The Great Debate Re: Alignment


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Kolokotroni wrote:
I dont know if killing an 'innocent' is clearly an evil act.

It is. According to the rules in the book. The only other two alignments (good and neutral) have compunctions against killing an innocent to attain a goal. That leaves only Evil.

However, everything you mentioned after that had nothing to do with an innocent person.

We aren't talking about a person innocent of a specific crime or evil. We are talking about Good or Neutral people, basically.

A soldier is not an innocent person. Someone trying to kill you is not innocent. Well.. unless you are evil, heh.
A demon, by definition (alignment of "always" evil), cannot be innocent.
The fact that an orc is marauding means that it's not innocent.

.

If the assassins didn't care if the people they killed were children who had nothing to do with this, they just needed to make sure they left no witnesses, then they would ping on the detect evil radar.
If the "witnesses" only included people they were told were not innocent, then it's most definitely not an evil act by itself.


Kaisoku wrote:
Darkon Slayer wrote:
someone above said it too, but LN is a dangerous alignment, because this person will do something they are told with out question. It is as I tell my players the alignment of the perfect soldier!

Wrong. It is still evil to knowingly kill an innocent person.

Lawful Evil is dangerous because they will follow any order at all.

A Lawful Neutral person would, by game definition, "have compunctions against killing innocent people".

Someone who doesn't care about killing innocent people is the very definition of Evil.

.

However, if they were going by wrong information that told them their targets weren't innocent...

The act is evil if the person knows what they are doing is killing innocent people, that does not always make them an evil person. They could have been mislead. If they believe what they are told, that they are saving innocent people, then they are not committing an evil act in their eyes.


Darkon Slayer wrote:
Kaisoku wrote:
Darkon Slayer wrote:
someone above said it too, but LN is a dangerous alignment, because this person will do something they are told with out question. It is as I tell my players the alignment of the perfect soldier!

Wrong. It is still evil to knowingly kill an innocent person.

Lawful Evil is dangerous because they will follow any order at all.

A Lawful Neutral person would, by game definition, "have compunctions against killing innocent people".

Someone who doesn't care about killing innocent people is the very definition of Evil.

.

However, if they were going by wrong information that told them their targets weren't innocent...

The act is evil if the person knows what they are doing is killing innocent people, that does not always make them an evil person. They could have been mislead. If they believe what they are told, that they are saving innocent people, then they are not committing an evil act in their eyes.

The default assumption is that alignment is objective not subjective. How they personally view the act doesn't really matter.


Quote:
So, the question: Were the assassins or those who hired them evil?

Killing unarmed innocent civilians is: Evil.

This is just one set of actions, not an alignment. You can't necessarily define a person's entire alignment based on one action or set of actions. *Sometimes* you can, but that would have to be a very evil action. In this case (murdering a bunch of innocent civilians), I think it's clear the assassins are (like most assassins) lawful evil.

Assassins are generally evil, but there can be exceptions. . . just infrequent, very odd exceptions.

Quote:
I dont know if killing an 'innocent' is clearly an evil act.

It depends on what you define as innocent. If they're truly innocent (as was the assumption based on the OP), then yes, it's clearly evil. If the innocence can be questioned, then yes, there is room for ambiguity. But not the way the OP defined things. The civilians were simply part of a traveling caravan. They probably didn't even know the party -- or at least had very little interest in them.


KenderKin wrote:

The other thing is every DM seems to want to create these long drawn out scenarios of how the evil guys aren't really evil b/c whatever reason.....

90% of the time BBEGs should be evil (hence the E in BBEG).

Eh, this simply isn't the case. I'll give you guys a little more information regarding the situation. The person who gave the order ends up having most of the correct information. The king is in fact going to try to use the artifact to kill thousands of people and will be using the party as long as they are beneficial and then attempting to dispose of them.

There were no women or children in the caravan, it was all men, and the assassins had no indication of who were combatants and who weren't.

Quote:

Then DMs want to try to figure out how to "screw" the paladin over......

Maybe this is a recent trend, but it seems like there is alot of "reasons" to take away the benefits of detect evil/smite evil etc.....

If you as the DM don't want paladins simply don't allow them.

I have no problems with paladins, and I had no intention of screwing over the paladin. As a matter of fact, the paladin had taken his first level of paladin at the start of that gaming session and I had no idea that he was going down that road when I had prepared the game.

Quote:

I would make a druid or bard or monk or ...... for the game........

Also need to have a big discussion about expectations prior to character creation regarding this issue

See numerous threads
limitations of the paladins code for inspiration.

Isn't part of the challenge of roleplaying to make your character work in a hostile world where not everything is going to go their way? It seems silly to me to sit down and plan out which characters will and will not work in a particular campaign, that strips most of the fun out of it.

For the record, the player apologized and explained that his views of morality are more black and white than most and that he should have shied away from playing a lawful good character with a DM who he knew to have tendencies of putting the players into situations where the "right" choice isn't always clear. He's still not going to play, but we've put the issue behind us as friends.


thegreatpablo wrote:
There were no women or children in the caravan, it was all men, and the assassins had no indication of who were combatants and who weren't.

OK, but the fact still remains: they were innocent civilians. Did the assassins attempt to interrogate them? Did they try to inform the PCs of the situation? Did they really do anything other than murder first, ask questions later?

Hint: murder first, ask questions later = Evil.


Kaisoku wrote:
Kolokotroni wrote:
I dont know if killing an 'innocent' is clearly an evil act.

It is. According to the rules in the book. The only other two alignments (good and neutral) have compunctions against killing an innocent to attain a goal. That leaves only Evil.

However, everything you mentioned after that had nothing to do with an innocent person.

We aren't talking about a person innocent of a specific crime or evil. We are talking about Good or Neutral people, basically.

A soldier is not an innocent person. Someone trying to kill you is not innocent. Well.. unless you are evil, heh.
A demon, by definition (alignment of "always" evil), cannot be innocent.
The fact that an orc is marauding means that it's not innocent.

.

If the assassins didn't care if the people they killed were children who had nothing to do with this, they just needed to make sure they left no witnesses, then they would ping on the detect evil radar.
If the "witnesses" only included people they were told were not innocent, then it's most definitely not an evil act by itself.

What i meant by 'innocent' is someone who is actually innocent but not believed to be by innocent by the subject in question. In the OP's case, the assasins killed the guards and the others because they believed them to be doing evil.

The comments about the demon was to challenge a different possible point. "Killing a defensless/unconcious enemy is evil". Which I also dont believe it to be the case. It is entirely situational, which is why I think calling the alignment section 'rules' is ludicrous.

Also, Batman, that is all...

Silver Crusade

If these "assassins" are willing to kill others for cash, then that's about as NE as it gets. Have they "worked" before to kill others? Most true "assassins" wouldn't need a compelling reason as you've provided.

However, if we're talking a group of people duped into attacking a caravan believing their actions were noble and saving lives, then we're into something else. However, I cannot fathom a "good" person knowing that there's unarmed civilians in the caravan (not disguised demons, etc.) advocating to slay them as they sleep, no matter what the rationale.

If the issue is how to treat your paladin, can you fault him? He's caught a bunch of despicable murderers of innocent people. They're feeding him a story trying to justify the murders, but if they were willing to use non-lethal means to avoid harming the armed and dangerous party, why not knock out the civilians as well?


But see killing the folks did not make them evil. LN is most likely, as they killed "the enemy" and killed them the fastest way they could without malice.

They were ordered to take out an enemy camp and "free" the pc's. If killing folks makes you evil then you can only ever play evil. One evil action does not make your evil and the GM had to right to rule the "assassins" which seemed to be soldiers as non evil. In war you do some not nice things, that does not mean your evil. As I sad LN scary fraking AL as you can justify about anything for the greater good or just following orders.

I guess you pc's save Evey orc at -1 hp then and would never ever take out a sleeping orc sentry or sleeping orcs in a tent.

But I guess it's ok then as well they had to all be evil right?


Ah, but they were not killing for cash, they were killing for patriotism. They were, so far as they knew, facing a caravan full of guards, not civilians - in fact, perhaps they were ALL agents of the other government.

Now, the paladin should be thinking: 'Hang on, if these people are the despicable evil people I think they should be for what they did, why am I not detecting evil?' from which they can deduce that something else is going on and things are not as they seem. What the player is thinking: 'These people should be evil from what I have seen them do, therefore I should detect evil, therefore the DM has done things wrong.'

This is the real issue here, not the question of the act being evil or not, or the assassins being evil or not.


seekerofshadowlight wrote:

But see killing the folks did not make them evil. LN is most likely, as they killed "the enemy" and killed them the fastest way they could without malice.

They were ordered to take out an enemy camp and "free" the pc's. If killing folks makes you evil then you can only ever play evil. One evil action does not make your evil and the GM had to right to rule the "assassins" which seemed to be soldiers as non evil. In war you do some not nice things, that does not mean your evil. As I sad LN scary fraking AL as you can justify about anything for the greater good or just following orders.

I guess you pc's save Evey orc at -1 hp then and would never ever take out a sleeping orc sentry or sleeping orcs in a tent.

But I guess it's ok then as well they had to all be evil right?

Does each person whose throat they slit count as an individual act or is all just one act. "Sure I slaughtered an entire village, but it still only counts as one."


I see this all the time with threads important details always seem to be missing.

Such as

traveling caravan
All men
1 guard

Was this a traveling caravan or a military escort?
Were the men in fact incapable of defending themselves?
How many men were on this trip?
How many of them at least carried a weapon of some sort during the day?

If you have scouted a caravan and see 100 armed men with grim looks of determination and you have a mission of stopping them......

Something is still missing..........


Dabbler wrote:

Ah, but they were not killing for cash, they were killing for patriotism. They were, so far as they knew, facing a caravan full of guards, not civilians - in fact, perhaps they were ALL agents of the other government.

Now, the paladin should be thinking: 'Hang on, if these people are the despicable evil people I think they should be for what they did, why am I not detecting evil?' from which they can deduce that something else is going on and things are not as they seem. What the player is thinking: 'These people should be evil from what I have seen them do, therefore I should detect evil, therefore the DM has done things wrong.'

This is the real issue here, not the question of the act being evil or not, or the assassins being evil or not.

Thank you, this is the very core of the issue, and something I couldn't put my finger on. The player was challenging the DM rather than the character challenging his assumptions.


Dabbler wrote:
Ah, but they were not killing for cash, they were killing for patriotism. They were, so far as they knew, facing a caravan full of guards, not civilians - in fact, perhaps they were ALL agents of the other government.

If patriotism is “the last refuge of a scoundrel”, it is not merely because evil deeds may be performed in the name of patriotism, but because patriotic fervor can obliterate moral distinctions altogether.

- Ralph B. Perry


So a soldier is always evil. Always, every soldier in every war therefor is evil. As sneaking into the enemy camp and taking out guards and enemy troops to rescue anyone is an evil act that makes anyone doing it irredeemably evil it seems.


seekerofshadowlight wrote:
So a soldier is always evil. Always, every soldier in every war therefor is evil. As sneaking into the enemy camp and taking out guards and enemy troops to rescue anyone is an evil act that makes anyone doing it irredeemably evil it seems.

Apparently to some people it is, so by that though, why play the game anything your character can do is inherently evil.


seekerofshadowlight wrote:
So a soldier is always evil. Always, every soldier in every war therefor is evil. As sneaking into the enemy camp and taking out guards and enemy troops to rescue anyone is an evil act that makes anyone doing it irredeemably evil it seems.

Killing when unnecessary, especially if your foes are not necessarily evil (as many have pointed out, they could have just been doing THEIR job) is evident of an evil mindset. Killing when necessary isn't good but is usually not evil.


seekerofshadowlight wrote:
As sneaking into the enemy camp and taking out guards and enemy troops to rescue anyone is an evil act that makes anyone doing it irredeemably evil it seems.

What about a camp full of unarmed civilians -- with one armed guard? And the guard was killed last -- civilians were taken out first so they wouldn't beat the armed assassins to death -- since all civilians are monks q:


Yep

missing information.....

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
seekerofshadowlight wrote:
So a soldier is always evil.

Yes. Yes we are.


meabolex wrote:
seekerofshadowlight wrote:
As sneaking into the enemy camp and taking out guards and enemy troops to rescue anyone is an evil act that makes anyone doing it irredeemably evil it seems.
What about a camp full of unarmed civilians -- with one armed guard? And the guard was killed last -- civilians were taken out first so they wouldn't beat the armed assassins to death -- since all civilians are monks q:

The OP has replied , the "Assassins" were told all people in the camp other then the party were enemy's, but acting as a caravan. There were no civilians just enemy's acting as such

So when you sneaking into orc terrorty and then have to sneak into the orc camp full of mostly unarmed orcs who are acting as traders, to save a group of people that do not know the orcs will kill em once hey stop being useful..do you kill them or knock them all out and tie them up and hope the other orc groups in the area do not find them?

Say your were ordered to take out the whole camp and leave no witnesses? Is it ok because they are orc's? Do you knock them out, maybe dooming your party and any other unit in the area or do you kill them?

If you kill a single one ever your evil.]

Edit: The GM has pointed out this was a war mission, a pre-emptive one perhaps but it was a military mission against a hostel power.


Well in PF orcs are effectively always evil.

Dark Archive

Was Alexander the Great evil? Was Hitler evil?


Rather than compare this situation to something completely out of context, I'll give an example of how non-evil "assassins" would have handled this.

Note: Non-evil assassins are fairly rare. They'd rather be called mercenaries.

The mercenaries would be divided into two groups.

The first group would have approached the caravan as lost travelers looking for some food/water/directions.

The second would be close by in the wood, sneaking along and prepared to ambush the caravan if needed.

The "face" group would have figured out who was really a threat. They would have identified the guard, the innocent civilians, and the PCs. They would get on the good side of the PCs.

Once they realized the situation, they would try to separate the paladin from the rest of the caravan and tried to reason with him. Since the paladin could detect evil (and possibly detect lies), the assassins would gain the paladin's trust. This would convince the PCs to come along willingly.

Since there's only one guard, the mercenaries could simply demand to let the PCs go. There's no way a single guard could take a whole squad of mercenaries + PCs. If the guard had attacked, he would have been captured and taken prisoner.

Then the PCs and the mercenaries would leave -- possibly with the guard as prisoner. The civilians in the caravan would be on their own.

How is this that hard to do -- especially in the context of D&D/PF?


pres man wrote:
seekerofshadowlight wrote:
So a soldier is always evil. Always, every soldier in every war therefor is evil. As sneaking into the enemy camp and taking out guards and enemy troops to rescue anyone is an evil act that makes anyone doing it irredeemably evil it seems.
Killing when unnecessary, especially if your foes are not necessarily evil (as many have pointed out, they could have just been doing THEIR job) is evident of an evil mindset. Killing when necessary isn't good but is usually not evil.

But who decides what is necessary? When fighting with ruthless people, you have to be ruthless or you die, or worse, someone else dies.

Those caravaners were 'foreign agents in disguise' (traditionally, these are always executed if captured). They could have been casters. They could have had concealed weapons. They could have killed the party rather than let them be 'rescued'. This mission is of vital importance, and that means you cannot take any chances. When special forces are sent into a hostage situation, taking prisoners is not their first priority - rescuing hostages and staying alive are. The textbook case for this is the Iranian Embassy siege in London. Is anyone calling the soldiers who performed that rescue 'evil' because they killed all but one of the hostage-takers?

You cannot judge it with hindsight, you can only judge the actions of the people by what they can be expected to know and what orders they are given.

In the case of soldiers, they are trained to obey orders first and foremost. Why? because in the middle of a battle, you don't, for example, always have time to explain to your subordinates that the 'civilian' cars over there approaching the checkpoint are, according to intelligence, packed with explosives that will be set off killing fellow soldiers and innocent lives both. You generally just have time to say: "Shoot those cars!" and if the CO giving the order is wrong, then it is 100% on his head, not on the men that actually shoot.

That said, there are occasions when soldiers should challenge their orders, where they feel they have clear information that the person giving the orders would be unaware of. They can register protest, as well, but to actually refuse is mutiny. War crimes trials (at least those that do not deal with the people giving the orders but those taking them) are not necessarily about what people did under orders so much as the fact that they never questioned those orders, registered protest or tried to inform their superiors of the consequences.


Kaisoku wrote:
Darkon Slayer wrote:
someone above said it too, but LN is a dangerous alignment, because this person will do something they are told with out question. It is as I tell my players the alignment of the perfect soldier!

Wrong. It is still evil to knowingly kill an innocent person.

Lawful Evil is dangerous because they will follow any order at all.

A Lawful Neutral person would, by game definition, "have compunctions against killing innocent people".

Someone who doesn't care about killing innocent people is the very definition of Evil.

.

However, if they were going by wrong information that told them their targets weren't innocent...

The argument that it is wrong to always take a life is something that many (perhaps most) of us find ridiculous. It leads to things like "if somebody is in intense physical pain and is only going to suffer a painful lingering death, we still shouldn't pull the plug" and "if we know somebody is going to seriously harm or kill someone else, we still shouldn't use lethal force to stop them". Scratch that, "ridiculous" is the wrong word. Many of us find the argument that it is always wrong to take a life to be morally repugnant.

While some people here hold to the notion of never resorting to violence under any circumstances, I can only commend them for the ferver of standing by their beliefs. I cannot commend them for those beliefs.

In this case, the question is whether a LN character would take a life if he were ordered to do so. The question is not whether he'd have any qualms about taking the life he was ordered to take. He may well let himself feel badly as long as he follows the order.


Special Ops that do rescue missions usually try to get intel before rushing in and killing indiscriminately. That appears not to have happened here. Thus much of the killing was unnecessary.


pres man wrote:
Special Ops that do rescue missions usually try to get intel before rushing in and killing indiscriminately. That appears not to have happened here. Thus much of the killing was unnecessary.

Indeed, they were pretty terrible special ops forces q:


So any race but human can be killed without reason and it is not evil, Killing a human is always evil.

So every soldier is auto LE every one, every guard, every one with a weapon and all PC's are auto evil.

Got ya

Sorry guys the "asaasins" were a cut case of LN. The followed there lawful orders and took out an enemy force. They went out of there way to not harm the "hostages" even when said hostages attacked them. If they were LE, they would have killed any party member that attacked them as well.

Edit: Also if they were a spec ops force they did the mission: Neutralize the enemy and save the hostages, just what they did. I guess Spec op forces are all evil if they kill and unarmed enemy or one that has not attacked them first.

Sovereign Court

I don't swing greatswords at your poetry readings, please keep your post-industrial discussions of moral ambiguity out of my high fantasy roleplaying.


So if a human soldier is ordered to put a group of halfling babies on pikes, he is LN because he is obeying his orders.

Got ya.


That however is not what they did. The killed adult enemy combats that were unarmed and in disguise as trader.

The did nothing that would make hem evil. Baby killing yes, but they killed people who the intell told them were enemy units out to kill people of there nation.

So while what they did maybe evil, that does not make them evil in the lest. As I said if you can kill an unarmed orc and not be evil there is zero difference. Even a paladin can kill an none evil enemy without loosing his powers.{Maybe not an unarmed one though}


seekerofshadowlight wrote:

That however is not what they did. The killed adult enemy combats that were unarmed and in disguise as trader.

The did nothing that would make hem evil. Baby killing yes, but they killed people who the intell told them were enemy units out to kill people of there nation.

Maybe those babies are really short monks in disguise.

"That however is not what they did." LOL, like what happened has stopped you from throwing out ridiculous what-ifs. LOL


Nebelwerfer41 wrote:
I don't swing greatswords at your poetry readings, please keep your post-industrial discussions of moral ambiguity out of my high fantasy roleplaying.

It's all fun and games until the holy word hits the fan.

(At least it was nerfed. . .)


ElyasRavenwood wrote:
I will toss out a very simple question. Do the ends justify the means?

no, never.


pres man wrote:
seekerofshadowlight wrote:

That however is not what they did. The killed adult enemy combats that were unarmed and in disguise as trader.

The did nothing that would make hem evil. Baby killing yes, but they killed people who the intell told them were enemy units out to kill people of there nation.

"That however is not what they did." LOL, like what happened has stopped you from throwing out ridiculous what-ifs. LOL

Yes it is what they did. Read what the op said. They were given a mission by there government to take out a hostile force acting as a caravan, who where using the pc's to gain an artifact which they would then use to attack there nation.

This is what the OP has stated. The "assassins" were soldiers who went out of there way not to harm the"hostages" They took out what the intell told them was a hostile enemy.


pres man wrote:
Special Ops that do rescue missions usually try to get intel before rushing in and killing indiscriminately. That appears not to have happened here. Thus much of the killing was unnecessary.

Or they were already given intel. Their intel was just wrong, and intentionally so. These guys were the strike team that goes in after intel has already been gathered.

Weighing in, I would put these guys at any lawful alignment very easily.
I would personally lean towards LN, because they are following orders from their government.
I might put them at LG, because they are doing what they believe is right to save lives, but I am not convinced this is their motivation beyond following orders. I see them more as guys who justify what they do by claiming this more than being motivated by this. It eases their consciece more than it motivates them to action.
Lastly, I would put them at LE only if they didn't really care what their orders were and took pleasure in the act. The person believed that leaving the guard behind jepordized the mission, so he went out of his way to not fail. He didn't kill him just to be spiteful or for money.

There are multiple thoughts about how alignment is determined. I believe actions have a set, universal, alignment, but that your actions do not determine your alignment. Your intention behind those actions determines your alignment. Other people believe that your actions determine your alignment and that intentions don't, or only minorly, affect you alignment.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

This thread is made of win.

Also relevant to the thread at large.

Dark Archive

Nebelwerfer41 wrote:

I don't swing greatswords at your poetry readings, please keep your post-industrial discussions of moral ambiguity out of my high fantasy roleplaying.

And yet those post industrial views of moral ambiguity are what have shaped high fantasy alignment, and what have led to some of the best roleplaying scenarios in the history of PNP RPGS.

Slavery and Indentured servitude weren't considered evil back then, and killing someone for owning slaves was considered murder. Women were the lesser of the two sexes. People who were not of your religion were fair game. Torture was considered an extremely reliable method of gaining confessions from "criminals".

Think warhammer 40k in the medieval era, that's basically what it was like. Different was bad.

Post-industrial discussions of moral ambiguity give the game a surprising amount of depth, and help make it a better game.

Leaving a game over one alignment call is called being a pissant.


TriOmegaZero wrote:

This thread is made of win.

Also relevant to the thread at large.

"Damn you TOZ"

(Now you are twice damned)

you made me look, I should have known better, but I looked.

"Who are you really angery at? TOZ or yourself?"
"I guess I am mad at myself"

Shadow Lodge

*cackles chaotically*


Jared Ouimette wrote:
Leaving a game over one alignment call is called being a pissant.

So if the party rogue rapes a prisoner in order to torture them into providing information and a player says that it is evil and the GM says, "Nope, it is neutral because it was for the greater good." The player would be a "pissant" for choosing not to game with that GM anymore? Interesting.

Sovereign Court

I think their shade of morality entirely depends on the conversation with the paladin. It sounds like the assassins were on a patriotic, relatively well intentioned operation but their information wasn't accurate.

So now they're faced with the displeasure of a champion of a good god, telling then they've killed innocent men. How do they react? Are they remorseful? Suspicious of their original orders? Resolute but willing the help bury the bodies? Repentant with the possibility of godly disfavor?

These assassins were put in a difficult situation. If you want them to seem, if not good, at least humane, then this mission should morally complicate them in some way. Something obvious to the paladin player so he knows he's not dealing with monsters.


pres man wrote:
Special Ops that do rescue missions usually try to get intel before rushing in and killing indiscriminately. That appears not to have happened here. Thus much of the killing was unnecessary.

The important word there is "Appears", and this scenario is all about things not being what they appear. How do you know that it wasn't accurate and complete? Further, how do you go from the intel 'appearing' not to have been done to the killing definitely being unnecessary - surely if the intel 'appears' not to have been done, then the killing 'appears' to be unnecessary, not WAS unnecessary?

One thing about wartime situations is that no matter how hard you try they are often not perfect, and no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Taking a recent example, in the Gulf War a bunker-buster bomb was dropped on a bunker containing hundreds of civilians. Clearly it 'appears' (to use your own words) that the intel wasn't done, and the killing was therefore unnecessary (your logic, above). Does this mean that the pilot who dropped it is an evil man? It fulfils the criteria above, although you stop short of saying the killing was evil.

Personally I think he isn't. The pilot was following orders and attacking what he was told was a legitimate target. Bombs are nasty things, they are indiscriminate, they kill people in their beds (when they are unarmed and asleep), they kill anyone in the area. That pilot knew that when he released that bomb, it was almost inevitable that people unable to defend themselves (if not innocent) would die. But his job was to follow orders in order to save more lives on both sides in the long run. The fault lies in either the failure of intelligence, or the orders given with insufficient intelligence. Either way, it is NOT the fault of the man at the business end of the weapon.

Killing people in their sleep is horrible, but as was said by General Sherman: "War is cruelty, sir, and one cannot refine it." You kill them in their sleep because if you HAVE to kill them to fulfil your mission, and that is the safest, smartest way to do it.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

I put up a long response earlier but something I do want to add based on what I have seen since.

I do think that most soldiers that are needing to do something in wartime that might be viewed as horrific are making the slide towards evil. I think that you hear about this all the time when soldiers return home saying that they had to do terrible things and that they changed so that they could survive out there to do them.

I guess some folks that I have seen respond might disagree with that. One thing that I do think is very important to the view that I have is that Evil does not equal bad.

One problem that I have seen a lot when dealing with the DnD alignments is that if I'm Good and you are Evil then we should be enemies that kill each other. Good and Evil work together all the time. They strive for different goals, but they come together on things that they both agree on.

A soldier when he returns from home and has to deal with what has gone on at that point has the chance to change and try to return to somewhat the person that he was before. I do not think that following orders like those that have been given in some previous posters examples makes a person IRREDEEMABLY evil. Alignment changes as your life progresses, and just because you swing one way doesn't mean you can't return to prior beliefs.

Happy gaming.
Barator


meabolex wrote:
Hint: murder first, ask questions later = Evil.

Based on that I would argue that the majority of adventuring parties are evil.

Dark Archive

pres man wrote:
Jared Ouimette wrote:
Leaving a game over one alignment call is called being a pissant.
So if the party rogue rapes a prisoner in order to torture them into providing information and a player says that it is evil and the GM says, "Nope, it is neutral because it was for the greater good." The player would be a "pissant" for choosing not to game with that GM anymore? Interesting.

Wow dude, really? Thank you for the incredible strawman! I'll cherish it forever, perhaps I should give you a gift too! Have a finger, I insist.


Jared Ouimette wrote:
pres man wrote:
Jared Ouimette wrote:
Leaving a game over one alignment call is called being a pissant.
So if the party rogue rapes a prisoner in order to torture them into providing information and a player says that it is evil and the GM says, "Nope, it is neutral because it was for the greater good." The player would be a "pissant" for choosing not to game with that GM anymore? Interesting.
Wow dude, really? Thank you for the incredible strawman! I'll cherish it forever, perhaps I should give you a gift too! Have a finger, I insist.

I'm just trying to see if your stance on the "one alignment call" is an absolute or not. What you call a strawman, I call reductio ad absurdum.

Dark Archive

pres man wrote:
Jared Ouimette wrote:
pres man wrote:
Jared Ouimette wrote:
Leaving a game over one alignment call is called being a pissant.
So if the party rogue rapes a prisoner in order to torture them into providing information and a player says that it is evil and the GM says, "Nope, it is neutral because it was for the greater good." The player would be a "pissant" for choosing not to game with that GM anymore? Interesting.
Wow dude, really? Thank you for the incredible strawman! I'll cherish it forever, perhaps I should give you a gift too! Have a finger, I insist.
I'm just trying to see if your stance on the "one alignment call" is an absolute or not. What you call a strawman, I call reductio ad absurdum.

This ain't Harry Potter, first off. Secondly, bringing absolutes into this is stupid and rather contrary. Let me verify: Leaving a game over THIS SPECIFIC alignment call reeks of pissantry in its most splendid form.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber
Paul Ackerman 70 wrote:
Based on that I would argue that the majority of adventuring parties are evil.

I would agree that many adventuring parties would likely slide towards evil unless they watch their actions. After all, when you kill enough orcs and then you start to see humans do things you disagree with you might just start wondering, "why don't I just kill this guy to solve another problem, it isn't that different than killing an orc."

Happy gaming.
Barator

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