The Order of the Stick

Or no longer sentient, or reincarnated, or whatever the case may be for the specific afterlife.

For some reason, Evil characters never seem to consider the ramifications of being sent to the afterlife that they earn for their alignment. Save a few, like Xykon. Anyway, you don't remember anything that happened to you down there after you're raised.

What's Xykon think on that again?

"Anything to avoid the fires down below." He views people who die as losers who couldn't hack it. Of course, this attitude change came after he became a lich.

edited 31st Mar '15 10:45:58 AM by Fighteer

Do anything you can to avoid the fires below.

Here's his words on the matter.

edited 31st Mar '15 10:47:20 AM by TobiasDrake

Woah, the Soul Splice storyline was two-thirds of the way between the beginning and now. Feels much more recent.

That story was also 6 years ago. It's kind of weird how the last third or so of Book 4 and all of Book 5 constitutes about half of the comic's real world run time.

edited 31st Mar '15 11:46:02 AM by Kostya

And it doesn't seem to get faster now. I remember that some time ago there were 2-3 updates a week, with sometimes a few weeks of break between them. But now it's around 2 weeks per update. A big difference.

Chronic illness will do that.

And all the side work for the Kickstarter campaign, let's not forget.

More detailed artwork is also a thing.

I haven't played much DND (Weird to be reading this comic then, I know) but the morality always struck me as... Really weird. If there was a quantified, fairly easily accessible measure of what is 'good' or 'evil', why would anyone ever deliberately be evil? There's actual, physical proof that you'll be going to one of the various Hells for your actions. The morality system's always been something that keeps me from being interested in DND.

Does every Evil character just not give a fuck, or do evil characters get benefits in the afterlife like good characters do?

Evil characters generally just don't give a fuck.

Well, rarely, supremely accomplished Evil characters can skip a few ranks on the usual "get mashed into demonic paste and grind your way up through eternity" routine. Some may think that's what they're going to get, ignoring the obvious fact that their chances are infinitesimal.

In most cases, though, Evil actions stem from simple human malice and greed. One of the elements of D&D morality seems to be that Evil Feels Good and your eternity of damnation is justified by how much pleasure you derived from being a jerk in life. Correspondingly, Being Good Sucks and you are rewarded for a life of self-sacrifice by eternal happiness.

Actually knowing you'll be rewarded or punished kind of skews the whole morality thing. Are you being a Good person because it's what you genuinely believe or just because you want to get into the best afterlife?

Oddly, most mortals seem not to care, at least to go by how OOTS portrays things. Sure, some might, but that's an inherently selfish act that might just get you bounced out of Lawful Good to True Neutral once the devas get a hold of your soul.

Alignment is a result of disposition just as much as one's actions.

If you help people for purely selfish reasons, then you probably don't qualify for most good alignments.

The Evil afterlives, however, would be more than happy to take you if you intentionally tried to get there for some reason.

It's comparable to the criminal justice system today, in a really weird way. People know there's a good chance of getting caught, but they do stuff anyway. Whether it's because they think they won't get caught(think they'll be a higher-up instead of soul paste), or just don't care.

I always liked the idea that only the people who tried to be good and failed are punished in one of the hells; those who were deliberately evil are rewarded in hell instead (by becoming a devil or a demon). That's not cannon, though.

I personally think it's grapeshot.

edited 31st Mar '15 5:57:43 PM by blkwhtrbbt

Yeah, Dn D morality is overly reductive. Also dumb.

Honestly, I would assume that Crystal doesn't have the brain power to consider what might happen the next day, much less the afterlife. Bozzok not caring can probably be chalked up to pride and indifference to spiritual matters. I'm not sure I can explain away an evil cleric though.

They serve an evil god, usually.