Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 3333584" data-attributes="member: 3146">An interesting and, IMO, inconsistent feature. (Though I suppose consistency could be introduced by saying that "Good" and "Evil" represent our evaluations of the character and beliefs of the gods and characters rather than the in-game analysis of it). If, for instance, Pholtus in the Greyhawk setting were to relabel Law "good" and Chaos "evil," that would be consistent with his teachings and the magical detections would work just the same way that the rules say they do. Good and Evil (in people and items though not necessarily in actions beyond whether or not they cause a paladin to fall) are objectively measurable in D&D, but, by the core rules, there is no reason to prefer the one over the other (except standards that might be brought from outside of the framework, such as hedonism, altrusism, or convenient matchup with qualities that the player admires). Heironeous says one thing is right, Wee Jas says another, Hextor a third, Pelor, a fourth, Obad Hai a fifth, Kord a sixth, Vecna a seventh, Erythnul an eighth and Olidammara a ninth. Why should any character prefer Chaos to Law or Good to Evil? One can objectively identify the things that the various gods prefer, but that won't tell characters which of the objective forces they ought to prefer--whether Good is actually good or whether Neutrality or even Evil is better.In other words, in D&D land, Good and Evil may be measurable qualities but strangely they don't necessarily carry the connotations of oughtness and ought-notness that they do IRL. If you're a Hextorian, Evil and Law both come with the ought connotation. Evil, for lack of a better term, is good for them.Thus the philosophical problem that D&Dland does not and cannot answer: is Good really good? If so, why?</blockquote>

Verification