Killing innocents for the greater good

Infiltrate plane.
Rouse uprising of hostages.
If all fails, atone after doing the doubtful deed.

Are people who don't understand how alignments work the same morons who don't get how Kig Crimson works?

>Book of Exalted Deeds
You mean the one that teaches DMs to immediately have Paladins fall at the slightest hint of a moral dilemma?

Everyone who owns it should set it on fire to atone for their shit taste.

>Doing evil for the sake of good outcome later is described in Book of Exalted Deeds as still being evil.

Sounds retarded

How the fuck do you even 'infiltrate a plane'?

...

Killing is not inherently an evil Act so I don't really see how that applies to the Dilemma

>Everyone who owns it should set it on fire to atone for their shit taste.
D&D paladinfag detected.

Evil.

IIRC The same book shows a picture of a paladin walking in on two succubi having sex and says "Does the paladin choose to smite evil, or respect love?".

Not a good book for answers to philosophical questions concerning good and evil.

>innocents
There's no such thing.

That's literally evil at it's greatest. Those who do evil just because are closer to be neutral, since they're retards closer to unaligned animals than to people.

>Does the paladin choose to smite evil, or respect love?
Smite evil, of course. How is that even a question?

Just because two demons are in love with each other doesn't suddenly excuse the fact that they're still evil to the core. Especially in a setting like D&D where Good and Evil are objective and measurable qualities.

You're going to have to get one of those pretty fast.

Exactly.

Not to mention, they're probably fucking out of lust instead of love. If anything a paladin should kill evil things that are fucking even faster, so they don't make more evil things.

>catching up to a superprop with a shitty cargo plane
That shit was an inside job man. CIA did a staged interrogation to make the plane slow down.

The thing that alignment threads never consider is moments where people act outside of their alignment without shifting from it. No one is going to act the same way every single day in every single situation. Somedays that Lawful Good paladin is going to want to punch some guy in the face and apologize for it later. That neutral evil guy is going to hold the door open for that little old lady because she reminds him of his grandma.

>evil
really? killing one guy to save 5 is just pragmatic.

killing innocents; is bad, -1
the greater good; is good, +1
I'm going to go out an a limb as say:
>neutral

Some kind of Lawful

Neutral Regret.

Here is the way I break it down in my games.
There is individual good, societal good, and cosmic good.
Individual good this is what players should be thinking about most. For them killing innocents will always be evil. As it is a individuals decision to preform the act of taking a bi standards life.

Societal good is less for players and more the views of good on a national level. A good example of this is if a Good society goes to war, there will undoubtedly be innocents caught in the cross fire, but what is considered good here is how you treat those innocents after the fact. Where a societal evil would kill the lot, societal good would show any and all compasion.

Cosmic Good this is the type of good that players shouldn't be involved in. I generally reserve this for Gods and Angels. These are beings of such power and wisdom that they don't care about the lives of a individual or even a society. They are so beyond the understanding of most mortals that some acts they commit can easily be construed as evil. If I am a god and I see a city full of normal joes and I know that celestially nuking them will stop a demon 500 years from now I am gonna nuke them. Besides any innocents who die there that are good are gonna end up in heaven so it all works out for the better.

No.

You are not responsible for actions that are not your own. Only the actions you carry out

Killing 100 people is evil, even if it saved 10,000

>lol orc babies

You do know that reactors have giant fucking walls built specifically for that scenario? The largest plane you can think of would be like a fly splatting on a windshield. No reactor damage whatsoever

You are responsible for your own choices. You chose not to save 10,000 people when you could. That is the same as killing them yourself. That is evil.

I didn't hire the hijackers nor build the power plant outside of SAM cover. I gain 0 culpability for the situation just for being aware of it.

I also chose not to send all my money to Africa today to feed starving children. Are they also dead because of me?

The choice whether to protect those 10,000 is also yours. And to shirk it is evil

If your money would have made the difference between them living and dying, then yes.

But you chose to let it happen when you had the power to stop them. You let them die and that is the same as killing them.

No. There's a word for the alignment in which you don't go out of your way to spend all your money to save the life of someone you don't know.

It's Neutral.

Someone who actively goes out of their way to their own detriment to save the lives of others is Good.

Someone who brings harm to others with their actions in order to benefit themselves is Evil.

Someone who remains inactive and neither saves nor harms others is neutral, because not everyone has the responsibility to put themselves at risk to help someone else.

I didn't choose to fly the plane into the reactor. If I shoot down the plane, a hundred people die, for sure, by my hand. If I don't shoot down the plane, nobody dies, for sure, by my hand. Some people may or may not die by circumstance, but I'm not the one who created those circumstances and it is not my responsibility as a bystander to ameliorate them.

Lawful good of course
alignments are fucking retarded and so are you for sstarting this thread.

>Tell me about morality and honor systems in other RPGs.
Other RPGs tend to have you play a character instead of an alignment with a 2d cutout behind it.

Then you are not good.

Chaotic Evil.

Or, at best, Neutral evil.

Nor am I evil.

Neutral Evil.
Good is something you *choose* to do. Forcing someone else into the cause of Good is unambiguously Evil.

Lawful Neutral

It's evil, of course.

But what is evil, anyway? Is there reason to the rhyme? Without evil there can be no good, so it must be good to be evil sometimes.

...

Evil. But that doesn't mean that the person who makes it is necessarily Evil, depending on the circumstances.

Gutless Evil - wants the power of the dark side but doesn't dare to admit it, thus keeps making excuses for its inexcusable actions.
The most common evil alignment IRL.

This is why alignments suck in general.

Even Judge Dredd once punched his fellow Judge in the face. SO THAT'S WHY HE'S ACTUALLY CHAOTIC NEUTRAL WAKE UP SHEEPLE

It's evil. It says so in the fucking books.

People love to bring up these arguments like these and go on about the greater good and some shit, but really it's not open for debate - it's stated quite clearly in there if you were to bother reading about that shit.

You'll do better to argue moralities in a game without alignments.

>really? killing one guy to save 5 is just pragmatic.
Nope, its evil

Yes you are.

Letting 100,000 people die due to inaction is evil. If you were in the army, and you didn't shoot down a plane heading for a nuclear powerplant, you bet your ass you're going to military prison.

>You're in a plane, either you kill 5 guys or you kill 100,000 guys
>Okay, how about I-
>THERE ARE NO CLEVER PLAYS THAT CAN GET YOU OUT OF THIS SITUATION, FUCKO, IT'S ONE OR THE OTHER

Alignment arguments are one thing, but if you're also removing player agency and not allowing them to come up with some clever plan to not have to kill anyone, you're a shit DM.

Why do people argue against smiting every evil-aligned creature in existence, sentient or no. You can say that they haven't been caught doing wrong or can change, but they probably did some evil in private and forcing an alignment change for all of them would take a shitload of time and resources. Killing them is the most efficient thing to do

>innocents
No such thing.

only degrees of guilt

...

I mean, it was a mercy kill. Would you rather have their undead corpses roam the streets?

Because it causes vigilantism and gives zero incentive for those who want to change to do any change because they'll get RKed by a griefer.

It can be any alignment. It's not really an alignment act but more of a character progressing thing. Like a good character's march towards evil, or a neutral character's break from neutrality. It's the consequences that make the alignment not the act itself.

Lawful Good

Everyone knows you adopt them, raise them, and then kill them when they achieve sufficient age.
The evil is, in the end, smote.

Lawful neutral, Lawful evil, neutral, Chaotic neutral, and maybe Chaotic evil if the world was under some sort of unstoppable despotic force could qualify. These vary on how sadistic the character makes it and how they feel about it afterwords.

"Good" in the DnD sense is all about purity righteousness and using faith and holy light to do away the no win scenario through sheer willpower or conviction or at the very least sticking with your convictions to the bitter end after giving it your all.

"Good" in the DnD sense is inherently idealistic and while killing does not automatically make a act not good the "innocents" killing does. Knowingly killing innocents even for the greater good is incredibly cynical and does not fit into the Exalted angels designs, nor the gentle mercies of Yolanda and Pelior.

Killing innocents doesn't have to be evil but it cannot be good. At least in DnD. People pulling IRL morality judgements and court rulings bullshit into this can fuck right off cause relativism has raped any possibly of a genuine ethics discussion.

You're fucking retarded.

It's literally evil to let a plane with a few hundred innocents bore itself into a nuclear powerplant causing thousands of innocent people to die or get sick.

You're being fucking retarded mate.

Or, because D&D cunts are always so retarded - translated in fantasy terms.

It's literally evil to let innocents with undispellable enchantments on their soul that bores a hole in the metaphysical prison of some horrible demon lord live.

It's between Lawfull Evil and Lawfull Neutral.

Lawful Neutral.
See Dredd nuking SovMeg1 in Apocalypse War.

>innocents

Judge Dredd is Lawful Good though.

Hi there utilitarianism. Your ethical theory does not apply to DnD as Good and Evil are universal forces and not relative concepts we judge societies on as evil actions in DnD regardless of reason literally create demons and empower evil gods in celestial wars.

DnD was not made to be a critique on human ethics cause real life is never idealistic and can never afford to be. Celestial good in DnD and therefor palidans good clerics, etc don't believe in the "no win scenario" and the way the morality system is laid out cannot exist if said scenario exist.

It should also be mentioned that unless we're talking about outsiders alignment in DnD refers to the trend of peoples actions. If you generally kill innocents for the "greater good" you're probably not good. If it was a one off fluke in a incredibility specific scenario you still could be.

I'm sorry the writers of Forgotten Realms did not consult a expert in ethics before basing a plane and magic system off of objective good and evil for play pretend games. But you need to chill the fuck out.

Sadly you are wrong.

"Good" in the dnd sense is about following the objective rules of morality laid down by the gods.
Killing people? Bad
Killing orks? Good

Its not exactly a nuanced system.

Alow me to fix the alignment once and for all. Not by changeing it, but by putting it into terms that you mongoloids might understand.

Lawful Neutral, declining into Lawful Evil with the delusion of being Lawful Good.

>"Good" in the dnd sense is about following the objective rules of morality laid down by the gods.
Isn't that what I said? With the whole plane and magic system off objective good and evil?
Or where you talking about the people's alignment is their "trend" thing. Cause that part isn't RAW true. Technically your alignment should be going all over the place as you make wildly different decisions on the act (and in 2e taking the level loss with it) its just I've never seen it played that way.

Although if you have please do tell I'm interested in how such a game would look.

"Ruthless" and "selfish" need more elaboration on and the line between them is blurred.

t. Jeremy Corbyn
youtu.be/XMC8yBq8usg

Lawful Evil.

Morality in D&D, and we are in D&D since we're using the alignment system, is purely black and white.

While a character could justify doing this to themselves, it's still by the rules of the universe an evil act and the universe would react accordingly.

Wouldn't the fact they're capable of love indicate that perhaps they are not actually evil to the core?

> >Killing innocents for the greater good.
>What alignment would that be?
Depends on the specific philosophical paradigm you subscribe to (deontological, consequentialist or virtue ethics).
So morality of committing a lesser evil in the name of greater good is subjective.
And don't even get me started on not doing potential good, and thus, being passively evil.

Only if you were ordered to shoot the plane down. The commander has the decision, the soldier does not.

...

Love and hate, both are passionate feelings and so therefore both are capable of crimes of passion.
Technically, emotion is evil for it implants a biased mindset against "Morally Gray" people.
A true pally must smite ALL the evil, no matter what form, no matter what cost.

So technically, all emotional paladins MUST smite themselves...

Sometimes it's necessary in speculative debates, though. There's a tendency for wannabe paladins on Veeky Forums to say "well I stop the plane by infiltrating it" and refuse to accept that they don't have the means or the time to make choices outside of the two put before them.

Lawful good.
Your inaction allows evil to spread and succeed.You are evil.

>There's a tendency for wannabe paladins on Veeky Forums to say
Yeah but if those wanna be paladins are playing characters who are actually paladins you're a dick for including a scenario that has no right to exist in such universe.

There's always limits to every scenario, and things you can't do, but if you want to come up with some clever and actually plausible plans to deal with the whole thing without anyone dying, I say go for it.

>Muh rule utilitarianism
>Muh act utilitarianism
>Muh preference utilitarianism
>In Moral Thinking (1981), Hare illustrated the two extremes. The "archangel" is the hypothetical person who has perfect knowledge of the situation and no personal biases or weaknesses and always uses critical moral thinking to decide the right thing to do; the "prole" is the hypothetical person who is completely incapable of critical thinking and uses nothing but intuitive moral thinking and, of necessity, has to follow the general moral rules they have been taught or learned through imitation.[51] It is not that some people are archangels and others proles, but rather that "we all share the characteristics of both to limited and varying degrees and at different times."[51]. Hare does not specify when we should think more like an "archangel" and more like a "prole" as this will, in any case, vary from person to person. However, the critical moral thinking underpins and informs the more intuitive moral thinking. It is responsible for formulating and, if necessary, reformulating the general moral rules. We also switch to critical thinking when trying to deal with unusual situations or in cases where the intuitive moral rules give conflicting advice.

Its not as cut and dry as you think it is fag

Innocense, good and alignments are all spooks. I would kill innocents for my greater well-being.

Of course I wouldn't shoot the fucking plane. are you a fucking idiot?

Nuclear powerplants are designed these things in mind. Some fucking plane crashing into powerplant won't do anything.

If I shoot down the plane, I doom the innocent to certain death, without giving them the time to act and maybe save themselves.

You, and the guys who keep repeating those fucking idiotic tram problems should be dragged behind a shed and shot, because you keep parroting a black and white worldview where extreme actions resulting to the death of many are seen as the only possible way to solve problems.

Fuck you, and the school of thought that birthed your twisted mind.

The only philosophy worth a damn. It takes a true genius to continually trigger a man so hard he continually writes rebuttals to your work 30 years after you've already died.

>if I don't ensure people can feed themselves they'll all die but by my hand so I'm good

Hello Stalin

>user misses the point of a moral dilemma experiment

Moral dilemma experiments miss the point of making a cool roleplay character.

Literally how

>Asks question about alignment system where good and evil are magically objective along with other magical objective forces called chaos and law
>Lets ask a question presupposed on real life ethics philosophy where such things as objective evil are fucking insane propositions
>Doesn't understand how this can no longer even remotely apply to OP's question anymore