KitsuneSoup's page

So casting protection from evil on random strangers becomes an 'anti-corrupting' influence?

does that really sound like a good idea to you?

Sure it does. You have a limited number of resources per day. You spend all of those resources ensuring that others are protected from the fundamental forces of evil in the world, which is a real, proven threat. That is an ethically good act; you could be use those spells for self-gain, but are instead using them to protect others.

I think the closest relative argument in the real world to this infernal healing thing is the legalization of marijuana, which I completely understand is a can of worms to open, but bear with me.

Marijuana. It's illegal, so utilizing it can result in consequences. Should it be? Nope. There are lots of arguments on both sides. However, the fact is, it's illegal. Every time you use it, you're aware of that fact. Whether or not you choose to use it is still your [character's] choice. But you're still making an informed choice.

The important part isn't the "is it illegal?" question, much like "is infernal healing evil?" isn't the question. The fact to both is, "Yes." But whether or not you choose to live with the consequences of your actions if they come home, is up to you. The only difference is, if you're suffering the consequences, at least with marijuana you can still affect the system, instead of being in Hell and just suffering forever.

Back in the game world, if your class abilities don't care about your alignment (read: most people that would cast infernal healing), why do you care? If you care about other's opinions of you or what aura they see, you as a character should not be casting those spells. If you don't, they have no impact on you. Other than, you know, that ultimate reward.

"Wait", says John the wizard," how do you know that? "

"How do I know what?" Answers Pete the cleric
"That it is Evil. How do you know that?"
"Well, I wave my arms around, chant some words, magic happens and I know wherever something detects as Evil. My God beams the information straight into my mind."
"And how do you know that it works correctly?"
"What do you mean? It never failed me before."
"Watch this." *casts misdirection on his planarly bound succubus and the paladin * "check our Robert the paladin."
Pete checks the paladin and finds him quite evil
"Well this proves nothing, you cast a spell on him"
"So your God can be tricked by a second circle spell? A very reliable source of information, that. How would you ever know if your detector stopped working?"
Sorcerer Lara chimes in "We can detect that spell you cast"
She tries casting Detect Magic, but wizard is faster and slaps Robert with Magic Aura. Lara detects no spells on the paladin.
"Well, I guess you don't actually know if Infernal Healing is evil or if it just detects as such. Guess we will have to stick to old-fashioned ways to find evil, like finding things that hurt and oppress sentient beings, which infernal healing is not."

Hylen the Ethics Major sits back and says, "You are deliberately corrupting the test, John, by not only introducing a new variable, but changing the rules of the test. The question is not "can I hide evil?" but is "Is this one action, by itself, evil?" The test results are clear; the ability to check if a spell is evil or not is not necessary to come from a God, but is a fundamental force."

Jacola the Atheist Cleric pipes in. "Ya, I can still cast detect evil, and I don't believe in gods at all. My spells come from unfettered access to the core of magic, which all people should have access to, if not for higher beings claiming they were deities blocking our natural growth as a species."

Hylen nods sagely. "And the better question is, why are we even discussing this? You know it's evil, and you're fighting a vanguard action to... justify it? One of two things are true: Either you do not care if the spell is evil and will cast it anyway, which is ethically incorrect but is then based on your viewpoint so is your decision to make, or you have a fundamental doubt in whether or not you should be casting the spell, in which case you should, from a purely ethical viewpoint, wait until you have an answer. The observed fact, not truth, is that this spell is evil. If you choose to use it or not is up to you. Using evil tools will make you more evil, regardless of the end result, because you know there is an alternate option that you simply choose not to utilize. You could, for example, make scrolls or potions that you sell or barter to purchase more potions of healing, but you instead choose to use this option. As you are an educated, informed user, you must accept the consequences of your choice."

Ashiel wrote:

For the same reason, I like good characters, because I respect and admire characters that are altruistic, protective of life, and concerned for others. Being good means you are a good person who does good things. Not that you're simply acting like a normal person but wearing the right uniform.

But, if it's just how many celestial badgers you can poop out in a day, or how many times you used magic circle against evil as the circle used to conjure an earth elemental, it's pointless. It has little to no
narrative value to the character, and so I simply don't care.

It's particularly wonky when your wizard goes to planar bind a night hag to try and recover a stolen soul (evil spell! good act?) and having to cast protection from good as a prerequisite (good spell!) and your good alignment descriptor peanut butter gets all up in your evil alignment descriptor chocolate.

The wizard also had the option of summoning another creature, and chose the left-hand path. The action of the choice solidifies the ethic definition. In this highly undefined example, the character could have summoned an equally-powerful good-aligned creature. There was no good act here.

It's always been a narrative question of whether it's 'more good' to cling to your ideals (such as a code against killing) even when the world is burning around you because of it (an example being Batman constantly putting Joker, etc. into the revolving door that is Arkham, instead of going all Punisher on them, which is the fault of the writers, obviously, since multiple life sentences are generally more effective at preventing mass murder spree recidivism in the real world than in a serial medium that requires iconic villains to be back on the street every time a new creative team is on the book) or 'more good' to sacrifice your own ideals and go all morally-relativistic-boddhisatva and make the 'hard choices' or 'realistic choices' or 'practical choices' as a Punisher type would maintain, claiming that by holding to a code against killing, someone like Batman or Daredevil is valuing his own shiny moral code over *other people's entire lives.*

This is not a question of a moral code versus the value of others. Placing the Joker in Arkham the first time was the ethically correct thing to do, as it was the correct location to prevent the most harm. The second time, Batman was still ethically correct, as the comics have shown that Wayne Enterprises invests a lot of money on better security, better cameras, and Batman has been shown to spend all the "downtime" he gets monitoring Arkham himself. It has gotten to the point that when villains break out, it was either due to an unknown flaw or due to the actions of another person outside of the control of Batman, which means placing the Joker back inside the secure prison is still ethically correct, if the loophole has been closed.

There's no real right answer there. If a new writer wants to use the Joker, and code-against-killing hero has put him away, he'll escape, and if 'I'll kill him to...

Well, this is just a problem with the serial nature. There's legit bad storytelling there. :D

Why do players feel it necessary to argue the alignment rules? In my experience? Storytelling and game creep. And honestly, bad storytelling.

At character creation, you declare your character's alignment, supposedly based on the character's background and upbringing. Then, you grow as a character. So if you make your wizard NG, you should be a fairly decent person. That's your storytelling character.

Then a new splat book comes out and has a new evil spell that sounds cool, and you want it. As a player, you start to argue about why it's not really evil, my Good character should have it, he'll research it himself if you won't give it to him, blah, blah, blah. Basically, the player is now changing the role of the character to try to take advantage of the change of the rules, but doesn't want branded as "the person that changes alignment just to get new powers". So the argument begins.

A good player should recognize that the character knows what is right and wrong, and act accordingly to further the story. But when you add in a score and a victory, the drive to win beats the drive to maintain original concept.

And just to throw out a few ethics problems in the examples given:

• Obi-Wan performed an ethically correct act by leaving Anakin there. He, as a person needing to stop a murderer, went precisely as far as was necessary to stop him from murdering again (to the best of his knowledge). To kill Anakin would be to commit murder from an pure ethics point of view; Anakin's ability to cause harm was removed.
  
• In a world where Force Lightning exists as the only Jedi power, the option to utilize it may be open for an ethics debate. It is not the only power available. So when the character makes the decision to learn the power and utilize it, they are making a conscious decision to cause unnecessary harm and are therefore knowledgeable of the Dark act.
  
• There is an interesting ethical question in this: A woman suddenly manifests Force Lightning, and only Force Lightning, and there is no other knowledge within her isolated social culture of Jedi powers. She uses it exclusively for hunting non-sentient animals to make her tribe's life easier. As she can receive no feedback of "the agony", and uses it only on ethically non-existent beings, is she being evil? In the real world, no, she is not. The first time she receives any form of feedback (from a reliable outside source, or from using her powers on a being that provides feedback she can understand, say, an animal large enough to survive the first moment of exposure or a human, and that she understands the screams of pain), continued use becomes an ethically inappropriate act. However, as she exists in a universe with a semi-sentient pervasive Force that dictates the effects on her soul, she is always committing an evil act, as she is corrupting herself and will eventually become, by those mandates, a person that will lose control.
  

Here's something I've learned at my tables that works very well for adjudicating races. Do a point buy. Increase the points available by the average race of your world (in most worlds, that's humans, so nine points). So, if you're allowing a 25 point buy, everyone has 34 points and has to buy the character's race first. Remaining points can be spent on stats. So a Suli, valued at 16 RP, means you then have 18 points to buy stats.

So far, this has balanced the table very well in several campaigns. Maybe it will assist you as well. :)

I would posit that Gorum would be fine with it. Fighting in a war should be all encompassing, and anything that removes distractions would be beneficial to the warrior.

Alternately, you could argue that only the greatest warriors and survivors are welcomed to the victory orgy with the sacred prostitutes, with the highest kill counts being permitted the first selection from the men and women in the camp. This would encourage more ferocity and greater competitiveness in war, which would also be approved.

Diamond B wrote:

23. Weapon speed this piggybacks on the above mention of weapons. I loved the idea of weapons impacting how quickly they could be brought to bear in a round. I recall with fondness the suffering of my battle axe wielding dwarf as he almost always went last in the round.

Weapon Speed would simultaneously placate the people who whine about Iterative Attacks and enrage people who decry "Martial/Caster Disparity!"

I like the idea in theory, but don't think it's viable in practice.

Except you'd bring back casting initiative as well, and for most things, those were much slower than weapons. Wizards used to have to track initiative and weapon speed much closer than the fighters...

Or, more realistically and in keeping with the tenants of Lawful Good, a paladin would exert every lawful means in his disposal to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the person was innocent, while using the law to delay the execution.

If the paladin in question is a well-respected member of the community, he should be able to request a few days to delay. A law-abiding, just court would listen when the character states he may be able to find evidence exonerating the prisoner. A secretly-manipulated-one would probably still give the time extension, either because they feel they cannot be unraveled, or they need the populace to be shown that the paladin was wrong.

After that, we have to make an assumption that the paladin cannot simply "detect lies" the prisoner for whatever reason. We'll claim we're in Cliffport, where magical testimony is not considered valid. We can't time-scry, then, either. But the paladin should have his own contacts. In some feudal settings, a simple "God wants you to tell the truth" to a serf-witness would cause them to break and reveal themselves.

Of course, that's not even factoring in what the paladin's companions would be doing. When a anything-but-evil rogue hears the paladin's lament, he's going to start digging as well. And while the paladin cannot condone spying or burglary to get evidence, the rogue can act independently.

Generally, this kind of thing should not be a "one-hour game session". It's a serious question of the character's motivations and his take on his own alignment, and therefore should be played out slowly and methodically. There should be small questions of faith and righteousness before this kind of "hard break" moral dilemma, and something everyone at the table is going to enjoy. If your paladin is more interested in the notion of the jailbreak, then they're not really a paladin, they're a fighter that wants a different set of powers.

As for the jailbreak... Lawful Good can't think that way, or it will rapidly use the ends to justify the means, and cease being Lawful Good, just Self-Righteous Good.

I just wish I could be Christian and not lumped in with all the others. I'm tolerant, intelligent, and while I have faith, it's in people as much as it is in God. I don't pray for magical healing from the stars, but if God is willing to nudge the surgeon's hand from time to time, that's cool.

But I have too many friends that are have had so many bad experiences with Christians, or that are their own personal brand of atheist (where their atheism is a religion, or it's not atheism, it's just Christian-bashing), or just plain believe that Christians have to be idiot Westboro jacks, that I find myself giving up on trying to convince them that you can be a person of faith while not being a hate-mongering fifth grader, and instead just be a loving, peaceful person.

There are a number of posts that are "this is the problem with Christians", "This is why I hate Christians", etc. I understand it's currently still chic to hate Christians. Do you hate the people, or do you hate the church? Do you hate the message, or do you hate the doctrine?

And I know, I know. There's always someone that's going to stand up and say, "But Kistune, you amazing stallion, /you're/ tolerant. /You/ love. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about how the church or a community treats people." I'm not blind to that, honest. No, I don't have the power to stop it on a grand scale, but I will stop and have stopped it if I see it happening. I can be there for the people that were mistreated. I don't have to participate in the bashing on either side. Even if I never affect a change in the world, I can know that I care about people, and do what I can to stop the injustices when and where I see them. Wasn't it the "hippies" that said "Think Globally, Act Locally"? I have my grand wishes for tolerance and understanding, but I'm realistic. I just want people to be happy around me, and if it ripples outward, which I believe it does, maybe a change can happen.

Reading a lot of these posts, I see some very open-minded people in both directions (gays are okay, and so are Christians!) that I am happy to be here.