D&D 5E Is he evil?

[lowkey13]

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[Fanaelialae]

Yes, but that is what Good aligned characters do by definition.

There is a great scene in the sixth or seventh episode of Firefly where we really get a clear indication of who Malcolm Reynolds is underneath the roguish veneer. He's just been bushwacked and shot by people he'd agreed to a deal with, and fortunately, they don't aim very well. They leave him for dead, but he draws a hold out pistol stands up (while bleeding to death) and orders them off his ship. Now the tables are turned, and the Captain of the other ship says, "You'd have done the same if the situation was reversed." And while holding the pistol on him, Mal says, "I've already proved that's not true."

GOOD ALIGNED!!!

Mal certainly took the moral high ground in that scene.

However, in episode 2 (The Train Job) he has Crow, Niska's lieutenant, at his mercy. He offers to return the money Niska paid them and Crow replies with threats. In response, Mal kicks him into Serenity's engine intake, killing him rather horrifically. So.... EVIL ALIGNED???

I don't think so. It's not inappropriate for a chaotic good character to do something like that, although it's on the extreme end of what might be allowed IMO.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

"species of intelligent life are morally acceptable to kill on sight"

It's a lot shorter to just abbreviate that as O.R.C.

Shorter, sure... but it also cheapens the impact, since there are a lot more than just orcs presented by D&D as civilized (in the sense of having civilization, even when not also meant in the sense of being civil), intelligent, self-aware, and only distinguishable from a corrupt and/or cruel human people/nation by physical appearance and that Good-aligned nations and organizations wholly support killing them on sight.

 

[lowkey13]

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[lowkey13]

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[Celebrim]

Not in D&D, it seems, since D&D has always allowed the "good guys" (with Good alignments) to arbitrate which species of intelligent life are morally acceptable to kill on sight.

I find that statement to wildly misstate what is going on.

PC's don't arbitrate what species of intelligent life are morally acceptable to kill - the cosmology and hence the DM does.

Broadly speaking, you can divide "intelligent life" into:

a) People
b) Demons

It's not morally acceptable to kill people accept in self-defense. It is morally acceptable to kill demons. The division is not arbitrary. If an orc is people, you can't kill them on sight - but equally it would be wrong for the DM to play them as demons. If an orc is a demon, you can't decide that they are people - and equally it would be wrong for the DM to play them as people (except to trick or confuse the players). This is set according to the creation or fundamental nature of the species. Does the thing have fundamentally a people nature, or fundamentally a demon nature.

Now, within the setting some characters may disagree over the question of whether orcs have a people nature or a demon nature, but one of those groups is wrong, and ignorance doesn't prevent their actions from being wrong.

And without the setting, some groups - including DMs - may never question their assumptions or think about whether orcs are people, but that is simply childish. That level of play got dispensed with in our groups about the time we were 14. If some groups never get past that point, or prefer never to address the point, that reflects only on the play at those tables and not D&D as a whole. D&D as a whole has typically had a much more nuanced take on the question than that, as even the D&D cartoon did not present orcs as wholly ruined beings. Brutish, thuggish and potentially dangerous sure, but you could go into a bar and they'd be drinking along side other patrons without creating a disturbance. That sort of cosmopolitan take is I think much more common to D&D that what you are here crediting.

 

[jasper]

Celebri, ....If some groups never get past that point, or prefer never to address the point, that reflects only on the play at those tables and not D&D as a whole.......
True.


.... D&D as a whole has typically had a much more nuanced take on the question than that, as even the D&D cartoon did not present orcs as wholly ruined beings.....
Hahahahha you using your own group to reflect the nuanced. And the CARTOON which had no one dying as nuanced. Especially during a decade where you could blow F-16 out of the air but GI JOEs parachuted out to safety always. hahahahahhaha

....Brutish, thuggish and potentially dangerous sure, but you could go into a bar and they'd be drinking along side other patrons without creating a disturbance....
Wait a minute you again doing letting your group decide the whole world of D&D gamers treat Orcs the exactly the same way.

.....That sort of cosmopolitan take is I think much more common to D&D that what you are here crediting..... Or your group is more cosmopolitan( hold the vodka) than the groups I played with.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

PC's don't arbitrate what species of intelligent life are morally acceptable to kill

I didn't say it was the PCs doing the arbitration, just that it is those with Good alignments doing it.

It's not morally acceptable to kill people accept in self-defense.

Such as when they have brought a lethal weapon into a fight, you take it from them, and kill them in defense of your own life. Which was my point that you kind of glossed over to start our current side discussion.

It is morally acceptable to kill demons.

To the extent that "demon" refers only to things which the game says are always evil, because if they weren't evil they'd be a different thing (which 5th edition mentions regarding things like should a devil change alignment they are no longer a devil).

If an orc is people, you can't kill them on sight - but equally it would be wrong for the DM to play them as demons.

That's where the history of D&D starts to disagree. D&D settings are frequently presented containing entities with Good alignments that believe killing an orc (and numerous other types of people) on sight is not just acceptable but is actually Good (with the capital g to signify upholding of the alignment, rather than just being liked)

If an orc is a demon, you can't decide that they are people - and equally it would be wrong for the DM to play them as people (except to trick or confuse the players). This is set according to the creation or fundamental nature of the species. Does the thing have fundamentally a people nature, or fundamentally a demon nature.

Which is why I mentioned how D&D presents these civilized (though again, not always civil) species - because it presents them as people, and Good (again with the capital g for clarity I mean the alignment) to kill them on sight.

If some groups never get past that point, or prefer never to address the point, that reflects only on the play at those tables and not D&D as a whole.

I've had arguments on this very forum, with posters that use the same kind of "I grew out of that" language to describe behaviors they don't like as you just have, wherein I am told that I am flat-out wrong when I say an orc (or other civilized, but not necessarily civil, species) deserves the same consideration as a human would receive under the circumstances met, and thus shouldn't just be assumed to be evil and killed on sight by Good-aligned adventures as they travel down the road.

That sort of cosmopolitan take is I think much more common to D&D that what you are here crediting.

I know it is much more common at my table, but I've been constantly regarded by other D&D fans I speak with as having strange ideas... so I'm not finding it easy to believe you are correct, despite my hope that you are.

 

[Corwin]

So many posts would circumvent obvious rebuttal and/or castigation if they would just start with something like, "At our table we..." rather than making blanket, absolutist claims about the hobby in general. Just a thought.

 

[Celebrim]

I didn't say it was the PCs doing the arbitration, just that it is those with Good alignments doing it.

No. This implies that good and evil are relative things. D&D's system asserts absolute morality. So the Good aligned creatures aren't deciding what is Evil. It's simply is evil.

Granted, this system falls apart when the DM can't even manage a semblance of a morally consistent universe, or trivializes morality to just which hat color you are wearing.

Such as when they have brought a lethal weapon into a fight, you take it from them, and kill them in defense of your own life. Which was my point that you kind of glossed over to start our current side discussion.

I didn't gloss over it. But, if you want me to address it, then I suggest that that is not what happened. Self-defense was explicitly not involved in the scenario introduced by the OP. If you want to come up with something that excuses the killing, it can't be self-defense. We didn't get very many details regarding the events that led to the scene, but we certainly got enough to rule out self-defense.

To the extent that "demon" refers only to things which the game says are always evil, because if they weren't evil they'd be a different thing (which 5th edition mentions regarding things like should a devil change alignment they are no longer a devil).

If you want to bring in Catholic iconography, you shouldn't be surprised if mucking around with the cosmology without changing the iconography results in nonsense.

That's where the history of D&D starts to disagree. D&D settings are frequently presented containing entities with Good alignments that believe killing an orc (and numerous other types of people) on sight is not just acceptable but is actually Good (with the capital g to signify upholding of the alignment, rather than just being liked)

Earlier in the thread I said that for each setting, you needed to define orc. Tolkien, who basically gave us the fantasy orc, very much is also a good example of this. Tolkien tried to blend Catholic theology with Norse theology. The existence of orcs, trolls, and balrogs gave his Norse inspired heroes a foe which they could face without showing any mercy to and thus, allowed them to be gloriously violent without moral gray areas. (Compare the very different treatment in his works to fights between 'free peoples', and the very different treatment Théoden and Aragorn give to defeated human enemies.) However, after finishing Lord of the Rings, Tolkien became a bit disturbed that he'd inadvertently overly humanized the orcs, presenting them too much as independent beings with their own personalities and even the ability to imagine resisting the forces of evil. This disturbed him so much, that he started rewriting his cosmology to ensure that orcs were firmly established by their creation as being incapable of good - essentially turning them all into puppets of Sauron and Morgoth. If he could, he probably would have retconn'd his Lord of the Rings orcs to be less like people, or otherwise changed the presentation.

How you define orc matters.

wherein I am told that I am flat-out wrong when I say an orc (or other civilized, but not necessarily civil, species) deserves the same consideration as a human would receive under the circumstances met, and thus shouldn't just be assumed to be evil and killed on sight by Good-aligned adventures as they travel down the road.

Depending on who they define orc, they may well be right. However, I know in my own game (which as I said, doesn't have orcs, but uses goblin-kind in all the same roles), goblins may be PCs, and are generally treated by players with the same consideration they'd give say a human or an elf encountered at random in the wild.

However, depending on how you define orc, some other table where they are killed on sight might not be wrong. Neither is superior to the other. What's wrong is not ever thinking this through, and as Tolkien noted in his own work, not thinking it through may end up producing minor flaws or unintended consequences.