I understood his point and it was a response that indicated that he understood yours. Your response missed his entirely, though.
No. I pointed out that the a single vague sentence isn't helpful, not that alignment isn't useful. Alignment should be a bit more detailed so as to let new players understand it better. And no a LG society cannot engage in child sacrifice. A misunderstanding of LG due to one vague sentence is how that could occur, though.
There's tons of stuff on alignments online, so new players already have plenty of resources. For instance,
this page on Lawful Good, which seems nice and in-depth.
Two things.
First, yes. It's any or all of those at the DM's discretion. He gets to decide what evil magic means. Going by RAW all of those qualify. Some magic is inherently evil. Creating zombies is one of those types of magic. Using magic for evil purposes would also be evil magic.
Except that, as you have likely seen, there are still plenty of discussions as to why exactly is creating undead an evil, or if mind-controlling someone so they don't perform an evil act is, itself, an evil act. Or whether a society could perform a child sacrifice in order to save hundreds or thousands of other people is an evil act.
Second, your questions don't touch on alignment. Evil exists even if alignment doesn't, so either it's Nuitari, LE god of evil magic if alignment is in the game, or Nuitari, god of evil magic if alignment is not in the game.
In this case, I was talking about how "LE god of evil magic" doesn't actually describe the god in any detail.
No. I want to say "the army's soldiers are mostly Neutral Evil" as a way of saying, "That they are just plain evil. They have no rules on when or if they will commit an evil act. And they are not psychotic about it. They just do it when they want, for whatever personal reasons that they have." It let's me know when playing them that they are not going to run around gleefully torturing everyone that they defeat, but that if it's expedient to kill an entire village so that word doesn't reach the rulers of the country that they are invading as quickly, that they will do it and not shed a tear.
And I'm sorry, but I find that pretty dull, if only because it gets in the way of me, the DM, having them act in the way I need to tell my side of the story. If I wanted to have ruthless elf or halfling soldiers that will gladly kill an entire village, I will--even though elves and halflings are traditionally Good.
This is why I said you missed his point. He wasn't saying armor means what alignment means.
This is wrong. You can have 5 creatures with AC 20. One might have light armor and be very agile and quick. Another might have thick scales. The third might have magical skin that is hard to penetrate. The fourth might be wearing magical plate and shield. And the fifth might be wearing hide armor, but have a mental ability that throws off attackers.
AC 20 is short hand for all of those, but you aren't going to know exactly which until you read the description of the creature. That's the similarity that
@Mistwell was pointing out, not that AC 20 influences creatures actions the way alignment does.
Which is why I said that Mistwell missed my point because AC 20 and LG have two very different purposes and are used in game for two very different reasons. You can't compare a number with a hard-and-fast meaning with something like alignment and character personality.
I'm pretty sure that nobody in the history of gaming has ever had an argument as to what AC 20 (or AC 0, back in the THAC0 days) actually
means, whereas I personally have seen or been part of
many arguments as to what any particular alignment means.
Good and evil are objective in D&D. An evil act doesn't become good regardless of reasons you think justify the act.
So I could convert an orc to good and then immediately kill it so it won't backslide, and that's a lawful good act, right? I mean Gygax thought so and he invented the system, so he should know.
Or, if
not sacrificing a child means that the Demon will rise and devour a thousand people body and soul, what alignment would you put the act of sacrifice as? Would it matter if the child was willing, because she was lawful good enough to put the needs of her people above her own life?
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