Hey all i have a question. Say I have a character that is a Druid that really wants to protect the forest and is part of a guild that does so. She comes across a loging group that is clearing a section of the forest for a Noble that wants to put his summer home there. She talks to the loggers and tries to get them to leave, they say no - go talk to the lord. The lord says no and wont budge (say a failed Diplomacy check or an impossibly high one). The character would then as a last resort assassinate the lord to protect the forest.
Would she be considered Evil because she assassinated him even though she tried every other diplomatic way to try to solve it?
Send one final message to the lord--an ultimatum. Make certain you repeat your demand that the loggers stop clear-cutting the forest--and include a warning that if he does not there will be consequences. It is up to you to decide how specific you should spell out those consequences, but it might give him pause to threaten war by your entire guild against him and his lands. Might not.
If he still says no; well, you went the extra mile and gave him a warning he shouldn't have ignored.
Master Arminas
Nope. One act does not make you evil, unless it's like...murdering an entire country.
I could see it being LN or true Neutral. You went through the proper channels to tell him to stop, so that hints at lawfulness.
What if the Druid was a Fey that lived close to the forest they were cutting down? so they are metaphorically just down the street from her cutting down forest
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So....It's evil now to kill an enemy that's purposely attempting to destroy your home?
I'd say solidly N
I do not think this would be an Evil act. It is more Neutral than anything else. You tried to be reasonable but the lord was not interested. Give him one more chance to mend his ways and if not consider yourself at war with him because of his actions.
Even if you consider it to be an evil act on act does not change your alignment. Since a Druid needs to be neutral rather than good even this is not a problem.
I would not assassinate him for another reason. You are a Druid and they are in an area where you have all the advantages. Just killing him will not send as strong message to other people. Use your spells and abilities to strike true terror into the lord and his minions.
Is it objectively an evil act? Yes. Killing sentient people who aren't trying to kill you is.
Would it affect a neutral-aligned druid's alignment? No.
Resorting to extreme/dark measures to achieve one's ostensibly positive goals is a perfectly acceptable neutral trait. Similarly, if I was playing a chaotic neutral rogue who had the habit of slitting his downed enemies' throats after combat to "make sure of them", or who decided to poison an evil enemy rather than face him in an unequal battle, it would be a brutal but effective tactic. But it wouldn't make him evil.
A druid in my game who prioritised the wild places of the world created what was basically a wildlife preserve, and bargained with a dark nixie to come live in the river there and protect it in exchange for the right to eat anyone who trespassed (except children). He was extremely clear to everyone about the penalties for trespassing and went out of his way to ensure anyone who did so had been warned several times. Was that dark? Sure. Evil? Arguably. Did it change his alignment from neutral to evil? No. Neutral characters can perform both good and evil deeds.
Even good characters can - occasionally - perform such deeds when fighting for good ends. It's not good. It's barely neutral. But, as an isolated incident, it shouldn't change your alignment. Unless you're a paladin or a strict cleric, perhaps.
If you make a habit of resorting to those methods, however, it's a different matter.
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Well i suppose with all alignment discussions, the answers will be subjective, and you will get all sorts of answers.
There may not be a clear cut answer.
Is this land the Lords land? if it is if he owns the land and is responsible for maintaining it for his liege lord, keeping it free of predators, monsters, so so people can settle clear land for farms, and build towns, then, well his word is law and he can do what he wants with his land. His logging program and the summer house he is building, will probably provide jobs and feed many families.
Are the loggers and builders to be blamed for doing their job? for providing for their families?
Who has a right to the land? the human inhabitants and thier lord or the druidic circle?
What if killing this lord will invite a more despotic lord to move in and take over?
I guess i think that simply put..if you use the argument "the ends justify the means", it will pave the way to and make it easier to justify more draconian deeds. I think the ends justifying the means is is evil itself.
while i don't know all of the parameters, it appears to me assinating the lord because he is doing something you don't like is an evil act. It certainly can be dressed up and justified as "protecting the forrest", but it would still be an evil act.
There are all sorts of subtle ways a druid can discourage people. 1) scare the loggers away with wolf packs. 2) render supply roads into a muddy morass, and impassible, so logs cant go out, and supplies cant go in. 3) liberal use of entangle spells, to slow down work. 4) spoiling the food supplies of the lord.
Basically a circle of druids may be able to make it much more trouble then it is worth to log and build through harasment rather then assination.
One problem with assasination is that you will have then proven yourself a threat. the rest of the lords family may want revenge. The over lord, or king, may decide that the druid circle is now a threat and bring the weight of the kindgom dowon to have the druid circle hunted down and killed, and the forrest burned logged and otherwise destroyed.
So I think the assasination would be a bad tactical idea, and an evil act.
I'm with Melissa and Elyas. As others have pointed out, this one evil act wouldn't necessarily make you EEEEEEEEEEEVIL! But it would still be evil (much like how casting a single spell with the [evil] descriptor does not immediately warrant an alignment change). If diplomacy has failed, I'd argue for sabotage rather than assassination. Depending on your level, and those of your druid friends, it should be easy enough to stop the workers from finishing their jobs. A 4th level druid can use alter winds to make 20 mph winds. Not enough to be deadly, but maybe they have to stop working for a bit. Ray of sickening can incapacitate the workers. There you go with 2 first level spells other than entangle that could help you stop the workers with out even actually having to fight. Maybe use some spells just to make the lord as miserable as possible too.
But the positive goals have to be proportional to the extreme/dark measures. Killing someone to prevent the summoning of Azathoth is okay. Killing someone to prevent them from hurting someone's feelings isn't.
You're right, and that's an important qualifier.
When it comes to killing people there is one question to answer before considering details:
Are people in danger if the victim is left alive?Trees aren't people. Deer aren't people. Zombies aren't people. Creatures that can put points in linguistics to learn languages are people.
The grey area here is when you have a druid who explicitly believes that the creatures and plants of the natural world are as important - or more important - than people, and that killing people to protect the natural world in extremis is regrettable but necessary. I think that's a reasonable case for a neutral alignment. Possibly a slightly crazy neutral alignment, but still.
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this is your home just as much as it is his!! So this is war and under war i would say nothing is to change to your aliment its a stale mate. this can happen between to cg pc. i feel that war has its own sepert rules.If bouth sides are of in knowlege of each ofther. If no warning from both sids come up then i would think that some aliment change would be right thing to do on both sids.
It is an Evil act to kill a non-Evil sapient being for a reason other than self defense or defense of others, but one Evil act does not make a character Evil. Your character is likely True Neutral.
Alright well thanks all! Ill most likely make her NE if after that she goes on a caursade to kill anyone hurting the forest.
If you're defending something like a dryad it might be different, but nonsapients have no moral weight compared to sapients.
That's city slicker morality. Druids would see it differently. Seeing it differently is what makes them Druids, and why they tend so much more strongly toward Neutral than toward Good.
this is your home just as much as it is his!! So this is war and under war i would say nothing is to change to your aliment its a stale mate.
This is exactly how I see it. Those woods are under his protection. The lord's actions, regardless of how he claims to "own" the land-- an utterly preposterous concept, "owning" land-- are an act of war. The Druid is a sovereign authority in his own right enforcing his foreign policy.
No different than any other sovereign ordering his troops to go to war over a patch of land-- except the Druid has to get his own hands dirty to do it.
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Like with many situations, we don't know many of the important parameters.
Is this lord living on the "edge " of civilization? Does the forest fall within the boundary of a kingdom?
How many druids are there, and what kind of forces can they bring to bear?
How powerful is the Lord? Who claims sovergnity over the land?
What are the possible ramifications of killing this lord?
Who will be upset and or angered if this lord is killed?
If the crown perceives the druid circle as a threat because they have successfully killed part of the noble peerage, then they may put bounties on the druid’s heads, and hire adventurers to go in and “take care” of the druid problem.
All I am saying is before you go assassinating someone, it is probably a good idea to get a grasp on the possible ramifications of doing this lord in this “lord”.
If you're defending something like a dryad it might be different, but nonsapients have no moral weight compared to sapients.That's city slicker morality. Druids would see it differently. Seeing it differently is what makes them Druids, and why they tend so much more strongly toward Neutral than toward Good.
It's not city slicker morality, it's Pathfinder morality. Morality is objective in D&D. There's no equivocation possible. There's nothing that is Good for one person and Evil for another. It's all the same for everyone.
I'm not going to pretend I love the alignment system, I don't, but if you use it by the book, there's no room for interpretation. Sapient Life is more important than non-Sapient life and the only times killing Sapients is ok is under the following circumstances: the Sapient is Evil, in self defense, or in defense of others (actually if the Sapient is Evil, it's essentially pre-emptive defense of others or self no matter what, because Evil is objective, so Evil people will harm others, it is inevitable).
That is moral fact in D&D, and it was done that way so people could play the game the way we all joke about: "break into a monster's home, kill it, and take its stuff." Without objective morality, you'd have Paladins trying to knock demons out and bring them to jail--you'd have Clerics refusing to go slaughter the orcs threatening the norther border--you'd have people getting hurt by Holy weapons because they clear cut a bit of forest to make a house for their family. It doesn't work.
Is it just me or are people resorting to murder awfully fast?
I guess it's kind of in the D&D style, but there are numerous way you can stop his plans without outright killing him.
Occupy Forest!
Cast Blight or other shenanigans on the Lord's fields and livestock. There's a reason druidism is tendency to neutral. Just show him how little nature cares for his so called ownership.
From the Druids perspective:
He "Owns" the land? Whats next? I suppose hes also going to say he owns the clouds or sky, or people.