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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hellcow" data-source="post: 2837735" data-attributes="member: 15800">I don't see evil in a favorable light. I see it as an ugly, unpleasant thing, generally opposed to altruism and empathy. I feel that evil generally requires the person in question to be willing to ignore the pain and suffering of others, and generally to be willing to cause pain and suffering to others. I believe that an evil person can serve a good cause, and help bring about a greater good in the world... but that doesn't change the fact that he does so by repeatedly employing methods a good person will find utterly repugnant. And yes, I am suggesting that a good person who is forced to perform such actions repeatedly will be forced to drift away from good alignment, forcing himself to numb his empathy for others.  Looking back to the barbarian warriors, There's a vast differents between the barbarian who glories in the pain he inflicts on his foes and the warrior who fights only to protect his helpless people, who seeks to bring down his foes as quickly and cleanly as possible, and who will, if given the chance, spare a downed enemy. They can both serve a good cause, if they fight a foe threatening innocent lives. That doesn't make the evil barbarian in any way a paragon of ideal behavior. He's a monster. It just happens that he's fighting worse monsters, and not doing harm to others. With that said, my point all along is that evil is a spectrum, and we're back to Hannibal Lecter and Jack... or, for that matter, Miles Papazian and Jack. I may consider Jack evil, but it's an entirely different level of evil than Lecter. And I feel that having this spectrum is vital to allow mystery in the world, to leave some sense of uncertainty as to just how bad evil is. Jack's not Lecter. But he surely isn't Mother Teresa. He may have a conscience. But he's willing to engage in acts that go against his conscience, over and over and over. A good person faced with a Jack Bauer no-win situation may take the same actions as Jack, stooping to evil methods. Or he may hesitate, and in the process lose the battle. Note that what I said above is that people often try to stop Jack from engaging in ruthless actions, even though he gets results... that there are others who AREN'T willing to do what he does, even when it is a no-win situation. It's all a matter of sacrifices you're willing to make, and not everyone will be willing to make sacrifices.With that said: by saying that good people can do evil, and evil people can do good, I AM, quite intentionally, downplaying the role of alignment. I am saying that you can have evil heroes and good villains. What I'm saying is that in my campaign, alignment tells you about what they may be comfortable with: anyone can change under duress. If a man's evil, you know there's a far better chance he WILL be comfortable with torture, and won't hesitate to employ it. If he's good, you know he's only going to resort to such tools in the most desperate moments, if at all. But in Eberron, at least, that tells you nothing about the cause he's aligned with. In many ways, it would have served the setting to remove alignment completely, but alignment is a deeply integrated part of D&D. Instead, Eberron encourages DMs to stretch alignment beyond simple black and white, and to make players think about motivations and behavior beyond just "He's evil! Kill him!" I will raise one more point. I'm saying that it's possible for an evil person to serve a greater good. I'm not saying that's the norm. In my mind, the majority of evil people are repugnant. They lack empathy for others and in one form or another are driven by a desire for personal gain or satisfaction with no regard for the suffering it may cause others. Again, evil, by and large, is unpleasant... though there's still a big difference between the slumlord and the baby-killer. However, while this may be typical, you can still have the Jack Bauer or King Kaius - the evil person whose intentions are noble, but whose methods are brutal. So if someone detects as evil, you should tread cautiously; odds are that the guy's a selfish bastard, at the very least. But you can't automatically assume he's a serial killer, or that he serves an evil cause. He might be promoting a noble cause, in a very unpleasant way. (Again, of course, this is merely in my campaign... though it is the style suggested in Chapter Nine of the Eberron Campaign Setting.) And there I go being all succinct again. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  I'd better go back to lurking if I expect to meet any of my deadlines... Last thought: this is precisely my point - in Eberron, at least, you can't condemn someone for "being evil". You can condemn someone for performing evil acts. Evil-aligned people are more likely to perform evil acts than good-aligned people. But not all will, and as in the case of the barbarian, even then they may perform these acts in service of a good cause. If all evil people are assured of being criminals and endangering society, I don't see how a world with the magical sophistication of Eberron or such a high density of PC-class people as Forgotten Realms would allow it to exist within an urban population - hence, I feel that the definition of evil as alignment needs to be broadened... and that society will be concerned with actions.</blockquote>

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