Detect Evil Is Rape

[Halfbrood]

I had page 5 on my ticket, damn.

[ForsakenSunlight]

I still think it beats the old dwarven paladins who used to literally use DE, find ppl, and beat them up.
 
On other hand, paladins are not rare at this point in time. There are quite alot of them actually. More paladins then clerics, and I would say sorc/paladin/fight prolly tied for most played classes at moment.
 
For those evil doers out there, and I've told others, give it time. This server swings alignments and classes alot. I mean just a handful of weeks ago there was tons of nature ppl, then tons of mercs, now lots of good folk.  When evil finally swings back I'm sure someone will whine about how hard it is to be a paladin and take down evil when "EVERYONE" is evil (yes I've seen those posts to.)
 
I don't think paladins shouldn't use DE, or that they should ask ppl not to quest them. I do think though ppl should not suddenly believe someone just because they say "I have a magic power, that dude is evil." Which 9 out of 10 times, they do.

[Barehander]

I don't really mind paladins telling everyone you're evil. All the worse for them. If you're a model citizen and have done nothing wrong, there's no reason for anyone to take the paladin's judgement for granted. So what if he has a magic radar that identifies an abstract concept of "evil"? If you've been a good guy, then clearly there is something flawed about the paladin's radar and his definition of good and evil is not the same as normal people's.

In fact, I welcome it as an opportunity to undermine the paladin and get into an ethical discussion. I just wish it was RPed, instead of what I get now: someone casually passes me on the street and tells others I'm evil, for absolutely no other reason than that he has a divine mandate. That's not responsible use of power, ever. More importantly, that's not a good contribution to the story, which should be our primary concern.

[TheImpossibleDream]

Unlike real life in FR evil is a physical thing. You either are or you aren't. No matter how you justify your actions if you're alignment field reads "Evil" you are evil no matter how non evil you act.

If you want to play non evil do not select the evil alignment. Just selecting the evil alignment means you've acted enough to KNOW YOU YOURSELF ARE AN EVIL AND IMMORAL BEING. For example you may have murdered someone or you may be a greedy wife beating mugger.

[Barehander]

Not really. Not at all, really. Evil and Good exist, but it is agreed that they are not identical with mortal values and morality. Entire nations consider some objectively Evil things quite good and acceptable. Slavery and human sacrifice are probably objectively not good, but there are many nations and cultures which consider them good regardless. There are Paladins, in fact, who uphold legal systems based on slavery. They don't know or think they're evil.

This is why I hate D&D alignment: it's fine in itself, but people misunderstand it. Just because the metaphysical building blocks of the universe are absolute doesn't mean the people live in a black-and-white world. Their world is the same as ours, with diverse values and beliefs. Nobody can worship an evil god and think they're evil, that's semantically contradictory: everyone strives for good, insofar as good is considered something desireable. They're simply mistaken about what is objectively good.

But these metaphysical truths are meaningless to many people: do you think a tribe who'd sacrificed virgins for generations would understand or care if a paladin came and told them what they do is evil? Do you think they have a conscious guilt? Hardly.

Objective Good and Evil exist, and everyone is positioned somewhere on the alignment grid. But that doesn't mean people's morality coincides with the alignment grid. They don't necessarily think Good is really "good" and desireable or that Evil is foul and undesireable. Some believe tyranny to be the ideal form of government, some believe freedom to justify war and murder.

I am convinced that the great majority of evil people don't know they're evil and don't feel guilty. As it should be. Nobody ever, anywhere, consciously chooses evil subjectively (as opposed to the objective Evil which they don't recognize as undesireable).

That's why I don't think Detect Evil can ruin anyone's RP: PCs should judge you for what they know about you, your actions and your values. If they are sympathetic to you, the declaration of a paladin that you're evil is meaningless to them. It simply means that the metaphysical Evil the paladin has seen does not concern their concept of right and wrong, which is a different thing.

Never associate Good and Evil with mortal right and wrong. There's a gap you can't bridge between them.

[ExileStrife]

I don't mean to be harsh on anyone in particular, but keep in mind we're not real life, history, Dungeons and Dragons canon, or the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.  Remember that EfU is it's own entity and that's where we are playing.  Keep the discussion specific to the custom environment we have crafted for EfU, otherwise this should be discussed in off-topic.

[Nufferz]

caprice potions!!! sold for a mere 50 coins from a specific person in a somewhat chaotic place

[Barehander]

I don't mean to be harsh on anyone in particular, but keep in mind we're not real life, history, Dungeons and Dragons canon, or the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.  Remember that EfU is it's own entity and that's where we are playing.  Keep the discussion specific to the custom environment we have crafted for EfU, otherwise this should be discussed in off-topic.

Yes, but we are specifically based on D&D Forgotten Realms, and more importantly, everything about the game is based on real life. How are you going to play and understand the game if not through your life experience? Everything we do, we immediately mirror off the real world. That is the only world we live in, and the only world we have any understanding of.

It's not valid to counter an argument simply by refuting the power of an example. Argumentation is based on logic and the shared meaning of our language. Therefore, it's relatively intersubjective and universally applicable in all environments. A->(B->A) is a tautology in EfU just as much as in Tarski's logic. You don't need a DM to ascertain this is the case, or a post in the lore forum.

It is equally true that if you define good as that which is desireable, you can never want anything but good. And that's what people do, psychologically. It doesn't matter whether it's real life, Forgotten Realms or Ymph. A person will always choose what he ultimately believes to be right. That's what my post above addresses: TheImpossibleDream claimed that an Evil being knows he has done wrong and is immoral. A lot of the time, he doesn't. What's Evil and immoral are two different things. Evil is an objective force of the universe. Morality is, by definition of the word, concerned with human behaviour and values. What we consider valuable. There's no reason to assume that people on Toril always consider Good right and Evil wrong. I'm sure nobody knows Good and Evil completely, because even the gods dedicated to Good disagree; and if they all had a perfect understanding of pure Good, they logically could not disagree. It's not an empirical matter of studying real-world, FR or EfU source material. It's simply a logical truth derived from the definition of words.


I certainly hope it's not the stance of the EfU DM team that inspiration, background, personality etc. for one's character should be derived from the material strictly offered by the server. I am sure everyone, you included, uses concepts from a myriad sources that have nothing to do with this server. I'm a student of religious studies and philosophy, and one of the biggest reasons I RP is so I can give life to academic concepts such as the Goddess cult, bodily mysticism, Neoplatonism, Jungian archetypes, the distinction of sacred and profane, Eliade's teophanies etc. This is why, personally, I'm a good roleplayer with interesting characters. You might do great with stereotypes represented by existing NPCs or forum guidelines, but that's not for me. It is quite reasonable to assume that people on EfU follow the same laws of logic and psychology that people everywhere. Because we play people, based on our experience of real people.

[Mort]

How to make a mountain out of a molehill?