Nonhuman noncombatants?

[Will]

Clearly, the right thing to do is capture the women and children and make them slaves so they can learn proper civilization and buy their freedom.

 

[WayneLigon]

You and your companions have fought and slain the orc chieftain and his minions. The male orcs are all dead.

-Would it be evil to let them live, if you view orcs and other humanoids as inherently evil?

Well there is no 'if you view' orc as inherently evil: they are inherently evil by the way the alignment rules work. They're born that way. So, yeah; kill 'em. It's not a matter of them being green-skinned or savage or being non-human: it's a matter of their entire lives being devoted to destroying what most PC's stand for.

At least that's the way it worked in previous editions. 3.5 took away some of that certainty, by saying they are 'almost always' CE. It's not a pure certainty, but it's the safe way to bet. (There are still many creatures that have 'always' by their alignment, meaning every single one of them is x alignment). Some settings, like Eberron, disregard a large chunk of the alignment rules which further muddles the picture. In settings like those, it becomes much less of a sure thing.

Most adventuring groups I've played with or run never really run up on this problem; usually if there are non-combatants, we'll just let them go unless they are something we know is 'always evil'. Hell, usually we'll let combatants go if they run or surrender, depending on what they've done. If they are clearly being paid to be guards, eh, we'll probably let them go. If they have fresh baby meat stuck between their teeth, then they all die regardless if they surrender or not.

This applies to human foes as well as non-human foes, for us. We usually don't make a great deal of distinction.

I think 'Killing Orc Babies: Yea or Nay?' should be a sticky post where any and all mentions of this 'no win' scenario are posted

 

[Rykion]

I would leave the women and children alone as long as they were non-combatants. The party would probably report their existence to the local authorities, and warn any nearby villages. They would still be a danger.

I never got the idea that the "monster" sentient D&D races are just humans with scales or ugly noses. That's the way Star Trek makes most nonhumans. If you brought a group of orc children into a town and raised them just like everyone else, they would still be violent and evil. Even if they had all the resources they need, they will kill their neighbor because his dog barks or they just don't like the way he looks. They will steal from anyone who has more than them, and from the local begger just because he's any easy mark. They'll challenge the mayor to a fight to the death to gain leadership. It's their nature not just the way they were nurtured.

A tribe of orcs that come across the spared orc women and children aren't going to spare any human villages because of it. They'll absorb the healthy women, girls, and maybe the youngest of the male children into their tribe. The older male children and old and infirm women are likely to be killed or made into slaves.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

In Grymwurld™ Orcs are always evil

In Grymwurld™ Orcs are always evil. The women and children also fight as they are able or run away when they can't. Sure it's old school but that's the way I like it.

The intra-party conflict arises when the paladin wants to put the Orcs to the sword whereas the rest of the party wants to enslave them. Interestly enough, the dwarf argues that slavery is a punnishment worse than death which is precisely why the Orcs should be sold and not killed.

The half-orc keeps his mouth shut because he doesn't want to get sold into slavery either. And he won't comment on whether his mother was an Orc slave or if she was a Human raped by an Orc. His attitude is 'it doesn't matter what you think, it only matters what you do.'

When I want put the PCs into morally ambiguous situations I use Humans as the opponents, not monsters. In that situation, the paladin knows that the non-combatants can be redeemed but also that they will seek revenge when his guard is down. The other party members still want to sell them into slavery (greedy bastards they are) but the paladin won't allow it so long as they repent of their evil ways.

 

[GreatLemur]

IMHO, part of the appeal of a game like D&D is that it allows its participants to imagine a fantasy world where good and evil are objectively real. Alignment was never just a description of how a character acts. It was a statement of which side a creature takes in the cosmos-wide struggle of forces.

D&D was intended as a game of action-filled adventure, not angst-filled ennui. In other words, the default assumption should be that Orcs are evil, and need killing. The players get to be the men (and women) of action that journey to the wilderness, and give the Orcs the killing they deserve. In the real-world it would be deplorable to kill a race based simply on a perception that it is evil. That's all the more reason to have a fantasy game where people get to act out such otherwise unacceptable desires.

If you make the game too much concerned with modern notions of morality, it loses the cathartic value that it otherwise has. It's good for us to pretend there is a place where larger than life people can really solve problems just by hitting them hard enough, and its easy to know who is bad, because they look bad. The real world is complicated enough. Our fantasy worlds might lose all value if even they don't let us get away from mundane morality.

Honestly, that sounds boring to me. When I run or play D&D, I want action and complicated problems. When I just want action, I play video games.

Are there any pure evil beings in your campaign who are to be killed on sight?

Or is every being a victim?

Why should any kind of creature be pure anything? Ambiguity and depth are fun.

I ran a game a while ago where some cannibalistic humanoids (basically, humans reduced to a predatory, animalistic state) were living in a graveyard, eating corpses and attacking live humans from time to time. Of course, the party felt totally cool about killing them all, as they were obviously dangerous and didn't seem particularly sapient.

After the fight, the party noticed that one of the fallen creatures was visibly pregnant. The party Cleric made sure to skewer that one through the belly, just to be certain. I think that was the coolest moment of the night because it totally fit the character and established him as the hardcore pragmatic bastard of the group, and meanwhile the rest of the party was a little freaked out by it . . . especially when they later discovered the fetus was entirely human.

That was a fun twist to throw at them, and it started sort of a running joke (supported, through sheer coincidence, by later events) that the Cleric was always just raring to go kill some babies.

 

[TerraDave]

You all know that "killing evil 'cause its evil" is, er, evil. Right?

Not to violate the rules...but the only regimes or groups in RL that embrace this philosophy are, um, the evil ones. That many religions and philosophies except that all people are "inherently evil"...original sin and all that (but not just that), so by this logic you would kill everyone. That you could use this to rationalize car-bombing the new york stock exchange...

Or I guess, you are evil. Should we kill you?

 

[RangerWickett]

To sorta agree with the above, you folks who are saying that there are races that are evil, and thus deserve to be killed, could be viewed by some as being evil yourselves. You would then need to be killed.

In my games, anything that is intelligent has the free will to choose how it acts. If a creature is just supposed to be a monster to be killed, then I don't make it be sentient. There are many monsters created by sorcerers and gods and such for special purposes, but these things do not have free will. They only act as they are directed to, and short of supremely powerful magic to grant them a soul, they are only monsters.

I guess that's what it comes down to. A soul gives you free will to choose. Otherwise, you are just a puppet of a greater power, be that a sentient who created you, or just the random forces of nature.

First of all, in my games, demons and devils don't exist as they do in D&D. There are malevolent energies that gather in certain planes because they feed off the evil of sentient creatures, and magic-users can draw that power into our world to create things that are equivalent to demons, but there are not cultures and ecologies of demons on other planes. Such beings only have corporeal form in this world, and in that form they are a manifestation of their creator, and have no soul.

Likewise for angels, being drawn from realms empowered by generosity and virtue. Gods, on the other hand, are sentient beings, and supremely powerful ones, and often they create servants and beasts to do their will. These things are not people, though. They are tools, created.

Of course, then there comes the ambiguity: what has a soul? How do we know? Is the monster that says it has a soul truthful, or was it just made to think that, and it really it simply a tool?

Again, most warriors won't care to worry about these issues. They're neutral. But some will care, and they will try not to harm beings that are not an immediate threat, and to help those who might become a threat if left in their current circumstances. Those people are good.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

That was a fun twist to throw at them, and it started sort of a running joke (supported, through sheer coincidence, by later events) that the Cleric was always just raring to go kill some babies.

Obligatory Blackadder quote:

Edmund: Tell him to take his sacred backside out of here, and what's more, if he comes begging again, tell him I shall report him to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who drowns babies at their christening and eats them in the vestry afterwards.

…

Baldrick: It's that priest. He says he still wants to see you.

Edmund: And did you mention the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells?

Baldrick: I did, My Lord.

Edmund: And what did he say?

Bishop: (enters; shouts) He said, "I *am* the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells!"

Edmund: (sits up with a start) Good lord!

Bishop: You haven't any children, have you, Blackadder.

Edmund: No, no, I'm not married.

Bishop: In that case, I'll skip breakfast and get straight down to business. Do you know what day it is today?

 

[WayneLigon]

You all know that "killing evil 'cause its evil" is, er, evil. Right?

It isn't in a world where you can objectively sort people into Good and Evil with a simple spell or power. If you knew for a fact, an objective non-relative black-and-white fact that someone was Evil you'd be a fool not to at least have them watched. In all likelihood you'd place them in exile, or simply kill them before they can harm someone else or corrupt them to their evil ways.

The reason it's bad to do this in our world is that we can't know if someone is genuinely evil or even if there is such a thing as 'evil'.

 

[Klaus]

It isn't in a world where you can objectively sort people into Good and Evil with a simple spell or power. If you knew for a fact, an objective non-relative black-and-white fact that someone was Evil you'd be a fool not to at least have them watched. In all likelihood you'd place them in exile, or simply kill them before they can harm someone else or corrupt them to their evil ways.

The reason it's bad to do this in our world is that we can't know if someone is genuinely evil or even if there is such a thing as 'evil'.

It's just that there are "degrees" of Evil. A neighboor who loves to spread gossips just to see the dramah in other people's lives is Evil, but she doesn't deserve a sword to the gut.