D&D 5E Is trafficking in soul coins ostensibly evil?

[Necropolitan]

As I see it the L part of the alignment says you look at the world from a lawful standpoint and the N says whether the law is good or evil doesn't matter, they will follow the law in most cases.

Like I said its subjective

"Lawful" doesn't mean you just do whatever is lawful where you are. It's never meant that.

If a character decides to do evil things for personal gain because it's lawful to do them then they're Lawful Evil by any reasonable definition.

You're claiming that whether or not a slaver is evil depends entirely on whether or not slavery is legal.

 

[RangerWickett]

There is no ethical consumption in capitalism. If I buy my mom flowers, even if it's a nice gesture, I'm still engaging in a system where the worth of money is dependent on its use as a tool by myriad bad efforts.

The currency, sure, isn't literally tormented souls, but the dollars in the ledger often are tied to labor done by people in precarious positions, being exploited by those who oversee them, doing work that damages the environment or that actively denies resources to those who most need them in favor of those who can afford them.

By spending your own dollars, you legitimize the value of a dollar, and thus legitimize the unethical use it has been put to. But if you don't spend dollars, how do you live in this society?

You can't hate someone for having no choice but to use money in our modern system. If they don't, they starve, or go homeless.

But you can sure criticize the flaws of the system.

Hate the game, not the player.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There is no ethical consumption in capitalism. If I buy my mom flowers, even if it's a nice gesture, I'm still engaging in a system where the worth of money is dependent on its use as a tool by myriad bad efforts.

The currency, sure, isn't literally tormented souls, but the dollars in the ledger often are tied to labor done by people in precarious positions, being exploited by those who oversee them, doing work that damages the environment or that actively denies resources to those who most need them in favor of those who can afford them.

You can't hate someone for having no choice but to use money in our modern system. If they don't, they starve, or go homeless.

But you can sure criticize the flaws of the system.

Hate the game, not the player.

That's nonsense in this situation. There's no requirement to use soulcoins to live.

That's the key issue with capitalism - there's no real escape at the present time - there's no realistic way to escape it.

But you can operate in this scenario without ever selling or buying soulcoins. No-one will starve or be homeless for not having them. They're a specialist high-end currency for superfreaks.

See here: Soul coin

Even the quote compares them to gems and says they're traded among high-end monsters, not everyday people.

 

[RangerWickett]

That's nonsense in this situation. There's no requirement to use soulcoins to live.

That's the key issue with capitalism - there's no real escape at the present time - there's no realistic way to escape it.

But you can operate in this scenario without ever selling or buying soulcoins. No-one will starve or be homeless for not having them. They're a specialist high-end currency for superfreaks.

See here: Soul coin

Even the quote compares them to gems and says they're traded among high-end monsters, not everyday people.

Yeah, it's more comparable to if you were operating in the slave owning South, and you kept some slaves on hand in case you needed to buy some expensive goods, because they were easier to deal with than having a lot of cash? Which is A weird concept in reality, but in a fantasy game, that's how these things work.

Now, if you acquire soul coins with the intent of releasing the souls, is that a thing that you can do?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Hmm. Yes, dealing in soul coins is distasteful and likely evil. But that brings up the question: is the construction of an afterlife where evil souls are condemned to eternal* torture not then inherently evil? I mean, is being forged into a coin any worse than what's already happening to them in Hell?

* For certain values of eternal.

One cannot change the metaphysics of existence, generally speaking. Even the gods are usually bound by rules and limits that forbid them from changing certain things, whether or not they wish to. One may argue that it is prudence to focus one's efforts on what can actually make the world a better place; another may argue that to accept any such things is still Evil. This is how Good beings can still disagree about what the correct choice is. That's not a problem as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One cannot change the metaphysics of existence, generally speaking.

Except in settings where the gods have done it previously.

Like the Forgotten Realms, with the Wall of the Faithless (which admittedly is I believe of increasingly dubious canonicity in 5E).

I would argue the Wall of the Faithless was also actually more evil than allowing the punishment of evil beings, and was created by a god and supported by all (all!) the other gods. Again though, it was a 2E invention not by Ed Greenwood but a couple of other writers, and I dunno if Greenwood has ever actively disavowed it, but he's sure gone right to the edge of disavowing it, to the point of explaining the FR cosmology in depth in one of his 5E-era books and never even mentioning it.

That said this may be in a campaign with a less god-changeable metaphysics.

(I think many questions can be raised along the lines of "What the hell were they thinking?!" about post-Greenwood 2E-era FR writers and decisions they made about the cosmology and gods, and the Wall of the Faithless is only one of many. It survived 3E and 4E through sheer inertia and some of those writers still being employed, I would suggest.)

 

[TiQuinn]

That's nonsense in this situation. There's no requirement to use soulcoins to live.

That's the key issue with capitalism - there's no real escape at the present time - there's no realistic way to escape it.

But you can operate in this scenario without ever selling or buying soulcoins. No-one will starve or be homeless for not having them. They're a specialist high-end currency for superfreaks.

See here: Soul coin

Even the quote compares them to gems and says they're traded among high-end monsters, not everyday people.

Not to mention, this whole matter has been discussed with Descent into Avernus before and others have found alternatives to forcing good aligned PCs into using soul coins to access portions of the campaign while forcing the moral issue.

Since it is fantasy, we have the ability to eliminate the “ethical consumption under capitalism” angle entirely.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah I'm finding it weird people are all overlooking this.

You have personal moral and ethical responsibility for any trading, buying or selling you involve yourself in. It is morally on you. If you sell a gun to a man intending who you know to either intending to do harm with it, or think it's quite possible they are, you are morally culpable. If you sell an animal to someone who you know has a reputation for torturing animals, you are morally culpable.

Likewise, if you trade/sell a soulcoin to a being which you know is likely to harm the soul within that coin, you are morally culpable. It is not a neutral act. It carries moral weight.

5E's alignments are descriptive, not prescriptive, but if you're selling soulcoins to monstrous infernal beings, it doesn't matter if it's legal or not, you're engaging in what is clearly a form of evil, so I would suggest LN is probably an inaccurate descriptor of the alignment of a character who does that unless this is just a complete moral blindspot for that character, like they've just never thought about it.

Very surprised any LG characters in the party haven't put a stop to this, honestly. Unless they're playing the characters as "Lawful Stupid" stereotypes, it being "legal" (in hell!) is irrelevant.

Does being good require actively stopping evil any more than being evil requires actively stopping good? One could argue that you are engaging in an evil act just by knowing about it and not doing anything. But that makes most of society look bad, so I can see why most folks don't go that far.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There is no ethical consumption in capitalism. If I buy my mom flowers, even if it's a nice gesture, I'm still engaging in a system where the worth of money is dependent on its use as a tool by myriad bad efforts.

The currency, sure, isn't literally tormented souls, but the dollars in the ledger often are tied to labor done by people in precarious positions, being exploited by those who oversee them, doing work that damages the environment or that actively denies resources to those who most need them in favor of those who can afford them.

By spending your own dollars, you legitimize the value of a dollar, and thus legitimize the unethical use it has been put to. But if you don't spend dollars, how do you live in this society?

You can't hate someone for having no choice but to use money in our modern system. If they don't, they starve, or go homeless.

But you can sure criticize the flaws of the system.

Hate the game, not the player.

Exactly what I was getting at.

Seriously, everyone should watch The Good Place.

 

[Scribe]

You all know where this thread is going.