Alignment

[BobChuck]

Alignment has always been a tricky thing. Paladins, in particular, get picked on as "not playing well with others" and being way to narrowly-focused, which makes them an excellent place to start.

Paladins are not, in any way, inherently problematic or disruptive. They don't cause problems in groups. Sometimes the players of paladins will cause problems, but that's the player, and it ultimately wouldn't matter what he was playing.

That said, Paladins do stir up a great deal of trouble in many D&D parties. But it's not their fault - they are shining heroes walking into danger intending to destroy it (admittedly, that's not always appropriate, but then, any class can be excluded if it doesn't fit the campaign).

No, the problem, the core of the issue, is the "Chaotic Neutral" characters who think it's perfectly acceptable to rob everyone in sight, or cast charm spells on the barmaid.

They defend themselves by saying "I'm Chaotic Neutral, its perfectly within my alignment". They are wrong - generally speaking, if a character does something that causes a Paladin to draw out his sword and try to smite him, what the character did was evil. It's practically the definition of evil: "things paladins want to smite".

But trying to prove this point inevitably leads to the question "What is Chaotic Neutral?" More generally speaking, "What is Chaotic Good?" Unfortunately, there's no easy answer.

After all, the other three "corners" are all fairly straightforward; they are often defined to be much narrower than they actually are, but the core of their definitions is pretty much universally accepted.

So perhaps the first step is to summarize those three corners while splitting them into their component parts.

[BobChuck]

Lawful Good characters work towards "The Greater Good". They seek to do "good things" such as protect the weak and help the helpless, while also doing "Lawful Things" like making the guards and borders stronger and  protecting the (Righteous) ruling class. They prefer to do Good Things in a Lawful Way and Lawful Things in a Good Way.

Lawful Good people pay their taxes willingly, because they believe the money is (or should be) spent to achieve the most good for the most people.

Lawful Evil characters seek to "Use the System". They work towards "Perfectly Justifiable Things" like keeping everything they can for themselves even when the neighbors are starving, while also doing "Lawful Things" like making the guards and borders stronger and protecting the (Corrupt) ruling class. They prefer to do "Justifiable" Things in a Lawful Way and Lawful Things in a "Beneficial" Way.

Lawful Evil people approve of taxes, and believe they have the right to "use every loophole in the book" to get around actually paying them personally. They also believe that, since everyone has this opportunity, anyone that doesn't deserves to lose their money, and are okay with paying whatever they can't get around - after all, it is (or should be) spread around to those that most excel at manipulating the system.

Evil: at this point, it's worth mentioning that very, very few Evil characters actually believe they are evil. Either "everyone has this opportunity and its their own fault for not taking it" or "I am special and unique so I can do what I want". Which leads to:

Chaotic Evil characters believe in "Might Makes Right". They work towards "Perfectly Justifiable Things" like keeping everything they can for themselves even when the neighbors are starving, while also doing "Chaotic Things" like staging disruptive individualistic protests and trying to get away from (Cruel) ruling class. They prefer to do "Justifiable" Things in a Chaotic Way and Chaotic Things in a "Beneficial" Way.

Chaotic Evil people hate taxes, hate tax collectors, and wish for everyone involved in the whole scheme to die slowly and painfully. While on fire.

The next step is fairly obvious, but I'd like to get some replies to this summary and make sure that (small group though we are) there's some consensus on all of this.

[Measure Zero]

Good and evil, used colloquially, are a matter of perspective and culture.  Orcs see overwhelming strength and a drive to dominate others as virtuous.  Might is morally right, while weakness is morally wrong.  Humans tend not to operate this way, instead looking toward concepts like fairness and justice to decide what is good and what is evil.  A dwarf probably thinks that good things are exactly the things that preserve and promote the interests of his clan and dwarven society in general, while evil things do the opposite.  From this perspective, an evil person will not always act in an evil way, a good person will not always act in a good way, and a neutral person probably doesn't care. And no sane person would think of himself as being evil, but would instead change his idea of what good and evil are to at least make himself not evil.

Good and Evil, as technical terms used in the D&D game, are not relative at all.  Absolute Good is what human society says is good.  Comparing the technical and colloquial senses, a good orc is Evil, and a Good is evil.  A good dwarf might be of any alignment, while a Good dwarf might not be a good dwarf at all.

Both perspectives serve the same purpose: they divide the populace up into three groups: them, us, and the bystanders.  The former perspective is more honest than the latter, because it doesn't involve painting a giant purple E on the foreheads of bad guys.

[Measure Zero]

No, the problem, the core of the issue, is the "Chaotic Neutral" characters who think it's perfectly acceptable to . . . cast charm spells on the barmaid.

That isn't an inherently Evil act.  Why would a chaotic neutral person even bother to think about whether it was good or evil to do something like that anyway?  They live their lives unbound by a do-gooder's zeal.

[BobChuck]

This is exactly the problem.

In many RPGs, such as World Of Darkness, a "spirit of murder" would not be considered inherently evil. It causes murder, seeks out murder, thrives on murder; all this is true. But it does so because that's what it is. One can no more blame a spirit of murder for influencing murder than one can blame the sun for rising.

D&D and its derivatives do NOT work this way. They have defined morality. There is Ultimate Good, Ultimate Evil, and all the extremes - it's not a matter of opinion. The rules are very explicitly defined to not work that way.

In D&D (and etc), a "spirit of murder" would be Chaotic Evil - it is a sentient creature that willingly causes death, pain, and destruction wherever it goes. It's a monstrous abomination and needs to be put down; allowing it to continue is to allow more people to die.

In D&D, morality, "Good and Evil", is absolute. Orcs don't think they are evil, but according to entities more fundamental to the universe than even Greater Gods, they are.

Does this mean they "deserve" to be wiped out? No, not necessarily. Does this mean that all orcs are automatically evil? Again, no. There is a great deal of grey / neutral morality in this, and it's certainly worth exploring.

But D&D is, ultimately, a light-hearted adventure game, not a deep exploration of grey on grey morality, and trying to push things too far defeats the point of playing.

The game is about fighting bad guys, slaying monsters, and saving the princess; if you really want to explore the deeper aspects of "what does it mean to do Good", D&D is not the game to play.

No, the problem, the core of the issue, is the "Chaotic Neutral" characters who think it's perfectly acceptable to . . . cast charm spells on the barmaid.

That isn't an inherently Evil act.  Why would a chaotic neutral person even bother to think about whether it was good or evil to do something like that anyway?  They live their lives unbound by a do-gooder's zeal.

Theft, in and of itself, is slightly evil, slightly chaotic act - the basic definition of the act is taking something from the person that "earned" it (chaotic) and giving it to yourself, which reduces someone else in order to raise yourself (evil).

That said, both motivation (why you did it/are going to do it) and reaction (how you react to unforeseen consequences) count for a lot. Stealing from a Red Dragon and giving the money to the local guards to distribute back to the people is a Lawful Good act.

Which is precisely why I used the example that I did. The adventurer in question is a stereotypical "Chaotic Neutral" character (perhaps I should have been more clear on this point). He's robbing anyone and everyone in town that he can. Not because he needs the money, but because "they're NPCs, we are adventurers, it's perfectly justified". That's very much Chaotic Evil.

The charm spell I'll concede the point on, as I provided no context whatsoever - I meant to suggest that the "Chaotic Neutral" adventurer was doing it to sleep with her (which is basically rape), but I forgot to include that.

[Measure Zero]

Absolute morality comes with its own problems.  Not only is it completely unrealistic, there is a very good chance that people who believe that they serve Absolute Good are in fact very Evil.  Remember that in certain popular real world religion, there is a blasphemy that when spoken is an unforgivable sin, while the killing of millions of people is a forgivable sin.  If that religion is correct, speaking those words makes a person terribly Evil and deserving of unending punishment.  But it isn't arbitrary or relative; it's an absolutely Evil act even if it seems benign.

You say that it's absolutely Evil to commit murder.  Murder is killing an intelligent being in an unjustified manner.  Cows and chickens are both somewhat intelligent, as are animals that are hunted, etc.  There is some distinction between "farmable" and "too smart to eat," but it is arbitrary and decided entirely by those with power.  This is hubris of the worst sort (it's not murder when I kill a fly for no reason), and definitely Evil.  There is no excuse for this in a world where food can be magically conjured, even it is built in to the cosmology that certain beings are just "lower" than others and morality doesn't apply to them.

Here is a scenario: the death penalty is to be administered to a man who has been convicted of treason.  Our PCs think that this does not deserve the death penalty because his crime seemed like a relatively benign crime, so they mount a rescue.  The treason caused a weakness in the city's defenses to be revealed, leading to an assault by an unrelated third party and multiple deaths.  By disrupting justice, the PCs are acting in a Chaotic (rebelling against the government) and Evil (preventing justice) manner.  Since Good and Evil are absolute, they are merely deluding themselves if they think that they did a good deed by freeing someone who was to receive an overly harsh sentence.  PCs are just not good judges of what is Good and what is Evil, and so are probably Evil even when striving to be Good.  Justification is delusion, and it is not important when it comes to determining whether or not Good has been done.  Replace "treason" with "mortal blasphemy" and the same arguments apply.

In your example with the Chaotic Neutral character, his charming of the barmaid might actually end up being a Good act.  It depends on how he uses his power.  If the sudden change of demeanor causes a drastic improvement in her life, isn't the spell Good?  After all, she was the one who correctly sucked up to the rich adventurer and saved the tavern from its impending bankruptcy when he blew a small fortune on booze and tips.  She might be set for life because she failed a save.  And in any event, Charm spells don't make people into mindless automatons; they just make them see the caster as a friend.  It's not Evil to make friends with someone, even though it may be Evil to manipulate a friend into doing something he or she may or may not have otherwise wanted to do.

[Measure Zero]

In D&D (and etc), a "spirit of murder" would be Chaotic Evil - it is a sentient creature that willingly causes death, pain, and destruction wherever it goes. It's a monstrous abomination and needs to be put down; allowing it to continue is to allow more people to die.

Just like wolves are evil when they kill people to eat them!

[BobChuck]

Absolute morality comes with its own problems.  Not only is it completely unrealistic, there is a very good chance that people who believe that they serve Absolute Good are in fact very Evil.  Remember that in certain popular real world religion, there is a blasphemy that when spoken is an unforgivable sin, while the killing of millions of people is a forgivable sin.  If that religion is correct, speaking those words makes a person terribly Evil and deserving of unending punishment.  But it isn't arbitrary or relative; it's an absolutely Evil act even if it seems benign.

I never said that absolute morality didn't have problems. I also pointed out that motivation (why you did / are going to do a certain thing) and reaction (how you respond to the ultimate outcome) are both very important. I am not, nor did I ever claim to be, trying to write an ultimate treatise on alignment; I'm trying to lay down a very basic and purposefully generalized summary that can be used as a springboard into further discussion.

You say that it's absolutely Evil to commit murder. 

nope.

I said that a creature that randomly murders living creatures wherever it goes for no reason (other than "that's just the way it is") would be defined as "Chaotic Evil". I can site numerous examples from D&D to back this up.

EDIT: I just saw your wolf example. It's killing in order to eat. It's not evil for the wolf to kill and eat a bunny, it's not evil for it to kill and eat a person. It's not really capable of understanding what evil is, and since its a natural creature with more or less normal instincts, it gets defined as Neutral.

EDIT: continued. The spirit of murder, on the other hand, would not be defined as "natural". It would be a necromantic construct or interloper from the negative energy plane; even if it's also not really capable of understanding what evil is, that does not make its actions okay. If both the wolf and the spirit were assaulting a village, they would both need to be "dealt with", but the reasons are different.

EDIT 2: yes, ultimately, if you push on this point hard enough, you can twist it so that they are no different and the game is really just making arbitrary distinctions to speed things up. that's the whole point. Absolute Morality keeps things simple and lets players run around having fun.

Murder is killing an intelligent being in an unjustified manner.  Cows and chickens are both somewhat intelligent, as are animals that are hunted, etc.  There is some distinction between "farmable" and "too smart to eat," but it is arbitrary and decided entirely by those with power.

Actually, the rules are pretty clear on what is and is not an intelligent being: intellect of 3 or higher.

What constitutes murder in the real world is indeed a very difficult topic. But it's not what we are talking about.

This is hubris of the worst sort (it's not murder when I kill a fly for no reason), and definitely Evil. There is no excuse for this in a world where food can be magically conjured, even it is built in to the cosmology that certain beings are just "lower" than others and morality doesn't apply to them.

Yeah, this is a problem in one of the "current" versions of D&D (pathfinder), where create food/water are 0th-level spells that can be cast infinitely.

In all previous editions, however, your example is fundamentally flawed.

Even if every single spellcaster capable of casting "create food/water" prepared it in every available slot every single day, the amount of food would be less than 10% of what's needed to feed even a small community; the larger the population, the lower the percentage - a bustling metropolis ends up with something like 3%.

I'm pulling from my memory here, but The Math has been done in several different places, and I can dig it up if you really want to see it. It's all based on the average/expected number of X class/level based on community size in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Plus, the food/water needs to be stored, transported, etc. And there's the issue of the used spell slots, that could have otherwise been used to heal wounds, remove diseases/poisons, boost/accelerate a larger number of grown/farmed food, and all the other mundane uses they could have been put to. And this is assuming that the deities in question are perfectly okay with their "level 20 avatar of all that they represent in the world" spending his days feeding the same few hundred people all the time instead of converting new worshipers and defending the faith.

And no, crafting doesn't help either: items of this sort are always either charge-based or uses-per-day, and creating them takes not only spell slots, but time and huge amounts of gold (which is also why there are animated golems doing the farming, among other things).

(Yes, technically the "create your own item" generic rules allow for permanent continuous versions, but that's clearly not the intent, and those rules have numerous other problems when applied to a variety of spells. (Examples using the various "conjure/transmute" spells to create infinite wealth have popped up and were errata-ed; the same trick could be used to create an "infinite food/water loop", but that doesn't mean it actually works.) Also, generic "create your own item/spell/monster/race/class/etc" rules always create lots of problems, and really shouldn't be counted when discussing these sorts of things.)

This has been thoroughly explored in multiple editions of the game, pathfinder is the only one where it's actually a valid accusation, and that's only because they tweaked the rules for 0th level spells in order to make low-level spellcasters a bit more flexible.

The short version is: spell-casters are rare and have better things to do than spend their days feeding a small portion of the population. It's not a bad way to fend off starvation for a few days, but it flat out does not work on any kind of long-term scale.

Here is a scenario: the death penalty is to be administered to a man who has been convicted of treason.  Our PCs think that this does not deserve the death penalty because his crime seemed like a relatively benign crime, so they mount a rescue.  The treason caused a weakness in the city's defenses to be revealed, leading to an assault by an unrelated third party and multiple deaths.  By disrupting justice, the PCs are acting in a Chaotic (rebelling against the government) and Evil (preventing justice) manner.  Since Good and Evil are absolute, they are merely deluding themselves if they think that they did a good deed by freeing someone who was to receive an overly harsh sentence.  PCs are just not good judges of what is Good and what is Evil, and so are probably Evil even when striving to be Good.  Justification is delusion, and it is not important when it comes to determining whether or not Good has been done.  Replace "treason" with "mortal blasphemy" and the same arguments apply.

First, the action is definitely Chaotic. That does not automatically make the people doing it Chaotic, but it certainly nudges them in that direction.

Whether or not it's Evil is, as you are rightly trying to demonstrate, unclear. His action (indirectly) lead to the death of hundreds, many even thousands, of people.

In your example with the Chaotic Neutral character, his charming of the barmaid might actually end up being a Good act.  It depends on how he uses his power.  If the sudden change of demeanor causes a drastic improvement in her life, isn't the spell Good?  After all, she was the one who correctly sucked up to the rich adventurer and saved the tavern from its impending bankruptcy when he blew a small fortune on booze and tips.  She might be set for life because she failed a save.  And in any event, Charm spells don't make people into mindless automatons; they just make them see the caster as a friend.  It's not Evil to make friends with someone, even though it may be Evil to manipulate a friend into doing something he or she may or may not have otherwise wanted to do.

I already conceded this point. As mentioned, I forgot to explain his motivation.

As I've mentioned three times now, while acts can be generalized as Good, Evil, Lawful, or Chaotic, the motivation of the person doing it factors in, and the reaction to unforeseen consequences counts for a lot.

Things, Acts, and Higher/Lower Beings have Absolute Morality. People are more complicated, and reconciling the two is difficult.

[kenada]

That said, both motivation (why you did it/are going to do it) and reaction (how you react to unforeseen consequences) count for a lot. Stealing from a Red Dragon and giving the money to the local guards to distribute back to the people is a Lawful Good act.

I don’t agree. According to your statement, stealing from the dragon is chaotic evil. The fact that one wants to do Good with it is irrelevent, and a paladin in this case should lose access to his class abilities.

In D&D (and etc), a "spirit of murder" would be Chaotic Evil - it is a sentient creature that willingly causes death, pain, and destruction wherever it goes. It's a monstrous abomination and needs to be put down; allowing it to continue is to allow more people to die.

Just like wolves are evil when they kill people to eat them!

D& considers un- and low intelligence creatures neutral because they lack the intellectual capacity for malice.

You say that it's absolutely Evil to commit murder.  Murder is killing an intelligent being in an unjustified manner.  Cows and chickens are both somewhat intelligent, as are animals that are hunted, etc.  There is some distinction between "farmable" and "too smart to eat," but it is arbitrary and decided entirely by those with power.

I’ve seen this distinction made in past games I’ve played in, but I’m not aware of its genesis.

This is hubris of the worst sort (it's not murder when I kill a fly for no reason), and definitely Evil.  There is no excuse for this in a world where food can be magically conjured

That would require ¹∕₁₅ of the population be 5th level clerics (assuming a Wis of 13). There is also the problem of distribution. The typical D&D civilizaiton lacks the capability to transport the food while it is still fresh.

even it is built in to the cosmology that certain beings are just "lower" than others and morality doesn't apply to them.

In which settings is this true? In my experience, it’s usually laziness on the DM’s part that allows a party to get away with behaving inappropriately.

[kenada]

Yeah, this is a problem in one of the "current" versions of D&D (pathfinder), where create food/water are 0th-level spells that can be cast infinitely.

Create food and water is still a 3rd level spell in Pathfinder. Create water is the orison.

[BobChuck]

That said, both motivation (why you did it/are going to do it) and reaction (how you react to unforeseen consequences) count for a lot. Stealing from a Red Dragon and giving the money to the local guards to distribute back to the people is a Lawful Good act.

I don’t agree. According to your statement, stealing from the dragon is chaotic evil. The fact that one wants to do Good with it is irrelevent, and a paladin in this case should lose access to his class abilities.

You are falling into the same trap Zero is trying to push me into. Theft, speaking in broad and generalized terms, is a slightly Chaotic and slightly Evil act. Murder, again is broad terms, is a slightly Evil act. Giving food to the poor is a Good act.

That said, motivation and reaction count for a lot.

Murdering a Red Dragon (by definition Chaotic Evil)to prevent it from going off and slaughtering hundreds of innocents is a Good act.

Stealing from a Red Dragon (because you went to murder it but its not at home) and giving the gold to the guards to distribute fairly is a Lawful Good act.

Giving food to the poor that has been tainted with a horrible disease in order to weaken the community and shatter their faith is a Chaotic Evil act. Doing the same across a large number of cities simultaneously to prepare them for invasion and conquest is a Lawful Evil act.

Motivation counts for a lot. Even in a system with Absoltue Morality, people are not absolute in their morals.

[BobChuck]

Of course, Motivation isn't everything, and some things just cannot be justified.

My favorite example of Absolute Morality and why it works the way it does is this:

A horrible something (what really does not matter, necromantic plague, demonic ascension, total annihilation, etc) assaults a Lawful Good kingdom. A ritual conveniently finds its way into the hands of the Lawful Good king, which works thus:

a Paladin from outside the kingdom without any connections to it must come and sacrifice the King's eldest daughter, damning her soul for all eternity, or the kingdom and all its inhabitants will suffer a terrible fate.

The choice, while horrible, seems simple enough: either damn one soul or doom thousands.

So, a Paladin hears about the situation and rides in.

He goes through the motions, everything is set, but a the last moment he hesitates, and thus dooms the entire kingdom. The unfortunate citizens (even those who fled the country) all (eventually) die, but most end up in the Lawful Good afterlife (since the kingdom was Lawful Good). Meanwhile, the Paladin goes to the Neutral afterlife for ultimately failing his duty.

The other choice is sacrificing the princess, which does in fact save the kingdom. It also irrevocably turns the Paladin Lawful Evil, thus setting the stage for conquest and subjugation of multiple kingdoms, which was the real objective the entire time (though killing off an entire kingdom is convenient, its not the goal).

The Right Choice, ultimately, is to take a third option - find out where the ritual came from, discover who is ultimately responsible for what is about to happen, and stop it, hard. Of course is difficult and unexpected, but that's what heroes do.

Having Absolute Morality is what lets this happen. If everything were relative, then there would not necessarily be a third option. but in a game about playing heroes, there has to be or the whole thing falls apart. Throwing this situation at a Paladin without including the third option is unfair; in World of Darkness it's a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

[kenada]

You are falling into the same trap Zero is trying to push me into. Theft, speaking in broad and generalized terms, is a slightly Chaotic and slightly Evil act. Murder, again is broad terms, is a slightly Evil act. Giving food to the poor is a Good act.

That said, motivation and reaction count for a lot.

No, I’m saying that motivation and reaction count for nothing when evaluating the nature of an act.*

Murdering a Red Dragon (by definition Chaotic Evil)to prevent it from going off and slaughtering hundreds of innocents is a Good act.

Do you have knowledge of its plan to do so, or do you assume that it is?

Stealing from a Red Dragon (because you went to murder it but its not at home) and giving the gold to the guards to distribute fairly is a Lawful Good act.

Still Chaotic Evil, unless you know those goods were stolen and are recovering them (with the authority to recover them) to return them to their rightful owners.

Giving food to the poor that has been tainted with a horrible disease in order to weaken the community and shatter their faith is a Chaotic Evil act.

I’d consider it Neutral Evil. I think Chaotic Evil requires a selfish component.

Doing the same across a large number of cities simultaneously to prepare them for invasion and conquest is a Lawful Evil act.

Still Netural Evil.

A good example of Lawful Evil is Cheliax, where the government only cares about two things: preserving their control, and maintaining order. Sometimes people get hurt, but that is an acceptable cost.

Motivation counts for a lot. Even in a system with Absoltue Morality, people are not absolute in their morals.

Which is why most people’s behaviors are a mix of good and evil acts. I would posit that being Good represents a tendancy towards commiting Good acts.

I’ll post my thoughts on all of the specific alignments later, but the following is a brief summary of my view on Evil ones:

• Lawful Evil: Favors order and/or possess some kind of honor system. Inflicts harm as a side effect of pursuing his interests.
• Neutral Evil: Inflicts harm as a side effect of pursuing his intersts.
• Chaotic Evil: His interests involve inflicting harm for its or his own sake.

--
* As a note, this is how I intend to treat alignments in my next Pathfinder game. I’ve been pretty lazy with how I treated them since I started DMing again, but it’s pretty much how I handled them in my old D&D games. I had a lot of fun messing with the party’s alignment assumptions. To quote the lawful stupid paladin in that game, “my detect evil says that (a drow they met) is Evil, but I can’t kill him yet because he hasn’t actually committed an Evil act.”

[BobChuck]

It sounds like we are saying the same things in different ways and saying they are different.

I'm speaking in general terms; I'm assuming that the rules as written hold true (Red Dragons are Chaotic Evil 99.9% of the time); I'm also assuming that the PCs are familiar enough with the local area to easily locate the guards, and so would have heard numerous stories about the Red Dragon nearby and how it was attacking things, eating everyone inside, and carrying off everything of value.

In short, I'm trying to summarize things in vague, general terms, instead of writing an essay on every single possible situation, which is both boring and impossible.

Regarding the Neutral vs Lawful/Chaotic Evil: It seems like are taking a narrower view of both Lawful and Chaotic, which is okay. Not what I would do, but generally okay - as I mentioned, the exact lines between each of the nine alignments are very fluid.

It also sounds like your "Chaotic Evil" is more Evil than your "Lawful Evil", which is A: not accurate according the pre-4th edition alignment and B: something I'm actively trying to avoid.

Finally, just to add you your last little example: I would counter that a single evil act does not justify smiting a person, any more than them detecting as evil, but both together would potentially be enough to justify smiting, depending on the nature of the act. I do not think that kicking a puppy would be enough to justify stabbing the drow through the heart.

But you are speaking in general terms, so it's not fair of me to nit-pick.

[kenada]

I'm speaking in general terms; I'm assuming that the rules as written hold true (Red Dragons are Chaotic Evil 99.9% of the time); I'm also assuming that the PCs are familiar enough with the local area to easily locate the guards, and so would have heard numerous stories about the Red Dragon nearby and how it was attacking things, eating everyone inside, and carrying off everything of value.

Well, that’s different. If there’s a red dragon attacking town and stealing things. That’s different from the original scenario because the original scenario came off as, “There is a red dragon cave over there. Lets go kill it so we can distribute its hoard to the poor.”

In short, I'm trying to summarize things in vague, general terms, instead of writing an essay on every single possible situation, which is both boring and impossible.

It is a problem when vague becomes imprecise. My definitions of evil were attempting to be general but still precise. I’m actually having a harder time coming up with a reasonable definition for Good.

Regarding the Neutral vs Lawful/Chaotic Evil: It seems like are taking a narrower view of both Lawful and Chaotic, which is okay. Not what I would do, but generally okay - as I mentioned, the exact lines between each of the nine alignments are very fluid.

Part of my posting in this thread is to help me hash out the definition of these alignments for my campaigns.

It also sounds like your "Chaotic Evil" is more Evil than your "Lawful Evil", which is A: not accurate according the pre-4th edition alignment

The problem with pre-4e alignments is that Evil was frequently Cartoonish Evil because TSRs code of ethics pretty much required it to be. I’m not interested in maintaining consistancy with that era, and I don’t think Pathfinder’s fluff really supports it anyway.

B: something I'm actively trying to avoid.

I’m not sure I would that I’m actively trying to, but I’m not going out of my way to avoid it. My definitions will probably shift some as I try to reconcile Good and Neutral.

Finally, just to add you your last little example: I would counter that a single evil act does not justify smiting a person, any more than them detecting as evil, but both together would potentially be enough to justify smiting, depending on the nature of the act. I do not think that kicking a puppy would be enough to justify stabbing the drow through the heart.

I agree, but when the DM is being lazy, the party would probably have just killed the drow. I say this because I’ve played in games where that happened.

Once I was playing a CG half-drow (of Eilistraee, of course) who wanted to save the drow race from Lolth. We encountered some drow once in a cave, and every time she restrained the drow, the party would beat them to death because drow = evil. The DM wasn’t being particularly strict about alignment, so that part of my character basically died because I couldn’t count on my own party not to mercilessly slaughter the people I was trying to save.

But you are speaking in general terms, so it's not fair of me to nit-pick.

Sure it is. That’s how we better refine our ideas.