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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Trickstergod" data-source="post: 1688110" data-attributes="member: 10825">Not quite how I see perfect balance. The reason neutrality is perfect balance, as opposed to good, is that sometimes there are necessary evils. For example, a village is over-run by plague. People are trying to escape, trying to get healing. However (and for a moment, let's just say that remove disease or whatever aren't handily available), there's no cure, and to let anyone escape from the village is to let the plague spread. So the solution? Kill anyone that tries to escape. Women, children, whatever. Shoot them down with crossbows and flaming arrows, and prevent them from spreading the sickness. The person didn't ask to be sick and for that matter may not even be sick, but it doesn't matter. The person has to die. Some might argue that to be a good act, but personally, I don't see it as such. It's a necessary evil. I'm not looking to argue the point - I rather wager some folk will disagree and say it's good and, hey, that's fine, to each their own. I'm not looking for a debate, merely showing my side of how I look at neutrality and balance and where others may be coming from. By that same token, my take on good is that it's an ideal and a willingness to risk your own survival. The neutral individual's the one with the flaming arrow's aimed at those who try escaping the plague-town - the good one's the one who actually goes into the town and tries his best to aid the sick and dying in the hopes that the sickness will burn itself out with a minimum of casualties or, even better, that a cure may be found. Thus why neutrality's balance and good is not; neutrality recognizes that sometimes people have to die, whereas good almost bullheadedly refuses that and is willing to risk itself to prove it. Good doesn't want things to work the way they're supposed to, it wants them to work better. I suppose one could argue, though, that isn't "perfect," but then, the harmony of the world has always involved necessary deaths and other such evils. Things that do good, that let others survive or keep on living, that are working the way they're supposed to, but that ultimately, when you look at it, are pretty crummy.And to respond to Calico, that's generally how people work, anyway. We get speeding tickets, pay them, but keep speeding anyway. We're often helpful to family and friends, but often enough could also give a toss about anybody else. We'll help somebody if we're the only one around and someone's in trouble, but when there's a crowd, our thought isn't to help it's that someone else will help and we won't have to trouble ourself with it. Heck, we'll even torture people if the situation is spin-doctored properly. Not to mention that as a resident representative of chaos, I hardly find actions of its like to rack up anymore karmic debt then lawfulness; one isn't any better or more detrimental than the other. And hopefully offering this up won't spark up a huge alignment debate...ahh well. Though typing this out does remind me of how almost simplistic the morality both the Book of Vile Darkness and Exalted Deeds is that they portray. Then again, both seem to lean a bit more towards prestige classes, magic items and outsider lords of varying stripes...hmm. Ahh well, yet again.</blockquote>

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