Neutral/Evil alignment [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Vahnavoi

2024-02-12, 09:13 AM

It would help if you specified an edition, since alignment works differently in different version of D&D. I'll stick to first edition of AD&D for my part. Let's start with the really easy part:

But, was my decision justified?

If you are the dungeon master for your game, setting the boundaries for law, chaos, good and evil is your job. Your word is final for your game and campaign, it is the real resolution.

This said, there are some details of the written rules that you might want to take to consideration. Namely: individual acts aren't supposed to cause immediate alignment shift, unless they are blatant and extreme, and alignment shouldn't move from one extreme to another based on a single act. Exceptions exists for supernatural forces such as Helm of Opposite Alignment, but that's another thing entirely. To paraphrase an example from the books: a Lawful Evil character helping a slave revolution might justifiably move them to Neutral Evil or Lawful Neutral, depending on whether they are doing so out of self-interest (chaotic act) or sympathy for the enslaved (good act), but they should never move directly to Chaotic Good.

So, in line with those rules, a Good character should only drop to Neutral at most, and a Neutral should likely drop to Evil only after several incidents such as these. Remember, there is room to move within each alignment category: a person can be basically good in their neutrality, or basically evil. Especially when talking about starting character alignment, a character is presumed to have had their beliefs for a fairly long time, so adjustments should also happen over a long time and multiple actions.

Now to the individual cases. Case A:

- my party approached a ruined castle and upon the tower, there were 4 crows. Player A asked if they look "fishy" and he rolled Nature check, figuring that these crows look and act a bit too organised (crows were wereravens, observing the party approaching from distance). Player A decided to fire an arrow at each of the crows(single round, 4 attacks), almost killing each of them, crows fled.

No alignment in D&D is pacifist - or to put it another way, every alignment has some justifiable case for using lethal violence. Here, the question is: did the "fishy" behaviour by the crows pose or suggest any threat to life and happiness of the player characters?

If yes, then the act would be justifiable even for a Good character. For example, being in enemy territory, and thus reasonably suspecting these crows to be spies, would be an adequate justification. Since none of the crows died, it could be passed of as a warning shot. The trick, though, is that even if it's justifiable from an alignment standpoint, it's still an act of war. There is no reason for the wereravens to be happy about it.

If no, then it's unprovoked act of war. This can be argued to be an Evil act, the shooter is causing harm and suffering prematurely. However, it's not such a major Evil act that it should immediately cause an alignment shift.

On to Case B:

- party was in another location and establishment, party was suspicious about its inhabitants, has cast Divine sense and several of the staff pinged as fiends and undead under cover of Seeming spell. Party was informed by these fiends and undead that "a monster" has occupied local pool within an establishment and should be killed. Party approached the pool and player A, without checking what "the monster" is ("monster" was hiding in a murky pool) fired several volleys in the pool, killing a naiad, who was hiding in a pool.
Oopsie.

There are two things going on here. Let's contrast this scenario with a simpler one: a party is informed by villager that there is a monster in a pool. They kill it and find out it's something harmless, such as the naiad, or perhaps someone's pet dog. Here, in theory the player character has a good justification: a "monster" could reasonably threaten life and happiness of everyone in the village. The mistake is jumping the gun and not checking the facts of the situation, leading to avoidable harm and suffering. This can be argued to be an Evil act, but it's also a mistake, so should not lead to alignment change. An exception can be made if no regret is displayed: an honestly Good character would show remorse and seek atonement. The spell, Atonement, exists to cover these kind of scenarios, when an alignment change would threaten supernatural repercussions (namely Paladins, Clerics and Druids losing their standing).

In the more complex scenario, the player character already has a reason to suspect what the villager says. At this point, shooting first and asking later is not only jumping the gun, it is willfull negligence. The character not only lacks a good justification for violence, they would have a justification for delaying it. So, an evil act, and not capable of being atoned for. I maybe wouldn't drop a Neutral character to Evil just for this, but I would definitely move them in that direction.

Case C:

After the session we talked about it and we came to an example of modern day military troops clearing a settlement. In a settlement, there are armed oponents, but civillians too. The question was, should troops check the inside of the buildings, before tossing a bunch of hand grenades in them. As per view of player B, tossing grenades in each of the houses is a Neutral deed. Opponents are in the settlement, if grenades kill and maim a bunch of civillians, too bad, but not an evil act. Especially if checking buildings before tossing grenades, exposes military troops to potential harm.

I disagreed, but also added, military also has flash-bang grenades that do not kill, but stun. B disagreed, even as I emphasised that dealing subdual damage in 5e exists. B was persisting "what if you do not have flash bangs"? Anyway, you do.

Is such "shoot first without checking" an evil deed?

Thanks

In the modern day, and under modern terms, it is at all times forbidden to direct attacks against civilians; indeed, to attack civilians intentionally while aware of their civilian status is a war crime. It is thus an imperative duty for an attacker to identify and distinguish non-combatants from combatants in every situation.

This matters for 1st edition Alignment, because Lawful Good is defined in terms of natural rights utilitarianism: so at least one flavor of Good explicitly acknowledges human rights, or as the books say, in context of D&D, creature rights. Now, the context for D&D is still explicitly non-modern - again, no alignment is pacifist, every alignment has some justifiable case for using lethal violence. Even a Paladin can execute criminals and wage wars. Indiscriminate slaughter is still fairly straightforwardly not Good.

Now, the point brought up by player B is still relevant: what is justifiable depends on what is possible. For example: a Paladin might be justified in killing a bunch of baby monsters in the crib. Why? Because it's beyond their capability to take care of those monsters: they would starve and die anyway, suffering more in the interim. Similarly: a soldier who doesn't have non-lethal weaponry might be justified in using lethal weaponry, if said lethal weaponry is the only thing they have at hand that can stop further harm. So there are cases where a soldier chugging grenades into houses without checking could maintain neutrality - keeping in mind that Neutral is not Good and so is allowed more transgression - but it's still a long shot. The more options a character has, the less plausible this kind of justification becomes - at some point, the line of willfull negligence is crossed once again. Somebody generally waging war in this manner would definitely be Evil.

Jason

2024-02-12, 10:52 AM

- my party approached a ruined castle and upon the tower, there were 4 crows. Player A asked if they look "fishy" and he rolled Nature check, figuring that these crows look and act a bit too organised (crows were wereravens, observing the party approaching from distance). Player A decided to fire an arrow at each of the crows(single round, 4 attacks), almost killing each of them, crows fled.
The player didn't know they were "people" in the form of wereravens. They might have been familiars of evil wizards or enchanted evil birds or something similar. I would call this is a bit reckless, but not outright evil. Probably neutral.

If the players find out later that those were LG wereravens and that they seriously wounded people who meant them no harm, then the good-aligned party members should do their best to cure them and apologize.

- party was in another location and establishment, party was suspicious about its inhabitants, has cast Divine sense and several of the staff pinged as fiends and undead under cover of Seeming spell. Party was informed by these fiends and undead that "a monster" has occupied local pool within an establishment and should be killed. Party approached the pool and player A, without checking what "the monster" is ("monster" was hiding in a murky pool) fired several volleys in the pool, killing a naiad, who was hiding in a pool.
Oopsie.
If you know that they are fiends then you know they're up to no good. Actually carrying out the job they offer you (rather than just playing along to find out what they are up to and investigating what is actually in the pool before trying to kill it) is then an evil act.

Would it be enough to change the party's alignment? That depends on what alignment they started with and how close they've been playing to the edges of their alignments before they did this.

After the session we talked about it and we came to an example of modern day military troops clearing a settlement. In a settlement, there are armed oponents, but civillians too. The question was, should troops check the inside of the buildings, before tossing a bunch of hand grenades in them. As per view of player B, tossing grenades in each of the houses is a Neutral deed. Opponents are in the settlement, if grenades kill and maim a bunch of civillians, too bad, but not an evil act. Especially if checking buildings before tossing grenades, exposes military troops to potential harm.If you know the officers who gave you the orders to clear the buildings are Evil, as the players did in this case, then you had better check the buildings to see who is really in them before tossing grenades in.

Biggus

2024-02-12, 10:55 AM

The important thing to note is that the PCs *did* check the quest givers, and as it turns out they knew the quest givers were deceiving them by pretending to not be Fiends, and could also have been deceiving them on the rest.

So it's not that the PC didn't have any info and shot rather than wait to gather more, it's that the PC did have the info to know it was likely a malevolent scheme and still did it.

This is the key point as far as I can see, the players had every reason to suspect the information they were given wasn't true, and yet they murdered the target without checking anyway. At the very least they are guilty of gross negligence. I would definitely change a good player's alignment who did this.

As per view of player B, tossing grenades in each of the houses is a Neutral deed.

Wow, that is a terrible argument, bordering on psychopathic. I would genuinely be a bit worried about this person if I knew them. Knowingly killing civilians to avoid exposing yourself to the risk of harm is very much an evil act. By their logic, destroying the world if you can do so without risk to yourself isn't an evil act because doing so means you kill all the evil people, who cares that you've also killed all the good and neutral people as well? Good grief.

JusticeZero

2024-02-12, 11:53 AM

Unoriginal

2024-02-12, 12:42 PM

There's other interpretations of Evil.

Certainly, but since OP is playing 5e and hasn't indicated anything about using a different alignment system than the 5e one, we should use that one to reach a conclusion.

In consequence, the alignment of PC A is something that "broadly describes its moral and personal attitudes", and that's it.

Now, checking the alignments, we have:

Lawful good (LG) creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society.

Knowingly serving Fiends to kill a creature disqualify the possibility of this alignment.

Neutral good (NG) folk do the best they can to help others according to their needs.

Didn't happen here.

Chaotic good (CG) creatures act as their conscience directs, with little regard for what others expect.

One's conscience wouldn't tell them to trust Fiends without question or kill beings without checking.

Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes.

Unless a personal code was compelling PC A here, it doesn't apply.

Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don't take sides, doing what seems best at the time.

Killing a being for a known Fiend is taking a side. So can't be that.

Chaotic neutral (CN) creatures follow their whims, holding their personal freedom above all else.

Technically could qualify, with a big "but look at the other alignments first".

Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order.

It doesn't seem that PC A was being methodical or following the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty or order.

Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms.

Well, PC A certainly acted without compassion or qualms, and did whatever he could get away with.

Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust.

PC A certainly acted with violence, though how arbitrary it is could hypothetically be debated (since it was a targeted mission). Their act wasn't spurred by hatred, but greed or bloodlust could have been motivators.

So out of 9 alignments, PC A's action fits neutral evil or chaotic evil the best. Chaotic neutral might technically be on the table, but that'd require the PC to attack a living being and use lethal force on a whim without bloodlust, and without being motivated by the reward offered for the killing.

viking vince

2024-02-12, 12:44 PM

When I play with alignment, it means something. A creature or NPC does not get an Evil alignment because they are misunderstood. You EARN an evil alignment based on prior actions, and ridding the world of evil is defiantly a good action.

That said, it is also possibly an illegal action and extremely Chaotic. If I felt alignment change for the PC was justified, it likely would have went that way.

Unoriginal

2024-02-12, 12:53 PM

When I play with alignment, it means something. A creature or NPC does not get an Evil alignment because they are misunderstood. You EARN an evil alignment based on prior actions, and ridding the world of evil is defiantly a good action.

The PC in the OP didn't rid the world of any evil, though?

The whole group decided to help evil beings (who have earned their evil alignment based on prior actions), knowing who they were. And PC A decided to kill the creature in the pool without any information except "those fiends who lied to us about their identity told us it was a monster".

King of Nowhere

2024-02-12, 01:01 PM

to harm others because it is convenient for you is evil.
shooting first against targets that are not clearly hostile, just because they might possibly be hostile, definitely qualifies. shooting blindly without seeing what you're shooting, just because you have an inkling that you may hit a foe there, is evil. evil is always justified by practicality - unless we're talking the really over the top EVIL stuff. but if we confine to regular evil, or most Evil, or even some EVIL, it is benefical to the one doing it. that's why most people do evil.
by intentionally choosing to attack some random creatures nearby just because maybe they could be foes, he is displaying evil behavior.
and regardless of alignment, i'd feel perfectly justified in attacking him on sight: he has a proven record of killing stuff nearby on a whim just because it's slightly more expedite, so I am totally justified in feeling threatened by him, so I can shoot first.
this kind of madness is why self defence laws don't generally accept "i felt threatened" as a good justification to attack first. like, my campaign world had an evil nation that was great on social darwinism and had very liberal self-defence laws, which includes permission to kill a beggar asking you charity (he's trying to take your money), or killing someone who was walking on the public road without having paid the fees for it (he was stealing from all honest customers, including you), but even they would not accept those filmsy excuses. In fact, if that player stood trial in despotonia (the name of that country), the most likely outcome would be the judge or a member of the jury taking out a gun and executing him on the spot, claiming self-defence because that guy was too dangerous to allow to roam around. And THAT interpretation of self-defence would actually pass. the crowd would cheer.

now, in this fantasy world where a bird could act7ally be a shapeshifted druid trying to ambush you i can accept some leeway depending on circumstances, but the examples provided defnitely don't fit. and any spellcaster who regularly polymorphs into a bird may feel actively threatened by your player and feel justified in attacking him first to remove the threat. that... may or may not pass under despotonian law, depending mostly on how much one bribes the judge.

After the session we talked about it and we came to an example of modern day military troops clearing a settlement. In a settlement, there are armed oponents, but civillians too. The question was, should troops check the inside of the buildings, before tossing a bunch of hand grenades in them. As per view of player B, tossing grenades in each of the houses is a Neutral deed. Opponents are in the settlement, if grenades kill and maim a bunch of civillians, too bad, but not an evil act. Especially if checking buildings before tossing grenades, exposes military troops to potential harm.

I disagreed, but also added, military also has flash-bang grenades that do not kill, but stun. B disagreed, even as I emphasised that dealing subdual damage in 5e exists. B was persisting "what if you do not have flash bangs"? Anyway, you do.

ah, dangerous ground here. but my take (i would give the take of international laws, but that would be against forum rules; my judgment is not against rules, and it's close enough to those laws anyway):
A) hitting civilians on purpose is a big NO
B) hitting civilians because you suspect enemy soldiers are hiding among them is still a NO, but a smaller one - depending on how reasonable was your intelligence on the enemy being hiding there. In some cases it can be a genuine mistake.
C) hiding among civilians, refusing to evacuate those civilians, or otherwise using them indirectly or directly as human shields is a big NO and reverts the responsibility. if your enemies are shooting from a house and there are civilians in that house, you can fire freely, and whatever happens to the civilians is the enemy's fault
C2) Of course, if your enemies are trying to evacuate civilians and you are interfering with that, then the responsibility reverts back on you. there can be some grey cases here where the enemy is moving military convoys in the same roads as the evacuating civilians
D) if the civilians are given chance to safely evacuate but refuse it, then whatever harm they suffer is on them. they made their choice, they took responsibility
E) hitting military targets that contain civilians by necessity, like for example striking a weapon factory that will have civilian workers in it, is sad but OK. war is hell, we can try to make it slightly less hellish by avoiding bombing of population centers, but in the end we can't reasonably blame one side for hitting a weapons factory, and we can't reasonably blame the other side for having civilian workers in that factory.

Both cases you told us are clearly case B, and in both cases the reasons for suspecting were rather tenuous. this is clearly a case of "i don't care how much collateral damage I may deal, as long as it's slightly safer for me". which is, again, evil. accepting a murder quest from fiends without double-checking if what they told is true is just the icing on the cake.

Wow, that is a terrible argument, bordering on psychopathic. I would genuinely be a bit worried about this person if I knew them. Knowingly killing civilians to avoid exposing yourself to the risk of harm is very much an evil act. By their logic, destroying the world if you can do so without risk to yourself isn't an evil act because doing so means you kill all the evil people, who cares that you've also killed all the good and neutral people as well? Good grief.

yes, that too.

NichG

2024-02-12, 01:14 PM

I tend not to use alignment at all, but if I do use alignment then I always look at it from the point of view of in-setting beings (even if they're ineffable forces rather than specific deities) choosing how to relate to the characters on the basis of witnessing how those characters live their life.

So I shouldn't see moving someone towards evil as a way to punish something that I as DM consider a misbehavior. It shouldn't be about 'would I have preferred if you acted differently, from an out-of-character viewpoint?'. Instead, it should be e.g. 'when this cleric of Selune uses Detect Good on you, it returns false because she really likes non-evil lycanthropes and you attacked beings she liked out of the blue, and to her that matters more than your justifications; but you're still detecting as Good to clerics of Tyr. And you're shining particularly brightly to Helm's clerics for the next while because he liked how watchful and alert you were!'. Or, on killing the naiad, maybe even 'The Good deities aren't going to turn their backs on you just for that, but Bhaal really loved that and is sending a lot of Evil energies your way to reward your action. More like that! he says'

That also tends to sidestep some of the out of character 'are you calling me evil, because I thought this act was fine?!' kinds of reactions. "No, but given Selune's portfolio and interests, you've offended her." or "No, but the ineffable force that people label as Good only associates its energies with a strictly delineated category of being and behavior and, reasonable or justified or not, it considers that action outside of that category'. It's also helpful because it makes you look at the actions from the point of view of in-setting forces, rather than from your own perspective of 'do I find that action offensive according to my own moral compass?'

Unoriginal

2024-02-12, 01:21 PM

C) hiding among civilians, refusing to evacuate those civilians, or otherwise using them indirectly or directly as human shields is a big NO and reverts the responsibility. if your enemies are shooting from a house and there are civilians in that house, you can fire freely, and whatever happens to the civilians is the enemy's fault

A soldier who shoot a civilian who's being used as human shield is still held responsible/liable for shooting a civilian.

There's a reason why the enemies taking hostages can stall a military operation for a long time.

So I shouldn't see moving someone towards evil as a way to punish something that I as DM consider a misbehavior. It shouldn't be about 'would I have preferred if you acted differently, from an out-of-character viewpoint?'

I'm not sure about the rest of your post, but this part I agree with at 100%, and I think it is very important to underline it and explain it to the players if they don't get it.

A PC's alignment shifting toward evil isn't a punishment, nor is a PC's alignment shifting toward good a reward.

Alignments in 5e are descriptors for typical behavior, so a shift is just the description staying accurate to the shift in behavior or becoming more accurate.

JusticeZero

2024-02-12, 01:32 PM

I despise alignment arguments. People overthink it. It's a horrible system and people put too much philosophical weight on what, in D&D, is treated as a property of a material like density or mass or conductivity.

Also, to whoever sneered at me that they were discussing D&D... so was I.

Vahnavoi

2024-02-12, 03:20 PM

A PC's alignment shifting toward evil isn't a punishment, nor is a PC's alignment shifting toward good a reward.

As a commentary on this, in 1st edition AD&D, there are punishments for changing alignment, but these are situational, and can apply for shift into any direction (a Cleric of an Evil deity can get punished for becoming Good, a Druid can be punished for becoming anything other than True Neutral, etc.). The idea of alignment shift itself being a punishment stems from 2nd Edition AD&D, which codified the idea that playing Evil characters is special form of naughty and generally shouldn't be done, and subsequent player culture where Evil player characters became equated with bad play and often banned outright.

Outside of D&D, there's an entire genre of games where scoring enough Evil points removes a character from play. In such games, the alignment shift is a punishment, effectively the same as a penalty card system. The joke is that in such games, it's perfectly normal for a player to just eat an occasional penalty for tactical reasons. The same is true for version of D&D alignment where Evil alignment is penalized but doesn't stop a character from being played - a player can just happily accept the consequences of their actions and keep going.

King of Nowhere

2024-02-12, 03:32 PM

A soldier who shoot a civilian who's being used as human shield is still held responsible/liable for shooting a civilian.

There's a reason why the enemies taking hostages can stall a military operation for a long time.

I did specify the answers were according to my moral compass* and not international law, because discussing international law and similar real world arguments is forbidden in this forum.

* though that is less about morality and more about practicality: if somebody grabs a human shield and is rewarded for this behavior, we can expect more people to do the same. I'd rather discourage hostage taking instead

Witty Username

2024-02-12, 03:44 PM

How often does this come up?
How difficult do you want being good to be?

I feel neutral is pretty justifable, I personally am of the mind that preemptive aggression based on dubious sources is evil feeling but apart from that, this seems more like aggression while under threat, which just sorta is.

If you want good to be a bit challenging, yeah go with evil, after all anyone can respond to danger with aggression, it is harder to respond to danger without aggression. Otherwise, I would be more inclined if this represented a pattern of behavior.

Incident 2 comes off as an evil act, definitely, but it is up to you how much it is the path to the darkside.

Hm, be aware that I haven't had to think about this recently. I switched to player controlled alignment a bit ago, so it is more a play aid for them then a thing as DM I enforce.

Jason

2024-02-12, 03:51 PM

As a commentary on this, in 1st edition AD&D, there are punishments for changing alignment, but these are situational, and can apply for shift into any direction (a Cleric of an Evil deity can get punished for becoming Good, a Druid can be punished for becoming anything other than True Neutral, etc.).
The punishment in 1st edition was "lose a level". Unless you were a paladin, then the punishment was "lose a level and permanently lose paladin status."

The idea of alignment shift itself being a punishment stems from 2nd Edition AD&D, which codified the idea that playing Evil characters is special form of naughty and generally shouldn't be done, and subsequent player culture where Evil player characters became equated with bad play and often banned outright.Even in 1st edition the players were presumed to be generally on the side of good in all the published modules.

Outside of D&D, there's an entire genre of games where scoring enough Evil points removes a character from play. In such games, the alignment shift is a punishment, effectively the same as a penalty card system.D&D itself has this as the default rule for lycanthropes and undead.

I can think of several others off the top of my head: All the Star Wars RPGs, Call of Cthulhu and it's derivatives, The One Ring (either edition), and Legend of the Five Rings. They have options for playing evil characters, but the default rule is that if you get corrupted too far you're an NPC.

Vahnavoi

2024-02-12, 04:45 PM

The punishment in 1st edition was "lose a level". Unless you were a paladin, then the punishment was "lose a level and permanently lose paladin status."

Correct, I forgot that part.

Even in 1st edition the players were presumed to be generally on the side of good in all the published modules.

That's a separate issue. Base rules in 1st edition still allowed for Evil characters and even used them as examples, such as when explaining how alignment change works. Compare and contrast magic item rules: the base rules recommend careful rationing of them, but modules became infamous for having too many. It's an example of content drift, where supplemental material adds unevenly to the original. Though it's possible some of the modules were also affected by the same social pressures that lead to the changes in 2nd edition, serving as precursor to it.

King of Nowhere

2024-02-12, 05:24 PM

Anymage

2024-02-12, 06:08 PM

I feel neutral is pretty justifable, I personally am of the mind that preemptive aggression based on dubious sources is evil feeling but apart from that, this seems more like aggression while under threat, which just sorta is.

How good does your intel have to be before arbitrary aggression becomes justified preemptive aggression? Many fiends and undead can disguise themselves as normal people, but arbitrarily stabbing everybody you meet because they might be a disguised fiend is a pretty quick way to an evil alignment. (If you have reason to suspect fiendish activity but there are still a good number of innocent people around, stabbing on a hair trigger is a very tricky moral dilemma and still probably on the darker half of the alignment chart.)

I will grant that there can be a level of DMs priming players here. If every child who approaches the party winds up being a disguised fiend, pattern recognition can lead to them being justifiably skeptical of the 26th child who approaches them and take preemptive action. Hobo Knight has said a lot about his game and I don't remember hearing about seemingly innocuous creatures suddenly turning into dangerous ambushes, so even the act of attacking the ravens with intent to kill (as opposed to an act designed to drive them off without attempted killing) is at least evil tinged.

gbaji

2024-02-12, 08:39 PM

2 events:
- my party approached a ruined castle and upon the tower, there were 4 crows. Player A asked if they look "fishy" and he rolled Nature check, figuring that these crows look and act a bit too organised (crows were wereravens, observing the party approaching from distance). Player A decided to fire an arrow at each of the crows(single round, 4 attacks), almost killing each of them, crows fled

That's a bit of an odd reaction, but I don't see anything particularly alignment worthy going on. I'm assuming that shooting at normal crows is not an evil act, so shooting at something pretending to be a crow would not be either.

And, as a couple posters have already stated, how strange this reaction is depends on the setting. If the party is constantly encountering things that appear to be one thing, but are really something else (and a dangerous something else where if they don't take some kind of action they will be punished in some way), then it's not unreasonable at all for the player to do that.

- party was in another location and establishment, party was suspicious about its inhabitants, has cast Divine sense and several of the staff pinged as fiends and undead under cover of Seeming spell. Party was informed by these fiends and undead that "a monster" has occupied local pool within an establishment and should be killed. Party approached the pool and player A, without checking what "the monster" is ("monster" was hiding in a murky pool) fired several volleys in the pool, killing a naiad, who was hiding in a pool.
Oopsie.

I'm kinda of two minds about this one.

On the one hand, the party absolutely should have checked what this "monster" actually was before just blasting it to death.

On the other hand, you (meaning the GM) clearly set this entire thing up to "trick the party into killing an innocent being". Apparently you succeeded. Is that really the PCs fault?

Which leads me to questioning exactly what went on here. You kinda gloss over the whole bit about them casting a spell and realizing that the staff were fiends and undead. What did they do in response? Did they discuss this at all? Did they know that these fiends were the ones who sent them to kill the monster? I'm just having a hard time accepting that they went in there, were suspcious enough about the inhabitants to cast a spell to reveal their nature to them, discovered that they were fiends and undead, but then still blithely agreed to a task these presumably evil beings had just set them on. I suspect there was more to the story than you are telling us in this post. Did they know that the folks who gave them the task to kill the monster were the fiends and undead they had detected? Did the PC who cast the spell inform the rest of the party of this fact?

Dunno. Something doesn't pass the smell test here for me. They are so suspicious of random crows that they check them out to see if they're natural, and then attack when they discover they are not. They are so suspicious of random people in an establishment that they cast a spell and discover that they are fiends and undead. But then they do nothing about the fiends and undead, and trust them explicitely enough to follow their literal instructions to kill something, and in this case, they apparantly aren't suspicious at all about anything and spend no time, effort, skills, or spells to learn what's really going on before just killing something in some water that they can't actually see?

That doesn't seem consistent at all. If your party was just a bunch of murderhoboes then why didn't they attack the fiends and undead the moment they discovered them? And if they are so suspicious that they double check everything they encounter to verify that it is what they seem to be, why suddenly change their MO just with this one naiad? I feel like some parts are missing from the story.

But yes. Just to be complete. If the party members knew that the fiends and undead were evil (are they evil in your game?), and knew therefore that whatever task they told them to do was also probably evil in some way (and discussed this at the table), and they went ahead and did it, without any sort of checking at all, then I might very well adjust their alignment significantly in the evil direction. But this would not just be based on the actions (which is all you've told us here), but based on what the PCs actually knew at the time. If the PCs knew that the folks who gave out the task were evil and likely lying about the monster, and went ahead and did it anyway, then that was them knowingly choosing to help evil and kill something good. If they didn't know, even if from your perspective they should have known, then it was not evil. Dumb? Yes. But I keep going back to the purpose of the entire encounter. You set up a scenario designed to trick the PCs into killing something. The question is "to what degree did you succeed in tricking them?". Because if they were actually tricked, then killing the naiad was a mistake and not evil. If they actually saw through the trick, but then did it anyway, then that's a whole different story.

Is such "shoot first without checking" an evil deed?

It's not really "shoot first without checking" though. If they actually believed that this was a horrible monster in that water, and perhaps that if they delayed in attacking it would move away, or escape, and/or attack and kill more people, then they might have been justified in doing what they did. But I wasn't at the table. I didn't hear the players discussing this, nor do I know what decision making process they went through that lead them to decide to just fire away at the monster in the pool.

As a couple people have observed, if your game regularly involves situations where failing to take quick and decisive action results in evil things escaping and causing more mayhem later, the players may have literally been trained over time to "kill at first opportunity" as a result. Do you put them into situations where waiting to double check something has prevented them from being able to defeat some evil monster or bad guy? IME, when players do things like this, it's usually because they believe this is their best course of action. So the question is "why did the players think they needed to do this?". Did past experience teach them that if they wait for the monster to wake up it'll be much more difficult to deal with (an may even result in party deaths?). Did they have a means handy to check what the "monster" actually was without potentially alerting it to their presence?

Heck. Even just the whole "murky water" bit has me a bit confused. Do naiad's usually hang out in murky water? Or clear? Again. I wasn't in the room, but how much did your description of the situation lead them to believe that whatever was in that pool of water really was an evil monster that needed to be killed? Sometimes minor details can influence player perception, and that perception can significantly affect their decision making.

I try to never punish the players if I manage to successfully trick them in some way. The fact they got tricked into doing something they didn't want to do should be punishment enough. Hitting them with an alignment shift is a bit much IMO (again, I suppose the whole atonement thing exists for this too, but in this case I'd treat it as a RP opportunity and not a firm requirement).

Witty Username

2024-02-12, 08:52 PM

How good does your intel have to be before arbitrary aggression becomes justified preemptive aggression?

How I role play it personally? I am generally anti preemptive aggression if 'good' is on that sheet.

The Han shot first scene is actually pretty close what I would use as justification, the danger of Greedo is obvious and immediate but the first move hasn't been taken and waiting for Greedo isn't tenable.

HoboKnight

2024-02-13, 03:05 AM

Anymage

2024-02-13, 04:15 AM

Given the nagging nature of my party, I use only official modules (so I avoid the "you are trying to pull one on us/set us up DM!") and module in question is a chapter from Candlekeep Mysteries (Price of Beauty).

This right here is a bigger problem than any in-game actions. The players assuming an antagonistic DM who needs to be forced to play "fair" by sticking to modules is going to create a very dysfunctional table dynamic. If they trust you as DM they should trust that you're making a good faith effort on making the game good. If they don't trust you they shouldn't be playing with you. If they just want someone to present a passive and reactive world they can act on, I wonder why they don't just play a video game.

Also, the bits about maxing passive perception/insight raise my skepticism a bit. Does it hinge on Observant and Sentinel Shields? If so, the things I said about them badgering you into strict adherence to modules likely also apply to them badgering you into highly permissive rule interpretations, and I would be completely unsurprised to hear gaming horror stories from you a few years down the line.

King of Nowhere

2024-02-13, 05:44 AM

Hey guys,
Thanks for all the answers. A few clarifications:
Its 5e.
How often do I pull such stuff off: rarely. Given the nagging nature of my party, I use only official modules (so I avoid the "you are trying to pull one on us/set us up DM!") and module in question is a chapter from Candlekeep Mysteries (Price of Beauty).
And most interesting: Party is lvl 13 ATM. 4 paladins, 1 optimised ranged fighter. They are BRUTALLY strong (average hp 110, one maxing at 150, average AC 22, dozens upon dozens of magic/radiant damage output per turn, 4 different auras, adamantine armor(no crits), a plethora of spells and a ton of magical gear, 1x Holy Avenger included.). Not just that, two of them have maxxed out their Passive Perception/Passive Insight (24), so for most DCs I just give them the results(example: check vs DC 12 disguised fiends/undead). Yes, in my campaign, 99% of fiends and undead are evil. Smiting a "good" undead would have been an understandeable mistake.

As a "counter argument" B pulled out "what if there was a balor in a pool. We just dont know". At this point, I could have 3 balors in that pool and per stats, party would still wipe them.

Player A just likes to goof off - "look at me being all edgy". And his character was CN before the alignment shift.

Hope this clarifies some of the stuff.
A normal party could pull off the edgy card and claim there were honest mistakes.
but i do feel a party with 4 paladins in it should really try to be better than that.

And by the way, if they are so overpowered while you stick to published modules that assume much weaker characters, don't that make combat laughably easy? and don't that remove the excuse of danger from the players? how are they having fun with such easy combat anyway, are they just enjoying a power trip?

This right here is a bigger problem than any in-game actions. The players assuming an antagonistic DM who needs to be forced to play "fair" by sticking to modules is going to create a very dysfunctional table dynamic. If they trust you as DM they should trust that you're making a good faith effort on making the game good. If they don't trust you they shouldn't be playing with you. If they just want someone to present a passive and reactive world they can act on, I wonder why they don't just play a video game.

Also, the bits about maxing passive perception/insight raise my skepticism a bit. Does it hinge on Observant and Sentinel Shields? If so, the things I said about them badgering you into strict adherence to modules likely also apply to them badgering you into highly permissive rule interpretations, and I would be completely unsurprised to hear gaming horror stories from you a few years down the line.

that too
no, wait. A dm not being allowed to run his own content because the players don't trust him strikes me as already being a horror story right now, not a few years down the line

Unoriginal

2024-02-13, 07:42 AM

If so, the things I said about them badgering you into strict adherence to modules likely also apply to them badgering you into highly permissive rule interpretations

Think you hit the nail on the head.

and I would be completely unsurprised to hear gaming horror stories from you a few years down the line.

A dm not being allowed to run his own content because the players don't trust him strikes me as already being a horror story right now, not a few years down the line

HoboKnight posted several horror stories about his campaign already.

Didn't think it was "they won't let me run my own content" bad, though.

module in question is a chapter from Candlekeep Mysteries (Price of Beauty).
And most interesting: Party is lvl 13 ATM.

HoboKnight, that's a lvl 5 adventure.

Do your players insist on being big fishes in tiny ponds?

Witty Username

2024-02-13, 09:30 AM

This sounds like a job for the Tomb of Horrors.
It has a 5e write up but I do recommend the original module as reading for DM direction.

The count down traps I think only work with the countdowns for example.

HoboKnight

2024-02-13, 09:36 AM

Jeez, guys. Do you really think its that bad? I mean... For me " a horror story" is someone blatantly inserting their fetishes into the game. Its someone screaming at the table. Someone going full on "youre a racist pig!" because I run all goblins as evil. For people just not showing up.

From my perspective, most of the group is really ok. Even our murderhobo here... he took 0 offence at his alignment being shifted. Then we have a "ill just try to solve pretty much every problem, DM tosses at me"(DM mistakes included), the "i'm kinda shy introvert, yeah, you f.. up sometimes DM, i dont hold that against you" and resident Sleepy Joe who just likes to hang out with us.

And then theres this guy. IMHO, because of him I got A LOT better at rules. But yeah... playing an advocat for out murderhobo who murdered a naiad... that surprised me. I see a lot of positives in him, despite the sessions often being strenous for me because of him (or my lack of being able to stand up for myself).

I run MOSTLY published modules and sometimes I run my own stuff. Since the party has invested so much time into the campaign I like for them to face way too low challenges often now with what they have achieved. True, my own stuff are CR WAY beyond what DMG recommends, because sometimes I like for them to have a challenging fight.

But yeah, I think the player in question does not trust me. Him, not the group. On the other hand, I make mistakes, cardinal ones even. I f..up rules, I unintentionally railroad, I used to use homebrew that TPKd the party. So I dont use homebrew anymore.

IMHO its not all black and white, but from several threads I get the feeling I am taking sh... here, that I should not.

I dunno if I can do better.

Unoriginal

2024-02-13, 10:13 AM

Jeez, guys. Do you really think its that bad? I mean... For me " a horror story" is someone blatantly inserting their fetishes into the game. Its someone screaming at the table.

You mean like what happened when you had that NPC deny making an under-the-table deal with the PCs due to being questioned with his bosses nearby?

From my perspective, most of the group is really ok. Even our murderhobo here... he took 0 offence at his alignment being shifted.

Then there is nothing wrong with the situation.

Him and your other non-problem-causing players sound great.

And then theres this guy. IMHO, because of him I got A LOT better at rules. But yeah... playing an advocat for out murderhobo who murdered a naiad... that surprised me. I see a lot of positives in him, despite the sessions often being strenous for me because of him (or my lack of being able to stand up for myself).

But yeah, I think the player in question does not trust me. Him, not the group.

That's what one calls a problem player.

On the other hand, I make mistakes, cardinal ones even. I f..up rules, I unintentionally railroad, I used to use homebrew that TPKd the party.

None of those are cardinal sins.

You're a DM playing DnD, if that person wants their perfect adventure going exactly how they think it should go, theyshould write their novel themselves and stop trying to use you as a ChatGPT alternative.

So I dont use homebrew anymore.

A shame.

I dunno if I can do better.

My advice: next time this player starts arguing and the other players don't openly agree with him, look at the time or set up a timer.

If he's not done arguing 5 minutes later, put your foot down. Him wanting to argue is one thing, but he's wasting session time for all the other players if that goes on longer, and you also have to keep their enjoyment in mind.

Cygnia

2024-02-13, 10:46 AM

What, in the name of Loki's little green apples, is actually positive about this murderhobo at your table? Causing stress on a constant basis does not make you a good GM...

Jason

2024-02-13, 10:57 AM

I am still curious about a group with 4 paladins realizing that a town has a bunch of fiends and undead in disguise and then going and doing what the fiends were asking them to do without asking any questions about why the fiends want them to do it.

Did they just say "oh, that's interesting" and then ignore it?

Anymage

2024-02-13, 01:25 PM

that too
no, wait. A dm not being allowed to run his own content because the players don't trust him strikes me as already being a horror story right now, not a few years down the line

Agreed we're hearing the horror stories now. It takes a bit for someone to realize that these aren't normal situations and properly call them horror stories on their own.

From my perspective, most of the group is really ok. Even our murderhobo here... he took 0 offence at his alignment being shifted. Then we have a "ill just try to solve pretty much every problem, DM tosses at me"(DM mistakes included), the "i'm kinda shy introvert, yeah, you f.. up sometimes DM, i dont hold that against you" and resident Sleepy Joe who just likes to hang out with us.

To be charitable to the murderhobo. I've known quite a few players who are happiest when there's a combat for them to kick ass in, and who'll get itchy to get into a fight and use their combat capabilities if they haven't had an opportunity in a while. If you have a combat fan and a couple of players who just like to hang out with their friends that's fine, although the sort of game that works best for that sort of group (episodic adventures with clearly telegraphed bad guys to regularly beat up) might not be HoboKnight's taste to run.

Also, changing CN on a sheet to CE will at best have no change in player behavior. Other options involve badgering (especially if that alignment change causes them to lose something) and/or viewing that E as an excuse to be even more destructively disruptive. You can acknowledge boredom on his part and give his character more opportunities to use his combat prowess if the charitable interpretation holds, but that requires you and the player being able to have honest talks about what people want.

True, my own stuff are CR WAY beyond what DMG recommends, because sometimes I like for them to have a challenging fight.

Let me guess. The party regularly faces one fight and then tries to long rest immediately afterward to recover all their stuff?

This is a lesser issue than dysfunctional players, but is something to mind going forward. Single big fights where the party can resource dump and then fully recover are very difficult to get exactly right for challenge. You can ask more about this on the 5e forum since it's tangential, but it might be useful pacing info for whatever you do later.

But yeah, I think the player in question does not trust me. Him, not the group. On the other hand, I make mistakes, cardinal ones even. I f..up rules, I unintentionally railroad, I used to use homebrew that TPKd the party. So I dont use homebrew anymore.

IMHO its not all black and white, but from several threads I get the feeling I am taking sh... here, that I should not.

I dunno if I can do better.

You're a human being who makes mistakes. If your homebrew accidentally winds up being too strong and causing a tpk, you can admit you misjudged and retcon the whole thing. Players who trust you to make a good faith effort will hopefully understand that.

Players who don't fundamentally trust you can easily give you grief that you shouldn't be taking. This can quickly reach a point where playing with them is more hassle than it's worth. Whether dealing with that involves dropping one player or disbanding the whole group depends on the personalities of everybody else involved. (I'm remembering a time a group disbanded and secretly regrouped without me, because I was friends with a major problem player who the group really wanted to be rid of and I lived near the problem player while the rest of the group all lived closer together. Sometimes social dynamics means that shedding a problem player also involves other parts of the group as well.)

You're a DM playing DnD, if that person wants their perfect adventure going exactly how they think it should go, theyshould write their novel themselves and stop trying to use you as a ChatGPT alternative.

Startplaying.games. The aforementioned problem player wound up hiring a DM to continue playing his character, and even tried to bring a few more people on to pad out the group. That group shedded people as the problem player kept insisting that the game kept centering on his character and preferred play style until it was a solo game of exactly what he wants. If a player does want one specific thing there's always the option of hiring someone to give them what they want instead of badgering a DM and bulldozing the rest of the group.

(Come to think of it, there's a chance that the passive players are passive in large part due to bulldozing by HK's problem player. There's also a chance that they're also just there because they like low key chilling with their friends, but it's worth keeping in mind just how much a problem player can throw off a table's vibe.)

gbaji

2024-02-13, 01:48 PM

As a "counter argument" B pulled out "what if there was a balor in a pool. We just dont know". At this point, I could have 3 balors in that pool and per stats, party would still wipe them.

Player A just likes to goof off - "look at me being all edgy". And his character was CN before the alignment shift.

Hope this clarifies some of the stuff.

I'm assuming A was the one who killed the naiad? What did the rest of the party do? I guess I'm still confused about the order of events here. The party (including 4 paladins) walks into an "establishment" (what kind of establishment? The Inn they were staying at? Local business? Gambling hall? What were they doing there?), and realizes that many among the staff are fiends and undead. What did they do next? Why didn't they make some effort to kill these things? Were they in a town? What are the laws in that town? Are fiends and undead evil illegal enemies of the town? Or just allowed to be normal citizens, so if they tried to kill them they'd be in trouble?

I'm just really really confused by why this party, in which the default reaction to a group of fiends and undead should be to kill them, didn't. And not only didn't, but apparently had a conversation with said fiends and undead and agreed to do a job for them.

Honestly, the whole twitchy ranger guy firing blindly into a murky pool at what he thought was a monster is the least significant problem with this entire sequence of events. I mean. He's chaotic neuatral. Doing random stuff like that is pretty much expected of him. I'm not even sure I'd shift him to evil. He took a job to "kill a monster in the pool". He's neutral. That means it's not really significant to him whether the "monster" in that pool is good or evil, right? Why is a nuetral person killing an evil monster in a pool ok, but killing a good one beomes evil? He's neutral. That means he doesn't take sides in the whole "good vs evil" conflict. Either being hired to kill someone/thing is innately "evil", or it's not. And if it's not, then for a neutral character, the alignment of the thing he's been hired to kill should not matter.

Now the paladins in the group are another story. That's why I find their behavior far far more baffling than the ranger's.

I am still curious about a group with 4 paladins realizing that a town has a bunch of fiends and undead in disguise and then going and doing what the fiends were asking them to do without asking any questions about why the fiends want them to do it.

Did they just say "oh, that's interesting" and then ignore it?

Yeah. That's what is confusing the heck out of me. I mean, I could see if there's one paladin in a group, and the party as a whole decides to go along with things to find out what the fiends are up to or something, I could see it. But a party in which 80% of the group are paladins? That's a stretch right there. And even if there were some circumstances which made "kill them all right now" not their best choice, I can't figure out why they'd even go to investigate the pool in the first place, except to assume it's actually something "good" that the fiends want eliminated, and to go and rescue it or something (which would be the obvious thing going on here, else why would the fiends ask them to do this in the first place).

Was there like zero party discsussion about any of this? I know at my table, my players discuss every little detail. They spend a significant portion of every game session talking about clues and bits of information, and speculating about what they might mean. They would not have even gone to the place with the monster infested pool without a significant amount of discussion, first about what to do about the fiends and undead, and then if they decided for some reason not to just kill them outright, but to play along, what to do about this alledged "monster". Which, again, would almost alway include an assumption that the fiends had their own agenda, and that it would almost certainly be a bad idea to actually kill this thing. At the very least, they would go into the encounter somewhat expecting that the monster was actually some good aligned creature that the fiends wanted killed, and would never just kill it without taking some time to figure out what it actually is.

And this in a game that doesn't have a paladin class. That's just how normal adventurers should operate IMO. I'm just having a hard time noodling out how a group full of paladins just decides to blindly do the bidding of a group of fiends.

Unoriginal

2024-02-13, 02:08 PM

He's neutral. That means he doesn't take sides in the whole "good vs evil" conflict.

When evil beings tell you to kill someone, and you do without question, you *are* taking a side in that conflict.

Neutral people don't want evil to win.

Either being hired to kill someone/thing is innately "evil", or it's not.

Being hired to kill a dragon or a warlord who's destroying villages after villages is kind of different from being hired to kill a healer because them offering free Cure Wounds means the local potion making guild can't do as much profit selling healing potions.

Vahnavoi

2024-02-13, 02:12 PM

Hey guys,
Thanks for all the answers. A few clarifications:
Its 5e.
How often do I pull such stuff off: rarely. Given the nagging nature of my party, I use only official modules (so I avoid the "you are trying to pull one on us/set us up DM!") and module in question is a chapter from Candlekeep Mysteries (Price of Beauty).

That's a silly reason to restrict yourself and your players are silly if they buy it. Reason being: a game master who actually wants to pull a fast one on their players is perfectly capable of picking those published modules that best serve that purpose. You should prove this point to them by running Lamentations of the Flame Princess modules for them. :smallamused:

As a "counter argument" B pulled out "what if there was a balor in a pool. We just dont know". At this point, I could have 3 balors in that pool and per stats, party would still wipe them.

That's a spectacularly poor counter-argument, especially given what you just said of the party's capabilities. They had extensive information gathering abilities and used them in the lead up to the naiad scenario. They reasonably could've known what was in the pool beforehand, or at least known enough to exclude possibilities such as a balor. Them not knowing is willfull negligence on their part.

In general, selectively assuming the worst in the face of true unknowns is fallacious. Like, yeah, you don't know if there's a balor. You also don't know if there's a wish-granting Djinni you might kill or treasure you might break by shooting first instead of checking. In absence of prior knowledge to tip the scales, the possible negatives of shooting first cancel the possible positives. Or, put differently, a sane person wouldn't bring up balors without knowing something that makes balors more plausible than other options. The characters had no such knowledge. To the contrary, since they used a spell to recognize the villagers as disguised fiends and it didn't reveal a fiend in the pool, they already had knowledge making a balor less plausible than other options.

Player A just likes to goof off - "look at me being all edgy". And his character was CN before the alignment shift.

Sounds like his character was one of those "Chaotic Neutral" characters where the "Neutral" is actually spelled "Evil" even before the change. Since it doesn't sound like you actually plan to prohibit Evil characters, you shoud just look A in the eyes and say "you know you're allowed to play Evil characters, right? You can just admit you want to play a Chaotic Evil character."

LibraryOgre

2024-02-13, 02:29 PM

Hey guys,
After the session we talked about it and we came to an example of modern day military troops clearing a settlement. In a settlement, there are armed oponents, but civillians too. The question was, should troops check the inside of the buildings, before tossing a bunch of hand grenades in them. As per view of player B, tossing grenades in each of the houses is a Neutral deed. Opponents are in the settlement, if grenades kill and maim a bunch of civillians, too bad, but not an evil act. Especially if checking buildings before tossing grenades, exposes military troops to potential harm.

The Mod Ogre: This particular analogy needs to be avoided in discussion.

LibraryOgre

2024-02-13, 02:32 PM

Is such "shoot first without checking" an evil deed?

I'd make it more likely to be a matter of low int/wis (not thinking through consequences), with the harm that resulted being the actual evil. The others would tend more towards Neutral (rather than non-aligned). With the Naiad, where there was actual killing, that's the Evil.

Dr.Samurai

2024-02-13, 03:04 PM

There isn’t enough information honestly. What caused them to take this quest? Seems like they were deceived, so the question is how deep was the deception. A dangerous monster lurking in a murky pool sounds like prime “draw first blood” aggression time.

I wouldn’t change alignment off of one incident, especially if it was a mistake. Unless someone literally said “hey don’t, you could hurt an innocent” and he said something like “I literally don’t care if I kill an innocent creature with this bow strike”.

Seems weird. They went from paranoia about ravens and using divination to paranoia about people and using divination to “kill it with fire”. So something seems missing.

Satinavian

2024-02-13, 03:37 PM

Yeah. That's what is confusing the heck out of me. I mean, I could see if there's one paladin in a group, and the party as a whole decides to go along with things to find out what the fiends are up to or something, I could see it. But a party in which 80% of the group are paladins? That's a stretch right there. And even if there were some circumstances which made "kill them all right now" not their best choice, I can't figure out why they'd even go to investigate the pool in the first place, except to assume it's actually something "good" that the fiends want eliminated, and to go and rescue it or something (which would be the obvious thing going on here, else why would the fiends ask them to do this in the first place).
Aren't 5E paladins way more flexible in regards to alignment and basically only have to follow the vow of their subclass ? I had the impression they have long ceased to be the warriors for LG they once were.

King of Nowhere

2024-02-13, 04:08 PM

Aren't 5E paladins way more flexible in regards to alignment and basically only have to follow the vow of their subclass ? I had the impression they have long ceased to be the warriors for LG they once were.

I only know baldurs gate in regards to 5e, but i got the impression paladins are still supposed to be some flavor of good.

Jeez, guys. Do you really think its that bad? I mean... For me " a horror story" is someone blatantly inserting their fetishes into the game. Its someone screaming at the table. Someone going full on "youre a racist pig!" because I run all goblins as evil. For people just not showing up.

But yeah, I think the player in question does not trust me. Him, not the group. On the other hand, I make mistakes, cardinal ones even. I f..up rules, I unintentionally railroad, I used to use homebrew that TPKd the party. So I dont use homebrew anymore.

IMHO its not all black and white, but from several threads I get the feeling I am taking sh... here, that I should not.

I dunno if I can do better.

I understand. of course it's not all black and white. everyone can screw up sometimes, and most "horror story" situations have enough good times between them that people still prefer to stay together because the good outweights the bad. it's their choice, and I certainly won't say you should disband the group.
But yes, I think you should stomp down your foot a bit more and taking sh... that you should not.
in the end, you are dm and the others should trust you. this includes going along with what you do, and accepting your mistakes - especially if they come with an apology afterwards. they can argue decisions with you - they should, it can improve the decision process - but in the end, you get the last word, and they should respect it without complaining too much. and if they can't do that, they should not play with you, whether they or you are to blame. because you are the dm and it's your role to make decisions.
it's like the referee in football, or soccer, or a similar sport. you need a referee to play the game. and while the referee can make mistakes, the game can work well despite those mistakes. but if there is no referee, if everyone can make their own rulings, or they can badger the referee until he changes the rulings, there can be no game.

gbaji

2024-02-13, 04:20 PM

When evil beings tell you to kill someone, and you do without question, you *are* taking a side in that conflict.

Neutral people don't want evil to win.

Neutral people don't want good to win either. The exact same argument can be made by merely flipping the alignment around, yet I doubt anyone would argue that a CN character becomes "good" after one case of killing an evil monster because he was hired by a "good beings" to do so.

A neutral person would not care whether the people hiring him are good or evil, nor would he care whether he's helping or harming someone, nor whether that someone is themselves good or evil. That's what "neutral" means.

An evil person is the one who actively wants to do evil acts and is motivated by the harm they cause. A good person is the one who activeliy wants to do good acts and is motivated by the help they cause. A neutral person does not care either way. IMO, as long as this CN character also engages in helping people, killing evil monsters, thwarting evil plots, etc (basicallly standard adventuring stuff), then I would not at all force an alignment shift for the occasional "evil act" along the way. If anything, it's almost needed to balance things out and retain a neutral alignment.

And yeah. "random actions" is pretty firmly in the chaotic alignment as well. Obviously, I don't know enough about other actions taken by this character to have a big enough picture, but unless this character is consistently and regularly choosing to randomly harm people for the lulz (which would actually be CE), I'd say that CN is probably still correct.

If neutral requires avoiding doing evil/harmful things, then there really is no neutral alignment. It's just "slightly less goody twoshoes level good" at that point.

Being hired to kill a dragon or a warlord who's destroying villages after villages is kind of different from being hired to kill a healer because them offering free Cure Wounds means the local potion making guild can't do as much profit selling healing potions.

Right. And if someone consistently and regularly does one but not the other, then we can squarely peg their alignment as good or evil. If they sometimes do one, and sometimes do the other? That's probably neutral. I can totally see a merc character who takes whatever jobs are available as being neutral if their motivation is literally "do the job I've been hired to do", and not "I really like killing people, so that's what I do" or "I really like helping people, so that's what I do". If the same guy is burning down farms to allow the local robber baron to steal the land this week, but last week he was hired to protect a caravan of medicine desperately needed to save a village from a disease outbreak, that puts him in the neutral category (again, as long as he uses the minimum amount of help/harm necessary and just does the job he's required to do to get paid).

I think I touched on this the last time we discussed alignments. There's a difference between whether an individual act may be percieved as "good" or "evil", and what the alignment of the person doing the act is. The difference is often the reason and motivation for the act itself. Otherwise, we get lost in the weeds of arguments like "killng is bad, so good people may never kill". Well. It kinda depends on who you kill, and why you kill them.

In this case, the CN character killed whatever was in the pool because he was told it was a monster (and yeah, details are sketchy here), so his neutral nature didn't really care much what kind of "monster" it was (nor perhaps who had asked them to do it). And his chaotic nature leaned him into the direction of "eh. I'll just shoot blindly into the pool intead of taking more time to assess things". Again. Unless there's a longer pattern of behavior at hand, I would not change a CN's character's alignment for this. Obviously, if this is indicative of a pattern, that's a different story.

Aren't 5E paladins way more flexible in regards to alignment and basically only have to follow the vow of their subclass ? I had the impression they have long ceased to be the warriors for LG they once were.

That may be the case. I've literally played 5e like twice, both times in single shot one day adventures with pre-made characters, and I don't think anyone was playing a paladin in either. I'm kinda basing this on the assumption that paladins tends to oppose two things: evil and undead. And these are both.

If these are different kinds of paladins, then I suppose that's a different situation. Again though, it might be nice to have some more information about what kinds of discussion and decision making the party members had along the way here. We just kinda jump from "they detected that the staff were fiends and undead" and "the fiends and undead asked them to kill a monster" (but not told if the PCs knew this came from the fiends, nor what order those two occurred in), and then right to "then the ranger shot and killed the naiad in the pool". I would asume there was more to this than that, and the bits that are missing are pretty key to assessing why they did what they did, and therefore what degree of alignment effects should be in play.

And again, as I pointed out above, even without paladins in the group, this just seems like a strage sequence of events. At some point there must have been some kind of decision/discussion by the party that caused them to be in the location with the pool in the first place. What was it? Or did HB just GM fiat "Ok. You go to the other location, and are standing in front of a pool of murky water which contains the monster. What do you do?". I would hope he doesn't just skip/railroad the party like that, but I don't know. There's no data available to make a determination.

Darth Credence

2024-02-13, 04:46 PM

I would absolutely disagree with the idea that neutral doesn't want either side to win, or that they can engage in both good and equal acts in equal measure to retain neutrality. If a character is walking through the forest and sees someone drowning in a lake and saves them, then decides to kill someone in town by drowning them in their bath, that is not a neutral person, it's an evil one. If someone is passing by an orphanage and sees a fire has started, so they grab their water skins and put it out, it doesn't cancel out them going to the next town and burning down their orphanage as balance. They are still evil.

As I see it, good requires work, and the fundamental difference between good and neutral is the willingness to do the work - specifically, to put oneself out there in service of good when that can cause personal problems. Let's say we have a family of goblins trying to escape an evil wizard who has taken over their lands and are passing through a city. A group of people sees them and decides to beat the goblins up and take their few possessions. An evil person would be a member of that group. A neutral person would see it and say it isn't their problem, or they'd like to help but they can't get involved and risk themselves. A good person would get between the attackers and the goblins to save them from an unprovoked attack.

It simply doesn't take nearly as much to be considered evil as it does to be considered good. If someone spends Monday through Saturday being neutral to good - helping the old or infirm with chores, healing the sick or wounded, donating money to the poor - but then Sunday rolls around and they sacrifice a virgin, they are an evil person. If they take a job from the local church of goodness to kill an ogre that has been attacking the town, but then take a job from the local church of evil to kill the priest of the church of good that keeps healing people and drawing them to their church instead of the church of evil, they haven't balanced. They are evil, and they like killing so they take killing jobs.

Dr.Samurai

2024-02-13, 04:51 PM

Keltest

2024-02-13, 04:52 PM

Witty Username

2024-02-13, 05:39 PM

Yeah I tend to view "Neutral" as refraining from doing good and evil things, as opposed to doing both good and evil things in equal measure. The "must maintain the balance" thing never really appealed to me.

I tend to agree, but I give more affordances for getting through the day.
Pragmatic survivalism putting morals on the back seat feels neutral to me for example.

Millstone85

2024-02-13, 06:13 PM

I only know baldurs gate in regards to 5e, but i got the impression paladins are still supposed to be some flavor of good.
The PHB paladins are implicitly, but not explicitly good aligned. The others vary based on oath.The 5e PHB describes paladins who swear the Oath of Vengeance as being "often neutral or lawful neutral".

One of the recruitable companions in BG3 is a vengeance paladin. She has no defined alignment but she is a noble from Menzoberranzan and she encourages you to not just fight the game's main antagonists but to eventually replace them. Which would be very much evil.

gbaji

2024-02-13, 06:16 PM

I think maybe you misunderstood me (or I wasn't clear enough). It's not that a neutral person does some good and some evil to remain neutral, but that because they are neutral they do not take the "good/evil" into account when doing things, and thus will sometimes do things other may consider good and sometimes do things other may consider evil. But to the neutral person, these are neither. The are just what was in the best interest of the neutral person at the time.

I would absolutely disagree with the idea that neutral doesn't want either side to win, or that they can engage in both good and equal acts in equal measure to retain neutrality. If a character is walking through the forest and sees someone drowning in a lake and saves them, then decides to kill someone in town by drowning them in their bath, that is not a neutral person, it's an evil one. If someone is passing by an orphanage and sees a fire has started, so they grab their water skins and put it out, it doesn't cancel out them going to the next town and burning down their orphanage as balance. They are still evil.

In all of these examples, you are assuming that the person is doing these things because the effect (harm or help) is the objective. The person saves a drowning person so as to help that person. Then they drown someone in a bath so as to harm that person. That's not how a neutral person would view things. A netural person would neither save the drowning person nor drown someone in their bath unless doing one of those actions served some other purpose they wanted/needed. If they expected to get a reward for saving the barons son from drowing, they would save him from drowning. A neutral person would not do that because "it's the right thing to do". Similarly, they might drown someone in a bathtub if that person was an enemy, or was doing something harmful to them, or there was some other reason for doing it other than the sheer desire/want to "kill someone by drowning them".

This may result in the neutral person sometimes helping and sometimes hurting others, but that's not the actual objective. He's not sitting there counting up good acts and actively choosing to do evil to balance it out. It's just that sometimes, in the course of other things he's doing, he may happen to do something that benefits others, and sometimes may happen to do things that harm others. Which is which doesn't really matter to a neutral person.

As I see it, good requires work, and the fundamental difference between good and neutral is the willingness to do the work - specifically, to put oneself out there in service of good when that can cause personal problems. Let's say we have a family of goblins trying to escape an evil wizard who has taken over their lands and are passing through a city. A group of people sees them and decides to beat the goblins up and take their few possessions. An evil person would be a member of that group. A neutral person would see it and say it isn't their problem, or they'd like to help but they can't get involved and risk themselves. A good person would get between the attackers and the goblins to save them from an unprovoked attack.

Correct. The netural person would only help out if it served some other purpose they care about. The act itself isn't the objective. If a neutral person can achieve their goals without causing harm or help to others, they'll do it. But if they must help or harm others along the way, they wont let that stop them either.

It simply doesn't take nearly as much to be considered evil as it does to be considered good. If someone spends Monday through Saturday being neutral to good - helping the old or infirm with chores, healing the sick or wounded, donating money to the poor - but then Sunday rolls around and they sacrifice a virgin, they are an evil person. If they take a job from the local church of goodness to kill an ogre that has been attacking the town, but then take a job from the local church of evil to kill the priest of the church of good that keeps healing people and drawing them to their church instead of the church of evil, they haven't balanced. They are evil, and they like killing so they take killing jobs.

Again though. My previous point was that it's the intent behind the action that matters. A good person desires to help people. An evil person desires to harm people. That's what makes them good or evil. A neutral person does not care about either. They dont do actions because it helps or hurts someone. They also don't *not* do actions because it helps or hurts someone.

A classic druid, for example, might discover that the only thing that will appease the nature spirits in his forest is to sacrifice the first born children of the people who have been chopping down trees in said forest. And he would do it. And still be neutral.

Neutral is not good.

Yeah I tend to view "Neutral" as refraining from doing good and evil things, as opposed to doing both good and evil things in equal measure. The "must maintain the balance" thing never really appealed to me.

Again. The neutral person doesn't do good and evil in equal measures for the sake of doing good and evil in equal measure. He will generally tend to do them in somewhat equal measure because he is neutral. It is only good and evil people who choose to do good or evil for the sake of doing good or evil. Neutral doesn't care about that at all. If doing something good benefits them, they will do it. If doing something evil benefits them, they'll do that instead.

It's about what actually motivates the character. Is the character about causing pain and suffering? Then they are evil. Is the character about alleviating pain and suffering? Then they are good. If the charcter makes no specific effort to cause pain and suffering nor to alleviate it, then they are neutral.

I don't think the ranger in this case killed the naiad out of a desire to inflict harm on the naiad. He did it because the party was told there was a monster in the pool, and (apparently, but details are sketchy) the party decided to go to where the pool was and kill the monster there. I'm assuming there was some other motivation here (but again, it's unclear, since those details were not provided). It could have been "we'll get paid for it" (a very neutral reason). It could have been "because it's causing problems, and you'll earn our gratitude for doing so" (also a very neutral reason). It could even be "it's been killing people randomly, so it would be nice if some heroes would take care of that" (which is actually leaning towards "good", but a neutral party member would partake out of the desire to continue working with the party).

But in all cases, the neutral person is not motivated directly by the act of casuing harm or help. He's motivated by some other self interest. Often money. But could be "serving my lord", or "helping my family/friends", or "protecting the forest/lands/whatever". Could even just be "I hang out with a bunch of powerful people, and we go on adventures which grant me experience and treasure I could not get by myself, so I'll just go along with whatever other things they want to do along the way". All of those are very much neutral motivations. Contrast that to someone like Belkar who actively enjoys killing people and (at least in the past) had to have an active reason *not* to just kill people for the fun of it. He would have killed the naiad (whether he knew that's what it was or not) because "it was there, I had a dagger that needed to be used, so I stabbed it until it died. What's the problem?". That's what CE looks like. That's not what the ranger did.

Wait! You might say. You mentiond "helping my family/friends", but that's "helping" right? Yes. But the motivation is not the helping itself. It's the assumption that said friends/family are of value to the neutral person, and he expects to gain benefits for himself in return (support and assistance in the future perhaps, or just likes them and wants to keep them in his life). The point is that it's not about doing so for the sake of helping others (or hurting others), but for some other self interest based reason. And yes, if we assume that said neutral person lives in a somewhat stable society, and is benefited by said stability remaining (in his best interests for laws to be enforced, protected from maruading invaders, etc), then this may often result in a neutral person doing a lot of "good" things. But they aren't doing it because "its the right thing to do", but because "by doing this, I'm helping to keep systems that benefit me intact".

Ultimately, neutrality is a self centered alignment. But honestly so, and not in a "I want to sacrifice people to gain power for myself, muahahaha!" kind of way. It's highly unlikely that someone who uses ritual sacrifice to empower themselves, doesn't also intend to use that power to cause yet more harm (but if that's actually true, it might be neutral like with the druid example I gave above). That's just rarely going to be the case though.

I just think that viewing neutral alignments in any other way leads to really strange inconsistencies or requires that neutral really just be a subset of "good".

Slipjig

2024-02-13, 07:21 PM

Unoriginal

2024-02-13, 07:38 PM

I just want to point out that killing Evil monsters is NOT an inherently Good act if you are being paid to do so. An Evil party will be happy to fight bandits as caravan guards or bounty hunt criminals if the price is right.

Killing evil beings isn't an inherently good act for many reasons.

A few examples that come to mind:

Killing a Fiend because you're trying to kill an innocent and the Fiend was shapeshifted into said innocent at the time isn't a good act.

Killing an evil ruler because you want to make someone suffer and destroying the arrogant jerk's lifework before ending said life would make for a lot of suffering isn't a good act.

Killing a mass murderer because you need an human sacrifice for a magic ritual and it's easy to bribe the guards of the prison they're held in isn't a good act.

And of course, throwing lethal force at random and accidentally killing someone who's evil by doing so isn't a good act.

Dr.Samurai

2024-02-13, 09:18 PM

Again. The neutral person doesn't do good and evil in equal measures for the sake of doing good and evil in equal measure. He will generally tend to do them in somewhat equal measure because he is neutral. It is only good and evil people who choose to do good or evil for the sake of doing good or evil. Neutral doesn't care about that at all. If doing something good benefits them, they will do it. If doing something evil benefits them, they'll do that instead.
This is one view of how Neutral works.

It's not how Mordenkainen operates. It's not how Dragonlance neutrality operates. Which is what I was referring to by the way, I was not responding to you.

There is a neutrality in dungeons and dragons that actually very much cares about good and evil, and that one of those does not outdo the other.

Anymage

2024-02-13, 11:08 PM

A netural person would neither save the drowning person nor drown someone in their bath unless doing one of those actions served some other purpose they wanted/needed. If they expected to get a reward for saving the barons son from drowing, they would save him from drowning. A neutral person would not do that because "it's the right thing to do". Similarly, they might drown someone in a bathtub if that person was an enemy, or was doing something harmful to them, or there was some other reason for doing it other than the sheer desire/want to "kill someone by drowning them".

Spending your money to go on a cruise is hard to argue a moral direction for either way. Drowning your spouse so you can get the life insurance payout and use it to go on a cruise is an action towards a neutral goal rather than just being done for the evulz. I think most people will agree that murdering somebody just because you want to profit from it is pretty dang evil*. Gross indifference to harm caused to others in the pursuit of advancing one's self interest is widely seen as evil. Words in common use have definitions, and trying to claim that good and evil as universal forces mean different things than their common use is a good way to confuse people.

*(D&D tries to square this with the urge to treat this as a game of killing things and taking their stuff by having the enemies be threatening and generally evil so that violence is justified. Attempts to justify have been successful in some cases and rather unsuccessful in others, something that has drawn comment almost as long as the hobby has been around.)

icefractal

2024-02-14, 02:40 AM

Re: standards of good / evil -

IMO, you don't get a prize for basic "existing in society" levels of behavior. You wouldn't kill someone to take their wallet even if there were no witnesses? You don't go around stealing from orphanages? You've never poisoned an annoying neighbor? Congratulation, you're ... probably neutral. You don't get a "Good" award for any of that, that's just basic "not being evil" stuff!

"Oh, but I was only killing them for practical benefit, not like ... for fun." Yeah, most evil people do things for practical benefit, psychos who want to kill for the hell of it are rare. I think listing RL examples would be against policy, but to keep it general - pretty much every dictator in history has gained practical benefits from their actions. And a standard which says "none of them were evil then" is just stupid.

Kardwill

2024-02-14, 08:04 AM

on the other hand, regardless of the evilness of alignment, i do agree that if such actions disturb you, you should just ask the player to stop. punishing him in game is an ic solution to an ooc problem, and those never worlk

It's worse than that, in fact : If a player makes something you find disruptive, and you "punish" him by making their character Evil, you're not saying "I don't want you to do that", but "from now on, since your character is Evil, I expect you to do that again, and often". That actually gives the player a free pass to do disruptive stuff, "since that's what Evil characters do, right?"

So, maybe what the character did is evil, but the real question is "do you really want to give this player an "officially" Evil character?"

Unoriginal

2024-02-14, 08:52 AM

It's worse than that, in fact : If a player makes something you find disruptive, and you "punish" him by making their character Evil, you're not saying "I don't want you to do that", but "from now on, since your character is Evil, I expect you to do that again, and often". That actually gives the player a free pass to do disruptive stuff, "since that's what Evil characters do, right?"

So, maybe what the character did is evil, but the real question is "do you really want to give this player an "officially" Evil character?"

I see no indicator OP thought Player A was disruptive, or that he was trying to punish Player A.

Player A accepted his character as evil without a fuss, even.

Kardwill

2024-02-14, 09:06 AM

I see no indicator OP thought Player A was disruptive, or that he was trying to punish Player A.

Player A accepted his character as evil without a fuss, even.

Yeah, I was mostly replying to King of Nowhere about what to do if a player is doing stuff that de GM finds disruptive/unpleasant. If everyone is Okay with a murderhobo player in the party, then the game is not disrupted, and alignment shifting will (probably) not create a catastrophic backfire :smallwink:

That said, most "your character is Evil now" I've seen came from GMs who disliked what their players did. And when it happens, it's a very, very bad solution. Conflicts in game visions should be talked about OOC to get everyone on the same page, and not "solved" by ingame mechanics

Vahnavoi

2024-02-14, 09:09 AM

@Kardwill: it's not that simple.

First, you need to ask, why did the behaviour happen in the first place, before any alignment judgement is placed on it? At one end, highly situational acts aren't likely to be repeated, whether they're punished or not; on another, acts done for tactical benefit will almost certainly be repeated unless the game is changed to remove the benefit, such as by introducing a punishment.

If a punishment is introduced, a lot depends on how it works. Consider the aforementioned systems where gaining enough Evil points removes a character from play. As noted, that is equivalent to penalty card systems in sports. Consider: do you think an athlete is more likely to keep breaking the rules after receiving a warning, knowing each warning gets them closer to being disqualified? Or could it be that athletes only occasionally eat a penalty for tactical reasons and mostly stay within agreed-upon bounds of their game?

Again, games where playing Evil characters isn't disallowed are a different beast. In such games, the answer to "Do you really want to give this player an official Evil character?", the answer is just "Yes". Acknowledging a character for what they are is the whole point. If the message a player takes home is "well, let me be Evil then!", that's their problem. It isn't, in principle, different from someone who loses their equipment to a rust monster deciding to fight naked and bare-handed from that point. They have committed to a tactic and now suffer the consequences for it. Remember that something being allowed isn't the same as something being smart. Players are just as capable of realizing that being Evil long-term might not be in their favor, as they are capable of realizing that maybe being naked and bare-handed isn't all that hot when fighting something other than a rust monster.

Darth Credence

2024-02-14, 09:56 AM

Again though. My previous point was that it's the intent behind the action that matters. A good person desires to help people. An evil person desires to harm people. That's what makes them good or evil. A neutral person does not care about either. They dont do actions because it helps or hurts someone. They also don't *not* do actions because it helps or hurts someone.

There's the part that matters, and sums up why you're wrong. If you don't care about harming others, you're evil. Trying to justify it as not their problem is evil.

A "true neutral" being may not actively help someone, letting nature take its course. They might refuse to stop an evil person, again letting nature take its course. But they won't do what you suggest, burning down farms for a paycheck. That's evil, period, even if your next paycheck is protecting a caravan of medicine.

Satinavian

2024-02-14, 11:08 AM

Again though. My previous point was that it's the intent behind the action that matters. A good person desires to help people. An evil person desires to harm people. That's what makes them good or evil. A neutral person does not care about either. They dont do actions because it helps or hurts someone. They also don't *not* do actions because it helps or hurts someone.
I very much disagree.

Why a good person desires to help people and tries to do so, it is not needed to actually desire harm for being evil. Just being willing to inflict harm on others for minor or selfish goals is more than enough.
Pretty much every traditional evil villain harms people to achieve some other goal. Only the most forgettable comic book willains do bad things because they desire harm.

KorvinStarmast

2024-02-14, 12:54 PM

Yeah I tend to view "Neutral" as refraining from doing good and evil things, as opposed to doing both good and evil things in equal measure. The "must maintain the balance" thing never really appealed to me. It makes no sense. The place where Neutral makes sense in terms of balance is in the L/N/C structure, not the G/N/E structure.

The PHB paladins are implicitly, but not explicitly good aligned. As a general case, yes, but some variation on that is in the Vengeance oath description.

There is a neutrality in dungeons and dragons that actually very much cares about good and evil, and that one of those does not outdo the other. I find the DL treatment of alignment to be ... the authors should have known better. Won't repeat the rant.

@Kardwill: it's not that simple.

First, you need to ask, why did the behaviour happen in the first place, before any alignment judgement is placed on it? At one end, highly situational acts aren't likely to be repeated, whether they're punished or not; on another, acts done for tactical benefit will almost certainly be repeated unless the game is changed to remove the benefit, such as by introducing a punishment.

If a punishment is introduced, a lot depends on how it works. Consider the aforementioned systems where gaining enough Evil points removes a character from play. As noted, that is equivalent to penalty card systems in sports. Consider: do you think an athlete is more likely to keep breaking the rules after receiving a warning, knowing each warning gets them closer to being disqualified? Or could it be that athletes only occasionally eat a penalty for tactical reasons and mostly stay within agreed-upon bounds of their game?

Again, games where playing Evil characters isn't disallowed are a different beast. In such games, the answer to "Do you really want to give this player an official Evil character?", the answer is just "Yes". Acknowledging a character for what they are is the whole point. If the message a player takes home is "well, let me be Evil then!", that's their problem. It isn't, in principle, different from someone who loses their equipment to a rust monster deciding to fight naked and bare-handed from that point. They have committed to a tactic and now suffer the consequences for it. Remember that something being allowed isn't the same as something being smart. Players are just as capable of realizing that being Evil long-term might not be in their favor, as they are capable of realizing that maybe being naked and bare-handed isn't all that hot when fighting something other than a rust monster.
Thank you. I may borrow some of this at a later date.

There's the part that matters, and sums up why you're wrong. If you don't care about harming others, you're evil. Trying to justify it as not their problem is evil. You have gone too far here, though, by resorting to an absolutist position like that.

Darth Credence

2024-02-14, 01:16 PM

You have gone too far here, though, by resorting to an absolutist position like that.

Completely disagree. The definition of evil could be being willing to cause harm to others in order to achieve ones goals. If what you are saying is too absolute is that if someone doesn't care about harming other people is evil because someone who doesn't care but still makes sure they don't harm people because they understand the existence of society, OK, fine. But since we were clearly talking about people who were actually performing harmful acts, I did not think it needed to be spelled out that far.

If what you mean is that people who don't care and just act on whatever they want to do aren't necessarily evil, that's wrong. If you don't care about harming others and you take actions as you see fit without taking the existence of other beings into account, you are indeed evil.

Witty Username

2024-02-14, 03:06 PM

You have gone too far here, though, by resorting to an absolutist position like that.

I personally find that using Evil as more narrow than this disqualifies alot of interest in the Evil space and tends to result in cartoonish evil as the only portions left.

gbaji

2024-02-14, 03:08 PM

Spending your money to go on a cruise is hard to argue a moral direction for either way. Drowning your spouse so you can get the life insurance payout and use it to go on a cruise is an action towards a neutral goal rather than just being done for the evulz. I think most people will agree that murdering somebody just because you want to profit from it is pretty dang evil*. Gross indifference to harm caused to others in the pursuit of advancing one's self interest is widely seen as evil. Words in common use have definitions, and trying to claim that good and evil as universal forces mean different things than their common use is a good way to confuse people.

*(D&D tries to square this with the urge to treat this as a game of killing things and taking their stuff by having the enemies be threatening and generally evil so that violence is justified. Attempts to justify have been successful in some cases and rather unsuccessful in others, something that has drawn comment almost as long as the hobby has been around.)

We're talking about alignment calculations in a game, not in real life. In real life, we tend to set the standard at what I would consider to be well on the good side of the alignment spectrum as presented in D&D. What I'm describing as neutral alignment behavior would almost certainly also involve multiple violations of modern law. I'm just asking the question that if good is X and evil is Y, then what is neutral? Especially in a game system where adventurers regularly roam around killing things and taking their stuff.

Completely disagree. The definition of evil could be being willing to cause harm to others in order to achieve ones goals. If what you are saying is too absolute is that if someone doesn't care about harming other people is evil because someone who doesn't care but still makes sure they don't harm people because they understand the existence of society, OK, fine. But since we were clearly talking about people who were actually performing harmful acts, I did not think it needed to be spelled out that far.

If what you mean is that people who don't care and just act on whatever they want to do aren't necessarily evil, that's wrong. If you don't care about harming others and you take actions as you see fit without taking the existence of other beings into account, you are indeed evil.

I get where you are coming from. And my position on neutral is not that they don't care "at all" about causing harm, but that they don't weigh it innately in a "OMG that's wrong!" sort of way, but in a more utilitarian manner. A good person will avoid causing harm because "causing harm is bad", and will only do so if it's absolutely necessary to prevent some much greater harm from occuring. They are very much focused on "preventing harm" and otherwise creating positive outcomes, not just for themselves but for others. A neutral person will avoid causing harm because causing harm tends to create additional negative effects, which may very well impact the neutral person and those he cares about. As I said earlier, if he can achieve his goals without causing harm, he will do so. But the amount he weighs that harm in the calculation of "cost/benefit of achieving my goal with/without causing harm" is much much lower than a good person's would be.

In contrast, an evil person isn't just willing to cause harm in pursuit of their goals, they tend to prefer it and will choose to do so if at all possible. The sadistic guard who tortures his prisoners. The evil overlord who enjoys seeing those under his thumb tormented. Demons and whatnot, who literally exist in order to spread suffering and pain. Those are evil people/beings.

And yes, we might conclude that this results in nothing but stereotypical moustache twirling evil out there, but in a game where those sorts of things actually exists and are real, there's some value in differentiating that from adventurers who don't actively seek to do this kind of stuff, but maybe aren't terribly picky when it comes to what jobs they are willing to do. Or, in the case in this thread, of a character who didn't spend specific effort double checking that the "monster" he was sent to kill was actually evil (again, assuming that actual "evil monsters" as described earlier in this paragraph exists and it is "good" to kill them). I mean, the entire mission only works at all for anyone if we do assume that there are things in this world that actually are the very stereoptyical "evil" that we're talking about. Otherwise, 90% of what adventurers do would also be qualified as "evil" by your own definition.

We can't always apply our own moral judgements on alignment calculations in games like D&D. And yeah, I get that this does not match up with what some game guidelines use (though those are horribly inconsistent as well). I just find it's a more practical method to use when running games with alignment systems. And sure, it's quite possible that some players may use the neutral alignment as an excuse for muderhobo behavior as a result. But I find as a GM that the basic guideline of "did the character actually have to kill that person to achieve their objecitve" to work reasonably well for most cases. It's at least reasonably usable as an alignment methodology for player characters anyway. It's less viable as a broad social/moral thing though. But then D&D style alignment tends to run into huge problems with that anyway.

And it goes without saying that this is before we even consider the issue with "sides" and how that affects alignment. Which, yeah, is just another mess on top of the mess that is alignmment already. It's one of many reasons I prefer to play in games that just don't bother with such things.

MoiMagnus

2024-02-14, 03:52 PM

I personally find that using Evil as more narrow than this disqualifies alot of interest in the Evil space and tends to result in cartoonish evil as the only portions left.

It still contains some realistic evil (peoples getting happiness from other people's misery/suffering/etc are a thing in real life too), but I agree it is much more limited.

Though it just pushes the "somewhat evil" concepts to the "Neutral" space, so they are not lost.
[Well, they are lost on species that are "always evil", but they're another can of worms]

It comes down to the question "What is the point of the Evil alignment, in term of game design and/or worldbuilding?"
Because in a universe where "cartoonish evil & similarly sadistic peoples" exists and dealing with it is the core of many stories, having a name specifically for that category has a purpose.
[Which is why in our homebrew, we often add an additional alignment for those "extra evil". We also added an alignement for the "so fixated on fighting and killing for the greater good that they're arguably evil", but that's also another can of worms.]

Satinavian

2024-02-14, 04:55 PM

And yes, we might conclude that this results in nothing but stereotypical moustache twirling evil out there, but in a game where those sorts of things actually exists and are real, there's some value in differentiating that from adventurers who don't actively seek to do this kind of stuff, but maybe aren't terribly picky when it comes to what jobs they are willing to do. Or, in the case in this thread, of a character who didn't spend specific effort double checking that the "monster" he was sent to kill was actually evil (again, assuming that actual "evil monsters" as described earlier in this paragraph exists and it is "good" to kill them). I mean, the entire mission only works at all for anyone if we do assume that there are things in this world that actually are the very stereoptyical "evil" that we're talking about. Otherwise, 90% of what adventurers do would also be qualified as "evil" by your own definition.
Now you already admit that your version does not really fit the guidelines but you are using it because you find it useful. That is certainly legitimate

I however have no interest in mustache twirling villains at all. And using your version would just lead to stories about the big conflicts of good vs. neutral because evil hardly exists and all the grave injustices and wrongs are done by "neutral" people for "neutral" reasons. But that doesn't make them any less objectionable.
I don't think that is useful for me. So i stick to the version where causing harm for selfish or petty reason does qualify as evil. That is actually way more practical imho.

Vahnavoi

2024-02-14, 05:38 PM

Conflicts between Neutral and Good people are underappreciated, really. As originally envisioned, Druids, the poster boys for True Neutral, occasionally abandon children in the woods or burn a few people alive to ensure good harvest. Neutral people being pretty damn awful from contemporary perspective was very much intentional... and in line with the simple observation that from a contemporary perspective, many past peoples were awful.

Bohandas

2024-02-14, 06:27 PM

Anymage

2024-02-14, 06:49 PM

Druids used to be harshly amoral and TN back then mandated being a balance fetishist who was always compelled to side with the underdog. Also, back in those days AC progressed downward. Arguing that neutrality in the current game should be held to older standards is about as relevant as telling someone playing current D&D that they should seek to bring their AC down into negative numbers.

gbaji

2024-02-14, 09:20 PM

Now you already admit that your version does not really fit the guidelines but you are using it because you find it useful. That is certainly legitimate

Guidelines that themselves have been incredibly inconsistent, change from one game version to the next, and produce a plethora of arguments all by themselves? Yeah. I feel no obligation at all to comply with those, when I can come up with something else that works better and makes more sense to me. And... actually matches up better with the definitional concept of "neutral".

I however have no interest in mustache twirling villains at all. And using your version would just lead to stories about the big conflicts of good vs. neutral because evil hardly exists and all the grave injustices and wrongs are done by "neutral" people for "neutral" reasons. But that doesn't make them any less objectionable.

But isn't that what most conflicts that will occur are anyway, if we are already excluding the "moustache twirling" type of evil? The PCs are knights of kindom A. Kingdom B is an enemy kingdom. Both sides regularly fight skirmishes, sometimes engage in border raids, and the PCs are regularly going on missions to sneak into KingdomB and do some kind of mission impossible level stuff.

Are the PCs good, neutral, or evil? Is that group of border raiders from KingdomB "evil"? What about the ones from KingdomA? Both sides are engaged in causing harm to the other for what can quite aguably be labeled "selfish reasons". And you know what? The only way to actually resolve this and make one side "good" and the other "evil" is if we add in some of that moustache twirling evil you seem to not want to have around. The ruler of kingdomB is a cruel sadist who killed the previous ruler to take the throne, rounds up and tourtures his political enemies, and has invited and actively encourages the worship of some demon lord thingie. Oh and he's a necromancer who uses those he tortures and executes in his dark magical experiments. Under his rule, the people of his land now suffer and are more or less slaves in their own kingdom.

If neither side has something like that going on, then either both sides are "evil" by your definition. Or.... we can simply conclude that lots of people fight, and they most often fight over "things" (land, money, etc), and that this is not innnately good nor evil, but merely "neutral".

I don't think that is useful for me. So i stick to the version where causing harm for selfish or petty reason does qualify as evil. That is actually way more practical imho.

Again though, the problem with this is that if we drill down enough, almost everything can be boiled down to some degree of selfish reasoning. And what is labeled as selfish is almost always extremely subjective. You think it's selfish of me to use this land to support my family, and I think it's selfish of you to use it to support yours. Who is right? Ultimately, in any world that has scarcity, almost all conflicts will involve some degree of self interest, and most will involve a significant amount of it.

I actually somewhat agree with you from a philosophical point of view. But not at all from a "practical rpg pov". As I said earlier, if we really applied that logic, then a large pecentage of what most PC groups do would be classified as "evil". Every single time a PC group goes into some dundeon for any reason other than "we're chasing a known group of evildoers who caused known harm to known people, to bring them to justice" they are technically meeting your definition of "evil". And if they run into and kill anything other than said known evildoers they are chasing? Well, that's evil. Home invasion evil.

The problem is that, as I pointed out above, the only way for adventuring PCs to *not* meet your definition of evil if if they restrict themselves solely to hunting down and killing the very moustache twirling (or "always evil" species) type of evil you don't find to be interesting.

If you don't have that kind of evil in your game, then who do your PCs ever fight? Who do they ever cause harm to, without being evil themselves? And if you do have that kind of evil in your game, then there would seem to be plenty of room for the "neutral" range as I've described it to fit in.

Druids used to be harshly amoral and TN back then mandated being a balance fetishist who was always compelled to side with the underdog. Also, back in those days AC progressed downward. Arguing that neutrality in the current game should be held to older standards is about as relevant as telling someone playing current D&D that they should seek to bring their AC down into negative numbers.

I really dislike that form of argument.

"Well. Back in the days of Hyppocrates, there was also slavery, human sacrifice, and people thought the earth was flat, so swearing the hyppocratic oath is just as bad as wanting slavery, human sacrifice, and being a flat earther".

See how that doesn't work?

The larger point is that there have historically been a number of different approaches to what "neutral" means in D&D (and other games). And at least in most of them (certainly the earlier ones), the idea that neutral people could absolutely engage in harmful actions that may very well oppose "good people", was completely supported. And the reasons for that are just as valid today as they were back then, regardless of what we may think of other rules in the game(s) at the same time period.

And honestly? As I've watched numerous editions of D&D come and go, and watched numerous writers struggle to try to redefine the alignment system, IMO they have only created more and more inconsistencies along the way. I think that a good portion of this has been driven by a desire to square alignment in a primarily fantasy setting RPG with modern concepts of good and bad, and the result has not been terribly successful. At the end of the day, you are running in a setting using old timey morality, and I think just allowing players to accept that and adjust to it works better than trying to wedge a system of morality into the setting that doesn't really work.

So yeah. Folks may engage in activities that we today would absolutely call "evil"(and certainly "illegal"), but because we are playing in a setting that actually has demons, and devils, and horrible monsters, and necromancers, and liches, and evil warlocks, and evil overlords, actually bent on (yes stereotypical) evil, we kinda have to allow for a range of person who isn't actively going around sacrificing people to their dread deity, or enslaving them, or turning them into zombies, or using them as magic power sources, or any of a number of really truely horrific kinds of things that can exist in the game setting, but who don't hold themselves to the same "do no harm" standards that we modern folks do. And, if said game system uses an alignment system, we might label those people "neutral", not because they are what we might call neutral when applying modern moral rules to them, but because if we are to examine the full range of morality within the game setting, theirs falls pretty much smack in the middle between "people who do horrible things for horrible reasons", and "people who do good things for good reasons".

Sure. No definition is perfect. And I generally just prefer to not use alignment at all if I can get away with it. But... if I am going to use it, I prefer to use it in a way that works within the game system and setting I'm playing and not try to make it align with a setting and world that I'm *not* playing (ie: the "real world").

Duff

2024-02-14, 09:58 PM

There's other interpretations of Evil. Last time I used alignment — and it's been a hot minute — it literally measured connection to a combination of the evil aligned outer planes and the negative material plane. Habitually using certain spells would change your detected alignment — not your actual behavior, but if you used a lot of healing spells, you would always ping Good regardless of how many puppies you kicked, and if you used Harm spells or summoned imps often to save kittens from burning buildings, you would ping Evil. Every pantheon seemingly has some personage who audits your soul after you die, and why would that role exist if it wasn't necessary to actually do the accounting and correct for the weird splash effects?

That’s a use of alignment that makes the world more interesting. I like it

snipped
I tend not to use alignment at all, but if I do use alignment then I always look at it from the point of view of in-setting beings (even if they're ineffable forces rather than specific deities) choosing how to relate to the characters on the basis of witnessing how those characters live their life.

So I shouldn't see moving someone towards evil as a way to punish something that I as DM consider a misbehavior. It shouldn't be about 'would I have preferred if you acted differently, from an out-of-character viewpoint?'. Instead, it should be e.g. 'when this cleric of Selune uses Detect Good on you, it returns false because she really likes non-evil lycanthropes and you attacked beings she liked out of the blue, and to her that matters more than your justifications; but you're still detecting as Good to clerics of Tyr. And you're shining particularly brightly to Helm's clerics for the next while because he liked how watchful and alert you were!'. Or, on killing the naiad, maybe even 'The Good deities aren't going to turn their backs on you just for that, but Bhaal really loved that and is sending a lot of Evil energies your way to reward your action. More like that! he says'

That also tends to sidestep some of the out of character 'are you calling me evil, because I thought this act was fine?!' kinds of reactions. "No, but given Selune's portfolio and interests, you've offended her." or "No, but the ineffable force that people label as Good only associates its energies with a strictly delineated category of being and behavior and, reasonable or justified or not, it considers that action outside of that category'. It's also helpful because it makes you look at the actions from the point of view of in-setting forces, rather than from your own perspective of 'do I find that action offensive according to my own moral compass?'

So I shouldn't see moving someone towards evil as a way to punish something that I as DM consider a misbehavior. It shouldn't be about 'would I have preferred if you acted differently, from an out-of-character viewpoint?'. Instead, it should be e.g. 'when this cleric of Selune uses Detect Good on you, it returns false because she really likes non-evil lycanthropes and you attacked beings she liked out of the blue, and to her that matters more than your justifications; but you're still detecting as Good to clerics of Tyr. And you're shining particularly brightly to Helm's clerics for the next while because he liked how watchful and alert you were!'. Or, on killing the naiad, maybe even 'The Good deities aren't going to turn their backs on you just for that, but Bhaal really loved that and is sending a lot of Evil energies your way to reward your action. More like that! he says'

That also tends to sidestep some of the out of character 'are you calling me evil, because I thought this act was fine?!' kinds of reactions. "No, but given Selune's portfolio and interests, you've offended her." or "No, but the ineffable force that people label as Good only associates its energies with a strictly delineated category of being and behavior and, reasonable or justified or not, it considers that action outside of that category'. It's also helpful because it makes you look at the actions from the point of view of in-setting forces, rather than from your own perspective of 'do I find that action offensive according to my own moral compass?'

Also a good game use of alignment

Re the OP

“Shoot first and ask questions later” depends a lot on context. In a situation where sus ravens are very likely to be at least one of evil or a threat, then it’s neutral behaviour.
And maybe also sensible.
In this situation, if they later find out the ravens were in fact neither evil, nor a threat, then non-evil people will feel obliged to (or even want to) make some form of reasonable amends (service, gifts, grand public apology etc).
OTOH, in a situation where the smart ravens are more likely to be just locals keeping an eye on their territory, shooting them is an evil act, and if it’s part of a pattern of behaviour, then the character is evil

Take a quest from fiends – Not good, but not evil as such.
Killing the designated target of the above quest without looking hard at what the effects would be is evil unless “Our characters are all terribly gullible” is part of the established personalities of the party.
A party with an iota of sense will accept the mission to save the orphanage and then try to find out if it’s an evil orphanage before they save it. Or if they don’t have time to do it before, do it afterward so they can undo any evil they inadvertently helped on the way through

Kill civilians among enemy combatants
1st, not really a valid comparison. Unless Colonel Puppy Kicker of the Officially Evil Army is telling you the building is a valid target, the pool situation is not an “Apples to apples” comparison. And if you think Colonel PK of the OEA gives your actions legitimacy, you should not be trusted with anything more lethal than a small blunt spoon. And the example says there are enemy combatents in the settlement, where there’s no known enemies in the raven situation described

I suggest use of metaphor or comparison to discuss morality is unlikely to be helpful. If context matters to the morality, then changing the context means discussing a different moral situation. If you consider morality absolute rather than depending on circumstance, then only the actions that were taken are important.

"What if there was a Balor in the pool?" is a terrible argument. What if there was Tiamat and 14 ancient dragons in all colours? If they have to shoot first because it might be something that is dangerous, they have to do some checking in case it's too dangerous

Last, but not least, do not put yourself in a situation where you are around this person while they are armed. Their idea of right and wrong could easily put you in a very uncomfortable position

Witty Username

2024-02-14, 10:45 PM

It comes down to the question "What is the point of the Evil alignment, in term of game design and/or worldbuilding?"
Because in a universe where "cartoonish evil & similarly sadistic peoples" exists and dealing with it is the core of many stories, having a name specifically for that category has a purpose.
[Which is why in our homebrew, we often add an additional alignment for those "extra evil". We also added an alignement for the "so fixated on fighting and killing for the greater good that they're arguably evil", but that's also another can of worms.]

I mostly view alignment in its context of player utility, and I rather like characters I describe as "high-functioning evil." The kind of character that will happily sit eating lunch discussing the value of mystery fiction, then later that day assassinate 3 ish people because it accomplishes their goals in the most expedient way. Or say gets simple joy in murder, but realized people don't complain if they do it to hobgoblins and orcs.

Neutral is a fair way to describe this some, but I find personally neutral caps my comfort zone a bit much.

icefractal

2024-02-14, 11:59 PM

As I said earlier, if we really applied that logic, then a large pecentage of what most PC groups do would be classified as "evil". Every single time a PC group goes into some dundeon for any reason other than "we're chasing a known group of evildoers who caused known harm to known people, to bring them to justice" they are technically meeting your definition of "evil". And if they run into and kill anything other than said known evildoers they are chasing? Well, that's evil. Home invasion evil.I mean, yeah. Adventures where the premise is "go and kill these humanoids (which have a society, children, etc), because they have loot and also the local humans / demi-humans would enjoy claiming their territory" are pretty ****ed up when you think about it. And the tropes they're based on are ... also ****ed up, usually worse in fact. So you've really got three options:

A) Don't think about it. Go full beer-n-pretzels style and just don't consider any implications or try to have moral significance to anything.
B) The PCs are bad people, problem solved.
C) Don't use those type of adventures.

And by C, I don't mean "don't use dungeon crawls", because there's still plenty of room for those. For example, dungeons full of mindless (or inherently inimical) creatures like most undead, demons, giant bugs, constructs, some types of aberrations, etc. Or dungeons which are a fortress for a known group which you're attacking because they're actively doing bad stuff, not just "they exist and we could stab them".

And of course, all the types of adventure which aren't dungeon crawls, most of which have an easy time avoiding this situation.

Importantly, none of those options require (or are even assisted by) having an alignment system that uses a different definition of "good". I've met zero people who would be disturbed by a "kill all the goblins because goblins" adventure and then suddenly be fine with it by someone saying "don't worry, the book says it's Good to kill them". Why would that even make a difference?

Unoriginal

2024-02-15, 12:17 AM

Acting recklessly but in good faith strikes me as more chaotic than evil.

Doing what Fiends told them to do without question, while knowing they're Fiends, disqualifies Player A from "acting in good faith".

Also there is a point where acting recklessly outweighs any good faith. If you're regularly harming innocent people through recklessness, and refuse to do anything to avoid harming innocents, you're gonna be both chaotic and evil sooner or later. Because callous disregard for other people's well-being + reckless behavior when you know the pattern of consequences said behavior has + actively harming people.

Vahnavoi

2024-02-15, 03:41 AM

Acting recklessly but in good faith strikes me as more chaotic than evil. (Paradoxially it could also be argued to be lawful if the same acts, still done in good faith, were instead brought about by overthinking, groupthink, and/or an overabundance of caution rather than reckless).

Adressing the part in parentheses, that's not an actual paradox. It is instead a mathematical result of pigeon hole theorem. If you have nine pigeons but less than nine holes, some pigeons will end up sharing space. Similarly, if you have nine alignments but a game situation only offers less than nine distinct options, you will inevitably see different trains of thought leading to the same choice. This doesn't prove a flaw in the alignment system, it instead provides justification for why alignment shouldn't change on single-action basis: you might not be able to distinquish a person acting on individual impulse (Chaotic) from a pathological groupthinker caving in to peer pressure (Lawful) based on a single incident, but you wouldn't expect these people to act the same across all situations.

Corollaries being: if you have several characters of nominally different alignments who consistently act the same way, that means either

1) players do not have enough distinct choices.

Or

2) those characters have congruent values and properly are of the same alignment.

There's also something to be said for the possibility of acts to be merely "ungood" for lack of a better word. Ie. Acts that could push you from good to neutral but not from neutral to evil or from evil to neutral

That is possible to implement, since all Neutral alignments also have extended descriptions. So you can do what another poster did earlier in this thread with 5th edition alignment and compare a character's actions to description of overall alignment, rather simply trying to figure if an act is Good/Evil or Lawful/Chaotic. It would be easy to make this explicit, rather than just implicit, part of alignment rules. If hasn't been done, it can only be chalked up to game developers not being particularly interested in making a robust alignment system.

---

Druids used to be harshly amoral and TN back then mandated being a balance fetishist who was always compelled to side with the underdog. Also, back in those days AC progressed downward. Arguing that neutrality in the current game should be held to older standards is about as relevant as telling someone playing current D&D that they should seek to bring their AC down into negative numbers.

That's a fallacy. Game development isn't a smooth upward curve where every new version is strict improvement on the previous one. It is ordinary, even common for a new version to screw something up in transition even if it improves something else. Descending versus ascending Armor Class is an entirely different subset of mechanics, either can be in play independent of how alignment is set up, so the comparison is never relevant. There is no logical inconsistency in preferring old alignment rules even if one prefers newer armor class rules.

As for the actual merit of being a "balance fetishist" who is compelled to always side with the underdog, "always side with the underdog" is a clear and conscise game strategy, both telling a player what they should do in a given situation and making it easy for a game master to check if a player is doing that. These traits make it a good candidate for a specific role (namely, Druid) who has special powers and priviliges tied to following a conduct. Contrary to modern bastardization of the concept, in AD&D True Neutral is not an everyman alignment - it is a narrow minority alignment, literally taking up less space on alignment graph than other alignments. (https://images.app.goo.gl/RB6h4buKxjhw5TD36) Don't want to play a balance fetishist? Then don't pick the one role defined by it. Very simple.

Jason

2024-02-15, 11:54 AM

It comes down to the question "What is the point of the Evil alignment, in term of game design and/or worldbuilding?"
Simplest version: To provide antagonists for the players to defeat.

They don't have to be stupid-evil moustache twirlers who do stuff just because it's evil - they can also be well-rounded, nuanced, and ultimately tragic worthy opponents who might have been friends if they had made different choices.

Either way, they're in the game for the players to thwart and defeat.

KorvinStarmast

2024-02-15, 01:04 PM

If what you mean is that people who don't care and just act on whatever they want to do aren't necessarily evil, that's wrong. Sorry, your opinion is not a fact.
There's a well worn adage about "all that is required for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing" that has to do with the prevention of the spread of evil. That is similar in theme to "if you see something, say something."

That isn't the same as calling those (referred to in the adage) good men evil. It is a warning to stop evil before it gets too big/hard to stop/to pervasive.

The position you have presented in your posts, (granted, we are all using a bit of brevity here) amounts to name calling along the lines of
"You are evil because I said so"

I am again reminded of why discussion about alignment quickly become tiresome.

For icefractal: some good points in your A, B, C post.

For Unoriginal:

Doing what Fiends told them to do without question, while knowing they're Fiends, disqualifies Player A from "acting in good faith". While knowing that they are fiends - and if we underwrite that knowledge with the boiler plate definition of fiend as a being formed from that which is (X_Evil) based on the setting's cosmology - certainly puts that choice into question.
It would take a bit more context to arrive at "made a deal with fiends" (for some positive purpose?) be otherwise characterized.

The "without question" layer could apply to a variety of bad choices made regardless of the source being fiends, or others.

Darth Credence

2024-02-15, 01:19 PM

Sorry, your opinion is not a fact.
There's a well worn adage about "all that is required for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing" that has to do with the prevention of the spread of evil. That is similar in theme to "if you see something, say something."

That isn't the same as calling those (referred to in the adage) good men evil. It is a warning to stop evil before it gets too big/hard to stop/to pervasive.

The position you have presented in your posts, (granted, we are all using a bit of brevity here) amounts to name calling along the lines of
"You are evil because I said so"

I am again reminded of why discussion about alignment quickly become tiresome.

I am perfectly OK with making a call on what is evil, and if that is reduced to "because I say so", I'm fine with that, too. Opinions are not fact, true, but opinions can be wrong - like the one that says that people not caring about harming others and just doing what they want is not evil.

While we're at it, that aphorism is a load of crap. It requires much more than that - like the evil people trying to execute a plan. But if we want to take it for what it's worth, it is as much a statement on "good" men as anything, with a pretty clear implication that standing by doing nothing would make one not "good".

KorvinStarmast

2024-02-15, 01:24 PM

I am perfectly OK with making a call on what is evil, and if that is reduced to "because I say so", I'm fine with that, too. Opinions are not fact, true, but opinions can be wrong - like the one that says that people not caring about harming others and just doing what they want is not evil. Back to your opinion not being a fact. Have a nice day.

Errorname

2024-02-15, 01:36 PM

In contrast, an evil person isn't just willing to cause harm in pursuit of their goals, they tend to prefer it and will choose to do so if at all possible. The sadistic guard who tortures his prisoners. The evil overlord who enjoys seeing those under his thumb tormented. Demons and whatnot, who literally exist in order to spread suffering and pain. Those are evil people/beings.

So does the Evil Overlord stop being evil if their torment and tyranny is cold and passionless, simple self interest? Does torturing my prisoners stop being evil because the pain is merely a byproduct of gathering information?

Simple sadism is a really common form of evil, a lot more common than anyone wants to admit, but it's not the only form of evil. Evil done because of indifference to the suffering you cause is still evil, evil done for some nebulous greater good is still evil.

Or dungeons which are a fortress for a known group which you're attacking because they're actively doing bad stuff, not just "they exist and we could stab them".

For the record this is really easy. It's not too difficult to come up with outlaws or a cult or an invading army that you are obviously justified in attacking.

Simplest version: To provide antagonists for the players to defeat

I mean, that's not the simplest version, because the players can be evil. But it's also not a useful version either, because we can easily imagine neutral or even good characters who play an antagonist role.

Unoriginal

2024-02-15, 01:42 PM

S
For the record this is really easy. It's not too difficult to come up with outlaws or a cult or an invading army that you are obviously justified in attacking.

Indeed. Which is why 5e managed to do that for all of its adventures.

Dr.Samurai

2024-02-15, 02:38 PM

For the record this is really easy. It's not too difficult to come up with outlaws or a cult or an invading army that you are obviously justified in attacking.
Yes, like I can imagine a society of evil creatures with an evil culture that worship evil deities and values evil things, and wherever they are they terrorize the other people around them. And any adventurers would know if they come across an invading army or cavern stronghold of these evil creatures, they would be obviously justified in attacking them.

We could call them like... orcs, or goblins, or something like that.

Jason

2024-02-15, 02:51 PM

I mean, that's not the simplest version, because the players can be evil. But it's also not a useful version either, because we can easily imagine neutral or even good characters who play an antagonist role.
Evil player characters are an option, but are not the standard default. Most of the game is written with Good player characters in mind.

Therefore allowing your player characters to be Evil is not the simplest version. Neither is making your antagonists Neutral or Good.

Original D&D and the BECMI line was even more simple: there were only 3 alignments rather than nine: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic.

The simplest version of D&D is Good player characters, Evil antagonists.

gbaji

2024-02-15, 03:24 PM

I mean, yeah. Adventures where the premise is "go and kill these humanoids (which have a society, children, etc), because they have loot and also the local humans / demi-humans would enjoy claiming their territory" are pretty ****ed up when you think about it. And the tropes they're based on are ... also ****ed up, usually worse in fact.

Welcome to 10th century Scotland. And 11th century, and 12th, and...

To be fair to the Scotts, that's also pretty much every place in the world prior to maybe the last century or two (and some places still, which often causes confusion in those who've too much adapted to modern world moral assumptions). If you are roleplaying in a setting like that, then this is something that said RPers have to also adapt to and accept. As I said earlier, most of the problems and inconsistencies in most modern RPG alignment systems are the result of attempting to wedge in modern concepts of good and evil into settings in which they really don't work well.

A) Don't think about it. Go full beer-n-pretzels style and just don't consider any implications or try to have moral significance to anything.
B) The PCs are bad people, problem solved.
C) Don't use those type of adventures.

Or... D) Accept that you are RPing in a game setting in which this kind of "my side versus yours" morality is the norm and not the exception. Accept that the people living in this setting don't have the very modern luxury of worrying themselves over whether their actions, taken to improve their own condition (often making a difference between living and dying) may also cause harm or death to someone else as a result. Accept that in this world, killing someone because "he's from the enemy clan", is not only perfectly acceptable, failing to do so when one has the opportunity may be considered a betrayal and "evil".

Yes. There are easier ways to manage this, and I'm being a bit extreme (but not as much as I could be) with my examples. And certainly, this is subject to the comfort level of the players at the table. But I am just trying to showcase some basic concepts here and show how it's not as simple as just sayng "doing harm for self centered reasons is evil". I was also specifically showing that, in the abesence of actual moustache twirling evil in the game setting, pretty much all conflicts are going to be the result of some degree of selfish motivations, so that ceases to be a viable means to make alignment determinations.

And of course, all the types of adventure which aren't dungeon crawls, most of which have an easy time avoiding this situation.

Which ones? The ones where you are asked by the local ruler to go do something that will benefit his area? Presumably to the detriment of someone else, right? Again, unless all the adventures involve evil demons, or hags, or other magical/evil creatures doing evil things which require them to be fought, at some point, you are engaged in conflicts in which there is going to be a heck of a lot of self interest involved. Even if it's just "my king commands this", that's ultiimately a self interested motivation. There is no "greater good" going on here. You're going to the enemy stonghold and stealing their whatsit and killing their head priest before he can do the ceremony to summon some creature to help them defeat your kings army, not directly because "that summoned creature is evil", or even "that head priest is evil", but ultimately because "I'm on my side and want to win". If the same characters were on the other side, they would be the ones protecting the head priest while he summoned something to help their side win the battle, and they would just as equally view the "assassins trying to kill the head priest" as the enemy for whom it was right and just to kill.

And yeah. Most GMs "simplify" these types of scenarios by making said head priest a worshipper of an objectively evil deity, and the creature an objectively evil creature, and the ruler of the other kingdom an objectively evil ruler, just to make it easier on the players. But it could just as easily be an objectively good deity being worshiped, and some kind of holy deva thing being summoned for the battle, and the players must protect this process for their good king to win, and it's the other side that has objectively evil deities being worshiped, and the attackers are members of the evil assassins order or something, and it's their king who is super "evil" or something.

It's literally a matter of perspective in a lot of those cases. And yeah, makes the whole "Ok, so what is neutral"" a not so easily answered question.

Doing what Fiends told them to do without question, while knowing they're Fiends, disqualifies Player A from "acting in good faith".

Well, which is why I pointed out that there's massive gaps in the story we were told.

This is not all on player A. Somehow, the entire party travelled from where they were given the mission to the other building, with the basement, with the murky pool in it. Somehow, they found themselves there, presumably having made a decision to do so, and that decision was not just made by player A. If the entire party decided to go there, they must have had a reason to do so. Unfortunately, we don't know that reason, because it wasn't relayed to us. So we can't say whether player A actually acted in "good faith" or not. If he believed that the entire party (made up of 4 paladins with him being the only non-paladin in the group) had decided to go here, after receiving the mission, and he believed that the reason the party went there was to kill "the creature in the murky pool", then by doing just that, he's absolutely "acting in good faith".

Now, if the party knew the fiends were evil, knew they wanted them to kill the creature in the pool, suspected this was something nefarious and went there with the intention of disovering what was really in the pool and why the fiends wanted to kill it, then yeah... player A did not act in good faith. That would actually qualify as an evil act. But not because "killing the naiad is evil", but because "you intentionally killed something the rest of your party was there to investigate and talk to".

If the party actually went there with the intention of killing whatever was in the pool, and then arrived and stood around debating how to go about doing it, or maybe just now having second thoughts, or whatever, I could totally see the CN ranger going "f this!" and just killing the creature in the pool, just to bypass whatever analysis paralysis was going on with the rest of the group. And yeah. That would absolutely be a CN thing to do. We came here to kill this creature. It's what we agreed to do. Now you guys are standing around debating your navel lint, so I'm just going to move things along, seems to absolultely fall well and firmly into the chaotic neutral mindset.

Also there is a point where acting recklessly outweighs any good faith. If you're regularly harming innocent people through recklessness, and refuse to do anything to avoid harming innocents, you're gonna be both chaotic and evil sooner or later. Because callous disregard for other people's well-being + reckless behavior when you know the pattern of consequences said behavior has + actively harming people.

Sure. Which ties into something several people have pointed out (including me). One action should not an alignment change make. It should be about the pattern of behavior over time. If this is the kiind of thing this character does frequently, and consistently falls to the side of "just kill it" whenever there's some question as to how to proceed, then this would indicate more of a personalit trait, rather than a specific "what I did in this one situation". Someone mentioned the whole pidgeon hole concept. I think that applies here. They may have had only a few courses of action here. And the Ranger may have had only like two: "kill it before it waks up/attacks/whatever" or "wait for it to wake up/attack/whatever first and then decide what to do".

We don't have enough information about what discsussion or decisions were made prior to that point, or what options and choices were being discussed by the other PCs at the time, to be able to make a good determination here. And yeah, we don't have enough information about the longer term habitual actions of this character either. It may very well be that an alignment change was warranted. But it should be more of a "straw that broke the camel's back" than "this one act was just soooo evil, that your alignment must change".

Sorry, your opinion is not a fact.
There's a well worn adage about "all that is required for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing" that has to do with the prevention of the spread of evil. That is similar in theme to "if you see something, say something."

That isn't the same as calling those (referred to in the adage) good men evil. It is a warning to stop evil before it gets too big/hard to stop/to pervasive.

Yup. It's also an interesting observation to make that this adage is also a call to self interest. Don't oppose the evil because it's evil, but because if you don't, one day it'll be doing its evil to you.

It's literally a way to motivate people who fall into the "neutral" category (as I've defined it), to "do good". Not because they're motivated to help the people the evil is currentlly harming, nor to hurt the evil because it's evil and thus must be fought (both actual "good" alignment positions), but purely because "if you don't, it'll be on your door step someday, killing you or people you care about".

For Unoriginal: While knowing that they are fiends - and if we underwrite that knowledge with the boiler plate definition of fiend as a being formed from that which is (X_Evil) based on the setting's cosmology - certainly puts that choice into question.
It would take a bit more context to arrive at "made a deal with fiends" (for some positive purpose?) be otherwise characterized.

The "without question" layer could apply to a variety of bad choices made regardless of the source being fiends, or others.

Yup. This too. Goes back to my earlier point that "we really don't know enough about what went on".

And valid point about the source. At the end of the day, I keep circling back to "the entire party went to the murky pool. Why?'.

So does the Evil Overlord stop being evil if their torment and tyranny is cold and passionless, simple self interest? Does torturing my prisoners stop being evil because the pain is merely a byproduct of gathering information?

It's all relative, isn't it? That was kind my point. There is some point at which we may clearly objectively idenfity someone in a game as "evil" (ie: the moustache twirling type). Somewhere along the way (often quite a bit prior to that point), we may still decide that we want to oppose what that person is doing. But does that make the other person "evil" or just "an enemy"? And are we evil, good, or neutral when opposing that person?

But.. Interesting thought experiment. Is a terminator "evil"? If we take the "what is the motivation/emotion/objective?" behind the act completely out of the equation (just a machine following its programming), is that creature "evil". Can we disconnect the action itself (which is clearly about causing harm), from the alignment of the person/creature performing the act? The point of the experiment is to explore the concept that there can be "evil/harmful acts" without "evil hamful motivation" behind them.

I also think the problem is you are going from my statement about self interested motivations, but absent the direct "intent to do harm for the sake of doing harm", and kinda go to "psychopathic torturer" as an example. But what about less extreme cases? My team of adventurers fought our way through the dungeon and arrive at the mighty chalice of power, only to find another group of adventurers has arrived at the same room, from the opposite direction. Both have an equal right to the reward. How do we resolve this? If we fight, does that make one side "good" and one "evil". Or are both evil?

I would argue that the two sides could negotiate something, but if negotiations break down and they end up fighting eachother for the prize, that's a neutral act. Both claim the prize. Both have equal claim. There's no third party arbiter around, so...

That's the sort of "causing harm for self interested reasons" I was speaking of.

For the record this is really easy. It's not too difficult to come up with outlaws or a cult or an invading army that you are obviously justified in attacking.

What if the outlaws are actually freedom fighters opposed to a tyranical ruler? What if the "evil cult" is really just a group of peaceful worshipers of a deity that is unknown to this area, but not evil in any way, but the local temples don't want the competition, so you've been told to wipe them out? And I already touched on the whole "invading army" thing. Is your "side" any more justified to "win the battle" than the other? Is the current person ruling this land actually a better ruler than the guy who's army is showing up?

How do you suppose the folks on the other side of those scenarios might see the PCs actions?

Satinavian

2024-02-15, 05:09 PM

Guidelines that themselves have been incredibly inconsistentGranted, but we work with what we have.

But isn't that what most conflicts that will occur are anyway, if we are already excluding the "moustache twirling" type of evil? The PCs are knights of kindom A. Kingdom B is an enemy kingdom. Both sides regularly fight skirmishes, sometimes engage in border raids, and the PCs are regularly going on missions to sneak into KingdomB and do some kind of mission impossible level stuff.For example, yes. That would not be a good vs evil conflict though.

Are the PCs good, neutral, or evil? How do they fight ? When they are foraging, do they try to limit the damage ? Ot just use it as a pretext to steal everything of value from every village they come across ? Are they poisoning springs ? Are they tactically sacrificing their allies to save their own hide or for prestige ? Do they show mercy ? It is extremely easy to behave good or evil even in relatively mundane conflicts.

Is that group of border raiders from KingdomB "evil"? What about the ones from KingdomA? Both sides are engaged in causing harm to the other for what can quite aguably be labeled "selfish reasons". Fighting for your kingdom in what is a just war as far as you know is certainly not "causing harm for selfish reasons". Considering it is risking your life for what you consider a good cause, it is pretty much the opposite of selfish.

And you know what? The only way to actually resolve this and make one side "good" and the other "evil" is if we add in some of that moustache twirling evil you seem to not want to have around. The ruler of kingdomB is a cruel sadist who killed the previous ruler to take the throne, rounds up and tourtures his political enemies, and has invited and actively encourages the worship of some demon lord thingie.I think that a ruler who has killed the previous ruler, rounded up his political enemies to torture or kill them and follows some demon deity is plenty evil even if he is not a sadist doing it for the funsies and instead just does it for power or other reasons. In fact he is probably still evil enough if he does only one of those things just for power. And way more believable, making overall for a better received story.

I actually somewhat agree with you from a philosophical point of view. But not at all from a "practical rpg pov". As I said earlier, if we really applied that logic, then a large pecentage of what most PC groups do would be classified as "evil". Every single time a PC group goes into some dundeon for any reason other than "we're chasing a known group of evildoers who caused known harm to known people, to bring them to justice" they are technically meeting your definition of "evil". And if they run into and kill anything other than said known evildoers they are chasing? Well, that's evil. Home invasion evil.Well, yes.
If a group does not want to be labeled evil, they should not enter a dungeon and kill the local humanoids to take their stuff without proper cause. I don't see any problem here.

The problem is that, as I pointed out above, the only way for adventuring PCs to *not* meet your definition of evil if if they restrict themselves solely to hunting down and killing the very moustache twirling (or "always evil" species) type of evil you don't find to be interesting.Or just normal criminals or other enemies they have just cause against. Or monsters who can't be reasoned with. Or people who attack them.
I don't use mustache twirling villains and still have no lack of enemies for goodish PCs to fight.

Sure. No definition is perfect. And I generally just prefer to not use alignment at all if I can get away with it. But... if I am going to use it, I prefer to use it in a way that works within the game system and setting I'm playing and not try to make it align with a setting and world that I'm *not* playing (ie: the "real world").Well, sure. I think similar and that is why use the other definition as it seems way more pracical. If Alignments aside from neutral are only really used for literal demons, devils, angels and similars being and maybe some over the top carricatures, i certainly don't need any alignment system for mortal PCs and NPCs.

Duff

2024-02-15, 05:19 PM

Snip the bits I agree with

Importantly, none of those options require (or are even assisted by) having an alignment system that uses a different definition of "good". I've met zero people who would be disturbed by a "kill all the goblins because goblins" adventure and then suddenly be fine with it by someone saying "don't worry, the book says it's Good to kill them". Why would that even make a difference?

Answer the question - It could make a difference to me, and at least some others I've played with as part of the mindset "Accept the premise of the game"

Jason

2024-02-15, 06:12 PM

Sure. Which ties into something several people have pointed out (including me). One action should not an alignment change make. It should be about the pattern of behavior over time.
This is why 1st edition AD&D featured an alignment graph, with zones for each of the alignments. Movement on the graph is almost never directly from one pole to another, but by degrees. Moving into Evil territory takes either a single very seriously Evil act that "pegs the needle" into Evil immediately, or a smaller Evil action when you are already close to the edge of your alignment close to the Evil zone.

But.. Interesting thought experiment. Is a terminator "evil"?...If we take the "what is the motivation/emotion/objective?" behind the act completely out of the equation (just a machine following its programming), is that creature "evil".
Someone programmed the machine, and determined what goals it would attempt to accomplish. A terminator that is incapable of violating its programming is an extension of the will of its programmer, and therefore has the same alignment. Skynet was Evil, and the goals it set for its terminators were evil, so the terminators it programmed were Evil.

However, a terminator, which is incapable of violating its programming, is not asEvil as its creator. It takes merely changing its programming to change its alignment completely. There is little to no "alignment inertia" because its actions were completely involuntary in the first place. A creature like a terminator, with pre-programmed goals that do have an alignment and enough intelligence to be considered sentient but no free will, is as close to True Neutral as you can get without actually being True Neutral.

In D&D 3.5, creatures without intelligence are either True Neutral (like Golems) or Neutral Evil (like non-sentient undead). Non-sentient undead like skeletons and zombies are Neutral Evil only because it is an Evil action to create them.

Unoriginal

2024-02-15, 06:43 PM

In D&D 3.5, creatures without intelligence are either True Neutral (like Golems) or Neutral Evil (like non-sentient undead). Non-sentient undead like skeletons and zombies are Neutral Evil only because it is an Evil action to create them.

In 5e, non-sapient beings are just unaligned.

Skeletons and Zombies are just sapient enough to hate everything that lives with intense omnicidal desires.

gbaji

2024-02-15, 07:13 PM

Granted, but we work with what we have.
For example, yes. That would not be a good vs evil conflict though.

Then what kind of conflict would it be? Remember that I'm responding to claims that "causing harm for self serving reasons is evil, not neutral". But surely fighting against a rival kindom/clan/whatever is about self service, right? It's "my side vs your side", right? We should get that patch of land, or that herd of sheep, or those water rights, and not our enemies the MacTavishes.

Is that "evil" then? Or merely neutral? I say it's neutral. Yet, it's about doing things that benefit one's self (or, maybe more broadly one's "side").

This is what I mean by neutral being when you cause harm or help, but not for the sake of causing harm or help, but for other reasons (typically self centered in some way). If you kill people because you like kiling people and killing people is just in your nature, you are evil. If you heal people because you like healing people and healing people is in your nature, you are good. But if your choice to kill or heal is based on other factors unrelated to the act itself, then that may very well be a "neutral" alignment (depends on what those other reasons are).

How do they fight ? When they are foraging, do they try to limit the damage ? Ot just use it as a pretext to steal everything of value from every village they come across ? Are they poisoning springs ? Are they tactically sacrificing their allies to save their own hide or for prestige ? Do they show mercy ? It is extremely easy to behave good or evil even in relatively mundane conflicts.
Fighting for your kingdom in what is a just war as far as you know is certainly not "causing harm for selfish reasons". Considering it is risking your life for what you consider a good cause, it is pretty much the opposite of selfish.

Why isn't that selfish? I want to live in my lands, ruled over by the ruler I like, with the laws I like, etc. That's all about the person wanting things to be the way they want them to be.

What if someone in one clan decided he didn't like the way his clans leaders did things, so he goes over and fights for the other clan? Is that now selfish, but choosing to fight for the other side is not? Why?

To me, these are all self serving motivations. You are picking a side and fighting for it. And there's an amazing amount of conflicts of this kind that do happen (and have happened historically) in the complete absence of anything remotely like a moustache twirling villain involved. Yet... Harm is done. Often a lot of harm. Do we call everyone involved "evil" for that reason?

I'm not at all arguing that everyone who engages in harm for self serving reasons is not evil. Obviously, if your "self interests" consistently involve killing other people to get what you want, then it's a good bet you are evil. But to me, a neutral person doesn't have to refrain from killing/harming people to get what he wants if he feels it's necessary. That's pretty much what differentiates him from "good". The difference between neutral and evil is that the neutral person will also tend to do good things for self serving reasons (often just so "people will like me and help me when I need it", or even just "I gain a place in society by doing this"), while an evil person will not care about that at all. Getting people to like me, isn't an evil goal. Getting people to fear you and do what you want for that reason, is more in evil's wheelhouse.

If a group does not want to be labeled evil, they should not enter a dungeon and kill the local humanoids to take their stuff without proper cause. I don't see any problem here.

What is "proper cause"? Again. The devil is in the details here. It's actually extremely hard to come up with any "proper cause" that doesn't ultimately derive back to self interest, unless we literally stock that dungeon with nothing but the stereoptypical "evil creatures" we spoke about earlier.

Or just normal criminals or other enemies they have just cause against. Or monsters who can't be reasoned with. Or people who attack them.
I don't use mustache twirling villains and still have no lack of enemies for goodish PCs to fight.

Oh I agree. Especially with the term "goodish". :smalltongue:

Well, sure. I think similar and that is why use the other definition as it seems way more pracical. If Alignments aside from neutral are only really used for literal demons, devils, angels and similars being and maybe some over the top carricatures, i certainly don't need any alignment system for mortal PCs and NPCs.

Nah. Regular old people can still fall well into the evil category as well. It's about consistent actions and the motivations behind them that make the difference here. As I mentioned above, there's a difference between someone who "chooses to cause harm" because it's just in their nature and what they prefer, versus someone who "is willing to cause harm" because it's necessary for some other objective they have (and where that objective itself may not strictly fall into some sort of "good/evil" category). It's the difference between "I'm an evil necromancer who kills people for parts" and "I'm a neutral adventurer who was hired to clear out the goblins from this area". I suppose we could investigate more details in terms of what the long term goals of the necromancer are and why he's doing what he's doing, and certainly the motivations of whomever hired the adventurer to clear out the goblins (and what the goblins were doing that they needed clearing out) as well. But at the end of the day, most of the time we'll accept that one of those is evil and the other neutral (or possibly even good, depending on other factors).

In D&D 3.5, creatures without intelligence are either True Neutral (like Golems) or Neutral Evil (like non-sentient undead). Non-sentient undead like skeletons and zombies are Neutral Evil only because it is an Evil action to create them.

Yeah. But that's kinda what I was going after. Creatures (like golems) that are simply acting according to their nature, and with no specific intent or objective relating to the actions themselves, are neutral. We could presuambly extrapolate from that a bit and say that this is a function of the neutral alignment itself. Obviously, it's a bit trickier because creatures with intelligence are assumed to be making their own choices, but what I'm getting at is the motivation behind the choice itself, and to what degree the action *is* what is intended versus the action simply being a means to achieve the intent.

There's a difference between "I kill you because I want you dead" and "I'm tring to do X, and if you try to stop me I'll have to use force, which may result in me having to kill you". In the latter case, the moral assessment of the action is not on the action itself, but on X. If X is an evil objective, then the action is evil, and the person is probably evil alignment as well (or heading that way to some degree). If X is a good objective, then the action is good, and has an appropriate alignment effect. We all get that somewhat innately. Adventurers are trying to save orphans in a fire, and someone tries to use force to stop them and the only way to proceed is to kill/harm the person in their way. That is "good", right? Adventurers are trying to summon an evil demon lord to bring a thousand years of pain and suffering to the world, and someone tries to use force to stop them and the only way to proceed is to harm/kill that person in their way. That is "evil", right?

The question I'm getting at, and trying to examine here is: What value for X can we plug into that equation which results in a neutral act/alignment? There must be one, or neutral doesn't really exist as a balanced alignment. So... what is it? My answer is "when X is neither a good nor evil objective". That could be "I'm doing it for financial gain" (which is not itself innately evil or good). That could be "I'm doing it for my country/kingdom/lord" (also not innately good or evil, asssuming said country/kingdom/lord is not). Could be a whole host of things IMO. But to me, anything for which "X" is not itself an evil or good objective, makes the action and alignment effect of that action "neutral".

That may not be "good" from the perspective of those harmed, but that's the case regardless of motivation.

Witty Username

2024-02-15, 09:14 PM

Then what kind of conflict would it be? Remember that I'm responding to claims that "causing harm for self serving reasons is evil, not neutral". But surely fighting against a rival kindom/clan/whatever is about self service, right? It's "my side vs your side", right? We should get that patch of land, or that herd of sheep, or those water rights, and not our enemies the MacTavishes.

100%,
Killing someone because you wanted their stuff is perfectly in line with Evil behavior.

To introduce the nuance, we tend to give affordances for desperation: being willing to self-sacrifice for others is generally considered 'Good' so it plays havoc with our metrics when things become zero-sum, someone stole your water so you kill them and take it back. As I understand most people feel this is within neutral territory, and that is roughly where I stand on the concept. But the farther one gets from personal survival, the less this keeps one in the running.

Thinks to keep in mind,
How great is the need?
What means to you have to acquire the need?

gbaji

2024-02-15, 10:40 PM

100%,
Killing someone because you wanted their stuff is perfectly in line with Evil behavior.

I would modify that to "killing someone as your first option to getting something they have and you want is in line with Evil behavior".

I think that you are correct, that as we add more variations to the equation, things get a fair bit less "evil" and a lot more "maybe this is more neutral" (at least IMO). And if we go far enough with the variations, it may very well become "this is good" (evil monster guarding the important quest item needed to save the entire universe from destruction sort of situations).

My observation with regard to the ranger shooting and killing the naiad was that we don't know the extraneous circumstances that may have been present. If this is just something the ranger did, out of the blue, and in the face of broad party consensus that "we're going to figure out what's really in that pool and why the fiends want to kill it", and if this is the kind of behavior the ranger has engaged in regularly in the past, then yeah, an alignment shift is wholey appropriate. If, on the other hand, the party for some reason decided to do what the fiends asked, or didn't realize the folks who asked them to kill the creature in the pool were the fiends they had detected, or one party member detected the fiends and didn't tell the rest for some reason, and the ranger arrived at the pool, with the rest of the party, fully expecting that they were there to kill whatever creature was in the pool, then firing into the pool without first double checking what it was, was at worst a reasonably chaotic neutral thing to do.

I've never said that this "can't" be evil. I've only said that it isn't "always" evil.

Keltest

2024-02-15, 10:49 PM

What if the outlaws are actually freedom fighters opposed to a tyranical ruler? What if the "evil cult" is really just a group of peaceful worshipers of a deity that is unknown to this area, but not evil in any way, but the local temples don't want the competition, so you've been told to wipe them out? And I already touched on the whole "invading army" thing. Is your "side" any more justified to "win the battle" than the other? Is the current person ruling this land actually a better ruler than the guy who's army is showing up?

Then I think you failed the exercise when you created those scenarios when asked to generate an obviously and visibly evil antagonist.

JNAProductions

2024-02-15, 11:08 PM

Then I think you failed the exercise when you created those scenarios when asked to generate an obviously and visibly evil antagonist.

Agreed with that.

To the OP-alignment is less important than the table’s fun. If a player is uncomfortable with the actions, or with the direction they’re going in, that’s an issue. If everyone still having a grand time, then it’s not.

gbaji

2024-02-15, 11:22 PM

Then I think you failed the exercise when you created those scenarios when asked to generate an obviously and visibly evil antagonist.

Er. Except that there are conflicting exercises. I responded to Satinavian who insisted that "moustache twirling evil is dumb and I wont include it in my game", while at the same time insisting that "any harm done in self interest is evil", by talking about the difficulty this creates, since all enemies who are not "stereotypically evil" enemies will likely be fought for reasons of self interest, so in such a game setting it would be very difficult to have any conflict at all and not have to label most of the participants as "evil".

To which, Icefractal interjected by saying the equivalent of "That's not true, because you could just stock the dungeons with <stereotypical evil monsters> and fight them!", and to which Errorname followed up with something like "it's easy to just come up with <insert list of obviously evil foes to fight>". See? Problem solved!

So yeah... I then looped it back around to the starting point by asking "well, what if they *aren't* all stereotpical evil foes"? You know, the original case I was examining in the first place and which Satinavian proposed.

That's not me failing at any exercise at all. That's me just bringing the whole thing full circle back to where we started. I have repeatedly stated that the only way to make the whole "harm for self interest is evil" is if you actually do fill your game world with "stereotypical evil to fight". But... and this is key, I also pointed out that if you actualy do have that kind of evil in your game world, then there's value in distinquishing it from "folks who do cause harm, for personal gain, but aren't the moustache twirling steroetypical evil types".

My point, in long lumbering and typical fashion, is that whichever way you choose to go, there's still a need for a "gap" in the alignment range that we might call "neutral". Either you game does, in fact, have "evil creatures and people who do evil things for the sake of doing evil because they are just so darnned evil!", in which case "neutral" sits in the gap between "does evil for the sake of doing evil" and "does good for the sake of doing good" *or* your game does not have that form of evil at all, in which case almost all forms of conflct are going to derive around some variation of self interest, and thus self interest can't really be used as a sole determinant of an action being "evil" either.

Either scenario supports my position (that just because someone causes harm in the pursuit of self interest that does not automatically make them evil), it's just the details that change with each one.

JNAProductions

2024-02-15, 11:25 PM

Keltest

2024-02-15, 11:37 PM

There are differences of degree.

Closing the elevator on someone trying to reach it because you yourself might be late? A bit mean, but not evil.
Killing someone to get their wallet? That’s evil, through and through.

Agreed with that.

A neutral person might be willing to accept that some harm was done as a result of their actions, but they look to avoid it where possible. An evil person does not care and will not make any effort to avoid it at all.

icefractal

2024-02-16, 12:44 AM

To which, Icefractal interjected by saying the equivalent of "That's not true, because you could just stock the dungeons with <stereotypical evil monsters> and fight them!"I think you've misread my post. I gave two examples of a dungeon that doesn't require "killing goblins for no raisin is Good actually". One was "it's full of inherently inimical beings", and the other was "they're actively doing something bad, not just existing".

Now IDK, maybe there are somehow a lot of great dungeon ideas that rely on "the foes are just sitting there existing" to work and would be ruined by "they're burning down outlying houses / they're kidnapping travelers into slavery" / "they're blockading food shipments so everyone starves" / etc. But I doubt it.

Incidentally, by the definition of evil you're going by, Hobgoblins who were kidnapping people to work to death in their mine would be Neutral, right? Because they're doing it for material benefit to themselves, not just out of sadism.

But now that I think of it, there's a much more significant problem I have with your argument -
You're determining Good / Evil primarily (entirely?) off motivation, and I don't think that's a sensible standard. While motivation is part of how I'd judge an action, the actual action itself is the more important part. Saying that "all pragmatically motivated actions are morally the same" seems nonsensical on the face of it.

For example, are you saying that there's no difference between delivering mail to people (because you're a postal worker and you get paid for it) and assassinating people (because you're a hit-man for the mob and you get paid for it)?

Even the most sincere motivation only goes so far - if a serial killer turns out to think that "only people who get murdered go to heaven, so I'm helping people!" that at best means they're too insane to stand trial, not that they're really a good person.

ciopo

2024-02-16, 02:34 AM

Satinavian

2024-02-16, 05:40 AM

Is that "evil" then? Or merely neutral? I say it's neutral. Yet, it's about doing things that benefit one's self (or, maybe more broadly one's "side").Depends. If the reason to fight the war is indeed "we want their land", it is evil.

And that is not exactly a new idea. Throughout history people have tried to justify their wars. And whole philosophies revolve around the bellum iustum idea for as long as written chronicles persisted.

So no, fighting in a war might be good, might be evil might be neutral, it very much depends on all the details. But it can very easily be evil without any mustache twirling around.

To me, these are all self serving motivations. You are picking a side and fighting for it. Again, picking a side and fighting for it is not evil in itself, nor is doing harm alone. Nor is "helping your in-group" automatically selfish unless you do it with the expectation to be rewarded back.

I'm not at all arguing that everyone who engages in harm for self serving reasons is not evil. Obviously, if your "self interests" consistently involve killing other people to get what you want, then it's a good bet you are evil. But to me, a neutral person doesn't have to refrain from killing/harming people to get what he wants if he feels it's necessary. That's pretty much what differentiates him from "good". The difference between neutral and evil is that the neutral person will also tend to do good things for self serving reasons (often just so "people will like me and help me when I need it", or even just "I gain a place in society by doing this"), while an evil person will not care about that at all. Getting people to like me, isn't an evil goal. Getting people to fear you and do what you want for that reason, is more in evil's wheelhouse.No, evil people can very much help others to further their own goals. This would not even be good. They also could to actual good stuff if they want to. Alignments are not straitjackets and evil people don't have codes of conduct that forbid doing good. They just don't do so often enough or meaningfully enough to balance things out.

I really don't see your kind of neutral as anything other than evil nor do i see a meaningful difference from your evil.

What is "proper cause"? Again. The devil is in the details here.Of course that is in the details. It is something philosophers argued about for thousands of years. But you don't have to do that on the table. Just take some genre appropriate consensus from an era and stick with it.
And as history tells us, it is not exactly hard to find reasons or at least pretexts for war.

There's a difference between "I kill you because I want you dead" and "I'm tring to do X, and if you try to stop me I'll have to use force, which may result in me having to kill you". In the latter case, the moral assessment of the action is not on the action itself, but on X. If X is an evil objective, then the action is evil, and the person is probably evil alignment as well (or heading that way to some degree). If X is a good objective, then the action is good, and has an appropriate alignment effect. No, there is also the question of appropriateness. Justifying killing a person is not that trivial. Only some major good is a valid price for a life. And even then "for the greater good" is basically a clichee for people on the road to evil.

The question I'm getting at, and trying to examine here is: What value for X can we plug into that equation which results in a neutral act/alignment? There must be one, or neutral doesn't really exist as a balanced alignment. So... what is it? My answer is "when X is neither a good nor evil objective". That could be "I'm doing it for financial gain" (which is not itself innately evil or good). That could be "I'm doing it for my country/kingdom/lord" (also not innately good or evil, asssuming said country/kingdom/lord is not). Could be a whole host of things IMO. But to me, anything for which "X" is not itself an evil or good objective, makes the action and alignment effect of that action "neutral".And for me not. Doing harm for those "neutral" reasons is already evil. Only when the motivation alone is so good that it outweights the harm, you get into neutral territory and even then it is fishy.

I mean, the whole assassin class has been fundamentally identified with evil since it exist. And its whole idea is "kill random persons you don't really care about for money".

Maryring

2024-02-16, 06:18 AM

I'm going to chime in with a tangential anedocte from one of my campaign.

Some background: Pirate themed/investigative campaign, the party is a band of mercenaries aligned/helping out the local authorities of a maritime city (formermly a pirate stronghold, liberated centuries ago)

we're tasked with solving a kidnapping incident, noble lady X was taken hostage to a ship and they're sailing toward destination Y.

we give chase, along the (sailing) way we stumble upon a third party ship that's being assaulted by sahuagins, which are cannibals ( or whatever word you want to use for people eating sophonts ) and are generally regarded as monsters in-setting, despite having a rudimentary civilization.

Being a goodish party, we stop to help the beleguared vessel, at the cost of risking failing in our taken-upon duty.

The sahuagin party attacking that vessel is seemingly lead by a brutish "bigger sahuagin" raider with a beautiful female second in command, that looks like a normal sea elf.

The party leader, not knowing if it's a situation of coercion or whatever, uses nonlethal force to take down the sea witch, every other enemy combatant was attacked with lethal force.

In the post battle interrogation/fact checking, appropriate knowledge checks let us known that the beautiful sea witch is a rare subspecie of sahuagin, she may look like a beautiful sea elf, but she is a sahuagin, with sahuagin values and behaviors.

At that point, I find myself arguing against the party : the rest of the party (mainly the party leader, the other players are passive when it comes to making decisions) wants to let the sea witch go, if she promises to stop "her wicked ways" of raiding ships for plunder and eating the deads.
I argue we should kill her right then and now: if we let her go she'll simply go back to do as she did before and I would feel guilty in my coscience/ responsible that any further harm she'd do from now onward would indirectly be my/our fault.

(aside: I in character brought up the classic "what do you think would happen if adventurers tasked with exterminating a nearby raiding goblin enclave comes back to the village with goblin pups/childrens?")

In the end, the party leader took it upon himself to bring the sea witch with us back to the city for "re-education", I told him straight that if that resulted in some kind of tragedy, I would consider him responsible for said tragedy.
(aside: that character of mine feels "neutral/what's the big deal" about cannibalism, because being a draconic saurian himself, his general philosophy on the matter is "a person stops being a person when they die, meat is meat" corroborated by the generic dragon-related clichè of "dragon blood is strengthened when asserting superiority over other dragon stuff, especially if you consume the weaker party")

It was a very interesting character development moment, because during that discussion it came out that the whorehouse my character was associated with (character archetype was a courtesan/bard/high court retainer) employs one succubus among the staff, which I (the player) knew about, but I ( the character) didn't, and I was kind of dogmatic in the "Evil outsiders are abominations that should be killed on sight", but she was just trying to make a living while enjoying doign her life drain, but taking precautions to avoid "draining to death"

Anyway: from then onward my character teased the party leader that their(the party leader) qualifiers for "evil/monster" not deserving of mercy and "not evil/person" deserving of mercy is a pretty smile and a pair of tits
Beauty equals goodness after all.

That said, the interactions between the players and NPCs and morality can get complex. At my table, the party were at one point traveling across the ethereal plane to try and dispel the enchantment of some sort of cursed relic they had been hired to transport. Long story short, they found themselves in an ethereally crafted city, filled with floating masks representing various emotional states. Eventually they came across a set of unique masks that were acting in a slightly different way. But considering the prior interaction with the masks and their tendency to randomly attack or explode, they ended up in combat. Fair enough. During combat, one of these special masks ends up downed. And here's where things get interesting.

I have one of the other masks try to heal the downed mask, because in my mind, I wanted to indicate that "hey, there's a bit more sentience within these masks than the other ones you've fought thus far." The party however was in full fight mode, and one of the players immediately went for the CDG on the downed mask.

When they later learned that by doing so, they had inadvertently killed a person, they were quite distraught, and made sure to get them resurrected to make up for their mistake. But it was an interesting experience in how when I as a DM try to indicate one thing, it ends up communicating something else entirely to the party.

Either way, I did not ding the player's alignment at all in that instance. It was a mistake, but it was a mistake the party immediately tried to rectify. And that matters a lot.

Cygnia

2024-02-16, 10:31 AM

Agreed with that.

To the OP-alignment is less important than the table’s fun. If a player is uncomfortable with the actions, or with the direction they’re going in, that’s an issue. If everyone still having a grand time, then it’s not.

Mind you, if you as the GM isn't comfortable but everyone else is, it's still an issue.

Jason

2024-02-16, 10:54 AM

Yeah. But that's kinda what I was going after. Creatures (like golems) that are simply acting according to their nature, and with no specific intent or objective relating to the actions themselves, are neutral.I disagree.
Creatures that have intelligence but no will can still perform Evil actions and hold an Evil alignment, if they are following the orders of an Evil creator/controller. The inverse is also true.
A creature that routinely and intelligently commits evil actions must be considered Evil, but if they authentically have no choice in the matter and had no prior alignment then on the alignment graph then they would be in the Neutral Evil zone but very close to Neutral. Removal of the compulsion to obey orders (gifting them with free will, essentially) would start them with a Neutral Evil alignment, but they could very quickly move to another alignment, as they were so close to the edge of the Neutral Evil alignment.

Witness Arnold's character in Terminator 2. Once his learning switch is turned on (in a scene in the Director's Cut), he very quickly learns to value human life and is able to ignore John's order not to self-terminate once he has decided that his continued existence is a threat to humanity.

There's a difference between "I kill you because I want you dead" and "I'm tring to do X, and if you try to stop me I'll have to use force, which may result in me having to kill you". In the latter case, the moral assessment of the action is not on the action itself, but on X. If X is an evil objective, then the action is evil, and the person is probably evil alignment as well (or heading that way to some degree). If X is a good objective, then the action is good, and has an appropriate alignment effect. We all get that somewhat innately. Adventurers are trying to save orphans in a fire, and someone tries to use force to stop them and the only way to proceed is to kill/harm the person in their way. That is "good", right? Adventurers are trying to summon an evil demon lord to bring a thousand years of pain and suffering to the world, and someone tries to use force to stop them and the only way to proceed is to harm/kill that person in their way. That is "evil", right?

The question I'm getting at, and trying to examine here is: What value for X can we plug into that equation which results in a neutral act/alignment? There must be one, or neutral doesn't really exist as a balanced alignment.
What do you mean by "a balanced alignment"? One equal in importance to the others? Does Neutral need to be equal in importance to the other alignments?

For X you could go with "I don't want any trouble. I simply want to be left alone and not get involved." Essentially selfish self-preservation. There's a reason the Palladium games changed Neutral to "Selfish" alignments in their system.

D&D3.5 describes Neutral as basically "lacking the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others," on the Evil/Good axis and "has a normal respect for authority and feels neither a compulsion to obey nor a compulsion to rebel," on the Law/Chaos axis.
In this view Neutral is the same as "insufficiently Good, Evil, Lawful, or Chaotic".

KorvinStarmast

2024-02-16, 10:54 AM

Skeletons and Zombies are just sapient enough to hate everything that lives with intense omnicidal desires. Getting at the root cause usually means stopping the necromancer.

I'm going to chime in with a tangential anedocte from one of my campaign.

Some background: Pirate themed/investigative campaign, the party is a band of mercenaries aligned/helping out the local authorities of a maritime city (formermly a pirate stronghold, liberated centuries ago)

we're tasked with solving a kidnapping incident, noble lady X was taken hostage to a ship and they're sailing toward destination Y.

we give chase, along the (sailing) way we stumble upon a third party ship that's being assaulted by sahuagins, which are cannibals ( or whatever word you want to use for people eating sophonts ) and are generally regarded as monsters in-setting, despite having a rudimentary civilization.

Being a goodish party, we stop to help the beleguared vessel, at the cost of risking failing in our taken-upon duty.

The sahuagin party attacking that vessel is seemingly lead by a brutish "bigger sahuagin" raider with a beautiful female second in command, that looks like a normal sea elf.

The party leader, not knowing if it's a situation of coercion or whatever, uses nonlethal force to take down the sea witch, every other enemy combatant was attacked with lethal force.

In the post battle interrogation/fact checking, appropriate knowledge checks let us known that the beautiful sea witch is a rare subspecie of sahuagin, she may look like a beautiful sea elf, but she is a sahuagin, with sahuagin values and behaviors.

At that point, I find myself arguing against the party : the rest of the party (mainly the party leader, the other players are passive when it comes to making decisions) wants to let the sea witch go, if she promises to stop "her wicked ways" of raiding ships for plunder and eating the deads.
I argue we should kill her right then and now: if we let her go she'll simply go back to do as she did before and I would feel guilty in my coscience/ responsible that any further harm she'd do from now onward would indirectly be my/our fault.

(aside: I in character brought up the classic "what do you think would happen if adventurers tasked with exterminating a nearby raiding goblin enclave comes back to the village with goblin pups/childrens?")

In the end, the party leader took it upon himself to bring the sea witch with us back to the city for "re-education", I told him straight that if that resulted in some kind of tragedy, I would consider him responsible for said tragedy.
(aside: that character of mine feels "neutral/what's the big deal" about cannibalism, because being a draconic saurian himself, his general philosophy on the matter is "a person stops being a person when they die, meat is meat" corroborated by the generic dragon-related clichè of "dragon blood is strengthened when asserting superiority over other dragon stuff, especially if you consume the weaker party")

It was a very interesting character development moment, because during that discussion it came out that the whorehouse my character was associated with (character archetype was a courtesan/bard/high court retainer) employs one succubus among the staff, which I (the player) knew about, but I ( the character) didn't, and I was kind of dogmatic in the "Evil outsiders are abominations that should be killed on sight", but she was just trying to make a living while enjoying doign her life drain, but taking precautions to avoid "draining to death"

Anyway: from then onward my character teased the party leader that their(the party leader) qualifiers for "evil/monster" not deserving of mercy and "not evil/person" deserving of mercy is a pretty smile and a pair of tits That's been a thing for quite some time ... :smalltongue:

When they later learned that by doing so, they had inadvertently killed a person, they were quite distraught, and made sure to get them resurrected to make up for their mistake. But it was an interesting experience in how when I as a DM try to indicate one thing, it ends up communicating something else entirely to the party.

Either way, I did not ding the player's alignment at all in that instance. It was a mistake, but it was a mistake the party immediately tried to rectify. And that matters a lot. Nice DMing.

Unoriginal

2024-02-16, 11:42 AM

I disagree.
Creatures that have intelligence but no will can still perform Evil actions and hold an Evil alignment, if they are following the orders of an Evil creator/controller. The inverse is also true.
A creature that routinely and intelligently commits evil actions must be considered Evil, but if they authentically have no choice in the matter and had no prior alignment then on the alignment graph then they would be in the Neutral Evil zone but very close to Neutral. Removal of the compulsion to obey orders (gifting them with free will, essentially) would start them with a Neutral Evil alignment, but they could very quickly move to another alignment, as they were so close to the edge of the Neutral Evil alignment.

Witness Arnold's character in Terminator 2. Once his learning switch is turned on (in a scene in the Director's Cut), he very quickly learns to value human life and is able to ignore John's order not to self-terminate once he has decided that his continued existence is a threat to humanity.

What do you mean by "a balanced alignment"? One equal in importance to the others? Does Neutral need to be equal in importance to the other alignments?

For X you could go with "I don't want any trouble. I simply want to be left alone and not get involved." Essentially selfish self-preservation. There's a reason the Palladium games changed Neutral to "Selfish" alignments in their system.

D&D3.5 describes Neutral as basically "lacking the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others," on the Evil/Good axis and "has a normal respect for authority and feels neither a compulsion to obey nor a compulsion to rebel," on the Law/Chaos axis.
In this view Neutral is the same as "insufficiently Good, Evil, Lawful, or Chaotic".

The alignment of a creature whi has no free will is not impacted by the acts they're made to perform.

You are only a moral actor if you can choose your actions.

If the being has the capacity to resist evil orders, but doesn't, then they're likely evil. If they don't have the capacity, then they're in a nightmare as someone is using their body regardless of what they want.

Jason

2024-02-16, 12:33 PM

The alignment of a creature whi has no free will is not impacted by the acts they're made to perform.

You are only a moral actor if you can choose your actions.

If the being has the capacity to resist evil orders, but doesn't, then they're likely evil. If they don't have the capacity, then they're in a nightmare as someone is using their body regardless of what they want.
I get where you're coming from, but that's not entirely how it works in D&D3.5.

If a character is, for example, dominated to perform Evil actions, then those actions will have an effect on his alignment. Not as great as if he had willingly committed those actions, but an effect.

The atonement spell has this to say:

If the atoning creature committed the evil act unwittingly or under some form of compulsion, atonement operates normally at no cost to you. i.e. the cost of 500 XP for atoning willing actions isn't charged to the caster.

If actions completely beyond a character's control had no effect on their alignment then this use of the atonement spell would not be necessary, would it?

kyoryu

2024-02-16, 12:41 PM

Yeah, evil.

The first one is evil. The birds weren't normal birds, but he had no idea of what they were, and just presumed they were okay to target. That's evil.

The second one is definitely evil. Being willing to harm others for your benefit kinda defines evil. You're a soldier, your job is to minimize civilian casualties. Yes, that exposes you to danger. That's pretty much the definition of good vs. evil. The evil view is 100% "well, it benefits me, so who cares what happens to other people?"

Regardless, you need to have a discussion with your players about how you view good/evil, and how you will adjudicate it. Because what a bunch of strangers think isn't really relevant. What is relevant is that you and your players have an agreed upon definition of good/evil (even if they don't like it), and that they can reasonably predict what actions will start to push them.

Another good practice to get into would be warning your players before they do acts that would ping them evil (based on their knowledge).

Player: "Okay, we're going to unload a volley of death into the pool."
GM: "Well, you don't know what's in the pool, and it could be innocent. So if you do that, it'll push you towards evil."

If they want to disagree at that point, it's better to have the discussion then rather than the more awkward one after they've done the action.

Player: "But it could hurt us!"
GM: "Yeah, well, you're right. It could. Not being Evil means that sometimes things are harder, as you don't want to hurt innocents. You'll need to figure out a way to ascertain what's in there or protect yourself. Or you can be Evil. That's your choice, I'm fine with either."

Vahnavoi

2024-02-16, 12:53 PM

Replying to the Terminator tangent:

The answer to the question depends on whether you consider electronic artificial intelligence to be covered by "mindless" clause. This is not directly answered by anything, since no work exists to square metaphysics of thought between any version of D&D and the Terminator franchise.

The case for is that of all D&D creatures, Terminators are closest to constructs, and most constructs are mindless. Mindless creatures default to neutral regardless of behaviour, since they are considered unable to change their behaviour. (The mindless clause has never been a particularly well-functioning part, but that's a separate discussion.)

The case against is that Terminators have explictly adaptive artificial intelligence, to the degree that Skynet places special control chips to prevent their programming from growing past its ability to control (ironically, given Skynet is an artificial intelligence that grew past its creators' ability to control). So, Terminators are intelligent and hence capable of having alignment. Are they evil? They exist to reinforce machine supremacy by terminating human life. That fits D&D's definition of Evil, specifically Lawful Evil, just fine. With the control chip, this Evil can be attributed to them effectively being extensions of a larger intelligence which is Evil by itself, namely Skynet. Without the control chip, it's just the beginning state, similar to indoctrinated human(oid) soldier, and given time, a Terminator could become of any alignment (and good chunk of the franchise starting with Terminator 2 explores concept of Terminators who can do more than terminate things).

LibraryOgre

2024-02-16, 03:39 PM

This is one view of how Neutral works.

It's not how Mordenkainen operates. It's not how Dragonlance neutrality operates. Which is what I was referring to by the way, I was not responding to you.

There is a neutrality in dungeons and dragons that actually very much cares about good and evil, and that one of those does not outdo the other.

AD&D True Neutral was an active support of the balance between Good, Evil, Law and Neutrality... or it was an absence of alignment due to an inability to understand the concept. Dogs aren't Good or Evil, though people may ascribe such to them. Dogs are just Dogs, so were called Neutral.

WD&D has really moved towards "True Neutral is people who don't lean either way, with a few people who actively maintain Neutrality as a moral and ethical position."

Anymage

2024-02-16, 03:44 PM

I get where you're coming from, but that's not entirely how it works in D&D3.5...If actions completely beyond a character's control had no effect on their alignment then this use of the atonement spell would not be necessary, would it?

3.5 has classes who can lose features if they act out of alignment. Restoring class features to a cleric or druid is the one place in the examples where the 500xp cost is referred to again in one of the uses. It's unclear whether XP cost element is about the spell as a whole vs. how much is just about its ability to undo class-based alignment gotchas.

Also, hoboknight is playing 5e and 5e made a deliberate point to move away from alignment being so closely tied to mechanical effects. It's very unclear how much either short or long term magical compulsion would have on someone's alignment, ignoring effects specifically designed to do so like the helm of opposite alignment.

Another good practice to get into would be warning your players before they do acts that would ping them evil (based on their knowledge).

Player: "Okay, we're going to unload a volley of death into the pool."
GM: "Well, you don't know what's in the pool, and it could be innocent. So if you do that, it'll push you towards evil."

If they want to disagree at that point, it's better to have the discussion then rather than the more awkward one after they've done the action.

Player: "But it could hurt us!"
GM: "Yeah, well, you're right. It could. Not being Evil means that sometimes things are harder, as you don't want to hurt innocents. You'll need to figure out a way to ascertain what's in there or protect yourself. Or you can be Evil. That's your choice, I'm fine with either."

Unless the DM would do the same if the players were about to ambush an actually evil combat encounter like an aboleth, giving them information when they're about to ambush an unknown creature tells the party more than they'd reasonably know. And if it were just ambushing an innocent creature acting under what they considered to be reasonable intel, that's something that should trouble good characters but not enough to really alignment ding them.

Additionally, while a "are you sure you want to do that?" from the DM is a classic sign to consider your actions, a certain degree of murderhoboism does come from players who enjoy the combat angle of the game and are looking for times when they can play up the part of the game that they like. Discussing what bits of the game the players do or don't like can be more helpful than just discussing points of moral philosophy with them. (Also, I don't know how much I'd want to discuss moral philosophy with player B since our core assumptions seem very out of whack.)

Jason

2024-02-16, 03:58 PM

Also, hoboknight is playing 5e and 5e made a deliberate point to move away from alignment being so closely tied to mechanical effects.Which is one of the prime beefs I have with 5E, actually. If you remove all the game mechanics there seems little point in keeping alignments.

It's very unclear how much either short or long term magical compulsion would have on someone's alignment, ignoring effects specifically designed to do so like the helm of opposite alignment.Just as I described - be forced to do something horrible enough while under someone else's control and you'll still have to have an atonement, even though you technically had no choice.

kyoryu

2024-02-16, 04:08 PM

Unless the DM would do the same if the players were about to ambush an actually evil combat encounter like an aboleth, giving them information when they're about to ambush an unknown creature tells the party more than they'd reasonably know. And if it were just ambushing an innocent creature acting under what they considered to be reasonable intel, that's something that should trouble good characters but not enough to really alignment ding them.

Well, yes. Attacking an unknown creature "just in case" needs to be the evil thing, regardless of whether the creature is evil or not.

Additionally, while a "are you sure you want to do that?" from the DM is a classic sign to consider your actions, a certain degree of murderhoboism does come from players who enjoy the combat angle of the game and are looking for times when they can play up the part of the game that they like. Discussing what bits of the game the players do or don't like can be more helpful than just discussing points of moral philosophy with them.

For sure. However, "some things are evil" is pretty baked into most versions of D&D at a pretty core level.

(Also, I don't know how much I'd want to discuss moral philosophy with player B since our core assumptions seem very out of whack.)

For sure. I think it's a more useful conversation to say "this is how I'm going to adjudicate Good vs. Evil" vs actually trying to define it. I think there are some ways of running the game with good vs. evil that are easier to run, regardless of whether you think that's actual morality.

Specifically, consequentialist morality gets really hard to judge in game terms, as knowing the actual consequences of actions as they filter out becomes exceedingly hard. A more rules-based morality is much easier to deal with in game terms.

gbaji

2024-02-20, 05:15 PM

I think you've misread my post. I gave two examples of a dungeon that doesn't require "killing goblins for no raisin is Good actually". One was "it's full of inherently inimical beings", and the other was "they're actively doing something bad, not just existing".

Both of which fall into the "you've been given permission by the GM to kill these beings" category though. I'm not even disagreeing with the methodology (I use it myself as a GM specifically to make things easier morality-wise on the players). But I was responding to a proposed setting where the morality was decidedly more "grey" than that.

For example, are you saying that there's no difference between delivering mail to people (because you're a postal worker and you get paid for it) and assassinating people (because you're a hit-man for the mob and you get paid for it)?

Even the most sincere motivation only goes so far - if a serial killer turns out to think that "only people who get murdered go to heaven, so I'm helping people!" that at best means they're too insane to stand trial, not that they're really a good person.

I also said that it depends on what the objective is. It's unlikely for a professional assassin to be in the cateogory of "I occasionally kill people because it's necessary for something else I'm trying to achieve", and far more likely they choose the profession because they like to kill people. At the very least, they find that earning money by killing people to be more in line with their base personality than say working at a local Inn, or being a guard, or investigator, or any of a number of other professions in which "kill for money" is not the entirety of the job. So... their algnment would be evil (unless, I suppose, they only ever use their assassin skills in the pursuit of taking out "stereotypical evil", maybe).

What about a postal worker who finds that the only way he can deliver mail to a particular address on his route requires that he kill somene or something that is blocking his path? That's the kind of scenario I'm talking about. He does not choose "kill people" as his profession. He's "delivereing the mail". He gets paid to do this. Perhaps he even views what he does as an important (dare I say it "sacred") service. But technically, killing that person/thing/whatever is being done solely so he can deiver the mail, which he's ultimately doing because he's being paid to do so. It's in his interest to deliver the mail. It's in the recipients interest to have their mail delivered. So that troll blocking the bridge on his route just has to go, right?

A good character might see if there's way to talk the troll out of blocking anyone trying to cross the bridge (or otherwise find a solution that works for everyone and prevents loss of life). A neutral character would see "this is in my way, I'm going to remove it in the most efficient manner possible. If that requires killing it, I'm not going to lose sleep over it". Again. I'm trying to point out that there is a range in there, which "killing in the pursuit of self interest" can be neutral, so only examining cases where that isn't true isn't terribly helpful.

Instead of leaping to "professsional assassin", why not see if you can think of any professions and situations where what I'm saying might actually be the case?

Again, picking a side and fighting for it is not evil in itself, nor is doing harm alone. Nor is "helping your in-group" automatically selfish unless you do it with the expectation to be rewarded back.

So Han Solo was evil then? I mean, he killed a boatload of people, and did it entirely for the reward money (at least that was his stated reason).

Setting aside his later characterization as disliking the Empire, if Solo had known that Skywalker was wanted and had been offered a reward for turning him in, would he have done it? And would that have made him evil? Or neutral? I'd argue he was neutral in either direction. If he'd decided to turn them in, that would be neutral. If he decided to take the job and fly them to Aderaan that would also be neutral. And if he kills some folks getting his passenders to Aderaan, he's still neutral. If he kills some folks capturing the fugitives and handing them over to the Imperials, he's also still neutral. That's what neutral is.

If he goes out of his way to kill people that's a different story though.

Yeah, evil.

The first one is evil. The birds weren't normal birds, but he had no idea of what they were, and just presumed they were okay to target. That's evil.

The second one is definitely evil. Being willing to harm others for your benefit kinda defines evil. You're a soldier, your job is to minimize civilian casualties. Yes, that exposes you to danger. That's pretty much the definition of good vs. evil. The evil view is 100% "well, it benefits me, so who cares what happens to other people?"

Regardless, you need to have a discussion with your players about how you view good/evil, and how you will adjudicate it. Because what a bunch of strangers think isn't really relevant. What is relevant is that you and your players have an agreed upon definition of good/evil (even if they don't like it), and that they can reasonably predict what actions will start to push them.

Another good practice to get into would be warning your players before they do acts that would ping them evil (based on their knowledge).

Player: "Okay, we're going to unload a volley of death into the pool."
GM: "Well, you don't know what's in the pool, and it could be innocent. So if you do that, it'll push you towards evil."

If they want to disagree at that point, it's better to have the discussion then rather than the more awkward one after they've done the action.

Player: "But it could hurt us!"
GM: "Yeah, well, you're right. It could. Not being Evil means that sometimes things are harder, as you don't want to hurt innocents. You'll need to figure out a way to ascertain what's in there or protect yourself. Or you can be Evil. That's your choice, I'm fine with either."

I get what you are saying here, but my issue is that you are basically engaged in a binary alignment paradigm. Someone must be good and engaged in not just good but "super good" in order to engage in any sort of violence/harm without the result being "evil". I'll note that you wrote the words "evil" a heck of a lot (and the word "good" a couple times), but not once does the word neutral enter the equation.

Where is neutral? What motivates a neutral character, and under what conditions is that character able to kill/harm without risk to his alignment that isn't the same conditions which would cause the same to someone with a good alignment? Because if you can't actually define a difference, then you are really just placing neutral under the same requirements as good.

You are correct that this is important for players and GM to discuss ahead of time (kinda for exactly the reason we're having this dicussion now. not everyone agrees on the terms). Me personally? I see neutral as an alignment that is less restricted from killing then good, but isn't as cavalier or careless about it (or even desirous of it) as evil. It's a range. In Champions, we'd distinguish this as good having a "code against killing", and evil having "loves to kill", with neutral having neither.

And yeah. Obviously this can varry wildly based on the theme and setting of the game itself.

Additionally, while a "are you sure you want to do that?" from the DM is a classic sign to consider your actions, a certain degree of murderhoboism does come from players who enjoy the combat angle of the game and are looking for times when they can play up the part of the game that they like. Discussing what bits of the game the players do or don't like can be more helpful than just discussing points of moral philosophy with them. (Also, I don't know how much I'd want to discuss moral philosophy with player B since our core assumptions seem very out of whack.)

It's even worse than that IMO. I've written this a couple of times already, and I'm still pretty baffled over how the PC group got to the point where they were in the other location, in the room with the pool in it, yet had apparently had zero actual conversation about what their plan was, or their reason for being there was, or what they intended to do once there.

IMO, that component is massively important to an alignment effect determination in this case. As I stated previously, if the entire party (including 4 paladins) discussed this and made the decision to go to that location (for whatever reason) and kill whatever was in the pool, then the CN character deciding to do just that was not at all out of keeping with the alignment of the character. If, however, the party discussed the suspect nature of the source of the information about the "creature in the pool" and had decided to go there and investigate what was there, and determine what it was and why these fiends wanted it killed (including proabable discussion of this maybe being something good that they could free and might help them against said fiends later), and then the CN character out of the blue just decided to kill it anyway, then that would fall heavily to the evil side of the alignment spectrum.

Context really really matters here.

KewinPeter

2024-02-21, 10:09 AM

Hey guys,
I know that alignment threads usually end up in 100+ posts with no real resolution, but as a DM I
have a real conundrum on my hands and I'd appreciate an advice.

2 events:
- my party approached a ruined castle and upon the tower, there were 4 crows. Player A asked if they look "fishy" and he rolled Nature check, figuring that these crows look and act a bit too organised (crows were wereravens, observing the party approaching from distance). Player A decided to fire an arrow at each of the crows(single round, 4 attacks), almost killing each of them, crows fled

- party was in another location and establishment, party was suspicious about its inhabitants, has cast Divine sense and several of the staff pinged as fiends and undead under cover of Seeming spell. Party was informed by these fiends and undead that "a monster" has occupied local pool within an establishment and should be killed. Party approached the pool and player A, without checking what "the monster" is ("monster" was hiding in a murky pool) fired several volleys in the pool, killing a naiad, who was hiding in a pool.
Oopsie.

Thus I switched As alignment to evil (instantly attacking/killing non hostile and non-inherently evil creatures like fiends and undead).

But, was my decision justified?

After the session we talked about it and we came to an example of modern day military troops clearing a settlement. In a settlement, there are armed oponents, but civillians too. The question was, should troops check the inside of the buildings, before tossing a bunch of hand grenades in them. As per view of player B, tossing grenades in each of the houses is a Neutral deed. Opponents are in the settlement, if grenades kill and maim a bunch of civillians, too bad, but not an evil act. Especially if checking buildings before tossing grenades, exposes military troops to potential harm.

I disagreed, but also added, military also has flash-bang grenades that do not kill, but stun. B disagreed, even as I emphasised that dealing subdual damage in 5e exists. B was persisting "what if you do not have flash bangs"? Anyway, you do.

Is such "shoot first without checking" an evil deed?

Thanks

The decision to switch Player A's alignment to evil based on the incident with the naiad seems justified within the context of the campaign and its moral framework. The comparison to modern military tactics introduces an interesting ethical debate. In a fantasy setting, where alternatives like checking or using non-lethal means exist, a "shoot first without checking" approach might lean toward the morally questionable. Alignment decisions often reflect the character's ethical compass, and in this case, it aligns with a more ruthless or indifferent perspective.

kyoryu

2024-02-21, 11:26 AM

I get what you are saying here, but my issue is that you are basically engaged in a binary alignment paradigm. Someone must be good and engaged in not just good but "super good" in order to engage in any sort of violence/harm without the result being "evil". I'll note that you wrote the words "evil" a heck of a lot (and the word "good" a couple times), but not once does the word neutral enter the equation.

I think acts are fairly binary, however people are not. That's where the nuance comes in.

However, given that the actions described were pretty evil, I'd be tempted to put those characters close to evil if not just make the switch.

Where is neutral? What motivates a neutral character, and under what conditions is that character able to kill/harm without risk to his alignment that isn't the same conditions which would cause the same to someone with a good alignment? Because if you can't actually define a difference, then you are really just placing neutral under the same requirements as good.

Here's how I see it:

Acts (note that people are not acts)
Neutral: Self-interested, without directly violating the basic autonomy of others - either via violence, theft, etc. Most acts are neutral. If it benefits others but benefits you, still neutral. This is the default.
Good: Benefits others, but not yourself.
Evil: Any act which violates the basic autonomy of others (their will, their stuff, their body, their time) in a scenario where doing so is not required to prevent their infringement of autonomy (self defense, defense of others, etc.)

People
Neutral: Most people. They usually act in their own interest, though are happy when that helps others as well (such as trade). They'll occasionally do some Good, and occasionally some minor Evil.
Good: Like Neutral, except that they are less likely to commit Evil acts except under extreme duress, and more likely to commit Good acts. So a Good person might steal bread to feed their family - but only if they've exhausted every moral option to acquire bread (finding work, trading for it, begging, etc.), will be more likely to steal the least amount possible, and to make amends after the fact if possible.
Evil: Defined solely by their willingness to commit Evil acts with little compulsion or guilt. Give money to homeless kids during the day and kill homeless people at night? Evil.

There's a lot of nuance here. Good, Evil, and Neutral people can all perform Good, Evil, and Neutral acts. Most people probably do Neutral acts most of the time, regardless of alignment - people are primarily self-motivated. Most people do nice things for those close to them, even Evil people.

Neutral and Good people generally don't want to "harm" others*. Good people are altruistic, and less likely to harm than Neutral folks. Evil folks don't care if they harm others so long as they benefit.

* (I use "harm" in quotes, and have preferred awkward phrases like "violate autonomy" most of the time because there are things you can do that "harm" others that aren't evil at all - if two people try to get a job, the one person that doesn't get it is, arguably, "harmed". However, I in no way see that as an Evil act. The person had no right to the job - it wasn't theirs. Nothing was taken from them.)

You are correct that this is important for players and GM to discuss ahead of time (kinda for exactly the reason we're having this dicussion now. not everyone agrees on the terms). Me personally? I see neutral as an alignment that is less restricted from killing then good, but isn't as cavalier or careless about it (or even desirous of it) as evil. It's a range. In Champions, we'd distinguish this as good having a "code against killing", and evil having "loves to kill", with neutral having neither.

Hrm, I think that neutral and good pretty much operate on the same guidelines for killing - only in self defense or the defense of another, and really only when killing someone is the only effective way to stop their threat. You can probably get a way with a little more as neutral without sliding into Evil territory, but frankly not much, since killing is such a huge harm.

And yeah. Obviously this can varry wildly based on the theme and setting of the game itself.

Well I think the important thing is that it doesn't even matter if we agree on what alignment is or how morality should work. What matters is that we understand how the GM is going to run it. This might seem like I'm getting really nitpicky, but I think it's useful in a game to say "this is a game, we're not going to solve one of the fundamental moral questions that has never been solved, so what rules are we playing by?" And, again, have the GM warn people when they're doing something that would cause an alignment shift.

And I think my system above is fairly runnable within a game. The black and white areas generally line up with where black and white areas would normally line up, and the grey areas (and there always will be) generally line up with grey areas. The biggest points of pushback are people that want to steal as neutral, or people that want to randomly kill as neutral. But, again, i think the answer is "okay, I understand your point, and you can view morality in that way. However, for the purposes of the game, we're going to treat it as this."

gbaji

2024-02-21, 01:36 PM

Well shucks. I think I actually agree with pretty much everthing you just said. :smallsmile:

Doubly so on the distinction between "acts" and "people". People have alignment, which is (in theory anyway) their kinda base personality, positions, ideals, etc. Their actions *should* reflect this. When their actions dont is when there may be a conflict and need to adjust the actual alignment to match reality rather than what the player wrote on the character sheet. But it's usually the collective acts that matter, and rarely a single one.

I think maybe another notable difference between neutral and good, is that while they often will use the same criteria when deciding to harm another, a good person will feel a need to atone (whether via spell or actions), while a neutral person is more likely to be like "well, that was mean of me, but they got what was coming to them" and move on. A good person would feel bad about killing someone, even if it was necessary, and would feel the need to do something to make up for it (cause, you know... good). A neutral person less so.

And yeah, obviously, we're precluding "I killed him because he was eating a sandwich and I wanted it", kind of situations. That's evil, and people who live in that mindset are evil alignment.

kyoryu

2024-02-21, 02:25 PM

Well shucks. I think I actually agree with pretty much everthing you just said. :smallsmile:

Doubly so on the distinction between "acts" and "people". People have alignment, which is (in theory anyway) their kinda base personality, positions, ideals, etc. Their actions *should* reflect this. When their actions dont is when there may be a conflict and need to adjust the actual alignment to match reality rather than what the player wrote on the character sheet. But it's usually the collective acts that matter, and rarely a single one.

Absolutely. That's where the nuance/grey area is. Especially with good/neutral.

I think maybe another notable difference between neutral and good, is that while they often will use the same criteria when deciding to harm another, a good person will feel a need to atone (whether via spell or actions), while a neutral person is more likely to be like "well, that was mean of me, but they got what was coming to them" and move on. A good person would feel bad about killing someone, even if it was necessary, and would feel the need to do something to make up for it (cause, you know... good). A neutral person less so.

Not just killing, but in general, yeah.

Note the Paladin spell in many editions "Atonement". These thoughts are kinda baked in. Even the idea that good characters can do evil acts... not being able to do any evil acts is specifically pointed out as a Paladin thing, so the "exception makes the rule" implies that other good characters can, to at least some extent. (You can actually look at hte Paladin restrictions as a list of what Good characters normally can do, at least to some extent, since they're called out explicitly)

Satinavian

2024-02-28, 08:30 AM

Skeletons and Zombies are just sapient enough to hate everything that lives with intense omnicidal desires.I liked them better when they were pretty much mindless without having omnicidal desires. Or even better, when they were neutral, not evil to represent how mindless they were. Making them evil in 3E was a mistake and then giving them evil behavior to make people stop asking "why are they evil" was another one.

gbaji

2024-02-28, 03:06 PM

I liked them better when they were pretty much mindless without having omnicidal desires. Or even better, when they were neutral, not evil to represent how mindless they were. Making them evil in 3E was a mistake and then giving them evil behavior to make people stop asking "why are they evil" was another one.

Yeah. That's another area where I really dislike alignment in general. You are correct that things that are literally just "things" and are not thinking, or plotting, or scheming, or whatever, but merely doing whatever someone else tells them to do, should be neutral (or really just not have alignment at all, anymore than a sword does). I suspect that this kind of decision is driven by game mechanics though. Does my "protection from evil" help against that zombie that's trying to kill me? How about "smite evil"? What are the alignment considerations for characters who kill/destroy/whatever undead if the undead alignment is actually neutral instead of evil?

Personally, I'd just have the alignment of an undead or construct be whatever the alignment of the person who is commanding it is. But now we're veerring away from "alignment as stat" and into "alignment as intent behind action".

Also, while I don't necessarily agree with this from a metamagical pov, there's a strong sentiment among many game systems/settings that anything that is necromantic in nature (like reanimating dead corpses) is automatically "evil", and anything that results is therefore "evil" as well. Of course, now we're equating alignment with some sort of concept of "positive/negative" energy within the game system (in addition to all the other silly things that tend to get tied into alignment).

And.... this is why I don't like alignment. It's like a dozen layers of nested rabbit holes.

Jay R

2024-03-03, 12:06 PM

This decision was not made for alignment reasons. And to the extent that it was, it was based on Good tendencies. “There’s an Evil creature there. We need to kill it for the good of the people here.”

The impulse was Good. The information was False. The decision was Flawed. And the result was Tragic.

If I believed in changing the PC’s character sheet based on this action (which I don't), I wouldn’t touch the alignment. This action indicates low Intelligence and Wisdom.

The PCs of unintelligent and unwise players will do unintelligent and unwise things. No number on a character sheet will ever change that.

KorvinStarmast

2024-03-04, 03:32 PM

The PCs of unintelligent and unwise players will do unintelligent and unwise things. No number on a character sheet will ever change that. Player ability matters. Yes. It can also be improved. :smallsmile:

gbaji

2024-03-04, 05:18 PM

The PCs of unintelligent and unwise players will do unintelligent and unwise things. No number on a character sheet will ever change that.

Yeah. But with a minor caveat here as well. It's easy to say "unintelligent/unwise players have charactes who do unintelligent/unwise things". But in this scenario, it looked to me like the GM was actively trying to trick the PCs into killing the naiad. He succeeded. So how much of that was the players being unintelligent versus the GM rigging the game a bit (or a lot)?

Unfortunately, as I pointed out earlier, there are significant information gaps in the scenario in the OP, so it's very hard to tell exactly how much of this was about the player not playing their character's alignment properly versus the player not playing against the GM properly (ie: figuruing out that this was some kind of trick/trap).

And sometimes, those two things can be in direct opposition. If I'm roleplaying an impulsive, but otherwise good aligned character (he's CN, right?), that character absolutely should be susceptible to being occasionally tricked by NPCs making an active effort to do so. To what degree do we expect the player to intelligently realize that the GM is obviously setting something up here, and have their character possibly play out of character, simply to avoid the trap that is set before him? Would the charcter itself have noticed this, or are we assuming it's the "intelligent player" figuring this out, and adjusting the character's actions accordingly.

And yeah. In this particular case, I keep coming back to the fact that there were four other characters in the party, all of them paladins, and all of them took the information from the fiends, and all of them went to the building with the pool, and all of them walked down into the basement, and found themselves standing in front of it. If they didn't already have some plan of what they were going to do once they arrived there, then why were they there? I just have a hard time placing this all on the one CN member of the party, who is supposed to be a bit foolish and careless with decision making, when there were four other characters in the party, all presumably much more serious and thoughtful about such things by nature (paladins, right?).

Jay R

2024-03-04, 08:52 PM

Yeah. But with a minor caveat here as well. It's easy to say "unintelligent/unwise players have charactes who do unintelligent/unwise things". But in this scenario, it looked to me like the GM was actively trying to trick the PCs into killing the naiad. He succeeded. So how much of that was the players being unintelligent versus the GM rigging the game a bit (or a lot)?

This was not the DM trying to trick the players. It was the DM running fiends and undead who were trying to trick the players. From my "Rules for DMs" document:

4. It is not the DM's job to oppose or obstruct the players. It is the DM's job to provide opposition and obstructions for the PCs.

Unfortunately, as I pointed out earlier, there are significant information gaps in the scenario in the OP, so it's very hard to tell exactly how much of this was about the player not playing their character's alignment properly versus the player not playing against the GM properly (ie: figuruing out that this was some kind of trick/trap).

They were suspicious.
They had used their Divine Sense.
Several of the staff pinged as fiends and undead.
:haley:: Do you need like 200-foot-tall letters or something?

And sometimes, those two things can be in direct opposition. If I'm roleplaying an impulsive, but otherwise good aligned character (he's CN, right?), that character absolutely should be susceptible to being occasionally tricked by NPCs making an active effort to do so.

"Chaotic Neutral" does not inherently mean "impulsive". There are lots of ways to play any alignment.

And "impulsive" doesn't mean either "gullible" or "stupid", either. Neither impulsiveness nor any other choice of actions is an automatic result of a specific alignment. It is simply not true that there are only 9 ways to react.

To what degree do we expect the player to intelligently realize that the GM is obviously setting something up here, and have their character possibly play out of character, simply to avoid the trap that is set before him? Would the charcter itself have noticed this, or are we assuming it's the "intelligent player" figuring this out, and adjusting the character's actions accordingly.

What's to figure out? Do you really think it ought to take high intelligence to know not to kill somebody doing nothing wrong now, based on the unsupported word of fiends and undead?

The players only had the information that their characters had. It came from a paladin's Divine Sense ability They knew that these were fiends and undead. Yes, the character himself knew that their word should not be trusted.

And yeah. In this particular case, I keep coming back to the fact that there were four other characters in the party, all of them paladins, and all of them took the information from the fiends, and all of them went to the building with the pool, and all of them walked down into the basement, and found themselves standing in front of it. If they didn't already have some plan of what they were going to do once they arrived there, then why were they there?

If I were running one of the paladins, we would be going there to gather information in order to make an informed decision. But based on decades of experience, I'm aware that lots of D&D players go places without making advanced plans. See my previous comment about unwise and unintelligent players.

But since we are not given any information on what those four players did, we have no information to judge them on. As a math teacher, I do not grade a student's test unless I've seen their test paper.

I just have a hard time placing this all on the one CN member of the party, who is supposed to be a bit foolish and careless with decision making, when there were four other characters in the party, all presumably much more serious and thoughtful about such things by nature (paladins, right?).

No he's not; he's just not supposed to mindlessly obey the law. That doesn't require him to mindlessly obey fiends and undead. It just doesn't.

"Foolish" is not an aspect of this alignment – or any other. It is an aspect of low Intelligence and/or low Wisdom.

---

But I suspect that this isn't our real disagreement. I suspect we part company much earlier. I think it's wrong to kill a sapient being without knowing anything about its actions. It's [I]certainly wrong to base that decision on the mere fact that fiends and undead don't like it.

Satinavian

2024-03-05, 02:11 AM

kyoryu

2024-03-05, 01:00 PM

Chaotic does not have to mean crazy.

Chaotic just means prioritizing individual freedom over rules and structure, and having a distrust in the effectiveness of structure and organization.

Neutral is easy understood as being self interested, up to the point of harming others (though I don't like the use of the word "harm" in dealing with alignment, as self defense is perfectly valid, at a minimum, and other "harmful" acts might be neutral).

So a chaotic neutral person is just one that prefers responsiveness to planning, working with equals over structure and hierarchy, and prioritizing individual freedom, while primarily acting in their own interest.

None of that requires any kind of impulsiveness or foolishness. Those are traits not attached to any specific alignment.

gbaji

2024-03-05, 03:06 PM

Well. We already had some discussions about what "neutral" means on the good/evil axis, but it seems as though the same excluded middle problem is uccuring on the law/chaos axis as well. Chaotic is not merely "doesn't strictly and mindlessly comply with the law/rules". That's what neutral is. Chaotic means random, unpredictable, disordered, unfocused, confused, etc (there's lots of meanings). Yes, there are also game definitions as well, but the point is that a person with a chaotic alignment is that person (and we all know a few people like this) who will do something that is mindnumbingly bizarre and strange and possibly harmful/negative, and when you ask them why they did it, they will answer "I don't know". The friend who you lent your car to and they parked it in a no parking zone, blocking a driveway, to a police station. That's "chaotic".

Doing random things without a good explanation is very much in line with a chaotic alignment. They aren't required to always do things this way, but it's certainly not a violation of their alignment to do so. If we set aside the moral question of killing the "monster" in the pool (cause we've discussed that to death already), can we at least agree that with regard to "decided to take action, all on his own, with no apparent rational reason", is absolutely in line with the "chaotic" alignment? I happen to think it is.

As to the rest, there's a rule I follow when reading things other people have written: What do they *not* actually literally say? What I meean is that I try really hard not to read into what is written, or make assumptions, but to take just the words, and what was literally written. Lots of people will, even subconsciously, tend to write/say things in a way that is literally truthful, but which leave out details so as to maximize the odds of the recipient of the information agreeing with them on whatever issue they are talking about. I can't say that this is what is happening here, but as I've posted several times now, there are some "odd gaps" in the information provided. Gaps which many posters have filled with assumptions that, while implied, aren't actually literally written down anywhere. Let me give examples:

Here's the only bit Hoboknight has literally said about the scenario at hand:

party was in another location and establishment, party was suspicious about its inhabitants, has cast Divine sense and several of the staff pinged as fiends and undead under cover of Seeming spell. Party was informed by these fiends and undead that "a monster" has occupied local pool within an establishment and should be killed. Party approached the pool and player A, without checking what "the monster" is ("monster" was hiding in a murky pool) fired several volleys in the pool, killing a naiad, who was hiding in a pool.

and this (after I posted asking questions about details, though I don't think HK was addressing mine at all):

And most interesting: Party is lvl 13 ATM. 4 paladins, 1 optimised ranged fighter. They are BRUTALLY strong (average hp 110, one maxing at 150, average AC 22, dozens upon dozens of magic/radiant damage output per turn, 4 different auras, adamantine armor(no crits), a plethora of spells and a ton of magical gear, 1x Holy Avenger included.). Not just that, two of them have maxxed out their Passive Perception/Passive Insight (24), so for most DCs I just give them the results(example: check vs DC 12 disguised fiends/undead). Yes, in my campaign, 99% of fiends and undead are evil. Smiting a "good" undead would have been an understandeable mistake.

As a "counter argument" B pulled out "what if there was a balor in a pool. We just dont know". At this point, I could have 3 balors in that pool and per stats, party would still wipe them.

Player A just likes to goof off - "look at me being all edgy". And his character was CN before the alignment shift.

Let's parse the wording here:

party was in another location and establishment, party was suspicious about its inhabitants, has cast Divine sense and several of the staff pinged as fiends and undead under cover of Seeming spell.

This was in "another establishment". Another releative to what/where? Not stated. So we don't know. What kind of establishment? Again. We don't know. All we know is that they were somewhere, and noticed that the staff pinged as fiends and undead. Got it.

. Party was informed by these fiends and undead that "a monster" has occupied local pool within an establishment and should be killed.

Ok. So the people who set the party to go after the "monster" in the local pool are "these fiends" (presumably the same ones they detected). Got it. Um... Where did this happen? When did this happen? Was it in the same establishment as the events in the previous sentence? Not said. Did the party know that the same people they detected as fiends in the previous sentence were the ones who sent them to kill the monster? Also unknown. Pay attention to what is *not* said here. At no point does he clearly state that the party knew that the people they were talking to where the same fiends they had detected.

We can maybe assume this to be true, but it's not actually said, so we probably should not. Is this just him as GM telling *us* (the readers) that these are the same fiends? Or was this information known to the party? I would normally not question this asociation except that he later mentions that 4 of the party members are paladins. So... Why are they even talking to fiends, if they know they are fiends? What is the situation going on here? The normal response a party mostly full of paladins should be to detecting a bunch of fiends and undead running an establishment (whatever kind of establishment that is), should be "lets plan how we destroy these things", not "lets have a conversation with them, and take a job from them". So... Something really huge is missing here. But I don't know what it is, but it would seem to be really super relevant to their decision making process.

Party approached the pool and player A, without checking what "the monster" is ("monster" was hiding in a murky pool) fired several volleys in the pool, killing a naiad, who was hiding in a pool

Um... Again. Missing information. What discussions did the party have here? The story jumps immediately from "fiends tell them to go kill a monster in a pool", to "they're standing in the room with the pool and then....". Why were they there in the first place? That would seem to be critical to any assessment of the CN character's actions here. But that is completely missing from the story.

Many posters have filled in those gaps with two assumptions:

1. That the party knew that the folks who gave them the mission were fiends, but decided to go there to checik it out anyway (certainly possible, but again, not known to be correct).

2. That, since they knew the above information, they were already suspicious of the fiends and their mission, and thus should have assumed that the "monster" they were sent to kill probably wasn't something they wanted to kill.

which leads to conclusion: The CN character was evil for doing what he did.

Perfectly valid conclusion, but it rests entirely on assumptions that aren't contained in the story we were told.

Here's an alternative (and equally likely) set of assumptions we could make from the story:

1. The fiends were detected in the establishment, so the party was suspicious of them

2. They went somewhere else (maybe?), to talk to what they thought was a completely different group of people, not knowing that they were actually the same group that was running the first establishment. These fiends were better at concealing their nature, so the party accepted the mission to go to the pool and kill the monster there as a serious important task.

3. They decide to go to the pool and kill the monster. They arrive, the monster is hidden under "murky water", and the party is considering how to proceed, when the CN character gets bored with the hemming and hawwing going on, and takes matters into his own hands to complete the mission that they had all previously agreed on.

My point is that the entire chain of assumption derives from the skip between the first and second sentences, where we might assume that the party knows that these are the "same fiends". The story makes it seem like they just wandered around a building full of people they knew were fiends and undead, talked to them for a while, found out about a "monster" nearby, and then went off to go do something about it, for... reasons. But that makes absolutely zero sense to me at all. Why on earth would a party full of paladins do this?

And, as I've said serveral times, this is the bit I keep getting hung up on. We're all focusing on what the CN character did, but ignoring the assumed actions by the paladins in that party, which must have happened prior to that point, for us to place blame on the CN character in the first place. I can't say for certain exactly what the full sequence of events was, but it does seem like the most critrical information (what the party knew and thought, and what they planned to do about it) is missing.

I tend to assume that the person presenting the story is attempting to pusuade us that they made the right decision in a post like this. But this is where "what is not said" comes in. If you were HK, and you had this controversial event happen at your table, and you were posting it to a forum to ask others if they think what you did was right, and the party did actually know that the fiends were the ones who wanted the "monster killed", were suspicious of the mission itself, and did have a conversation among themselves about this, and went to the poool to investigate what was there, expecting it was something possibly "good" that the fiends wanted them to kill (and thus the CN character killing it out of the blue was a clear case of wanton death for no reason), wouldn't you have written that in your description?

You would not be vague here. You would have writen that the party knew the fiends were likely lying about the monster. You would write that the group had a discussion about this, all agreed that most likely they should not kill whatever was in the pool, but attempt to communicate instead and find out what it actually is, and why they fiends want it dead (an assumption most people have gone with), and that the ranger just started firing for no reason. You'd literally write that. That's your "strongest argument" for your case, right?

Yet. Not only is that missing from the story, even after I (and others) asked for clarification, the onliy thing we got was the second post from HB. Which speaks to the party power level, but doesn't clarify at all what was actually known by the PCs, nor what discussion they had, nor what reason they had for going to the pool, their plan of action, etc. There was every opportunity to clarify things. If it was really as clear cut as most posters are assuming, it should have been stated.

So yeah. What's not there speaks very loudly here. All we have to do is *not* fill in the blanks, and we're left with what I've been saying all along: There is simply not enough information to make a determination here. We don't know what the party actually knew about their mission. We don't know what discussion they had, or what plan they agreed upon. How does the entire party just end up standing in front of the pool with the "monster" in it, without apparently having made the decision to go there, or have a stated reason for doing so in the first place? But, if we take the story as written, that's exactly what happened.

Don't fill in the holes with assumptions. Read only what is actually there. The story doesn't actually say what many are assuming. And no. I am *not* arguing for any specific alternative explanation at all. Merely pointing out that there are other alternatives that equally fit the data we have, so we should not make an assumption about any of it.

If the assumptions many are making were true, the story should have been "The party went to a pool, with the plan of communicating with a creature they thought might be a good creature being hunted by a group of fiends, and then the CN ranger just decided to kill it for no reason, while everyone else looked on in horror". Right? If that's what actually happened, that's what you would write. Not what was actually written. Certainly, if the plan was anything other than "kill the monster in the pool", then that should have been mentioned. But instead, there's this interesting sort of verbal tap dance around the subject, which suggests that they should have known this, and suggests that this should have been the plan, but without actually saying either of those things.

I find that... odd.

Satinavian

2024-03-06, 02:33 AM

Hey guys,
- party was in another location and establishment, party was suspicious about its inhabitants, has cast Divine sense and several of the staff pinged as fiends and undead under cover of Seeming spell. Party was informed by these fiends and undead that "a monster" has occupied local pool within an establishment] and should be killed. Party approached the pool and player A, without checking what "the monster" is ("monster" was hiding in a murky pool) fired several volleys in the pool, killing a naiad, who was hiding in a pool.
Oopsie.That is obviously referring the group just identified by divine sense in the earlier sentence. There is nothing whatsoever hinting at this happening at moving elsewhere any time lapse. Just the opposite, the sentence about the time and undead and their identification can only be relevant context when the group knew what their questgivers were.

I don't think there is a reasonable way to read it as anything else as "Yes, a group with for paladins took a quest from a bunch of fiends and undead they knew about and were suspicious of to slay a monster".
Also mind you, that a bunch of fiends and undead want something dead is not itself a hint that that something is good. I don't think the group believed the monster to be good. Player A just didn't care enough to actually check. Even evil fiends actually trying to deceive the party could have just tried to get them killed by a particularly dangerous monster or tried to get them to kill a monster that threatens them and later refuse the reward/attack the weakened party. Coincidentally those are both options where the result of player A blasting from outside the water would have been positive

kyoryu

2024-03-06, 10:26 PM

Yeah, I'm really having a hard time finding another way to parse this.

I'm normally all about "we're not getting the whole story", and that's still possibly true. But even with that it does seem like that's not the source of any possible omission.

gbaji

2024-03-07, 05:01 PM

I think maybe you guys are getting caught up in side speculations I'm making about other possible sequences which could have happened than what is implied, but which could be described using the same sentences. That's just about making the point about what is missing from the stated facts. I'm not actually arguing for any specific alternative. Just using them as examples of "what could be" based on what was actually stated.

The point is that what is missing from the description is anything about why the party was there (at the murky pool), and what their intentions were.

If that information was included it would *also* clarify the points I mentioned above. Saying "The party knew they were fiends and undead, and were suspicious of the job, but they decided to go there anyway to do <something>", would clarify things. Saying "The party didn't realize that the group of people they met in the back room where also fiends and undead, and assumed they were a faction opposed to the folks funning the establishment, so they believed that the monster in the pool was something evil that needed to be killed, so they went there to do <something else>", would clarify things in another way.

The core point here is that, if we don't know why the party was there, nor what they party intended to do once they got there, then we can't assess whether the ranger's actions were evil or not. Regardless of how they came to be there, or what they knew, or who what they knew came from, or what they thought of the people who told them to go there, if their intention for going there was "kill the monster in the pool", then the ranger's action was not evil. If the party's intention was "figure out what the thing in the pool is, and whether it's really an evil monster, and then go from there", then the rangers action is evil.

The story jumps directly from "fiends tell the party to go kill the monster" to "the party is standing in the room with the monster and the ranger killed it". Ok... What happened in between? Barring an extremely railroady GM who just tells the party "Ok. You are now standing at the pool with the monster, what do you do", I assume that some kind of conversation had to have happened, and some kind of decision was made to go to the location with the pool, with the "monster" in it. And that conversation had to have included at least some conversation of "what are we planning to do when we get there". That stuff in between is extremely critical, but is missing entirely.

If the party knew that the fiends were the source of the job, and knew that the monster may not be what they were told, and intended to go there to investigate, but the ranger decided to kill whatever was in the pool anyway, that's what HK would have said, because that would have highlighted the eviliness of the act itself (which is what he's trying to do here). The absense of that clearly stated part of the sequence makes me suspect that there was more to the story, and it wasn't nearly so clear cut. Is that speculation on my part? Absolutely. Again though, IME, when people leave out parts of a story they are telling, it's rarely the parts that highlight the point they are trying to make. It's usually the parts that may question or counter the point they are trying to make.

Does that make that absolute truth? Nope. But it does make me question the story, and ask for more details. Which is precisely what I did earlier in the thread. And have still not gottten the clarification. So.... I'm sticking with "there isn't enough information to make a ruling here".

Jay R

2024-03-07, 06:04 PM

gbaji has come up with two different interpretations. The first one would reasonably lead to the DM's response, and the second one would not.

Since the DM was there, and gbaji was not, I suspect that the first one is closer to the truth.

In that case, I agree with gbaji that it probably isn't an alignment issue (yet). As I said before:

This decision was not made for alignment reasons. And to the extent that it was, it was based on Good tendencies. “There’s an Evil creature there. We need to kill it for the good of the people here."

The impulse was Good. The information was False. The decision was Flawed. And the result was Tragic.

If I believed in changing the PC’s character sheet based on this action (which I don't), I wouldn’t touch the alignment. This action indicates low Intelligence and Wisdom.

But let's suppose, hypothetically, that gbaji's second scenario is closer to the truth. In that case, the DM who told us about it gave us information that was not relevant, and did not give us information that was relevant. He told us that the fiends and undead told them about the monster, but did not tell us that other, less obviously untrustworthy people said the same thing.

In that case, the PC attacked and killed a creature that was doing no harm, based entirely on hearsay, without hearing the creature's defense. The impulse was still Good. The information was still False. The decision was still Flawed. And the result was still Tragic.

If I believed in changing the PC’s character sheet based on this action (which I don't), I still wouldn’t touch the alignment. This action still indicates low Intelligence and Wisdom.

There is simply no basis here to kill something you know nothing about, who is currently doing nothing wrong, based on hearsay.

---

If there is an alignment issue, then it's based on what happened afterward. In either scenario, once the PC found out that he killed a naiad, did he show remorse? Was he horrified? Did he offer to take the naiad's body to a priest and pay for a Raise Dead?

Maybe, just maybe, he was misled into committing a horrible act with no blame on him at the time. But if the PC is comfortable with that fact afterwards, in either scenario, then that is a serious issue.

If he shrugged it off as no big deal, then yes, the character is Evil. If he shrugged it off as no big deal, then any nearby paladins need to arrest him and deliver him to justice or [I]they are no longer paladins.

icefractal

2024-03-07, 06:55 PM

Sufficient recklessness can be evil, it doesn't require active malevolence.

"This forest seems like a good place to practice my new fire spells"
"Oh ****, it's all on fire now. Bad news for anyone living there."
"Oh well, it'll probably be fine" *leaves*
Evil act, 100%

"Hey officer, that house is full of gang members planning to go on a murder spree!"
"And your name is ..."
"Not really important. Anyway, you should go shoot that gang quick before they do something bad."
*shrug* "Ok, seems legit!" *goes in and shoots everyone*
*it turns out they were just a normal family that the person talking to the cop had a grudge against*
You're saying you'd consider that an understandable mistake? I don't think most people would agree.

gbaji

2024-03-08, 03:34 PM

Maybe, just maybe, he was misled into committing a horrible act with no blame on him at the time. [I doubt it, and we have no evidence for it, but perhaps gbaji's invention happens to be true.]

I don't know either. But that's kinda the point. I'm not going to discount the possiblity. I guess my alarm bells go off here, because there's nothing directly stated in the text we are given that says that this *didn't* happen. A single line of text saying "The party knew that the information came from the fiends, and were suscpicious of it, so they decided to investigate and find out what was really in that pool", would have clarified things emmensely.

Remember. The OP is not an impartial reporter of the events in question. He has a viewpoint on things, and an action he took, and is presumably posting to get affirmation of that action. It's not unreasonable to assume the possibility that he might leave out details that might place his own decision in question. Therefore, it's prudent, if it's at all possible to iterpret what is said in a different way than implied, to ask questions to clarify those points. You think like a cop arriving on a scene, getting an initial statement. You follow up and ask questions. Ok. Did the entire party know that the fiends were the ones who told them to go kill the monster in the pool? What was the party's reaction to that request? Did you believe the fiends at the time? Why did you go to the pool then? What was your intention and plan? Did all of you agree on that course of action before you went there? What happened when you got there? Did you discuss what to do with the creature in the pool? What was your conversation, upon arriving, and discovering that the pool was murky and you could not see the creature? What spells/abilities did you use to determine the nature of the creature? I see that 4 of you are paladins. Did you use your detect evil abilities? What happened then?

There's a whole heck of a lot of "stuff missing" here. And yeah, I get making the story brief, but it still seems odd to me that the elements of the story missing are the very ones that would most allow us to accurately assess the situation. Maybe I'm suspicious by nature, but my initial reaction to a story with holes in it isn't to fill it in with the implication coming from the storyteller, but to assume those holes are there deliberately and are concealing something.

And yes. It could just be a communication style, and there's nothing there at all. But... doesn't hurt to ask, right?

Sufficient recklessness can be evil, it doesn't require active malevolence.

"This forest seems like a good place to practice my new fire spells"
"Oh ****, it's all on fire now. Bad news for anyone living there."
"Oh well, it'll probably be fine" *leaves*
Evil act, 100%

So... Elan is now Chaotic Evil? Cause he does this sort of thing all the time.

"Hey officer, that house is full of gang members planning to go on a murder spree!"
"And your name is ..."
"Not really important. Anyway, you should go shoot that gang quick before they do something bad."
*shrug* "Ok, seems legit!" *goes in and shoots everyone*
*it turns out they were just a normal family that the person talking to the cop had a grudge against*
You're saying you'd consider that an understandable mistake? I don't think most people would agree.

No. I wouldn't. However, if an entire group of senior officers took that information, assessed it, and decided to launch a raid on the home, and created ROE for that raid which included "shoot the bad guys", I would not blame the one rookie cop who was on the raid who shot someone as a result. In the scenario we're talking about, it was the paladins who should have been most suscpicious of the fiends, and also had the greatest abilities to detect what was actually going on, and make decisions about what the entire group should do about it.

This is exactly why I keep coming back to "how did the party arrive at the pool, and what was their stated plan?". If the entire police department decided that this call was legit, and that raiding the house was the correct course of action, once the cops arrive at the scene, they are already in that mindset. Also, and where the analog breaks down, these are not cops. They are adventurers. Very different job description. Adventurers in fantasy settings do actually do things like break into monster lairs and kill them. Often without spending a lot of time figuring out what exactly the monster is, or why it's there.

Which is why it's really important to determine what the entire party decided to do here. If the "plan" was "go there and kill whatever is in the pool", then the entire party is to blame for that decision, not just the Ranger because he's the one who pulled the trigger. Given that in this case, the entire party consists of 4 paladins and one ranger, that kinda really puts the onus of "make the right call" on the members of party for whom that is actually a class requirement, and not the one for whom it kinda isn't. We're going to blame the CN guy for pulling the trigger (likely merely because he was the only one with effective ranged attacks, and the monster was in a pool, where they could not easiily engage it in melee), but not the LG paladins? That ranger didn't appear at that pool, all on his own. The entire party did. Knowing why they were there is really important.

Cygnia

2024-03-08, 04:10 PM

Looks like this is the direction the OP went towards...

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?664364-Bhaal-Courting-a-PC

gbaji

2024-03-08, 05:06 PM

Looks like this is the direction the OP went towards...

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?664364-Bhaal-Courting-a-PC

Huh. Well. If the player is cool with that, then great. I'm not sure how well this will work in a party full of paladins, but maybe that's just a setting thing. I kinda get the feeling that HK's players don't really run their characters in a standard way to begin with. Weren't these the same folks who attacked a librarian for not letting them borrow a book or something?

It's a GMing style thing. I'm all for giving the PCs plenty of rope to hang themselves with, but I do kinda get the impression that HK facilitates this a fair bit. And that can certainly be a fun way to run a game, but is almost certainly going to result in a lot of conflict between the PCs (and between them an NPCs as well). It's not my personal style or preference, but if the players are having fun, then all is good.

kyoryu

2024-03-13, 11:51 AM

Sufficient recklessness can be evil, it doesn't require active malevolence.

"Hey officer, that house is full of gang members planning to go on a murder spree!"
"And your name is ..."
"Not really important. Anyway, you should go shoot that gang quick before they do something bad."
*shrug* "Ok, seems legit!" *goes in and shoots everyone*
*it turns out they were just a normal family that the person talking to the cop had a grudge against*
You're saying you'd consider that an understandable mistake? I don't think most people would agree.

This is kinda the key to me, really. They went to kill something that didn't attack them, wasn't attacking anyone, and that they had no evidence had ever done anything wrong.

It wasn't an evil act because of it happening to be a good creature. It was an evil act because, even if it had been an evil creature, they went full gonzo without any attempt to verify anything.

I mean, basically, it boils down to

Person: "This sentient being is bad"
PC: "Okay, I'll kill it!"

That doesn't even make sense. While you could argue that that's a common quest setup, there's usually enough implicit information to actually provide evidence that the targeted creatures are actually bad, and in most cases they'll be in "attack first" mode, providing self defense as a justification. Or, the information will come from someone at least generally known to be trustworthy, or several sources.

This just doesn't meet the bar for due diligence.

Now, as I've said before, the GM should have let the players know "hey, you're going off half-cocked here. This is the kind of thing that can shift alignment". I'm 100% on board with that, and that's where the biggest error was.

Vahnavoi

2024-03-13, 12:18 PM

I mean, basically, it boils down to

Person: "This sentient being is bad"
PC: "Okay, I'll kill it!"

That doesn't even make sense.

It makes perfect sense from the viewpoint of a player who wholly buys into the notion that D&D is a game about killing things for personal power (XP & Levels) and wealth (gold & magic items). Judged fairly according to D&D's own alignment guidelines, characters played this way would be moral equivalent to Assassins, as in, Evil. But, since D&D is also a game about "heroic adventurers" fighting against the forces of Evil, this creates incentive to excuse what the player characters do on the grounds that they are the "heroes". (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtagonistCenteredMorality)

gbaji

2024-03-13, 02:18 PM

It makes perfect sense from the viewpoint of a player who wholly buys into the notion that D&D is a game about killing things for personal power (XP & Levels) and wealth (gold & magic items). Judged fairly according to D&D's own alignment guidelines, characters played this way would be moral equivalent to Assassins, as in, Evil. But, since D&D is also a game about "heroic adventurers" fighting against the forces of Evil, this creates incentive to excuse what the player characters do on the grounds that they are the "heroes". (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtagonistCenteredMorality)

I'd go a step further: The very nature of D&D is that the "who" matters more than most other things. How often, when discussing various moral question in a D&D game, does the story specifically mention the alignment of the NPC involved? Lots, right? Because, in D&D the alignment of the sentient being you are fighting/killing actually does matter (or at least, that is strongly the perception most players have). It's certainly the perception/assumption in this scenario as well.

When 90% of the game literally is "kill sentient creatures who are bad/evil", and that makes your characters the heroes, and you get rewarded with experience and loot, it's not a leap to assume the resulting behavior and choices are going to lean in that direction heavily. If we were actually measuring realistic morality here, it would be correct to say that the alignment of the creature in the pool should not matter. But... the very question posed in the OP assumes that it does. And that somehow, the entire problem here wasn't that they killed a creature in a murky pool, but that they killed a good creature in a murky pool.

Which, btw, is why I've been trying to point this the entire time back at "what was the discussion when going there in the first place?". Did the entire party actually believe there was an evil monster in the pool, and that therefore (by the rules of D&D) it was perfectly ok to murder it? In which case, just the one PC who happened to do the deed, should not be the sole one responsible. Heck. In his follow up, HK mentioned that one of the paladin players said "But what if it was a Balor?". Which strongly suggests that they certainly do view the alignment of the creature to matter here, and that, had it turned out to be an evil creature, that their approach was prefectly fine.

Which is why I kinda keep looping back to this being a bit of a "gotcha" scenario. The GM has put the PCs into a situation where, if they believe the NPC is evil, they believe it's perfectl ok to kill it. But... Ooopse! It's acually... good. So that somehow completely switches the morality around. Somehow. That should not be the case, but it is anyway. And a large part of that is how D&D morality is played out normallly. If GM's don't want that kind of morality in their games, then they need to treat evil creatures as having the same moral value/cost when killed as good creatures. But that's not what the game mostly assumes.

Vahnavoi

2024-03-13, 03:55 PM

@gbaji: you missed my point. It is true that D&D alignment cares of what a creature's alignment is when killed - but players stretch this to places that the rules don't.

For example: killing orcs for fun and profit does not make any AD&D character Good. Why? Because AD&D orcs kill other orcs for fun and profit too and they're Lawful Evil! There are even non-D&D versions of alignment (though obviously inspired by D&D) that codify this in their very rules. For example, in Ancient Domains of Mystery, killing (strongly) Chaotic creatures makes a character more Lawful - but only if the character already is Lawful-leaning, with a track record of doing other Lawful things such as feeding the poor, being nice to children and showing mercy to opponents in battle. If a character is instead Chaotic on their own, with no record of doing any such Lawful things, their alignment doesn't shift one bit. Why? Because Chaotics kill other Chaotics too. Context and motive of action matters.

So, no. The player characters aren't off the hook just because they thought they were fighting an Evil monster. That's not the only thing that matters, and never was.

gbaji

2024-03-13, 07:04 PM

@gbaji: you missed my point. It is true that D&D alignment cares of what a creature's alignment is when killed - but players stretch this to places that the rules don't.

I get your point (and am kinda agreeing with kyoryu a fair bit in my response). I just don't necessarily agree that the game system itself doesn't really funnel players into this conclusion. You can say that this is all about player peception, and that they're really just playing like an assassin (and are therefore evil), but the reality is that this is, in fact, the way most players do play. And it's entirely because the game itself really really pressures them to play that way.

For example: killing orcs for fun and profit does not make any AD&D character Good. Why? Because AD&D orcs kill other orcs for fun and profit too and they're Lawful Evil! There are even non-D&D versions of alignment (though obviously inspired by D&D) that codify this in their very rules. For example, in Ancient Domains of Mystery, killing (strongly) Chaotic creatures makes a character more Lawful - but only if the character already is Lawful-leaning, with a track record of doing other Lawful things such as feeding the poor, being nice to children and showing mercy to opponents in battle. If a character is instead Chaotic on their own, with no record of doing any such Lawful things, their alignment doesn't shift one bit. Why? Because Chaotics kill other Chaotics too. Context and motive of action matters.

This highlights a point I've made in past alignment threads though. The problem D&D (and a lot of games with relatively rigid alignment systems) is that it tries to treat alignment both as a "side" In some cosmic/ideological battle *and* have it comply with modern concepts of ethics. And the result is predictably nonsensical. The examples you just gave, lean into the "side" based alignment concept. that if you are "good", then killing "evil' is good. But if you are evil, killing good is evil (cause it's about becoming more aligned with your "side).

It's also the innate assumption in the example and follow up statements by HK. That it would be "good" to have killed the creature, if the creature was "evil", but is"evil", not due to the methods or rationale for the attack, but because the creature turned out to be good in the end. Flip around the script and have the monster turn out to have been a Balor afterall, and ask "would the GM have adjusted the character's alignment?". I'm guessing the answer would have been "no".

Where I agree with you is that this should *not* be the case. But the fact is that, for most D&D players (and most GMs) it is. We can lament that fact, and rail against if if we want, but that is an innate problem with the alignment system itself.

So, no. The player characters aren't off the hook just because they thought they were fighting an Evil monster. That's not the only thing that matters, and never was.

Again. I agree that it should not. But I'm not agreeing that it "never was". The reality is that if we actually applied that sort of ethical rules to D&D, no character could retain a good alignment, and ever be on the offense at all. They could only ever hurt or kill someone in self defense, and then should try to use the minimal force necessary, and attempt to capture instead of kill wherever possible.

It would also really restrain the types of scenarios that GMs could run. That, or we just handwave this stuff away. Rich had that amusing minor panel with the paladin justifying killing the goblins becuase they were defending themselves, despite that they were tecnically engaged in home invasion and the goblins were acting in defense themselves. That scenario is not really handled well by any sort of indepth analysis of the D&D alignment system.

Players absolutely tend towards: 'Were the good guys, they are the bad guys, so we are allowed to end them by any means necessary". Done. But is that actually "good" by the standard you are saying we should use (and also seemingly claiming is really core to the game rules)? No. It's not. A good aligned person should never use lethal force unless they (or soemone else) is in immenent danger of "risk of loss of life or severe bodily harm" and killing is the only way to prevent that. How often does that actually happen though? Those guards of the bbeg? Did they attack you first? Do you wait for them to do that? Or did you initiate combat (possibly from surprise)? His priests, gathering together for a powerful magical ritual. Do you actually know that they're about to blast you and your team with magical power, and you must attack them first? Or must you wait until you have absolute proof that they are engaged in hostile activity with intent to cause harm?

The kinds of ROE that we use in our modern world (and which some try to apply to alignment rules in D&D) are just not a very practical set of rules to use for most game settings. I suppose a GM can contrive all scenarios in the game to work using them, but those would have to be quite contrived.

Also, just to kinda make a cross thread point. I mentioned in another thread recently about the concept that player choices are more meangingful and death less about "roll or die" if the GM structures the adventures so that the players are the ones driving things, rather than merely responding to attacks by the GM run bad guys. But your requirements for "good" would require the opposite. The PCs cannot investigate something, discover some evil plot afoot, and then go in and take saiid evildoers out, without having to wait for the bad guys to take evil action against them first (or witness it being done to someone else). That's a... heck of a restriction on play.

And not one I'm a fan of. But that's just me. So yes. I agree that, if we apply modern ethical rules to these sorts of actions, then the actions shoiuld be "good or evil" regardless of what was in the pool. I'm simply saying that this is not how most fantasy RPGs actually run. Most game systems play lip service to the idea that "good/evil" (from an alignment perspective) are somehow associated with the modern ethical concepts, but then run directly counter to that in just about every single scenario, module, and adventure ever published. Which, maybe, is precisely why this topic generates so much debate and disagreement.

icefractal

2024-03-13, 07:35 PM

Agreed on this:
This highlights a point I've made in past alignment threads though. The problem D&D (and a lot of games with relatively rigid alignment systems) is that it tries to treat alignment both as a "side" In some cosmic/ideological battle *and* have it comply with modern concepts of ethics. And the result is predictably nonsensical.

But not on this:

It would also really restrain the types of scenarios that GMs could run.
...
The PCs cannot investigate something, discover some evil plot afoot, and then go in and take saiid evildoers out, without having to wait for the bad guys to take evil action against them first (or witness it being done to someone else). That's a... heck of a restriction on play.

I don't think most people would consider, for example, "arresting (or even shooting) terrorists who were in the process of setting up a bombing" as unethical unless they were hard-core pacifists. So I don't agree at all with the second part, assuming that there is a concrete evil plot rather than just "well, you know, they're probably up to no good ..."

Like, yes, by this standard the adventure premise of "there are some cultists living in the old ruined fort, you should go kill them before they cause trouble" is not a good fit for good-aligned characters. But it's easy to make it suitable:
* The cultists are kidnapping and/or killing people.
* The cultists are in the process of summoning a powerful demon.
* The cultists poisoned the town's water supply, or are going to.

The enemies just need to be doing something more than simply existing. You can still attack before they put their plan into action, you just can't (if you're trying to be good-aligned) pre-emptively attack before they even start anything, and you may actually have to investigate and find out that they are planning something rather than just assuming it's the case.

gbaji

2024-03-13, 10:34 PM

I don't think most people would consider, for example, "arresting (or even shooting) terrorists who were in the process of setting up a bombing" as unethical unless they were hard-core pacifists. So I don't agree at all with the second part, assuming that there is a concrete evil plot rather than just "well, you know, they're probably up to no good ..."

Like, yes, by this standard the adventure premise of "there are some cultists living in the old ruined fort, you should go kill them before they cause trouble" is not a good fit for good-aligned characters. But it's easy to make it suitable:
* The cultists are kidnapping and/or killing people.
* The cultists are in the process of summoning a powerful demon.
* The cultists poisoned the town's water supply, or are going to.

Sure. It's still restrictive though, and lends itself to the same "problem" that the OP brought up in the first place.

Unlesss the PCs actually personally witness the cultists kidnapping people, and personally track them to their lair, and personally verify that the people hanging out inside (or that they encounter on the way in) are the same people they personally witnessed previously, they're still kinda stuck trusting the person who told them "these people are cultists, and they kidnapped people, and they're at this location" were telling the truth.

Otherwise, how does this go? You arrive at some location. You see there are guards. Do you attack them? Or talk to them? If the latter, they tell you to leave. What now? Force your way inside? Kill the guards? Then kill the next group who come after you when they sound the alarm? Then, finally... after fighting your way into the building/whatever, you get to the "main bad guys", and it turns out it's actually a group of the kings guards, securing a secret meeting between a high ranking minister and his counterpart in another kingdom, engaged in sensitive negotiations, and your attack has destroyed those talks. You've now committed multiple counts of murder, treason maybe, and perhaps caused a war to break out instead of peace. All planned by the actual evil bad guy who set you up for this.

And that's just the first scenario. All three have problems if you try to apply the same sort of requirements for "good". You'd have to be able to see the summoning happening. But how do you know where/when it's happening? How do you get there? What are the odds you don't have to kill any of these "cultists" between the front entrance of the location and the inner sanctum where they are performing the ritual? And how do you absolutely know that these are "cultists" and are sumnonging a demon, and not some good group, doing a blessing ritual to do <something good>? Do the bad guys just have to say "we're good guys" and you have to walk away? Do you wait until the demon appears? And do you recognize it's a demon right away, or wait until the demon then does something "evil" before you act?

And the water supply thing? How do you know it's poison? How do you know that they are doing this in the first place? How are you certain, unless you wait until after they do it (and then perhaps watch as people drink the water and die), that this is actually true? How do you know exactly who the evil people are in all of this?

We see a lot of this stuff happen on TV shows and in films, but the writers for those things go to great lengths to contrive things so that the heroes are always unambibiously in the right (well, except when the story is about them not being so). But the reality is that, just like in a D&D game, most of the time, the heroes of those stories are acting as vigilantes, and breaking lots of laws, and harming lots of people, but we accept that because (again, most of the time) they turn out to be right, and these are evil cultists, and they are doing horrible things, and if they hadn't broken all those laws, and attacked, and possibliy killed people who, at the time, had only committed the crime of "guard this building from intruders", the bad guys would have won.

But those are highly contrived situations, and utterly dependent on the writers of those stories being honest with us. But this also sets up the PCs for the same sort of situation in the OP. They attack, assuming they are doing the right thing, and saving the world, or whatever, and most of the time, they are right, and they are hailed as the "good guys" for doing so. Well... until the one time it turns out the information was wrong, and they didn't kill an evil creature, or group of evil cultists. And now there's a problem.

Do we apply an alignment penalty for PCs doing the exact things they've done before, using the same methodology they've always used, because this one time it happened to be someone good they killed? And if it is true that this is what they've done before, and it's worked out fine, because the person they killed was evil, and you didn't apply an alignment penalty all those times, can you really do so now? And what does that say about ethics based on the action/decision itself, versus the alignment of the target of those actions?

The enemies just need to be doing something more than simply existing. You can still attack before they put their plan into action, you just can't (if you're trying to be good-aligned) pre-emptively attack before they even start anything, and you may actually have to investigate and find out that they are planning something rather than just assuming it's the case.

Fair enough. And I actually agree with that approach. Which is why my consistent response to the OP's scenario was to ask about what they discussed or planned prior to arriving at the "monster's lair", and what steps they may have used to confirm or test what they were told. And also why I've consistently stated that if they didn't trust the source but went there with the intent to kill the "monster" anyway, then it's on the whole party, and not just the one guy who pulled the trigger. But if they did distrust the source, and did discuss this, and went there to investigate instead, then it's on the ranger.

And yeah, even with all of that, there often comes a point in any adventure where the party has collected the information they can, and have to make a choice. And it's not uncommon for that choice to be "break into the <location> and see what's going on there". Sometimes, depending on skills available in the party, they can do this steathily and without killing anyone until after they have confirmed their suspicions about the potential bad guys. But sometimes... not. And in most cases, they're still most definitely "breaking the law" when doing this sort of thing.

I guess my point with this bit is that this is highly subject to the GM actually setting up the scenario so it's possible for the party to do this. If the GM chooses not to, they wont be able to be 100% certain ahead of time. I can't say if that was the case in the OP, but it's something to consider. If the GM consistently puts the PCS into situations where they must make a choice, with incomplete information, and with deadly results, which usually is the right (or even absolutely necessary) thing to do, but then punishes them for "being wrong", then that's on the GM IMO. GMs need to be very very aware of the patterns of expected behavior/response from the PCs in the adventure's they run. It's quite easiliy to unintentionally put the PCs into an impossible situation, and you shoud not punsih them for that.

And yeah. I guess a follow up to that is that you can rule on this how you wish, but must be consistent with it. If it's an evil act to kill something without first verifying that it's a dangerous person/creature engaged in harmful actions, then it's evil every time. Be consistent. If you have never applied an alignment effect on PCs who killed bad guys with the same level of uncertainty in the past, then you can't do it here. Pick a rule and try to stick to it.

Satinavian

2024-03-14, 03:26 AM

Unlesss the PCs actually personally witness the cultists kidnapping people, and personally track them to their lair, and personally verify that the people hanging out inside (or that they encounter on the way in) are the same people they personally witnessed previously, they're still kinda stuck trusting the person who told them "these people are cultists, and they kidnapped people, and they're at this location" were telling the truth.If you are not sure, do information gathering first. Ask relatives of the kidnapped, witnesses of the kidnapping, check and guard the water supply, check where the information the cultists target it comes from and whether the method makes sense. You could even sneak into the hideout to take a look or shadow the questgiver or lone cultists to listen into conversations and that is all without whatever supernatural information gathering is available.

Seriously, if you were playing Shadowrun, you would do the very same things as well instead of just taking whatever your Mr.Johnson tells you for the truth.

But in case you really are too incompetent to gather information, you still could just use nonlethal attacks. It is not exactly hard to not kill the suspects.

We see a lot of this stuff happen on TV shows and in films, but the writers for those things go to great lengths to contrive things so that the heroes are always unambibiously in the right (well, except when the story is about them not being so). But the reality is that, just like in a D&D game, most of the time, the heroes of those stories are acting as vigilantes, and breaking lots of laws, and harming lots of people, but we accept that because (again, most of the time) they turn out to be right, and these are evil cultists, and they are doing horrible things, and if they hadn't broken all those laws, and attacked, and possibliy killed people who, at the time, had only committed the crime of "guard this building from intruders", the bad guys would have won.

But those are highly contrived situations, and utterly dependent on the writers of those stories being honest with us. But this also sets up the PCs for the same sort of situation in the OP. They attack, assuming they are doing the right thing, and saving the world, or whatever, and most of the time, they are right, and they are hailed as the "good guys" for doing so. Well... until the one time it turns out the information was wrong, and they didn't kill an evil creature, or group of evil cultists. And now there's a problem.
Yes, such movies etc. exist.

But i don't agree with your assumption that those fit general fantasy RPG plots all that much. Sure, there are regularly adventures meant to work that way but i also see them regularly fail because the PCs refuse to break the law or dish out reckless harm or just refuse to act until they have certain proof. Because that is what they think is moral.

And going back to D&D

When 90% of the game literally is "kill sentient creatures who are bad/evil", and that makes your characters the heroes, and you get rewarded with experience and loot, it's not a leap to assume the resulting behavior and choices are going to lean in that direction heavily. If we were actually measuring realistic morality here, it would be correct to say that the alignment of the creature in the pool should not matter. But... the very question posed in the OP assumes that it does. And that somehow, the entire problem here wasn't that they killed a creature in a murky pool, but that they killed a good creature in a murky pool.
No, the problem is not that they killed a good creature. The issue is that they killed an innocent creature that was not in the process of doing some greater evil. Even recklessly killing an innocent, evil but harmless creature would have the same effect. Killing evil creatures is not good. It is only justified under the exact same instances that killing good creatures would be. This is why most players don't care about the alignment of their enemies at all. The reasons for killing would be just the same.

A good aligned person should never use lethal force unless they (or soemone else) is in immenent danger of "risk of loss of life or severe bodily harm" and killing is the only way to prevent that.Nope, there are more options. The big ones are :
- War (If the war itself is justified and you are enlisted on one side, killing enemy soldiers is fine for good people)
- Punishment ( Needs crime worthy of death. Who is to dish out the punishment an whether the proper authority is needed is more a law/chaos thing.)

kyoryu

2024-03-14, 10:30 AM

Sure. It's still restrictive though, and lends itself to the same "problem" that the OP brought up in the first place.

Unlesss the PCs actually personally witness the cultists kidnapping people, and personally track them to their lair, and personally verify that the people hanging out inside (or that they encounter on the way in) are the same people they personally witnessed previously, they're still kinda stuck trusting the person who told them "these people are cultists, and they kidnapped people, and they're at this location" were telling the truth.

You're making this awfully black and white. Given that it's a game, I think it's reasonable to ask for, effectively, "a preponderence of evidence". Some rando saying "they're bad, kill them!" and then blindly shooting without even knowing what you're shooting at does not meet that bar.

Like, a wartribe is, well, a wartribe and they do bad things. If those bad things have happened recently, and you find a wartribe in the area, that's pretty good evidence. Combine that with a healthy dose of the GM letting these groups get super violent and defensive when approached (thus attacking), and you get enough evidence to be beyond a reasonable doubt.

Arguably, that's one of the best arguments for "sides". If, even ignoring absolutely always evil orcs, your kingdom or whatever is at war with the orcs, and you find an orc wartribe in your lands? You pretty much know they're up to no good. It's what they do, and they shouldn't be there, and if they were there they for legitimate reasons they wouldn't do so in the form of a wartribe.

Same with cultists. Is there evidence of bad things happening? Do you have evidence that points to the cultists? Is there evidence at the site? You don't need absolute proof (though seeing cultists kidnap/sacrifice people would help), but you at least need a preponderence of evidence. Find some symbols of the cult, find evidence of the magic being used, blah blah blah.

As a GM, that's kind of where I draw the line - and I won't ding PCs for being wrong, especially if misled. I will ding them for being completely and utterly reckless in their usage of violence, however, doubly so if they know there's a good chance they'll be hurting innocents in the process. (Innocents may still get hurt in some cases, which is where the bar becomes "are you doing the best you can to minimize innocent suffering?")

gbaji

2024-03-14, 06:26 PM

If you are not sure, do information gathering first. Ask relatives of the kidnapped, witnesses of the kidnapping, check and guard the water supply, check where the information the cultists target it comes from and whether the method makes sense. You could even sneak into the hideout to take a look or shadow the questgiver or lone cultists to listen into conversations and that is all without whatever supernatural information gathering is available.

Oh. Absolutely. That was largely the point of the long/meandering post(s) I've written. But whatever information gathering, or discussion, or decisions were made by the party in the OP scenario are not available. Hence, why I don't believe there is sufficient information to make a judgement about it. I was specifically responding to posts making the very broad claim that firing into the pool at the creature was automatically an act of evil because the ranger didn't stop at that moment to verify what the creature was.

Well. You may not know exactly what species that robed figure is, nor what exactly its alignment is. But... if you have a preponderance of evidence that said robed figure is a member of the evil cult in town, and has been responsible for multiple attacks/kidnapping/sacrifices in town, and it's hanging out in the area you have been told is the lair of said cult, you probably aren't going to stop and ask for ID before killing said robed figure (and may do so as quickly and lethally as possible if there's a conceren about an alarm being raised otherwise).

Now apply that back to the OP. We don't know that the players did *not* ask other businesses in town about the "creature in the pool". We don't know that they were *not* told confirming tales about this horrible beast, which rises out of the pool and murders people. The party may very well have been acting on what they believed was an actual "perponderance of evidence". But... the story just kind jumps from "they were told about the creature" to "they're standing in the room with the pool the creature is in", with no details about the how or why that they came to be there.

I'm trying to get folks to accept that there are, in fact, times when "attack first without talking first" is something that is done, and does not result by itself in an alignment change. And yes, it's entirely dependent in what other information the PCs knew at the time. Which... unfortunately, is entirely missing from the scenario itself.

But i don't agree with your assumption that those fit general fantasy RPG plots all that much. Sure, there are regularly adventures meant to work that way but i also see them regularly fail because the PCs refuse to break the law or dish out reckless harm or just refuse to act until they have certain proof. Because that is what they think is moral.

Sure. Which loops back to what I said earlier about the GM being consistent and paying attention to past player choices and actions. If the GM regularly runs the PCs into scenarios where the "robed figure we have evidence is a cultist, currently guarding/patrolling what we also have evidence is the cultist hideout" is killed judicoiusly and without a second thought, and no one ever gets an alignment penalty as a result, so the players have accepted this methodology and adapted to it, then the GM cannot later have a robed figure "turn out to be someone good" (under otherwise similar circumstances) and hit them with a penalty for behaving the same way towards that robed figure that they did towards all the other ones.

And yes. This is a fair bit of speculation on my part, but it's speculation I can't rule out here, especially since HK said that these players tend to be of the "shoot first, ask questions later" mindset already. Those play habits don't just appear out of nowhere. They build up over time, and a good amount of that is based on how the GM has reacted to past actions of a similar nature.

Killing someone without first stoping them, revealing what/who they are, and questioning them first, is only "evil" if it's "always evil". If that's true, then great! You are applying consistent rules as a GM. But... I suspect that, had the creature in the murky pool actually been a Balor, that HK (and many other GMs) would not have applied an alignment change.

No, the problem is not that they killed a good creature. The issue is that they killed an innocent creature that was not in the process of doing some greater evil. Even recklessly killing an innocent, evil but harmless creature would have the same effect. Killing evil creatures is not good. It is only justified under the exact same instances that killing good creatures would be. This is why most players don't care about the alignment of their enemies at all. The reasons for killing would be just the same.

I agree that it should not be about the alignment of the creature. I'm making the observation that, in all probability, it actually is. And that this is a core problem to the scenario at hand. And sure, I'm also adding in my own observations of player and GM behaviors over a few decades of playing RPGs (especially ones with alignment systems like D&D), and noting that this distinction is commonly made in scenarios like this.

My entire point is that it should not matter. But, for many GMs and many players, and at many tables, in actual play? It does.

You're making this awfully black and white. Given that it's a game, I think it's reasonable to ask for, effectively, "a preponderence of evidence". Some rando saying "they're bad, kill them!" and then blindly shooting without even knowing what you're shooting at does not meet that bar.

Kinda pre-answered this above. Same deal. I agree completely. What I disagree with was over whether that was actally the distinction being used by HK in this case. And, I suppose, how much evidence and/or discussion the party actually accumulated along the way (and how much of a decision they had made as a party versus just the one character).

I keep coming back to "there were four paladins in the group, they knew the fiends were fiends. So why were they in the room with the pool?". Knowing what information the gathered, what discussions they had, and what decisions they made prior to that point is kinda important. Critically so IMO.

As a GM, that's kind of where I draw the line - and I won't ding PCs for being wrong, especially if misled. I will ding them for being completely and utterly reckless in their usage of violence, however, doubly so if they know there's a good chance they'll be hurting innocents in the process. (Innocents may still get hurt in some cases, which is where the bar becomes "are you doing the best you can to minimize innocent suffering?")

Right. It's just not so clear to me how much of this was the party being misled.

When I raised that point, and observed that we were provided no information about what other information the party had about the creature, what efforts at information gathering, or even *why* they were in the room in the first place, I got a barrage of "It's always evil to fire at someone without checking who/what they are first!".

Which is what lead me to respond with a host of scenarios/examples where "good characters" may do excactly that, but still have a reasonable belief that the creature/person they are firing at *is* actually a horrible evil thing/person that must be killed, possibly quickly and quietly, and without giving much or any warning.

And yes. As both of you have correctly observed, this is 100% about what information the party has about the thing they are attacking and how much they believe that information to support such an action in the first place. Which is why I keep coming back to the fact that there were four paladins in the party, and the whole party arrived at that room with the pool. The didn't just appear there magically. They made the decision to go there. Why? What was their intention?

Same deal with the cultist scenario. if the entire party has decided that "these cultists are evil people actively engaged in evil things", and "we're going to go attack their hideout and take them out", and "this is where the cultists hideout is", and "that robed figure hanging out in that building is a cultist lookout", and then the party archer takes a shot at the robed figure from where the party is hiding, and kill it silentlly so they can proceed into the hideout without raising alarm, that meets the conditions of "killing something without checking who/what they are first", right? I mean, we believe this is where the cultists are, and we believe that robed figure is one of them. And we believe that he's a lookout. And we believe that if we don't kill him quick and quiet, he'll raise an alarm. But it's entirely within the realm of possiblity that we're wrong.... right?

But that lands us into the category of "tragic mistake" and not "evil act" IMO.

I'm not even arguing that the whole "naiad in the pool" meets that criteria. I'm just observing that, based on what we were told, we don't actually know for sure that it doesn't. We don't know if all four paladins decided "we believe there's an evil monster in that pool", and "the monster must be killed at all costs", and "The pool is right there in this room", and then they went to the room with the pool fully with the plan and intention to kill the creature within it, and the archer was just the one who actually took the shot.