Steel_Wind
Legend
S'mon said:Naw, he's right and you're wrong. Acts that do harm to others and aren't balanced by a countervailing good are Evil (in D&D terms); that certainly includes random vandalism (CE), foreclosure on the widow's mortgage (LE) and fraud (NE). That these are not as evil as genocide or serial killing doesn't make them Neutral acts in D&D terms.
No, sorry, I'm not wrong.
D&D has always had within it a distinction between a property crime and a crime of wanton violence and cruelty.
The idea of the neutral thief has been embraced by D&D for 30 years. Indeed, it is even possible for D&D to embrace the possibility of even a neutral good thief.
Where D&D drew the line was at violence and cruelty to other living sentient beings. The assassin in 1st edition is the classic example. That was an individual who killed for money - the "antithesis of weal" to quote EGG.
This is a sensible distinction. Legal systems throughout the industrialized world draw a vast distinction between property crimes and crimes of violence.
Put bluntly, the group of 12 year olds out egging a house are NOT engaged in a lawful good act. But this is hardly a few steps up the slippery slope from donning black runed armor and posing for a Frazzetta painting.
Similarly, the bank which forecloses on a defaulting borrower is not engaged in a lawful evil act. At worst it is lawful neutral and is even quite defencibly lawful good when taking a long view of the matter. To ascribe to the enforcement of a secured lending instrument a moral equivalency of "evil" is just something we are not EVER going to agree upon, no matter if we write messages to one another for the next 10 years, 3 times a day.
Our viewpoints on these matters are clearly just not the same. What is self-evident to you is not in the least self-evident to me.
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