May 07, 2013 Neutral

[RJJ7]

Speaking in a real-world sense, there are two possible methods of interpreting one's ethical alignment. I will call them Action-morality and Intention-morality.

In Intention-morality, one is judged good or evil based on one's intentions. If one has 'good' intentions (e.g. reducing suffering, protecting innocents, etc.), then one is basically a 'good' person. The flaw I have commonly seen cited in this method is that one can have good intentions while still being a character that would be traditionally considered evil, such as Kore and Psimax. In Action-morality, one is judged good or evil based on one's actions. If one does 'good' things, then one is basically a 'good' person. The flaw I have commonly seen cited in this method is that some actions can be good or bad depending on one's intent. For example, killing someone can be either good or bad depending on one's purpose in doing so (self-defense vs murder). Most people seem to use a hybrid of the two that incorporates a lot of gut-instinct judgement calls.

It's not my intention to argue morality here, so let me just say that subscribing more to an Action-Morality system, I think Psimax is evil. The people who are arguing that he is more neutral are using a different moral philosophy (whether because they subscribe to it themselves, or whether because they believe that the D&D alignment system uses it is another matter).

Out of curiosity, would you people who have played the game say that D&D alignment is more action based or intention based? From what I can tell, it's a bit of a murky cross-reference. Your intentions determine your G-N-E standing, and your actions determine your L-N-C standing. I say "murky", because there is some bleed-over between categories. Some actions are off-limits to good characters, regardless of intentions. Likewise, your intentions do affect your L-N-C standing to a certain extent (though mostly insofar as it is your intention to promote order/chaos vs doing it accidentally). Psimax's intentions are good, yet no one has argued that he is Chaotic Good. Or is that merely social conditioning (i.e. everyone has a gut reaction against calling Psimax 'good'--even in a D&D sense--regardless of his intentions), and there really is a case to be made from D&D that Psimax is chaotic good?**

**Please, please, please understand that I am speaking purely in terms of D&D alignment, which I consider to have no real bearing on real-world good and evil. I don't want to be lynched for suggesting that the guy that splished Kin's tail is good.

[Jochi]

What if Kin had fed her leash and collar (VERY CAREFULLY!) into an oblivion hole, freeing her to use her full range of abilities?

What are kin's actual abilities? just abilities inherent to yuan-ti? or does kin have other powers?

http://www.goblinscomic.com/10222006/

"All of her Yuan-ti powers are subdued"

possibly includes a regeneration ability? or were you just suggesting she used the powers to defeat PsiMax?

Many lizards, including glass snakes, regenerate tails. I'm unaware of any snakes that do.
What Yuan-ti do is anybody's guess (THunt's option in other words).

[Reads_Forums]

Best as I can see Psimax starts off with standard Buddhist doctrine:

Existence is suffering
Suffering arises from attachment
There is an end to suffering

So far, so good. Batting .750 on the Noble Truths. He may have started doing all of this out of compassion for beings tied to the Great Wheel. Mutilating Kin was done out of shock and anger, not compassion, so he loses points, but nobody's perfect.

It's that last one

The end to suffering is following the Eightfold Path

where he falls down. Psimax isn't helping the MoM crawlers reach Enlightenment.

And he's absolutely right about Fogarth. All the FMKs have happily killed countless thinking, feeling creatures in pursuit of completely selfish goals - wealth, possessions, personal power. Fogarth and MinMax have racked up a body count in the millions even if they can't remember it because of the resets. (I cut Kin some slack because she is doing this out of duty towards her people, not personal greed) Fogarth only cares about Kin 156 because chance turned them into companions. Otherwise he would have happily slaughtered her or sighed with relief when Psimax exploded her tail.

If Psimax's is saving himself and others from a terrible fate and he is using the only means at his disposal to do so, avoids un-necessary cruelty and a few other things, then he could very well be non-evil. A little pain now to save them from the worst of all possible fates and all that. He could even be Good.

He certainly seems Lawful. After all Nirvana in D&D is the Realm of the True Lawful. And his methods of precision and absolute dedication to the fundamental rules of existence smack of Pure Law.

So Lawful Neutral, maybe even Lawful Good by a strange avenue. He only becomes Lawful Evil if his real goal is selfish - escape from existence for himself, rather than obedience to an imperative (Lawful Neutral) or compassion for himself and other suffering creatures (Lawful Good).

Interesting analysis, it's certainly a possibility ( it's also possible he's just a nutty 2d villain without any reasons for his motivation.) I agree he is lawful to his own motivations, I think we'd have to see more of him to judge his motivations, which we may not get. So far this run he's killed less people than minmax & co. Compared to the millions of deaths each group might be responsible for he's certainly not evil because of a few actions in a detached reality with no long term consequences.

Minimax has been attacking everyone in the tower room with no consideration for who they are, even an owner of the AoP. It's fine to kill people in the maze of many as it's not real killing. If psimax kersplishes everyone in the tower room is that evil? No one is judging minmax's actions because it's all fair play in the game and none of it matters in the long run. Why are psimax's actions evil and not minmax? Because he doesn't want to play THAT game, but a different one? If he attacked kin with intentions of winning the race, no one would make his attack on her absolute evil as good and evil characters would equally want to compete with our group alike.

Many on here seem to play, "I don't like his character and therefore he's CE", he may be misguided, but his intentions aren't those of evil. Someone who kills an innocent believing themselves to be doing the right thing probably wouldn't be cast as CE, and would regret their mistake. If someone successfully pointed out the flaw in his logic, would he change his actions? I think so, as everything he has done is consistent with his belief in what is right.

I'd say his personality is too severe to simply label, as if he is LN, he's so severely LN that his actions are unlike those that an average LN person would take.

Kersplishking kin would have been done by a good, neutral or evil character, the evil character may have taken the time to painfully finish her off in front of Forgath to persuade him to talk more freely.

What would happen if two good groups were left facing each other at the end of the MoM, they sit down and have tea and biscuits and debate who should leave first, rock paper scissors, or they attack each other and the winning group gets flipped to evil? I think they simply attack each other in the spirit of the game, possibly surrendering when the first party member falls to avoid the winning party have to suffer a permanent death.

[Operator]

Speaking in a real-world sense, there are two possible methods of interpreting one's ethical alignment. I will call them Action-morality and Intention-morality.

In Intention-morality, one is judged good or evil based on one's intentions. If one has 'good' intentions (e.g. reducing suffering, protecting innocents, etc.), then one is basically a 'good' person. The flaw I have commonly seen cited in this method is that one can have good intentions while still being a character that would be traditionally considered evil, such as Kore and Psimax. In Action-morality, one is judged good or evil based on one's actions. If one does 'good' things, then one is basically a 'good' person. The flaw I have commonly seen cited in this method is that some actions can be good or bad depending on one's intent. For example, killing someone can be either good or bad depending on one's purpose in doing so (self-defense vs murder). Most people seem to use a hybrid of the two that incorporates a lot of gut-instinct judgement calls.

It's not my intention to argue morality here, so let me just say that subscribing more to an Action-Morality system, I think Psimax is evil. The people who are arguing that he is more neutral are using a different moral philosophy (whether because they subscribe to it themselves, or whether because they believe that the D&D alignment system uses it is another matter).

I think there's a distinction to be made between ethics and meta-ethics. Ethics, which is what you're examining, is what judges actions, what we use to determine whether something someone does is good or evil. In this sense, all morality is "action-morality", since being able to discern the moral status of an action is the object of any ethical theory. So, I'd reject the idea of "action-morality" on the basis that it takes Good and Evil for granted insofar as it assumes that actions can somehow be evaluated in isolation. The tradition in contemporary philosophy tends, broadly speaking, to be split between deontological and consequentialist species of ethics. Deontological ethics isn't concerned so much with intentions as with conformity to a rule or a principle--those who argue that lying is categorically bad, or that killing a sentient creature is never permissible, are thinking deontologically. I think there's an argument to be had about whether these rules aren't articulated on the basis of statistically-likely consequences (Kant's criterion, for instance, asks us to imagine a world in which the principle we use to guide our actions could reasonably be employed by everyone--the criterion for reasonableness is the functionality of the world, as he suggests when he notes that we could never universalize the principle of lying for personal gain, given that the world would find itself paralyzed and without trust, clearly a consequentialist consideration), but that's neither here nor there--the explicit consequentialists, among whom I count Kore and Psimax, evaluate their actions on the basis of net outcomes; however, unlike the complex value sets most people possess, these characters are both completely one-dimensional in their pursuits. In the absence of any mediating local goals, then, they can commit themselves without hesitation to any course of action deemed necessary in pursuit of their ultimate goals. So, it's not just that they "intend well"--this is a meta-ethical consideration, by which I mean a question both of what Good and Evil fundamentally mean, and how we determine them. In isolation, Psimax's actions may be obviously evil insofar as they inflict suffering. When we ask why those actions are evil, though--perhaps because "suffering bad"--we get a larger picture, one in which Psimax may argue that he is actually minimizing aggregate suffering by inflicting smaller amounts of pain along the way. Yet, there's a still larger picture in which these values are defined and assigned to the side either of Good or Evil--why is it, for example, that suffering in general is wrong? I think Psimax's repulsion is existential, not ethical. I mean by this that he is only acting with respect to some arbitrarily-specified interest insofar as he makes explicit that he simply doesn't want to participate. He's incredibly careful, and, if his objections to existing were moral, I suspect he'd have voiced them that way.

Looking to what you write below, I'd argue the "some flavor of Neutral" crowd are right. And, while I understand that you're speaking strictly in alignment terms, I think part of the point is that alignments, precisely because they tend to look at actions in isolation (checked against intuitions about right and wrong), erroneously consign people to different sides (a conflict of which Psimax explicitly desires no part), or, worse, could be used to make anyone seem any kind of way depending on whether a character's actions are viewed in-context, and how many layers of context are retained (which judgments are, I think, very inconsistent in alignment terms, hence the confusion in the narrative).

Out of curiosity, would you people who have played the game say that D&D alignment is more action based or intention based? From what I can tell, it's a bit of a murky cross-reference. Your intentions determine your G-N-E standing, and your actions determine your L-N-C standing. I say "murky", because there is some bleed-over between categories. Some actions are off-limits to good characters, regardless of intentions. Likewise, your intentions do affect your L-N-C standing to a certain extent (though mostly insofar as it is your intention to promote order/chaos vs doing it accidentally). Psimax's intentions are good, yet no one has argued that he is Chaotic Good. Or is that merely social conditioning (i.e. everyone has a gut reaction against calling Psimax 'good'--even in a D&D sense--regardless of his intentions), and there really is a case to be made from D&D that Psimax is chaotic good?**

**Please, please, please understand that I am speaking purely in terms of D&D alignment, which I consider to have no real bearing on real-world good and evil. I don't want to be lynched for suggesting that the guy that splished Kin's tail is good.

[DrinksTooMuchCoffee]

Out of curiosity, would you people who have played the game say that D&D alignment is more action based or intention based?

I favor the motivation angle because it's more an inherent property of the character. If a character's alignment is just an accumulation of external circumstances then it rapidly loses meaning. One can come up with a host of less-than-altruistic reasons to save the princess from the dragon, such that knowing the motivation I'd have a hard time saying it makes a character with some of those motivations more "good" to have done so. And if saving the good princess from the evil dragon isn't necessarily "good", then what is? Also, in a world with devils and demons, the manifestations of Evil, I like "evil" to be more evil than just "Huh? What? That harmed someone? Uh, whatever, dude", and for them to desire to cause harm more than be indifferent to it. Again I'd have a hard time considering a character "good" if they just didn't care how many people they helped through their actions, but happened to do so by accident or circumstance independent of their motivation. If you go with pure actions as well, you can have someone perfectly pretending to be a Paladin, along with pinging as LG because they've acted just like a LG Paladin should, right up until they reveal it was part of their plan to plunge the world into never ending torment, which I find annoying. I'd like alignment to be a little more significant than "he's been acting this way". That's okay as in a karmic balance system, but is deficient from an omniscient authorial stance.

[Sheeva]

But the people running the dungeon never leave. Ever. You might call what eventually "wins" a duplicate, but that is not really the case. Basically it just rewinds to the beginning and you do it all over again. Even if you win and exit, when the Maze resets you are still inside at the beginning of the run.

This isn't how the maze works. Once your groups "wins", you're teleported out of the dungeon, and a new group from a different reality takes your place.

Maybe I missed something, but how does a new group "take your place"? Based on how MFK entered, an adventuring group has to willingly seek out and enter the MoM, which means there can be any number of groups in there at a time (depending on how many enter), which also means that the number should be increasing with each run, given that only one group ever leaves at a time.

[Glemp]

How does a new group "take your place"? Based on how MFK entered, an adventuring group has to willingly seek out and enter the MoM, which means there can be any number of groups in there at a time (depending on how many enter), which also means that the number should be increasing with each run, given that only one group ever leaves at a time.

Given that the Maze can bring every group to the time they started when they die, it is not unreasonable that 'spare' groups are held in suspension until a spot frees up.


...Cool avatar.

[Sheeva]

How does a new group "take your place"? Based on how MFK entered, an adventuring group has to willingly seek out and enter the MoM, which means there can be any number of groups in there at a time (depending on how many enter), which also means that the number should be increasing with each run, given that only one group ever leaves at a time.

Given that the Maze can bring every group to the time they started when they die, it is not unreasonable that 'spare' groups are held in suspension until a spot frees up.


...Cool avatar.

Has it been stated that there can NOT be more than the current number of groups? I may have missed that.

And thanks!

[WastesTime]

For me, Psimax has grown as a character EXTREMELY in this comic strip. Seriously, Thunt is the master of writing. Making us hate the character wholeheartedly and then make us jump straight into a heated argument over whether there is something to it or not in a single strip? This is true art when it comes to writing. This is wit, intelligence and awesome analysis of the human character right there for you!

[Sheeva]

What if Kin had fed her leash and collar (VERY CAREFULLY!) into an oblivion hole, freeing her to use her full range of abilities?

What are kin's actual abilities? just abilities inherent to yuan-ti? or does kin have other powers?

http://www.goblinscomic.com/10222006/

"All of her Yuan-ti powers are subdued"

possibly includes a regeneration ability? or were you just suggesting she used the powers to defeat PsiMax?

Based on what GS says in the update you linked, her powers are subdued "as long as someone holds the leash". Therefore, her powers are not currently subdued from the collar itself.

[RJJ7]

I favor the motivation angle because it's more an inherent property of the character. If a character's alignment is just an accumulation of external circumstances then it rapidly loses meaning.

*assumes deep growly voice*

It's not who I am underneath--it's what I do that defines me.

[willpell]

Speaking in a real-world sense, there are two possible methods of interpreting one's ethical alignment. I will call them Action-morality and Intention-morality.

Isn't this basically what Niezsche was getting at with "master" and "slave" moralities? The captain of industry improves the lives of millions of social plebs by forcing a handful of social rejects to labor at minimum wage to sustain the social order, and so by "master" morality he's Good, even when he whips several hundred "lazy bums" to make them work an 18-hour day? Saying his cruelty makes him Evil is only a "slave's" ignorant perspective, according to this? Someone who's actually studied Nietzsche can no doubt point out where I've misinterpreted him.

[DrinksTooMuchCoffee]

I favor the motivation angle because it's more an inherent property of the character. If a character's alignment is just an accumulation of external circumstances then it rapidly loses meaning.

*assumes deep growly voice*

It's not who I am underneath--it's what I do that defines me.

But that's too big to fit in the alignment field.

[DragonStryk72]

Yeah, definitely evil, Either Lawful or Neutral evil, but still evil. Let's remember that he killed his Kin in cold-blood multiple millions of times, and she was an ally, and even trying to flee from him. She was in no way a threat to him. That's it, evil as per D&D/AD&D/Pathfinder, he's a lawful target for smiting. Then there was the depraved indifference to the act itself, he didn't even turn to look at her when he destroyed her.

He doesn't get evil points for attacking Kin this time, as she was getting ready to snap his neck with her tail, that's self-defense.

[wonderdrow]

I think he's Lawfull Evil.

He's clearly a villain, and he's trying to force his own twisted view of Order, thus Lawfull Evil.

[AccursedBiscuit]

Thought I read something somewhere, about how Yuan-Ti can go into a shock/coma/hibernate stasis mode where they can slowly grow limbs back. Anyone care to confirm? I dunno, what if they find something similar to the Blue Orb of Bloodlight? Kin could get a really cool glowy tail. Any other tail replacement ideas?

[willpell]

Let's remember that he killed his Kin in cold-blood multiple millions of times.

Only a few hundred actually (I forget whether it was 200+ or 900+).

[Kore]

"I think he's Lawfull Evil."

"Quit cheating you cheater, how many times do I have to kill you before you die!"

So you think Minmax is evil because he was trying to kill a Paladin? Minmax may have done similar things nearly 2 million times in a row.

It is sad how you slander Psi-Max who is destroying many seeds of evil and thus making the world a better place, yet defend Minmax 156 who loves a monster.

[Glemp]

Let's remember that he killed his Kin in cold-blood multiple millions of times.

Only a few hundred actually (I forget whether it was 200+ or 900+).

Eight hundred and seventeen.


...Why is it these details I remember?!

[Pillbug]

Whether or not he Psimax can fit with the traditional D&D alignment system(I don't know much about it) he's clearly a ruthless antagonist working against the protagonists for what amounts to selfish reasons. He also comes off as someone who just finished "Nihilism 101," so even if his actions can somehow be read as sympathetic I can't take his motives very seriously. Sure, he can explain away his methods, but anything can be twisted into "the right thing to do."

And as for "this" Kin being special? She's special because Psimax killed her (or tried to; we haven't gotten to the end yet and they both THINK she's dead) in front of her friends and then argued that they shouldn't care about her because there are other Kins so she doesn't count. That's a straw argument. You care about people you love more than the people you don't know; that is basic understanding of "human" interaction. Stripping away the emotion doesn't make you smarter; it makes you less able to understand people, their motivations, and their capacity for amazing feats of empathy and protection. Psimax may be brilliant, but he has ignorance in equal measure.

On a less rant-y note: go Kin go!

[Kore]

for what amounts to selfish reasons

A selfish Psi Max would just jump into an oblivion hole. Psi max is trying to help everyone "out of hell" because he cares about everyone. He is looking for a final solution to the problems of pain and suffering and evil, it is not his fault if others are not far-sighted enough to appreciate it.

[Pillbug]

for what amounts to selfish reasons

A selfish Psi Max would just jump into an oblivion hole. Psi max is trying to help everyone "out of hell" because he cares about everyone.

If he cared about everyone he'd take their desires into consideration. At best he's a well-intentioned extremist. He's acting towards his personal ideal.

[langerhans]

What if Kin had fed her leash and collar (VERY CAREFULLY!) into an oblivion hole, freeing her to use her full range of abilities?

What are kin's actual abilities? just abilities inherent to yuan-ti? or does kin have other powers?

http://www.goblinscomic.com/10222006/

"All of her Yuan-ti powers are subdued"

possibly includes a regeneration ability? or were you just suggesting she used the powers to defeat PsiMax?

Based on what GS says in the update you linked, her powers are subdued "as long as someone holds the leash". Therefore, her powers are not currently subdued from the collar itself.

http://www.goblinscomic.com/07142009/

"my magical abilities may be dampened by the collar" - while no one was holding it, think it was mentioned somewhere else before then as well that kins abilities are continuously dampened whilst the collar is being worn, regardless of whether it's being held

[Glemp]

And as for "this" Kin being special? She's special because Psimax killed her (or tried to; we haven't gotten to the end yet and they both THINK she's dead) in front of her friends and then argued that they shouldn't care about her because there are other Kins so she doesn't count. That's a straw argument. You care about people you love more than the people you don't know; that is basic understanding of "human" interaction. Stripping away the emotion doesn't make you smarter; it makes you less able to understand people, their motivations, and their capacity for amazing feats of empathy and protection. Psimax may be brilliant, but he has ignorance in equal measure.

He isn't ignoring the emotional connection - rather, he's claiming that it isn't a valid argument, and that killing her makes him no more evil than FMK killing the other parties they've encountered, or even MM slaughtering his way through the Tower room below. Objectively, killing her is no different to, say...MM, Forgath and the Drow slaughtering their way through the GAP's village. After all, they didn't know the GAP, so Complains killing MM would be much more sad and tragic than the other way round, right?

[DuIstalri]

He isn't ignoring the emotional connection - rather, he's claiming that it isn't a valid argument, and that killing her makes him no more evil than FMK killing the other parties they've encountered, or even MM slaughtering his way through the Tower room below. Objectively, killing her is no different to, say...MM, Forgath and the Drow slaughtering their way through the GAP's village. After all, they didn't know the GAP, so Complains killing MM would be much more sad and tragic than the other way round, right?

On top of this, whenever FMK killed an alternate, they probably didn't view it as mattering much, because they would just be reset in the next run. Forgath's reaction here is more anger fuelled by horror at what has happened to a friend I think, especially considering how close they finally were to winning. We know for certain that Minmax, at least, killed good aligned people during the tower battle, (ScarMax is stated to be identical to regular Minmax personality wise) so applying any sort of alignment system to this particular dungeon crawl is a lot more difficult then anywhere else in the Thuntverse.

Of course, Psimax is still absolutely evil for his ultimate goal, and I want him to die horribly for what he did to Kin, but that is more due to the attachment I, as a fan of the comic, have to her. If we had been following one of the other teams during the tower battle, only for 'our' Minmax to kill one of them, we would want him dead just as much as we want Psimax.