Can a Neutral Aligned Person cut out someone's tongue?

[BlueWitch]

Yeah.

Brutal right?

But it happened last session and we ended up getting a big discussion on it.

Our new DM thought it was evil but wanted us to vote. The players and former DM were mixed. 2 thought it was okay given what happened. I myself am on the fence but leaning toward it not inherently being evil considering the guy *was* a jerk.

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Context: Basically a guy was trash talking (and rather harshly) a fallen comrade who gave his life. So the Player Character (a Half-Genie, Duskblade/Sorc) cut out his tongue after a brief fight.

The problem is her alignment is True Neutral. Pretty extreme right? (Not all of our characters were present so they couldn't just jump in and stop her.)

but anyway's, what do you think?

[Ashtagon]

Yeah, that's pretty solidly into evil territory right there. The "punishment" is way out of proportion, not to mention cruel and unusual. It probably counts as chaotic too, for that matter.

[NerdHut]

I'd say context matters. Broadly speaking, I'd say cutting out someone's tongue (In D&D morality, mind you) falls pretty close to the line separating Neutral and Evil. But given the specific circumstance, I'd say it's a clear cut (hehe) evil act. She didn't have much provocation if you think about it, and she just permanantly maimed the guy.

That said, a True Neutral character can commit evil acts. There are two kinds of neutrality: moderation and balance. They're not mutually exclusive, but in short a moderate neutral just doesn't do much evil or good stuff. They just kind of do what works, while balanced neutrals do good and evil things in roughly equal amounts. A neutral character might be a peasant farmer just living his life, or it might be a genocidal dictator who protects the world from demons in his spare time.

[Ellrin]

Any aligned character can do anything; alignment doesn’t prevent action. That said, enough action that is sufficiently different in principle from one’s alignment will shift a character’s alignment. I would say, given the circumstances, this particular action is primarily chaotic, with a significant but not major evil bent, but the degree to which these hold true depends on a larger context—for instance, how socially and/or legally acceptable is violent immediate retributive action? Has this character been provoked by the victim before, and to what extent? Is the victim evil, and how much did the character know about the victim’s possible misdeeds?

Regardless of the answers to these and other questions (these are just examples that your DM should and possibly already has taken under consideration), it’s ultimately up to the DM whether any given act or set of actions is enough to warrant an alignment shift; and actions that are made in accordance with some other alignment should also be taken into account.

Myself, I’d say one action like this, while it is brutal, is not in itself enough to constitute an alignment shift; but it is a significant point in a bigger picture that may eventually point to an alignment shift.

[zlefin]

Yeah.

Brutal right?

But it happened last session and we ended up getting a big discussion on it.

Our new DM thought it was evil but wanted us to vote. The players and former DM were mixed. 2 thought it was okay given what happened. I myself am on the fence but leaning toward it not inherently being evil considering the guy *was* a jerk.

------------

Context: Basically a guy was trash talking (and rather harshly) a fallen comrade who gave his life. So the Player Character (a Half-Genie, Duskblade/Sorc) cut out his tongue after a brief fight.

The problem is her alignment is True Neutral. Pretty extreme right? (Not all of our characters were present so they couldn't just jump in and stop her.)

but anyway's, what do you think?

I think it's an evil act. on its own the action is not enough to change the character's alignment.
I think it's very plausible in character. so I don't see a problem.

[Analytica]

Mutilating someone to a life-altering handicap (imagine if you could not speak to anyone, and had no internet, what kind of isolation you end up in - never again whisper to a loved one, never call out for help, nothing) because they say something you find disrespectful?

Full on fall all the way to Evil. Vile.

[atemu1234]

Eh, considering that purchasing a casting of regenerate is (7th level spell, minimum caster level 13, 7*13*50 gp) 4550 gp, which is well outside of most peoples' budgets, but also an option, I'm not sure I fall too hard on the 'this is irredeemably evil' side of things, but it definitely falls a fair bit south of neutral.

[Vizzerdrix]

Depends on intent.

[Ellrin]

Mutilating someone to a life-altering handicap (imagine if you could not speak to anyone, and had no internet, what kind of isolation you end up in - never again whisper to a loved one, never call out for help, nothing) because they say something you find disrespectful?

Full on fall all the way to Evil. Vile.

Let’s not forget this is a world where good and evil have incarnate forms and regenerate is a thing. It’s bad, but it’s not nearly as bad as it would be in the real world.

[Zaq]

It's clearly an evil act.

Whether one act is enough to shift alignment depends on, well, a lot of things. Neutral people sometimes do evil things. Even Good people can sometimes do evil things (not so much those gooder-than-good Exalted types, but they're very specifically exceptional by definition). Does it make them stop being Good or Neutral? It might. It might not. Depends on the magnitude, the context, the intent, the rationale, what they do afterwards, and so on.

It's also worth considering how comfortable you are with a single act really changing someone's alignment, especially if you're starting with Neutral as opposed to an alignment with, shall we say, a tendency for stricter precepts that could be violated. Maybe you're okay with a single action counting for more than the rest of someone's life (or at least the rest of their recent life) when it comes to describing their ultimate alignment, or maybe you'd need to see a pattern rather than just a single (if major) deviation from what they'd been doing up to that point. (Consider also that the more extreme the deviation from the character's established baseline, the harder the creator of the fiction has to work to make that deviation believable. If you start creating examples—which, to be clear, you don't appear to be doing in this specific context—of characters who really embody a certain alignment and who then commit some act that's really, really opposed to that certain alignment, one has to ask why it makes even a tiny bit of sense for that strongly deviant act to be what the character really did.)

Remember that alignment is, as others have stated, descriptive, not prescriptive. The question is less "can a person with X alignment commit Y act?" and more "after committing Y act, would a person stay at X alignment?"

Of course, the fact that D&D is fundamentally a combat simulator and most adventurers callously slay dozens or hundreds of living creatures (many of whom are unambiguously "people," even if they happen to be people doing problematic things) in the course of a career kind of makes it really weird to talk about how evil a specific harm visited upon someone is. If you just fought them and killed them and they weren't clearly defenseless, nonhostile, etc. (something something Miko something Shojo something something), the conventions of the game and the genre will cause most people to just kind of accept it and move on without dwelling on it forever, unless you're intentionally trying to play a pacifist of some kind. So if killing them isn't an alignment-altering act, is inflicting a permanent injury worse than straight up killing them? Yeah, context matters. Context matters a ton. And my real point in this paragraph is pointing out that accepting "we fought, they died, let's move on" as normal is itself a pretty terrible baseline if you want to have even a semi-serious discussion about morality. Standard D&D adventurers are basically terrible people.

I still love the game and I still have fun pretending to be this particular flavor of "hero," but the casual acceptance and glorification of copious violence in the game's ruleset and basic milieu really tends to skew this kind of discussion.

[magic9mushroom]

I'm going to join the chorus saying that it's an Evil act, but one Evil act does not an alignment shift make.

There is exactly one time I as DM threatened to alignment-shift someone for one act; that was for trying to defend a demon who'd been raping people to death from an angel come to slay her while allegedly NG. I told him that I'd drop him to TN if he did that (the other players talked him out of it).

[Remuko]

I think it's an evil act. on its own the action is not enough to change the character's alignment.
I think it's very plausible in character. so I don't see a problem.

agree with this entirely.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Given how easy body parts are to replace (via magic, if nothing else), many actions in D&D that would be permanent and irrevocable in real life are nowhere near as bad.

Cutting out someone's tongue, for instance, is expensive, but not that bad. Certainly not irredeemably evil.

[Sutehp]

I tend to agree that cutting out someone's tongue is an evil act. While such a thing may not be permanent if they can find someone to cast the Regenerate spell, that it going to be well outside the means of most people in your standard fantasy setting, so I think this can be treated as something that is as serious a crime as it would be in our world. Of course, the punishment would probably differ depending on which time/era and place/jurisdiction here on Earth we're talking about.

But yeah, I think intent would have to be a pretty big part of determining just how evil an act this was. And the fact remains that cutting someone's tongue out is NOT something that can be done by accident. You have to make a determined and deliberate action to do something as visceral as cutting out a person's tongue. And if that's the case, then you knew that you were maiming another person, most likely permanently. And if this began with some sort of verbal argument or name-calling or whatever, then cutting out someone's tongue is a totally disproportionate reaction.

But yeah, as Zaq said, the question isn't "can a True Neutral do this (cutting out a person's tongue)" so much as "what are the consequences of any person doing this (cutting out a person's tongue)?" Nobody deserves to have their tongue cut out in response to trash-talking someone, no matter how much trash-talking was being done. So what are the consequences of doing this? That's for the GM to decide and the players to react to.

[LuminousWarrior]

From what I'm reading it sounds like the PC cut out the NPC's tongue in an act of rage after he insulted the honour of a dead friend. Perhaps Evil, yes, but not an Evil act that ought to cause an alignment shift. In fact, depending on the circumstance behind it and the culture of the setting, it may be one that should be expected. The NPC got off easy. I would have killed him.

[ezekielraiden]

Yeah this is...pretty friggin' extreme, but I wouldn't make someone fall for JUST this. But the player should know that they're in extremely fragile circumstances--they are *at significant risk* of falling to Evil.

If they make some minimal effort (e.g. giving the person some money to care for themselves until they can get it fixed), they'll be on a slow trajectory back to healthy Neutral status.

But...yeah this individual act is pushing things nearly to the brink. Petty evil alone might not do it, but even a *moderately* severe act after this (like, say, intentionally slaying a surrendered enemy or something, even if provoked) would push it over.

I guess you could say they're on alignment probation. It's not like ANYTHING remotely bad they do will put 'em in the slammer, but they're On Notice and anything worse will be Very Bad News.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

From what I'm reading it sounds like the PC cut out the NPC's tongue in an act of rage after he insulted the honour of a dead friend. Perhaps Evil, yes, but not an Evil act that ought to cause an alignment shift. In fact, depending on the circumstance behind it and the culture of the setting, it may be one that should be expected. The NPC got off easy. I would have killed him.Basically, yes. Many cultures in Earth's history would see such punishments as par for the course. Killing someone for dishonoring a beloved teammate who recently died would be accepted, if not expected. A mere tongue-ectomy is letting 'em off pretty lightly, in my opinion.

[Hackulator]

I mean, it is definitely evil. However, neutral and even good characters can do evil things. Neutral characters can just do evil things from time to time, as long as they are mostly balanced. Good characters can make mistakes, do things they regret later, etcetera.

[Feantar]

If they were a good character, I'd shift them unless they showed severe remorse. But they are neutral, and as such, this is acceptable. Now if they keep on doing this, shift them to evil, but otherwise, they are in the clear.

[doctor doughnut]

Brutality alone is not just a pure evil act....no matter how much you don't like it.

After all, keep in mind a good or neutral person can kill.....and killing is sure worse than just wounding.

So if you accept that you can ''defend yourself" with killing, then you can sure wound someone for an action they take.

[Sutehp]

Brutality alone is not just a pure evil act....no matter how much you don't like it.

After all, keep in mind a good or neutral person can kill.....and killing is sure worse than just wounding.

So if you accept that you can ''defend yourself" with killing, then you can sure wound someone for an action they take.

It depends on how you define "brutality." You also have to remember that unprovoked harm is still evil precisely because it's disproportionate. You don't get to physically harm someone just because they insulted you; that reaction doesn't fit the original action. Insults don't cause physical harm but cutting someone's tongue out obviously does. That right there is why physically harming someone in reaction to them saying something is totally out of proportion. That sort of brutality can't be anything but an evil act. This moral imbalance is precisely what makes certain acts evil.

Killing is not always murder; as I said before, it depends on intent. If I shoot someone who doesn't have any way to defend themselves, that's obviously evil because I don't have the right to take someone's life if they're not about to hurt anyone. But if I shoot someone who's trying to hurt or kill me or anyone else, that's a good thing because I'm acting to prevent harm. Murders are always a killing, but not all killings are murders. And the way to determine that is to look at intent and proportionality. You can't justifiably hurt anyone just because they said something insulting (without it being an evil act). You can't justifiably kill someone just because they looked at you funny (because that's definitely an evil act). You can only justifiably kill someone if they are trying to murder you or someone else because those are the only circumstances involving killing that don't create a moral imbalance. Considering the circumstances the OP told us about this neutral character cutting someone's tongue out, it's obvious that there is a moral imbalance here and the Neutral character who cut the tongue of the PC is on the wrong side of the imbalance. It doesn't seem like something egregious enough to shove a person's alignment from Neutral into Evil, but it's certainly a BIG step in the "south of Neutral" direction.

Now I'm wondering how that PC is going to get revenge against that NPC who cut out his tongue. (And the alignment consequences from that action are probably a whole 'nother post.)

[Psyren]

Many cultures in Earth's history would see such punishments as par for the course.

That doesn't make it not Evil. All kinds of brutality can be/was/is "par for the course."



I guess you could say they're on alignment probation. It's not like ANYTHING remotely bad they do will put 'em in the slammer, but they're On Notice and anything worse will be Very Bad News.

Given that the character in question is a Duskblade, their alignment doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. It'd pretty much start and end at "I changed some letters at the top of my sheet."

[Rynjin]

Mutilating someone to a life-altering handicap (imagine if you could not speak to anyone, and had no internet, what kind of isolation you end up in - never again whisper to a loved one, never call out for help, nothing) because they say something you find disrespectful?

Full on fall all the way to Evil. Vile.

"Talk ****, get hit" and all that.

If you're stupid enough to badmouth the dead friend of someone who kills monsters for a living and whose choice of profession guarantees they're a bit unhinged compared to a normal person, you've brought your fate on yourself. It's like hitting a sleeping grizzly bear in the ass with a baseball bat.

[Ellrin]

That doesn't make it not Evil. All kinds of brutality can be/was/is "par for the course."


Nobody’s arguing that committing evil acts just because they’re socially expected makes them nonevil; instead, the argument seems to me to be that they’re less evil than the same acts undertaken without those social expectations. It seems like a relatively sound argument, even in a world of absolute good and evil, since acts undertaken under duress lose some of their moral and ethical force, and social and legal conformity are, if you ask me, a form of duress.

[Elysiume]

"Talk ****, get hit" and all that.

If you're stupid enough to badmouth the dead friend of someone who kills monsters for a living and whose choice of profession guarantees they're a bit unhinged compared to a normal person, you've brought your fate on yourself. It's like hitting a sleeping grizzly bear in the ass with a baseball bat.Someone being easily provoked into committing an evil act doesn't make the act any less evil. It's not as if they were tricked or otherwise unaware of what they were doing.

At 4550gp for a casting of Regenerate (plus the difficulty in finding a 13th level caster that is able and willing), you're looking at over a century of untrained labor or over a decade of trained labor (if they can even work sans tongue). That's assuming they don't have any other costs, which they absolutely do. It's not technically a permanent injury, but it might as well be, taking the default setting/costs.

[Psyren]

Nobody’s arguing that committing evil acts just because they’re socially expected makes them nonevil; instead, the argument seems to me to be that they’re less evil than the same acts undertaken without those social expectations. It seems like a relatively sound argument, even in a world of absolute good and evil, since acts undertaken under duress lose some of their moral and ethical force, and social and legal conformity are, if you ask me, a form of duress.

The snippet in the OP is brief, but from what's there I didn't see any kind of societal or legal coercion or even mores at play. Even if the guy had been raised exclusively in a society like that, they weren't being overseen by any authorities, nor were there any witnesses save the adventuring party (again, from what I read.) So I would at a minimum look askance at "my culture expects this/made me do it" as defense/justification.


"Talk ****, get hit" and all that.

If you're stupid enough to badmouth the dead friend of someone who kills monsters for a living and whose choice of profession guarantees they're a bit unhinged compared to a normal person, you've brought your fate on yourself. It's like hitting a sleeping grizzly bear in the ass with a baseball bat.

Grizzly bears don't have moral capacity, while PCs generally do. Certainly I wouldn't expect a Duskblade with animal intelligence to make it very far in their chosen vocation.

[noob]

Mutilating someone to a life-altering handicap (imagine if you could not speak to anyone, and had no internet, what kind of isolation you end up in - never again whisper to a loved one, never call out for help, nothing) because they say something you find disrespectful?

Full on fall all the way to Evil. Vile.

cutting a tongue does not actually prevents you from talking it only makes it harder.
In fiction the whole "cutting tongue prevents talking" exists not because it is true in real life but because it is a convenient plot tool.

[Silfir]

"Talk ****, get hit" and all that.

If you're stupid enough to badmouth the dead friend of someone who kills monsters for a living and whose choice of profession guarantees they're a bit unhinged compared to a normal person, you've brought your fate on yourself. It's like hitting a sleeping grizzly bear in the ass with a baseball bat.

Well, exactly. "Get hit". Not "Get your tongue cut out of your face."

I don't think it's necessarily evil to react to verbal injury with physical assault, but the type and severity of the assault is revelatory as far as the character's alignment goes. The more grossly out of proportion, and the more elaborate and cold-blooded the thinking behind it, the more evil it is. Only an evil (or as you say, unhinged) person would jump to cutting tongues. A neutral person with a dark side might do it, but would generally feel remorse over it once the fog in their head clears.

You do something like this without significant remorse, you're definitely evil.

[Elricaltovilla]

Is acting with the express goal of genociding an entire society of sapient individuals evil? What about an entire species of such individuals? Or an entire plane?

What if those creatures are "Always Chaotic Evil" Orcs? Or an enclave of vampires? Or, y'know, all the demons of the Abyss or devils of the Baator?

My point is that good and neutral characters do evil things all the time. But in D&D doing evil unto evil is not an inherently evil act (unless it is, the writing is pretty inconsistent). When you consider some of the societies that exist in these settings, even cutting out someone's tongue might not be evil, but instead an expected action from society to defend/avenge the honor of the dead person.

There is no way to have a consistent answer because the rules regarding alignment are so inconsistent and vague, and because we tend to instinctively force our own values and sensibilities on to the world in which we play. I'm of the opinion that one Evil act does not make a person Evil, however. It takes dedication and consistent behavior patterns to necessitate an alignment shift.

[Pleh]

Yes, a neutral character can do this without instant alignment shift: "you're evil now."

I would warn my character that this almost certainly moved them towards eventually becoming evil, if the trend continues.

If they argue, "I was provoked," I'll say, "yes, many evil characters were products of their circumstances and doesn't mean they're not evil." That has more influence over their prospective redemption and atonement, should it ever become necessary or desired and less over their actual alignment.

Alignment is what you are, not what you'd be if you were in the right set of circumstances. The character likely feels the weight of the Vile act they've committed. If they continue to act in similar ways without remorse, they'll likely slip into a full alignment shift.

[ezekielraiden]

Is acting with the express goal of genociding an entire society of sapient individuals evil? What about an entire species of such individuals? Or an entire plane?

What if those creatures are "Always Chaotic Evil" Orcs? Or an enclave of vampires? Or, y'know, all the demons of the Abyss or devils of the Baator?

My point is that good and neutral characters do evil things all the time. But in D&D doing evil unto evil is not an inherently evil act (unless it is, the writing is pretty inconsistent).

Except that what you're doing here is asserting different, inconsistent standards, and then saying, "Look how inconsistent this is!"

Do you accept or reject the in-world definition of "good" and "evil," or not? If you reject it, then it doesn't matter whether or not the in-universe people call themselves good; you've already made the decision that those labels are meaningless cruft, no different from the color of clothes they wear, and you'll be applying whatever values-system you've chosen for the analysis. Or, if you do accept the in-world definition, well, it's already been defined, so there is no discussion to be had--the actions are right because they're right, end of story. Your parenthetical makes a vague gesture at a different analysis, though--asking whether we, Doylist audience members, can find consistency in the presented work, or if it has irreconcilable inconsistency--and that is a valid approach...but it requires us to abandon any thought of final answers on whether an action is or is not "good," and instead ask whether the system as a whole is well- or poorly-made. In making a transvaluation of values, we have to stop asserting a standard, and start analyzing the standard presented, following its logic to natural conclusions and comparing and contrasting the situations displayed.

Or, to phrase that differently: we can evaluate any individual action, if we have a system already in place to judge them by (whether the one the author offers, or a different one). Or, we can evaluate any given system, implicitly the author's, by examining what it says about the individual cases, and whether or not we accept its results. But we cannot simultaneously evaluate a proposed system and evaluate the actions themselves. One or the other must be our input data, what is simply accepted for what it is, used as the scaffolding for our conclusions. You can decide to ask, "by what standard should we weigh things?" first, or you can ask, "what do things weigh?" first, but you cannot ask both questions simultaneously--the answer to one changes the answer to the other.


When you consider some of the societies that exist in these settings, even cutting out someone's tongue might not be evil, but instead an expected action from society to defend/avenge the honor of the dead person.

And if we refuse to believe that the morality of an action is purely defined by the society in which it takes place? We don't even need to go full-on deontological ethics here, where morality is totally divorced from the consequences of one's actions. As long as you have even one action that is simply evil, full stop, without exception, you're committed to the idea that morality cannot be a function of society. It might be influenced by society, but society isn't what determines right from wrong. If slavery, or sexual assault, or betrayal of trust, or any other specific deed simply *is* evil, you're committing to the idea that moral wrong exists independently (at least some of the time) from societal norms. And if you refuse to accept that any deed can be "evil" regardless of context, then you can't ever judge outside of context, at which point statements like "My point is that good and neutral characters do evil things all the time" makes no sense--either they aren't 'good' because they failed to follow the cultural norms, or they are 'good' because they did, and you have no right to assert your cultural system as any form of better or more moral than theirs.


There is no way to have a consistent answer because the rules regarding alignment are so inconsistent and vague, and because we tend to instinctively force our own values and sensibilities on to the world in which we play.

Sure there is. You just have to be willing to actually commit to a values-system, rather than (as too many authors do) half-assedly handwaving something and dodging any actual, y'know, philosophy and ethics and judgment. Avatar: the Last Airbender articulates a perfectly reasonable values system, and it totally tosses around terms like "good" and "evil" on the regular. But it's also a messy world, where people make mistakes, and learning how to do the right thing--or the wrong thing--isn't inherent, but a process, something people choose. And it does so in a natural, unforced way. The man (Yon Rha) who killed Katara's and Sokka's mother is clearly evil, but as she so nicely puts it, "There's just nothing inside you, nothing at all. You're pathetic and sad and empty," a miserable, cowardly wretch--but also a person, with all that entails. Sozin, the genocidal maniac, and Roku, the wise Avatar, were equally Fire Nation, and equally human, and had responsibility for their respective actions.

We root for Zuko even when he's a villain because he's a complex and interesting villain, but we cheer and/or tearbend when he slowly, slowly tears down the dark in his personality and slowly, slowly works to rebuild it--stumbling and falling all the while, but standing back up again. But we also have it clear that, even from an extremely young age (no older than 10, and probably younger), Azula was a twisted person, and that by 14 she is clearly evil and needs to be stopped. (She's also incredibly tragic, heavily shaped by an abusive father acting out the values of a morally-bankrupt culture) and her fall into madness is one of the finest examples of creating sympathy for a villain without ever condoning or excusing her villainy that I've ever seen in any creative work.)

In the end, this "forcing [our] values" thing is only one of two inevitable conclusions. Either we enforce a values-system, or we are provided one and use it. We cannot not evaluate; even to choose to do so is to make an evaluation (the meta-evaluation that it is not appropriate to evaluate). So there will be some system, be it the trivial non-system "anything goes" or any set of evaluations or rules larger than that empty set, and either we provide it, or the author does. And with something like D&D, where the authors effectively abdicate that decision for all but a very tiny handful of cases? Of course if there's any system there at all it's because we've provided it. No one else can.


I'm of the opinion that one Evil act does not make a person Evil, however. It takes dedication and consistent behavior patterns to necessitate an alignment shift.

This opens up a serious question: Is Evil a trait, or a pattern?

And that question opens up another: How do you determine whether a trait is present, without looking for the patterns it causes? How do you explain how a behavioral pattern occurs, without citing the trait that causes it? Which came first, the Evil nature, or the Evil deed? Are we asking an unanswerable question, akin to, "which comes first, the word, or the thought behind the word?"

[Crake]

while balanced neutrals do good and evil things in roughly equal amounts.

Doing an equal number of good and evil acts still nets you into evil, because evil weighs more heavily than good. Save an orphanage but murder a prostitute, you're still a murderer.

[Duke of Urrel]

I agree with others who say that context matters. This kind of cruel mutilation is Evil and usually perpetrated only by Evil creatures, but it's not beyond a morally Neutral person who has strong reasons. A Lawful Neutral person may do it if the Law requires it to punish a vile lawbreaker. A Chaotic Neutral creature may do it for personal revenge or to punish a tyrant. Any morally Neutral person might cut out the tongue of an Evil liar or enchanter like Saruman or his minion, Grima Wormtongue.

[magic9mushroom]

Doing an equal number of good and evil acts still nets you into evil, because evil weighs more heavily than good. Save an orphanage but murder a prostitute, you're still a murderer.

Not if the prostitute is a succubus!

More seriously, it depends on the magnitude of the good and evil acts. Stealing forty cakes, for instance, is not enough to outweigh the "saving the orphanage" thing you mention, even though it is an evil act (assuming you're just going to eat them all yourself).

[Crake]

Not if the prostitute is a succubus!

More seriously, it depends on the magnitude of the good and evil acts. Stealing forty cakes, for instance, is not enough to outweigh the "saving the orphanage" thing you mention, even though it is an evil act (assuming you're just going to eat them all yourself).

I was rating by magnitude. Saving 2 people's lives but murdering 1 doesn't make you neutral. Stealing is also arguably chaotic rather than evil, depending on the circumstance.

[magic9mushroom]

I was rating by magnitude. Saving 2 people's lives but murdering 1 doesn't make you neutral. Stealing is also arguably chaotic rather than evil, depending on the circumstance.


THEFT
Any child can tell you that stealing is wrong. Villains, however,
often see theft as the best way to acquire what they
want. Evil people pay only for things they cannot take.

:V

As far as my personal opinion goes, I agree that it does depend on the circumstance, but stealing forty cakes from a baker when you don't actually need them because you want to eat lots of cakes is still probably Evil even if the baker is reasonably well-off and won't starve from lack of money.

[Crake]

:V

As far as my personal opinion goes, I agree that it does depend on the circumstance, but stealing forty cakes from a baker when you don't actually need them because you want to eat lots of cakes is still probably Evil even if the baker is reasonably well-off and won't starve from lack of money.

True, but if the baker has insurance, and gets compensated for the lost product, and all you're really doing is dogging a big corporation, and causing a bunch of hassle, then it's more chaotic. Likewise, a child stealing an apple to be able to actually live to the next day also probably isn't evil.

[Keltest]

Frankly, while "cosmic balance" neutrality does exist, it mostly doesn't apply to the day to day actions of a random person. There simply aren't enough burning orphanages for them to even try to balance out any major act of evil like maiming somebody, so the end result ends up looking very much like the "middle of the road" neutrals.

[ezekielraiden]

I agree with others who say that context matters. This kind of cruel mutilation is Evil and usually perpetrated only by Evil creatures, but it's not beyond a morally Neutral person who has strong reasons. A Lawful Neutral person may do it if the Law requires it to punish a vile lawbreaker. A Chaotic Neutral creature may do it for personal revenge or to punish a tyrant. Any morally Neutral person might cut out the tongue of an Evil liar or enchanter like Saruman or his minion, Grima Wormtongue.

But, again, context matters: Saruman's a powerful wizard whose words can literally kill people, Grima was literally an invading agent trying to slowly kill a king so his real master could take over. In the example, no law was broken, and even if it were, cutting out a tongue is a pretty severe response.

The prompting context was: someone saying some really nasty things at a funeral of a beloved friend. That's surely a **** move, but is it an act that warrants (barring magical intervention) permanently maiming someone? That seems a bit like, say, cutting off someone's hand because they wrote a nasty, unfair, factually incorrect obituary. It's needlessly and pretty gruesomely violent. Actually cutting the tongue, a very strong muscle, is not easy. (Cooking tongue is hard because it is quite a tough muscle.)

Is it definitely always inherently evil to cut out a tongue? No, I wouldn't say so. Is it probably excessive to cut out a tongue in all but, frankly, pretty contrived-sounding circumstances? Yeah, that's a sentiment I generally agree with.

A capital-G Good person should innately be concerned about disproportionate response. A Neutral person shouldn't necessarily have that kind of restraint, but genuinely extreme acts should, at the very least, require some meaningful prompting. I don't think "bad-mouthing my dead friend" is the kind of meaningful prompting appropriate here. Cutting out a tongue requires a helpless target, determination, even cold-bloodedness. It might not make the tongue-cutter Evil, but as I said before, it's so perilously close to doing so that the player should be aware of what they're risking.

(I should also note: I don't run games for Evil characters. Ever. I'm not interested in that kind of story. So if you want your PC to fall? That's fine, that can make for an interesting thing. But if you do that in one of my games, you're signalling to me that you want to play a different character, because I'm not going to allow you to play an Evil character long-term. If you want it to be a temporary thing, something to be recovered from...maybe. But if you're expecting "yeah, this character's gonna be evil for the foreseeable future," you and I will need to work out who your new character will be, 'cause you won't be playing the newly-Evil one anymore. And yes, every time I've run a game I've made it very, very clear that I don't run games for Evil PCs. I can say this with certainty because I've only run two campaigns, both in the same homebrew setting; the second game is closing in on its first year.)

[Pleh]

True, but if the baker has insurance, and gets compensated for the lost product, and all you're really doing is dogging a big corporation, and causing a bunch of hassle, then it's more chaotic. Likewise, a child stealing an apple to be able to actually live to the next day also probably isn't evil.

Insurance? Big corporations? Did you mean to say Guild or are you playing Shadowun?

[doctor doughnut]

It depends on how you define "brutality." You also have to remember that unprovoked harm is still evil precisely because it's disproportionate. You don't get to physically harm someone just because they insulted you; that reaction doesn't fit the original action. Insults don't cause physical harm but cutting someone's tongue out obviously does. That right there is why physically harming someone in reaction to them saying something is totally out of proportion. That sort of brutality can't be anything but an evil act. This moral imbalance is precisely what makes certain acts evil.

The thing is a D&D world is a LOT more brutal then 21st century Earth(well, in the Western First World anyway). Just compare getting attacked by some bandits. In 21st century west first word, you MUST try and run from something like a bandit. And if you must fight, you can only ever kill as a 'last never resort'. Really 'society' says you SHOULD let yourself be robbed and then just hope the bandits don't hurt you. Now in a D&D world should you encounter some bandits: you can freely kill them with deadly force.

So if you can freely kill with no problems, then wounding something is nothing.



And the way to determine that is to look at intent and proportionality. You can't justifiably hurt anyone just because they said something insulting (without it being an evil act). You can't justifiably kill someone just because they looked at you funny (because that's definitely an evil act). You can only justifiably kill someone if they are trying to murder you or someone else because those are the only circumstances involving killing that don't create a moral imbalance.

Good and Evil in D&D are not the Good and Evil in 21st century Western First World Earth. With your defination of justifibibe killing, how could you ever play a Good or Neutral Character in D&D?

[Crake]

Insurance? Big corporations? Did you mean to say Guild or are you playing Shadowun?

The example was lex luthor stealing 40 cupcakes :smalltongue:

[Pleh]

The example was lex luthor stealing 40 cupcakes :smalltongue:

Oh, so silliness was the objective. Carry on

[Ellrin]

The snippet in the OP is brief, but from what's there I didn't see any kind of societal or legal coercion or even mores at play. Even if the guy had been raised exclusively in a society like that, they weren't being overseen by any authorities, nor were there any witnesses save the adventuring party (again, from what I read.) So I would at a minimum look askance at "my culture expects this/made me do it" as defense/justification.

Perhaps not, but the part of the post you initially replied to concerned past cultures on Earth and was therefore not directly referencing the circumstances of the originally described situation. Again, I would question whether the context we were given in the original post is sufficient to decide the degree to which this is an evil act; while certainly we can agree there is some degree of evil intent in such an act, without further information about the wider world and extenuating circumstances, we're judging in a relative vacuum.

[Ashtagon]

The thing is a D&D world is a LOT more brutal then 21st century Earth(well, in the Western First World anyway). Just compare getting attacked by some bandits. In 21st century west first word, you MUST try and run from something like a bandit. And if you must fight, you can only ever kill as a 'last never resort'. Really 'society' says you SHOULD let yourself be robbed and then just hope the bandits don't hurt you. Now in a D&D world should you encounter some bandits: you can freely kill them with deadly force.

So if you can freely kill with no problems, then wounding something is nothing.


An important difference here is that the bandits would be very likely to kill and rob you rather than just rob you. As such, killing them is a proportionate response. In contrast, cutting out his tongue is excessive for what amounts to verbal harassment.

I would even argue that cutting out the tongue is perhaps more evil than killing, as it requires more effort (any situation in which you could control the other enough to cut out their tongue is one in which it would be far easier to simply kill).

[ATHATH]

It depends on how easy it is for them to get their tongue regenerated and/or acquire telepathy.

[NontheistCleric]

I would even argue that cutting out the tongue is perhaps more evil than killing, as it requires more effort (any situation in which you could control the other enough to cut out their tongue is one in which it would be far easier to simply kill).

I find it hard to understand this reasoning. The 'level' of evil isn't determined by the effort required to carry out any supposedly evil act.

At the end of the day, tongue-cutting only takes away a tongue, while killing takes away everything. In a vacuum, the latter is clearly more 'evil'.

[hamishspence]

It leaves one with a major handicap for the rest of one's life. So, it isn't just inflicting suffering at the moment of the act - it predictably leads to long-term suffering.

[Crake]

I find it hard to understand this reasoning. The 'level' of evil isn't determined by the effort required to carry out any supposedly evil act.

At the end of the day, tongue-cutting only takes away a tongue, while killing takes away everything. In a vacuum, the latter is clearly more 'evil'.

Going through more effort to maim someone implies a heavier malevolence behind the act, and if you take evil as both the intent and the act, then yes, requiring more effort (and thus a stronger malevolence) is more evil.

[Hackulator]

I find it hard to understand this reasoning. The 'level' of evil isn't determined by the effort required to carry out any supposedly evil act.

At the end of the day, tongue-cutting only takes away a tongue, while killing takes away everything. In a vacuum, the latter is clearly more 'evil'.

If you are cutting out someone's tongue, you pretty much have to have them in a situation where they are helpless. Killing a helpless creature would definitely be evil. Killing an enemy in battle is not the same thing. Also, motive matters, so there is a difference between cutting out someone's tongue because you are mad at them and killing someone because they deserve to be executed for their crimes.

[noob]

It depends on how easy it is for them to get their tongue regenerated and/or acquire telepathy.

You are one more person who was confused by the plot tool of cut tongues that prevents talking.
In real life cutting the tongue of someone makes talking harder but not impossible.
Telepathy is not needed unless you are using the plot tool that makes cutting tongues prevent talking which is an extremely dumb plot tool that is extremely unrealistic.

[Clistenes]

We need to know two things:

1.-What has that person done? Has he or she committed some heinous crime?

2.-Is cutting limbs, blinding, tongue removal...etc., an accepted punishment in their culture?

Let say that person has tried to frame an innocent person for murder, trying to get her or him executed, and that the punishment for said crime (maliciously giving false testimony during a trial) is tongue removal... Under said circumstances, I would say the character who wants to do it is pretty much neutral.

It's not nice, but they probably think it is the right thing to do...

[hamishspence]

You are one more person who was confused by the plot tool of cut tongues that prevents talking.
In real life cutting the tongue of someone makes talking harder but not impossible.

It doesn't need to be impossible - it just needs to be very difficult, for it to be a handicap.

[ezekielraiden]

I find it hard to understand this reasoning. The 'level' of evil isn't determined by the effort required to carry out any supposedly evil act.

At the end of the day, tongue-cutting only takes away a tongue, while killing takes away everything. In a vacuum, the latter is clearly more 'evil'.

It's just an application of the same logic as applies to the "self-defense" defense in law: you are only in the clear if you used violence not in excess of what was needed to stop the threat.

Consider: someone has a knife, and you have a gun. Of course, they can still be a dangerous threat to you or others, so it may be warranted to use violence (even lethal violence) to prevent that threat from happening. However, if someone threatens you with a knife from across a parking lot, where you and the knife-wielder are the only people present, and you shoot them dead, you have pretty clearly used violence far in excess of what was necessary to avoid harm to yourself. Usually, we give the person claiming self-defense some leniency for timing, uncertainty, etc. So if you're in your own home at 2 am and someone has broken in and *appears* to have a knife, accidentally killing them by shooting them in the leg and hitting the femoral artery is usually not going to be judged as wrongdoing, even if we might still consider such an action a little excessive. The usual term used here is "disproportionate": the violence used musr be proportionate to the threat

To truly cut *out* a tongue--to remove it at the root, so no meaningful amount of the tongue muscle remains inside the mouth--you have to already have an incapacitated or bound opponent, and you have to specifically injure that target in a pretty gruesome and difficult manner. Surely, if your opponent has "only" done verbal violence to you, it is disproportionate to first sufficiently attack them that you have them incapacitated and at your mercy, then perform a painful, permanent injury that requires deliberate effort. You can't "accidentally" cut out someone's tongue. You can't say it wasn't premeditated. This isn't an act of passion. It's very concretely acting in order to cause another being severe pain and permanent harm. That's a hell of a lot more than just lashing out at someone who hurt you by insulting your dead friend.

[Aldrakan]

Well, exactly. "Get hit". Not "Get your tongue cut out of your face."

I don't think it's necessarily evil to react to verbal injury with physical assault, but the type and severity of the assault is revelatory as far as the character's alignment goes. The more grossly out of proportion, and the more elaborate and cold-blooded the thinking behind it, the more evil it is. Only an evil (or as you say, unhinged) person would jump to cutting tongues. A neutral person with a dark side might do it, but would generally feel remorse over it once the fog in their head clears.

You do something like this without significant remorse, you're definitely evil.

Yeah this seems like one of those instances where it's not exactly that doing it makes you evil, but that this is your first response reveals you have probably been a sadistic evil bastard the whole time and this is just the first occasion it's really shown itself.

[NontheistCleric]

It leaves one with a major handicap for the rest of one's life. So, it isn't just inflicting suffering at the moment of the act - it predictably leads to long-term suffering.

At least, though, the tongueless person still has a life to live. The dead person gets their life from that point onwards taken away wholesale. Most people, I'm sure, would rather go without the tongue than their lives. After all, if they later find tongueless life to be unbearable, they can commit suicide, so at least they would a the choice the dead person doesn't.

Not that I'm saying it's not evil to cut off a tongue, but as evil as it may be, killing someone is still even more so.


Going through more effort to maim someone implies a heavier malevolence behind the act, and if you take evil as both the intent and the act, then yes, requiring more effort (and thus a stronger malevolence) is more evil.

Except that even if we were to use the intent+act metric, as an act, killing could very convincingly be argued to be of a far greater magnitude, so on balance, it would still be more evil than tongue-cutting.


If you are cutting out someone's tongue, you pretty much have to have them in a situation where they are helpless. Killing a helpless creature would definitely be evil. Killing an enemy in battle is not the same thing. Also, motive matters, so there is a difference between cutting out someone's tongue because you are mad at them and killing someone because they deserve to be executed for their crimes.

To truly cut *out* a tongue--to remove it at the root, so no meaningful amount of the tongue muscle remains inside the mouth--you have to already have an incapacitated or bound opponent, and you have to specifically injure that target in a pretty gruesome and difficult manner. Surely, if your opponent has "only" done verbal violence to you, it is disproportionate to first sufficiently attack them that you have them incapacitated and at your mercy, then perform a painful, permanent injury that requires deliberate effort. You can't "accidentally" cut out someone's tongue. You can't say it wasn't premeditated. This isn't an act of passion. It's very concretely acting in order to cause another being severe pain and permanent harm. That's a hell of a lot more than just lashing out at someone who hurt you by insulting your dead friend.

Okay, I don't disagree that if done accidentally, in battle or in self-defense, killing is probably less evil than cutting someone's tongue out. However, I was considering the two in a vacuum, as the part of the post I responded to was talking about the acts in themselves, not in any particular context.

I'd also say that even if done in a moment of passion, lashing out at someone who insulted your dead friend, if done with lethal force, is still worse than cutting out their tongue in a similar fit of rage. Lethal force entails intent to kill, which is, if 'my dead friend was insulted' is the justification, is still worse than intent to cut out tongue.

[ezekielraiden]

At least, though, the tongueless person still has a life to live. The dead person gets their life from that point onwards taken away wholesale. Most people, I'm sure, would rather go without the tongue than their lives. After all, if they later find tongueless life to be unbearable, they can commit suicide, so at least they would a the choice the dead person doesn't.

Not that I'm saying it's not evil to cut off a tongue, but as evil as it may be, killing someone is still even more so.



Except that even if we were to use the intent+act metric, as an act, killing could very convincingly be argued to be of a far greater magnitude, so on balance, it would still be more evil than tongue-cutting.




Okay, I don't disagree that if done accidentally, in battle or in self-defense, killing is probably less evil than cutting someone's tongue out. However, I was considering the two in a vacuum, as the part of the post I responded to was talking about the acts in themselves, not in any particular context.

I'd also say that even if done in a moment of passion, lashing out at someone who insulted your dead friend, if done with lethal force, is still worse than cutting out their tongue in a similar fit of rage. Lethal force entails intent to kill, which is, if 'my dead friend was insulted' is the justification, is still worse than intent to cut out tongue.

If your focus is very specifically on "it's more evil" rather than "it's not much less evil," then it's probably a moral judgment you just don't agree with. But it is not inconsistent to believe that forcing a person to live only a shadow of a life is worse than just ending their suffering immediately. That's pretty much the justification for euthanasia: that allowing prolonged suffering is more morally wrong than killing to prevent suffering. Of course, the specific reason is different, and you may quite easily hold that tongue removal isn't sufficient suffering to justify such an act. But, if you believe euthanasia is justified in even one case, you've made your position very difficult (as opposed to very easy) by now needing to argue where the severity line lies, rather than that there is no severity line at all.

A similar argument may be made about life imprisonment as opposed to death penalties. That it is more merciful in those rare circumstances where appeal is truly impossible (where guilt is so well-established that it is taken as irrefutable fact, say during the Nuremberg trials where it was quite well known who the defendants were and what they had done) to grant the short, swift, and hopefully minimal suffering of a death sentence than to lock someone alone in a box for forty or fifty years. (For a fictional parallel, consider Grindelwald in Harry Potter, who was at least as old as Dumbledore but had spent some 40 years in solitary confinement; some might argue that killing him is more merciful than giving him a "life" trapped alone in a box.)

As for the intent thing, again the issue seems to be where one draws the line. Are you comfortable saying that there is no deed you could commit against another person that would be worse than simply killing them? Nothing that could ever, even in principle, be the cause of such suffering that killing definitely couldn't be even a little less evil? If so, your morals are quite different from mine. I can quite easily think of acts (say, slowly flaying the person, then introducing a poison like dendrocnide excelsus that causes enduring, year-long crippling pain) where I *would* rather die than be subject to them, and thus I have to consider them less merciful than killing. And if, like me, you are not comfortable saying that there cannot be actions you would not consider worse than killing, then you open the door to the same "where do we draw the line" argument. Which isn't insoluble, I should note. It's just much, much harder than when you exclude (or include) everything.

More simply: it's all well and good to say that life is irreplaceable and therefore evil to take, but even many who feel that way believe there can be greater evil in merely permitting a continual state of suffering; if you do hold such a view, then surely causing such a state of continual suffering must be worse still. This then embarks you, if you want to definitively say that it's always more evil to kill than to merely injure, to draw a line (for when killing is mercy and not wickedness) and justify why that line is the right one. It seems that your argument is about the very conceiveability of the other side's position, but it's not much different from a quite common and (at least allegedly) morally-grounded belief about suffering.

[Hackulator]

At least, though, the tongueless person still has a life to live. The dead person gets their life from that point onwards taken away wholesale. Most people, I'm sure, would rather go without the tongue than their lives. After all, if they later find tongueless life to be unbearable, they can commit suicide, so at least they would a the choice the dead person doesn't.

Not that I'm saying it's not evil to cut off a tongue, but as evil as it may be, killing someone is still even more so.



Except that even if we were to use the intent+act metric, as an act, killing could very convincingly be argued to be of a far greater magnitude, so on balance, it would still be more evil than tongue-cutting.




Okay, I don't disagree that if done accidentally, in battle or in self-defense, killing is probably less evil than cutting someone's tongue out. However, I was considering the two in a vacuum, as the part of the post I responded to was talking about the acts in themselves, not in any particular context.

I'd also say that even if done in a moment of passion, lashing out at someone who insulted your dead friend, if done with lethal force, is still worse than cutting out their tongue in a similar fit of rage. Lethal force entails intent to kill, which is, if 'my dead friend was insulted' is the justification, is still worse than intent to cut out tongue.

I don't necessarily think something is less evil just because its less damaging. If your motivation was for them to suffer, the fact that you didn't kill them doesn't make your act meaningfully less evil.

Also, why, according to some other posters, does evil "weigh more heavily" than good? Why if, for example, I spend my time doing good but have psychopathic urges which I eventually give in to resulting in occasional murders am I more evil than good if my good acts have clearly outweighed my evil? Motive of course matters, if my intentions for doing to good are questionable that might change things, but why are you clearly evil if you save 100 people but murder 1?

[ezekielraiden]

Also, why, according to some other posters, does evil "weigh more heavily" than good? Why if, for example, I spend my time doing good but have psychopathic urges which I eventually give in to resulting in occasional murders am I more evil than good if my good acts have clearly outweighed my evil? Motive of course matters, if my intentions for doing to good are questionable that might change things, but why are you clearly evil if you save 100 people but murder 1?

If Alice is the treasurer, and was completely honest about her bookkeeping for 10 years, helping the government save 20% of its revenues every year, and then embezzled just 1% of the national revenues in her 11th year, is she a trustworthy treasurer?

If King Greg rules justly and fairly for 10 years, then in the 11th year of his reign executes 12 dissidents solely for questioning his rule (they committed no act that was morally or legally impermissible), is he a just and fair king?

If Scientist Sally publishes 500 papers over 50 years, and only the first 5 of them are outright lies (e.g. she completely falsified all the data and knew she was doing so) while the rest are sound, high-quality science, does she have scientific integrity?

If Fernando the firefighter saves 1000 people from fires every year, but also murders 1 person each year, is he a hero, or a horror?

For me, the answers are no, no, maybe, and horror. No amount of prior good justifies, excuses, or ameliorates future evil. Ever. In other words, "if my good acts have clearly outweighed my evil" is an impossibility--that fundamentally misunderstands how good and evil work, because they aren't a weighed scale, they're the establishment of a pattern of good, or the breaking of a pattern of good.

The reason I say "maybe" for Scientist Sally is that I believe it is possible to earn forgiveness for (some) past misdeeds, and thus establish a new pattern afterward. Say she told the lies to earn a job or impress an advisor. She can't take that back. But she can make amends, and turn over a new leaf, and build a better, newer self on the foundation of repentence. Some may never forgive her, and thus always view her work as tainted. But I think a lifetime of commitment to dependence deserves recognition.

[Grek]

My take: no, not evil. Because cutting his tongue out is less bad than outright murdering him, and you wouldn't even be having this conversation if it were just a single killing.

[Zanos]

Mutilating a person because they were rude to a dead person is Evil, full stop. Is one Evil act enough to shift you to Evil? Maybe. It's the DMs call, but honestly if the character hasn't shown much compassion or altruism and is establishing with their actions that they consider holding someone down and cutting out their tongue an acceptable response to something that offended them, they better not get near any Holy Words.


My take: no, not evil. Because cutting his tongue out is less bad than outright murdering him, and you wouldn't even be having this conversation if it were just a single killing.
Killing someone for badmouthing a dead guy is murder, and definitely Evil, so yeah we would.

There's also an argument that maiming is more Evil than murder; you can certainly kill someone in the heat of the moment, which is still Evil, but less so. Deliberate mutilation is a calculated punishment for a slight.

[ezekielraiden]

My take: no, not evil. Because cutting his tongue out is less bad than outright murdering him, and you wouldn't even be having this conversation if it were just a single killing.

I'm not sure I understand what you're going for here. This seems to imply that we would not call it evil to kill someone for insulting a dead friend's memory at the funeral. But...I would call such a killing pretty Evil. Any Good character who did that would drop to at least Neutral on the spot. A Neutral character would either likewise drop to Evil (if they'd already been pretty wicked to begin with) or be perilously close (if they'd been pretty decent up to this point), because murder of any kind is a serious evil. Even just killing is Very Bad, and Good people do so only under rather terrible circumstances (while genuinely trying to avoid it when it's possible to do so--which means consistently trying to learn if it's possible).

[zlefin]

Mutilating a person because they were rude to a dead person is Evil, full stop. Is one Evil act enough to shift you to Evil? Maybe. It's the DMs call, but honestly if the character hasn't shown much compassion or altruism and is establishing with their actions that they consider holding someone down and cutting out their tongue an acceptable response to something that offended them, they better not get near any Holy Words.


Killing someone for badmouthing a dead guy is murder, and definitely Evil, so yeah we would.

There's also an argument that maiming is more Evil than murder; you can certainly kill someone in the heat of the moment, which is still Evil, but less so. Deliberate mutilation is a calculated punishment for a slight.

pedantry power! :
there's a few setting where it might not be murder, depending on other circumstance. those settings are pretty evil though.

also, mutilation can still be in the heat of the moment, it may not take THAT long to do.

[Hackulator]

If Alice is the treasurer, and was completely honest about her bookkeeping for 10 years, helping the government save 20% of its revenues every year, and then embezzled just 1% of the national revenues in her 11th year, is she a trustworthy treasurer?

If King Greg rules justly and fairly for 10 years, then in the 11th year of his reign executes 12 dissidents solely for questioning his rule (they committed no act that was morally or legally impermissible), is he a just and fair king?

If Scientist Sally publishes 500 papers over 50 years, and only the first 5 of them are outright lies (e.g. she completely falsified all the data and knew she was doing so) while the rest are sound, high-quality science, does she have scientific integrity?

If Fernando the firefighter saves 1000 people from fires every year, but also murders 1 person each year, is he a hero, or a horror?

For me, the answers are no, no, maybe, and horror. No amount of prior good justifies, excuses, or ameliorates future evil. Ever. In other words, "if my good acts have clearly outweighed my evil" is an impossibility--that fundamentally misunderstands how good and evil work, because they aren't a weighed scale, they're the establishment of a pattern of good, or the breaking of a pattern of good.

The reason I say "maybe" for Scientist Sally is that I believe it is possible to earn forgiveness for (some) past misdeeds, and thus establish a new pattern afterward. Say she told the lies to earn a job or impress an advisor. She can't take that back. But she can make amends, and turn over a new leaf, and build a better, newer self on the foundation of repentence. Some may never forgive her, and thus always view her work as tainted. But I think a lifetime of commitment to dependence deserves recognition.

Mostly, Mostly, Mostly, and both.

The world is a better place for the work of all of them except possibly Sally, because of the varying impact a scientific paper can have depending on the subject and whether it's widely accepted. Alice is of course the clearest in terms of morality (though to be clear, your questions at the end were not good vs evil) as monetary amounts are pretty simple to weigh, and the way its worded implies the money wouldn't have been saved otherwise. If she makes the government a trillion dollars at then takes 0.5% of that amount for herself, she still did good she's just not perfect.

The other two are of course more complex, and judging their morality would require knowing their motivations.

People make mistakes, do the wrong thing, even do evil. You still have to look at the whole of their existence to judge them.

[Grek]

I'm not sure I understand what you're going for here. This seems to imply that we would not call it evil to kill someone for insulting a dead friend's memory at the funeral. But...I would call such a killing pretty Evil. Any Good character who did that would drop to at least Neutral on the spot. A Neutral character would either likewise drop to Evil (if they'd already been pretty wicked to begin with) or be perilously close (if they'd been pretty decent up to this point), because murder of any kind is a serious evil. Even just killing is Very Bad, and Good people do so only under rather terrible circumstances (while genuinely trying to avoid it when it's possible to do so--which means consistently trying to learn if it's possible).

My implication is that very few people make a real fuss about killing sentient creatures in D&D. It is a rare table that bats an eye at the paladin and his three friends kicking in the door a dungeon, killing a dozen bandits, looting the vault and leaving. An insistence on capturing the bandits alive so that they can be taken in and judged before the magistrate is considered supererogatory at best and pointless scrupulosity at worst - most tables wouldn't even consider the question of whether or not it is 'right' to kill the bandits. They're bandits, you can kill them. And yet in terms of harm done, that's at least a dozen times worse than cutting out a single tongue. Sure, maiming someone isn't friendly, and it should rightfully make people doubt their safety around you... but on the scale of things that adventurers get up to every day, it hardly registers on the moral scale.

[ezekielraiden]

My implication is that very few people make a real fuss about killing sentient creatures in D&D. It is a rare table that bats an eye at the paladin and his three friends kicking in the door a dungeon, killing a dozen bandits, looting the vault and leaving. An insistence on capturing the bandits alive so that they can be taken in and judged before the magistrate is considered supererogatory at best and pointless scrupulosity at worst - most tables wouldn't even consider the question of whether or not it is 'right' to kill the bandits. They're bandits, you can kill them. And yet in terms of harm done, that's at least a dozen times worse than cutting out a single tongue. Sure, maiming someone isn't friendly, and it should rightfully make people doubt their safety around you... but on the scale of things that adventurers get up to every day, it hardly registers on the moral scale.

I can assure you, I have never played a Paladin this way and would be extremely annoyed if fellow players did so. I have, in fact, had a character do penance for killing slaver goblins that he tried to reason with but which attacked him moments after he suggested they try *not* keeping slaves (or, rather, when he suggested they should not keep the slaves they currently held). All life is sacred, to harm anyone is a terrible thing, but there are times where one must choose between allowing great harm or causing lesser, albeit still meaningful, harm. For the Paladin, that choice is obvious, otherwise their years of martial training would be rather wasted, but killing should always be a regrettable, last-ditch effort, never standard practice. Even for the deeply wicked, unless and until they have shown an actual refusal to repent or change.

[ezekielraiden]

Mostly, Mostly, Mostly, and both.

The world is a better place for the work of all of them except possibly Sally, because of the varying impact a scientific paper can have depending on the subject and whether it's widely accepted. Alice is of course the clearest in terms of morality (though to be clear, your questions at the end were not good vs evil) as monetary amounts are pretty simple to weigh, and the way its worded implies the money wouldn't have been saved otherwise. If she makes the government a trillion dollars at then takes 0.5% of that amount for herself, she still did good she's just not perfect.

The other two are of course more complex, and judging their morality would require knowing their motivations.

People make mistakes, do the wrong thing, even do evil. You still have to look at the whole of their existence to judge them.

You avoided the specific questions, though. You answered whether the people were effective. Not trustworthy, just, or having integrity. And, well, let's just say I don't believe someone can be both a hero and a horror. You either don't steal, or you do. You either tell the truth, or you don't. You either act with justice, or you don't. Hardcore consequentialism is a recipe for hardcore tyranny and evil.

If a person has told lies, they are a liar, that is what the word means. If a person has stolen, they are a thief. If a person has murdered, they are a murderer. It takes a he'll of a lot more than just "I did better most of the time!" to be a good person. Goodness, as I explicitly said, is a pattern, and evil is the breaking of that pattern--even just once. To frame this differently: would you accept as a defense of embezzlement, "but I made way more for the company than I ever stole from the retiree's fund!"?

Or perhaps a different idea: Does this mean that murdering 50% minus one of all living humans, in order to give the remaining 50% plus one idyllic, eternal life, would be a morally neutral act to you? It results in mathematically more good than harm: finite deaths versus infinite happiness. If so, well, let's just say I'm very glad you aren't likely to be elected UN Secretary-General anytime soon. That brand of utilitarianism leads to the worst kinds of oppression: the oppression that genuinely believes it is the best thing for its victims.

[Grek]

I can assure you, I have never played a Paladin this way and would be extremely annoyed if fellow players did so. I have, in fact, had a character do penance for killing slaver goblins that he tried to reason with but which attacked him moments after he suggested they try *not* keeping slaves (or, rather, when he suggested they should not keep the slaves they currently held). All life is sacred, to harm anyone is a terrible thing, but there are times where one must choose between allowing great harm or causing lesser, albeit still meaningful, harm. For the Paladin, that choice is obvious, otherwise their years of martial training would be rather wasted, but killing should always be a regrettable, last-ditch effort, never standard practice. Even for the deeply wicked, unless and until they have shown an actual refusal to repent or change.

Well. Your table is unusual in that regard, then - most groups don't play it like that.

[Silfir]

My implication is that very few people make a real fuss about killing sentient creatures in D&D. It is a rare table that bats an eye at the paladin and his three friends kicking in the door a dungeon, killing a dozen bandits, looting the vault and leaving. An insistence on capturing the bandits alive so that they can be taken in and judged before the magistrate is considered supererogatory at best and pointless scrupulosity at worst - most tables wouldn't even consider the question of whether or not it is 'right' to kill the bandits. They're bandits, you can kill them. And yet in terms of harm done, that's at least a dozen times worse than cutting out a single tongue. Sure, maiming someone isn't friendly, and it should rightfully make people doubt their safety around you... but on the scale of things that adventurers get up to every day, it hardly registers on the moral scale.

Killing is not inherently evil. You've puzzlingly chosen an example of when killing is justified and moral - bandits are a blight on civilized society, and are often encountered far outside of where civilized law enforcement can handle them. Exterminating them is often the only practical path to neutralizing the harm they do to the weak and innocent, and so not just acceptable, but imperative to a paladin.

The question of whether it is "right" to kill the bandits is rarely considered because the answer is obvious. Even if you did undertake the wildly impractical task of dragging them before a magistrate, they'd usually just execute them for being bandits anyway. To make it anything but obvious, you have to introduce additional snags into the scenario, i.e. some of the lower-rank bandits surrender claiming to have only stayed with the band because they were afraid to leave, or the band is known to be the region's equivalent to Robin Hood's merry men.

There's nothing evil or harmful about exterminating honest-to-god bandits.

Not that "Look at all the other evil stuff adventurers do on the regular" is a particularly convincing argument even if the example chosen was a valid one.

[icefractal]

IME, while many D&D parties may cut a swath of bodies in their path, it's much more often "let's not think about it / it's a fight there's no choice" than it is "killing is A-Ok." In effect, the enemies may as well fall offscreen or turn red and fade away like it was a video game.

Killing people deliberately, with the camera fully focused on the action, is another matter. And at that point there usually is a higher standard applied. In that context, I think most groups I've been in wouldn't consider killing someone over an insult ok, even those who'd been carving their way through a dungeon the previous day.

[Hackulator]

You avoided the specific questions, though. You answered whether the people were effective. Not trustworthy, just, or having integrity. And, well, let's just say I don't believe someone can be both a hero and a horror. You either don't steal, or you do. You either tell the truth, or you don't. You either act with justice, or you don't. Hardcore consequentialism is a recipe for hardcore tyranny and evil.

If a person has told lies, they are a liar, that is what the word means. If a person has stolen, they are a thief. If a person has murdered, they are a murderer. It takes a he'll of a lot more than just "I did better most of the time!" to be a good person. Goodness, as I explicitly said, is a pattern, and evil is the breaking of that pattern--even just once. To frame this differently: would you accept as a defense of embezzlement, "but I made way more for the company than I ever stole from the retiree's fund!"?

Or perhaps a different idea: Does this mean that murdering 50% minus one of all living humans, in order to give the remaining 50% plus one idyllic, eternal life, would be a morally neutral act to you? It results in mathematically more good than harm: finite deaths versus infinite happiness. If so, well, let's just say I'm very glad you aren't likely to be elected UN Secretary-General anytime soon. That brand of utilitarianism leads to the worst kinds of oppression: the oppression that genuinely believes it is the best thing for its victims.

That's a very unrealistic view of the world. Anyone who has ever done anything wrong is a bad person? I highly doubt you live up to such standards and neither does almost anyone else. You sound like someone who has only ever read about the world in books as opposed to experiencing it. Everything is gray. You have to take everything into account and make the decisions that lead to the most good. Only in fiction is there some easy answer where nothing bad happens. Only cowards are afraid to make the hard choices when they are the best choices.

As to your hypothetical, clearly not. You cannot "mathematically" weigh "happiness" vs death. If you had asked "the whole world is going to die and the only way for you to save anyone is to kill half the people" then clearly, that would be a good act. However, that is only given the fact that I stated it was the only way to save them. You have a moral responsibility to search out the best possible solution, not to simply choose a solution and say "well the math works out so this was good to do".

[ezekielraiden]

That's a very unrealistic view of the world. Anyone who has ever done anything wrong is a bad person? I highly doubt you live up to such standards and neither does almost anyone else.

Sure. People err, a lot. And we consider that rather a lot more important, in practice, than whether someone's net effect has been positive. It doesn't matter if you've told the truth a thousand times in a row when it was important, if you then tell five lies when it was important. You have lost the pattern of truth-telling, and cannot be called "honest" anymore. It's not relevant that you didn't steal in the hundred prior cases when you could have stolen a lot of money, if you steal $1000 now. Now, I strongly believe in genuine forgiveness for genuine repentance, so I believe it is possible, with some evil acts, to overcome that stain and earn one's way back to good graces. But that is a hard road to walk. You have to endure scrutiny, and prove commitment and intent, which is very difficult, but possible. For other evils, usually irrevocable ones like treason or murder, there may never be forgiveness, not in mortal life.

But is it that unrealistic? What do we do when we learn that a government official has embezzled money, or used their position to coerce sexual favors from subordinates? We don't look at the long list of awards and good contributions and thus forgive them for this act. We call, loudly, for their resignations. If a sociopath invented the cure for cancer, but only by killing one in five of the 2000 test subjects they unethically experimented on, we would not hail them as a hero who saved countless lives. We would rightly call them a monster and condemn their horrific crimes against humanity, though we would probably (and I'd argue validly) use their discoveries to save future lives while condemning in the strongest possible terms the methods used. If a police officer is found to have falsified evidence to get a conviction, even once, and even if the suspect actually was guilty, we don't just look at their 20 years of excellent police work and say, "oh, they were mostly good, it's fine." No, we literally dig out ALL the cases they touched in any meaningful way, because their word is tainted: we can no longer trust ANY use of power that they exercised, because it could have been merely apparently good police work.

It seems to me much more realistic to use this pattern approach. Because that's how real people treat real errors. Errors matter more than preceding runs of consistent good, even long runs of good.


You sound like someone who has only ever read about the world in books as opposed to experiencing it.

This seems like a rather unnecessary ad hominem. Either my ideas are right or wrong; whether I learned them from literature or from experience is not causative of either. I have, however, studied the topic at the junior/senior level in college, if you feel I must present valid credentials before my arguments can be taken seriously. (Currently studying formal logic and modal logic, among other things.)


Everything is gray.

I disagree. Some acts are simply evil. Murder (not just killing), rape, torture, coercion by force of violence. Engaging in them cannot, even in principle, be compensated by doing enough good. If one person murders another for the pleasure of it, meaning unlawfully taking a life solely because the life-taker finds joy in watching another human die, there is no amount of good in this life that can counterbalance that evil. Ever. This person may at best end up a "complex" villain, but a villain they still are.


You have to take everything into account and make the decisions that lead to the most good.

So there is some number of murders and torturings that are justified by keeping everyone else happy and healthy? Or not? Either you can compensate, because everything is grey, or you can't, because some things are just evil.


Only in fiction is there some easy answer where nothing bad happens.

Whoever said walking this kind of road was easy? It's not, I assure you. The temptation is always there, and hiding where you least expect it.


Only cowards are afraid to make the hard choices when they are the best choices.

Ah, yes. "I did what I had to do." The refrain of many who did evil things. The end justifies the means, no? And when the end is "everyone's happiness," "everyone's safety," why, what isn't worth doing to secure that? So we trimmed some free speech here and killed some innocent bystanders there. We had to! It was the hard choice, but definitely absolutely necessary, the only way to achieve the best result, by the metric I chose to judge it with!


As to your hypothetical, clearly not. You cannot "mathematically" weigh "happiness" vs death.

But you can weigh "working as a firefighter" against it? Or what IS your utility function? You clearly have some way of evaluating how much good an act produces. Evidently it's not the typical happiness or pleasure that most utilitarians use, noe that you've said that. So...what is it? How do you evaluate the good or bad of an action to determine if a person is "mostly" good or "somewhat bad" etc.?


If you had asked "the whole world is going to die and the only way for you to save anyone is to kill half the people" then clearly, that would be a good act. However, that is only given the fact that I stated it was the only way to save them. You have a moral responsibility to search out the best possible solution, not to simply choose a solution and say "well the math works out so this was good to do".

Try this on for size: what if the best possible course of action cannot ever, for any reason, include any amount of murder? A (genuine) pacifist would argue that. Consider Buddhism, or even moreso Jainism, where they carry brooms to sweep the path in front of them, so they won't even accidentally kill insects because they hold ALL (animal) life to be sacred and irreplaceable. Are they cowards for steadfastly holding their pacifism, even when threatened with violence by others? Am I a coward for saying, "no, I will not murder this woman, even if her survival has a high likelihood of triggering nuclear war"?

Also, note how you have recapitulated exactly what I said: the tyranny that genuinely believes it is the best thing for its victims. Because that's the critical danger, here: genuinely but wrongly believing that a "hard" act is the best one, despite the costs. But genuine effort to seek the best outcome is all-excusing, as you've framed it.

[Hackulator]

But is it that unrealistic? What do we do when we learn that a government official has embezzled money, or used their position to coerce sexual favors from subordinates? We don't look at the long list of awards and good contributions and thus forgive them for this act. We call, loudly, for their resignations. If a sociopath invented the cure for cancer, but only by killing one in five of the 2000 test subjects they unethically experimented on, we would not hail them as a hero who saved countless lives. We would rightly call them a monster and condemn their horrific crimes against humanity, though we would probably (and I'd argue validly) use their discoveries to save future lives while condemning in the strongest possible terms the methods used. If a police officer is found to have falsified evidence to get a conviction, even once, and even if the suspect actually was guilty, we don't just look at their 20 years of excellent police work and say, "oh, they were mostly good, it's fine." No, we literally dig out ALL the cases they touched in any meaningful way, because their word is tainted: we can no longer trust ANY use of power that they exercised, because it could have been merely apparently good police work.

It seems to me much more realistic to use this pattern approach. Because that's how real people treat real errors. Errors matter more than preceding runs of consistent good, even long runs of good.

As a society, we can't allow people to commit crimes and get away with them, because a legal system requires a level of absolutism to function in a way that is remotely fair. In a legal system, fairness is as important or even more important than being morally "correct". As human beings, we can judge a person as someone good who made a mistake. The reason people treat errors as more important than a consistent run of good is because they generally assume there are many more errors which they are not aware of when someone who was good is found to have done something evil, not because a single bad act always outweighs all the good someone has done.


This seems like a rather unnecessary ad hominem. Either my ideas are right or wrong; whether I learned them from literature or from experience is not causative of either. I have, however, studied the topic at the junior/senior level in college, if you feel I must present valid credentials before my arguments can be taken seriously. (Currently studying formal logic and modal logic, among other things.)

Moral philosophy out of a book is a nice thought experiment but generally woefully inadequate for the real world. Your positions seemed obviously to be out of a moral philosophy textbook.

You are correct my statement could be construed as a personal attack and for that I apologize.


I disagree. Some acts are simply evil. Murder (not just killing), rape, torture, coercion by force of violence. Engaging in them cannot, even in principle, be compensated by doing enough good. If one person murders another for the pleasure of it, meaning unlawfully taking a life solely because the life-taker finds joy in watching another human die, there is no amount of good in this life that can counterbalance that evil. Ever. This person may at best end up a "complex" villain, but a villain they still are.

So there is some number of murders and torturings that are justified by keeping everyone else happy and healthy? Or not? Either you can compensate, because everything is grey, or you can't, because some things are just evil.

In a vacuum with no context, some things are black and white evil. Nothing in the world exists in that vacuum.


Ah, yes. "I did what I had to do." The refrain of many who did evil things. The end justifies the means, no? And when the end is "everyone's happiness," "everyone's safety," why, what isn't worth doing to secure that? So we trimmed some free speech here and killed some innocent bystanders there. We had to! It was the hard choice, but definitely absolutely necessary, the only way to achieve the best result, by the metric I chose to judge it with!

I feel like you ignore some of my positions when they don't allow you to make boilerplate arguments against them. If you killed a bunch of people to get somewhere, you clearly didn't succeed at "everyone's happiness". As I have said many times, you have an obligation to try to find the least damaging method of accomplishing your goals. Sometimes however, you have to do things you'd rather not. In the end, other people will have to judge your choices.


But you can weigh "working as a firefighter" against it? Or what IS your utility function? You clearly have some way of evaluating how much good an act produces. Evidently it's not the typical happiness or pleasure that most utilitarians use, noe that you've said that. So...what is it? How do you evaluate the good or bad of an action to determine if a person is "mostly" good or "somewhat bad" etc.?

There's no math for this, no easy answer or equation you're going to be able to apply to answer these questions. Life is hard and messy and you make the decision you think is best and hope it works out.


Try this on for size: what if the best possible course of action cannot ever, for any reason, include any amount of murder? A (genuine) pacifist would argue that. Consider Buddhism, or even moreso Jainism, where they carry brooms to sweep the path in front of them, so they won't even accidentally kill insects because they hold ALL (animal) life to be sacred and irreplaceable. Are they cowards for steadfastly holding their pacifism, even when threatened with violence by others? Am I a coward for saying, "no, I will not murder this woman, even if her survival has a high likelihood of triggering nuclear war"?

Also, note how you have recapitulated exactly what I said: the tyranny that genuinely believes it is the best thing for its victims. Because that's the critical danger, here: genuinely but wrongly believing that a "hard" act is the best one, despite the costs. But genuine effort to seek the best outcome is all-excusing, as you've framed it.

I'm going to assume when you say murder you mean homicide, as homicide is the act of one person killing another, and murder is a legal term. Here are some hypothetical situations, tell me what you think.

There is a bomb in the building and I am trying to get someone to leave. The person does not believe me, tells me to eff off and he is going to call the cops if I don't leave him alone. I physically attack him to chase him out of the building. Did I do wrong?

I am a sniper with a terrorist in my sights. They are in the process of arming a bomb which will kill hundreds or even thousands of people, so I shoot them dead. Did I do wrong?

I am the commander of a nuclear submarine which has been damaged. The reactor is going to melt down and the only way to stop it is to send an engineer to fix it. To do so, he must enter a room which is flooded with radiation and he will die. I order him to his death. Did I do wrong?

Same submarine. There is nothing that will stop the reactor from exploding, likely killing people on many nearby ships. I dive the boat as deep as I can to get away from those others, killing everyone else on board. Did I do wrong?