Alignment

[JamesonCourage]

But here's another riddle. Are american soldiers who snipe armed mujahideens and make those preventive air strikes evil? If during the battle one mujahideen shoots another one and then you shoot him in turn - would anyone think you killed an ally? Are american "adventurers" evil in general, because they go to other countries and kill the not necessarily evil people there?

American soldiers are in NO way adventurers. That is a terrible comparison.

I'd agree with your analogy more if the were part of a nation currently at war with trolls, which is something I allowed for in my initial post in this thread. However, if there is no such open, organized conflict, then there is no allowance. The troll is by all appearances an ally, and even inserted itself in between the PCs and the oncoming danger, making itself a target, and exposing it's flank to the players (a general sign of trust).

 

[Animal]

Trust.. or lack of tactical thinking and overall stupidity? I'm not even sure if creatures with such a low intellect would try to suck up to adventurers for some reason, when their primal driving urge is to close in for the kill, snap that neck and eat that meat. All this "sudden troll ally" thing sounds so alien and unlikely, that i'd never believe it if i was one of the said PCs.
But apparently there are many people who share views opposite to mine. I honestly don't see how being at war with some troll nation would better justify the killing of some random troll in a skirmish, or why the said troll would be considered an ally just because he started killing orcs before the adventurers... But i guess it all boils down to OP's DM's intentions and feelings. He knows the truth about the wretched troll and he is the final judge upon PCs' actions.

 

[Celebrim]

All this "sudden troll ally" thing sounds so alien and unlikely, that i'd never believe it if i was one of the said PCs. But apparently there are many people who share views opposite to mine. I honestly don't see how being at war with some troll nation would better justify the killing of some random troll in a skirmish, or why the said troll would be considered an ally just because he started killing orcs before the adventurers... But i guess it all boils down to OP's DM's intentions and feelings. He knows the truth about the wretched troll and he is the final judge upon PCs' actions.

I admit there is a certain amount of bias on my part on my part when reading the above related story about the possibly heroic troll, because trolls specifically in my game are much more than simplistic monsters with animal instincts. There are troll bards and troll sages in my game world, for example. While trolls are repulsive creatures that favor darkness, they are also morally ambigious much of the time. They are far more strongly chaotic and fey than they are evil in my game. So a troll as ally doesn't strike me as terribly improbable based on how I have concieved trolls in my head. If a troll finds a baby in the woods, there is really no telling whether he'll see a snack or a baby. A traveller finding a troll on the road may or may not get eaten, and it might come down to a) how recently the troll is eaten and b) whether or not the traveller acts frightened or impolitely. A troll that gets treated like its civilized and respectable might in fact act civilized, merely to amuse itself. They are really alien things, and the stupidity tends to manifest itself in apparantly illogical and unpredictable behavior not as a ravening animal predator.

Now there are apparantly people who have concieved trolls very differently, and I don't blame them for that because I know that there are aspects of trollness that aren't part of canonical D&D. If you bring that conception into my game, and the above situation begins to unfold you'll just be wrong and I'm going to be a bit baffled because as far as I will be able to tell, I've provided all the information you need to view this troll in a more complicated way. I wouldn't blame a neutral character for simply viewing the troll as a complication to be disposed of, but I'd expect good aligned characters to be very conflicted at this point because they haven't been threatened and have no evidence that the troll is a threat to any but evil creatures (or at least, their enemies).

Another source of bias on my part is that I consider the three strongest influences on my D&D game: HP Lovecraft, The Lord of the Rings, and Grimm's Fairy Tales. If I were to pick a fourth it would be the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon (that did this plot twice). If I were to introduce a monstrous looking creature who was mysteriously acting in a way that seemed heroic, there would be at least an 80% chance that it was a polymorphed prince or something of the sort. In a world filled with magic, it would seem to me that judging something by its appearance is extremely foolish indeed.

 

[TanisFrey]

Interesting thread. Here's a classic thought problem.

You are in a minecart shaft deep in the bowels of some duergar hell and you see a loaded ore cart coming down the line. You stand at a switch and can allow the cart to travel on one of two paths, the one it is on, or to switch it to a secondary line.

Standing down the original line is your old wizard buddy, intrigued by some rune scratched in the ground. He has his gnarled old back to you and will never see it coming. Do nothing and "Smarty" gets it. This means more XP for you the next time the DM gets around to the new tally, not to mention spliting shares 4 ways instead of 5.

On the other line is a baby duergar who has somehow crawled away from its absentminded mother who is busy whipping her slaves into cleaning up some offal one made in the corner while chained overnight. The mother will probably eat her young anyway if it gets squashed.

There is no time to warn either the wizard or the baby, nor can you stop the cart. You can only either pull the switch, or not.

The question is this: Do you switch the track and kill the innocent duergar infant?

The big tough paladin choose a third path. Self-sacrifice, he throws himself in the way of the cart to derail it, thus saving the baby and the wizard at the cost of himself.

 

[the Jester]

That is because the majority of people consider good to be self-sacrifice and altruism and the people who were creating D&D were not creating a revolution in morality but simply going by what people accept as moral.

It is the same with torture. D&D says it is evil even though there may be those who would disagree.

Good and evil are actual, specific, real philosophies with superpowerful entities backing them up in D&D. There is no gray area at all; good is good, evil is evil.

You may use an Objectivist definition for good. In D&D terms, that makes you morally neutral- likely LN or N- with a possibility of evil (selfishness, in D&D, is the root of evil).

In a give campaign the definitions may be different, just as a given campaign may not use elves, fighters or swords. But let's not assume that without the OP saying so. In the context of good and evil as defined by D&D, killing the troll was clearly and unequivocally an evil act. If this was my campaign, that paladin would have found himself an underpowered fighter.

 

[Sekhmet]

From the book of Exalted Deeds (A 3.X core rule book on the nature of good).

BoED is not Core. Core is DMG, PH, and MM. The three books required to run a game.

Check out page 103-106 of the PH.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Let it be known that I am amoral myself, and all I have to go by are the very definitions that have been set by the 3.x universe.

You've used the term a lot in this thread, but there is no "the" D&D universe. There are as many D&D universes as there are games being played. While the behaviors (and even motives) of good and evil are fairly well defined in D&D (SRD: Alignment), there's nothing about how those alignments relate to each other. One campaign may take the Cosmic Struggle of Good vs Evil, wysiwyg approach; while another can take a more nuanced approach that assumes there's the capacity for both in us all. I'm pretty certain that one gamer's morally complex world is just as much D&D as a simplistic black-and-white one.

At a minimum, something as basic as "all trolls are evil" isn't a requirement in "the" D&D universe. One can certainly make it so in a campaign, but it's not a necessity. This is a notion that's even supported by the book:

Alignment: This line in a monster entry gives the alignment that the creature is most likely to have. Every entry includes a qualifier that indicates how broadly that alignment applies to all monsters of that kind.

Always: The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary predisposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions.

Usually: The majority (more than 50%) of these creatures have the given alignment. This may be due to strong cultural influences, or it may be a legacy of the creatures’ origin. For example, most elves inherited their chaotic good alignment from their creator, the deity Corellon Larethian.

Often: The creature tends toward the given alignment, either by nature or nurture, but not strongly. A plurality (40–50%) of individuals have the given alignment, but exceptions are common.

A campaign that uses "usually CE" trolls that are practically never good/neutral is just as valid as a less cut-and-dried campaign that has "usually CE" trolls that are good/neutral nearly half the time.

In other words, "the" D&D universe is a lot more flexible regarding monster alignments than you seem to be suggesting. It's a lot more flexible in ways that go way beyond that, as well, of course.

 

[Sekhmet]

"The" D&D Universe is the one that the core 3.x books set forth for the purposes of this thread. Other homebrew universes exist, surely. I run one myself. Still other campaign settings exist that change the nuances of the core universe.
The OP did not suggest or mention he was using them. We can only assume he is using the core universe.

"Usually" CE means just that. It will be at least uncommon, more probably rare to find a troll that does not wish to emulate their God, The Destroyer.

This means that all trolls are born or raised to be CE. Some go against that, yes, I am not arguing that. However, they all have the taint of CE in them. That makes it the duty of all LG paragons to smite them, as it is diametrically opposed to them. Just as it is the duty of all Demons to fight Devils and vice-versa, just as it is the duty of Dwarves to struggle against Orc and Giants.

If you are Good, no G-N-E alignment shift is necessary for destroying Evil if your action serves the greater Good.
Torching an LG city to kill one or two Evil commoners does not serve the greater Good. Torturing one Good soldier to root out and stop an Evil organisation that threatens to destroy that Good city DOES serve the greater Good.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

"The" D&D Universe is the one that the core 3.x books set forth for the purposes of this thread. Other homebrew universes exist, surely. I run one myself. Still other campaign settings exist that change the nuances of the core universe.
The OP did not suggest or mention he was using them. We can only assume he is using the core universe.

"Usually" CE means just that. It will be at least uncommon, more probably rare to find a troll that does not wish to emulate their God, The Destroyer.

Again, there is no such thing as "the" D&D universe. The core rules allow for a lot of leeway.

If one insists on adherence to the "core rules" for questions of morality in a "core" universe, then one can't overlook that "usually CE" means "more than 50% of specimens are CE" by the definition of "usually" in the core MMI excerpt posted above. Thus, a perfectly RAW world can contain up to 49% non-evil trolls. And in a world with 49% non-evil trolls, killing a helpless one who had just possibly aided the party and didn't detect as evil could very well have been an evil act, by the standard definition of evil in the SRD.

And there's zero homebrewing in that assessment. That's RAW, period.

The OP didn't indicate his PC exists in one of these non-B&W universes because he doesn't seem to know. And that is why it's a good idea to lay out explicitly if a camapign takes place in an "if it's ugly, it's evil" world, or something else-- because there is a wide range of "core" universes. Not being on the same page as the DM or other players in this regard is likely to lead to exactly this kind of confusion-- obviously, because otherwise we wouldn't be havng this discussion!

 

[That Darn DM]

"The" D&D Universe is the one that the core 3.x books set forth for the purposes of this thread. Other homebrew universes exist, surely. I run one myself. Still other campaign settings exist that change the nuances of the core universe.
The OP did not suggest or mention he was using them. We can only assume he is using the core universe.

"Usually" CE means just that. It will be at least uncommon, more probably rare to find a troll that does not wish to emulate their God, The Destroyer.

This means that all trolls are born or raised to be CE. Some go against that, yes, I am not arguing that. However, they all have the taint of CE in them. That makes it the duty of all LG paragons to smite them, as it is diametrically opposed to them. Just as it is the duty of all Demons to fight Devils and vice-versa, just as it is the duty of Dwarves to struggle against Orc and Giants.

If you are Good, no G-N-E alignment shift is necessary for destroying Evil if your action serves the greater Good.
Torching an LG city to kill one or two Evil commoners does not serve the greater Good. Torturing one Good soldier to root out and stop an Evil organisation that threatens to destroy that Good city DOES serve the greater Good.

The book merely expanded on good and evil. It was optional for the feats and what not, but the first chapter was almost an essay on the nature of good in the D&D world and better defines it than the PHB or DMG. It was just expanding on what good and evil are and what is expected of good. Actually, the PHB says good is a "respect for life". Make of it what you will, but you say it's very defined when it's barely a page long, then I find a 3.X book that better covers the 3.X rules, then you say "That's not core", even though your first example was a Forgotten Realms deity. That's kind of a double standard.