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

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The OP is talking about LN.

The OP also wrote the thread title, which is about goodness. There's a mixed message going on.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Lawfulness is a method. Goodness is a goal.

You may have just ruined all future alignment debates. That is a great construction.

 

[Tonguez]

No, but “participation” probably is something more controversial. What constitutes participation - willing, unwilling, active, passive? And does it matter if you have or lack the power to change things, given the situation you’re in? That’s one of the most insidious traps of the alignment debate and requirements of being Good. A lot of people in alignment debates effectively require Good = perfect, even to the point of personal extinction.

Feeling himself inadequate to the task it was Admiral Charles Middleton and his friend Rev, James Ramsey who suggested to the young William Wilberforce that he take up the abolitionist cause in the British Parliament - it took 20 years but Wilberforce eventually got the British Slave trade stopped in 1807.
Sometimes changing things just takes one conversation

 

[R_J_K75]

The OP also wrote the thread title, which is about goodness. There's a mixed message going on.

If a LN does something that another alignment would consider good/evil, can they justify their actions by saying they dont believe, see the world that way? I think they can

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If a LN does something that another alignment would consider good/evil, can they justify their actions by saying they dont believe, see the world that way? I think they can

Now we're getting into good, classic alignment war territory!

In previous editions, good and evil were literally measurable by spells, so what someone thought of their own actions didn't really matter, since there was apparently an objective truth.

5E, happily got rid of that idea, so it's more of an open question. I would say if their actions can reasonably be expected to harm other people, it's evil, whether or not the person doing so wants to admit it. (We can see a lot of this in the real world, unfortunately.)

And in that case, the question becomes whether there's a reasonable ability for someone capable of traveling to Hell and then leaving it again could save a soul trapped in a coin from its eventual fate of oblivion.

I would say yes, but -- big caveat -- I don't own Descent into Avernus, and thus am less familiar with soul coins than I suspect most posters on this thread are.

 

[billd91]

Feeling himself inadequate to the task it was Admiral Charles Middleton and his friend Rev, James Ramsey who suggested to the young William Wilberforce that he take up the abolitionist cause in the British Parliament - it took 20 years but Wilberforce eventually got the British Slave trade stopped in 1807.
Sometimes changing things just takes one conversation

Which is a lot easier if you're independently wealthy enough to buy the votes necessary to be an MP and a bosom, school-mate chum of one very influential Prime Minister. All of which come back to the question of how much power you have to effect change.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

So would slavery not be an evil act if you're in a country where it's legal?

I don't see how soul coins and slavery are analogous. Owning slaves would always be evil because you are choosing to keep them in that state when you have the power to instantly set them free by just saying the word.

But then maybe I'm misunderstanding how soul coins actually work - if a character finds a soul coin, can they release the soul back to its previous state? I was under the impression that once a soul is in the coin, it remains there and a character can't just easily free it. If I have that wrong then I would change my answer.

 

[SlyFlourish]

My group and I had a big problem with soul coins. You're destroying a soul -- essentially the infinite existence of an entity -- to move a vehicle a few hundred feet. We hated it.

So I changed it to demon ichor. Go smash some demons and take their abyssal tainted essence and use that to fuel your vehicles.

I wrote more about it here:

Running Descent into Avernus Chapter 3

This article offers tips for running chapter 3 from the D&D hardback adventure Descent into Avernus. This article is one in a series of article covering Descent into Avernus including: Running Descen...

slyflourish.com

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Which is a lot easier if you're independently wealthy enough to buy the votes necessary to be an MP and a bosom, school-mate chum of one very influential Prime Minister. All of which come back to the question of how much power you have to effect change.

The French monarchy was toppled by people too poor to afford bread. The notion that some people are truly powerless is a bluff by the powerful.

 

[Seramus]

In previous editions, good and evil were literally measurable by spells, so what someone thought of their own actions didn't really matter, since there was apparently an objective trtruth .

Alignment was never completely objective, since it was determined by potentially fallible third parties. That still holds true in 5E, just with most ways to determine what those third parties think of you being stripped away.

Though, there are still a few oddball cases like Descent into Avernus changing your alignment just for hanging out in Hell. Which is all kinds of weird when alignment is descriptive and not prescriptive.