Roleplaying Good (aligned) Bad Guys [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Oramac

2018-08-17, 07:48 AM

Unoriginal

2018-08-17, 10:57 AM

How can we justify Good-Aligned bad guys?

Either they're bad guys or they're good-aligned. You need to choose.

Liches

You can't. 5e's Lichdom is antithetic to being good.

Chromatic Dragons

Chromatic Dragons can be good, they don't need justification. Most aren't because their personalities (partially through Deity's influence) make them prefer being tyrants or destroyers.

If any of them prefer being benevolent, there is no reason why they can't be.

Death Knights

You can't. Death Knights are evil Undead who raise up from an evil former Paladin who had forsaken their oaths and vows.

Even if you somehow redeemed one, then they'd just go back to the rest of death.

Demons/Devils, etc.

You can't. A Devil or Demon who'd turn good would stop being a Devil/Demon and turn into another type of outsider.

is a genuinely nice person. So why is he a Lich? He realized once he reached middle age that if he died, he couldn't learn anymore. So he pursued Lichdom in order to learn forever. He uses the Seeming spell to change his appearance as necessary (most often as an elf), and every 500 years or so changes his whole identity so as not to arouse suspicion as to why this teacher never dies.

And he regularly slaughter people to feed their souls to his philactery, which he created by sacrificing even more people. You know, like Liches do.

Or you can just say "in my homebrew campaign they don't have to do evil stuff", but then there is no reason to justify anything beyond that.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-17, 11:39 AM

Unoriginal

2018-08-17, 11:46 AM

Good doesn't mean lawful.

You can be good and break the law. You can be evil and follow the law.

The antagonist want to save an orphanage. This orphanage has a disease. The antagonist are going to steal the cure. The party is hired to not allow the cure to be stolen.

You can be lawful and break the law.

Hobgoblins don't care it's illegal to attack isolated farms in the realm of Solver. The Archdevil Glasya has plenty of crime syndicates at her beck and call. A Deva won't care if a judge condemned people to death, if they're innocent they will be saved.

KorvinStarmast

2018-08-17, 11:58 AM

Something I like to challenge myself to do on occasion is coming up with stories for things that don't generally make sense. Usually, I apply this to making characters, such as "how can I justify a Lawful Good Assassin Rogue" and the like.
Jason Bourne.

Whatever mental gymnastics you want to do, do them.

What I suggest that you do is Stop using alignment for your tools, and consider goals and motives.

Here is the deal with original alignment, it is the idea of Having Opposed Goals (Law versus Chaos). "Good" and "Evil" are simply labels people use to keep score.

Let us examine briefly England and France, 18th century. (Or if you'd rather, during the 100 years war). Neither is by themselves good nor evil unless they are looking across the English Channel. The other side is 'by default' evil whichever shore you are standing on, yet neither was wholly good nor wholly evil.

What they were, however, were two powers who had Opposed Goals. Tension.

Example from play over 40 years ago. We were a nice sized adventuring party who had killed a lot of monsters, protected the town that was our base from a few attacks, and had disrupted a cult of priests, led by an Evil High Priest (that's a class / level name for an 8th level cleric in OD&D) that were doing some seriously bad ritual magic in a deep cavern/dungeon outside of town and consorting with demons (Eldritch Wizardry, original demons) while so doing. (We also found out later that they were messing with the very fabric of magic ... but I digress )

We figured that we were the good guys. We'd heard that off to the southwest was this "evil leader" who wielded this 'named sword' ... but that rumor didn't influence us much as we tried to find an old dragon and loot his hoard.... there was rumor of a few really choice items ...

Before we ran that raid, though, the town had some visitors. Crap loads of them. A small army led by Paladins and Clerics. Lawful Paladins. We had a paladin in our group.

They were not our friends, and were not our allies. My Druid in particular was called out as being "no longer welcome in town" and our paladin got a ration of grief for even thinking to hang out with us. (We were the usual collection of elves and half elves and dwarves and humans and thieves and Magic Users and all that)

These were not an evil group, but they viewed us as having Opposed Goals to their view of the world.

It created some interesting tension and some great role play.

DOn't thing alignment. Think "Opposed goals' and there is your narrative tension, right there.

Oramac

2018-08-17, 12:05 PM

You can't.

You can't.

You can't.

Congratulations. You have absolutely no imagination and have completely missed the entire point of this thread.

How about this: let's make some stories for Evil Gold Dragons, or maybe an Evil (i.e. Fallen) Angel.

Basically, the point is how to write an NPC that is not what the MM says it is. If all you can say is "you can't", I never want to play in your game.

KorvinStarmast

2018-08-17, 12:10 PM

Basically, the point is how to write an NPC that is not what the MM says it is. That's not hard to do. (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/76790/22566) What I suggest you do, though, is to first free yourself form the labels "good" and "evil" before you start as I discussed in my previous post.

Millstone85

2018-08-17, 12:13 PM

A story can have good-aligned antagonists, or portray traditionally evil creatures as good guys, but "good-aligned bad guys" is antinomic.

Now, regarding the creatures you mentioned:
* Demons and devils: You can have extraplanar species of horned winged humanoids and stuff, but I think that would be a case of "in name only". If fiends aren't malice incarnate, they aren't fiends. An alternative is to make celestials and fiends a single species where individuals somatize their alignment.
* Chromatic Dragons: Similarly, you could say that dragons gain or lose their shine depending on their alignment. Races would still exist, like the fire-breathing brass/red dragons and the cold-breathing silver/white dragons. Alternatively, the metallic/chromatic division has nothing to do with alignment.
* Liches and death knights: That one really depends on how undeath works in your world. With the default lore, becoming and surviving as a lich involves doing terrible things with other people's souls.

JeenLeen

2018-08-17, 12:18 PM

Assuming being undead doesn't make one's mental state such that they cannot become good, one who repents.
I could see an evil lich deciding to do good. In one game, I played a person who became Necropolitan out of evil desire, but later repented and became a hermit, eventually joining the PCs. Death Knights who decide to try to make amends could be such.

awa

2018-08-17, 12:19 PM

Congratulations. You have absolutely no imagination and have completely missed the entire point of this thread.

How about this: let's make some stories for Evil Gold Dragons, or maybe an Evil (i.e. Fallen) Angel.

Basically, the point is how to write an NPC that is not what the MM says it is. If all you can say is "you can't", I never want to play in your game.
Its not about imagination
well either the lich devours the souls of the innocent or its not a 5th edition lich.
If he does eats souls in larger numbers than hes evil, if we take away that requirement than all he needs to do to not be evil is well not be evil.

falling to evil is easier than falling to god because of the greater weight such acts have
we can do someone who thinks they know better than everyone else and tries to rigidly enforce their morality on others to the point where they are causing more harm then good. This works particularly good for non-humans who cant understand humans/ mortals.

another might refuse to acknowledge that their are evils that must be appeased or worked around and simply cannot be destroyed through brute force. So our "bad guy" keeps awakening elder evils

Or for a less mystical version destabilizing governments it doesn't like and then leaving the vicious bloody civil war that happens when it leaves to knock over the next leader who is not 100% perfect.

Edit
Our lich would not be "good" but if say they became a lich to maintain a magical seal that if released would eat all the souls he may very well be the lesser of two evils.

Unoriginal

2018-08-17, 12:49 PM

Congratulations. You have absolutely no imagination and have completely missed the entire point of this thread.

If you think that subverting alignments or having convoluted justifications to explain why X traditional bad guy is actually good are more of a sign of imagination or of point-catching ability by itself...

Basically, the point is how to write an NPC that is not what the MM says it is.

Then state so, preferably in your OP.

"I'd like to see a lore different than the default 5e one where X creature is a good guy" is quite different from "I'd like to see a justification why those evil creatures are good".

My point was that either you follow the default lore, in which case a certain number of the situations you've written can't happen and the others don't need justifications, or you have an homebrew lore in which case no justification is needed.

Assuming being undead doesn't make one's mental state such that they cannot become good, one who repents.
I could see an evil lich deciding to do good. In one game, I played a person who became Necropolitan out of evil desire, but later repented and became a hermit, eventually joining the PCs. Death Knights who decide to try to make amends could be such.

In 5e default lore, a Lich could do some good actions, but ultimately they're people who became mass murderer just to save their own skin. You can't repent if your very existence is based on you doing evil stuff to continue existing.

In the same way, managing to have a Death Knight decide to make amend would mean you end the Death Knight's curse and free their soul. Which is something that could be pretty awesome to see in a campaign, but it'd be highly exceptional.

Oramac

2018-08-17, 12:50 PM

Its not about imagination

But it is. See below.

well either the lich devours the souls of the innocent or its not a 5th edition lich.

(My emphasis added)

The text in the MM about a Lich consuming souls to feed its phylactery reads thus:

Soul Sacrifices. A lich must periodically feed souls to its phylactery to sustain the magic preserving its body and consciousness. It does this using the imprisonment spell. Instead of choosing one of the normal options of the spell, the lich uses the spell to magically trap the target's body and soul inside its phylactery. The phylactery must be on the same plane as the lich for the spell to work. A lich's phylactery can hold only one creature at a time, and a dispel magic cast as a 9th-level spell upon the phylactery releases any creature imprisoned within it. A creature imprisoned in the phylactery for 24 hours is consumed and destroyed utterly, whereupon nothing short of divine intervention can restore it to life.

A lich that fails or forgets to maintain its body with sacrificed souls begins to physically fall apart, and might eventually become a demilich.

(My emphasis added)

There is nothing at all stating that an innocent soul must be used, nor is there any definite time frame for when the souls must be fed to the phylactery. It does state that it can only hold one soul at a time, and a soul is destroyed after 24 hours. We can infer that the lich need not feed the phylactery daily, however, because we know of several liches in the lore that did not feed theirs daily, yet remained liches. The fact that it does not give a specific time frame for feeding the phylactery allows the DM to make that decision, but again, we have lore that supports the phylactery NOT needing to be fed for quite a long time (Acererak living in the Tomb of Horrors for example).

So how would a good lich feed his phylactery? Well, he'd probably do it once every few years. Maybe so long as a decade, depending on how generous you want to be with the time constraints. So, then, who does he feed into the phylactery? Easy: those already marked for death. Murderers, rapists, people who talk at the theater. This is made even easier if the world in question uses the death penalty.

Thus, you have a lich who remains good and doesn't harm those who haven't already earned it.

Unoriginal

2018-08-17, 01:03 PM

we have lore that supports the phylactery NOT needing to be fed for quite a long time (Acererak living in the Tomb of Horrors for example).

Acererak's whole thing is that a) he found a way to bypass the usual limits of what happen when you don't feed your philactery b) the Thomb of Horrors and many other dungeons he set up on other worlds constantly provide souls for his philactery without him having to do work.

So how would a good lich feed his phylactery? Well, he'd probably do it once every few years. Maybe so long as a decade, depending on how generous you want to be with the time constraints. So, then, who does he feed into the phylactery? Easy: those already marked for death. Murderers, rapists, people who talk at the theater. This is made even easier if the world in question uses the death penalty.

Thus, you have a lich who remains good and doesn't harm those who haven't already earned it.

Yeah, sure, let's try justifying an evil act like that.

Seriously, do you really want to argue that eating people and condemning them to oblivion is a good act?

Millstone85

2018-08-17, 01:03 PM

There is nothing at all stating that an innocent soul must be usedYou can try to go around it with your setting's metaphysics, but having your soul eaten or stolen is generally perceived as a fate worse than death. For a mortal to decide that another deserves this... That's a no-no.

Better to just have vegan liches. Maybe the kind that ruins crops with their mere presence, so there is still a moral dilemma.

Stan

2018-08-17, 01:07 PM

Its not about imagination
well either the lich devours the souls of the innocent or its not a 5th edition lich.
If he does eats souls in larger numbers than hes evil, if we take away that requirement than all he needs to do to not be evil is well not be evil.

But what if he eats only the souls of those who are truly evil? If it's evil to destroy evil then most adventuring groups have serious problems.

Or, maybe he is a little evil, devouring the occasional annoying junior professor. But he doesn't have the typical evil lich goals. He's all about learning and teaching. He wants to lead only in his little world of academia. He doesn't try to dominate others or bend their wills as that would inhibit their ability to learn and teach new truths. He might be evil but he runs a top rated school and keeps the research money pouring in so everyone shrugs it off. If someone made a move against him, the local government would come down hard on them.

Many evil characters could also be enlightened despots, where intelligence and long term planning drastically reduce the amount of slaughter and destruction. Suppose you have an old dragon. Like most dragons she's all about the hoard. But she gets bored on long flights and tires after a few hours. So, instead of roaming the continent looking for treasure, she forms a plan to make treasure come to her. She advertises having the best collectibles around and offers to trade; her intelligence means that she usually gets the better end of the deal and her collection grows over time without having to leave her hoard unprotected. Very few are stupid or powerful enough to try to rip off a dragon. Sure, she could be evil and kill someone who comes to trade. There would be short term gain but if she got caught doing that even once, everyone would stop coming to trade with her. After decades of safe trades, others also come here to trade with each other under the safe protection of a dragon. She allows this for a fee. With this many people coming to trade, it makes sense to open an inn. Make it high end to attract more rich traders and suck even more money from them. Over time, the lair transforms into an exclusive boutique and spa where rare items can be purchased. With so many comings and goings, she hears rumors of other exotic items. Between that the the library section of her hoard, she has leads on many old tombs and evil temples, many of which are annoyingly subterranean with tight confines. Rather than bother digging them out, it's more comfortable to hire adventuring teams to investigate and bring back the choice items for rewards. She's so busy acquiring wealth and running the resort that she doesn't have time for petty evil.

Ganymede

2018-08-17, 01:11 PM

One of the best ways to do something like this is, instead of going with "good villains," create two morally ambiguous forces/factions and pit them against one another, with the stakes of the conflict having an impact on the PCs.

That way, the PCs have to figure out how to resolve the conflict, whether through allying with one side, destroying them both, or solving the conflict through less obvious means. In any case, the PCs get the opportunity to interact with allies that might have been enemies and enemies that might have been allies.

awa

2018-08-17, 01:22 PM

But what if he eats only the souls of those who are truly evil? If it's evil to destroy evil then most adventuring groups have serious problems.

Most adventures dont eat souls the ones who do yeah their evil. You can justify killing, but soul eating on a regular basis that's capital E evil. As long as you need to that to survive goods not really on the table. Maybe you could pull off a neutral if you were the only one who could stop a greater threat and somehow you needed to be a lich for that; but most such scenarios come across as really contrived and feel like the lich is just making excuses rather than trying to find a better option.

our professor lich is still evil because of all the soul eating, it doesn't matter that he doesn't try and take over the world, cause hes still eating souls.

Oramac

2018-08-17, 01:31 PM

But what if he eats only the souls of those who are truly evil?

Pretty much this. Hell, since a lich binds his soul to his phylactery, maybe our good lich hunts down and feeds on the souls of bad liches by consuming their souls from their phylactery.

soul eating on a regular basis

Define "regular basis". We've already discussed the vagueness of the time component in the MM. And see above for a way to feed his phylactery.

I'll concede that maybe this guy isn't "good", but I doubt there are many adventuring parties out there that wouldn't at least hesitate in saying he's evil.

I suppose this is just one more nail in the proverbial coffin for reasons I hate the alignment chart.

Stan

2018-08-17, 01:37 PM

Most adventures dont eat souls the ones who do yeah their evil. You can justify killing, but soul eating on a regular basis that's capital E evil.

Who says? Maybe you're saying that because you're already used to killing in the game. Maybe some souls are irredeemable. Allowing them to reform in a new body is just sloppy. A real hero finishes the job. A really noble hero would gladly sacrifice their own immortal soul to become a lich who can permanently end evil creatures.

Millstone85

2018-08-17, 01:47 PM

I hope this thread doesn't become entirely about the morality of eating evil souls, because I have some ideas for other creatures.

Aboleths
Many aboleths do not turn humanoids into thralls. They are content being served by chuuls and oozes, which have little individuality to begin with. They worship Ghaunadaur, a deity that is simply as ancient, slimy and tentacled as themselves.

Dark Elves
Dark elves are simply elves of the Underdark. They do not get along with other elves, but what two elven subraces do? Their society is a theocracy where only females can attain priesthood, something they are justly criticised for, but they do not commonly practise humanoid sacrifices or slavery.

Illithids
The dietary needs of the illithids can be sustained with animal brains. Reproduction is more of a pickle but many humanoids, especially aged ones, are willing to undergo the transformation, just like illithids themselves are wiling to join with an elder brain, and elder brains are in turn willing to join with Ilsensine.

KorvinStarmast

2018-08-17, 01:52 PM

strangebloke

2018-08-17, 02:07 PM

Simple. There's a good person, serving a morally dubious person who you are opposed to.

Maybe Lucia the Saint is guarding her Father's vault where he keeps the sword of stars that you need to kill the demon king. Lucia's dad won't give you the sword, and she'll protect her father's interests fist.

Oramac

2018-08-17, 02:07 PM

MagneticKitty

2018-08-17, 02:37 PM

Maybe a corrupt town judge who kills people the trial by peers gave a pass too but he thinks are actually evil. Convicted but not enough proof. So he's a secret vigilante?

Maelynn

2018-08-17, 02:47 PM

A Lawful Rogue could very easily be an Inquisitive One, who becomes an investigator Sherlock Holmes-style. If they use their talents to help people by solving mysteries and figuring out murders, then you'd have an LG one.

As for 'good' bad guys, make one who gets so wrapped up in their idea of doing good that they're taking it way too far. Like the judge mentioned above, who starts killing off those people he feels are evil and whose death make the world a better place. Or the matron of the orphanage who is so devoted to 'her' children, that she poisons the janitor when he's found to have hit them repeatedly and pushes a lowlife and addicted mother off the stairs who tries to claim her lost child.

Angelalex242

2018-08-17, 03:05 PM

Well, there's ways to do good aligned vampires. For example, the gypsy Curse... (Warning! May or may not include a 'happiness clause' that turns them evil again on the spot...)

The Bronze. Angel is in his game face and Buffy has her crossbow trained
on him. Angel morphs back into his human form.

Angel: C'mon! Don't go soft on me now!

Buffy launches the bolt. It hits the wall next to him.

Angel: Little wide.

Buffy: Why? (gets up) Why didn't you just attack me when you had the
chance? Was it a joke? To make me feel for you and then... I've killed a
lot of vampires. I've never hated one before.

Angel: Feels good, doesn't it? Feels simple.

Buffy: I invited you into my home and then you attacked my family!

Angel: Why not? I killed mine. I killed their friends... and their
friend's children... For a hundred years I offered ugly death to
everyone I met, and I did it with a song in my heart.

Buffy: What changed?

Angel: Fed on a girl about your age... beautiful... dumb as a post...
but a favorite among her clan.

Buffy: Her clan?

Angel: Romany. Gypsies. The elders conjured the perfect punishment for
me. They restored my soul.

Buffy: What, they were all out of boils and blinding torment?

Angel: When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it
doesn't get your soul. That's gone! No conscience, no remorse... It's an
easy way to live. You have no idea what it's like to have done the
things I've done... and to care. I haven't fed on a living human being
since that day.

Buffy: So you started with my mom?

Angel: I didn't bite her.

Buffy: Then why didn't you say something?

Angel: But I wanted to. I can walk like a man, but I'm not one. I
wanted to kill you tonight.

Buffy looks at her bow and back at Angel. She puts the bow down on the
floor and approaches him. She offers her neck.

Buffy: Go ahead.

He just looks at her in silence.

Buffy: Not as easy as it looks.

Unoriginal

2018-08-17, 03:12 PM

Maybe a corrupt town judge who kills people the trial by peers gave a pass too but he thinks are actually evil. Convicted but not enough proof. So he's a secret vigilante?

So that story by Agatha Christie ?

Oramac

2018-08-17, 03:15 PM

As for 'good' bad guys, make one who gets so wrapped up in their idea of doing good that they're taking it way too far. Like the judge mentioned above, who starts killing off those people he feels are evil and whose death make the world a better place.

Sounds a lot like the Punisher to me. Arguably good, but I've always loved the anti-hero

Well, there's ways to do good aligned vampires. For example, the gypsy Curse... (Warning! May or may not include a 'happiness clause' that turns them evil again on the spot...)

snip

I never saw Buffy, but that is a hell of a good one. And the short version for it is "bad guy gains a conscience".

Bloodcloud

2018-08-17, 03:47 PM

In 5e default lore, a Lich could do some good actions, but ultimately they're people who became mass murderer just to save their own skin. You can't repent if your very existence is based on you doing evil stuff to continue existing.

Or it could be Dexter the lich, consuming the souls of the already damned, surviving on corrupted souls ready to be sent to hell. Evil done to evil, becoming at least grey. Say, maybe consuming those souls prevents them from turning into undeads or devils/demons, straight up lowering the amount of evil in the world, while maintaining the goodish lich!

Bloodcloud

2018-08-17, 03:52 PM

I once designed a city of undead, a "necrocracy", where the undead were rulers. Worthy individuals were turned into undead so they could live for eternity, criminals were consumed, and upon death the regular folks were turned into mindless undead to serve as labor for the living. As such, the living had a higher standard of life on average because of that free labor.

It wasn't exactly good, the whole thing was corrupt, but it was grey enough to ask question about wether it was evil to be destroyed or not.

Unoriginal

2018-08-17, 03:59 PM

Evil done to evil, becoming at least grey

You can't make grey by adding black to black.

Phoenix042

2018-08-17, 04:05 PM

* Demons and devils: You can have extraplanar species of horned winged humanoids and stuff, but I think that would be a case of "in name only". If fiends aren't malice incarnate, they aren't fiends. An alternative is to make celestials and fiends a single species where individuals somatize their alignment.

First of all, he clearly means "antagonists who are good, not just necessarily in intention (good intentions and all that), but in actual fact.

This strikes me as funny, because MOST of my antagonists are "good" as a matter of perspective. It's pretty rare that I actually follow the MM description of the bad nasties as being truly, irredeemably evil.

For example, in my world, the "fiend vs Celestial" dichotomy isn't necessarily according to an objective scale of good and evil, but rather, the main pantheon of gods have decided upon a plan for the cosmos, which they (in their wise but fallible and subjective judgement) believe to be the most good. Those outsiders who work to further the plan are given white wings, halos and other bright features. Those outsiders who work against that plan or pursue alternatives are twisted and cursed by the gods of the cosmos. These are fiends.

The absolute truth, though, is that even gods are fallible in my games.

Unoriginal

2018-08-17, 04:12 PM

The absolute truth, though, is that even gods are fallible in my games.

Gods are fallible in the default setting too. Doesn't mean that actually, the bad people aren't bad.

Kane0

2018-08-17, 04:20 PM

Derpaligtr

2018-08-17, 04:29 PM

MagneticKitty

2018-08-17, 04:30 PM

So that story by Agatha Christie ?

I dunno who that is. But I was thinking a criminal minds episode. theres also the one where this guys' fiance was killed by a gang so he hunts the gang members down. He doesn't remember after.
You could go with werewolf (not accepting curse) who is the nicest guy but doesn't remember anything about transforming and mass murder

Millstone85

2018-08-17, 04:49 PM

First of all, he clearly means "antagonists who are good, not just necessarily in intention (good intentions and all that), but in actual fact.I doubt that, because I made a post about "de-bad-guy-zed monsters" and it got me this from the OP.
Thank you!! This is the direction I was hoping this thread would go.

Thrudd

2018-08-17, 05:40 PM

I think there needs to be a better reason than "subvert expectations" to bother with this exercise. I don't find it particularly imaginative to swap the traditional alignments of D&D creatures. What is the goal here, what is the interest? Is it for the DM to be able to say "You thought it was an evil creature, but it's actually good! Have I just blown your mind?" It's not as clever as you think it is.

Or is it yet another protest/critique of the alignment system of D&D by saying "morality is actually gray, you guys, there's no such thing as true good or evil, it's all relative. Labels don't mean anything, don't read a book by its cover!"

alternatively: "It may do some evil things, but it has good intentions, so you should feel conflicted about this."

another common one: "just because something is ugly or icky or has a different culture doesn't mean it's evil - people are just prejudiced against *insert your favorite monster*."

Basically, all this is doing is saying that some activity the book has labeled evil, you have decided is not really evil (for instance the consuming of souls), or the evil thing the book says the monster does, they don't really do - therefore liches aren't actually evil by nature. If there is nothing inherently evil about being/becoming a lich, then there's no reason one of them couldn't have good/unselfish motives and behavior. But this is not "making a good bad guy". You are changing the setting so that liches are not necessarily bad guys.

All things are possible in terms of changing the setting. We can say that all dragons, no matter what their color/type, are not predisposed to any particular behavior or alignment. good chromatics are just as likely as evil metallics, it's just a matter of upbringing. Demons are just beings with free will like any other, it is their social conditioning that makes them usually want to do evil stuff. Take the demon/devil out of hell and show them what it's like to live among caring people, and they can turn out to be good, too.

The example with the non-slaver Drow and the non-human-eating Illithids are the exact same thing. I mean, it's a choice for a setting, I guess. But I wouldn't call that "good bad guys". I'd call that a setting without natural bad guys- just replacing the cosmic battle of good and evil, or the clear battle for survival between the PC civilization and monsters that want to destroy it, with a more down-to-earth clash of different societies and cultures each with their own valid points of view.

"creature that the book says is evil but there is one special one that is actually good" is a little bit worse than redesigning the setting to remove the black-and-white decisions. In this case, you expect and want your players to know that liches are evil, that demons are evil, but you're going to throw them a curve ball with this special NPC that is actually, implausibly, good - I guess so they learn not to trust what they've read in the book or learned from other games? Or just difference for difference's sake? Maybe it is a particular sort of favorite creature that you want to be friends with the PCs instead of the enemy, so you can spend more time role playing with it and showing off its abilities?

Some of the monsters are explicitly labelled as "usually evil" rather than Evil with a capital 'E' - so it is easy to say "well, this good one is a rebel or an outcast from their normal society" ala Drizzt and basically every half-orc PC. No extra-special dispensation required. But creatures that are normally cosmically, human-eatingly, soul-stealingly, want to bring eternal darkness to the world Evil aren't just going to sometimes turn up as good. You need a setting-exception for them - like THIS one guy somehow figured out how to be a lich without eating souls, so he isn't actually evil - THIS one demon is for some reason different than all the others, it was given a conscience and chosen for a mysterious special purpose by some god.

Unoriginal

2018-08-17, 05:53 PM

To be fair, there are examples of canon non-evil Illithids. Some of those who get out of the Elder Brains' influence decide to not be jackasses. Others double down on the evil.

Millstone85

2018-08-17, 07:11 PM

To be fair, there are examples of canon non-evil Illithids. Some of those who get out of the Elder Brains' influence decide to not be jackasses. Others double down on the evil.I just found precedents for non-evil liches.

Archlich: Archliches are transformed human spellcasters—as often clerics or bards as wizards—who have deliberately and carefully accomplished their own transformation into liches. They devote their undeath to the furtherance of whatever noble purpose motivated the transformation.

[...]

Baelnorn: Baelnorns are elven liches who have sought undeath to become the backbones of their families, seldom-seen sources of magic, wise counsel, and guardianship. In ancient Myth Drannor, they stood watch against thieves, protected journeying elves, kept family lore, and tutored young wizards in magic.
You pursue eternal life as an undead creature. Most wizards who search for and achieve easy immortality by way of esoteric necromantic texts are evil, avaricious spellcasters who stop at nothing to achieve their ultimate goals. For some, that goal is lichdom itself. But you have a greater, nobler purpose.

Unlike many who have become liches before you, you have trained your mind to avoid succumbing to the madness that necromantic preservation often brings. For instance, you did not perform the foul ritual that traded your life for animation the moment you found it; you waited until your power was equal to the change. Nor did you accept the aid of Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead, to empower the ritual, but you waited to find methods outside his control. In doing so, you escaped his touch, though you bear his personal enmity to this day.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-17, 07:39 PM

I just found precedents for non-evil liches.

There was also an official Druid Lich enemy in 3e. So, like, even something that is usualyl totally against the idea of undead can become a lich (she/he was evil tho... But still protected nature).

Millstone85

2018-08-18, 03:26 AM

I never saw Buffy, but that is a hell of a good one. And the short version for it is "bad guy gains a conscience".The thing with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel is that they really played out Liam/Angel's human soul, the undead personality of Angelus, and the demonic beast within, as three distinct entities that happen to share a body.

Angel could very well wash his hands of what his possessed corpse did after his death. His soul had gone to some afterlife, so he literally wasn't there for all these crimes. As far as I understand, he feels responsible nonetheless because he believes the vampire built on the debauchery and selfishness he showed as a living human. Also, he remembers everything as if he had done it.

"You thought it was an evil creature, but it's actually good! Have I just blown your mind?"
"morality is actually gray, you guys, there's no such thing as true good or evil, it's all relative. Labels don't mean anything, don't read a book by its cover!"
"It may do some evil things, but it has good intentions, so you should feel conflicted about this."
"just because something is ugly or icky or has a different culture doesn't mean it's evil - people are just prejudiced against *insert your favorite monster*."
"creature that the book says is evil but there is one special one that is actually good"I agree those are all bad twists to pull on the players. Even as the reader or watcher of a fantasy story, they make me roll my eyes.

The example with the non-slaver Drow and the non-human-eating Illithids are the exact same thing. I mean, it's a choice for a setting, I guess. But I wouldn't call that "good bad guys". I'd call that a setting without natural bad guys- just replacing the cosmic battle of good and evil, or the clear battle for survival between the PC civilization and monsters that want to destroy it, with a more down-to-earth clash of different societies and cultures each with their own valid points of view.Note that you do not necessarily have to change all creatures that way. You can go on a case-by-case and ask yourself if it would make the story better. For instance, I see two reasons why a DM would want to make it possible for the party to walk in a drow city without getting killed or enslaved. One is that drow architecture is really cool. Another is that even an Underdark adventure could use a pause from the unforgiving wilderness. And if a drow wants you to bring something to the aboleth neighborhood, it can be a chance for players to freely explore an alien location. But I don't see as much potential in the friendly illithid colony.

Unoriginal

2018-08-18, 03:55 AM

I just found precedents for non-evil liches.

That was for 3.X/4e. The lore was different back then.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-18, 07:04 AM

That was for 3.X/4e. The lore was different back then.

Doesn't mean it ain't possible though.

Grasping at straws much?

Stan

2018-08-18, 07:37 AM

Official lore just means somebody wrote something down and an editor let get published. For any particular game, the lore is whatever the group wants it to be.

Angelalex242

2018-08-18, 07:52 AM

The thing with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel is that they really played out Liam/Angel's human soul, the undead personality of Angelus, and the demonic beast within, as three distinct entities that happen to share a body.

Angel could very well wash his hands of what his possessed corpse did after his death. His soul had gone to some afterlife, so he literally wasn't there for all these crimes. As far as I understand, he feels responsible nonetheless because he believes the vampire built on the debauchery and selfishness he showed as a living human. Also, he remembers everything as if he had done it.

All that's true. So I'd personally built Angel as a Vampire with x amount of Paladin levels. He's a Vengeance Paladin as Angel, and an Oathbreaker as Angelus. Give him however many levels suit your campaign, and away ya go. And watch out for the 'true happiness' that flips the evil switch back on!

Note that as a result of having all the powers and abilities of a full vampire, he's much stronger than any PC. He stands a pretty good chance of soloing Strahd.

Maryring

2018-08-18, 07:53 AM

I actually have a "lich" character of sorts, though she uses a non-standard phylactery. She's got a crystal which houses her soul, and from that she can animate puppets to act as her body, while allowing her to research life extensions and resurrection. No eating of any souls required.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-18, 07:57 AM

Official lore just means somebody wrote something down and an editor let get published. For any particular game, the lore is whatever the group wants it to be.

Yup, but a lot ofnpeople play with base assumptions.

If i play in forgotten realms, these things are a legit possibility...

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Baelnorn_lich

So when someone is trying to make an encounter or build their own lore, they can build off that and make LG Dwarven Liches.

Unoriginal

2018-08-18, 10:09 AM

Doesn't mean it ain't possible though.

Grasping at straws much?

You're the one grasping at straw, I'm afraid.

The 5e Lich lore is pretty clear about how the 3.X/4e one does not apply. Hell, in 3.X you didn't even need to be evil to be a standard Lich. 5e changed that.

Note that as a result of having all the powers and abilities of a full vampire, he's much stronger than any PC. He stands a pretty good chance of soloing Strahd.

Strahd would have been a great antagonist for the show Angel. A vampire wizard could have been a fun contrast compared to Angel.

Angelalex242

2018-08-18, 12:44 PM

Strahd would have been a great antagonist for the show Angel. A vampire wizard could have been a fun contrast compared to Angel.

You've convinced me. I want to run Angel vs Strahd now.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-18, 02:09 PM

A demon-hunting lich sounds fun actually. Demons are evil incarnate and infinite in supply, a perfect phylactery food source!
You could spin the story all sorts of ways, eg the companion of a long dead paladin that swore to continue their work after they were struck down during a fiendish incursion.

Speaking of fiends, for a tale of a good fiend check out tales of wyre

Except the little problem that fiends don't have souls.

Thing is, if you want to live longer, there are ways other than lichdom. Reincarnate. Clone. Forms of undeath that don't require you to eat souls. Some sort of deal for immortality that doesn't involve crimes against humanity (humanoidity?)

Yes, you can say "in my setting, demons are actually all paragons of good and justice, and angels are all psychotic murderers", but at that point, you're re-defining what demon or angel means both in the common definition and in the default lore we're all working with. The later isn't a problem, it's your world and your rules, the former is bit iffier, it sounds like you're trying to change expectations just because (and you're certainly going to confuse people. But it also makes any discussion meaningless, because we're not working on the same premises. Do whatever you want in your setting, it's your right, but then the question "How can we justify Good-Aligned bad guys?" doesn't make any sense if they never were bad guys in your world, you just keep calling them the same.

Malifice

2018-08-18, 03:07 PM

Who says? Maybe you're saying that because you're already used to killing in the game. Maybe some souls are irredeemable. Allowing them to reform in a new body is just sloppy. A real hero finishes the job. A really noble hero would gladly sacrifice their own immortal soul to become a lich who can permanently end evil creatures.

Bahahahahaha!

Never change GitP. Never change.

Zorrah

2018-08-18, 03:20 PM

There are variants, optional histories, things of that matter that can play into this. Though, I wouldn't recommend, I suppose not all chromatic dragons have to fall into their given alignment, and one such could be called an exceptional example.

For undead that have governing rules, consider a deathknight created like this. Paladin is in a town under siege. Intends to challenge the opposing general to single combat upon seeing him on the battlefield. Said general never takes to the field and the town is growing hungry and sick. Paladin sneaks into generals tent in the middle of the night to challenge him, kills him in the night and dies that evening. He accomplished through stealth what honor would not give him. His God, restores life to his bones for one last quest, to restore his lost honor. Thus, a Lawful Good deathknight. As a DM, you're creatures are uniquely yours. Yes, this is quite homebrewed, but I don't see a problem with a creature like this.

The Aboleth

2018-08-18, 03:34 PM

Regarding liches: You could always go the "Twilight" route and have the lich consume the souls of animals. The MM specifies the soul must come from a creature, not a humanoid, so I can see a case being made for a "vegan" lich (as someone said earlier).

Derpaligtr

2018-08-18, 05:14 PM

Bahahahahaha!

Never change GitP. Never change.

You laugh and yet there are good liches...

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Baelnorn_lich

Y'all need to get hit by the imaginary nerf bat of imagination.

werescythe

2018-08-18, 05:18 PM

Oddly enough I have been thinking of a similar matter. Like is it possible to have a Lawful Neutral Beholder to help organize three rival factions into a single working community?

JackPhoenix

2018-08-18, 05:23 PM

The 5e Lich lore is pretty clear about how the 3.X/4e one does not apply. Hell, in 3.X you didn't even need to be evil to be a standard Lich. 5e changed that.

3.5 Lich template: Alignment: any evil

You laugh and yet there are good liches...

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Baelnorn_lich

Y'all need to get hit by the imaginary nerf bat of imagination.

There *were* good liches. In a specific setting, in different edition. Not all of them are actual liches, despite the name. And then 5e changed how liches work.

Oddly enough I have been thinking of a similar matter. Like is it possible to have a Lawful Neutral Beholder to help organize three rival factions into a single working community?

Sure. Beholders are living, sapient beings who can think and make decisions for themselves, even if they are insane by human(oid) standards, not Evil given physical form or creations of dark magic like fiends and undead are.

Unoriginal

2018-08-18, 05:28 PM

You laugh and yet there are good liches...

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Baelnorn_lich

Y'all need to get hit by the imaginary nerf bat of imagination.

Good liches don't require more imagination than evil liches.

Baelorn liches were liches who got to that state without any evil acts being involved. That is past editions' lore, and this doesn't work with 5e's lore about liches.

Pretending that liches following the 5e lore can be good is, indeed, laughable.

Of course, as said previously, you can use a different lore that says liches can be good, but in this case you don't need justification, it's just a specific status quo where liches can be good guys and so there is nothing special about them being good guys.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-18, 05:31 PM

3.5 Lich template: Alignment: any evil

There *were* good liches. In a specific setting, in different edition. Not all of them are actual liches, despite the name. And then 5e changed how liches work.

Sure. Beholders are living, sapient beings who can think and make decisions for themselves, even if they are insane by human(oid) standards, not Evil given physical form or creations of dark magic like fiends and undead are.

Which means that if there was good liches, then there can be again.

The precedent is there.

Saying that you can't have good liches, when we already had good liches, is so incredibly backwards.

Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean others can't have it. Grow an imagination.

Unoriginal

2018-08-18, 05:43 PM

Which means that if there was good liches, then there can be again.

The precedent is there.

Saying that you can't have good liches, when we already had good liches, is so incredibly backwards.

Again, the lore in previous editions allowed that, not the lore of this one. Same way that 5e Djinn aren't the same as the 3.X Djinn.

Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean others can't have it. Grow an imagination.

Again, if you want good liches, just have a setting where they can be good. It doesn't demand any particular justification, and it certainly doesn't demand any particular imagination.

Derpaligtr

2018-08-18, 06:13 PM

Again, the lore in previous editions allowed that, not the lore of this one. Same way that 5e Djinn aren't the same as the 3.X Djinn.

Again, if you want good liches, just have a setting where they can be good. It doesn't demand any particular justification, and it certainly doesn't demand any particular imagination.

Bull.

Nothing stops it from happening.

Just because you have such a narrow view on fantasy, doesn't mean someone else has to. If someone wants to run a home game with good liches in it, there is plenty of precedent.

Stop trying to "badwrongfun" people.

Millstone85

2018-08-18, 07:55 PM

Here is an idea for a homebrew setting that allows gentler drow cities, yet also ties into the default lore.

Ages ago, the world of Amble lost most of its planar connections. The gods sent aspects of themselves to act as living portals, so the essential energies would keep flowing through Amble. As time passed, the divine aspects grew increasingly divergent from their true selves, some to the point of shifting their loyalty to a different deity.

This is Amble's elven pantheon:

Aspect
Affinities
Domains
Symbol

Alathrien
High elves, Plane of Fire, Alathrien
Arcana, Light
Candle

Araushnee
Dark elves, Plane of Earth, Eilistraee
Forge, Trickery
Spiderweb within a crescent

Gadhelyn
Eladrin, Feywild, new deity every day
Nature, Trickery
Leaf-shaped arrowhead

Rillifane
Wood elves, Plane of Air, Rillifane
Nature, Tempest
Oak populated by birds

Sashelas
Sea elves, Plane of Water, Sashelas
Knowledge, Tempest
Dolphin

Vandria
Shadar-kai, Shadowfell, Raven Queen
Death, Grave
Weeping eye

Thrudd

2018-08-18, 08:24 PM

Oddly enough I have been thinking of a similar matter. Like is it possible to have a Lawful Neutral Beholder to help organize three rival factions into a single working community?

Anything is possible. The questions to ask are: why do I want this? Does this fit with my setting, does it make sense for this to be there? Does this have repercussions for other parts of my game world? Am I going for a theme or a tone in my game, and does this fit? How do I think this will be received by players, is there a reaction or a feeling I'm hoping they will have about this? Does this thing make sense as a character, does it have motives and beliefs that are explainable? What does it want and why does it want it? Would it make more sense to be one race or creature type vs another?

You want to think holistically about your game, your setting, and what sort of expectations you are giving the players. It's about editing and refining your vision.

sithlordnergal

2018-08-18, 08:35 PM

JackPhoenix

2018-08-18, 08:38 PM

Bull.

Nothing stops it from happening.

Just because you have such a narrow view on fantasy, doesn't mean someone else has to. If someone wants to run a home game with good liches in it, there is plenty of precedent.

Stop trying to "badwrongfun" people.

Sure. Just like nothing stops demons from being paragons of good, dwarves from being 30' tall and made of cotton candy and pigs from flying and breathing fire. But you should admit that they are not what D&D (and most people familiar with them) considers demons, elves or pigs. 5e D&D liches had a choice to be good... it's called "not turning themselves into liches". After that, they are evil by their very nature, and don't have the option to turn back without commiting suicide.

Boci

2018-08-18, 08:54 PM

Sure. Just like nothing stops demons from being paragons of good, dwarves from being 30' tall and made of cotton candy and pigs from flying and breathing fire. But you should admit that they are not what D&D (and most people familiar with them) considers demons, elves or pigs. 5e D&D liches had a choice to be good... it's called "not turning themselves into liches". After that, they are evil by their very nature, and don't have the option to turn back without commiting suicide.

True, but morality tends to be a bit more flexible than a race being 30ft tall or made of cotton candy. Some players/DMs have never been satisfied with "because its evil". This isn't just happening now, in 3.5 there were people asking exactly why it was evil to raise zombies and send them into a burning house to save people.

Thrudd

2018-08-18, 09:02 PM

I actually rather like the concept of good aligned bad guys. A villain need not be wrong or evil. In fact, this sort of reminds me of a little story I read talking about a lawful good Guard. The guard started out as a normal guard, but over the course of the short story he began to see the injustices done to races that were considered "monstrous". He saw how poorly those races were treated, and set out to change it.

He was turned into an enemy of the state due to his thoughts on how monstrous races should be treated and his actions to change the state of things while within the bounds of the law. It ended with him being labeled "The Demon King" because he led a force comprised of what are usually considered evil creatures, such as chromatic dragons, goblinoids, certain evil giants, and intelligent undead. His goal never changed though, he simply wanted freedom for those who were treated as trash by the current kingdom
That doesn't sound good at all, except as a morality story for children. It's exactly the thing I said earlier, deciding that "the monsters aren't evil, they're just misunderstood, and the 'real' bad guys are the intolerant people who are prejudiced against them." Great to teach kids about not judging people based on appearance. Not great as compelling fiction or an interesting game scenario.

He isn't a good aligned bad guy. He's a good guy who is fighting against oppression. The oppressors are just calling themselves "good", but they obviously aren't. They've just swapped positions, so the human kingdom are the bad guys and the monsters are the good guys.

"Good aligned bad guys" is a contradiction. People actually mean "monsters people think to be bad but turn out to be good." Or "creatures that don't conform to the alignment listed in the book."

JackPhoenix

2018-08-18, 09:16 PM

True, but morality tends to be a bit more flexible than a race being 30ft tall or made of cotton candy. Some players/DMs have never been satisfied with "because its evil". This isn't just happening now, in 3.5 there were people asking exactly why it was evil to raise zombies and send them into a burning house to save people.

Why is it evil to enslave [group of people I don't like] and send them to do heavy labor in horrible conditions so the normal people [i.e. the group I belong to] don't have to?

Necromancy gets this, because it's not something that exist in the real world, and we have no experience with it. Why exactly is murder/slavery/torture evil? Because we (the humans, and to be more precise, modern western society) decided so. There were (and still are) other societies that disagree on what's considered evil, because there's no objective good and evil.

There is objective good and evil in D&D, but it was a real human who decided what fits under each label. Necromancy is evil for the same reason murder or slavery is: someone with authority and influence said so, and others followed. If Gary Gygax decided that broccoli is evil, there would be people today arguing about why using broccoli to make a dinner is evil, when they don't mind or even like the taste. (not the same, actually, because, again, we don't have necromancy in real life, unlike broccoli)

Boci

2018-08-18, 09:22 PM

Why is it evil to enslave [group of people I don't like] and send them to do heavy labor in horrible conditions so the normal people [i.e. the group I belong to] don't have to?

Necromancy gets this, because it's not something that exist in the real world, and we have no experience with it. Why exactly is murder/slavery/torture evil? Because we (the humans, and to be more precise, modern western society) decided so. There were (and still are) other societies that disagree on what's considered evil, because there's no objective good and evil.

There is objective good and evil in D&D, but it was a real human who decided what fits under each label. Necromancy is evil for the same reason murder or slavery is: someone with authority and influence said so, and others followed. If Gary Gygax decided that broccoli is evil, there would be people today arguing about why using broccoli to make a dinner is evil, when they don't mind or even like the taste. (not the same, actually, because, again, we don't have necromancy in real life, unlike broccoli)

Necromancery isn't evil anymore though. Unless I missed something, it was dropped from 4th and 5th ed. It was explicitly evil in 3.5, and now no longer is.

Malifice

2018-08-18, 11:20 PM

Necromancery isn't evil anymore though. Unless I missed something, it was dropped from 4th and 5th ed. It was explicitly evil in 3.5, and now no longer is.

Still evil in 5e.

So far this thread has attempted to justify (repeated) soul destruction, necromancy and murder as 'good'.

Keep it going people. This is hilarious.

How about a good aligned mass rapist? He goes about punishing evildoers by raping them until they stop doing 'evil'.

How about a 'heroic' slaver or paedo? A heroic purveyor of genocide perhaps?

These threads never cease to amaze me. I can now add soul destruction to my list of things argued as being 'good and noble'.

Hahaha.

Unoriginal

2018-08-19, 01:41 AM

Necromancery isn't evil anymore though. Unless I missed something, it was dropped from 4th and 5th ed. It was explicitly evil in 3.5, and now no longer is.

Necromancy as a whole isn't evil in 5e, but making Undead via necromany spells is not good and regularly making them is something only evil people do.

You're not evil just for casting Ray of Efeeblement, for example, but Undead are different.

Millstone85

2018-08-19, 03:58 AM

How about a good aligned mass rapist? He goes about punishing evildoers by raping them until they stop doing 'evil'.I think there is a hentai with that exact premise.

Boci

2018-08-19, 04:01 AM

Still evil in 5e.

So far this thread has attempted to justify (repeated) soul destruction, necromancy and murder as 'good'.

Keep it going people. This is hilarious.

How about a good aligned mass rapist? He goes about punishing evildoers by raping them until they stop doing 'evil'.

How about a 'heroic' slaver or paedo? A heroic purveyor of genocide perhaps?

These threads never cease to amaze me. I can now add soul destruction to my list of things argued as being 'good and noble'.

Hahaha.

Gary Gygax felt that killing orc children was fine, so the argument that "it's good because GG said so" is a little suspect. But keep patting yourself on the back for just following what the rules he gave us. After all, not produce lice, right?

Necromancy as a whole isn't evil in 5e, but making Undead via necromany spells is not good and regularly making them is something only evil people do.

That already doesn't make sense. Its not good, and regularly doing it is evil? That constrived, and doesn't work for anything else. "Mirdering the innocent isn't good, and doing it regularly is evil".

Lorsa

2018-08-19, 04:50 AM

Something I like to challenge myself to do on occasion is coming up with stories for things that don't generally make sense. Usually, I apply this to making characters, such as "how can I justify a Lawful Good Assassin Rogue" and the like.

In this thread, I want to explore the opposite. How can we justify Good-Aligned bad guys? Liches, Chromatic Dragons, Death Knights, Demons/Devils, etc.

Passions, goals, jobs, etc. are all on the table.

I'll start with a Good Lich I plan to use in an upcoming homebrew campaign:

The largest arcane magic guild is called the Arcanum, and it runs a University as well, open to both magic and non-magic users. Unbeknownst to anyone, the Headmaster of this place is a Good Lich (human). His passion is learning. His goals are to learn, and to teach. He teaches a couple classes a year, and is a genuinely nice person. So why is he a Lich? He realized once he reached middle age that if he died, he couldn't learn anymore. So he pursued Lichdom in order to learn forever. He uses the Seeming spell to change his appearance as necessary (most often as an elf), and every 500 years or so changes his whole identity so as not to arouse suspicion as to why this teacher never dies.

Anyone else got a Good (aligned) Bad Guy?

I feel a bit ashamed for joining the "difficult" chorus.

But I am a bit uncertain on how you think. In your mind, what counts as a "bad guy". That definition needs to be clear. Because, to me, being a "bad guy" and being "good aligned" are mutually exclusive things. Unless you have another view of "bad" as in "that girl is sooo attracted to 'bad guys'" - in which case a "bad guy" might just be a motorcyle-riding tatooed dude with a leather jacked who generally treats women poorly but can secretly be sacrificing himself for the lives of others.

For example, in your lich example, what makes the lich a bad guy? The fact that he is a lich? So, in your mind, being a lich still makes you "bad", but doesn't have any effect on your alignment? The disconnect here is that most people think that being a lich doesn't necessarily make you a "bad guy", but it does make your alignment evil.

So, in order to come up with examples, we need to know what goes under the defiintion of "bad" and what kind of actions changes your alignment in your mind.

To offer another lich example, how about a lich who became so by other people willingly sacrificing their souls for her undeath? Perhaps a great threat was facing the nation, and they figured that only the heroine of the land could help them and the best way to make her successful was to turn her undead. So while she did feed souls to her phylactery, they all agreed willingly to do it (and it wasn't even her idea to begin with).

Malifice

2018-08-19, 06:10 AM

Gary Gygax felt that killing orc children was fine, so the argument that "it's good because GG said so" is a little suspect. But keep patting yourself on the back for just following what the rules he gave us. After all, not produce lice, right?

That already doesn't make sense. Its not good, and regularly doing it is evil? That constrived, and doesn't work for anything else. "Mirdering the innocent isn't good, and doing it regularly is evil".

Gygax is the final arbiter for what is evil or good now?

Garry had some pretty weird ideas fueled by his own conversion to a certain real world religion later on in life. In particular an 'eye for an eye'. I suggest having a look into it.

I mean come on. We're trying to frame a soul raping lich as the good guy.

Unoriginal

2018-08-19, 06:27 AM

I feel a bit ashamed for joining the "difficult" chorus.

I'd be curious to know what you call the "difficult" chorus.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-19, 06:52 AM

To offer another lich example, how about a lich who became so by other people willingly sacrificing their souls for her undeath? Perhaps a great threat was facing the nation, and they figured that only the heroine of the land could help them and the best way to make her successful was to turn her undead. So while she did feed souls to her phylactery, they all agreed willingly to do it (and it wasn't even her idea to begin with).

It wasn't her idea to pursue the path of immortality, making deals with fiends or dark gods to learn the secrets (emphasis on secrets) of lichdom, which always include service to those entities? Then she used dark magic to feed on the souls of the fools who willingly agreed to a fate worse than death, because they had no idea what are they talking about? How did they came up with a plan level 17+ wizard (or, arguably, warlock) (because that's what's needed for lichdom) wouldn't, anyway? MM makes it clear: Wizards won't end up as a liches on a whim.

If they need her to be undead for some reason, just find a vampire and get him to suck on her neck for a while.

And don't act surprised when the "great threat" ends up being secondary problem compared to "the nation's champion turned into a vile undead monster".

Malifice

2018-08-19, 07:03 AM

Hahaha.

'Good aligned noble lich, destroying souls via dark sacrifice to preserve her own immortality as an undead monster.'

A true hero.

Every week these threads rock up, and they get more stupid every time.

If that sort of **** flies at your table go nuts. I blame the DM as much as I do the obviously socially stunted player trying it on.

Malifice

2018-08-19, 07:07 AM

Millstone85

2018-08-19, 07:33 AM

Perhaps a more reasonable alternative to the lich is the deathlock. Not SCAG's warlock of the Undying, the monster in MToF.

Normally, a deathlock is a warlock who failed to keep their end of the bargain and got transformed into an undead spellcaster fully dedicated to serve their patron. But MToF mentions that "An extraordinarily powerful necromancer might also discover the dark methods of creating a deathlock and then bind it to service, acting in this respect as the deathlock's patron".

That's one way for a character to be forced into becoming something akin to a lich. And as powerful as the necromancer might be, it is easy to imagine the ritual being fumbled somewhat, resulting in the deathlock eventually retrieving their free will.

The character might go on a quest to kill the necromancer and then find peace in the grave.

Unoriginal

2018-08-19, 08:53 AM

It wasn't her idea to pursue the path of immortality, making deals with fiends or dark gods to learn the secrets (emphasis on secrets) of lichdom, which always include service to those entities? Then she used dark magic to feed on the souls of the fools who willingly agreed to a fate worse than death, because they had no idea what are they talking about? How did they came up with a plan level 17+ wizard (or, arguably, warlock) (because that's what's needed for lichdom) wouldn't, anyway? MM makes it clear: Wizards won't end up as a liches on a whim.

If they need her to be undead for some reason, just find a vampire and get him to suck on her neck for a while.

And don't act surprised when the "great threat" ends up being secondary problem compared to "the nation's champion turned into a vile undead monster".

And if you just want immortality, the Boon of Immortality exists.

Bohandas

2018-08-19, 09:27 AM

You can be lawful and break the law.

Hobgoblins don't care it's illegal to attack isolated farms in the realm of Solver. The Archdevil Glasya has plenty of crime syndicates at her beck and call. A Deva won't care if a judge condemned people to death, if they're innocent they will be saved.

Agreed.

I never understood why they called the alignment "lawful" and not "orderly" when from context it's clear that that's what they meant (although I'm sure it's probably from some book that Gary Gygax read)

The Aboleth

2018-08-19, 09:45 AM

I think a case can be made for a lich who is Lawful Neutral in the right circumstances. In my own campaign, there is a lich who rules a kingdom but can be best described as "pragmatic." He treats his people well and fairly because, in his own words, "Uprisings are a waste of my time." He has reasoned that if he keeps his kingdom well-run and his people happy, then he will have more time to devote to his scholarly pursuits and research. The death penalty in his kingdom results in the guilty party's soul being fed to the lich's phylactery--a fact which is known throughout the kingdom and which people are mostly fine with ("If you don't want your soul eaten, then don't commit murder in the first place!" they'd say).

Of course, as others have noted you can still make the argument that eating a soul is Evil no matter what. Fair enough, and my particular lich doesn't deny he is Evil--he just leans more toward pragmatism than anything else. But I can still see a case made for a LN lich under these (or similar) circumstances.

The people in this thread saying, "No, never! [Insert thing here] must ALWAYS be Evil!" are not the type of people I would want to play with, and I'll just leave it at that.

Angelalex242

2018-08-19, 09:49 AM

Ya know, I brought Angel up way back when because I thought the point of the thread was 'make one monster in particular a good guy', which, in that case, was done by cursing a vampire (which normally has no soul or conscience) with a soul and a conscience.

Now, before he was cursed, Angelus was so evil Strahd would be going, 'Damn. Unnecessary.' But the Cursed being generally runs around fighting evil and doing the right thing when he can.

the Curse almost functions like a Helm of Opposite Alignment, or the Balance card in the Deck of Many Things, should either of those things be used on a vampire.

denthor

2018-08-19, 09:51 AM

NPC group working for a good church is looking for something that your PC group is looking for.

First encounter is inside the ruins of where it may be.

Set up you see a fire at night. Distance 400 feet.

Your PC'S may ignore investigate or murder hobo.

There you go.

qube

2018-08-19, 10:02 AM

You're the one grasping at straw, I'm afraid.

The 5e Lich lore is pretty clear about how the 3.X/4e one does not apply. Hell, in 3.X you didn't even need to be evil to be a standard Lich. 5e changed that.How about we all agree that the following is utter nonsense.

DM: I'm sorry guys. I know we're playing in Fearun, but Wizards of the Coast hasn't yet released a booklet with the Baelnorn lich in fifth edition. Now now, I know that 5e Fearun is just Fearun after the Second Sundering, and there's nothing that suggest Ao would have done away with Baelnorn liches ... but you have to understand: my hands are tied ! Good aligned Liches can't exist in 5E until a book comes out that says they can!

And lets all agree that DMG, on page 4, says

The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game.

And lets all agree, that for the context of this thread (which starts with "Something I like to challenge myself to do on occasion is coming up with stories for things that don't generally make sense") if it requires fudging the Divinely Given Fifth Edition Rules As Written, a bit, that that's perfectly fine.

Heck, the MM is more Greynight then Forgotten realms anyway, so if you're playing in Faerun some (small) adaptations will need to be made anyway!

-----

On Good demons, Asmodeus origin story from Fiendish Codex II, notes he's a fallen angel, corrupted by staying in the nine hells to long. One would then also consider the opposite to be possible; that devils/demons can be "corrupted" by positive divine powers.

On good dragons, I don't see a reason why they should be evil per-se. So any profound experience coould alter their alignment.

Good Liches have already been covered, with the elf lich guardians.

Death Knights are a bit more tricky as they are alive because of the vile energy of an evil god.
Perhpas they used to be a good guy, who for the wrong reasons started to follow the wrong god; who raised them once dead; but a turning attempt of sufficiently high cleric rekindled his good side.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-19, 10:08 AM

Malifice

2018-08-19, 10:25 AM

The people in this thread saying, "No, never! [Insert thing here] must ALWAYS be Evil!" are not the type of people I would want to play with, and I'll just leave it at that.

Good to hear. I dont want to play with someone who agrees with the statement of '[Rape/ murder/ torture of children] must not ALWAYS be Evil!'

Some things are evil. Those things are harming, killing or oppressing others, unless done in a proportionate manner, in reasonable self defense or the defense of others (at which point those acts become morally neutral).

I have no problem with a LE soul raping Lich thinking he's Neutral, or even Good. Genuinely thinking it. Player also.

He's not though. He aint getting into the Mount Celestia on death. He can plead his case all he wants to Kelemvor, but it matters naught. His subjective belief doesn't matter.

None of this takes away any 'nuance' to how that character is portrayed or depicted by the player. Its' just he's an evil monster, that genuinely believes he is good (as most evil monsters do).

Unoriginal

2018-08-19, 10:32 AM

None of this takes away any 'nuance' to how that character is portrayed or depicted by the player. Its' just he's an evil monster, that genuinely believes he is good (as most evil monsters do).

Something I like with D&D is that most evil monsters know they are evil, they simply believe it's the best/most enjoyable way to live.

The Aboleth

2018-08-19, 10:57 AM

So the lich regularly commits evil, knows and admits he's evil, but he's lawful neutral? What. Also, he must run the kingdom pretty badly if he's got enough murderers to stuff one into his phylactery every 24 hours.

Again, if he wasn't evil, he wouldn't be a lich in the first place. There are many ways to achieve immortality without the need to eat souls.

You must have missed the part where I said:

Fair enough, and my particular lich doesn't deny he is Evil--he just leans more toward pragmatism than anything else. But I can still see a case made for a LN lich under these (or similar) circumstances.

I'm not trying to make the case that MY lich is LN. I'm just saying I'd be open to an argument for A lich being LN.

Good to hear. I dont want to play with someone who agrees with the statement of '[Rape/ murder/ torture of children] must not ALWAYS be Evil!'

Strange...I looked through my entire post and couldn't find where I said I believed rape/murder/torture of children was not evil. Probably because I never said that.

Lorsa

2018-08-19, 12:13 PM

I'd be curious to know what you call the "difficult" chorus.

Basically the people who believe that good and bad are opposites and therefore the stated idea is impossible.

In other words, that the OP's request is equivalent as asking how you draw a round square.

And this chorus are in the OP's eyes, I imagine, rather "difficult".

It wasn't her idea to pursue the path of immortality, making deals with fiends or dark gods to learn the secrets (emphasis on secrets) of lichdom, which always include service to those entities? Then she used dark magic to feed on the souls of the fools who willingly agreed to a fate worse than death, because they had no idea what are they talking about? How did they came up with a plan level 17+ wizard (or, arguably, warlock) (because that's what's needed for lichdom) wouldn't, anyway? MM makes it clear: Wizards won't end up as a liches on a whim.

If they need her to be undead for some reason, just find a vampire and get him to suck on her neck for a while.

And don't act surprised when the "great threat" ends up being secondary problem compared to "the nation's champion turned into a vile undead monster".

You'll get no arguments from me. I was trying to offer a suggestion to the OP that I thought they'd find acceptable within their parameters.

awa

2018-08-19, 12:27 PM

How about we all agree that the following is utter nonsense.

DM: I'm sorry guys. I know we're playing in Fearun, but Wizards of the Coast hasn't yet released a booklet with the Baelnorn lich in fifth edition. Now now, I know that 5e Fearun is just Fearun after the Second Sundering, and there's nothing that suggest Ao would have done away with Baelnorn liches ... but you have to understand: my hands are tied ! Good aligned Liches can't exist in 5E until a book comes out that says they can!

A baelnorn is not just a lich who decided not to be evil they are created through a different process with different rules that presumably do not require them to eat souls as baelnorn cannot be evil.
So really they are a false example having a not evil baelnorn is not clever or creative it’s just an immortal elf that's not evil by default.

Baelnorn have some similarities to lichs but they’re not liches because among other things they don’t eat souls. They’re their own thing that happens to be superficially similar. It’s like saying bats are birds just because they both fly or dolphins are fish because they swim.

edit
the funny thing is i don't actually dislike the ops idea its just ive gotten caught up in arguing against this specific example because he choose ones that are basically defined by being irredeemable.
The one someone posted way back about the rational/ lazy red dragon was fine nothing their that requires a red dragon to eat souls or what have you as part of its very nature.

edit 2
So the thread is probably drowned in lich arguing but I’ll give a shot at answering the actual post
Ghouls are bad and kill people, but they do help stop the spread of disease by eating corpses. If left alone they loot graveyards for the dead and generally keep their numbers low enough that you can live with them if your careful and don’t make it to hard to get at corpses. They may have an endless hunger but they still have a finite amount of space in their stomachs.
But this small group has found a better place for themselves, they are sent into plague ravaged regions to remove the corpses and halt its spread. Immune to the plague themselves they can collect all the plague dead for their lairs allowing them enough meat to even their incredible hungers; and it’s simply an unfortunate fact of life that there will always be more plague dead to keep them fed.

Even the "good" ghouls need to be treated with caution because while they may be providing a vital service they are not nice or safe but with sufficient safeguards in place they can fulfill their duty and do more good than harm.

Malifice

2018-08-19, 01:05 PM

Strange...I looked through my entire post and couldn't find where I said I believed rape/murder/torture of children was not evil. Probably because I never said that.

You said: 'The people in this thread saying, "No, never! [Insert thing here] must ALWAYS be Evil!" are not the type of people I would want to play with, and I'll just leave it at that.'

Allow me to insert [Murder/ rape and torture of children] as your [insert thing here] in the above sentence.

It goes without saying that Rape is a reprehensible crime, and evil.

Soul annihilation is worse. In DnD it has always been portrayed as the vilest most evil thing you can do.

Having a 'LN' lord that sentences murderers to soul annihilation so he can stay alive is like having a 'LN' Lord that sentences criminals to being raped. By him.

It's not morally neutral. Its evil with a capital E.

Your soul destroying/ rapist Lich might disagree of course, and that's his right (weirdly even your soul destroying Lich lord acknowledges he is evil in any event).

You can subjectively think youre a good man all you want to, even while ordering the vilest of genocides and crimes. I have no issue with that, or depicting such a (common) trope in my games.

But in my games, soul destroyers, rapists, murders, necromancers, slavers, torturers and so forth go to the negative planes of existence on death. They're evil despite what they think about the topic.

Angelalex242

2018-08-19, 02:06 PM

Here's one...

Suppose you stick a helm of opposite alignment on an individual lich. Or he draws the Balance card of the deck of many things?

No matter what he was yesterday, his alignment's been flipped.

Now horrified at the thought of eating souls, what does he do now?

Scripten

2018-08-19, 02:18 PM

Malifice

2018-08-19, 02:32 PM

He stops eating souls and dies. Being actually dead, he's no longer a Lich.

Likely horrified at what he has done, and what he is, he destroys himself immediately, before someone can take the Helm of Alignment change off him.

Noble self sacrifice and protection of the innocent.

This thread is ridiculous.

All alignment threads invariably are.

People justifying all sorts of beyond the pale crap (genocide, soul eating and destruction, human sacrifice, murder, torture, cannibalism, necromancy, slavery; you name it) as morally neutral or even morally good if 'done for the right reasons'.

Apparently Kelemvor judges souls based on the individuals subjective interpretation of why they comitted rape and murder; as long as they can argue persuasively that they were only raping, torturing, soul destroying etc 'evil 'doers' they're golden and get into Celestia.

I shoudlnt be surprised.This mirrors what a lot of people think in the real world; most murderers, rapists, terrorists and genocidal monsters think they are actually good and righteous people, or are doing it for good reasons (genuinely they actually think this).

They arent.

Angelalex242

2018-08-19, 02:48 PM

You'd think a Lich who can cast Wish would try to wish himself out of eating souls before falling on the nearest sword. These ARE 20th level wizards, after all.

The Aboleth

2018-08-19, 02:57 PM

You said: 'The people in this thread saying, "No, never! [Insert thing here] must ALWAYS be Evil!" are not the type of people I would want to play with, and I'll just leave it at that.'

Allow me to insert [Murder/ rape and torture of children] as your [insert thing here] in the above sentence.

Given that I was talking specifically about a lich, I thought context would have clued you in to the fact I was talking about creatures that are usually considered Evil--not acts. But fine, let me rephrase:

The people in this thread saying, "No, never! creature[/b] here] must ALWAYS be Evil!" are not the type of people I would want to play with, and I'll just leave it at that.

It goes without saying that Rape is a reprehensible crime, and evil.

I agree.

Soul annihilation is worse. In DnD it has always been portrayed as the vilest most evil thing you can do.

I would personally disagree with the bolded part. As for the part that is not bolded, I'll reserve my judgment since I am way more familiar with 5E than previous editions.

Having a 'LN' lord that sentences murderers to soul annihilation so he can stay alive is like having a 'LN' Lord that sentences criminals to being raped. By him.

Strongly disagree. 5E does not equate "soul-devouring" with "rape." You are free to feel that way, but that comes from your own personal interpretations/biases, not from 5E's writings. Maybe keep that in mind before you criticize the posts of other people.

Beyond that, even if I accepted the premise that becoming a lich should ALWAYS be an Evil act, there's nothing saying a previously evil lich couldn't slowly drift to another alignment over the course of many hundreds of years. PCs are able to switch alignments based on a pattern of Good/Neutral/Evil actions...why couldn't creatures or NPCs? I can definitely see room for a scenario in which a lich who has lived for 1000 years is [i]now LN or even Good because their Neutral or Good acts over the most recent 500 years far eclipse the Evil acts.

If PCs can change alignment, why can't we also leave room for creatures (liches, demons, etc etc) to do the same?

qube

2018-08-19, 03:00 PM

Baelnorn have some similarities to lichs but they’re not liches because among other things they don’t eat souls. They’re their own thing that happens to be superficially similar. It’s like saying bats are birds just because they both fly or dolphins are fish because they swim.Except, of course, you ignore that Baelnorn is short for Baelnorn lich. It would be insane for a fiction writer to give it a confusing name if it's not part of some plot.

And, yes, sure, their abilities don't match 100%. But dracoliches are liches too, and their abilities ALSO don't 100% match.
(In statblock rules, they lack Turn Resistance, Paralyzing Touch or Disrupt Life. In description rules & in geenral flavor, a typical lich can use any soul to feed, while a dracolich requires dragon souls)

qube

2018-08-19, 03:18 PM

> Soul annihilation is worse. In DnD it has always been portrayed as the vilest most evil thing you can do.

I would personally disagree with the bolded part. As for the part that is not bolded, I'll reserve my judgment since I am way more familiar with 5E than previous editions.Oh, I can tell you -- soul annihilation is evil as ****.

Damning or Harming souls, Book of vile Darkness (DnD 3e, p8)
While harming one's enemies physcially is not inherently villainous, harming their souls is always evil. Only the foulest of villains could actually want to cause paint to another creature's aspect. Creatures without corrupt hearts simply dispatch their foes quickly, beling that sending a villain off to the justice of the afterlife is publishment enough. But evil beling like to capture foes and torture them to death, and some even prefer to torture the souls of their foes, never granting them the release of death. Worse still, some evil beings use their foul magic to destroy an opponents soul, ending his or her existance altogether.

(and when BovD speaks of evil, it's not something ambigous. Under 'murder', it describes killing a green dragon to stop it as a good act, and killing it for money as a neutral act. when it describes evil, it's not the "oh, but a green dragon is a living creature too and thou shallt not kill and so forth) )

Malifice

2018-08-19, 03:24 PM

Given that I was talking specifically about a lich, I thought context would have clued you in to the fact I was talking about creatures that are usually considered Evil--not acts. But fine, let me rephrase:

The people in this thread saying, "No, never! creature[/b] here] must ALWAYS be Evil!" are not the type of people I would want to play with, and I'll just leave it at that.

I agree.

I would personally disagree with the bolded part. As for the part that is not bolded, I'll reserve my judgment since I am way more familiar with 5E than previous editions.

Strongly disagree. 5E does not equate "soul-devouring" with "rape." You are free to feel that way, but that comes from your own personal interpretations/biases, not from 5E's writings. Maybe keep that in mind before you criticize the posts of other people.

Beyond that, even if I accepted the premise that becoming a lich should ALWAYS be an Evil act, there's nothing saying a previously evil lich couldn't slowly drift to another alignment over the course of many hundreds of years. PCs are able to switch alignments based on a pattern of Good/Neutral/Evil actions...why couldn't creatures or NPCs? I can definitely see room for a scenario in which a lich who has lived for 1000 years is [i]now LN or even Good because their Neutral or Good acts over the most recent 500 years far eclipse the Evil acts.

If PCs can change alignment, why can't we also leave room for creatures (liches, demons, etc etc) to do the same?

Id hazard a guess that if Soul annhilation was a crime, it would incur a longer jail sentence than Rape does in most criminal codes. Murder is already more serous than Rape in most criminal jurisdictions. Presuming the existence of a soul (and an afterlife) annihilating a sentient beings soul is infinately worse than murder.

Youre not just harming them (rape, torture, assault) from which they'll emerge scarred but still alive, and youre not just killing them (from which at least they live on in the afterlife) youre utterly annihilating them from existence. You're depriving them of any chance of redemption, or just reward (or eternal damnation). They will never be reunited with loved ones in the after life. There is no after life.

Shar worshiipers and other nihilists might be down with that, but Shar is pretty evil also so there is that. Tharizdun also, but again, also evil.

I cant recall seeing 'soul destruction' as ever depicted as anything other than a practice engaged in or advocated by beings other than those we could be pretty happy as defining as 'uber evil bad guys'.

In a world that presupposes immortal souls, it's literally the most horrible form of harm you can do to a being.

The Aboleth

2018-08-19, 03:25 PM

Oh, I can tell you -- soul annihilation is evil as ****.

Damning or Harming souls, Book of vile Darkness (DnD 3e, p8)
While harming one's enemies physcially is not inherently villainous, harming their souls is always evil. Only the foulest of villains could actually want to cause paint to another creature's aspect. Creatures without corrupt hearts simply dispatch their foes quickly, beling that sending a villain off to the justice of the afterlife is publishment enough. But evil beling like to capture foes and torture them to death, and some even prefer to torture the souls of their foes, never granting them the release of death. Worse still, some evil beings use their foul magic to destroy an opponents soul, ending his or her existance altogether.

(and when BovD speaks of evil, it's not something ambigous. Under 'murder', it describes killing a green dragon to stop it as a good act, and killing it for money as a neutral act. when it describes evil, it's not the "oh, but a green dragon is a living creature too and thou shallt not kill and so forth) )

Sure, but that is a 3E text. And it still doesn't equate "soul destroying" with "rape." You can argue it's saying soul destroying is worse,, but even if it were my point about 5E not saying it (yet?) still stands.

EDIT DUE TO ACCIDENTAL DOUBLE-POST:

Id hazard a guess that if Soul annhilation was a crime, it would incur a longer jail sentence than Rape does in most criminal codes. Murder is already more serous than Rape in most criminal jurisdictions. Presuming the existence of a soul (and an afterlife) annihilating a sentient beings soul is infinately worse than murder.

Putting aside the issue of a criminal justice system as a valid judge of a crime's real severity, I'm pretty sure some victims of rape would feel non-existence preferable to living with the trauma of having been raped. I'll say no more on this subject, because it is potentially a trigger for some.

not just harming them (rape, torture, assault) from which they'll emerge scarred but still alive, and youre not just killing them (from which at least they live on in the afterlife) youre utterly annihilating them from existence. You're depriving them of any chance of redemption, or just reward (or eternal damnation). They will never be reunited with loved ones in the after life. There is no after life.

See above.

I cant recall seeing 'soul destruction' as ever depicted as anything other than a practice engaged in or advocated by beings other than those we could be pretty happy as defining as 'uber evil bad guys'.

Poor strawman.

In a world that presupposes immortal souls, it's literally the most horrible form of harm you can do to a being.

Again, this is debatable.

Louro

2018-08-19, 04:15 PM

Actually, in forgotten realms there is no much difference from being turned into an undead or dying without having a faith.

Faithless souls end up in the faithless wall, which is an absolute aberration. Kelemvor tried to destroy it, but had to withdraw once he found out.

----

Good bad guys?
The best ever villains are those who are actually right.

Millstone85

2018-08-19, 04:22 PM

Apparently Kelemvor judges souls based on the individuals subjective interpretation of why they comitted rape and murder; as long as they can argue persuasively that they were only raping, torturing, soul destroying etc 'evil 'doers' they're golden and get into Celestia.This is another can of worms, but I believe it was never Kelemvor's job to judge if a soul is lawful good enough for Celestia. Rather, his job is to take the DMG's "When a creature dies, its soul [...] goes to abide on the plane where the creature's deity resides. If the creature didn't worship a deity, its soul departs to the plane corresponding to its alignment." (p24) and replace the end with "stays with me in Hades as a servant, larva or brick".

I cant recall seeing 'soul destruction' as ever depicted as anything other than a practice engaged in or advocated by beings other than those we could be pretty happy as defining as 'uber evil bad guys'.

In a world that presupposes immortal souls, it's literally the most horrible form of harm you can do to a being.Uh, no. In a world that presupposes immortal souls, the most horrible form of harm you can do to a being is torture them forever and ever, knowing they can no longer await the sweet release of death. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

And if saying so makes me an "uber evil bad guy" in your eyes, then so be it.

Maelynn

2018-08-19, 04:48 PM

in my games, soul destroyers, rapists, murders, necromancers, slavers, torturers and so forth go to the negative planes of existence on death. They're evil despite what they think about the topic.

So any governing body who upholds the death penalty is evil and should be sent to the hells? Because clearly, those people are murderers too. Who cares if they believe they're making the world a better place by ridding it of a vile monster who has committed all sorts of vile acts, who cares if they 'disguise murder as justice to get away with it'? They kill a man. They're murderers. They go to the negative planes. Right?

Your alignment is just not your actions. It's your intentions, your beliefs, the result you hope to get that also matters a great deal.

Also, just because there are people in this thread saying that something isn't always evil, doens't mean they say the exact opposite instead and think it's a good thing. There's this huge and lovely grey area you're completely ignoring here. ;)

qube

2018-08-19, 05:21 PM

Sure, but that is a 3E text. And it still doesn't equate "soul destroying" with "rape." You can argue it's saying soul destroying is worse,, but even if it were my point about 5E not saying it (yet?) still stands.considering you said, "As for the part that is not bolded, I'll reserve my judgment since I am way more familiar with 5E than previous editions.", yes, that' 3E text. that was the point.

As for it still doesn't equate "soul destroying" with "rape."- On the scale of evilness, rape is only a footnote in BoVD. Because rape has more to do with either psychopathic inability to control urges, or domination through extreme violence. Bad, with terrible consequences, sure - but soul destruction is giving the middle finger to the Grand Cosmic Scale of things.
If you want to trying to argue that one should look at the state of the victim opposite to the reason why the actions were committed ... well, that's an argument you'll lose. Don't forget that theft from an innocent man is evil, yet killing a red dragon is good. Yet death is a far more severe state then loss of a few coins. What made one evil and one good was not what was done, but why.

As for 5E not adressing the issue ... well, considering the reasons why one is worse then the other has not changed between editions, I'm not sure why you need 5E to actually repeat it.
(not saying that this is is the case here - but "5E has not adressed the issue yet" is usually the last argument of someone who knows he lost the argument but rather put his head in the sand then listen to reason).

---

Also, just because there are people in this thread saying that something isn't always evil, doens't mean they say the exact opposite instead and think it's a good thing. There's this huge and lovely grey area you're completely ignoring here. ;)
indeed. But to be fair, there are some things that have very few gray area.

murderers killers, and even necromancers (namely the guys who help make Baelnorn liches) can be considered good sometimes. Though for rapists and soul destruction ... I got a hard time finding that gray area.

(even soul destruction. fearun/5E has nothing on that scale where I'd see it as valid option)

Millstone85

2018-08-19, 05:24 PM

It is pretty much inevitable at this point that we would go into subjects like the death penalty and, its counterpart, the right to die.

The only other option is to end the discussion, which I think will be done for us very soon.

Scripten

2018-08-19, 05:37 PM

I'm amazed that the mods haven't banned these alignment threads yet. They never really seem to go anywhere remotely positive.

Boci

2018-08-19, 05:48 PM

As for it still doesn't equate "soul destroying" with "rape."- On the scale of evilness, rape is only a footnote in BoVD. Because rape has more to do with either psychopathic inability to control urges, or domination through extreme violence.

Likely also because as misguided as the writers of BoVD were, they nevertheless realized that going into rape based mechanics, magic items fuelled off it, using it as a casting component, was a terrible idea.

Unoriginal

2018-08-19, 05:51 PM

Likely also because as misguided as the writers of BoVD were, they nevertheless realized that going into rape based mechanics, magic items fuelled off it, using it as a casting component, was a terrible idea.

There is actually a rape-based magic item in 3.X, either in the BoVD or the Fiend Folio. It's an unicorn horn, used to rape a virgin, that allows you to teleport where the rape happened.

Boci

2018-08-19, 05:53 PM

There is actually a rape-based magic item in 3.X, either in the BoVD or the Fiend Folio. It's an unicorn horn, used to rape a virgin, that allows you to teleport where the rape happened.

That's just fluff though. Its also referenced in the fleshmelding artefact (a man reshaping slaves to look like his daughters, eww) and one of the gnome NPCs is a machocist rapist. But that's just a reference, a reminder from the writers that they still remeber is exists. Soul destruction on the other hand could be used to substitute the XP cost for caster or to empower a spell. It also featured in how some of the artefacts worked, but just their creation, but also how they operated.

Kane0

2018-08-19, 06:23 PM

A clan of ostracized fiends sounds pretty cool as a throwaway faction, those that condemn typically fiendish ways of life and are hunted by traditional fiends and celestials equally.

Mummies and Wraiths might be neat as not-traditional-evil too, depending on the story behind them.

Aboleth, Slaadi and Kraken could be awesome angatonists that aren't evil, in the same sort of category as Great Old Ones where most consider them evil by default but it isn't locked in. This goes for chromatic dragon too I guess.

The Aboleth

2018-08-19, 06:31 PM

considering you said, "As for the part that is not bolded, I'll reserve my judgment since I am way more familiar with 5E than previous editions.", yes, that' 3E text. that was the point.

Fair enough; for some reason I thought you were referring to the bolded part and ignored the not bolded. It's been an exhausting weekend!

As for it still doesn't equate "soul destroying" with "rape."- On the scale of evilness, rape is only a footnote in BoVD. Because rape has more to do with either psychopathic inability to control urges, or domination through extreme violence. Bad, with terrible consequences, sure - but soul destruction is giving the middle finger to the Grand Cosmic Scale of things.

I can't begin to tell you how much I disagree with the bolded assertions.

As for 5E not adressing the issue ... well, considering the reasons why one is worse then the other has not changed between editions, I'm not sure why you need 5E to actually repeat it.

"Reasons why one bad thing is worse than another" is mostly subjective. However, I will note that while BovD says soul-destroying is "only used by the most vile individuals," it could also say the same about rape if it wanted to include the act as "more than a footnote." That BoVD barely speaks about rape does not mean rape is considered to be less heinous.

(not saying that this is is the case here - but "5E has not adressed the issue yet" is usually the last argument of someone who knows he lost the argument but rather put his head in the sand then listen to reason).

My head remains firmly above sand-level.

I feel like some people are trying to distort what I am saying. At no point have I said "Soul-destruction is Good!" It's not. Heck, I'm not even saying I think rape is worse! I'm just saying some might feel otherwise, and I wouldn't begrudge them for feeling so.

Likely also because as misguided as the writers of BoVD were, they nevertheless realized that going into rape based mechanics, magic items fuelled off it, using it as a casting component, was a terrible idea.

Aaaaaand the moment someone brings up "rape-based mechanics" is the moment I decide to bow out of this discussion. Have a good one, everybody!

Boci

2018-08-19, 06:38 PM

Aaaaaand the moment someone brings up "rape-based mechanics" is the moment I decide to bow out of this discussion. Have a good one, everybody!

You bow out when someone says "rape based mechanics aren't in the game because they are a terrible idea"? Not sure why, it sounds like common sense to me.

Kane0

2018-08-19, 07:11 PM

Everybody has their own line.

For many, it was probably the word 'rape'.

So can we not please?

The Aboleth

2018-08-19, 07:29 PM

You bow out when someone says "rape based mechanics aren't in the game because they are a terrible idea"? Not sure why, it sounds like common sense to me.

Sorry, I should clarify: The idea itself creeps me out, and I didn't/don't want to spend more time thinking about it. I agree with you that they are a terrible idea.

qube

2018-08-20, 02:22 AM

> Because rape has more to do with either psychopathic inability to control urges, or domination through extreme violence. Bad, with terrible consequences, sure - but soul destruction is giving the middle finger to the Grand Cosmic Scale of things.

I can't begin to tell you how much I disagree with the bolded assertions.Cool. err ...
On the reasons why people rape ... err ... take it up psychologists?
On the soul destruction, take it up with the writers of fearun/D&D.

However, I will note that while BovD says soul-destroying is "only used by the most vile individuals," it could also say the same about rape if it wanted to include the act as "more than a footnote." That BoVD barely speaks about rape does not mean rape is considered to be less heinous.No - but the fact it points out that soul destruction is an act only done by the most vile of individuals, while rape is just a footnote under psychopaths (and believe you me, psychopath is a low bar considering the stomach churning stuff BoVD covers), is.

I feel like some people are trying to distort what I am saying. At no point have I said "Soul-destruction is Good!" It's not. Heck, I'm not even saying I think rape is worse! I'm just saying some might feel otherwise, and I wouldn't begrudge them for feeling so.
And I'm pointing out that D&D devs are not amongst them.

People can agree with them or not - just like they can disagree murdering a red dragon to save the townsfolk is a good act - but that doesn't matter. Oppinion doesn't alter canon.

Louro

2018-08-20, 02:56 AM

agree [/I]with them or not - just like they can disagree murdering a red dragon to save the townsfolk is a good act - but that doesn't matter. Oppinion doesn't alter canon.
Of course it matters. What's good in one society can be evil in another.
Red dragon can have divine status and citizens must endure it's whrath.
Harvesting bad people souls for the red dragon can be a good act if he is using them to prevent demons taking over.

Being persuasive to get someone go to a bar is fair in Spain, and rude in Germany.
Killing wolfs was a good act a couple of decades ago.
Stealing food is a good act from a kobold perspective (he is helping the kobunity).
Hiting a city with an asteroid was a good act in Dragonlance.

Malifice

2018-08-20, 03:45 AM

Harvesting bad people souls for the red dragon can be a good act if he is using them to prevent demons taking over.

Bahahahahahaha!

Every. Single. Time.

Louro

2018-08-20, 04:24 AM

Malifice

2018-08-20, 04:55 AM

Harvesting evil souls to fuel magic defenses against evil stuff is a good act.

Bahahaha! No it is not a good act!

In Warhammer 40k the empire needs 1M (million) souls everyday to fuel some sort of ancient equipment that prevents the big Evil to take over directy.

And the 40K Imperium of Man is a dystopian and Orwellian tyrannical xenophobic theocracy/ bureaucracy that would be very much 'LE'!

You do understand this right? Like; I cant understand how you can possibly argue otherwise!

The Emperor fights Chaos. He's a bastion of Law and Order, not one of 'Good'. His agents virus bomb planets killing billions of innocents while he wages a galactic war of genocide thats been going well over 10,000 years and costs literally trillions of lives annually!

The Imperium of man uses evil methods to fight Chaos and Disorder. There is nothing 'good' about the Imperium of Man; they're a regime that has all the bad traits of the Nazis and Stalin, all rolled into one, then dialled up to a billion.

The 40k Imperium of Man is 'good'? I think you kind of.. miss the point there.

Greywander

2018-08-20, 05:40 AM

I think this thread has unintentionally fulfilled the request of the OP. I mean, if we do assume that soul destruction is an unambiguously Evil act, then just look at how many people are providing reasonable sounding justifications for why it could actually be good? Just make an NPC that follows that same logic, and you have a villain who honestly thinks they're the good guy.

But it also works if you go the other way. If these acts aren't actually unambiguously Evil, then we have an awful lot of radical extremist paladins and clerics terrorizing innocent liches and vampires.

From this we can derive two templates that allow us to make "good" villains.

If X is actually evil. "X isn't necessarily evil, here's some twisted logic to justify it."

If X isn't necessarily evil. "All X is evil and needs to be destroyed. No exceptions."

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 05:46 AM

Harvesting evil souls to fuel magic defenses against evil stuff is a good act.

ahahaa.

In Warhammer 40k the empire needs 1M (million) souls everyday to fuel some sort of ancient equipment that prevents the big Evil to take over directy.
Is that good or bad? Is survival good or bad?

The Emperor, or at least the Imperium, is evil, though. That's the whole point.

Greywander

2018-08-20, 05:59 AM

The Emperor, or at least the Imperium, is evil, though. That's the whole point.
By our standards, yes. The Imperium is comparable to Nazi Germany. But here's the thing: the world of Warhammer 40k isn't our world, nor is it the D&D world. We've already seen how D&D might view good and evil differently than we do in our world, the same is true in 40k. "Desperate times call for desperate measures," as the saying goes. 40k is a cruel world, and everything is trying to kill you. The Imperium is definitely authoritarian, and it's certainly an unpleasant place to live, but so is everywhere else. If you are a human, the Imperium is your best shot at long term survival, even in such a crapsack world. 40k eschews traditional judgements of evil or good, instead going back to the idea presented earlier of having two (or more) factions with competing goals. In this case, the goals of each faction generally involve genocide against your species, so it's merely a matter of pragmatism to side with the faction that's less likely to kill you for no reason. It's a very different mindset when it comes to morality than D&D.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-20, 06:03 AM

By our standards, yes. The Imperium is comparable to Nazi Germany. But here's the thing: the world of Warhammer 40k isn't our world, nor is it the D&D world. We've already seen how D&D might view good and evil differently than we do in our world, the same is true in 40k. "Desperate times call for desperate measures," as the saying goes. 40k is a cruel world, and everything is trying to kill you. The Imperium is definitely authoritarian, and it's certainly an unpleasant place to live, but so is everywhere else. If you are a human, the Imperium is your best shot at long term survival, even in such a crapsack world. 40k eschews traditional judgements of evil or good, instead going back to the idea presented earlier of having two (or more) factions with competing goals. In this case, the goals of each faction generally involve genocide against your species, so it's merely a matter of pragmatism to side with the faction that's less likely to kill you for no reason. It's a very different mindset when it comes to morality than D&D.

That doesn't make IoM good. They are the best chance humanity has, but they are evil, it's just that everyone else is worse.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 06:16 AM

By our standards, yes. The Imperium is comparable to Nazi Germany. But here's the thing: the world of Warhammer 40k isn't our world, nor is it the D&D world. We've already seen how D&D might view good and evil differently than we do in our world, the same is true in 40k. "Desperate times call for desperate measures," as the saying goes. 40k is a cruel world, and everything is trying to kill you. The Imperium is definitely authoritarian, and it's certainly an unpleasant place to live, but so is everywhere else. If you are a human, the Imperium is your best shot at long term survival, even in such a crapsack world. 40k eschews traditional judgements of evil or good, instead going back to the idea presented earlier of having two (or more) factions with competing goals. In this case, the goals of each faction generally involve genocide against your species, so it's merely a matter of pragmatism to side with the faction that's less likely to kill you for no reason. It's a very different mindset when it comes to morality than D&D.

40k doesn't "eschews traditional judgements of evil or good".

EVERY faction is evil. That's the whole point.

It's true that it's a very different mindset than in D&D, but that doesn't make the setting separate from our standards of morality.

Boci

2018-08-20, 06:22 AM

That doesn't make IoM good. They are the best chance humanity has, but they are evil, it's just that everyone else is worse.

Craftworld Eldar probably have slightly better chances for getting the "least **** faction" award. Imperium of Man is second best.

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 06:26 AM

Harvesting evil souls to fuel magic defenses against evil stuff is a good act.

In Warhammer 40k the empire needs 1M (million) souls everyday to fuel some sort of ancient equipment that prevents the big Evil to take over directy.
Is that good or bad? Is survival good or bad?

Good and bad are subjected to culture. There is no such thing as absolute good. Malar, god of beasts, is seen as evil in most civilizations. What civilization doesn't know is that Malar is the only way to go when the savage wilderness is your home. Malar is good for savage people.

There are good aligned planes that your soul goes to and bad aligned planes that your soul goes to. When you die, your one soul that you have goes to one place depending on how your actions are perceived in the view of the multiverse.

On a small scale, you might be correct. A society of Evil people may see their actions as good because it is beneficial to them. They're equally as likely to understand that their actions are Evil regardless because they're wholey motivated by those actions being good only for them. If it's beneficial for them to claim the souls of hundreds because it secures their safety for the the foreseeable future, they would see that as an act of good, even though I think it's well established (even in 5E, Curse of Strahd explicitly touches on this notion) that claiming/trapping/destroying souls is an incredibly evil deed.

But DND does have an absolute grand scale. You can shake hands with Asmodeus himself, a being of true evil. He would be proud to tell you that what he has accomplished has done much good for him and his armies of evil. The grand cosmological scale is what's being discussed here, not the subjective community based scale.

I pick Asmodeus as the example here because his goals in the long term are made to sound beneficial to all of those who would continue to live in the multiverse. Wars would never happen, life would be endlessly comfortable, the world would quite literally be a utopia made by him. The truth however is that he wants to be the one being at the head of all that and the cost to get there is an endless amount of dead and buried bodies with their souls filed into a list condemning them to his eternal servitude.

Under your definition, Asmodeus is a Good being because his goals are peace and prosperity to all the known multiverse.

EDIT: This information on Asmodeus made available in MToF was actually a pretty good read, it was very clever of him to trick the angels into taking him to appeal to a Lawful Neutral God as his actions are entirely lawful. He never tries to defend himself against accusations of Evil.

Monavic

2018-08-20, 06:57 AM

I once ran a game with a good lich. In this case he betrayed his former master who became evil and transformed into a lich himself. To get revenge the master captured him and forced him to become a lich against his will. He kept his students phylactery so that he could not kill himself and would always be drawn back. This might even work with 5e lore seeing as the good lich is not the one stealing souls.

Louro

2018-08-20, 07:01 AM

ahahaa.

The Emperor, or at least the Imperium, is evil, though. That's the whole point.
The emperor was actually a paladin.

From your perspective the empire is awful. From the perspective of the billions of people being protected by marines the empire is good.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 07:43 AM

The emperor was actually a paladin.

He was an awful person who protected others.

From your perspective the empire is awful. From the perspective of the billions of people being protected by marines the empire is good.

From everyone perspective the Imperium is a brutal tyranny that kills billions of its citizens daily on a whim and hundreds of billions more out of semi-pragmatic callousness. It's not because the citizens consider it the best thing that it's not evil.

qube

2018-08-20, 07:44 AM

> just like they can disagree murdering a red dragon to save the
> townsfolk is a good act - but that doesn't matter. Oppinion doesn't alter canon.

Of course it matters. What's good in one society can be evil in another.
Red dragon can have divine status and citizens must endure it's whrath.No. Because what you did is try to muddy the example opposite to adressing it.

We all understand the situation of a red dragon terrorising townsfolk (at least, people argueing in good faith do).
We all understand that people can be motivated by helping innocent people.

D&D has ruled a combination of the above two as [killing dragon] = [good]
Other "societies" (RP systems, trains of though, mental extercities, faiths), might come to a different conclusion - I can people argue that dragon lives also matter. but that's not relevant for D&D. In D&D, [killing dragon]* = [good]

*: in the aforementioned situation, for the aforementioned reason

The emperor was actually a paladin.Which explains

The Imperium's rule, carried on in the Emperor's name since the end of the Horus Heresy by the High Lords of Terra and a multitude of Imperial organisations, has been long, oppressive and necessarily harsh. It has also resulted in technological and cultural stagnation, and a regression into tyranny, superstition and religious obfuscation and intolerance that would have horrified the Emperor.
-- warhammer40k.wikia.com

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 07:47 AM

that would have horrified the Emperor[/I].

It's highly debatable if the tyranny and oppression would have horrified the Emperor. The fall in technology and superstition would have, certainly, but he wasn't a nice person himself.

Oh well, I suppose it's a pointless debate anyway. How awful the Imperium is to its citizens depend of the writer.

Sometime it's barely better than the Dark Eldar, sometime it's presented as somewhat decent to the general population when it doesn't have to be horrible for the sake of survival.

Also depend which planet you're on.

Boci

2018-08-20, 07:49 AM

It's highly debatable if the tyranny and oppression would have horrified the Emperor. The fall in technology and superstition would have, certainly, but he wasn't a nice person himself.

The IoM's flavour of tyrranny would have. The Emperor was an atheist and hated being worshipped (yes yes, he probably shouldn't have acted like a god then).

Scripten

2018-08-20, 07:51 AM

The emperor was actually a paladin.

From your perspective the empire is awful. From the perspective of the billions of people being protected by marines the empire is good.

There are at least a dozen books/short stories/novellas proving this statement to be utterly wrong even in-universe. The Imperium is not good. The Imperium is not supposed to be good. Not even "ambiguously" good.

The first few Horus Heresy books introduced a "good" faction. They were almost immediately exterminated, and the only reason there's an "almost" in there is due to the forces of Chaos, not the Imperium. The IoM's MO even at that time was unconditional genocide of "non-humans" with a very broad definition of what constituted "non-human".

The Emperor was a self-styled god and a fascist who used his functional(?) immortality to take over all of humanity, genetically engineer servile super soldiers, and then commit a spree of genocide across the galaxy. He's capital 'E' Evil, with a Lawful flavor. One might even consider him to be a demilich equivalent in 40K, due to his need for human souls and sessile existence.

Edit: Oof, this thread is full of ninjas. But the points still pretty much stand. The Emperor couldn't even relate to the Primarchs' level of humanity, much less actual humanity.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 07:51 AM

The IoM's flavour of tyrranny would have. The Emperor was an atheist and hated being worshipped (yes yes, he probably shouldn't have acted like a god then).

Oh, sure, he would have hated being worshiped.

qube

2018-08-20, 07:53 AM

From everyone perspective the Imperium is a brutal tyranny that kills billions of its citizens daily on a whim and hundreds of billions more out of semi-pragmatic callousness. It's not because the citizens consider it the best thing that it's not evil.Yup. Heck, just look at the Gue'vesa - humans who willingly join the Tau & fight for the Greater Good*, are considered amongst the most vile of Traitors and Heretics within the Imperium of Man.

* All sentient beings should strive to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of beings in the galaxy. Advancement towards a more successful, prosperous and peaceful existence in the future without much of the violent conflict

Oh, sure, he would have hated being worshiped.yes, because of the same reason he ended religion.

to quote The Emperor Himself declared that Mankind would never be free to progress and advance to its destined position as the pre-eminent intelligent species in the Milky Way Galaxy until "the last stone from the last church was cast down onto the last priest." It wasn't about him personally hating to be worshiped - it was because getting worshipped was contrairy to his mission.

Boci

2018-08-20, 07:57 AM

Yup. Heck, just look at the Gue'vesa - humans who willingly join the Tau & fight for the Greater Good*, are considered amongst the most vile of Traitors and Heretics within the Imperium of Man.

That's not actually a good example. Just because the Tau call their ideology the Greater Good doesn't mean it is. They already been clairified to drug the water supply and its hinted they might have done a lot worse. Everyone in 40k is bad, including the Tau.

qube

2018-08-20, 08:03 AM

That's not actually a good example. Just because the Tau call their ideology the Greater Good doesn't mean it is. They already been clairified to drug the water supply and its hinted they might have done a lot worse. Everyone in 40k is bad, including the Tau.sure, but humans that join to fight with the Tao for the greater good (you might argue that's not real - but they don't know that) - are considered vile of traitors and heretics because the Tao are xenos (not humans, but aliens) and do not follow the Emperer.
It's not an argument on how the Tao are good, but on IoM's totalitairianism (I prob spelled that wrong. meh)

Boci

2018-08-20, 08:06 AM

sure, but humans that join to fight with the Tao for the greater good (you might argue that's not real - but they don't know that) - are considered vile of traitors and heretics because the Tao are xenos (not humans, but aliens) and do not follow the Emperer.
It's not an argument on how the Tao are good, but on IoM's totalitairianism (I prob spelled that wrong. meh)

I don't why you'd need to mention that though. The Imperium of Mankind regularly commits genocide and billions die every day in their death camps. Next to that, not allowing their citizens to join another faction is downright tame.

Louro

2018-08-20, 08:11 AM

to quote The Emperor Himself declared that Mankind would never be free to progress and advance to its destined position as the pre-eminent intelligent species in the Milky Way Galaxy until "the last stone from the last church was cast down onto the last priest." It wasn't about him personally hating to be worshiped - it was because getting worshipped was contrairy to his mission.
Would you say said mission was good or evil?

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 08:33 AM

Would you say said mission was good or evil?

Might I direct you to my previous post where having a "good" end goal achieved by an evil world view doesn't make that a "Good" cause.

I'll give you the text straight out of MToF if it helps you understand it a bit better.

Asmodeus wants to rule the cosmos. Under his watch, he believes, the universe would take on a pristine, perfect state, with every living creature assigned a place in the infernal hierarchy. Wars would end, and every creature would have a purpose to fulfill. The universe would be a utopia, at least as Asmodeus views such a thing.

Tyranny, as with the Emperor in this 40k example and Asmodeus with the Blood War, often has "Good" intentions. That doesn't mean absolute rule where you crush and kill those who don't agree isn't Evil.

A mission to conquer the world through war and put it under your thumb to make it into your view of an idealized paradise is most likely Evil.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 08:55 AM

Doesn't help that Asmodeus's idea of an utopia is very much "a boot stamping on an human face -forever".

For all his grandiose rhetorics, he IS a sadistic totalitarian trickster of a control freak at heart.

Louro

2018-08-20, 09:09 AM

hamishspence

2018-08-20, 09:15 AM

30 years ago killing wolves was good because wolves were evil. Now it's a crime. Society evolves and goodness/evilness evolves with it.

Or alternatively - society develops a more accurate perspective on goodness/evilness over hundreds of generations.

Wolves were never evil - they were only perceived (wrongly) as evil.

Louro

2018-08-20, 09:20 AM

But would you say that wolves Hunter's from 30 years ago were evildoers?

qube

2018-08-20, 09:22 AM

Would you say said mission was good or evil?IIRC his mission was making humanity reach their full potential. This, in a void, is good. How he did it, however ... I'm afraid I don't know enough details on. (as PMProsecutorGodot points out, end & means are very different things).

However, all this doesn't consider that the Empire of mankind is a horrid corruption of the vision the Emperor. Ergo who or how he was is not really relevant. This is what makes it evil:

The selected psykers are, for the most part, indoctrinated to accept their fate as their sacred duty for the Imperium, for they are too dangerous to those around them to be allowed to live, and the sacrifice of their life is the greatest good that they can do in service to the God-Emperor. Those who prove less willing to give themselves for the glorious cause of Mankind are sedated and their psychic lifeforce fed to the power collection mechanism of the Golden Throne regardless.

Torm also absorbed the souls of his followers, to defeat Bane. But those souls were given by his followers. They didn't need to be indoctrinated - and no unwilling ones were taken.

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 09:25 AM

W40k was a bad example.

Good or evil?
1) someone breaking the neck of dozens of birds.
2) someone killing inocente people
3) someone assisting a mad dictator with the evil stuff.

1) a 6 years old kid thinking he was putting them to sleep (RL story)
2) killing infected people before they turn into zombies and destroy the whole mankind.
3) sacrificing himself, dealing with nightmares every night because of what he must do to make the dictator trust him and be able to backstab when the time comes.

What I mean is that acts are not good or evil, only people are. And it depends entirely on motivation, culture and intelligence.

30 years ago killing wolves was good because wolves were evil. Now it's a crime. Society evolves and goodness/evilness evolves with it.

Don't forget that the premise of this isn't based in real life, it's based in a game world where good and evil are clearly defined cosmic forces that play a large part in deciding what happens to you.

1- Definitely not good, I would say neutral due to ignorance.
2- This is an incredibly common trope in stories and media involving Zombies. The good people often struggle with killing someone to prevent them from turning, even if they're being begged to do it. Most of the time though it ends with the living humans becoming a worse plague to each other than the Zombies were, even those who were previously averse to killing people to prevent them from turning have become used to it and might even do it with little to no hesitation. Certainly not good.
3- At best Neutral, a good person would be horrified at the thought of assisting in such endeavors. It's also entirely possible that he was just as evil as the dictator but would rather commit his misdeeds in a different opposing direction to the him.

Creating specific, ambiguous examples doesn't support your point either. It's pretty easy to create examples that could easily be detailed as doing a bad thing for a good reason. That's not the crux of the discussion here.

On the wolf example, this is asinine. Did you know that Slavery was legal in the united states until 1865? Does that mean that prior to that date it wasn't a terrible thing to do? Just because a society views an act as "Good" or "Acceptable" doesn't mean it ever was, it just means that they viewed it as such.

I cannot stress to you enough however that this discussion is about a variety of game worlds, not real life, where Good and Evil are defined clearly. We could argue the philosophy of real life actions to the end of time but in DND you've got to do some pretty heinous things to be a Lich in the first place, you're almost definitely evil.

hamishspence

2018-08-20, 09:26 AM

But would you say that wolves Hunter's from 30 years ago were evildoers?

Yes - if their motives were not "protect people from attack" but purely "kill for sport".

Good demands "respect for life" - and this includes animal life. "Unnecessary killing" is by default evil, as is "killing for pleasure".

A shepherd killing wolves that prey on his sheep is not an evildoer.

But a sport hunter that hunts wolves that are doing no harm, purely for sport, is.

Louro

2018-08-20, 09:36 AM

Were all the slaves owners evil people?

What about drowning newborns in freezing water?
Tibet inhabitants did this to test the endurance of the children. Most of them died, those who survived... well, they survived.

I think it's pretty bold to make judgement about different cultures without the proper knowledge. Before science realized this shamans were considered retardeds.

---

Now, given the incredible diversity of D&D cultures, how can you state what's good and what's evil? Do humans have the copiright of good and evil or what?

hamishspence

2018-08-20, 09:40 AM

Were all the slaves owners evil people?

All slave owners were committing evil deeds.

Being evil people requires that one's "evil traits" overall, outweigh one's "good traits".

A person who lives a life dominated by self-sacrificing behaviour, but who "owns a slave or two" might get a Good alignment regardless of the small amount of Evil they do - because they are "more Good than Evil".

Louro

2018-08-20, 09:50 AM

Actually easier than that. Good guy inherits farm with slaves. He treats them good.

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 09:52 AM

Now, given the incredible diversity of D&D cultures, how can you state what's good and what's evil? Do humans have the copiright of good and evil or what?

You need to get your thoughts out of the societal implications of Good and Evil because in D&D the Gods themselves that are real, you can literally shake their hands know what is good and evil. Creating Undead or becoming a Lich usually puts you on a Good aligned Gods "He goes to the bad place" list.

The discussion is not based in real life, Good and Evil (for the 4th time I feel like I'm telling you this) are cosmic, well defined forces that shape and control the multiverse. There are entire planes with the sole purpose of housing specifically good or evil things.

I don't think you're actually taking any of this information in though, you seem to want to argue for the sake of arguing rather than to reach an understanding. I'm really beginning to understand why people advocate for a different type of alignment system.

EDIT:

Actually easier than that. Good guy inherits farm with slaves. He treats them good.
A good guy would free them and offer to pay anyone who wanted to stay and work for him.

This has basically confirmed my earlier suspicions.

Malifice

2018-08-20, 10:03 AM

It's highly debatable if the tyranny and oppression would have horrified the Emperor. The fall in technology and superstition would have, certainly, but he wasn't a nice person himself.

Oh well, I suppose it's a pointless debate anyway. How awful the Imperium is to its citizens depend of the writer.

Sometime it's barely better than the Dark Eldar, sometime it's presented as somewhat decent to the general population when it doesn't have to be horrible for the sake of survival.

Also depend which planet you're on.

And whether some random imperial agent had declared your planet needed to be virus bombed for some obscure reason, or you got drafted into the IG.

avalkauskas

2018-08-20, 10:05 AM

I would say Alignment is detrimental to what you're trying to achieve. Your NPCs and PCs should all have "lifepaths" or/and "personalities" that define them. It's much more interesting to face a PC or NPC that has ambitions, vices, secrets and fears. That gives everyone around the table plot and dialogue hooks rather than *sigh* alignment.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 10:16 AM

Were all the slaves owners evil people?

If we're talking about cattle slavery like in the US? Yes, yes they were.

Now, given the incredible diversity of D&D cultures, how can you state what's good and what's evil?

Lawful good (LG) creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society. Gold dragons, paladins, and most dwarves are lawful good.

Neutral good (NG) folk do the best they can to help others according to their needs. Many celestials, some cloud giants, and most gnomes are neutral good.

Chaotic good (CG) creatures act as their conscience directs, with little regard for what others expect. Copper dragons, many elves, and unicorns are chaotic good.

Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes. Many monks and some wizards are lawful neutral.

Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don't take sides, doing what seems best at the time. Lizardfolk, most druids, and many humans are neutral.

Chaotic neutral (CN) creatures follow their whims, holding their personal freedom above all else. Many barbarians and rogues, and some bards, are chaotic neutral.

Lawful evil (LE) creatures methodically take what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order. Devils, blue dragons, and hobgoblins are Lawful evil.

Neutral evil (NE) is the alignment of those who do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms. Many drow, some cloud giants, and yugoloths are neutraI evil.

Chaotic evil (CE) creatures act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust. Demons, red dragons, and orcs are chaotic evil.

Do humans have the copiright of good and evil or what?

In real life? Yes, as long as no other sapient species is identified.

In D&D? You're acting as if the dumb intolerant humans are imposing those labels on others. Clue number 1: they are not.

Most creatures are perfectly aware of if they're doing good or bad.

Goblins know they're malevolent, sadistic bullies. Most just think it's better/more enjoyable for them to be that than the alternative.

The Yuan-ti who are part of the doomsday cults know destroying the world for their own interest is evil. They just don't care about those who will be hurt by that, because the perks are good for them.

Gruumsh doesn't think he's a misunderstood good guy. He's proud of being a bad person because according to him, it's how the strong should behave and stomping on the weak is what makes him happy.

Actually easier than that. Good guy inherits farm with slaves. He treats them good.

You mean he frees them so they aren't slaves anymore?

I'm really beginning to understand why people advocate for a different type of alignment system.

No reason to put the blame on the 5e alignment system, here.

Like usual, people don't use it, do their own thing, and then complain about it.

Boci

2018-08-20, 10:41 AM

No reason to put the blame on the 5e alignment system, here.

Like usual, people don't use it, do their own thing, and then complain about it.

I think its relevant point that "If D&D has objective Good and Evil, and the means in-universe to assertain this, why does it have diverse cultures with different moral outlooks that would imply a more subjective take on morality?".

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 11:08 AM

No reason to put the blame on the 5e alignment system, here.

Like usual, people don't use it, do their own thing, and then complain about it.

I should clarify, it's not a direct jab at the system as a whole but at the idea that writing LG on your character sheet from the start gets people to assume that a) things you do are definitely good or b) You are unable to do things that are not good.

Basically, those who advocate for a dynamic alignment system where you take whatever actions you like and have that shift your alignment accordingly are starting to appeal more to me. I'd previously been a real stickler for Paladin's and their tenets (I still hold them a bit more strictly than some people at my table like) but I can understand the complaints behind it.

This doesn't harm the in universe paragons of their Alignment like Angels and Demons because barring a few notable exceptions, their actions are almost always in line with the alignment you expect. It does allow for a more dynamic system for Player Characters (read: Adventurers) to evolve over time because they live a chaotic and tumultuous lifestyle where they can inadvertently find themselves having to make incredibly difficult choices at the risk of life and limb.

At the same time, to a lesser extent, it was me showing my exasperation at the quoted commenter cherry picking a few unrelated morally ambiguous (or at least easily spun towards good or evil) scenarios to a tabletop game with a rigid alignment system.

Millstone85

2018-08-20, 11:39 AM

I think its relevant point that "If D&D has objective Good and Evil, and the means in-universe to assertain this, why does it have diverse cultures with different moral outlooks that would imply a more subjective take on morality?".My answer to this question would be "Because most adventures do not take place on the Upper Planes".

It is one thing to know there are heavens, and some characters may have spent enough time in them to make an attempt at writing "The Good Book", but it is not like every court of law has an angel sitting as judge.

Boci

2018-08-20, 11:40 AM

My answer to this question would be "Because most adventures do not take place on the Upper Planes".

It is one thing to know there are heavens, and some characters may have spent enough time in them to make an attempt at writing "The Good Book", but it is not like every court of law has an angel sitting as judge.

Which seem's incompatible with ProsecutorGodot's take:

You need to get your thoughts out of the societal implications of Good and Evil because in D&D the Gods themselves that are real, you can literally shake their hands know what is good and evil.

Which makes it sound like any kingdom or empire that wants to be good would check their laws with the gods.

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 11:56 AM

Which makes it sound like any kingdom or empire that wants to be good would check their laws with the gods.

We'll know for sure when the module drops next month, but I'm pretty sure that Waterdeep sets itself up primarily around Lathander.

This is also the primary drive around a lot of stereotypical alignements for races. Dwarves model themselves around Muradin, believing that he created them directly and take a Lawful Good approach to kingdoms and life. Drows have Lolth, telling them that what most (gods and mortals) consider Evil is what's good for them.

Law and Good don't go hand in hand though, just pointing that out.

Louro

2018-08-20, 11:59 AM

Ok, my last shot.
The cataclism, Dragonlance.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 12:01 PM

I think its relevant point that "If D&D has objective Good and Evil, and the means in-universe to assertain this, why does it have diverse cultures with different moral outlooks that would imply a more subjective take on morality?".

This question cannot be answered, because it relies on an incorrect assumption.

Two lawful good persons can disagree on what constitue the right thing to do, two neutral evil people can disagree on if doing something is worth it or not, two lawful evil people can disagree on how to interpret a code of conduct, and this even if they both have the same cultural background and belong to the same group. And there is nothing to say that there is one of those two how is correct and the other isn't.

Alignment is only a fraction of a character's personality, and there are thousands of factors that could lead someone to make a choice other than the other.

This is on the individual level. Now imagine on the cultural one.

Let's take the concept of murder, for example:

Both the surface Elves, the Bullywugs and the city of Waterdeep consider murder to be something that require punishment.

The surface Elves consider that one who commits murder should be punished...because they've wronged the family of the victim, which must now go on without them, and the punishment is geared toward compensating the family of the departed, sometime by paying them or by having to complete the murdered person's unfinished work. The most extreme punishment they will inflict on the murderer is exile.

The Bullywugs consider that one who commits murder should be punished... because if they got caught, and if they got caught, it means they're not good enough for whatever benefit they would get from said murder, while a successful assassination would likely have earned them favors and prestige.

The city of Waterdeep considers that one who commits murder should be punished... but said punishment will be different if you killed a Lord, a magistrate, a noble, a priest, or a random commoner. And if it was a random commoner you might get a reduced sentence depending on your reasons. In other word, depending of the victim's importance in the socio-economico-political structure, you could get immediate death penalty or a fine.

Meanwhile, goblin society doesn't care if a goblin murders another goblins, but it's not going to protect them if someone want to punish them for the murder (ex: if they kill one of the toadies of a slightly tougher goblin, they can expect bad things to happen).

It doesn't change that most surface Elves are chaotic good, because (among other things) the thought of murdering their fellow community members is abhorrent to them and they're not likely do to it.

It doesn't change that most Bullywugs are neutral evil, because (among other things) they have no issue with killing people to get what they want if they can get away with it, without caring for the pain they inflict on others.

It doesn't change that most Goblins are also neutral evil, because (among other things) they have no issue with killing people to get what they want if they can get away with it, and they very much like inflicting pain on others.

It doesn't change that if anyone in any of those societies regularly arbitrarily murdered people out of greed, said person would be chaotic evil.

Millstone85

2018-08-20, 12:22 PM

As an addendum to my last post, it might be a good thing that angels don't sit as judges.

Remember, a deva lives in a realm of absolute law and good. The deva might not understand the compromises and hard choices that mortals must grapple with in the world.

So cosmic Good isn't realistic by Material standards. Try to wrap your head around that one.

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 12:31 PM

Ok, my last shot.
The cataclysm, Dragonlance.

A quick read through of information about the Cataclysm in Dragonlance: Caused by a Kingpriest (head of state) who outlawed the worship of Evil and Neutral Gods and was in opposition to even the worship of good gods. His actions were initially motivated by the want to eradicate evil but eventually transformed into a want to control humanity as a godlike power (ironic to me since he seemed to be against the worship of gods himself)

In his efforts to please (or more likely enforce what he believed the god wanted) Paladine he ordered the complete genocide of a race and the deportation of two others. In the interim of all this he had devolved into hunting down even those who aligned themselves with him if they were in disagreement over some things. The gods consequently eradicated his nation for his hubris.

Forgive me if any of that information is incorrect, I had to do some research on the matter.

Yes, I would say that the Kingpriest in question would be considered Chaotic Evil. His actions caused the deaths of thousands of innocents and wiped a nation off the face of the planet all because he became paranoid and made demands of gods.

He had been told for 13 days straight to stop what he was doing and he kept on doing it.

Boci

2018-08-20, 12:31 PM

So cosmic Good isn't realistic by Material standards. Try to wrap your head around that one.

I believe its called "Signs writers realize they've written themselves into a corner for 200"

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 12:34 PM

A quick read through of information about the Cataclysm in Dragonlance: Caused by a Kingpriest (head of state) who outlawed the worship of Evil and Neutral Gods and was in opposition to even the worship of good gods. His actions were initially motivated by the want to eradicate evil but eventually transformed into a want to control humanity as a godlike power (ironic to me since he seemed to be against the worship of gods himself)

In his efforts to please (or more likely enforce what he believed the god wanted) Paladine he ordered the complete genocide of a race and the deportation of two others. In the interim of all this he had devolved into hunting down even those who aligned themselves with him if they were in disagreement over some things. The gods consequently eradicated his nation for his hubris.

Forgive me if any of that information is incorrect, I had to do some research on the matter.

Yes, I would say that the Kingpriest in question would be considered Chaotic Evil. His actions caused the deaths of thousands of innocents and wiped a nation off the face of the planet all because he became paranoid and made demands of gods.

He had been told for 13 days straight to stop what he was doing and he kept on doing it.

Eradicating his nation when he was the main offender was probably disproportionate, but then again he didn't do all those things without his nation's support.

Louro

2018-08-20, 12:42 PM

A quick read through of information about the Cataclysm in Dragonlance: Caused by a Kingpriest (head of state) who outlawed the worship of Evil and Neutral Gods and was in opposition to even the worship of good gods. His actions were initially motivated by the want to eradicate evil but eventually transformed into a want to control humanity as a godlike power (ironic to me since he seemed to be against the worship of gods himself)

In his efforts to please (or more likely enforce what he believed the god wanted) Paladine he ordered the complete genocide of a race and the deportation of two others. In the interim of all this he had devolved into hunting down even those who aligned themselves with him if they were in disagreement over some things. The gods consequently eradicated his nation for his hubris.

Forgive me if any of that information is incorrect, I had to do some research on the matter.

Yes, I would say that the Kingpriest in question would be considered Chaotic Evil. His actions caused the deaths of thousands of innocents and wiped a nation off the face of the planet all because he became paranoid and made demands of gods.

He had been told for 13 days straight to stop what he was doing and he kept on doing it.

Holy sacred cow! That changed a lot.
When I read a book about that, many years ago, the kingpriest was building the though police (minority report). Even killing mothers because at some point most of feel like killing their children.
Then Paladine, after the warnings, dropped a giant asteroid fireball over Ishtar completely destroying it.

The greater good of good destroyed and entire city to punish his followers and drive them back to the right path.
It was an act of good because Paladine did it.

--
On a side note, lord Soth was on his way to stop the kingpriest before the disaster, but an elven bitch distracted him. Then he turned into Lord Vader.

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 12:46 PM

As an addendum to my last post, it might be a good thing that angels don't sit as judges.

Remember, a deva lives in a realm of absolute law and good. The deva might not understand the compromises and hard choices that mortals must grapple with in the world. To the deva, an aasimar is a prized student who must live up to high, sometimes inflexible standards.
So cosmic Good isn't realistic by Material standards. Try to wrap your head around that one.

This wraps around nicely to the anecdote I posted earlier where Asmodeus tricked the Angels into appealing to Primus instead of their own courts. The Angels spent so much time bickering between each other and appealing their ideas, literal weeks of angels pouring in to condemn Asmodeus, that Primus lost his patience and never made a ruling. Asmodeus had defended his actions as Lawful (within the confines of the Nine Hells, they were) and said that they were to prevent the collapse of the multiverse (Which is inarguably a "Good" thing, and he's not technically lying about it). That doesn't mean he isn't Evil though.

It makes sense that they wouldn't understand because they live in a realm where little to no Evil exists and the goal of most higher planar beings is to influence mortals to follow their guidelines.

Which you cut out of the quote so I added it back in.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 12:50 PM

As an addendum to my last post, it might be a good thing that angels don't sit as judges.

So cosmic Good isn't realistic by Material standards. Try to wrap your head around that one.

I believe its called "Signs writers realize they've written themselves into a corner for 200"

I don't see what there is to wrap one head's around or what corner they're supposed to have written themselves in.

Cosmic good isn't realistic by Material Plane standards the same way the Plane of Fire isn't realistic by Material Plane standards. The planes are hyperbolic realms dedicated to a concept.

Angels live in a realm of near-uncompromised lawful benevolence. The Material plane contains all the alignments.

For Deva, doing the right thing is not an hard choice, it's common sense. If they see a starving penniless man find the gem-filled purse a rich merchant just dropped, for them it's obvious the right thing to do is to give the merchant his purse back, even if you have to go hungry and homeless because of it. And if they see a merchant being given bac his lost riches by a man who's destitute, it's obvious the right thing would be to reward the man (and even if the penniless man had done nothing, they would consider helping him obvious).

The idea that the penniless man could take the purse for himself or that the merchant could order the penniless man beaten to an inch of his life for daring touching the merchant's belongings is not something all Deva would think about without being exposed to said idea.

On a side note, lord Soth was on his way to stop the kingpriest before the disaster, but an elven bitch distracted him. Then he turned into Lord Vader.

He broke his oath and jeopardized his mission because he was jealous, then became a mass murderer. Blaming it all on "an elven bitch" is not what I'd call tasteful, since I want to stay polite.

Louro

2018-08-20, 01:05 PM

A good guy would free them (the slaves) and offer to pay anyone who wanted to stay and work for him.

This has basically confirmed my earlier suspicions.
So you basically saying that no slave owner ever was good. Even if they really care about the slaves.
One must fight the current order of things to be good? You know, if you free the slaves and pay them, your business is gonna be down really fast.
Then those slaves will be back into slavery.

Louro

2018-08-20, 01:07 PM

He broke his oath and jeopardized his mission because he was jealous, then became a mass murderer. Blaming it all on "an elven bitch" is not what I'd call tasteful, since I want to stay polite.
Oh sorry. Which, I meant elven which.

Millstone85

2018-08-20, 01:11 PM

Oh sorry. Which, I meant elven which.Or did you mean "witch"?

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 01:18 PM

So you basically saying that no slave owner ever was good. Even if they really care about the slaves.
One must fight the current order of things to be good? You know, if you free the slaves and pay them, your business is gonna be down really fast.
Then those slaves will be back into slavery.

No, I'm saying that the act of slavery isn't a good act, a good aligned person (in line with the long lost premise of this thread) would not keep slaves.

I'm shocked that you even have a defense ready in favor for keeping slaves, even if this is just a hypothetical scenario, even worse the defense is that the slave owner would lose money. Greed most definitely isn't a good trait either.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 01:41 PM

So you basically saying that no slave owner ever was good. Even if they really care about the slaves.

If they cared about them, they wouldn't condemn them to chattel slavery.

One must fight the current order of things to be good?

If the current order of things is evil, then yes. That or refusing to participate and leave, at least.

You know, if you free the slaves and pay them, your business is gonna be down really fast.

Oh, poor slave owners, it must be soooo hard for them.

Then those slaves will be back into slavery.

Oh, so really you're doing them a favor? How nice of you.

Let's just ignore that no, once freed, people couldn't be re-enslaved like that.

But anyway, Louro, thank you for showing us you were an outspoken defender of chattel slavery.

Louro

2018-08-20, 01:48 PM

Louro

2018-08-20, 01:51 PM

But anyway, Louro, thank you for showing us you were an outspoken defender of chattel slavery.
I never said I supported slavery. Refrain from those words as they are fukin offensive.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 01:53 PM

I never said I supported slavery. Refrain from those words as they are fukin offensive.

Because implying that slave owners were doing the slaves a favor by not freeing them isn't offensive?

Louro

2018-08-20, 01:56 PM

If the current order of things is evil, then yes. That or refusing to participate and leave, at least.

Ok, tell me what are you doing against slavery? Clothes, computers, diamonds... all that stuff being build by people working under slavery conditions. Those conditions are probably illegal on your country.

Tell me, what u doing?
Nothing?
So are you evil?

Louro

2018-08-20, 01:57 PM

Because implying that slave owners were doing the slaves a favor by not freeing them isn't offensive?

I didnt day that. Don't make up stuff.

Hecuba

2018-08-20, 02:00 PM

All slave owners were committing evil deeds.

It's worth noting that the ideas of slavery as discussed in D&D's published works are generally working from a framework of chattel slavery: this is the kind of slavery under which African-American slaves were enslaved in the antebellum US, and is the best analog for the modern illegal slave trade.

As a result, it is what most of the audience has in mind when they consider slavery a an abstract moral question.
That's not necessarily a bad thing - this is probably the most relevant framework by which to consider slavery for most campaigns, and it is certainly accounted for the plurality (and likely the majority) of slavery in human history.

If you are seeking to compare against specific historical practices, however, then you need to be far more granular.
Indentured servitude is generally considered a form of slavery, but is far different in character than chattel slavery. Most modern societies consider both to be unacceptable, but the historical record generally shows a vast difference in treatment and quality of life for the two.

Similar distinctions occur in ancient history. I'll use Roman and Medieval Europe as for examples, as I'm most familiar with the details there.

A roman nexum faced a far better life than a vernae or servus - with the notable exception of a servus publicus. Both a servus publicus and household slave of a "good" citizen could generally expect a quality of life better than a poor urban freeman.

Additionally, a freed slave was only generally freed from his owner's family to the same extent as the family members: when some owners did what we would consider in the modern sense to be the Good thing - granting manumission to their slaves as a matter of course - they were generally taken into the prior owner's family (gens). Thus, while manumission did offer some legal protection, for much of legal history the freed slave was still at the whims of the family that had owned him (as were the majority of the family). The paterfamilias could, after all: sell any of his family into slavery up to 3 times, arbitrarily take any of their property, and (at least until Hadrian) kill them with impunity. Notably, it was legal for a paterfamilias to arbitrarily kill his sons for about 3/4 of a century longer than it was to kill a slave without good cause.
Thus, while being freed did give you more public rights, it also forced you to choose between abject poverty or giving the head of the family that had owned you more control over your life.

Consider then, the theoretical case of a slave owned by a "good" son of an evil paterfamilias. The paterfamilias could simply take direct ownership of the slave, but the "good" son could free them if the paterfamilias did not intervene. But would that be a good thing? The slave, if freed, would have to choose either between leaving becoming a freeman with no property (and thus likely becoming a serf- just another form of slavery) or becoming more directly subject to the whims of the evil paterfamilias.

The slave is undoubtedly the victim here, and their enslavement is certainly Evil in D&D terms. But its not clear that the son, despite having the nominal authority to free the slave, can meaningfully reduce that evil.

To make it more complex, you didn't always have the option of freeing your slaves. As early as Augustus' reign, it had become enough in vogue that there were legal limits: you could free at most 100 slaves at your death, and there were rules preventing freeing too many before your death to prevent working around that. You also couldn't free a slave under the age of 30. This is undoubtedly a societal Evil - but for a society where a single large villa could have several hundred slaves in the household alone, it did mean that there were often emancipation-minded slave-owners who literally could not free the vast majority of the slaves they inherited.

Serfdom is also worth considering explicitly in this context. At least in broad terms, the primary distinction between a serf and a chattel slave throughout most of European history was that a chattel slave could be bought and sold independently while a serf was inherently owned as part of the ownership of a piece of land. Indeed, for most of the practice's history, it was harder to offer a serf freedom: you had to own the land for a year first, and you generally had to have permission of a higher authority or a council of your peers. Yet we do not generally peg serfdom in fantasy as inherently evil the same way we do chattel slavery. The conditions were often equally oppressive: the abridgment of rights, equally severe. But because there is a clearer path to the more recent societal evils for chattel slavery, we view it as worse: in reality, the reason we see a distinction is because society began to address the ills of serfdom sooner.

I won't say that all of these practices are not inherently "Evil" in a D&D sense. But in many cases, there are a nebulous societal evil that a nominal individual "master" might not be able to correct by means of manumission: in some cases, they might not have the right. In others, forcing manumission might make the slave's life worse.

TL;DR? - Historical slavery - while unquestionably evil - could often be a societal and institutional evil beyond the ready means of a individual slave-owner to fully redress - even with regards to the slaves they directly owned. When making judgement about a whether an individual character's (or historical figure's) morality in regards to slavery, make sure to consider what the institutions of slavery and society in question looked like compared to your personal vision of slavery.
A Roman citizen who freed several hundred slaves between his living years and testament at death was likely pushing the boundaries of what the law would allow.
in contrast, examples exist of slave-owners in antebellum Virginia (which, like several other Southern states, required freed slaves to leave within a year) routinely freeing elderly or infirm slaves they could not sell or expect to work - effectively amounting to exile to the frontier for being sick or old, since even most of the Northern states made it difficult for freed slaves to settle.

Louro

2018-08-20, 02:03 PM

Thanks for explaining what I couldn't Hecuba.

Refrain from your words unoriginal.

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 02:07 PM

Nope. You saying that owning slaves is evil, therefore a slave owner is evil. I don't agree with that. It might be true 99% of the times, but there might be exceptions, as some USA black slaves reported.

Knowing that 99% of X is evil, killing them all would be a good act 100 years ago, but evil by nowadays standards as you will be executing 1 innocent people.
Life was much "cheaper" in the past.

Society keeps changing and evolving. What is good today might be not as good in 100 years, and only Kelemvor is wise enough to give each soul his place.

I am very explicitly not saying that. One evil act doesn't make you Evil, continuous evil acts that end up defining your life overall makes you evil. This doesn't have to do with how society views Good and Evil, from the very start I agreed that societal views are subjective and that you were correct in mentioning that. This thread is not about that.

Once again I must remind you that this discussion is rooted in a game universe where good and evil are cosmically defined. Evil is Evil, Good is Good.

Now you're running away with the assumption that I believe all people who kill birds are evil, all people who have ever owned a slave were evil and probably not petting every dog you meet is evil too. You've gone and put words in my mouth and I find that incredibly rude. There's nothing I dislike more than having my point of view stretched and misunderstand to the point of parody.

Actually that's not true, I dislike when people completely ignore my point of view and construct it for me much more.

Your ignorance is insulting at this point, you've either got a severe problem with reading comprehension or you're intent on being argumentative for the sake of antagonizing other posters. I would appreciate if you actually read what I posted before you respond so that you aren't making incorrect assumptions.

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 02:08 PM

I didnt day that. Don't make up stuff.

I'm not making anything up.

You know, if you free the slaves and pay them, your business is gonna be down really fast.
Then those slaves will be back into slavery.

Louro

2018-08-20, 02:18 PM

Quote Originally Posted by Louro
"You know, if you free the slaves and pay them, your business is gonna be down really fast.
Then those slaves will be back into slavery."

Unoriginal:
"Because implying that slave owners were doing the slaves a favor by not freeing them isn't offensive?"

And I'm the one who lacks comprehension. Sure.
I stated a fact, you made up the favor thing.
You made up that I support slavery. Get that back please.

Maxilian

2018-08-20, 02:41 PM

Millstone85

2018-08-20, 03:21 PM

Note: A good character in lore that could also be a bad guy, is the god of beauty of the elves, the one who created the Harpies, IMHO he may be "good" but that was freaking evil.Not in the current lore.

The gods involved in the creation of the first harpy were Fenmarel Mestarine, CN elven god of solitude and outcasts, and Aerdrie Faenya, CG elven goddess of air, rain, fertility and birth. And neither of them willed this transformation on the woman. When Fenmarel ignored the song that Aerdrie had gifted the enamored woman, it was the mortal's own invocation of a dreadful power, to curse the gods, that made her a monster.

Sources: MM p181, for the origin of the harpies, and MToF p43, for the details on the elven pantheon.

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-20, 03:22 PM

To be fair, in DND i believe, you can easily have Good aligned BAD GUYS, why? cause alignment justify some horrors, if those horros are commited to "evil" creatures, lets say, a Lich use only Goblinoid souls for his philactery, with the intention on eventually getting rid of the world of the plague of goblinoids (they are indeed a plague by how they are described in the MM), and at the same time, take the chance from the Evil God to recollect it souls (Well, he would be doing a favor to many goblins, as they worship the God of Darkness out of fear, and they do fear eternal servitude under its tyrant hand more than they fear death).

Note: A good character in lore that could also be a bad guy, is the god of beauty of the elves, the one who created the Harpies, IMHO he may be "good" but that was freaking evil.

The entire crux of this discussion has been based around the fact that in D&D's universe alignment does not justify some horrors. In previous editions in fact there were significant penalties for classes who played against their alignment, 5E doesn't put a mechanical restriction on things like the older editions did but it's not exactly shy about explaining that God's don't mess around when you've done enough good or evil to warrant their attention.

The underlying premise of Curse of Strahd is that:
An incredibly evil and as of yet unidentified dark power sought out Strahd and corrupted him to be evil (he was already evil, but previously redeemable) just to trap him in a demiplane for being irredeemably evil, allowing him to draw in adventurers to try and corrupt them to also be evil. By the way, anyone who dies in Barovia has their soul forever tied to this demiplane and can no longer gain peace in the afterlife. Good stuff.

Destroying souls is one of the most evil things you can do.

Also, I'm curious if you have a source for that bit on the Harpies. The best I could find was a brief mention of a mortal woman who was given a blessing from a god to try and gain the affection of another god, and when she was rejected she cursed the gods and turned that blessing into a terrible curse. The source I found didn't have any citations to confirm this so I'm wondering if you had anything more specific.

EDIT: Looks like the source to confirm what I found has already been posted but I'm still curious about the version you mentioned.

hamishspence

2018-08-20, 04:16 PM

Unoriginal

2018-08-20, 04:17 PM

hamishspence

2018-08-20, 04:19 PM

Not in 5e.

In 5e, good people don't commit horrors. Not even against evil beings..

5e alignment is so vague that it's hard to categorically prove this though.

Hecuba

2018-08-20, 04:21 PM

Because implying that slave owners were doing the slaves a favor by not freeing them isn't offensive?

At many points in the history of slavery, it was the truth. It is a truth we can and should find morally offensive, but it is none the less the truth.

Another Roman history example: if you are were a non-Roman non-Latin slave (i.e. a slave descended from a conquered people) your rights if freed were substantially curtailed even compared to other freedmen. Rather than having abridged citizenship, you became a dediticii. In pretty much every way imaginable, your civil and property rights were inferior to other freemen. If there was a citizen who disliked you, you unquestionably had better legal protection as the slave of a citizen (where the citizen could defend an attack on you as their property) than as a free dediticii. If you came within 100 miles of Rome, you were subject to re-enslavement without the possibility of ever being freed again.

Freeing such a slave in ancient Rome was only a kindness if the slave in question wanted to leave the vicinity of Rome entirely. Even then, unless all prior owners of the slave had avoided the kind of conspicuous branding that clearly marked them as a former slave, they were probably going to be an easy target for any unscrupulous freedman of higher status who wanted their property and could sway a magistrate.

To use another example from US history: as mentioned above, many of the southern states had slave codes that forces freed slaves to leave the state within one year. If a slave family was divided between different slave-owners, one owner freeing a part of that family when the other would not free the part he owned would effectively shatter the family.

In both cases, I would say that a "Good" slave owner should offer them freedom if they want it - while making them aware of the consequences that the could not shield them from if they did so. But the societies in question were designed to keep these people down: it was not accidental that there were avenues to make actively and agressively oppress former slaves.

Angelalex242

2018-08-20, 05:32 PM

Classic case here is George Washington. He didn't quite find it in himself to free slaves while he lived, but had them all automatically freed on the death of Martha Washington. Martha gave no ****s, however, and not only kept her slaves, but passed them down to her heirs.

Scripten

2018-08-20, 06:25 PM

Angelalex242

2018-08-20, 07:14 PM

You guys do realize that abolitionism was a thing long before Washington, right? People not only knew it was wrong then, but actively worked to end it long before the Civil War.

Also this thread has actually slid even further below where it was last time I looked. I'm actually, unfortunately, amazed. Good show GitP.

Well, I brought Washington up as an unquestionably good man who personally struggled with what to do about slavery. He couldn't write it out of the whole country, and his conscience struggled with it. So he eventually did the best he could think of at the time.

Afrodactyl

2018-08-21, 02:44 AM

I'd say it's easy to flavour a "bad guy" as a "good guy". Just because people view them as evil, it doesn't mean that they necessarily are. Viewing it from the villains perspective, flawed logic and rose tinted glasses are the key. Also, I like to use the alignments in the statblocks as guidelines (unless the fluff specifically says "no they're evil all the time always"). If I want a chaotic good green dragon, I'll have a chaotic good green dragon and find a reason to justify it in my story.

A cult may be rounding up the homeless and vulnerable and sacrificing them to feed a ritual that awakens a great otherworldly beastie, but they might be waking that beastie up to combat a greater evil that's going to ruin everyone's day.

A lich may ascend to lichdom by rounding up the sick and infirm, who may very well be willing participants, however he has done so so that he can be an eternal "healer" who has pledged himself to ridding the world of diseases (if he kills everyone who has the disease, then the disease no longer exists).

A swarm of automatons may be killing people left and right, but maybe they were instructed to "help the people", and they've interpreted that as "life is full of suffering, so if we kill them we're helping them because they can't suffer any more". Their creator may or may not be aware of their creations "results", only knowing that they've "helped the people".

Yes, this guy has kidnapped the king's newborn son, but he had a prophetic vision that the child would grow up to be a murderous tyrant that lays waste to a thousand cities, and he thinks he's doing everyone a favour by stopping him before he gets a chance to.

Lonely Tylenol

2018-08-21, 05:32 AM

Either they're bad guys or they're good-aligned. You need to choose.

The Operative in Serenity was Lawful Good, but also unarguably the “Bad Guy”. Antagonism doesn’t equal evil, especially in situations where you have a villain protagonist (Dexter, Walter White), two morally ambiguous competing forces, or two good competing forces.

THAT SAID:

So how would a good lich feed his phylactery? Well, he'd probably do it once every few years. Maybe so long as a decade, depending on how generous you want to be with the time constraints. So, then, who does he feed into the phylactery? Easy: those already marked for death. Murderers, rapists, people who talk at the theater. This is made even easier if the world in question uses the death penalty.

Thus, you have a lich who remains good and doesn't harm those who haven't already earned it.

This is just Dexter with souls, and if you were paying attention to Dexter (no shame if you weren’t, it definitely lost the plot a few seasons in), a large part of the series is that Dexter is still unarguably evil and amoral as a person; he’s just meant to be sympathized with because the people he kills are worse. It’s lazy to suggest that Dexter is somehow good because the people he does unquestionably evil things to are also bad.

Unoriginal

2018-08-21, 06:52 AM

The Operative in Serenity was Lawful Good, but also unarguably the “Bad Guy”. Antagonism doesn’t equal evil, especially in situations where you have a villain protagonist (Dexter, Walter White), two morally ambiguous competing forces, or two good competing forces.

I've never argued that you couldn't have good antagonists or evil protagonists. But the terms "bad guy" and "antagonist" aren't entirely synonymous, and it's for this very reason: if you have good antagonists, they're not the bad guys, and if you have evil protagonists, they are the bad guys.

hamishspence

2018-08-21, 06:57 AM

The Operative in Serenity was Lawful Good, but also unarguably the “Bad Guy”.

Mal: "I don't murder children"
Operative: "I do. If I have to."

Operative: "I'm a monster. What I do is evil, I have no illusions about that - but it must be done."

Operative is a lot closer to LE than anything else.

Louro

2018-08-21, 07:22 AM

Or just legal neutral.
He doesn't care about good or bad. All he cares is about what needs to be done, whatever it is.

hamishspence

2018-08-21, 07:33 AM

He doesn't care about good or bad. All he cares is about what needs to be done, whatever it is.

The difference is that the atrocities he commits only "need to be done" from his own warped perspective.

Neutral people in general, prefer good to evil:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm#alignment

"Most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil—after all, she would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way."

and they "have compunctions against" hurting the innocent:

"People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships."

The Operative's compunctions are distinctly lacking, by contrast.

Greywander

2018-08-21, 07:37 AM

hamishspence

2018-08-21, 07:45 AM

I don't actually think slavery is Evil in D&D. It might not be Good, but I can definitely see a Neutral society legalizing slavery.

A Neutral society can have a mixture of Good traits and Evil traits.

It might depend on the edition - but from 3.5e onward (all the way into 4e - possibly into 5e as well) there has been a strong theme of "slavery is evil".

"Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others" - slavery would, generally speaking, be covered under "oppressing".

the serfdom seen in many feudal societies is basically slavery, and yet those are the societies that medieval fantasy is based off of.

The 3.0 FRCS made the distinction that serfs are not property in the way that slaves are, and are still "considered persons" (implication, that slaves, normally, aren't).

Unoriginal

2018-08-21, 08:04 AM

I don't actually think slavery is Evil in D&D. It might not be Good, but I can definitely see a Neutral society legalizing slavery.

It all depends on how slaves are treated, and what rights they have. Under the right circumstances, a slave may be just a servant with a long contract (not necessarily lifelong, either, but it could be). On the other hand, the serfdom seen in many feudal societies is basically slavery, and yet those are the societies that medieval fantasy is based off of. Calling someone a "slave" without clarifying what you mean doesn't automatically make it an evil thing, nor is it necessarily evil for one person to have obligations to another person.

In an Evil society, slave owners may be able to do as they please with their slaves. Slaves would have few to no rights.

In a Neutral society, slaves may be second-class citizens but would still have some legal protections. Selling yourself into slavery may be seen as an acceptable way to get out of poverty or other bad situations. A path to freedom may exist, but might have certain barriers that prevent it from being common.

In a Good society, slaves might be given equal or similar rights to freemen, being treated more like someone who was in debt to or under contract to their owner. A path to freedom would almost certainly exist.

Heck, hiring someone as an employee could be perceived as basically "renting" them as a slave. Actual slaves got compensated for their labor in the form of food and shelter and whatever else their master gave them, and in some cases slaves could be wealthier than the average person at the time. Sure, it could also be terrible, and frequently was. But you can't just say that "slavery" is Evil without saying what it is about slavery that's evil.

US style chattle slavery isn't all the ways slavery can exist, but US style chattle slavery is definitively on the evil end of the alignment pool.

5e has an example of chaotic good "slavers" with the Djinn, but it's based on:

-the "slaves" are treasured servants/worshipers
-they can convince the Djinni to let them go.

At which point it can only be considered slavery because they're presumably not payed for their work and they can't quit the job without the Djinni's approval, but at this point it's straining the definition to the extreme. It's far different from pretty much all forms of what we've called slavery in human history, with the closest being maybe the Roman house slaves. But even them needed to pay their freedom if they wanted to be freed on their own volition. Which is different from "you can leave if you convince this freedom-loving benevolent blue guy who never mistreated you to let you quit your job."

Point is, when people talk about slavery, they generally talk about the horror that the slave trade was until Lincoln. And no, there were no "good slavers" back then. Some were maybe less ****, but inflicting inhuman treatments on dozens/hundreds of people to line up your pockets isn't benevolence even if you treat one or two like human beings on the side when it's convenient.

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-21, 08:14 AM

A Neutral society can have a mixture of Good traits and Evil traits.

It might depend on the edition - but from 3.5e onward (all the way into 4e - possibly into 5e as well) there has been a strong theme of "slavery is evil".

"Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others" - slavery would, generally speaking, be covered under "oppressing".

The 3.0 FRCS made the distinction that serfs are not property in the way that slaves are, and are still "considered persons" (implication, that slaves, normally, aren't).

Depending on how significant you consider the footnote on Drow to be in the PHB, it names Drow as an almost universally reviled evil race, who just so happen to think that any surface dwellers are only good dead or as slaves.

On that note, it's also mentioned that typically even the most good hearted of the typically evil races find it a constant struggle to fight the evil urges that are intrinsically part of them. The opposite isn't true for stereotypically good aligned races because the gods who created them believed that free will was the right thing to give them, allowing them to make their own choices and form their own alignment. It literally says "According to myth, the good-aligned gods who created these races gave them free will to choose their moral paths, knowing that good without free will is slavery."

Evil gods quite literally created the monstrous evil races (like orcs, goblins) to be subservient to them, ingraining it so far into their very being that even half-orcs are prone to falling victim to those urges.

All of this is to say that, yes, even in 5E slavery is considered "Evil". It's a trait almost exclusively associated with Evil beings and given explicit mention that the gods of good were willing to allow their creations the free will to fall to evil just to not enslave them.

qube

2018-08-21, 11:06 AM

Were all the slaves owners evil people?
those without moral qualms about it, certainly are.

What about drowning newborns in freezing water?
Tibet inhabitants did this to test the endurance of the children. Most of them died, those who survived... well, they survived.drowning, as in "dying through submersion" ? yeah, that's evil ... but you're probbably not arguing that tibetans are undead. Submerging newborns in freezing water, is quite the different question. neutral, I'd presume.

Now, given the incredible diversity of D&D cultures, how can you state what's good and what's evil?You (or I), don't. The development team, however does.

Yuo might not like what the dev team says, but if they say unicorns and bunnys and butterflies are evil ... then they are evil. Period. You don't come into the equation.

Unoriginal

2018-08-21, 11:09 AM

Yuo might not like what the dev team says, but if they say unicorns and bunnys and butterflies are evil ... then they are evil. Period. You don't come into the equation.

Unless it's an homebrew setting. But in which case we can't really discuss it as point of reference.

Boci

2018-08-21, 12:02 PM

Yuo might not like what the dev team says, but if they say unicorns and bunnys and butterflies are evil ... then they are evil. Period. You don't come into the equation.

I dunno about that. I seem to recall 3.5 players and DMS being pretty united on calling BS about the whole "poisons are evil because they cause undue suffering". Players and DMs are able to think for themselves, and can therefor question aspects of a games rules or lore they otherwise enjoy.

Malifice

2018-08-21, 02:05 PM

Ok, my last shot.
The cataclism, Dragonlance.

Where good guys doing evil things (the Kingpriest and his regime) was punished by all the Gods (Paladine, Thakisis, Gileam) combined?

That catacylsm?

Malifice

2018-08-21, 02:06 PM

On a side note, lord Soth was on his way to stop the kingpriest before the disaster, but an elven bitch distracted him. Then he turned into Lord Vader.

Dude, really?

Maxilian

2018-08-21, 02:26 PM

In older editions, at least, some acts are intrinsically Evil, with no "but they become nonevil when committed against villains" exceptions specified.

As BoVD puts it:

"While harming one's enemies physically is not inherently villainous, harming their souls is always evil. Only the foulest of villains could actually want to cause pain to another creature's eternal aspect. Creatures without corrupt hearts simply dispatch their foes quickly, believing that sending a villain off to the justice of the afterlife is punishment enough."

Not saying wanting to cause pain, but destroy it (yeah its still pretty evil) but sometimes a better fate than what they would get.

Note: I don't think the paragraph you quoted its completely true, as if that were true, a good creature killing devils and evils in any of the underworld with holy (anything) weapons, would be "doing something evil" as it would destroy the devil (A more direct example, a priest who travels to the Nine hells to destroy Lemurs with holy water, to "save" the souls of those misguided mortals from a eternity of pain).

Unoriginal

2018-08-21, 02:33 PM

Not saying wanting to cause pain, but destroy it (yeah its still pretty evil) but sometimes a better fate than what they would get.

Note: I don't think the paragraph you quoted its completely true, as if that were true, a good creature killing devils and evils in any of the underworld with holy (anything) weapons, would be "doing something evil" as it would destroy the devil (A more direct example, a priest who travels to the Nine hells to destroy Lemurs with holy water, to "save" the souls of those misguided mortals from a eternity of pain).

There is nothing to save, whatever the mortal soul was is turned into a devil by the Styx. Devils are not literally souls, although they are made of soul stuff.

Also, funnily enough, in 5e destroying/eating souls is one of the few taboos most demons consider crossing to be going too far (though of course, some still do it).

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-21, 03:03 PM

Also, funnily enough, in 5e destroying/eating souls is one of the few taboos most demons consider crossing to be going too far (though of course, some still do it).

They don't want to destroy Evil souls because that would leave them with less troops in the Blood War, and they don't want to destroy good souls because those are a form of currency and status in the Nine Hells.

I'd actually wager that even a Devil would be against the idea of a Lich being in proximity to one of their cults. It's no coincidence that Orcus, a demon lord, is the biggest name associated with the knowledge of achieving Lichdom.

Hecuba

2018-08-21, 04:43 PM

The 3.0 FRCS made the distinction that serfs are not property in the way that slaves are, and are still "considered persons" (implication, that slaves, normally, aren't).

Historically, that is generally inaccurate for serfdom - serfs could not be sold independently, but they were owned as part of the land they were joined to. It's also not universally accurate for all historical forms of chattel slavery - many ancient practices considered slaves both person and property, which others merely considered them to be the lowest caste of society with where all rights were heavily based on class.

Which, in effect generalizes to: the D&D treatment of slavery is generally tied heavily to the context of antebellum U.S. chattel slavery. This makes it simple to make the situation readily relatable and culturally relevant. Unless you want to use the game as a platform delve deeply into the mire of historical slave practices, you probably are best sticking with its judgements about the morality of slavery writ large. If you are interested in exploring the specifics of the moral morass of slavery - for example, to provide a visceral exploration of how vile the U.S. antebellum practice was even when compared to the other historical contexts for slavery - then you need to make distinctions between - well, not shades of grey, but shades of black.

Louro

2018-08-21, 04:58 PM

Where good guys doing evil things (the Kingpriest and his regime) was punished by all the Gods (Paladine, Thakisis, Gileam) combined?

That catacylsm?
Yup, where the gods of good agreed on dropping a nuke on Ishtar, destroying the regime and thousands of innocent lifes.

It was a meteorite when I read those books. Nowadays I think it was a flood.

Greywander

2018-08-21, 05:58 PM

A Neutral society can have a mixture of Good traits and Evil traits.
What exactly do you mean by this? A society that eats babies and builds homes for the homeless isn't Neutral, it's bipolar. Neutrality is more about moderating Evil and Good. As the PHB states, Neutral creatures generally have a compunction against harming innocents, but aren't willing to sacrifice to save strangers. They don't have a mix of Evil and Good traits, they have traits the lie somewhere between Evil and Good.

The 3.0 FRCS made the distinction that serfs are not property in the way that slaves are, and are still "considered persons" (implication, that slaves, normally, aren't).
This is just semantics. I doubt that serfs cared that they were nominally free when they were subjected to similar types of oppression. Principles are important, but what makes them important is how they better people's lives in a practical sense.

I believe I heard somewhere that in Japan there were samurai who liked to test out their swords by waiting for a peasant to walk by and then chopping their heads off. Sounds much better than slavery, right?

US style chattle slavery isn't all the ways slavery can exist, but US style chattle slavery is definitively on the evil end of the alignment pool.
I'm not so sure about this. Chattel slavery has many different flavors, and the style practiced in the US certainly wasn't the worst. Pets are legally considered property (i.e. "chattel"), and yet we treat them very well and animals do have certain legal protections. US style chattel slavery wasn't good, I'll give you that, but that doesn't preclude the possibility of "good" or at least "neutral" chattel slavery existing somewhere at some point in history or within a fictional setting. Today? In real life? Sure, there's no justification for it. In D&D? Maybe.

Point is, when people talk about slavery, they generally talk about the horror that the slave trade was until Lincoln. And no, there were no "good slavers" back then. Some were maybe less ****, but inflicting inhuman treatments on dozens/hundreds of people to line up your pockets isn't benevolence even if you treat one or two like human beings on the side when it's convenient.
If the problem is inhumane treatment, then just have a society with laws against treating slaves inhumanely. And lining your pockets off the backs of slaves isn't the worst thing you could do. You could rape them. Or kill them for your own amusement. Or have them fight each other or engage in dangerous activities just for your own amusement. You could force mothers to kill and eat their babies. You could force fathers to rape their daughters. I mean, if we're talking Evil, we might as well go big, right? When you can force another person to do anything you want them to do, labor would definitely fall closer to Neutral than many of the other alternatives.

If you strip out the inhumane treatment, they're more like permanent employees. Which could certainly fit in a Neutral or even a Good society. I'm not saying slavery is "good" by any means, I'm just saying that you could have a society that was nominally Good but still practiced slavery. Most civilizations in D&D aren't Western Liberal Democracies with Universal (demi-)Human Rights. Slavery is antithetical to our world view, but it isn't necessarily antithetical to the world view of D&D characters, even Good ones. It's not easy seeing the world from a different perspective, and it can be hard to get into the head of someone who thinks differently from you, so I wouldn't blame most DMs for making slavery always evil. It just doesn't need to be.

Which, in effect generalizes to: the D&D treatment of slavery is generally tied heavily to the context of antebellum U.S. chattel slavery. This makes it simple to make the situation readily relatable and culturally relevant. Unless you want to use the game as a platform delve deeply into the mire of historical slave practices, you probably are best sticking with its judgements about the morality of slavery writ large. If you are interested in exploring the specifics of the moral morass of slavery - for example, to provide a visceral exploration of how vile the U.S. antebellum practice was even when compared to the other historical contexts for slavery - then you need to make distinctions between - well, not shades of grey, but shades of black.
True, unless you really want to delve into the morality of slavery as a theme of your campaign, you're probably better off avoiding both morally ambiguous slavery as well as the really nasty stuff. Slaves are generally used for labor, and only by bad people, who treat them badly. There also wasn't a lot of slavery in Western Medieval Europe, so it would be truer to the source not to have slaves running around everywhere.

But this thread is specifically about introducing moral ambiguity into the game, so you can have an antagonist who is nominally Good, or an ally who is nominally Evil. Here's a Good aligned Bad guy for you: an Abolitionist who wants to free all the slaves, despite the fact that this will mostly likely lead to their death when they have no way to support themselves and will likely plunge the nation into civil war. The good guys might be more level-headed abolitionists who want to end slavery gradually, integrating the slave population into their society instead of simply shoving them out the door with nothing, and hopefully avoiding violent conflict.

KorvinStarmast

2018-08-21, 06:27 PM

After all, not produce lice, right? Chivington, not Gygax. Sand Creek.

hamishspence

2018-08-21, 06:32 PM

Most civilizations in D&D aren't Western Liberal Democracies with Universal (demi-)Human Rights. Slavery is antithetical to our world view, but it isn't necessarily antithetical to the world view of D&D characters, even Good ones.

BoED said it best:

BoED: page 11: "Being Ahead Of Your Time"

Heroic characters often end up at odds with their culture and society. The standards expected of good characters in D&D, especially those who lay claim to exalted status, bear much more similarity to modern sensibilities about justice, equality, and respect for life than to the actual medieval world that D&D is loosely based on, and that is quite intentional. It is certainly possible that your campaign world might be a more enlightened place than medieval Europe - a place where men and women are considered equal, slavery is not practiced in any form, torture and capital punishment are shunned, and the various human and humanoid races live together in harmony. In such a case, an exalted character can live in relative peace with her culture, and focus her attention on slaying evil creatures in ruins and dungeons or rival, evil nations.

On the other hand, your campaign world might more closely reflect the realities of life in Earth’s Dark or Middle Ages. Perhaps women are not viewed as men’s equals or even sentient beings in their own right, slavery is widespread, testimony from serfs is only acceptable if extracted through torture, and humans of a certain skin tone (let along nonhumans) are viewed as demonic creatures. It is vitally important to remember one thing: these factors don’t change anything else said in this chapter (or in the Book of Vile Darkness) about what constitutes a good or evil deed. Even if slavery, torture, or discrimination are condoned by society, they remain evil. That simply means that an exalted character has an even harder road to follow. Not only must she worry about external evils like conjured demons and rampaging orc hordes, she must also contend with the evil within her own society.

In all likelihood, most human (and halfling) societies fall somewhere between the two extremes described above. In game terms, humans tend to be neutral, neither good or evil. Human societies might tolerate a variety of evil practices, even if some humans find them distasteful. In such a circumstance, an exalted character is still at odds with the norms of her society and may occasionally find herself in conflict with it, but she can devote her time and attention to dealing with evil acts, either inside or outside her society, rather than trying to reform an entire nation or culture.

Cityscape page 148: "Slavery"

The institution of slavery should always be regarded as an evil by any good-aligned characters in a campaign.

4e took the approach that it's nigh impossible to be a good-aligned slaveowner - but easy to be a Neutral aligned slaveowner.

4E Dark Sun Campaign Setting page 197: "Slavery and Alignment"

Keeping slaves is not compatible with a good alignment, but doing so does not necessarily make a character evil. Most slave owners are unaligned. Overseers who treat their slaves brutally are definitely engaging in evil acts that should outrage good characters.
The question is whether anything can be reasonably done about the situation. Given how commonplace slavery is on Athas, good characters can't reasonably attempt to free every slave they meet, nor should they recklessly challenge slave owners who are too powerful to overcome.
Good characters should be anguished by the abundance of human misery in civilized areas, however, and they should be dedicated to aiding however they can short of attempting suicidal actions.

Louro

2018-08-21, 06:32 PM

The actual campaign I'm DMing a clerigarky good kingdom (Torm, chauntea, midnight) is buying slaves from a state evil city (Dunk Sun-esque).

It's their main way of getting info from that city.
They put those slaves under a much soft form of slavery. This pays partly the huge cost of buying them) while leting the clerics teach them the ways of civilization. Those who learn are driven into a productive life, those who doesn't are release outside the kingdom.

Ruled by Torm clerics mainly, I consider/portrait them doing good the best they can.
When PC discovered this they all debated about it. They began to understand how difficult is to get intel from that city...
Only the paladin (from Athas) got angry with this. Actually furious.
"HELL NO! That's wrong! You told me slavery is evil! No one should own you! Oh Torm, what are we doing?!?!"

They own slaves for good kind of... Context is everything, most of the times.

Boci

2018-08-21, 06:34 PM

Chivington, not Gygax. Sand Creek.

Yeah, Gary Gygax quoted him.

hamishspence

2018-08-21, 06:39 PM

Yeah, Gary Gygax quoted him.

Specifically, in this thread:

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=11762&hilit=prisoners&start=75

Gygax: Paladins are not stupid, and in general there is no rule of Lawful Good against killing enemies. The old addage about nits making lice applies.
Gygax: Chivington might have been quoted as saying "nits make lice," but he is certainly not the first one to make such an observation as it is an observable fact. If you have read the account of wooden Leg, a warrior of the Cheyenne tribe that fought against Custer et al., he dispassionately noted killing an enemy squaw for the reason in question.

KorvinStarmast

2018-08-21, 06:45 PM

For good aligned antagonists, look at Captain America Civil war.
Iron man was the antagonist.
Both good men, but their goals differed as did their methods.
Batman v Superman also (though that was a very dark portrayal of Batman; to the point that the movie emphasized his wavering goodness).
Plenty of other examples. Im just putting down some that socially withdrawn geeks will get. If we go back to page 1 of this thread, I mentioned using "opposed" versus "good and evil" as a framework. Thanks for the supporting argument. It can make a good story.

Something I like with D&D is that most evil monsters know they are evil, they simply believe it's the best/most enjoyable way to live. Yeah; the mustache twirling is optional, and is added "to taste" like many seasonings in a stew.

He stops eating souls and dies. Being actually dead, he's no longer a Lich. This thread is ridiculous.Yeah.

Id hazard a guess that if Soul annhilation was a crime, it would incur a longer jail sentence than Rape does in most criminal codes. -snip- Presuming the existence of a soul (and an afterlife) annihilating a sentient beings soul is infinately worse than murder.
-snip-s In a world that presupposes immortal souls, it's literally the most horrible form of harm you can do to a being. Yes, but the audience on these boards likely do really connect very often with the concept of a soul. To far too many, it's a game mechanic.

Doesn't help that Asmodeus's idea of an utopia is very much "a boot stamping on an human face -forever". For all his grandiose rhetorics, he IS a sadistic totalitarian trickster of a control freak at heart. At least he's honest about it. :smallwink:

Greywander

2018-08-21, 07:52 PM

Actually, now that I think about it, slavery seems like it would be more of a Lawful vs. Chaotic thing than a Good vs. Evil thing. I think Good and Evil would be primarily concerned with how the slaves were treated. Chaos would oppose slavery because it opposes all forms of authority, while Law would see a slave class as a natural part of the hierarchy. In fact, Lawful characters are used to being under obligation to an authority, and a master-slave relationship is just another form of this.

A Good character would want slaves to be treated with the same humanity as freemen, in which case they might as well not be slaves. Think of the hippies who want animals to be treated like people.

A Lawful character would be fine with everyone moving out of the slave class, making slavery "obsolete". They wouldn't oppose slavery on moral grounds, but on economic ones, and only when it made sense to do so.

Chaotic characters would be the only ones who would actually oppose slavery on principle. A big part of Chaos is freedom, and it opposes hierarchies of all kinds.

Now, I don't think this bears out in D&D lore, and stems more from my person interpretations of what the alignments should represent. I just find it curious that slavery seems to be entirely a Good vs. Evil thing, and that Law vs. Chaos doesn't play any kind of role.

JackPhoenix

2018-08-21, 08:32 PM

Snip

That's because chaotic alignments aren't about opposing authority... CG and CE doesn't give a **** about authorities, and do what they feel is the right thing/whatever they want at the moment, respectively, and CN only cares if someone tries to tell them what to do (which is also part of the Ideal "Independence"). Stance on authorities fits better under Ideals... in fact:

Freedom: Chains are meant to be broken, as are those who would forge them.
Freedom: Tyrants must not be allowed to oppress the people.
Freedom: Everyone should be free to pursue his or her own livelihood.
Freedom: The sea is freedom-the freedom to go anywhere and do anything.

Criminal, Folk Hero, Guild Merchant, Sailor. Now, while these ideals are followed by (chaotic), they don't actually require you to have chaotic alignment, or influence your alignment at all, they are just some of the suggestions for characters who were already given chaotic alignment (CG, most likely, for the first 3, CN for the last one). The first 3 actually work better for good than chaos, though not necessarily for LG.

hamishspence

2018-08-22, 12:47 AM

Chaotic characters would be the only ones who would actually oppose slavery on principle. A big part of Chaos is freedom, and it opposes hierarchies of all kinds.

I just find it curious that slavery seems to be entirely a Good vs. Evil thing, and that Law vs. Chaos doesn't play any kind of role.

That is probably because "being enslaved by drow" has been a thing for many editions - and Drow have a CE deity and tend toward CE overall.

"Chaotic Evil people who oppose slavery on principle" have never really been a thing in D&D. CE has plenty of hierarchies - they're just based more on power than rules "The strongest boss around the weak".

Millstone85

2018-08-22, 05:09 AM

Yes, but the audience on these boards likely do really connect very often with the concept of a soul. To far too many, it's a game mechanic.Do not forget about Hell, a concept I am sure many connect to.

The initial assumption would be that Hell means torture eternal. An endless bath in boiling oil, being chained to a mountain with a bird eating your liver every day, that kind of fun. As horrible as having your soul annihilated is, oblivion is a mercy when compared to Hell.

Now, in 4e, the torture would not be everlasting. It would either lead to oblivion, the devils having beaten all the spiritual energy out of you, or to transformation into a devil. Still, I believe most would prefer a quick obliteration over that.

In 5e, evil souls are stripped from their memories in the Styx and emerge as a different being entirely. Thus, they are already fated to oblivion by default, and the only difference between this and being fed to a phylactery is who benefits from it.

In any case, I can see why someone would think of fueling a phylactery this way and reasonably feel good about it.

The real problem with this plan is how to harvest the soul at a point where it has zero chance for redemption. That's a tough judgment to make, difficult enough that the lich would surely make the wrong choice at least once. And one time is all it takes.

Unoriginal

2018-08-22, 06:18 AM

They don't want to destroy Evil souls because that would leave them with less troops in the Blood War, and they don't want to destroy good souls because those are a form of currency and status in the Nine Hells.

I didn't misspeak when I said "demons" and not "devils":

Hated Outcasts Demons have few rules, and the murder of other demons hardly raises an eyebrow among these fiends. The act of devouring souls is something else. For this reason, most demons shun nabassus and force them to live on the fringes of the Abyss.

Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes p. 135.

So most demons would see Liches as scums.

Which I think is a good argument as to why the "good Liches that only eat evil people souls" thing doesn't work. If your standards are worse than a demon's, you have problem.

I'd actually wager that even a Devil would be against the idea of a Lich being in proximity to one of their cults. It's no coincidence that Orcus, a demon lord, is the biggest name associated with the knowledge of achieving Lichdom.

Orcus's business is apparently even below the typical demons' low standards.

In 5e, evil souls are stripped from their memories in the Styx and emerge as a different being entirely. Thus, they are already fated to oblivion by default, and the only difference between this and being fed to a phylactery is who benefits from it.

In any case, I can see why someone would think of fueling a phylactery this way and reasonably feel good about it.

The real problem with this plan is how to harvest the soul at a point where it has zero chance for redemption. That's a tough judgment to make, difficult enough that the lich would surely make the wrong choice at least once. And one time is all it takes.

A "If I don't do this bad thing, others will, so why should I not do it and benefit from it?" rationalization is not the mark of a good person. Same as "If I don't kill this man for a boatload of money, they'll just hire a different hitman, so I have no reason to not do it."

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-22, 06:33 AM

I didn't misspeak when I said "demons" and not "devils":
Orcus's business is apparently even below the typical demons' low standards.
Looks like I misread that, but I think the point still stands that both Devils and Demons have some qualms with destroying souls, and they're intrinsically evil beings.

Unoriginal

2018-08-22, 06:41 AM

Looks like I misread that, but I think the point still stands that both Devils and Demons have some qualms with destroying souls, and they're intrinsically evil beings.

Fair, but I'd say for the Devils it's more a case of pragmatism ("we need that ressource, don't mess with it") while for the Demons it's more a moral standard ("we could do things with those souls, but even I find that disgusting and loathsome").

Louro

2018-08-22, 06:42 AM

In 5e, evil souls are stripped from their memories in the Styx and emerge as a different being entirely. Thus, they are already fated to oblivion by default, and the only difference between this and being fed to a phylactery is who benefits from it.
Really?
Don't they go to their God's home anymore?

Unoriginal

2018-08-22, 06:54 AM

Really?
Don't they go to their God's home anymore?

If they're pledged to a god in particular, they go there. The Styx is for those who are lawful evil without having their soul dedicated to one god in particular (or for those who made deals with devils that take precedent over divine allegiance).

Malifice

2018-08-22, 08:19 AM

Yup, where the gods of good agreed on dropping a nuke on Ishtar, destroying the regime and thousands of innocent lifes.

It was a meteorite when I read those books. Nowadays I think it was a flood.

It was the goods of good, evil and neutrality.

Define innocent lives. The city was essentially a Nazi stronghold engaged in genocide and fascism (a theocracy really). When bombing a city in self defence against such a regime, there are going to be some innocent bystanders.

Pretty sure Paladine ensured the actual good guys that got caught up in it got into heaven in any event, and he also tried to warn the inhabitants several times (via messages to the Kingpriest and via Soth).

I suppose they're gods and could have been a little more selective. But one of the architects was the LE Takisis and I dont think she really gave a **** who died.

Malifice

2018-08-22, 08:23 AM

If they're pledged to a god in particular, they go there. The Styx is for those who are lawful evil without having their soul dedicated to one god in particular (or for those who made deals with devils that take precedent over divine allegiance).

If they have no God they're faithless.

Devils try and bargain with souls on the way to final judgement. The faithless and the false are pretty easy prey, but avid worshippers of other evil gods also often take what they see as the lesser of two evils.

As a faithful Banite do you really want to wind up in the Barens of Doom and Despair as a Larva dodging Night Hags trying to harvest you as spell components for all eternity?

Unoriginal

2018-08-22, 08:41 AM

ProsecutorGodot

2018-08-22, 09:24 AM

Given that the alternative it oblivion in the Styx, and that to follow Bane you must agree with Bane's ideals at minimum to an extent, you might consider it worthwhile, especially if you think Bane will do something with you.

Same for the orcs. By all account Gruumsh's afterlife is horrifying, but to the orcs it's eternity spent doing what they love (when they're not bossed or boxed around by stronger beings).

This might be true for some , but Goblins' also have it written that they're horrified at the prospect of dying because what Maglubiyet has planned for them in the afterlife is a worse fate than death for them.

Unoriginal

2018-08-22, 09:48 AM

This might be true for some , but Goblins' also have it written that they're horrified at the prospect of dying because what Maglubiyet has planned for them in the afterlife is a worse fate than death for them.

Very true. Goblins have it rough.

Millstone85

2018-08-22, 09:49 AM

If they have no God they're faithless.

Devils try and bargain with souls on the way to final judgement. The faithless and the false are pretty easy prey, but avid worshippers of other evil gods also often take what they see as the lesser of two evils.

As a faithful Banite do you really want to wind up in the Barens of Doom and Despair as a Larva dodging Night Hags trying to harvest you as spell components for all eternity?Those are Forgotten Realms specific notions.

On worlds that do not follow Ao's weird rules, it works like this:
When a creature dies, its soul departs its body, leaves the Material Plane, travels through the Astral Plane, and goes to abide on the plane where the creature's deity resides. If the creature didn't worship a deity, its soul departs to the plane corresponding to its alignment. There is no Fugue Plane, judgment of Kelemvor or Wall of the Faithless to consider.

On the other hand, the Lower Planes and the River Styx add a layer of complexity:
Mammon is the foremost merchant and miser of the Nine Hells, and perhaps the richest entity in all the planes. As the lord of Minauros, Mammon oversees the soul trade. While those who pledge their souls are claimed by the devil they bargained with, lawful evil creatures that aren't bound by any contract emerge from the River Styx as lemures. Roving bands of soul-mongers patrol the river's banks, harvesting the newly created devils. On its arrival, each soul passes through the capital of Minauros, the Sinking City, and is recorded. The soul is then distributed to whoever should claim it, according to contracts in force and laws in effect. Mammon appropriates any extra lemures for himself and sells them for profit.
Shadar-kai are very interested in the magical silt at the bottom of the River Styx that holds the memories and identities of lost souls. It is a bit unclear whether lemures still count as souls, or if bargained souls avoid the identity-stealing river.