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...? I don't understand why you're saying this to me like its not something I don't know.I am simply making a point, not casting aspersions on your intelligence. Games of all sorts, of course, are games, and the goal of a game is enjoyment.
Thank you, Captain Obvious?
False. Suppose you as a Paladin walk into a city and use Detect Evil on a random civilian. He registers as Evil, but all accounts say that while he is a selfish individual and uses his cunning to get deals better for himself (without outright cheating), he values stability and fairness, and treats his subordinates and customers well (on the rationale that this is good for business). He has not killed anyone, or committed any 'evil' deeds besides looking out for himself first. Can you just go 'oh well, radar says he's evil, guess I've gotta stab him to death lol'? Obviously not.
Such a person would not register as Evil in my campaign. What you're describing sounds more like Neutral or Lawful Neutral. They would also likely be less than 6th level, since characters of 6th level and higher are paragons of their professions and exceptionally rare. A king might be sixth level, but not a farmer or a shopkeeper. By the rules, commoners shouldn't ping on a Detect Evil, because commoners are almost never 6th level or higher. The vast majority of murdering, raping, and pillaging bandits and pirates don't even ping on a Detect Evil (because they tend to be between first and third level).
In my standard campaign setting there is an organization of paladins (the Sisters of Justica) who do regularly walk into public gathering places, Detect Evil on the crowd, and then haul anyone that pings off for a long and very unpleasant stay in their church's dungeons, where forced confessions are the rule. They are still good guys though, because based on the game as presented, the chances are excellent that anyone who pings on a Detect Evil is totally guilty of being a really awful person. The either worship evil directly, or are an exceptionally powerful (6th+ level) force for evil.
Now suppose this man is a blackguard of Asmodeus. He has trained in martial ability and has even received Asmodeus' dark gifts, but is not some psychopathic killer - quite the contrary, he is a valued member of the community. Does this change anything? LN clerics of Asmodeus exist. LG PALADINS of Asmodeus exist. Claiming worship of a power that is actually evil (ie. an objective evil) does not necessarily mean that all its servants are objectively evil.
If this man is a blackguard, then he is in fact a sociopathic killer. That's pretty much exactly what a blackguard is: a magically gifted sociopath. A paragon of evil.
And since when do Lawful Good Paladins of Asmodeus exist? That's absolutely ridiculous. Is that actually in one of the books somewhere? I thought by RAW you couldn't even be a LG worshiper of Asmodeus, because its more than one alignment shift away from LE. Asmodeus' followers should be LN, LE or NE.
At the end of the day, a DM can certainly rule that there are good servants of objectively evil powers, but the end result of that is just a confused and muddled mess of nonsensical morality that can't be untwisted. You can't have meaningful stories about morality when you confuse things in that way, because there is no possible way to resolve moral issues. Everything is quagmire.
This is what I'm saying in a nutshell; objective evil does exist, but it does not imply that all evil is by necessity objective. Suppose you live in a completely mundane, backwater village who has never even heard of the gods (or otherwise dismisses them as outright folklore) - is the local cut-throat thug evil because he is a servant of a dark god? No, clearly not. Objective and relativistic evil co-exist in these settings.
How can the local cut throat be a servant of a dark god if he comes from a village where people have never even heard of the gods?
The local cut throat of a small village is probably a first or second level rogue, and while he may be evil, he isn't a paragon of evil, has no evil aura, and thus is not objectively evil.
That's not the case with an evil cleric, who does detect as evil from 1st level (because he has sworn his soul to objective evil and joined Team Evil), and it's certainly not the case with any blackguard. To become a blackguard a person has to be 6th level, evil, and make contact with an evil outsider. Since 5th level is the peak of human development, and 6th level is approaching superhuman levels of power, we're talking about people who have lived careers dedicated to evil. They have six levels of XP accumulated from, presumably, committing evil acts.
And they sold their soul to a demon.
That's the clear implication of "Must make contact with an evil outsider" requirement to become a blackguard. A blackguard is a powerful warrior who is so dedicated to evil that he has sold his soul in exchange for supernatural powers that will forever mark him as in allegiance to Team Evil.
If a Paladin walks into a bar, detects evil, and pings on a blackguard enjoying a beer, that Paladin is not only entirely in the right to demand everyone flee the bar so he can kill the blackguard, he's actually failing to follow the paladin's code if he doesn't attack on sight. That's like the whole reason the Powers That Be on Team Good grant paladins the ability to detect evil. So they can go root it out wherever it hides, even if it hides in plain sight.
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Is this another thread about those poor gnolls?Wyverns.
Poor wyverns. We need some kind of society...like Gamers for the Ethical Treatment of Monsters. GEToM? GET'M?
In before the lock.
Edit:
Oh, and SMURF!!!
I thought a personal attack was criticizing the person instead of their actions. So, "Poster X is a troll" versus "Poster X's last post misses the point I am making and argues against something I never said," for example.
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LN clerics of Asmodeus exist. LG PALADINS of Asmodeus exist.Right on the clerics, wrong on the Paladins (Devs have copped to an error with writing on that) You can however have a LN HellKnight.
LG Hellknights too! Though they don't tend to make it into the higher ranks....
There's also how all those gods and their churches relate to each other, especially with Shelyn trying to play relatively nice with most of hte evil gods and Sarenrae doing the same, but less nicely and more firmly.
This pantheon seems like one big dysfunctional family at times. :)
Are paladins of the Godclaw still around?
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"Good Orcs make sweet love to Good Liches while watching over Good Glabrezus"Damn your eyes for making me think of that and instantly making me ponder how to make it non-stomach-churning.
Like seriously, if I could make you see what I just saw, I would. >:(
;)
You totally should start a thread where people will write bizarre setups (eg. a brothel ran by a priestess of Urgathoa and a demoniac of Orcus) and you will good-ify it (eg, both are CN and promote safe post-mortem sex and raising awareness of the situation of undead sex workers).
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I do not think any action in and of itself is good or evil. the action in them selves are chaotic or lawful though. if an act is good or evil is based on intent not the action.
so the if the dwarven community law is to kill racial enemy is in place i would say it is lawful and i would think that would be the law (right or wrong regardless).
on intent if he thinks i must destroy these monster to protect the innocent i would give him good on it, but the intent to harm and kill is evil. I do not see how a Vow of killing all of one race can be done and keep a purity of intent.
on side notes:
A gray vs gray world be the world that needs a paladin the most. A job is not to fight evil but to give people a in flesh representative of what you should do. A person that a follower of the faith would say to themselves what would so and so do.
You do not kill undeads they are already dead. you just put them to rest.
I not sure anymore but I thought you did not kill outsider either just put them in time out back in there own dimension.
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You totally should start a thread where people will write bizarre setups (eg. a brothel ran by a priestess of Urgathoa and a demoniac of Orcus) and you will good-ify it (eg, both are CN and promote safe post-mortem sex and raising awareness of the situation of undead sex workers)."Good Orcs make sweet love to Good Liches while watching over Good Glabrezus"Damn your eyes for making me think of that and instantly making me ponder how to make it non-stomach-churning.
Like seriously, if I could make you see what I just saw, I would. >:(
;)
I SWEAR TO GOD GORBACZ I WI...
Eh, someone'll Rule34 it sooner or later anyway.
(replace Urgathoa with Calistria and possibly Orcus with a fallen azata, Calistria has had an interest in vampires for their sexual elements anyway according to canon, to the point that she and Urgy have a bit of tug-of-war around them. Naderi could get involved in well considering the dark natuOH DAMN IT)
Uh...Aren't you a dude, Mikaze?
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Uh...Aren't you a dude, Mikaze?Yeah. I don't know where all this gender confusion keeps coming from. My avatar is pretty damn manly.
There's a certain song that fits this situation perfectly...
How is that working out with your Goddesses?
I do love Bree Olson. I met her at a convention once. She was awesome!!!
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Uh...Aren't you a dude, Mikaze?Yeah. I don't know where all this gender confusion keeps coming from. My avatar is pretty damn manly.
It happens to me too!!!
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Yeah, I don't get that. That's totally a dude avatar too.
There's a certain song that fits this situation perfectly...Uh...Aren't you a dude, Mikaze?Yeah. I don't know where all this gender confusion keeps coming from. My avatar is pretty damn manly.
....did have a male elf sniper for a Shadowrun campaign planned once that looked like Annie Lennox.
Uh...Aren't you a dude, Mikaze?Yeah. I don't know where all this gender confusion keeps coming from. My avatar is pretty damn manly.
Riiiiight. :p
False. Suppose you as a Paladin walk into a city and use Detect Evil on a random civilian. He registers as Evil, but all accounts say that while he is a selfish individual and uses his cunning to get deals better for himself (without outright cheating), he values stability and fairness, and treats his subordinates and customers well (on the rationale that this is good for business). He has not killed anyone, or committed any 'evil' deeds besides looking out for himself first.
Can you just go 'oh well, radar says he's evil, guess I've gotta stab him to death lol'?
So, he isn't evil but is at least 5 HD, a cleric/Pally, or is evil.
Because nothing you listed is evil. Neutral is selfish (NE is selfish but also willing to harm others).
Now suppose this man is a blackguard of Asmodeus. He has trained in martial ability and has even received Asmodeus' dark gifts, but is not some psychopathic killer - quite the contrary, he is a valued member of the community. Does this change anything? LN clerics of Asmodeus exist. LG PALADINS of Asmodeus exist. Claiming worship of a power that is actually evil (ie. an objective evil) does not necessarily mean that all its servants are objectively evil.
He likely was a Blackguard of Asmodues since he registers as evil and does nothing evil. Sadly, he loses all his class features since if he does no evil he can't maintain his alignment.
This is what I'm saying in a nutshell; objective evil does exist, but it does not imply that all evil is by necessity objective. Suppose you live in a completely mundane, backwater village who has never even heard of the gods (or otherwise dismisses them as outright folklore) - is the local cut-throat thug evil because he is a servant of a dark god? No, clearly not. Objective and relativistic evil co-exist in these settings.
He might be. Depends what his worship entails.
And they sold their soul to a demon.
That's the clear implication of "Must make contact with an evil outsider" requirement to become a blackguard. A blackguard is a powerful warrior who is so dedicated to evil that he has sold his soul in exchange for supernatural powers that will forever mark him as in allegiance to Team Evil.
No, that isn't. you just need to talk with a demon.
Every summoner who summons a demon (easy by 6th level for any caster with Summon Monster) can help.
I like to look at morality things as more of a continuum than a set in stone absolute.
So, for example:
you got your four adventurer dudes,
you got a village of 30 commoners minding their own business and farming.
And you got a cave full of goblins, that can't be bothered to stick to the woods and mind their own f#~@ing business.
So.
Your 4 heroes,...they go in there, and wipe the place out, kill every last goblin in there, be it a sire, a b*!&#, or a whelp.
Now, the village of commoners, who were minding their own business can keep doing that. So ultimately, all in all, it's a groovy deal. If there's any repercussions, well it was worth it, to keep the useless evil goblins from doing horrible things to the villagers who were minding their own business.
HOWEVER,.....it was kinda a crappy thing to do. Killing baby goblins? Gasp and swoon! Yeah, maybe it was wicked, a little bit. Goblin babies never killed anybody.....yet,..... So, the four guys that did it, though they're not officially darned to heck, are nevertheless taking the first steps on a road to perdition. They need to go drink some holy water, and feed some poor beggars, and do some good deeds, because their Fable character is starting to grow a second and third sausage down there. And the next act of evil, well they've just gotten more jaded, they have learned to be repulsed by themselves and do whatever icky thing they were thinking about doing anyway; the next act of evil they pull, they won't have such a hard time justifying it to themselves.
One or two more acts of depravity and they might grow to like it.
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That face looks familiar. Anyone know anything about the larger image that it's take from?
I'd really like to know too. She was my favorite "iconic" from the Dragon/Dungeon days, and "happy tiefling and not somewhat sinister" art is pretty rare.
They need to go drink some holy water, and feed some poor beggars, and do some good deeds, because their Fable character is starting to grow a second and third sausage down there.
As long as they can't butcher an entire village, play football with the townsfolks' heads, buy up all the vacant houses, wait a few days for law enforcement to forgive you, turn over a new leaf by just hunting down and murdering bandits for sport and loot and be able to retire off all the money being raked in through the rent of those houses whose previous owners you murdered. Freakin' Fable. ;)
(I heard they made the karma system a bit less goofy in the sequels though, true/false?)
...their Fable character is starting to grow a second and third sausage down there...
O_o Clearly I know even less about the Fable series than I was aware.
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^
I married a Hero's Guild initiate hoping that I could get a Battle Couple thing going and maybe actually have a competent NPC tagging along for once.
She just stayed at home and drank all day.
Haven't played the third one, but Fable 2 didn't change a thing about the karma system. It was still pretty laughable.
Damn. I was hoping it had started to live up to its potential. Then again that was a setting where the most powerful organization around was actively training potentially dangerous individuals and setting them loose without a care whether they were nobly heroic of wanton butcherers and the populace somehow hadn't swarmed the place yet to burn it down to the ground.
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IMO, the only way genocide of an evil race isn't evil is if the continued existence of that race absolutely guarantees the existinction of one's own or another race. Merely being a threat is not reason enough.
After all, there were times in real world history when the belligerent French kept attacking everyone ("Take ziss and zat and zat and ziss!"), and though they were certainly a very real and lethal threat to others, they weren't exterminated. And thanks heavens for that. Without them, who'd make films that all start with someone talking about the importance of dreams I ask you? Who?
I think that saying, well orcs are trying to kill us all the time so all orcs should die is a lazy approach to crime and punishment, or even a lazy approach to dealing with apex predators. Tigers try to eat us so what do we do? Why we build taller fences and charge admission so kids can point at them.
I think such exterminations are an evil act, even in a fantasy world where evil is as much a pernicious supernatural force as a philosophy. In most fantasy books I've ever read, it's seldom been the forces of good saying, "We need to eradicate each and every one of these buggers from the world... bring me their wretched infants, my diregator ain't gonna feed himself!" so much as "We need to drive them back/seal them away/banish them to the dark plane of bloodpoo from whence they came."
And I know killing bad guys feels good, but is it a good act or are we cathartically acting out our baser impulses? Sometimes your good aligned character rises to epic levels and can Sauron-flattenkill a battlefield of hobgoblins dead in a single attack. Oh what a feeling, satisfying one's bloodlust with such ease. However, I don't believe the righteousness one feels during such a tasty kill necessarily (depending on the exact circumstances) reflects any aspects of goodness.
This all said, it's just fantasy. So do what you want and call it what you want. So long as the game table is all on the same page, just have fun, sez me.
Would killing ALL Kender be less than totally good?
Would killing ALL Kender be less than totally good?
My Ma was a kender.
Well I'm brand new to the thread, but I say (and agree with most) that genocide is always evil. Now killing a band of evil ogres that have skins of the local non-ogre folk, as well as actively making human leather chairs and live ones waiting to get stretched - this is something I would have no qualms about putting to the sword and asking questions later. Still that's not the same as genocide.
A little grey perhaps, but not unexpected in most games.
Killing evil when you encounter something truly evil is justified (to a Paladin). But I've never witnessed a game where the goal was to bring any race to extinction, nor would I condone such an instance.
Kill evil when you must. But never go to genocide for any reason - that is never justified.
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Moral quandries can really open up possibilities in a game. I once played a halfling druid who having killed an attacking harpy, found three baby harpies who,oddly enough, she didn't want to massacre. Even a check on their alignment found that at age not a lot, they weren't actually evil- no time to grow up to nasty ways yet. Upshot was a travelling druid with three baby harpies in a saddlebag touring the land until able to convince a temple with help rearing them. Open minded GM allowed skill checks for rearing and moral education over a period of time- upshot being one good , one neutral and one evil harpie. Evil harpie was imprisoned (same as many evil humans), neutral harpie went its own way and good harpie joined the party. Now this is not , i am sure, what the GM envisioned for a wandering monster encounter, but you don't need to be a plaster saint to not want to massacre infants, who as yet have had no opportunity or capacity to make any moral decisions regarding good or evil, whatever they may turn out to be, and hardening yourself to do so based purely on species sounds biggoted. What if the dwarves decided to massacre all the human children of Cheliax based on them being an evil nation? How do we feel about that?
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Moral quandries can really open up possibilities in a game. I once played a halfling druid who having killed an attacking harpy, found three baby harpies who,oddly enough, she didn't want to massacre. Even a check on their alignment found that at age not a lot, they weren't actually evil- no time to grow up to nasty ways yet. Upshot was a travelling druid with three baby harpies in a saddlebag touring the land until able to convince a temple with help rearing them. Open minded GM allowed skill checks for rearing and moral education over a period of time- upshot being one good , one neutral and one evil harpie. Evil harpie was imprisoned (same as many evil humans), neutral harpie went its own way and good harpie joined the party.
If the alignment of harpies is a function of how they are raised, then you don't have a moral quandary, you have a moral quagmire. Because you've changed them from creatures who are inherently evil to creatures who are victims of poor socialization. Which means that it becomes almost impossible to justify killing them, which severely limits their usefulness as a monster.
You say this initial encounter where you killed the harpy was a wandering monster encounter, correct? That sounds like you entered the harpies territory, a form of home invasion. You can't claim self-defense if you walked into the harpies territory and killed it while it was in the process of trying to drive you out of its territory. Killing a person (which is what harpies apparently are) when you provoked the attack is never justified.
If a harpy can be raised to be a good person, then every harpy you encounter in the wild that is evil is essentially a very territorial adult abused child who has never had a chance to be rehabilitated, never had a chance to break the cycle of violence. That dramatically changes the nature of the game.
There is no moral quandary in killing a harpy in those conditions. It's just wrong. That's not actually a morally gray area. Killing someone just because they were raised to be aggressively territorial and prone to violence and you provoked them to an attack is murder.
But more on that later.
Now this is not , i am sure, what the GM envisioned for a wandering monster encounter, but you don't need to be a plaster saint to not want to massacre infants, who as yet have had no opportunity or capacity to make any moral decisions regarding good or evil, whatever they may turn out to be, and hardening yourself to do so based purely on species sounds biggoted. What if the dwarves decided to massacre all the human children of Cheliax based on them being an evil nation? How do we feel about that?
That's because you are thinking of of monsters as the equivalent of human criminals, when they are not in fact human at all. Monsters are not the result of bad parenting, impoverished social conditions and social oppression. The whole purpose of having monstrous humanoid creatures is so that there can be a clearly define opposition. When you turn monsters into humans that look different, you eliminate their effectiveness as opposition. You make them people.
Consider a gang in south central Los Angeles. As a group they are involved in large number of violent crimes, they bring repeated harm to their community in the form of drugs and violence, and they corrupt youths into joining their lifestyle. The mainstream of society expects something to be done to eliminate gangs - at the same time, we recognize these gang members are people, they have fundamental rights, and that presents a moral quandary.
We expect the police to act within strict limitations on their power, and we don't allow them to simply arrest gang members for being gang members. Because they are people, and people have rights. We respond to the gang problem with a wide range of anti-poverty social programs, gang outreach programs, prison rehabilitation programs, scared straight, etc. etc.
Would you consider a group of vigilantes, bristling with weaponry, who bust into gang clubhouse and shot everyone inside who went for a weapon to have killed in self-defense? Of course not. Would you think any better of them if they found a baby in the clubhouse and raised it to be a good person? I doubt it. You'd just think they were kind of twisted.
(And for the record, the dwarves invading Cheliax and killing all the babies would be wrong for the exact same reason it would be wrong for the LAPD to invade South Central Los Angeles and kill all the babies there. Just because the Cheliax territory is controlled by the House Thane Gang doesn't make the people of Cheliax evil.)
So what happens when the gang is a flock of harpies, and the clubhouse is a hex of wilderness? Suddenly your halfing is the armed vigilante sneaking around in a harpy's house until he murders the occupant - a harpy who possibly thought she was defending her nest/home from the armed halfling intruder.
This is the fundamental problem with treating monsters like people. If it's wrong to kill a monster baby because it can grow up to be a good person, then it's also wrong to kill an adult monster that happened to grow up to be a bad person. Because its wrong to kill people.
Consider the ogres in the OP's example. They eat other sentients and turn their skin and bones into artworks. The OP says his party "came across them" and entered their home, and while the OP doesn't say it exactly, it's implied the ogres were killed.
Now, if these ogres were simply a product of their environment, raised in a subculture that considers other sentients food and considers making furniture out of their skin to be perfectly fine, then they're not really that different than us (I eat hamburgers and wear leather jackets, for example) except they see other sentients as food. So they are speciest people, but still people. If they can be taught to see other sentients as people, then its not moral to genocide ogres.
But it's also not moral to invade ogre controlled territory and kill them. Because it's not really their fault they were raised in a different culture.
As I've tried to point out in this thread, if this is how you run monsters, then anything resembling the standard adventuring party wandering around in the wilderness, exploring dungeons, and getting into violent confrontations with things and collecting treasure afterwards isn't morally ambiguous. It's wrong.
It's wrong in the exact same way it would be wrong for you to strap yourself up with weapons, go to a gang controlled neighborhood and wander around until some gangbangers screwed around with you, took a tough stance, and then shot them dead and looted them for their wallets and gold necklaces.
But it gets so much more complicated than that.
Because the wilderness is full of evil, intelligent monsters (particularly evil humanoids) that will eat you if you go into the wilderness, and fight you if you try to push the wilderness back.
And if they are people, then they have a fundamental right to defend their territories from aggressive expansion by other sentients. Which - in most fantasy settings, Golarion included - makes humans the one of the worst species on the planet. Humans are well-organized, technologically advanced, and highly expansionist -- tending to be the most populous race on the planet (or at least its surface land masses). And rather than engage in extensive outreach to evil humanoids (who are essentially socially maladjusted minority groups), you have colonialist imperialism and widespread oppression and social exclusion. You've made the good guys evil, and the evil guys misunderstood.
Which means that when you save that village from the marauding goblins, you're the bad guy. When you clear the top level of a dungeon of the vicious orc band that resides there, you're the bad guy. When you defend a merchant caravan from the trolls that live in the swamp it must pass through, you're the bad guy.
Like I said, no moral quandary, just a moral quagmire. You get to pick a side: evil or evil. Either way you're a bad guy.
We Sith deal in absolutes! Genocide is always evil!
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Genocide is always evil!
From a certain point of view...
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All interesting points, but I don't see this as a question of what is right and wrong on this issue so much as it merely being a question of preferences. We game to act things out and have fun, and different people act upon varying drives and personal perspectives.
For me, there is a difference between fighting back or driving off the evil hordes and causing an entire race to become extinct. I can't find any general angle of spin that convinces me the inclination to wipe out an entire race is somehow good (as I said before, of course it's easy to imagine situational exceptions). Any god telling followers to commit genocide is not embodying goodness. That is an angry god, a vengeful god, and likely a strong and widely worshipped god, but if gods be so vain and free of thoughtful solution they represent the worst in men. But for someone else, vengeance and quick solutions by blade may actually be what they define and sacred and right. Perhaps not the truest example, but one that leaps to mind... when the twin towers went down, an old friend of mine called to say, "We should nuke the Middle East." I responded with, "I understand how upsetting this week has been. We're all feeling it and I lost a friend, but, as an academic question, you'd really want to slay every muslim in the world for what happened in Manhattan?" We had very different concepts about what good was on that day and we likely would player our Pathfinder games quite differently.
Our evil fantasy races in literature are often just juiced up metaphors for those who would in the real world invade us, bully us, kill us, rape us... real people acting as basely as our animalistic potential allows. They are... the enemy. And yet we all know there are so many exceptions to every rule that real life is not the black and white of fantasy. So in game, must we play with black and whites as is the traditional standard, or are we allowed to meddle with the form and play with a wide range of grays of it suits us? Must I say this orc baby is a creature of pure evil that will never change, even if given proper nuturing to help reform its nature, or are we allowed, as game designers and roleplayers, to play whatever the hell we want to play based on our preferences?
Hellboy made a DEMON friendly, and cat loving. And that's what made it fun for me.