Neutral/Evil alignment

[Unoriginal]

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]

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".

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Keltest]

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]

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]

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

[Satinavian]

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]

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]

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]

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.

Spoiler: Terminator 2

Show

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]

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.

Spoiler: fun anecdote

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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 ...

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]

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.

Spoiler: Terminator 2

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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

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]

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

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]

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.