Alignment Sucks

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1147606218[/unixtime]]
DUDE: I'm seriously considering going blackguard.
ME: Why?
DUDE: Because I can't handle this being-good-all-the-time stuff.
ME: But then you'd have to be evil all the time.
DUDE: Really?
ME: Yeah. That means every time your blackguard orders a pizza he's going to have to think about what everyone else in the party absolutley hates on their pizza and get that. Or else it's not really evil.
DUDE: Like anchovies?
ME: No, dude, like poop. 'Cause you're evil. And feces is, like, evil and junk.

So, does that mean that since I remove feces from wastewater, I'm exalted?

Kickass. Where are the nearest infidels? I want to smite something.

[Book]

The unfortunate thing about being True Neutral, is that you are somewhat forced into providing a balance of good and evil actions into order to maintain and enforce your on-the-fence alignment.

It just pays to be listed as Evil.

Then you can act anyway you want some 95% of the time. Then 5% of the time, hammer home the point that you are evil by performing some despical act that benefits you and your party.

After all, the old customer service adage goes that for every person you are extremely pleasant to - they'll tell maybe 1 or 2 people. But for every person you piss off - they'll tell almost a dozen.

Evil is way more memorable than good. So your few evil acts will provide a strong anchor point for your D&D alignment concerns. All the while you go about acting however you damn well please.

[User3]

Remember, Gygax was a Kant adherent, which means there are moral absolutes. You let orphans burn because that's evil, dammit. You feed your friends poop pizza because that's evil, dammit. You do bad things because it's your nature to do bad things. You aren't accidentially pleasant because you want to conquer the world--you are ruthless and kill the person who threatens to disrupt your scheme, even if that's accidental.

That's intensely stupid. What, so if I want to be the Sheriff of Nottingham and just cheat my peasants out of their gold so they're living in poverty, that makes me not-evil?! If I want to be Magneto and kill everyone not in my chosen race and then spend the rest of my life treating my chosen ones with love and dignity, that makes me not-evil?! If I want to be Michael Corleone and plan only to kill people who oppose my plans and even one day eventually stop doing it, that makes me not-evil?!

Then it's actually impossible to be evil in Dungeons and Dragons. This means that majorly evil bastards in other works of fiction like Darth Vader and Voldemort are actually neutral, since they don't indulge every single opportunity to be evil.

Being evil by your definition is more of an impossible standard than being good; this means that soon as your character decides to be evil he's deciding to destroy everything in his path for no goddamned reason. He can't have a family or friends or favored servants, he can't go shopping without thinking of ways to burn down the store (and will suffer penalties unless he shows some sort of plan to do so), he has to eventually kill every single person who irritates him going down the street, so on.

Your example, by the way, contradicts the behavior of a lot of 'evil' people in Dungeons and Dragons, such as the Red Wizard of Thay or Ssazz Tam.

I don't think even Gygax had this system of character paralyzation in mind when he wrote the alignment system: try again.

[dbb]

What Chan is describing is what I think of as Neutral Evil or perhaps Chaotic Evil: Neutral Evil is evil for the sake of evil, and Chaotic Evil is unpredictable, irrational, and psychotic evil. The notion of a "Chaotic Evil society" is kind of a funny one, and yet to the Drow, it's no joke.

The condition of man ... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

Yeah, that's Chaotic Evil right there. Anyway, pretty much all of the "Evil" people you describe are Lawful Evil, who, conceptually at least, play better with others than either NE or CE. Magneto is arguably not evil at all depending on which version of Magneto you're talking about. Even the Sheriff of Nottingham could be argued into being annoyingly Lawful Neutral rather than outright evil.

--d.

[Neeek]

1147624259[/unixtime]]What Chan is describing is what I think of as Neutral Evil or perhaps Chaotic Evil: Neutral Evil is evil for the sake of evil, and Chaotic Evil is unpredictable, irrational, and psychotic evil. The notion of a "Chaotic Evil society" is kind of a funny one, and yet to the Drow, it's no joke.

No, it's really not. What Chan is describing is just plain incorrect. Look, even demons and devils don't spend all their time being evil, and they are literally evil personified. It's just too hard to do things that hurt others all the time. They don't just kill all their minions all willy-nilly, because they don't grow in power if they do, yet doing so would be more evil than not doing so.

Evil, in the DnD sense is just being an egoist. You do whatever will make you happy, and don't particularly care if it hurts other people. And this doesn't even mean that you go around killing everyone you met and taking their stuff, since doing that is likely to get you killed, and that's not something you want either. It just means your goal is *your* happiness with no concern for the feelings of others. So writing "Evil" on your character sheet *does* make you Evil, as long as your goals are selfish. Note that even "stopping the world from being destroyed" is a selfish action. And it has to be this way, because that's the only way it can work at all. Going with Chan's definition, Evil is wiped out by itself in a matter of days, because they all will be flipping out and killing each other at the drop of a hat, and the good guys will just clean up what's left with no trouble.

The problem, of course, is this puts Evil in a consequentialist moral theory, while Good is stuck in a non-consequentialist moral theory, and that also doesn't work very well.

[dbb]

No, it's really not.

Yes, it really is!

Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others.

No, it really isn't!

Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualm [strong]if doing so is convenient[/strong].

Yes, it really is!

Others actively pursue evil

No, it really isn't!

killing for sport or out of duty to some evil master

.

Remember what I said about covering your ears and waving your arms? Yeah. That's about all the sense you can derive out of the D&D alignments. The "rules" describing evil are confusing, unclear, and in some cases outright self-contradictory. So -- while I don't personally hold with Chan's notion that Evil alignments needs to be EVIL, goddammit, and needs to be that way darn near continually -- if I had to reach out and play "pin the alignment on the donkey" with what he's describing, it'd be NE or CE.

--d.

[Book]

Within a given campaign world, what constitutes "evil" changes as you move from one geographical locale to the next (assuming that your campaign world is a myriad array of socio-cultural subgroups).

For example, in the Forgotten Realms, "evil" actions run the full spectrum of interpretations when going from Thay, to Chult, to the Moonsea Cities, to Sembia, to Silverymoon.

If you plan on being a long-term citizen of one of these locales - you'll find your moral and ethical compass will change (anywhere from a little to a lot) based upon the prevailing laws of the land and the majority morality that your exposed to a daily basis.

That's one of the reasons why alignment is way more dynamic than just saying you are going to be Chaotic Good from levels 1 through 20. As an adventurer, you'll be traversing through many lands over many years performing extremely stressful actions and interacting with a vast array of social types.

A strict adherence to alignment seems almost impossible.

[RandomCasualty]

Gygax's alignment system was fucking awful. Seriously.

His idea of true neutrals were people who constantly switched sides to achieve some kind of balance. I mean you were basically motivated at trying to create some cosmic balance between good and evil. It was crazy.

Gygaxian evil was solely about being evil just for evil's sake. Gygax pretty much saw the world in a totally black and white moral sense. Not just in the perspective of good morality, but in both sides. As in, evil pretty much considered itself a team, and when you were evil you didn't fight for yourself so much as furthering the cause of the evil side.

3rd edition makes a lot more sense. Good people see value in all life, neutral people see value in just people they like or feel duty towards, and evil people just value themselves.

And it's a lot simpler that way.

As for why you don't have evil heroes, evil tends to be selfish, and doing something "so your great grandchildren can conquer the world" is more of a neutral act than an evil one, since you're doing something for someone related to you and not you yourself. True evil is performing acts solely because they are self serving.

And yeah, evil can do all sorts of actions, good or evil, and while that's an advantage, it's also a disadvantage, because people who know you are going to view you differently. YOu can never fully trust an evil person, because you know that when it comes down to it, he's willing to sell you out and your cause to further his own goals.

Ultimately in my opinion, neutrals are the best alignments. They have a small group of people they are loyal to (and thus are considered trustworthy by their friends) and can also perform all kinds of bad acts, so long as they're not against their friends.

[User3]

OK, Evil is pretty simple, but people tend to think it means "whatever I want to do."

Evil is doing awful things to people to accomplish your goals. Simple. Someone have a magic item you want? Kidnap their sister and ransom her for the item. Some barmaid not want to sleep with you? Alter Self into her boyfriend and sleep with her anyway. You might just do good things like clear a town from an infestation of giant rats...but if the townspeople don't pay you, then you'll steal their children and sell them into slavery.

Neutral is doing awful things, but only if they accomplish a greater good. Its Evil to murder an innocent to get his gold; to be Nuetral, you'd have to murder that innocent because he was carrying a plague that would kill hundreds of innocents. Neutral is not "balance". Doing both good and evil acts (seperately) makes you Evil, simply and clearly. Only acts that are both good and evil can be called neutral. Neutrality is the essense of compromise where you choose the greater good for the lesser evil (and never the lesser good for the greater evil).

Good is the trickiest of all. Good is both never doing evil acts, and sacrificing youself for others. Its an uncompromising ethic and generally a pain in the ass for most adventurers.

The problem with the DnD alignment system is that its set up for people to be Neutral. A good person is not going to take the life savings of a peasant, even if he did kill the manticore that terrorized the land. On the same note, an evil person is not going to adventure; he's going to steal the peasant's gold and tell the peasant to bring out his daughter as well. The evil guy can kill manticores, so some peasants aren't going to give him any lip if he wants to take the gold instead of earning it.

DnD needs a short list of good and evil and neutral acts so that people know whats going on, and structure the rewards system in such a way that being Neutral or Evil is not such aneasy route to power (magic items are raw power and they have a GP cost, so its necessary for them to take ever GP they can get and steal magic items if they can).

[User3]

Okay, take this example.

Garm is a banished genasi wizard from his homeworld of the elemental plane of earth for trying to bring light, air, and plant life to this barren world. As a fitting punishment, he's banished to the Underdark.

Of course, since he's a high level wizard, very few of the denizens pose a serious threat to him. The dank, lifeless, twisted underworld offends him on every level so he decides to get to work.

He first conquers a 'city' of grimlocks, kills the medusas, and offers the survivors a choice: work for him towards restoring the Underdark or die. Those that resist get turned to zombies. They spend their days excavating the terrain to look for treasure and to turn the soil to make it habitable for flowers. Garm eventually ends up killing most of the Grimlocks because they're irredeemibly evil and thus will probably plot against them. The neutral ones get to live in his garden paradise; light is provided to the plants by lieu of his wizard spells. Eventually, settlers from the above world are invited to live here due to cheap prices and an abundance of 'land'. They are invariably neutral or even good, but he turns away anyone of sufficient power, since he doesn't want them getting a bug up their ass and trying to overthrow him.

While expanding his underground forest empire, perhaps earning the loyalty of druids and elf clerics because he's killing and enslaving any evil intelligent creatures he finds, he eventually crosses the drow path. He mind controls some of the head priestesses and turns them against each other. With the city in chaos, he uses his militia (armed with mithral breastplates, salves of healing, tangleboot bags and adamantine weapons he personally fabricated himself) to pick off any drow his apprentices have tagged as evil. Because he's going to reform their society and he doesn't want evil drow passing on their lore of holding positions in government.

Eventually, a huge section of the Underdark is habitable towards a wide variety of creatures, perhaps even pleasant to live in. Peace reigns because Garm killed/enslaved/zombified a whole metric fuckton of the warring evil races. A good portion of drow society has been forcefully rehabilitated towards his brand new philosophy of 'globalization'--which basically says that creatures have to get along with each other otherwise he'll smash their societies into the ground, kill people who show up as evil on the detection spells, and indoctrine their offspring towards his way. Creatures that can't be non-destructive under any circumstance (like demons) get killed on the spot.


Question: Is Garm good, neutral, or evil? Please keep in mind that he's destroying legions of sentient creatures merely because it's aesthetically pleasing to him to see forests in a land with an earthen ceiling.

[User3]

Okay, take this example.

Garm is a banished genasi wizard from his homeworld of

Lawful Evil.

Garm hurts people for no better reason than they stand in his way(evil), even though he is creating a stable society of laws(laws).

I mean, lets look at this fvcker. He kills evil drow for one better reason than they might upset his society. He destroys several societies and enslaves their people because they oppose him and might be useful to him.

I suspect you've got some tricky shit up your sleave where this Garm fvcker is some iconic DnD hero who's supposedly Lawful Good.

Fvck that. Everyone wants to think that they're a good person. Everyone. People think that just because they don't rape children or murder indescriminately that somehow these facts make them Good.

Most DnD adventures are Evil. I'm not even making this shit up. You go to someone's house, murder everyone there, and take all their shit because its nicer than yours. Most adventure writers don't have the chops to write novels, so they can't understand the nuances between the morals of Good and Evil, so they just portray everything as evil and destructive and we assume that killing those guys is good.

People want to have the alignment where they can torture people for information and still have angels pat them on the back. Well, it doesn't work that way.

DnD has some conceits that make the game fun. Looting the dead, desecrating tombs, and murdering evil races(regardless of their actual alignment) is bread and butter for DnD, and the moral failures could actually be fixed by better rules.

If magic items were dangerous to the unitiated, then looting them is actually a Good deed. If tombs were hotspots of negative energy that spawned life-hungry undead, then desecrating them is Good. If evil races were actually evil because of some actual reason (like the facehugger aliens in Alien, who need to kill sentients to breed), then it'd be OK to kill them on sight.

Until we get that, people are just going to write Good on their character sheet and do whatever they want. Hell, I've never even seen a DM who used the alignment rules, and I've been playing for over 15 years.

[Lago_AM3P]

Okay, here's another one.

There's a matriarchal kingdom that's the most powerful in the material plane. A cleric/monk by the name of Zaha works behind the scenes to stage a civil war by allying with the more savage races and has an army of undead. With Zaha's influence, the insurgents win and the royal family and nobles are executed, like Machiavelli recommends in The Prince.

At the end of a successful reign, the peasants are slightly better off than before, because they don't have to worry about orcs and bugbears looting their lands--Zaha has brought an end to the elf/dwarf/orc war by forcefully displacing the elves and granting the orcs the land (after installing a more tolerant tribe leader of course). The city is a much better place to live in for the rich but not at the expense of the poor. Since it's a medieval war, the poor are still suffering, but not moreso than they were before. As soon as he implements this new world order, he decides to step down from the throne and live a quiet life in his monastery.

When asked by his grandchildren why he initiated a seemingly frivolous war in the grand scheme of things, Zaha explains that the primary reason was working so hard wasn't for personal profit, but because the thought of women ruling the humans ticks him off so hard that the sexist bastard had to do something about it. The peace from the savage races side after the war was due to concessions he gave them for being on their side. Of course, he planned to implement some positive changes because since he's a friggin' high level cleric there was no reason not to do it but explains that his real reason for the rebellion was because he refused to be a subject of a kingdom where the queen gave the king orders

Does this make Zaha Good, Neutral, or Evil?

[User3]

There's a matriarchal kingdom that's the most powerful in the material plane. A cleric/monk by the name of Zaha works behind the scenes to stage a civil war by allying with the more savage races and has an army of undead. With Zaha's influence, the insurgents wi

Neutral Evil.

[dbb]

This seems an appropriate time for
[counturl=39]this post[/counturl].

--d.

[RandomCasualty]

1147641400[/unixtime]]
There's a matriarchal kingdom that's the most powerful in the material plane. A cleric/monk by the name of Zaha works behind the scenes to stage a civil war by allying with the more savage races and has an army of undead. With Zaha's influence, the insurgents win and the royal family and nobles are executed, like Machiavelli recommends in The Prince.

I'd probably say this guy was Lawful neutral or lawful evil.

I'd have to know more details about what he did and why he killed the people. If it was all following a personal code, he might be able to justify LN, though most likely he's LE.

[Lago_AM3P]

I'd have to know more details about what he did and why he killed the people. If it was all following a personal code, he might be able to justify LN, though most likely he's LE.

In The Prince, Machiavelli recommends that any insurgent who conquers the previous ruling class kills them so that people won't still feel feelings of loyalty to the exiled nobles. The peasantry usually doesn't particularly care who oppresses them and the lower gentry can be persuaded to follow the new rulers if their rule is better. You have to kill these people, not just imprison or exile them, otherwise there will be people trying to defend and reinstall the old regime. And guess what? This conundrum actually happens in real life.

Zaha is trying to prevent a cycle of civil war by removing an alternate source of loyalty. This is to ensure that the 'savage' races don't get their dander up again and prevent more people from getting killed in a useless struggle.

He's not doing it for power or hatred or greed, he just didn't like seeing the frontier people clash with orc tribes and thought (rightly) that disposing the elf minority would correct this situation. He also simultaneously thought that the system of women ruling men was pure madness.

[Lago_AM3P]

I mean, lets look at this fvcker. He kills evil drow for one better reason than they might upset his society. He destroys several societies and enslaves their people because they oppose him and might be useful to him.

I suspect you've got some tricky shit up your sleave where this Garm fvcker is some iconic DnD hero who's supposedly Lawful Good.

The natural state of affairs in the Underdark is a warring society of races who literally spend centuries trying to kill each other.

There is no peaceful way to get these races to stop, as the drow are ruled by fanatically insane priestesses led by a sadistic diety and the mindflayers have an insatiable hunger for human brains. By killing the
evil that can't ever redeem (or would be too much of a risk for the other people by giving them the opportunity), in the long run, Garm is actually cutting down on the suffering and strife in this world.

There might not be any beholders in this future, but since all beholders can and want to do is export crime that's not actually a bad thing. These things are like Hannibal Lectors having the power of five Cyclops and it's impossible to change that.

Regardless, since all Garm wants is there to be forests in the Underdark with harmless deer and birds, he's going to have to deal with this consequence. And this means getting rid of anyone who is a threat to this paradise.

[RandomCasualty]

1147667564[/unixtime]]
In The Prince, Machiavelli recommends that any insurgent who conquers the previous ruling class kills them so that people won't still feel feelings of loyalty to the exiled nobles. The peasantry usually doesn't particularly care who oppresses them and the lower gentry can be persuaded to follow the new rulers if their rule is better. You have to kill these people, not just imprison or exile them, otherwise there will be people trying to defend and reinstall the old regime. And guess what? This conundrum actually happens in real life.

Zaha is trying to prevent a cycle of civil war by removing an alternate source of loyalty. This is to ensure that the 'savage' races don't get their dander up again and prevent more people from getting killed in a useless struggle.

He's not doing it for power or hatred or greed, he just didn't like seeing the frontier people clash with orc tribes and thought (rightly) that disposing the elf minority would correct this situation. He also simultaneously thought that the system of women ruling men was pure madness.

If his actions weren't motivated by selfishness, but rather to help the people, then he could almost be viewed as good, but I think that since he's willing to get his hands dirty and murder the helpless and displace the elves, he's not exactly good. Since he's doing things for others and not motivated by self-interest, he's not evil either.

This only leaves neutral.

As far as his law/chaos axis. Lawful seems most appropriate solley becuase he's deposing women due to a personal code or belief that he has that they're inferior to men. He apparently believes so strongly in this notion that he's willing to kill over it. This definitely sounds like the thinking of a rigid lawful character.

So lawful neutral.

[Lago_AM3P]

If his actions weren't motivated by selfishness, but rather to help the people, then he could almost be viewed as good, but I think that since he's willing to get his hands dirty and murder the helpless and displace the elves, he's not exactly good. Since he's doing things for others and not motivated by self-interest, he's not evil either.

His activities are motivated by both selfishness and altruism; he personally holds a distaste towards the thought of women ruling since he's a sexist bastard and that's a continuing source of motivation.

But then, there are heroes out there who are seeking to overthrow the evil empire and have a personal hatred towards the BBEG who rule them, so being self-interested in itself doesn't push anyone towards the evil camp.

but I think that since he's willing to get his hands dirty and murder the helpless and displace the elves, he's not exactly good. Since he's doing things for others and not motivated by self-interest, he's not evil either.

In case you didn't notice, it's almost impossible to have social reorganizations in medieval society without having war/mass death (like from a plague) and it's impossible to have war at all without innocents suffering/dying.

Elves are a greedy, wasteful race (in Zaha's eyes) since they take up huge tracks of necessary land, refuse to make compromises for the sake of other races, and their only export is magic--which since humans and half-orcs age and learn much faster, it's makes more sense to have humans and half-orcs pioneer these things.

The barbarian tribes are pissed off because they're eking out a living on shitty land and they reproduce faster than the people who have good land. Selling out the dwarves wouldn't do any good because their lifestyle wouldn't benefit the barbarian tribes. But the elves are sitting on huge swathes of land for no reason other than cultural reasons. So they gotta go.

And by the way, I find the statement that since Zaha is willing to damn his own soul for the benefits of others that doesn't make him good curious. Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? Ramza literally kills hundreds of people (not all of them evil) in order to stop a grisly war and eventually prevent the apocalypse--not because he's sadistic, but because death is cheap in this game in both setting and mechanics and it's impossible to non-lethally restrain someone in that game.

I also find it strange on how much your and K's answers differ especially since you guys do a really good job of arguing their case.

...

Just so we're clear on this, if anyone tries to draw any contemporary political parallels in this thread, I will personally fly to your house, freeze your head, crack open your skull, and eat the tasty chilled brains inside like in Temple of Doom.

And then I'll ask fbmf to lock this thread using your computer.

[fbmf]

[TGFBS]
Merged with the Alignment Sucks thread.
[/TGFBS]

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I've always insisted that alignment can be a useful tool, but only if written on a campaign level. When a DM plans a campaign, he seriously needs to decide things like wether ends can justify means or if the road to the Nine Hells is paved with good intentions and wether the laws of the land are handed down from on high by the Gods themselves. I can totally see a game where a totalitarian dictator forges a great and lasting society out of warring tribes and still be Lawful Good because while the average peasant has few rights and freedoms, he's living bettern than the stone age squalor that he was dealing with before.

By the same token, you can have a campaign where The Divine Right of Kings is not just some bullshit that someone cooked up to scare people into letting him rule as he likes, but is actually the way the world works, making chaotic people little better than the evil cultists who oppose the church. On the other hand you can have a world where lawfulness is simply a predisposition to discipline and planning, while chaotic characters are simply lazy and cocky. The key is you pick one or the other, the problem with D&D's take on law vs chaos (Well, not the only one, probably. But the big one IMO) is that it tries to do both.

Even then, you'll probably have some contradiction and sticky moral grey areas, (Fewer if you've actually studied moral and ethical philosophy) but at least what you have should be easier to deal with than the quagmire of D&D alignment.

-Desdan

[dbb]

Actually, if you've studied moral and ethical philosophy, you'll probably end up with more grey areas.

But really, alignment functions best as a tag. These are The Bad Guys. These are The Good Guys. These are The Uncommitted Guys. You can call it "Law" versus "Chaos" if you like, or "Good" versus "Evil" if you're more classically inclined, or just "Us" versus "Them" if you prefer to boil things down to brass tacks -- but mostly it's a convenient way to have abilities that function against "people I really, really hate" without having to phrase it in quite that way.

--d.

[Lago_AM3P]

Frank's d20 Final Fantasy had an easy way to handle it.

Irredeemably evil fellows got the "Evil" tag. This indicated ahead of time that there's no way that sparing these people would be good for other living creatures and they have no utility at all to the greater good in the moral sense--so go ahead and torture, enslave, and kill these people to your hearts content.

Every campaign needs this thing. That way you can differentiate between the evil orcs you can kill without thought in a cavern and the noble savage orcs you encounter in the forest.

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

That's intensely stupid. What, so if I want to be the Sheriff of Nottingham and just cheat my peasants out of their gold so they're living in poverty, that makes me not-evil?! If I want to be Magneto and kill everyone not in my chosen race and then spend the rest of my life treating my chosen ones with love and dignity, that makes me not-evil?! If I want to be Michael Corleone and plan only to kill people who oppose my plans and even one day eventually stop doing it, that makes me not-evil?!

My point--and perhaps it was unclear--was, essentially, why should it be any easier to be evil than good? Why does good have its choices dictated and, for some reason, evil doesn't? Why should evil be able to do anything and then rationalize it while good can't do the same fvcking thing?

Evil kicks old ladies down stairs for no damn reason. Evil pulls the wings off flies. Evil likes nu-metal… at maximum volume... on Sundays at 70 A.M. Evil should demand evil all the time just as good demands good all the time. Evil shouldn't be allowed to skate on some backhanded rationale like, "I saved those orphans so they will owe me their fealty when I have conquered the world." Evil says, "Let them burn. Their screaming pleases me. Hey, do any of them bleed candy?"

Then it's actually impossible to be evil in Dungeons and Dragons.

As impossible as it is to be good, yes.

This means that majorly evil bastards in other works of fiction like Darth Vader and Voldemort are actually neutral, since they don't indulge every single opportunity to be evil.

Vader? Suffers fools poorly? Check. Tortures his own daughter? Check. Cuts off his son's hand? Check. Forces the death of his own mentor? Check. Assists in overseeing the construction of two devices that destroy planets? Check. Would've killed his own son in Hope to save said first planet destroyer? Check. Puts foe who humiliates him in suspended animation and hands him over to a bounty hunter? Check.

Dude, how much eviller do you want him to be? This list goes on and on and on. Vader's the definition of NE until he loses his spine in Jedi.

I'm sorry, but Potter's not my thing. I can't comment on Voldemort.

But to be clear: As good doesn't have to right every wrong, evil doesn't have to commit every evil. We don't see Luke return to Jabba's palace and execute everyone there nor try to become sheriff of Mos Eisley, but we can probably agree he's good. Likewise, Vader doesn't have to carry around kittens so he can murder every couple of minutes, either.

Being evil by your definition is more of an impossible standard than being good; this means that soon as your character decides to be evil he's deciding to destroy everything in his path for no goddamned reason.

His reason's because he's evil. And sometimes, as with good, a greater evil takes precedence (q.v. the Death Star).

He can't have a family or friends or favored servants, he can't go shopping without thinking of ways to burn down the store (and will suffer penalties unless he shows some sort of plan to do so), he has to eventually kill every single person who irritates him going down the street, so on.

You think Vader doesn't have a list of every dumbass who's messed with him ever? Petty evil doesn't have the resources to accomplish killing everyone who irritates him, while vast evil doesn't have the time. Just like good: a low-level paladin doesn't go after the Waterdeep thieves' guild nor Sauron, and the paladin who stops hunting the evil marauding dragon to beat on the kid who threw a snowball at an old man is an idiot. Priorities.

Your example, by the way, contradicts the behavior of a lot of 'evil' people in Dungeons and Dragons, such as the Red Wizard of Thay or Ssazz Tam.

Like that's my fault.

I don't think even Gygax had this system of character paralyzation in mind when he wrote the alignment system: try again.

So you think he had in mind a system that says, "Good is totally impossible and evil is awesomely easy"? Go read your first edition Player's Handbook again, the alignments section on page 33.

Being evil means you're evil. You don't get to pick when. You don't get to say, "Nah, I'll let it go so they'll owe me one--that's sort of evil, kind of."

There's not one set of moral absolutes for good and none for evil, it's just that most players see evil as more versatile before realizing that evil actually means friggin' evil.

[Neeek]

1147682845[/unixtime]]

My point--and perhaps it was unclear--was, essentially, why should it be any easier to be evil than good? Why does good have its choices dictated and, for some reason, evil doesn't?

It's not. The problem is, in any serious moral discussion, you have to consider motivation. Motivation is considered *more* important than the actual action in most moral systems. If you don't agree, then consider this: If you were walking along one day and someone hit you with their bike, would you get equally angry with them if A) they laughed and continued on their way, B) stopped to make sure you were okay, or C) having a heart attack, and collapsing after hitting you? If the answer isn't yes, then you think motivations matter more than actions.

On the whole, Chan, your entire argument falls apart when it encounters any sort of evil mastermind type character. Basically, your definition make all evil ineffective, since acting evil all the time is counterproductive.


By the way, as far as Lago's grandchildren example goes, consider, instead, if they were all planning on becoming liches or something similar and living forever.