Alignment is dumb because morality is entirely subjective so there's no reason my paladin can't rape and murder...

this shit is retarded

No, alignment is bad because it doesn't represent actual human motivations at all. Absolutely zero characters are interesting because they are chaotic good: they are interesting because they want something. You'll see people arguing over what alignment the bald fuck from Breaking Bad was, but in reality what made him interesting was his lust to prove himself and his hidden capacity for cruelty. No one gives a fuck about him being Lawful Evil. If you describe your character by his alignment, it's not a real character, it's a fucking walking cliche. Learn to roleplay an actual human being. Except most D&D players don't know how to roleplay a human being, since they only play drow assassins and tiefling warlocks because it's the only fucking way they can make an "interesting" character, then call the human fighter or human bard in the group "boring" and ask what alignment he is, when in reality he is the only one with an interesting backstory and character motivation.

Y'all motherfuckers stop straw manning and take some proper critical thinking intensive classes - Some ones with stuff like argumentation and philosophy.

You are the rankest of amateurs, and perhaps at best, sophomoric.

Not that this is related but alignment is great for a setting with objective morality

Alignment is just a guideline for how a character behaves. It's also useful for classes like Paladins or Clerics who operate according to strict moral codes.

I don't think anyone could disagree that recreational murder is evil.

>thinking that evil/good implies that people are assholes instead of just a disrespect/respect for life
>thinking that raping and murdering is a respect for life

Objective morality does not exist

OH GOD NECKBEARDS IN FEDORAS!!! HISSSSSSSS

It does in D&D since gods are real.

>implying people don't have certain default patterns of behavior
>implying that wanting something and how someone goes about getting said something will be the same between all persons as long as the thing desired is the same.

Interesting.

I would tell that neckbeard that it would only be Lawful Good if his deity's tenants said he could rape and murder children. If he worships a god who promotes something like "justice, community, and freedom" then he would be completely acting against his god for his own selfish desires.

>MY particular strain of ethical foundationalism is objectively true

How many lawful good deities do you think would tolerate the rape and murder of children?

Ooh baby someone's in the mood for adverbs.

Depends on setting polytheistic gods don't really create objective morality due to their flaws, at least if we're talking Greek style gods

I changed how I did alignments. Everything is still the same, except now they are descriptive, rather than prescriptive.
Go ahead man, rape the nuns and eat the goblin babies. But now you are an Oathbreaker Paladin, and your spells don't work. Now either atone for your sins to the point where your gods forgive you, or start worshipping Orcus.
I started doing that about a year ago. Never really had a problem with edgelords before, but I did have a girl playing a thief rogue who liked the trap and skills part way more than combat. She liked to steal, pickpocket, and otherwise swindle the pompous rich people they dealt with as adventurers, but was always sure to help those they saved and donated money to the poor and sick. After a few months and the completion of the first arc of the campaign, there was a time skip. The first session after, I asked for her sheet and changed her alignment from Chaotic Evil to Chaotic Good and announced that during the time skip a small but extremely vocal and devout group of worshipers had resulted in statues in the region of her being built. While still living, she was beatified and after her death she was declared a saint of orphans and lost souls.

>implications

How many lawful good deities do you think would tolerate the rape and murder of ANY ANIMAL EVER?

Nearly all of them.

...

We're talking about your typical pantheon with at least one god per alignment.

e.g. Bahamut is the moral arbiter of Lawful Good aligned characters

Same thing with most fantasy literature - good and evil are pretty clearly defined and there's not much ambiguity. That's what makes for inspiring heroic stories.

I think the problem is that most settings designed with objective morality don't consider the implications that objective morality would have on the world and the players actions, this is the reason I usually prefer subjective morality

I dunno, Spartans and Romans had a bit of a hard-on for certain types of recreational murder.

You just need a culture where life is cheap enough.

>this is the reason I usually prefer subjective morality
In that case you might as well not use morality or alignment at all

How can you make the moral argument that recreational murder isn't evil?

You're inflicting great pain and death on others for nothing more than your own amusement.

How edgy do you have to be to not see that that's objectively evil?

The Abrahamic one.
As long as they were part of a tribe that pissed off the Israelites.

I usually don't

I mean, it's evil to me, since I was raised in a culture that says murder is evil.

But to them it wasn't that evil, they were raised to believe that it was a normal state of affairs.

Let me give you another example. Digging up the corpse of your relatives and parading them around town and keeping them in your house would be pretty dang evil if you did it the US, but other cultures consider cremating or burying your dead pretty evil.

Or how about intentionally prolonging the suffering of sick people? Pretty evil, no? Well that's what Mother Theresa did because she though that suffering got you closer to God, and thus was pretty good in her book.

And when you talk about fantasy, it gets even muddier. The human imagination is vast, it's not hard to come up with a culture where recreational murder or whatever is considered good, and is even a good thing overall.

It's been my experience that neckbeards are more likely to take a morally absolutist position with their characters. Edgelords tend towards being the skinny dweeb sorts.

I'm sorry but what culture tolerates murder?

We're talking about fantasy settings where morality is objective though, humans may disagree about what's good but if the literal god of goodness, who is the source of all morality in the setting says something's good it is

While what you said is true. The real reason why alignment is dumb is because is a stupid thing to keep track of for no reason and no fucking benefits, at all.

So its better to just ignore that shit altogether. Its like asking your players "When was the last time your character went to the bathroom? When was the last time you took a shower?" It doesn't fucking matter and its senseless shit to mention or keep track of.

Every character is himself, alignments are not needed.

Spartans tolerated (and encouraged) murder of Helots.

Romans had gladiatorial games and executions used as entertainment.

Granted, they didn't tend to define those as "murder" since the definition of that word is the "unlawful killing of another human being," so if you go that route then yeah, you wouldn't find a culture that tolerates murder. You could definitely find a lot of cultures that tolerate and encourage the killing of fellow humans, sometimes for the stupidest reasons.

We're not, though. At least the post sequence I'm replying to said that there is objective morality in our world.

If the setting in question has a "god of goodness" or whatever, then of course this discussion is pointless, since you could say "The God of all that is Good and Just has declared that murder and rape are Good" and problem solved, murder and rape are now objectively good.

How fucking conceited and egotistical do you have to be to think that morality isn't subjective?

"My sense of good and evil simply must be correct, unlike all the people in the far past and far future that would have disagreed with me!"

I'm pretty sure that you can argue that murder is objectively evil since you're causing undue suffering to others.

If you're claiming that morality is subjective then I can argue that EVERYTHING is subjective. There's no such thing as objective truth since we experience everything through our own subjective frame of reference.

Nothing is 100% objective but I think every mentally stable individual agrees that things like rape and murder are evil.

>since you're causing undue suffering to others.

But several philosophies have held that suffering isn't an evil at all. The Stoics and Nietzsche off the top of my head.

Do you think that the kind of suffering that Nietzche was talking about is the same kind of suffering as being shot or stabbed or murdered?

You only say that because you were raised to believe that "murder" and "undue suffering to others" are both evil. This is your belief and you hold it to be correct. Nothing wrong with that.

But, the mere fact that its a belief means that somebody else can hold a different belief. You have, of course, conveniently labeled all those people who hold different beliefs as "mentally unstable" in order to shut down any opposition.

You see, your last sentence is equivalent to saying "people who think that rape and murder are not evil are mentally unstable," and furthermore you are using the words "rape" and "murder" instead of "forced sex" and "killing" since the definitions are different.

Have you never heard the good old "niggers were better off enslaved, at least they were fed and sheltered" before? People genuinely believed that slavery was actually a good position for a black to be in, since having a white man taking care of him was better than being free but on his own. And with that, they justified all the abuse and "undue suffering" if slavery.

Quite possibly. He believed we should be out doing great things, perhaps even if those great things involved terrible things along the way. He spoke favourable of Caesar Borgia. But the thing with Nietzsche is it's hard to pin down what he actually wanted you to do; regardless he didn't consider suffering evil, and was viciously critical of ideologies that considered it as such.

Indeed, he was big on the idea of going beyond good and evil (Beyond Good and Evil was actually the title of one of his books), and in regards to evil, the basic idea would be changing our view of things we normally consider as evil (something from which merit can never spring) and instead viewing them and other things in terms of favourable/less favourable.

As I said, if you're going to argue that way then you might as well say that nothing is objective - not just morality. There's no such thing as objective truth because we all experience things subjectively.

Sure I've heard that before. There are certainly some grey areas with regards to morality but there are also some things that are pretty much objectively wrong (as objective as is possible since there's no such thing as objective truth in anything).

Is it just me, or is this the only board where a civil and passably interesting philosophical discussion can rise from a bait thread that was meant to inspire a record-breaking count of the word "Faggot"?

Bless you, people of Veeky Forums, each and every one of you.

>There's no such thing as objective truth because we all experience things subjectively.

The distinction between subject and object is spurious anyway, because you can't understand the object except through the subject. So the subject, being socially formed is the lens through which we understand the object, and ultimately this means that truth itself is socially contextual.

Objective and subjective are the wrong words to use here.

You're looking for "absolute" and "relative."

Things like laws of physics are absolute (even if our knowledge of them is not absolute), Christians and Aztec kings are subject to the same acceleration towards the center of the earth, regardless of their culture. but things like opinions or beliefs are relative, since they depend on how you were raised.

Any that's not Jain. Your country has an army, right?

alignment is fine to help you define a character but as a game mechanic it's fucking stupid and removes all nuance from the story regarding questions of right and wrong and philosophy.

This way of thinking appeared only in 15th century. Don't think there are no other points of view.

Are you sure? Hammurabi's code of laws made sure to punish murder, and the ten commandments themselves explicitly condemned murdering.

Isn't the original intention the other way around? Alignment isn't supposed to define your character or how he acts but is instead just a game mechanic to represent how certain spells affect you and to which side of the cosmic war you tend to.

At least that was in the earlier editions, IIRC.

mhm

...

You have no way of knowing if the laws of physics are absolute. Even the most brilliant scientists don't know this for certain.

You can't even prove that you're real.

To even be able to make the claim that "the laws of physics are absolute" require you to have a subjective reference frame.

True. But people generally accept that gravity is real and that murder is wrong. Even if these things aren't 100% objective.

Stop using the word murder, because murder by definition is "unlawful, premeditated killing," use the word killing instead.

Only you can't, because that would undermine your entirely argument because every culture on earth approves of certain types of killing. Murder is just killing of the type that we think is wrong. Older cultures valued life a lot less, so a lot of the things you'd consider murder today, they didn't consider as murder.

Take into account that some people consider war and the death sentence to be murder. For some cultures even killing animals is murder, like those that descend from Vedism, because reincarnation and all that jazz.

An example of state-allowed murder under certain circumstances does not disprove the idea that nearly every human culture disapproves of murder.

Sure but military action would usually be classed as self defense.

Murdering civilians will get you in trouble.

There are always other points of view. I mean there are people out there that think the earth is flat so I'm pretty sure that some people will try to justify torture and murder.

Dude, stop. Stop being deliberately obtuse.

Absolute in this case means "not dependent on your culture and upbringing," I have no intention of getting into a discussion about the nature of reality with you, so stop trying to bring Philosophy 101 into this.

>that murder is wrong. Even

Because murder is defined typically as "wrongful killing." But we don't think killing is wrong, not inherently anyway, and every society has a long list of times it's acceptable to kill someone that another society would classify as murder.

Your reasoning is circular. Your argument amounts to "murder is bad because murder is bad."

Once again, rephrase your argument without using the word murder.

What do you mean "don't bring philosophy into this"? That's what this whole discussion is about.

You can't prove that the laws of physics are absolute any more than I can prove that murder is objectively wrong.

Re-read the post.

We are not talking about the nature of reality, stop trying to bring this discussion into an unrelated area, once which you are woefully unequipped to discuss.

No, my argument is that murder is bad because it causes undue suffering to another.

Sure, self defense for example. But killing someone for nothing more than your own amusement is pretty much objectively wrong. As objective as you can be since we've established that nothing is 100% objective.

Alignment is very misinterpreted.

It is a very gamey mechanic. It's not a measure of how good you are, but how you're cosmically aligned; how much negative or chaotic energy are you attracting.

It is also ment to be descriptive, not prescriptive.

So, often, it's about two questions:
1) would you enjoy, do nothing or stop someone who's murdering a child?
2) are you pro, against or indifferent toward tradition and government?

Also, sage.

What are we talking about according to you?

Do you have a degree in philosophy? If not then you're just as equipped as anyone else to discuss it.

Not that guy, but I'm pretty sure the point is that what constitutes "murder" varies wildly and arbitrarily between peoples. For gladiator matches to happen, that means society had to be fine with the needless suffering and struggling of combatants and that they actually enjoyed watching it. For them it wasn't murder at all, it was just a killing, no different than seeing a cat kill a bird or a mouse.

>No, my argument is that murder is bad because it causes undue suffering to another.

Nigga we've already provided examples of societies that were perfectly fine with causing "undue suffering", and even some where they didn't even think of it as suffering at all. It's almost as if different people have different opinions on what "undue" means.

>But killing someone for nothing more than your own amusement is pretty much objectively wrong
No, it is not absolutely wrong. It is wrong only relative to your culture.

For a Roman, it is perfectly alright to watch and enjoy the killing of a man, or to participate in it.

This argument has begun doing in circles and you refuse to address any of the arguments presented to you.

This discussion is over at least until you stop using the word "murder" in your posts about killing.

We are talking about absolute and relative morality.

>But killing someone for nothing more than your own amusement is pretty much objectively wrong.

Unless they're emperor and the person is some variety of lesser person, as was the case several times in Imperial Rome and Imperial China.

Do you not think that if an evil person is in charge of a society that will have an effect on what is considered acceptable?

Of course people have different opinions on things. As I said, some people believe that the earth is flat.

>some people believe that the earth is flat.
There's this pesky word called "proof."

The earth is roughly spherical regardless of what people believe and we can prove that, and even if we couldn't prove it, it would still be roughly spherical even if 100% of the people believed it was flat. To the earth, it doesn't matter at all what you believe, since the earth isn't a human construct.

Doesn't work the same way for beliefs and morals, since there's no possible proof involved here.

Well, if he grow up believing that, everybody grew up believing that and there are even religious institutions centered around the idea that raping and killing children dispassionately... at the very least no one would thought that its a bad idea in any sense.

Tips as many fedoras as you want, but we live in a word were if the individual kills someone its murder but if a collective kills someone is justice.

As we've already establish NOTHING is 100% absolute since everyone experiences reality subjectively.

I'm sure you can find some people who will think its okay to rape babies.

If we're talking about morality I'm using the broadly accepted definitions of "good" and "evil".

We're going round in circles here.

Do you think that the average person considered that morally righteous?

Yes, no imagine a world where that 'evil person in charge somehow leads their culture to conquer the globe. Every other culture on the planet just magically drops dead ans their culture spreads across the glove.

Who is there to call their ruler evil? Or say that the acts their society does are wrong or bad? Some people in the culture might think so, but they'd be on a level of people today that insist the most trivial things make you worse than hitler. Nobody would take them seriously. Everybody would agree that whatever they were doing isn't evil. And that'd be that.

And the only reason you would be able to argue that was evil is because you grew up in a different culture that didn't accept those things and said they were evil.

That's what ends up being relative.

So you went from "there's things we can all agree are evil" to "well they only believe that because they're evil". Huh.

And besides, why are they "evil"? Because you said so? What makeshift your opinion any more correct than anyone elses?

Prove to me right now that the earth is spherical and not flat.

>Assuming my paladin follows some stupid diety

No thank you, user

>makeshift
*makes, mobile posting desu

An ad absurdio argument with a dash of genetic fallacy. Nicely done.

I check you with an ad medium fallacy by pointing out that there can/should/ought be a way to roleplay realistic morality without the extremes of the alignment grid or spook-posting. Then I raise you an ad hominem, you fucking faggot OP.

Do you think that people automatically align their morality with the views of whatever asshole is in power?

Do you think that when Caligula was in power that the average Roman suddenly thought that rape and murder were morally acceptable?

What's the definition of "evil" according to you.

If morality is subjective then, from my subjective point of view, people who commit acts that I deem immoral are evil.

>Paladin can Smite Evil on anyone because they're evil in SOMEONE'S eyes

>As we've already establish NOTHING is 100% absolute since everyone experiences reality subjectively.

You haven't really established this. Things can be absolute without humanity understanding them fully. Math and physics are good examples of absolutes. They would work for someone on earth as well as someone 5 galaxies away. The only way to dispute that is to try and argue that reality is a simulation or that everyone is under mass hypnosis, but even then all that means is that we're wrong about whatever rukes actually govern the universe, and it's THOSE rules that are absolute instead.

Either way, there is -some- absolute set of rules that governs how everything works, and physics is the highest level we've been able to prove. So until we peove literally everything is a lie, it remains absolute

>If we're talking about morality I'm using the broadly accepted definitions of "good" and "evil".
Which stem from your culture and thus are relative.

You're going around in circles because you refuse to listen and respond to any arguments, choosing instead to repeat your first argument over and over again and trying in vain to hide behind some "nothing is absolute and laws of physics are subjective bla bla bla" nonsense that you don't really understand.

popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round

Here you go. I'm sure you're going to come back with some idiotic argument about subjectivity and perceptions and whatever else in a pointless attempt to deflect.

>Do you think that people automatically align their morality with the views of whatever asshole is in power?

No, that's why I asked you to imagine the scenario where they end up conquering the globe over a long period of time.

Nice try dodging the actual point there though

>Do you think that the average person considered that morally righteous?

I think they considered it the Emperor's right and that a certain amount of fear of their Emperor was a just state of affairs.

I refer you to an earlier post:
Stop using the words "subjective," and "objective" because they don't mean what you think they mean. Also, stop using the word murder and rape because that is called begging the question.

>Things can be absolute without humanity understanding them fully.
It's impossible to make this claim without a subjective frame of reference.

>Math and physics are good examples of absolutes
They are NOT absolutes. You cannot say that things like gravity are constant absolute forces just because they exist today.

>People seriously believe that morality is objective
The fact that there's thousands of religions and beliefs that often contradict each other with most of those contradictory beliefs claiming to be objective should clue you in.

Go read the 2000AD storythreads, I just found myself a new comicfu

That's the point, from your subjective point of view, people who do "imoral" things are evil. But what I consider "moral", what you consider "moral" and what any random person considers "moral" is going to be different. There is no actual consensus on what kind of behavior is moral and what isn't, and people will argue about what is and isn't acceptable because there is no "objective truth" to morality.