DemoMonkey
Hero
"At what point does a character become irredeemably evil?"
Murdering a roomful of schoolchildren seems like a good benchmark.
Murdering a roomful of schoolchildren seems like a good benchmark.
D&D General D&D doesn't need Evil
- Thread starter BookTenTiger
- Start date
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
I don't think we really need to consider that to consider whether someone may or may not be evil, or whether someone still deserves punishment for evil deeds. There many never been a point where someone is irredeemable.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Or maybe not. That person may still turn back from evil and completely change who he is. That doesn't mean that he shouldn't be jailed for life or executed for his crimes, but he may no longer be evil when that happens.
embee
Lawyer by day. Rules lawyer by night.
I most certainly agree. The "redemption" of Darth Vader has always been truly ridiculous when you consider that he committed genocide on a galactic scale.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Good people can fall to evil and evil people can rise to good. It's rare, but it happens. Whether you think that person has been redeemed or not is still debatable, but the evil portion would be gone with the change in outlook and morals.
embee
Lawyer by day. Rules lawyer by night.
Depends on the change in
Darth Vader's change in morals was "Hey! This physical manifestation of the Dark Side of the Force who is hellbent on enslaving the Galaxy is actually going to go through with his long-stated plan of killing my son. I'm down with him corrupting my son and am more than happy to conspire with him to kill my son but I draw the line at him actually trying to kill my son. The only one who is allowed to try to kill my son is me, which I have tried to do multiple times, including just two minutes ago."
Depends on the change in morals.
Darth Vader's change in morals was "Hey! This physical manifestation of the Dark Side of the Force who is hellbent on enslaving the Galaxy is actually going to go through with his long-stated plan of killing my son. I'm down with him corrupting my son and am more than happy to conspire with him to kill my son but I draw the line at him actually trying to kill my son. The only one who is allowed to try to kill my son is me, which I have tried to do multiple times, including just two minutes ago."
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Or...
"Hey! My son felt the good in me and tried to get me to turn. I hesitated, because it reached something deep inside of me, but it wasn't enough to get me to stop and turn back. The dark side's domination is very hard to throw off. However, the attempted murder of my son, who deep down I still love, was enough of a level to enable me to lift off the darkness and turn back to the light."
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
The dark and the light here are purely metaphysical concepts, which many would say are immaterial compared to the tangible effects of his actions.
And to bring this back to the topic I think that’s what OP is getting at - you can have D&D without those purely metaphysical moral forces. You don’t have to get into the weeds of whether a character is fundamentally evil or fundamentally good or whether or not the villain has been sufficiently redeemed. You can just focus on the tangible effects of characters’ actions, and let everyone draw their own conclusions about their moral value.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
I agree. D&D doesn't need evil, with or without the capital "e". You can (and I have) run campaigns that don't touch on the concept of evil at all. You just need adversaries. IMO, it makes for much more memorable and interesting adventures when you use complex enemies and rivals instead of the traditional "they're evil because they're evil" excuse.
Evil isn't a personality trait, it's an action. You do evil by torturing innocents. You do evil by hurting others for your own gain. You do evil by caring more about yourself than other people and then action on it. An "evil person" is just someone that consistently acts upon those tendencies, insomuch that it practically becomes a core part of their identity (like Zariel from Descent into Avernus). However, that doesn't mean that they can't be redeemed, it just means that, at the moment, they're bad people and are in need of stopping.
Evil isn't a personality trait, it's an action. You do evil by torturing innocents. You do evil by hurting others for your own gain. You do evil by caring more about yourself than other people and then action on it. An "evil person" is just someone that consistently acts upon those tendencies, insomuch that it practically becomes a core part of their identity (like Zariel from Descent into Avernus). However, that doesn't mean that they can't be redeemed, it just means that, at the moment, they're bad people and are in need of stopping.
Does D&D NEED evil? No it doesn't. Do almost all D&D games include evil? Absolutely. Even if you refuse to use the term, almost all bad guys will fall into this category. Very few of them will consider themselves evil, since everyone is the hero of their own story, but that doesn't change the fact that they are evil. Using non-evil opponents is an interesting plot twist, since the "hero" PCs will have to decide if their opponent is actually an enemy. However this isn't common usage.
As for Evil (absolute), there are a lot of games that have it as an integral part of the game .Cuthulu is a prime example, with the Great Old Ones and their minions. Legend of the Five Rings has the Shadowlands, an area completely corrupted by the Taint, the essence of a fallen god. Deadlands has the Reckoners that act to literally bring Hell on Earth. D&D employs fiends to fill this role. There is definitely a place for absolute Evil in rpgs.
As for Evil (absolute), there are a lot of games that have it as an integral part of the game .Cuthulu is a prime example, with the Great Old Ones and their minions. Legend of the Five Rings has the Shadowlands, an area completely corrupted by the Taint, the essence of a fallen god. Deadlands has the Reckoners that act to literally bring Hell on Earth. D&D employs fiends to fill this role. There is definitely a place for absolute Evil in rpgs.
