D&D 5E What are your 5e houserules

[Lyxen]

killing Orcs is an evil act now?

See the other answers, it might depend a bit on the circumstances but killing foragers (assuming that they are only that, and not the brutal orc warriors who have just destroyed your home town two days ago after torturing and killing all your family and friends and who are now just foraging because they need it and have not other town to burn around the corner) in cold blood and torturing certainly is evil.

Id argue unprovoked mass murder of a bunch of people foraging in the woods, and brutal torture or a survivor, in order to locate the rest of those people, in order to engage in some light genocide, is a bit more than simply 'inconsistent with the CG alignment' but I otherwise agree with your post.

It depends on the circumstances. The guy might absolutely hate orcs for background or history reasons. These "foragers" might be doing just that now because they don't have a town to slaughter, pillage and burn. There might be too many to deal with otherwise due to the points above, etc.

Circumstances always matter a lot, and this is where most of the alignment discussions fail, not because of general principles, but just because the event and the circumstances are not described precisely enough, so people have different views of the even.

Personally, I'd let the player know then and there of this, the instant he told me he was going to massacre them, that's the fact what he's about to do is evil, that this fact is absolute and the view of the Gods, and to pull their head in because (as a non evil, heroic campaign) we're not doing that kind of stuff at this table.

Up to you, but see above about circumstances.

Do it, and your PC is obviously not Heroic, nor Good, and (according to the restrictions of the game) not a PC anymore.

And then again, it depends on the circumstances.

 

[Flamestrike]

killing Orcs is an evil act now?

It always has been, unless those Orcs pose you or your allies or innocents a direct threat, and there is no other means to reasonably stop them.

I know you prefer a game, where Orcs have an inherent moral outlook that they can never change, and thus it's somehow a LG act to engage in full blown genocide against them, toss their children on the pyres as they scream, enslave them as forced labor, crucify them, butcher any of them that surrender and so forth, but clearly that's not the assumption in DnD anymore, and it never has been.

To the extent that you would strip a LG Paladin of his powers, for refusing to engage in the above, and instead seeking a peaceful solution that doesn't involve genocide.

We've had this discussion before.

If you're curious, the Orcs in this scenario were NG and worshippers of Torm (their leader having been spared by a Paladin of Torm many years ago, and converting to the faith himself afterwards, before leading a small group of Orcs discontent with their original tribes worship of Dark Gods away from their original village, and setting up an outpost nearby).

Not that that the ethnicity, race, religion or morality of your victims ever justifies or is relevant to the ethics of you murdering them, committing genocide on them or torturing them in any event.

A point you and I disagree with.

 

[Flamestrike]

It depends on the circumstances. The guy might absolutely hate orcs for background or history reasons.

No, that's utterly irrelevant.

Or are you saying it's only evil if I murder or torture someone I like (or am ambivalent towards), but it's not evil as long as they're people I hate?

If I hated a particular race, and I were then to slaughter members of that race based on that hatred, I'm clearly NOT a Good person.

Do we agree?

If you dont agree, find me a historical example of someone who slaughtered members of a race based on race hate, that you consider a Good person.

Good luck with that!

 

[cbwjm]

This is a thread about house rules. Could we please stop dragging in the old argument of whether or not it's okay to kill orcs.

 

[Horwath]

It always has been, unless those Orcs pose you or your allies or innocents a direct threat, and there is no other means to reasonably stop them.

I know you prefer a game, where Orcs have an inherent moral outlook that they can never change, and thus it's somehow a LG act to engage in full blown genocide against them, toss their children on the pyres as they scream, enslave them as forced labor, crucify them, butcher any of them that surrender and so forth, but clearly that's not the assumption in DnD anymore, and it never has been.

To the extent that you would strip a LG Paladin of his powers, for refusing to engage in the above, and instead seeking a peaceful solution that doesn't involve genocide.

We've had this discussion before.

If you're curious, the Orcs in this scenario were NG and worshippers of Torm (their leader having been spared by a Paladin of Torm many years ago, and converting to the faith himself afterwards, before leading a small group of Orcs discontent with their original tribes worship of Dark Gods away from their original village, and setting up an outpost nearby).

Not that that the ethnicity, race, religion or morality of your victims ever justifies or is relevant to the ethics of you murdering them, committing genocide on them or torturing them in any event.

A point you and I disagree with.

damn,

sarcasm does not translate very well into written form

 

[Flamestrike]

damn,

sarcasm does not translate very well into written form

It was like we were in the middle of that debate last year, when WOTC came out and said I won.

 

[Lyxen]

No, that's utterly irrelevant.

It is, unless you are one of these people who never understood that alignment is not, actually has never been monolithic. That not only each "box" covers a wide range of behaviours, but that even people with one "label" don't have to be consistent with it all the time.

Or are you saying it's only evil if I murder or torture someone I like (or am ambivalent towards), but it's not evil as long as they're people I hate?

I'm not saying anything of the kind, the act is evil, but there might be justification for it for any character. Again, characters don't have to be one-sided cardboard cut-outs.

If I hated a particular race, and I were then to slaughter members of that race based on that hatred, I'm clearly NOT a Good person.

It depends on circumstances and your definitions. WIth the little information that we have on the situation, I would not presume to say that the character in question is not CG, if orcs slaughtered all his family recently and he thought the orcs were part of that same band. We don't have enough information.

Do we agree?

No, we don't. Coming back to the subject of the thread, you obviously have a house rule that alignement has to be monolithic and another one that characters are simple cardboard cutouts.

If you dont agree, find me a historical example of someone who slaughtered members of a race based on race hate, that you consider a Good person.

Because, of course, D&D is about history. sigh But there are many examples in the fantasy genre, starting with Gimli or Legolas, and continuing with many characters from David Gemmel.

Good luck with that!

I will give you historical example as soon as you give proof to me that D&D is made to model real life and history. Good luck with that !

 

[James Gasik]

Things were much simpler in the original game. You had Lawful and Chaotic, based on the works of Michael Moorcock. Good and evil were irrelevant, the forces of Chaos wanted to tear everything apart, and only the forces of Law stood against them. It was a war for the ultimate survival of reality. There was no question of if Orcs were good or evil- by definition, they were minions of Chaos. You killed them out of self-preservation.

The change to alignment in AD&D added a lot of nuance, but the game didn't support it well (if at all). You were still expected to go out and murder goblinoids and monsters by the truckload, but now moral questions about "aren't the goblins just trying to survive" and "is a baby drow evil?" come up to complicate the proceedings.

Do we give quarter? Do we let prisoners go? Should we donate some of our gold to that orphanage? This made the game better as a roleplaying experience (mostly- you still had sessions grind to a halt over moral debates that the Thief would solve by going back and murdering your prisoners when they could), but worse at dungeon crawling where you break into people's homes and private property routinely, murder them, and take their stuff, and get to be called "heroes".

And despite some half-hearted attempts, the game has never really reconciled this issue. Now we're told that no species is inherently evil, and so at any point, the DM can be like "actually, those hobgoblins are lawful good, you can't murder them, it's wrong".

 

[Flamestrike]

It is, unless you are one of these people who never understood that alignment is not, actually has never been monolithic.

Huh?

No, I'm simply arguing (and it really shouldn't even be an argument, to anyone outside of Hitler) that:

''A person that engages in mass murder, torture and genocide of a people, based on hatred of the race of that people, is not - by any measure - a morally good person.''

I'm not here to debate the truth of that sentence, because there is no way you can convince me it's wrong, and this isnt the thread for it.

 

[Lyxen]

Things were much simpler in the original game. You had Lawful and Chaotic, based on the works of Michael Moorcock. Good and evil were irrelevant, the forces of Chaos wanted to tear everything apart, and only the forces of Law stood against them. It was a war for the ultimate survival of reality. There was no question of if Orcs were good or evil- by definition, they were minions of Chaos. You killed them out of self-preservation.

It might have been us in France taking things differently, but from the reading of the books without anyone to explain them to me, it was actually not that simple. Lawful did not necessarily mean good, but it often did, just as chaotic did not necessarily mean evil, but often did, so it was not that clear cut. And I don't remember anyone, ever, attacking someone because they were lawful and the other chaotic, it was certainly not said that way in the rules, or even implied.

The change to alignment in AD&D added a lot of nuance, but the game didn't support it well (if at all). You were still expected to go out and murder goblinoids and monsters by the truckload, but now moral questions about "aren't the goblins just trying to survive" and "is a baby drow evil?" come up to complicate the proceedings.

And again, I don't agree, many paragraphs both in the PH and the DMG are actually fairly detailed about NOT doing this. Yes, there was some (normal in my opinion) "moral pass" about allowing good characters to kill adversaries in self-defense, or preservation of their lands/culture etc. but it's not the same thing at all.

Do we give quarter? Do we let prisoners go? Should we donate some of our gold to that orphanage? This made the game better as a roleplaying experience (mostly- you still had sessions grind to a halt over moral debates that the Thief would solve by going back and murdering your prisoners when they could), but worse at dungeon crawling where you break into people's homes and private property routinely, murder them, and take their stuff, and get to be called "heroes".

And maybe lots of people never played "let's break into homes and murder people to rob them", and maybe dungeons were mostly filled with really evil creatures ? Yes, there are all these stories about murderhoboes, funny, never met one of them in 42+ years of D&D.

And despite some half-hearted attempts, the game has never really reconciled this issue. Now we're told that no species is inherently evil, and so at any point, the DM can be like "actually, those hobgoblins are lawful good, you can't murder them, it's wrong".

And then, there are people (like all the people I've ever played with, and that's a lot) who always played that way and never murdered entire populations because they were supposedly always evil ?