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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 3297378" data-attributes="member: 22779">IMO, the problem lies in reducing an event that much.  If you break it down to all of its component actions, then you will find that no action is ever evil.  Swinging a sword, in and of itself is not evil.  Pouring a poison into a well is not evil.  Etc.  However, if you pull back the focus a little, and look at cause and immediete effect, then you can decide if an event is evil or not. The problem with relying on motive I outlined above with the two knights.  If I do nothing but good acts, with the evilest intent, does that make me evil?  And, if because motives are so subjective, relying on motives makes alignment subjective.  If my motive is good, "I am poisoning this cup to kill the evil tyrant", does that mean that my use of poison is good?  If it is, then playing paladins becomes very easy.  "I wiped out the town because it was a den of evil.  That some people in the town weren't evil is irrelevant since I have ended the threat the town presented."  If motive determines morality, then morality as a game construct becomes meaningless.OTOH, if we use a somewhat wider focus (but not so wide as to include future possiblities), then we can say easier if an act was good or evil.  Killing children is evil.  That the woodcutter had no intention of killing the child mitigates it somewhat, but, it's still evil.  A paladin woodcutter would have to atone.  He could atone because it was unintentional.  By using a slightly wider focus, we can use alignment as a tool in the game.  Muddying things with intent simply serves to add fuel to the fire of alignment disagreements.  In this view of alignment (which isn't necessarily the only view), alignment is absolute.  A given event is good, evil or neutral.  We don't need to look any farther than that.  We can, certainly, but we don't need to.  Note, this also only applies to events, not to characters.  Since a character is nothing but a collection of motivations, we cannot separate motive from character.  However, events don't need motivations to occur.  They simply exist.</blockquote>

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