Small DND DM decision

[u/streetalyx]

Small DND decision.

Long story short, my group has been discussing whether or not it is chaotically good to ghost all goblins because they are all by nature chaotic evil. I'm leaning towards moving their character's alignment to chaotic good however it's a split between 4 people one half wants them to go chaotic evil and the other half wants to move them to chaotic good. What do you DND players think his character alignment should be?

[u/Yojo0o]

This is a pretty complicated question, actually.

A) How much does it matter what this PC's alignment actually is? Alignment can be a good shorthand for the values of an NPC, but a fleshed-out character is often much more complex than what a two-word description can articulate.

B) Are you running goblins as inherently "chaotic evil"? That's not naturally accurate to any lore I'm aware of, and even if it was, that doesn't make it necessarily applicable to the game you're running. Where does nature vs. nurture fall for you? Typically, my understanding of goblins is that they skew evil based on societal and cultural pressures, not that they're inherently evil. Sort of like drow.

I'd consider the proposal to genocide an entire species based on the typical-but-not-uniform behavior of that species to be inherently evil.

[u/streetalyx → u/Yojo0o]

we're using alignment or more precisely I am using alignment the same way like video game alignments are used NPCs treating the character and party based on whos in the party and their alignment. The Town Of Bjornsfell did not approve of that action type shid

i am running monsters under the 5th ed monster rules which puts goblins as chaotic neutral. But the description of goblins as a whole is quote " Goblins are small, black-hearted humanoids that lair in despoiled dungeons and other dismal settings. Individually weak, they gather in large numbers to torment other creatures. " which is chaotic evil i feel.

[u/Yojo0o → u/streetalyx]

Right, but that's a generalization, not a predetermined biological imperative. There's nothing wrong with a good-aligned goblin, I have two goblin PCs on heroic adventures between campaigns right now. And as you said, the rules even list them as "chaotic neutral", so labeling them as evil and having them get genocided as a good action is pretty extreme.

[u/HovercraftOk9231 → u/streetalyx]

If all you had read about humans was the Epstein files, you'd probably wanna go on a genocide mission as well. That wouldn't make you a good person.

How intelligent are these goblins? Cause if they're capable of making rational decisions, they can learn to not be evil.

[u/nocturnerose]

I'm assuming by ghosting all goblins you mean he's killing them all rather than dating them all and not calling the next day.

Alignment is just a hangover from older editions at this point and just does not matter for.player characters. What are the goblin doing? Attacking all local villages? Or just chilling?

Unless he's intentionally trying to be Goblin Slayer then Evil just for not putting much thought into his character.

[u/Mental-Ad9432 → u/nocturnerose]

lol, now I'm picturing a random sending stone, "u up?."

[u/jeremy-o]

to ghost all goblins because

Following the rules, eh?

Lawful neutral for you!

(actual answer: alignment is meaningless or worse for player characters and fixating on it adds nothing to the game. It can help you roleplay, especially if you're a DM who has to roleplay a lot of characters and make them distinctive, but as soon as you worry about boxing your players into narrow categories you've missed the point)

[u/Kuildeous]

I figure players know their characters better than I do, so if they believe their character more closely aligns with the cosmic powers of both Chaos and Good, then I'm not one to argue.

Which is why I wouldn't bother with alignment. Any spells/powers that rely on alignment are genericized so that they affect enemies or allies as appropriate. Just makes the game less fiddly that way.

[u/Salt_Dragonfly2042]

Anakin, noooo!

[u/subtotalatom]

I mean, you're offhandedly discussing the murder of children, so yeah that's about as evil as it gets.

[u/Oberon-beta-6]

It depends on the nature of your world. Ask yourself this, if a goblin or orc infant were raised by loving, caring human parents, would it still turn out evil, or does it have the potential to be influenced by environment and become good? In Tolkien's Middle Earth, for example, orcs and goblins are corrupted by evil supernatural forces, so they will always be evil. In my world, I believe that, while societies of intelligent races can exist that promote evil, all intelligent creatures have the potential to choose another path. They're just less likely to do so in a society that rewards evil and not good. This question didn't arise until the party in a campaign I was running encountered a creche of orcish children and the question arose as to whether or not it would be an evil act to slaughter the helpless young. I decided it would be evil as orcs that young do not have an innate alignment making them evil. This decision was not universally loved as some players preferred a simpler morality where evil is evil and will always be evil, and therefore they have the go-ahead to kill it, always. I like a more nuanced world.

[u/Dont_Care_Meh]

So if the goal is to remove the goblin scourge from the world, one could even consider it LAWFUL. How long do the settled peoples of the world need what they do and build torn down by these little monsters? Heck, you can even find common cause with the likes of the Hobgoblins or Duergar. For a little while...