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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2144577" data-attributes="member: 27012">I'm not sure that it necessarily causes a slip into an Evil alignment, either.  If you wanted to rule that repeated expedient killing makes one Evil because it becomes casual and shows a lack of compunction against killing as a first coarse of action, I think I'd agree.So long as you come to an agreement before the game, that's fine.  But as I've stated in other alignment threads, I think alignment is designed to serve a specific purpose in D&D.  It's designed to identify the "teams" and identify the good guys and bad guys.  As such, an Evil alignment is like a black hat in an old Western, a Nazi uniform in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or a Stormtrooper helmet in Star Wars.  If you've got a player who expects that approach and then toss them an innocent farm hand with a black hat, a reluctant Nazi who really hates Hitler, or a Stormtrooper with a picture of his family tucked in his armor, you are going to have problems.  In most action movies as well as plenty of first-person shooters, guards are targets to be killed, not real people.  If that's not the case and the players don't know it, one can run into problems.I think it makes all the difference in the world.  Most RPGs that I've ever seen have a vigilante element to them.  That means that the PCs roam around and dispense justice.  Whether the bad guys are evil is as relevant as whether the person in an electric chair is guilty of mass murder or not.  It's the whole justification for vigilante justice.Remember that most of the people that criminal justice systems execute are helpless, whether they have their hands tied behind their back when they are shot or hung or they are strapped into an electric chair or a hospital gurney at the time they are killed.  If their death is a foregone conclusion, then letting them defend themselves is a mere technicality, especially if the PCs are superior (see the example of the elf ranger and the hobgoblins).  Letting them plead or beg only makes things more difficult if, again, their death is a foregone conclusion.  So I'm not sure why any of that matters, though it might to an individual code of honor.What does matter is whether they were evil enough to warrant a death penalty and whether tying them up was a viable option that would achieve a just resolution.  In your example, as I know understand it, the answer seems to be no and yes and that does make killing the guards a problem.  In the original example in the thread, I think the answers might be yes and no, which, for me, produces a different assessment.Then why were the characters engaged in vigilante activity?I got my examples crossed.  In this case, killing the guards doesn't sound justified.  It sounds casual and sounds like they didn't make any attempt to establish whether these guards were particularly bad.  That does show a lack of compunction for killing innocents.  But I think that example differs substantially from the one that started the thread.Fair enough.  And I agree with that, and I don't think "I'm Chaotic Neutral" necessarily means "I can do whatever I want" in the 3E SRD definition because both Chaotic and Neutral have boundaries.Yes, I think there are relative levels of cruelty, especially if killing is justified or necessary.  There are always humane and cruel ways to kill.Then I think it would be fair to call the player on having no compunctions against killing the innocent.  Again, I got my signals crossed between the examples.Fair enough.  I'm not advocating excuse making or abuse of the CN alignment.  But the question remains whether the actions could fall within that alignment, independent of the excuse-making.  That's what I'm trying to address.  In my assessment, for Neutral to occupy a space between Good and Evil (rather than being a depthless dividing line), it needs to include characters that are "More good than absolute Neutral but still not quite Good" and characters that are "More evil than absolute Neutral but still not quite Evil".  Looking for a functional interpretation of the SRD definitions, I've drawn my lines at ideological rather than pragmatic behavior.  The Neutral character works in a soup kitchen to feed the poor because they will be praised for it (a pragmatic reason).  The Good character works at a soup kitchen to feed the poor because they want to help the poor and could care less about praise (an ideological reason).  The Neutral character beats up or tortures a villain because it's the only way to get information from them (a pragmatic reason).  The Evil character buts up or tortures others because they enjoy inflicting pain (an ideological reason).  Because of that, my interpretation of Neutral seems to be a lot wider than a lot of the other interpretations here. And, for me, that's a good thing because it makes Good and Evil the white hats and black hats that I want them to be while the gray morality of pragmatism has a home in Neutrality.  And it lets me use alignment to simplify some of the moral complexity that, in my experience, just isn't a whole lot of fun to play out because it's just too unpleasant to have fun with (except, perhaps, in very small doses).Given that my game has both a fallen Paladin and a Druid who needed to undergo an atonement, I certainly agree.</blockquote>

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