Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 3292317" data-attributes="member: 22779">Well, no, cutting down the tree wasn't evil.  Killing the child was.  A nit pick.Let me try another tact then.Suppose this situation.   A nasty, bad evil dragon snatches the princess and takes her back to his lair for a leisurely snack.  Just before chowing down, a knight complete with white horse rushes in, slays the dragon and saves the princess.A good act right?Now, what if the knight only saved the princess so that he could sell her into slavery?  His motives are pretty vile.  Does that make the act evil?  At what point?  When he saves her?   But, at that point, he actually hasn't done anything evil.  How about when he sells her into slavery?  But, that would mean going back in time and changing the event of killing the dragon.What if, on the other hand, he intends to sell her into slavery when he rescues her, but, changes his mind and takes her home again?  Does that make the act of slaying the dragon go from good to evil and then back to good?In my mind, intention is not terribly relevant.  What is relevant are the actions that occur.  The knight saved the princess.  That is a good act regardless of the reason why.  It doesn't matter that the knight is a blackguard sworn to sacrifice the princess to Orcus.  Alignment is determined by actual events as they occur, not hypothetical events that have not.  Nor do future events have any bearing upon the alignment of an act.  Saving the princess is a good act.  Later selling her into slavery or sacrificing her to Orcus is an evil one.  None of the acts, however, actually impinge on each other.  Inaction is completely amoral.  You cannot show any reality in which my inaction has directly caused harm to that child.  Yes, I could have easily saved the child, and, if the character was good, he bloody well should, because good implies altruism and all that.  But that speaks to the alignment of the character, not the alignment of the action.But, that's not what I'm talking about.  The act of inaction, if you can call it that, is inherently amoral.  It is neither good nor evil.  There is simply nothing there to be good or evil.  There is no action.  In the same way that the paladin should not be punished by a loss of status for the BBEG killing the hostages.  You cannot show that the BBEG would not have killed the hostages anyway.  It isn't the paladin killing the hostages, it is the BBEG.</blockquote>

Verification