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WotC's Jeremy Crawford Talks D&D Alignment Changes
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<blockquote data-quote="Jfdlsjfd" data-source="post: 8035158" data-attributes="member: 42856"><p>Some in this thread have incorrectly concluded that their debaters think that it's OK to go out of your way to slaughter Evil creatures even if they didn't harm you in the first place, just because they are Evil. It may not be your point but I am using this post to clarify that it's not morally acceptable either. If Orcs are Evil superpredators, it's OK to kill them when they raid your village, but it's not OK to get out of your way to reach an orcish village and kill them all. Same with, say, wolves. We removed them from our city centres and can understand that shepherds act to protect their flocks while thinking that flying to some remote place where you can find wolves to kill them randomly is a little excessive.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It should if the mindflayer has free will. If he's some extension of the hive mind of his city, irremediably Evil, and its only way of feeding is eating human brains, then killing him is less problematic. If he's a free-willed mind flayer, with the liberty to choose how it acts and feeds, it is a human with tentacles and killing him would be a crime as well.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I like to play my NPCs who value the continuation of their lives. Most of them <em>will</em> surrender, because very few causes are worth fighting to the death. In real life, 99.9% (this is hyperbole, I don't know the real statistics) of offenders are simply arrested, they don't fight to the death with the police forces. I play my NPCs like that. Sure, you will find cultists who will try to do a stand-off like some millenarian sects did in real life, but even them they don't all fight to the death when surrounded. And even if they killed them "inadvertantly", the PCs will be hard pressed to explain why they used lethal force as the first resort by the authorities. Typical scenario: Village elders hire the PC to resolve problem with a group of evil-worshipping forest dwellers who decided their presence encroaches on their forest and kills farmers here and there. If the PC come back and say "oh, don't worry any longer about them, we wiped them all", the elders will worry they have invited the same sort of wackos that they faced in the first place.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And why wouldn't intelligent, free willed orcs surrender less than human would do in the same situation? If they are just humans with a mask, they should behave like human opponents. If they are the extension of the will of Gruumsh, then they will behave like Gruumsh want them to do, and he cares about them the same as one care for his hairs... nice to have but ultimately expandable. He will see very little interrest in having them surrender and will ingrain in them the desire to fight to the death.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>If a mind flayer is surrendering, despite it being totally irremediably evil, it must be a part of a scheme. Plus, once it is established that mind flayer can only sustain themselves by feeding on people, there is literally no solution to handle a mind flayer infestation. Keeping them in jail and letting them starve is probably ethically worse. Despite humanities' interest in preserving biodiversity, noone advocated against the eradication of smallpox.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The easier way to accomodate all playstyle should be to have BOTH "caricature of evil" (orcs and mindflayers of old) AND complex evil (humans, elves, dwarves, halflings... who happen to be evil), instead of having ONLY "always evil creature" (something I don't see anyone advocating) or having ONLY "morally complex creatures" (as the change of the meta-level you advocate for would result). When you have both, you just have to choose the right opponent to tell the story you want to tell, when you only have one type of evil, you have to tweak it. I agree that it is easier to simply than complexify, so the choices, in term of decreasing simplicity, are (a) "have both evil and free-willed races" > (b) "have only free-willed races" > (c) "have only always evil races". If I get your position right, you're saying the b is easier than c to handle (which I agree) while I am saying that a is easier to deal with than b.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think I'd fall asleep before the hour has passed, because the setup of labelling criminal group evil and warranting killing them all is not appealing to me, when it is obvious that we're speaking of human beings.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And since exactly, we don't run an evil human barbarian camp without an existential crisis (because even labelling them barbarians, unless speaking of the PC class of course, is telling a lot about the culture the PCs are from), then I guess you can get why orcs and mindflayers should be different.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jfdlsjfd, post: 8035158, member: 42856"] Some in this thread have incorrectly concluded that their debaters think that it's OK to go out of your way to slaughter Evil creatures even if they didn't harm you in the first place, just because they are Evil. It may not be your point but I am using this post to clarify that it's not morally acceptable either. If Orcs are Evil superpredators, it's OK to kill them when they raid your village, but it's not OK to get out of your way to reach an orcish village and kill them all. Same with, say, wolves. We removed them from our city centres and can understand that shepherds act to protect their flocks while thinking that flying to some remote place where you can find wolves to kill them randomly is a little excessive. It should if the mindflayer has free will. If he's some extension of the hive mind of his city, irremediably Evil, and its only way of feeding is eating human brains, then killing him is less problematic. If he's a free-willed mind flayer, with the liberty to choose how it acts and feeds, it is a human with tentacles and killing him would be a crime as well. I like to play my NPCs who value the continuation of their lives. Most of them [I]will[/I] surrender, because very few causes are worth fighting to the death. In real life, 99.9% (this is hyperbole, I don't know the real statistics) of offenders are simply arrested, they don't fight to the death with the police forces. I play my NPCs like that. Sure, you will find cultists who will try to do a stand-off like some millenarian sects did in real life, but even them they don't all fight to the death when surrounded. And even if they killed them "inadvertantly", the PCs will be hard pressed to explain why they used lethal force as the first resort by the authorities. Typical scenario: Village elders hire the PC to resolve problem with a group of evil-worshipping forest dwellers who decided their presence encroaches on their forest and kills farmers here and there. If the PC come back and say "oh, don't worry any longer about them, we wiped them all", the elders will worry they have invited the same sort of wackos that they faced in the first place. And why wouldn't intelligent, free willed orcs surrender less than human would do in the same situation? If they are just humans with a mask, they should behave like human opponents. If they are the extension of the will of Gruumsh, then they will behave like Gruumsh want them to do, and he cares about them the same as one care for his hairs... nice to have but ultimately expandable. He will see very little interrest in having them surrender and will ingrain in them the desire to fight to the death. If a mind flayer is surrendering, despite it being totally irremediably evil, it must be a part of a scheme. Plus, once it is established that mind flayer can only sustain themselves by feeding on people, there is literally no solution to handle a mind flayer infestation. Keeping them in jail and letting them starve is probably ethically worse. Despite humanities' interest in preserving biodiversity, noone advocated against the eradication of smallpox. The easier way to accomodate all playstyle should be to have BOTH "caricature of evil" (orcs and mindflayers of old) AND complex evil (humans, elves, dwarves, halflings... who happen to be evil), instead of having ONLY "always evil creature" (something I don't see anyone advocating) or having ONLY "morally complex creatures" (as the change of the meta-level you advocate for would result). When you have both, you just have to choose the right opponent to tell the story you want to tell, when you only have one type of evil, you have to tweak it. I agree that it is easier to simply than complexify, so the choices, in term of decreasing simplicity, are (a) "have both evil and free-willed races" > (b) "have only free-willed races" > (c) "have only always evil races". If I get your position right, you're saying the b is easier than c to handle (which I agree) while I am saying that a is easier to deal with than b. I think I'd fall asleep before the hour has passed, because the setup of labelling criminal group evil and warranting killing them all is not appealing to me, when it is obvious that we're speaking of human beings. And since exactly, we don't run an evil human barbarian camp without an existential crisis (because even labelling them barbarians, unless speaking of the PC class of course, is telling a lot about the culture the PCs are from), then I guess you can get why orcs and mindflayers should be different. [/QUOTE]
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