So not sure if rules can even answer this one, alignment being what it is.
but anyway i've been thinking lately ''So what if had a character who was a good person, strives to do good and all. But does consistently one evil thing to help with that good like raise the dead or some other spell with the evil descriptor. Would the whole evil in the alignment thing change that character? would the good balance the evil?''
p.s. not for any current games, just a thought.
Its a facet. like any character trait. You could say that their personality affect their alignment to some degree or vice versa.
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Good and evil are things on golarion. A balor is evil because it is a balor, not because of what it does. Outsiders in general have a set alignment which is prescriptive.
Characters, on the other hand, have descriptive alignments, which best describe the character's actions without forcing them to do things a particular way.
Still, good and evil are things. A person on golarion has alignment, it is a possession.
I'd be inclined to say that you'd have an evil alignment if you cast raise dead a lot, but you could still have personality traits that make you a functional and well adapted member of society who mostly benefits others. The gods might hate you, but your friends probably wouldn't.
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Here's the only rules answer I can manage, and it's not much.
Alignment is a tool for developing your character's identity—it is not a straitjacket for restricting your character. Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two characters of the same alignment can still be quite different from each other. In addition, few people are completely consistent.
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I'd consider a character who uses evil ways to achieve good goals, or the other way around, to be neutral. The character might view itself as good, and congratulate itself on their accomplishments, but their actual methods are bringing them down from that lofty position.
Whether these evil ways are the torturing of enemies, the slaughtering of children of evil races or the casting of spells with the evil descriptor, doesn't really matter. Good folk should not use such methods. Those who do, burden their soul as to be no longer good.
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Like most of alignment discussions, it depends. IMO it would depend on what that "consistently one evil thing to help with that good" was. If it was "raise the dead", which I assume means create undead like zombies and skeletons, I would say neutral. If you didn't do it often I could even see good. If you started creating free willed evil undead, that will lead to the dark side...evil.
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Stuff.
All this talk of subjective morality and means to an end is nice, but in Pathfinder casting an evil spell is evil, regardless of what you use it for.
Summon an army of skeletons to fight the Tarrasque? If it kills you, there's now a Tarrasque AND an army of skeletons to fight. There are always consequences to creating evil creatures, even if you have control over them, because that control can be wrested.
aren't the 'create undead' line of spells evil because they disrupt the whole transmigration of souls thing that is the afterlife and cause the souls of the dead to suffer?
I do interpret alignment as a subjective moral code for mortals to follow, which means its more loose and is subject to change, but for outsiders its more hardcoded accordingly. IE, alignment for mortals (and even, arguably, for Deities) is a lifestyle choice; for outsiders its part of their DNA (so to speak, outsiders probably don't have DNA).
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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IMO, a Good person is, broadly speaking, someone who seeks to perform Good acts and eschews Evil acts.
That doesn’t mean they can’t do something Evil to accomplish an especially Good end, but that shouldn’t be something they want to do. That choice should be hard for a Good person to make, and they should probably feel bad about it afterwards. Even though they accomplished something Good, they had to sacrifice their ideals to do so, and that torments them.
If you consistently use an Evil spell, that tells me that you have no compunctions against performing that Evil act, which to me means you’re not Good. Even if you make a show of wringing your hands or atoning each time you hit the “undead horde” button, at some point that starts to feel disingenuous.
aren't the 'create undead' line of spells evil because they disrupt the whole transmigration of souls thing that is the afterlife and cause the souls of the dead to suffer?
Maybe. Maybe not. There's not really a reason. Creating (permanent) undead is Evil, that's just part of the fabric of reality.
aren't the 'create undead' line of spells evil because they disrupt the whole transmigration of souls thing that is the afterlife and cause the souls of the dead to suffer?
In Golarion, yes, that's how it works. In Pathfinder in general, it's not defined in detail how the afterlife works or why undead-creating spells are evil.
Looking into it more, Necromancy and the Undead in general are powered by the Negative Energy Plane, which is an unaligned plane. Seems like animating a corpse with negative energy actually has little to do with the soul that once inhabited it. Acknowledging this is all setting determinate, seems like there's some confusion/contradiction.
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This is an ethical question of intention vs result. In AD&D/D&D/Pathfinder, good, evil, lawful, and chaotic alignments are based on results, not intention. And if you inadvertently did something you didn't want to do, you seek atonement, as per the spell, to clear your soul of the stain of your actions.
The negative energy plane, by its very nature, destroys life. The plane itself might be unaligned, but if you create undead, you're creating a creature with an aversion to life. The nature of undead, when left uncontrolled, is to attack and kill the living.
This makes undead evil in nature. At least in Pathfinder. Even if you control undead to save innocents, you're still creating an evil force upon the world. If you die or otherwise lose control, the innocents have the undead as one more problem in their lives. So, you're doing both good and evil, which means you're neutral.
Your intentions might be good, but your actions aren't. And actions are what count in Pathfinder. You should seek an atonement spell for your evil deeds and not do it again. If you keep doing it, atonement will stop working, and you'll shift alignment to neutral.
Not that it's a problem to be neutral, mind you. It's very easy going and pragmatic. Lots of very fine folks are neutral. Usually the neutrals are much more widely agreeable people than the good...
Looking at things i think i like neutral as an alignment explaination a lot here.
It explains the good guy using dark powers thing well. A greater good, save innocents, save the day, damn the rules any anything that would interfere.
as a quick aside, this has also helped me develop the character better.
I guess this is really a can something evil be used for good situation. Answer definitely yes, but it's still an evil object.
if it matters i'm not planning for permanent undead, hoping to go with more temporary undead. hoping but not sure it's really possible. if not, then he won't create more or something he can't handle himself.
Thanks for the help i think i got my answer
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Ammon, glad to be of help :)
Pizza Lord, I agree with your post in general, but I'd like to reply to this part.
- You kill a man for his money or even just steal his money. Evil thing. / You give the money to an orphanage. Good thing.
Hurting people is definitely evil, but not all stealing is hurting. Someone who has wealth in such abundance that they are no longer making other people's, or even their own, lives any more beautiful through said wealth, is not being hurt if their money gets stolen.
In such a case, stealing said person's money is certainly not an evil act. It is, however, unlawful, and as such it is a chaotic act. Stealing from the very rich and giving to the very poor would as such clearly fall into the chaotic good alignment.
Right?
In law vs chaos, the same happens as in good vs evil.
If you take matters into your own hands, because you feel the law is unjust, that's a chaotic act. Like the above steal from rich to give to poor.
If you do something unlawful to achieve something lawful, that's neutral. Like if you steal from the greedy baron, and then pretend to be a legal clerk, giving the baron's money to one of his captains, so that the soldiers get paid as the baron should have done in the first place.
If you take lawful action against said baron, such as invoking a higher law (religious law, for example) to judge, condemn, and assassinate the baron for his unlawful behaviour, then you're being lawful (even though assassination would seem to be unlawful on its own, it is lawful in this case).
Think of Dirty Harry. He was a jerk, but he worked to stop evil. In doing so, he did some questionable things. But, we view him as one of the good guys.
Think of Dirty Harry. He was a jerk, but he worked to stop evil. In doing so, he did some questionable things. But, we view him as one of the good guys.
Do we? I've always thought of him as contributing to and reinforcing the cycle of violence that he was trying to stop. While he may have stopped specific criminals, he legitimized extra-legal violence as a solution to social problems.
I know I sound way too pompous here. It's early, and I haven't had enough coffee so that I can write more like a normal person and less like a wordy academic.
In addition to alignment, characters have lots of other motivations. I have two chaotic neutral characters who are totally different in their beliefs and values. One is Pazuzu-worshipping warpriest from Cheliax who lives on the Sargavan frontier doing his colonial "heart of darkness" thing. The other is sandkin half-orc druid from Katapesh who worships Bastet and wants to kick all Avistanis (aka "Avi-trash") out of the continent of Garund. They would totally true to kill each other if they ever met in person.
cheerful, bubbly lich
I'm stealing this idea and am thinking about maybe Martha Stewart as a lich.
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Pizza Lord,
I do have the feeling that we're kind of on the same page, but that we're reading too much into each other's posts and have begun to argue for argument's sake.
Probably, if we'd talk in person or would play a game together, we'd agree on each other's judgement.
As it is, I see no things in your reasoning that I'd like to refute out of hand, but it's the way you put it and the way you put things from my message in a different context and/or light, that makes me want to argue with you.
I won't, though.
As far as I can tell, we're both agreeing at least that Pathfinder judges good, evil, law, and chaos on actions, not intentions.
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Well, no... Because if you put a creature with a link to the positive elemental plane on the prime material plane, that creature would not be able to give enough energy to explode prime material creatures.
It would instead just heal them and maybe encourage plant life a bit.
Putting living innocents on the positive elemental plane without protection, though... Yeah, that would be evil.
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One of the oddities about alignment is that it sometimes doesn't take into account the differences between what kind of person you are (or think yourself to be), and what kind of impact you are choosing to have on the world and other people around you.
There are terribly self-serving people who are running charities or doing other good works because it makes them look good (or is part of an attempt to repair damage to their reputation they've done previously, or even part of a public service requirement imposed upon them by the law, for their previous misdeeds). They are objectively doing good things, but not necessarily good people.
There are people who mean so terribly well, and feel bad for poor hungry people and whatnot, but don't do a darn thing about these situations. No time volunteered, no money donated, no Toys For Tots or whatever. They may think of themselves as good people, they may even be good people, at heart, but they aren't doing a darn thing to help anyone, or make the world a better place.
Game alignment scores don't really account for those sorts of situations, the 'bad person doing good things for bad reasons' (like Queen Margery in Game of Thrones, distributing food to the poor to bolster her reputation as a 'good person' and build up a support base against that of Cersei in a city otherwise under Cersei's thumb) or 'good person doing bad things with the best of intentions' (like the Operative in Serenity thought himself to be, a monster protecting civilization from a worse fate, convincing himself that he was doing horrible things to help create a world that wouldn't need hard, cruel people like himself) or whatever.
Being a big fan of comic book superheroes, in which the 'heroes' are vigilantes and lawbreakers who defy authority, and yet also enforce justice, at the same time 'chaotic' and 'lawful,' I've always kind of shrugged at the concept.
In the end, people are people. In the real world, it's been determined that the part of our brain that makes a decision to act goes off a half-second *before* the part of our brain that connects to ethical or moral decision making, and suggests that we spend our entire lives just *doing stuff* and then desperately scrambling after the fact to rationalize how that action was consistent with our so-called beliefs.
Fictional characters may have a consistent characterization or 'alignment' (or not...), but *people* sure as heck don't.
We're all exception-based design.
"I am X, except that one time I Y'd, because... uh, I was drunk? Really angry? Confused? Feeling down? Being written really out of character?" :)
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Personality should create your alignment, not the other way around.
Not to say you can't do things that are sometimes contradictory to your "normal personality" but they should represent either character growth/change or a new facet of your personality that hadn't been explored before.
Maybe the Lawful Good was always on the up and up...before Lawful Evil Baron von Bad used some obscure laws to steal his land and wife. Now our fighter wants to kill him. Clearly against the law (though not necessarily chaotic) but probably out of character for this person.
Humans too aren't creatures of perfect alignment like celestials. They can fluctuate maybe one week their a bit more lawful maybe the next a bit more chaotic. but they always end up averaging somewhere about their alignment.
Going off of the old fantasy empires rpg, raising a lot of undead was technically a chaotic action, not necessarily an evil one. Good/evil would be a matter of intent.
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There is plenty of confusion in alignment systems, simply because there are multiple.
In Order vs Chaos (Warhammer), you should view order as good. And the good guys are just slightly less a-holes as the bad guys.
In Light side vs Dark side (Starwars), it's all about intention and the way a character deals with their emotions. While Dark side might lead to evil and the other way around, they are certainly not the same thing.
In Vampire we have humanity vs bestiality, but having high humanity as a vampire doesn't make you a good guy.
Now, D&D (and PF) has the 9 alignments system.
Does the 9 alignments system allow for all human actions to fall into their categories? No, of course not. But it does allow us to categorise quite well. You could probably find yourself in the alignment system.
As a small test, I'll categorise myself.
I'm considered a generally friendly guy - no alignment value.
I'm a nurse - no value, but easier to do for altruistic (good) people.
I like when things are fair for everyone and will act accordingly - lawful good trait.
I take matters into my own hands if I consider them unfair or stupid, and have no qualms about breaking rule or law to 'fix' things to my own vision - chaotic trait.
I usually help people, even if it is of no benefit to me - good trait.
If people seem intent on destroying themselves, I might ask questions and offer insight (especially when working), but I'll totally let them - chaotic neutral trait.
I detest lying, and refuse to do it (unless I'm in a game) - lawful trait.
I'm thoroughly pragmatic when it comes to reaching goals - neutral trait.
I sometimes feel a grim satisfaction at seeing certain people fail - evil trait.
So generally, I'm probably neutral good, with true neutral tendencies.
In no way would that mean that my personality is about the same as other NG people. Personality is not alignment at all. Alignment is mostly important for gods, priests, and magic. Personality is what matters in roleplaying.
In the real world, it's been determined that the part of our brain that makes a decision to act goes off a half-second *before* the part of our brain that connects to ethical or moral decision making, and suggests that we spend our entire lives just *doing stuff* and then desperately scrambling after the fact to rationalize how that action was consistent with our so-called beliefs.
We know it is the case that humans possess machinery for rationalizing actions after the fact, and we have reliable results indicating that actions which may feel concious occur before conscious decision making. We also know that out conscious minds definitively do affect decision making.
What consciousness is is a hotly debated topic.
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You can be a pyromaniac of any alignment.
LG - I shall smite the Demon with FIRE!!
NG - Sarenrae
CG - Sarenrae with ADHD
LN - BURN THE HERETIC!!
N - Fire is one of the four elements
CN - Sings songs about fire while burning random non-orphanage stuff down
LE - Your Honor, I did not burn down the orphanage. I simply put the flammables by the orphanage, in a line to the abandoned house next door, and set THAT house on fire. The orphanage burned itself down and the kids were just too dumb to unlock the door.
NE - Burning people's homes down isn't my only tool, just one of my favorites.
CE - Burn. Burn! BURN! BURN!! BUUURN!!