Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="robertliguori" data-source="post: 4659830" data-attributes="member: 47776">So, question for the morally-absolute folks.&nbsp; What's stopping you from playing a morally-absolute character?&nbsp; Just declare you're right, and revel in it?&nbsp; The guiding hand of your deity encouraging you to spare/slay the orc babies? Wrong.&nbsp; The devils popping up to tell you &quot;Rock on, buddy!&quot;? Wrong.&nbsp; The cosmic forces of the universe stripping you of your paladin powers? Also wrong.&nbsp; (Plus, not possible in 4E, and avoidable by respeccing to a Fighter1/ClericX devoted to your moral cause in 3.5E.)You don't want to engage in moral questions?&nbsp; Then don't.&nbsp; Accept that there are physical forces in the multiverse that call themselves Good and Evil and Law and so on, and that these forces do not necessarily correlate to actual morality, and that what is Good isn't good and so forth.The real problem (I believe) is not the desire to play a morally-absolute character, but a morally-correct character, backed up objectively by the laws of the setting.&nbsp; And that's where you run into problems.&nbsp; What happens if a fellow player wants the same thing, but disagrees on what is properly heroic?&nbsp; As you can see, there is lots of flat-out disagreement about whether executing orc babies is nobly heroic or grim and dark; what's a DM to do when one player wants to be empowered by the forces of righteousness to slay orcs and orcspawn, and another wants to be similarly empowered to defend the helpless (including orcspawn)?I don't think that swarms of objectively evil orcs make for heroic fantasy, myself.&nbsp; I think that it's actually pretty damn grim, and my bog-standard evil orcs do not attack in mindless, relentless swarms, but actually tend to rapidly rout and flee for their lives when faced with heroic opposition.&nbsp; I think that orcs for which going in and knocking heads is a functional solution without requiring total genocide is much more heroic than orcs-as-xenomorphs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="robertliguori, post: 4659830, member: 47776"] So, question for the morally-absolute folks. What's stopping you from playing a morally-absolute character? Just declare you're right, and revel in it? The guiding hand of your deity encouraging you to spare/slay the orc babies? Wrong. The devils popping up to tell you "Rock on, buddy!"? Wrong. The cosmic forces of the universe stripping you of your paladin powers? Also wrong. (Plus, not possible in 4E, and avoidable by respeccing to a Fighter1/ClericX devoted to your moral cause in 3.5E.) You don't want to engage in moral questions? Then don't. Accept that there are physical forces in the multiverse that call themselves Good and Evil and Law and so on, and that these forces do not necessarily correlate to actual morality, and that what is Good isn't good and so forth. The real problem (I believe) is not the desire to play a morally-absolute character, but a morally-correct character, backed up objectively by the laws of the setting. And that's where you run into problems. What happens if a fellow player wants the same thing, but disagrees on what is properly heroic? As you can see, there is lots of flat-out disagreement about whether executing orc babies is nobly heroic or grim and dark; what's a DM to do when one player wants to be empowered by the forces of righteousness to slay orcs and orcspawn, and another wants to be similarly empowered to defend the helpless (including orcspawn)? I don't think that swarms of objectively evil orcs make for heroic fantasy, myself. I think that it's actually pretty damn grim, and my bog-standard evil orcs do not attack in mindless, relentless swarms, but actually tend to rapidly rout and flee for their lives when faced with heroic opposition. I think that orcs for which going in and knocking heads is a functional solution without requiring total genocide is much more heroic than orcs-as-xenomorphs. [/QUOTE]

Verification