assassination and alignment?

[shadow]

I'm wondering how assassination would be viewed in the D&D alignment system. Would it always be an evil act? Standard D&D alignment seems to say so, especially since the assassin PrC has to be an evil alignment. Would it be possible however, to have a nuetral aligned assassin (not necessarily having the assassin prestige class)? I'm thinking specifically of an agent working for a king who is in charge of assassinating enemies of the state or powerful criminals. Such a character would seem more LN to me, but the idea of killing someone who is not directly threatening you would be described as evil in D&D alignment. Or how about the US's recent strikes against Saddam's palaces? (Sorry, I don't mean to bring up politics, but this is just an example). Since we were targeting Saddam directly, this could be an "assassination" attempt. But, I'm not about to argue this was an evil act. (In fact you could argue that Saddam "deserved it") So is assassination always an evil act in terms of D&D alignment?

 

[Pielorinho]

Strictly speaking, in the D&D world, assassination is not always evil:

Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

Note that if you kill without qualms, if you kill simply because it's convenient, if you destroy innocent life for fun or profit, then you may be evil. If you protect innocent life, you may be good.

It's easy to imagine a situation in which the only plausible way to stop a villain from "destroying innocent life" -- the only plausible way to "protect innocent life" -- is to kill the villain.

In such a case, the alignment rules are silent on the method of killing the villain. They do not distinguish between killing the villain with poison, killing the villain in open battle, or killing the villain by paying one of his lieutenants to off him.

Again, this answer is just by a strict reading of the alignment rules. If you go outside of that strict reading, all bets are off: it depends entirely on the ethos you stipulate within your campaign.

Daniel

 

[Kweezil]

Assassination, as "defined" in D&D by the Assassin class, is the act of killing someone for payment, which is an evil act and therefore anyone who does so is evil or slipping that way.

Unfortunately, this doesn't match the dictionary definition, which is Assasinate - to kill by surprise or sudden assault; to murder (a politicial or religious leader) by sudden violence; to injure or destroy (a person's character or reputation) Within that definition, it's still evil (it is murder, after all), though the 'greater good' could be a mitigating excuse in some cases, but not many.

-This is all IMHO, of course.

 

[Cheiromancer]

(rolls save to avoid alignment question thread... fails by one)

I think players and DM's alike have to watch their play style or they will effectively become assassins. Many, many adventures boil down to "kill the bad guys and take their stuff," or "kill the villain for the king's reward," which is within spitting distance of "killing people for money."

The difference, presumably, is that assassins don't particularly care what their target has done; nor do they wish to find a non-lethal solution to the problem. Players should take care that their opponents really are bad guys, and should make some effort to solve the problem non-violently.

The price of entering an assassin's guild, killing someone for no other reason but to be admitted, should always be refused by non-evil characters. Killing another sentient being for no other reason than their own benefit is very evil.

But basically I agree with Pielorinho.

 

[Spatula]

There are some non-evil assassain PrCs in FFG's Path of Shadow. One of them is actually restricted to good alignments only, as I recall.

I don't have anything else to add, except to echo what Cheiromancer said. The DMG Assassain PrC is evil because you need to kill a random person in cold blood in order to qualify. While adventurers typically kill things and take their loot, they generally don't do so indiscriminately (or at least, non-evil ones don't). And it may not be honorable to kill using poison, or killing a helpless or unaware foe, but honorable does not equal good.

 

[Azlan]

Consider this: James Bond is an assassin.

Sure, James Bond oftentimes plays other roles in spying and espionage. But he is first and foremost an assassin for Her Majesty's Secret Service.

 

[Thresher]

The dictionary version-
a person who commits murder; especially : one who murders a politically important person either for hire or from fanatical motives

This is very much different to what you are suggesting, motivation is the key here. The assasin PrC kills for money, what you are bringing up are other motivations, like a sense of justice, personal beliefs and political reasons. The last 3 can be easily applied to the simple alignments used in D&D.