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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6160610" data-attributes="member: 17106">This post is readable again. Your last was in a gray color that was (and still is) not. I don't know why.Some are, some aren't. Those that aren't I would qualify as being in a moral gray area. "Where does leather armor come from" is also a valid concern.The D&D definition of good does not specify anything about humans or intelligent creatures, and indeed is pretty clear that good characters are concerned with all sentient beings. However, what "respect for life" "concern for dignity" constitutes is open to interpretation. There's a case to be made for an omnivorous creature hunting or scavenging as being appropriate. After all, carnivorous animals aren't evil. The case for farm animals, either as labor or as food, being within the definition of respect for life is pretty tenuous in my opinion.How does this apply to societies? As the quote goes, if slaughterhouses had glass walls we would all be vegetarians. Farmers who produce meat beyond the bare minimum needed to survive are pretty clearly not good, and might be either neutral or evil. Gentry who consume these products without being involved in their production are abetting it, whether they know/care or not. That does not prevent them from doing other good deeds, but does make it challenging to maintain a good alignment. Really, any noble would struggle to maintain a good alignment.IMC most good-aligned characters are (among other things) vegetarians. Most druids and other nature-y types are as well (I never understood why it was okay for druids to weather leather armor; perhaps they take it from creatures who die naturally?). Thus, the practice is a minority, but a significant and influential one, and many people that are not vegetarians restrict their use of animals on moral grounds. While D&D is not set in Southeast Asia, this is one aspect in which my world tends to resemble the history of India and surrounding regions. I have something of a constant cold war going between the druids and their ilk and civilized humanoids; farming is one of their main points of difference.*Of course, all of this is in a D&D context where morals are absolute, alignments are mechanically defined, souls exist, and all of this is distinct from the real world and its history. Real life issues are thornier. I am, unsurprisingly, vegetarian myself, but I am not making this post to claim that real people who participate in conventional eating practices are immoral.*Independent of what the D&D rules implications are, I think that sitting a restrained elephant beside a corpse, conducting a ritual, and sacrificing the elephant in exchange for the character's life would give most people pause.My conception of alignment is that there are very few "good societies", and that most are mixed. In my mind, a diverse human society supports good and evil, and the good elements are constantly conflicting with the evil ones, which includes, to my way of thinking, animal agriculture and war.For as long as wars have been fought, there have been rules of war. They have not always been codified as modern society does, but there have always been de facto laws in place regarding the treatment of prisoners. Of course, some real societies included the sacrifice of prisoners as being perfectly within their rules, which is a big deal to those who don't agree.On a world level, one assumes that 5000+ gp diamonds are not infinitely available. Yes, the core rules raise all kinds of questions about how and when resurrection is used, even before you start mining HoH for ideas to change how it works.Well, okay. I think it's pretty clear that the life in trade is a restriction, and it is intended to supplement the core rules, not replace them. Given the paucity of character deaths and resurrections in my games lately, it's hard to say what I did or did not accomplish in my own game. As I've subsequently indicated, the goal here is also to change the tone surrounding resurrection magic, and in that I most definitely succeeded.The noble was a 12th level assassin. I expect the technical aspects of resurrection to be eminently achievable to a character of that stature. The PCs were, at the time, level 6, and had commensurately lower social status and resources. If a level 6 character wanted a resurrection, that would be much more difficult. My intention is not to make it impossible for high level characters to do difficult (and morally questionable) things.</blockquote>

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