Can you be neutral through extreme acts of both good & evil?

[Boci]

Given that Human Sacrifice is portrayed as a pretty Vile thing to do in BoVD, I think it's safe to say that Gygaxian druids would be NE in "modern D&D."

In BoVD though the sacrifice text includes bonuses based on a knowledge religion check. It could be argued that is a necessary component of human sacrifices being evil. Certainly it doesn't rule out the possibility of a non-evil human sacrifice, since murder is also evil in BoVD, and good characters can do that.

[Segev]

He expected us to go with the Paladin back to his home city, in a neighboring country, help him deliver the artifact to his boss, and then negotiate with his boss as to why the artifact was better off in the hands of the library's vault.

And we were only doing this as a favor to the library - a pit stop on our way to getting something we needed more.

On the one hand, that's pretty out of the way. And, if the paladin didn't offer that as a solution, even in an oblique way like, "Well, I have to deliver it to my lord, but if you can convince him to let you take it..." it's on the GM for not giving an apparent solution. After all, with the Paladin being so intractable, why would the party assume the lord would be any more cooperative?

But still, "it was inconvenient" doesn't excuse evil actions, and engaging in banditry for your own convenience is evil.

[Boci]

On the one hand, that's pretty out of the way. And, if the paladin didn't offer that as a solution, even in an oblique way like, "Well, I have to deliver it to my lord, but if you can convince him to let you take it..." it's on the GM for not giving an apparent solution. After all, with the Paladin being so intractable, why would the party assume the lord would be any more cooperative?

But still, "it was inconvenient" doesn't excuse evil actions, and engaging in banditry for your own convenience is evil.

The item was necromantic though, so evil, you could argue you don't have a right to keep an evil magical item, even if you did find it. If their patron was better at keeping it safe then its entirely justifiable as not evil. For all the talk about the the sanctity of ones mind, dominate isn't an evil spell, so it can have non-evil uses. And "hand over that item" is a pretty tame use of it.

[Segev]

The item was necromantic though, so evil, you could argue you don't have a right to keep an evil magical item, even if you did find it. If their patron was better at keeping it safe then its entirely justifiable as not evil. For all the talk about the the sanctity of ones mind, dominate isn't an evil spell, so it can have non-evil uses. And "hand over that item" is a pretty tame use of it.

Sure, but it's also a paladin who demonstrably hasn't fallen for his refusal to fork it over. And the OP's party had no more right to it than did the paladin, nor did the OP's library patron have more right than the paladin's lordly patron. If the OP had engaged in combat with the paladin and the paladin's party with the intent of KOing and stealing the item, that wouldn't have been any better than the mind control. And the paladin and party would have been just as justified in returning violence with violence.

The PCs were definitely the aggressors here, and against people who were not harming them. Thus, I can't disagree with the GM's assessment of the alignment demonstrated by their handling of this encounter. Assuming it is an objective accounting of the events that we've gotten, there's a deep-seated communications issue between the GM and the OP. There is also potentially some lack of GMing skill on the GM's part, which will mostly be improved with practice, and constructive advice.

[Douche]

On the one hand, that's pretty out of the way. And, if the paladin didn't offer that as a solution, even in an oblique way like, "Well, I have to deliver it to my lord, but if you can convince him to let you take it..." it's on the GM for not giving an apparent solution. After all, with the Paladin being so intractable, why would the party assume the lord would be any more cooperative?

But still, "it was inconvenient" doesn't excuse evil actions, and engaging in banditry for your own convenience is evil.

Technically we just teleported him, along with the item, to meet our benefactor. We did not engage in banditry. All we did was put him in a situation where he could have a discussion with our boss.

If anything, that's super neutral. We upheld our end of the agreement in a unique way while not actually harming anyone. It was only when the benefactor teleported the paladin back that we were assailed and defended ourselves. And when I say "If you oppose us, you'll die" I mean that we gave the henchmen every opportunity to leave the situation peacefully, and it was their choice if they wanted to get into a fight. In other words, we only said "We're not afraid to defend ourselves"

Btw I find it strange that everyone keeps talking about Hitler and orphans, and yet has nothing to say about small scale stuff like not tipping but giving money to beggars.

[Segev]

Technically we just teleported him, along with the item, to meet our benefactor. We did not engage in banditry. All we did was put him in a situation where he could have a discussion with our boss.

As you told the story, you said you mind-controlled him through the portal. There was every reason to believe from that context that you also compelled him to give up the item. Anyway, we're getting incomplete and one-sided story here, so we can't really judge fairly.

My biggest point is that this is an OOC problem you need to discuss more thoroughly with your GM.

Btw I find it strange that everyone keeps talking about Hitler and orphans, and yet has nothing to say about small scale stuff like not tipping but giving money to beggars.

The thread title asks about "extreme acts." I don't think "not tipping" and "giving (presumably small amounts of) money to beggars" qualify.

Heck, "not tipping" isn't necessarily "evil" to begin with. It's not nice to fail to tip, but it's hardly a moral imperative.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah, seems like it you're not getting anything except pointless table arguments out of it, it's better to just skip Alignment.

These threads that pop up every few weeks or so are pretty much the same thing that I repeatedly saw Alignment turn into when used in actual play, back when I played D&D. It just wasn't ever worth the trouble.

[Max_Killjoy]

I like it both as a player and DM if it's pretty easy to point at something and say "That's evil. Don't do that please." And it's not complicated and leaves enough room for a broad variety of characters. For example, I do that with 5e Alignment behaviors. I point at them and say "don't regularly and consistently do that, in my judgement. If you do, I'll tell you to please knock it off." Of course, you can always go with the common alternative: don't be a disruptive a-hole.

Other than that, I'm totally down with the players picking an Alignment from the book, writing down the not-required nor-consistent associated Alignment behavior. Then using that as one of their personality motivations along with the other Personality Traits when making decisions for what their character does (aka role playing).

Or not. Up to them.

My approach as a GM is to have the other characters (PCs and NPCs) react to what the PC does, and have in-setting consequences for a character's in-setting actions. "The universe" doesn't have to care one whit about good and evil, but if a character goes around doing things that other characters consider objectionable, vile, taboo, etc, then those other characters are going to have something to say about it.

Part of this may be that I don't run systems/settings where PCs ever become godlings, immune to the laws of most polities, and answerable only to gods, epic monsters, and other godling adventurers. Or otherwise the characters start out as effectively immune to "mundane" law from the start, but answerable to a different society altogether.

And part of it might be from playing and running games like Vampire, where morality is complex and even characters with good motives and good ends in mind end up having to compromise on their means and methods just to survive. A particular vampire might still be a monster, but they're the least-objectionable monster "in the valley" and would only be replaced by someone far worse.

[LordCdrMilitant]

A moment of laxity can blight a lifetime of faithful service.

To be good after doing evil requires devoting the rest of your life to redeeming yourself and righting all the wrongs you did and then some.

[Segev]

A moment of laxity can blight a lifetime of faithful service.

To be good after doing evil requires devoting the rest of your life to redeeming yourself and righting all the wrongs you did and then some.

Yes and no. Everybody commits some evils. It's just...inevitable. Nobody is perfect. Part of redemption is putting it behind you. But the greater the evil, the harder the redemption, and making up for it is a significant part of the process.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, I do that too. But that's not sufficient to stop PCs from being Evil characters. Well, okay, it often is if the players are acting their typical stupid and thoughtless as to consequences way. But that holds true for any Alignment.

My point is, in my current campaign, I decided I wanted PCs to be Heroes and Guys-who-work-with-Heroes-because-reasons, and NPC Villians to be Villains. And didn't want PC Punisher-style anti-heroes. Because players are particularly bad at successfully pulling that off even when it isn't an open table campaign. To get the theme I wanted, banning Evil PCs was the way to go.

And 5e Alignment made that pretty easy. I don't have to worry about a list of "is this action evil" or "is that action evil". I just have to point players at a single general sentence and say "don't regularly act like that general behavior".

I have not had a chance to look at 5e Alignment in detail, my comments go back to AD&D through 3.5e. If it's just a list of "don't do this" and you can use it to make your campaign better, that's a good thing -- sounds like it works as a detailed but easy way to say "don't be evil" for your games.

[Psyren]

Given that Human Sacrifice is portrayed as a pretty Vile thing to do in BoVD, I think it's safe to say that Gygaxian druids would be NE in "modern D&D."

Didn't Gygax also say that Paladins should go around murdering evildoers the minute they repent so they won't have time to backslide, and considered that a kindness?

Much like Lucas, I give props to the dude for the original creative spark, but large fantasy properties benefit from diversity of viewpoint at the helm and evolution over time.

[Boci]

Didn't Gygax also say that Paladins should go around murdering evildoers the minute they repent so they won't have time to backslide, and considered that a kindness?

Much like Lucas, I give props to the dude for the original creative spark, but large fantasy properties benefit from diversity of viewpoint at the helm and evolution over time.

Still not as bad as "Nits breed lice", his answer to the orc children moral dilema, which I believe is also atributred to British army commanders talking about native America.

That said, both of the above are just stupid, but a setting with non-evil / evil light human sacrifice in it by contrast could certainly work and be quite interesting.

[Rhedyn]

This comes to a question of ones goodness being a quality of character or one's utility to the whole.

An evil monster that must devour one soul a night could be considered a savior if his power is the only thing standing between the universe and complete annihilation. Trillions of souls saved for the price of one per day. Depending on the extent of this man's evil, he may even be considered good in the right content let alone neutral.

But if goodness is a quality, something that is earned through action and not utility, then great acts of evil cannot be balanced by great acts of good. Goodness requires sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness, and other special circumstances. Great Goodness tends to be a reaction to evil acts. Balancing the two becomes contradictory and leads more to inaction. Or more neutral like behavior in general.

[CharonsHelper]

Still not as bad as "Nits breed lice", his answer to the orc children moral dilema,

That's really a setting question about whether orcs are irredeemably evil or merely predisposed.

[Boci]

That's really a setting question about whether orcs are irredeemably evil or merely predisposed.

Probably still best not to use a line connected to an actual genocide though.

[Max_Killjoy]

Probably still best not to use a line connected to an actual genocide though.

John Milton Chivington.

[Douche]

That's really a setting question about whether orcs are irredeemably evil or merely predisposed.

I wanted to avoid the Orc Problem in the OP for precisely this reason. I didn't want to discuss performing evil for the sake of good, I wanted to discuss performing both evil and good.

Suffice to say, the reason that it's okay to kill orcs by the dozen in LotR is because they don't have anything resembling an actual society. They are born out of the dirt, they don't have children or families. They are one-dimensional murdering machines. If they do have mothers & children (I don't rightly know anything outside the films tbh) then they are never shown - giving mankind the moral high ground when purging them from the world. Same goes for goblins.

But again, that's not what I'm talking about. Not that I want to be the total arbiter of the discussion here, just that I personally was not asking about "ends justify the means" crud.

The thread title asks about "extreme acts." I don't think "not tipping" and "giving (presumably small amounts of) money to beggars" qualify.

Heck, "not tipping" isn't necessarily "evil" to begin with. It's not nice to fail to tip, but it's hardly a moral imperative.

But the point is that people are immediately jumping to genocide. There are other acts of evil that aren't so ingrained into public consciousness as being irredeemable that it suffocates all discussion.

The consensus seems to be that if you commit one act of evil, then that tars your character for life even if you do nice things for the rest of your time. I'm not talking about having a corny redemption arc where you have to spend your life trying to atone. I'm talking about a guy who just, say, blew up a town because they pissed him off - yet generally likes to help people otherwise.

These threads that pop up every few weeks or so are pretty much the same thing that I repeatedly saw Alignment turn into when used in actual play, back when I played D&D. It just wasn't ever worth the trouble.

It's kind of funny to me that people are talking about D&D alignment and it's definitions as if you guys are all part of some religion. Right at the beginning of the thread, people asked me what system I am playing, as if that has any bearing on morality. It seems kind of puritanical.

I guess I didn't make it clear enough but this is not tied to a system.


All in all, I'd just like to say that I don't agree with the consensus here. I think that someone who lives their life on their own terms - occasionally doing good, and occasionally doing evil - as the situation demands... that's not overall evil. That's just neutral. All I'm getting out of this thread are moral judgments (not towards myself, I don't care about that. Just generally) and it just makes me shake my head.

[hamishspence]

I'm talking about a guy who just, say, blew up a town because they pissed him off - yet generally likes to help people otherwise.

Evil. That's how evil works - an evil guy might seem "good most of the time" but mass-murder, out of temper, without repentance, outweighs this massively.

[Steel Mirror]

The consensus seems to be that if you commit one act of evil, then that tars your character for life even if you do nice things for the rest of your time. I'm not talking about having a corny redemption arc where you have to spend your life trying to atone. I'm talking about a guy who just, say, blew up a town because they pissed him off - yet generally likes to help people otherwise.

Is that supposed to be an example of "not that evil"? Because it seems more like an example of "absolutely monstrous evil", the kind of thing that WOULD tar you for the rest of your life.

I do agree that there are some things that are wrong and evil, but which wouldn't necessarily define you so completely that you could never escape them. If you killed someone in a fight (I'm talking like an avoidable barroom brawl here, not self-defense in a war or something), or diverted drugs from a dying person so that you could get high, those certainly weren't your proudest moments, but you can try to live a life that is otherwise decent, and I for one wouldn't say that you are irredeemably Lost.

The reason you are a getting a lot of people talking D&D morality or asking about system, by the way, is that D&D is really the only system (that I know of) that categorizes entire people with the stark labels of "definitely good", "definitely evil", "neutral", and so on. In other systems that don't have that mechanic (indeed in real life), we are more free to say this or that action you took was evil, and this action was good, and to judge the person based on the sum of those determinations. In D&D you have to sort through all that and distill all the complexity down one of nine descriptors (well you could make them non-aligned in some editions), and that's where you get the serious arguments.

The fact that your OP used the words good, evil, and neutral, and talked about orcs and paladins and DMs, also encouraged people to see your question through the D&D lens.

EDIT: It's such a nebulous question, too, that you aren't going to get any bedrock answers that lay out exactly how many dollars you have to tip your waiter to make up for a murder spree. In real life, if I met someone who was usually a totally great guy that donated thousands to charity and lived carbon neutral but, say, occasionally punched me in the stomach when we disagreed about something, and swerved his car to hit dogs on the road because he thought the splats were funny, I wouldn't say that person is overall kind of neutral. I'd say he was an *******. Then I'd call the police.

I wouldn't call that person "evil", but I certainly wouldn't say his extremes balance out so that I don't judge him negatively. He just does some good and some bad.

Now if his actions escalated and he blew up a town of people because they pissed him off, then I now have no problem calling him evil.

[Psyren]

But the point is that people are immediately jumping to genocide. There are other acts of evil that aren't so ingrained into public consciousness as being irredeemable that it suffocates all discussion.

I gave a non-genocide example - someone who routinely batters their wife or children when frustrated. No matter what other charity he is doing in his life, he's evil.

The consensus seems to be that if you commit one act of evil, then that tars your character for life even if you do nice things for the rest of your time. I'm not talking about having a corny redemption arc where you have to spend your life trying to atone. I'm talking about a guy who just, say, blew up a town because they pissed him off - yet generally likes to help people otherwise.

For the reasons hamish mentioned, this guy would be evil.

All in all, I'd just like to say that I don't agree with the consensus here. I think that someone who lives their life on their own terms - occasionally doing good, and occasionally doing evil - as the situation demands... that's not overall evil. That's just neutral. All I'm getting out of this thread are moral judgments (not towards myself, I don't care about that. Just generally) and it just makes me shake my head.

Your problem is that you are using a very blanket term ("doing evil") which is vague to the point of meaninglessness. What matters for morality is the severity of an act, not its frequency. Someone who picks pockets in the poor district of town every week is still going to be less evil than someone who strangles a child for no reason once, and the former is easier to actually atone for - you can return what you stole, but you can't return the life and innocence you took.

[Scripten]

The consensus seems to be that if you commit one act of evil, then that tars your character for life even if you do nice things for the rest of your time. I'm not talking about having a corny redemption arc where you have to spend your life trying to atone. I'm talking about a guy who just, say, blew up a town because they pissed him off - yet generally likes to help people otherwise.

As hamishspence said, that's an evil character. If a character is going around committing murder, then they are evil. Simple as that, really. As I stated in the very beginning of this thread, there's no variable with a counter of how many "good" things you've done versus how many "bad" things you've done. Once you cross the rubicon of murdering sentient beings, you're evil. Especially if we're talking about things like mass murder, such as blowing up a town.

Alignment discussions like these always make me feel rather unsettled by some posters on this forum. If you think that a person can commit mass murder because they're "pissed off" and justify it by how many puppies they've rescued, then I'm not sure we're going to have a productive discussion. That's, frankly, psychotic.

It's kind of funny to me that people are talking about D&D alignment and it's definitions as if you guys are all part of some religion. Right at the beginning of the thread, people asked me what system I am playing, as if that has any bearing on morality. It seems kind of puritanical.

In real life, people are not "Good" or "Evil" because objective, empiric morality doesn't exist. Morality is a subjective measure of how well a person fits into a social framework. Most people understand, at least on a base level, how to measure behaviors to align to the current zeitgeist of morality, but those standards change vastly depending on time period and culture and are subject to personal interpretation to a certain range. While the terms are useful for a subjective rating, it's not much use in a conversation with the goal of coming to some universal conclusion. I asked what system you're using because the constraints of the alignment system in a game are what define characters as "Good", "Neutral", and "Evil". Otherwise, this is nothing but an invitation to an endless morality debate where people argue between the various points on the spectrum of acceptable moral judgements.

And for what it's worth, I'd ping the characters you are describing as Evil in any RPG system with an alignment system (that I'm aware of) and consider them to be evil by my standards in a real life context.

[Quertus]

Let me give you an example: a bunch of heroes had a magic item that our benefactors wanted. It was a necromantic item, and our benefactors were a library that stored sacred artifacts. So we had to rendezvous with these guys who agreed to parlay with us, although they were dedicated to giving the necromantic item to their church - because their leader was a paladin.

So we met up with them and tried to convince them, but they were stonewalling us because the DM isn't good at negotiating - his characters are either too agreeable or not agreeable whatsoever. Now, this is a homebrew system... My character specializes in portals. So instead of just killing them and taking the item, I just created a portal and we mind controlled the leader through it (my ally was a mind controlly mage), back to the library where they could confiscate the item. Wow, peaceful solution, am I right?

I then told the paladins henchmen that there was no more need to fight, it's over now. You'll die if you oppose us. We're going to wash our hands of this now - see ya later. But then the DM had the paladin teleported back to us and initiated combat before we could do anything. Railroad!

But don't worry - I tricked them into evacuating the women & children first. More refugees to take under my wing, hehehe.

Your character is evil. Let me say it again: your character is evil. Plenty of Playgrounders can explain it to you, if you are willing to listen. I think this sums it up, though:

Evil. That's how evil works - an evil guy might seem "good most of the time" but mass-murder, out of temper, without repentance, outweighs this massively.

However, OP, that's not what you asked. You asked if a character can be neutral by doing both good and evil. The answer is, it depends on which edition of D&D you're playing. So, which system are you using? Hmmm...

Now, this is a homebrew system...

Ok, WTF?! Seriously? You want a group unfamiliar with the arbitrary alignment system that your GM created to make rulings on it? Yeah, no. Unless your GM is utterly incompetent, decisions on how it works are left to the system's creator.

Of course, he chose to implement an alignment system, so it's a no-win scenario.

[Steel Mirror]

All I'm getting out of this thread are moral judgments (not towards myself, I don't care about that. Just generally) and it just makes me shake my head.

If you didn't want moral judgments, I'm not sure why you started a thread entitled "Can you be neutral through extreme acts of both good & evil?" I'm pretty sure any answer that would qualify as on-topic is going to involve some moral judgments.

[Psyren]

If you didn't want moral judgments, I'm not sure why you started a thread entitled "Can you be neutral through extreme acts of both good & evil?" I'm pretty sure any answer that would qualify as on-topic is going to involve some moral judgments.

"Please don't bring morality into muh alignment thread" seems to be a futile exercise indeed

[Segev]

But the point is that people are immediately jumping to genocide. There are other acts of evil that aren't so ingrained into public consciousness as being irredeemable that it suffocates all discussion.

"Extreme" is an adjective you used in the topic line. If you wanted people not to go to the extreme, you should choose a different adjective.

The consensus seems to be that if you commit one act of evil, then that tars your character for life even if you do nice things for the rest of your time. I'm not talking about having a corny redemption arc where you have to spend your life trying to atone. I'm talking about a guy who just, say, blew up a town because they pissed him off - yet generally likes to help people otherwise.

Yep, that's pretty darned evil. Nope, you're not getting a pass for it if you're unrepentant and, say, would probably do it again if you got mad at another town.

I mean, you can have an affably evil mass murderer that people (especially safely behind the 4th wall) love. Look at Richard from Looking For Group. But that doesn't make them not evil.

All in all, I'd just like to say that I don't agree with the consensus here. I think that someone who lives their life on their own terms - occasionally doing good, and occasionally doing evil - as the situation demands... that's not overall evil. That's just neutral. All I'm getting out of this thread are moral judgments (not towards myself, I don't care about that. Just generally) and it just makes me shake my head.

Nope, sorry. "I beat, kill, and torture people on my own terms, but I also give to charity and help out orphans so the deed to the mine that keeps their orphanage open isn't stolen," doesn't make you non-evil. Again: Hitler was kind to dogs and many Nazi bigwigs were good family men.

It's not "one act of evil" that forever stains you. It's that evil stains you to the degree of its evil, and unless you wash away the stain by striving to not be the kind of person who would commit that evil, you're never escaping it. You can be a wonderful person otherwise, but you still are stained.

Half a pound of ice cream mixed with half a pound of mud still just yields a pound of mud.

Evil. That's how evil works - an evil guy might seem "good most of the time" but mass-murder, out of temper, without repentance, outweighs this massively.

Yep. Exactly.

In real life, people are not "Good" or "Evil" because objective, empiric morality doesn't exist. Morality is a subjective measure of how well a person fits into a social framework.

You're confusing "morality" and "ethics." If your social framework includes a right for the rich and powerful to kidnap, rape, torture, murder, and force death battles between the peasantry, poor, or other underclasses, that doesn't make this behavior moral. No matter how well it "fits into the social framework."

I've written theses on morality as objective independent of any religion on this forum before, so I won't belabor them again. I acknowledge that people disagree with me. But I will state that I do not agree that morality is subjective to the point that you can't identify a mass murderer as "evil" and a hard-working and generous preserver of life as "good." (Adding "what if that preserver-of-life is secretly also a mass murderer?" isn't being clever, by the way, when I'm not writing a lengthy thesis here.)

[Bohandas]

Didn't Gygax also say that Paladins should go around murdering evildoers the minute they repent so they won't have time to backslide, and considered that a kindness?

Much like Lucas, I give props to the dude for the original creative spark, but large fantasy properties benefit from diversity of viewpoint at the helm and evolution over time.

In his defense, IIRC, cosmic good was originally deliberately written to be dysfunctional to justify staunchly characters like Mordenkainen.

I must admit though that I personally would have gone more along the Allegro the Panda everyone is high all the time or Friend Computer happiness is mandatory type routes to do dysfunctional goodness.

[Bohandas]

Nope, sorry. "I beat, kill, and torture people on my own terms, but I also give to charity and help out orphans so the deed to the mine that keeps their orphanage open isn't stolen," doesn't make you non-evil.

What if they killed a person so dying orphans could get their organs. Like, five sick orphans, needing a heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys. Trolley problem.

[Steel Mirror]

What if they killed a person so dying orphans could get their organs. Like, five sick orphans, needing a heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys. Trolley problem.

But what if one of THOSE orphans was prophesied by the oracle of Apollo to become the next Necromancer Queen, and the person who was killed for their organs was more able to experience joy than any other person on the plane? And the person who was killed was an elf at the beginning of a healthy 700 year long life, while the orphans are all half orcs who probably won't live past 60. But also, one of the orphans is the last survivor of once proud culture and only remaining speaker of his native language, so allowing him to die is basically genocide.

[Scripten]

You're confusing "morality" and "ethics." If your social framework includes a right for the rich and powerful to kidnap, rape, torture, murder, and force death battles between the peasantry, poor, or other underclasses, that doesn't make this behavior moral. No matter how well it "fits into the social framework."

That's not quite how I've understood that and I would argue that I did not conflate the two. The social framework is a system of "ethics", but morality is a subjective measure of how behaviors relate to that framework. You can't have an objective morality because there's no universal constant for it. Morality is by definition subjective and ethics is the framework upon which we base our morality.

I'm not saying that a person's morality measured by how fervently they follow the set of ethics of their society, but that an individual's basis for morality is impossible to determine without the premises provided by their society's ethics. If you do not have an initial premise that "bodily autonomy is a human right", then there is no springboard from which to determine that murder is wrong, for instance. You may have a gut feeling on right or wrong, but that is born of a mix of inherited and conditioned behaviors. Ethics and morality are constantly evolving, evidenced by the fact that we are all rightly repulsed by the idea that one's humanity is dependent on one's socioeconomic standing.

I've written theses on morality as objective independent of any religion on this forum before, so I won't belabor them again. I acknowledge that people disagree with me. But I will state that I do not agree that morality is subjective to the point that you can't identify a mass murderer as "evil" and a hard-working and generous preserver of life as "good." (Adding "what if that preserver-of-life is secretly also a mass murderer?" isn't being clever, by the way, when I'm not writing a lengthy thesis here.)

I certainly didn't claim any of that and in fact claimed the opposite. My explanation was to support my asking the OP what RPG alignment system they were using.