Was V's act evil? (Probable spoilers!)

[Quartz]

Sorry to break it to you, but according to window's "magnify.exe" those are x's.

I checked and they're not Xs, they're shadings for the eyes.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

Good? Evil? Who cares? How much XP is that worth?

[/munchkin powergaming] [/joke]

 

[Betote]

I voted yes. Not because of killing evil dragons, but because one in there is clearly a half-dragon, which is not, by the rules, inherently evil.

Half-dragons have, by the rules, the same alignment as their dragon parent. So if you think that killing every black dragon is not evil, therefore killing every half-black dragon wouldn't be evil, either.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

If this thread has taught me anything, it's that some people will go to any length to claim that PCs aren't allowed to commit evil actions - because apparently even when they do, it's just redefined as somehow being good.

This thread has taught me that most folks think there is a greater moral imperative to preserve the sanctity of your own soul than to save the lives of countless people.

Put one soul on one side of the balance, and an infinite number of lives on the other, and most folks here choose the soul.

1 soul > countless lives

1 innocent life > countless innocent lives

Makes for some interesting moral calculus.

Given the power (from whatever source) to kill all those evil black dragons, you guys are arguing that is it more good to use that power for the sole selfish purpose of just saving one's own family.

 

[Krensky]

This thread has taught me that most folks think there is a greater moral imperative to preserve the sanctity of your own soul than to save the lives of countless people.

Put one soul on one side of the balance, and an infinite number of lives on the other, and most folks here choose the soul.

1 soul > countless lives

1 innocent life > countless innocent lives

Makes for some interesting moral calculus.

Given the power (from whatever source) to kill all those evil black dragons, you guys are arguing that is it more good to use that power for the sole selfish purpose of just saving one's own family.

I'm arguing that any use of the power V is evil, and that killing something because it has and evil alignment just because it has an evil alignment is evil. I'm also arguing that comitting mass murder and making the dragon watch for aggrivated assault and attempted murder
is evil.

 

[Cadfan]

Even if all 1,000 of the dragons were evil, this would still be an evil act.

An Evil alignment is not an all-purpose "all morality bets are off, go ahead and slaughter me" badge - it means only that the creature in question is predisposed towards selfish, unkind actions. An evil creature - even a black dragon - might go through its entire existence without ever commiting acts so vile as to require a death sentence, even under medieval-style penal codes. Killing someone just because you know they're not a nice person is unambiguously evil.

What this sounds like to me is a flat out rejection of the entire concept of alignment as a meaningful descriptor or guide to actions.

If you're going to judge everyone based on their actions, and you're going to presume that an evil creature might just not bother ever doing anything meaningfully evil... what is alignment accomplishing? Alignment is normally supposed to speak to a creature's innate, objective nature. It stems from a historical and fantastical notion that certain creatures or races are just plain evil, no matter what. Once you've shifted to an action/punishment based morality, the concept of alignment is obsolete.

Which is cool and all. I don't really like alignment. But I'm just saying, there's no point in declaring that a dragon is inherently evil if you aren't allowed to judge the dragon on whether its inherently evil. That requires having rejected the idea of inherent nature.

 

[hamishspence]

half dragons

The SRD just has the template, but the MM gives it context, since the sample half-black dragon human is "Often CE"

So "same as the base creature" should be remembered as being "by default, but not all the time"- if you're creating a random half dragon, generally give it same alignment, if you want to know what proportion actually have that alignment, entry suggests its 40-50%, by use of the term "Often"

as for "inherent behaviour" D&D PHB says alignment is a tool, not a straitjacket, creatures can behave in a fashion atypical of their alignment.

If black dragons had Evil subtype, there would be a slightly better case. But just as Evil can corrupt even celestials, Good can redeem even demons- Fall-From-Grace, succubus in Planescape Torment.

alignment is a guideline, and one that gets broken often. Good people sometimes do Evil things, and vice versa.

 

[cmbarona]

What about the Daleks? (spoilers for old-school Doctor Who fans)

Interestingly, this reminded me of the moral wrestling in an old Doctor Who episode. The Doctor ended up on Skaro at the time of the creation of the Daleks (for those of you unfamiliar, they are an alien being designed as a political commentary toward nazis: cold, inhuman, and ruthless killers who would EX-TER-MIN-ATE all non-Dalek life if they could). The Doctor ultimately couldn't bring himself to set off the bomb in the nursery in which they were being developed. That would be genocide.

To this day (unless there have been new developments since I last saw the new series), he still hopes for the possibility of their redemption.

Was V's act evil? IMHO, of course. Killing is always worse than redeeming, or even the hope or attempt of redeeming.

Plus, torture? Totally not cool.


P.S.: Sorry if someone else has mentioned this, but the thread is getting long and I have work to do this fine Saturday.

 

[MarkB]

What this sounds like to me is a flat out rejection of the entire concept of alignment as a meaningful descriptor or guide to actions.

If you're going to judge everyone based on their actions, and you're going to presume that an evil creature might just not bother ever doing anything meaningfully evil... what is alignment accomplishing? Alignment is normally supposed to speak to a creature's innate, objective nature. It stems from a historical and fantastical notion that certain creatures or races are just plain evil, no matter what. Once you've shifted to an action/punishment based morality, the concept of alignment is obsolete.

Which is cool and all. I don't really like alignment. But I'm just saying, there's no point in declaring that a dragon is inherently evil if you aren't allowed to judge the dragon on whether its inherently evil. That requires having rejected the idea of inherent nature.

I'm not rejecting the concept of alignment, I'm just rejecting the notion of treating it as a black-and-white, either-or condition.

By the rules, murdering somebody is evil, but so is short-changing them. I don't believe that a person who consistently short-changes people, commits petty thefts and tends to be unpleasant and hurtful in conversation is as deserving of death as a depraved murderer - but they're both Evil in alignment, and a racial tendency of Always Evil may contain numerous examples at both ends of that scale, as well as everything in between.

 

[Grog]

With this reasoning you can justify any sort of genocide or ethnic cleansing everywhere as "It was just defence. The might have attacked me in the future"

You can't apply D&D reasoning to the real world. In D&D, everyone's moral code and values falls into one of nine basic categories. The real world is infinitely more complex than that.

What I find interesting is that I think if V had killed every one of those dragons individually, during the course of adventuring (and remember that "adventuring" means "invading their home for the express purpose of killing them for XP and taking their treasure"), no one here would be saying that was an evil act. So I guess the fact that V did it more efficiently than most others is what makes the act evil?

I guess the message here is "kill all the dragons you want, just don't be too good at it."