I'm getting the feeling a lot of people in this thread didn't bother to read the last one despite the fact that it has now been linked by three different people...
Why would I do that? I don't even feel the need to read this thread. If I have a clever sounding point, like, "What if they were only evil in the first place because someone used a Helm of Opposite Alignment on them?" I don't want to be told that someone had the same thought before. I'm here to seek attention, not to find out what other people have to say!
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I'm getting the feeling a lot of people in this thread didn't bother to read the last one despite the fact that it has now been linked by three different people...
I'm on post 99. The issue of what constitutes identity hasn't come up yet and because I'm interested in that question I don't feel like sitting out of this discussion while I catch up on all 400+ posts of the last one.
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Ok, lets examine the same situation when it occurs in fiction:
The Care Bears do it all the time.
Willow had done that to Angelus in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Ok, he already shifted a lot before).
Neverending Story 2, to a fatal result.
So, all of them are evil ?
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Situation 1: Lets say a paladin is facing a evil wizard who had opened a portal to abyss. The only one who can close the portal is the evil wizard and he don't want to. Thousand would die if the portal is not closed, the paladin has a helm of oposite aligment in hand. Is evil to use it on the wizard saving the life of thousands ?
Situation 2: The Paladin has a twin brother that started to study necromancy. His parents are concerned that his brother turned evil. The paladin confirm it with detect evil and the oppurtune helm is in his hand. Is a good act for him to use on his beloved brother before he has the chance of doing an evil act and breaking the heart of his parents and himself ?
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You are fine with rewriting the personality of a person so long as the physical shell is kept alive. Because you consider the physical shell the important part.
I called a spade a spade.
I was brutally frank, but I was civil.You didn't like my exposing the truth of your claim regarding valuing the life of someone, when you are advocating the destruction of the person themself, and pretending you are mere talking of "free will".
Domination removes free will, but you are still inside screaming to get out. The Helm rewrites the old person and creates a new one. Which is why it takes a Wish or Miracle to recreate the original person. Co,ong back from the dead is simple in comparison.
And now the second thing you did was put words in my mouth, you know you seem to have a VERY bad habit of TELLING people how they feel or what they think about something, we will never have a meaningful conversation on the topic so long as you keep doing that. I could do that too, I could say that you have no regards for life whatsoever and that you would rather watch people bleed to death than grant them rehabilitation because you dont care what happens to them, at all, as long as they are dead or mutilated you are happy. (see what I did there?)
re·ha·bil·i·tate
verb
: to bring (someone or something) back to a normal, healthy condition after an illness, injury, drug problem, etc.
: to teach (a criminal in prison) to live a normal and productive life
(Really? because it would seem that that's exactly what the helmet does to evil people just through MAGICAL means instead of therapy.)
: to bring (someone or something) back to a good condition
I say: Putting the helmet on him is wrong. Changing who he is, is wrong. Whether or not the justice system in question decides he needs to die for the wrongs he did, putting his brain into the blender is wrong. Its not "life or helmet pick one". Its "Do the right thing, or do the right thing." The lesser of two evils is not at issue- we're talking about what should a paladin do not what laws should a kingdom have.
To that logic I say:
killing is wrong, it just is.I will agree that the paladin should not use the helmet if you agree that he should not kill or maim people for WHATEVER reason because it is wrong. As you have said, the lesser of 2 evils is not the issue, its "do the right thing or do the right thing" and killing is not "the right thing".
Before you enter a debate like this it's useful to realize that different people define their 'self' very differently.
For some people the 'self' is their brain / body. If you put them through a Star Trek transporter that dismantled their body and recreated it perfectly from new molecules somewhere else, they'd see that as murder. (I had a friend who saw things this way.)
For some people the 'self' is the persistence of memory, the continuity of their experiences. They'd have no problem with being dismantled and reassembled, but they'd be horrified if you tried to use one of those memory erasers from Men in Black on them. "The me that exists now is going to be killed. Why should I be comforted by the fact that the me that used to exist is going to be brought back?" (This is my instinctive viewpoint. The friend I mentioned and had this discussion with responded, "I've had blackouts after drinking heavily. Lost memories are no big deal.")
And for some people the 'self' is their beliefs, their free will. If you took that away, they'd think you were destroying them. These people will be offended by the Helmet of Opposite Alignment. Those who don't think free will is even a real thing find this attitude hard to understand.
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Ok, lets examine the same situation when it occurs in fiction:
The Care Bears do it all the time.
Willow had done that to Angelus in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Ok, he already shifted a lot before).
Neverending Story 2, to a fatal result.
So, all of them are evil ?
***********************************
Situation 1: Lets say a paladin is facing a evil wizard who had opened a portal to abyss. The only one who can close the portal is the evil wizard and he don't want to. Thousand would die if the portal is not closed, the paladin has a helm of oposite aligment in hand. Is evil to use it on the wizard saving the life of thousands ?
Situation 2: The Paladin has a twin brother that started to study necromancy. His parents are concerned that his brother turned evil. The paladin confirm it with detect evil and the oppurtune helm is in his hand. Is a good act for him to use on his beloved brother before he has the chance of doing an evil act and breaking the heart of his parents and himself ?
Other Good piece of fiction that I don't think has been mentioned is Passing through Gethseme of Babylon Five.
Situation 1: Yes. This person is a menace to society. As people have been threatened. ACTION NEEDS TO BE TAKEN NOW TO SAVE THOUSANDS OF LIVES.
Situation 2: There is no immediate threat. The brother might be able to be reached by other means. Also the evil son is yet to do wrong.
The analogy has been made comparing using this to killing. Bluntly, while I'm not sure I agree with it, in these cases it's like a sniper taking a shot at a guy shooting into a crowd of people and dealing with a person who might/maybe do so in the future (and for the sake of arguement,hasn't taken steps to prepare).
But using the helm, like killing, is not something you do casually. IT IS, IN MANY WAYS, ONE OF THE KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL.
Another thing is, IMHO, the helm is more likely (but not exclusively) to be used by Lawful people of any stripe. Law is, after all, all about working within social contracts, customs, orthodoxy etc. Those who defy orthodoxy are bad/wrong. It's the kind of thing a law and order type might use on his rebellious child. A lawful good person might use on a chaotic evil serial killer.
Liberty and Freedom, personal choice are as much Chaotic concepts, and while they lean torwards Chaotic Good, I'm not sure they are good in and of themselves.
Hope that's helpful,
Kerney
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Another thing is, IMHO, the helm is more likely (but not exclusively) to be used by Lawful people of any stripe. Law is, after all, all about working within social contracts, customs, orthodoxy etc. Those who defy orthodoxy are bad/wrong. It's the kind of thing a law and order type might use on his rebellious child. A lawful good person might use on a chaotic evil serial killer.
Liberty and Freedom, personal choice are as much Chaotic concepts, and while they lean torwards Chaotic Good, I'm not sure they are good in and of themselves.
I would agree with this. That said, I don't think that Lawful characters are incapable of adopting chaotic concepts, especially if we are talking about a LG character who realizes that some measure of personal choice is necessary for happiness. A Lawful character may also object to the Helm without arguing for "freedom" if they believe that it allows a person to escape just punishment or if they believe that it constitutes an erasure of self (in a fantasy context, that it does not merely alter but destroys and replaces the soul).
Alignment is some isolated part of your personality. It's an overarcing feature that impacts every part of your personality. It's why you act in the ways you do, why you make the choices you do. Your tastes and Asthetics both help form your alignment and are formed by your alignment. It affects how you reason, how you process facts. To radically chaneg your alignment (and by definition a Helm of Opposite Alignment is the most radical change that is possible) is to affect every part of your personality to a greater or lesser degree.
Frankly anyone who wants to portray their alignment as a tack on that can be reversed with little change to the person is kidding themselves (although it is true that some people choose the alignment they want for their PC and then proceed to ignore it and play the PC the way they want and define the alignment by "I said I was that alignment therefore how I act is that alignment" so I can see why some people might come to see it as a minor modification).
Let me use my current character as an example of how little difference in personality there can be between opposite alignments. I am playing a LG martial artist. She believes that life is precious and that adherence to rules and duty make us stronger individually and collectively. She has recently been involved in a struggle with a corrupt government. Given this, it would be possible to convince her that all government is inherently bad because it can't actually safeguard the people as it claims and in fact serves primarily to weaken its people (who are potential threats to those in power). This would swing her over rather abruptly into CG territory. However, since she doesn't have the faith in the inherent goodness of humanoids that would enable her to feel comfortable about being CG, from there it would be a quick slide to CN with "why do I bother protecting these selfish weaklings anyway, I might as well use my strength to get what I want" and the fact that she's an ascetic whose main source of physical pleasure is in athleticism could really easily be corrupted into sado-masochism for a full CE.
She'd stop being the one arguing for mercy and become extremely cruel, but she'd still have the same pride in what she does, forsake luxuries as "weak," and train obsessively because if you're not strong you're a victim. She'd still value self-control, but it would be because "I need to make sure that everything I do is an extension of my true will rather than a momentary whim" not "I need to make sure I behave properly." Her personal attachments wouldn't change much aside from swapping which teammates she considered "misguided" - though they might deteriorate when her former friends object to her new conduct.
A Helm (or mundane corrupter) wouldn't need to change much, they'd just need to poke the right two buttons - getting her to enjoy killing and getting her to decide that her recent experiences with government reveal a flaw in the concept. The rest of her personality is built around a value for strength - all that would change is what she did with it.
Now you might say that people can change alignment over time so would that be the same as claiming that they are destroyed. And it's true that you are the same person you were 10 years ago in the case of most people, and you won't be the same in 10 years. But the cruicial part there is time.
Much like over 6 years or so every molecule in your body will get changed out, but that is still quite different from getting hit by a Disintergrate spell and having your body reduced to a very small pile of dust. The 1st is part of living, the 2nd is death.
Changing alignment/personality over 5 years is living, over 6 secs is destruction.
I don't think that's a fair analogy. Aging involves replacing molecules with new molecules of more or less the same type, with more or less similar connections between them. If Disintegrate did that, you'd at minimum still get something resembling a body. The fact that you get dust indicates that it either changes the types of atoms in the body or more likely totally demolishes any connections between them - it's more like a sped-up version of cremation than aging. I can see why you would think that immediate shifting would cause more damage than a slow change. However, the spell Sands of Time, which actually does immediately (and temporarily) advance someone an age category, effects the physical deterioration that occurs due to natural aging, no more no less.
Given that there are examples where speeding up a natural process is no more destructive than the slow process, many people feel that the Helm has exactly the psychological effect of natural redemption/corruption, which involves shifting parts of worldview in a way that they are most consistent with and stable within the rest of the personality.
If it doesn't, that's interesting too, but I don't think the Helm gives any justification for exactly how the item reworks the personality around the new alignment. There's certainly room for table variation there, and that would affect whether the use of the Helm is seen as inherently evil.
Why would I do that? I don't even feel the need to read this thread. If I have a clever sounding point, like, "What if they were only evil in the first place because someone used a Helm of Opposite Alignment on them?" I don't want to be told that someone had the same thought before. I'm here to seek attention, not to find out what other people have to say!
The sarcasm is strong with this one
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Killing people is wrong. It's against the law. So how come governments use the death sentence?
Holding people captive against their will is wrong. It's against the law. So how come governments put people in prison?
Paladins are Killers For God! Their god-granted abilities help them kill. They don't have abilities that give them a bonus to rehabilitate.
In a lawful good society, all the things being debated here would have been aired as their society and laws evolved over the years, and their laws will have built-in safeguards.
So, the government would have to prove (to a court/judge) that the accused was guilty of a crime that merits this level of response, prove (using magic) that the criminal was Evil, and give the criminal a free choice over which punishment to accept: death, or alignment change.
If he chooses alignment change, he must willingly undergo the procedure, i.e. deliberately fail the saving throw (easily confirmed by using detect magic on the helm, as it only becomes non-magical after actually working, actually changing alignment).
This is not 'nothing', but it is not domination. It's as wrong as killing someone or locking them up against their will. But we know for a fact that even governments who believe (and have laws against) killing and imprisonment are perfectly willing to kill and imprison, lawfully. Of course they would be willing to use the helm, under the same safeguards as for state-mandated killing/imprisoning.
What's good for the state is good for the paladin. The paladin can kill who he wants, but will fall if it isn't justified, not fall for the act of killing itself. The same logic would apply to imprisonment, and using the helm.