|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
While I disagree with the entirety of Ryan's argument, he's not entirely wrong. Unbolded and rebolded for emphasis. By the same passage you quoted, it states that NE is what is normal for the race in Golarion. You can Rule Zero to whatever you need, but that is the baseline the setting operates on as seen in the lore itself I.E A 4 year long bloody conflict many nations in Golarion would be invested in making sure never happens again. A Sarenite Paladin from Osirion might balk at such a deed whereas an Andoran Eagle Knight may recall the atrocities committed in those years by goblinkind.
You declaring that all Goblins are NE is in fact a houserule.Alignment, Size, and Type: While a monster’s size and type remain constant (unless changed by the application of templates or other unusual modifiers), alignment is far more fluid. The alignments listed for each monster in this book represent the norm for those monsters—they can vary as you require them to in order to serve the needs of your campaign. Only in the case of relatively unintelligent monsters (creatures with an Intelligence of 2 or lower are almost never anything other than neutral) and planar monsters (outsiders with alignments other than those listed are unusual and typically outcasts from their kind) is the listed alignment relatively unchangeable.
The norm does not mean all nor does it mean absolute.
We had non-Goblins in P1.
They are not innately Evil.
Goblins are not humans so they don’t necessarily mature like humans. Their children are often abused and given little or no care. They also have an extremely high infant mortality rate, and often resort to cannibalism while still children. This would mean that those that are slow to develop end up dying. Over the generations goblins could have evolved into a race that reaches mental maturity long before they reach physical maturity. Considering that goblins are not known to be that well developed mentally to begin with that does not seem unlikely.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I guess what keeps respawning these threads is that PF goblins are very like evil children, and some players have occasionally evil children, others were occasionally evil children once, and the latter kind at least may not like to fantasize about being stabbed and buried in a shallow grave.They should consider pf2
This is a PF1 subforum, could you take any PF2 discussion elsewhere? Thanks.
Why is it always goblin babies? There are so many types of babies we could be spending our gaming time murdering and arguing over! Why not orc babies or cyclops babies or red dragon babies or kobold babies or minotaur babies?
Didn't the GM decide (in the case that spawned this) that the babies were not-so-secretly outsider [evil] (or 5 HD mundane evil creatures) since, despite looking like simple baby goblins, they had an Aura of Evil that the paladin could detect?
Let it be granted for the sake of argument that the overwhelming majority of goblins are evil. This is not the end of the argument. Paladins kill either to punish the wicked for their misdeeds or to defend themselves or others against an imminent threat. The inherent wickedness of goblinkind is not as relevant as the question of HOW evil and chaotic they are. Paladins can't go around killing evil humans or dwarves or halflings just because they are slumlords, war profiteers, worship Asmodeus, or routinely cheat their customers. They can't break into prisons and slaughter the inmates who detect as evil. In fact, outside of the confines of adventure paths, by definition exceptional, there are relatively few circumstances in which paladins can freely kill. Part of this is because of the conflicting demands of law and good, and part is because it is generally recognized that good and evil exist on a scale and not all evil creatures merit death merely because they are somewhere on the evil side of that scale. Evil outsiders always do. In most games, there are other creatures also considered so irredeemably and utterly evil they are worthy of smite-on-sight status (ogres, spirit nagas, most undead, etc).
In some games this list is long and in others it is not. This will depend greatly on the GM. A GM who sees goblins as moral beings who merely have a predisposition for evil will not run a game well suited to a paladin whose player is accustomed to thinking of all goblins as semi-intelligent annoyance monsters who eat children if left unchecked. The reverse is also true. In some games, the GM has defined goblins in such a way that goblin babies, thus far innocent of any wrong-doing, are nonetheless worthy of killing because they lack the potential to ever be anything better than a menace to the nearest nongoblin community. If a player tries to play a paladin in that game who believes that all intelligent creatures can be redeemed and brought to goodness, frustration will ensue on both sides.
Goblins do not exist in our world. They exist only within the imaginations of those who play the game. It is not possible to establish a single correct answer to the goblin baby question until every player and GM has the same shared viewpoint about them. This won't happen. So in some games the correct answer will be something like "Burn them with fire--it's the only way to be sure" and in others players might adopt them or subsidize orphanages, trade schools, and missionaries who actually have a chance of success.
As GMs, it is our duty to be clear in our own minds where we fall on these sorts of issues. As players of paladins, it is only prudent to discover what our GMs' positions are. Don't play a paladin in a game run by someone with whom you have little in common. Your paladin will either fail or fall unless these questions never arise, in which case why play a paladin at all?
Paladins can't go around killing evil humans or dwarves or halflings just because
They can't? Uh oh...
While I disagree with the entirety of Ryan's argument, he's not entirely wrong. Unbolded and rebolded for emphasis. By the same passage you quoted, it states that NE is what is normal for the race in Golarion. You can Rule Zero to whatever you need, but that is the baseline the setting operates on as seen in the lore itself I.E A 4 year long bloody conflict many nations in Golarion would be invested in making sure never happens again. A Sarenite Paladin from Osirion might balk at such a deed whereas an Andoran Eagle Knight may recall the atrocities committed in those years by goblinkind.
You declaring that all Goblins are NE is in fact a houserule.Alignment, Size, and Type: While a monster’s size and type remain constant (unless changed by the application of templates or other unusual modifiers), alignment is far more fluid. The alignments listed for each monster in this book represent the norm for those monsters—they can vary as you require them to in order to serve the needs of your campaign. Only in the case of relatively unintelligent monsters (creatures with an Intelligence of 2 or lower are almost never anything other than neutral) and planar monsters (outsiders with alignments other than those listed are unusual and typically outcasts from their kind) is the listed alignment relatively unchangeable.The norm does not mean all nor does it mean absolute.
We had non-Goblins in P1.
They are not innately Evil.
You are absolutely right. It just means, barring special circumstances, goblins are normally evil.
Why is it always goblin babies? There are so many types of babies we could be spending our gaming time murdering and arguing over! Why not orc babies or cyclops babies or red dragon babies or kobold babies or minotaur babies?
My reasoning on the previous page holds for why it's goblins I think.
Also dragon babies are worth gold and I have a terrible suspicion that minotaur babies are delicious. Veal.
You are absolutely right. It just means, barring special circumstances, goblins are normally evil.While I disagree with the entirety of Ryan's argument, he's not entirely wrong. Unbolded and rebolded for emphasis. By the same passage you quoted, it states that NE is what is normal for the race in Golarion. You can Rule Zero to whatever you need, but that is the baseline the setting operates on as seen in the lore itself I.E A 4 year long bloody conflict many nations in Golarion would be invested in making sure never happens again. A Sarenite Paladin from Osirion might balk at such a deed whereas an Andoran Eagle Knight may recall the atrocities committed in those years by goblinkind.
You declaring that all Goblins are NE is in fact a houserule.Alignment, Size, and Type: While a monster’s size and type remain constant (unless changed by the application of templates or other unusual modifiers), alignment is far more fluid. The alignments listed for each monster in this book represent the norm for those monsters—they can vary as you require them to in order to serve the needs of your campaign. Only in the case of relatively unintelligent monsters (creatures with an Intelligence of 2 or lower are almost never anything other than neutral) and planar monsters (outsiders with alignments other than those listed are unusual and typically outcasts from their kind) is the listed alignment relatively unchangeable.The norm does not mean all nor does it mean absolute.
We had non-Goblins in P1.
They are not innately Evil.
The only place there's a divergence is that some people think that because they metagame read about these niche aspects that characters need to play as though they're aware of the secret sarenite goblins, or the lone good aligned goblin in sandpoint.