D&D 5E Is it possible to have a good-aligned final boss in a good campaign?

[Saeviomagy]

Sure. Easy example: PCs are settlers. The "bad guys" are (American) Indians, and the final boss is the big Indian medicine man. He's a good guy and willing to sacrifice for others, but that doesn't mean he's going to roll over and play dead when the PCs are invading his peoples' lands. Think of Listens To Wind from the Dresden Files: clearly good-aligned, but not always on the same page as Dresden, especially during Turncoat.

If we're talking Dresden, then winter or summer both kind of fall into this category.

 

[Shasarak]

This is where you are using personal bias in responding. You believe freedom is best, therefore you think anyone opposed to freedom cannot be good. The Borg do not enslave people, they improve them. Your personal beliefs allow for murder, theft, assault because of personal choice but that doesn't happen to the Borg, they live in harmony.

Does mind control count as enslavement?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

In another thread here, we're debating a thing in FR called the wall of the faithless. Essentially it's a wall where, if you don't believe in a god or don't believe that the gods deserve worship, then when you die, you are mortared into the wall and gradually lose your identity while being tortured. The players could either be for tearing down the wall (siding against all the good gods of the pantheon, who currently seem to believe that it's a necessary part of the afterlife) or against it. Whether the wall is actually necessary or not is then up to you.

They are not tortured. But they do gradually lose their identity.

 

[Eltab]

Good vs. Good conflict, based-on-IRL example:

The Pope decides that the Christian church needs to present a more-unified front to deal with Islam-inspired murder groups. Of course HE is obviously the best person to be in charge of Christendom.
Many Orthodox Patriarchs and Protestant denomination Presidents disagree. (Some disagree on both points.)
Many political leaders want to know about dual-allegiance problems.

Some of the things this Pope wants to do - such as charitable aid to attack victims, near-battlefield refugee aid, deliberate preaching of Christianity in Muslim lands, drafting anti-conversion-into-Islam apologetics, creating a religious militia - are going to step on other peoples' toes. You might have to negotiate between the Red Cross and Catholic Charities, for instance.

The PCs come from a denomination(s) that history has not been kind to (Coptic or Nestorian "Assyrian" Christians), or are relatively recent (Baptists) or are borderline-heretical (Mormon).

Edit: At the climax of the adventure arc, this Pope wants to call a Crusade.

 

[Saeviomagy]

They are not tortured. But they do gradually lose their identity.

Everything I've read about the wall says that the process is painful.