Cosmic Good and Evil?

[jedipotter]

So within the setting of D&D who or what decides what is good and evil? Not by the game rules, but in the setting. You can find lists in the rules as to what is good or evil, but who or what in the setting decides that?

Is alignment cosmic? Does the ''multiverse'' decide what is good and what is evil? Is the multiverse aware?

Who decides what alignment each being has? A human is born neutral, but will slowly develop an alignment. But how? Do the gods decide what alignment a person is based on their actions/thoughts? Or is it more cosmic? Does the multiverse decide if your good or evil?

If a good person does an evil act, who changes that persons alignment? Gods? The mulitverse? Something else?

Thoughts?

[atemu1234]

It's an interesting philosphical concept, but alignment isn't quantitative in the D&D universe. The multiverse may be sentient, of course, and it's actually pretty likely, but alignment is literally a composite of the player's actions. An evil act may not change their alignment, but a history of it would.

All in all, it would be interesting to see how the players would react to meeting the multiverse.

[sleepyphoenixx]

All in all, it would be interesting to see how the players would react to meeting the multiverse.

They'd try to kill it, of course. And loot the body.

[Jeff the Green]

I suppose it'll depend on the setting. In mine, Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are elements just like Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. It's what outsiders are made of (though some, like firre eladrin and genies have some of the four classical elements mixed in), and doing Good and Evil acts attracts Good and Evil particles to you, changing your body's composition slightly in favor of one or the other. In fact, technically you can have a an alignment of Lawful Good Fire Air Positive, but because very few people actually commit acts of fire or positive energy and it doesn't tell you very much (are they an arsonist with a day job as a medic or do they use holy flame to purify the world of undead?) pretty much nobody bothers using detect fire on a person.

Also, yay! jedipotter started a thread that doesn't seem destined for a pointless argument. At least, no more so than any alignment thread.

[afroakuma]

Depends which "setting" is under discussion. In the Great Wheel cosmology, alignment forces are indeed real, objective facts of the multiverse. In Eberron they're far more mutable and subjective.

An individual's alignment is not strictly quantifiable, though, or measurable beyond "I can detect evil and oh boy howdy that qualifies."

[Segev]

Within the setting, Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are fundamental forces that simply are, in the same sense that Earth, Fire, Water, and Air are.

The canon setting(s) do not present an ur-being, a One True God, which has defined them thusly; they simply are.

I could go into my treatis on objective morality, but it's not really an answer to the question in the OP, so I won't. There's not much philosophy here: the setting presents them as real, genuine things. Nothing and nobody defined them any more than something or somebody defined the elements.

[1pwny]

Actually, I really liked Jeff's idea. And while it might be hard to explain and seem weird fluff-wise, it would really explain a lot about how the setting works in general. Rather than having the entire Circle Against... line read your opponent's moral values, simply having magic check the amount of particles on a person would be fairly easy.

[jedipotter]

Depends which "setting" is under discussion. In the Great Wheel cosmology, alignment forces are indeed real, objective facts of the multiverse. In Eberron they're far more mutable and subjective.

"

Now how does this work in the Great Wheel (Planescape) setting? How is alignment ''real''? Is each alignment like an ''energy force'' that a person can choose to follow? So the Multiverse sets what each alignment is, and a creatures alignment comes from if they follow that path or not?

Yea, on my list of why I don't like Eberron is the ''do whatever'' alignments.....

[AlignmentDebate]

So within the setting of D&D who or what decides what is good and evil?
Paladins do, with morality detecting eye beams.

[afroakuma]

So the Multiverse sets what each alignment is, and a creatures alignment comes from if they follow that path or not?

I don't believe you're interpreting the concept properly. I think you're looking for something different than what the answer actually is.

[Ettina]

I suppose it'll depend on the setting. In mine, Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are elements just like Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. It's what outsiders are made of (though some, like firre eladrin and genies have some of the four classical elements mixed in), and doing Good and Evil acts attracts Good and Evil particles to you, changing your body's composition slightly in favor of one or the other.

That makes a lot of sense. After all, a non-Evil cleric following an Evil god pings as Evil, and it stands to reason that actively drawing power from an Evil outsider (gods are outsiders, right?) would get you a lot of Evil particles even if they wouldn't normally be attracted to you.

[Jeff the Green]

Actually, I really liked Jeff's idea. And while it might be hard to explain and seem weird fluff-wise, it would really explain a lot about how the setting works in general. Rather than having the entire Circle Against... line read your opponent's moral values, simply having magic check the amount of particles on a person would be fairly easy.

It also gets around the more distasteful parts of BoED and BoVD. Yes, kinky sex is Evil, and chastity is Good. Dominatrices ping on detect evil and the unicorn rider on detect good. Doesn't mean you should smite the one and save the other. And yes, slash tongue is Evil, but it's because you use elemental evil to do it rather than it being somehow morally wrong. Most philosophers and people who have thought about it in general agree that Good ≠ good and Evil ≠ evil, and most people who care about morality use things like detect violence or detect guilt (Dragon 323).

[jedipotter]

doing Good and Evil acts attracts Good and Evil particles to you, changing your body's composition slightly in favor of one or the other.


Ok, but here is the trick: what is good or evil? Are there rules? Is X always evil and Y always good? And what about all the gray?

Killing is a great example:

One type of Good says: You must never, ever, kill for any reason ever....there is always another way.

The other type of Good says: It is OK to kill, but only in self defense of you or others.

So can both types still be good? And even if self defense is good, how does the 'universe' decide?

[ryu]

They'd try to kill it, of course. And loot the body.

What can I say? The man's correct. Speaking from experience incidentally.

[eggynack]

Alignment is determined by The Council of the Aligned. They determine what acts fit in which alignment, and while the council is partially filled with the kinds of beings you'd expect, high level casters, massive monsters, maybe a deity or two, there's a good amount of less powerful beings, like bards, fighters, aristocrats, and even a commoner or two. They meet all over the multiverse semi-regularly, everywhere from a massive castle to the elemental plane of fire to an arbitrary tavern, and they lobby for various things to be aligned in various ways. Many of their decisions are sensible and obvious, but if you ever find yourself wondering why poison or deathwatch is evil, or why sanctify the wicked is good, then you have The Council of the Aligned to blame.

[GameSpawn]

I view it as just being a property of things in setting. If you work out, you become stronger, and better at combat. If you kill innocents, you become evil, and Holy Word affects you.


Ok, but here is the trick: what is good or evil? Are there rules? Is X always evil and Y always good? And what about all the gray?

Killing is a great example:

One type of Good says: You must never, ever, kill for any reason ever....there is always another way.

The other type of Good says: It is OK to kill, but only in self defense of you or others.

So can both types still be good? And even if self defense is good, how does the 'universe' decide?

To my mind, that's a bit like asking how the universe decides how gravity works. It's not a decision; it's how the universe is. You can look at how gravity affected things in the past and reason out how it works, and you can look at what good people did in the past and reason out what kind of acts are good acts.

[Milo v3]

Book of Vile Darkness (and probably BoED) list what actions are evil in a default 3.0 setting, though many people argue with some of what these books say is evil and what they say is good.

[Jeff the Green]

Ok, but here is the trick: what is good or evil? Are there rules? Is X always evil and Y always good? And what about all the gray?

Killing is a great example:

One type of Good says: You must never, ever, kill for any reason ever....there is always another way.

The other type of Good says: It is OK to kill, but only in self defense of you or others.

So can both types still be good? And even if self defense is good, how does the 'universe' decide?

In my world? Or standard D&D? In both there's an approach that's similar to the formula in most common law-based jurisdictions: you need actus reus, a guilty act, and mens rea, a guilty mind for something to be good or evil, though, as in law, negligence can be a mens rea. So yes, there are rules, but it's attenuated and sometimes even negated by state of mind.

For example, saving orphans from a burning building is usually Good. If you do it with intent to ritually sacrifice them later, it's at best neutral. (I'd probably go with straight neutral, but I can see someone argue for Evil.)

In your example, killing is rarely a Good act. BoED outlines this, actually. Killing Evil outsiders is nearly always Good. Killing someone in defense of another is probably good, but it needs to be proportionate—you can't kill someone who's threatening to beat someone nonfatally, for example. Killing in self defense is usually neutral.

As for the gray, that's why we have LN, TN, and CN.

How the universe knows or decides is left vague, as far as I know. In my world it's sort of like The Secret—sentient non-outsider beings' brains work like magnets to attract Evilons and Goodons (and Lawons and Chaosions) under the right circumstances.

The difference between my world and D&D is that there's a lot less emphasis on state of mind and circumstance. Killing an Evil outsider is always Good even if he, like one Solamil, runs a soup kitchen. (Admittedly, he's trying to promote the sin of gluttony. He's just really bad at it.) and killing a celestial is always evil, even if he's brainwashed an entire village to serve him and make holy war on the mostly inoffensive goblins that live nearby.

[Psyren]

"Good and evil are not philosophical concepts in the D&D game. They are the forces that define the cosmos." - Player's Handbook 103.

As someone earlier in the thread mentioned, they are fundamental forces, right up there with the elements (Fire, Earth, Air, Water) and energy (positive/negative.)

The gods are at best representatives or enforcers of these qualities; they do not control them or stand above them.

[jiriku]

So within the setting of D&D who or what decides what is good and evil? Not by the game rules, but in the setting. You can find lists in the rules as to what is good or evil, but who or what in the setting decides that?

Within the non-Eberron canonical settings, no one decides, just as people don't "decide" what is up or down or hard or soft. "Good" and "evil" are as objectively observable as "red" and "yellow" -- the only difference is that you need magic to sense alignments.

That said, it's common enough for DMs to run homebrew settings in which there isn't an objective standard for judging good and evil -- like in the real world. In that situation, people just have to argue about it and come to a rough consensus.


Is alignment cosmic? Does the ''multiverse'' decide what is good and what is evil? Is the multiverse aware?

No, that would be silly. Unless in a homebrew setting where the DM has created a sentient multiverse, the multiverse is not aware and it does not make decisions of any sort.


Who decides what alignment each being has? A human is born neutral, but will slowly develop an alignment. But how? Do the gods decide what alignment a person is based on their actions/thoughts? Or is it more cosmic? Does the multiverse decide if your good or evil?

Intelligent beings choose their own alignments by adopting beliefs and behaviors consistent with that alignment. Gods don't decide for them. The cosmos doesn't decide. The multiverse doesn't decide. Individuals decide for themselves. An exception to this rule would be creatures with an alignment subtype. Their alignment is determined by their very nature, in much the same way that their nature determines the number of arms and legs they have. Although examples exist of creatures who break with their alignment subtype, they're pretty much the exceptions that prove the rule (and IMO they exist mostly by Rule of Cool, not because their existence is consistent with the rest of the D&D cosmology).

Obviously, exceptions of forced alignment change exist. Here I assume you're asking "how does a creature's natural alignment come to be."


If a good person does an evil act, who changes that persons alignment? Gods? The mulitverse? Something else?

Here, the metagame intrudes on the setting. Within the setting, if a being wishes to change its alignment, it adopts, consciously although perhaps with or without very much self-reflection, the beliefs and behaviors of the new alignment. Change occurs gradually even though the game rules don't give us a mechanic to represent gradual alignment shifts. However, people in D&D are fictional characters -- they don't really have internal beliefs except as assigned to them by the real person who controls them. Thus, the metagame appears: the DM chooses when an NPC changes alignment, and players choose when their characters change alignment (with guidance from the DM, see below).


Thoughts?

In the early days of D&D, alignment was seen as prescriptive rather than descriptive. Alignment set limits on how you could play, and the DM was encouraged to force alignment change on a PC, along with punishments in the form of xp loss or even level loss, if the player didn't play the alignment consistently. In modern play, it's more common to see alignment as merely descriptive. The player determines his/her character's alignment, although the DM may guide by explaining the alignments and may occasionally overrule a player who really is just seriously not getting the concept. However, even when alignment changes, nothing special generally happens. Personally, we don't use the alignment rules at all at my table -- people just play their characters, and NPCs judge the PCs according how they act and what the cultural context is, with no need to consult a detect spell before deciding what to do. For paladin/knight types, we just use written codes of conduct to guide their actions -- just like elite groups in the real world do.

THE CONTENTIOUS PART: What I'm sure you're concerned about is "what do I do if my player gets an advantage by claiming to be one alignment but then acts like a different alignment?" I would recommend that you take an extreme stance, impose some punitive house rules, keep them secret from the players until you spring the penalty, then bounce them out the door if they complain too much or try to rudisplork around the penalty somehow. Or you could just remove alignment from the game. I did, and we have even more fun without it than we did with it. Frankly, I found alignment to be a pain in the butt both as player and DM, and it never added anything to our games that was worth the trouble of having it around.

[Judge_Worm]

Depends on the DM/setting.

In my current campaign I'm working on, the alignments are based upon the Nine Pillars (there's also The Dome). Each of these Nine Pillars are a greater deity that personifies that alignment, and all it entails, for instance Asmodeus (upgraded to deity status) determines what is Lawful Evil, he does this by exemplifying it, he obeys contracts, treaties, and tradition (he's the patron god of loyalty) while still looking out for number one (he's also the patron god of attorneys). Things get weird with True Neutral because Marhut (God of balance) is strictly opposed to whatever alignment the Universe is leaning towards (unless it's exactly true neutral, which has only happened once, when the Universe was still brand new and the original Nine Pillars had come to be). Then there's The Dome, Yog-Sothoth, who's alignment is unknowable, and who IS, CREATED, and DESTROYED the Universe (although the Universe was shaped by the original Nine Pillars).

Now compare that to the normal Great Wheel cosmology in which Law/Chaos and Good/Evil are tangible things that even powerful outsiders are subject to. Or Eberron in which the twin axises are subjective, and thus anyone can be any alignment as long as they believe their following their alignment (which I dislike strongly, imagine an Epic-Level Paladin decided that all sentient life/undead/constructs were evil at the core because they step on one other to survive, so said Pally decides to TPK everything in the Universe, arguably CE in my book but since the Pally can argue it was for the good [by destroying evil] and for law [an empty Universe can't commit chaotic acts] they're still LG, because they really really believed they were doing the right thing).