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....without appearing to be completely insane?
In our world some of the worst people are those who actually think that they are doing good. Would something like that be possible in a world where moral alignment is a tangible force?
For a paladin it's practically impossible. If you cease to be lawful good you will realize soon enough that your divine powers have vanished. A cleric could champion a cause he believes noble and just but if he is actually evil he will channel negative energy which should tell him something. For non-divine classes it could be easier, but as a villain who is anywhere but the smallest villages you would still have to interact with the rules at some point. How do you think of yourself as a good being when a paladin almost bisects you with a smite or if the gaze attack of a Ghaele shakes you?
I would like to see some other opinions on that.
alignment is totally subjective
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You lie to yourself in the same way you'd lie to others.
- Deny the facts.
- When you can't deny the facts, deny the rules.
- When you can't deny the rules, deny the definitions.
- When you can't deny the definitions... make a personal attack.
I'm not Evil!
That spell doesn't mean anything, it doesn't work that way. I'm telling you, I'm not Evil!
Yeah, whatever. What you call Evil, I call a practical necessity!
...maybe you're the true Evil here!
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You don't know the rules.
This. A Paladin doesn't know what Lawful Good is, and even if someone is detected as evil, they can just tell themselves that, yes, they've done some bad things, and that's what the spell is picking up, but they did them for good reasons, and those holier than thou Good types should be thankful they haven't had to make the kinds of choices.they had to.
if you're evil, you know it, normally even in real life, but people think there are good excuses for a few evil acts.
They would say for example: Sure I'm evil, but at least I got honour (when they killed a family member because of their honour).
Or "I did evil things, but it was for the good of my people" When they massacred a village that had a natural resource their village wanted.
One of the most "good" evil guys I saw was in the serenity movie who said that he wanted to create a paradise for the good men out there, but he, being evil, would never live there.
This is again the "can you kill evil babies in the crib" kinda question, only in another form.
Think about it as they said in the series "Lie to me", the difficulty is not knowing if someone lies, but why they lied. There are good reasons and bad reasons for doing evil deeds, and you should be judged on those.
The descriptions of alignment are pretty clear, there is no lying needed, they give you pretty defined definitions on how those types of people should behave if they are that alignment.
Its not clear at all, its VERY blurry, especially for NPCs. How far does "I was just following orders" go with a Lawful neutral character before they go all the way to evil?
Generally lying to oneself in such a way requires some measure of mental instability. When one's sense of reality and perception are skewed it does not take much to misinterpret things to fit the desired circumstances.
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I have an evil character who believes he is lawful good.
He is totally insane though. But he doesn't realize it. He's a wizard though, so doesn't have to worry about losing powers due to alignment shifts. He's actually fought a few paladins, but he convinces himself they are anti-paladins or not paladins.
He justifies all his actions as being for the greater good of all things. He doesn't see a problem with massacring a small village if it helps him advance his studies, because he believes that once his studies are complete, and he is ruling the world, he'll make up for any minor inconveniences suffered along the way. Sacrifices have to be made, you know.
And he does good too. All the time. He helps old ladies cross the street. He loves children. He gives alms to the poor. He just knows what's best for everyone, and nothing is going to stop him from pursuing what's best. That's all.
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The Golarion pantheon doesn't really allow for this to work very well; the good deities and their followers are tolerant of one another, and to be otherwise would mark them as not "good" as it's understood in this work (Pathfinder and D&D morality being informed by modern, rather than medieval, ideas of right and wrong). If we look at medieval morality, the picture of good is very different. Saint Thomas More was canonized not despite, but in part because of, the vicious zeal with which he pursued heresy (he was personally responsible for burning at least six Protestant theologians at the stake, and torturing or otherwise persecuting many more). Or, for a more recent example of that kind of morality, check out Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Afghanistan under the Taliban; the Muslim theocrats who stone rape victims to death for "unchastity" and massacre Baha'is and Hazara Buddhists regard themselves as the epitome of goodness, and their atrocities as evidence of their virtue.
Now, even in the polytheistic setting of a Pathfinder game, it's certainly possible to imagine a god who would command his followers to behave like Crusaders or Mujahedin: such a god would deny the divinity of all other deities, regardless of how similar or different their creeds were to his own, and declare them all demonic. His cult would follow a strict "convert-or-be-killed" policy toward followers of other faiths. According to the standard rules, such a god would be Lawful Evil, but he and his followers would regard themselves as the definition of Lawful Good. He might even empower his clerics to channel positive energy, heal spontaneously, turn undead, etc., and his messengers might take the form of angels or archons rather than demons or devils. All it requires is a slight modification of the rules, which of course is any GM's prerogative in her own homebrew setting.
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The descriptions are VERY clear, read them
This is arrogant, insulting, pointless, and above all just plain wrong. I have read them, hundreds of times over the years. So have many other people that argue about the alignment without consensus.
On a technicality, it can be easier for a LE guy to pass as a good guy than a CG one.
And even CE could see themselves as LG: "I'm upholding the law of the strong (Lawful?) and I get rid of the evil of the weaks (Good?).".
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Moral relativism is all well and good on Earth, but it kind of goes by the wayside when you have angels and demons waiting in the wings who will walk up and say hi and maybe even give you a sandwich if you ask nicely. That sandwich is filled with deontology, theodicy and corned beef.
People lie to themselves all the time. You don't have to be crazy, just misguided.
Get funnier with religions, especially when one could technically make (some of)them shut up by using their own holy texts.
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If you're evil, you know it.
Gotta disagree here. It's not hard to see that many (most?) historical figures who were responsible for terrible things felt completely self-justified.
I have an evil character who believes he is lawful good.
He is totally insane though. But he doesn't realize it. He's a wizard though, so doesn't have to worry about losing powers due to alignment shifts. He's actually fought a few paladins, but he convinces himself they are anti-paladins or not paladins.
He justifies all his actions as being for the greater good of all things. He doesn't see a problem with massacring a small village if it helps him advance his studies, because he believes that once his studies are complete, and he is ruling the world, he'll make up for any minor inconveniences suffered along the way. Sacrifices have to be made, you know.
And he does good too. All the time. He helps old ladies cross the street. He loves children. He gives alms to the poor. He just knows what's best for everyone, and nothing is going to stop him from pursuing what's best. That's all.
Excellent.
How do you lie to yourself about your alignment ... without appearing to be completely insane?
In our world some of the worst people are those who actually think that they are doing good. Would something like that be possible in a world where moral alignment is a tangible force?
For a paladin it's practically impossible. If you cease to be lawful good you will realize soon enough that your divine powers have vanished. A cleric could champion a cause he believes noble and just but if he is actually evil he will channel negative energy which should tell him something. For non-divine classes it could be easier, but as a villain who is anywhere but the smallest villages you would still have to interact with the rules at some point. How do you think of yourself as a good being when a paladin almost bisects you with a smite or if the gaze attack of a Ghaele shakes you?
I would like to see some other opinions on that.
Most party members don't care about their alignment. They are the pantheistic equivalent of agnostic: they know the gods exist, but they don't devote themselves to the philosphy of any one.
A Lawful Neutral lore master in my campaign says that he worships Desna, the Chaotic Good goddess of freedom, luck, and travel. His alignment mostly makes sense, because the character is too wishy-washy to be strongly good or evil, yet he has the discipline of a scholar. He pays attention to Desna because she is the last remaining true goddess worshiped by the ancient Thassilon Empire, which is his field of expertise. But he does not follow Desna's philosophy of free-spirited travel to enjoy the world.
In yesterday's game, two players were on vacation, so two party members were missing: the two with Good in their alignment. That left a Lawful Neutral lore master, a True Neutral bard, and two Chaotic Neutral rogues. They were fighting a Lawful Evil wizard allied with Chaotic Evil clerics. The party laughed at the thought that the clerics might use spells from the Evil domain, such as Protection from Good and Unholy Blight, to try to stop them.
This lack of Good is not a lie. If left on their own, the four characters would have been delving into lost ruins for loot rather than saving anyone from evil. But the evil wizard was a recurring enemy that they could not ignore.
In contrast, in that same campaign, I played a young gnome ranger before I took over as GM. He worshiped Desna like everyone in his family, and thought of himself as Chaotic Good. In his background, I set up how he had a playful job in a hunting camp that was really a secret training camp established by the gnomes of Sanos Forest to train their non-sorcerous youth as rangers in case they ever needed a militia. Once he could survive in the wild on his own, he left Sanos Forest to see the world.
In the party, the dwarf fighter was willing to be the figurehead leader of the party, but my gnome ranger was doing all the responsible work of leadership behind the scenes: running errands, dealing with the authorities, making battle plans, and gathering information. He liked popping in to visit people, he liked solving puzzles. He became good friends with the local sheriff. The GM warned that my gnome was going to lose his Chaotic alignment if he kept being the responsible one. I threw in an occasional friendly prank to remind people that he was chaotic. His battle plans were chaotic in their oddball cleverness, too.
Then my gnome, in one of his hairbrained plans, decided to multiclass to monk. Which requires Lawful alignment. I asked the GM if he could change his alignment, and she said that given that he had been Lawful all along, she had no problem. I added a backstory that in the training camp, some of the trainers were secretly monks, trying to encourage lawfulness whenever they spotted it in a young gnome.
In other words, my gnome was Lawful Good, but he lied to himself that he was Chaotic Good, because that alignment was expected of him.
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If you're evil, you know it.
I disagree. The idea of "cartoonish super-villainny" type of Mumm-Rah "Ancient spirits of Evil..." behavior is ludicrous, imo. You serve Rovagug because he is the natural or inevitable, cataclysmic end to everything. You serve Asmodeus for the promise of spectacular rewards. Maybe you serve Nocticula because she desired you. Perhaps no other god would help you achieve your ends.
For the non-religious, the likelyhood is that you're "pragmatic", or you've realized how important you are (to the exclusion of all or most others), or you are owed a debt by the world, or some other reason why your needs, your desires are more important than everyone else's.
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I have to admit I find it a bit strange how many people claim that the people of D&D/Pathfinder worlds are oblivious to the alignment system. An evil cleric who has inherited a kingdom from his father, turned it into a tyranny and hears that a paladin is coming to slay him will most definitely not prepare Dictum and Protection from Chaos because the paladin rebels against his lawful authority. A Hell Knight that smites chaos will have some idea that his ability affects beings who don't like to follow rules instead of 1/3 of the population with a genetic defect. Good, evil, law and chaos are hardwired into the rules like light side and dark side in Star Wars. You can think that killing a bunch of helpless children is a great idea. It won't keep your eyes from turning yellow (if you are a force-user). Not mentioning aligned planes, outsiders etc. If there is no awareness what exactly you do when you cast any spell with an alignment descriptor they become pointless.
Why I'm asking is because of a concept for a villain. An aasimar who thinks of himself as the perfect example that interbreeding between mortals and supernatural creatures can influence the alignment of their descendants. So to keep the mortal races from being slowly corrupted from within by half-fiends, tieflings, chromatic half-dragons, dhampirs and sorcerers with the related bloodlines he tries to eliminate them.
Now he already has some limited knowledge of how the alignment system works, even though he draws completely wrong conclusions. He believes his cause and himself to be just but that's an illusion that can way too easily be shattered (meeting a paladin, a summoned angel etc.) at which point he will start acting obviously crazy (GAH! Anti-Paladin, Erinyes in disguise! DIE DIE DIE!!!) or break down, which would be a pretty pathetic end. And it seems the more he would rely on a divine class the sooner such a point would come. And any "I'm evil but I work for the greater good!" would pretty much destroy the whole basis of his worldview.
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If you've ever read any of the half decent FR novels or even Dragonlance, you'll find that no matter what character you're talking about, whether it's someone as sainted as Sturm Brightblade, or as twistedly evil as Manshoon, you'll never see them refer to themselves or anyone else by an alignment table. They may describe themselves or others as evil or good, tyrannical, or benevolent, but those in qualitative terms.
Don't be mad, but that seems mostly lazy to me. The authors simply don't want to bother with the alignment system. How exactly would you explain how an axiomatic weapon works? How the difference between a hound archon and an agathion? Why would a succubus and an erinyes try to kill each other? All of that is part of the game world. That some people ignore it doesn't suddenly let the law/chaos axis vanish from the game.
This is even more true of novels not shackled to game systems. The alignment system is still a game mechanic, an abstraction of a story, not a story in and of itself.
A novel "not shackled to a game system" has absolutely nothing to do with that because there definite moral alignments don't exist. They do however exist in D&D/Pathfinder to the point where you can detect with them magic and they make you vulnerable to attacks from opposing alignments.
Very Very Few Evil people think of themselves as evil. The vast majority of people that we would consider evil will find justifications for their actions, the same way most people do for the petty sins they commit. It doesn't change the fact that they ARE evil.
Yeah, that's pretty much the point of the thread, how in the nine hells this works in a fantasy world where alignments are tangible things.
There's no blinking neon sign over a character defining their class. If the wizard identifies a [Good] spell that harms him he might rationalize it by saying "maybe I mis-identified that..." (IE, maybe I failed my Spellcraft check [despite actually having succeeded]). It's even easier with paladins, as there's no (stated) visible manifestation of a Smite - he just hits you really, really hard. Maybe he got a lucky hit, or maybe he just put more "oomph" into that blow. Maybe he's got a class ability like Smite that you're not familiar with. Maybe he's an Antipaladin in disguise. Rationalizations can go on and on.
A character who doesn't want to deny their worldview can easily come up with excuses to preserve it.
I often struggle with alignment constraints myself, but I have found that the best DM's and games don't focus on them too much just as the best novels have to ignore them. It isn't lazy. You would have a really terrible story if the writers had to acknowledge an alignment system. Where is character development or intrigue when this can happen:
Fighter: "Hey, Cleric. Do you think Wizard has been acting weird lately?"
Cleric: "Yeah, one second"
Cleric casts Detect Evil!
Cleric: "Yep, he is evil now. So kill him or redeem him?"
Novarion, based on your comments, you are not asking if this can be done. You are complaining that it cannot be done, and asking people to prove you wrong. I think that based on RAW and your notion that players are aware of the Moral Axis rules, you are correct. You now have a few choices that I see. Throw out this character concept, seriously redefine it, or work with your DM to go against the RAW. Some posters have proposed good ways for working around this. Suggest those to the DM.
You and the DM may want to ask yourselves a few questions. As thejeff and Orthos pointed out, how does you character even know that Smite Evil was cast? Why are the Moral Axis rules well known? Are paladins and angels so common that they are a threat? And perhaps most importantly, is your current campaign or party set up in such a way that this character is unplayable? Can the character be reworked to make him playable?
Finally, you may want to consider toughening up this guys world views. Why do you see him as dedicated enough to his ideal to commit genocide but too fragile to confront a single paladin?
Is a "paladin" a real thing in the game world? Do they call themselves paladins and no one who isn't a paladin uses the title? Or are there various orders, all with their own names and titles, most probably mixing actual paladins with fighters and clerics and other classes?
I would assume that most members of the paladin class identify themselves as paladins and only few others who have no training as one would do so too. It is what usually comes up during introductions. If someone says that he's a wizard it's a description of what you can expect him to do. My guess would be that Iomedae's Holy Knights is actually an order that combines clerics and paladins.
If the lawful evil being who thinks he's good is smitten by a paladin, does he suddenly realize he's actually evil or does he assume this knight must have some kind of smite good or smite law ability?
That probably depends on a lot of factors. Others already mentioned that there is no way codified in the rules to tell apart a smite from a challenge, a power attack or a series of crits. I guess that's a matter of personal taste. It is a supernatural ability that is granted to them and that they can lose, so I would find a bit of a light show appropriate. Then there is the question how much someone knows about class abilities and the world they live in. For example if you know what a paladin can do you know that smite good and lay on hands come in different packages. I guess you could do knowledge (religion) checks for that kind of thing.
I now have an idea for a similar aasimar character who wants to improve the morality of mortal races by breeding with as many as possible, spreading the purifying celestial bloodlines as much as he can.
I though about that too, but I wanted to create a villain who has more enemies out for his head than a bunch of angry husbands.:D
There's no blinking neon sign over a character defining their class. If the wizard identifies a [Good] spell that harms him he might rationalize it by saying "maybe I mis-identified that..." (IE, maybe I failed my Spellcraft check [despite actually having succeeded]). It's even easier with paladins, as there's no (stated) visible manifestation of a Smite - he just hits you really, really hard. Maybe he got a lucky hit, or maybe he just put more "oomph" into that blow. Maybe he's got a class ability like Smite that you're not familiar with. Maybe he's an Antipaladin in disguise. Rationalizations can go on and on.
A character who doesn't want to deny their worldview can easily come up with excuses to preserve it.
No blinking neon sign maybe, but again it depends on knowledge and ignorance. Even low-level good outsiders have a constant or at-will detect evil, and if he could he would seek them out. Probably not brag about the grim work he does,, but he is descended from them and thinks that they are the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I often struggle with alignment constraints myself, but I have found that the best DM's and games don't focus on them too much just as the best novels have to ignore them. It isn't lazy. You would have a really terrible story if the writers had to acknowledge an alignment system. Where is character development or intrigue when this can happen:
Fighter: "Hey, Cleric. Do you think Wizard has been acting weird lately?"
Cleric: "Yeah, one second"
Cleric casts Detect Evil!
Cleric: "Yep, he is evil now. So kill him or redeem him?"
Ehm, sorry, but I see that as a challenge. Because that isn't limited to Pathfinder. That's what you can get in many stories with magic, telepathy, mind-scanning etc. If the wizard wants to be evil there's....O_o I just see that Undetectable Alignment is a bard/cleric/paladin spell, so the wizard would have to secretly get a magic item.-_-
Novarion, based on your comments, you are not asking if this can be done. You are complaining that it cannot be done, and asking people to prove you wrong. I think that based on RAW and your notion that players are aware of the Moral Axis rules, you are correct. You now have a few choices that I see. Throw out this character concept, seriously redefine it, or work with your DM to go against the RAW. Some posters have proposed good ways for working around this. Suggest those to the DM.
Wrong, I want to know HOW it could be done. By the way since it is pretty obviously an NPC villain concept (honestly, who wants to play a racist, genocidal, complete and utter moron, I mean the only worse thing I can imagine is playing a Chaos Space Marine) guess who would be the DM.
You and the DM may want to ask yourselves a few questions. As thejeff and Orthos pointed out, how does you character even know that Smite Evil was cast? Why are the Moral Axis rules well known? Are paladins and angels so common that they are a threat? And perhaps most importantly, is your current campaign or party set up in such a way that this character is unplayable? Can the character be reworked to make him playable?
Finally, you may want to consider toughening up this guys world views. Why do you see him as dedicated enough to his ideal to commit genocide but too fragile to confront a single paladin?
Again, it's an NPC villain, he doesn't have to be playable. The moral axis rules are well known because the game depends on them a lot. I once had the idea of a tiefling Paladin/Abyssal Sorcerer who takes pleasure in summoning fiends to use them against evil enemies. Then I realized that the first time she pulled that trick she would be an Ex-Paladin/Abyssal Sorcerer because Summon Monster has the Evil descriptor when used that way. Inquisitors have all detect alignment spells as at-will, clerics and oracles have to understand it to know when to prepare/cast which protection spell or if Holy Word or Dictum is more appropriate. And maybe a Paladin was a bad example. Let's assume a cleric confronts him about what he does and is told about the aasimar's brilliant plan.
Cleric: Are you in.... Wait a moment, let's summon Beethoven the hound archon.
Cleric casts Summon Monster IV
Cleric: Hey Beethoven, that guy over there thinks he is good because he's descended from a celestial and kills all tieflings and dhampirs he can find because their blood would turn the mortal races evil.
Beethoven: What the *beep*? That's *beep*in' insane! He's so evil I get a *beep*in' headache just by looking at him. No wonder if he's beep'in' killed tons of innocents because of that crazy *beep*
Assimar: That has to be an illusion.
Cleric: Do I look like a wizard or bard to you? Beethoven hit him in the head!
Beethoven hits Assimar with greatsword. It is super-effective.
Cleric: That wound looks real enough to me.
Assimar: It's a shadow conjuration!
Cleric: Did that feel like a fraction of the damage he should do? Maybe he should hit you again.
The problem of the concept is that he believes he is good because he is descended from a being that by its very nature has to be good. And it is not that hard to prove that he is evil. I'm currently updating the concept a bit so that he has a "familiar" (some kind of fallen celestial with character levels) who gives him undetectable alignment and otherwise supports his delusions.
Ok. Sarcasm. Got it. I did not realize you were making an NPC, and yes, I have had players try to sit down at games with what I considered evil concepts. I once played in an entirely evil campaign, so forgive me for my presumption. Clearly, I was trying to help a PC. I am now at a bit of a loss. My earlier point now just means that you as the GM would need to be the one adjusting or loosening the rules, but that is clearly something you are unwilling to do.
Oh, also, I am aware of Undetectable Alignment and even Nondetection, but to use those, you have to admit you have something to hide.
I read your villain concept... and if I have it correct - you want to have:
An aasimar who has taken upon himself the task of saving the world by eliminating those who have the taint of evil upon them (examples being half-fiends, abyssal bloodline sorcerers, and the like..)
If this is correct, I am going to suggest something radical: Make him a good alignment.
Not all good is the same. Not all forces for good have to agree - good does not have to be kind, or sympathetic, or even all that understanding. It can be cold, and brutal and yes, even merciless.
I think you have described a good-aligned NPC who is totally, 100% devoted to the eradication of evil and still will be an antagonist for the PCs.
I am going to go even further by suggesting such a character would be Lawful Good and here is why:
A lawful character is a predictable one. They are uncompromising in nature - given a certain set of circumstances, they will behave in a certain way. When those circumstances arise again, they will act in the same way. Your aasimar, when faced with a person of a 'tainted nature', kills them. It doesn't matter if they are a dhampir necromancer lord with plans for world domination or just a tiefling farmer whose mother didn't know that the one night stand all those years ago was with a devil in disguise. Those are distinctions that would change the mind of neutral or chaotic characters, all your NPC sees is the evil so his reaction is the same - kill it.
Now, I will also fully state that this NPC couldn't be a paladin or a cleric of a good god as those classes have built in restrictions and behaviour requirements that he cannot meet. He could a celestial bloodline sorcerer, or an oracle maybe.
Just a thought.
The problem with that suggestion J is that a Good character is incompatible with the idea of killing a creature just because of an arbitrary factor. Most notably the idea that "you have X in your bloodline, X is evil, that makes you evil, I'm going to kill you for it", when the victim has done nothing to prompt such an assault, nor taken any hostile actions against the instigator nor anyone else. Even the evil fodder races such as goblinoids, orcs, etc. that adventurers get sent after all the time have the threat of "have raided/will raid unless stopped" justifying such an assault; in this case, many of this guy's victims will be nothing more than an unfortunate commoner who, as you stated, got the short end of the stick as far as ancestry goes.
Lawful Neutral, I could see very easily, though there would be a very real risk of sliding into LE in the process. But Good? No, that is not Good. Not at all.
I have a Chaotic Neutral character who is rather savvy about planes, gods, and the like. He thinks of himself as being Chaotic Good, but he is mistaken in that belief -- favoring good over evil when given a choice between the two is not the same as actually being good. Since he is not a member of a divine class, the clues about his true alignment are few and far between.
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The problem with the OP's question is that the alignment system is written from the perspective of a Lawful Good individual. Shift to any other square of the alignment chart and the categories are viewed differently. A CG character might view the Lawful/Chaotic spectrum as Oppression/Freedom. A LE character might view it as Order/Anarchy. Similarly, an Evil (of any sort, really) character might view Good/Evil as Means/Ends, or even Servile/Dominant.
Just because someone fits the Evil alignment doesn't mean that they think they're wrong. In fact, they most likely believe that their path of action is right.
Ok. Sarcasm. Got it. I did not realize you were making an NPC, and yes, I have had players try to sit down at games with what I considered evil concepts. I once played in an entirely evil campaign, so forgive me for my presumption. Clearly, I was trying to help a PC. I am now at a bit of a loss. My earlier point now just means that you as the GM would need to be the one adjusting or loosening the rules, but that is clearly something you are unwilling to do.
Sorry, I never got the hang of playing evil characters, for me it's always the hardest part of DMing but it works because I don't see them as player characters but as beings who are supposed to give others a warm fuzzy feeling when they are put down. That's not something I want to feel about my characters, but to each his own.;-)
However I always think that GM should only break the rules to improve the fun of his players. Bending the whole alignment system so some whacky idea works isn't my style. However, I might have an idea with a fun custom spell.....Oh, also, I am aware of Undetectable Alignment and even Nondetection, but to use those, you have to admit you have something to hide.
Exactly. So it doesn't work if he casts it on himself which wrecks that part of my idea. But it does work if someone with his own agenda who knows that what he believes is nonsense wants to use him. That's why I just converted another old whacky idea into villain number two. A fallen cassisian angel cleric who has a spell to shrink himself to the right size to be the helmet for a medium-sized being.
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Going back to the original post, alignment is a tool for the player, not the character. The character doesn't "lie to himself," he/she just is.
So for example, the player would know that his character is lawful evil, but the character might be simply adhering to the law of the land and taking and selling slaves and not think of himself as evil at all - however the rules clearly state that slavery is an evil act.
However, while the player has access to those rules, the character does not. So if a paladin tries to smite the character, the character might think that he is being persecuted by a fanatical zealot powered by a god who wants to wipe he and his kind out.
Plus, smite good and smite evil work basically the same, right? How does the character know that it isn't an anti-paladin trying to smite him?
The problem with that suggestion J is that a Good character is incompatible with the idea of killing a creature just because of an arbitrary factor. Most notably the idea that "you have X in your bloodline, X is evil, that makes you evil, I'm going to kill you for it", when the victim has done nothing to prompt such an assault, nor taken any hostile actions against the instigator nor anyone else. Even the evil fodder races such as goblinoids, orcs, etc. that adventurers get sent after all the time have the threat of "have raided/will raid unless stopped" justifying such an assault; in this case, many of this guy's victims will be nothing more than an unfortunate commoner who, as you stated, got the short end of the stick as far as ancestry goes.
Lawful Neutral, I could see very easily, though there would be a very real risk of sliding into LE in the process. But Good? No, that is not Good. Not at all.
I would suggest that the arbitrary factor is not 'they have evil in their blood' but 'what they do with it'. You are right in saying that most good people would take that into consideration; I am saying they don't have to.
Good aligned PCs also go out and hunt chromatic dragons for no other reason than to take their hoard. That's just greed.
Hunting down bands of orcs or what-have-you because they "will raid unless stopped" is killing people for what they 'might' do or are 'likely' to do. I am saying our aasimar could be doing the same thing.
Good does not have to be reactionary, it doesn't have to wait for evil to attack in order to save people from it or avenge them. Nothing about good prevents it from going out and finding the evil to slay.
This NPC goes out and kills evil things. In fact, it goes out and kills things that may actually 'ping' to evil detection spells and effects so he can even get confirmation.
It may suck for the tiefling farmer, but this aasimar is out there ridding the world of evil. He may be an unforgiving bastard about it, but it could still be a good thing.
I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. A PC trying that in any of my games would find himself quick on the southward slide out of any alignment ending in G. An NPC, such as this guy, might be Good the first time or two the party meets him, but after a few incidents of this would be very firmly Neutral and/or well on his way to Evil.
Read the Goblins welcoming (goblinscomic.com) it features a Dwarf Paladin named Kore who kills a Dwarf child because he was being raised by an orc and therefore could become evil or sympathize with evil. Sounds close to your concept. no?
I read Goblins for a while. I never understood why in heck Kore hadn't fallen.
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I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. A PC trying that in any of my games would find himself quick on the southward slide out of any alignment ending in G.
Big time.
Those examples are all simply bad player examples. "Good" characters who hunt chromatic dragons just for their hoards? That would be evil.
Characters who hunt chromatic dragons to stop them from eating villagers? That would be good.
Plus, hunting down a band of orcs who has already raided a village is definitley not doing it because they "might." It is doing it for what they already have done. If a human village and an orc village have co-existed next to each other for years without incident and one day a group of adventurers decided to kill the orcs, that would be evil.
That's fair, then.
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The thing is alignment is subjective. By Pathfinders alignment definitions I'm Chaotic Evil simply because I enjoy my freedom and only care about myself and a select few. Yet ask them and they describe me as Chaotic Good. Why because I am good from their perspective.
Kore is Lawful because he is organized and methodical. Kore is good because to him and probably a few others he is doing the right thing.
Look at the Goblinslayer he thought he was good because he was defending the city from monsters.
This whole "Alignments are set in stone" crap is ignorant. I present you with the second paragraph under the alignment section:
"Alignment is a tool for developing your character's identity—it is not a straitjacket for restricting your character. Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two characters of the same alignment can still be quite different from each other. In addition, few people are completely consistent."
To be blunt any GM who thinks an alignment is set in stone probably won't end up with happy players. I say this from experience with 5 GMs who done this and that isn't counting the other bad GMs. I can also tell you the more loose alignments are then more often than not it will be more enjoyable for everyone. I say that from GMing and Co-GMing around 50 campaigns with 10 different groups.
I will Now step down from the soapbox.
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So you do what your hate, greed, and lust drive you to do? You are out to get everything you can, no matter who it belongs to?
I would describe you as Chaotic Evil, too. If you don't do those things, I wouldn't describe you as CE.
Alignment doesn't care about perspective, it cares about action and motivation. Those things are not subjective. You either do it or you don't.
Just because you think you are good does not make it so.
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One thing to keep in mind in this discussion is that PCs don't have access to the Core Rulebook - our characters don't necessarily know how the morality of their multiverse works!
That's fair, then.
Whoops!
Was going to edit my post and ended up deleting it! That'll teach me to try and post while cooking....What I wrote originally was that I'm mostly just playing the devil's advocate here. I agree that hoard hunters and orc slayers are examples of non-good characters.
The original point I was making was that in the specific example of the OP, we are talking about someone slaying evil. In this context, evil is a real and quantifiable thing whose existence is tangible.
So in that alone, they could be a good character - they hunt down evil and destroy it. So where do they go wrong?
Most would suggest that this aasimar falls astray because he sees evil when it isn't there. Our tiefling farmer for example - he doesn't do bad things, he just has tainted blood.
But you could argue that having the taint of evil in your very essence does increase the amount of tangible evil in the world and that is something the forces of good would like to stop.
All I was saying is that the assimar's failure to distinguish between that tainted person with another tainted person (this one a full fledged
half red-dragon murderer) is law/chaos thing not a good/evil one.
"Evil needs to be put to the sword. No exceptions, full stop." - Sticking to that, no matter what the evil might be, and never ever making exceptions no matter what the circumstances, is indicative of a lawful alignment. A very lawful one, much more lawful than any reasonable person would have to be sure.
But it doesn't make him evil.