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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jfdlsjfd" data-source="post: 8444417" data-attributes="member: 42856">While certain recent settings got rid of the metaphysical existence of good and evil by the mean of clearly communicating gods, and 5e by the menas of spells (a tendancy that started with the loss of one of the silliest things ever... the alignment languages... alignment defined the way you spoke) there are still celestial beings embodying them and planes defined by them. There is still a strong support for alignment as a measureable in-game characteristic.The alignment stemming from actions also forces to define a cutting line. I mean, if you're an angel defined by good, you're doing good thing, including when you wipe out a city to make an example, and if you're a demon, you do evil thing, and if you save a baby, it's baby Hitler. If you want alignment to reflect actions... at what point do you consider someone has atoned? If the demon killed billions of living beings, then took a millenia of paid leave sitting in a tavern and drinking (while paying dutifully for lodging and beer, without ever being inebriated), he's still evil? Nobody, even the local long-lived elves, have ever seen him doing something evil. Or has he changed enough, but just stopping to do evil things, that you'd made him change his alignment? And how would the paladin entering the tavern and killing him outright being judged? And after inaction, there is the overall balance... if he helps an old lady to cross a road, will he be forgiven for the billions innocents killed? Action-based morality is much more nuanced and less appropriate as a fantasy gaming concept than the metaphysically-enforced order of things (including times where it's metaphysically botched, like the warring paladins casting Smite Evil at each other example above).Edit: if one want to think about it, outside of this thread, there is currently a trial of a then 18-years old secretary girl who worked for a brief time in an extermination camp in Germany. She's charged with 11,412 counts of complicity of murder, since crime against humanity have no statutes of limitations. Is she now, at 96, the same person she was at 18? Was she fully responsible when typing and doing paperwork in the camp, or was she the product of her time and education? Those are the tough question the judges will have to answer... Not an easy task and something that is clearly outside of the range of alignment tools. </blockquote>

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