Morality has been scientifically connected to disgust, some see homosexuality as dirty and immoral, for others the two are not associated.
Yeah, in an evil pc or pcs gone bad game, one of the simplest complications involves revenants, ghosts, spectres and the like.
Oh, you caused great suffering, and there are ramifications.
Maybe they hire a cleric and bless their lands to keep the wrathful dead at bay, lol.
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What if we just eat cows & pigs (aka the ugly animals), but not horses & dogs (the cute & lovable animals)? Does that make it better now? It somehow seems to. Unless you live in an area where your main choice is dog.Horse meat is rather tasty but expensive and hard to get where I live. The reason I have not and will not try dog is that I think they are ugly animals, eating feces and all. I've already eaten lots of different animals.
But the thought of eating a human? That freaks me out so much I don't even enter katholic churches anymore because of all this "christs blood and body consuming" stuff. Which for me is cannibalism.
And in other parts of the world, the thought of Horsemeat in their food is causing a panic (see World News on Europe).
And we're not talking about a Human eating a Human. That's Cannibalism, and not what we're talking about.
We're talking about a Mammal eating a different kind of Mammal. And where exactly that line is drawn.
A Human eating a Goblin, is probably not the norm, but how different would eating a Minotaur be over a Cow? An Orc has frequently looked like a Pig at times, so would they make Tasty Baby Back Ribs? People eat lizards, so would Kobolds be much different? Especially with enough BBQ sauce?
The Thread isn't about eating members of your own race. Its about eating the other races ;-)
And if you do like Horsemeat, would Centaurs be ok to eat? Or would the Human half freak you out too much to do it?
Mmmm, can you imagine minotaur steaks?
Kobolds and the right bbq sauce with peppers worked in would be delightful.
In one game, the centaur got a bit weirded out by horses and refused to eat any monster vaguely horse like.
For that reason in my games I would always rule that cooking and/or knowingly eating a living or dead intelligent humanoid with or without this hex would be considered and evil act.There's a nasty rumour that there is an island nation near Tian Xia where the folk regularly hunt intelligent sea life such as whales, dolphins and merfolk with harpoons from ships. They then harvest the meat for eating or making soup. Would they be considered evil?
Is sea shepard society in pathfinders?
I personally wouldn't do it. But in a game scenario with kasatha characters in it they had a cultural directive to leave nothing for their enemies, and another to waste nothing of use, being wastelanders. So when one died they grieved but respectfully ate their departed so it could no be zombied by their opponent. Traumatizing perhaps as perpetrator guilt, but the right action in their culture.
Recommend reading some books like western attitudes towards death and overviews of grieving rituals in world cultures. Food taboos are interesting when crossed with grieving rituals. Comedic song recommend , flanders and swan the cannibal song is worth a listen too. as the young cannibal swears "i wont let another man pass my lips".
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Shepherd's Pie, now with 50% more shepherd.
For that reason in my games I would always rule that cooking and/or knowingly eating a living or dead intelligent humanoid with or without this hex would be considered and evil act.There's a nasty rumour that there is an island nation near Tian Xia where the folk regularly hunt intelligent sea life such as whales, dolphins and merfolk with harpoons from ships. They then harvest the meat for eating or making soup. Would they be considered evil?Is sea shepard society in pathfinders?
It should be. My characters would join right away. :)
Recently while salvaging valuables from defeated bugbears my Half Orc Ranger used Survival skills to render several pounds of rations from his defeated foes. I considered this good roleplaying for a true neutral ranger of monstrous ancestry raised among mountainous barbarian tribes. While I attempted to hide this action from other party members the players in my group considered it an evil act. I dont quite understand the Alignment system in spite of my many years as a player.
If the party is starving, and the only sustenance is flesh from the dead, I do not see cannibalism for survival as bad.
I can even see paladins doing it but probably going for atonement afterwards.If the humanoids are being sought for their flesh to be consumed, then that is different.
I'm going to go with Jacobs on this and say that cannibalism applies to eating ANY sentient being whether it's your race or not, and is generally an evil act barring extenuating circumstances.
I agree, but I don't think there are "extenuating circumstances". Cannibalism for survival is what I would call a necessary evil. Would it flip your alignment? No, unless you carry the taste for "long pig" (or Dwarf or whatever) into your life afterwards. Unless, you are a Paladin. Then you have the choice of suffering starvation for your beliefs or falling. Imo, of course. Necessity can't excuse every action. If it does a lot of things become OK, torture for example. "We had to know, lives were at stake", is a classic justification. Necessary, maybe, evil certainly. I think you could say the same thing about survival cannibalism.
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I don't really understand how the chaos/law scale relates to the act being described. I mean, it doesn't seem all that random or impulsive or a breaking down of order.The reasoning being that it is against most cultural traditions, thus chaotic.
However, depending on the setting and the cultures involved, it can be a very jarring classification. I have to admit, when I think of the RL culture involved, "chaotic" isn't the first thing that comes to mind.
That approach still throws those RL monks and LG couatls under the bus.IIRC, James Jacobs actually said it was chaotic.
First of all, thank you all for giving me the reaso... er excuse to stop grading occasionally and deal with more interesting topics :)
Cultural relatavism is not relevant to this topic. It was fun just typing that. D&D / PF is about moral absolutes, good / evil and law / chaos. It's not about understanding the cultural peculiarities of obscure groups and accepting their behaviors (or making excuses for them). It's about judging the peculiarities of groups from a viewpoint of absolute good / evil etc. and saying what their alignment is. And there is nothing wrong with being evil. Nothing. In rl evil = wrong and good = right. And we all think we are "right" (that is "good"). The other guy (in rl) is wrong / evil. And from their point of view, vice versa. Not in D&D / PF. There are evil gods, evil species, evil people galore. There are groups philosophically dedicated to behavor we would all find "evil" who accept the "evil" label without hesitation. And large parts of the world accept this. Sometimes along side gods, species, and people who are "good". Good and evil are disparate philosophies which are both choices. One is not universally desirable ("good" in rl terms) and one is not universally despised ("evil" in rl terms).
Oh, we had pork roast :)
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But that's just it, the moral absolutes need to be defined as making sense. Defining "cannibalism is evil" in such broad strokes rather than taking a more nuanced "murdering people to eat them is evil" just results in a lot of weirdness(again, with those in-game LG couatls and any faithful analogue of those monks, who only perform their practices on the bodies of those that shared their beliefs and don't murder them to make medicine from their bones).
It's not a case of moral relativism, but rather finding the absolutes that really are moral.
But that's just it, the moral absolutes need to be defined as making sense. Defining "cannibalism is evil" in such broad strokes rather than taking a more nuanced "murdering people to eat them is evil" just results in a lot of weirdness(again, with those in-game LG couatls and any faithful analogue of those monks, who only perform their practices on the bodies of those that shared their beliefs and don't murder them to make medicine from their bones).It's not a case of moral relativism, but rather finding the absolutes that really are moral.
They are roughly defined and rough is as good as it's going to get. You're thinking in modern terms. Modern thought has relatavism imbedded in it as a positive. The culture of the monks is outside of the basic reference of D&D, which is pseudo western medieval belief. Updated and filtered through popular media. Europeans would have been horrified at any time up to, say the last 40 years. And what did the Catholic Spaniards do to the accumulated written wisdom of the Native Americans they conquered? They burned it as "evil" due largely to the presence of snake motifs (not to speak of the rampant human sacrifice of meso-American cultures which gave the Spaniards the willies). We judge good / evil with cultural relatavism imbedded in our basic thought processes these days. I understand that; I have a degree in cultural anthropology to go with the history degrees. RAW D&D / PF assumes a fixed morality which is based on our past and specifically a romanticized pulp version of it. And, because it's a game which defines things in broad, not specific terms, you get simplified things like evil spell descriptors (the act is evil, no matter the reason), and cannibalism = evil. Of course this is all (at best) RAW and your game is what you make it.
My "short pig" was good :)
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But the objective morality in the game is rooted more in modern morality than the medieval. It's why those conquistadors would be considered evil for their atrocities just like high priests calling out for human sacrifice. That and the game doesn't state "cannibalism = evil", unless one infers that from the behavior of certain monsters. Which still leaves us with those LG couatls(who are from Mesoamerican culture, bringing it all full circle ;) ).
But the objective morality in the game is rooted more in modern morality than the medieval. It's why those conquistadors would be considered evil for their atrocities just like high priests calling out for human sacrifice. That and the game doesn't state "cannibalism = evil", unless one infers that from the behavior of certain monsters. Which still leaves us with those LG couatls(who are from Mesoamerican culture, bringing it all full circle ;) ).
It's not really rooted in modern morality although it is certainly moving that way. It's rooted in the classic pulp interpretation of western thought. There are, simplfied, versions of good and evil there which would not crop up in a strictly "modern morality" RPG. Examples; necromancy = evil (even mindless undead for a "good cause), casting spell "X" = evil (just because... it IS), cannibalism = evil (i.e. Witch Hex ? the name), and the Paladin can not tell a lie etc. (even for a good cause). An RPG rooted in strictly modern ethics would be culturally sensitive / reletavist. RAW D&D / PF is not.
I'd say D&D / PF LG Couatls and Monks just don't eat the dead. It's not like D&D / PF is a perfect recreation of any rl cutlure. It's a distorted mirror image at best. And in any event, a non-mammalian monster eating people not quite the same as one mammalian humanoid eating another. If a Dragon snacks on a burglar I don't call it cannabilism. Just lunch :)
Me and the Dragon ate fine :D
But the objective morality in the game is rooted more in modern morality than the medieval. It's why those conquistadors would be considered evil for their atrocities just like high priests calling out for human sacrifice. That and the game doesn't state "cannibalism = evil", unless one infers that from the behavior of certain monsters. Which still leaves us with those LG couatls(who are from Mesoamerican culture, bringing it all full circle ;) ).
It's not really rooted in modern morality although it is certainly moving that way. It's rooted in the classic pulp interpretation of western thought. There are, simplfied, versions of good and evil there which would not crop up in a strictly "modern morality" RPG. Examples; necromancy = evil (even mindless undead for a "good cause), casting spell "X" = evil (just because... it IS), cannibalism = evil (i.e. Witch Hex ? the name), and the Paladin can not tell a lie etc. (even for a good cause). An RPG rooted in strictly modern ethics would be culturally sensitive / reletavist. RAW D&D / PF is not.
I'd say D&D / PF LG Couatls and Monks just don't eat the dead. It's not like D&D / PF is a perfect recreation of any rl cutlure. It's a distorted mirror image at best. And in any event, a non-mammalian monster eating people not quite the same as one mammalian humanoid eating another. If a Dragon snacks on a burglar I don't call it cannabilism. Just lunch :)
Me and the Dragon ate fine :D
If Good is as dumb, ignorant and bigoted as you think it should be in PF / D&D, then no wonder Evil is such a popular choice!! :D
The thing gets blurred when dealing with very different creatures. More so if one doesn't accept the other as sentient.
A human who eats dolphin might think its just another animal.
A dragon who eats a human hight think its just another animal.
What about culinary adventure quest cannibalism?
A whole world to discover and taste.
Cannibalism almost always has to be evil. In practice there are only a few options for it-
Scavenger of corpses - which is impractical for most humanoids who don't have the constitution to eat rotting meat. In folklore this sort of thing is reserved for horrors like ghouls.
Survivalist cannibalism - where you devour the recently dead to survive, such as during the siege of a town or starving while lost in the mountains. It would usually be a chaotic act as cannibalism is taboo in most cultures, so you are defying customary laws.
Ritualistic death rites - devouring your own recently deceased as a religious practice. This would be neutral in the few unique cultures which do it as a matter of course.
Predatory cannibalism - you and hunt and kill sentient beings for food. This is the only cannibalism that would usually be possible, and predation of sentients must be evil.
Battlelust cannibalism - devouring parts of the corpses of those you kill. Its almost impossible to distinguish this from predatory cannibalism as in both cases you are doing the killing and the devouring.
I would add to this:
Practical Cannibalism - cooking the deceased in your community not out of desperation or religion, but to avoid needless waste and efficient use of resources.
One other point to consider in all this: how is it any different to eat someone than it is to throw them into a compost pile to turn them into food for the plants you're going to eat?
There is also the eating of your enemies (and sometimes allies) to gain the aspects of their power. This is a bit of a combo between Battlelust and Religious.
Kaaaa-liii maaa, Kaaaaa-liiii maaaa!
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I'm thinking of making a Nagaji character. Who might occasionally eat humans, but I still see her as probably neutral good. Modeled on Madame Vastra from Dr. Who. While there's nothing definative on screen, she does give such conversations as
Vastra: "Jack the Ripper will trouble these streets no more"
Partner: "How did you find him?"
Vastra: "Stringy"
Would you say her eating humans affects her alignment?