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goto124
2015-01-07, 05:37 AM
This thread has been opened up for any and all alignment-related questions.

A person can't be considered Good if he* does things purely for personal gain (loot, fun, etc). But does that make him Neutral, or Evil? When is killing considered Neutral or Evil? If Evil means doing things for the evulz, how do you have non-stupid evil?

*Male pronouns used to refer to all sexes and genders.

Eldan
2015-01-07, 05:40 AM
Neutral is raising yourself higher. Evil is raising yourself while lowering others.

goto124
2015-01-07, 05:42 AM
Raising yourself in what sense?

Knaight
2015-01-07, 06:19 AM
Raising yourself in what sense?

Generally getting closer to one's goals. Often that's some variety of becoming more influential or powerful, but that's not really the main point. It's part of a general system that gets applied to D&D a lot, which essentially works out to:
Good: Helps others at the detriment to one's self.
Neutral: Helps one's self primarily.
Evil: Helps one's self, actively harms others to do so.

That's obviously extremely bare bones, and individual characters will be more complex than that. To use an extremely mundane real life situation, say that you have three students, and they're in a class which has a curve. Three strategies are employed:

Good student: They put a lot of effort in helping classmates, which they could have used studying.
Neutral student: They study heavily, and maybe help those they personally like to a limited degree.
Evil student: They deliberately sabotage the work of other people in the class, so that the curve boosts their work.

Obviously the analogy involves things where it wouldn't really make sense to bring out words like "evil", and it's not like this one aspect of a person is even all that indicative of who they are generally (at least between the "good" and "neutral" students, it would be more than enough to reflect poorly on the "evil" student's morals). Still, it highlights the concept. The neutral person still has a lot of things they won't do and lines they won't cross, and while not actively altruistic they aren't actively harmful. The evil person is willing to do some of those things and cross some of those lines.

1of3
2015-01-07, 06:21 AM
That's a very good question. Following it through, will get you some thing like 4e's alignments.

mythmonster2
2015-01-07, 06:22 AM
Raising yourself in what sense?

In basically any sense. More money, more power, etc. The difference between Neutral and Evil is that Neutral generally doesn't screw over other people to get that power. They'd take $100 if they found it on the ground, but they wouldn't take it from someone who's passed out. And evil doesn't have to be For the Evulz, it just has to not care about what's in the way between it and power.

hymer
2015-01-07, 06:51 AM
A person can't be considered Good if he* does things purely for personal gain (loot, fun, etc). But does that make him Neutral, or Evil? When is killing considered Neutral or Evil? If Evil means doing things for the evulz, how do you have non-stupid evil?

*Male pronouns used to refer to all sexes and genders.

I think you're skewing the debate a little with this opening question. Neutral vs. Evil is not really a matter of ambition, unless you consider ambition to be evil in itself (and it would mean that Good people cannot act on their ambitions, which I think creates problems in other places). It's in the willingness to harm others (and let come to harm, depending on specific views), as has been pointed out, that they differ. The Evil character does not consider the effect on others relevant in itself. The Neutral character is probably somewhat fuzzier there, unlikely to cause harm to others unless there is definite personal gain; and there may be an upper limit to what the Neutral is willing to do, a threshold above which no amount of personal gain will allow the commission of evil acts. A Neutral may be unwilling to, say, hire a killer in pursuit of their ambition, even if it meant certain promotion. Or they won't stoop to blackmail, or generally commit felonies.

I think it's also entirely possible to be neutral or evil and have no ambitions of note, a case which would make it hard to use the original question to distinguish between those two alignments at all.

Winterwind
2015-01-07, 07:00 AM
Ambition on its own shouldn't be considered Evil. Good people can be ambitious just the same; it is not a morally charged quality.

I'd say the primary defining characteristic of Good, Neutral and Evil is their attitude towards the value of life and harming others:
Good will go out of its way to actively help and protect others.
Neutral will go out of its way to not actively cause harm to others, but will not necessarily actively go out to help them.
Evil will do as it benefits it, completely regardless of how it affects others, and will not actively go out to help others without some major incentive.

I feel like it can be sort of phrased like Asimov's First Law of Robotics, successively reduced and crippled at every step:
A Good person will not harm another person or, through inaction, let that person come to harm.
A Neutral person will not harm another person.
An Evil person does not care whether harm comes to another person.

BrokenChord
2015-01-07, 07:09 AM
Both Neutral and Evil characters are generally concerned only for the well-being of themselves and those they specifically care about; the devil is in the details, as they say, and the main difference is that Evil will hurt anybody if they think said hurting will help their goal, while Neutral has compassion and a conscience to the degree that they won't usually hurt others even if that would be undeniably the best way to accomplish their goals.

Bear in mind that Good isn't the alignment of avoiding Evil; you need to actively do Good things, without ulterior motives, to be Good. Characters who avoid Evil but don't actively pursue Good make up the majority of the Neutral population, not counting those of animal intelligence of course.

Of course, Good and Evil are defined basically arbitrarily in this game and, by the rules, have little to do with the concepts of good or evil (y'know, the ones with lower-case letters). So examples are going to be arguable in most cases.

LudicSavant
2015-01-07, 07:40 AM
There are no concrete canonical factors for separating Neutral from Evil. At no point in D&D is alignment ever defined in anything resembling consistent, let alone concrete, terms by which you could accurately evaluate a person's alignment based on their personality, actions, or anything else. So... basically, the divide is wherever you want it to be. Pick a place that is appropriate for the themes of your campaign.



A Good person will not harm another person or, through inaction, let that person come to harm.
A Neutral person will not harm another person.
An Evil person does not care whether harm comes to another person.

You realize you just defined every adventurer willing to swing a sword at the archvillain at the end of the story as not qualifying for Good or Neutral, right? Those paladins aren't carrying swords around for show. They totally are for harming other people.

Winterwind
2015-01-07, 07:48 AM
You realize you just defined every adventurer willing to swing a sword at the archvillain at the end of the story as not qualifying for Good or Neutral, right? Those paladins aren't carrying swords around for show. They totally are for harming other people.Yeah, it did occur to me I might edit in "Make allowances for harming evildoers when doing so will protect people from harm otherwise"; I figured it was obvious, though, so I went lazy. :smalltongue:

Eldan
2015-01-07, 07:53 AM
You have "evil does not care if they harm another", maybe add "good people care if they harm another and will not do so if it can be avoided"?

Broken Twin
2015-01-07, 08:06 AM
While I have no personal love for the D&D alignment system... this is the rule of thumb I generally run with in regards to determining where an action falls on the G-N-E alignment.

Good will help others for the sake of helping others.
Evil will help others only to further their own goals.
Neutral will judge if helping others is worth the risk.

Good cares first and foremost about others.
Evil cares first and foremost about themselves.
Neutral cares about both in equal measure.

Knaight
2015-01-07, 08:20 AM
Ah, I guess one of the issues I had is an assumption I'd made- the assumption that you have to harm someone to further your goals. It's probably come from my time in MMOs, which lack RP and won't give you any choices apart from killing. Am I right to say that a character from an MMO would be considerd Evil in a Tabletop, since his first solution to anything that stands in the way of fat loots personal gain is 'murder the guys in front of you'? Are all murderhobos Evil if they don't restrict themselves to monsters and undead?

Most MMO characters habitually pick fights with things that are clearly just sitting there minding their own business, so it doesn't look good. With that said, a lot of tabletop RPGs assume a level of killing way in excess of what just about anybody does in the real world, and emphasize who is being killed and why the killing is being done. Good characters are generally killing in defense of others, and those they are killing are generally those actively in the process of killing or at least seriously harming innocents. Neutral characters generally have the moral restrictions such that they are only willing to kill in defense, but who won't actually do so without some sort of personal compensation. Evil characters are much more willing to break that line, or at least other lines involving seriously harming people without it being in defense of anyone.

goto124
2015-01-07, 08:28 AM
(Whoops, accidentally deleted the other post. Sorry about that.)

I'm asking this question so that I have a better idea of what to put on my character sheets. I'm more looking for general consensus on DnD Alignment so that my idea of, say, 'Chaotic Neutral' is close enough (can't get perfect for something like morality) to most people's ideas of that alignment.

Ah, I guess one of the issues I had is an assumption I'd made- the assumption that you have to harm someone to further your goals. It's probably come from my time in MMOs, which lack RP and won't give you any choices apart from killing. Am I right to say that a character from an MMO would be considerd Evil in a Tabletop, since his first solution to anything that stands in the way of fat loots personal gain is 'murder the guys in front of you'?

If someone from an MMO comes to a Tabletop world (like me), how should he change his way of doing things so that he's Neutral, not Evil?

From what I gather, to be Good, I must help others to my detriment. But then there's different levels of help and detriment. A person might be willing to toss out advice or a couple of not-extremely-valuable items since it won't impede his way to his goal all that much. And there's the individual's perception of detriment.


You realize you just defined every adventurer willing to swing a sword at the archvillain at the end of the story as not qualifying for Good or Neutral, right? Those paladins aren't carrying swords around for show. They totally are for harming other people.

That, alongside killing being such a part and parcel of games, is why we make concession for Good-aligned PCs (not just paladins) killing creatures that beep on Detect Evil. Or 'kill one person who's killing millions', etc.




Most MMO characters habitually pick fights with things that are clearly just sitting there minding their own business, so it doesn't look good. With that said, a lot of tabletop RPGs assume a level of killing way in excess of what just about anybody does in the real world, and emphasize who is being killed and why the killing is being done. Good characters are generally killing in defense of others, and those they are killing are generally those actively in the process of killing or at least seriously harming innocents. Neutral characters generally have the moral restrictions such that they are only willing to kill in defense, but who won't actually do so without some sort of personal compensation. Evil characters are much more willing to break that line, or at least other lines involving seriously harming people without it being in defense of anyone.

Reminder to self: Try to come up with ideas other than 'kill this guy sitting around and see if he somehow drops something that helps us!'

And provoking someone to attack you first is still Evil?

Knaight
2015-01-07, 08:44 AM
Reminder to self: Try to come up with ideas other than 'kill this guy sitting around and see if he somehow drops something that helps us!'

And provoking someone to attack you first is still Evil?

I generally just use a context derived from real life, skewed by genre convention. Genre convention is what opens up the rather extreme amount of killing even by good characters, but even there it's generally in defense of other people. There might be a fair amount of acquisition of loot (D&D is practically built around it), but generally the goal isn't just to kill people and get stuff. Provoking someone to attack first gets considered in that. If some characters are provoking a horribly corrupt noble who is essentially above the law to demand a duel from them so that they can end the reign of terror, it might be entirely acceptable. If the entire point is to provoke someone to attack first so as to kill them and take their stuff without getting in trouble, it's somewhat more deplorable.

Segev
2015-01-07, 09:06 AM
Evil is willing to actively hurt people for its own convenience or even amusement. It CAN care about individuals, but even that tends to be on the more selfish, "they're mine" end of things. (This doesn't mean truly selfless love for another is impossible...but it's rare and unlikely and will usually be marked by true obsession. It will also be viewed as a weakness.)

Evil can be intelligent, and choose not to cause harm to others for purely selfish motives. It can even be restrained, genteel, and civilized. But it has no conscience to stop it from hurting others. Strangers and enemies can expect no mercy unless it serves a broader purpose (and then only if the evil person in question is the sort to worry about that sort of thing). Allies and friends might get warnings or even special, unequal treatment (depending on the Law/Chaos alignment) based on how much the evil person likes them or finds them useful. But even if they like the potential victim a lot, the evil person only hesitates to hurt them because he'd miss them. Not because he would feel guilty.

Evil also tends to lack a sense of proportion in its retaliation, barring (again) a broader plan behind why showing restraint is useful. Inconveniencing an evil person who has no reason to keep you alive and the power to kill you at least as easily as any other solution to your inconvenience will lead to your demise.


Neutral is self-centered. It does not go out of its way, as a general rule, to help others. It might for an ally, in the expectation that they'd do similarly, and it probably would for a friend and almost certainly would for a loved one. (Even evil will for a loved one.) Neutral can be ruthless; with rivals and enemies, neutral will rarely feel bad about screwing them over to gain maximum advantage for itself...though it will typically have a sense of proportion which evil lacks.

Neutral has a conscience, just not a sense of duty to help others all the time. It will not murder a rival unless the rival would likely do the same, or to otherwise save a life more valuable to the neutral person than the rival's.



One way to look at it is this: Neutral people need a reason to hurt others; Evil people need a reason not to.

goto124
2015-01-07, 09:18 AM
I generally just use a context derived from real life, skewed by genre convention. Genre convention is what opens up the rather extreme amount of killing even by good characters, but even there it's generally in defense of other people. There might be a fair amount of acquisition of loot (D&D is practically built around it), but generally the goal isn't just to kill people and get stuff.

Wow. That's already quite a huge jump for me.

Reading this thread makes me think there's a rather thin line between Neutral and Evil, since both are self-centred. Even more so if the Evil person is under political/social constraint. Perhaps more concrete examples would help with this?

Segev
2015-01-07, 09:22 AM
Reading this thread makes me think there's a rather thin line between Neutral and Evil, since both are self-centred. Even more so if the Evil person is under political/social constraint. Perhaps more concrete examples would help with this?
Maybe expanding on my prior comment will help.

A Good-aligned person needs a reason not to help somebody, and a very strong reason to cause somebody harm.

A Neutral-aligned person needs a reason to help somebody, but also needs a reason to cause somebody harm.

An Evil-aligned person needs a very strong reason to help somebody, and needs a reason not to cause somebody harm.

goto124
2015-01-07, 09:33 AM
Maybe expanding on my prior comment will help.

A Good-aligned person needs a reason not to help somebody, and a very strong reason to cause somebody harm.

A Neutral-aligned person needs a reason to help somebody, but also needs a reason to cause somebody harm.

An Evil-aligned person needs a very strong reason to help somebody, and needs a reason not to cause somebody harm.

What counts as a 'reason'? Even in MMOs, players get experience or loot for killing innocents, for example...

Jay R
2015-01-07, 09:49 AM
Since the D&D alignment system is not consistent with any moral or ethical system from any major religion or philosophy in the history of the world, is not consistent over editions, and is poorly explained (differently) in each edition, you will never get a consensus.

Ask the DM of the game you're in. In one campaign, I had to remind the DM regularly that my Thief wasn't Lawful. He just found traveling with a Paladin to be much more lucrative than stealing, and wasn't doing anything to jeopardize that relationship.

As a DM, here is my rule of thumb:
A Good decision is made because it's the right thing to do, whether it helps you or not.
A Neutral decision made because it's the most expedient thing to do, and isn't directly hurtful to others.
An Evil decision is made without regard for whom it hurts.

But it's always easier to describe in a concrete example than to define. So here's one.

If you find a baby lost in the woods:
The Good decision is to take her to the nearest town and try to find her parents, because we have to take care of her.
The Neutral decision is to take her to an orphanage in town, because her tears will haunt you if you don't, or maybe look for her parents because there might be a reward.
The Evil decision is to leave her there.

Your alignment is defined by your decisions, but even more by your decision process.

Thialfi
2015-01-07, 09:53 AM
I have always felt that alignment is dictated by how you treat strangers. You can be evil and love your friends and family and sacrifice for them. I dislike the idea of stupid evil that hurts other people just for giggles. My definitions;


Good - will go out of their way and give of themselves to help out strangers. Will consistently put the wants and needs of others before their own.

Neutral - will help out others of it really doesn't cost them anything, but generally considers their wants and needs before thinking of others. Will not harm others for personal gain.

Evil - actively views their wants and needs as more important than anyone else's. Will hurt others for personal gain or the advancement of their beliefs.

Red Fel
2015-01-07, 09:55 AM
First, an answer to the thread title: Style.

Moving on.


A person can't be considered Good if he* does things purely for personal gain (loot, fun, etc). But does that make him Neutral, or Evil? When is killing considered Neutral or Evil? If Evil means doing things for the evulz, how do you have non-stupid evil?

*Male pronouns used to refer to all sexes and genders.

As others have said, Neutral is pragmatic. It's what economists would call "rationally self-interested." The Neutral character does things without regard for their moral charge. A Lawful Neutral character, for instance, respects honor, tradition, or authority, irrespective of whether that authority directs him to feed orphans or sacrifice them to the blood god. A Chaotic Neutral character respects freedom, passion, and personal expression, with no regard to whether his freedom comes at the cost of or to the benefit of others. That said, I disagree with those who say a Neutral character won't use or hurt others - he will, if that's what it takes, it's just not a priority for him.

An Evil character is similarly self-interested, but tilts towards a destructive moral charge. As others have observed, Evil is not only willing, it's eager to promote its own interests at the expense of others. Neutral may use others towards its own ends if it would be most effective to do so, but it won't do it simply because it can. Evil, by contrast, may do precisely that - from an Evil perspective, other people are meant to be used.

An Evil alignment mentality is often associated with a Power mentality - that is, Power is the most valuable thing. Whether it is political, arcane, financial, or simply brute physical force, an Evil alignment often espouses the idea of "Might makes Right" - that the strong deserve to rule over the weak. By that logic, then, an Evil character sees himself as entitled to use (and dispose of) others in his efforts at self-promotion. A Neutral character does not necessarily feel the same entitlement - he has the same ultimate goal, but his methods are less likely to involve collateral damage.

Don't be confused, though. The Neutral character isn't necessarily motivated by compassion; he's motivated by pragmatism. Let me give you a few examples: The character has been tasked with executing a criminal. LN: He tracks down the criminal, and kills him. Quick and efficient. No mercy, no reprieve, no torture, just death. LE: He tracks down the criminal, secures him, and taunts him. He lists his crimes, beating him while he does so. He kills him slowly. When the criminal is dead, he places his head on a pike, with a list of the offenses committed, as a warning to other criminals. The character has been tasked with running the administration of a town. LN: He institutes a series of reforms designed to streamline all city operations into a neat bureaucracy. All roads are arranged and repaired, in order of need; all agencies submit budgets, and receive financing, based upon a ratio; markets receive a uniform tax rate; the courts are streamlined into an efficient and streamlined jurisdictional system. LE: He institutes a series of reforms designed to streamline all city operations into a neat bureaucracy, with him at the top, and those he least trusts serving immediately below him, where he can see them. Capital punishment becomes the default sentence. Each agency has a carefully streamlined graft system, with a trickle of money starting at the top and working its way down. Everyone keeps in line, because everyone quickly learns to fear the Chief Bureaucrat. The character has been challenged to a duel. LN: He fights, fairly but fiercely. If he loses, he submits gracefully. If he wins, he has redeemed his honor, and sees no utility in killing his opponent (unless it is a duel to the death, in which case he dispatches him swiftly). LE: He fights fiercely. If he loses, he immediately sets about plotting the absolute humiliation and ultimate destruction of his enemy. If he wins, he does so by "accidentally" maiming his opponent, ideally by ruining his sword hand. If it is a duel to the death, he gores him, a slow and agonizing death, and does so with a smirk.
See what I mean? Style.

Segev
2015-01-07, 09:55 AM
What counts as a 'reason'? Even in MMOs, players get experience or loot for killing innocents, for example...

I was trying to be pithy. I am happy to expand on it a bit.

A good person needs a reason not to help somebody. These reasons can vary, but usualy are practical. Inability to help is a big one; if you truly can't do anything, trying might make a situation worse. (A good person still may WISH they could help, and an unwise or really idealistic one might try anyway.) Resource management is another. This is always a hard choice for the good-aligned, but limited resources can enforce a need to choose who to help and how much. This is closely related to "inability," but adds in consideration of value of the resources in terms of how much help they can provide to how many people. You will find dispute between good-aligned people as to what the "right" choice is, but a good-aligned person will generally WANT to help...they just may disagree on their ability to do so.

The other big, stand-out reason not to help is if the "help" would actually be causing harm to others who the good person does not have a very strong reason to harm. Helping a serial killer, for example, to escape his execution is likely not on a good person's to-do list. "He would harm others if I helped him" is a reason not to help. (Again, you might get debate between good people over whether it is sufficient reason not to help.)

A good person needs a very strong reason to cause harm to somebody. This generally falls into the "fight to defend oneself, one's family, and the innocent" category. There might be other reasons, up to and including "the person I'm hurting has volunteered for this harm for a greater good," and generally, good people don't LIKE hurting others. They will avoid hurting others who do not practically force the good person into it.

Remember that even good people can take neutral actions, and they can make mistakes. This is not an automatic shift to neutral if a good person hurts somebody that maybe the textbook "good" person would have treated with mercy. But that gets into patterns of behavior vs. one-time incidents. As a general rule, the pattern of good alignment is to only harm those who present as serious threats to life, liberty, or property of innocents.

A neutral person requires a reason TO help somebody. This reason can be as simple as "they're my friend," which encompasses "they'd do the same for me" and "it makes me happy to see them happy." It also has hints of "helping them puts them in a better position to make me happy later."

The more traditional reasons tend to be personal profit. Favor-trading, being paid, and the like all suffice. Even "civic duty" can be a reason. But neutral people are usually going to at least give passing thought to "what's in it for me" when they help others. If there's truly nothing in it for them, they probably have better things to do. Things that do help themselves.

A neutral person requires a reason to cause harm to somebody. Conversely, neutral people take no pleasure in, and generally feel guilt when they are the cause of, others' pain. They will not actively harm people for no reason, and will even take steps to avoid causing harm to others. They are self-interested, but they have a conscience about it. If their benefit comes at a cost to somebody who doesn't deserve to pay it (and is unwilling to do so), they will generally forbear. They might be annoyed, but they're not monsters.

If given a good reason, however, they ARE willing to hurt others. A rival who thwarts them too often might be subject to more harmful revenge, or even ruination. Enough benefit to themselves can tip them into willful harm of even innocents who've done nothing to them (e.g. "steal a loaf of bread to feed my starving family" type things, or even "swindle the rich guy with a fake diamond"). They will almost always stop short of true cruelty and murder unless the victim has personally offended them or is otherwise a "deserving" target. They are, however, far more willing to pay cruelty and malice in kind than are the good-aligned, viewing petty sleights as worthy of pettiness in return, and vengeance as at least nearly as good as justice.

An evil person needs a very strong reason to help somebody. Whether it's because they dislike seeing others happy, enjoy seeing others in pain, or simply don't want to be bothered, evil people generally won't help others without something important in it for them. This can seem like the neutral person's requirement, but it goes deeper and is stronger. They may take a small bit of schadenfreud from watching another suffer, to the point that they would need a reminder if there's only minor benefit in it for them to help them...or would at least wait a moment to savor it before helping.

The neutral person will help if he sees something in it for him, even just a bit of a warm fuzzy or future favor. The evil person will only help if he sees definite benefit that aligns with his plans and goals. Immediate pay, clearly-offered favors owed, or maintaining a specific image to ensure similar help is forthcoming for him in the future might suffice. But he generally must have a solid reason why helping somebody aligns with his self-interest, rather than merely considering whether there's anything he can get out of it.

An evil person needs a reason not to cause harm to others. This doesn't mean all evil people are psychopaths who revel in causing harm. Some truly won't do it for no reason at all; it's effort and its wasteful and they just don't care. But if causing harm to others would merely be convenient, they will typically do so. Only if they have reason not to - whether needing that person, or needing a reputation, or fear of legal repercussions, or actually viewing that specific person as a friend or loved one - will they take the inconvenience caused by avoiding harm to that person.

Knaight
2015-01-07, 09:55 AM
Reading this thread makes me think there's a rather thin line between Neutral and Evil, since both are self-centred. Even more so if the Evil person is under political/social constraint. Perhaps more concrete examples would help with this?

The big line that's being pointed to is a general refusal to do actively harmful things, including the ones that people can generally get away with. A few scruples doesn't cut it here, a whole bunch just might. Again, consider the older genre literature. The heroes of a lot of it are what would qualify as good. Antiheroes and such are often more neutral. The actual villains tend to be evil. Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, and concessions have to be made regarding the standards of the time, which probably shouldn't be ported over to deliberately heroic figures (though in some games it still fits). Nonetheless, there's generally a pretty clear delineation.

Shadowknight12
2015-01-07, 10:01 AM
Neutral and Evil aren't any more closely related to each other than Good and Neutral are.

Most people assume that the default is being Good, when it really isn't. Good people are a rarity, life beats the Good out of you early enough. Most people are Neutral, they strive to be Good but they have limits, and none of us are strangers to harming others.

The problem is that cultural expectations are that we all seek to portray and believe ourselves as Good, and thus we reflect this in our characters. We shouldn't do this, though, because it creates those awkward moments with your LG Paladin where portraying her realistically like a normal human being would actually make her Neutral.

Loxagn
2015-01-07, 11:39 AM
I've personally always been of the belief that selfishness is not actually evil. Acting in accordance with one's own needs is a biological directive. You eat because you're hungry. You amass wealth because it makes your life comfortable. Neutral is easy because it comes naturally. Animals are, after all, True Neutral.

On the other hand, Good or Evil, Law or Chaos, they all require a choice. They require conscious effort, understanding the consequences of one's actions and going through with them. Good may offer food to a starving man, knowing they may need that food later. Evil may murder a competing business owner, knowing that they're ending a life to suit their needs. Law may tell the truth in a situation where lying might be more beneficial, and Chaos might cheat in a game of chance knowing they might well get caught and punished for it.

A Tad Insane
2015-01-07, 11:44 AM
A good person feels good when they're helping people
An evil person feels god when they're hurting people
A neutral character gets varying degrees of both

Winterwind
2015-01-07, 12:11 PM
What counts as a 'reason'? Even in MMOs, players get experience or loot for killing innocents, for example...In real life, you would get "loot" for killing a random person in the street, too - they'd probably be carrying around a wallet, after all. What would you think of somebody who either killed a random person in the street simply to get their wallet, or tried to provoke that person into a fight so they could kill them and take their wallet? Exactly.

I think your problem is that you keep approaching this from the perspective of a game, with the objective being the acquisition of wealth and power, rather than a story, with the objective being an accurate and interesting portrayal of a character that plays a part in that story - which, I feel, is usually the much better way to phrase what a roleplaying game is. Stop thinking so much about loot, start thinking about what the character you portray is like, and partake in telling his story. That's essentially what a roleplaying game is - collaborative storytelling, where both you and your fellow players take part in crafting a narrative. Like reading a book or watching a movie - except now, you get to be co-writer in that book or movie. Ask yourself this - if a character in a book or a movie you were reading/watching started acting the way MMO characters act like, slaughtering everything in sight - what would you think of that character? Would you think that would be natural behaviour? No? Well, what would be, then? That's the way to go, then.

Of course, then roleplaying games usually add some measure of mechanical/tactical challenge on top of everything, to spice it up, but ultimately, the above should still be correct for all but the most hack-and-slashy groups. :smallwink:

goto124
2015-01-07, 09:50 PM
Thanks for the help all of you guys give! I think I'm starting to understand this better.


I think your problem is that you keep approaching this from the perspective of a game, with the objective being the acquisition of wealth and power, rather than a story

Ah, I see. So RPGs are less 'game' and more 'storytelling with friends'. I'll keep that in mind, though I'm not sure how well it transfers to actual campaigns.



A Good-aligned person needs a [fair] reason not to help somebody, and a very strong reason to cause somebody harm.

A Neutral-aligned person needs a [fair] reason to help somebody, but also needs a [fair] reason to cause somebody harm.

An Evil-aligned person needs a very strong reason to help somebody, and needs a [fair] reason not to cause somebody harm.


[explanation]

Your summary makes a lot more sense with the explanation now, thanks! It'll help when I create characters.

If a person is just as likely to harm somebody as he is to help somebody, to the same extent, for loot/boredom/etc, is that person still considered Evil?

illyahr
2015-01-08, 02:08 PM
If a person is just as likely to harm somebody as he is to help somebody, to the same extent, for loot/boredom/etc, is that person still considered Evil?

It depends on the reason he is helping/harming. If he is helping for the loot, I'd say neutral. If he is harming for the loot, I'd also say neutral.

Boredom, however, is a bit different. If he helps because he is bored, helping is his default attitude. This means Good. If he harms because he is bored, harming is his default attitude. This means Evil. If he is bored and his friends want him to help/harm, his reason is his friends. This means Neutral.

The Grue
2015-01-08, 03:26 PM
I think your problem is that you keep approaching this from the perspective of a game, with the objective being the acquisition of wealth and power, rather than a story, with the objective being an accurate and interesting portrayal of a character that plays a part in that story

Yes, that certainly is a problem; we can't let people have fun the wrong way now can we?

Winterwind
2015-01-08, 04:19 PM
If a person is just as likely to harm somebody as he is to help somebody, to the same extent, for loot/boredom/etc, is that person still considered Evil?I think that's where it gets down to the details. What sort of help? What sort of harm? What's the exact reason? To whom?

Somebody who kills people out of boredom? Almost certainly Evil. Somebody who will occasionally say hurtful things? Depending on how s/he helps others, might be anything from Good over Neutral to Evil.


Yes, that certainly is a problem; we can't let people have fun the wrong way now can we?Beg your pardon; it was not my intention to come across as expressing that. It seemed to me, however, that the OP did not fully understand the concept of roleplaying (as in, the act of portraying a living character in a living world/story, not the act of playing roleplaying games), or at least, what the difference between that sort of roleplaying and the usual hack-and-slay-with-no-consequences-to-your-deeds common in computer games, so I tried to present an outlook that might illustrate these concepts best. Whether the OP and his group actually adopt a playstyle that such an outlook would imply, go for a pure hack-and-slashy tactical simulation, or anything in between, is entirely within their purview and I make no judgment on that one way or the other. I do see how I may have sounded like making the point you describe; for that, I sincerely apologize.

Lathund
2015-01-08, 04:20 PM
From what I gather, to be Good, I must help others to my detriment.

I wouldn't necessarily say it needs to be to your detriment. Say, an orphan is in need of a family to raise him. A neutral family might say "I'm really too busy with other things at the moment," an evil family might scorn you for asking them, while a good family might take him into their house even if it's an inconvenience. And yes, in that way, it might be detrimental. But over time, the good family might come to adore the orphan and consider the adoption one of the best decisions of their life.

All in all, I mostly agree with the previous posters, but I'd like to add three things:

- Caring. Say, two people with similar financial situations both encounter a beggar. One gives money because he wants to help the beggar, the other gives money because he feels it is expected of him. Both have given up on some money. However, I'd only call the first person 'good'. I'd say it's not the detriment that defines the good deed, but the willingness to sacrifice something so that others may benefit.

- 'Self' goes further than just your own personal wellbeing. If a mother helps her child, is that a good deed? I say no, because the child is closely connected to her self. Your family, friends, company, even your people or your country can be considered part of your 'self'. I believe it was Saddam Hussein who, when he was caught, was asked why he had done so many horrible things. He said: "I did it for my people." In his mind, apparently, helping his people was a good deed. But in my book, helping your own people at the expense of others, is closer to evil.

- Lastly, I'm under the impression that 'good' often favors long-term over short-term, while evil does the opposite. But this is debatable.


Neutral and Evil aren't any more closely related to each other than Good and Neutral are.

Most people assume that the default is being Good, when it really isn't. Good people are a rarity, life beats the Good out of you early enough. Most people are Neutral, they strive to be Good but they have limits, and none of us are strangers to harming others.

The problem is that cultural expectations are that we all seek to portray and believe ourselves as Good, and thus we reflect this in our characters. We shouldn't do this, though, because it creates those awkward moments with your LG Paladin where portraying her realistically like a normal human being would actually make her Neutral.

I so agree with you. Too often I heard people consider themselves good, 'because they don't do anything wrong'. Maybe not, but do they ever do anything good? Rarely at best, I think. Never to mention the fact that most of them seldom take the time to reflect on their deeds: they're probably doing more things wrong than they realise.

Segev
2015-01-08, 05:33 PM
If a person is just as likely to harm somebody as he is to help somebody, to the same extent, for loot/boredom/etc, is that person still considered Evil?

While we can come up with broad strokes, and discuss specifics which may or may not be exceptions, the truth is that we, as human beings, have a natural ability to recognize good and evil when we see them.

My favorite rendition of the alignment grid replaces "Good" with "nice guy," "lawful" with "plays by the rules," "choatic" with "does not play by the rules," and "evil" with "jerk."

These are oversimplifications (with entire tropes dedicated to such things as "good is not nice"), but they are good gut-reaction checks. Does something strike you as wrong? Make you think, "what a jerk," when you see somebody do it? It's probably evil. That person may or may not be - remember that alignment is about patterns of behavior, not singular acts - but he is likely dipping his toe into the deeper end of the alignment pool. Does something make you think, "that was sweet?" Then it PROBABLY - not necessarily, but probably - is good. Same applies to whether the guy doing it is good or not as to whether he's evil or not, of course.

Generally, we draw the line of "neutral" and "evil" along the measure of how easily the party who is wronged by the act can recover, combined with a degree of how much they deserve what's happening to them (especially insofar as the one wronging them knows or believes the wronged party is deserving of retribution).

Again, this isn't a perfect metric; situations can find all sorts of exceptions or corner cases where the nuances are tricky. But it's a good broad metric.

So, ask yourself: to what extent is your character whose alignment is in question causing harm, and how much does your character believe he knows the victim deserves it?

Really, if you're helping out of boredom, you're neutral-to-good, because you're performing a good act for little more personal benefit than alleviating enui. Do it regularly, and you almost certainly are good.

IF you're hurting people just because you're bored, that implies that you get your kicks from causing pain. You're probably evil.

If you're helping people for pay, that's neutral, by and large. The more it takes to move you to help, the more neutral it is. (We'll ignore arguments as to whether depraved indifference and obligation-to-rescue exist and can make you evil; they're getting into that sticky, special-situation territory.) How much help is your character giving, for how much pay? The more help compared to the pay, the more likely it is a Good act, rather than a Neutral one.

If you're hurting somebody for pay - whether as a mercenary, assassin, prankster-for-hire, thief-for-hire, or just to steal from them for your own benefit - you're probably more on the Chaotic side of things (as most "hurt somebody else for pay" tasks are not legal in most societies). But that's irrelevant to our question in this thread.

If you are a bounty hunter, you're able to be almost any moral alignment. This is because your victims are "deserving," generally. They've done something wrong, and must be deprived of their freedom to be brought to answer for it. Good men can do this to protect others from wrongdoers (and money, because hey, making a living is not evil). Neutral people can do it for a living. It's even honest work. Evil people can do it for money AND the thrill of getting to bully people who can't legally defend themselves.

If you're some sort of vigilante-for-hire, you likely dwell in the neutral to good range. Many heroic adventurers take their good-aligned missions from the King of Goodland on this sort of basis. They're going after evil monsters doing bad things to innocent people, and they're getting paid for solving the King's problem. But they are motivated at least as much by making sure bad things stop happening to innocent people as they are by the money; good parties will do these things for free if they must and the need is dire. As Good people, they certainly wouldn't side with the monsters if the monsters offered a better deal to them, personally. Evil likely would. Neutral probably wouldn't, just because even Neutral doesn't like doing harm to innocents for money.

That's the line, probably, here. A neutral person will hurt others for money, but only if they feel the person somehow deserves it. Or, at least, if they feel the victim won't suffer nearly as much as the beneficiary will benefit. Stealing from the rich for oneself can still leave one CN, if one does not steal so much as to make them suffer. It's not right and good, and certainly not Lawful, but it's the minor sort of evil that gets called "neutral."

That said, performing a lot of those "neutral" thefts won't lift you out of evil alignment unless you ALSO avoid the kinds of thefts that would mark you as evil.


Again, a lot of this is judgment call. Look at it from a distance and see what your gut tells you. It's going to be right a lot of the time.

Lathund
2015-01-08, 05:47 PM
While we can come up with broad strokes, and discuss specifics which may or may not be exceptions, the truth is that we, as human beings, have a natural ability to recognize good and evil when we see them.

My favorite rendition of the alignment grid replaces "Good" with "nice guy," "lawful" with "plays by the rules," "choatic" with "does not play by the rules," and "evil" with "jerk."

I fear I have some doubts about this rendition. I guess many people on this forum are from the USA, so let's take Democrats and Republicans as an example. One Democrat might consider one Republican as a redneck bigot warmonger - what a jerk! That Republican might see the Democrat as a smug fetus-murdering hippie - what a jerk! But who of them is good?

We're prone to consider people with similar opinions as ourselves as part of our own group, as people who know what they're talking about. We're much more likely to see them as 'nice guys', which makes good vs. evil incredibly subjective.

LudicSavant
2015-01-08, 06:01 PM
We're prone to consider people with similar opinions as ourselves as part of our own group, as people who know what they're talking about. We're much more likely to see them as 'nice guys', which makes good vs. evil incredibly subjective.

Just because opinions are split doesn't make it subjective. Note that essentially every well-recognized truth was once controversial (including claims that truth in literally every field of science was "subjective" and that there was no "one right answer" to things like "physics"), and also that every culture we have record of largely thought of itself as advanced and knowing most of what there was to know about the world.

The average person on the street will intuit that 0.9 repeating is not exactly equal to one, or that the solution to the Monty Haul Problem is "both doors have an equal probability." They are also, to a man, completely, objectively, provably wrong for reasons that aren't even a little bit complicated.

Questions of good and evil (e.g. "what constitutes good overall maintenance of the well-being of conscious creatures?") are no more subjective by virtue of the study of ethics being young and marred by superstition than any other field was when it was young, poorly developed, and dominated by superstition. You can ask falsifiable questions about it, explore those questions via experiment, get back results, and use those results to make accurate predictions.

Phrases like "it's just subjective" are the kinds of statements that are used to deflect asking questions about subjects we aren't sure about, yet still be able to act like we know our stuff. They show their nature when you actually put them in the context of real moral issues. "Is it just to work massive numbers of children to death in concentration camps?" "It's just subjective. Everyone has a right to their own opinion."

Lathund
2015-01-08, 06:32 PM
- Scrubbed because I think I completely missed LudicSavant's point. Trying again tomorrow when I'm more awake -

LudicSavant
2015-01-08, 06:43 PM
(Removed my response since it was to a post that Lathund removed)

NichG
2015-01-08, 07:43 PM
Questions of good and evil (e.g. "what constitutes good overall maintenance of the well-being of conscious creatures?") are no more subjective by virtue of the study of ethics being young and marred by superstition than any other field was when it was young, poorly developed, and dominated by superstition. You can ask falsifiable questions about it, explore those questions via experiment, get back results, and use those results to make accurate predictions.

Phrases like "it's just subjective" are the kinds of statements that are used to deflect asking questions about subjects we aren't sure about, yet still be able to act like we know our stuff. They show their nature when you actually put them in the context of real moral issues. "Is it just to work massive numbers of children to death in concentration camps?" "It's just subjective. Everyone has a right to their own opinion."

The subjectivity in that comes from a lack of definitions, or definitions which are built in impossible-to-evaluate or impossible-to-use ways.

E.g. you ask 'is it just?', but that requires that you and the person you're talking to agree what 'just' means. If you want to have an objective conversation about it, first you have to define what 'just' means and then ask the question. Otherwise we could go in very wide circles such as:


-What kind of children are these? Are they the same species as me? I don't find it unjust to work large numbers of chickens to death, for example. Maybe someone would disagree, so what about working large numbers of bacteria to death?
-What if they were sentient chickens? How do we define sentient? How do we define the qualities that make someone deserving of justice in general?
-Doesn't the fact that most people have to work to survive and indication that all of us are being worked to death, just slowly? Why does the speed matter?
-What about working computers to death - maybe they have the unexpressed capacity for sentience, so does that make it unjust?
-What if I built a species that wants to be worked to death and derives its only satisfaction from it?

etc...


On top of that, most such definitions break down at some point or other. It may be that it's actually provable that you can always make them break down if you're permitted self-referential statements by using something along the lines of Godel's incompleteness theorem.

That is basically what happens with D&D alignment discussions. Supposedly there are definitions, but those definitions are inconsistent across the source material, are jarringly different than what people think the words should mean, etc. The result is that generally most people make some sort of modification to the definitions because the system as-defined is incoherent to them. So that puts us in subjective territory.

Subjective discussion is fine and can be productive though. The problem is when people import habits from objective discussion, and assume that every statement they make must be a statement of 'absolute truth'. Instead of saying 'I like it when Good doesn't have to mean nice, and when alignment is more what side you're on' people often feel like they have to say 'Good does not mean nice. Alignment is only what side you're on.' or similar things.

Winterwind
2015-01-09, 03:33 AM
I don't really see how subjectiveness versus objectiveness has anything to do with Lathund's original point.

Segev made the point that usually, one can just tell somebody's alignment by judging whether one thinks they are nice or a jerk; Lathund brought up the counter-point that there are situations where one wouldn't reach a consensus that way, because people will disagree on who is nice and who is a jerk. Whether there is an objective truth to who's nice or who's a jerk doesn't change one bit about that counterpoint - as long as people can't readily agree on what that truth is, this would still be a problem in Segev's method of alignment determination, regardless of whether people would disagree because who's nice and who's a jerk is completely subjective, because it's objective but we lack the right definitions to talk about it properly, because it's objective but we don't have sufficiently advanced ethics to discern what it is, or anything else.

Personally, though, I think Segev's method is precisely the right way to do it - I was actually thinking of bringing forth pretty much the same idea, but couldn't think of how to phrase it in a fashion sufficiently clearly understandable not to be challenged based on phrasing alone (which, given that that's what's happened twice to me in this thread already, I wanted to avoid :smalltongue:), so highest commendations to Segev for pulling that off :smallsmile:. Lathund's objection is correct, but I don't think it's actually that big a deal - yes, there are some situations where people might disagree, but I think both the situations people disagree on, as well as the people who do the disagreeing, are both the exception. For every pattern of behaviour where a significant number of people will argue whether it makes the person engaging in it nice or a jerk, there are ten where it will be perfectly clear-cut for the vast majority of people. And for every person that will condemn somebody over their political or whatever views, there are ten normal, open-minded people who may disagree with their views, but won't judge their human qualities because of that.

Lathund
2015-01-09, 06:15 AM
I guess Winterwind is right. Segev's system is a good first-order approach and usually that's enough. But imho, it's the situations where people disagree that the most interesting conversations arise :smallsmile:

hifidelity2
2015-01-09, 06:57 AM
If you find a baby lost in the woods:
The Good decision is to take her to the nearest town and try to find her parents, because we have to take care of her.
The Neutral decision is to take her to an orphanage in town, because her tears will haunt you if you don't, or maybe look for her parents because there might be a reward.
The Evil decision is to leave her there.

Your alignment is defined by your decisions, but even more by your decision process.
Actually the evil person sells the baby into slavery

However

Characters can (and should be) more complex than simple alignment.
For example I have a gnome thief – he was NE but “became” over the campaign LE. However we has adopted into a human family (long story) so to them he is NG BUT if anyone threatens them (and as part of one plot the DM had an NPC do the old “Do what I say or your family gets it”) then he is totally ruthless – he Killed the npc but not before wiping out his whole organisation and everyone he knew

goto124
2015-01-09, 08:30 AM
Characters can (and should be) more complex than simple alignment.

I started this thread so that I knew what alignment to put on my character sheets, without the DM and other players screaming at me 'your character is NOT the alignment you told us she was!'. For example, I don't want to say my PC is Chaotic Neutral, only to turn out in the actual campaign that she's Chaotic Evil.

Case in point: In my video games, guards exist for you to kill. In TTRPGs, if that barbarian-turned-CE thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?391514-How-do-I-deal-with-a-Chaotic-Evil-party-member) is anything to go by, it's the exact opposite- if you kill a guard, watch out for consequences. It can be quite a shocking change for someone moving from computer games to something more like storytelling.

Mastikator
2015-01-09, 09:23 AM
Neutral is raising yourself higher. Evil is raising yourself while lowering others.

Ambition is raising yourself higher. Being good, neutral or evil has nothing to do with raising yourself higher. An entity of pure goodness can want to raise himself higher, and would want to raise others with him.

Neutrals have a conscience and are capable of empathy but are not willing to go out of their way to help other people if it doesn't suite them. Evils have no conscience and are often sadistic. Evils may or may not have ambitions of improving your own status, what makes them evil is that they either don't care how they hurt other or actually enjoy it. An evil person can care about someone else, but only to the extent that they see that person as a part of himself.

Ambition is what makes you want to rise to the top, it is neither good nor evil. You can rise to the top and have good intentions and actually be able to carry them out without becoming evil or neutral or having to sacrifice precious things or people.

Segev
2015-01-09, 09:45 AM
I guess Winterwind is right. Segev's system is a good first-order approach and usually that's enough. But imho, it's the situations where people disagree that the most interesting conversations arise :smallsmile:

This is a good way of getting to the crux of my point wrt the objections to the approach I suggested. It is, indeed, a first-order approach. I acknowledge it can fall apart in many cases where specifics start to come into play.

"That guy is kicking puppies! He's probably evil!" "That guy is rescuing children from a burning tree house! He's probably good!"

Sure, it might turn out that those puppies are disguised hellhounds who let the treehouse on fire and are vulnerable only to the boots of a good man, and if they're not stopped, they'll do the same thing in 10 minutes to another treehouse full of children. It is equally possible that the man rescuing those children is actually a slave trader who summons hellhounds to endanger them so that he can look like a hero when he collects his wares.

But that's getting into weird corner cases.



To the point about democrats and republicans, there is a lot of examination of the nature of good and evil in politics, because politics is inextricably entwined with power. Power corrupts, and attracts the corruptable. There are elements of first-order examination being incorrect in the face of real-world facts involved, too.

It's very hard to discuss this in the abstract, because examples always will be colored by my own political leanings, and that will drive us off into a debate over whether I am calling people who have opposite ones good or evil or stupid or whatever. Or worse, debates over the underlying socio-economic philosophies I'd be using in the examples.

Suffice it to say that I tend to find it laudible, on first-order examination, to want to do many of the social and economic policies that those on the other side of the spectrum propose. Second-order and deeper examinations are where I find the flaws, and deliberate obfuscation of those deeper examinations to exploit the first-order goals to create deceptively villainous policy is where I see evil.

Meanwhile, I know many on the other side of the political spectrum view me as reprehensible for my positions, because they sound to them, on first-order examination, to be cruel and callous.

I cannot speak about the views of those who disagree with me; I have performed my analysis as deeply as I have time and ability, and have formed my views and philosophies based on what I see and know. I tend to doubt the other side can have done so without being evil enough to deliberately wish to exploit those who have not.

I do tend to think that those who view my side of the spectrum as evil are engaging in a shallower analysis, but that's hardly surprising: if I thought a deeper analysis revealed my positions to be flawed and to lead to evil, I wouldn't hold them (or, I suppose, I could be an evil person holding them on purpose).



The point of all of that is not that I am calling anybody who holds a political, social, economic, or cultural view evil (at least, not here), but to illustrate that the reason you have "both sides" calling the other evil is, in no small part, because of disagreements between first- and second-order anaylsis of activities.

To first-order analysis, I doubt a Republican and Democrat would disagree over whether a given, mostly-contextless act were good or evil. Murder is evil. Self-defense is neutral. Sacrificing oneself to save another is good. Only the most partisan amongst us - those who have determined that disagreement with them means somebody is inherently evil and can have no redeeming qualities - will disagree on those. "He can't be good; that self-sacrifice was just to make himself LOOK good. I know he really just wanted to watch that person suffer. He probably didn't mean for it to kill him." "No, he can't be evil. Obviously, that guy MUST have attacked him first, so it must have been self-defense!"

They start INVENTING context - oft without even a factoid to support it aside from their preconceived notion - to create a warped second-order examination that fits their preconception.

But not permitting any such evaluation beyond the first-order, even the most partisan of Republicans and Democrats will tend to agree on basic "did that man, who is not identified with any party or viewpoint, commit a good, neutral, or evil act?"

Jay R
2015-01-09, 11:27 AM
From what I gather, to be Good, I must help others to my detriment.

To be Stupid Good, yes. But the concept of enlightened self-interest can also be good.

Ideally, I will look for a way to help others that also helps me. I'll build a ramp to the apartment for the guy in a wheelchair, then use it to help move in my couch.

If I see somebody drowning and jump in to save her, the fact that I'm a good swimmer doesn't make the act less good, though it certainly makes it less to my detriment. In fact, learning to swim, to do first aid, to defend myself, specifically to be better able to help people without it hurting me is considered a good act.

But sometimes it happens that helping somebody who needs your help does require doing something to your detriment. And how far down that path you can go does determines how far along the moral continuum you have grown.

But you may never get that test. I certainly haven't. It might be nearer the mark to say that to reach the highest levels of Good, you need to be willing to help others at your own risk. But the fact that it's never been needed doesn't mean you aren't good; merely that you haven't been tested. Similarly, you don't need to pass an algebra test to be good at algebra, but you need to be able to do so if you take the test.

But in a D&D game, a competent DM will make sure your character gets tested with serious risks, so the difference probably won't matter there.

NichG
2015-01-09, 11:32 AM
Ambition is what makes you want to rise to the top, it is neither good nor evil. You can rise to the top and have good intentions and actually be able to carry them out without becoming evil or neutral or having to sacrifice precious things or people.

The test is, what happens when you're put into a situation where you can't get everything you want. Then you have to prioritize. So e.g. one person might prioritize 'rising to the top' above 'not sacrificing people', but another person would sort them another way.

That's sort of the difference between a 'for the Evulz!' character and a character who is a more nuanced, even completely rational, Evil. If you let both of them be in a very permissive environment where they can get anything they want, the 'for the Evulz!' character will still keep doing horrible things just for their own sake, but the 'rational Evil' character may well just go about their way and not bother anyone, because their situation isn't really pressing them. If they haven't yet crossed a moral event horizon, they're likely to lapse Neutral in terms of day to day behavior, but they have a much higher potential for Evil as it only takes a bit of pressure to bring it out.

Once you force them to choose between things, it exposes that underlying ranking of values.

Thats why extreme ambition goes hand in hand with Evil so often. Usually fulfilling a grand ambition is going to involve hard choices along the way. If the ambition involves the state of the world exterior to the character rather than something purely internal, those hard choices are likely to involve other people's benefit or loss. So if such a person puts their ambition above all else, e.g. 'maintaining a non-Evil alignment' ends up ranked lower than 'succeeding in this thing', then they're a sort of ticking moral time bomb - once they hit a decision point that exposes their ranking, they're going to go Evil.

Winterwind
2015-01-09, 11:55 AM
I started this thread so that I knew what alignment to put on my character sheets, without the DM and other players screaming at me 'your character is NOT the alignment you told us she was!'. For example, I don't want to say my PC is Chaotic Neutral, only to turn out in the actual campaign that she's Chaotic Evil.If it comforts you - pretty much all players and DMs I've ever played with (which is a fair bunch) weren't all that pedantic about it, and would accept a fairly wide range of behaviours for any given alignment; they'd only start protesting if the behaviour was really, really out of line. :smallsmile:


Case in point: In my video games, guards exist for you to kill. In TTRPGs, if that barbarian-turned-CE thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?391514-How-do-I-deal-with-a-Chaotic-Evil-party-member) is anything to go by, it's the exact opposite- if you kill a guard, watch out for consequences. It can be quite a shocking change for someone moving from computer games to something more like storytelling.One way of thinking that I find helps with this - and, to preempt further protests, let me preface this with the disclaimer that any given group can choose a different level of immersion, from kill-everything-hack-and-slashing not any different from that found in most video games, to what I am about to describe, with any level in between, and that's all fine, as long as all people are in agreement and having fun - but, anyhow, one way of thinking that I find helps with this is remembering that, in the reality of the game, all of those NPCs are people, too. Those guards are not just stat blocks walking around to present a challenge. Each one of them is a person. With dreams and wishes and fears, with friends and foes, family, history, a personality, everything that makes a person a person. And the interactions you could have with them are, likewise, just the same as the ones you could have with any real person - and with real people, it takes some fairly extreme circumstances or a fairly extreme personality for somebody to go around killing them.

Now, in most groups (near as I can tell, anyway), the attitude taken is basically that, but filtered with tropes appropriate to a heroic fantasy story - which is to say, while killing innocents is still just as awful as it would be in reality, killing villains and their minions is much more appropriate (you don't really see, say, Luke Skywalker agonizing over all of those stormtroopers he's killed) - but yeah, if you want to avoid falling into treating NPCs the way video games often may teach one to, then reminding yourself that those NPCs are, for your character, just as real people as the players you are playing the game with are for you may help. :smallwink:

Talakeal
2015-01-09, 07:57 PM
Gargy Gygax seemed to think that neutrality was merely a sort of weakness, and that neutral characters lacked the stomach to hurt others.

A good character, for example, would mercilessly execute criminals, failure to do so would mean that they were complacent in any future evil that they committed.

Evil creatures, on the other hand, will hurt and kill others for personal gain.

Neutral characters, on the other hand, acted with mercy or temperance because they didn't have the strength to do what needed to be done for the common good / their own personal best interest.

I find this view to be pretty warped, but it is what the original author of the game has stated to be his original intent.

Jay R
2015-01-09, 09:19 PM
Gargy Gygax seemed to think ...

I find this view to be pretty warped, but it is what the original author of the game has stated to be his original intent.

His original intent was that Lawful meant "Good" and Chaotic meant "Evil". I don't think we need to worry about his original intent.

Lathund
2015-01-10, 05:21 AM
His original intent was that Lawful meant "Good" and Chaotic meant "Evil". I don't think we need to worry about his original intent.

I think that when everyone agrees on what's right and what's wrong, lawful and good come very close, as do chaotic and evil. And I imagine that in Gygax' day, fewer people discussed morals with people from different social groups, because social groups tended to be more closed. As a result, people *within* each group see everyone around them agree with each other, which might've led to this viewpoint.

This thread has become a great philosophical discussion imho. Segev, Jay R and NichG: I see a lot of wisdom in your words. Although that might be because I greatly agree with you :smalltongue:

Kiero
2015-01-10, 06:38 AM
Neutral is ambivalent about others, they don't factor into any calculations. Evil is malevolent, harming others in pursuit of your goals is an active consideration.

Jay R
2015-01-10, 09:26 AM
What defines the seventh rung on a ladder? Nothing, except that it's between the sixth and the eighth.

The problem with defining the three categories is that there are not, in fact, three categories. There is a continuum from the saint who devotes her entire life to serving humanity anytime, anywhere, all the way down to the person who would start wars to wipe out anybody he doesn't like, just to get more living room.

Where are the exact boundaries between Good and Neutral, and between Neutral and Evil? They don't exist, just as there is no exact boundary between daylight and twilight, and between twilight and night.

I suspect that one of the biggest difficulties to role-playing for some people is the unconscious assumption that each character must fit comfortably in one of nine well-defined pigeon-holes.

Frozen_Feet
2015-01-10, 10:00 AM
I think your problem is that you keep approaching this from the perspective of a game, with the objective being the acquisition of wealth and power, rather than a story, with the objective being an accurate and interesting portrayal of a character that plays a part in that story

I think this whole paragraph is entirely besides the point. If you think of it for ten seconds, you can probably think of myriad games where the objective isn't to crush the opposition. Neither games or acquisition of wealth and power require you to hurt or kill other players/people as a hard rule. Case in point, in early editions of D&D, the main source of experience points was treasure. It did not matter if you acquired it by slaughtering those in your way, or by sneaking past them, or by negotiating and bartering with them. You don't need to adjust your main goal from "loot and experience" by one inch in order to realize there are multiple ways those goals could be achieved. Or to put it other way: you can play a game fairly or gentlemanly, or you can play it like a bully. So on and so forth.

goto124
2015-01-10, 10:18 AM
I think this whole paragraph is entirely besides the point. If you think of it for ten seconds, you can probably think of myriad games where the objective isn't to crush the opposition. Neither games or acquisition of wealth and power require you to hurt or kill other players/people as a hard rule. Case in point, in early editions of D&D, the main source of experience points was treasure. It did not matter if you acquired it by slaughtering those in your way, or by sneaking past them, or by negotiating and bartering with them. You don't need to adjust your main goal from "loot and experience" by one inch in order to realize there are multiple ways those goals could be achieved. Or to put it other way: you can play a game fairly or gentlemanly, or you can play it like a bully. So on and so forth.

To be fair though, I did say the games I played were of the hack-and-slash type. And even when there were other options, the first option to try would be 'kill the guy'- something that obviously doesn't work in games without respawn :P

illyahr
2015-01-10, 02:47 PM
Have you ever played a game with a karma/reputation meter? At what point are you considered an 'evil' character in those games? You can't place yourself in a general alignment block and say "I act this way because this is my alignment." There are shades of each alignment that bleed over into adjacent alignments.

You can be a downright bastard who will defend his family with his life because he loves his family. You can be a cleric of good who is extremely racist and puts down people of the group he dislikes while still defending them from evil.

If anyone ever tells you "Your character wouldn't do that because he is X alignment," just tell them that, yes, they are X alignment but yes, they would do that. It is entirely possible to flit back and forth across two alignments just because you sit right on the edge between the two.

Need_A_Life
2015-01-10, 05:22 PM
Well, even if we make the three neat boxes of Good, Neutral and Evil, there is a spectrum between the paragons of righteousness through the people fighting the good fight, the regular guy on the street, the greedy barkeep and a demon from the darkest pits.

The greedy barkeep might be Neutral. Or he might be Evil. Hell, in certain campaigns and under certain circumstances, he might be Good.

The snakeoil salesman who shows up at a town to earn a buck and get away before his scam is revealed might be Neutral. The guy who made sure that a manageable plague spreads and overwhelms a large city's ability to deal with it so he can sell his "miracle cure" at an exorbitant price? Probably Evil.

But people - GMs and players - might disagree. I know I strongly disagreed with a former GM that an NPC who was willing to murder a helpless innocent for no other reason than "I'm being paid to do it" was apparently Neutral (and thus the Paladin's attempt to Smite Evil failed).
Then again, I was playing an Evil character in a party with a Paladin for four sessions before anyone realized my alignment (being a cowardly sadist whose approach to combat was a gleeful "burn 'em all!" didn't seem obviously Evil to any of the others).

Mastikator
2015-01-10, 08:18 PM
The test is, what happens when you're put into a situation where you can't get everything you want. Then you have to prioritize. So e.g. one person might prioritize 'rising to the top' above 'not sacrificing people', but another person would sort them another way.

[snip]

It'd be a very extreme situation where the option of cooperating with people isn't even an option yet rising to the top in the context of those very people is something you'd desire.
Forget evil, forget neutrality, my point was that you can be the pinnacle of good and still desire rising to the top.

tomandtish
2015-01-10, 09:29 PM
(Whoops, accidentally deleted the other post. Sorry about that.)

I'm asking this question so that I have a better idea of what to put on my character sheets. I'm more looking for general consensus on DnD Alignment so that my idea of, say, 'Chaotic Neutral' is close enough (can't get perfect for something like morality) to most people's ideas of that alignment.



Thanks for the help all of you guys give! I think I'm starting to understand this better.

Ah, I see. So RPGs are less 'game' and more 'storytelling with friends'. I'll keep that in mind, though I'm not sure how well it transfers to actual campaigns.


And your comments here illustrate the most important thing of all: Talk to the people you are playing with (especially the DM). Most alignment arguments that occur within a game occur because people aren't working from the same understanding of what the alignment means.

I've seen some pretty big variance on these forums of what "Good" or "Evil" means. The only definition that is going to matter in the end is the one that you and your fellow players (and your DM is definitely one of them) agree on. This is even more important if anyone's playing a character with alignment restrictions or a conduct code.

It doesn't need to be a 20 hour debate, but get enough general ground that if the DM says a good character falls to neutral for killing a prisoner, no one is surprised.

NichG
2015-01-11, 12:47 AM
It'd be a very extreme situation where the option of cooperating with people isn't even an option yet rising to the top in the context of those very people is something you'd desire.
Forget evil, forget neutrality, my point was that you can be the pinnacle of good and still desire rising to the top.

How extreme it needs to be is basically just another way of saying 'how important is your ambition'. E.g. one person will say 'if it takes me 5 years longer but I can stay Good, that's worth it'. Someone else might say 'no, me staying Good isn't worth a 5 year delay'. Or 'preventing a 5% chance that I eventually fail isn't worth the cost' versus 'preventing a 5% chance that I eventually fail is worth any cost'

The pinnacle of good who desires to rise to the top is someone who still puts 'being good' over 'rising to the top' in their priorities. If the two are ever in conflict, they default to being good over rising to the top (since we're talking about the pinnacle here). "Do I risk offending my noble patron who supplies me with cash and magic items by being slightly late to our meeting, in order to pull people out of that burning building?" etc.

Mastikator
2015-01-11, 12:53 AM
A person who is the pinnacle of good wouldn't have a patron that would be offended by the person being late for tea because he was pulling people out of a burning building.

Nor would he kick puppies.

You go from ridiculous scenario to more ridiculous scenario. :/

Cealocanth
2015-01-11, 01:19 AM
Among roleplayers, the things which qualify as good and evil are often muddied. This is probably because people are pretending to be that alignment, usually, and are much more complicated than that, making everything that is done in character deliberately staged to seem good and evil depending on the situation. People are more complicated than that, which is why I dislike alignment systems. To me, at least, alignment should be about intent, not about the action itself. Curing a disease can be evil if it is done only for the purpose of profit, and the cure itself is gotten in an immoral way. Destroying a city can be a good thing if that city is harboring a monster which could destroy the world. It's all quite subjective.

My GM, however, loves alignment systems, so we tend to compromise about this stuff.

For example: I have a character who is a psychopath with an obsession with death. He is a war criminal with PTSD and is prone to violent outbursts because of this, as well as ASPD, which gives him little care for petty things like morality, yet he finds enjoyment in killing things. He doesn't like to torture things, but he does enjoy hunting them, finding their weaknesses, exploiting those, and the satisfaction of the kill that results. This is why, after the war, he has taken to life as a big game hunter. He operates mostly in self-interest, especially when doing so will allow him to murder something, so will tolerate a small group of associates around him in order to keep him safe from those who would prevent him from his usual murderous rampages, like the police.

If I had to pick an alignment for this man, it would be Neutral Evil. Neutral because he has little respect for the rules, for authority, or the law, but has enough sense to not murder someone when he will get hanged for it. Evil because he finds enjoyment and personal pleasure from murder, and goes out of his way to commit it However, due to the fact that I don't roleplay him as stupid, and I will tolerate the law and the rules of the town if only because I would be hanged otherwise, and in the side, plot and very much intend to kill those lawmakers when he could actually get away with it. He likes killing, but he likes living more. But because of this, the GM has decided that the character is simply True Neutral because all he does is act in his own self-interest, and that it is just a coincidence that his self-interest includes the sheer old fashioned joy of killing.

And there's the dichotomy. By one interpretation, the fact that one chooses to commit murder even though they are aware that it is morally wrong and don't care about the moral implications because one enjoys it makes a character Evil. But on the other hand, a strong sense of self-preservation and self-interest which overrides the desire to commit murder, even though one enjoys it, simply because one is aware that if they don't kill that man now, they will probably get to kill three tomorrow, makes the character Neutral. The question you need to answer for yourself is that does the intention to commit evil make you evil, or does the willingness to weigh the consequences make you neutral?

NichG
2015-01-11, 01:35 AM
A person who is the pinnacle of good wouldn't have a patron that would be offended by the person being late for tea because he was pulling people out of a burning building.

That's even more restrictive than the example I gave. That means that if dealing with some guy who might be offended would help the pinnacle-of-good person rise, he can't do it in your estimation because he's trying to be a pinnacle of good. So you're saying he can't, say, use half the merchants in town? Or deal with any nobleman who isn't also a pinnacle of good?

Is it really so hard to understand that there can be situations in which multiple motivations are in conflict, and that those situations are the things that are defining moments, not the situations in which everything is easy and you have your choice of whatever you want?

The 'pinnacle of good' guy's choice is simple: he saves the people, takes the relations hit with his patron, and tries to fix that problem later. It means that he might be a little bit behind the other guy who would let the families burn so that he wouldn't lose a business opportunity, but that's the point: he has a different relative valuation of his ambitions and his morality than the cut-throat guy.

AMFV
2015-01-11, 01:41 AM
For example: I have a character who is a psychopath with an obsession with death. He is a war criminal with PTSD and is prone to violent outbursts because of this, as well as ASPD, which gives him little care for petty things like morality, yet he finds enjoyment in killing things. He doesn't like to torture things, but he does enjoy hunting them, finding their weaknesses, exploiting those, and the satisfaction of the kill that results. This is why, after the war, he has taken to life as a big game hunter. He operates mostly in self-interest, especially when doing so will allow him to murder something, so will tolerate a small group of associates around him in order to keep him safe from those who would prevent him from his usual murderous rampages, like the police.

If I had to pick an alignment for this man, it would be Neutral Evil. Neutral because he has little respect for the rules, for authority, or the law, but has enough sense to not murder someone when he will get hanged for it. Evil because he finds enjoyment and personal pleasure from murder, and goes out of his way to commit it However, due to the fact that I don't roleplay him as stupid, and I will tolerate the law and the rules of the town if only because I would be hanged otherwise, and in the side, plot and very much intend to kill those lawmakers when he could actually get away with it. He likes killing, but he likes living more. But because of this, the GM has decided that the character is simply True Neutral because all he does is act in his own self-interest, and that it is just a coincidence that his self-interest includes the sheer old fashioned joy of killing.

And there's the dichotomy. By one interpretation, the fact that one chooses to commit murder even though they are aware that it is morally wrong and don't care about the moral implications because one enjoys it makes a character Evil. But on the other hand, a strong sense of self-preservation and self-interest which overrides the desire to commit murder, even though one enjoys it, simply because one is aware that if they don't kill that man now, they will probably get to kill three tomorrow, makes the character Neutral. The question you need to answer for yourself is that does the intention to commit evil make you evil, or does the willingness to weigh the consequences make you neutral?

Depending on your edition there isn't really that much room for interpretation. Murder is generally explicitly evil, as it should be. After all if we put acting in self-interest as something that would prevent somebody from being Evil, then literally no character would ever be evil. The willingness to harm others for your self-interest (and being a serial murderer qualifies more precisely than anything else) is evil. In fact I would say serial murder is probably about as evil as you can get. Just because you don't murder every single person you come across doesn't make your character any less of a serial murderer.

Willingness to weight the consequences would only make you neutral if you were weighing the consequences for others not for yourself. Meaning that if you, and even then only if you went out of your way to avoid harm as much as possible.

Lathund
2015-01-11, 11:21 AM
My GM, however, loves alignment systems, so we tend to compromise about this stuff.

For example: I have a character who is a psychopath with an obsession with death. He is a war criminal with PTSD and is prone to violent outbursts because of this, as well as ASPD, which gives him little care for petty things like morality, yet he finds enjoyment in killing things. He doesn't like to torture things, but he does enjoy hunting them, finding their weaknesses, exploiting those, and the satisfaction of the kill that results. This is why, after the war, he has taken to life as a big game hunter. He operates mostly in self-interest, especially when doing so will allow him to murder something, so will tolerate a small group of associates around him in order to keep him safe from those who would prevent him from his usual murderous rampages, like the police.

If I had to pick an alignment for this man, it would be Neutral Evil. Neutral because he has little respect for the rules, for authority, or the law, but has enough sense to not murder someone when he will get hanged for it. Evil because he finds enjoyment and personal pleasure from murder, and goes out of his way to commit it However, due to the fact that I don't roleplay him as stupid, and I will tolerate the law and the rules of the town if only because I would be hanged otherwise, and in the side, plot and very much intend to kill those lawmakers when he could actually get away with it. He likes killing, but he likes living more. But because of this, the GM has decided that the character is simply True Neutral because all he does is act in his own self-interest, and that it is just a coincidence that his self-interest includes the sheer old fashioned joy of killing.

And there's the dichotomy. By one interpretation, the fact that one chooses to commit murder even though they are aware that it is morally wrong and don't care about the moral implications because one enjoys it makes a character Evil. But on the other hand, a strong sense of self-preservation and self-interest which overrides the desire to commit murder, even though one enjoys it, simply because one is aware that if they don't kill that man now, they will probably get to kill three tomorrow, makes the character Neutral. The question you need to answer for yourself is that does the intention to commit evil make you evil, or does the willingness to weigh the consequences make you neutral?

I agree with you on the evil alignment. But not so much about being neutral evil: if the only thing keeping him from murdering people is punishment, how much more chaotic can he get? 'Killing whenever I can get away with it' screams chaotic evil to me. Any blood-thirsty maniac can be whipped to obey, but before I consider him neutral, I'd expect a somewhat stronger relationship with the rules than that, or a personal code, or at least something. Something more than 'better not get hanged'.

Sounds like a great character concept btw. Well done!

goto124
2015-01-12, 12:25 AM
Actions define alignment, not thoughts or words, right? Which means I could have a character that's TN in thoughts but NG in actions? If her thoughts don't change, it's bound to affect her actions to make her TN... but as long as her not-so-good thoughts aren't tested , she'll stay NG? And her thoughts could gradually change to NG before her actions get to change her to TN.

For example, a character I have in mind hates orphans and mentally-challenged children, since she had to take care of them and... let's just say they're naughty. If she encounters such people while with the party, both she and I will have to explain why a Good person could treat such poor children with huge contempt...

Lathund
2015-01-12, 05:00 AM
Actions define alignment, not thoughts or words, right?

Disagree. Please allow me to shamelessly quote myself:


Say, two people with similar financial situations both encounter a beggar. One gives money because he wants to help the beggar, the other gives money because he feels it is expected of him. Both have given up on some money. However, I'd only call the first person 'good'.

Imho, why you do it is about as important as what you do.


Which means I could have a character that's TN in thoughts but NG in actions? If her thoughts don't change, it's bound to affect her actions to make her TN... but as long as her not-so-good thoughts aren't tested , she'll stay NG? And her thoughts could gradually change to NG before her actions get to change her to TN.

Well, that could definitely happen. But I wouldn't be comfortable calling her NG until both her actions and her thoughts are NG.


For example, a character I have in mind hates orphans and mentally-challenged children, since she had to take care of them and... let's just say they're naughty. If she encounters such people while with the party, both she and I will have to explain why a Good person could treat such poor children with huge contempt...

Hrm, is that the only issue? Because no person is 100% the same alignment. Even the holiest of people could be a racist and the most villainous of murderers could have a soft spot for old ladies. I believe even the PHB mentioned the possibility of a kleptomaniac LG cleric (although a quick search reveils nothing).

So by and large, your character could be NG, with a passionate disgust against these children.

hamishspence
2015-01-12, 07:01 AM
I believe even the PHB mentioned the possibility of a kleptomaniac LG cleric (although a quick search reveils nothing).

It was in the Personality subsection of the PHB Looks, Personality, and Background section, where it discusses ways to, for example, make your LG dwarf different from any other LG dwarf:


Personality

Decide how your character acts, what she likes, what she wants out of life, what scares her, and what makes her angry. Race and alignment are good places to start when thinking about your character’s personality, but they are bad places to stop. Make your lawful good dwarf (or whatever) different from every other lawful good dwarf.
A handy trick for making an interesting personality for your character is including some sort of conflict in her nature. For example, Tordek is lawful, but he’s a little greedy, too. He may be tempted to steal if he can justify it to himself.
I think Tordek's established as a LG Fighter in the relevant 3.0 splatbook.

goto124
2015-01-12, 07:34 AM
So by and large, your character could be NG, with a passionate disgust against these children.

Could I have someone who's CE to <insert race here e.g. drows>, but NG to everyone else?

It's based off the idea that in the games I played, I was a ruthless murderhobo towards the NPCs, but did my best to help fellow players (which includes strangers) :D

But... what overall alignment does Someone have then?

hamishspence
2015-01-12, 07:40 AM
Could I have someone who's CE to <insert race here e.g. drows>, but NG to everyone else?

It's based off the idea that in the games I played, I was a ruthless murderhobo towards the NPCs, but did my best to help fellow players (which includes strangers) :D

The PHB (which the SRD repeats much of) suggests that "judging by factors other than deeds" is a LE trait (going by its description of LE characters):

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm#theNineAlignments


Lawful Evil, "Dominator"
A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion. He is comfortable in a hierarchy and would like to rule, but is willing to serve. He condemns others not according to their actions but according to race, religion, homeland, or social rank. He is loath to break laws or promises.

I'd say that's a common trait of Evil alignments in general - a CE drow might be expected to "condemn elves by race" as well - and an Evil-leaning elf might be expected to condemn drow, or dwarves, or humans, depending on the setting and the culture.

Savage Species suggests that Evil characters compartmentalize - treating "those they feel are beneath them" badly, but "their peers and loved ones" well.

Extrapolating further to "they treat a Hated Group badly, and everyone else, even strangers, well" doesn't seem too far out of line.




But... what overall alignment does Someone have then?
My preference is for "Habitual evil deeds" outweighing "habitual good deeds" in an assessment - but that's me.

goto124
2015-01-12, 07:47 AM
Thing is, she's Good to everyone else. In a room full of every race except Hated Race, you'll see her acting just like a Good cleric, healing people, giving advice, resolving conflicts, trying to avoid violence, etc. Until Hated Race walks in. Then it's annihilation. Nah, toned down to (say) verbal annihilation since she respects the other races and knows they don't want to see blood. And then she actually treats all races (except Hated Race) fairly, aka by their actions, not giving any race special treatment.

I do get your point, but it seems wierd to say she's LE. The LE alignment conjures up a somewhat different image, after all, and what if she's CG with the other races?

Maybe I should just put down her Good alignment when she's with most races.

Or just write 'so racist it's effectively double personality', so if a paladin tries Smite Evil on her when she's normal, no effect, but if she's in her Hated Race Rage, it works xD

(just throwing out random ideas, may or may not be good ones)

hamishspence
2015-01-12, 08:00 AM
Thing is, she's Good to everyone else. In a room full of every race except Hated Race, you'll see her acting just like a Good cleric, healing people, giving advice, resolving conflicts, trying to avoid violence, etc. Until Hated Race walks in. Then it's annihilation. Nah, toned down to (say) verbal annihilation since she respects the other races and knows they don't want to see blood. And then she actually treats all races (except Hated Race) fairly, aka by their actions, not giving any race special treatment.

I do get your point, but it seems wierd to say she's LE. The LE alignment conjures up a somewhat different image, after all, and what if she's CG with the other races?
The deeds in question probably should be weighed up. A person whose Evil deeds are minor and Good ones major (even if both are habitual) is more likely to be non-Evil than a character who is the reverse.

A serial killer who spends most of their time "working to help people in need" and some of their time torturing members of Insert Species Here to death for pleasure, is a good example of "minor Good, major Evil" - since the evil deeds are so big, and habitual if rare.

It's a good way to subvert expectations - most Evil characters aren't genuinely altruistic to strangers - but this one is.

NichG
2015-01-12, 08:13 AM
Thing is, she's Good to everyone else. In a room full of every race except Hated Race, you'll see her acting just like a Good cleric, healing people, giving advice, resolving conflicts, trying to avoid violence, etc. Until Hated Race walks in. Then it's annihilation. Nah, toned down to (say) verbal annihilation since she respects the other races and knows they don't want to see blood. And then she actually treats all races (except Hated Race) fairly, aka by their actions, not giving any race special treatment.

I do get your point, but it seems wierd to say she's LE. The LE alignment conjures up a somewhat different image, after all, and what if she's CG with the other races?

Maybe I should just put down her Good alignment when she's with most races.

Or just write 'so racist it's effectively double personality', so if a paladin tries Smite Evil on her when she's normal, no effect, but if she's in her Hated Race Rage, it works xD

(just throwing out random ideas, may or may not be good ones)

Any nuanced character tends not to be well-described by the alignment system anyhow, so I'd say don't worry about it and write down what will cause the least conflict with people's expectations.

That is to say, people are usually less shocked by an evil character being nice (they think that the evil character is up to something or is currying favor, even if that isn't true) than they are by a good character committing cold-blooded murder or torture. So if you write LE, you're less likely to get people trying to second-guess your characterization than if you write CG.

But ultimately, you shouldn't feel confined to alignment as the end-all be-all for your character's behavior. Just play your character, since you do seem to have a concrete idea for her behavior, and let alignment fall where it may.

Lathund
2015-01-12, 08:19 AM
Could I have someone who's CE to <insert race here e.g. drows>, but NG to everyone else?

It's based off the idea that in the games I played, I was a ruthless murderhobo towards the NPCs, but did my best to help fellow players (which includes strangers) :D

But... what overall alignment does Someone have then?

I don't think you can ever have a specific alignment to a race. You can, however, have thoughts and do deeds that are generally in line with a specific alignment when dealing with a certain race.

And if your character has a good reason to hate Drow, e.g. being an Elf, or having been victim of Drow, I'm not sure if I'd file it under CE at all. Probably something neutral, as long as it's in line with self-defense.

I *am* curious about the 'helpful murderhobo' thing though. Are both with respect to NPCs? If so, what separated the helpful moments from the murderhobo moments?

Segev
2015-01-12, 08:35 AM
With the hypothetical saint-to-all-but-gnomes (to choose a "hated race" that isn't going to open the "is killing orcs because they're monsters evil?" can of worms), it would really depend on her actions.

True, saintly behavior towards all save gnomes definitely pushes her towards Good. It would depend on the actions she takes when presented with the opportunity to do harm to gnomes. Does she delight in tormenting them? Does she go out of her way to hunt down any she knows about and petrify them to cut pipeworks into and use as fountains in her garden?

If she's a gnome-centric serial killer, that's enough to put her firmly in the Evil category. Habitual murder and/or torture is definitely Evil. She might be in the more northerly climbs of the Evil alignment, verging on Neutral, but she's still quite Evil.

Remember, Evil can be good and kind to those that it finds worthwhile.

If, however, she just is mean to them when they impinge on her presence, or avoids helping them in favor of non-gnomes, possibly with a haste to assume the worst about a gnome in any situation that arises, she's probably Neutral to even Good, depending on just how badly she treats gnomes.

The thing about Good is that it values people as people, and doesn't really care what they look like. Any treatment of people as non-people pushes you Evil-ward on the moral axis. (Minor depersonization doesn't make you evil by itself, but it's a mark against your "good" credit.)

goto124
2015-01-12, 08:35 AM
Any nuanced character tends not to be well-described by the alignment system anyhow, so I'd say don't worry about it and write down what will cause the least conflict with people's expectations.

Perhaps it's best to write down the FULL description, and let the DM decide if she beeps Evil on Detect Evil and gets smited by Smite Evil. Thanks for the advice.

Since we're discussing alignment, perhaps someone could explain the difference between Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic?



I *am* curious about the 'helpful murderhobo' thing though. Are both with respect to NPCs? If so, what separated the helpful moments from the murderhobo moments?

That one is in the context of MMOs, which are rather different from TTRPGs, especially: while PCs are players to be respected like in TTRPGs, the NPCs are mindless robots and it's perfectly okay to kill them.

So players help other players obtain loot, EXP, etc. For example, if a squishy mage friend (heck, a stranger) needs to get through an anti-magic field full of angry guards, the helpful murderhobo will gladly annihilate said guards to let the mage pass.

I don't think the helpful moments and the murderhobo moments are exactly seperated here, it's a matter of who you're being helpful/murderhobo to :P

Frozen_Feet
2015-01-12, 08:58 AM
Actions define alignment, not thoughts or words, right? Which means I could have a character that's TN in thoughts but NG in actions? If her thoughts don't change, it's bound to affect her actions to make her TN... but as long as her not-so-good thoughts aren't tested , she'll stay NG? And her thoughts could gradually change to NG before her actions get to change her to TN.

At least if you're using 1st edition AD&D rules, yes, this is exactly how it works and is supposed to work. The reason behind it is player character - non-player character divide. To paraphrase 1st edition DMG, for NPCs, alignment is used as guideline for their behaviour - where as for PCs, actual behaviour will be a guideline for their alignment. A Dungeon Master was supposed to track where each player character was/is alignment-wise using a specific graph (http://40.media.tumblr.com/f73effc6c5ade53376506aff28028d7e/tumblr_nf535aCDxy1t4iu9go1_500.jpg) and inform them when they've crossed a line a changed alignments. The alignment as stated by the player was only a starting point, and the DM was supposed to reward or penalize them based on how well they adhered to that stated role. You can import the graph and AD&D guidelines for handling alignment to any game using the nine alignments, and it will work fine.

Segev
2015-01-12, 09:17 AM
Since we're discussing alignment, perhaps someone could explain the difference between Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic?


Going by the same "gut reaction" sort of broad strokes, again, my favorite graphic depiction of the alignment chart equates "Lawful" with "Plays by the rules," and "Chaotic" with "does not play by the rules."

There's a lot of nuance that can flavor this, but that's the core of it. For a vast majority of actions and personalities, you can generally use that to get a feel for at least the approximate zone they're in.

A Lawful person subscribes to an ethical code he views as bigger than himself. He finds value in the rules almost for their own sake. He will frown on others breaking them and will refuse to do so himself for less than a compelling reason.

A Neutral person usually has his own internal ethical code, which may or may not be based on an external one. He won't do something just because the rules say so, but he will probably stick to them just because they provide a framework for communication. He will only care about others violating them if it inconveniences him or his friends, and will not scruple to follow them in the face of his contrary desires if he doesn't think he'll get caught nor that it will hurt those he cares about.

A Chaotic person may also have an internal ethical code, but it will be more related to mental notes as to how best to get his goals achieved. Chaos is not defined by opposition to any set of rules, but rather by a refusal to care about rules for their own sake. The Chaotic person will follow rules if he knows there is a good reason to. He will also have no problem with somebody breaking a rule unless the act itself is stupid. He has no respect for external laws save where conforming to them lets him achieve his goals more easily than disregarding them.


It's worth noting that Chaotic people can look Neutral in many societies, because a lot of society's laws are encodings of generally good ideas, or enforcement of things which are required for people to live in relative peace in close proximity. Both Chaotic and Neutral people may well break the rules when they want to and don't fear reprisal (particularly if they think they won't get caught). Neutral people, however, will follow the rules even if they wouldn't get caught, unless there's something in it for them. Chaotic people require there to be something in it for them to adhere to the rules if they know that they won't be caught.

NichG
2015-01-12, 09:45 AM
My favorite take on Lawful vs Chaotic isn't really backed up by rules-text, but rather its because it resolves most of the usual paradoxes that people bring up when discussing Lawful characters.

Lawful alignment arises from a character seeing larger-scale organization or 'ways of being' as the important things. Chaotic alignment arises from a character seeing individual concerns as the important thing. Note that 'the important things' doesn't mean that they'll want to protect or uphold them. It may be that the character has ambitions to tear them down or replace them. Instead, it has more to do with what the focus of their energy is towards.

For example, a Lawful ambition might be 'I want to build a new empire with myself as the head' or 'I want everyone in this nation to believe only in the same deity as I do'.
The Chaotic versions of those might be 'I want to (personally) be the most powerful person in the land' and 'I want to throw down the god who is my deity's enemy'.

For the Lawful version, that person values the world as a whole being a certain way. For the Chaotic version, they value things mostly in terms of how they relate immediately to their personal condition (or the personal condition of a small number of specific other people).

This completely sidesteps paradoxes like 'What about a Lawful Good character in an empire with evil laws? Do they want to follow the law?' or 'What about a warrior who stringently follows a personal code no matter what laws it drives him to break?'. The warrior can be Chaotic and still have a strong personal code, because it's their personal honor which they're protecting. Or you could have the warrior be Lawful if instead of concern for their personal honor, they're driven for concern of the honor of their order (e.g. they don't want the ideal they stand for to be tarnished).

Talakeal
2015-01-12, 05:06 PM
His original intent was that Lawful meant "Good" and Chaotic meant "Evil". I don't think we need to worry about his original intent.

Was Gygax the one who used Law vs. Chaos or was that Arneson?

Regardless of original intent though, he was still a very vocal and influential member of the gaming community, and that is the opinion he held on the Neutral vs. Good and Evil, at least later in his life.

Jay R
2015-01-12, 10:49 PM
Say, two people with similar financial situations both encounter a beggar. One gives money because he wants to help the beggar, the other gives money because he feels it is expected of him. Both have given up on some money. However, I'd only call the first person 'good'.

I agree that there is a line to be drawn between the two of them. But that line is nowhere near as important as the line that separates the two of them from all the people who gave nothing.

goto124
2015-01-12, 11:07 PM
Speaking of actions vs intentions: How do I treat lying? It's probably a case where intentions have to affect alignment, otherwise it doesn't make much sense...

hamishspence
2015-01-13, 02:23 AM
BoVD suggests that lying, while strongly associated with Evil, isn't always an Evil act.

Knaight
2015-01-13, 03:02 AM
Speaking of actions vs intentions: How do I treat lying? It's probably a case where intentions have to affect alignment, otherwise it doesn't make much sense...

It could make sense even when you completely ignore intentions, if you look at the effects of the lie. This is actually an area where Nazi Germany is a pretty good example - if "There are no Jews here" is a lie, it's a pretty good indication that the liar is a good person*. Protecting a persecuted minority from a genocidal state is an effect of a lie that is downright commendable.

*Which also applies to members of any other group being slaughtered wholesale, of which there were several.

goto124
2015-01-13, 03:07 AM
What about unintended consequences of the lie? Since the DM or player may not know its full consequences (can take a lot of time), it might be a lot easier to go with intentions, something that can be seen on the spot.

Knaight
2015-01-13, 03:09 AM
What about unintended consequences of the lie? Since the DM or player may not know its full consequences (can take a lot of time), it might be a lot easier to go with intentions, something that can be seen on the spot.

I'm not saying that you should ignore intentions, just that you can. Plus, you can restrict the consequences look to predictable outcomes and it still works. It arguably works a lot better, even.

Lathund
2015-01-13, 08:10 AM
I agree that there is a line to be drawn between the two of them. But that line is nowhere near as important as the line that separates the two of them from all the people who gave nothing.

Can't help every beggar you come across. At least not in a town like the one I live in. Also, there are lots of ways to be charitable. So I get your point, but I'm not impressed.


What about unintended consequences of the lie? Since the DM or player may not know its full consequences (can take a lot of time), it might be a lot easier to go with intentions, something that can be seen on the spot.

In modern-day law, unintended side effects that lead to bad stuff are usually treated quite mildly. Although it matters how predictable the side effect was. I heard of two cases that might be interesting here:

One: a man tried to murder another man by poisoning a cake. The target ate a slice from it and died, as did his wife. He was found guilty of two murders, because he should've realised that not only the target would eat from the cake.

Two: a young guy ate a peanut butter sandwich, after which he kissed his girlfriend. What the guy didn't know what that she was allergic to peanuts. The girlfriend got in a shock and died. The guy was found guilty, but received no punishment: he couldn't have forseen the side-effect.

So, two men both unintentionally kill a person: one kills a man's wife, the other his girlfriend. Both are found guilty, but only the one that took an unacceptable risk got punished.


Since we're discussing alignment, perhaps someone could explain the difference between Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic?

Tough one. My first of two cents will concern laws in general. Why do people have laws, traditions, habits? Imho because in most situations, these give the best results. The collective wisdom of many great minds, frequently over many generations, has decided on a good general procedure for a certain scope of situations. Of course, these laws and traditions regularly need to be re-evaluated because the world keeps evolving. Then, some turn out to be obsolete or dysfunctional while others can survive for hundreds, maybe thousands of years (e.g. 'no murder').

One constituent of 'law/chaos' is how strongly people observe 'the rules'. Lawful people tend to adhere to them a lot, maybe more than they should. Imho, this implies a certain... trust... in whoever made those rules. These people might not always understand why a rule is the way it is, but they will assume that they're there for a good reason. A chaotic person on the other hand might have a general distrust in whoever makes the rules and would rather follow their own conclusions.

Cent number two: personal engagement with morals. Some people rarely think about what is right or wrong, but just do whatever they like or whatever they can get away with. I consider the average adolescent to be CN, because they usually are usually focused on themselves, trying to have a good time. This can range from mildly chaotic people who will go to school because they have to but play video games whenever they can, to very chaotic ones who run away from their homes and do whatever grown-ups forbid.
Others can spend hours thinking about morals, discussing good and evil over an internet forum (:smallwink:). By doing so, their personal code slowly fleshes out.

Myself, I'm a bit of a double whammy. I take rules and traditions very seriously - from family, from the law, from the church - but I also spend a lot of time thinking trying to find my own way in that. I don't follow rules blindly, but I wonder why each rule is there and then make my own decision based upon those. Some people might consider that neutral, but I see neutral as a sort of 'meh' approach to the rules instead of a 'me' approach.

Jay R
2015-01-13, 08:34 AM
Can't help every beggar you come across. At least not in a town like the one I live in. Also, there are lots of ways to be charitable. So I get your point, but I'm not impressed.

Of course. But that has nothing to do with my point. The divisions between the people who try to help, for whatever reason, are less important than the division between those who try to help, and those who don't.

There's an incredible difference between the person with two dollars who gives one dollar to help, and the person with a million dollars who gives a thousand dollars to help.

There's a difference between the person who donates when they can because they want to and the person who donates when they can because they think they're supposed to.

There's a difference between the person who gives some money he won't miss and the person with no money who volunteers to work in a soup kitchen for the poor.

But the biggest difference is still between those who try to help and those who don't.

Frozen_Feet
2015-01-13, 09:12 AM
What about unintended consequences of the lie? Since the DM or player may not know its full consequences (can take a lot of time), it might be a lot easier to go with intentions, something that can be seen on the spot.

In a purely consequentalist system, you deal with this via degrees of separation. Three is a good cut-off point. Namely: if whatever unintended effect took three or more events in addition to the lie that was told, it has no bearing on the character's morality. You can extrapolate this principle to other events too.

Lathund
2015-01-13, 10:41 AM
Of course. But that has nothing to do with my point. The divisions between the people who try to help, for whatever reason, are less important than the division between those who try to help, and those who don't.

There's an incredible difference between the person with two dollars who gives one dollar to help, and the person with a million dollars who gives a thousand dollars to help.

There's a difference between the person who donates when they can because they want to and the person who donates when they can because they think they're supposed to.

There's a difference between the person who gives some money he won't miss and the person with no money who volunteers to work in a soup kitchen for the poor.

But the biggest difference is still between those who try to help and those who don't.

I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this one. If you help purely because you think it's expected of you, I consider that a lawful act instead of a good one. Imho, it's hardly worth a blip on the good-o-meter, same as not helping at all. So I suggest we agree to disagree.

Completely agree on your other points in this post though.

LudicSavant
2015-01-13, 11:49 AM
The subjectivity in that comes from a lack of definitions, or definitions which are built in impossible-to-evaluate or impossible-to-use ways. Lack of definitions doesn't cause subjectivity, it causes failures to communicate about actual questions of how the world works. The way the world works does not become subjective simply because a few humans failed to communicate.


E.g. you ask 'is it just?', but that requires that you and the person you're talking to agree what 'just' means.

This is a problem inherent in all communication, and it is completely irrelevant to whether or not you can actually create an objective model of the world regarding a specific subject. To get an idea of why I think of these "questions of definition" as false questions, consider the following:

Today, there are factions on the internet which are arguing with each other, at length, over whether or not if a tree falls in the fores without anyone around to hear it, it makes a sound. One might even be tempted to say that the answer to this question is "subjective." However, it is not, and indeed I have yet to encounter anyone arguing on this subject who would not actually agree with each other on the answers to this question as soon as they get past their semantic confusion.

If you ask any of these people "If a tree falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it, does it create a vibration in the surrounding environment?" Almost everyone says yes; this answer can be verified via observing the after-effects of a vibration occurring even if no observer was present when the tree fell. "If a tree falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it, does it create an auditory experience?" Almost everyone says no. Most believe that a mind capable of interfacing with auditory signals needs to be there for an experience to happen.

You see, the people arguing are not actually arguing over a question of how something in the world works, they're arguing over their own semantic presumptions and misunderstandings. It isn't a real argument at all. It's not a question of "subjective vs objective" it's a question of establishing terms being necessary to have an intelligible conversation at all, ever, on anything. It's a question of successfully engaging in the act of using language to communicate, which requires getting on the same page of definitions as a necessary step for successful communication. People disagreeing on definitions are not actually disagreeing about the nature of the world, they are doing something comparable to refusing to agree with a mathematician that they can say Let X = Y and thus preventing the mathematician from talking to them about actual math at all.

NichG
2015-01-13, 12:25 PM
Lack of definitions doesn't cause subjectivity, it causes failures to communicate about actual questions of how the world works. The way the world works does not become subjective simply because a few humans failed to communicate.

This is a problem inherent in all communication, and it is completely irrelevant to whether or not you can actually create an objective model of the world regarding a specific subject. To get an idea of why I think of these "questions of definition" as false questions, consider the following:

Today, there are factions on the internet which are arguing with each other, at length, over whether or not if a tree falls in the fores without anyone around to hear it, it makes a sound. One might even be tempted to say that the answer to this question is "subjective." However, it is not, and indeed I have yet to encounter anyone arguing on this subject who would not actually agree with each other on the answers to this question as soon as they get past their semantic confusion.

If you ask any of these people "If a tree falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it, does it create a vibration in the surrounding environment?" Almost everyone says yes; this answer can be verified via observing the after-effects of a vibration occurring even if no observer was present when the tree fell. "If a tree falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it, does it create an auditory experience?" Almost everyone says no. Most believe that a mind capable of interfacing with auditory signals needs to be there for an experience to happen.

You see, the people arguing are not actually arguing over a question of how something in the world works, they're arguing over their own semantic presumptions and misunderstandings. It isn't a real argument at all. It's not a question of "subjective vs objective" it's a question of establishing terms being necessary to have an intelligible conversation at all, ever, on anything. It's a question of successfully engaging in the act of using language to communicate, which requires getting on the same page of definitions as a necessary step for successful communication. People disagreeing on definitions are not actually disagreeing about the nature of the world, they are doing something comparable to refusing to agree with a mathematician that they can say Let X = Y and thus preventing the mathematician from talking to them about actual math at all.

The difference is, if you tell me you want to discuss 'What if I measure both the position and velocity of a quantum-mechanical object perfectly and simultaneously? What would happen?' then I have a framework in which I can say 'there is no such thing as an object which has both a perfectly selected velocity and a perfectly selected position'. If you know one perfectly, I have a way to show through the axioms which are picked out by us agreeing to discuss 'a quantum-mechanical object' that the other quantity does not exist.

If we say 'lets discuss whether or not this is evil?' then other axioms can slip in. The reason is that the question of 'does evil actually exist as an underlying, predictive property of the world' is unresolved. The person proposing the question is attempting to implicitly introduce an axiom: "we assume 'evil' is a meaningful concept". However, it's not a given that just because you can slap a word on it like "evil" that it is going to map to an underlying structure of reality that actually does have meaning independent of the speaker simply giving it meaning via definition.

Since that is not answered, claims that 'there is an objective answer' following from that axiom is premature, because it may contradict other axioms in the system.

Add to that that discussing the sound of a tree falling has a fairly stringent set of axioms associated with it: we're assuming this takes place in our universe, with our physical laws, consistent with all observations up till now. There's still some definitional slack "is 'sound' the act of perception or is it just phonons", but its easy to enumerate the possibilities and explicitly make things clear.

If we're talking about things which have emotionally charged axiom choice, there may simply not be the possibility for agreement between a given pair of people. That is to say, there is more axiomatic slack in the system, and people can in fact choose the axioms that appeal to them emotionally without it being 'incorrect' in any meaningful way. If you fundamentally care about a given ethical system applying when all members of the society are held to an identical system, but I do not care about that, then we can hit a point where our disagreement is axiomatic: there is no correct resolution, because we each are holding different underlying assumptions.

That is the origin of 'subjectivity'. Once you boil things down to axioms, if there are multiple possible mutually inconsistent choices people can make, then the topic is going to be subjective.

If we're talking about 'what happens to a society implementing a given ethical code in a certain way', that has an objective answer. If we're talking about 'lets call it 'evil' when such a society collapses given X,Y,Z constraints on the societal structure', then both the decision to associate that particular category with a highly charged and poorly defined word, as well as the X,Y,Z constraints, are places where subjectivity is going to creep in.

Because I may not be able to argue that 'the society won't collapse given those conditions', but I can argue something like 'X is a nonsensical constraint, I can build a society that doesn't collapse if instead of X we use Q'. There isn't really a counter-argument to that because it's just saying 'I would prefer to assume different axioms'.

Mutazoia
2015-01-13, 05:02 PM
A person can't be considered Good if he* does things purely for personal gain (loot, fun, etc). But does that make him Neutral, or Evil? When is killing considered Neutral or Evil? If Evil means doing things for the evulz, how do you have non-stupid evil?

*Male pronouns used to refer to all sexes and genders.

Evil is kicking a priest in the family jewels
Neutral is leaving $100 in the collection plate afterwards

goto124
2015-01-13, 06:36 PM
I thought that's Affably Evil.

hamishspence
2015-01-14, 07:05 AM
An evil act is one that the DM thinks is harmful, unnecessary and unjustified (the character, however, might think otherwise)

A character with an evil alignment is one that has a mindset that is pretty much guaranteed to produce a pattern of habitual evil acts. (This is why it's possible to be Evil despite not having done anything evil - say, if one's had one's alignment changed by magic)

A Neutral character might be "driven to Evil from time to time" but for them, it's not habitual.

AMFV
2015-01-14, 11:00 AM
A character with an evil alignment is one that has a mindset that is pretty much guaranteed to produce a pattern of habitual evil acts. (This is why it's possible to be Evil despite not having done anything evil - say, if one's had one's alignment changed by magic)

I just wanted to intercede to say that in my opinion, this is one of the best descriptions for alignment. It not only explains why a character might be evil even if they had not had the means or the opportunity to commit large scale evil actions, but it explains why a character might be good.

However; I think there might even be a better way, for an evil character evil actions simply feel natural. They're as you said habitual, and habits can be formed. A neutral character can become evil if they develop the habits for it. Good, is, I think, less defined by habits that are good, and more defined by an absolute rejection of evil. A good character may commit evil acts, but they will be ashamed of them, often enough so to try to recompense for their evil acts. A good character would habitually commit good acts but would be feel shame for them. Conversely an evil character (one that was far enough gone) would feel shame for good actions, viewing them as signs of weakness or possibly even evil (there are many arguments that charity is bad because it weakens people), that sort of thing.

So to be truly neutral, you could come from two different aspects, a negative neutral, who isn't significantly habitually inclined to evil or good on a regular basis. Or a positive neutral, somebody who feels that good actions are weak, and that evil actions are shameful. Both of these would produce a character that does not act significantly Good or Evil over the course of time.

hamishspence
2015-01-15, 02:27 AM
A third option is the character who both likes doing certain Good acts, and certain Evil acts - they feel it natural and good to "mistreat" their enemies - but also they feel it natural and good to "make personal sacrifices for strangers".

Such a character would normally be Neutral, unless their acts one way noticably outweigh their acts the other.

Lonely Tylenol
2015-01-15, 05:39 AM
Proactivity, mainly.

Amphetryon
2015-01-15, 08:09 AM
I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this one. If you help purely because you think it's expected of you, I consider that a lawful act instead of a good one. Imho, it's hardly worth a blip on the good-o-meter, same as not helping at all. So I suggest we agree to disagree.

Completely agree on your other points in this post though.

I tend to agree here. For example, let's assume a scenario of a burning house, where you know there's at least one person probably still alive inside. A Character runs inside to help. Off the top of my head, any one of these reasons may be primary for this Character:

1. The person inside is a friend of his.
2. He knows the folks gathered around will see his heroic attempt, and will praise him for it.
3. He knows the folks gathered around will see his failure to act, and will criticize him for it.
4. He's a fireman, and it's his job.
5. He feels the attempt to save the life of another is worthwhile, regardless of the identity of the person inside.
6. He knows the fire won't hurt him (protective gear, fire resistance, intel on where the person is and where the fire's spread, etc.), so the rescue is at extremely limited personal risk.
7. He's a lunatic who is for some reason oblivious to the danger.

I could probably come up with more, and I'm certain other folks can list additional primary motivations for running inside a burning building. Personally, I see a big difference in the level of Good involved in these acts, based on motivation. In other words, I think intent matters in determining Good/Neutral/Evil.

Rogue Shadows
2015-01-15, 09:08 AM
A person can't be considered Good if he* does things purely for personal gain (loot, fun, etc).

Sure he can. Alignment is the sum of your actions and thoughts, not any one individual action or thought. While it's true that some actions, taken consciously, make you automatically evil (which don't bear mention here), a Paladin doesn't fall from grace if he enters a poker tournament purely because he likes poker and wants to win a whole ton of cash - at least not as long as there isn't any more pressing concern.


But does that make him Neutral, or Evil? When is killing considered Neutral or Evil? If Evil means doing things for the evulz, how do you have non-stupid evil?

My approach to the matter is this.

Good means taking risks within the limits of your abilities to help anyone, anywhere, at any time, for just about any reason. You don't have to be suicidal, of course - dying for a hopeless cause when you could run away isn't Good, it's just stupid (excepting in "hold the line" situations, of course). Fall back, regroup, and come up with some other plan. Otherwise, though, good means that, for example and with regards to heroes, when you overhear at a tavern someone talking about how the mine two towns over has become infested with kobolds who are killing the miners, you immediately grab your sword and head for aforementioned mine. Maybe gather some information first, but your first thought is the safety of others whom you've never heard of before - not yourself. With regards to commoners, being good means something like, if you see a burning building, and hear that there's someone trapped inside, you immediately grab an axe or something and start hacking your way into the building to try and save said person.

Neutral means taking risks within the limits of your abilities to help yourself, your friends, and your family. Once again, you don't have to be suicidal, but if you hear that the mine two towns over has become infested with kobolds who are killing the miners, you don't get involved. You don't wish harm on the miners by any means and wish that the kobolds would go away, but unless someone you know is in those mines then you're not moving - you have your own problems that you need to deal with. If someone comes up to you and offers you gold to clear out the mines, well, that's a paycheck, and risk is part of the job. You'll do it. With regards to commoners, if you see a burning building and hear that there's someone trapped inside, you'll immediately join the bucket line. You'll put your all into fighting the fire without risking your own life personally unless, again, the person trapped is someone you know.

Evil means taking risks within the limits of your abilities to help yourself. It's not necessarily that you don't care about anyone else - even evil has loved ones - it's just that numero uno is generally your only concern. If the mine two towns over has become infested with kobolds who are killing the miners, well, it sucks to be them, but someone better offer you a lot of gold before you're willing to do anything about it, and even then at the first sign of real risk to yourself, you're out (whether you keep the money regardless in that case is a matter of Law and Chaos more than Good or Evil). With regards to commoners, if you see a burning building and hear that there's someone trapped inside, you'll join the bucket line, but - well, bad back. Don't expect too much, okay? And no way in Hell are you diving in there for someone you don't know. Although, hmm, that building was always sort of an eyesore...

Now, again, though, these are broad generalizations. A good person could expect to be paid for dealing with the mine. He took great risks, after all, it's not unreasonable to expect some form of compensation. A neutral person could have a moment of heroism and dive into a burning building to save someone he doesn't know; or he could have a moment of depravity and think to himself "hey, if that mine closes down then the one in my town will make more money - sweet!" And an evil person might hear that his friend has been captured by kobolds or that the person trapped in the burning building is only a child and immediately act to save them, with no thought for his own well-being.

Again, alignment is the sum of your thoughts and actions, not any one individual thought or action.

goto124
2015-01-15, 09:30 AM
Evil means ...if you see a burning building and hear that there's someone trapped inside


... well, you're the one who started the fire in the first place. :P

I do appreciate your help though.

hamishspence
2015-01-15, 10:45 AM
"Taking risks" is a pretty good starting point when it comes to adventurers. "Making sacrifices" might be a better starting point when it comes to ordinary civilian-type characters though.

The exception to the general rule, might be when a character is very much a mix of Good and Evil, rather than "mostly selfless Good" or "mostly selfish Evil".

An extreme racist/speciesist, who is at the same time altruistic toward strangers not of the "hated group" - is a good example of where the deeds need to be summed up - the pattern of Evil and the pattern of Good weighed against one another, rather than the character simply assumed to be Neutral.

If the good deeds are major and the evil deeds minor - character is probably Good.
If the evil deeds are major - character is probably Evil.
If the good and evil deeds are both minor - character is probably Neutral.

Yuki Akuma
2015-01-16, 09:55 AM
I always like the interpretation that Evil acts have more 'moral weight' to them - essentially, it's easier for Evil acts to make you Evil than it is for Good acts to make you Good.

Being Good is hard. Being Evil is easy.

Rogue Shadows
2015-01-16, 12:07 PM
Agreed, to an extent, although repeated acts of minor evil really shouldn't count any more than repeated acts of minor good. Whatever the "evil" equivalent of dropping spare change into a Salvation Army jar. Minor acts of shoplifting, I guess. A person who can't really resist getting a five-fingered discount on chewing gum or coke or something - even stealing from a tip jar - really doesn't risk an alignment change. It just makes you a jerk.

Also there's an issue of distinguishing between evil and mental illness or honest mistakes, but that's a bit heavy for most games. There's also "the greater good," wherein minor depravities can be forgiven when persuing a larger goal, but you have to be very careful with this. A 2nd Edition D&D module called The Night Below had a moment of this - the heroes can ally with some mind flayers to fight against a bunch of aboleths (the ringleaders), derro, kuo-toa, and other mind flayers that are trying to take over the world. It is extremely in their best interests to do so, and the potential-ally mind flayers, while unrepentant about their nature and their evil, will be loyal allies and won't try to betray the party at any point. The module pointed out that any Paladin characters might have issue with this (due to their class), and suggested that the Paladins should ask for guidance from their deities, and if they do their deities will say that the Aboleth plan must be stopped, and if part of that means allying with mind flayers for the moment, then so be it.

Segev
2015-01-16, 01:45 PM
The "evil equivalent" of leaving change in a beggar's bowl would be more along the lines of cursing him out for being in the way. There are a hundred little acts of selfishness and minor spite that people can and do perpetrate daily without really making themselves evil, though patterns build up and all that.

Taking out your frustrations on a clerk or waitress (nothing illegal, and technically within your rights as a customer, but definitely unecessary and hurtful), cutting somebody off in traffic just so you don't have to be behind them on the road, mocking somebody just to make yourself feel above them...

These are generally not going to shove you towards evil alignment if you're also giving the occasional charity, holding the occasional door, helping calm the occasional crying child. Even a Good person might do some of them from time to time; what separates a Good person from a Neutral person is that the Good person will not justify it when he realizes he's done so, and will probably feel bad about it. May even apologize if it's practical and wouldn't make things worse.

Frozen_Feet
2015-01-16, 04:29 PM
I always like the interpretation that Evil acts have more 'moral weight' to them - essentially, it's easier for Evil acts to make you Evil than it is for Good acts to make you Good.

Being Good is hard. Being Evil is easy.

I understand why people often give Evil greater weight (it's a principle of purity thing), but I personally find it unnecessary. Construction and creation are already harder than destruction; you don't need to make it count for less too.

Jay R
2015-01-16, 08:59 PM
I tend to agree here. For example, let's assume a scenario of a burning house, where you know there's at least one person probably still alive inside. A Character runs inside to help. Off the top of my head, any one of these reasons may be primary for this Character:

1. The person inside is a friend of his.
2. He knows the folks gathered around will see his heroic attempt, and will praise him for it.
3. He knows the folks gathered around will see his failure to act, and will criticize him for it.
4. He's a fireman, and it's his job.
5. He feels the attempt to save the life of another is worthwhile, regardless of the identity of the person inside.
6. He knows the fire won't hurt him (protective gear, fire resistance, intel on where the person is and where the fire's spread, etc.), so the rescue is at extremely limited personal risk.
7. He's a lunatic who is for some reason oblivious to the danger.

I could probably come up with more, and I'm certain other folks can list additional primary motivations for running inside a burning building. Personally, I see a big difference in the level of Good involved in these acts, based on motivation. In other words, I think intent matters in determining Good/Neutral/Evil.

So out of idle curiosity, how would you rate this guy?
8. It never occurred to him that there was a choice to make.

Amphetryon
2015-01-16, 09:13 PM
So out of idle curiosity, how would you rate this guy?
8. It never occurred to him that there was a choice to make.

Tell me why it didn't occur to him, and I'll have a better answer. Did it not occur to him because he's spent his whole life in some sort of secluded society, where helping others is indoctrinated? Is he just not very bright? Is he honestly altruistic? Some combination thereof?

Jay R
2015-01-18, 10:13 AM
Tell me why it didn't occur to him, and I'll have a better answer. Did it not occur to him because he's spent his whole life in some sort of secluded society, where helping others is indoctrinated? Is he just not very bright? Is he honestly altruistic? Some combination thereof?

Ordinary modern guy, grew up in Texas suburbs, reasonably bright (grad student at the time, who went on to get his Ph.D. Currently holds several telecom patents.) Plays D&D & reads comics.

Sitting outside his apartment, and saw orange flickering lights. Ran down to the apartment building on fire, and saw a woman on crutches trying to get down the stairs. Ran up the stairs to help carry her down.

I was later asked why I decided to do it. I thought a moment, and replied, "I didn't decide. There was no decision to make."

The only reason I asked is that your list of people seemed to assume that each person in a moment of crisis stops to think about the risks and makes a considered judgment, and your conclusions were based on that assumption. But that's not my experience.

AMFV
2015-01-18, 02:42 PM
Ordinary modern guy, grew up in Texas suburbs, reasonably bright (grad student at the time, who went on to get his Ph.D. Currently holds several telecom patents.) Plays D&D & reads comics.

Sitting outside his apartment, and saw orange flickering lights. Ran down to the apartment building on fire, and saw a woman on crutches trying to get down the stairs. Ran up the stairs to help carry her down.

I was later asked why I decided to do it. I thought a moment, and replied, "I didn't decide. There was no decision to make."

The only reason I asked is that your list of people seemed to assume that each person in a moment of crisis stops to think about the risks and makes a considered judgment, and your conclusions were based on that assumption. But that's not my experience.

Well that's an important thing to consider. I think that what you're discussing is when Good is engrained into a person to the point where such an action is natural. He does the good thing because he doesn't think there's a choice, not because there isn't a choice (there obviously is), but because Good is natural to him. The same thing could be said for certain kinds of habitual potentially evil actions.

Lathund
2015-01-18, 03:50 PM
Jay R: it sounds like option #5: "He feels the attempt to save the life of another is worthwhile, regardless of the identity of the person inside." I agree that you didn't make a considered judgment at the time, but you must've made a decision at some deeper level of consciousness. One that was deeply connected to your personal beliefs, because that's usually the case with split-second decisions. Mind you, the vast majority of our decisions isn't made consciously; only around 10% or so.

Well done btw.

McStabbington
2015-01-18, 04:41 PM
Ordinary modern guy, grew up in Texas suburbs, reasonably bright (grad student at the time, who went on to get his Ph.D. Currently holds several telecom patents.) Plays D&D & reads comics.

Sitting outside his apartment, and saw orange flickering lights. Ran down to the apartment building on fire, and saw a woman on crutches trying to get down the stairs. Ran up the stairs to help carry her down.

I was later asked why I decided to do it. I thought a moment, and replied, "I didn't decide. There was no decision to make."

The only reason I asked is that your list of people seemed to assume that each person in a moment of crisis stops to think about the risks and makes a considered judgment, and your conclusions were based on that assumption. But that's not my experience.

Beyond a hearty well-done, I would add my voice to the chorus saying that this is a good act indicative of a good alignment. You did what you did because you have inculcated a pattern of behavior of sacrificing and risking for others. That you didn't think about it at the time says less that you didn't think at all, so much as you had already put in the thought beforehand sufficient to make it part of your nature.

If I were to tie it to ethics rather than D&D alignment, I would note that if I may paraphrase Aristotle here, virtue is loosely defined as a habituation to engage in virtuous acts, where a virtuous act is using practical wisdom to find the mean appropriate to the situation between the potential competing vices. In this case, the virtue he'd be discussing is probably courage. If you make a habit of running into burning buildings just 'cause, regardless of whether or not people are in there, then you'd just be rash. If you never go into burning buildings no matter who is inside them, then you'd be cowardly. But because you were able to determine at a glance the need and engage in the appropriate act regardless of the possibility of harm to yourself, you were demonstrating a courageous act, and because you didn't need to evaluate before you went in, it's indicative of a courageous nature, which Aristotle believed to be virtuous.

Long story short, bully for you.

Amphetryon
2015-01-18, 04:47 PM
Ordinary modern guy, grew up in Texas suburbs, reasonably bright (grad student at the time, who went on to get his Ph.D. Currently holds several telecom patents.) Plays D&D & reads comics.

Sitting outside his apartment, and saw orange flickering lights. Ran down to the apartment building on fire, and saw a woman on crutches trying to get down the stairs. Ran up the stairs to help carry her down.

I was later asked why I decided to do it. I thought a moment, and replied, "I didn't decide. There was no decision to make."

The only reason I asked is that your list of people seemed to assume that each person in a moment of crisis stops to think about the risks and makes a considered judgment, and your conclusions were based on that assumption. But that's not my experience.

This fits with #5 on the list, as others indicated. If my list somehow implied that folks consciously went through a checklist to consider their motivations, I apologize for lack of clarity of intent.

goto124
2015-01-19, 07:11 AM
I read somewhere about a situation in which the PCs had lied to a black dragon and stolen its loot. Part of the problem is: the players had assumed the dragon was Evil, but the DM didn't take the same attitude. Are the PCs necessarily Evil, and how would something like this be resolved?

Seto
2015-01-19, 08:17 AM
I read somewhere about a situation in which the PCs had lied to a black dragon and stolen its loot. Part of the problem is: the players had assumed the dragon was Evil, but the DM didn't take the same attitude. Are the PCs necessarily Evil, and how would something like this be resolved?

First of all, the DM and the players should agree OOC on what the stance towards "always evil" and "usually evil" should be, and what the DM himself considers as Evil.
Secondly, this one act would never suffice to shift an alignment even if it was agreed that the Act is Evil.
Thirdly, I'd argue that there's really no difference between stealing from a Good Dragon or an Evil Dragon, since both of them sit on their gold and generally do not use it to further their Good or Evil goals. Stealing from a dragon is Neutral from a consequentialist point of view (and from that point of view stealing is often Neutral anyway, except in some situations, for example when it leads to a family starving (Evil) or prevents a villain from using his possessions to harm people more efficiently (Good)). Now, is stealing in itself Evil or Neutral ? Is it Chaotic ? It's a conversation that we've had here time and again. My personal opinion is that it depends on why you do it and its foreseeable consequences, and in itself is thus Neutral (with Chaotic leanings in most cases). But ultimately that's up to the DM and he should make clear to the players what his position is (especially if there're alignment-restricted classes among PCs), so back to my first point.

Besides, I doubt a general thread devoted to alignment questions will work, because these tend to lead to pages of people arguing, followed by side-tracking philosophical questions, which is a fascinating thing to read and thrilling to participate in, but pretty much requires a whole topic.