Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WalterKovacs" data-source="post: 4720383" data-attributes="member: 63763">There are ways to justify evil acts, if only to yourself. Heck, there is a movie out right now that addresses the very issue of whether the ends justify the means. However, eliminating that many dangerous creatures is likely to have an effect on the ecosystem. It's like removing one of the predators from the top of the food chain ... the ecosystem will react. In the OOTS cosmology monsters were created, in part, as a means for clerics (and other divine classes) to get experience and thus expand the reach of their respective dieties into lands they don't directly control. V just eliminated a lot of potential XP for future (heck, in one example current) adventurers. V has created a power vaccuum that will need to be filled. Not to mention there are treasure hordes out there without protectors ... that could invite other types of dragons to migrate to new locales. Suddenly the town with the agreement with a black dragon that keeps them safe at the cost of certain ammounts of money has to deal with a red dragon that has claimed the treasure horde and wants a new deal ... While it's possible to justify something like this in theory, odds are anything with an effect that huge is hard to truly comprehend the long term repercusions. Part of the problem with the ends justifying the means is that there isn't an "end". You can't just tack on "and everyone lived happily ever after ...", the story continues. And, because the story continues, there are going to be repercusions to the action.  And ultimately, justifying an action to yourself or to others doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't evil. In fact, the way that faustian deals like the one that V made work is that people try to justify their actions. "I can use evil to do good ..." is an important pit stop on the road to evil. When you get to the point of thinking that "bad things to bad people isn't bad", that's another one. Star Wars example (or Dark Knight example, take your pick). The bad guys actively ask to be struck down in anger because they know it will damn the good guy. Heck, that Anakin Skywalker's path towards becoming Vader and you will see some parallels to V's actions. You have the arrogance, you have the turning away from his friends and allies, you have the turning to a dark power in order to save his loved ones, you have the revenge slaying of a large group, you have the killing of an unarmed baddie ... all that's left is the ironic "kill your family because you tried to save them" moment and we'll be a few comics away from V needing a bio suit and screaming "No!" at the top of his lungs. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Ultimately it's for the Gods/DM to decide whether something will cause an allignment change, or will cause a paladin to fall, etc.</blockquote>

Verification