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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2222370" data-attributes="member: 2067">Thanks for all the advice everyone, I think I've reached a tentative descision on it. Killing something [Good] is not inherently [Evil]. Kind of for the same reasons that hurting someone with a Fireball isn't. In a world where resurrections and reincarnations can be bought and sould, death is another weapon, another tool, another basically neutral agent whose affect on your alignment depends on what you're using it for.So yes, you can kill a Deva who is saving a drowning puppy and still be [Good] for it. It is just remarkably difficult to make sure you keep the right mindset while doing these killings -- you shouldn't gain pleasure from it, and you should try to stop it, and you should do what you can to save that drowning puppy yourself. Of course, you're no Deva, so it's gonna be harder, and yes, killing that Deva did lessen the overall [Good] in the world (something you should not be happy to do), but it is not in itself [Evil] and can even, in the right circumstances, be [Good].It's a case of "sometimes to be Good you have to let some not-good things happen." I've come to the same idea Milton has -- the fall is fortunate. True Good can only be realized if people have the ability to *not* be it. This is why the celestials don't wage constant war on the Outlands...without a station to rise up from, you can't really rise up.Which means, as far as my own campaign setting goes, that the Good Outsiders are part of the Bad Guys. They're only following orders, and they are technically correct (I think I'm going to go with the splintering idea), but there is a reason the Material Plane exists aside from "no one has taken it over yet." It will be Heaven (or Hell, or....Limbo) on Earth. But there's a reason that things weren't just made that way in the first place...the material plane exists because it is where mutual purity of element and alignment can exist. All of Elysium can be a reward for [Good], but it can never be as Good as a Good Guy on the Material Plane. Because in order for Good to be Truly Good, it needs to have people who aren't good. And in order for Evil to be Truly Evil, it needs to have people who aren't Evil (you can't torture innocents when no one is really innocent, can you?). ...I still don't know what suddenly makes the Gods all think that it would be better not existing. But I think that its existence *is* essential for the continued functioning of all the planes as they are, and that if this plane is taken out of the mix, they will all gradually collapse........which leaves me needing to answer some questions I never thought I'd have to ask in D&D.....but hey, that's for the next thread! <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=":)" />Thanks a lot everyone.</blockquote>

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