Is Defiling Corpses For a Good Cause Evil?

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

So, an issue has come up in a D&D game I'm running. A player, playing a Neutral Good dwarf cleric of Moradin, wants to crucify the corpse of a bandit by the side of the road as a warning to other bandits. Would this go against his alignment?

[SowZ]

I see no reason why it would hurt his alignment. Even if it isn't Neutral Good, every action a character does won't be in line with their alignment. Since this doesn't hurt anyone, it wouldn't be nearly major enough to cause an alignment shift. If it is an in character thing to do, good on the Dwarves player! Don't discourage it.

[Chilingsworth]

As long as he wasn't executing them via crucifixion, I don't see why doing that would be particuarly evil.

[missmvicious]

That's a little more in line with Lawful Neutral than Neutral Good, but like the other posters said, it's not enough to cause an alignment ping... just a red flag. If he starts to display more tyrannical behavior or other forms of fear mongering as a behavioral pattern, it may be time to discuss an alignment shift to LN or even LE depending on the reasons behind the actions.

[Reluctance]

Little evil. Not worth a fall, an alignment change, or even a comment. If anything, I'd consider it more an evil predictor than evil itself.

[Morithias]

I still don't see why "defiling corpses" is considered evil. In our world yes it is disrespectful to the people who died, however this is a world where burning a corpse can mean the difference between "evil tyrant gone forever" and "Evil tyrant returns 4 days after being assassination".

Plus, this isn't some noble soldier who died in a war for a cause he believed in even if it did conflict with other forces of good where it was grey and grey morality, it was a bloody bandit who probably jumped the party going "give me gold or I cut you".

Lawful Neutral I'll agree with. However as per the action is lawful neutral, this act moves him toward the LAWFUL side of the alignment chart, NOT the evil side. Therefore this dwarf is now one step closer to Lawful Good.

Remember people Good =/= Nice!

[Cirrylius]

Well, Moradin is a Lawful god with Protection in his portfolio. Leaving a dead bandit pinned up as a warning to other lawbreakers shouldn't be a big issue. The only problem I could see is the church might consider it too brutal a message to jibe with Moradin's whole Tough But Fair image. IOW, the ACT wouldn't be disapproved of, but how the public at large PERCEIVES the act might.

[Mastikator]

Change his alignment? No. But neither Moradin nor the Church of Moradin should be OK with it since it can be argued that dead bodies are sacred and should be buried, not crucified, and as previously stated it's a bit on the brutal side.

[Killer Angel]

So, an issue has come up in a D&D game I'm running. A player, playing a Neutral Good dwarf cleric of Moradin, wants to crucify the corpse of a bandit by the side of the road as a warning to other bandits. Would this go against his alignment?

To be fair, I don't see this as a good cause, but more a lawful cause...

[MukkTB]

Alignment gets to be a pain. This was not an act that warrants an alignment shift.

If you're the world builder you have to decide how the local entities would feel about it. Its not unreasonable to have a policy of burning the dead. At least the ones that aren't taken care of. Undead are not pleasant. Some governments may crucify or hang criminals. Churches may have their own moral codes. The local magistrate may be pissed that the bandits weren't taken in to town for a fair trial. Maybe you need a writ to be able to execute people. Maybe there is no local law at all and nobody cares.

The only thing about it is, if local conditions are a specific way, you should have warned the player about them. "Everyone knows the magistrate comes down hard on vigilantes," isn't something the player should have to deal with after his actions. If the legal code is obscure he should at least get a knowledge roll. Warn him before he takes the action so he can make an informed decision.

[Kurald Galain]

So, an issue has come up in a D&D game I'm running. A player, playing a Neutral Good dwarf cleric of Moradin, wants to crucify the corpse of a bandit by the side of the road as a warning to other bandits. Would this go against his alignment?

Yes. "The end justifies the means" is not Good.

(edit) that said, one such act does not warrant an immediate alignment shift; and endless debate about this is the main reason why I stopped using alignment in my games over a decade ago.

[Newman]

Defiling corpses is perfectly traditional behavior for Good characters, especially when it comes to fighting villains with a healing factor.

Usually decapitation and a stake to the heart work on most everyone.

[Medic!]

I've always used motivation more than acts to gauge alignment in campaigns. If his motivation is to keep the peace through fear or save those poor bandits' souls through fear, that's more of a LE act, but as has been mentioned many times over, one act isn't sufficient to change someone's alignment. If anything I'd probly secretly assign a player in that situation's character 2 lawful points and maybe 1/2 an evil point. Of course those points work kinda like Who's Line Is It Anyway and are kind of arbitrary until it's like "Ok dawg, here's the deal..."

tl;dr Puting bodies on display as an incentive to uphold the laws is a stereotypical LE act, imo, but alignment changes should be earned over time

[Newman]

Here's a spiky question: what's the effect of Lelouch and Suzaku's actions on their allignments?

[gkathellar]

Putting somebody's corpse on a pole to rot "as a warning to others" is not a good cause, because more than likely it's not going to dissuade anyone from anything, and the only likely outcomes are making people angry and upset. Now with that said, I'd think the main ethical issue with defiling a corpse in most fantasy game setting is that you deny it the benefits of a possible Raise Dead spell in so doing. It's much like how you don't defile corpses in Greek mythology, because in so doing you do harm to the person in the afterlife.

There's also the question of respect, and its paramount role in having a good alignment. Just because an action against the corpse doesn't hurt the dead bandit doesn't stop the action from reflecting poorly on you. You killed the guy, you won, good for you — but as long as he's not a threat any more, any further action you take against him is a black mark against you.

Here's a spiky question: what's the effect of Lelouch and Suzaku's actions on their allignments?

Not on topic, they don't have alignments, not an anime forum, blah blah complain complain.

[missmvicious]

it was a bloody bandit who probably jumped the party going "give me gold or I cut you".

That's a good point, Morithias. I wonder what the bandits backstory was? Was he truly worthy of such a vulgar display of vengeance? Was the bandit simply a boy/girl who ran away from home a little too soon and got caught up in the wrong crowd, or was the bandit a murderous, vile monster who's been given every possible chance to reform and yet refuses to behave within the acceptable confines of structured society?

Was he plagued with poverty and merely doing the only thing he could do to provide for his family? Or was he a mean little bully who got off on destroying other people's lives?

NG (good above all else)= Putting the heads of vicious marauders on pikes as a warning to those who rape and pillage in your kingdom.

LE (tyranny) = Putting the bodies of slain enemy soldiers of lands you have conquered on pikes as a way to inspire fear in all who oppose your army.

LN (the law above all else) = Hosting a fair and impartial trial to determine the guilt of an accused offender, then determining a sentence based on established law and/or precedence, and following through with that sentence without consideration for repentance or a reprieve, even if that punishment involves displaying your corpse in public as a warning.

All three alignments are capable of producing similar results. The difference is in the reason or method that resulted in the act.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Well, the PCs found an upturned supply cart containing a dead merchant, on a road winding through a lawless forest between two cities. Further examination revealed the fact that the cart had been robbed. The party decided to track down the thief/murderer, and the ranger lead them to a cave containing a group of bandits. They entered the cave, and were ambushed. There was a fight, which the PCs won.

[missmvicious]

Did anyone bother to investigate the body to determine whether the merchant was murdered or killed accidentally?

Did anyone bother to figure out whether or not these bandits really were the bandits who attacked the merchant caravan, or did they just follow tracks and draw a simple conclusion?

I'm reminded of the book Sojourn, where a party of Rangers and a bounty hunter were seeking out Drizzt for the murder of a simple farmer and his family. On the surface, it really looked like Drizzt was the culprit, and the group was out for blood. But the lead Ranger wanted the truth and investigated the clues impartially. Although it took some digging, she eventually realized that the initial clues were misleading and that Drizzt had actually avenged the ravaged family. She cancelled the pursuit, putting aside her initially racist preconceptions. The bounty hunter, on the other hand, was satisfied by his earlier notions, and wanted the bounty badly enough to overlook the more recent clues.

Does your party sound more like the unbiased Ranger who only sought the truth, or the judgmental bounty hunter who saw a blood-fountain full of GP?

As a DM, here is a good chance for you to explore their motivations. Maybe you could spin this story into a great subplot:

Spoiler

Show

The lord of the town is tyrannical and seeks punishment more than justice. The robbers were an impoverished family who got talked into a life of crime by a diplomatic anarchist, because the legal system was crushing them. New to the game, they meant to do a simple, "Pay the toll, and you can go free" kind of schtick, but the anarchist bandits is a little too chaotic for that and wanted to put a little fear in the merchant, which startled the horses and caused the cart to flip. The family wanted to bolt, but the anarchist threatened to kill them if they didn't help loot the body. So, with no other choice, they helped bring it back to camp, where they were drugged and left behind with enough clues to lead a militia right to them, while the anarchist left with the best loot down a secret path into the woods where only a skilled tracker would've found them.

The adventurers found the obviously guilty party, but the family saw them first. Realizing they would be publicly tortured for a crime they didn't commit if they were brought back to town, they decided to try their luck against these adventurers and see if they can escape alive into the woods. Unlucky for them, the adventurers were stronger. Now, their relatively innocent hides are hanging from a cross for the effort, but a recurring CE villain is now terrorizing the country side!

It would be interesting to find out how this affects your players' role-playing. What they do next with this new plot hook will tell you everything you need to know about whether or not the Dwarf is getting red-flagged for an alignment ping.

[bloodtide]

So, an issue has come up in a D&D game I'm running. A player, playing a Neutral Good dwarf cleric of Moradin, wants to crucify the corpse of a bandit by the side of the road as a warning to other bandits. Would this go against his alignment?

No. At least it should not be. Until just a couple dozen years ago, this was very common. And this is still done in parts of the world.

Now the modern (western) view holds that a corpse is sacred and you must 'treat it right', but that's today. Most of the Western world thinks of a dead body as something special, but not the whole world. The belief that a 'dead body is just a shell' is completely valid.

Dwarves are great examples of 'extreme good'. I see them as doing things like 'crucify the corpse of a bandit by the side of the road as a warning to other bandits.' That's common dwarf type justice.

Think of the other side though. If Moradin was to say 'every corpse is a super special snowflake and must be treated with honor and respect', then how would dwarves act? Does this mean they must give every dead body a proper burial? Do they dig graves? Or pyres? Do they need to have a ceremony? Do they need to take the bodies to a graveyard and inform the local authorities who is there? Can they even kill people?

[Sgt. Cookie]

The real question is: Who is considering the corpse "Defiled"? Moradin? The Dwarf? The general consensus of the fictional world? Or just us, through our meta perception of this fairy tale?

This question is asked from a meta perspective, we are not taking into account that this fictional world has a different set of rules to ours. We are trying to super impose our own morality on a world that is vastly different to our own.

As has been stated before, this fictional world has ways of raising the dead, communing with other worldly forces, hell, even going into other planes to kick the arse of a god.

So by asking this question from a meta perspective, you are by passing the simplest and most important question of them all: Who is considering the corpse "Defiled"?.

If you can answer that, with any answer other than "Me, but from a meta perspective" then you have found your answer.

[Cirrylius]

[COLOR="Purple"]Maybe you could spin this story into a great subplot:
[SPOILER]

That would be a great scenario in a novel. If my DM sprang it on me, though, I would be LIVID.

[SowZ]

That would be a great scenario in a novel. If my DM sprang it on me, though, I would be LIVID.

Why? If someone uses lethal force as a first response often they will kill people who don't deserve it often.

It is not as if the story above should be unexpected. Most criminals aren't just horrible people. Most have a reason to have been pressured into it. A good cop will investigate motives behind a crime and try and establish context. A morally ambigous mercenary will see a crime and then go after whoever is involved, ready to kill at the first need.

Did anyone bother to investigate the body to determine whether the merchant was murdered or killed accidentally?

Did anyone bother to figure out whether or not these bandits really were the bandits who attacked the merchant caravan, or did they just follow tracks and draw a simple conclusion?

I'm reminded of the book Sojourn, where a party of Rangers and a bounty hunter were seeking out Drizzt for the murder of a simple farmer and his family. On the surface, it really looked like Drizzt was the culprit, and the group was out for blood. But the lead Ranger wanted the truth and investigated the clues impartially. Although it took some digging, she eventually realized that the initial clues were misleading and that Drizzt had actually avenged the ravaged family. She cancelled the pursuit, putting aside her initially racist preconceptions. The bounty hunter, on the other hand, was satisfied by his earlier notions, and wanted the bounty badly enough to overlook the more recent clues.

Does your party sound more like the unbiased Ranger who only sought the truth, or the judgmental bounty hunter who saw a blood-fountain full of GP?

As a DM, here is a good chance for you to explore their motivations. Maybe you could spin this story into a great subplot:

Spoiler

Show

The lord of the town is tyrannical and seeks punishment more than justice. The robbers were an impoverished family who got talked into a life of crime by a diplomatic anarchist, because the legal system was crushing them. New to the game, they meant to do a simple, "Pay the toll, and you can go free" kind of schtick, but the anarchist bandits is a little too chaotic for that and wanted to put a little fear in the merchant, which startled the horses and caused the cart to flip. The family wanted to bolt, but the anarchist threatened to kill them if they didn't help loot the body. So, with no other choice, they helped bring it back to camp, where they were drugged and left behind with enough clues to lead a militia right to them, while the anarchist left with the best loot down a secret path into the woods where only a skilled tracker would've found them.

The adventurers found the obviously guilty party, but the family saw them first. Realizing they would be publicly tortured for a crime they didn't commit if they were brought back to town, they decided to try their luck against these adventurers and see if they can escape alive into the woods. Unlucky for them, the adventurers were stronger. Now, their relatively innocent hides are hanging from a cross for the effort, but a recurring CE villain is now terrorizing the country side!

It would be interesting to find out how this affects your players' role-playing. What they do next with this new plot hook will tell you everything you need to know about whether or not the Dwarf is getting red-flagged for an alignment ping.

The initial ranger was a pretty bad person anyway, though. I wouldn't say she looked at clues impartially so much as Drizzt flung them in her face so hard she couldn't ignore it. Still, you bring up a good example as to how it can happen a party is tracking the wrong person.

[Winter_Wolf]

Crucifixion as a warning to would-be thieves seems like a very dwarven behavior, depending on which sources you consider when deciding "typical dwarf mentality".

At first I thought it would be a definitely non-good activity, but I wouldn't mark it as evil unless there was a degree of torture involved. Because he's putting up a corpse instead of putting up a living being to be ravaged by the torture-to-death, I'd probably look the other way.

[ScionoftheVoid]

Why would mutilating a corpse be evil for any reason?

It's a corpse, so any killing involved was done beforehand. In D&D, the only effect mutilating a corpse has on the soul it previously housed is that it may be unable to be raised from the dead (as a living person or, IIRC, a zombie) - and cutting off the head can prevent Speak with Dead from working. Two of those aren't likely to be used on a bandit in any case and less zombies is generally only a good thing. And if these were common or garden bandits then Raise Dead may well not have worked anyway, the spell says outright that coming back is an ordeal, and I believe the PHB version implies that ressurection only works on PCs and important NPCs. And that's if they want to come back, if they're in bandintry for any reason other than enjoyment the afterlife may well be better than their life was.

It might be disrespectful, but that's not automaticallly evil (though it can be, if taken to extremes). And a dwarf (or Moradin) might not see it that way anyway. Hatred and respect can go together. To a dwarf, leaving mutilated corpses of foes might be a sign of respect - the dwarf has gone out of their way to discourage others from that path, rather than not being bothered and just leaving as if nothing had happened. It might not be as respectful as proper burial rites, but dwarves have respect for their foes built into their racial features (in D&D 3.5, at least) - they have such a hatred toward some races that they have specific training to combat them. They take their foes seriously, even as they combat them with traditional dwarven sense of duty. Dwarves are a perfect example of good not being nice, seeing as they live in fortresses and are trained for combat as a matter of course - something orcs lack.

Hope that is in some way helpful.

[Killer Angel]

The real question is: Who is considering the corpse "Defiled"? Moradin? The Dwarf? The general consensus of the fictional world? Or just us, through our meta perception of this fairy tale?

This question is asked from a meta perspective, we are not taking into account that this fictional world has a different set of rules to ours. We are trying to super impose our own morality on a world that is vastly different to our own.

Still, when we apply morality to the behavior of a paladin, we apply our own morality. Slavery was common ad widely accepted in past ages, but we (and the paladin) consider it evil.
So no, unless differently specified, D&D world share our moral PoV.

That said, IMO the act was LN and decisely not worth a change of Al.

[SowZ]

Still, when we apply morality to the behavior of a paladin, we apply our own morality. Slavery was common ad widely accepted in past ages, but we (and the paladin) consider it evil.
So no, unless differently specified, D&D world share our moral PoV.

That said, IMO the act was LN and decisely not worth a change of Al.

The act itself doesn't have an alignment attached to it. It is all about intentions. I'd say LN is a good qualifier in this case. But the same act could be Chaotic, Good, Evil, etc. depending.

[TriForce]

striktly speaking, yes, mutulating a corpse, especially for such a trivial thing like a potential warning is against a good alignment.

its obviously not enough to make a alignment shift, and other people might do little more then raise a eyebrow at such a act of cruelty, but it has several implications.

first of all, that bandit likely had family/friends who are completly innocent but still loved him. by pinning him up there, you MIGHT scare off other bandits, but your sure to inflict some minor trauma on any loved one of him who saw him.

also, a corpse is a unhealthy thing, hanging it up is a danger for any innocent passing by there.

and lastly, yes the bandit might possibly have been a murderer. but lets be fair, you dont know that for sure, and all he did to you was defend himself when he got attacked. making a signpost out of the guy is just very disrespectful.

all in all, its a neutral act at best, and a evil act in most times, even tough its only a minor one. its certainly cruel, and it should get at least a "what the hell" out of other good aligned people

[Lord Tyger]

Hold on- how is it supposed to discourage the bandits? Is it along the lines of "This bandit got killed, and this is just a way to display that fact," (in which case, just hanging from a local tree with a sign seems like it might be a bit easier- and some sort of signification that it's a bandit specifically seems necessary in any case, unless this is a traditional way of dealing with banditry in the area)?

Or is it a more specific warning meant to indicate "Those caught in the course of banditry will have their corpses crucified," in which case, why is post-humous crucifixion such a big deal? Is it percieved to have some effect on the afterlife (plenty of cultures linked burial ceremonies to your comfort or position in the afterlife). If so, does it actually? Condemning the bandit to eternal metaphysical crucifixion might be a bit harsh.

[FatJose]

What if people take it to mean that there's a crazy bunch out killing and nailing up people? On who's authority is he defacing the roads? How can anyone be sure the guy was a thief? Really, that rotting body is just gonna scare everybody.

[Vitruviansquid]

My rule of thumb: If it's a question, it's evil.