I agree that neutrals can be self-interested, but they are not supposed to be too callous or totally blind to the well-being of others. They certainly don't have to go out of their way to help someone, but I think murdering someone for gear is tending slightly towards the evil side of the scale.
I'm not saying a neutral can never kill someone for gear, but I would hope that they didn't make a habit out of it. Pure selfishness is a clear trait of evil, and as the helpfile says:
Heedless of the well-being of others, evils selfishly and shamelessly
exploit others for their own advancement and power.*
I can certainly see a neutral person looting items from a corpse they found without any problem. I can also see a neutral killing someone for gear, if they didn't do it all the time, or if there were some other underlying reasons.
While neutrals can be selfish, once their selfishness extends to having no compunction about killing anyone for gear whenever they feel like it, I think they are slipping into evil.
The neutral alignment enjoys several benefits. You can hunt with both evils and goods, you are not affected by protection from evil or good, and good aligned characters need a decent reason to attack and kill you. The price of this is that people expect neutral align characters to act with reason that isn't totally motivated by self interest. Although as I said, it is usually OK in moderation.
Have we recently revisited this? I rolled a neutral toon, just hit my pinnacle, literally have had only three interactions and none of them negative, mainly people helping me rank. Get some EQ alone and nobody really had a chance to look at me, then get killed by a bounty hunter suddenly out of nowhere and I wasn't even on the top ten list? Obviously, it's my fault for not being super cautious but I didn't think for one moment this toon would be in bounty danger this fast with hardly any interactions. Maybe a good idea would be if someone is going to place a bounty, they need to tell the clerk why they wish them dead. I would love to know why this toon was bountied yet he never interacted with anyone. What a waste of a toon.
Just had pretty much the exact situation - I think I know what happened - but don't really want to discuss it here. Suffice to say its IC - and i guess the reasoning makes sense - but its pretty shitty from the player in question.
How interesting. My most recent pinned character also was bountied within one playing hour of reaching my 50. But I do my best to annoy everyone so I was not surprised.
I get it, maybe there are other reasons to put bounties out there, perhaps some people don't want to be hunted. My point is LISKO just put out a scroll about not accepting low tier bounties, yet LISKO herself killed a newly pinned toon (granted she doesn't know this) that isn't even on the TOP TEN list waaaa? Why send out that scroll IG in the first place? Makes 0 sense. If I didn't read that scroll, then I wouldn't have my guard down. Granted, this is my fault for not having sanc while I was in town and being an idiot for thinking there is no way i would have a bounty right now. So 100% my fault I won't deny that, just venting a bit. God dam you LISKO. Well, at least I can say that i had an Ogre Warrior for 7 hours! Was going to give these suckers ago but after having almost 1600hp chopped down in seconds with no aura, ya no thanks you all can keep them!!
Since your all being so negative, I will say something positive.
Good Job Lisko, you obviously have our numbers. While I can not speak for them, I will vouch for your RP through the encounter. Now catching me at the end of a seven hour request may have been a bit of dirty pool but, well scouted and accomplished regardless. Kudos.
Naw, no negativity, Lisko got a good kill. First Ogre Warrior I've ever rolled and didn't think I would get melted that fast if caught off guard. I had almost 70% of all the EQ I needed and just pinned so didn't think I needed to be Thief/Ninja/Sydicate paranoid so quickly. Literally pinned, got EQ, went into town to make sure I purchasing some seaweed to make sure I was always flying and BAM blackjacked, melted. I can assure you, when I decide to roll another Warrior Ogre, I will never in my life walk through town with no aura again, so lesson learned.
Naw, no negativity, Lisko got a good kill. First Ogre Warrior I've ever rolled and didn't think I would get melted that fast if caught off guard. I had almost 70% of all the EQ I needed and just pinned so didn't think I needed to be Thief/Ninja/Sydicate paranoid so quickly. Literally pinned, got EQ, went into town to make sure I purchasing some seaweed to make sure I was always flying and BAM blackjacked, melted. I can assure you, when I decide to roll another Warrior Ogre, I will never in my life walk through town with no aura again, so lesson learned.
@Ulmusdorn @sarcon I was wondering that too, why give up after one death? You're going to die at some point, doesn't take away from the character unless your RP is the undefeated heavyweight champ or something.
@Ulmusdorn @sarcon I was wondering that too, why give up after one death? You're going to die at some point, doesn't take away from the character unless your RP is the undefeated heavyweight champ or something.
That was epic..* Undefeated heavyweight champ or something*. Well, I'm more of a mage player, besides recently playing a ranger which I really started to like. Well, I also played doomblades for years, to this day still my favorite class to play, just haven't been the biggest fan of the changes to them. When I use to play doomblades your biggest bain was a warrior, so you had to use a polearm and be super defensive and leverage your critical strikes to survive. The other approach was Iron arm and predict bash, but again duel wielding weapons vs a warrior was pretty much death against a smart warrior. When I returned from my long break, something happened to that two-handed defense, perhaps it was because Doomblades were too defensive, which could be true, I dunno, I always still had problems with vamps, crusaders and warriors as a doomblade. The life of a doomblade is hard, you always have to be prepared for a specific enemy, couldn't just fight multiple fronts simultaneously. So, long story short I was going to roll a mage then decided to try a Ogre warrior to give it a go, however once I was melted that fast by a thief, it pretty much killed that little experiment. It basically reinforced that I prefer having aura and protections all the time, vs taking a risk with no aura and dying in three rounds. Granted, the death was my fault for not being prepared at that moment. I've always found that if i die it's because i made a mistake and usually i do two things.. take a second and re-evaluate what happened to correct the error, or scrap the character and teach myself a hard lesson to not let that happen again or else. Sure it's a little harsh but it smartens you up really quick.
not enough of it around!