Theft and Alignment

[drnuncheon]

A wolf kills a deer so that it can eat. It doesn't care one whit about the deer. Has it done an evil deed, or a neutral deed?

Animals != people, so it's really not a good analogy. I mean, you could say 'a human kills a plant so that it can eat', too...

Try for an example with two intelligent creatures. How about:

A human kills an elf so that it can eat. It doesn't care one whit about the elf.

Evil? Yup.

J
but still vegetarian

 

[Janx]

Perhaps another way to look at it is to examine the alignment of the victim.

Going by extremes here, let's assume all the villagers are good, and the orcs are evil. If we always look at things from the good guy side and describe the actions as such, it makes sense.

If I steal from a villager, that's wrong because they're good and I'm hurting them

If I steal from an orc, that's good because they're evil and I'm hurting them

Think of it as factions in some war. It's OK to hurt guys on the evil faction. It's not ok to hurt guys on the good faction.

In most of the examples given by others where stealing was OK, the victim was "evil" in some way.

One can also look at my above example by effect and reach the same conclusion. Stealing from orcs, hurts the evil guys.

If we look at it by motive, then it becomes fuzzy.
Why was I stealing from orcs?
To get food?
To get something back they took?
To hurt them?
To get rich?
They were there (meaning I would have robbed anybody who came down the trail)?

If you want to keep it simple, I suggest examining victim and effect, and ignoring the motive.

Janx

 

[Thanee]

I'm continually surprised by the number of people who still equate Lawful alignment with following laws.

Well, I don't think lawful equals following laws (altho following laws is surely a lawful tendency), but it strikes me as lawful to believe property belongs to the ones owning it.

The mafia example is a pretty good one to show that lawful has many faces. A well-organized thieves guild, doing all the dirty work, would probably be NE (IMHO) with some lawful (organization) and some chaotic (stealing and stuff) tendencies, but clearly evil (selfish, greedy, ruthless, with no respect for the life of others, etc).

Obviously lawful-chaotic and good-evil are not connected. Lawful is not good and chaotis is not evil. If it were like this, we were still playing OD&D.

Bye
Thanee

 

[J-Buzz]

I don't think the mafia is a good example. The mafia if a small part of a bigger picture. They are following rules that they come up with true, but they are a small percentage of a larger population. However I do agree with the point made that lawful is not following laws or no-one would be lawful (Speeding for example).

I think of Lawful and Chaotic as how you approach and solve a problem. Lawful being cut with the grain, solve the problem as most people in that society would. Chaotic being you go against the grain doing somthing different and causing strife (not necessarily in society, could just be in the party).

My good evil break down gets simpler (although it makes it hard to play neutral).
Good do things for others/against evil.
Evil do things for self/against good.

There are many motivations for stealing, and depending on where you are and how society depicts the act really depends on what would be considered good, evil, chaotic, or lawful.

The Paladin should have been against it, and the rogue should have wanted to do it. Not every party can work together in harmony, that is what makes the game fun.

This is just my opionion. However, everyone here is from a different society, and will have their own opionion on this, and all will differ. Alignment questions are the pandoras box of d&d questions......

 

[ARandomGod]

As defined by the Book of Vile Darkness, stealing is an Evil act. Since the BoVD is an official WotC product for the Dungeons & Dragons d20 game, that means in the D&D game, stealing is an Evil act.

Pssst
That's just lawful with a moral alignment (either good OR evil, both are always pressuring one to choose) talking, attempting to whittle away neutral again.

This opinion is simply patently untrue. I mean, it CAN be evil, but so CAN killing. It is not necessarily evil, and neither is killing.

Otherwise you simply cannot have a good character kill ANYTHING. Ever.
Period.
(And that's just as absurd as saying killing is ALWAYS evil. Period)

 

[ARandomGod]

My good evil break down gets simpler (although it makes it hard to play neutral).
Good do things for others/against evil.
Evil do things for self/against good.

Actually, I think that this is not only fine, but makes it easier to play neutral. You just have to not take things to extremes.


"Good do things for others/against evil."
So if you are doing something for another, that's against evil, and therefore not an evil act. But it is not necessarily a good act either. It is, indeed a neutral act.

"Evil do things for self/against good."
Doing things for yourself is against good, ie not good. But not evil, just not good. Or to say, neutral.

Both "good" acts AND "evil" acts can also be neutral acts. That is the reaon for and definition of neutral.

All the people above who seem to think about a concept "NO, that is EVIL"
They're not entirely wrong, they just have no concept of neutral.
Hell, most Good people think of neutrals as evil. But they're not.

And I've noticed a tendancy from that type of individual to either not be able to describe a neutral act at all (A lot of the above examples saying what's evil and not neutral fail to meantion what's neutral and not good) Generally they simply think of neutral as a lesser form of good.

And that, in my opinion. Is just someone with a lack of imagination.
And someone who can't actually concieve of evil, generally.
If ANYthing that's not good is evil, then that seriously lessens what evil actually IS. Which, I suppose, isn't a bad thing, really. It's innocent, naive, and shows a lack of experience and imagination, as I said above, but really it's kind of sweet.

Remember: "Evil is not who you kill, it's how you identify magic items"
**Inside joke. Who and why you kill is actually a good definition of evil. But it's not the only one. As follows:
... from an evil character played by my brother. He was a halfling... used to sneak into the villiage homes at night and befriend the little children do nice things for them. Give them little gifts, be sweet. Tell 'em he was a magic "brownie", and they couldn't tell anyone or he couldn't come again.

Get them to try on these magic boots he found...

"If she dances 'till her feet bleed and won't stop, I leave. If something good happens, I see if she can take 'em off, and we'll go try little billy's house next."

I think that was evil. And he never really stole anything, or killed anyone. He was only nice to people. Other people he was with killed people and stole things, but it's not like he liked or trusted those guys.

 

[GakToid]

Thanks

Thanks for all of the input.

To those of you worried about our group, it's all good. The rogue's comment was in jest. The paladin...what can I say, he tends to overreact.

-Gak Toid

 

[ARandomGod]

That said, Lawful people generally respect the laws of the lands they move through, not because they are obedient, but because they realize that social organization is better than anarchy. They do tend to follow the rules, as long as it does not interfere with what they do, and when it does, they would rather keep the code intact and work within it, or offer an organized alternative, rather than shaking up the system.

They don't have to follow the laws of the land, but they do realize that laws are things they like, in general.

I agree with this one completely.
In fact I agree with it so much as to state that
1) When a lawful person is in an area where the laws do not agree with his own, he is in effect (but not in reality) a either lawful with neutral leanings or neutral with lawful leanings, depending on how HIS law and the local laws interact, and how his society views the society he's currently in.

And, I'd go further to say that actively disregarding similiar laws would be unlawful for that character, actively disregarding non-conflicting laws would be neutral, but following conflicting laws would be chaotic.

A person in a foriegn land can have alignment troubles depending on how much he identifies with his homeland compared to how much he identifies with the current location. Normally, however, this is not an issue. The lawful character by default follows the laws of the land.

There can be issues, however. And, for that matter, the Lawful character is the ONLY one who really has problems following all laws.
A neutral character can indeed always follow every law and still remain neutral.
Even a chaotic character can follow foreign laws better than some lawful ones. They'll gripe and complain, perhaps. But a traveler who always adapts as completely as possible to the local laws of the land has absolutly no problem being desctibed as chaotic in my opinion.
"What? Why are we tied up? You LIKE us! You had no problem with our evening prayers yesterday! You were praying too!!"
"Yesterday we were in Isavalta. It was legal, mandatory even. Here, however, it's punishable by execution. I'm taking you in. Sorry."
Pretty chaotic.
A lawful person, however, simply could not follow both those opposing laws and maintain his lawful status.

 

[ARandomGod]

Thanks for all of the input.

To those of you worried about our group, it's all good. The rogue's comment was in jest. The paladin...what can I say, he tends to overreact.

-Gak Toid

~_^
No problem.
I still say it would be an appropriately chaotic act for the cleric to call the Paladin for an alignment audit, for his blatently non-lawful act of attempting to keep the thief from claiming rights of spoil. (Assuming there either IS a salvage act, or there is no law against it. And there's a good chance that there's not, unless people are currently buried with all their possessions. In which case you really should ditch the paladin and go into the grave robbing busness. There will be a LOT of buried treasure according to the laws of the land, and your alignment allows, no, encourages you to partake.)
In fact, as I stated before, you could almost see it as your duty. I mean, your character went along with the chaotic messing with the pally's mind, but then he overreacted extremely, being actually quite evil in his zeal and joy at watching the poor rogue suffer, and your good concious just can't let that slip by!

Plus, I think it'd help tone the self-rightous bastard down. You've got to stop these people pretending to be good from oppressing normal people. No More Spanish Inquisition!