Detect Evil

[MerakSpielman]

If it is also partially dependent on your actions, then why would the redeemed serial killer's alignment immediately switch to neutral when he's done nothing yet to make up for slaughtering all those human children?

And the question remains... if alignment is totally determined by actions, you can think all the evil thoughts you want and not get detected. You can think "Hmmm, how many good deeds do I have to do so that if I kill a child I still won't detect as evil? It should be the same number of good acts it would take to redeem myself should I have killed the kid first... Let's perform some experiments shall we?" I can imagine entire dark tomes filled with results of such experiments. "Killed one child. Donated 1000 gp to charity. Still detected as evil. Saved a town from a flood. Result: Did not detect as evil."

So there has to be at least some element of mindset in the equation. The above experimentors should constantly detect as evil, since even their good acts were commited only the cover up their inherrent evilness.

 

[DarkMaster]

Leaving aside the fact that you are responding to a situation described specifically as being a facet of alignment being caused by one's actions...if alignment is merely a state of mind, why does it require something big to change it? Presumably even an evil person can have a sudden revelation and seek to turn his life around - if alignment is dependent on current state of mind, he should, be all rights, immediately detect as good.

If it is also partially dependent on your actions, then why would the redeemed serial killer's alignment immediately switch to neutral when he's done nothing yet to make up for slaughtering all those human children?

Sorry state of mind is not the appropriate description, It is much deeper it's the value you are basing your life, what is deep inside, your philosophy toward your existence and the existence of others. These are things that cannot be changed easily, it either takes a lot of time or an enormous emotional shock, losing a child for example can reshape your vision of the world for a few years and slowly come back or not. I know that if I would lose my 15 months son it could seriously change my vision of the world. Action have nothing to do with alignement, they are just the results of your tought. If I am a good person I will never kill intentionally because my conscience tell me not to. My action are not driving my mind, it's the opposite. Action more often than we want will actually do the opposite of our intention.

When you say that the evil person had a revelation, yes its alignement is switching to good right away.

As for the serial killer, he killed in the past, but since he talk with the paladin he is "brainwashed" Now, In his mind killing a inocent child for pleasure is unconcivable, therefore his alignement is changed. You are probably catholic, you think that you must buy your paradise with good action. Catholic churches (notice that I say church and not religion) focus more on the actions than the interior. Because it is the only way for priest to judge if you are good or evil. I expect a fantasy church to be less oriented towards the action and more towards the inside since they can actually see the real intention of their follower(Detect alignement spell).

If the religion of your world judges the mortal by their action during their lives then being good for the last ten minutes of your life will not buy you the paradise. But if the god judges only with the current state of the soul than yes. But don't forget that switching alignement is much harder than simply saying, I don't feel like being evil anymore. It something deep within each of us.

 

[CyberSpyder]

And the question remains... if alignment is totally determined by actions, you can think all the evil thoughts you want and not get detected. You can think "Hmmm, how many good deeds do I have to do so that if I kill a child I still won't detect as evil? It should be the same number of good acts it would take to redeem myself should I have killed the kid first... Let's perform some experiments shall we?" I can imagine entire dark tomes filled with results of such experiments. "Killed one child. Donated 1000 gp to charity. Still detected as evil. Saved a town from a flood. Result: Did not detect as evil."

So there has to be at least some element of mindset in the equation. The above experimentors should constantly detect as evil, since even their good acts were commited only the cover up their inherrent evilness.

Personally, I do prefer the purely action-based one. What, really, is the standard otherwise? The person above is taking a very inhuman approach to morality, admittedly - but he is acting rather significantly for good, as well as evil. To my mind, a person who acts equally for good and for evil is indeed a neutral person, regardless of their reasons for so doing.

Otherwise...what about a person, like the Ragnarok-paladin mentioned earlier, who is convinced that he is saving people by killing them? He is performing evil acts, but you could certainly argue that he has an inherent goodness - he is acting for good as best as he sees it.

It is better that alignment be mechanical and not quite so 'perfect.' People tend to be a rather convoluted sort, burgeoning with both good and evil impulses - I don't think you can reasonable categorize their innermost minds as good or evil. Even with magic.

 

[DarkMaster]

Leaving aside the fact that you are responding to a situation described specifically as being a facet of alignment being caused by one's actions...if alignment is merely a state of mind, why does it require something big to change it? Presumably even an evil person can have a sudden revelation and seek to turn his life around - if alignment is dependent on current state of mind, he should, be all rights, immediately detect as good.

If it is also partially dependent on your actions, then why would the redeemed serial killer's alignment immediately switch to neutral when he's done nothing yet to make up for slaughtering all those human children?

Sorry state of mind is not the appropriate description, It is much deeper it's the value you are basing your life, what is deep inside, your philosophy toward your existence and the existence of others. These are things that cannot be changed easily, it either takes a lot of time or an enormous emotional shock, losing a child for example can reshape your vision of the world for a few years and slowly come back or not. I know that if I would lose my 15 months son it could seriously change my vision of the world. Action have nothing to do with alignement, they are just the results of your tought. If I am a good person I will never kill intentionally because my conscience tell me not to. My action are not driving my mind, it's the opposite. Action more often than we want will actually do the opposite of our intention.

When you say that the evil person had a revelation, yes its alignement is switching to good right away.

As for the serial killer, he killed in the past, but since he talk with the paladin he is "brainwashed" Now, In his mind killing a inocent child for pleasure is unconcivable, therefore his alignement is changed. You are probably catholic, you think that you must buy your paradise with good action. Catholic churches (notice that I say church and not religion) focus more on the actions than the interior. Because it is the only way for priest to judge if you are good or evil. I expect a fantasy church to be less oriented towards the action and more towards the inside since they can actually see the real intention of their follower(Detect alignement spell).

If the religion of your world judges the mortal by their action during their lives then being good for the last ten minutes of your life will not buy you the paradise. But if the god judges only with the current state of the soul than yes. But don't forget that switching alignement is much harder than simply saying, I don't feel like being evil anymore. It something deep within each of us.

 

[CyberSpyder]

Sorry state of mind is not the appropriate description, It is much deeper it's the value you are basing your life, what is deep inside, your philosophy toward your existence and the existence of others. These are things that cannot be changed easily, it either takes a lot of time or an enormous emotional shock, losing a child for example can reshape your vision of the world for a few years and slowly come back or not. I know that if I would lose my 15 months son it could seriously change my vision of the world. Action have nothing to do with alignement, they are just the results of your tought. If I am a good person I will never kill intentionally because my conscience tell me not to. My action are not driving my mind, it's the opposite. Action more often than we want will actually do the opposite of our intention.

Yet there have been many good people who have killed in a moment of rage. If they were truly good, deep inside, in the part that matters most, how could this be? You could say that they were really, secretly evil, but I believe this is a simplification at best. Circumstances alter cases, and bad situations can drive good people to behave in extreme ways.

A perfectly good person can be driven to do an evil thing. This, I think, is a crucial point - if you can accept it, you should be able to see why basing alignment on a person's innermost being will not work, for if it were based on that, if in fact someone's innermost being can be so quantified, then it should not be possible for a good person to do something evil. Alignment must be based on something else - like action. Our innermost selves are beyond such classifications.

As for the serial killer, he killed in the past, but since he talk with the paladin he is "brainwashed" Now, In his mind killing a inocent child for pleasure is unconcivable, therefore his alignement is changed. You are probably catholic, you think that you must buy your paradise with good action. Catholic churches (notice that I say church and not religion) focus more on the actions than the interior. Because it is the only way for priest to judge if you are good or evil. I expect a fantasy church to be less oriented towards the action and more towards the inside since they can actually see the real intention of their follower(Detect alignement spell).

Atheist, actually. Now, what if that serial killer walked out with the full intention of turning his life around, saw an innocent child, and immediately succumbed to old impulses? Was he, then, ever truly good? Why? Yes, he intended to change his life, and he felt certain that acting in such a heinous way was behind him - but what use, and of what true meaning, are such intentions if they are not backed up by action? Is a good person actually good if they never help anyone in any way?

 

[DarkMaster]

A good person will ultimatly perform good action same for an evil person. When I gave the example of the paladin killing his wife murderer, it was more than a one event action. He completly lost his belief in the current law system and decide to make his own law, thus reverting to chaos. This change becomes so powerfull that it affect his whole approach on life not only that single event. But it could have been in an excess of rage, nobody is perfect, then for a short moment he deviated from his own line of conduct. In that case that doesn't make him chaotic. Because once the rage is over he fully realised his mistake and starts to repent in a way appropriate for him, ten days of prayer, auto flagelation whatever. As a DM I don't expect my player to play 100% their alignement 90% is reasonable for player with classes that don't depend severely on alignement like barbarians, 99% for paladin and the likes and maybe 75% for others. I don't tell that to my player. Humans are not perfect and I don't expect the PC to be either.

Good person can have evil taught as evil person can have good taught. the example of the serial killer you are giving is the perfect example of an evil lying to himself because he was brainwashed by some religious order that this was the way to go. he is lying to himself, his alignement is still evil but he doesn't know. And as soon a temptation arise it's true nature surge back. there is an expression in french that say. Deny your natural and it will come back running.

Tell me frankly do you know what is your alignement, I personally have no clue. If I look at my action I could say I am good but if I start to look at the real motivation behind all my action then I start doubting .

 

[CyberSpyder]

Good person can have evil taught as evil person can have good taught. the example of the serial killer you are giving is the perfect example of an evil lying to himself because he was brainwashed by some religious order that this was the way to go. he is lying to himself, his alignement is still evil but he doesn't know. And as soon a temptation arise it's true nature surge back. there is an expression in french that say. Deny your natural and it will come back running.

So would he still detect as evil, then, even though he feels horror and remorse at how he acted previously, and is certain that he would never do such a thing again? How can you lie to yourself if you don't truly know? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that feelings, at any given point, are less important than the reality of how you behave?

Tell me frankly do you know what is your alignement, I personally have no clue. If I look at my action I could say I am good but if I start to look at the real motivation behind all my action then I start doubting .

I think, as I said before, the only thing you can reasonably tie 'alignment' to is someone's actions - because the core of a person's motivations are too variable. People have impulses of good and evil all the time. The question is which of them you follow up on.

But I think I'm probably lawful good.

 

[dcollins]

The D&D rules are exceedingly clear on these "is alignment relativistic?" issues.

Good and evil are not philosophical concepts in the D&D game. They are forces that define the cosmos.(PHB ch. 6)

And so:

Well, I wouldn't think so, but it does raise the question about whether or not different priests would get a different result concerning evil depending on their priesthood.

No, they would not.

If a priest of Bane cast "detect evil" on another prest of Bane would he get a signal? Do Bane worshippers consider themselves evil?

Yes, absolutely, they would.

Does a Muslim extremist consider a Christian evil? You betcha.

Irrelevant, as they are not D&D religions, and the extremist does not have a detect evil spell available to verify the matter.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Say I belong to a cult. This cult teaches a doctrine that I have wholly accepted - that I must sow pestilence and disease across the land to make way for the coming of the God of Death. I go about my duty heartily, and never for the slightest moment does my concviction waver. However, I am no fool, and I do not wish to be found out by a paladinbot and killed. This, after all, would not be helpful in getting the God of Death to arrive. So I spread disease in one town, then go to the next and perform charity work until I detect as good. I time how long this took (say, a year or two) and keep up the good work for another couple years. Then, I reason, I should be able to infect my current town with pestilence and disease without showing up as evil. Of course, all the good deeds I've done are canceled out since everybody in the town is dead, but I did the good deeds, so they count on my spiritual alignment-o-meter. Go to the next town and repeat. Charity work until I'm far enough ahead to be able to afford to infect the town without detecting as evil, then kill the poor fools.

I would think that my internal, conscious motive - my active desire to destroy the lives of the people I'm helping, would outway whatever good I was doing. I think that this process would not work - I would detect as evil the whole time.

 

[Gnimish88]

Personally, I like the line of reasoning that people who do good acts are still register evil if that is their alignment, since it leaves you to figure out what the heck their motives are. I also like knowing that someone who registers evil may not, in fact, be doing anything illegal. The world is not clear cut, evil doesn't mean stupid any more then good does, and just because someone acts in ways that appear good doesn't mean that they are good people. I would wager that even Stalin or Pol Pot commited some actions that appeared good.