Is this evil?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Party discovers Half the town are MONSTERS who convert their victims. Party kills them. Players have a very good reason to believe the rest of the so called townsfolk are MONSTERS as well so their job is only half done.

And it would be irresponsible to just leave and hope nothing will ever show up with the magical power to pop whatever ward the town has on it.

Grand Lodge

What 'very good reason' is that? The fact that they went to bed and slept instead of joining the other half of the town in the attack on the party?

Silver Crusade

See laziness does get you killed...

"Make your campaign setting safe! Kill all adventurers ON SIGHT!"


I hate to quote 3.5 here....

There's an example in Book of Vile deeds (or Exalted good... forget which) about a defining good and evil and actions and so on that is this to a T.

Example is where you are convinced that a town is evil. Everyone. Beyond redemption EVIL. The approach that is cited to kill them is to poison the towns water supply so that as soon as they drink it they die. This is cited as being an evil act.

Why?

Not because use of poison is evil.
Not because it might cause pain and suffering

Because it it unreasonable to assume that EVERYONE in the town is both evil and beyond redemption (pretty much regardless of the evidence).

Or to put it another way...
http://www.goblinscomic.com/09172005/
That man is not a pally in any rules system I have heard of.


Maybe the werewolf town is accustomed to having do-gooder type adventurers waltz into town, declare the town's unfitness to live and begin indiscriminate lupine slaughter? Maybe they were preemptively attacking the party.

I'd say it's evil to kill them all while they sleep, though. If the PCs think it's a danger... they should leave town- other nearby locals probably know to stay away from the contained were-people zone.

If there's a cleric or paladin who says that "It's part of my holy mandate to eradicate the vile taint of lycanthropy and some such!", then it's about as evil as the crusades.


Azreal423 wrote:
Anyways, The village they were in was pretty much warded to keep all werewolves/tigers inside of it. so there was no chance of them escaping to the PC's knowledge.

This, assuming the party was aware of such wards, is solid evidence that the act would be evil. Yes it is safe to assume that almost all the warewolves in the town are evil or at least support the evil acts of the ones that were awake in the town, but 2 questions I do have to ask.

If the party was aware of this ward, IE they basically knew this is a prison for lycanthropes, why did they enter it? Assuming of course there was a good reason, some item they needed inside of it etc... then the answer is yes it would be evil in any circumstance to kill the sleeping wolves. A town warded to contain in my book, is a prison. Would it be evil to walk into a prison and kill all of the convicted and imprisoned serial killers? I would say absolutely yes, especially if you cannot confirm that 100% of them are not actually guilty and/or evil. Now a paladin casting detect evil might work it's way to a grey area by actually being able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that every single wolf he killed was evil, but even then it is a chaotic act because it is interfering with the due process of the law, that apparently has already successfully been carried out.


I have a "werewolf town" in my homebrew part of the River Kingdoms and some of the werewolves were acting out their alignment while others (including the patriarch of the bunch) wanted to try and fit in with the locals. Note that not all of the hamlet's inhabitants were actually werewolves (long story short, these were citizens uprooted from Ustalav who followed their werewolf patriarch to "greener pastures").

The good-aligned PC's at first wanted to raze the hamlet because they wrongly assumed that all of the inhabitants were evil, nasty werewolves. Turns out only a handful were and the PC's dealt with them. The PC's had to use roleplay and social skills to deal with the patriarch and his werewolf loyalists in order to root out the true evil. Note that the patriarch was evil as well but the majority of the villagers were just common, decent folk scratching a living out of the wilderness for the good of the community.

Just as good is not mindless, evil is not either. Therefore, executing suspected evildoers does not a good act make. There are always other options. Figure out what those are and pick the most appropriate course.


The thread has grown large enough that even though I think I have the gist of it, I could have missed something.

But, to amend my previous post, I'm weighing in that simply assuming that the sleeping townsfolk (regardless of lycanthropic nature) were evil, based on the actions of the conscious townsfolk, and killing them on that basis alone, is evil.

It would be like a platoon of US Marines going into a Vietnamese village and killing men, women, and children, because they were certain that they were VC.

Sorry, can't excuse that as non-evil, in any way, shape or form. That's why our legal/justice system (based on the same Judeo-Christian ethic that the D&D alignment system has been based on for the past 35+ years) requires a fair trial, as opposed to gut feelings or convictions of guilt by association.


"What would Jesus do?"


The act itself is evil, I don't think anyone can argue that killing innocents only suspected of being dangerous monsters is anything but. However, the act can easily fall into the boundaries of actions allowed to a Chaotic Neutral alignment.

Rogue thinks "I can either wait for them to wake up and possibly die, or make sure I live through it. I don't like it, but I'd rather be safe than sorry."

No one had detect evil?


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After reading the thread, this is what I understand.

A) Party went into a hamlet that they knew had a ward around it to keep werewolves from leaving.
B) Party walked around town fully armored and armed.
C) Locals asked them to give up weapons.
D) Party refused to give up weapons, and did not offer to leave.
E) One local was overheard telling the leader of the locals that they should just attack the party.
F) Party attacked locals.
G) Locals who weren't talking to party joined in to attack party.
H) After fight, Rogue wants to kill the rest of the hamlet in their sleep.

Honestly, I think we're back to the murderous hobos rather than adventurers. Let's disect this...

A) Why did the party go into a hamlet that they knew there were werewolves in anyway? Did they just go in to kill them all? Were they just wanting to go shopping?

C) I can understand not wanting to give up weapons when you knew you were surrounded by werewolves, ok. But, why go there anyway if you don't want to be surrounded by werewolves? Why not just leave instead?

E & F) So, one person suggests to the leader that the town should just attack, so that makes it ok to open up on the whole town? Did they make a sense motive check to see if the leader was listening to the guy? Maybe this is the village idiot who thinks attacking people first is always the best solution (AKA the town's designated murderous hobo).

G) Well DUH! What did you expect? What would the character's do if they saw a bunch of out of towner's attacking their cousin? Of course they'd join in! Using this as justification that 'they are evil' is stupid. Anyone would join in attacking the party, they opened hostilities with a 'pre-emptive' strike, but no proof anyone was going to attack them, just one idiot (like them) who thought it would be a good idea.

H) It's an evil impulse. If he goes through on it, he's committing an evil act. Honestly, I think F was an evil act myself. Attacking a hamlet because one guy in the crowd said 'Hang em!' is stupid.


How large are these wards? How much farmland/forests/mines/rivers/lakes/etc does it include in this town? If none, then either some members of this town are not affected by this ward, and can then bring food and other supplies into the town, or outsiders from neighbouring towns pass through and trade needed supplies with this town. In either case, there are non-lychanthropes entering this town out of their own free will... the townsfolk can't be that bad.

It looks like mdt has covered pretty much everything else I was going to say. The party sounds like a bunch of high powered, cut throat, bandits attacking a town that is just trying to defend itself. But then again the D&D alignment definitions can be strange or byzantine at times.


One of my groups GMs just emailed this to us.

All about alignment


Khrysaor wrote:

One of my groups GMs just emailed this to us.

All about alignment

Nice, I like it.

Grand Lodge

I'm considering taking it and working it into the alignment writeup, should I decide to keep alignment in my houseruled 3.5.


Khrysaor wrote:

One of my groups GMs just emailed this to us.

All about alignment

That's a pretty good article, and I've read it before. If anyone wants to use that as a basis for D&D/Pathfinder alignment arguments, then they simply have to realize that they're moving away from the game's RAW/RAI.


wow... I just had a similar situation where a paladin (as part of a group) killed a group of kobolds on sight.
(litterally:
GM: You come to a clearing and see 4 kobolds lounging on a log
Sorc: I cast sleep (all 4 fail saves and fall asleep)
Pally, ranger, summoner: we charge forward and coup-de-grace them.

(Im trying to figure out weather or not to penalize the pally for this.


So I'm a player in the OP's game. Actually I'm the wizard that initiated the "first strike." I wanted to just kind of shed some more light on the player's side of what happened to see what everyone thinks. We went into the town knowing that there was a barrier around it, but we didn't know what it did, other than that it held in the towns inhabitants. We also knew that the town was inhabited by animals the night before (our rogue did a scouting mission into the town), however our characters knew nothing about Lycanthropy (it hasn't existed for 2,000 years) and so we went in to investigate at dawn. When we got inside the town we found a man naked inside his house and when he spotted our rogue he screamed, "they're here" and attempted to run off. I put him inside a resilient sphere cause i was confused about him sounding the alarm but a couple dozen villagers were already headed towards us with weapons drawn. they began to surround us and demanded to know what was going on, we explained the situation and asked them to stop surrounding us, when they demanded we put our weapons away. All but the barb did and we asked that they did the same however they refused. The man in the sphere (once the spell released) whispered to the "leader" that they should just kill us to be safe and then the GM said they advance towards you. at that point i hit them with a deep slumber and thus began the combat. after we had run their leader into one of the buildings and set it ablaze (that was the rouge's doing) the rouge decided to kill the sleeping villagers before they could attack us as well. This, I believe is a complete picture from our end of what happened... maybe this will shine some more light on events.


Burning buildings is just good roleplaying.


@someoneknocking

Ok, could you see why some guy, sleeping naked in his house, might be upset at waking up and finding a group of heavily armed men had broken into his house, and had weapons? Especially when one of them imprisoned him a spell? And therefore might advocate to kill them to be safe? Especially when one of them (presumably a heavily muscled guy with a glower) refused to put away his weapons?

In other words, what would your group do if they were in a hamlet they called home, and 4 or 5 heavily armed thugs broke into the house of the guy down the street, put him in a bag, and then refused to put their weapons down when you demanded they do so? I think you might attack them, yes? For invading your town, kidnapping old man McMurthy, and refusing your demands they disarm themselves and explain their actions?

Even from your point of view you seem to be in the wrong on this one.


blue_the_wolf wrote:

wow... I just had a similar situation where a paladin (as part of a group) killed a group of kobolds on sight.

(litterally:
GM: You come to a clearing and see 4 kobolds lounging on a log
Sorc: I cast sleep (all 4 fail saves and fall asleep)
Pally, ranger, summoner: we charge forward and coup-de-grace them.

(Im trying to figure out weather or not to penalize the pally for this.

Do you run the game by the book, whereby Kobolds are of the Evil alignment? If they were Evil, you should absolutely not penalize them--hell, maybe you should reward them.

Ashenfall wrote:
But, to amend my previous post, I'm weighing in that simply assuming that the sleeping townsfolk (regardless of lycanthropic nature) were evil, based on the actions of the conscious townsfolk, and killing them on that basis alone, is evil.

Ok, so this drives me crazy--and it's not just you, don't worry, it seems to be most people.

D&D's alignment system is objective. You cannot apply real world morality concepts to it because real world morality is predicated on lacking perfect knowledge and the possibility that things are subjective.

For example, in the real world, if someone is released from jail after they served their time, you can't just kill them because they're evil. In the real world there's no certainty of that evil. You can't know--hell, there might not even be "evil" (though, I think there is).

However, within the alignment system present in D&D exists certainty. You actually can just walk up to that guy on the street and kill him if he's Evil. Because Evil is an objective cosmic force. If you kill someone for being Evil, Team Evil is down one guy, and that is Good. It's Good because Good is also a cosmic force and Team Good wants Team Evil gone.

Ashenfall wrote:
It would be like a platoon of US Marines going into a Vietnamese village and killing men, women, and children, because they were certain that they were VC.

It's nothing like that, though, because the US Marines can't know for certain that they're VC. However, in D&D-world, you can tell, absolutely, if someone is Evil because Detect Evil is a first level spell and a spell like ability of several classes.

A Paladin can walk up to a sleeping kobold, see that it is Evil, and execute it. And he did a Good thing because the kobold was Evil.

I know this sounds weird because people are so used to the real world, shades of grey, etc. But there is no grey in D&D--there's Good, Evil, and Neutral (well, Law, and Chaos, but they're not relevant here).

Ashenfall wrote:
Sorry, can't excuse that as non-evil, in any way, shape or form. That's why our legal/justice system (based on the same Judeo-Christian ethic that the D&D alignment system has been based on for the past 35+ years) requires a fair trial, as opposed to gut feelings or convictions of guilt by association.

Again, though, innocent until proven guilty is silly when there are concrete means available in the world to tell without a doubt that someone is Evil.

So, I said this earlier in the thread, but it bears repeating:

If the werewolves were Evil, killing them in their sleep is Good. If the werewolves weren't Evil and did not pose a known threat to the PCs, killing them in their sleep is Evil. Very simple, very objective.

Silver Crusade

mplindustries wrote:
Do you run the game by the book, whereby Kobolds are of the Evil alignment? If they were Evil, you should absolutely not penalize them--hell, maybe you should reward them.

Let's look at that book!

The Bestiary wrote:
While a monster's size and type remain constant(unless changed by the application of templates or other unusual modifiers), alignment is far more fluid. The alignmnets listed for the monsters in this book represent the norm for thoes monsters--they can vary as you require them to in order to serve the needs of your campaign. Only in the case of relatively unintelligent monsters(creatures with an Intelligence score of 2 or lower are almost never anything other than neutral) and planar monsters (outsiders with alignments other than those listed are unusual and typically outcasts from their kind) is the listed alignment relatively unchangeable.


mplindustries wrote:


If the werewolves were Evil, killing them in their sleep is Good. If the werewolves weren't Evil and did not pose a known threat to the PCs, killing them in their sleep is Evil. Very simple, very objective.
Bestiary wrote:


Of all the various types of lycanthropes, it is the werewolf that is the most widespread and the most feared. Stories of werewolves haunting lonely forest roads, prowling misty moors on the outskirts of rural societies, or dwelling in the shadows of the largest cities are widespread as well. In most societies, werewolves are feared and despised—and with good reason, as the typical werewolf personifies all that is savage and bestial in a lycanthrope. This isn't to say that good-aligned werewolves are unknown, but they're certainly a minority among their kind, and most werewolves are evil murderers who delight in the hunt and the succulent taste of raw meat.

A) Do you even play the game by the rules, where not all creatures of a given type are evil? Such as werewolves not all being evil?

B) There are 100 werewolves in the hamlet, 80 are evil adults, 1 is a good adult, 5 are neutral, and the rest are children under the age of 10. Now, is it Good to kill the entire village in their sleep, or is it Evil? How simple and objective is it now? Did you even bother checking to see if they are all Evil? No? Then that is an Evil act, because Evil kills out of convenience rather than need (that would be in the alignment section, under Evil).

Evil wrote:


Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.


Mikaze wrote:
mplindustries wrote:
Do you run the game by the book, whereby Kobolds are of the Evil alignment? If they were Evil, you should absolutely not penalize them--hell, maybe you should reward them.

Let's look at that book!

The Bestiary wrote:
While a monster's size and type remain constant(unless changed by the application of templates or other unusual modifiers), alignment is far more fluid. The alignmnets listed for the monsters in this book represent the norm for thoes monsters--they can vary as you require them to in order to serve the needs of your campaign. Only in the case of relatively unintelligent monsters(creatures with an Intelligence score of 2 or lower are almost never anything other than neutral) and planar monsters (outsiders with alignments other than those listed are unusual and typically outcasts from their kind) is the listed alignment relatively unchangeable.

+1000

I can't tell you how annoying I find it when people say 'You are playing the game wrong' but they don't bother reading the rules themselves. There is no such thing as 'always evil' in Pathfinder (outside of some planar creatures who are quite literally made out of pure elemental evilness).


mdt wrote:
A) Do you even play the game by the rules, where not all creatures of a given type are evil? Such as werewolves not all being evil?

I don't use alignment at all, actually ;)

mdt wrote:
B) There are 100 werewolves in the hamlet, 80 are evil adults, 1 is a good adult, 5 are neutral, and the rest are children under the age of 10.

Children have alignment, too.

mdt wrote:
Now, is it Good to kill the entire village in their sleep, or is it Evil?

The entire village? It's Evil. It is Good to kill the 80 Evil adults and any additional Evil children there are. Killing the other 6-14 werewolves is Evil.

mdt wrote:
How simple and objective is it now?

Extremely.

mdt wrote:
Did you even bother checking to see if they are all Evil?

My post said: "If the werewolves were Evil, killing them in their sleep is Good. If the werewolves weren't Evil and did not pose a known threat to the PCs, killing them in their sleep is Evil."

So, if they were Evil, the first line applies. If not, the second.

mdt wrote:

+1000

I can't tell you how annoying I find it when people say 'You are playing the game wrong' but they don't bother reading the rules themselves. There is no such thing as 'always evil' in Pathfinder (outside of some planar creatures who are quite literally made out of pure elemental evilness).

I don't think you're playing the game wrong. I think people who use Alignment, but then don't treat it as objective, are applying the Alignment system incorrectly.

And I never said that all kobolds would all be evil. I said, "Are you playing by the book whereby the Kobolds are evil?" If they were not evil, then it's not cool to kill them.


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If the werewolves are good, then they're like sparkly vampires, and killing them is actually doing them a favor.


mplindustries wrote:


However, within the alignment system present in D&D exists certainty. You actually can just walk up to that guy on the street and kill him if he's Evil.

Actually according to the world as written if you do that in a lawful society you'll be picked up by the guards for murder.


Jak the Looney Alchemist wrote:
mplindustries wrote:


However, within the alignment system present in D&D exists certainty. You actually can just walk up to that guy on the street and kill him if he's Evil.
Actually according to the world as written if you do that in a lawful society you'll be picked up by the guards for murder.

True. Good does not always equal Lawful.

Silver Crusade

Spanky the Leprechaun wrote:
If the werewolves are good, then they're like sparkly vampires, and killing them is actually doing them a favor.

Michael J. Fox is so disappointed in you.


Mikaze wrote:
Spanky the Leprechaun wrote:
If the werewolves are good, then they're like sparkly vampires, and killing them is actually doing them a favor.
Michael J. Fox is so disappointed in you.

Oh, yeah; because this thread is going to be filed in some future internet philosophical libarary and quoted in phd dissertations 49 years from now.

Diogenes, if he was alive, would be floored.


@ mlpindustries:

I agree 1000 percent, that alignment in the game is objective.

That being said, my statement was based on the assumption that the townsfolk alignments weren't known, whereas your argument seems to be based off of the assumption that their alignment was knowable, if not outright known.

Makes for two completely different positions, for me.


Someoneknocking wrote:
So I'm a player in the OP's game. Actually I'm the wizard that initiated the "first strike." I wanted to just kind of shed some more light on the player's side of what happened to see what everyone thinks. We went into the town knowing that there was a barrier around it, but we didn't know what it did, other than that it held in the towns inhabitants. We also knew that the town was inhabited by animals the night before (our rogue did a scouting mission into the town), however our characters knew nothing about Lycanthropy (it hasn't existed for 2,000 years) and so we went in to investigate at dawn. When we got inside the town we found a man naked inside his house and when he spotted our rogue he screamed, "they're here" and attempted to run off. I put him inside a resilient sphere cause i was confused about him sounding the alarm but a couple dozen villagers were already headed towards us with weapons drawn. they began to surround us and demanded to know what was going on, we explained the situation and asked them to stop surrounding us, when they demanded we put our weapons away. All but the barb did and we asked that they did the same however they refused. The man in the sphere (once the spell released) whispered to the "leader" that they should just kill us to be safe and then the GM said they advance towards you. at that point i hit them with a deep slumber and thus began the combat. after we had run their leader into one of the buildings and set it ablaze (that was the rouge's doing) the rouge decided to kill the sleeping villagers before they could attack us as well. This, I believe is a complete picture from our end of what happened... maybe this will shine some more light on events.

From what I gather:

1) you broke into some guys house
2) you're confused as to why he's freaking out
3) even more confused why the town decides to run to help him
4) put the leader to sleep when the guy, who's house you broke into, suggests attacking you
5) confused why others retaliate
6) decide to kill the rest of the town, just in case..

So.. from what I can tell, the players were anxious to actually have a combat encounter, made some hasty decisions, everyone (including GM) got flustered and things escalated..

In the end, I don't think there's anything in your, or the GM's, story that didn't make the party sound evil to me. Then again, I wasn't there, but that's my observation from all the input.


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I continue to be amazed (and significantly concerned) by what questions come up that people actually debate whether they are evil.

"Can I kill a bunch of random strangers in their beds as they sleep? Is that evil?"

Well... Yeah.


This thread is evil. As a paladin I can no longer associate with you guys.


First of i don't know if they broke in and if they did and they thought the town was overrun by animals with no people their its different than them breaking into a house they know is occupied.

Still think the killing everyone is evil but from this GM's standpoint your fine up til that.


Malignor wrote:

I'd say evil, since it's localized genocide, non-combatants and all.

I agree with this.

Enough acts like that and there will be special layer in the Abyss awaiting this NPC when his time comes. Of course there will be many familiar faces looking for some pay back. And if he's really lucky (or unlucky if you look at it that way) he'll get Jehzelda's personal attention.


Someoneknocking wrote:


*snip* at that point i hit them with a deep slumber and thus began the combat. after we had run their leader into one of the buildings and set it ablaze (that was the rouge's doing) the rouge decided to kill the sleeping villagers before they could attack us as well. This, I believe is a complete picture from our end of what happened... maybe this will shine some more light on events.

Alignment aside... just one question. You had a combat (presumably making a lot of noise), set a building on fire (more noise, light etc.) and the rest of the villagers (in their beds iirc from the op) didn't wake up? Massive party the night before? Really soundproof walls? :D

As for alignment, eeeevil. As a DM I've always judged my PCs by their actions, not their opponents. Killing sleeping people is not good. Not neutral. Just plain old evil imo. If any of the rest of you objected to the Rogue's actions they should have stopped him. If you don't reign him in, sooner or later he'll probably get the lot of you dead by his deeds at the hands of the local law (if any) or ticked off relatives / friends of the deceased (if their is no law). Consequences.


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mplindustries wrote:


A Paladin can walk up to a sleeping kobold, see that it is Evil, and execute it. And he did a Good thing because the kobold was Evil.

Actually, no. Not unless the kobold has at least 5 HD.

Detect Evil


Learn something new everyday i reread the spell after your post CCaB and also realized that a good creature can also show up if it currently has evil intentions.


@Talonhawke

Kind of puts that whole 'It is eeebbbillll, killitkillitstabstabslashslashpantpant! Ahhh, it is goooood to kill things!' mantra that people keep using on the threads into a whole new light, doesn't it?


Yeah my players are leery of using that excuse anyways since detect evil won't hold up in a court of law in my home world.

Basicly you need something to corraborate any divination magic for it to be used in court. Had one poor Paladin who never fell from it (since they were evil cultist trying to turn the town to zombies.) but who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Led to two great RP activities as he tried to convert the the prison into all being followers of St Cuthbert and the party trying to convince the mayor to let the "homocidal maniac" have a pardon.


Talonhawke wrote:
Learn something new everyday i reread the spell after your post CCaB and also realized that a good creature can also show up if it currently has evil intentions.

does that in turn mean an evil creature will not show up as evil if it currently has no evil intentions at all? or what if it currently has GOOD intentions?

A generally evil and vicious barbarian comes across a group of bandits finishing off a group of travelers. It turns out that the generally evil barbarian has the prisoners code against violence toward children rages out and kills the bandits but only manages to save an injured child which he is not carying to the nearest town for help. along the road he crosses paths with a paladin who, upon seeing the bloody barbarian with the injured child, does a detect evil.

will he sense the barbarians general evil... or the current good act?


I would rule both much like an evil outsider with good alignment.


blue_the_wolf wrote:
will he sense the barbarians general evil... or the current good act?

Technically, he will sense the barbarian's evil... if said barbarian has an evil alignment and has at least 5 HD (otherwise Detect Evil won't register).

He cannot sense any good. 'Good' of any magnitude is not something that can be detected by Detect Evil. At all.


Ashenfall wrote:

@ mlpindustries:

I agree 1000 percent, that alignment in the game is objective.

That being said, my statement was based on the assumption that the townsfolk alignments weren't known, whereas your argument seems to be based off of the assumption that their alignment was knowable, if not outright known.

Makes for two completely different positions, for me.

Sort of--I was reacting to the idea that you said their actions were evil because they did not know.

But the point I was trying to make is that, whether they know or not, if the Werewolves were Evil, it's still Good to kill them.

In other words, their knowledge is irrelevant to the Goodness of the act.

Don't get me wrong, if the Werewolves weren't all Evil, then yeah, it was Evil to kill them like that, but it has nothing to do with knowledge.

If someone Assassinates ten people for cold blooded, selfish reasons, but all of them just so happen to be evil, the Assassin did ten Good deeds without knowing it.

These are the bizarre consequences of an objective, and measurable alignment system.

It sounds to me that most people in this thread would like the alignment system to be subjective, and the thing is, there's a really easy way to do that: stop using Alignment because it's a silly system designed pretty much entirely to make it ok for PCs to murder their enemies wantonly while still getting to feel like heroes.


Don't see how you can claim killing for money in cold blood is good no matter who you kill you might negate some of the evil but your reasons for doing something matter.


Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:
Actually, no. Not unless the kobold has at least 5 HD.

That's fair, it couldn't be a Paladin, then, it would have to be an alchemist, bard or Sorcerer/Wizard. See Alignment has no HD restrictions.

And again, it's really going to be up to the GM to determine whether those Kobolds laughing and whatnot were evil. Even if the PCs murdered them without knowing if they were evil or not, the Goodness or Evilness of the action is entirely contingent upon the Kobolds actual alignment, not knowledge of the alignment.


Once again no its contingent on the Pcs motivation other wise evil guys would kill off minions to be neutral and un smitable.


Not to mention Killing evil creatures is way cheaper than an atonement spell for fixing you alignment if you need it set back to good.


Ah, so killing someone because he is evil is not only non-evil but always a good choice, according to some people here.
Hmm... given the fact that 'being of an evil alignment' and 'doing evil things that warrant being killed' are not exactly synonymous in my book, I find that a tad hard to follow.

mplindustries wrote:
However, in D&D-world, you can tell, absolutely, if someone is Evil because Detect Evil is a first level spell and a spell like ability of several classes.

Oh, really? Did you even bother reading the rules of that ability? Such as, it won't register on normal beings of 4 or less HD (so there's no telling), giving false positives in case of a cleric of an aligned deity (a Level 11 LN Asmodean Cleric registers as 'overwhelming evil'), and the like?

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