The Goblin Controversy, Inherent Evil, and the Problems with Racial Alignment


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I agree, and I'd usually rather go by what they have done than by their 'race' only.
But regardless, I don't get why I can't treat monsters differently than people. Having inherently evil stuff simplifies the game experience for sure, and it's neither a good or bad thing by itself; I just think that it should be the default, leaving more complex situations for whoever wants them.

dragonhunterq wrote:
I don't get why this is still an issue. The fact that orcs and Goblins aren't inherently evil, they just have a cultural tendency to be is already hard coded into the rules as pointed out even before I linked it. What more exactly do you want?

Nothing more. I just don't agree with people who want this changed, so that the standard way of treating orcs, ogres, even demons maybe, should be like people and not monsters.


I agree with most of the stuff in the OP.

I have never, ever liked any world or game that paints any race or creature that has free will as inherently anything, good or evil. I'd much rather they simply describe behavior.

For instance (pulling all of this out of my butt, haven't checked bestiaries), do trolls need to be evil? Maybe they're just animalistic and territorial. Maybe they're regenerative powers require a steady diet of living things, so when they're pressed (or when habitat is infringed upon), they venture towards settlements for human food and such. Maybe it's super hard for them to raise their young (let's say 3 or 4 troll kids are born, but only half or less typically survive), which gives them further incentive to get food at all costs. They aren't evil, necessarily, just often in conflict with other races for resources.

I get that saying Orcs are evil and Silver Dragons are good and such fits the sort of pulpy background a lot of games have, but it feels very hollow and forced to me, and it always has.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Megistone wrote:

I agree, and I'd usually rather go by what they have done than by their 'race' only.

But regardless, I don't get why I can't treat monsters differently than people. Having inherently evil stuff simplifies the game experience for sure, and it's neither a good or bad thing by itself; I just think that it should be the default, leaving more complex situations for whoever wants them.

dragonhunterq wrote:
I don't get why this is still an issue. The fact that orcs and Goblins aren't inherently evil, they just have a cultural tendency to be is already hard coded into the rules as pointed out even before I linked it. What more exactly do you want?
Nothing more. I just don't agree with people who want this changed, so that the standard way of treating orcs, ogres, even demons maybe, should be like people and not monsters.

I guess it depends on what you define as monsters vs people. It isn't uncommon for us to refer to awful people in the real world as monsters, so the line isn't cut and dry.

For some, humanoids being qualified as monsters may be uncomfortably close to real life racism. The example of orcs in particular is muddied by half-orcs not being ACTUALLY being intrinsically evil.

For others, a sentient species capable of understanding morality qualifies. A red dragon may be a monster but if they can opt not to be evil murder machines then not much sets them apart from people. Compared to a demon which is forged out of evil to do evil. (But even they wind up good sometimes...)

A decent rule of thumb might be it is people if you can make a PC out of it, core or otherwise, it is probably people. Being a PC means they have enough agency to decide to be good or evil.

I can't name a published adventure that has you attack a group of sentient beings, or even creatures in general, without some level of justification based on what those specific creatures have done. Or at least their bosses have. Even the basic premise of finding treasure in the monster's lair usually occurs from said treasure being left by prior victims, and the PCs discover it because they want were attacked by said monster.

It isn't hard to justify killing THIS ONE MONSTER In PARTICULAR, is what I'm saying.


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This is a pretty tough conversation. It is important to note that the presentation of an entire race as evil is both backward and harmful. It is also important to note that in this game it's nice to have bad guys, and not just people who are bad because of what they have done, but monsters you can kill on sight without wondering if you'll lose your class abilities.

For me, outsiders fill this role nicely. I like demons because I don't expect my players to consider the moral implications of killing a demon. It's a block of stats for them to kill. Arushalae from Wrath of the Righteous is an exception to this, but there was a large build up to that. Mortal races, at least in my homebrew, require more motive. I don't expect my players to kill a goblin they see walking down the street, and I try to give them viable reasons to kill an orc before the encounter. To do otherwise makes for a shallow setting in my opinion. I think the harm of "evil block of stats to kill" outweighs the benefit of simplicity. And it really doesn't take much effort to justify combat in Pathfinder. So I try to give my bad guys a full backstory, and to include at least one example of morally gray member of the race to remind my players they aren't ALL like this.

Liberty's Edge

If you want something to kill that doesn't have any moral implications whatsoever, personally I think that's what mindless undead and golems and creatures of animal intelligence that regularly eat people are for.

Demons and the like are also usually fairly low on moral implications...but not entirely complication free. Mortal races? All equally implication-heavy. But those implications are only an issue if you're killing them for existing.

I've been gaming for going on 20 years now. At no point have I ever seen a creature killed by PCs for existing. In non-Evil Pathfinder games, they've almost exclusively been killed for things they had very clearly done, or in self defense. It is really easy to avoid bad implications without having races be 'always evil, murder on sight' just by giving the PCs good reasons to fight and kill these particular enemies. I'm deeply confused by people who think it isn't.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Undead are often pretty easy to kill in sight. Which isn't to say it isn't worth talking to the smart ones. In fact, most APs seem to have at least one typical monster who the PCs can arrange a mutually beneficial alliance with.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:
Megistone wrote:

I want a game where I can treat an orc encampment in a different way than I treat a civilized town. A game where my good character can raid that place and slaughter all the orcs without having to worry about the sins that any of them may or may not have committed, because they are evil baby-eating brutes that threaten innocents. They are monsters!

The good thing is that I can still play (and I did) a character who believes in redemption and second chances for (almost) everyone. In the right campaign, of course.

Let me have my 'easy' game as the default, and leave morality issues for when I feel like playing that way.

I much prefer a game where it doesn't matter what the beings in an encampment look like whether I can go in and kill them, it matters what kind of encampment it is (ie: village or war camp or bandit lair) and what the folks there have been doing recently (ie: attacking a group that hasn't done anything is wrong, attacking murderous raiders is fine).

ie: I'm fine with a Paladin going into an orc encampment full of orc warriors and killing everyone...but only under the same circumstances they'd go into, say, a bandit encampment full of human bandits and kill everyone. Which are not hard circumstances for the GM to arrange.

Treating orcs identically to how you treat a group of humans who behave the same does not introduce moral ambiguity or keep you from killing them unless the GM makes it, it just necessitates a brief description of the bodies of their victims or the like.

Good Aligned PCs killing humans (or other PC race characters) happens a lot in Pathfinder, and is not hard to justify, requiring that the killing of non-humans operate on the same standards is not that big a deal and does not result in angsting over every death and making the game overly complicated. And it both increases verisimilitude and removes some very ugly implications.

What I don't get is, aside from home games, this is already how it happens in Golarion.

I can't think of a single adventure where you go slaughter a dungeon full of X, only because it's full of X and there's no other reason.

So I really don't see what people here are whining about, since the Bestiary already makes it explicit it represents the norm and there's deviations.

Liberty's Edge

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TheFinish wrote:

What I don't get is, aside from home games, this is already how it happens in Golarion.

I can't think of a single adventure where you go slaughter a dungeon full of X, only because it's full of X and there's no other reason.

I know. I'm a little befuddled that people don't seem to get that.

TheFinish wrote:
So I really don't see what people here are whining about, since the Bestiary already makes it explicit it represents the norm and there's deviations.

If you mean the people who want this to be even more explicit, I think the number of people in this thread who seem to buy into the idea that alignment is racially determined in Pathfinder is a pretty good explanation why: Some people clearly still don't agree that this is how it works.


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andar90 wrote:


I have never, ever liked any world or game that paints any race or creature that has free will as inherently anything, good or evil.

The extent to which mortals can change via free will in PF does not feel particularly realistic to me, but it's a thing I am happy to accept for the sake of making a wider range of stories.


Tarik Blackhands wrote:
Subparhiggins wrote:
DiscoJer wrote:
I don't understand why evil races are unrealistic. Biology drives behavior just as much as environment. Maybe evil races have brain chemistry that leads to evil acts?

This would be an incredibly unfortunate road to take, and would amplify the problem of evil races rather than doing anything to fix it.

Please don't do this Paizo.

I mean, is this really that different than "Forged from the blood of *Evil God Here* the *Evil Race Here* exist only to burn, pillage, and destroy,"

Yes, very much so, and in a way that makes the game playable for me.

Forged from the blood of Evil God Here makes an Evil Race instruments of the will of that god, and any halfway competent evil god will then limit their free will to make them incapable of changing away from that. But the evil god is the one responsible.

(Which is pretty much how Tolkien's orcs came about in the first place, but a much better fit for all the outsiders formed from mortal souls than for orcs in the Pathfinder cosmology.)


Deadmanwalking wrote:


I disagree. Alignment remains useful as a descriptor of behavior. What becomes pointless is the idea that it's hard coded rather than a result of the choices one makes.

Why does every different sentient being in a fantasy world have to have exactly equal capacity for choice ?

As a person with mild OCD, I am very aware of how it limits my capacity for choice compared to other people in RL, let alone to the particular Christianity-derived take on "complete control of one's morality while alive, consequences of that set your soul's path in the afterlife irrevocably" that underlies the PF cosmology and the D&D cosmologies it grew from.

Liberty's Edge

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:

Why does every different sentient being in a fantasy world have to have exactly equal capacity for choice ?

As a person with mild OCD, I am very aware of how it limits my capacity for choice compared to other RL people.

I never said 'equal', but all sapient creatures have enough capacity to choose to do good or evil things, at their option.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:
the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:

Why does every different sentient being in a fantasy world have to have exactly equal capacity for choice ?

As a person with mild OCD, I am very aware of how it limits my capacity for choice compared to other RL people.

I never said 'equal', but all sapient creatures have enough capacity to choose to do good or evil things, at their option.

But, isn't it then equally valid to have a race that consistently chooses Evil over Neutral or Good?

And if such a race exists, then it's perfectly normal for the setting to treat with distrust and/or violence.

Liberty's Edge

TheFinish wrote:
But, isn't it then equally valid to have a race that consistently chooses Evil over Neutral or Good?

Sure. I mean, there'll be exceptions, but yeah, most of any type of group might be Evil.

TheFinish wrote:
And if such a race exists, then it's perfectly normal for the setting to treat with distrust and/or violence.

Sure. Orcs are definitely regarded this way in many parts of the setting, as are drow, just for example.

That doesn't make murdering someone for being an orc or a drow morally acceptable, though.


Deadmanwalking wrote:


I never said 'equal', but all sapient creatures have enough capacity to choose to do good or evil things, at their option.

That is a position about the nature of free will, not necessarily universally held, and therefore not necessarily something I would see as necessary or inherently positive to bake into the game as universally applying.

To go back to Tolkien again, consider Tom Bombadil. He's clearly meant to be an unFallen Adam, without knowledge of good and evil and therefore incapable of that scale of choice; he has to stay in his garden with his lady rather than affecting the outside world, but the evil of the One Ring can't touch him. (The real giveaway that he is meant to be Adam is the one proactive thing he does, which is naming the party's horses; Adam naming the beasts is straight out of Genesis.)

The potential for characters of that sort in a game is not something I would wish to rule out by insisting all sapient beings in the game's setting have to be able to choose good or evil.

Liberty's Edge

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the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:
That is a position about the nature of free will, not necessarily universally held, and therefore not necessarily something I would see as necessary or inherently positive to bake into the game as universally applying.

I'm a fairly strong advocate for the idea of free will being baked into just about everything, actually.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:
To go back to Tolkien again, consider Tom Bombadil. He's clearly meant to be an unFallen Adam, without knowledge of good and evil and therefore incapable of that scale of choice; he has to stay in his garden with his lady rather than affecting the outside world, but the evil of the One Ring can't touch him. (The real giveaway that he is meant to be Adam is the one proactive thing he does, which is naming the party's horses; Adam naming the beasts is straight out of Genesis.)

What? No. Like, strongly no. Tolkien was not writing Biblical allegory, or doing anything remotely similar. Nor does any of his writing on Tom Bombadil I've ever read even imply this. Indeed, Tom Bombadil explicitly does have knowledge of good and evil, and is Good...he's just also an Old Power in the world with a sharply circumscribed area of influence.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:
The potential for characters of that sort in a game is not something I would wish to rule out by insisting all sapient beings in the game's setting have to be able to choose good or evil.

Frankly, the implications from beings of this sort existing are really weird. Intelligence combined with being a moral zombie incapable of moral or immoral acts is both really weird and, just as importantly, completely antithetical to any metaphysical system involving objective Alignment, which is something Pathfinder has.

Grand Archive

Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Deadmanwalking wrote:
the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:
That is a position about the nature of free will, not necessarily universally held, and therefore not necessarily something I would see as necessary or inherently positive to bake into the game as universally applying.

I'm a fairly strong advocate for the idea of free will being baked into just about everything, actually.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:
To go back to Tolkien again, consider Tom Bombadil. He's clearly meant to be an unFallen Adam, without knowledge of good and evil and therefore incapable of that scale of choice; he has to stay in his garden with his lady rather than affecting the outside world, but the evil of the One Ring can't touch him. (The real giveaway that he is meant to be Adam is the one proactive thing he does, which is naming the party's horses; Adam naming the beasts is straight out of Genesis.)

What? No. Like, strongly no. Tolkien was not writing Biblical allegory, or doing anything remotely similar. Nor does any of his writing on Tom Bombadil I've ever read even imply this. Indeed, Tom Bombadil explicitly does have knowledge of good and evil, and is Good...he's just also an Old Power in the world with a sharply circumscribed area of influence.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:
The potential for characters of that sort in a game is not something I would wish to rule out by insisting all sapient beings in the game's setting have to be able to choose good or evil.
Frankly, the implications from beings of this sort existing are really weird. Intelligence combined with being a moral zombie incapable of moral or immoral acts is both really weird and, just as importantly, completely antithetical to any metaphysical system involving objective Alignment, which is something Pathfinder has.

About Tolkien: Yep, in his letters to the writer of Narnia, he often reprimanded him for infusing Narnia with religious allegory (like the lion is Jesus)... He may have infused it a bit, we all do a bit when we create things, but it was never consciously, and not as big as THIS. He was always basing his stories in old lores and legends.


Deadmanwalking wrote:

I'm a fairly strong advocate for the idea of free will being baked into just about everything, actually.

How specific a position on it, though ?

I mean, I can very easily envision an Evil tyranny whose party line was "Our system benefits people who make the right choices and therefore if we are oppressing you it's entirely a direct consequence of your free-willed choices being wrong"; for Good characters to work against that tyranny, and be persuasive to the oppressed who had been convinced of that position, they would kind of have to start from some position akin to "free will isn't the only thing that affects what happens to you, and the belief that it is is a tool being used to control you"; that would seem a fairly simple case where the Good thing to do is to argue against philosophically depending on free will. I'd rather that not be a thing the baked-in rules of the setting preclude.

Quote:
Frankly, the implications from beings of this sort existing are really weird. Intelligence combined with being a moral zombie incapable of moral or immoral acts is both really weird and, just as importantly, completely antithetical to any metaphysical system involving objective Alignment, which is something Pathfinder has.

Where you say "antithetical", I see "interesting role-playing opportunity". I am very fond of the PF universe having objective alignment precisely for what opposing or re-complicating that at a character level enables.

Liberty's Edge

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:

How specific a position on it, though ?

I mean, I can very easily envision an Evil tyranny whose party line was "Our system benefits people who make the right choices and therefore if we are oppressing you it's entirely a direct consequence of your free-willed choices being wrong"; for Good characters to work against that tyranny, and be persuasive to the oppressed who had been convinced of that position, they would kind of have to start from some position akin to "free will isn't the only thing that affects what happens to you, and the belief that it is is a tool being used to control you"; that would seem a fairly simple case where the Good thing to do is to argue against free will.

I'm talking OOC here, that free will is a major thing that should be an inherent part of the setting, though other stuff certainly has an impact. People in-universe can have all sorts of positions on free will.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:
Where you say "antithetical", I see "interesting role-playing opportunity".

I'd disagree just because the idea of an intelligent creature incapable of moral action is nonsensical to me. Its not a creature I believe can exist on a conceptual level.


Deadmanwalking wrote:


I'm talking OOC here, that free will is a major thing that should be an inherent part of the setting, though other stuff certainly has an impact. People in-universe can have all sorts of positions on free will.

People in RL do too, though. I wouldn't want the game to make non-inclusive assumptions there.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:


I'd disagree just because the idea of an intelligent creature incapable of moral action is nonsensical to me. Its not a creature I believe can exist on a conceptual level.

I find it quite easy to envision. And in Golarion terms, it would seem that such a sentient being, going through the River of Souls, could plausibly end up in one of the sections of Pharasma's domain that are occupied by the True Neutral, so it does not break the cosmology.


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Tresondros wrote:

I actually agree with this.

Players should have to consider the moral implications of killing.

The problem, I think, is that this would require some changes in the setting. For example, You could still have the goblins at thistletop in ROTRL but you would have to drive the idea that these are creatures following ripnugget who worships Lamashtu under the tutelage of a priestess of Lamashtu.

I disagree strongly.

This is a game about fantasy adventure, not this pure gray morality dark and gritty setting.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
HWalsh wrote:
Tresondros wrote:

I actually agree with this.

Players should have to consider the moral implications of killing.

The problem, I think, is that this would require some changes in the setting. For example, You could still have the goblins at thistletop in ROTRL but you would have to drive the idea that these are creatures following ripnugget who worships Lamashtu under the tutelage of a priestess of Lamashtu.

I disagree strongly.

This is a game about fantasy adventure, not this pure gray morality dark and gritty setting.

We have very different definitions of 'pure gray dark and gritty.'


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Revan wrote:
HWalsh wrote:
Tresondros wrote:

I actually agree with this.

Players should have to consider the moral implications of killing.

The problem, I think, is that this would require some changes in the setting. For example, You could still have the goblins at thistletop in ROTRL but you would have to drive the idea that these are creatures following ripnugget who worships Lamashtu under the tutelage of a priestess of Lamashtu.

I disagree strongly.

This is a game about fantasy adventure, not this pure gray morality dark and gritty setting.

We have very different definitions of 'pure gray dark and gritty.'

That may indeed be the case - But there is SERIOUS value to running a game where you have racial alignments.

The first is world familiarity.

When a player, who knows the lore of Golarion, has a character that meets a Goblin he knows what to expect. Goblins are evil. Goblins are chaotic. Goblins like fire.

When the Goblin acts in that manner then the player feels vindicated in their knowledge of the world.

This helps to begin to build the player expectation. Which is a good thing.

Why is this a good thing? It is a good thing because when the GM wants to spin things and include the Lawful Good pyrophobic character, who is supposed to be an oddity, then the player reacts the same way the character should, in that it IS an oddity. This allows a GM to manipulate player/character behavior by using the expectations that the player has.

When you, by default, muddy those waters you make it much harder to do that.

While you may think that this enhances the game world, it usually doesn't. It makes players wipe away their character bias. Which in real life, we usually don't do.

Everyone has a bias based on what they have experienced. We all know what a "Dude Bro" is and what a "Dude Bro" typically acts like. We know "The Type" as it were.

Sometimes we meet someone who is a "Dude Bro" and we expect them to react like a "Dude Bro" and they don't. We are surprised and usually this allows us to refine our opinion. IE it is the old adage of it reminds us not to judge a book by its cover.

In a fantasy world, you don't get that unless you make those stereotypes a thing. You don't make those things a stereotype unless you enforce them in media. You don't enforce them in media by saying, "They lean toward being evil."

Because that right there automatically puts doubt on the statement which weakens the impact of it.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
HWalsh wrote:
Tresondros wrote:

I actually agree with this.

Players should have to consider the moral implications of killing.

The problem, I think, is that this would require some changes in the setting. For example, You could still have the goblins at thistletop in ROTRL but you would have to drive the idea that these are creatures following ripnugget who worships Lamashtu under the tutelage of a priestess of Lamashtu.

I disagree strongly.

This is a game about fantasy adventure, not this pure gray morality dark and gritty setting.

While you are correct this is a fantasy adventure, the people who make are pretty explicit that they want it to be dark and gritty, if not dealing with moral grey areas. That said, a fair amount of their content allows for moral ambiguity, and where it doesn't they tend to go out of their way to justify you murdering stuff. The bad guys of Pathfinder tend to be very bad indeed.

Pretty sure they left some of this undefined so that both view points could exist and be "right" for both games, TBH.

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I have removed some posts. Please avoid making personal attacks. It is possible to have a discussion without making snide or aggressive comments.


I feel like "this kind of creature is evil, so it's okay to slaughter them without provocation" isn't even the way it works in the course of actual gameplay. Like, a good portion of the Chellish aristocracy is evil, but it's not like PCs go around slaughtering Chellish aristocrats for no reason.

So why do people attack Orcs without provocation but not Dotari? Probably because we inherently have empathy for humans, even bad humans, but the basic premise of Orcs is that they are awful and lesser beings that no one need pity. I'm certainly not a fan of that, since if PCs want to have empathy for anything at all, they will find a way to do it.

I find when you have a group that's always inclined to try to talk their way past a problem if they see an opening to be willing to consider the perspective of the "monster" (Otyugh's are great for this, since they are monstrous but also neutral and they speak common). I find that in the case of "the group wants to fight some stuff" it's easy enough to find justifcations for violence that aren't tied to some essential quality of the victims of said violence.

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The various goblin threads are moving very quickly. To help us keep up with the moderation of these threads they will be locked overnight and unlocked again tomorrow morning when we are back in the office.

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I am unlocking the various goblin threads. Lets remember to keep things civil and friendly!


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PossibleCabbage wrote:
I feel like "this kind of creature is evil, so it's okay to slaughter them without provocation" isn't even the way it works in the course of actual gameplay.

I think it's more about something like a goblin being objectively awful than their actual alignment. Someone that regularly raid places to kill people for food and burn the place for fun is why people kill them on sight and NOT because they happen to ping of you cast detect evil.

So for the Chellish aristocracy, they generally don't come to Brevoy, kick down your door in an effort to eat your liver. The same can't be said of goblins... To a lesser extent the same can be said of other monster races. With orcs at least, there are enough 1/2 orcs around that there is at least a decent chance the orc like creature don't want to kill you.

So IMO alignment isn't the reason for 'kill them on sight', but past known actions and likelihood of danger for the person in question: A high level paladin has a lot more reason to ponder the issue than the generic low level guard.


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What is better: to be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?

Shadow Lodge

The bestiaries don't just describe stat blocks. They describe the most common cultures that a PC is going to encounter. In the case of creatures like gnolls or goblins, that is an evil culture, so the default entry is going to show an evil goblin. The default culture of creatures like merfolk is neutral, so their default alignment is neutral. It has nothing to do with inherent evil, and everything to do with the default upbringing a creature is exposed to.

Liberty's Edge

graystone wrote:
I think it's more about something like a goblin being objectively awful than their actual alignment. Someone that regularly raid places to kill people for food and burn the place for fun is why people kill them on sight and NOT because they happen to ping of you cast detect evil.

Actually, goblins rarely kill people for food. This is not to say they don't want to, it's to say they're cowards and don't really want to fight people. Most goblin raids are stealing food, not murdering anyone. There are exceptions, but they are just that exceptions.

Which puts a rather different complexion on killing them on sight.

Now, people absolutely still kill goblin raiders if they can, and I'm not saying they don't. Or goblins they find in their house. But a single goblin in, say, an alley in a human settlement is almost certainly trying to engage in petty theft rather than murder, which effects your priorities, y'know? It doesn't make you like them, but it makes you more likely to chase them off than kill them.

And it makes someone with a goblin pet/servant/adventuring companion seem eccentric rather than crazy. And makes it seem a drastic overreaction to insist on killing said goblin.

And all that is before whatever event is gonna shift the public perception of goblins.

graystone wrote:
So for the Chellish aristocracy, they generally don't come to Brevoy, kick down your door in an effort to eat your liver. The same can't be said of goblins... To a lesser extent the same can be said of other monster races. With orcs at least, there are enough 1/2 orcs around that there is at least a decent chance the orc like creature don't want to kill you.

Depends on where you are. The real reason nobody goes after Chelish aristocrats is they look like everyone else. And many places people do go after Half Orcs (there's some serious anti-Half Orc prejudice in Ustalav, for example).

And goblins almost never kick down your door to eat your liver either. They're more likely to raid your store room.

graystone wrote:
So IMO alignment isn't the reason for 'kill them on sight', but past known actions and likelihood of danger for the person in question: A high level paladin has a lot more reason to ponder the issue than the generic low level guard.

A generic low level guard will take an average of around 2 damage fighting an average goblin before he kills it. He has 19 HP.

Now, if there are lots of goblins that rapidly starts looking worse for the guard (four goblins make that average damage something like 12-15 and a serious situation, if he gets unlucky he could die)...but one goblin? Not a serious threat to him for the most part, which definitely explains killing them if they're raiding.

But alone? Goblins are simply not that threatening to most people who are armed and armored.


graystone wrote:
To a lesser extent the same can be said of other monster races. With orcs at least, there are enough 1/2 orcs around that there is at least a decent chance the orc like creature don't want to kill you.

Come to think of it, how easy is it to confuse a Golarion orc for a Golarion half-orc ? Elves and half-elves are very distinct about the ears, but the only thing I am remembering off the top of my head is that orcs average six feet tall and half-orcs somewhat taller, and I don't recall anything to specify how much they each vary around that average.

Liberty's Edge

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Serum wrote:
The bestiaries don't just describe stat blocks. They describe the most common cultures that a PC is going to encounter. In the case of creatures like gnolls or goblins, that is an evil culture, so the default entry is going to show an evil goblin. The default culture of creatures like merfolk is neutral, so their default alignment is neutral. It has nothing to do with inherent evil, and everything to do with the default upbringing a creature is exposed to.

Indeed! With goblins, I've even found explicit textual evidence to support this point (on p. 141 of Inner Sea Races):

"Some goblins do become genuine adventurers, almost always after banishment, seeing their tribe wiped out, getting lost, or otherwise finding themselves separated from the group. Without a strong leader, lone goblins drift until they find someone else offering food and protection. They eventually grow a shameful streak of loyalty toward any companions—even humans—with whom they travel long enough. Goblins separated from their own kind long enough may even begin to shy away from murderous impulses or express uncharacteristic qualities such as empathy and compassion, ensuring their tainted hearts will never find acceptance among their own kind again."

So if you remove goblins from their culture they often stop being Evil. If that's not definitive evidence for the cultural nature of goblin Evil, I dunno what is.


BryonD wrote:

Gnolls?

What is your solution for Drow as presented by Pathfinder Canon?

Also, are you actively calling for them to scrap big chunks of setting cannon and start over?

If goblins are now to be a core ancestry choice, this is exactly what needs to be done.

Maybe they should start a new campaign setting from scratch. Get rid of the old baggage.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:

I much prefer a game where it doesn't matter what the beings in an encampment look like whether I can go in and kill them, it matters what kind of encampment it is (ie: village or war camp or bandit lair) and what the folks there have been doing recently (ie: attacking a group that hasn't done anything is wrong, attacking murderous raiders is fine).

ie: I'm fine with a Paladin going into an orc encampment full of orc warriors and killing everyone...but only under the same circumstances they'd go into, say, a bandit encampment full of human bandits and kill everyone. Which are not hard circumstances for the GM to arrange.

Treating orcs identically to how you treat a group of humans who behave the same does not introduce moral ambiguity or keep you from killing them unless the GM makes it, it just necessitates a brief description of the bodies of their victims or the like.

Good Aligned PCs killing humans (or other PC race characters) happens a lot in Pathfinder, and is not hard to justify, requiring that the killing of non-humans operate on the same standards is not that big a deal and does not result in angsting over every death and making the game overly complicated. And it both increases verisimilitude and removes some very ugly implications.

I'm anti-goblin-as-PC camp because now it's non-trivial to establish a settlement that's accepting to goblin PCs while simultaneously suffering from a goblin villain society.

In the above example, PCs attacking evil human bandit groups is okay because the society that supports the PCs are generally majority human as well. That's why the PCs can walk into society without being ostracized.

Now, to have a 'classic low level adventure' where PCs fight a goblin settlement, the GM has to jump through some narrative hoops. One way a GM might do this is to have the victim society also be majority goblin. If the GM doesn't take these precautions, it feels unrealistic when the goblin PC walks into the victim human settlement and isn't met with resentment.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
voideternal wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:

I much prefer a game where it doesn't matter what the beings in an encampment look like whether I can go in and kill them, it matters what kind of encampment it is (ie: village or war camp or bandit lair) and what the folks there have been doing recently (ie: attacking a group that hasn't done anything is wrong, attacking murderous raiders is fine).

ie: I'm fine with a Paladin going into an orc encampment full of orc warriors and killing everyone...but only under the same circumstances they'd go into, say, a bandit encampment full of human bandits and kill everyone. Which are not hard circumstances for the GM to arrange.

Treating orcs identically to how you treat a group of humans who behave the same does not introduce moral ambiguity or keep you from killing them unless the GM makes it, it just necessitates a brief description of the bodies of their victims or the like.

Good Aligned PCs killing humans (or other PC race characters) happens a lot in Pathfinder, and is not hard to justify, requiring that the killing of non-humans operate on the same standards is not that big a deal and does not result in angsting over every death and making the game overly complicated. And it both increases verisimilitude and removes some very ugly implications.

I'm anti-goblin-as-PC camp because now it's non-trivial to establish a settlement that's accepting to goblin PCs while simultaneously suffering from a goblin villain society.

In the above example, PCs attacking evil human bandit groups is okay because the society that supports the PCs are generally majority human as well. That's why the PCs can walk into society without being ostracized.

Now, to have a 'classic low level adventure' where PCs fight a goblin settlement, the GM has to jump through some narrative hoops. One way a GM might do this is to have the victim society also be majority goblin. If the GM doesn't take these precautions, it feels unrealistic when the goblin PC walks into the victim human...

He gets met with resentment, the party asks why. Oops the game has a natural way of giving the pcs a plot hook. Goblin players states he is here to help, NPCs don't believe him. Goblin then precedes to help, NPCs feel ashamed at their premature judgement. Done.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:
And goblins almost never kick down your door to eat your liver either. They're more likely to raid your store room.

Or climb in your window and snatch your baby for later eating...

Deadmanwalking wrote:
graystone wrote:
So IMO alignment isn't the reason for 'kill them on sight', but past known actions and likelihood of danger for the person in question: A high level paladin has a lot more reason to ponder the issue than the generic low level guard.

A generic low level guard will take an average of around 2 damage fighting an average goblin before he kills it. He has 19 HP.

Now, if there are lots of goblins that rapidly starts looking worse for the guard (four goblins make that average damage something like 12-15 and a serious situation, if he gets unlucky he could die)...but one goblin? Not a serious threat to him for the most part, which definitely explains killing them if they're raiding.

But alone? Goblins are simply not that threatening to most people who are armed and armored.

Sure, the guard will probably be fine. But his job isn't to guard himself, it's to guard weaker people under his protection. People for whom a single goblin could be a major threat.

I would expect most town guards to look at a goblin in town as a warning sign that a major infestation might be coming. You know, like how you're supposed to assume that if you see one mouse in your house, there's probably like 10 more hidden around that you haven't seen yet. Except these mice might decide to kill the family dog and spit roast the baby.

More on topic, you could certainly write an inherently evil race created to be evil by an evil god, but in that case would they really be evil? If they don't have the ability to choose, that means they don't have free will, which means they'd be true neutral. They would commit evil acts, not because they want to, but because they have to. That would be like telling a human "Breathing is an evil act. What, you have to breath or you'll die? Oh well, guess you're evil then." And if they do have the ability to choose, it wouldn't be long before you started having non-evil ones running around. The only creatures that are sapient, but don't have free will to choose their own alignments are typically Undead and Outsiders. And there's some degree of wiggle room even for those in PF canon. In my opinion, if an evil god wants to keep a group of people evil, he would have to effectively maintain a large scale mind control spell on them continually. Disabling that and freeing the minds of that race from his control would be an interesting quest, plus it would actually increase the moral quandary of it. After all, you have to fight these people in order to free them from the control, but they're not actually bad people, so can you justify killing them in order to help them?

Now personally, I prefer for alignment to primarily be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. In other words, this person is evil because they have willingly committed a number of evil acts without remorse not because they have a pre-set code of behavior that they have to follow slavishly. Now to a certain degree proclivity should be included in that, but I think primarily it should be based on what you have done rather than what you probably would do given the right circumstances
I think Pathfinder actually suffers somewhat, as have previous iterations of D&D, because they haven't properly defined which of those alignment is based on, and so you have both types of case cropping up. After all, if I'm playing a Paladin, and I Detect Evil on somebody it matters which is the case. If alignment is descriptive, the fact that that person glows means they have done things that would almost certainly be punishable by law if publicly revealed. If it's prescriptive, then that person may never have done anything wrong, and the Paladin investigating/smiting him would be doing so purely on the basis of what he might do. Which is the sort of thing that is usually frowned on as "dystopian" when you use it in sci-fi.

Liberty's Edge

voideternal wrote:
I'm anti-goblin-as-PC camp because now it's non-trivial to establish a settlement that's accepting to goblin PCs while simultaneously suffering from a goblin villain society.

It's not that hard, IMO. And Paizo have strongly implied that they'll be doing something in-setting to justify it.

voideternal wrote:
In the above example, PCs attacking evil human bandit groups is okay because the society that supports the PCs are generally majority human as well. That's why the PCs can walk into society without being ostracized.

I'm not quite following here. I was making a statement about what is moral in the setting, not about what societies will tolerate. The two are entirely different issues.

voideternal wrote:
Now, to have a 'classic low level adventure' where PCs fight a goblin settlement, the GM has to jump through some narrative hoops. One way a GM might do this is to have the victim society also be majority goblin. If the GM doesn't take these precautions, it feels unrealistic when the goblin PC walks into the victim human settlement and isn't met with resentment.

Not if non-Evil goblins are also decently well known. If you've got an elven village attacked by human bandits that also has a trade relationship with a separate group of humans, then it requires no meaningful effort to have them not blame all humans for those bandits. Likewise, if a human village has some friendly relations with a group of goblins, a different set of goblins attacking them doesn't necessarily result in all goblins being hated.

That would, of course, require establishing groups of publicly known non-Evil goblins in-setting, but it's doable.

But more importantly nobody is saying goblins shouldn't come in for resentment and prejudice. They're saying that killing them all on sight is excessive even in the setting as-is.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:

Not if non-Evil goblins are also decently well known. If you've got an elven village attacked by human bandits that also has a trade relationship with a separate group of humans, then it requires no meaningful effort to have them not blame all humans for those bandits. Likewise, if a human village has some friendly relations with a group of goblins, a different set of goblins attacking them doesn't necessarily result in all goblins being hated.

That would, of course, require establishing groups of publicly known non-Evil goblins in-setting, but it's doable.

But more importantly nobody is saying goblins shouldn't come in for resentment and prejudice. They're saying that killing them all on sight is excessive even in the setting as-is.

Though I agree with your points, I'd like to point out that such 'justification' by the GM establishing trade routes with non-hostile goblin societies, etc. are additional examples of narrative hoops that the GM wouldn't have had to establish in the first place had goblin PCs not been a thing.


Deadmanwalking wrote:


Depends on where you are. The real reason nobody goes after Chelish aristocrats is they look like everyone else. And many places people do go after Half Orcs (there's some serious anti-Half Orc prejudice in Ustalav, for example).

The real reason nobody goes after Chelish aristocrats, is that they're aristocrats: People with power and authority in a country and society supports them with the full force of law and military might.

"Go after Chelish aristocrats" as a random person in Cheliax means you're a murderer and assassin and a high priority one at that.
To "go after Chelish aristocrats" from outside would require a major military operation, beyond the scope of the nearby powers.
Likewise neighboring countries don't just declare open season on Chelish diplomats who happen to be travelling, for diplomatic reasons.

Liberty's Edge

A Ninja Errant wrote:
Or climb in your window and snatch your baby for later eating...

This is pretty rare, fairly explicitly. Canon is very clear that goblins doing anything people would really be scared of is very much the exception, not the rule. No matter how big they talk sometimes.

Stealing babies is super dangerous and likely to lead to death, after all (vengeful parents, after all)...and goblins are cowards.

A Ninja Errant wrote:
Sure, the guard will probably be fine. But his job isn't to guard himself, it's to guard weaker people under his protection. People for whom a single goblin could be a major threat.

What people? I'm gonna be honest here, per the Gamemastery Guide's sample characters, most people are 2nd level or higher. Those without armor or weapons would certainly die if they fought a goblin, but their odds of dying before the guard gets to them if they run away are extremely low.

A Ninja Errant wrote:
I would expect most town guards to look at a goblin in town as a warning sign that a major infestation might be coming. You know, like how you're supposed to assume that if you see one mouse in your house, there's probably like 10 more hidden around that you haven't seen yet. Except these mice might decide to kill the family dog and spit roast the baby.

That's definitely a possibility of you see them lurking in an alley and I'd absolutely expect an investigation, but chasing them off and investigating is a bit different from hunting them down and killing them.

This is also not a response that a goblin known to be part of a PC group will likely provoke.

A Ninja Errant wrote:
More on topic, you could certainly write an inherently evil race created to be evil by an evil god, but in that case would they really be evil? If they don't have the ability to choose, that means they don't have free will, which means they'd be true neutral. They would commit evil acts, not because they want to, but because they have to. That would be like telling a human "Breathing is an evil act. What, you have to breath or you'll die? Oh well, guess you're evil then." And if they do have the ability to choose, it wouldn't be long before you started having non-evil ones running around. The only creatures that are sapient, but don't have free will to choose their own alignments are typically Undead and Outsiders. And there's some degree of wiggle room even for those in PF canon. In my opinion, if an evil god wants to keep a group of people evil, he would have to effectively maintain a large scale mind control spell on them continually. Disabling that and freeing the minds of that race from his control would be an interesting quest, plus it would actually increase the moral quandary of it. After all, you have to fight these people in order to free them from the control, but they're not actually bad people, so can you justify killing them in order to help them?

This, I agree with entirely.

A Ninja Errant wrote:
Now personally, I prefer for alignment to primarily be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. In other words, this person is evil because they have willingly committed a number of evil acts without remorse not because they have a pre-set code of behavior that they have to follow slavishly. Now to a certain degree proclivity should be included in that, but I think primarily it should be based on what you have done rather than what you probably would do given the right circumstances

This is really and clearly explicitly how this works in Pathfinder. Alignment is explicitly descriptive in pretty much all Pathfinder stuff.

A Ninja Errant wrote:
I think Pathfinder actually suffers somewhat, as have previous iterations of D&D, because they haven't properly defined which of those alignment is based on, and so you have both types of case cropping up. After all, if I'm playing a Paladin, and I Detect Evil on somebody it matters which is the case. If alignment is descriptive, the fact that that person glows means they have done things that would almost certainly be punishable by law if publicly revealed. If it's prescriptive, then that person may never have done anything wrong, and the Paladin investigating/smiting him would be doing so purely on the basis of what he might do. Which is the sort of thing that is usually frowned on as "dystopian" when you use it in sci-fi.

The issue with smiting people for being Evil even if Alignment is descriptive is that you don't have to have done anything death-worthy to be Evil. A moneylender who simply never makes any allowances for circumstances might be Evil for taking away family homes...but that's probably not an execution offense, y'know? In fact, it's likely not even illegal. There are a lot of other examples I could give of people who are Evil due to doing things that are not really worthy of death, and such people are almost certainly more common, even among the Evil, than those whose crimes are worthy of death.

The other issue is that Detect Evil can be spoofed pretty readily (misdirection being the most obvious way) so smiting anyone who detects that way is gonna hit an innocent at some point.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:
Serum wrote:
The bestiaries don't just describe stat blocks. They describe the most common cultures that a PC is going to encounter. In the case of creatures like gnolls or goblins, that is an evil culture, so the default entry is going to show an evil goblin. The default culture of creatures like merfolk is neutral, so their default alignment is neutral. It has nothing to do with inherent evil, and everything to do with the default upbringing a creature is exposed to.

Indeed! With goblins, I've even found explicit textual evidence to support this point (on p. 141 of Inner Sea Races):

"Some goblins do become genuine adventurers, almost always after banishment, seeing their tribe wiped out, getting lost, or otherwise finding themselves separated from the group. Without a strong leader, lone goblins drift until they find someone else offering food and protection. They eventually grow a shameful streak of loyalty toward any companions—even humans—with whom they travel long enough. Goblins separated from their own kind long enough may even begin to shy away from murderous impulses or express uncharacteristic qualities such as empathy and compassion, ensuring their tainted hearts will never find acceptance among their own kind again."

So if you remove goblins from their culture they often stop being Evil. If that's not definitive evidence for the cultural nature of goblin Evil, I dunno what is.

There are all sorts of horrific implications to taking that too seriously though. The truly good thing to do with goblins apparently isn't to kill them on sight, but to destroy their tribes, saving as many as possible and bringing them individually under wiser strong leaders, so that they'll develop loyalty and eventually perhaps empathy and compassion.

Such a campaign would certainly be able to redeem goblin children and even many of the adults. At least kidnap them and sell them as servants for their own good.

Obviously just intended to justify Goblin PCs, but has some really nasty real world parallels if taken seriously on a cultural level.

Liberty's Edge

voideternal wrote:
Though I agree with your points, I'd like to point out that such 'justification' by the GM establishing trade routes with non-hostile goblin societies, etc. are additional examples of narrative hoops that the GM wouldn't have had to establish in the first place had goblin PCs not been a thing.

Paizo have pretty much said they'll jump through them for us, though. I have a hard time objecting to them making more work for themselves, y'know?


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Goblins are a traditionally evil race - not by Pathfinder canon, but by the majority of fantasy fiction.
Allowing goblin PCs means the GM has to come up with a backstory solution so a human settlement can accept your goblin PC but still foster hatred for the villain goblin encampment.
To me, it's the narrative equivalent of a mechanical rule that I dislike.
When I find rules in the rulebook I dislike, I have to spend time fixing it mechanically. When I read a flavor inconsistency, I also have to spend time fixing it by narrative.
When I buy Paizo products, I want it to save time.
That said, as Deadmanwalking says, it's not too hard to fix. It's by no means a game-breaker to me. But I do have an opinion on the matter.

Edit: If Paizo said they'll provide the narrative, I'm more okay with this.


Deadmanwalking wrote:
The other issue is that Detect Evil can be spoofed pretty readily (misdirection being the most obvious way) so smiting anyone who detects that way is gonna hit an innocent at some point.

Though actually Smiting won't work in that case, as I understand it. I don't think Smite can be fooled that way.

But mostly, I agree. Attacking anyone who detects as evil is a good way to move yourself into that category real fast in any game I run.

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