Advanatages of being Evil?

[NaturalHazard]

Also the alignment thing is suppose to be fluid right? so good neutral charactors can commit evil acts and evil charactors can commit good acts, its possible for a charactor to change for the better or the worse throughout his/her life. Detect evil i hate that spell how does it work? Someone steps on your toe, you think angry maybe evil thoughts at that moment, paladin casts the spell at that exact time. Oh no's arrest him!! hes evil!! can they see all your past sins and thoughts or is it a general sense of knowing whats going on in a persons head? or aura of past acts?

[Phantom Lamb]

Detect evil i hate that spell how does it work? Someone steps on your toe, you think angry maybe evil thoughts at that moment, paladin casts the spell at that exact time. Oh no's arrest him!! hes evil!! can they see all your past sins and thoughts or is it a general sense of knowing whats going on in a persons head? or aura of past acts?

Think of your alignment as a fuel gauge. The actions of your life -- good, evil, chaotic, lawful -- fill up your tank or drain it. Mere thoughts at any given time don't have an impact on Detect Evil. Your fuel tank is drained by evil actions, not thoughts alone.

But yes, it is only a gauge and has no influence on your actions. A good-alligned person is considered "good" because their actions over their life have been overwhelmingly in the "good" category. However, if some tragedy befalls them, their allignment doesn't keep them from flipping the switch and behaving evil. Your actions influence your gauge rather than the other way around.

[NaturalHazard]

Good is generally what benifits the human/elven/dwarven/halfling/gnome races? goblin, orcs, gnolls, ect are all inherently evil. So no matter what they got no chance? Example a tribe of gobbo's inhabit an area, they get pushed off a large part of their hunting gathering lands by human farmers. The loss of their gathering area's puts pressures on the goblin population so they turn to raiding the farmers. Farmers get help from local government to pay adventurers to go kill goblins and get a bounty on goblin heads. This is good, right, the goblins are slowing down progress and civilisation. Now lets think of a similar situation but in this case its not goblins but uthgarth barberians, would it still be good to put a bounty on their heads? or maybe wild elves instead? I know i know doesnt matter because goblins are a monster race/species and nearly all evil, but doesnt good/evil cross racial/species lines? Anyway I think im over complicating things, what a boring game where you have to debate the morals of every little annoying thing you kill like goblins lol. But could it be possible for a neutral druid to champion their cause? fight the (good) head hunting adventurers, would fighting and possibly killing adventurers like humans/dwarves/elves ect in the defense of goblins for example make the druid evil?

[Fezzik]

In your goblin analogy, it isn't that the fact that the race is "evil", it's that they're committing evil acts (presumably) stealing is a bit iffy on the evil side since they're doing it to survive, but if they went about killing the farmers that got in the way, then yes, they're being evil and should be stopped. Same would hold true for a pack of rampaging barbarians. Now, if they started trading with the land hungry farmers instead this might throw the whole evil thing right out the window (unless perhaps, they were trading in Kobold slaves for the farms).

Despite my ancestry, there were some Vikings that I would consider evil (like the ones that pillaged the monastery and burned everyone inside), and others that were neutral and good (like those that did nothing but trade and settle).