If Good can slay Evil and call it a Good act, and Evil can slay Good and call it an Evil act, where is the distinction that makes them different, besides their nametags?
Their interaction with "innocents".
Good protects "innocents", evil harms them.
Killing the person how tortures and kills children is not morally equal to that person's own deeds. Both involve killing, but that is about the end of the comparison.
Exposure to culture is the shaping force of morality for a young mind. This is why most religions spew dogma, and frown upon science, philosophy and individualism. If you are allowed to think rationally and make your own opinions, the clergy cannot get their claws into you. This holds true for both real life/history and fantasy settings. Orc gods are invariably evil, and thus, orc children born into orc societies are raised to adhere to evil dogma. Thus the default orc is evil.
An orc raised by a goodly parent in the tenets of a goodly deity will likely grow up to be good.
And an orc child too young for cognitive processing will be neutral, just as devoid of an identity and opinion as any other child.
Unless your setting has some manner of "bad blood" origin story where the entire race is infused with evil as a legacy of an evil god, but then they should warrant "Always CE" in the alignment bit, instead of just "CE". And since the descriptive blurb on orcs talk in length about society, I am going to go with psycho-cognitive and social psychology.
Of course, if you do not WANT to consider ethics, go ahead and interpret things however you want. My authority on the matter does not extend further than my game table.
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I actually prefer making things irredeemably evil if I'm going to say 'killing Evil is acceptable'. Such as 'orcs are corrupted humans/elves that can never be turned back into the rational creatures they were before'. Then you don't have the problem of orc societies and children cropping up, because that doesn't happen.
ToZ,
Sorry, I guess I need to expand on my own worldview for D&D/PF. To me, the outer planes and the mortal plane are different places. They are not connected. The mortal plane can channel energy to any of the outer planes. Gods take advantage of that by gaining power from their worshippers. Some gain from prayers, some gain from sacrifices.
Good and Evil on the planes, and for those from those planes, is absolute. A Solar is Good (Capital G), he or she is composed completely of Good (Capital G). A Devil or Daemon is Evil (Captial E), he or she is composed completely of Evil (Capital E).
However, mortals are not of the planes, they are made up of mortal stuff, and can be anything. Good killing Evil (Note the Capital G and E) is no different than Matter anhilating Antimatter and vice versa. It's a cosmology thing.
However, when that comes down to the mortal plane, things get weird from a cosmology standpoint. If a Solar gates to the Mortal world, he is taking on the essence of the Mortal world to do so. He's tainted, just a bit. And from there, he can fall to evil (little e) and even be turned to Evil (Big E). By the same token, a succubus that comes to the mortal world takes on the stuff of the mortal world, and becomes tainted. She could become Neutral, or even Good.
It's much harder for Good to fall, or Evil to fall, but it can happen, on the mortal plane. Same for Neutral by the way.
On the mortal plane, acts carry great weight. So, no mortal is ever born Evil (Big E) or Good (Big G). So killing mortal babies, regardless of species, is Evil (Big E) because those babies are innocent. By the same token, certain acts are always Evil (Big E) or Good (Big G) on the mortal plane. Killing may or may not be evil, it depends on who and what and why.
Someone who stabs a sleeping man in an inn and steels his money has comited an Evil act. This is true even if the man he stabbed and stole the money from is an Evil murderer who roasts children. He wasn't killing this person to save anyone, he wasn't killing this person because he thought they were evil. He was killing someone to take their things and for no other reason.
That's what some people don't get. If killing evil is ALWAYS a good act (as some people have stated), then a murderer who kills a rapist is comitting a good act, because the rapist was evil. That just doesn't work.
The reason that Solar's can kill Devil's in the outer planes is because there they are personifications of Good and Evil, fighting each other like Matter and Antimatter.
On the mortal plane though, a Solar could fall for killing evil. And a Devil could fall for doing good deeds on the mortal plane. The way I see it, the mortal plane is where Good and Evil vie for control because they are two infinite forces, neither able to destroy the other, only able to slowly wear at them. In the mortal world, however, they can slowly gain power over the other side.
Wow, rambling here, I'm really tired right now (just did a 6 hour Champions Game). I hope this helped with my outlook.
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It aligns pretty close with mine, although I hadn't thought the cosmology thing out as thoroughly.
No wonder the eladrin in my game doesn't always act Good. Although the taint may come more from his player than the material plane. :)
Also, my statement was in support of your post, as kind of a leading question that pres man helpfully cooperated with. ;)
Hee hee!
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It doesn't matter if you save the damn universe by raping and killing innocent people. Raping and killing innocent people is still bad.
How evil is it to damn the universe to destruction just to save your conscience and delay the deaths of a few innocents?
In the television show Torchwood: Children of Earth, the main character, Jack Harkness, was faced with a very difficult choice. A group of aliens known as the 456 demanded that the governments of Earth give them 10% of Earth's child population. They threatened to kill everyone on the planet if their demands were not met, and appeared to have the ability to carry out this threat. Jack figures out a way to destroy the 456 that are making the threat...but it will come with the price of basically torturing a child to death. To make it even more morally complicated, the only child near enough for the procedure to be carried out upon in the time allotted is Jack's grandson, Stephen. So Jack is presented with the following options:
1. Do nothing. If the governments manage to collect the hundreds of millions of children, he's damned them to an centuries of suffering.
2. Actively oppose the collection of children. If successful, he damns the human race to extinction.
Alignment in general should be stripped from the game, and I hope it is in PFRPG 2E (although I doubt it).
3. Sacrifice his own grandson in order to save the hundreds of millions of children, and the billions of people on Earth.
Using an absolute moral system, the least evil is option number two, despite the fact that it results in the genocide of t he human race. The most evil would be option three, the choice that saves hundreds of millions of lives minimum.
This thread went pretty crazy for awhile, but I think I agree somewhat with the OP. I don't think that Alignment should be based off of what is seen as morally right or wrong in any time frame, including our own, but should be hashed out between the players and the DM. Social and legal situations, however, I am all for having be from any time frame.
I have a question about a problem I presented to my characters in game that has been interesting but very morally and "alignmenty" ambiguous. The party, in Kingmaker, stumbles upon a bounty hunter who has just caught his prey and is about to knock him out with his merciful club. They interfere, threatening the man(An inquisitor of LN Hoar, god of vengeance in the Forgotten Realms), who is happy to show them his bounty permit and chat with the party. The man he had caught was a serial murderer who exclusively targeted women and was implied to have not been quick about his kills(I stick to implying overly depraved behavior because I don't feel it adds to the game to state out exactly what horrors may or may not have taken place).
The man was to be brought back at the urging of the church of Hoar and the nobleman father of one of the victims, where he would be tortured(too much OOC discussion already in this game session revolved around dirty jokes so I said tortured as a catch all instead of saying he'd be castrated), then hanged, drawn and quartered. The man was undeniably guilty(party rolled great sense motives when the captured man tried to trick them), and the inquisitor had a holy mandate as well as legal backing of a powerful nation, but one of the party members is a 20yr old LN ranger with a lot of hate for torture.
The party had talked religion with the inquisitor, where it was revealed the ranger was a follower of Helm, honorable god of guardians, watchmen, and bodyguards, so the inquisitor felt safe letting the man help guard his prisoner. The ranger, anti-torture, decided to give the man a clean death and with a coup de grace slit the murderer's throat.
Now I was in a quandary here. The inquisitor was above the party's level, clearly in the right in the eyes of the law and his LN church, and the guy following the god of guardians had used a bit of trickery to kill a man under his charge. Alignment-wise I don't think it was an evil or good act, but I can't believe it was a lawful act and ended up having the inquisitor attack the party(luckily I forgot a few features of the inquisitor and the party drove him off without anyone dying).
My problem is that morally both sides could argue they were in the right. The inquisitor had a job from his church to capture a dangerous and depraved man and bring him back for, in the church's eyes, a rightful vengeance, while fromthe ranger's point of view the fact that the man was going to be tortured meant that anything, even tricking a would-be ally and breaking from the ideals of the god he holds to, was acceptable to ensure the man got a clean, fast death. Now that the inquisitor has become a potential recurring villain I wonder what I should do if he is smart enough to bring a grievance against the ranger before a court, or the church of Helm, for interfering with his holy and legal duty. Once the PCs have their kingdom running they'll be untouchable by mortal authorities but since I don't see a right or wrong I'm not sure what potentially important NPCs would think. I'll probably go with whatever seems like it'll provide the most interesting situations but I do like my Realms to feel like it is real and that the NPCs in it have ideas and opinions that don't all revolve around the PCs.
Using an absolute moral system, the least evil is option number two, despite the fact that it results in the genocide of t he human race. The most evil would be option three, the choice that saves hundreds of millions of lives minimum.
Interesting. By saying that he has no control over actions 456, by acting in a Neutral fashion (or possibly Good if fighting the Evil of the 456 is take as such) this makes this the least evil choice. Killing is own grandson (actually insert any one child to make it less of personal hit) is the most evil because it is the direct killing of an innocent.
I would disagree and say that #1 is the most evil. Not only has he done #3 (as after centuries of suffering death would be the final result) but he's done it to 10% of the world children not just 1.
Assuming that the children weren't killed but returned alive at the end then it has to be decide which is the greater evil. A single hideous death of an innocent, or the protracted suffering of a greater number of innocents. In terms of the Pathfinder game that's a subject for the gaming group in question to address as both are flagged as evil.
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The problem is this kind of moral dilemma is not particularly successful heroic story telling nor GameMastering for heroic fantasy. The choice to fight Evil (embodied by the 456) in a heroic game should correct choice and have a probability of heroic success.
You can take virtually every AP Paizo has written and modify the ending so that the way to "defeat" the big bad isn't combat but a choice between scarifies. Suddenly all those levels and struggle to reach that point becomes pointless as the final choice cannot be influenced by anything besides the characters moral outlook (which can have even less mechanical impact then their randomly rolled weight, see the common pit trap). What's the point of learning to cast Wish if it cant change the outcome. This is bad game craft for which I'd back any player who flipped the table and walked out.
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In the television show Torchwood: Children of Earth,
That show was like the poster-child for morality-trap adversarial GMing. I'd walk straight out of that game, even if I was playing an evil character, 'cause it's just terrible narrative railroading.
"Make the decision I demand! And lose anyway! Ha ha! I'm the GM, beeyotch! Dance, puppet, dance!"
Meh. I'd heard good things about the show, and that was my first exposuure to it. So, so disappointing.
Exposure to culture is the shaping force of morality for a young mind. This is why most religions spew dogma, and frown upon science, philosophy and individualism. If you are allowed to think rationally and make your own opinions, the clergy cannot get their claws into you. This holds true for both real life/history and fantasy settings. Orc gods are invariably evil, and thus, orc children born into orc societies are raised to adhere to evil dogma. Thus the default orc is evil.
An orc raised by a goodly parent in the tenets of a goodly deity will likely grow up to be good.
And an orc child too young for cognitive processing will be neutral, just as devoid of an identity and opinion as any other child.
Unless your setting has some manner of "bad blood" origin story where the entire race is infused with evil as a legacy of an evil god, but then they should warrant "Always CE" in the alignment bit, instead of just "CE". And since the descriptive blurb on orcs talk in length about society, I am going to go with psycho-cognitive and social psychology.
Of course, if you do not WANT to consider ethics, go ahead and interpret things however you want. My authority on the matter does not extend further than my game table.
Or, An orc child raised by a good parent in the tenents of a good deity could hear stories about his kin, be convinced he was stolen from them, bide his time, murder the weaklings who think they can brainwash them, and go off to be a true orc, and not some decadent thing they tried to make him.
And an orc child too young for cognitive processing can throttle, kill and eat a human child because that's what he's born to do.
It's all in how you see them.
==Aelryinth
I think it mainly has something to do with it's Brit origins who also gave us Warhammer. Given that Britain has been invaded, bombed, had have considerable amount of warfare on it's native territory by foreign powers, (something the U.S. hasn't had to deal with since 1812), this might have colored their attitudes somewhat.
I'm not sure when's the last time a foreign power waged war on the British Isles, but I'd say you might be on to something. Now you've got me wondering what a show like that produced in Russia would look like...
I'm not sure when's the last time a foreign power waged war on the British Isles, but I'd say you might be on to something. Now you've got me wondering what a show like that produced in Russia would look like...
WWII is still quite fresh in their minds. I don't think there's been anything major since then, although they've had to deal with terrorist stuff a lot more frequently than the US.
The party had talked religion with the inquisitor, where it was revealed the ranger was a follower of Helm, honorable god of guardians, watchmen, and bodyguards, so the inquisitor felt safe letting the man help guard his prisoner. The ranger, anti-torture, decided to give the man a clean death and with a coup de grace slit the murderer's throat.Now I was in a quandary here. The inquisitor was above the party's level, clearly in the right in the eyes of the law and his LN church, and the guy following the god of guardians had used a bit of trickery to kill a man under his charge. Alignment-wise I don't think it was an evil or good act, but I can't believe it was a lawful act and ended up having the inquisitor attack the party(luckily I forgot a few features of the inquisitor and the party drove him off without anyone dying).
My problem is that morally both sides could argue they were in the right. The inquisitor had a job from his church to capture a dangerous and depraved man and bring him back for, in the church's eyes, a rightful vengeance, while fromthe ranger's point of view the fact that the man was going to be tortured meant that anything, even tricking a would-be ally and breaking from the ideals of the god he holds to, was acceptable to ensure the man got a clean, fast death. Now that the inquisitor has become a potential recurring villain I wonder what I should do if he is smart enough to bring a grievance against the ranger before a court, or the church of Helm, for interfering with his holy and legal duty. Once the PCs have their kingdom running they'll be untouchable by mortal authorities but since I don't see a right or wrong I'm not sure what potentially important NPCs would think. I'll probably go with whatever seems like it'll provide the most interesting situations but I do like my Realms to feel like it is real and that the NPCs in it have ideas and opinions that don't all revolve around the PCs.
Morality has nothing to do with it. Yep, both parties were morally correct for their own belief systems. Both would have been doing the right thing.
Now it just comes down to legality.
Your LN ranger, by following the higher laws of morality (saying don't torture the bad guy, just execute him and be done with it), has violated mortal laws.
In this situation, as GM, I'd have had the Bounty Hunter, if he had the rights to do so, arrest the Ranger and return him and the dead murderer to the legal authorities to be sorted out. If he didn't, I'd have him take the body back, give an accounting of what happened and give the name of the ranger and his friends. Then I'd have an arrest warrant issued for the Ranger, and possibly his friends.
It really comes down to how the local authorities decide to handle it. The ranger could be tried for murder (the murderer was wanted for murder, but he hadn't had a trial yet, so technically he murdered an uncondemned man). They could, if they don't care much about how the guy died, just charge him with obstruction of justice.
A different take might be that the victims (the local Noble's family) could claim vengance right on him. He deprived them of their right to see the murderer of their family member punished as the law demands. That depends on the local laws.
Basically, it's not a Good/Evil thing (Morality), it's a legal thing (did the Ranger break the law, and if so, how badly?). I'd say at the very least he broke the law.
Additionally, the Bounty Hunter might demand a weregild from the Ranger if the murder brought more alive than dead (1,000gold alive, 250gold dead).
Now, the Ranger may have some issues with his god. If he broke an oath to guard the prisoner (which it sounds like he did), then a stuffy god who hates liars might strip him of his spells until he atones for it.
WWII is still quite fresh in their minds. I don't think there's been anything major since then, although they've had to deal with terrorist stuff a lot more frequently than the US.
I think many adult males have also been in Afghanistan or Chechnya, since they have a conscription-based army. I'd say their culture and attitude might have deeper roots than even WWII though - I think it might have started with the Mongols nearly overrunning the country and leaving the rest vassals.
Anyway, as to the above case - if the ranger did give his word, Helm might be unhappy about that. He is worshipped in many lands, including where torture may be legally accepted. If the ranger did not commit himself in any way, though, I think he'd be in the clear - he has seen justice served. Some societies, particularly frontier communities fairly common in the Realms, consider known brigands or other heinous criminals to be enemies to all, and anyone is allowed to kill them if they can. It is quite possible that both the inquisitor and the ranger are both within the bound of the law for the community they are from.
Morality has nothing to do with it. Yep, both parties were morally correct for their own belief systems. Both would have been doing the right thing.Now it just comes down to legality.
Your LN ranger, by following the higher laws of morality (saying don't torture the bad guy, just execute him and be done with it), has violated mortal laws.
In this situation, as GM, I'd have had the Bounty Hunter, if he had the rights to do so, arrest the Ranger and return him and the dead murderer to the legal authorities to be sorted out. If he didn't, I'd have him take the body back, give an accounting of what happened and give the name of the ranger and his friends. Then I'd have an arrest warrant issued for the Ranger, and possibly his friends.
It really comes down to how the local authorities decide to handle it. The ranger could be tried for murder (the murderer was wanted for murder, but he hadn't had a trial yet, so technically he murdered an uncondemned man). They could, if they don't care much about how the guy died, just charge him with obstruction of justice.
A different take might be that the victims (the local Noble's family) could claim vengance right on him. He deprived them of their right to see the murderer of their family member punished as the law demands. That depends on the local laws.
Basically, it's not a Good/Evil thing (Morality), it's a legal thing (did the Ranger break the law, and if so, how badly?). I'd say at the very least he broke the law.
Additionally, the Bounty Hunter might demand a weregild from the Ranger if the murder brought more alive than dead (1,000gold alive, 250gold dead).
Now, the Ranger may have some issues with his god. If he broke an oath to guard the prisoner (which it sounds like he did), then a stuffy god who hates liars might strip him of his spells until he atones for it.
Yeah, the exact legal authority is iffy in this case because the capture and ranger's execution of the prisoner took place in a frontier region outside of the direct control of Calimshan or Tethyr. The bounty hunter did try, and almost succeed, in capturing the ranger but the rest of the party drove him off with a bit of luck and a fear spell. Now the inquisitor does have the backing of his church and powerful nobles in Calimshan, so I'm going to use that later to cause some embarrassment or problems for the ranger and probably have the authorities in Calimshan, as well as followers of Hoar in the region, hear about the ranger's actions.
I think the weregild idea is the best legal solution for the area, Calimshan seems the type of place that would count up the gold and if everything is equivalent in the end justice has been served, however I think the problems with the inquisitor of Hoar and the nobleman who lost out on his legal vengeance will linger for a little longer, especially once the PCs start kingdom building. Having a powerful noble in one of the two major nations near you angry with you could lead to some tense negotiations and diplomatic situations down the road.
As for the problem the ranger has with his god, that was mostly an OOC mistake. The player thought Helm was like Tyr, a god of justice, rather than being a god of duty first and foremost. It was just a mistake and I didn't have the ranger lose power over it or face divine retribution.
It could be that it wasn't even much of a mistake. I'm not that keen on Helm sponsoring rangers, but if he did, I'd say they'd likely be encouraged to act (among other things) a little like the marshals in the Wild West. If the ranger believes the captured man was a criminal deserving of death under the law s/he swore under Helm to uphold, killing them then and there is not a sin against their faith.
It could be that it wasn't even much of a mistake. I'm not that keen on Helm sponsoring rangers, but if he did, I'd say they'd likely be encouraged to act (among other things) a little like the marshals in the Wild West. If the ranger believes the captured man was a criminal deserving of death under the law s/he swore under Helm to uphold, killing them then and there is not a sin against their faith.
That wasn't the sin I was going for. It was the violating his own oath to guard the prisoner. Marshall's in the wild west didn't shoot their own prisoners before they could go to trial, especially after taking an oath to guard them.
I think the weregild idea is the best legal solution for the area, Calimshan seems the type of place that would count up the gold and if everything is equivalent in the end justice has been served, however I think the problems with the inquisitor of Hoar and the nobleman who lost out on his legal vengeance will linger for a little longer, especially once the PCs start kingdom building. Having a powerful noble in one of the two major nations near you angry with you could lead to some tense negotiations and diplomatic situations down the road.
Yep, sounds like you've got a good solution to it. The bounty hunter and the noble can both show up as recurring problems. Neither one is a bad guy, but they both have plenty of reason to throw a monkey wrench into the PCs work without ever crossing the line into evil. On the other hand, if the PCs do anything other than respond in kind (such as putting out contracts on them, etc) then they'll descend into the evil side. Just goes to show how wars can start between countries who are both good or neutral or one of each.