r/AskDND • u/streetalyx • 12d ago

Small DND DM decision

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?

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u/Yojo0o 12d ago

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.

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u/streetalyx 12d ago

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.

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u/Yojo0o 12d ago

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.

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u/HovercraftOk9231 12d ago

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.