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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gold Roger" data-source="post: 5923556" data-attributes="member: 33904">Curse on that sexy playtest material from distracting me, when there's posts I wanted to answer.I think there's no disagreement between us here. The collective of PC races and plenty other creatures provide numerous shades of grey and I like my shades of gray. I just don't think adding absolute good and absolute evil creatures diminishes the element of shades of grey.If you've seen numerous time what absolute evil creatures gnolls are, what do you do when you meet a group of gnoll mercenaries just minds their own business. What if a tribe of gnolls hails the PC's as profecised bringers of good omen and treats them like kings?If you know an order of knights is secretly enthralled to Pazuzu, do you deny theyr freely granted help?What about those hound archons guarding that one room in the dungeon. They are objectively good. But they deny you passage and it wouldn't actually be killing them to attack.Killing creatures in game because you think they are evil monsters is different from creatures actually being evil monsters though.To take an example from my homebrew, some orcs in certain places are extreme racists. Other people in certain places are very racist against orcs. Being or not being an orc will get you killed or enslaved. But in other places both orcs and humans hold noble titles and stand side by side. Because neither is always evil and the differences can be overcome.Gnolls on the other hand, might be thinking bipeds, but still absolutely evil. When you hear a fallen empire used gnoll troops in large number, it propably wasn't very nice.I hope I got your point and brought mine across.This is why I don't believe saying a creature is inherently evil makes it less interesting. If drow just do bad things, they are just like bad humans. If drow do evil things because they have a deep inborn sadism or similar, that has a larger effect on the game.Definitely. If we say a creature is always evil, there must be some metaphysical element to them and a good setting reason. Considering how many creatures in D&D are products of magic, one might say some creatures need a reason to be free in their moral choices!I love the Warhammer settings (fantasy and 40k) for their use of moral. Almost everything is in shades of grey, but then there are beings of absolute evil (and law and chaos) as well. The only thing lacking is pure good, which is admittedly hard to do, but would serve to reduce the grimmdark a bit. Also they meld chaos and evil a bit to much for my taste.I would actually take your distinction WFRP even further. Demons are beings of pure evil manifest. Cultists are people who made the moral choice to be and act evil. But in between those are the children of chaos and the undead. The children of chaos (beastmen, skaven, harpies etc) are my favorites, creatures that originate and exist in the natural world, but are corrupted behind the point of no return. These creatures are in every way distinct from demons, yet there is no denying that they are "always evil". Humanoids and with various characteristics to boot!These are very much my model for inherently evil humanoids in my games.</blockquote>

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