So, here we have it, from a Battle Imm's mouth. Ragers are misguided. Magic is, in fact, not forbidden or dangerous to Thera. Moreover, the level of a certainty a goodie rager can have in the "correctness" of his worldview (i.e. that magic is forbidden and dangerous) is not sufficient to justify killing another goodie.

Not exactly what I meant. As a good-aligned rager, you can convince yourself that magic is evil (Red Aura), those who wield it are evil (Red Aura), and therefore you are completely justified in killing magic users regardless of alignment. Just because your character believes this is an adequate justification does not make it so. In my opinion, any good-aligned character that uses arguments like this to justify doing evil things is 'misguided' in regards to their alignment.

Kastellyn's stance, as an evil half-elf BattleRager, is that all mages deserve to die as punishment for the ages old betrayal of the Village by others of their ilk. Magic may be dangerous to Thera - but that's not why I want them all dead. Your character could have dozens of reasons for wanting to kill mages or see the destruction of magic, including the belief that magic is dangerous to all of Thera (an altruistic world view I would expect more from a good-aligned Villager than an evil-aligned Villager) or revenge on the mages that wiped out your village leaving you as the sole survivor. There's no one correct reason to hate magic.

As an aside, I would think that the vast majority of Therans view Villagers as 'misguided'. I'm fine with that.

My whole point on this thread is that if your character does evil things, they are not good, regardless of whatever mental gymnastics they do to justify it. An example: you could easily write a role for a storm giant that said, in essence, 'Orphans are the root of all evil in this world because they will eventually rise up and kill everyone that has never donated to the orphanage.' If you then went out and killed all the orphans you came across, including the good-aligned ones, I think (hope) we'd both agree that you're not good-aligned, regardless of how much your character believed they were looking out for the best interests of everyone in Thera.

Now substitute 'mages' for 'orphans' and 'destroy Thera through their manipulation of forbidden magic' for 'rise up and kill everyone that has never donated to the orphanage'.

Personally, if my goodie character really "believed" the Rager worldview then I would feel compelled to kill goodie mages should they refuse to be purged of their magic. Imho it would be questionable goodie role-play not to.

That's fine. But those would be the actions of a neutral-aligned individual, not a good-aligned individual. FWIW, wholesale slaughter of mages is the realm of evil-aligned individuals.

The last thing I'll add is that your good-aligned Villager should also be looking at the alignment of mages as sort of a yardstick of their potential to do whatever it is you hate mages for. In other words, if your character thinks that mages will eventually destroy the world through their manipulation of magic, you have to ask yourself if this is a goal that a good-aligned mage would work towards - one that would involve the wholesale slaughter of a lot of innocents? Would a good-aligned mage ride a flaming demon steed through a remote storm giant Village and kill everyone there, sparing only one child? If revenge for an act like this is your justification for killing mages (maybe you hope you find and kill the ones who did it), is that elf transmuter a good target?

If you're a neutral or evil Villager, a lot of these types of questions won't even occur to you - nor should they. If you're a good Villager, and your mage enemy is neutral or evil, a lot of these types of questions won't matter to you - nor should they.

Again, great points and great discussion!

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends