For an extreme example, amongst us humans we may consider someone as “good” but a cow being raised for food would see us a bad.
This seems like false example ...
Even the best among Good beings hunt, eat, and kill ... sometimes even without remorse, or second thougths. And it never made them anymore Evil.
If you would like to use Cow raised for food as example ...
Good character would give her as full life as possible, enough space, good food, proper medical care, and kill her as clean and painless as possible.
Evil character on the other hand would probably keep her in some dark, deep, depresive shed, surounded by remains of other cows, almost starved to death and most likely will even torture her just for fun, before he kill her.
A Goblin that eats other sentient beings, may be a good provider for it’s clan and a hero.
Being a hero in eyes of your Evil race doesnt make you much less Evil.
The point of Alignments isnt to determine if your character is popular among his own people, but to determine if those people have higher chance to help you (good), harm you (evil), or ignore you (neutral).
That said, Goblin who provided sentient beings as food for his own clan is still Evil, even tho he helped "technically" his own ...
For one, he sees other races as lesser, that is one of signs for Evil character.
For two, he attacked them and get their bodies to be eaten ... if he would be Good, he would search for option to feed his own while make minimal harm to the others ... wich would probably mean gather some wildberries, or (presuming Goblins are purely carnivous) even steal some meat from those sentient beings rather than just kill and eat them.
And finaly, the fact that other Goblins eat here is just side effect, they didnt attacked to feed others, they just attacked and then there was meat that could be eaten.
A white dragon may not be innately evil per say, but will see other beings like a cat sees a rat.
But they are ...
That is difference between DnD and Reality ... in our world we are beings of free will, capable of anything on scale between Lawfull Good and Chaotic Evil ...
In DnD tho, there are beings who dont have such luxury ...
- Either they "tend to ne G/E", that is still better option, since they can willingly fight it if they want to, but still its not so easy for them as for others who dont "ted to G/E" ... example would be Half-Orcs
- Or (and that is also quite common), they simply "are G/E", wich basicaly mean that they cannot understand the concept of other Alingment ... such being isnt Evil bcs it choose to, its simply its nature, just as we tend to think about this, just as wild animal either runs or attack ... in the same manner they Destroy, kill, torture, and do all those Evil stuff ... their heads (or souls if you wish) are simply unable to grip any other concept.
To put it simply ...
If you use wounded animal as an example ...
Good character see someone who needs help.
Neutral character see wounded animal.
Evil character see a toy.
And they all can see food.
Sometimes it is cultural (then there is possibility for redemption, but it is hard and long road), sometimes it is their nature (then they are basicaly lost).
There are exceptions tho, but as Niara (i believe) allready said here ... being who manage to change his aligment ceases to exist, and is shaped to its new form fitting the new alignment.
I mean have you ever seen Zariel (
celestial /
fiend) ?
I personally don’t mind beings that are innate in alignment, but I love redemption and execration story lines.
They pisses me off to be honest ...
Redemption stories are so often theese days it almost feels like a propaganda ... it has ben ages since i enjoyed good corruption story in game.
I believe there should be ballance in this.
To quote the great sage Paarthurnax
“What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”
This quote have few important problems why it cant be used for DnD ...
For one, in Elder Scrolls there are not "Good Dragons" and "Evil Dragons" by their nature ... there are just "Dragons" who work on entirely different system.
For two, if you talked with him properly he explain to you that all that he managed to change was just some aspects of his nature ...
He claim that he dont tendencies to rule over humans ... yet he is practicaly leader of Graybeards, who worship him almost like a God.
He claim that he rejected his tendencies to destroy others ... yet he helps you to defeat Anduin.
Basicaly you can say that he never actualy overcomed his nature ... he just distanced from everyone so his nature, he was unable to change, dont manifest. :P O_o
And last but not least ...
While the situation with Paarthurnax may seem deep and philosophical ... he isnt Good at all.
All he can hope for is some kind of Neutral.
IF he would actualy become Good (in matter of Alignment), he would actively try to help others, and i dont mean just Greybeards (even tho they would probably be first) ... instead just sleep on his mountain and think about clouds and stars, meditating about words in Dragon language and ocassionaly learn some Dragonborn traveler (or Greybeard) word of power.
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Anyway i still want option to kill Tiefling childs ...
I dont care about their Alignment, that is totally irellevant. :P
