Drake said
Isengoo saidThe descriptions alone should have been more than enough to indicate what that particular action entailed as far as a good/neutral/evil alignment went.
Roleplay should have taken over from there utilizing those code prompts and following on accordingly. Sadly, the power and usefullness of the attack made it easy for people to chose to ignore that obvious indication of the attacks nature.
Hence the need to add additional code to make that sink in all the more clearly. The repercussions for using the attack should have been coming from the playerbase, those of good and neutral alignment at least.
I think you took my point out of context. The game already provides for checks and balances so people know if their RP is out of sync with how their character should be behaving given the circumstances (reputation, karma, other people?). I don't think bothering the wizards with any action you take is necessary given the system already does it for you.
I guess I should state that I still don't think backstabbing is all that bad, compared to torturing people, especially when used for good ends, and I don't like that the system doesn't reflect this, but I understand the near impossibility of capturing all things under the karma or reputation system when an inputted command isn't used.
If you imagine the process of backstabbing someone, let's imagine the scenario of a good guy backstabbing an evil guy (for all intents and purposes) the only real action involved is sneaking behind someone to place a dagger in their back. The dagger being placed into their flesh isn't outside the norm of everyday combat, excepting some strange moral device people have attached to it under this circumstance. Often, 'good' people will lie in wait and ambush other people with nothing happening to their karma or their reputation because they didn't input a command, but I say there is no difference between this type of behavior and a backstab.
Now, let us examine the torture of someone. For this hypothetical, let's say the torturers are good and the tortured is evil. This is also a common enough occurrence, so nobody can say I am wrong for fear of looking foolish. So, the good agent here has a weapon, let's say a saw, and he slowly cleaves through the evil agent's flesh, while they are chained up, with express intent to cause pain. The intent with the backstab is to kill, the intent here is to cause pain so as to derive information. I ask you, which is more sinister? Surely, nobody can say the backstab is the more evil of the acts.
Therefore, Rangers backstabbing orcs seems perfectly reasonable in my eyes, if Crusaders/Taniel Priests torturing people is also acceptable.