Organ Harvesting Evil Humanoids - Good, Evil or Neutral?

[dangerginger]

My party just killed their first ogre. I asked if anyone wanted to take a trophy of any sort. They had recently encountered a foe who wore a necklace of ears, so I was curious if they felt like emulating this grisly practice or not. The sorceror decided to take an eye, for "alchemical purposes". Then he began to riff on the many uses of different body parts and substances. It quickly escalated to a place I wasn't certain how to categorize as far as what alignment would easily allow that degree of butchering of a humanoid creature, regardless of its evil nature.


The archived post below talks about harvesting the organs of good creatures as an evil act. (However, I was not able to find the corresponding mention in the actual Book of Vile Deeds on the page mentioned...)
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php?t-248164.html
But what about neutral and good characters cutting up the corpse of slain humanoids? The party didn't think of it with the handfuls of goblins and ratmen they were slaughtering, last week. But now the worms seem to be out of the can. I ended the session with them standing over the defeated foe and told the sorceror's player that I would have to do some thinking before I got back with him about the relative morality of such actions. We'll start next week with my judgement and their subsequent activity choices.

What sort of reaction does anyone have to this? Is it a perfectly acceptable action? Or a morally grotesque desecration of a sentient being? Albeit an evil one? And if it *is* an evil act to do it with humanoids, what about the many uses of dragon corpses or other monstrous creatures? Where is the line between grotesque exploitation and practical usage of materials?

I recognize this as a blurry philosophical issue and appreciate opinions from all positions around the fence.

[Nettlekid]

I think you're going to get the answer that organ harvesting is an evil act which defiles a corpse and is just all around squicky, but I personally think that it's a neutral act, just like killing the evil creature in the first place. I'm of the opinion that acts are good or evil based on both what the act is composed of, and who is affected by it. I'm going to call organ harvesting evil. Like killing. Subduing and taking in to authorities or reformation would be good. Killing a good creature is an evil thing. But killing an evil creature...well, I'd call that neutral. Sort of like two negative signs cancelling out. So while organ harvesting is certainly not GOOD (unless maybe you plan to use those evil organs for a really great good...) it's not exactly an evil, harmful, hateful thing either. But that's just what I think.

[Fouredged Sword]

I would have the next group of good creatures that they interact with react with disgust. Defiling a body is an evil act after all. Not a major one, but not good none the less. Good cultures will react with distaste to those who do these acts.

Otherwise they aren't doing an act that is Really Evil like torture or something. They should keep their alignment unless they go really off the rails with cutting up bodies. If done for a good cause, or even a cause at all it would be a neutral act, if not good (IE the ogre's eye is needed to cure a sickness in a town). If done for no real reason, or for selfish reasons, then they could get into trouble with alignment.

Normally the disgust reaction and a small penalty to diplomacy with the next group of good creatures they interact with is enough to nudge them back to civilized behavior.

[Telonius]

Generally, I'd say that respecting a fallen enemy's corpse has more to do with the Law/Chaos axis than the Good/Evil axis. Just about every culture has specific burial customs, and whether or not you follow those customs seems to be the main question. That does't seem like it would usually have much to do with causing pain, but it does have a lot to do with honoring traditions. (Though it's possible to be Good/Evil - for example, if you're desecrating a corpse in order to cause pain to the person's family; or if you're burying it because you know his loved ones would want you to).

I don't have the text on me either, but I suspect that the Book of Vile Darkness's mention of it had more to do with killing someone specifically for their organs and no other reason. ("I need a liver for my spell component, you have a liver, gimme.") I don't think that's the same situation as killing a foe in battle and then using the corpse.

[AmberVael]

What sort of reaction does anyone have to this? Is it a perfectly acceptable action? Or a morally grotesque desecration of a sentient being? Albeit an evil one? And if it *is* an evil act to do it with humanoids, what about the many uses of dragon corpses or other monstrous creatures? Where is the line between grotesque exploitation and practical usage of materials?

Organ donation, from dead subjects, is something done pretty widely nowadays. There are also numerous people who donate their bodies to scientific and medical purposes. So, I think it's fair to say that at minimum, it's not always wrong to harvest things from a body.

Largely, I think you're going to find that the distinction between moral and immoral on this topic depends on the intent and reason behind the act (surprise). If you're trying to take a willing donor's heart to save someone (in what would admittedly be a pretty creepy ritual) then you're probably gonna be fine. Cutting up a dead enemy on the battleground, on the other hand... you're pushing at the boundaries there, but I think it falls more into 'disturbing' than 'evil.' They aren't desecrating the corpse to horrify or terrorize anyone, and it's not like anyone is putting it to use anymore. They're just being efficient in a very very creepy manner.

The things I would consider are consent, intent, and effects. Are they taking parts from someone who would have been fine with it? This enemy clearly was fine with taking it from other people- perhaps they would have understood? Are they taking stuff for a noble or at least reasonable cause, or are they doing it pointlessly and without thought of what might come of it? And what is going to happen from this anyway, and will it have bad after-effects that they should have considered?

[dangerginger]

I definitely had difficulty categorizing it as strictly evil, for sure. The moment I started to take issue with the practice was when the sorceror started spending so much mental energy looking for ways to "buffalo" the carcass, using every last little bit. When I'm honest, if a character goes there, it does only make sense to really commit. But I had a strong reaction to it, personally.

For perspective, here's the make up of the group:
Half-Elf Sorceror - CN
Gnome Druid - N(G)
Human Samurai (far from his home culture) - LN
Dwarf Ranger - CG

[Renen]

What about harvesting dragons for components? I think this should be allowed as long as the target isn't good. Because if you aren't evil but to help others you need your spells which just happen to use such components well...

[Lord Haart]

I second the "law-chaos axis problem" notion. For one, you've already killed that guy, hello? If using someone body parts for practical purposes would be evil regardless of circumstances, so would be killing, and in D&D it's very much not so. Second, i can easily picture CG pragmatist who has no moral qualms whatsoever about doing some grissly work if those components will let him save more children down the line. Even LG might go down that train of thought without immediate alignment shift, if monster was nothing like a noble opponent who'd deserve a proper burial, if there are no little ogre-children to watch in horror and if the components in question are valuable enough (if he'd waste time for a marginal profit because he enjoys the butchery, that would be significantly more chaotic and perhaps a tiny bit tainted). They do loot bodies, ransack caves and sell ominous artifacts of slight evilness +2 to village merchants, after all.

[Nettlekid]

Funnily enough, I feel better about it if the Sorcerer is going all the way and intending to use every last bit of the kill as opposed to like, scooping out the eyeball and tossing the rest away. It feels thrifty, and also kind of like the more that he takes, the less wasteful the creature's death was. I agree that Good creatures will probably be kind of taken aback or disgusted, but if the reasons and intents are explained then they'd probably think less poorly of it than they would if say, he was wearing the thing's heart around his neck.

In that group, I think it makes a lot of sense for a CN Sorcerer not to go out and kill creatures for spell components, but if they happen to be dead for him to think "Hmm...wait a minute...Well, if it's dead anyway, it won't need it's-" and whatnot. I expect the Ranger would probably be up for it too, being a hunter and appreciating the benefits of a kill. If the enemy is one of his FEs, all the better. The Druid might be half-and-half, yes if the creature is some sort of anti-nature thing (abomination, undead, etc) but maybe less so if you're chopping up something natural. Then again, circle of life. And then I would expect the Samurai to see this as dishonorable to a fallen opponent, and be against it. So based on my interpretation of the various characters and alignments, it looks like people who are saying it's a Law/Chaos axis argument are pretty spot on.

Renen brings up a good point about dragons, that it's highly encouraged to strip the body and use every part of a dragon. Some notably good classes, like the Vassal of Bahamut from the BoED, specifically mention cutting up evil dragons for useful parts, so they're calling that an actively Good action.

[supervillan]

Your samurai is the only party member I can see having any serious moral/philosophical issues here. In samurai culture touching the flesh of the dead is extremely distasteful, and dealing with the dead in any way is the work of eta, the underclass of society. No self respecting honourable samurai would touch a corpse, let alone carve one up for components or trophies.

In the Rokugan oriental adventures campaign Samurai caste characters cannot loot fallen enemies without serious honour penalties. The game system addresses loot acquisition (magic items specifically) through spontaneous enchantment: "awakening the kami". I think it's very elegant, I'm a big fan of the Rokugan setting.

[Duke of Urrel]

In the real world, our attitudes about harvesting bits of dead people have changed from time to time and place to place. Whether it's "desecration" or an ethical practice that lets nothing go to waste depends on one's culture – and on one's technological advancement.

This leads me to propose a few guidelines – not solid answers, only guidelines.

One common guideline is that it is generally regarded as less moral to use a creature of a species closely related to you as food or raw material. A desperate individual may get away with cannibalism without being Evil, and a primitive culture may if resources are scarce, for example on an island. However, in most cases, eating one of your own kind or even of a similar kind is a moral no-no, definitely south of moral Neutrality. I consider it very proper for a goblin or an ogre to eat human flesh, but very improper for a human to do the same to a goblin or an ogre. This is because goblins and ogres are Evil creatures, whereas humans, most of them anyway, have higher moral pretensions.

Another guideline has to do with hygiene. A good reason not to eat the flesh of one's own kind is that this flesh is a good source of diseases. The "ick" factor may even be regarded as an instinct that guards us against disease. In modern times, we think nothing of harvesting organs from recently deceased people because we can do it hygienically, under sterile conditions. The medieval world typical of D&D fantasy is not likely to have hygienic technology that can handle Humanoid flesh without risking disease. So this is something else to consider. A DM should be aware exactly what kind of disease a goblin or ogre is likely to carry, and what kind of health risk you take when you mess around with a Humanoid's corpse.

A third guideline has less to to with our world and more to do with the fantasy world we choose to build. What does it mean to "desecrate" a corpse? More importantly, what are the consequences of desecration? Do the gods have specific opinions about what you may or may not do with a slain enemy? And what about Undead? Some religious prayers and rituals for the dead may have a very important purpose: to prevent corpses from rising up again. Improper ritualistic treatment, or desecration of a corpse, may cause it to turn Undead later. (If you harvest an eyeball from an ogre's corpse, you really don't want an ogre ghoul or an ogre spectre to come looking for it some time later, and the Undead may not need eyes of flesh to see you.)

Only the DM can determine whether there is a third moral guideline and what it means, because only the DM knows what offends the gods and what causes the dead to enter Undeath. But I think every DM should give some thought to these matters. The basic knowledge of what offends the gods and what causes the souls of the dead to fail to pass on should be well known to individuals with Knowledge of Religion.

[Spuddles]

My people use every part of the humanoid.

btw OP, an ogre is a giant, not a humanoid

[Mnemnosyne]

As far as I would consider, there is absolutely no consideration of alignment at all in this. If you're gathering useful components for practical purposes, that's a totally non-aligned act that has absolutely no effect toward good, evil, law, or chaos.

The exception would be if corpses are somehow significant to the actual purview of the soul of the dead creature. Does cutting up the corpse, in this cosmology, actually cause harm to the dead creature's soul? In that case, it is likely an evil thing to do. But in the standard D&D cosmology, the only effect cutting up a corpse has is making the body unsuitable for certain types of resurrection, which, if it is aligned at all, is no different than killing the creature in question.

Similarly, if cutting up the corpse causes it to be likely that an evil undead creature will spontaneously rise, then that's evil. However, if it is only a superstition that undead creatures will arise if the corpse is cut up, then the act has no actual alignment tendency attached to it (although it may be viewed as evil by the uninformed masses that think it's causing undead to be created).

[Wookie-ranger]

Harvesting organs for a good and specific purpose would be conciddered a neutral act.
I.E.: "The King's Daughter can only be cured by a potion made from the tough of 5 Red dragons"
Good deed + Evil creature to slay = Not Evil (not sure if i would consider it good)

If you harvest organs for general purpose, this can be a slippery slop.
I.E.: "hmmmm, goblin hearths give my Sound based spells +2 caster level.... and the y are already dead.... they will not miss that will they and it would be a shame to let it go to wast"
neutral deed + already dead creature = Not evil yet, but I would say that a good character should be put into the neutral category. Mainly because other good npcs would thing so. The locals might be happy that you got rid of the monthly farm raids. But they would shun you and probably ask you to leave (if they cannot kick you out) when they find out that you keep a chest full of organs in your bedroom.

Finding creatures for their organs because they are give you more power would be considered evil, imho.
I.E.: "I heard that there is an Ogre clan in the near by mountains! Ogre brain gives an extra +1 to str to any healing spell i cast. We should wipe them out!"
This falls under the category of "killing for personal gains" category ("book of vile darkness" p.7)


The problem however is the general idea that Adventures can be anything else but evil. Seriously as an adventurer your job is to kill things, take their stuff, gain power, kill more things and take more stuff, until you are the most powerful being that walks your plane. The only thing that stops them from slaying every town, village an caravan that they come across is that you can get quests and find things that give you more xp when you kill them.
This is a very simplified view of things, but If the DM would start a session by saying that all level 1 commoners give you 1000xp most "adventures" would start to smile. (some more then others, but I don't judge)

[Skysaber]

In previous editions, the rules even encouraged this. Back then magic items could only be created through harvesting parts of monsters. Hair shaved from a fallen giant woven into a Belt of Giant Strength for example, or ogres for Gauntlets of Ogre Power - your sorcerer should be aware of the fact that he's got the parts for at least one pair of those gauntlets here, and going by rules given for cutting up dragons, beastie parts are worth a third of the final sale cost of the end item.

Logically, a cleric does not pray over a pile of gold and it spontaneously evaporates, leaving a magic item. Spellcasters buy stuff with that gold, and most of what they've been buying through the history of the game have been monster parts.

"Oh, so-and-so needs the X of a Y that will complete his research/magic item/spell to save the kingdom from certain doom. Your adventure is to go get it for him."

The last guidelines we were given in this department were "parts from an appropriately themed monster" so an ogre would yield raw mats for a set of gauntlets of ogre power (obviously) but perhaps also potions of bull's strength distilled from the muscles, scrolls of bull strength written on his hide, potions or scrolls of Enlarge similarly.

An eye from a giant would also make for a suitable power component for the casting of Arcane Eye. An ear for Clairaudience. A tongue for Tongues.

A really thorough rendering job could net you a skeleton for sale or animation (is it an evil act to put it at the bottom of a village well, with the instruction "pump", so your farmers have irrigation?), job lots of ogre parchment, drying and burning fleshy tissues so the flames heat potions of strength or similar, and all kinds of ogre-themed things.

One might even make the case for rendering its brain down to an essence, then using that in an ink to scribe a scroll of Feeblemind because of an ogre's legendary lack of mental abilities.

Transporting and finding buyers for this, however? Well, there is a reason why magic shops exist, so a discrete clientele don't have to walk up to a guy on a street hawking "Ogre brains for sale!"

And what does transport and sale amount to? A mini-adventure.

Most likely, your party will run aground on "none of you have appropriate skills for this" (which I would count as either Survival, or Profession: Farmer, as the two classes of people who traditionally cut animals up), and so can't grab anything but the truly easy stuff.

Also, most likely those parts won't be worth much unless someone casts a Gentle Repose on the body first.

[Pickford]

Harvesting organs for a good and specific purpose would be conciddered a neutral act.
I.E.: "The King's Daughter can only be cured by a potion made from the tough of 5 Red dragons"
Good deed + Evil creature to slay = Not Evil (not sure if i would consider it good)

If you harvest organs for general purpose, this can be a slippery slop.
I.E.: "hmmmm, goblin hearths give my Sound based spells +2 caster level.... and the y are already dead.... they will not miss that will they and it would be a shame to let it go to wast"
neutral deed + already dead creature = Not evil yet, but I would say that a good character should be put into the neutral category. Mainly because other good npcs would thing so. The locals might be happy that you got rid of the monthly farm raids. But they would shun you and probably ask you to leave (if they cannot kick you out) when they find out that you keep a chest full of organs in your bedroom.

Finding creatures for their organs because they are give you more power would be considered evil, imho.
I.E.: "I heard that there is an Ogre clan in the near by mountains! Ogre brain gives an extra +1 to str to any healing spell i cast. We should wipe them out!"
This falls under the category of "killing for personal gains" category ("book of vile darkness" p.7)


The problem however is the general idea that Adventures can be anything else but evil. Seriously as an adventurer your job is to kill things, take their stuff, gain power, kill more things and take more stuff, until you are the most powerful being that walks your plane. The only thing that stops them from slaying every town, village an caravan that they come across is that you can get quests and find things that give you more xp when you kill them.
This is a very simplified view of things, but If the DM would start a session by saying that all level 1 commoners give you 1000xp most "adventures" would start to smile. (some more then others, but I don't judge)

5 red dragons aren't 5 orphans, for example. Intent is nice, but doing an evil thing to achieve a good end is still an evil act.

If it's not humanoid, harvesting parts would not be evil, if it is, arguably it's evil, especially if it involves desecrating a corpse.

i.e. If you defeated a knight in a duel to the death, it would be evil to then cut his eye out because he happened to be an ogre.

[Fouredged Sword]

I think there are two sepearate questions here.

First, is it a good deed to have killed the creature? Red dragons are color coded as evil, so yes.

Second, is it a good dead to harvest the organs? I say mostly this would be a mildly evil act as murder, so you get a pass if it is for a good cause.

[ArcturusV]

Well, the OP starts by talking about a Fetish. Which is entirely cultural based. I don't think you can really tag something as Good or Evil based off that. It's all up to the specifics of the setting.

For example, burial. Burial could be a very "Dishonorable" thing, depending on culture, and burying an enemy you slayed is probably about equivalent to pissing on them as far as the Good/Evil or Law/Chaos is concerned. Maybe their culture is big on Pyres and Cremation. Or cannibalism as a way to respect a fallen enemy (Worthy foe, I shall consume his flesh to take his strength!).

Of course, it's all cultural based. I wouldn't list a Fetish as an Evil thing at all. Heck, the Leviathan Hunter PrC (Out of Stormwrack) has fetishes as a Class Feature (Though they call it "Trophies"... it's still dismembered parts of monsters you have killed being hung around your neck/tacked to a shield), and that class doesn't hold an Evil Alignment Rider at all.

Now if the Fetish was being used as some Necromantic item powered by the soul of the person you slayed? Probably in the realm of "Evil" as spells that do stuff like that tend to have an [EVIL] tag on it.

[Duke of Urrel]

I find this discussion very interesting, for several reasons.

I should confess that there's a bigger question in my mind that causes me to link the moral issues of organ harvesting to the issue of how Undead are created. Another thread recently posed the question: Given the obvious threat that the Undead pose to all living things, and given that creating an Undead usually requires a somewhat intact corpse, why doesn't every self-interested society, regardless of its cultural or esthetic inclinations regarding treatment of the dead or its religious beliefs about the afterlife, burn every single corpse and scatter its ashes – merely to defend itself against possible Undead in the future?

The meta-game answer to this question is simple: If every culture acted in this prudent and rational manner, the world would be practically Undead-free, and the game of D&D would be deprived of a whole interesting and challenging category of monsters.

But what is the in-game answer to this question? There has to be a strong cultural bias – or divine commandment – against simply burning one's dead, and in favor of some other defense against Undead that is not infallible, such as burying corpses in secret, secluded places (a possible solution for druids and primitive clerics) or defending all public graveyards against intrusion by Evil clerics (a possible solution for civilized clerics).

The question of harvesting body parts from the dead is related, because it makes corpses incomplete and somewhat less desirable for creating Undead. If the practice of taking bits of corpses away with you for use as talismans or suchlike is very widespread, intact corpses will become rare as a result, and so will the Undead. (Though maybe the fleshy bits don't matter to the Undead themselves; as I suggested in my previous posting, maybe an Undead can see without eyes to seek out and punish the one who stole those eyes from its corpse.)

On the other hand, maybe there are extra spells that we can invent to empower Evil clerics to "regenerate" lost parts for incomplete corpses, as well as spells to help them locate and exhume corpses.

I am intrigued by the idea that organ harvest for talismanic purposes is Chaotic rather than Evil, but I would prefer the dividing line to run between civilized and primitive cultures. The use of bits of one's enemy as talismans seems to me, in a word, barbaric, that is, primitive as well as outside of Law. I would place this practice outside of Goodness as well, though this may be more my esthetic preference than anything else. So maybe this practice is okay for most druids (except for Neutral-Good ones) and for Chaotic-Neutral wild elves, but not for Good elves or elves of other subspecies (not even the drow, who despite being horribly Evil seem to me somehow too "civilized" and vain about their appearance to adorn their armor with their enemies' ears and fingers).

Primitives may have their own ways to guard against vengeful Undead. They have spells that civilized people have forgotten. Maybe a belief in reincarnation rather than the migration of a soul to an Outer Plane after death has something to do with the ability to use harvested organs as talismans.

As for the disease problem I mentioned above, perhaps the Gentle Repose spell guards against this, though in some cases a cleric should probably prepare Remove Disease and keep it ready, just in case something goes awry while operating on a corpse. Maybe washing your hands in magically purified water does the trick.

Finally, I appreciate Skysaber's reminder that materials from corpses have long been assumed to be an important ingredient in spellcasting, particularly in arcane spellcasting. Troll's blood used to be listed as a necessary ingredient for Regeneration potion, for example.

As you can tell, my ideas are in flux. That's why I like reading threads like this one.

[Fouredged Sword]

The issue with burning bodies is that the undead that are created from burned bodies are more dangerous than the skeletons and zombies created by normal undead creation. If I remember right there is some kinda ash ghost thing that burns you.

Skeletons and Zombies are something your local millitia can handle. Ghost ash clouds, less so.

It is fairly hard to render a body into a form a necromancer can't do SOMETHING with it. They are the Martha Stewart's of spellcasters.

[ArcturusV]

Well, the potentially easier answer is that Undead is such a wide category that burning corpses doesn't prevent it.

For example, standard lore for Mummies in DnD actually DOES have them being animated from Ashes, not corpses. So... yeah. Instead of having a 1 HD humanoid skeleton or 2 HD zombie, you have a powerful mummy instead.

It's one of those mousetrap things. You build a better mousetrap? The mice get smarter. So you can't really look at it in terms of preventing Undead. Too many incorporeal Undead, and things like Mummies from Ashes, etc. And generally they are WORSE and scarier than zombies, skeletons, even Wights and Vampires.

But yeah. The general issue is hard to deal with. DnD presumes Good and Evil are absolute rather than subjective. And practices like fetishes, cannibalism, using body parts as spell components, etc, fall into a certain category. I mean the rules presume it. And if you plugged the scenario into a lot of Rules situations, you'd probably get "It's Evil" or "It's Chaotic Evil".

... but even in DnD, morality is still subjective when they talk about it in setting terms. The rules have it as absolute. But settings don't. I mean if alignment and such was absolute in settings, you would never have say, Sigil in Planescape. It'd just be a massive carnage factory unsuitable to sustaining adventurers as a base of operations as you have things like Fiends and Celestials in the same city (And by Absolute Morality in DnD terms, of which these are exemplars of, it's all kill on sight, no excuses broked).

So... yeah. Kinda loss my train of thought here. Undead probably doesn't factor in. Morality is both Absolute in Rules, and Subjective in Settings. So it generally comes down to which side a DM would want to rule on this sort of thing.

[Duke of Urrel]

Morality is both Absolute in Rules, and Subjective in Settings. So it generally comes down to which side a DM would want to rule on this sort of thing.

Very well stated! Of course, when I'm the DM, this is where the problem really begins.

Could you or somebody here tell me where relevant Undead lore can be found, for example regarding those mummies you mentioned and the ash-cloud ghost that Fouredged Sword vividly brought to mind? Libris Mortis, I presume?

[ArcturusV]

Eh, I couldn't find it on a quick search.

Though I did uncover the Revenant. Which mentions: "Revenants are sometimes created even when a body has been completely destroyed by its killers, indicating that the magic which brings Revenants back to life can also reform their bodies".

So there's another one out there.

[123456789blaaa]

The issue with burning bodies is that the undead that are created from burned bodies are more dangerous than the skeletons and zombies created by normal undead creation. If I remember right there is some kinda ash ghost thing that burns you.

Skeletons and Zombies are something your local millitia can handle. Ghost ash clouds, less so.

It is fairly hard to render a body into a form a necromancer can't do SOMETHING with it. They are the Martha Stewart's of spellcasters.

May I sig the underlined portion?

[Skysaber]

If every culture acted in this prudent and rational manner, the world would be practically Undead-free, and the game of D&D would be deprived of a whole interesting and challenging category of monsters.

But what is the in-game answer to this question?

I would propose an answer in two parts. One, bodies are buried because 'laying the dead to rest' in this manner results in the lowest possible chance for the deceased to spontaneously rise as undead. Yes, it creates what are effectively warehouses of raw parts for a necromancer to work with, but unless he is very skilled, deliberately created undead (ie, mostly skeletons and zombies) aren't going to be as nasty as what rises when the corpse decides that its outrage over its treatment is bad enough that it gets up to do something about it - those types are nasty.

So, the 'low budget' option is simply that burying is the best they can do.

My answer to this 'what's the better option' has always been that it is similar to the creation of sewers, and it takes a certain level of advancement from a culture/society before they have both the resources and the will to do something about the root of the problem.

Ever since in 2nd edition when they published the Druid spell Decompose I've been having the elvan cultures in my games used that on all of their dead. Is it expensive to use that on all of their dead? Yes, but it's only 2nd level, so it's not too bad. Does it require massive spellcasting reserves for a culture to implement this broadly? You bet it does.

However, Decompose turns nonliving organic material into soft dirt and loam, and you won't find a former-body material harder for a necromancer to turn into undead than something that is already fully and completely decomposed. Compound the difficulty by planting something in it.

The dead have been respectfully served. They got buried, and the spell used only hastened what was going to happen anyway. And now you've got a better idea of why elves feel so close to trees. "Yeah, the mortal parts of what made up my grandfather have been taken up by roots and are now a part of that tree."

I'd be interested if anyone else had worked out culturally appropriate themed methods of laying their honored dead to rest in ways that necromancers found them no longer worth the trouble.

BTW, I've always ruled that goblinoids just don't care about their dead being raised as undead, and given their numbers even if every other humanoid culture had a good means of disposal available, there are enough goblinoids around, and they die often enough, that I don't foresee a supply problem for necromancers in the future.


The question of harvesting body parts from the dead is related, because it makes corpses incomplete and somewhat less desirable for creating Undead... On the other hand, maybe there are extra spells that we can invent to empower Evil clerics to "regenerate" lost parts for incomplete corpses,

That spell already exists. Living people are creatures. Dead ones, however, are objects - and Make Whole works just fine on them, provided they aren't burned or disintegrated or something like that that actually turns the remains into something else (like Decompose).


, as well as spells to help them locate and exhume corpses.

I suffered a moment of confusion at this, as those spells not only exist but have been in use for some time. Then I recalled that I use third party material more than just about anyone, so that's probably why I know and use them when you just proposed we create them.


Finally, I appreciate Skysaber's reminder that materials from corpses have long been assumed to be an important ingredient in spellcasting, particularly in arcane spellcasting. Troll's blood used to be listed as a necessary ingredient for Regeneration potion, for example.

Thank you.

Also a reminder, no culture regards a 'necessary thing' as evil. They may find it unpleasant or distasteful, but never evil. Sewage workers have a BAD job, as do rat-catchers, but no one regards them as evil for it. Underclass? Sure. Not someone you'd invite to society parties? Certainly. But not evil.

As the rules on rendering dragons for their parts highlights, monster parts are still an integral part of magic item creation. And nobody dislikes having magic items available to suit their needs.

So pretty much like the local butcher, who turns cows, pigs and sheep into parts fit for the king's table, there would be a niche for adventurers bringing back parts of the monsters they'd killed so Lord High Noble Whatshisname could have the latest in Cloaks of Charisma, or whatever.

[Fouredged Sword]

Sig away. I am proud of that one.

[Spuddles]

I think there are two sepearate questions here.

First, is it a good deed to have killed the creature? Red dragons are color coded as evil, so yes.

Second, is it a good dead to harvest the organs? I say mostly this would be a mildly evil act as murder, so you get a pass if it is for a good cause.

Killing a dragon for no other reason than organ harvest is as immoral as killing a dragon for its horde. So, in general, killing things and taking their organs, while "icky" isn't really evil per se.

The game could just as easily be called "murder hobos". Is there really that much of a difference between killing things for their experience points and items and killing things for their experience points, items, and useful spell component bits?

[Duke of Urrel]

The game could just as easily be called "murder hobos". Is there really that much of a difference between killing things for their experience points and items and killing things for their experience points, items, and useful spell component bits?

Fortunately for the moralists among us, Evil creatures such as red dragons don't usually wait peaceably for adventurers to resolve their debate over whether it's really moral to kill Evil creatures for their treasure, their hide, or their precious bodily fluids. They are more inclined to attack first, and when this happens, the adventurers (that is, those who survive) aren't so much murderers as opportunists.

[Duke of Urrel]

My answer to this 'what's the better option' has always been that it is similar to the creation of sewers, and it takes a certain level of advancement from a culture/society before they have both the resources and the will to do something about the root of the problem.

This makes a lot of sense.


"Yeah, the mortal parts of what made up my grandfather have been taken up by roots and are now a part of that tree."

Clearly, the elves who use the Decompose spell have the right idea about how to keep their dead out of Undeath. Perhaps most other decent folk follow their example.


BTW, I've always ruled that goblinoids just don't care about their dead being raised as undead, and given their numbers even if every other humanoid culture had a good means of disposal available, there are enough goblinoids around, and they die often enough, that I don't foresee a supply problem for necromancers in the future.

So necromancers rely on the indecent folk... That makes sense, too. Or perhaps they scavenge battlefields before the dead can be decently buried.


Living people are creatures. Dead ones, however, are objects...

Ah, of course! So the Locate Object spell would work. Except on a corpse buried in a lead-lined coffin. And imagine how heavy that would be...! No, the elves really do have the right idea.


Also a reminder, no culture regards a 'necessary thing' as evil. They may find it unpleasant or distasteful, but never evil. Sewage workers have a BAD job, as do rat-catchers, but no one regards them as evil for it. Underclass? Sure. Not someone you'd invite to society parties? Certainly. But not evil.

So pretty much like the local butcher, who turns cows, pigs and sheep into parts fit for the king's table, there would be a niche for adventurers bringing back parts of the monsters they'd killed so Lord High Noble Whatshisname could have the latest in Cloaks of Charisma, or whatever.

I'm now thinking of driders doing the work of draining, carving up, and rendering bits of corpses and storing their fluids and organs neatly in jars for their drow overlords. It all makes sense. And non-Evil creatures do the same thing, with a similar class division, though not always with the same species of corpses. Thanks again!

[Spuddles]

Fortunately for the moralists among us, Evil creatures such as red dragons don't usually wait peaceably for adventurers to resolve their debate over whether it's really moral to kill Evil creatures for their treasure, their hide, or their precious bodily fluids. They are more inclined to attack first, and when this happens, the adventurers (that is, those who survive) aren't so much murderers as opportunists.

Whatever helps you sleep at night :smallwink:

[Pickford]

Fortunately for the moralists among us, Evil creatures such as red dragons don't usually wait peaceably for adventurers to resolve their debate over whether it's really moral to kill Evil creatures for their treasure, their hide, or their precious bodily fluids. They are more inclined to attack first, and when this happens, the adventurers (that is, those who survive) aren't so much murderers as opportunists.

Yes, but here's the thing. IF you attack first, and have no evidence the evil dragon has done anything wrong (what if it's a freakish pacifist red dragon?) that's an evil act. (Shooting first and asking questions later, not a good act)

[Yogibear41]

Yes, but here's the thing. IF you attack first, and have no evidence the evil dragon has done anything wrong (what if it's a freakish pacifist red dragon?) that's an evil act. (Shooting first and asking questions later, not a good act)

In my experiences good and evil in DND don't work like that but that could be highly due to my DMs way of thinking or rather 1st editions way of thinking as we basically play a 1st edition game with 3rd edition rules.

In the world we play in there are plenty of "Good" people who kill "Evil" things not for what they have done but simply for what they are.

Waiting to attack a red dragon until it attacks you first seems like less of a good act and more of a stupid one lol.



EDIT: was playing a game a few days ago with mostly relatively new players, we happened to be fighting some weak Demon, so we have the demon on deaths door then it begins to run away saying the spell is broken im free! And im like kill it! and their like why? and im like its a demon.....

Not to mention the fact that it might be incredibly weak, but it could come back with help that isn't... (even though I know the DM wouldn't do that to the group(yet) because they are all new, learning things the easy way instead of the hard way is a luxury lol)


EDIT 2: In some cultures its considered wasteful to not use all the parts of a slain animal. Ogre animal eh whats the difference lol.

This does remind me of a story my DM told me though, once when he was playing in another players game he captured a troll alive. Chained it up to the wall of the kitchen of a restaurant, and went about the process of cutting of a piece cooking the stew out of it and then serving it up as a delicacy. For some reason dwarves found troll meat to be a delicacy. Millions were served.

[ArcturusV]

There's an old book I used to have, was "The Deathworld Trilogy" (Excellent book in any case, go, read it if you haven't) that does talk about that cultural thing at the start of the second book. And is one of my favorite things to quote when applicable. Main character Jason Din-Atl going into things like Capital Letters ("A beast can be Beautiful but it cannot know Beauty!" and stuff like that which Mikah said). But also on objective morality and how "What works for one tribe of desert nomads doesn't necessarily apply to everyone".

But yeah. That sort of logic applies.

Of course if I remember my oh so long ago delve into Western Philosophy... I recall reading something which argued that all Moral choices are ultimate Ascetic choices. Morality ultimately deriving from what we consider to look, feel, and sounds good to us rather than from some ultimate moral authority.

Which is why I say it's setting specific.

[Duke of Urrel]

Yes, but here's the thing. IF you attack first, and have no evidence the evil dragon has done anything wrong (what if it's a freakish pacifist red dragon?) that's an evil act. (Shooting first and asking questions later, not a good act)

I want to give you full credit for this, because it's an apt rejoinder to what I've said, and because your reasoning is absolutely correct – for the real world. Because in the real world, there's never certainty about a person's motives in advance of any evidence; in the real world, nobody is irredeemable, because everybody may change; and in the real world, there are no inherently Evil creatures. We all just evolved to survive, each species in its own way.

Contrast this with the fantasy world that we create for D&D, in which there are spells that can inform you whether a creature is Evil, and in which there are inalterably Evil creatures that are that way by nature and from the moment of birth (or hatching, germination, emergence, construction, spawning, or whatever). The meta-game reason for this is that we hairless apes enjoy killing things in make-believe and feeling that we have moral license to do so. The in-game reason is that the world of D&D has creatures so Evil that pragmatic considerations – kill that red dragon before it burns down your village! – usually override moral ones.

I absolutely agree with you – even inside the game – in regard to Evil humans. You can never tell with humans. They are the only PC species in D&D that actually also exists in the real world, so I like some more verisimilitude here. I like to assume that even in-game humans aren't inherently Evil, but "break bad" from a typically morally Neutral default position; and I like to assume that even in-game humans with detectable Evil auras are changeable and therefore redeemable. Moreover, as I have suggested in another thread, I believe even alignment detection with morally wavering creatures may go awry, because even a Good creature can have Evil thoughts that are detectable as such, and vice versa. This is why I agree with the many who condemn the morally rigid paladin who would instantly execute someone – especially a human or demi-human – immediately upon detecting an Evil alignment aura.

I don't have the same feelings, however, with regard to red dragons, or even orcs and goblins, generally. Sure, I don't think it would quite qualify as Good to invade these creatures' territory for treasure if they hadn't done anything wrong yet and were keeping to themselves ... but that's not generally how these creatures behave.

[Duke of Urrel]

Of course if I remember my oh so long ago delve into Western Philosophy... I recall reading something which argued that all Moral choices are ultimate Ascetic choices. Morality ultimately deriving from what we consider to look, feel, and sounds good to us rather than from some ultimate moral authority.

This view – the view that morality can be reduced to esthetic feelings – does indeed exist. Moreover, I believe this assumption motivates quite a lot of human behavior, if not most of it. (One of the proponents of this view may have been Friedrich Nietzsche, but I'm not too sure about this.)

It's not my view, though. If we seriously and strictly reduced morality to esthetics and nothing more, I think we'd have to say that racism is okay, "because people who look different make me feel uncomfortable." Personally, I believe that particularly the critical question of when to kill and when not to kill becomes less an esthetic question and more an unavoidably moral question the closer we get to our own species.

But once the killing is over and done with, esthetic feelings once again come to the fore. Is it okay to bottle up that orc blood to make a potion? Okay, what about nailing that orc hand to your shield to give yourself a combat advantage? When we answer these questions for ourselves in our individual ways, we're morally adrift and must rely upon what our esthetic feelings can accept – or our stomachs can endure.

I should thank you, ArcturusV, for steering our discussion back toward the original topic!

[Fitz10019]

That spell already exists. Living people are creatures. Dead ones, however, are objects - and Make Whole works just fine on them
This undermines the idea of adventurers taking bits for sale to arcane shopkeepers. Only a new shopkeeper would buy body parts. Established shopkeepers would have a supply room of corpses and routinely cast Make Whole to restock on the useful bits and pieces. So, there really wouldn't be a market for these parts.

Someone paid to create magic items might demand the body parts as part of payment to pad their profit margin. Then adventurers should only take parts related to items they need / plan to order for creation.

Regarding the OT:
If you feel that 'harvesting' is a D&D tradition, yet 'disrespectful' to the dead, you can require a gesture of respect after harvesting. This could be replacing the parts with wood carved to resemble what's being taken (time consuming/skill check needed), burial (time consuming/strength check needed/tools needed), offering to a deity or deities (time consuming/knowledge check needed), or some combination of these. Heck, maybe Make Whole would be the most appropriate gesture of respect (spell slot or wand charge used).

Failure to show this respect can result in a condition that requires an Atonement spell to end. The condition could be that Cure spells have reduced effects (or fail completely).

[Yahzi]

If the DM would start a session by saying that all level 1 commoners give you 1000xp most "adventures" would start to smile. (some more then others, but I don't judge)
In my world, killing a commoner gives you 32 XP.

But before you rush out and start whacking peasants, consider... the guy who lives in that castle up on the hill normally gets the xp when a peasant dies. He isn't going to let you kill his peasants for xp any more than he's going to let you kill his cattle for fun.

This simultaneously explains why high-level NPCs care about protecting peasants and how those NPCs got to be high-level in the first place. It also prevents the shadowclypse, explains why wizards make magic swords, fixes the value of gold piece across realms and planes, and enables player agency to an incredible new level. :smallsmile: