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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jaelommiss" data-source="post: 6752225" data-attributes="member: 6775925">This is a character who breaks into peoples' homes*, brutally beats or murders them, then steals everything of value that they had. The theft in this situation is a pittance compared to the murder. Given that this is being done outside of his duties as a law officer, I can only assume that the system determined these criminals to be innocent, or they are somehow beyond his jurisdiction. In either case, his actions blatantly disregard the oaths sworn as part of his station and the rules and procedures he is supposed to follow. Based on that I would declare that the character is Neutral Evil. Of course, this could be contested at every point. I read the character's writeup and interpreted it one way. The original post is clearly written from the perspective that this is not a bad guy. The author even mentioned it directly. In contrast, I described the same actions in a way that is clearly damning. The big problem about determining alignments is that everyone will read it differently. Without knowing why the character acts in this way (I think that the police are powerless to stop real crime, my wife's killer walked free and I will never force another innocent to suffer that pain, etc.) it is very hard to accurately assess the situation. If the character was capturing and killing criminals to bring them to justice (lawful), then I would expect him to either leave the wealth behind, or take it and invest it in the law enforcement agency he works for. Pocketing it shows that his assaults are at least partially out of selfishness. If he was taking the money to pay for treatment of a sick daughter (or for some other altruistic cause) then I could see him being neutral instead of evil, especially if he viewed his actions as deplorable but unfortunately necessary. If he only targeted criminals he knew were going to commit further serious crimes then I'd move him a step away from evil. I could even accept that this character is good if he, in addition to the previous two points, offers a chance to come peacefully and avoids killing at all costs, including expending personal resources (healing potions) to stop them dying if struck too hard. *It would strain credibility to assume he always finds them wandering the streets</blockquote>

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