Alignment And Annihilation [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Markoff Chainey

2016-03-20, 04:39 PM

When it comes to morals and ethics, it is very important to be precise language-wise, otherwise things get mixed up badly.

First, the story you tell is about how the character behaved. Behaviour is easy to judge from the outside.

Another thing is the inner drive for a certain behaviour, the intention. Every action has an intention, otherwise we would not act. The problem with the intention is that it cannot be seen objectively by anybody else.

So, I might see a woman on a rainy night walking over a bridge. - She suddenly slips. I might now...
a) rush to her in order to prevent her fall over the bridge
b) rush to her in order to make sure she falls over the bridge

and no matter if I choose a or b, the outcome might be
-) she falls over the bridge
-) she does not fall over the bridge

It might happen that I want to throw her over, but she feels I rescued her or I might want to rescue her and only due to my action (because I rush there and slip myself) she falls over...

We must not mix up the intention of an action with the outcome of an action. In reality, we have no clue about the outcome of any of our actions because there are myriads of influences on anything we do. - The higher the complexity of a scenario, the less can we know the outcome.

"Alignment" (Good/Evil/Neutral) is about an inner stance and can only be linked to the intentions of a character. Her behaviour is an evidence of the intention, but from the outside you can never be 100% sure about the intention, because you can only perceive behaviour.

(Chaotic/Lawful/Neutral) is a funny thing because it mixes up an inner stance with an outer. - It says something about how a character will behave (!) towards the law of a culture he was raised in or that he accepts. In our culture for example, vengeance is officially frowned upon. - If someone hits you, you are not supposed to hit back by law. If someone robs you, you are not supposed to rob the person back and so on... In another culture and another universe, it might be totally legal and normal to kill someone because he spit on the floor. So a lawful person might feel obliged to kill someone who spits on the floor.. is doing so now good or evil? - This cannot be answered!

Now, to relate to your problem, the main question to ask is: did the character want to annihilate them all? (Intention!) If not, then he was maybe short-sighted, acting incredibly stupid or whatever... his guilt is a hint that he did not want it and his intention was a different one. You cannot break "Alignment" with the outcome of an action, only with the intention of an action. I might have the best altruistic intentions to help someone and wreck the whole world... I will feel terrible, but still die with a "good" alignment. The caveat is of course that being of a good alignment and doing something that leads to a horrible outcome might wreck a person and her integrity and that might lead to a change of alignment - but in any given direction.

(Try to see it from the opposite... What would have happened when a character of evil alignment would have wanted to kill them all and with a powerful spell and by some chance saved them instead from certain death? he also would not become "good" suddenly, because he wanted them dead for no reason but them being alive...)

Markoff Chainey

2016-03-20, 04:44 PM

When it comes to morals and ethics, it is very important to be precise language-wise, otherwise things get mixed up badly.

First, the story you tell is about how the character behaved. Behaviour is easy to judge from the outside.

Another thing is the inner drive for a certain behaviour, the intention. Every action has an intention, otherwise we would not act. The problem with the intention is that it cannot be seen objectively by anybody else.

So, I might see a woman on a rainy night walking over a bridge. - She suddenly slips. I might now...
a) rush to her in order to prevent her fall over the bridge
b) rush to her in order to make sure she falls over the bridge

and no matter if I choose a or b, the outcome might be
-) she falls over the bridge
-) she does not fall over the bridge

It might happen that I want to throw her over, but she feels I rescued her or I might want to rescue her and only due to my action she falls over...

We must not mix up the intention of an action with the outcome of an action. In reality, we have no clue about the outcome of any of our actions because there are myriads of influences on anything we do. - The higher the complexity of a scenario, the less can we know the outcome.

"Alignment" (Good/Evil/Neutral) is about an inner stance and can only be linked to the intentions of a character. Her behaviour is an evidence of the intention, but from the outside you can never be 100% sure about the intention, because you can only perceive behaviour.

(Chaotic/Lawful/Neutral) is a funny thing because it mixes up an inner stance with an outer. - It says something about how a character will behave (!) towards the law of a culture he was raised in or that he accepts. In our culture for example, vengeance is officially frowned upon. - If someone hits you, you are not supposed to hit back by law. If someone robs you, you are not supposed to rob the person back and so on... In another culture and another universe, it might be totally legal and normal to kill someone because he spit on the floor. So a lawful person might feel obliged to kill someone who spits on the floor.. is doing so now good or evil? - This cannot be answered!

Now, to relate to your problem, the main question to ask is: did the character want to annihilate them all? (Intention!) If not, then he was maybe short-sighted, acting incredibly stupid or whatever... his guilt is a hint that he did not want it and his intention was a different one. You cannot break "Alignment" with the outcome of an action, only with the intention of an action. I might have the best altruistic intentions to help someone and wreck the whole world... I will feel terrible, but still die with a "good" alignment. The caveat is of course that being of a good alignment and doing something that leads to a horrible outcome might wreck a person and her integrity and that might lead to a change of alignment - but in any given direction.

(Try to see it from the opposite... What would have happened when a character of evil alignment would have wanted to kill them all and with a powerful spell and by some chance saved them instead from certain death? he also would not become "good" suddenly, because he wanted them dead for no reason but them being alive...)

pwykersotz

2016-03-20, 04:46 PM

"Alignment" (Good/Evil/Neutral) is about an inner stance and can only be linked to the intentions of a character. Her behaviour is an evidence of the intention, but from the outside you can never be 100% sure about the intention, because you can only perceive behaviour.

In-character, maybe. But this imaginary person isn't real. A person is objectively controlling them, and has to explain and perform the interactions to another person (the DM) which makes it much easier to judge.

Markoff Chainey

2016-03-20, 05:08 PM

In-character, maybe. But this imaginary person isn't real. A person is objectively controlling them, and has to explain and perform the interactions to another person (the DM) which makes it much easier to judge.

It just adds another layer of complexity, but you cannot get into the players head. If he did not want his character to perform an evil act, it is fair to say that his character hadn't the intention to perform an evil act, even if the outcome was horrific (and actually quite foreseeable).

All happened due to "absent-mindedness", but the poster did not say if the player was absent-minded or if the player acted intentionally and said that his character was absent-minded, but the first seemed more likely, otherwise the player himself would likely not feel guilty.

As a DM, I do not allow the player to let a char act intentionally "absent-minded" and if the player is absent-minded, I allow his character to step up by making a wisdom roll and tell the player what his character thinks what will be the most likely outcome and how he feels doing this or that... So in that case, I would have let the player roll a wisdom or int check against DC 10 and let him remember the highly explosive eggs... so I would have forced a conscious decision from the player.

Telok

2016-03-20, 05:20 PM

Shaofoo

2016-03-20, 05:24 PM

Are there any mechanical effects of alignment in 5e? I haven't found any so far, but my knowledge is far from complete.

I usually write a one word personality descriptor in that spot on my sheet. Confuses the heck out of some people but it's more accurate than alignment.

Outside of a couple of magic items there is no penalties to alignment by RAW.

This is why consequences is far more important than just changing two words and that being the end of it.

BurgerBeast

2016-03-20, 05:27 PM

When it comes to morals and ethics, it is very important to be precise language-wise, otherwise things get mixed up badly...

Great post. I love the discussion of morals and this is ultimately the end point of most discussions (especially when the classic dilemmas are discussed). I will just add that there is a further step to this process, and that is the foreseeability of undesirable outcomes and how they relate to criminal negligence.

So, no matter how well intentioned you were when you let the children play, letting them play in traffic which led to their death is your fault, and you are morally accountable, and therefore you committed an evil. This assumes you are responsible, i.e. a mature adult as opposed to a child.

Markoff Chainey

2016-03-20, 05:30 PM

Are there any mechanical effects of alignment in 5e? I haven't found any so far, but my knowledge is far from complete.

I usually write a one word personality descriptor in that spot on my sheet. Confuses the heck out of some people but it's more accurate than alignment.

mechanical - only some spells (protection from evil / good, detect evil, ...) and some really powerful items like sentient magic weapons have some mechanical influence

the alignment system is really crappy as an real life system to capture moral values, but funny on the other hand when you play D&D with a malicious DM that likes to force ethical decisions from his players :)

lebefrei

2016-03-20, 05:40 PM

Ninja_Prawn

2016-03-20, 05:41 PM

mechanical - only some spells (protection from evil / good, detect evil, ...)

Neither of those spells have anything to do with alignment in 5e. They've been changed to target certain creature types.

Markoff Chainey

2016-03-20, 05:54 PM

Great post. I love the discussion of morals and this is ultimately the end point of most discussions (especially when the classic dilemmas are discussed). I will just add that there is a further step to this process, and that is the foreseeability of undesirable outcomes and how they relate to criminal negligence.

So, no matter how well intentioned you were when you let the children play, letting them play in traffic which led to their death is your fault, and you are morally accountable, and therefore you committed an evil. This assumes you are responsible, i.e. a mature adult as opposed to a child.

I am glad you liked it :)

Yes, the post is much too short to even mention all the other important aspects - facets of perception, expectations, ...

your example with the children... allow me to play the devil's advocate to show that it is really complex... you say some interesting things. I think it is clear that the adult is responsible, meaning that he has the duty to care for the wellbeing. But what does committing an "evil" mean? In my own personal language, "evil" and "ignorance" are interchangeable, but that is in no way a scientific impeccable connotation. Being morally accountable is even more tricky. Being responsible entails that you are accountable in some way, but "morally accountable".. It is of course something we do constantly (= judging the internal system of others that we derive from their actions and context which we perceived), but not something we actually can do. (Because it is not possible to derive an internal system from the outside) And "fault" is also a word that we use often but has more than one meaning and most of them are actually problematic. By all means, I totally do agree that one must make sure that children should not play in traffic! - But what does "fault" mean? It actually should mean that your actions lead to a series of incidents that lead to a certain unwelcome outcome. In reality, we can never be sure if that is really true because we cannot visit another multiverse where only we took one different decision and see the outcome. And in our normal day language "fault" means the same as "blame" and that is again a totally different story, but is strongly interwoven with the "judging the internal system of others that we derive from their actions and context we perceived".

Slipperychicken

2016-03-20, 06:15 PM

I'm honestly not sure what their alignment would be at right now, as both character and player are wracked with guilt. What do you all think?

I wouldn't bother. You don't need the PHB to tell you right from wrong. It's not even going to matter much unless you plan on dropping an Amulet of Ultimate Evil soon.

pwykersotz

2016-03-20, 06:20 PM

It just adds another layer of complexity, but you cannot get into the players head. If he did not want his character to perform an evil act, it is fair to say that his character hadn't the intention to perform an evil act, even if the outcome was horrific (and actually quite foreseeable).

All happened due to "absent-mindedness", but the poster did not say if the player was absent-minded or if the player acted intentionally and said that his character was absent-minded, but the first seemed more likely, otherwise the player himself would likely not feel guilty.

As a DM, I do not allow the player to let a char act intentionally "absent-minded" and if the player is absent-minded, I allow his character to step up by making a wisdom roll and tell the player what his character thinks what will be the most likely outcome and how he feels doing this or that... So in that case, I would have let the player roll a wisdom or int check against DC 10 and let him remember the highly explosive eggs... so I would have forced a conscious decision from the player.

No, but the player can certainly tell you what was going through his head. And yes, sometimes players are blinded to what seems obvious to the GM and can accidentally do some terrible things, but if asked the player will be able to articulate his intentions to the universe (DM) and be judged objectively for them.

I like your method of determining absent-mindedness.

I highly disagree that "intention" is the only tracker of morality/alignment. That is a ridiculous claim. People commiting genocide often believe in their hearts that they are doing the right thing. They are "cleansing" the world of "inferior" or even "evil" people. I dare you to claim that makes them good. This is often where "I was only following orders" comes into play. An attempt to claim Lawful Neutral. Guess what? Those people get imprisoned or executed for war crimes. They were Lawful Evil at best.

Action drives our alignment. Very few people in the real world believe themselves to be evil, even truly terrible people that anyone else would call a monster. We live through our perspective, and justify our actions so that we can live with ourselves. As such, we are terrible judges of our own alignment. Those closest to us (a spouse, children, parents) probably know it much better unless they also justify our actions.

Keep in mind that this muddies the waters a bit because a person has made a value judgement about what "good" and "evil" apply towards, which can be the evil part of the intention. If I attach a value of "good" to cake and "evil" to pie and then I kill all pie-eaters, not only am I a hypocrite (I love pie!) but I have committed evil because I have made a value judgement to dehumanize which would be an evil intention, whether I qualified it that way or not.

That said, I agree that actions are important. They just aren't the core. If the Paladin drops the torch by accident and the nest goes up, that's not evil. If the Paladin lights the nest ablaze thinking that he is killing fiends and he is actually killing human children, that would be evil by accident because he has purposefully done it, though he would likely be repentant and not in need of an alignment shift or a fall. If he purposefully lights ablaze human children, he would be acting and intending evil. If he purposefully lights children ablaze because he truly believes that they will go to Mount Celestia untainted then he is acting evil with good (and wrong) intentions and is evil. So your genocidal example would be a person who is evil, but perhaps redeemable (though perhaps not forgivable by those he wronged). Whereas someone who knew the evil in their actions and did it anyway is just capital 'E' Evil.

Markoff Chainey

2016-03-20, 06:21 PM

I highly disagree that "intention" is the only tracker of morality/alignment. That is a ridiculous claim. People commiting genocide often believe in their hearts that they are doing the right thing. They are "cleansing" the world of "inferior" or even "evil" people. I dare you to claim that makes them good. This is often where "I was only following orders" comes into play. An attempt to claim Lawful Neutral. Guess what? Those people get imprisoned or executed for war crimes. They were Lawful Evil at best.

Action drives our alignment. Very few people in the real world believe themselves to be evil, even truly terrible people that anyone else would call a monster. We live through our perspective, and justify our actions so that we can live with ourselves. As such, we are terrible judges of our own alignment. Those closest to us (a spouse, children, parents) probably know it much better unless they also justify our actions.

In a D&D game, the DM sees all. And the DM watched this person act terribly. They slaughtered the helpless injured (infirmary) and committed genocide on the future of this community by destroying their eggs. (I assume they were hobgoblin eggs if that is how you play...). Finally, he even showed a willingness to kill victims of the hobgoblins, knowingly killing slaves and thralls.

Not only would I shunt him down to neutral evil (he plays nice with the party I assume, this makes him not chaotic evil), but the whole party would find themselves being attacked by bounty hunters regularly.

The escaped slave reached the nearest point of civilization, told anyone that would listen about the evil adventurers, and now diviners are tracking the party and sending people to capture them for trial.

Remember, by accepting Drizzt as their most popular character and even putting drow into the common player race section (I don't agree with this personally), they are saying that any "evil" race has exceptions. You are evil if you just go about murdering their noncombatants.

I did write that intention is the base for any action. Any action is a behaviour. We are in control of which intention we follow when we act and our "alignment" (I would call it internal value system) defines which action we take. Other very important factors are our goals, the perceived context in which we act and our ability to think about our action. These factors, especially the perceived context - the picture they have of the world they are living in, are often totally deluded in mass murderers.

I did not claim that they are good nor evil. - These terms stem from a culture in which a certain value system is regarded as "good" or "evil" - but that culture is purely imaginary and therefor highly diverse.

Actions do not drive our alignment, but they certainly create the picture that others have from us. So to say I might think that she is a "good person" because I saw her helping an old lady over the street... I do think she is "good" because I fail to discern between perceived behaviour and the internal value system that "makes" a person. (For example I do not know why she helped the old lady over the street, maybe she held a gun to her side and robbed her while they walked and I only failed to perceive it!)

I totally do agree that we are terrible judges of our own "alignment" - but we are the only persons able to judge our internal system! Every body else can by their own right only be a judge of our behaviour and we better listen, because people outside of us can better judge our behaviour than we do ourselves, but they cannot (!) judge our internal system because they can by no means access it directly. - Even if I would want to spill it out in front of you, we would have to talk - using behaviour again - you can never know if I lie or not, tell everything and even then, you have to translate everything into your own system in order to comprehend it and all that is not 100% possible without errors and misconceptions.

"War criminals" are judged by their enemies who have won the conflict...

Every action creates reactions from our environment - you are not free of responsibility! Not in the real world, not in D&D. Especially not in D&D! It is a fantastic story hook and a good reason to send many people after the party to bring them to "justice". - But the main decision as a human DM is... why do you do this? Do you want to "punish" the player because he did something you personally loath or do you want to create the best possible experience for all players and you? If your intention is vengeance, maybe you should instead look out for different players and make your life less miserable.

Knaight

2016-03-20, 06:52 PM

mgshamster

2016-03-20, 07:05 PM

Are there any mechanical effects of alignment in 5e? I haven't found any so far, but my knowledge is far from complete.

The Few Mechanical Implications of Alignment in 5e (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?474120-5E-The-few-mechanical-implications-of-Alignment)

lebefrei

2016-03-20, 07:30 PM

If your intention is vengeance, maybe you should instead look out for different players and make your life less miserable.

I don't appreciate the personal attack, and it is also clearly against the rules of this forum. These are not my players, I am not the OP, and you know nothing of my life.

I try to DM an active, living world and attempt to have each action lead to another. If there would be a reasonable, "civilized" place for the slave to reach, that is what would likely happen in my game. I am the DM, sent to shape a world around PCs. Not to punish nor play against my players. By doing this, I act the world, not myself. Would it be fun, and also remind them that the world doesn't just look the other way from evil acts because they're the focus? That would be my hope.

As far as the topic goes, of course morality is subjective. Even war crimes. I am arguing both from a modern western perspective, the one from which we usually play the game, and from a D&D perspective, that actually explains its morality in most worlds.

Two people have equated actions to accidents. Accidents and unintended consequences are neither part of someone's direct action. Action is intention made manifest. In that regard yes, intention shapes alignment, but only insofar as you act upon it. Having good thoughts yet living a life only for yourself would in game terms make you neutral, not good. I don't ascribe to such a simple system of morality in our real world, I am using what is available to translate it to the game. Just as the game makes other realities into abstractions to simplify them for game rules.

Society may judge those accidents, but they do not shape the alignment of the player. Nor did I say that others create your alignment, only that those close to you may know it better than you know yourself. Society shapes reputation. That is why it's possible that the law comes down on everyone attacking the Hobgoblins there; they may all be held responsible even if they didn't directly act towards it. That probably doesn't effect their alignment, though, unless they just stood by and watched as the sorcerer killed mercilessly.

I work with my players over their alignment (and now the other guiding factors that 5e contains) to figure out if their actions match in the big picture. We decide if they are either failing to roleplay the character they built, or if they choose the wrong alignment and should shift it. Or, possibly and my favorite, the character has experienced actual change and growth, as that is a strong hallmark of a good story.

Sigreid

2016-03-20, 08:03 PM

I don't appreciate the personal attack, and it is also clearly against the rules of this forum. These are not my players, I am not the OP, and you know nothing of my life.

I try to DM an active, living world and attempt to have each action lead to another. If there would be a reasonable, "civilized" place for the slave to reach, that is what would likely happen in my game. I am the DM, sent to shape a world around PCs. Not to punish nor play against my players. By doing this, I act the world, not myself. Would it be fun, and also remind them that the world doesn't just look the other way from evil acts because they're the focus? That would be my hope.

As far as the topic goes, of course morality is subjective. Even war crimes. I am arguing both from a modern western perspective, the one from which we usually play the game, and from a D&D perspective, that actually explains its morality in most worlds.

Two people have equated actions to accidents. Accidents and unintended consequences are neither part of someone's direct action. Action is intention made manifest. In that regard yes, intention shapes alignment, but only insofar as you act upon it. Having good thoughts yet living a life only for yourself would in game terms make you neutral, not good. I don't ascribe to such a simple system of morality in our real world, I am using what is available to translate it to the game. Just as the game makes other realities into abstractions to simplify them for game rules.

Society may judge those accidents, but they do not shape the alignment of the player. Nor did I say that others create your alignment, only that those close to you may know it better than you know yourself. Society shapes reputation. That is why it's possible that the law comes down on everyone attacking the Hobgoblins there; they may all be held responsible even if they didn't directly act towards it. That probably doesn't effect their alignment, though, unless they just stood by and watched as the sorcerer killed mercilessly.

I work with my players over their alignment (and now the other guiding factors that 5e contains) to figure out if their actions match in the big picture. We decide if they are either failing to roleplay the character they built, or if they choose the wrong alignment and should shift it. Or, possibly and my favorite, the character has experienced actual change and growth, as that is a strong hallmark of a good story.

I didn't see an attack. I saw two possibilities the other person saw, including that.the retribution is just the natural way things work when the crime is reported.

Drackolus

2016-03-20, 08:46 PM

I agree that alignments are cumbersome and restrictive and have no benefit. I've stopped using them altogether because they don't have any positive impact.
The world should act as the world does. Two words on his character sheet are useless.
EDIT: also, a DM shouldn't play the pc's character, and changing their alignment is nothing but an attempt to do just that.
And another point, an absolute athourity passing judgement completely eliminates moral ambiguity, and therefor a huge portion of interesting villains. Chaotic and lawful are fine alignments. That's not to say that good and evil aren't interesting concepts - in fact, the opposite is true. Absolutely stating alignment is what makes it uninteresting.

Malifice

2016-03-20, 09:06 PM

This guy committed intentional mass murder of children, and we're debating his alignment? He set fire to a nursery full of kids!

He gets a big fat CE for mine. If he's genuinely remorseful he can demonstrate it with his actions in character. Its a long road back from being the kind of person that murders children back to being a good person though, if indeed its even possible.

JumboWheat01

2016-03-20, 09:10 PM

And this is why I always enact a look first, stab later policy. Plus it's not exactly fair (or sporting,) if they're not fighting back or cannot fight back.

But yeah, killing kids? That's generally a big no-no to most gods. 'Bout the only ones who would aren't exactly higher than evil on the chart of alignments. So even if the character would continue to profess that they are good, the gods would probably say otherwise, and send those horrid people down to the Abyss. And in the end, that's all that really matters for a character.

Ewhit

2016-03-20, 09:54 PM

I think as DM you should have told him them that that action does not fit with your alignment but if you want to do continue its up to you. That usually puts them in place but if they decide to do it I agree with systems listed above reprocussion for their actions. Town finds out prices raised not as friendly maybe they have to leave town and know that image is affected maybe mayor or ruler orders them on quest or village is wiped out by hobgoblin army in revenge and lone survivor blamed adventures

Saeviomage

2016-03-20, 10:26 PM

Now, this player was previously chaotic good but due to a string of decisions that boil down to absentmindedness- committed genocide. I'm honestly not sure what their alignment would be at right now, as both character and player are wracked with guilt. What do you all think?

1. Players don't have alignments, characters do.
2. How do you mean absentmindedness? Do you mean that the player forgot information that was important and his character acted inappropriately because of that? Or that the player said his character forgot something and acted inappropriately?
3. What do you expect to achieve by waving the alignment stick around?
4. If they're wracked with guilt, they're clearly not evil.
5. Even if not wracked with guilt, what they've done isn't all that much worse than the average adventuring day. D&D games are almost entirely a sequence of people wandering around killing sentient creatures for money and territory.

Ewhit

2016-03-20, 11:01 PM

we can open can worms here. We as people alignments. What's considered lawful and good in one land might be considered evil in another and vise versa. When we bomb terrorists whom we consider evil and non evil people next to them. women and children as collateral damage.
Does that make the president and all who are part of that decision evil?

Malifice

2016-03-20, 11:12 PM

4. If they're wracked with guilt, they're clearly not evil.

Is your argument really that only the murderers and rapists who dont feel guilt are evil, and the murderers and rapists that do feel guilt are not evil?

Only in a DnD discussion can the suggestion be made that murdering a bunch of children or engaging in outright genocide is not evil because 'the killer felt bad about it afterwards'.

5. Even if not wracked with guilt, what they've done isn't all that much worse than the average adventuring day

In games featuring murderhobos perhaps. Not all games do.

RickAllison

2016-03-20, 11:17 PM

Is your argument really that only the murderers and rapists who dont feel guilt are evil, and the murderers and rapists that do feel guilt are not evil?

Only in a DnD discussion can the suggestion be made that murdering a bunch of children or engaging in outright genocide is not evil because 'the killer felt bad about it afterwards'.

In games featuring murderhobos perhaps. Not all games do.

Well, it could also be in a World of Darkness discussion! In that system, this would be a Morality check with only 1 die (compared to the 3-5 normally). If they succeeded, it is actually fluffed as the person still being capable of feeling remorse for the crime they have committed. When the Morality drops, it actually indicates that the person has stopped being able to feel guilt.

Malifice

2016-03-20, 11:32 PM

Well, it could also be in a World of Darkness discussion! In that system, this would be a Morality check with only 1 die (compared to the 3-5 normally). If they succeeded, it is actually fluffed as the person still being capable of feeling remorse for the crime they have committed. When the Morality drops, it actually indicates that the person has stopped being able to feel guilt.

Just imagining the following exchange after a new flatmate (lets call him Frank) found on Craigsist or something comes home:

Matt: Hey Frank, how was your day?
Frank: Not so great man. I murdered a bunch of children.
Matt: What?
Frank: I feel kinda bad about it now though.
Matt: Whew. For a second there I thought you might be evil.

RickAllison

2016-03-20, 11:38 PM

Just imagining the following exchange after a new flatmate (lets call him Frank) found on Craigsist or something comes home:

Matt: Hey Frank, how was your day?
Frank: Not so great man. I murdered a bunch of children.
Matt: What?
Frank: I feel kinda bad about it now though.
Matt: Whew. For a second there I thought you might be evil.

You joke about that, but it wouldn't be out of line in WoD :smalltongue:. Heck, Hunters get a mechanic where they can basically say, "I don't feel bad about killing that entire bus of children. Blowing it up was necessary to kill the vampire!"

Sigreid

2016-03-20, 11:45 PM

Something to consider, is it really that much worse to kill the infirm and destroy the eggs than it is to slaughter all the able bodied hobgoblins and then leave the infirm and the eggs/kids to die of starvation or potentially attacks by predators?

Malifice

2016-03-21, 12:00 AM

Saeviomage

2016-03-21, 12:20 AM

Is your argument really that only the murderers and rapists who dont feel guilt are evil, and the murderers and rapists that do feel guilt are not evil?

I'm saying that evil is entirely a pejorative term when applied to an individual.

Only in a DnD discussion can the suggestion be made that murdering a bunch of children or engaging in outright genocide is not evil because 'the killer felt bad about it afterwards'.

The act is evil. The killer may not be. The two are not inextricable.

In games featuring murderhobos perhaps. Not all games do.
In any game where the PCs aren't leaving a string of unconscious but still alive foes in their wake. D&D has shown that even demons can be turned good, and PCs can easily choose not to kill with little effort. There is no excuse for ever killing anything in D&D.
In fact if anything, killing a creature with an 'evil' alignment is worse: you condemn them to an eternity in the hells. Killing good creatures sends them to various heavens. So those adventurers killing children are evil?

Just imagining the following exchange after a new flatmate (lets call him Frank) found on Craigsist or something comes home:

Matt: Hey Frank, how was your day?
Frank: Not so great man. I murdered a bunch of children.
Matt: What?
Frank: I feel kinda bad about it now though.
Matt: Whew. For a second there I thought you might be evil.
Frank: Yeah, now I can still kill lemures permanently by sprinkling holy water on them. And a Night hag can't stuff my soul into her soul bag. And if I visit mount Celestia, I can still get bless and lesser restoration! But I can't become an oathbreaker, no matter how many oaths I break. I guess that's a small price to pay.
Matt: What the hell are you talking about?

Long story short, evil in D&D and evil in the real world are not the same thing.

The only thing they share in common is that labeling someone Evil is used as an excuse for awful behavior towards them.

Malifice

2016-03-21, 12:33 AM

Long story short, evil in D&D and evil in the real world are not the same thing.

Im down with postmodernism but I'm not so sure the text of the DnD rules lead me to think that when DnD uses the terms 'evil and 'good' they have different meanings to what you and I use them as.

3E defined them as:

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

Evil implies harming, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient or if it can be set up. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some malevolent deity or master.

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.

I note that is an earlier edition, but seeing as the alignments used in 5E are parsed versions of 3E's alignments, I see no reason to assume these assumptions are not still of some value in determining what is 'good' and what is 'evil'.

If we use these definitions, arbitrarily murdering children (even feeling bad about it afterwards) is clearly an act of evil.

At my table the PC's alignment would shift immediately, most likely to CE (the arbitrary and unecessary use of violence and murder). The character might think otherwise, but they're in for a rude shock on death.

The only thing they share in common is that labeling someone Evil is used as an excuse for awful behavior towards them.

Do evil things to an evil person and you're also an evil person. Good people understand this idiom. As did Nitzche: 'He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster' and all that.

Saeviomage

2016-03-21, 12:36 AM

...

Umm... so you're saying every adventurer is evil, right? Well, unless your group makes no use of the combat chapter at all.

Malifice

2016-03-21, 12:54 AM

Umm... so you're saying every adventurer is evil, right? Well, unless your group makes no use of the combat chapter at all.

No. If you're exploring a ruin/ the underdark/ Barovia and a bunch of monsters/ Strahd the Vampire/ cultists of Tiamat/ Demons and demon woshupping Drow leap out and try and kill you, you're well within your rights to use force (including lethal force) to deter or stop them.

Just like if you were on your way home and a mugger leaps out at you, and you are forced to shoot him in self defence. Not an evil act. It's not a good act either, but its certainly not an evil one.

The use of force (even lethal force) in self defence (or the defence of others) when no other option reasonably presents itself is not an evil act. Arbitrary violence and killing for no other reason other than for profit or convenience is an evil act. In fact, that's the precise definition of evil straight from the 3E rules (though the applicability of that definition to 5E is debateable).

Murder has pretty much always been considered an evil act in all forms of DnD and across all contemporary societies. If your PCs are acting like murder-hobos then they're almost certainly evil.

Whether they acknowledge it or not is a different story.

Knaight

2016-03-21, 02:11 AM

Is your argument really that only the murderers and rapists who dont feel guilt are evil, and the murderers and rapists that do feel guilt are not evil?

Only in a DnD discussion can the suggestion be made that murdering a bunch of children or engaging in outright genocide is not evil because 'the killer felt bad about it afterwards'.

Please. The arguments being made may be a bit more overt than normal, but that's only because the typical self serving euphemisms have been largely avoided. Apply the euphemisms a bit, and it starts sounding like this:

"A preemptive strike was launched against presumable enemy combatants in a support facility. In the battle, there was some amount of regrettable collateral damage."

Malifice

2016-03-21, 02:36 AM

Please. The arguments being made may be a bit more overt than normal, but that's only because the typical self serving euphemisms have been largely avoided. Apply the euphemisms a bit, and it starts sounding like this:

"A preemptive strike was launched against presumable enemy combatants in a support facility. In the battle, there was some amount of regrettable collateral damage."

The 'support facility' was a infirmaryand was known to contain dozens of children, wounded peeps and non combatants I thought. It was intentionally targetted too.

Intentionally gunning down/ bombing non-combatants isnt 'collateral damage' either. It literally means incidental deaths, injuries, or other damage inflicted on an unintended target.

Hitting the barracks is one thing. But then moving to the nearby hospital and putting the noncombatants and captives to the sword (or in this case burning down the nearby hospital with peeps trapped inside) is something else entirely.

Knaight

2016-03-21, 02:52 AM

The 'support facility' was a nursery and was known to contain dozens of children I thought.

Intentionally gunning down/ bombing non-combatants isnt 'collateral damage' either.

This is exactly why those terms exist. A term like 'support facility' isn't there to describe things like blowing up an armory; at that point you just admit to blowing up an armory. A nursery, or a hospital, or something else which sounds bad? Generic term time. In this context, a fire was set in an infirmary, with it eventually spreading to the nursery being entirely predictable. Neither of those look good, but through the magic of euphemisms, an infirmary can be referred to as a 'support facility', with the nursery rolled into 'collateral damage', along with all of the slaves that the party was presumably ostensibly there to rescue.

Also the entire point of the term 'collateral damage' it to euphemize gunning down/ bombing non-combatants. It's another term that gets used because descriptions like "shot a missile at an apartment building because there was an enemy sniper on the roof" sounds bad. Then there's the flexibility of terms like 'non-combatant', particularly in the context of pre-emptive strikes, where by definition they haven't actually attacked you, and thus convenient criteria like "everyone within the age range that would conceivably make them part of a fighting force" can be used instead.

The big thing here though, is that none of that rhetoric is at all particular to things like D&D boards. Most of the examples of it being used are pretty politicized, but unless you've been living under a rock they're familiar arguments found elsewhere. Even avoiding the political aspects about whether a given war is just or not, and whether particular tactics are acceptable, and all that, and looking just at facts, there are specific cases where independent hospitals have been hit with missiles, painted as military targets because of providing support, and then brushed under the rug on the basis of the people involved being very very sorry.

Malifice

2016-03-21, 03:30 AM

This is exactly why those terms exist. A term like 'support facility' isn't there to describe things like blowing up an armory; at that point you just admit to blowing up an armory. A nursery, or a hospital, or something else which sounds bad? Generic term time. In this context, a fire was set in an infirmary, with it eventually spreading to the nursery being entirely predictable. Neither of those look good, but through the magic of euphemisms, an infirmary can be referred to as a 'support facility', with the nursery rolled into 'collateral damage', along with all of the slaves that the party was presumably ostensibly there to rescue.

Mate, you can call them whatever you want. The point is that the Sorcerer knew he was killing non-combatants. That was his plan.

Also the entire point of the term 'collateral damage' it to euphemize gunning down/ bombing non-combatants. It's another term that gets used because descriptions like "shot a missile at an apartment building because there was an enemy sniper on the roof" sounds bad. Then there's the flexibility of terms like 'non-combatant', particularly in the context of pre-emptive strikes, where by definition they haven't actually attacked you, and thus convenient criteria like "everyone within the age range that would conceivably make them part of a fighting force" can be used instead.

There is a reason that "shot a missile at an apartment building because there was an enemy sniper on the roof" sounds bad. Because it is bad.

You're arguing semantics - and this has zero to do with whether what this dude did was objectively evil.

I was a soldier in a past life mate, and if one of my men deliberately fire bombed an infirmary, then they've just committed a clear war crime. Mistaking a barracks for an infirmary - yeah it happens. Hitting the wrong car killing civilians instead of military targets, fine. Unfortunate but not a deliberate killing of non-combatants.

This Sorcerer intentionally targetted non combatants, the sick and the injured. When faced with someone he knew was dominated, he elected to kill the person rather than help his friends knock him out. These are all displays of arbitrary and unecessary violence for (largely) convenience sake.

I'm sure if youre having problems with the local orc village, that rounding them all up and putting them all to the sword (men, women and children) and razing the village to the ground, is an effective solution to the problem. But its still evil. A good person tries to resolve the issue without resorting to violence, possibly opening up trade between the two camps if possible and preserving life. If attacked, the good person fights back as much as needed to preserve innocent life, using proportionate lethal force if reasonably needed. The good person treats prisoners and injured combatants (both friendly and enemy) with kindness and dignity, show mercy and compassion to their enemies and seek at all times to resolve the problem with minimal violence and respect for sentient life.

Couching it in some kind of nebulous terms is nothing more than a justification for the act (and as a Lawyer IRL I hear these kinds of justifications all the time for all sorts of abhorrent acts). Im probably close to 'CN' IRL if I had to guess (think along the lines of Saul Goodman) and (as indicated prior) used to be a Soldier. Torching a bunch of wounded non combatants, nurses and doctors, shooting prisoners and some light genocide certainly isnt something I could picture myself engaging in, clear conscience, pangs of remorse after the fact or otherwise.

BurgerBeast

2016-03-21, 04:20 AM

But what does committing an "evil" mean?
Committing an immoral act, which essentially boils down to inflicting harm on another person. It might be helpful to point out that my view of morality is based almost entirely around abstaining from evil as opposed to spreading good.

In my own personal language, "evil" and "ignorance" are interchangeable, but that is in no way a scientific impeccable connotation.
Nor should it be. We're not having a scientific discussion (I'm a scientist). But for me those two words are not interchangeable. Evil is a term that has strictly moral connotations, whereas ignorance has a wider net, in my view.

Being morally accountable is even more tricky. Being responsible entails that you are accountable in some way, but "morally accountable".. It is of course something we do constantly (= judging the internal system of others that we derive from their actions and context which we perceived), but not something we actually can do. (Because it is not possible to derive an internal system from the outside)

I see no problem with attributing moral accountability, and nor should you. This seems strange to me, so I'd be interested to hear more. It sounds dangerously close to moral relativism. If you can't judge someone, then how, for example, can we judge someone like Hitler?

And "fault" is also a word that we use often but has more than one meaning and most of them are actually problematic. By all means, I totally do agree that one must make sure that children should not play in traffic! - But what does "fault" mean?

In the context, simply that the person at fault was responsible for ensuring the safety of the children (within reason), and failed to do so.

It actually should mean that your actions lead to a series of incidents that lead to a certain unwelcome outcome.
In direct cases, yes. But that's why I brought up indirect cases and negligence. This is because duty/responsibility comes into play in such a way that failure to act can lead to moral culpability.

In reality, we can never be sure if that is really true because we cannot visit another multiverse where only we took one different decision and see the outcome.

Yes, which is why we judge the intention and not the outcome, and which leads us directly back to your original post.

And in our normal day language "fault" means the same as "blame" and that is again a totally different story, but is strongly interwoven with the "judging the internal system of others that we derive from their actions and context we perceived".

I think this drives closer to the heart of what might be a disagreement. I think morality is objective. The idea that everyone has their own internal system seems to me to have nothing to do with the truth about what is right and what is wrong. As for judging others based on what we derive from their actions and our context... well, those are just the real limitations. We factor them into our conclusions. This isn't unique to moral judgments, it's a limitation of all judgments.

Regitnui

2016-03-21, 05:37 AM

OK, happily skating past moral complexity and "I'm a general in the Pentagon don't dare question me you stupid civilian" doublespeak, the act of killing the enemy children and wounded is a Bad Thing. It's why warlords use child soldiers to intentionally try and catch their opponent in that moral complexity. This sorcerer is Evil. I'm not sure if that act knocks them down to the abyss or merely just out of the Upper Planes, but they definitely took an alignment knock. Since there's genuine regret on the part of the character, we're probably on Chaotic Neutral with a lingering tilt towards Good which may reassert dominance for Chaotic Good (CN)

Markoff Chainey

2016-03-21, 07:33 AM

... I see no problem with attributing moral accountability, and nor should you...
... I think this drives closer to the heart of what might be a disagreement. I think morality is objective. The idea that everyone has their own internal system seems to me to have nothing to do with the truth about what is right and what is wrong. As for judging others based on what we derive from their actions and our context... well, those are just the real limitations. We factor them into our conclusions. This isn't unique to moral judgments, it's a limitation of all judgments....

For reasons of simplicity and not to bore out everybody else, I am going to ignore the rest of your comments, but I want to answer these two, because I think they cover most of our disagreement and, as you also agreed, are the "heart" of it.

First, morality is all but objective. A moral system exists in every society and is normally reflected within the law system in official form, but the unofficial form of it governs most of our social interactions. Morality grows out of the need that people need to find a way to somehow find a way to live together. But morality is not given by nature, but invented by society. The generally notion that stealing (= taking something from somebody else without that persons agreement) is bad is given from the universe, but a rule our society invented because it makes our life easier. To say that it is "objective" seems absurd to me, though, because even such a basic rule is dependent on many other factors before it will be accepted by society. - That there is private property, for example or that everybody is allowed to have private property and all people are more or less equal so that it is generally prohibited to take something from somebody else. There used to be societies on our planet where these things were not given and the "moral rule" - stealing is bad - would not be accepted so generally.

My point is, when you think about a fantasy world, it is very clear that many societies exist that have a profoundly different moral context (dragons, mindflayer, elves, humans, ...) and this makes it incredibly hard to come up with a common understanding of "good" and "bad" because what is "good" and "bad" is not written in stone, but invented and made up by society and each society might have a different understanding about that. - Killing a slave in ancient times would have been regarded as "unfortunate" rather than "evil", while in our times today we (thankfully!!) regard slavery and any kind of "qualification" of human beings as "evil". So if something is "good" or "bad" is solely made up by the society and there is no "evil" unless you define what qualifies as "evil". (That is true for anything... there is no "apple" unless you define what constitutes an "apple" and differentiates it from a "banana".)

So, there is no "truth about what is right or wrong" that is "objective", but only within the borders of one given society. An act that is "right" is an act that the society in question regards as beneficial in order to prolong its existance (this is why killing an enemy in defense is not regarded as "bad") and a person that is "good" is one whom the society expects to perform "right" actions.

If you meant that by there is a truth about what is right and wrong, than I agree. Most eastern cultures have an interesting concept of "dharma" - it basically does mean "acting based upon the will of the universe". - This does mean that there is an independent objective truth about what is right and wrong independent of any society, but beneficial or not beneficial for the whole universe... but when you dig deeper into those philosophies (especially Samkhya and Vedanta, I am not very familiar with Buddhism) you learn that they do not define what is right or wrong by the "actions" themselves or the "fruit of actions", the outcomes, but by the intention of the one acting and the ideal is to perform an action without the involvement of ones' own wills and desires.

Now about the third and last point, the moral accountability... I have a big problem with one out of two kinds of moral accountability and I think everybody should have, because it is the root of the feelings of shame and guilt. - Both two emotions that are being used for oppression by almost all of our societies. The one kind I mean is that somebody else but myself holds me morally accountable. Moral accountability is incredibly important as a tool to reflect the own actions, intentions, outcomes,... in order to become the person we want to become.

- Why is it impossible to morally judge somebody else correctly
Any action by itself is neutral. Writing my name is neutral. When I am signing a death sentence I am legally eligble to do, I do nothing but write my name. - But in that example you see that it is impossible to act without including an intention. My intention "colours" my action and is based upon my perceived context. There is no absolute "true" or "objective" contexts, though. When somebody else perceives my action, this person sees it within the context of that person and that might give my action a totally different "colour", because that person automatically projects an intention onto me.

Two persons might have an identical set of values. Person A signs a death sentence for someone whom he believes is a mass-murder and will continue to kill until he is alive. Person B believes that Person is innocent... All they disagree on is the context. Person A will regard his action as good while Person B will believe it is bad.

The next problem is that everybody but me is better in judging my behaviour. How well I can dance, for example. I might think that I am excellent or poor or whatever. When I want to make sure, I ask somebody else or look at a video of myself and thus become an "outside" person. But any qualified statement about the internal system of somebody else involves communication with the other person. - Two persons try to come to a mutual understanding. This is all but objective and cannot include any other person but the two AND even among the two, it is not possible to communicate without the chance of misunderstanding or willful misinformation.

When you ask someone: Why did you do that? - It is impossible to get an objective truth as an answer. It involves a translation from the perception of the world from that person to you, a translation of values from that person to you and so on - with the problem of willful misinformation or misunderstanding on each step. So you will come to an understanding of why the person did that, but that does not mean at all that you really know it.

So what we do when we (morally) judge someone... we perceive an action, translate it into the context of how we perceive the world, impose our own value system on the person acting, impose a reason for the person acting and then we make a (self-)judgement how we would judge ourselves for doing what we just perceived and impose that judgement on the other person! We cannot help but judge others and ourselves... constantly. But that is no excuse for the fact that we should not do it because it simply does not work, even if we want to believe it.

- Why is shame and guilt not beneficial for an individual
I will make it short (and therefore even more inaccurate)... shame and guilt lead to an exterior motivator for behaviour and prevent ourselves from acting out of our own belief system, thus preventing real learning and unfolding how we are and want to become. It is one of the main reasons why we feel miserable.

- Why is shame and guilt necessary for a society
If shame and guilt where not there, our society would cease to exist overnight. If you would just take it away, people used to be restrained by that emotions would roam free and destroy the society. So we need it. An individual needs to transcend it though, I believe that this is our mission and this can only be done by strengthening the internal moral and value system. If everybody would act according to a developed internal value system, we would not need an external one... But we can only allow the external one to become more loose if the internal one of the persons with the least strong internal value system is strong enough to keep up... The problem is that the stronger the external one is (law, society moral,...) the weaker the individual internal systems become.

If someone threatens society, society will deal with him. That is good (for society) and for me personally, the continuation of the existance of the society I currently live in is more important than the rights of an individual threatening it. - But that should IMO not be mixed up with an universal judgement of "good" or "bad".

All that boils down for me that ignorance towards other people, contexts, ways we perceive, internal systems, ... is evil, because ignorance does meant that we know, perceive, calculate, foresee, .... yet ignore! and act inaccordingly to our own nature and internal value system, (we rely on an external system that we think will not punish us) because we believe that the outcome will be beneficial for us.

Markoff Chainey

2016-03-21, 07:51 AM

I don't appreciate the personal attack, and it is also clearly against the rules of this forum. These are not my players, I am not the OP, and you know nothing of my life.

I am sorry if you regarded my comment as a personal attack. I neither meant you to be the target of my last paragraph, nor your players. The last paragraph was a general remark to the topic and the very first post.

The poster seemed quite shocked to me and was asking about how he should react. Between the lines, I imagined that I read that he wants to use his game world to "punish" the players. So I wanted to elicit his motivation - if he was really asking for advise how to carry on with the story or if he was actually concerned how to carry on with the game and the group.

Sigreid

2016-03-21, 08:11 AM

Is one of the arguments advanced by every genocidal monster ever.

Actually I was wondering if you hold good adventurers responsible for seeing to the wellbeing of the helpless, or are the only obligated to not actively kill them?

eastmabl

2016-03-21, 09:10 AM

Now, this player was previously chaotic good but due to a string of decisions that boil down to absentmindedness- committed genocide.

There's no such thing as an absentminded genocide.

Accidental? Sure. Absent-minded? Hardly.

He took certain actions, and his character has to deal with the consequences. If he's wracked with guilt, let him go RP his redemption.

((Now, I'm imagining the party raiding another evil hobgoblin complex to save the young hobgoblins. This character then raises the young hobgoblins to adulthood and teaches them goodness before releasing them into society)).

Finieous

2016-03-21, 09:17 AM

Murder has pretty much always been considered an evil act in all forms of DnD and across all contemporary societies.

Like others, I think it's more interesting to focus on social consequences in the game world or story for character actions than to debate "alignment," but I'm wondering about this. Do most DMs adjudicate these consequences based on the moral values of contemporary societies? Do you run your Empire of Thyatis like a modern Western representative democracy, or like a dark age feudal empire? I ask because I can think of few nations in officially published D&D settings in which wiping out a tribe of evil humanoids would be considered "murder," in the strict sense of criminal or illegal killing. As far as "all forms of D&D," of course, many early published adventures were precisely this: wiping out the "forces of Chaos" in the Borderlands on behalf of the Realm, for example.

I'd expect this to be even more prevalent in campaigns influenced by sword-and-sorcery literature, where racial/ethnic violence was one of the rare commonalities between civilized and barbaric societies (thinking mostly of Howard, here, but not only Howard).

I'm not a historian, but as I understand it, the medieval church (and even into the modern era) was generally supportive of using violence against heathens, infidels, and heretics, particularly when they were first given an opportunity to convert before being put to the sword. And the first formal statements of "laws of war" date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I'm currently running an "old gray box" FR campaign. I'll encourage the players to explore the morality of their actions however they like, and their characters, too, but in general this is a setting where civilization in the North is hanging by a thread and most of the "points of light" are small pseudo-states ruled by retired adventurers and warlords. However you feel about the morality of your character's actions -- and however your companions feel about it -- you wipe out a goblinoid tribe, you might get a parade. You certainly won't be a "wanted criminal."

pwykersotz

2016-03-21, 09:34 AM

All that boils down for me that ignorance towards other people, contexts, ways we perceive, internal systems, ... is evil, because ignorance does meant that we know, perceive, calculate, foresee, .... yet ignore! and act inaccordingly to our own nature and internal value system, (we rely on an external system that we think will not punish us) because we believe that the outcome will be beneficial for us.

I'm with BurgerBeast on objective morality, but more importantly...

In D&D morality is provably objective. There are planes of pure alignment, the stuff of which is tangible. Now you can find individual writings from people trying to use different morality systems in the game and trying to somehow fit them in there, but at its core D&D has always been a model of the ancient beliefs, whether right or wrong. The gods walk the land. Phlogiston is a thing. The Elements are Air/Earth/Fire/Water. Good/Evil/Law/Chaos are objective. Demons, Genies, Angels, and all matter of mythological monsters exist. These are all provable fact within the context of game. Thus it makes sense to judge morality from that same perspective. Doing otherwise gets weird really fast.

Knaight

2016-03-21, 10:15 AM

Mate, you can call them whatever you want. The point is that the Sorcerer knew he was killing non-combatants. That was his plan.

There is a reason that "shot a missile at an apartment building because there was an enemy sniper on the roof" sounds bad. Because it is bad.

You're arguing semantics - and this has zero to do with whether what this dude did was objectively evil.
That would be because I'm not arguing that what the sorcerer did wasn't evil*. The guy burned down an infirmary, a nursery, and what was either a forced labor camp or a more distributed system (either way, a bunch of innocent slaves were burned to death). The character is a significantly worse person than the vast majority of villainous antagonists I use as a GM.

No, what I'm arguing against is your repeated assertion that the existence of arguments to the contrary are some sort of aberration that could only come up when discussing D&D. I'm arguing that the exact same sorts of arguments get made all the time for real violence against real people, but that they look superficially different because of the euphemisms involved - and even then, the euphemisms tend to get dropped at fringes. It's not particularly hard to find people who are seriously advocating deliberately genocidal policies up to and including systematic nuclear strikes on every city across several countries, most of which aren't even involved in any military conflict whatsoever.

This discussion here isn't an aberration. It's a microcosm of a much wider one.

OK, happily skating past moral complexity and "I'm a general in the Pentagon don't dare question me you stupid civilian" doublespeak, the act of killing the enemy children and wounded is a Bad Thing. It's why warlords use child soldiers to intentionally try and catch their opponent in that moral complexity. This sorcerer is Evil. I'm not sure if that act knocks them down to the abyss or merely just out of the Upper Planes, but they definitely took an alignment knock. Since there's genuine regret on the part of the character, we're probably on Chaotic Neutral with a lingering tilt towards Good which may reassert dominance for Chaotic Good (CN)
I'd put them at CE. While the guilt should at least mean that they won't repeat the action, "they only committed genocide once" is not a particularly convincing defense against being classified as a horrible person.

*Which really should be obvious to you. The term "self serving euphemism" doesn't exactly suggest approval.

Coffee_Dragon

2016-03-21, 10:23 AM

Only in D&D!

Only in a DnD

... do there exist gods and monsters, tangible manifestations of metaphysical concepts and inhuman forces who are actually out to eat our brains (and take our goats). If one of us was transported to such a world and faced with the choice of killing the infirm, it might reflect well on us to decline, since that would reflect a value system that's considered beneficial in our own godless, monsterless world. A native might legitimately have another valuation of this decision. To them, every inhuman left alive could be someone likely to return as an implacable enemy to eat human children (and take our goats). Hence the call for context.

They were Lawful Evil at best.

"At best"? What's worse than evil? :)

Not only would I shunt him down to neutral evil (he plays nice with the party I assume, this makes him not chaotic evil), but the whole party would find themselves being attacked by bounty hunters regularly.

If my DM had a human society expend resources to punish me for being too harsh on their enemies, instead of maybe wagging their finger at me and using those resources to further combat that enemy, I would certainly call bull****.

Generally I think the thread ought to be more conservative in its use of the word "genocide". If "bulk slaying" isn't palatable, at least stop at "mass murder".

Also, it's "infernal hellspawn", not "children".

Regitnui

2016-03-21, 11:04 AM

"At best"? What's worse than evil? :)

Also, it's "infernal hellspawn", not "children".

1) at least there's rules to mess with when dealing with Lawfuls. Chaos is unpredictable.

2) I work in retail; "infernal hellspawn" can describe human children just as well as cambions.

I'd put them at CE. While the guilt should at least mean that they won't repeat the action, "they only committed genocide once" is not a particularly convincing defense against being classified as a horrible person.

I'd hold the possibility of dropping into evil at the next opportunity back until said next opportunity.

Also, this is high on the list of "you're never going to live this one down." As a player, I'd use it for the rest of the campaign to get advantage on intimidate checks, ruin their attempts at diplomacy and even get them arrested if appropriate. "My friend over there has been known to blow up entire camps of hobgoblins down to the children, so if you wouldn't mind letting us through before he makes a scene..."

Gtdead

2016-03-21, 12:32 PM

So the person acted without any consideration of the power dynamic in the dungeon, he killed indiscriminately and in a sadistic way (arson)

The way you describe this, it sounds like a chaotic stupid. Just kill stuff because it's a dungeon. But aside from that, he acted as an evil person. He just tried to kill everything in his way. Even if he was under orders to purge the dungeon of it's inhabitants, he still acted as a zealot. Even if he assumes that the race he is fighting against is evil and unlikely to reach a compromise of sorts, he could at least show some restraint or remorse. That perhaps could allow him to stay within the "neutral" or even "neutral to good" boundaries depending on the context (although killing or allow sentient beings to die without second thoughts isn't what a good character does no matter what).

Ewhit

2016-03-21, 12:35 PM

Yes can we please stay on topic

Do the following and be done with it.
1. Advise whoever that the course of action does not follow character alignment or have him roll wisdom check to figure it out or not . That will solve just about any situation that might go far left from their alignment

2. Or make int check. Example. As the group is running you encounter girl x with a dagger as she holds up dagger to you in a threatening manner. Either a. U tell them they know she was charmed or have them roll. Then you have them roll or let highest int remember she is well known and liked or powerful in town etc and her rescue would be important.
If anyone still kills her after that it's an alignment dip
And then punish for later game play town finds out. Fame in saving town is lowered. Kicked out of town forced to do quest. Cleric loses spell lvl or paladin.
They leave town and town gets wiped out for revenge by x creatures.

As for the eggs or children etc. either don't play them in adventure or have a solution ready for the adventures to figure out by themselves or by rolling.

And if it continues make them or he play the new alignment and stick with the above rules of you wouldn't do that or you would do that.
Otherwise what's the use of all 9 alignments for character morality.

Democratus

2016-03-21, 02:09 PM

BurgerBeast

2016-03-21, 02:53 PM

For reasons of simplicity and not to bore out everybody else, I am going to ignore the rest of your comments, but I want to answer these two, because I think they cover most of our disagreement and, as you also agreed, are the "heart" of it...

I'd love to continue this conversation without derailing, but I can't PM you.

On topic:

It's very hard to give straight answers without context. In my worlds, morality is objective and evil races are evil. Their destruction is always good.

1. Setting fire to a hobgoblin infirmary, in my view, is unethical (chaotic, not in the sense that the action itself is necessarily chaotic, but that taking such an action knowing leads to a chaotic society because it invites chaotic responses) but not immoral. Call that a one-notch shift toward chaos.

2. I'm not sure I understand the egg chamber. What sort of eggs? I can;t answer without context.

3. Setting fire to the rest of the dungeon, is chaotic for the same reasons as (1). One notch toward chaos. Is it evil? In my view, this depends on foreseeable consequences. Did he put only evil monsters in danger of being burned? No problem. Did he knowingly endanger good and innocent people? It sounds like it. I say that's evil, most notably because it wasn't the only available option, and so it's a one-notch slide toward evil.

4. "Blowing a hole through... an old woman who was being mind controlled" is a clear act of evil in my view. One notch toward evil.

I should point out that by "one-notch" I don't mean one point on a sliding scale. I mean a change in alignment. I mean lawful becomes neutral or neutral becomes chaotic, for example. Each of these, in my view, is a highly significant act.

Knaight

2016-03-21, 10:43 PM

Sigreid

2016-03-21, 10:49 PM

I do think we make a lot of these moral delimas ourselves. I believe the original intention of the humanoid races was that they would be an absolute known evil quantity that the players could slaughter for fun and profit without having any worry that they were going to accidentally kill someone with the potential for good. In fact, I think the player races were the player races because of all the creatures in the D&D universe they were the only ones that were blessed with enough free will to choose which side they were ultimately on. Yes this makes them two dimensional, little more than paper targets at the range, but it means the good guys always know what is right. It's kind of like putting white and black hats on people in a cowboy movie.

Edit" I think this is born out in their names:

Human: The ultimately free willed and self determining race
Demi Human: Pretty literally semi-human or human like - have significant freedom of choice
Humanoid: Roughly human shaped, but lacking the capacity for free will of humans

Malifice

2016-03-22, 12:22 AM

In the standard D&D campaign world there is a virtual state of war between the goblinoids and the civilized races.

It being war, certain ethical standards are relaxed. For example, every crewman in the 8th US Air Force wasn't Chaotic Evil despite the fact that they were carpet bombing cities and undoubtedly killing infirm and children. The act may be barbaric, but Lt. Smith the bombardier is most likely not Evil with a capital E.

More importantly - it really doesn't matter what the alignment of a character is. The character does what he does - sometimes great good and sometimes questionable evil. But as a complex person, that character isn't defined by on action (or even 10 actions) but instead by a lifetime of deeds and thoughts.

You're again confusing subjective morality with objective morality.

Subjective morality is just that - it's subjective. LG people can rape and murder and remain LG. The individual defines what is good or evil subject to their own reasoning.

If alignment is objective, then your justifcation matters naught. If rape and murder are evil, then theyre evil. You might subjectively be able to rationalise your actions, but this is irrelevant to whether you 'are' in fact objectively good or evil, or where your soul goes on death.

In DnD the default morality is both objective and subjective. Good and Evil exist as cosmic forces with in game effects and fluff consequences. If you die CE your soul heads to the Abyss (barring FR's deity rules of course).

A Paladin of Torm who accepts the oath of Vengance and slaughters an entire Orc villiage who pose him no threat (as part of a deliberate campaign of genocide directed at Orcs whom he considers a global threat to order and teh human race), also putting dozens of screaming women and children to the sword may think (subjectively) that he is LG in alignment and that he acts for the 'greater good'. He's objectively not LG though. He is objectively LE, and will almost certainly get a rude shock when he is proclaimed faithless on death by Torm (LG God of justice and honor) and either accepts an offer from the Devils to join them in the nine hells, or gets turned into spiritual wallpaper by Kelemvor.

And im sorry to break it to you, but the Nuerunberg defence has been raised and it failed. If your CO gives you an order to engage in the murder of non combatants and you do it, you're intentionally peforming an act of objective evil. You're wilfully engaging in evil. When the SS soliders participated in the Holocaust they were willingly engaging in evil acts. A good person will generally refuses the order (and likely gets shot). A N person may go along with it, likely becoming evil in the process. 'Total war' doesnt make objectively evil acts less objectively evil - it just provides a subjective justification for that evil act.

Finieous

2016-03-22, 08:51 AM

A Paladin of Torm who accepts the oath of Vengance and slaughters an entire Orc villiage who pose him no threat (as part of a deliberate campaign of genocide directed at Orcs whom he considers a global threat to order and teh human race), also putting dozens of screaming women and children to the sword may think (subjectively) that he is LG in alignment and that he acts for the 'greater good'. He's objectively not LG though. He is objectively LE, and will almost certainly get a rude shock when he is proclaimed faithless on death by Torm (LG God of justice and honor) and either accepts an offer from the Devils to join them in the nine hells, or gets turned into spiritual wallpaper by Kelemvor.

Now you run into the problem of whether the gods themselves measure up to your interpretation of their Objective Alignment. In the Forgotten Realms, this is rarely the case. Again, I'm an Old Gray Box guy so I don't even get into any of the divine shenanigans that have come up in later game books and novels. But consider, for example, Ilmater, one of the few Lawful Good deities in the OGB. His description has this delightful line: "He has the power to manifest himself in creatures being tortured, relieving their pain, but only if such creatures are of good alignment and have not done anything to deserve such treatment." [Bolded for emphasis and for lulz] So for this Lawful Good deity, it's fine for non-goods (even neutrals) to suffer torture, and its even okay for goods if they have it coming. Hard to imagine him weeping for the hobgoblin babies.

So is good Good and evil Evil, even when the good gods are evil and the evil gods are good? Or is Good whatever the "good gods" do? And if the gods can't provide the solid foundation for your objective morality, what can?

The FR deities seem to be vain creatures, and if you care to safeguard your afterlife, it seems your best course is to curry their favor in whatever way you can. Salvation is more about networking than objective morality.

Democratus

2016-03-22, 09:00 AM

You're again confusing subjective morality with objective morality.

Subjective morality is just that - it's subjective. LG people can rape and murder and remain LG. The individual defines what is good or evil subject to their own reasoning.

If alignment is objective, then your justifcation matters naught. If rape and murder are evil, then theyre evil. You might subjectively be able to rationalise your actions, but this is irrelevant to whether you 'are' in fact objectively good or evil, or where your soul goes on death.

Not at all. I'm saying that someone's actions in a given instance can have no bearing on their alignment.

Good people can do bad things and still be good people; even in a world with absolute Good and Evil. Heck, it's even a common trope in fantasy (and D&D) to have a militaristic group of Lawful Good zealots end up doing terrible deeds for what they believe is the greater good.

Even when Good and Evil are universal values with planes and gods - you can still have truly good people doing truly bad things, while remaining truly good people.

Malifice

2016-03-22, 10:50 AM

Now you run into the problem of whether the gods themselves measure up to your interpretation of their Objective Alignment.

No you dont, because unlike the real world, the game has a DM.

Its irrelevant what you the player or your character thinks about their justifications for their actions. If the DM says your acts are objectively evil, they objectively are.

Ilmater, one of the few Lawful Good deities in the OGB. His description has this delightful line: "He has the power to manifest himself in creatures being tortured, relieving their pain, but only if such creatures are of good alignment and have not done anything to deserve such treatment." So for this Lawful Good deity, it's fine for non-goods (even neutrals) to suffer torture, and its even okay for goods if they have it coming. [B]Hard to imagine him weeping for the hobgoblin babies.

Even harder for him to condone them being tossed on the pyre and burned alive.

Nothing in his dogma suggests he approves of torture. I have zero idea how on earth youre interpreting this from his dogma. He rewards good and kind people with alleviation of suffering.

Laughably you've somehow interpreted this to mean he actively condones the torture of children. I guess it is possible to be a CE Cleric of a LG deity of Illmater in 5E, and run around with such a perverted view of his Dogma (and thats a good thing from a RP perspective). That said, dont be too shocked when your character gets pronounced as faithless on death and turned into wallpaper.

Im sure you'll be screetching your justifications for your actions as the roller seals you in for eternity.

Heck, it's even a common trope in fantasy (and D&D) to have a militaristic group of Lawful Good zealots end up doing terrible deeds for what they believe is the greater good.

Then theyre not (objectively) Lawful Good are they? Subjectively they think they are, but objectively they are not. The burn in the Nine hells on death.

pwykersotz

2016-03-22, 10:52 AM

Now you run into the problem of whether the gods themselves measure up to your interpretation of their Objective Alignment. In the Forgotten Realms, this is rarely the case. Again, I'm an Old Gray Box guy so I don't even get into any of the divine shenanigans that have come up in later game books and novels. But consider, for example, Ilmater, one of the few Lawful Good deities in the OGB. His description has this delightful line: "He has the power to manifest himself in creatures being tortured, relieving their pain, but only if such creatures are of good alignment and have not done anything to deserve such treatment." [Bolded for emphasis and for lulz] So for this Lawful Good deity, it's fine for non-goods (even neutrals) to suffer torture, and its even okay for goods if they have it coming. Hard to imagine him weeping for the hobgoblin babies.

So is good Good and evil Evil, even when the good gods are evil and the evil gods are good? Or is Good whatever the "good gods" do? And if the gods can't provide the solid foundation for your objective morality, what can?

The FR deities seem to be vain creatures, and if you care to safeguard your afterlife, it seems your best course is to curry their favor in whatever way you can. Salvation is more about networking than objective morality.

Careful guys, I think Finieous might be an Athar (https://planescape-center-of-all.obsidianportal.com/wikis/athar) in disguise! :smallwink:

Regitnui

2016-03-22, 11:31 AM

Heck, it's even a common trope in fantasy (and D&D) to have a militaristic group of Lawful Good zealots end up doing terrible deeds for what they believe is the greater good.

That's why some of the people in Eberron's Church of the Silver Flame, a Lawful Good church, are Lawful Evil. They believe and they still do monstrous things "for the greater good". Here's the rub; they still read as Good, because their faith overrides their personal alignment!

Finieous

2016-03-22, 11:31 AM

Nothing in his dogma suggests he approves of torture.

I don't assume he approves of it. I just assume he will only provide relief from torture if the victim didn't deserve it, because that's what the passage says.

Otherwise, I agree with most of this post. As DM, you can call my character whatever alignment you like, and you can describe his afterlife however you like. "I was not, I was, I am not, I care not."

P.S. In the Forgotten Realms, I would almost certainly be an "Athar." The deities are even referred to as "powers" and some of them are just ascended mortals. Then you've got stuff like Tyr falling in love with Sune, getting jealous of Helm, and killing him in a duel. I think that kind of stuff is cool -- it's all kind of pseudo-Greek, where the gods are really like stylized, exaggerated mortals with superpowers. I'd expect a pragmatic character to play the game, make the right offerings at the right time, sing the right praises, etc. But worship in the sense of genuine devotion? I think you'd have to be ignorant or a little crazy. ;)

Malifice

2016-03-22, 11:42 AM

I don't assume he approves of it. I just assume he will only provide relief from torture if the victim didn't deserve it, because that's what the passage says.

I can understand this. I oppose certain evil acts, and dont engage in them or support them, but certainly think some peeps deserve them or (hopefully) may even learn a lesson from them. You reap what you sow, live by the sword and all that.

The Good gods cant be opposed to torture. The penalty for not worshipping a good God is... well... an eternity of it. Illmater wont save an evil person from suffering. That's different from saying he condones the practice of torture or seeks to inflict suffering. He actively seeks to minimise suffering among the good peoples of Faerun. Besides - if he saved everyone, there is no incentive to be a good person. What is the alleviation from suffering, absent the suffering?

Now that were on the topic, there were heretical worshippers of Illmater that were down with self flagelation from memory.

Democratus

2016-03-22, 11:49 AM

Then theyre not (objectively) Lawful Good are they? Subjectively they think they are, but objectively they are not. The burn in the Nine hells on death.

Yes. They are objectively Lawful Good and they go to their proper afterlife. They are genuinely good people who do extreme things in the name of good.

http://orig15.deviantart.net/f6b0/f/2013/272/a/e/lawful_good_by_alkenstine-d6nj62l.jpg

Finieous

2016-03-22, 12:00 PM

I can understand this. I oppose certain evil acts, and dont engage in them or support them, but certainly think some peeps deserve them or (hopefully) may even learn a lesson from them. You reap what you sow, live by the sword and all that.

I don't agree that anyone ever deserves torture, but then I'm not a Lawful Good deity. But again, as DM, your interpretation is the only one that matters. This is no big deal -- I just have to feel you out when we play. So I would eventually learn in your games that my Lawful Good character could stand by and watch a captive being tortured, so long as I'm pretty sure he's neutral or evil. Maybe I could even participate, just a little, if he really deserves it? After all, the good deities torture people for eternity when they deserve it, so a good man ought to be able to pull a few nails out of a murderer's fingers.

Other DMs in other games might immediately slap me with a Lawful Neutral or Evil tag. You just gotta figure out how each DM expects you to play your character.

Malifice

2016-03-22, 12:06 PM

Yes. They are objectively Lawful Good and they go to their proper afterlife. They are genuinely good people who do extreme things in the name of good.

In my game they dont so you're objectively wrong.

They are not Lawful Good if theyre engaging in genocide. They might subjectively think they are, and feel righteous in their pogroms and mass murder, but they objectively are not.

Your justification for your evil is irrelevant. A Good aligned Mage who decides to embark on a ritual that kills the firstborn children of a villiage of hundreds to restore his own beloved child to life, is no longer a good person. He faltered in being a good person when the idea first came to him, his resolve to do the deed pushed him even further down towards evil, and by the time it came for him to do the act, he had already ceased being a good person.

Good people dont engage in mass murder. Good people dont engage in rape, torture or genocide. Evil people do however - and almost always they do it 'for the greater good'.

Telok

2016-03-22, 12:45 PM

Hilarity. Everyone sees the alignment thing dfferently, every DM runs it a little (or a lot) differently, and there's these long arguments about it since... I think I saw my first one in one of the pre-internet Dragon mags.

As every edition has progressed alignment has become less and less important, less enforced in the rules, and ever more incoherently explained. I advise players to write down a few sentences of personality traits, motivation, and personal history for their character. Let the DM run alignment however thay want to, up to and including ignoring it completely.

Don't worry, be happy. Ignore useless rules that don't do anything positive.

Marcelinari

2016-03-22, 01:14 PM

I'd like to point out that we actually know startlingly little about this circumstance, and that some of the 'hypothetical' acts being ascribed to the Sorcerer by some people are wildly out of the range of our current knowledge.

1) We know that Hobgoblins are culturally usually Evil, keep a slave race, and are actively opposed to the goals and well-being of the party (and presumably the wider non-hobgoblin world).

2) We know that said slave race was comprised of mutants who appear to have been unique to this particular dungeon, and that they beseeched the party to intervene and set them free. They are clearly sentient and do not consent to their use as slaves.

3) There was a 'flammable egg chamber' in the dungeon. Since hobgoblins are not traditionally an egg-laying species, I assume this was the birthing chamber for the mutant slave race. Note that it is unknown if Sorcerer knew that these eggs were flammable. Also note that 'egg chamber' does not necessarily equate morally with 'nursery'.

4) The Sorcerer set fire to a hobgoblin infirmary, with the full knowledge that there was an egg-chamber within the same complex, flammable or not, and then set fire to the remainder of the dungeon. We have no knowledge of if the infirmary was occupied at the time.

5) The party encountered an old woman who was being mind-controlled. They had knowledge of the mind-control. The rest of the party attempted to subdue the woman non-lethally, the Sorcerer opted for the use of overwhelming force. Without accurate knowledge of the order of operations, it's possible either that the Sorcerer did not kill the old woman outright, or if he did, he did so only after damage had been inflicted upon her by his party.

6) There is at least one remaining mutant, who has become free and also very angry with the party.

With this in mind, it's important also to look at some of the more extreme accusations which have been thrown about.

We have no indication that the Sorcerer ever at any point, deliberately or accidentally, killed either hobgoblin or mutant children, although mutant eggs were destroyed in the blaze.
Any act of genocide committed by Sorcerer was definitely not intentional, but an unexpected byproduct of the fire he set against his valid enemies (the hobgoblins) and the unexpectedly low population of the mutant slaves.
The killing of non-combatants was the result of one or two acts of indirect destruction (arson), rather than any sort of serial murder. The fact that any acts of evil committed by Sorcerer were both singular in nature (rather than repeatedly committing the same evil) and not directly violent towards non-combatants is an important point in his favour.

So lets be a little more level-headed and stick to the facts of this situation. Let's steer away from the more contemporary acts of violence and mass evils which have been mentioned thus far.

Theodoxus

2016-03-22, 02:27 PM

The title is (pardon the pun) inflammatory. It's patently obvious that the OP considers the act, by a self-described Chaotic Good entity, to be anything but good. He has poisoned the well and thus any and all discussion is tainted by his bias.

I have two overriding problems with the scenario and requisite alignment pandering. I am a outspoken advocate of limited alignment interactions. It is fairly obvious to me that alignment in 5E, much like 4E, is a callback to tradition rather than a mechanical necessity. Even things like 'Protection from Evil and Good', which would imply an alignment basis, aren't. As such, alignment is a personal concept for the player and their character. A "what is the basic outlook of my toons life" or "how do I deal with a rabid weasel" kind of deal.

So, the first problem is that while the character takes a chaotic good bent to their outlook on life, when faced with an evil foe, the 'chaotic' takes precedence over the 'good'. That's fine, and sounds consistent.

The second problem is the idea of alignment change. A common theme is that actions speak louder than words and going around slaughtering innocent creatures will slide you face first in the 'evil' category. But that's without merit in 5E. Without a mechanical basis for alignment, it remains entirely in the realm of what a character believes about themselves. It harkens back to the whole 'an evil man sees himself as good'. [Though a psychotic man doesn't give a rip.]

So, as far as I'm concerned, if this were my game; the sorcerer would remain CG, as that's how the player has defined him and when faced with evil, his chaotic nature takes over. Easy peasy.

Democratus

2016-03-22, 03:08 PM

In my game they dont so you're objectively wrong.

Emphasizing that it is in your game makes it, by definition, subjective.

Malifice

2016-03-22, 08:07 PM

Emphasizing that it is in your game makes it, by definition, subjective.

No it doesn't. It's counter intuitive but it's true.

pwykersotz

2016-03-22, 08:10 PM

He faltered in being a good person when the idea first came to him, his resolve to do the deed pushed him even further down towards evil, and by the time it came for him to do the act, he had already ceased being a good person.

Out of curiosity, in your game does evil fall to goodness with the same ease? Or is good just a narrower path? And how easy/hard is it to get back on that path?

RickAllison

2016-03-22, 08:16 PM

No it doesn't. It's counter intuitive but it's true.

You might want to rephrase your arguments, then. It is objective at your table, and nowhere else. Your sense of morality is subjective at every table besides yours. By the syntax of your comment, however, you had erroneously claimed that your view on morality was objective and thus true everywhere. You could say "In my game, they don't, so you would be objectively wrong." The difference is that your comment claimed that his view of morality was objectively wrong in all spaces, whereas the alteration would mean it is only objectively wrong at your table. Huge difference.

Gtdead

2016-03-22, 09:00 PM

Malifice has a good point. There must be a very clear definition of morals that comes from the DM.
Alignment is probably the least understood part of dnd as all these endless discussions prove. If a player is going to use it, he needs to understand how it relates to that universe. Because when we add the morality of the planes in this discussion, plus the whole "objective vs subjective" angle, it loses it's point fast.

In my opinion it's better to use it as a descriptor for what the character is capable of doing, for example, if the character thinks that ends justify murder and acts on it, then he is evil. There is a case to be made for lawful good zealots that kill evil beings without second thoughts, but usually in fantasy settings, evil beings are mostly extraplanar beings, like demons and the like.

When we are talking about the material plane things aren't as clear cut. You can be chaotic evil and still be a folk hero type / savior or you can be lawful good and look like a tyrant in the eyes of the npcs. Perspective matters, and unless a DM steps in and clears the confusion, less experienced players can confuse alignment with rationalization.

Coffee_Dragon

2016-03-22, 09:10 PM

Man, falling to goodness is the worst. You let down your guard for one second, get seduced by angels, and then... all the wicked thoughts you've had, all the bad deeds you've done, all the credit for your evils just slips away and they drop you off as a lowly petitioner on Mount Celestia. Bummer and double bummer.

Finieous

2016-03-22, 09:33 PM

Perspective matters, and unless a DM steps in and clears the confusion, less experienced players can confuse alignment with rationalization.

Damn straight, can't have players doing that! The DMs gotta step in and confuse alignment with rationalization for them!

Gtdead

2016-03-22, 09:45 PM

Damn straight, can't have players doing that! The DMs gotta step in and confuse alignment with rationalization for them!

Well personally I'd be okay with the DM making a ruling and move on rather than have players arguing about it all the time. I've played with a DM that is really bad at this and liked to serve alignment shocks for breakfast and it can be annoying if you play a Paladin in 3.5, but when all is said and done, that's his job.

My current DM believes that unless you are the sadistic psychopath type that murders babies and ejaculates on their severed heads, you can't really be of an evil alignment. I don't agree with him but won't make a big deal about it.

Malifice

2016-03-22, 10:46 PM

You might want to rephrase your arguments, then. It is objective at your table, and nowhere else.

Its an objective truth in the entire multiverse. Step into the multiverse I DM and find out for yourself. Your characters subjective reasoning will matter naught.

Here's the trick. Nothing in the real world (beyond knowledge of self) can be objectively known. Not even the existence of the chair you sit on at the moment or the screen you are reading from right at this instant. All knowledge is subjective - other than our own ability to doubt.

Or as Descartes put it: Cogito ergo sum.

Your sense of morality is subjective at every table besides yours.

In the real world, all knowledge beyond individual self awareness is subjective. In the game world however, we have a DM. Objective knowledge can exist because the DM says it does.

In the real world we dont have that advantage sadly, and even if we did have an omnipotent/ omnipresent 'DM' capable of setting objective morality (or any objective truth) there is no way for us to ever know what that knowledge is.

Even though objective morality exists in the multiverse, the characters in it can never objectively know for sure. Even if their Gods popped down and told them what good and evil 'are', theyre simply accepting that divine decree on nothing more than faith. Faith is not the same thing as ontological certainty. Believing in something, is not the same thing as it being true. One doesnt naturally follow the other.

By the syntax of your comment, however, you had erroneously claimed that your view on morality was objective and thus true everywhere.

It is true everywhere. Everywhere in the multiverse run by this DM.

Your DM could set a wildly different objective morality, where murder is good and pure, and charity is evil and cruel. Or he could do away with objective standards of good and evil entirely and make all morality entirely subjective - and in such a world, as long as you can justifiy an act to yourself as 'good' it's a good act.

In such a world lacking objective morality, 'alignment' means only what it means to you personally, and has no relevance to anyone else. A truly postmodern version of morality, where 'LG' means whatever you the 'LG' person says it means.

Out of curiosity, in your game does evil fall to goodness with the same ease?

Nope. If you've tortured and murdered a child just the once, then you've demonstrated via your actions that you are not a good person. No-one reading this would disagree with this statement should they be called up for (for example) jury duty in a murder trial: Child murderers are bad people.

Simply by virtue of the murderer helping a little old lady across the road doesnt change that fact. The murderers actions have demonstrated that while he is prepared to help someone in need (the little old lady) he is also prepared to murder children. The latter is a far more definitive statement of his morality than the former.

Even the most hideous monsters have redeeming qualities. (Godwin alert) Hitler loved his family, girlfriend, his country and the German people, and was a tee totaling vegetarian. Everything he did he did for his country, not for himself. He (through the Nazi party) implemented charitable and welfare orginisations (The Winterhilfswerk and the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt mainly) that sought to help the needy and poor in German society. Then he ordered the extermination of six million people for 'the greater good'.

Those charitable things dont 'even each other out' or in any way redeem the man. He is almost universally regarded as a completely evil monster.

If you're curious, I personally doubt the existence of objective morality in the real world. That said, Im a Cartesian and somewhat of a postmodernist, and thus doubt the existence of any objective truths outside of the objective reality of bare self awareness - again Cogito Ergo Sum.

Luckily, in DnD (being an imaginary game that happens entirely in our minds) objective truths can (counter intuitively) exist. But only because the game is imaginary. If the DM says objectve truths exist, and they are 'X' then they do exist, and they are 'X'. Not that your characters inhabiting your DMs world can ever possibly know this with any certainty. Theyre limited by the same ontological limitations that limit us in the real world from obtaining absolute truth beyond self existence.

pwykersotz

2016-03-22, 10:54 PM

Nope. If you've tortured and murdered a child just the once, then you've demonstrated via your actions that you are not a good person. No-one reading this would disagree with this statement should they be called up for (for example) jury duty in a murder trial: Child murderers are bad beople.

Simply helping a little old lady across the road doesnt change that fact. Your actions have demonstrated that while youre prepared to help someone in need (the little old lady) youre also prepared to murder children. The latter is a far more definitive statement of your morality than the former.

Even the most hideous monsters have redeeming qualities. (Godwin alert) Hitler loved his family, girlfriend, his country and the German people, and was a tee totaling vegetarian. Everything he did he did for his country, not for himself. He (through the Nazi party) implemented charitable and welfare orginisations (The Winterhilfswerk and the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt mainly) that sought to help the needy and poor in German society. Then he ordered the extermination of six million people for 'the greater good'.

Those charitable things dont 'even each other out' or in any way redeem the man. He is almost universally regarded as a completely evil monster.

If you're curious, I personally doubt the existence of objective morality in the real world. That said, Im a Cartesian and somewhat of a postmodernist, and thus doubt the existence of any objective truths outside of the objective reality of bare self awareness.

Luckily, in DnD (being an imaginary game that happens entirely in the mind) objective truths can (counter intuitively) exist. But only because the game is imaginary.

Then I assume earnest repentance is a thing? Because otherwise heaven is getting a very small influx of souls.

Also, I'm not sure your examples are equivalent. A mass-murder would not be weighed against vegetarianism. It would be weighed against something a little more grand. Say, saving an equal number of lives through pure self-sacrifice and altruistic intentions. Such a person might be able to commit a mass-murder due to being mislead (which doesn't excuse it) or perhaps in a fit of rage that those people were the ones destroying an otherwise perfect society (reeeeally doesn't excuse it). But if shown the error of their ways, I would hope that true repentance would be possible.

Malifice

2016-03-22, 11:03 PM

Then I assume earnest repentance is a thing? Because otherwise heaven is getting a very small influx of souls.

I agree an evil person can be redeemed. But (for mine) it takes a lifetime of work and repudiation of past evil to achieve. Falling is much easier than getting back up, and some people are virtualy irredeemable.

Plently more fallen Angels in DnD than redeemed Devils.

If your character has spent any part of his life thinking that mass murder can be justified for 'the greater good' then he probably is not a good person. If he has supported genocide, he's definately not a good person. If he has directly particpated in it, or ordered it, he's evil.

Also, I'm not sure your examples are equivalent. A mass-murder would not be weighed against vegetarianism.

Im not suggesting you weigh a persons good acts against thier evil ones. Jeffrey Dahmer could have very well been a lovely man to a lot of people, but that doesnt sway me from saying that he is an evil man.

It doesnt work that way. You cant help out in a soup kitchen one night, and then prowl the streets murdering women like Jack the ripper the next night, and claim to not be an evil person. You're just a psychopathic monster.

pwykersotz

2016-03-22, 11:07 PM

I agree an evil person can be redeemed. But (for mine) it takes a lifetime of work and repudiation of past evil to achieve. Falling is much easier than getting back up, and some people are virtualy irredeemable.

Plently more fallen Angels in DnD than redeemed Devils.

If your character has spent any part of his life thinking that mass murder can be justified for 'the greater good' then he probably is not a good person. If he has supported genocide, he's definately not a good person. If he has directly particpated in it, or ordered it, he's evil.

Im not suggesting you weigh a persons good acts against thier evil ones. Jeffrey Dahmer could have very well been a lovely man to a lot of people, but that doesnt sway me from saying that he is an evil man.

It doesnt work that way. You cant help out in a soup kitchen one night, and then prowl the streets murdering women like Jack the ripper the next night, and claim to not be an evil person. You're just a psychopathic monster.

All righty, thanks for the replies. :smallsmile: I've got a handle on how you run things now. It's similar (though perhaps a little more strict) to my own.

RickAllison

2016-03-22, 11:21 PM

Its an objective truth in the entire multiverse. Step into the multiverse I DM and find out for yourself. Your characters subjective reasoning will matter naught.

snip

In the real world, all knowledge beyond individual self awareness is subjective. In the game world however, we have a DM. Objective knowledge can exist because the DM says it does.

snip

It is true everywhere. Everywhere in the multiverse run by this DM.

Thank you for re-stating exactly what was criticized about you before. You are impressing your subjective morality objectively on your world. We get your views on morality, you've yelled about them this entire thread, but that doesn't mean someone is objectively wrong for disagreeing with you, just objectively wrong at your table. If you really are a lawyer, then you should know that precision of language is important, but you are failing to demonstrate this:

In my game they dont so you're objectively wrong.

By your syntax, you are stating that because they do not comply with your view of morality as a DM, the view of morality they are discussing is universally wrong. We get that you mean it is wrong in your universe, but that is distinctly NOT what you have stated. Be more precise, or turn in your J.D.

Of course, this doesn't even take into account your habit of strawman-ing arguments to condemn circumstances that were not nearly so clear-cut.

Malifice

2016-03-22, 11:32 PM

We get your views on morality,

They arent my views on morality. Like I said above, I dont personally believe in the existence of objective morality (or the existence of an objective universe for that matter) in the real world.

But were not talking about the real world are we? So the ontological rules change.

By your syntax, you are stating that because they do not comply with your view of morality as a DM, the view of morality they are discussing is universally wrong. We get that you mean it is wrong in your universe, but that is distinctly NOT what you have stated. Be more precise, or turn in your J.D.

Dont confuse my interpretation of evil and good in a DnD sense, and my view that the game requires me to set and maintain an objective standard of both in my game, with what happens in your game.

Again, if your DM is happy with child murder being a 'good' act in his world as long as your player or the character can rationalise it, go nuts. Heck he might set murder down as being objectively a good act in his world, obviating the need for any justification. I agree that alignment is mutable from game to game (although I do find the arguments advanced justifying acts of extreme evil for the greater good to be unsettling to say the least).

You're mixing up my discussion of objective and subjective knowledge, with my own interpretation of DnD's morality (and I think its pretty clear that the intent is that alignment is an objective force in the DnD universe, and its also equally clear what 'good' and 'evil' are supposed to represent - although both are not as clear as it they were in 3E).

Lets be clear here, my answer to alignment issues is 'Ask your DM'.

Mith

2016-03-23, 01:20 AM

Love it. Only in D&D!

There are several blatantly evil acts in there, and the OP indicates no feelings of remorse. If the character did actually feel remorse and is actively seeking to redeem themselves, I'd say they are now officially CN in the eyes of the Gods. If not, they may well be headed for the Abyss.

I read the lines "Absent-mindedness" and "character and player both feeling remorse" as the reason for the character to not be shunted. If this was done via ambivalence to moral behaviour, then that would be CN. Actual maliciousness, straight to CE.

My "bit harsh" was because a 3 strike rule, no if, and, or buts can be too harsh if context of the actions are not taken into consideration. If the character is judged as Evil due to outcomes they couldn't be aware of happening, then should they gain morality demerits?

I am honestly confused as to where we are in disagreement here.

Regitnui

2016-03-23, 03:02 AM

Malifice, you're arguing that because it's night where you are, everyone else should be asleep as well, no matter where they are or what their circumstances are.

Malifice

2016-03-23, 03:27 AM

Malifice, you're arguing that because it's night where you are, everyone else should be asleep as well, no matter where they are or what their circumstances are.

Read this and see where youre wrong:

They arent my views on morality. Like I said above, I dont personally believe in the existence of objective morality (or the existence of an objective universe for that matter) in the real world.

But were not talking about the real world are we? So the ontological rules change.

Dont confuse my interpretation of evil and good in a DnD sense, and my view that the game requires me to set and maintain an objective standard of both in my game, with what happens in your game.

Again, if your DM is happy with child murder being a 'good' act in his world as long as your player or the character can rationalise it, go nuts. Heck he might set murder down as being objectively a good act in his world, obviating the need for any justification. I agree that alignment is mutable from game to game (although I do find the arguments advanced justifying acts of extreme evil for the greater good to be unsettling to say the least).

You're mixing up my discussion of objective and subjective knowledge, with my own interpretation of DnD's morality (and I think its pretty clear that the intent is that alignment is an objective force in the DnD universe, and its also equally clear what 'good' and 'evil' are supposed to represent - although both are not as clear as it they were in 3E).

Lets be clear here, my answer to alignment issues is 'Ask your DM'.

Im not imposing my own moralities (or to be more correct, my understanding of DnDs moralities) on anyone elses table. Im clear in the post above that 'ask your own DM how it works at your table'.

At my table, good and evil are objective forces. Ergo, objective good and evil exist (in one multiverse at least). People inhabiting my world have their own views on what is good and evil (with some guidance by the deities) and players also get a headsup on the metaphysics of the world. Within that paradigm, I have absolutely no problem with a LG character performing genocide for 'the greater good'. I simply record in my notes that that PC is now (objectively) LE. He gets a rude shock on death.

Your own DM could be a hardcore postmodernist for all I know, and morality could be totally subject to the individuals own interpretation in his multiverse, and mass child murderers stay LG and go to Mount Celestia on death as long as they personally think child murder is good and can rationalise it.

That doesnt fly in my games. You die, get judged and go to the correct outer plane of your actual alignment. An Oathbreaker Paladin who never does anything evil and spends his life helping out down the soup kitchen and helping little old ladies across the road, shows charity, mercy and compassion and refrains from causing unecessary suffering also loses his powers until he 'reforms'.

Regitnui

2016-03-23, 03:46 AM

No, but you're judging another's situation by your circumstance. It's the middle of the morning where I live. Should I go to sleep because it's midnight where you are? Why then can you say someone else's table is objectively wrong when it comes to matters of morality?

Malifice

2016-03-23, 04:57 AM

Finieous

2016-03-23, 08:57 AM

So here's a question: Do people really roleplay what happens to their characters in the afterlife? I've been playing for 35+ years and the only questions that have ever mattered after death are: "Do I get resurrected?" or "Do I come back as undead?"

It's a little shocking to me that some players may find out what plane their character goes to in the afterlife, as a kind of report card on their roleplaying at the end of the campaign (for that character). Is this really a thing?

Democratus

2016-03-23, 09:25 AM

The ideas about afterlife in D&D are complex. From what I've read this is my conclusion.

A soul's afterlife (whatever it may be) matches the temperament of the soul. It's their preferred destination.

Lawful evil souls go to the hells where they can use oppression and rules to eventually climb up the ladder. If sent to Celestia, a Lawful Evil soul would be miserable and unable to indulge in their true nature. In summary, Hell isn't a punishment for LE characters. It is a reward.

The only real "punishment" is to be stuffed into Kelemvor's wall due to refusal to participate in the system at all.

Fightmaster

2016-03-23, 11:34 AM

Regarding the egg chamber: The mutant slave race are bred through eggs, not the normal hobgoblins. The sorcerer had been aware of their flammability.
Regarding the sorcerer: We've discussed it and feel that at the very least evil would be fitting, as at that juncture they committed wide scale arson that lead to mass death without putting real thought to the results of their actions. However he aims to try and repent for this and should vengeance be sought out; will put up no resistance.

Regitnui

2016-03-23, 12:29 PM

A soul's afterlife (whatever it may be) matches the temperament of the soul. It's their preferred destination.

Unless you're living in Eberron. Then you just go to Dolurrh. It isn't a reward, it isn't a punishment. It just is.

Democratus

2016-03-23, 01:32 PM

Unless you're living in Eberron. Then you just go to Dolurrh. It isn't a reward, it isn't a punishment. It just is.

Indeed. Very much like the Greek concept of the Underworld.

Grim.

Marcelinari

2016-03-23, 03:20 PM

Fightmaster - I personally would have put the character's alignment to Neutral, with their consent. They bore no intention to commit the mass killing of innocents, and at no point did they actively kill anybody who they did not see as a direct threat to the lives of themselves or their team mates. However, they enabled the deaths of many innocents and did so only through their own shortsightedness and reckless actions.

If your player is happy with the Evil label, that's all well and fine. But all in all, I think that the lack of evil intention precludes an evil alignment.

BurgerBeast

2016-03-23, 06:03 PM

I don't assume he approves of it. I just assume he will only provide relief from torture if the victim didn't deserve it, because that's what the passage says.

The problem here is that morality is measured through your actions (and the intent behind them), not through your inactions (and the intent behind them).

If you could measure your morality through inaction, then pretty much every one in the first world is evil. Suffering and misery is everywhere around the globe yet we just go on with our lives. Evil.

Luckily, it's not measured that way. We look at what you do (and the intention behind it), not what you don't do.

In the specific case of Ilmater, there are [edit: two three] things to consider: (1) does he know that the suffering is happening? (2) is he responsible for it? (3) does he have the power to stop it?

In the case of Ilmater, the answers are apparently (1) Yes, (2) No, (3) Yes. The answer of "no" to question (2) absolves him of moral responsibility.

Note that if the answer to (2) is "yes" then he is evil.

BurgerBeast

2016-03-23, 06:13 PM

Also worth pointing out that I differ in the fact that I think real life morality is objective. Note that the fact that something is objective does mean that it is universal, nor that we fully understand it, no even that a person's ability to detect it is objective.

But if you take the stance that all human experience is subjective (which isn't really refutable), it doesn't follow that all knowledge or all things are subjective - only that our ability to perceive them is.

So while many people may disagree on whether particular acts are good or evil, and how context changes the answer and in which direction, there are still some things that are moral and about which things can be said, objectively, in at least some contexts.

For example, I don'r believe that anyone would legitimately claim that torture of another sentient being purely for the purpose of amusement is a good thing. More importantly, they are wrong even if they do.

This is why it is fair to say that morality is objective. There is at least one claim that is universal and objective. That is sufficient to say that morality objective. It is not sufficient to say that I (or anyone) knows the correct answer to all moral questions, or even that every moral question has a clear answer, but it is enough to say that (at least some) moral answers can be determined objectively.

Elbeyon

2016-03-23, 06:19 PM

Holy and evil are just other words for good and bad. Holy and evil tend to be so charged I find it easier to use the other two words.

Violence is bad. Any use of violence is a bad thing. Repeated use of it makes the character bad. If someone uses violence they better have some good actions to balance that debt, or they might just be a bad person.

Finieous

2016-03-23, 06:47 PM

In the specific case of Ilmater, there are [edit: two three] things to consider: (1) does he know that the suffering is happening? (2) is he responsible for it? (3) does he have the power to stop it?

In the case of Ilmater, the answers are apparently (1) Yes, (2) No, (3) Yes. The answer of "no" to question (2) absolves him of moral responsibility.

Note that if the answer to (2) is "yes" then he is evil.

Well, no, he's still Lawful Good. Says so right in the book! And as Malifice pointed out, it's not evil for Lawful Good deities to torture people for eternity as long as they have it coming. This eternal torturing can't be evil because the Lawful Good deities do it, see?

In this case, I was really just raising an eyebrow at LG Ilmater's notion that some people deserve torture, and therefore are not worthy of his comfort. Malifice is correct that this is a small-ball objection given that Ilmater is himself a torturer.

The lesson remains: Just figure out ASAP how your DM is going to run these monsters so you can roleplay your character appropriately.

RickAllison

2016-03-23, 07:47 PM

In the specific case of Ilmater, there are [edit: two three] things to consider: (1) does he know that the suffering is happening? (2) is he responsible for it? (3) does he have the power to stop it?

In the case of Ilmater, the answers are apparently (1) Yes, (2) No, (3) Yes. The answer of "no" to question (2) absolves him of moral responsibility.

Note that if the answer to (2) is "yes" then he is evil.

So let me get this straight. A LG paladin sees someone getting brutally murdered. (1) He knows the suffering is happening, (2) he is not responsible, and (3) he has the power to stop the murderer. He can remain LG because, despite watching this victim get tortured and murdered and having the power to save them, he is not responsible for their safety?

Malifice

2016-03-23, 09:48 PM

So let me get this straight. A LG paladin sees someone getting brutally murdered. (1) He knows the suffering is happening, (2) he is not responsible, and (3) he has the power to stop the murderer. He can remain LG because, despite watching this victim get tortured and murdered and having the power to save them, he is not responsible for their safety?

With Gods its a little different. They always have the power to stop people doing bad things (or if you're an evil God, to do the opposite). But that kinda messes with free will and the choices made by mortals, which is kind of the whole reason the Gods exist.

Presumably (and cannonicaly) they are also prevented by Ao from direct intervention. So there is nothing they could do about it even if they wanted to.

It might sadden Torm to see a Paladin of his fall from grace, and murder innocents, but Torms direct intervention is imposible. That Paladin will however eventually be judged upon his death, and will almost certainly at this time be pasted into the Wall of the Faithless by Kelemvor (unless he chooses another God during his mortal life, and faithfully upholds the new Gods ideals).

AS Malifice pointed out, it's not evil for Lawful Good deities to torture people for eternity as long as they have it coming.

What? It is evil to do this and the LG deities do no such thing. The Evil deities certainly do it though.

The mortal (through his actions on the prime material) makes the decision about which one happens to him. If he does good, he goes to the upper planes and kicks back in Celestia for eternity (or wherever his God lives). If he does evil in his mortal life, he goes the lower plane of his God (and gets turned into a larva and used as currency by Night hags or whatever).

Gods dont make the decision to punish mortals to an eternity of damnation. Mortals do.

But if you take the stance that all human experience is subjective (which isn't really refutable),

But it is.

Human experience is the only thing that we can objectively know (with ontological certainty) to exist. Cogito ergo sum.

My ability to doubt my own existence proves I exist. This is an objective and irrefutable fact.

The inescapable inference from this is that I cant possibly know with the same levels of ontological certainty that anything else (beyond self existence) to be objectively true.

While 'I' (my mind) knows 'I' definately exist, 'I' could be plugged into (for example) the Matrix, or be having a highly realistic dream. My body, even my brain, the chair that I sit on, the keyboard that I type on and all of time and space could all be constructs of the matrix. I cant possibly ever know with any level of certainty anything outside the 'I'.

In other words, 'I' can only accept the existence of the Universe (and everything in it) on faith.

So while intuitively it appears as if our experiences are subjective, and the world is objectively real or objectively exists, logically speaking it actually works the other way around. The observer is the thing that objectively exists, and it is the observed universe around us that is subjective.

It sounds super weird (and is counter intuitive) but Heisenberg, Descartes, quantum physics, AI engineers and Postmodernists have been telling us this is how stuff works for quite some time now.

Google 'Double slit light experiment' and prepare to have your mind blown.

it doesn't follow that all knowledge or all things are subjective - only that our ability to perceive them is.

Millions of postmodernists and quantum physicists would like to disagree.

Finieous

2016-03-23, 10:17 PM

The Good gods cant be opposed to torture. The penalty for not worshipping a good God is... well... an eternity of it.

And as Malifice pointed out, it's not evil for Lawful Good deities to torture people for eternity as long as they have it coming.

What? It is evil to do this and the LG deities do no such thing.

I surrender!

Malifice

2016-03-23, 10:24 PM

I surrender!

'Good gods are not opposed to evil mortals getting tortured' does not = 'It is not evil for a LG God to engage in torture'

You have a strange way of reading a sentence as meaning something else entirely. Like how you tried to interpret Illmaters easing of the suffering of good people being tortured as = to him supporting the torture of children.

RickAllison

2016-03-23, 10:27 PM

To be fair, much of this thread has been filled with people Iron Heart Surging logic :smallwink:

Finieous

2016-03-23, 10:29 PM

I surrender again!

Malifice

2016-03-23, 10:38 PM

To be fair, much of this thread has been filled with people Iron Heart Surging logic :smallwink:

Dont Iron Heart Surge! You'll extinguish the sun and kill us all!

BurgerBeast

2016-03-24, 01:09 AM

Holy and evil are just other words for good and bad. Holy and evil tend to be so charged I find it easier to use the other two words.

Nitpick, but I use good and evil (not holy and evil). I also try to put the adjective morally in front of them.

The reason I don't just use good and bad is because good and bad can be applied to things that aren't moral. Examples: this is a good movie; that guy's a bad goalkeeper. Neither connotation is moral.

Violence is bad. Any use of violence is a bad thing. Repeated use of it makes the character bad. If someone uses violence they better have some good actions to balance that debt, or they might just be a bad person.

There are two problems here. (1) Not all violence is bad. This is true because of context. It is not bad to hurt someone in order to stop them from (for example) raping or murdering someone else. (2) Specifically, the fantasy genre provides a context in which the extermination of many monstrous species is, at least, not evil, and perhaps even good.

So let me get this straight. A LG paladin sees someone getting brutally murdered. (1) He knows the suffering is happening, (2) he is not responsible, and (3) he has the power to stop the murderer. He can remain LG because, despite watching this victim get tortured and murdered and having the power to save them, he is not responsible for their safety?

A good point. Let me present the case that led me to my stance, and maybe together we can come to a better framework.

The classic moral dilemmas try to put people into a similar position, but introduce a dilemma, to make the decision harder. So, just to pick one of the classics, take the one where a water bomber is about to drop water on a forest fire but he sees some firemen still fighting the fire. If he dumps the water, the fire men will probably die. If he doesn't dump the water, he and the people on board will probably die because he can't pull out of his dive given the weight of the water on board.

My solution to this problem is this: outcomes don't matter. What does matter is whether the pilot decides to harm anyone (including himself). Once he decides to hear or sacrifice anyone, he is being morally evil. In other words, he must act in the way that he thinks will not bring harm to anyone. If someone dies (even if everyone dies), it is not his fault. On the other hand, the moment he makes a decision to save someone over someone else, he is choosing to actively harm or sacrifice someone (himself included) and is therefore committing an evil.

In another moral dilemma, a gunman gives a husband a choice: kill your wife or your daughter. If you don't kill one of them, the gunman will kill both. For me, if the father chooses to shoot his wife or his daughter, he is committing an evil, because he is causing the harm or suffering. If he chooses not to act at all, then anything that the gunman does is the gunman's responsibility, and therefore the gunman alone is morally accountable. The husband is not accountable even if the gunman kills both women.

Your paladin example is not a dilemma. It's really a choice to either act to prevent evil or do nothing. The fact that there is no other pressing moral choice is what makes it clear that the paladin needs to act, I think. But absent that knowledge, it's not possible to judge hold the paladin morally accountable. I suppose in the Ilmater example, it's this lack of context that makes me say we can't judge him. What if Immature suffers in place of three wrongfully accused in one day, but on the same day twelve wrongfully accused die. Does that make him evil? It depends on whether he knew of the others and whether he had the power to save 15.

In short, such decisions require more consideration? I'm not sure. You chose a very direct example, but what about the example of North Americans who know, on some level, that suffering in the third world is rampant. Is the conclusion that if we are not acting to stop it that we must all be evil? Or does it depend more on degree of ability to stop it?

BurgerBeast

2016-03-24, 01:44 AM

But it is.

Human experience is the only thing that we can objectively know (with ontological certainty) to exist. Cogito ergo sum.

I know that DesCartes says so, and I happen to agree (because you included the word certainly), but this is not what I mean to say. I mean to say that even your own experience of yourself is being experienced by you, and is therefore subjective. So while you might want to say that you know, objectively, that you exist, this doesn't mean that the particular way that you experience yourself is objective, because it is being experienced by you (the subject).

This same knowledge can be extended to other things in the universe. For example, while you might wish to argue about whether or not I can objectively know that the sun exists, I feel very confident in asserting that the sun does exist. As for the details of what it is and what its qualities are, those are subjective, but its existence is not. I can concede that my certainty about the sun's existence is less than my certainty of my own existence, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't think the sun exists.

My ability to doubt my own existence proves I exist. This is an objective and irrefutable fact.

Oddly enough, DesCartes has been refuted with varying degrees of success. But as I said, for the most past I agree with him.

The inescapable inference from this is that I cant possibly know with the same levels of ontological certainty that anything else (beyond self existence) to be [sic] objectively true.

While 'I' (my mind) knows 'I' definately [sic] exist, 'I' could be plugged into (for example) the Matrix, or be having a highly realistic dream. My body, even my brain, the chair that I sit on, the keyboard that I type on and all of time and space could all be constructs of the matrix. I cant possibly ever know with any level of certainty anything outside the 'I'.

You're opening a whole other can of worms with the brain in the vat theorem. Even your italicized 'my brain' contains problems. If you mean the brian you perceive in the matrix, then sure, but presumably you don't mean the brain that is actually housing your thoughts, which must exist materially somewhere (unless you believe in spirits). At any rate, you're getting into what it means to exist, which is a bit beyond the scope of this discussion.

In other words, 'I' can only accept the existence of the Universe (and everything in it) on faith.

This isn't true at all. The reason is that the universe is interactive. So you've set up a false dichotomy between 100% verifiable knowledge and pure faith. I don't accept this. I have good reasons for believing, for example, that my wife exists, and her thoughts are coming from her mind, which also exists, and that the sun is real, and that the earth is real, etc. I can concede that they are not 100% verifiable, but I don't accept their existence on faith alone. I have good reasons to think they are real.

It sounds super weird (and is counter intuitive) but Heisenberg, Descartes, quantum physics, AI engineers and Postmodernists have been telling us this is how stuff works for quite some time now.

This is a gross misrepresentation of Heisenberg and quantum physics. I am not qualified to say whether it misrepresents DesCartes, and I don't have any respect for postmodernists. I am a scientist and science teacher, so I feel qualified to comment.

You can watch any debate on religion between Deepak Chopra and either Sam Harris or Michael Shermer (or a plethora of others), and you'll hear plenty of refutations concerning why you can't extend the very real claims of quantum physics into realms in which they don't apply.

Google 'Double slit light experiment' and prepare to have your mind blown.

Yes, I am familiar with it.

Millions of postmodernists and quantum physicists would like to disagree.

You're mistaken here. In the first place, the truth isn't determined by consensus anyway. In the second place I don't care what postmodernists think. In the third place, you're grossly oversimplifying the quantum physics.

Elbeyon

2016-03-24, 01:53 AM

Nitpick, but I use good and evil (not holy and evil). I also try to put the adjective morally in front of them.

The reason I don't just use good and bad is because good and bad can be applied to things that aren't moral. Examples: this is a good movie; that guy's a bad goalkeeper. Neither connotation is moral.Aye, I get what you're saying. Good and bad can be used in a moral sense though (which is the way I'll be using it). Leaving behind some of the extra baggage is worth it to me.

There are two problems here. (1) Not all violence is bad. This is true because of context. It is not bad to hurt someone in order to stop them from (for example) raping or murdering someone else. (2) Specifically, the fantasy genre provides a context in which the extermination of many monstrous species is, at least, not evil, and perhaps even good.(1) I disagree somewhat. All violence (against living things) is bad, and the context does matter. Violence in defense can be reasonable, regrettably, but hurting others is still wrong. The factors at play do not negate that. Heroic actions through violence is tainted by the violence itself. A good action, helping others or yourself, does not undo the a bad action. A bad thing was done regardless. If the violence was justified enough; however, the context might change their good meter in the positive. (2) I'm going to disagree on a technicality. Species is irrelevant even when discussing a group that are all one species. Cases of morality can be extremely circumstance based, and generalizations about a people don't help. Each case needs to be looked at individually. Still, murdering a group of raiders is still using the wrong method. It would make the user a lessor person for using that method, but maybe not a lessor person overall if considering they helped a bunch of people. Now, if the person in question disbanded the raiders through non-violent means they might even have been holy or saintly. Doing nothing wrong in the process of doing good.

Dang typing with an injured finger sucks. :smallfrown:

BurgerBeast

2016-03-24, 02:12 AM

Aye, I get what you're saying. Good and bad can be used in a moral sense though (which is the way I'll be using it). Leaving behind some of the extra baggage is worth it to me.

(1) I disagree somewhat. All violence (against living things) is bad, and the context does matter. Violence in defense can be reasonable, regrettably, but hurting others is still wrong. The factors at play do not negate that. Heroic actions through violence is tainted by the violence itself.

Surely even you see a problem with this. Some questions:

(1) Does the degree of the violence matter: a shove? accidental? an offhand comment that causes emotional distress even though it was misunderstood?

(2) If violence in defense can be reasonable, but bad, then by what standard do you decide what is bad since, evidently, reason (reason the faculty, not reason the justification) is not the criteria?

(3) Do plants count as living? How do you escape the conclusion that all humans are bad for eating living things to survive? Are wild predators (all wild animals, in fact) evil?

A good action, helping others or yourself, does not undo the a bad action. A bad thing was done regardless. If the violence was justified enough; however, the context might change their good meter in the positive.

I'm not sure how to read this other than as a direct contradiction.

(2) I'm going to disagree on a technicality. Species is irrelevant even when discussing a group that are all one species. Cases of morality can be extremely circumstance based, and generalizations about a people don't help. Each case needs to be looked at individually. Still, murdering a group of raiders is still using the wrong method. It would make the user a lessor person for using that method, but maybe not a lessor person overall if considering they helped a bunch of people. Now, if the person in question disbanded the raiders through non-violent means they might even have been holy or saintly. Doing nothing wrong in the process of doing good.

Of course this is all true in the real world. The confusion might be the context. I am talking about a world where every orc (for example) exists as Tolkien's Uruk Hai did, as the embodiment of evil, a lack of capacity for good, the desire to inflict endless suffering upon all that are good, and in many cases torment and eat good "people." I am not talking about the often-played card of the orc village of relatively peaceful peoples filled with women and children who have the capacity for compassion, etc. In my mind, such a situation goes directly against the spirit of the fantasy trope (but can be an enjoyable way to play, nonetheless).

Elbeyon

2016-03-24, 02:32 AM

Surely even you see a problem with this. Some questions:

(1) Does the degree of the violence matter: a shove? accidental? an offhand comment that causes emotional distress even though it was misunderstood?

(2) If violence in defense can be reasonable, but bad, then by what standard do you decide what is bad since, evidently, reason (reason the faculty, not reason the justification) is not the criteria?

(3) Do plants count as living? How do you escape the conclusion that all humans are bad for eating living things to survive? Are wild predators (all wild animals, in fact) evil?

[4]I'm not sure how to read this other than as a direct contradiction.1) Yes, of course. Slapping someone vs shooting them matters. Oh, an accident. That's tough. I'd really need an straight up example to say on that one. It could go a lot of ways depending.

2) Pain? Suffering? Feeling Empathy? The golden rule? That's the reason violence is bad. That action of preventing someone from hurting others could provide the good to make it reasonable.

3) Depends on the setting, I guess. I do it like this: killing to eat is bad. Is killing to eat all that person has done? If they've never done anything good, and have gone around killing animals I would call them bad. It'd depend on the individual animal. Let's not try to group a whole species together.

4) I kind have answered this in number 2. The violence was wrong. The act of helping was not.

Of course this is all true in the real world. The confusion might be the context. I am talking about a world where every orc (for example) exists as Tolkien's Uruk Hai did, as the embodiment of evil, a lack of capacity for good, the desire to inflict endless suffering upon all that are good, and in many cases torment and eat good "people." I am not talking about the often-played card of the orc village of relatively peaceful peoples filled with women and children who have the capacity for compassion, etc. In my mind, such a situation goes directly against the spirit of the fantasy trope (but can be an enjoyable way to play, nonetheless).Do they have free-will? Can they make decisions? If they can think/decide they needed to be treated as an individual. No free passes on racism. If their is a possibility at all they are not a murder machine it needs to be addressed.

Democratus

2016-03-24, 08:40 AM

In the world of D&D things are much simpler.

Celestial creatures, like solars, commit violence and yet what they are good by definition. Violence isn't evil in D&D. It's the primary method of conflict resolution. There are good guys and bad guys. The good guys are good when they use violence on the bad guys.

At its best, D&D is a portrayal of the Hero's Journey. There are obstacles, gatekeepers, mentors, and a final conflict. That's the nature of this kind of storytelling.

Luke Skywalker wasn't doing evil when he blew up the Death Star. Indiana Jones wasn't doing evil when he shot all those Nazis. Buck Rodgers wasn't doing evil when he shot down Draconian fighters. All these actions are in service of the story and in the context of heroic fiction.

KorvinStarmast

2016-03-24, 03:42 PM

There is a reason that "shot a missile at an apartment building because there was an enemy sniper on the roof" sounds bad. Because it is bad. That is incorrect, and LOAC does not agree with you.

It isn't bad when that sniper is shooting at troops that my (or your) aircraft / helicopter / UAV is supporting. The sniper made that building a fighting position. The LOAC support the my PoV on that, not yours.

What's interesting to me is the number of lies told with the word "war crime" in the sentence, which is where your PoV on this leads to. Falsehood.

The term for "collateral damage" came about over time. On the professional side -- even though by strict rule that fighting position was legally attackable -- it is at the very least regrettable (from where I sit, it is tragic) that the non-combatants get hit. Who put them in play? The sniper. He made their home a fighting position. Actual war is not a tennis match, nor is it a video game. Using that example in a discussion about D&D alignment is part of the problem of the dialogue about alignment in the first place: it's a non sequitur.

Back to D&D and alignment.

Coffee_Dragon

2016-03-24, 04:33 PM

And as Malifice pointed out, it's not evil for Lawful Good deities to torture people for eternity as long as they have it coming. This eternal torturing can't be evil because the Lawful Good deities do it, see?

We have drifted so far off the original topic... BUT!

Calling it "eternal torture" is overstating it a tad, I think. Details probably differ between editions, but there are three common properties to petitioners in the Planes:

1. They lose all their memories, further clouding the notion of afterlife as punishment or reward. If there was a particular causality to where they ended up, the moral is lost on them, good or bad. (This is obviously not how it works in OotS.)

2. They spend their time milling about or doing activities appropriate to their home plane: petitioners on Ysgard fight a lot, larvae wriggle, souls on limbo maybe float around and get eaten by slaad, petitioners in Arborea frequent the ropes course (http://campcomic.com/comic/dwelling). If they ever end up on another plane (e.g. get sucked through a portal to Sigil) they'll have no idea what to do there because they're not really people and have very narrow frames of reference. They're not a proper continuation of the mortal life.

3. Their eventual fate and goal is to merge with their home plane, not to exist forever. So the ultimate function of petitioners is not to play out the eternal reward or suffering of mortal souls, but to ensure the continuation of the Outer Planes (and with it, the gods) that are built on belief. The world continues to spin, pup. (http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=356)

The Wall of the Faithless is particular to the Forgotten Realms, I believe, by decree of Ao. It may seem pointless and dickish, but it's really no more than a repository of stupid helpless souls that would just be standing around being stupid and helpless somewhere else if they weren't stuck in the wall. Eventually they too will dissolve and merge their essence with the wall (I guess with the Outlands/Concordant Opposition... even if they technically weren't TN? I don't know how that works).

In summation, Reverse Gravity is a stupid overpowered spell that should be allowed by nobody.

Finieous

2016-03-24, 04:39 PM

We have drifted so far off the original topic... BUT!

I already surrendered, twice! As long as I can get a feel for how the DM handles this **** and how seriously he takes it, I can play my character and have a good time. Everybody's happy. :smallsmile:

RickAllison

2016-03-24, 04:52 PM

I already surrendered, twice! As long as I can get a feel for how the DM handles this **** and how seriously he takes it, I can play my character and have a good time. Everybody's happy. :smallsmile:

No quarter shall be taken! We be the Pirates of the Stick and will na' be sated without ye booty!

http://www.ravenswoodleather.com/images/products/1353.jpg

JumboWheat01

2016-03-24, 05:11 PM

No quarter shall be taken! We be the Pirates of the Stick and will na' be sated without ye booty!

I dunno if I should feel threatened or sexually harassed.

Finieous

2016-03-24, 05:17 PM

No quarter shall be taken! We be the Pirates of the Stick and will na' be sated without ye booty!

Find some other booty, stick pirate!

RickAllison

2016-03-24, 05:30 PM

I dunno if I should feel threatened or sexually harassed.

Yarrrr, we be not entirely sure either.

Coffee_Dragon

2016-03-24, 05:35 PM

I already surrendered, twice!

Silly, you can't surrender out of an internet discussion! You are a knave and a roll-player and a defender of spurious homebrews! We will take all your currency except the quarters!

JackPhoenix

2016-03-24, 09:08 PM

Unless you're living in Eberron. Then you just go to Dolurrh. It isn't a reward, it isn't a punishment. It just is.

Yep. Proves (together with the whole "death and suffering" thing) that gods are ****. So let's look for the spark of divinity within ourselves and kick their asses when we find it and become as gods themselves.

This message was NOT in any way sponsored by a cult led by 2700 year old teenager lich. Honestly!

Regitnui

2016-03-25, 12:38 AM

Yep. Proves (together with the whole "death and suffering" thing) that gods are ****. So let's look for the spark of divinity within ourselves and kick their asses when we find it and become as gods themselves.

This message was NOT in any way sponsored by a cult led by 2700 year old teenager lich. Honestly!

*Brandishes silver torch* Agh! Heathen! Back, be purified in the Flame!

Eh, who am I kidding? I'm a Vassal of Olladra.

Malifice

2016-03-25, 01:43 AM

I know that DesCartes says so, and I happen to agree (because you included the word certainly), but this is not what I mean to say. I mean to say that even your own experience of yourself is being experienced by you, and is therefore subjective. So while you might want to say that you know, objectively, that you exist, this doesn't mean that the particular way that you experience yourself is objective, because it is being experienced by you (the subject).

The 'I' is objectively true. The experiences you refer to are all you can ever know of the outside world (the world outside the I) and they are subjective.

So the minds existence = objective. Everything else = subjective.

Its counter intuitive because we like to think the universe objectively exists, but we have no actual proof that it does.

This same knowledge can be extended to other things in the universe. For example, while you might wish to argue about whether or not I can objectively know that the sun exists, I feel very confident in asserting that the sun does exist. As for the details of what it is and what its qualities are, those are subjective, but its existence is not. I can concede that my certainty about the sun's existence is less than my certainty of my own existence, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't think the sun exists.

Does the Sun exist for Neo, or is it just his perception of it?

When you're dreaming, is the sun in your dream real? Are the people you talk to real people?

This isn't true at all. The reason is that the universe is interactive. So you've set up a false dichotomy between 100% verifiable knowledge and pure faith. I don't accept this. I have good reasons for believing, for example, that my wife exists, and her thoughts are coming from her mind, which also exists, and that the sun is real, and that the earth is real, etc. I can concede that they are not 100% verifiable, but I don't accept their existence on faith alone. I have good reasons to think they are real.

As does Neo. But there is no spoon.

You accept the existence of the universe around you on faith. As do the peeps in the matrix.

This is a gross misrepresentation of Heisenberg and quantum physics.

As were both aware, Heisenbergs central theorem was the uncertainty principle.

Here is an extract from his own book (the preface by Paul Davies) that disucusses why (on a quantum level at least) the universe is subjective:

The classical world view [objective and external space time], so passionately espoused by Einstein, accords well with common sense by asserting the objective reality of the external world. It recognizes that our observations inevitably intrude into and disturb that world but that this disturbance is merely incidental and can be made arbitrarily small. In particular, the microworld of atoms and particles is considered to differ in scale, but not in ontological status, from the macroworld of experience. Thus an electron is a scaled down version of an idealized billiard ball, sharing with the latter a complete set of dynamical attributes, such as being somewhere (i.e. having a position), moving in a certain way (i.e. having a momentum) and so on. In a classical world our observations do not create reality: they uncover it. Thus atoms and particles continue to exist with well defined attributes even when we do not observe them.

By contrast, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which Heisenberg here expounds so lucidly, rejects the objective reality of the quantum microworld. It denies that, say, an electron has a well defined position and a well defined momentum in the absence of an actual observation of either its position or its momentum (and both cannot yield sharp values simultaneously). Thus an electron or an atom cannot be regarded as a little thing in the same sense that a billiard ball is a thing. One cannot meaningfully talk about what an electron is doing between observations because it is the observations alone that create the reality of the electron.

Thus a measurement of an electron's position creates an electron with a position; a measurement of its momentum creates an electron with a momentum. But neither entity can [objectively] be considered already to be in existence prior to the measurement being made.

What, then, is an electron, according to this point of view? It is not so much a physical thing as an abstract encodement of a set of potentialities or possible outcomes of measurements. It is a shorthand way of referring to a means of connecting different observations via the quantum mechanical formalism. But the reality is in the observations, not in the electron.

The denial of the objective reality of the external world implied by the Copenhagen interpretation is often couched in more cautious terms, but Heisenberg here provides some of the bluntest affirmations of this position that I have seen. Thus: ‘In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But the atoms or the elementary particles themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.'

Einstein's opinions are labelled dogmatic realism', a very natural attitude, according to Heisenberg. Indeed, the vast majority of scientists subscribe to it. They believe that their investigations actually refer to something real ‘out there' in the physical world and that the lawful physical universe is not just the invention of scientists. The unexpected success of simple mathematical laws in physics bolsters the belief that science is tapping into an already existing external reality. But, Heisenberg reminds us, quantum mechanics is also founded on simple mathematical laws that are very successful in explaining the physical world but still do not require that world to have independent existence in the sense of dogmatic realism.

http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Heisenberg,Werner/Heisenberg,%20Werner%20-%20Physics%20and%20philosophy.pdf

You can watch any debate on religion between Deepak Chopra and either Sam Harris or Michael Shermer (or a plethora of others), and you'll hear plenty of refutations concerning why you can't extend the very real claims of quantum physics into realms in which they don't apply.

This isnt some 'Secret' stuff. The above extract was taken straight from Heisenbergs own work.

fallensaviour

2016-03-25, 04:24 AM

*Brandishes silver torch* Agh! Heathen! Back, be purified in the Flame!

Eh, who am I kidding? I'm a Vassal of Olladra.

The rakshasha living in the flame and the lolipope commend you for your service

Regitnui

2016-03-25, 06:50 AM

The rakshasha living in the flame and the lolipope commend you for your service

Sod the Flame!

Marcelinari

2016-03-25, 09:20 AM

The 'I' is objectively true. The experiences you refer to are all you can ever know of the outside world (the world outside the I) and they are subjective.

So the minds existence = objective. Everything else = subjective.

Its counter intuitive because we like to think the universe objectively exists, but we have no actual proof that it does.

[Snip]

Does the Sun exist for Neo, or is it just his perception of it?

When you're dreaming, is the sun in your dream real? Are the people you talk to real people?

[Snip]

As does Neo. But there is no spoon.

You accept the existence of the universe around you on faith. As do the peeps in the matrix.

I think, thanks to the matrix, most of us are familiar with basic solipsism. It's true that the only thing we can 100% confirm is the existence of our own self. Nobody has refuted this assumption. However, I think what burgerbeast was getting at was the idea that we do not actually take each detail of the world around us completely on faith, either, generally hoping that what we're interacting with exists. We have solid and consistent information that our environments are in existence, based on our senses. The only thing about the scenario that we are really taking on faith (and even then it's intuitive rather than counterintuitive) is the idea that our senses can be trusted - i.e. that an outside world exists at all. There's no way of confirming this assumption, but given the alternative - that nothing really exists and everything is pointless - it's just more useful to operate under the conceit that other things exist.

Burgerbeast was not denying you completely - they clearly understand that there is no clear argument against the solipsist position. They do not claim that the sun definitely, provably exists, but rather that given the conceit that an outside world exists, they feel confident in asserting that the sun exists. I suspect that my reasoning on the matter would be thus - "I do not know that the outside world exists, but it might, because my senses tell me it does. My options are then 1) I cannot trust my senses and nothing exists, neither the Sun nor anybody asking me whether the sun exists, and therefore any answer I give is pointless and experienced only by myself, or 2) I can trust my senses and the things I observe exist, including both the Sun and the individual asking me if it exists. If I answer 'no' now, I will be wrong, and someone will have understood me to be wrong. So if I say 'the sun does exist', I am either wrong and nobody exists to judge me thus - or I am right, and I have demonstrated my correctness".

This has been a crash course in a philosophy that almost certainly has a proper name and was published somewhere, but that I like to call the 'pragmatic theory of truth', i.e. - Is it useful to believe this worldview?

Coffee_Dragon

2016-03-25, 10:29 AM

Sod the Flame!

Kneel before Sod the Flame

Finieous

2016-03-25, 10:53 AM

It's true that the only thing we can 100% confirm is the existence of our own self.

Way off topic, but no we can't. Descartes' "cogito" is rubbish. As Nietzsche and others have pointed out, the only thing his little experiment demonstrates, even if you allow the other steps in the syllogism, is "There are thoughts."

Marcelinari

2016-03-25, 01:31 PM

Way off topic, but no we can't. Descartes' "cogito" is rubbish. As Nietzsche and others have pointed out, the only thing his little experiment demonstrates, even if you allow the other steps in the syllogism, is "There are thoughts."

As I understand it, Descartes' skepticism was based off of the hypothetical that there is some extranatural force (an all-powerful demon) fooling all of your senses into believing the things you experience. From that perspective, the reasoning behind 'cogito ergo sum' is that there must be a core 'self' for the demon to be fooling. I can't speak to the objections of Nietzsche and others, but it seems reasonable to me.

Finieous

2016-03-25, 01:49 PM

The objection is that while Descartes purports to begin his hypothetical from a position of pure skepticism (deceived by a demon), the "I" or "self" is inserted as nothing but baseless presupposition. In other words, how does Descartes jump from the apprehension that there is thinking happening (specifically, doubting) to the attribution of that thinking to a particular agent, person or self? A better statement of the "cogito" would therefore be "There are thoughts" or "It is thinking," similar to the proposition "It is raining."

Again, way off topic. I surrender thrice!

Regitnui

2016-03-25, 02:31 PM

Again, way off topic. I surrender thrice!

About time.

In any case, the question here is answered with the general Playground summary of "well, he sure ain't Good anymore".

fallensaviour

2016-03-25, 02:35 PM

Sod the Flame!

I notice you didn't sod the lolipope

Regitnui

2016-03-25, 02:40 PM

I notice you didn't sod the lolipope

Firstly, eww.

Secondly, I prefer Breland to Thrane.

Thirdly, I don't believe in the Flame

Fourthly, I'm offering clocks that count down to Daran's 18th birthday, only 10sp per. You want one?

Marcelinari

2016-03-25, 02:41 PM

fallensaviour

2016-03-25, 02:55 PM

Firstly, eww.

Secondly, I prefer Breland to Thrane.

Thirdly, I don't believe in the Flame

Fourthly, I'm offering clocks that count down to Daran's 18th birthday, only 10sp per. You want one?

I was once in a pathfinder game that took place 10ish years after base ebberon. I was playing a dhamphir sorcerer/oracle/theurge member of the blood of vol (not the horribly evil part, the part with power coming from within that has regular people following it) grandson of Kaius. My plan was to reunite khorvaire under one ruler (me) then attain lichdom so there's never be a war of succession again. Part of my plan included trying to wed Daran.

JackPhoenix

2016-03-26, 12:57 PM

Sigreid

2016-03-26, 02:08 PM

Well, if all of this is a product of my imagination and conciete then whoever or whatever is either tending to or providing my delusion needs to make with better drugs ASAP! The whole bloody mess has gone wrong.

Regitnui

2016-03-26, 02:54 PM

Regitnui and fallensaviour: I'm suddenly reminded of the thread "1000 things the worst party in Eberron is forbidden from doing" (or something like that) on WotC forums. I wonder if it was saved somewhere.....

edit: it was: http://www.angelfire.com/dragon3/captainjarlot/

I love that thread. Made me want to run a eberron pirate game in the first place. Of course, it looks more like a intrigue plot in pirate nation right now. It just needs players.

fallensaviour

2016-03-26, 03:09 PM

Regitnui and fallensaviour: I'm suddenly reminded of the thread "1000 things the worst party in Eberron is forbidden from doing" (or something like that) on WotC forums. I wonder if it was saved somewhere.....

edit: it was: http://www.angelfire.com/dragon3/captainjarlot/

At least I wasn't the pc with vol's dragonmark! And divinity within was what I was thinking of as the church I was part of...also the rest of ther players were pirates/smugglers/traders and the campaign had to do with the mists receding from the mournland while I was trying to take over the world with necromancy for the greater good!

Regitnui

2016-03-26, 03:30 PM

At least I wasn't the pc with vol's dragonmark! And divinity within was what I was thinking of as the church I was part of...also the rest of ther players were pirates/smugglers/traders and the campaign had to do with the mists receding from the mournland while I was trying to take over the world with necromancy for the greater good!

If I had a.PC declare they had the dragonmark of death, I'd declare they were kidnapped by the Emerald Claw as a child before the campaign. And then they have to reroll.

fallensaviour

2016-03-26, 03:38 PM

If I had a.PC declare they had the dragonmark of death, I'd declare they were kidnapped by the Emerald Claw as a child before the campaign. And then they have to reroll.

I forget who all knew that in character, and our dm was very much the "sure you can have the awesome thing, I'll use it against you later type"

Regitnui

2016-03-26, 03:42 PM

We need an eberron thread. I also need to update my stat block.

fallensaviour

2016-03-26, 03:50 PM

We need an eberron thread. I also need to update my stat block.

The best part about that game is since I was playing oracle/sorcerer and both are cha casters I had a 26 charisma...the downside is we were somewhere around lvl 8-10 and I only had 3rd level spells...then I hit theurge...unfortunately the class abilities for it in pathfinder suck if both classes are spontaneous casters...but that both classes progress thing was nice

BurgerBeast

2016-03-26, 04:54 PM

The 'I' is objectively true....

There are many refutations of this. See Nietzsche, for example. He rightly pointed out that Descartes had no more right to say "I think" than he had to say "there are thoughts." If seeing the sun does not evidence that I see it, then detecting thoughts does not evidence that I think them, either. You don't get to have it both ways.

"I think therefore I am," thought it had remarkable consequences for DesCartes and for Western thought, is a mistake of logic.

The experiences you refer to are all you can ever know of the outside world (the world outside the I) and they are subjective.

There is much philosophical tradition that has something else to say. For example "There is no I," or "I am everything."

You accept the existence of the universe around you on faith. As do the peeps in the matrix.

This is elegantly refuted by Matt Dillahunty of the atheist experience to a Christian.

As were both aware, Heisenbergs central theorem was the uncertainty principle.

Yes. What you appear to be unaware of, and perhaps Heisenberg himself was unaware of, are it's limitations.

Here is an extract from his own book (the preface by Paul Davies) that disucusses why (on a quantum level at least) the universe is subjective...

Apparently Paul Davies is also unaware of it. When you get down to it, even if you accept that there is ultimately (on microscopic levels) no objective reality, you have to concede that your entire life is lived based on an objectively consistent universe and so at the least it has no relevance to your everyday life.

This isnt some 'Secret' stuff. The above extract was taken straight from Heisenbergs own work.

This is dishonest. When you say "from his own work" you give the impression that he wrote it. But Davies wrote it. Regardless, even Heisenberg had the ability to be wrong.