FreeTheSlaves
Adventurer
?reanjr said:
Paladins exist to fight evil, they don't and can't fight those that are good & neutral except in self defence (and even then they need to atone).
How evil is evil?
- Thread starter Xath
- Start date
Paladins exist to fight evil, they don't and can't fight those that are good & neutral except in self defence (and even then they need to atone).
Geoff Watson
First Post
FreeTheSlaves said:
The 'power' rating of evil auras is based on the power (level) of the creature, not how evil it is.
Someone with a faint evil aura is just as villainous as someone with a strong evil aura, he just has fewer hit dice or no supernatural evil.
Back to the original question, I would rate the vast majority of people as neutral, with only a few percent for each other alignment.
Geoff.
From reading the PHB description of alignment, I use the baseline that the majority of folks are neutral. To be lawful, chaotic, good, or evil requires not just a tendency, but a sort of activism or dedication. It isn't enough to be a nice guy, you really have to be out there helping the helpless to be Good. It isn't enough to be mean-spirited, you have to actually cause notable harm in order to be Evil, and so forth.
I'm not about to go putting a percentage upon it, though, because that's not what alignments are really for. As written, they're meant to apply to individuals, at which point you assign the alignment for dramatic purposes, not to match a demographic.
I'm not about to go putting a percentage upon it, though, because that's not what alignments are really for. As written, they're meant to apply to individuals, at which point you assign the alignment for dramatic purposes, not to match a demographic.
FreeTheSlaves
Adventurer
[Falls over and rolls down a mountain as ground beneath feet shifts mightily]
That is weird! Mr evil mass murdering rogue10 registers as a faint evil in power while Mr theologan cleric of Vecna5 is a strong evil! I know which I would want to face.
Guess I'm going to have to enter the world of house rules to maintain my campaigns internal logic...
That is weird! Mr evil mass murdering rogue10 registers as a faint evil in power while Mr theologan cleric of Vecna5 is a strong evil! I know which I would want to face.
Guess I'm going to have to enter the world of house rules to maintain my campaigns internal logic...
WayneLigon
Adventurer
The paladin's ideals are, themselves, Good and there is no real argument on that point. Good and Evil in D&D, unlike a good chunk of our real world, are universal concepts meaning that cultural and societal barriers have little to no effect on them. What's Good here is Good over there as well, and across that ocean and over those mountains.reanjr said:
The people on that island over there give a girl child to their volcano goddess every year to keep the island from sinking. If they don't do that, millions drown and die. An entire tradition of art and music goes away. Trade routes over half the world would be disrupted. Despite that, what they are doing is Evil and the people actively involved in doing it will detect as Evil. They may think they're doing Good by keeping the island above water, but they're not. To paraphrase, your ability to justify what you're doing doesn't make it right.
Apok
First Post
FreeTheSlaves said:
This is one of the main reasons that I have mostly stripped alignment from my games. It's still there but spells that work against alignments don't affect most things. 'Evil' and 'Good' only set off detection-type spells if the person in question is under the influence of an appropriately aligned Outsider, God, or Force.
So, while Mr. Evil Mass Murdering Rogue wouldn't register as 'Evil,' he certainly could be classified as being an evil person and, more importantly, a very dangerous one.
This is nice because it stops the Detect Evil ability from becoming a danger meter unless you are facing off against dark cultists, priests, the posessed, undead, or outsiders.
mhacdebhandia
Explorer
I tend to assume that racial tendencies prevail, but that populations fall closer to the neutral point as a whole than to strong extremes.
Elves as a people are chaotic good, and their social structures and traditions will reflect this, but an individual elf will have significant "neutral tendencies"; most people are not greatly motivated by moral or ethical impulses. It's the strong-willed, prominent personalities of elven society who gather the groundswell of opinion that leads to the chaotic good character of elven social institutions - elves won't get behind a lawful neutral system, but they're happy to go along with proposals which suit their natural inclinations.
The same is just as true for, say, orcs. Their societies are not brutal and cruel because they're all mindless bullies - they're brutal and cruel because strong leaders run the show that way by embodying their natural racial inclinations, and it's something that orcs are more or less willing to go along with because they understand it. You couldn't get away with a lawful neutral system in an orc tribe either, but it's not because all orcs are deeply chaotic evil.
Most people are passive about their alignments, in other words. This can include "heroes" - not every neutral good warrior who saves a kingdom is motivated by purest altruism. True, paladins are required to be actively committed to high-minded ideals, and won't have the passive tendencies I ascribe to the majority of people, but I think they're alone of the Player's Handbook classes in necessitating that level of commitment. Even clerics won't necessarily have to feel strongly about such issues - Wee Jas is hardly an exemplar of lawful thought and deed, for example, so her clerics need not be such themselves.
That said, I would probably choose to divorce alignment-detection spells from character power and establish a looser metric of "commitment". An evil cleric of Wee Jas wouldn't radiate evil the same way a cleric of Hextor would, precisely because Wee Jas' interest in death and the undead strikes me as fairly distant from the alignment axis while Hextor's tyranny necessitates genuine commitment to order and evil from both the god and his clerics. Similarly, a deeply altruistic and benevolent wizard would radiate more strongly than his decent but hardly philosophically-committed warrior friend.
Elves as a people are chaotic good, and their social structures and traditions will reflect this, but an individual elf will have significant "neutral tendencies"; most people are not greatly motivated by moral or ethical impulses. It's the strong-willed, prominent personalities of elven society who gather the groundswell of opinion that leads to the chaotic good character of elven social institutions - elves won't get behind a lawful neutral system, but they're happy to go along with proposals which suit their natural inclinations.
The same is just as true for, say, orcs. Their societies are not brutal and cruel because they're all mindless bullies - they're brutal and cruel because strong leaders run the show that way by embodying their natural racial inclinations, and it's something that orcs are more or less willing to go along with because they understand it. You couldn't get away with a lawful neutral system in an orc tribe either, but it's not because all orcs are deeply chaotic evil.
Most people are passive about their alignments, in other words. This can include "heroes" - not every neutral good warrior who saves a kingdom is motivated by purest altruism. True, paladins are required to be actively committed to high-minded ideals, and won't have the passive tendencies I ascribe to the majority of people, but I think they're alone of the Player's Handbook classes in necessitating that level of commitment. Even clerics won't necessarily have to feel strongly about such issues - Wee Jas is hardly an exemplar of lawful thought and deed, for example, so her clerics need not be such themselves.
That said, I would probably choose to divorce alignment-detection spells from character power and establish a looser metric of "commitment". An evil cleric of Wee Jas wouldn't radiate evil the same way a cleric of Hextor would, precisely because Wee Jas' interest in death and the undead strikes me as fairly distant from the alignment axis while Hextor's tyranny necessitates genuine commitment to order and evil from both the god and his clerics. Similarly, a deeply altruistic and benevolent wizard would radiate more strongly than his decent but hardly philosophically-committed warrior friend.
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sckeener
First Post
Hand of Evil said:
If we use that definition then, Drow are the good guys (at least according to other Drow.) According to their belief system sacrifice of intelligent beings is normal and if they don't do their sacrifices to Lolth (or whatever divine entity of the moment,) then they are going to the abyss, drow society is going to turn against them, and it will make them an outcast. Drizit is evil!
FreeTheSlaves
Adventurer
sckeener said:
Tis true
BiggusGeekus
That's Latin for "cool"
"OK, if you guys are so evil, why don't you just... EAT THIS KITTEN!
-- Forehead, from The Tick
For races, I prefer "highly xenophobic" to "evil".
For individuals, I go with the cleric-1 of an evil god shows up more evil under a detect magic spell than a mass murdering rogue who thinks he's doing the right thing out of insanity.
I don't do this because of my personal beliefs. I'm pretty much anti-genocide. I keep this rule in my game world because otherwise the PCs will just walk around with detect evil rather than interact with the world. Other than that I try to avoid alignment issues. My game is not a Sociology 101 lecture.
-- Forehead, from The Tick
For races, I prefer "highly xenophobic" to "evil".
For individuals, I go with the cleric-1 of an evil god shows up more evil under a detect magic spell than a mass murdering rogue who thinks he's doing the right thing out of insanity.
I don't do this because of my personal beliefs. I'm pretty much anti-genocide. I keep this rule in my game world because otherwise the PCs will just walk around with detect evil rather than interact with the world. Other than that I try to avoid alignment issues. My game is not a Sociology 101 lecture.
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