Cleric of Gruumsh in a party with an Elf

[Riley37]

According to lore, Gruumsh once had an alliance with the conniving elven goddess Araushnee to bring down her fellow elven deities once and for all. Their plan failed and Araushnee was transformed into Lolth and her elven followers into drow.

If the elf PC, at WarpedAcorn's table, has the drow sub-race, then your angle has even more interesting opportunities for where the story might go.

I disagree with you about chaotic alignment and random arbitrary shifts of direction. Robin Hood is classic Chaotic Good; that doesn't mean he'll ever change his mind about taking from rich and giving to poor. If Corellan and Moradin ever relent and allow the orcs a homeland, even a desert or swamp, at that point Gruumsh's commitment to destroy "all that the other races would deny them" stops applying, and THEN he's free to change course.

 

[Maxperson]

Sort of like certain real-world situations (but lets not go there) where we have people that are 'DEFINITELY EVIL' in the eyes of those who have everything, while they have nothing. YES, it tends to breed a form of moral stunting, being relegated to the fringes of the world where everyone hopes you will just shut up and quietly expire. When instead you get PISSED and start a murder spree, well your just EEEEEVVVVVVIIIIIILLLLLLL!

There is never a justification for murder. Ever.

Now, I think that its reasonable to look at orcs as 'fallen'. They may or may not have been nice guys back when Gruumsh got cheated out of a nice spot in the cosmos, but they could have taken a higher moral path, and they didn't. That doesn't make the elves and dwarves blameless, nor make the orcs any less victims (at least in that telling of the story, whether its the whole truth is another question).

Nobody cheated him out of anything. He kept going places that others got to first. No cheating was involved that we can see in the lore. They laughed at him, but you don't get to murder people for laughing at you.

It would be possible, for example, to see Gruumsh as actually being a less morally corrupt orcish paragon. Yes, he believes in strength over all, and knows that he isn't going to get what he wants except by fighting, but maybe he actually doesn't espouse WANTON violence, only a sort of 'Klingon-esque' sort of "brutal realism". Maybe his priests actually kill (and eat) elvish prisoners MERCIFULLY! Who knows? I mean, I think the sort of 'default' assumption is more like cartoon evil, but I don't think you have to rewrite any of the material to read a little more into it and take it as mostly one side's story.

Sure, if you completely ignore the lore which says otherwise. The lore says that he does espouse wanton violence. That's what "leading orcs in ceaseless slaughter", "unending rage" and "reveling in the anguish" means. That far surpasses Klingons.

 

[Oofta]

Hey, its fine that you like 'cartoon evil' and that's really not any sort of bad or hard to understand choice. It works great for any campaign where the basic modus of play is 'slay all them evil guys' and you have a list and the list is always right, and there's nothing more to it than that. Its a game, that game is fun to play (certainly for many people, I find it gets old after a while, but it certainly works fine).

HOWEVER, when you start telling the rest of us that we're doing it wrong, that our way of playing is some sort of 'variant' game that, in effect, "isn't really D&D" and we have to have a therapy session with the players to discuss how they can't be mean to orcs, I'm calling BS! OK?

This sort of thing is highly variable, nobody can claim that one sort of alignment theory and concept of how to treat evil or any other element is 'baked into' D&D such that we can even say unequivocally which way is 'the rules'. In fact the entire argument is preposterous and not worth having. So we're just going to leave it at this. You have your opinion, and you can discuss how that relates to how YOU would play this thing out, and others of us will have OUR opinion and we will not call each other wrong or claim that the other guy's version of D&D is not 'the real thing'.

In pretty much every post I've done I try to include some variation of "do what make sense for your campaign". From my very first post, I've tried to make it clear that my advice is just how I would handle it in my campaign. So I'm call BS on that.

Second, orcs may be humanoid, but they are not humans. According to the books orcs are monsters and the epitome of chaotic evil. Maybe you ignore alignment in your games and that's great. But it is a core assumption of the game. The PHB defines what evil is, the monster manual gives an alignment to every creature in the book. Orcs, and their god Gruumsh, are chaotic evil. That's not my opinion, that's how they are defined in the book.

If you change a core assumption of the rules, especially ones as fundamental as alignment and the role of clerics in your game I think it should be discussed up front, That's all. Do what makes sense for your campaign.

 

[dco]

Gruumsh should aid better worshippers.

 

[Oofta]

Gruumsh should aid better worshippers.

Amen.

 

[Jonathon Robinson]

I disagree with you about chaotic alignment and random arbitrary shifts of direction. Robin Hood is classic Chaotic Good; that doesn't mean he'll ever change his mind about taking from rich and giving to poor. If Corellan and Moradin ever relent and allow the orcs a homeland, even a desert or swamp, at that point Gruumsh's commitment to destroy "all that the other races would deny them" stops applying, and THEN he's free to change course.

Fair point. I get that chaotic doesn't mean random arbitrary shifts and I may have been a little too open with my comment. I was just trying to tell the DM that changing his mind on "Gruumsh wants all elves dead" is definitely possible and there's always a way out. If I was this DM and I change my mind I would simply shrug to the player and say "your god is chaotic evil"