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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1811872" data-attributes="member: 5171">The key here is "which itself is evil".  Actions don't actually have any inherent evilness or goodness until we judge them.  Your argument, if I am reading you correctly, essentially reads as, "Murder is inherently evil, so applying the logical standards I used to say that theft isn't evil is stupid."  Do you understand how that doesn't hold up logically?You are saying that murder is inherently evil, and that theft is not, as part of your argument for logically proving that one of these is evil and the other is now.  As a logical strategy, starting out with the thing you're trying to prove taken as a given is really, uh, giving yourself a boost. <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=":)" />Neither killing (murder, with the judgment value taken away) nor theft is inherently good or evil.  Killing an ax murderer as he's about to hack up your spouse is killing that can be considered either Neutral or Good, under normal circumstances (well, as normal as ax-murder-circumstances ever get, anyway).  Killing someone for being in your way is usually considered Evil.  The question is not whether something is inherently good or evil -- because most actions aren't inherently anything, and you can't use "it's inherent" as part of a logical discussion -- but what degree of harm it inflicts on another person and what extenuating circumstances can affect an individual instance of the action.I disagree.  Back in college, I gave blood regularly.  The difference between giving blood and being attacked by someone who intends only to cause you to bleed is that the assailant causes you 1) mental distress, 2) loss of something that was yours involuntarily, 3) loss of time or energy as you recoup this loss, and 4) loss of trust in mankind as a result of the assault.You take those four factors and add them together, and it's pretty obvious that the person who attacks the other person, even if it's for nothing more than a slightly bleeding wound, has harmed them.  We agree on that, right?  Assaulting someone in such a way that they bleed, but that's about it, is still harm, right?  Not as bad as murder (duh), but still harmful?  And, if unprovoked, you might consider somebody who did that to innocent people a lot to be evil?Now, apply those four factors to theft -- or, to strip it of its inherently judged term, "taking".Does this form of taking cause mental distress to the person?YesDoes it cause you to involuntarily lose something you had?YesDoes it force you to either accept this loss or lose time or energy recouping the loss?YesDoes it cause you to come away from the experience with a less trusting and happy view of mankind?YesI'm happy to drop this line of logic if you can show me an action for which i will agree that the answer to each of the four questions is "yes" but cannot concede is harmful -- not evil, mind you, but harmful. (Executing a condemned criminal is almost always painful and causes him to lose something, so it's definitely harmful, but it has extenuating circumstances that make it not-evil.)If you cannot come up with such an action (and the fourth question is sort of sticky, so fudge it if necessary), then you should concede that because you accept that logic, then theft, as defined as "involuntary taking of something belonging to someone else, which causes mental distress as a result", harms people.I am somewhat distressed at the number of people who don't believe that theft actually harms anyone.Please note the number of times I said "not as bad as murder, question of degree, extenuating circumstances" and such.  If you can't concede that theft is harmful, then I don't think we have anything to discuss.If you do concede that theft is harmful, then please explain how someone who willingly and knowingly does something harmful to another person for the stated reason of "greed" is not commiting an evil act.I don't apply real-world politics to the game -- not when kings and queens abound -- but I think applying some degree of real-world ethics to the game is vital.  I set up games where Chaotic Good rogues steal stuff from the evil overlord to foil his schemes, or from pompous merchants to help the needy.  I set up games where everyone is a shifty antihero, and pickpocketing during a raucous party is expected in a kind of "if you don't like it, don't carry anything valuable on you, you gullible sap" way.  In the former, they're good, and in the latter, they're antiheroes operating against evil people, which is murky but really not horrific by any stretch.This guy is traveling in a group with a paladin, and he's robbing innocent people because he's greedy, and leaving his allies unconscious and possibly dying in order to do it.If my group said, "Haha, today I want to go into the jeweller's shop, take the biggest necklace I can find, and tell the merchant to stop me if he's man enough to try," then I'd ding them down a notch or two on the alignment-meter.  And doing that is pretty much the same as looting the luggage of an innocent person, except that the thief is being more sneakier about it.  I don't see "sneaky" as a good extenuating circumstance.Your argument appears to be that "This isn't real" is an acceptable reason for a character to, through his actions, knowingly and willingly cause harm to innocent people with no consequences to his alignment as a result.Again, don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that this shifts his alignment all by itself.  I'm not saying that by a long stretch.  Blink once if you understand the concept of degrees.  I'm saying "This was an evil act."  That's all I'm saying.  He caused harm to innocent people knowingly and willingly without an extenuating circumstance.  One evil act doesn't make you evil.  Heck, several evil acts don't make you evil.  Only when you make a lot of evil acts over a period of time are you in danger of sliding from Neutral into Evil. Would those guidelines be anything like:"Evil” implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others."-- the SRDSo, if you agree that theft harms people, then the first line, as a general guideline, would seem to apply.In Eberron, as the first poster noted, it's possible to have the Evil alignment without being a puppy-kicking demon-consorting villain.  Cruel shopkeepers and unsavory guards can be evil while still serving the community and not running around on murderous rampages.In this campaign, a cruel shopkeeper can get slapped with "Evil" even if he doesn't go around murdering people.  Is the shopkeeper who overcharges people or works his apprentice too hard more evil than the person who robs complete strangers rather than attending his injured-and-possibly-dying friends?</blockquote>

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