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Talakeal
2015-05-09, 05:33 PM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.

Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way.

Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence? For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?

BWR
2015-05-09, 06:04 PM
1. It's no worse than saying becoming undead automatically makes you an NPC. The DM is being straight with you from the beginning that evil PCs aren't acceptable and this will have consequences. As long as the DM tells you before the game starts what s/he wants from it and how things will be handled, everything's fine. You can make your own decisions ahead of time if you want to play in it or not. Perfectly within his rights and the only legitimate complaint you can make is 'I don't want that'.

2. Evil. Evil is as evil does. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No question. Now, defining 'evil' is a more interesting question, but if you've first admitted what you are doing is evil...

3. Possibly. Evil generally requires some measure of intent, even good intent, but blatant disregard for the saftey of others or ignoring consequences or not bothering to think things through might, for some DMs, be an evil act. Check with your DM beforehand so you don't get any unfair surprises. In general, I would say negligence, even gross negligence, isn't a directly evil act unless you honestly don't care about possible consequences.

Cluedrew
2015-05-09, 06:40 PM
Well the GM, and the group as a whole, are allowed to make rules for their group. That being said if someone has to go this far the player and group are probably not compatible and parting ways would be a better solution. A single event is probably also to small to judge, although if it is ridiculously bad or follows a set of lesser but still unpleasant events then once might be enough.
If you mean uses necessary evil means to accomplish greater good I would say good, but they are standing at the beginning of a path that leads to evil even in this best case. Good characters can pull it off, but more often they don't and stop being good characters. It is easier in less extreme cases. I wouldn't call a prison guard evil just because he/she keeps people trapped on a piece of property. If there is prisoner abuse though...
If you are not doing anything to save someone, when it is within your power to do so, does it make a difference if you are a bystander or the killer? Same answer.

Keltest
2015-05-09, 06:49 PM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.

I would say yes, though its certainly better that theyre up front about it. Individual evil acts are not going to change your alignment, and there is plenty of room for neutral characters to poke into that end of the pool and still be basically heroic. I could see a consistent pattern of evil acts might result in the character becoming an antagonist, but a single one? That's uncalled for.


Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way. Neutral, probably, although even good characters can get away with it if they've truly exhausted all other options. They would inflict a penance on themselves, like Heracles did with his 12 labors, but they would cross that line if there was no alternative.


Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence? For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?

That's a bit of a murky area. I would say yes, if you used a civilian as bait and they got hurt, that would reflect poorly on your alignment unless they volunteered for it and were aware of the risks.

erikun
2015-05-09, 10:01 PM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.
It sounds like it could be an abuse of DM trust. After all, the players sitting around the table have to trust each other than they're all there to have a good time. If the DM starts saying "I will take away your character if I feel it appropriate," it is basically saying that the DM doesn't trust the players to act appropriately.

I think it would be fine if the DM had some pretty clear-cut rules about the situation. For example, if it was a very basic kick-in-the-door style of game, then the DM would be justified in saying that any party backstabbing, PKing, or stealing from party members would turn the character into a NPC under the DM's control. Assuming that is the game the players want, that is a perfectly fine.

However, outside that sort of a situation - that is, outside the DM stopping actions that the players don't want to see - it really isn't appropriate.


Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way.
If you are chopping up babies to feed the homeless, then yes, you are doing the good deed of feeding the homeless. But you are also chopping up babies as a result. The result of a good and an evil tend to balance out as evil, all things being equal.

Yes, there will be situations where doing some minor evil (stealing from the large treasury) for some large good (feeding the populace) averages out as a good deed overall. And there will be situations where some evil must be done in order to allow a good situation to happen - perhaps abandoning the town next to the demon horde you just summoned, in order to survive and have time to banish them back. However, in a lot of these situations, a good-aligned character will be looking for some sort of penance or atonement for their deed. After all, while they may have accomplished some sort of necessary good in their task, there was still some evil done by their hand in the process. "Good" could, perhaps, be seen as a desire to make up for past misdeeds, rather than just trying not to in the future.

(And yes, a character can take penance without being a Paladin/Cleric/etc. A soldier who takes the time to serve as guard duty in towns they visit, to make up for the one village lost to orc raids because of past negligence, would be a character taking penance for their past actions.)


Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence? For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?
The general answer is "no." However, that tends to assume that there was no responsibility from the character, or that the character did not cause the situation in some way. A heroic party that arrives at a village too late to stop it from being destroyed by an undead horde did not partake of an evil act; the undead were not caused by the party (hopefully). A senator who has taken money under-the-table from a necromancer cult which raised the undead horde would be an evil situation - the senator is not reasonably assumed to stop the horde themselves, but giving the necromancers the ability to do so does make them responsible. And with the example from above, if a soldier who was supposed to be defending or scouting against a dangerous enemy and instead went off and got drunk - thus letting the enemy through without warning and allowing a village to be destroyed - was a cause of its destruction and it was an evil act.

jaydubs
2015-05-09, 11:00 PM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.

No. It's the GM deciding to run a restrictive game. It's something that I'd talk to the GM about, and something I might leave a game over. But I wouldn't call it abusive.

To me, abusive means it's something the GM should basically never do. And since I can't find anything inherently wrong with running a "no evil" game, or to enforce a stated rule strictly, I don't find it abusive. Again, I personally wouldn't play in such a campaign.


Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way.

There's a difference between a character who uses evil means when he simply thinks it's the most effective solution, and a character who only uses evil means rarely or when there's no other choice. I'd call the former neutral, and the latter good.

A vigilante who frequently tortures people to protect his community, accepting the risk he'll harm innocents in the process because it seems like the most efficient solution, is neutral. Someone who kills an innocent, because he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that doing so is the only way to save many more lives, may still be good.


Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence? For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?

To me, yes. But only if the person in question has the capacity to understand the risk, but chooses to not take precautions. Someone (or something) too stupid to understand the risk is not evil.

For instance, say a man creates a highly explosive magical device. He leaves it in the middle of a busy street. He doesn't intend to hurt anyone, but he leaves it there because he's lazy. To me, that's an evil act.

A monkey finds a highly explosive magical device. He has no idea what it is. He leaves it in the middle of a busy street. Not evil, because he lacks the capacity to understand the risk.

Wardog
2015-05-10, 02:48 AM
1. It's no worse than saying becoming undead automatically makes you an NPC. The DM is being straight with you from the beginning that evil PCs aren't acceptable and this will have consequences. As long as the DM tells you before the game starts what s/he wants from it and how things will be handled, everything's fine. You can make your own decisions ahead of time if you want to play in it or not. Perfectly within his rights and the only legitimate complaint you can make is 'I don't want that'.


I'm not sure about that.

"Becoming undead" usually requires somthing significant happening to you, which you should be able to mitigate against. Also, fluff-wise, its justifiable in that becoming undead means you are no longer you any more. (You died, and then were turned into a monster).

In contrast, this isn't just a ban on evil players, its a ban on evil acts - with punishments that (as presented) don't make sense in terms of fluff.

What consititutes an "evil act" is - as a million alignment argumnets have shown - not something that everyone agrees on. But it is something that many people/characters may end up commiting, due to desparation, misunderstanding, or the DM having a different idea of what constitutes "evil". Furtehrmore, its is something that would realistically have realistic consequences (e.g. having police/guards/bountyhunters sent after you, people avoiding you, losing powers (if you are a Paladin), etc. And those are all things that someone would have to deal with (seek forgiveness / stand trial / avoid capture) in ways that could make for an interesting game or story. "You cease to exist" or "you no longer have control of your character" do not.


And based on Talakeal's previous posts, I dread to think what his DM would class as an "Evil act".

(Taking away a character could be acceptable in the case of disruptive players who want to murder all the NPCs everyone rather than playing the story as intended, but IMO its silly as a punishment for a single evil act. Especially as the former is punishing the player for the player being a jerk, while the latter is punishing the player for the character doing something wrong).

Sith_Happens
2015-05-10, 04:06 AM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.

Yes and no, respectively. Seriously, that is a stupid, ***hole idea.


Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way.

Evil. Alignment, for the most part, is about what you do, not why you do it.


Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence?

Definitely, though "can" does not mean "always."


For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?

In general, it depends upon how reckless they were being and how much foresight they could reasonably have been expected to have. In these specific examples, yes.

Yora
2015-05-10, 05:46 AM
Since an evil act is whatever the GM decides it is, it really sounds like the GM simply wants everyone to play like he wants them to. Doesn't really sound like a campaign worth playing.

goto124
2015-05-10, 06:48 AM
How is this different from the many normal DMs who do good-only campaigns? Isn't a ban on evil a pretty common thing?

How well does the DM know his/her players, and vice versa? Strangers, friends, somewhere in between? It would be understandable in the case of strangers.

Talakeal, what do you know about this DM?

Keltest
2015-05-10, 06:50 AM
How is this different from the many normal DMs who do good-only campaigns? Isn't a ban on evil a pretty common thing?

How well does the DM know his/her players, and vice versa? Strangers, friends, somewhere in between? It would be understandable in the case of strangers.

Talakeal, what do you know about this DM?

most DMs that I know of will not just yank your character sheet away from when whenever you d vaguely defined "evil" act. A ban on evil characters is one thing, but lots of players will occasionally delve into the darkness a little bit, especially if theyre playing Neutral characters, for one reason or another.

Hawkstar
2015-05-10, 08:19 AM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.It depends on where he's coming from, really. With a sane DM, I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and take it as intent of 'I am not interested in running a game of Bastards". Hopefully, grey/questionable actions are exempt. (Of course, I'd ask "Is torching 10-year-old orphans willing, able, and trying to kill us evil? Because that's something that actually came up in one of my games - we were attacked by an armed gang of street rats, and my Blaster Sorcerer does not have a 'stun' setting)

However, this is your DM and gaming group, and I think the actual answer is "The only rules are 'Do you accept the insanity that's been ordained for you to suffer at all times, or do you try to get out?"


Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way.Neutral at worst. The Grey Guard in D&D 3.5 is all about doing this, and must maintain a Lawful Good alignment. Some people get overworked up about Champions of Ruin's inclusion of "Well-intentioned Extremist" headline as 'Type of Evil Hero" (Just as they get worked up over "Lying" being a headline in "Evil Acts"), but the actual text of that sourcebook indicates that they're only truly Evil if the acts don't Balance Out in some manner. They are, however, barred from being "Exalted Good", though.


Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence? For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?Very possibly the bait one, especially putting unwilling lives at risk by using them as bait.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-10, 09:41 AM
Why do I get the feeling this DM has played through a campaign where the paladin tried to force themselves onto people after baby murdering or the rogue tried to justify why killing their entire party was well within their rights as a chaotic neutral person? I really wonder if the reaction is one of a DM being too controlling, or a DM having a knee-jerk reaction to some really questionable interpretations of alignment?

I must also agree to speak with the DM. Ask them what extent the evil act must be. If they are talking about taking characters for slaughtering people to make a summoning circle to bring Pazuzu into the world, okay, maybe they just need to have some time to relax. If things like intimidation, theft or lying are all on the table, I'd bail as fast as my pudgy legs could take me as none of those are strictly speaking, evil in the right circumstance.

I would also try to convince him that it is not fun for anyone to have this dangling over their head, that the rule should be discussion, not outright taking the character away. Maybe the evil act can be worked into the story, depending on why and what is done. Maybe it could be done without being too disruptive to the group's enjoyment.

I'd also ask the why of the rule, to better understand the guy. Maybe it is to stop random murderhoboing for all we know and the guy got worked up and said something a little silly.

goto124
2015-05-10, 09:41 AM
Meanwhile, we'll hope that Talakeal has a sane DM.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-10, 09:49 AM
Goodness knows that I've made similar threats to players after they refuse to understand why insulting people doesn't get them on your side or have groped powerful fey. I think I did actually make a similar threat after a player indicated that they wanted to destroy the souls of their family.

Nightcanon
2015-05-10, 10:03 AM
Depends a bit on the nature of the campaign, I think. If it's old school Team Good vs Team Evil and you're constantly fighting against an Evil enemy that fights to the death, and he's just wanting to rule out PvP or attacks on NPCs when you head back to town to heal and resupply that's one thing; if every orc horde you fight has an attached baggage train composed of mourning women and orc children who run up to you and kick your shins because "you murdered my daddy, you speciesist" and every fight against human cultists ends with half of them throwing down weapons and begging for mercy when you're in a race with the BBEG and don't have time to deal with prisoners according to the Silverymoon Convention then that's another.

Talakeal
2015-05-10, 10:50 AM
Meanwhile, we'll hope that Talakeal has a sane DM.

Your going to be hoping a long time for that one :smalltongue:

Maglubiyet
2015-05-10, 10:56 AM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers?

Taking away a character is an evil act. Any GM who does this is considered a Fallen GM and should have his campaign taken over by a Good or Neutral player. Evil GM'ing is strictly forbidden in RAI.

The GM can resume his campaign if he completes a quest to Atone for his evil deeds -- perhaps sending him out to get pizza or something.

D+1
2015-05-10, 11:09 AM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.
It's not an abuse of DM powers because no version of the game gives the DM that power in the first place. They can kill PC's, they can temporarily take control of their actions through spell effects, or curses like lycanthropy, or they can turn them into NPC's such as perhaps by becoming a vampire. But not because they did something evil. This is a power the DM has given to himself. It is abusive - especially without A LOT of explanation to players WHY doing something evil should mean they lose their PC, or whether they could ever get their PC back, or most important of all - EXACTLY what does the DM consider to be evil and does the DM think he gets to spring this on players without any warning, or how much warning does he intend to give?

95% of the time (or more) I would think that this is not even going to EVER be an issue that comes up with reasonable players. They're not generally interested in trying to do evil and aren't likely to stumble into deeds so questionable that they might be evil. But this is a HUGE RED FLAG that the DM has a really gigantic issue with something and he's going to be a colossal jerk about it to make it not happen. This is a game-breaker. Not just because of this one rule but because it indicates that the DM thinks that he gets to be an all-controlling wanker who always gets his way and never even has to think of alternative points of view. You need to talk to the DM IMMEDIATELY and get to the bottom of this - and, of course tell him that he DOES NOT get to take away your PC without better justification than that.


Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way.
Doing evil IS evil. "The ends justifies any means," is an EXCUSE to be evil - even if your supposed goal is making things better. It's a convenience to just do something awful because you know it's easy and will work. See the movie Serenity and the character of "The Operative". He admits he's a monster who does horrible things, but he is convinced that it's good and necessary in order for other people to live in a perfect world. But that means he does EVIL things and therefore IS EVIL. He simply bought into the convenient excuse that the ends justifies the means; even when the means involves killing innocent people, torturing them, and following the orders of evil men, because it will SUPPOSEDLY lead to a better world that makes it okay. It doesn't.


Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence? For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?
No it would be generally classified as a very chaotic act. The goal is not to get the innocent killed. That would be evil. But putting them at risk to their very lives as a matter of course is VERY close to it. It is not the sort of thing done by good-aligned and lawful-aligned characters. Doing it regularly means lawful characters become neutral at best and more likely chaotic, and good characters become neutral at best. But it also matters how the characters feel about the results of their actions. If you knowingly, and willingly put innocent people in that position and DON'T CARE if they get hurt or killed as a result, that's evil.

Now there's also such a thing as making HONEST mistakes. Good characters are allowed to commit errors. Being good doesn't mean you're perfect - it means you TRY TO BE; that you WANT to be and do better. Getting innocent people hurt and killed because you were stupid, or simply made a mistake, or otherwise merely failed at something, that doesn't make the character evil. If you're lawful and good you feel bad about being dumb, incompetent or unlucky, and you try not to let it happen again. If you're neutral you say that those are just the breaks and you don't feel too bad because it wasn't really your fault. If you're evil then you're fine with the outcome; lawful evil and it was probably your plan all along; chaotic evil and you really enjoy how amusingly cruel the universe can be and wouldn't it be fun to see that again?

Talakeal
2015-05-10, 01:04 PM
Doing evil IS evil. "The ends justifies any means," is an EXCUSE to be evil - even if your supposed goal is making things better. It's a convenience to just do something awful because you know it's easy and will work. See the movie Serenity and the character of "The Operative". He admits he's a monster who does horrible things, but he is convinced that it's good and necessary in order for other people to live in a perfect world. But that means he does EVIL things and therefore IS EVIL. He simply bought into the convenient excuse that the ends justifies the means; even when the means involves killing innocent people, torturing them, and following the orders of evil men, because it will SUPPOSEDLY lead to a better world that makes it okay. It doesn't.


First, thank you for your response. It is well thought out and insightful.

But, I think you are making a lot of assumptions and using loaded language.

For example, you assume that he is using "convenient excuses that will supposedly lead to a better world."

What if it was making "Very difficult and regrettable sacrifices that will certainly lead to a better world."

This gets even more difficulty in a game like D&D which labels things objectively evil regardless of context.

Using a tranquilizer dart on a rampaging animal to protect people without killing the animal is evil. Stabbing the BBEG with his own unholy sword is evil. Summoning a fiendish animal to pull people from a burning building is evil. Animating the corpse of a knight who failed in his duty and giving him one last chance to protect his charge when all other defenses have failed is evil. Using deathwatch after an explosion to see who to heal first is evil. Allying the the Tanari to stop the Baatezu from taking over the world because it would be mutually beneficial for both mortals and Tanari to not give the Baatezu another foothold is evil. And so on...

This is without even getting into questions of when it is ok to kill someone. Whether or not Batman is complicit in the Joker's crimes because he refuses to put him down for good is an old debate, and I don't think there is a clearly right or wrong answer. It is even weirder in D&D by RAW, because killing is sometimes evil, and other times it is instead evil to show mercy.

Also, sometimes it isn't about "easy" but about "risky". For example, say there is someone who is extremely dangerous. Maybe they carry a deadly disease, or a curse, or a dark secret, or have uncontrollable powers like the child in "It's a Good Life". Just killing them would be easy, sure. And it would also be evil. But, in this scenario, imagine the risk. The harder road is likely to fail, and the consequences of failure are, in this case, so much worse than those of taking the easy way out, that it would be flat out foolish to try, regardless of morality.


To use another example, in a recent game we had a fairly traditional LoTR style plot to use a Macguffin to kill the BBEG while he is weakened because we have no chance of defeating him at full power. My character refused, as she declared that it was cowardly and dishonorable and tantamount to murder, and that she was a virtuous warrior, not a craven assassin. Now, in this case I certainly not looking for an excuse to take the easy way out; but I am being stupid and reckless for the sake of my own pride, and being willing to put millions of innocent lives at risk just to ease my pride and conscience does not seem to be the "right" answer.

Cluedrew
2015-05-10, 01:10 PM
Meanwhile, we'll hope that Talakeal has a sane DM.I laughed when I read this... which makes me feel sorry for Talakeal.

... Any GM who does this is considered a Fallen GM and should have his campaign taken over by a Good or Neutral player. ...And this one made me grin.


"The ends justifies any means,"With the word any yes it does become something twisted. I disagree that "the ends justifies the means" is always an excuse for every pair of ends and means. Sometimes the good really does out weigh the bad and if there is a lack of other options that are less evil then it can be justified. Can be.

Banjoman42
2015-05-10, 01:19 PM
Is your DM secretly Miko, by chance?:miko::miko:
That's DM abuse if I've ever seen it.
As for the second question, Think of it this way. The Lawful evil character believes that by uniting everyone he can create a better world. This is certainly a decent goal, but the LE is willing to a) Kill enemies of the state b) go to war with neighboring kingdoms and c) assassinate political enemies, all to achieve this goal. This makes the goal very not worth it, and just makes everything worse.
There is some wonky logic behind some evil acts (such as tranquilizer poison and summoning controllable fiends being evil), but undead are evil usually because the soul of the person of is twisted in the creation process.

BWR
2015-05-10, 05:09 PM
First, thank you for your response. It is well thought out and insightful.

But, I think you are making a lot of assumptions and using loaded language.

For example, you assume that he is using "convenient excuses that will supposedly lead to a better world."

What if it was making "Very difficult and regrettable sacrifices that will certainly lead to a better world."

This gets even more difficulty in a game like D&D which labels things objectively evil regardless of context.


You were the one who stated that you would be using evil actions - how is using your own admission 'loaded language'?
In most D&D worlds and by default (which is the only thing we can argue based on because we don't know how your DM will handle things) some actions are inherently evil and you are doing something evil no matter what excuse you use. Never mind greater good arguments or "it was the only thing I could do" it's evil and what you consider necessity does not alter that. The very fact that you bring up these sorts of arguments indicates that your characters will fall into the 'road to Hell is paved with good intentions' trap. Context doesn't matter in the vast majority of cases. Doing evil is doing evil.


Using a tranquilizer dart on a rampaging animal to protect people without killing the animal is evil.
huh? Technically it's "Using poison that deals ability damage is an evil act because it causes undue suffering in the process of incapacitating or killing the opponent. The only acceptable poison for good characters to use is the oil of taggit whichc does no damage but causes unconsciousness" BoED p. 34.
So, No, poisons are not inherently evil, it is causing undue suffering that is.



Stabbing the BBEG with his own unholy sword is evil.
I don't believe wielding an evil weapon is actually enough to become evil unless you make a habit of it or use evil powers. At least, I cannot find anywhere that says doing this is an evil act.



Summoning a fiendish animal to pull people from a burning building is evil. .
Again you fall prey to 'good intentions'. It doesn't matter what the goal is, you are performing an evil act and increasing the general evilness in the multiverse.



Animating the corpse of a knight who failed in his duty and giving him one last chance to protect his charge when all other defenses have failed is evil.
Yup. You are increasing the evil in the multiverse by creating a foul mockery of life. 'good intentions'. Now, animating the dead was not a per def evil act in 2e, so times have changed. You may want to find out if your DM considers all undead spawn of evil by nature or if they can be neutral or even good.



Using deathwatch after an explosion to see who to heal first is evil..
I agree that one is stupid. PF fixed it as did many house rules. Still, if you want to go by the RAW...
Ask your DM.



Allying the the Tanari to stop the Baatezu from taking over the world because it would be mutually beneficial for both mortals and Tanari to not give the Baatezu another foothold is evil. And so on...
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Allying with fiends is never a good idea, no matter how well your immediate goals my align. Frankly, you're effing stupid if you go along with them without expecting to get screwed over. 'Good intentions'.



This is without even getting into questions of when it is ok to kill someone. Whether or not Batman is complicit in the Joker's crimes because he refuses to put him down for good is an old debate, and I don't think there is a clearly right or wrong answer. It is even weirder in D&D by RAW, because killing is sometimes evil, and other times it is instead evil to show mercy.
.

D&D operates on the idea that the morality of killing is basically neutral, with any tip either side depending on the motive and the nature of the victim (and possibly the method). Killing the invading horder of fiends is a good act. Killing the innocent kids in the Happy Puppy and Kitten Orphanage is an evil act. Mercy is nice but sometimes it just doesn't work out well for people. Mercy is one of those 'generally good' things that doesn't always work.



Also, sometimes it isn't about "easy" but about "risky". For example, say there is someone who is extremely dangerous. Maybe they carry a deadly disease, or a curse, or a dark secret, or have uncontrollable powers like the child in "It's a Good Life". Just killing them would be easy, sure. And it would also be evil. But, in this scenario, imagine the risk. The harder road is likely to fail, and the consequences of failure are, in this case, so much worse than those of taking the easy way out, that it would be flat out foolish to try, regardless of morality.
Again, 'good intentions' and 'greater good'. I suppose you could argue that these are neutral acts rather than evil, what with self-defense, but it really depends on the situation. Still, let's assume it's an evil act. Sometimes it seems like there are no right choices but that's part of being Good. It isn't always easy, it isn't always nice or even possible to always be good. It's an ideal to strive towards. Evil is easy. Good is hard. True Good heroes are about making the hard choices and actually pulling off being better than average people and not just whine about 'it was so difficult to do it another way'.



To use another example, in a recent game we had a fairly traditional LoTR style plot to use a Macguffin to kill the BBEG while he is weakened because we have no chance of defeating him at full power. My character refused, as she declared that it was cowardly and dishonorable and tantamount to murder, and that she was a virtuous warrior, not a craven assassin. Now, in this case I certainly not looking for an excuse to take the easy way out; but I am being stupid and reckless for the sake of my own pride, and being willing to put millions of innocent lives at risk just to ease my pride and conscience does not seem to be the "right" answer.
Depends on the alignment system you have. If the alignment system does say that stealing is always wrong, if killing people at less than full power is wrong, then you did the right thing. you are not responsible for the actions of the enemy, however heinous. If the alignment system says that stealing is ok, at least in this situation, and killing weakened enemies is ok, then you were prideful and possibly evil.

This is the problem I've noticed with a lot if people: they get too focused on their own personal feelings on morality that they can't seem to grasp that an artificial morality for a game might treat things a bit differently. You don't have to think the game morality as acceptable IRL. You don't even have to like it for the game world, but once it has been established as valid for the game, complainints are pointless.

@Wardog.
I don't really see how becoming undead after being killed by undead is any easier to mitigate than performing an evil act in this case, since you can simply ask the DM "Is X evil?". If the DM refuses to answer then he's most likely being an ******** out to 'get' the players. If the DM answers questions about good vs. evil in the game so the players and PCs know what to do, it's fine. If the DM refuses to answer but was upfront about refusal to answer before the game starts, then the players have no one to blame but themselves.

Cealocanth
2015-05-10, 05:36 PM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.

Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way.

Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence? For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?

1. This isn't actually an abuse of power, technically, but you sh(ould ask the GM if he has a good reason for it. In some campaign settings there may be some sort of all-encompassing evil power that inevitably controls all evil characters in the world, and if a player turns out to be evil then he is under GM control. If there is a legitimate, story-driven reason for it, then it's really no different than taking control of a character after he's willingly allowed himself to be possessed by a demon or something. Judging by the way that this post is written, the reason given may be "because I'm the GM and I don't want any evil characters in my game," but there could be a more legitimate reason behind it. Granted, it is a poor game design choice, but that's not really the question here.

2. Evil. In most games (and in real life, to a certain extent), everyone is evil until proven good. Without going into IRL religion too far, one can compare the divine planes of the D&D universe. Why are there so many more damned souls in the 9 Hells (mostly as those soul-worm things in 4e lore) than souls in the 7 Heavens? It's because in Western tradition, people are inherently evil and must to be taught to be good. It doesn't matter what your goals are, if you commit evil in the process of doing so, then you're considered evil. To take a few examples from the clearest examples of the good and evil dichotomy in modern culture - super heroes and villains -: Mr. Freeze is evil because he is willing to steal and kill in the good attempt to save his wife, Nora. The Joker is evil because he is willing to murder, torture, steal, kill, and commit even further vile acts even though he works toward what he sees as a better society. Lex Luthor is evil because he lacks any sanctity for human life even though his overarching goals is to create an independent and prosperous humanity. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" - Common Proverb

3. Yes and no. Alignment is about choice, not about outcome. If a hero knows that a town of innocent civilians will be destroyed by rampaging undead without his help, and instead chooses to ignore that and continue frolicking at the bar, then that choice to do nothing is an evil act. If a hero is busy frolicking at a bar and somewhere on the other side of the world a family he had never met nor heard of dies of starvation, then its not evil because he couldn't have known and by extension done anything about it. The problem where this, and the alignment system as a whole, is what is considered an evil act if you have to choose the lesser of two evils. Say a player in your campaign setting is put in a situation where the rest of the party is being killed in a room filled with poison gas, but at the same time, two-hundred villagers are suffocating by the same gas in a different room. Said player has a choice to divert the flow of gas and kill one of the two chambers faster, but save another. Technically either choice would be evil in the alignment system, but this is a situation where there exists no 'good' choice to make. Even in this case, though, inaction is still more evil than the other two choices because it is the choice to remove burden of choice off of the player and kill everyone else.

In other words, good and evil are a highly nuanced dichotomy that, no matter how hard one may try, cannot be bound together into a succinct 9 category alignment system. Evil stretches from as far as "racial genocide" to "ignoring a homeless person". Good stretches as far from "putting a penny in the 'give a penny jar" to "devoted entire life to curing cancer." There are people who have rightly spent their entire lives contemplating this issue, and we, as a society, haven't really made much progress in this manner in the thousands of years we have been trying to solve it.

Hawkstar
2015-05-10, 07:07 PM
You were the one who stated that you would be using evil actions - how is using your own admission 'loaded language'?
In most D&D worlds and by default (which is the only thing we can argue based on because we don't know how your DM will handle things) some actions are inherently evil and you are doing something evil no matter what excuse you use. Never mind greater good arguments or "it was the only thing I could do" it's evil and what you consider necessity does not alter that. The very fact that you bring up these sorts of arguments indicates that your characters will fall into the 'road to Hell is paved with good intentions' trap. Context doesn't matter in the vast majority of cases. Doing evil is doing evil.


huh? Technically it's "Using poison that deals ability damage is an evil act because it causes undue suffering in the process of incapacitating or killing the opponent. The only acceptable poison for good characters to use is the oil of taggit whichc does no damage but causes unconsciousness" BoED p. 34.
So, No, poisons are not inherently evil, it is causing undue suffering that is.But what makes the suffering "Undue"? Sometimes, the suffering is necessary, such as strength- or dex-draining someone to weaken them into a point of complicency, or Int-damaging a mage to keep them from casting for a long while, or Con-damaging someone to kill them quickly.


Again you fall prey to 'good intentions'. It doesn't matter what the goal is, you are performing an evil act and increasing the general evilness in the multiverse.

Yup. You are increasing the evil in the multiverse by creating a foul mockery of life. 'good intentions'. Now, animating the dead was not a per def evil act in 2e, so times have changed. You may want to find out if your DM considers all undead spawn of evil by nature or if they can be neutral or even good.You're also increasing the tangible Good in the world through your actions as well - by rescuing people, you restore trust, hope, and other beneficial things, which feed into raising the Cosmic Good of the world. The existence of the cosmic levels of Good and Evil objectively allow for Ends to Justify the means - if an action increases the amount of Cosmic Good in the universe far more than the amount of Cosmic Evil in the universe, it is unequivocally a Good act (But it bars you from Exalted status).

Dread Necromancers can be Nonevil by RAW and RAI, meaning not all manipulation of Negative Energy forces you to be Evil.
By RAW and RAI Neutral Clerics can also cast Evil spells and channel Negative Energy.
Malconvokers channel demons, and are Good by RAW.

Cluedrew
2015-05-10, 08:04 PM
To explain, most of the people talked about don't actually use evil means to accomplish good. They use evil means to accomplish evil (or nothing) with internal justification. That is they are fooling themselves that this will work, or are just insane. A good rule of thumb is if the person is enjoying it, they are probably evil, if it makes them uncomfortable or regretful every time, they are probably good.

Talakeal
2015-05-10, 08:24 PM
stuff.

I didn't say the term "evil" was loaded. I was more talking about terms like "excuses" "easy way out" and "supposed".

My problem is that when I read the alignment sections of the DMG the descriptions of my character always end up "good" yet my character's actions always peg them as "evil". It leaves me very confused.

Also, a lot of the things that are labeled as "always evil" despite being beneficial makes no sense. Summoning a demon and forcing him to do good deeds for 24 hours (which also has the effect of stopping him from doing whatever evil he would normally do in those 24) is labeled as an always evil action.

In this case, I presume, the universe will, somehow, karmic lash out and cause senseless evil and suffering in the world. That is what the BoED and BoVD imply, but if you actually look at it, it makes no sense. Why do good actions not have the same effect? Why do the demons themselves, knowing that doing "evil deeds" makes them stronger actually pursue their goals rather than sitting around animating zombies, summoning one another, and coating their weapons with poison? It paints the picture of a cosmos that is totally out of balance and in which human free will is more or less meaningless as the consequences are never natural and there is a pre ordained right and wrong answer to every dilemma.

And of course, the fact that an act is always as evil as its worst component means you have an innately unjust cosmos where everyone is doomed. For example: Summon a demon to do a good deed = evil. Summon an angel to do an evil deed = evil. Evil acts beget more evil. Therefore this cosmos was damned from the get go and the D&D cosmology is even bleaker than that of Warhammer.


The allying with a demon example is actually pulled from a campaign I ran. The players were attempting to stop a devilish invasion that would plunge the entire world under Baatezu control. The players came across a Marilith that had been bound to service by an evil wizard. They killed the wizard, and rather than attacking them the Marilith offered to help the party. She wasn't doing this to be nice, she was doing it because it was in her best interests as her primary goal was to win the blood war and the baatezu conquering an influential prime material world and getting access to all the magic and souls and other resources that represented would be a major boon to them.
The players, though, refused her service and killed her, citing the BoED's prohibition against good characters working with fiends.
I was ok with that, as that was there decision and I let my players make their own moral choices.

But I am wondering, what would you have done if you were running that scenario?

Would you have simply had the Marilith be too caught up in her CE nature to help the players even when it is in her own best interest? Betraying them at a crucial moment despite the fact that doing so gains her nothing and indeed could cost her everything?
Or, would you simply have the universal "anti-karma" force say "Whelp, you saved the world, but you did it using an evil ally, so we can't let that have positive consequences. We are going to alter the universal fabric of good and evil so that the devils can take over another world of equal value without a fight!"

Maglubiyet
2015-05-10, 09:09 PM
But I am wondering, what would you have done if you were running that scenario?

Would you have simply had the Marilith be too caught up in her CE nature to help the players even when it is in her own best interest? Betraying them at a crucial moment despite the fact that doing so gains her nothing and indeed could cost her everything?
Or, would you simply have the universal "anti-karma" force say "Whelp, you saved the world, but you did it using an evil ally, so we can't let that have positive consequences. We are going to alter the universal fabric of good and evil so that the devils can take over another world of equal value without a fight!"

I think a demon just might be unpredictable enough to sabotage a mission when the stakes are "merely" a world. At the very least it would probably cause some heartache along the way that the PC's would be responsible for.

If, on the other hand, the players were presented with a potential alliance with a devil to halt a demonic invasion, that might be harder to pass up.

The universal karma question is irrelevant from an individual's perspective.

Cluedrew
2015-05-10, 09:11 PM
But I am wondering, what would you have done if you were running that scenario?Probably what you did, let the characters make a decision.

Personally, although I like the alignment system {Gasp} I do feel that its currant form is a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. I use a "refurbished" alignment system myself, and I stripped out most of the absolute statements. Yes poison is not as good or honorable as a straight up duel, but if no one can match the Black Knight of Slaughter in combat, it is better than letting her roam free.

So in this example teaming up with the Marilith would only have the cost of having a devil on your side. Who might fight with you to the end but would probably be a lot less concerned about civilian casualties and be constantly on the lookout for things she can do for her and her side.

In short, things should be labelled evil because they are amoral, not the other way around.

zinycor
2015-05-10, 09:14 PM
1: It's totally fine if this os known before hand by all players and n the game there aren't actual temptations for the players to do evil acts, with this I mean hat there will not be chances to ally with the evil people or that any NPC will suggest making a deal or soemthing like that.

This kind of scenario works nicely if you are working on an existing module, where you can anticipate how the NPCs will react and every player knows thaat doing blatantly evil acts (Such as burning the town, or betraying the party) would just slow the game.

If your game is centered about moral choices then it's absolutely idiotic to have evil forbiden

2: Evil, though I will discuss with the player before hand what are the acts that I find that are blatantly evil before hand. Example: If I think summoning devils into the material plane is innerently evil, it's my duty to mke the player know so.

3: They don't become evil through real negligence, that means they don't become evil if they truly didn't expect that certains actions would result badly. If the characters use civilians as bait, then that's evil.

Talakeal
2015-05-10, 10:16 PM
The universal karma question is irrelevant from an individual's perspective.

Although I personally agree with you, the BoED does not seem to share this opinion.

To quote:

"Some good characters might view a situation where an evil act is required to avert a catastrophic evil as a form of martyrdom: "I can save a thousand innocent lives by sacrificing my purity." For some, that is a sacrifice worth making, just as they would not hesitate to sacrifice their lives for the same cause. After all, it would simply be selfish to let innocents die so a character can hang on to her exalted feats.
Unfortunately, this view is ultimately misguided. This line of thinking treats the purity of the good character's soul as a commodity that she can just give up or sacrifice like any other possession. In fact, when an otherwise good character decides to commit an evil act, the effects are larger than the individual character. What the character sees as a personal sacrifice is actually a shift in the universal balance of power between good and evil, in evil's favor. The consequences of that single evil act, no matter how small, extend far beyond the single act and involve a loss to more than just the character doing the deed. Thus it is not a personal sacrifice, but a concession to evil, and thus unconscionable."

So, the book takes a very clear stand on this issue. What is DOES NOT do, however, is explain what the actual consequences of such a "cosmic shift in the balance of good and evil" actually means and how such a shift is a worse consequence than, say, letting an entire mortal world fall under the sway of Asmodeus, or look at what this idea of "evil always winning out in the end" means for the setting as a whole.

Mr Beer
2015-05-10, 10:28 PM
Seems unduly restrictive to me but more information is required. If this is as a result of a traumatised GM not wanting another game where one of the players gets off on torture-porn descriptions of exactly what they do with POWs, fine. If the GM is going to confiscate your character sheet because of some Batman style vigilantism, it's not OK. So it depends.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-10, 10:34 PM
Although I personally agree with you, the BoED definitely does not share this opinion...

Yeah, I get it, but it's still "off-camera" action. For the purposes of the game, causing an infinitesimal shift in alignment of the cosmos is about as interesting as causing a few more daisies to grow on a battlefield because a PC's corpse fertilized it. Yes, it's a direct consequence, but ultimately irrelevant unless your campaign takes very careful stock of the balance between Good and Evil for some reason.

McStabbington
2015-05-10, 11:52 PM
Yeah, I get it, but it's still "off-camera" action. For the purposes of the game, causing an infinitesimal shift in alignment of the cosmos is about as interesting as causing a few more daisies to grow on a battlefield because a PC's corpse fertilized it. Yes, it's a direct consequence, but ultimately irrelevant unless your campaign takes very careful stock of the balance between Good and Evil for some reason.

On the contrary, it is something that plays out at the very heart of your character, because the central conceit of "greater good" is that it allows you to ignore and rationalize the fact that you are still doing evil. The book's point is that if the DM actually takes concepts like good and evil seriously, then his players do not get to absolve themselves of the consequences of their actions no matter what their rationalizations. Killing a single innocent child to save the multiverse will very likely serve the greater good. It may even be necessary if there was absolutely no other way to do the job.

But it was still evil. It was still the murder of an innocent. And no matter how necessary it was or how much good ultimately good comes out of it, that does not change the evil action which generated it. And the party that does such an action should suffer the consequences, whether in the form of changed alignments or falling from your position as a paladin if you were one.

Alberic Strein
2015-05-11, 01:16 AM
As noted, we first need to make a distinction between evil characters and evil acts.

Dealing with a devil, killing one uppity archangel (or D&D equivalent), looting the temple of a good-aligned god or straight up opting to torch a village plagued by an unknown illness to avoid it spreading are all evil acts. To that we can add more pragmatic acts. Torturing someone for information, using poison or other "dirty" means of fighting, like assassination infecting the fort's water supply with a disease, etc...

Adventurers, even if they are not baby devouring monsters, can decide to opt for such acts to deal with the opposition. Also, adventurers are reckless and usually don't think things through. I've had, for example, one group start a fire in the stables of a manor to give their rogue a sufficient diversion to get in. Fire spread, innocent people died. Evil act. It was a one-time things and never did it again, even though they are closer to "true neutral" than to "good" nowadays.

Those are evil acts. PCs who do that are Evil PCs. Or are they? When a book includes information about alignments, the part on the "evil alignments" can be summed into "21 reasons why it's perfectly alright to slaughter them". evil PCs, according to the Player Handbook, are greedy, egoistical and devoid of the smallest quality.

When a DM skims through the alignments, it's quite logical for him to say "nope, don't want THOSE in my group".

Of course, everything is not so simple. We've had countless discussions about alignments, what is considered a "good" aligned PC, what is an "evil" one and it pretty much means many different things for most people. Personally I like the good/evil axis of my PCs to be designed by how far they can go before feeling that they went too far and repent, while not barring them from having any noble thought, action, or else.

Going back to Talakeal's DM, I like that he is upfront about it, but it's either slightly... Well, insane ("You let that child die, give me your character sheet! The rogue, you are plagued by all those treasures you sold! Wait, you took an elderly woman's medication, give me your character sheet! Forget it! You're all paladins now!") as it's pulling out the big sticks for, well, adventurers being adventurers, reckless and morally questionable. Or a very, very, very strong way to control the characters ("Well, you CAN do that, if you want to lose your character. Well, you CAN ignore that, if you want to lose your character). Or he was completely traumatised by something and is bringing a LOT of personal baggage to the game. So yeah, this is not a good omen for games to come.

For Talakeal's second question: It's personal, but while doing evil is evil, a not-evil character committing evil deeds can be caracterized by overpowering regrets, troubled sleep, the inability to cope with what he has done and the fear of doing it again. Not just not wanting to do it again, but the terror of doing an evil act again, of becoming THAT kind of person. Basically, if the Player takes a lot of time and dedication to represent how the evil acts his character has done go against everything he stands for and believes in, and how hard he is trying to repent, then his character is not evil. Otherwise, he is.

For the third question: Long story short, yup. But adventurers will be adventurers, if being reckless with people's lives is evil enough for your character to turn into a baby eating raving maniac and have the DM yank the character sheet away from you, then there probably is an issue. It's one of the things that are not always enforced, and, I think, for good reason.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-11, 04:33 AM
On the contrary, it is something that plays out at the very heart of your character, because the central conceit of "greater good" is that it allows you to ignore and rationalize the fact that you are still doing evil. The book's point is that if the DM actually takes concepts like good and evil seriously, then his players do not get to absolve themselves of the consequences of their actions no matter what their rationalizations. Killing a single innocent child to save the multiverse will very likely serve the greater good. It may even be necessary if there was absolutely no other way to do the job.

But it was still evil. It was still the murder of an innocent. And no matter how necessary it was or how much good ultimately good comes out of it, that does not change the evil action which generated it. And the party that does such an action should suffer the consequences, whether in the form of changed alignments or falling from your position as a paladin if you were one.

Which is why I don't bother with alignments very much. Giving your characters a Sophie's Choice that forces them to fall is a cheap shot. In the real world, choosing between the lesser of two evils is called "being responsible", not being evil.

Keltest
2015-05-11, 05:16 AM
I would just like to point out for a moment that the BoED is, in the opinion of myself and others, very badly written. For precisely the points you raise, oddly enough.

Hawkstar
2015-05-11, 07:18 AM
So, the book takes a very clear stand on this issue. What is DOES NOT do, however, is explain what the actual consequences of such a "cosmic shift in the balance of good and evil" actually means and how such a shift is a worse consequence than, say, letting an entire mortal world fall under the sway of Asmodeus, or look at what this idea of "evil always winning out in the end" means for the setting as a whole.
I think it's a kind of awkward situation. It ultimately is making a compromise with Evil - if even the greatest of heroes engage in Evil some times, what does that say about the world? It damns the world in an "As long as there is evil" way.

Also - death is not evil. If a million innocents die at the hands of an evil person, the cosmic balance between Good and Evil is not immediately affected because those souls remain Good, and are merely reshuffled around a bit. However, things get bleaker when soul destruction gets involved.


Of course, the BoED and BoVD are two editions out of date when dealing with D&D in general instead of a specific edition, so....


Those are evil acts. PCs who do that are Evil PCs.

Not absolutely. They could also be neutral, if they also do similarly extreme Good acts.

Kantaki
2015-05-11, 07:33 AM
I agree that taking away an character for one Action is a bit extreme.

On the second Point: Yes I think that sometimes doing evil can be help the good cause.
So yes raising undead and using other black magic to fight an orc-army is less evil than allowing them to slaugther an peaceful villiage of innocent gnomes. Of course there are exeptions (familicide) but in many cases this should be at least neutral. Unless you take the evil Option because it is easier.

As for the third question knowingly allowing Innocents to suffer, be endangered or die as a result of your plans or actions, no matter how well intentioned is borderline evil.

Hawkstar
2015-05-11, 08:33 AM
I agree that taking away an character for one Action is a bit extreme.
Depending on what the DM considers an Evil action, a single one may be all it takes to completely ruin his or other's fun at the table.

Kantaki
2015-05-11, 09:39 AM
Depending on what the DM considers an Evil action, a single one may be all it takes to completely ruin his or other's fun at the table.

Well yes but anything extreme enough to justify those measures would turn the character evil anyway. And turning evil PC into NPC is something I can accept.

goto124
2015-05-11, 09:52 AM
Depending on what the DM considers an Evil action, a single one may be all it takes to completely ruin his or other's fun at the table.

And if that happens, some* OOC talk needs to be done, even with the turn-into-an-NPC rule which I believe is meant to make sure players learn their lesson for disruptive behavior.

* Depending on the player, kicking him out may be required... I don't know.

Hawkstar
2015-05-11, 01:06 PM
Well yes but anything extreme enough to justify those measures would turn the character evil anyway. And turning evil PC into NPC is something I can accept.Eh... not necessarily. It takes more than one act, no matter how vile, to turn someone from Nonevil to Evil. Alignment changes are, short of an Atonment spell, always gradual. However, it seems that in the DM's campaign world, starting down the slippery slope immediately launches you off of it.

Keltest
2015-05-11, 02:10 PM
Eh... not necessarily. It takes more than one act, no matter how vile, to turn someone from Nonevil to Evil. Alignment changes are, short of an Atonment spell, always gradual. However, it seems that in the DM's campaign world, starting down the slippery slope immediately launches you off of it.

While major actions are usually not enough to alter your alignment, if you go far enough it totally could. If Elminster were to one day wake up and decide that he wanted to set Waterdeep on fire, he could easily do so, and it would absolutely negatively affect his alignment.

Kantaki
2015-05-11, 02:20 PM
Eh... not necessarily. It takes more than one act, no matter how vile, to turn someone from Nonevil to Evil. Alignment changes are, short of an Atonment spell, always gradual. However, it seems that in the DM's campaign world, starting down the slippery slope immediately launches you off of it.

But there are a few things that turn someone imidiatly evil. A faustian Pact, slaying a entity of pure good, destroying/binding a soul, sending an innocent to hell or starting a genocide (see familicide) for example would turn even an saint evil.

Lord Torath
2015-05-11, 02:51 PM
Is this the same DM who says that not turning your magic items over to the local authority is an evil act? I'd say this is definitely a situation that requires a frank, OOC discussion about why exactly he wants this rule, and what he hopes to accomplish with it. And more importantly, why he thinks you players should put up with it.

Red Fel
2015-05-11, 03:11 PM
Is this the same DM who says that not turning your magic items over to the local authority is an evil act? I'd say this is definitely a situation that requires a frank, OOC discussion about why exactly he wants this rule, and what he hopes to accomplish with it. And more importantly, why he thinks you players should put up with it.

So much this.

On the one hand, while I disagree with the rule suggested in the OP (one Evil act and you lose a character), a DM who is upfront about his house rules has the prerogative of making them.

On the other hand, that rule, in conjunction with the whole thing about owning magic items being Evil, and kill-on-sight Paladins who can somehow mysteriously track you down all the time, and so forth, basically strikes me as a DM trying to tell his players how to play. It reads as "If you don't do X, you lose your character."

I agree that a very frank conversation is required at this point. Because if he thinks you're all simply playing characters in a story that he is writing, you need to decide if that's a game you want to play. (Can you even call it playing? At what point are you simply saying to the DM, "Okay, what does my character do now?")

Flickerdart
2015-05-11, 04:19 PM
What constitutes Evil is subjective to such an extent that to do nothing Evil often means inaction and contemplation at every step. I'm the kind of person who tends to over-think things anyway, but if the cost of accidentally doing evil is "you lose your character" then my character in-game and/or me out of game are going to try to figure out the possible Evil consequences of any act to the point that nothing would ever actually get done.

LibraryOgre
2015-05-11, 05:04 PM
First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.

His table, his rules. He told you up front.


Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way.

That leans more towards neutral, IMO, though there's a degree of grey in there. The fact that they consider themselves willing to use evil ends to accomplish their goals pushes them towards neutral or evil... just because they're nice to grandmothers and orphans doesn't get them a pass from hooking up a car battery to someone's jooblies.


Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence? For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?

That's not really negligence... that's more "depraved indifference." Negligence is "We didn't adequately check if everyone was out before we blew up the building" not "Well, we weren't planning on shooting them, so we figured they could play in the gun range."

Alberic Strein
2015-05-12, 12:50 AM
Not absolutely. They could also be neutral, if they also do similarly extreme Good acts.
That... That was a strawman. What I was trying to say was that if you read the PHB and the alignment bit, an evil PC is not merely a PC who does evil act, he is, by the definition of his alignment, egocentric, needlessly cruel and prone to betraying their allies. So when a DM reads these definitions, a common reaction is to go "Hell no, I don't want THESE in my campaign!" which explains the ban on evil characters.

Whoever, the characters that are banned are psychotic, egocentric, cruel madmen who may decide to poison their blades. They are banned for being terrible in a group, not for doing the evil act that is poisoning their blade.

Dysfunctional characters, the archetypal "evil PCs" are banned, not functional characters who lack morals, who do "evil acts".

Which is why the ban on evil characters does not explain or help justify the DM's reaction of "You do ONE evil act, your character is yanked out from your grasp."

However, now that you answered that, I can't help but feel the need to defend my strawman a bit.

Doing evil acts and being blatantly (or subtly) unrepentant about these will slowly bring you towards evil. Unless you do one of the examples Kantaki brought up, they won't turn you immediately evil, but it will be a slow and insidious change, but it can only be countered by doing penance for one's crimes. Said penance can entail saving a number of lives equal to the ones you took, or some other proof of repentance, but it has to be from that angle, and not just "oh well, I did some extremely good acts last week, I'm fine with a little orphanage burning or two."

If you single handedly save a village from a goblin attack, demand nothing in return -you already got a lot from the goblins- and then proceed to occupy a house in the village, killing the husband and enslaving his wife and daughters on the basis that, had you not come here, the village would have been razed, every single man would have been killed and all the women would have been enslaved anyway, so even with that little evil act, you're still very much karma positive; Then your character is evil, not neutral. Good and evil act don't automatically compensate each other. Honest penance with good acts as proof of your character's efforts -and successes- at reforming may, in the long term, bring redemption for the evil acts he committed. Not : Orphanage Burning + Orphanage Saving = Karma 0.

Sith_Happens
2015-05-12, 02:01 AM
Doing evil IS evil. "The ends justifies any means," is an EXCUSE to be evil - even if your supposed goal is making things better. It's a convenience to just do something awful because you know it's easy and will work. See the movie Serenity and the character of "The Operative". He admits he's a monster who does horrible things, but he is convinced that it's good and necessary in order for other people to live in a perfect world. But that means he does EVIL things and therefore IS EVIL. He simply bought into the convenient excuse that the ends justifies the means; even when the means involves killing innocent people, torturing them, and following the orders of evil men, because it will SUPPOSEDLY lead to a better world that makes it okay. It doesn't.

You should watch that movie again, because you're massively underselling the extent to which the Operative is a perfect example of what you're talking about. He doesn't think that the things he does are okay, merely that they're necessary.


For example, you assume that he is using "convenient excuses that will supposedly lead to a better world."

What if it was making "Very difficult and regrettable sacrifices that will certainly lead to a better world."

Doesn't change whether those "difficult and regrettable sacrifices" are Evil. Matter of fact, "difficult and regrettable sacrifice" is one of the favorite phrases of Evil characters who think (rightly or not) that they're working for the greater good.


Using a tranquilizer dart on a rampaging animal to protect people without killing the animal is evil. Stabbing the BBEG with his own unholy sword is evil. Summoning a fiendish animal to pull people from a burning building is evil. Animating the corpse of a knight who failed in his duty and giving him one last chance to protect his charge when all other defenses have failed is evil. Using deathwatch after an explosion to see who to heal first is evil. Allying the the Tanari to stop the Baatezu from taking over the world because it would be mutually beneficial for both mortals and Tanari to not give the Baatezu another foothold is evil. And so on...

You're conflating multiple actions into single actions.

Stopping a rampaging animal: Good
Using poison to do so: Evil (by RAW). Never mind that tranquilizers aren't necessarily poisons in the first place, or that, as previously pointed out, only poisons that deal ability damage (which tranquilizers generally don't) are Evil.


To use another example, in a recent game we had a fairly traditional LoTR style plot to use a Macguffin to kill the BBEG while he is weakened because we have no chance of defeating him at full power. My character refused, as she declared that it was cowardly and dishonorable and tantamount to murder, and that she was a virtuous warrior, not a craven assassin. Now, in this case I certainly not looking for an excuse to take the easy way out; but I am being stupid and reckless for the sake of my own pride, and being willing to put millions of innocent lives at risk just to ease my pride and conscience does not seem to be the "right" answer.

This has nothing to do with Good and Evil and only the barest minimum to do with Law and Chaos.


My problem is that when I read the alignment sections of the DMG the descriptions of my character always end up "good" yet my character's actions always peg them as "evil". It leaves me very confused.

If this happens it's because you're interpreting something incredibly wrong. Most Evil actions are largely incompatible with "altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings."


On the contrary, it is something that plays out at the very heart of your character, because the central conceit of "greater good" is that it allows you to ignore and rationalize the fact that you are still doing evil. The book's point is that if the DM actually takes concepts like good and evil seriously, then his players do not get to absolve themselves of the consequences of their actions no matter what their rationalizations. Killing a single innocent child to save the multiverse will very likely serve the greater good. It may even be necessary if there was absolutely no other way to do the job.

But it was still evil. It was still the murder of an innocent. And no matter how necessary it was or how much good ultimately good comes out of it, that does not change the evil action which generated it. And the party that does such an action should suffer the consequences, whether in the form of changed alignments or falling from your position as a paladin if you were one.

This. Having to choose the lesser of two evils is a thing that legitimately happens sometimes. What the BoED is saying is that a Good character is going to make absolute sure that they do in fact have to, and they're going to feel really bad about it afterwards.

Or, to put it differently, what the BoED is saying is that there's a name for people who think that it's worthwhile to "sacrifice" one's own Goodness. That name is "the Operative (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxcTDoE_Kbg)."


Is this the same DM who says that not turning your magic items over to the local authority is an evil act?

Unless Talakeal has gotten a new DM since that thread without telling us then yes it is. Which is the real problem here.

Hawkstar
2015-05-12, 07:46 AM
While major actions are usually not enough to alter your alignment, if you go far enough it totally could. If Elminster were to one day wake up and decide that he wanted to set Waterdeep on fire, he could easily do so, and it would absolutely negatively affect his alignment.It would negatively affect his alignment, but it wouldn't send him all the way to Evil immediately, nor even kick him out of Good (If he is indeed Good). It takes a pattern and change toward evil. He could very well jump to Evil, though, if he has a complete and sudden change in outlook.


But there are a few things that turn someone imidiatly evil. A faustian Pact, slaying a entity of pure good, destroying/binding a soul, sending an innocent to hell or starting a genocide (see familicide) for example would turn even an saint evil.Citation needed. I'm trying to look it up in the BoVD, Fiendish Codex, and Champions of Ruin, but that's three books to sift through. And by OotS, not even Familicide is enough to kick someone out of Neutral.


That... That was a strawman. What I was trying to say was that if you read the PHB and the alignment bit, an evil PC is not merely a PC who does evil act, he is, by the definition of his alignment, egocentric, needlessly cruel and prone to betraying their allies. So when a DM reads these definitions, a common reaction is to go "Hell no, I don't want THESE in my campaign!" which explains the ban on evil characters.

Whoever, the characters that are banned are psychotic, egocentric, cruel madmen who may decide to poison their blades. They are banned for being terrible in a group, not for doing the evil act that is poisoning their blade.

Dysfunctional characters, the archetypal "evil PCs" are banned, not functional characters who lack morals, who do "evil acts".

Which is why the ban on evil characters does not explain or help justify the DM's reaction of "You do ONE evil act, your character is yanked out from your grasp."No, but bad experiences with *******s who use "just one" Evil Act to completely ruin the gaming experience for the DM or players WOULD justify the ban on "one evil act, you lose your character". Also, it makes it easier to kick That One Character out of the party without breaking "Never Leave a PC Behind".


Doing evil acts and being blatantly (or subtly) unrepentant about these will slowly bring you towards evil. Unless you do one of the examples Kantaki brought up, they won't turn you immediately evil, but it will be a slow and insidious change, but it can only be countered by doing penance for one's crimes. Said penance can entail saving a number of lives equal to the ones you took, or some other proof of repentance, but it has to be from that angle, and not just "oh well, I did some extremely good acts last week, I'm fine with a little orphanage burning or two."Penance is not needed - only pattern. Indifference toward Good and Evil is Neutral.


If you single handedly save a village from a goblin attack, demand nothing in return -you already got a lot from the goblins- and then proceed to occupy a house in the village, killing the husband and enslaving his wife and daughters on the basis that, had you not come here, the village would have been razed, every single man would have been killed and all the women would have been enslaved anyway, so even with that little evil act, you're still very much karma positive; Then your character is evil, not neutral. Good and evil act don't automatically compensate each other. Honest penance with good acts as proof of your character's efforts -and successes- at reforming may, in the long term, bring redemption for the evil acts he committed. Not : Orphanage Burning + Orphanage Saving = Karma 0.Actually, the guy can still be Neutral despite his actions - but you have a single Good Action (Saving the village) put against not only an Evil action (Killing the husband), but also a pattern of Evil. If he also engaged in a pattern of Good acts, he would still be Neutral.

Also - Non-Evil doesn't always mean Non-Villainous.


Furthermore - it is beliefs, thoughts, and intentions, not actions, that define one's alignment. However, "Evil Acts" are born from evil beliefs, thoughts, and intentions, and beliefs/thoughts/intentions without actions to back them up are more useless than a screen door on a submarine.

To bastardize a famous quote, Alignment is not judged by the size of the act, but by the size of the heart.

The problem with the "Save and Burns Orphanages" model is that it ignores or defines the heart of the person who does so by their willingness to burn orphanages.

Segev
2015-05-12, 10:58 AM
I think the central problem Talakeal's facing is the question of "cosmic good" and its weight against "cosmic evil." I'm with him when it comes to asking, "what does that mean?" That it might mean stupid-karma style antics, such that those devils take over another world without difficulty (as suggested as an admittedly silly possibility), is unacceptable as a rationale.

Good and Evil can be genuine forces without having a cosmic author get on board with them to force outcomes. They're about choices made and the kinds of tools one has to hand.

There is merit in the point that, technically, death is not in and of itself evil. Nor is an innocent suffering a victory for that alignment. Sure, the practitioners of villainy enjoy it; they're evil. Certainly, if one can prevent it, a good man will strive to do so.

But - and I will strive to tread lightly here, as I am invoking real world religion - there are examples in scripture and even more modern (where that means "post-New Testament") times wherein those labeled by those scriptures as "good" (and even prophets of the Supreme Good) are tormented and martyred. While the actions of those who enact such are unquestionably evil, it is on the heads of those who perpetrate it, not those who tried their best within moral and ethical bounds to prevent it...but failed.

So there is at least some philosophical support for the notion that allowing evil to happen because you would not commit evil, yourself, is perhaps more "good" than performing some evil for that "greater good."

That said, the suggestion seems to be more that, in sacrifcing your own "exalted status" as a good person, you're not just preventing suffering, but are in some way, perhaps risking greater evil down the line at your own hands.

That is, by accepting the evil into yourself, you risk that slippery slope. Perhaps you side with the demon against the devil army, and then you turn on her in the name of Good in order to protect the multiverse from her further depredations. This treachery could, itself, grow into a seed of betrayals for less and less good reasons. Or perhaps you let her go, but your experience with her is such that you trust her when you shouldn't, and are tempted to perform more evil. Or maybe nothing evil comes of it at your own hands, but she over time perpetrates more villainy (and corrupts more souls) than the whole world's worth would have been.

At the same time, one could argue that a world under the sway of Asmodeus would be one wherein more souls are corrupted overall than she would be able to do on her lonesome. So perhaps that's not the way. And certainly, "kill the world so they're not corrupted by Asmodeus" is a terrible act of its own villainy.

This is why these questions can be hard.

Personally, I think it is wise not to ally with demons needlessly. The Scorpion and the Toad are a good fable for explaining why. But if it is truly necessary, and the "greater good" is really that important, I, personally, would pray for guidance and protection, and then do what I thought I must. (Hopefully, that guidance would be forthcoming so I could make the wisest decision.) Extra vigilence over what you tolerate and even perform, yourself, is crucial under such an alliance. The demon will tempt you, both for the heck (the Abyss?) of it and because some acts of evil are expedient to your mutual goals.

Fortunately, one evil act does not an alignment make; atonement is possible.



Summoning a fiendish critter to save orphans from a fire...that's less excusable. Though I suppose the reasoning is the resistance to fire.

Honestly, I think the whole "spellcasting is an aligned action" set of rules are a bit off. Too often, the alignment tag is applied based on something utterly unrelated to anything the spell actually does or is required to cast it. The logic behind summoning and binding [evil] creatures being Evil leads to summoning and binding [good] creatures being Good...even though you're enslaving good-aligned beings. Sure, a Good summoner probably is more trying to work with allies than compel minions, but the mechanics are no different. An Evil summoner summoning good-aligned beings to compel them to do evil is still "tainting" himself with a Good action, if one follows that logic. If the summoning spells are to have alignments associated, they should have better reasons than "um, because." Some consequence, either of the summoning or of the ritual required, should reflect it.

If summoning a fiendish creature required ritual sacrifice or some other act which could be viewed as actively perpetrating evil, perhaps. If summoning a celestial creature required strict observance of some positive and helpful thing, sure.

But wouldn't it make more sense if you had to be of the appropriate alignment in order to summon the good or evil creatures, rather than the act of summoning them shoving you towards their alignment? (Maybe neutral casters have a random chance of getting either.)

Jay R
2015-05-12, 11:18 AM
My mind went in three separate directions almost immediately.

A. The DM decides what game she is running. Everyone else decides whether they will play. This isn't a hidden or "gotcha" rule; it's clear and pre-announced, and therefore perfectly valid. That is the DM's absolute right.

B. Don't play with DMs you don't trust. This rule wouldn't bother me with a trustworthy, competent DM, but might be the indication that she isn't trustworthy or competent, and therefore a reason to leave the game. If you don't accept the rule from this DM, just quit - without bothering to decide if it's "an abuse of DM powers" or "actually appropriate". If it's a rule you won't play with, just don't play in that game. That is the player's absolute right.

C. I would never institute such a rule unless I had a clear, specific need for it. I would only establish such a rule if there were a disruptive player skirting the Evil line in ways that were making the game less fun for the other players, and all attempts to talk to him about it had failed. At that point, I would need some sort of draconian rule.

Therefore, if my DM instituted such a rule, I'd think about the actions of all the players at the table (including myself), and ask if I can see what provoked the rule.

Talakeal
2015-05-12, 11:31 AM
Stopping a rampaging animal: Good
Using poison to do so: Evil (by RAW). Never mind that tranquilizers aren't necessarily poisons in the first place, or that, as previously pointed out, only poisons that deal ability damage (which tranquilizers generally don't) are Evil.
.

Don't all poisons deal ability damage by RAW?



This has nothing to do with Good and Evil and only the barest minimum to do with Law and Chaos.
.

Not directly, no. I was simply making the point that sticking to your principles, doing the right thing, and doing the easy thing, are not always in harmony with one another, and that the level of risk and consequences sometimes justified "taking the easy way out".
Also, although it might not directly be about good and evil, I would personally question the alignment of someone who risks the entire world for the sake of their own pride.



If this happens it's because you're interpreting something incredibly wrong. Most Evil actions are largely incompatible with "altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings."
[/URL]."

The problem is these are all very nebulous terms.

If read a certain way they actually have a lot more to do with law / chaos than good and evil. Say you are playing a CG character who gets back at a tyrant by playing an elaborate prank on him that leaves him embarrassed and humiliated before his men rather than killing him. This is respecting his life at the cost of his dignity.
On the other hand, if you could keep someone alive after a horrific injury using some horrific mad scientist apparatus leaving them essentially a brain in a jar you are respecting their life at the cost of their dignity.
Or are you? Does respect for life mean "keeping people alive at all costs" or does it mean "respecting the natural cycle?"
Is using magic to keep someone whose "time has come" alive respectful? How about using undead guardians to protect the living? Is swiftly killing one person who has contracted a deadly and highly contagious plague that could kill millions respecting life or not? How about killing a horde of marauding orcs who are out massacring civilians? How about assassinating the BBEG before he can unleash the horde? How about executing the BBEG for his crimes after the fact because you care about the lives and dignity of the thousands of people who he has already killed?

[QUOTE=Sith_Happens;19241554]
Unless Talakeal has gotten a new DM since that thread without telling us then yes it is. Which is the real problem here.

Can't disagree with you there, although this only applies to the first question. The second problem came up independent of the DM while I was simply unable to figure out how to fill in the alignment or deity sections of my character sheet, and the third is more about a problem that I have with PCs running games.





So the character I am playing cares very much about other people. She works at a hospital, her supernatural powers are all focused around healing people, she spends almost all of her free time doing charity work or studying medicine. She gives the majority of her income away to charity. She is self sacrificing to the point where it is almost a character fault, having a bit of a martyr complex and neglecting her own needs to save others, if she is injured she doesn't heal herself until everyone else is tended to (and even then she sometimes forgets to see to her own needs) even when it is tactically inefficient. She would give away almost anything to the truly needy and would happily sacrifice her life to protect others.

On the other hand, she is a bit overbearing, and often thinks that she knows what is best for people other than they do. She is extremely overprotective of people she is close to and that often makes her a bit controlling and confrontational to outsiders. She also does not like putting other people in danger, and will push them away, sometimes at the expense of their feelings. She will undertake dangerous tasks alone despite the risk because she doesn't want to risk her companions getting hurt.

She acknowledges that god and metaphysical forces exist, but does not believe that they have authority over human free will. She doesn't worship any god directly, and doesn't not see anything inherently wrong with working with evil deities, fiends, the undead, [evil] spells, or unholy items so long as tangible good comes from it.

Now, she also doesn't care about her own purity. She is tormented by guilt and regret over past mistakes and transgressions, some real and some mostly in her head. She believes herself to be already damned. She also idealizes other people, and goes to great lengths to protect their innocence. Thus if something evil needs to be done for the greater good, she will volunteer. Not because she enjoys it, she very much does not, but because she doesn't want to see other people have to get their hands dirty and burden their conscience with it.

She is also proud and stubborn, and won't back down even if she is in over her head. She will often take the harder road in spite of the risk.


So, what do I write down on my character sheet for alignment?

According to the PHB: (3.5 as it is the most convenient. Maybe another edition will clarify?)
Good=
Altruism (yes)
Respect for life (either very yes if you define this as trying to avoid death and keep people alive or no if you mean respect the natural cycle of life and death and the boundary between)
Protect Innocent life (yes)
Concern for the dignity of sentient beings (again, varies based on how you look at it. Is putting someone on a pedestal and refusing to let them sully themselves respecting their dignity or not?)
Makes personal sacrifices to help others (very much yes)

Neutral=
Have compunctions against killing the innocent (yes)
Lack the commitment to make sacrifices or help others (very much no)
Committed to others by personal relationships (Doesn't have many relationships but those that she does have are very committed, so both yes and no?)
Would sacrifice himself to protect his family or homeland (yes)
But would not do so for strangers who are not related to him (very much no)

Evil:
Debase and destroy innocent life (Not unless doing so means protecting and aiding more innocent life)
... for fun or profit (very much no)
Hurting others, oppressing, and killing others (sometimes, see above)
Have no compassion and kill without qualms if it is convenient (very much no)
Others actively pursue evil (no)
killing for spot (no)
or out of duty (yes)
to some evil deity or master (no)


So, going by this, the character has far more good than evil or neutral. But good doesn't seem to fit for someone who is willing to commit evil actions. But the listed descriptions of neutral doesn't fit the character at all.

Sith_Happens
2015-05-13, 01:33 AM
Don't all poisons deal ability damage by RAW?

Oil of taggit and drow poison don't, just looking in Core.

...I just noticed though that I forgot to write out my separations of your other examples:


Stabbing the BBEG with his own unholy sword is evil.

Wielding an unholy weapon: Evil (I think, I don't remember if there's actually a clear verdict on this one)

Stabbing the BBEG: Probably Good


Summoning a fiendish animal to pull people from a burning building is evil.

Summoning an Evil creature: Evil

Ordering it to do something Good: Good


Animating the corpse of a knight who failed in his duty and giving him one last chance to protect his charge when all other defenses have failed is evil.

Animating an undead: Evil

Protecting someone: Possibly Good, depends on who you're protecting and from what


Using deathwatch after an explosion to see who to heal first is evil.

Casting Deathwatch: Evil (however stupid it may be that that's so)

Healing people: Possibly Good, depends on who you're healing and why


Allying the the Tanari to stop the Baatezu from taking over the world because it would be mutually beneficial for both mortals and Tanari to not give the Baatezu another foothold is evil.

Aiding demons: Evil

Thwarting devils: Probably Good

Obviously how these sorts of things weigh against each other is going to vary from campaign to campaign, but the important part to remember is that the Evilness of an Evil act does not negate the Goodness of an associated Good act, and vice versa.


So the character I am playing...

Okay, let's take a look at this and see where your error lies (or maybe I'm wrong about there being one, we're about to find out).


cares very much about other people. She works at a hospital, her supernatural powers are all focused around healing people, she spends almost all of her free time doing charity work or studying medicine. She gives the majority of her income away to charity. She is self sacrificing to the point where it is almost a character fault, having a bit of a martyr complex and neglecting her own needs to save others, if she is injured she doesn't heal herself until everyone else is tended to (and even then she sometimes forgets to see to her own needs) even when it is tactically inefficient. She would give away almost anything to the truly needy and would happily sacrifice her life to protect others.

This, on its own, is all exalted-level Good stuff. Like, it would be hard to describe a more Good character if you tried.


On the other hand, she is a bit overbearing, and often thinks that she knows what is best for people other than they do. She is extremely overprotective of people she is close to and that often makes her a bit controlling and confrontational to outsiders. She also does not like putting other people in danger, and will push them away, sometimes at the expense of their feelings. She will undertake dangerous tasks alone despite the risk because she doesn't want to risk her companions getting hurt.

None of this stuff has any bearing on the Good-Evil axis. It does arguably sound like Lawful behavior, especially that first sentence.


She acknowledges that god and metaphysical forces exist, but does not believe that they have authority over human free will. She doesn't worship any god directly, and doesn't not see anything inherently wrong with working with evil deities, fiends, the undead, [evil] spells, or unholy items so long as tangible good comes from it.

Now, she also doesn't care about her own purity. She is tormented by guilt and regret over past mistakes and transgressions, some real and some mostly in her head. She believes herself to be already damned. She also idealizes other people, and goes to great lengths to protect their innocence. Thus if something evil needs to be done for the greater good, she will volunteer. Not because she enjoys it, she very much does not, but because she doesn't want to see other people have to get their hands dirty and burden their conscience with it.

And here's the rub. Where does she draw the line? Kill one to save one hundred? Ten to save one hundred? One hundred to save one thousand? One thousand to save ten thousand? Millions to save tens or hundreds of millions? Would she personally flip a "kill millions" switch, or does she stop at passively condemning them to death? Would she torture someone for information? How severely? Etc., etc.

Most importantly of all: How quick is she to decide that something Evil "needs" to be done? If the answer is "in a heartbeat" then congratulations, you're playing the Operative.


So, what do I write down on my character sheet for alignment?

On average I'd say Neutral, but technically it depends on how much and what sorts of Evil she has in fact done so far. Being theoretically willing to commit atrocities is all well and good, but ultimately alignment is at least 90% about what you do rather than what you would do.

If the worst thing she's "had to" do so far is literally kick a puppy, for example, then you can probably get away with having her start off Good. Just be prepared for your descent down the slippery slope as actual moral dilemmas come your way.


Have compunctions against killing the innocent (yes)

Does she really? Because if she's perfectly willing to do so if she feels she needs to then no she doesn't have compunctions against it, no matter how guilty she feels afterwards.


Lack the commitment to make sacrifices or help others (very much no)

Sometimes "making sacrifices" means "putting in the effort to do something the hard but right way." If you're willing to "get your hands dirty" because it's the quick and easy way to accomplish some end, then those are sacrifices you're showing a lack of commitment to make.


Debase and destroy innocent life (Not unless doing so means protecting and aiding more innocent life)

Your parenthetical qualifier is irrelevant. Would debase and destroy innocent life = would debase and destroy innocent life.


... for fun or profit (very much no)

Not all profit is personal or tangible. Optimizing the number of people saved by one's actions could easily be seen as a sort of "moral profit motive."


kill without qualms if it is convenient (very much no)

Once again I ask: Does she really have qualms about it? If she's as willing to do it without a second thought as you make it sound like, then I'd argue no she doesn't.

zinycor
2015-05-13, 10:49 AM
the problem here is simple.

In the end, the more complex a character is, the harder it will be to classify it. The more complex your character is, you will find out that that he is motivated for more reasons than evil, good, chaos or law. The alignment system on DnD is not made to describe a whole person just guide lines on a playable character.

If you want to make a deep character that's great, but don't let the alignment system bother you, it just isn't made to work that way.

Talakeal
2015-05-13, 11:42 AM
Sometimes "making sacrifices" means "putting in the effort to do something the hard but right way." If you're willing to "get your hands dirty" because it's the quick and easy way to accomplish some end, then those are sacrifices you're showing a lack of commitment to make.


Its not about hard or easy. I can easily see her beating her head against a wall for decades trying in vain to save someone. As I said in my previous example, it is about risk and willingness to gamble with people's lives.
Honestly, I would say that she actually falls too far in the other direction, being too stubborn and proud to see when something is a lost cause and too slow realizing that trying to save everyone is just going to result in chasing good money after bad and is likely to end up saving no one.
As I said, she cares nothing for her own purity. She rarely decides to kill someone of her own volition, including "bad guys", but if someone's death has already been decided and she lacks the abilities to stop it (for example a murderer who has been found convicted and sentenced to die) she will be the first to volunteer to be the executioner for three reasons:
1: She can ensure the death happens quickly and painlessly.
2: No one else has to suffer the guilt and corruption of performing the dirty deed.
3: It makes her look colder and scarier, which will serve to drive away people who she feels would be at risk by being to close to her.



Your parenthetical qualifier is irrelevant. Would debase and destroy innocent life = would debase and destroy innocent life.


So, using that logic, a businessman who freely spends money, but only if doing so is guaranteed to make him even more money in the long run, should not be considered greedy and miserly because he is willing to spend his money in search of more money?


Not all profit is personal or tangible. Optimizing the number of people saved by one's actions could easily be seen as a sort of "moral profit motive."


That sounds like a bit of a stretch. The word profit refers to monetary gain, using it to main accomplishing any sort of goal makes the statement meaningless and borders on Psychological Egoism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism), which in my experience uses circular reasoning to make any sort of ethical debate incoherent.


the problem here is simple.

In the end, the more complex a character is, the harder it will be to classify it. The more complex your character is, you will find out that that he is motivated for more reasons than evil, good, chaos or law. The alignment system on DnD is not made to describe a whole person just guide lines on a playable character.

If you want to make a deep character that's great, but don't let the alignment system bother you, it just isn't made to work that way.

Yeah, pretty much. I just have no idea what to put in that box on my character sheet.


I think the central problem Talakeal's facing is the question of "cosmic good" and its weight against "cosmic evil." I'm with him when it comes to asking, "what does that mean?" That it might mean stupid-karma style antics, such that those devils take over another world without difficulty (as suggested as an admittedly silly possibility), is unacceptable as a rationale.

Good and Evil can be genuine forces without having a cosmic author get on board with them to force outcomes. They're about choices made and the kinds of tools one has to hand.

There is merit in the point that, technically, death is not in and of itself evil. Nor is an innocent suffering a victory for that alignment. Sure, the practitioners of villainy enjoy it; they're evil. Certainly, if one can prevent it, a good man will strive to do so.

But - and I will strive to tread lightly here, as I am invoking real world religion - there are examples in scripture and even more modern (where that means "post-New Testament") times wherein those labeled by those scriptures as "good" (and even prophets of the Supreme Good) are tormented and martyred. While the actions of those who enact such are unquestionably evil, it is on the heads of those who perpetrate it, not those who tried their best within moral and ethical bounds to prevent it...but failed.

So there is at least some philosophical support for the notion that allowing evil to happen because you would not commit evil, yourself, is perhaps more "good" than performing some evil for that "greater good."

That said, the suggestion seems to be more that, in sacrifcing your own "exalted status" as a good person, you're not just preventing suffering, but are in some way, perhaps risking greater evil down the line at your own hands.

That is, by accepting the evil into yourself, you risk that slippery slope. Perhaps you side with the demon against the devil army, and then you turn on her in the name of Good in order to protect the multiverse from her further depredations. This treachery could, itself, grow into a seed of betrayals for less and less good reasons. Or perhaps you let her go, but your experience with her is such that you trust her when you shouldn't, and are tempted to perform more evil. Or maybe nothing evil comes of it at your own hands, but she over time perpetrates more villainy (and corrupts more souls) than the whole world's worth would have been.

At the same time, one could argue that a world under the sway of Asmodeus would be one wherein more souls are corrupted overall than she would be able to do on her lonesome. So perhaps that's not the way. And certainly, "kill the world so they're not corrupted by Asmodeus" is a terrible act of its own villainy.

This is why these questions can be hard.

Personally, I think it is wise not to ally with demons needlessly. The Scorpion and the Toad are a good fable for explaining why. But if it is truly necessary, and the "greater good" is really that important, I, personally, would pray for guidance and protection, and then do what I thought I must. (Hopefully, that guidance would be forthcoming so I could make the wisest decision.) Extra vigilence over what you tolerate and even perform, yourself, is crucial under such an alliance. The demon will tempt you, both for the heck (the Abyss?) of it and because some acts of evil are expedient to your mutual goals.

Fortunately, one evil act does not an alignment make; atonement is possible.



Summoning a fiendish critter to save orphans from a fire...that's less excusable. Though I suppose the reasoning is the resistance to fire.

Honestly, I think the whole "spellcasting is an aligned action" set of rules are a bit off. Too often, the alignment tag is applied based on something utterly unrelated to anything the spell actually does or is required to cast it. The logic behind summoning and binding [evil] creatures being Evil leads to summoning and binding [good] creatures being Good...even though you're enslaving good-aligned beings. Sure, a Good summoner probably is more trying to work with allies than compel minions, but the mechanics are no different. An Evil summoner summoning good-aligned beings to compel them to do evil is still "tainting" himself with a Good action, if one follows that logic. If the summoning spells are to have alignments associated, they should have better reasons than "um, because." Some consequence, either of the summoning or of the ritual required, should reflect it.

If summoning a fiendish creature required ritual sacrifice or some other act which could be viewed as actively perpetrating evil, perhaps. If summoning a celestial creature required strict observance of some positive and helpful thing, sure.

But wouldn't it make more sense if you had to be of the appropriate alignment in order to summon the good or evil creatures, rather than the act of summoning them shoving you towards their alignment? (Maybe neutral casters have a random chance of getting either.)

Thank you.

This is actually the best explanation I have heard, far better than what is printed in any book. The idea that the problem with committing evil acts for the greater good is internal, and that each time you perform them they become easier in the future it a very good one and far more mature than usual for D&D. Of course, making it an absolute is still pretty silly, and it makes a lot of assumptions, the biggest of which is that the PC will not only have the motivation but be in the position to perform such deeds in the future, which for really high end stuff like saving or destroying entire worlds is actually pretty unlikely (unless looked at from a meta-game perspective).

Segev
2015-05-13, 12:50 PM
Thank you.

This is actually the best explanation I have heard, far better than what is printed in any book.You're welcome; glad it was of use to you. :)


The idea that the problem with committing evil acts for the greater good is internal, and that each time you perform them they become easier in the future it a very good one and far more mature than usual for D&D. Of course, making it an absolute is still pretty silly, and it makes a lot of assumptions, the biggest of which is that the PC will not only have the motivation but be in the position to perform such deeds in the future, which for really high end stuff like saving or destroying entire worlds is actually pretty unlikely (unless looked at from a meta-game perspective).

There are absolutes in good and evil. There are things you cannot do, as a Good person, without tainting yourself horribly. Generally speaking, if you seem to be in a situation forcing you to do it "for the greater good," you really aren't. There may be bad things that happen to innocent people as a consequence, but the action you're taking is not you hurting them. If it is, it's almost invariably the "bad guy will blow up world if you don't do this horrible thing to one person" sort of variety...and then it's not your evil that blows up the world if you refuse. It's his; he's the one pushing the button.

However, the thing about it making it easier, internally, to perform evil acts again... that's very real. You've found the price to buy that person's soul. It may be high, and you may have only gotten a little of it last time, but evil has time and makes others pay those high prices. Now it's just a matter of bartering down the price.

If a man asks a woman if she'll sleep with him for a billion dollars, and she says, "Yes," he might then ask if she'll sleep with him for one dollar. "What kind of a woman do you think I am!?" she may reply. "We've already established what kind of woman you are," he answers; "Now we're just negotiating price."

(Sadly, due to the cultural double standards, this parable doesn't work with genders inverted. The expectation is that the guy wouldn't have to be offered anything but the chance to have sex. ...but I digress.)

The point here is that once you've found the price he is unwilling to pay to avoid performing evil, you can just keep coming back to it. Edge it down a little at a time. Next time, perhaps, you make the choice sweeter by ensuring that the personal act of evil profits him personally as well as serves the greater good.

Heck, take the Marilith example: now that he's worked with her, he "knows somebody." She even, perhaps, complied with his wishes not to perform senselessly vile acts on innocents. Next time he sees her, she helps him out in some minor way without being asked. She might even be honest when she says her motives were that she didn't like the foe and she did like him, so thought she'd help out.

The personal benefit is that the party now has an ally they didn't before. A powerful one. Of course, alliances go both ways, and while she may not ask them to do anything overtly evil, she might ask them to do some things no worse than what they've already done. Perhaps she has a favored Manes she needs escorted somewhere. It's almost a woobie, it's so helpless. Under her orders (and knowing the danger the world poses it), it won't hurt the party. But now they're associating with evil for the sake of protecting it.

Little things, over time. Favors given and received. Slowly accepting that, sometimes, her methods of "help" are not the most...ethical or moral. But she seems to try to respect their wishes when helping them, and their limits when asking for help. She just pushes it a touch more each time.

obryn
2015-05-13, 01:17 PM
This is going right in my "Reasons why D&D Alignment is Terrible" folder.

Segev
2015-05-13, 01:19 PM
This is going right in my "Reasons why D&D Alignment is Terrible" folder.

They really aren't. Not at their core. The problem arises from people trying to be clever, over-apply them, or use them as bludgeons rather than tools.

Talakeal
2015-05-13, 01:32 PM
You're welcome; glad it was of use to you. :)



There are absolutes in good and evil. There are things you cannot do, as a Good person, without tainting yourself horribly. Generally speaking, if you seem to be in a situation forcing you to do it "for the greater good," you really aren't. There may be bad things that happen to innocent people as a consequence, but the action you're taking is not you hurting them. If it is, it's almost invariably the "bad guy will blow up world if you don't do this horrible thing to one person" sort of variety...and then it's not your evil that blows up the world if you refuse. It's his; he's the one pushing the button.

However, the thing about it making it easier, internally, to perform evil acts again... that's very real. You've found the price to buy that person's soul. It may be high, and you may have only gotten a little of it last time, but evil has time and makes others pay those high prices. Now it's just a matter of bartering down the price.

If a man asks a woman if she'll sleep with him for a billion dollars, and she says, "Yes," he might then ask if she'll sleep with him for one dollar. "What kind of a woman do you think I am!?" she may reply. "We've already established what kind of woman you are," he answers; "Now we're just negotiating price."

(Sadly, due to the cultural double standards, this parable doesn't work with genders inverted. The expectation is that the guy wouldn't have to be offered anything but the chance to have sex. ...but I digress.)

The point here is that once you've found the price he is unwilling to pay to avoid performing evil, you can just keep coming back to it. Edge it down a little at a time. Next time, perhaps, you make the choice sweeter by ensuring that the personal act of evil profits him personally as well as serves the greater good.

Heck, take the Marilith example: now that he's worked with her, he "knows somebody." She even, perhaps, complied with his wishes not to perform senselessly vile acts on innocents. Next time he sees her, she helps him out in some minor way without being asked. She might even be honest when she says her motives were that she didn't like the foe and she did like him, so thought she'd help out.

The personal benefit is that the party now has an ally they didn't before. A powerful one. Of course, alliances go both ways, and while she may not ask them to do anything overtly evil, she might ask them to do some things no worse than what they've already done. Perhaps she has a favored Manes she needs escorted somewhere. It's almost a woobie, it's so helpless. Under her orders (and knowing the danger the world poses it), it won't hurt the party. But now they're associating with evil for the sake of protecting it.

Little things, over time. Favors given and received. Slowly accepting that, sometimes, her methods of "help" are not the most...ethical or moral. But she seems to try to respect their wishes when helping them, and their limits when asking for help. She just pushes it a touch more each time.

Absolutely agree.

However, in this case the Marilith's help could have literally saved the world.

It is extremely unlikely that any amount of evil the PCs could do, even if they were completely in the Marilith's thrall, would match the amount of evil that the alliance prevented.

It is possible, but it requires the PCs to A: be completely manipulated, B: Be in a position to allow evil fiends to overtake an entire world, C: Be powerful enough that they are the only one's who can do it, and D: Don't realize the enormity of their fall and pull out at the last minute.

The PCs were only in a position to save the world in the first place due to being in the right place at the right time with the aid of both the gods of good and several Macguffin's, and even then it was not a sure thing (hence why the Marilith's help could have changed the outcome). The chances of that happening again (outside of DM meddling mind you) are vanishingly small even with . And if we do factor in DM meddling then you also have to assume player motivations, which requires them to be just as bamboozled and corrupt as their characters are.


They really aren't. Not at their core. The problem arises from people trying to be clever, over-apply them, or use them as bludgeons rather than tools.

Agreed that they work at their core. If you boil them down to "Good characters make sacrifices to help others" "Evil characters harm others for selfish ends" and "Neutral characters lack the convictions to perform great acts of sacrifice or villainy" then they work fine.

The problem is that books including (but not limited to) BoED and BoVD try and boil them down to small absolute statements which make them a mess.

And then you get cases like my DM who uses them as a means of railroading the players and says that a single evil action gets your character yanked from you.

I won't say the same thing for Law and Chaos though, as they encompass many unrelated things, some of them directly contradictory. Even if you try and boil them down to simple things like "Law supports an ordered society" and "Chaos wants to tear down ordered society" you get weird cases like people trying to overthrow the current system to establish their own ideal society.

Segev
2015-05-13, 02:28 PM
While "good is not nice" and "nice is not good," the core of "good" really is "nice guy...deep down, at least." He sees others as at least as valid as himself, and suffers when he sees them suffering, and derives joy from seeing their joy.

While evil can be affable, evil is, deep down, a jerk. In the end, others are less than him or his goals, and he does not suffer, ultimately, at the pain of others (in general). It may or may not please him, but it's not something evil cares to stop for its own sake.

Law really does play by the rules. What those rules are can vary, and a Lawful person can change his ethical code, but will not do so capriciously or easilly. He will act in accordance with habit, established pattern, and the rules to which he subscribes. He will always hold one set of rules higher than any others to avoid contradictions. This can lead him to bucking a rule system which is in conflict with his higher-held rules. The Lawful man, too, will always strive to follow the letter of whatever rule he's for.

Chaos is more flexible. This doesn't mean the chaotic hero can't have rules and a code...he just views it as more of a guideline. Chaos is concerned with the SPIRIT of rules, if it cares at all, because rules are just words designed to codify something somebody chose to do. They're imperfect, so the rules adapt to fit the situation.

D+1
2015-05-13, 08:35 PM
But, I think you are making a lot of assumptions and using loaded language.
I try to assume only when made necessary by lack of more details. And the language is loaded deliberately because the idea of doing evil in order to actually promote good is outrageously contradictory and an idea that needs to be crushed. Alignment has enough baggage without TRYING to tie it in knots.


For example, you assume that he is using "convenient excuses that will supposedly lead to a better world."
That's not an assumption though. That IS what is happening when a character (or player) thinks that it's even possible much less the right thing to do to perform EVIL deeds and thereby actually do good.


What if it was making "Very difficult and regrettable sacrifices that will certainly lead to a better world."
A very difficult and regrettable sacrifice is to choose doing good even though you know doing evil will be more effective. Think of the conversation between Luke and Yoda: "IS the Dark Side stronger?" "No. Quicker. Easier. More seductive." Evil seduces you with lies that doing evil is right and proper because it's so often more effective. A benevolent dictatorship is STILL a dictatorship. Just because nobody is repressing you at a given moment doesn't mean that you are free and have rights.


This gets even more difficulty in a game like D&D which labels things objectively evil regardless of context.
D&D labels things as objectively evil for the sake of convenience. Hey, if you want to play out every campaign debating with everyone at the game table about what's good or evil then by all means have fun (if that's your bag). But D&D says you can kill orcs because it's ALREADY been dictated before the game starts that they ARE evil and that killing them is therefore a good thing. You don't need to waste time on the debate. Take the answer the game is giving you, ACCEPT it and move on.


Using a tranquilizer dart on a rampaging animal to protect people without killing the animal is evil. Stabbing the BBEG with his own unholy sword is evil. Summoning a fiendish animal to pull people from a burning building is evil. Animating the corpse of a knight who failed in his duty and giving him one last chance to protect his charge when all other defenses have failed is evil. Using deathwatch after an explosion to see who to heal first is evil. Allying the the Tanari to stop the Baatezu from taking over the world because it would be mutually beneficial for both mortals and Tanari to not give the Baatezu another foothold is evil. And so on...
I don't see how you can get ANY of these kind of conclusions without first shredding everything that alignment is trying NOT to do.


This is without even getting into questions of when it is ok to kill someone. Whether or not Batman is complicit in the Joker's crimes because he refuses to put him down for good is an old debate, and I don't think there is a clearly right or wrong answer. It is even weirder in D&D by RAW, because killing is sometimes evil, and other times it is instead evil to show mercy.
Yeah, we haven't gotten into questions about orc babies yet have we? Someone who really can't distinguish the difference between good and evil is probably best described by the technical term of sociopath or psychopath. Here in the real world we tend to perceive such people as evil because they perform amoral acts - EVIL acts - even though we supposedly accept that the reasons WHY they do such things are precipitated by mental defect and not by choice. In D&D alignment doesn't generally draw that distinction. Evil is as evil does. In fact it's INTENDED to work just that way - your alignment doesn't force you to do only actions that carry the appropriate alignment label, you take upon yourself the appropriate alignment label as determined BY your actions. Characters CHOOSE to do good and they are therefore good. Characters CHOOSE to do evil and they are therefore evil. What you wanted to accomplish by doing evil is irrelevant - doing the evil deed is what makes you evil. Killing innocents is evil. Killing innocents thinking that you'll make the world better by doing so is psychopathic.


Also, sometimes it isn't about "easy" but about "risky". For example, say there is someone who is extremely dangerous. Maybe they carry a deadly disease, or a curse, or a dark secret, or have uncontrollable powers like the child in "It's a Good Life". Just killing them would be easy, sure. And it would also be evil. But, in this scenario, imagine the risk. The harder road is likely to fail, and the consequences of failure are, in this case, so much worse than those of taking the easy way out, that it would be flat out foolish to try, regardless of morality.
Morality is not determined by difficulty. Doing the good thing often IS harder and may even be more likely to fail. But the ends don't justify the means. Just because it's EASIER to kill the child with the out of control powers in order to make a lot of people safe doesn't make it RIGHT or GOOD to kill the child. It' simply expedient. Easier. Quicker. More seductive.


To use another example, in a recent game we had a fairly traditional LoTR style plot to use a Macguffin to kill the BBEG while he is weakened because we have no chance of defeating him at full power. My character refused, as she declared that it was cowardly and dishonorable and tantamount to murder, and that she was a virtuous warrior, not a craven assassin. Now, in this case I certainly not looking for an excuse to take the easy way out; but I am being stupid and reckless for the sake of my own pride, and being willing to put millions of innocent lives at risk just to ease my pride and conscience does not seem to be the "right" answer.
When you manage to end up holding the BBEG as he dangles helplessly over the Pit of Certain Doom his crimes have not changed. His due punishment has not changed. His intent upon surviving by any means in order to do more evil almost certainly hasn't changed. His pleas for mercy don't HAVE to dictate your actions. Simply begging for mercy doesn't mean he has ANY right to it.

Your characters answer doesn't seem to be the "right" answer because it isn't. THERE is your difficult and regrettable sacrifice. Killing the BBEG in what you would otherwise consider a reprehensible fashion is tough - but killing BBEG's is the right thing to do.

Hawkstar
2015-05-13, 09:10 PM
Yeah, we haven't gotten into questions about orc babies yet have we? Someone who really can't distinguish the difference between good and evil is probably best described by the technical term of sociopath or psychopath. Here in the real world we tend to perceive such people as evil because they perform amoral acts - EVIL acts - even though we supposedly accept that the reasons WHY they do such things are precipitated by mental defect and not by choice. In D&D alignment doesn't generally draw that distinction. Evil is as evil does. In fact it's INTENDED to work just that way - your alignment doesn't force you to do only actions that carry the appropriate alignment label, you take upon yourself the appropriate alignment label as determined BY your actions. Characters CHOOSE to do good and they are therefore good. Characters CHOOSE to do evil and they are therefore evil. What you wanted to accomplish by doing evil is irrelevant - doing the evil deed is what makes you evil. Killing innocents is evil. Killing innocents thinking that you'll make the world better by doing so is psychopathic.Enough about "Orc Babies".

Let's talk about "Death Star Contractors" instead.

Luke Skywalker's a complete monster.

Knaight
2015-05-13, 09:44 PM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.
It's pretty draconian. The group can set whatever ground rules they want, but snatching characters away and demanding that the players make new ones is a great method to stop having players in the context of a group that doesn't know each other super-well, and is a great way to be told to chill the heck out in the context of a group of friends. There's a bit of a "I'm taking my ball home and you can't play" overtone here.


Second, what alignment would you give a character who uses evil means to accomplish good deeds? Someone who is working for the greater good and is kind and compassionate, but is willing to get their hands dirty and employ whatever means are necessary to prevent a greater evil if they can't find another way.
It depends on the tenor of the campaign in question. There are some where this is expected behavior, there are some where this is probably a pretty good descriptor of the villain. I have an NPC which meets this criteria pretty well in one of my current games, and while they might be on the same side as the PCs (for now at least, I'm not expecting PC loyalties to be all that stable) they sure as heck aren't being mentally filed away as good.


Third, can one commit evil actions through negligence? For example, my players often put innocent lives at risk by using them as bait, being careless about collateral damage, shooting first and asking questions later, etc. Now, I don't play with alignment, but if I did would getting innocent civilians killed due to recklessness and lack of foresight be an evil act?
Again, this is table dependent. Personally I really don't buy the "good intentions" schtick when it's in the contexts of actions which have entirely predictable if unwanted negative results. To use a real world example, if someone decides to drive a car while drunk they probably aren't intending to hurt anyone. They are intending to take an action that they know full well puts other people at risk of dying though, and that doesn't exactly reflect well on them. Using people as bait, wanton and unnecessary collateral damage, and being prone to violence? Those are worse.

Talakeal
2015-05-13, 10:06 PM
I try to assume only when made necessary by lack of more details. And the language is loaded deliberately because the idea of doing evil in order to actually promote good is outrageously contradictory and an idea that needs to be crushed. Alignment has enough baggage without TRYING to tie it in knots.


That's not an assumption though. That IS what is happening when a character (or player) thinks that it's even possible much less the right thing to do to perform EVIL deeds and thereby actually do good.


A very difficult and regrettable sacrifice is to choose doing good even though you know doing evil will be more effective. Think of the conversation between Luke and Yoda: "IS the Dark Side stronger?" "No. Quicker. Easier. More seductive." Evil seduces you with lies that doing evil is right and proper because it's so often more effective. A benevolent dictatorship is STILL a dictatorship. Just because nobody is repressing you at a given moment doesn't mean that you are free and have rights.


D&D labels things as objectively evil for the sake of convenience. Hey, if you want to play out every campaign debating with everyone at the game table about what's good or evil then by all means have fun (if that's your bag). But D&D says you can kill orcs because it's ALREADY been dictated before the game starts that they ARE evil and that killing them is therefore a good thing. You don't need to waste time on the debate. Take the answer the game is giving you, ACCEPT it and move on.


I don't see how you can get ANY of these kind of conclusions without first shredding everything that alignment is trying NOT to do.


Yeah, we haven't gotten into questions about orc babies yet have we? Someone who really can't distinguish the difference between good and evil is probably best described by the technical term of sociopath or psychopath. Here in the real world we tend to perceive such people as evil because they perform amoral acts - EVIL acts - even though we supposedly accept that the reasons WHY they do such things are precipitated by mental defect and not by choice. In D&D alignment doesn't generally draw that distinction. Evil is as evil does. In fact it's INTENDED to work just that way - your alignment doesn't force you to do only actions that carry the appropriate alignment label, you take upon yourself the appropriate alignment label as determined BY your actions. Characters CHOOSE to do good and they are therefore good. Characters CHOOSE to do evil and they are therefore evil. What you wanted to accomplish by doing evil is irrelevant - doing the evil deed is what makes you evil. Killing innocents is evil. Killing innocents thinking that you'll make the world better by doing so is psychopathic.


Morality is not determined by difficulty. Doing the good thing often IS harder and may even be more likely to fail. But the ends don't justify the means. Just because it's EASIER to kill the child with the out of control powers in order to make a lot of people safe doesn't make it RIGHT or GOOD to kill the child. It' simply expedient. Easier. Quicker. More seductive.


When you manage to end up holding the BBEG as he dangles helplessly over the Pit of Certain Doom his crimes have not changed. His due punishment has not changed. His intent upon surviving by any means in order to do more evil almost certainly hasn't changed. His pleas for mercy don't HAVE to dictate your actions. Simply begging for mercy doesn't mean he has ANY right to it.

Your characters answer doesn't seem to be the "right" answer because it isn't. THERE is your difficult and regrettable sacrifice. Killing the BBEG in what you would otherwise consider a reprehensible fashion is tough - but killing BBEG's is the right thing to do.

D&D is full of fairly arbitrary "always evil" actions. If you discount those as not really evil it becomes a lot simpler.

Even so, there are tons of times when you have to choose between the lesser of two evils. Tell me what the "non-evil" choice is in the following scenario:

You are the monarch of a "good" kingdom. The next kingdom over is ruled by a chaotic evil aristocracy. They are doing heinous evil to innocent people, both in their own nation and others. Your evil neighbors don't respond to economic or diplomatic efforts, and it has become apparent that the only way to stop them is by going to war. You can, probably, defeat them in battle, although doing so will mean the deaths of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent civilians who are caught in the crossfire.

What is the absolutely good choice here that does not result in any evil?

Sith_Happens
2015-05-14, 12:55 AM
Its not about hard or easy. I can easily see her beating her head against a wall for decades trying in vain to save someone. As I said in my previous example, it is about risk and willingness to gamble with people's lives.
Honestly, I would say that she actually falls too far in the other direction, being too stubborn and proud to see when something is a lost cause and too slow realizing that trying to save everyone is just going to result in chasing good money after bad and is likely to end up saving no one.

That's called Stupid Good.:smalltongue:


As I said, she cares nothing for her own purity. She rarely decides to kill someone of her own volition, including "bad guys", but if someone's death has already been decided and she lacks the abilities to stop it (for example a murderer who has been found convicted and sentenced to die) she will be the first to volunteer to be the executioner for three reasons:
1: She can ensure the death happens quickly and painlessly.
2: No one else has to suffer the guilt and corruption of performing the dirty deed.
3: It makes her look colder and scarier, which will serve to drive away people who she feels would be at risk by being to close to her.

This, once again, smells very Lawful to me but has next to nothing to do with the Good-Evil axis.


So, using that logic, a businessman who freely spends money, but only if doing so is guaranteed to make him even more money in the long run, should not be considered greedy and miserly because he is willing to spend his money in search of more money?

That's just called being cautious, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with greed or miserliness.


That sounds like a bit of a stretch. The word profit refers to monetary gain, using it to main accomplishing any sort of goal makes the statement meaningless and borders on Psychological Egoism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism), which in my experience uses circular reasoning to make any sort of ethical debate incoherent.

Profit can also mean "to gain advantage or benefit."


Yeah, pretty much. I just have no idea what to put in that box on my character sheet.

If your "volunteer as executioner" example is typical of the sorts of supposedly-Evil things she gets up to then there's nothing to not have an idea about. Just put Lawful Good with Severe Personal Issues.:smalltongue:


This is actually the best explanation I have heard, far better than what is printed in any book. The idea that the problem with committing evil acts for the greater good is internal, and that each time you perform them they become easier in the future it a very good one and far more mature than usual for D&D.

...That is the explanation printed in every book.:smallconfused:


Absolutely agree.

However, in this case the Marilith's help could have literally saved the world.

It is extremely unlikely that any amount of evil the PCs could do, even if they were completely in the Marilith's thrall, would match the amount of evil that the alliance prevented.

It is possible, but it requires the PCs to A: be completely manipulated, B: Be in a position to allow evil fiends to overtake an entire world, C: Be powerful enough that they are the only one's who can do it, and D: Don't realize the enormity of their fall and pull out at the last minute.

The PCs were only in a position to save the world in the first place due to being in the right place at the right time with the aid of both the gods of good and several Macguffin's, and even then it was not a sure thing (hence why the Marilith's help could have changed the outcome). The chances of that happening again (outside of DM meddling mind you) are vanishingly small even with . And if we do factor in DM meddling then you also have to assume player motivations, which requires them to be just as bamboozled and corrupt as their characters are.

Those are some serious mitigating factors right there. You're worrying too much about technicalities here. Sure hanging around with a demon is technically Evil, but in this case it's such a thin technicality that even a Paladin could get through the situation with their powers and conscience intact as long as they're remotely careful about not letting the demon do demon things on their watch.


And then you get cases like my DM who uses them as a means of railroading the players and says that a single evil action gets your character yanked from you.

That is entirely a problem with your DM, who might I remind you isn't working off of a remotely correct understanding of the system in the first place.


That's not an assumption though. That IS what is happening when a character (or player) thinks that it's even possible much less the right thing to do to perform EVIL deeds and thereby actually do good.
...
A very difficult and regrettable sacrifice is to choose doing good even though you know doing evil will be more effective. Think of the conversation between Luke and Yoda: "IS the Dark Side stronger?" "No. Quicker. Easier. More seductive." Evil seduces you with lies that doing evil is right and proper because it's so often more effective. A benevolent dictatorship is STILL a dictatorship. Just because nobody is repressing you at a given moment doesn't mean that you are free and have rights.
...
Morality is not determined by difficulty. Doing the good thing often IS harder and may even be more likely to fail. But the ends don't justify the means. Just because it's EASIER to kill the child with the out of control powers in order to make a lot of people safe doesn't make it RIGHT or GOOD to kill the child. It' simply expedient. Easier. Quicker. More seductive.
...
When you manage to end up holding the BBEG as he dangles helplessly over the Pit of Certain Doom his crimes have not changed. His due punishment has not changed. His intent upon surviving by any means in order to do more evil almost certainly hasn't changed. His pleas for mercy don't HAVE to dictate your actions. Simply begging for mercy doesn't mean he has ANY right to it.

This says a good portion of the things I've been trying to say much better than I've been doing. The short of it is, alignment is not consequentialist and is not meant to be. That doesn't mean you can't play someone who subscribes to consequentialism, but don't expect that character's alignment to stay Good if they're going to keep pulling the lever every time they're presented with the trolley problem.


Even so, there are tons of times when you have to choose between the lesser of two evils. Tell me what the "non-evil" choice is in the following scenario:

You are the monarch of a "good" kingdom. The next kingdom over is ruled by a chaotic evil aristocracy. They are doing heinous evil to innocent people, both in their own nation and others. Your evil neighbors don't respond to economic or diplomatic efforts, and it has become apparent that the only way to stop them is by going to war. You can, probably, defeat them in battle, although doing so will mean the deaths of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent civilians who are caught in the crossfire.

What is the absolutely good choice here that does not result in any evil?

They're both the non-Evil choice. Specifically, "let the CE kingdom be" is the Neutral choice and "those sick bastards are going down" is the Good choice. So innocent civilians are going to get caught in the crossfire, what of it? That just means that as the Good guys it's your job to conduct the war in such a way that as few as possible do.

goto124
2015-05-14, 02:17 AM
alignment is not consequentialist and is not meant to be. That doesn't mean you can't play someone who subscribes to consequentialism, but don't expect that character's alignment to stay Good if they're going to keep pulling the lever every time they're presented with the trolley problem.

I've heard of 'alignment' systems that use priorities (consequentialism vs deontology, pragmatism vs idealism, etc) instead of Good and Evil. Takes out a lot of the baggage associated with the terms 'Good' and 'Evil', not to mention the confusion with the Law-Chaos axis.

Talakeal
2015-05-14, 11:31 AM
@ Sith Happens:

So, the part I quoted earlier from the BoED is the only part I know of in any book that spells out why committing evil acts for the greater good is never excusable. It seems to frame it from the perspective of "cosmic good and evil" and "universal forces" rather than the slow degradation of one's own morality. It does not give room for extenuating circumstances, and explicitly calls out numerous acts as always evil regardless of the circumstance. AFAIK working together with a demon is always the wrong thing to do by RAW regardless of mitigating circumstances.
I am not aware of any other D&D books that directly touch on the subject, although if you say every book talks about I must have missed something. Would you mind giving me a page number so I can see what I am missing?

As for the consequentialist thing, now I am legitimately even more confused. I am not trying to argue, I genuinely do not understand how you can measure someone's morality without taking consequences into account and am trying hard to wrap my head around it. Any help would be appreciated.
It seems like you would get a world where The Simpsons argument of "I am not going to fight you. I am just going to walk towards you swinging my fist, and if you don't get out of the way it is your own fault!" is a valid ethical standpoint.
If you don't look at the consequences pointing a gun at someone pulling the trigger is not evil. Heck, even directly attacking someone wouldn't hold the weight of killing as that is a consequence of the attack rather than an inherent part of the action itself.
Or do you base the ethics of an action on the target rather than their motives? So, for example, killing an evil guy who isn't harming anyone and is just in a cave searching for repentance is still a good act, while killing a good guy who is about to cast an epic level spell that will purge the world of all "heretics" by slaying anyone who doesn't share his beliefs is still an evil act because until he actually goes through with the plan he is still good and therefore an invalid target?

Hawkstar
2015-05-14, 12:32 PM
So, the part I quoted earlier from the BoED is the only part I know of in any book that spells out why committing evil acts for the greater good is never excusable. It seems to frame it from the perspective of "cosmic good and evil" and "universal forces" rather than the slow degradation of one's own morality. It does not give room for extenuating circumstances, and explicitly calls out numerous acts as always evil regardless of the circumstance. AFAIK working together with a demon is always the wrong thing to do by RAW regardless of mitigating circumstances.
I am not aware of any other D&D books that directly touch on the subject, although if you say every book talks about I must have missed something. Would you mind giving me a page number so I can see what I am missing? That part in the BoED says why it's never excusable for an exalted character, not merely a non-Evil or even Good character.

And the idea that the slow degradation of one's own morality is inevitable is fallacious, and is a good way to end up with a character that's Neutral despite committing horrific acts on a somewhat regular basis, because their morality is such that they also commit incredibly Good acts (With good intentions behind them) on equally regular basis. Both sides are saying "He's only going to get worse/better, we can't take him!"... and yet, never actually slipping either direction.

Your described character is straight-up Good with Personal Issues, but not quite Exalted Good, unless we're talking Death Star Contractors or Executing Evil (Acts that are not actually evil, but sheep like to think of as such).

zinycor
2015-05-14, 02:29 PM
The sad, sad true of the matter is

Alignment is a mechanic in a game, it isn't deeper than that, it assumes that evil and good exist as objective things because that's the easy way to see it. And this view doesn't work if you start to question the system with complex subjects, because it's not intended to.


You are the monarch of a "good" kingdom. The next kingdom over is ruled by a chaotic evil aristocracy. They are doing heinous evil to innocent people, both in their own nation and others. Your evil neighbors don't respond to economic or diplomatic efforts, and it has become apparent that the only way to stop them is by going to war. You can, probably, defeat them in battle, although doing so will mean the deaths of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent civilians who are caught in the crossfire.

What is the absolutely good choice here that does not result in any evil?

My question is, How many times have you seen this sort of thing played on LOTR or Narnia? Not that many, because there the good army doesn't face crossfire, because they are on the good side, no innocents die because of the good guys. Is this realistic? Hell no, but alignment does work this way, because it's made to be simple, and if you have complicated questions about it, it just doesn't hold up.

Now, in terms of the game, if i had a king on this situation and this king were a good character, he would have to make the very difficult decision of going to war while trying to minimize the deaths of civilians diying on the crossfire, and helping whatever civilians his armies could, even if this meant losing key battles, even putting his own country in danger.

Is this what the book says us to do? I don't know honestly, but I don't really care, cause we all can get that this character would be good, maybe stupid or a bad strategist, but good nonetheless.

Don't worry too much about alignment, and if your DM wants a game without evil characters or evil actions, but you want to play a character who you see as good but your DM will probably see as evil, then talk to your DM about this, and if he doesn't agree on your views on this character, make another character that fits better this sort of game or leave the table.

Cluedrew
2015-05-14, 03:24 PM
My question is, How many times have you seen this sort of thing played on LOTR or Narnia?Once each...

They are some distance away in Lord of the Rings, but in Narina there is one buffer country (a non-magic Narina) and a desert in the way. Oddly enough you actually get to see "both" choices if you read the stories. I don't want to give any spoilers though. I don't have to much to add by I would like to point out the situation does show up in some very famous stories.

Talakeal
2015-05-14, 03:47 PM
The comments in this thread have gotten me curious enough to look up the difference between consequentialist and deontological moral systems.

While fascinating, I must say, I really cannot wrap my head around how anyone could look at things from a purely deontological point of view.

And though I comprehend how a game could run on deontological ethics, I can't quite grasp how this same game is about "good" characters going around killing people and taking their stuff.

Segev
2015-05-14, 04:06 PM
In all honesty, an LG ruler is going to be concerned, first and foremost, with preserving the well-being of his own kingdom. This isn't out of a sense of selfishness, but rather a sense of duty and responsibility. The noble reasons for government are primarily about protecting those who subscribe to it. Seeing to it their rights, their liberties, their lives, their properties, and their well-being is preserved against those who would use violence, deceit, and theft to deprive them of such things.

While, on a personal level, he may wish to go out and save those subject to his CE neighbor's cruel abuses, it is not his job as ruler to do so. He does not rule his neighbor. His job is to protect his people from that neighbor.

Given, however, the nature of CE, it is highly probable that the CE nation will solve any lingering concerns over the rightness or wrongness of conquering them by their own actions. They will brew and foment until they think they can get away with war-like actions against the LG kingdom. It would be well within the right of the LG ruler to determine that peace, even after having beaten back the initial hostilities, is not in his nation's best interest. That permitting the CE nation time to rebuild its war engine only invites more slaughter and death, and that crushing them now (if he can) is the best way to preserve his own people's safety.

It's not his fault that the CE nation is a warmongering tyranny; he is doing what he must to protect his own people. It is an added bonus that, when the horror of the war is over, as the new ruler of the neighboring kingdom as well, he will be able to enact reforms to build it up in ways to protect and help the new citizens of his conquered territories, too.

Flickerdart
2015-05-14, 04:10 PM
Quite frankly, the whole point of a ruler is to make these sort of tough decisions where lives will be lost either way. No absolute monarch can ever stay completely LG without a whole lot of atoning (through the spell or otherwise).

Hawkstar
2015-05-14, 04:34 PM
Quite frankly, the whole point of a ruler is to make these sort of tough decisions where lives will be lost either way. No absolute monarch can ever stay completely LG without a whole lot of atoning (through the spell or otherwise).
But because the ruler is going to make decisions that get innocent people killed, and will not always be sorry or see his decision as wrong, he must be Evil because he is doing Evil acts without atonement. Therefore, anyone in any position of significant authority must be Evil.

Segev
2015-05-14, 04:45 PM
I disagree, but we're getting into the stickier parts of alignment discussions, because we're into culpability. Just because you choose between two things doesn't mean you're responsible for the fact that bad things happened. You're responsible if you didn't do everything you could to mitigate the harm of your choices, but when you literally cannot choose "no harm," choosing as best you can is not evil. Evil does have a certain amount of intent behind it, just as does good. That intent can be depraved negligence, but "I want to do right" is not an evil intent.

The times when it looks like somebody "means well" but keeps doing evil, and they're recognizably evil for it, you can always find that their "good intentions" were more about finding the easy way to feel good about themselves more than about genuinely helping others. There is a reason we have a concept of innocence. If you honestly, genuinely believe that you're convincing old folks to go to a wonderful retirement community where all their needs are met, and you have never refused opportunity to find out otherwise, it's not really your fault that you were duped and it is actually a soylent green factory. Obviously, if you find out, or refuse to find out, and you continue...then you're being evil (either deliberately or through depraved indifference). But genuinely not knowing because you've been wholeheartedly deceived does not make you evil.

More often, you will find the "but I meant well!" villain acting in self-deception. They were serving themselves, and actively and willfully ignoring the negative consequences of their actions, or blaming others rather than accepting responsibility. Good men making hard choices are likely to blame themselves (though it is not required) for the suffering that results. Even if they do not blame themselves, however, they will mourn it, genuinely, and if presented a way to take more upon themselves to prevent more of the suffering, they generally will.

But simply having to make a hard choice doesn't make you evil. It might make you weary and even feel guilty, but it doesn't make you evil in and of itself. Only your choices to hurt people for selfish reasons or when you could have avoided it can really make you evil.

LibraryOgre
2015-05-14, 04:59 PM
But simply having to make a hard choice doesn't make you evil. It might make you weary and even feel guilty, but it doesn't make you evil in and of itself. Only your choices to hurt people for selfish reasons or when you could have avoided it can really make you evil.

Well put. Your qualification of "good" doesn't require you to be all-knowing. It doesn't require that you never do anything that might hurt someone. It means that, when presented with a bunch of options, you find the one that is going to create the most good and the least evil... and, to an extent, that you be uncomfortable with any choice that results in any evil, even if it's the best option you have available.

Hawkstar
2015-05-14, 05:11 PM
I disagree, but we're getting into the stickier parts of alignment discussions, because we're into culpability. Just because you choose between two things doesn't mean you're responsible for the fact that bad things happened. You're responsible if you didn't do everything you could to mitigate the harm of your choices, but when you literally cannot choose "no harm," choosing as best you can is not evil. Evil does have a certain amount of intent behind it, just as does good. That intent can be depraved negligence, but "I want to do right" is not an evil intent.
But you can always choose to not act and do no evil - If anything evil happens, it's on the person who does the evil act, not you!

LibraryOgre
2015-05-14, 05:54 PM
But you can always choose to not act and do no evil - If anything evil happens, it's on the person who does the evil act, not you!

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

Good must be active; constantly failing to act because you're afraid of the consequences of a wrong choice isn't good.

goto124
2015-05-14, 09:44 PM
But you can always choose to not act and do no evil - If anything evil happens, it's on the person who does the evil act, not you!

Is this how Exalted Good works? -scratches head-

Talakeal
2015-05-14, 10:16 PM
Is this how Exalted Good works? -scratches head-

As near as I can figure.

I think exalted heros are supposed to be treated like living relics, people who are too pure to exist in the real world and need to be sheltered at all costs to serve as inspirations to others.

Segev
2015-05-15, 12:30 AM
Sometimes, inaction IS the good/best option. Not always, and probably not even often. But sometimes.

Refusing to act is a choice as much as any chosen action.

Sith_Happens
2015-05-15, 03:00 AM
The comments in this thread have gotten me curious enough to look up the difference between consequentialist and deontological moral systems.

While fascinating, I must say, I really cannot wrap my head around how anyone could look at things from a purely deontological point of view.

And though I comprehend how a game could run on deontological ethics, I can't quite grasp how this same game is about "good" characters going around killing people and taking their stuff.

Sounds like a roleplaying opportunity to me. Next time you're playing a particularly cerebral or academic character, have them be an armchair philosopher fascinated with the intricacies of alignment and the ways in which it does and doesn't map to a practical system of ethics.

McStabbington
2015-05-15, 05:34 AM
The comments in this thread have gotten me curious enough to look up the difference between consequentialist and deontological moral systems.

While fascinating, I must say, I really cannot wrap my head around how anyone could look at things from a purely deontological point of view.

And though I comprehend how a game could run on deontological ethics, I can't quite grasp how this same game is about "good" characters going around killing people and taking their stuff.

I wouldn't say that the game runs purely on deontological ethics. If anything, this game has one of the best consequentialist NPC's of any gaming universe. It's just that said NPC's name is Asmodeus. The road to hell is quite literally paved with the intention to make sacrifices for the greater good where D&D is concerned.

Lawful Good, however, tends to fall far more on the side of virtue or Kantian ethics. Asmodeus would be happy to tell you that without him, the demons would completely overrun the multiverse and return the order created by the gods to its primordial form. At which point, your average archon would sigh and ask why he thinks that's actually worse than corrupting his immortal soul with evil.

If you want to understand it, it might help to think of choices as rank-ordered priorities. If you choose, say, pizza rather than ice cream, you're revealing through your choices that pizza is higher than ice cream in your heirarchy of needs and wants. Well, a truly good person always, always puts "never voluntarily hurting another sentient life form" at the top of their rank order. They may screw up and hurt someone. They may be mistaken about what the consequences of their action are and hurt someone. They may even be placed in a situation where hurting someone is impossible to avoid. But they'll always strive to uphold that preference even if it means dying.

For them, Asmodeus' choices aren't some noble sacrifice for the fate of the multiverse. They are him choosing to live another day even over and above not hurting anyone else or doing the right thing.

TheCountAlucard
2015-05-15, 07:22 AM
Is this for that same campaign where not happily handing over your magical items to the nearest dictator counts as not just an evil act, but an immediate shift to Chaotic Evil that sets implacable super-Paladins on your trail and enables them to smite you for maximum damage?

Because if it is, seriously, get the hell out of that game while you can. I know we said it earlier in other threads, but I mean it this time. Get out of that jerk's game, even if you have to poison him to do it.

Hawkstar
2015-05-15, 07:31 AM
Well, a truly good person always, always puts "never voluntarily hurting another sentient life form" at the top of their rank order.Citation needed. Good has no qualms about hurting others as long as it doesn't inflict undue suffering. Good is free to kill, stab, and pummel all it can in the course of getting the rest of the universe to Straighten Up and Fly Right.

goto124
2015-05-15, 07:41 AM
even if you have to poison him to do it.

But what if he makes his Fort save?

TheCountAlucard
2015-05-15, 08:49 AM
But what if he makes his Fort save?Use enough doses that he's statistically-unlikely to pass all of them.

Assuming of course that he's not a Fiend of some sort - those have a tendency to be immune. :smallsigh:

D+1
2015-05-15, 08:56 AM
You are the monarch of a "good" kingdom.
Well, IS IT a good kingdom? Alignment is determined by past actions. Actions dictate alignment, NOT the other way around. Alignment doesn't make you do anything. Wanting to remain the same alignment that you are now is what makes you do this as opposed to that. It may seem very small but that is a very important distinction. If alignment itself EVER forces a character to take a specific action then the player has no control over his character. The game does. The player would supposedly then simply be a passenger along for the ride - a mere observer who watches as his character does things that the player may or may not want the character to do.


The next kingdom over is ruled by a chaotic evil aristocracy. They are doing heinous evil to innocent people, both in their own nation and others. Your evil neighbors don't respond to economic or diplomatic efforts, and it has become apparent that the only way to stop them is by going to war. You can, probably, defeat them in battle, although doing so will mean the deaths of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent civilians who are caught in the crossfire.

What is the absolutely good choice here that does not result in any evil?
If we do nothing then we are not ourselves doing evil. The evil kingdom is doing the evil. Our alignment then looks more neutral or chaotic. Not until _I_ start doing heinous evil to innocent people in my nation and others, ignoring pleas to stop, etc., will I be evil.

Continue on as we have? Pointless diplomacy? We're not being neutral, we're taking action and remaining involved - even if it is useless. Being good does not mandate that you have to succeed in stopping all evil everywhere. Would that we could. Maybe we could lend support to other nations that WILL go beat them down, with money and supplies, or volunteer troops? Sorta puts them in the position of being better than we are though, because they're willing to make the sacrifice that we won't.

Go to war? Well, if we consider it OUR moral imperative to stop others from doing evil if we can then we accept that OUR OWN sacrifice of life is the cost that must be paid. Doing the right thing is HARD TO DO. It is the DIFFICULT choice. No greater love than to lay down your life for a friend, and 'tis a far better thing I do than I have ever done, etc. You can't stop the evil overlord like Neville Chamberlain with a signature on a piece of paper and claiming, "peace in our time". Historically, it's never worked. If it does work then they weren't really all that keen on being evil, now were they? You stop the evil overlord from perpetrating evil by killing enough of his troops, and his commanders, and HIM, until they stop being evil or there's none of them left to do the evil anyway. That, I would say, is the most-good choice which does not in and of itself result in evil, despite the fact that THE COST TO BE PAID for doing good is the loss of thousands/millions of innocent lives. But that's not really our fault is it? It's all still on the head of the BBEG and his evil aristocracy.

The ABSOLUTELY good choice is that our happy thoughts, and Unicorn Emergency Love-fest teams with their rainbow eye beams, flower bombs and ice cream armor will spontaneously and painlessly make them change their ways and we all live together forever in a joy-joy world. But that seldom actually works for some reason so we sadly must fall back to just killing them all until they stop.

So tell me - do my people, my army share MY belief that this military action is something that needs to be done? IS this a good nation? Or is it a neutral or perhaps chaotic nation and I just happen to be a good-aligned leader who knows that their hardship and sacrifice in this war is one of those difficult choices that good leaders have to make?

McStabbington
2015-05-15, 09:00 AM
Citation needed. Good has no qualms about hurting others as long as it doesn't inflict undue suffering. Good is free to kill, stab, and pummel all it can in the course of getting the rest of the universe to Straighten Up and Fly Right.

Oh, for the love of Mike the Lantern Archon, would you please just read my statement with an ounce of charity? I was writing that at 4 in the morning; just kindly slide in the word "innocent" right before the word "sentient". Just like I've included the other times I've posted on this thread. And what would totally be in keeping with the entire tenor of my post.

Seriously, the desire to "win" this conversation should not be so great as to intentionally read idiocy into everyone else's statement. I know it's the internet, but it's our little corner of the internet. Keep it nice.

D+1
2015-05-15, 09:18 AM
Good must be active; constantly failing to act because you're afraid of the consequences of a wrong choice isn't good.
But constantly failing to act because you're afraid of the consequences isn't EVIL. Being afraid isn't evil. Being afraid isn't non-good. In reality only the insane and those who have no self-awareness have no fear. Being brave also doesn't make you good. It's often described as the ability to act DESPITE fear. It's perfectly possible to be incredibly brave while doing vile and evil things. Therefore, being incapacitated by fear doesn't mean you're non-good.

Talakeal
2015-05-16, 11:29 AM
So, as it turns out I have a partial explanation for #1.


The DM made the announcement after the party saw a wounded NPC and (jokingly) discussed just leaving her to die rather than helping her.

It turns out she was the DMPC (who happens to be at least twice the parties level btw) and the DM was making those statements to railroad us into taking her with us.

So that explains that.

Keltest
2015-05-16, 11:31 AM
So, as it turns out I have a partial explanation for #1.


The DM made the announcement after the party saw a wounded NPC and (jokingly) discussed just leaving her to die rather than helping her.

It turns out she was the DMPC (who happens to be at least twice the parties level btw) and the DM was making those statements to railroad us into taking her with us.

So that explains that.

Then the DM needs to create more compelling plot hooks.

GloatingSwine
2015-05-16, 11:41 AM
So, last night my GM made an announcement that if a player character ever committed an "evil act" they would be taken away from the controlling player. That got me thinking about some things I have been musing for some time.

First, is this an abuse of DM powers? I know the RPGA had the same policy, and it seems pretty standard for DMs to state up front "no evil characters", but is it actually appropriate to yank away a character from their owning player because they don't behave? Particularly if it is only a single event, or one which falls into a grey area.

It's clear that the GM intends the campaign to be generally heroic, under those conditions if a PC does something overwhelmingly evil then they should probably be retired as a PC and become a villain. (Though that shouldn't be for petty evils. On the other hand if you're doing petty evils as a PC in a heroic fantasy setting then why are you even there? You're supposed to be larger than life characters not playground bullies.)

Cazero
2015-05-16, 12:15 PM
So, as it turns out I have a partial explanation for #1.


The DM made the announcement after the party saw a wounded NPC and (jokingly) discussed just leaving her to die rather than helping her.

It turns out she was the DMPC (who happens to be at least twice the parties level btw) and the DM was making those statements to railroad us into taking her with us.

So that explains that.

I suggest you pull a Gimli (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=740) at the first opportunity.
Hopefully that will teach your GM to not mixup bullsh*it railroad excuses and actual intent of making a campaign about heroics.

Hawkstar
2015-05-16, 01:51 PM
It's clear that the GM intends the campaign to be generally heroic, under those conditions if a PC does something overwhelmingly evil then they should probably be retired as a PC and become a villain. (Though that shouldn't be for petty evils. On the other hand if you're doing petty evils as a PC in a heroic fantasy setting then why are you even there? You're supposed to be larger than life characters not playground bullies.)

But crunchy chicks are delicious!

Sith_Happens
2015-05-16, 04:48 PM
So, as it turns out I have a partial explanation for #1.

The DM made the announcement after the party saw a wounded NPC and (jokingly) discussed just leaving her to die rather than helping her.

It turns out she was the DMPC (who happens to be at least twice the parties level btw) and the DM was making those statements to railroad us into taking her with us.

So that explains that.

Is she still wounded? Because I agree, just leaving her there to bleed out would be wrong, this situation clearly calls for a coup-de-gras.:smallamused:

LibraryOgre
2015-05-17, 06:46 PM
But constantly failing to act because you're afraid of the consequences isn't EVIL. Being afraid isn't evil. Being afraid isn't non-good. In reality only the insane and those who have no self-awareness have no fear. Being brave also doesn't make you good. It's often described as the ability to act DESPITE fear. It's perfectly possible to be incredibly brave while doing vile and evil things. Therefore, being incapacitated by fear doesn't mean you're non-good.

I disagree. Being paralyzed by fear, such that you never take good actions, but also avoid evil actions, makes you neutral. Good and evil are both active. Neutral can be active (enforcing balance between good and evil, or law and chaos), but can also be passive... choosing not to act.

Keltest
2015-05-17, 06:55 PM
I disagree. Being paralyzed by fear, such that you never take good actions, but also avoid evil actions, makes you neutral. Good and evil are both active. Neutral can be active (enforcing balance between good and evil, or law and chaos), but can also be passive... choosing not to act.

Indeed. Ive seen neutral described as having the strength to stand for what's right, but lacking the will to.