General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
HOWEVER, it seems in some people's points they're using real world morality to define D&D morality (often these are conflated).
This is a game about killing things and taking their stuff. If you see an orc, you kill it. Why? Because it is an orc...and orcs are evil.
Black dragons are more evil than orcs but not as evil as fiends.
"Commiting genocide" against an evil people in D&D is a good act. It is done on a small scale every day. Doing something good on a larger scale is not less good, it is MORE good. (Caveat: Doing any act for evil reasons, even if it ends up a good act/consequence is still evi).
If I can kill an orc (without knowing anything about it other than that it is an orc) and steal its property morally, then I can kill hundreds of orcs, also without reason.
If dragons are worse than orcs, then I can do the same.
If I had a spell that would wipe out every fiend in the multiverse simultaneously, would it not be a good act?
But, what V did was evil. He tried to torture the creature, and he also killed some non dragons. Those reasons, along with the creating undead, made it evil.
Although i voted Evil. I would have done the same thing to prevent the endless parade of "you killed my father, prepare to die" encounters that would follow.
Just for fun, the closest spell I've ever seen this one is the Extinction spell - a twenty-third level spell - from Eclipse: The Codex Persona, a FREE d20 supplement from Distant Horizons Games.
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There's an interesting default assumption running through this discussion which is touched upon but not explicitly stated. That is that destroying an evil creature ultimately and unambiguously makes the world, on the whole, a better place. More "good".
But I think that in a realistically run campaign, matters are more complicated than that. It isn't just a creature's nature that matters, it's their complete affect upon their world. While it's true that evil black dragons wreak mayhem and destruction, it's not necessarily true that their removal would result in the living community suddenly all turning into shiny happy people. In fact, their mayhem and destruction will cause their victims to act, perhaps even to work together to defeat a common enemy.
The bottom line is that so much thoughtless destruction will have unforeseen consequences as power shifts and new opportunities arise. While it's possible that this will result mostly in good, it's not definite. Simply a simple conclusion.
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Evil, RAW. Arguing by any other moral philosophy is pointless, since that's not the question that was asked, which was, "in D&D terms was V's act evil?" The answer is yes, unambiguously.
Vengeance, as defined by the official rules, is not necessarily evil, but is definitely on the slippery slope and is nongood. After all, the gods of vengeance are often evil or neutral. Retribution is not justice. Retribution, is about feeling good about something you shouldn't feel good about (which is, namely, killing or other forms of cruelty).
Let's also not forget here that V was being deliberately cruel which is, most definitely, RAW, E-VEEL (as another put it). Deliberately inflicting pain upon others who are helpless to resist lacks in mercy, which is a quality of good, RAW. As such, the very least that can be said about V's act was that it was not good. But a detailed look at the act will define it as evil as well.
For those indicating that black dragons are all evil, the alignment rules, as placed in D&D (particularly since 3e) do not make this a universal truth. Rather, it's a strong tendency. This tendency breaks down further in settings such as Eberron, where alignment archetypes are played fast and loose. While OotS does not seem to be as radical as Eberron, it should be noted that Burlew has already played with alignment stereotypes in the past (note the goblins from StoD or Miko acting in the way a stereotypically Lawful Stupid paladin would act and as a result becoming un-paladinified). It's also pretty clear that this is supposed to be a further demonstration of V falling down the slippery slope (I mean, what good's a Faustian deal if you don't get the slippery slope)?
For those more concerned about intentions than acts (even though, RAW, acts are more important by far) - V's intentions are not good either. It's crystal clear that V's intent is not justice, nor the safety of the world but pure sadistic vengeance. V wants to make the dragon suffer in a way that it is beyond even what the dragon was going to do to his/her family. It is not his/her intention even to keep her family safe. After all, surely, somewhere down the line, there's a friend or ally who will be rather displeased at V's act? No - it's about getting back at the dragon and doing it a way that demonstrates V's superiority of power better than the dragon could ever hope to match.
Let's phrase it differently shall we... "was it evil for the dragon to threaten to kill and trap the souls of V's family, due to the fact that V had killed her son?" The answer, of course, is no. Vengeance, RAW, isn't good. Likewise, V's act, which goes beyond even what the dragon intended to do, is most definitely evil.
For those indicating that black dragons are all evil, the alignment rules, as placed in D&D (particularly since 3e) do not make this a universal truth. Rather, it's a strong tendency.
From here: Reading The Monster Entries :: d20srd.org
Aligment
This line gives the alignment that the creature is most likely to have. Every entry includes a qualifier that indicates how broadly that alignment applies to the species as a whole.
Black dragons are ALWAYS chaotic evil.
(Half dragon-centaurs might not be)
Contrast that with:
orcs: sometimes chaotic evil.
and
drow: usually neutral evil.
If you can kill an orc on sight, or a drow on sight, you can sure as heck be a paladin who kills a black dragon on sight.
Retribution is not justice. Retribution, is about feeling good about something you shouldn't feel good about (which is, namely, killing or other forms of cruelty).
I'm picking this nit only because we're using pretty precise language, here.
The definition of retribution is "something justly deserved; recompense." Retribution is, in fact, justice. It has nothing to do with the motive of the individual meting out the justice.
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From here: Reading The Monster Entries :: d20srd.org
Aligment
This line gives the alignment that the creature is most likely to have. Every entry includes a qualifier that indicates how broadly that alignment applies to the species as a whole.
Black dragons are ALWAYS chaotic evil.
(Half dragon-centaurs might not be)
Read the corresponding entry in the MM (emphasis mine):
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Monster Manual, pg. 7
Alignment
This line gives the alignment that the creature is most likely to have. Every entry includes a qualifier that indicates how broadly that alignment applies to the species as a whole. See the Glossary for details.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Monster Manual, pg. 305
Alignment: This line in a monster entry gives the alignment that the creature is most likely to have. Every entry includes a qualifier that indicates how broadly that alignment applies to all monsters of that kind.
Always: The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary predisposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions.
Usually: The majority (more than 50%) of these creatures have the given alignment. This may be due to strong cultural influences, or it may be a legacy of the creatures’ origin. For example, most elves inherited their chaotic good alignment from their creator, the deity Corellon Larethian.
Often: The creature tends toward the given alignment, either by nature or nurture, but not strongly. A plurality (40–50%) of individuals have the given alignment, but exceptions are common.
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So you are saying, revenge against a creature that is inherently evil, has a predispotion towards evil and is raised in a society that exalts evil and therefore has far less choice in aligning itself with good or any inherent inhibition against evil acts who commited an evil act by a creature who is raised in a society that exalts choice and respect for others (as elven society supposedly does since it is CG), and chooses to exercise such revenge on an extremely disproportional scale, is justified.
I have no idea what your run-on sentence said. I see the word justified. Yes, it's justified.
Broke my family apart, physically and almost mentally. Tied up my spouse for torture. Would make sure my children suffered eternal punishment.
Where you see disproportional scale, I see an extremely high-level caster making sure his family is safe from retribution. It's not V's fault this dragon happened to be so stupid and obstinate.
It's the OotS world. Most of its characters know exactly what's going on as far as D&D tropes go. A few eggs get broken to make omelets. The only thing that might make it an evil act is V taking a wee bit too much enjoyment in it.
If you came across a tribe of orcs or goblins that wasn't rampaging and murdering humans - maybe they're even trading with them - would you decide to go in and start killing indiscriminately?
If there was a black or green dragon that just sat in it's cave and never bothered the nearby town of humans, would you run in and slay it and proclaim yourselves to be paladins?
I understand that, for some people, D&D is little more then "Hey, there's an angry monster" "I kill it!" But that very clearly hasn't been the case for OotS, and trying to typecast it as such is kinda weird.
Edit: Also, no, it's not justified. The whole idea of evil is that it's the easy path. Being the good guy isn't supposed to be sunshine, flowers, and rainbows. You see some do something unquestionably evil, yes, you stop it and then. You don't then kill it's family because they might be evil too, that makes you no different then the evil bad guy you stopped. I can't think of a single game or setting that has a meter of alignment or morality that wouldn't mark you down for it.
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Arguably, even the deaths of the occasional non-evil black dragons and half dragons is not enough to make this act evil. It seems to me that you've got to go with intentions, if you want to argue that this act is evil. Either that of you're committing yourself to a moral position that says... not very nice things, lets say... about every modern act of warfare or embargo to occur since at least world war 2. I can only pursue this line of reasoning so far under the code of conduct, and the analogy between enemy soldiers and inherently evil monsters isn't perfect, but the basic idea- that its not generally considered morally wrong to kill off even relatively large amounts of civilians (non-objectively evil creatures) in pursuit of the reduction of your side's casualties- remains the same.
Maybe we'd have a better world if people didn't think that way, but they do.
Thanks Alzrius. I didn't schlep upstairs to get the MM.
That said, unique (1) or very rare (<1%, and probably a lot less when we compare that to unique- i.e. only one in existence) is a pretty reasonable casualty of war when your job is to go out and kill stuff every day (i.e a D&D adventurer).
Add to that that the very rare or unique individual is just as likely to be LE, NE, N, CN, or LN...and all of those are reasonably acceptable kills in D&D.
Mathematically, if you give all the other alignments an equal chance, the individual who is not CE still has a 5/8 chance of being an acceptable non-good kill
Statistically, if you use my 1% or less, and my 5/8 chance, for every 267 acceptable dragons killed one good dragon would be killed.
In real life, I couldn't live with that. In D&D, I TOTALLY could.
This was not problematic because of killing an evil race in D&D. THAT IS THE GOAL in D&D, much of the time. This WAS evil for a number of other reasons.
Anyone who has ever shot a kobold brigand (or, heck a human brigand) in the back while they are running away from their botched highway robbery should appreciate that the morals in D&D are a bit different than in our world.
This wasn't conventional warfare. This wasn't the equivalent of one country attacking another country and the other country retaliating to protect it's citizens.
This was the equivalent of some guy trying to kill me and my family, failing then me killing the guy and proceeding to hunt down and kill EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF HIS FAMILY. His mom, his dad, his paraplegic cousin Dwight, his sister and her 3 kids aged 3, 12 & 16. This is me killing my way across creation to end his bloodline.
I'm sorry but that's just frakkin EVIL.
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I'm with the guy surprised that 13% of those polled think it was a good act.
V makes a deal for his soul with epically powerful archfiends for power. This makes him an unambiguously evil character at this point. He is evil, the actions that follow are evil by default, but moving on, we have -
He allows the souls of the most evil, powerful wizards to be grafted to him.
After killing the dragon, he uses that power to turn the dragon undead.
He casts an epic level [Evil] spell created by the most powerfully evil necromancer in all of the Abyss.
This spell exists to kill off an entire family line, no matter how far it stretches.
These deaths include plenty of evil black dragons, but not every single black dragon is evil (as the MM glossary establishes)
It also includes non-dragon offspring such as half dragons and other spawn which are not alignment restricted, so hundreds of good and neutral beings could have been killed and V has no way of knowing, nor does he care.
He tortures the dragon with the knowledge that her entire line will end.
Really, where do people find the good in this? This is about real world morality. D&D alignment has rules and V's actions are outright evil, starting with the deal with the devils and anything that flows from that, even saving his family, is tainted. He became an evil creature. Can a Balor apply for paladinhood after killing enough devils? Evil creatures killing evil creatures are not committing good acts and V has certainly become evil. Rich hints at this with the subtle changes in V's appearance.
Arguably, even the deaths of the occasional non-evil black dragons and half dragons is not enough to make this act evil. It seems to me that you've got to go with intentions, if you want to argue that this act is evil. Either that of you're committing yourself to a moral position that says... not very nice things, lets say... about every modern act of warfare or embargo to occur since at least world war 2. I can only pursue this line of reasoning so far under the code of conduct, and the analogy between enemy soldiers and inherently evil monsters isn't perfect, but the basic idea- that its not generally considered morally wrong to kill off even relatively large amounts of civilians (non-objectively evil creatures) in pursuit of the reduction of your side's casualties- remains the same.
Maybe we'd have a better world if people didn't think that way, but they do.
V's spell was E-VEEL because of his intentions (torture the dragon, demonstrate his superiority, etc.) and because of the act (killing everything related to her). This would be like dropping a nuclear bomb on Detroit because someone from Detroit tried to kill your grandmother. Or, engineering a virus to kill everyone of a specific ethnic group for doing the same.
Heck, the demons (devils, whatever) even gave him an out in having the Imp take his head to Durkon. Which he rejected because of his pride and arrogance.
It was an E-VEEL act with E-VEEL intentions and it is going to cost him.
Also, unpreventable civilian casualties in pursuits of military goals are not moral (they aren't necessarily immoral either). They may, depending on a number of factors, be legal. They may also be illegal. The laws of war don't say where the line is, for good reason. Killing an entire population to prevent them from maybe attacking you at some indeterminate point in the future is both immoral and illegal.
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Last edited by Krensky; 20th March 2009 at 11:52 PM..
Since I cast the disintegrate spell, I am the one that's getting blamed for the entirety of my group's actions? And therefore, my family must be tortured?
V stopped the dragon. What is being discussed is what happened afterwards.
Quote:
C'mon now. The black dragon parent took this to another level, and V is now making sure that no other member of this family will take it upon themselves to exact revenge on V and his/her family.
Genocide isn't taking things to a whole other level?
V killed a black dragon, and in such a way to make it very difficult to raise it (disintegrate leaves no corpse). The mother wanted to go beyond simply killing V, but killing V's immediate family. Now, the extra things the dragon was going to do (soul bind) were escalating things. However wiping out not just the immediate family, but tons of relatives, is a whole other level of escalation.
At best V was being EQUALLY evil as the dragon. Was the dragon stupid for leaving it's child behind to defend the horde? Perhaps. V was equally stupid for not trancing, for going off alone, and choosing a banned school that ended up preventing access to teleportation (although that was unintentional on V's part an was due to changes to the universe). V made mistakes that enabled the dragon to achieve it's plan ... JUST like the dragon made mistakes that allowed V to kill the dragon's child.
[quot]
What if that stupid half-dragon centaur was GOOD? Who cares? It could just as easily find out about V's actions and try to kill V, leaving V's children with only one parent. Just because it's good doesn't mean it's going to go down every other peaceful avenue, figuring out what its cousin did to deserve this, etc.
[/quote]
No it will wipe out the entirety of V's family line, because that is at best neutral
Also, if it was actualy V's plan to avoid retribution and not revenge (there is no indication by V that this is any more than spiteful revenge on V's part) then there is a huge gap in that logic as BLOOD relatives aren't the only people that may go after V. For example, the centaur half of the half-centaurs family are just as likely to be upset about the massive slaughter. Not to mention Tiamat.
If the goal is kill anyone that might be upset and come after V in revenge ... it would require destroying all intelligent life (and unlife, and sentient immortals, etc). If anything the greater the slaughter the more likely there is going to be someone seeking revenge.
Anyone who has ever shot a kobold brigand (or, heck a human brigand) in the back while they are running away from their botched highway robbery should appreciate that the morals in D&D are a bit different than in our world.
In the real world, I don't think shooting a brigand in the back as they are fleeing is not "good" or "evil," it's unsportsmanlike (and often a cowardly act if the brigand was completely unarmed). Just ask Robert Ford.
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