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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CyberSpyder" data-source="post: 1404473" data-attributes="member: 12199">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?No, it's just a pretty obvious connection to make.  Morality is a consequence of freedom of action.  If one's moral nature becomes 'fixed' at a certain point, it can only be because one no longer has freedom of action.  If you still have freewill in an afterlife, then, one can only conclude that you can become evil (or good, if already evil) in the afterlife.  Spawn is that comic with the spiderman-like guy, right?You miss the point.  In reality, there are many different standards for judging evil, and most people don't agree on those standards.  The people who hold the standards are aware that theirs is not the only standards, and even though they think their standard is 'correct,' they also know that it is possible to misjudge.In the D&D cosmology, however, there is a universal, objective standard for determining evil, that cannot be wrong short of magical interference.  Fortunately, it is also possible to tell when there is magical intereference, through 'detect magic.'  A wise state would conduct periodic 'evil checks' through the city, and round up those who detected as evil.  Those people would then be checked for magic, and divested of any magic on their belongings.  If they then did not detect as evil, they would be freed.  If they still detected as magical, either holding them in a cell for a few days or a couple of Dispel Magics would clear up that problem, allowing someone to determine their true alignment.  They could then be dealt with appropriately - imprisonment and attempted rehabilitation in a kind state, or execution in a pragmatic state.This, of course, is going from the assumption that evil is defined by outlook.  If it is defined by past actions, then the above would not be an effective way of preventing future suffering - the person plotting to blow up the city would not be caught, while the now-clean recovering drug addict who once did some terrible things would.</blockquote>

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