I missed this earlier, but you're off base with that statement. Sorcerers have inherent/instinctive magic. That's it. Nothing in their write-up implies a chaotic personality. They are as likely to be lawful as chaotic as neutral. Warlocks make and keep pacts/contracts with entities, as well as follow those patron's instructions. That's a very lawful behavior. There are probably more lawful Warlocks than chaotic ones. Paladins are the one you noted. Bards with their jack-of-all trades, wandering lifestyle are probably more chaotic than lawful.
So we have 2 that would more likely be lawful(Warlock and Paladin), 1 that would more likely be chaotic(bard), and one that has no preference built into the class(sorcerer).
Chaos Sorcerer is one of the first archetypes ever mentioned for them. The write up emphasizes that their power is "wildly unpredictable" and that they usually have "obscure and quixotic motivations". They are chaotic man.
And, while warlocks can make pacts, GOO warlocks might be bound to an entity that has no idea they are there, and have basically stolen power. The Feylocks might have a contract, but it could very easily be an irrational one that doesn't really lend itself to law.
So... I think it is closers to 1 that is more likely to be lawful (paladin), 1 that has a balance (warlock) and 2 that are chaotic (bard and Sorcerer)
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That's your opinion.
In the game world Evil people see it totally differently. They're correct, and the Good guys are wrong.
No, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I am not wrong. If I told someone that doing Good didn't mean doing the right thing, then they'd tell me that the action isn't Good. I don't care that evil people think they are doing good, that is beside the point. The point is that if you are explicitly telling me that Good =/= right, then we have a major breakdown that cannot be bridged. Because that means that occasionally Evil is Good, and that cannot work.
That is the point of alignment.
And as DM I get to determine objective reality of the game world. If I tell the Players that a rock falls from the sky, a rock falls from the sky.
The PCs on the other hand are stuck in Cartesian doubt.
Have fun playing God then, but to a lot of the rest of us, we don't particularly feel the need to declare our opinions objectively right.
Heck, I have declared something objectively true in the game before, as the DM, only to be told by the players I was wrong. And, hey, it turned out I was.
Depends. Was the act reasonably necessary to protect innocent people from being killed, and was the act proportionate in the circumstances.
That's the only relevant question.
Depends on the bad guys.
Depends on the prisoners.
Not intentionally, but doing the Good thing is often hard.
If you're a DM that has enemies surrender, just to attempt to murder the PCs in any sort of regularity, you don't deserve to be DMing.
They might try and escape captivity of course. But why on earth would they surrender (to a more powerful force) allow themselves to be disarmed (putting them at an even greater disadvantage) and then attack the same powefull creatures that spared them all over again.
Presumably they've formed the view that the PCs outmatch them when they surrendered. Desiring to survive, most creatures flee when given the opportunity to do so.
A few even remember being saved, and might even pop up later on to return the favor and help the PCs.
You know; like normal living creatures.
You seemed to have missed the point I was trying to make.
See, it is very easy as a DM to sit back and wonder, wide-eyed about why the players are acting so evil. But, then when you examine what situations you have put them in, it becomes more clear.
For example, you said that the most relevant question on the Cloud Kill ambush is whether it was necessary to prevent people from being harmed and was it a proportionate response. But, that supposes that the players weren't sent after them with the express goal of stopping them. Because in, I'd say 85% of games, if the players are sent to stop a cult, it isn't to politely arrest them and ask them to come along quietly.
So, if you have a tendency of having the enemy turn and open fire when the players announce themselves, or run and flee, then the players aren't going to announce themselves, because all it does it makes their lives more dangerous and more difficult. Is that right? Not IRL, but this is a game, meant to be fun, and part of the fun is counter play.
And the harder and more frustrating you make taking the Good path, the more the players are going to not want to take the good path, because there isn't a point. I've had DMs who have constantly had prisoners cause immense frustration for the players, to the point where the idea of taking a prisoner was shot down by the group, because it was too much of a headache. In IRL, an evil thought, in a game meant to be fun? The equivalent of saying that you'd prefer not to stab yourself repeatedly while listening to music. It kind of makes the whole experience less fun.
I covered that in session zero remember.
Evil = harming a creature unless reasonably needed to protect innocent life from harm or in self defense from an imminent threat, when no other option is reasonably open to you.
Dude goes for a weapon; you shoot him dead.
You did see the dividing line showing that I was responding to Oofta and not you, right? And your definition of Evil could easily cause problems.
It's a form of (non lethal) harm. On the lower end. If a creature poses you harm, and you dominate person them to stop them from killing someone, that is in no way an evil act.
If you dominate person a harmless creature, and order it to murder its friends (who also pose no-one any harm) that's an evil act.
Again, see the definition of evil above.
Sure, non-lethal harm to basically rip away someone's free will and puppet them. Most players use Dominate Person in combat, to turn an enemy against their allies. Not harmless creatures, but you are ordering them to harm their friends.
Make a guess if someone had that capability in our world if the ability to force an friendly soldier to turn and kill his friends before you stepped up and killed him wouldn't be seen as some sort of evil act.
And yet, you very carefully cut that exact scenario out as "not evil" because, presumably, the soldiers in question are posing a threat which requires violence, so turning them into a meat puppet is reasonable force.
But, I'm going to go out on a limb here, and wonder that you are probably an old school DM who likely sees Necromancy as Evil. Despite being the same thing, only with a dead person instead of one who has to watch himself kill his allies.
Lucky we have a DM isnt it?
If you want to maintain a good alignment, you refrain from harming others unless that harm is in self defence, or the defence of others, is proportionate to the threat, and no other option reasonably presents itself.
If you go around murdering people, raping them or torturing them, you're evil.
Do you have a lot of players asking to rape people in your games? It seems to come up a lot, but that is the one thing I have never actually seen at the table.
going around Murdering people is really a lot of the game. And we have to be very precise in how we define Murder, to make it... not murder. And torture, as I pointed out, seems mostly to come about when the DM gives you a prisoner who refuses to cooperate, and the players come down to either wasting their time or doing what it takes to get information. And, again, they are on a time limit, so they go for the first expedient option. You want less torture have fewer prisoners who refuse to answer questions.
Not according to your code of honor. According to theirs.
Devils have a very convoluted and rigid code of conduct they adhere to (religiously). Castes, tithes, contracts etc etc.
How about the definition of the word honor?
"adherence to what is right or to a
conventional standard of conduct." other synonyms include Integrity, ethics, and honesty.
Do Devils have a standard of Conduct? Yes. Is it conventional, does it involve Ethics or honesty? No. Not even a little bit. Hence the Evil part.
No, again you're applying a human-centric anthropomorphic definition of the word 'family'.
A thri-kreen or Mind Flayers conception of family is very different indeed from a humans.
Yes, they would have a different conception of social groups, which is why I wouldn't use the word "family" to describe it. Because I can't change what the word Family means, and it doesn't fit what is going on with them
No, not even for Devils.
And evil people by definition, disagree with that definition.
They're correct, and the do gooders are weaklings leading the world into corruption and decadence, and only (the Sith empire, Thanos, House Bolton, the Black Network, the Brotherhood of Mutants, Drow race, Nazi Germany etc etc) can save the world from such perversion and weakness.
They see their moral code as correct, and the good guys being incorrect.
Which is why we call those people Evil and not Good. Kind of makes sense, because if they were right and we called them Good, then they wouldn't be evil.
