killing stuff is evil, full stop (paraphrased)) made no mention whatsoever about the motivation for killing things, unless it was hidden in white text and I managed not to capture it for the quote tag. Responding with sarcasm because I failed to address points you didn't make seems. . . odd.

[hamishspence]

The comment to which I responded (Regardless of the rest of your day, spending 30 minutes a day killing stuff is evil, full stop (paraphrased)) made no mention whatsoever about the motivation for killing things, unless it was hidden in white text and I managed not to capture it for the quote tag.

The part that made it clear that there wasn't a Good motivation:

"If you spend 30 minutes every day killing and robbing random creatures then you're evil."

Killing a "random creature" doesn't invoke motivations like "protecting others" and so forth.

[Amphetryon]

The part that made it clear that there wasn't a Good motivation:

"If you spend 30 minutes every day killing and robbing random creatures then you're evil."

Killing a "random creature" doesn't invoke motivations like "protecting others" and so forth.
How are creatures found in a dungeon-delve (the scenario) considered something other than "random", exactly? Was there a clause in the scenario I missed? Was it specified somewhere that these "random creatures" were attacking for reasons other than 1) hunger, 2) protecting their young or their mate, or 3) through some order or compulsion to guard a given space?

EDIT: Alternately, this provides an easy out. Use scouting, gather information, or divination to suss out what the creatures are before you go in to the dungeon, and suddenly they're not "random monsters", they're "specific monsters". Somehow, I doubt that's the intent of the "random" qualifier.

[Taelas]

Actually Fiendish Codex 2 says almost precisely that- if you're lawful, and you do 9 pts worth of Corrupt acts, and you fail to have remorse- you're damned to Baator forever.
Emphasis mine.


You argued that when 95% of a person's actions are Good, and 5% are Evil, that person is Good.
Why does it become different when this is applied to "daily actions" . How about weekly? Monthly? Yearly?
It isn't about time, it's about value. If a character does so many Good deeds that his abusing his family for half an hour every single day only amounts to 5% of the morally significant actions he performs, then yes, he's likely of a Good alignment. I don't see how it's possible, but there it is. Maybe he spends nine-and-a-half hours saving lives every single moment and the stress causes him to hurt his family for insignificant things, and he regrets it afterwards. That sounds somewhat plausible.


That's not even what the PHB says. If a person "has no compassion for others and will kill/hurt/oppress them if doing so is convenient" they're Evil. The fact that the "others" they have no compassion for represent only a small portion of the population- is irrelevant.
No, that is PRECISELY relevant.

You are weighting Evil actions more heavily than Good actions. There is NO justification for this.

This is the relevant passage in the PHB:


“Good” implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
“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.

Neither of those are absolute. When a character has respect for life in general, but hurts, oppresses and kills a minority, you have to weigh those two aspects against each another. You cannot single out one aspect and claim it defines the character alone.

[hamishspence]

It isn't about time, it's about value. If a character does so many Good deeds that his abusing his family for half an hour every single day only amounts to 5% of the morally significant actions he performs, then yes, he's likely of a Good alignment. I don't see how it's possible, but there it is. Maybe he spends nine-and-a-half hours saving lives every single moment and the stress causes him to hurt his family for insignificant things, and he regrets it afterwards. That sounds somewhat plausible.

Volunteer Charity Worker where the time spent (and possibly physical risk) makes doing the work a "personal sacrifice"?

Volunteer schoolteacher who abuses their pupils a small percentage of the time?


You are weighting Evil actions more heavily than Good actions. There is NO justification for this.

In the PHB it doesn't say whether you should "weigh one against the other" or whether "consistent evil acts against one group outweigh any amount of Good acts against another group". In the various splatbooks, however, it does.

You've got Champions of Ruin, Savage Species, Fiendish Codex 2- all suggesting that evil acts are of greater weight than good ones for the purposes of judging a character's morality. Fiendish Codex 2 does so "for afterlife purposes if you are lawful" Savage Species makes it clear that compartmentalisation is possible for Evil characters. Champions of Ruin mentions evil characters who "most of the time are good" or who "only show their evil under certain conditions" and make "repeatedly, deliberately committing evil deeds" the mark of an evil character.

Even Heroes of Horror, which allows for a Neutral character to consistently do both good and evil deeds, stipulates "good intentions" for the evil deeds- and depending on the deeds, sometimes that's not enough.

As to "how bigoted can a good-aligned character/faction be- Eberron: The Forge of War, and Cityscape, have things to say:

Eberron: the Forge of War page 108

Bigotry/Prejudice
Roleplaying: You don't like, and don't trust, members of your hated group. At best, you ignore them when possible. More likely, you are actively rude and off-putting, perhaps even prone to violent outbursts. You have no interest in dealing with these people, negotiating with them, or cooperating with them; you'd rather see them all go away, or even all dead.

It cannot be stressed enough that in a game of heroism, as Dungeons & Dragons is normally played, this is not an appropriate attitude for a good aligned character.

Cityscape page 156

Most cities that formally oppress one or more races are lawful, while those that informally allow such persecution are chaotic. No good society permits this sort of racial persecution.

[Water_Bear]

I agree with hamishspence, but think it's also an issue of context;

A brilliant solider/blacksmith/wizard who puts their own life on the line repeatedly to save their city/the world, but puts their students through sadistic tests and belittles them? Good, but not Nice.

A politician/general/religious leader who spends their time doing good works and helping the people of their community, but goes home every day and beats their spouse or abuses their children? An Evil person wearing a mask of Good.

You can't just tally up Good and Evil deeds like this was Star Wars and you're trying to get access to Force Lightning. Alignment is a role-playing tool meant to be used by live human players to judge the moral and ethical character of their characters.

There are mechanical impacts of the system, but that doesn't mean we have an excuse to approach it in a legalistic way. Think about what it means for someone to be willing to abuse their own family. You really can't look at Alignment in a vacuum, or else you end up with nonsense like this.

[hamishspence]

You can't just tally up Good and Evil deeds like this was Star Wars and you're trying to get access to Force Lightning. Alignment is a role-playing tool meant to be used by live human players to judge the moral and ethical character of their characters.

There are mechanical impacts of the system, but that doesn't mean we have an excuse to approach it in a legalistic way. Think about what it means for someone to be willing to abuse their own family. You really can't look at Alignment in a vacuum, or else you end up with nonsense like this.

This. Really, one should think about what it means for a person to be willing to consistently do evil deeds for their own gratification at all.

[Taelas]

There are mechanical impacts of the system, but that doesn't mean we have an excuse to approach it in a legalistic way.
It is the only way to approach it. It is a mechanical system, and it is objective.

Treating Evil deeds as factoring more than Good deeds when it comes to alignment is the exact opposite of objectivity.


Think about what it means for someone to be willing to abuse their own family. You really can't look at Alignment in a vacuum, or else you end up with nonsense like this.
I am NOT looking at it in a vacuum. Every time a single parameter changes, everything else shifts in turn. It is my failure to communicate that properly, and it is like that which causes much of the confusion.

A person who willingly abuses their family--and when speaking of abuse, we are not talking simply being a jerk; we are talking heavy emotional and/or physical trauma--is not a person who selflessly commits Good deeds every day. I fully agree that that is nonsense. They may do Good deeds which appear selfless to an outside observer, but their motivation for doing them matters. Most likely, any such deeds are only to cover up their depravity. They are Evil.

But a Good person who risks their life every day to save others, and who is under extreme stress, can end up abusing their family because of it. What is more important, they regret it afterwards. This does not excuse the abuse to the family, but it does mean that the person can be of a Good alignment.

On the surface, the two are similar, but their motivation for doing the things they do change everything. One delights in tormenting their loved ones. The other hates themselves for it (and likely throws themselves even more into their life-risking work the next day, ending up even more stressed, perpetuating a vicious and unfortunate cycle).

[hamishspence]

It is the only way to approach it. It is a mechanical system, and it is objective.

Treating Evil deeds as factoring more than Good deeds when it comes to alignment is the exact opposite of objectivity.

BoVD explains what "objective alignment" is- it's simply that:

"the evil nature of a creature, act or item isn't relative to the person observing it- it just is evil or it isn't"

That's all. No requirement that evil acts and good acts matter equally, or evil personality traits and good personality traits matter equally.


A person who willingly abuses their family--and when speaking of abuse, we are not talking simply being a jerk; we are talking heavy emotional and/or physical trauma--is not a person who selflessly commits Good deeds every day. I fully agree that that is nonsense. They may do Good deeds which appear selfless to an outside observer, but their motivation for doing them matters. Most likely, any such deeds are only to cover up their depravity. They are Evil.
Why might a person show genuine compassion for others, yet abuse their spouse? Maybe it's a medievalistic setting where wives cannot refuse consent, the person is abusive by modern standards, yet genuinely believes in compassion toward the poor and makes personal sacrifices because of this?

Or as a parent, their society allows them to do anything, up to and including executing, their children?

[Taelas]

BoVD explains what "objective alignment" is- it's simply that:

"the evil nature of a creature, act or item isn't relative to the person observing it- it just is evil or it isn't"

That's all. No requirement that evil acts and good acts matter equally, or evil personality traits and good personality traits matter equally.
That is one aspect of objectivity, not necessarily the whole of it.

Book of Vile Darkness is also terrible when it comes to the subject of alignment (and the same goes for Book of Exalted Deeds). Neither handle their own subject with any kind of coherency.


Why might a person show genuine compassion for others, yet abuse their spouse? Maybe it's a medievalistic setting where wives cannot refuse consent, the person is abusive by modern standards, yet genuinely believes in compassion toward the poor and makes personal sacrifices because of this?

Or as a parent, their society allows them to do anything, up to and including executing, their children?
"Medievalistic"? A setting that studies the Middle Ages? I'm not sure what you mean by that... A setting that is of a similar technology and style as the Middle Ages is simply a medieval setting, is that what you meant?

Regardless, the setting doesn't matter unless it changes what is Good and what isn't. A person may think he's Good without actually being it. Casually abusing your spouse because you think it's fine and helping innocents because you believe it's the right thing to do lands you rather solidly into Neutral territory, if not outright Evil. The motivation behind the abuse is important. If it is unintentional--done in a fit of anger or by accident--then it is far less evil than if it is done with intent, and has a much lesser impact on your alignment.

[Knaight]

It is the only way to approach it. It is a mechanical system, and it is objective.

Treating Evil deeds as factoring more than Good deeds when it comes to alignment is the exact opposite of objectivity.
That has absolutely nothing to do with objectivity. A framework which assigns every action a value then totals them is objective, and it remains objective if it ends up being, say Alignment Value = [1(Good Action Total) - 3(Evil Action Total)], and a system which is entirely based on what feels right regarding alignment is subjective, even if they are treated as exactly equivalent*. Stating that they must be equivalent to be objective doesn't even make sense - that's like stating that kinetic energy totals aren't objective from a certain reference frame, because velocity is squared while mass isn't.

*In setting, a set of booleans for alignment (Chaotic, Not Chaotic, Lawful, Not Lawful, Good, Not Good, Evil, Not Evil) are completely objective, where ambiguity devoid of framework isn't, but I'm assuming that we're looking at objectivity at the mechanical level.

[hamishspence]

"Medievalistic"? A setting that studies the Middle Ages? I'm not sure what you mean by that... A setting that is of a similar technology and style as the Middle Ages is simply a medieval setting, is that what you meant?.

I meant a setting where the moral codes of the population are "medieval-like"- as per the long BoED quote earlier.
. Casually abusing your spouse because you think it's fine and helping innocents because you believe it's the right thing to do lands you rather solidly into Neutral territory, if not outright Evil.

While Heroes of Horror allows for Good deeds + "evil deeds with good intentions" to land in Neutral Territory, "because it's my right by law to do so" is not Good Intentions.

Why is "casually abusing your spouse because you think it's fine" combined with Good Deeds solidly Neutral, but an elf casually abusing humans because they think it's fine is Good if they do enough Good deeds to compensate for it?

Personally I think BoED and BoVD are not as "terrible" or "incoherent" as a lot of people say they are.

[Talya]

I always liked the alignment system, too. Removing it utterly dismantles many D&D setting conventions, too.

Now to be a smartass.


lots of good things come out of it as well

yes. Good things. Evil things. Chaotic things. Lawful things. And everything in between, as well.

[hamishspence]

I like alignment parly because it led me to do a lot of moral philosophising- to take every 3.0 and 3.5 alignment statement written anywhere I could find, examine them, and find the overarching themes behind them.

To ask questions. Just how compassionate can an evil character get and remain evil? How selfish can a Good character be and remain good? and so forth.

[Taelas]

That has absolutely nothing to do with objectivity. A framework which assigns every action a value then totals them is objective, and it remains objective if it ends up being, say Alignment Value = [1(Good Action Total) - 3(Evil Action Total)], and a system which is entirely based on what feels right regarding alignment is subjective, even if they are treated as exactly equivalent*. Stating that they must be equivalent to be objective doesn't even make sense - that's like stating that kinetic energy totals aren't objective from a certain reference frame, because velocity is squared while mass isn't.

*In setting, a set of booleans for alignment (Chaotic, Not Chaotic, Lawful, Not Lawful, Good, Not Good, Evil, Not Evil) are completely objective, where ambiguity devoid of framework isn't, but I'm assuming that we're looking at objectivity at the mechanical level.

I am saying that judging a Good act to have less impact on alignment than an equivalent Evil act is not objective, because it is assigning more value to the Evil act solely because it is Evil, and not because of any objective criteria.

Evil acts are not somehow inherently more important than Good acts, and they do not have more of an effect on your alignment than equivalent Good acts do.

[hamishspence]

What acts do you consider are equivalent good acts, to specific evil acts?

I could see "channeling positive energy" as equal in Good moral value to the Evil act of channeling negative energy (PHB).

But what else? Is "summoning a fiend" then dismissing it before it has time to do anything, exactly as evil as summoning then dismissing a celestial is good?

If so, why would BoVD say "the path of evil magic leads swiftly to corruption" but BoED say "good spells usually don't have any redemptive influence on those who cast them"?

[Callista]

I like alignment parly because it led me to do a lot of moral philosophising- to take every 3.0 and 3.5 alignment statement written anywhere I could find, examine them, and find the overarching themes behind them.

To ask questions. Just how compaasioonate can an evil characters get and remain evil? How selfish can a Good character be and remain good? and so forth.I like that about it, too. I enjoyed philosophy class and I do a lot of thinking about those sorts of things. I know some people think of D&D as something that you "shouldn't take seriously", but from my perspective, stories of all sorts have a lot to teach us about ourselves and our choices. Whether you're playing a hero, a villain, or an average joe just trying to get by in the world, there are things to learn from them to make the real world better. Why should we ignore the things we can learn from stories just because it's fiction?


So, every adventuring party that kills things found in a dungeon-delve is evil? I'd have thought that POV was a bit harsh.It depends on the dungeon. Dungeons don't exist in a vacuum, you know. Many dungeons contain only things you as a Good adventurer would be quite justified in killing.

Example scenarios of dungeons where Good-aligned adventurers could, in good conscience, kill things:

Ten years ago, the mages' guild kicked out an apprentice with high potential because of his secret experiments with necromancy. Now the local beggars are disappearing, and his arcane mark was discovered on a body reeking of negative energy. Invade his undead-infested lair, track him down, and bring him to justice.

Your hometown is under attack by a group of barbarians whipped into a frenzy by a priest of Erythnul. They've holed up in a nearby ruin and are launching raids on the outlying farms, to the point that the farmers can't harvest their crops, and the death toll is mounting. Deal with the problem before the town starves.

Your country is at war with an invading army. Recently, things have been getting worse--they seem to have hired a green dragon and his kobold mercenaries to bolster their numbers. Your soldiers are worn down by the dragon's fear aura, and the kobolds' traps aren't helping matters, but recently a courageous scout found the dragon's lair. Enter the lair and take out the dragon--hopefully the kobolds, without a leader, will scatter.

You see how easy it is? Good characters aren't pacifists. They just don't murder people. If you're a DM and you have a Good party or mostly-Good party, you need to give them good reasons to fight, not just "Hey, there are monsters here, they're worth XP, kill them!" In other words, you have to begin a story where the PCs can step in as the protagonists and write the ending. That's what D&D is about--storytelling. If you ignore the storytelling part of the game, then you might as well be playing a war game or a computer RPG: Fun, but not taking advantage of the full potential of D&D.

[Taelas]

What acts do you consider are equivalent good acts, to specific evil acts?
It's very difficult to quantify.


I could see "channeling positive energy" as equal in Good moral value to the Evil act of channeling negative energy (PHB).
That's an example, though I never liked viewing those actions in terms of alignment. I don't personally see it as morally significant whether you channel positive energy or negative energy.


But what else? Is "summoning a fiend" then dismissing it before it has time to do anything, exactly as evil as summoning then dismissing a celestial is good?
Sure, but again, I wouldn't call either of those two acts morally significant.


If so, why would BoVD say "the path of evil magic leads swiftly to corruption" but BoED say "good spells usually don't have any redemptive influence on those who cast them"?
Personally, I think it's because they are just bad books.

[Amphetryon]

It depends on the dungeon. Dungeons don't exist in a vacuum, you know. Many dungeons contain only things you as a Good adventurer would be quite justified in killing.

Example scenarios of dungeons where Good-aligned adventurers could, in good conscience, kill things:

Ten years ago, the mages' guild kicked out an apprentice with high potential because of his secret experiments with necromancy. Now the local beggars are disappearing, and his arcane mark was discovered on a body reeking of negative energy. Invade his undead-infested lair, track him down, and bring him to justice.

Your hometown is under attack by a group of barbarians whipped into a frenzy by a priest of Erythnul. They've holed up in a nearby ruin and are launching raids on the outlying farms, to the point that the farmers can't harvest their crops, and the death toll is mounting. Deal with the problem before the town starves.

Your country is at war with an invading army. Recently, things have been getting worse--they seem to have hired a green dragon and his kobold mercenaries to bolster their numbers. Your soldiers are worn down by the dragon's fear aura, and the kobolds' traps aren't helping matters, but recently a courageous scout found the dragon's lair. Enter the lair and take out the dragon--hopefully the kobolds, without a leader, will scatter.

You see how easy it is? Good characters aren't pacifists. They just don't murder people. If you're a DM and you have a Good party or mostly-Good party, you need to give them good reasons to fight, not just "Hey, there are monsters here, they're worth XP, kill them!" In other words, you have to begin a story where the PCs can step in as the protagonists and write the ending. That's what D&D is about--storytelling. If you ignore the storytelling part of the game, then you might as well be playing a war game or a computer RPG: Fun, but not taking advantage of the full potential of D&D.
Nothing in the first scenario you've set up precludes the necromancer being good or neutral. Nothing in the first scenario you've set up precludes someone (the person who hired you? The person who asked that person to find adventurers?) from framing the necromancer for their own crimes. Killing in this situation is not obviously good.

2nd scenario: The priest of Erynthul is himself magically compelled, as part of an elaborate plot to start a war against the homeland of the barbarians, who are merely pawns in someone else's master plan for world domination. Killing plays right into that overlord's hands. Again, this isn't an obviously good scenario.

3rd scenario: Why is the other country invading? Did one of our princes abscond with their most beautiful princess, after her husband secured a promise from all his allies to defend her honor? Is there a blight, and was it caused by someone from our country? Why is the dragon helping them? Is it being coerced, or tricked, enslaved? Perhaps our countrymen have been tormenting it for years in attempts to get its horde, and the dragon sees a chance to finally end the raids on its possessions? Again, there's nothing in your scenario that guarantees that killing the dragon - or even fighting in the war - is good.

[Callista]

Like you I also see no reason to directly make dealing with positive and negative energy aligned actions, but I do think it makes sense in the D&D cosmology for them to be associated with Good and Evil alignments (though not inseparable from them--Cure and Inflict spells should not be automatically aligned).

Think of a sentient creature--especially its mind--as a machine with specifications; like, say, your car for example. A car is made to run on a road, to have its tank filled with a good quality gas, to have its oil changed--that sort of thing. If you try to run it outside its specifications--try to drive it off the road, fill its tank with kerosene, neglect the oil changes--then it won't run or won't run very well. If a sentient creature is like that, then part of the specifications for the information that makes up a creature's mind would be the rules of ethical behavior. Just like positive energy anchors your soul to life, your mind is closest to its ideal state when your actions are aligned with Good. The more Evil you become, the more you twist your own mind into something it was not meant to be.

Why do I say Good is the ideal state of a living creature? Well, because Good-aligned actions are things that support life: Helping another person, supporting another person, being encouraging, drawing someone toward being more helpful; or destroying those things that destroy life.

That's why it makes sense that even mindless undead show up as Evil--their negative energy is so closely associated to the wrongness that exists in an Evil creature's mind that it is identical for the purposes of divination; and their innate hostility for life is so similar to an Evil creature's willingness to destroy life that you can see the Evil aura just as though they were doing those things by choice.

[TuggyNE]

Nothing in the first scenario you've set up precludes the necromancer being good or neutral. Nothing in the first scenario you've set up precludes someone (the person who hired you? The person who asked that person to find adventurers?) from framing the necromancer for their own crimes. Killing in this situation is not obviously good.

2nd scenario: The priest of Erynthul is himself magically compelled, as part of an elaborate plot to start a war against the homeland of the barbarians, who are merely pawns in someone else's master plan for world domination. Killing plays right into that overlord's hands. Again, this isn't an obviously good scenario.

3rd scenario: Why is the other country invading? Did one of our princes abscond with their most beautiful princess, after her husband secured a promise from all his allies to defend her honor? Is there a blight, and was it caused by someone from our country? Why is the dragon helping them? Is it being coerced, or tricked, enslaved? Perhaps our countrymen have been tormenting it for years in attempts to get its horde, and the dragon sees a chance to finally end the raids on its possessions? Again, there's nothing in your scenario that guarantees that killing the dragon - or even fighting in the war - is good.

All of these scenarios invite discernment and proper research, yes, but if their face value is in fact the truth of the situation, then I would agree with Callista that a Good adventuring party would be justified in killing what it comes across.

Or is your argument that there are in fact no Good adventurers, and cannot be?

[Callista]

All of these scenarios invite discernment and proper research, yes, but if their face value is in fact the truth of the situation, then I would agree with Callista that a Good adventuring party would be justified in killing what it comes across.Yes, I'm assuming that they are what they seem at face value: The necromancer really is a murderer, the barbarians really are intent on killing people who did them no harm, and the dragon really is helping an invading army trying to take over a peaceful nation.

But if they weren't what they seemed--if the necromancer is being framed, the barbarians are being compelled, or the dragon is a prisoner and the kobolds are the real villains--then that just makes the story even more interesting, doesn't it? A Good party would do the Gather Information checks to make sure that their targets were legitimate; and if they accidentally did kill someone who didn't deserve it, they would try to make it right. There's nothing saying Good people can't make mistakes, even tragic ones.

Parties that search out dungeons and kill everything therein to get the treasure, with little rhyme or reason as to their motivations, don't really have an alignment to begin with because they aren't being role-played at all. Those PCs don't have personalities--they're just a set of stats meant to get XP and become more powerful. I guess you could call them evil because what they're doing is essentially wanton slaughter, but if they have little motivation beyond XP and treasure, you're playing a war game, not a role-playing game.

[hamishspence]

Sure, but again, I wouldn't call either of those two acts morally significant.

they're significant enough to cause characters who have a restriction against performing "aligned acts" to Fall.

As to whether they'll change a character's alignment if done enough, in Complete Scoundrel, the malconvoker has a special class feature, which says "regular use of conjuration spells with the evil descriptor does not threaten to change your alignment"- thus making it clear that without the class feature, it does threaten to change your alignment.

I do think it makes sense in the D&D cosmology for them to be associated with Good and Evil alignments (though not inseparable from them--Cure and Inflict spells should not be automatically aligned).

And, thankfully, they're not- Cure spells don't have Good tag, Inflict spells don't have Evil tag.

[Hiro Protagonest]

All of these scenarios invite discernment and proper research, yes, but if their face value is in fact the truth of the situation, then I would agree with Callista that a Good adventuring party would be justified in killing what it comes across.

Or is your argument that there are in fact no Good adventurers, and cannot be?

Eh, the first one I can see as "no remorse hack n' slash", so long as you stick to the targets. The second depends on how the barbarians normally act, and what the party is (if they just minded their own business before, a druid, or a cleric of a nature or battle deity, can steer them on some other path). The third? Typical mercenary stuff, so again, depends on what the dragon was doing before the war (and "stealing livestock" isn't enough, dragons have to eat).

[Taelas]

they're significant enough to cause characters who have a restriction against performing "aligned acts" to Fall.
Yes, but that is more of a mechanical quirk than something that makes sense.


As to whether they'll change a character's alignment if done enough, in Complete Scoundrel, the malconvoker has a special class feature, which says "regular use of conjuration spells with the evil descriptor does not threaten to change your alignment"- thus making it clear that without the class feature, it does threaten to change your alignment.
It is the act of casting a spell with an alignment descriptor that is aligned. Perform enough acts with a different alignment than your own, and it is very likely to change--regardless of whether those acts are spells or not. I am not questioning that.

However, casting a summon spell to summon an evil creature then dismissing the summoned creature immediately without doing anything... I don't see it as morally significant. If it must be an Evil act, it is so minor as not to affect anything.

The simplest equivalent acts I can think of are saving a life and taking a life. Going out of your way to murder someone is Evil. Going out of your way to save someone is Good. The two acts should have equal consequences with regards to alignment (though it is difficult to imagine a sane person who would do both).

[Hiro Protagonest]

All of these scenarios invite discernment and proper research, yes, but if their face value is in fact the truth of the situation, then I would agree with Callista that a Good adventuring party would be justified in killing what it comes across.

Or is your argument that there are in fact no Good adventurers, and cannot be?

Eh, the first one I can see as "no remorse hack n' slash", so long as you stick to the targets. The second depends on how the barbarians normally act, and what the party is (if they just minded their own business before, a druid, or a cleric of a nature or battle deity, can steer them on some other path). The third? Typical mercenary stuff, so again, depends on what the dragon was doing before the war (and "stealing livestock" isn't enough, dragons have to eat), and one option would be to negotiate to get the dragon on your side. Of course, killing an enemy wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened in war.

[hamishspence]

The simplest equivalent acts I can think of are saving a life and taking a life. Going out of your way to murder someone is Evil. Going out of your way to save someone is Good. The two acts should have equal consequences with regards to alignment (though it is difficult to imagine a sane person who would do both).

The racist elf who "goes out of their way to murder" dwarves but "goes out of their way to save" anyone who is Not A Dwarf.

Using your previous example, an elf who has saved 190 other people, and murdered 10 dwarves, would be Good.

Similar elf who has murdered 10 dwarves and saved 10 other people would be Neutral.

Yet another elf who has murdered 190 dwarves and saved 10 other people would be Evil.

(leaving out unspecified other aligned acts for the time being).

However, casting a summon spell to summon an evil creature then dismissing the summoned creature immediately without doing anything... I don't see it as morally significant. If it must be an Evil act, it is so minor as not to affect anything.
the intent behind the example is to reduce it to "casting an Evil spell" alone, and ensure no other Evil consequences exist.

[Lady Serpentine]

If so, why would BoVD say "the path of evil magic leads swiftly to corruption" but BoED say "good spells usually don't have any redemptive influence on those who cast them"?

I think you, ah, kinda missed his point... His annoyance was that Good acts are always treated as being less influential than Evil ones, a very good example of which is that summoning a hellish being has more moral influence than summoning a divine being, even if neither has time to do anything, converse with you, or anything else. The fact that the books say that good spells don't do much for you but evil ones do does nothing to refute his point, because that's exactly what he was complaining about.


they're significant enough to cause characters who have a restriction against performing "aligned acts" to Fall.


Mechanical alterations of alignment are not equivalent to moral significance. It's hard to argue that using a simple 'Summon Monster #' spell really has any moral weight for most characters. And a good DM isn't going to change alignments purely on the grounds of summoning such things because of that, even if they technically could.

Also, provided you don't treat your summoned creatures as simple cannon-fodder (in theory, potentially an Evil act; see above on 'treats people as disposable'. Or does that not apply because they're celestials or demons? In which case, explain how that differs from the elf earlier treating humans as disposable because they're a different species...), and you choose to fluff it as summoning the same creature multiple times, instead of just getting some random thing, what if the Chain Devil (or whatever it is) that you're summoning is one of the outliers for their species, and is actually good-aligned? It's obviously not going to be influencing you towards evil willingly, yet the spell retains an Evil alignment.

[hamishspence]

I think you, ah, kinda missed his point... His annoyance was that Good acts are always treated as being less influential than Evil ones, a very good example of which is that summoning a hellish being has more moral influence than summoning a divine being, even if neither has time to do anything, converse with you, or anything else. The fact that the books say that good spells don't do much for you but evil ones do does nothing to refute his point, because that's exactly what he was complaining about.

I thought it was that he was arguing that there is no in-game justification- none at all- for people to make the out-of-game judgement that evil acts have more power to change a Good character's alignment, than Good acts do to change an Evil character's alignment- hence, I provided a counter example.

You are weighting Evil actions more heavily than Good actions. There is NO justification for this.

[Lady Serpentine]

Hm. Maybe. I'd been going based on this:


I am saying that judging a Good act to have less impact on alignment than an equivalent Evil act is not objective, because it is assigning more value to the Evil act solely because it is Evil, and not because of any objective criteria.


Either interpretation seems to have valid arguments for it, though. I guess he'll have to confirm one or the other for us to be sure.

[Taelas]

I thought it was that he was arguing that there is no in-game justification- none at all- for people to make the out-of-game judgement that evil acts have more power to change a Good character's alignment, than Good acts do to change an Evil character's alignment- hence, I provided a counter example.

This is correct. (I do not consider material from Book of Exalted Deeds or Book of Vile Darkness as sufficient evidence on their own, due to my opinion of those particular books regarding alignment.)

[Shadowknight12]

On the subject of "official" sourcebooks regarding alignment:

Taking all of what was ever written on alignment on an "official" book and assuming everything is simultaneously true (without realising said books were written by different people at different times, and that those people did not, in fact, had the time to check that the stuff they were writing was fact-checked or internally consistent with other sources) is logically unsound. It is barely one step above taking a bunch of religious texts of different faiths, sprinkling glitter on them, throwing them into a paper shredder, asking a hyperactive pixie to pick out the prettiest shreds and then pasting everything together in a pitch-black room while O Fortuna (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWiyKgeGWx0) blares in the background.

[EndlessWrath]

I (As a DM) handle Alignment by interviewing my players. They give me an intended alignment, and I mark that on a grid. Y axis is Good/Evil. X axis is Chaos/Law. I move them slightly from their position on the grid as I'm interviewing them for their background and decisions. This alignment is hidden from them and I make notes during the session to mark whether or not they shift from where I last left them. I'll never do a major shift unless a major action or change occurs. If we go from protecting the meek to butchering them by the thousands.. thats clearly evil and we'll shift down the axis.

I don't have issues with Detect alignment often, but I imagine when I do I let the player ahead of them know if the evil aura they detect is major, moderate, or minor. Etc.

-Wrath

[Knaight]

I am saying that judging a Good act to have less impact on alignment than an equivalent Evil act is not objective, because it is assigning more value to the Evil act solely because it is Evil, and not because of any objective criteria.

If Evil is a Boolean state, then being Evil is an objective criteria. One can structure the system so that being Evil is in and of itself a multiplicative effect on how much an act counts for, and there is absolutely no loss of objectivity. One could do the exact same thing in reverse and count Good as more valuable, also without losing objectivity. Objectivity really doesn't enter into this at all.

[Taelas]

If Evil is a Boolean state, then being Evil is an objective criteria. One can structure the system so that being Evil is in and of itself a multiplicative effect on how much an act counts for, and there is absolutely no loss of objectivity. One could do the exact same thing in reverse and count Good as more valuable, also without losing objectivity. Objectivity really doesn't enter into this at all.

Making Evil OR Good be a multiplicative effect is not being objective. It is treating one as more important than the other, for absolutely no reason. I'm not at all sure I understand what you're saying, so forgive me if that's not the case.

I'll instead attempt to make my own position more clear. Let's say a given Good act is worth 10 "Good points", for lack of a better designation. An equivalent Evil act is then worth 10 "Evil points". Let's say these acts are as per my previous example: a Good person going out of their way to save a life and an Evil person going out of their way to tale a life. In my opinion, taken in extreme isolation, these acts are functionally equivalent but opposite, and should modify a person's alignment to the same degree.

My problem is that people make the Evil act count for more with regards to alignment than the equivalent Good act.

How is that in any way objective? If you disagree that the acts are equivalent, then that's something we'll simply have to disagree on. Otherwise, the Good act should modify an alignment every bit as much as the Evil act.

[Deophaun]

Making Evil OR Good be a multiplicative effect is not being objective. It is treating one as more important than the other, for absolutely no reason. I'm not at all sure I understand what you're saying, so forgive me if that's not the case.
The word you are looking for is biased, which is not an antonym of objective. A scale may be biased to under-weigh objects placed upon it, but it is still just as objective as a scale that delivers an accurate reading.

[Shadowknight12]

The word you are looking for is biased, which is not an antonym of objective. A scale may be biased to under-weigh objects placed upon it, but it is still just as objective as a scale that delivers an accurate reading.

And what he is saying is that the reasoning for a system being biased towards Evil rather than Good is subjective. A truly objective system would not need to be biased because there would be no logical, objective reason for such bias.

[Knaight]

And what he is saying is that the reasoning for a system being biased towards Evil rather than Good is subjective. A truly objective system would not need to be biased because there would be no logical, objective reason for such bias.

The exact same thing applies to them being treated exactly equivalently, as there is really no null hypothesis in play here. As such, that criticism is utterly meaningless, as treating a measuring system as not objective because subjective qualifiers were used in creating it means treating essentially all measuring systems as subjective.

An analogy: The reasoning for the Celsius system is based on subjective choices regarding matter, and arbitrarily declaring water's freezing and boiling points the arbitrary numbers of 0 and 100. Does that mean that things don't have an objective temperature? No, because subjectively in creating a scale doesn't remove objectivity in measurement.

[Callista]

The Good/Evil scale is naturally asymmetric. You can't make up for Evil with Good actions because it just doesn't work that way. Good and Evil isn't math; it's biology. Think of Evil as like a cancer cell in an organism--something that's gone just wrong enough that it thinks only of itself at the expense of everything else. Usually, any enterprising cancer is snuffed out by your immune system, just like evil is identified and targeted by your conscience. But every once in a while, things get out of hand, the conscience is overwhelmed, and evil grows out of proportion until eventually the local paladins start getting psychic migraines.

But it only takes one small bit of evil to start out with. By itself, it's inconsequential; early on, it's easily treated; but if you ignore it, let it grow--you're going to end up with bigger and bigger problems, and you have to do more and more to redeem yourself. The Good/Evil scale is how far you've gone down that path, how damaged your soul has become.

[Amphetryon]

But if they weren't what they seemed--if the necromancer is being framed, the barbarians are being compelled, or the dragon is a prisoner and the kobolds are the real villains--then that just makes the story even more interesting, doesn't it? A Good party would do the Gather Information checks to make sure that their targets were legitimate; and if they accidentally did kill someone who didn't deserve it, they would try to make it right. There's nothing saying Good people can't make mistakes, even tragic ones.

Parties that search out dungeons and kill everything therein to get the treasure, with little rhyme or reason as to their motivations, don't really have an alignment to begin with because they aren't being role-played at all. Those PCs don't have personalities--they're just a set of stats meant to get XP and become more powerful. I guess you could call them evil because what they're doing is essentially wanton slaughter, but if they have little motivation beyond XP and treasure, you're playing a war game, not a role-playing game.First you argued that a party that took the adventures you presented at face value (and happened to be right) were Good.

Then you argued that a party that took the adventures you presented at face value (and happened to be wrong) were tragic and committing Evil (because killing "innocents" - even in ignorance - is Evil)

Then you argued that a party that took the adventures you presented at face value (and didn't consider whether they were right or wrong) "aren't being role-played. . . because they don't have personalities."

You came to all three of these conclusions FROM THE SAME ACTIONS (taking the adventures you presented at face value). Do you see why I have a problem with how Alignment works in so many cases, yet?

[Water_Bear]

You came to all three of these conclusions FROM THE SAME ACTIONS (taking the adventures you presented at face value). Do you see why I have a problem with how Alignment works in so many cases, yet?


The "problem" here is that you are looking at the Alignment system's greatest strength as a weakness. There is no way to tally up and weigh Actions and Intentions except by thinking about them in the contexts of the characters and their world.

Adventurers who set out to do Good and succeed, are typically Good aligned.

Adventurers who take an assignment on with Good intentions, only to discover they have inadvertently caused Evil, are tragic figures. They will almost certainly move to correct what happened, and with regret over their role in what happened. They are still Good aligned, but have to bear the burdens of their actions and possible carelessness.

Adventurers who habitually go out on quests regardless of moral character, seeking nothing more than personal betterment and reacting to every obstacle with violence, are almost certainly Not Good and quite possibly Evil. This kind of character is usually less invested in their world, and thus has fewer observable character traits, which is often a sign of poor role playing.

Depending on the circumstances, casting Fireball might be a heroic action or an atrocity, an act of anarchy or one of deep reverence for authority. Alignment is all about context and role-playing, and it cannot be put into simple mechanical terms without losing its essential character.

D&D is not a computer game, and Alignment is not about points or rules; interpretation is necessary and will vary from group to group. That is why I will always prefer D&D style alignments to something like nWoD's Morality scales; it is a role-playing tool rather than an abstract mechanic.

[Knaight]

The "problem" here is that you are looking at the Alignment system's greatest strength as a weakness. There is no way to tally up and weigh Actions and Intentions except by thinking about them in the contexts of the characters and their world.

The point is that interpretation shouldn't vary based on the changing of trivial details, and in this case intention was counted as a trivial detail. That it doesn't particularly matter what you intend to do, only what you actually do, is part of several real world moral systems (such as almost all utilitarian systems), and as such can't be convincingly dismissed that easily.

[Amphetryon]

The point is that interpretation shouldn't vary based on the changing of trivial details, and in this case intention was counted as a trivial detail. That it doesn't particularly matter what you intend to do, only what you actually do, is part of several real world moral systems (such as almost all utilitarian systems), and as such can't be convincingly dismissed that easily.

DINGDING! Got it in one.

[Callista]

The "problem" here is that you are looking at the Alignment system's greatest strength as a weakness. There is no way to tally up and weigh Actions and Intentions except by thinking about them in the contexts of the characters and their world.

Adventurers who set out to do Good and succeed, are typically Good aligned.

Adventurers who take an assignment on with Good intentions, only to discover they have inadvertently caused Evil, are tragic figures. They will almost certainly move to correct what happened, and with regret over their role in what happened. They are still Good aligned, but have to bear the burdens of their actions and possible carelessness.

Adventurers who habitually go out on quests regardless of moral character, seeking nothing more than personal betterment and reacting to every obstacle with violence, are almost certainly Not Good and quite possibly Evil. This kind of character is usually less invested in their world, and thus has fewer observable character traits, which is often a sign of poor role playing.

Depending on the circumstances, casting Fireball might be a heroic action or an atrocity, an act of anarchy or one of deep reverence for authority. Alignment is all about context and role-playing, and it cannot be put into simple mechanical terms without losing its essential character.

D&D is not a computer game, and Alignment is not about points or rules; interpretation is necessary and will vary from group to group. That is why I will always prefer D&D style alignments to something like nWoD's Morality scales; it is a role-playing tool rather than an abstract mechanic.I had a post on this, but then I read back on what you said and realized you said it better than I did. So I shall just quote it with a "This."


Then you argued that a party that took the adventures you presented at face value (and didn't consider whether they were right or wrong) "aren't being role-played. . . because they don't have personalities."Yes. That's a metagame perspective: When you don't role-play, your character's alignment doesn't have much meaning, because alignment is a description of part of your character's personality, and role-playing means doing things according to your character's personality. Alignment is a role-playing tool; if you don't role-play it's pretty useless.

[Amphetryon]

I need you to demonstrate that taking an assignment from a quest-giver of some sort at face value equals "not roleplaying," please. I need to understand how it is roleplaying SOMETIMES and not roleplaying other times, when exactly the same action is taken by the players.

[Callista]

I need you to demonstrate that taking an assignment from a quest-giver of some sort at face value equals "not roleplaying," please. I need to understand how it is roleplaying SOMETIMES and not roleplaying other times, when exactly the same action is taken by the players.Any Good character (acting in character) will kill someone only if they have a very good reason to believe that that person deserves death. I think you misunderstood me when I said "face value"--I meant that the quest was indeed what it seemed to be, not that the party took it on without question. Only a very naive adventurer would do that, especially if they were Good-aligned and being asked to kill sentients. Good-aligned people are usually very careful when it comes to killing, and will check to be absolutely sure that the killing is justified and there aren't any better alternatives. Even non-Good parties don't survive long if they don't make sure they can trust the people who hire them to tell them the truth about what they're doing.

Their ability to detect deception successfully depends on the characters. Grok the Stupid Half-Orc is much more likely to be fooled than most, but he's not doing something evil unless he knows that he's killing innocents and does it anyway.

[Amphetryon]

Any Good character (acting in character) will kill someone only if they have a very good reason to believe that that person deserves death. I think you misunderstood me when I said "face value"--I meant that the quest was indeed what it seemed to be, not that the party took it on without question. Only a very naive adventurer would do that, especially if they were Good-aligned and being asked to kill sentients. Good-aligned people are usually very careful when it comes to killing, and will check to be absolutely sure that the killing is justified and there aren't any better alternatives. Even non-Good parties don't survive long if they don't make sure they can trust the people who hire them to tell them the truth about what they're doing.

Their ability to detect deception successfully depends on the characters. Grok the Stupid Half-Orc is much more likely to be fooled than most, but he's not doing something evil unless he knows that he's killing innocents and does it anyway.
That's not misunderstanding, it's not adding words to your thought which you didn't put to the post. I didn't read what you didn't say. You said "at face value", not "after doing due diligence." It also still depends on the success of their investigations; if they fail at Gather Information or get fooled on their Sense Motives (which seems especially likely at low levels), they're now committing Evil despite due diligence.

It's also not addressing the question of "why is accepting a quest sometimes roleplaying, and sometimes not roleplaying, given that in both cases, it's accepting the quest and no additional parameters are provided to make this judgment."

[hamishspence]

Taking all of what was ever written on alignment on an "official" book and assuming everything is simultaneously true (without realising said books were written by different people at different times, and that those people did not, in fact, had the time to check that the stuff they were writing was fact-checked or internally consistent with other sources) is logically unsound.

How do we know that the people "did not have the time to check that the stuff they were writing was fact-checked or internally consistant"?

Especially when the books regularly make references to each other?


(I do not consider material from Book of Exalted Deeds or Book of Vile Darkness as sufficient evidence on their own, due to my opinion of those particular books regarding alignment.)

A few bad calls don't make the whole of the books "invalid evidence"- especially when other books use them as the starting point.

[JadePhoenix]

How do we know that the people "did not have the time to check that the stuff they were writing was fact-checked or internally consistant"?

Especially when the books regularly make references to each other?
Obviously, you don't.
Sincerely, I think the problem is that most people in this forums simply don't know much about how alignment works in D&D. It grants no attack bonus, it fuels no infinte loops, so the optimizers of old haven't checked it, meaning everyone else has to actually read the stuff to know it.
So we end up with stuff like "BoED is crap because it says poison is evil", which clearly means people haven't read the book (it doesn't even say poison is evil, it says using poison that deals ability damage is an evil act).
I've seen so often people saying that 'written fluff is crap' in these forums that I wonder why they play D&D at all, if everything is so bad.

[Kish]

This is correct. (I do not consider material from Book of Exalted Deeds or Book of Vile Darkness as sufficient evidence on their own, due to my opinion of those particular books regarding alignment.)
"There is no evidence against what I'm arguing. And I consider the books that do have evidence invalid, because I don't like them." Have to laugh.

[JadePhoenix]

"There is no evidence against what I'm arguing. And I consider the books that do have evidence invalid, because I don't like them." Have to laugh.

I'm inclined to sig this.

[Taelas]

"There is no evidence against what I'm arguing. And I consider the books that do have evidence invalid, because I don't like them." Have to laugh.

I'm glad you're amused. Tell me, why should I take extremely poorly written material as evidence for anything?

While neither book is completely useless (there are things in both I have no problem with), they are so inconsistent regarding alignment that I cannot take it at face value.

In the same manner that I don't accept sample characters as evidence of anything, because they are so notoriously poorly fact-checked that any inconsistency could be for any reason whatsoever.

Book of Exalted Deeds describes how using poisons that deal ability damage is evil because of the unnecessary suffering that it involves, then introduces ravages which does the exact same goddamn thing, but only towards Evil People, so they're Totally Fine and Good, Y'all. How the hell does that even start to make sense? Torture is fine if it's against Evil people? Talk about Unfortunate Implications.

Book of Vile Darkness doesn't have something as outrageous as that, but the way it describes every somewhat-questionable act ever as EVIL after complaining how Evil is overused and should only be used for a "dark force of destruction and death" that "tempts souls" and "perverts wholesomeness and purity" ... urgh. I also had to facepalm at their treatment of fetishes and addictions. Evil? Really? Good grief. I guess Ilmater should really change his alignment to Neutral Evil, given what they say about masochism. :smallannoyed:

Go on, tell me: Why should I accept anything either book says about alignment? They don't handle the subject with any amount of sense.

[AntiTrust]

Book of Exalted Deeds describes how using poisons that deal ability damage is evil because of the unnecessary suffering that it involves, then introduces ravages which does the exact same goddamn thing, but only towards Evil People, so they're Totally Fine and Good.


In the very next line it does mention that its not really doing the same thing as poison. It's forcing evil creatures to have physical manifestations of the evil in their hearts. Poisons, with the exception of drow poison, don't bring out anything in anybody, they simply wrack people with pain indiscriminately and the suffering it causes is thus "undue", while the ravages and afflictions section fall into the "due" suffering category (that phrase "due suffering" still sounds bad though I'll admit) I suppose because it only works on those with an evil alignment. I will say that a quick google search of ravage and affliction don't come up with what I think they were going for, but I honestly can't think what words would really describe what those abilities are trying to do.

[Amphetryon]

In the very next line it does mention that its not really doing the same thing as poison. It's forcing evil creatures to have physical manifestations of the evil in their hearts. Poisons, with the exception of drow poison, don't bring out anything in anybody, they simply wrack people with pain indiscriminately and the suffering it causes is thus "undue", while the ravages and afflictions section fall into the "due" suffering category (that phrase "due suffering" still sounds bad though I'll admit) I suppose because it only works on those with an evil alignment. I will say that a quick google search of ravage and affliction don't come up with what I think they were going for, but I honestly can't think what words would really describe what those abilities are trying to do.

"Undue" appears to be a value judgment based entirely upon the writer's opinion of what Good is. Causing someone pain and suffering despite the fact they've never directly harmed you, your family, or anyone you can personally name simply because they tripped the Evil-o-Meter could just as easily be called "undue" suffering within the moral framework BoED provides, without changing anything other than the Ravages.

[willpell]

Torture is fine if it's against Evil people? Talk about Unfortunate Implications.

As long as there is no way to force someone's Detect Evil to register a false positive, there shouldn't be anything too unfortunate about this. No-one will register as Evil if they have never done anything that qualifies as Evil. Orcs and the like are "usually" Evil; it's not regardless of their behavior. The only creatures which can't ever stop being evil are things like Demons and (arguably) Undead, where it's literally impossible for them to exist without exerting an Evil influence on everything around them. If someone is behaving as if they were Good and it isn't all just a dirty trick, they will actually become non-Evil eventually (admittedly Detect Evil isn't written as registering degrees other than those based on character level, but it would be a poor DM who wasn't willing to downgrade your Evil aura over time if you're trying really hard to improve, and anyway Evil creatures that aren't undead or clerics are usually Faint auras anyway unless they're extremely powerful).


Book of Vile Darkness doesn't have something as outrageous as that, but the way it describes every somewhat-questionable act ever as EVIL after complaining how Evil is overused and should only be used for a "dark force of destruction and death" that "tempts souls" and "perverts wholesomeness and purity" ... urgh.

No agrument here. The problem is that they were trying to argue both sides of a viewpoint without distinguishing them. It is a slippery slope; every thoughtlessly cruel word has the potential to push people toward the moment when they snap and stop caring about others, but it takes an awful lot of such pushing, and you certainly aren't Vile if all you've ever done is be snippy at people who didn't deserve it. It's called Detect/Smite/Protection-From Evil, not Detect/Smite/Protection-From Jerk. (If only Jerks could be detected, smote, and protected from IRL.)


I also had to facepalm at their treatment of fetishes and addictions.

Addictions certainly are tools of Evil, though the Evil is not the person who suffers them but the one who causes him to - the pusher who gets him to try a drug against his better judgment, the dealer who mercilessly exploits the addict's desperation, the crimelord who makes the stuff knowing what it can do and distributes it to whoever will pay without thought of the consequences (it's not impossible to sell drugs only to people you've vetted as responsible users, but it's very hard to turn an immense profit while doing so, and the majroity of druglords and cartels are just after buckets of money, so I'd say at least "evil" if not "Evil" is a fair cop). As for fetishes, that's much more questionable, but not entirely wrong-headed. By definition, a fetish (as opposed to a kink, which is often called a fetish but this is casual and inaccurate use of legitimate medical terminology) is the inability to have a healthy sexual attraction to an entire person, because you care only about whatever you fetishize. It's objectification and dehumanization, it's unhealthy, and it's not the same as consensually engaging in sensual edgeplay or whatnot. Anyone who actively tries to talk people out of being satisfied with loving, healthy relationships (which may or may not include kink aspects) and into having a mad obsession with some "ultimate thrill" that can only be satisfied by utterly disregarding conventional morality - yeah, at least a little Evil. Story of O is not about a mentally stable individual behaving appropriately and in a holistic fashion for the benefit of all society.

[AntiTrust]

"Undue" appears to be a value judgment based entirely upon the writer's opinion of what Good is. Causing someone pain and suffering despite the fact they've never directly harmed you, your family, or anyone you can personally name simply because they tripped the Evil-o-Meter could just as easily be called "undue" suffering within the moral framework BoED provides, without changing anything other than the Ravages.

Well the whole alignment system is by its nature a value judgment, but the point I was making is that its distinct from poisons in that it can only effect those with the evil alignment so his statement that it does "the exact same thing" really isn't true, it can't effect any non-evils. BOED doesn't add the qualifiers "you must know them, they must have harmed you personally, etc" because curiously enough you then wouldn't be able to seek justice for the john doe that was murdered merely because you didn't know him.

Now what I find interesting in that section is where it talks about damage, it says that you add their charisma modifier to the damage listed on the table. So the fighter who is evil, but dumped charisma will take less damage than the one who didn't. I guess maybe because the more charismatic you are the more likely you are to spread your beliefs to others? I'm honestly not sure what they were going for with that.

[Callista]

I agree that the poison use issue is a flaw in the alignment system, and I houserule it as unaligned when I DM. I consider poison's association with Evil to be a flaw because it is inconsistent with the rest of the alignment system, but I also understand where it came from.

Poison use is against the paladin's code, and has traditionally been so ever since paladins were defined as a class. That has associated it with Evil, though in reality poison use is more dishonorable than anything else.

Poisons are also associated with chemical warfare, something that in most real-world countries is considered inhumane because of how much suffering it causes. (Look up mustard gas or sarin or any number of chemical weapons. Scary stuff. Even some otherwise ruthless people won't touch it.)

The trouble with the viewpoint that poison is evil, is that there's no reason why poison would be any more evil than many other strategies one might use in combat, such as a Fireball, a flask full of acid, or a Fear spell, which also cause a good deal of distress for the enemy. Intimidating the enemy can even be the point, because you can save a life by forcing someone to surrender.

So the way I houserule poison is that only if something would be Evil if you did it without poison, is it also Evil if you use poison to do it. So, if you used inhaled poison in the middle of a crowd of civilians, that would be Evil. If you used poison designed to torture someone, that would be Evil. On the other hand, a poisoned blade is not Evil unless you use it to kill someone who doesn't deserve to die. Using disease as a weapon is practically always Evil because of how it spreads to the innocent.

(Most paladins still won't use most poisons. Poison use is dishonorable--a sneaky tactic many Lawful characters would abhor. Some paladins do use drow poison or Strength/Dex poison to bring criminals to justice though, and a paladin with shades of gray, such as a Greyguard or Shadowbane Inquisitor, might be pragmatic enough to do so during the course of a declared war.)

The Book of Exalted Deeds isn't really the origin of this inconsistency. It goes straight back to the Player's Handbook, and to earlier editions. When they wrote the BoED, they tried to stay true to the PHB while still allowing Good characters to use poison-like substances, and that resulted in the Afflictions and Ravages. I honestly don't blame the trouble on the BoED authors; it's a problem that's been around since the first edition. The Book of Exalted Deeds has some extremely useful discussions of what Good means, and I consider it a valuable resource for role-playing. Just houserule the poisons, and you're golden.


Now what I find interesting in that section is where it talks about damage, it says that you add their charisma modifier to the damage listed on the table. So the fighter who is evil, but dumped charisma will take less damage than the one who didn't. I guess maybe because the more charismatic you are the more likely you are to spread your beliefs to others? I'm honestly not sure what they were going for with that.The stronger your force of personality, the harder your conscience can prod you when it's awoken.

[Lady Serpentine]

So... Going on the 'undue suffering' thing, can someone provide a reason that using, say, a poison that damages DEX, causes more suffering than one that simply does massive damage, and could, for all we know, be much more unpleasant in its effects?*

And, if the Ravages are specifically designed to target Evil characters and are thus 'due suffering', why isn't it not an Evil act to use such toxins on those known to be Evil?

(Also, for that matter, how is burning someone alive with a Fireball not causing undue suffering?)

*For example, the DEX-damaging potion might simply dull their reflexes and make them have less energy, while the one that does severe damage could make their skin permeable and cause them to start bleeding out through it, presumably rather painfully.

Edit:



(Most paladins still won't use most poisons. Poison use is dishonorable--a sneaky tactic many Lawful characters would abhor. Some paladins do use drow poison or Strength/Dex poison to bring criminals to justice though, and a paladin with shades of gray, such as a Greyguard or Shadowbane Inquisitor, might be pragmatic enough to do so during the course of a declared war.)

Why is it dishonorable to be sneaky, though? If someone chooses to try to kill you, why should you give them a better chance at doing so? Especially if one follows their own code, which paladins can do.

[Callista]

So... Going on the 'undue suffering' thing, can someone provide a reason that using, say, a poison that damages DEX, causes more suffering than one that simply does massive damage, and could, for all we know, be much more unpleasant in its effects?*

And, if the Ravages are specifically designed to target Evil characters and are thus 'due suffering', why isn't it not an Evil act to use such toxins on those known to be Evil?

(Also, for that matter, how is burning someone alive with a Fireball not causing undue suffering?)

*For example, the DEX-damaging potion might simply dull their reflexes and make them have less energy, while the one that does severe damage could make their skin permeable and cause them to start bleeding out through it, presumably rather painfully.Yes, I agree with you here. It all depends on the effects of the poison: Is it torture, or is it more of a dizzy stupor or muscle weakness? I guess a Good-aligned person would still use a Ravage if they could, because it won't hurt any innocents that it contacts--if you can get one, it's better than a poison, just because there's less chance of accidentally exposing non-Evil bystanders. No sense in taking that risk if you don't have to.


Why is it dishonorable to be sneaky, though? If someone chooses to try to kill you, why should you give them a better chance at doing so? Especially if one follows their own code, which paladins can do.Paladins can follow their own codes, but it has to be LG, which means they believe in honor. Part of honor includes giving your opponent a fair fight, which means no poison. There might be exceptions, especially among paladins who are fighting to immobilize criminals, or paladins in situations like Thanh where the only way to protect those under their care is to use stealth.

The average paladin is moderately Lawful, strongly Good; so if it comes down to it, he'll choose to let go of honor and use poison if it's the only way to do Good--but he won't like having to do it. Personality-wise, the sort of people who become paladins prefer to meet an enemy on level ground, face-to-face, and fight honorable duels. But most of them are realistic enough to know that their honor is not the most important thing in the world--that others are more important than their pride. That's why paladins with a big pride issue are the most vulnerable to falling. Just look at Miko and her serious holier-than-thou attitude--if she'd had more humility, she might not have fallen.

[Amphetryon]

BOED doesn't add the qualifiers "you must know them, they must have harmed you personally, etc" because curiously enough you then wouldn't be able to seek justice for the john doe that was murdered merely because you didn't know him.Then how does a Good character know whom they are allowed to harm, or kill? Detect Evil can be fooled, and many Good characters don't have personal, ready access to it in the first place. We're back at "Good can't kill, regardless", it would seem, and that puts a serious crimp in most adventurers' days.

[hamishspence]

Poisons are also associated with chemical warfare, something that in most real-world countries is considered inhumane because of how much suffering it causes. (Look up mustard gas or sarin or any number of chemical weapons. Scary stuff. Even some otherwise ruthless people won't touch it.)

The trouble with the viewpoint that poison is evil, is that there's no reason why poison would be any more evil than many other strategies one might use in combat, such as a Fireball, a flask full of acid, or a Fear spell, which also cause a good deal of distress for the enemy. Intimidating the enemy can even be the point, because you can save a life by forcing someone to surrender.

So the way I houserule poison is that only if something would be Evil if you did it without poison, is it also Evil if you use poison to do it. So, if you used inhaled poison in the middle of a crowd of civilians, that would be Evil. If you used poison designed to torture someone, that would be Evil. On the other hand, a poisoned blade is not Evil unless you use it to kill someone who doesn't deserve to die. Using disease as a weapon is practically always Evil because of how it spreads to the innocent.

I tend to agree. While many natural poisons are pretty agonising (viper venom, various spider venoms, and famously, platypus venom) it's a bit excessive to apply this to all poisons- and apply different reasoning to ability-damaging spells.

I would take the same approach you mentioned to using ravages for that matter- they're just another form of violence, that only affects the Evil- so whenever violence against evil people wouldn't be justified (Eberron Campaign Setting mentions that this can happen- not every Evil person deserves to be attacked) use of a ravage wouldn't be justified either.


Then how does a Good character know whom they are allowed to harm, or kill? Detect Evil can be fooled, and many Good characters don't have personal, ready access to it in the first place.
Just apply real-world logic. Does it qualify as self-defence? Does it qualify as defence of others? Are you in the same sort of position as a police officer who would be permitted to use violence at that point?

[Callista]

Then how does a Good character know whom they are allowed to harm, or kill? Detect Evil can be fooled, and many Good characters don't have personal, ready access to it in the first place. We're back at "Good can't kill, regardless", it would seem, and that puts a serious crimp in most adventurers' days.That's one of the most painful parts of being a Good-aligned adventurer: Sometimes, you really don't know what the right choice is. You're a fallible individual, and you know all too well that you are capable of making mistakes.

But choosing not to act is also a decision you're responsible for. If you choose not to help, and someone is hurt, then that's on your conscience, just as it would be if you chose to try to help and someone were hurt because of that.

So the best thing a Good-aligned adventurer can do is to use their judgment (and possibly a Phylactery of Faithfulness) and hope that it's enough. And, when it isn't, they try their best to make up for the mistake.

By the way, I'd prefer to re-phrase "Good can't kill, regardless," as, "A Good character doesn't want to commit murder." Good people can kill justifiably. They can also mess up and do Evil things. Evil is out of character for them, it draws them toward Evil alignment, and it leads to guilt and desire to redeem themselves--but alignment is a label on your character's personality, not a limit on the possible actions he can take. If your flawed Good character would do something Evil in some situation, you shouldn't hesitate to let him do it and let the chips fall where they may, maybe even change his alignment toward Evil if that act makes it plain he no longer cares so much about others as he used to. Alignment and actions both depend on personality, and personality can change as your character changes.

[Deophaun]

The whole poison = evil thing is obviously poorly thought out. In the Player's Handbook we have the spell poison that's sole purpose is to poison things, dealing Con damage (which is probably the one type of stat damage that would most directly correlate to increased physical suffering), and yet the spell doesn't have an evil descriptor. Go figure.

[hamishspence]

That's one of the most painful parts of being a Good-aligned adventurer: Sometimes, you really don't know what the right choice is. You're a fallible individual, and you know all too well that you are capable of making mistakes.

But choosing not to act is also a decision you're responsible for. If you choose not to help, and someone is hurt, then that's on your conscience, just as it would be if you chose to try to help and someone were hurt because of that.

So the best thing a Good-aligned adventurer can do is to use their judgment (and possibly a Phylactery of Faithfulness) and hope that it's enough. And, when it isn't, they try their best to make up for the mistake.

WoTC's Save My Game: Lawful & Chaotic, said pretty much the same thing toward the end of the article, for the paladin:

Though a paladin must always strive to bring about a just and righteous outcome, she is not omnipotent. If someone tricks her into acting in a way that harms the innocent, or if an action of hers accidentally brings about a calamity, she may rightly feel that she is at fault. But although she should by all means attempt to redress the wrong, she should not lose her paladinhood for it. Intent is not always easy to judge, but as long as a paladin's heart was in the right place and she took reasonable precautions, she cannot be blamed for a poor result.

applies quite well to any Good aligned character.

[Lady Serpentine]

Yes, I agree with you here. It all depends on the effects of the poison: Is it torture, or is it more of a dizzy stupor or muscle weakness? I guess a Good-aligned person would still use a Ravage if they could, because it won't hurt any innocents that it contacts--if you can get one, it's better than a poison, just because there's less chance of accidentally exposing non-Evil bystanders. No sense in taking that risk if you don't have to.


I can see that. Though, what if the Ravage damages their DEX by means of giving them severe muscle cramps and/or spasms, so that they can't concentrate or move well, and the poison via the dizzy stupor/muscle weakness? Is it better to torture the Evil person but not risk exposing innocent bystanders, or risk exposing them to something that won't really hurt them but not torture the person(s) you're after?


Paladins can follow their own codes, but it has to be LG, which means they believe in honor.


(I agree with the last paragraph, and thus cut it for space, and since I'm not really going to be addressing it, as it all makes sense to me.)

Does it, though? I could make a case for an extremely ordered, non-Chaotic, person who's also intensely Good, and yet doesn't care at all about honor.


Part of honor includes giving your opponent a fair fight, which means no poison. There might be exceptions, especially among paladins who are fighting to immobilize criminals, or paladins in situations like Thanh where the only way to protect those under their care is to use stealth.

Except that, if your enemy is willing to use poison, it doesn't, or at least shouldn't. Why would 'fair' mean denying yourself an advantage your enemy has, so long as there aren't specific moral objections to it?

[SuperPanda]

Ah, the hornets nest.

I don't mind alignment as a role-playing guide, and really unless I have a Player playing a Paladin (and specifically a Paladin) I really just treat it as that 9 times out of 10.

For the purposes of magic I keep track of players alignments and have spells and items respond to them in kind. Generally I find the players don't go too far from their alignments when they know they aren't being held to them for some reason.


Then you get Paladins. The only class in the game with a required alignment and rules for punishing them if they deviate. I always, always, warn a player when they choose to play a Palaidn that they're sending me a signal which says "I want to face moral peril and have one of three outcomes to it. 1) I rise above the darkness and the bleakness of the world because I'm the Hero and sometimes you need a little good old fashion good guy in the mix. (The Captain America / Sir Galahad approach). I'll falter, struggle, but ultimately come out on top and when I do I'll prove to others that it is possible. (The Prince Zuko approach). I will begin as a shining beacon of light, but nothing can withstand the grim-darkness forever. I'll look upon the huddled masses of this world and finally understand... I'll cleanse this world of its ills at any cost and crush the failures of humanity under my boot. (The Darth Vader approach)."

So... someone wanting to play a Paladin who lies to fool people into giving them information, that entraps confessions from suspected criminals, who poisons his blade and sends spies to watch people he suspects of crimes... I think they'd make great Evil Paladins. Doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons, the ends justify the means. I simply don't allow them to do this and still be held up as righteous and saintly.

Now a Lawful Good cleric doing the same things might slip to Lawful Neutral without needing to worry about a fall. A Lawful Good Paladin though, I drop them to LE instead of LN because a cleric is just a man, but a paladin is an exemplar. If a Cleric falters his flock might stray. If a Paladin falters a whole generation of impressionable youths might stray.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I've seen so often people saying that 'written fluff is crap' in these forums that I wonder why they play D&D at all, if everything is so bad.

It's because D&D is the tabletop RPG. Everyone's heard of it. 90% of the time, it's how someone is introduced to the genre. Have YOU ever heard of Strands of Fate?

At this point, I play it because I have the books and I'm bored. I don't have a RL group. If a PbP catches my interest, I sign up. I just try to build a character that's good and play the game.

My interest in D&D is waning. But I'll always be here, in the 3.5 section, arguing heatedly.

[Shadowknight12]

How do we know that the people "did not have the time to check that the stuff they were writing was fact-checked or internally consistant"?

Especially when the books regularly make references to each other?

If any other person had asked me that, I'd go book-hunting for examples of egregious contradictions or things that make no sense and the like, clear evidence that writers had no idea how the things they were writing would interact with something another writer had written before or would be writing months from then.

But you know those books better than I do, so I am 100% sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. In fact, the only way I can explain how you can staunchly defend everything written about alignment ever used simultaneously is because you have taken the time to pick out all the inconsistencies and contradictions and either selectively ignoring them or jumping through hoops to stretch their interpretations in a way that makes everything fit together.

So yeah, all the things that do not quite fit with each other and you had to look at them in a certain way or ignore them? That's the evidence I'm talking about.

Also, "making references" is no evidence. I can reference BoVD without having a clue of what's inside because it's the book of evil things. So I can drop it as a reference whenever I'm talking about evil things to encourage sales without having a clue of what the book actually says.

[OracleofSilence]

IExcept that, if your enemy is willing to use poison, it doesn't, or at least shouldn't. Why would 'fair' mean denying yourself an advantage your enemy has, so long as there aren't specific moral objections to it?

What I see here is a potential issue with the interaction of Posion and the good alignment. The Paladins Code states that a Paladin will not use poison. Okay. It does not say, "A Paladin will not use poison, because it is Evil".

The way I see it, this code is not a requirement to be LG, it is a requirement t play the LG version of the Paladin class. The code is a set of requirements that a Paladin follows, not necessarily requirements that set makes them LG, but requirements that their Oath to <insert god here> hinges upon. While the code assigns the use of Poison as dishonorable, that does not mean that a Paladin views Poison use as Evil.

Why the BoVD says poison use is evil however, is beyond me. I mean, why is something like Drow Sleeping poison (it makes you sleep), evil, while repeatedly stabbing a goblin in the kidneys not? I mean, last time i checked, getting PUNCHED in the kidneys was downright agonizing, i would really hate to imagine what stabbed in the kidneys would feel like

[Shadowknight12]

How do we know that the people "did not have the time to check that the stuff they were writing was fact-checked or internally consistant"?

Especially when the books regularly make references to each other?

If any other person had asked me that, I'd go book-hunting for examples of egregious contradictions or things that make no sense and the like, clear evidence that writers had no idea how the things they were writing would interact with something another writer had written before or would be writing months from then.

But you know those books better than I do, so I am 100% sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. In fact, the only way I can explain how you can staunchly defend everything written about alignment ever used simultaneously is because you have taken the time to pick out all the inconsistencies and contradictions and either selectively ignoring them or jumping through hoops to stretch their interpretations in a way that makes everything fit together.

So yeah, all the things that do not quite fit with each other and you had to look at them in a certain way or ignore them? That's the evidence I'm talking about.

Also, "making references" is no evidence. I can reference BoVD without having a clue of what's inside because it's the book of evil things. So I can drop it as a reference whenever I'm talking about evil things to encourage sales without having a clue of what the book actually says.

[Taelas]

As long as there is no way to force someone's Detect Evil to register a false positive, there shouldn't be anything too unfortunate about this. No-one will register as Evil if they have never done anything that qualifies as Evil. Orcs and the like are "usually" Evil; it's not regardless of their behavior. The only creatures which can't ever stop being evil are things like Demons and (arguably) Undead, where it's literally impossible for them to exist without exerting an Evil influence on everything around them. If someone is behaving as if they were Good and it isn't all just a dirty trick, they will actually become non-Evil eventually (admittedly Detect Evil isn't written as registering degrees other than those based on character level, but it would be a poor DM who wasn't willing to downgrade your Evil aura over time if you're trying really hard to improve, and anyway Evil creatures that aren't undead or clerics are usually Faint auras anyway unless they're extremely powerful).
I don't think you understand my point. Torturing anyone, regardless of who is torturing whom, is never a Good act. It is absurd to claim that because the victim is Evil, torture is just right and dandy.


Addictions certainly are tools of Evil, though the Evil is not the person who suffers them but the one who causes him to - the pusher who gets him to try a drug against his better judgment, the dealer who mercilessly exploits the addict's desperation, the crimelord who makes the stuff knowing what it can do and distributes it to whoever will pay without thought of the consequences (it's not impossible to sell drugs only to people you've vetted as responsible users, but it's very hard to turn an immense profit while doing so, and the majroity of druglords and cartels are just after buckets of money, so I'd say at least "evil" if not "Evil" is a fair cop).
Except they are not describing people who cause or exploit addictions. They describe people who are addicted.


As for fetishes, that's much more questionable, but not entirely wrong-headed. By definition, a fetish (as opposed to a kink, which is often called a fetish but this is casual and inaccurate use of legitimate medical terminology) is the inability to have a healthy sexual attraction to an entire person, because you care only about whatever you fetishize. It's objectification and dehumanization, it's unhealthy, and it's not the same as consensually engaging in sensual edgeplay or whatnot. Anyone who actively tries to talk people out of being satisfied with loving, healthy relationships (which may or may not include kink aspects) and into having a mad obsession with some "ultimate thrill" that can only be satisfied by utterly disregarding conventional morality - yeah, at least a little Evil. Story of O is not about a mentally stable individual behaving appropriately and in a holistic fashion for the benefit of all society.
A sexual fetish is, at the most basic definition, a sexual attraction to something that is not normally considered sexually attractive (regardless of what that something is). What you are describing is paraphilia: when a sexual fetish has a negative impact on a person's life.

[hamishspence]

I don't think you understand my point. Torturing anyone, regardless of who is torturing whom, is never a Good act. It is absurd to claim that because the victim is Evil, torture is just right and dandy.
Common justification "LG means punishing those who harm or threaten innocents- for some crimes, the only proportionate punishment is torture"

Terry Goodkind seemed to use something along those lines when one of his heroes orders a minor villain tortured to death (and says it is merciful compared to the punishment she would have imposed), in Faith of the Fallen.


Except they are not describing people who cause or exploit addictions. They describe people who are addicted.

"Using drugs" isn't in the Evil Acts section though, it's right after that, in a separate section. Possibly in a "it leads to evil behaviour to get the resources to feed the addiction" justification.



If any other person had asked me that, I'd go book-hunting for examples of egregious contradictions or things that make no sense and the like, clear evidence that writers had no idea how the things they were writing would interact with something another writer had written before or would be writing months from then.

But you know those books better than I do, so I am 100% sure you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I really don't. I read the books again and again, and I can't see the "egregious contradictions and things that make no sense"- they all seem to at least make some sense.

[Math_Mage]

Call me when someone finds an internally consistent, readily understandable code of morality that could be systematically integrated into the mechanics of a roleplaying game and that is not vulnerable to abuse.

Till then, I'm perfectly content with the thought that while people can easily abuse the alignment system, they can also use it as the foundation for a complex and nuanced moral compass. Just because you can be Miko doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate the fact that you can be Roy.

[Shadowknight12]

I really don't. I read the books again and again, and I can't see the "egregious contradictions and things that make no sense"- they all seem to at least make some sense.

I ask you a question. Do you have to actually work to make everything make sense? Do you have to make a (perhaps subconscious) effort to make all the diverse material fit together? Because it's possible that you have done so automatically and are incapable of seeing what we're talking about. If I were to quote you several inconsistencies in books and you were to write several paragraphs on how everything fits together if you jump through logical and philosophical hoops, would that actually make a difference? It's highly possible that the vision of the alignment system that you have developed is so ingrained into you that nothing anyone can bring up can alter it because you have had time to brute-force everything to fit together and you're not even aware of that.

If that's the case, then it's useless to debate anything with you on a fundamental basis, because you are utterly impervious to anything anyone else can say. If I say "Well, BoVD is inconsistent with this and BoED contradicts that" and you go "no, because if you follow this interpretation, it all makes sense!" it's entirely dependant on whether we want to follow your interpretation or not. If we don't, then those inconsistencies don't disappear but you still can't see them, so we end up going nowhere.

[Math_Mage]

I ask you a question. Do you have to actually work to make everything make sense? Do you have to make a (perhaps subconscious) effort to make all the diverse material fit together? Because it's possible that you have done so automatically and are incapable of seeing what we're talking about. If I were to quote you several inconsistencies in books and you were to write several paragraphs on how everything fits together if you jump through logical and philosophical hoops, would that actually make a difference? It's highly possible that the vision of the alignment system that you have developed is so ingrained into you that nothing anyone can bring up can alter it because you have had time to brute-force everything to fit together and you're not even aware of that.

If that's the case, then it's useless to debate anything with you on a fundamental basis, because you are utterly impervious to anything anyone else can say. If I say "Well, BoVD is inconsistent with this and BoED contradicts that" and you go "no, because if you follow this interpretation, it all makes sense!" it's entirely dependant on whether we want to follow your interpretation or not. If we don't, then those inconsistencies don't disappear but you still can't see them, so we end up going nowhere.

Many things look strange before you put effort into understanding them. And putting effort into understanding something doesn't mean you lose the ability to see how other people could think it's inconsistent. I don't necessarily agree with hamishspence that it's all consistent, but your argument here is quite strange (not to mention just a little rude).

[hamishspence]

I ask you a question. Do you have to actually work to make everything make sense? Do you have to make a (perhaps subconscious) effort to make all the diverse material fit together?

As far as I recall, no. Can't think of any major "logical and philosophical hoops" that had to be jumped through.

Now if there was an example of something where one book stated "this act is always evil" and other stated "this act is always good" that would be the classic example of a major, egregious inconsistency.

I could certainly agree with the notion that there are minor inconsistencies - and probably more than a few. It's the major inconsistencies I don't recall seeing any of.

[Water_Bear]

The fact is that, in most cases, the various source-books are fairly consistent about what is Good and what is Evil, and to a lesser extent about Law and Chaos.

There are issues where I would argue against D&D 3.5's rulings on what is and isn't moral, because I personally disagree with them*, but they are fairly clear internally. Even the Poison/Ravage thing makes a certain kind of sense if you read the description of what Ravages are; they are "...magical traumas which turn the moral corruption of evil into physical corruption which wracks their bodies."

Again, it is very easy to go through the wealth of tips and rulings written about alignment and pick apart bits here and there where it doesn't fit perfectly. But Alignment is a system which cannot exist without interpretation; it is a role playing tool. Of course it won't work if you want to treat it like a set of absolute rules, because it is something which requires DM and player adjudication by design.

*The BoVD displays a kind of depressing misunderstanding of BDSM and other fetishes which is common in popular culture, especially fantasy literature. I tend to ignore it in my games so as not to offend my players, but the official word is that Kink = Evil. Luckily it doesn't come up often.

[Math_Mage]

Couple of orphaned posts being rescued here.

Anyway, perhaps it would indeed help to pick out a particular inconsistency. I mean, it's more productive than going back and forth where hamishspence says "I don't see any particular inconsistency" and you say "I don't believe you can't see any particular inconsistency."

[hamishspence]

*The BoVD displays a kind of depressing misunderstanding of BDSM and other fetishes which is common in popular culture, especially fantasy literature. I tend to ignore it in my games so as not to offend my players, but the official word is that Kink = Evil. Luckily it doesn't come up often.

I tend to the view that the BoVD examples represent the most extreme end- a long way from "safe, sane and consensual".

[Shadowknight12]

Many things look strange before you put effort into understanding them. And putting effort into understanding something doesn't mean you lose the ability to see how other people could think it's inconsistent. I don't necessarily agree with hamishspence that it's all consistent, but your argument here is quite strange (not to mention just a little rude).

I do not intend to be rude, I am merely stating that someone can find things so ingrained to them that they smooth over the inconsistencies naturally, like I do when it comes to biology and chemistry. Not everything is consistent (for example, there is a gaping flaw in the main theory of how biology works, which is that every cell comes from another cell, yet everyone ignores the fact that either life has never had a beginning or that theory is false (because the first cell must have come from something that was not a cell)). It's not something inherently bad or wrong, it's a part of human nature. We must merely be aware of it.

Also, yes, putting effort into understanding something means that we construct our own interpretation of how that something works. The more effort we pour into it, the more resilient we are to changing it. Again, nothing wrong with that, it's human nature. We just have to be aware of when we've poured so much effort into understanding that we are going to automatically rebuke every possible criticism to our viewpoints, to avoid fruitless debates.


As far as I recall, no. Can't think of any major "logical and philosophical hoops" that had to be jumped through.

Now if there was an example of something where one book stated "this act is always evil" and other stated "this act is always good" that would be the classic example of a major, egregious inconsistency.

I could certainly agree with the notion that there are minor inconsistencies - and probably more than a few. It's the major inconsistencies I don't recall seeing any of.

No, it's the things you call "minor" inconsistencies. They are minor to you, because you have managed to rationalise them within your view of the alignment system. They are not minor to a lot of people.

Also, there's a matter of personal taste. I dislike how poison use is evil yet good defines itself as avoiding undue suffering (and there's nothing that avoids undue suffering like a quick-acting poison or a sleeping poison). I also dislike that the system is biased towards evil simply because people want cheap drama (see: Ravenloft did it first, and it was the one thing I always hated about Ravenloft, how if you were pristine and pure and good, everything was stacked against you (and you were likely gonna lose, because all the resources you could use to succeed pinged as evil), and if you were even slightly ungood, you were doomed to become a Dark Lord eventually, no middle ground). I also dislike how it's all written from one specific moral perspective (some people say you can't blame the writers from writing things from their own moral perspective, I say you can, since they are supposed to write things to integrate as wide a system of beliefs as possible).

In the end, pretending the alignment system is perfect and that it allows for every variety of playstyle is simply untrue. The alignment system, taken strictly as written, is full of inconsistencies (even if they're only 'minor' for some people) and supports only a few very narrow playstyles.

[hamishspence]

I dislike how poison use is evil yet good defines itself as avoiding undue suffering (and there's nothing that avoids undue suffering like a quick-acting poison or a sleeping poison).
and sleeping poisons are specifically called out as Not Evil in the very same source.


No, it's the things you call "minor" inconsistencies. They are minor to you, because you have managed to rationalise them within your view of the alignment system. They are not minor to a lot of people.
For me, probably the biggest alignment inconsistency issue, is over how compulsory "being merciful" is for Lawful Good aligned characters.

Manual of the Places calls out Celestia (the lawful aligned and good aligned plane) as the plane of "justice and mercy"

BoED goes out of its way to suggest that good characters must show mercy if they wish to stay Good- becoming "merciless" is a trap that they "must not succumb to".

But PHB 3.0 (reprinted in PHB 3.5, before BoED came out) states of Lawful Good "Alhandra, a paladin who smites evil without mercy and protects the innocent without hesitation, is Lawful Good".

A problem. Perhaps not reaching "major problem" status for me, but I can understand why others would think it is.


The alignment system, taken strictly as written, is full of inconsistencies (even if they're only 'minor' for some people) and supports only a few very narrow playstyles.

Which are the "few very narrow play styles" that are supported?

[JadePhoenix]

My interest in D&D is waning. But I'll always be here, in the 3.5 section, arguing heatedly.

I'm just gonna leave this (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontLike) here (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch?from=Main.ptitle xxpmjrh25rbg).
I think everyone has the right to not like 3.5 or whatever, but if you don't like it, why do you have to spend your time bashing it every 5 seconds?

[Water_Bear]

With regards to the mercy thing, I think that it is a case of accidental equivocation. When you talk about destroying Evil mercilessly it means completely and without hesitation. When you talk about giving mercy to defeated enemies, it means being willing to accept genuine surrenders and give everyone a chance at redemption. The context changes the meaning of the word, and thus how we read it.


for example, there is a gaping flaw in the main theory of how biology works, which is that every cell comes from another cell, yet everyone ignores the fact that either life has never had a beginning or that theory is false (because the first cell must have come from something that was not a cell)

Also; not even slightly true. "Life" is just series of self-assembling molecular machines, and even something as simple as RNA can fulfill most of the criteria of biological life. Life did not originate as cells, but rather cells emerged as the dominant unit of life as RNA/DNA organisms became increasingly complex over time.

Abiogenesis is the most reasonable explanation for the origin of life on earth, and your inability to understand it does not in any way reflect on the "consistency" of evolutionary biology.

I don't mean to be rude, but this kind of reasoning is exactly what Creationists and other Anti-Science political groups use to try and dismiss legitimate scientific theories. It is very important that people understand what science is and what current theory states about our world.

[Shadowknight12]

and sleeping poisons are specifically called out as Not Evil in the very same source.

Fine, my mistake. But let's look at the other poisons. Take a very powerful poison, like Black Lotus. It does not say in any source that it produces intense pain or any kind of suffering. Now let's assume it's used on a creature who has such poor Constitution that they die immediately (and presumably, painlessly). Isn't that far better than setting them on fire until they die, or stabbing them repeatedly with a sword?

Also, look at Ravages in BoED. They're supernatural poisons specifically meant to be used against evil people. Since they would presumably inflict the same pain (or would be equally painless) as a regular poison, then clearly the difference is not being merciful. The only other reason why Ravages are okay and poisons are not is that poisons are indiscriminate, while Ravages only damage Evil. So does that mean that paladins can poison a village's water supply with a Ravage in order to cull the evil from it? And if the paladin can poison his sword with a Ravage to kill someone they know it's evil, why can't they just restrict themselves to use poison on creatures they have specifically identified as Evil with their Detect Evil? Why do we need good-aligned poisons?


For me, probably the biggest alignment inconsistency issue, is over how compulsory "being merciful" is for Lawful Good aligned characters.

Manual of the Places calls out Celestia (the lawful aligned and good aligned plane) as the plane of "justice and mercy"

BoED goes out of its way to suggest that good characters must show mercy if they wish to stay Good- becoming "merciless" is a trap that they "must not succumb to".

But PHB 3.0 (reprinted in PHB 3.5, before BoED came out) states of Lawful Good "Alhandra, a paladin who smites evil without mercy and protects the innocent without hesitation, is Lawful Good".

A problem. Perhaps not reaching "major problem" status for me, but I can understand why others would think it is.

Good, you've identified one of the main problems with the alignment system as written. The fact that most adventures are specifically written assuming the players will kill everything inside (by definition, not showing mercy) supports that assertion. D&D is a game steeped in the "killing things and taking their stuff" gameplay mechanic. That mechanic precludes mercy.

There's also the very concept of the paladin. The paladin is a warrior. It has been trained, mainly, to kill things. It may have a few divine abilities not directly related to killing or staying alive (like Lay on Hands or Remove Disease, arguably), but that doesn't mean that the paladin is not, first and foremost, a killing machine. And yet he is expected to be merciful, in direct defiance of his own purpose. He has an ability called Smite Evil, which means that he is expected to deal damage to evil foes. They could've given him an ability called "Hold Evil" or "Stun Evil" or something like that, but they didn't. Its iconic ability is the ability to deal extra damage with an attack.

Paladins do not work when one adheres strictly to what's been written about alignment. There is a strong disconnect between the lofty ideals of alignment and the actual reality of gameplay, and the player is the one that gets trapped in a lose/lose situation unless the DM is, ironically, merciful and avoids any thorny issues.


Which are the "few very narrow play styles" that are supported?

Well, clearly, everything must be morally black or white. There is no such thing as shades of gray, no room for nuance and no cosmological balance. The forces of good are always about to be wiped out (as is the natural conclusion of the alignment system favouring evil) and everything is hopeless because evil is so prevalent and so easy to fall prey to. It's the typical "points of light" setting, which some people say had not seen before 4e but I insisted it has been around forever. It's the stape of WW's World of Darkness and the 3e alignment system has supported that playstyle as well in everything but name.

Look at what Ravenloft had to do to allow for intrigue. It had to make Detect Alignment spells automatically fail (and IIRC, spells that behaved differently according to alignment). That is not a playstyle supported by the alignment system as is.

In fact, there is no room for moral variance in a lot of species without houseruling. You cannot have redeemed evil creatures without BoED's specific spell for it, and you cannot have a great number of benevolent red dragons because the MM says they're always evil.

The playstyles that a strict reading of the alignment system supports are either "this thing is evil so let's kill it because we're good and that's that" or "this thing is evil but we can't kill it so let's find a way to stop it in a different way or else the paladin falls, also, let's be very careful with every action we engage in or we'll turn evil." I call the first one "Consequence-Free Hack'n'Slash" and the second one "Morality Minefield."


Also; not even slightly true. "Life" is just series of self-assembling molecular machines, and even something as simple as RNA can fulfill most of the criteria of biological life. Life did not originate as cells, but rather cells emerged as the dominant unit of life as RNA/DNA organisms became increasingly complex over time.

Abiogenesis is the most reasonable explanation for the origin of life on earth, and your inability to understand it does not in any way reflect on the "consistency" of evolutionary biology.

I don't mean to be rude, but this kind of reasoning is exactly what Creationists and other Anti-Science political groups use to try and dismiss legitimate scientific theories. It is very important that people understand what science is and what current theory states about our world.

I come from a third-world country, and my university taught me Biogenesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogenesis) as the main dominant theory in biology when it gave me a biochemist degree. No, it was not a religious university. So please, do try to realise that sometimes other scientists in other places have been formed differently.