Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd
I think much of the difficulty of alignment game mechanics is captured here.
These are both problematic because there are two separate kinds of moral issues, one of motives (protect everyone from monsters, seek justice), and one of methods (kill anything monsterish whether you are sure it's guilty or not, work with a subversion of natural order to kill people it says are guilty without trial), and despite the similarities (both certainly look like good motives and evil methods) we want to bin them in different alignment categories.
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Much of this also goes for "law" and "justice," as I noted in my post. It isn't confined to fantasy with Good and Evil . . . the exact same Gordian knot of motives vs. methods arises in action stories and thrillers. This is why I think it wise to leave moral conflicts out of abilities that can actually sense Good and Evil, and have the latter be impersonal, cosmic forces that regularly run roughshod over mortal morals.
And in a sense my logic holds in action stories, too: The law is an impersonal force with an objective existence, enforced by the faceless apparatus of power; it can be tested by consulting the legal code. Justice is a subjective personal thing. Frequently, unjust actions are legal and just ones are illegal. This is why Legal Enforcement Powers, Rank, the Law skill, etc. are possible regardless of your personal mental disadvantages – there are probably cops with Bloodlust and Intolerance who have those traits, and vigilantes with Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) and Selfless who don't.