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

[Micah Sweet]

There just wasnt enough of an outcry to make it matter. The adventure was released in 2019, social media didnt completely lose its mind till 2020.

That explains it perfectly, thank you. It made it in under the wire, before the door closed on PCs ever taking non-heroic actions in WotC 5e.

 

[Cergorach]

physically destroying the coin or casting remove curse will release the soul (and cause a coin to rust).

Is that 'reality' or something they are told? Because imagine the devastation it would cause when destroying the coins actually destroys the souls permanently... This they find out after destroying thousands of souls. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

 

[Scribe]

Unfortunately, Moorcock isn't really part of the current conversation in fantasy nowadays. ("Nowadays" meaning "since Ronald Reagan was president.")

While there are definitely games where the battle between Law and Chaos is a thing -- Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadowdark, for instance, to say nothing of Black Sword Hack -- but for most D&D play, it's all about Evil and Good.

Sure, granted, but thats where "Law and Chaos" come from. Just because the current edition has lost the plot, doesnt mean we all have to accept that is a universally accepted state of things.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Is that 'reality' or something they are told? Because imagine the devastation it would cause when destroying the coins actually destroys the souls permanently... This they find out after destroying thousands of souls. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

That's a great doubt for a devil to get into the player characters' heads.

Still, no harm (probably) in just filling a portable hole with them until a definitive answer can be found -- preferably well away from the Hells.

 

[Staffan]

Lawfulness is a method. Goodness is a goal.

I would argue the opposite, actually. Law is about goals, and Good is about means.

This is one of the things I've been influenced by Keith Baker on. In this perspective, someone who's Lawful is a person who sees structures, groups, and organizations as paramount. A nation, a guild, an order, a church, or something like that. Chaotic people instead see people fundamentally as individuals. They are loyal to people, not to organizations. Good and Evil then are about methods. What are you willing to do to pursue those goals? Do you betray, steal, and murder in service to your goals, or do you rather help and build up?

So, James Bond? Lawful Evil. He's an agent on Her (well, His these days I guess) Majesty's Secret Service. He gets his missions from M, who speaks for the Crown and for the State. He has no compunctions about cheating and murdering and lying and laying in pursuit of his missions, trusting that they're for the good of Britain.

Malcolm Reynolds? Chaotic Neutral. He is fiercely loyal to his crew, and does not care for anyone outside it. He lives on the fringes of society, and does what he has to, but still has a conscience (such as returning much-needed medicine).

Grand Moff Tarkin? Also Lawful Evil, almost textbook so. He serves the Empire, and formulates doctrines he believes will serve the Empire best even when they are absolutely heinous such as the Doctrine of Fear.

Emperor Palpatine though? Chaotic Evil. He may be in charge of the Empire, but the Empire is but a tool for Sith ascendancy, and the Sith ideology is highly individualistic. He gladly brought down the Republic and turned it into the Empire, because the Empire served his own goals better.

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

Showed YOU!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I would argue the opposite, actually. Law is about goals, and Good is about means.

Lowercase l law is, by definition, teleological. It needs a purpose in order to do or be anything. A law always has to be set for doing something. Good may be what that something is, or not.

Goodness is a goal. It is not a means; it is senseless to say "well just do Good, 4head!" Goodness is, by definition, an evaluation of something. It judges means, no question! But it judges those means by whether or not they pursue Good. Same goes for Evil. This applies regardless of which of the three theories of ethical value one might favor.

Consequentialist ethics says that the good is that which causes the most benefit (and/or removes the most harm) to relevant beings: hence, we must evaluate various methods for how much harm they remove or benefit they provide, by some metric (pain and pleasure being the primary choice for most consequentialists.) Deontology says that the good arises from fulfilling our pre-existing duties, most famously as Kant's categorical imperative, which provides a standard (or, rather, three standards intended to be equivalent) for evaluating various methods to determine which ones are acceptable and which ones aren't. Virtue ethics (my personal preference) is nearly summarized by Aristotle himself: "Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while Virtue finds and chooses the mean." That is, Virtue is choosing the correct moderate position between extremes, conditioned by the specific situation; what might be cowardly (deficient) in one situation is brave (virtuous) in another and foolhardy (excessive) in a third.

This is one of the things I've been influenced by Keith Baker on. In this perspective, someone who's Lawful is a person who sees structures, groups, and organizations as paramount. A nation, a guild, an order, a church, or something like that.

Those things are tools, methods, by which one achieves something. A Lawful Neutral person does not particularly care what end those things pursue, so long as they pursue them effectively. A Lawful Good person would ask, "What are the church's beliefs? What does the structure accomplish? Why was it built? What does the group value?" Etc. If the answers to those questions are worthy—if they seek good ends—then the LG person will support them with all their heart, while keeping an eye out for faults that must be corrected. LE wants to sate selfish desire and see those "beneath" them kept in their place; a structure that inhibits their (allegedly) deserved rise is bad and wrong, while a structure that takes away from their "leaders" and gives to the LE person is worthy and correct. As above, they will ask what the thing pursues, and why. Lawful Neutral does not care what the tools of law are used for, only that the tools do what they were intended to do effectively. An ineffective tool is a bad tool that should be replaced with a worthy tool.

Chaotic people instead see people fundamentally as individuals. They are loyal to people, not to organizations.

Edit: Missed replying to this part. See, I completely agree! But all of those things: individual people and their behavior/history/presentation, vs organizations? Those are approaches or methods. Things you can rely upon or engage with in order to achieve some particular end. They are not in and of themselves ends--unless you're taking a specifically Kantian deontological approach, at which point, you're already committing to Good to begin with. (Kant is pretty clearly on the Good side, and I'd say it's pretty hard to argue that his philosophy is anything other than Lawful Good in intent, given the whole "duty" focus of it.)

Good and Evil then are about methods. What are you willing to do to pursue those goals? Do you betray, steal, and murder in service to your goals, or do you rather help and build up?

Not at all. Good can absolutely approve of betrayal, if it is a defection away from Evil. "Murder" is the unlawful killing of another, which both LE and LG care about; CG does not care about whether a killing is lawful, it cares about whether the killing is warranted, laws be damned. Likewise theft; CG characters are quite happy to steal in the name of good (consider Robin Hood), while LE characters, at least my favorite ones, will go out of their way to restore a stolen item, not because they don't see the advantage, but because theft is an unacceptable tool in the pursuit of their goals, even though those goals are Evil. Again, Evil and Good are about evaluating whether something is worthy of pursuit or not. Law and Chaos are about which tools are most effectively used to pursue those ends.

A Good person won't do an evil thing, whether or not it is effective. A Lawful person will favor a structured, regimented, formal approach if it is available and does not require them to disobey their morals. A Lawful Good person will oppose an evil law, despite the fact that it is a law, because evil laws are not acceptable. That is quite clearly choosing between methods of achieving Good.

So, James Bond? Lawful Evil.

Not even close, so I'm not going to even engage further with this one.

Malcolm Reynolds? Chaotic Neutral. He is fiercely loyal to his crew, and does not care for anyone outside it. He lives on the fringes of society, and does what he has to, but still has a conscience (such as returning much-needed medicine).

Nah. He's NG pretending to be CN. He repeatedly saves people he doesn't need to, and Shepherd Book barely needs to speak a word to get Mal to do the right thing for the right reasons. He's a bitter man who tried to do the right thing in the past and got burned for it, but beneath that bitterness, he still has the heart of a hero. He wants to do good. His goals are still good.

Grand Moff Tarkin? Also Lawful Evil, almost textbook so. He serves the Empire, and formulates doctrines he believes will serve the Empire best even when they are absolutely heinous such as the Doctrine of Fear.

I'm not seeing how this makes the Empire his goal. His goal is tyranny, with himself at the head. His method is force: obey or die. That sounds like an evil goal pursued with discipline and structure.

Emperor Palpatine though? Chaotic Evil. He may be in charge of the Empire, but the Empire is but a tool for Sith ascendancy, and the Sith ideology is highly individualistic. He gladly brought down the Republic and turned it into the Empire, because the Empire served his own goals better.

So...the structure was a method of achieving his goals. Which were evil.

Showed YOU!

Not really.

Good is a direction on the plane of meaning. Necessarily, it expects that the paths you walk must point in that direction, so it evaluates paths. But it is not a path itself. Law is a type of road. Roads may point in any direction. Only those which point in a Good direction (or at least which do not ever point away from Good) are acceptable to the Lawful Good person. The Lawful Neutral person does not care which direction the road points. She only cares that the roads are well-made and well-maintained. Necessarily, an LG person cares about both the direction and the maintenance. An LE person likewise cares about the direction and the maintenance, but they favor the opposite direction. CG doesn't give an aerial coitus whether you use a road or a game trail or literally just hike cross-country, but you'd better always be heading towards the Good as best you can.

 

[Necropolitan]

Soul coins are the epitome of Lawful Evil: they reduce individuals to commodities in their purest form of currency where they can be used however their owner wants regardless of their free will.

If you spend a soul coin you are trading a slave. That's Evil.

If you expend a soul coin you've destroyed a soul and obliterated an individual. That's Evil.

If you do the above solely for your own benefit that's even more Evil.

If you free a soul from a soul coin you're freeing a slave (for as free as it can get depending on where it is).

It makes sense, Devils would want to make the Hells as corrupting as possible so ensuring the main currency can damn someone for using it is a good idea to them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Unfortunately, Moorcock isn't really part of the current conversation in fantasy nowadays. ("Nowadays" meaning "since Ronald Reagan was president.")

While there are definitely games where the battle between Law and Chaos is a thing -- Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadowdark, for instance, to say nothing of Black Sword Hack -- but for most D&D play, it's all about Evil and Good.

Babylon 5: Law vs. Chaos. The 90s where a while ago now, but certainly after Reagan.

Much more recently, Shadow of the Sun (Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel) is Law vs Chaos, and illustrates exactly why it's better for D&D than good vs evil: players are free to choose either side without having to be edgelords.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

He's an agent on Her (well, His these days I guess) Majesty's Secret Service.

Curiously, the first James Bond novel was published in 1953. The year it changed from "His" to "Her".

 

[GrimCo]

If entry for soul coins is correct, when one frees soul from soul coin, if trapped soul is of evil alignment, it is sent to Styx and transformed into lemure. So in effect, by freeing trapped soul, you just create another low form baatezu devil. If you don't free it, it's evil. If you free it, you help in creating new devil, which is evil. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't catch 22 situation.

Is it evil or not, depends entirely on DM and players view. Do they think that eternal torment for evil souls is just punishment? If they think it's just and good, then, no, dealing with those coins isn't really evil.