Sadras
Legend
That is one enlightened Goblin.
D&D 5E Goblins and their "Curse of Strife"
That is one enlightened Goblin.
TaranTheWanderer
Legend
Sure is! But they do have an INT of 10, so why wouldn't they make that argument? Definitely a conversation that, maybe, a goblin leader might have. It feels a lot like shoving your beliefs down someone's throat. "You'll just have to trust me that this is for your own good" I feel like Goblin Choice should be a factor in their conversion, if you want to skirt the sensitive issues.
Remove Curse cast by a cleric is reminiscent of Christian Missionaries going to convert the 'heathens'. It's still problematic.
FWIW, I find the Wildemount Goblins to be kind of neat and flavorful if one wanted to add it into a game.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Nope. That's just not true. Remove Curse can be cast by any old drunk who can cast Remove Curse. Any Cleric, of any god - including other goblins, with Goblin religions. Any Paladin - including evil and scary ones. Any Wizard or Warlock who knows it - so not every arguably religious people.
Further, it doesn't require any conversion. A Goblin who hates you before you cast Remove Curse on him may well still hate you. He just won't hate you because of a magical curse, but because you, he, or both are jerks. There's no baptism or oils on forehead. There's no accepting Lathander (or whoever) as your Lord and Saviour. There's just a Wizard or whoever going ZAP with their one-action casting time, which could be done from surprise or whatever, and BAM, curse gone, but that's all that's gone.
If Remove Curse could only be cast by Good or Lawful Clerics, or something, you'd have a point. If it required some sort of elaborate ceremony or agreement from the target, you'd have a point. But that's not the case. This is a spell that, sure, could be cast by some conversion-minded would-be missionary-priest, but could equally be cast by a drunk Wizard down a dark alley. Hell, you could put it in direct opposition to "missonary" stuff by having the main people casting it be other Goblins, keen to free their fellows. And those Goblins don't have to be nice guys, signed up for friendliness and hand-holding, either.
TaranTheWanderer
Legend
True but, should it be cast without consent? I mean, people turn down medical procedures for philosophical/religious reasons all the time. My point is Cure Disease isn't as cut and dry as it seems. "I'm doing this for your own good, whether you like it or not" can still be viewed as an issue.
GreenTengu
Adventurer
I think removing what is effectively something between hypnosis and a drunken state can't really be compared to a medical procedure. At worst it would be like giving someone medication for a mental illness.
You aren't replacing the curse with a different curse, you would just be putting them in the more neutral headspace they would be in if they were born without an explicit magical curse. The same state as everyone else.
And all it does it move their minds to a more neutral position. They might-- maybe even probably-- would still be down with Bane, after all-- everyone they have ever known is. And they could presumably recurse themselves again if that is their explicit choice by performing whatever ritual to Bane.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
If people are going to complain about the other ways of removing the curse because they're too much like what gets done to minorities, this really isn't different. The details you're providing above are differences without a real distinction to someone who really wants to criticize it along the lines of the missionary conversion work or baptism.
Honestly, if someone's going to criticize showing compassion to a goblin as being like the programming inherent with conversion therapy, no distinction you're going to draw between remove curse and missionary conversion/baptism is going to hold water.
jmartkdr2
Hero
I always equated magical mind control to drugging someone. It's an outside, unnatural influence on how their brain works. So using charm person to convince someone to do something that harms them is morally similar to roofies (and thusly often pretty bad.
Reading it as gaslighting feels - off, since that doesn't exactly go away after X minutes.
Which means a racial curse (imposed after the creation of the race) is more like drugging an entire culture. The 'literally all of them' aspect is fantastical, but it's still close enough that I think the closest real-world analogy to removing a racial curse would be the Opium Wars (as opposed to forcible conversion).
Then again, (if I were using the curse in a game I'm running) I wouldn't allow the curse to be removed by the goblin changing their mind - it's coming form an outside source and that must be dealt with. I might let remove curse temporarily suppress it, but Bane is going to have to re-cast the spell from time to time (or would need to if he wants it to stay around, anyways) so you get window where the goblin might realize what's happening to their people and thus decide to stop it.
But end the curse forever? That will involve fighting a god pretty directly.
Reading it as gaslighting feels - off, since that doesn't exactly go away after X minutes.
Which means a racial curse (imposed after the creation of the race) is more like drugging an entire culture. The 'literally all of them' aspect is fantastical, but it's still close enough that I think the closest real-world analogy to removing a racial curse would be the Opium Wars (as opposed to forcible conversion).
Then again, (if I were using the curse in a game I'm running) I wouldn't allow the curse to be removed by the goblin changing their mind - it's coming form an outside source and that must be dealt with. I might let remove curse temporarily suppress it, but Bane is going to have to re-cast the spell from time to time (or would need to if he wants it to stay around, anyways) so you get window where the goblin might realize what's happening to their people and thus decide to stop it.
But end the curse forever? That will involve fighting a god pretty directly.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
No, sorry.
Zapping someone with a spell to remove a literal curse is different to what you're describing. All the methods you're defending, someone went out of their way to construct an elaborate and unnecessary scenario that ensured that it was similar to dubious real-world stuff. They put layers of extra stuff on it, and made it so a spell suddenly doesn't work the way it's supposed to, in order to promote this extra stuff's importance.
When I put a bunch of extra layers on Remove Curse, and do so to promote the importance of those layers, and those layers are designed to resemble real-world stuff, then you can make your argument, but right now, it's just a cheap and disingenuous attempt to defend something that's mildly dodgy.
TaranTheWanderer
Legend
people can interpret things any way.
-I’m going to remove this curse
-no don’t do it, I don’t want to
-yes, I’m going to do it anyways, it’s for your own good. I know better than you.
-but I don’t want it. I like my life.
-too bad, I’m doing it anyway.
Sounds Bad to me.
-I’m going to remove this curse
-no don’t do it, I don’t want to
-yes, I’m going to do it anyways, it’s for your own good. I know better than you.
-but I don’t want it. I like my life.
-too bad, I’m doing it anyway.
Sounds Bad to me.
GreenTengu
Adventurer
So I suppose you are also against drug addicts being denied drugs until they sober up or finish going through withdrawl?
Because they generally aren't going to be asking to get free of the addiction, particularly once the withdrawl symptoms begin kicking in.
