D&D 5E Ethics of Killing Vat Spawn?

[Tonguez]

Are they essentially flesh golems? Homunculi? Or are they alive and sentient creatures?
The effects of killing golems might be an issue depending on if they have souls. Warforge in particular have made this complicated.

The issue then is if they are essentially golems without souls then slaughter at will (even if they look like cute ugly babies).

However if they are sapient and have souls then you need to be confident that they are irreddemable due being infused wil divine Evil

if they are irredeemibly Evil then slaughter them with righteous justice!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I have been fortunate in that most of my DMs have avoided the darker options, often by giving us an at least semi-justified way out (and, in general, allowing that "release a prisoner with a promise to change their ways" CAN succeed, if handled wisely).

There's really only been one time where I genuinely considered killing prisoners or the like, rather than trying for a less-murdery approach. In that circumstance, the party was many miles from any civilized lands, there was a very high likelihood that if the prisoners were taken in for judgment they would simply be executed anyway, and the party had neither the time nor the resources to keep the prisoners with them for the rest of the adventure. I agonized about it for a fair while before the DM clarified that we could just give the prisoners a wagonload of supplies we'd recovered previously (theoretically belonging to our patron, but already written off as lost) and tell them to get the hell out of Dodge. That we showed them mercy and offered them an actual shot at survival made them grateful enough not to double-cross us, and once they were safely down the road we got back to work.

But yeah. In circumstances like that--where death is all but guaranteed and you legitimately have to weigh "show compassion to this handful of prisoners who literally just tried to kill us all and would gladly alert their friends so they can get a second chance to kill us all" against "stop the villain who is trying to kill lots of completely innocent people"--it's....a really tough question for me. I am almost always 100% in favor of showing mercy, restraint, and compassion, particularly when you have every reason not to. Every now and then, though, there's a moment of crisis, and you have to weigh whether the wickedness of the world has put you in a morally unwinnable position--and if so, how you can lose with the most grace and wisdom.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The PCs are justified in killing anything and anyone in defence of themselves and others. Killing can never be justified based upon biology.

 

[Zardnaar]

Are they essentially flesh golems? Homunculi? Or are they alive and sentient creatures?
The effects of killing golems might be an issue depending on if they have souls. Warforge in particular have made this complicated.

The issue then is if they are essentially golems without souls then slaughter at will (even if they look like cute ugly babies).

However if they are sapient and have souls then you need to be confident that they are irreddemable due being infused wil divine Evil

if they are irredeemibly Evil then slaughter them with righteous justice!

In game probably sentient meat puppets no souls.

Self propelled meat puppets.

In the source material all of the spawn are infused with the soul stuff of the god of darkness iirc.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The PCs are justified in killing anything and anyone in defence of themselves and others. Killing can never be justified based upon biology.

If they eat them, they get a pass.

Oh. You mean the victim's biology.