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<blockquote data-quote="Jeff Wilder" data-source="post: 1249980" data-attributes="member: 5122">Like many things in D&amp;D, the evil nature of poison must simply be accepted as a matter of religion.&nbsp; When a player asks why killing someone with a sword isn't (necessarily) evil, but putting them to sleep with a poisoned dart is, the DM simply says, &quot;Because that's what the gods of good have said.&quot;&nbsp; (Or, more generally, &quot;Because everyone knows that using poison is evil.&quot;)&quot;But -- !&quot; says the player.&quot;Does your PC believe the gods of good know what they're doing, or not?&nbsp; If so, then we have nothing to argue about.&nbsp; If not, then he's not really a follower of good, and you should feel free to have him use poison.&quot;It's been difficult getting this across to my group, because we're composed of highly educated liberals.&nbsp; We're simply not used to accepting the &quot;God said so&quot; argument in real life, so it's very difficult to accept it in D&amp;D.&nbsp; It's important, though.(There are other solutions, of course, besides the dogmatic.&nbsp; The DM can decide to allow moral relativism to inform the argument, which will almost certainly lead to poison being allowed, but then one must re-balance the game in another way.&nbsp; Or the DM can get rid of alignment.&nbsp; And so on.)Jeff</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jeff Wilder, post: 1249980, member: 5122"] Like many things in D&D, the evil nature of poison must simply be accepted as a matter of religion. When a player asks why killing someone with a sword isn't (necessarily) evil, but putting them to sleep with a poisoned dart is, the DM simply says, "Because that's what the gods of good have said." (Or, more generally, "Because everyone knows that using poison is evil.") "But -- !" says the player. "Does your PC believe the gods of good know what they're doing, or not? If so, then we have nothing to argue about. If not, then he's not really a follower of good, and you should feel free to have him use poison." It's been difficult getting this across to my group, because we're composed of highly educated liberals. We're simply not used to accepting the "God said so" argument in real life, so it's very difficult to accept it in D&D. It's important, though. (There are other solutions, of course, besides the dogmatic. The DM can decide to allow moral relativism to inform the argument, which will almost certainly lead to poison being allowed, but then one must re-balance the game in another way. Or the DM can get rid of alignment. And so on.) Jeff [/QUOTE]

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