Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Meridian" data-source="post: 433062" data-attributes="member: 1603">Let's break it down:One:  Murder is the *unlawful* killing of one sentient being by another (a broader definition than what's in the real-world law books and dictionaries, but not inappropriate).  Conversely, in a situation where the law does not rule on killing as an act with punitive consequences, it is not against the law, therefore, it isn't murder.Two. Societal conditioning will influence an individual's reaction and feelings about a sentient being killing another.  Societal conditioning is also responsible for furthering the considerations of defining and choosing between good and evil.Three:  A tool, by several definitions, can be something used to accomplish a task, or someone used to further another's plans (ofttimes without their conscious assent, to deepen the similarities between the inanimate and animate forms of tools.)Barring all else, a tool can be used as a weapon, a weapon can be used as a tool, and a tool and weapon can be one and the same.Four.  By previous definitions, an assassin is a tool or weapon used to kill, its sentience notwithstanding. In a society whose laws contain sanctions against murder, it is an illegal profession.  In a society without those sanctions in law, the profession of assassin can flourish.  The use of an assassin would be considered an evil act if taking sentient life against the conscious will of the victim is considered evil by the society in which the act took place.Five.  Courage is the state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution.  It doesn't take courage to kill, just the will to do it.  It takes more courage *not* to take another's life when it is expedient and one's self-interest to do so, since deliberately and knowing placing one's self-preservation at risk by avoiding taking a life when one could do it without consequence to oneself would fall at least on the lighter side of neutral, if not good.If using DnD alignment to chart actions, the degree to which one pursues one's self-interest *to the detriment of others* is usually the ruler for degrees of good and evil.  The *method* of pursuing one's self-interest is a chart for law and chaos.  Killing someone or something to prevent them from harming someone else classifies as a good act; killing someone because they threatened you or anything you regard as yours falls in the category of neutral vs good & evil; and killing someone because you felt like it would be evil.  Your readiness to implement that drastic a solution is also an indicator of the degree of good or evil.In the DnD Alignment Graph, killing to defend from evil is not considered an evil act, although by our society's broader considerations, it is.  Affected by this graph, hiring an assassin to assassinate an evil warlord would not be considered an evil act; by our society's standards, it would be an evil act despite the good intent.Under the DnD Alignment Graph, hiring an assassin is not in itself an evil act.  It's just another tool; it's to what use the assassin is put that makes it a good or evil act.  If a true neutrally-aligned druid hired an assassin to take out a lawful good king who had refused to halt civilized progress into the druid's woods, it would be an act defending one's self-interest.  Ideally, killing would not be the first resort, because that would definitely place the act itself into the evil category, marking a tick for the druid's alignment to shift that way.  We would assume that the druid either exhausted as many possibilities as he thought were timely or applicable before resorting to killing the king.An assassin is always aligned evil because killing is a tool that he or she is ready to use at a moment's notice as a first, last, or median resort...at least, that would be my rationale.All this to say that, according to official DnD alignment, hiring an assassin to kill someone as punishment for an act that resulted in the harm of others would probably be chaotic (since it was in essence a betrayal of companionship and an usurpation of due process) and a neutral act leaning slightly toward evil, because it was justified by the record of the victim and threatened a self-interest.  However, if evidence proved that having the target assassinated would result in a clear proliferation of evil, then it was an act of self-interest that would result in the harm of others and thereby evil.  Either way, the GM would have to decide if it was an act that justified an alignment *against everything else* the character has done in his career.  Personally, since the character is CN and I haven't heard too much of his history, I think he is justified, although another such similar act performed right on the heels of this one would tip him over.In the above case, I would have to say that the CN was basically holding a grudge against the bespelled character, and that hiring an assassin to kill someone based on his past behavior, while not nice, isn't evil enough to justify an alignment change.  It's just nasty. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />I hope my "thinking out loud" made some kind of sense. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-P" title="Stick out tongue    :-P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":-P" /></blockquote>

Verification