These acts of goodness are concrete, positive means by which the heroes of the world fight against the darkness of evil. They are the meat and drink of the exalted hero, and should serve as an inspiration for how to play a character of good alignment, suggesting not only common actions but also motivations and personality traits.
So who are these “others” a good character is supposed to help? Again, the “good is not necessarily stupid” rule comes into play. Obviously, a good character is not required by her alignment to help evil characters or those who are working at crosspurposes to a good character’s own goals. However, altruism often blends into mercy in situations where a villain asks for quarter and aid (see Mercy below). In any case, altruism is tempered by respect for life and concern for the dignity of sentient beings, and good characters balance their desire to help others with their desire to promote goodness and life.
The idea that creatures too weak to better themselves deserve their low position is a hallmark of evil dogma. Good characters reject this notion completely, recognizing that most poor and needy people are the victims of circumstance, not of their own weakness or failings.
Many good characters devote their lives to healing as an expression of their morality. Pelor is a god of healing, and his clerics with the Healing domain make it their mission to share Pelor’s beneficence with others through healing. Even paladins, whose mission is primarily to smite evildoers, have the innate ability to heal wounds and remove disease as a reflection of their pure goodness. A character devoted to healing views the power to heal as a gift of celestial powers and is generally careful never to use that gift in a way that would cheapen or taint it—by healing evil characters, for example. On the other hand, some view healing as a means of grace, believing that every cure light wounds cast on a blackguard cannot help but lead the villain closer to repentance and redemption.
Forfeiting any claim on a reward for one’s deeds is a simple form of sacrifice touched upon in the previous section. Voluntarily donating money, goods, or even magic items to a temple, charitable institution (an orphanage or aid society), or other organization is another financial sacrifice often practiced by good characters. Exceptionally virtuous characters might swear sacred vows, forever sacrificing the enjoyment of some worldly pleasure—alcohol or stimulants, sex, or material possessions— or course of action, including violence. True heroes of righteousness, all too often, sacrifice their own lives to save the lives of others.
Good spells don’t have any redemptive influence on those who cast them, for better or worse. An evil wizard who dabbles in a few good spells, most likely to help him achieve selfish ends, does not usually decide to abandon his evil ways because he’s been purified by the touch of the holy. On the other hand, there are certain spells whose sanctified nature demands a concrete, physical sacrifice from the caster (see Sanctified Magic in Chapter 6). No character can draw upon such holy magic without being changed for the better as a result.
A good character must not succumb to that trap. Good characters must offer mercy and accept surrender no matter how many times villains might betray that kindness or escape from captivity to continue their evil deeds. If a foe surrenders, a good character is bound to accept the surrender, bind the prisoner, and treat him as kindly as possible. (See Mercy, Prisoners, and Redemption in Chapter 2 for more about the proper treatment of prisoners.)
In general, it’s a good idea for the DM to make sure that the players aren’t punished unnecessarily for showing mercy to opponents. If every prisoner schemes to betray the party and later escapes from prison, the players quickly come to realize that showing mercy simply isn’t worth it. It’s fine for these frustrations to arise once in a while, but if they happen every time, the players will rightly give up in frustration.
Forgiveness is essential to redemption. If those she has harmed refuse to forgive her, a character seeking to turn away from evil faces nothing but hatred and resentment from those who should be her new allies. Isolated from both her former allies and her former enemies, she nurses resentment and quickly slides back into her evil ways. By extending forgiveness to those who ask it, good characters actively spread good, both by encouraging those who are trying to turn away from evil and by demonstrating to evildoers that the path of redemption is possible.
A man whose body is wasting away from disease actually has two illnesses: the physical disease that consumes his flesh and the despair that gnaws at his soul. Healing him not only heals his body, it also restores his lost hope. A woman who throws herself on a paladin’s mercy and turns from her evil ways struggles along the difficult road to redemption. The paladin’s mercy and forgiveness offer the most important assistance along that road: hope, a vision of the reward that lies ahead.
Hope in its truest form is more than just a vague wish for things to be better than they are; it is a taste of things as they might be. When an exalted bard comes to a city that groans under the oppressive rule of a pit fiend, he may inspire hope by singing tales of liberation or by demonstrating force of arms against the pit fiend’s diabolic minions. But the best hope available to the oppressed residents of the city is when the bard simply shows them kindness, thereby reminding them of what it was like to live under a more benign rule. He brings them together in community, whereas the devils have been turning them against each other, sowing distrust alongside despair. By experiencing a taste of kindness and freedom, however small, the citizens are inspired with hope. That hope empowers them to resist the devils, with or without the bard’s force of arms.
Worse, it stinks of evil, robbing the victim of the freedom to choose and echoing the use of torture to extract the desired behavior. True redemption is a much more difficult and involved process, but truly virtuous characters consider the reward worth the effort involved. The process of redemption is described in Chapter 2: Variant Rules.
Of course, good characters recognize that some creatures are utterly beyond redemption. Most creatures described in the Monster Manual as “always evil” are either completely irredeemable or so intimately tied to evil that they are almost entirely hopeless. Certainly demons and devils are best slain, or at least banished, and only a naïve fool would try to convert them. Evil dragons might not be entirely beyond salvation, but there is truly only the barest glimmer of hope. On the other hand, a good character approaches every encounter with orcs, goblinoids, and even the thoroughly evil drow with heart and mind open to the possibility, however remote, that his opponents might some day be transformed into allies. Creatures that are “usually evil” can be redeemed. This is not to say that a good character’s first thought in an ambush should be, “How can I redeem these poor orcs?” However, if the ambushing orcs end up surrendering, there is ample opportunity to seek their redemption.
While the previous section outlined positive actions good characters can (and should) perform to improve the world and better the lot of those in it, this section discusses some of the difficult choices and decisions that characters trying to live up to high ideals are likely to face when those ideals make contact with reality.
Some good characters might view a situation where an evil act is required to avert a catastrophic evil as a form of martyrdom: “I can save a thousand innocent lives by sacrificing my purity.” For some, that is a sacrifice worth making, just as they would not hesitate to sacrifice their lives for the same cause. After all, it would simply be selfish to let innocents die so a character can hang on to her exalted feats. Unfortunately, this view is ultimately misguided. This line of thinking treats the purity of the good character’s soul as a commodity (like her exalted feats) that she can just give up or sacrifice like any other possession. In fact, when an otherwise good character decides to commit an evil act, the effects are larger than the individual character. What the character sees as a personal sacrifice is actually a shift in the universal balance of power between good and evil, in evil’s favor. The consequences of that single evil act, no matter how small, extend far beyond the single act and involve a loss to more than just the character doing the deed. Thus, it is not a personal sacrifice, but a concession to evil, and thus unconscionable.
Good ends might sometimes demand evil means. The means remain evil, however, and so characters who are serious about their good alignment and exalted status cannot resort to them, no matter how great the need.
Sometimes a situation might demand that a good character cooperate with an evil one in order to accomplish a worthy and righteous goal. The evil character might not even be pursuing the same goal. For example, a brief civil war has put a new ruling house in power in a drow city, and the new rulers start actively raiding the surface world. A party of good adventurers travels into the depths of the earth to stop the drow raids. At the same time, a party of evil drow loyal to the deposed house seeks to overthrow the new rulers and restore their house to its position of power. The two groups have different but mutually compatible goals, and it is possible—within certain limits—for them to cooperate with each other. However, the good characters must not tolerate any evil acts committed by an evil ally during the time of their alliance, and can’t simply turn a blind eye to such acts. They must ensure that helping the drow will put a stop to the surface raids, which might entail a level of trust the drow simply do not deserve. And of course they must not turn on their erstwhile allies when victory is in sight, betraying the trust the drow placed in them. Such a situation is dangerous both physically and morally, but cooperating with evil creatures is not necessarily evil in itself.
the cause of good expects and often demands that violence be brought to bear against its enemies. That said, there are certain limits upon the use of violence that good characters must observe. First, violence in the name of good must have just cause, which in the D&D world means primarily that it must be directed against evil. It is certainly possible for a good nation to declare war upon another good nation, but fighting in such a conflict is not a good act. In fact, even launching a war upon a nearby tribe of evil orcs is not necessarily good if the attack comes without provocation—the mere existence of evil orcs is not a just cause for war against them, if the orcs have been causing no harm. A full-scale war would provoke the orcs to evil deeds and bring unnecessary suffering to both sides of the conflict. Similarly, revenge is not an acceptable cause for violence, although violence is an appropriate means of stopping further acts of evil (as opposed to paying back evil already committed).
The second consideration is that violence should have good intentions. Launching an incursion into orc territory is not a good act if the primary motivation is profit, whether that means clearing the treasure out of the ruins the orcs inhabit or claim his own. That said, he is within his rights to expect the same treatment from them. Neutral characters are often joined to adventuring parties through bonds of friendship and loyalty to the other characters, and a good character respects those bonds and can trust a friend, even one who is not also good. Evil characters, however, typically join adventuring parties for purely selfish reasons. Paladins, of course, are prohibited from associating with evil characters, but other exalted PCs should also steer clear of evil companions, unless the evil character is attempting to reform herself and making progress toward neutrality at least.
Good characters in parties that also include neutral characters carry a weighty burden of responsibility. They should serve as examples of the good life, demonstrating the virtue and the rewards of following the righteous path. They must steer their neutral companions away from evil deeds, and ought to encourage them toward goodness, as gently or as bluntly as the individual case requires. Good characters can be guilty by association with neutral characters who commit evil deeds, and simply turning a blind eye to the questionable acts of their companions is not an acceptable option. This important prohibition can cause a great deal of friction within an adventuring party. Some players build their characters on the idea of being roguish, unsavory, perhaps a little brutal. If the paladin in the party is constantly getting in the way of that character’s approach to things, everyone’s enjoyment of the game is at risk. Many of these problems can be eliminated at the outset by working to achieve a consensus among the players regarding what kind of game you are going to play. That doesn’t mean that everyone needs to agree to play good characters and stick to the straight and narrow, but players who want to play neutral characters need to know up front what they’re getting into, and the whole group needs to decide to what extent ethical debate is going to be a part of every game session. If everyone’s happy with the paladin and the rogue constantly being at crosspurposes, and the group decides to make that a central part of the roleplaying experience, that’s fine—as long as the players treat each other with respect and the characters don’t split the party into two warring factions.
What does a good character do when he is opposed by good? Two good nations might go to war, two good adventuring parties might be working toward opposite goals, or two good characters might become bitter enemies. As discussed under Violence, above, violence against good creatures is not good. When conflict arises, as it certainly will at times, good characters must use every diplomatic means available to avoid the outbreak of violence, whether between nations, smaller groups, or individuals. In the D&D universe, if one side’s goals are actually evil, a relatively simple communespell can make that abundantly clear. Diplomacy might not always work, but the outbreak of violence is not just a failure of diplomacy, it is a failure of good and a victory for evil.
When fighting through a dungeon, characters needn’t switch to subdual tactics when they suddenly encounter evil dwarf minions. But if those minions surrender, it is best to take the prisoners back to town to stand trial for their crimes. When the adventure takes place in a city and the opponents are citizens of the city (rather than evil monsters from the sewers or deeper underground), subduing opponents and turning them over to the city watch is preferable to killing them and possibly being forced to stand trial for murder.
The principles of good make certain demands about how criminals are treated. The death penalty for serious crimes is commonly practiced and widely accepted and does not qualify as evil, even if many good characters, firm in their belief that redemption is always possible, would rather see even the vilest criminals offered the opportunity to find their way to righteousness during their imprisonment. Torturing prisoners, either to extract information or simply as a means of punishment, is unequivocally evil, however. This leads good characters (especially lawful good characters) into a dilemma: Is it wrong to turn a prisoner over to legitimate authorities knowing that the prisoner will be tortured and abused in captivity? Fortunately, the answer is straightforward, if sometimes difficult to implement. Yes, delivering a person over to be tortured, even if the person is thoroughly evil and the torturers are a legitimate authority, is evil. How to avoid being put in that position is a more difficult question, and one that depends greatly on the circumstances.
On the other hand, your campaign world might more closely reflect the realities of life in Earth’s Dark or Middle Ages. Perhaps women are not viewed as men’s equals or even sentient beings in their own right, slavery is widespread, testimony from serfs is only acceptable if extracted through torture, and humans of a certain skin tone (let alone nonhumans) are viewed as demonic creatures. It is vitally important to remember one thing: these factors don’t change anything else said in this chapter (or in the Book of Vile Darkness) about what constitutes a good or evil deed. Even if slavery, torture, or discrimination are condoned by society, they remain evil. That simply means that an exalted character has an even harder road to follow. Not only must she worry about external evils like conjured demons and rampaging orc hordes, she must also contend with the evil within her own society.
In all likelihood, most human (and halfling) societies fall somewhere between the two extremes described above. In game terms, humans tend to be neutral, neither good nor evil. Human societies might tolerate a variety of evil practices, even if some humans find them distasteful. In such a circumstance, an exalted character is still at odds with the norms of her society and may occasionally find herself in conflict with it, but she can devote her time and attention to dealing with evil acts, either inside or outside her society, rather than trying to reform an entire nation or culture.
In situations where a society’s practices put good characters at odds with it, a good character’s alignment is the strongest indicator of how she will deal with that conflict.
HELPING OTHERS
When a village elder comes to a good character and says, “Please help us, a dragon is threatening our village,” the good character’s response is not, “What can you pay?” Neutral characters might be that mercenary, and evil characters would certainly consider how to collect the most benefit from the situation. For a good character, however, helping others is a higher priority than personal gain. A good character might ask a number of other questions before leaping up from her seat and charging to the village’s aid: good characters aren’t necessarily stupid. A good character can be cautious, determining how powerful the dragon is and whether additional reinforcements are required, but she should never say, “Sorry, I’m out of my league. Go find another hero.” It’s just good sense to learn as much as possible about a foe before plunging into battle. Even more, a good character need not be naïvely trusting. Some might go to great lengths to verify that the elder’s story is true and not some villain’s attempt to lure them into a trap. All her caution or suspicion still doesn’t undermine a good character’s responsibility to offer help to those in need. Altruism is the first word in the Player’s Handbook’s definition of good, and helping others without reward or even thanks is part of a good character’s daily work.So who are these “others” a good character is supposed to help? Again, the “good is not necessarily stupid” rule comes into play. Obviously, a good character is not required by her alignment to help evil characters or those who are working at crosspurposes to a good character’s own goals. However, altruism often blends into mercy in situations where a villain asks for quarter and aid (see Mercy below). In any case, altruism is tempered by respect for life and concern for the dignity of sentient beings, and good characters balance their desire to help others with their desire to promote goodness and life.
CHARITY
One specific aspect of helping others is charity: providing material assistance to those in need, particularly those whose situation in life robs them of pride and respect. Offering food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, lodging to the homeless, care for orphans and widows, and hope to the hopeless are among the simplest and yet most profound of good deeds. Good characters offer this sort of assistance to needy people without regard for their moral character and with the utmost concern for their dignity.The idea that creatures too weak to better themselves deserve their low position is a hallmark of evil dogma. Good characters reject this notion completely, recognizing that most poor and needy people are the victims of circumstance, not of their own weakness or failings.
HEALING
Healing wounds, removing disease, and neutralizing poison are a concrete embodiment of a good character’s respect for life. These deeds are not inherently good, since they can be performed selfishly or in the interests of evil. Even so, healing magic involves positive energy, which is closely linked to holy power.Many good characters devote their lives to healing as an expression of their morality. Pelor is a god of healing, and his clerics with the Healing domain make it their mission to share Pelor’s beneficence with others through healing. Even paladins, whose mission is primarily to smite evildoers, have the innate ability to heal wounds and remove disease as a reflection of their pure goodness. A character devoted to healing views the power to heal as a gift of celestial powers and is generally careful never to use that gift in a way that would cheapen or taint it—by healing evil characters, for example. On the other hand, some view healing as a means of grace, believing that every cure light wounds cast on a blackguard cannot help but lead the villain closer to repentance and redemption.
PERSONAL SACRIFICE
A good character doesn’t just help others or fight evil when it’s convenient for him to do so. Even the most generous altruism, when it comes without sacrifice or even serves one’s own selfinterest, is neutral at best. A character committed to the cause of good champions that cause in any circumstance, often at great personal risk or cost.Forfeiting any claim on a reward for one’s deeds is a simple form of sacrifice touched upon in the previous section. Voluntarily donating money, goods, or even magic items to a temple, charitable institution (an orphanage or aid society), or other organization is another financial sacrifice often practiced by good characters. Exceptionally virtuous characters might swear sacred vows, forever sacrificing the enjoyment of some worldly pleasure—alcohol or stimulants, sex, or material possessions— or course of action, including violence. True heroes of righteousness, all too often, sacrifice their own lives to save the lives of others.
WORSHIPING GOOD DEITIES
The deities of good are the highest exemplars of the principles of virtue, righteousness, and purity. By offering them worship, sacrifice, and service, good characters cultivate their own personal virtue, assist the cause of good in concrete ways (supporting the charitable work of the church and strengthening the clerics and paladins who serve as the deity’s agents), and extend the deity’s reach in the world. Not all good characters worship good deities. Some serve neutral deities like St. Cuthbert, Obad-Hai, or Olidammara, while others put the claims of good above the dogma of any deity. Nevertheless, virtually all good characters are willing to cooperate with the churches of good deities, recognizing them as allies with a common cause. Unlike evil deities, good deities usually have temples and shrines in open, public places—often at or near the center of bustling cities. In fact, the worship of good deities is one of the forces that often helps to cement humanoid communities together, serving to unite the populace in a common activity and a common set of ideals. This is particularly common among nonhuman races of good alignment, including halflings, dwarves, and elves, where good alignment is the norm and a single deity often claims the allegiance of an entire community. However, it is common for even human cities to be drawn together in the worship of Pelor, who commands at least the respect of neutral citizens as well as good. Of course, in evil cultures, the worship of good deities can be both a crime and an act of rebellion.CASTING GOOD SPELLS
Good spells alleviate suffering, inspire hope or joy, use the caster’s energy or vitality to help or heal another, summon celestials, or channel holy power. Particularly in the last instance, good spells might be just as destructive—at least to evil creatures—as a fireball. Not all good spells involve only sweetness and light.Good spells don’t have any redemptive influence on those who cast them, for better or worse. An evil wizard who dabbles in a few good spells, most likely to help him achieve selfish ends, does not usually decide to abandon his evil ways because he’s been purified by the touch of the holy. On the other hand, there are certain spells whose sanctified nature demands a concrete, physical sacrifice from the caster (see Sanctified Magic in Chapter 6). No character can draw upon such holy magic without being changed for the better as a result.
MERCY
For good characters who devote their lives to hunting and exterminating the forces of evil, evil’s most seductive lure may be the abandonment of mercy. Mercy means giving quarter to enemies who surrender and treating criminals and prisoners with compassion and even kindness. It is, in effect, the good doctrine of respect for life taken to its logical extreme—respecting and honoring even the life of one’s enemy. In a world full of enemies who show no respect for life whatsoever, it can be extremely tempting to treat foes as they have treated others, to exact revenge for slain comrades and innocents, to offer no quarter and become merciless.A good character must not succumb to that trap. Good characters must offer mercy and accept surrender no matter how many times villains might betray that kindness or escape from captivity to continue their evil deeds. If a foe surrenders, a good character is bound to accept the surrender, bind the prisoner, and treat him as kindly as possible. (See Mercy, Prisoners, and Redemption in Chapter 2 for more about the proper treatment of prisoners.)
In general, it’s a good idea for the DM to make sure that the players aren’t punished unnecessarily for showing mercy to opponents. If every prisoner schemes to betray the party and later escapes from prison, the players quickly come to realize that showing mercy simply isn’t worth it. It’s fine for these frustrations to arise once in a while, but if they happen every time, the players will rightly give up in frustration.
FORGIVENESS
Closely tied to mercy, forgiveness is still a separate act. Mercy means respecting the life of an enemy, treating him like a being worthy of kindness. Forgiveness is an act of faith, a willingness to believe that even the vilest evildoer is capable of change. Good characters are not enjoined to “forgive and forget” every time someone harms them. At the simplest level, forgiveness means abdicating one’s right to vengeance. On a deeper level, if an evil character makes an effort to repent, turn away from evil, and lead a better life, a good character is called upon to encourage the reformed villain, let the past be past, and not to hold the character’s evil deeds against her.Forgiveness is essential to redemption. If those she has harmed refuse to forgive her, a character seeking to turn away from evil faces nothing but hatred and resentment from those who should be her new allies. Isolated from both her former allies and her former enemies, she nurses resentment and quickly slides back into her evil ways. By extending forgiveness to those who ask it, good characters actively spread good, both by encouraging those who are trying to turn away from evil and by demonstrating to evildoers that the path of redemption is possible.
BRINGING HOPE
If the most soullessly evil villains relish spreading despair and devouring every last shred of hope, it naturally follows that the cause of good involves rekindling hope in the face of despair. This might be the most nebulous of all good deeds, hard to define or measure, but it also might be the heart and essence of good. All the other good deeds discussed in this section, in addition to their often concrete and physical benefits to people in need, have the additional intangible benefit of increasing hope.A man whose body is wasting away from disease actually has two illnesses: the physical disease that consumes his flesh and the despair that gnaws at his soul. Healing him not only heals his body, it also restores his lost hope. A woman who throws herself on a paladin’s mercy and turns from her evil ways struggles along the difficult road to redemption. The paladin’s mercy and forgiveness offer the most important assistance along that road: hope, a vision of the reward that lies ahead.
Hope in its truest form is more than just a vague wish for things to be better than they are; it is a taste of things as they might be. When an exalted bard comes to a city that groans under the oppressive rule of a pit fiend, he may inspire hope by singing tales of liberation or by demonstrating force of arms against the pit fiend’s diabolic minions. But the best hope available to the oppressed residents of the city is when the bard simply shows them kindness, thereby reminding them of what it was like to live under a more benign rule. He brings them together in community, whereas the devils have been turning them against each other, sowing distrust alongside despair. By experiencing a taste of kindness and freedom, however small, the citizens are inspired with hope. That hope empowers them to resist the devils, with or without the bard’s force of arms.
REDEEMING EVIL
Perhaps the greatest act of good one could ever hope to accomplish is the redemption of an evil soul. Bringing an evil character to see the error of her ways not only stops her from preying on innocent victims, but helps her as well, winning her a place in the blessed afterlife of the Upper Planes instead of an eternity of torment and damnation in the Lower. While acts of charity and healing might help a person’s body, redeeming an evil character helps her soul. Holding a sword to a captured villain’s throat and shouting, “Worship Heironeous or die!” is not a means of redemption. Sword-point conversion might be a useful political tool, but it is almost entirely without impact on the souls of the “converts.”Worse, it stinks of evil, robbing the victim of the freedom to choose and echoing the use of torture to extract the desired behavior. True redemption is a much more difficult and involved process, but truly virtuous characters consider the reward worth the effort involved. The process of redemption is described in Chapter 2: Variant Rules.
Of course, good characters recognize that some creatures are utterly beyond redemption. Most creatures described in the Monster Manual as “always evil” are either completely irredeemable or so intimately tied to evil that they are almost entirely hopeless. Certainly demons and devils are best slain, or at least banished, and only a naïve fool would try to convert them. Evil dragons might not be entirely beyond salvation, but there is truly only the barest glimmer of hope. On the other hand, a good character approaches every encounter with orcs, goblinoids, and even the thoroughly evil drow with heart and mind open to the possibility, however remote, that his opponents might some day be transformed into allies. Creatures that are “usually evil” can be redeemed. This is not to say that a good character’s first thought in an ambush should be, “How can I redeem these poor orcs?” However, if the ambushing orcs end up surrendering, there is ample opportunity to seek their redemption.
THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW
The choice to follow the path of exalted deeds means picking one’s way among complicated moral issues and painful dilemmas. It means questioning some of the common assumptions about what’s acceptable in the context of a D&D adventure.While the previous section outlined positive actions good characters can (and should) perform to improve the world and better the lot of those in it, this section discusses some of the difficult choices and decisions that characters trying to live up to high ideals are likely to face when those ideals make contact with reality.
ENDS AND MEANS
When do good ends justify evil means to achieve them? Is it morally acceptable, for example, to torture an evil captive in order to extract vital information that can prevent the deaths of thousands of innocents? Any good character shudders at the thought of committing torture, but the goal of preventing thousands of deaths is undeniably a virtuous one, and a neutral character might easily consider the use of torture in such a circumstance. With evil acts on a smaller scale, even the most virtuous characters can find themselves tempted to agree that a very good end justifies a mildly evil means. Is it acceptable to tell a small lie in order to prevent a minor catastrophe? A large catastrophe? A world-shattering catastrophe? In the D&D universe, the fundamental answer is no, an evil act is an evil act no matter what good result it may achieve. A paladin who knowingly commits an evil act in pursuit of any end no matter how good still jeopardizes her paladinhood. Any exalted character risks losing exalted feats or other benefits of celestial favor if he commits any act of evil for any reason. Whether or not good ends can justify evil means, they certainly cannot make evil means any less evil.Some good characters might view a situation where an evil act is required to avert a catastrophic evil as a form of martyrdom: “I can save a thousand innocent lives by sacrificing my purity.” For some, that is a sacrifice worth making, just as they would not hesitate to sacrifice their lives for the same cause. After all, it would simply be selfish to let innocents die so a character can hang on to her exalted feats. Unfortunately, this view is ultimately misguided. This line of thinking treats the purity of the good character’s soul as a commodity (like her exalted feats) that she can just give up or sacrifice like any other possession. In fact, when an otherwise good character decides to commit an evil act, the effects are larger than the individual character. What the character sees as a personal sacrifice is actually a shift in the universal balance of power between good and evil, in evil’s favor. The consequences of that single evil act, no matter how small, extend far beyond the single act and involve a loss to more than just the character doing the deed. Thus, it is not a personal sacrifice, but a concession to evil, and thus unconscionable.
Good ends might sometimes demand evil means. The means remain evil, however, and so characters who are serious about their good alignment and exalted status cannot resort to them, no matter how great the need.
Sometimes a situation might demand that a good character cooperate with an evil one in order to accomplish a worthy and righteous goal. The evil character might not even be pursuing the same goal. For example, a brief civil war has put a new ruling house in power in a drow city, and the new rulers start actively raiding the surface world. A party of good adventurers travels into the depths of the earth to stop the drow raids. At the same time, a party of evil drow loyal to the deposed house seeks to overthrow the new rulers and restore their house to its position of power. The two groups have different but mutually compatible goals, and it is possible—within certain limits—for them to cooperate with each other. However, the good characters must not tolerate any evil acts committed by an evil ally during the time of their alliance, and can’t simply turn a blind eye to such acts. They must ensure that helping the drow will put a stop to the surface raids, which might entail a level of trust the drow simply do not deserve. And of course they must not turn on their erstwhile allies when victory is in sight, betraying the trust the drow placed in them. Such a situation is dangerous both physically and morally, but cooperating with evil creatures is not necessarily evil in itself.
VIOLENCE
Violence is a part of the D&D world, and not inherently evil in the context of that world. The deities of good equip their heroes not just to be meek and humble servants, but to be their fists and swords, their champions in a brutal war against the forces of evil. A paladin smiting a blackguard or a blue dragon is not committing an evil act:the cause of good expects and often demands that violence be brought to bear against its enemies. That said, there are certain limits upon the use of violence that good characters must observe. First, violence in the name of good must have just cause, which in the D&D world means primarily that it must be directed against evil. It is certainly possible for a good nation to declare war upon another good nation, but fighting in such a conflict is not a good act. In fact, even launching a war upon a nearby tribe of evil orcs is not necessarily good if the attack comes without provocation—the mere existence of evil orcs is not a just cause for war against them, if the orcs have been causing no harm. A full-scale war would provoke the orcs to evil deeds and bring unnecessary suffering to both sides of the conflict. Similarly, revenge is not an acceptable cause for violence, although violence is an appropriate means of stopping further acts of evil (as opposed to paying back evil already committed).
The second consideration is that violence should have good intentions. Launching an incursion into orc territory is not a good act if the primary motivation is profit, whether that means clearing the treasure out of the ruins the orcs inhabit or claim his own. That said, he is within his rights to expect the same treatment from them. Neutral characters are often joined to adventuring parties through bonds of friendship and loyalty to the other characters, and a good character respects those bonds and can trust a friend, even one who is not also good. Evil characters, however, typically join adventuring parties for purely selfish reasons. Paladins, of course, are prohibited from associating with evil characters, but other exalted PCs should also steer clear of evil companions, unless the evil character is attempting to reform herself and making progress toward neutrality at least.
Good characters in parties that also include neutral characters carry a weighty burden of responsibility. They should serve as examples of the good life, demonstrating the virtue and the rewards of following the righteous path. They must steer their neutral companions away from evil deeds, and ought to encourage them toward goodness, as gently or as bluntly as the individual case requires. Good characters can be guilty by association with neutral characters who commit evil deeds, and simply turning a blind eye to the questionable acts of their companions is not an acceptable option. This important prohibition can cause a great deal of friction within an adventuring party. Some players build their characters on the idea of being roguish, unsavory, perhaps a little brutal. If the paladin in the party is constantly getting in the way of that character’s approach to things, everyone’s enjoyment of the game is at risk. Many of these problems can be eliminated at the outset by working to achieve a consensus among the players regarding what kind of game you are going to play. That doesn’t mean that everyone needs to agree to play good characters and stick to the straight and narrow, but players who want to play neutral characters need to know up front what they’re getting into, and the whole group needs to decide to what extent ethical debate is going to be a part of every game session. If everyone’s happy with the paladin and the rogue constantly being at crosspurposes, and the group decides to make that a central part of the roleplaying experience, that’s fine—as long as the players treat each other with respect and the characters don’t split the party into two warring factions.
DIVIDED LOYALTIES
For better or for worse, a paladin is not just good: she is lawful good, sworn not just to uphold the principles of good but also bound by a code of conduct, and subject to local law as well. Many paladins are also members of a specific deity’s church, a knightly order of some sort, or both. At the best of times, these various loyalties—her code of conduct, her church’s laws, her order’s demands, the laws of her nation, and the abstraction of her alignment—are all in harmony, and her path is clear before her. When circumstances are not so ideal, she finds herself torn between conflicting demands: her superior in her knightly order commands her to kill a brutal murderer who has escaped punishment in court on a legal technicality, for example. Her personal code requires that she punish those that harm innocents, and this killer certainly falls in that category. However, her personal code also instructs her to respect legitimate authority, which includes both her knightly superior and the local law that has let the killer go free. The demands of her good alignment suggest she should punish the wrongdoer, but the demands of her lawful alignment insist that she obey the judgment of the court. It is entirely possible that either her superior or the magistrate in the case is corrupt or even possessed. Whom does she obey? How does she sort out the conflicting demands of her loyalties? Paladins are by no means alone in this situation. Any character who tries consistently to do good eventually finds himself in a situation where different loyalties are in conflict. Chaotic good characters might care far less about a potentially corrupt or at least ineffectual court system, but they might have other personal standards or obligations that cause conflict in similar or different situations. In the end, however, many such conflicts boil down to a question of priorities, and for a character who aspires to exalted deeds, good is the highest priority. In the example above, the murderer must at least be captured, if not killed, before he can kill again. If she has reason to suspect corruption, either in the court or in her own order, the paladin must attempt to uncover it, though it might mean being cast out of her order, punished under local law, or both. Her paladinhood and her exalted status remain intact, since she acted in the cause of good even when that required questioning the legitimacy of authority. Magistrates or knightly superiors who serve the cause of evil while posing as agents of good are not legitimate authority, and the paladin is right for exposing their corruption.What does a good character do when he is opposed by good? Two good nations might go to war, two good adventuring parties might be working toward opposite goals, or two good characters might become bitter enemies. As discussed under Violence, above, violence against good creatures is not good. When conflict arises, as it certainly will at times, good characters must use every diplomatic means available to avoid the outbreak of violence, whether between nations, smaller groups, or individuals. In the D&D universe, if one side’s goals are actually evil, a relatively simple communespell can make that abundantly clear. Diplomacy might not always work, but the outbreak of violence is not just a failure of diplomacy, it is a failure of good and a victory for evil.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
When dealing with evildoers who are citizens of the realm specifically, or members of the civilized humanoid races (dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, human) in general, it is often preferable to bring evildoers to justice in the form of legitimate legal authority rather than meting out that justice oneself.When fighting through a dungeon, characters needn’t switch to subdual tactics when they suddenly encounter evil dwarf minions. But if those minions surrender, it is best to take the prisoners back to town to stand trial for their crimes. When the adventure takes place in a city and the opponents are citizens of the city (rather than evil monsters from the sewers or deeper underground), subduing opponents and turning them over to the city watch is preferable to killing them and possibly being forced to stand trial for murder.
The principles of good make certain demands about how criminals are treated. The death penalty for serious crimes is commonly practiced and widely accepted and does not qualify as evil, even if many good characters, firm in their belief that redemption is always possible, would rather see even the vilest criminals offered the opportunity to find their way to righteousness during their imprisonment. Torturing prisoners, either to extract information or simply as a means of punishment, is unequivocally evil, however. This leads good characters (especially lawful good characters) into a dilemma: Is it wrong to turn a prisoner over to legitimate authorities knowing that the prisoner will be tortured and abused in captivity? Fortunately, the answer is straightforward, if sometimes difficult to implement. Yes, delivering a person over to be tortured, even if the person is thoroughly evil and the torturers are a legitimate authority, is evil. How to avoid being put in that position is a more difficult question, and one that depends greatly on the circumstances.
BEING AHEAD OF YOUR TIME
Heroic characters often end up at odds with their culture and society. The standards expected of good characters in D&D, especially those who lay claim to exalted status, bear much more similarity to modern sensibilities about justice, equality, and respect for life than to the actual medieval world that D&D is loosely based on, and that is quite intentional. It is certainly possible that your campaign world might be a more enlightened place than medieval Europe—a place where men and women are considered equal, slavery is not practiced in any form, torture and capital punishment are shunned, and the various human and humanoid races live together in harmony. In such a case, an exalted character can live in relative peace with her culture, and focus her attention on slaying evil creatures in ruins and dungeons or rival, evil nations.On the other hand, your campaign world might more closely reflect the realities of life in Earth’s Dark or Middle Ages. Perhaps women are not viewed as men’s equals or even sentient beings in their own right, slavery is widespread, testimony from serfs is only acceptable if extracted through torture, and humans of a certain skin tone (let alone nonhumans) are viewed as demonic creatures. It is vitally important to remember one thing: these factors don’t change anything else said in this chapter (or in the Book of Vile Darkness) about what constitutes a good or evil deed. Even if slavery, torture, or discrimination are condoned by society, they remain evil. That simply means that an exalted character has an even harder road to follow. Not only must she worry about external evils like conjured demons and rampaging orc hordes, she must also contend with the evil within her own society.
In all likelihood, most human (and halfling) societies fall somewhere between the two extremes described above. In game terms, humans tend to be neutral, neither good nor evil. Human societies might tolerate a variety of evil practices, even if some humans find them distasteful. In such a circumstance, an exalted character is still at odds with the norms of her society and may occasionally find herself in conflict with it, but she can devote her time and attention to dealing with evil acts, either inside or outside her society, rather than trying to reform an entire nation or culture.
In situations where a society’s practices put good characters at odds with it, a good character’s alignment is the strongest indicator of how she will deal with that conflict.