Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

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Subutai
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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Subutai » Tue May 14, 2019 4:47 pm

Just to touch back on the "how is alignment defined" discussion that's been going on here a bit, I've looked back at a good few 3.0, 3.5, and Forgotten Realms books and have found very little, if anything, ever specifying what actions actually are good and what are evil. Other than spells in the Evil domain that are listed in various books, the only books I've found that really list out actions as being evil or good have been The Book of Vile Darkness and The Book of Exalted Deeds (both of which are optional supplements).

Not that I necessarily disagree with killing slaves in the fighting pits being an evil action, but I do question the assumption that it's evil without question, due to the black and white nature of Forgotten Realms because, as easy as it is to say "Forgotten Realms is black and white, therefore this action is definitely evil", unless I've missed something in one of the Forgotten Realms books somewhere, there's very little in the Forgotten Realms books actually detailing what counts as good and what counts as evil.
Last edited by Subutai on Tue May 14, 2019 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Ork » Tue May 14, 2019 4:59 pm

Alignment has always been the preview of DM discretion, and adding points of good or evil are something that fluctuate depending on your characters actions. While there are some things that are starkly evil and some times starkly good, we shouldn't hamstring ourselves from making a compelling story because of our alignment. Alignments are meant to be fluid, and unfortunately we work in a system where they are static.

I'd almost be unopposed if we removed alignments all together from Arelith. Play a character first and an alignment that informs DMs what that might look like. They're the only ones that might see your character sheet.

One of the big things I think about is the good alignment. I'd say most people are good, but most good people don't go out of their way for everyone they encounter. They might put in good deeds running a food pantry, or work for non-profits or take pro bono cases for families in need, but they're not trying to solve the world's crisis daily. A good character doesn't need to consider the cosmic good for them to have that alignment.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by CosmicOrderV » Tue May 14, 2019 5:32 pm

While that might certainly be a valid view for real life, this is an artificial system of morality in which it's been demonstrated by the sourcebooks (2E player's handbook, pg 66. Though I remember later editions saying the same thing) neutral is actually the most common alignment. Depending on other actions and influences, your hypothetical example can easily be neutral. It's the complexity that was brought up before.

Alignment isnt determined by intention (even if it plays a part). It's determined by action and consequences (on a physical and metaphysical level). The finer details are absolutely kept vague and meant to be the perview of DM's, but one can most certainly be good, without considering the larger picture, just as much as they may think themself good but actually be neutral, due to their ignorance of the overall impact they have on the world. Awareness and intention don't have anything to do with it. Those traits are more steeped in our present real world culture, rather than established setting dynamics.
Last edited by CosmicOrderV on Tue May 14, 2019 6:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by JubJub » Tue May 14, 2019 6:55 pm

People also need to remember it's not just about fighting, you have these slaves kept in cages who are forced to fight. When they lose they are raised and put back into their cages to do it over and over. For me it would be different if the things you are fighting are doing it willingly. Considering the situation of the beings you are fighting I always found it odd a good person or many neutrals would ever travel to an evil city to participate in such a thing. Lets not forget you have to travel to den of evil to even participate in it.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by xanrael » Tue May 14, 2019 9:44 pm

Subutai wrote:
Tue May 14, 2019 4:47 pm
Just to touch back on the "how is alignment defined" discussion that's been going on here a bit, I've looked back at a good few 3.0, 3.5, and Forgotten Realms books and have found very little, if anything, ever specifying what actions actually are good and what are evil. Other than spells in the Evil domain that are listed in various books, the only books I've found that really list out actions as being evil or good have been The Book of Vile Darkness and The Book of Exalted Deeds (both of which are optional supplements).

Not that I necessarily disagree with killing slaves in the fighting pits being an evil action, but I do question the assumption that it's evil without question, due to the black and white nature of Forgotten Realms because, as easy as it is to say "Forgotten Realms is black and white, therefore this action is definitely evil", unless I've missed something in one of the Forgotten Realms books somewhere, there's very little in the Forgotten Realms books actually detailing what counts as good and what counts as evil.
Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells lists out acts of Corruption and Obeisance, evil and lawful acts that cause one's soul to slowly shift in alignment and possibly be damned to Hell. As a note these actions are not a "do them one time and your alignment is shifted immediately and you get an express ticket to hell". Rather it is through many instances of this stuff and severity of each act that determines things.

Corrupt Acts:
- Using an evil spell
- Humiliating an underling
- Torture (worse it is the more corrupt)
- Stealing from the needy
- Desecrating a good church/temple
- Betraying a friend or ally for personal gain
- Causing gratuitous injury to a creature
- Perverting justice for personal gain
- Murder (cold blooded and purely for pleasure is worse)

Obeisance Acts:
- Swearing fealty to a leader
- Disciplining an underling
- Resolving a dispute through a lawful process
- Quietly accepting legal judgement against you
- Enforcing a sentence of lawful punishment
- Following a rule you consider stupid
- Aiding a superior to your own detriment

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by CosmicOrderV » Tue May 14, 2019 10:36 pm

Lists like that are cool thought experiments, that help demonstrate my point, regardless of whether or not Arelith's list is the same (obviously Arelith doesnt have one, ha).

Let's take the "stealing from the needy bit." Semantics completely aside, however the DM defines needy, let's consider a theif who normally steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Chaotic Good. This hypothetical person, let's call them Robin, if they mistakenly steal from a needy person, has committed an evil act. Doesnt matter if they meant to, or were even aware that they did. It was evil. What makes it evil? What quality or objective? It becomes clear that the effect is very important to morality. How long can such negligence continue until its clear Robin doesnt really care, she's just indiscriminately stealing, and occasionally giving to the poor. Firmly more nuetral than good.

Towards that end, divining that universal standard of morality is hella fun RP! One must ask, towards what end do these effects amount? What is the objective purpose of morality (alignment)?

The answer is out there.

If anything, the mechanic i prefer would be players not being able to see their own alignment. You pick where it starts, then it evolves--hidden--on its own. Let DM's and actions nudge it, such that, one day they wake up and realize that various mechanical systems are treating them differently. Players dont get told. A lot harder to cheese it if you dont know what your standing is. Of course this would take a lot of work, so...it won't be considered feasible, but c'est la vie. An image of the ideal to strive for.
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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by xanrael » Wed May 15, 2019 1:33 am

I don't disagree that alignment is going to be up to the staff to determine. Even stuff printed in the PHB isn't sacrosanct as we're playing Arelith, not Living Faerun. The wording of "thought experiment" on material from a sourcebook seems a bit odd to me, but eh.

If you go all the way back to Gygax's stuff on alignment you'll get a fairly decent explanation IMO (though as Law and Chaos were the original alignments you'll see more emphasis on this by Gygax than later editions that seemed to focus more on Good and Evil):

"Alignment does not preclude actions which typify a different alignment, but such actions will necessarily affect the position of the character performing them, and the class or the alignment of the character in question can change due to such actions, unless counter-deeds are performed to balance things. The player-character who continually follows any alignment (save neutrality) to the absolute letter of its definition must eventually move off the chart (Illustration I) and into another plane of existence as indicated. Note that selfseeking is neither lawful nor chaotic, good nor evil, except in relation to other sapient creatures. Also, law and chaos are not subject to interpretation in their ultimate meanings of order and disorder respectively, but good and evil are not absolutes but must be judged from a frame of reference, some ethos."

source: The Meaning of Law and Chaos in Dungeons and Dragons and their Relationships to Good and Evil by Gary Gygax, February 1976

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by JubJub » Wed May 15, 2019 2:17 am

Alignment should be seen as a framework with a lot of grey area in it. But actions will also have consequences. A paladin tortures a bad guy to get information on where a kidnapped child is, many times that is going to be ok. But it if turns out that person he just tortured was really an innocent farmer and not the bad guy he thought the person was, well now the paladin has some serious issues and consequences he has to deal with.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Vrass » Wed May 15, 2019 4:15 am

That's why its fun to play true neutral... can adapt to a situation and use whatever means are most efficient at the time. Good, evil, order, chaos... all of these are useful tools.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by CosmicOrderV » Wed May 15, 2019 5:09 am

Maybe i'm misreading the intent here, but Xanreal, it sounds like you're simultaneously acknowledging of, and expressing contempt for, the fact that Arelith isn't by-the-book Faerun.

I'm also not entirely sure what value you expect to be derived from that quote. It says three things:
  • Self-seeking (or self-serving) actions are not inherently good-evil-chaotic-lawful, except in so far as they effect other sentient creatures. This is what's been stated. It's about the effects one's actions have upon the world and the people within it.
  • Law and Chaos do not explicitly mean Order and Disorder. This is one is cool, because it's not been brought up yet, but it's something I think was mentioned in a past thread concerning the creation of the Forgotten Realms universe. To consider something like Alignment to be an energy, or palpable force, is useful, because energy is never destroyed or created. It just changes. So let's imagine a sandbox. There's only so much sand in this box, and that number never changes. Being a sentient create of limited awareness, one only sees a small portion of the sandbox. The part they happen to inhabit, typically. Like any other natural phenomena, Law and Chaos are then measured by what effect they have on the universe (or sandbox in our case).
  • Continuing from above: When multiple identical shapes are designed--let's say squares--taking up most of the sand in your local area, it will seem very organized. It's lawful--structured--meticulously built. But this is only your small area of the sandbox. Now let's say eventually the ENTIRE sandbox carries that same definition, those same squares. We've taken up so much sand from the other areas of the box, that comparatively speaking, there's not enough sand to build any other shapes that compare. Sure there might be some minor variation, but it's dwarfed by the more clearly defined squares. Measured against the space these squares inhabit, they're no longer uniform with their surroundings. They strike a definition that set themselves apart from the rest of the box. Chaos is the opposite state. When there isn't much built in one's local awareness, but save a handful of irregular shapes--corners and angles, and a single triangle--each corner, especially the triangle, is going to seem very defined. There are other angles present, but the pattern rarely seems to follow a probable course, because of how they do not conform with each other. But when this is expanded to the entire sandbox, you're going to see more many more angles and triangles, as the pattern perpetuates itself. The sand is going to be spread across more areas, composing the multitude of shapes. It's now become uniform by comparison.
I like to think of this as a helpful visualization for the relationship between Law & Chaos, and how they manifest. As it were, our talk was more about Good & Evil, though.
  • Point number three gleaned from the quote, Good & Evil require a frame of reference in order to be measured. Gygax helmed the world of Greyhawk, and the original 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Later editions were the collaborative works of others. While one can't discount Gygax's inspiration (Law & Chaos is a great example of his contributions) Arelith is several steps removed by nature of it not being Greyhawk (it's Forgotten Realms), and not being 1E. Let's take a closer look and just use logic, though. I'm going to be a little pedantic. The term used was 'ethos'. This would seem to suggest that Good & Evil are cultural concepts. Notice as well, that various races and cultures have their own pantheons of Good & Evil gods. If morality was really so flippantly determined by cultural values, it becomes rather curious that literally every god from every pantheon conforms to the same ideals. If these things were so easily ascribed by a peoples' ethos, we might have a 'good' deity of one group being best friends with the 'evil' deity from another group, simply because those the values of good and evil are defined so differently by the two groups. That's clearly not what happens though. Like Xanrael said them self, we have supplements that clearly define acts of Good and Evil, so clearly these concepts do not vary by 'ethos'. That doesn't mean these concepts lose value, though. Rather than having a shifting frame of reference, the challenge becomes to define a universal frame of reference. Something that all cultures, and the gods they manifest, adhere to. This means morality is normative. It has a series of standards or principles, that act out some purpose.

Phew. Now we've come full circle. I know it can be hard to to differentiate one's personal views&morals from how fantasy views&morals are defined (hell, some people can't even separate them self from their character's identity) but one has to try hard to work with what we've been given, and not force a particular narrative. That'll provoke too many inconsistencies. So what we have to work with, is this:
  • All gods and people of the FR setting appear to conform to very similar concepts of Good & Evil
  • Law & Chaos are seen as older forces that concern the organization of power, rather than how that power is used (Good
    & Evil)
  • Because the above, morality is normative, meaning there is a constant standard by which to judge it.
  • The close similarities between various cultures of what is Good, Evil, Lawful, or Chaotic, means commonalities can be found to narrow down the list of which actions equate to what.
By working with these understandings, one can start to forge fun new narrative inspiration, about what it's like living in a world like the Forgotten Realms--and more specifically--Arelith! Perhaps even by extension, how it relates to a certain Cage Fight :P
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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by xanrael » Wed May 15, 2019 5:45 am

CosmicOrderV wrote:
Wed May 15, 2019 5:09 am
Maybe i'm misreading the intent here, but Xanreal, it sounds like you're simultaneously acknowledging of, and expressing contempt for, the fact that Arelith isn't by-the-book Faerun.
You misreading by a mile.

As for the rest. My original response was to someone that wasn't you that mentioned they couldn't find any specifics in any books past x and y, so I simply provided a 3rd.

You seem to be looking for an argument from me for some reason and approaching this conversation like you're an authority figure on the subject. I didn't really have an argument with you, hell last 3.5E campaign I DMed the players didn't know their PC's alignments and I kept track of it separately myself much like you suggested in a prior post.

As far as presenting information though, a player saying "I think alignment works this way" doesn't really mean much. A DM or Admin is a different story. Quoting a WotC sourcebook as a basic guideline then the creator of the alignment system and game provides a bit more detailed information from a source of authority on the subject.

I even pointed out that:
1. Arelith isn't beholden to any of this
2. The meaning behind alignment has shifted over the years.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, I don't care how people play their own alignments and believe it is fully in the staff's hands how it is handled. If anything, it bugs the hell out of me when I see players who do take it upon themselves to say what is "right" and "wrong" RP wise for other characters, especially if it is just their personal interpretation.

Edit - This probably comes off as harsh. I'm not trying to say players don't have the right to discuss alignment or that this discussion has been bad.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by CosmicOrderV » Wed May 15, 2019 4:07 pm

Ah, my bad. And no worries!

I just enjoy this topic. Nothin' against you, I just want to be thorough enough that those with less insight can gain a clearer picture.

After all, DM's is players too. 😉
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Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:22 pm
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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by JubJub » Thu May 16, 2019 3:54 pm

A lot of alignment should be common sense, with occasional moral issues. Is walking down the road and blowing up the toll gate because you find it annoying something a LG person would do or even something a good person would do? A LE person may pay the toll and not harm the gate simply to keep up appearnces. Maybe a CE person pays it simply with the intent to come back and rob the toll keeper later. The main thing about alignment is, if asked why did you do that, can you justify it with a good explanation.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Subutai » Thu May 16, 2019 6:09 pm

JubJub wrote:
Thu May 16, 2019 3:54 pm
A lot of alignment should be common sense, with occasional moral issues. Is walking down the road and blowing up the toll gate because you find it annoying something a LG person would do or even something a good person would do? A LE person may pay the toll and not harm the gate simply to keep up appearnces. Maybe a CE person pays it simply with the intent to come back and rob the toll keeper later. The main thing about alignment is, if asked why did you do that, can you justify it with a good explanation.
On the other hand, a CG person might blow up the gate because they don't believe in the concept of toll gates in the first place and find the restrictions on travel to be an undue oppression. A LG person might might find cause to blow it up if the toll gates were part of a legal system of tolls, but the tolls were being used to support evil means, such as if Cordor was run by an evil regime.

This is why I'm very, very hesitant to ever say anyone is playing their alignment wrong, or should be doing something else. There are all kinds of different reasons and justifications for all kinds of behaviors, and except maybe in extremely egregious situations, trying to define most actions as good or evil, or even lawful or chaotic, is trying to put simplistic labels on complex, nuanced situations.

This goes for the ultimate outcomes, too. Lots of people in this thread have said that alignment depends on the outcome of ones actions, rather than the intention, but even that becomes extremely murky when you look at the ultimate effect of actions in the long term. If a priest of Ilmater saves the life of an injured and dying man, but the injured and dying man turns out to be a warlock who goes on to murder half of Cordor, is the priest evil? The warlock would have died otherwise, and the people spared, if the Ilmaterian hadn't acted with good intentions, only to result in an evil outcome.

What if the priest saves a paladin, and the paladin stops an evil necromancer who is raising a vast army of the dead, only to find out that the necromancer's army of the dead was the only thing that could have stopped a demonic invasion that destroys Cordor, and that the necromancer hated his army of dead and would have destroyed it as soon as the invasion was stopped? The priest and the paladin both did good, only to result in a greater evil.

What if the priest saves a man, whose child is a paladin, who helps usher in a great and holy restoration of Cordor as a paragon of virtue, but two generations hence, Cordor's status as a bastion of righteousness results in an upsurge of evil intent on tearing the new city of light to the ground and killing everyone there? Cordor would have been spared if only it had remained neutral, which it would have if the priest hadn't saved the man generations before.

You can go farther and farther down the rabbit hole, and way off into twisting butterfly effects if you focus on the ultimate outcome of actions on alignment.

A single DM running a single campaign with a single party can make pretty easy decisions one what's good and what's evil, or what's lawful and what's chaotic, but on a server like Arelith, which is necessarily much more like the real world due to its large population and uncontrolled storyline and direction, alignment becomes extremely gray extremely quickly, and defining actions as being solely at one point or another point on the alignment spectrum almost always requires those actions to be oversimplified and stripped of all complexity and nuance.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by The GrumpyCat » Thu May 16, 2019 8:18 pm

Subutai wrote:
Thu May 16, 2019 6:09 pm

A single DM running a single campaign with a single party can make pretty easy decisions one what's good and what's evil, or what's lawful and what's chaotic, but on a server like Arelith, which is necessarily much more like the real world due to its large population and uncontrolled storyline and direction, alignment becomes extremely gray extremely quickly, and defining actions as being solely at one point or another point on the alignment spectrum almost always requires those actions to be oversimplified and stripped of all complexity and nuance.
I love this statement so much and it more or less solidifies how I feel about the situation.

Will we tweak peoples alignments? Yes. Occasionaly. If they're being particularly ridiculous about it. But it's not somethign we do lightly and the above is exactly the reason why.
This too shall pass.

(I now have a DM Discord (I hope) It's DM GrumpyCat#7185 but please keep in mind I'm very busy IRL so I can't promise how quick I'll get back to you.)

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Dreams » Thu May 16, 2019 10:15 pm

DM GrumpyCat wrote:
Thu May 16, 2019 8:18 pm
Subutai wrote:
Thu May 16, 2019 6:09 pm

A single DM running a single campaign with a single party can make pretty easy decisions one what's good and what's evil, or what's lawful and what's chaotic, but on a server like Arelith, which is necessarily much more like the real world due to its large population and uncontrolled storyline and direction, alignment becomes extremely gray extremely quickly, and defining actions as being solely at one point or another point on the alignment spectrum almost always requires those actions to be oversimplified and stripped of all complexity and nuance.
I love this statement so much and it more or less solidifies how I feel about the situation.

Will we tweak peoples alignments? Yes. Occasionaly. If they're being particularly ridiculous about it. But it's not somethign we do lightly and the above is exactly the reason why.
I think this is a great thing to keep in mind.

At the same time, I think certain things need to be brought to the attention of DMs when you see it due to being so opposed to the class, such as:
- Paladins summoning/using Undead/Fiends
- Druids hooking up with Pale Masters

Maybe seeing a Paladin with a Beast Belt or a druid with a fullplate/tower shield is just poor taste, but these other examples are the exact opposite of what these classes stand for.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by CosmicOrderV » Thu May 16, 2019 10:19 pm

I sympathize with alignments being difficult to minutely keep track of for a server like arelith. I don't expect things to change, so much as just be more clearly defined and predicated.

So I would like to clarify on a point of inconsistency with one of the examples given. Arelith is a world of magic where ideas hold power. In part because Many ideals have personification. It's a world where thoughts and emotion provoke measurable interactions upon the physical world. Because of the nature of divinity, magic, and life as we know it, there is a cyclical relationship where each of these things effect each other. Be exposed to the shadow plane long enough, one takes on traits of the place (see, Shadow Dragon and Shadovar). The shadow plane also has effects on the personality as described by various supplements (see Child of Night prestige class). Asmodious was supposedly an Angel corrupted by the abyss. There are several sources that suggest places (and/or their associated energy) warps and effects creatures both physically and mentally.

Because of this, it can be easy to mix-and-mistake the two concepts, such that one doesnt consider the other (physical or metaphysical), despite their inherent relationship. Morality, or alignment, is an energy in D&D, that behaves the same way.

When it was stated that the ultimate effect is what discerns an action as either good or evil, we're have to look at it causally. The ultimate effect is the energy it promotes in others. You treat someone poorly, and it can embitter them, drive them to wrath or suffering, such that it poisons their soul and can corrupt them. Eye for an eye and the whole world's blind--vicious cycle--sort of thing.

Because of this...
While a LG person 'could' blow up a legally enforced gate used for nefarious reasons, that's not a very lawful thing to do. It's not going to change their alignment, sure. But it's not archetypal behaviour. This example doesnt quite hold.

The priest of ilmater did their duty, and showed compassion. Sharing some 'good energy's let's say, with the bad guy. This act of compassion might inspire the warlock to use their powers for good. Or they might go on a murder spree. Either way, that's the warlock's purview, not the priests. The potential was always there. Now if the priest knew beforehand, and healed anyways? I'm tempted to think that takes a normally good act and makes it neutral, simply by virtue of whatever mental anguish that would surely cause for the priest. Which touches back on the prior point. Mental effects physical, and its cyclical relationship. Maybe that anguish has the priest abandon the clothe! Perhaps they downward spiral into hyper-vigilance and become very selectful of who they heal, instilling a sense of bitterness in those refused, which then leads to more suffering, that priest decides to harden themself against out of fear of healing another Warlock! It's all about the mental energy one instills in another, and even if only physical, it will have mental associations.

It's pretty straightforward in this regard. The responsibility of one's actions, are their own. That doesnt mean it's 'good' to inspire foul energy in others, though. Alignment is a reflection of what kind of energy, or impact, one has on the world around them.

Sure it can be tough to define that, but it is in no way the convoluted map of causality that disregards autonomous responsibility.
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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by ReverentBlade » Fri May 17, 2019 2:28 pm

If you were a super-villain, and you go back in time and murder Hitler because you lost a bet with him on who could kill more people in their lifetime, D&D would shift your alignment a few points towards Good for preventing the Holocaust.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Shadowy Reality » Fri May 17, 2019 2:47 pm

ReverentBlade wrote:
Fri May 17, 2019 2:28 pm
If you were a super-villain, and you go back in time and murder Hitler because you lost a bet with him on who could kill more people in their lifetime, D&D would shift your alignment a few points towards Good for preventing the Holocaust.
This is not true, intent matters.
If a character is an insane murderer, that kills when the urge is too great, happens to only kill Evil people by pure chance, the character is still very much Evil.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Ork » Fri May 17, 2019 5:09 pm

At this point people need to cite sources when commenting on FR alignment.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Subutai » Fri May 17, 2019 6:25 pm

Ork wrote:
Fri May 17, 2019 5:09 pm
At this point people need to cite sources when commenting on FR alignment.
Agreed. I tried to call attention to this a while ago by pointing out the lack of anything concrete in anything but a few optional supplements, and other than another one or two additional optional supplements with further examples, no one has come up with any firm rules from any sourcebook (I'll also note that even a source from a core book isn't necessarily definitive, as the things sourcebooks say can essentially be summed up as "Someone at WotC had this opinion", most of the time).

This lack of sources is essentially the core problem here. We have some people saying alignment is intent, some saying it's action, some saying it's outcome, when it reality, no one seems to have any real foundation on which to make their claim beyond their personal opinion, or the way they've seen it interpreted by others.

While mine is an opinion just like the others, this is why I believe the alignment system, at least on Arelith, can't have rigid rules, or even much in the way of guidelines and clear definitions. Whether you want to say that something is good or evil based on the action, the intent, or the outcome, there's almost always a way to justify anything as supporting any alignment.

In the end, I don't really believe that alignment matters at all. It matters to paladins, in that they have a rigid code to uphold, but in that case, alignment is more leveraged as a way to show they've upheld their code. Someone can be lawful good without upholding the paladin code, and a paladin can break their code without failing to be lawful good. The same is true of druids. A Neutral character doesn't necessarily agree with a druid on much at all, and a druid who fails to uphold druidic values might still be be Neutral.

Beyond those two examples, I don't see why alignment matters. Your character's actions matter, and how others view your character's actions matter, but that goes beyond alignment.

Side Note: Should this topic be renamed to something more descriptive of what it's become?

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Ork » Fri May 17, 2019 10:17 pm

I agree 100% with that assessment, Subutai. Alignments are wielded as weapons against other players when there is a disagreement about the roleplay. Case and point, this thread.

In the end who makes the call on "you're doing it wrong" is the DMs and the Devs. It's not bad to have these discussions, but when it's used to call out other players we've gone too far.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by CosmicOrderV » Fri May 17, 2019 10:35 pm

The "that's your opinion" defense is a little disheartening to read. This is the 21st century and people are still trying to discount conversations seeking truth, as preference. I'm not even trying to say I know the complete truth, just trying to discuss what it ought to resemble. If the numerous examples of official content and basic logic don't satisfy folks to at least entertain this line of thought, then we've got a different problem altogether. A problem I already mentioned not having the patience to address.

Give it some time, and it'll start to make more sense.

Cheers.
Aodh Lazuli wrote:
Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:22 pm
I, too, struggle to know what is written in books without first reading them.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Ork » Sat May 18, 2019 12:17 am

Very patronizing especially when your entire posts are pure conjecture.

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Re: Andunorian Cage Should create reprecussions for attending.

Post by Subutai » Sat May 18, 2019 1:20 am

CosmicOrderV wrote:
Fri May 17, 2019 10:35 pm
I'm not even trying to say I know the complete truth, just trying to discuss what it ought to resemble.
My disagreement here, and I believe I'm not alone in this, is that even after all this discussion, I'm not at all convinced that there's anything resembling a "truth" to be had about alignment. Every time someone says the "true" measure of alignment is intent, someone else says "No, the true measure is outcome", and someone else says "No, the true measure is the action".

The closest we've gotten so far are the examples from the Book of Vile Darkness, Book of Exalted Deeds, and Fiendish Codex II (the first two examples I listed. The third, Xanrael). While those are certainly examples, I'll reiterate that they're guidelines proposed not in core books, or in Forgotten Realms supplements, but as standard optional supplements that largely cast blanket statements that some act is always evil ("Theft is evil, and evil people always want to steal things", from the Book of Vile Darkness, for example. So there goes the Robin Hood as a good guy idea). Even if the statements were carefully detailed and nuanced, however, it doesn't change the fact that they're very much optional supplements, which essentially means "These are some ideas you can consider". They aren't rulings, or official lore. They're simply optional guidelines to be used if they fit your campaign.
CosmicOrderV wrote: All gods and people of the FR setting appear to conform to very similar concepts of Good & Evil
This is only true up to a point. The Zakharan pantheon doesn't have alignments at all, for example, and several of the dead Untheric deities have portfolios that don't really match up with their alignments. Likewise, when it comes to evil races like Orcs, their deities are almost uniformly evil even when the portfolios would normally be good or neutral (The Orc goddess Luthic, for example, has the portfolio of caves, fertility, healing, home, orc females, servitude, and wisdom, and yet her alignment is Lawful Evil).

There are probably a small few domains that overlap consistently (tyranny, for example) that might be consistently Good or Evil across pantheons (excluding pantheons without alignments), but there are many more that vary from pantheon to pantheon, and even those are dubious. Gods with the vengeance portfolio are normally not evil, but gods of murder generally are. If one were to murder someone as an act of vengeance, what portfolio would it fall under?

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