D&D 5E Is he evil?

[AaronOfBarbaria]

That only became absolutely definitively true with the arrival of 3e

My 2nd edition Monstrous Manual disagrees with you. It tells me right at the front that the Alignment mentioned for each monster "shows the general behavior of the average monster of that type." and that exceptions occur.

And in any event, this does not mean that in a particular campaign orcs are not evil with a capital "E".
For about the 20th time, define orc.

To both of these: I already told you the definition you keep asking for, and that I'm not talking about what someone might do with their own campaign.

Doesn't matter.
I've heard enough. All the red herring details people keep inventing don't overturn what we already know, and besides which are less pertinent (being invented) than the facts we already know.

It does matter because it highlights that the "red herring details people keep inventing" actually includes some of the details your interpretation of the events relies upon - which you have invented because it was necessary to invent something to reach a conclusion beyond "Not enough information provided to be sure."

I know, but in the source material it is possible to have a fallen angel, but a risen devil is impossible.

That's not what the book says.

This departs in to religion

You might. It doesn't, and I won't.

Point being, devils are evil with a capital "E", even in and I would say especially in 5e, since the language you quoted to me seems to explicitly overturn certain weak and badly thought out ideas we saw in 2e/3e.

"Point being"? You sound like you think you are telling me something I didn't know already or don't agree with - and that is very odd since I'm the one that brought devils being evil with a capital 'E' into the conversation as a means to prove that orcs, being neither fiend nor celestial, aren't treated in the same way by the D&D books.

Sure. But you can't expect someone who has been playing for 20-30 years to have their setting and conception fully set by the fluff in 5e.

That's not an expectation I have, nor is it one I expressed anyone, myself included, as having at any point.

Again, define "orc".

And again, I already did.

Tolkien is definitive here.

Tolkien is not one of the names on the credits page of the D&D game... so no, that's not the case.

I've already addressed this, and I hate going in circles.

Which makes it weird that you keep leading the discussion into them.

None of which necessarily proves that orcs aren't evil with a capital "E".

Which is fine, because it doesn't have to - the text describing alignment and what it means already did that.

Whether he or his creation is wholly ruined now is a different question.

That is a question. But I find the more interesting one to be how one side of this specific grudge can be "wholly ruined" while the other side isn't, despite that other side both creating the negative emotion that caused the grudge, and being willing to take the grudge as far (since both sides treat the other with the same kill on sight attitude).

But again, we aren't addressing merely how 5e defines "orc", but how it is has been variously defined over the course of D&D's history in different campaign worlds.

It's really odd that you know that here, but ask me twice before this, and once after, to define orc. Make up your mind; do you know what we are talking about or don't you?

For some definitions of orc, granted perhaps not the 5e one, killing orcs on sight is not racist or murderous.

Replace "orc" in that sentence with any real race and tell me if you think it still makes sense.

Yes, I understand that orcs are genuinely fictional so there is some leeway in their creator possibly saying that they are not a people - but D&D talks about their outlook on life, their culture, their family units, and their self-awareness and the implied self-identity as being a people that comes with it, plus explicitly points out in the earlier versions that an orc counts as a person so that we know any spell that affects people affects orcs - so I'm not sure how all of those facts could coexist with the above statement that killing of a creature for no further reason than because it is what it is is not racist, or how that killing being done simply because an opportunity arose is able to be called anything but murderous.

Indeed, orcs are almost certainly not the same race as humans in most D&D worlds, and thus even to compare it to racism is to be facile, even if orcs are "people". We don't have a word for being 'specist' because we don't have multiple sapient species in this world, but in this case we need such a word if we are to start talking about the wrong of discriminating against orcs if orcs are "people".

Are you aware that real world racism can manifest as insisting that other people that look differently than your people do aren't actually people?

 

[Charles Rampant]

Good god there is a lot of words being typed in this thread for what is a fairly obvious and (with three individual exceptions) clear cut question.

 

[jasper]

Is it really necessary for us to sit around with Orcs singing Kumbaya?

Is that what it has come down to?

kill them if they do that. that song is ENVVVVVVVVIL.
No. They must in 3/4 time rap in a barbershop quartet "alice's restaurant" while being backed by 60 piece ORCestra with its 3rd violin missing it "G" string.

It boils down to how the group (not internet, not the creators, not the people who are going to dislike the group thinking) and the DMs define EVIL and orcs. So is ORCS is peoples let them eat pie. If EVIL kill the orc and take their pie. But the DM must stay in the lines set up.

 

[Celebrim]

To both of these: I already told you the definition you keep asking for, and that I'm not talking about what someone might do with their own campaign.

Ok, good. I'm trying to explain why your way of looking at things doesn't make everyone else's way wrong, any more than their way makes your way wrong.

That is a question. But I find the more interesting one to be how one side of this specific grudge can be "wholly ruined" while the other side isn't, despite that other side both creating the negative emotion that caused the grudge, and being willing to take the grudge as far (since both sides treat the other with the same kill on sight attitude).

Are you actually interested in that, or have you already made a decision? I'm sure if we actually wanted to explain how they became wholly ruined, we could write the myth that would explain that. It wouldn't be terribly hard to explain how someone with a grudge became evil if that is what we wanted to do. After all, it's not unusual for people with a grudge to use that grudge to justify all manner of evils.

It's really odd that you know that here, but ask me twice before this, and once after, to define orc. Make up your mind; do you know what we are talking about or don't you?

I'm saying no one knows what they are talking about until orc is defined for a particular campaign world. You've defined what orc means at your table, which as best as I can tell is a definition that says orcs aren't actually evil but the victims of racist discrimination and elves, dwarves and the like are just like orcs with the only difference being they wear different hats. And that's fine, and it tells us a lot about how to act morally and honorably toward an orc in your game world, but that definition is applicable only to your table. At some other table, orcs might have a completely different definition, and operating under that completely different definition it might well be moral and honorable to kill them on sight.

Replace "orc" in that sentence with any real race and tell me if you think it still makes sense.

That's so ridiculous, I'm going to quote it again.

Replace "orc" in that sentence with any real race and tell me if you think it still makes sense.

Of course it wouldn't make sense! Orcs aren't real, and aren't interchangeable with humanity (which is real). In most fantasy settings, orcs aren't a race. If one species is carved out of stone and animated by some deity, and another species is formed where some gods blood fell in the soil, and another species evolved from plains dwelling simians, and another species are the offspring when some god had too much wine and woke up next to a tiger, then those species are not divided by artificial divisions like race. You can't take the differences between those races as being comparable as the difference between to racial groups of humanity, and it would be frankly insulting to try to make direct parallels between fantasy species and particular human racial groups. When different species have different origins and different natures, then we can't say what the inherent worth or dignity or rights of a species are. We can however say that humanity all have the same inherent rights and dignities owing to their common creation and universal relationship with each other as peers. We can't say that about two different species, least of all two different species with wildly different origins.

Yes, I understand that orcs are genuinely fictional so there is some leeway in their creator possibly saying that they are not a people - but D&D talks about their outlook on life, their culture, their family units, and their self-awareness and the implied self-identity as being a people that comes with it, plus explicitly points out in the earlier versions that an orc counts as a person so that we know any spell that affects people affects orcs - so I'm not sure how all of those facts could coexist with the above statement that killing of a creature for no further reason than because it is what it is is not racist, or how that killing being done simply because an opportunity arose is able to be called anything but murderous.

I don't think you can make it so clear cut. Yes, we've come a long way from Tolkien orcs, to get to something like World of Warcraft. Certainly, if your D&D game makes orcs parallels to humanity in most ways which it seems to, and makes them explicitly people, then I also agree that killing them for no other reason than they are orcs is 'speciesist'.

Are you aware that real world racism can manifest as insisting that other people that look differently than your people do aren't actually people?

*puts head in hands*

Are you aware that I've had people come up to me and say that because of my skin color, I wasn't really a person. That I was in fact a fake person who had been cooked in an oven by Satan in mockery of real people, and as a consequence of my different creation I did not really have a soul? In other words, they weren't saying that I merely was a different race of humanity, but that I was a whole other species ultimately incapable of inherent good because I was the construct of a dark and evil power - that is to say, an non-person, or an "orc". This is my real life experience. I'm not making that up. So yes, I'm aware racism is a real thing, but I'm talking about imagined fantasy worlds which have all sorts of different things in them that aren't things in reality.

 

[Maxperson]

That only became absolutely definitively true with the arrival of 3e, which gave species alignments in a nuanced manner "Usually Chaotic Evil", rather than "Chaotic Evil". And in any event, this does not mean that in a particular campaign orcs are not evil with a capital "E".

That's not accurate. At also applied to 2e.

From 2e: "Alignment shows the general behavior of the average monster of that type. Exceptions, though uncommon, may be encountered."

 

[Celebrim]

That's not accurate. At also applied to 2e.

From 2e: "Alignment shows the general behavior of the average monster of that type. Exceptions, though uncommon, may be encountered."

Does putting this caveat in alignment in any way distinguish the rules for say a succubi from a hobgoblin or a hobgoblin from a troll? Are exceptions to eithers basic behavior to be any more expected, and can we on the basis of those exceptions say anything? The problem with this broad far reaching caveat is that it doesn't distinguish the demographics of one entry in the monster manual from another. That was largely left up to the individual DM.

I assure you, I played during 2e and certainly in the early 2e era it was still uncommon to treat monstrous humanoids or demihumans as people. That began to change with the publication of 'reverse adventures' in Dragon where you played the bad guys, and with the publication of more lore for the traditional evil races and books for creating demihuman PCs. I ran a 'reverse campaign' for a while, the "goblin campaign", which was really all about "goblins are people" and "goblins can be heroes". But in earlier eras, Tolkiens original conception, of goblins and orcs being the basically mindless wholly ruined servants of a dark power prevailed and wasn't generally questioned, even as campaigns increasingly departed from Tolkienisms (certainly D&D elves are not Tolkien's immortal elves however clearly inspired by them they may be).

 

[Maxperson]

Does putting this caveat in alignment in any way distinguish the rules for say a succubi from a hobgoblin or a hobgoblin from a troll? Are exceptions to eithers basic behavior to be any more expected, and can we on the basis of those exceptions say anything? The problem with this broad far reaching caveat is that it doesn't distinguish the demographics of one entry in the monster manual from another. That was largely left up to the individual DM.

There would be those uncommon hobgoblins, trolls, and succubi that are good or neutral is all that exception means. If there are exceptions built into the rules, then those exceptions exist within the game universe that the PCs are exploring, even if the DM never creates one for you to encounter. The PCs would have presumably heard about at least some of them.

I assure you, I played during 2e and certainly in the early 2e era it was still uncommon to treat monstrous humanoids or demihumans as people. That began to change with the publication of 'reverse adventures' in Dragon where you played the bad guys, and with the publication of more lore for the traditional evil races and books for creating demihuman PCs. I ran a 'reverse campaign' for a while, the "goblin campaign", which was really all about "goblins are people" and "goblins can be heroes". But in earlier eras, Tolkiens original conception, of goblins and orcs being the basically mindless wholly ruined servants of a dark power prevailed and wasn't generally questioned, even as campaigns increasingly departed from Tolkienisms (certainly D&D elves are not Tolkien's immortal elves however clearly inspired by them they may be).

Yeah. I think the general way to look at it is orcs aren't people, but I think most of that is because DMs generally don't create people orcs. If all the players see is evil, that's how they are going to treat the race. It's up to the DM in any edition to change that perception through his encounters.

 

[Celebrim]

There would be those uncommon hobgoblins, trolls, and succubi that are good or neutral is all that exception means.

Yes, exactly. But if you go to the original thread of the conversation you are quibbling with and look at the context, I was making a point about how hobgoblins are mechanically different than demons. So the fact that you wrote that sentence proves my point about how in 2e, they were not.

Yeah. I think the general way to look at it is orcs aren't people, but I think most of that is because DMs generally don't create people orcs. If all the players see is evil, that's how they are going to treat the race. It's up to the DM in any edition to change that perception through his encounters.

Agreed. I think the basic problem is not that players kill orcs on sight, but that players had never met an orc that did not attack them on sight because that's how the DM used and conceived them. If you don't have orcs in your game that aren't heavily armed foes that attack on sight and respond to any attempt at parlay as a sign of weakness and an opportunity for treachery, then there is no reason to expect the PC's to go, "Hey, these are people." And in point of fact, they probably - if that's how you play and conceive them - aren't people, but monsters.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, exactly. But if you go to the original thread of the conversation you are quibbling with and look at the context, I was making a point about how hobgoblins are mechanically different than demons. So the fact that you wrote that sentence proves my point about how in 2e, they were not.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by that. Alignment, outside of spells and abilities that interacted with it, wasn't really a mechanic(outside of changing from one to another). Creatures with evil alignment were mechanically different for reasons other than alignment, even in 3e.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by that.

*struggling not to respond snarkily*

Alignment, outside of spells and abilities that interacted with it, wasn't really a mechanic(outside of changing from one to another).

Yes, exactly. Given this fact, do you see how no formal mechanic existed in 2e to differentiate two different monsters with the alignment entry 'Chaotic Evil' on the basis of that alignment alone? And do you also see how the caveat written at the front of the book that not all creatures necessarily had the listed alignment also did not and could not distinguish two different monsters with the same alignment entry 'Chaotic Evil' on the basis of that alignment alone since it applied to them euqally, and to the contrary under the rules the alignment entry 'Chaotic Evil' on say both orcs and balors connected the two monsters rather than differentiated them?

Creatures with evil alignment were mechanically different for reasons other than alignment, even in 3e.

Yes, but we were in context explicitly and implicitly talking about mechanical differences of alignment. The fact that two different monsters might have different HD isn't relevant to the topic.