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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kahuna Burger" data-source="post: 3668779" data-attributes="member: 8439">I've noticed in alignment threads that a lot of weight tends to be given to the target of an action in determining the good vs evil of the action. ie, it's ok to kill orc babies if orcs are instrincicly evil in your campaign, it's ok to torture an evil cultist for information, because they have abandoned their right to the protections of civilization when they decided to follow evil gods, etc... In a similar vein, there was an argument made in discussions of the "Pegasus" arc of the new Battlestar Galactica that the torture and rape of a cylon prisoner did not make the soldiers 'bad' because a) she was part of a genocidal enemy of humanity, and b) "she" was just a machine anyway and probably couldn't really expereince it as a human would.The alternate view, expressed in the BSG threads but rarely (ime) in alignment discussions, is that some actions, regardless of their target, indicate a depraved nature on the part of the actor.  That is, even if orcs are intrinsicly evil and every orc baby will grow up to be the enemy of humanity, a good person should not be able to chase down a screaming toddler and spit them through the back without needing some major therapy afterwards. Even if the cultist is completely depraved and literally soulless, a good person should be unwilling to inflict pain until they give in. Because those acts are about the actor not just the target.Now you can easily exagerate this into saying if the target doesn't matter then self defense is murder and you are letting evil flourish by not fighting it, blah blah blah. My question is not about combat, which is very solidly in the "fighting evil is (usually) good and fighting good is (usually) evil" definition in D&D, but rather issues like slaughtering the helpless/non combatant survivors, torture, rape, genocide, slavery and the like. Can a non human / undeniably evil / definitely will be evil someday target change the morality of an action? How much weight should be given to the target? Is there a point where seeking out those targets because it makes otherwise evil behaviour "ok" says something about the actor even if being stuck in the situation and gritting your teeth to deal with it is ok?</blockquote>

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