Shattered Kingdoms

Being merciless towards one's legitimate foe is arguably good. How good is a soldier who won't shoot the enemy? I realize you're thinking of less extreme cases. Still, I suggest that such high virtues as showing love to one's enemies befit principled characters more than scrupulous.

IIRC, one of the original models for scrupulous characters was Dirty Harry. In one movie, this fictional policeman:
1. tortured a kidnapper to make him reveal the location of a hostage in desparate need of medical care.
2. tricked that same kidnapper into going for his gun, thus giving Harry an excuse to gun the kidnapper down - which he did.

Sounds pretty ruthless to me.



The question is NOT what the character rationalizes for the greater good. You're right that even diabolic characters can so justify themselves. Rather, the character's goals must truly be good. As the original help file states: "They have the best of intentions...", not "They claim the best of intentions...".

The only wiggle room here is what the greater good is. We allow characters to weigh the relative merits of virtues and blessings, and act accordingly. However, a character who's obviously straying from the mark is not good. Killers for a ignoble cause tend to fit aberrant best, no matter how noble they think or claim their cause to be.

To respond to Marilyn's post



It's a non-vote. Its only advantage is you can see the poll results without pushing a button every time you enter the thread. Named for the immortal who requested it a few times.



You're absolutely right. The idea is to come up with your character's views, and then pick the best fit of the 7 alignment options. That makes the mechanics work out. It also encourages a certain amount of consistency.

For example, in the case you describe, his adherence to such strong ethical standards suggests principled as the best choice. If he were a bigger hypocrite, though, one could argue for unprincipled. It's a judgement call.

No . . .By what you are saying is that is that the ends justify the means no matter what the means are.

(I have zero idea where you live but this is an example) By your logic, if you killed my parents and some other people (fiction of course) and I found out that you were living in New York. New York said that they won't get involved. That then gives me the right to nuke the entire fricken town just to make sure your dead. The goal is just, bringing a mass murderer to justice. I really wish people would stop trying to argue that the ends justify the means.

Dirty Harry was a really good movie, one of my favorites. If that is what scrupulous means then it is not one of the lightie alignments. Dirty Harry was unscrupulous. He was completely selfish in his motivations. If you want a more realistic model of scrupulous, try Robin Hood, Bat Man, or even vast majority of interrogators for the police. They might "bend" what is good but they're not just cruel people to obtain their objective.

It's completely possible to play a pacifist, you just have to follow the rules of not getting PK'd.

Forsooth and Sklz covered my thoughts pretty well.



Saying that "the ends do not justify the means" is a MORAL and ETHICAL judgement that YOU are placing onto that belief. It is a product of YOUR upbringing and YOUR way of thinking. It does not necessarily apply to everyone, or to all circumstances.

For instance, let's say the criminal in NY has a remote nuclear detonator for the other 5 largest cities in the U.S. and is going to set it off. Would I be in favor of nuking him then if I had no other option? Sure. I don't know if you would too, but as a hunch I'd say yes. If so, then you believe that the end DOES justify the means, "but only under certain circumstances." If you say no, it could be very easily argued that you took a "non-good" path by letting many more innocent lives die AND the criminal gets away.

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I'll take this time to remind people that the SK alignments are based on a Palladium system and not a D&D one. Scrupulous is not at all like Chaotic Good, for instance. Palladium's alignments were based along the core concept of selfishness. Basically, there is unselfish, selfish, and selfish to the point that you're so selfish you're willing to go out of your way to hurt others for your own enjoyment. The secondary concept is that of honor or obeyance to the law which is the main thing that separates principled from scrupulous and aberrant from other darkies.

There is no true "good", "evil" or "neutral" in the palladium world.

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As for our Nerina example, the difference between a scrupulous character and a diabolic one is that the lightie does not WANT to hurt people uninvolved with the situation, but will if necessary. The lightie takes no pleasure in the additional violence, but believes such is necessary to accomplish a higher goal.




It depends on the situation. I've had necros who were good enough to stay alive 99% of the time INTENTIONALLY sit in the Inn there just to mock the Hammer and try to hide behind the laws. Darkies aren't stupid- they know the hurdles the Hammer has to jump to get to them.


Nowhere in my example does it say the lightie was happy about it. If it was possible I'd expect the lighties to attempt to stun, but not to the point where it'd jeopardize their main target.


Talons (or gray ones at least, and some light) defend their laws, just like any good tribunal. The fact that previously the talons put no moral judgement on their laws made life much harder for the Hammer.

CASE STUDY:
For instance, I asked this exact question to a Talon leader:

"If a man murdered, in cold blood, for NO reason, a young one barely a league outside your borders, then came here for refuge from the Hammer, would you let me slay him or at least bring him to justice yourself, as long as I could give you perfect evidence that such occurred?"

Of course, the answer was no. The Talons were very gray oriented at the time. They didn't want to get involved in politics (impossible in SK, as it should be) and didn't want the Hammer or the Adepts on their [REDACTED]. Unfortunately, that's not possible.

What ended up occurring was that we'd spot an enemy in Nerina, ask the Talons to do something (and then they refused), then go in and kill the enemy with the least possible collateral damage. That means either stunning the Talons or wording out after the kill. Afterwards, we'd turn ourselves in.

The Talons (I assume) were pressured by the darkies to give them better protection, so they ended up warning the targets when we asked them do something and the targets escaped. We countered by stopping the advance warnings.

Does that seem like an unrealistic or un-scrupulous solution? The Hammer fully believes that it is empowered by the gods to do whatever the damn hell it wants to purge "evil". If others try to stop them, they're no better than the evil itself. Is it "good"? I certainly have no capacity to make such a judgement, and I don't think anyone else does, either.

In fact, an example very, very, very similar to that is nearly standardized (so far as I know) as a Hammer recruitment question. It's a core part of their philosophy.

I purposefully made my griffon scrupulous to avoid the complete and utter pacifist position that would otherwise have been forced on me.

Nothing is "forced" onto anyone, nor is being principled necessarily being pacifistic.



"Those laws were most likely placed there by others of the same alignment."

That pretty much says it. I don't see a principled character following a law they consider injust or ethically wrong. As for violence as a last resort- if you're chasing a Midnight Council member in Menegroth, your other courses of action run out pretty damn fast. Somehow I think "o corp e; o serg e; o capta e;" is a good sign he doesn't want to talk about it.

But, subject to what the ends are, it does to a scrupulous mindset.

I suspect that the thing you're overlooking is that it's possible to play a character with a scrupulous alignment and still be damned because you got it wrong. IN CHARACTER.

I think the helpfile is perfect as it is. It's served for years, and provides the perfect framework for a wealth of different mind-sets character types that fit within an essentially virtuous but potentially flawed pattern.

Besides which, personally speaking, I view the different auras as an indicator of the remorse a character might feel for certain actions, not a dictat on whether those actions would be taken in the first place.

Then I don't pay too much attention to the letter of the rules, it's the spirit behind them that's the important bit. Creativity requires a degree of ambiguity and flexibility.

Am I the only one who things that the Alignment helpfiles are general guidelines and not to be taken to the word then? (boggle)

Personally, I think some people are squeezing just a bit too much "evil" into the scrupulous tag. That said, I don't really see a need to alter the helpfile.

Side note: It is possible to play a scrupulous pacifist.