yet another alignment question...

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Your example of the nobles and serfs and everything made me think a bit and I think you were labeling good/evil wrongly for law/chaos.

No, I think they were. Nobility was considered a divine right. Serfs, kerns, whatever, were required to do what the nobility wanted, and the church, by and large, was on the nobles' side (because that's where the wealth and power was). A noble who whipped a disobedient serf could sleep soundly at night because his entire society told him that it was not an evil act. The serf was, in fact, evil for ignoring the noble's divine right to use him as a foot stool, have his way with his daughter, etc. But, applying moral relativism, since the society said the noble was good by definition, he was good, and the disobedient peasant was evil. This is why moral relativism doesn't work for me. Evil is evil. I don't care what that particular society thought. Under moral relativism, we can label slavery, war, rape, and anything else you name "good" because on society or another through history thought it was.

I used the example, because you told me to step out of my modern moral values and apply medieval ones. I did, and that's the result. I don't think that's a very good way to go about the game though. How would we know who the bad guys are?

 

[Tallow]

I can see your point, but that wasn't the fighter's motivation anyway. .... If it was done for the wrong reasons, it's evil.

That's assuming that the killing of a helpless person, is of itself, an evil act. If it is, then no matter the circumstances or reasons, the act is evil. Therefore a Paladin committing coup de grace on the blackguard is an evil act, despite mitigating circumstances. Paladin loses paladinhood.

If the act itself can be mitigated into a variety of alignments depending on circumstances and intentions, then you have to play with shades of gray.

1. Paladin's act is good, because of intentions, circumstances, and the fact the Blackguard represents a continuing evil threat on all that is good and holy.

2. A Blackguard killing a helpless child because it gets in the way of his rape of the mother, is certainly evil. Boiled down to the bare bones though, its still killing a helpless person. In black and white, its no different than the Paladin's act. However I don't know a single person who would see it that way, including myself.

3. Fighter gets pissed at a mage who steals from them, defrauds them, endangers his friends, and lies to them to get out of trouble. Fighter is tired of the mage and his lies, and so kills mage. His intention is akin to swatting an irritating fly. Because the mage is sentient, is this an evil act? In some cases, I'd say yes. The blackguard did this to the child. In other cases, the Mage is more than a fly, and has caused real danger and irritation of the fighter himself. Forget about the other PC's in this right now. His act was done out of the passion of anger, and he was justified in his anger towards the mage. Therefore the act itself is not evil, because his intentions were not evil. His intentions had no motivation other than to assauge his anger and sate his passion, which he was justified in having. Was it a borderline act? Certainly. Was it bonifide evil? certainly not.

I would say the fighter did not commit the act for the wrong reasons if you use the definition of Chaotic Neutral as your guideline.


Andy Christian

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Perhaps we DO have a very different world-view. I don't separate the act from the motivation. And each individual occurence is judged on its own merits. Blackguard killing little girl - unabsolvable evil. Paladin (or anyone) striking down a dangerous foe that they finally managed to disable in a fight - not evil. Not good either. The truly uber-good thing to do would be capture him or reform him. But killing such a foe would be acceptable. I admit that a not particularly dangerous mage who had been subdued for some time is a bit more complicated. The motivation for the act, however, rules the day. And I define committing any act of violence out of anger as evil (anger /= sense of justice). Though I submit that it's possible I simply pay too much attention to Yoda.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Acts aren't evil....intentions are.

At least, that's how I view it. A paladin mercilessly slaying all evil creatures he detects is still Good. Heck, if they can't defend themselves in any way, if they're just helpless peasants, he's still Good. Of course, he's not very honorable anymore, so he would loose paladinhood.

Why? Because he's doing it for All the Right Reasons....to stop suffering. To end pain. Even if he causes some in the process, the end justifies the means in his mind. He's doing it to make the world a better place to live. It's Good.

It's not honorable, but it's Good.

It's the same way that a revolution can be lawful. If the revolters are organized, hoping to put in a new organization, a better organization, something that could be in control and supervise in a benevolent way, it's a Lawful act. Especially if the current ruler is Chaotic and haphazard.

I don't think Lawful means "obeying commands." It just means you like organization and have a passion for structure. Usually, this means you'll obey commands, because you love the structure that puts people in charge of you....but not always.

I'm mostly with Lost Soul....it appears that the act was motivated mostly by personal pleasure and gain. And it came at the expense of another. It leans to evil.

It doesn't have to be. If he killed him to stop him from harming others, it's good. If he killed the mage to stop him from helping others, it's probably evil (unless those he was helping were evil).

IMHO, no act can be truly evil or good. Even raising undead, though it pulls on wicked energies, can be made to be a good act, or even a neutral one, with enough rationalization.

Of course, the alignment doesn't change the perspective of the people. The wizard may not be missed by many (he was affiliated with the theives' guild, after all), but many people would view the one who killed him out of simple annoyance to be a very disturbed individual.

I've got no problems with the CN guy committing the act. No one can stay 100% true to their alignment, and there are no set number of "times" you can deviate from it before you turn evil. There's no alignment score.

Basically, you have to use it as a guideline. If the character consistently and repeatedly kills people to make himself happier, he's probably leaning in the direction of evil. Tell him that, give him a chance to try something different, or let him play evil.

I don't think it was out of character for a CN guy to kill on impulse. However, the impulse did make him derive pleasure from a malicious act....so he should be starting to feel the urge of the deep pit a bit. He doesn't have to counteract the action, but he probably shouldn't keep doing it.

Neutral isn't a balancing game. It isn't a scale. Neutral isn't the hardest alignment to play...it's the easiest. Because it's simply instinctive. You protect things that you like, you kill things you don't. You help those who are close to you, you kill people who make it harder for you to do that.

On a side note, I think that a death penalty, even, could be viewed in different ways. If it's to make yourself feel better and you derive some pleasure from seeing the victim suffer, it's probably evil. If it's to stop further evil and to send a message to halt wickedness, it's probably good. And it's most likely lawful -- anything connected to a court system would be.

Of course, that's in-game, not real-world. Everyone has to decide for themselves how their morals are balanced in the real-world, and everybody is, of course, 100% right. ^_^

 

[Humanophile]

I don't see how killing someone just because you're sick of hearing their lies can be passed off as good. It can be more or less evil depending on whether the focus of it is the lying ("we'll never get anywhere with him, let us just do justice now") or the sick of hearing part ("OK, me bored now *hack*"), but it's still a black mark somewhere on the soul.

And furthermore, while this character gives me vibes of the "I'm playing CN simply so I have an excuse to be Evil when I want to", this single act is fully within the bounds of a callous but very much CN character. If that's not how you want your game played, you're best off giving the player an odd look and informing him that that's an evil act, but that's more social pressure than anything else. Either of the rationales would be evil, but only enough to nudge the alignment a little. It takes an active campaign of ruthlessness and callousness to become evil, especially if the character is only a lackluster example of those traits.

 

[Marimmar]

sorry for not answering

First I want to apologize to all who made such great contributions to this thread. I wanted to reply yesterday but i unfortunately got a full workload on my desk and had no time.

And now for something completely different...

Our group had long discussions about alignments and we decided that we would use modern morale standards since noone was really capable of telling what was right or wrong in medieval times. D&D is a modern game so there's nothing wrong with using modern morale standards.

The captured mage was so terrified of the party that it was quite clear that he wouldn't pose a threat later on, so killing him to prevent him from further actions against the party was uncalled for. The party had several options at the moment:

a) taking back their money and let the mage run after some 'naughty mage' talk
b) stripping him of all his belongings and let him run after some 'naughty mage' talk
c) stripping him of all his belongings and deliver him to the thieves guild
d) taking back their money and deliver him to the authorities for fraud
e) kill and plunder him

Since they chose option e) they clearly lowered themselves to the level of being thugs, thieves and murderers themselves.

The other party members reacted as follows:
CG elven Priestess: currently on vacation

NG Wizard: he's currently in a bad mood since his wife (the elven priestess) broke up with him and is full of agressions and big talk but fails to follow through with any of his threats passing them all of as jokes. He was a bit surprised when the fighter slew the mage and gave him a funny look.

LG Bard: He was alignment changed by a deck of many things (not under my DM-ship) and cannot advance anymore as a bard. He now acts all lawful good and wanted to intervene but since he's not much of a fighter he was too afraid to interpose himself. (he was affected by the trap the false password set-off, a symbol of discord, and attacked the fighter but was knocked down in a single round so he was rightfully afraid of the fighter)
He later wrote a letter to the authorities in which he described the killing and warned them of the very dangerous fighter.

Since they wind-walked back to their home country immediatly afterwards (which is two nations away) the local authorities couldn't catch up to the fighter.

I will definitely have the thieves guild (great idea ^_^) hunt down the party and demand a compensation for their lost 'investment'. And since the authorities believe that they committed a crime themselves the party's fighter is effectively banned from Ordulin in Sembia. I take it that medieval law enforcement was quite primitive so they will be able to walk unhindered into other sembian cities as long as they do not get involved with the authorities.

Having read all the posts regarding the killing by the fighter, i realized that a lot of you are either pro or con a chaotic neutral alignment. I read through the alignment descriptions and it clearly says there that 'killing out of convenience' is an evil act. Thus killing a helpless prisoner is definitely an evil act. You don't have to put up with him anymore and can continue with your own business. Being impulsive does not justify killing someone. I do consider myself a lawful neutral person but i would never think of killing someone who doesn't pose a threat to my own continued existance. Since this is a moral dilemma we are talking about it is okay to leave the chaotic/lawful axis out of our equation. It all boils down to, is killing a bound prisoner a good, neutral or evil act? Since it wouldn't have been much of an effort to turn him in to someone to deal with him apropriately or letting him go after a good beating and stripping of his belongings I consider it to be an evil act.

Well i might have been a bit thin skinned then since the fighter at the moment of the capture insisted on attacking the mage's horse and splitting it in half with several critical hits (keen longsword + impr. crit) which was totally uncalled for since the mage was already pulled down by a lasso. They could have captured the horse with ease.

I hope all this still makes sense somehow.

~Marimmar

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you *really* want to send a message....

Law enforcement in D&D doesn't have to be primitive. A few mages, a few clerics, a few scrying spells and one day later, the wizard teleports in, Meteor Swarms the place where the fighter is staying...that night....death.

If you want to persuade him to be evil, you could even allow him to keep his character's personality in a different body...a fiend of some sort contacts him as he's about to cross over, and he's offered a choice: burn in hell now, or take a new body and pay some sort of price for it...set him against the PC party, or against a powerful noble.

If the place is decent-sized, they probably have at least one 15+ level wizard and/or cleric at their disposal. The town could have the criminals wrapped up in a day. It's amazing what a little Speak with Dead can give you....

 

[Marimmar]

Law enforcement in D&D doesn't have to be primitive. A few mages, a few clerics, a few scrying spells and one day later, the wizard teleports in, Meteor Swarms the place where the fighter is staying...that night....death.

That won't work right now, they already offended a high level cult of the dragon wizard who almost singlehandedly defeated the party. He and his high level cult of the dragon cleric buddy are already on the lookout for them. The party luckily got wind of their plans because the party's wizard sneaked into the cult stronghold and overheard their planning on how to deal with the party. Since then they change locations constantly by using wind walk and only rest in a rope trick cabin. Thus far I ruled that the scrying cleric had some bad luck finding them because they either zipped around at 60mph or were locked up in their rope trick. However this is prone to change soon unless the party stops interfering with the cult's activities and stays far away.

I'm not really out to get the fighter for his deed, he already is under a quest spell to kill five clerics of Tempus within a year and a day and bring their heads to the chaotic evil temple of Garagos the Destroyer in Westgate as additional payment for being true ressurected. He is a level 2 priest of Garagos so they had to bring him there to get him back to live. All other temples either refused to raise him or it was clear that they would take the corpse and utterly destroy it.

I just warned the fighter that he is on his way to become evil because I firmly believe that players should act according to their character's alignment. Else there would be no point in having an alignment in the first place. There's no reason that only paladins and monks are bound by their alignment and if they act out of alignment, they may face an alignment change. Since it doesn't involve a level loss anymore it shouldn't be too hard on the character, unless he is a cleric and loses his faith or a paladin.

The chaotic neutral attitude of 'I can do whatever I want' is in no way acceptable and playing a chaotic neutral is like playing any other alignment. I know a lot of people in real life who are chaotic and thus believe I know what a chaotic character should act like. Those folks don't show up on appointments, are only interested in their own agendas not what is required of them, are not capable of keeping order at home or at work, are not willing to face the consequences of their actions and instead blame others, try to get other people to do their work and aren't able to concentrate on a task for more than five minutes.

None of the above mentioned character traits involves violent behaviour and killing a bound prisoner is thus not neutral but evil in my opinion.

~Marimmar

 

[smetzger]

The guys a fighter right? It probably makes very little difference what alignment he is. There is no penalty for changing alignment in 3e.

 

[Marimmar]

The guys a fighter right? It probably makes very little difference what alignment he is.

He is fighter 8, cleric 2 - but since his god Garagos is a chaotic neutral deity of war and destruction being chaotic evil is no real problem for him.

~Marimmar