Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 1932067" data-attributes="member: 27012">While I do want to give Lord of the Rings another shot, I have only so much interest in reading mythology.  I have read Beowulf in translation and I'm simply not up to reading it in Old English.  Middle English is about my limit.  Now if you want to talk Shakespeare...Animals are defined in the SRD as creatures with a sub-3 intelligence.  If one defines "incapable of moral action" as being unable to choose to behave differently, then the only alignment that could have the "Always" modifier (indicating an absence of moral choice) would be Neutral and that's clearly not the case.  An angel can't choose to not be Good but that doesn't make it Neutral, right?  So if I say that a goblin can't choose to not be Evil, does that make them Neutral?We lock of plenty of sociopaths because the insanity defense is very difficult to use successfully.  In fact, quite a few nutty serial killers wound up on death row for the same reason.  It's really more a matter of whether they understood their society's expectations for their behavior than whether they actually felt like what they were doing was wrong.  One article that I found described why the insane are treated differently--they lack "malicious intent".  It would be difficult to argue that an Evil sentient creature lacks "malicious intent" when they hurt somebody.  So as long as an Evil creature has "malicious intent", understand that it is hurting others, and can grasp the distinction between Good and Evil alignments, I think they are sane and responsible in a legal sense.Is an inherently Evil creature Evil?  Yes, I think so.  Should it be held responsible for it's actions?  Maybe or maybe not.  In the game that I'm currently running, a goblin can choose not to hurt or kill if they want (e.g., If I try to kill that hobgoblin that is ordering me around, he'll kill me instead.).  Their nature simply means that they pretty much always want to hurt or kill and will generally do so if given the opportunity.  So there is an element of free moral agency, even if they normally don't use it for very much.That brings us back to the question I've been asking -- "What do you do with them, then?"  You've got a hundred thousand goblins, each of which is inherently Evil and cannot be reformed.  What do you do with them if you are Good?</blockquote>

Verification