Alignment question here.
What would an assassin be that has decided to kill the entire leadership of a nation (King+family+advisors/Council+high-ranking bureaucrats/whatever) to get rid of the corruption that has taken hold in it? He has gotten sick of how the aristocrats fuck over the people and everyone under them again and again and wants to end this by murdering every corrupt person he can get his hands on.
Good because he wants to do the world a favor by removing an evil from the picture?
Evil because he slaughters hundreds of people?
I ask because I want to know if smite evil would work on him or not.
>>46331277
>I ask because I want to know if smite evil would work on him or not.
WHICH EDITION?
>>46331277
Lawful Evil at a guess.
If you can Smite Evil, you can also Detect Evil. Also, in the game where you have Smite Evil as an ability, all Assassins are explicitly evil as a prerequisite to their class so if he ever becomes non-evil he loses all his class abilities and can be beaten by any idiot.
And yes, the person you are describing is Evil, by the alignment rules of 3.5. As explained in the alignment books (Book of Exalted Deeds and Book of Vile Darkness), an Evil character can still have good goals. Unless every one of the aristocrats are Evil, and have done Evil things, and the assassin knows they have done Evil things, killing them is Evil.
>>46331277
The action of changing government for the greater good with violence is CG.
That said,
>gotten sick of
sounds personally motivated and possibly selfish and
>by murdering every corrupt person he can get his hands on.
sounds needlessly violent and excessive, which would land on CE or CN.
Answer: More data needed.
>>46331277
I would say he's/she's probably a very extreme Chaotic Good. Sorta like the Punisher in a way.
I would also say it depends on how correct he/she is about the nobles being corrupt. How many of them are evil themselves?
>>46331406
This is true too, if the character is an Assassin and not just a person who has decided to assassinate, or become an assassin.
>>46331502
Well I am building a campaign and one of the characters is that former adventurer rogue that has been played by corrupt aristocrats over multiple years and eventually his group was used as a scapegoat and only he survived and found out about everything. Now he is out for revenge.
For more clarification, it's a rather dark setting and the people who used them were acting like 'good' people who were trying the change things for the better but actually just exploit everyone even more.
The PCs are to be hired by the same guys to stop the crazy assassin who is murdering them.
>>46331277
Alignments are shit, but Neutral Evil, likely because of 'stare into the abyss' syndrome.
He has a code of honor, only targeting those who he sees as deserving it, but his methods are dubious at best, he breaks the law as he sees fit, and he's likely had to compromise his moral principles to achieve his goals.
alright i get one question aswell. homebrew setting played with pf rules
Game is about kinda ful of grey moralities, a high level clericTN so far and kind of a pope of all available godsgets sourrounded by a group of revolitionary peasants (that follow outsidersthat are not necessarily evil but that are declared enemies of the godly order of the castes and the temples)
after warning them to back off and them drawing weapons the cleric focuses negative energy on all except one of them, who the cleric takes in for interrogation. then proceeds to destroy 2 police constructs that disapproved her actions and wouldnt let her go (the cleric is technically undercover).the cleric then proceeds to interoogate the captured woman without the use of any force and providing food and a comfortable place to sleep since she is already scared shitless from seeing about 40 of her friends drop dead and doesnt need further persuaion.
my DM insists me frying those 40 peasants would be considered evil
>>46331890
Your handling of grammar would ping Evil, to be honest, but fucking YES.
Hell's wrong with you? Can't you just Sanctuary away from them?
>>46331939
sorry for my grammar, english isnt my native language
since i didnt get to rest the night before i kinda ran out of spells. Also i needed one of them for interrogation since our clues to find that revolutionary group were all turning out cold and they were already performing several acts of terror on our city (such as crashing airships in residential areas) so just getting away empty handed wasnt really an option.
anyways, why is it considered evil to kill them, it is generally not considered evil to do the same with a group of bandits that try to kill you. or with a group of regular enemy soldiers on a battlefield for that matter (who might also be fighting for a good thing)
>>46331702
>Now he is out for revenge.
Evil. This is not complicated. The people who hired the PCs may also be evil, but Evil vs Evil is pretty normal in D&D (see: the Blood War).
>>46332037
>they were already performing several acts of terror on our city (such as crashing airships in residential areas) so just getting away empty handed wasn't really an option.
I'm going to ask why you didn't mention this before, because I was under the assumption that they had 'simply' showed up with weapons and general hostility because the revolution was just coming underway.
I don't know enough of your campaign or circumstances to give you an exact answer, but the fact that you killed over three dozen revolutionaries who were acting on (seemingly) their own good conscience in one go rather than fleeing or attempting to negotiate first likely comes off tasting of cruel dictatorship to the DM.
>>46332417
like i said, the game is about grey moralites, they. explaining the whole situation would be rather excessive, thing is , nobady has the moral high ground. The current government consists of an advisor that uses the regents as a kind of puppet for several hundert years (he is a giant spider which is required by law) he is CG my cleric knows him for over 100 years. The society is really racist agaisnt shapeshifting folk (doppelgangers) and kills eyerone of those once they get unovered and also really hostile against anything that is non human basically The country is in war with sorrounding states all the time. The revolutionaries are lead by some really powerful outsiders who control a giant forgotten town orignially built by the giant spiders right under the town we are in (called the underworld) and claim by killing the advisor and overthrowing the government they would lead to a age with peace and understanding instead of war. To achieve this they crashed several airships in the town as a distraction to kill the advisor (which the other player thwarted). and are leading a war of terror against our state.so basically america vs al-queda
what lead us to this market filled with 'revolutionaries' was a message written in the chopped of fingers of orphans form an orphanage that servered as a base of operations for the underworld resistance. we uncovered that base of operations in the orphanage and forced the guy who run it to get us access to a meeting of the revolutionary leader, that went south and when my character went to check on all the orphans a day later they were gone.
that message told us the head of the revolutionaries would be there that day, but it seems like that was a trap or something.
oh and the lead from the meeting (one of the involved parties was a construct) that went south lead us to the regent who had bought this construct and subsequently "lost" it without the advisor knowing.
>>46332794
Gotta say, my GM knows ow to make an intresting Story full of intruiges and twists.
its all very grey morality and there is a fight maybe once every 3 sessions.
my character is a former pope-like figure of the faith of the 9gods (3 gods of creation , 3 of preservance and 3 of destruction) who came back after dying as a semi undead along with a whole bunch of other semi undeads called revenants. Since then she is kinda the undead secret pope, since the public hates the revenants, she has still been fulfilling her duties but cannot openly use her power that she has behind the scenes. Since she came back from death she uses the old crypts of the the temple of the 9 gods as a sanctuary for revenants and other kinds of undead to enable them a peaceful life, as long as they do not hurt or attack anyone or leave the crypt.. thats kind of the basics jist of the setting
>>46332794
forgot to mention that the undeworld is some kind of communist utopia with no discrimination against anyone and everyone beeing really poor but somehow happy, and most of them never even saw the daylight
>>46331277
Alignment system is shit. SHIT.
Anyways, according to 5th E :
>Lawful good (LG) creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society.
No, since assassinating people isn't the right thing as expected by society (also: moral relativism? in my dnd?...wtf.)
>Neutral good (NG) folk do the best they can to help others according to their needs.
Could do.
>Chaotic good (CG) creatures act as their conscience directs, with little regard for what others expect.
Even better
>Lawful neutraI (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes.
Certainly not law or tradition, and personal code can be anything, so let's ignore this one.
>Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don't take sides, doing what seems best at the time.
No, he obviously takes sides, at a great risk for himself
>Chaotic neutral (CN) creatures follow their whims, holding their personal freedom above all else.
No, same reason.
>Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty,or order.
Maybe. Would be nice if code was defined.
>Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms.
Don't think so. Isn't that simply CN by another name, btw ?
>Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust.
Depends. Is he doing it because he's really sick of corruption and truly hate them, or because he wants to create a better world.
Apparently, 5th doesn't care about doing good deeds to further an evil goal, and vice-versa ; I haven't been able to find a line about it.
So I suggest chaotic good or chaotic evil, depending on how good he is at rationalizing his behaviour.
If you want to be a dick GM, make the spell light him Good or Evil depending on how the caster would view his crusade. Sympathetic caster = ping Good. Antagonist caster = ping Evil.
>>46333185
according to older versions of this people that are on a quest for revenge (for example if someone killed their familiy and they want to hunt them down and kill them like liam neeson in taken . would be considered LE. i never understood that logic, although i sometimes have a messed up understanding of good and evil.
>>46333185
>(also: moral relativism? in my dnd?...wtf.)
It's a work-around for the age-old alignment buster "LG guy goes into city where being LG is not allowed." If you use alignment as literally anything but various kinds of elemental forces and vaguely defined character personalities you are in trouble.
Personal codes can be anything, but I believe the implication when they're tied to Lawfulness is that they have to be consistent, e.g., a Lawful character might not enjoy following their personal code, but does so anyway because of a sense of obligation or whatever. A chaotic individual might abhor theft, for example, but they might be less principled about it, making exceptions and things based on circumstances. "Ends justify the means" thinking might also come into play.
Don't forget that Neutral can also refer to characters who believe in a balance between elemental forces. I dunno if that's still in 5E RAW, though, they really de-emphasized alignments in this system.
>Baron ordered the assassination of my character's pregnant wife
>Character catches wind of this
>Character orders the gradual assassination of literally every living member of the Baron's family tree, saving him for last
>Revoke his title, imprison him, throw him in the Oubliette
What would my CK2 character's alignment be?
Chaotic good obviously?
How could someone who wants to effectively eliminate all corruption be anything else?
Dunno if you guys have the Avenger. In 3.5 he was a Good aligned assassin.
>>46331277
Red with white leanings.
>>46333526
I don't think "balance" true neutral is in 5th E. It would probably be LN now, dedicated to a code that uphold balance.
I use order-freedom and selflessness-egotism axis nowadays, it makes for a fast way to work with most problematic situations. It's far from perfect, though.
>>46331277
Depends on what his alignment was to begin with, and the alignment of the people he slaughtered. He'd probably be chaotic by the end of it, regardless.
>>46333972
>Alignment requirement: Any non Chaotic
Since when are coups and other violent political manipulations Lawful? That's by the book Chaotic.
>>46331702
Guy responding to here.
I agree with this anon >>46332092
It's probably evil.
Acting out of revenge is usually evil.
Sounds like the character could be borderline, but if he is actively taking evil actions to achieve his revenge rather than focusing onundoing their evil, then he would be able to be smited, if you can smite anything evil in your system.
>>46331406
Explain Slayer of Domiel, anon. It's a GOOD assassin.
>>46331327
I would say that a strong case could be made for the exact opposite - chaotic good. He is trying to achieve a good end through illegal means that will cause lots of unrest.
>>46337340
I think I'd also call this one Chaotic Good. Killing aristocrats for the Common Good is basically a slightly more violent Robin Hood, the archetypal CG character.
>>46337340
My take is that he is doing evil (killing people proactively) because they are unworthy of their power (offending his lawful sensibilities) but this level of debate needs the GM to rule on it. You're right that you could make a strong case for CG but LE was my first instinct here.
>>46337340
Definitely not Good, Chaotic Neutral if he is truly altruistic, Chaotic Evil otherwise
>>46337799
Doesn't seem like this character has problems with authority per se, just with the current government
>>46331277
Textbook lawful neutral. The system is corrupt and he wants to fix it. He clearly lives by a strict code and won't kill anyone that isn't corrupt
>>46331406
IIRC Assassin PrC only had Evil alignment as an entry requirement and you could become any alignment after that. You would lose access to some of your best spells if you became Good though, as all the really useful assassin spells had the [Evil] tag. It would also be extremely difficult to be anything other than evil if you used about half the class features of the assassin class. So you effectively stay evil by 3.5's definitions of Evil action if you keep doing what an assassin does best.
>>46337917
there's ways to get people out of power that doesn't involve throat-slitting, y'know.
he's neutral if he's really just trying to remove bad people from the world. evil if it's really his way of handling those he deems unworthy of their status for whatever reason
>>46331277
Akame ga kill
>>46334101
>Not black with red leanings.
He's an assassin for god's sake. I could see white leanings though, and it's not unprecedented.
>>46337999
Easy to say that if you have contacts and political power.
If you're just the average pleb thats good at being unseen then thats not true, this may be the easiest way to finish off a dying empire thats only interested in keeping the status quo going for as long as they can milk their personal gravy train at everyone elses expense.
>>46331277
probably true neutral.
Protip; a single action or goal does not a morality make. Paladins can have a selfish desire too, like forbidden romance or a desire for wealth for their family. Warlocks might do most of their work with demons, but could spend the weekends doing community service for orphans having been one as a kid.
Your assassin works for a greater good, but is willing to cut corners by killing the leadership instead of going through the process of dethroning them in a proper political upheaval. They therefore have a splattering of good and bad qualities. That's the basis for a strong character, don't try and box it into a broken morality system.
