D&D General The Problem with Evil or what if we don't use alignments?

[Oofta]

Right--which just goes to show that his alignment is all over the place and therefore isn't really all that useful. Which edition do you pick? Does he change if you use a different edition?

It's a problem because decades ago a third party company had a different alignment? Do you hurt yourself when you stretch that much?

You use the current edition. Not hard.

 

[Oofta]

At the risk of someone aggressively mislabeling this as a 'strawman', did we just get a post that both: equates killing sapient children to exterminating an aggressive artificially created animal and then offhandedly allude to certain mental illnesses causing evil?

Just giving a chance to walk that crap back.

Some people are born psycopaths because of a physical difference in their brain that has been traced to the amygdala. They just aren't wired the way most people are. They lack empathy, punishment does no good and their reward centers are more active than most people. Many people born this way would, in general, be considered evil by most people. I linked to the article if you want more detail.

Much of what we consider "good" is inborn instincts that are shared by many animals. So yes, some people lack the instinct for good. If that's possible in the real world it's possible for fantasy creatures.

As far as "exterminating" ... I have no idea what you're talking about unless once again you're dragging around stuff Gygax said.

 

[Maxperson]

It's a problem because decades ago a third party company had a different alignment? Do you hurt yourself when you stretch that much?

You use the current edition. Not hard.

It actually is fairly hard to use only 5e. I mean, this is the entirety of LG, "creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society." One vague sentence really isn't enough. You and I can do it, because we had editions with more to alignment that we just know. Someone who is brand new won't have much to go on.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Some people are born psycopaths because of a physical difference in their brain that has been traced to the amygdala. They just aren't wired the way most people are. They lack empathy, punishment does no good and their reward centers are more active than most people. Many people born this way would, in general, be considered evil by most people. I linked to the article if you want more detail.

Much of what we consider "good" is inborn instincts that are shared by many animals. So yes, some people lack the instinct for good. If that's possible in the real world it's possible for fantasy creatures.

Yeah, so that's just terrible.

Especially when 'Evil' is basically just an excuse for killing them. Even if you want to say it's a reasonable replacement for an actual description, it's a description designed to remove the guilt from killing them. Like that time they said drow kill their siblings in the womb shortly before science found out humans eat their siblings in the womb.

As far as "exterminating" ... I have no idea what you're talking about unless once again you're dragging around stuff Gygax said.

Your Ripley example. You respond to the question of killing orc younglings by talking about killing xenomorph eggs. Xenomorphs are artificial lifeforms that lack sapience and orcs... aren't. And there's something super-skeevy about comparing sapient being to animals especially in thi context.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, so that's just terrible.

Especially when 'Evil' is basically just an excuse for killing them. Even if you want to say it's a reasonable replacement for an actual description, it's a description designed to remove the guilt from killing them. Like that time they said drow kill their siblings in the womb shortly before science found out humans eat their siblings in the womb.

Your Ripley example. You respond to the question of killing orc younglings by talking about killing xenomorph eggs. Xenomorphs are artificial lifeforms that lack sapience and orcs... aren't. And there's something super-skeevy about comparing sapient being to animals especially in thi context.

I have never stated that I would allow PCs to kill a creature just because it's evil.

On the other hand, I'm also not going to tell people they're doing it wrong if they take a different approach.

 

[Greg Benage]

At the risk of someone aggressively mislabeling this as a 'strawman', did we just get a post that both: equates killing sapient children to exterminating an aggressive artificially created animal and then offhandedly allude to certain mental illnesses causing evil?

Not that I noticed, but then I try to approach these discussions with the bare minimum of charitability to other posters.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

It should be less easy to miss. And in future editions, the lore given should be for the average ones, not the evil ones. The lore should show how some are evil, yes, but shouldn't go so far as to say most are evil and only a small percentage aren't.

On the other hand, why bother? Just provide a stat block. Since people in real life, around the table, can't agree on what is good, evil, lawful or chaotic, using those denominations doesn't add anything to the description. Keep the fluff in specific settings. The Xenomorph would be classified as evil by some groups, I'd see them as not aligned -- they are no more evil than sharks or smallpox. What's the point in labelling them with unclear qualifiers?

And yes, that applies to Good races.

The MM did that if you read entry on Quaggoths, we learn that "in a distant age, quaggoth tribes dwelled upon the surface as nocturnal arboreal hunters, possessing their own language and culture". That's basically a sentient species. The stories continues... "When elves entered the mortal realm, they clashed with the quaggoths". OK, that's basically a war, it happens all the time even within a species... "eventually driving them to near extinction. Only by fleeing deep into the Underdark did the quaggoth survive". So we had tribes of a sentient species, with language and culture, that was genocided by elves. With a passion, because not only did they have to hide in the Underdark but they had to go DEEP into the Underdark... staying near the surface wasn't enough not to be destroyed by the land-grapping elves, showing sign that they were really intent into exterminating them. I'd be strongly suspicious of ancestor-worshipping elves in this context. TBH, I don't think many people pay attention to the Quaggoth story, but it really paints elves of old into worse than orcs, because the orcs had a reason to be aggressive, while the elves apparently just wanted to take their land.

Right now, orcs have five paragraphs on how evil they are. They're evil, and sometimes they band together into larger, even more evil groups. You can tell they're evil because they have evil names (I bet if there was a group of dwarfs who called themselves The Screaming Eye, everyone would think they're cool and not evil). There's also extra paragraphs on how their evil god Gruumsh makes them do evil things because of those mean old other gods taking away all that land.

And frankly, reading the story of the gods conspiring against Gruumsh to take all the places to live and letting nothing for the orcs can be interpreted as just an orcish belief... but it's totally coherent with elves as fantasy nazis claiming their vital territory and driving other people into extinction. It's also make the idea that orcs are evil the same way that "Indians are evil because they don't want to let us take their land" in hollywood westerns, not a very convincing idea of "evil". They are just currently at war with every other race because they were not afforded a place to live in the world. It's certainly a long lasting war, but unless you consider that all war is evil -- in which case most (all?) human cultures are evil, there is nothing inherently evil by being at war. They do sacrifices of their eyes to their god -- that's a religious belief, nothing evil. They take a great pleasure in killing elves -- ok, that's sadistic, admittedly, but after millenia of war I am pretty sure anyone would arrive at the point of hating the soldiers of the other side -- it's not an excuse, though. They are raider and plunderers, but that's not particularly evil by itself, attacking ennemy supply lines is a common and sound practice. They kill "any humanoid that stands against them". That's pretty much the goal of any army. Only the mention of their bloodlust let the reader infer that they might also kill humanoids that don't stand against us, but it's never explicitely written. The mention that they are always on the move isn't evil, it's just a regular practice of nomads. Their habit of attacking "the richest target" proves that they are intelligent. Attacking poor targets yield less gold.

At the next paragraph, I started wondering if it wasn't a case of unrealiable narrator because it's stated that they are "flaunting such vivd and grotesque titles as Many Arrows". The latter is canonically peaceful... And the name isn't grotesque ; it's even sounding very similar to the Broken Arrow tribe of Native Americans.

The next paragraph is even more interesting... "Rejecting notions of racial purity, they proudly welcome ogres, trolls, half-ogres and orogs into their ranks". Who exactly is embracing notions of racial purity in the setting? That would be a sign of enlightenment on the orc parts. If it's mentionned, it's because it's noteworthy, a distinctive trait of them.

Their goddess of fertility ask them to procreate often and indiscriminately. So they must be fruitful and multiply and reject notion of racial purity. Great, that's not something unheard of, especially fitting for a fertility goddess. That, and their babies are orcs or half-orcs, irrespective of the other parent's exact species.

You can read the description as "orcs are evil, plundering, xenophobic, rapists and genocidal maniacs" of course and it might even be the intended effect. But the wording in the MM can be read as "orcs were the butt of the jokes of human, dwarven and especially elvish gods, despite just wanting some place to settle, so they had to become nomadic people and setttled people continues to treat them with a strong anti-nomadic bia, including accusations of all the crimes ranging for "killing and plundering" to "having funny names" to prove that it's justified to kill them. I'd say they are average and maligned by the evil followers of the other gods, the same who exterminated the peaceful quaggoth to take their lands.

And I do agree that there should be monsters. I even agree there should be intelligent, natural monsters, not just unintelligent beast-monsters or unnatural entities. But I think that intelligent monsters should have a reason for being evil that's more than just "because D&D tradition" or "because their god/arch-fiend made them that way" or "because they're uglier and/or not the same color than the good guys."

And once you give intelligent monsters a reason, it no longer makes sense for every one of those monsters to share that reason.

Reason: their ancestors were not granted any land to inhabit, so they must survive by plundering, which makes them evil in the eyes of the settled people, regardless of their individual qualities. Even if you're the smart and peaceful Obould Many-Arrow who brokered a peace treaty with all your neighbours, taking the risk of angering your own fighters and being killed for that -- you will still be derided as a "flaunting a grotesque name", the name of your proud ancestors.

 

[Maxperson]

The MM did that if you read entry on Quaggoths, we learn that "in a distant age, quaggoth tribes dwelled upon the surface as nocturnal arboreal hunters, possessing their own language and culture". That's basically a sentient species. The stories continues... "When elves entered the mortal realm, they clashed with the quaggoths". OK, that's basically a war, it happens all the time even within a species... "eventually driving them to near extinction. Only by fleeing deep into the Underdark did the quaggoth survive". So we had tribes of a sentient species, with language and culture, that was genocided by elves. With a passion, because not only did they have to hide in the Underdark but they had to go DEEP into the Underdark... staying near the surface wasn't enough not to be destroyed by the land-grapping elves, showing sign that they were really intent into exterminating them. I'd be strongly suspicious of ancestor-worshipping elves in this context. TBH, I don't think many people pay attention to the Quaggoth story, but it really paints elves of old into worse than orcs, because the orcs had a reason to be aggressive, while the elves apparently just wanted to take their land.

Mostly, but the bolder part isn't necessarily true. Nothing says that they had to go deep into the underdark. It's just as plausible that they simply feared the elves would follow them down into the dark and so they went deep just to be sure.

And frankly, reading the story of the gods conspiring against Gruumsh to take all the places to live and letting nothing for the orcs can be interpreted as just an orcish belief... but it's totally coherent with elves as fantasy nazis claiming their vital territory and driving other people into extinction. It's also make the idea that orcs are evil the same way that "Indians are evil because they don't want to let us take their land" in hollywood westerns, not a very convincing idea of "evil". They are just currently at war with every other race because they were not afforded a place to live in the world.

No. Alignment is something objective in D&D. Orcs are not evil because of some resistance to land taking. Those orcs that are evil, are evil because they are actually evil. Not all orcs are evil by RAW.

You can read the description as "orcs are evil, plundering, xenophobic, rapists and genocidal maniacs" of course and it might even be the intended effect. But the wording in the MM can be read as "orcs were the butt of the jokes of human, dwarven and especially elvish gods, despite just wanting some place to settle, so they had to become nomadic people and setttled people continues to treat them with a strong anti-nomadic bia, including accusations of all the crimes ranging for "killing and plundering" to "having funny names" to prove that it's justified to kill them. I'd say they are average and maligned by the evil followers of the other gods, the same who exterminated the peaceful quaggoth to take their lands.

The only way you can interpret the wording that way is if you homebrew alignment to be subjective. Otherwise that interpretation fails on its face. The evil orcs are objectively evil. The good orcs are objectively good. And the neutral orcs are objectively neutral.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Mostly, but the bolder part isn't necessarily true. Nothing says that they had to go deep into the underdark. It's just as plausible that they simply feared the elves would follow them down into the dark and so they went deep just to be sure.

Granted, it's possible that they overreacted to being driven to brink of extinction and it was not all the way the fault of the elves.

No. Alignment is something objective in D&D. Orcs are not evil because of some resistance to land taking. Those orcs that are evil, are evil because they are actually evil. Not all orcs are evil by RAW.

The only way you can interpret the wording that way is if you homebrew alignment to be subjective. Otherwise that interpretation fails on its face. The evil orcs are objectively evil. The good orcs are objectively good. And the neutral orcs are objectively neutral.

That's my point. As soon as you remove the "objective" quality of alignment in D&D, orcs are no longer "bad, evil creatures that are objectively evil because their god made it so" and... all the human, elvish and dwarven gods are hateful (I don't use the evil word because it wouldn't be clear) and their behaviour against orcs was unacceptable... and the behaviour of all the current societies in the game world toward those nomads is not better. Since the thread what homebrewing into "what if we don't use alignment?" (so basically, we don't use alignment and we judge situations according to our complex real-life morality), I think it was worth mentioning that the orcs as described become instantly more like Native American/German tribes described by colonists/Romans. With all the purportedly good races in the role of the colonists/romans.

 

[Maxperson]

That's my point. As soon as you remove the "objective" quality of alignment in D&D, orcs are no longer "bad, evil creatures that are objectively evil because their god made it so" and... all the human, elvish and dwarven gods are hateful (I don't use the evil word because it wouldn't be clear) and their behaviour against orcs was unacceptable...

They haven't ever been objectively evil as a race just because their god made them that way. Starting with 3e, orcs were often CE, which meant that 40-50% were. In 5e the alignment is only a suggestion and the book says the DM can use any alignment he wants for any creature. Eberron orcs are not all evil in 5e. So despite the 5e orc fluff, they are not all evil. However, if an orc IS evil, whether through choice or Gruumsh, it is objectively evil.

In 1e and 2e far fewer of them were not evil, but they still existed.