There should be no evil alligned races

[OldTrees1]

And D&D does have inherently good species, where every member is born with a good alignment. Where the OP goes wrong is in thinking humans or demihumans are "good" races. That's okay though, because the orcs, goblins etc. aren't inherently evil either.

Inherently XYZ would imply more than being born XYZ. I was born left handed. I am now left handed, ambidextrous, or right handed depending on the task. I am not inherently left handed. So in every D&D edition where angels can fall, I don't know of any inherently good species.

Demihumans like halflings, dwarves, and elves are usually written as having good tendencies. This is part of the reason why they are stereotyped as "the goodly races" (whether or not you agree with pop culture). However the OP notices they are not stereotyped as inherently good. Oddly enough "the evil demihumans" are often stereotyped as inherently evil.

You are right that D&D does not have "the evil demihumans" as inherently evil. Oddly 5E lore seems to muddle that detail (see 5E Orc in MM vs MTOF). However that did make me comment about the limitations of the opening post.

And personally I think someone could make an awesome campaign centered on that question. I think it’s more open than you give it credit for; I remember a documentary on prisons where one of the interviewed people was a prisoner who did not want to be released because he knew he’d kill more people if he was. Was this person evil? I don’t know, but seeing it always stuck with me.

That sounds interesting. There are a few ways that campaign could go. You could have it focus on one state of being, or the creator could have multiple different experiments. Maybe this one is explicitly mind controlled. Another one is influenced with an ever escalating pressure. A third keeps having their memory edited. Etc.

[Bohandas]

D&D Elves were never inherently good. They might have had good tendencies, but D&D Elves were moral agents and had the capacity to choose to do good, or evil.

The OP is saying, if you have no inherently good species, then it makes sense to have no inherently evil species.

Who said the same didn't apply to orcs? I've got the 3.5e monster manual here and it lists elves as "Usually Chaotic Good" and orcs as "Often Chaotic Evil" so from an official RAW standpoint elves are more inherently good than orcs are inherently evil

[OldTrees1]

Who said the same didn't apply to orcs? I've got the 3.5e monster manual here and it lists elves as "Usually Chaotic Good" and orcs as "Often Chaotic Evil" so from an official RAW standpoint elves are more inherently good than orcs are inherently evil

I don't disagree. 3E D&D has no species that are inherently XYZ alignment. The details are in the back of the monster manual, but I appreciate that section well.

So if the OP argues "If there are no inherently good species, there should be no inherently evil species", then I think D&D 3E passes the OP's requirement. This made me wonder if the OP was speaking more generically rather than brand or edition specific.

[vasilidor]

A note on evil deity influences. If they reward evil practices and punish good practices then you can totally get an evil society via evil gods. magic mind rape need not be used. Just teaching them to hate certain groups can be enough.
this is actually, in part, how real world evil gets propagated through real world societies.

yes I know real world evil is often more complex than that, but that is a part of it.

[Duff]

This is an edited quote to sumarise OPs current position...

There should be no evil alligned races.

except

if you are going to keep your setting purely black and white then i have no issues with you having inherently evil races.

or

unless you are intentionally going for the grimdark vibe.

So, perhaps, "In a morally nuanced setting, there's no place for Always Evil races."
But I don't even agree with that

You are describing Stalin's USSR right there.

While it didn't last forever, Stalin's USSR did survive a couple of crisis which could easily have ended it. Sure, Stalin might have survived that night if his guards weren't too scared, but that didn't bring about the fall of his nation. If Stalin had an heir who was willing and able to do things the same, it would have continued.
IE, North Korea. There's limits to how much a real world government can (or should, or will within the forum rules) be used as a proxy for an evil race. But I think there's a case to argue that a government apperatus like the Kims could endure with a sentiant species that are in fact all evil

Also, this

In this same light is it peculiar to note that demons and devils vastly outnumber the various good aligned outsiders? Are you taking into consideration how being good is the hard option while being evil is the easier option? Your assumption that the evil/good flip flop should be observable in equal helpings is unfounded.

And this talks to a pet hate of mine for most Tolkien-derived fantasy settings.

a RACE can't be Evil, but a CULTURE can be.

Most of the races other than human have distinct cultures. There's a Dwarvish language shared by all dwarves, for example, But no human one. So if other humanoid races have this level of monoculture across comunities, I'm inclined to say evil can be a part of a species' culture

Okay, but now we're talking about relative evil, not objective evil. If orcs are kind and loving and socially-oriented, just not towards anything that isn't an orc, then they're not wholly evil. And quite frankly, outsiders could see that too. Said outsider might always be on the receiving end of a pointy stick, but they could still see that orcs love their children, respect their spouses, and create great philosophy...just not with any non-orc.

These orcs aren't evil, they just have some weird biological rage trigger that happens whenever they smell a non-orc humanoid. Or whatever.

Always evil doesn't have to mean completely evil though. "Always willing to kill and eat other sentient species when hungry" can, in a setting with absolute morality, mean they are always evil if eating sentient species is evil. And D&D has generally had absolute morality, which is why a paladin can fall and still think they're doing what the 12 gods have commanded them to.

Thing is, using "race" in the way Tolkien did was old-timey even in the mid-1970s and it's incredibly outdated now. D&D should have changed the labeling to species long ago, at least as early as 3e. It's not like they aren't capable of doing so in other properties, characters in WotC licensed Star Wars have Species and Class rather than Race and Class.

Agreed. "Race" brings baggage it doesn't need to the conversation

Writing interesting stories in homogenous environments skewed to moral extremes is extremely difficult to do well. Stories in which absolutely everyone is evil degenerate into endless backstabbing between a group of totally unsympathetic monsters while stories in which everyone is a moral paragon are bland and boring. This is why every evil society story has at least one decent character to serve as an audience proxy and why every team of world-saving heroes includes at least one jerkface antihero or edgy rival (and this character is often far more compelling than the protagonist).

Consequently most 'always evil' groups are actually rather uninteresting and mostly serve as cannon fodder antagonists. The Trollocs from Wheel of Time, for example, which are just reskinned Orcs anyway, are living bioweapons and inherently tainted by the Dark One's touch. There aren't any redeemed Trollocs in the story, but at the same time there are barely any speaking Trollocs, they're just something for the good guys to smash. The minute some evil group becomes interesting enough to write a story about it, it almost inevitably acquires some measure of nuance. A well-known example is Boba Fett: he appears in the original Star Wars films entirely as a heartless mercenary thug, and yet because he had one of the coolest character designs in the history of cinema he became the progenitor of countless stories and spawned an entire fictional culture based on explaining who he was and where he came from.

Sort of true, but not actually addressing the question. There's nothing to say a fantasy setting can't have trollocs which are all inherantly evil as well as orcs who can have different alignments/ethical philosophies/moral codes.
As to "sort of" - I'd say it's harder to have good stories within the extremes of good and evil. But possible. I'd suggest Game of Thrones has some good stories about interactions where I'd call all the characters evil. Even stories which are about the conflict between extremes good and extreme evil are more limited. But they can definitely be interesting. Lots of examples in real world mythology/religion if you care to look. Stay within forum rules and don't quote specifics. I'd suggest lord of the rings (Boromir and his dad aside) would count.

[Bohandas]

Most of the races other than human have distinct cultures. There's a Dwarvish language shared by all dwarves, for example, But no human one. So if other humanoid races have this level of monoculture across comunities, I'm inclined to say evil can be a part of a species' culture

AND a tendency to a particular kind of culture can be inherent to a species. It's my headcanon that they ARE different dwarven cultures, they just all live underground, do a lot of metal and stonework, and drink a lot as a result of their being able to see in the dark, having an instinctive understanding of stone and metal, and being resistant to poison.

Similarly, the orcs could tend to evil due to lacking the lifespan and intelligence to develop and maintain a society that doesn't need to rely on the sorts of awful things that happened in every major society in the bronze age and earlier

EDIT:
Or societies could even be hardcoded, like in Warhammer 40000's orks, who grow from spores and when seeded on different worlds without any parental care or instruction they all instinctively build the same society speaking the same language and building the same spaceships and hovertanks

[Mechalich]

AND a tendency to a particular kind of culture can be inherent to a species. It's my headcanon that they ARE different dwarven cultures, they just all live underground, do a lot of metal and stonework, and drink a lot as a result of their being able to see in the dark, having an instinctive understanding of stone and metal, and being resistant to poison.

There are cultural commonalities found between all or nearly all human cultures (and the exceptions tend to be confined to highly unusual environments), so it does indeed make sense that there would be commonalities between nearly all the cultures of some other sapient species, they'd just be different commonalities. There's even some limited evidence regarding this sort of thing from comparisons between Neanderthal culture and contemporary Human culture, though the data is admittedly highly speculative.

It is worth noting that in a fantasy world with large numbers of different species the among of intraspecies cultural variation is going to drop, because each species is going to have a favored niche and, at least prior to the development of agriculture, they're going to dominate their niche and struggle mightily to have any presence in niches better suited to other species unless there is geographic isolation. For example, if dwarves are better adapted to an alpine lifestyle than humans, there simply won't be any humans in alpine environments unless you have a continent without dwarves or something. Of course this leads to the question of why one fantasy species doesn't brutally exterminate all of the other species it sees as competitors once it secures a societal/technological/magical advantage. It's a fairly rare setting that's willing to follow the obvious path and say 'oh but they do' (Dark Sun, as usual the most realistic of D&D settings, is one such).

[Vahnavoi]

Of course this leads to the question of why one fantasy species doesn't brutally exterminate all of the other species it sees as competitors once it secures a societal/technological/magical advantage.

If, as you propose, sapient creatures speciate based on dominating their ecological niche, why would they see each other as competitors? To give contrast from natural world, ants war against other ants (and termites) - but only those ants which happen to be of similar size and eating the same food. Small ants and big ants co-exist comfortably because they are not each other's direct competitors.

Approached from a different angle, the advantage required to carry out complete, intentional genocide is vast. The simplest explanation tends to be that neither side is capable of exterminating the other. The second simplest is that the other side is trying hard, but you're working to stop them - that's what the fight against forces of evil genuinely is in many settings.

[Samoja1]

If, as you propose, sapient creatures speciate based on dominating their ecological niche, why would they see each other as competitors? To give contrast from natural world, ants war against other ants (and termites) - but only those ants which happen to be of similar size and eating the same food. Small ants and big ants co-exist comfortably because they are not each other's direct competitors.

Approached from a different angle, the advantage required to carry out complete, intentional genocide is vast. The simplest explanation tends to be that neither side is capable of exterminating the other. The second simplest is that the other side is trying hard, but you're working to stop them - that's what the fight against forces of evil genuinely is in many settings.

There could be some tension between men and elves. Elves tend to be fond of the forest while men tend to be fond of cutting forests down. I don't think anyone would bother the dwarves because nobody wants to live in a mine shaft their whole life, so dwarves are useful to the economy because they mine ores nobody else would bother with. Most other creatures live in remote and hostile locations which is probably why they survived this long.

[Forum Explorer]

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Outsiders are a little trickier, depending on your conception of what they are. If your cosmology is that fiends are the essence of Evil in bodily form, the idea of redemption makes no sense (or, at a minimum, would mean that they stop being fiends and transform into something else). But if fiends are simply another free-willed race that is native to a plane generally aligned with Evil, then allowing deviance from that norm absolutely makes sense.

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I like the idea that if Angels can fall, than Devils can rise.

[Willie the Duck]

I think a lot of people are forgetting that just because not all individuals of a certain group are evil does not mean you can't have them as acceptable targets.

I don't see that in what people are saying, can you point out an example or two?

[Alcore]

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I like the idea that if Angels can fall, than Devils can rise.

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[Vahnavoi]

There could be some tension between men and elves. Elves tend to be fond of the forest while men tend to be fond of cutting forests down.

Could be? Is. That conflict is part of Tolkien's work, (in several different ways even), it's part of folklores of many different peoples and has been repeated in fantasy a huge number of times.


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[Xervous]

{Scrubbed} There’s no sense in debating whether or not people are perceiving the parallels or not, given that such perception is a personal act of pattern recognition. It’s just a question of whether or not objections are actionable, who is allowed to define the rules of discourse, and what percentage of a group is required to blacklist a subject.

[KorvinStarmast]

Most of the races other than human have distinct cultures. There's a Dwarvish language shared by all dwarves, for example, But no human one. So if other humanoid races have this level of monoculture across comunities, I'm inclined to say evil can be a part of a species' culture

Nice point.

Spoiler: possibly OT Tolkien orc language thing

Show

(FWIW, Tolkien had the various kinds of goblin and orc groups speak different languages as the excuse that Frodo and Sam could understand the rough common that orcs used to communicate across group lines in their Mordor Adventure).

Agreed. "Race" brings baggage it doesn't need to the conversation

Thanks for putting that in there. As to Boromir: was he misguided with good intentions? (Love of country, love of his city, love for his people). He fell into evil, it seems to me, as his story arc wound up in FoTR(book) due to the sin of pride. (Seven deadly sins and all that). That was his weak spot that the ring's 'aura' / malign influence exploited. I think it is the same weak spot that ensnared all nine mortal kings who accepted Sauron's gift rings. (Heck, I'll take that a step further, and suggest that Isildur's own pride was used against him by the ring from the moment he took possession of it ... but we are getting waaaaaaaay off topic)

There are cultural commonalities found between all or nearly all human cultures (and the exceptions tend to be confined to highly unusual environments), so it does indeed make sense that there would be commonalities between nearly all the cultures of some other sapient species, they'd just be different commonalities. {snip} ..., they're going to dominate their niche and struggle mightily to have any presence in niches better suited to other species unless there is geographic isolation.

For example, if dwarves are better adapted to an alpine lifestyle than humans, there simply won't be any humans in alpine environments unless you have a continent without dwarves or something. Of course this leads to the question of why one fantasy species doesn't brutally exterminate all of the other species it sees as competitors once it secures a societal/technological/magical advantage.

Philosophy can mitigate such things, though.

It's a fairly rare setting that's willing to follow the obvious path and say 'oh but they do' (Dark Sun, as usual the most realistic of D&D settings, is one such).

One more reason that 5e needs Dark Sun.

[Jason]

Inherently XYZ would imply more than being born XYZ. I was born left handed. I am now left handed, ambidextrous, or right handed depending on the task. I am not inherently left handed. So in every D&D edition where angels can fall, I don't know of any inherently good species.

I'm not sure I agree. I am also a lefty, and as far as I can tell I was born that way. That seems "inherent" to me. The fact that I can use my right hand for tasks most right-handed people would have trouble using their left for is largely a matter of necessity. My "inherent tendency" is still to use my left whenever possible, but I have trained myself to sometimes use my right hand when it is inconvenient or impossible to use my left.

I don't consider myself right-handed when I'm using a pair of scissors with my right hand. I'm a lefty who has learned to adapt through practice.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: everyone please take a very wide left turn away from real-world political parallels and stick to the explicitly fictional.

[Rydiro]

What about illithid who need to eat sentient creatures to survive?

[Willie the Duck]

What about illithid who need to eat sentient creatures to survive?

What specifically about them? Applying them to the OP's premise (again, with which I do not agree, as I don't see the need for symmetry in this and no one has yet presented a specific reason why it should be), they are rather one-dimensional (the must-eat-brains part, at least) and sorta grimdark. So I don't know what they do one way or another.

[Vahnavoi]

Illithids don't just need to eat brains to survive. They are supremacists who consider all non-illithids to be inferior. Your suffering makes your brains tastier to them. Hence, they consider it their right to enslave and torture you for their own benefit.

The horror they evoke is that of someone treating us badly in the same way we sometimes treat cattle badly. For something Gygax came up in the 70s based on a Lovecraft illustration he liked, they've been pretty succesful.

[Xervous]

Illithids don't just need to eat brains to survive. They are supremacists who consider all non-illithids to be inferior. Your suffering makes your brains tastier to them. Hence, they consider it their right to enslave and torture you for their own benefit.

The horror they evoke is that of someone treating us badly in the same way we sometimes treat cattle badly. For something Gygax came up in the 70s based on a Lovecraft illustration he liked, they've been pretty succesful.

One could say he predicted the future, social media and all that. Subsisting off brains, suffering brains being more valuable...

[Vahnavoi]

One could say he predicted the future, social media and all that. Subsisting off brains, suffering brains being more valuable...

{Scrubbed}

[Anymage]

What specifically about them? Applying them to the OP's premise (again, with which I do not agree, as I don't see the need for symmetry in this and no one has yet presented a specific reason why it should be), they are rather one-dimensional (the must-eat-brains part, at least) and sorta grimdark. So I don't know what they do one way or another.

If illithids have free will, a nonevil illithid vegan who seeks other ways to gain sustenance and who treats other sentient life with respect is possible. I don't think anybody is saying that illithid vegans are impossible or that it would be right to attack one who's known to be nonevil just because it's an illithid, so I guess there's a point there. Illithids are still dangerous enough and overwhelmingly-likely-to-be-evil enough to treat an unknown one as an existential threat, to the point where few people would fault you for ambushing one to avoid letting it get off a mind blast just because there's a vanishingly small chance that it's a vegan.

I will say pursuant to OP's original point that I dislike how traditionally "good" races have the full run of free will, while traditionally "evil" races have pure evil baked into their constitutions by their creator deities. That's a specific 5eism that's easy to ignore. And there are plenty of other ways to come at the same place (creator deities predispose their creations to certain attitudes/outlooks that they consider optimal, plus influencing societies) while still allowing choice. It's symmetrical in that it allows generally humanoid things to have options, while not getting in the way of the idea that enemies are enemies because they do bad things and consequently heroic violence is justified.

[OldTrees1]

I'm not sure I agree. I am also a lefty, and as far as I can tell I was born that way. That seems "inherent" to me. The fact that I can use my right hand for tasks most right-handed people would have trouble using their left for is largely a matter of necessity. My "inherent tendency" is still to use my left whenever possible, but I have trained myself to sometimes use my right hand when it is inconvenient or impossible to use my left.

I don't consider myself right-handed when I'm using a pair of scissors with my right hand. I'm a lefty who has learned to adapt through practice.

Maybe you adapted less than I did. I no longer have an inherent tendency to use my left hand whenever possible. For specific tasks I have a tendency to use a specific hand (which hand is task dependent). However in general I have no inherent tendency. That is why I used it as an analogy.

However if the analogy is getting in the way, we can skip it. I was bringing it up to point out that to be inherently XYZ then XYZ needs to be a permanent essential characteristic. If the characteristic is not permanent (see fallen angels) then it is not inherent.

So despite D&D having some species that are born as alignment XYZ, I still don't know of a D&D species that is inherently good.

If illithids have free will, a nonevil illithid vegan who seeks other ways to gain sustenance and who treats other sentient life with respect is possible. I don't think anybody is saying that illithid vegans are impossible or that it would be right to attack one who's known to be nonevil just because it's an illithid, so I guess there's a point there. Illithids are still dangerous enough and overwhelmingly-likely-to-be-evil enough to treat an unknown one as an existential threat, to the point where few people would fault you for ambushing one to avoid letting it get off a mind blast just because there's a vanishingly small chance that it's a vegan.

Ignoring ways for D&D creatures to skip needing to eat at all, Illithids can live off of rothe brains instead of intelligent life. Even with that possibility the friendly exceptions are very rare. There is a colony of a friendly subspecies in the north and there was a famous friendly illithid long ago.

Also yes, it is reasonable to treat a potential existential threat like an existential threat.

Oh and to connect with your other point about 5Eisms. In 5E the Illithid species enslavement by the Elder Brain species is more oppressive than before. IIRC there is passive mind control rather than just social control.

[KorvinStarmast]

Oh and to connect with your other point about 5Eisms. In 5E the Illithid species enslavement by the Elder Brain species is more oppressive than before. IIRC there is passive mind control rather than just social control.

They totally stole that from the Zerg Overmind and the Cerebrates!

[Jason]

However if the analogy is getting in the way, we can skip it. I was bringing it up to point out that to be inherently XYZ then XYZ needs to be a permanent essential characteristic. If the characteristic is not permanent (see fallen angels) then it is not inherent.

So despite D&D having some species that are born as alignment XYZ, I still don't know of a D&D species that is inherently good.

If "absolutely permanent and unchangeable" is your criteria for "inherent" then no creature in D&D has an "inherent" alignment. Or any other "inherent" characteristic, for that matter, since there are in-game methods to change any of them.

[OldTrees1]

If "absolutely permanent and unchangeable" is your criteria for "inherent" then no creature in D&D has an "inherent" alignment. Or any other "inherent" characteristic, for that matter, since there are in-game methods to change any of them.

Deja Vu. I already replied to this comment here:

I don't disagree. 3E D&D has no species that are inherently XYZ alignment. The details are in the back of the monster manual, but I appreciate that section well.

So if the OP argues "If there are no inherently good species, there should be no inherently evil species", then I think D&D 3E passes the OP's requirement. This made me wonder if the OP was speaking more generically rather than brand or edition specific.

[Vahnavoi]

I understand OldTrees1's point but the analogy is a total miss. Handedness is a genetic quality arising from bodily asymmetry present in all humans, it starts developing before you are even born. It is one of the best examples of an inherent trait in real humans. Through a lot of effort, a left-handed person might acquire some degree of ambidexterity, but even that potential is genetically limited, and, most importantly, apparent learned ambidexterity does not change your genes and your bodily asymmetry. The factors that determined your handedness are permanent part of you from cradle to grave.

[OldTrees1]

I understand OldTrees1's point but the analogy is a total miss. Handedness is a genetic quality arising from bodily asymmetry present in all humans, it starts developing before you are even born. It is one of the best examples of an inherent trait in real humans. Through a lot of effort, a left-handed person might acquire some degree of ambidexterity, but even that potential is genetically limited, and, most importantly, apparent learned ambidexterity does not change your genes and your bodily asymmetry. The factors that determined your handedness are permanent part of you from cradle to grave.

I will drop the analogy then. I am glad you can see the point despite my poor analogy.

[Sharur]

As stated, if you are going to keep your setting purely black and white then i have no issues with you having inherently evil races. But if your setting has no inherently good races, which most fantasy settings today don't, then you should not have any inherently evil ones either.

I guess we have different views of good and evil (and for that matter, morally neutral, as well) then.

For my games (simplified), a "good act" is one that, in total, helps those outside your "in group", while a "good person" is one who will regularly and by default do "good acts" when presented with the opportunity, even to their detriment; it could be said that for such a person doing an "evil act" is "in character". E.g. Superman stops to help.

Likewise, an "evil act" is one that hurts, in total, hurts others, and an "evil person" will regularly and by default do "good acts" when presented with the opportunity; they relish and enjoy evil acts, while hurting someone is "in character" for such a person, e.g. Darth Vader taking out his frustration by choking people when upset.

A morally neutral act is one that doesn't significantly affect others, while a morally neutral person breaks the pattern; they don't default to good or evil actions, as instead their actions are guided by another leader, be it a defined code or random whimsey.

The upshot of this is that you can very easily have a "unbalanced" moral distribution, "evil races" but not "good races"; Being good isn't necessarily an advantage to survival.