Honestly, treating ‘Evil’ as just self-interested to the point of being willing to place your own desires above the wellbeing of others is actually one of my favourite takes on it, because
A) It makes it legitimately challenging but also very rewarding to be Good (I mean, what NPC isn’t going to like someone that actually successfully respects their wishes and needs when helping them?)
B) It opens up Evil as a legitimate option for party members that isn’t an instant dealbreaker
C) It allows you to run creatures meant to be ‘inherently evil’ (devils and chromatic dragons in particular) as assholes but not completely unthinking and unreasonable, which makes them a LOT scarier- these are intelligent creatures that should be just as witty and dangerous to hold a conversation with as they are to fight. A dragon that’s undeniably a selfish bastard but can make compelling cases to try and out-RP the players and get them to fall into traps or hesitate to fight them, or a Devil that knows just how to play the role of a corruptor, someone who tempts the party and plays to win the big game.
Yeah. Unpopular opinion, I know, but I really like alignment. It’s pretty easy to say “puts self above others” = evil and “puts others before self” = good.
My quick version of law v chaos is “puts societal structure above individual freedom” = law and “puts individual freedom above societal structure”.
Feels like a framework closer to how people actually behave and doesn’t invite in-party conflict.
so the whole alignment thing is just a political compass?
Always has been
Yeah I generally run any non-neutral alignment as “Willing to go out of your way to perform acts of [help/harm], with the alignment being determined by why you did it and whether you feel satisfied by the outcome, and you intentionally do those acts in a [principled/unpredictable] manner.”
As a result, most creatures are generally neutral - They may lean in one direction or the other, but a paladin’s divine sense will only reveal evil if someone would actively make choices to harm others, feeling no remorse. Any good deeds are an extension of selfishness, done for the purpose of some kind of gain (lawful: gain is calculated or for an existing purpose, chaotic: gain is for whatever they wanted at the time)
A good alignment for a paladin sense means you’re willing to make active choices to sacrifice things important to you (or perhaps for your survival) for the purpose of helping others. That can be as simple as giving up something you wanted or as heavy as charging into a burning building to rescue the occupants. (Lawful: does it because it’s the right thing to do, chaotic: does it because it felt right at the time)
I disagree with that interpretation. Evil shouldn’t be going out of your way to cause harm, it should be willingly causing harm to get your way. The harm is the method, not the goal.
Like, a good person driving down the road will swerve and crash their car to avoid hitting a dog. A neutral person would stop the car and see if they can move the dog, or at least drive around it. An evil person wouldn’t even slow down. Why should they have to be a minute late because some idiot dog decided to stand in the wrong place?
Meanwhile, if the evil person swerved and crashed their car to hit a dog who wasn’t even on the road, their car would be wrecked and their journey would be totally ruined. They’d be just as foolish as the good person. If you’re going to have your actions bound by the same restrictive moral guidelines as good people in a new coat of paint, you might as well be good.
You’ve got some fair points, and in agree with you - I was just still waking up when I wrote my original comment and misrepresented what I meant a bit. Will edit and update my comment later.
So evil civilizations would suddenly become good? Upholding evil laws and customs isn’t necessarily selfish but it is perfectly evil in my book.
I prefer having actual evil in the game. Selfishness is neutral in my mind because you’re neither doing good nor evil for the sake of it.
I prefer having actual evil in the game.
You can do that too, it just requires more thought than “alignment says Evil.”
no extra steps, that’s exactly what chaotic evil is
Except she follows the law, she just finds loopholes that you could throw a nuke through. She announced her attack on the factory, and didn’t attack the town. She also wrote a dissertation on how to shell a town legally.
I’d say lawful evil, trending towards neutral evil
That sounds like chaotic lawful to me.
That will complement my Good Evil character nicely.
Following “the law” doesn’t make you lawful. Robin Hood is clearly very lawful good, he has a strict moral code he follows, and that happens to involve breaking laws he considers evil. If you follow laws to get your way but don’t really care about the spirit of them then I think that makes you pretty chaotic.
Isn’t acting purely in self interest the general definition of chaotic neutral?
If while acting in your own self-interest you knowingly, through action or inaction, allow others to come to harm, even indirectly, that is evil. In the same way that a character knowingly doing something that benefits others would arguably make them good. A chaotic neutral person may act on a whim or in self-interest the majority of the time, but I doubt they’d let their actions cause actual harm to others.
But trying to pigeonhole human behavior into a rigid matrix of alignments is inherently flawed, people are much more complex than that. Fortunately, DND allows the DM free reign to define that or allow it to be a grey area - in reality, “alignment” will always be fluid.
If while acting in your own self-interest you knowingly, through action or inaction, allow others to come to harm, even indirectly, that is evil.
I think most Americans buy products made via unethical labor practices, and which damage the environment, harming everyone.
Are you really making the argument that the vast majority of Americans are evil?
As an American, I’m not not making that argument.
Why not? It’s not a moral argument.
There‘s also the distinction between allowing evil practices for your personal gain and allowing them to avoid harming yourself. The latter would be a neutral alignment.
Are you really making the argument that the vast majority of Americans are evil?
With regards to the D&D alignment chart? Sure. I don’t know what kind of weird moral gotcha you’re attempting here but there’s not one to be found.
I think this is a little over-broad. As written, the only way to be good is to stop all evil everywhere. Or am I missing something?
No, it still requires something the person does or doesn’t do (within reason) to influence or allow the evil act. If you see someone being mugged and you ignore it and keep walking when you have the power to help, even if just calling the police and walking away, then yes, that inaction makes you a bad person, IMO. But if a bad guy starts a war on the other side of the planet, you’re not evil if you don’t enlist and go fight the evil regime.
But like I said, it’s all a grey area, there is no black and white good and evil in reality. It’s rarely as simple as just “this is good, and this is evil” in real life.
By that description, the vast majority of people are evil. Well, both evil and good, since most people at least occasionally do things that aren’t in their self-interest to help others. But primarily evil, thanks to the inaction clause on the evil side and nothing comparable on the good side.
They’re also more evil the more educated they are, since they’re more aware of ways that people are suffering harm that they could potentially abate.
For example, if you are not homeless and you are aware that some people are homeless and a storm is coming, if you don’t help them all find shelter - to the extent of bringing them into your own home even if it means you end up not having a place to sleep - by your definition, you’re evil.
I’m not a fan of that definition, either for D&D or anything else, but if it works for your table, great!
An “evil” act does not make a person evil necessarily. We all do bad shit sometimes. My point was it’s a grey area that can’t be defined with 9 alignments outside of the structure of a game, but knowingly allowing your actions to cause harm to others is an evil act.
That being said, the idea of good and evil is entirely the result of fiction. I don’t believe there’s a black and white “good and evil” in reality. Human actions and motivations can’t be defined so broadly IMO.
No. Neutral only cares about the cosmic or universal good. The welfare of others or ones self doesn’t factor into it. Many druids are Neutral because the balance of nature (the natural order) is the motivation behind their actions.
Neutral druids don’t care about the welfare of others? Not even the other druids in their circle?
If given a choice between upsetting the balance and saving a druid they’ll maintain the balance. Healing a wound or something isn’t moral decision.
I prefer to think of good vs evil as altrusim vs egoism. LG is “the laws should protect everyone” and LE is “the laws should protect me”. CG is “everyone should be free to live as they please” and CE is “I should be free to live as I please”. Acting in pure self-interest with no regard for ideals would be CE, or maybe NE depending on how it’s done.
I like your take, you said it better than I did.
I disagree. Lawful or Chaotic describes ones adherence to rules; either those of society or their own moral code. Chaotic would describe one who does not adhere to any rules or guidelines; nothing is off limits except that which would violate their alignment on the Good-Evil axis. Neutral would mean that one would bend those rules to achieve a particular outcome. Lawful is going to stick to the book; they’re very conservative.
Yeah, at best it’s chaotic neutral. It’s not evil. Evil is a desire to harm others. Self interest isn’t evil, just not good. I would say true neutral because it’s not acting in a desire to rebel against laws either, but I could see an argument for chaotic neutral.
For reference for people familiar with BG3, the dead three are evil gods. They actively want to cause harm/death. Evil isn’t just someone who doesn’t care. Evil is someone who cares and wants to harm.
Evil isn’t the desire to harm others. Devils don’t desire to claim people’s souls for the lulz, they do it for power. Everything they do is to gain power, for their own benefit. They don’t care if the souls will become lemures or a snack, they just try to convince people and scheme for their own benefit anyway.
Demons are way more brutal, they don’t really gain pleasure from pain per-se, they also want power, but their approach is way more direct. If they can gain power by killing all those people and bathing in their blood, thay will forcefully do it, not by deceiving the human through a shitty contract, but by forcing their power.
Devils are LE, demons are CE. All in all, evil is the disregard of moral consequences when finding ways to benefit yourself.
Deceiving someone to sign a shitty contract so they now must slave away for you? LE.
Kidnapping someone and forcing them to do stuff to your benefit? CE.
Reaching a fair accord so that you allow people in need to work for you for a fair price, where both parties give a bit so no one is really getting taken advantage off? Either LG or LN depending on the context.
Offering to kill the bad monster that is terrorising the town for free, and disregarding the lucrative offers from it because it’s the right thing to do? Any good alignment.
Any of those people could have desires of harm, it’s how they channel their wants that puts them in different places in the alignment chart.
Not all evil is just about personal gain. That’s way oversimplified. Sure, some is and that can be part of it, but sometimes it isn’t.
Bhaal is the lord of murder, and not usually doing it to gain anything. “Bhaal only lived to hunt and kill, the presence of the living instilling in him an overpowering desire for death and destruction. He was at all times a cruel, violent and hateful being, though his behavior could vary from cold and calculating ruthlessness to a savage thirst for blood.”
Evil is basically desire to do harm or to have power over others (which I’d argue is the same thing). Tyranny is evil because it removes others ability to do what they want, which is harmful. It’s about a desire. A desire to have power over someone, or to harm someone, or to kill someone, etc. Gaining power over someone isn’t the disregard for consequences, it is regarding them and choosing tyranny.
However, good actions also often do this. You kill bad people, imprison criminals, etc. It’s good because you were trying to help/protect someone. Not good would be anything else, which both neutral and evil have to fit in there somewhere. Neutral must be without regard, and evil must be with regard and intent to do the opposite. If not, what is neutral or evil if it’s not those?
Nope. Neutral would be a tendency to act in the interests of the cosmic or universal order. Neither ones self nor the general welfare of others is given priority.
This is the classic theological definition of evil. Evil isn’t the anti-good, it’s the absence of good. Good is typically regarded as some kind of selflessness or care for other, so evil is basically selfishness. There’s nuance, but I wanted to support the challenge to dualistic world view.
A “theological” definition doesn’t really work in a world where there are actual gods and some of them actively want to cause suffering. The theology of D&D (and most other fantasy settings) is not the theology of Earth Christianity of the 21st century.
Of course. But at the same time alignment is under the domain of gods and it’s part of the cosmological structure itself. I wouldn’t think one can simply declare to be outside the purview of morality.
Of course it isn’t out of the purview of morality. It is morality. Alignment is just a simplified way of stating the morals and ethics of a character without going into detail. I’m just saying the theology we have in our world is not the theology of D&D. Evil is not necessarily describing the same thing it may in our world.
Theology isn’t limited to Christianity. But hey, if you like your villains cartoony, go with the dualism!
No idea who the char is here, but self interest with no regards to morality sounds more chaotic neutral than CE to me.
If you’re neutral, that means that you observe tenets that mitigate all benefit to others and harm to others from your actions. To act selfishly without thought of morality will inevitably lead someone down a road of evil. No one ever stays neutral or good if they’re acting wantonly selfish.
That’s lawful neutral
Isn’t self interest without regard to anything else true neutral? Good would mean helping people, evil would mean hurting people. Lawful means following the laws, chaotic means rebelling against laws. True neutral has no regard for anyone else and no regard for laws.
Lawful doesn’t mean following the laws. A lawful person isn’t obligated to follow the law in the Kingdom of Baby Eating.
Lawful means you obey the rules. However, presumably you have your own set of ethics, as well as probably the belief in a god that also has their own rules. You have to reconcile these. Obviously if your god is about protecting innocent lives and you think the babies being eaten are innocent and deserve protection, you probably aren’t going to obey all the laws in the KoBE.
Isn’t chaos neutral? Chaos is the base state? Chaos is the law of God/Universe? All other man made law is idealism and can be either good or evil?
Aren’t laws an act against God/Universe? They are independent of honest reality? They are created as a mask/detergent/escape from reality/present/God/universe?
Laws are the opposite of faith in God/“God”?
Nah, there’s a whole bunch of Lawful Neutral deities that uphold natural laws, and the Great Balance, like Jergal, Kelemvor, and Mystra. A lot of Good/Lawful Good deities as well, especially when it comes to the natural passage of life and death. Messing with that natural law gets you on the wrong side of like half of any given pantheon. There are even evil gods, like Bane, that are all about law.
No, no, let her cook. Giving up on alignment altogether is a good move
That sounds a lot like chaotic evil to me.
CE specifically goes out of its way to be evil, though. What you described is CN. CE characters would be your standard “mad scientist” from a 90’s cartoon.
It’s only ‘real evil’ if it is done for the sake of evil itself? Thats a pretty hot take.
That’s a pretty hot take
It’s literally what the player handbook (well, 3rd edition at least) describes CE as…
Srd on CE characters:
Chaotic Evil, “Destroyer”
A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. […] If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal.
Evil is not a religion or a life philosophy in third edition anymore. A CE character does not need to commit evil for the sake of evil, they need just to be ‘out for whatever [they] can get’. Think about the typical CE goblins.
They don’t call it Tasha’s Uncontrollable Laughter.
I feel like it’s not clear on whether evil is being willing to hurt people for some minor benefit to you, or if that’s neutral and evil is being willing to make personal sacrifices just to cause harm. The first one is about as evil as you get in real life, but real life doesn’t have demons.
I haven’t heard any stories of demons making personal sacrifices just to cause harm, and demons are definitely evil.
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