I like alignment

[Taelas]

That has absolutely nothing to do with objectivity. A framework which assigns every action a value then totals them is objective, and it remains objective if it ends up being, say Alignment Value = [1(Good Action Total) - 3(Evil Action Total)], and a system which is entirely based on what feels right regarding alignment is subjective, even if they are treated as exactly equivalent*. Stating that they must be equivalent to be objective doesn't even make sense - that's like stating that kinetic energy totals aren't objective from a certain reference frame, because velocity is squared while mass isn't.

*In setting, a set of booleans for alignment (Chaotic, Not Chaotic, Lawful, Not Lawful, Good, Not Good, Evil, Not Evil) are completely objective, where ambiguity devoid of framework isn't, but I'm assuming that we're looking at objectivity at the mechanical level.

I am saying that judging a Good act to have less impact on alignment than an equivalent Evil act is not objective, because it is assigning more value to the Evil act solely because it is Evil, and not because of any objective criteria.

Evil acts are not somehow inherently more important than Good acts, and they do not have more of an effect on your alignment than equivalent Good acts do.

[hamishspence]

What acts do you consider are equivalent good acts, to specific evil acts?

I could see "channeling positive energy" as equal in Good moral value to the Evil act of channeling negative energy (PHB).

But what else? Is "summoning a fiend" then dismissing it before it has time to do anything, exactly as evil as summoning then dismissing a celestial is good?

If so, why would BoVD say "the path of evil magic leads swiftly to corruption" but BoED say "good spells usually don't have any redemptive influence on those who cast them"?

[Callista]

I like alignment parly because it led me to do a lot of moral philosophising- to take every 3.0 and 3.5 alignment statement written anywhere I could find, examine them, and find the overarching themes behind them.

To ask questions. Just how compaasioonate can an evil characters get and remain evil? How selfish can a Good character be and remain good? and so forth.

I like that about it, too. I enjoyed philosophy class and I do a lot of thinking about those sorts of things. I know some people think of D&D as something that you "shouldn't take seriously", but from my perspective, stories of all sorts have a lot to teach us about ourselves and our choices. Whether you're playing a hero, a villain, or an average joe just trying to get by in the world, there are things to learn from them to make the real world better. Why should we ignore the things we can learn from stories just because it's fiction?

So, every adventuring party that kills things found in a dungeon-delve is evil? I'd have thought that POV was a bit harsh.

It depends on the dungeon. Dungeons don't exist in a vacuum, you know. Many dungeons contain only things you as a Good adventurer would be quite justified in killing.

Example scenarios of dungeons where Good-aligned adventurers could, in good conscience, kill things:

Ten years ago, the mages' guild kicked out an apprentice with high potential because of his secret experiments with necromancy. Now the local beggars are disappearing, and his arcane mark was discovered on a body reeking of negative energy. Invade his undead-infested lair, track him down, and bring him to justice.

Your hometown is under attack by a group of barbarians whipped into a frenzy by a priest of Erythnul. They've holed up in a nearby ruin and are launching raids on the outlying farms, to the point that the farmers can't harvest their crops, and the death toll is mounting. Deal with the problem before the town starves.

Your country is at war with an invading army. Recently, things have been getting worse--they seem to have hired a green dragon and his kobold mercenaries to bolster their numbers. Your soldiers are worn down by the dragon's fear aura, and the kobolds' traps aren't helping matters, but recently a courageous scout found the dragon's lair. Enter the lair and take out the dragon--hopefully the kobolds, without a leader, will scatter.

You see how easy it is? Good characters aren't pacifists. They just don't murder people. If you're a DM and you have a Good party or mostly-Good party, you need to give them good reasons to fight, not just "Hey, there are monsters here, they're worth XP, kill them!" In other words, you have to begin a story where the PCs can step in as the protagonists and write the ending. That's what D&D is about--storytelling. If you ignore the storytelling part of the game, then you might as well be playing a war game or a computer RPG: Fun, but not taking advantage of the full potential of D&D.

[Taelas]

What acts do you consider are equivalent good acts, to specific evil acts?

It's very difficult to quantify.

I could see "channeling positive energy" as equal in Good moral value to the Evil act of channeling negative energy (PHB).

That's an example, though I never liked viewing those actions in terms of alignment. I don't personally see it as morally significant whether you channel positive energy or negative energy.

But what else? Is "summoning a fiend" then dismissing it before it has time to do anything, exactly as evil as summoning then dismissing a celestial is good?

Sure, but again, I wouldn't call either of those two acts morally significant.

If so, why would BoVD say "the path of evil magic leads swiftly to corruption" but BoED say "good spells usually don't have any redemptive influence on those who cast them"?

Personally, I think it's because they are just bad books.

[Amphetryon]

It depends on the dungeon. Dungeons don't exist in a vacuum, you know. Many dungeons contain only things you as a Good adventurer would be quite justified in killing.

Example scenarios of dungeons where Good-aligned adventurers could, in good conscience, kill things:

Ten years ago, the mages' guild kicked out an apprentice with high potential because of his secret experiments with necromancy. Now the local beggars are disappearing, and his arcane mark was discovered on a body reeking of negative energy. Invade his undead-infested lair, track him down, and bring him to justice.

Your hometown is under attack by a group of barbarians whipped into a frenzy by a priest of Erythnul. They've holed up in a nearby ruin and are launching raids on the outlying farms, to the point that the farmers can't harvest their crops, and the death toll is mounting. Deal with the problem before the town starves.

Your country is at war with an invading army. Recently, things have been getting worse--they seem to have hired a green dragon and his kobold mercenaries to bolster their numbers. Your soldiers are worn down by the dragon's fear aura, and the kobolds' traps aren't helping matters, but recently a courageous scout found the dragon's lair. Enter the lair and take out the dragon--hopefully the kobolds, without a leader, will scatter.

You see how easy it is? Good characters aren't pacifists. They just don't murder people. If you're a DM and you have a Good party or mostly-Good party, you need to give them good reasons to fight, not just "Hey, there are monsters here, they're worth XP, kill them!" In other words, you have to begin a story where the PCs can step in as the protagonists and write the ending. That's what D&D is about--storytelling. If you ignore the storytelling part of the game, then you might as well be playing a war game or a computer RPG: Fun, but not taking advantage of the full potential of D&D.

Nothing in the first scenario you've set up precludes the necromancer being good or neutral. Nothing in the first scenario you've set up precludes someone (the person who hired you? The person who asked that person to find adventurers?) from framing the necromancer for their own crimes. Killing in this situation is not obviously good.

2nd scenario: The priest of Erynthul is himself magically compelled, as part of an elaborate plot to start a war against the homeland of the barbarians, who are merely pawns in someone else's master plan for world domination. Killing plays right into that overlord's hands. Again, this isn't an obviously good scenario.

3rd scenario: Why is the other country invading? Did one of our princes abscond with their most beautiful princess, after her husband secured a promise from all his allies to defend her honor? Is there a blight, and was it caused by someone from our country? Why is the dragon helping them? Is it being coerced, or tricked, enslaved? Perhaps our countrymen have been tormenting it for years in attempts to get its horde, and the dragon sees a chance to finally end the raids on its possessions? Again, there's nothing in your scenario that guarantees that killing the dragon - or even fighting in the war - is good.

[Callista]

Like you I also see no reason to directly make dealing with positive and negative energy aligned actions, but I do think it makes sense in the D&D cosmology for them to be associated with Good and Evil alignments (though not inseparable from them--Cure and Inflict spells should not be automatically aligned).

Think of a sentient creature--especially its mind--as a machine with specifications; like, say, your car for example. A car is made to run on a road, to have its tank filled with a good quality gas, to have its oil changed--that sort of thing. If you try to run it outside its specifications--try to drive it off the road, fill its tank with kerosene, neglect the oil changes--then it won't run or won't run very well. If a sentient creature is like that, then part of the specifications for the information that makes up a creature's mind would be the rules of ethical behavior. Just like positive energy anchors your soul to life, your mind is closest to its ideal state when your actions are aligned with Good. The more Evil you become, the more you twist your own mind into something it was not meant to be.

Why do I say Good is the ideal state of a living creature? Well, because Good-aligned actions are things that support life: Helping another person, supporting another person, being encouraging, drawing someone toward being more helpful; or destroying those things that destroy life.

That's why it makes sense that even mindless undead show up as Evil--their negative energy is so closely associated to the wrongness that exists in an Evil creature's mind that it is identical for the purposes of divination; and their innate hostility for life is so similar to an Evil creature's willingness to destroy life that you can see the Evil aura just as though they were doing those things by choice.

[TuggyNE]

Nothing in the first scenario you've set up precludes the necromancer being good or neutral. Nothing in the first scenario you've set up precludes someone (the person who hired you? The person who asked that person to find adventurers?) from framing the necromancer for their own crimes. Killing in this situation is not obviously good.

2nd scenario: The priest of Erynthul is himself magically compelled, as part of an elaborate plot to start a war against the homeland of the barbarians, who are merely pawns in someone else's master plan for world domination. Killing plays right into that overlord's hands. Again, this isn't an obviously good scenario.

3rd scenario: Why is the other country invading? Did one of our princes abscond with their most beautiful princess, after her husband secured a promise from all his allies to defend her honor? Is there a blight, and was it caused by someone from our country? Why is the dragon helping them? Is it being coerced, or tricked, enslaved? Perhaps our countrymen have been tormenting it for years in attempts to get its horde, and the dragon sees a chance to finally end the raids on its possessions? Again, there's nothing in your scenario that guarantees that killing the dragon - or even fighting in the war - is good.

All of these scenarios invite discernment and proper research, yes, but if their face value is in fact the truth of the situation, then I would agree with Callista that a Good adventuring party would be justified in killing what it comes across.

Or is your argument that there are in fact no Good adventurers, and cannot be?

[Callista]

All of these scenarios invite discernment and proper research, yes, but if their face value is in fact the truth of the situation, then I would agree with Callista that a Good adventuring party would be justified in killing what it comes across.

Yes, I'm assuming that they are what they seem at face value: The necromancer really is a murderer, the barbarians really are intent on killing people who did them no harm, and the dragon really is helping an invading army trying to take over a peaceful nation.

But if they weren't what they seemed--if the necromancer is being framed, the barbarians are being compelled, or the dragon is a prisoner and the kobolds are the real villains--then that just makes the story even more interesting, doesn't it? A Good party would do the Gather Information checks to make sure that their targets were legitimate; and if they accidentally did kill someone who didn't deserve it, they would try to make it right. There's nothing saying Good people can't make mistakes, even tragic ones.

Parties that search out dungeons and kill everything therein to get the treasure, with little rhyme or reason as to their motivations, don't really have an alignment to begin with because they aren't being role-played at all. Those PCs don't have personalities--they're just a set of stats meant to get XP and become more powerful. I guess you could call them evil because what they're doing is essentially wanton slaughter, but if they have little motivation beyond XP and treasure, you're playing a war game, not a role-playing game.

[hamishspence]

Sure, but again, I wouldn't call either of those two acts morally significant.

they're significant enough to cause characters who have a restriction against performing "aligned acts" to Fall.

As to whether they'll change a character's alignment if done enough, in Complete Scoundrel, the malconvoker has a special class feature, which says "regular use of conjuration spells with the evil descriptor does not threaten to change your alignment"- thus making it clear that without the class feature, it does threaten to change your alignment.

I do think it makes sense in the D&D cosmology for them to be associated with Good and Evil alignments (though not inseparable from them--Cure and Inflict spells should not be automatically aligned).

And, thankfully, they're not- Cure spells don't have Good tag, Inflict spells don't have Evil tag.

[Hiro Protagonest]

All of these scenarios invite discernment and proper research, yes, but if their face value is in fact the truth of the situation, then I would agree with Callista that a Good adventuring party would be justified in killing what it comes across.

Or is your argument that there are in fact no Good adventurers, and cannot be?

Eh, the first one I can see as "no remorse hack n' slash", so long as you stick to the targets. The second depends on how the barbarians normally act, and what the party is (if they just minded their own business before, a druid, or a cleric of a nature or battle deity, can steer them on some other path). The third? Typical mercenary stuff, so again, depends on what the dragon was doing before the war (and "stealing livestock" isn't enough, dragons have to eat).

[Taelas]

they're significant enough to cause characters who have a restriction against performing "aligned acts" to Fall.

Yes, but that is more of a mechanical quirk than something that makes sense.

As to whether they'll change a character's alignment if done enough, in Complete Scoundrel, the malconvoker has a special class feature, which says "regular use of conjuration spells with the evil descriptor does not threaten to change your alignment"- thus making it clear that without the class feature, it does threaten to change your alignment.

It is the act of casting a spell with an alignment descriptor that is aligned. Perform enough acts with a different alignment than your own, and it is very likely to change--regardless of whether those acts are spells or not. I am not questioning that.

However, casting a summon spell to summon an evil creature then dismissing the summoned creature immediately without doing anything... I don't see it as morally significant. If it must be an Evil act, it is so minor as not to affect anything.

The simplest equivalent acts I can think of are saving a life and taking a life. Going out of your way to murder someone is Evil. Going out of your way to save someone is Good. The two acts should have equal consequences with regards to alignment (though it is difficult to imagine a sane person who would do both).

[Hiro Protagonest]

All of these scenarios invite discernment and proper research, yes, but if their face value is in fact the truth of the situation, then I would agree with Callista that a Good adventuring party would be justified in killing what it comes across.

Or is your argument that there are in fact no Good adventurers, and cannot be?

Eh, the first one I can see as "no remorse hack n' slash", so long as you stick to the targets. The second depends on how the barbarians normally act, and what the party is (if they just minded their own business before, a druid, or a cleric of a nature or battle deity, can steer them on some other path). The third? Typical mercenary stuff, so again, depends on what the dragon was doing before the war (and "stealing livestock" isn't enough, dragons have to eat), and one option would be to negotiate to get the dragon on your side. Of course, killing an enemy wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened in war.

[hamishspence]

The simplest equivalent acts I can think of are saving a life and taking a life. Going out of your way to murder someone is Evil. Going out of your way to save someone is Good. The two acts should have equal consequences with regards to alignment (though it is difficult to imagine a sane person who would do both).

The racist elf who "goes out of their way to murder" dwarves but "goes out of their way to save" anyone who is Not A Dwarf.

Using your previous example, an elf who has saved 190 other people, and murdered 10 dwarves, would be Good.

Similar elf who has murdered 10 dwarves and saved 10 other people would be Neutral.

Yet another elf who has murdered 190 dwarves and saved 10 other people would be Evil.

(leaving out unspecified other aligned acts for the time being).

However, casting a summon spell to summon an evil creature then dismissing the summoned creature immediately without doing anything... I don't see it as morally significant. If it must be an Evil act, it is so minor as not to affect anything.

the intent behind the example is to reduce it to "casting an Evil spell" alone, and ensure no other Evil consequences exist.

[Lady Serpentine]

If so, why would BoVD say "the path of evil magic leads swiftly to corruption" but BoED say "good spells usually don't have any redemptive influence on those who cast them"?

I think you, ah, kinda missed his point... His annoyance was that Good acts are always treated as being less influential than Evil ones, a very good example of which is that summoning a hellish being has more moral influence than summoning a divine being, even if neither has time to do anything, converse with you, or anything else. The fact that the books say that good spells don't do much for you but evil ones do does nothing to refute his point, because that's exactly what he was complaining about.

they're significant enough to cause characters who have a restriction against performing "aligned acts" to Fall.

Mechanical alterations of alignment are not equivalent to moral significance. It's hard to argue that using a simple 'Summon Monster #' spell really has any moral weight for most characters. And a good DM isn't going to change alignments purely on the grounds of summoning such things because of that, even if they technically could.

Also, provided you don't treat your summoned creatures as simple cannon-fodder (in theory, potentially an Evil act; see above on 'treats people as disposable'. Or does that not apply because they're celestials or demons? In which case, explain how that differs from the elf earlier treating humans as disposable because they're a different species...), and you choose to fluff it as summoning the same creature multiple times, instead of just getting some random thing, what if the Chain Devil (or whatever it is) that you're summoning is one of the outliers for their species, and is actually good-aligned? It's obviously not going to be influencing you towards evil willingly, yet the spell retains an Evil alignment.

[hamishspence]

I think you, ah, kinda missed his point... His annoyance was that Good acts are always treated as being less influential than Evil ones, a very good example of which is that summoning a hellish being has more moral influence than summoning a divine being, even if neither has time to do anything, converse with you, or anything else. The fact that the books say that good spells don't do much for you but evil ones do does nothing to refute his point, because that's exactly what he was complaining about.

I thought it was that he was arguing that there is no in-game justification- none at all- for people to make the out-of-game judgement that evil acts have more power to change a Good character's alignment, than Good acts do to change an Evil character's alignment- hence, I provided a counter example.

You are weighting Evil actions more heavily than Good actions. There is NO justification for this.

[Lady Serpentine]

Hm. Maybe. I'd been going based on this:

I am saying that judging a Good act to have less impact on alignment than an equivalent Evil act is not objective, because it is assigning more value to the Evil act solely because it is Evil, and not because of any objective criteria.

Either interpretation seems to have valid arguments for it, though. I guess he'll have to confirm one or the other for us to be sure.

[Taelas]

I thought it was that he was arguing that there is no in-game justification- none at all- for people to make the out-of-game judgement that evil acts have more power to change a Good character's alignment, than Good acts do to change an Evil character's alignment- hence, I provided a counter example.

This is correct. (I do not consider material from Book of Exalted Deeds or Book of Vile Darkness as sufficient evidence on their own, due to my opinion of those particular books regarding alignment.)

[Shadowknight12]

On the subject of "official" sourcebooks regarding alignment:

Taking all of what was ever written on alignment on an "official" book and assuming everything is simultaneously true (without realising said books were written by different people at different times, and that those people did not, in fact, had the time to check that the stuff they were writing was fact-checked or internally consistent with other sources) is logically unsound. It is barely one step above taking a bunch of religious texts of different faiths, sprinkling glitter on them, throwing them into a paper shredder, asking a hyperactive pixie to pick out the prettiest shreds and then pasting everything together in a pitch-black room while O Fortuna blares in the background.

[EndlessWrath]

I (As a DM) handle Alignment by interviewing my players. They give me an intended alignment, and I mark that on a grid. Y axis is Good/Evil. X axis is Chaos/Law. I move them slightly from their position on the grid as I'm interviewing them for their background and decisions. This alignment is hidden from them and I make notes during the session to mark whether or not they shift from where I last left them. I'll never do a major shift unless a major action or change occurs. If we go from protecting the meek to butchering them by the thousands.. thats clearly evil and we'll shift down the axis.

I don't have issues with Detect alignment often, but I imagine when I do I let the player ahead of them know if the evil aura they detect is major, moderate, or minor. Etc.

-Wrath

[Knaight]

I am saying that judging a Good act to have less impact on alignment than an equivalent Evil act is not objective, because it is assigning more value to the Evil act solely because it is Evil, and not because of any objective criteria.

If Evil is a Boolean state, then being Evil is an objective criteria. One can structure the system so that being Evil is in and of itself a multiplicative effect on how much an act counts for, and there is absolutely no loss of objectivity. One could do the exact same thing in reverse and count Good as more valuable, also without losing objectivity. Objectivity really doesn't enter into this at all.

[Taelas]

If Evil is a Boolean state, then being Evil is an objective criteria. One can structure the system so that being Evil is in and of itself a multiplicative effect on how much an act counts for, and there is absolutely no loss of objectivity. One could do the exact same thing in reverse and count Good as more valuable, also without losing objectivity. Objectivity really doesn't enter into this at all.

Making Evil OR Good be a multiplicative effect is not being objective. It is treating one as more important than the other, for absolutely no reason. I'm not at all sure I understand what you're saying, so forgive me if that's not the case.

I'll instead attempt to make my own position more clear. Let's say a given Good act is worth 10 "Good points", for lack of a better designation. An equivalent Evil act is then worth 10 "Evil points". Let's say these acts are as per my previous example: a Good person going out of their way to save a life and an Evil person going out of their way to tale a life. In my opinion, taken in extreme isolation, these acts are functionally equivalent but opposite, and should modify a person's alignment to the same degree.

My problem is that people make the Evil act count for more with regards to alignment than the equivalent Good act.

How is that in any way objective? If you disagree that the acts are equivalent, then that's something we'll simply have to disagree on. Otherwise, the Good act should modify an alignment every bit as much as the Evil act.

[Deophaun]

Making Evil OR Good be a multiplicative effect is not being objective. It is treating one as more important than the other, for absolutely no reason. I'm not at all sure I understand what you're saying, so forgive me if that's not the case.

The word you are looking for is biased, which is not an antonym of objective. A scale may be biased to under-weigh objects placed upon it, but it is still just as objective as a scale that delivers an accurate reading.

[Shadowknight12]

The word you are looking for is biased, which is not an antonym of objective. A scale may be biased to under-weigh objects placed upon it, but it is still just as objective as a scale that delivers an accurate reading.

And what he is saying is that the reasoning for a system being biased towards Evil rather than Good is subjective. A truly objective system would not need to be biased because there would be no logical, objective reason for such bias.

[Knaight]

And what he is saying is that the reasoning for a system being biased towards Evil rather than Good is subjective. A truly objective system would not need to be biased because there would be no logical, objective reason for such bias.

The exact same thing applies to them being treated exactly equivalently, as there is really no null hypothesis in play here. As such, that criticism is utterly meaningless, as treating a measuring system as not objective because subjective qualifiers were used in creating it means treating essentially all measuring systems as subjective.

An analogy: The reasoning for the Celsius system is based on subjective choices regarding matter, and arbitrarily declaring water's freezing and boiling points the arbitrary numbers of 0 and 100. Does that mean that things don't have an objective temperature? No, because subjectively in creating a scale doesn't remove objectivity in measurement.

[Callista]

The Good/Evil scale is naturally asymmetric. You can't make up for Evil with Good actions because it just doesn't work that way. Good and Evil isn't math; it's biology. Think of Evil as like a cancer cell in an organism--something that's gone just wrong enough that it thinks only of itself at the expense of everything else. Usually, any enterprising cancer is snuffed out by your immune system, just like evil is identified and targeted by your conscience. But every once in a while, things get out of hand, the conscience is overwhelmed, and evil grows out of proportion until eventually the local paladins start getting psychic migraines.

But it only takes one small bit of evil to start out with. By itself, it's inconsequential; early on, it's easily treated; but if you ignore it, let it grow--you're going to end up with bigger and bigger problems, and you have to do more and more to redeem yourself. The Good/Evil scale is how far you've gone down that path, how damaged your soul has become.

[Amphetryon]

But if they weren't what they seemed--if the necromancer is being framed, the barbarians are being compelled, or the dragon is a prisoner and the kobolds are the real villains--then that just makes the story even more interesting, doesn't it? A Good party would do the Gather Information checks to make sure that their targets were legitimate; and if they accidentally did kill someone who didn't deserve it, they would try to make it right. There's nothing saying Good people can't make mistakes, even tragic ones.

Parties that search out dungeons and kill everything therein to get the treasure, with little rhyme or reason as to their motivations, don't really have an alignment to begin with because they aren't being role-played at all. Those PCs don't have personalities--they're just a set of stats meant to get XP and become more powerful. I guess you could call them evil because what they're doing is essentially wanton slaughter, but if they have little motivation beyond XP and treasure, you're playing a war game, not a role-playing game.

First you argued that a party that took the adventures you presented at face value (and happened to be right) were Good.

Then you argued that a party that took the adventures you presented at face value (and happened to be wrong) were tragic and committing Evil (because killing "innocents" - even in ignorance - is Evil)

Then you argued that a party that took the adventures you presented at face value (and didn't consider whether they were right or wrong) "aren't being role-played. . . because they don't have personalities."

You came to all three of these conclusions FROM THE SAME ACTIONS (taking the adventures you presented at face value). Do you see why I have a problem with how Alignment works in so many cases, yet?

[Water_Bear]

You came to all three of these conclusions FROM THE SAME ACTIONS (taking the adventures you presented at face value). Do you see why I have a problem with how Alignment works in so many cases, yet?

The "problem" here is that you are looking at the Alignment system's greatest strength as a weakness. There is no way to tally up and weigh Actions and Intentions except by thinking about them in the contexts of the characters and their world.

Adventurers who set out to do Good and succeed, are typically Good aligned.

Adventurers who take an assignment on with Good intentions, only to discover they have inadvertently caused Evil, are tragic figures. They will almost certainly move to correct what happened, and with regret over their role in what happened. They are still Good aligned, but have to bear the burdens of their actions and possible carelessness.

Adventurers who habitually go out on quests regardless of moral character, seeking nothing more than personal betterment and reacting to every obstacle with violence, are almost certainly Not Good and quite possibly Evil. This kind of character is usually less invested in their world, and thus has fewer observable character traits, which is often a sign of poor role playing.

Depending on the circumstances, casting Fireball might be a heroic action or an atrocity, an act of anarchy or one of deep reverence for authority. Alignment is all about context and role-playing, and it cannot be put into simple mechanical terms without losing its essential character.

D&D is not a computer game, and Alignment is not about points or rules; interpretation is necessary and will vary from group to group. That is why I will always prefer D&D style alignments to something like nWoD's Morality scales; it is a role-playing tool rather than an abstract mechanic.

[Knaight]

The "problem" here is that you are looking at the Alignment system's greatest strength as a weakness. There is no way to tally up and weigh Actions and Intentions except by thinking about them in the contexts of the characters and their world.

The point is that interpretation shouldn't vary based on the changing of trivial details, and in this case intention was counted as a trivial detail. That it doesn't particularly matter what you intend to do, only what you actually do, is part of several real world moral systems (such as almost all utilitarian systems), and as such can't be convincingly dismissed that easily.

[Amphetryon]

The point is that interpretation shouldn't vary based on the changing of trivial details, and in this case intention was counted as a trivial detail. That it doesn't particularly matter what you intend to do, only what you actually do, is part of several real world moral systems (such as almost all utilitarian systems), and as such can't be convincingly dismissed that easily.

DINGDING! Got it in one.

[Callista]

The "problem" here is that you are looking at the Alignment system's greatest strength as a weakness. There is no way to tally up and weigh Actions and Intentions except by thinking about them in the contexts of the characters and their world.

Adventurers who set out to do Good and succeed, are typically Good aligned.

Adventurers who take an assignment on with Good intentions, only to discover they have inadvertently caused Evil, are tragic figures. They will almost certainly move to correct what happened, and with regret over their role in what happened. They are still Good aligned, but have to bear the burdens of their actions and possible carelessness.

Adventurers who habitually go out on quests regardless of moral character, seeking nothing more than personal betterment and reacting to every obstacle with violence, are almost certainly Not Good and quite possibly Evil. This kind of character is usually less invested in their world, and thus has fewer observable character traits, which is often a sign of poor role playing.

Depending on the circumstances, casting Fireball might be a heroic action or an atrocity, an act of anarchy or one of deep reverence for authority. Alignment is all about context and role-playing, and it cannot be put into simple mechanical terms without losing its essential character.

D&D is not a computer game, and Alignment is not about points or rules; interpretation is necessary and will vary from group to group. That is why I will always prefer D&D style alignments to something like nWoD's Morality scales; it is a role-playing tool rather than an abstract mechanic.

I had a post on this, but then I read back on what you said and realized you said it better than I did. So I shall just quote it with a "This."

Then you argued that a party that took the adventures you presented at face value (and didn't consider whether they were right or wrong) "aren't being role-played. . . because they don't have personalities."

Yes. That's a metagame perspective: When you don't role-play, your character's alignment doesn't have much meaning, because alignment is a description of part of your character's personality, and role-playing means doing things according to your character's personality. Alignment is a role-playing tool; if you don't role-play it's pretty useless.