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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3345281" data-attributes="member: 2067">No, see the second part of my post: it is habitual action. If they don't habitually perform many good or evil acts, then they are neutral on the whole. I don't remove a Good alignment for one Evil action, either. At the very least, the scragpoles were eating humanoids. Now, because they are evil, and they must have done something to get that way, "eating humanoids" could be inferred to mean that they were eating people not because they needed to or were desperate to, but because they truly enjoyed the extra pain and suffering they inflicted upon these otherwise innocent humanoids. That's just inference from Whizbang's own posts. It's quite possible they've done much more, "offstage," as it were. Rape, pillage, murder, devil-worship, all on a scragpole scale, but done nonetheless, are all entirely possible. Specifically, we don't know, and neither does the paladin, but we don't need to know, and neither does the paladin. Because if they are evil, it is inferred that they performed actions to make them thus. Thus, the paladin is given the moral imperative to destroy them: they have done things that make them evil, things that they deserve justice for. The specifics are between the scragpoles and the moral authority of the multiverse, the paladin is just an agent of justice.I think knowledge of complex motives is well beyond the capacity of even a trained diviner. The paladin doesn't need to know the whys and the wherefores, just the facts of the scenario: evil is as evil does, and they can discern where evil is, and be assured that evil has been done.I don't see how this proves your case. Mass murdering tyrants are obviously going to be higher level (more HD) than petty thugs. Imps, according to D&D, are made from the souls of many expired mass murdering tyrants (because these souls compose the stuff of the plane of which they are made). Clerics draw on the powers of generations of mass murdering tyrants. And one can't really comprehend the ramifications of one's actions if they don't have an INT capable of understanding the nature of cosmic forces. I don't see how moral choice and guilt are incompatible. Aaaaah, there's the relativism.And it's obviously different. Wolves aren't evil because they don't understand the cosmic forces. Killing and eating cows, similarly, isn't inherently evil because the cows aren't capable of being "innocent." However, the scragpoles understand the cosmic forces (or are made from the cosmic forces). They know full well the evil that they are perpetuating. The fact that they have an Evil alignment proves this.Killing and eating humans isn't "natural" to them. If it was, they wouldn't be evil. If they didn't understand what they were doing, they wouldn't have that alignment. They have that alignment, thus they are fully aware of the moral choices they have made, and the guilt which they bear is because of that awareness.</blockquote>

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