Shattered Kingdoms

A principled character would avoid taking the gear for this very reason, to avoid any spot on his honor or suspect for his motives. RP the evil gray - fine. Take his gear knowing the hue and cry it would cause.. no principled char would make that sacrifice of honor/virtue/yada for any gear. The game is very different for principled alignments.

I would. I've played several principled characters, and they've been my favorites. And yes, I'm one of the ones arguing for enforcing the alignment.

It's an alignment for characters ruled by honorable philosophies, and all the roleplay that comes with the resulting friction. And that alignment (ideally) gets you recognized as a safe friend by anyone but the most evil. Great for playing preachers, diplomats, and other civilization-builders for example. Faster levelling is another plus; lighties generally have better training zones, and you get the full alignment disparity advantage.

No, it's not for people seeking to make a splash with PK, but that has its appeal. And if you like PK in moderation, it's easy enough to get into a position that will force you to fight for good cause - tribunal membership if nothing else. And if your PK is moderate, are a few items you can't steal really that important?

However, principled characters can't be recognized as generally good to people, when they're killing people with abandon. Permitting people to grossly violate the alignment makes it lose value, along with the rest of the alignment system.



Absolutely. All alignments should be enforced. Maybe then we'll have less silliness like a diabolic leading the Harlequins, to take one well-known example.

If the sole reason behind a principled character killing an individual (NPC or player) of gray aura simply because they wanted an item, I would call this action lacking civility, honor, and virtue...

Now if there was some further reasoning -> there was knowledge this item was going to be part of some sinister plot, this selfish person had managed to fight and take it from another, so on so forth.. and to regain the item would thus be considered an act of righteousness, then it would make sense to give challenge and recover the item if a vocal confrontation and other less violent tactics are less fruitful. There would also be some merit in stunning rather than killing the individual and recovering the item.

Thus, to answer the question - it's neither white nor black, and can't judge it by the action itself. A dagger is neither good nor evil. It is the intent behind the action which reveals its nature.

It's a peeve of mine when someone doesn't think you are RPing right because their vision does not see the various .. shades of gray.

Some of us are Sith, and live in a world of absolutes.

Essentially, a principled character needs to have a greater motivation besides getting the NPC's things. I could see a principled killing grey soldiers of the Empire during wartime, claiming spoils of war from their gear. I could see the more zealous ones killing grey NPCs tainted with the slightest hint of evil, since they obviously need to be purged for not changing their ways all these years.

There is also no such thing as a One True Formula for knowing when someone is unrepentantly evil. Some principled characters will have a shorter fuse than others, e.g. the self-righteous Hammer Alshainite will be quicker to put the gank on than the pacifistic Aludran priest. The alignment has enough room for both of these.

A couple of things I'd like to point out.

Muktar, you said that the inquisition and the crusades did not have the blessing of their god, and thus were not righeous. Unless you yourself have talked to God, and he has told you that, you cannot prove this point.
In fact, the Inquisition and the Crusades were endorsed by the Pope, who is one of the closest examples of a living god we have in real life. They also were were hailed as the bastions of Christianity and all that is right and good, purging evil from the world. Yes, evil people were involved, but the act and the vast majority of people were good.

Secondly, there have been complaints that the excuse "Because HE did it, I can do it." is a poor one, and that former characters should not be pointed out as examples of a principled character. I ask why not? Halcidan in particular was, and still is, exalted as a posterchild of the principled alignment. Just look at any "Who's your favorite characters" list, and you'll see that's the case.

It is entirely plausible for principled characters to be killing greybies. An Ainite is the easiest example, because Ain's antithesis is Choas, which is predominantly a grey-aura faith. Furthermore, it is a common extention that anyone with a grey heart is disorderly within themselves, and thus must be removed. An Alshainite can easily say that anyone not of a Light heart must be removed, and there have been a number of examples of this RP. These are just two examples I could come up with quickly.

I dont think a principled-aura character should kill greybies solely for lewt, no. But there are MANY reasons that greybies would be killed by one of principled aura.

Finally, in reading the helpfile for Principled, I feel it is poorly written I mean, come on "Those laws were most likely placed there by others of the same alignment"? That's naive, not principled.

I didn't see anyone so far bring up the fact that you can loot a character without killing them if you use mode stun. That eliminates any need for a lightie to kill a grey-aura for gear. Mugging someone from their gear is not really appropriate for principled characters either, but I still see it as a much lesser ethical infraction than murder.

I think it's worse than murder. You beat someone to within an inch of their life, and take their [REDACTED], and leave them there helpless. But that's just my point of view.

If it wasnt so hard to know what said character had in their inventory. Perhaps "get all <target>" could be used on stunned foes to loot their inventory. Get object still needed to remove their armor from worn to show you need to put some effort into taking armor off. I did mention it with the note that NPCs can become aggressive until killed after you have done this which means you end up having to kill them anyway.

Yeah, I think I agree there, GL.