D&D 5E Evil Vs. Neutral - help me explain?

[Flamestrike]

Hiya!

I didn't read the whole thread, so here's a grain of salt.

Neutral is about "survival of self first, then family, then friends, then everyone else". Chaos is about "freedom to make choices and personal desires first". Evil is about "getting something for yourself through the suffering and pain of others". Good is about "helping those around you, even at cost to yourself, friends, and family".

CN mixes the "Freedom" with the "survival". The Chaotic part puts them in the "me first, friends and family second...everyone else has to fend for themselves". The Neutral part determines how they will go about getting the "me first" thing accomplished. In this case...Evil nor Good are considerations.

So, a CG person may think "I really want that money! I don't know the guy, so I could kill him...I guess. But then again, he could be a really nice guy with a family. I mean...just because someone wants him dead doesn't really give that someone the right to just take his life. That's not fair at all. Hmmm....naaaa. Forget it. I'm not killing anyone for money." Now, a CE person may think "I really want that money! And they didn't say how I had to kill him...my choice I guess. This is great! I can finally try out that new paralytic poison! If it works I can get in a little bit of fun torturing him to death. Count me in!".

Now, the CN person may think "I really want that money! I'll just take if from this guy now. Attack!" ... Or maybe he thinks "I really want that money! I'll kill that guy, sure!"... Or maybe he thinks "I really want that money! But I'm not up for killing anyone today. Pass."

The big difference is that the CN person doesn't have that "moral compass" to help him decide on what action to take. He doesn't care if it's good or evil. He doesn't care about the outcome at all. He only cares about himself and what he wants at that moment. And yes, for the record, I do see CN as the "insane" alignment. It's a very difficult alignment to pull off, as D&D is a group-based game, and CN characters are whimsical in what they will do. The player has to basically play the character in a way that will, eventually, result in the party killing him or otherwise "not being with him". For CN, think uber-spoiled 7 year old; they want what they want, and they want it now...and they don't care how they get it.

PS: Alignment is determined by the DM...not the player and not the characters "personal upbringing". If the DM says "Killing sentient life" is evil, then it's evil, regardless of the fact that the CE drow cleric lived in Erelhei-Cinlu and there "killing for fun and profit" was a noble and aspired virtue.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

I completely disagree.

The CN person does have a moral compass. He's morally neutral. He is neither evil nor is he good (nor as you suggest, alternating between both).

He avoids both evil actions and altruistic ones and lives in the shades of grey in the middle of the two extremes.

Neutral is not a licence to be evil and good. Youre not a moral switch hitter, just because youre Chaotic. A Neutral character is... well... neutral with respect to both. The chaos thing doesnt mean that he swings between them - any more than a chaotic good person swings between good and neutral.

A True neutral person doesnt murder people for money (as that is evil) nor does he give all he has to charity (that's good). He earns his money as best he can, and uses it to live a good life for himself and his family. He may occasionally lie and cheat for gain, but he wont murder and kill. He may occasionally give a few coppers to a beggar, or help a little old lady across the street, while retaining enough cash to live comfortably himself or if it doesnt otherwise inconvenience him.

The chaotic neutral person is morally in the same boat, just with little regard for tradition, laws, honor or rules. He'll cheat, lie and look after his own skin without being evil (or altruistic). His word doesnt generally mean much, if he gets an advantage from breaking it, and no-one gets hurt in the process. Your average petty criminal would be CN. The Lawful neutral dude will be morally the same, but stick to his word, and work within the laws of the land and out of a sense of duty or obligation. Your average judge or law abiding citizen would be LN.

 

[Mephista]

Chaotic Neutral has been used to describe gods of entropy, shadows, and destruction (kind of the hallmarks of the Abyss) that, for some reason or another, the writers didn't want to be "Evil." I really don't have anything else to add to the discussion than alignment is never going to agree because its trying to turn something entirely subjective into an objective thing.

 

[Flamestrike]

Chaotic Neutral has been used to describe gods of entropy, shadows, and destruction (kind of the hallmarks of the Abyss) that, for some reason or another, the writers didn't want to be "Evil."

The Abyss is literally CE, not CN.

CN is described as:

A chaotic neutral character follows his whims. He is an individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but doesn't strive to protect others' freedom. He avoids authority, resents restrictions, and challenges traditions. A chaotic neutral character does not intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a campaign of anarchy. To do so, he would have to be motivated either by good (and a desire to liberate others) or evil (and a desire to make those different from himself suffer). A chaotic neutral character may be unpredictable, but his behavior is not totally random.

The above does not infer destruction or evil in any way. It simply describes a person who values his own liberty and freedoms, without doing either evil or good deeds in the process. He doesn't murder people (that would be evil), but he doesn't go out of his way to help people either (that would be good).

He'll break into your house and steal from you if he needed money. But if you wake up and catch him, he wont kill you out of hand to cover his tracks (although he will tie you up, and will fight back in self defense, using lethal force if absolutely necessary).

A CE villain on the other hand would also break into your house and steal from you. He'll also kill you (and your whole family) in your sleep if doing so is convenient for him, makes it less likely he'll get caught, and he thinks he'll get away with it.

A CG hero would break into the local oppressive barons house and steal from him (to undermine his tyrannical rule over the local peasants). He would then redistribute the a large share of the wealth to the poor to fund resistance against the baron, and free any political prisoners locked in the dungeon on the way out.

 

[Shasarak]

We had one whole edition without alignment arguments.

We had four whole editions without alignment arguments.

 

[The Human Target]

We had four whole editions without alignment arguments.

Who's we?

 

[Mephista]

The Abyss is literally CE, not CN.

Yep. Kind of my point. You have gods and characters that embody everything that the CE Abyss does, but they're labeled as CN, because they didn't want to call them "Evil." Example - gnome god Geld. And this is from official D&D books and characters.

"Oh, they live to destroy and cause mayhem, but they're not Evil, so its alright."

Its that kind of sophistry that makes me roll my eyes at alignment. If the writers are so inconsistent with it, how should we expect players and GMs to agree?

 

[Shasarak]

Who's we?

Presumably a different we to the original we.

 

[Flamestrike]

Yep. Kind of my point. You have gods and characters that embody everything that the CE Abyss does, but they're labeled as CN, because they didn't want to call them "Evil." Example - gnome god Geld. And this is from official D&D books and characters.

Never heard of Geld. Whats he from?

Edit: You man Gelf?

That dude is CN(E). Clear evil tendencies. Dude hands out with Death Slaad (which also tend towards a more evil alignment) and Succubi. His herald is also fiendish.

He is a pretty mean SOB whose dogma is basically the active destruction of Gnome society. Dude is right on the cusp of CE and CN - the only thing stopping from pushing him over the edge into full blown evil is he doesn't overtly advocate killing anyone; just bringing about basically total anarchy in Gnome society.

 

[pemerton]

The funny thing is that some editions of the game actually tell us the criteria for good and evil in D&D and yet people continue to debate those very aspects that have already been spelled out for us in core books.

<snip>

Different editions defined things a bit differently. AD&D was kind of annoying in how they did it, because it poorly represented, you know, people.

I don't agree - see my post 33 upthread.

In 1st ed AD&D, good people are those who care about human wellbeing, truth and beauty. Gygax puts forward various conceptions of human wellbeing - happiness, dignity, rights, etc - without really distinguishing between them.

Evil people, on the other hand, are those who do not regard these valuable things (truth, beauty, others' wellbeing) as any sort of constraint on their actions. As Gygax puts it, for them purpose is the determinant. I think this represents people pretty well.

They tended to see most creatures as good or evil, lawful or chaotic, with neutrality as this narrow ribbon in the middle for oddballs.

Yes. That's because most people either act in a way that is respectful of values like truth, beauty and wellbeing, or else disregard those things. So most people are either good or evil (as conceived of in the framework presented by 1st ed AD&D).

In this scheme, I don't think that "neutrality" is some sort of grey-zone between good and evil. As I said in that earlier post, each of LN, CN and TN is its own thing. LN people are those who pursue order for its own sake - they are not evil, because they value something outside themselves (namely, social organisation) but they are nevertheless guilty of moral error, because the thing they value is not worth valuing as an end in itself. The CN make a parallel error, but in respect of freedom rather than order. And TN is a more-or-less Stoic or Taoist prioritisation of nature over artifice, and a corresponding belief in the importance of harmony and balance.

3e did it the best.* They painstakingly explained what the terms meant. Unlike AD&D they made the alignments make sense. Most regular people on earth would be neutral. Neutrality is a broad band of alignment, with good and evil, law and chaos being the extremes.

I think that 3E, by trying to treat neutrality as a grey-zone between good and evil, tends to cause confusion. What counts as a sacrifice? The neutral are said to have compunctions - suppose, because of those compunctions, a person gives up the opportunity to make a profit which would require evicting a poor family from their land. Does that count as a sacrifice? If so, how does neutrality differ from goodness? If not, what does count as a sacrifice?

There is also a tendency for 3E's evil to collapse into "takes pleasure from harming others", which is a pretty narrow range of personalities. If you expand evil to include "Doesn't worry about harming in others in the pursuit of desire" (which is the 1st ed AD&D definition) then you've removed the space for neutrality, because someone who will forego desire in order to avoid harming others looks like someone who will make sacrifices, which is how good has been defined.

 

[pemerton]

There have been several posts equating "alignment is descriptive" with "the GM gets to determine what alignment the PC is". But those two things are not equivalent.

It's true that, in D&D, for PCs, alignment is descriptive. For instance, Gygax on p 23 of his DMG says that "The overall behavior of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or, in the case of player characters, behavior determines actual alignment."

But this doesn't automatically mean that the GM gets to unilaterally decide what the alignment consequences are of a given PC's behaviour.

If a player takes the view that his/her PC is not evil (eg because not purely selfish, or not always disregarding the wellbeing of other people), it is a strong thing for the GM to unilaterally decide that the player is wrong. It's the player's game as well as the GM's, and the PC is the core vehicle for the player to interact with and interpret the shared fiction of the game.

I think avoiding table conflicts, and being sensitive to the fact that reasonable people can have different interpretations of the moral signficiance of actions (especially in the context of escapist fiction), are important considerations. And they suggest at least a degree of caution in relation to GM unilateralism.