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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3293119" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok, you are correct.  The hardest thing about discussing alignment is shifting world views so radically when you move from one perspective or another.Your saving the Princess example is correct, or at least correct to the extent I think necessary, for the same reason that your counter to the claim the wood cutter is responcible for what the miller does with the wood.  The discrete extent of the action is limited to period between the moment of the act of violition and the beginning of the next act of violition.  The woodcutter can only be held accountable for the wood after it goes through the hands of the miller if the woodcutter when he performed the act of selling the wood knew what would happen to it.  (Actually, I'm not sure that that is strictly true, and I've very tempted to start bringing the technical language of theology into this, but lets just say that even if it is not true it is sufficiently true for these purposes in the same way that pi=3.14159265 is not true but is generally sufficiently true for the purposes that you employ it.)  On the other hand, the woodcutter is responcible for the tree falling by his hand because his was the last act of will in that chain of events.If I can return to a counterexample someone else mentioned, if a Blackgaurd threatens to kill a child if the Paladin doesn't drop his weapon, the Paladin is not (even partially) responcible for the death of the child (doesn't have to atone at least, and again within what is sufficiently true for our purposes) if he doesn't drop his weapon, because that's not the last act of will in this chain of events and no one is responcible for the Blackgaurds actions but himself.  The Paladin would, if he bothered to respond to such a threat at all, simply note that he cannot prevent the death of the child by either dropping or not dropping the weapon, and therefore what happens to the child is entirely up to the Blackgaurd's choice.But let's change the scenario abit.  Suppose the Blackgaurd puts the child in a devious trap which goes off if someone approaches within 30' and kills the child.   Now, if the Paladin approaches the trap knowing the consequences, the Paladin is at least in part responcible for the death of the child (and should atone) even if his intention was to save the child because the Paladin's action is the last one with violition in the chain of events.  The Blackgaurd has done the more abominable thing, but the Paladin has still helped kill the child.</blockquote>

Verification