PDA

View Full Version : Would like to have a dialogue with people in favor of monster rights.



Uryse
2013-12-31, 03:59 PM
My campaign setting is a modern setting in which humans have recently learned that they are not alone in the world. The players are adventurers who often hunt and kill monsters in the course of saving people.

I want to see a political advocate group form to protect the rights of monsters. This isn't something that I would agree with, nor, I think.

I intend to make this new group antagonistic towards the heroes but I don't want a group of silly hippy-buffoon stereotypes so I was thinking that I could bat this around with some people who would favor that sort of thing more.

If you ever found yourself arguing against V's right to zap either of those black dragons, you're someone that I'd like to hear from.

For starters, vampires.

I saw some of this on a show on HBO, True Blood, but I'd love people's thoughts on why they would want to defend blood-sucking fiends from beyond the grave.

I may prod or question your logic but I will try to keep an open mind and remain respectful of opposing views.

Rhynn
2013-12-31, 04:04 PM
Basic ethics is the first thing: if a sapient creature has never actually done any "wrong" (e.g. killed another sapient being), then what right do you have to kill them? You'd have to show, case-by-case, that you're acting either to protect or to avenge other sapients.

So, has this particular vampire actually ever killed anyone? Has it sucked blood out of anyone against their will? Can you show a real likelihood that it will in the future?

This is, obviously, complicated if vampires are just plain evil by nature (D&D, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.), rather than by statistics.

Coidzor
2013-12-31, 04:05 PM
I know in the Ponythread there were people arguing in defense of vampires and changeling's moral right to exist despite preying solely upon sophont life, though, frankly, I'm not quite sure how you'd have people who weren't buffoons/thralls/using monsters in their illicit conspiracies who would be in favor of not killing monsters that are maiming and killing people.

Grinner
2013-12-31, 04:18 PM
For starters, vampires.

I saw some of this on a show on HBO, True Blood, but I'd love people's thoughts on why they would want to defend blood-sucking fiends from beyond the grave.

I may prod or question your logic but I will try to keep an open mind and remain respectful of opposing views.

Basic questions: How much blood do they need? Do they take just a sip? Or do they splay their victim's throat open like a hot jelly doughnut? Can they take animal blood? Is there social infrastructure in place to ensure every vampire receives his allotment? Or are they forced into begging or violence, like some kind of addict?

LibraryOgre
2013-12-31, 04:26 PM
You might take a look at the Buffy, Season 8 volume "Predator and Prey", which has a large section about the backlash against Vampire Slayers, including Harmony getting a reality TV show. A lot of the arguments that group might make are in that volume... things like "vampires are afflicted individuals" (i.e. they didn't ask to become vampires, normally, so discriminating against them because you say they don't have a soul is morally wrong) are pretty big.

Lord Torath
2013-12-31, 04:49 PM
Shadowrun might be a good place to look. There are the meta-humans (elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, and their variants), and then there are things like Ghouls and Vampires. Ghouls must feed on human flesh, but it doesn't need to be fresh, or killed by them. And they've been fighting for legal status (ie citizenship). I'm not certain where Vampires fit in; I think they might exist only in the shadows (and, of course, they require feeding off of living humans).

And, of course, then you have groups like Humanis, which are rabidly anti-metahumans and magic users, and even more anti para-animals (vampires, ghouls, and similar, plus things like dragons).

Uryse
2013-12-31, 05:04 PM
Wow, good ideas all around.

Okay, more details about vampires. Vampires probably don't need to kill to survive. Each one only needs about a pint or so of living blood (not from a corpse or a transfusion bag) every few days. They are strongly inclined to take more though.

Each vampire tends to have between 6 and 12 vampire spawn serving them.

One of the themes of this setting is to address the alien nature of non-human creatures. Vampires aren't humans with superpowers who happen to drink blood.

They view humans the way we view cheeseburgers. Not the cows that become cheeseburgers, mind you. I am okay with the fact that a cow died to make my double-whopper but I at least want the cow to be reasonably well treated while alive and killed as painlessly as possible.

In short, I don't want to be a jerk about it.

Vampires not only don't tend to have such impulses, in my setting, they are incapable of such impulses. Call it a lack of soul or just an altered brain chemistry.

That is the reality of what we're dealing with. Vampires, however, are not above manipulating perception in their favor. That will be the rub.

The Oni
2013-12-31, 05:04 PM
Depending on your angle and the particular monsters to which you refer, I could see this going perhaps the way of Team Plasma from Pokemon Black/White. They make pretty good points, which are supported quite strongly by the fact that, while animalistic, many Pokemon exhibit greater-than-human intelligence and some can even hold intelligible conversations. This would hold true for many Magical Beasts that are generally considered evil or otherwise hunted.

From another perspective, if you're referring to more obviously humanlike monsters like Lamia or vampires you could make many of the same arguments that people make for disenfranchised groups IRL, although with practical concerns as well rather changing the direction of those arguments.

As an example: in a campaign setting I wrote, Elves suffer from an affliction wherein, when they are deprived of sunlight for long periods, they turn furry, predatory, and lacking in empathy - a condition that is by all appearances irreversible - though they retain their intelligence and ubiquitous Elven arrogance. These creatures are called Hulder, and fancy themselves "the pinnacle of elven evolution" - all other creatures are utterly beneath them, and as the greatest, it is their duty to dominate the entire continent and slay anything that gets in their way (dark-elf social darwinism ho)

Complicating matters - most of the Elves have already turned Hulder. This basically means the Elves are screwed going both ways - humans see them as sociopathic killers waiting to happen, while Hulder figure they're just not good/pure enough to achieve Hulderism - and so they're mostly outcasts.

Regarding the activism:

There's a radical school of thought going on that holds that Elves should try and breed with humans as much as possible - the premise being that Half-Elves can't turn, and thus the eradication of the pure Elven species will save their hybrid descendants from corruption. The Unfortunate Implications there are entirely intentional.

Obviously, countless spellcasterly and scholarly types have searched for a cure for the condition, but to no avail. Magical light therapy and the traditional wolfsbane-type cures have all been played out, with no meaningful results. Most Hulder don't really want to be cured, either, as they don't see anything wrong with their condition at all.

So mostly, you end up with a lot of eccentric Chaotic Good academics searching for cures and potential treatments, and trying to keep other nations from going to outright war with the Hulder, while desperately trying to understand and simultaneously explain the nature of the affliction to ignorant mundanes who couldn't possibly grasp the magnitude of what it would mean to genocide an entire race based on this! and before you know it they're contemplating sabotage for the greater good...

So that might give you a good starting point for the who and the why of your Vampire Rights Activists Gone Rogue.

Uryse
2013-12-31, 05:05 PM
I like the Season 8 of Buffy idea. I had read about it but had forgotten.

erikun
2013-12-31, 05:14 PM
I've occasionally batted around the idea of a druid in support of "elemental" rights. That is, as elementals are creatures of another plane, and sometimes intelligent, then forcing them to remain in the world either trapped or binded is cruel and should be stopped. This includes destroying golems and magical items that hold elementals inside them. It requires some knowledge of how the planes work, and isn't something I've ever played - primarily because being the guy who destroys cool stuff isn't fun in most groups.

Any sort of undead-focused necromancer would be a canidate for undead rights. Anything from the sympathetic crazy Tsukiko to the Nurell worshipper should work just fine.

Uryse
2013-12-31, 05:19 PM
That is something I hadn't thought of.

Its not the same thing but I may have to have a PETA like group of druids protesting familiars and animal friends.

Coidzor
2013-12-31, 05:29 PM
Each vampire tends to have between 6 and 12 vampire spawn serving them.

So each of them is a confirmed and unrepentant murderer with multiple homicides if those vampire spawn were human at one point. Otherwise, what are vampire spawn if not vampires themselves?


One of the themes of this setting is to address the alien nature of non-human creatures. Vampires aren't humans with superpowers who happen to drink blood.

Ok, where do they come from then if they're not converted humans? Are they a separate species? Corpses inhabited by entirely different entities from that of the meat popsicle?


They view humans the way we view cheeseburgers. Not the cows that become cheeseburgers, mind you. I am okay with the fact that a cow died to make my double-whopper but I at least want the cow to be reasonably well treated while alive and killed as painlessly as possible.

In short, I don't want to be a jerk about it.

You just said that they're jerks and then you don't want to be a jerk about it? They don't even view humans as living beings, solely as food.


Depending on your angle and the particular monsters to which you refer, I could see this going perhaps the way of Team Plasma from Pokemon Black/White. They make pretty good points, which are supported quite strongly by the fact that, while animalistic, many Pokemon exhibit greater-than-human intelligence and some can even hold intelligible conversations. This would hold true for many Magical Beasts that are generally considered evil or otherwise hunted.

From another perspective, if you're referring to more obviously humanlike monsters like Lamia or vampires you could make many of the same arguments that people make for disenfranchised groups IRL, although with practical concerns as well rather changing the direction of those arguments.

As an example: in a campaign setting I wrote, Elves suffer from an affliction wherein, when they are deprived of sunlight for long periods, they turn furry, predatory, and lacking in empathy - a condition that is by all appearances irreversible - though they retain their intelligence and ubiquitous Elven arrogance. These creatures are called Hulder, and fancy themselves "the pinnacle of elven evolution" - all other creatures are utterly beneath them, and as the greatest, it is their duty to dominate the entire continent and slay anything that gets in their way (dark-elf social darwinism ho)

Complicating matters - most of the Elves have already turned Hulder. This basically means the Elves are screwed going both ways - humans see them as sociopathic killers waiting to happen, while Hulder figure they're just not good/pure enough to achieve Hulderism - and so they're mostly outcasts.

Regarding the activism:

There's a radical school of thought going on that holds that Elves should try and breed with humans as much as possible - the premise being that Half-Elves can't turn, and thus the eradication of the pure Elven species will save their hybrid descendants from corruption. The Unfortunate Implications there are entirely intentional.

Obviously, countless spellcasterly and scholarly types have searched for a cure for the condition, but to no avail. Magical light therapy and the traditional wolfsbane-type cures have all been played out, with no meaningful results. Most Hulder don't really want to be cured, either, as they don't see anything wrong with their condition at all.

So mostly, you end up with a lot of eccentric Chaotic Good academics searching for cures and potential treatments, and trying to keep other nations from going to outright war with the Hulder, while desperately trying to understand and simultaneously explain the nature of the affliction to ignorant mundanes who couldn't possibly grasp the magnitude of what it would mean to genocide an entire race based on this! and before you know it they're contemplating sabotage for the greater good...

So that might give you a good starting point for the who and the why of your Vampire Rights Activists Gone Rogue.

The real question is how on earth is anyone near them not at war with the Hulder right now, seeing as the Hulder are crazy-murderous bastards that are driven to slay everything that isn't an Elf, since Elves they want to kidnap and force to become more Hulder.

Uryse
2013-12-31, 05:38 PM
Ok, where do they come from then if they're not converted humans? Are they a separate species? Corpses inhabited by entirely different entities from that of the meat popsicle?

You just said that they're jerks and then you don't want to be a jerk about it? They don't even view humans as living beings, solely as food.

I'm sorry. I wasn't as clear as I meant to be. Vampires are converted from humans. There is no separate entity. Just an infected corpse with an animated brain. I was just saying that their perspective is now entirely inhuman. That there is no humanity remaining in them.

When I said I didn't want to be a jerk, I was speaking about how I would want a living cow treated to sort of illustrate the difference between human and vampire.

Vampires are total jerks about it. They feel about ripping up a person the way you or I would feel about shredding a head of lettuce.

Sorry about that.

Coidzor
2013-12-31, 05:55 PM
I'm sorry. I wasn't as clear as I meant to be. Vampires are converted from humans. There is no separate entity. Just an infected corpse with an animated brain. I was just saying that their perspective is now entirely inhuman. That there is no humanity remaining in them.

When I said I didn't want to be a jerk, I was speaking about how I would want a living cow treated to sort of illustrate the difference between human and vampire.

Vampires are total jerks about it. They feel about ripping up a person the way you or I would feel about shredding a head of lettuce.

Sorry about that.

In that case then, it hinges upon them being able to successfully hide the fact that they're unrepentant murderers and deceive people that they actually regard people as people, which doesn't seem very likely given that they see people as solely food and not even animals.

Can humans even cause them harm?

Uryse
2013-12-31, 06:01 PM
In that case then, it hinges upon them being able to successfully hide the fact that they're unrepentant murderers and deceive people that they actually regard people as people, which doesn't seem very likely given that they see people as solely food and not even animals.

Can humans even cause them harm?

Oh yeah, humans can harm them. Everything I am describing is happening in a game governed by a hybrid Pathfinder / D20 Modern system.

Plus, (the reason vampires would bother with deception) humans outnumber them by a ratio of around thousands to one.

Fable Wright
2013-12-31, 06:20 PM
I'm one of those people who would join the monster advocate groups. When I see decidedly inhuman monsters (e.g. the giant spiders from the Desolation of Smaug) I tend to root for them, or at least hope they can get away from the 'heroes' before they're butchered. Less so for humans with superpowers and a personality quirk as a side effect. Why? Primarily because of their decidedly inhuman nature: they're nothing like us. At all.

In the case of the spiders, they're beautiful, giant creatures capable of intelligence and communication that have distinctly different values and culture than our own. Sure, they eat people who enter their territory and spread like a plague upon Mirkwood seeking to devour every living being inside it in their insatiable hunger, but that's something we can work around. They can think. We can make them understand the basics of our culture (e.g. if you or your kin go beyond this borderpost and/or eat humans, we will extirpate your nest and try this again with the next spiders to come here until one of you gets it) and then get into mutually beneficial agreements with them. Offer them hunting grounds and teach them to herd cattle to sustain their populations, for example, in exchange for their silks or assisted passage through the forest.

For more parasitic monsters, like vampires, there's a bit more of a problem. The system shouldn't be constructed so that it's vampires taking advantage of humans. They're sentient people, so they can, eventually, become assimilated into human culture. The problem is, they can spread like a plague, accidentally kill people just by feeding, and their 'spawn' are the enslaved husks of murdered humans that they can make at will. Every effort should be made to let them live lives as normal as possible, but this would require some serious concessions from their side. For one, they're not allowed to keep thralls in their service. It would just encourage them to make more. For another, blood taken would have to be regulated and feeding habits curtailed. They can set up booths in a localized area to pay people for blood. Take too much blood, pay too little, treat the cheeseburgers like cheeseburgers, you're not going to find too many volunteers. Ideally, this is going to lead some, if not most, vampires to pay their donors in iron-rich food and other ingredients to make their donors healthier and lead to a symbiotic relationship. In reality, the vampire is probably going to try to manipulate the donor, coerce people into unhealthy relationships for the sake of the vampire, drain humans just enough that they can't work and have to rely on the vampire to get funding, and so on. It's regrettable, and the system should try to catch this. We're not killing them because they're sentient beings, and give to our collective culture. We're not letting them exercise their inalienable rights to be our lords and masters, though, as we're sentient beings too.

TL;DR: Hardline approach to monster relations in the hopes of developing mutually beneficial agreements with them in the future.

The Oni
2013-12-31, 06:30 PM
The real question is how on earth is anyone near them not at war with the Hulder right now, seeing as the Hulder are crazy-murderous bastards that are driven to slay everything that isn't an Elf, since Elves they want to kidnap and force to become more Hulder.

Well, it's mostly because they're sociopaths, not idiots. At the moment the situation is largely akin to Nazi Germany, pre-WWII. The Hulder want to take their rightful lebensraum (which in their opinion is everything under the sun) but they're doing it gradually and the other nations figure if they let them take just a little bit of backwater territory, they can avoid outright total war.

Also it's important to make the distinction that they don't necessarily *want* to kill other sentient races. It's just that if the other races aren't strong enough to defend their stuff, they didn't deserve to have it in the first place. If they'd kindly just get out of the way and let the Hulder take it, the Hulder would be cool with that too; otherwise, the Hulder will happily stab them in the face.

Slipperychicken
2013-12-31, 06:31 PM
I always thought vampire-advocacy stories (and mutants, superheroes, and similar things) were just metaphors for real-life prejudice. One could surely take real-life minority groups (such as jews, homosexuals, autistics, etc.) as inspiration, as these stories often do.


Vampires are easy: they retain their past memories, often retain a human appearance, the families and relatives of vampires would surely be hesitant to turn on their kin (as vampires are often made, not born), and they are in some fictions able to survive without murdering people. A community truly rife with vampirism may come to accept them as people, and a trusted community leader who turns out to be a vampire may be accepted rather than reviled.

Uryse
2013-12-31, 06:36 PM
TL;DR: Hardline approach to monster relations in the hopes of developing mutually beneficial agreements with them in the future.

Interesting and I may use that approach for the leader of this group though I see the main group being a little too pro-monster / anti-violence to take a very hard line.

The only problem is I don't think that this approach would work. Vampires, at least of this type, are essentially sociopaths. Arguing for mutual benefits with a sociopath, or just someone who is incapable of setting any value on your wants or needs seems ultimately self-defeating. They will take you for all they can get and screw you over ASAP.

That does work for me, story-wise though. It does, however, beg the question, how often do the vampires screw with you before you toss in the towel? Again, I don't want the advocates to seem hopelessly dense.

Uryse
2013-12-31, 06:40 PM
I always thought vampire-advocacy stories (and mutants, superheroes, and similar things) were just metaphors for real-life prejudice. One could surely take real-life minority groups (such as jews, homosexuals, autistics, etc.) as inspiration, as these stories often do.


There is truth in that. These stories are often metaphors for such things. I am sort of using that against my players, if I can pull it off.

For me, the fun of this is making them wonder if they have misjudged the monsters by playing on modern day values that we put aside while playing and then kind of slapping them on the knuckles and saying, nope, that isn't a gay guy or a different ethnicity... its a shark that you've been trying to make friends with.

Coidzor
2013-12-31, 07:21 PM
Well, it's mostly because they're sociopaths, not idiots. At the moment the situation is largely akin to Nazi Germany, pre-WWII. The Hulder want to take their rightful lebensraum (which in their opinion is everything under the sun) but they're doing it gradually and the other nations figure if they let them take just a little bit of backwater territory, they can avoid outright total war.

Also it's important to make the distinction that they don't necessarily *want* to kill other sentient races. It's just that if the other races aren't strong enough to defend their stuff, they didn't deserve to have it in the first place. If they'd kindly just get out of the way and let the Hulder take it, the Hulder would be cool with that too; otherwise, the Hulder will happily stab them in the face.

That doesn't make any sense, seeing as how they believe everything belongs to them, this would leave no room for non-Hulder to "get out of their way," so the natural result would be the same, total omnicide.

So it's kind of hard to believe that with all of the people working to try to cure them that no one knows about their ultimate designs for all life on the planet.

Fable Wright
2013-12-31, 07:42 PM
Interesting and I may use that approach for the leader of this group though I see the main group being a little too pro-monster / anti-violence to take a very hard line.

The only problem is I don't think that this approach would work. Vampires, at least of this type, are essentially sociopaths. Arguing for mutual benefits with a sociopath, or just someone who is incapable of setting any value on your wants or needs seems ultimately self-defeating. They will take you for all they can get and screw you over ASAP.

That does work for me, story-wise though. It does, however, beg the question, how often do the vampires screw with you before you toss in the towel? Again, I don't want the advocates to seem hopelessly dense.
I'm not saying that it would work well. As I mentioned, the ultimate goal of a symbiotic relationship is very idealistic. The reality is threatening the vampires with a big stick to stay in line and follow our rules and trying to make what benefits them benefit the community. The system of having them pay people for their blood ideally works out (in the minds of the organization) as vampires paying welfare support for people who can't work and providing some healthcare (as they want healthy, repeat customers) along the way. The vampire get self-preservation and farm-raised organic cheeseburgers in return. In reality, the vampires try to get people hooked on addictive substances and habits, keep people desperate for money, and tilt the economy to get more people willing to sell blood, while the organization hunts down vampires who do this to get them to realize that doing such things doesn't work out well in the long term. You can't feed if you're staked in your coffin, after all.

As for throwing in the towel? Again, you probably kill vampires who openly try to get people addicted to substances or coerce people, who kill someone they feed on, and whose repeat customers look like they're on death's door at the end of the month. Either remaining vampires quickly get the message or you soon are rid of a vampire infestation.

Finally, with the group being too pro-monster to play very hard lines: That's when a group of adventurers find a mysterious person in a concealing black robe in an inn offering sums of money for (potentially specific) monster's heads with a sob story of what they're doing to the community.

The Oni
2013-12-31, 07:55 PM
That doesn't make any sense, seeing as how they believe everything belongs to them, this would leave no room for non-Hulder to "get out of their way," so the natural result would be the same, total omnicide.

So it's kind of hard to believe that with all of the people working to try to cure them that no one knows about their ultimate designs for all life on the planet.

Oh, no, you've got it right. When they say "get out of the way" they mean "get off our continent," which is impossible logistically, but the Hulder are OK with that line of thinking. They don't care where the other races are, as long as they're not *here*, taking up their space and breathing their air. They may at some point decide to expand their efforts to the entire world, but one thing at a time, naturally.

Before they were Hulder, they were Elves, and as Elves they had friends and allies who knew that they, while a bit condescending, weren't monsters. In the same way that some settings offer a cure for lycanthropy and vampirism, they search for a cure for Hulderism - they just haven't found one yet.

Barring a radical change in philosophy, it's not expected that there will be any treaties or surrender - so the soldiers wall up along the border of the major territories and hope it doesn't come to full-scale war.

Bhu
2013-12-31, 10:23 PM
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=781.msg4421#msg4421

Introduce them to MADD :smallbiggrin:

Saidoro
2014-01-01, 12:16 AM
One of the main points to hit is that fighting monsters because they're currently hurting people, or are actively planning to hurt people or to get "justice" for people they've hurt in the past is an entirely different beast from fighting monsters because they are monsters. If something is killing people that's a problem which needs to be dealt with in one way or another, just like we deal with dangerous animals or criminals or diseases. If, on the other hand, the monster just sets up shop in town and starts exchanging goods and services with the townsfolk and spends a bit of extra money to supply whatever their extra needs are they're no worse and no more deserving of death than anyone else doing the same. If the monsters are rational actors it should be possible to find ways of dealing with them without killing them, it's just a matter of good system design.

Beleriphon
2014-01-01, 12:44 AM
I'm sorry. I wasn't as clear as I meant to be. Vampires are converted from humans. There is no separate entity. Just an infected corpse with an animated brain. I was just saying that their perspective is now entirely inhuman. That there is no humanity remaining in them.

So its a mobile corpse? An intelligent mobile corpse that retains the memories of the previously living person?

At that point they aren't that different then a zombie.


When I said I didn't want to be a jerk, I was speaking about how I would want a living cow treated to sort of illustrate the difference between human and vampire.

Vampires are total jerks about it. They feel about ripping up a person the way you or I would feel about shredding a head of lettuce.

Sorry about that.

Ah, so vampires are treated as the ultimate apex predatory. A creature that requires hunting humans, but at the same time has the intelligence and ability to not kill its prey to survive but doesn't care enough about the prey to bother.

I think vampires are a poor choice to focus on for a monster rights campaign. I'd take something more akin to orcs, goblins or orgres. That way you can at least argue that they are 1) too stupid to know better so we need to educate them or 2) they are culturally inclined to being naughty so we need to educate them.

The other thing you really need to think about is what type of setting you have. Is it a more medieval setting or something later? Because in something more middle to late medieval then rights are a bit of an alien concept to most people, let alone something that isn't people.

Thinker
2014-01-01, 01:21 AM
In addition to your main advocacy group, make a group that reveres the vampires. They see the vampires as the next step in humanity and want to be like them. They advocate for greater deference to vampire behavior and perhaps even believe that vampires have some secret that they are willing to share if humans play nice with them.

Another group may make the case that vampires are a new species and need to be studied. They advocate for controlled environments for vampires where they can be studied, but not harmed. They may cooperate with the vampires to some extent in an effort to understand them.

andresrhoodie
2014-01-01, 11:30 PM
You've created yourself a pickle.

You dont want your pro-vampire group to be stereotypical hippy morons.

While at the same time made your vampires an absolute irredeemable evil and a dangerous predator that adds nothing to human society.

One thing has to give. I'm sorry but the only people who would rights for your vampires are morons.

Or people who want to appease the vampires in hopes of being turned into vamps themselves. Which is one tack to take.

BeerMug Paladin
2014-01-02, 02:59 AM
The only vampires that would be worth advocacy, from what I see you saying, would be the weak/cowardly vampires who see an advantage to following the rules of society and working together with others. There's a lot of reasons they might. To get a stable food supply, to do something they love (does a vampire love to perform for an audience? Do they love to build or paint?)

I don't see how one could make a pro-vampire-rights movement if what you've said is common knowledge, especially if vampires are universally evil in alignment (this is how I interpret your statement about them being universally a sociopath).

Sociopathy is a real trait people have, though, and we don't lock people up for it alone. We simply treat them the same as anyone else for harmful/damaging activity.

The only reason for 'vampire advocacy' I can think of would be the same reason a society wouldn't just allow someone with the detect evil spell to run around slaying anyone and anything that meet the criteria.

It wouldn't be so much a vampire advocacy group, as a general group against the slaying of evil beings, just for its own sake. Vampires would just be a small caveat of its overall mission (and in fact, such a group could still be divided on either side with respect to this issue).

andresrhoodie
2014-01-02, 03:41 AM
Sociopathy is a real trait people have, though, and we don't lock people up for it alone. We simply treat them the same as anyone else for harmful/damaging activity.

The only reason for 'vampire advocacy' I can think of would be the same reason a society wouldn't just allow someone with the detect evil spell to run around slaying anyone and anything that meet the criteria.

It wouldn't be so much a vampire advocacy group, as a general group against the slaying of evil beings, just for its own sake. Vampires would just be a small caveat of its overall mission (and in fact, such a group could still be divided on either side with respect to this issue).

I suspect if real life sociapaths were bullet proof and had magical powers including mind control and mass creating more sociopaths from their victims you would see governments being a lot more pro-active about them

AMFV
2014-01-02, 03:50 AM
I suspect if real life sociapaths were bullet proof and had magical powers including mind control and mass creating more sociopaths from their victims you would see governments being a lot more pro-active about them

Well Sociopathy isn't actually criminal and not necessarily tantamount to criminal insanity. I think the fundamental problem with this setting is that we're ascribing beliefs to an entire diverse group of people, Vampires should have some diverse beliefs just as sociopaths do, while some Vampires have the whole cattle thing, maybe others are just willing to hang out at blood banks. I mean they retain their human intellect and therefore they retain some ability to make moral distinctions and decisions.

BeerMug Paladin
2014-01-02, 05:20 AM
I suspect if real life sociapaths were bullet proof and had magical powers including mind control and mass creating more sociopaths from their victims you would see governments being a lot more pro-active about them

Which is part of why I stated that I'm not sure how there could be a pro-vampire rights movement if what the original poster said was common knowledge. Not that it makes it impossible, just a tad more difficult.

I suspect that the original poster did not want to approach this from an angle of 'people who disagree are ignorant or fools', and instead present a moral dilemma issue into their game world, hence why they were looking for good arguments such a group may use. That's a laudable goal in any world presented to an audience, but it strikes me as a little difficult given what he has stated is true about vampires for the setting.

I outlined the best argument I could think of for why someone may feel that vampires deserve advocacy and equal treatment.

Actually, come to think of it, you could have a vampire in one of these advocacy groups that really believes in the message they promote. And wants to develop a set of guidelines that vampires should learn so they can survive without needing to rely on empathy. That could be an incredibly brave and heroic thing, actually. Part of what makes moral dilemmas interesting in stories is showing characters struggling with them. That could potentially be a very interesting character as well.

Think of all the people that would instantly judge that creature as a threat, regardless of what they do, and since its identity is known, would seek it out to slay it. If you want to make the dilemma less black-and-white, having a vampire with noble, heroic traits could go a long way to make this issue more complex.

Broken Crown
2014-01-02, 12:20 PM
Some arguments a "vampire rights" activist might use to address the question:

What, if anything, makes human life more valuable or worthy of protection than vampire life? What, if anything, makes rabbits' lives more valuable and worthy of protection than those of wolves?

If we presume that beings of equal sapience fundamentally have an equal right to exist, then a human's right to exist (including the need to avoid being eaten by vampires to survive) is no greater than the vampire's right to exist (including the need to feed on humans to survive).

Also, since vampires are fundamentally dependent on humans for survival, but not vice versa, vampires cannot threaten the existence of humanity as a whole (including by increasing their numbers to the point where the humans cannot support them) without destroying themselves.

The whole predator/prey relationship is addressed by the question of self-defence: it applies to individual cases. As has been stated, vampires don't even need to harm humans significantly in order to survive, so the mere existence of vampires is not, in itself, a threat even to individual humans (donating blood only weakens the donor temporarily, if the donor is healthy). Since humans vastly outnumber vampires, most humans won't be affected at all.

Therefore, there is no ethical reason to persecute vampires as a group. If individual vampires engage in murder, extortion, or other criminal acts, they can be dealt with by the criminal justice system on a case-by-case basis.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-02, 01:20 PM
actually, vampires is one of the few groups I would make an exception for in monster rights. granting orcs rights is something I wholeheartedly support, but vampires is something that by its very nature parasitic and harmful to everyone around them, not by any abstract psychological/mental problem, but by a clear biological need for blood taken from other people. the best thing for vampire rights is a cure for vampirism, your cured, you've got rights. until then you have the right to get cured of vampirism and nothing else.

AMFV
2014-01-02, 01:37 PM
actually, vampires is one of the few groups I would make an exception for in monster rights. granting orcs rights is something I wholeheartedly support, but vampires is something that by its very nature parasitic and harmful to everyone around them, not by any abstract psychological/mental problem, but by a clear biological need for blood taken from other people. the best thing for vampire rights is a cure for vampirism, your cured, you've got rights. until then you have the right to get cured of vampirism and nothing else.

Provided of course that you do have a cure for Vampirism. Also there are many humans alive today that require blood from other humans, and I wouldn't call them parasites. Unless Hemophiliacs count as vampires.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-02, 02:09 PM
Provided of course that you do have a cure for Vampirism. Also there are many humans alive today that require blood from other humans, and I wouldn't call them parasites. Unless Hemophiliacs count as vampires.

"cure" might take the form of "kill" it does not bother me much.

really? well then. hemophiliacs are patients. and does a patient have the right to go before the doctor is done treating them? no, they do not. and the cases are not comparable. hemophiliacs do not possess in addition to their need for blood, a predatory need to seek it out and take it directly from other humans, that and you presume too much about the amount of blood needed, thinking that they only need a sip, when vampires need the blood of the whole person. we are not talking about humans who sip a little of your blood out, we are talking about monsters who drink fully from you until you are nothing, that and vampires have various other supernatural powers in addition to their thirst, which makes them dangerous. a vampire is a patient same as the hemophiliac. and if the condition is not curable and will only prolong suffering by letting them live, the only proper cure is euthanasia.

furthermore, unlike hemophiliacs, the vampiric condition is spreadable. a curse, a plague only existing to cause problems, with the potential for everyone to acquire it, and once everyone has, there will be no more available blood vampires could fee from and the vampires, read: everyone, will die out, ending civilization. a hemophiliac is not a threat that could end civilization. vampires are.

AMFV
2014-01-02, 02:11 PM
"cure" might take the form of "kill" it does not bother me much.

really? well then. hemophiliacs are patients. and does a patient have the right to go before the doctor is done treating them? no, they do not. and the cases are not comparable. hemophiliacs do not possess in addition to their need for blood, a predatory need to seek it out and take it directly from other humans, that and you presume too much about the amount of blood needed, thinking that they only need a sip, when vampires need the blood of the whole person. we are not talking about humans who sip a little of your blood out, we are talking about monsters who drink fully from you until you are nothing, that and vampires have various other supernatural powers in addition to their thirst, which makes them dangerous. a vampire is a patient same as the hemophiliac. and if the condition is not curable and will only prolong suffering by letting them live, the only proper cure is euthanasia.

furthermore, unlike hemophiliacs, the vampiric condition is spreadable. a curse, a plague only existing to cause problems, with the potential for everyone to acquire it, and once everyone has, there will be no more available blood vampires could fee from and the vampires, read: everyone, will die out, ending civilization. a hemophiliac is not a threat that could end civilization. vampires are.

There are communicable conditions that require blood transfusions. And some people who require transfusions can be fairly active members of society. I don't see why Vampirism is necessarily any different, as long as they can control their predatory nature, it certainly shouldn't be.

Grek
2014-01-02, 02:12 PM
I think people are approaching this one from the wrong end.

Your vampire advocacy group isn't advocating that vampires be given civil rights and access to human blood, they're a transhumanism movement advocating the total conversion of the human population over to vampirism.

Live chickens costs about 3$ a head and have 10 pints of blood in them. Since vampires only need a pint every other day, even a self-indulgent vampire could easily afford to feed himself by devouring chickens. This is probably both cheaper and more eco-friendly than modern food production.

Assuming this kind of vampire doesn't gets the standard vampiric immortality deal and doesn't have any obviously bad weaknesses like turning into ash when exposed to sunlight, there's no reason why you wouldn't want to become a vampire. Even if there were some pretty harsh weaknesses, people who were dying of some disease or who would otherwise die might easily agree to a 'second chance' at life as a vampire.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-02, 02:18 PM
assuming even that a blood transfusion is enough for a vampire, or that animals count, some vampires after all can only feed from humanity. we are all making different assumptions about how much blood a vampire needs daily, mostly because we can make up vampires however we want.

I? am going to assume the worst. they're monsters who will suck out all our blood, parasites who can never live with humans. I gladly welcome the orc, the goblin, the troll into society, they deserve rights. vampires however do not. they are too dangerous.

AMFV
2014-01-02, 02:22 PM
assuming even that a blood transfusion is enough for a vampire, or that animals count, some vampires after all can only feed from humanity. we are all making different assumptions about how much blood a vampire needs daily, mostly because we can make up vampires however we want.

I? am going to assume the worst. they're monsters who will suck out all our blood, parasites who can never live with humans. I gladly welcome the orc, the goblin, the troll into society, they deserve rights. vampires however do not. they are too dangerous.

That's normally not the way Vampires work, Dracula was able to sustain himself on one person for months, hundreds of pages of that godawful slow book at the very least. nWoD Vampires don't come close to killing a living human when they feed normally. The only ones I've seen that suck out the entire blood daily are B movie vampires. There would several problems with that, where would the blood go, I mean a whole person worth of blood is quite a bit of blood, if you require that each day that means that your own blood would have to be expended completely each day, so that's a pretty unlikely scenario, by most Vampire models I've seen.

Of course if you're correct it's a different paradigm, but even if they require a whole human worth of blood, transfusions or blood draws might still be able to sustain them, particularly if they were a small fraction of the population.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-02, 02:33 PM
That's normally not the way Vampires work, Dracula was able to sustain himself on one person for months, hundreds of pages of that godawful slow book at the very least. nWoD Vampires don't come close to killing a living human when they feed normally. The only ones I've seen that suck out the entire blood daily are B movie vampires. There would several problems with that, where would the blood go, I mean a whole person worth of blood is quite a bit of blood, if you require that each day that means that your own blood would have to be expended completely each day, so that's a pretty unlikely scenario, by most Vampire models I've seen.

Of course if you're correct it's a different paradigm, but even if they require a whole human worth of blood, transfusions or blood draws might still be able to sustain them, particularly if they were a small fraction of the population.

the vampires are still threats. I would rather destroy them all, or cure them at my most idealistic. coexistence is out of the question. they are predators, driven to feed and dominate others. perhaps if one is good I will gladly put them in stasis until a cure is found where they can then learn to live in whatever society they wake up in as a normal, non-bloodsucking person.

BeerMug Paladin
2014-01-02, 02:35 PM
I? am going to assume the worst. they're monsters who will suck out all our blood, parasites who can never live with humans. I gladly welcome the orc, the goblin, the troll into society, they deserve rights. vampires however do not. they are too dangerous.

For the purposes of the question being asked, you should consider the vampires that were actually presented, not just argue against whatever thing you're thinking of. I could easily say that of course they deserve rights, because to me, the only proper depiction of a vampire is a romantic-sparkle vampire.

Also, I would imagine such a vampire seeking rights would also be interested in negotiating an agreed contract for goods and services rather than just willy-nilly hunting people like a prey animal. People who assault other people are dangers, and we don't generally let them run around as they please.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-02, 02:41 PM
For the purposes of the question being asked, you should consider the vampires that were actually presented, not just argue against whatever thing you're thinking of. I could easily say that of course they deserve rights, because to me, the only proper depiction of a vampire is a romantic-sparkle vampire.


oh no, don't get me wrong.

they all need to die. all vampires. all depictions. ever.

even the most friendly of vampires contains potential to destroy civilization.

I just will not allow that potential to exist. especially concerning the sparklepires. they are an even more insidious threat, since they are so charming and seemingly harmless, they can be used to convince people not to kill vampires, and that cannot stand, therefore they also need to die.

Telonius
2014-01-02, 02:44 PM
Libris Mortis has some rules about Undead Metabolism. In the table on page 9, Vampires are listed as having a diet dependent on Blood, and an inescapable craving for Life Force. The sidebar on page 10 suggests (though doesn't outright state) that satiation happens when a single dose of Life Force (through Energy Drain) or Blood (through Blood Drain) is obtained. So as long as the vampire is able to get one dose within the satiation period, there should be no problem.

The Restorations could get expensive, but if the vampire can afford 100gp per day (or happens to be a Hierophant with Restoration as a spell-like ability) I could see him being able to "clean up his own mess."

The vampire might also buff up the victim to allow them to make the Fort save after 24 hours.

BeerMug Paladin
2014-01-02, 02:53 PM
oh no, don't get me wrong.

they all need to die. all vampires. all depictions. ever.

even the most friendly of vampires contains potential to destroy civilization.
I don't quite understand your position, and I think it probably is going to be something we just won't agree on. I don't see how certain depictions of vampires could destroy civilization. As it seems pretty resilient and adaptable to me, especially considering that vampires could just as easily be susceptible to it, and also cultural influences.

Grek
2014-01-02, 02:56 PM
Let's assume we're using the Pathfinder vampires, as specified on page one.

Cons:
12 consecutive seconds of exposure to sunlight is lethal to you.
18 consecutive seconds of immersion in running water is lethal to you.
You become allergic to garlic, mirrors and holy symbols and must struggle to approach them.
You are physically incapable of trespassing on private property.

Pros:
You gain the ability to sustain yourself on blood.
You become stronger, more agile, more intelligent and more beautiful.
You become entirely immune to ageing, disease, poison, blood loss, starvation, suffocation and fatigue.
You become mostly immune to cold, electric shocks and injury from non-silver objects.
You heal supernaturally quickly when you are injured.
You gain the ability to see in total darkness.
You gain the ability to summon and command rats, bats and wolves.
You gain the ability to turn into a bat, wolf or cloud of mist.
You gain the ability to crush people's minds and dominate them.
You no longer cast a shadow.

Feeding:
As specified on page one, a vampire needs a minimum of 1 pint every other day to survive, but would enjoy eating more if allowed to do so. Gladly, they are allowed to do so. One of your abilities is summoning 2d6 wolves that stick around for an hour. These wolves are physically incapable of injuring you and have the guilty deliciousness of a fast food hamburger. Human blood is even more delicious, but you have no particular need to drink it - animal blood will sustain you perfectly well.

All in all, while the whole "can never go out in sunlight again" deal would suck, there's a lot to like about becoming a vampire, at least in Pathfinder.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-02, 03:01 PM
I don't quite understand your position, and I think it probably is going to be something we just won't agree on. I don't see how certain depictions of vampires could destroy civilization. As it seems pretty resilient and adaptable to me, especially considering that vampires could just as easily be susceptible to it, and also cultural influences.

because I said this before. vampires require blood. vampires by sucking out that blood, turn other people into vampires. if this is done enough, everyone becomes a vampire. oh no, everyone is vampire, no feedable blood left, everyone starves and dies, civilization ends. that and in the meantime vampires are bloodsucking jerks who can hypnotize people, have some form of super-strength and perhaps other dangerous magical powers as well, plus an inhuman mindset inherently predisposed to using the humans around them as food and prey.

I don't see any reason why they should live. if they can't be cured, killing them all is the right thing to do.

Frozen_Feet
2014-01-02, 03:16 PM
Any monster that eats humans fits the same situation as any other case of predators and prey. This includes vampirism.

Therefore, any human who kills other sentient beings for sustenance can not claim any moral high ground whatsoever in regards to such a monster. This gets especially interesting in a setting where animals are considered sentient and have their own language (etc.) Even assuming otherwise Earth-like setting, at least pigs fit this out of the common food animals; yes, that's right. A pig provenly has self-awareness on par with a four-year-old human child.

Are you feeling good about yourself now? :smalltongue:

Basically, in any setting where there is non-human intelligence, humanism is dead. If you claim moral high ground because "humans are more intelligent/special/whatever!", you better have a God backing you up, or you are just wrong. I mean, there are many setting where being a vampire/dragon/whatever makes you more intelligent, wiser, charismatic etc. - why are we putting values of some puny humans on a pedestal, when there's all-around superior creatures present who have lived longer, and know more, than any of us do? Why, I ask. :smallamused:

Rhynn
2014-01-02, 03:17 PM
vampires by sucking out that blood, turn other people into vampires.

Not actually true in many (most?) versions of vampires. Usually (Buffy, V:tM, V:tR, etc. etc.) something more complicated, like feeding the victim vampire blood after draining them dry, is required. In most cases, it's a conscious decision by the vampire to create another vampire.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-02, 03:43 PM
Any monster that eats humans fits the same situation as any other case of predators and prey. This includes vampirism.

Therefore, any human who kills other sentient beings for sustenance can not claim any moral high ground whatsoever in regards to such a monster. This gets especially interesting in a setting where animals are considered sentient and have their own language (etc.) Even assuming otherwise Earth-like setting, at least pigs fit this out of the common food animals; yes, that's right. A pig provenly has self-awareness on par with a four-year-old human child.

Are you feeling good about yourself now? :smalltongue:

Basically, in any setting where there is non-human intelligence, humanism is dead. If you claim moral high ground because "humans are more intelligent/special/whatever!", you better have a God backing you up, or you are just wrong. I mean, there are many setting where being a vampire/dragon/whatever makes you more intelligent, wiser, charismatic etc. - why are we putting values of some puny humans on a pedestal, when there's all-around superior creatures present who have lived longer, and know more, than any of us do? Why, I ask. :smallamused:

I agree with the humanism is dead sentiment, but killing all vampires is still the morally right thing to do. as for pigs. *eats pork* *doesn't feel bad* I never liked four year children anyways. :smallsmile:

vampires should die regardless.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-02, 04:07 PM
I suspect if real life sociapaths were bullet proof and had magical powers including mind control and mass creating more sociopaths from their victims you would see governments being a lot more pro-active about them

shhhh, you're ruining the plan.

allowing my personal bias into the equation for a moment to agree with raziere. vampires (and other undead) exist in storytelling as a horror story about human nature, zombies for instance being a representation of mindless instinct unrestrained by morality or reason. vampires as shown in most media (I'm talking about actual vampires not the ones marketed to desperate teenagers in a scrawl that couldn't even pass for children's book level of storytelling) are a kind of threat that can only really be dealt with successfully through the death of either them or humanity. the ones the OP describes are definitely a case of this as they require living victims in order to feed successfully, view their victims as mere prey, and are hyper-powerful in comparison to humans.

in a situation like this frozen_feet is technically correct, they have about as much moral justification in feeding on humans as we do in feeding on animals...however the difference in this situation is that we are fully capable of defending ourselves and fighting back, if you're going to kill and eat an animal you wouldn't be surprised that it tries to bite you to save its own life would you? it doesn't care if you're hungry, it doesn't care if you can justify it to yourself, it wants to live and if that means making sure the person attacking it doesn't then that's the answer. prey animals are fully justified in defending themselves, their issue is that they aren't really that good at it when it comes to a predatory animal...humans have experience fighting, that issue doesn't hold up as well for us.

and on the guilt over pigs thing? I lean towards carnivorous so no real effect.

Waar
2014-01-02, 04:14 PM
"
oh no, don't get me wrong.

they all need to die. all [ ]. all depictions. ever.

even the most friendly of [ ] contains potential to destroy civilization.

I just will not allow that potential to exist. [ ] are an even more insidious threat, since they are so charming and seemingly harmless, they can be used to convince people not to kill [ ], and that cannot stand, therefore they also need to die. "

:smalltongue:

Rhynn
2014-01-02, 04:16 PM
vampires should die regardless.

You can probably ease up on the invective and rhetoric about imaginary undead.

Coidzor
2014-01-02, 04:22 PM
I'm reasonably confident that if we wanted to we could also find a philosopher to come up with a moral imperative to destroy a sophont that existed solely to kill, eat, and enslave another species of sophonts despite being capable of choosing differently, Frozen_Feet, though, that's part of the point of and fun of moral philosophy.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-02, 04:26 PM
" "

:smalltongue:

again, if I must reiterate this, vampires are an exception to the rule. orcs, goblins, trolls, dragons, things like that I have no problem with.

vampires, however, along with demons, should die. their natures are inherently inimical to other beings. I see no good reason for them to exist.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-02, 04:27 PM
pointing out that the argument is interchangeable doesn't necessarily make it false. morally disturbing? yes. selfish and destructive? that too. in fact by saying "kill them all they could wipe us out" we open ourselves up to the same argument from the other side, the problem is if a group such as vampires requires humans as a food source in order to live it ceases to be an issue of morally right and wrong and becomes a matter of self preservation. the nicer ones may object to ill-treatment of humans but they still benefit from it and still require some degree of it in order to live.

it isn't an issue of "they don't want to so they can just stop and we can live peacefully" it's an issue of "they NEED to and we don't want to be killed or treated as livestock so we should fight". if they weren't bound by their nature to target humans the argument might not be as valid but since that's not the case ideals of avoiding conflict fall flat. as an active threat that has no other targets vampires would fall under self defense from a human perspective. now other sentient species? that depends on if they have the same risk of death, containment, or conversion that humans do in this situation.

Frozen_Feet
2014-01-02, 04:28 PM
Coidzor, that isn't the point.

The point is that if we do find those reasons, they will apply to majority of mankind as well.

So if vampires have to go... so have all the pig-eaters. :smalltongue:

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-02, 04:31 PM
Coidzor, that isn't the point.

The point is that if we do find those reasons, they will apply to majority of mankind as well.

So if vampires have to go... so have all the pig-eaters. :smalltongue:

the second pigs start being capable of wielding weapons and organizing well enough to fight us I'll accept that as valid. I won't really agree with it but from a logic perspective it would, atleast for the pigs, be a valid solution.

edit: albeit moderately less valid as we have the option of not eating pigs while still maintaining multiple sources of food....maybe move on to dolphin, see if those IQ points add to flavor.

BeerMug Paladin
2014-01-02, 04:41 PM
Vampires are fictional. Things usually called vampires tend to be intelligent beings that feed on human blood at night. It may not even be quite that thing at all and still be a vampire.

The specific traits of a vampire are determined by the author of the world they inhabit, and nobody else.

Consider this. In the D&D core rulebooks, some lycanthropes are listed as always lawful good.

Waar
2014-01-02, 04:50 PM
again, if I must reiterate this, vampires are an exception to the rule. orcs, goblins, trolls, dragons, things like that I have no problem with.

vampires, however, along with demons, should die. their natures are inherently inimical to other beings. I see no good reason for them to exist.

Sure, I found it amusing anyhow (reminded me of a character of mine, with the difference that that character was of the opinion that there was no inherent right for such beings to exist, however individual behaviour could act as a substitute)

Tanuki Tales
2014-01-02, 05:19 PM
again, if I must reiterate this, vampires are an exception to the rule. orcs, goblins, trolls, dragons, things like that I have no problem with.

vampires, however, along with demons, should die. their natures are inherently inimical to other beings. I see no good reason for them to exist.

Humanity can also fit into those blanks, by the by.

And how are vampires honestly any different than any other race that preys on humanity and don't play nice with others?

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-02, 05:35 PM
Humanity can also fit into those blanks, by the by.

And how are vampires honestly any different than any other race that preys on humanity and don't play nice with others?

simple, vampires need to. if a race were just attacking humans because they feel like it or we did something to offend them then that means negotiation is still possible (even if it's extremely difficult) without reducing humanity to nothing more than a penned in food source. by throwing in a reliance on the blood of a living human you set up two major points that break down the possibility of a truly worthwhile negotiation.

the first being that even if you get them to tone it down they still have a physical requirement to feed on humans, all negotiations would be able to do is reduce the frequency or scale of attacks by a small amount, and even that would likely end when an influential enough vampire decides "hey why should I keep to this we're stronger faster and can control their minds to heck with playing nice".

the second is connected to the first, in their requirement for feeding on humans the only condition of a truce they could accept is willingly allowing feeding on humans for the entirety of the vampire race. accepting that means willingly agreeing to literally sacrifice blood in order to appease them into hopefully not launching large scale attacks to simply gather humans to snack on later. a condition of absolutely no feeding wouldn't be valid to them because they need it in order to live, allowing feeding wouldn't be valid to us because it would be a temporarily scaled down version of what negotiations or war would be used to try and prevent.

a goblin, an orc, a dragon, none of these things require the harm or death of a human to continue living, there's a possibility for even terms with them. with vampires it's a choice between two negative options.

Tanuki Tales
2014-01-02, 05:41 PM
a goblin, an orc, a dragon, none of these things require the harm or death of a human to continue living, there's a possibility for even terms with them. with vampires it's a choice between two negative options.

Neither do vampires necessarily, especially the ones being discussed here. Constitution damage and levels can come from any other living creature just as readily.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-02, 05:55 PM
Neither do vampires necessarily, especially the ones being discussed here. Constitution damage and levels can come from any other living creature just as readily.

I'm referring to the ones brought up by the OP which were stated as "made from humans" "thinking of humans the way we think of a hamburger" and "requiring at least a pint of blood from a living human". admittedly other kinds of vampire exist in D&D and pathfinder that are moderately more tolerable but the ones originally brought up in this thread fall under "kill or be herded like cattle".

normal pathfinder and D&D vampires I'd hold back on total extermination for, they're more victims of the idiotic "always evil" or "almost always evil" bestiary tag. heck in pathfinder ghouls can be civil and not try to eat you...and they're undead specifically built for an insatiable hunger for dead flesh (albeit they don't need it to live). THAT is where I'd say I disagree with raziere's kill-'em-all stance...then again they're still colossal jerks in pathfinder.. and that's from someone who almost always plays evil.

in summary: first vampires described in the thread really don't have a valid defense. other vampires that don't necessarily need blood from a living breathing humanoid directly in front of them? meh.

Tanuki Tales
2014-01-02, 05:57 PM
I'm referring to the ones brought up by the OP which were stated as "made from humans" "thinking of humans the way we think of a hamburger" and "requiring at least a pint of blood from a living human". admittedly other kinds of vampire exist in D&D and pathfinder that are moderately more tolerable but the ones originally brought up in this thread fall under "kill or be herded like cattle".


I may have missed it while reading through, but did the OP actually say that they can only gain sustenance from human blood? I saw everything else you mentioned, but I saw it more as the accepted reality than a set in stone one.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-02, 06:03 PM
I may have missed it while reading through, but did the OP actually say that they can only gain sustenance from human blood? I saw everything else you mentioned, but I saw it more as the accepted reality than a set in stone one.

only mentioned food source was humans who had to be alive while the feeding happened. potentially there could be other sources the OP didn't mention but from the phrasing provided I read it as "they're a human problem, made from humans, feeding on humans" due to a lack of other potential victims being mentioned. that said assuming they can feed on other humanoids too is it now more morally correct to say "well don't feed on us there's those orcs over there you can have, you're no longer our problem" than "regrettably your needs are a danger to every other sentient creature, we have to fight you"?

Tanuki Tales
2014-01-02, 06:06 PM
only mentioned food source was humans who had to be alive while the feeding happened. potentially there could be other sources the OP didn't mention but from the phrasing provided I read it as "they're a human problem, made from humans, feeding on humans" due to a lack of other potential victims being mentioned. that said assuming they can feed on other humanoids too is it now more morally correct to say "well don't feed on us there's those orcs over there you can have, you're no longer our problem" than "regrettably your needs are a danger to every other sentient creature, we have to fight you"?

Oh, I'm not saying that. Unless there's a race of completely unrepentant monsters (like 1st edition Orcs) who happen to have the humanoid type as well. This happening just introduces more of a potential moralistic dilemma that some people feel wouldn't really exist with the vampires.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-02, 06:13 PM
Oh, I'm not saying that. Unless there's a race of completely unrepentant monsters (like 1st edition Orcs) who happen to have the humanoid type as well. This happening just introduces more of a potential moralistic dilemma that some people feel wouldn't really exist with the vampires.

oh I agree, and I'm not saying this all to try and shut down the "maybe they can live" group or anything as I'm generally in favor of the "good" option not involving genocide. really if they can feed on other humanoids there's a simple solution... enlist them in your military if you have an active enemy...promise of food and societal acceptance in exchange for mutual support, your enemies are going to be killed by your army anyway and you get powerful berserkers or shock troopers out of it.

erikun
2014-01-02, 08:58 PM
On the topic of vampires specifically, I should note that people will possibly advocate anything if they think they'll get something out of it. If somebody is told they'll get immortality and large amounts of power for only going into the neighboring town and saying this family in the creepy old mansion is a nice bunch of chaps, then at least some people are likely to do so with little remorse.

Coidzor
2014-01-03, 01:29 AM
I may have missed it while reading through, but did the OP actually say that they can only gain sustenance from human blood? I saw everything else you mentioned, but I saw it more as the accepted reality than a set in stone one.

They only care to gain sustenance from human blood and aren't willing to negotiate with humans on that front was my interpretation.


Coidzor, that isn't the point.

The point is that if we do find those reasons, they will apply to majority of mankind as well.

So if vampires have to go... so have all the pig-eaters. :smalltongue:

The pig-eaters aren't covered by the hypothetical categorical imperative: defense of the species from xenocidal elements or efforts to do the opposite of uplifting the species. :smalltongue:

AMFV
2014-01-03, 01:45 AM
I may have missed it while reading through, but did the OP actually say that they can only gain sustenance from human blood? I saw everything else you mentioned, but I saw it more as the accepted reality than a set in stone one.

Even they only can gain sustenance from human blood, many humans need human blood also to survive. I would call it more like a medical condition requiring blood transfusions than anything else. Vampires are similar to hemophiliacs in this respect, even if they need to take the blood from a living victim that could still be a voluntary arrangement particularly if it conveys certain benefits to the suckee.

Also I think that we again have a stereotyping problem, the OP has put all Vampires in the same exact behavioral mindset, which just doesn't work in a more complex scenario, closer to reality I think you'd see a more varied breadth of opinions among them.

Certainly being self-serving they'd be willing to at least consider a nonlethal arrangement since it is helpful to their survival even if it's not the exact type of scenario they'd prefer.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-03, 02:05 AM
there is a reason they have the same behavioral mind set: Magic! makes them think that way! they're enchanted if you will, to think in an inhuman manner to hunt us down. they're magical beings, with inherent magical limitations. what're you going to do, let succubi suck out peoples souls next? just let in all the human-looking parasites just because they're hot and charming? don't you ever think, that this is what they want? for us to think that they can be redeemed or controlled so that they can feed from us all they want behind our back? its Tarquin all over again, but with parasitic feeding instead of mass-murdering and general evil.

just because they're charming, doesn't mean they don't deserve to die.

AMFV
2014-01-03, 02:07 AM
there is a reason they have the same behavioral mind set: Magic! makes them think that way! they're enchanted if you will, to think in an inhuman manner to hunt us down. they're magical beings, with inherent magical limitations. what're you going to do, let succubi suck out peoples souls next? just let in all the human-looking parasites just because they're hot and charming? don't you ever think, that this is what they want? for us to think that they can be redeemed or controlled so that they can feed from us all they want behind our back? its Tarquin all over again, but with parasitic feeding instead of mass-murdering and general evil.

just because they're charming, doesn't mean they don't deserve to die.

And just because they need blood to survive doesn't mean they do. We're not allowing them to kill people, or allowing them to take the blood they need from unwilling volunteers, we're suggesting a system where there is cooperation between vampire and man.

Grek
2014-01-03, 02:15 AM
Lord Raziere, the point of this thread is to come up with arguments FOR vampire rights. Not to argue against them. I'm pretty sure the OP can do that himself.

BeerMug Paladin
2014-01-03, 02:25 AM
And just because they need blood to survive doesn't mean they do. We're not allowing them to kill people, or allowing them to take the blood they need from unwilling volunteers, we're suggesting a system where there is cooperation between vampire and man.

Such a system of cooperation seems possible to me. It's just that the parameters of this particular scenario are a tad fantastic, because... Well, fantasy.

Vampires are made up, so if one wants to do something new with them, make up some new rules, modify others, and use 'em to do what you want. Some people happen to find that idea interesting.

The first step to do though would probably be to treat them as people, since, you know, the only intelligent beings we do know on a human level are, well, human. Just give them a few unsavory needs (like blood-sucking) and suddenly you have a potentially interesting conflict.

AMFV
2014-01-03, 02:27 AM
Such a system of cooperation seems possible to me. It's just that the parameters of this particular scenario are a tad fantastic, because... Well, fantasy.

Vampires are made up, so if one wants to do something new with them, make up some new rules, modify others, and use 'em to do what you want. Some people happen to find that idea interesting.

The first step to do though would probably be to treat them as people, since, you know, the only intelligent beings we do know on a human level are, well, human. Just give them a few unsavory needs (like blood-sucking) and suddenly you have a potentially interesting conflict.

True I once wanted to create a setting where humans were ruled by Vampires who acquired their blood through a taxation system rather than predation and force. I mean you'd still have vampires that look down on humans but it'd be less prevalent.

Zrak
2014-01-03, 03:46 AM
Bringing up the cow/cheeseburger distinction implies the assumption that animals are treated better by people than people are by vampires, but I don't think that's something we can take for granted; being ripped up like lettuce at least sounds like it would be a lot quicker than many of the ways people have killed animals for food and sport over the years. If this is in a quasi-medieval setting, think about the sort of devices trappers are using, the manner in which animals like boars are hunted, activities like bear- and badger-baiting, and so on.

This is, of course, without even starting on how humans treat other humans for reasons even less connected to their immediate need to survive.

The group doesn't need to establish that vampires are good guys, it can just be that they're the lesser evil. Despite the decidedly unsympathetic vampires in your setting, you probably still won't even have to bring out the really nasty human atrocities to make the point. At a certain point, monsters that just kill you for food, however coldly, don't even begin to compare. That's the point where the advocates should start.

AMFV
2014-01-03, 04:20 AM
Bringing up the cow/cheeseburger distinction implies the assumption that animals are treated better by people than people are by vampires, but I don't think that's something we can take for granted; being ripped up like lettuce at least sounds like it would be a lot quicker than many of the ways people have killed animals for food and sport over the years. If this is in a quasi-medieval setting, think about the sort of devices trappers are using, the manner in which animals like boars are hunted, activities like bear- and badger-baiting, and so on.

This is, of course, without even starting on how humans treat other humans for reasons even less connected to their immediate need to survive.

The group doesn't need to establish that vampires are good guys, it can just be that they're the lesser evil. Despite the decidedly unsympathetic vampires in your setting, you probably still won't even have to bring out the really nasty human atrocities to make the point. At a certain point, monsters that just kill you for food, however coldly, don't even begin to compare. That's the point where the advocates should start.

Also as has been established they don't have to kill you for food, so symbiotic existence is possible.

Coidzor
2014-01-03, 05:54 AM
The group doesn't need to establish that vampires are good guys, it can just be that they're the lesser evil. Despite the decidedly unsympathetic vampires in your setting, you probably still won't even have to bring out the really nasty human atrocities to make the point. At a certain point, monsters that just kill you for food, however coldly, don't even begin to compare. That's the point where the advocates should start.

Murder is OK because someone else invented genocide or torture gorn is a bit of a weak argument.


Also as has been established they don't have to kill you for food, so symbiotic existence is possible.

They're just also established to be categorically too much of a bunch of ***** to accept that possibility.

GrayGriffin
2014-01-03, 06:17 AM
the second pigs start being capable of wielding weapons and organizing well enough to fight us I'll accept that as valid. I won't really agree with it but from a logic perspective it would, atleast for the pigs, be a valid solution.

edit: albeit moderately less valid as we have the option of not eating pigs while still maintaining multiple sources of food....maybe move on to dolphin, see if those IQ points add to flavor.

1. Are you seriously advocating that someone only deserves to live if they are capable of defending themselves? So you wouldn't mind if I went on a baby-murdering spree? How about puppies? Or kittens?

2. Pigs are smarter than dolphins in the first place.

Grek
2014-01-03, 06:51 AM
They're just also established to be categorically too much of a bunch of ***** to accept that possibility.

It's been established that they lack the natural human instinct to not injure other humans, not that they are incapable of choosing not to hurt a human. Most humans see nothing wrong with eating a sandwich. This does not mean that are overcome by a sudden urge to devour an entire rack of them without paying every time they go to the deli.

Vampires are the same way in this setup. They drink blood because blood is food to them, but they don't kill people or drink blood from unwilling humans because doing that is illegal and will get them in big trouble.

Wardog
2014-01-03, 06:52 AM
I always thought vampire-advocacy stories (and mutants, superheroes, and similar things) were just metaphors for real-life prejudice. One could surely take real-life minority groups (such as jews, homosexuals, autistics, etc.) as inspiration, as these stories often do.



Unfortunately, I tend find those metaphores critically flawed, in that real-life minority groups are us, with minor or no differences from the rest of us, but who are mistreated or distrusted or marginalized due to ignorance or the desire for power over others.

Whereas mutants, vampires, etc include people that can kill you with their mind (often accidently), or need to eat people to survive, or (in the case of Magneto and co) have both the desire and means to conquer and subjegate everyone else.

Plus, I'm not sure "monsters are analogous to minority groups" doesn't have a whole load of unfortunate implications in itself.

Tanuki Tales
2014-01-03, 11:15 AM
Another thing that hasn't been mentioned yet (and pops up in fiction from time to time) is that vampires usually fall into an Enemy Mine scenario with humanity very fast. Even if humanity is just their preferred food source (and not their only), vampires will go to absolutely any ends to ensure the continued protection and survival of humanity.

So, to maneuver them into a position to be advocated. have something show up that just wants the flat genocide of all of humanity.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-03, 12:55 PM
1. Are you seriously advocating that someone only deserves to live if they are capable of defending themselves? So you wouldn't mind if I went on a baby-murdering spree? How about puppies? Or kittens?

2. Pigs are smarter than dolphins in the first place.

1: that's not what I'm advocating at all. what I'm advocating is that pigs aren't in a position we would be in with vampires as they're incapable of self defense where we are not, incapable of communication where we are not. I am advocating that pigs likely don't WANT to die but they aren't exactly able to stop it. we, unlike the vampires initially mentioned in this thread, are capable of going on without causing any direct harm to a pig if we so wanted, if pigs were capable of negotiating or fighting back chances are we would listen. vampires, again as shown at the start of this thread, have no reason to listen to negotiation as they are required by their nature to harm humans. listening to claims that it's immoral and stopping would just get them killed. if anything a logically thinking vampire would be able to understand that the best possible way to sustain their own race is to crush the infrastructure and knowledge-base of ours to better control their source of food....none of what I said makes it morally right to go out and kill something defenseless, but logically they wouldn't be able to stop you as I was saying.

2:and yet we get so much more sympathy for dolphins and efforts to conserve them, weird.

3: the main difference between eating something (plant, animal, doesn't matter) and a vampire eating a human is that it's us on the losing end. no matter what we have to cause harm to something to survive, this is an inescapable fact that we tend to ignore to make ourselves feel better, plants are alive yet we use them as a guilt free food source to avoid harming the nice little animals that oink and moo. a vampire, in order to survive, would put us through that same level of emotional distancing so that it could survive, we likely wouldn't like that much and so the process of keeping ourselves safe would involve removing all of them. it's not a matter of morals, it's a matter of logic and means.

tanuki tales: for a situation like that to gather enough actual support it would, again, require some other means of sustenance for vampires than humans. otherwise it's trading death for willing acceptance of being slowly drained of blood.

Narren
2014-01-03, 01:06 PM
1. Are you seriously advocating that someone only deserves to live if they are capable of defending themselves? So you wouldn't mind if I went on a baby-murdering spree? How about puppies? Or kittens?

2. Pigs are smarter than dolphins in the first place.

I think there is a slight difference between eating pork and murdering babies.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-03, 01:18 PM
I think there is a slight difference between eating pork and murdering babies.

usually. slightly less of one if you're murdering them to eat them but then there's that whole cannibalism thing people complain about.

Elderand
2014-01-03, 01:24 PM
usually. slightly less of one if you're murdering them to eat them but then there's that whole cannibalism thing people complain about.

Meh, it's not so much a matter of morals as it is a matter of vastly increased chances of some diseases with cannibalism compared to other meat.

If we are on a plane and it crash in the mountains I wouldn't hesitate to eat any of you.

Admiral Squish
2014-01-03, 01:26 PM
I find a problem with your basic premise, honestly.

"These monsters are horribly sociopathic, unrepentant, and biologically evil, and everyone with a real brain knows it, but I need a bunch of crazy hippies who believe them to have a potential for good, and I don't want them to sound like crazy hippies."

If the monster is inherently, scientifically evil, then there is no debate that can be made that doesn't sound like crazy hippie stuff. If you oversimplify the truth of the matter, there's no arguments that can be made. Rather than just making all vampires irredeemably evil and sociopathic, why not make them actually complex, interesting characters with a depth beyond 'I'm a terrible person, please murder me'.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-03, 01:28 PM
Meh, it's not so much a matter of morals as it is a matter of vastly increased chances of some diseases with cannibalism compared to other meat.

If we are on a plane and it crash in the mountains I wouldn't hesitate to eat any of you.

I decided to take that as a compliment on my cleanliness and an insult on my general health at the same time. but yes as you showcased rather easily in that comment, morality doesn't come into the equation in a matter of survival. excuse the stupidity of my saying this in a thread discussing vampires but self preservation is not a matter for those with bleeding hearts.

Elderand
2014-01-03, 01:33 PM
I decided to take that as a compliment on my cleanliness and an insult on my general health at the same time. but yes as you showcased rather easily in that comment, morality doesn't come into the equation in a matter of survival. excuse the stupidity of my saying this in a thread discussing vampires but self preservation is not a matter for those with bleeding hearts.

Oh it's not a comment about anyone's health, it's just that you are more likely to contract a prion based disease (mad cow) if you practice cannibalism.

That's how mad cow started, we fed cattle with flour made from cattle.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-03, 01:35 PM
Oh it's not a comment about anyone's health, it's just that you are more likely to contract a prion based disease (mad cow) if you practice cannibalism.

That's how mad cow started, we fed cattle with flour made from cattle.

was joking on that bit :P.

Elderand
2014-01-03, 01:37 PM
was joking on that bit :P.

I wasn't, I will eat you should it become necessery :P

Red Fel
2014-01-03, 01:40 PM
One of the themes of this setting is to address the alien nature of non-human creatures. Vampires aren't humans with superpowers who happen to drink blood.

I think this is the key point, right here. You have to decide whether you're dealing with monstrous creatures with human-like minds, who have an admittedly different perspective on what is nonetheless Black and White Morality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackAndWhiteMorality), or in the case of monsters it might be slightly more ambiguous (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreyAndGrayMorality), or whether being a non-human is so fundamentally different, their minds so inherently alien, that their logic is completely incomprehensible to us (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality).

If the former, you have the perfect baseline for monsters and humans setting down together at the peace table. Both have the same wants, the same needs, just expressed differently. Vampires, for instance, want for love, home, community, the same as humans do; they just happen to be photophobic and require fresh plasma infusions through an orally-delivered medium. You can have your Buffy or True Blood scenario.

But remember the other aspect of the Buffy vampire - with very few exceptions, they have no souls. Now, in Buffy, they played this up by making vampires inherently evil. I think that's a bit shallow and cliched, but that doesn't have to be the case. You could instead write it as they have simply a different concept of morality altogether. As you mentioned in your burger example, they few humans as food, and why reason with food? But again, you don't need to go there either.

Consider any number of movies or books where a character existed who had no concept of love, morality, or mercy. This wasn't a cruel or wicked person, but simply someone who did not understand these concepts. For the most part, they are human concepts, and a non-human may have no need to develop a capacity for tenderness or affection. They simply don't understand why they can't feast on the tender flesh and drink the sweet blood of innocent humans. It's not that they look down on their prey - they might even like or respect them. They might even see it as a sign of respect to feed upon someone. (Picture the classic Dracula only wishing to feed on exceptionally beautiful virgins.) They simply don't see why it should be a problem.

If you're starting from a Blue and Orange Morality standpoint, the ability for non-humans and humans to live together becomes strained. It's one thing to give a child a rule to follow that the child doesn't understand. The child may obey for fear of punishment, because you are bigger and stronger and an authority figure. But these are beings out of the collective nightmares of the human unconsciousness. If they follow such rules, and don't understand them, it is either because they want peace or because they fear reprisal. You therefore have to put humanity in a position where humanity is a threat to non-humans. Otherwise, what incentive do they have to obey?

If humanity is a threat to non-humans, a genuine and existential threat, the question becomes this: Why does humanity want peace? Obviously, the embattled non-humans would prefer not to be annihilated. But if humans can overcome and destroy them, why wouldn't they? Look at motivation. What reason would the humans have to stop their march of victory, and say, "We're willing to spare you if you agree to live by these rules"?

This, in essence, is the heart of the debate in my mind. Boiled down to bullet points: Are vampires merely humans-but-different, or are they completely alien? If they are merely humans-but-different, they can easily argue for their right to exist, by essentially alleging that they are differently-abled humans, much like others with medical conditions (but replace "needs a wheelchair" with "must feed on blood," for example). Philosophically speaking, if they can make the argument that they are mentally and morally humanlike, they should be able to seek peaceful coexistence. If they are completely alien, a new series of questions emerges. First, why should they follow the rules? Is it due to human threat? Second, if it is due to human threat, why do humans tolerate their continued existence?The same applies to most non-human races you might introduce into a setting.

Personally, I think that if you have vampires that are just blood-drinking sun-fearing humans, they should be able to seek the protection of the law. The challenge only arises if they don't understand the need to follow that law. Remember also that even if vampires are protected by laws, like any other citizen, there will always be vampires who break the law, and humans who hate law-abiding vampires for purely bigoted reasons. Such is the way of things.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-03, 01:43 PM
I wasn't, I will eat you should it become necessery :P

understandable, you have no reason in your mind to place my survival over your own and as such for you it's a valid trade. which oh so conveniently segues back on topic, humanity has no valid reason to put vampires' survival over their own survival and freedom so even if laws were put in place by a (incredibly shortsighted) ruler there would only be so many people willing to go in to be fed on and they'd likely die or be turned quickly enough that the only ones left on the menu are the ones who object enough to fight back.

Zrak
2014-01-03, 01:56 PM
Murder is OK because someone else invented genocide or torture gorn is a bit of a weak argument.

This is true, but this is also pretty much the argument for going out and killing the vampires in the first place.

Anyway, I thought of a few other things after re-reading the comments that trying to relate to vampires is like trying to befriend a shark. Taking this line of reasoning a little further, sharks sometimes kill people and there's really no hope of convincing them not to, yet you don't really see people going out to eliminate all the sharks for our protection, so let's look at some reasons why not.

1) Sharks don't really kill very many people; assuming typical restrictions, neither will vampires.
Simply put, investing the effort required to eliminate vampires would be a big waste of time and manpower, considering they probably aren't the biggest threat humanity faces, or even in the top fifty or so. Towns near vampire nests can just have an early curfew and be very careful about inviting strangers into their homes. At this point, going out to kill vampires doesn't really achieve much, since it just diverts adventurers from more meaningful contributions like chasing off goblin raids or even just sitting around using their magic to feed the hungry and heal the sick. Going after vampires changes the party from Heroes into self-absorbed glory-seekers who aren't after helping people, but instead just want to make their name as vampire slayers. Have lots of common people regard them with eye-rolling, and the Monster Rights people take them to task on "real problems" humans face.

2) There are very serious disadvantages to killing lots of sharks; there are downsides to killing or even trying to kill vampires.

Again, if we're assuming these vampires follow some of the traditional "rules," like burning up in sunlight and requiring an invitation to enter a home, they aren't going to be preying on a really significant number of humans. They are, however, going to prey on a significant number of other monsters, since they need food from somewhere. For instance, hill giants probably mostly sleep out in the open, and they're going to have a lot more blood than humans; leaving vampires alone probably thins the dangerous hill giant population considerably. The same way eliminating sharks would horrifically damage the ecosystem and doesn't really serve much purpose given how few people they kill, killing vampires would decrease predation on other monsters and not actually save that many people. Not only is there no point to killing sharks/vampires outside of self-defense, but doing so is actively detrimental to human life.
Moreover, if vampires retain the class levels and abilities of their living forms, hunting vampires probably adds to the danger of vampires more than it lessens it; every hero who fails could mean another extremely powerful vampire. Again, leaving them alone is the better option, since it at least somewhat limits their reproductive options; an orc warrior-the-npc-class makes a considerably less dangerous vampire than a human sorcerer. So, to sum it up: killing vampires serves little to no purpose and is, in fact, actively detrimental not just to the protection of humanity in general, but even to the protection of humanity from vampires, specifically.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-03, 02:19 PM
This is true, but this is also pretty much the argument for going out and killing the vampires in the first place.

Anyway, I thought of a few other things after re-reading the comments that trying to relate to vampires is like trying to befriend a shark. Taking this line of reasoning a little further, sharks sometimes kill people and there's really no hope of convincing them not to, yet you don't really see people going out to eliminate all the sharks for our protection, so let's look at some reasons why not.

partly because we aren't aquatic and sharks aren't specifically seeking us out to eat us. we travel into their territory and their environment not the other way around, vampires would be in human territory because that's where we are.



1) Sharks don't really kill very many people; assuming typical restrictions, neither will vampires.
Simply put, investing the effort required to eliminate vampires would be a big waste of time and manpower, considering they probably aren't the biggest threat humanity faces, or even in the top fifty or so. Towns near vampire nests can just have an early curfew and be very careful about inviting strangers into their homes. At this point, going out to kill vampires doesn't really achieve much, since it just diverts adventurers from more meaningful contributions like chasing off goblin raids or even just sitting around using their magic to feed the hungry and heal the sick. Going after vampires changes the party from Heroes into self-absorbed glory-seekers who aren't after helping people, but instead just want to make their name as vampire slayers. Have lots of common people regard them with eye-rolling, and the Monster Rights people take them to task on "real problems" humans face.

again, sharks don't kill many people because we aren't a normal part of their environment, they prey on seals, we get attacked in their waters because they confuse us for seals or just get curious and go "I wonder how that thing tastes". vampires aren't in that same situation because they actively know what they're hunting down, they understand where humans are, what they do to protect themselves, and have tricks specifically made for making the hunt easier. for all intents and purposes they fill the niche of "natural predator" that we make nigh on impossible to reach in the real world by our use of technology.



2) There are very serious disadvantages to killing lots of sharks; there are downsides to killing or even trying to kill vampires.

Again, if we're assuming these vampires follow some of the traditional "rules," like burning up in sunlight and requiring an invitation to enter a home, they aren't going to be preying on a really significant number of humans. They are, however, going to prey on a significant number of other monsters, since they need food from somewhere. For instance, hill giants probably mostly sleep out in the open, and they're going to have a lot more blood than humans; leaving vampires alone probably thins the dangerous hill giant population considerably. The same way eliminating sharks would horrifically damage the ecosystem and doesn't really serve much purpose given how few people they kill, killing vampires would decrease predation on other monsters and not actually save that many people. Not only is there no point to killing sharks/vampires outside of self-defense, but doing so is actively detrimental to human life.

so, your argument is that if you let a town live in terror from the vampires that moved outside of it specifically to eat the townspeople they'll be perfectly safe in the day from...bigger threatening giants that the vampires are smart enough to know are huge and threatening...yeah. we're talking about intelligent creatures here, if they can't figure out how to get around an invitation inside or a curfew they wouldn't last long enough to be a race in their own right. and if they really let those things be what turns them away from humans to the much more dangerous target of giants...well then I have to question if their brains weren't the first thing they lost.

alternatively they could avoid giant territory in the first place because setting up a village next to a bunch of hill giants is a terrible idea more likely to get them killed than to make the vampires, who can easily kill the remaining population and move on to a new town, stop attacking them..



Moreover, if vampires retain the class levels and abilities of their living forms, hunting vampires probably adds to the danger of vampires more than it lessens it; every hero who fails could mean another extremely powerful vampire. Again, leaving them alone is the better option, since it at least somewhat limits their reproductive options; an orc warrior-the-npc-class makes a considerably less dangerous vampire than a human sorcerer. So, to sum it up: killing vampires serves little to no purpose and is, in fact, actively detrimental not just to the protection of humanity in general, but even to the protection of humanity from vampires, specifically.

this is valid in situations where the adventurers are so terribly prepared to deal with vampires that they shouldn't be considering it in the first place, but give them a cleric and paladin, some time and materials to prepare, and it becomes another trip out to deal with something threatening the town. further if the situation is really what you mentioned then consider that "orc warrior-the-npc-class" from some place that wasn't protected had about 100 friends, all of whom were turned or dominated...by leaving the vampires alone you've allowed them to grow their forces to a point where even your helpful adventurers are going to be extremely lucky to survive.

Zrak
2014-01-03, 03:39 PM
we travel into their territory and their environment not the other way around, vampires would be in human territory because that's where we are.
Vampires can no more enter a home uninvited than sharks flop out of the ocean and stroll down the boardwalk looking for a bite to eat. Again, human settlements near vampire nests just need early curfews and strict rules about inviting strangers in to minimize the danger. The isolated trapper/hunter/ranger might get drained, but they've taken up relatively risky professions, anyway. Regular people living in established settlements have little or nothing to worry about from vampires that operate under relatively traditional restrictions.


so, your argument is that if you let a town live in terror from the vampires that moved outside of it specifically to eat the townspeople they'll be perfectly safe in the day from...bigger threatening giants that the vampires are smart enough to know are huge and threatening...yeah.
My argument is that people who live in towns in a D&D world live in constant terror of basically everything around them, or at least should live in constant terror of basically everything around them. Of all those myriad threats, vampires are not only one of the most manageable without confrontation, but will manage some of the other threats if left to their own devices. Giants are a threat day and night, inside or outside one's home; vampires are a threat to the townspeople who leave their homes after dark. Giants are a threat to the townspeople, not so much to vampires; a big strong guy with a club isn't a threat to someone with comparable ability scores, a dominating gaze, damage reduction, and the ability to turn into mist and retreat if things start going poorly.


we're talking about intelligent creatures here, if they can't figure out how to get around an invitation inside or a curfew they wouldn't last long enough to be a race in their own right.

They can get around it very easily, by eating things that aren't humans. Giants or orcs may be more threatening than humans, but it's not like any of them pose a meaningful threat to most vampires.


and if they really let those things be what turns them away from humans to the much more dangerous target of giants...well then I have to question if their brains weren't the first thing they lost.
I disagree entirely. If I were an intelligent creature with superhuman physical abilities but equally extreme weaknesses, I would mostly prey on creatures that were individually large, but mostly isolated and unintelligent, rather than attempting to prey on small, intelligent, organized creatures who are often aware of my extremely crippling weaknesses. Preying on humans not only requires requires more effort for less reward, but is actually more dangerous in the long run. Intelligent vampires would avoid raiding human settlements because intelligent, organized creatures are going to deploy intelligent, organized countermeasures.


alternatively they could avoid giant territory in the first place because setting up a village next to a bunch of hill giants is a terrible idea more likely to get them killed than to make the vampires, who can easily kill the remaining population and move on to a new town, stop attacking them..
So your contention is that vampires are the only monsters that seek out human settlements to raid? I don't really think that that's tenable. Moreover, it's not just giants, it's giants, orcs, goblinoids, ogres, gnolls, harpies, lizardfolk, and so on. Drow or duergar could be miles below you without you knowing until they invaded. Basically, everything in the entire world is trying to kill you, and it is not reasonable to assume there is anywhere even remotely safe.


this is valid in situations where the adventurers are so terribly prepared to deal with vampires that they shouldn't be considering it in the first place, but give them a cleric and paladin, some time and materials to prepare, and it becomes another trip out to deal with something threatening the town.
I thought the vampires were intelligent? Are they just sitting their lairs, unguarded, waiting to get killed? That doesn't sound intelligent to me. If I were a vampire, my lair would be extremely well-hidden, extremely heavily trapped, guarded by expendable undead I can control, and I'd have spent my incredibly long life building up class levels with which to defend myself. Also, I wouldn't antagonize intelligent, well-organized creatures if I could avoid it, especially when they provide so little blood for the effort involved.


further if the situation is really what you mentioned then consider that "orc warrior-the-npc-class" from some place that wasn't protected had about 100 friends, all of whom were turned or dominated...by leaving the vampires alone you've allowed them to grow their forces to a point where even your helpful adventurers are going to be extremely lucky to survive.
I'll defer here to all the earlier explanations about why vampires must keep their numbers limited. Moreover, if we assume this isn't the case and that vampires can just reproduce freely without consequence, why have they not already done so and overrun the world?
Adventurers are high-value targets because they make powerful additions to the vampire community. Orcs and such are better than nothing if the vampire really needs to reproduce, but not worth it, otherwise.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-03, 04:02 PM
Vampires can no more enter a home uninvited than sharks flop out of the ocean and stroll down the boardwalk looking for a bite to eat. Again, human settlements near vampire nests just need early curfews and strict rules about inviting strangers in to minimize the danger. The isolated trapper/hunter/ranger might get drained, but they've taken up relatively risky professions, anyway. Regular people living in established settlements have little or nothing to worry about from vampires that operate under relatively traditional restrictions.

let me see, any spell that blocks negative effects of sunlight expose, congratulations you're no longer forced to be a nocturnal hunter. any human tricked by the vampire into looking into their eyes, congratulations you now have a dominated servant to invite you in.

you keep using sharks as an example but the fact of the matter is they wouldn't be dangerous to humans in nearly the same way as vampires, they wouldn't interact in nearly the same way, they have an entirely different environment.



My argument is that people who live in towns in a D&D world live in constant terror of basically everything around them, or at least should live in constant terror of basically everything around them. Of all those myriad threats, vampires are not only one of the most manageable without confrontation, but will manage some of the other threats if left to their own devices. Giants are a threat day and night, inside or outside one's home; vampires are a threat to the townspeople who leave their homes after dark. Giants are a threat to the townspeople, not so much to vampires; a big strong guy with a club isn't a threat to someone with comparable ability scores, a dominating gaze, damage reduction, and the ability to turn into mist and retreat if things start going poorly.

you're assuming two things here, one is the "they can't find a way in even if they're VERY smart" which isn't true. the other is that out of the two food sources, one being a giant who could be a threat the other being a human in the street or in their home who clearly can't the vampire will somehow choose the one big and strong enough to smash it into the ground with said club. risk/reward doesn't work like that, when you have a populace in fear of you and thus very likely to react like frightened idiots instead of mount a rational defense you attack them, not the giants who have a reason for not fearing you.




They can get around it very easily, by eating things that aren't humans. Giants or orcs may be more threatening than humans, but it's not like any of them pose a meaningful threat to most vampires.

again, risk/reward as well as somehow assuming a vampire would live near a human settlement without having a plan to get those humans.



I disagree entirely. If I were an intelligent creature with superhuman physical abilities but equally extreme weaknesses, I would mostly prey on creatures that were individually large, but mostly isolated and unintelligent, rather than attempting to prey on small, intelligent, organized creatures who are often aware of my extremely crippling weaknesses. Preying on humans not only requires requires more effort for less reward, but is actually more dangerous in the long run. Intelligent vampires would avoid raiding human settlements because intelligent, organized creatures are going to deploy intelligent, organized countermeasures.

intelligent organized creatures will indeed deploy countermeasures...which is why you panic them similar to how most vampires would. assuming everything that isn't human but still a valid target for feeding is stupid is..well..stupid. giants (notice the plural) are hardly isolated, orcs aren't exactly isolated and they're at least smart enough to put up some defenses for whatever settlements they have. preying on humans, especially with the VERY weak defenses of "implement a curfew and don't invite people in" that you suggested is much less risky than going into a group of enemies who are usually armed and trying to eat one.



So your contention is that vampires are the only monsters that seek out human settlements to raid? I don't really think that that's tenable. Moreover, it's not just giants, it's giants, orcs, goblinoids, ogres, gnolls, harpies, lizardfolk, and so on. Drow or duergar could be miles below you without you knowing until they invaded. Basically, everything in the entire world is trying to kill you, and it is not reasonable to assume there is anywhere even remotely safe.

actually no I didn't say that vampires are the only creatures that would raid a human settlement, but they are the ones most likely to set up a semi-permanent base RIGHT by one. towns take time to make and the one you mentioned was stupidly set up next to hill giants, hill giants as the name implies tend to live in the hills..put that together and you see that humans likely took the time despite knowing hill giants were present to settle there. if you are aware of a threat you have two options, avoid it or kill it. avoiding it requires not placing your town right in front of it full of things it wants and saying "we live here now".



I thought the vampires were intelligent? Are they just sitting their lairs, unguarded, waiting to get killed? That doesn't sound intelligent to me. If I were a vampire, my lair would be extremely well-hidden, extremely heavily trapped, guarded by expendable undead I can control, and I'd have spent my incredibly long life building up class levels with which to defend myself. Also, I wouldn't antagonize intelligent, well-organized creatures if I could avoid it, especially when they provide so little blood for the effort involved.

ah I see so they can use their intelligence and levels but only if they completely avoid the level 1 commoners in town to go chew on a hill giant or orc warcamp. glad to know the ones who will attack are all braindead as a condition of that.



I'll defer here to all the earlier explanations about why vampires must keep their numbers limited. Moreover, if we assume this isn't the case and that vampires can just reproduce freely without consequence, why have they not already done so and overrun the world?
Adventurers are high-value targets because they make powerful additions to the vampire community. Orcs and such are better than nothing if the vampire really needs to reproduce, but not worth it, otherwise.


actually, weaker spawn serving as expendable troops is a valid strategy for overwhelming something. you have an army of orcs in hand and you want to draw out more easy food? use your army to go in destroy the town and capture the fleeing townspeople then you have easy access to any of them. the orcs can then be sent elsewhere ore destroyed since their purpose for being turned was achieved.

edit: if you're going to argue in favor of vampires not being a threat please PLEASE at least put more effort into it than "if we hide in our houses and ignore them they'll go away".

Zrak
2014-01-03, 06:30 PM
let me see, any spell that blocks negative effects of sunlight expose,
Is there such a spell? I'm not familiar with anything that lets PF vampires move around in the daylight with impunity. If there is such a spell, then all bets are off.


any human tricked by the vampire into looking into their eyes, congratulations you now have a dominated servant to invite you in.
If the humans are looking into the vampires eyes, they're already done for because they're outside or the vampire is inside. It's really simple. At sunset, close opaque curtains, close the door, and don't let anyone in. Vampires are harmless to you, now. I mean, yeah, some idiot will open his door and get eaten, but that's his problem. Does it suck that you have to do this? Sure. Does everything about your life suck because you're a peasant in a medieval world populated by innumerable magical horrors that are trying to kill you? Also yes.


you keep using sharks as an example but the fact of the matter is they wouldn't be dangerous to humans in nearly the same way as vampires, they wouldn't interact in nearly the same way, they have an entirely different environment.
I mentioned sharks once or maybe twice to draw the comparison to a remark from earlier in the thread. They're entirely inessential to the point.


you're assuming two things here, one is the "they can't find a way in even if they're VERY smart" which isn't true.
Actually, I'm assuming it's not worth the trouble to find a way in when there are much more easily available food sources that provide more blood. It's not even that they absolutely couldn't attack humans, it's that there is absolutely no reason for them to attack humans instead of easier, more lucrative prey.


the other is that out of the two food sources, one being a giant who could be a threat the other being a human in the street or in their home who clearly can't the vampire will somehow choose the one big and strong enough to smash it into the ground with said club.
I already addressed this. Simply put, the giant really is not a risk for most vampires. Aside from natural armor, damage reduction, and fast healing, the vampire automatically takes its gaseous form and returns to its coffin if reduced to zero hit point. In other words, if the giant manages to overcome the vampire against all odds, all the giant has actually managed to do is inconvenience the vampire for an hour or so; the vampire will be ready to go out and hunt again the same night.
Also, you're getting far too hung up on giants; I just picked a monster at random.


risk/reward doesn't work like that, when you have a populace in fear of you and thus very likely to react like frightened idiots instead of mount a rational defense you attack them, not the giants who have a reason for not fearing you.
How do these panicky, inept humans survive the constant threats by which they're bombarded? At this point, there's no point in killing the vampire because the town is a lost cause; what are you going to do when the next threat comes, and the one after that?


again, risk/reward as well as somehow assuming a vampire would live near a human settlement without having a plan to get those humans.
Please stop just saying risk/reward and instead actually explain why a monster that is capable of at most inconveniencing the vampire counts as a risk.
Also, I'm not assuming they'd live near human settlements, I'm accepting for the sake of argument that they might live near human settlements. I don't see why vampires would ever bother with humans, so I don't see a good reason for them to seek out human settlements.


intelligent organized creatures will indeed deploy countermeasures...which is why you panic them similar to how most vampires would. assuming everything that isn't human but still a valid target for feeding is stupid is..well..stupid.
I said nothing about everything that isn't human; I said vampires would gravitate to the prey most able to provide food but least able to mount an organized, intelligent resistance. Things like drow and kobolds aren't good prey, things like giants, orcs, and smaller families of ogres are.


giants (notice the plural) are hardly isolated,
They travel in poorly-organized nomadic bands, their lives are often cut short by violence and disease, and it's not like the entire tribe is always together. Note the organization entry in the monster manual; lone vampires go after "solitary" giants, or "gangs" or "bands" of them.


orcs aren't exactly isolated and they're at least smart enough to put up some defenses for whatever settlements they have.
They also send smaller raiding parties out from the settlements. The vampire should be feeding on the hunters and raiding parties, not trying to fight a hundred orcs all at once. If the orcs stop raiding for the same reason humans impose a curfew, the vampire just solved the town's orc problem.


actually no I didn't say that vampires are the only creatures that would raid a human settlement, but they are the ones most likely to set up a semi-permanent base RIGHT by one.
Given that many of the threats in D&D are at least vaguely nomadic, this is probably true, but also meaningless; personally, I don't think it's any consolation that the orcs coming to slaughter every man, woman, and child in town don't have a semi-permanent settlement right next to it.


towns take time to make and the one you mentioned was stupidly set up next to hill giants, hill giants as the name implies tend to live in the hills..put that together and you see that humans likely took the time despite knowing hill giants were present to settle there. if you are aware of a threat you have two options, avoid it or kill it. avoiding it requires not placing your town right in front of it full of things it wants and saying "we live here now".
So, basically, humans need to avoid settling near temperate, hilly areas, to prevent giants from raiding. Okay, then they can hang out in marshy swamps, right? Oh, lizardfolk. Lizardfolk can't live in the arid deserts, so why shouldn't the humans move there? Oh, look, it's gnolls. Maybe if the humans just lived way up in the mountains? Nope, I guess the giants up there are worse, plus there are just as many orcs and goblins as everywhere else. Underground? I don't know where to start. Build a floating town and live in the middle of the ocean? Sahuagin, aboleths, and krakens? Oh, I see.
As I said, most of everything everywhere is trying to kill you. There is nowhere safe.


ah I see so they can use their intelligence and levels but only if they completely avoid the level 1 commoners in town to go chew on a hill giant or orc warcamp. glad to know the ones who will attack are all braindead as a condition of that.
Using their intelligence is what would lead them to chew on the giants and ogres and such, creatures with a lot of blood and nomadic cultures that aren't likely to mount organized resistances to a few members of the larger group, if there is one, going missing. If humans don't panic, which communities that survive any reasonable length of time don't, they will mount much more sustained and organized countermeasures; even if they do panic, they'll probably pool their money and call in adventurers. If a few orcs go missing, the other orcs fight over their stuff; when a couple kids go missing from their homes, it's the start of a quest. Humans are a lot more trouble than they're worth.


actually, weaker spawn serving as expendable troops is a valid strategy for overwhelming something. you have an army of orcs in hand and you want to draw out more easy food? use your army to go in destroy the town and capture the fleeing townspeople then you have easy access to any of them. the orcs can then be sent elsewhere ore destroyed since their purpose for being turned was achieved.
Okay, so why hasn't this already happened, then?

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-03, 07:31 PM
If the humans are looking into the vampires eyes, they're already done for because they're outside or the vampire is inside. It's really simple. At sunset, close opaque curtains, close the door, and don't let anyone in. Vampires are harmless to you, now. I mean, yeah, some idiot will open his door and get eaten, but that's his problem. Does it suck that you have to do this? Sure. Does everything about your life suck because you're a peasant in a medieval world populated by innumerable magical horrors that are trying to kill you? Also yes.

you do realize that towns in these conditions need to post guards and have people to receive travelers and supplies don't you? when you so actively point to other threats and say "they're going to kill them too so why worry about the vampires" you realize that they can't just shut absolutely everything down when it gets dark if there ARE those other threats. any guard watching for slavers or monsters or invasion becomes a target for a vampire to dominate and wreak as much havoc as they can with the town's defenses. if they DON'T post guards they open the door for every other danger in the world to just attack them at night while they're all cowering in their homes hoping they'll be safe..



Actually, I'm assuming it's not worth the trouble to find a way in when there are much more easily available food sources that provide more blood. It's not even that they absolutely couldn't attack humans, it's that there is absolutely no reason for them to attack humans instead of easier, more lucrative prey.

and who's going to guarantee that other targets are really easier? that the vampires even WANT those targets. go after the things all taught from a young age to swing an axe or club or go after the weak things hiding in fear?



I already addressed this. Simply put, the giant really is not a risk for most vampires. Aside from natural armor, damage reduction, and fast healing, the vampire automatically takes its gaseous form and returns to its coffin if reduced to zero hit point. In other words, if the giant manages to overcome the vampire against all odds, all the giant has actually managed to do is inconvenience the vampire for an hour or so; the vampire will be ready to go out and hunt again the same night.
Also, you're getting far too hung up on giants; I just picked a monster at random.
the average villager is even less of a risk, unlikely to know how to fight well, no defenses to speak of against the abilities of a creature practically designed to hunt them down, but hey they have a door that can be ripped off its hinges and a mind that can be taken control of between the vampire and them, obviously not a valid target. meanwhile the giant that can potentially make it run is the best target ever...

andif it helps I can get hung up on sharks.



How do these panicky, inept humans survive the constant threats by which they're bombarded? At this point, there's no point in killing the vampire because the town is a lost cause; what are you going to do when the next threat comes, and the one after that?

there's the thing..they likely don't. you know how common it is in a fantasy campaign for the village to be destroyed and the only survivors to be the ones smart or scared enough to run for it? heck that happens with BANDITS, you're talking about mystically powerful vampires with class levels. that's the reason adventurers are so necessary, why well trained guards are necessary, because without those a town IS doomed. as I said you see a threat your options are avoid it or kill it, in a world where just about everything is dangerous that means you pick your location VERY carefully and you bring a ton of weapons.



Please stop just saying risk/reward and instead actually explain why a monster that is capable of at most inconveniencing the vampire counts as a risk.
Also, I'm not assuming they'd live near human settlements, I'm accepting for the sake of argument that they might live near human settlements. I don't see why vampires would ever bother with humans, so I don't see a good reason for them to seek out human settlements.

because "inconveniencing" is still higher on the risk scale than "easy target".

and as I said earlier in the thread, the vampires originally being discussed had everything set up as targeting humans specifically. pathfinder and D&D ones don't need humans in specific but if they show up and are a threat to the town you still go out and deal with them. they just want to talk? sure, send a heavily armored diplomat with a neck-guard and smoked glasses. otherwise they have no reason to play nice with you, they have no reason to solve your problems for you, you are a source of blood and whatever material comforts they can get out of you.



I said nothing about everything that isn't human; I said vampires would gravitate to the prey most able to provide food but least able to mount an organized, intelligent resistance. Things like drow and kobolds aren't good prey, things like giants, orcs, and smaller families of ogres are.

just bolded the part I'm talking about.



They also send smaller raiding parties out from the settlements. The vampire should be feeding on the hunters and raiding parties, not trying to fight a hundred orcs all at once. If the orcs stop raiding for the same reason humans impose a curfew, the vampire just solved the town's orc problem.

ah right I was curious how an orc camp full of heavily armed troops was now a more valid target than a human town with a couple guards who apparently are afraid of the dark.. because the vampires all became highwaymen who prefer well armed targets. with this same reasoning they're now a danger to traveling merchants, couriers, supply caravans, and any other human group that might have to travel at night, that means they're more than just an orc problem.

and assuming for a second they manage to make the orc encampment stop attacking its neighbors..where do they get their food from now if not the aforementioned town in need of a night-light? or are they now going out of their way to become traveling human-friendly adventurers.



Given that many of the threats in D&D are at least vaguely nomadic, this is probably true, but also meaningless; personally, I don't think it's any consolation that the orcs coming to slaughter every man, woman, and child in town don't have a semi-permanent settlement right next to it.

it's not meant to be encouraging it's meant to point out the fact that vampires tend to gravitate to easily taken towns, throughout literature and gaming vampires have traditionally been smug self centered creatures seeking a lofty title and a supply of food they can rule over as a tyrant.



So, basically, humans need to avoid settling near temperate, hilly areas, to prevent giants from raiding. Okay, then they can hang out in marshy swamps, right? Oh, lizardfolk. Lizardfolk can't live in the arid deserts, so why shouldn't the humans move there? Oh, look, it's gnolls. Maybe if the humans just lived way up in the mountains? Nope, I guess the giants up there are worse, plus there are just as many orcs and goblins as everywhere else. Underground? I don't know where to start. Build a floating town and live in the middle of the ocean? Sahuagin, aboleths, and krakens? Oh, I see.
As I said, most of everything everywhere is trying to kill you. There is nowhere safe.

that's why you send in the big overly brooding adventurers with the swords and the spells and the willingness to kill that probably makes them really bad permanent guests.. but besides the point, I didn't mean "don't go anywhere for fear of monsters" I mean "when you see a bunch of monsters right next door to where you're going to put your town DO SOMETHING ABOUT THEM OR PICK SOMEWHERE ELSE". honestly I'm surprised adventurers don't charge stupid tax or demand extra for pre-existing conditions from mayors too foolish to check the surroundings for a fort full of monsters or a warcamp or a dragon cave BEFORE starting construction.



Using their intelligence is what would lead them to chew on the giants and ogres and such, creatures with a lot of blood and nomadic cultures that aren't likely to mount organized resistances to a few members of the larger group, if there is one, going missing. If humans don't panic, which communities that survive any reasonable length of time don't, they will mount much more sustained and organized countermeasures; even if they do panic, they'll probably pool their money and call in adventurers. If a few orcs go missing, the other orcs fight over their stuff; when a couple kids go missing from their homes, it's the start of a quest. Humans are a lot more trouble than they're worth.

ah I see, the "orcs are too selfish to worry about the thing that just killed their brother" route...no..you know what..putting that off for a second. the word "nomadic" should give a relatively clear indicator for why other creatures are less valid food sources for a vampire than humans. as you yourself pointed out vampires are likely to hide their lair, place lots of traps, and generally live comfortably in a hard to find place (albeit it's odd you say that then move on to "well they won't attack towns cause adventurers" when you were saying it in response to adventurers..). now then, with that fairly immobile base that takes time to set up it makes it difficult to get food from a nomadic culture that will likely travel WAY outside of your territory not long after you start snacking, you could always tear down your base after the time and effort put into it to go set it up near the nomadic group again only to have to tear it down yet again..or you could keep it in the very well hidden location with its traps and defenses that you set up to deal with intruders and trust that after all that work it will actually do what you made it to do.

on the "orcs are selfish" thing, if you're going to go with the traditional answer for that but declare that vampires have suddenly changed favored tactics from "eat villagers" to "eat things actually capable of fighting back because darn those pesky doors" then you're really set in your ways on not killing vampires. I'm astounded that you wouldn't have more sympathy for the other creatures those vampires would be killing if you're really that set on not killing them off.



Okay, so why hasn't this already happened, then?

could be because it's much easier and less resource/time intensive to just TAKE PEOPLE FROM THE TOWN. heck be subtle and use the right tricks and you OWN the town and can make your feeding habits near impossible to notice. hungry? take a bit from the dominated official over there and have them wear a scarf to hide the marks. accidentally overfeed and kill a guy? dispose of the body and say they were sent on official business elsewhere, blame monsters when he doesn't come back.

Coidzor
2014-01-03, 08:46 PM
It's been established that they lack the natural human instinct to not injure other humans, not that they are incapable of choosing not to hurt a human. Most humans see nothing wrong with eating a sandwich. This does not mean that are overcome by a sudden urge to devour an entire rack of them without paying every time they go to the deli.

Vampires are the same way in this setup. They drink blood because blood is food to them, but they don't kill people or drink blood from unwilling humans because doing that is illegal and will get them in big trouble.

They're acknowledged to be capable of doing so, but it's also been acknowledged that they don't care. They're not gonna be suicidal and try to eat someone while they're surrounded by sandwiches armed with laser rifles, but they're incapable of recognizing that the ones with laser rifles are anything other than sandwiches.

I don't believe that has actually been established. It's been put forth as a possibility, certainly. My recollection of the OP's words are that it's been established that they'll still be doing such things, even while manipulating their rubes/servitors/wossnames to give the appearance that they're not. Unless I managed to miss a post or something. :smallconfused:


This is true, but this is also pretty much the argument for going out and killing the vampires in the first place.

It's functionally identical to arguments for why one would put down criminal groups that are murdering people regularly, but not to "murder is OK because we've found worse things."

If anything you'd want to try to reduce it to a worse-sounding version of "genocide is OK because 99% of the population, possibly 100% of it are mass murderers." :smallconfused:


Anyway, I thought of a few other things after re-reading the comments that trying to relate to vampires is like trying to befriend a shark.

It's worse, because the Shark is a Shark and incapable of moral judgment. The vampire is capable of moral judgment & still views you as food rather than an entity.


Taking this line of reasoning a little further, sharks sometimes kill people and there's really no hope of convincing them not to, yet you don't really see people going out to eliminate all the sharks for our protection, so let's look at some reasons why not.

Sharks are relatively easily avoided, are rarely a problem unless a person is injured or gives the appearance of being an injured prey animal, and people have demonstrated that many of them can be swum with in a relative approximation of safety. Vampires will actively seek people out to the ends of the earth and thus far haven't been shown to be willing to dialogue so much as dominate or devour.


1) Sharks don't really kill very many people; assuming typical restrictions, neither will vampires.
Simply put, investing the effort required to eliminate vampires would be a big waste of time and manpower, considering they probably aren't the biggest threat humanity faces, or even in the top fifty or so. Towns near vampire nests can just have an early curfew and be very careful about inviting strangers into their homes. At this point, going out to kill vampires doesn't really achieve much, since it just diverts adventurers from more meaningful contributions like chasing off goblin raids or even just sitting around using their magic to feed the hungry and heal the sick. Going after vampires changes the party from Heroes into self-absorbed glory-seekers who aren't after helping people, but instead just want to make their name as vampire slayers. Have lots of common people regard them with eye-rolling, and the Monster Rights people take them to task on "real problems" humans face.

Doesn't really work in the OP's scenario because they're actually dealing with real problems caused by vampires, and the argument basically amounts to ignoring mobsters who enslave and kill people because there's something nastier that isn't already occupying the narrative somehow.


2) There are very serious disadvantages to killing lots of sharks; there are downsides to killing or even trying to kill vampires.

There's downsides to trying to take down the crime syndicate. There's downsides to trying to take down the evil lich. There's downsides to getting rid of the slaver ring. Most of these are either immaterial to adventurers or worth it in the long run for everyone who isn't an accomplice.


Again, if we're assuming these vampires follow some of the traditional "rules," like burning up in sunlight and requiring an invitation to enter a home, they aren't going to be preying on a really significant number of humans.

Vampires have always created their own invitations if they were so inclined as far as I can recall the genre. They're certainly capable of doing it with their SLAs in both 3.5 and PF, IIRC.


They are, however, going to prey on a significant number of other monsters, since they need food from somewhere. For instance, hill giants probably mostly sleep out in the open, and they're going to have a lot more blood than humans; leaving vampires alone probably thins the dangerous hill giant population considerably.

Demonstrably false if vampires are being found in human settlements preying on humans regularly, which IIRC is part of the established game in this case.


The same way eliminating sharks would horrifically damage the ecosystem and doesn't really serve much purpose given how few people they kill, killing vampires would decrease predation on other monsters and not actually save that many people. Not only is there no point to killing sharks/vampires outside of self-defense, but doing so is actively detrimental to human life.

You have to actually show that they're preying on other monsters instead of eating humans because it's so much easier, but, yeah, that would be one possibility and it definitely would have them go from threat to... something else most likely anyway.


Moreover, if vampires retain the class levels and abilities of their living forms, hunting vampires probably adds to the danger of vampires more than it lessens it; every hero who fails could mean another extremely powerful vampire. Again, leaving them alone is the better option, since it at least somewhat limits their reproductive options; an orc warrior-the-npc-class makes a considerably less dangerous vampire than a human sorcerer. So, to sum it up: killing vampires serves little to no purpose and is, in fact, actively detrimental not just to the protection of humanity in general, but even to the protection of humanity from vampires, specifically.

We should ignore them so that they can build up the numbers needed to become incapable of being overcome by our current crop of adventurers out of fears that the occasional adventurer will be turned that's actually not a complete chump, based upon the premise that non-civilized humanoids have a lack of PC-classed individuals. Assuming that non-civilized humanoids don't have individuals with PC class levels is a bit problematic due to the whole adventuring paradigm. It might be true in some games, but it tends to weaken the narrative when the Orc Warchief isn't even a Barbarian and he doesn't have any better caster support than an Adept.

Fiery Diamond
2014-01-03, 08:52 PM
I wasn't, I will eat you should it become necessery :P

And similarly, if I were in that plane crash with you and knew you thought this way, I would straight-up murder you before it even got to the point where you started to see it as a necessity. Whether you want me to call it survival drive on my part and a preemptive strike (such as we're talking about for killing the vampires) or me just seeing your heartlessness as worthy of death (the "kill them they're monsters" reason for killing vampires) is more or less irrelevant. The end result is the same, even if the justification isn't, and no one should have real reason to argue with it.

Zrak
2014-01-04, 03:45 AM
MonochromeTiger: I started writing a longer reply, but it started getting repetitive pretty quickly, so I'll summarize.
Any argument about human settlements: Put garlic there. Problem solved.
Any argument about monster societies: Please read the bestiary entries for the monsters in question.


It's worse, because the Shark is a Shark and incapable of moral judgment. The vampire is capable of moral judgment & still views you as food rather than an entity.
From the OP's post, I got the impression his/her vampires aren't really capable of moral judgment in the sense that we understand it. Regardless, the shark thing wasn't designed to be too serious a comparison.


Doesn't really work in the OP's scenario because they're actually dealing with real problems caused by vampires, and the argument basically amounts to ignoring mobsters who enslave and kill people because there's something nastier that isn't already occupying the narrative somehow.
I think that's a perfectly reasonable argument if there are limited resources; if something else is killing more people, even if it's disease or starvation, there's no reason not to have groups complaining that the adventurers should be handling that less glamorous but more lethal problem instead. The issue isn't whether or not you agree with the argument, but whether NPCs could make it without sounding like silly hippies.


There's downsides to trying to take down the crime syndicate. There's downsides to trying to take down the evil lich. There's downsides to getting rid of the slaver ring. Most of these are either immaterial to adventurers or worth it in the long run for everyone who isn't an accomplice.
I'm not really sure what you mean. If you're arguing the adventurers are going to ignore any potential consequences of their actions, that's probably true, but the OP is asking for reasons that NPCs could object to the heores' actions without sounding like idiots. Pointing out that the heroes might be putting the entire community at greater risk by going after the vampires is a perfectly reasonable reservation for those NPCs to have.


Vampires have always created their own invitations if they were so inclined as far as I can recall the genre. They're certainly capable of doing it with their SLAs in both 3.5 and PF, IIRC.
I'm not sure I follow you. In PF, the rules explicitly state that they cannot enter a house unless given permission by someone with the authority to do so. If the doors are closed and the curtains are drawn, they're going to have to burn several spells to get into a house. They probably don't have to use any spells to pick off wandering monsters. Again, I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it's probably more trouble than its worth.


Demonstrably false if vampires are being found in human settlements preying on humans regularly, which IIRC is part of the established game in this case.[/quote[
If that's the case, it stands to reason that the human settlements haven't taken adequate steps to prevent vampire raids; curfews, invitation precautions, garlic and mirrors everywhere, &c. The NPC group could advocate taking such precautions and leaving the vampire alone as a more productive and less risky solution than open confrontation.

[QUOTE=Coidzor;16721505]We should ignore them so that they can build up the numbers needed to become incapable of being overcome by our current crop of adventurers out of fears that the occasional adventurer will be turned that's actually not a complete chump, based upon the premise that non-civilized humanoids have a lack of PC-classed individuals.
Again, if they can/are going to build up those numbers, why haven't they already? Even the ones who've only been alive a few decades have had time, to say nothing of those that've been alive for centuries.


Assuming that non-civilized humanoids don't have individuals with PC class levels is a bit problematic due to the whole adventuring paradigm. It might be true in some games, but it tends to weaken the narrative when the Orc Warchief isn't even a Barbarian and he doesn't have any better caster support than an Adept.
Yeah, this is fair. Still, I guess one could argue it's better they have to just happen to find one of the relatively few orcs with class levels to turn than to basically spoon-feed them adventurers. Especially given how powerful a vampire would seem to a commoner, it's at least reasonable that a lot of NPCs would assume PCs were bound to fail.

Mr. Mask
2014-01-04, 03:53 AM
I suggest not having just one group taking this stance. You can have the reasonable guys who are being logical about it and just want an end to the violence, and the ones who want to treat the beasties like they're non-dangerous, when they are dangerous. The latter group could easily not really believe what they say, having other incentives for why they champion this (could go as far as them being in league with the beasties, or they might be getting money off monster insurance or getting votes).

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-04, 09:49 AM
MonochromeTiger: I started writing a longer reply, but it started getting repetitive pretty quickly, so I'll summarize.
Any argument about human settlements: Put garlic there. Problem solved.
Any argument about monster societies: Please read the bestiary entries for the monsters in question.

to use your argument: if just putting out garlic worked why didn't vampires stop being a threat in fantasy a long time ago. and if we're going by bestiary entries then you have even less to go on because any sufficiently smart vampire can just summon animals to find someone and drag them out. you're using the most simple possible solutions presented and not taking into account that their simplicity means there are quite a few ways around them..especially for a vampire old enough to have seen them in use.




I think that's a perfectly reasonable argument if there are limited resources; if something else is killing more people, even if it's disease or starvation, there's no reason not to have groups complaining that the adventurers should be handling that less glamorous but more lethal problem instead. The issue isn't whether or not you agree with the argument, but whether NPCs could make it without sounding like silly hippies.

in the situation presented by the OP so far that isn't the case though, and even if it were should the villagers just randomly decide "on second thought ignore those vampires making us miserable, go deal with this big problem then completely forget vampires exist"? no, they would have the adventurers deal with the other problem then go and kill the vampires because they're still a threat even if they aren't the biggest one.



I'm not really sure what you mean. If you're arguing the adventurers are going to ignore any potential consequences of their actions, that's probably true, but the OP is asking for reasons that NPCs could object to the heores' actions without sounding like idiots. Pointing out that the heroes might be putting the entire community at greater risk by going after the vampires is a perfectly reasonable reservation for those NPCs to have.

it's not about ignoring consequences it's about the fact that letting a threat remain because you're afraid to deal with it just gives that threat time to get bigger or pick away at you. you find someone who plans to hurt and kill several people over a long period of time, do you just ignore them because calling the cops means a cop might get hurt or do you call the people whose entire job is keeping the community safe to deal with the threat? calling the cops deals with the situation and prevents the prolonged suffering of the entire community, not calling the cops means you just actively acknowledged and allowed the pain and death that person just caused.



I'm not sure I follow you. In PF, the rules explicitly state that they cannot enter a house unless given permission by someone with the authority to do so. If the doors are closed and the curtains are drawn, they're going to have to burn several spells to get into a house. They probably don't have to use any spells to pick off wandering monsters. Again, I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it's probably more trouble than its worth.

ok, again, opening a door does not constitute going in. throwing something in to burn the house and force people out? also not going in. sending a dominated person in to force the residents out? not going in. forcing the door open and dominating the first person to (understandably) look at what just happened then ordering them to invite you in? still works as an invitation from someone inside. oh look, none of those require "burning through several spells".



If that's the case, it stands to reason that the human settlements haven't taken adequate steps to prevent vampire raids; curfews, invitation precautions, garlic and mirrors everywhere, &c. The NPC group could advocate taking such precautions and leaving the vampire alone as a more productive and less risky solution than open confrontation.

or it stands to reason that A: not every weakness of a vampire is common knowledge (you do have to understand many settings require you to make a knowledge roll to understand what half the things you're fighting actually are, if the seasoned adventurer needs to have studied to get basic details a town in the middle of nowhere is pretty much doomed). B: vampires being smart as they are have found ways around each of those defenses in the past and are continuing to do so. C: the defenses aren't the astounding solution you think they are.



Again, if they can/are going to build up those numbers, why haven't they already? Even the ones who've only been alive a few decades have had time, to say nothing of those that've been alive for centuries.

again, they haven't because they don't need to. they have plenty of other means of getting their preferred target, the target that as I've said many times and as the OP's posts implied is an average, non weapon trained, human.



Yeah, this is fair. Still, I guess one could argue it's better they have to just happen to find one of the relatively few orcs with class levels to turn than to basically spoon-feed them adventurers. Especially given how powerful a vampire would seem to a commoner, it's at least reasonable that a lot of NPCs would assume PCs were bound to fail.

and we're still working on the assumption that a bunch of people desperate for their lives enough to go to incredibly stupid lengths with their daily routine are going to turn down a chance, even a small chance, of getting rid of the problem? seriously? stop saying vampires are dangerous if you're going to say that they're harmless with a couple of tricks and a lack of night life. think for a second. yes vampires will appear strong, largely because they ARE strong, but adventurers are strong too. after the first few vampires are killed the story will spread with trade, with diplomats, and with travel. suddenly it's not "those vampires are really dangerous we should hide from them and not provoke them at all (despite them being the ones who started it)" to "they can die like anything else, get your toughest adventurers and rid us of the blood sucking menaces".

I've already pointed out the flaw in shutting down everything at night since it cripples a town's defenses against other threats, kills any possibility of receiving potentially vital supplies that arrive later in the day (nope, sorry, gates are closed because everyone is in their house, just leave that caravan and its people outside where the vampires WILL eat them and take their stuff.), and equates to ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.. no.. actually it's not ignoring the problem, it's worse than that, it's admitting defeat and pretending they can hide from the consequences. if your villagers are seriously desperate enough to do that then they're definitely desperate enough to send a group of adventurers even remotely capable of making their lives more tolerable.

Frozen_Feet
2014-01-04, 03:37 PM
And similarly, if I were in that plane crash with you and knew you thought this way, I would straight-up murder you before it even got to the point where you started to see it as a necessity.

You realize that's likely to hurt your own survival chances and make it so you have to eat him?

Gazelles and cheetahs can drink from the same spring, because when cheetah is not lurking, the gazelles know it's not hungry. As such, these animals, the prey and the predator, can stroll within arm's reach of another, even if in different conditions the former would flee the latter. Homicidal fear towards carnivourous creatures isn't necessarily rational; you have to first ask whether it's worth the effort, and then whether they are contributing somethinng more when alive rather than dead.

Besides, "I will kill him before he even thinks of eating me!" doesn't really stand on higher moral ground than "I'm going to kill and eat him to survive". :smalltongue:

AMFV
2014-01-04, 03:41 PM
And similarly, if I were in that plane crash with you and knew you thought this way, I would straight-up murder you before it even got to the point where you started to see it as a necessity. Whether you want me to call it survival drive on my part and a preemptive strike (such as we're talking about for killing the vampires) or me just seeing your heartlessness as worthy of death (the "kill them they're monsters" reason for killing vampires) is more or less irrelevant. The end result is the same, even if the justification isn't, and no one should have real reason to argue with it.

I think murdering somebody because they might want to murder you, potentially is probably frowned on most places, I'd think that it'd be the same for vampires.



Besides, "I will kill him before he even thinks of eating me!" doesn't really stand on higher moral ground than "I'm going to kill and eat him to survive". :smalltongue:

Also you realize that this way there's no tasty man pies and that's a terrific shame.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-04, 03:53 PM
I think murdering somebody because they might want to murder you, potentially is probably frowned on most places, I'd think that it'd be the same for vampires.

ah but when you know for a fact they're there to kill you it's called a preemptive strike.




Also you realize that this way there's no tasty man pies and that's a terrific shame.

'tis indeed quite a shame. especially if you kill them so far ahead of when starvation actually becomes a problem and spoil any viability for food.

AMFV
2014-01-04, 03:56 PM
ah but when you know for a fact they're there to kill you it's called a preemptive strike.

That's why if you're inclined to eat folk, you should just start killing people on the plane before it starts to crash, which is even more preemptive.





'tis indeed quite a shame. especially if you kill them so far ahead of when starvation actually becomes a problem and spoil any viability for food.

Yep, and you'd be stuck with smoked man, and that's really not as good as succulent juicy human.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-04, 04:03 PM
That's why if you're inclined to eat folk, you should just start killing people on the plane before it starts to crash, which is even more preemptive.

that tends to end badly what with not having viable reason to know they're there to kill you, and likely being much less armed than the people who would react.



Yep, and you'd be stuck with smoked man, and that's really not as good as succulent juicy human.

I'm curious how you've found the equipment to properly smoke meat in this hypothetical situation. that said the fact that it's now added to the situation opens up the door for delusions of a cannibalism based cooking show brought on by fumes from the ruined engines and pain from whatever wounds were sustained getting there. now we'd just need a title, is "to serve man" too cliche?

AMFV
2014-01-04, 04:12 PM
that tends to end badly what with not having viable reason to know they're there to kill you, and likely being much less armed than the people who would react.

Insanity is a pretty good reason, I'd say it's the most viable reason...




I'm curious how you've found the equipment to properly smoke meat in this hypothetical situation. that said the fact that it's now added to the situation opens up the door for delusions of a cannibalism based cooking show brought on by fumes from the ruined engines and pain from whatever wounds were sustained getting there. now we'd just need a title, is "to serve man" too cliche?

You don't carry a portable smoker with you when you fly? That's just unpreparedness.

Elderand
2014-01-04, 04:15 PM
To clarify, yes I'd eat any of you if my survival was at stake.

But I'm a reasonable fellow. I'd start by eating the dead and only after all other rations had gone.

That being said, I'm also a smart fellow, so once the dea run out I would keep you alive...just slicing bitts off now and then to survive, that way you won't spoil.

MonochromeTiger
2014-01-04, 04:28 PM
Insanity is a pretty good reason, I'd say it's the most viable reason...

oh for self justification sure. but really all you need for that is to say "I feel like doing this so I will do it".



You don't carry a portable smoker with you when you fly? That's just unpreparedness.

admittedly a lack of portable smokers is one of my flaws, next to incurable sarcasm and a tendency to favor less moral but still viable tactics.


To clarify, yes I'd eat any of you if my survival was at stake.

the feeling is mutual.



But I'm a reasonable fellow. I'd start by eating the dead and only after all other rations had gone.

then it's a very good thing at least one other person on this hypothetical forum flight brought a portable smoker, in honor of that I'd suggest trying to eat AMFV last...then completely failing to kill and eat me because I'd have stolen all the tiny bags of peanuts and run off to make a shelter.



That being said, I'm also a smart fellow, so once the dea run out I would keep you alive...just slicing bitts off now and then to survive, that way you won't spoil.

well that's a reassuring thought. but somehow, much like the vampires keeping people alive only because they need their food-source to last, it would be relatively difficult for you to keep everyone alive so death (even accidental) is a risk for anyone you have available. further I'm fairly sure people would object quite a bit to being eaten piecemeal to roughly the same lethal extent that they would object to being killed and eaten. also despite general expectations of a good host and cook I suspect they would only get more upset if you offer them a bite.

Red Fel
2014-01-04, 07:12 PM
And now, waxing lyrical, as they are wont to do, Ambrosius, spokesvampire for the Freedom for All Non-humans Group.

Ahem. Thank you for having me this evening. On behalf of my organization, FANG, I wish to share the following message, paraphrasing the Bard, of course.

Hath not a vampire eyes? (Well, other than Drusilda, there, but there was this disagreement in Venice in the 16th century...) Hath not a vampire hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food? (Well, parts of it.) Hurt with the same weapons? (We get better.) Subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means? (Okay, those are both nos, ignore them.) Warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a human is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? (I wouldn't recommend it.) If you tickle us, do we not laugh? (I wouldn't recommend that either. Erminrude is a bit of a biter.) If you poison us, do we not die? (For some of us, that's how we got here in the first place.) And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (That's not a threat. Seriously. Put down the stakes...)

Thank you, Ambrosius.

Necroticplague
2014-01-04, 10:00 PM
I don't think morality would really become a large relevance to the extermination of monsters. There would be small fringe group that tries to stop it, and everyone else will politely ignore them while they go about their business. And if history is anything to go by, humans have a tendency to kill anything they can. Heck, few thousand years ago (closer to few hundred thousand), Homo Sapiens came to power by pretty much murdering every other hominid in existence, even though many were smarter, faster, stronger, reproduced faster, ect. Sapiens won out over all of them by gathering in big, well-organized groups and killing all of them. These vampires, trolls, orcs, ect. would be wiped out for the same reason H. Neanderthalis was: they pose a threat, so humans will wipe them out to eliminate it, morality be darned. The only thing that prevent them from doing this to everything else (like we humans have come to close to) is that most threats either live in an age where humans don't know too much about them, or else lack the means to do so. That, and the fact some other of these groups that are similarly social could also form the organized groups necessary.

Frozen_Feet
2014-01-05, 04:27 PM
There is basically no evidence for an extermination war between cro-magnons and neanderthals; that's a discredited theory. There is evidence of some instances of cro-magnons eating neanderthals, but there's more evidence of the two hominids living side by side and even interbreeding. It is likely cro-magnons contributed to neanderthals' extinction, but they did so by outhunting, not outfighting them. They did compete of the same food stuffs, but didn't war any more than cro-magnons did with each other.

Beleriphon
2014-01-05, 05:24 PM
There is basically no evidence for an extermination war between cro-magnons and neanderthals; that's a discredited theory. There is evidence of some instances of cro-magnons eating neanderthals, but there's more evidence of the two hominids living side by side and even interbreeding. It is likely cro-magnons contributed to neanderthals' extinction, but they did so by outhunting, not outfighting them. They did compete of the same food stuffs, but didn't war any more than cro-magnons did with each other.

There's also the evidence that early humans bred faster and more frequently. Plus early humans bred with neanderthals effectively eliminating them as a separate species.

Frozen_Feet
2014-01-12, 06:58 AM
Back on the topic, the best argument a monster can have for its rights is looking adorable. (http://www.stara.fi/2014/01/11/mies-lahti-savannille-halailemaan-leijonia/)

Imagine that same video with, say, dragons and blink dogs in place of lions and hyenas. "Who's a good firebreathing engine of death and destruction? Who?" :smallamused:

Again: any and all questions of monster rights are the exact same as rights of predatorous animals. Anything supernatural short of demonic possession is just superficial. It doesn't really matter which parts of you it eats and how, the core of "eats people" applies to all carni- and omnivorous species - even other humans.

Now, if demonic possession is involved, things get wildly different. Arguing rights for a demon is philosophically rather complex, because very existence of such creatures not just asks, but presupposes there is a definite answer to the question "what is evil?". After that, you are no longer trying to justify respectful treatment for a sentient being - you are trying to justify existence of evil. This quickly gets into the field of theology and metaphysics.

A good example of a setting where the question and its answer are not at all straight-forward: Princess Maker 2. In it, Lucifon the Prince of Darkness is given right by God to raze a sinfull and decadent kingdom to the ground. A hero rises to defend them, triumphing over the Prince, but upon his defeat the devil asks: "But why do you defend these people? I was only doing my job." The hero didn't have an answer. Later, one of the endings reveals that God always appoints and compels the strongest person in the netherworld to rule over it. Slaying the Prince proves a "hero" as that strongest person - basically, anyone who sinks to the level of the Devil to win the Devil, becomes the Devil ("He who fights monsters...")

The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis gives alltogether different set-up and different answer: in the second part, the protagonist feels inferior to the Devil, as he has hard time intellectually countering the temptations the Devil poses to Eve of Perelandra. He feels guilty for hating the Devil and restrains his urge to violence. However, after a point in the book he realizes that evil is the one thing you are perfectly justified and natural to hate, and in righteous indignation bashes the Devil to death. It's still not as black-and-white as it sounds, as at the same time, it is proven that fear and hatred towards otherness are a result of evil's corrupting influence. So a foreign, carnivorous creature might instinctively appear monstrous (this happens in the book), but that's an irrational reaction caused by evil whispering in your ear. So there's a distinction between hating evil for what it is, and hate that is evil due to resulting from incorrect judgment.

If we use vampires in particular as an example, the issue of vampire rights thus becomes different depending on which tradition you follow. Are they "just" reanimated corpses, caused by, say, a virus? Then they're no different from any other predatorous animal. Are they corpses possessed by demonic spirits? If you follow morality akin to Princess Maker 2, then that doesn't justify bad treatment towards them; they may be sinful, but countering violence with violence just makes you sinful as well. If you follow morality like the Space Trilogy, then destruction of them is perfectly just - provided they are correctly identified.

D&D alignment is actually a mix. When it comes to natural creatures, whether that be demi-humans, humanoids or monstrous creatures like dragons, it is in line with Princess Maker 2: even if they're evil, destruction of them is not good, and can make you evil as well. But when it comes to supernatural creatures like the Undead, Demons and Devils, it is in line with the Space Trilogy: destruction of such creatures is not only acceptable, it is a good act because it actively rids world of evil.

hamishspence
2014-01-12, 07:05 AM
Should be noted that many devils were once angels in D&D (especially archdevils).

And some demons have ceased to be evil-aligned. Planescape may have came up with the concept- but it's not absent in 3.0/3.5.