Interesting dilema with alignment.

Errant said:

I'm with Taren.

Torture, intentionally inflicting pain & suffering on another living creature, is evil. Torturing is an evil act.

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Huh? How about swinging a sword at someone with intent to inflict hp damage? That's intentionally inflicting pain and suffering.

The adventurer that seeks to exhaust all other options before resorting to violence is an incredibly rare thing (and it could be argued there's always another option - otherwise there would be no fanatical pacifists in the world). Calling torture intrinsically evil is just drawing an arbitrary line.

However, appart from the idea that inflicting pain to illicit information is necessarily evil, I pretty much agree with what you said.

Errant said:

Torture, intentionally inflicting pain & suffering on another living creature, is evil. Torturing is an evil act.

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While I personally agree with this statement, I think it's not quite as Black & White as you put it. I think it depends on a lot to determine what is "good" and what is "evil."

The Spanish Inquisition is a good example here because the church was torturing people for what it considered to be a good cause. While today I think of this as completely reprehensible and an "evil" act indeed, I may not have thought that way at the time.

Most people who have replied seem to be following the same thread; that the alignments are more of a guideline than a rule.

I'll come out and say it with you!

Joshua Dyal said:

Since nobody's come out and done so yet, I'll chime in and say I think the whole alignment situation is really silly anyway, and shouldn't be used as more than a guide or descriptor, not a mechanic, and certainly not something to base character reactions on.

The only possible exceptions I can see to this are outsiders, who are mechanically good, evil, lawful, etc. depending on their type, and paladins. Other than that, I play pretty fast and loose with alignment, and typically prefer to eliminate detect alignment type spells as much as possible.

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I couldn't have said it better myself. I was going to post, but you took the words right out of my mouth.

No offense, but I find it ludicrous to present situation "X" and proclaim how a person of alignment "Y" will react to it. There are an infinite amount of ways a person of a given alignment will react to a given situation.

Scarab said:

I'd say that's typical Wulf Ratbane behaviour (Hey, Wulf! You're famous when people start to use you as an example!). Though the debate still rages on whether Wulf is CN or CG.

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Well, good. I do try to be iconic... but I wear my moral ambiguity as a badge.

Let's assume for a moment that the victim is an orc, and there are two voices in the party:

The first voice speaks up and says, "This is wrong. You cannot treat him so cruelly."

The second voice says, "On the other hand we must find out their plans, or many more innocents will perish."

So what alignment would you ascribe to those two?

Personally I feel like torture is more acceptable for a lawful person. I have always felt that the duty of lawful good is to bring the greatest good to the greatest number. The duty of the chaotic good person is to bring good, on an individual level, to everyone they meet.

So I think the CG would have a soft spot for the victim of torture, whereas the LG would see it as necessary means to an end.

Well, that's how I see Chaotic vs. Lawful behavior, anyway. In neither case is torture particularly good. It depends on the victim of torture, frankly.

As for Wulf Ratbane, does it change anything if I particularly enjoy the torture, regardless of the end result?

Wulf

My view of alignment is pretty lax. I look at things sort of like this: There are "Big E" evil things, and "little e" evil things. And vice versa for good, as well.

Pulling a knife on a guy in a bar and threatening him is a "little e" situation. So long as someone isn't doing it all the time, its not really likely to affect his alignment. People who see him pull the knife may think one particular way or another, but that's almost entirely independent of"alignment".

Torture is a kind of "medium E." I wouldn't make a PC evil from a single act of torture, but I might consider him more neutral than good.

And of course, all things must be balanced aganst the need, and the desired result.

Torturing an orc to help prevent innocent deaths would probably end up a wash in my book. I'd never let a Paladin or certain orders of clerics get away with it, but anyone else would be A-OK. Torturing an orc to find out where a human city's treasury for no other reason than greed might very well push someone to an evil alignment.

a teacher once told me that a good act is one that you truely belive to be good and an evil one is on you know is bad but do it any ways

another concept is the end as to justify the means

Torture and ALignment

I always have a hard time with implementing alignment. First the question always arises is alignment based on a strict literal code (no torture no matter what) or is it situational (no torture except under some nebulous set of circumstances and you really shouldn't be enjoying it). People in the real world can't resolve that one, why would us poor gamers have a better insight?

Then I always have a problem with alignment because gamers ALWAYS metagame. We insert the morals/ethics we have been taught into a fantasy game and expect 21st century urban "alignments" to make sense in a cave fighting a dragon's minions with magic. Example - killing and torture = a bad thing. Not so - to many groups killing is a great thing to do, and those who are not a member of your group = faird game to do whatever. I have to mention this, but this kind of thinking is why we have such trouble understanding fanatics such as the Al Quedal or the skinheads. To us, what they do is Evil (the big E from above). To them what they do if Good (big G) and what we do is Evil. How do you resolve that?

In a fantasy world with real gods interacting with the universe, alignment MUST be relative (if alignment flows from the god). If you worship god X, who's aspects include rage, fighting, and the rape of defenseless animals, you would be LG FOR YOUR GOD if you went around mad, fighting, and raping defenseless animals. To followers of a god wit hte aspects of peace and animal protection, you are CE, no question. See where I'm going? To be really more accurate and workable, all alignment items and spells should take into consideration who's using them and what god is involved. Thus a sword that slays all LG wielders must be reinterpreted as a LG slaying sword of god X... so whomever picks it up is evaluated for alignment with respect to the appropriate god or pantheon. You might be a CN follower of God Z, but touch that sword, undergo instant evaluation, and you might just keel over dead.

- Billboard Baggins

Torture is an evil act. I cannot see how anyone could argue differently. Certainly not within the alignment rules of D&D, and also in real life.

That's not to say a good aligned character won't resort to it if the circumstances are wrong. Also a one off occasion is going to lead to an alignment shift over-night either, but if they make a habit of resorting to torture, and have no quarms about inflicting pain to get what they want then I don't think the character can be considered good even if what they want is world peace and an end to global hunger.

Well, while I don't think it's right to try to define "good" and "evil," because I personally believe in an absolute scale, I think we need to define "torture."

Other than physical pain, there's a lot of things that could be considered torture.

Let's say we have 6 or 7 goblins. You give each one the opportunity to redeem himself and cough up the information (before sending him to meet his maker, of course). If they refuse, you kill them in front of the others.

Or you offer them the choice of a quick and noble death, with a proper burial, or an ignominious one...

Lots of options that don't necessarily mean cruelty and suffering.

As for "real world" justification of torture, it can be done, and has been done. Utilitarianism is very much alive and well. You'd find quite a lot of folks willing to look the other way if torture would cough up the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, or the target of the next attack. You'd save a lot of innocent lives and the only one who suffers is a terrorist. Utilitarianism is frequently used to justify the "greater good."

Substitute "Fzoul" for "Osama" or "orc" for "terrorist" and there you go.

Wulf

SableWyvern said:

Huh? How about swinging a sword at someone with intent to inflict hp damage? That's intentionally inflicting pain and suffering.

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Thats true, I probably should have said something along the lines of "intentionally inflicting pain and suffering on a helpless creature...", but I think most people got the idea.

I also lean toward Kid Charlemagne's idea that there are different "shades" of evil. In some circumstances (like there being absolutely no other way to save the innocents) I'd even deem a normally evil act (like torture) to be only neutral. Ugly but necessary. A paladin (etc) should probably want to atone for it, but once off it won't cost him his abilities.

But thats just me.