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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zappo" data-source="post: 2214581" data-attributes="member: 633">Interesting! Outsiders definitely have free will; they can't act against their alignment, but they are otherwise free to do whatever they want. I agree that this is a severe constraint, but it isn't the same as being, say, a golem or a zombie. Destroying a golem or a zombie isn't more Evil than wracking a car, to the point where we use the term "destroy" rather than "kill" for those creatures. Similarly, killing animals is usually Neutral as well (at least, in a medieval-ish context). So it seems that free will is indeed an important quality in determining the morality of a killing, but outsiders don't completely lack it. So why would killing a celestial be a greatly Evil act? Shouldn't it be little worse than killing, say, an animal?I think that this is where the absolutist elements of D&D's alignments come into play. In D&D, Good and Evil are actual forces, like gravity or electromagnetism. They can be detected and measured; they can even be used to produce various useful effects. Leaving aside the idea of building Evil accelerators to find whether Evil is a wave or a particle, this means that in D&D there is a direct tie between certain actions, items and creatures, and morality itself. A link which doesn't depend on human observation - there are things that are Evil or Good even if they don't really do anything evil or good.A [Good] Outsider is a creature of Good, in a very literal sense. Killing it means destroying a certain amount of Good, or at least dispersing it. This favors Evil and is therefore Evil, much like destroying a Good artefact or casting Unhallow. Regardless of whether the outsider was free-willed or not, though if he was, it certainly makes the act even more evil.And again - despite all of this, circumstances can arise that can tilt even those scales over to Good.</blockquote>

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