I don't think acts are either good or evil, as though they can be only one. Instead I define good as "something that benefits or creates life" and evil as "something that degrades or destroys life." Thus most acts are both good and evil, and a person's values and morals derive from where they find an acceptable balance between the two.

Ask any gardener, a healthy garden requires pruning and weeding, both of which are evil, yet good.

As for lawful vs chaos. Misnomers really, as lawful was never intended to have anything to do with legal issues.

The best example of a lawful person is someone that is OCD. For them everything has a place and a process.

The best example of chaotic is someone who never makes plans, but instead just goes with the flow.

For example, lawful is a concert violinist who practices the same time everyday to achieve perfect technique, while chaotic is the fiddler who plays without care for techniques or the proper form, playing by feel instead.

Actually the point of morals is that no, I don't. Subjectivity is irrelevant. You either are treating someone like they're not human, or you're not. That being said, I'm perfectly willing to accept justifications. It doesn't change the morality of the act, rather your personal comfort level with the act. Mine too.
This message was last edited by the user at 03:50, Mon 21 July 2014.

If we define good and evil using subjective terms, then they're meaningless.  They only make sense as part of some kind of objective framework.  I'm sure Hitler, Stalin, and Mao saw themselves as good, but the destruction of tens of millions of lives is the mark of evil.

That said, all of us have some measure of good and evil in us.  As Luke says in Jedi, "There is good in you," and he was right.  Vader systematically killed children and hunted down many Jedi, slaughtering them, and yet even he still in the end was able to find redemption.

I've always liked a line from Robert Jordan's The Great Hunt:  "No man can walk so long in the Shadow that he cannot come again into the Light."  (Also, holy mangoes, Google Books as The Great Hunt now?  Part of it, anyway.)

Look at any war in human history. Has either side ever considered themselves to be the bad guys? I doubt it...

War movies used to typify one side as the goodies and the other as the baddies. Most modern war films tend to depict each group of combatants as just a bunch of grunts trying to do their bed and survive the mess that their superiors have gotten them into.

I might even go so far as to say that the soldiers are the good guys while the leaders are the bad guys!

As a close personal friend of several soldiers, I commend you for this comment, and wholeheartedly agree.

The problem is this.

Every race and creature in a game with an Alignment system comes with one. Orcs are evil, does that mean they will eat their young and rape their own women? Wouldn't an Orc mother care for her child?

Same for, for example the Lawful Good Dwarves (whom I hate to use as an example, but they are perfect in this case). They hate Goblinoids and Orcs. They war with them. If a dwarf clan, takes their grudge too far and eliminates an entire village of Goblins and Orcs, wouldn't that be genocide? Wouldn't that be evil?

If you look at it from the systems perspective, No, the Orc mother is still evil and the dwarves did a perfectly natural Lawful Good job.

The setting and the system tells us that everything is clear cut. If it is an Orc you are facing %99 of the time he is going to be a Chaotic Evil blueberry who deserves to die, if you are facing an Elf, he is a Chaotic Good blueberry that deserves to die because he is an Elf. Both acts would be good and justified. XP is the one true god, next to dice.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 07:24, Mon 21 July 2014.

Alignment/racial justification for genocide? Yep sounds like a normal Day in D&D.

'Good' is the one I agree with.

There is no good or evil in physics.

There is no art, music, sound or color either- all we get are energy waves of various frequencies.  All the good stuff is created by brains, and the mechanisms by which frequencies are interpreted as "color" can be hacked, which is how we see the whole range of colors from a screen that is in truth emitting photons at just three frequencies.

But all these things are useful interpretations for us, and it is quite useful to describe a particular ratio of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow light  as "forest green", to describe a certain category of patterns of kinetic vibrations in air as "smooth jazz" and to describe the mass gassing of a civilian population as "evil".

Like smooth jazz, or the Mandelbrot Set, or our planet's atmosphere, evil may be fuzzy around the edges and impossible to pin point exactly, but the our inability to define these things with precision do not render them non-existent.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:53, Mon 21 July 2014.

Rid yourself of the notion that morality and alignment have anything to do with each other.  "Good" is what the gods that live in the "good" place say it is.  Same goes for "law".

We aren't talking real world here.  This is a game with some very different premises than reality.

Game mechanics and mythos' are irrelevant. Otherwise, two deities with conflicting or outright opposing codifications on what is good are good. That's a false premise as far as I'm concerned.

If they both live in the upper planes and grant positive energy to their followers, they are both right, though.

Alignment is only meaningful in games where such deities exist.  Otherwise, you end up falling down the rabbit hole of subjective definitions.

Trying to use the alignment system to describe the real world is nearly impossible, because things just don't work like that.

No sorry, It's debatable that one of them might be right, but if they are conflicting, it's not actually possible to both be right.


Alignment is only meaningful in a game where a single rule exists. Deities that want their worshippers to kill others are a joke in terms of being good. And if you'll remember, neutrals get the choice which energy to channel, so say the dwarven deity that hates goblins... Yeah that guy's LN.


No, when you have variety of definition, that's where subjectivity is. If you have a single defining trait, What is or is not moral, then you have objective definitions. Morality has no concern for anything other than treating people like people, (in the case of RPGs, even if they're non-human people) What changes is societal acceptance. Killing a goblin on the basis that he's a goblin is always wrong, but for the dwarves, it's acceptable. Not moral, but accepted. Morality is unshaken here. A single solitary core definition. Not subjective. Not fluid in any way like societal norms.

Sure it is. If you don't give people dignity, the best you can claim is neutral.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 26):

Kind of like trying to explain exactly what HP represents in D&D.  =)

My thought about this: Given an ethical, moral, or religious framework (ethos), evil is that which doesn't follow it and good is that which does. There probably will be many acts, thoughts, etc. to which the adjectives "evil" or "good" don't apply...choice of salad dressing for example.

In reply to OceanLake (msg # 29):

Everyone knows vinaigrette is evil, and only chaotic people enjoy french dressing. Only holy Ranch is lawful Good


On another note, i've always assumed that what is considered good and evil depends on how everyone around you sees it, of course there is a little variation, but i'm pretty sure most people in your neighborhood would consider you evil if they saw you kicking puppies.

In reply to OceanLake (msg # 29):

Tell that to the paladin who loses his religious powers for a month over atoning for accidentally taking a sip of chicken broth, when part of his oaths cause him to vegetarian.

It violates too many diet regimens. At best, I'd call it Neutral Good :D

Swordchucks has touched upon it.

Good or Evil depends upon one thing only:

Who's making the rules?

In my games all Paladins are "Lawful." Why?

Does, or does not, a Paladin Lay on Hands? You think some mortal king gives him that power? Some mortal king gives the Paladin power over the Undead?

All Paladins are Lawful because they obey the Laws of the God/Goddess they serve. Not the Laws of men.

Are they Good or Evil? That depends on the God/Goddess they serve, because that God/Goddess makes the rules for "that" Paladin.

So, simply put: Who decides what's "good" and what's "evil?" If you're playing in a game without Gods/Goddesses, then you, the DM, make that call.

If you are playing in a world with Gods/Goddesses, then the "Gods" do, ultimately. While it's true that Society plays its part, a Society (Kingdom) that mainly serves/worships Heironeous is going to consider anyone who worships -- or any act sponsored by -- Hextor as "evil." So, ultimately, the God -- via the Society -- makes the decision.

So various nations would have varying laws.

Speaking of salad dressings and paladins, can an entity, apart from that entity's choice or action, be either good or evil?

First:

A paladin is lawful because it is expected to have a steady mind and follow oaths, laws, and dictates of its government and FAR more importantly its faith. Just following the law does not make one lawful, following it even when it is NOT the right thing to do, always following it. When someone wonders about you, they will ALWAYS come to the same conclusion about your actions. Also the Why they act that way matters.

That is how I always understood Lawful. That being said... Richard Rahl, or does warfare not count? His actions, on and off the battlefield, often surprised people. Then again that could be his world versus their expectations.

An entity good or evil? I have a pair of deities in one campaign world that have no alignment other then what their particular followers give them. One is a real diety raised after being undead, I forget the particular story... sadly... While the other was a mere king that died, and somehow her loyal followers raised her to godhood. Is she good or evil? No, but her followers are all over the board.

Whether that is ok in normal game terms, idk I blame my crazy dreams.

We're talking about imaginary sky people that grant power to people who pray to them.  Why do other rules of a logical world have to apply?

What if the question was the consumption of alcohol.  One good deity prohibits it as evil, but another celebrates it as good.  Can both be right?  Must one be wrong?  If so, which one is right or wrong?

As for killing... we are talking about a world where there is a real and verifiable afterlife.  Why would killing someone be seen as such a huge tragedy when they will be rewarded by their god and have some sort of eternal existence from them on?

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 36):

One issue to consider is commitment.  For example, why couldn't Samson cut his hair?  Was it because it is wrong to cut hair?  No.  It was because he was a Nazarite, and part of the Nazarite "Code" or "Promise" is that they won't cut their hair.

So by breaking a promise to deity, it can be "wrong" even if it is not otherwise wrong.  The "lawful" thing to do is for them to obey their promises to deity.

In reply to Heath (msg # 37):

Agreed. For Paladin or Cleric, their "promise" to their God comes first. Promises to man come second.

Depends on your perspective. What is natural for the spider is chaos for the fly.