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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RainOfSteel" data-source="post: 3292674" data-attributes="member: 24460">No, he did not commit an evil act.  He may well have done something tremendously stupid and possibly criminally culpable--if he didn't check out the area where he was going to drop the tree ahead of time--but evil, no.  Not if he didn't know the child was there.  (And in a fantasy-type gaming setting, it may well be that this type of criminal culpability concept hasn't yet been developed.)It's called a conscience.  Good people have it and when terrible things happen by their own hand, then even it was an accident with not slightest implication of evil, such as the example given above, then their conscience harms them.Pesky things, these consciences.  But if we didn't have them, we would all be sociopaths, and then a lot of evil really would occur.There are few neutral acts and accidentally killing someone isn't one of them.  However, just because an act isn't neutral doesn't mean it must be good or evil.  Accidents fall into their own zone, IMO.  (Like I mentioned above, cirminal culpability may apply in situations where the perpetrator is not evil.)Negligence is not necessarily evil.I don't view drunken drivers who hit and kill people as being negligent.  That is malice aforethought and fully evil.  They have deliberately removed their ability to control their driving and then driven their vehicle, making them both responsible and evil.But driving and hitting a patch of ice, skidding out of control, and hitting and killing a child is no more evil than dropping a tree unknowingly on one.Where criminal culpability rests, and the severity of any forthcoming punishment (if any), that is something else entirely, and highly dependent on a given society's laws.</blockquote>

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