Do baby kobolds detect as evil?

[Zappo]

Or chicken fetuses, which you've probably eaten dozens in your lifetime (in eggs).

The eggs you eat are unfertilized.

 

[Joseph Elric Smith]

Yes
YMMV
Ken

 

[Celtavian]

Re

Save for outsiders, I don't make any race newly born evil.

 

[johnsemlak]

VEry interesting discussion.

Let me add a wrinkle:

Do young half-orcs show up as mildy evil in a detect evil spell?

Of course, it's possible for a PC half orc to be LG.

 

[Nifft]

I think any answers to this question are campaign-specific.

-- Nifft

 

[MerakSpielman]

The eggs you eat are unfertilized.

only in modern times. The D&D characters would be eating fertalized eggs.


I am leaning towards nudging the PCs to just slay the little tykes and move on, just because the adventure is about exploring a dungeon and cleaning out monsters, not trying to find a good home for orphaned kobolds.

I see no reason why we can't keep discussing it, though.

I think the best thing that was said was:

Excuses, excuses. Killing defenceless children is an evil act. Where is the diffrence between a Paladin killing a bunch of Kobold babies and a Orc crshing in the skull of an elven child?

This point has yet to be addressed, except by Numion, who said "It's no more evil than killing an animal" but provided no real rationalle. Were you saying, Numion, that both killing the elf child and the kobold child were no different than killing an animal, or were you distinguishing between elves and kobolds?

Also, I might mention that in D&D, animals are always Neutral. Shouldn't it be a little worse to kill a Neutral creature than an evil creature?

Also, animals have very little intelligence. The same is true for babies of whatever species, but they have the potential for greater intelligence as they age, whereas the animal does not. Would this not make killing the kobold babies worse than killing the animal?

 

[Holy Bovine]

Excuses, excuses. Killing defenceless children is an evil act. Where is the diffrence between a Paladin killing a bunch of Kobold babies and a Orc crshing in the skull of an elven child?

If the Orc in question is a LG Paladin and Elves are considered evil creatures in the world then there is no difference. However that is not the case within the confines of D&D. D&D deals in absolutes of Good and Evil. Applying our values to such a world is not in the 'spirit' of the game.

Both are defenceless children, and both are considered "bad" by the killer. Still doesn't make it right, and as concepts of what's "right" are pretty key to the good alignment, that kind of slaughter is OOC for a truely good character.

Good as defined by you, not the D&D world. A truly good character using our modern value system would never have attacked the kobolds in the first place.

Doing your duty without caring about in the debth moral ramifications (or even glazing over them with excuses) is lawful neutral with delusions of righteousness.

So you would take away the Paladinhood of a character you, as DM, put into that situation? That's great. I would have to assume that there are no good characters in the games you run since they have to coddle and care for all those orphaned monsters that adventurers have killed the parents of.

Obviously this is something that can go around and around forever (and has many times in the past). I always find it refreshing to take another kick at this topic though - it has been a long time.

 

[MerakSpielman]

VEry interesting discussion.

Let me add a wrinkle:

Do young half-orcs show up as mildy evil in a detect evil spell?

Of course, it's possible for a PC half orc to be LG.

I always thought it would be a fun "moral quandry" adventure to have a village hire the PCs to rescue some of their villagers who were taken by orc slavers in the Nearby Caves (this scenario works best with a Paladin in the group). When they get there, the orcs try to negotiate with the PCs, but will admit to having some villagers as slaves. If checked, only a few of the orcs radiate evil. The PCs generally will attack first and detect evil later. Once they orcs are dead, they have the baby problem. Some of the babies are half-orc. But that's a sideline.

They get to the slave pens, and some of the slaves are orcs. This might inspire them to detect evil on the slaves (just to see if releasing these orcs will be ok), whereapon ALL the slaves will detect as evil.

What do the PCs do? Slavery is evil, but it's no good just releasing fifty or so evil people to run rampant in the land. You can't arrest them, because you haven't seen then actually commit any crimes. You can't kill them, because they are helpless and not a threat.

This is what really happened.
The village that hired the PCs had a problem a few months ago. Prompted by the local cleric, the mayor declared it against the Law to be evil. One by one, they rounded up all the even marginally evil villagers (using the cleric's detect evil) and stuck them in a building. Then they didn't know what to do with them, so they contacted a local orc tribe and made a "can you take them off our hands" kind of deal. The villagers lose their evil citizens, the town gets some cash, the orcs get slaves, and evil townsfolk are neutralized in a non-execution way.

But somehow word leaks out, and the nearby villages hear rumors that orc slavers now have citizens from the Town captive. The Town is not so foolish as to try to explain their actions to outsiders who might not see things the same way, so they "hire" the adventurers, hoping that the heroes will get themselves killed before they reach the slaves and get the real story.

Now, after hearing and understanding all this, what does the good-aligned party do with a) the slaves and b) the town?

(or am I hijacking my own thread?)

 

[MerakSpielman]

So you would take away the Paladinhood of a character you, as DM, put into that situation? That's great. .

It can be fun, as an excercise, to try to come up with ways that a Paladin has NO right and good course of action before him. Things like: There is a kingdom on the brink of total civil war. Only if the current king is replaced with the rightful heir will there be peace instead of anarchy as feuding nobles vie for the crown. The only rightful heir has been infected with lycanthropy. He is currently ravaging the locals, slaughtering wantonly. The locals are trying to kill him, and have almost succeeded, and have very little chance of stopping if the paladin trys to explain things to them. There is no cleric available.


Hijacking my own thread again. Somebody slap me.

 

[Darkness]

Hijacking my own thread again. Somebody slap me.