Will killing your helpless prisoners make your alignment evil?


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Spacelard wrote:
Xpltvdeleted wrote:
Spacelard wrote:
Why is it when ever I see a thread like this I just think "Why ask the question?"
Enquiring minds want to know!

My players are (insert good alignment here) and have (insert obvious evil act here) should they change alignment to evil? They say they aren't evil because they give blood/donate to charity/like puppies and balances out the (insert heinous evil act here).

Yup there are some dubious "evil" acts but some are universally constant. Killing helpless prisoners because its convenent, selling babies to Ed Gein's mother, murder of innocents are a few examples.

I think that there is an issue with universal. I think its safe to say that people don't actually believe in any universal standards of morality.


I prefer non-euclidean alignment myself

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I don't get it. I should lurk moar.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
LilithsThrall wrote:
What alignment would you give Ras al Ghul from Batman Begins?

Easy one... he's Neutral Evil. Strongly so. he started out as an essentially Neutral Good person, but he's not only evil but irredeemable as well.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Thalin wrote:

I mean, the way you did it sure, that was evil. Tearing apart dead corpses and torture? Yeah those are bad. But killing a bound prisoner? Not so much. In fact, it's almost a neccesity; what are you going to do, drag all your captured

people through the dungeon / across the countryside?

It's a situational thing. On the other hand most adventures in Legends of the Shining Jewel take place in the city of Amtyhdor itself. Characters maintaining a lawful and/or good alignment have no excuse in not turning over captured villains to the Diamond Legion for trial.


Slacker2010 wrote:
Kolokotroni wrote:

Batman killing the joker after the 5th time he's escaped arkham and hurt/killed innocents is not an evil act to me, and never will be. Preventing evil is not evil. Batman acted to defend the jokers future victims. As long as he does not do so lightly, he is not evil.

A battered woman kills her abusive husband in his sleep. He is helpless, she killed him. That does not inherantely make it an evil act. This is not a black and white issue as people seem to claim it is. The circumstances matter, and must be interpreted individually.

Good characters try to prevent evil and have respect for life. Respect for life is different from holding it inviolet. If a character kills when given sufficient cause, it is not evil.

Under this assumption is John Travolta's Character in "Swordfish" Lawful Good? He is doing this to save innocent lives, even if he has to kill a few people. And he doesnt want to hurt people unnecessarily but he is willing to sacrifice for the greater good. His end goal is Good but he is willing to do anything to get there, what would most people say his alignment is?

Good question. But travolta's character was willing to hurt innocent people along with the guilty. That is a breaking point for me. There si a difference between harming wrongdoers to stop wrong, and harming innocents to protect a greater number of innocents.


Er, I should have asked earlier but what does the alignment change mean?


LilithsThrall wrote:

Again, this thread is going down the path that so many similar threads have gone done.

People don't and never will agree on what is "good"/"evil". That's what makes these kinds of threads so problematic.

I couldnt agree more, though sometimes jumping through the same old hoops amuses me.

Thats why i made my batman comment.

I have seen incredibly good arguments for batman being almost every alignment. I think interesting characters that have alot of depth are stifled by the alignment system in the first place. Very few really deep characters from literature or folklore neatly fit any alignment as presented. And ofcourse the whole thing is so subjective it hurts sometimes.


To the basic question of this thread:
No, you kill for the right cause. You are doing the right thing. They deserve it. It is your job to kill them. It is your DUTY to kill them. Torture them, they are evil, their souls belong to demons. You do a good deed to all of us torturing them. Their blood is not on your hands. Sssss! Do it! Do it! DO IT! Sssssss!


I would say that the character is evil. The DM has final say though.

Dark Archive

LilithsThrall wrote:

This is the Batman conundrum.

Batman continually captures the Joker, puts him in Arkham, only to have the Joker get out again and kill people.

Batman could just kill the Joker.

But, in a world which assumes that "good" and "evil" are real, he'd be crossing the line if he did so.

No, that's called job security.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
I don't get it. I should lurk moar.

There's nothing to get. Seriously.


Jared Ouimette wrote:
LilithsThrall wrote:

This is the Batman conundrum.

Batman continually captures the Joker, puts him in Arkham, only to have the Joker get out again and kill people.

Batman could just kill the Joker.

But, in a world which assumes that "good" and "evil" are real, he'd be crossing the line if he did so.

No, that's called job security.

lol, i love that explanation

Sovereign Court

I agree with several of the other posters in this thread, especially Ravenot and Druuw.

The character can think whatever he wants to about justifying his actions. As a DM, I would slap a EVIL on his character sheet so fast for the baby thing that it would break the sound barrier. Then I would probably never invite him back for a session, not because I disagree with his PC actions (I put PCs though difficult moral decisions as much as the next DM), but because I find his actions as a player unacceptable. Then again, I'm a pretty picky DM :-P

I doubt anyone would argue that Hitler was anything but evil, yet I'm sure he could justify killing innocents in horrific ways with some "greater good for the country" argument. Many people who are evil justify their actions as good, believe that they are good, and present themselves to the general public as good.


Corollary question: does it change anything whether the prisoner is one of the civilized races (PC races) or a non-civilized humanoid race 'such as orcs or goblins)? If it does, what about closer calls such as Drow and Duergar (who are civilized)?

Dark Archive

The answer to the alignment question is what the gods in your game think is good or evil. If your setting's god of good is cool with trading babies to witches, stabbing people (albeit evil people) in the back for their sweet gun, and not allowing foes to surrender, then your characters are going to be OK. If not, well why the hell did you present this as an option???

Why were the tieflings having sex while their buddies are being (loudly, I imagine) slaughtered? Also, what would you expect from your players? Did you really see them being all cool with the tieflings and letting them live?

The witch and the baby scenario was also kinda douche-y to pull on them. The powerful and intimidating-looking witch offers to help in exchange for this baby (a contrived coincidence that they found it, I assume). Let's see, save the country or save the baby? Country. Baby if possible, but definitely country. But why put them through this and expect them to take your definition of the high road?

Stabbing the evil dude in the back for his sweet gun. Not much to say to that, I think alot of parties would hear "evil" and "loot" and kill him.

And remember, make all the characters evil and some of the immaturity is going to skyrocket to alot of immaturity. I have two threads about dealing with those issues. Your group may do fine, I don't know, but it usually takes people with a more mature take on evil to do an evil campaign justice.


j l 629 wrote:

He says he would do anything for the good of his country, whatever it takes.

Putting aside all the comments about alignment which have been made so far, I would be curious to see how far "whatever it takes" the player is willing to go.

Is there anything the PC cares for? Family? Friends? Does he have any loyalties whatsoever?
If not, does the player know what roleplaying is?


TriOmegaZero wrote:
Just gonna leave this here.

Thanks, that made my day.

I had a similar situation on my NG bard. We were in a sub arctic area during winter. We were infiltrating an enemy strong hold, and using a sleep spell, we ended up with some prisoners. They were murderous bandits. We were actually acting under orders from the local law, so we were acting as deputies. We were 2 days from the nearest city.

The options were.
1. Leave them tied up to die of exposure or predators. Worse than a clean death.
2. Take them a prisoners with us where they would likely raise an alarm and get us killed.
3. Give them a quick, clean and painless death.

I really didn't want to kill them, but as I could not come up with a better alternative, that was what we did. The other important part of the description of evil is "without qualms". Evil kills without a second thought for the sanctity of life. A good person can execute an evil criminal, but it must be as a last resort.

I would rate my actions as a LN execution of justice. It was not a good act by any means, but since it was done with plenty of qualms, and only after looking for any other alternative, I do not think it was evil either.


Wonder if this thread will go crazy and get nuked the way mine did.

By the way, if my character is supposed to be evil for killing 60 innocent bystanders when he had few options left, these guys are freakin' groin-grabbingly evil!!!


As a counterpoint to the 'can't bring them back to justice' argument, please be aware that 'Low Justice' is a concept that very much comes to bear on the subject.

For example, the PC's are hired by the baron to clear out a local orc community that is raiding his lands and killing his serfs. The PC's attack the orc camp and kill most of the orcs. The only ones left are the old and infirm and the children, a percentage of whom are half-orcs due to rapine and pillage. Now, the characters round up the prisoners, and find that there are humans, elves, half-orcs, and even a drow in the prisoners the orcs had. The women are of mixed thought on their children, some want to take them and raise them, others want them put to death. To make matters more complicated, they have a dozen orc prisoners in various states, and many older orcs and females and children all together. What do they do?

Here's the issues :

1) Children are captured, some hybrids, some pure orc. Should they put them to death? Even though the mothers of some want them? What do they do with the ones the mothers want killed?
2) What do they do with the female drow they found?
3) What do they do with the elderly orcs who are no longer a threat?
4) What do they do with the prisoners they have who are young and hale orcs who could come back to cause trouble?

I can see several things they could do, taken in reverse order :

4) They have low justice, given by the Baron when he gave them the job. Using this, their alignment should dictate what they do. Good or Lawful would hold quick 'on the site' trials of the prisoners, using the rescued women as witnesses. Those that were involved in raping and eating the prisoners get killed for their crimes. Those that they don't have evidence against, or who have a prisoner standing up for them ('No, she was nice to us, she fed us, and wrapped up our wounds when we were beaten'). Any that remain could be granted clemency if they agree to be 'exiled' to a wild area, or to a nearby enemy country. A neutral or evil party could just kill all the prisoners after announcing that they are guilty of crimes against the barony. Or they could force the survivors to go attack the next barony over if they are at war or armed truce with that barony. The characters were given this authority, so they have a responsibility to use it, how they use it depends on their alignment.
3) They have low justice, they could just kill them all, or could exile them, or could send them packing as in 4 for the non-elderly. Again, depends on their alignment.
2) This one really puts a strain on the alignment thing. The drow has, so far as they know, done the barony no harm. In fact, she's been a victim of the orcs. A good party should probably release her unless they have specific knowledge of evil acts on her part, or unless she glows evil to detect evil. A neutral party could use their low justice to execute her, if drow have been an enemy of the barony before, but that's dipping toward evil unless there's specific knowledge about her, or she glows evil. An evil party would probably want to work out a trade with her, her 'services' and any knowledge she might have about the local drow for her life, and then either keep the pact or not.
1) Here's the deal breaker for good, in my opinion. The half-breeds are the really hard ones, those are half-human/half-elf/etc. Some of them have mothers who want them (some of those mothers may be orcs, depending on what happened in 4 above). A good party is going to be in a huge pickle, and may just settle for exile for most of the surviving orcs just so they don't have to kill the children. A neutral party will probably go one way or the other, but, killing the children should stain them to some extent, especially wholesale slaughter of babies (even if you go with the 'evil from birth' outlook Jason prefers, those half-breeds aren't). An evil party will pretty much do whatever they want with the babies, from killing them to selling them to slavers.

Notice that in much of the above though, helpless prisoners were killed. Not because it was more convenient to the PC's, but because they had been given the responsibility of low justice. So those killings of prisoners were not murder, they were proper and legal executions of criminals.

Now, if they went out on their own and decided to attack the orcs because the orcs were not humans/elves/halflings, and the orcs had not been troubling the local communities (any more than the humans had been bothering them), then the whole thing changes. They are basically just attacking the orcs for their own means, stealing and killing with no justifications, and killing those prisoners becomes evil because it's for their benefit, not some greater good or responsibility.


Wow a lot of responses, still reading them all. I wanted to make one point clear that keeps coming up.

This was a hostage situation in the city hall. There were town guards down 2 flights of stairs. There was the town prison 100 ft across the bridge.

The PCs mentality is that once you work against them your life is forfeit.

The deposed king's people did do very bad things to take control of the city and maintain their hold out of fear and intimidation. But again their perspective is that this is the rightful king and they will do what it takes to make things right (sounds familiar?).

As far as why ask this question I need some input on where to draw the line because of the very strict 'you heal evil people and I smite you' policy of the gods.

I'll get back to reading all of these responses now, thanks for the input.


Frogboy wrote:

Wonder if this thread will go crazy and get nuked the way mine did.

By the way, if my character is supposed to be evil for killing 60 innocent bystanders when he had few options left, these guys are freakin' groin-grabbingly evil!!!

I was expecting you :) Most people here agree this party is evil.


Yep somethings are just really easy calls

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
Quote:
What is with all the threads asking about if a character is evil? The opinion of people on the internet don't matter. What matters is if the people in your group can come to a consensus on what good and evil mean in your game. Getting support from the interwebs means nothing.


j l 629 wrote:

Wow a lot of responses, still reading them all. I wanted to make one point clear that keeps coming up.

This was a hostage situation in the city hall. There were town guards down 2 flights of stairs. There was the town prison 100 ft across the bridge.

The PCs mentality is that once you work against them your life is forfeit.

The deposed king's people did do very bad things to take control of the city and maintain their hold out of fear and intimidation. But again their perspective is that this is the rightful king and they will do what it takes to make things right (sounds familiar?).

As far as why ask this question I need some input on where to draw the line because of the very strict 'you heal evil people and I smite you' policy of the gods.

I'll get back to reading all of these responses now, thanks for the input.

The Pcs mentality is hardly one that would represent a chaotic good character. Chaotic good are much more lenient in their approach and beliefs. I know because I play chaotic good characters. The either for or against us is a harsh lawful mentality. Now this policy the gods enforce I find paradoxical for good deities. A good deity would seek to win an evil person back to the side of good and their weapons are compassion and mercy. Healing someone evil shows a good deities benevolence in a higher hope of winning that person back to good.

Dark Archive

As far as clerics and healing goes, if god gives you lemons, YOU FIND A NEW GOD! :)


Frogboy wrote:

Wonder if this thread will go crazy and get nuked the way mine did.

By the way, if my character is supposed to be evil for killing 60 innocent bystanders when he had few options left, these guys are freakin' groin-grabbingly evil!!!

Absolutely. If it was one event, and they showed remorse, I would be inclined to only drop them to neutral, and let the work back to good, but this is multiple evil events with no signs of remorse.

j l 629 wrote:


The PCs mentality is that once you work against them your life is forfeit.

This is an evil mentality. An innocent, old lady who shelters followers of the old king because they are cold and hungry is doing a good act. She gives them shelter as an act of kindness and sends them on their way. By the parties justification they can kill her without a second thought because she unknowingly worked against the PC's aims.


In the Iron Kingdoms there are not that many gods like in most standard settings so finding a new god isn't as easy as it seems.

And again the IK system has the 'pain of healing' where if you heal someone of an opposed alignment of your god you both get punished. It is a random roll but some of them can really mess you up for long periods of time. This is why alignment is important here.

Also the cleric of the party, worships the neutral earth goddess Dhunia, saw what they were doing and told them, you do what you have to do pretty much. He aided in stabilizing the dying foes and bringing the to consciousness. Should he be punished for this?

I have another player who didn't make it last session who is a Lawful Good Dwarven paladin who would have righted the moral compass of the group. Wait until he gets back and sees the evil auras on them.

(side not I do not NPC PCs whose players are not there, they get sucked up into a cursed magic item bound to the party and spit out next time they show up).

Dark Archive

j l 629 wrote:

In the Iron Kingdoms there are not that many gods like in most standard settings so finding a new god isn't as easy as it seems.

And again the IK system has the 'pain of healing' where if you heal someone of an opposed alignment of your god you both get punished. It is a random roll but some of them can really mess you up for long periods of time. This is why alignment is important here.

Also the cleric of the party, worships the neutral earth goddess Dhunia, saw what they were doing and told them, you do what you have to do pretty much. He aided in stabilizing the dying foes and bringing the to consciousness. Should he be punished for this?

I have another player who didn't make it last session who is a Lawful Good Dwarven paladin who would have righted the moral compass of the group. Wait until he gets back and sees the evil auras on them.

(side not I do not NPC PCs whose players are not there, they get sucked up into a cursed magic item bound to the party and spit out next time they show up).

Did the foes have a neutral component in their alignment? If not, he gets punished. If by neutral you mean NG, then yes, he gets punished, if you mean True Neutral, it's up to you how the god reacts to him healing everyone, although I'm pretty sure they'd approve.

Dark Archive

Charender wrote:
Frogboy wrote:


j l 629 wrote:


The PCs mentality is that once you work against them your life is forfeit.
This is an evil mentality. An innocent, old lady who shelters followers of the old king because they are cold and hungry is doing a good act. She gives them shelter as an act of kindness and sends them on their way. By the parties justification they can kill her without a second thought because she unknowingly worked against the PC's aims.

I think he meant "betrayed/actively tried to kill us".

Grand Lodge

You know, I have a weapons of the gods character very similar to this PC...he is definitely NOT good. In fact he is pretty firmly in the heading towards a villain track as two of the good PCs want him dead for various evil acts done, and the other two would want him dead if they weren´t so oblivious that they accept my very weak lies. Of course like all good villains, I am leading them along for my own gains and pitting them against my enemies and against each other so they can´t unite against me. Maybe more of a evil mastermind then this PC...but a lot of what he is doing was my early days of villainy hehe.


I would move him closer to Neutral on his good/evil axis. Remember that neutral people are not good people. They are not the kind of people you would want to hang out with. They can be selfish, mean, heartless, backstabbing, and ruthless - but that by itself doesn't make one evil. The evil part comes in when they enjoy inflicting pain like this on other people or because the sheer scale of what they are doing is beyond redemption.

The PC here, unless I didn't catch it, didn't do this because he wanted to see the prisoner writhe in anguish, or because of some sick pleasure in watching someone else suffer. He was almost duty-bound or had run out of other options. That is a perfectly neutral thing to do - but it doesn't make him evil.

On that note - I've noticed a tendency for people to think of the neutral alignments as almost a "buffered good" rather than a neutral. Neutral is a dark alignment - it's not evil, but is certainly isn't good either.


What about eating helpless prisoners? What if you were REALLY hungry?


I don't know if yall missed it but when ya sell a baby to a woman wearing human skin then act like your helping to find that child while thinking it's funny....yep your evil

There really is nothing more to say after you do that except some folks want to justify everything just because they dislike the AL system. But here it is clear cut. Only some one thats evil would do such actions. They can paint them however they want but the actions were evil.


j l 629 wrote:

...

He oversaw the selling of a lost orphan baby he found to an evil witch wearing cloths made of human skin in exchange for her aid in helping a city under attack. "I don't know that baby" was their reply. Of course they had to come across a blind lost mother of the baby frantically searching later, which they fail to tell anything about the baby to and pretend to help her look.

He shot a member of the army of the nation he is pretending to work with in the back pretty much because he really liked his awesome pistol. This man had done some bad wartime things and had captured an agent of the PC's nation so this is a fuzzy line, but not a good action.

...

These are things a neutral character would do just as easily as an evil character. Like I said, neutral isn't good.


NE would, NG would not true N I also do not see doing it. A N person might if they thought they had no other option and would feel bad about it but it needed done and all, after all not there kid. They had options and played it up, zero guilt there. There was no gain, then Acting like they were helping find he child they sold put it over the line.


Frostflame wrote:
I was expecting you :) Most people here agree this party is evil.

:) Yeah, I think they one upped my character.

TriOmegaZero wrote:
Quote:
What is with all the threads asking about if a character is evil? The opinion of people on the internet don't matter. What matters is if the people in your group can come to a consensus on what good and evil mean in your game. Getting support from the interwebs means nothing.

Mine was mostly asking the question about what evil is. Is it someone who seeks to do evil the same way that a good person strives to be good? Or is it someone who commits evil acts and doesn't have any moral dilemmas about it? From what I gathered from my thread, the answer is yes no maybe.


If you're the DM and your player is mature enough, just speak to him out of game play and explain that his character is evil. Being evil doesn't necessarily mean being a jerk. He could still role play his character the same way he always has but his character sheet would note Neutral Evil. If I read the description of the group correctly, no one seems to mind anyway.


For me the judgment call for aligned actions generally comes down to:

1. What the person that performed the actions did.
2. The motivation for the action.
3. The intention behind the actions.
4. What the victim of the actions has done.

And I usually use at least a 5 point scale (the scale points being -2, -1, 0, 1, 2) for the answer with a -2 being the least favorable and 2 being the most. The "weight" for the questions would be (What = x4 modifier, Motivation x 3 modifier, intention x 2, and past actions x1 modifier).

It is possible that the later issues could change the over all alignment of the action but it isn't likely as in my mind what you actually do is more important than what you meant to do or why you did it.

Please note that the questions are based on the idea that "staying in alignment" is the end goal... the more inline with the alignment the higher the "score" of the action.

Not something I really share that often, however people looking over my shoulder will occasionally see the numerical results of this (if not the process). Generally about 20 points will start moving you along, while the longer it's been since you've done a "transgressive" action will help drain off old "points".

And at the end of the day I don't really share the system or where the character is at any given time because I like being able to have my room to fudge things a bit if needed, and because I generally don't like "forcing" changes on players without having lots of time and cause to thing about it.


seekerofshadowlight wrote:
NE would, NG would not true N I also do not see doing it. A N person might if they thought they had no other option and would feel bad about it but it needed done and all, after all not there kid. They had options and played it up, zero guilt there. There was no gain, then Acting like they were helping find he child they sold put it over the line.

Yeah, I'm talking about LN, N & CN.


Murder of innocents, unarmed prisoners, or really anyone who isnt a threat to you is undoubtably an evil act. Doing it once isnt enough for an alignment shift though

IMO to many people play neutral to skirt the bounds of evil aligned PCs. To counteract this I do a bit of a point rule when determining alignment shifts. If a neutral character does 10 unquestionably evil things without doing 1 unquestionably good thing their alignment shifts to evil. Now notice I say unquestionably evil acts, these are things like murder of innocents/prisoners and involentary slavery. This works for my game and it may or may not work for you but from what Im reading you cant let him continue to play "evil but chaotic on paper" for much longer or its going to cause an issue.

There is of course also in game negative reinforcement which I find works quite well. Have the city watch get involved somehow, either by witnessing the crime themselves or by someone accusing them of the crime. Put them on trial and force them to defend their actions. Theres also nothing wrong with a good ol' PC lynching to drive the point home. Nothing stops evil as well as true justice *nods sagely*

Liberty's Edge

What if you go back in time, and they're a baby. A baby that will grow to be Ryan Seacrest?
You'd be evil, but you'd have to do it. So you'd be a hero.


Ravenot wrote:

Absolutely it's a good act. "Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette." is the very road to great leadership. Take Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, or Genghis Khan. They're all considered great, powerful leaders of their people and were greatly praised by them. According to their own country, they were far from evil. Yet they murdered many in the name of their countries, and were ruthless.

In my games when I DM, I always look to see what the highest motives a character follows in regards to his alignment. It kind of comes down to perspective. What is the characters perspective of good? Yes, there are some characters who closely follow morality, so breaking that morality would break his alignment. On the other hand, there is a Lawful character belonging to a game i'm DMing currently. He has a very strict "Code" that he follows of a secret society. Sometimes, in order to follow that code, he will break laws and even perform questionable acts, but to him, he is following HIS higher law to the letter. A good character could have the same analog, meaning his version of good could include killing a thousand babies if it meant killing hitler before he grew up and stopping a worse evil.

So you have to find out what the characters motives for good are. Do you think he believes he is doing the greater good and protecting his country/life/loved ones? Or is he stepping out of his normal bounds and has snapped from his normal path?

Yes, i'm playing the devils advocate. But the fact remains, each individual alignment ISN'T black and white. There's a wide range of personality within each alignment, and they're not all cut and dry.

By that logic Torquemada would've been a Paladin.


Ravenot wrote:

Absolutely it's a good act. "Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette." is the very road to great leadership. Take Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, or Genghis Khan. They're all considered great, powerful leaders of their people and were greatly praised by them. According to their own country, they were far from evil. Yet they murdered many in the name of their countries, and were ruthless.

Absolutely not: Great leadership doesn't mean a good person -- it doesn't mean a decent person -- it doesn't even mean a "not evil" person.

You seem to have your terms confused.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
LilithsThrall wrote:
j l 629 wrote:

He says he would do anything for the good of his country, whatever it takes.

Putting aside all the comments about alignment which have been made so far, I would be curious to see how far "whatever it takes" the player is willing to go.

Is there anything the PC cares for? Family? Friends? Does he have any loyalties whatsoever?
If not, does the player know what roleplaying is?

Instead of alignment The White Wolf Storyteller system had a Humanity Score. rated from 0 to 10. Basiclly the number pretty much defined where your character would draw the line with 10 being basically Gandhi and 0 a completely souless and sociopathic monster who no longer drew the line at any act no matter how monstrous a one you might conceive.


LazarX wrote:
LilithsThrall wrote:
j l 629 wrote:

He says he would do anything for the good of his country, whatever it takes.

Putting aside all the comments about alignment which have been made so far, I would be curious to see how far "whatever it takes" the player is willing to go.

Is there anything the PC cares for? Family? Friends? Does he have any loyalties whatsoever?
If not, does the player know what roleplaying is?

Instead of alignment The White Wolf Storyteller system had a Humanity Score. rated from 0 to 10. Basiclly the number pretty much defined where your character would draw the line with 10 being basically Gandhi and 0 a completely souless and sociopathic monster who no longer drew the line at any act no matter how monstrous a one you might conceive.

Yep, a lot of things I hate about that system, but the morality system was actually easy to follow, for the most part, and examples of 'where my line are' were pretty straight forward. But, it's also a system of grays, so it needed that. D&D/PF is a system of absolutes, so instead it needs less grays and more concretes and absolutes.

Unless of course you play like I do where you have two concrete sides that are black and white and a huge messy gray lump in between. ;)

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Windcaler wrote:

Murder of innocents, unarmed prisoners, or really anyone who isnt a threat to you is undoubtably an evil act. Doing it once isnt enough for an alignment shift though

In my book it is. A good person who's done that has already traveled the road to evil in her mind. In fact I'd say the more "good" you supposedly were, the greater the shift you've ALREADY DONE to commit such an act even once.

The Exchange

Alignment is tricky- It's a mindset. If you're actively going out and trying to help and save people, you're good; If you're actively going out and hurting people, you're evil; If you do neither, you're neutral. Alignment shift is almost never immediate unless magic/curses are involved, but generally an immediate shift is a DM believing that you just chose the wrong alignment at character creation, which I can understand also.

That said, alignment has never been a big issue at my table. We generally use it as a starting point for our character's personality, and only the paladin ever really becomes an issue because that whole class forces alignment debates just by existing. When I play, I honestly don't even write an alignment down half of the time, instead just playing the character in line with it's concept. If another player asks me what my alignment is, I say "You tell me" and have them guess based on my actions. None of MY class features are dependent on me acting a certain way so if I turn to the dark side, it's not that big of a deal (except that one person in our group is permanently Lawful Good no matter what).


Hunterofthedusk wrote:

Alignment is tricky- It's a mindset. If you're actively going out and trying to help and save people, you're good; If you're actively going out and hurting people, you're evil; If you do neither, you're neutral. Alignment shift is almost never immediate unless magic/curses are involved, but generally an immediate shift is a DM believing that you just chose the wrong alignment at character creation, which I can understand also.

There are some edge cases, like the OPs case where the guy's mindset is 'I'm going to save my kingdom!' and he does it by any means necessary, including murdering prisoners and selling babies to evil witches.

In general though, if the character and player are in the same mindset, and are in the mindset of 'I need to help people' then yeah, they're generally good.

Hunterofthedusk wrote:


That said, alignment has never been a big issue at my table. We generally use it as a starting point for our character's personality, and only the paladin ever really becomes an issue because that whole class forces alignment debates just by existing. When I play, I honestly don't even write an alignment down half of the time, instead just playing the character in line with it's concept. If another player asks me what my alignment is, I say "You tell me" and have them guess based on my actions. None of MY class features are dependent on me acting a certain way so if I turn to the dark side, it's not that big of a deal (except that one person in our group is permanently Lawful Good no matter what).

I've had changes, but it's usually gradual. I had a character start off as CG. He ended up being in charge of the group, and most of the group was CN or CG. He ended up having to impose discipline on them just to keep things from exploding in their face all the time, so over time he ended up going to NG instead of CG.

Another character started off as NG and ended up shifting to CN over the course of the campaign because the player couldn't stop playing selfish vs altruistic.


Sweet mother of monkeys. My two cents:

Law/Chaos is dependent on your character's respect for a code (be it city laws, something personal, a country, etc), and how consistent your character's actions are with that. Lawful characters consistently act in accordance with a set of beliefs, Chaotic characters tend not to.

By that metric, I'd put the character the OP mentioned at Lawful something.

Good/Evil is dependent on how you go about doing things, and is probably best understood as unselfish/selfish. Good characters prefer to put themselves at risk than innocents, etc, etc.

The OP's character strictly adheres to the code of "Save my country". He's Lawful. He chooses, however, to put innocents at risk (giving the baby to the witch), over putting himself in harms way (fighting the witch). Other examples include burning down houses to kill a single guy instead of taking the risk of going in there and killing only him. In the strictest sense, those are evil, selfish acts.

The OP's mentioned character is Lawful Evil. So was Ghengis Khan...and so are most realpolitik leaders. That's okay - there's nothing that says you can't be a monster of a person and have good effects on the world.

-Cross

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