Alignments... the Ultimate Sacred Cow

[green slime]

Okay, in D&D the Assassin PRC must be evil. IMHO the closest modern day RL example would be a Marine Sniper. IRL is the Marine Sniper who kills a dictator evil? He probably doesn't feel that he is. He is getting a paycheck to learn how to shoot people and doesn't do it for pleasure. In most cases an Assassin also does it for the pay. Isn't it possible to play a good Assassin? What is it about the Assassin that makes it inherently evil?

US Marine Snipers do NOT shoot people based on orders from the highest bidder for their services. To suggest otherwise is to do a great injustice to those men in the Armed services of the US. And I'm not even an American.

 

[Kichwas]

A marine sniper is a hired killer. But in the sense that a fighter or ranger working for his sovereign is a hired killer. They all work for cause of the given state or legal concept they have sworn fealty to [*].

An assassin is in the modern day akin to an assassin... A contract killer, such as a mob hit man.


[*] A marine does not swear loyalty to the USA or the president or any given body, but to the US Constitution. The typical feudal fighter swears fealty to a specific sovereign - as do the soldiers of most modern militaries other than the US (in modern parlance the state has often become the soveriegn, but even given this many militaries swear fealty to specific persons within that state).

Our soldiers are like lawful neutral paladins - sworn to a code of conduct rather than a body. I can attest to this given the oaths I swore to - the same every American soldier swears to: to uphold the Constitution of the United States and defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic. An oath I take seriously to this day (and part of why I'm working to go into law).