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<blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2017336" data-attributes="member: 27012">Well, I'm seeing a lot of &quot;alignment talk&quot; in the examples...I would argue that alignment isn't really a cop-out.&nbsp; Yes, it makes moral elements more clear, but it doesn't eliminate the hard choices, especially if your players are role-playing their characters.&nbsp; Yes, a Detect Evil spell would make it easier for your players to select only Evil slayers for killing but it would also make it impossible for them to simply assume that all of the slavers must be Evil and, therefore, fair game.&nbsp; Yes, you can kill Evil opponents without moral abiguity but you also can't rationalize away the killing of Neutral or Good opponents.&nbsp; In morally ambiguous situations, most players in my experience default to &quot;Action Movie Morality&quot;, which is (roughly) if they are a bad guy, are working for a bad guy, or are attacking the good guys, they can use lethal force and kill them with impunity.&nbsp; In many ways, I find that (and GM attempts to add some depth to it) more two-dimensional.Sometimes people need to ignore one Evil to address other Evils.&nbsp; Unless your deities define Good as &quot;A hopeless struggle against all Evil, win or lose&quot;, one can ignore Evil going on around them (A) if they have no reasonable chance of doing anything useful about about it or (B) if they've got greater Evils to deal with.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="John Morrow, post: 2017336, member: 27012"] Well, I'm seeing a lot of "alignment talk" in the examples... I would argue that alignment isn't really a cop-out. Yes, it makes moral elements more clear, but it doesn't eliminate the hard choices, especially if your players are role-playing their characters. Yes, a Detect Evil spell would make it easier for your players to select only Evil slayers for killing but it would also make it impossible for them to simply assume that all of the slavers must be Evil and, therefore, fair game. Yes, you can kill Evil opponents without moral abiguity but you also can't rationalize away the killing of Neutral or Good opponents. In morally ambiguous situations, most players in my experience default to "Action Movie Morality", which is (roughly) if they are a bad guy, are working for a bad guy, or are attacking the good guys, they can use lethal force and kill them with impunity. In many ways, I find that (and GM attempts to add some depth to it) more two-dimensional. Sometimes people need to ignore one Evil to address other Evils. Unless your deities define Good as "A hopeless struggle against all Evil, win or lose", one can ignore Evil going on around them (A) if they have no reasonable chance of doing anything useful about about it or (B) if they've got greater Evils to deal with. [/QUOTE]

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