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Hold on real quick I have another thing to post in the pet peeves "forum memes" thread
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See Rynjyn's above statement. In no way did he insult your intelligence. If your reasoning is flawed, then he has all the right to tell you so. That is what one does in a discussion.Yes and no.
First one certainly contained an insult, while second started pretty harsh (belittling her feelings reference the initial insult).
While technically correct, Rynjin's replies ignore a large and well-established set of traditional views - i.e. "humans aren't animals" - which even the game system we all play acknowledges.
Humans are part of the larger "animalia" but they are not, culturally speaking, animals, in the same way that other creatures are.
Dropping it isn't the answer. Rynjin needs to apologize for his insulting first post.
People (whatever race) are not animals. Ok sure in the broadest of scientific definitions every moving life form is an animal. BUT clearly that is irrelevant here. We are talking about whether it is right or wrong to eat dead people... which is literally ghoulish behavior. Just because some culture somewhere thinks it's perfectly ok or even good doesn't make it right. Desecration of the dead is evil is it not? And this is at the very least that.
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Cannibalism is not something that does well in the Good/Evil scale. If it has consequences for the soul of the creature, that may impact it alignment-wise. Nothing in the game presumes that, to my knowledge, however. Remains (pun intended) to discuss the handling of the dead body itself. The important thing here is that the body is treated with respect by those handling it, nothing else in this issue can ever be an alignment issue that I could see. If doing so involves the body eaten by the tribe, chopped up and left for the birds, burnt, buried, dumped at sea, magically petrified, or whatever else, it matters not. It gets more complicated if the deceased and the one disposing of the body are not of the same faith or culture - but alignment is an INDIVIDUAL concept. A shaman working in accordance with his beliefs in order to respectfully dispose of a dead body shouldn't even incur the debate about Evil. If he is informed of these things and still does so, however, that would be different.
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Aye. I agree with Sissyl. Different cultures have disposed of bodies in so many different ways that it is easy to keep track. Cremation, burial, eating the dead to respect them, eating the dead to damn them, putting the organs in jsrs and wrappig them in sheets, throwing the dead into the ocean, using the dead in grand ceremonies, etc. There is just no way to put it on a good or evil axis just to appeal to your modern sensibilities. Ot doesnt matter if it is okay for US, the intent behind the act should be taken into account. Aranna, just because YOU believe it to be desecration doean't mean that it is. It may offend MODERN people but in various cultures worldwide it was just a fact of their culture.
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Stuff about culture!
Christianity... Catholicism really. My family was Catholic (mother's side) and basic Christian (father's side). I went to Catholic School too.
The way they explained it was you were literally eating the actual body of Christ, and drinking his blood.. When you were old enough. There was no 'this is a metaphorical ritual' involved, it was just straight "You're eating Jesus".
Although, Paizo does seem to have a problem keeping modern-day ethics and morals out of a fantasy game. One that's more or less a kitchen sink of time-eras anyways.
But that's the crux of it, these ARE the modern times NOT the ancient times. This game is being sold to modern people NOT ancient people. There are a great many things from ancient times that were seen as good back then which are clearly not good; I am sure I don't need to spell out some of these horrible things, but will if you need clarity.
Just so we're clear here, if the debate is that eating people without killing them, but just not wasting the body, is evil...would you say the protagonists of Alive are evil? They didn't kill each other, but when the cold did what it does, they did what they had to in order to survive?
Since doing evil out of necessity surely isn't good, and usually isn't even neutral, and these folks (and the lizardfolk, which Rynjin already brought up, are not evil as well), then the consumption of flesh that was once sentient, in of itself is not evil.
Killing a sentient creature for the purpose of eating them can be, absolutely, but just munching on already dead folk like carrion surely is not.
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You are still applying logic the wrong way. You are talking about your MODERN DAY morality. You should loom at it from your character's perspective, not your own. I mean for Pete's sake, we are talking about a world where binding creatures to do your will despite their personal feelings on the subject is a morally... neutral act. Your morality is not the character's morality. By your logic, most parties woukd be obvioudly evil, after all, most modern people don't go around gutting people and taking the stuff off of their bodies. Why can adventurers do it? Because it is Golarion NOT earth. Your logic is flawed.
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Note that I am still all for an objective morality, the one found all across the world in every society we have found, which is a reflection of human thought and the workings of our brains. It is not cultural relativism that makes me consider the shaman's actions to be not evil, but the simple fact that there is no victim, no carelessness, and no evil intent. I would find it difficult to map him into the Evil corner.
What is forbidden is killing anyone else, and the clear implication is that only those desperate enough would stoop to such behavior.
This is especially interesting in light of the fact that many in Jesus' time left off from following Him because of His statements of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. They left because they considered it "proof" that He was not following the scriptures, when, in fact, He had not broken the Law at all by such statements. And, relating cannibalism to the desperate act of those who, mired in their own sinfulness, have come to such a low state as to be able to survive in no other way... well. Huh. Scripture just gained new respect in my eyes in a way that I'd never seen it before.
There's also the fact that eating people is likely very, very diseased. So...
Well, that obviously depends on the cause of death and time since death, plus it probably isn't a problem for a lizardman who eats human flesh.
I don't GM, but my fellow player (in Way of the Wicked, so cruel is to be expected), after we'd killed the innkeeper's wife, gave the innkeeper a choice: both he and his children were to be fed to the ghouls, and he got to choose whether he'd go first in front of the children, or last after witnessing their deaths. He went first. We all agreed that was selfish of him.
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Play an orc. Eat whoever you want. Act confused when people get upset.
"I just cut him damn near in half with an axe, and that's alright, but I try to get in an after-battle snack and that's where you draw the line? You pinkskins got some weird rules."
Ghoul stuff.And if he wanted to go second? Sacrificing his children to live a few more minutes. So selfish.
That would've been the selfless thing to do. Those few more minutes are seriously traumatising and not worth living. Going second he takes that trauma on himself. Going first, he subjects his children to the sight of not just their father's gruesome death, but what gruesome fate awaits them too in just a moment.
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Dropping it isn't the answer. Rynjin needs to apologize for his insulting first post.
Nah.
People (whatever race) are not animals. Ok sure in the broadest of scientific definitions every moving life form is an animal. BUT clearly that is irrelevant here. We are talking about whether it is right or wrong to eat dead people... which is literally ghoulish behavior. Just because some culture somewhere thinks it's perfectly ok or even good doesn't make it right. Desecration of the dead is evil is it not? And this is at the very least that.
Who says desecration of the dead is evil? And who defines cannibalism as desecration?
Many real world cultures consider ritual cannibalism to be part of the CONSECRATION of the dead.
It is neither good nor evil. It is simply a cultural difference. Declaring all acts not of your culture as evil is shortsighted and narrow-minded. In short, it's an intolerant view.
Like any action, cannibalism can be evil in certain circumstances (Hannibal Lecter-style eating someone while they're still alive, eating the person against the wishes of their family is a minor one), but putting a blanket moratorium on it doesn't make any sense.
Hey Rynjin, your quotations look to be a little messed up. You should still have time to edit if you didn't mean to write your reply as part of the bigger quotation.
Yar, I fixed it.
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Religious aside about Christianity and Cannibalism: ** spoiler omitted **
Its not verboeten, for many its mandatory :)
"Take, eat; this is my body." Matthew 26:26
(I went into more detail in FAWTL...)
EDIT: link-add and spoiler tag
The cruelest thing the players have ever done? They have not done it yet, I am still waiting.
The cruelest thing I've done as a party member?
Engage in biological warfare against a tribe of 2,000 Barbarians (killed them all with Cackling Sickness within a week, the Succubus helped w/stragglers.)
Animated a fallen enemy as a ghast and entombed her within tons of rock (using mud to rock), because we wanted her to starve unable to move in the dark forever.
** spoiler omitted **
If need to know what i believe a true christian is.
One who isn't pushing to the point of damning someone who doesn't believe in god. Helps without wanting anything in return. Will help even when its hard on them. Accepts people for who they are yet never wavers in believing they are christian.
Examples are their son is a homosexual, and my cousin a lesbian. They wont let anyone talk bad or say 'religion says it wrong' about them. Wont let a single person call them evil for that. Even tho despite their son never acting on his desires always a strong part of the church. The church turned their back on him when they found out. He reached out to them and they smacked his hand away. Despite always being there for people. They supported him and their belief in their relgion still never failed. Despite it being wrong and believe to this day what was done to him was wrong they are still christians and go to church every week. When they moved automatically becoming a major part of even the new church they joined.
A true christian to me needs to live up to that in order to be one. So far i have yet to meet one like that other then them. I must admit i might be biased to christians because of my god parents. I hate alot of people who call themselves christians yet wont lend a hand when they damn well can. Who when they give things to a family really down on their luck they insist on it back the next month despite the next month being just as hard as the last. Demanding constantly to be paid back while still be a christian.
As you can tell i love my godparents and believe thru and thru they are real christians but i have alot of hatred towards christians as well. I mean no offense but its merely curiousty. Call it a small subconcious mission to find another real christian in the world.
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** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **...
Being a Christian isn't really about what you do. That's the entire point of it, it's about what he did. The only thing one person does that makes him a real Christian is to say, "yep, I belive that, and henceforth that guy is the boss to me."
Lots of people do a crappy job following the rules, or being a good example among others, or just not being someone you want to punch in the face...but, the fact is all of us fall short of the ideal...whether that's because we lie, kill, steal, covet, or whatnot...or if we, in the case of the people you say aren't "true", too strongly judge those who fall short in other ideals.
Jesus talked a lot of smack about the Pharisees for being hypocritical judgemental pricks who looked down on sinners. I don't think the message was "you're even worse than these people and will never be my followers," but rather "dude, don't think you're any better than these people...you all totally need my intervention equally."
There are a LOT of Christians who don't practice forgiveness enough, that's true, but remember, if we were perfect and capable of not sinning, no sacrifice would be necessary. So yeah, we should love and accept gay people, and nonbelievers, and anyone else who doesn't act the way we think is acceptable, because the ideal is to try and be like God, who loved us even when we weren't up to his perfect standard...but part of that includes loving those people who they themselves don't do the very loving he commanded.
I...think I talked myself in a circle, but the TL;DR version is a "where did it say you had to he perfect to be a real Christian? The prerequisite for it is more or less admission that you suck and need God's direct intervention to negate the massive buildup of crap we've accumulated over our lives, all of us, by being terrible people."
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** spoiler omitted **
Classier,and the path I should've taken, but I typed that mess out on a phone with my frickin' thumbs, and I'm not going to do that again. :-P
I will instead re-rail and say I followed a suggestion on these boards and had my antipaladin of Besmara flay a prosti-priestess of Calistria alive and spell out "Besmara is better in the sack," with her organs and blood on the Calistrian temple walls.
You can guess how the church of the goddess of revenge took it. Laid into an ambush by five of them posing as armor merchants who were enchanting my full plate...soon as I took it and my shield off for them to +1 up and was in my street clothes, they ambushed me.
Next day the rest of the party found my character's head hanging in the temple entrance with his body parts chopped up to spell "Maybe, but she doesn't take insults very well. Let this be a lesson to the rest of you even considering hurting our girls."
It was a LOT of parts.
** spoiler omitted **...** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **...
Edit: To keep with the thread as best i can. I'm no where near a cruel person and no one has really done anything cruel in games outside of being the usual entitled pricks.
I didn't do it but the parties witch player upset me my rogue so much at one point. That i the player debated everywhere to take out this said witch. From setting the web of his spider famliar on fire while slept to outright getting a contract with a devil to give me the most awesome familiar to take out this witch. To even plotting revenge fantasies in and out of chracter.
Plotting character progression all to take out one person. This said players witch for me saying something to the gm. Unfortantly him being the gms favorite i could never get anything done. So in turn him saying that since he is a caster and i'm a rogue he could take me out at any point so i should watch what i say out of character.
Tho i think what made it really cruel is i got the gms girlfriend on my side so if i ever put my plan into action he would end up having to make a decision to either keep giving into the demands of his favorite player or give into the demands of his gf.
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** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **...** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **...
I haven't done it yet, but ever since I read the Kingmaker subforum's thread about taking a dryad for a wife "Mongolian Style" (not my words) as a battle trophy, I wanted to do that with one of my characters. Furthermore, I want to build a glorious mansion around her tree, with a kitchen that extends in a 300 yards radius from her tree. That way she will be a kept woman, literally unable to get out of the kitchen. Not evil, per se, but gloriously chauvinistic (Erastil is LG and would totally approve of that). Who am I kidding, it's totally evil!
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Just think of the amount of food you could have cooked in such a kitchen...
Party of Summoner, Rogue (Catfolks), Monk (Human) and Fighter/Inquisitor (Dhamphir) launched an attack on a goblin stronghold, and inside was several bunny rabbits in cages that the goblins used for food and ritual sacrifice (100 to be exact). The monk decided the kill 99 of the bunnies and give the rogue the last one as a pet.
Did you make him actually do it? Because despite the "shockingly callous EVIL" of the act as a concept, that's way too boring for a person to actually do. He'd probably have quit before the 20th grapple check.
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Dance around in front of an npc, while wearing the blood-splattered outfit of one of their loved ones. Deny the killing in Monty-Python accents.
So there is this group I used to play with regularly, always doing evil parties. I don't think I am even allowed to post here the worse s*** they/we pulled.
Burning down orphanages and poor quarters was among the more harmless stuff.
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Hmmm. We had all evil Superheroes game that was modified from d20 Modern. (Every single PC was either a murderer or backstory, or committed murder in the first session.)
That party was more prone to senseless violence than protracted cruelty, though. We did a lot of terrible things and caused horrible civilian casualties, but most of what we did was over quickly. We were more like an incredibly dickish natural disaster.
Actual cruelty... Eberron campaign. One or two good aligned PCs, rest were some flavor of neutral. (I was a LN warforged who secretly served the Lord of Blades.) I don't remember what level we were at that point, but we DID have our own airship. Anyways, our sorceress (who was a member of one of the Houses, and I think had a bounty on her from a rival house? It's been a decade since this campaign) had been abducted (via GM fiat) and held captive by a crime lord in Sharn, who was holding on to the sorceress until our enemies could arrive to pick her up.
Long story short, we managed to get into the hideout first, kill the crime lord's minions, rescue the sorceress, and take the crime lord alive.
Our sorceress was pretty pissed, so we called in some favors and spent a pretty good chunk of money on making sure the crime lord (a half-elf bard I think? It's been a decade) paid.
And so the crime lord wound up being very securely and uncomfortably restrained (like, can't-move-an-inch restrained), given a ring of sustenance, given a necklace of adaptation (or maybe a cheaper equivalent), sealed into a lead casket that was further warded against divination, and then dumped into the deep ocean (again, airship).
I think we estimated that the crime lord would spend at least a century alone in that box before she would finally expire of old age.
We might have done something to her to stop her from aging, too. As I said, it's been a decade.
I became horrified until I realized you meant characters, not what horrible things players have done.
I have a story that's a tad long - involved a mage capturing two militant spies, torturing them to no result. He then turned one into a mouse, releasing a group of hungry cats into the room. This was Rifts, so the "mouse" still had a full human set of hit points and could still talk - so it took a long time to die while screaming for help the whole time. The second spy talked.
When the spell wore off, the now human skeleton of the first spy burst through the cat. The mage PC animated the dead cat and human skeleton to beat the second spy to death in thanks for the information.
(I think that beats turning a borg into a sentient urinal, though that's a close second).
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If you think killing bunnies is evil, either you're a hardcore PETA vegan or you've never taken the time to think about where your food comes from. It does not grow magically in white styrofoam packages at WalMart.
If you truly want to horrify a PETA vegan show them the study that proves plants can feel when they are being eaten and cry out in pain. Apparently the "cry out in pain" is done chemically since they can't vocalize.
The cruelest thing my players ever did was hand over a defeated lich's soul to the demon lord Abraxas after destroying the phylactery.
Can you really get any crueler than leaving someone's soul in the hands of a demon? The fact that said lich worships the Four Horsemen only made it worse.
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Party of Summoner, Rogue (Catfolks), Monk (Human) and Fighter/Inquisitor (Dhamphir) launched an attack on a goblin stronghold, and inside was several bunny rabbits in cages that the goblins used for food and ritual sacrifice (100 to be exact). The monk decided the kill 99 of the bunnies and give the rogue the last one as a pet.Did you make him actually do it? Because despite the "shockingly callous EVIL" of the act as a concept, that's way too boring for a person to actually do. He'd probably have quit before the 20th grapple check.Killing and neatly butchering a rabbit takes 20 to 30 minutes with a proper bleedout. Just killing? Thirty seconds to a minute to get the animal positioned properly for cervical dislocation and performing a quick hard jerk. If you didn't care about doing it properly? Less time than that, but you'd probably have to do it to some animals twice. A hard blow angled correctly to the back of the neck right at the occipital condyle will also do the trick and will achieve reliable separation of spine and skull with minimal carcass bruising if done properly. Basically it's internal decapitation when performed correctly, and it is instant and humane.
Also horribly boring and a waste of food to repeat this 99 times. The most I want to process at a sitting is half a dozen, and that's a solid evening of work. Though the killing part is a pretty tiny fraction of it.
If you think killing bunnies is evil, either you're a hardcore PETA vegan or you've never taken the time to think about where your food comes from. It does not grow magically in white styrofoam packages at WalMart.
Note the quotation marks. And that was my point. Killing a rabbit for no reason (as opposed to, say, it's meat or hide) is kinda on the mild, puppy-kicking side of evil. Doing it nearly a hundred times? That's just work. Work you're not getting anything for, at that.
That is really what fireball is for. Plus you get them cooked.
Note the quotation marks. And that was my point. Killing a rabbit for no reason (as opposed to, say, it's meat or hide) is kinda on the mild, puppy-kicking side of evil. Doing it nearly a hundred times? That's just work. Work you're not getting anything for, at that.Party of Summoner, Rogue (Catfolks), Monk (Human) and Fighter/Inquisitor (Dhamphir) launched an attack on a goblin stronghold, and inside was several bunny rabbits in cages that the goblins used for food and ritual sacrifice (100 to be exact). The monk decided the kill 99 of the bunnies and give the rogue the last one as a pet.Did you make him actually do it? Because despite the "shockingly callous EVIL" of the act as a concept, that's way too boring for a person to actually do. He'd probably have quit before the 20th grapple check.Killing and neatly butchering a rabbit takes 20 to 30 minutes with a proper bleedout. Just killing? Thirty seconds to a minute to get the animal positioned properly for cervical dislocation and performing a quick hard jerk. If you didn't care about doing it properly? Less time than that, but you'd probably have to do it to some animals twice. A hard blow angled correctly to the back of the neck right at the occipital condyle will also do the trick and will achieve reliable separation of spine and skull with minimal carcass bruising if done properly. Basically it's internal decapitation when performed correctly, and it is instant and humane.
Also horribly boring and a waste of food to repeat this 99 times. The most I want to process at a sitting is half a dozen, and that's a solid evening of work. Though the killing part is a pretty tiny fraction of it.
If you think killing bunnies is evil, either you're a hardcore PETA vegan or you've never taken the time to think about where your food comes from. It does not grow magically in white styrofoam packages at WalMart.
Why are you assuming a Graple check of all things>
The Monk goes YATATATATATATATATATA and several bunnies die.
It'd only take a few rounds.
Hell, at higher levels he's probably traded out Wholeness of Body for Dragon's Breath and roasted a bunch of the little buggers in one go.
Not a lot of work, really.
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Even a level twenty monk will still take 14-15 rounds to kill them all, even assuming he never misses. Not many players are willing to sit through that for no reason than pointless cruelty(even assuming no alignment(a highly Chaotic act) issues), fewer still would wait on someone else to.
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Playing a Ravenloft adventure in which the demi-plane happened to encompass a small town (It was a published module. Something with Marionettes). The players, of which I was one, were getting fed up with the bad guys always coming back, no matter what we seemed to do. Solution? We burned down the entire town, killing everyone inside, innocent or not.
The DM was both amused and somewhat taken aback. He decided we were the new Ravenloft Lords and that particular campaign ended.
20 years later and he still brings it up from time to time :)
Playing a Ravenloft adventure in which the demi-plane happened to encompass a small town (It was a published module. Something with Marionettes). The players, of which I was one, were getting fed up with the bad guys always coming back, no matter what we seemed to do. Solution? We burned down the entire town, killing everyone inside, innocent or not.
The DM was both amused and somewhat taken aback. He decided we were the new Ravenloft Lords and that particular campaign ended.
20 years later and he still brings it up from time to time :)
Upon becoming the new Lords did anyone say "the show must go on."