There's also the method of determining which "subjects" are appropriate for study. Mengele saw Jews, Gypsies, and anybody else in a concentration camp as being most "useful" as part of his experiments since he considered them subhuman like lab rats but conveniently anatomically and medically identical to "real" people in all the ways that mattered. What process does this character use to determine who would be more useful as a corpse to examine?
And I sincerely doubt that Mengele thought himself to be evil, though history is pretty clear that he was. He likely enjoyed his work, was known for his obnoxiously cheerful demeanor while going about mutilation and mass murder, and would no doubt argue that even the wholesale methodical slaughter of innocent human beings was for the greater good and actually a good act because he was a believer in the Nazi propaganda about them being subversive and inherently evil creatures based entirely on their heritage. That highlights how a personal and subjective view (meaning driven by personal motivations and justifications) of good and evil can be so ridiculously flawed it would be hilarious if not for countless real world examples, Mengele being just one particularly well documented one. Quite a few serial killers also qualify. They're still evil, objectively, because they do objectively evil things.
Nothing in the character description indicated that the character had anything other than beneficial motivations for their studies. Mengele is a bit of a leap from what's described in the OP.
From the OP: "He is not averse to MAKING corpses, so long as he gets to study them afterwards. "
I mean, find me a dnd character that doesn't kill people. Technically they exist, but they're pretty rare. OP said they'd be doing autopsies on the corpses of bad guys the party fought. Player characters have done worse things while still being "good" aligned.
There's also the method of determining which "subjects" are appropriate for study. Mengele saw Jews, Gypsies, and anybody else in a concentration camp as being most "useful" as part of his experiments since he considered them subhuman like lab rats but conveniently anatomically and medically identical to "real" people in all the ways that mattered. What process does this character use to determine who would be more useful as a corpse to examine?
And I sincerely doubt that Mengele thought himself to be evil, though history is pretty clear that he was. He likely enjoyed his work, was known for his obnoxiously cheerful demeanor while going about mutilation and mass murder, and would no doubt argue that even the wholesale methodical slaughter of innocent human beings was for the greater good and actually a good act because he was a believer in the Nazi propaganda about them being subversive and inherently evil creatures based entirely on their heritage. That highlights how a personal and subjective view (meaning driven by personal motivations and justifications) of good and evil can be so ridiculously flawed it would be hilarious if not for countless real world examples, Mengele being just one particularly well documented one. Quite a few serial killers also qualify. They're still evil, objectively, because they do objectively evil things.
Again, the nazis experimented and tortured living people before exterminating them systematically. It feels like skipping a lot of steps to directly compare them to a doctor that uses the corpses of enemies who died fighting the party anyways in order to further their understanding of medicine presumably to help people.
I'm not saying there have not been scientists or doctors in history that have used they knowledge for evil purposes, I'm not even saying that can't be that OP is describing, I'm just saying that they did not imply that in the original post. Again, d&d adventuring parties have a habit of getting in fights. Enemies regularly die in these fights. Corpses are hard to come by as most dnd settings predate the practice of donating your body to science. It might seem a little gruesome to perform autopsies after battle, but I wouldn't say it makes you evil. It's not necessarily good either, but OP has not provided us with sufficient context to determine which for sure it is. My original statement was based off my impression of the character in which I presumed the character had good intentions and wasn't crossing lines into torture.
Tl;Dr yes people have done bad things "for the greater good" in the name of science, but that doesn't mean everyone who works toward good and science is bad. We'd be pretty f'd if that were the case.
I've had my say on Alignment. The character actually sounds more like a Way Of The Long Death Monk to me.
As far as Josef Mengele goes, finding out how many people he killed is difficult. I found one answer: 15,754. That's just in the concentration camp. I can't find any information about before or after. Tens of thousands yes. Hundreds of thousands, no. There is even less information on the people he tortured. They just say tens of thousands. I'm sure he thought he was both lawful and good, and I think he was Lawful Evil. This just goes to show how weird Alignment can be.
For my own I deal with the matter of Player Character Alignment by largely ignoring it outside of roleplaying. I have my own, carefully thought out, views on Alignment, and when a character does something strange I find it interesting to ask them why. A particularly clever answer might get a point of Inspiration.
It might be just my reading, but "MAKING corpses" reads to me more than just dissecting the victims of his party's fight...
In context I interpret that as "willing to be a non-pacifist PC", but it depends somewhat on what happens when there's a shortage of monster corpses. If he goes out and supplements his supply with villagers, 'evil' is an easy choice. If he buys chickens and dissects them, eh, could be any alignment.
If a character makes a deal with the devil so that for every act of evil they do, the devil will do two acts of good, then they're probably Good because they are intentionally and actively forcing the devil to do good.
I don't think that statement could be any more wrong. Firstly, a character that knowingly and willfully commits premeditated acts of evil specifically for the sake of committing evil acts is evil, regardless of whatever mitigating factors they claim to justify their actions. Being good isn't a matter of assuaging one's own conscience. It's doing good and not enabling or willfully permitting evil to happen. Also, doing evil things "for the greater good" does not make one's acts anything other than evil and the person who did so is evil. In some cases a neutral person might commit some evil acts, but neutrality isn't synonymous with dispassionate amorality, either and is often used as an excuse for evil (an example is the scientists in the show The Expanse who have their emotion and compassion literally surgically removed so they can experiment on children "for the greater good" without feeling guilty). Second, as worded that devil's could be satisfied by the devil giving one copper each to a couple of beggars after the self-justified "good" person murdered a baby. Devils are, by definition, evil creatures to the core and would never willingly enter any deal that they knew would result in a "net positive" balance of good results coming from it.
In general, you can't justify robbing, killing, and pillaging with "I'm not evil, I gave an orphan a cookie yesterday!"
The key thing you missed is that this one is based on the premise that the deal would force the devil to do more good than the character does evil, and even then, is still very iffy. (And also more of a thought experiment than an actual character, as a note.) The alignment is also still decided by the players, not the character themself; the key is that it looks at why they do what they do instead of solely at the "what they do" part and nothing else (note the third point, that a character who does good so they can hurt evil creatures is probably evil).
If a character makes a deal with the devil so that for every act of evil they do, the devil will do two acts of good, then they're probably Good because they are intentionally and actively forcing the devil to do good.
I don't think that statement could be any more wrong. Firstly, a character that knowingly and willfully commits premeditated acts of evil specifically for the sake of committing evil acts is evil, regardless of whatever mitigating factors they claim to justify their actions. Being good isn't a matter of assuaging one's own conscience. It's doing good and not enabling or willfully permitting evil to happen. Also, doing evil things "for the greater good" does not make one's acts anything other than evil and the person who did so is evil. In some cases a neutral person might commit some evil acts, but neutrality isn't synonymous with dispassionate amorality, either and is often used as an excuse for evil (an example is the scientists in the show The Expanse who have their emotion and compassion literally surgically removed so they can experiment on children "for the greater good" without feeling guilty). Second, as worded that devil's could be satisfied by the devil giving one copper each to a couple of beggars after the self-justified "good" person murdered a baby. Devils are, by definition, evil creatures to the core and would never willingly enter any deal that they knew would result in a "net positive" balance of good results coming from it.
In general, you can't justify robbing, killing, and pillaging with "I'm not evil, I gave an orphan a cookie yesterday!"
The key thing you missed is that this one is based on the premise that the deal would force the devil to do more good than the character does evil, and even then, is still very iffy. (And also more of a thought experiment than an actual character, as a note.) The alignment is also still decided by the players, not the character themself; the key is that it looks at why they do what they do instead of solely at the "what they do" part and nothing else (note the third point, that a character who does good so they can hurt evil creatures is probably evil).
It's not iffy, it's way past that. This is not basic math were Good deeds cancel out Evil ones. You can't maintain a good alignment simply by doing more good deeds than evil ones. It might work that way in a CRPG, but as far as I'm concerned not at my table. This would end up some kind of messed up CN alignment.
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If a character makes a deal with the devil so that for every act of evil they do, the devil will do two acts of good, then they're probably Good because they are intentionally and actively forcing the devil to do good.
I don't think that statement could be any more wrong. Firstly, a character that knowingly and willfully commits premeditated acts of evil specifically for the sake of committing evil acts is evil, regardless of whatever mitigating factors they claim to justify their actions. Being good isn't a matter of assuaging one's own conscience. It's doing good and not enabling or willfully permitting evil to happen. Also, doing evil things "for the greater good" does not make one's acts anything other than evil and the person who did so is evil. In some cases a neutral person might commit some evil acts, but neutrality isn't synonymous with dispassionate amorality, either and is often used as an excuse for evil (an example is the scientists in the show The Expanse who have their emotion and compassion literally surgically removed so they can experiment on children "for the greater good" without feeling guilty). Second, as worded that devil's could be satisfied by the devil giving one copper each to a couple of beggars after the self-justified "good" person murdered a baby. Devils are, by definition, evil creatures to the core and would never willingly enter any deal that they knew would result in a "net positive" balance of good results coming from it.
In general, you can't justify robbing, killing, and pillaging with "I'm not evil, I gave an orphan a cookie yesterday!"
The key thing you missed is that this one is based on the premise that the deal would force the devil to do more good than the character does evil, and even then, is still very iffy. (And also more of a thought experiment than an actual character, as a note.) The alignment is also still decided by the players, not the character themself; the key is that it looks at why they do what they do instead of solely at the "what they do" part and nothing else (note the third point, that a character who does good so they can hurt evil creatures is probably evil).
It's not iffy, it's way past that. This is not basic math were Good deeds cancel out Evil ones. You can't maintain a good alignment simply by doing more good deeds than evil ones. It might work that way in a CRPG, but as far as I'm concerned not at my table. This would end up some kind of messed up CN alignment.
CE in my book. Evil isn't defined by not doing good, but Good (and Neutral) are defined by not doing evil.
Okay, which category of Evil do you consider Robin Hood to be in, since he steals from the rich (Evil) to give to the poor (Good)? After all, in a system where evil automatically outweighs equal or more good, Robin Hood is evil, so which category of evil do you put him in?
If a character makes a deal with the devil so that for every act of evil they do, the devil will do two acts of good, then they're probably Good because they are intentionally and actively forcing the devil to do good.
I don't think that statement could be any more wrong. Firstly, a character that knowingly and willfully commits premeditated acts of evil specifically for the sake of committing evil acts is evil, regardless of whatever mitigating factors they claim to justify their actions. Being good isn't a matter of assuaging one's own conscience. It's doing good and not enabling or willfully permitting evil to happen. Also, doing evil things "for the greater good" does not make one's acts anything other than evil and the person who did so is evil. In some cases a neutral person might commit some evil acts, but neutrality isn't synonymous with dispassionate amorality, either and is often used as an excuse for evil (an example is the scientists in the show The Expanse who have their emotion and compassion literally surgically removed so they can experiment on children "for the greater good" without feeling guilty). Second, as worded that devil's could be satisfied by the devil giving one copper each to a couple of beggars after the self-justified "good" person murdered a baby. Devils are, by definition, evil creatures to the core and would never willingly enter any deal that they knew would result in a "net positive" balance of good results coming from it.
In general, you can't justify robbing, killing, and pillaging with "I'm not evil, I gave an orphan a cookie yesterday!"
The key thing you missed is that this one is based on the premise that the deal would force the devil to do more good than the character does evil, and even then, is still very iffy. (And also more of a thought experiment than an actual character, as a note.) The alignment is also still decided by the players, not the character themself; the key is that it looks at why they do what they do instead of solely at the "what they do" part and nothing else (note the third point, that a character who does good so they can hurt evil creatures is probably evil).
It's not iffy, it's way past that. This is not basic math were Good deeds cancel out Evil ones. You can't maintain a good alignment simply by doing more good deeds than evil ones. It might work that way in a CRPG, but as far as I'm concerned not at my table. This would end up some kind of messed up CN alignment.
CE in my book. Evil isn't defined by not doing good, but Good (and Neutral) are defined by not doing evil.
Yes, that was a typo. My bad.
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Okay, which category of Evil do you consider Robin Hood to be in, since he steals from the rich (Evil) to give to the poor (Good)? After all, in a system where evil automatically outweighs equal or more good, Robin Hood is evil, so which category of evil do you put him in?
Stealing is not evil, killing usually is when it's not in self-defense.
That being said, stealing goes against the laws of society so it's usually considered chaotic.
So here you go, because he steals to give to the poor, (which is a good act) Robin Hood has always been considered one of the paragons of CG.
Yes, but not for quite the same reasons. The laws of society are irrelevant. His stealing is ethically wrong (Chaotic) but morally good (Good).
Okay, which category of Evil do you consider Robin Hood to be in, since he steals from the rich (Evil) to give to the poor (Good)? After all, in a system where evil automatically outweighs equal or more good, Robin Hood is evil, so which category of evil do you put him in?
Stealing is not evil, killing usually is when it's not in self-defense.
That being said, stealing goes against the laws of society so it's usually considered chaotic.
So here you go, because he steals to give to the poor, (which is a good act) Robin Hood has always been considered one of the paragons of CG.
Yes. Absolutely. Also, killing evil people/creatures/awakened topiaries/etc is not by definition evil, and it would be reasonable to argue that soldiers serving Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham are Lawful Evil (LN with evil leanings at least) for willingly serving evil masters as they should be well aware that they're actively contributing to unfairness and oppression. I'm pretty sure at least one D&D sourcebook has specifically cited Robin Hood as an archetypical example of CG, though I might just be thinking of how almost every discussion thread I've ever read on the subject has included somebody mentioning him.
Nothing in the character description indicated that the character had anything other than beneficial motivations for their studies. Mengele is a bit of a leap from what's described in the OP.
From the OP: "He is not averse to MAKING corpses, so long as he gets to study them afterwards. "
I mean, find me a dnd character that doesn't kill people. Technically they exist, but they're pretty rare. OP said they'd be doing autopsies on the corpses of bad guys the party fought. Player characters have done worse things while still being "good" aligned.
It might be just my reading, but "MAKING corpses" reads to me more than just dissecting the victims of his party's fight...
But like OP did say that they'd chiefly be dissecting victims of party fights, so to assume they're going further than that is reading into things that aren't there.
Back when medicine was in its infancy, people studying anatomy sometimes had to do some weird things to acquire bodies for study, like Da Vinci, but that doesn't mean that they were all slicing up innocent peasant folk. Honestly the "here's this body anyways, it would be a waste *not* to dissect it" approach seems pretty in line with medical history in our world.
I feel like every thread like this just ends with me saying “and this is why the Lawful/Chaotic axis stinks, it just doesn’t mean anything except to silly stereotype characters.”
Evil isn't defined by not doing good, but Good (and Neutral) are defined by not doing evil.
Surely this is all perspective.
Killing is generally considered an evil act but, if it is done in the pursuit of good (e.g. killing guards to free prisoners), it is generally no longer seen as evil, and may even viewed as good.
However, what if it is later discovered that, though you didn't know, those guards were actually good and the villagers were evil? An evil act has been committed, but does that make those who committed them evil?
If not, then we would be saying that the intention matters more than the act. In that case, by forcing a demon to no longer commit evil acts, but instead do good (and moreso than the evil being committed by the character) could be seen as good. In fact, to a truly good character, it would be an immense sacrifice, risking their own soul by committing evil acts which appal them, but all to make the world a better place. It could be seen as a saintly act, condemning your soul to damnation for the good of the world.
Evil isn't defined by not doing good, but Good (and Neutral) are defined by not doing evil.
Surely this is all perspective.
Killing is generally considered an evil act but, if it is done in the pursuit of good (e.g. killing guards to free prisoners), it is generally no longer seen as evil, and may even viewed as good.
However, what if it is later discovered that, though you didn't know, those guards were actually good and the villagers were evil? An evil act has been committed, but does that make those who committed them evil?
If not, then we would be saying that the intention matters more than the act. In that case, by forcing a demon to no longer commit evil acts, but instead do good (and moreso than the evil being committed by the character) could be seen as good. In fact, to a truly good character, it would be an immense sacrifice, risking their own soul by committing evil acts which appal them, but all to make the world a better place. It could be seen as a saintly act, condemning your soul to damnation for the good of the world.
And this is where we get into very messy moral territory, because this discussion goes beyond D&D. I believe the intention is what makes an act good or bad, but a good friend of mine is a consequentialist who believes that the result is what matters. And that's why defined moral alignments probably shouldn't exist in our fun fantasy game, because no one can agree on what they mean.
And this is where we get into very messy moral territory, because this discussion goes beyond D&D. I believe the intention is what makes an act good or bad, but a good friend of mine is a consequentialist who believes that the result is what matters. And that's why defined moral alignments probably shouldn't exist in our fun fantasy game, because no one can agree on what they mean.
Amen!
Even without this, nobody can agree on what alignments mean. As above, ask 2 people, you'll get 3 (or more) contradictory definitions.
Evil isn't defined by not doing good, but Good (and Neutral) are defined by not doing evil.
Surely this is all perspective.
Killing is generally considered an evil act but, if it is done in the pursuit of good (e.g. killing guards to free prisoners), it is generally no longer seen as evil, and may even viewed as good.
However, what if it is later discovered that, though you didn't know, those guards were actually good and the villagers were evil? An evil act has been committed, but does that make those who committed them evil?
If not, then we would be saying that the intention matters more than the act. In that case, by forcing a demon to no longer commit evil acts, but instead do good (and moreso than the evil being committed by the character) could be seen as good. In fact, to a truly good character, it would be an immense sacrifice, risking their own soul by committing evil acts which appal them, but all to make the world a better place. It could be seen as a saintly act, condemning your soul to damnation for the good of the world.
And this is where we get into very messy moral territory, because this discussion goes beyond D&D. I believe the intention is what makes an act good or bad, but a good friend of mine is a consequentialist who believes that the result is what matters. And that's why defined moral alignments probably shouldn't exist in our fun fantasy game, because no one can agree on what they mean.
And then it's not a problem, because the DM has his own opinion of what alignment means and what the aligned plane means, and as alignment is not prescriptive, he can let the players play whatever they want and tell them what happens with the detect spells and their souls when they die. And they can have many interesting debates around the table, planescape actually encourages this with the factions and their views in addition to the alignement. The universe does not need your agreement to exist, though.
I'd rather play the game while at the table, and save the interesting debates for another time. My group and I have plenty of them, and an hour taken up debating whether an action, or a character, is good or evil is an hour less playing D&D.
It also leads to arguments and bad feeling. A player with a character concept which he believes to be good, does something which he believes to be good, only to be told by the DM that it is not because the DM's definition of good is different to his own. If the DM insists they've just committed an evil act, or that their alignment is not good as they believed, they will not be happy. This isn't like a different interpretation of the rules, it is something they feel is fundamental to their character. They will argue the point (vehemently), and they will get upset.
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There's also the method of determining which "subjects" are appropriate for study. Mengele saw Jews, Gypsies, and anybody else in a concentration camp as being most "useful" as part of his experiments since he considered them subhuman like lab rats but conveniently anatomically and medically identical to "real" people in all the ways that mattered. What process does this character use to determine who would be more useful as a corpse to examine?
And I sincerely doubt that Mengele thought himself to be evil, though history is pretty clear that he was. He likely enjoyed his work, was known for his obnoxiously cheerful demeanor while going about mutilation and mass murder, and would no doubt argue that even the wholesale methodical slaughter of innocent human beings was for the greater good and actually a good act because he was a believer in the Nazi propaganda about them being subversive and inherently evil creatures based entirely on their heritage. That highlights how a personal and subjective view (meaning driven by personal motivations and justifications) of good and evil can be so ridiculously flawed it would be hilarious if not for countless real world examples, Mengele being just one particularly well documented one. Quite a few serial killers also qualify. They're still evil, objectively, because they do objectively evil things.
I mean, find me a dnd character that doesn't kill people. Technically they exist, but they're pretty rare. OP said they'd be doing autopsies on the corpses of bad guys the party fought. Player characters have done worse things while still being "good" aligned.
Again, the nazis experimented and tortured living people before exterminating them systematically. It feels like skipping a lot of steps to directly compare them to a doctor that uses the corpses of enemies who died fighting the party anyways in order to further their understanding of medicine presumably to help people.
I'm not saying there have not been scientists or doctors in history that have used they knowledge for evil purposes, I'm not even saying that can't be that OP is describing, I'm just saying that they did not imply that in the original post. Again, d&d adventuring parties have a habit of getting in fights. Enemies regularly die in these fights. Corpses are hard to come by as most dnd settings predate the practice of donating your body to science. It might seem a little gruesome to perform autopsies after battle, but I wouldn't say it makes you evil. It's not necessarily good either, but OP has not provided us with sufficient context to determine which for sure it is. My original statement was based off my impression of the character in which I presumed the character had good intentions and wasn't crossing lines into torture.
Tl;Dr yes people have done bad things "for the greater good" in the name of science, but that doesn't mean everyone who works toward good and science is bad. We'd be pretty f'd if that were the case.
I've had my say on Alignment. The character actually sounds more like a Way Of The Long Death Monk to me.
As far as Josef Mengele goes, finding out how many people he killed is difficult. I found one answer: 15,754. That's just in the concentration camp. I can't find any information about before or after. Tens of thousands yes. Hundreds of thousands, no. There is even less information on the people he tortured. They just say tens of thousands. I'm sure he thought he was both lawful and good, and I think he was Lawful Evil. This just goes to show how weird Alignment can be.
For my own I deal with the matter of Player Character Alignment by largely ignoring it outside of roleplaying. I have my own, carefully thought out, views on Alignment, and when a character does something strange I find it interesting to ask them why. A particularly clever answer might get a point of Inspiration.
<Insert clever signature here>
In context I interpret that as "willing to be a non-pacifist PC", but it depends somewhat on what happens when there's a shortage of monster corpses. If he goes out and supplements his supply with villagers, 'evil' is an easy choice. If he buys chickens and dissects them, eh, could be any alignment.
The key thing you missed is that this one is based on the premise that the deal would force the devil to do more good than the character does evil, and even then, is still very iffy. (And also more of a thought experiment than an actual character, as a note.) The alignment is also still decided by the players, not the character themself; the key is that it looks at why they do what they do instead of solely at the "what they do" part and nothing else (note the third point, that a character who does good so they can hurt evil creatures is probably evil).
It's not iffy, it's way past that. This is not basic math were Good deeds cancel out Evil ones. You can't maintain a good alignment simply by doing more good deeds than evil ones. It might work that way in a CRPG, but as far as I'm concerned not at my table. This would end up some kind of messed up CN alignment.
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CE in my book. Evil isn't defined by not doing good, but Good (and Neutral) are defined by not doing evil.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Okay, which category of Evil do you consider Robin Hood to be in, since he steals from the rich (Evil) to give to the poor (Good)? After all, in a system where evil automatically outweighs equal or more good, Robin Hood is evil, so which category of evil do you put him in?
Yes, that was a typo. My bad.
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Yes, but not for quite the same reasons. The laws of society are irrelevant. His stealing is ethically wrong (Chaotic) but morally good (Good).
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Yes. Absolutely. Also, killing evil people/creatures/awakened topiaries/etc is not by definition evil, and it would be reasonable to argue that soldiers serving Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham are Lawful Evil (LN with evil leanings at least) for willingly serving evil masters as they should be well aware that they're actively contributing to unfairness and oppression. I'm pretty sure at least one D&D sourcebook has specifically cited Robin Hood as an archetypical example of CG, though I might just be thinking of how almost every discussion thread I've ever read on the subject has included somebody mentioning him.
But like OP did say that they'd chiefly be dissecting victims of party fights, so to assume they're going further than that is reading into things that aren't there.
Back when medicine was in its infancy, people studying anatomy sometimes had to do some weird things to acquire bodies for study, like Da Vinci, but that doesn't mean that they were all slicing up innocent peasant folk. Honestly the "here's this body anyways, it would be a waste *not* to dissect it" approach seems pretty in line with medical history in our world.
"Yes I am a bounty hunter but I do not accept gold as payment....I only require the bodies"
Would be a weird yet kind of fascinating character....a lawful neutral type.
Now we all know that bounties may not always be on the up and up...but that makes the character interesting and give them some story space to grow.
I feel like every thread like this just ends with me saying “and this is why the Lawful/Chaotic axis stinks, it just doesn’t mean anything except to silly stereotype characters.”
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Surely this is all perspective.
Killing is generally considered an evil act but, if it is done in the pursuit of good (e.g. killing guards to free prisoners), it is generally no longer seen as evil, and may even viewed as good.
However, what if it is later discovered that, though you didn't know, those guards were actually good and the villagers were evil? An evil act has been committed, but does that make those who committed them evil?
If not, then we would be saying that the intention matters more than the act. In that case, by forcing a demon to no longer commit evil acts, but instead do good (and moreso than the evil being committed by the character) could be seen as good. In fact, to a truly good character, it would be an immense sacrifice, risking their own soul by committing evil acts which appal them, but all to make the world a better place. It could be seen as a saintly act, condemning your soul to damnation for the good of the world.
And this is where we get into very messy moral territory, because this discussion goes beyond D&D. I believe the intention is what makes an act good or bad, but a good friend of mine is a consequentialist who believes that the result is what matters. And that's why defined moral alignments probably shouldn't exist in our fun fantasy game, because no one can agree on what they mean.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Amen!
Even without this, nobody can agree on what alignments mean. As above, ask 2 people, you'll get 3 (or more) contradictory definitions.
I'd rather play the game while at the table, and save the interesting debates for another time. My group and I have plenty of them, and an hour taken up debating whether an action, or a character, is good or evil is an hour less playing D&D.
It also leads to arguments and bad feeling. A player with a character concept which he believes to be good, does something which he believes to be good, only to be told by the DM that it is not because the DM's definition of good is different to his own. If the DM insists they've just committed an evil act, or that their alignment is not good as they believed, they will not be happy. This isn't like a different interpretation of the rules, it is something they feel is fundamental to their character. They will argue the point (vehemently), and they will get upset.