Hi,
I've got an AL5 party all with CG alignment on an adventure to find and kill a dragon. During the adventure they ran into a camp of evil poachers in the middle of dressing a Unicorn carcass.
After the party dispatch the poachers, they decide that they want to cook the Unicorn carcass. They reason that it should attract the dragon. Of course there's a bit of a debate, and the party decides that they're just going to cook a part of the carcass... and if it doesn't work, they'll cremate the unicorn. Although one or two want to try eating it first.
The party didn't kill the creature, they didn't gut and dress it... but they did carve off a leg and are now roasting it.
The question is, did the party commit an act that would result in some kind of alignment adjustment/penalty?
Thanks.
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Well, a unicorn is a sentient being that can reasonably be assumed to have been good. So if they were doing the same thing to a human or elven corpse, what would the alignment consequence be?
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Well, a unicorn is a sentient being that can reasonably be assumed to have been good. So if they were doing the same thing to a human or elven corpse, what would the alignment consequence be?
This is it.
Basically, as GM, decide how you define Cannibalism and if you think it should qualify as an aligned action in the your setting.
Personally, I'd only count eating creatures of the same subtype to be actually cannibalism (humans eating humans). That would be an evil act in my book (regardless of circumstances, they can repent later if they are they do it out desperation). It is also unlawful in most cities and would make most NPCs react badly.
As eating sentient races (but not your personal race/subtype), it would still be unlawful in most cities and disturb most NPCs, but I wouldn't impose any Good/Evil alignment impacts for just eating dead creatures which you had no part in killing (direct or indirect).
That said, I would impose a pretty hefty penalty on social skills against creatures with scent ability, which would be naturally friendly with unicorns, for at least next 6 hours, or so, after eating the unicorn.
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I would give them all explosive diarrhea.
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Fools! They should have taken its blood and used it to revive He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!
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I see nothing inherently wrong with consuming sentient creatures.
That being said you decide the morality of things in your game.
Treat it as if the party is shipwrecked and eats the corpses of dead crew members.
They didnt kill the sentient lifeform but they are making use of it.
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In many places in our world eating another human being isn't even illegal. Killing or attacking the person is. If the meat is legally acquired (say, someone donating the chunk of flesh) it is perfectly legal to consume. So whether it is lawful or not would depend on where they area, their personal beliefs, and the beliefs of the locals. Likewise with it being evil or not.
Cutting up a corpse could be considered desecration of a body. But many also count looting the bodies as desecration as well. PCs generally don't have a problem with that.
Killing the unicorn would most likely be evil. Unless it was self defense or something.
I would give them all explosive diarrhea.
Rainbow-colored of course.
Most people don't seem to have a problem with wearing the skin of an intelligent being (dragonhide), but have problems with wearing the skin of other intelligent beings (humans). Eating the flesh of an intelligent being may have similiar views.
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Most people don't seem to have a problem with wearing the skin of an intelligent being (dragonhide), but have problems with wearing the skin of other intelligent beings (humans). Eating the flesh of an intelligent being may have similiar views.
The general issue (in real life) is about justification of the action, no so much the action itself.
Are you eating humans because they are the food with least effort for the best taste? Are you eating them for the special powers you gain while eating human flesh? Are you wearing the skin of a human because it is better than wearing the skin of any other animal?
For real life, the answer is that humans aren't the best option with the least effort ot eat, they gain you nothing other than how being fed would normally benefit you, and their "leather" isn't really any more impressive than any other hide. So a person doing these things is likely doing them for less than rational reasons, since a rational person will take the route with the least effort for the highest gains.
Regarding Dragonhide, the reason it's viewed differently is because there is advantage to wearing dragonhide over other hides. So even if morality is iffy on wearing the skins of intelligent creatures, reason will make people wear it anyway.
Regarding real life wearing of furs and leather, the bottom line issue is that there aren't non-animal based substitutes of superior quality (yet). When artifical leather and fur catch up to the real thing, the morality of wearing the real thing will become more iffy, probably to the point where it will be considered immoral to wear real leather and fur. It's the whole morality Vs reason argument. If good, logical reasons exist to do something, it's hard to argue the morality against it. If the good, logical reason ceases to exist, the morality becomes more important.
Thanks all for the responses so far :) It's given me quite a bit of insight.
I think the closest, real-life example for this situation would be that Dentist who killed Cecil the Lion back in 2015. Although this party didn't kill the Unicorn, they were looking for ways to consume the unicorn after the fact and rationalized it with "we're trying to attract the dragon" (because Dragons dig BBQ apparently) and settling on not consuming the unicorn, but trying to lure the dragon and if that didn't work, cremating the Unicorn.
The question I'm wrestling with is this:
Given the above circumstances, is cooking a Unicorn's carcass an act that any reasonable Chaotic Good character would do? I could imagine that there are circumstances that it might be OK, but given the above situation?
The answer I'm coming up with so far is that what they are undertaking is more of a Neutral Evil act given that they are acting without feelings or scruples.
I'd like to hear what y'all think about that.
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Thanks all for the responses so far :) It's given me quite a bit of insight.
The question I'm wrestling with is this:
Given the above circumstances, is cooking a Unicorn's carcass an act that any reasonable Chaotic Good character would do? I could imagine that there are circumstances that it might be OK, but given the above situation?
The answer I'm coming up with so far is that what they are undertaking is more of a Neutral Evil act given that they are acting without feelings or scruples.
I'd like to hear what y'all think about that.
Chaotic Good. Sure. They'd do it if you dared them, or on a whim, or because they hadn't done it before. Classic chaotic alignment.
Eating dead things isn't exactly opposed to good alignments, provided you are eating for nourishment. If the PCs are hungry, and a dead animal lies before them, it is reasonable for them to at least consider eating it. The alignment this behaviour qualifies as, is neutral, just neutral. A Vulture (animal) is a neutral creature that eats the dead.
As for corpse desecreation, that one shouldn't offend Chaotic Good inherently, but it could still offend their deity. Divine casters in the group should probably get a "whisper" that the unicorn should be buried properly, assuming their deity has opinions on that. Not really an alignment thing, just something the deity may actually have opinions on. For most Good Deities, the main concern is that the Party leaves the unicorn in a state where it cannot become undead (like cremating the remains, or perhaps saving the bones until you encounter a safe burial location, one protected against the creation of undead, like a temple to a good deity).
Again, the topic is that the PCs are wanting to eat an already dead creature which requires no more effort than that of cooking raw meat. If the PCs had any part in killing the creature (even just enabling it to happen), the situation would be different. If the PCs have the ability to raise the creature (raise dead, reincarnate, or others), you could impose that this option would be the "good" option.
And again, if the PCs do eat the creature, NPCs with scent will "only" know that the PCs have eaten a unicorn recently, which may make some creatures hostile. They can smell it on the PC's breath.
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I noticed that the entry for Unicorn indicates that they mate for life. I for one would love it if the mate showed up at the most compromising moment.
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Donner, party of 5...
Allignment issues aside.
They have eaten a sentient, insanely magical being. I would be a whole lot more worried about the curse, and trying to find someone to remove a unicorns curse without asking questions. As to being "marked", I don't think 6 hours will clear that up.
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I noticed that the entry for Unicorn indicates that they mate for life. I for one would love it if the mate showed up at the most compromising moment.
That actually happened in the game... the dead Unicorn in question had a mate who was watching nearby unnoticed. That much was written in the adventure, anything after that up to the DM.
One of the spell casters was vehemently against anything but giving the Unicorn a proper burial. When she was overridden, she went off on her own to rest and pray for her spells - shunning the party and their actions. So I had the Unicorn mate approach her (and only her) to bless her.
Eating dead things isn't exactly opposed to good alignments, provided you are eating for nourishment.
Good point... although the party is by no means starving, they have plenty of food. The village they are working from is also not in desperate need of food. The originally wanted to BBQ the unicorn to attract the dragon they are after, and that somehow morphed into a conversation about eating the unicorn.
I was worried that I was imposing some notion that I hold out-of-game that what they were doing was some kind of sacrilege. I see now that it's not necessarily so, but what they are doing can be misconstrued... especially if a gang of
Ekujae elves
just showed up out of the blue. Oh if only this were in the Mwangi Expanse (Que the Benny Hill Theme).
I noticed that the entry for Unicorn indicates that they mate for life. I for one would love it if the mate showed up at the most compromising moment.That actually happened in the game... the dead Unicorn in question had a mate who was watching nearby unnoticed. That much was written in the adventure, anything after that up to the DM.
One of the spell casters was vehemently against anything but giving the Unicorn a proper burial. When she was overridden, she went off on her own to rest and pray for her spells - shunning the party and their actions. So I had the Unicorn mate approach her (and only her) to bless her.
Drat! I was picturing the mate attacking the party in a rage. Or at least showing up to defend their love -- do they attack something truly Good?
Although what you did may be enough of a slap. You're into homebrew territory with a "Unicorn blessing," aren't you? What was the blessing, that the rest of the party didn't get?
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To me it seems like something that would offensive to most in Golarion, and definitely bordering on evil. I mean, they presumably killed the poachers for killing the unicorn in the first place, but now they're going to hunker down and gnaw on the poor creature's leg?
As you say, they have other food, so it seems to me that they are really just doing this "for the LOLs". Of course, if that's the sort of absurdist tone you're looking to strike in the game, that's totally fine and I can see how that would be entertaining for many (though it sounds like at least one player/party member was unimpressed).
If you want a more serious tone, I'd suggest hitting them with the consequences of their actions. For me, I think I'd have the unicorn's mate appear before them all... not as a vengeful presence, but one completely beset by grief. Let them feel the mate's anguish at not only finding his or her life partner dead, but being consumed by the very people who he/she thought to be the dead unicorn's avengers. (One monstrosity replaced by another, and all that.)
The goal wouldn't be to penalize them mechanically, or even to give them another encounter to fight (which could be fun and indirectly encourage the behaviour), but to roleplay that they exist in a world where actions have consequences, and where their choices matter (for good or ill).
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Repulsive or offensive is not the same as evil.
However, going against your own beliefs in terms of how to show respect for dead *persons* (person being any creature that can have a personality, aka sentient species)... that's definitely chaotic and possibly evil.
Would I force an align change based on a single act?
Not unless it was done eagerly and with blatant disregard for alignment (basically an act of defiance against your own principles).
For most characters, don't think of alignments as *command* laws which can be broken, defied, enforced, etc... Think of them as *descriptive* laws such as the law of gravity, which describes how stuff behaves. In other words, someone is good if they tend to behave good. They're lawful if they tend to be lawful.
The exception to this is the alignment-dependant characters, like the Druid (Neutral), Monk (Lawful), Paladin (LG) and so on. These folks have oaths and customs to abide by, and they're the price of their powers & skills.
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Just woke up, again, so this may or may not be coherent, buuu~uuut:
1) what several posters have mentioned (you're in house-rule territory) is correct; you need to define the situation for your campaign setting
2) there are several contradictory examples in published settings
- 2a) in Golarion, as-published, the act of eating any sentient creature is considered "cannibalism" (even though that makes no sense), and, generally speaking, engaging in such an act may condemn the corpse of the person who does so to a ghoulish fate (by becoming a ghoul after death); this is is hazy, at best, however, so...
- 2a-1) there is a magic item that explicitly tells you whether or not an act is considered opposed to your deity's philosophy, called phylactery of faithfulness
- 2b) in Blue Rose, a setting published by Green Ronin, not only is it evil (called "shadow aligned" in that setting), but it is evil, regardless of the circumstances, and no matter what; whether the people are starving, ignorant, or confused is irrelevant: devouring the flesh of a unicorn (specifically, though possibly any sentient creature), it's evil enough that you actually feel the corruption (at least, before you eat it) to warn you off
Both of these are pretty opposed, morally, to the consumption of sentient flesh.
That said, unless imposed by an outside source (such as a GM), there's nothing inherent to the consumption of sentient creatures - it's just that is really, really risky for humans to eat other humans, and not just in terms of difficulty.
EDIT: I forgot to add...
Also,
- 2c) Druids - and others - (at least, in any publication I've seen) explicitly aren't evil to wear dragonhide, and that material only comes from sentient creatures; killing a sentient creature just for its hide would seem rather evil, to me, so. (Dragons do get grumpy about this, however.)
In reality, at least, diseases (including, it seems, neural disease(s)), are really easy to transfer, and really hard to get rid of. This fundamentally makes consuming human flesh a bad idea.
There may well be hidden factors, like that, which make eating sentient creatures a bad idea - like a curse or some other effect that causes problems down the line (... like turning into, say, a ghoul) that are extremely non-obvious to those engaging in the practice.
That said, it's important to allow your players to know about such things, and allowing the PCs to possibly become aware - metagaming aside, this is likely something you're going to want to mention out-of-game to your players, if there are consequences, though you might not let the PCs know.
If it's never going to come up in this game... there's probably no reason to bring it up, and let the rest just be RP fodder.
EDIT: Also, in a game where I was a player, we were able to use a small piece of a unicorn we found (a snip of its tail) to create a new body and thus raise it from the dead.
My character went to the unicorn and chatted with it, asking if he could use the old corpse () for parts and non-evil experimentation - using the hide, flesh, blood, and so on in order to create sacred, holy devices and clothing.
The unicorn was extremely wierded out, but eventually agreed to the whole thing - after all, it had no use for its former corpse, aside from sentimental value... and what was it going to do with it? The character made magically binding promises on himself to only use it for good reasons, and made sure to continuously use various holy spells to consecrate (sometimes even consecrate) the stuff to various good gods, and utilize the resources to help bring healing instead of harm.
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now they're going to hunker down and gnaw on the poor creature's leg?
It's dead, Jim! It's not like not eating it makes it alive again or anything!
Seriously though, I think it's impossible to judge the PCs actions without looking at their respective religions. Different cultures and religions have different burial rites, and while those are generally for their own species, they should provide some guidelines. There are/were real life cultures were eating part of a dead person was a sign of respect and belived to be a certain form of life after death (as in, the dead one's soul lives on in the people eating him/her). In other cultures, eating part of a dead foe was believed to transfer the eaten one's strength or other attributes to the eater.It's also possible that the players don't really think of the dead unicorn as a sentient creature, but as merely a dead horse, due to a strange lack of past interactions with real-life unicorns.
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I'd rule it as a mildly Chaotic Neutral act if not just Neutral. Neither of which should affect your party's alinement at all. Using the flesh of once sentient beings is not inherently evil. Aside from dragonhide there normal humanoids skins used in creation and maintainable of zombie skin shields which are not inherently evil. (Replacing the skin is done by letting the shield steal the skin of a fresh medium humanoid corpse.)
Cannibalism is also not necessarily evil either. There is an entire barbarian archetype, Raging Cannibal, built around this idea and only needs to be non-lawful.
That said, this may offend some that witness this act or find evidence of this act. Especially lawful of good druids.
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Druids - and others - (at least, in any publication I've seen) explicitly aren't evil to wear dragonhide, and that material only comes from sentient creatures; killing a sentient creature just for its hide would seem rather evil, to me, so. (Dragons do get grumpy about this, however.)
Haven't a few non-sentient dragons been published though?
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Different cultures and religions have different burial rites, and while those are generally for their own species, they should provide some guidelines. There are/were real life cultures were eating part of a dead person was a sign of respect and belived to be a certain form of life after death (as in, the dead one's soul lives on in the people eating him/her). In other cultures, eating part of a dead foe was believed to transfer the eaten one's strength or other attributes to the eater.
Something I've written about elsewhere with regards to the cook people hex being labelled as inherently evil.
For the Amazonian Wari' eating deceased in-laws (affines) was an act of compassionate cannibalism, the practice of which continued until somewhere between 1956 and 1969. This endocanibalism (eating a member of you own group)was done out of compassion for the deceased and their family. The spirit of the dead would be pleased and the family consoled; the though of burying the body in the cold ground was considered tragic and a cause for upset. Eating the dead was not done out gratification as the act eating could be very unpleasant for the participants, nor was it for the Wari' an act of inhuman savagery - for them it was the ultimate act of compassion. Thus if Pathfinder was written from their perspective burial of the dead could well be an evil act.
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OK, Compassionate Cannibalism doesn't apply. First, this "meal" isn't going to be pleased, it's kin are not going to be consoled. Second, it is a UNICORN, the embodiment of freedom and purity, and the party is adding to its degradation. We can find all the inapplicable fringe cases to muddy the waters, and hide behind Shades of Gray, but wrong is still wrong, evil still evil.
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You're into homebrew territory with a "Unicorn blessing," aren't you? What was the blessing, that the rest of the party didn't get?
Oh yeah, I have to go off the reservation on these adventures as everyone has the same access to the materials as I do. And meta-gaming is a huge issue with my group - in that everyone meta-games the crap out of everything. This situation is one of the rare role playing points we get into during the game, so I want to keep people guessing to make it fun.
The "blessing" was a restoration.
...they presumably killed the poachers for killing the unicorn in the first place, but now they're going to hunker down and gnaw on the poor creature's leg?
The poachers actually started the battle... but the rest of that statement captures how the scene played out :)
The more this thread goes on, the less inclined I am to give some kind of Alignment penalty. However, if these characters do go through with this, I'm certain that there will be some form of reckoning.
Have you considered corruptions, assuming that they aren't working Meta to turn the actual Nasty, you are probably going to die ugly Corruptions, (ghoul being the most likely) ... Getting back on track, not allowing them to turn the corruptions into free new powersets.
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The corpse could rise as a vampire unicorn. Possibly with a wooden leg.
Anybody who ate of it could rise as a ghoul if they die before atoning.
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It's a good creature, and it could be interpreted as disrespecting the corpse, which is a big no-no for good characters. Whether that crosses the line though is your choice.
Eating magical beasts is not a good idea in general. Disrespecting a clearly good aligned creature may not bode well if others find out about it- particularly the blessing it came from. Unicorns are also known to have fey friends who would be quite vicious should they find their friend being eaten.
It's not in the stat block but you could have the Unicorn be the Fugu Fish of the D&D world.
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the party is adding to its degradation.
Is it? How many unicorns have you spoken to? How do you know that dead unicorns don't view being eaten (by good aligned creatures) as a good thing because that way, their bodies are useful instead of rotting away? For comparison, organ donors view helping others to be better then having their bodies buried or cremated without removing anything. Not the same thing, but we are talking about a chaotic creature, and I would consider burial rites to be rather lawful.
this "meal" isn't going to be pleased
Again, the unicorn is already dead. I mean, if the deceased unicorn is merrily trotting across the green fields of Elysium (or however that works), does it even care about what happens to it's body?
Derklord, Honestly, are you trying to spin that unicorns WANT to be eaten?
As to the organ donors argument: Organ donors are given the choice, beforehand, and one would hope they aren't being murdered for their organs.
As to the being dead making them beyond all earthly cares, arguably the case in this world, but definitely not the case in Pathfinder with resurrections, ghosts, reanimations et al.
I am interested in WHY you want the waters muddied.
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Derklord, Honestly, are you trying to spin that unicorns WANT to be eaten?
I'm saying that the possibility exists, and that we just don't know.
[Organ donors] aren't being murdered for their organs.
Neither was the unicorn - it was dead when the party found it.
As to the being dead making them beyond all earthly cares, arguably the case in this world, but definitely not the case in Pathfinder with resurrections, ghosts, reanimations et al.
If anything, not being able to be made an undead would be a plus, a ghost is independent from the physical body, and is it likely that someone will cast Raise Dead (the only resurrection spell to care about the state of the body) within the next few days on the cead unicorn?
I am interested in WHY you want the waters muddied.
Because I really dislike the "it's this way in our culture, therfore it must be this way in Golarion, too, even for non-humans".
I also dislike accepting double standards without reflection (what, killing goblins is OK because they're goblins, but eating an already dead magical horses is totally evil?).I'm not saying it definitely should be treated as eating road kill. I'm saying the GM should carefully consider the PCs and the unicorns completely alien cultures before making a decision.
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Personally, I don't think "You missed out on a restoration" is enough of a slap. You could go with the "Eating the Unicorn will curse you in some way" theory. Or truly bless the one who walked off -- but how???
A restoration... What if the player of that PC finds out [i]later [/later]that their character now gets a bonus on saves not to lose whatever got restored. For instance, if it had been ability loss, then anytime the PC is saving against a damage/drain to that ability score, they'll get a bonus to their save. From now on. Permanently. How much of a bonus? It's a very limited benefit in the sense that it won't apply to all that many Fort saves. (I'd tend to say +3, but you may prefer a different number.) As for what type of bonus, I'd suggest either Insight or untyped, off-hand.
Or make it easier, and the next time the PC has to make any Fort save, tell them that they now have an extra +1 bonus to Fortitude. Permanently. (Again, Insight or untyped.)
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Because I really dislike the "it's this way in our culture, therfore it must be this way in Golarion, too, even for non-humans".
I also dislike accepting double standards without reflection (what, killing goblins is OK because they're goblins, but eating an already dead magical horses is totally evil?).I'm not saying it definitely should be treated as eating road kill. I'm saying the GM should carefully consider the PCs and the unicorns completely alien cultures before making a decision.
I do agree with what you're saying about the cultural homogeneousness some people have with fantasy. I think 'morality' in this situation is the wrong concept. What we're really discussing is reputation; how actions will reflect on how others perceive us. Picking your nose is not an alinged act, but you'll definitely get reactions.
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Derklord, I am interested in WHY you want the waters muddied.
I'm interested in WHY you want to take an overly-aggressive, hostile tone to another poster who is clearly discussing a non-real fantasy situation by either misrepresenting his points or (at best) refusing to accept that the concept of a not-like-ours fantasy world might have different moral judgements.
Frankly, of the two, your posts come off as reactive and needlessly angry. Clearly, you feel like you e a personal stake in this for some reason, but the picture you're attempting to paint is kind of flawed. It may be correct, but your presentation could use some work, is what I'm saying.
I would suggest that dialogue would best be served if we all got off of our high horse(s) and actually engaged in non-judgemental conversation.
Druids - and others - (at least, in any publication I've seen) explicitly aren't evil to wear dragonhide, and that material only comes from sentient creatures; killing a sentient creature just for its hide would seem rather evil, to me, so. (Dragons do get grumpy about this, however.)
Haven't a few non-sentient dragons been published though?
Have they? Any dragon can be made "nonsentient" by, say, feeblemind, or disease, but afflicting them just so they are non-sentient is merely changing the method of evil.
If you're referring to non-true-dragons... I don't know? All the ones that come to mind are dumb, but still sentient. If one is diseased, curing it sounds better (unless it's evil, but it's still basically an afflicted sentient creature).
EDIT: none of this is to say you're wrong - I just can't think of any. But I'd be very pleased if there are links and descriptions! (Sorry: I just realized upon retreading that it looked like I was disagreeing; I was just mentioning my experience/memory - the latter of which isn't perfectly reliable...)
But really, it's a cultural thing. Trolls hate troll hide armor. Dragons hate dragon hide armor. This makes sense. This is probably a perfect way of treating this sort of thing. It neatly sidesteps "real life" issues, while giving understandable in-character concepts.
Oh! Also, look at the "fey creature" template (I'm on my phone, so no links, I'm afraid) - if you do eventually go with the curse option, that has a decent example.
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Tacticslion,
I asked him why, because I wanted to know. His answer that he preferred a game with less of a Western moral base was perfectly reasonable, nor was it saying that anyone who didn't go with his preference was wrong. No disagreement with that, would be awfully dull if everyone thought in lockstep.
I argued against posts that tried to brand people as parochial for deciding that what the party had decided was wrong. I pointed out the flaws in their arguments and approach. There isn't ever going to be a universally right answer to any of this, nor a thoroughly wrong one.
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The party didn't kill the creature, they didn't gut and dress it... but they did carve off a leg and are now roasting it.
The question is, did the party commit an act that would result in some kind of alignment adjustment/penalty?
I guess that depends. Do any of them have Profession (cook)? I mean, Survival is going to let them successfully cook it so that it's edible, but how's it going to taste? They could easily overcook it and dry it out, turning rare, delicious meats into chewy slabs with the taste and consistency of shoe leather. That might not necessarily be evil, but it would be absolutely tragic.
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They should all get rainbow sherbert poops.
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They should all get rainbow sherbert poops.
< giggle >
Tacticslion,
I asked him why, because I wanted to know. His answer that he preferred a game with less of a Western moral base was perfectly reasonable, nor was it saying that anyone who didn't go with his preference was wrong. No disagreement with that, would be awfully dull if everyone thought in lockstep.
I argued against posts that tried to brand people as parochial for deciding that what the party had decided was wrong. I pointed out the flaws in their arguments and approach. There isn't ever going to be a universally right answer to any of this, nor a thoroughly wrong one.
That is more than fair. I apologize for excessive saltiness in my reading, then.
I will blame my medicine that was affecting me, as, clearly, I, personally, could never make such a mistake and/or fail to understand the point. Nope. Never.
(Oops.)
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Do any of them have Profession (cook)?
One of them does... I'm afraid there is the very real possibility that this Unicorn will turn out to be as tasty a bbq as anything.
Personally, I don't think "You missed out on a restoration" is enough of a slap. You could go with the "Eating the Unicorn will curse you in some way" theory. Or truly bless the one who walked off -- but how???
Well, the restoration thing was done in private - as the recipient walked off from the group and was meditating in the forest nearby while the rest of the group determined how and why they should go about cooking the unicorn corpse. So the group doesn't know about the restoration, just that one character, and that was written in as part of the adventure. Fortunately, that was the end of the night, so I have until the next game to figure out what to do.
I have figured out a few responses, depending on how the characters go forward. I'm hoping that they don't back down from what they were thinking of doing... it should be pretty fun. I'm sure one or two of them have tripped over this thread (hi guys!), so I don't want to reveal anything before the game. But i do have the reward/penalty thing figured out to my satisfaction now.
I would like say thanks to everyone in this thread for their thoughts, it all helped me get to this point, and it should be great fun for the next game :)
Do any of them have Profession (cook)?One of them does... I'm afraid there is the very real possibility that this Unicorn will turn out to be as tasty a bbq as anything.
I say let 'em run with it. It's a delicacy! Like eating veal. You know it's wrong, but it's just so delicious.
It's also very likely to attract the attention of fey. I mean, if you want there to be some consequences, that will do it. The fey aren't necessarily going to be swayed by the logic of "well, it was already dead" because their values are radically different from those of humans. Meaning, they are likely to take offense.
Could be fun.
So many ifs...
If eating sentients is evil... I'm going to pass on that.
If eating sentients is unwise... Why would it be? Well, madcow and similar. What sort of Prion-borne diseases might be held happily in check in the flesh of the unicorn, whose horn is a sovereign curative?
What if ghouls are those who have a spiritual taint of having eaten sentients? Might a Unicorn be a bigger taint than a Goblin?
What if it's all just perfectly fine, with the cosmos itself, with the unicorns, with the Akashic Records department, etc, but the _cultures_ of the world will freak out?
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Do any of them have Profession (cook)?One of them does... I'm afraid there is the very real possibility that this Unicorn will turn out to be as tasty a bbq as anything.
Tell them to use a (living) Hydra instead - that way, they never run out of meat!
@Daw & Tacticslion: Just to put the matter to a close, I didn't see Daw's post as overly-aggressive or hostile, so no hard feelings here. Indeed, I wish I'd argue more with people who actually want to understand why I'm making my respective point.
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the party is adding to its degradation.Is it? How many unicorns have you spoken to?
I'm following about 10 on twitter. As that's roleplaying, it must count.:)