Alignment Sucks

[da_chicken]

Negative energy burst isn't [Evil].

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I don't think Frank's talking about core rules (either version). He's talking about Monte Cook's variant rules in the BoVD.

[da_chicken]

Most spells in BoVD deal unholy or vile damage, or conjure hellfire (must access the lower planes to function). Same reason unholy blight is [Evil]. Not [Evil] because of intent. [Evil] because they magick the force of evil.

[Username17]

As per the guidelines on page 77 of the BoVD, all kinds of crazy stupid spells get the [Evil] Descriptor - including Deathwatch of all things.

And by those criteria, spellls that improve Undead - such as NEgative Energy Burst, are Evil. It's retarded, but so are those guidelines. Setting people on fire isn't Evil, but causing "despair" is.

Dumbtastic.

-Username17

[da_chicken]

The problem is they some spells get the [Evil] descriptor because they're inherently evil, and some get it because of the flavor text. That's what hapened with deathwatch. A lot of people don't like that. That's why BoVD had it as a variant rule.

Basically, deathwatch ends up being evil because the spell description says (paraphrasing) "using the power of undeath, you can see the life force of creatures around you" instead of just "you can see the life force of creatures around you". Removing the references to undead and negative energy and renaming the spell lifewatch would make the spell unaligned again.

I don't think anybody was upset that consecrate became [Good] and desecrate became [Evil], but the only reason they did was because of flavor.

And setting people on fire can be evil. It just isn't inherently so. "Summoning the power of evil to cause dispair" is going to be unequivocally evil, and that's all the [Evil] tag represents.

Arguably, of course, they should keep [stupid] flavor considerations like this out of the core entirely.

[Ramnza]

What happens when you use negative energy for a good purpose? A sorcerer in a previous campaign and a wizard, for that matter, did so. Then a few months ago we got into this exact debate and found out that using negative energy for any reason would change our alignment, which we didn't even agree upon or understand, much like this thread. So, my question is, what happens when you use negative energy for "good", does it change your alignment, or are you just unable to even use it?

[Psifon]

When you do this, your DM makes a house rule.

[Username17]

There are two schools of thought on this:

Manual of the Planes says: Negative Energy is an elemental force, a fundamental building block of the universe, and using it is no more inherently good or evil than using stone or air. Negative Energy is dangerous, but so is Fire - and the raw stuff of it is as incapable of understanding human morals as is the sea.

Book of Vile Darkness says: Negative Energy is the raw stuff of Evil, with capital letters and everything. Even being near it puts scars on your soul and makes you think bad thoughts. The best thing that can be done with Negative Energy is to contain or destroy it - but even that is tricky and risks temptation and corruption into wickedness. Those who even see Negative Energy in its raw form are never as pure as those who did not - and the true glory of Good can never be truly attained once its dark influence has been felt even fleatingly.

There is, obviously, no possible way to reconcile those two viewpoints, and it comes to the DM to determine which is more retarded. Andy Collins chose to largely embrace the second in his publication of the 3.r rulesset - but that by no means guarantees a lack of stupid going in to that decision.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

It dosen't really matter if NE is neutral or evil, it does matter when the rules can't seem to decide. Just pick one and stick with it.

[Username17]

Personally I could be happier if questions of Law/Chaos just fvcking died and never ever came back. Good and Evil don't have a consistent definition and are in various places generated by a number of different (and contradictory) moral codes. It's a game which embraces the concepts of absolute right and wrong, yet it doesn't present a consistent moral system to actually generate those absolutes. And that's where all the fvcking Paladin debates come from. The game jumps between irreconcilable Aristotilean, Kantian, Smithian, and Christian morality without segue and those systems tell you to do different things in different situations.

But how about Law/Chaos? There is no definition of Law/Chaos! Law is about personal resolve, Chaos is about personal freedom - those are the same thing. A truly chaotic individual does what they want because they are free, a truly lawful individual does what they want because they can't be dissuaded from their inherent course of action.

There is not, nor has there ever been, an associated ethical system of Law/Chaos. It's simply not a meaning bearing distinction. Many people put down Lawful or Chaotic and have that essentially mean "disruptive to the party", but the vast majority of the time it doesn't mean shit. There isn't a gray area, because Law and Chaos aren't black and white - they are purple and rhinocerous.

In every situation, there is a Lawful act and a Chaotic act which are the same. In any potential dilemma, a Lawful or Chaotic argument could be made for either solution. Adherence to personal beliefs is Lawful, adherence to group authority is also Lawful, so doing what others want you to do or not is Lawful. Personal freedom is Chaotic, unpredictability is Chaotic, so doing what you want or doing what ohers want you to do is still Chaotic.

There's no meaningful distinction. These aren't real opposed forces. They have no correspondance to any ethical system at all. They might as well be "blue team" and "red team".

---

Good and Evil suffer from having too many defintions. Law and Chaos don't have any. The first can be debated endlessly, the second has no available debate at all.

-Username17

[Username17]

Bonus question: Why do cats and snakes get off the hook?

The answer: They are animals, and it says right in the alignment description that animals are all neutral no matter what they do.

But Why? Snakes use poison, and housecats torture weaker creatures to death for fun. Why aren't they evil?

Certainly not because they are too dumb to understand the implications of their actions. Not only are some animals entirely capable of understanding their actions and the results they have, but some creatures jolly well get alignment tags in spite of having less intelligence than a house cat (which apparently in D&D is actually possible). So the elephant gets the "animal" tag and is neutral, while the zombie has a "-" intelligence and is Evil anyhow.

Certainly not because they have no choices in the matter. While a cobra has no viable way to survive without killing creatures with its poison fangs, a cat actually can be trained to not torture small animals to death. So a cat performs torture because it is natural for it to do so (and could be trained otherwise) and is neutral, an Osyluth performs torture because it is natural for it to do so (and could be trained otherwise) and is evil. Furthermore, the beloved Zombie actually has no choices at all under any circumstances, and is Evil.

So regardless of whether the creature is capable of understanding the ramifications of its actions or of making other life choices, the double standard exists. Real creatures from Earth all get the neutral tag regardless of what they do and why they do it, while fantasy creatures get judged good or evil on the merits of the same actions and inclinations that real creatures get a free pass on.

---

Bonus question 2: What standards do we use?

Let's see if you can spot the portions of D&D morality that borrow from these incompatible schools of thought:

Utilitarianism: The greatest good for the greatest number, ethical calculus. The Utilitarian believes that the sum total of your actions and inactions should make the world better for as many people as possible. The expected results of actions would be weighed in terms of probable outcomes for all affected individuals, and the action with the greatest possitive effect overall is the best, no exceptions.
Classic Dilemma Utilitarianist Dilemma: The Organlegger. When presented with one healthy person and five blood-matched people in need of an organ transplant (of various different organs), the challenger of Utilitarianism would demand to know whether the Utilitarianist would kill that one healthy person to save the other five.
Classic Utilitarianist Resolution: The problem with the question is that it is not truly a dilemma, the actual question is one of resource management. The resources at your disposal are a crack team of medical professionals, a sterile working environment, and one healthy person. The choices are not simply to part out the healthy man to save five lives or have the crack team of medical professionals and the healthy man sit on their thumbs while people die all around them. The choices include having those resources allocated to a number of life saving tasks. If for some reason you truly only had those two options (perhaps your spaceship had crash landed on a distant planet), then of course it would be immoral to allow five people to die instead of killing one. But in the normal course of events, having a full medical staff and a vast pile of sterile tools, drugs, and equipment saving only 4 total lives is a very bad return, and while it's better than doing absolutely nothing in this case, it's so far from the optimal result as to be itself immoral under normal circumstances.

Deontology: There is right and there is wrong. Actions which are right are right because they are generalizable, actions which are wrong are wrong because they are not. Murder is wrong because if everyone committed one murder, noone would be left (not generalizable), Truth is so good that it gets capitalized because if everyone did it life would be awesome (generalizable). It is actions, and not contexts, which determine the rightness of behavior.
Classic Deontological Dilemma: You are hiding a Jew in your house from the Nazis, or a Black man in your house from the KKK. One of them comes up and asks you point blank if it is true that you are hiding one of those inferior types in your house. The challenger of Deontology would demand to know how you are going to avoid performing an evil act, since both aiding murderers and lying are evil.
Classic Deontological Resolution: Again, this is not truly a dilemma. While aiding murderers is evil and so is lying, combatting evil head on is not. Indeed, if everyone fought against these organizations, they wouldn't exist and everyone would be better off (generalizable). So even though you may well die in doing so, fighting back is the proper solution. Nobody said that the path of good was going to leave you alive at the end...

Tribalism: Pick a group. Any group. Now maximize the benefits to that group with your actions. That group could be "humans", or "sapient creatures", or "living things", or "Americans", or "White People", or "The Harrison Family", or "Mitsubishi", or "My Friends", or anything in between.
Classic Tribalist Dilemma: Other tribes compete with your tribe for resources, so the challenger to tribalism would say that the tribalist is compelled to destroy others who are not defined within the tribe. Further that the more similar a non-tribal creature is, the greater the imperative to destroy it.
Classic Tribalist Resolution: Just as other creatures are inside your tribe, so too is it true that your tribe can be a member of tribes with other tribes. The Harrison Family is aligned with the "America" tribe just as the Mbutu family is. As such, while there is considerable incentive to discriminate against the Mbutus, actual attacks against them must be curtailed if they risk hurting the main tribe indirectly by making the tribe's tribe weaker over all.

Rigid Code: "Because it says so right on page 54!" A rigid code is a list of dos and don'ts which are based on faith rather than logic. As such, they are above question, and completely arbitrary. There may or may not be a "reason" for the inclusion of any particular rule, and that reason could be anywhere between "because otherwise society would collapse, like tomorrow" and "because otherwise we'd be like the people who follow that code over there". But for the follower of the code this is not important.
Classic Rigid Code Dilemma: The great thing about a code that requires (and allows) no logical basis is that it is not above conflicting with itself. Constantly. And from Bushido to Islam, they do. Constantly.
Classic Rigid Code Resolution: The usual response is to rank the rules like a computer program. Going at great length to set up a series of contingencies by which rules interact. It usually is extremely contentious, and often longer than the original code, like the Torah.

-Username17

[User3]

I've never had a problem with alignments. Its very simple... so simple in fact that pulling out modern ethical thought is unnecesary. Its all based on the morality of the playground.

Law: Following other people's social conventions.
Chaotic: Not following people's social conventions.
Good: Preventing pain to others.
Evil: Knowingly causing pain.

Sometimes, an act is both on the Law/Chaos and the Good/Evil axis. Neutral acts are ones that either don't involve social conventions or pain to others, or are at both ends of the spectrum. Here's a list of acts:

Stealing from someone who can afford to loose whatever you stole: Chaotic, since almost every society has a law about stealing.

Stealing from someone who will feel pain about the loss (like stealing money from the very poor): Chaotic and Evil.

Stealing something important to save someone from pain: Chaotic Good. Its anitsocial, but good.

Murder (killing sentients for profit or pleasure): Evil and Chaotic, since every society has a law or taboo against it.

Killing sentients in self defense: Neutral. Killing is not lawful, but since they are trying to kill you they are more wrong in the law as they started it, so you get a pardon for it, and so this sits smack in the middle of the road on the L/C axis. It also prevents pain to others, but it causes pain, so its neutral on the G/E axis.

Overthrowing a king: Chaotic.

Animating the undead: Evil, as it causes others pain to see the dead defiled.

Poison: Evil, as poisons generally cause prolonged pain.

Torture: Evil, as it causes prolongs pain.

Preventing an Evil act: Good, unless you prevent it with a lesser Evil act, then its Neutral.

Preventing a Chaotic Act: Lawful, unless its prevented with a Chaotic act, then its neutral.

Now for the tricky ones, which unfortunately negate most DnD adventures:

Looting the recent dead: Evil. This defiles the corpse which will cause pain to the relatives of the recent dead.

Using others as expendables(like making a summoned monster to set off a bunch of traps for you): Evil.

Killing others based on their race: Evil. So, the "kill the goblin tribe" adventure is right out.

-------

So cats and snakes are neutral, as they do not know that they are causing pain, but adventurers are evil. Outsiders are the physical incarnation of ideas, so trying to teach them to be something else is silly. Its like trying to teach a fish to fly.

[erik]

To nit pick a few of those.

Some poisons do not cause pain. They could just as easily be knockout poisons. Eerier is the idea of painless death, or even deaths that feel pleasurable (morphine overdose or somesuch imaginable case). They would appear to be good acts, even if tis murder, as it prevents any possible future pain.

There has to be more to animating dead being evil than just the chance that people will see that it was done. Otherwise it is jolly well good in a community of the not terribly perceptive. Likewise for looting the dead. It follows that it is a neutral act if nobody notices, by those premises. Unless you wanna tread the shaky ground that you evilly cause yourself pain by witnessing your own acts of corpse looting and animation.

I've likewise never had many problems with alignments because I try not to delve too deeply into them. They're just team names bestowed by the gods or whatever powers that be, with creeds that are attempted to be followed much of the time by the team members. Sometimes people defy or fail to live up to their creed, and if they do it enough, then they change teams.

As for adventures that I can think of off-hand for this criteria,

One which I think was an adaptation of a 3e module had the PCs ferreting out a smuggling ring, and we wound up killing all of them. I would have joined the smugglers once I found out how friggin outrageous the local tarrifs were, but I wound up dying twice in that mission, once after about 30 minutes of play, the second time in less than 5. Fvcking backstabing NPC guide.

(Adventure from D&D 1st Ed, Beastiary of Dragons and Giants- Ravellia and the Dragon Eggs)
One that didn't fit the criteria was an adventure where the PCs are paid to protect/incubate some dragon eggs that several interested parties want to get a hold of (all of whom incidentally were evil, but didn't have to be by necessity), and of course the eggs winds up being a black dragon's eggs. The module makes no mention of it being evil to use lethal force to stop people trying to take or damage the eggs.

Also from Beastiary of Dragons and Giants (Trouble in Tall Stone Pass). Players are offered by merchants 500-1000 gp a head to kill stone giants who rob travellers on some mountain pass. If the players are unwounded from random encounters by the time they meet the giants, the giants explain that they only take tolls just like any other local government, and will give 5000gp and some treasures if they don't fight (if the PCs are wounded a bunch, then they don't feel the need to make such an offer to wimps who they could probably beat). My favorite part is at the end if you kill the 3 giants (Neutral alignment by the by), you find 3 stone giant "eggs" and it gives market price for selling them as slaves.

Among a few other mods, I've got the book of lairs I and II from AD&D 1st ed, and they has tons of short adventures simply dubbed stuff like "Goblins (80)", "Undead (876)", and "Gooey and Oozy Things (26)" which denote the lair's owner and how many of them there are. I think I'll probably just make a tally of how many adventures fit which criterion at some later date.

[Josh_Kablack]

Fighter Explains All

[PhoneLobster]

I've never liked this whole idea that lawful means following whatever the local communities rules are and chaotic means the opposite.

Its dumb and annoying, there is no reason a lawful character needs to follow any law other than his own internal code or reasoning, and no reason a chaotic character cannot like actual laws, for instance any law that protects or grants them any freedoms of any form.

But then I'm strongly in the camp of alignment being a totally ludicrous system.

My default means of dealing with it are that the players are consistent with their alignment as long as their actions follow whatever their own zany personal interpretation of their alignment is.

Sure this means that there are like a hundred different interpretations of what it means to be even just chaotic good and for some reason they all get to wear the same alignment team colors.

But at least that way its subjectively consistent for the player. (and doesn't go stabbing paladins and the like in the eye)

No way in hell is it ever going to be objectively consistent.

[Username17]

In fact, the existence of chaoically alligned societies and lawfuly aligned solitary beings proves beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt that the defintions

Law: Following other people's social conventions.
Chaotic: Not following people's social conventions.

is bullshit. Even worse for that definition, D&D actually assumes societies from all over the great wheel of alignments, which means that anything you do or don't do is logically going to be in conflict with (and supported by) the social conventions of others. So the question of fitting in with social conventions or not is a sucker's question - it is literally impossible to make any progress in determining the lawfullness or chaoticness of any action by that method.

As to the claptrap about pain and evil, I have only this to say: Pfffft! The game accepts a utilitarian justification for beating people to death with a sword (you are judged by the results of your swording, not the act of swording itself - which is good because simply using a slightly sharpened iron bar to beat an intelligent creature to near death and then waiting for it to expire from agony and blood loss is an action which aupriori would seem to be ungeneralizable). The game therefore would need to allow for for a similar argument being made for the use of poison. A lethal injection is generally considered one of the most humane ways to kill someone there is, so any pain-based justification would practically demand that you trade your crossbow for a blowgun.

As to the justification for why raising undead is evil, there really isn't one. The justifications include "It says in the Bible not to do that" (a rigid code that should have no direct relevence in D&D), and "Isn't that something villains do?" which is essentially an ad hoc argument that has nothing to do with anything. There is really no argument available for why raising zombies is wrong, save that it is "gross" and some people don't like it. But of course some people (and some societies) actually think it's cool, so even that argument is horse shit.

The fact is that while many people can generate an internal moral compass based on the four words of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos, and many people could even make a consistent guide for what actions or intentions (depending upon which you think are important) you think are worthy of which labels, the game as written cannot. Law and Chaos could be sufficiently defined as to be different, maybe even opposites, but they aren't. Good and Evil could be consistently enough defined that there would be common ground in explaining them, but they aren't.

Law and Chaos overlap. Completely. There is no action nor intention save the casting of a Lawful Spell that is unambiguously Lawful and not Chaotic. And even that mysteriously includes Magic Circle Against Chaos when used to power a Planar Binding of a Slaad (which is itself unambiguously Chaotic for some reason).

You want to argue that this shit makes any sense? Good luck with that. Go for it, but I reserve the right to openly laugh at you for even trying.

-Username17

[SuicideChump]

1115700830[/unixtime]]

Overthrowing a king: Chaotic.

I don't agree expecially on this statement. What if the assassination of a king is part of a wizard's complex scheme to take over the reign and instaurate his absolute tiranny?
What if the slaughtered king was a fvcking senile retard who abandoned his realm to total anarchy?

[Username17]

What if the slaughtered king was a fvcking senile retard who abandoned his realm to total anarchy?

What if he is? If the people are used to a realm abandoned to total anarchy, then isn't that the "order" of the situation? Indeed, installing peace over total anarchy would constitute a change, and could thus be seen as Chaotic.

There is only one objective definition of Entropy and Order, and that's the thermodynamic definition. And in that defintion, the following things are entropic:

Heat
Mixing
Melting
Boiling
Kinetic Energy

The following things are ordered:

Separation
Freezing
Condensing
Large Structures
Potential Energy

So in the objective defintion, it is Ordered to convert the Sun's rays and Carbon Dioxide into sugar; it is Ordered to raise a stone off the ground; it is Ordered to take salt out of the ocean. It is Entropic to burn a log of wood; it is Entropic to allow a stone to fall off the top of your tower; it is Entropic to pour your wine on the sand.

And that's explicitly not what they mean by Law and Chaos, which means that they don't mean anything. There's literally nothing else for "Chaos" to mean, because that's the only thing that Chaos actually is.

-Username17

[User3]

Poisons in the real world that don't cause pain are pretty rare, and almost all poisons kill people with even a mild overdose. Fighting with a weapon means that the enemy has a chance to ask for quarter, or run away, or will pass out from the pain. Poisoning someone means that you are willing to kill them without giving them a chance, so painless poisons are Evil as they are murder, not just because they cause pain. Fighting in self defense or to prevent pain to others is a neutral act as it is an evil act balanced by a good.

DnD's "perfect poisons" that cause no harm to anyone should not be evil, though. They' fall under the drug rules, in my mind.

Animating the dead is evil not just because it causes pain to people, but the soul of the person whose body is was would be offended(and its still around somewhere). Also, the gods themselves will see the act and put the Evil red nametag on the PC. Doing evil is not just about whether you get caught, but its about whether you and the gods know what you are doing is evil. Its about whether 90% of people in the world would find this act morally repulsive. Morality is surprisingly static across every society. No society in my mind thinks murder is fine, or that torture is cool. some have different ideas of when killing is OK, but killing sentients for pleasure is always wrong (some evil societies will say things like "its ok to kill Race A or Religion B, but killing us is evil. )

Overthrowing govenments is chaotic, even if those societies are chaotic. Chaotic societies have few social cenventions, but those conventions can be broken. For example, an orc tribal society would see it as chaotic to force everyone to wear red pants, as orcs have a convention of wearing whatever they please. Chaos is all about saying "my personal code overrides the rules the society."

Don't forget that alignment is a magic force, and the gods make the rules. Detect Evil finds evil not because it makes a choice about your recent actions, but because there are forces in the universe that already mark you for your actions regardless of how you feel about it.

[PhoneLobster]

So now its still chaotic to depose the chaotic evil despot who randomly slaughters his own people for fun just because, technically, his word IS law?

It just seems like a twisted and poor excuse to screw over the poor benighted paladin yet again.

What are you, chaotic or something?

[fbmf]

[TGFBS]
The law/chaos alignment thread was merged with this old alignment debate in order to keep the "Being Evil and not knowing it" thread on topic.
[/TGFBS]

[Maj]

Law: Following other people's social conventions.
Chaotic: Not following people's social conventions.

So long as there is a third option between two alignments, a lack of one alignment cannot be its opposite.

Not Good = Neutral or Evil.
Not Lawful = Neutral or Chaotic.

So now its still chaotic to depose the chaotic evil despot who randomly slaughters his own people for fun just because, technically, his word IS law?

Yes. If your lawful alignment includes following the law of the land. If your lawful code doesn't include that, and rather, includes making every country you visit have a code of laws that looks more like your own, then... No. Overthrowing the government isn't chaotic.

And that's partially why being lawful is BS - because Good and Evil are these massive, grand, universal forces, but when you define a universal force of law as being a "personal code" then you're going to end up with nothing but piles of stupid.

[User3]

Chaotic people don't have personal codes? WTF?

What about Robin Hood and Gokou and Spiderman and all those people?

[Josh_Kablack]

Robin Hood is actually a perfect example.

He totally fought against the corrupt Sherriff of Nottingham, who was lawfully the acting authority of the realm.
But he did so because the Sherriff of Nottingham had abused the trust that the rightful King Richard had placed in him.

So, was Robin Hood acting Chaotically by opposing the lawful ruler of the realm? Or was he acting Lawfully by supporting the interests of the rightful king in absence?

[Maj]

Or was he just being plain old good (without the frou frou law/chaos crap) by supporting the abused people?