Alignment - Action As Intent

[Kahuna Burger]

Secondly, your analysis of the safety of the hostages relies entirely on trusting a dragon who eats people.

This is a strawman... My initial insertion of the consequences aspect was based not on the dragon saying what it would do but on the history of what the dragon had done. [my] analysis of the safety of the hostages relies entirely on judging the predicatability of a dragon who has eaten people in a consistent way for a while now. Nothing was said about the dragon merely making threats. (nor does eating people have anything to do with predicatability of behaviour.)

edit : if this was the first time the dragon had asked for a sacrifice and/or the first time anyone had stood up to it, the decisions matrix would in fact be more complicated, but that's not what I suggested as a additional factor.

Double edit : see Reign of Fire. the Defender's stance was not based merely on the idea that if the Cowboy failed the dragon might track them back and harm them but on good evidence that it had done exactly that before. The Cowboy had additional information about the consequences of his actions but did not care that the lives of people not even involved in his decision could be risked as well.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yes, but the example the DMG does give of a sudden alignment change meshes well with this example - a villain who has a revelatory change of heart.

Yeah, but a change of heart doesn't do much unless it also changes your mind, your body, and your soul along with it.

In other words, how does the universe *know* you've changed your heart? When you start acting like it. The only cases I can think of where you'd change your heart and not act on the impulse is when you haven't really changed your heart ("Oh, I really *wanted* to save that town from the necromancer, but it would be so *hard*") or when you're certifiably insane ("WHAT HAVE I DONE?!".....the next day: "SWEET PELOR I'VE DONE IT AGAIN! WHY GODS WHY!" ....the next week: "WHY DO I KEEP KILLING ORPHANS EVEN THOUGH I AM SO VERY SORRY ABOUT IT?!").

 

[Brentos]

Hmmm...

But the overall intent is that the character does it because it is the morally right think to do, without any reward. If an act is performed with personal gain vs. the same act with no personal gain, are they equal?

A good act should have both the intent and the act.

The LG does the above because they are acts are morally motivated; the LN may do the above because he financially rewarded; while the LE will probably require the threat of death, or other such punishment

A good act is a good act irrelevant of the intent as far as the rules of this game are concerned.

Probably the best way to frame my thoughts (outside of the DMG) are:

1. It is impossible to know character intent, as they are not real
2. It is possible to know player intent for their character if they are themselves truthful and asked at each action.
3. It is less possible to know player intent in the metagame sense unless they openly confide and are truthful (I'm doing this because I'm bored, etc.)

As a judge in a D&D game, I can only judge the actions of the characters in the game. That is the only objective truth I have as a DM. Since I, as a DM, represent the gods of the D&D worlds (DM's play all NPCs) the gods judge characters based solely on their actions as far as rules issues are concerned.

Now, for the sake of storytelling and plot, sure, a DM and a player can work outside of the rules, but as far as in-game resolution, the rules are pretty clear.

The counter-example brought up was the helm of opposite alignment. That is a magical item that purposefully bends the rules, so it is really not applicable to the overall argument. The point of that item is it forces the player to make his character *act* opposite of how they have been *acting*. If the player claims that his character *intends* to act the opposite way, but instead acts as they always have, then they are not really playing correctly.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Yeah, but a change of heart doesn't do much unless it also changes your mind, your body, and your soul along with it.

In other words, how does the universe *know* you've changed your heart? When you start acting like it. The only cases I can think of where you'd change your heart and not act on the impulse is when you haven't really changed your heart ("Oh, I really *wanted* to save that town from the necromancer, but it would be so *hard*") or when you're certifiably insane ("WHAT HAVE I DONE?!".....the next day: "SWEET PELOR I'VE DONE IT AGAIN! WHY GODS WHY!" ....the next week: "WHY DO I KEEP KILLING ORPHANS EVEN THOUGH I AM SO VERY SORRY ABOUT IT?!").

Um, dude, its the fricking UNIVERSE, I don't think divination of the soul is out of the question....

for an npc such issues do not exist. The DM decides if they are sincear or not, the end. For a PC it is a matter of trust and the knowlege that a player trying to "play" the allignment system in such a way will lose the character first and his place at the table second.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Um, dude, its the fricking UNIVERSE, I don't think divination of the soul is out of the question....

The more important ramification, for my campaigns, is that you don't actually change your soul until you do something that changes it. Mere thought doesn't get you anything unless it has a physical effect.

Part of this, I believe, is my explanation of alignment as "particles of energy" that are attracted to certain behaviors...alignment is a physical thing, not merely a mental thing, in my games.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Part of this, I believe, is my explanation of alignment as "particles of energy" that are attracted to certain behaviors...alignment is a physical thing, not merely a mental thing, in my games.

hrm, do demons and devils have a way of washing those off after a Blood War sortie? (of course if the destruction of a demon brings with it a clear and measurable increase in power for a devil it might even out....)

 

[Brentos]

The more important ramification, for my campaigns, is that you don't actually change your soul until you do something that changes it. Mere thought doesn't get you anything unless it has a physical effect.

Part of this, I believe, is my explanation of alignment as "particles of energy" that are attracted to certain behaviors...alignment is a physical thing, not merely a mental thing, in my games.

align-ichlorians?

That's kind of cool, actually, which explains why in D&D but not other D20 (modern) games you have this difference. Alignment is a magical force of the universe attracted to behaviors. I need to think about this, it is cool!

 

[Doug McCrae]

Risking oneself is heroic. Volunteering to risk everyone else as well, without their consent, not so much.

"Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed."

 

[gizmo33]

In other words, how does the universe *know* you've changed your heart? When you start acting like it.

Your thoughts are real things as far as I know (or at least I know mine are). Also there's a detect thoughts spell, which suggests that the DnD game thinks they are real as well (and observable by others). The DM doesn't know your thoughts, and that's the problem. He's not really the universe though.

You can change your heart and not act on it without being insane. One example I can think of is an evil character thrown in jail that converts to good. But he can't really do that if alignment is based on actions, because all he's doing is sitting on a dirt floor waiting to be let go.

In fact, if alignment is based only on actions, then what alignment is someone who has sat in jail for 20 years and thought about killing halflings the whole time but has done nothing? What about someone who spent 20 years thinking about all the good things he wanted to do when he got out.

I agree that intent is a very difficult thing for a DM to judge in a player, but that doesn't mean that it makes more sense as an alignment system. I think the rules have always had a strong component of potential/intent in the alignment system - and the conventional understanding of good/evil also has a large component of intent. If not, then why aren't you evil only as long as you're actually performing an evil act? (Edit: related question - why is summoning a fiendish ape to kill orcs considered evil if only the action matters? How can a magic sword detect as evil if it actually can't do anything? If you cast detect evil on a part of the Nine Hells, would it glow evil if it weren't sentient?)

 

[Brentos]

Hmmm.

"Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed."

But, wasn't Zoe wrong? Didn't the hero actually free a people from a lie? Sure, some died, but that was death through rebellion like the US revolutionary war. Had they not done anything, more would have died in the evil oppressive sort of way. "Live free or die"