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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6619794" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Someone with a specialized skill set of "I make other people dead" wouldn't necessarily be evil. For example, a sniper working for a special forces division of a nation's army is, in general, a highly-trained specialist in making people dead who cannot defend themselves--yet such people at least have the possibility of being good. So yeah, I'd agree that the assassin class is not inherently evil. The problem is that "the assassin class" and "is a killer for hire available to the highest bidder" are not the same thing. The former describes a skill set; the latter describes an intentional attitude. Anyone--Assassin-class or not--can be a "killer for hire." I think the issue with Gygax was that he saw classes as defining more than just what you're capable of: he saw them as defining your whole outlook on the world. Hence all the various alignment restrictions: "Druid" isn't just "skilled with nature magic," it's a whole intentional outlook, a complete philosophy of the world; "Paladin" isn't just "holy warrior," it's a Lawful Good way of life, just one that happens to have practical applications to the typical dungeon-delving adventurer.Of course. But, and this may be reading something into the OP, the idea I got from this was that there were no unacceptable targets. I wasn't sure, hence my writeup of the questions above: I need to know if there are unacceptable targets, and if so, why they are unacceptable. If there are no unacceptable targets for a sufficiently high price, I would call that Evil. If the only unacceptable targets are unacceptable specifically because they are either (a) useful or (b) intimately associated with the killer (relatives, lovers, dear friends), and not for any reasons of principle (e.g. NOT a rule like "never kill a child"), I would also call that Evil. If there are unacceptable targets for reasons of principle, then I'd buy it, but the character would toe a very thin line, depending on how narrow or wide those reasons of principle are. As an example, "never kill a child...unless it's a non-elf child, because non-elves aren't people" would be sufficiently narrow that I'd call it Evil--such philosophy would accept genocides, which are pretty clearly evil.Furthermore, it very much sounds like the standards you're applying to the "acceptable targets" *also* apply to our contract-killer in question. That is, the OP specifically talks about him being "motivated by greed." If "greedy merchants" are acceptable targets, shouldn't greedy "I kill people to make myself fabulously rich" people ALSO be on that acceptable targets list? And if someone is among the acceptable targets for *legitimately* Good people to kill, doesn't that say something about that someone's alignment?Again perhaps I was reading too far into this, but I figure as a "fresh" character, this PC is almost certainly trying to "get his name out" as the kind of person who will do ANY job, EXACTLY as prescribed, for the right price. I could be wrong here--but that was a pretty clear implication from the "kill someone" vs. "save a kitten" example.Which, as stated, is why I would approach this as a series of questions. We could add to the questions above stuff like, "If you know the person in question is a BBEG type, would you still take a job?" and "Do you always follow your contracts to the letter, exactly as stipulated? Do you take liberties or modify contracts on the fly?" The former would pretty clearly put the character on *at least* the darker side of Neutral--accepting contracts regardless of who the contractee is or what they'll ask you to do, as long as they pay you enough, isn't exactly what I'd consider "neutral" behavior. That is, I would expect a Neutral person to refuse contracts on both ends, regardless of pay, because they ask too much.Finally, there's another line from the OP that I think is worth considering. Specifically:The player is clearly having the character do things he thinks are evil, and justifying his continuing succession of evil deeds by parroting the oft-heard addict's line: "I can stop whenever I want." That's both an extremely flimsy excuse, and demonstrating a serious divergence between the player's idea and the group's idea of alignment. Specifically, the player seems to think that Alignment is an intrinsic attribute, such that nothing the character ACTUALLY does influences it--rather, Alignment is first, a priori, and it determines what the character could consider doing.Which, of course, makes Neutral the "Anything Goes" alignment. You can do whatever you want, for as long as you want, and it will never matter because you always COULD be non-evil (or non-good!), you just <s>want one more hit</s> have one more job to do. Which, of course, makes Neutral almost *worse* than Evil, because it can be everything Evil is while masquerading as something okay and acceptable.</blockquote>

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