Modrons don't have a hive mind, they're just very good at obedience.
Depending on which sourcebook you read, the lowest ranking modrons don't actually have free will: they're automatons, and are Lawful for the same reason zombies are Evil: it's part of their basic make up rather than how they act/view the universe.
Edit: Also, most example of Evil being self-sacrificing are things like suicide bombers or vicious weapons: hurting myself a comparative little to hurt my foes a LOT.
Other examples of self sacrificing evil includes minions standing between the good guys who outclass them and the BBEG.
Good is no "harder" than any other alignment, it simply represents your character's values. If you think good is hard, maybe your character is more neutral than good.
Edit: Also, most example of Evil being self-sacrificing are things like suicide bombers or vicious weapons: hurting myself a comparative little to hurt my foes a LOT.
Other examples of self sacrificing evil includes minions standing between the good guys who outclass them and the BBEG.
I stand by what I said about degrees of otherness. Also, generally these minions don't expect to lose.
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Also, generally these minions don't expect to lose.
Indeed; just because the GM put them there to spend a couple rounds dying before the PCs get to the BBEG doesn't mean that's their intent in-character. Their decision to stand in front of the BBEG is no more alignment-related than the PC tank's decision to stand in front of the PC caster(s).
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Good is no "harder" than any other alignment, it simply represents your character's values. If you think good is hard, maybe your character is more neutral than good.
Neutral people would still rather have Good neighbors than Evil ones.
There is a difference between having Good values and living up to them.It is easy to say 'People should donate to charity.' It is harder to give up your own ambition and actually do so.
It is easy to say 'The strong should protect the weak.' It is harder to actually stand up to someone preying on the weak.
In short: I think Good is hard because I know I'm more neutral than Good.
So somebody self-sacrificing to help a greater Good is not actually good alignment, because they are only actually helping an expanded self and not others?
Evil does self-sacrifice, but not to help others. Only to help itself. Self, in this case, can be an expanded self, such as serving a greater Evil (a cult or evil mastermind.)Yes. There are degrees of 'otherness'. Helping my own spouse/child/tribe is less meaningful than helping a stranger.
So helping your tribe/community/church/child/spouse is not good at all in this view?
These are all expanded self, correct?
Anybody you care about seems to fall into that expanded self category which makes helping them not good.
A paladin saving orphans is therefore not doing good if he cares about orphans. Same with all innocents.
Only sacrificing for strangers you don't care about seems to be left for good.
Under these premises, I agree, good is very hard. I would also argue it is not an ideal worth pursuing.
Good is no "harder" than any other alignment, it simply represents your character's values. If you think good is hard, maybe your character is more neutral than good.Neutral people would still rather have Good neighbors than Evil ones.
There is a difference between having Good values and living up to them.It is easy to say 'People should donate to charity.' It is harder to give up your own ambition and actually do so.
It is easy to say 'The strong should protect the weak.' It is harder to actually stand up to someone preying on the weak.
In short: I think Good is hard because I know I'm more neutral than Good.
Good's not really all that hard. Adventuring Good is hard, but so is Adventuring Evil. A comforting hand on someone's shoulder is Good. Taking the time out of your day to be considerate of others is Good. Respecting someone else's right to live and be happy is Good. Good, like Evil, is made of lots of small attitudes that become big behaviors. Such low-level behaviors can also be used to exemplify domestic Evil - an officer clerk that provides barriers to real help, taking out your frustrations on others, mocking their pains and sorrows, those are small, yet Evil behaviors.
It's when you get to the point where you're fighting soul-eating demons that you go, "Sweet Asmodeus, this job /sucks/." Unfortunately, the Evil guys are saying the same thing while planetars mop their faces up off the floor.
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So helping your tribe/community/church/child/spouse is not good at all in this view?
These are all expanded self, correct?
Anybody you care about seems to fall into that expanded self category which makes helping them not good.
A paladin saving orphans is therefore not doing good if he cares about orphans. Same with all innocents.
Only sacrificing for strangers you don't care about seems to be left for good.
Under these premises, I agree, good is very hard. I would also argue it is not an ideal worth pursuing.
Not so much "anybody you care about" as "anybody connected to you".
That is, people who are in your immediate sphere of influence such that how you treat them will likely come back to you. Treating these people well doesn't mean much morally, since it's typically self-beneficial to inject positivity into your own sphere.
But making sacrifices in order to bring benefit to those with no connection to yourself, whose reaction to that benevolence is unlikely to ever affect you; that is good, because you're not just "building your own castle". You're making a one-way transaction from you to them.
I think there is miss-communication here on what is meant by "hard".
'Good is hard' isn't referring to the amount of work or danger required. It refers to the lack of shortcuts one can take, philosophically and ethically.
Like how villains can lie, cheat, and rationalize their way to the actions that they take while these options are not there for good.
Evil can sit by while someone is hurt by the strong - and still be Evil. Good will intervene, even at the cost of their own goals or well being - otherwise it isn't Good.
So helping your tribe/community/church/child/spouse is not good at all in this view?
These are all expanded self, correct?
The answer is 'it depends'. I think the decider might be 'would you have still done it for a stranger', not if it actually was a stranger. The less likely it is that you would do it for someone you don't know, the less Good it is, which can result in it being Neutral.
Anybody you care about seems to fall into that expanded self category which makes helping them not good.
A paladin saving orphans is therefore not doing good if he cares about orphans. Same with all innocents.
Well, no. A paladin cares about those orphans because he is Good. I'm not trying to say that Good is defined by apathy. I'm trying to say that Good means caring about others for no other reason.
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letting someone go who is begging for their life is a very simple decision, you will sleep easily at night.Unless you wonder if this person will now commit more evil. Knowing that someone you freed went on to kill an orphanage full of children would wreck a Good character.
taking the life of someone who is begging you to spare them can cause mental illness and a shorter lifespan.If you are Evil then this kind of thing won't bother you at all. In fact, you would revel in it.
youre correct i meant to type "letting someone live who is begging for their life is a very simple decision, you will sleep easily at night."
evil does not mean psychopathic. it only means you are willing to kill out of convenience, against innocence. this does not imply that you must be cold hearted, only that you feel the best way to accomplish a goal is by that action.
only exception to this is some aspects of chaotic and neutral evil. but we're only talking about evil as a concept (ideal), not evil by the alignment system of pathfinder.
There's a reason why Dante had the neutral angels just inside Hell, but not really a part of it.
Because there is no salvation component to Judaism?
A comforting hand on someone's shoulder is Good. Respecting someone else's right to live and be happy is Good.
Yes, but if that's all the Good a person does, their own alignment probably doesn't reach past Neutral.
Taking the time out of your day to be considerate of others is Good.
Now we're talking. As I've been saying, the key to Good is that is costs you something: even it that's just an opportunity cost. When you could be doing something else, you stop to help. When you could spend money on yourself, you give it away.
It's when you get to the point where you're fighting soul-eating demons that you go, "Sweet Asmodeus, this job /sucks/." Unfortunately, the Evil guys are saying the same thing while planetars mop their faces up off the floor.
I don't really think those are equivalent.
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Yeah, that's what I called the 'Red and blue' morality.
Yeah, that's what I called the 'Red and blue' morality.And my background in psychology tells me all kinds of interesting things about folks who buy into it. :D
I can guess a few of those, but I am curious as to what you mean.
Evil is not hard.
Just because others try to stop you from commiting evil acts doesn't make your desire to do evil "hard." That's just consequences of your actions.
Good is hard; no argument there.
However...
It's difficult enough to remain Good as a monk in a monastery, where temptation is minimized: there will always be the ability to say 'screw this' to celibacy and bland food and working long hours at potentially backbreaking labor for no personal reward.
How is a reclusive monk "good"? How is he or she helping other people by secluding him or herself in a monastery?
Celibacy has nothing to do with morality, nor does eating bland food (presuming there's no other option, since the monk is living in a monastery; indeed, the monk's food may well be donated to the monastery, in which case he or she may well be burdening nearby communities and causing others to go hungry, in effect). I'm not sure what labor a monk might be engaging in, aside from perhaps maintaining his or her monastery... so, that's not really "good" either; it's self-serving.
Unless they're actively helping people, monks are neutral at best.
I should have been more clear. I was assuming a monastery (or nunnery) of a Good faith. That is, though reclusive, they seek to do good works. Perhaps they take in the poor. Perhaps they try to educate the next generation. Perhaps the fruits of their labor are brought into civilization and given to the needy.
In any case, my point about the monastery was about the lack of temptation, as opposed to opportunity to do Good works.
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Anyone who thinks the main difference between good and evil is which set of outsiders you're likely to find yourself fighting does not understand alignment.
If morality is objective in the world of Golarion, as many of the people in this thread (including myself) seem to agree upon, then there is nothing actually wrong with seeing the teams as Red vs Blue.
It depends on the character, but you could easily see good vs evil as operating forces on the universe no different then heat and cold.
Part of the problem with a defined objective morality is that you are removing as much ambiguity from it as possible for ease of play, which is really easy to do when you can establish abstract or magical concepts. That's why settings with this objective-based morality include alignments, and settings that don't tend to stray away from it. (Compare Cyberpunk games to Fantasy games)
There's a major difference in playing a character that sees the teams as Red vs Blue and a player being actively disruptive. If I want to play a Good aligned Terminator Android I can very easily do it by picking Favored Enemy: Outsider (Evil) and slaughtering all of them that I see. If I wanted to I could out a veritable dictionary of destruction or thesaurus of transgressions. They are objectively defined as evil, I'm furthering the cause of Good by removing their opposition from the force of good.
Needless to say, this does not work in real life, or with any rational humanoid you're going to meet. The problem I'm having is you seem to be mixing the two as one situation and telling me I'm having bad fun. They are two situations, the strange nature of morality in the game allows both to exist or be absent at the will of the people playing in that particular game.
I would have to definatly agree with this. The concept of concrete morality seems to be lost on the youn'ins. There will always be grey, but grey is the middleground, neutral, if you will.It seems to also stem from player entitlement. People want the dark brooding anti-hero (neutral or evil) without the alignment. This also stems from the word "hero" being used too liberally these days. When Magic Johnson came out and said he had HIV... I remember the press calling him "couragous" and "a hero"... still not sure why that was. He cheated on his wife multiple times gave god knows how many women the HIV and was then forced to own up to it... Now that I'm done dating myself.
Many have been conditioned to keep their minds open... and that's good. It will eventually wipe predjudace from the map. But a lot have kept their minds so open that their that their brains have fallen out. You see this with serial killer groupies and the like.
Agreed. I find it odd when people commit evil acts and try to frame them as good by intent or established alignment. "We killed the prisoners so they wouldn't harm any more innocents." Or, "I'm good, so killing evil in cold blood must be OK". I just look at them and say "Necessary evil". Good characters do that type of thing. Too much and they're not good anymore of course...
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Anyone who thinks the main difference between good and evil is which set of outsiders you're likely to find yourself fighting does not understand alignment.If morality is objective in the world of Golarion, as many of the people in this thread (including myself) seem to agree upon, then there is nothing actually wrong with seeing the teams as Red vs Blue.
Nothing mechanically wrong, I suppose. But Good and Evil mean different things. Playing them as Team A and Team B robs them of their identities. Heaven is a much nicer place to be than Hell. Orc society is markedly different than human society. As a Neutral person, I'd much rather have an Angel arrive unannounced than a Demon.
Very well put, Ross.
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Anyone who thinks the main difference between good and evil is which set of outsiders you're likely to find yourself fighting does not understand alignment.If morality is objective in the world of Golarion, as many of the people in this thread (including myself) seem to agree upon, then there is nothing actually wrong with seeing the teams as Red vs Blue.
It depends on the character, but you could easily see good vs evil as operating forces on the universe no different then heat and cold.
Part of the problem with a defined objective morality is that you are removing as much ambiguity from it as possible for ease of play, which is really easy to do when you can establish abstract or magical concepts. That's why settings with this objective-based morality include alignments, and settings that don't tend to stray away from it. (Compare Cyberpunk games to Fantasy games)
There's a major difference in playing a character that sees the teams as Red vs Blue and a player being actively disruptive. If I want to play a Good aligned Terminator Android I can very easily do it by picking Favored Enemy: Outsider (Evil) and slaughtering all of them that I see. If I wanted to I could out a veritable dictionary of destruction or thesaurus of transgressions. They are objectively defined as evil, I'm furthering the cause of Good by removing their opposition from the force of good.
Needless to say, this does not work in real life, or with any rational humanoid you're going to meet. The problem I'm having is you seem to be mixing the two as one situation and telling me I'm having bad fun. They are two situations, the strange nature of morality in the game allows both to exist or be absent at the will of the people playing in that particular game.
If it's just Red vs Blue, then if I detect your alignment I haven't learned very much about you. The guy who detected as good might defend me from the guy who detected as evil when he tries to kill me in my sleep, or it might be the other way around. I don't know. About all I learn from those detection spells is which domains you might have if you're a cleric.
But if alignment is what the Core Rulebook says it is, then finding out your alignment actually reveals what you're like as a person. If you detect as good and it doesn't just mean "blue", then I know you're not going to hurt me without a good reason; meanwhile, if you detect as evil and it doesn't just mean "red", then I know I'd better not get in your way because you'll have no compunctions against hurting me (physically or otherwise) if it would be advantageous to you - or maybe even just for fun.
So even at the bare minimum mechanical level, there's a real difference between using alignment the way the CRB defines it and using it as Red vs Blue.
Wormser, you are using the 'good' that is the opposite of 'bad'. I am talking about the 'Good' that is the opposite of 'Evil', which is Pathfinder is an objective force that can be measured, and is defined in the Core rulebook.
A LE Tyrant thinks he is doing the just and proper thing. He does not think he is bad. His society quite possibly agrees (Infernal Cheliax, anyone?)
A CE Orc Warlord is probably more revered and respected the more brutal he is. His troops wouldn't have it any other way: if he started showing compassion they'd kill him and put the next biggest orc in charge.
That does not make either of them Good.
What this means in practical terms, is that an NPC should ping good or evil based upon the PCs beliefs (thus the same NPC could be both good and evil to two different members of a party).
Since alignment is actually very labile in pathfinder, it is only really useful when describing what types of outsiders are arbitrarily impacted by a spell (and in describing the activity constraints of certain paragons of a particular faith (e.g. Clerics, paladins, etc). In the case of the paragons, the labels of good and evil describe their beliefs in relation to a basic western judeo-christian belief system and are really only a descriptor.
It's exactly the opposite of that. An NPC will ping good or evil regardless of the beliefs of the PC. Good and Evil are objective in Pathfinder, not subjective.
That does not make either of them Evil.
"Evil" cannot be objectively described. Evil can only be described in the context of a system. Saying that the Tyrant or the Warlord are Evil is an label based upon an assumption that the pathfinder universe is viewed thru the lens of the Judeo-Christian belief system (or other similar belief) which have certain societal values
Altruism and self sacrifice as good isn't particular to any one religious group. It has been ubiquitous across societies throughout human history.
The only lens that matters is the rules combined with the GM. Once the nature of Good/Evil has been determined in this way, it is objective and fixed for that particular Pathfinder universe.
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So the spell would be "Protection from beings who tend to act against the judeo-christian valued behaviors" instead of Protection from Evil.
Not sure why you keep leaning on the "judeo-christian" thing. Societies from the Calahari bushmen, to Buddhist India, to aboriginal tribes recognize sacrifice and altruism as good.
And in Pathfinder the spell is simply Protection from Evil- where Evil is a predetermined property of the universe, just like the value of Pi.
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No - We do not know that Altruism and self-sacrifice have been ubiquitous across societies as a valued belief. You take a small sample of beliefs across a narrow swath of history (for example, tell me what the Incans, Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs, Abysissians, Old Kingdom Eygptians felt about altruism and self sacrifice based upon their own recorded beliefs) Tell me what the Vikings, Goths, Mongols felt about these topics.
Who cares? They didn't write the Core Rulebook, and this thread is in the Pathfinder RPG General Discussion forum, not the Off-Topic Discussion forum.
There is no "Nature" of Good/Evil in pathfinder. There is just a defined set. There is no "Good = Hard." There is only what pathfinder has defined as good and evil
The point of the original post, and one with which I agree, is that there is a "Nature" of Good/Evil in Pathfinder.
It's not just a label or a Jersey, as some have aptly put it.
Evil takes shortcuts. Evil holds hostages. Evil is willing to do horrible things to further its means.
Good involves doing things the hard way - because it is harder to accomplish a goal when you are also worried about who and what is harmed by the means.