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.
I don't get it.
Like, I don't get your post. You "addressed" my example points without even mentioning my actual topic, nor adding anything to the conversation. I know this sounds mean in text, and I can't really think of a nicer way to write it this late, but what are trying to say?
Maybe it would help if I summarize the conversation.
OP: Holy Word is an ethical puzzle. (They list an example)
Me: I agree. I would like to add that one reason why it's an ethical puzzle is because the spell cannot differentiate between major evil deserving death and minor evil deserving lesser punishment.
You: your examples aren't evil and alignment isn't related to morality. (???)
Are you actually saying that the assignments were just team names to justify killing and that GOOD didn't have anything to do with being good?
Because if so, I'm grognard enough to not be impressed by the "I remember the old lore and you don't even know what alignment is" argument. You're just wrong (if that's even what you actually said).