D&D 5E Ethics of Killing Vat Spawn?

[DemoMonkey]

In D&D, it' s only ethical to kill something if it has GP, XP, or magic items.

Whether it has a soul, sentience, an afterlife, or a sweet little grandma is irrelevant.

D&D is a murder simulator, not a morality problem.

 

[Shiroiken]

A vat born creature is no different than a clone, so they largely go under the same mentality. The only difference with the clone is wanting to kill a clone of yourself under the belief that only one of you can be "real" (a common historical trope). Killing a vat born or clone could be justified as them not "being real," and while it's definitely not "good," it might not be "evil" either. This is likely something that each individual would decide for themselves, similar to mercy killing. As someone pointed out, these creatures don't count because of their mindless, evil nature.

I say do whatever makes sense for you and your group and don't worry about what other people say.

Stop that! Ideas like that make threads boring

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think people should just accept that sometimes a character's actions can be bad without making them an inherently bad person and stop bending over backwards to make a guilt free human-shaped thing to brutalize.

Once we achieve that, we can instead come up with actual motivations for villains in stead of reasons why they should die and the zombie genre can finally die and not come back.

 

[jasper]

What's a vat spawn?

Basically creature that are not born but are created in a vat. There are no children may not even have females or gender.

An example are the Giaks from Magnamund. Basically souped up Goblins created in vats and infused with the God of Darkness and evils essence.

A non evil vat spawned Giak would require a wish spell or other magic. They're sentient in terms of feeling pain and being able to think (up to a point) but they can only be created by the servants of the darklords and have very limited free will (essentially none).

Context I'm thinking of vat spawned baddies replacing the usual D&D fodder for a post apocalyptic game.

Giak

Giak

Giaks are a race of humanoid servants of the Darklords. They are not very intelligent, but they are fierce and strong. The Darklords first appeared in Magnamund and began to breed Giaks in MS 3072 [1]. In MS 3262, the Darklords began construction of the city of Helgedad, which eventually claimed...

lonewolf.fandom.com

How much xp do I get per critter?

 

[Steampunkette]

In D&D, it' s only ethical to kill something if it has GP, XP, or magic items.

Whether it has a soul, sentience, an afterlife, or a sweet little grandma is irrelevant.

D&D is a murder simulator, not a morality problem.

Murder only exists in a moral framework. Otherwise it's just killing.

I think people should just accept that sometimes a character's actions can be bad without making them an inherently bad person and stop bending over backwards to make a guilt free human-shaped thing to brutalize.

Once we achieve that, we can instead come up with actual motivations for villains in stead of reasons why they should die and the zombie genre can finally die and not come back.

This is super important^

Also: Sometimes there are perfectly good reasons to kill people that have nothing to do with alignment, origin, or race. And the way people bend over backwards to invent RACES that it's okay to slaughter wholesale says a lot...

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Also: Sometimes there are perfectly good reasons to kill people that have nothing to do with alignment, origin, or race. And the way people bend over backwards to invent RACES that it's okay to slaughter wholesale says a lot...

Except that no, once you establish XYZ as people, there is no good reason to go after him and kill him. Except of self-defence situation -- which would be uncommon since they are supposedly sentient and so would rather surrender rather than fight to the last man -- and euthanasia (a debate which D&D world should be free of since there is no lingering injuries, HP are recovered overnight and healing magic is plentiful), you'd be hard pressed to find a situation in which it is OK to behave like characters usually do.


(vaalingarde)

Once we achieve that, we can instead come up with actual motivations for villains in stead of reasons why they should die and the zombie genre can finally die and not come back.

Having motivations for acting evil is great and I don't think anyone here said the contrary. However, if a vampire has actual motivation for doing evil, let's say he's like Strahd von Zahrovich and killed all female dusk elves in order to make elves feel what he felt when his love was denied, that's criminal, but not a reason to kill him. On the other hand, if on top of that, you establish in the setting that vampires are impossible to rehabilitate, always evil, so that they are not only doing evil but are evil, you could conceivably start arguing that the alternative (eternal jail without any possibility of sentence reduction, which is similar to torture) is worse than killing him outright. Note that I am not saying that being evil is sufficent to justify killing, nor I am defending the strawman that it's OK to kill innocent things because they are evil, but I am saying that being absolutely evil is a prerequisite to even consider killing it as an ethical solution to the problem of someone merely doing criminal acts.

Having this kind of debate is very fun at the table and create memorable roleplay moments when one of the PCs actually choose to slit the throat of the the BBEG instead of Spare the Dying him... but some evening, you could want to play without entering this debates six to eight times per long rest.

 

[MarkB]

Personally, I have a distaste for introducing a non-free-willed sentient race into a setting just so that they can be killed without moral qualms. If they're sentient enough to develop and maintain a culture and language, they're making decisions in their lives in some fashion, and that means that their free will or lack thereof is a matter of degree, not an absolute.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As others have said, that they're spawned in vats is mostly irrelevant. If it is genuinely demonstrable (and discoverable) that no giak is capable of existing with independent behavior unless you use something like a wish--aka one of the most powerful spells around--to make one, then I'm comfortable viewing them as....basically meat-puppets.

Potential question: What would happen if you could somehow sever the dark presence that controls a given (living) giak without simply killing it? (Think the equivalent of "put inside a solid lead Faraday cage, but for dark power--nothing gets in, nothing gets out.) Would it live? If it did live, would it still have the capacity for thought?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Having this kind of debate is very fun at the table and create memorable roleplay moments when one of the PCs actually choose to slit the throat of the the BBEG instead of Spare the Dying him... but some evening, you could want to play without entering this debates six to eight times per long rest.

Then don't try to justify it. Your PCs are murderers and don't care. Done.

It's worse and does more damage to try and justify it than to lean into it.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Then don't try to justify it. Your PCs are murderers and don't care. Done.

It's worse and does more damage to try and justify it than to lean into it.

I am fine with D&D being about roleplaying uncaring murderers. I worked under the assumption, maybe incorrect, that most table had groups who tried to justify their actions as "good-ish", and reading published campaign, where it seems to be expected, reinforced that impression. I am pretty sure many groups would say "hey, this person burned the peasant's farm, let's kill him and take his +1 axe because it's fine to commit murder and pludering" . Trying to justify this behaviour against persons/sentient beings is as (or even more) harmful than trying to find opponents that it is actually acceptable to kill when they do these same farm-burning things.