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

[billd91]

Evil. Very much so. A spell that kills all of a creature's family, across the globe, indiscriminately? Evil. Even if it happened to kill only evil creatures, it would still be an evil thing to do.

 

[Nymrohd]

Deleted.

 

[Jarrod]

Not evil. Indicriminate, and possibly a bad idea, but not evil.

Let's look at the order of events:

V uses his/her/its most powerful spell (Disintegrate) to slay a dragon.
Because of this, the dragon's parent spends all of its wealth to *hurt* V as much as possible. It locates V's family and threatens to not only kill them, but bind their souls and spend the rest of its life fleeing from V.
V kills the dragon, again using a powerful spell.

At this point, it's perfectly logical to assume that, with no other steps taken, *another* dragon will arrive at some point in the future and attempt to carry on this revenge cycle. Therefore, kill the dragon's family.

Now, if the parent dragon hadn't threatened to soul bind V's family and depart for other planes (again, *specifically* to hurt V), I would agree that this was over the top. But given the dragon's threat, I think it's perfectly acceptable.

 

[Cadfan]

By the 3.5 MM pg 305, Alignment, Always: It is possible for individuals to change alignment.

This just goes to show the ultimate futility of attempting to merge modern assumptions about morality operating on the level of the free willed individual with fantastical and historical assumptions about inherently, objectively, and permanently evil monsters and races.

 

[Nymrohd]

So the fact that one dragon decided to react this way leads to the logical conclusion that all dragons of his kind would react in the same way?

 

[Tuft]

Evil. Very much so. A spell that kills all of a creature's family, across the globe, indiscriminately? Evil. Even if it happened to kill only evil creatures, it would still be an evil thing to do.

Note that "family" is rather undefined. Theoretically, it could recurse back to the first black dragon, and then down to all its descendants.

That for example includes all sorcerers that trace their lineage back to black dragons. And then their human/elf/etc families. Are all those fair target for slaying because they are related to someone who had a drop of black dragon blood in their veins?

 

[Vorput]

I voted not evil.

But, to be fair, a black dragon ate my Wizard once. So I may be a little biased.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

Q

This really should be a public poll so all the namby-pambies could out themselves.

I'm out!

IMC the spell would have the [evil] descriptor, and this discussion would never come up. I suspect it has the [evil] descriptor in Rich's campaign too.

 

[Krensky]

Evil. So Evil it needs to be capitalized. So Evil it really should be spelled E-VEEL, like it's being said by a caricature of a southern baptist preacher.

The implication given is that V just killed every black dragon and half-black dragon in the world, and it's possible he just killed everything with black dragon blood.

Genocide. Causing the extinction of a species. V just did far worse then the dragon was going to do with the same motivations.

Legally, V might have an 'out' since he wasn't in the right frame of mind when he agreed to the deal and while subject to fusing thing he's probably only barely in control of his actions. At the least he's hearing voices telling him to do evil things. Still though, E-VEEL, and the legalistic argument might help in regards to the afterlife, but it doesn't make the act any less E-VEEL.

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

There seems to be a reasoning that if there are irredeemably evil beings then there can be no irredeemable actions taken against them. If dragons exterminate elves, it's evil, but if elves exterminate dragons, it's not, because dragons are evil. What actions are being taken becomes almost meaningless- what matters is who you are doing it to. Any action that results in less evil in the world is by definition good.

I wouldn't subscribe to this in my game, but if that's what's meant by 'always evil' then V's action can't be called evil and indeed, if he focuses exclusively on evil beings, he could do far 'worse; and still come out fine.

--Z