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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 6737559" data-attributes="member: 6801286">What it really comes down to is whether this evil quality defines the character. I believe all characters are capable of doing some good and some evil. A character could be good, yet extremely selfish. That character could still be considered good, unless his selfishness causes harm to others. Its a scale, and if it tips too far in the other direction, the quality starts to define the character.Vanity is a bad quality, but probably doesn't cause harm. Selfishness could definitely cause harm if taken to a certain extreme. And there are many other such qualities that do not put a character in a positive light. But at what point do you label someone as evil?Is someone who kills the innocent, evil? Probably. But what if he kills them indirectly, or accidentally? What if killing innocent people is part of what is expected of him in his position? The current US president is surely guilty of killing a lot of innocent people with his drone program, in his attempt to fight Isis. So does this make him evil? Or does all the good he does also hold some weight before we brand him as such?And what of a group like Isis? We would certainly call them evil. But they probably believe that they are acting in accordance to what their holy scripture dictates (and they are probably right), and many of them are probably fighting back against Assad because they are oppressed by him (can't really blame them, since Assad used chemical weapons against his own people). So here you have a difficult situation. They believe they are fighting according to holy scripture (Lawful), and are fighting to establish their own Islamic state (Freedom fighters), and yet committing horrible atrocities along the way (Evil).I realize that drawing real world comparisons makes some people uncomfortable, so I'll leave it at that. D&D tends to stick to a more black and white version of good and evil, where there is very little space for gray. The book of vile darkness (3rd edition) has a specific paragraph that concedes that it is often not easy to draw a clear line between good and evil. I do like what it considers to be evil acts, its a pretty good list:Lying, cheating, theft, betrayal, murder, vengeance, worshiping evil gods or demons, animating the dead or creating undead, casting evil spells, damning or harming souls, consorting with fiends, creating evil creatures, using others for personal gain, greed, bullying and cowing innocents, bringing despair, tempting others.All of these have context paragraphs, to explain why they are evil acts. Stealing to feed the poor, isn't an evil act of course. But stealing for personal gain is. And stealing from the rich, to give it to the poor, is somewhere in the middle. Context always matters.</blockquote>

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