What must one do to be "evil" alignment?

[Yalius]

If Bob constantly thinks about torturing animals but decides not to do so only because he's afraid of the repurcussions, and for no other reason, then I'd say he's evil, he just happens to be held in check.

I guess that the way I see it, if a person is serious about wanting to do evil, even if he's outwardly held in check by fear of punishment, he's probably going to find some way to indulge those evil impulses. When he thinks nobody is watching, or he can get away with it, he'll do it. If he genuinely refrains from doing all evil actions for fear of getting caught, well, his heart really isn't in it. He's neutral.

But those little evils that Bob does, like throwing rocks at dogs, or knocking birds' nests out of trees, or laughing at the child with the port-wine stain, those are the little evils that an evil soul would indulge in. The things that are so minor we excuse them. But they're still the outlet for an evil soul that doesn't want to get caught. If he really refrained from doing all of those minor little things that people overlook, well, that's just not evil in my book.

It's kind of like that Goth kid who loves to act like he's the next in line to Satan himself, loves to read all about serial killers, loves to shock people. He loves to think "I'm EVILLLLLL, your morality means nothing to me!" but he still refrains from doing anything actually harmful. And he always says that if he got the chance he's going to show everybody just what he thinks of them and their quaint morality. He ain't evil. He might like to think he is, but he ain't. And, yeah, I DM'd for him years ago.

 

[Brazeku]

Can and will are different things. No party spends their hard-won loot on being able to cast divinations on each and every person they see. In practice, they will do so when there's a question in their minds. When they have very strong expectations, they dont' have the questions, and so don't use the divinations.

I've found divination magic to be ubiquitous in most campaigns I've played in, and especially those I've run. All our wizards have taken divination magic, and clerics can just ask for it on any given day (even the little level two spell "augury" can give you a weal or woe; as player I will wind up using it 2 or 3 times per game day on average). But of course YMMV.

I also think, even if they do get burnt, players will only have strong expectations the first time. After the universe smacks them for making an improper choice, you'd better believe they will be seeking divine guidance.

The weakness of the other side is this: if there is no objective measure on it, it can be difficult to get players to care about morality. If there is no Good and Evil but what they think, they can simply choose whatever they want, and move on. Not much in the way of moral quandry, there.

I agree that it can be a weakness with certain types of players - the types of players who wouldn't enjoy morality play in the first place.

Avoiding obviously sussable Good/Evil doesn't mean that there is no Good and Evil but what the players think. The real world offers little feedback in terms of a universal moral compass, and yet plenty of people believe in Good and Evil, and there are literally hundreds of rich philosophical traditions which center around them. I find that the lack of a definite produces a continuum of belief and real agony over choices, as opposed to straight up dichotomies.

Oh, I dunno. Even if you do have the higher word on what is Good and Evil, that does not tell you what you're going to do about it. That's the real quandry...

You can ask about the outcome of particular actions, and you can ask if an action is good or evil, get a straight up yes/no, and act accordingly. You can stab the divination in the foot with a time constraint, but that gets old quickly. That would be the first tactic I would use as a GM that comes to mind, before I stripped alignment from all the classes and characters/NPCs/monsters completely and replaced it with a motivation based system.

 

[Remus Lupin]

This thread brought to my mind Robert Browning's "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister." Consider the following -- is the narrator of these lines evil?

I.
Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims--
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!

II.
At the meal we sit together:
_Salve tibi!_ I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
_Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for "parsley''?_
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?

III.
Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps--
Marked with L.
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)

IV.
_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
--Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)

V.
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp--
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp.

VI.
Oh, those melons? If he's able
We're to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!--And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

VII.
There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?

VIII.
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

IX.
Or, there's Satan!--one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! _Hy, Zy, Hine..._
'St, there's Vespers! _Plena grati
Ave, Virgo!_ Gr-r-r--you swine!

 

[Sejs]

What must one do to be "evil" alignment?

Consistant over-arching self-interest to the point of malice.

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.

False baiting paladins with the intention of 'tricking' them into making a wrong decision in order to make them fall from grace is lame.

Very, very, very contrite and lame.

 

[phindar]

If there is no Good and Evil but what they think, they can simply choose whatever they want, and move on. Not much in the way of moral quandry, there.

I disagree. I think more often in games, Alignment gets used as a way to shortcut past the moral quandry. If you can't Detect the evil, then that's when the characters have to look at the situation and decide what they believe the right thing to do is. Some players grok that and some it just frustrates. I think players who aren't interested in moral quandries aren't going to be interested in them whether you use alignment or not, but for those players that are, moral quandries are more interesting without the certainty of an objective alignment system. (At least that's how it is for me, so if nothing else, I know that's true for at least one person.)

 

[shilsen]

All the following is with the caveat IMC and IMNSHO:

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?

Yes. No. And it can be, though it would be very rare. You would normally, IMC, need some form of action to detect as evil.

To add a little context to my answers, creatures are not born into alignments IMC, but achieve alignments through their thoughts and actions. Which can of course be mediated by some natural tendencies and even more so by nurture, so an ogre is slightly more likely to be evil than a human and an ogre raised by ogres is slightly more likely to be evil than an ogre raised by dwarves (though the latter is more likely to die of concussions at an early age).

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.

IMC, the paladin knows that if he detects evil in a room full of people in most human societies, about 20% or so of them detect as 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.

Sounds a little unnecessary, but if you want to do it, just make sure that you have a damn good idea exactly how and why they are detecting as evil, what alignment means in your campaign, and what paladinhood means in your campaign.

 

[shilsen]

I disagree. I think more often in games, Alignment gets used as a way to shortcut past the moral quandry. If you can't Detect the evil, then that's when the characters have to look at the situation and decide what they believe the right thing to do is. Some players grok that and some it just frustrates. I think players who aren't interested in moral quandries aren't going to be interested in them whether you use alignment or not, but for those players that are, moral quandries are more interesting without the certainty of an objective alignment system. (At least that's how it is for me, so if nothing else, I know that's true for at least one person.)

I think you're right about the tendency being for the alignment system to reduce moral ambiguity, but I've found that it's very easy to use it to enhance moral ambiguity. The alignment system as written is nebulous enough, as are means of detecting it (I've always liked the fact that a mass murdering psycopath can detect as less evil than a LN church librarian under Detect Evil). Nothing makes one face moral ambiguity like discovering that the guy who detects clearly as evil is also a loving father, a devoted husband, a loyal friend, and an important and beneficial member of society.

 

[delericho]

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?

I would rule that a truly isolated hermit couldn't be Evil, because he would be unable to commit any Evil acts. However, as mentioned earlier in the thread, it's highly unlikely that such a hermit will not have at least animals to visit his Evil upon.

In the context of the game, I rule that one's alignment is determined by one's actions (because how can the DM really judge the thoughts and motivations of a PC?).

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.

The best way to do this, I think, is to take an appropriately broad view of Evil - it essentially comes down to harming others for one's own benefit. So, the merchant who cheats his clients, the tax-farmer who legally inflicts great suffering on the populace, and the corrupt politician may well all be Evil, but some or all of them may not have committed an actual crime, and they probably haven't committed crimes worthy of summary execution.

Bear in mind also that the Detect Evil power does not indicate the magnitude of Evil a person has committed, but only the power of the individual who is Evil. So, a 1st level Commoner serial killer would appear to be less Evil than a 10th level Fighter whose only crime is that he hates dogs and enjoys kicking them at every opportunity. (Of course, one could argue that Evil is Evil is Evil, and that there is actually no distinction... but that's an argument that I don't feel like getting into.)

 

[UnsocialEntity]

Well since you seem to just be interested in the strict d&d alignment, not how people run their own campaign:

From the SRD:
"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.


D&D's good and evil system is pretty black and white. Good people make sacrifices, evil people are baby eaters. It seems like the system mostly cares about action, not thoughts. If someone thinks about it, but doesn't do anything, they're just neutral. They haven't slipped into *true* evil.

So what are the peasants doing? Blackmailers, muggers, etc would probably fit pretty well into evil, and wouldn't require more than level 1 commoner. If you're looking for something that would be a moral quandry, you would probably have to look at lawful evil, since you wouldn't be able to arrest them for their eeevvviilllss.

Speaking of LE, it's pretty lawful evil to try to trick the paladin into slipping up on his code. It can be interesting to make situations like this, but hopefully it's in order to develop the paladin's character, and whether he values law over good, or good over law, instead of just trying to punish someone for picking paladin.

Of course, if the paladin just decides to slaughter the peasants as soon as they register evil without even witnessing them commiting a crime, then perhaps he should be playing a CG or CN character... but yea. I would say as long as the paladin puts some thought into his actions (or inactions), no need to take away his powers.

 

[Quartz]

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.

Can I suggest you talk it over with the player first? The point of the game is to have fun, an this sounds remarkably like a non-fun thing to do.