Alignment myths?

[billd91]

Evil is Evil because of choice, not because of results; disabuse yourself of the idea that including intent into morality necessitates that the moral system is slack.

Actually, in the D&D cosmology, it's both. There are actions that are, by definition, evil regardless of the intent. Casting spells with the Evil descriptor comes to mind.

There are also evil intentions with any action whether bane or benign.

When the two are in conflict such as casting a spell with an Evil descriptor to achieve a good intention or torturing someone to find out where they are keeping the king's heir captive, you have some interesting role play opportunities. For most characters, it's a good thing to play up the remorse and atonement when an evil action is taken in a good goal. It helps both the player and PC grow in the game. But if they keep using said tools without the remorse or mere lip service, even for good goals, I think it becomes time for the DM to remember the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and start sliding the PC's alignment.
But it's true that some characters have a much harder time taking those evil actions. Paladins are forbidden them lest they lose their powers and good clerics don't even have some of those tools available for the temptation.

In the case of the child being killed by the falling timber:
The action of chopping down the tree that kills the child isn't evil even if it was negligent, I think. The reason for the negligence, however, gets at whether the character acted with evil intent. Was it through distraction or incompetence? Then it's not evil. Was it through an attitude of "I'm doing this and I don't care who gets hurt", then I'd say it is. The first is unintentional negligence, the second is willful.
That said, it's not a very strong evil in any sense. Certainly not like taking a child's puppy and eating it in front of them to watch them cry.

 

[Voadam]

I find the definition of good as those who care about something besides themselves more than themselves silly. Fanatical martyrs so devoted to an evil leader/dark god/fiendish master/unholy cause that they are willing to sacrifice themselves for those they are devoted to are evil, not good.

Martyrdom is not a definition of good

 

[Sejs]

They may be outside of your intent, but they are rarely outside of your control. The fact remains that your actions caused an evil event to occur. You are still responsible.

Absolutely not the case. Intent, not result, is the crux on which determination rests.

Felix has said what I'd intented to already. The D&D-sense 'alignment' of an action is determined before that action takes place, not after. If I cut down that tree with the express intent of killing the child that is in it, then it's an evil act before I'm even done cutting. If I throw away my banana peel and a child later slips on it and breaks his neck, it is not an evil act; the intent was never there. Both results are identical: the child is dead. But I'm not doing evil unless my intention was to make that child die.

 

[Celebrim]

No, it doesn't. But it is a good starting point...

My point is that it really doesn't.

especially in matters like this since law is tied up with morality standards - upon whom is it appropriate to place blame. Foreseeability is a good place to start figuring out how to draw that line, since if you don't, then every act is likely to be an evil act, because some consequence down the road will turn out to be evil.

It's worth noting that in some ethical systems, this is in fact true. That, because the universe is flawed and every consequence likely to lead to ill, that no one can be righteous or innocent (except someone who could see every consequence down the road). Foreseeability is a good place to start in a court of law because the judge also cannot foresee consequences and has no standing to judge someone for not foreseeing consequences that he himself probably could not have foreseen either. But again, the court isn't necessarily a good place to start because when we speak of objectively good and evil from the stand point of an observer outside of the frame of the universe this is not necessarily the case.

This is incorrect. For example, the law does not prosecute those who are unable (for whatever reason) to follow the law. It excuses many actions because their intent was good, even though the same action taken under different cirucmstances would make the act unlawful and thus prosecutable. For example, if I accidentally shoot an innocent bystander in the course of attempting to defend someone from death (say, by missing while trying to shoot the attacker), the law in most jurisdictions excuses my action and I am not culpable.

Again, whether the law excuses something or not is not particularly relevant. The law excuses people and does not generally prosecute them for lying outside of a few particular contexts, but that does not mean that the law is because it excuses and does not find culpable, maintaining that to lie in those other contexts is moral.

Negligence of the law is often not an excuse. But that is not always true. And, of course, we are not talking about law per se. We are talking about morality - and in virtually every code of morality, consequences are important, but so are intentions.

Which is pretty much precisely my point. Both have to be taken into account.

All of this is interesting, and generally ture. Yet it has no bearing on whether or not determinations of good and evil are bounded by a foreseeability standard.

Maybe, but it has a great deal of bearing on whether or not a mortal court is a good place to start exploring what is good and what is evil precisely because, being mortal, it is also inextricably bound by the same foreseeability standard and so - even if good and evil were not bounded by the foreseeability standard - it wouldn't be just for the court so bounded to make judgements that were not so bounded.

 

[BlackMoria]

Uuuggghhhh. I hate alignment threads. They make my head hurt.

The only comment I will make is that, assuming that I am following the supposition that Hussar is making correctly - then every character that I have played over the last 30+ years has committed an abundance of evil acts since intent or the foreseeability of casuality is irrelevant.

Therefore, by Hussar's model - every character anyone who has ever played in D&D who has killed or injuried another (that means probably 99.9999% of characters) has committed evil acts and given the nature of a standard campaign, multiple evil acts to boot.

Hmmm. Let me ponder that.

Sorry, Hussar and Celebrim. To quote Adam from Mythbusters - "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

What do you feel are the biggest alignment myths?

That it adds anything positive to the game.

 

[Mighty Veil]

I think it's lame when someone tries to argue that an anti-hero or anti-villian are more good or lawful than obviously they are. The Punisher is evil. He has no problem killing. Yeah, in a D&D sense everyone does that. But I've always felt fantasy is a bad genre to have shades of grey or go too deep in the ecologies of monsters (which unfortunely D&D has).

I remember on another forum people actually were arguing that Ra'Ghul of Batman Begins was LN! Uh, crazy maniac who holds his group together with fear and strength. Likes to turn lawful cities into chaotic ones. No qualms against people dying for his crazy aims. Not LN...

Other myths...

Characters follow their alignment. It's suppose to be, the characters just act how they like. The DM keeps track. It's only bad if your alignment switches if you're a Paladin, or similar alignment specific class. But is it so hard to just say "yes" to your king, do his quests. Help out peasants, and your party members when in trouble. There you go, LG.

Evil means murderous killer. So a PC shouldn't be allowed to play it.

LG is the default alignment.

 

[Celebrim]

The difference here is the I was saying was in direct response to a particular assertion of the form A therefore B. Whereas you apparently decided to tell me I "didn't have any reasons" as a means of pantomiming a real refutation without citing any particular conclusion I jumped to without reason as a way of trying to give your position apparent objective weight.

Uhh. Ok. I suppose we are not going to get much out of talking to one another, because you didn't have any reasons was a thesis and I thought proceded to defend it. If you don't percieve that, I'm sorry, but at this point I doubt I can do much about it.

Oh?

That was exactly my point. But that was Hussar's position. Hussar posited that remorse came about only because the act was evil.

I think you are making a straw man argument out of Hussar's position. Hussar posited that in this case the remorse came about only because the act was evil and the woodcutter was good.

That is what I called non sequitir. You called me wrong. Now you are agreeing with me?

No, I'm simply allowing that there are other cases which are different, in which another act wouldn't be evil, or another person wouldn't be good, or another person even if good wouldn't be perceptive, or whatever. It doesn't follow that because I agree that in other cases that the presence of remorse doesn't imply evil, that I agree with you that in this case the presence of remorse doesn't imply the evilness of the act. That's what I call a non sequitur.

And my point here is that "terrible" isn't, necessarily or AFAIAC, a synonym for "evil".

Pardon me, you are right. I just got tired of writing 'evil' and substituted something along the lines of 'a great evil'. Read it as that.

Evil is a moral judgment.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Evil is so far as I'm concerned the absence of good in the actions of beings possessing a will. It remains evil whether or not anyone judges it evil.

Incorrect. I was stating my position was to demonstrate to you that it was something other than what you supposed it was. Since I wasn't implying that it was a proof of anything, it once again seems to me that you wish to allege illogic at the drop of a hat, again apparently in the hopes of scoring rhetorical points with the crowd.

I wish you'd stop with the amatuer psychology and the pointless allegations. I can reply to anything you say with the accusation that you are just hoping to score rhetorical points with the crowd. It is a blanket argument having no bearing on this, and it doesn't get us anywhere.

However, what you did assert is that Hussar and I were saying the same thing, which is also incorrect.

No I didn't. I know you aren't asserting the same thing. I asserted that you didn't provide in that particular post any points of rebuttle that contridicted Hussar's position. I asserted that your thesis was not supported, and went on to say that it wasn't supported because Hussar could accept the points of your rebuttle as true without changing his position. this is not nearly the same thing as saying that you and Hussar had the same thesis.

My stance is that acts cannot be meaningfully evaluated separate from evaluating the agent. Hussar's stance is that act and agent evaluation are separate. By me restating my stance, which I hope you should see is not the same as Hussars, should be sufficient to refute your claim that Hussar and I are saying the same thing.

Which would be great if that's what I had said.

That Hussar and I agree that a paladin should not be judged for such an act is a separate issue from whether an act can be meaningfully called "evil" without considering the agent.

By my stance, he does not need to atone.
By Hussar's stance, he does not need to atone.
By the rules, he does not need to atone.

I don't think that that is true. Hussar wrote in the original post:

In the case of a paladin, he would have to atone for that action. In the case of a cleric, he would also likely have to do some sort of atonement (assuming he was good of course). Everyone else just feels bad.

It was for that which I commended Hussar as someone that understood the Paladin's world view in a way that I find rather rare.

I could respond to the rest, but it would be pointless because it proceeds from what I percieve as such a radically false premise, namely, that by Hussar's stance (and mine) the Paladin doesn't need to atone and that by the rules the Paladin does not need to atone.

I think the rules make very clear, with what you say is unfortunate langauge, that the Paladin needs to attone. You say that this doesn't follow with the ordinary understanding of what good and evil are, which is fine, because we aren't dealing with ordinary understanding but the understanding of a Paladin. It would be surprising if the ordinary understanding was the same as a Paladins. As Hussar said, everyone else just feels bad.

 

[Celebrim]

Uuuggghhhh. I hate alignment threads. They make my head hurt.

The only comment I will make is that, assuming that I am following the supposition that Hussar is making correctly - then every character that I have played over the last 30+ years has committed an abundance of evil acts since intent or the foreseeability of casuality is irrelevant.

Therefore, by Hussar's model - every character anyone who has ever played in D&D who has killed or injuried another (that means probably 99.9999% of characters) has committed evil acts and given the nature of a standard campaign, multiple evil acts to boot.

Hmmm. Let me ponder that.

Many, and I dare say most, of the worlds extant ethical systems have no problem with stating that probably 99.99999% of people have committed evil acts and multiple evil acts to boot. In fact, some of the most common ones claim that everyone has committed sufficient evil acts to be worthy of death. As Shakespeare said (I paraphrase), "Do not give someone only what they deserve, for if we only get what we deserve, which of us will escape a hanging?"

 

[Slife]

That alignment changes can happen without deciding to do something good/chaotic/lawful/evil. That is, your alignment can be effected by someone else's actions.

For example

BBEGaladin! Don't come any closer or I'll kick this puppy/Kill this orphan/Fire the laser/Other Generic Evil Act.

Were the paladin to attack, the evil action of the puppy being kicked/the orphan being killed/the laser being fired/ or the generic evil being perpetuated would be on the part of the BBEG, not the paladin.