Is this an evil act, or not?

[RigaMortus]

You can't use the "real life" arguement because there is no quantifiable way to determine what is exactly good and what is exactly evil in real life. In D&D, you can. In D&D, Good and Evil CAN be measured.

Getting back to the topic... I think the action was evil, neutral at best. From what I've read here (please correct me if I am wrong) but the group wasn't sure if there was a cure, right? Were they actively looking to see if a cure existed? What was their purpose for being in the kobold den to begin with? Revenge for attacking the townsfolk?

Others have made a good point. Assuming that the party felt there was no cure available, why is killing the diseased kobolds acceptable for controlling the disease, but killing the diseased townsfolk is not? If they WERE on a quest to find a possible cure (still not definate that there was one), then why give up hope on curing the kobolds, and not give up hope on curing the humans?

 

[Buttercup]

Riga, let me answer some of your questions.

The group was investigating the mine for two reasons. 1. The kobalds that had been repeatedly attacking the town seemed to retreat in that direction, and 2. The miners just stopped coming home. It had been a month since anyone had seen them.

The local priest can cast Remove Disease. But he only has a certain number of spell slots per day, and he intends to spend them on keeping any more townsfolk from dying. He believes the well may be the source of the plague, but boiling the water doesn't help. He has suggested to the PCs that the plague isn't natural in origin, and wondered aloud if the Kobalds have anything to do with it. (As it happens, they don't. They're dying of it as well. But no one in town knows that.)

By the time the party found the sickly kobald infants, they had already had two encounters with kobalds in the mine, and found numerous corpses of miners. At this point they had been speculating whether or not the obviously ill kobalds were only carriers of the plague, or were intentionally spreading it to the town. There were no adult kobalds left alive. Four of the party had just been injured by kobalds. Three of them had already gotten the plague, and had been cured by the priest the day before, after feeling wretched. They still had no idea how to clean up the well in town, if it could even be done, and if that would even help. Further, they had more than 60 settlers camped one day outside of town, who they had escorted on a six week journey over the mountains, during which they had suffered numerous attacks. They had lost some of the settlers and a few NPC guards. They couldn't take the settlers back where they came from, because if they did, all would have become slaves in the rapidly disintigrating empire. The PCs were at their wits' end.

This was the context. And so when Nadja, who thinks of kobalds as little better than animals, put the infant kobalds out of their suffering, I agreed with her that it was a good and merciful act.

I've found this discussion fascinating. Clearly there isn't one single answer, even though D&D has objectively measurable alignments. If there were a single right answer, the thread wouldn't have gone on for so long.

 

[Dave Turner]

There is a massive unstated assumption that is coloring this entire thread:

Is the kobold infant something that is worthy of moral consideration in the first place? Can it be "wronged"?

We would consider it odd if someone said that some objects in the world were "wronged". If someone told me that I had "wronged" a stone because I broke it in half, that would seem peculiar and incorrect to everyone. In the case of the kobold infant, are we sure that it is something in the world to which moral language (right and wrong) applies? What gives an object moral rights and does a kobold infant (or a human one, for that matter ) have those properties?

 

[Krail Stromquism]

I disagree

Buttercup,

there is obviously one answer:

CATAPULT!

In a magic filled world whos to say those lil tikes wouldnt enter a geosyncranis orbit?

Diseased Orbitting Space Kobolds!

Ginat Space Hamsters had their turn, even Scro. NOw its time for the new generation.

DOSK, The Next Generation.

In D&D the default solution to many a problem is "kill it" or "smash it"

How much if any deliberation was there before killem was arrived at?

Im still pulling for the sanity check.

or maybe a Will save or Charisma check. Its an unsavory act for sure and would take strong force of will or strong persona.

Its like Fear Factor D&D style

 

[Krail Stromquism]

Dave Turner,

an interesting question.

I think most people would stand behind the Sentience idea, but then does that include Intellegent Swords or Items?

In most games monsters are sentient and even have systems of faith and culture that are well established.

every monster is a playable race, if one decided to be exclusitory of morality defined by species how does impact high level monsters? and why or how would they be able to choose their own alignments?

its best not to think about and just think CATAPULT!

 

[Dave Turner]

Dave Turner,

an interesting question.

I think most people would stand behind the Sentience idea, but then does that include Intellegent Swords or Items?

In most games monsters are sentient and even have systems of faith and culture that are well established.

every monster is a playable race, if one decided to be exclusitory of morality defined by species how does impact high level monsters? and why or how would they be able to choose their own alignments?

its best not to think about and just think CATAPULT!

Maybe catapult is the better way to go.

But consider what you wrote. Kobold infants certainly have not acquired systems of faith or culture that you suggest are a part of sentience. If kobold infants do not possess these concepts, they could be considered unsentient. If they're unsentient, they do not deserve moral consideration. It's therefore a bit nonsensical to talk about the wrongness of killing them.

What do you mean when you suggest that sentience should be a defining property of moral things? What do you mean by "sentience"? I'm sure that if you think about it for a bit, you'll find that a definition that includes infants will also include things like cows or dogs. This would make it "murder" to kill a cow or dog.

 

[Czhorat]

It's evil.....

The kobold children were just that, children. They didn't seem to be a threat, and it sounds as if this disease were curable. How long could the tikes have lived? DId the party TRY going back to town to convince the townsfold to do the right thing? Maybe this is the time to break out those diplomacy skills and see if you can do some good that doesn't involve killing things.

UNless, of course, your DM has decided that kobolds are like demons and are by nature evil. Then again, if the character in question BELIEVED them to be inherently evil, then he'd not know that he was committing an evil act. Perhaps someday he could meet a good-aligned kobold priest and be forced to atone for his crimes.

 

[Krail Stromquism]

Well I dont wanna turn this into a freshman philosophy class discussion or anything but playing with the definition of sentience is wacky in our world let alone in D&D.

Or to make it even more silly in STAR TREK, where holograms have protected staus as sentient beings, and robats and computer programs.

BUt if we label the kobolds as having the potential to have independent thought, then that would include almost everything else in the D&D world, rocks, sticks, moose droppings.

Cause the potential exists for them to become sentient and capable of independent thought. Golems for instance, can gain independent thought, or rather lets call them constructs.

or the gods themselves may lift up a pile of moose turd and make it into its Avatar. So potential covers a lot.

D.O.S.K. is SO in da HIZZOUSE! HALLAH HALLAH!

what were we talking about?

 

[Dave Turner]

BUt if we label the kobolds as having the potential to have independent thought, then that would include almost everything else in the D&D world, rocks, sticks, moose droppings.

Cause the potential exists for them to become sentient and capable of independent thought. Golems for instance, can gain independent thought, or rather lets call them constructs.

That might be a place to start, but it doesn't give much traction to the problem. It doesn't make sense to grant moral privileges to objects that have the *potential* to be moral. When those objects are moral objects, then we'll extend them moral protections. Until that time, should they receive them? If something has the potential to be moral, then it is currently not moral by definition and can be treated as we would treat a (mundane) stone.

 

[Krail Stromquism]

Dave Turner,

but by your reasoning that would include any creature that hasnt come to maturity, including human and demi human babies and children and the cast of Dawsons Creek.

Would that be just not to extend protection to those groups, except the cast of D.C.?

What makes it that we do extend those rights to them?

Why does one extend these rights to yummy Pad Thai? or Cheese Steak hoagies? or your favorite 20 sider?

these are the questions upon which the universe rests

surely we should shoot them out of a catapult, no?