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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4726752" data-attributes="member: 2067">There is a difference between protecting your own survival, and condemning the survival of another.Sometimes (often, in D&D)  your survival will mandate that you kill another -- it's kill or be killed. Sometimes the survival of something you protect will mean the same thing: either this guy dies, or the orphanage is burned to the ground (or whatever). The first is mostly neutral, the second is mostly good.The Evil thing to do is to kill it, not to ensure your survival, but to ensure its demise. Your survival is important, but you just liked killing it. You enjoy the act of murder. You actively want that thing to die. You feel good, not because you lived, but because that other guy DIDN'T. Neutral is "I protect myself." (and also: I fluctuate between the other two views). It is "I win."Good is "I also protect those who can't protect themselves." It is "everyone wins!"Evil is "I have the right to kill it." It is "you lose." It's a fine distinction, and not always obvious, but that's part of why Evil, IMC, is something the PC's always face to a certain degree in themselves. It's inevitable that normal people feel those "evil" D&D emotions -- vengeance, anger, power...but what separates the Good from the Neutral from the Evil is how you view what you kill. You kill it out of some necessity, you're probably not Evil. You kill it out of some hubris, you probably are. So V's action wasn't protecting himself (or his family); when the dragon momma died, that was accomplished (perhaps some extra abjurations to be safe). V's action wasn't protecting the innocent -- there were no real third parties involved here. V's action was, however, demonstrating that V has power over life and death, that V had the express right to kill hundreds of beings as a simple show of power and vengeance. No, If I am saying "You need to die so I can live," I am saying that my survival depends on your death. That doesn't imply that my life is somehow more important, that they are weaker than me, that they deserve death more, or in any other way imply my superiority. Enemies in war who respect each other, hunters that honor their prey, none of these people devalue the lives of their enemies. You have just as much right to live as I do. Luck and skill might determine who gets to survive, but your death isn't something you earned, it's something that the situation has forced on us. Maybe you caused the situation and refuse to stop it? Maybe I did? It regrettable that we can't both emerge from this, but it is a necessity. It is Evil to think that you do not have as much right to live as I do. Even if you're a baby-eating puppy-kicker, and have shown that you never want to change, the only reason you have to die is because you're trying to eat my babies (neutral) or because I need to protect the babies (good), not because your life has less value than mine, not because you deserve to live less, or I earned it more. It is Neutral to protect myself by killing you, because you threaten me.It is Good to protect the helpless by killing you, because you threaten them. It is Evil to do anything by killing you, because you are worth less.</blockquote>

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