Detect Evil at will?

[Trithemius]

eed of change. I have really like the ArM

> system, and with some adjustments (don`t want Hermeticism in

> Cerilia) will probably use it as the magic system of my next campaign.



I think RL "hermetica" is better than Ars Magica "hermetica" w.r.t BR.

That being said, I don`t mind the Arts as they are, I just don`t find

that things like Parma Magica and the Houses work well.



> D&D seems to be best suited to fighters and rogues. I am

> satisfied with combat (taking my homebrew into account). Its

> magic that vexes.



I`m not wild about combat myself ;)

I think Ars Magica does it okay anyways.



--

John Machin

(trithemius@paradise.net.nz)

-----------------------------------

"Nothing is more beautiful than to know the All."

Athanasius Kircher, Ars Magna Sciendi.

[Ariadne]

Originally posted by The Green Knight@Jul 28 2003, 10:07 AM
Clerics and paladins register as strongly evil. The evil courtier might register as slightly evil, but what the hell does that mean?

Well, in 3.5 Edition clerics and paladins have a stong alignment aura, right, but this aura is related to the deity, not him.

A LE cleric of Healin would still radiate a LG aura, I fear (confusing, but normally clerics can only be a step from their deity anyway). The only exeption is, if the deity is neutral, then all non-neutral clerics radiate their alignment as an aura...

So IMO the LE Patriarch wouldn't be detected by the paladin.

[ryancaveney]

John Machin wrote:



> Or get rid of alignments! >:D



Well, yes, precisely! That is, I still use the alignment notation as one

part of a shorthand roleplaying description of NPC personalities, very

possibly with a reputation vs. reality slant (e.g., everybody *thinks*

this guy is LG, but he`s really NE at heart, and has hired a good PR firm;

or everybody thinks she`s CE, but she`s really NG with enemies who tell

terrible stories about her), but it doesn`t have any game mechanical

reality for me at all, except in the most extreme cases of super-powerful

fanatic extraplanar beings or awn/ehr-sheghlien. It`s not only about

power -- powerful dragons don`t have detectable alignments, because their

power does not come from their ethical philosophy (though you can still

magically detect, "Uh, there`s something *really powerful* some distance

away in that general direction"); a minor awnshegh, however, is moderately

detectable *as evil* only because most of its power derives precisely from

being a part of The Big Evil (TM).



> > In my personal opinion, there is no ruler anywhere in Cerilia

> > who qualifies as particularly "good" in a simple-minded

> > alignment sense, especially the ones who are actually good

> > (in the sense of competent at their job) rulers! In my

> > Cerilia, the principle that a good prince is a person who

> > sacrifices his own personal innocence to protect his people

> > by any means necessary is widely regarded as obviously true.

>

> Just like the Scorpions from L5R?



I don`t know L5R. Kenneth correctly identifies me as one who reads

Machiavelli very appreciatively. Part of the issue with morality is how

much of it is really a smokescreen, a set of comforting lies we tell each

other and ourselves to hide our darker motives and desires. There is

often a vast gulf between the way people describe their actions and the

way they really act -- one reason so many people get so upset by old

Niccolo is that while writers about morality usually try to restrict

themselves to pleasant fantasies ("wouldn`t the world be a much nicer

place if everyone acted like this") about how we would prefer to *imagine*

that we behave, Machiavelli described how people *actually* behave.

People get upset by this because they see themselves in his writings, but

would rather they didn`t. Moral platitudes are largely about maintaining

an illusion of happy cooperation which doesn`t really exist, but many

people prefer not to think about that uncomfortable truth.



Anyway, back to my primary principle of Cerilian statecraft, which is

perhaps best described as "good rulers do good things to good people, and

bad things to bad people." A big part of the way I look at it is a

"circles of kinship" kind of thing: the rules about interactions within

one`s community differ from the rules about interactions with outsiders;

and there are many different sets of communities of which each person is a

part (family, village, temple, clan, country, species, etc.), each with

its own set of rules and corresponding insider / outsider distinctions in

permissible behavior.



The ideal ruler IMO acts NG to his subjects, LG to his allies, CE to his

enemies and LE or TN to everyone else, and IMC everyone understands this.



To draw a parallel to another game world we both know, consider the

Orlanthi attitude to murder. Kill a kinsman, and the hurt can never be

healed. Kill a non-kin fellow Orlanthi, and you`ll have to pay a wergild.

Kill a foreigner, and you get to keep his stuff. Another such example is

found in the _Sartar Rising_ section on kinds of warfare. We try not to

fight other clans within the tribe, or if we do we try to keep it just to

small and mostly bloodless cattle raids and ceremonial champions`

contests. When we fight clans outside our tribe, we try to avoid wanton

slaughter, unless we already have a blood feud with them. Even when

raiding a ancestral feud enemy, there are still a few rules of war we

observe. When fighting foreigners, however, everything is kosher.

Humakt, God of War and Oaths, normally discourages ambushes and prohibits

use of poison and disease spirits in fights between Orlanthi, and punishes

those who break treaties; in fights with outsiders, however, we are

released from these restrictions, indeed in some cases encouraged to

violate them, *because we know outsiders won`t be playing by the rules

either*. They Are Not Us in the strongest sense, so We Owe Them Nothing.



The general principle here is that the morality of an action depends

crucially on the person to whom you do it. This is seen, for example, in

the bible -- compare "thou shalt not kill" with "thou shalt not suffer a

witch to live." How were those seemingly contradictory rules reconciled?

By noting that the unspoken but very real codicil to the first rule is

"one of us", and that witches are defined as "not one of us". The

Crusades were based on similar logic: all sorts of things you shouldn`t do

to fellow christians were just peachy when done to muslims, because They

Were Not Us. Whatever changes in acceptable behavior over time there

have been which are sometimes called "moral progress" (e.g., slavery

used to be universally accepted; nowadays it is widely condemned) is not

really a change in what *actions* are good or bad, but rather a change in

the size of the group to which you`re prohibited from being bad.



This is the original meaning of the word "outlaw" -- a person who is

outside the protection of the laws, and to whom it is therefore legal to

do *anything* at all. If you did something sufficiently terrible, you

would be outlawed -- placed outside the law -- then anyone who wanted to

could freely take your possessions or kill you or whatever else they

desired without fear of punishment. This usage has to do with taking

someone who started as in-group and making them out-group so as to get to

use out-group rules while interacting with them, but it applies equally

well to people who started as out-group. In this kind of system,

vigilante acts are specifically allowed, and sometimes directly

encouraged: when a criminal violates the social contract, they have

declared themselves no longer bound by rules of civilized behavior, and

therefore literally volunteer to be violated against in turn; but those

who strike back at them are not themselves violators because the contract

has already been abrogated by the criminal party. This reasoning is still

present at the core of the justification for the death penalty for murder:

it`s not OK to kill someone, *unless* they themselves have already killed

someone who shouldn`t have been, thereby declaring officially to the world

that in dealing with them, killing is a perfectly acceptable act.



I like my Cerilia with very small in groups and very big out groups, where

people don`t really worry too much about the moral implications of doing

terrible things to outsiders -- after all, they`re *outsiders*. You`re

*supposed* to do terrible things to them, lest they do them first to us!

Of course we`d never do that to our *own* people -- but *they* aren`t

*really* "people". This is perhaps best exemplified in Cerilia by the

Gheallie Sidhe, but in my vision of Cerilia, basically *everyone* thinks

this way. Everyone`s cultural conditioning supplies a set of rules for

deciding who is OK to kill and who isn`t, and every culture has a rather

longer list of "OK to Kill" than "Not OK to Kill".



"It`s Not Cricket" only applies while actually playing cricket -- when

your opponents come prepared to play rugby or ice hockey instead, you`d

best meet them with equal force and ferocity.





Ryan Caveney

[Eosin the Red]

eney"

> Subject: Re: Detect Evil at will? [36#1764]

>

> Well, yes, precisely! That is, I still use the alignment notation as one part of a shorthand roleplaying description of NPC personalities, very possibly with a reputation vs. reality slant (e.g., everybody *thinks* this guy is LG, but he`s really NE at heart, and has hired a good PR firm; or everybody thinks she`s CE, but she`s really NG with enemies who tell terrible stories about her), but it doesn`t have any game mechanical reality for me at all, except in the most extreme cases of super-powerful fanatic extraplanar beings or awn/ehr-sheghlien.



[SNIP]



> "It`s Not Cricket" only applies while actually playing cricket -- when your opponents come prepared to play rugby or ice hockey instead, you`d best meet them with equal force and ferocity.



Wow. Nicely done. These would be my words also if I could articulate this well.



Eosin~Randy

[ryancaveney]

Eosin the Red wrote:



> > From: "Ryan B. Caveney"

>

> Wow. Nicely done. These would be my words also if I could articulate

> this well.



*grin* Thanks!





Ryan Caveney

[Trithemius]

It`s Not Cricket" only applies while actually playing

> cricket -- when your opponents come prepared to play rugby or

> ice hockey instead, you`d best meet them with equal force and

> ferocity.



I`m not sure that this is strictly the case in Anuire. Their chief god

is one who promotes chivalrous behaviour. Now, before someone clever

says something like "the chief god of Western Europe in the Middle Ages

was a merciful deity, etc etc" I would just like to stress that I

personally believe that religion is, if anything, more important to

Anuireans than it was to Western Europeans. Even educated rulers in

Anuire are almost certainly devout.



I like the idea that not everyone is Machiavellian, not quite yet.



--

John Machin

(trithemius@paradise.net.nz)

-----------------------------------

"Nothing is more beautiful than to know the All."

Athanasius Kircher, Ars Magna Sciendi.

[ryancaveney]

Gary wrote:



> At 06:31 PM 7/29/2003 +1200, John Machin wrote:

>

> >Which deity in BR should have this magic? I don`t know of any vigiliance

> >deities in BR. In HW followers of the chaos-smiting deity can try to

> >sense chaos-evil; followers of the pole-star/watchmen deity can try to

> >detect hidden enemies that approach from afar. I don`t think that these

> >magics should be generic, but rather specific.

>

> Paladins` ability to detect evil at will was pretty much the most

> ubiquitous example, though the detect spells are pretty easily available,



But that`s not addressing John`s point. Sure, that stuff is in the PHB,

but not everything in the PHB appears in Birthright. What John is

saying, and I agree with this, is that easy access to detection of enemies

does not fit the flavor of the setting well at all, and as such it is yet

another PHB rule that Cerilia would do better to drop. In the rest of

your post, you seem to agree with this, too... =)





Ryan Caveney

[kgauck]

ge -----

From: "John Machin" <trithemius@PARADISE.NET.NZ>

Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 1:37 AM





> Or get rid of alignments! >:D



I rather like the idea that order and disorder and good and evil are

tangible forces in the structure of the universe. Players however, aren`t

tied into these, unless they channel divine energy, but they do respect one

or two of these principles. Alignment detection spells are specific

questions posed about the behavior of the character in question. Given his

past and future (auguary need not bother with linear notions of time) which

principles does the character adhear to. Other spells could, and should

detect other kinds of personality answers, such as "would this person

consort with the dead?", "is he greedy?", or "does she respect knowledge and

learning?"



Kenneth Gauck

kgauck@mchsi.com

[ryancaveney]

John Machin wrote:



> Ryan sez:

> > "It`s Not Cricket" only applies while actually playing

> > cricket -- when your opponents come prepared to play rugby or

> > ice hockey instead, you`d best meet them with equal force and

> > ferocity.

>

> I`m not sure that this is strictly the case in Anuire. Their chief god

> is one who promotes chivalrous behaviour.



True. OTOH, I think that Haelyn, having watched Anduiras fight Azrai,

probably has an idea of chivalry which is flexible enough to include some

version of "show honor to the honorable, but none to those who have none."

I really don`t think Haelyn will get too mad at you if you renege on your

offer of safe conduct and slay the Gorgon`s herald, even though he came

under a flag of truce, if the dirty goblin tries to eat some of your

servants. He probably does force you to strike second, but I don`t think

he would prevent you from striking at all.



Or possibly, this is precisely the role Cuiraecen`s followers play in

Anuirean society -- Stormlords are *supposed* to do violent things without

orders, and the god has been known to consort with that shady Eloele, so I

think that if a Haelynite Henry II were to complain about a meddlesome

priest, four Cuiraecen-worshipping knights would be happy to undertake the

task purely of their own volition. =) Call it "plausible deniability".



This becomes a good adventure seed -- a lord wants something done, but as

a good Haelynite he has to prevent himself knowing too much about it or

appearing too involved: enter a loyal guilder to hire an adventuring party

in some dockside tavern, rather than sending official troops.



> I like the idea that not everyone is Machiavellian, not quite yet.



Let`s review the cast of characters, shall we?



Avan and Boeruine are much too powerful and too marked as targets to have

survived this long without being seriously Machiavellian.



Alam, Ghoere, Raenech and Mierelen of Brosengae are "bad guys".



The Mhor might be a paragon of virtue, but he`s really too busy fighting

the Gorgon`s armies all the time to worry too much about it.



Tuor and Moergen probably try to be paragons of chivalry, just to

differentiate themselves from their enemies, but I think that mostly

means they`re likely to lose before too long; but then they surely know

that, as well. OK, Moergen is probably too much an idealist to realize

it, but long experience of Alamie`s treachery should make every Tuor

highly suspicious of anyone trying too hard to seem honorable.



Roesone might be fairly chivalrous, but I think sheer practicality has to

be her watchord, given how badly her enemies overmatch her.



I don`t really have a good grasp on Liliene Swordwraith`s character.



Theocrats, wizards and guilders don`t really count, somehow.



In some ways, I think I can say this seems to imply that Hierl Diem is

trying the hardest to stick with the ancient ideals, which may be why he`s

watched half is patrimony get up and walk away...





Ryan Caveney

[kgauck]

ge -----

From: "Ryan B. Caveney" <ryanb@CYBERCOM.NET>

Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 6:02 PM





> > I like the idea that not everyone is Machiavellian, not quite yet.

>

> Let`s review the cast of characters, shall we?



I`ll agree that the ideal alignment for a landed ruler is LN. But also

consider Constantine`s refusal to be baptised until he was on his deathbed.

The conventional wisdom of the ancient world was that rulers could not be of

good alignment. Success required too many comprimises. People who did not

have the responsibility of the state could be good, but not rulers.



But let us assume that there is a great power in the universe which rewards

good and punishes evil. Let`s call it Haelyn, Nesirie, and Cuiraecen. Does

this tip the scales of what is possible? Or is it cancled out by forces of

evil, leaving a wise ruler to walk the fine line between them?



Medieval poltical theorists, the proscriptionists, were not alone in wanting

to believe that good behavior brought a reward to the person, and in the

case of a ruler, to the realm. If this principle is true, where if not

Anuire is it evidenced?



Kenneth Gauck

kgauck@mchsi.com