Biztak |
An adventuring group breaks into the underground lair of a local thieves guild. While searching around the underground complex for a villainous rogue that tried to kill the party, the PCs stumble across a room of 7 sleeping humans, likely members of the guild. One PC wants to steal the sleeping humans' weapons and close the door. Another PC wants to quietly kill them all in their sleep.
Question: In this scenario, is killing the sleeping humans an evil act? I'm curious what other players/ DMs think about this. Alignment is often difficult to pinpoint because it is so subjective and situational. Any thoughts would be helpful.
in my opinion its more of a chaotic act than evil, the lawful action would be apprehending them
Drahliana Moonrunner |
An adventuring group breaks into the underground lair of a local thieves guild. While searching around the underground complex for a villainous rogue that tried to kill the party, the PCs stumble across a room of 7 sleeping humans, likely members of the guild. One PC wants to steal the sleeping humans' weapons and close the door. Another PC wants to quietly kill them all in their sleep.
Question: In this scenario, is killing the sleeping humans an evil act? I'm curious what other players/ DMs think about this. Alignment is often difficult to pinpoint because it is so subjective and situational. Any thoughts would be helpful.
It's a borderline case. If it was a room of seven sleeping mass murderers, that's one thing. But if a couple of those people are no more than petty pickpockets, you've crossed the line if you simply kill them out of hand. The fact that you are making assumptions without knowledge can be damming itself depending on the greater context.
That's an example of a mistake that might literally come back to haunt you.
Dave Justus |
Remember that ending a life is not always equivalent to murder. Murder is a word that only has meaning in the context of man-made laws.
Not true at all. Having and objective good and evil essentially means ascribing to the theory of Natural Law (which is entirely unrelated to the concept of lawful alignment.) Basically it is that good and evil flow from objective principles, life is valuable and should be revered, etc.
Murder is unjustified killing and a violation of Natural Law. It cannot be anything other than evil. Not all killing is murder. Some things that can justify a killing, at least according to some beliefs, are things like self defense, legal authority, war (see just war theory) etc. At the same time, just because something isn't murder, for example an execution by a corrupt regime, doesn't mean it isn't evil.
Dave Justus |
There is no universal truth for "Natural Law". It's a vague term that is subject to interpretation.
I also did not say or mean to imply that murder is always or not always evil.
It is a philosophical theory. The term isn't vague at all, it describes something quite specific. The theory is that moral laws are indeed objective and not subject to interpretation. One could (and many have) argue about how true it is in the real world, but the alignment system of pathfinder makes it fairly clear that it, or something very similar, is indeed true in the game simulation.
Dave Justus |
You cannot prove that a philosophical theory is objectively true. There's not even a point to arguing about it. It's like trying to argue that hamburgers are objectively delicious.
I don't think I even tried, let alone claimed to have succeeded.
What I said, and think I can prove (although it really shouldn't be in dispute) is that it is objectively true that Natural Law is a specific philosophical theory. It has been around for a few thousand years now, and is pretty well known. It is objectively true that what theory is, is that morality is universal, objective and can be deduced by reason.
These are facts that can be easily verified. Google 'natural law' and come back if you disagree in some way.
I assert that the alignment mechanics in the Pathfinder game mean that however true or untrue natural law may be in our world, it must be true in any universe modeled by that system. In Pathfinder, good and evil are objective and (presumably) understandable by reason (although that isn't stated specifically, if it wasn't true then there would have to be some sort of mechanics beyond expecting GMs and players to understand good and evil etc.)
This may be no more true to the real world than casting fireballs, but it is how the system works.
Raynulf |
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Yes, the theory exists and does make a claim to a universal truth. A claim. A claim that, while not entirely unreasonable, cannot be proven.
That's why it's a philosophical theory.
But the point is not it's application to the real world, but the fact that in D&D (and Pathfinder), alignment is objective, which implies that Natural Law or something like it is the basis for how alignment works in the game.
If alignment were intended to be subjective, or judged subjectively, it would actually be pointless - you'd basically wind up with 4E's "unaligned" by virtue of everyone attempting to justify their actions either way, and subjectively ruling that everyone is "Good" regardless of whether they're a saint or mass-murdering psychopath.
To have an abstracted alignment system, it has to be objective in order to function, which means that the Pathfinder cosmos must express a judgement of alignment upon actions, regardless of cultural norms (e.g. slavery is generally considered Evil, regardless of whether you're in Andoran or Cheliax).
Hugo Rune |
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I find it disturbing that there are people on this forum who are arguing that killing a roomful of unknown sleeping people is not an evil act. More so given that those people may be entirely innocent - they are only described as likely members of the guild. Not even confirmed members, let alone members who have done heinous crimes worthy of the death penalty.
With such views being aired it is little wonder that RPGs got such a bad press in the 80's and 90's.
Raynulf |
Yes, alignnment in Pathfinder is objective. Subjective to our interpretations of what should be objective in our own games. There is no "Good vs evil" list for every single action. It always has, currently is, and always will be subject to interpretation.
In this you are correct: The Pathfinder rules on alignment are implicit in that they give some general guidelines, and require the GM to use them to infer the alignment of a given activity. Interpretation is required.
However, there is a big difference between interpreting the intent of the alignments and rationalization of an immoral (or at least questionable) action. Because if you try, you can rationalize anything.
As a more extreme example; In a kingdom beset by depleted resources, disease, infestations of kobolds in the wild areas and poor trade, future for the common folk looks grim. Infant mortality is high, food is low and morale is dismal. But a group of PCs could turn this around; Adventuring through the kobold filled mountains not only sees them bring home potent relics of the old kingdom and sizeable amounts of coin and gems... but the very key to the salvation, nay, revolution of their kingdom.
Kobolds.
Kobolds (Borrowing from 3.5's Races of the Dragon and Book of Vile Darkness) are small and weak, yet fast breeding and enduring, able to survive on almost any organic matter and moreover, they are enemy of humanity - a blight upon the land that puts good, law-abiding citizens in fear of the night and shying from the mineral rich mountains the kobolds call home. Surely, then, it is reasonable that the kobolds atone for their misdeeds against your fair people? After all, is it not justice that the source of the famine and fear be the instrument by which the cities may sprawl and push back the night, refectories hand out free food to the masses, constructs protect the kingdom from assault and perform labor and the people are at last liberated from their banal existence to pursue art, culture, science and leisure?
So a 10th level party with a +15 in Knowledge (religion) sets up a kobold battery farm, with the captive females producing eggs after a mere two weeks (assuming 2 weeks recovery, that's an egg a month), which hatches after 2 months incubation. While some hatchlings (especially females offspring from those whose properties they want more of) may be kept and reared in captivity, most will immediately go onto the desecrated and unhallowed altar, collecting another +6 in bonuses (without bothering with long rituals) for a take-10 religion check of 31 - about 150gp worth of crafting cost to turn into 300gp of magic items. A battery farm of a thousand odd female kobolds (requiring 15,000gp of manacles, plus similar amounts for the facility) producing about 1000 eggs a month equates to 300,000gp worth of magic item creation per month - about 10 create food and water at-will command word vending machines a month (which can hypothetically each feed 200,000 a month due to only needing a standard action rather than 10 minutes to cast the spell).
Given a couple of years of development and accepting a loss in efficiency, trained factory workers (+7 with skill focus), can then be crunching through hundreds or thousands of hatchlings a day, funneling the soul magic into the forges and crafting stations nearby, as the domesticated/enslaved kobold "Hatchling Juice" powers an industrial revolution as billions of gp of magic items are crunched out each year, and the wonders ever increase.
And the architects of this industrial empire may then attempt to argue that, surely, the utopia they have created surely justifies the methods? Are not their actions Good?
And the answer is... No. It's not just evil, it's Evil of the blackest form. The fact that the public benefit doesn't change that.
Footnote: This might be a somewhat over-the-top example, but I picked it because it highlights the fact Good means that the ends do not justify the means. An evil act with benefits, even to more than just yourself, doesn't make it non-evil. If PCs are acting like cold-blooded villains they need to either:
- A) Own up to it. Accept that what they're doing is wrong and have it weigh on their conscience, as they try to cling to their high morals.
B) Change their alignment to some form of Evil in keeping with their actions.
CampinCarl9127 |
In this you are correct: The Pathfinder rules on alignment are implicit in that they give some general guidelines, and require the GM to use them to infer the alignment of a given activity. Interpretation is required.
Yup. This should have been the entire post. This sums it up and everything you need to know about it.
The rest of your example is just something left up to more interpretation. As always.
PossibleCabbage |
Killing people on the off-chance that it is your benefit to do so (even though a case of mistaken identity or an innocent being at the wrong place at the wrong time) is pretty much the definition of evil in a game like this. Like it's "the Paladin falls immediately" kind of evil.
I mean, the reason you're killing them while they sleep and not waking them up and talking to them in order to make sure that they deserve summary justice at your hand, is simply because you want to avoid a fight that might inconvenience you or cost some sort of valuable resource. It's an extremely selfish act.
I think a good character would be okay in taking the weapons of the sleepers, putting them in a sack in the corner, waking them up and talking to them, and if it turns out they've got nothing really to do with this (they're a mercenary company that didn't really know what they were signing up for, say), giving them back their weapons.
But things like "alignment systems" tend to get pretty confused (or arbitrary) in these sorts of games if you push too hard. Like when you try to dig to the metaphysical basement level, it more or less boils down to "good" acts are pretty much the ones that please the gods who are labeled "good" by the books. Like if you were to feed and employ homeless orphans to help you construct a nice statue in honor of Asmodeus, is that an evil act? Is there a sliding scale where if you pay the orphans more than x currency per hour it's a good act and if they pay the orphans less than y currency per hour it's an evil act (and between x and y it turns out neutral?) It makes sense to consider "who is (dis)pleased" by this act and to consider whether an action is ultimately selfish or selfless, but it's bothersome to extrapolate "good" and "evil" in the senses the players will bring with them to the table from that.