Another aspect of the puzzle is that not every evil deserves death. A bum who does minor theft almost as a habit, a hateful bitter man who antagonizes everyone but obeys the law, a teenager, a greedy business person who employs half the town but makes everyone’s life a bit worse, and so on.
Good should have the self restraint to not go straight to murder.
The system in question relied on a hard Alignment metric. So addressing each of your examples:
A bum who does minor theft almost as a habit: Theft would qualify as a Chaotic act and would have no bearing on the Good/Evil axis
A hateful bitter man who antagonizes everyone but obeys the law: This is a Lawful act and may or may not have an effect on the man’s Good/Evil axis.
Teenager: there is no alignment associated with angst
A greedy business person who employs half the town but makes everyone’s life a bit worse: How he makes their life worse would matter in this instance, but he may be committing acts that affect his soul’s alignment.
One of the things that everyone everyone forgets about this system is that Alignment has nothing to do with morality, but rather which prime plane the individuals soul was aligned with. Good is aligned with the Positive Energy plane, Evil with the Negative Energy plane, Lawful with Mechanus, and Chaos with Limbo. Each alignment also had a Power Word spell.
Right, so anyone who is just somewhat selfish and more concerned about their own well being than others would die, even if they are not actively harming people.
Does the “harm evil” spell affect the now clearly evil cleric who is taking part in genocide?
If the caster is not of the alignment of the power word spell then yes they are effected by it, but since it’s based off of HD vs CL they would likely only be afflicted with the lowest effect.
On the first cast he’s fine, after that and he’s responsible for breaking up a few families who insist that their loved ones “could never be evil”, he’s wrapped up with the local magistrate for months, maybe it even makes it to the Duke himself.
The second time, after his resentment to the people who caused him suffering, his internal wish that they go as well. He’s fucking gone and you need a new priest.
*Edit- NVM, since the cleric/priest/whatever is the same level as the caster (the same cleric), it’s just making him deaf for a few minutes, that’ll be more of a wakeup call for him maybe.
a hateful bitter man who antagonizes everyone but obeys the law
As one of those hateful bitter people in the eyes of others who still is lawful, I emphatically tell you that we are evil and absolutely would and should be killed by Holy Word and other such spells.
a teenager
Wait, what?
Actually everyone on your list should be killed by that spell, even the teenager though I vehemently disagree with that.
Like you can sit there and quibble about what is actually evil or not but this is magic, and what matters is what the majority of people consider evil, and they all hit the mark. Most adults are ageist bigots who’d wipe out all teenagers on a dime if they could, for example, even though that’s pretty evil.
That’s what he’s saying, the spell can’t discern between the mass murderer and the lowly thief, the user of that spell should have the restraint to not jump straight murder. Not all evil beings deserve death.
Debatable. I don’t really think the thing is about what people deserve. A sword like that could be used for all kinds of different things, not just some moral crusade.
Hell, I’d use it to detect so-called good people without the stabbing and avoid them. The worst kind of people are good ones. Goodness itself is a kind of evil.
People are quibbling over what is good and evil but no one considers how useful a sword like that would be. D&D already has a hard-coded alignment system with predictable behaviors associated with each alignment so implying good and evil are subjective is meaningless.
Then again, morality itself is pretty meaningless so 🤷
I can’t speak for the mechanics of any game you’ve played as the GM can change these things, but most people don’t treat Good and Evil as being so simple. Most games I’ve been in treat evil as varying degrees of selfishness while good is selflessness. The landlord that mercilessly squeezes the tenants for an extra nickel would probably be evil, maybe not as evil as a vampire who kills to sustain their immortality, but still evil. Just because someone is evil doesn’t mean they deserve death, we don’t execute thieves in the real world.
A magic weapon or spell that can only harm evil people doesn’t mean that you can nonchalantly use it. If you used holy word in the middle of a crowd and killed 30 people who were just shitty people you’d be evil as well. The same goes for using the sword, if you go around stabbing people to see if they are evil it would make you evil.
Not sure how you’d use the sword to detect evil people without the stabbing part, what are you gonna do, tap them with the pommel and see if they felt anything?
Having used to be that bum, yes, I can say emphatically what they’re doing is evil by conventional standards. I agree wholeheartedly with what they do, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s evil and by that game’s standards they should die.
Items like that go by the standards established in the game and that means that homeless dude is gonna die. Conventional western morals dictate he be jailed, at least, and most Americans do want people like that exterminated because they dehumanize the homeless. Even restorative justice types don’t actually view or treat homeless people like humans let alone peers. Homeless populations are pretty universally reviled, and as good and evil always boil down to our feelings and popularity contests, that’s what makes them evil in the eyes of others.
I am not agreeing with the notion, just saying what it is. Personally I think humanity is inherently evil so all humans should die from such an item or a spell. But no one would take my opinion into account so this morality-is-relative crap people are pulling to dispute the veracity of the sword doesn’t hold water either.
Another aspect of the puzzle is that not every evil deserves death. A bum who does minor theft almost as a habit, a hateful bitter man who antagonizes everyone but obeys the law, a teenager, a greedy business person who employs half the town but makes everyone’s life a bit worse, and so on.
Good should have the self restraint to not go straight to murder.
The system in question relied on a hard Alignment metric. So addressing each of your examples:
One of the things that everyone everyone forgets about this system is that Alignment has nothing to do with morality, but rather which prime plane the individuals soul was aligned with. Good is aligned with the Positive Energy plane, Evil with the Negative Energy plane, Lawful with Mechanus, and Chaos with Limbo. Each alignment also had a Power Word spell.
Right, so anyone who is just somewhat selfish and more concerned about their own well being than others would die, even if they are not actively harming people.
Does the “harm evil” spell affect the now clearly evil cleric who is taking part in genocide?
If the caster is not of the alignment of the power word spell then yes they are effected by it, but since it’s based off of HD vs CL they would likely only be afflicted with the lowest effect.
On the first cast he’s fine, after that and he’s responsible for breaking up a few families who insist that their loved ones “could never be evil”, he’s wrapped up with the local magistrate for months, maybe it even makes it to the Duke himself.
The second time, after his resentment to the people who caused him suffering, his internal wish that they go as well. He’s fucking gone and you need a new priest.
*Edit- NVM, since the cleric/priest/whatever is the same level as the caster (the same cleric), it’s just making him deaf for a few minutes, that’ll be more of a wakeup call for him maybe.
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As one of those hateful bitter people in the eyes of others who still is lawful, I emphatically tell you that we are evil and absolutely would and should be killed by Holy Word and other such spells.
Wait, what?
Actually everyone on your list should be killed by that spell, even the teenager though I vehemently disagree with that.
Like you can sit there and quibble about what is actually evil or not but this is magic, and what matters is what the majority of people consider evil, and they all hit the mark. Most adults are ageist bigots who’d wipe out all teenagers on a dime if they could, for example, even though that’s pretty evil.
Good and evil are honestly pretty meaningless.
That’s what he’s saying, the spell can’t discern between the mass murderer and the lowly thief, the user of that spell should have the restraint to not jump straight murder. Not all evil beings deserve death.
Debatable. I don’t really think the thing is about what people deserve. A sword like that could be used for all kinds of different things, not just some moral crusade.
Hell, I’d use it to detect so-called good people without the stabbing and avoid them. The worst kind of people are good ones. Goodness itself is a kind of evil.
People are quibbling over what is good and evil but no one considers how useful a sword like that would be. D&D already has a hard-coded alignment system with predictable behaviors associated with each alignment so implying good and evil are subjective is meaningless.
Then again, morality itself is pretty meaningless so 🤷
I can’t speak for the mechanics of any game you’ve played as the GM can change these things, but most people don’t treat Good and Evil as being so simple. Most games I’ve been in treat evil as varying degrees of selfishness while good is selflessness. The landlord that mercilessly squeezes the tenants for an extra nickel would probably be evil, maybe not as evil as a vampire who kills to sustain their immortality, but still evil. Just because someone is evil doesn’t mean they deserve death, we don’t execute thieves in the real world.
A magic weapon or spell that can only harm evil people doesn’t mean that you can nonchalantly use it. If you used holy word in the middle of a crowd and killed 30 people who were just shitty people you’d be evil as well. The same goes for using the sword, if you go around stabbing people to see if they are evil it would make you evil.
Not sure how you’d use the sword to detect evil people without the stabbing part, what are you gonna do, tap them with the pommel and see if they felt anything?
Did you seriously say a bum who commits a minor theft deserves the death penalty? Or should I have more coffee?
Having used to be that bum, yes, I can say emphatically what they’re doing is evil by conventional standards. I agree wholeheartedly with what they do, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s evil and by that game’s standards they should die.
Items like that go by the standards established in the game and that means that homeless dude is gonna die. Conventional western morals dictate he be jailed, at least, and most Americans do want people like that exterminated because they dehumanize the homeless. Even restorative justice types don’t actually view or treat homeless people like humans let alone peers. Homeless populations are pretty universally reviled, and as good and evil always boil down to our feelings and popularity contests, that’s what makes them evil in the eyes of others.
I am not agreeing with the notion, just saying what it is. Personally I think humanity is inherently evil so all humans should die from such an item or a spell. But no one would take my opinion into account so this morality-is-relative crap people are pulling to dispute the veracity of the sword doesn’t hold water either.