It is a role playing game. It is for the player or GM to come up with their own flavour & roleplay reason why it is evil. In the same way they come up for a reason why they have a ranger level, or Str 18, or how the have the reactionary trait. nevertheless it is clearly described as evil, so use your imagination... Or don't if you aren't fussed about that side of things.
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Let's look at the "real" scenario of the "Infernal Healing" situations for example. None of this silly nonsense about using it to save starving orphans who have been mauled by owlbears... The real way it is used.
So: Fighter, Wizard, Ranger, and Cleric all are tasked with taking out a vicious group of Goblins who are plaguing the town. The Goblins have kidnapped a woman they captured when they raided a caravan carrying goods, presumably they intend to eat her. These are level 1-2 adventurers.
Encounter 1:
The party fights a group of Goblins at the edge of the forest. The Wizard takes an arrow to the face and, having only 7 HP, uses a wand of Infernal Healing, patches himself up.Defeating the Goblins wasn't good or evil as it was just self defense. The use of the Infernal Healing is evil.
Encounter 2:
The party fights a second group of Goblins, with Goblin Dogs no less, near the outskirts of the Goblin's war camp. The Cleric gets dropped by a lucky crit from a Goblin's bow. The Wizard patches him up with the wand, he makes the stabilize, but he was still at -1 HP.Defeating the Goblins wasn't a good or evil act.
Casting Infernal Healing was an evil act.Evil Acts: 2
Good Acts: 0Encounter 3:
The party fights a third and final group of Goblins, with the Goblin Warchief, in the war camp. They manage to defeat the Goblins and save the woman. The Wizard tops everyone off with the wand. Using it two more times.Evil Acts: 4
Good Acts: 1That is about how that spell is used, that is pretty much an accurate scenario. If this keeps up, and the GM is keeping score, you are seeing a 4:1 Evil:Good Act ratio. Now, I know what you are saying, "NO! NO NO NO! Healing is a good act!"
Nope. Healing isn't a good act in and of itself. Discounting the fact that Healing Spells, such as Cure Light Wounds, is not a Good spell. Healing, in and of itself, is a neutral act.
If things keep up at this pace, the Wizard in question is going to fall to Neutral, if not Evil. That is generally how it goes.
No problem, I cast prot from evil on everyone at the start of the day.
Evil Acts: 4
Good Acts: 5
I'm a shoo in for heaven at this rate...
I think part of the problem is that in some cases, evil and good are presented as being equal and opposite (Paladin v Antipaladin, Protection from Evil v Protection from Good) and in other cases, evil is presented as the stronger & easier option (Infernal Healing v Cure Light Wounds).
Alignment is kind of schizophrenic that way.
Well the Paladin is stronger than the Antipaladin, and most good outsiders are actually much stronger than their closest fiendish equivalents, and the good guys usually have the best spells (like bestow grace), so I would say that they're equal but different.
It is humorous that the absolute best way to combat terrible evils is in fact to be evil-aligned. It immunizes you to the most common, often often most painful, weapon used by evil fiends. So if your intent is to go out and smite the pants off of the elder evils, then you'd actually be better off being evil.
Well the Paladin is stronger than the Antipaladin, and most good outsiders are actually much stronger than their closest fiendish equivalents, and the good guys usually have the best spells (like bestow grace), so I would say that they're equal but different.
It is humorous that the absolute best way to combat terrible evils is in fact to be evil-aligned. It immunizes you to the most common, often often most painful, weapon used by evil fiends. So if your intent is to go out and smite the pants off of the elder evils, then you'd actually be better off being evil.
The point is that being good shouldn't be the easiest way to fight evil, but it's the good folks who are generally the ones motivated to do so.
*snip*Ends don't justify the means.
Ends are neither good, nor evil. Ends are a result. The result is flavored by the means.
You're also confusing "Good" with being effective.
Also, again, this is one of those nonsense scenarios. You're talking about a situation (a burning orphanage) where the only healing available is a wand of Infernal Healing. Nobody in the party has:
1. Cure Light Wounds
2. Lay on Hands
3. Channel Positive
4. A +1 Wisdom, 1 Rank in Heal, and Heal as a Class Skill
5. A character who bought a known evil item as the only reliable healing.I can tell you. I've never been in a group where someone didn't have something from items 1-4 heck. It'd be hard to find number 4 not in a group of commoners who are running an orphanage.
Often evil 'is' more effective than Good. That's why so many good people fall due to doing bad things. That is the allure of evil.
Good is never, "What works." How you win is more important than winning to Good.
"It isn't wether you win or lose, it's how you play the game."
>Ends don't justify the means.
Always had trouble with that reasoning. If ends don't justify the means, what the hell does? Cookie monster? That is the sort of thing a poncey hero says in a movie while yelling in the face of the BBEG, not the sort of thing an actually good ruler says in their memoirs. Can you imagine Louis XIV of France, aka "The sun king" saying that? Nope. Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire? Nope.
>this is one of those nonsense scenarios
If your moral theory breaks down the second someone takes 2.5 seconds to come up with a situation where it will do so, it is not a very sturdy theory. That, in turn, means it is a horrible theory to be used in practice. Universe is sufficiently unkind that one of those circumstances will indeed come up, and then you are left with no idea what to do because your morals just burst into flames.
>"It isn't wether you win or lose, it's how you play the game."
So if Good isn't about humanly good things, like saving lives or alleviating suffering, and is instead about some morals gods/spacewhales bestowed upon the world, it is not about efficiency, it gives weird inconsistent results (letting people die being sometimes the thing a Good character would do, even though they can save them), and being Evil actually helps deal with the things that lurk in the darkness and eat babies...
Yeah, I agree with Ashiel, give me my Evil allignment. I'll keep doing same stuff a good person would(saving people, spreading education, improving society), and will cast that horrible Infernal Healing to keep up the mechanical bonuses once a day or so. New dawn for humanity I guess, and another reason why allignment makes no sense whatsoever.
I'll pick "being called evil by an alien spacewhale, while actually improving HDI, GDP, welfare, education and knowledge" over "being called good by an alien spacewhale, while actually slaughtering innocents in droves, letting children die in pain and saying poncy things" any day of the week.
Also
>1. Cure Light Wounds
2. Lay on Hands
3. Channel Positive
4. A +1 Wisdom, 1 Rank in Heal, and Heal as a Class Skill
5. A character who bought a known evil item as the only reliable healing.
Believe it or not, not all parties have a paladin/cleric/dedicated healer. If you have never been in a party without one, that's good on you, but that doesn't prove anything.
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The point is that being good shouldn't be the easiest way to fight evil, but it's the good folks who are generally the ones motivated to do so.Well the Paladin is stronger than the Antipaladin, and most good outsiders are actually much stronger than their closest fiendish equivalents, and the good guys usually have the best spells (like bestow grace), so I would say that they're equal but different.
It is humorous that the absolute best way to combat terrible evils is in fact to be evil-aligned. It immunizes you to the most common, often often most painful, weapon used by evil fiends. So if your intent is to go out and smite the pants off of the elder evils, then you'd actually be better off being evil.
I'm pretty sure everyones motivated to fight evil. Because evil tends to not respect you unless you make it respect you. So evil fights evil, neutral fights evil, good fights evil. Just depends which evil we're talking. That guy trying to destroy the world, everyones gonna jump him. Most people like living. That guy trying to conquer everywhere, pretty sure all the evil folks in the areas he's conquering, the ones that don't join in probably will do some pretty nasty things to oust em. The motivation simply isn't "cus they hurt others." It's "they do things that I don't like." And that is a surprisingly powerful motivator in general.
I'm pretty sure everyones motivated to fight evil. Because evil tends to not respect you unless you make it respect you. So evil fights evil, neutral fights evil, good fights evil. Just depends which evil we're talking. That guy trying to destroy the world, everyones gonna jump him. Most people like living. That guy trying to conquer everywhere, pretty sure all the evil folks in the areas he's conquering, the ones that don't join in probably will do some pretty nasty things to oust em. The motivation simply isn't "cus they hurt others." It's "they do things that I don't like." And that is a surprisingly powerful motivator in general.
Agreed. Likewise, if as many here have noted, that doing "evil" like casting infernal healing trumps good that you're doing, well, it's not like being evil makes you a particularly bad person. In fact, according to folks like HWalsh and Drahliana Moonrunner, we won't be good if we don't wholly abstain from those things on moral principle rather than practice.
So for the vast majority of people, you'll have the Evil guys you actually really love being around because they heal your children, feed the poor, do nice things, love people freely, put themselves in danger on a regular basis for the protecting and dignity of others, and bleed for them. Except they cast infernal healing and summon fiendish eagles to defeat orcs.
Then when those OTHER evil badguys, like the ones who want to unleash a balor on the material plane or somesuch rear their ugly heads, the "good" evil guys go out and bleed for their world. Their evil alignment allows them to practically backstroke through a sea of unholy blight spam from the legions of demons and devils, while they carve the blackened hearts from the chests of fiends irreverently, caring nothing for the Strength damage of their unholy auras. When they cast the evils back into the pit, they'll go home and hug their families, play with their children, and kiss babies and thank the gods for their safety.
And since we're already evil, and abaddon, hell, or the abyss await, we just become mummies via create undead and hang out on the material plane and continue to spread happiness and joy.
Oh, I do. Haven't used alignment in years. But HWalsh denying the problem exists is what I rail against.As I've said before, I don't consider it a problem. Undead being evil (in and of themselves or the creation of them) and dealing with devils and demons being evil are both common fantasy tropes. I've got no problems with that being built into the system.
I've got no problem with handwaving it away either. I really have trouble understanding why it's such a huge deal for so many people.
I think it's the very idea of objective morality. Most people nowadays, if pressed, would argue either for some form of utilitarianism or moral subjectivism. When you impose a system that deals with good and evil as objective, the first reaction is revulsion.
Notice how most of the "support" for Infernal Healing makes their case in utilitarian terms.
Oh, I do. Haven't used alignment in years. But HWalsh denying the problem exists is what I rail against.As I've said before, I don't consider it a problem. Undead being evil (in and of themselves or the creation of them) and dealing with devils and demons being evil are both common fantasy tropes. I've got no problems with that being built into the system.
I've got no problem with handwaving it away either. I really have trouble understanding why it's such a huge deal for so many people.
I think it's the very idea of objective morality. Most people nowadays, if pressed, would argue either for some form of utilitarianism or moral subjectivism. When you impose a system that deals with good and evil as objective, the first reaction is revulsion.
Notice how most of the "support" for Infernal Healing makes their case in utilitarian terms.
You are saying that as if utilitarianism was something bad.
The way I have always seen it is that in a world where good and evil are actual tangible things and the gods are proven to exist and can walk among mortals, morality is objective not subjective. If something is listed as evil, argue however much you like but it doesn't matter. The "universe" has decided that is evil, no matter how you slice it. Yes it depends on the world you play in, obviously, but what makes people think that the energies of existence care what tiny bit about what your character thinks? They are what they are, tough luck.
Feel free to call me wrong but take the emotion out of your objection and just look at the fact. Look at it objectively. The game rules of that universe says X therefore X. Just because you argue something or disagree does not mean you are right. Houserule it or take it as it is. It is up to the GM of course as they are the rulemakers.
Also remember, every villain is the hero of their own story. If you can argue what you are doing is not evil, the BBEG gets the same treatment. If morality is subjective, nothing they do is actually evil and you just think it is and the alignment system is broken. If morality is objective and set in stone but the powers of the universe, whatever they may be, then that's it. Just like how there is no actual economy in the game and prices are universally set and every community values everything equally. It doesn't have to make sense, it just works that way unless you house rule it otherwise.
If it is subjective, then you are never fighting evil. You are killing people just for disagreeing with what you think is right.
>The "universe" has decided that is evil, no matter how you slice it.
Sure, universe says that X is Evil. Now why should humans care about what the universe says again? It sure seems that what humans like(e.g. not dying) doesn't allign with what the universe likes(e.g. people not using Infernal Healing or other Evil stuff).
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Didn't say humans had to care. Do what you like, but if what you like is what is considered evil then your opinion means nothing in the face of facts. Argue what you like, but evil is evil, good is good, regardless of what your character likes.
Of course I don't think real life is like this.
See, if this "Evil" doesn't mean the same thing as what humans would consider evil, you can just as well call it "Orange" and call "Good" "Blue". So, the universe considers your actions "Orange". Big deal. Paladins are very "Blue". Okay, whatever. Doesn't change wherever your actions are actually good or bad from the perspective of the society as a whole.
You are saying that as if utilitarianism was something bad.
Notice how most of the "support" for Infernal Healing makes their case in utilitarian terms.
It's not "bad," it's simply wrong, in the (fictional) Pathfinder cosmology.
In the Steven Universe cosmology, there is a city on the Delmarva peninsula called "Beach City," and I believe that Delmarva is its own state. There's a state immediately to the west of Delmarva called "Keystone." If you want to tell me that Rebecca Sugar is wrong, and that the state immediately to the west of the Delmarva peninsula is Pennsylvania, not Keystone, you're simply wrong, because Ms. Sugar is writing a fictional alternate universe, one where there is no state called Pennsylvania. (Steven himself -- well, maybe not Steven, but his friend Connie -- would just look at you in shock to see how ignorant you were, if Steven/Connie were not themselves also fictional.)
In the Lord Darcy series by Randall Garrett, King Richard the Lionhearted did not die in 1199, his brother John never assumed the throne, and the Angevin Plantagenet dynasty ruled most of Europe (and eventually the entire New World) until the mid 20th century at least. The idea that the Plantagenets had been supplanted by the Tudors in the 15th century is ludicrously wrong and every street urchin knows that within that fictional universe.
In the Star Trek universe, and specifically on Star Trek Earth, much of the 1990s were taken up by the Eugenics Wars. Captain Kirk would laugh at you if you said they had never happened.
I'll pick "being called evil by an alien spacewhale, while actually improving HDI, GDP, welfare, education and knowledge" over "being called good by an alien spacewhale, while actually slaughtering innocents in droves, letting children die in pain and saying poncy things" any day of the week.
Unless you know the whole supply chain you can't be sure there isn't something monstrous in there. A businessman who supplies free clothing and blankets to underprivileged children so they don't die from exposure is certainly doing a good thing. If he does this en masse that's probably a great thing. If the reason he's able to do it in such quantities is because his supplier is a sweatshop working people in slave-like conditions, he's partially culpable if he had a way of knowing that. If he doesn't care about that fact enough to investigate when the clues are there, it undercuts his claim to being good.
That's how these assertions that infernal healing and other [evil] spells read to me. There's an indicator out there that something's not on the up-and-up in that [evil] tag. As a spellcaster, if you don't investigate whether there's some cosmological side-effect of your spell and you're willing to use it despite that indicator, you're partially culpable for whatever side-effects might exist. Being willing to accept that negative baggage is a hallmark of either (1) the good outweighing the harm you can imagine (the ends justify the means) or (2) the person doing this isn't good (taking the expedient path regardless of who it harms). Note here that being OK with using the sweatshop is why the person is evil - willingness to use evil means is a sign of evil. Willingness to use good means is not an analogous sign of good (so no, casting protection from evil 5000 times doesn't flip your alignment by the same token as regularly casting infernal healing might).
Now, to the larger point that the rules don't explicitly say casting [evil] spells has any side-effects. I think many people here agree that if it doesn't have those effects, calling it an evil act to cast those spells doesn't make sense. I claim that it's therefore implicit in the fact that it's an evil act. The rules also don't say why gods care about worshipers or how they gain/lose power. They don't say how to make a place a portal to the Abyss, the flavor just sometimes says that a place had such atrocities that it attracted demonic attention and this is the result. There are causes that aren't spelled out exactly and effects that aren't spelled out exactly. Just because they're left ambiguous doesn't mean they don't exist in-world.
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I think the real answer to the original question is that the vast majority of people in real life are True Neutral and think they are Good. They extrapolate their real-life morality to their character, hence the use of "ends justify the means" without understanding that's not a "Good" (Capital G) way of thinking; it's Neutral at best.
Wraithstrike's Scale of Good/Evil Version 1:
1. Do a good thing without having to harm the villians(bad guys) or victims.
2. Harm/kill the bad guys if needed, and save all the victims.
3a. Do things without using any evil methods and minimize casualties.
3b. Do this minor evil thing for a good reason to make sure everyone lives and/or nobody is harmed.
4a. Do not do majorly evil things even if a lot of people die.
4b. Do majorly evil thing with regret because it will save everyone or at least minimize the impact the disaster would have otherwise.
5. Take the most efficient route, no matter what evil must be done. The results matter, not how we get there. Have no qualms about crushing a few eggs to make some omelets.
I think we can agree that 1 and 2 are good. Evil will mostly likely go with 5, even if it has good intentions.
I think the disagreements mostly come in points 3 and 4.
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Yeah, about as stupid as starting a rebellion because someone added a tax to tea...Another big factor was that the British had forbidden colonists from settling beyond the Appalachian Mountains to avoid conflict with the tribes that lived there.
Truly, the start to a noble and proud national history we try not to include in our textbooks.
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So if Good isn't about humanly good things, like saving lives or alleviating suffering, and is instead about some morals gods/spacewhales bestowed upon the world, it is not about efficiency, it gives weird inconsistent results (letting people die being sometimes the thing a Good character would do, even though they can save them), and being Evil actually helps deal with the things that lurk in the darkness and eat babies...
Tl;dr, you're defining Good strictly from the consequentialist standpoint.
There is a slight problem with the consequentialism: it works like a drug. In small doses it serves as a reality check, and prevents your moral stance from becoming subtly perverted, such as when acts of magnanimity (like, sparing enemies who certainly wouldn't have done the same if the tables were reversed) start to be treated as obligatory acts. But if you get addicted to it, and start substituting it for your actual moral stance, it will ruin your mind and inevitably lead to justifying literally anything to yourself, both on personal and political level. Taking bribes from a criminal syndicate in exchange for not investigating their crimes? Well, bringing the syndicate down would only create chaos in the streets and result in more deaths, so my corruption is perfectly moral! Exterminating or incarcerating whole categories of population? Well, the society we're building will give a great return in terms of lives saved and suffering alleviated, so these means are clearly justified by our end! That's just where consequentialism leads in the real life - once it becomes your main principle, it becomes one huge loophole for self-justification and doing what is expedient, because it offers no practical guidance on how to act, particularly if consequences are not clear and immediate. It is telling that your own examples of good rulers are iron-fisted tyrants (who offered short-term solutions for the problems of their countries but set them on the course to decline in the long term - ironically the extended trains of consequences tend to repudiate consequentialism and the resulting "end justifies the means" attitude).
As it seems, the main reason why consequentialism is constantly brought up in discussions on TTRPG morality because in TTRPGs you have GM Almighty, who controls the consequences at his whim.
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Wraithstrike's Scale of Good/Evil Version 1:
[snip]
I think we can agree that 1 and 2 are good. Evil will mostly likely go with 5, even if it has good intentions.
I'm not sure we can -- and even if "we" can, that's only because neither Jesus nor Mahatma Gandhi plays Pathfinder nor participates on the message boards. Neither of them would consider #2 to be "good," although they'd certainly agree that it's better than #3, and so on down the road.
That's part of the issue, I think. Pathfinder recognizes in several places that good/evil is a continuum, but of course, the Good domain doesn't come in flavors, really. If we're talking about Good deities, the question is not what behavior they hold up as an ideal, or how they themselves behave, but what behavior they expect (and accept) from their followers. I personally have no problem with the statement that Shelyn is "more good" than Torag, partly because Shelyn's moral code more closely approximates my own, but also because Torag seems to me to be a more stern and demanding capital-L Lawful small-g good deity. But, then, I also have no problem with the idea that the God of the Old Testament is "less good" than the God of the New Testament, an idea that I share with a lot of theologians, if I wrap it in the right terminology.
So, yes, lines may be to some extent arbitrary. The fact that the see alignment spell and the detect alignment series of spells have different detection thresholds is suggests that the lines Pathfinders see are also to some extent arbitrary.
But the fact that lines are blurry doesn't make distinctions unreal. If you suggest to a biologist that cats are the same as dogs because umpteen zillion years ago, they shared common ancestors that were fish, you'd be laughed at. And more subtly, biologists will recognize differences but argue about whether or not the differences are sufficient to warrant drawing a line between two creatures -- how many subspecies of eastern gorilla are there this week?
I think another of the major issues here is, as Xaimum Mafire pointed out, most people are neutral. (When we make that statement about Golarion, it's uncontroversial; for the real world, perhaps more so.) If most of the people on this thread are, in fact, neutral(*) but consider themselves to be good, then they can only reconcile that by drawing a much more generous line dividing good and evil, one that promotes most of "neutral" to good.
Of course, they can get away with that because we don't have spells like see alignment in the real world.
---
(*) I'd actually expect, based on a lot of the sociopathic fantasies on this forum, that an uncomfortable number of board members are actually evil. Again, if you want, you can draw the line between "good" and "evil" at the point where eating babies is good as long as you have a white wine with them, but red wine is right out. As FatR pointed out, there are a lot of theories of morality that you can drive entire trainloads of self-justification and delusion through.
I think the real answer to the original question is that the vast majority of people in real life are True Neutral and think they are Good. They extrapolate their real-life morality to their character, hence the use of "ends justify the means" without understanding that's not a "Good" (Capital G) way of thinking; it's Neutral at best.
I think that may be a small part of it; certainly, a not-insignificant portion of players despise having their morality called into question by a game.
However, the bigger problem is one of game design. As written, there is literally no moral drawback to the use of infernal healing, for example. The GM might make one up, but it's not in the description of the spell, and most people will play RAW if they can help it. So we have a spell that is completely neutral in terms of what it does - everybody needs healing, yeah? The only difference between infernal healing and celestial healing is that infernal healing has a little "[Evil]" tag attached to it.
Which, with all due respect to Paizo, is about the crappiest possible way to signal that a spell is evil. It's the D&D-spell equivalent of that thing bad movies about unbelievably skilled protagonists do, where everyone around the protagonist talks about their brilliance and expertise, but all we see them doing is stuff anyone of average intelligence could do easily. If the description of infernal healing stipulated that the spell would only activate after the blood sacrifice of a fluffy bunny, the "[Evil]" tag would make intuitive sense. Right now, it doesn't, hence the outcry.
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See, if this "Evil" doesn't mean the same thing as what humans would consider evil, you can just as well call it "Orange" and call "Good" "Blue". So, the universe considers your actions "Orange". Big deal. Paladins are very "Blue". Okay, whatever. Doesn't change wherever your actions are actually good or bad from the perspective of the society as a whole.Except that in about 99% of cases Evil and Orange line up*. It's only in a couple of odd supernatural cases that they don't obviously do so. Is it really so shocking to people that in a world with alignment magic there might be some oddities?
I'm more shocked that people think we have a 100% consistent theory of morality. And I really mean people think they have a 100% consistent theory of morality, because no two people actually have the same theory. Philosophers have been digging at this and arguing about this for over two thousand years and we haven't yet achieved anything like common ground.
There's a common trope -- myth, really -- that "science has proved bumblebees can't fly." Accepting it at face value, though,... does anyone really think that anyone, for an instant, would actually look at a flying bumblebee and say "I'm an aerodynamic physicist, and that isn't happening!"
Of course not. If there's a conflict between "my theory says this shouldn't happen," and "that is happening right now in front of me," the resolution is that my theory is wrong. And in Golarion, if your understanding of evil is that infernal healing is not an evil spell, your understanding of evil is also wrong.
And if your understanding of evil in the real world is that, in Golarion, infernal healing is not an evil spell, your understanding of evil in the real world is wrong. Failure to distinguish fantasy from reality being one major flaw in that understanding.....
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However, the bigger problem is one of game design. As written, there is literally no moral drawback to the use of infernal healing, for example.
As written, there's also no moral drawback to killing and eating babies.
The GM might make one up, but it's not in the description of the spell, and most people will play RAW if they can help it.
And what does RAW say about killing and eating babies? Any moral drawbacks are purely the result of the GM making something up.
So we have a spell that is completely neutral in terms of what it does - everybody needs healing, yeah?
... and a main course that is completely neutral in terms of what it does -- everybody needs food, yeah?
Honestly, the problem may not be one of morality, but one of absolutism. Good and evil are not tags we attach to ourselves as a result of our actions, not really. We wish we were good, and we see ourselves as good, but when it comes down to it, very few people actually manage it. Those that do, or claim they do and people tend to believe them, often do things like shut themselves in a building with others, let other people provide for them, and pray for the world for decades. Which sort of works, only you never actually DO anything.
Reading the above, what worries me is that people see the question of morality, even real world such, as a numbers game. Good is an ideal, something we choose to strive for. As part of that striving, we commit ourselves to not doing certain awful things, to keep the consequences for others of our actions on the positive range of the scale, to act the times we can - and accept that there is only so much we can do. Yes, we are mortals, we are very very fallible, we have good days and bad days, we do things all the time that were not particularly impressive. And since we want to be good, we suffer when we think of our worst failures. We have an active conscience. And, and this is key, we do NOT justify our failures by the flimsiest excuses available. If we fail, we strive to learn from it and do better.
Of course, there are situations where morality does not apply. Two of you, one spot on a floating log, the other will drown. When the dust has settled, one of you will live, and regret having to do what you just did to your fellow human - but not many would consider you a bad person for not choosing to drown. The weirder the circumstances, the less applicable to morality. Saving the rest of the children from a burning orphanage by sacrificing one of them to a demon, yadda yadda, it's all just excuses to disqualify morality as such. And thus, useless for this entire discussion. A good person might well choose to do the sacrifice for the sake of the other kids. Or they might not. As a constructed situation that assumes everyone involved can KNOW the consequences of their choice, it speaks very little if at all of the morality of those involved. It is the same s&*$ the torture-fans in various governments have pushed like cocaine with their "ticking bomb" scenarios - and just as irrelevant.
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theres a great many posts recently making a claim to other peoples motives that really have no place here. Ashiel and others have made very reasonable arguments as to why a thing ought to be considered good aligned or not. The fact that the book is not consistant with those views does not somehow make them amoral.
Look, if I somehow gained power over the world and made oranges illegal and proclaimed that any who ate oranges would, henceforth, be considered evil, do you think eating oranges would actually be morally wrong?
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I am sure some of you have an answer to this but how does aerodynamics work on an airplane wing that allows a really heavy object that will sink in water to fly through the air?
I dont know the answer to that one honestly but you know what... their is some scientific principle and law that has an answer for it.
I dont need to know WHY the spell infernal healing is evil. The rules say it is so it is. You dont have to understand why infernal healing is evil.... its in the rules thats enough said right there, now if you want to argue over whether it should be evil or not thats on you, But the rule is the rule is the rule...if it were wrong Paizo would errata it and they havent. so . . . Once more, its an evil spell.
Isn't most of the ends vs means disagreement about whether a spell with the (evil) descriptor can be used to Good effect? Infernal (and Celestial) healing are particularly interesting cases because the description of both state that there is no long term effect on the target's alignment.
I guess I'm saying that if a Paladin had Infernal healing cast on her, I'd expect the player to role play it as an icky, icky experience, but I wouldn't consider having the paladin fall, or require her to seek atonement.
Yes, even in Golarion.
No Trogdar, Ashiel and others have tried to force the incorrect in Golarion theory of subjective morality as a law and have gone so far as to state the actual law of Objective Morality in Golarion is incorrect or, at the very least, not correctly named.theres a great many posts recently making a claim to other peoples motives that really have no place here. Ashiel and others have made very reasonable arguments as to why a thing ought to be considered good aligned or not. The fact that the book is not consistant with those views does not somehow make them amoral.
Look, if I somehow gained power over the world and made oranges illegal and proclaimed that any who ate oranges would, henceforth, be considered evil, do you think eating oranges would actually be morally wrong?
Given that I said the exact opposite, I'm going to request a citation on this one.
Their arguments basically are:
"If that descriptor wasn't there then these spells wouldn't be evil."
Also false.
This thread wasn't intended to argue IF these things are evil. They are. That's a fact. If you argue with a fact then you are automatically wrong.
This thread is here to discuss why some people are so offended by that fact.
I'll repeat it again. For the umpteenth time.
I said, quite clearly, and repeatedly, that prior to the new rule it was not a thing, but after the new rule, then it simply doesn't matter. It mattered somewhat before, but not any longer, because no longer does your alignment necessarily describe your character or their general attitudes towards others. It just describes what color shirt they're wearing in a metaphorical sense.
Because, if simply casting infernal healing or protection from good makes you evil, and protection from evil and summon monster [celestial weasel] makes you more good, then it doesn't mean anything anymore.
It renders it simply a mechanic. A now more ill defined mechanic. A mechanic that contradicts the stuff describing the mechanic. You can be a really great, good, awesome heroic person worthy of legends and fables for your acts of kindness, generosity, and love, but you'll get tagged [Evil] 'cause you were frequently using spells like infernal healing and summon monster [fiendish buttmonkey].
Which is fine and good, since it means that because alignment isn't anchored to how a character actually acts and treats others any longer, we don't have to care. It's totally possible to play the heroic good guys we want while getting to enjoy the sweet, sweet immunity to spells like unholy blight and unholy aura.
It's a win/win.
However, the bigger problem is one of game design. As written, there is literally no moral drawback to the use of infernal healing, for example.As written, there's also no moral drawback to killing and eating babies.
The GM might make one up, but it's not in the description of the spell, and most people will play RAW if they can help it.And what does RAW say about killing and eating babies? Any moral drawbacks are purely the result of the GM making something up.
So we have a spell that is completely neutral in terms of what it does - everybody needs healing, yeah?... and a main course that is completely neutral in terms of what it does -- everybody needs food, yeah?
"Hurting, oppressing, and killing others"
If you're going to try argumentum ad absurdum at least TRY to make sure it's an example that's logically consistent with the point you're trying to make.
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Since the description that the spell is evil is just an ill defined mechanic ive decided to look into some other spells... like fireball.
Now it says it generates a searing explosion Im just going to rule that it doesnt really effect that ice elemental at all, since you know it had no flesh to sear and doesnt state the exact temperature of the fire. and since its over in an instant its not a constant heat source to melt the ice elemental Since you know its an ill defined mechanic.
That sounds like the logic you are using at the moment Ashiel, that since the spell doesnt tell you why its evil or what the evil effect does then it doesnt matter.
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Since the description that the spell is evil is just an ill defined mechanic ive decided to look into some other spells... like fireball.
Now it says it generates a searing explosion Im just going to rule that it doesnt really effect that ice elemental at all, since you know it had no flesh to sear and doesnt state the exact temperature of the fire. and since its over in an instant its not a constant heat source to melt the ice elemental Since you know its an ill defined mechanic.
That sounds like the logic you are using at the moment Ashiel, that since the spell doesnt tell you why its evil or what the evil effect does then it doesnt matter.
"1.
burn or scorch the surface of (something) with a sudden, intense heat."No need for flesh for searing to occur.
"It can melt metals with low melting points, such as lead, gold, copper, silver, and bronze."
From a quick Google search: "Melting point of gold: 1,948°F"
So it's a minimum of that hot.
Most importantly it says:
"A fireball spell...deals 1d6 points of fire damage per caster level (maximum 10d6) to every creature within the area. Unattended objects also take this damage."
So very well defined how much damage it does (1d6 per level) who it deals it to (creatures and unattended objects, but not attended objects such as clothing or weapons). An ice elemental is a creature, it has no specific rule that contradicts that it takes fire damage (such as immunity), so it's VERY well defined that it takes damage (because the spell says so) and WHY (because it's f~#&ing HOT).
Whereas [Evil] descriptor spells don't tell you HOW evil they are (how many evil points do you get for casting one?), WHY they're evil (no mention of hurting, oppressing, or killing others...which is the ONLY defined part of the Evil alignment), or who this evil affects (only Good or Neutral asters? Do Evil people get MORE mustache twirlingly evil the more they cast it?).
All you know is "it's evil". Which is cool and all, and nobody's arguing whether it is or not, but that doesn't stop it from being really stupid that it is because it has A.) No information provided on why, how, or how much it is nor B.) Any way you can just LOOK UP information outside the game, like you can do for Fireball.
Therefore, it has basically no effect but determining what "team" you're on for the purpose of "Team affecting effects" such as Holy Smite. Because alignment is a RESULT or actions not a DETERMINER of them, your character can and likely will continue acting exactly the same way they always have. At worst being a bit contradictory (an Evil character doing good things) or at best just evening out to Neutral.
What a lot of people are saying is it'd make a hell of a lot more sense if there was a defined reason WHY it was evil...because then it would matter. IF it actually required harming another living being (EX the material component was "A pint of blood taken unwillingly from a sentient creature"), it would make more sense.
Basically, you and Orfamay are really bad at this and should come up with better examples if you're going to use this argumentation style.
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So the basis of all your arguments is they didn't provide hard numbers in the spell so it's loosely defined mechanics don't matter?. If you need tonuse math to determine whether your good charector , or even neutral charector should or should not.I don't need to know how hot the fire is to know I shouldn't touch it
You shouldn't need to know how evil the evil spell is not to use it if you don't want to be considered evil. It wouldn't be evil is somewhere in the world of pathfinder it was a rule of magic that says it's evil. There is no need for any sort of weighing how evil it is. This is not the real world it's a game of imagination and dice rolling and loose rules to aid gameplay.
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This is not the real world it's a game of imagination and dice rolling and loose rules to aid gameplay.
Which is why it's baffling why so many people are up in arms because I and a few others don't like this loose rule that, IMO, DOESN'T aid gameplay.
I think Sundakan put the spotlight on that ill logic so I'll skip it, save for this part.
It does tell you what it does. Just as fireball says it deals xd6 fire damage, spells like protection from evil also tell you what they do.
If they change your alignment merely by casting them, then no, they don't really matter to me or a lot of people since we're not interested in blue vs orange, but rather a character's actions and behavior. As long as a character is consistently altruistic, protective of life, and concerned for others, I'll see him as good no matter what his alignment is on his character sheet.
It's clearly not "aiding gameplay" either.
I'm more up in arms as you put it because of the logic that using evil to do good is good just because they didn't put in numbers to make sure everyone could clearly see it was evil.
Which turns this into a subjective moral argument, because both IRL and in the game there are gradients.
Killing is, objectively, by the game rules, evil.
Good can still be accomplished by doing it.
The question, of course, remains where the line is. When is a small evil justified for accomplishing a bigger good?
Questions that have gone unanswered since the start of recorded history, and I somehow doubt we'll manage to hash out here.
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So then a question, and yes it's all theoretical. Let's say you keep using that wand. Cause overall your good and it helps. Tomorrow paizo posts errata that each time you use it an important gets its wings 4 kittens die and a child gets cancer.
Does that matter to your view of your charector now? How would they react to learning that?
Cause if you basis for using it nothing in the rules tellse why it's bad, it just is so whatever I don't care that seems...negligent? Probably not the right word I'm looking for, but I need sleep