Genocide and Alignment

Then evil has already won.

If there isn't enough resources to maintain the population of the planet, and ganging up to kill the mega orcs off won't work, then no matter what mega orcs win in the end, due to any one country being unable to maintain their own resources.

Basically, if the resources can't be obtained by any one country by themselves, then they need each other to survive in the first place. If they can't take out the thing killing any other of them, they lose.

No, if you knowingly kill a good being on purpose, that is an evil act.

The question is: What does God say?

God, is it okay if I kill those motherfuckers?

Let's try something new.

You are stuck in the middle of Donner's pass. Your little party are all good people. There's you, your son and daughter, and the last two hobbits on earth.

Donner's Pass will kill you if you stay too long and requires your full energy to make it through. There's only enough food for two people. The hobbits are the last of their race and consider it vital that they survive. They will attack in order to get the last of the food. However your children are also there. Going on only a portion of rations isn't an option, you've been rationing for a while and any more would make you too weak to finish getting out of the pass. Killing yourself and letting them eat you isn't an option either - you've got a terrible disease that will kill you soon and would infect anyone that ate you.

Would it be evil to kill the hobbits? You'll be sacrificing your life either way - either to save your children or to save the hobbits. Is it evil to wipe out the last hobbits in the world in order to save your children?

That's my favorite solution for DM's that like making paladins fall when I'm playing a Paladin. When faced with a no win situation I pray for guidance.

Exalted doesn't have any sort of alignment system and Creatures of Darkness are just, "Things the Unconquered Sun doesn't like."

So your grandmother's ghost, who bakes cookies for orphans, helps out around the house, finds homes for stray puppies and kittens and has never hurt anyone in her entire life is only considered a Creature of Darkness because the Unconquered Suns anything from the world is evil, no matter what.

Also, he was a god who committed genocide against millions of innocent species and encouraged his worshipers to rip the still beating hearts out of screaming victims and offer to them as part of prayers, so maybe looking to him for moral guidance isn't necessarily the best idea.

You seem to misunderstand alignments. You can perform neutral or even evil actions if they must be done, even if you are good.

>Would it be evil to kill the hobbits? You'll be sacrificing your life either way - either to save your children or to save the hobbits. Is it evil to wipe out the last hobbits in the world in order to save your children?

In a setting with objective morality, yes, it would be evil to kill the hobbits because there's no "extenuating circumstances." Hopefully after killing them you will offer your apologies, go to a temple, and ask one of the priests there how you can atone.

Yeah, and then your alignment changes. That's the system.

The Hobbits would kill the children, so you are defending them which is good...

No. Only if you commit acts that cannot be aligned with your current alignment. As I said, neutral or even evil acts CAN be aligned, depending on the act.

But you are also killing them, which is bad. If the gods or DM or system says it's an evil act, it's evil. There is no trying to bend it. It is either good neutral or evil. Defending is good. That is one act. Killing them is evil. That is another act. You can try to justify it to be neutral if you want but you did two separate actions, and one of them is evil in the eyes of the gods, dm, and system.

If you are good aligned and you do an evil act you are not doing an action which you are aligned to, and will change your alignment by doing said evil act. That is how the system works.

If it isn't, you aren't playing with alignments.

>ever making a race which is wholly evil
YOUR
SETTING
A
SHIT

Everyone has a good reason for doing evil, objective morality is meaningless if it isn't about means.

What if the gods themselves are the ones in a similar dilemma? Who says what's good and evil then, huh?

The DM. Or the system.

"Mervin says that coasters are evil in game and there's nothing in the books to contradict him. Any paladin using a coaster automatically falls."

See, the DM doesn't have to step in there because the gods are already in place. If your dm changes the gods on a whim then you have a shit dm.

The "extenuating circumstances" are the threats of starvation and the predicted action of the hobbits.
The problem comes down to two questions: predictive policing(is it okay to kill someone based on their intent to commit a crime?), and does the condition of being the "last hobbits" give their life some value beyond the children?
>Killing is bad
Killing is itself a neutral act, murder, unjustified killing, is an evil act. You must kill the hobbits to prevent them from committing an evil act (taking the supplies by force), which makes the killing justified. Were they unwilling to attack, the decision would be more ambiguous.

It's up to the gods of the setting. If the gods don't know, then it's up to the system. If the system has no answer, it's up to the DM. If the DM doesn't know, then he's probably a bad dm if he can't make a decision on something as simple as this.

I'm sorry, but this example is really not great. A+B+C in concert is necessarily better than A+C or B+C, and the only people who can't see that are the selfish ruling party more concerned with personal protection than actual survival. Kingdom A and B are lawful stupid if they both perpetuate this myth.

Unjustified killing isn't evil. But the problem is, you need to wait until you have justification. You can't just kill someone because you believe that they might pose a threat at some unspecified point in the future. Justification would require self-defense which would mean you would have to wait until that person was actually making an attempt on your life.

You can't just kill someone because you suspect or strongly believe that they're going to kill you and then claim it was self-defense.

If you do kill someone and it wasn't in self-defense, then it's expected that you would feel bad about it (if you were a good person) and would seek to atone for your sin. Refusing to do that would probably necessitate an alignment change.

If you were neutral and you killed someone, then it's probably not a big deal and you wouldn't suffer alignment change. If you killed people regularly as a way to solve problems then your alignment would probably be evil so it wouldn't matter.

Defending and killing is the same act in this case, and yes, you are playing with alignments. What you describe is playing with autism, which is different.

You've made it clear that the hobbits will absolutely attack you for the food. Therefore, killing them would be in self defense with that knowledge. Not evil, and justified well enough to keep you in your good area. Eating the now-defended-against smallfolk, foul as it might be, might be a necessity after that point. It's only a neutral act seeing as it was done out of survival need.

>It's up to the gods of the setting.
This is reasonable, if you worship the God of Hobbits or God of Children, the answer becomes quite clear, likewise if you worship a god who requires pacifism, you are forced to do nothing or fall. I've been posting under the assumption that no easy answer is forthcoming.
>You can't just kill someone because you suspect or strongly believe that they're going to kill you and then claim it was self-defense.
I agree, but what if we muddy the situation a bit? said "They will attack in order to get the last of the food." so, if you, knowing this. guard the food and kill them when they attempt to steal it, have you committed an evil act?

You're right. Let me work it into a mythos context that makes more sense.

Mythos beings are invading the world and you can't stop them. Only by creating Elder signs can you survive, as these repel mythos beasts. There's a limited number of Elder signs created by evil nation C. A and B only survive thanks to the protection these elder signs provide, but creating their own would require becoming absolutely evil and sacrificing innocents. After all, each one only protects so much land.

Country C falls to cultists as a direct result of the corruption sacrificing tons of innocents caused and now A and B have an opportunity to grab all the Elder Signs created in C. They cannot cover both territories with the few Elder Signs that exist. Only one, or perhaps just part of one.

If they can create a safe zone long enough they can potentially figure out a spell to get rid of the mythos beasts, but everyone outside the area WILL die, or worse than die. What is the most moral response knowing that you cannot fully cover a land area greater than a single country, especially if you can't even cover an entire country?

The most moral response I can think of is to coordinate the evacuation of the women and children of nations A and B, and the magicians necessary to banish the mythos, to a safe zone on the border of A and B. A unified effort to save the world without losing it's soul.

CEASE YOUR PSUEDO PHILOSOPHICAL RATIONALIZING, DEGENERATE. GOOD IS GOOD. EVIL IS EVIL. THE WHOLESALE MURDER OF INNOCENTS WILL ALWAYD BE EVIL, FOR ANY REASON. IT MATTERS NOT IF IT IS FOR SURVIVAL OR OTHERWISE. A TRUE HERO WILL ALWAYS RISE ABOVE AND FIND THE THIRD ACTION BETWEEN SURRENDER AND DESOLATION

DEUS VULT

youtube.com/watch?v=T3phscjgc_A

>this is what paladin players believe

>THE WHOLESALE MURDER OF INNOCENTS WILL ALWAYD BE EVIL, FOR ANY REASON
>DEUS VULT

...

Killing whomever needed for own survival is nature's way.
Therefore it is true neutral act.

Let's make one thing clear...For the classic Evil/Good balance to work properly, we NEED the neutral option. That's not something you can dsicard.

A lot of the situations that are being hypothetically raised on this thread are all "What if your only option for survival is X? Is it evil? Is it good?" It's neutral. Creatures are allowed to fight for their survival and doing what is absolutely necessary to stay alive is not evil. It's not good. It's neutral. Sacrificing yourself or your well being for the survival or benefit of others is a good act. Sacrificing other life or well being for your own benefit, if it's not a matter of survival, is an evil act.

Sometimes, circunstances will arrive where the only way to survive is doing an act normally considered evil, like killing a sentient creature. For example, if it's attacking you. Killing it is not an evil act. It's a neutral act. Evil and Good as opposed cosmic forces justify conflict because they are anathema to each other. It's only a good act to kill Evil creatures because, by their very nature, they'll cause pain and suffering to those around it, spread corruption, and multiply themselves to spread more pain, suffering and corruption. It's not the killing act itself. It's the fact that you are preventing more evil from sprouting and more suffering from existing. While neutral creatures can pratice evil, they are not cosmically alligned with evil and are no anathema to goodness. They can be converted, they can attone. And killing them is still not an evil act if it's done out of necessity. It's just not a good act. It's neutral.

>There are only two hobbits left. Which means their race is doomed anyway, because only one couple isn't sufficient to allow a specie to survive. The earth will continue to exist without Hobbits.
>There are my kids who are my flesh and blood.

The choice is pretty simple. Kill the Hobbits and save my kids.

Killing the hobbits is a bad deed, but as a parent it's my duty to protect my kids at any cost. I will leave all food for my kids as my death is inevitable, and help them to cross the pass. Maybe my sacrifice will atone for my crime, but most likely I will rot in hell, but at least I will know that my kids are safe and that I accomplished my duty to the end.

The situation would be different if the two Hobbits were needed to stop a great evil that would destroy mankind or something like this. In that case I would let the hobbit survive in order to save mankind, as my kids would get killed by that greater evil anyway.

>When faced with a no win situation I pray for guidance.

What if the DM makes you fall for praying for their guidance?

Then you're DM's a dick; being forced to fall because you admit to not being perfect and needing advice from the god you worship is just asinine.

I didn't know the Paizo story team came on here.

That sounds like it would be good cause to make the DM fall.

It can be considered a Neutral action provided you save more than the amount of sapients that you kill, and don't torture the genocided.
However, this would represent an extreme neutrality that most creatures treat with hostility. This "war against the eight alignments" True Neutral is as much "enemy of everyone" as it is "ally of everyone".

>have the act be considered a neutral or even good action
Self defense is neutral. If the enemy keep attacking, even if they're good people but are under orders to, you're not evil for mowing them all down if they're still a threat.

From a very tall building

>Niggers exist
Are you saying our world is a shit setting?

I don't get Farnese's expression here, was she feeling off or was she somewhat aroused because of her sadistic desires?

>Peform 99 acts of good
>Perform one act of evil
>You are now evil

>Perform 99 acts of evil
>Perform one act of good
>You are now good

Something doesn't add up, user...

Depends how the genocide is done.

Everyone dies in a mass battle (requires every single member of the genocided population fighting and not merely in self defense), maybe not evil.

You have to kill people who are bound and helpless and had not personally done anything to warrant being punished beyond being of their race? Always evil.

You hit the switch that blows up the underdark without knowing what the switch did ahead of time, always evil but you can find repentence or make amends to the ghosts of the innocent flumphs you murdered via a sufficiently dangerous questline.

The key thing is that you need context that mitigates what would usually be always evil. "we killed them as collateral damage while attacking the truly evil ones" isn't good enough, dresden logic never holds up.

If her armor had had close fitting enough metal around her nipples and clit there would ahve been a triple *ting* of arousal.

>implying that Muslims during the crusade times didn't deserve the sword

loving every laugh. Deus vult.

First massacre during the first crusade was when frankish crusaders arraived in an east roman empire town as guests and mistook the local orthodox christians for muslims because they had tans and didn't speak french.

Then the crusades ended on the frankish crusaders getting annoyed at not being paid and ransacking constantinople and ending the east roman empire, paving the way for the muslims to take over the port at istanbul and spread islam further north into the black sea and central asian kharnates and China.

If the writing is shit and dealing with moral alignment in absolutes yeh.

Muh /pol/ bait.