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No, D&D is really kind of a stand in for the "objective morality system of D&D", which PF of course subscribes to. The big thing is when there is a hard choice that has to be made that *isn't* a personal sacrifice, like offing Baron Zulthar's family for the sake of the peace and stability of the region. The person who can do that when it is necessary is to me, much more heroic then the person who cannot.In this case there is a difference between more heroic and more Good. A truly Good character would not accept sacrificing other innocent people. He would try to find a different way and, succeeding or failing, would be the paragon of Good.
Oh completely agree. But its the fact that they can be the paragon of Good while still failing that makes Good easy.
Oh completely agree. But its the fact that they can be the paragon of Good while still failing that makes Good easy.No, D&D is really kind of a stand in for the "objective morality system of D&D", which PF of course subscribes to. The big thing is when there is a hard choice that has to be made that *isn't* a personal sacrifice, like offing Baron Zulthar's family for the sake of the peace and stability of the region. The person who can do that when it is necessary is to me, much more heroic then the person who cannot.In this case there is a difference between more heroic and more Good. A truly Good character would not accept sacrificing other innocent people. He would try to find a different way and, succeeding or failing, would be the paragon of Good.
The easy thing would be to let the family bite it and save the day. Fiat accompli!
The hard thing would be to struggle for another way to victory without taking such shortcuts. Even if it means you might fail.
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The person who can do that when it is necessary is to me, much more heroic then the person who cannot.
Why can't Pathfinder-good do that?
As to your second point, this is the case in Pathfinder definitions as well, mostly because good can make "personal sacrifices" not sacrifices of other people. Also, since they protect innocent life, their damned either way by that definition.
Let's apply some critical thinking here, alright?
The game says that to be good, you should be interested in saving innocents.
The game allows for a PC (or NPC) to be good.
Therefore, the game considers it possible to satisfy the requirements of a good alignment.
The game considers it possible to be good, which it defines as involving protecting innocents.
The game generally does not make it possible to save EVERY innocent EVERYWHERE.
Therefore, the game's requirement for being good must be restricted to what you're realistically capable of.
So by applying even the most basic degree of logic, Pathfinder-good simply requires protecting as many innocents as your capability allows. Therefore, if the only possibilities in a given situation involve a nonzero number of innocents dying, Pathfinder-good does not leave you "damned either way"; it requires that you do what you can to ensure that you protect as many innocents as your capability allows—even if that's not all of them.
This seems to mesh perfectly with what you're saying is "more heroic".
So the mark so a good person is his willingness to do evil?
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Even if we imagine a (probably very contrived) situation where the only means to reduce the number of innocents who die is to kill some of said innocents at your own hand, then we're left with a good person having to make a choice between slaughtering innocents or letting more innocents be slaughtered.
I'm not seeing how that decision could be considered "easy"; neither option is desirable. Neutral would just let the greater number die ("lack the commitment to make sacrifices for others"), and evil wouldn't care. Good is the only one with a real decision to make at all, and it's a tough one.
Isn't that what's meant by "good is hard"?
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First to Mr. Beyers: Well said Sir, well said.
Second, generally: Just like Pathfinder is not an accurate economic simulator or an accurate medieval warfare simulator it is not a be all, end all treatise on philosophy and morality.
The Alignment system will always be, at best, a set of rough guidelines on how creatures are to act and what they believe in within the context of their game environment and setting.
There will NEVER be cut and dry answers to most alignment question in the game. That is one of the reasons they have a GM, It is also one of the reasons this game is so great. It makes you THINK about such things as morality and justice.
Things that make you think are generally good (in my opinion).
Even if good is hard.
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There's a couple of solutions to your dilemma.
Option #1: Houserule that there is no "inherent evil" in your campaign world; that is, if you're using anything (including necromancy) for ends that don't match the CRB's definition of evil, you're not doing evil....
Option #2: Accept that the way things work in the game world and the way any given player believes things work in the real world don't have to be the same. You take what the rules say, and apply them: creating undead is evil, and evil means XYZ, therefore creating undead shows that XYZ is true of you....
Ultimately, what really matters is that when someone (whether a paladin PC or a random NPC) detects your alignment, they're given the right information.
Absolutely agree. Unfortunately I feel the CRB description of alignment is misleading on this point since it describes Evil in terms of harm done while failing to mention that elsewhere in the rules there are examples of evils that are inherent, not tied to amount of harm - such as the creation of undead, or the fact that a redeemed nonevil demon still detects as evil (and is even vulnerable to Smite Evil). I expect that some arguments over alignments start because one party assumes that evil is solely defined by the CRB while the other is arguing from exceptions XYZ.
In a reality where Necromancy is definitively Evil, why would a Good person pursue it as a career? Casting a necromancy spell every now and then because it's "necessary for the greater Good" or "the least bad solution in a terrible predicament" is one thing... becoming a "compassionate necromancer" seems to be something else altogether.
...
In the context of the reality Ross is discussing, necromancy is Evil. Full stop. How you use it doesn't change that fact.
Just like someone above said killing an innocent is Evil. Period. Killing an innocent for a greater good can be justified, but it's still an Evil act.
So I pose the question again... in a reality where Necromancy is definitively Evil, why would a Good person pursue it as a career?
Perhaps creating undead is definitively evil. However, it isn't definitively harmful unless we houserule in some explanation (for example, creating even unintelligent undead damages the soul of the target, or that creating an undead creature means that some innocent somewhere dies to balance the scales, or even that animating a dead corpse instills in the caster a deep subconscious desire to bring about more death). And if creating undead isn't harmful, then a compassionate person may very well see no problem with creating undead carefully and responsibly.
And that compassionate person will then be Evil. Which is, for starters, contrary to the description of Evil in the CRB. It also requires some people to either divorce alignment from morality (because some things are evil but not immoral) OR assume that game morality is different from contemporary morality.
I would guess that the NPC guide has higher level NPCs because it is pretty easy to whip up a 1st lvl commoner on your own.
Actually, while it's true that creatures of under 5 HD don't detect and it's often assumed that most people are under 5HD, Paizo's NPC guide has a lot of fairly ordinary folks as NPC classes 5th level or higher. The average guard is only level 3 and doesn't Detect, but a Tavern Champion or Grizzled Mercenary are level 5+, and an officer is a...
Yeah, but calling the 5th level NPC a "barmaid"? That suggests that it's common for 5th level commoners to be barmaids - perhaps even that the best way to model a barmaid is as a 5th level commoner. If you want to model a few commoners with different skills, there's nothing wrong with giving two different example 2nd level commoners, and if you're running out of roles for commoner levels 5-10 maybe you don't need to give example commoners of each of those levels. (Now that I think about it, this is probably more a result of the NPC Codex's theme "one NPC for each level in each CRB class" rather than an actual statement about the commonness of 5th level barmaids...)
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Absolutely agree. Unfortunately I feel the CRB description of alignment is misleading on this point since it describes Evil in terms of harm done while failing to mention that elsewhere in the rules there are examples of evils that are inherent, not tied to amount of harm - such as the creation of undead, or the fact that a redeemed nonevil demon still detects as evil (and is even vulnerable to Smite Evil). I expect that some arguments over alignments start because one party assumes that evil is solely defined by the CRB while the other is arguing from exceptions XYZ.There's a couple of solutions to your dilemma.
Option #1: Houserule that there is no "inherent evil" in your campaign world; that is, if you're using anything (including necromancy) for ends that don't match the CRB's definition of evil, you're not doing evil....
Option #2: Accept that the way things work in the game world and the way any given player believes things work in the real world don't have to be the same. You take what the rules say, and apply them: creating undead is evil, and evil means XYZ, therefore creating undead shows that XYZ is true of you....
Ultimately, what really matters is that when someone (whether a paladin PC or a random NPC) detects your alignment, they're given the right information.
Well, that's an issue of the setting-neutral hardback being added to by a setting book. That is, the CRB is "default Pathfinder" while individual settings (like Golarion) might add, change, remove or replace elements of anything, including alignment.
So like I said, the important thing is consistency - something that's conspicuously absent from most of the "paladins are disruptive" posts I've seen around the boards. :/
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Tell that to Baron Zulthar's whole family. When your Paladin can kill them all and not fall for having done what was necessary to prevent innocent lives from being lost, get back to me. Evil doesn't hesitate.
One thing imo that often confuses people. "Right and wrong" are often seen as equaling "good and evil" They're not the same thing. What's right is what you are supposed to do (cultural / alignment choice) or think you have to do. If you kill the Baron's family (who are innocent) to save a far larger number of innocents many would say you did the "right thing". But killing the innocent, no matter the reason, is evil. So, an evil action might be judged the "right" (or correct) thing to do by many. It could be considered a necessary evil. At the same time saving the lives of the Baron's family at the cost of thousands of innocent lives down the road could be the "wrong" (incorrect) thing to do, but still be a good action.
Paladins aren't supposed to do the "right thing". Just the good thing. A regular "good" character could do the "right" (evil) thing in the case above and get away with it (from an alignment standpoint). I don't think one nasty evil act could destroy a solidly good characters alignment (unless they are already on the edge). Paladins, well... Paladins walk a tight rope. That is what, again imo, makes them fun / interesting to play :)
Ymmv of course.
I'm not claiming the Right thing and the Good thing are the same. I just think Good gets off easy cause it can excuse itself from doing the Right thing by saying "That's not Good." An Evil person cannot. That's not to say that all Evil people do the Right thing, but if if you want to always do the Right thing your alignment is probably going to be anything but Good.
Also, I'm not sure those scenarios are really that contrived Jiggy, and well yes a Good person will try and "take a third option", but I think the problem with your analysis is that Evil and Neutral people will not do the Right thing, only Good people will. Which is just mistaken. Good people are not always Right and Right people are very rarely (if ever) Good.
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Anzyr, what you're calling "right but not good" is probably what everyone else means when they say "good". I guess someone must have poisoned the word "good" for you at some point by not doing the right thing but still getting themselves labeled as "good" and so you latched onto other words (like "right") to describe actual goodness.
That's the only explanation I can think of for your consistent assertions of "Good won't do the right thing", which to most people is an oxymoron.
So just re-read this thread while replacing the word "good" with "doing the right thing" and it'll probably be a much more agreeable experience for you. :)
I'm not claiming the Right thing and the Good thing are the same. I just think Good gets off easy cause it can excuse itself from doing the Right thing by saying "That's not Good." An Evil person cannot. That's not to say that all Evil people do the Right thing, but if if you want to always do the Right thing your alignment is probably going to be anything but Good.Also, I'm not sure those scenarios are really that contrived Jiggy, and well yes a Good person will try and "take a third option", but I think the problem with your analysis is that Evil and Neutral people will not do the Right thing, only Good people will. Which is just mistaken. Good people are not always Right and Right people are very rarely (if ever) Good.
I realize that. I don't think good can, or should really, "get off easy" by not doing it because it's "evil". I think sometimes good has to realize the necessity of an evil act and bite the bullet and do it. If a Paladin has to be the one, and he does the deed he should fall. If the lives of thousands of innocents aren't worth a "fall" what would be? It's an interesting philosophical problem. Not one I suggest shoving down the throats of every Paladin character who wonder by, but it's a possibility that can't be discounted.
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Hrm... except very often I'm quite certain the Right thing is very much an Evil action (which may not automatically make a person Evil, but over time...) I'll just leave the words of the poster child for this right here:
"What do you do when there is an evil you cannot defeat by just means? [...] In my case, I commit evil in order to destroy the greater evil!"
— Lelouch Lamperouge
I just happen to consider it more heroic (though less Good obviously) for people to be willing to knowingly engage in Evil to do the Right thing.
Anzyr, what you're calling "right but not good" is probably what everyone else means when they say "good". I guess someone must have poisoned the word "good" for you at some point by not doing the right thing but still getting themselves labeled as "good" and so you latched onto other words (like "right") to describe actual goodness.That's the only explanation I can think of for your consistent assertions of "Good won't do the right thing", which to most people is an oxymoron.
So just re-read this thread while replacing the word "good" with "doing the right thing" and it'll probably be a much more agreeable experience for you. :)
So, everyone else is being sloppy about their terminology? I don't agree that "good" has it easy as was stated above, because I don't excuse good from making choices. Hard choices :)
engage in Evil to do the Right thing.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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The lesser of two evils is still an evil.
Umm.. Exactly Gilfalas, doesn't mean it isn't the Right thing to do.
Umm.. Exactly Gilfalas, doesn't mean it isn't the Right thing to do.
Except if it is evil, by definition, it is not the right thing to do.
If you have been put into a position that only two evil options are left to you, then you have failed at being a hero.
Doing the lesser of two evils is not good or heroic. It is minimizing your failure. But rest assured you have indeed failed.
If this is a case of GM railroading then of course that is different.
The concept of this RPG is (to most) to be heroic. There are as many different games styles as there are games and some groups may like examining no win situations and their effects on their characters.
But in general, if your doing evil your doing evil. The lesser of two evils is still evil.
Most Paladins should reject both choices and find a third avenue where they could succeed. Never giving up. Never surrendering. That is acting good and being heroic.
The campaign has to support such concepts though. If your playing in a morally ambiguous world with nothing but shades of grey then certain character and morality concepts simply will not work in that game and setting.
The evil thing to do is NEVER the right thing to do. It may be the most expedient thing to do, it may be the only option you have but if it is evil it is never right.
It is still evil, its also more heroic at least in my opinion. The person who is willing to shoulder the burden of doing the lesser evil to fight the greater evil is a much more respectable person then a Good person who would rather oppose and fail to stop the greater evil.
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If this is a case of GM railroading then of course that is different.
The concept of this RPG is (to most) to be heroic. There are as many different games styles as there are games and some groups may like examining no win situations and their effects on their characters.
But in general, if your doing evil your doing evil. The lesser of two evils is still evil.
Most Paladins should reject both choices and find a third avenue where they could succeed. Never giving up. Never surrendering. That is acting good and being heroic.
The campaign has to support such concepts though. If your playing in a morally ambiguous world with nothing but shades of grey then certain character and morality concepts simply will not work in that game and setting.
So what you are saying is that is is impossible to be Good, or to be a hero, unless the campaign is designed such that a hero can always find a third option, and is never genuinely forced to make a choice between two evils?
In a world that will always provide a Third Option if you just Try Harder, of course a Good person will never settle for the lesser evil.
In a world more like ours, refusing to pick one of the evils can mean picking the greater evil by default. It's evil to kill civilians, but if the alternative is the Nazis getting a nuclear bomb? It's not heroic to cause massive suffering because you can't accept anything less than perfection.
The Perfect can be the enemy of the Good.
EDIT: IMO, the hardest part of being Good is making the hard decision, living with it, and trying to make amends as best you can. A nongood character satisfies themselves with the fact that they did the right thing, or the best they could. A good character does what they can, but still regrets that they couldn't do better. This is what makes Schindler's final speech in Schindler's List so powerful. He's just done a very heroic thing, but at the end is gripped by doubt - could he have saved even one more person? This question does not diminish him as a hero, but rather elevates him.
If this is a case of GM railroading then of course that is different.
The concept of this RPG is (to most) to be heroic. There are as many different games styles as there are games and some groups may like examining no win situations and their effects on their characters.
But in general, if your doing evil your doing evil. The lesser of two evils is still evil.
Most Paladins should reject both choices and find a third avenue where they could succeed. Never giving up. Never surrendering. That is acting good and being heroic.
The campaign has to support such concepts though. If your playing in a morally ambiguous world with nothing but shades of grey then certain character and morality concepts simply will not work in that game and setting.
So what you are saying is that is is impossible to be Good, or to be a hero, unless the campaign is designed such that a hero can always find a third option, and is never genuinely forced to make a choice between two evils?
In a world that will always provide a Third Option if you just Try Harder, of course a Good person will never settle for the lesser evil.
In a world more like ours, refusing to pick one of the evils can mean picking the greater evil by default. It's evil to kill civilians, but if the alternative is the Nazis getting a nuclear bomb? It's not heroic to cause massive suffering because you can't accept anything less than perfection.
The Perfect can be the enemy of the Good.
EDIT: IMO, the hardest part of being Good is making the hard decision, living with it, and trying to make amends as best you can. A nongood character satisfies themselves with the fact that they did the right thing, or the best they could. A good character does what they can, but still regrets that they couldn't do better. This is what makes Schindler's final speech in Schindler's List so powerful. He's just done a very heroic thing, but at the end is gripped by doubt - could he have...
And yet not once did he murder thousands of innocents for the greater good.
So what you are saying is that is is impossible to be Good, or to be a hero, unless the campaign is designed such that a hero can always find a third option, and is never genuinely forced to make a choice between two evils?
It is impossible to be ANYTHING if the campaign is not designed to support it.
If your GM never runs you anything but the lesser of two evil's scenario's then that is what you have to deal with.
If your GM gives you free reign to try alternate options and avoid the obvious solutions and possibly do a more difficult one which avoids the pitfalls of the others then that is what you have to deal with.
But I find Hero's are the ones who take the hardest paths and make them work and are the one's who see a choice between two evil's and say "No, not good enough, we are changing this."
That to me is heroism and being truly good, along with self sacrifice, bravery, justice, benevolence, etc. Being unwilling to settle for ANY evil and being willing to go the more difficult route and find a better way.
I guess I disagree with your definitions of heroism. Hero's find a way. Others, who settle for the lesser evil's, may succeed in some degree but are probably not hero's. They may be interesting characters and have exciting stories but they are not hero's.
But then again I am talking about a Sword and Sorcery RPG where such things can be made a possibility, not real life. Real life is far more complex and is not a 'heroic setting' and does not have 'alignment rules' to guide peoples moral fundament.
A massive disfference between the real world and FRPG ones is the fact that in the real world no one thinks they are evil. They pursue their causes and endeavors and they think they are just in the reasons, whatever they are.
In RPG worlds,most evil knows it is freaking evil and accepts it. It glories in it. Demons and Devils know they are evil. Dark elves know they are evil and have no delusions they are good. They live in an evil society and think it is a superior one. Evil dragons, hobgoblin empires, devil worshippers of Cheliax, they know they are evil and they have no problems with it and never confuse themselves with doing the right or good thing.
A pretty hefty difference which cannot be ignored from the reality of our world, which would fundamentally alter the basis and structure of standard morality in that world.
Honestly, I cant think of any good piece of story ever that has well-written good characters always find an ideal solution. That doesnt mean theyre not heroes. And ive got pretty hih standards for what i consider good (unlike the 3.5 devs and several people here on the board i dont agree malcolm reynolds is good for example, think hes plain neutral or chaotic neutral).
But characters i consider "good" -Laura Roslin, Lee Adama, Aragorn, Inara Serra,Donna Noble, so on and so on - often get in situations that seem like choosing the lesser of two evils. Sometimes they can get around it and take a better path, sometimes they cant. But how they handle those situations, and how rhey consider them afterwards, is what makes them good.
For those who know BsG, Laura Roslin (minor spoiler) ordered the destruction of a civilian ship likely filled with innocents to protect the rest of the fleet, and Lee Adama carried it out. It was a major evil action, but the fact that it was the lesser of two evils, the fact that they thought hard about it and didnt just make a mathematical calculation but rather considered the consequences for those particular people, and the fact that they felt much anxiety and sorrow afterwards, that they second-guessed themselves - the fact that this was a -difficult- choice for them is what makes them good as characters despite being forced to partake in evil actions. Had it been an evil character making the choice - if Gaius Baltar was president at the time - it would have been a very simple choice.
Nvm... my post wasn't really productive to where the conversation has lead so far... carry on.
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What is "right" is subjective. It depends on how you feel about the end, the means, and the person in power over what happens.
What is Good or Evil is objective.
Sometimes "right" will align with one or the other. But that is a corollary, not a causal, relationship.
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...what everyone considers good is what is socially accepted and NOT what is right. Obviously the good thing and the right thing is the same to the person considering it but to society it is not. Society thinks it is acceptable to live off slaves as long as you do not see them and if a person thought the right thing to do was to kill the slave masters he would also think it a good, but society would certainly label such a person as evil.
At what point did society become the one who determines what's good or evil? Are we even still talking about Pathfinder? Because in Pathfinder, good is defined in the setting-neutral Core Rulebook without any caveats about where you're from or what others think. Similarly, detection spells don't really care what your society thinks.
If you're speaking in relation to real-world morality, fine; but that's not a discussion I'm interested in here. If you're talking about the Pathfinder alignment system, though, you're simply wrong.
One is lawful good and the other is chaotic good but both would consider the other viewpoint evil.
Given all the alignment-based spells/abilities/planes/etc, I'm pretty sure characters in-universe can tell the difference between "that guy's committing evil" and "that guy's committing good but lawfully/chaotically and I don't like that because I'm the opposite". To suggest that people who can prepare spells to detect or protect against individual alignments would see any action they don't like as being "evil" instead of whatever alignment it actually is, is a pretty ridiculous claim.
Ilja, your example using the "33" episode of BSG is a good one, but I think you miss the major point here. Good and evil are not acts, they exist only in terms of our thoughts and intent (obviously, in PF this is somewhat different). Destroying a ship that reads as having an active nuclear signal that's barreling towards your fleet isn't an evil act unless you have selfish and malign intent. Lee's intent was to eliminate a threat to thousands of other lives by destroying what they had every right to believe was a weapon of the Cylons. He even did a close-range fly-by to peer in the windows of the passenger liner, see if anyone was actually alive in there. By any metric, he was doing a good thing, preserving as much innocent life as possible after looking for any other way out of the situation. In the aftermath of the Cylon attack on the 12 colonies, the impact of his choice is dramatically enhanced to being heroic.
Furthermore, I wouldn't call Baltar evil. The man was selfish and a coward and a liar, but he never wanted to hurt anyone. Considering he was being manipulated by the Sixes for the entire show, he should be cut a little slack. And no, it's not just because he was my favorite character of the show.
Absolutely agree. Unfortunately I feel the CRB description of alignment is misleading on this point since it describes Evil in terms of harm done while failing to mention that elsewhere in the rules there are examples of evils that are inherent, not tied to amount of harm - such as the creation of undead, or the fact that a redeemed nonevil demon still detects as evil (and is even vulnerable to Smite Evil). I expect that some arguments over alignments start because one party assumes that evil is solely defined by the CRB while the other is arguing from exceptions XYZ.There's a couple of solutions to your dilemma.
Option #1: Houserule that there is no "inherent evil" in your campaign world; that is, if you're using anything (including necromancy) for ends that don't match the CRB's definition of evil, you're not doing evil....
Option #2: Accept that the way things work in the game world and the way any given player believes things work in the real world don't have to be the same. You take what the rules say, and apply them: creating undead is evil, and evil means XYZ, therefore creating undead shows that XYZ is true of you....
Ultimately, what really matters is that when someone (whether a paladin PC or a random NPC) detects your alignment, they're given the right information.
Well, that's an issue of the setting-neutral hardback being added to by a setting book. That is, the CRB is "default Pathfinder" while individual settings (like Golarion) might add, change, remove or replace elements of anything, including alignment.
So like I said, the important thing is consistency - something that's conspicuously absent from most of the "paladins are disruptive" posts I've seen around the boards. :/
Its not the setting book, its the core rulebook on evil descriptor spells and the detect evil spell (detecting all undead as evil regardless of alignment), and neutral clerics of evil gods.
It is also the setting neutral bestiary talking about evil descriptor monsters detecting as evil even if they are redeemed and no longer are evil alignment and how undead ghosts can be any alignment even good.
Core Pathfinder has both moral descriptor alignment for creature alignment entries and team fiend alignment for descriptors.
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Its not the setting book, its the core rulebook on evil descriptor spells and the detect evil spell (detecting all undead as evil regardless of alignment), and neutral clerics of evil gods.
It is also the setting neutral bestiary talking about evil descriptor monsters detecting as evil even if they are redeemed and no longer are evil alignment and how undead ghosts can be any alignment even good.
Core Pathfinder has both moral descriptor alignment for creature alignment entries and team fiend alignment for descriptors.
I'm going to just assume you're right, because it's irrelevant to the point made in the post you're allegedly replying to.
So like I said, the important thing is consistency
In the end it doesn't matter what evil means, just as long as whatever it means, that's what's told to the player whose PC detected evil.
That is, if a paladin's player is told that evil means X and is then told that someone detects as evil, it is a right and proper thing for him to react as though X is true of the target. If you tell him that evil means X and then tell him that someone who is not-X detects as evil, then he's not the one being disruptive.
Until there's in-game obfuscation involved (like misdirection or whatever), the important thing is that the player knows what the result of his detection spell actually means.
Ilja, your example using the "33" episode of BSG is a good one, but I think you miss the major point here. Good and evil are not acts, they exist only in terms of our thoughts and intent (obviously, in PF this is somewhat different).
I somewhat disagree when it comes to real life, and completely disagree when it comes to pathfinder. I'll leave the real-world debates to another thread.
Destroying a ship that reads as having an active nuclear signal that's barreling towards your fleet isn't an evil act unless you have selfish and malign intent. Lee's intent was to eliminate a threat to thousands of other lives by destroying what they had every right to believe was a weapon of the Cylons.
I somewhat agree in this case, as there was a large uncertainity about the situation, but my main point was this: It was difficult for them. That is why they are good.
If Laura had just said "well, off they go!" the moment they got to know them, kind of like Gaius Baltar did, she'd be evil in my mind. Lee doing the same thing would probably also be evil, or possibly a dark shade of lawful neutral.Furthermore, I wouldn't call Baltar evil. The man was selfish and a coward and a liar, but he never wanted to hurt anyone.
I do not equal evil with malice. Callous self-serving, sacrificing or risking others for oneself, and disregarding other people are in my mind far enough to be evil. Cowardice was a defining trait of him, but there comes a point where cowardice becomes evil, and that's when you start risking everyone around you for your own sake. Gaious did that so many times over it's not even funny. He (spoiler alert) hid the truth about Eight and Six when he knew they where on the fleet, tried to get the Olympic Carrier destroyed to kill a scientist which might prove his part of the attacks, not to mention the whole New Caprica.
I mean, I like Gaius as a character. I can sympathise with him, even empathise sometimes (and I have a hard time with that in general). But he is evil, in my mind. Not Darth Vader evil, quite understandably evil, but still evil.|
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@Gilfalas - of course the assumptions of the game world matter, BUT your position reads as "heroism is not possible unless the universe is structured to reward heroics." Which is kind of the opposite of "Good is Hard" because in a world that rewards heroics you at least know that your heroics - refusing to accept the lesser evil - will be rewarded and Good Will Win. This is inherently easier than having to make your best guess and live with doubt and uncertainty.
Real life is not a "heroic setting" in that it doesn't rig the game in favour of heroic actions. That doesn't mean that there aren't real-life heroes.
It's also certainly not a safe assumption that evil knows it's evil. In the pastry thread, Ross linked to this post explaining that Evil usually has other motivations and justifications that happen to "take a shortcut through other peoples' happiness."
You cannot use hindsight, they used the best information they had, which was a viable atomic weapons program, the least damaging method of achieving the goal, a commando team (rather than saturation bombing) and made the call, I am sure the people involved wish they could, with waht they then knew have made a different call, but we have the best intel available, and trying to sleep at night, not a time machine.Since it appears that several innocent civilians were needlessly slain, I think a pretty compelling case could be made that while well-intentioned it was not the right thing to do.Hence the Hydro was carrying too little heavy water to supply one reactor, let alone the 10 or more tons of heavy water needed to make enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon.
With the benefit of hindsight, the consensus on the German wartime nuclear program is that it was a long way from producing a bomb, even had the Norwegian heavy water been produced and shipped at the maximum rate.
Yes, exactly. Let's say you're told that there's a 50% chance of an disease breaking out what will kill 100,000 people unless you develop a cure, and developing the cure requires the death of 100 monkeys in medical experimentation. The right thing to do is develop the cure, even if the disease never breaks out and in hindsight the monkeys died in vain.
For those who know BsG, Laura Roslin (minor spoiler) ordered the destruction of a civilian ship likely filled with innocents to protect the rest of the fleet, and Lee Adama carried it out.
Destroying a ship that reads as having an active nuclear signal that's barreling towards your fleet isn't an evil act unless you have selfish and malign intent. Lee's intent was to eliminate a threat to thousands of other lives by destroying what they had every right to believe was a weapon of the Cylons. He even did a close-range fly-by to peer in the windows of the passenger liner, see if anyone was actually alive in there. By any metric, he was doing a good thing, preserving as much innocent life as possible after looking for any other way out of the situation. In the aftermath of the Cylon attack on the 12 colonies, the impact of his choice is dramatically enhanced to being heroic.
I'm not familiar with the episode in question, but if the destroyed ship contained (or likely contained) civilians and the person giving the order knew that, then it's a very good example of when performing an evil act (after thinking carefully and looking for another option) would be the right thing to do.
I'm not familiar with the episode in question, but if the destroyed ship contained (or likely contained) civilians and the person giving the order knew that, then it's a very good example of when performing an evil act (after thinking carefully and looking for another option) would be the right thing to do.
I think some of the confusion here is that there is no "right" answer here, and sometimes (in no-win situations), the best you can do is pick the "least bad" thing.
And, taking it back to Pathfinder, I'd expect some Atonement to have to happen for the Paladin involved in this decision or action.
I'm not all that savvy on the Golarion gods, so I trust you on that. I was basing it on the Paladin class writeup.
I'm not familiar with the episode in question, but if the destroyed ship contained (or likely contained) civilians and the person giving the order knew that, then it's a very good example of when performing an evil act (after thinking carefully and looking for another option) would be the right thing to do.
*SPOILERS* (but it's an early episode)
Well, Cerberus is not incorrect - they had reason to believe it to be a weapon. Basically, the whole fleet used FTL travel to escape attacking enemies, and one ship got left behind. Far later it reappeared, not responding to any attempts to contact it, but travelled right towards the fleet. Basically, the fleet did not know if their com systems had been knocked out, or if it was rigged as a weapon, or whatever my be. Though of course, even if it was rigged as a weapon that doesn't mean the civilians onboard where likely to be dead, they could very well have been left on board as hostage. Everything was pretty uncertain. I kind of agree with Cerberus that destroying the ship might not have been an evil action, but casually destroying it without it being a big deal (morally) is something only an evil character would do (or perhaps, in the case of the pilot executing the order rather than the president giving it, they could be lawful neutral, but just maybe).