Back in 3rd Edition D&D there was a spell called "Holy Word" that could kill non-good creatures within a 40 foot radius of the caster, if the caster was sufficiently high level relative to the creatures. Good creatures were completely unaffected.
When tightly packed you can fit about 2000 people into a 40-foot-radius circle (total area is 5000 square feet). So one casting can deal with the population of a good-sized town. My gaming group speculated for a while about a society where it was a routine ritual to round up all the peasantry and nuke them with Holy Word to keep the population clear of evil. Never incorporated it into any campaigns, though. It's a bit of a sticky philosophical puzzler.
This is a weird one because despite being a "good" spell, it entails the mass murder of innocent neutrals. It really doesn't seem like a good action to me.
It seems like anyone who was okay with this would fall to neutral or evil simply by virtue of being okay with mass murder, and in turn fall victim to the Great Neutral Purge.
Indeed, hence the sticky philosophical puzzler. I would think that the clerics themselves would start getting affected by the spell. Fortunately (for them), the effect of the spell when cast on someone of the same level as yourself is only deafness for 1d4 rounds. The Church could probably cover that up.
There was another interesting related situation that came up in an actual campaign I was in, involving the Blasphemy spell (a variant that only kills non-evil targets). My party and I were in our "home base", a mansion belonging to an allied NPC noblewoman, planning out our next excursion. A powerful demon we'd been tangling with attempted to scry-and-fry us, teleporting in and nuking us with Blasphemy. Unfortunately there were a lot of low-level NPC staff working in the noblewoman's household and the spell wiped them out instantly... except for one guy, who happened to be of evil alignment. He survived the encounter because of that.
Even though his alignment was evil, though, he'd never done anything wrong and didn't seem like he had any reason to do anything wrong in the future. So we weren't sure if we should fire him or what. It wasn't illegal to simply be evil, you had to actually do something evil before you could be punished. We just warned him we'd be keeping an eye on him, in the end, and kept him on staff.
I'm pretty sure if you aren't a creature from a celestial plane of evil or good, only your actions define your alignment, not the other way around.
Okay, he hadn't done anything wrong to us. I guess we could have paused the main campaign to spend a while investigating him, but we were doing one of those save-the-world things so we didn't have the time. :)
I feel like there might be interesting ways to deal with it. Perhaps the mass killing of neutrals only ever happened the first time, which could have been many generations ago and under singular circumstances. Since then, only the odd one here or there ever dies during the purge. Perhaps it's been decades or centuries since anyone died to the purge, reinforcing belief in it's effectiveness as a basis for a pure society. It may have been so long that people wonder whether the purge is even real, or just a traditional ceremony carried out annually based on old myths. Then one year, it wipes out half the city. The party investigates?
The ritual could have been real, but was quietly faked so that a corrupt leader could avoid facing their fate.
Or, the ritual was always fake but used as a cover to assassinate specific targets without consequences.
Yes! And the ambiguity means the DM doesn't have to decide which it is until the players have deduced certain facts.
If they're high enough level relative to the caster the spell doesn't do insta-death, it just hurts a bit.
Otherwise the clerics would probably nuke themselves the first time they tried this. Maybe. The ethics of this spell are confusing.
What is being good except having self-imposed restrictions to avoid doing something evil? This spell seems perfect. There will rarely be a time where a good aligned character could justify using it in an overpowered way. If it were inverted then you would see evil characters using it all the time. It's a self-imposed balance. You have a very powerful tool, but you must avoid using unless absolutely necessary.
Ah, but there is an evil equivalent, Blasphemy. It affects non-evil creatures instead of non-good creatures, and as such has no self-balancing properties. There are even equivalents for Law and Chaos, which are... worryingly abstract.
I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.
Here's the SRD entry for the spell. It definitely nukes the neutrals.
The evil equivalent is Blasphemy, which nukes all non-evil creatures. Yes, the neutrals get it from both sides.
Then there's Word of Chaos and Dictum, the Law and Chaos equivalents of those Good/Evil spells. Neutrals, believe it or not, death!
Pick a side, you neutral scum!
Good.
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Here’s the SRD entry for the spell. It definitely nukes the neutrals.
Which is kind of horrifying because most of the population of any given setting is supposed to be neutral. The average commoner isn't so greatly committed to following airtight moral codes that they'll ping on a detect whatever spell, whether that's good, evil, law, or chaos. Cast that on a crowd of randoms and you've probably wiped out three quarters of them.
It was a bit different back in the 3rd edition days, "good" and "evil" were slung around a bit more liberally. I believe it wasn't until the 5th edition when they introduced the "unaligned" state, which is sort of "neutral but without the commitment", and assumed most average folk were unaligned.
Presumably before the high cleric casts Holy Word there'd be a festival ahead of time in which people are given plenty of opportunity to donate to good causes (ie, the Church) to crank up their good meters before being "tested."
I feel like the average townsperson would sit between neutral good/lawful neutral.
Implementing a system like that would kill a lot of innocent people and the occasional guilty person.
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.
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).
One problem with the strategy is that Blasphemy, Dictum, and Word of Chaos all exist as well. If the Cleric's Alignment/Faith changed they could sacrifice the town with a single cast.
A lawful evil farmer might be a dick, but if you stab him the guards are going to have questions.
Situations like this give me the inclination to treat D&D Good™ and Evil™ as physical properties rather than moral tendencies. D&D Good™ that is a little too eager to murder beings labeled as Evil™ falls short of what I would consider good. If someone used such power to kill someone who is a pathological liar and petty thief, that wouldn't seem good to me even if that person could be classified as Evil™ as the system defines it.
Then again while to me such act seems evil, I don't think I could call the caster Evil™ because D&D explicitly endorses killing Evil™ creatures as a Good™ act. Since the 1st edition, the purest paragon of Good™ that is the Paladin wields a weapon to kill.
5th edition has done it better with the addition of "unaligned" to the mix, IMO. In order to have an alignment - even a neutral one - you need to explicitly dedicate yourself to that alignment, or be supernaturally bound to it such as with angels and demons. I would rule that these spells don't affect the unaligned.
It is definitely more convenient for players, especially now that they dropped class alignment requirements, but there is so much worldbuilding tied to Good and Evil and such, it feels a little strange to treat it like something most characters ignore.
The sword's power changes with time, and as it racks up more kills. Soon, it gains a +1 to attack and damage. Then, it can become wreathed in flame as a bonus action. Then, it grants advantage to checks made to locate creatures. Then, its base power inverts and it can only kill non-evil creatures.
Do not tell the player about that last one. Insist to the player that it works exactly as you first described. The Paladin can kill innocent shopkeepers and little old ladies, but cannot kill this assassin working for the BBEG.
Will he question his own stab-first ask-later methods? Or will he turn evil without even noticing?
I personally hate this kind of twist. If you need to actively lie to your player, not just mislead with some clever wordplay, it always feels like you’re breaking trust.
Why explain it in meta, instead of the old trustworthy totally-not-a-witch saying it only affects evil?
No need to lie, have it start to say stuff after awhile and if the other doesn't jump to demon sword that's on them.
I also hate this kind of twist. There better be a great lore reason for this because it's a huge fuck your playstyle meta reason to do this.
The playstyle is stabbing random townsfolk on the off chance you kill a bad guy. Fuck that playstyle.
And for a lore reason, just have the sword be influenced by the morality of the wielder's actions. Stabbing random townsfolk is evil. The sword turns evil.
If you know that the sword can't hurt people that aren't evil, then stabbing randoms is by definition not evil because you can't hurt them.
I mean, yeah it's meta gaming hard and lots of folks wouldn't want this at their table, so chalk it up as a learning moment as a DM and figure out a good way to take it from them. The obvious one in this case is that the sword damages evil creatures, not destroys. Have our little meta-gaming pally stab a guy twice his level and get wrecked so he rethinks the practice. "Welp you've stabbed the bbeg, they've stripped you and the party of their possessions and locked you in a dungeon, boy you're lucky he had somewhere to be or you'd be dead." Like this is only a clever meta-game if you're in a video game where you know the level of the zone you're in and you know the full meta.
And even then, a simple "hey we're a RP table and we try to keep meta to a minimum, so please reconsider this practice" or "hey before you go stabbing everyone, do you know what the level of each of the characters are? something to think about..." is the polite thing to do before you ruin their game based on the DM's mistake.
Attacking people is still upsetting even if they don't get hurt. There are many ways to harass people without hurting them, and I'd consider surprise schrodinger shanking one of them. I don't know if I'd call that "evil" per se, but I'd definitely call it an asshole move.
Personally as a DM I wouldn't make the sword evil, but I might make it so eventually it would repel the grasp of the Paladin who used it so flippantly, rather than as a warrior of good.
First off, a sword that only destroys evil doesn't mean insta-kill. It just means you only deal a fatal blow if they're evil. You can just rule that it still damages good characters, so you lose basically all of your allies due to constant wounding.
Second, this is consequentialism vs deontologism. Is the morality of an act decided by the outcome or the act itself? You have the consequentialism view that the action is okay because you know it can only kill an evil person. I argue that the sword's properties can change without you knowing, so this knowledge is just belief. As the consequences cannot be truly known before the action takes place, the morality is decided by the action itself (deontology). Stabbing people at the start of every conversation is evil.
If I were doing this, I wouldn't describe the effects exactly (except the +1). I would just tell them it misses every time they attack a non-evil character first, and describe it being wreathed in flames. Then for the swap just tell them who it misses or hits still, but they have to figure out both times what the effect is (or that it changed).
I always go with "this is what you can figure out/read on the manual/some old guy in a pub said" and stick with that, because it feels weird to me to outright lie to players about a game mechanic.
For everything, whether they have it totally figured out or not. I set this expectation in session 0 though, because otherwise the party will spend 6 hours trying to investigate a normal wooden chest because I said "as far as you can tell it's a normal chest" and they took that to mean "... But there's more you CAN'T tell"
Maybe it's just easier to lie.... I should try that more often.
Actually based on how it's worded it would have no effect on neutral aligned creatures on the Good/Evil axis.
Which would make the sword pretty shitty since Good or Neutral covers close to 1/2 of the monster manual, and may or may not apply to some bandits.
To be fair, the sword kept nagging him.
"You should draw me, i bet that guy's really evil" OKAY FINE SWORD-NIMI YOU CAN EAT THAT OLD MAN
Now throw him a good character with some magic immunity that negates the effect of the weapon.
I mean, that sounds very much like a paladin in unapologetic violation of one or more of their oaths.
Yea, blatant murder and assault isn't justifiable to most good deities or codes of ethics, even if the target pings as evil. "Oh this shopkeeper is evil? Guess he dies."
At the least, it's highly illegal most places, so even if there aren't divine consequences there'd certainly be social ones.
Yeah, even when alignment is proof enough you still need trials, and a random person's magic sword isn't exactly reliable proof in itself.
Can it fail? Can it be tricked? Is it a magical effect, or a divine one?
What about people who have done horrible crimes but served their sentence?
You can't expect to wield supreme judicial power just cause you threw a sword at some watery tart.
Supreme judicial power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical abuse of a magic item. I mean, if I went around stabbing people just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
Have him stab the mayor who's evil because he's greedy and selfish and borderline abusive in trade-deals with neighboring regions but is otherwise beloved (and has rewards heaped on him) because he's so good at actually keeping order in the town and keeping their goodwill (although probably at least a little bit through some passive-aggressive blackmail). That's always fun.
If one were to base their diet around moral responsibility, would eating only what the blade can cut be reasonable? Can it cut vegetables? Can animals be evil? Would training a cow to be evil in order to avoid starvation be morally justifiable?
Okay but if this became common enough that every paladin had a sword that only killed evil things and they also had the restriction that they had to only eat what they killed then it would be a good thing to raise evil creatures as food sources for the paladins, even though the people doing the raising are doing an evil thing.
See, here's my problem with that: humanity is inherently evil so everyone would be killed by such a thing.
Yet here we are, and evil we are. Case closed
You can go ahead and waste time beleaguering the point if you want. It's not gonna change the fact that humanity is inherently evil whether you like it or not.
If it makes you feel better, it means I am evil too. Then again, so are you. We all are. It's just the natural state of being human.
