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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeyLookItsMe" data-source="post: 1634024" data-attributes="member: 17429">EvilIn games I run I make it perfectly clear to my players that just because you cast detect evil on someone, and it comes up positive, does NOT make it ok to slaughter them. Mortals aren't the ones who are to make judgements about who is *deserving* of death. In battle, there will always be casualties, but I make sure they understand teh difference between the death of your enemy in combat, and straight up murder. I think if one *were* to go and slaughter said evil fellow, it would be an evil act in itself. I always tended to use this one NPC from a campaign I ran years ago as an example. There was a dwarf named Dug who was once part of a party that was rivaling the PC's group. Over time, the rivalry became a friendship. Dug was a fairly nice guy most of the time. He had fought with the humans in their war against the orcs for years. He never went around slaughtering humans and dwarves, and was for the most part, a pretty down to earth fellow. However, as with most of his race, he wasn't particularly fond of orcs. He, in fact, took great pleasure in their destruction, and relished every chance he had to engage them. While noone was really aware of it, among the PC's, Dug didn't find the concept of burning orc villages to the ground to be a particularly wicked thought. Orc women and children were still orcs....and of course to him, the possibility of orcs having any redeeming qualities was laughable. However, no orc is *inherently* evil, as I see it. They are the result of their culture, and upbringing, perhaps mixed with stronger natural tendencies towards violence. However, in accepting the possibility for a SINGLE good orc, they become creatures who are capable of redemption. For this reason... Dug, as far as I was concerned...was evil. He was fallable. He made mistakes. Everyone is, really. But he too, is a sentient creature. The product of his life, and the choices he has made, good or bad. He too has the chance for redemption. To take a life because you have to is one thing. To take a life because you consider yourself the absolute moral authority of right and wrong, clearly able to make judgements about the behaivior of others is to be a horrible tyrant. I think there are virtually NO people who wake up, look in the mirror, and say "Gosh I am sooooo Evil!" People have reasons for every action they take, and the scary part is, no matter how evil that action may be, as far as they are concerned, it is justified. Insanity not withstanding, if they couldn't justify the action, they couldn't bring themselves to do it. Gosh that was longer than I thought. If I knew I was going to go on so long, I would have brought some water <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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