The position of the Yes camp is inconsistent, and relies on a stance of 'evil spells send you to evil, no exceptions for intent', but when shown the implications, suddenly 'Nuh-uh, good spells can't do the reverse, because intent matters!'....
YMMV...
I did not say that. Please adjust your quote tags.
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Which means you're agreeing with me, since I'm playing Devil's Advocate*, when I show what would happen, if [alignment] tagged spells were allowed to change alignment, even by a microscopic amount.
Uh...no. I still pretty thoroughly disagree with you. That's not inevitable at all. As I've been arguing for, well, a while now. As have others.
It becomes an awful mess, with horrible implications that many GMs would recoil from, so they hurriedly start loading on the exceptions.
Not if one interprets things in a relatively sane and reasonable manner.
The position taken by the 'Yes' camp (from the original post, and represented by Trimalchio and others), is that Prot[Good] and similar should be an evil spell, and as such, should cause alignment drift.
That's not precisely the position I or, say, ryric are arguing. We're arguing that [alignment] spells being aligned acts only results in the 'cosmic vending machine' problem if you ignore context...which likewise results in the 'cosmic vending machine' problem if you ignore the context of non-magical acts.
In short, casting a spell is equivalent to a minor act of that alignment. Logically, if someone would let you 'buy your way to heaven' (or Hell) by spamming such a spell, they must also allow it for donating the money used to some charity for the same purpose. I mean, donating to charity is clearly a Good act.
So, you could easily have someone who allows buying your way into heaven without [aligned] spells being aligned acts, making these two entirely separate arguments that you're attempting to conflate.
The position of the 'No' camp (represented by myself, Ashiel, Auren, and others) is that doing so would set a precedent with awful implications, allowing terrible people to buy a ticket out of Hell (or if they're a caster, to do so free of charge).
We've illustrated how that would happen, in game, and the only way it can be rebutted is for the Yes camp to insist that alignment drift only happens in one direction. The slippery slope. The plughole of suck.
No. You are factually wrong. I just rebutted it an entirely different way, and have been doing so for a bit now.
If good intent and good end results are totally irrelevant to whether someone drifts to evil from casting Prot[Good], then they must be equally irrelevant when considering if someone drifts to good by casting Prot[Evil], and thus, you have introduced the concept of 'Get out of Hell Free' trinkets being sold as indulgences, in the way they were sold in Medieval Europe.
Right. But my point is that they aren't irrelevant at all. But neither is the nature of the spell. If casting an Evil spell is an Evil act. But a very minor one that can be outweighed by the intent and consequences...this problem you're citing doesn't exist.
And that's what I'm advocating.
If intent matters, such that the cosmic powers just 'know' when someone is cynically trying to abuse a Prot[Evil] loophole, then intent also has to matter, when judging the use of Prot[Good] for noble or neutral intent. But what kind of good intent could you possibly have, for using such tools? Well, how about using a captured P[G] wand to slap AC and save bonuses on two feuding Good nobles at a parley, so they can't as easily hurt each other, for example. The intent is noble, peaceful, diplomatic, the end result is to prevent an ill-considered blow or spell to prolong a misunderstanding. Why would helping to broker peace between goodly countries cause excommunication?
It doesn't. Well, unless you're a Paladin. And even then only if you cast the spell yourself. And Paladins fall for any Evil act, no matter how minor.
Using the spell in this circumstance is the equivalent of, say, blaming an ongoing war on someone on your own side who's dead (and a completely innocent and virtuous person), thus blackening their name but helping to stop the war by salving the other side's pride. It's good diplomacy, and might save many lives, but still technically a minor act of Evil...an act outweighed by the Good it does, and thus never gonna change someone's Alignment, but not Paladin-safe.
The position of the Yes camp is inconsistent, and relies on a stance of 'evil spells send you to evil, no exceptions for intent', but when shown the implications, suddenly 'Nuh-uh, good spells can't do the reverse, because intent matters!'.
Uh...that's factually untrue of my argument and that of several others. It absolutely works symmetrically, intent always matters, and I've never said otherwise.
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Right. But my point is that they aren't irrelevant at all. But neither is the nature of the spell. If casting an Evil spell is an Evil act. But a very minor one that can be outweighed by the intent and consequences...this problem you're citing doesn't exist.
And that's what I'm advocating.
It's what I advocate too.
You appear to have a problem with the concept of 'Devils Advocate', where a person can take the opposing side's argument, and run with it to its logical conclusion.The logical conclusion of saying 'Prot[Good] damns you, intent doesn't matter', is that 'Prot[Evil] absolves you, intent doesn't matter'.
Can't have it only matter in one direction, and not the other.
In that statement I quoted, you agree with me, that Protection from Good doesn't cause alignment drift, if cast for good intent. That's how I'd run it, which makes it no different from other spells.
Fireball is a good act, if you use it to kill marauding evildoers.
Fireball is an evil act, if you use it to hurt innocents.
Prot[Good] is an evil spell, if used to carry out evil.
Prot[Good] is a good act, if used to protect innocents.
The [aligned] tag is pointless, in deciding the good/evil nature of casting. The only point in having it is to say that some people are incapable of casting it via class abilities (but could use UMD skill).
Therefore, you agree with me.
So...what's the disagreement?
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Indeed. Calling a demon, binding it, and preventing it from going about its usual evil business (or better still, forcing it to do nice things), would seem to be doing everyone a favour.
Certainly didn't appear to do King Solomon any harm in the PR department, since he managed to go down in legend as both a demon binder, and one of the wisest and just men who ever lived.
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That's not precisely the position I or, say, ryric are arguing. We're arguing that [alignment] spells being aligned acts only results in the 'cosmic vending machine' problem if you ignore context...which likewise results in the 'cosmic vending machine' problem if you ignore the context of non-magical acts.
In short, casting a spell is equivalent to a minor act of that alignment. Logically, if someone would let you 'buy your way to heaven' (or Hell) by spamming such a spell, they must also allow it for donating the money used to some charity for the same purpose. I mean, donating to charity is clearly a Good act.
Unless you are up for the insane task of grouping actions into tiers of Alignment-ness and ranking them all individually in a way that rape can't be paid away with trivial tasks, what you are asking is that people use their heads and keep things sensible. But asking people to do so is the same as asking them to not have rules for alignment shifting at all. You are asking people to play magical tea party with it. That's a totally okay possition. In fact, it's one step away from my possition of zero alignment rules whatsoever.
The question then becomes why bother defending rules with a possition that necessitiates having no rules? You're basically asking for people to think you're agreeing with them.
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It's good diplomacy, and might save many lives, but still technically a minor act of Evil...an act outweighed by the Good it does, and thus never gonna change someone's Alignment, but not Paladin-safe.
Why is it not Paladin-safe?
An act where the good done outweighs the evil is, by definition, not an evil act.
You don't fall for doing good, or neutral.
Killing is evil. Self-defence is neutral and justified.
Killing in self-defence is a neutral action.
Killing is evil. Preventing harm to others is good.
Killing to prevent harm to others is a good act.
That's how paladins are able to participate in the game, otherwise they'd have to swear a vow of pacifism, and refuse to go on most written adventures. It would be a boring class to play.
Sandpoint militiaman: "We're off to deal with the goblin raiders, wanna come?"
Sandpoint Paladin: "No, I'm not allowed to do harm, so I'll sit in my cave, eating fungus and licking water off the walls. Last chance to repent your evil ways, sinners."
Sandpoint militiaman: "Mmmm, whatever."
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So, to those on the No side, can a person commit evil and then not change alignment with sufficient non-magcial good acts?
Can a serial killer stay non-evil by sufficient holding open doors for little old ladies? If not, then what is your bloody problem with a spell explicitly saying its evil? It has an effect on alignment. So does any good/evil act that isn't magical, such as the aforementioned holding doors open for little old ladies. If one can be a Good act (doors and little old ladies, charitable donations, food to orphans, etc) without causing all this drama, why the hell do you have such a problem with a spell that has an equivalent effect? Yes, it's evil, no, it won't shift your alignment on its own, no it's not fine for a paladin to cast it.
And WPharolin,
Please show me in the rules where the acts requried to change alignment are expliclty spelled out. They're not, so casting aligned spells simply falls into the same area as adjudicating any other act and its effects on your alignment. So kindly stop the patronising "magical tea party" b&$%~+@*.
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And WPharolin,
Please show me in the rules where the acts requried to change alignment are expliclty spelled out. They're not, so casting aligned spells simply falls into the same area as adjudicating any other act and its effects on your alignment. So kindly stop the patronising "magical tea party" b*$~%&#+.
No. Plain and simple. Because asking me to do so shows a ridiculous lack of understanding in what my position actually is or what my point was. I'm sorry you were offended by a common, well understood phrase used in the rpg forum community. But I won't feed your knee jerk reaction to an innocent remark.
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It's what I advocate too.
Therefore, you agree with me.
So...what's the disagreement?
Ah, gotcha. My bad, this thread is long enough that things occasionally get confused.
We appear to have no major disagreements. Well, except for this:
Why is it not Paladin-safe?
An act where the good done outweighs the evil is, by definition, not an evil act.
You don't fall for doing good, or neutral.
I disagree. Basically, I think that, even if the Good stuff that accompanies it outweighs the Evil, an act itself can still count as Evil. It's an 'ends don't justify the means' sorta thing. And mostly only relevant for Paladins.
Killing is evil. Self-defence is neutral and justified.
Killing in self-defence is a neutral action.Killing is evil. Preventing harm to others is good.
Killing to prevent harm to others is a good act.
That's how paladins are able to participate in the game, otherwise they'd have to swear a vow of pacifism, and refuse to go on most written adventures. It would be a boring class to play.
I consider killing to be a Neutral act, with motivation and context determining its Good or Evil. This is probably slightly off from the way the Alignment Rules are technically phrased, but is supported by other parts of them, and matches my real-world beliefs.
So Paladins can totally kill under some circumstances without it being a problem.
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So, to those on the No side, can a person commit evil and then not change alignment with sufficient non-magcial good acts?
Any act of redemption should only count, if it is sincere, proportional to the crime, and takes some actual effort.
So, no. Tipping a few coins to a beggar, in amounts you don't even notice, won't wash away your murder (or negligent death, because we know how some players love to fling those area spells) of a beggar, no matter how many times you do it.
Purchasing the slum area, cleaning it up, making it habitable, giving it a clean water supply, and setting in trust in perpetuity, to be used as a refuge for the poor?
That might work to show contrition. Because it actually costs you something long-term, more than just the increased money, in time, effort, pulling in favours from disinterested town planners, having to make speeches to change the public opinion.
Putting your own reputation on the line, in the face of opposition from 'concerned citizens', afraid that you're attracting vagrants to the area, rewarding laziness, disincentivising hard work and thrift.
Having to pay for guards to protect the area, from racists ("Those halflings don't have jobs, it's cus the little freaks don't WANT jobs! They're gittin somethin fer nuthin! Let's git 'em!"), from criminal gangs who want to prey on them (because "Why should the town council pay for patrols, in this ridiculous pet project of yours?"), from everyone who wants to drive you out of town, and force 'HoboTown' to fail, like the sweatshop factory owners, angry that your idea will catch on, and they'll have no-one desperate enough to work for slave wages in their deathtrap mills, the slum landlords who want to be able to buy back their old property, all fixed up, for a fraction of what you paid them for it...
Yes, if a player wanted to take on that nightmare, then I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they had a genuine desire to make amends.
In narrative terms, the philanthropist may begin honestly or cynically, but after witnessing often enough the daily problems his tenants have to deal with, he would develop empathy and a social conscience.
In game mechanics, it would prompt a 'slide to good'.
It's not 'redemption' that's out of the question, it's allowing it to be accomplished with trivial ease, that should be discouraged.
Never mind cheap wands, allowing a caster to perform a standard action, 0gp materials spell several times/day, to weasel off the detect evil radar, is distasteful to me, because I want a game where people are judged on their intent and results.
I would say that a Paladin would fall to Lawful Neutral by animating dead, while using the spell to achieve some higher good. That is called balance. Which is what neutrality is all about. A paladin is not expected to offset the evil he does with the good he does. No! He is expected to find ways around the problems he faces without resorting to the easy and usually evil paths. A person who continually does both good and evil is neutral at best. A person who does a lot of good acts so the people see him as a kind and benevolent man, for when he does his heinous crimes, the people will not suspect him is very evil. No amount of good done with the intention of covering up his evil will actually change his alignment to neutral.
TO change ones alignment from neutral to good, one has to continually do good things without resorting to evil.
To maintain a good alignment one has to do good without any any major evil deed. A minor evil deed should never be repeated as a good person repents for doing the wrong thing.
To maintain a neutral alignment one will do both good and evil without thinking about how their actions will affect their alignment. They will do both minor evils and any type of good acts but they will not cross a line that would lead them to evil.
To maintain there evil, a bad person just need to continue doing his evil acts with out remorse or regard for how their actions will affect the environment around him in a negative way. No amount of good actions will change who they ate as long as they will continue to do major evil.
Killing someone in cold blood is an evil act.
Killing someone in the defense of oneself or others is a neutral act.
Killing someone in the defense of oneself or others as a last resort and only because there was no other way to stop someone is a goodish act.
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Snorter,
I agree. But a lot of the argument seems to be you can cast this a lot and change your alignment. If you wouldn't allow a few thousand acts of charity (that don't actually hurt your wealth) to offset evil acts, I can't see how casting protection from evil is any different.
WPharolin,
Ok. That's fair. My post was very badly phrased and aggressive. My central point, which I can see you not getting, is that alignment is pretty much "magical tea time" all the time. There aren't going to be hard rules on it because morality is something that varies a lot between tables and defining things strictly from Golem HQ would just not work. For people who like the rules to be more codified and precise, I see how alignment which is messy as all hell drives you nuts. However, if you are already using alignment and judging whether giving orphans bread is a good act or how it balances with you making them orphans, then an aligned spell falls into the same bracket. It is defined by the table, and that's the only way alignments can work at all. So saying this particular part is "magical tea time" when all alignment is seems a little dismissive and patronising to people who don't share your distaste for alignment in general.
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I disagree. Basically, I think that, even if the Good stuff that accompanies it outweighs the Evil, an act itself can still count as Evil. It's an 'ends don't justify the means' sorta thing. And mostly only relevant for Paladins.
I agree that should apply, in cases like torturing a prisoner for information. That's partly because information gained that way has been proven to be often inaccurate, partly because the game gives PCs other ways (like telepathy and enchantment) to get the info, and partly because the players who suggest it sometimes seem a bit too keen, and I don't want to go there, for my sake or other players.
I think my resistance to it being an 'auto-fall, even when used for good ends' is due to my belief that it shouldn't have the evil tag in the first place, or be such a trivial evil, that it's only there to clarify which spell lists it's on.
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Unless you are up for the insane task of grouping actions into tiers of Alignment-ness and ranking them all individually in a way that rape can't be paid away with trivial tasks, what you are asking is that people use their heads and keep things sensible. But asking people to do so is the same as asking them to not have rules for alignment shifting at all. You are asking people to play magical tea party with it.
Eh. No more than the rules for changing Alignment do to start with.
Besides, who doesn't like a good magical tea party?
That's a totally okay possition. In fact, it's one step away from my possition of zero alignment rules whatsoever.
Indeed it is. :)
The question then becomes why bother defending rules with a possition that necessitiates having no rules? You're basically asking for people to think you're agreeing with them.
Not exactly. I'm just clarifying my own position. And it does involve having rules, they're just fairly freeform.
The Alignment rules are extremely useful to the GM as a shorthand for 'What is this NPC likely to do?' and a measure of what spells effect them in what manner. They're a lot less necessary for PCs, but there for consistency. And pretty codified.
The rules for changing alignment, on the other hand, are pretty freeform, and adding a category of actions to them doesn't make them less so.
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I agree that should apply, in cases like torturing a prisoner for information. That's partly because information gained that way has been proven to be often inaccurate, partly because the game gives PCs other ways (like telepathy and enchantment) to get the info, and partly because the players who suggest it sometimes seem a bit too keen, and I don't want to go there, for my sake or other players.
All true. And mostly agreed (though I feel that torture is unjswtified even if it did work).
I think my resistance to it being an 'auto-fall, even when used for good ends' is due to my belief that it shouldn't have the evil tag in the first place, or be such a trivial evil, that it's only there to clarify which spell lists it's on.
I can see that, but feel that it's a slightly different conversation. I mean, my very first post on the thread noted that I disagree with some spells having the Evil tag...but that's not really quite the issue under discussion here.
WPharolin,
Ok. That's fair. My post was very badly phrased and aggressive. My central point, which I can see you not getting, is that alignment is pretty much "magical tea time" all the time. There aren't going to be hard rules on it because morality is something that varies a lot between tables and defining things strictly from Golem HQ would just not work. For people who like the rules to be more codified and precise, I see how alignment which is messy as all hell drives you nuts. However, if byou are already using alignment and judging whether giving orphans bread is a good act or how it balances with you making them orphans, then an aligned spell falls into the same bracket. It is defined by the table, and that's the only way alignments can work at all. So saying this particular part is "magical tea time" when all alignment is seems a little dismissive and patronising to people who don't share your distaste for alignment in general.
Please go back and read my posts. You're current argument is not one I can even begin to address as it misrepresents my position on a level that makes it unrecognizable.
Eh. No more than the rules for changing Alignment do to start with.Besides, who doesn't like a good magical tea party?
Nothing wrong with that at all. That is exactly what I advocate. No alignment means not having to justify the side effects of having rules with horrible implications because there aren't any implications at all. Players are more than capable of just deciding for themselves.
Not exactly. I'm just clarifying my own position. And it does involve having rules, they're just fairly freeform.
If a player can't look at rule and immediately gauge it, of it it basically puts him at the mercy of the DM's sensibilities, then the difference between having the rule and not having the rule is that one of those takes up word count. Since having alignment doesn't solve debates about the story any better than just not having alignment does than freeform is really the only sane option.
The Alignment rules are extremely useful to the GM as a shorthand for 'What is this NPC likely to do?' and a measure of what spells effect them in what manner. They're a lot less necessary for PCs, but there for consistency. And pretty codified.
I have a question: Have you ever played another system, not D&D or it's legacy games, that did not use alignment? If so, did you ever once feel as though you couldn't get a handle on the characters because it lacked alignment?
The rules for changing alignment, on the other hand, are pretty freeform, and adding a category of actions to them doesn't make them less so.
No it doesn't. You're right. Every argument in favor of [alignment] affecting alignment in this thread has been one that does not require rules. I would go so far as to say, they CAN'T have rules. That the very notion of a concrete system for alignment shifting is impossible. My issue is that that makes the whole argument kind of pointless.
Example:
If good spells lean toward good than casting good spells can make you good. Even if you have committed rape and do not feel remorseful. This statement is true.
It becomes false statement when you counter it with what basically equates to not having rules. It's a gentlemen's agreement of sorts. And that's cool. But it's also confusing because it isn't a position that actually care what the hypothetical rules are. Thus the confusion that you were agreeing with people whom you were not.
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Nothing wrong with that at all. That is exactly what I advocate actually. No alignment means not having to justify the side effects of having rules with horrible implications because there aren't any implications at all. Players are more than capable of just deciding for themselves.
Alignment is potentially very useful, for reasons I've gone into. Changing it seems like something it's best to keep more thematic than with hard-and-fast rules, though.
If a player can't look at rule and immediately gauge it, of it it basically puts him at the mercy of the DM's sensibilities, then the difference between having the rule and not having the rule is that one of those takes up word count. Since having alignment doesn't solve debates about the story any better than just not having alignment does than freeform is really the only sane option.
Eh. Alignment isn't perfect, but having some sort of integral measure of what's Good and Evil is very useful in a game like Pathfinder that bases itself on the struggle between the two to some degree.
I have a question: Have you ever played another system, not D&D or it's legacy games, that did not use alignment? If so, did you ever once feel as though you couldn't get a handle on the characters because it lacked alignment?
Most of my gaming has been in non-D&D systems of one sort or another. Which is actually, to some degree, why I like Alignment as shorthand. It's by no means impossible (or even especially difficult) to do without Alignments...but many games have some different shorthand for at least some of the same sort of personality trait notes (Nature, Demeanor, Virtues, and Humanity in Vampire: The Masquerade, Virtues alone in Exalted, Aspects in FATE, Fear Stimuli, Madness Meters and Obsession in Unknown Armies, etc.) and frankly, those that don't have something like that make it a lot harder. Especially with pre-written NPCs.
Alignment has the great virtue of being a fair bit simpler than many of the systems I mention, and is thus pretty easy to memorize, which makes it even more useful on those pre-written characters I mention above...which Pathfinder has a lot more of (in the form of Bestiary entries if nothing else) than most other games.
No it doesn't. You're right. Every argument in favor of [alignment] affecting alignment in this thread has been one that does not require rules. I would go so far as to say, they CAN'T have rules. That the very notion of a concrete system for alignment shifting is impossible. My issue is that that makes the whole argument kind of pointless.
No, it's possible. Just probably a bad idea.
Example:
If good spells lean toward good than casting good spells can make you good. Even if you have committed rape and do not feel remorseful. This statement is true.It becomes false statement when you counter it with what basically equates to not having rules. It's a gentlemen's agreement of sorts. And that's cool. But it's also confusing because it isn't a position that actually care what the hypothetical rules are. Thus the confusion that you were agreeing with people whom you were not.
I agree that [alignment] spells should be aligned acts. That has some mechanical implications (ie: falling Paladins) even if they're unlikely to shift someone's alignment on their own.
I never understood the summoning demons to save orphans. Couldn't a caster just summon an angel to do the same thing without the chance for turning evil? The idea kind of summoning devils to fight evil falls flat on its face when most fiends have resistances to each other, and most summoning spells can summon celestials as well as fiends. So I don't really get the appeal from an in-game perspective.
I never understood the summoning demons to save orphans. Couldn't a caster just summon an angel to do the same thing without the chance for turning evil? The idea kind of summoning devils to fight evil falls flat on its face when most fiends have resistances to each other, and most summoning spells can summon celestials as well as fiends. So I don't really get the appeal from an in-game perspective.
It doesn't matter why you're summoning demons. Maybe they're immune to the fire consuming the orphanage, maybe they have a SLA that you need to save one of the stragglers. The point is that it doesn't matter what you summoned, you saved the kids. All the Good of orphan saving, what Evil was done? Why is the world so much worse off because a magical clone of a demon was brought into the world for a few rounds and then vanished? Unless the spell is fueled by pure happiness and drains the world of joy with each casting, [evil] spells are not actually Evil, and thus should not have [evil] tags. If you think that's what [evil] spells already do... then that's a house rule.
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Some casters can't cast angel-summoning, as in, it it would fail, due to divine alignment limitations. Though in those cases, he'd be an evil a!!$$&+, who might wish to save some kids, but if so, it'd be because they were his own kids, the kids of someone he liked/feared/respected, or thought he might get some reward, all of which wouldn't really be noble intentions anyway.
Another reason could be that you want to pull someone from a burning building, you pick a creature you know is immune to fire.
Fiendish immunities are well-known and predictable.
Who can possibly remember celestial grab-bag powers? They make no rhyme or reason, it's like they won them in a raffle.
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What about this : Casting an [good] spell is the same as chating a prayer to a good god. But spending the entire day praying, asking for forgiveness can turn someone to good ingame ?
Casting a [evil] spell counts as saying heretic verses and curses ? Reading aloud the unholy book os Asmodeus can corrupt someone to evil ingame ?
What about profanities, speaking badly or libidinously of good gods ? How much evil can you do speaking alone in your room ?
It should always be easier to go from good to evil, and be difficult to go the other way.
It is also easier to break laws than to follow them.
That is why people of such law abiding virtue should be rare.
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Except most people are Neutral and not Chaotic.
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It should always be easier to go from good to evil, and be difficult to go the other way.
It is also easier to break laws than to follow them.
That is why people of such law abiding virtue should be rare.
...Wat
You have to go out of your way to break most laws. It's much harder to rob a store at gunpoint than NOT rob a store at gunpoint.
In general, NOT doing something is much easier than doing something. And the majority of laws are "Don't do this".
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Not to mention the "easy to break laws" thing might be true if you accidentally break a law without knowing it, but if you would have followed that law faithfully if you had known about it, well...
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...WatYou have to go out of your way to break most laws. It's much harder to rob a store at gunpoint than NOT rob a store at gunpoint.
In general, NOT doing something is much easier than doing something. And the majority of laws are "Don't do this".
Rob a store is a extreme exemple, lets talk about not paying all the taxes or not using cheap contamined meat in a tavern kitchen.
To use an example I've used in other alignment threads:
I think most people would feel that stealing is bad,
But would probably forgive someone for stealing bread to feed their family,
But feeding your family doesn't make stealing good.
Rob a store is a extreme exemple, lets talk about not paying all the taxes or not using cheap contamined meat in a tavern kitchen.
...WatYou have to go out of your way to break most laws. It's much harder to rob a store at gunpoint than NOT rob a store at gunpoint.
In general, NOT doing something is much easier than doing something. And the majority of laws are "Don't do this".
Those are the minority in most people's day to day lives, however.
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To use an example I've used in other alignment threads:
I think most people would feel that stealing is bad,
But would probably forgive someone for stealing bread to feed their family,
But feeding your family doesn't make stealing good.
It does mean you're not acting evil though.
What if the store owner is an evil jerk?
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What if the store owner is an evil jerk?
I dunno. One of the staples of Pathfinder is stealing other people's stuff, either pre or post death of the original owner.
Have you ever picked up something in PF and kept it after defeating an enemy? A sword, perhaps? Maybe a potion? Did you leave it or insist on sending the possession to the previous owner's next of kin?
In for the penny, in for the pound!
using another system that doesn't use alignment that i have a bit of familiarity with. Savage Worlds uses hindrances to flesh out a character rather than alignment, most hindrances are personality traits and some could even grant other Edge like abilities, while others are flat mechanical penalties with mechanical bonuses attached. like small reduces your toughness, but if you look at the size rules, being small gives you a bonus to hit larger foes with melee weapons and interacts beneficially with the giant slayer edge. but other major hindrances are things like curious or code of honor. it doesn't need alignment because it uses hindrances as a more effective substitute. things like Cautiousness or Loyalty are considered minor hindrances with no mechanical effect and you have a max of 2 hindrances of each for the minor and major categories. Hindrances are generally benny generators and bennies are basically action points/hero points. 90 percent of the published hindrances are personality traits like timid, phobia, mania, and the like
^I would say that a serial killer (who hasn't quit being a serial killer) CAN'T be good by holding doors for people or by casting [Good] spells, regardless of the quantity of either, but a serial killer who manages to cast enough [Good] spells (which shouldn't be easy, but should be possible) COULD use this (perhaps even accidentally) to obscure detection of the serial killer's alignment, or even cause (incorrect) detection of Good alignment.
Going in the other direction, a good person who casts a lot of [Evil] spells might be able to resist being converted to Evil or even non-Good (although doing either part of this should not be easy, but not impossible either), but runs the risk of showing up as Evil on a Paladin's radar even while remaining Good.
One thing that is missing out of the discussion (including the above paragraph) of the consequences of using [Evil] spells is the possibility that when using power from an Evil source, you aren't just depleting it, you are also exercising it, so that even if you managed to cast enough Infernal Healing to temporarily deplete Hell's reserves, in the long run you are helping Hell to bulk up. (And then, you might, depending upon interpretation of how the spell works, also be growing Infernal Flesh in your patients, which might do something bad if it happens enough in patients who aren't already managing to be Good while having Infernal Flesh. An analogous problem is also a reasonable concern about the Trollish Healing spell that somebody mentioned many posts back.)
With respect to the Necromancer who rents out Skeleton or Zombie oxen to farmers (and by the way, I could TOTALLY see this being a common practice in Geb, except that the Skeletons and Zombies are often derived from creatures other than oxen): Yes, this would have risks, including health risks, as well as failing to supply fertilizer to replenish the soil. But it could work economically, even as it has bad effects on poor farmers who can't compete with the Undead-Industrial-Food Complex, just as unwholesome and downright dangerous practices in food production have been runaway economic successes on Earth. Thus, the Agricultural Undead business model would be perfect as one of the product and service lines of . . . .
Since there seemed to be at least some interest in continuing the undead livestock discussion, I made a new thread:
What a peaceful, unbiased title.
I never understood the summoning demons to save orphans. Couldn't a caster just summon an angel to do the same thing without the chance for turning evil? The idea kind of summoning devils to fight evil falls flat on its face when most fiends have resistances to each other, and most summoning spells can summon celestials as well as fiends. So I don't really get the appeal from an in-game perspective.It doesn't matter why you're summoning demons. Maybe they're immune to the fire consuming the orphanage, maybe they have a SLA that you need to save one of the stragglers. The point is that it doesn't matter what you summoned, you saved the kids. All the Good of orphan saving, what Evil was done? Why is the world so much worse off because a magical clone of a demon was brought into the world for a few rounds and then vanished? Unless the spell is fueled by pure happiness and drains the world of joy with each casting, [evil] spells are not actually Evil, and thus should not have [evil] tags. If you think that's what [evil] spells already do... then that's a house rule.
Summoning doesn't create a clone. Many evil outsiders have abilities like greater teleport at will, so if they ever happen to be back on the same prime material plane they'll be able to teleport back to where you've summoned them. Also it makes certain spells, scrying and nightmare, potentially easier for the evil outsiders you summon to succeed.
Looking for that macguffin in that hard to find dungeon? Well after summoning random devil x, that secret became a little less so to the forces of hell.
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Summoning doesn't create a clone. Many evil outsiders have abilities like greater teleport at will, so if they ever happen to be back on the same prime material plane they'll be able to teleport back to where you've summoned them. Also it makes certain spells, scrying and nightmare, potentially easier for the evil outsiders you summon to succeed.
I believe the reference to 'clones' comes from earlier discussions and FAQs, where people questioned why druids were allowed to summon innocent bears, wolves, tigers (oh, my!), and force them into fatal combat, for reasons the poor animals didn't understand or benefit from.
Wasn't that like bloodsports, and completely disrespectful of nature?
The official response was that 'no real animals were harmed in this production'. The spell didn't drag some luckless animal away from her mate and cubs, but created a replica of that animal from magical handwavium, so it was OK really.
Personally, I think that's a steaming pile of hooey, a retcon to avoid Monte Cook being strung from a lamppost by PETA.
It sounds very much like when parents tell their kids that 'Dobbin was feeling very tired, so he went to play at a farm in the country', and 'yes, that was the man from the glue factory, who just handed me a bundle of used banknotes...'.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Summoning a fiend to save kids from a burning orphanage? The idea makes me rub my hands with glee at the fun I could have with that as a GM. So now the fiend's motivation is to follow the summoner's exact commands while still causing as much pain and suffering to those children as possible.
If you're using summon monster any commands other than combat must be relayed via language, so I hope you have loophole-free commands so that the fiend can't choose to be super inefficient. Sure, he can rescue five kids at once but instead he chooses one at a time. Perhaps he decides to walk, slowly, with his charges through some fire so they can have some nice disfiguring burns. I mean, they won't be burned enough to die, just enough to be in severe pain. That's "rescued." All the while he's laughing at their suffering and pointing our things like their dead friends and how their home is gone. Yep, nothing evil there. The end result would be that the kids were saved but in the worst possible way, and with as much unnecessary pain and trauma as possible.
You can probably get better results from planar binding, but that is a longer process and you better believe my fiend would string out negotiations as long as possible just to prolong the agony of the children.
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Yes, a GM can punish NPC babies because he's pissed at me for casting [evil] spells. Or he could get over himself and admit there's nothing evil about it.
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Yes, a GM can punish NPC babies because he's pissed at me for casting [evil] spells. Or he could get over himself and admit there's nothing evil about it.Or it could be that he is just playing sadistic creatures of pure evil as, well, sadistically evil...
The problem is that I've never heard anyone claim that summoned (not called) evil creatures disobey or misinterpret your orders on purpose until this thread, wherein it is the only potentially evil thing about the whole spell, conveniently supporting their side of the argument.
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Why is his motivation good?
A better world could be a good motivation, but if that means you run around killing "lesser races", then your "better world" motivation has a connotation of meaning genocide. "Better world" in your case then becomes an evil motivation.Right, but his motivation doesn't involve 'killing lesser races' or anything like that. It's purely to make the world a better place in a pretty legitimate sense. He's just wiling to do literally anything to advance that cause.
And it's Good because he wants to make the world a better place. It's completely altruistic, selfless, and aimed at improving people's lives.
I disagree with concept of a perfect world even being a feasible concept, let alone a possible actuality.I agree entirely, and that's actually part of the moral of Serenity (the guy mentioned above is the villain of the piece, remember).Think of this in terms of White Wolf's Humanity scale. The Operator is evil (Humanity score near to zero) because there simply is no line he will not cross to acheive his ideal. Many classic pulp/horror/scifi villains in fact are people following a good ideal but either have a twisted version of that ideal, or are so far gone in that they will excuse any action in doing so.
One of my favorite passages from James Blish's "Cities In Flight" when a character discovers what horrific experiments are being used to create the anti-aging drugs which become so important later in the series.
"I knew it, you are an idealist aren't you? You have the characteristic ruthlessness."
"Yes, that's exactly what it takes."
I was in no way arguing the Operative wasn't Evil. Quite the opposite, really.
I was arguing that motivation wasn't a sufficient measure of Evil in and of itself, with him as an example of a character that would be Good using that measure but clearly wasn't due to the actions he took.
In short, I agree with you entirely.
I was going to ask this on the parody thread, but I guess I'm looking for a slightly more serious answer, or at least don't want to start a debate on that thread.
I also have not read all of the responses, so I apologize in advance if this has been covered.
Are people really so hung up on the idea that something that is generally a minor evil act can be used for good in specific circumstances?