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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1269915" data-attributes="member: 3146">My understanding of the PH allows creatures to have alignments based upon their tendencies and attitudes--what they would do if given the chance--as well as their actions.However, the basic question that your contention raises is how much evil and how bad evil does one have to do in order to have an evil alignment. The implication of your statement is that only people who've done stuff bad enough to deserve death have evil alignments.There are a number of questions about that contention:First, how does that square with the idea that somewhere around 20% of the population of a neutral town will be evil? Have 20% of the population really done enough bad stuff to deserve death/smiting? If so, why is there still an 80% in this town?Second, what kind of evil is sufficient to get someone the evil alignment? Is that the same kind and amount of evil that is necessary to justify killing them?Is bilking employees out of their pension funds over a period of years sufficient? Or to make the example medieval, lying about the rate of taxation on the peasants and keeping the extra for yourself? How many years of that are required before one's alignment becomes evil? And do such individuals then deserve death?How about kneecapping debtors for the local loan shark? That certainly seems evil to me. But I don't know that it's just to start killing people for assault. (Even the supposedly harsh ancient legal codes generally demanded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth not a head for a kneecap).Perjury? Is lying under oath enough to make a man evil? If so is it good enough to kill a man over?How about oathbreaking in general? The ancients certainly thought it evil. But is it--even if repeated many times--enough to warrant death?What about bearing false witness? Bringing false accusations against someone else is usually thought of as evil. How many times before one's alignment shifts? And do you then kill him? (IIRC, the ancients generally inflicted the penalty for the crime he was accusing the defendant of rather than automatically killing him and they were generally too harsh for our modern tastes).Spousal abuse? Is one beating enough to make a man evil? Enough to kill him over?Child abuse? How many times before you're evil? And then do you deserve to die?Rape? Is one sufficient to make a man evil? Should he then be killed. (If you say yes, most ancient systems would agree with you (although they had a lot more conditions for prosecuting rape and reportedly rarely used such laws) but very few modern systems prescribe that penalty.)How about murder? Is one murder sufficient to make a man evil? If so, does that man automatically deserve to die?I can buy the idea that you don't get to be a 6th level evil priest without performing child sacrifice. Heck, I can buy the idea that just being a priest in a death cult is a crime worthy of death. Corrupting the morals of the city and all that if nothing else. (It was good enough to kill Socrates, surely it's good enough to kill a priest of Vecna). But I can't buy that the wife beater who kneecaps debtors for the local thieves' guild in his spare time isn't evil. Nor do I think that Joseph Jacksonus who beats his children if they perform poorly and beats his wife if he's drunk (which he usually is) isn't evil. But I don't think it would be just to kill him for it. He's done enough bad stuff to have an evil alignment but it still doesn't justify smiting.</blockquote>

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