Neutral/Evil alignment

[Unoriginal]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Keltest]

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.

The PHB paladins are implicitly, but not explicitly good aligned. The others vary based on oath.

[Witty Username]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Unoriginal]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

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