Book of Exalted Deeds is Crap!

[Username17]

OK, when I started talking about some of the stuff that could be done with the Book of Exalted Deeds, there was a lot of whining that you couldn't do some of it because of the "spirit of the rules" or some such crap. Well, the spirit of the rules in this case, is crap, so stuff it.

It comes down to a fundamental problem with the way they envision "good" - such that people who are "good" with respect to book aren't actually very "good" with respect to any actual definition of the term I am familiar with ever having been advanced by any rational person or society ever.

Here's the biggy: According to the BoED, "The ends do not justify the means." That is, performing evil acts in order to attain what you hope will be good results is still wrong. Well, that's all fine and dandy - there are a number of real ethical systems which do exactly that and people really follow them (with varrying degrees of success), and from any kind of moral relativist standpoint I can't really condemn them for it even when I don't subscribe to it myself. But they do allow you to fight with weapons, and even kill people.

But Why?

Certainly, killing people causes pain and suffering, both for the person you are killing, and for everyone who knew and loved them. Noone, no matter how vile, goes unmourned. Sometimes it's only by creditors, but there is noone whose passing goes unblemished by sorrow and regret.

And yet, the reasons for allowing this are obvious. This is at its heart a tactical wargame, and victory is not really achieved until the enemy is dead and routed. You have to be able to kill the darklord, because it's a game and killing the darklord is what makes you win!

But Why?

You can't use poison or torture because it causes suffering - you can't even cast spells that make your enemies unhappy in the hopes that they'll bugger off and go home. When tools are removed from your tool kit on account of being "evil" it is because they "cause suffering".

Well, swords cause suffering. Lots of it. Physical injuries are called "trauma" for a reason. When you swing a sword into someone, it hurts them. It chops into flesh and bone, it bruises organs and severes nerves. When you slice into a nerve on someone's arm, it starts pumping out anguish to the limit of its capacity - much like every single pain nerve down stream of it were hammered simultaneously. But you can do that - even though it is potentially the most painful thing that you can do to someone.

But Why?

Well, you are allowed to chop up Evil People who are doing (or going to do) Evil Things. After all, if you don't kill that blackguard, he's going to kill a bunch of people - which really means that your inaction in that case would from a very real standpoint be a choice that killed a bunch of people with that blackguard's sword.

That's unconscionable, obviously. It's morally reprehensible to willingly allow horrible things to happen to people, just as it is awful to do those things to people yourself. And that justifies the use of weapons - even, perhaps especially, with deadly force - provided that it is used to save others and preserve even as you are unfortunately slaying others and destroying.

But Why?

What happened to the ends not justifying the means? In order to justify cutting people open in the name of peace and good neighborliness - we resorted (as indeed we must) to an existential view of choice and a utilitarian viewpoint of actions and good.

We can't "poison people". We can't "mutilate people". We can't do any of a number of things because of this deontological view of good and evil that the game imposes. But we can still cut people open in the heat of battle with a dull axe - provided that we have good cause.

But Why?

Because the ends justify the means, that's why!

Our use of weapons, and indeed everything we do and strive for, is justified in terms of action results. But a lot of stuff is ruled out because of methodology, even though the criteria by which it is ruled out is equally applicable (or more so) to some of the things which we have special dispensation for.

So the forces of "good" are a bunch of hypocrites who cannot be respected by anyone with an ounce of sense. The ethical code is iron clad, and contradictory on many points. They refuse to compromise, except for when they really want to in which case compromise is made not only with the principals themselves - but with the manner in which the principles are defined.

If an "exalted" policeman were to see a normal little girl who was dominated by a demon to pour cyanide into the well - and he was armed with a can of pepper spray and a gun - he'd have to shoot the innocent child instead of bringing her to her knees with the pepper spray. Why? The pepper spray and the bullet will both cause almost unimaginable agony and suffering, albeit temporarily, to the poor little girl. The bullet will also most probably kill her in an excruciating ordeal wherein a lance of white hot pain and despair will shove aside her very life blood until her heart gives out and she lies cold on the floor to while away the last minutes of her life with her brain suffocating in a tomb of unresponsive flesh. The pepper spray will cause one heck of a hystamine reaction and will leave a painful rash that won't go away for days or even weeks.

But "exalted" characters have special dispensation for the use of deadly force to promote good ends, even at the cost of suffering and anguish. They do not have special dispensation to hurt people with debilitating chemical compounds even to protect the person in question.

"Exalted" characters can not give an inch from the path of "righteousness". But the path of righteousness is not defined in this case in terms of helping people or saving lives, or anything sensible like that. It's defined in completely arbitrary terms which upon close examination make no sense at all.

"Exalted" characters do things that make no sense and resort to deadly violence and other astonishing crime when rational people would not. They can not, and will not perform many reasonable activities, but can and will stab people to death if they can't do anything else to attempt to resolve a situation - which is most of the time because they aren't allowed to lie, tranquilize people or animals, or even brand cattle. That's right, if the guards come to the door demanding that you turn over the young woman accused of witchcraft, and you don't have the evidence yet, you are not allowed to pretend she isn't there - but you are allowed to stab the guard in the face!

Noone would want "exalted" characters in their cities or countries. These guys are bat shit nuts and a danger to themselves and everyone around them. This is madness, not goodness.

So what's with this "spirit of the rules" crap? The "spirit" of the rules is adheering strictly to a nonsensical list of dos and don'ts - even at the cost of life and limb for innocent people throughout the world. So if you figure out some method that you can jury rig the rules of "exaltedness" into some method of actually being helpful to those in need - good for you. While the strictures of "good" make that sort of thing extremely difficult, when it's occassionally not actually forbidden it might be nice to try out once in a while.

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

The ethical code is iron clad, and contradictory on many points.

Wow...it's almost as if they based their philosophical reasonings on any one of a number of real-world religions. :tonguesmile:

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Ah, the perils of writing books elaborating on alignments when you never bothered to figure out in basic terms what the alignment means.

[Machine_Kiss]

You know what's funny ... my current Chaotic Neutral Wizard is playing with spells from both the BoVD and BoED. With both EVIL and GOOD descriptors. Helps keep my balance though.

And from what I hear, there is in the future WotC pipeline a Book of Absolute Neutrality on the horizon as well.

I can't help but think that is going to be:

1. Highly irrational and confusing as all get out.

2. Boring. Evil is interesting. Goofy Good is interesting (in a watching a car wreck kind of way). Neutral is just ... there.

[da_chicken]

I'm waiting for the Book of Moral Subjectivism.

[Tae_Kwon_Dan]

1075889746[/unixtime]]I'm waiting for the Book of Moral Subjectivism.

I think the sample chapter should be entitled Yeah, but Mussolini made the trains run on time

[Username17]

While killing three people is a crime, killing a thousand people is a statistic.

When you look at the big picture, after all, anything you do or don't do will result in the deaths of a wide variety of people in a wide variety of situations who would not have had you done things differently.

When you start talking about oppressive policies the numbers get really complicated and subjective, whether you have the ability to count bodies in mass graves or not. After all, when the trains don't run on time, people die. So while you are busily having your political foes whacked in the heads with tire irons, a strong transportation and distributional system may be saving lives at the same time - and that's really hard to measure (since it is both impossible and morally untennable to go back and do the whole thing again without a strong transportation network as a control).

And while those numbers are hard to measure - they are also extremely important. In fact, they are really the only important thing. A ruler is going to have to make sacrifices - because every single person they rule is going to die, and policies of government are going to necessarily dictate when and how for every single one of them. The how is, actually, not particularly important in the grand scheme of things, as once someone is a slab of meat it doesn't make a bit of difference whether it was a bullet or cancer.

And a government can influence the rate of death by bullets, and it can influence the rate of death by cancer - and if the government is influencing them such that the aggregate death rate right now is going up they are the bad guys.

Benito Mussolini was a bad person because the total number of people he saved with strong government interventions does not seem to make up for even the number of Ethiopians he ordered slaughtered. He is not a bad person because he used "unethical methodologies" - his methodologies were unethical because they killed more people than other methodologies available to the Italians at that time.

-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

1076712434[/unixtime]]Benito Mussolini was a bad person because the total number of people he saved with strong government interventions does not seem to make up for even the number of Ethiopians he ordered slaughtered. He is not a bad person because he used "unethical methodologies" - his methodologies were unethical because they killed more people than other methodologies available to the Italians at that time.

-Username17

That's only true from a basic Utilitarian viewpoint. For isntance, the vast number of deaths could therotetically be justified by the increase in quality of life to the survivors, depending on how you value life itself v. quality of life. A basic problem with Utility=good.

The real problem w/ the D&D "good" alignments isn't that it allows killing, but that D&D explicitly does not specify what ethics system it follows. It makes a difference whether killing is justified as Good because (a) the balance of equities favors the act (Utilitarianism); (b) the balance of equities favors the act from using that act as a rule (Rule Utilitarianism); or (c) sometimes right, sometimes wrong based on principles that apply, regardless of whether utility is served (Kantian).

Since they can't even figure out how they want to justify "good," they end up with contradictory muck about what is "good."

[Username17]

For isntance, the vast number of deaths could therotetically be justified by the increase in quality of life to the survivors, depending on how you value life itself v. quality of life. A basic problem with Utility=good.

How is that a problem?

Depending upon how you value things, things can or can't be justified based on the other available options. That's the very basis of any moral discussion.

That utilitarianism is a moral system, and thus subject to moral discussion can't be problem with Utilitarianism unless you are suggesting that the only valid moral system is "amorality" - in which nothing has value or is subject to debate.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1076717618[/unixtime]]
The real problem w/ the D&D "good" alignments isn't that it allows killing, but that D&D explicitly does not specify what ethics system it follows.

Yeah. I really wish they actually straight out defined their ethics system somewhere, either that or drop the whole concept of absolute morality (it's a stupid concept IMO anyway).

[User3]

BoED Exalted ethics are just a D&D-ified version of the Chivalric code.

So of course, it muddles up the whole Good thing with silly, Lawful ideas like Honor.

Some things actually make an odd, convoluted sort of sense: Why can't you poison a Blackguard in his sleep, but you can stab him in the face? Because he then has the option to be convinced (at the last moment) of the error of his evil ways and repent dramatically before he dies.
Of maybe he'll curse you and breath vile blasphemies on his last breath, and you'll know that you were right to kill such an irredeemable character.

The point of that matter is, Chivalric honor requires dramatic deaths, and be cause Exalted is just Chivalry lite, Exalted deeds require dramatic deaths.

And why can't you lie, or cloud people's minds? Because such acts take away their choice, which in turn removes their ability to act honorably.

The real problems in the BoED's definition of what 'Exalted' is arise when they try to pretend that 13th century Chivalry can ever be compatable with 2004 america's general morality of liberal humanism.

[User3]

DnD morality is based on a "if people think you are good, then you are."

DnD is based on a popularity contest.

Kill the baby that's destined to become an evil god-thing, and you are evil or at best a neutral because most people will be offended and some will be offended but understand. Its not about the moral debate or good vs evil or determinism vs free will, its about how comfortable the regular guy on the street would feel eating dinner next to a babykiller.

Save a popular princess and kill a few mooks, you are a hero. Save an evil empress and kill a few paladins, you are a villain. Save a popular princess and kill a few paladins, and you're neutral because half the crowd outside your house will be baying for your blood, and the other half will bring the food for your victory party.

Give a guy a "fighting chance," then you're good, since at any point in the battle they can surrender and repent. Murder him in his sleep or kill him after he surrenders and you're evil.

Fight by the "rules," and you are Lawful. Kick a guy in the nuts or attack under a parlay flag and you are Chaotic.

Its simple. If you say "this would make someone who didin't know me feel uncomfortable around me, or hate me," then its evil. If its "this would make people not trust me," then its Chaotic.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

That's pretty much it, rule by mob and rumor. Almost noone cared about the overriding philosophy behind good and evil as concepts, so pretty much it was killing someone in their sleep or using poison to kill them is cowardly because it connotes that you have to use dirty tricks to defeat your enemies. And that's pretty much the chassis that the D&D alignment system is written on, a semi-historical moral absolutist-by-way-of-moral-relativist system that's not really internally consistant because the people who though it up weren't the philosophers who were actually *good* at it.

And that's not really an apology either. If you don't want to do a 4-color-comic-book-esque campaign where some people are always good and some people are always evil, or if you're not comfortable making moral judgments all the time and forcing your morality on the others at the table, then the alignment system won't work for you and you'll need to rewrite things so it either works with your favored philosophy or so the game doesn't touch morality at all.

-Desdan

[User3]

I don't mind that Outsiders are pure evil, or that Hell is so evil that if you go to Hell and get sand in your pants, you have pure evil radiating out of your pants.

That's OK. I don't even mind that paladins radiate good as living incarnations of goodness or that clerics radiate whatever they are since they are drawing magical power from their moral beliefs. I mean, if you are an incarnation of evil, you are going to walk into a new society with their own opinions of good or evil and say "So, I wonder what the most evil thing I can do here is?"