non interferring murder witness: evil or not?

[Tsyr]

Not what I was saying at all, yet you are half right: Lets face it, real world ethics have all but no impact on the allignment system in DnD.

The more important point was that that is going to be used as a stepping stone for discussing real world morality, which will inevitably stray into politics and/or religion... and thats assuming real world morality isn't forbidden, which I think it pretty much is, even if it is an unwritten rule.

 

[FCWesel]

The evil of good men IS inaction. See the movie "Boondock Saints", the first five minutes answers this question and the last five minutes are just awesome. The rest of the time in between...just gold.

To quote the movie..

Monsignor: We must always fear the wicked. But there is another kind of evil that we must fear the most, and that is the indifference of good men.

Conner MacManus: I do believe the monsignor's finally got the point.

Murphy MacManus: Aye.

 

[shilsen]

Real-life morality - open to debate

D&D morality - Pure Neutral. Neatly covered in the PHB. Not that it should stop you guys yelling at each other, of course

 

[DMScott]

Your character sees an individual being beaten to death in the street of a city he's visiting. The victim is of a race the PC despises, but is legally welcome within the city.

The reason the PC despises the race is important. If the PC despises the race because he knows they collectively sold their souls to some evil deity for all time and work evil in the world as a result, that obviously impacts on the answer.

The PC knows just within a door to his side is a room full of armed men who can stop the incident and could easily hear a call for help, especially as it would take barely a moment to open that door and call in.

Again, need to know more about these armed men, and what connection they have to the situation - seems likely there's some sort of connection, since the PC knows they're there. If alerting these men will somehow lead to much greater evil, then doing so may not be a good idea.

The PC just stands there and watches, until he is spotted by chance and the assailants flee. The victim dies shortly there-after.

Evil or not on the part of the PC?

By itself (or depending on the answers to the above questions), probably an evil act, yes. Probably not sufficiently evil to change anyone's alignment unless they've already got a pattern of borderline actions.

What if afterwards, the PC tried to stabalize the victim? Does that change anything over letting the incident happen without even shouting out an alarm?

Can't be answered without additional motive information.

What if the PC was following the victim, and witnessed the entire event from start to finish?

Probably no effect, unless the PC was doing so under instructions from a good deity (or their representative) to "follow this person but absolutely do not interfere regardless of what you see".

 

[S'mon]

It's a pure Neutral act - behaving like this could make a Good PC Neutral, but could not make a Neutral PC evil. It could also cause loss of paladinhood IMC. I agree it's 'dark neutral' because it's un-good - not compatible with Good alignment - but not un-evil; ie acting like this would not make an Evil PC Neutral, IMO; although conceivably some evil classes might have a duty to join in attacking the victim so it could cause a loss of anti-paladinhood or similar.

 

[Aaron L]

Isn't "doing nothing" Neutral by definition?

 

[Tsyr]

A lot of people have the idea that doing nothing is the same as doing the act themself, Aaron. And I mean, to be honest, IRL I do feel that way. But by the DnD alignment system, yes. Doing nothing either way is the very definition of neutrality.

 

[Aaron L]

Well, thats what I mean, of course, in D&D Doing something about it would be either Good or Evil, but doing nothing is pretty much as Neutral as ya can get.

 

[Goobermunch]

I can't tell you whether it's evil or not. My instinct is that it's not.

However, from a legal standpoint, it's probably not criminal.

A crime consists of an act and a state of mind. There must be a nexus between them. Except in a few special relationships (parent-child, husband-wife), nonfeasance (not acting) is not an act. Thus, no act, no crime.

This isn't a bad ethical system either. It prohibits punishment for pure thought and requires some action to confirm the criminals evil intent.

But it ain't D&D alignment.

--G

 

[Tsyr]

Remember, when it comes right down to it, the DnD alignment system is painfully simple. It's like a three year old... You have "Good men" and "Bad men" and a few "Ok men". I don't like it, but by the rules, that's more or less what it is. For any one situation, you have essentialy three outcomes on the good/evil axis... Good, Neutral, and Evil. The Good response would have been to get help or intervene. The Evil response would have been to join in or keep help from arriving. The neutral response was to do nothing.

"The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good to not thwack it repeatedly" is a nice sentiment, but it doesn't hold true in DnD's alignment system, because the system defines neutrality as not thwacking evil with a stick, and reserves evil for activly participating in evil. The "thwack with stick" arguement actually pretty much removes the possibility of neutrality... It's very much a "If ye aint fer us yer agin' us" attitude.

So, baring some wild new information, I'm going to say it's a neutral act. Intent would determine its possition on the law/chaos axis... "I don't want to interfere" would be Lawul, "It's not my problem" would be neutral, and "I don't want to get involved" would be chaotic.