Alignment

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Bigotry is what happens when good doesn't have all their information right and jumps to a poor donclusion...

 

Technically speaking, Half-Fiends/Cambions are listed as "Always evil (any)" in the MM. They are creatures who half of their essence is made of pure evil. They are incapable of being good on their own accord. A paladin has as much need to question a half-fiend's motivation as a green dragon's motivation. Kill on sight, no need to bother with detect evil. Both creatures are only capable of raising the world's net misery.

D+D operates on some sort of natural rights based ethic. An evil character has to in some way violate some of those rights of at least some other in order to be evil. An evil character is therefore essentially denying the humanity of other persons and therefore is worthy of being persecuted by good characters without demonstrating an actual reason for persecution.

 

I don't think i have ever had a problem with alignment as i am almost always LN. The description in 3.0/3.5 is perfect for me
"Lawful Neutral, "Judge"
A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government.

Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot."

I play a LN as having a personal code that doesn't allow him to hurt innocents but against enemies that have been proven to be honorless anything goes. He will treat an individual not based on their race but their actions however race will give you a baseline to predict behaviour off of.

 

You realise, I hope, how entirely ****ed up that is?

Also, to quote from the Planescape Monstrous Compendium I:

Also, I would question this:

I would say that it's entirely possible to be 'evil' without ever having commited an 'evil' act - it doesn't make sense otherwise. Are you neutral in regards to good and evil up until that point despite, say, planning to do it for a while or holding other thoughts generally considered 'evil'? That's silly - alignment is a reflection of your character's morals, not their actions.

At any rate, your idea of what 'good' entails is terrifying. 'We can kill anything evil ... because they're evil!' is just insane. They should just wander around casting detect evil on everyone and purge the city, by that thinking - and would probably kill a significant amount of productive citizens if they did. You can be evil and a functional member of society at the same time.

As I created this thread to dance and scream about: Evil is not the sum of an evil character, what they do, and what they're motivated by. It's a moral outlook - saying that you can kill anyone based on their moral outlook is flabbergastingly insane.

 

I'm totally with Aik on this.

The cambion char was simply passing through the town, he hadn't done anything, for crying out loud.
What gave them the right to chase him all over the place, trying to kill him, then eventually deceive and backstab him, and then claim the moral highground?

That's ridiculous. I fail to see the good in that.

He's evil, make no mistake there. However their actions were not good.
He didn't deserve what happened.

 

You bet your ass you can!

Me, I play Chaotic Evil or Neutral Evil. IRL, many tests have nailed me as Chaotic Neutral (oh no, madman!), and it fits with who I am.

 

I entirely agree with Aik and Lore. If I was the DM and Aria's behaviour is consistently like this I would have forced an alignment shift to Neutral. Reading about the way she goes around doing things strongly reminds me of Miko from Order of the Stick: she is convinced that what she does is good and that gives her the right to do whatever she pleases, including sending a poor girl to the Abyss, and to come up with the craziest excuses because the one option she will never consider is that she could have been wrong. That she didn't have all the facts is not an excuse, because she never tries to get all the facts, and when she does get them she immediately dismisses them because they're coming from the evil cambion (circular reasoning at its best).

It's even worse in this case because, as I mentioned above, Aria doesn't even try to get the facts right and doesn't even consider that the cambion may be doing exactly what he claims (just passing through) and as much in a hurry to leave as she is to see him go.

 

Fantasy has always worked that way. Evil must be destroyed and there isn't that nuanced gray area in morality like there is in reality.

As for the "always" alignment tag of 3.5, it's defined as "The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary predisposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions." 3.5 ed doesn't have a cambion entry (replaced by the half-fiend template) and never actively addresses the number of non-evil half fiends (stating that they occur "all too rarely") so I have no idea what the likelihood in 3.5 is. If in 2ed 10% of cambions aren't evil, that's still a pretty low number of non-evil. It makes sense to investigate such a creature as the likelihood of that creature being evil is quite high. I guess from there it really depends on the how both sides handled themselves. Most likely, by D+D terms, so long as the paladins didn't simply out right attack the cambion, they where probably in the right (unless the cambion had demonstrated evil acts in the past).

The thing is an evil character, unless he is so weak he is incapable of forcing or manipulating to achieve his own selfish desires or is lawful evil and so terrified of the legal consequences to his actions, will act upon those desires at some point. To be evil requires enough of a disregard for the needs of others to actually act on your selfishness at some point. For a grown adult, however there is always someone weaker (such as a child) or someone who you have no attachment to (such as a foreigner). If an evil character cannot commit evil acts, he probably has enough reservations about his actions that make him neutral rather then evil. For example, my character who always wants to do good acts, but never finds himself able to commit good acts is really just a neutral character with sympathies toward good.

It's not really my idea. Even for an exalted champion, violence is a good act if it stops or prevents evil acts according to the Book of Exalted Deeds (you like that exploitable prevention of evil acts?). Now if you go to most of the good outerplanes, like Elysium, you'll be killed on sight if you are evil according to the Manual of the Planes (Arcadia too, but Arcadia is a Lawful plane with good leanings). D+D operates under the concept of killing evil as a good act and at worst a morally neutral act (with the exception of killing evil children). The concept of justice is D+D is the punishment of evil. While paladins hard held in check by their lawful nature, there's a reason the Eldrian may look evil in the eyes of some, despite embodying Chaotic Good.

Personally I think good is the redemption of evil, as the Book of Exalted Deeds leans to, but much of the forces of Heaven in D+D seem more keen on the extermination of evil rather than the redemption of evil.

 

Sort of like the Spanish Inquisition? (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) They didn't care about the facts, but rather getting the accused to conseff so they could burn him at the stake...

 

The Spanish Inquisition I wouldn't really say were 'good' they followed orders to do what they believed was right.

Also the SI did relatively fewer burnings and torture compared to local groups and compared to the number of accused they had to deal with.

 

Heh, Aik, and that mindset is still what gives good characters the possibility to attack a goblin cave simply because it's there, slaughter everything inside when they defend their homes, and then loot the bodies.

Indeed, good characters should never slaughter other creatures simply because they're evil. Unless the said creature actually does anything, then they are, indeed, slaughtering them just for different outlook on life. And that, my friends, is evil through and through.
Of course, if the said evil creature will do something evil, then he's due for a just punishment. Just like anything else.

 

I actually plan for a little grey area in my campaigns. The Party will sometimes pick up some less than pure mercinary work to finance their long range plans. Mercinaries are hired to do exactly what Goli spoke of. They will be hired to slaughter goblins because they are there, not because of an active threat to a settlement...

 

Yeah - I have trouble seeing anyone murdering goblins just because they're there as 'good'. Well, I have trouble seeing it as a good action - I suppose if they honestly believed they were doing the right thing they could still be good, though as a not-good (blatently evil?) action it would still be something that, say, a paladin should lose their divine goodness over.

I think it's silly that killing sentient creatures for no justifiable reason be considered a 'good' action, regardless of the fact that most of their race are generally a horrible group of people. Sure, go slaughter them after, say talking to them to find out their intentions, or they start attacking your people - that's justified, even when the justification's thin.

IMO, D&D-fantasy (as a genre) would be more interesting if the 'monster' races were given a little more credit. Sure - goblinoid culture might encourage evil, but there's so reason they wouldn't be able to form sensible relations with non-goblinoid neighbours. It might be difficult due to the bigotry and such from both sides, but there's some excellent scenarios to be had there.

Anyway, IMO the alignment system can handle shades of grey, so long as you don't get caught up in the idea of alignment (especially the standard as-presented idea of alignment) being the be all and the end all of what makes a character tick. Which was, I believe, the entire point of this thread.

 

Randomly wandering off into a goblin village for no reason and massacring a goblin village is not a good act simply because it has the tendency to create more evil then good from it's actions. They aren't even in the presence of good creatures or most causes, neutral creatures. However, it is rare to find a group of evil creatures merely minding their business, specifically with the dictates of Maglubiyet, who commands them to make war against non-goblinoids.

Also the notion of bigotry really doesn't operate in the D+D world in the way it does ours. There are plenty of evil creatures who fall whose alignment falls under the "usually" or "always" which means over 50% of those creatures are evil. Most of them worship evil deities who command their followers to commit evil acts. It doesn't make sense not to say most duergar are evil when they are defined as such and to approach them in such fashion. Laduguer would have it no other way.

A good character should be open to the notion of idea of races not normally good containing good individuals, but it is supremely naive to hold the idea of giving a goblin the same chance as anyone else and quite irresponsible as you are likely putting others at harm.

You have to also be aware that there will always be a notion of good vs. evil in fantasy. Even if your character doesn't fit what is traditionally evil, he is drawn into the fold of good vs. evil none the less. The notion of definitive evil has been an important part of epics since the dawn of the Christian knight. Evil in fantasy is born of Christian notions of evil. This very dated idea of what is evil is the reason D+D unfortunately doesn't have degrees of evil; if one denies or opposes God, well you know. You can't really bring in a lot of modern notions about morality.

There are a lot of things in D+D that are open to in the eyes of a lot of modern types aren't evil, but are considered evil in D+D, such as the use of narcotics, S+M and self mutilation for example (I'd personally never say anyone was evil for engaging in such activities, but the Book of Vile Darkness is quite certain they are). You just have to roll with the fact D+D has one concept of what is good and what is evil, while most people probably have different ideas of what these things are.

Yes it makes it a bit frustrating for your character to role play someone who doesn't align themselves with evil, but is treated so none the less. I use to love to play a LE fighter who thought he was some great, noble hero and always struggled with the fact he was condemned as evil and would get hassled by paladins and other "swords of righteousness" types. While I never played him as a scheming manipulator or any other traditional LE type and his was always on the verge of LE and LN, he was still evil. Just because he opposed traditionally evil creatures (how he hated the drow and orcs), could be very selfless with the right type of people and idealized archons and LG angels doesn't make up for the fact he was depravedly indifferent to commoners in grave peril, was prone to violence when his honor was slighted or was very open to the idea of slavery. I never once saw him as evil, I saw him as an honorable, but arrogant and selfish young man, but I've never doubted LE was the right alignment for him or that the reactions he received from his alignment where inappropriate.