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

[Cadence]

Or, to use the vegetarian argument - if we're bad for eating pigs, that doesn't somehow justify mind flayers. It just means by D&D standards, we're evil.

Reading some history books lately... was that ever in doubt?

 

[Faolyn]

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.)

Interesting! Since, in 5e at least, the spell creates the berries rather than altering existing ones, I'd guess sure. (If the spell altered existing berries, maybe not, if they can't digest the berries.) Or perhaps they'd have their own version of the spell (goodbrains) that does the same thing.

However, while the spell says it provides nourishment, it doesn't say it makes the eater feel full. So it might not be as satisfying.

 

[Hussar]

Reading some history books lately... was that ever in doubt?

What do you mean lately? It's not like humanity comes out smelling pretty throughout most of history.

But, the point I was making is that we do draw the line even about our food. The unethical treatment of animals is.. well... unethical. We have all sorts of laws and practices that prevent you from, say, torturing a pig to death over the course of years, driving it insane, mutilating it, but keeping it alive, just so we can use it for whatever strikes our fancy. Most people, even over a plate of spare ribs, do consider that a bad thing.

 

[Cadence]

What do you mean lately? It's not like humanity comes out smelling pretty throughout most of history.

I meant that my reading them was lately/recently, the years covered in the books varied.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, punching Nazis is foolish (even accurately identified ones)--it makes it easy for them to play the victim or present false equivalencies. The reason scrupulous non-violence is so effective is because of how easy it makes it for uncommitted and uninterested people to tell who is in the wrong.


That sounds pretty close to what I would have suggested prior to reading the thread, especially #4.

The whole enterprise becomes less ethically suspect when they're saying "Hey, here's some cool IP from the past that we have. Peruse it at your leisure, some of it could be questionable" instead of "Hey, wanna give me 10 bucks for some old game books... but first read this disclaimer"

But obviously I can see why a for profit company prefers the latter.

Oh, and because I forgot to respond to this earlier. Thank you for the response. I was a little surprised, to be honest, that this got absolutely no response at all. I had thought I'd at least get something. And, yeah, I can totally understand why a company would not want to give stuff away like that. After all, it is not an insignificant cost getting all that stuff into pdf form. They have to pay someone to do it, and I imagine it's a really, really painful thing to do. Off sized pages, making sure the scans are perfect, and I think the pdf's are all text readable and searchable, are they not? Which means you need a really good quality scan.

So, again, it's not an unreasonable thing to want to get something back for that.

 

[Voadam]

Oh, and because I forgot to respond to this earlier. Thank you for the response. I was a little surprised, to be honest, that this got absolutely no response at all. I had thought I'd at least get something. And, yeah, I can totally understand why a company would not want to give stuff away like that. After all, it is not an insignificant cost getting all that stuff into pdf form. They have to pay someone to do it, and I imagine it's a really, really painful thing to do. Off sized pages, making sure the scans are perfect, and I think the pdf's are all text readable and searchable, are they not?

Unfortunately no. There are a number where there is no OCR whatsoever so no search capability and a greater number where it is terrible so searching is fairly crippled by wrong characters.

Which means you need a really good quality scan.

Some are really good.

They put a high priority on scanning old ones to quality levels early, then later a lower priority one. Then as they got going they also had working PDF files from having made the newer edition books. But then some got lost or whatever so a lot of the 3e Dragonlance books for instance that were done by licensees are now just picture scans with no copyable or searchable text.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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

So, be snarky and insincere in your reponses? Got that, too.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You're judging the pigs by your human standards, why wouldn't the mind flayers do the same to humans? Pigs are intelligent feeling creatures, as smart as dogs or two-year-old humans. There is no reasonable doubt about the fact that they generally don't wish to be killed.

Given pigs both kill and eat each other on occasion, and don't seem to consider the ones doing that outcasts...

 

[Thomas Shey]

My understanding of Illithids is that they would consider our vocal languages to be nothing more than the braying of a herd animal. I rather think that at this point we humans give pigs more credit for their intelligence than a mind flayer would have for a human.

Given they're perfectly capable of using it to communicate with others who don't have telepathy, I don't buy it.

 

[Cadence]

Given they're perfectly capable of using it to communicate with others who don't have telepathy, I don't buy it.

They've probably seen our social media and what we do to each other in person though. I'm not sure how much intelligence we should be credited.