Is sacrifice evil if it saves the greater good?

[hamishspence]

Don't forget stat damaging poison use.

That's BoED-only- other sources, such as the FAQ for Complete Adventurer Ninja, have stated "there's nothing inherently evil about using poison".

Throw in the fact that at least one Always Good being (couatls) naturally has a stat damaging poison, and a case can be made that at least on that one, the BoED made a misstep.

Whereas the others usually have more than one source (or a core source, in the case of Rebuking Undead) to support them.

Just as BoVD stresses that while Lying is forbidden by many creeds (and it's against the paladin code) it's not actually an inherently evil act, the same could be said for poison- even stat damaging poison.

Other sources of stat damage- such as spells that inflict it, generally don't have the [Evil] tag. The only way to make Poison different, is to argue that it causes "excessive suffering in the process of incapacitating an opponent"- which is a difficult argument to defend.