D&D 5E Is he evil?

[Corwin]

It would be evil if the PC, knowing that this "bouncer" attacks patrons with deadly weapons, to let him live to kill again.

If he repents then fine, go to your afterlife to get your just reward.

Thanks. This brought another consideration to mind.

This is D&D after all. What if the fighter knowingly committed this "heinous" act aware going into it that he had the resources and access to raise the bouncer from the dead an hour later? So the killing ends up being nothing more than a grandiose slap on the wrist or a spanking, really.

 

[BookBarbarian]

So you really can not complain if you are executed then, right?

Perhaps not, but I l also wouldn't call it "good" or even "not evil".

If I'm playing a game in a more modern setting and my character walks into a bank and the guard decides I look suspicious and draws his gun on me then rethinks and decides to put it back in his holster would it be not evil for my character to draw and put him down because "he drew first"?

If my character is in a saloon and brawl breaks out and the saloon owner pulls his trusty double barreled shotgun from below the bar and levels it at us and tells us to knock it off and after we've settled down and the owner puts her gun away again would it be not evil for my character to shoot her because "she drew first"?

Good characters don't get a free pass to do evil because someone else started it, or because their blood was up or because they we're drunk etc. etc. etc. That's what sets good characters apart.

If you want to make a character that kills anyone who draws steel against them go ahead. Such a character can be enjoyable and memorable. Just don't pretend your character is still Sir Hero McGoodface afterward.

Though this is all academic to me since I contend that alignment is not necessary to make a game enjoyable and memorable. A DM doesn't need to scrub out "Good" on a characters sheet to decide how NPCs will react to a PC's actions. Just decide how you think other people in the town or countryside would react and then just have them do so.

 

[Shasarak]

Perhaps not, but I l also wouldn't call it "good" or even "not evil".

If I'm playing a game in a more modern setting and my character walks into a bank and the guard decides I look suspicious and draws his gun on me then rethinks and decides to put it back in his holster would it be not evil for my character to draw and put him down because "he drew first"?

If my character is in a saloon and brawl breaks out and the saloon owner pulls his trusty double barreled shotgun from below the bar and levels it at us and tells us to knock it off and after we've settled down and the owner puts her gun away again would it be not evil for my character to shoot her because "she drew first"?

Except that the bouncer not only drew but started blasting away. So even if he does "put it away" then what is to say it wont come out again as soon as the PC turns his back or even later out in the outhouse when the PC literally has his pants around his ankles? Nah, in the spirit of a "Western" the PCs would be expected to get into gun fights in the Saloon and no one would bat an eye if they kill anyone there. Heck, the Sheriff may not even bother to give them a warning.

Good characters don't get a free pass to do evil because someone else started it, or because their blood was up or because they we're drunk etc. etc. etc. That's what sets good characters apart.

If you want to make a character that kills anyone who draws steel against them go ahead. Such a character can be enjoyable and memorable. Just don't pretend your character is still Sir Hero McGoodface afterward.

Of course they do - if you are playing DnD. Look at the quotes from Gary - Good people are not passive pacifists who sit back and wait for the "Town Guard" to sort out their problems. In fact Pacifists are specifically responsible for the harm that is caused by the actions of anyone that they spare, making pacifists not only "stupid" but probably evil as well.

Though this is all academic to me since I contend that alignment is not necessary to make a game enjoyable and memorable. A DM doesn't need to scrub out "Good" on a characters sheet to decide how NPCs will react to a PC's actions. Just decide how you think other people in the town or countryside would react and then just have them do so.

And in any case, you scrub out "Good" on the character sheet and now the PC gets to play the CN character that they always wanted to play anyway.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Of course they do - if you are playing DnD. Look at the quotes from Gary - Good people are not passive pacifists who sit back and wait for the "Town Guard" to sort out their problems. In fact Pacifists are specifically responsible for the harm that is caused by the actions of anyone that they spare, making pacifists not only "stupid" but probably evil as well.

I've seen the quotes from Gary. Not one of then mentions a bouncer breaking up a bar fight. Also, choosing not to kill an unarmed individual does not make one pacifist. Not by a longshot. Heck it doesn't even make one passive. A character can actively defend oneself and even active slay evil doers and without slaying bouncers working in their place of establishment that have chosen to lay down their arms and yield.

But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps a character that will kill to defend themselves or others, but won't kill an unarmed opponent that has surrendered is a pacifist. Maybe I've been using that word wrong all this time.

 

[tomBitonti]

Something we should be careful about: If we are deciding if the action of the bouncer was "evil", we have to decide whether we mean "evil" as commonly understood by folks in this world, or "evil" as defined in the game setting. These are often conflated, but they aren't the same. This is evident, to me, based on the answers provided by Gygax. I am thinking that in the Gygax game world, deities had a definite presence, and what was "Good" or "Evil" was clearly put on actors in the environment by the gods, without a necessary correspondence to to our real world sensibilities.

Then, in the Gygax world, if the PC in the bar fight was a Paladin, the question of whether slaying the Bouncer was evil would be answered by a simple "Detect Evil", with the in-world result telling if Bouncer were evil and slain, or non-evil, and allowed to live.

That does seem to merely shift the question, making it a problem for the GM to decide, and probably leading to all sorts of arguments when the GM's answer doesn't match player expectations.

I think, though, that a lot of games do not accept the Gygaxian style of handling alignment, so maybe this line isn't very useful.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Fanaelialae]

So I've been out of the loop for a few days, and admit I haven't read all of the messages that I've missed. But I just came across something I found very interesting on Dragonsfoot.com, in a compilation of answers to questions directly from Gary Gygax. This is in relationship to AD&D (1e), and the views on alignment have changed a bit. But I didn't realize how different his views were from mine until reading these:

While I don't agree with Gygax's definition of good and evil, it certainly is an interesting viewpoint.

 

[Maxperson]

There is kind of a big difference between thinking there is no one there, and there literally being no one there. And the latter happens way more often.

Gotcha. It's okay to kill people sometimes since the latter happens way more often.

You misunderstand me. Sometimes people think they are absolutely sure, when their car obscures their vision. See, in a car you can't look 360 degrees around you. Cars have blind spots. And so, even when you think you are absolutely sure, you can be only 90% sure, or less, due to incomplete information.

Fair enough. I agree that you can't be 100% certain in the vast, VAST majority of instances.

Quite often in traffic you can be absolutely sure. Take for example when you're crossing the road at Route 66, in the middle of Death Valley. You can look for miles both left and right, and you can say with 100% certainty if any traffic is coming.

Those very, very rare exceptions, such as if you are in death valley, don't alter what I said in the slightest.

And this also happens at intersections, especially if you ride a bicycle. There are NEVER kids wearing camouflage crossing the road! Never! You can be 100% sure that when you run a red light, and there is no one there, that no traffic with pop up out of thin air. Especially if you live in a country with very flat open roads.

I didn't say the kid was wearing camouflage, I said he was camouflaged. I kid wearing dark pants and a light blue shirt can be camouflaged against the dark ground and light blue sky. It happens all the time.

But I think you're still missing the point of the hypothetical moral example. The example is not about whether you can be absolutely sure. But it's about whether laws are always morally right... and they are not, because context matters. Law cannot cover every circumstance, and quite often a law can be broken without it being morally wrong.

No. You guys are missing the point, because it was MY point to make. I said that laws are founded in the morality of society, and they are. The red light laws are founded on society's idea that killing people recklessly is bad, and not killing them is good. That the laws are imperfect and don't cover all situations only means that they are imperfect. I does not alter the fact that they were made based on the morality of society.

 

[Henry]

Perhaps not, but I l also wouldn't call it "good" or even "not evil".

If I'm playing a game in a more modern setting and my character walks into a bank and the guard decides I look suspicious and draws his gun on me then rethinks and decides to put it back in his holster would it be not evil for my character to draw and put him down because "he drew first"?

If my character is in a saloon and brawl breaks out and the saloon owner pulls his trusty double barreled shotgun from below the bar and levels it at us and tells us to knock it off and after we've settled down and the owner puts her gun away again would it be not evil for my character to shoot her because "she drew first"?

Good characters don't get a free pass to do evil because someone else started it, or because their blood was up or because they we're drunk etc. etc. etc. That's what sets good characters apart.

Based on the orignal post I would call these incorrect analogies.

Closer analogy: you walk into a bank and the bank guard thinks you look suspicious and OPENS FIRE because you got in a shoving match with another patron. The saloon owner stops a fight between two fighters by OPENING up on the fighters with BOTH BARRELS. In the story the bartender wasn't just waving the steel around as a warning - he tried to do bodily harm (and may have drawn blood, the story isn't clear on that point, just that he sucked compared to the battlemaster). If you have a concealed carry permit, and lawfully have the firearm, the line is a little grayer. It's not outright cold-blooded murder, though depending on circumstances it may be manslaughter. In D&D terms, it's not good, but it's not outright evil, either.

However, game system REALLY matters here, because this is 5e - a combatant can easily put someone down at zero hit points and choose not to kill them. In 3e, there is no easy nonlethal coup de grace, not everyone carries a sap at all times, and is very likely to fail at their weak coup de grace because they're not rogues. If anything might argue it being an evil act, it's the battlemaster not taking the advantage to just smack the bartender on the back on the head with his sword hilt instead of running him through.

An alternate scenario: in the middle of a battle, a warrior draws steel and means to do obvious bodily harm to a physically weak cleric and his fighter buddy. The cleric catches him with a hold person, and the fighter takes the opportunity to run the warrior through. Is it an evil act? He is helpless - yet had he made his save, the cleric would likely have been slaughtered.

What if the warrior is the only combatant, and a sworn enemy? Is it still evil to slay him, or is it self defense?

 

[Ilbranteloth]

While I don't agree with Gygax's definition of good and evil, it certainly is an interesting viewpoint.

Yeah, I don't agree either. But I think that it highlights the fact the definition of good and evil in the game is malleable, and dependent on the campaign.

Something that did occur to me is that within the campaign there can be multiple definitions of good and evil, and the DM would be the one that knows the "true" cosmological definition, or the one that the Deities use. This is the one that matters if your campaign might have ramifications for acting out of alignment.

The other one(s) would be the ones that society and/or religions teach, which might not entirely align with the cosmological one. So in the OP I would say that how the other PCs view the act will be based on the societal version of good/evil (Samurai, Gygax Paladin, whatever), but the DM might have a different opinion.

 

[Maxperson]

The quotes from Gygax are interesting, and essentially call the Spanish Inquisition LG. The thing with Gygax is that he is often treated as some sort of infallible D&D god, when he's no such thing. I think he was way off base with those quotes.