D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Cadence]

So survival is evil based on whether humans like how your biology works or not?

Thank goodness it is us deciding and not pigs, cows, and chickens!!!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

(Regarding the point about humans eating pigs, I think you can draw a pretty legitimate line of distinction between things that can have a conversation with you and things that can't.)

Or like the Illithids say: "we think you can draw a pretty legitimate line of distinction between things that have a telepathic hive-mind and things that don't."

 

[Umbran]

(This comes up in the context of forms of vampires that have to kill their victim rather than just feed on them. The only moral choice is suicide at that point).

Yeah. But the prey species saying that doesn't exactly establish it as truth.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Question: Would Goodberry sustain a Mind Flayer? Would the Mind Flayer's need to consume brains override the spell's description of sustaining the creature that consumes it, or would the spell's descriptive text override the Mind Flayer's need to consume brains?

Because if it's the latter option, that gives Mind Flayers a fairly easy way out of the whole "evil by existing" dilemma, because they would no longer have to eat brains, and instead just become/find a Druid that could cast Goodberry regularly to sustain them.

(In my world, a group of cast-off Mind Flayers have discovered how to grow synthetic brains so they don't have to eat the minds of innocent people.)

 

[Vaalingrade]

Thank goodness it is us deciding and not pigs, cows, and chickens!!!

The cows are actually really self-sacrificing, chickens self-loathing.

And the pigs are secretly history's greatest monsters, so killing them is Lawful Good and not eating them is wasting prescious bacon.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah. But the prey species saying that doesn't exactly establish it as truth.

To be honest, the fact the prey species can say it at all establishes it as truth as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Cadence]

The cows are actually really self-sacrificing, chickens self-loathing.

And the pigs are secretly history's greatest monsters, so killing them is Lawful Good and not eating them is wasting prescious bacon.

I know about the cows from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe,
and a friend was traumatized by chickens when young...
and nothing changes the beginning of the Wizard of Oz quite like knowing that pigs occasionally eat their farmers.

 

[Cadence]

To be honest, the fact the prey species can say it at all establishes it as truth as far as I'm concerned.

And "Speak with Plants" becomes a much more interesting spell...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Or like the Illithids say: "we think you can draw a pretty legitimate line of distinction between things that have a telepathic hive-mind and things that don't."

Yeah, but I don't care much what the illithids think. I don't think you have to believe in cosmic evil to use it for a term. If pigs actually find a way to communicate with me tomorrow, I'd be off pork the next day, and that's exactly the situation the mind flayers are in.

 

[Vaalingrade]

To be honest, the fact the prey species can say it at all establishes it as truth as far as I'm concerned.

So... cast Silence before attempting brain grapple. Got it.