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<blockquote data-quote="jessemock" data-source="post: 1272244" data-attributes="member: 15694">So, from your interpretations of alignment guidelines from two outdated editions, along with your personal assumptions about the ethical systems normal to humans in pseudomedieval fantasy worlds, 'evil' doesn't mean &quot;evil enough to deserve death,&quot; because that would mean too many people would deserve to die.&nbsp; That's ridiculous, but okay: what percentage of the population does deserve to die, then?&nbsp; I mean that if four out of ten people commit atrocious murders, do you only execute one, because forty, thirty, or even twenty percent of the starting population would be too many?You want to formulate an ethical reductio ad absurdum:&nbsp; evil can't always mean 'deserving of execution' because the consequences are ethically unacceptable:&nbsp; too many people would deserve execution.First, this is wrong, because it relies on false premises:&nbsp; you might prefer that all human D&amp;D societies enjoy the same distribution of alignments among their populations, but, unfortunately, your preference does not make it so.Second, it doesn't follow from the fact that, say, thirty percent of the population deserves execution, that thirty percent of the population will actually be executed.&nbsp; There is no ethically unacceptable conclusion here.I believe the problem with the reasoning in this debate is that it's moving backwards:&nbsp; the rules have already established that those of evil alignment (and, yes, often neutral) deserve extra violence, if not death.&nbsp; That's the foundation.&nbsp; If a particluar NPC's or PC's deeds don't merit all of the consequences attendant to an evil alignment, then he's not evil.&nbsp; That's black and white, and it is precisely the reason why Detect Evil is a licence to kill.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jessemock, post: 1272244, member: 15694"] So, from your interpretations of alignment guidelines from two outdated editions, along with your personal assumptions about the ethical systems normal to humans in pseudomedieval fantasy worlds, 'evil' doesn't mean "evil enough to deserve death," because that would mean too many people would deserve to die. That's ridiculous, but okay: what percentage of the population does deserve to die, then? I mean that if four out of ten people commit atrocious murders, do you only execute one, because forty, thirty, or even twenty percent of the starting population would be too many? You want to formulate an ethical reductio ad absurdum: evil can't always mean 'deserving of execution' because the consequences are ethically unacceptable: too many people would deserve execution. First, this is wrong, because it relies on false premises: you might prefer that all human D&D societies enjoy the same distribution of alignments among their populations, but, unfortunately, your preference does not make it so. Second, it doesn't follow from the fact that, say, thirty percent of the population deserves execution, that thirty percent of the population will actually be executed. There is no ethically unacceptable conclusion here. I believe the problem with the reasoning in this debate is that it's moving backwards: the rules have already established that those of evil alignment (and, yes, often neutral) deserve extra violence, if not death. That's the foundation. If a particluar NPC's or PC's deeds don't merit all of the consequences attendant to an evil alignment, then he's not evil. That's black and white, and it is precisely the reason why Detect Evil is a licence to kill. [/QUOTE]

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