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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6699095" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I had not realized that pacifism was sufficient for Good. Does this mean that capturing a person and then allowing them to starve to death is something a Good character can do? Because that is perfectly consistent with "refus[ing] to kill ANYTHING": allowing a death cannot be identical to causing a death, which is how "kill" is defined (as far as I'm aware, anyway). Plus, the as-noted "you can be a 100% sincere pacifist and a necromancer."Now, you might try to instead argue that pacifism is a necessary condition for being Good rather than a sufficient one (that is: you must be pacifist to be Good, but it doesn't guarantee that you are). Whether that position is defensible or not is another question.As for the compatibility of Good and "gods," there are several (relatively) straightforward answers.1. Gods may be called Good because they meet an external, objective standard of Good-ness, which exists independently of them; worshipers give them worship because they do remain consonant with this standard, and because said worship is more effective at creating a fulfilling life than simply revering the objective standard of Good-ness directly. (Gods, in general, have agency whereas the external standard of Good-ness does not.) This is probably the most reasonable answer in most D&D settings with well-known, active gods, because it (a) still allows for gods to change their minds/be wrong, and (b) provides some justification for concepts like "the gods can die" and other such things.2. The gods have the power to literally make statements true or not, and thus declare by fiat what is "Good"; worshipers thus worship in order to be aware of what is "Good." This is problematic in any setting where there are multiple "Good" gods, as two gods might disagree about what "Good" means. Further, it is far more likely that a god the books call "Evil" would object to that classification, and would instead claim they have a different (and, of course, superior!) definition of "Good." You also have the more intractable issue of even the 'classically' "Good" gods disagreeing--if they literally have the power to make particular statements true, and they make statements which are mutually exclusive about what "Good" is, how do you know who is right?3. We take the early Christian answer to the problem: the "Good" gods literally ARE Good. It is not that they are merely called Good because they meet the definition of Good, nor that they fiat declare what Good is. Their very nature IS "Good"-ness; in Platonic terms, the Good gods are the Form of the Good. They are powerful not because they meet or make some standard of Good, but because Good-ness finds its foundation in their inalienable nature. This is also difficult to square with the existence of multiple gods, though it loses the issue of "Evil" gods merely asserting that they have a different definition of "Good." One perspective on it, then, is that all of the "Gods of Light" (as 13A puts it), or whatever you want to call them, are simply different perspectives on one central concept.(Essentially, these three are just expanded and D&D-ified versions of the two listed ideas of "piety" in Plato's Euthyphro and the more recent, AFAIK-Christian-in-origin "take a third option" idea.)</blockquote>

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