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Message: <blockquote data-quote="med stud" data-source="post: 187210" data-attributes="member: 1211">There are two answers for this as I know of real life. One is the morally absolutistic view that humans are created by God (or whatever) and therefore are Holy. Killing is forbidden in holy writing X, therefore we shouldnt kill.The other answer is that with increased sentience comes increased levels of potential suffering. A plant is unable to suffer; you can damage it, but you cant (probably) make it suffer. A low animal, like a worm, you can make suffer physically but probably dont mentally (since the mental capacity of a worm is pretty limited). If we go up on the scale we find mammals, who are able to feel emotions like joy and fear. Those animals can suffer physically and mentally. If we go up the ladder again, we find sentient beings, who can be hurt terribly mentally, with the use of imagination and so on.What does this explanation tell? Nothing without premises. But if we put in a premise, like hurting is bad, we come to the conclusion that is worse hurting a sentient being than a plant. This is the morally relativistic point of view, which often is about maximising happiness or minimizing suffering.These explanations can be used well in D&D to judge an action. Let's say that the morally absolutic view says that killing hobgoblins is not wrong, it is a Neutral action. If it says that killing all children is wrong, then it is Evil. Pretty easy.By using the relative moral, we have to compare the consequences of letting the children live; what will happen to the total level of "happiness" in the world? On the minus side we have the loss of Happiness from the children, and what's on the plus side is another matter, depending on how you view hobgoblins in your game.Hope Im not incohorent, Im pretty tired as Im writing this  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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