What must one do to be "evil" alignment?

[delericho]

Let's pick an example. The Aztecs believed that if they didn't regularly sacrifice human hearts to the gods, the sun wouldn't go up. Now, killing people by carving out their hearts probably counts as an evil act.

If this belief is not true, then sacrificing humans is evil via the insanity clause. If it is true - for example, if the gods appeared and told everyone that - then sacrificing the humans is not evil, it's a necessity deriving from the situation.

Aztec mythology isn't one of my strong suits, but still...

I would argue that even if it was literally true that an absence of human sacrifice would lead to an absence of the sun, it would still be Evil for a person to sacrifice an unwilling person in this manner. (I could get behind an exception for truly wicked criminals, though.) Basically, I will hold that the only life you have the right to sacrifice is your own, and that while it may be necessary to commit Evil, that does not make it non-Evil. YMMV, of course.

Likewise, generals who send their soldiers to their deaths because doing so will protect their homeland are not evil, despite the suffering they are causing. In the end, they are doing what's neccessary.

Yeah, that I agree with.

Thinking about this, I believe evil people can be divided into two categories:

- The Rational Actor: Someone who knows full well what suffering his actions will cause, but doesn't care for selfish reasons.

- The Irrational Actor: Someone who causes suffering but either does not realize it or weights it against imaginary benefits.

Where I disagree is the definition of the Rational Actor, which I feel is a bit too narrow. I think there's got to be room for the person who knows full well the suffering his actions will cause, weighs it against real benefits (and not necessarily to himself), and chooses therefore to take the action anyway.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Easy way to think of evil is to start at an extreme and work backwards to a gray zone.

Let's take the insane types, psychopaths and sociopaths. Psychopaths are basically angry all the time and have no trouble hurting others. Sociopaths essentially don't care if they hurt others but don't have that inherent rage.

Psychopaths are pretty obviously evil, they tend to enjoy hurting people or at least breaking stuff. Psychopaths can avoid doing evil acts but people tend to know that "Bob has a wicked temper." During decision making anything with a "may hurt people" outcome tends to be a pro, rather than a con. They may resist the urge but to some extent they crave to inflict harm.

Sociopaths can live perfectly normal lives and never be noticed as such. The thing about a sociopath is that every time there is a decision to be made, they don't consider "other people getting hurt" to be either a pro or a con.

Some people consider this to be "neutral." I personally disagree as "other people getting hurt" tends to be something most people shy away from. So IMC, sociopaths show up as evil. They may never *do* an evil act but they are constantly considering doing things that would be evil.

 

[Set]

Psychopaths are pretty obviously evil, they tend to enjoy hurting people or at least breaking stuff. Psychopaths can avoid doing evil acts but people tend to know that "Bob has a wicked temper." During decision making anything with a "may hurt people" outcome tends to be a pro, rather than a con. They may resist the urge but to some extent they crave to inflict harm.

And the vast majority of them seem to be based entirely on fear. They make themselves less scared by hurting other people, and are completely convinced that other people would hurt them just as fast and freely. People who scare, intimidate or threaten them, even people who just make them uncomfortable, like women, blacks, foreigners or gays, are the targets of their attacks. Fear becomes aggression, as they lash out.

Studies have shown that the majority of these people felt powerless at some point in their childhood, and have come to associate 'power' and 'confidence' and 'manliness' with acts of aggression. By bullying others, by terrorizing others, by 'asserting their strength,' they try to compensate for their own frustrations, their own feelings of inadequacy and irrelevance.

They then raise new generations into the same situation, children who grew up in fear of those stronger than themselves, who grow up to 'pay it forward' and terrorize those weaker than themselves, saying to themselves, 'nobody is every going to be mean to me again!'

Sociopaths can live perfectly normal lives and never be noticed as such. The thing about a sociopath is that every time there is a decision to be made, they don't consider "other people getting hurt" to be either a pro or a con.

The drug-dealer who doesn't 'use' is a prime example. He rationalizes that 'there's always gonna be a market for this stuff' and sells a product that destroys lives. It isn't hurting him, and he 'knows' from his own personal example of not using that being exposed to the stuff doesn't guarantee a person's destruction. And so, to him, this is 'proof' that his customers are only destroying themselves. He takes no responsibility for handing them the weapon with which they destroy themselves, and quite possibly their families with them.

What I sell is killing people? Well, it doesn't *have* to, and it's not *my* fault if they kill themselves / each other. Free will and all that. I'm just a businessman. Heroin doesn't kill people. People who use to much heroin kill themselves. It's their own fault for dying, because they are weak and stupid. It's *always* the victims fault. Never the person who pushed them into the oven and watched them burn.

Some people consider this to be "neutral." I personally disagree as "other people getting hurt" tends to be something most people shy away from. So IMC, sociopaths show up as evil. They may never *do* an evil act but they are constantly considering doing things that would be evil.

In the real world, these people are simply supremely selfish. The effects of their actions only matter so far as they impact themselves, or people that 'matter' to them. So long as it isn't happening in *their* backyard, they could give a crap that a thousand people are starving to death every minute. It's not their problem. Compassion, empathy, charity, all that stuff is for wusses and pansies and pinko commies.

 

[irdeggman]

Try flipping it around.

What does a character have to do to be "good"?

If that can be defined then the opposite is true of evil, at least on a really simplified level.

If you can't define either then you are in an alignmentless game. Not that that is a bad thing, but it should be recognized and instead ue "motivations" and things like that to define how a character looks at the world in general.

 

[Harmon]

Can a hermit be evil if he's never exposed to people? Must you "commit" an action to be "evil"? Certainly just thinking selfish or destructive things isn't evil is it?

A hermit that is evil, but never been around people to commit an evil act. Thoughts of evil do not make one evil, its the actions that you take that make for evil deeds. So thinking about mowing down a bunch of people with a lawn mower isn't evil, but doing it is.

The reason I ask is that I'd like to have an encounter where the paladin is encouraged to "detect evil" and finds several peasants minding their own business, who've never committed a crime, who aren't hostile to the paladin or his religion, but who are evil.

I want a "what do you do?" moment in this encounter and thoughts on the consequences just to test the alignment system in D&D and the notion of this one guy's paladin.

jh

As I understand- the PCs go into a hamlet/village and meet a few people that seem odd. They tend not to act evil or good, even kinda nice to a point, so the Paladin does a little Detecting of Evil and realizes the place is louded with evil people. Whow- but they are all kinda nice, good craftsmen, honest with portions at meals, and kind to their kids, but evil as a demon.

Maybe these people mistreat their kids in private, in private ways, or the village might be responsible for the deaths of a few dozen people they could have saved without really doing anything and now they are evil for it (feeling no responsibility for the deaths, when they are completely responsible for them).

Its a hard sell from our POV, and its difficult to get a grasp on from your I understand. Personally I don't think what I wrote here is really worth the effort (course, I wasn't sold by any of the others I read either so...), but all of it might help you understand or see how to proceed.

Good luck on this one.

 

[irdeggman]

Finally, if a paladin finds someone who detects as evil but is not actually guilty of something, IMO the correct action would not be "You are evil! *smack*", but instead show him on the right path through his example. There's a reason why paladins are supposed to be charismatic...

This depends on the paladin's code of conduct.

They are not all the same.

If he is based on "justice" then you are probably correct (at least much more common in this case).

But what if he is based on "vengence"?

Then all evil must be stamped out is still within the LG alignment and his personal code of conduct would reflect this while still maintaining the core requirements for all "generic" paladins specified in the PHB.

Not all paladins behave the same, nor should they. IMO too manypeople ignore the code of conduct and think the the generic one in the pHB is "the" code of conduct. That is simply wrong, each paladin, as well as each cleric, has his own code of conduct that is copatable with his deity's and will define how he views the world and what he should be doing (that is conducting himself) at all times.

 

[Nifft]

If you cast protection from good (alone in a forest) you will eventually become evil. It's an evil act to cast an [Evil] spell, after all.

The road to Hell is paved with Abjurations! -- N

 

[Brazeku]

I entirely disagree. Just because something is LG and has an Int of 30 doesn't make it right. I would probably blip as CN in D&D, yet you don't see me asking Slaad Lords or Olidarma for advice. The fact that magic can determine what is Good and Evil does not tell me what is right or wrong; someone of any alignment can have a sincere ethos that they think represents the best path for a person.

Under real world considerations, with no really apparent cosmic order, what you are saying makes sense. But under D&D rules, with obvious alignments and mechanics to gain powers around them, I think the situation would be very different and doesn't open itself to post-modern interpretations of morality. In my view, the good-evil spectrum of alignments absolutely does not represent philosophies, it is a scale of right and wrong, with physics surrounding them and very real damnation if you follow the evil path. Good and Evil assume 'right' and 'wrong', so something which has the alignment 'good' is inherently 'right thinking' by nature. Law and Chaos is different, it represents a scale of god knows what, frankly it's too vague to be of much use except as an indicator for procedural rigidity or respect towards authority.

If the system had been intended to represent different philosophies as opposed to black and white morality, Good and Evil wouldn't have been the words used.

Would people listen to them? If it could be demonstrated that beings with world breaking intelligence and supernatural powers which served as paragons of the cosmic order actually existed and would answer questions and grant favor, wouldn't society have developed in such a way as to listen? What would people have turned out to be like in such a situation? It's an intriguing question.

It can be an interesting game, if you have the PCs killing celestials guarding tombs to get holy weapons they need to defeat evil that were put there to await a prophesied group of heroes who are destined to start a war against Hell that will kill millions but ultimately bring about the downfall of a Devil Lord which will ultimately bolster the armies of the Abyss with unforseeable consequences.

It can be an interesting game, the question it asks is are individually harmful acts which serve a greater good considered to be evil or good? The answer varies, but the alignment system doesn't support this type of question any better than a motivation based or non-alignment based system. Being able to determine what is and isn't a celestial being and agonizing over killing it to serve a greater good is a cheap plot device which would be better served by observing the being through actions, as opposed to assigning it a place in the cosmos by simply looking at it's alignment in a Monster Manual entry.

Like I said above, just because good and evil aren't spelled out or placed on every character sheet doesn't mean they don't exist. In fact ,I would say that in a system where good and evil aren't defined, when you come across a rare something which actually does have some kind of metaphysical effect based upon it's nature, the impact of that event is much greater. D&D's system is too ham fisted to be used for serious moral quandries, it's like a pulp comic book or a bad movie.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

The way that I understand D&D alignments, you do not actually have to do something to be evil.

Some thing are evil in and of themselves. For instance, the death watch spell, is evil. Not just that, it's [Evil], as well. The death watch doesn't do anything. Its a spell, it has no free will of its own nor any capacity for action... And yet... [Evil].

So... If a spell can be evil (and one that can be used for good or ill in equal measure), then an object can be evil, or a person can be evil, without having done ... anything at all.

Evil (and the other alignments) has substance and force in and of itself. It is a quality that one can possess regardless of their beliefs or behavior.

Later
silver

 

[Amuk]

I think that, given D&D's (generally) "objective" rules for Good and Evil, that it is entirely possible for your townspeople to be evil regardless of whether or not they've ever taken any overt acts that could be called evil. But, as irdeggman's Paladin example illustrates, D&D alignment is not purely objective: The same class & alignment could very well have two diametrically opposed -- but nevertheless 'correct' -- reactions based on purely "subjective" factors.

The distinction there is between essence and action. For most purposes in D&D, the alignment of a thing generally objectively Good, Neutral, or Evil (otherwise we'd have to deal with good orcs and evil blink dogs). Whether an act is Good, Neutral, or Evil, however, is a murkier problem (as above).